Chip Up & Ship It (GGPoker, Spins recreational regular diary)

40K Profit Challange Week 15 Update

Profit Start of the Week 15: $-988
Profit End of the Week 15: -$73
Profit for the week: $915

Number of games: 440
Hours played: 11.75

# Overview
This week I picked up some volume, and double Leaderboards prizes triggered "missed opportunity" response in me. All sessions I've played tired and skipped all study routines, but the outcome is finally a green result for the week.

It was a roller-coaster week and the main contributor was one session where I went on 100s limit and got lucky with +17 BI mainly due to running massively above EV line. Didn't do it afterward, as I was afraid of distance claiming its EV dollars back))

Overall EV / ChipsWon graph for the week:

40K Profit Challange Week 16 Update

Profit Start of the Week 16: -$73
Profit End of the Week 16: $702
Profit for the week: $775

Number of games: 435
Hours played: 12.25

# Overview
I'm very glad that I finally got an overall profit in the challenge (16 weeks of play) into the green zone. I'm playing up to 20 Limit with 5.5K on my balance - 250BI feels very comfortable and doesn't cause me to hit my table that often

Since Camino, I quit drinking and this helped to bring more stability into my evening grind. I'm not working on my game at all, not doing drills, not running analysis. Feels like I'm not progressing, but still manage to maintain a decent ChipEV.

As today is the last day of September will share monthly graphs in the next post instead of posting weekly. I feel I'm overdoing graphs in the blog...

September summary

# Key performance indicators
Number of games: 1201
Profit: $1,350
Rake: $1695
Rakeback: 33.03%
Hours played: 33.25
Hourly: $40.6

Profit and Bonuses graph

Chips EV and Won graph:

# Overview
I've skipped the first half of the month, taking a break from poker to walk the Camino in Spain. Since returning I'm playing quite conservatively on the lower stakes putting very reasonable amount of hours. My excitement for the game went down after August, when I lost a big portion of my BR and went in the red in overall numbers of the 40K profit challenge.

Rakeback of 33% is the lowest for any month since I started to track it. I'm not in the mood to set any goals or targets for the next month or a quarter, lots of stuff on work that keeps my head occupied and poker now is a side hustle that distracts me from work before going to bed. It might change, it might not - we'll see.

Missed to include the SharkScope leaderboard for September, that I've captured yesterday:

With my moderate results, I've got 8d Rank over the German SNG players and 39th in Global Rank. Not many of pro grinders are playing on 888.
Interestingly, on the lower limit (5$) German total players are 14.5% of the pool, whereas on 100s limit German residents generate 25.8% of traffic.

Today got quite lucky to catch 5x multiplier 3 times and one time 10x multiplier in the span of 10 games after opting in Leaderboards. Won all 5x multipliers and got second place in the 10x game. Session was very good resulting in +$200, but the main reward for this luck I'm waiting to get from 1st place in LB :pcuser::

40K Profit Challange Week 17 Update

Profit Start of the Week 17: $702
Profit End of the Week 17: 423
Profit for the week: -$279

Number of games: 483
Hours played: 14.5

# Overview

The whole week I'm running massively under EV-line, but somehow could manage to stay afloat. Today finished session early and decided to give a shot for 100s LB, which punished me massively (-$1400 for the try) - it took all the profit for the week plus a bit more... I like taking shots, will do it once again next week...

Hi...What is actuelly your ChipEV on each stake? On what do think which ChipEV is possible on each stake?

Originally posted by Kostja007
Hi...What is actuelly your ChipEV on each stake? On what do think which ChipEV is possible on each stake?

My overall ChipEVs/tourney for limits and my somewhat inaccurate EVRoi estimations are:
- $5 Limit: 42 (EVRoi: 4.2%) over 2.1K games
- $10 Limit: 34 (EVRoi: 1.8%) over 4.2K games
- $20 Limit: 31 (EVRoi: 1.6%) over 2.5K games
- $50 Limit: 25 (EVRoi: 0.6%) over 1K games
- $100 Limit: 20 (EVRoi: -0.2%) over 2.2K games

If you can see I'm "barely beating" each limit without rakeback, but rakeback adds another 2-3% in the ROI so it makes sense to play.

Also, there is a positive dynamics in lower limits, meaning that I used to have a lower ChipEV/tourney in the past and now it is increasing (Last 900 tourneys on 10s limit have 37 ChipEV), but not on 100s limit, there I'm going in another direction (last 760 tourneys with ChipEV 9).

I think one could do at least +30-40% better in ChipEV/Tourney on each level if one would invest more time and effort into studying, coaching, game/time selection, and analyzing the field. I'm slacking on lots of important aspects to the game as I have "good enough" results to keep playing, this is a flaw that I'm aware of.

How did you calculated the EV-ROI? Thats pretty good results I think. I started playing the 5$ Spins. After 487 games I have a Chip-EV of 23,62. But Sample seems to be a little bit to small to say something about Chip-EV. Yesterday my Chip-EV was 28. Anyway my Winningline is much lower than my Chip-EV. Also I am just playing the 5$ games and my rakeback is at 43%, which result is ok.

I think you've already asked this question and I've already answered it earlier somewhere ))

My naive formula for 10s limit is:
EVRoi = (cpg/316 +1) * (1 - rake / buy-in) - 1

Where 316 - is a weighted average of starting stack on the limit (depends on the distribution of 300 chip vs 500 chip games)
It is a very approximate calculation, though...

Originally posted by Kostja007
How did you calculated the EV-ROI? Thats pretty good results I think. I started playing the 5$ Spins. After 487 games I have a Chip-EV of 23,62. But Sample seems to be a little bit to small to say something about Chip-EV. Yesterday my Chip-EV was 28. Anyway my Winningline is much lower than my Chip-EV. Also I am just playing the 5$ games and my rakeback is at 43%, which result is ok.

I would highly recommend buying Spin'n'Go GTO Wizard subscription for at least one month and spending 20+ hours in the first month - it sets a strong base strategy preflop and post-flop by just playing GTO opponents and analysing mistakes you make there...

I went right to premium and bought every month since then. For me 50 hands / month is too little as I use feature to bulk-upload all hands after the session to find the biggest mistakes.

40K Profit Challange Week 18 Update

Profit Start of the Week 18: $423
Profit End of the Week 18: -$1201
Profit for the week: -$1624

Number of games: 526
Hours played: 15.5

#Overview
The main contributors to the red results are 2 shots for 100s limit Leaderboard - had a really long streak with no 5x+ multipliers (100 2x, 3x games with only one 5x) at the same time running under EV line:

Well, no shots for 100 leaderboards for the next week for me )

40K Profit Challange Week 19 Update

Profit Start of the Week 19: -$1201
Profit End of the Week 19: -$346
Profit for the week: $855

Number of games: 319
Hours played: 10.8

# Summary

Happy to report on a green week. This week I switched from playing 20s to 50s, though Leaderboard is shared for them and playing 20s yields more rakeback, my all-time ChipEV per tourney for both limits is the same (30) so in theory I should do better on 50s with lower rake. That being said 50s greeted me with upstreack in ChipEV (60/tourney), but actual results are 1/3 of that:

The highlight of this week was yesterday's session, where in the span of 30 tournaments I got two 25x multipliers (chance to get one is 0.15% or 1 in 666 tournaments). I placed 2nd in one of them and 3d in another. That resulted in 2nd place in Leaderboard and another 300$ in the pocket.

After that, I kept thinking that if I took down both tournaments my overall ROI for the limit would bump around +3,5% (currently it is 0.8% without rakeback). This is crazy, how important those big multipliers are in the Spin'n'Go discipline. My miss is that starting from 10x multipliers ICM factor kicks in and I'm really behind on understanding and adjusting my game accordingly. Playing them like regular Spins making pure ChipEV decisions.

Yesterday, session was quite emotional:f_ugly:

I ended 50s session with big negative result, around -10BI - went way below EV line and decided to play 100s Leaderboard. 888Poker changed recently that 50 games now qualify for Leaderboard and it took another 25 games for me before I got my winning 5x multiplier to opt-in and start the run. It was a decent run, when at the last game of the session I had 191 Leaderboard points and 5x multiplier game at on the screen. Top scores at that moment were 196 and 199, meaning if I loose the game I would be placed 3d with another 196 points and if I won the game I would place 1st with 201 points. And don't forget that I have 5K on my account and 1st place grants $500 as a price... So to say the least, I felt some pressure

In HU next hand happened

I've run this hand through GTOWizard and it was played good up until the river, where Wizard suggest to lay it down more often, then to call.

The next hand brought me the win and the first place that held till today's morning:

Interestingly, if I would loose that heads-up match, me and "gombhal1993" would switch places, so this last win brought me +$900. That recovered 50s session and marked another green day on my calendar. :f_drink::f_drink::f_drink:

I'm not sure if that is due to a close opponent skill level or an increase from 30 games to 50 games in Leaderboards, but looking at the final standings in the board - the difference of 5 points between 1st and 5th place - this is crazy. Very tight and close competition.

First time posting hand history in the blog - do you find it interesting or valuable? Should I do it more often?

Good Job and more hands, please!

I think the river call depends on villain. Vs fish I call more than vs reg. Because I think a fish will only valuebet a few high flushes (A, Q,T, 9 high) with a potsize bet and often bets them already on the flop. Lower flushes he might bet smaller on the river. And in relation to that he can easily overbluff that spot.

My thoughts are exactly opposite.
From my experience fishes don't bluff enough in position especially, where regs know that they can push out weak flush or 2 pairs with pot-size bets. Also, against regs bet sizing matters more than when playing against fish, so pot-size bet on the river from reg I'd categorise as polarised, having big flushes and trash about equal amount of time 25% for each, checking behind fair portion of mid-value hands. Therefore 50% for me here to do bluff-catching as none of value hands I'm beating, where pot odds give me 1/3 for a call. This was my idea behind the call.
I'm not sure if I'd made this decision in case of all-in from his side. This would be quite scary for me and knowing the tendency of the field under-bluffing, I think I would lay my 3-high flush down.

40K Profit Challange Week 20 Update

Profit Start of the Week 20: -$346
Profit End of the Week 20: 2339
Profit for the week: $2685

Number of games: 525
Hours played: 21

# Summary

This week was very good in many senses.

I've received rake-back from the site, that I've registered some time ago in the summer where they offer additional rake races for 888Poker players. Still hesitant if I can mention the site here or if should I include the rakeback from them in my challenge. Decided not to count it towards challenge at this time. It was substantial as the first month, when you register, they offer a double payout - so for August I got $1.2K with 4.3K rake generated that month (a 25% Rakeback boost is not bad at all).

Another good thing, is I went to 50s limit, though Leaderboard is shared between 20s and 50s meaning, that playing 50s would give less rakeback, but my ChipEV / Tournet this month is 37 which should give a much bigger profit from the tables rather than Leaderboards. Bummer, that I'm running massively under EV line, winning only 2K chips where I ChipEV is 17K, but distance should give it all back, hopefully With the transition to 50s, the 100 limit doesn't look that scary anymore and I successfully played 3 days for 100 Leaderboard, placing first 2 times.

I've started a document, where look very closely into regular opponents - try to search for them in the internet, and capture what are their win rates against me in HU. Then, I compare their stats to GTO stats trying to find, where they substantially differ and how can I adjust. At this point, it didn't bring much value against them, but at least I now better understand Coffee HUD stats and their threshold values. Saw that some of the regs that I'm playing against are playing way more volume and time.

The biggest inside from this analysis is that playing against regs is a big waste of time, money and chipEV. Unless I will start crashing them heavily (that doesn't seem to happen any time soon) it is much better to find time slots when regs are not playing.

On top of the great week results - I went to a local club where I placed 4th in the Bounty tournament cashing another 1K EUR.

.

Yeah, that is the problem. I'm working full-time and mostly commuting to the office. So during workdays not much of the time selection - from 19-00 till 23-00. The heaviest traffic is around 20:00 - 01:00, but I'm constantly having a bad night's sleep if I play those hours - emotionally and cognitively heavy activities before going to sleep are not good for health.

Finally got my deep-ish run in online MTT, Main Event for 60$: