GRoDT report
32 tournaments
+$141
$1161
5 weeks
Notifications
Clear all
A discontunued challenge within the challenge*: 'Chase Me - I'm an Ace!'
as an early celebration of the Asexual Awareness Week and to show the power of having more free time naturally 
(* A kind of Inception here 
)
Due to an attempt to move action onto iPoker, I've left only so much (~$102) on the PKR balance - $88.13 liquid plus $13.80 in tourney ticket equity:
Spoiler
But that's not a big issue because the Chase The Ace promo has just started and it doesn't matter for it which stakes >=$1.50 are played, so I feel I can grind away safely 
The goal is to reach $1020 (i.e x10), ideally within the first 8-day period of the chase, including the expected massive chase prize itself, ldo (TBA on Oct 19). So it's a kind of a tankroll challenge, though the BRM itself is not loose at all (I'm not so keen on switching to the $6s unless I find out that I win too much pre-chase at the $1.50s even 9-tabling).
Boring accounting rules:
Spoiler
Because the classical tankroll challenge allows to start with $150, I reserve the right to deposit $48 more back to PKR 
(that's in addition to owed rakeback, not to substitute for it in the acct).
Owed rakeback will be fictitionally added to the balance as always, which is justified by the temporary credit card loan argument. Right now, my October rake is $12, so PKR is owing zero RB yet.
For clarity of presentation, the stats of the mini-challenge will be based purely on the actual account balance plus the owed RB, so the next bonus chunk, to which I'm more than halfway, will count in fully, as well as any winnings from the blackjack freeroll to which I've qualified (having dropped $3 - lolvariance), though I normally don't count casino-derived winnings (I'll exclude them from the GRoDT stats, though).
As for accounting, it's not a separate GRoDT entry - it will just count into the stats of the main GRoDT challenge of the thread. Neither will a loss of $150 lead to a forfeit in GRoDT.
¡Vamos!
Ouch, I've had a sleepless night when I saw again how tough programmers' work can be and how precise it needs to be (one accidentally forgotten line of code can ruin everything 
). Hat off to those many Pokerstrategists who have mastered this trade!
Quite logically, the first night was bad in terms of focus, but the troubles must be all over now.
Spoiler
Note that five $1.50 tickets have already been bought 
Hmm, right, that page is rather messy yet. I'll try to throw a few more links soon to give you an idea, just I'm in a bit of a hurry now. In the meantime, you can start by reading the asexual wiki to grasp the very basics of the theory of 'the fourth orientation'. But bear in mind that the Education Network is only one of the asexual communities, the Tumblr one is also prominent but less centralised.
Or just post your questions here, and I'll give explanations.
GRoDT report
122 tournaments
+$32
$1193
6 weeks
The PKR mini-balance is standing at $88 (of which, $6 is points equity, i.e. 4 potential $1.50 tickets), but the next bonus chunk is very close.
I almost didn't play at PKR on Sunday because of a malfunction of my Ethernet port (or the cable, which is less likely) that happened just after my previous post and took half an hour to get sorted out and demoralised me somewhat.
Also, I'm struggling with bringing the jackpot table count from 6-7 to 9 for the chase, and I wonder how a couple of people are able to do this; perhaps it's just a matter of training and good general focus sharpness.
My grind infrastructure is lagging in many ways far behind the one needed for stakes and/or volume I'd like to play 
My apathy is so ridiculous, I'm not even pushing myself to find a decent second ISP or spend more than a few hours a week improving AHK scripts.
I indicated quite clearly in the title that the (fictitional) starting bankroll is $500. The real net worth is much more, but because of my fishiness, I can only play at rather low stakes with a rather low hourly (wouldn't have a bigger hourly if I were at $30s+), so quintupling the net worth will take much longer than I wanted this thread to live, hence I put up a mini-quest to quintuple the $500 because I can do it with low risk as well.
It's not the same as the PKR siteroll because the rest of my money is at three iPoker skins, Stars, Neteller and local banks
But I started wondering if $100 could be turned into $1K by playing the $1.50s due to LemOn36's challenge and because I think that grinding them to place high in Chase The Ace yields the maximum hourly.
I mean, 7-9-tabling jackpots / Spins surely lowers the ROI dramatically, so much that I doubt I'd be getting more (if any) $/game post-rakeback/bonus at the $6s, but the top prizes in the chase alone are so big that they exceed the normal projected weekly winrate I would have if I kept playing (necessarily fewer) PKR $12s or iPoker €10s. The prizes are like a fixed salary
There's at least one more reg of PKR's $12s who has switched to playing the maximum allowed number of tables (9) of $1.50 jackpots due to the chase - I really think she'd be losing post-rakeback pre-chase if she were grinding $6s instead. I can't 9-table efficiently yet, and the first prizes ($1K a week, not too shabby) are definitely going her way.
Plus, I'm rather new to the 'full grind' mode and want to train myself with low risk before venturing into Winamax €25s (possibly with a bit of €50s mixed in at offpeak times to fill the screen) next year (which I do have money for, just need to visit the EU to get set up), where mass multitabling, albeit with a way worse pre-race ROI, also maximises the weekly winrate due to a similar race paying loads to the few most active grinders.
More exactly, I'm following Collin Moshman's advice to move down stakes temporarily in order to get used to playing more tables, plus I'd like to eliminate the subconscious fear of not being a winner in the 7-9-tabling mode. So I'd like to get a sample of mass-multitabling the $1.50s to get an idea of the ROI in this mode, then get similar samples at iPoker's €5s and €10s.
Parallelly, I should start working towards being able to get in more hours of play per week, i.e. getting sleep and nutrition in order.
GL Tony, I saw your link I understand it now it is just like everything happens in a spectrum you know including sexuality! So you can be very much on the one or on the other side, or somewhere in the middle. But anyways, back to poker, GL with the challenge winamax has a lot of fishy players, but you DO need a EU bank account for this and they will send you a letter to your home address (not sure though if this address should also be in the EU or not), but anyway, the rake is intense that is for sure at winamax, if you are not winning a hand promo or something, it is quite disgusting but the field is pretty soft though!
Thank you for understanding (you've grasped the spectrum concept perfectly) and the wishes! 
Originally posted by FlyingDutchm1n
the rake is intense that is for sure at winamax, if you are not winning a hand promo or something
That's definitely true for cash games :f_cry:, however, the Expresso (7%) and MTT rake rates are very reasonable and the softness more than compensates for that.
Oops, I have so many options that I'm a bit lost 
The field at the €10 Twister has started looking depressingly tough to me (maybe it's not that tough because most of the regs are ownable). PKR's software is slower and the levels are also 2-minute, and there too many regs to get over 40 chips/game at the $12s, in my impression, and the admins are too slow at fixing the CTA leaderboard so I'm demotivated and dropping the PKR grind.
Stars' rep Matthew has said on 2+2 that a celebration of the 1-year anniversary of Spin & Gos starts today, but I see no news or lobby updates yet, let's see in the evening; if $5 Spins reappear, I'll seriously consider grinding them instead. I'm less afraid of winning $1M than I was a few months ago The $1M prize - that I don't need any more than $100K - does take 2% out of the ROI, but the ROI increase due to fishiness more than compensates for that.
Originally posted by tonypmm
I'm less afraid of winning $1M than I was a few months ago
The same applies to the new structure of $100 Spins, of course.
It's hilarious to read the outrage on 2+2 caused by a simple change of the top multiplier from 3600x to 12000x, with the frequency reduction from 1/100K to 3/1M, with in fact has changed hardly anything because the other multipliers, where most of the EV lies anywhere, are hardly affected.
Anyway, Matthew has said that the actual celebration is to start on Monday, so I have a spare weekend to play at Coral.
GRoDT report
113 tournaments
-$123
$1070
7 weeks
A-a-and the sleep issues have kicked in again
Weirdly enough, I was running the best at those hours when I was playing the worst
I took part in iPoker's Big Sunday for the first time, along with Stars' KO Week ME (neither of them counts into the challenge as their buy-ins exceed the limits specified somewhere above... I didn't lose much there, though). Well, I need to reconsider my plans regarding the idea of mixing in a cherry-picked Sunday major MTT schedule, not because the buy-ins are big relatively to my net worth but because, as paradoxically as it sounds, I really suspect I have a negative expected ROI in them exactly because the structures are deep and slow (I have no idea of what buttons to click, lol, and get owned by everyone else, which is more dramatic than the positive effect of the softness of the fields).
I've come to a conclusion that my best hourly is in €5 Twister because there's a huge average skill gap between it and the €10 one. Let's see what Stars offer next week, though; if they roll out $10 buy-in, $2M (or something more ridiculous) top prize, I'll switch over just because the field is expected to be amazing.
Meh, I was really hoping for the $10 buy-in... but the $5 buy-in $1M 'Silver' Spins are quite profitable too 
Starting this week, my Pokerstars action (except MTTs with no overlay), incl. winnings derived from free tickets, does count into the challenge stats.
(For the record, I have 326 FPPs now, so let's subtract their value - $5 - from the BR for convenience.)
Stars just started a spins promotion deposit $10 or more with bonus code:
ANNIVERSARY
and you will get 5x0.50$ (bronze???whatever that is suppposed to mean) spin and go tickets.
'Bronze' means that the $0.50 buy-in Spins are the cheapest of the 3 ways to win $1 million; the two other ways are the 'Silver' $5s and the 'Gold' $100s; the last ones are permanent, the other two are promotional.
I'd like to grind the middle, 'Silver' ones. The 'Bronze' $0.50s are way too cheap, the $100s are way too tough.
I (and likely you all too) have received a survey about the VIP program from Pokerstars...
Originally posted by myself
Judging by the language of the survey ('Would you like the program to be weighted more towards FPP exchange or towards other bonuses and promotions?', 'Is it clear to you how to spend FPPs?'), it looks like no wonders are happening and Stars are considering reduction of the VPP earning pace or the FPP value in 2016. Perhaps we'll see a high variance monster with tiny value disguised as big, akin to FTP's 'The Deal' (for which the lack of players' awareness of the ways to spend FTPs was cited as a major reason, as if they couldn't just put up more banners to raise this awareness)
I mean, the idea of 'The Deal' itself is OK, but I'd rather they make the coin earning rate 5 times faster and thus the promo 5 times more generousI might naturally become a Goldstar this month and a Platinumstar in the next one-two as a by-product, but the $5s are the only games that are playable there.
A new rule for myself: not to look at my chip EV and actual ITM graph/report until I become a Goldstar (to gain access to satellites to the Quarterly VIP Freeroll)
I know that a few people turn the EV line off because they think it's inaccurate, but that's false and my reason is, on the contrary, that it's so accurate that I subconsciously believe that it has no variance 
I don't want to start comparing myself with regs, moaning and not playing as a result of looking up short-term cEV fluctuations. It's better for the weekly winrate to play twice more tournaments with an ROI that is better than half of 'the best'. Besides, when people talk about 'the best attainable ROI', they never talk about what's possible if playing at more than 4 tables - of course missing spots is inevitable then, but the hourly is still bigger.
All I need to know that the $5s (or possibly iPoker €5s next week) are sooo soft that there's no way my post-rakeback EV ROI (the word 'rakeback' is a compliment to Stars' terrible VIP program, though) could be negative there, or in any case, it's not significantly negative.
The only times when I should look it up is when it comes to making business decisions (at which site/stake to play). When I'm committed to a certain site and stake, I can't say anything definitive anyway until I get a sample.
Ironically, I'm still going to view real money winnings because the challenge rules require this and these winnings are hardly correlated with the skill in the short run anyway
GRoDT report
97 tournaments
-$83
$987
8 weeks
^ Dat volume
I don't know why Stars' client seems less playable, 4 tables of Spins seem a lot already, roughly equivalent to 6 tables of iPoker, even though the blind levels are slower at the former. One of the reasons might be that the main time to act at Stars is 12 seconds 
(as opposed to 15 on iPoker) and I'm not used to taking the timebank and also don't want the opponents to wait for too long.
Despite the bigger number of hands played per tourney, I don't feel that my edge at Stars is significantly (if any) bigger. The thing is that fish remain fish at any blind level (up to 60/120 - for sure - they're not loose enough on average in high blinds), and whereas their average bb/100 lossrate is surely lower in higher blinds, I'm not sure if the same is true for their average chip/hand lossrate - they do have push/fold leaks, one way or another. So my assumption is that the blind growth speed doesn't matter as much as the quality of the field I'm sat against.
I'll probably set up special hotkeys to record (into a text file) whether I've got 0, 1 or 2 regular opponents in a game and then calculate the average. Off the bat, it seems that a significant % of seats in Stars 5s is taken by someone who's hidden from the search function or has nontrivial sizings that s/he must have set up manually in the client or Table Ninja, i.e. not a total newb (whether s/he actually plays well is a matter of further observation, of course).
I'll still try to get used to loading 6 Stars tables next week.
And I'll definitely need to do some existential leakbusting tonight after I wake up.
I'm too lazy, and I didn't grind enough this week until 2 hours before the Silverstar freeroll (which I'm now 1-tabling as a warmdown), and to earn the 500 VPPs in time, I had to move up to the tough 15s (4-6 tables) Not surprisingly, the session was very tilty.
Spoiler
I can't complain about the money because I went on a +$205 heater :f_tongue:, but I'm terrified to look at the EV bb/100 later tonight.
It was an ideal spot to record my 'thoughts', but I didn't manage to launch any voice recorder, so I have to write down everything I remember from then. So here are the top 10 annoyances that I remember...
I hate it that/when (I understand many of these concerns are ridiculous, but bear with me, it's +EV for you to make analogous 'mental game HHs' too):
Spoiler
1. The time to act at Stars is only 12 seconds as mentioned above, making 6-tabling and, surprisingly, even 4-tabling rather awkward.
2. My motor coordination is poor and I often find it easier to spend time on hovering the mouse over Stars' buttons instead of pressing one of the many buttons of the mouse that are tied to hotkeys but my muscles can hardly remember which button stands for which action and reach it fast and reliably, except the right-click fold and the middle button shove.
3. Opponents of all kinds 'exploit' me, intentionally or not, by doing passive actions (limps / flats) that force me to make more clicks per hand and, more importantly, exercise my brain in playing after the flop, instead of donating chips by restealing or calling resteals with ridiculously weak ranges like the iPoker field tends to do.
4. Stars' blind structure is sooo slooow that, for the majority of the time, the stack depths are too awkward for all-in restealing or openshoving.
5. I have to actually think a bit too often at Stars, especially when I have some kind of marginal 2nd-3rd pair on the flop OOP
6. Pokerstrategy advertises Spin & Goes as the easiest format of poker (for beginners), whereas theoretically (ignoring the softness of the fields), they and HU hypers are one of the toughest formats to learn (behind PLO) because one has to play postflop with total rags most of the time and also OOP rather often. Full ring MTTs are more basic in this sense, even despite the bigger stack depths, and are also soft. Their only shortcoming is the length and thus worse flexibility of the schedule.
7. Opponents make slightly suboptimal unexpected plays, even if they lose, because they puzzle me and have to be noted but I don't have Notecaddy definitions for those plays yet.
8. Stars have no 'Call Any' advance action button when I accidentally make a non-all-in all-in.
9. I run into well-known regs, which makes me wonder why on earth they prefer to torture me here instead of getting out to the 30s+. This applies to myself too, though - someone on Moskvyak's coaching was once angry with the fact that I contaminate the 5s-7s instead of sticking to the 30s
10. I try to make 'high chip variance plays' vs regs, or anyone vs whom I have no plan, to negate their edges, but somehow the stacks seem to return to about equal and thus of maximum possible depth too often.
P.S. as for my new policy on accounting casino promotions:
Spoiler
I normally don't debit the tourney tickets received in them to the challenge 'BR stats', because, well, they weren't earned by playing poker but by playing very high variance games to save time for me, which I can afford... but that's not the case with PKR's blackjack freerolls as they require only a $10 wager, so I've chosen retroactively to subtract my losses and add nothing for my wins in such cases, but to include the ticket equity earned, that is bigger. So anything that I win in tomorrow's PKR Masters entering with the ticket won in the 1st BJ freeroll, will be counted into the BR If I play iPOPS parallelly, though, the results (wins or losses) there won't count.