Liar Dice - Diary of a Bean Counter!

We are told that if you flip a coin 10 times and it's tails every time, the probability of the 11th flip being tails again is nevertheless 50:50. And I believe that with my whole heart.

However, I also believe that the greater the number of times you flip the coin, the closer you must expect the ratio of heads to tails to be to 50:50. So, if you flip it a million times you would expect variance of less than 1%, I'd imagine. This is the reason why poker players suffering prolonged downswings often think to themselves: "my upswing must be coming soon because this downswing has lasted so long". And it's not an entirely irrational point of view. Because, the greater the number of hands played the more mathematically improbable is a significant divergence from the arithmetically 'correct' apportionment of results (i.e. profit).

So, just like many players before and since, I wasn't being entirely unreasonable in supposing that the recent positive session the subject of my last post finally marked the turnaround point. Well, it turns out that my downswing had a false bottom - a hidden compartment of dreadful results just waiting to be released. Thus the following session marked another $100 drop in my BR.

A quick summary of the horror includes being dealt QQ 3 times in quick succession and being pitted against KK twice and 99 once. Unsurprisingly, I lost to KK both times. Of course, I also lost to 99 becuase naturally villain snags a 9 on the turn. In a cruel twist of fate, I then get dealt 99 myself and my pfr gets called by a player with 88. My 90% preflop equity advantage is rather irrelevant in the face of his flopped set. What else? Well someone calls my raise with 64s and gets a flush draw. I bet big so that they don't have anyway near the right odds to call for their draw; they call anyway and of course hit on the turn. And so on.

So, the next time you think your downswing must be nearly over, just remember: it might be only just beginning...

BR $255.93

Today is a good day. Today my bankroll crossed the $1,000 mark. Titan were as good as their word and, a day after submitting my order, quadrupled my ailing BR with a bonus cash injection which has been 3 months in the earning.

The funny thing is, that I didn't even consider the rakeback points bonus when I joined Titan. All I was interested in was the seemingly juicy First Deposit Bonus of $600. Well, all that remains of that FDB is $60 (waiting to be cleared). The remainder of the cleared bonus - $540, plus an additional $225 of my original deposit, has been lost in the most depressingly long and painful downswing I could have imagined.

I've dwelt on the downswing a good deal already, and now is not the time for further recriminations or self doubt or cursing of my bad luck. It's enough to note that I will see out the remainder of my 'sentance' playing SSS at Titan to clear another ~$200 in bonuses over the next week or so, and then change both games and sites. I have no complaints about the rakeback deal – worth over 70% at a quick calculation - but the software is enough to drive anyone insane heavy multitabling. Those advertising pop-ups that have a habit of appearing just as you're trying to run to a table in time to raise that elusive AA in the big blind after a raise and a 3bet in front of you, and which cause a mini system-crash and end with you seeing that Titan has kindly folded your Aces for, have had me nearly in tears many a time. I can't blame Titan alone. My machine is getting on a bit and is – I gather – somewhat low on RAM. Combined with an appallingly lumbering Elephant, it just can't cope, poor thing.

So, all in all, instead of getting my BR most of the way to $2000 as anticipated, I've merely limped over the $1000 mark instead.

Still, profit is profit at the end of the day. And that's what I have to focus on now. That, and trying to find a way back to enjoying my poker once more. Just one more week of grinding and then it's time to re-evaluate things - more or less everything, in fact.

With best wishes from the $1K Club,
Yours truly,
Tim64

BR $1,093.56
(Titan $1,051.25; FT $40.31; Party $2)
First Deposit Bonus cleared: $540 (90%)
Bonus remaining to clear: $60

nice to see that u're downswing ended
and congrats to u're rebuilded br

on which site do u wanna play in future?
the ipskinner should help u alot with u're titanproblems.

best wishes
goldflair03

Thanks for the encouragement, but you misunderstood me if you thought I was saying my downswing had ended. The boost to my BR is bonus alone - I continue to lose at poker. Now that I'm rolled for NL100, I lose even more:

Yesterday:
I raise J :diamond:J UTG and get called by the BB. Flop is 8 :diamond:T :diamond:Q :diamond:. I bet 2/3, he calls. Turn is T :club:. Villain checks and I check behind - worried about the flush. River is 3 :heart:. Villain bets pot. I umm and ahhh and finally call putting villain on a busted flush. Villain shows KTo (weak call by me no doubt, but what a nice suck out for him);

I steal in CO with 88; hit trips on flop with 3 cards lower than mine: 5 :diamond:8 :club:7 rainbow. Villain donks, I call. Turn is 2♦; villain pushes; I call. River 4 Villain shows A :diamond:7 :diamond:. With middle pair and a backdoor flush it's enough to go broke against a random pre-flop aggressor, I guess .

I have QQ in the big blind. The BU steals and I raise 3 times the steal amount. Flop is A :spade:5 :diamond:3 I push the flop as per standard SSS play. Not only does villain have an A but he has A :heart:6 :heart:. Well, of course Turn is: 6 & River 6 for the boat.

I have KK UTG1 and raise. I get flat called by villain holding A :diamond:K :diamond:. Not only does hit hit his Ace on the flop, but he even makes a flush on the Turn.

I openraise ATo in SB and BB pushes against me. I look at villain's stats, think for a bit and call. He shows K :club:J giving me a decent 65:35 preflop edge. Flop comes 9 :club:7 :spade:6 with no flush draw for villain. Ok... looking good... Turn: K

Today:
MP3 raises, I push with A :heart:K :heart:. Villain instacalls his montster K :club:Q :diamond:. Ok, I think: 70:30 - nice... Flop: 7 :diamond:Q 6 :spade:. Yikes Turn: A ...River: Q

The small blind Sklansky pushes 20BB into me with A7o; Smiling, I call in the big blind with AKo. Flop 8 7 3 :spade:. With no help for me on Turn or River, it's another win for the man with the worse hand.

MP1 raises; I push with AKs. Villain shows TT. Ok, I think: I'm a small dog here but it's only 45:55 - not too terrible... I have some outs... 4 :heart:J :heart:A Turn: T (but he has more outs)

But it's really ok. I'm used to it, now. It's been happening for months and months, after all.


BR $996.55
Best wishes from the $996.55 Club,
Tim64

Ok, granted, things aren't looking great for the readership stats of this blog if I'm replying to my own posts... but what the hell:

I had a strange experience just now in the weird and not-so-wonderful world of NL100 on iPoker. People were calling my raises and shoves with worse hands and ... not ... sucking ... out ... on ... me. How freaky is that?

I had a note on one guy that he once called my pre-flop raise with JJ (I had QQ) and called me down with no overcards to his JJ. Tonight, the exact same thing happened with the exact same guy. I had to smile. Next to the note I made last time, I just added "twice."

Then I open raised AT in the SB and the BB sss player pushed all-in against me. I hesitated then decided he can push with worse in this spot and he showed A7o. And he didn't hit one of his 3-outer 7s. I said, he DIDN'T hit one of his outs. I won the hand. Seriously, with the better hand pre-flop, I actually went on to win the hand. Clearly something very wrong here...

I raised KK and hit this flop: 4 :heart:J :club:K :club:. I made a 1/2 pot c-bet and villain called. Turn was T :spade:. With a heavy heart I pushed my remaining chips in. I'm thinking: "He is going to call me. He is going to call me, and then he is going to show me AQ for a straight. The absolute bastard." Well, he did call me, but he only had Q :diamond:J :club:. So that was alright then.

And the people who man the doors at the salubrious $1,000 Club in West London have told me that, contrary to earlier indications, my membership card is still valid. Just fancy that.

BR $1,093.34

Don't worry Tim we read everything! I guess everyone is just to lazy to post.

Btw, I can never get you online on Skype.

Hi Tim,

Hmm very strange when people do NOT suck out... ♦ Had a really strange session yesterday, all my strong hands were cracked BUT all my weak hands sucked out! Thank god is was a break even session

Anyway hope you will hit your MASSIVE heater now (or very soon) ♠_biggrin:

Greetz,

Tampa

The aim of my next post will be to set out some new aims, projects and plans. To say what I hope to be playing and where and for how long each day.

The aim of this post will be to tell you what I won't be doing. And why.

What I won't be doing any more is grinding SSS on Titan Poker. The reason I won't be doing it is because that's what I've been doing for the last 3 months and I can't say I have enjoyed the experience.

I figured that I'd need to play around 80K-100K hands whilst clearing my first deposit bonus and that was about right. I told myself that, as a minimum, I would need to have a winrate of 1BB/100 hnds over that sample for me to see SSS as a profitable way to spend my time. Well, my winrate was not even close to that; it was negative. Heavily negative.
I don't know how much of that is down to leaks, how much is down to my never having more than 300-400 hands on any of my opponents due to software restrictions and how much is due to the seemingly neverending downswing. And in a way, it doesn't matter.

I studied the theory as best I could, posted a decent number of hands on the forum and took care not to make rash moves. But I had a negative winrate. This on limits NL50 and NL100 which I know - from the experience of others - to be beatable. Beatable, perhaps; but not by me. Or at least not by me on a sample which I consider to be reasonable. There's no telling what my winrate might be if I played for another 3 months. It might swing upwards to 1BB/100 or even more - who knows. But I won't be finding out.

Before we move on, let's look at the upside:

SSS is a rakeback goldmine. For the 3 months I played on Titan, I cleared $1550 in rakeback ($515 pcm). Set against my losses from playing, the net profit was $659.60, or about $220 per month. If I had even been able to play at breakeven, the profit would have been sizeable and I would have a very different view of things in all probability. But there we are.

However, the psychological effect of having lost the equivalent of $890 while playing poker is too much to ignore (40+ stacks at NL100; ~90 stacks at NL50 - or about 60 buyins down accross both limits). Whether or not that is within the realms of possibility for variance while playing SSS on midstakes is another matter; it's not within the realm of activities I'm willing to engage in. Put another way, playing losing poker for 3 months ain't my idea of a good time.

What it comes down to is this: I don't think I can make a living playing poker. There, I said it. And it feels good to have said it. It's a load off. Where I'm from, anything less than $2000 pcm in post tax earnings is woefully insufficient to keep a family in reasonable comfort. So, it's time to revise my aims:

1. I will play poker for its own sake;
2. I will play for profit but not for survival;
3. I will play a variant(s) of poker that I enjoy and find fulfilling;
4. I will look on rakeback as a bonus on top of winnings - not the other way round.

All being well I will soon have a baby son or daughter and I don't want to miss out on the good stuff sat at the computer for hours every day when it adds virtually no financial benefit (compared to my earnings potential in other pursuits).

Now, if I can achieve the objectives 1-4 above, I may one day be able to play poker at a level where it does make a real financial difference. But that won't be anytime soon, so the best thing to do is take the pressure off and move forward with the right frame of mind.

Tune in again soon for Phase II of the Journey.

Final (pre-cashout) BR: $1176.91

Great blog, keep up the good work!

Hey Tim,

I like your goals. I can't even imagine the pressure I'd be taking on if I had to support myself in England (not to mention having a wife and baby on the way) with SSS... I think I'd need to double my income in order to afford a psychiatrist for the bad days, haha.

When will you know whether it's a son or a daughter btw?

@Dandycal: Definitely - I would need my own hotline to the shrink ♦

Re the baby, we believe it's a girl - but they can sometimes surprise you

Hope all's well with you - look forward to Skyping soon. Just reinstalled my system so hoping things not quite so laggy going forward.

hey i just recogniste one second ago how the ipokersystem works
i also play on ipoker nl100 ♦
so whats u're screenname?

i'm RAPT0R09

First the theory/assumptions behind the goals...

Assumptions:
1. I want to enjoy playing Poker. I was happy before I discovered the game and my life won't come to an end if I never play another hand. So, if I can't find a way to enjoy Poker, I won't play. There is simply no point.

2. There would be a point in playing without enjoyment if it were profitable. After all, most people work because they have to, not because they want to. However, as explained in my last post, I can't play 'profitably'. That doesn't mean I can't make a profit. After all, turning an initial investment of $50 into >$1,000 is a profit by any standards (more than 2000% roi, in fact). But 'profitably' is a relative term. If I make, say $10 an hour working in a normal day job then poker isn't 'profitable' by comparison unless I can make at least $10 an hour. And I can't.

3. From 1 and 2 above we get the following: I achieve no benefit by playing Poker without enjoyment.

4. Playing merely to release bonus is no longer enjoyable for me. I've done the hard work now and built a bankroll which - if it were 'my own' money - would make me feel very uncomfortable to risk on a form of gambling. In short, I don't want to have to grind to release bonus if that 'grinding' is not of itself enjoyable (see 1-3 above). For example, I don't want to sign up for bonuses and then feel constant pressure to play more than I want to in order to clear them.

5. I don't want to play Poker which requires heavy multitabling. I'm no genius and I need my thinking time. Robotic play holds little satisfaction for me.

6. I'm happy to move up the limits gradually and I don't want to move up to a new limit until my winrate/ROI at the previous limit is at least 'satisfactory'. This means that having a BR sufficient for limit Y (judged by number of buyins) is not necessarily a reason for me to move up if I'm still struggling at limit X.

7. I prefer to have some kind of financial goals as well as skills based goals. This is mainly because it's quite hard to measure skills based goals. However, I will keep these financial goals realistic and achievable and try not to get frustrated if they take longer than expected to achieve or if I fall back from time to time.

8. In order to improve - and thereby get more enjoyment from Poker - I need to spend more time studying and less time playing. That way, the time I spend playing will be more profitable (EVEN IF MY OVERALL PROFIT IS LESS - in fact this is the primary theoretical concept I have come to appreciate over the last 3 months).

9. I accept that Poker should be a profitable hobby for me, not a replacement to my day job. This way I'll keep it fresh and exciting and avoid feelings of depression or anger when I am running bad.

10. We always need 10 assumptions; it keeps things neat and tidy.

Conclusions:

Where will I play?
I'm transferring my BR (less the $375 needed to buy the camcorder I had planned for) to Full Tilt Poker. I accept there may be better rakeback deals out there but I would rather have a comfortable site with games at
all levels and hours of the day and where my rakeback is paid weekly rather than forcing me to play for months before I see any reward.

What will I play?
I plan to play a combination of NL Short Handed and SnGs. I will also try to fit in 1 MTT per week - mainly for kicks and experience. I will play NL10, or less, until I achieve a decent winrate at that level, and the $5.50 SnGs until I reach an ROI of at least 10% over a decent number of games.

Goals:

Training
1. Reread all silver NL articles 1-30
(articles completed: [1-10] );
2. Read all silver SnG articles 1-18
(articles completed [1-15 (ALL)]: );
3. Read the MTT articles
(articles completed: );
4. Watch 1 NL SH video per week [So far, so good];
5. Watch 1 SnG video per week [So far, so good];
6. Update this blog weekly as a minimum [So far, so good].

Financial
1. Increase my starting BR by the $55 necessary to get Holdem Manager (Small Stakes). If I decide to get the Professional Version, I'll need to have made at least $80. Until then I'll play without stats which I think is fine at the lower NL limits I'll be starting on; [complete] and
2. Reach a $1,000 BR once more. [complete]
Disclaimer: The author reserves the right to change or supplement goals and generally to change his mind about all or any of the above content or assertions herein.

Thanks, indeed, if you got this far. ♦
Tim64

Very nice goals Tim, I have kinda the same ones. I'd love it to be profitable in a way that it becomes a hobby with nice side effect on my wallet. Professional play is probably not possible for me since to get a better deal than my normal job would be very hard.

The most important thing for players like us is to have goals in skills and learning, not monetary ones. These are the only ones you can improve and that is where the fun of poker comes from. When you start to look at it as a job you loose the excitement.

And if you improve enough, the other goals will follow shortly.

Hi Tim,

Cool that you will become a father! Be sure not to miss out anything ♦ Being around withyour kids is FAR more important than playing poker Nevertheless there will be plenty time enough to play poker (well I have :)).

Too bad SSS didn't work out that good for you. On the other hand turning $50 into $1000 isn't that bad either IMO. I am break-even after 17K hands at NL25 now...

I wish you good luck in learning the other forms of poker, however may be it's better to first focus on 1 new type NL10 SH OR the SNG's.

Greetz,

Tampa

Thanks for all the comments, peeps.
@Tampaloeres81: I dreamed of one day playing breakeven SSS ♦
@RahXephon1: Definetely. The monetary goals are often more harmful than helpful - I won't take mine too seriously...
@goldflair03: I was (past tense ) [edited]
@Janusrichmond: thanks
@Dandycal: sick garph you posted of your heater. There's no way I would have given up SSS with garphs like that. Hope you stick with it as you're an inspiration to us all...

Stay tuned for a little news on MTTs...

I don't want to sound like I've taken a job in Marketing for Full Tilt but I do love that site. In particular the Full Tilt Academy which is imho pretty awesome. Having David Lederer teach you how to play SnGs in a dedicated video is a pretty cool experience and the depth of content is impressive.

I don't kid myself about the purpose - it's to get us to play more of course; but I can live with that if it improves my game. (No jealousy please, Pokerstrategy; you'll always be No. 1 in my eyes :heart: )

Anyway, one of the features are the challenges. I took a challenge for the SnGs and one of these was to play in a satellite tournament. So, I went of to the tournaments page and filtered out the cheapest tournaments and saw that there was a $0.25 + $0.05 satellite to something called the Daily Dollar tournament (the buy-in for which is ... wait for it ... $1.

(I hadn't got round to transfering my main roll to FT yet so I only have the ~$40 there from when I last withdrew - which means I have to play cheapskate games...)

What a bargain, I thought. Well, I finally won my third such satellite and got my entry to the Daily Dollar.

So, instead of costing me a $1 it had cost me $0.90. Check out that $0.1 saving!!!!

Thus, around 1:00am my time I found myself sitting at a table competing for a share of a guaranteed $10,000 prize with 8,000 other hopefuls

A few hours later I was still there and had managed to stay in long enough to get in the top 1,000 entrants for a juicy $2.20 payout. And then... things started to get interesting. I'd been playing pretty tight when I got deal JJ. I raised and got pushed against by another shorty with a similar stack to me. I called and went up against KQo and my Jacks held up. And from there I got dealt the most amazing string of hands, including AA 3 or 4 times. And my stack just got bigger and bigger to where I was actually 5th in the whole trny and looing at a payout of $350.

And then, I did something silly.

It was now six in the morning and I'd been out with work friends so was feeling a bit tired and woozy by then. It wasn't the right time to try to bully my big stacked opponent off his hand. I had the nutflush draw with three to a flush on the flop. Sadly, he couldn't be bullied because he'd flopped a Queen high flush Well, no more diamonds came and my stack dropped from around 350K to 30k and with the big blind at 4k chips I suddenly found myself having to push all in to stay alive. I did so shortly and my KTo went up against KK, with no more miracles for me.

So, in the end I cashed in 171st place - pretty good up against 8,000 - and I turned my $0.9 buy-in into a $6.50 payout for a 600% roi. Not bad for 5 hours work ♦

More soon...
Tim64

Things are going gently uphill for a change. A couple of weeks ago, the daily trudge upstairs to the computer at the end of an evening at work for 2 hours grinding SSS for my bonus filled me with a kind of dread.

Now, I'm quite happy to play 45 mins of NL 5 SH or a single set of $6.5 SnGs and call it a night. I'm no longer playing to release bonuses so it feels more like a pasttime than a chore.

And, as usual when you take the pressure off, you start to see results. After cashing out $375 recently (30% of my BR) to buy a nice little Sony Handycam for taking home vids of mini Tim64 when s/he arrives, I felt a bit like I was starting again. But of course that was silly: $800 is still a whopping BR compared to that lonely $50 all those months ago.

So, I've been finding the low limit cash games pretty beatable and this has enabled me to experiment with playing a big stack and not worry too much about the occasional iffy move. My BR is inching upwards anyway - it's hard not to when there are so many players at these limits that will go broke with just a pair.

The SnGs are also running well. I'm playing much more aggressively than previously and taking the good and bad luck in my stride. So many sick beats at SSS means I no longer mind getting sucked out on nor do I feel guilty when my pocket deuces make quads vs villain's QQ with both of us allin preflop in the later stages of a tourney. Heads up I actually feel confident that I'm going to win more than my share of the first prizes and once in the money I'm playing for 1st and settling for 3rd. I watched a great vid on FT Academy where Lederer explains that once through the bubble the top 3 players have already locked up 60% of the winnings between them - the're actually only fighting over the remaining 40%. I'd never looked at it like that before. In practice it means that the difference between coming 3rd and 2nd is pretty minimal whereas the payoff for 1st is significant, so it's worth taking some risks and pushing pretty loosely to get chips, give yourself a shot at the whole caboodle (i.e. there's no shame in coming 3rd, trying to get to 1st; but arguably there is if you play just to cling onto 2nd).

I've now made the ~$50 needed to get Holdem Manager Small Stakes and can look forward to another $25 in due course once the Take 2 promo runs its course. I have some technical issues to sort out first, though. My connection keeps phasing out and FT doesn't seem to want to reconnect without some form of electronic shove - like an old fashioned pinball machine. This will prove no simple matter as - both in and out of Poker - I'm a bear of very little brain.

Well, next step is NL10 and the $11 SnGs. But I'll wait till I have a reliable connection before risking a frightening eightieth of my BR ♦

BR: $871.68
Overall SnG ROI: 9.35% (441 games total)
ROI last 100 gms: 39.65%
ROI last 50 gms: 26.2%
Total cashed out to date: $419.11

I'm a great one for making pointlessly convoluted plans relying on untested assumptions and unlikely variables.

My latest plan is achingly simple in its fundamentals:
"To increase my BR by 10% per month on average."

Here's the basic idea behind the concept: If on average I can achieve a 10% winrate (for example on SnGs, where at the lower limits 10% is realistic) then, by investing the equivalent of my entire BR during the course of a month, I should increase my BR by 10% overall. In practice, this would mean investing in 100 SnGs per month, each for 1% of my total BR.

So, if I can do this month on month (on average - and allowing for downswings), I've calculated that I should be able to turn my 'starting' BR of $800 into $74,167,255 in ten year's time. ♦

Returning back down to earth, the problem with the plan is of course that one's winrate and therefore ability to achieve a consistent 10% increase in BR each month reduces as we climb the limits. For example, while it might be possible to achieve a 20% increase in BR playing the 6.5$ SnGs and NL10 SH; at the 109$ SnGs or at NL100 we'd expect a much lower winrate/ROI. If, for example, I assume 10% per month for the first year of play, then 9% for the second year and so on down, my total BR at the end would only be $1,314,963. Still, that's $100K a year on average and I guess I can live with that

*Tim64 rubs his eyes, yawns and throws the covers back. Ahhh those poker dreams...*

Well, on to more practical matters: I have been doing pretty well this month and eventually decided to purchase the rather lovely Hold'em Manager Professional, further lining the pockets of PS.com (or at least the PS Shop, anyway). To my great surprise, it actually seems to work on my neolithical PC and I love messing around with all the tournament graphs and so on. Now at last I can see what people mean when they talk about running above or below their EV line - a revelation indeed!

The SnGs are going nicely and I've recently moved up to the $11+1 Turbos on FT with a reasonable conservative 75BI brm. Cash games were going a storm at NL5 SH, but NL10 has started out a little less well (at least I can blame it on the EV line, which I'm a little under. ) I think I am folding to donk bets too often and will need to start posting hands pronto.

Sleepless nights are now just around the corner with the baby expected in under 1 month, so I might be lucky to increase my BR by 10% per annum after my playing hours fall away in a fog of dirty nappies and sleepless nights...

BR: $902.88
Total Poker Earnings: $1392.24
Total cashed out to date: $489.36
Overall SnG ROI: 10.615% (548 games total)
ROI last 100 gms: 16.652%
ROI last 50 gms: 36.235%
Cash Games: Down 1.5BI NL10 SH

Since I'm in the business of making the most of good news while it lasts and since I didn't have that much of it the last 3 months, it's nice to crow about an ROI busting set of SnGs I just played:

No of $11 SnGs played: 5
ITM: 80% (positions - 1,1,3,3,9)
ROI: 131%
$/hr: 87.3
Total winnings: $78.60

Recent Stats:

BR: $890.93
Total Poker Earnings: $1380.29
Total cashed out to date: $489.36
Overall SnG ROI: 9.49% (565 games total)
ROI last 100 gms: 13.632%
ROI last 50 gms: 29.181%
Cash Games: Down 0.9 BI NL10 SH (2300 hands)

Thanks for stopping by,
Tim64