turtleknife_poker_blog

Getting OFF Full Tilt!

You may have seen me playing more and more $2 heads up sit and go tournaments at Full Tilt Poker. I started playing them for the very simple reason of getting OFF the TILT ranking that Sharkscope anoints me when I lose 4 or more sngs in succession.

I hate seeing that there, and really it doesn`t mean much, but I suppose it`s just a personal thing. However, my win rate in those $2 HU-SNG`s is very high, maybe about 75% (just a guess). The competition, as you`d quite imagine is very, very weak, - sometimes to the point where I can dust`em up in less than 5 hands! I noticed my overall profit on Sharkscope shows that I only win $1 per every sng tournament I enter anyway, so it really isn`t cutting into my stats at all.

Given that though, I wonder if this strategy could be good for doubling a bankroll, $1.85 at a time? Let`s say you deposit $50 and you really want to double that. I can bet that after 75 sit an go HU matches, you could very well have your $100, then be on your way to OPM.

Just a thought.

Bankroll Advice from the Forum

Sun137 has generally provided a well-designed course for understanding bankroll management in poker. Here is an excerpt for your benefit. If you want to see the whole series go to www.TournamentIndicatorForum.com and look for the Bankroll section.

The great Gary Player, when called a lucky player at one of the major golf events, smiled as he turned to his (idiot) accuser and said 'it's funny, the more I practice the luckier I get' and went on to win another major title.

Poker is the same (as is anything competitive). There may currently be legal challenges (in the UK) to decide if Poker is a game of skill or luck, but in reality, for the individual, it is far more than that.

It is a continuous path of application and learning, combined with an ability to master our emotions in the face of misfortune and maintain a cool head to allow a proper analysis of the next hand - because we only have about 5 seconds to pull ourselves together before the cards are dealt and making good decisions on a consistent basis is the NUMBER ONE factor that produces a growing bankroll with (ultimately) a successful poker career.

But how do we reach this point?

I stated in part 3 you are on a poker degree course. Some of us will come out with 1st class honours, some with 2nd class, some with 3rd class and some with a pass. The level is not important, as long as you pass - because a pass means you are a profitable poker player. You are maybe not as profitable as the 1st class honours guy, but so what? You are profitable, and 95% - yes 95% of poker players online are not. For a huge number of reasons, but mainly because they do not apply themselves, do not take the time to 'learn, play, review, repeat'. There is a huge amount of information available to learn the game properly, online, in forums, in poker books, videos, lots of sites to practice at with little or no risk - but there are probably 10 times the number of poor players (fish, hare, gifthorse, call them what you will) out there than when there was limited information available. The current release of the Dan Harrington Cash game books will not help them, because by their nature, poor players will not read them.

Learn, play, review, repeat. Forever. That is now you do it, for it is a process of continuous improvement.

In part 1 I showed you the basic model/guideline for a cash game bankroll builder.

In part 2 I outlined the many elements required to build a proper structure for a multigame bankroll.

In part 3 I showed you how to put it all together with examples and identified the cut off point for moving from a 'training stage' poker player with no bankroll to a profitable player with a new 'starting' bankroll.

Now we look at training and analysis in more detail.

The training period, IMHO, is a minimum of 6 months. If it takes you longer, that's ok. we are all different. When you start to become consistently profitable and build a BR (as advised in part 3) your training period is over. But if you, later on, bust your BR, you are BACK in training mode - because if you are rigidly following the BR guidelines you should NEVER (well 95% of the time) totally bust out.

What is included in the training period and how much does it cost?

I take it for granted you have computer, printer and internet connection. We use these items for our everyday life, so they are not part of the cost. However the following ARE all included:

Books...............$200 (not all at once)

As you learn different aspects of the game (and different games), you need a book (or books) for reference. Yes, you can browse the internet, but you do need about 3/4 books per type of game during this period. I have about 20 I still use as core reference and I will buy any new books that I perceive will help me improve my game. But $200 over 6+ months is a good starting point. Marty has a very good book review site, so I will not compete with his listing here (there are some I have he doesn't list).

A training site............$100

Every poker site has play games. Don't waste your time, it bears no relation to real poker. You need somewhere to practice that will give you advice and as near a real life game as possible. Poker School online is good, Turbo Texas Holdem is another simulation option, but there is only one place to go (IMHO) and that is Poker Academy. It is the most advanced simulation software on the market, light years ahead of the market and has a 'real' feel to it with online advise as you play. If you watch Marty's poker strategy videos and want to try out some moves, PA is the play to do it. They have a downloadable version 2 for around $100.

Software....................$300

Before you go into the competitive poker world with your 'new' bankroll, following successful training, only a player who is going to lose does so without any software. There are a huge number of poker calculator software aids out there (Marty has another site reviewing them) but not all are any good. But what do you need? There are 4 areas:

Statistical assistance for Cash games
Statistical assistance for SNG/MTT
A database to record all your hands and provide analysis of play
A specialist database to analyse specific areas of your game.

I have used a number of aids over the years, but currently the following mix is by far the best (again IMHO):

Holdem Indicator (for statistical assistance in cash games)
Tournament Indicator (for statistical assistance in SNG/MTT)
Poker Tracker (a database/analysis tool - records all your hands)
PAHud (on screen statistical display linked to Poker Tracker)
Prospector (a top of the range specialist database to analyse your game).

(Poker Office 2 is a database/statistical aid I did use but it has too many crashes after updates)

I have provided a detailed description of how I use these software aids elsewhere, but basically I use PAHUD/PT/HI for my cash games and PAHUD/PT/TI for my SNG/MTT. I use PT as my main database and export areas I wish to analyse to Prospector (part of the Poker Academy software family) for detailed review.

All the above programs can be purchased within the $300 budget. I recommend using them during the training period, as you will be fully experienced using them when you go 'live' with your new BR and they will also improve your skills/ability during training.

Poker Videos.................$400

I only recommend this towards the end of your training and beyond. Sign up to one of the numerous training sites (Marty has a site recommended) only when you have a broad understanding of the game, its terms, style of play etc. Otherwise your money will be wasted. poker Videos build on existing knowledge gained by your own hard work and research, they are not an easy route to learn quickly and bypass the hard graft. During my maths degree, the tutor would give us printed notes to learn, but make us write them out, because when you do that it stays in your mind as you are thinking as you write. If we just read the notes, a lot of the information would drift. So do the hard graft, then sign up to the site, because by then you will have a solid foundation and know what they are talking about.

It is a nice round number ($1000) but I believe it to be a good estimate of the money required to learn the game during the initial stages of your poker career. There are always offers linked to software (usually to sign up to sites) and that is fine, as you are usually on limited funds at this stage, so take advantage of the offers - but choose your site/games carefully to tie in with the type of practice you want.

You have (as defined in part 3), a minimum of 200 hours training to undertake. This is a slight understatement as the 200 hours refer to gameplay only. There is another guideline here:

For every hour at the tables during training, equal time should be allocated to reading/research, practice and review. (Play on Poker Academy is part of this element, as the 200 hours at the tables only refers to live tables).

Therefore the training total is 400 hours. If it seems a lot, it isn't. This is a poker degree. It is real money you want to play with. If you do not want to put in the time, go to the bookies, give your money to charity or (worse ) your partner to spend. The 800 hours can be as long as you want. 6 months (30 hours a week), 1 year or more.

Now you know why 6 months is the minimum time period..................

I hope this is of help to you. In part 5, I will look as some of the key elements we use to analyse our game and make the right decision regarding the game you should be playing.

Arnold Snyder where are you?

Whatever happened to Arnold Snyder?

Somebody asked on the forum if anybody had read "The Poker Tournament Formula" by Arnold Snyder. Of course BaddBeatBobb and myself participated in Arnold's forum and were initially excited about how he was playing live tournaments. We really wanted to know if the strategy could be translated to low limit online poker and after several attempts to get data, we surmised it would not be successful. Arnold himself came back and basically said that he had no experience online with this system so couldn't verify it as a winning strategy online.

I would have really liked to devise an aggressive strategy for Full Tilt tournaments, but in trying so, it was more like smashing your forehead against a brick wall.

Here is BBB's response:

Ahh, Poker Tournament Formula, one of my favorite and enduring hobby-horses.

I really like the book, and think it emphasizes a few important ideas. If you find it startling and new, as I did when i first read it, then it may be the case for you, as it *certainly* was for me, that I simply hadn't played enough tournaments, nor thought about tournament strategy in enough depth to put Arnold's ideas into a bigger context.

The book is a bit like handing matches and gasoline to eight year old boys. They'll have great fun right up to the point where they set their own clothes on fire.

In a nutshell, the strategy is to break into unopened pots from position (hijack, cutoff, button) to try and steal. If you don't get the steal, then fire off a c-bet on the flop. If that doesn't get it done, jam the turn and pray.

Ok, obviously I'm being far too simplistic here. Arnold's a very good writer, and the book explores a great many lines of play, introduces the theoretical notion of speed of a tournament (rate of change of M, or the first derivative of M, dM/dt if you prefer a more formal expression), and it emphasizes that you have to stop being a timid weenie and start betting.

The main problem is, for all its elegance, it simply lacks empirical data of success. No one has actually come out and put their poker winnings record up for public scrutiny and said, "I did this all with the Snyder method." Marty, by contrast, has been very open about his own record (see tournament results) and the method he used to achieve the win-rate: mousie, patient, TAG.

Marty in fact asked right on Snyder's own forum for anybody to actually share some numbers and he attempted to collaborate with Arnold to adapt the PTF to small buyin tournaments where players are far too sticky to let anybody get away with a position-based steal strategy.

As for me, I attempted to formalize the mathematics in the PTF, to precisely describe dM/dt, and I discovered that the formulae break down in field sizes above about 300 players, when you need to shift from Arnold's (basically) quadratic equations to exponential equations. I'm referring specifically to his field factor equation. I asked about this on his forum and got no useful replies. So, since his strategy relies explicitly on tournament speed, which relies implicitly on field factor, and since many online tournaments have fields larger than 300, there's a pretty big problem here. The problem, to my knowledge, remains unacknowledged and hence un-addressed to this day.

Formalisms aside, the more basic issue is "Put up or shut up," and nobody has yet been willing to display their tournament success record while claiming it is based on a fundamentally PTF-based strategy.

Sit and Go grinding.

My streaks haven't been getting any longer, they just haven't been getting any better. Half of my no cashes are due to my own poor play, and the other half I can credit the poor play of others or the infamous Full Tilt Action Randomizer. Well anyway, I can't complain because I haven't had a very long losing streak, just that breaking even isn't exactly acceptable either. I am taking Full Tilt break and will be on Poker Stars and Cake Poker maybe until Friday to help save me from myself. I have had to go to the $2 and $5 heads up tables on occasion just to TurtleKnife get back in the winning column.

One fun point was when I found one of my own subscribers at a sit and go table and she was absolutely tilting. here is the youtube link:

I have also been playing with nicely presented product called PersonalPokerPal which in esence is a bankroll management tool full of excellent graphs. You can see the full review here for Personal Poker Pal

Learning the OPM way at Full Tilt.

From Phd in the forum:

It spiked and then fell again....

Its good to see you playing less than $33 I saw in the last hand BigA.

But $6 is still pretty high when you are not using Other Peoples Money (OPM).

When I say that, I obviously have no idea what your finanical circumstances are, but I would say exactly the same thing to Bill Gates.

Building a bankroll off OPM is not simply something to be done is you cannot financially afford to lose. Rather, it is a very important part of the learning process which is necessary to get the correct mindset.

For the amount of time I spend staring at computer screens, I would rather be playing Play Station or X-box. If on-line poker is the MOST enjoyable thing to you that you could do with your time (and money) then BR is not really an issue.

However, if like most of us, you are playing to make money, then it is imperative to build a BR from OPM. Lots and lots of things happen through this process.

Firstly, you start playing at very low stakes. Here you will be playing lots and lots of very bad players. It is essential that you do this, to learn what a bad player does. You should be sharkscoping loads of your oponents (5 a day is fine) but only after you have formed your own opinion about whether they are good or bad. Then check their sharkscope and you start to gain firstly a good understanding of how not to play, and secondly, you start to build profiling skills.

Secondly, as you progress through the levels, with OPM then you are not at all concerned about the money you are playing with....because it is not yours. This leads to another very important learning stage....experimentation.

If you know you can be profitable at $1.10 buy-in and you build a bankroll to allow you to play $2.20 then at some point in the $2.20 stage, you can occasionally try new things out. If they don't work, its all good. You learned something, or maybe you learned how you could refine your experiment in the future to a slightly different situation. But you also know that it is no big deal to experiment and lose, because you can go back to profitable play (even at $1.1) and win back what your experiment(s) cost you.

You keep doing this through the buy-in levels and you have all of a sudden gained a huge level of experience to be a functional, equipped and feared opponent at your current or next buy-in level.

I am only a pretty new poker player and I started playing at about the same time as I signed up to this forum. If you were to read through my posts from day 1 to now, you will see that I have struggled and grappled with heaps of different experiments. All aimed at improving my game and my understanding of the game.

I think Coop underwent a pretty similar process on this Forum too.

So after about 6 months, these are some of the experiements I mucked around with, all using OPM.

1. loose play in the early stages
2. Attacking mice
3. Slow playing and min-raising AA and KK
4. stealing blinds
5. Open limping or Open raising
6. Multi-tabling
7. Ignoring GCI (game critical intersects) in SNGs
8. ICM (Independent Chip Models) and bubble factor agression
9. How to bet with the nuts
10. Fly swatting

I'll leave it at 10 because its a nice round number...

I have learned and experimented, read about, and theorized about all of those things with OPM. Yes, that even includes the books I have bought, the video subscriptions and my other tools like Tournament Indicator.

I deposited $20 at Party Poker and got another add-on poker calculator and lost my $20.

I then deposited another $50 into Pacific Poker and I have never deposited with my own money again.

I have turned $70 into over $5,000 in 6 months following the Bank Roll Building process. So you do not need to play high stakes immediately to win a descent amount in a short time. You need to look at it like compunding interest. Each dollar won, puts you closer to playing the next level where you win more each game than the preceeding level.

(In fairness I should add I had $1000 help from backgammon at Pacific Poker which stopped me having to re-load a couple of times and paid for my poker books)

For example my goal over the next 6 months is not to make another $5K, but rather another $10K. Phaedrus 75 @ Full Tilt, and Phaedru3 @ Pacific (though you won't find MTT result for Pacific)

I am far from being a great player. However I think I am a good player with the least experience of other good/great players on this Forum. I put getting "good" from scratch in 6 months down to primarily 4 things:

1. Marty Smith and his videos
2. My reading
3. Learning new skills at each new level (I do have a pretty inquiring mind to help with this).
4. This poker forum.

There are so many great posts to learn from, but by contributing my own posts as much as I have, I keep pushing the boundaries for that next small edge I can acquire. And in the end, you only win because of lots and lots of small edges.

So I guess what I am trying to get at, with this pretty long winded post, is that sure, muck around with stuff like loose calling and ignoring ICM, but do it with OPM. At the low levels, other people are just falling over themselves to give you their money. They play with zero knowledge. Just by watching Marty's videos alone, and playing like he teaches (which is pretty easy TAG (Tight Agressive) style you, you will take their money as easily picking fruit in an orchard.

With OPM you can then build on what Marty teaches, acquiring new skill sets (necessary to add which he obviously has but are too advanced to be taught in his videos for beginners). You keep doing that learn, practice, repeat, review cycle all the way through the levels for ever with OPM.

I have moved up and down levels tonnes of times during this process. It isn't working for me at the moment at $20 at Full Tilt at the moment, so I have dropped to $10 and am also playing more MTTs as a separate experiement. The point is, my learn practice, review repeat cycle has shown me that I have a structural problem at the $20 level at Full Tilt, and I will work on that (in time) with OPM from the $10 level. I jumped up and down between $5 and $10 and $2 and $5 heaps too.

It just means the first time I go up a level, I'm frequently not quite ready. But each time I have to go down a level, its not because of the cards, its not because some trick that should be working isn't working. It is me, and my level of present understanding of the totality of the game which is inadequate.

Killer Poker

From Sun37 in the forum:

I didn't buy KPO, because I heard it was crap, but bought Killer Poker 2 instead. It is an easy book to read (a light read, would be my classification) and I finished it in an afternoon. It remains part of my current library of poker books (I have provided the full list in a seperate post a few weeks ago).

There are some books I refer to all the time, other I look at for a specific query in a particular type of game and there are others I read for enjoyment. John Vorhaus, KPO2 is in the last category. He has a good writing style, has picked a different theme from the normal poker books to give him a 'selling line' in this highly competitive sector of the market and does make you think about the game in a different way - and that is not a bad thing, as sometimes we get too narrow minded in our approach.

The ESP idea where you just KNOW what to do in a particular situation is, I believe, perfectly explained by you in your last 2 paragraphs Phaedrus. I do believe in the concept, without really understanding any of the scientific theory behind it, but I have heard many professional players say when they are 'in the zone' they just know what to do and it comes from the inner subconscious and there are numerous occasions I just KNOW (for example) calling against the odds is the RIGHT thing to do and just do it, without even trying to analyse why - and my instinct is right.

The brain is a very complicated piece of kit, we really know very little about it, but one thing is certain - without the level of required application and experience, there will be nothing for the ESP to pick from in the brain's databank..............

Ref the point about timing delays in the decision process and people who go into great detail analysing players time to assess their decisions, my view is simple. Don't waste your time. If you spend more time on learning, practice and application, you will be better off. When I am playing, my decision time is very quick. However I post on the forum, email, browse the net, watch poker videos and do all those bad things I advise others not to do, so the delay in my decision is probably due to watching Brad Booth bluff Phil Ivey from full tilt poker or something similar.

Ot it could be because the kettle has boiled and I am away from the laptop. Or because the kids are distracting me. Or........you know what I mean.

So enjoy the book, but do not go to deep in the analysis of it.

Tournament Indicator STT strategy at Full Tilt Poker

In January or February I got fed up by my inconsistent play at Full Tilt and start using Tournament Indicator religiously. I had used it off and on over the previous 6 months without much success--mostly because I hadn't taken the time to understand how to use the data available to me. I love playing the large tourneys but I don't cash enough or win enough to make it worth my time. I've always been much better at sng's so I decided I would see how well I could do if I concentrated on those.

So starting sometime in early February I began playing stictly sng's with the intent of building a bankroll. At the time I think I had about $10 in my account. Anyway, I believe I won a $10 single table sng and then followed that up with a $20 single table win--yes, I was playing over my BR at that poiint but I was tilted!

At any rate, even without TI I've always been decent at sng's simply because it's only 1 table, and after enough hands you can learn a lot about players and their tendencies if you just pay attention and take a few notes. So TI ehanched that info but I didn't think it gave me a substantial advantage over the other players---unless I had a lot of history data on several players from hand 1.

So after thinking about that it occurred to me that I could better maximize the value of TI and its advantage by playing MTT sng's, since you can launch up to 10 TI instances at once for up to 10 separate tables--in other words, you can monitor every player in up to a 90 player sit and go. I figured that knowing exactly how someone was playing when they got moved to my table or vice versa would be a pretty major advantage, especially later in a the poker tournnament when stealing blinds and taking advantage of tight/weak players is so important. Let me just say that turned out to be a pretty good hypothesis.

Starting in March I began playing 45 man sng's at Full Tilt. I have stuck with the rule of never playing one that was more than 5% of my BR, which has worked out well. For the past 3 months I have pretty much stuck to $24+2 buy-ins, but have tried $69+6 a few times.

If you look me up on Sharkscope or OPR (my screen mame at FT is mrgoodplayer) you will see that my ROI over that period of time is somewhere around 90%. You will also see that my pfofit was about $500 in March, $2,000 in April, $1,200 in May, and as of tonight with 2 straight wins ($400 and $1,100 for my first ever $69+6 win) $2,200 in June--for a total profit of $5,900 in the past 3 1/2 months. That is after putting $120 in my account in December. Needless to say I am absolutely floored at the unbelievable impact TI has had on my results.

I did not post this to brag, although I'll admit I'm pretty proud of the accomplishment. I posted it because I was curious if anyone else has tried this, and if so, if they have experienced similar results.

I am starting to think I have a nice little part-time job going here. 

If anyone is interested in more details or would like to discuss let me know.  You won't have to twist my arm.

Full Tilt Poker Bankrolling

Managing your poker bankroll is a key factor to online success, yet the clear majority of online players fail miserably in doing so, thus stacking the deck against themselves without realizing the importance of knowing which games to play and how much to risk at any given time.

The absolute best way to manage your own poker bankroll, is to use someone else’s money, then your total risk is limited to profits already won from opponents. If you are just starting out this may be confusing because a lot of professional players and writers will recommend having say 50 or 100 buys-ins compared to your game of choice. In a sense that is true, but if you want to play $5 buck sit and go poker tournaments and learn the game a little, a $500 deposit is a tad unreasonable and really not very realistic.

This is one of those areas where pro players lose touch with the little guy and place outrageous expectations and rules as to how to play and manage their online activities. No, for someone just starting out $50 maybe $100 bucks deposit at a time is plenty enough. If a new player deposits more than that, chances are they will end up on higher tables looking for a nice cash, only to find they are out-played at higher levels and reloading becomes imminent.

So how do you get other’s players money in your bankroll when you’re just starting out? You earn it! You play the low stakes games like $1 and $2 buck sit and go tournaments or the .25/.50 limit hold’em tables. If you can’t beat these levels, why would you start higher, risk more, and face stiffer competition? Start with $50 and see if you can double it. Get to $100 or $200 in your account, then start playing $.50/$1 limit holdem and $5 sit and go tournaments. Build your account to $500.

This is NOT easy to do, but neither is it difficult. The good thing about OPM (other players’ money) is that if you get to $500 from your original $50 deposit, you’re likely to value it more as hard earned poker money and think twice about moving up to faster, harder, stronger levels and risking too much against superior players.

By working your way up levels with accumulated winnings you are really earning your way up because you have proven to be able to adapt, learn, and control your own emotions at the tables in any level you have tried. If you are a profitable player, you have already then joined the ranks of the very few and those skills learned at low limits can be carried forward to more profitable levels.

ADD here: I just sent out the latest free offer for real poker training if anyone is interested.

TurtleKnife troubles at Full Tilt?

I had to get this excellent question in on the blog for those inquiring minds. I don't know if Official Poker Rankings can do anything about this, considering the popularity now of tokens and satellites, but the results DO distort to be sure.
___________________________________

BaddBeatBobb writes: Our fearless leader has some interestingly divergent stats on OPR. On Full Tilt he battles as Turtleknife. On Poker Stars he's Bonovox33. Here's the data as reported on Official Poker Rankings using Full Tracking (instead of last 120 days):

First, Turtleknife on Full Tilt:

Prizes:  $4093
Profit:  <0
ROI:  -20%
ITM:  99/556 (18%)


Next, Bonovox33 on Poker Stars:

Prizes:  $4891
Profit:  $1175
ROI:  32%
ITM:  114/660 (17%)


Has the fabled Full Tilt Kill Switch spelled doomsday for our favorite turtle?  Inquiring minds want to know. . .
-----------------------------------------------------------

Very astute observation BBB and thanks for brining it up as there may be some who subscribe to my video/strategies that might be wondering the same thing. There IS an explanation not readily evident in OPR stats, but through no fault of their own.

I looked at this a while back and had to figure it myself as well because the numbers didn't add up. At first I thought it was Full Tilt!! However, I assure you I am profitable at MTT AND STT play with both ID's and both sites, in spite of these numbers.... allow me to explain.

Firstly, if we can add my Ironduke64 ID from party Poker I would like to compare all 3 ID's to prove my low-limit strategies work for bankroll building and OPM.

1- Bonovox33 on Stars
2- Ironduke64 on Party Poker
3- TurtleKnife on Full Tilt

The following stats correspond with each ID as position 1,2, and 3.

ITM                = 17%, 18%, 18%
Early Exits      = 5%, 7%, 4%
Early Middle    = 15%, 16%, 14%
Middle            = 42%, 39%, 44%
Middle Late     = 25%, 21%, 24%
Late               = 14%, 17%, 13%

These stats have a relatively tight range that to me, represent a consistent style of play, that is without looking at the results.

However, Full Tracking ROI for NL Holdem = 33%, 106%, -16%.

It's the -16% at Full Tilt which doesn't belong. Even though OPR has an accurate record of all my tournaments, it is not the whole story, becuase with these range of stats, so closely in step with a consistent strategy, you would think FT should be a profitable site for me. It is.

I know what you are thinking, its because of bad beats, but really, no.

If you cue up TurtleKnife, full tracking on OPR, then go to just above the tournament results display and change the first drop down menu option to "Buy in, Prize", change the second drop down menu setting to "*All (Show $0)".

What the tournament results now show are the highest buy in tournaments I have played on Full Tilt. (I know, sad, but its where I LIKE to play..)

If you glance down the first range of tournaments it probably shows 70 or 80 tournaments with a $26 entry fee. I can tell you now that I have NEVER PAID full price for one of these tournaments. I have entered each and every one of these tournaments with a $6 sng token win. It is true, I dont win ALL the sng token tournaments I play, but that is reflected in my sharkscope record too, just for clarification.

OPR counts this directly to my profit and loss as if I paid the $26. Really, what other choice do they have? But for someone likes me who toils in the low entry-fee tournaments, that many buy-ins, (let's say 75 x $20) is $1,500 directly to my bottom line in MTTs.

Factor in my regular participation in KO tournaments that normally yield a profit before I make the money, and the bottom line at Full Tilt is very much the same as at Stars.

Might I also add that at Poker Stars, I don't think I have ever played a token or satellite, at least not regularly. If you calculate and compare the average finish numbers above, and then look at the results, there needs to be another explanation. This is mine, and though I hope you all understand, I welcome further comments.

Pocket Pair Forum Discussion

JP started this topic in the poker forum and it has grown into a full discussion. I like to see as many flops as I can with ANY pair, but not to raises and re-raises unless I am short stack or big stack. To me the idea is to keep the cost small enough so that when your set does hit, all the previous times you missed it will be made up for.

JP Continues here....
In 21,000 hands
Had 1,168 pp as hole cards
Won 59.93% of them for 584,440 T$
Of all PP 99 had it 100 times winning 62% but net loss of 15,000 T$ Went to showdown 70% of the time with it.
AND 22 had it  84 times winning 32% but net loss 1,185 T$ went to showdown 35% of the time with it.
So these two of ALL PP were the ONLY pp played with a long term net loss and compared to total won is VERY small.

This is JUST for PP starting cards.  Now to look at 3 of a kind numbers:
This 3 of a kind includes PP and other 3 of a kind possible hands with me holding 1 card and two on the board and me with AK or something and 3 of a kind on board with my A hi winning it (extremely rare) But of ALL 3 of a kind hands I had 510 with ONLY 205 going to flop. That is because a hand I held and folded developed into a trip or set hand but it was weak and I never played it or for whatever reason did not go to flop with it but the hand played out and if in I would have had 3 of a kind.

All PP do NOT develop into sets BUT still do develop into winning hands either as parts of flushes, str8's, boats and even 2 pair. I don't know how or if possible even to set filters in Poker Tracker to isolate only PP hands that turn into sets. I can't find it. However, MOST 3 of a kind I get are from PP. I know if I hit a set in flop or turn I'm going all the way with it. Therefore I will look at the 205 hands that saw a flop and seeing that I folded 12 on the flop I did not flop 3 of a kind and it came later. I also folded 5 times on the turn meaning I still had no trips. That is 17 times folded out of 205 with 6 more being folded on the river. That means I folded 3 of a kind on the river knowing I was totally beat and couldn't or wouldn't put my life on the line or waste chips. Probably open end on board or 4 to flush on board or bigger boat I know I'm in the bottom of. I can only remember folding a set of T's once on the river but obviously there have been a few other laydowns.

So that means 182 3 of a kind hands went to showdown and I folded almost 300 preflop that became 3 of a kind hands. Some of those mucked would have been small pairs out of position and most are junk cards the developed trips rather than pp that became sets. But I know myself as a player and while I may end up with trips, unless it's a great hand I don't put much faith in it like AQ and QQ is on board. Most 3 of a kind hands I end up with at showdown are from PP starters. I also know I folded countless small pairs preflop never even limping in. I can only estimate that of about 300 mucked, 100 were small pairs and of the 200 played to showdown 150 were pp for 250 total. Which would give us close to 1 in 4.75 PP (1186) becoming sets.

I reset the filters eliminating big pairs from starting cards so PP 22-99 shows 736 of them dealt winning 49% of them and going to showdown with 53% of them. 22-33-44 go to showdown the least, 35% and under. With PP 99 and under overall as starting cards, of all those I played winning half the time 256T$ avg. per hand I have to say it is profitable in poker tournament play.

I can isolate further with PP 22-66 and position = UTG, UTG+1, Middle showing 192 times dealt, winning 42% and per hand avg +77 T$ so it is PLUS EV to be playing them.

I also like to limp with AK and AQ in early tournament play so as to disguise my hand strength and keep opponents wondering if I am strong or weak. Its just part of my early tournament passive play mode, where really I am more or less waiting to trap over-aggressive wankers. If my poker calculator (tournament indicator) shows me still green mzone, I figure I have a lot of time still to wait for a big hand.

HOWEVER! The KEY to playing them is post flop skills! Being able to get away and surrender losing the least amount as possible AND turning a loser into a winner anyway through betting/maneuvering. Only 39% of these specific hands actually went to showdown. Only the 22 was a loser with these specific filters for -6400 T$ but half that was in one hand, late stage high blind tournies losing 3500 and folding to a bet on the turn.

Early with a low pair you limp or raise with intent to bluff/steal post flop, must be opening the pot if raising, mostly limp to see, call raise IF no more than 10% of opponent stack AND it won't cripple you. As 22-44 are the worst performers, they are easy to muck UTG/UTG+1/Middle. More and more I have been mucking them without pot odds to limp in as there is no benefit otherwise.