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.

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

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.

The Trouble with Turbos

The following article was published more than a year ago now and I have been corrected on some issues in regards to it, mainly that pros don`t normally play them. Well along comes Colin Moshman and his brilliant sit and go strategy and now suddenly there is a strong contingent of highly competitive and bankrolled players that play turbos almost exclusively.

However, as for building your bankroll and working on your skill set while getting the most out of your investment turbos should be avoided. They have these inherent downward slides in playing them which could send you, your bankroll and your sanity running for cover.

-------original article below--------

You can easily find yourself in a trap in turbo sit and go tournaments, if you actually go on a streak and win a few. The truth of it is, they WILL eventually send you spiraling in such a way that can render you unfit for real life. That is not a prediction, but rather a mathematical surety.

To prove this point, do a little exercise by loading up and viewing a few 20+ buck sngs on any site. Select a few of what seem to be the more solid players, (rounders) and do a deep level search on their statistics at SharkScope. SharkScope can tell a lot of truth about a player and if you discover somebody’s ROI quite high, like 20% or more, check to see how many turbos they play.

What you will find, proof positive, is that winning players DO NOT play turbos with any regularity if at all. It is simply not mathematically profitable to do so, no matter how good you are. The main substance of this derives from the fact that after 3 or 4 levels your game is essentially left up to the randomness of the deck, thus virtually eliminating the skill aspect in the latter half of the tournament.

It is the same analogy between playing poker or blackjack. The best blackjack teachers admit your goal should be not to lose money since the odds (house) are always against you long term. Long term, it is a losing proposition. How many professional blackjack players are there?

When the game’s structure reduces or eliminates the skill factor, then the rounders will know it just by glancing at this information window, and thus, by and large avoiding that type of tournament. Luck is not part of the rounder game. Rounders dwell on winning percentages, return on investment and bankroll strategies and because they do, a random winner type format just cannot fit into that overall plan.

The only time I find turbos poker tournaments acceptable is for fun or social event. If you are going out with the guys or girls, most home style, one table tournaments are well suited for turbo style blinds if only to prevent the last 2 or 3 players left don’t monopolize the poker table too long. Consider your 10 or 20 bucks in those situations entertainment. Oh yeah, and you better know what chance your 76 suited has against AQos.

If you want some silly fun and are drinking with your friends, by all means go turbo. If you want to build your online bankroll, get a brain on.

Sit and Go Bankrolling

Playing Sit and Go Tournaments at Full Tilt Poker with Proper Bankroll Management is still a BIG mystery to most online poker players.

I loaded up my tournament indicator poker calculator and played a full slate of sit and go games over the weekend at Full Tilt, Poker Stars, and Cake Poker. I am happy to report that I made upward trends in the bankroll at each website, but not without the usual frustrating bad beats and random coolers getting in the way on occasion.

The good thing about bad beats is that someone has made an error playing against you, so really, they are bound to give their winning back simply because of indisputable laws of poker math. Poor decisions will result, over time, in losing money. However, the poor decisions do not necessarily start at the table. As I found while playing this weekend, table buy-in and competition is your first big decision.

You can view the lobby of a sit and go tournament while it is filling up, so when I play the $20 and $30 buy-ins I sharkscope my opponents before I commit. There was one 9 seated $30 table that had 4 players patiently waiting for 5 more entries. I scoped each one of those players to find they were all sharks with rounder style graphs reaching for the sky – all four of them I am not kidding. Even when I play my best, these guys know how to adapt and exploit my weaknesses to the point it made no sense for me to join that table. In fact, I think at least two of them should have reconsidered playing that sit and go. I mean why seek out the toughest competition? So that was a good decision for me.

In joining other games that day at these levels however, the above example was actually rare. I researched every opponent I had that day and found that the majority of players were playing above their bankroll. How do I know this? Well sharkscope does offer information like ROI%, but it also shows total profit and from there it’s easily discernable that a player sitting down at a 30 buck sit and go table with a lifetime earnings negative $338 simply shouldn’t be there.

At $20 and $30 sit and go tournaments your bankroll should be at least $500, To me a $1,000 is probably more like it, especially if your skills aren’t up to par with a bankroll you may have padded with a “fortunate” win.

Here are some other observations of random players I saw at these tables:

Total profit of $112 over 2,354 games.

Total profit of (negative) -$3,225 over 1,821 games.

Total profit of (negative) -$1,003 over 231 games.

It went on and on. Is it any wonder then that the majority of players lose money playing online poker? You simply are not giving yourself a chance to win in the long run, by playing tables higher than your bankroll allows. Astoundingly, at least 4 of every 9 players at at each table I searched over the weekend were there above their poker bankroll and long term losers at sit and go tournaments.

Sit and Go Strategy: Getting it all in ahead... or "Are you Sure You Want to do That?"

The phrase “getting it all in ahead” has been used by many pros in their articles and comments which are meant to be used as valuable lessons to players learning the game or building their bankroll. However, getting it all in ahead is used far too often as a strategy in tournaments when given certain circumstances, it actually should be avoided.

Let’s clarify the phrase first. If you put all chips in the pot pre-flop with AA and your opponent calls you holding QQ, well you for sure got it all in ahead. In fact that’s about the best scenario you can hope for as you are better than a 4:1 favorite, and hey I am all up for plays like that. Similar situations would be your pocket JJ versus a caller with 99. With a pair over pair your hand will do much better than say your AA showing up against suited connectors. But at 4:1 your +ev is so impressive that you should take that risk even during early stage, low blind levels of a sit and go tournament.

Now how about if you had pocket JJ and your opponent had the AcQc and you both went all in pre-flop? Sure you are likely to be ahead and you guessed right but your JJ is only a marginal favorite against AQs. It will win approximately 54% of the time. You got it all in ahead all right, but is it worth it? Is that really a good, solid Sit and Go Strategy?

Well in a cash game scenario if you did this all the days long, you will come out ahead, but not without some trials to your psyche. In a spot like this, playing sit and go tournaments with either hand, I want to see a flop and make sure it’s a flop that either helps my hand, or doesn’t help my opponent’s hand. Because both are quality hands there is good reason to invest in them pre-flop, but not your whole stack!

In fact, your first concern should be to preserve your stack in early in the early going when blinds are low. Part of the reason for this is that low-entry, online tournament players often over play their hands enough that they create huge pots with marginal situations and although they may be right, there are usually victims in these hands too! But a fair amount of low limit players don’t really care about this either, they just want to play bravado style and show you they were right, even if they get sucked out on. Speaking of suck-outs, in the low limits going in ahead full charge, you better learn to deal with suck-outs in a big way.

The other major point about going all in early is that you often lose the chance to make the money later in that same poker tournament because you were willing to let it ride. If you really want to play like that, go play in the micro limits or free games because that’s where you can really push marginal mathematical edges and not really bother with the outcome. Suffice to say, while building your bankroll pushing 55/45 hands is not going to build your bankroll online.