Decerto Poker

Running Bad/Bankroll Management.

2007-03-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

Well I have been running bad again and I think a lot of it has to do with the way that I have been managing my bankroll. I get so frustrated with still being at the lower levels of online poker that I take shots at the higher buy-ins. I feel that I am good enough to beat 400NL but I do not have the bankroll to make it happen. I run poorly in one session and then I have to drop down to 200NL and I am no longer playing my best because I am chasing loses from the 400NL session.

So, as difficult as it is for me I am going to set BR requirements to play specific levels. For the lower levels I do not think I need a 30 buy-in bankroll because I feel I am way better than the compitition. So, here it goes. I am going to stick to the following requirements no matter what;

$100-$4000 = 100NL
$4001-$12000 = 200NL
$12001-$18000 = 400NL
18001-$30000 = 600NL
30001+ = 1000NL

I think that this is about a six month project to achieve a 30K bankroll. I really feel with concrete bankroll requirements I will have a much easier time climbing the ranks.

The Gambler

2007-03-05T14:44:00.000-08:00

Roll the dice, deal the cards, hold hands with the one armed mistress of chance…
it doesn’t matter. It’s the the bullet that calls to you. The question that must be answered. Is this it? Is that leaden soldier aching for the warmth of my flesh? Is the dream of crimson to become a reality erupting on the white walls of destiny or is it just a click click click and an anticipation. A glimps of that black cloaked figure who wants nothing more than to pull you into the depths. But I’m not a fool. I know my odds. I’m a favorite. Five to One.

Not a whole lot of playing lately...

2007-02-24T21:49:00.000-08:00

Well I have started dealing cards at a couple places in town and it is really cutting into the amount of time that I am spending playing online. One of the places that I am working I think I am going to quit in the near future. I am just not making enough money dealing there to make up for missing the online action.

I have been running better at the tables and I think that I am making some good plays. I started playing around with limit poker the last few days mostly to get in shape for playing prop at a casino in town. I don't really like playing limit but I do like how it makes you think about the game differently. Specifically, limit poker makes you think about every bet and, "saving bets" when you are beat. This concept comes in very handy when you are playing NL because it lets you lay down hands that you would normally call. At NL I sometimes struggle folding a hand when it's only going to cost me a small percentage of my stack to call, but when you play limit every bet made and saved counts toward your over all winrate (same holds true for NL but it is much more pronounced in limit). Limit poker is about playing mistake free poker to maximize your edge. NL is about making smaller mistakes than your opponents. If you add some of the limit ideas to your NL game I think that it is possible to increase your winrate substantially...

Running Poorly

2007-02-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

I have been running poorly for the last week or so. Not really losing a lot of money but not winning either. It has been very frustrating. Right when I start to go up I run KK into AA or something similiar. I am really in need of a long winning streak to boost my confidence again. Over the last 10K hands of 100NL I have played I have been running at 5.43 ptbb/100 which is good, but at 200NL I am running at -6.45 ptbb/100 so it has really evened out. I guess all I can do is keep grinding away.

This was an interesting hand that came up in a session earlier tonight and would love to hear your comments on it http://www.pokerhand.org/?845071. The villian in the hand was 24 vp$ip and 14 pfr. He played the flop very aggressivly but tended to be a lot more passive on the turn and the river. I really didn't think that he could bet the river without having at the very least a set so I would have dumped had he pushed. What do you think of my line other than that?

The dealing job is going well. I don't really like it but it is nice to have some extra money other than my poker winnings (which have been scarce lately). Hopefully within a year or so I will be making enough off of my poker that I can feel comfortable not having a back up plan. But until then, I think the job is probably a good idea and at least it is poker related. Peace.

On the Up and Up

2007-02-16T15:52:00.000-08:00

Things have been running very well the last few days. I have been running at 15.66 ptbb/100 for my last 10K hands on Full Tilt and I am feeling pretty good about my game. I think that I have gotten a lot better recently and think I will be pwning from this point forward (hopefully).

I have been in the process of setting up an epassporte account for probably a month now. At first every thing seemed like it was going to go smooth. They do an account verification where they send you two small amounts of money and you have to tell them how much those amounts were before you can use your account. This took about 4 days and then I deposited money which took another 7 days to get through. The problem is, on their fees page they say they are taking about $2.00 for transfers but instead they took out $5.00. This would have been fine except for the fact that I only deposited $47.00. I don't need to deposit, I need to cash out. So now my account balance is $42.00 and I can't deposit to Full Tilt because their minimum amount is $45.00. It makes me want to kill somebody.

I picked up another Job dealing cards. It's not a bad gig, but I would rather not be working. I just think with all the online gaming stuff that is going on it is the smart thing to have some means of encome to call back upon if the whole online poker thing is flushed down the toilet. In the mean time I hope to make as much money as possible grinding away...

I hate poker.

2007-02-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

Well I haven't updated in a while because I didn't really feel up to it. I had the worst downswing of my career and just kept going down down down. Anyway, I think I finally came out of it and things are looking a bit better now, but still kinda shakey.

I have decided to play less tables and really concentrate on my game. Going for quality rather than quantity for a little while at least. Although I will miss out on a lot of rakeback, I think that playing less tables will really improve my game because I will be able to concentrate on the action. Hopefully I will be able to move up stakes a little quicker, because I don't think I need as big of a bankroll to play 2 tables than I do to play 8 tables because my edge is much larger.

Outside of poker news, things are good. I have been playing a lot of harmonica lately and I am in the process of writing a play. I'll probably post some exerpts on here when it get farther along. It's about a compulsive gambler (imagine that).

200NL treating me well.

2007-01-25T02:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I have moved up to 200NL and things have been going well. Rather than playing 8 tables like I was at 50NL and 100NL I have only been playing four tables and really trying to concentrate on my game. It seems to be working for the time being running at 14 ptbb/100 over my first 2.5K hands at that level.

In my oppinion 200NL is much easier to beat than 100NL because the play is much more predictable. Players are not making moves that don't make any sense. They still make bad plays but at least their bad plays have some logic behind them. If I put someone on a range of hands usually I am pretty close to what they actually have, whereas at 100NL sometimes I would be completely off. There are still times at 200NL where players baffle me by doing something stupidly insane, but like I said, things seem to much more simple.

Neteller shutdown to US costumers now and it seems like it is getting more and more difficult for players in the US to put their money into sites and take money out. I keep thinking that it is some kind of bad dream and I will wake up and poker will be legal in the United States again. It seems like the PPA is doing a good job trying to get an exemption for poker, so hopefully that is something that happens in the near future. If so, in a year or two I hope to have the capital to create my own online poker site and make millions of dollars as the casino operator rather than the guy that feeds the rake.

Peace.

Things are running...but not good.

2007-01-21T17:31:00.000-08:00

So I have played a lot of hands this last week because my g/f has been out of town and I really didn't have anything better to do. I started out on a pretty bad downswing of 7 buy-ins and I have been struggling and sort of breaking even since then. I did go back up the 7 buy-ins and I am finally up for the week, but it has been rough.

I railed one of my friends friends yesterday at 2/4NL and it really opened my eyes to some of the different things that a really good player is thinking about during a hand and also how to become a better player. I think I was focusing too much on what other players were doing to be "good" players and not enough on things that I should be doing to be a good player.

That being said I have started to write my own poker book. I don't think I will ever try to publish it or anything but I thought that I should write out all my thoughts on the game. I wrote about 10 pages today when I was at a cafe and then came back and I seemed to do much better at the tables. Just thinking about the game and what I can do to play better and to have optimum strategy against certian types of players I think is the key to becoming one of the greats.

The thing is though, I don't want to be one of the greats. I just want to make enough money to fill a swimming pool.

People Actually Read This Shit?

2007-01-16T01:34:00.000-08:00

Well it turns out that there are quite a few people that are actually reading this blog...so I better get with it and start posting some real content, eh? Anyhow, poker has been pretty uneventful the last few days. I haven't really had any big upswings or downswings. I have been playing a lot of Omaha and I think that I am getting better at the game dispite no huge boosts to my BR.

My girlfriend is going out of town for a week starting tomorrow and I will be home alone so I will probably be playing A LOT of poker. Not that I don't already play a lot, but I will most likely play a stupid amount. If All goes well I should be moving up stakes at the end of the month.

Right on Time

2007-01-12T20:02:00.000-08:00

I have been playing pretty good lately and playing a lot of tables. My goal has been to go up at least 2 buy-ins a day every day until I am at the stakes that I want to be playing. So far I have been able to keep right on track.

I am not that big a fan of "The Mathmatics of Poker" mostely because the information you can not really apply to the game while you are playing it. I can not calculate standard deviations in my head while I am playing poker and I don't really think more than .001% of the population can. So, the book is more or less an academic venture for me that doesn't have too much of a bearing on my play.

A book that I have been reading that has helped me out a lot is "Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha". I have only read about half of it now but it has improved my Omaha game tremendoulsy. I think that with very little practice I will be able to have a huge edge at PLO and hopefully supliment my NLH income considerably. If you are interested the PLO I recommend getting that book.

Staying even is worse than losing.

2007-01-05T00:49:00.000-08:00

Not really, but it feels like it sometimes. I have been breaking even for the past couple of days not really going, but not going down either (which is good). It just seems like every time I start doing really well at the tables something goes terribly wrong and I get stacked for two buy-ins holding the second nuts. But as the saying goes, "That's Poker".

I just got "The Mathmatics of Poker" and I am looking forward to reading it as I feel my game is a lot more mathmatical than some other players games. I think that having a better understanding of game theory should help me considerably. I'll let you guys know if I find anything interesting in the book and I will give a more formal review when I am done with the book.

I am trying out is Spade Eye which supposedly helps you find the fish at the tables online. So far I don't think it has done me any good. Sure there are more loose passive players at my table, but I think a good player should be able to take advantage of other types of players as well and I don't think that a loose aggressive style works very well against LAPs. I think the trick to the program would be to find the types of players that are most profitable for your personal style of play and tend to play with those players more.

On the bright side of things I am making mad rakeback by eight tabling all the time and I shouldn't have to take any money out of my BR for living expensenses for a long while.

Good luck at the tables.

Building a Bankroll

2007-01-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

Well it's a new year and I am still grinding it away at low stakes poker barely making enough to live on. I have played poker for a living for about a year and a half now and up to this point have had some crazy swings and have almost had to get a job a couple times. But enough is enough, I am tired of grinding away at the low stakes and I am ready to move up to the big time.

I am ending this year with 100K in my bankroll and I plan to do anything and everything to get there with a healthy bankroll. I'm going to stick to 30 buy-ins at each level until 200NL and then 40 buy-ins for 400NL and up. I think that I should be able to move up one level per month and make enough rakeback that I will not have to demenish my bankroll for living expenses.

I ended last month 8 tabling 100NL and went on a horrible downswing due to over confidence and tilt. I cashed out down to 1500 and am starting this month at 50NL. This blog will document my progress, will share some of my insights into the game, and hopefully make the readers and myself better poker players.