Week 10

After another rollercoaster couple of weeks my BR stands at $420 but only a couple of days ago it was down below $200. In 2 weeks I’ve played 39x$5 for a profit of $130; 173x6.50s for a profit of $131; 32x11s for a profit of $152; 19x16s for a loss of $169; and 13x22s for a loss of $241. In a nutshell I’m winning at 5.50s, 6.50s and 11s but losing it all at the 16s and 22s.

So I need to be playing games at which I consistently win and play less games at which I lose. I’ve been thinking about playing some 18,27 & 45 man SNGs. I’ve started playing sets of 4 of a particular game: if I show a profit in that set I play another of the same game and so on until I lose money in a set at which point I move to another game. The idea is to keep playing the games I’m winning at and reduce the number of games that I’m losing at. It’s early days yet: I’ll let you know how things are going.

Month 2

This month was all about STTs. My aim for the month was to play 100 games and I managed 370. However, this was at th expense of playing very few cash games.. That’s fine for now, I’ve just reread PNLHE and the Harrington on Cash Games books are out at the end of the month. So background work is still going on while I continue to master STTs.

I ended up playing 82x5s for a profit of $107 (24% ROI); 18x6s for a profit of $77 (66% ROI); 250x10s for a profit of $225 (8% ROI); and 22x22s for a big loss of $403.

After the bad run at the 22s, finishing ITM 3/22, I started looking into STT variance and have decided that I’m playing with too light a bankroll at 20 BIs. My latest idea is to play 500 6.50s, building a bigger bankroll and getting a minimum sample size to measure my ROI, hourly rate etc.

Until recently I’ve avoided turbos because of the increased luck factor and associated drop in ROI. However, I can play 200 turbos a week and get a sample of 500 games in a little over a fortnight. If I were to run at a 10% ROI I’d pad my bankroll out by an additional $300, $600 at 20%. I’ve already finished 300 games at the 11s and I’d like to complete a 500 games sample at that level by way of comparison. And then there’s the 16s. I’ve heard there are a lot of regulars at that level but I’ll give it a shot when I have 20BIs i.e. sometime later this week.

After playing all these STTs at Stars I will be a silver star by the end of the month. I’m not really aware of all of the benefits but a 50% FPP bonus is good for a start. Sign up bonuses with other sites is something I’ll have to think about more but I’ll wait until my bankroll has grown a bit and I’m playing at a higher stake.

Aims for the coming month:

Continue concentrating on STTs

Play 500+ STTs (including turbos)

Get 500 game samples at 6.50s and 11s

Take a shot at 16s

Week 8

I played 96 $10 STTs for a profit of $42 (<5%>and although the profit was small I have gained confidence at this level. I managed to take my bankroll over $440 and took a shot a the 22s. I played 5 games and managed a third for a $74 loss for the week.

Week 7

On the whole a good week ending with a bankroll of $320. I didn't play a single cash game all week but managed almost 100 STTs. I played 90 $10 games for a profit of $135 (13% ROI) taking my bankroll over $400 and moved up to $20 games. I played a set of 4 games finished OOM i n all of them and have had to move back down again. Exactly the same thing happened a few weeks ago when I moved up to $10 games and it didn't take me too long to work them out, so I'm not particularly worried. I'm quite comfortable playing $10 games so I should be able to take another shot at $20 by the end of the week.

Week 6

It was a bit of a rollercoaster last week but it finished with my bankroll standing at $253. The week began badly: before long I was down $100 and had to drop back down to $5STT and 5NL. This was a result of a bad run playing STTs. I felt I didn’t really get the game fully so I took myself out and bought a copy of Moshman’s SNG Strategy. I have a copy somewhere but can’t find it. Anyway I read this through in a day and my results picked up straight away. I went back to killing $5 games stepped back up and had some good results in $10 games.

It seems my problem was twofold: playing too many hands too aggressively early on and not fully grasping the dynamics behind later stage play. I've downloaded SNG Wizard on a 30 day free trial and I'm reviewing the majority of games I play. Lat week i played 52 $5 games and 12 $10 games. In the coming week I hope to reinforce what I've learnt with continuing good results at $10 games.

I played very few ring game hands last week, around 300 for a small loss. I don't expect to play to many this week either as I continue to develop my STT skills. I did buy another copy of PNLHE which I'll start working through later in the week.

Week 5

After another good week my bankroll stands at $223. I’ve moved up to 10NL and show a $35 profit over 1300 hands for a win rate of 13BB/100. I’ve successfully stepped up the aggression and am now playing proper TAG poker: 15/10/3 at 10NL as opposed to 18/5/1.7 at 2NL. This transition may account for my showing a loss at 5NL – I played 900 hands last week for a small (3BB/100) profit but I’m still showing a slight loss over a total of 3K hands.

I’m still tinkering with my ring game starting hand selection but I’m pretty clear now what I’m doing preflop. The main change post flop has been relentless c-betting – I raise it up before the flop and then bet out. Simple but effective. I’m thinking this is going to need a good bit of refinement at higher levels.

I’ve played quite a few STTs in the last week: 46 at $5 for a profit of $134 (53% ROI) and 27 at $10 for a loss of $81. I’m still developing my STT strategy, currently I’m playing TAG for the first 3 levels and then change up through the gears to LAG against opponents based on their stack size and degree of tightness. This basic strategy works well for $5 games but I’ve struggled a bit at $10.

When I moved up to $10 I played a set of 4 games, finishing out of the money in all of them. My bankroll took a severe dent, dropping from $210 to $165 and the lower bounds of moving down to 5NL/$5 STT. I played $5 STTs until my bankroll was back up to $200 and then switched back to $10 games. This has happened a couple of times – I’m using my licence to print money at $5 to fund my education at $10. I am improving and it shouldn’t be too long before I’m regularly beating the $10 games. I’ve been 4 tabling at $5 and this works well for me. However, at $10 I’ve found I play better 3 tabling. In future I intend to 2 table when I move up a level until I know I can beat the new level and then add more tables if appropriate.

Over the coming week I want to crack $10 STTs and continue to show a good profit at 10NL, it would be good to maintain a win rate of over 10BB/100. Last weeks aims were to show a profit at 5NL/$5 STTs was met, particularly with the STTs.

Month 1

After the first month of the challenge my bankroll has risen from it’s original $40 to $213. In month 1 I played 12,750 hands in ring games and 23 STTs.

I started the month playing 2NL cash games which I beat for 21BB/100, not fantastic I know but this was my first venture into cash games. To begin I was playing quite passively but I’ve stepped up the aggression as the month has gone on. After a couple of weeks I’d taken my bankroll over the $100 mark and moved up to 5NL, lost $17 over 600 hands and promptly moved back down again. I consistently beat 2NL over a week and had a second go at 5NL; playing 2500 hands for something like 2BB/100.

At about the same time I began playing $5 STTs, to great affect. I played 22 in a week for $85 profit (70% ROI), taking my bankroll over $200, allowing me to move up to a higher level again. This only happened last night but I managed to get 150 hands in for a $6 profit at 10NL. I’ll be moving up to $10 STTs this evening. The next bankroll targets are $400 for $20 STTs and $500 for 25NL.

The following is my ring game profit graph for the first month:

My goals for month 2 are:

More hands than in month 1

More profit than in month 1

Beat 10NL/$10 STTs

Play 100+ STTs

Improve post flop play