NOVEMBER 2008

NOVEMBER POSTS


Nov 30, 2008 5:18 PM
November Roundup

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Novemeber was a yoyo month for me poker wise. I had to really work hard and grind the games. I always felt everytimei took a step forward, I come back three and then have to grind my way back ahead. It was hard work, but at the end my stats are not too bad.
I managed to hit Silver Star on Pokerstars.
I played 325 Tourneys in total on Stars. 21 of them were $6 18 player and then I stepped up to the $16, 18 player for the rest.
here are the stats:
ROI 12,4%
ITM 26.8%
TOTAL PROFIT: $621
So not too bad, but could have been much better. I also filterred my results to find out when multi-tabling, how many tables were the most profitable for me and the result was 10 tables. For some strange reason, 7 tables was when I lost money..lol. Best day was 27th November when I won $271 and worst day was 14th November when I was down $144!
I also played a few games on Party and a few game on iPoker. For some reason Tourney Manager is not importing my Party tourney info and neither is sharskope, which is a bit of a bitch, but I know I deposited $250 to play the $10 sng’s, not sure how many I played, but I reckon between 25-50, but my balance is $239, so i am down $11. The games were soft as crap, but the new software was messing with my PT3 HUD and for some reason, even though I created and saved a layout, the wrong stats kept appearing under the wrong people. It was only after a few shoves into spaz’s, that I thought were rocks, that I realised. Still don;t know why it won;t work, maybe I need to switch back to the old tables.
On iPoker, I played about 6 tourneys and lost all 6.. lol. down $60. I stopped playing immediately when my aces got bust in two tourneys and i ran like shat. iPoker definately has my doomswitch on. I ran like that in the cash games too.
I might withdraw the money from iPoker again, but no clue where to go with it yet.
So all in all, not a bad month. Another month of profit is always good and an improvement on last months profit of $447, but then again that was at the $6 level.
I am not planning on moving up again this month, the games at this level are soft enough for me to grind out for a while yet. i get the feeling that if I move up I am going to run into many more solid regs, which is just too -EV to be worth the hassle.
I will keep playing Party, but no where near the volume I will be putting in at stars. Possibly aim for maybe 50-75 tourneys there in December. Also want to try and maintain silver star status at Stars. Finally, I want to do well in the Stars !”run good” competition and get a cash in the Stars BOP’s promotion. Well fingers crossed.
Hope you ran good and do so next month
atb
BM

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Nov 28, 2008 7:45 PM
Regrouping and recouping baby!

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Thank christ! I finally seem to be out of my horrible downswong.
Played a long session on Stars last night and did well. One thing I did notice was i was just determined to not let the beats get to me and for once i didn;t. it started off bad with AA getting doen over by AA AIPF, but I just moved on.. I also stepped up from 8 to 10 tables and I think that might have helped me too. It did feel good though when my luck started to turn and my hands started to hold and even better.. I got a few suckouts! SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIP!
Its amazing the power that poker has over your mood. I run good, i feel good and feel like i am playing good, but when i run bad, my mood is bad and my confidence goes down the swanny. I also lose motivation for the game. Fortunately now I am in the good mood..so SHIIIIP IIIT!
Just got to get 72 more point for silver status on stars this month. So ship that!
Finally an up beat post.
Right come on stars, let me run goot two days in a row… one timeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
BurnleyMik


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Nov 26, 2008 10:24 AM
**BEWARE** Tilt Post

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
I can do absolutely Fuck all right at the moment in these tourneys. Here are my bustout hands as they happened in order:
$15+1 on Stars - Getting short, 8 BB’s I shove AsTs on the button,on the bubble, with 5 left. A9o and 8s7s both call. Board comes 4s 3c 2s, Jc, 8h. I miss every out. gg me.
$15+1 on Stars - Guy mini raises from CO, I shove him from SB with Ako. He has QQ. I get no help GG me.
$15+1 on Stars - I open push AQo with 8 BB’s from the Button. SB insta calls and has AK. I get no help. gg me.
$15+1 on stars - I get it in vs a tilting maniac. 6 players leftand he just lost a big potwith hisAQ vs KJ. Next hand he is in SB and I am in BB. I have KdTd and we see a flop of 6h Td 5c. He open pushes the rest of his stack. I make the easy call. H has Th 7h. I have him in bad shape. Turn is 7s for his two fkin pair, river is 6d. gg me. FFS.
$15+1 on stars - Getting short,with 9 BB’s (5 handed befre tables break to FT). I make an UTG push with KTs, big stackmakes a quick call with 88. 6d8c6s7h4s. Another race lost.
$15+1 on stars - My mistake in this one. Loose player raises CO. I shove button for 16 BB’s with AJs. He was raising 26% of his hands,figured AJ was well ahead of his raising range. He actually had AK..lol. gg me.
$15+1 on Stars - I have 11 BB’s left at the 50/100 level. I am in the MP2 with QhQs. UTG+1 mini raises to 200 and MP1 flat calls. So I take my time and then blast with the Q’s. It folds back to UTG+1 who calls and so does MP1. UTG+1 flips 44 for his stack and MP1 KcQc (lolol. wtf? with two allins before?) I am in great shape, until the final board is 9c 9h Ks 3c Kh. Oh nice. The wanker wins and i lose AGAIN.gg me.
$15+1 Stars - Weak player limps UTG+1, 7 handed on FT. Blinds are 300/600. I am in CO with A9o and 4k in chips, so I push. Everyone folds to weak player who quickly calls with Td Qs. Board is Th Kc 5s 8s Ks. Sigh. GG me.
That was my set of Stars games last night. I mean WTF can I do. I lose very race, run big hands into monsters and lose every showdwon.
Here is how my Party set went:
$10+1 Stt. - Blinds at 100/200. A shorty pushes all in with 1100 chips. Imoves over the top for 2100 chips to isolate with JcJd. Maniac big stack in SB calls. Shorty has Kc6h and maniac has the mighty 8sQs..lol. Board comes 4s 9h Qh Tc 6d. I am no longer laughing. gg me. Another donkey takes my chips.
$10+1 Stt. No bad beat here, just a setup. 8 BB’s, i shove A3o from SB into BB. He wakes up with QQ. gg me.
$10+1 STT - Again, standard setup. I manage to finally make the money in one and then three handed shove A9o right into BB’s Aks. Where’s my suckout? exactly. gg me.
$10+1 STT - I raise UTG+1 with Ah Kh to 600, at the 100/200 level. A guy in MP, who was a total idiot playing over 54% of his hands mini raises me to 1k. I put my last 1800 chips into the middle and he quickly calls. He shows Ad Js lol. Board comes As, 3c 3s 9s 4s. His fkin Js makes him the flush and again I bust to a total fkin nugget. gg me.
$10+1 - I got HU and shoved A9.He had a 3:1CL and called with the almighty T3o. Of course he flops a 3 and its gg me.
You want more? I thought not, but how can this not drain your confidence? I really am losing the urge to play at all, as I just start to feel I can;t win. Ikid you not, these are the games, as played yesterday. They are in order of bust out. TBH though this is how my last few sessions everywhere have gone. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I can;t see what. All I know is I need to get my money in good and with the goods. I do and I lose. Whats the point.
/rant
Not sure where to go from here TBH.


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Nov 25, 2008 2:41 PM
Moving things about

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
After 3 continuos bad beat and bad luck sessions on stars, I started moving the roll around. I deposited some on Party and some on iPoker. I have to admit the standard on both is worse than horrific! So few players have any clue of what they are supposed to do. I am only rolled for the $10 games on both ATM, but plan on putting in some volume to find out which is the juiciest.
I have to admit I find multi-tabling, with overlap very difficult on iPoker as the table with the action doesn;t pop to the front.I must have timed out about fifty hands and it tilted the shit out of me. I also ran like a one-legged donkey on there. Getting AA twice and cracked both times. Interestingly enough, I checked PT3 and found that iPoker is the worst place for me to get AA. It has only won 76% of the time I have gotten it, in comparrisson to Stars, where is has won 91% of the time. Strange eh? In fact according to PT3 QQ/AKs/AQo and JJ all have a higher win percentage than AA. Morale of the story? Fold aces on iPoker!
I am quite enjoying the new party tales now i am getting into them. I admit they are mega juicy and full of idiot calling stations, which is sweet. I am still trying to figure out if I prefer the cascading or tiling of tables when I ply there. I just think things get a bit too small and cluttered if you start shrinking those tables.
Sunday night Iplayed someMTT’sfor the first time in Ages. I also qualified for the SM, unfortunately KK is not as good as TT and my final shove with K5o was called by some mug with Q8..lol. gg me. I got deep in the $11 $15k on Stars and also very deep in the new double duece on Full Tilt. Unfortunately both were for just small cashes. I bummed outof the 100k early, how does anyone get deep in that donkfest? Also played the two daily doules on FTP and didn’t do much in either. Enjoyed being able to have sometime to play MTT’s hough. Made a nice change.
Maybe I will get timeto play some more this week?Fingers crossed.
gl and ATB
BM
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Nov 19, 2008 8:29 PM
Tough old game for sure!

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Well, I am still grinding the $16 SnG’s on Stars. I have been a bit busy recently to really squeeze the volume in, but I have played something like 200 SnG’s this month and TBH I am extremely dissapointed at my current ROI, which is about 8.6%. I felt I have been playing fairly well and my recent addidtion of using the PT3 HUD (as suggested by Longy) has definately helped me to stop shoving into the spazzy players and so technically should be reducing the variance. I KNOW I am due a good run soon, as I’m certain my luck has been way below the EV. AA cracked by AJ again last night.. of course he makes a straight on the river six handed! lol. This game can really make me a bitter guy sometimes!
I still have one major problem though… berating the fish. Its really really stupid, but I go on crazy monkey tilt if I get smacked by a few beats or setups and then I try to go back to abuse the prick who just isolated my re raise with K9 vs my AQ and he hits a K. This is costing me on more than one level. Firstly, it just helps build up my anger and secondly I am losing concentration on my other tables. I can’t get it into my head that i WANT these complete pillocks at my tables. I WANT them making stupid fucking calls. What I don;t want though is for them to keep busting me out!! I just want my hands to hold sometimes. I get so annoyed when “another donkey makes a bad call and wins” (which is something I type often), but in reality I should just make a quick note and move on, but I can;t. These guys are affecting my bottom line. Everytime i don;t cash, my ROI and total profit is affected and lets be honest, I am a results orientated player. I think this is actually a leak in my game. I am letting things get to me fairly easily. Even though i have over 100 buy-ins for the games I play, I still get pissed if I go on bad-uns. I need to find a way to control this monkey-tilt. Advice accepted.
I have recently been coming accross players who have superb ROI’s and total profits, playing the same levels as me. Watching their game and checking their stats, they play a very similar game to me, so i find it a bit hard to comprehend how they have such high ROI’s. Are they just luckier than me? Possibly. Are they just better than me? Definately. I think I really need to study SnGWiz harder because I am sure there must be fundamental mistakes I am making.
I noticed Acornman, is a member of SnGIcons and I was wondering what that site was like. Anyone any ideas?
Anyways, i am gonna continue to grind and hit Silver Stars on Stars this month. Nothing special, but I’ll give it a shot and see if i can play some of those freerolls. I just hope I can finally run good one time.
Gl at the felt and ty for reading.
BM


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Nov 12, 2008 10:25 PM
WTF???

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Its been two days and I finally have been able to get back onto Pokerstars! I tried everything, but something was blocking my connections. I turned off Windows firewall and Norton Firewall and still I couldn;t connect. I started to worry I had picked up a virus.
Once I had downloaded the latest stars update, I could no longer connect. I posted on the forum and found a guy with the same issue. I eventually dropped him a PM and he explained it was a problem with Norton Firewall, so I uninstalled, re-installed and renewed my subscription and then ker-ching, we are back on line!
So I have hardly been able to play a friggin game!
I did manage a bit of 8-tabling on Full Tilt, playing 4 tables of the old $6 games and one $22 Matrix. Ended up second in the matrix game, winning a table, a second and a fourth, I lost to the lucky MF you have ever seen too! grrr.
So i did manage a small profit, but the games took forever to fill. Definately not as busy as stars.
Last week I managed more games on Stars and improved my ROI a little. I think its somewhere around 14% now, so not too dis-heartened. Hopefully I can knock some more out soon and build on that.
I am still bemused by the amount of rake charged on a SnG. How can they charge say, 7.5% on a game that takes no longer than an hour? When you pay the same rake on an MTT and they can last for hours. If you are knocking out a lot of SnG’s you are paying a disgusting amount of rake to the sites. IMO, its about time one of them took the initiative and started being much more reasonable, somthing like 2-2.5% would be much fairer. I am sure they would nail the SnG market if they did.
I don;t really know what it is in comparrison on a cash table, but if I knock out 12 tables per hour (often many more simply due to busting early in some) thats $12 per hour in rake minimum, thats gotta be destroying your bottom line as a grinder and making it much harder to be a winner. What levels are you playing at to be paying the equivalent in rake at a cash game? Maybe its time to petition the sites or one of the sites to see if they will take any notice. Maybe they should create a maximum rake charge per hour, similar to max rake per hand?
Just thinking out loud, but it would be nice if they stopped being so damned greedy and looked at it from a players’ perspective.
Thats all for now.
/rant
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Nov 6, 2008 12:57 AM
Stepped up, but struggled.

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
As the title says.
I stepped up from the $6.50 SnG’s to the $16.50 SnG’s on Pokerstars this week and although it’s still littered with donkeys, there are many more solid regs, which reduces your EV for sure.
To help my quest i tried to download the trial version of tournament shark. This is a simple program thats linked to a database, similar to sharkscope, but shows the stats for each player at your table, whilst playing. I figured this would make it much easier for me to work out who I could make moves against and who were the donkeys to be more careful with. Unfortunately the software was a complete sack of shit and would not work. I even got on to live support who couldn;t help. Useless.
Anyways I just got on with it and played. Upto now I have completed 91 tourneys, but its two steps forward one back all the time. I am running at something like 8% ROI, which is making it one tough fucker of a grind. My luck has been on the worse side I would say, especially as I keep making moves into monsters, which helps fuckall. I would say that although my luck is worse, the players are definately tougher. It’s not rare to be getting towards the bubble and the blinds being at 600/1200 and 2 or three players less than 3 BB’s. This just makes it a crapshoot. I have also found myslef making daft moves at times i don;t need to and not applying the gap concept properly, which again is a big mistake really.
I have dropped my tables to 8, as I feel I need a little more concentration in these games than the $6.50’s. The thing is I used to play these a lot about a year or so back and the games were definately softer. I am amazed when i hit a final table and the full table of 9 is playing with the blinds at 200/400. I mean WTF? People are really getting onto the idea of how to play a solid SnG strategy and you really have to work a lot harder to force them into mistakes. You also need more well timed aggression, which can have the adverse affect if you pick the wrong players to try it on.
Don;t get me wrong, the games are not super tough, they definately are not, as some of the calls these guys will make at crucial stages completely fucking boggles my mind. People still willing to happily stack off with Ace rag, and I don;t mean they are the ones making the moves, I mean they are the ones making the calls for 50BB’s +..lol. Yep, i see it a lot.
There was one guy who really tilted me and when i checked his stats he was up like 26K in SnG’s, average $15!!! FK ME! His play was awful too (well it seemed awful to me, but it may have been some crazy metagame shit). Basically I raise MP with KK he flats on the button. I have him tagged as a multi-tabler so should be decent ( he was in all the recent games i fired up). Flop is KTx with two clubs. Its a heavily drawing board, so I put the pressure on and pot it. He thinks and smooth calls. Turn is another blank card, not a club, something like a 4 I think it was. Pot was now like 900 ish and I have 1.3k behind and he has about 1.5k. so i move it in. He thinks and then calls me with AJ.. ???? Ok, he has the ace of clubs, but that draw is now totally dead and so he is down to four outs against my set, with one card to come. You can guess what the fkin stars river was. yep the Queen hit and he makes the str8 to bust me. WTF was he thinking there? In fact I am gonna root that hand out and post it on the forum to see if anyone can work out what the fuck he was putting me on to call with Ace high and the gutter.
meh. Anyways, like I say, i found it tough. I’ll smash some more out this weekend and see how I go. If I feel the games are not worth it, then I may look elsewhere, as the rake is a killer anyways. I may just leave enough on stars for the $6 games and keep trying those to make a play at the BOP’s leaderboards and then play my higher stuff on another site. if I can ever find one i really wanna play on.
So SnG’s are still the only thing I am playing right now. I know they can be robotic, but i don;t mind them TBH.
There were a couple of good regs, who I knew were tough players…
powelljam and scdraven were both my nemesis’s. scdraven, must have busted me in at least three tourneys. There was also a New York guy, can;t remember his name and he was very good. One thing I do maintain though.. the German playes are without a shadow of a doubt the worst. They really suck and lathough i want them in the games, i wish they would stop hitting fkin everything against me! England FTW!
Anyways, off now, to keep pissing and moaning about my luck at the tables! hahahaha
BM