Turbo Teeth

I decided to hit up the turbos on Stars again. I feel like there is no way I'll get in 1000 sng's a month if I'm playing regular speed tourneys. The only possible way would be to add on more tables. But I really don't enjoy playing more than 4 at a time. So instead I'm trying turbos again.

And again, I've had some very lobsided results. My last stint had me cashing way too many 3rds. This time around I've had way too many 2nds, which is admittedly better...but still a large disappointment. I got to heads up 9 times in 37 matches...and only won one of them.

That is completely unacceptable! But I feel like there is almost nothing I could have done to avoid any of those losses. Almost every single all in to determine a winner was a 60/40...weighted one way or the other, and I lost 8 of 9. The worst % I had was when I was all in preflop with AK and the guy woke up with KK which held up. I lost every 3:2 or coinflip I found myself in when it mattered. Very very frustrating.

I also busted in Level 1 of 2 consecutive tourneys with AA. Once I was all in preflop (on the very first hand!) and got called by T9s (wtf?!) I even got a virtually harmless flop of Q66..and lost to a running 78. Christ. Then I'm all in with AA on the flop of 8xx against 99, and the next card off is a 9. That one was especially irritating because the guy who won was a complete prick.

I was involved in a prior tourney with this guy and it got down to heads up between the 2 of us. And he relentlessly moved all in pretty much every hand. So I told myself the next face card I get, I'm calling. (The blinds were 300/600 Ante 50, so every 2 hands he moved in I was losing 1000!)
Well I pick up Q4 against him and he moves in again! I decide to look him up and sure enough, he had nothing...J9o if I remember correctly. The pot was for about 95% of the chips in play, and he rivers a J to take down the tourney. Now I can take a beat...but he then tells me it's my fault for losing the tourney for calling with such a trash hand. I just say gg and move on to the next tourney...and he's there...and I bust to him in the aforementioned AA v 99 hand. He continues to tell me "one day you'll learn."

The only thing I could possibly learn from that guy is how to be dumb and lucky, and undeservedly arrogant. I really don't understand players like that, and I told him so. Who talks shit after sucking out?? WHO?!

And this is common! Many people take some weird sort of pride in being terrible at poker, and giving terrible beats. For the life of me, I just can't understand these people. If they're just there to gamble, why can't they just do that and have fun.

I have a feeling the common characterstic between most of these idiots is the -teen suffix at the end of their age. A lot of young people (14-20) play online poker! And they are such a universally descpicable collection of individuals. Poker players are bad enough, but overly confident donkteens on the upswing of variance are so irritating, I'm seriously considering muting all chat and avoiding any and all talking. Were it not for the fact that I'm so frequently bored while playing, I would have done this long ago.

But I think this is perhaps in my future, unfortunately. I wish we could have fun and be nice while playing poker, but there's just too many miserable fucks with miserable lives who have nothing better to do than be complete asses in the chat box. It's not unlike a chat room, completely inhabited by poker players. (Would anybody willingly go to one of those?)

Oh well. Enough negativity.

::

On a more positive note, I'm going to the dentist soon to get my teeth fixed. Which is preferable to talking to a donk. (A quick note: I'm terrified of the dentist!) That's not a joke either. I haven't been to the dentist in 6 years, and I make an effort to avoid the dentist by brushing consistently. I really really really hate the dentist, and I'm terrified that I have to go. But atleast I'll likely get anaesthesia. I need root canals, fillings, wisdom teeth removal...and whatever else they find. Kill me now.

Actual Poker Content

My first full month back on Stars is almost over. While in many ways it has been a letdown, it hasn't been that bad either. If nothing else, it has driven me to work even harder at developing my game (since I'm no longer getting the AP bonuses.)

I haven't put in as many sit n go's this month as I wanted to (only 360, with 2 days to go.) But that is ok, since I spent consider time playing multi's along with almost 4,000 hands of ring on top of that.

I think this will change when I am able to get a monitor big enough to support 4 tables without overlap. It may sounds like a very small thing, but the overlap between tables gets extremely irritating after several hours, and forces me to not play 4 games at once as often as I'd like.

::

I've also moved up to $30+$3's. The games are still easily beatable, and I have a big enough roll, I shouldn't really be playing $20+$2's. I only stuck with them so long to make sure I had a good feel for the sng style of play. I also wanted to make sure I was playing against enough weak players to be profitable, but there's very little difference at the $33's compared to the $22's.

I hope to not spend more than 2 months playing these, as the $55's are profitable too I'm sure, but I really want to be conservative with my bankroll. I'm not playing any levels without atleast 100 buyins. (Which I do technically have enough for the $55's, but I need to keep money off to the side to pay taxes with. >.< )

::

That's all that' going on with poker right now. I spent a few days playing nothing but multi's, but didn't feel like staying with them. They tie me down to the computer for such long periods of time. Sometimes I'll almost hope to lose just so I can quit playing. And that's not a good way to be playing.

For a while I was thinking about trying to rack up a bunch of TLB points. I got 1338 right now, and I didn't play a tournament until mid January. But to what end? You don't get shit for being on the TLB. You might get to fight for a few seats to a WPT event, but that's about all the perks available. (Aside from possibly playing McEvoy heads up for $1,000. Which may happen once for the entire year.) Doesn't seem worth the effort.

::

PS released news that Elky was the player who first reached Supernova status. (100,000 FPP's) I really have no idea how the hell you get that many FPP's so quickly. I have 7,400 for the month, and I put in quite a bit of time. Now I realize I'm not playing for the highest stakes possible, but even if you were, I still don't see how you could possibly rack up that many of them.
If you're playing the highest stakes cash games, you'd have to see roughly 118,000 hands to get that many FPP's. (Since hands that don't see a flop aren't raked.) How do you play that many hands of poker in a month. (Let alone 3 weeks! Which is all the time it took Elky to accomplish this feet.)

Or if you're playing $525+$30 sng's, you'd still have to play 667 of them. Has there even been 667 of those tournies run this entire month?

How did he do this?!

SnG Power Tools

Here it is. I should have written this up a while ago, and then I almost forgot to do it, but since atleast one blogger would like to know what the software is like, I figure I should do a write up/summary.

Here is a pic of the normal opening screen.



I suppose I should first tell what the purpose of this software is. It is not a statistical tool like PokerTracker, it is rather a learning tool you use to evaluate the EV of specific hands.

You can define the different parameters of different hands. (i.e. the blinds, the amount of chips you have, the amount of chips your opponents have, what starting hand you were dealt, the likely range of hands your opponents will call an all in with.)

And then after defining all of these settings, you hit "Compute" and it will tell you the Expected Value of moving all in vs. folding.

There is also a "Compute All" button which works to decide which range of hands it is correct to push with.

This is all well and good to think about various theoretical situations, but the real value of this software is it's ability to load in hand histories from tournaments!

Here is a pic of the screen you will get when you load an entire tourney:



Only the hands which are not in red can be analyzed. (Red hands usually mean there was action prior to your turn.)

So only about 50% of hands can be analyzed, but that's ok. Usually the hands which you can't analyzed are pointless to analyze anyways. (But I hear that an updated version of the software will have the ability to analyze all hands.)

The tourney screen shows what you were dealt, which position you were in, how many chips you had, and what you did. If you double click on any of the hands, it will load all the parameters into the software itself. My favorite thing to do is calculate some marginal hands which you instinctively want to fold without much thought. (I'm often astounded when I fold a hand like QTs and later check the EV and see that a push would have been better than folding.)

Here is the final hand of the last SNG I played:



I was dealt JJ in the SB and I had almost exactly 10 big blinds. It was folded to me. According to the software, a push was +EV. (Duh.)

But there are many hands where it is not so obvious if folding is a better option than moving in.

::

I also must make one more note about this software. It only compares moving all in to folding. But there are certainly situations where the highest EV of all is a call or a standard raise. It depends on your opponents. But as a rule of thumb, if you are sitting on less than 10 big blinds, you shouldn't be doing much calling. I almost never limp with less than 10 bb's, but I will make exceptions if I think it's very unlikely I'll get action if I move (i.e. a very tight player behind me, OR a maniac who will move in if I just limp.)

But the point of this is, if you are constantly doing plays that are +EV, you're gonna get good results.

You still need a good read on your opponents though. The crux of the calculations is the hand ranges you put in for your opponents. Tight players require a very different range of hands to move in than against loose players. So as usual, you still need to observe your opponents and figure out how they are playing.

If anyone has any further questions about this software, just leave a comment. I realize this is a very incomplete summary, but further info can be found on their website.

Cheers.

I Made a Big Mistake Today

I ate at Panda Express in the Easton Mall.

Now this was a very innocent mistake, I've never eaten there before! And I love chinese food. But I can, without a doubt, say that it was the worst chinese food I've ever had. In fact, every part of the whole eating experience was terrible.

1) The workers. Now I don't expect much from fast food workers, but even compared to others of their own kind, these workers were terrible. And they kept calling me 'sir.' Nothing pisses me off more than being called 'sir' repeatedly. "Would you like something to drink sir?" "What kind of rice sir?"

Do other people get as irritated by this as me? I feel like I'm in court getting indicted on some peculiar fast food charges. Well, MAAM, I'd like Dr. Pepper! And, MAAM, white rice please.

2) The prices. These are rather outrageous. Especially after I saw the quantities of food I got. I paid $6.45 for beef and broccoli. 1/2 of the plate was a giant pile of rice (est. value = $0.11) 1/4 of the plate was an eggroll (est. value = $0.39) The other 1/4 of the plate was what I ordered, the beef and broccoli. I could eat the whole entree in 3 bites. (est. value = $1.15)

3) The food itself...tasted awful. I felt sick for 45 minutes afterwards, and I ate this before going to the gym. I almost vomited at one point. I can not believe how bad they fuct up a delicious thing like chinese food. The rice sucked, the eggroll sucked, and the beef and broccoli was barely edible. Even the sweet and sour sauce sucked.

4) The fortune cookie. Not only was it the worst tasting (crumbly and old looking) fortune cookie I've ever had, but the fortune didn't even make any sense. It said "Stubborness is not a virtue." Not only is this not a fortune, it's not even an informative statement! Who the hell doesn't know this already? Stubborness isn't a virtue? Get the hell outta here! All this time I've been working on my stubborness because I thought it was a good thing.

5) The laughable way they advertise themselves as "Gourmet Chinese Food." That's an awful high position to take when you peddle disgusting fast food. It's equivalent to Burger King saying their food is "Gourmet American Cuisine." Gimme a break.

Don't make the same mistake I did!

There is No God

Ok, there may be a God, who knows. That's not really the point.

I don't really know which way to slant this post, if I should be happy I finished 8th, or pissed I got unbelievable screwed yet again at a final table. I think I feel more negative than positive, and I hate that about myself (and tournament poker.)

There I am, with the chiplead, and playing extremely focused. I've also got very good reads on the other players.

To make this a short story, I lose 4 consecutive all ins, and I'm out.

Longer version.

First I call an all in with AJ v A7 for 600k. Lose to a rivered 4 flush.
Call another all in with AKs v 88. Again for about 600k. Make the nut flush but 88 makes a boat.
At the final table I call the all in of the only guy shorter than me. I have A2 and he has Q7. Lose that one.
Finally I'm all in with KJ against the 2 blinds. Flop a K high flush draw, which doesn't come through and I lose to 98 which pairs up on the river. Sweet.

So there you have it. 1.2 million gone in 4 hands.

I won $630, but I was so close to big money. Top 6 got over a grand, and I really didn't think it was possible for me to finish out of the top 6 when I had the lead. So fucking brutal.

::

In slightly less worse news, I made a final table this morning as well, in the $5 NL Holdem event. There were 550 entrants and I got into the final 5. Then I'm all in with 55 v A3 and the guy flops an ace. Lose the rest on the next coinflip and I got ousted from that one too. Oh well.

Atleast I'm making final tables. The last year of study and constant play has really crafted my game into something decent. I'm gonna win one of these fucking tournaments, I just don't know when. I guess it's up to the poker gods. =P

Example

I often write about how irritating it is having to deal with retards and the stupid shit they say, but I don't often put examples in here. So here it is, a rather prototypical example:

PokerStars Game #3744454026: Hold'em No Limit ($1/$2) - 2006/01/24 - 19:14:01 (ET)
Table 'Lilofee' Seat #4 is the button
Seat 2: Moshito ($270.75 in chips)
Seat 3: barneymax ($236.70 in chips)
Seat 4: whatup3 ($188.75 in chips)
Seat 5: garyinnyc ($200.40 in chips)
Seat 6: Dragonystic ($285.40 in chips)
Seat 7: wenlit ($27 in chips)
Seat 8: rushto ($227.95 in chips)
Seat 9: JohnSpence ($192.60 in chips)
garyinnyc: posts small blind $1
Dragonystic: posts big blind $2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Dragonystic [3c 7c]
wenlit: calls $2
rushto: folds
JohnSpence: calls $2
Moshito: calls $2
barneymax: folds
whatup3: calls $2
garyinnyc: calls $1
Dragonystic: checks
*** FLOP *** [7h 4c 5c]
garyinnyc: checks
Dragonystic: bets $4
wenlit: calls $4
JohnSpence: calls $4
Moshito: folds
whatup3: folds
garyinnyc: folds
*** TURN *** [7h 4c 5c] [6d]
Dragonystic: bets $8
wenlit: calls $8
JohnSpence: calls $8
*** RIVER *** [7h 4c 5c 6d] [Qh]
Dragonystic: checks
wenlit: checks
JohnSpence: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Dragonystic: shows [3c 7c] (a straight, Three to Seven)
wenlit: shows [4s 3s] (a straight, Three to Seven)
JohnSpence: mucks hand
Dragonystic collected $22.85 from pot
wenlit collected $22.85 from pot
JohnSpence said, "lol"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $48 Rake $2.30
Board [7h 4c 5c 6d Qh]
Seat 2: Moshito folded on the Flop
Seat 3: barneymax folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: whatup3 (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 5: garyinnyc (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 6: Dragonystic (big blind) showed [3c 7c] and won ($22.85) with a straight, Three to Seven
Seat 7: wenlit showed [4s 3s] and won ($22.85) with a straight, Three to Seven
Seat 8: rushto folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: JohnSpence mucked [7d 7s] [note: he flopped top set, thats the reason he is laughing]

I'm a reasonable man. I can understand being upset about losing after flopping top set. But he then goes on to berate the way I played the hand!

He says "keep betting the ignorant end of the draw" as though I was out on a complete limb with no sort of hand.

I flopped top pair and a straight flush draw, betting is easily the best play.

Compare that to his play. He flops top set on a very threatening board. There are 2 clubs and straight draws galore, but he slowplays anyways!

Some people are just completely unaware of when to slowplay and when not to, and I'm fine with that!...were it not for the fact that I have to hear this idiot tell me I played my hand poorly.

Everyone thinks they're so good at poker, they're blind to their own ineptitude. Which again, I'd be fine with if I didn't have to constantly listen to these retards impart their irrational thoughts.

Maybe I need to make better use of the mute-chat option.

MTT News

Been playing some multis lately, to keep things fresh. All the SnG's have really helped out my MTT game I think.

I just final tabled one of the 180 person $20 NL Holdem tourneys on Stars. Was chip leader with 4 to go and lost a few 3:2's to get ousted. But I can't be the slightest bit mad, I won 2 coinflips to amass the chip lead, so I feel like I had good luck to make it there anyways. The tourney right before this final table I finished one from the final table in a heartbreaker.

I was all in with AK against AQ and the guy hit 2 queens and ousted me. Had I won that, I would have had a decent stack to start the final table with. Uber frustrating.

I also lasted deep into two rebuy tourneys which paid pretty good. The $10 one netted me $400 when I finished 16th. And that tourney was a heartbreaker too. Some guy inexplicably raises in midposition with T2s and I decide to get all my chips in with A4s. But the guy flops a T right off the bat, and I narrowly miss another final table.

Anyways, I really needed some good results to help my confidence (and bankroll.) I was really at my wits end when I wrote my last post, and deservedly so. I'm also very optimistic that I'm pulling out of this harsh variance swing.

I was doing some thinking about how long I've broken even for, and it's scary to think how long of a streak that would be in a B&M setting. I think I play about 4 times as many hands as I would in a live card room. So that means my last 6 weeks of breaking even would equal about 24 weeks in a casino, or in simpler terms, half a year! That's a laughably long cold streak. I can't imagine what that would be like to live through for 6 months.

But enough negativity. I'm very optimistic about the following months (and year.)

And thanks to everyone who has given me some support. I know it sucks reading about poker players whining about running bad. I'll try my best to keep future posts as whine-free as possible...atleast in regards to poker. I'm still gonna bitch about other things.

I Must Be Sick

Mike Matusow is an idiot, but he has said one thing which has rung true throughout my poker career. Anyone who plays this game for a living must be sick. I'm probably sick. You have to be a little twisted to gamble for a living. And this isn't because it can be a hard living (many jobs are hard) and it isn't because it provides little satisfaction (again, many if not most jobs are not very satisfying.) The real reason is this: horrible horrible things are going to happen to you when you play poker, and you know this going into it (and go through with it anyways.) This is NOT like other jobs.

The terribleness of most jobs is in the small things, the repetition, the crummy boss/coworkers, the poor pay, the lack of promotional possibilities. But none of these things can amount to the feeling you get when you work 40 hours a week, week after week, and come away worse than when you started, financially speaking. The only other job I can think of with this facet is investing.

But there still is a clear difference between the two. When you invest, the money works for you, and you don't have to sit there and stare at every loss and every gain. If you did, you'd probably drive yourself mad. You can sit back and look at the overall trends per month or per quarter, and look at the profits.

This would be the most ideal viewpoint to play poker, but it's hard to have such a high vantage point of your wins and losses when you have to see each and every one of them right in front of your face. And when the beats pummel you for week after week...it takes it's toll.

They've certainly taken a toll on me.

I thought that I had become rather immune the variance of playing the game, but really I was good at short term variance. A few days of losses or a week of poor results, I could get used to. I did get used to that. But there are more prolonged streaks of losing in poker.

What's interesting about these streaks is that when you consider playing poker for a living, you don't consider these kinds of streaks very much. Especially if you think you're a good player. You might think along the lines of "well I'll be able to limit my losses with my skill." Which is undoubtedly true, but missing the point completely. Even when you limit your losses, you're still losing. And when these streaks get prolonged, you not only have to deal with losing, but with self doubt, paranoia, financial pressure.

I'll start having thoughts that I'm not nearly as good at poker as I thought I was. Even though I've been a consistent winner for a year and a half. That I'm not good enough to make a living from this game, or atleast not enough to make a good living from it. Just 2 short months ago I was on the verge of my bankroll hitting 10k, and now I'm at 5k, with massive losses piling up.

On top of that, a part of that bankroll will have to be withdrawn to pay for taxes on my winnings from the past year!

Yet another cliche is coming to mind as abundantly true. Poker is a hard way to make an easy living.

::

On a closely related topic, I've been reading all sorts of things about people playing professionally these days. 2+2 is full of these players, and many of them are woefully naive. They view poker as some kind of dream job with the end result being a huge tournament win and a lifetime of travel, fun, money and women. (Or some mix of those things.)

TV poker has so glamorized poker with stories of people winning satellites for cheap, and parlaying that satellite win into a major payday. Of course you don't see the thousands of other players who put money into the prizepool and came away with nothing. This is the most common result in tournament poker, especially for these newcomers who think they can play poker.

Poker is such a great game because it fools everyone into thinking they are winning players. How does it do that when most people lose? In many ways probably. First you have an abundance of players with initial success without strong poker skills. This involves a tournament victory for thousands of dollars, or a hot run in ring games for an insignificant number of hands.

Secondly you have to realize that most people do not track their results. So in reporting their winnings, it's all too easy to lie to yourself. You remember the times you win, and shrug off the losses as "times I got unlucky." And at the end of the year, especially if you get bonuses, you think you are a winning player, or "a break even player at worst." I can't recall the number of terrible players I've heard say that. Even though less than 10% of poker players come away with positive results at the end of the year.

Thirdly, even for players who do track their results, but are currently beating micro limits or $5 sngs...it's so easy to assume your winrate will continue as you move up the ladder. Again, this is not the case at all. I could teach pretty much anyone to beat low buy in poker. You can have almost no knowledge of proper post flop play, but so long as you start with better hands that your opponents (play tight) you will have a consistent slim edge over the other idiot players.

But to extrapolate small winnings at small stakes holdem into medium winnings at middle limit (and so on up) is a ghastly mistake. As you move up, so must your skills. And sadly for most people, their potential isn't as high as their hopes. Everyone has a theoretical plateau; based on your intelligence, your determination to win, your ability to adapt to better players, and so many other semi-tangible factors.

Your opponents want to win just as much as you. And as you move up, you are more likely to run into players who know everything that you know about the game and more. This is necessarily so, unless you are the most talented player at the level you play at (and there can only be one of those.)

Now you can avoid these players like the plague and focus your attack on the weak players at every limit you reach, but don't think for a second that your EV won't be effected by the diminishing number of donks and the higher number of skilled players.

For a simple thought experiment: Try to imagine how good you would do at a table full of players that were identical to you in every way. Of course you would break even, and hence lose out to the rake. So not only do you have to be better than the other players at your table, but you have to be so much better as to cover what you pay the casinos. This is not easy! I pay about a thousand dollars in rake per month (atleast I did when I was in ring games.) So theoretically you could beat a game for over a grand a month and still have nothing to show for it. As is sometimes the case when you're running bad.

What's the fucking point of all of this? Simple, poker is hard. Poker is harder than non pros can even fathom, and I sort of wish every wannabe pro would quit his job and find out just how brutal it can be so they would perhaps lay off of me with their faux-poker knowledge.

It's a funny irony though, that this is the way poker has to be in order for it to be profitable. Were it not for the fact that most people are fooling themselves, people couldn't make a living off of it. And this is yet another burden the pro must carry. All pros are dependent on bad players for their livelihood, and yet must occasionally (or frequently, depending on how well you are running) give away their money to these very players and absorb whatever inane shit they have to say.

Anytime someone says to me that I should be happy I was just all in with way the best of it and lost anyways against some donk, I just want to grab a lead pipe and show him how happy I am that I have to deal with these idiots all day long.

Anyways, since this topic is becoming violent, I should end it. If any poker hopefuls are reading this, I will tell you this much. The poker world is like the real world, the weak get eaten up by it, and if you're strong enough, you come away like a diamond carved out of rock through ages of pressure and conflict. My biggest fear is that I'll find out that I'm not one of the strong ones, and that should be the genuine fear anyone who does this for a living has. Everything else will fall into place based on that simple truth.

Tact

I'm running pretty bad right now. I wanna write about it, but everytime I write out a paragraph and I reread it, it looks like bitchy whining. I really don't like when I come off that way, and I can't figure out anyway to talk about how shitty the cards have been (like losing with AA all in preflop 6 times in a row.) I also feel like anyone reading this might think I exaggerate, so I almost feel compelled to put up each and every hand history as proof that I'm getting screwed, but then that looks even worse! And my blog turns into a boring hand history factory. I don't want that either. I guess I'm left with not talking about it at all (like the 3 consecutive bubble finishes where I was all in with top pair against second or bottom pair.) ;)

::

But poker aside...life has been frustrating lately too. I feel like I'm getting hit from every direction possible right now: financially, family stuff, personal things, not to mention the poker.

For the first time in probably years I completely lost my self control yesterday while at the gym. I was playing in a friendly pickup game of basketball. I knew some of the players, and others I didn't know. I also must note that I had already worked out prior to playing, so I was tired and not playing particularly well.

So one person on our team, for whatever reason, decided to start verbally riding me for every play that goes wrong. If I miss a shot he rolls his eyes or throws his hands up in the air like he's pissed that I didn't pass the ball (even though I'm wide open and am a pretty good shooter.) He kept bossing me around, like a condescending coach. I dunno what the guys problem was, it's just a fucking pick up game, not the NBA. But he relentlessly hounds me and my play, and finally I tell him to go fuck himself....real! loudly. Everyone in the gym just stops and looks at us, and I felt bad for the teammates whom I didn't want to bludgeon, but I just shouted in his face and then left.

I'm not sure what exactly prompted me to get so utterly mad at this person, but even in retrospect I feel like he deserved to get yelled at, and probably deserved to get punched in the face. Where I come from, a person would get punched in the face for sure if he ran his mouth as much as that guy did. I don't wanna get banned from the gym, and I also don't want to get punched myself, so it's probably good that I decided to just leave rather than fight him.

But his face is tatooed in my memory, and sadly, I feel like there is no possible way for me to not run into his ugly mug again. (We are both members of the same gym and both play basketball after all.) I'm not sure how I'm going to react when I see him again. Because just the thought of him incites me to clench my fists and narrow my vision like a tiger eyeing a gazelle.

I hope I don't have anymore to write about this topic in future blog posts. It's likely to not be very flattering.

::

I'm gonna start hitting up the shootout tournaments on Stars. For those who don't know, a shootout tournament is basically multiple sit n go tournaments, where the winner of each table goes to the next round. I hate mtt's, but I feel like I have good sng skills, and might be able to do well in these. The only problem is that Stars only offers $5o and $100 shootouts. (Aside from the $5 quad shootout.) So I may only play a few per month. I have high hopes though.

::STUNNED::

Sometimes SnG's go so badly you think the universe is against you.

PokerStars Game #3591236524: Tournament #17823543, Hold'em No Limit - Level III (25/50) - 2006/01/10 - 07:10:31 (ET)
Table '17823543 1' Seat #3 is the button
Seat 2: Dimaire (775 in chips)
Seat 3: CorvettePow (280 in chips)
Seat 4: espnnate (1555 in chips)
Seat 5: SmallPapi (3720 in chips)
Seat 6: Dragonystic (1675 in chips)
Seat 7: Mick Walker (1260 in chips)
Seat 8: fishmango (2895 in chips)
Seat 9: RamonIshmael (1340 in chips)
espnnate: posts small blind 25
SmallPapi: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Dragonystic [Ah As]
Dragonystic: raises 100 to 150
Mick Walker: folds
fishmango: folds
RamonIshmael: raises 100 to 250
Dimaire: folds
CorvettePow is disconnected
CorvettePow has timed out while disconnected
CorvettePow: folds
CorvettePow is sitting out
espnnate: folds
SmallPapi: folds
Dragonystic: raises 1425 to 1675 and is all-in
RamonIshmael: calls 1090 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [6d 3c 4h]
RamonIshmael said, "gg"
*** TURN *** [6d 3c 4h] [5h]
*** RIVER *** [6d 3c 4h 5h] [Jh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Dragonystic: shows [Ah As] (a pair of Aces)
RamonIshmael: shows [7d Ac] (a straight, Three to Seven)
RamonIshmael collected 2755 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2755 Rake 0
Board [6d 3c 4h 5h Jh]
Seat 2: Dimaire folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: CorvettePow (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: espnnate (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: SmallPapi (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: Dragonystic showed [Ah As] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 7: Mick Walker folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: fishmango folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: RamonIshmael showed [7d Ac] and won (2755) with a straight, Three to Seven

A7o! But wait, it get's better. I build my stack up again...only to lose it to the same jackass with the same miserable hand.

PokerStars Game #3591253515: Tournament #17823543, Hold'em No Limit - Level III (25/50) - 2006/01/10 - 07:18:07 (ET)
Table '17823543 1' Seat #6 is the button
Seat 3: CorvettePow (230 in chips)
Seat 4: espnnate (1785 in chips)
Seat 5: SmallPapi (3345 in chips)
Seat 6: Dragonystic (1190 in chips)
Seat 7: Mick Walker (1700 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 8: fishmango (2795 in chips)
Seat 9: RamonIshmael (2455 in chips)
Mick Walker: posts small blind 25
fishmango: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Dragonystic [Kc Ks]
RamonIshmael: raises 250 to 300
CorvettePow: folds
espnnate: folds
SmallPapi: folds
Dragonystic: raises 890 to 1190 and is all-in
Mick Walker: folds
fishmango: folds
RamonIshmael: calls 890
*** FLOP *** [9h 2c 7s]
*** TURN *** [9h 2c 7s] [3d]
*** RIVER *** [9h 2c 7s 3d] [7h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
RamonIshmael: shows [As 7d] (three of a kind, Sevens)
Dragonystic: shows [Kc Ks] (two pair, Kings and Sevens)
RamonIshmael collected 2455 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2455 Rake 0
Board [9h 2c 7s 3d 7h]
Seat 3: CorvettePow folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: espnnate folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: SmallPapi folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Dragonystic (button) showed [Kc Ks] and lost with two pair, Kings and Sevens
Seat 7: Mick Walker (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: fishmango (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: RamonIshmael showed [As 7d] and won (2455) with three of a kind, Sevens

Great hand!

It's times like this I'd enjoy having a lead pipe and proximity.

I'm Sick of Coming Up With Titles

Things have defintely turned sour in the tournies I've been playing. I finished outside the money in 8 consecutive turbo tournaments, which cut my ROI in half. Many of those tournaments I was simply card dead the entire time and finished 5th or 6th. When I got down to the bubble I pretty much got shafted on every all in. I also finished 2nd in several of the regular speed tournaments where I was all in for most or all of the chips on the table as a 65-70% favorite, and lost about 3 of those in a row. And in the last tourney I just played I bubbled yet again. This time I was (almost) all in with AA v 77 preflop, for about $4500 in chips, and he spiked a 7. Oddly enough, I still had like $350 in chips after that beat, worked it up to $2000, but then busted on the bubble anyways!

This was perhaps the single most frustrating tournament (SNG) I've ever played. The reason being that the other short stack kept moving in and the 2 large stacks REFUSED to call him. Even getting better than 2:1 on their money. I was livid. It almost looked like collusion, but I have a feeling the answer is far more trivial, they're just stupid and don't know how to calculate pot odds. It's frustrating when bad players hurt your EV through their own ineptitude.

In any case, I still had a nice first week of tournies. My ROI is shamefully small, but that's entirely due to Turbos. I'm still hovering at 30% for regular speed ones. I'm gonna continue to play both until I have a very large sample to do statistical analysis from. I really wanna know which of the 2 will be more profitable in the long run. But I probably have to put in 500 tournies a piece before I can make any decisions.

::

I was looking at the VIP Freerolls now offered by PS. I was almost sick to see that already a dozen or so players have qualified as Platinum VIP members. That requires 10,000 FPP's. A few of the high NL ring players were already there in less than a week! Which means they're probably pulling in 40,000 - 60,000 FPP's a month. Now if you're a Platinum VIP member, you get double FPP's, so they're actually getting 80,000 - 120,000 of them a month! The Porche was 3,000,000 FPP's I think. So these players could have a brand new Porche in less than 3 years, for free! (Actually much sooner than that, since after you get 100,000 FPP's for the year, you get 3.5x the FPP's rather that 2x.) I don't wanna do all the math, but the point is clear.

Talk about job benefits.

I just qualified as SilverStar VIP. Not really a big deal, but it's cool that Stars is having a $100,000 freeroll every month for VIP's. I think you have to be GoldStar or above to get into that, but I'll be there in a few weeks. Maybe one of these months I'll get lucky and crack a tourney like that for a decent amount of money. If nothing else, it's free practice.

More Turbos

I've put in 50 Turbo tournies to get a feel for them. As I figured, they are twice as fast, and my ROI is about half as good. But even if that's true, it's still worth playing them for getting more FPP's per hour, and paying slightly less rake.

Of the 49 turbo tournies I've played, I've come in 3rd and 4th 10 times each. That makes for a rather weak ROI. I only have 6 1st places and 6 2nd places. So I'm sitting on a 15.65% ROI for these. That's rather disappointing, since I feel I have a better edge than that over these players, but I think I've run rather poorly thus far in these. I've busted on the bubble 2-3 times in pots where I was a substantial favorite for a substantial amount of chips. (Which is the only way I'll usually risk my tourney life on the bubble, if it seems like winning that pot will give me a really good shot at 1st.) The worst of those beats had me sitting on top 2 vs another player with bottom 2. We were all in on the flop and the very next card brought him his 2 outer.

I'm not really upset at all though. I came back in another tourney from only 200 or so chips and won it, and I probably didn't deserve to win. Where you finish in these quick tournaments is heavily card dependent.

::

On a very cool note, I registered the SnG Power Tools program. It was rather pricey at $80 but I can tell already that it is well worth it!! I'm going over every single tournament I've played, and look at the EV of the hand I bust out. Whether I was right in my push against the likely range of hands my opponent had. I was pissed to realize I've made a few blunders in important spots, EV wise. But I'm learning rapidly with this program. It's astounding.

I'm gonna try and post a whole write up on the program and how it works, along with screenshots. I'm very impressed with this software, I think it will help my game more than PokerTracker, and that says a lot.

But that will have to wait for a different time.

We Have a Winner

Here it is, the single craziest hand I've ever seen in my life.

First 9th Place Finish

I had to take 2 consecutive disgusting beats, but I finally finished last in a sng.

The first beat.

PokerStars Game #3544430922: Tournament #17588991, Hold'em No Limit - Level III (25/50) - 2006/01/05 - 20:43:35 (ET)
Table '17588991 1' Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: kmgpop (1090 in chips)
Seat 2: BB John (1595 in chips)
Seat 3: SAVATA (1485 in chips)
Seat 4: dazza70 (1425 in chips)
Seat 5: Dragonystic (1455 in chips)
Seat 6: Scagnetti (1550 in chips)
Seat 7: poppycock (1755 in chips)
Seat 8: SadNess (1665 in chips)
Seat 9: mother09 (1480 in chips)
Dragonystic: posts small blind 25
Scagnetti: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Dragonystic [Kc Ks]
poppycock: folds
SadNess: folds
mother09: folds
kmgpop: calls 50
BB John: folds
SAVATA: folds
dazza70: folds
Dragonystic: raises 150 to 200
Scagnetti: folds
kmgpop: calls 150
*** FLOP *** [8h 6h 9c]
Dragonystic: bets 900
kmgpop: calls 890 and is all-in (Editors Note: WTF?)
*** TURN *** [8h 6h 9c] [Qs]
*** RIVER *** [8h 6h 9c Qs] [Jh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Dragonystic: shows [Kc Ks] (a pair of Kings)
kmgpop: shows [Kh Tc] (a straight, Nine to King)
kmgpop collected 2230 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2230 Rake 0
Board [8h 6h 9c Qs Jh]
Seat 1: kmgpop showed [Kh Tc] and won (2230) with a straight, Nine to King
Seat 2: BB John folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: SAVATA folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: dazza70 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Dragonystic (small blind) showed [Kc Ks] and lost with a pair of Kings
Seat 6: Scagnetti (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 7: poppycock folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: SadNess folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: mother09 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

The second beat, for the rest of my chips.

PokerStars Game #3544489557: Tournament #17588991, Hold'em No Limit - Level IV (50/100) - 2006/01/05 - 20:48:53 (ET)
Table '17588991 1' Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: kmgpop (1255 in chips)
Seat 2: BB John (1545 in chips)
Seat 3: SAVATA (1485 in chips)
Seat 4: dazza70 (1425 in chips)
Seat 5: Dragonystic (365 in chips)
Seat 6: Scagnetti (2425 in chips)
Seat 7: poppycock (1930 in chips)
Seat 8: SadNess (1665 in chips)
Seat 9: mother09 (1405 in chips)
BB John: posts small blind 50
SAVATA: posts big blind 100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Dragonystic [Jh Ad]
dazza70: folds
Dragonystic: raises 265 to 365 and is all-in
Scagnetti: folds
poppycock: folds
SadNess: folds
mother09: folds
kmgpop: folds
BB John: folds
SAVATA: calls 265
*** FLOP *** [2h 3h 8s]
*** TURN *** [2h 3h 8s] [Qc]
*** RIVER *** [2h 3h 8s Qc] [Th]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
SAVATA: shows [Ac 8h] (a pair of Eights)
Dragonystic: shows [Jh Ad] (high card Ace)
SAVATA collected 780 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 780 Rake 0
Board [2h 3h 8s Qc Th]
Seat 1: kmgpop (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: BB John (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: SAVATA (big blind) showed [Ac 8h] and won (780) with a pair of Eights
Seat 4: dazza70 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Dragonystic showed [Jh Ad] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 6: Scagnetti folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: poppycock folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: SadNess folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: mother09 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Just hope this isn't the precursor to several dozen more of these beats.

100 Tournies Down, Several Thousand to Go

Just finished playing my 100th (and 101st) sit and go tourney for the month. I'm pretty happy with the results. I have an ROI over 30% and I was in the money more than half the time.

But I am fully aware of the fact that I had better than average luck. I did pretty well in the 3:2's and the coinflips for the month. So I'm pretty sure my results are a little bloated. Another 100 will probably tell a more accurate story of what kind of long term results I can expect. I also played 11 turbos and had pretty good results. I really like how fast they are.

I think for now I am going to do a mix of regular and turbo sng's. I like playing 2 turbos on the left side of the screen, and 2 regular ones on the right side.

I'm also rather proud that I didn't have a single last place finish for my first 101 tournies. Not that it particularly matters if you bust 4th rather than 9th. It's one of those moral type victories.

In any case, I'm really excited about the possibilities of making a living off of these. I downloaded a program called SnG Power Tools, to help me study proper end game all in strategy. And I think if I keep up a good work/study ethic, I can expect some nice winnings.

Blimey

A lot of streaks lately in my results. Both good and bad. I had 4 consecutive 2nd places tonight. I was happy to make it down to the final 2 that many times in a row, but to lose all 4 of them really sucks. I had a 10k v 3k chip lead in one of them, and the guy still came back and won. He was a very good HU player though. I also played in 3 of Stars Turbo sng's.

Now these are an interesting idea. I've been considering whether or not its +EV to play Turbo's rather than the regular ones. Even if I have the same winrate per hour, it's worth it, since that means I'll be playing in more tournies, hence more FPP's.

Also the rake is slightly lower. The turbo's are $25+$2, and the regular ones are $20+$2. This may seem like a very small difference (2% to be exact.) But if I'm going to be playing in 600 - 1000 of these a month, it may be worth it to pay slightly less rake. The only problem I see is perhaps getting tilted when I hit a bad streak of these. They are more or less crapshoots, and after 15 minutes the blinds are high enough to start moving all in. Correct SNG strategy still applies, but you have fewer opportunities to be patient for a good hand.

Since I feel like patience is one of my strongest assets in normal SNG's, I'm not sure it would be a good idea to hit up the turbos. I really like that they don't last beyond 45 minutes though (even if you win them.) One of the heads up matches I got into (on my streak of 4 consecutive Phil Mickelsons) was over a half hour! By the time we were done, the tourney had stretched over 1 hour and 35 minutes! That's a long fucking sit n go, and I seem to stick around most of them for atleast 45 minutes.

Atleast if I was playing turbos I could be over and done with most of them within a half hour and have another one fired up. I have a feeling that my ROI would pretty much be cut in half, but I could play twice as many in the same amount of time. In all likelihood it's slightly more profitable, but I just don't feel comfortable in them. And that's a very important thing in poker. Perhaps more so than amateurs realize. The comfort factor can be huge at times.

::

At Matt's I ended up finishing a disappointing third after amassing a huge stack of chips. I bled most of them away to a new player we had this week. When it was down to the 3 of us I was all in against him several times, 5 I think. He won every single one of them. One of them I was all in with a flopped flush. The board was AK5 all of diamonds, and I had 69 of diamonds. The other guy had JJ with the Jd and called my all in and hit a higher flush on the turn. Then he was all in again against me with bottom pair. I had 2 overs and flush draw. (15 outs twice is pretty much a coinflip.) Lost that one. These on top of the other all ins (none of which were beyond 65/35.)

Oh well. I had good luck at the beginning of the tournament. I suppose dems da breaks.

I should sleep now, but instead I'm gonna watch my 3rd Rock from the Sun DVD's. (Perhaps the most underrated sitcom over the past 10 years.)

I Heartily Endorse This Event or Product

I made a new page to host my SNG stats. Since I'm gonna be playing in a lot of them, I don't want to constantly fill up my regular posts with boring SNG data. Also, if I'm having a good day it looks like I'm bragging, and if I'm having a bad day at the tables it looks like I'm bitching. (I'm still gonna do both.) But not with statistics.

So for anyone interested in how my results are coming along, I'll keep that page updated every few days. There's also a link to it next to the TLB link. I really should update the damn TLB soon.

Happy Birthday Blog

I just realized that I have now been writing in this blog for a year. In blog years, that's a long time. I think 1 human year = 7 blog years if I remember correctly.

That being said, I certainly am glad that I have kept up with it for an entire year. Not because it has really profited me any meaningful way, but rather has given me a sense of satisfaction and completion. (The same reasons I enjoy cleaning the house.)

I also really didn't want to start a blog, and put work into it, only to quit it a half a year later. This is the fate of most blogs, and I don't blame the people for quitting them at all. It's pretty much a waste of time, so unless you derive some perverse sense of enjoyment (like myself) from writing a blog, it probably isn't worth it.

::

In actual poker news, I put in another 25 (give or take) sng's today. I bubbled 4 consecutive ones in spectacular fashion. I was pretty pissed about those finishes, but I got redemption by winning the last 2 I played in.

I really can't wait until I have accumulated enough FPP's to get a bigger monitor. The overlap is driving me nuts. I'm trying to use as motivation to play as many as I can a day. Even still, I almost never play for more than 8 hours a day. So it beats getting a real job.

::

I keep watching these Learn Poker From the Pros shows on FoxSports. I can't seem to formulate a firm opinion on weather or not I like the show. On the one hand, a lot of the information is perfectly valid, sound advice. But even still, I never hear anything I haven't read before. It's like a televised version of Holdem for Beginners. Any and all of the information is readily available in any book, or even online somewhere. That in and of itself doesn't make it a bad show though. TV is easier to watch than a book is to read.

Also the round table segments always seem a bit awkward. One person ends up doing most of the talking, or some ridiculous bickering breaks out between 2 of the players.

I was also gonna do a quick rant about how they let Clonie Gowen on the show and label her a "professional poker player" even though as far as I can tell she's never won anything in the poker world and has only been playing for a few years. (WPT Ladies Night doesn't count. The "tournament" had 6 entrants.) But I'll avoid that route since I've never really watched her play, and for all I know, she could be good.

Or maybe she's a donk whom the media has made famous for some inexplicable reason. I almost want to go onto a tangeant rant about how shitty so many of these tournament players are that I watch and how gruesome a fall they will have when variance finally catches up with their overachieving asses.

Ah fuck it, it's my blog. Let's rant!

Tournament players (and here I'm talking about multi table tournaments) are, as a group, some of the worst poker players alive. There's a good reason for this. Tournaments often don't require you to do anything more complicated than shoving all your chips in at the right times. This isn't necessarily true, as any tourney pro will tell you. There are many skills involved in tournament poker, and utilizing them all will achieve the best results. But this is only because few people are willing to accept the fact that (atleast in NL Holdem events) the edge derived by skillful play can be negated by someone using a simple all in system.

(If you've never heard of the all in system, you should take a look at Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by Sklansky.) Basically, this involved you doing only folding and going all in preflop with certain hands, for the entire tournament. How well does this system fare? Pretty darn well! But even if you don't happen to believe that, it's irrelevent.

In tournament poker you're so sufficiently shortstacked a majority of the time that most any complex maneuvres are impossible to institute correctly. I'm not saying there isn't finesse or strategy or skill or whatever in tourney play. I'm just saying it's lacking in comparison to ring play, and a top ring game player will beat the hell out of a top tourney player.

So here's where problems arise. You have a new group of individuals who want to break onto the poker scene. But this doesn't mean what it once meant. The top players you see now have crafted their game through years of play. The only way to achieve lasting success in poker is with a strong foundation in the fundamentals.

But now you have players who win a satellite, do well in a WPT event, and think they are poker gods. Not only that, they are only playing poker as a sort of get rich quick scheme (whether or not they know this.) I doubt many have given much thought to using their winnings wisely (i.e. investing.) Rather they'll take their $100,000 win, buy some nice new things and blow the rest on more tourney buy ins, which they will of course lose, because they suck at poker and don't even know it.

Meanwhile if you can get lucky a few times, regardless of whether or not you genuinely suck at poker, you'll subsequently get enough 'tv time' to make you semi famous and open to the media as a money making tool. These days it seems like poker skills are really the last thing you need to make it. "Making it" now involves nothing more than getting sufficient air time to get advertising deals. (Which will often times involve being staked in tournaments.) Then you got it made. But whoops, you don't know how to play poker.

That was originally what I was going to write about Clonie Gowen, but she hasn't even won anything!! I have no idea how she got famous, other than having her face being on television for the required amount of time.

The next few years of poker are going to be really interesting. Splash in the pans take a while to shake out in the poker world, because luck in tournament poker is such an extreme element. I'm reminded of many of the railbirds who asked me for money while on AP. When asked how they could guarantee that they would pay back double, they would sometimes point out the tournaments that they won for thousands and thousands of dollars. (Some even with proof, via www.thepokerdb.com)

Me: "What happened to all your money man?"

Railbird: "Oh, you won't believe this..." [insert bad beat story which is entirely believable] "...so can I borrow $10?"

I won't go into the responses I often give these people, that's a side story. But that sort of sums up in a nutshell how I feel about tournament poker players. More often than not, they represent the extremes of variance. Skillful play or not, just remember, Steve Dannenman finished 2nd in the Main Event this year. That's how much luck there is in tournament poker. Then again I'm bitter on the whole topic.

Anyways, this entry has gone on long enough.

1 Outed Again

PokerStars Game #3514625517: Tournament #17435196, Hold'em No Limit - Level VII (100/200) - 2006/01/02 - 20:02:07 (ET)
Table '17435196 1' Seat #3 is the button
Seat 3: Dragonystic (2185 in chips)
Seat 7: McP88 (2860 in chips)
Seat 8: albright04 (8455 in chips)
Dragonystic: posts the ante 25
McP88: posts the ante 25
albright04: posts the ante 25
McP88: posts small blind 100
albright04: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Dragonystic [Qd Kc]
Dragonystic: calls 200
McP88: folds
albright04: checks
*** FLOP *** [Ac 5c Tc]
albright04: bets 200
Dragonystic: calls 200
*** TURN *** [Ac 5c Tc] [4c]
albright04: bets 200
Dragonystic: raises 200 to 400
albright04: calls 200
*** RIVER *** [Ac 5c Tc 4c] [3c]
albright04: bets 200
Dragonystic: raises 400 to 600
albright04: calls 400 (?!)
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Dragonystic: shows [Qd Kc] (a flush, Ace high)
albright04: shows [3h 2c] (a straight flush, Ace to Five)
albright04 collected 2975 from pot
Dragonystic said, "lmfao"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2975 Rake 0
Board [Ac 5c Tc 4c 3c]
Seat 3: Dragonystic (button) showed [Qd Kc] and lost with a flush, Ace high

I'm not upset at all about the beat. I just thought it was hilarious that he called my raise on the river with his straight flush, rather than put me all in. Guess he was worried about me having 6c7c.

I also took another classy beat in the first tourney I played today. Was all in on the first level of the sng, I think the 2nd hand, with AA against 2 other people! QQ and AK! QQ isn't too bad, but who the fuck gets broke with AK with the blinds 10/20?! Anyways, the Q hit. Again, I don't particularly care about the beat, it's just funny stuff.

It's no wonder these things are so damn profitable.

Day 1, SNG's

I put in 30 SNG's today, with some really nice results. 7 1st's, 3 2nd's, 6 3rd's and 7 4th's. (And I'm still in my last one with a lot of chips.) I've had some good luck, but also some rotten luck. Really I've just been able to consistently get to the last 4 and from there I either double up or bust. I rarely acquire chips early on.

I realize 30 SNG's prove nothing whatsoever. But it's still nice to start off on the right foot. I don't think I can keep up a 57% ROI, but I am still very optimistic about possible winrates. I feel like I have something to prove to myself. I'm deadly focused at the tables, and never make a single bet without thinking. It's hard to get my chips! If worse comes to worse, I blind down to almost nothing with 4-5 players left and I might have to win a 3:2 dog.

I've also realized the importance of avoiding calling off your chips. I'm almost never calling raises when it gets late. Even with big hands. And it works out amazingly well. If I can't get in cheap or put in a raise myself, I fold. And this keeps me out of the way of running into big hands, for the most part.

Anyways, just thought I should put up a report on my success before things turn sour. LOL.