I hit $50 last night on PokerStars, which is when I would move up to 5c/10c under the rules of Daniel Negreanu's challenge. However, 500 big blinds is a bit on the small side as far as conventional bankroll management wisdom goes.
Therefore, I've decided to delay the jump up to 5c/10c until I hit $100 so that I start it with 1000 big blinds. I may take the occasional shot at it before then though just depending on how I feel on any given night.
It took me about 1400 hands to get from $25 to $50, and it took DN only 252 hands which is just sick. However, it looks like his next step is taking him quite a bit longer because he's been at 5c/10c since then, and in a recent update that I just found he says that he has crossed the $100 mark but has yet to move up to the next level, 10c/25c. So now is my chance to catch up!!
On a slight side-note, there's been some comments from various writers online about this that are just flat out wrong and sometimes stupid. Let me point a couple of them out now.
Exhibit A: Here the author states, "At a certain point he will reach a level he can no longer beat. Judging by his inability to laydown top pair on High Stakes Poker, it is likely that level will be about $1/$2 or $2/$4 in todays games." There's so many reasons why this is a stupid comment. The guy is making this assessment based on a bunch of hands he saw on TV. He has little if any idea about the context of those hands, and I can guarantee you that Daniel was thinking about so many things in each of those hands that this guy would never have thought of nor perhaps even understand.
ok. next one.
Exhibit B: This one basically has the opposite problem, with the idea that Daniel's road will get easier as he moves up in stakes because of the "ridiculous" play at micro stakes, where players "are almost always going to call you down to the river, and pushing opponents out of pots is practically impossible." yeah, you sir just described the easiest games in the world to beat, and you're also speaking as if Daniel would not know how to adapt to these conditions even if he is too used to playing at high stakes where his full arsenal of weapons should be used.
Let me finish this off by saying that I don't want to glorify DN as some sort of poker deity or anything like that at all. I do think he is one of the best in the world today, and this is based on his record and some of his thoughts that I have read or listened too. Even his record is a dangerous metric to judge him on because anything can happen in the short run, but he has put up great numbers year after year that it would be hard to argue against this. But the way that he thinks about the game (as evident in his writings) is what impresses me more.
All that being said... Negreanu, I'm gonna whup your butt to $10,000. After that is unknown territory for me and I'll make no claims about that, but we will see.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Peter Chi vs. Daniel Negreanu
Ok Negreanu, you don't know this, but I'm racing you in your challenge.
I just reached the 2c/5c level yesterday, I'm at $25.03 now. It took me just under 2,200 hands, which is about 3 times the amount it took you (786 hands). So this means that you're 3 times the player that I am. haha.
Just kidding (at least, in the sense that you could make any judgment of that based on this). But according to his latest update, he's now at 5c/10c. I should point out, though, that he has had a 2-month head-start on me, plus I started with almost 3 bucks less haha. But on the other hand, I have a $25 bonus coming from PokerStars once I play enough hands... so between all these things I think I'll just call it even :)
I think I'm going to do things a little bit differently from him though, in that at some point I'd like to get off of cash games and switch over to SNGs and MTTs. I'm not set on that for sure though; we'll see how I feel down the road. But right now I'm thinking that at $100 I'll switch to the $5 tournaments and go from there.
The funny thing is how much I'm getting into this though. I was worried when I started that I wouldn't be able to take these micro-stakes games seriously, but... that's not true at all. Twice within these 2,200 hands I had come within $1 of the $25 mark, only to have it come crashing down. And I got just as excited and then subsequently demoralized as I would when I was playing for hundreds of dollars. That kind of makes me feel good though -- it's testimony that I play this game because I love it, and the stakes don't even matter per se. I mean they do matter in the sense that I'm eager to move up because each step up represents accomplishment. but. I dunno, I've always told myself that the day when playing poker becomes all about the money for me is the day I'll quit, if that ever happens.
Meanwhile I'm still hovering around $1k on Full Tilt... been up and down around it for the past month and can't break much higher than that yet. I'm staying at the $10s even though when I first started rebuilding that roll I was moving up at 50 buy-ins for each level, but the $20s just seem too high psychologically for me right now; if I whiff on just 5 in a row that's minus $100 right there, and that's far from unlikely on any given session.
Atlantic City in two days!!
I just reached the 2c/5c level yesterday, I'm at $25.03 now. It took me just under 2,200 hands, which is about 3 times the amount it took you (786 hands). So this means that you're 3 times the player that I am. haha.
Just kidding (at least, in the sense that you could make any judgment of that based on this). But according to his latest update, he's now at 5c/10c. I should point out, though, that he has had a 2-month head-start on me, plus I started with almost 3 bucks less haha. But on the other hand, I have a $25 bonus coming from PokerStars once I play enough hands... so between all these things I think I'll just call it even :)
I think I'm going to do things a little bit differently from him though, in that at some point I'd like to get off of cash games and switch over to SNGs and MTTs. I'm not set on that for sure though; we'll see how I feel down the road. But right now I'm thinking that at $100 I'll switch to the $5 tournaments and go from there.
The funny thing is how much I'm getting into this though. I was worried when I started that I wouldn't be able to take these micro-stakes games seriously, but... that's not true at all. Twice within these 2,200 hands I had come within $1 of the $25 mark, only to have it come crashing down. And I got just as excited and then subsequently demoralized as I would when I was playing for hundreds of dollars. That kind of makes me feel good though -- it's testimony that I play this game because I love it, and the stakes don't even matter per se. I mean they do matter in the sense that I'm eager to move up because each step up represents accomplishment. but. I dunno, I've always told myself that the day when playing poker becomes all about the money for me is the day I'll quit, if that ever happens.
Meanwhile I'm still hovering around $1k on Full Tilt... been up and down around it for the past month and can't break much higher than that yet. I'm staying at the $10s even though when I first started rebuilding that roll I was moving up at 50 buy-ins for each level, but the $20s just seem too high psychologically for me right now; if I whiff on just 5 in a row that's minus $100 right there, and that's far from unlikely on any given session.
Atlantic City in two days!!
Friday, March 06, 2009
shaniac vs. Shannon Shorr
There's been some drama between two semi-name players in the past couple of days.
First, who are these guys? The first thing that might not be too obvious is that these are both dudes. When I first started reading shaniac's posts on 2+2, I thought his screenname stood for Shania C. But it's actually Shane Schleger, a very active 2+2 poster and blogger with a ton of readers.
On the other side, Shannon Shorr is actually the reason this feud caught my eye -- he's a guy I played with for the 2nd half of Day 1 at the WSOP back in 2006. At that point, he was coming off of his first big score of his career: a 4th place finish at the Aussie Millions for about $200k. He has since become a very accomplished tournament pro, periodically being near the top of CardPlayer's Player of the Year standings and was as high as #2 this year.
Now, what happened? Well, NBC's National Heads-Up Championship is coming up. It's an invite-only tournament with a $20k buy-in. The criteria for selection is not clear-cut, and that is exactly the reason for this fiasco... the stink of it is that Shannon feels snubbed for not having been invited.
But here, let me just lead you to the post: Snubbed.
And here is shaniac's: Delusional.
And just for good measure, here is the list of people who WERE invited.
Soo... who is right? The thing is, I think shaniac makes really good points, but I don't think it was right for him to call out Shannon like that. Shannon was just ranting on his own blog, which, yes, is out in the open for people to see and therefore is open game for people to rip on and whatever. But... I mean, he really takes a number of shots at Shannon that I think are quite unnecessary and not only are hurtful, but detract from his point as well.
Discussion/debate/flaming continues here in this 2+2 thread.
First, who are these guys? The first thing that might not be too obvious is that these are both dudes. When I first started reading shaniac's posts on 2+2, I thought his screenname stood for Shania C. But it's actually Shane Schleger, a very active 2+2 poster and blogger with a ton of readers.
On the other side, Shannon Shorr is actually the reason this feud caught my eye -- he's a guy I played with for the 2nd half of Day 1 at the WSOP back in 2006. At that point, he was coming off of his first big score of his career: a 4th place finish at the Aussie Millions for about $200k. He has since become a very accomplished tournament pro, periodically being near the top of CardPlayer's Player of the Year standings and was as high as #2 this year.
Now, what happened? Well, NBC's National Heads-Up Championship is coming up. It's an invite-only tournament with a $20k buy-in. The criteria for selection is not clear-cut, and that is exactly the reason for this fiasco... the stink of it is that Shannon feels snubbed for not having been invited.
But here, let me just lead you to the post: Snubbed.
And here is shaniac's: Delusional.
And just for good measure, here is the list of people who WERE invited.
Soo... who is right? The thing is, I think shaniac makes really good points, but I don't think it was right for him to call out Shannon like that. Shannon was just ranting on his own blog, which, yes, is out in the open for people to see and therefore is open game for people to rip on and whatever. But... I mean, he really takes a number of shots at Shannon that I think are quite unnecessary and not only are hurtful, but detract from his point as well.
Discussion/debate/flaming continues here in this 2+2 thread.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
February Graph
Well, here's the latest graph with February play included:
The line represents the beginning of February. So yeah, it's been up and down as usual, but according to this graph I'm up a couple hundred in the past month. Also this doesn't include that $200 bounty that I won in FTOPS.
Last night I decided to play limit cash games for some reason though. I have no idea why I thought that would be a good idea. And yeah it was not fun at all, and I dropped $160. I actually still feel pretty bummed about it. What's funny is that back in the old days I wouldn't even blink at a loss this size... but now that I've been rebuilding from almost nothing, it hurts to see so much hard work go away in one bad session. oh well, whatever.
One more thing -- at the beginning of the year I deposited $100 into PokerStars. Well, by March 1st I ran that all the way down to $7.59. Sweet. And unfortunately, I tried to re-deposit but for some reason it wouldn't let me. Sooo... being stubborn, instead of just letting it go, I've decided to drop all the way down to 1c/2c NL games to try and work it back up. So yeah money-wise it's totally a waste of time, but I'm looking at this as a project. In fact, Daniel Negreanu is in the middle of doing the same thing -- from $10 to $100,000. Race to the finish imo... haha.
and also it'll make a good story once I win the WSOP.
The line represents the beginning of February. So yeah, it's been up and down as usual, but according to this graph I'm up a couple hundred in the past month. Also this doesn't include that $200 bounty that I won in FTOPS.
Last night I decided to play limit cash games for some reason though. I have no idea why I thought that would be a good idea. And yeah it was not fun at all, and I dropped $160. I actually still feel pretty bummed about it. What's funny is that back in the old days I wouldn't even blink at a loss this size... but now that I've been rebuilding from almost nothing, it hurts to see so much hard work go away in one bad session. oh well, whatever.
One more thing -- at the beginning of the year I deposited $100 into PokerStars. Well, by March 1st I ran that all the way down to $7.59. Sweet. And unfortunately, I tried to re-deposit but for some reason it wouldn't let me. Sooo... being stubborn, instead of just letting it go, I've decided to drop all the way down to 1c/2c NL games to try and work it back up. So yeah money-wise it's totally a waste of time, but I'm looking at this as a project. In fact, Daniel Negreanu is in the middle of doing the same thing -- from $10 to $100,000. Race to the finish imo... haha.
and also it'll make a good story once I win the WSOP.
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