Opening up the books

Kind of a lot has happened since my last blog post. Most notably was Poker's "Black Friday," on April 15th of this year. Here's a pretty good article about that, but the short of it is that the DoJ shut down PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Now, PokerStars was able to return money to their U.S. players pretty quickly, but Full Tilt Poker has been unable to do so thus far. So, currently I can't play online poker, and have about $3,000 locked up in there that I can't even access, and am starting to get a little worried that I might never see it again. But we'll see what happens.

So in this downtime I've decided to look at my recent stats from before the shutdown, to do some simple analyses and maybe learn something about my game and continue to try and grow in this way while I can't actually play. So... here we go.

First, my data that I'm looking at right now are from a recent 4 month window, and consist of roughly 50,000 hands played across three levels of stakes: $50, $100 and $200 no-limit hold'em (with the $ amount being the buy-in for the game). To be precise, it's 51,709 hands and the breakdown is:

13,056 hands at $50NL
26,538 hands at $100NL
12,115 hands at $200NL

So what is 51,709 hands of poker exactly? Well, in a brick and mortar casino, you can expect to get dealt about 30 hands per hour. So if I were playing only in a brick and mortar casino, how long would it take me to play 51,709 hands? If you do the math, it would take me about 43 weeks playing at 40 hours per week to attain this.

In contrast, by playing online I was able to attain this in 4 months playing an hour or two per night and only whenever I had the free time, due to the fact that hands get dealt faster online AND you can play multiple tables at the same time.

Ok, now how much did I make? Well my raw profit at these stakes was $2,986.75 over this time period. One meaningful statistic though is your winrate, in terms of BB/100. That is, big blinds per 100 hands. So for example, if you are playing $100NL where the big blind is $1, and your winrate is 2 BB/100, then that means that on average, you are winning $2 every 100 hands. Also, I will note that when I play, I average about 600 hands per hour. From this, I can also calculate my hourly rate. So here they are:

$50NL: 9.80 BB/100 -> $29.40/hr
$100NL: 5.88 BB/100 -> $35.28/hr
$200NL: 3.24 BB/100 -> $38.88/hr

Ok so my BB/100 decreases as the stakes increase, which is to be expected since higher stakes means harder opponents, typically. On the other hand, I do make the best hourly rate at the highest stake of $200NL.

It's only marginally better though; at each increase in stakes I'm playing twice as big (i.e. risking twice as much) but only doing slightly better. But, two things: 1) It's always good to try and move up and be able to win against better opponents and keep improving your game, so even if my winrate suffers in the short term, I should strive to attain good winrates at higher stakes in my continual quest for improvement as a player, and 2) These estimates are actually subject to a lot of variability, even after 10,000+ hands that I have at each level. The variance of poker is so much greater than one might think. I haven't done the math yet but conventional wisdom says that you need to have about 100,000 hands before you can have any reasonable precision on your winrate.

So, even though $29.40-$38.88/hr playing poker may sound pretty sweet, I wouldn't bet the farm on me yet (it's pretty clear that I do *beat* these games, but just by *how much* isn't very clear yet). Also, and more importantly, we already know that I hated playing poker full time when I did it the summer before starting my PhD.

There's a lot more I can look at, but I'll end this here for now and maybe take a look at some other things later.

Lish and Peter go to Snoqualmie Casino

Our getaway this weekend was to... wait for it... Issaquah! Ok, maybe not a very exciting town in and of itself. But we chose it for its proximity to both Snoqualmie Casino and the North Bend Outlet Mall. We stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn, the same type of hotel that we had for Aasthaa's wedding, and we've decided this is one of our favorite brands of hotel.

So we headed out there on Saturday afternoon, hit the Outlet Mall first, and then headed over to the casino. I had never been there before, and neither had Lish, so we started out just by taking some laps around the floor to check out what was available. My first observation was that the casino floor was WAAAAY more cramped than any other casino I had ever been to. The aisles between slot machines and table games were so narrow, it was practically impossible to walk through without bumping into people.

Lish was also quite disappointed to learn (while we were chatting at dinner) that there would NOT be free drinks at the casino. Nope, only Vegas and Atlantic City, I told her. And maybe some other places I don't know about, but I've never been to a casino outside of those two which served free alcohol. Nonetheless, we quickly went over to the bar to get a couple of drinks that I bought for us.

Then we hit a $10 blackjack table. I was trying to encourage Lish to play, but she wanted to just watch me. I tried to make some chit-chat with the old guy next to me but he wasn't too cooperative (gave kind of a strange answer to my question of "how has the table been treating you tonight?"), and the dealer was REALLY silent and un-friendly as well, so it was kind of a boring table. But I pulled $55 from it before we got up and tried to find some fun slot machines.

My definition of a "fun" slot machine is:
1) One where I know what I'm rooting for
2) Has a bonus game with possibilities of hitting a big jackpot

I know the bonus games are just gimmicks, but they at least make it entertaining. We had found a really fun game that fit this definition at the Bellagio when we went back in September of 2010... but we couldn't find quite this game here. We found similar ones though. Lish did hit a small jackpot for about 3400 credits... with each credit being 1 cent :) I think I dropped $45 in the slot machines altogether.

Then I took my $10 profit and we went to the club! Lish wanted to dance and I was happy to oblige, and it was $10 cover for guys, and ladies were free, lol. Much better than Vegas! And it was fun, I mean we decided we weren't a huge fan of the music they were playing since we didn't recognize a ton of it. And then of the stuff we did recognize... well, there was Katy Perry, and Britney, lol. But it wasn't all bad, and we did have a good time in there.

Finally we went to the Pai Gow tables, which we had been scoping out earlier too but they were full. Aannnddd... they were still full. Those Asians sure don't like to give up their seats, lol. They also only had two tables of it, which I explained to Lish was because they can't make as much money off of them compared to other games since it goes so slow. The other thing I noticed at that point was that, while previously the two tables were $25 minimum bet and $15 minimum bet, they now were both $25 minimum bet. When I mentioned this to Lish, she said "Oh, so you won't play at a $25 table?" Haha, it's not that I *won't*... it's just that, well, it's just nice to be aware that say a $100 buy-in only gets you 4 bets now, that's all. heh.

Anyways, after a few minutes of watching, all the players still showed no signs of budging, so we decided to just call it a night. It was almost midnight anyways, and we're getting old, haha. So we headed back to our hotel after a great night together. aww.

A Tale of Two Casinos

The two casinos of this story are Tulalip, and the Fantasy Casino at Allison's (Lish's sister) work party.

My friend Chris e-mailed me during this last week asking if I wanted to hit up a cardroom sometime this weekend, because his wife was out of town. I did some googling and found that Tulalip has a $75 buy-in poker tournament that starts at 11am on Saturdays, so we decided to go for that.

It was pretty quick getting up there, like 35 minutes once we left my house. So we got there in plenty of time to register and everything. Chris sat at a cash game while waiting for the tournament to start, and I played some blackjack. Pulled down $55 there so a nice little score. I think Chris lost a bit in his cash game.

Then we started the tournament. Starting stack was 5000 chips, blinds started at 25/50 and 20 minute levels. So definitely a fast tournament. In one early hand, I managed to get away from top two pair where I would have lost my stack. A couple people limped in front of me, I called with QJo, and another person or two called behind me. Flop came down QJ9 rainbow, the BB bet 150, one guy called, I raised to 650, BB made it 1450, and then the caller woke up and shoved all-in. In retrospect I think it's a pretty easy laydown with all that action, but I really tanked on that for a while (trying to convince myself that one of them had a worse two pair, and maybe the other one just had a straight draw). But I think I'm absolutely never best there. So I folded, BB called with KTo for the flopped straight, and the other guy had my same hand, QJo. The straight held up to win, and I live to fight another day.

There was one guy who busted two people (on different hands) coming from behind -- he took out KK with AJ after they got it all-in on a J-high flop, and then he took out AA with 9T after flopping middle pair. Definitely was salivating at the prospect of getting into a pot with this guy. Then, another guy open-folds top two pair against him after getting shoved on. WHAT!! Didn't you see what this guy was moving in with?? yeah, there definitely was some weak play at this table.

My bustout hand came right after the first break. Blinds were 200/400 with 25 ante, I had about 5700 at that point. It folds to me in the SB, I have AQs and raise to 1200. BB 3-bets to 2400, I ship and he calls with JJ. I get no help and I'm out. I was talking to Chris about this one, wondering if I could get away from my hand there. My point was that, on the whole, live players have very narrow 3-betting ranges; online I'd ship this all day without a question. But I think JJ is towards the lower end of a typical live player's 3-betting range. Chris made the point that you can't let this go because the blinds are rapidly increasing and you just need to accumulate, and obviously if enough pocket pairs are in his range, it's an easy ship with that much in the pot already. yeah, I might need to think about this one a little more, but he's probably right.

Anyways, then I played some cash (1/3 no-limit) after that and pulled down $88 at a non-remarkable table. Definitely plenty soft, but nothing too interesting there. So I booked a little $68 win on the day after counting my tournament entry. Hey I'll take it; Chris said he was down about $300 on the day.

Then was the Fantasy Casino for Allison's work party. But first, we all went to the 5pm mass at Blessed Sacrament (Lish, myself, Allison, Bekah (another one of their sisters), Tisa and Erin). Tisa and Lish already had plans to hang out tonight, so I went with just Allison and Bekah to this work party. And it was really fun! All of the chips were just play-money, and you got raffle tickets for prizes at the end of the night based on how many chips you had won; the more chips you had, the more raffle tickets you got. They had blackjack, roulette and a poker table. We played a little bit of all 3. Roulette is probably one of my least favorite casino games since there's no strategy at all, but I think I had the most fun at that table! I got to explain it to the girls (in terms of how much you win for each bet -- there's really nothing else to it), and just hang out with them there.

All in all, a good day of gambling on all counts.

BWO: Boys Weekend Out (Vegas Dec 2010)

A little late on this trip report, but better late than never.

Back in November, I happened to talk to Rahul over e-mail, and he mentioned that he was taking his annual trip to Vegas with his boys over the weekend of Dec 10-12. This was the weekend before finals week at UW, but seeing as I had no finals this quarter... and also Lish was on her trip to Mexico, so I figured it was great timing! The surprising thing to me is that Rahul is generally against mixing his friends, so I felt really lucky to actually get an invite on this trip. The cast of characters for this trip was myself, Rahul, Dave (who I had actually met before), Danny, and Paolo.

Rahul actually arrived by himself on Thursday, a good 24 hours before anyone else got there so that he could get in some extra gambling time, haha. I seriously thought about joining him, but I couldn't take Friday off. So I got a flight out on Friday evening, scheduled to land in LAS around 11pm. As usual, I rented a car (I have perhaps an unhealthy hatred for taxis). Quick side-note though: the rental car desk for Enterprise closes at midnight, so it was already cutting it close. Turns out my flight was delayed, so that had me pretty stressed out. Couple of other things that happened at the airport:

BAD: Got my peanut butter confiscated at security. Bummer, I just like to have food with me on trips to try and minimize the need to eat out.

GOOD: Found a free Southwest drink voucher on the ground, and I was flying Southwest! So I considered myself even with the world at that point. Although I was still worried about making it to Vegas in time to pick up my car.

Fortunately, I made it. Not only that, but they gave me a convertible! For the price of an "Intermediate," too. That was super exciting.

The first night in Vegas wasn't too eventful; Danny was already in bed by the time I got to the Venetian, which is where we were staying. The other boys were playing/watching Craps. I wound up playing a little bit of poker that night and won a little bit (like $40).

On Saturday morning I woke up early (relatively, for Vegas -- like 9:30am) for a satellite into Venetian's $330 buy-in Deep Stack tournament. The satellite was $80 with top 2 getting seats. The play was nothing too notable, maybe a little weak-tight. I built up a decent stack early, by getting lucky with AQ against AK... but then my luck turned around. In another hand, I turned the nut-straight against two pair, we got it all-in, and he rivered the boat. I had him covered, but that took me down to about half the starting stack. Then just a few hands later, I had AA, got a couple of callers after I raised, got it in against a flush draw on the flop, which hit and I'm out. boo.

After this, I went to the Wynn for their noon tournament. $120 buy-in, and we had about 50 players for that. I don't really remember anything from this tournament except my bustout hand: I had AA, with a raise and a call in front of me. I was shallow enough to shove so I did... the raiser folded, but then the caller called, with 66. 6 on the river and I'm gone.

At this point I decided it was time to take the convertible for a drive. Oh! I almost forgot. I did drive from the Venetian to the Wynn (which are basically right next to each other, but Vegas blocks are really long)... anyways, for that drive I decided to put the top down even though it was just like 5 minutes. And it took me like 5-10 minutes to figure out how to put the top down in this thing! Turns out I had to move one of the parts in the trunk manually. Anyways, that drive up the strip with the top down was pure happiness :) It was just before noon, the sun was up, and it was about 60 degrees. A little chilly, but Seattle had been COLD before this! Here's a pic, can't remember if this is that drive or another one down the strip:

So anyways, after my bustout at the Wynn, I decided I wanted more. And I also hadn't eaten lunch yet. So, I decided to drive out to Red Rock Casino, where they have a Capriotti's :) For those who don't know, this is a small chain of sandwich shops, with locations in Newark, DE and Las Vegas, NV, among not many others. This drive may have been one of the highlights of the trip. This pic is from the parking lot of Red Rock Casino, with my rental car in the bottom-left corner:

The other highlight, though, was dinner that night. Somehow, because Dave is the man, his work was covering dinner that night at Del Frisco's, a fantastic steak house. I don't even fully understand the details about why his work was willing to pay for this, but it had something to do with collectors coins that the restaurant gives out and his office is collecting. Anyways, we ate like kings, with several appetizers and side dishes to share along with our steaks, and two bottles of wine. Total bill was about $600 with tip (for five guys), and I can honestly say that it was the best meal I've ever had in my entire life.

After dinner, we went back to the casino to all sit at a blackjack table together. This was super fun, but nothing really notable to report. I bought in for $200, lost that, bought in for another $200, lost about half of that, and then managed to break even before quitting.

Sunday all the boys left around noon for their flights back to NYC, and I was staying until Monday morning. So I had roughly a full 20 hours in Vegas by myself at this point. Word. My flight on Monday morning was at 6am, so I figured I would just stay up and drive to the airport around 4am. I also did some searching online for poker tournament schedules, and found that Caesars had a 10pm tournament that night. And also I needed to go to mass, which I would do at 7pm at the UNLV Newman Center. That was my schedule for the night, and if I busted out of the tournament early, I'd just play a cash game until it was time to go.

The afternoon actually was really nice, to have that to myself in Vegas with a convertible. I drove that around for a bit in search of a Starbucks, which actually took me a good 45 minutes (this would never happen in Seattle!) But I settled in there, and actually did some work for a bit.

The final bit of the story was the Caesar's 10pm tournament. It was an $80 buy-in, and we got just over 50 players, which made first place be just over $1000. There was nothing terribly notable about the play in this tournament either... but as I got pretty deep in this tournament, like around the break at 2am and we still had like 15 players left, I was definitely worrying about whether we were going to be done in time for me to make my flight. The top 6 were getting paid, and I was chip leader for a little while as we had about 15 down to about 10 players left. Some things were definitely going my way -- I was able to steal blinds at will, and I won a race with AK against TT. I did have one painful beat though as a short-stack shipped, I called with AJo, she turned over A5o and flopped a 5. But things still managed to go pretty well overall and we got down to 3 players around 3am. At that point, me and another guy had about the same chipstack, and then the 3rd guy had probably like 1.5 times that. We made a deal once we got down to 3: there was $2160 in prize money remaining, so we guaranteed everyone $600, and then winner would take another $360. The original payouts were something like $1040, $675 and $380 (although I see that doesn't quite add up right, so I'm a little off).

Anyways, long story short, I came in 2nd and took $600. And we finished right around 3:30am, just in time for me to drive to the airport. Perfect!

With all my other losses and gains (not all mentioned in this report), I finished this Vegas trip basically up about $600 even.

As I walked out to my car, it definitely felt a little surreal... it's not that I haven't been up this late in Vegas, but I was 100% sober, and my surroundings definitely were not. On our last couple of bathroom breaks, there were tons of drunk clubbers stumbling around (the poker room at Caesars is right next door to Pure), and as I was leaving after the tournament finished, there were drunk girls pole dancing on the PussyCat Dolls poles. So that was a bit of a sight for sure.

But I got to my car in the parking garage, and even though it was cold, I put the top down for one last drive as I went to the airport. Driving down the strip at that hour, completely sober, with all the lights and the cold air in your face was definitely was the perfect way to end one of the best Vegas trips I've ever had.

no more PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker

Within roughly the last month, the two biggest online sites have pulled out of the state of Washington. This comes as a result of the 2006 law passed by Gov. Christine Gregoire which made online gambling a felony. Not much seemed to happen since then as it seemed mostly to be business as usual, and they made it a point to say that there was never the intention to prosecute individual players as a result of this law.

Then recently, a WA lawyer named Lee Rousso took this law to court to try and get it overturned. He lost, and soon after that, the big dogs (Stars and Tilt) decided, understandably, that it was now in their best interest to stop serving WA customers until things change.

The really unfortunate part of all this is that this was the year that Rahul and I were supposed to go #1 and #2 in the WSOP Main Event, as per our 5 year plan/pact made... well, 5 years ago. I don't really see how I'm even going to get to the WSOP this year, now.

One piece of bright news though is that I found that I still have $4.78 on another site, Bodog!! I ran up 75 cents to $600 on Stars before... IT'S GO-TIME AGAIN. well... I just started a session, and I'm down to $2.28 right now. lol.

Summer's here

It's been a while since I've written a post. And kind of a lot has happened since my last one. Most notable is probably this hand:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?6828714

Full Tilt Poker Tournament Summary Main Event Shootout (161626570) Hold'em No Limit
Buy-In: $200 + $16
Buy-In Chips: 2000
81 Entries
Total Prize Pool: $16,200
Tournament started: 2010/05/27 21:31:00 ET
Tournament finished: 2010/05/28 0:25:36 ET
1: Antoshka, $12,000 Prize Package
2: xanthopod, $2,100
3: E Tyme, $1,260
4: shuriken555, $840
...


So yeah, I was one hold away from winning a seat into the WSOP this year.

To add insult to injury, I showed this to a friend and he pointed out that my expected value once we were all-in was approximately $9000. Ouch.

On that same front, I'm playing in two satellites tomorrow. One is FTP's 150 seat guarantee, which is a $600+40 buy-in that I won my seat into a few days ago. So basically, at least the top 150 finishers in this tournament will get a seat in the ME. Currently there are 640 people registered, but I expect that to increase a lot come tomorrow.

The other one is a freeroll that I got a token to play in by earning enough Full Tilt points or something like that. The top 10 finishers in that will win a seat, and there's currently some 3,000 people registered in that one. So, we'll see how that goes...

And finally, Rush Poker on FTP is so sick. I'm addicted to that thing. I can't do it justice with an explanation, so here: Rush Poker

And after the little bankroll boost from my consolation prize in the ME shootout, I was up to playing $200NL. But the swings are so crazy... I think I ran up about a grand and then subsequently dropped $1500. So I'm dropping in stakes dramatically until I get my head straight again...

Anyways, we'll see how tomorrow goes.

ruh roh

PokerStars rebuilding project took a turn for the worse tonight. Over the past few days, I somehow decided that I'm capable of 8-tabling $50nl. I have no evidence whatsoever that I can beat this game at all, so this probably wasn't a wise idea. Even at $25nl, I was usually playing 4 tables, and MAYBE up to 6.

Anyways, I dropped $200 tonight. The Stars roll now sits at about $940, which, without the recent $600 deposit really means that it's at $340. ouch.

It doesn't help that I have this urgency due to the reload bonus... I didn't realize how much I was going to have to play before making that deposit. I think it's going to be somewhere on the order of 5 hours per week, which doesn't sound like that much, but it's definitely way more than I've been playing since the Hopkins days. And of course the more tables and the higher that I play, the less time it will take. Unfortunately, this swayed me to make a poor decision.

What to do at this point? Should I drop in stakes? Play less tables? I mean, the bonus means nothing if I go busto before I even reach it.

Well, after some thought, the plan now is to confine myself to a 6-table mix of $25nl and $50nl, at least until my roll gets back to $1200, since this is where I originally began to play $50nl. If I drop below $800, I'm gonna forget about the bonus and be back to $25nl exclusively.

Reload bonus

Today I sort of cheated and deposited $600 into my PokerStars account, in order to qualify for a $150 bonus. And I mean "cheat" only in the spirit of the challenge. But it seemed silly not to take advantage of free money if I could. Also, I didn't even think it would work, since... the whole reason this challenge arose was because I was unable to deposit, whenever it was that I tried last year.

I might just withdraw the $600 as soon as I can though (probably as soon as I clear the bonus).

Anyways, I need to earn 3,000 VPPs within 3 months, to obtain the bonus. I think that's actually going to be rather tough. We'll see...

10,000 hands!

I made it! After tonight I now have 10,016 hands of $25nl under my belt. In fact, here's all of my stats from all levels since I started rebuilding.

Most of these numbers probably don't mean anything to those who don't use the PokerTracker software, but some of them are obvious: I've won $416.15 over 10,016 hands at the $25nl (they call it $0.25; this is the size of the big blind, and $25 is the size of the buy-in which is what I have been referring to).

It's also of note that I spent the least amount of time at the $10nl level ($0.10) and also had the highest winrate then. This obviously could be due to running good over a small sample size (with poker, anything under 10,000 is considered "small" since the variance is so freaking high), but if I remember correctly, I think this did seem to be the easiest level to play at thus far.

Ok, now here's my graph of winnings thus far over all the levels.

Can't complain about that :) My PokerStars account sat at $602.01 after finishing that off.

Now, on the downside... tonight I also went ahead and played some at the $50nl level, after completing my 10,000 hands of $25nl. And this didn't go so well. I dropped about $60 there tonight.

So that's a bit of a setback. I'm going to keep at it though, and only playing 1-2 tables at a time for now (I've been playing 4-6 at $25nl).

The statistical analyses of the 10,000 hands at $25nl are still to come!

Approaching 10,000 hands

So like I said a while ago, my latest task was to play 10,000 hands at $25nl and then do some statistical analyses. Well, I'm getting close now, sitting at about 9600 hands after playing a little tonight. So I thought it might be nice to start thinking about what analyses I'd actually like to do.

First is the obvious: Statistically, am I a winning player at this level? This should be a fairly straightforward question to answer with the data at hand. I'll also have a point estimate and confidence interval on my winrate.

I'd also like to get winrates and confidence intervals for each position at the table (i.e. big blind, UTG, button, etc). My sample size is obviously going to be a lot smaller for this (should be roughly 1,000 hands per position) but we'll see how wide my confidence intervals are for that.

Finally, I think I'd like to do some analyses examining the pot sizes that I win. Previously (like a long time ago on another site) I used to think I won lots of small pots but then always got it in bad for the big pots. This would obviously be a problem. I haven't thought through exactly how I'll examine this yet, but it should be do-able.

That's about all I can think of for now. I'm sure I'll also just do some data exploration and see what's in there. It might be good to look at hand-specific statistics, i.e. am I losing with AQ, or KQ, or other medium-big hands that I should be winning with? And do I play too much of the junk hands?

After this though, I'm fairly sure I'm going to move up to $50nl. The PokerStars account sits at about $580 right now, so I'm well above Daniel's rules for the move-up. Incidentally, I haven't been able to find any updates lately on his progress.

Anyways, I'll probably start by playing just 1 table at a time for a bit, like 1,000 hands or so. Although that'll be a lot, so maybe a bit less. We'll see...

Vegas and other updates

So it turns out that Lish wasn't the biggest fan of Vegas. All the bright lights, masses of people, and billboards shouting "SEX SEX SEX!!" were a bit too much.

It wasn't *all* bad, though. We went hiking at Red Rock Canyon which was amazing. And she did enjoy playing Pai Gow at Bill's while we waited for breakfast (and she won $45!)

But by about the 3rd day, she was totally sick of the strip, and has said that she doesn't want to stay on the strip if she ever goes back there. Which is actually fine -- if I do make it back for the WSOP (which is the main thing for which I'd definitely WANT Lish to be in Vegas again), I'll probably want to rent a house or condo for the 2 weeks or whatever... because it was a little stressful hopping from hotel to hotel back in 2006. Also, I'd like to have a kitchen so that we don't have to spend so much on meals. So if we do that, then hopefully it'll be a little more peaceful and it will all work out.

Anyways. Right now I'm gonna call my shot and say that I'll be back in 2011. Because, I think I'm gonna need a full year of bankroll building before I'm in a good enough position to have a reasonable chance. And I need to stop doing stupid things with my bankroll, or else I'm not going anywhere. I basically haven't made anything since I got here... I mean it's been up and down, between $2000 and $3000 the entire time. The one productive thing I've done is resurrect my PokerStars account, and that's in large part because I've taken it so seriously and have refused to play drunk on that account.

Speaking of which, I'm now at 6225 hands of $25nl, and the PokerStars account sits at about $370.

I've also been playing a bit more PLO on Full Tilt, just at the $25 level as well. Not doing so hot there though... I'm down about $100, after about 1000 hands so far. This game is sick but I also know I'm just not very good at it yet. I haven't put in that much effort into actually getting better at it, i.e. analyzing hands and such. I'm gonna just keep playing it for a bit though, and then maybe will do some of that later on...

Looking ahead

I've played about 4600 hands at $25nl now, so I'm almost halfway to my target of 10,000 hands. The PokerStars roll currently sits at like $302. I had gotten it up to about $355, but then started not running as good over the past thousand hands or so.

I'm getting pretty eager to move up to $50nl though. By traditional bankroll management rules I think I'm not really supposed to go there until my roll is at like $1k-$2k (20-30 buy-ins), but whatev. As long as I just use my head, I think I can avoid going busto...

I'm also looking at what I can buy with my Frequent Player Points (FPPs). I currently have just under 1,000. lol, that's not very much. But apprently you can buy seats into tournaments with these things! Right now, for example, they have a $8,500 Asia Pacific Poker Tour event (in Macau), for 500,000 FPPs, and also a $15,875 tournement Europeant Poker Tour event (in Barcelona) for 940,000 FPPs. I imagine the WSOP will be somewhere in that ballpark as well...

Might take me a while to get that many points, haha. I also have to be at the Platinum Star VIP level in order to be eligible to purchase these things. And to be Platinum requires a certain amount of play per month, which I'm certainly not anywhere near right now.

To figure out just what it would take, I just went on Poker Stars' VIP points calculator, and after playing with it for a bit, it says that I should be able to attain Platinum status if I play $600NL for 10 hours per week. So... not *entirely* out of reach, within maybe the next year or two...

3k hands and counting...

The journey to 10,000 hands at 25nl has been a slow one. I haven't been playing too much, and whatever time I *have* been playing, I've mostly been on Full Tilt playing tournaments. With basically breakeven results over the past month or so, and nothing very notable to speak of.

But I just crossed 3,000 hands of 25nl tonight, and my PokerStars account now sits at about $335 and change. The updates from DN's side have basically stopped due to the WSOP and such, so that is understandable. That's kind of why I had been playing tournaments lately anyways. I think I'm going to bring my focus back to this challenge though... I'd like to say that I'll get my 10,000 hands by the end of the summer, but not at the expense of study time for my theory exam... so it's probably not going to happen. In fact, it's probably better if it doesn't.

This past Friday night I went to a homegame at a classmate's house, Eric. It was a pretty fun game and I'd definitely be up for playing with them some more. They also have a regular game that is a mix of lowball games with like $100 buy-in, so that might be fun to try too... although... I should probably try and LEARN those games before I step in there, haha...

150 Seat Guarantee

Well, I said it:

"Meanwhile, WSOP satellites have started. I'm not going to make a real push at it this year since I'm pretty sure it would be a bad idea to try and actually go play it -- I still have my theory qual on August 26th. But, Full Tilt is as usual running their massive 150 seat guarantee satellite, this year on June 21st for a $535 buy-in. I intend to win a seat into THIS tournament, and it'll be my one shot at the WSOP this year."

and I just did it:



Unfortunately, I don't think I can play in this, because it starts at 3pm tomorrow and I'm playing at church this week, and have to be at practice at 4:30pm.

However, there's another $535 tournament, also a Main Event Qualifier, that starts at 1:30pm and should be much smaller. I might just do that instead... or I might just unregister and keep the tournament credits for later use. We'll see...

my gchat buddy list...

...now contains a WSOP bracelet winner!

Congratulations to Leo Wolpert who won the $10k Heads Up NL Hold'em Event which ended on Tuesday night.

Leo was involved in the Michigan-Ohio State last-longer bet that I organized for the Main Event back in 2006 (which I talk about back in
this post). I can't remember if I actually met him then, but we e-mailed back and forth a bit, and hence he's been on my gchat list since then.

I thought about shooting him a "congrats" on gchat but it would've been totally random to him and I didn't want to seem stalker-ish. Of course, you might say I abandonded that by making this post, but whatever.

The Main Event starts on July 3rd. Doesn't look like I'm playing this year... sigh...

Hello from Michigan

The spring quarter has come to an end, and you know what that means... more time for poker!!

Maybe. I still have to study for the big qualifying exam on August 26th. But I barely played ANY poker at all during the spring quarter, so almost anything would be "more" at this point.

Lish and I are at the tail end of our vacation in Michigan, centered around Emily's wedding on Mackinac Island, and followed by time in Ann Arbor and Detroit. We're not gonna hit the Detroit casinos though since Lish wants to save that for when we actually go to Vegas, but I did get to introduce her to a little Chinese Poker while we were out for breakfast the other morning :)

Tonight I crossed the $300 mark on PokerStars, woooo! No idea how DN is doing there since I can't find any updates, but under his scheme I'd be at $50NL now (actually, I would have been since crossing $250). But I'm at about 2200 hands of $25NL right now, so still chugging along to 10k on that. It's gonna be kind of funny if/when my Stars account surpasses my Full Tilt account, which may happen since I've been taking my Stars account so seriously, but just been monkeying around on my Full Tilt account. hah.

Oops, I did it again

On Saturday evening, we had a Memorial Day Weekend BBQ/Party. There was beer involved. Well, before going to bed, I decided that it would be a good idea to sit at 5/10 (limit) heads-up. Long story short, my Full Tilt account now sits at about $705, a good drop down from about $1000.

On the other front, I played enough hands to clear my bonus at PokerStars! So that account now sits at about $260. I've played 1,632 hands at $25NL (I'm gonna start calling it that now instead of 10c/25c; they're the same thing), so I still have a ways to go before reaching my target of 10,000 hands and then doing some analyses.

I've barely been playing at all this quarter because school has been pretty rough... I think I've played MAYBE once every two weeks or so, and only for like an hour at most.

school woes

Haven't been playing as much lately due to school kicking my ass. However, I did cross the $200 mark today on Stars (now at $226.46). woo. :) My immediate goal now is to just play 10,000 hands at the 10c/25c level, because *NERD ALERT* I want to build up a sufficient sample size to do some statistical analyses of my play. I'm just curious to see what I might find if I take a close look at it.

Meanwhile, WSOP satellites have started. I'm not going to make a real push at it this year since I'm pretty sure it would be a bad idea to try and actually go play it -- I still have my theory qual on August 26th. But, Full Tilt is as usual running their massive 150 seat guarantee satellite, this year on June 21st for a $535 buy-in. I intend to win a seat into THIS tournament, and it'll be my one shot at the WSOP this year.

Lish and I opened the discussion for me taking her on her first Vegas trip, in early September after my qual. We're both excited about that :)

PLO: such a sick, sick, sick, sick...

...sick, sick game. I'm just playing 5c/10c and 10c/25c right now to learn this damn game, but man it's crazy tilting. That's all I'm gonna say, because anyone who has played much PLO is probably laughing and saying no duh.

In other news, I crossed $100 at PokerStars. This means I'm within grasping range of DN, because based on his last update he must still be somewhere below $125 as he has yet to reach the 10c/25c level under his 500BB rule.

Postponing the move up

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.