We should both print this out and frame it to sit next to our computers.

... How long before it got hurled across the room after Mr Fishy did his usual trick with 92o ... my money is on 25 minutes lol.

First losing session this morning in about the last 15. Only dropped a BI, was one of those where they hit, I missed, or they just had better. I folded two pair 3 times in the first one hundred hands alone. Reasonably happy with my play I guess, probably not A game but I guess I can’t always play my A game at 6.20am lol.

So just to reiterate my long(ish) term plan. If I appear not to be sticking to this, PM me and call me a tw*t, then point me in the direction of this post. Once I’ve withdrawn my roll at the end of the bonus period, I intend to leave myself with approx. $60 with which to build. I’ll be playing 5nl (I don’t consider this under-rolled before anyone says it – I think this is fine for 5nl).

Step 1: play another 15k hands 6 tabling. This will give me a solid sample of 25k hands doing this, as I’ve played 10k hands already 6 tabling. So this will give me a good measure of my winrate.

Step 2: play another 25k hands 12 tabling at 5nl. I want to see how much of a hit my winrate takes doing this. Hopefully it will be more than half that of my 6 table rate.

Step 3: hopefully having done that I will have built my roll up beyond $250. At that point I’ll start 6 tabling 10nl. I’ll play 25k hands here and establish my winrate and a decent measure of my VPP/hand.

Step 4: assuming step 3 goes ok and I win over that sample, 12 table 10nl for 25k hands, and measure winrate and VPP/hand.

If I want to take an accurate measure of VPP/hand, I will not be able to play any other games/formats/limits, as this will mess with all the calculations. So hopefully this will work as an incentive to keep to the above.

Timescale:

Step 1: approx. 2 weeks.
Step 2: approx. 10 days.
Step 3: approx. 2 weeks.
Step 4: approx. 10 days.

So it’s not like this is going to take forever – again hopefully that will serve as encouragement to stick with it.

I’d like to hit Gold VIP if possible as it would make a big difference to the bonus amounts I’d get, and I think that would only be possible at 10nl+. So I’ll establish the above winrates and then hopefully have an idea of what will be most profitable for me to play. As I said yesterday, right now I’m resigned to not playing 25nl or up any time in the near future, as I don’t think my mindset is right to be successful there.

Good, reasoned and well thought out structure. Don't hold yourself to the time periods or you'll get impatient I think when you don't hit them. Think of them as aspirational. One thing I find helps me not tilt is being over rolled. You lose two BI then its a drop in the ocean if you are over rolled. It also allows you to try something a bit different without losing everything you just grinded. Probably a personal thing though.

Agreed. I hope if i stick to the above i'll actually play overrolled for once. Just looking at stats in HEM - under reports, plugging leaks 3 - flop hand strength - top pair weak kicker or worse, weak/no draw, over 11k hands im losing at 73bb. Is that normal?! That seems an awful lot. Could anyone else check theirs to see if its similar?

Or does that include all no pair hands, cos if so it would make sense

In hm2 10nl vpp per hand says .04 but i think its about .034 for me. Havent calculated in awhile. Thats with me being mostly nitting it up.

I like this new plan much better mate. Plans need to be realistic and achievable to maintain motivation in implementing them. I reckon you're onto something.

I give up. Have taken my entire roll out. The straw that broke the camel's back? Hitting a set of kings on the flop, check raising him all in and him hitting runner runner for a straight with a king in his hand. I just do not get the rub of the green. I hit a nut flush draw on the flop and it does not complete. I have an up and downstraight draw and float it and does not complete. I have two pair and they have the set without me filling up.Basically if I am ahead I get out drawn and if I am behind, I don't t improved. I just cannot handle it. I just cannot see any massive way of improving my game when that craps happens and wipes out an hour of good hard grind. Getting grotty with the Mrs and playing too late into the evening. That's me out of this game for at least a month. Will keeping reading this, but won't have much to contribute good luck guys.

I know exactly how you feel, I have the same problem. It's so frustrating when you build up maybe a buy in and then lose 3 to this nonsense. Then all you hear is people saying if you can't beat the micros you can't move up. I have definitely not seen as many bad beats happen at any other limit like they do at 2NL and 5NL. It's like play money really so people don't care.

Hope the break does you good though. Especially if it's effecting your personal life.

@ Cracked.

Sorry to hear that mate. I think anyone who has played poker for any length of time can sympathise with this – that one tournament / session / hand where it just gets too much and you never want to play again. At the end of the day we’re not playing professionally and so this should be a ‘fun’ hobby – if it stops being enjoyable you have to question why you’re playing. A break is probably a very sensible idea. I’d suggest maybe having a week or two away without any poker time (including forums/TV/magazines etc) and see if you come back refreshed. Then maybe look to do some more studying before u actually hit the tables again, so you can hit the ground running and bring in some fresh ideas to look to implement.

Had a few days away so this morning was the 1st time I’d played since Thursday. I’ve now just about reached the half-way point in the first part of my planned period at 5nl – 25k hands 6 tabling. Here are the stats so far:

Hands: 12,138
P/L: $ 112.38
Winrate: 18.52 bb/100

Here’s the graph:



Delighted with that, obviously. I’m running good but I don’t feel like I’ve been on a sick heater – it feels more like I’m getting value in spots I should expect to get value, where I have a fish’s range crushed and he spazzes/ stacks off light. This morning was a good example – had a few nice spots, got paid when I flopped trips and a monkey overvalued AA, then got stacked when my top set ran into quads. So not having it all my own way, but certainly the deck is being pretty decent to me at the moment. Long may it continue! I’m hoping to get the remaining 13k hands done by this time next week, but there are a few real life things going on which mean my volume may drop a bit over the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to the 10-12 tabling 25k hand period – I’m curious to see how possible this is on my netbook, and how much my winrate will suffer. If I can keep it at 10bb I’ll be absolutely delighted. If I start timing out all over the place and my winrate goes through the floor, I’ll have to reassess whether I should bother to go for the mass table option at 10nl.

So you should be mate. That's fantastic going. I'm envious.

Any Zoom, or all regular 6 max?

I'm intrigued by how you find 6 tabling, and how you expect to 12 table. You play on a laptop right? I have a desktop computer with 19" monitor and can tile 4 tables and just be happy with it. Usually I play 2-3 in the default table size where they overlap a little.

How do you set up 6 tables? Tiled, stacked, overlapping? And if they are small (tiled), how much info do you set your HUD up with so it isn't all too busy?

Did you think the little gift I sent helped? Would be interested to see what your take was on it. PM me.

It’s all normal 6 max. I find it an awful lot more profitable than Zoom – too few fish and too many nits who won’t stack off without the nuts playing Zoom.

At the moment I’m tiling 6 tables. My netbook screen is very small so they overlap. I can’t see everything that’s going on, but it’s not really a problem. The main thing I like is to have the tables in the same place, so even if I’m not watching every single one closely, I can remember that I’ve been 3bet a few times by the guy on the top right table, or the fish on the bottom left table has been calling me down light, or whatever. That’s the problem I have with stacking/cascading – it’s harder to differentiate the tables as they all flash up in the same part of the screen.

My HUD is (off the top of my head) as follows:

Name/Hands
VPIP/PFR/AF/Steal/Fold to Steal
EP PFR/MP PFR/ CO PFR/ BTN PFR
3bet/Fold to 3bet/Cbet flop 3bet pot/ Fold to cbet flop 3bet pot
Flop Cbet/ Turn Cbet/ Fold to flop Cbet/ Fold to turn Cbet
Went to showdown

So there’s a fair bit of info in there but I find I use it all and it can just about all fit on the screen so it’s ok.

I think playing 10-12 tables is probably going to be a problem on my netbook though. When I used to play a lot of tables on Party I cascaded, but that was on a bigger laptop. I can’t tile that many tables on my netbook so I’d have to cascade, which isn’t ideal. I think the biggest problem will be the reduced ability to table select properly – I’m very disciplined with my table selection, and this will suffer if I mass table. To be honest I don’t tend to take too much time over individual decisions (a definite fault of mine) so I don’t think I’ll be overly pressed for time playing 10-12 tables, but the lack of table selection will hit my winrate significantly I reckon.

I finally finished the deposit bonus period and withdrew my entire roll from Stars as planned. I withdrew about $815 – I had deposited a total of $510 so that’s a nice $300 profit including all the bonuses etc. I then bought two Stellar bonuses totalling $60 with which to restart my roll.

And of course … as soon as I did that, I had the worst session I’ve had in about 2 weeks. Dropped $13 in 500 hands at 5nl. I was a way off my A game (made a couple of bad river calls totalling about $2.50) but generally it was one of those sessions where I just had nothing to value bet with, and the couple of times I did hit tp, they rivered their draw. It’s easy to feel like you’re playing you’re A game when you keep making big hands, and it’s easy to feel like you’re playing your C game when you can’t hit a flop.

So my roll is down to $47, which is annoying as now I feel slightly pressured at being under-rolled. I’m sure it will be fine and I’ll grind it back up to safety sooner rather than later, but if the worst happens and I hit some variance and drop another few BI, I’ll just redeposit $20 or so rather than dropping down to 2nl (which would be a complete waste of my time).

I also have 2.5k fpps, so I’m wondering whether to play a few hypers and try to turn them into some extra cash. I may do if I need to – otherwise I’d quite like to keep them and see if I can have a shot at Gold VIP in the next few months, at which point I’d buy the Gold bonus (just to save time rather than playing a load of hypers).

We shall see. GL at the tables boys n girls.

A bad session was probably inevitable. Any idea what I can do with 400 vp points from poker stars if I decide to start up my roll on another site?

Check out the vip store thru the cashier, u might be able to get a small cash bonus or tournament entries. Otherwise use them to play some satellites, see if u can turn it into a more valuable tournament ticket