I don't live in London, but there is a casino in walking distance of my house. It holds no great attraction to me at the moment (I've been once before and didn't particularly enjoy it) but maybe I'll give it another shot in the future.
That's basically all true. I am quite fragile mentally, so god knows why I ever got addicted to such a frustrating game. I need to take a step back before I turn into Mike Matusow!
I use some calculations in my spreadsheets that are based on the Kelly Criterion 'risk of ruin' thing, but I'd never actually risk going broke. I move up and down the stakes more or less according to how I feel on any given day. (Like last week I started with a downswing at 25NL, continued to lose stacks at 10NL, but finished with two 100bb/100 sessions at 4NL).
The plan/challenge for 2016 was to take shots at higher limits whenever I had 5 buy-ins for them (e.g. I took a shot at 25NL once I'd made $125 at 10NL), but I revised the plan a bit as I moved up and my overall winrate slipped into the single-digits. I was hoping to have hit 700 euros of cashgame profit by the end of May, as I would have taken a shot at 100NL, but the last few weeks have knocked me down to about 550 in on-table profit, so I need to rebuild my roll as well as well my confidence.
Fortunately, rakeback and tourney tickets have kept my overall balance reasonably healthy despite the downsw0ng.

I can't be arsed with doing the tiny sample size graph, but the Unibet results for Week 23 were:
Cashgames: Lost 66.63 euros (something like minus 35bb/100, but only 1500 hands).
Tourneys/SNGs: +12.87 euros.
I've got a 'Double Trouble' ticket, so I'd better make sure I turn it into cold hard cash on Tuesday night and not commit ICM suicide like I did last time. (I needlessly stacked off top set vs a flush, and basically set fire to 40 euros).

On Friday I made a cashout to cheer myself up, and then spent the weekend trying out the new VirginGaming Wild Seat SnGs. I think they are the probably the softest real money games on the planet. Seriously, it's like Zynga was in 2011, as it seems over half of the player pool is female and 99% of players are super-passive bingo players. I saw someone limp-fold a 2.25bb stack (!) and another checked her option with QQ in the BB vs 2 limps 7bb deep.
Unfortunately, it's basically un-grindable, as it's one table only, and the games are actually pretty slow, due to all the limping and low traffic, so clearing the deposit bonus (in just one month) is probably going to be impossible for me. Also, the rake is 10%, and the prize pools are random, so even with a huge skill edge, the variance is going to be insane.

I still haven't really got much of a plan for this month. I've got more medical tests this week, but I'm kind of looking forward to getting away to visit family, soak up some sun and watch the footy. Poker is not a high priority right now. I should think I'll be properly back on the grind in July, but I'm just gonna be very casual about poker in June.

Haha I also cashed out a few bucks a while ago to buy myself a cheer up present. Hope the medical tests show that everything is ok. Enjoy your time off with your family! Take care!

Yeah I can see bobbing up and down in stakes based on how you feel that day, I think I would benefit from that. Hope I didn't sound too harsh in my analysis of your results orientedness attack but I'm trying to understand that stuff better to conquer my own demons and thought it may help. Enjoy the sun, that's defo a big part of my routine: a daily swim in the sea now it's summerish [/humblebrag]. A chilled month is always a good month so have fun.

gl with your health Arty

oh and "overall winrate slipped into the single-digits" #microcrusherproblems

This week I've mostly donking around in 4-max £1 Jackpot SNGs on Virgin where - due to stupidly high rake of 10%, and even stupider prize pool distribution - the 'effective rake' was 25.46%. There are apparently too few "multipliers" in the prize pool. Almost every win results in a profit of just £1, which is ridiculous when there are four players buying in. (I kept track of all the prizes, because the prize frequencies don't appear to have been published. I know that there's a 10k prize out there somewhere, but it means that everyone that doesn't win it is underpaid. The biggest prize I saw this week was a solitary £8, but I bricked that game.).

Shock! Horror! I can't beat 25% rake, even though the opponents are the worst players I've ever seen in real money games.

Example hand:


I don't always win SnGs, but when I do, the SB sits out the entire game, and the BB folds a tiny stack getting 7.5 to one.

Graph for last weekend's initial trial showed some promise, but then I remembered that the first two of the games were on free tickets, so the ROI of 5% was overstating things.


If the prize pools were shared "fairly", then rake of 10% would require a winrate of 28% to break even. Over the tiny sample size this week, I won 30% of games, but had an ROI of -11%. Go figure.



That 9-game losing streak was "fun". I had five 2nd places in a row where I basically lost every flip, but I guess that's standard when you're 10bb deep. #SkillGame

I'm giving up with these games. Maybe it's possible to break even in them if you run well with regard to the prize pools in the long run, but it would take so long to get a "decent sample size" (it's one-tabling only on Virgin) that I think that grinding them would drive most people insane if they didn't go busto first.
I thought SpinGos on Stars were over-raked, but the jackpot games on Virgin are even more of a rake trap. Most of the players over there seem to treat them like slot machines ("Let's play 100% of hands, and maybe I'll double my money") and that's probably the best way to look at them tbh. I don't think they are the goldmine that affiliates might lead you to believe.

The MTTs on Virgin seem like much better value, however. It's the same 10% rake, but at least the prize pools are guaranteed. Some of the tourneys start 200bb deep too, so there's plenty of scope for post-flop skill edges to be maximised. (Believe it or not, an 8-way raised pot is not uncommon). I've only played 4 MTTs so far, but cashed in 3 of them and lost a 70/30 race in the other. I don't have enough money on the site to play £4 MTTs and be "correctly rolled", but I'll probably play a few more if they don't clash with the footy.

I still have no concrete plans for the month. I've enjoyed the first couple of days of Euro 2016, but I'm starting to feel pangs for cashgames, so maybe I'll get back into the "serious poker" mindset soon.

Those jackpot SNGs might make a good warm-up before each session lol. In the past, I too have had a few "breaks" where I've tried playing more tournaments. They can be fun to play every once in a while. But I also end up getting drawn back to cash games. It's in my blood lol.

I take it theres no cash games on that site?

Great thread Arty. I'm sure things will improve for you soon.

Subbed. AHFTW!

Just play the £10 games, the players are just as bad, especially before peak times. You have to wait a bit longer for a game but you can min raise each hand to victory with most of them.

Unfortunately not. If there were, I would be playing them, but not telling the rest of the world, because I imagine they'd be crushable for 40bb/100!

whats the mtt schedule like? biggest buyin/gtd?

Hey Arty. Very, very fun thread. Been having a blast reading it. Still have a few pages left to read

Non-Poker:

I think you maybe have a similar medical condition as my sister, she has horrible headaches and migraine several times per month, she ends up in the clinic at least once a month due to the fact that she simply cant take the pain anymore. to the point where she cant almost open her eyes/starts vomiting/etc...

She has gone trough a lot of exams to find out the cause but its still unknown what exactly causes it.

Do you have any clues in this regard?? As to what might cause it, how to definitely stop it, etc?

Sorry if I'm mistaken but by reading some of your posts it strikes as if maybe that's the case with you too.



Poker:

How many tables on Uni bet are you playing at once? Is it possible to play say 6-8 tables at the same time without much trouble? Is rake back good?

I also dabbled with snowie for a long time and it definitely helped my game a ton. I think its a cool tool. I didn't want to pay for it thou, as it is (or was at the time) quite expensive and I kept making free accounts till reaching the quota to study with it. (I know, I suck), but you cant do that anymore.

I will definitely be following, very interesting thread. Just started my own one, will probably not be as fun as this one, but we will see.

With only three or four a day, you can barely call it a schedule at the moment! It's mostly just £4 and £10 games, but I think they have a couple of £20 tourneys at the weekend, which (I think) is way below your usual limits. The player pool is still tiny at the moment (the tourneys get <100 entrants), but the players are 95% slot machine degens, as this composite grab of the global poker chat box reveals:

It kind of freaks me out that there are bored housewives (they have screennames like "Mummykins") that can afford to burn £100 a day on slots/bingo (and even talk about it openly). I think they dabble on the poker games for a similar thrill, but have even less chance of winning in the long term. If/when Virgin allows multi-tabling and offers a downloadable client instead of only having a (huge) browser-based window, the whales will get destroyed pretty quickly.

Thanks!
I'd rather not discuss my health (let alone someone else's) in detail ITT. I have a known and manageable underlying condition (my liver and kidneys are messed up), but either as a side-effect of the medication I've been on for years, or something else as yet undetermined, I suffer from just about all the mysterious symptoms associated with chronic fatigue syndrome. My doctors are trying to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with me, because a "non-specific illness" is kind of impossible to treat. Hopefully your sister will get a diagnosis and a treatment soon, because I know from experience that it's quite distressing when you feel like crap all the time, but can't do anything about it except hide under the duvet! FWIW, yesterday was another migraine wipeout for me. I couldn't even watch the football without almost throwing up, so making math-based decisions would have been impossible.

Note: If anyone wants to discuss health matters, please take it to PM. I want to use this thread as a distraction from real life, and not a place for me to moan about it.
I usually play 3 or 4 tables on Unibet. 6-10 is possible, but you need a reasonably modern desktop PC and hi-res screen, as it it's CPU-intensive and the tables are "big". (The client wasn't designed with 24-tabling laptop users in mind).
I'll go and find and subscribe to your thread. Cheers!

Re "Virgin" chat (no pun intended)

Don't trust Branson (met him once in a service station). I reckon that's all botfake chat to lure in the unwary

The cardroom manager has mentioned that multi-tabling will happen at some point. You can also Ctrl and +/- and the table will scale up or down so you can make the window much smaller.

I'm away from home at the moment, and not playing poker at all (I'm watching training videos when I have the chance), but I played a couple of short sessions last week. I just stuck with 10NL, as my cashgame skills are a bit rusty after a couple of weeks of short-stack hypers. I found myself on a table with some fischigespielers making some surprising hero-calls.



No volume, but the graph for the week was looking like a 0bb/100 bell curve until I made a series of overbet bluffs and turned it into a 9bb/100 sine wave.



I might not play again until next month, but I'm considering doing a bit of Zoom or Snap for a change of pace when I get back on the grind, as I'm interested to see what my stats and redline would look like with my current playing style.
I hope everyone's doing well. Catch ya later!

I believe that's what investors call the 'fat tail'

I'm guessing the last hand he thought you had a busted low flush draw lol. As for the first hand, may I show you an even worse hand I experienced earlier this year?

Hopefully you don't mind me posting a hand in here. I just post it for entertainment purposes because the hand you posted reminded me of this one, and thought you might enjoy it. Look what this villain is calling with on the turn.

Hey Arty, you inspired me to try other sited than Stars and its been going great, so thanks a lot for that. I was between Unibet and some other site and chose the other one.

I wish you best of luck. Crush them

Strategy post.

After spending several months crunching numbers produced with the latest counter-factual regret minimisation techniques on a server farm running fourteen thousand 12-core multi-threaded GPUs 24 hours a day, my neural networks have found the unexploitable GTO solution to tomorrow's referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.



I'm pretty sure my strategy is breakeven at worst, and I have confirmed this by thinking about it.

Rational, logical and +EV, because....

Huh, who knew.

Hey Arty just catching up with the last page as I've missed quite a few posts, too bad that migraine is not letting you watch football comfortably but at least England made it past the first round

When Unibet stopped working on my country and I had to find another site was the moment when I realized there are quite a few sites that aren't working in this place. Moved to 888poker again to see how it goes and so far the field is not very tough at NL10 but we'll see. Best of lucks to you! Take care!