Week 52 was a bit weird/stressful. Games were full of unknowns (some of whom appeared to be drunk as well as stupid) but I didn't play much and I ran pretty badly, losing most of the important flips. I got brutalized on a 250 euro bubble, after folding for 25 hands thinking I was safe (the shorter stacks kept getting walks but I kept getting shoved on), and throughout the week I didn't get good action when I had premiums. I can't really complain though. I binked a couple of the UK Tour 25eu satties to keep building the ticket roll.



I'll do a review of my yearly results a bit later.

Really interesting read, don't know why I haven't come across this before. I play solely on Unibet as well and I'm almost certain that you've caused me no end of misery when you were sat directly on my left a few days ago.

What are you aiming for 2017?

Annual Review - 2016 edition

I began the year thinking "Cash games are gonna die out soon. I'll just do my usual 100,000 hands in the micros and when my winrate drops below 5bb/100, I'll quit poker and get a new hobby." But then I started overbetting like a maniac and poker was suddenly a lot of fun for a couple of months. I had a heater and decided to try and move up quickly ("Got 5 buy-ins => move up"). By about April I'd made more money in four months on Unibet than I'd made in four years of 2NL-10NL on Stars/888. Of course the heater couldn't last. #variance

At some point during my inevitable cashgame downsw0ng, I got a pang of jealousy from reading how a couple of Unibet regs had basically freerolled their way to a 5-star holiday in Denmark (and a $1100 tourney) by turning raffle tickets won on Twitch into satty tickets that they grinded up from 10 euros. I decided I would give the satty grind a go. I think I started taking tourneys semi-seriously in August, when it dawned on me that I could make more money playing 4 euro satties than I could at 25NL. The rest of the story is documented in the thread above. I just played 10-20 satties a week, gradually increased my buy-in level, and only had 3 or 4 losing weeks. I'm currently awaiting delivery of my end-of-year results spreadsheets from Uni support, but I'm pretty sure my tourney ROI for 2016 was in excess of 50%.
Occasionally I played some 4NL or 10NL alongside (or between) tourneys just to help clear some 'rakeback' points, but I didn't give it full focus, so my winrate at the end of the year was nothing special, and total cashgame volume didn't hit 60,000 hands until the final session of the year.

I feel a bit grumpy at the moment, as I always do when a new year rolls around and Zooey Deschanel still hasn't dropped the restraining order. I guess I should be very happy on the poker front as I'm still on pace to qualify for a couple of live events, and my end of year graphs are quite attractive.

March of the Tourney Penguin:

I'd guess my ABI was about 6 euros. Average profit per game was about tree fiddy.

Cashgame Graph from 4NL to 50NL and back down again:


I am yet to make concrete poker plans for 2017. I'll keep plodding away in the satellites for a month and then have a proper think about what to do with my bankroll. If/when I make it to the UO, I'll have to sell/swap some action, because I can't afford to burn $1100 in one donkament. I might play cash again later in the year, but I really don't know. For now I'll stick with updating this thread instead of making a new one.

Happy new year to all readers, lurkers, posters and subscribers! #PingItUp.

Your attitude and custom graphs make this thread entertaining and up there with the best.

Good luck for the new year, gunning for you!

Nice stuff Arty, love the graphs! I really hope you get to grind yourself into one of the UO, for what it looks like they seem to be a hell of an experience. Happy New Year to you too, as always I'll keep an eye on you via Twitter. Cheers!

Had to google Zooey Deschanel. She reminds me of Daisy Lowe

Always enjoying your updates, keep it up! GL in the new year, go win some Unibet Opens

I was at the latest unibet open. Tbh wasnt that hell of an experience. What are you hyped about?

Well done on the year mate, glad you've decided in a more profitable and fruitful path for the future i.e. MTTS. PS lolled at overbetting making cash more fun again comment.

PS You will lol at the softness of live mtts


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

Satellite bubbles have been very stressful so far this week, as I've often been nursing <10bb for an hour or more. #NotMyIdeaOfFun
Nevertheless, I crept into the money a couple of times and hit a bankroll milestone.



Inb4Busto.

Full update next Monday.

That amount of tickets would drive me crazy!

Congrats though, quite the haul.

All the best for 2017 Arty!

Happy New Year Arty, you overbetting penguin. Hope 2017 is kind to you on and off the felt!

Good luck Arty in 2017.

Sure you will get a live seat soon.

Thanks for the well wishes everyone.

I'm struggling to get motivated tbh. I'm not particularly interested in playing live. It's more that I want to meet up with some of my twitter/facebook/forum buddies. A tournament where they will all be in the same place at once seems the obvious choice.

Week 1 of 2017 started OK and ended badly. I think you can tell when my weekly 48-hour migraine started.



I've got to stop regging for games when I know I'll end up making bad calls just so I can go busto and back to bed.

Possibly the weirdest hand I played all week was this one. It went 6 ways after UTG went all in for <1bb with K5o. It checked down and I won with ace high at showdown. Standard.



After the 1k peak in the middle of the week, my ticket roll is back down to 950 euros, so I guess I'll have to #PingItUp again.

Have seen you on 4NL briefly couple days ago. Currently rebuilding a roll
Think you'll make it to UO London? You have around 1K in UO tickets so must be getting close.

Good luck Arty

Yeah, I did some 4NL just to see some flops for the Moving Up Promo. I did a little bit of 10NL once I got the ticket for that too. Maybe my observation is based on too small a sample-size and I've just been unlucky to randomly land on tables full of regs, but the cashgames seem a lot nittier than they were 6 months ago. I know Unibet traffic has hit a new peak this year, so I'd guess that a lot of regs from other sites have joined the pool, so there is a lower proportion of fun players. Either that, or I've become so accustomed to playing tourneys that I'd forgotten what it's like to play against people who actually know the rules of poker.

Today I played a couple of donkaments on Stars. (I had a freeroll ticket from some promo or another). Busting against aces in both games wasn't much fun, but I earned upwards of $1 an hour. #Inb4Zillionaire

Uni ticket roll is still on 952 euros. I'm gonna have to start playing more of the 25 and 50 euro games to get me back on schedule, as I've been slacking. Some 'real life stuff' I have to deal with might mean I'm not even free on the weekend of the UO, so it's hard to get motivated for that deadline. I might post some graphs or hand histories on Monday.

What cash games do you play, FR or 6max?

Just stumbled upon this thread and read the 1st post, subbed gl

Uni only has 6-max, but I probably wouldn't play full ring cash if I automatically got rewarded with a 1bb/100 bonus. I find nitring too dull for words.

Week 2 of 2017 didn't go very well. I ran pretty badly (lots of AK<AQ kind of stuff) and volume was pathetic, so it's not even worth posting a graph.

2 donkaments on Stars: +$3.15
600 hands of 4NL and 10NL on Uni: +1.68 euros
10 donkaments (ABI of 9.72) on Uni: +2.80 eu.

On Stars, I kind of enjoyed firing up my tracker for the first time in months and confirming my player notes were still in place.


About the only real fun I had this week was playing a 1 euro deepstack donkament on a free ticket.

Q: If you're playing against whales, what is the best way to get 176bb in the middle over the course of three streets?
A: Do it in two.



Q: If someone open jams 119bb, should you consider folding kings?
A: No. Snap-reshove.



I briefly had a huge chip lead with about 370bb, but two hours later I busted just before the money. #StupidGame

UO ticket roll is on 530 euros, UK Tour tickets on 425, so I'll keep trying to #PingItUp.

I don't much feel like doing a big update, but I want to keep posting at least once a week if possible. I've been bed-bound with migraine for a couple of days, and last week was full of runbad on the tables and IRL. I played a mix of tourneys and cash and kept losing when all in pre-flop. The cashgames were mostly played on promo bonus tickets so my bankroll actually went up despite getting killed with KK<TT, AA<89s and KK<AK.
Hardly any volume as usual, but here are the graphs anyway:




I got quite frustrated by the #NoFoldEquity issue that is endemic on Unibet. It's not a problem when you're running OK and getting big hands that hold, but it's so tilting when you're jamming light (but correctly), or losing 70/30s all the time.

Here's a typical example where everyone is short-stacked on the final table of a satty. I know he has the best hand pre-flop, but he's supposed to ****ing fold it! #ICMnoob


Meanwhile, 4NL remains a circus where clowns show down some very weird hands.


I've been following the AI vs Brains challenge in NVG (I don't watch the streams though, as it's too tilting to watch Libby tank so long on the turn and river). Since the humans are getting crushed, I decided to run a parallel AI vs penguin challenge when I found out that Slumbot (a former winner of the Computer Poker competition) can be played online. It's kind of cool to see a bot make 7x pot jams with 7-high. It's even cooler to snap off the overbet bluffs with the second nuts.


I'm pretty clueless about heads up (especially 200bb deep), but thanks to releasing my own inner-animal (I've jammed 6x pot with 9-high a couple of times), I'm somehow beating this thing.



Computer AI: -58bb/100. Penguin Brain: +58bb/100. #LolbadSampleSize #Variance

I don't think I can beat it long term, partly because I keep misclick-raising the river with one pair when I don't realise it's just donked into me, and the lack of a 4-colour deck means I keep paying off flushes, but I'm gonna try and get my name on the leaderboard for 1000 hands if I can.

Back in real money land, the runbad last week has made me even more risk-averse than usual, so although I can "afford" to play higher, I think I'll stick with 10 and 25 euro games (or lower) this week. My mental game weakness means I'm not prepared for losses at the 50 euro level at the moment. Ticket roll is currently on 975 euros. #PingItUp

Confirmed: Penguin brain > Computer AI
Disclaimer: Lolbad sample size. #variance



Heads up, I have no idea what I'm doing, so I think I just ran very well (although there were no pre-flop all ins) to get on the 1000 hand leaderboard. Slumbot makes a lot of plays I don't understand due to my lack of HU experience, and its variety of sizes (all of which seem balanced - you can see its holecards after each hand) make it really hard to play against. God knows what sorcery frenkleecp used to crush it so badly. When the AI gets updated it will probably be close to unbeatable.

Interesting to see some of those bots being online, didn't know. Nice result Arty! Do you know when the 2017 update is coming out? Just toyed around with it for 40 hands, and the interface isn't the worst, but I soon realized missing 4 color deck and stacksizes(?)

It pot 4b/called my 2.5x 5b w 65s and backdoored a flush otr on K84JQ when I tripled

I might try to get some serious hands in and see if it's something to be learnt from It saves your session when you are logged in, right?

Played 14 hands against the bot, I was up 3500 then it decided to rage quit me: "No response from server"...

Confirmed rigged

Your guess is as good as mine regarding the update. It just says "shortly" in the news section, but that probably means it will be online about 6 months before Galfond's site. The lack of stacksizes is annoying, but they always reset to 20,000 at the end of each hand, so you often have to overbet huge at some point to get all in.
Love 65s.
I found it sometimes felt like I was being super-used, because its ranges are so well balanced that it nearly always has something that crushes you when the pot gets big. I actually got tilted by "coolers" a few times (so many rivered two pairs that had to pay off sets/flushes), so I went totally animal, making some ******ed plays that usually worked. At one point, I 4-bet 65s, then bet flop and jammed turn with 0% equity and got a fold from 66. Meanwhile, it's almost become the law that if I have 9-high on the river, I have to cram it like a spazzed-up Kassouf.


When you quit, it remembers how many hands you played and your winrate, but I don't think you can analyse past hands, unless you take screengrabs. When the new version comes out, I might take it a bit more seriously, as I found it very liberating to play such wide ranges without having any money at stake, and I feel like some of the aggressive plays (and floating with backdoors) can be translated to 6-max, so it could be a free learning device. For heads up players like you, I think it might be a useful pre-game warm-up tool.