I pick YugiohPro's game apart with my HUD, but he still wins all the time, so it doesn't really matter.

awesome thread, loving the "inside look" to some of these things and your views both as a player and former worker.

not sure if you have an answer to this, but I live in PA USA#1 and stars is coming back in July. How would guarantees for MTTs be handled for something like this? Will they have a set schedule from day 1 in hopes of drawing in people, or will they slowly ramp up their daily guarantees? Maybe better phrased, how would you handle that?

Knowing stars they will lowball it super hard for the first day and then adjust in a pretty nitty way

Given stars standing in the pokersite food chain sadly that’s likely the way to go

You seem unable to decide if you want to play highroller stuff or not. Your opinion changes weekly mostly dependant on the run of the week before

Hope it gets better

You keep bringing up the fact that everyone can buy a HUD and learn to use it but it creates an information gap. I don't think it's realistic to expect non-professionals to grasp the use of a HUD unless it's an automatic barebones one. I can't think of an equivalent game where this kind of edge is provided.

And yes, the advantages that mass database analysis gets you is huge and enabled by HUDS as well. I think I'm flip flopping back to anti-HUD.

HUDS having the lowest impact on MTTs out of a range of game formats (which isn't clearly true but let's say it is) has nothing to do with whether it's a big issue or not.

Too kind!

I'm not sure on this. I've seen different approaches to the India market and other markets but I wasn't around when Jersey first launched. I worked next to the Czar of New Jersey aka the Governor aka the Gov'nuh and I hope he is on the case (I think he will be). He is one of the best people at the company I've dealt with, always helping everyone out and helped to train me as well. He's also been around in the company since Black Friday or earlier so well equipped to deal with Americans since PokerStars was originally an "American poker company" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guG9cVs3ms4)

In general Stars tends to be pretty conservative with their guarantees. I think the USA is quite delicate because the WSOP/888 has a monstrous license advantage and the liquidity in US online poker is quite low because of the idiot government. It was a nasty bad beat for US players for the DoJ to scare off interstate poker. I'm sure Pennsylvania would have assimilated and created a really attractive bloc of states for other states to join, eventually leading to the spread of online poker in America.

If I was handling it I don't think there'd be much wiggle room for me. There's not much you can do here when you get 100 players or something that show up on a Friday night. Now in terms of the main shared liquidity .COM site.. oh boy I would do some things there.

This is true. Downswing has hit $25k now in 9 days(!). Still up ~$35k on the month and I'm going to use some "perspective shifts" to "hack" my mindset and enjoy "my time" on "earth." 35k would be a HUGE month if it happened in a different way. It would also be huge to be stuck 25 and then end at 35 for the month. So it would be downright silly to be upset over the way this one shaped out.

It's about 22k from $530+ and 7k from my bread and butter 0-$320. I've learned a valuable lesson about not trying to play high variance high stakes games, especially with the overlay chasing. This is one I hope not to repeat in the future. This past Sunday I fired the $530 BBHR twice (mandatory), the $530 200k on Party, and the $1K 200K on WPN. The ability scores on these games are pretty high but I'm looking over the final table finishers and the lobbies when I enter and I think they're ok spots.

The $1K on WPN in particular just always has decent tables for me and people punting all over so I'm not sure how it sustains an 88 Av. Ability. I guess the best regs are max re-entering so it starts getting really tough at the end. I notice WPN also uses a weird pay structure in the 1K where first place gets over 25% of the prize pool. That just leads to insane variance. Maybe I should cut this tournament.

Ok on reflection I think I'm just going to cut the $1K on WPN on Sundays due to the pay structure and also the incentives where the higher up the buy-ins you go the more sick cash players show up and elite botting/assistance players show up. I have been ravaging WPN and not impressed by a lot of the $530+ regulars but they could be sickos/assisted users/bots for all I know. In the past I've had quite a few regs who did weird things to me that ended up being banned later.

I also think the Party $200k might be a thin fire. $200k is near the "break even" point of firing a $530 for me and I might just find better value sticking to the BBHR $530.

Still elated at how it's been going since leaving my job. I thought I had an edge but would have never imagined I'd be up 6 figures already. Just need to patch up some small leaks.

I'll be hitting the lab pretty hard in preparation for SCOOP. The new "off peak" schedule is better for me physically and better for my wife but honestly I find the prizes pretty uninspiring and there's only a few good tournaments to build around (shoutout to WPN and the Bounty Builder $55/$162 here). Party makes a noble effort but they just don't have the liquidity to build in these hours so I'm playing a bunch of $109 10k's and $33 5k's. It's also pretty tough to go from FRESPT SCOOP and Powerfest prize pools to grinding offpeak NA hours immediately after. That's another thing about playing higher MTTs. They tend to take up a lot of your focus and devalue your other birds. It's tough to care too much about a $55 50k, which a mid-high reg should always be playing, when you're trying to slay a 2K PKO.

A lot of my year will hinge on how I do during SCOOP. I can see either pushing from $115k past $200k+ or dropping to something like $75k or below and being disheartened a bit. I'm still strongly considering heading to the WSOP after SCOOP. I've found that I'm mostly motivated by extremely large field tournaments with big prize pools (aren't we all) and I could use a change of pace.

Thanks to everyone posting in this thread and the regulars as well. Feels like there's been a surge of good discussion lately and I hope to keep it going!

just one last thing about HUDs...

The problem that I see in banning is that probably no site, except maybe stars if they try really hard can enforce this...
imo there are a lot of players using VNP to play on stars and other sides and when HUDs will be baned there will be players who will use some kind of custom HUDs and they will have bigger edge vs field

also without huds there will be harder to multitable (not sure if this is good or bad tbh) and liquidity for mtts will drop massively imo (lower prizepools)

so i really think that using/allowing hud has more benefits for players/sites then downsides

and i say it again, if sides allow players to change their screen names couple of times a year there will be really imo downside of allowing huds, because then one can use hud to mostly track his own game, and to have stats on villains from this session (easier to multitable MTTs) + maybe some stats from last 5-6 sessions (u can never have like 2k+ hand sample from someone, if obv u dont know all his screen names and combine them)

I thought exactly this when I saw you at my table on the 2.5K GTD Late Night Swordfish @ 888, "How the f*** can this guy play this tourney and actually care for 7-800 buckz up top" lol

I think you should stop playing that one and some other small birds around that time slot and focus on higher stuff, not that I care about my EV in those games being affected or anything like that, I truly say it for what I think is best for you haha glgl

Hey Jae, been following this thread and enjoying it. Just wanted to say hi. Longtime follower from pojo days. We met briefly at WSOP (Indian guy named Ajay). Hope to see you out in Vegas this summer!

lol thanks for the post ramabranch appreciate your looking out. At that hour I don't have many high value games running so a $33 2.5k is par for the course maybe slightly less tempting than an average game in that slot but I run out of things to play real fast

Thanks Ajay

Was thinking of you again when I wrote this

I am absolutely loving this thread, thank you so much for opening up yourself to us. I mean, really, thank you. I am not sure if my comments or questions are relevant to this discussion, but I am throwing them out there.

I am a US player who is part of the Moneymaker era of online poker and I would call myself a successful recreational player who was able to pay my mortgage many months from earnings when I was unemployed. Full table MTT and 9 or 10 handed one table SNGs (with 3 places paid) were my thing and I played buy-ins up to around $250 (I was outclassed at $250 and gave up on that after a few tries). I am totally a one table at a time guy.

I essentially stopped playing entirely on Black Friday. Cold turkey, it was horrible. A year or so ago, I started back playing occasionally micro stakes on Ignition/Bovada for just fun, but the first actually serious poker I have done since Black Friday were my first two live WSOP circuit events a couple weeks ago. I live 4 hours from the nearest casino, but I will do that again. I enjoyed it on a social basis, and cashed decently in one of them, so that was a huge charge.

OK, so that is my background so you know where my comments are coming from, a recreational player who is now retired and wishes he lived in a country where I could play serious online poker.

1. I do not like anonymous sites like Ignition, I like to get to know my opponents like back in the day.
2. I do not like HUDs from an ethical standpoint, but I had one back in the day because others had one and it helped me at least some. I felt at a disadvantage if I didn't have one. It certainly didn't hurt. I would like to see them banned from all sites for everyone. Find the bots some other way if that is the only reason to allow them.
3. I can't say this more strongly, I hate rebuys, reentries, and add-ons and all other gimmicks, including knockouts/bounties or whatever they are called. I am older, so maybe that is it, but I am never going to rebuy. I do not remember rebuys back in the day. Unfortunately, it appears that now it is a special deal when there are no rebuys.
4. Related to the rebuy thing, I don't like lengthy late registration periods. You don't know for hours how many players there are or what the payouts will be. I remember when an hour was a long time to late register.

Those are my constructive comments, maybe some site can offer some old school structures or something. That said, if PokerStars, etc., were available where I live, I would adjust and be all over it. The thing is though, is that people don't know or don't remember how things used to be. Not everything in place now is a good development.

So, here is the question I have been trying to answer for months. Is there any concise site that discusses how things have changed in playing since, say, Black Friday. I know it has changed dramatically, especially online, in both difficulty, but also basic strategy. But, I am having a heck of a time trying to hone in on it.

Thank you so much again for this very entertaining and educational thread.

Just popping in to say I still absolutely love this thread, so so interesting to hear how things work behind the scenes.

i remember watching your vids (on CR?) when i was first playing online poker and enjoying them quite a lot

in gl

I remember those vids too, think it was deuces cracked (?) all I remember is not being able to follow bc million zillion tables tiled

Ah yeah it was DC, Ansky had vids on there playing 500z as well iirc

Hey carolina, thanks for taking the time to post. It's posts like yours that motivated me to make this thread in the first place.

I agree with #1
I agree with #2
I agree with #3 in spirit but I've just accepted PKOs. The ship has already sailed on PKO and recreationals have already embraced it with throbbing passion. Also let's just clarify the terminology. There's rebuy formats which are nearly extinct now and then re-entries, which are quite prevalent, which allow you to rebuy into a tournament.
I agree with #4

#3 and #4 are tied together. Sites like WPN use both to maximize milkage of their regulars and sustain attractive prize pools.

In regards to your question, no I'm not aware of a site like this. I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for exactly though. Do you mean a site that discusses tournament formats and structures? Or discusses strategy to play online poker?

Thanks guys. Yeah it was on DeucesCracked, not CardRunners. RIP to both.
*********************************************

Poker Update: April 28, Week 16

I took the entire week off until today so I don't have any EV reports or anything like that. I'm very happy with how I played today. EV was very strong and I think I've actually gotten better at a few things in the past week through study. Unfortunately I continued the poor run today. At sub 40bb stacks I ran 7 ev bb/100 below, about 2.3 million, and it cost me in finish distributions big time.

Scope is showing I played 87 tournaments today at $73 ABI:

3rd $44 Hyper
5th $55 Gladiator
7th $55 Hyper
7th $250 High Roller
11th $109 Classico
11th $50 6-Max
14th $109 PKO
15th $109 Hyper
15th $82 Hyper PKO

I'm not happy with the distributions of course but it's a really good output to make so many runs in 87 games. In the Winamax High Roller I came to the final table 3/7 or something and then lost KQ to K7 for a ladder and then busted shortly after on this hand.

Winamax - 3000/6000 NL (7 max) - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 25.19 BB
UTG: 16.64 BB
UTG+1: 58.61 BB
MP: 29.78 BB
CO: 18.85 BB
BTN: 7.13 BB
SB: 20.46 BB

7 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.43 BB) Hero has 9 A

fold, UTG+1 raises to 2.2 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 1.2 BB

Flop: (5.83 BB, 2 players) 4 2 9
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets 2.01 BB, Hero raises to 7 BB, UTG+1 raises to 56.28 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 15.85 BB and is all-in

Turn: (51.54 BB, 2 players) 8

River: (51.54 BB, 2 players) T

Hero shows 9 A (One Pair, Nines)
(Pre 43%, Flop 91%, Turn 0%)
UTG+1 shows 8 8 (Three of a Kind, Eights)
(Pre 57%, Flop 9%, Turn 100%)
UTG+1 wins 84.97 BB

It's been a rough stretch with a lot of two outter type hands on the turn where I end up dumping my stack in by river and they improved with a hand they would have called anyways. Also a lot of preflop "coolers" but most people are nut peddlers so they probably run slightly worse into AA-KK much less often.

Final reflections for this month:

1. Run good or run bad doesn't matter. It's all mindset

Running good or bad over the short run shouldn't matter to a winning professional who is devoted to improving.

Run good/run bad does matter if you don't feel you're a winning regular inside or you're in a toxic paradigm like I was in 2015/2016. Then yes your life on earth is limited and so is your bankroll so you have every right to sweat things. But if you're confident you're smashing the games up and you're improving on a daily basis, the short term doesn't matter. Ironically I ended up getting more caught up in the short term because of winning absurd amounts of money and then losing some of it back. That is good fortune, not bad.

Case in point. I've been running objectively awful since April 15th. 3 ev bb/100 below, 14m chips lost, terrible final table distributions, a creeping sense of dread with coolers, and so on. But once I pull back to the entire month I see I'm running almost exactly at my expectation. This means I was sun running from April 1-April 8th and I ended up grabbing 60k to pad any losses.

EV bb/100 has been double digits this month and even 40 bb and below (shallower stacks) has been almost double digits as well. This is fantastic news because it means I am playing well and the results don't matter. It hasn't been perfect though. I've made a few mistakes for sure.

2. Mistakes were made

I've had severe flaws all over for not only this month but my entire career it looks like. It won't all be fixed in one day but I hope I'm making progress.

- I don't value the fact that I'm "running hot" enough and don't factor it into my calculations.

You always need a buffer for your bread and butter games. Natural downswings at my $0-$320 buy-in range will be at least $10k even if I destroy them long term.

- I chase too much in very high games that hurt my grind output. Here's a good golden motto. Dick swinging leads to down swinging.

To avoid this in the future I've set some hard caps on the games I'm allowed to play.

$2,100- 1 Million plus prize pool required
$1,050- 300k+ prize pool
$530- Not sure on this one sorting out my feelings

This means all of my swag checks like 2 units in the $1,050 100k on WPN versus a bunch of bots(?) or the late registering Super Tuesday for $1,050 and some decent overlay value were all punts. I think the Super Tuesday fire was +ev but how much of a bankroll do you need to fire a 1K with 15bb and gamble? More than what I've got, that's for sure.

Sometimes things will happen and I'll have a downswing in my normal games and then also throw in high chasing. That leads to a double whammy and a sad Jae bear that doesn't want to grind.

I'm a very weird mix of hard on myself/polite/humble but then also very not humble when things are going well. And then I hype myself up. I think this stuff is good to a certain extent because you always want that mental edge and hope for the future. But I think humility is a good thing. It's something I had beaten into me after the 2012-2014 golden years. And as I came back this year and started doing well honestly I lost it around April 8th. I'm hoping this time I can move forward with more good sense and humility. It's not always as simple as winning=you are the illest and losing=boy do you suck you loser.

I feel energized from my time off and am very excited for Sunday. Best of luck to you as well!

Man, as someone who's known you/talked w/ you for years, it's actually really impressive to see your mindset/attitude towards the game. Embracing the negative/trusting the process etc.

Obv much <3 and keep crushing man

Thanks for your response. I think my not being able to articulate the question is why I am having trouble finding answers. Mainly, it is strategy and things like bet sizing. These things have evolved a lot over the past few years. In very general terms, it seems like TAG was considered a more optimal strategy than LAG. Today, I get a sense that people are more LAG. And limping/calling seem to be more a thing than it used to be today as people mix things up. I am not asking you to explain this. I try to find books and online content that will help me get better in today's climate after a long absence from poker. This forum I am finding very helpful. And I enjoy reading your hands that you post and your thoughts about them.

Thanks Jordan

Yes things have definitely evolved. There are a lot of good training sites though that can get you up to speed. Stuff like the Upswing Lab and I'm sure there are others.
*********************

Poker Update:

Sunday was much more relaxed than usual because I cut out all $530's except the BBHR which my boy Smille shipped for 70k+! Man I tell you Sundays are so fun there are always so many sweats. I ended up finishing fifth in the Supersonic for 6.5k or so. It was 20k+ up top and anyone's game in a hyper. Was a bit bittersweet final tabling it for the first time and not getting into the big money sonny regions but I'll take it.

Ended up qualifying for two day 2's, one today that just finished and one on Winamax tomorrow. So I'll be playing full sessions. It's been a rough stretch for your boy, threw up a few more 5th-7th in stuff like the Sunday Slam (remind me to never play that one again you're in peak session when deep in it). Managed to find a W in the 100 Euro SHOOTER on Winamax today for a bountiful 500+ euros.

BBV hand of the day:

PokerStars - 1000/2000 Ante 200 NL FAST (3 max) - Holdem - 3 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 26.48 BB
BB: 31.37 BB
UTG: 69.43 BB

3 players post ante of 0.1 BB, BB posts SB 0.5 BB, UTG posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.8 BB) Hero has K K

Hero raises to 2 BB, BB raises to 5.62 BB, UTG calls 4.62 BB, Hero raises to 26.38 BB and is all-in, BB raises to 31.27 BB and is all-in, UTG calls 25.66 BB

Flop: (89.23 BB, 3 players) 5 3 T

Turn: (89.23 BB, 3 players) 6

River: (89.23 BB, 3 players) J

BB shows K K (One Pair, Kings)

Main Pot [79.45 BB]: (Pre 40%, Flop 38%, Turn 35%)
Side Pot#1 [9.78 BB]: (Pre 79%, Flop 76%, Turn 69%)

UTG shows T J (Two Pair, Jacks and Tens)

Main Pot [79.45 BB]: (Pre 20%, Flop 24%, Turn 31%)
Side Pot#1 [9.78 BB]: (Pre 21%, Flop 24%, Turn 31%)

Hero shows K K (One Pair, Kings)

Main Pot [79.45 BB]: (Pre 40%, Flop 38%, Turn 35%)

UTG wins 89.23 BB

This was 12 left in the Triple Threat. Our villain was snapping his decisions. I knew he was up to no good. When I'm running good I like to get a little cheeky and say I had them reverse dominated in spots like this. Which is not not true. Fair play to JTs.

My distribution woes continue making a lot of runs everywhere that aren't panning out. I think I'm playing better than ever though EV in the past few sessions has taken a leap above and I've gotten more cognizant about certain things I need to reckon with better such as laddering payouts. I did stone bubble the 200 Eliminator on ES today though making a spicy 4b shove.

Table count is a bit too fast and furious right now though. I've had issues with a variety of sites such as .ES or .COM and now that I have everything at my fingertips my table counts are getting too high and I'm losing track of action and timing out. I think it's time. I will have to cut $33's and below except on .COM It's been a good run but looks like I'll be a $55-215 gamer primarily now.

Just wanted you to know, you were sitting out of a 109t last night or day before, I assumed you reged and forgot and left the pc. Goodluck though i see you often and have been lurking the thread for a while.

Just found this thread, some awesome stuff! Really appreciate the effort into all your post

My man. Thanks for this. Yeah it's been fun grinding these hours, really like your dedication and I would do the same in Canada and I'm pretty much doing the same from Korea!

That 109T it's like I don't even want to know that one happened. I think I just closed Stars was focusing on a few final tables on WPN and it kind of annoys me that there wasn't a pop up or something letting me know. I think there is a pop up so I'll have to test it today once I bust this $44 BB.

In general Stars costs me tons of money with tables not popping up when late registering or re-entering. They've also refunded me a bunch and now I've gotten quite accustomed to hitting ctrl + R or using Stars Helper to tell me how many tables I'm in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCHgxoXv4g4

I find it absurd this issue where you late register and the table just doesn't pop up so you end up sitting out and blinding out. I am curious who else is affected by this and how widespread it is.

Thank you.
*****************************************

Poker Update: May 2019, Week 1



So I ended up closing out April pretty weakly. I'm off to a decent start in May despite playing only a few sessions. My daughter had her first birthday party yesterday which is a huge deal in Korea. All of the family was invited and it was pretty nice to see everyone together. It made me reflect a bit on how much can change in a year. A year ago we were in the Isle of Man and now I'm in a new apartment in Korea. I'm posting pictures of this party as soon as we get them back!

I've implemented a few tweaks to my grind that will hopefully lead to an improved process for May. My table count was definitely too high once I got .ES back. I've decided to cut out a lot of the more marginal games and try to be more focused when playing. Winrate and understanding have actually increased in the past few weeks; this is one good thing about downswings they should motivate you to question and improve, I guess. My goal is to maintain a double digit EV bb/100 for the year, practice good game selection, and not time out or sit out of tournaments!

Reflections on the Eve of my Babe's First Birthday

Leading up to Sophie's first birthday I was ruminating on my style in MTT's and how out of line it can be sometimes. I see a lot of players clinging to their 12bb stacks in the $33 2K on 888 trying to ladder out that extra $50. And I think of how many tables I sometimes have at peak just treating every new bird like a disposable nappy. Now the true answer is you should be somewhere in between. Tournament lives are not disposable but you shouldn't be clinging to them either.

And I thought to myself that I have gotten a bit out of line with the lack of regard for the tournament life. The fact of the matter is I've been SPEEDING and have lost appreciation for the beauty and fragile majesty of each individual tournament run as I load a sea of $22 1.5k turbos in the withered NA hours.

So going forward I will be treating tournaments with more respect. Less tables, more focus, and slightly less punting. Goal for this month is to have a better finish distribution and consider each punt and additional table carefully.

Results

I'm off to a decent start this month. Nothing major but just 1st-3rds in some cute stuff.

2nd $270 6-Max WPN $6628
1st $109 PKO 888 $2994
3rd $215 18K WPN $2305
2nd 200 ES Eliminator $1820
7th $530 WPN for $1574. This one hurt a bit

EV Analysis

I'm continually in the lab working on trouble spots. My coach has been helping me quite a bit this month as well. I've been running a bit cold during the downturn but hopefully this will turn around for SCOOP!

Realistically everything this month will come down to SCOOP and then I will decide whether or not to grind a full WSOP based on how happy/fulfilled the online grind has made me, which will honestly come down to raw $ made or lost. So I'll work on getting some good habits reinforced for this key stretch.

Yea there is a popup if you try to close stars while a mtt is pre registered. I only had that bug with a table not opening if either my internet was going slow or stars was lagging but not in many months.

relatively simple fix: dont pre reg and reg as ur table slots open up. especially whne u re used to playing more than 15 tables that little time it takes to reg sth shouldnt be an issue especially when bugs like these are a thing. havent had this happen to me ever and dont think i ve missed anything

if anything i have saved myself forgettign to unreg and then scrambling to fit in some random mtt that i cant fit onto my screen

Thanks DJ. GL in the games you have left!

Yeah unfortunately registering as my table slots open up isn't an option for me I have multiple tools to track my popped tables so hopefully this bug isn't hurting me too much.

I polled a general MTT chat and it seems like this happens to a lot of people a lot of the time. I wonder how much money is being eaten by regulars/recreationals due to client lag
***********************************

Thread Update:

Not sure why I was being a huge fish all this time but I've decided to just start updating this thread after each Sunday. Seems like the clear move here.

Today I played my HEART out. Runs:

- 8th 33R 40K. First time final table this one. JJ couldn't hold against AJ and I just lost a bunch of 30/70's at the final two tables too. Ew!
- 12th 33 Turbo
- 13th 109 Hyper
- 13th 109 20K Challenge 888
- 15th 55 Hyper
- 15th Hot 109 ES

And then the true highlight was making a run in the Sunday Million and finishing 89th. I want to say that's my best finish in it ever including all the $215's but it might not be. Probably pretty close though.

Luck adjusted winnings have been grim and the deficit is piling up. Running about 1.10 bb/100 below in the full sample but about 2.50 below for sub 40bb stacks. I've seen databases of players with 2.50 winrate at <40bb stacks so losing 2.5 here in a bunch of final table and final two table spots isn't the right approach.

I'm having a lot of fun though and I'm really looking forward to SCOOP. The withered NA grind really doesn't do it for me. Shoutout to dj1337/all in pav/some other names I'm blanking on for showing up on the regular. It's a good money making grind but man it does not arouse me in the slightest.

Every Sunday is a treasure and I can't wait for next week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LeL9BUPtA