nUFamn's MTT/SNG Operation

Over the past couple months I've been beginning to finally get serious about poker. Up until now, I've played lots of live drunken cash games w/friends, and dabbled with online play (both cash & tournaments), but I've finally buckled down and read a few books and have been trying to play 2-4 tournaments each evening. I've got a full-time job, so I'm limited timewise. I've been running badly the last couple weeks... losing lots of flips mainly, having underpairs call my shoves pre-flop and catching a straight by the river (3x I think, maybe just 2x), but keeping my buy-ins modest has allowed me to maintain sanity hehe.

No desire to multi-table more than two at a time. I like to take good notes and have learned that by keeping a close eye on the table I get a much better feel for opponents.

Operation Details

Tournaments I'll be playing:
$3+.30 KO/DS/T 90-man SNG on FTP
$1-$3 FO donkaments on both FTP and Stars
$4+.40 180-man SNG on Stars
$3+.30 R/A on Stars (once I get my roll a bit bigger, ran bad a few times and am hurting from these now... even though my biggest cash online is from this one)
I'll also sometimes play a $5 or $10 buy-in tournament on the weekends when I'm more available.

This'll mainly be a way for me to keep myself mentally sound as well as hopefully get some feedback on various aspects of my game.

Starting Bankroll - 1/14/2009
Personal Investments still in bankroll: $100 on FT
Full Tilt - ~$200
PokerStars - ~$125

2 weeks and no update, was looking forward to your hands, i play the same tournies. have you given up?

No not given up, I've been reading HOH2 more than playing lately. I have been slacking on this though... I'm at work now, but I'll write up a post tonight!

I played in the $3+.3 R/A on Stars last night in lieu of going to my local cardroom, was doing decent early-on in the rebuy hour with about 5k chips. Then donked about half off, then tightened up, added-on, shoved with QTs trying to steal and someone picked up AKo for the knockout. Kinda lame, was my first shove of the night too lol.

I'll try harder though with this though

In lieu of working on my op here, I decided to play for a bit tonight. Played the $1+.1 FO on Stars, made ITM but only a couple bucks (still not bad for 3k-ish players). Also played a 755-player $1 tourn on FT, made top 30% but no money for me. Finally, decided to play a $5 SnG on FT. I'm confident that I'm better at tournaments than cash, and while time is a factor, the biggest thing that bugs me in tournaments is the variance.

It seems like to be really successful at tournaments, you have to play the fuck out of them. I just don't have time nor am I good enough to do that. So, SnG's make more sense on some levels. (I love MTT, so would never quit, but maybe I should focus on SnG's a bit more as a grinding tool?)

Came in first in the SnG for a cool $17 profit, leaving me up 15 on the evening. Not fantastic, but it's nice to be in the black. I've been in the red lately.

Also trying to read HOH2 as previously stated, good so far. It's really nice because while I've heard the concepts mentioned on here, he does a really good job of fleshing out most of the details and presenting it in a very understandable way.

So, if I play tomorrow night I'll try to play 1 SnG and 1 MTT at a time to balance some variance.

Current Bankroll
PokerStars: $80.48
Full Tilt: $201.98
Total: $282.46

You have nowhere near the roll to be playind 3.33 R/As.

Hehe I know. They're a lot of fun though. I generally abide by bankroll principles, but frankly I want to "take a shot" here and there. (That said, I'm probably better off playing a $10+1 or something.) I'm done with them for a while though, I need to juice my roll a bit more on Stars before I'm comfortable even "taking a shot."

Good to see you not given up. I read HOH a couple of years ago, its good and it helped me get my first few SNG MT cashes. Trouble is you dont normally have the time to wait for the hands he suggests and people dont respect the continuation bet the way he suggests. Try the $2.20 turbo 180 man SNG on stars. Its kind of half way to an MTT and over in 1.5hours. Great for practising high blind play, it has a lot of poor players who give a way chips. Play tight at the begining (about 20 mins) then loosen up about level 4. If you do make a hand try to get all in, people will call with draws and even A high. In Jan ive got my BR up to $500 playing these (from $150).

Nice, thanks for the tip. I haven't been playing too much... took a couple days off of playing, but I've played three different types a number of times. The $1+.1 FO's on Stars, $3+.3 90-mans on FT, and $5+.5 SNGs on FT. I think that focusing on the 90-mans and SNGs will be much more profitable for me.

Oh I also played a little bit of ring... hit a couple strong hands to go up almost a full buy-in, but then I donked it all away. Also stacked a friend in a home game by slowplaying a flopped boat. That was pretty fun, it felt apparent for the first time that I'm getting better at keeping track of how people bet with what kind of hands and am naturally beginning to (try to) assign ranges, always calculating pot odds, etc. I am pretty close to finishing HOH2, quite good. I think I'm actually gonna go read that for a bit now.

Just got 2nd/90 on the $3+.3 on FT for $44+ko's

Overall bankroll: $298

I'm so bad at regularly updating this. I've just been lazy lately, there's no excuse.

Last weekend, I FT'ed like 5 tourney's in a row (3+.3 KOs, and I think another $2 MTT) which was nice. Provided a bit of a boost. Over the course of ten days, I've gradually lost most of the winnings.

I went to the live cardroom last night for their $25+5 30-max, but was late. So, disappointed but still wanting to play cards, I bought in their $60 WSOP Main Event Super Satellite. 4 players were total donks, but I could never catch anything against them. Got outplayed by an older dude who had a set on one hand. Shoved my KK once to take down a pot. Otherwise, just couldn't get anything going. 4/10 for $0 prize. Had I caught just a couple of hands differently, I see myself winning this one...

I also lost ~$80 playing $2/2 ring. That's what I'm pissed about. They stick us at this shorthanded table so I'm paying blinds 2x as often. No qualms about how I played in it, had a couple nice hands that got cracked and I had to get rid of, etc. Just pissed that I put myself in a marginal position. I should have just waited for the Satellite to begin, but wtf would I have done at the cardroom for an hour w/o playing cards??

Maybe I should learn to play limit hold'em for keeping-myself-busy purposes. Also, what I notice about playing live, is that half of these players don't give two shits about the money. They play to play and maybe have a big payday -- what I'm getting at is that they're donkier than donkfests on stars. At the ring game, guy was practically value betting (1/4-pot bluffing) with busted straight & high card, and he looked disappointed when he lost. At the satellite, another guy showed up 30 minutes after it started to find himself short a few BB. First hand he catches bottom pair w/K kicker. Gets his chips in by the turn, and also looks kinda disappointed. Was a good night though!

Online Bankroll: $320-ish
Live Bankroll: none now lol (but that's okay, live bankroll is funded by paycheck. ideally i'd save up $3k and have a bankroll, but I'm just playing with those funds as i save them up lol)

Just took down 449-player $2 (1R/1A) tournament on FTP for a cool $455.

Bankroll up to $715!

I pulled one two-outer from my ass on a guy at the final table, calling his AA with my QQ. Also donked off a good chunk of chips w/middle two pair vs. straight made on turn... wouldn't be disappointed, but i could have folded to his raise on either the turn or the river. All-in-all though, I feel like some variance caught up with me tonight. I won a few races, caught some nice hands, and finished strong!

Last observations... playing totally sober may have helped. I'll review some hands tomorrow and probably post some.

Congrats man!! Nothing like doubling the bankroll in one session!! MTT's rule lol.

Thanks! Yeah was very pumped afterward!

Last night I went to play live... lost $95. I need to quit doing that shit. After some other discussions in various forums around here, I think I'm going to quit going there in order to focus on building the roll up before I return.

Played tonight in 4 or 5 of the $3+.3 90-man KO tournaments on FTP, won the last one for $72. So that partially makes up for idiocy. It's really nice to have a couple of good sessions in a row. I counted up my last 12 days before these two wins: I played 24 tournaments, ootm for 21 of them, barely cashed in the other three... so down at least 18 buy-ins at that point!

Bankroll $775. (The $95 lost last night came out of my bank account, and I'm not withdrawing money from my online account to pay myself back!)

Played a few tournaments last night... started out on a $5.50 MTT with an interesting structure (one of Stars' trial tournaments), and really hope they continue. The blinds were more of a gradual increase and long levels, allowing for a lot of maneuvering.

Anyways, didn't multi-table, just focused on this one tournament most of the evening as I had been doing quite well, in the top 80 or so out of a 1300 player field the majority of the time.

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...in-t82255.html

In the above hand, the guy (even OOP) had been getting the drop on me all night long, taking decent sized pots with well-timed bets. So, I was getting aggravated, and may have let it affect my play on the above hand. He was right to make the calls, I was wrong to bet so small on the turn... but I really wanted all his chips in there with AA, as top and middle pairs were frequently taking down pots. He just got uber-lucky on the river; I even said to myself, "He either has T9 or nothing at all and just thinks I was weak."

After the hand I was knocked down to like 8k chips, ~3M. I was proud that I didn't freak... I managed to get back up to around 20k chips, went up and down around there, made it ITM (woohoo..), and then was forced to shove an AJ and called by QQ (i think, and of course his QQ holds up).

I should've just gone to bed after that tournament, but I felt compelled to play a bit more as it was Friday night, so I strut my shit over to FTP and hop in their $3.30 KO 90-mans for a little while. (I'm glad I didn't do 6.50s!) Wasn't playing bad, but definitely not good... called a maniac's 4th consecutive all-in with a OESD for all my chips, missed, THEN decided to go to bed.

It was an interesting night... My hopes had gotten high in that tournament, as I was playing spot on, c-betting, taking pots, dodging opponents when they catch stuff, not losing chips stupidly... until that one GD hand.

I'm gonna head to the gym now, and then come back and play a few tournaments this afternoon.

Here's a donktastic move that wasted a lot of potential with this tournament. :P I think that c/r should've definitely thrown a red flag that said, "Hey dumbass! Your middle-two aren't good here! Better fold!"

So aggravating to make these dumb moves... but at least I feel like I'm really trying to learn from them. Still a n00b tho, as it were.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00+$0.40 Tournament, 75/150 Blinds (8 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com



UTG (t3605)
UTG+1 (t1675)
MP1 (t1410)
MP2 (t6302)
CO (t7835)
Button (t5536)
SB (t8937)
Hero (BB) (t5595)

Hero's M: 24.87



Preflop: Hero is BB with J, 7
3 folds, MP2 calls t150, 1 fold, Button calls t150, SB calls t75, Hero checks

Flop: (t600) J, 7, A (4 players)
SB bets t150, Hero raises to t400, MP2 calls t400, 1 fold, SB calls t250

Turn: (t1800) 3 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets t650, MP2 calls t650, SB raises to t3500, Hero raises to t5045 (All-In), MP2 calls t4395, SB calls t1545

River: (t16935) 6 (3 players, 1 all-in)
SB bets t3342 (All-In), MP2 calls t707 (All-In)

Total pot: t18349
Main pot: t16935 between MP2, SB and Hero, won by SB
Side pot 1: t1414 between MP2 and SB, won by SB

I am no expert but I think your mistake here was on the flop. I have been trying to fix a leak in my game when I play out of the blinds. After the SB bets $150 the pot is $750 you raise was $400 around half the pot. When MP2 called the sb needed to put another $250 into a pot of $1550. Odds better than 6 : 1. He was going to call with a lot of hands. Maybe a pot sized raise (to $900 or maybe $1000 for show) on the flop would have scared him off or helped you realise you were beat.

Got off work early on Tuesday, went to play the live $30 tournament. Came in 8th/30, so not too bad, but as only the top 3 pay I didn't get any money back. I got the last seat available, and I arrived an hour early! So... I don't think I'll try to squeeze into that tournament again. :P

Last night I just played in a couple tournaments... the 6 and 7:00 $1 donkaments on Stars, and a $3 FO on FTP. Went pretty deep in the $3 FO, but ultimately bubbled out. In the second $1, finished 9/2373. I'm proud of the deep finish as I put a lot of effort into playing smartly and conservative, but very aggressive when I felt strong that I had the best of it, and it worked out.

I focused more than normal, and am kinda realizing that I need to do that more. What interests me is that I've had pretty good success at the tables over the last few months (my initial $100 deposit up to $730+/-, after withdrawing my $100), and I definitely feel like I can do better if I get back to my original plan of continuing to study and reviewing my HHs.

So, what I think I'm going to do is try to play a little less, and spend some of that time reviewing sessions that went well for me, and reviewing sessions that went poorly for me. Also, over the next few weeks, I'd like to re-read HOH, HOH2, and NLHE Theory and Practice to try to absorb concepts that may have only partially sunk in.

FTP$ - $650
Stars$ - $85
Total BR - $735

I think that I'm going to continue playing the $1 donkaments... I really want to gain more experience with the large fields. I'm also still playing with FTP's $3.30 and $6.50 90-mans, and I like their $2-5 tournaments because they get up to 4-800 players which is still somewhat beatable compared to the 2-3k fields on Stars.

I'm officially turning the 90-mans into my bread and butter. I haven't yet cashed in a $6.50, but I won two $3.30s this weekend and have realized that they are what's been helping to boost my bankroll. I'm always attracted to larger field sizes, but I am going to revamp my gameplan a bit.

When I'm playing, I'll be playing two tournaments: one $3.30 90-man SNG on FTP, and another that will either be a $3.30, a $6.50, or some other tournament on FTP or Stars that I deem worthy of playing. I'll continue to try and take down some larger tournaments, but I've got to play more of these $3.30s!

FTP$ - $742.15
Stars$ - $88.13
Total BR - $830.28

I'm going to visit the parents for the afternoon, but I've got tomorrow off of work and aside from some errands in the morning, the afternoon/evening are earmarked for poker.

Also, somewhat unrelated, but I'm also thinking about building a quality poker table. My dad has all the tools necessary, and I think I could buy the parts for ~$200 max (probably less). Anyone ever done this before? I don't think it'll be easy, but it'd be very satisfying to have a nice table.

What I'm Doing Now

$6.50 entry $26 Token Frenzies -- I'm going to try to play as many of them as I can. They seem pretty soft, and as such seem to be an excellent way to get into some real tournaments on the cheap. This will help me refrain from going to my local cardroom and blowing $100 in a couple hours.
90-man KO/T/DS on FTP - I am playing multiple stakes on these. With regular buy-ins, I'll stick to the $3/$6 ones... but after I've earned a few more tokens I will play some of the $24+2s.
$2-5 FOs and KO (preferably DS) MTTs on FTP - I'm pretty sure that I gain significant value by outlasting larger fields. Sure, a few rough hands negates that, but on the whole, I usually finish high in large fields. This also tempts me to use tokens on some $26 FOs...
Stars Tournaments - Been playing the $4.40 180-man SNGs, with very little success. Haven't quite determined why. Stars must be rigged, obviously. Conversely, I've done much better in their $1-3 FO donkaments lately, getting fairly deep (though no big scores in a while).

FTP$ - $766 + (1) $26 Token
Stars$ - $61.47

I had won two tokens, and made a mistake with one last night (it turned out okay but was a mistake). I had been playing tournaments all evening, and as I got knocked out of the last couple around 2am, I decided that I wasn't done. So, looking for a good value tournament, I see a $4000 guarantee $26 PL HE with only like 70 players in it with a few minutes before kickoff. So, I was like, "Shit, only got to make it to 18th.. that's a nice overlay too!"

Well, I signed up for it and played, but by the end of the late registration, overlay was gone and it was a 200-man tournament. Fuck. Oh well, I was in it so I had to make the best of it.

I played well I suppose. Pot limit is an interesting monster. It was my first tourny with it, so I definitely enjoyed it. I had woken up at 6:00am though for work, then been playing poker from ~7:00pm to 2:00am by the time I signed up for this one... and even with a Red Bull in me, I fell asleep playing.

I only slept through a few levels though, and woke up with a slightly-below average chipstack. Good timing too, because three hands later I was dealt aces and got a nice triple-up via AA vs. KK vs. TT. That hand allowed me to work my way into the money and turn my $26 token into $47. There were a few times that I folded some decent hands in order to increase my chances of cashing. Generally, I'd berate myself for that, but in my tired state I was very pleased with a cash.

Anywho, for the week, I'm only slightly up, and it all is from cashing in 4 tournaments last night. It had been somewhat of a rough week. I love playing on Fridays though, as that's when donks get paychecks.
$26 PL HE MTT (token) -- $47 cashed
$3 KO MTT -- $47 cashed
$2 FO MTT -- $8 cashed
$6.50 Token Frenzy -- $26 Token

Over the last week, I've cashed a few, lost a few, ultimately down about $40. No big deal. I feel like I've been playing tight, although perhaps a bit weak. I'm going to try to work on that this weekend.

Mini-Op for 3-Day Weekend (3/13/2009 to 3/16/2009)

I'm setting myself up for an extended grind this weekend. $6.50 90-mans on FTP, $4.40 180-mans on Stars. $26 Token Frenzies on FTP, and any won tokens going to $26 90-mans on FTP.

I'm going to keep Notepad open and take notes on anything I feel is noteworthy during the weekend, and then will re-evaluate as I progress. Between Friday 6:00pm when I get home from work and midnight on Monday (78 hours), I'm shooting for 2-3 tables at a time, totaling about 24 hours of playtime at the least.

This is how my weekend went... top box being PokerStars, bottom being FTP. As you can see, I was firing blanks on PokerStars all weekend. For the majority of it, I was bombing out on FTP as well... except for last night, when I went far in both SNG's I played, which brought me up to "break-even" for the 3-day period.

After reading slevin's op for the last few weeks, I've decided that I need to focus less on the bankroll and more on playing good poker. I also think that I tried to move up too quickly. While I'm still learning, I might as well continue playing these $3 MTT and $5 SNGs, while it's cheap to screw up.

Anywho, I didn't take notes all weekend like I'd planned (which is kinda disappointing), but the weekend didn't go like I'd planned at all. Friday, it was cold cards and suckouts, so I quit early that evening. (I just noticed the dates are off... I think OPR applies the date when the tournament actually ends, which is hours after I busted out of most of these.) Woke up around 10am on Saturday and hit the tables again while watching the final table of EPT Dortmund... they read a couple of my e-mails to them, so that was kinda fun. (Anyone else see Sandra? She's f'ing hot. Anna Kournikova of poker anyone?)

Continued to play saturday... as you see finished strongly in one of the $3 90-mans, but other than that couldn't get anything rolling. I took most of Sunday off... I visited parents and read some HOH to try to figure out if I've been screwing up or if I'm having a bad run of cards.

Monday, I was off of work, so spent the morning running errands and getting things done around the apartment... then poker in the evening! I started off much the same, but then I decided to load up two smaller SNGs, and did pretty well in them. In the one I won, I finally felt like "it was back" -- I don't know how to describe it other than I was in the zone. I had finally found some players who responded to my bullying, and as we hit the money I was the overwhelming chipleader... primarily because the players kept folding their blinds to me when I was raising with 74o etc. Then, when I'd catch a hand (TPTK or set), a deft check/call line usually sucked in most of their chips. It felt really good for things to finally flow a bit!

~20 hours of poker, though, and I've spent $106.75 on entry fees and have cashed out $106.13... for a net loss of 62 cents. Though, with those KOs, I knocked at least a few people out, so a net gain.

One thing's for sure, despite the early success turning $100 into about $800 through MTT/SNGs only, I think that my game has slightly shifted toward more weaker moves that ultimately costed me a lot of chips. I'm making a concerted effort to maintain aggression, in good spots both when I have cards and when I don't have cards.

I have said to myself lately "quit playing cards and play poker" and it's hard for me to do that because lately, I'd been running into a lot of hands, so c-bets, bluffs, etc. just don't work. I'm gonna review some of my hands tonight, and will hopefully find a few where I can seek advice. Thanks to those who read!

These are my games since my last post. As you can see, it's been relatively successful. Last night I tried to power-game it, playing two at a time very aggressively earlier in the tournament than I normally do. The good side was that I built a stack more often in the KO 90-mans than I usually do, but the bad side was that I lost it due to a few marginal plays and a few that I'm still pleased with.

I don't know the exact profit/loss, but it's somewhere around $50 just from eyeballing it... I've gotta go in to a meeting, just wanted to throw this up there. Tonight I'm really going to pull some HHs from PT2 and post them for some feedback.

Oh, I also joined GrinderSchool over the weekend, which is why I only played a few tournaments during said weekend. I splurged on the 3-month subscription, figured I'll commit the next 3 months to seriously improving my play!

It was good to see you at the GTS Final Table. One criticism that I saw you were doing:

Playing too much OOP then folding to cbets. I'll probably be commenting more when I do the video of the final table.

Good luck with the operation!

Yeah, I feel like theres a lot of hands where I'd like to see a flop, and probably pay too much to see it, then give up when I miss. The upside to that is that I can pick up a c-bet (or more) every now and then by slowplaying it when I do hit hard. But yeah, definitely noted.

I took down a big $5 tourney Saturday morning for $370~, and subsequently made a $300 withdrawal that I'd been planning on doing for a while.

I played a bunch over the weekend, so I'm taking tonight off to post some HHs both here and on TGS. And btw, TGS is a great source of information... I've not watched enough of the videos yet, but just hearing how these guys' minds work through situation is of huge value. It builds my confidence when I'm thinking the same thing, and opens a new door when I'm thinking the (sometimes.. ) opposite.