Titles are hard.

Ok, let me introduce myself since I'm probably the least known poster with a decent postcount around here. Names Ben, i come from Australia. You can probably guess my nicks not all that original from there. Feel free to look for me on PokerStars, I enjoy railing others games and chatting poker.

I dont venture out from the SnG forum much. I started online poker after playing some social games at work. I was terrible, ATC can win type player. Gave myself a budget of $50 per month to learn this game. First month I lost basically the lot but started learning some basics, Second month I focused mainly on SnGs and built my next $50 back up to $100. Third month I continued with SnGs and built my roll to $350 or so. I havnt deposited again since then and hope not to other than for reload bonuses. Then I basically quit for a while (various reasons), played a little but lost basically, down to around $320. Got serious again recently, built back up to around $380 and then on advice from Jack Sawyer on here started multi-tabling $11 normal speed SnGs and hit a hot streak. Have taken my BR from $380 to $625 in the last four days.

My goals arent exactly clear. I have a reload bonus needs clearing on stars. I need to earn 1400 FPPs by mid march, so I figure if I play around 12 $11s (5 FPPs per) the days that I play I should clear it in that time. Of course if I make the step up to $22s I'll clear it even quicker. I'm hoping by the time I clear that I'll have a roll of $1k or higher. That seems like a nice mark. Means I'm rolled for things like 25NL instead of 10NL, and can move beyond the real micro MTTs when I try to learn them.

Which brings me to longer term goals. I think to become a more complete player I need to move back out of STTs. Once I've cleared my bonus and got a bit of a BR going, I want to start focusing some efforts on learning either cash or MTTs (or both). I play some 6-max 10NL now, and am a winning player, but definately play some bad hands to make sure I'm only a slight winning player instead of a bigger one. MTTs I enjoy, and often build a big stack early, but have a habit of pissing it away before the money.

I think I have a solid but leaking STT game. Against the soft opposition I have now I'm getting by (I'm happy to admit I'm going through a positive variance stage atm), but I have some definite leaks that need plugging. To list a few:

Poor p/f from the button shortstacked. I've become very passive from the button which is a huge problem in STTs when you get short.
I dont think i'm doing a good job extracting value from my big hands.
I think I'm missing spots to earn more chips in general. Calls I should make, value bets on rivers, stuff like that.
Still too loose PF sometimes. This is a leak that I battle with on and off, I'm fairly good, but sometimes regress.

My biggest leak by far is playing when I'm tired and not in the mood. I make dumb plays, try to hurry things along, and piss away whole tourneys for no good reason. Thats one reason I'm posting this now. Got some time on my hand, but had a big day today and have decided I'm too tired to play some SnGs, so thought I'd get around to posting this instead.

So here we go, operation begins...tomorrow!

Current BR - $626.49
Bonus FPPs - 554/1875



Links to posts I've made added as time goes by:

Thoughts on beating micros #1
Thoughts on beating micros #2
Thoughts on beating micros #3
Thoughts on beating micros #4
Thoughts on beating micros #5
Thoughts on beating micros #6
Thoughts on beating micros #7


Book review: Professional No-Limit Hold'em vol 1
Book Review: Harrington on Cash Games Vol 1