Operation I Am Not a Grinder

was a little miffed at my results so far (down about 200 over my 1st 12k hands) so i did some detailed HUD analysis.

i checked pots above 90bb's : i m up a shitton
i checked pots between 60 and 90bb's : i m up a shitton
i checked pots between 40 and 60bb's : i m up a shitton
ditton for pots between 20 and 40bb's...

then it dawned on me : of course i m down a ton in pots under 20bb's - i m playing 5 max with 1-1 blinds! breaking even at this game is absolutely crushing it (i ve paid 1.8k in rake through 12k hands) so i m glad i looked at this obvious stuff in detail. considering i m just getting to know the regs and this is my first stint grinding PLO exclusively, i m pretty satisfied with my results. take out the rake and i m beating the game at 15bb's/100 lol.

hah just had a 2 outer cost me about 400$ in ev but made 300ish playing stars donkaments

I think you're 24th in the rakerace right now, good job! I'm in the $325 spot right now, Alex has got a nice hold near top 10.

About time they update it!

after the extensive review of my PLO betfair database I did last night, I decided to change my approach from 8-tabling solid tagg to 6-tabling psychotic lagg.

unsurprisingly, ppl aren't very good at fighting back. I ran at 44/36/16 and tore things up. it's a little more tiring playing this way but man does it ever beat the rake. helps to run hot so i m making a reverse-tilt decision to wrap it up for today and enjoy the mini-upswing :



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68.5 hrs to go.

Very sick, FINALLY! (also did you get my msg about not sending to my MB?)

RRRRRRRobusstooooo

your perseverance was bound to pay off eventually. keep at it so I can rail you again on skype soon.

taking care of a bunch of real life stuff today

tomorrow will be a monster

squeezed in a turbo session and ran 400$ under ev in 350 hands, still managed to only lose 70 yay

put in a short session this afternoon, coming back for a long late-night session in a bit. the hour i spent looking over my first 12k hands was definitely worth it. the switch to lagginess has resulted in a pretty sick PLO redline as well as - ironically - lowering my variance with people being more afraid of my play (i ve settled down to 39/30/13) :



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cash went pretty meh (4bi under EV, dropped 300ish) and then grinded tourneys for about 5 hrs, was down 200 at one point and ended up +200 after bubbling the FT of a 27$ KO turbo.

meh bleh

Originally Posted by bikes

fwiw you were a giant inspiration to me when i first started poker so i wish the absolute best of luck to you.

i have noticed something about the EV lines. I usually seem to run above EV (lol) and my red line generally travels south. I suspect you and Dylan's red lines are above 0, which play some role in your seeming consistent running below EV. Just wanted to mention that

pretty sure EV has nothing to do with that, if anything there she be a reverse-proportionality between blue line (SD winnings) and red line (unless you are phil ivey). maybe i m missing the point and you prob already realize this...

put in a short session already this aft, ran hot to make 300ish, in a very strange emo state past cpl days so might keep it to donkaments this afternoon in order to avoid some crazy swongs.

strangly, i felt like i tightened up during today s session since there were 2 decent spewy players to my left on a couple tables but was surprised to see that i ran at 46/40/20 at 5 max wtf.


63 hrs to go, big week ahead.

meh just finished 256th out of 35000 in the sunday 1/4 mill, got it in TT vs AQ to be top 15, river Q

still made little over a hundo through a ton of donkaments and sit n gos so wtv

Originally Posted by Genitruc

pretty sure EV has nothing to do with that, if anything there she be a reverse-proportionality between blue line (SD winnings) and red line (unless you are phil ivey). maybe i m missing the point and you prob already realize this...

no I was just pointing out an observation, I don't really understand what I'm seeing enough to make a point. Nor do I have a large sample of hands in my DB right now, so I might just be running good over the last 40k hands which would make everything I said irrelevant

holy shit, 1st time since switching full-time to PLO that i felt like i should just stop. was geared up for a great long session then this happened after firing up tables:



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felt like i was playing my A game but i dunno, seems like stopping had to be a good decision.

lol and just lost a flopped striaght vs bare AA and bd FD for a full buyin my last hand as i posted that graph

what a fucking day

say hello to good ol' NLHE!

Don't think I could handle this variance, ever.

10-4, 10-4... Grinder down!

lol

Paging Genitruc

Long story, basically I am drowning in a bunch of personal stuff.

Not gonna make any promises, but don't count me out for a 500$ payout in the 60k promo just yet.

got my mind set on grinding today, was up 3 bi in first 500 hands then lost 9 bi in 115 hands. pretty standard plo variance and normally it would bug me a big but at this particular juncture any negative variance at all really is unbearable.

makes me sound like a huge pussy but i m not gonna play meaningful stakes while on mega life-tilt

just fired up a bunch of lowstakes stars qualifiers and donkaments, maybe more PLO later tonight.

meh, somehow played 300$ worth of lowstakes donkaments and qualifiers and managed to pay out for about 60$ total

then put in about 3.5 hours of solid 4-5 tabling, played well in some great games and made 200ish while running 500 under ev.

so -500ish overall on the day while running about 700 below ev in cash and a zillion below ev on stars. lucky i had swigiddy and p4's railing me otherwise i d have just bailed altogether i think.

gogo gadget blake griffin now imo.

meh just played for a little over an hour, dropped 600 in 450 hands and my EV for the session was BE. back at it in a cpl mins.

put in another 2.5 hrs, played really really well, kept getting set over setted in rr pots, ran like death to lose another 2 BI over 1.2k hands.

so fucking frustrating but glad i had the guts to play and play well.

put in a little over 2.5 hrs tonight, dropped 8 bi, pretty fucking madenning. Role is getting a little short for PLO. Reviewed the entire session and only feel bad about 1 hand where I should have clearly called the turn and reverse-tilt folded.

meh meh fucking meh.

wtf

hah, wtf indeed. flopped top two 3 times in HU rr pots deep and ran into top set twice and bottom set once (wtf is with ppl reraising KJ22 then flopping bottom set on AJ2 lol)

gonna do some detailed analysis (although i already looked over everything over this little 25 buyin and there s not much i d like to change) later and grind hard tomorrow and wednesday (games should be great with regs resting up after promo).

just put in a quick 2 hr session 8-tabling NL100 to take a break from the PLO variance.

made 2 spewy plays that cost me buyins that were fine but unnecessary and ended up a tiny bit. looks like 8-tabling nl .5-1 generates about 55% as much rake as plo 1-1. it was nice to be sheltered from the variance so i might just grind NL for the next couple days before a 2 week trip to france i have had planned and paid for since the fall of '10. should be fun and i feel hyper vulnerable to variance (losing a zillion BI with a breakeven EV line will do that to you) so we ll see.

fired up 6 tables, 3 nl + 3 plo since i saw a couple whale sitting

i haven t done this in a while but i m so tilted and frustrated and angry and scared right now that wtv, i ll just post describe the hands that led me to shut things down right away.

1st hand i raise 58hh from CO, sb flats

flop 557, he donks i call

turn J he leads for pot i call

river 2 he bets 3/4 i shove he snaps with 2's full

next big hand i call a rr 180bb's deep at plo w QQ34dbl suited in pos

flop 36T w 2 back door flushdraws, i call 3/4 pot c bet

turn 7 he bets 2/3 pot I jam he snaps with AA89 and i m drawing dead

next big hand i raise the btn with KT34dbl suited, get flatted by a huge whale in the BB

flop T56 giving me the weak openender and flushdraw w top pair, i pot he calls

turn is offsuit K giving me top 2, FD and o ender, he checks i pot he jams, he flips KKK and I lose. solid one-outer to stack me.

215 hands, down 450. my total online br - after paying back some debts and withdrawing living expenses for next month - is 5.5k

i know variance is meaningless, it s all one big session, blahblah

but it just hurts too much right now so i m shutting things down because i m so angry that i can t see straight.

i know how it feels to think there is no end to the run bad, but when it hurts this bad, regardless of the BR it is probably too high for you to be playing. there have been plenty of times where i have known i was +ev at a game but wasnt rolled for you, and honestly right now Im realizing that its better to be comfortable with what you are playing than to be playing the highest stakes you can.

all i can say would be pick a single game that you enjoy, study it as much as you play, and play the stakes where a downswing doesnt affect you. its easier said than done, but with good volume, even small stakes can make a good amount.

ya that s great advice.

i m 100x as interested and excited by PLO than i am by NL. i may just have to suck it up next month and put in an absurd amount of NL 100 volume since PLO 50 games don t run much on betfair and i can almost definitely make a lot more at nl100, despite the greatly reduced rakeback, than i could at plo50.

u get the store points bonuses?

have a great trip!!

thx, should be pretty awesome i think

got the store points about 90 hrs after redeeming

Enjoy the trip, see you in 2 weeks.

have a relaxing vacation in France! come back refreshed and ready to run the tables

moved to full-time SNG/tourney donking on Stars since getting back. feel a little disappointed that things didn t work out for me on betfair, but switching to mindless 20-30 tabling has been a huge relief and helped me realize that i am no longer interested in being a sick player, i am simply looking to squeeze out a bunch of money asap and get the fuck out.

so far i ve collected 11k vpps and made 6.4k in profits in the 10 days playing mainly 12 and 16$ SNG, 45man and 180 man tourneys. it also helped to bink the 5$ turbo (6k runners) for 4.3k yesterday...

results aside, the endurance and resilience i seem to show up with in the face of variance is completely different in the world of escalating blinds. i have a huge edge when the stacks are deep (for a few fleeting minutes at the start) and then play just about as well as anybody as stacks get short. i suppose not converting from cash to donkaments was always a question of pride, of wanting to control my schedule... desperation has led me to what i hope will be a solid bread and butter for the next few months. i do well in a cage.

knock on fucking wood.

nice job on the huge turbo take down

despite there being a lot of good news in this post it doesn't seem very upbeat

you can still become that sick mid/high stakes cash player once you've padded the life roll!

good luck in the donkaments dude, you've always owned it up in those!

I can't believe you're coming to the dark side of donkament tilt. I guess that if you can 20-30 table super soft fields, may as well. There's just so many advantages to being a cash player that it's hard for me to imagine going to tourneys if I were as good as you are at cash games.

GLGL, hopefully I don't see you at the tables :P

Edit: 20-30 tables is crazy btw... soo jealous. I doubt I'll ever be able to play more than 12 no matter how hard I try

bah it s really pretty simple: when i finish a session of donkaments/sng's i always feel like i want to get back to the tables, win or lose. it s crazy that i didn t see how impoartant this was as i tried to squeeze in cash hands despite often wanting to vomit when trying to put in more than 3 hours in a single day.

since march 10th (10 days) i ve put in just over 100 hours. that s more than i played at cash in jan and feb combined. and i m still hungry.

Well I totally understand that, mostly cuz that's why I play tourneys too. Last year I tried to learn cash games but I couldn't get any volume in because I never wanted to play. Every time I played cash games I couldn't wait for it to be over. 4 hours of cash games took FOREVER to play. I switched back to tourneys and it was so much better. Time seems to fly by playing donkaments. It's also good for discipline reasons since once I start registering, I can't just stop playing whenever I want. It allows me to string together 8-10 hours of playing whereas if I were playing cash games, there's no way that would EVER happen.

So yeah... while playing cash games for a living is about a million times more comfortable and convenient, you gotta do what makes you happiest or what makes you the most money. I get it. GLGL

well i keep expecting a dark cloud to start pissing on me around every new corner but it just hasn t happened yet. since march 10th i ve played over 3k sit n gos and a bunch of donkaments. i ve grinded out about 17k vpps and i m up almost 11.5k. in 16 days. thought i was hitting downswing city but shipped 2k for 1st in the 11$ 2.5k guaranteed turbo tonight and the journey to robustoville continues. playing fking lowstakes donk n gos.

who knew.

Originally Posted by Genitruc

i ve grinded out about 17k vpps and i m up almost 11.5k. in 16 days. .

lol awesome, gj

Originally Posted by Genitruc

well i keep expecting a dark cloud to start pissing on me around every new corner but it just hasn t happened yet. since march 10th i ve played over 3k sit n gos and a bunch of donkaments. i ve grinded out about 17k vpps and i m up almost 11.5k. in 16 days. thought i was hitting downswing city but shipped 2k for 1st in the 11$ 2.5k guaranteed turbo tonight and the journey to robustoville continues. playing fking lowstakes donk n gos.

who knew.

That's amazing dude! Keep it up.

So would you say the amount of time you're playing has gone way up, given the time these donkaments take?

That's the only reason I never started playing more!

actually i can only think of 3 or 4 occasions where i had to force myself to keep playing because i was going deep in donkaments which, obviously, is so much more fun than playing a long session to get unstuck at cash.

the biggest change is that i feel zero fear of losing at the tables so i just play and play and play and play...

in a nasty little 3k downswing right now but deeeeep in a 5$ rebuy so hopefully that swing turns around right about now bink 1 time

one time!

I saw your 0/3 in flips sequence to flame out. Lame.

fking sigh, just fucking sigh (lost 3 consecutive flips to finish 13th for 220, 1st was 8kish)

moved up and played a bunch of higher buyins today, got royally fucked. lots of dirty late beats, nothing really interesting to report. VPP progress is going amazingly well but I think i ll move down to 16$ and lower buyins for a cpl days and just grind harder than ever.

just kept going and going and going. towards the end of the night chopped the 11$ turbo (1100 entrants) for 1k then finished 2nd in a 180 man 12$ and i m now

BACK TO BREAK EVEN FOR THE DAY BANG

also made 3k vpps in 14 hrs of play zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

yeah vpps!!!

lol VPP addicts ITT

man i wish i had switched to donkaments like 2 years ago i d be a fucking millionaire by now

lol canadians ehh and lol donkaments ehh?

How many hours are you playing a day?.. this donkament grind would tilt me I think!

as many as i feel like, avg is prob 10 hours

Man that's sick.. I'm impressed. Keep it up!

In terms of hourly, grinding mtt's is pretty awful compared to cash games. I mean assuming the guy is good at both and plays similar stakes, obv should play cash games. But in the end, it's about doing what you love!

yeah but grinding 10 hours of mtts is probably comparable to about 3-4 hours of cash in terms of focus/tough decisions etc.

yeah so it's easier to grind more hrs without being braindead, so I guess it's a similar $ per braincell burnt. I'd still like to have those 6-7hrs back and do something else than poker hehe

Originally Posted by Alexos

In terms of hourly, grinding mtt's is pretty awful compared to cash games. I mean assuming the guy is good at both and plays similar stakes, obv should play cash games. But in the end, it's about doing what you love!

And hittin A big score is epic

That's the evilest devil, the hope of getting that big score.

Originally Posted by Alexos

That's the evilest devil, the hope of getting that big score.

so true...

200 sit n gos per day is a good way of keeping it real while waiting for the big score

moved back down to lowstakes for a cpl days, made some back then played a bunch of 40-60$ tourneys and sng today and just ran... well you can imagine. at one point whiffed 21 consecutive 38$ 18-man sng. dropped a little over 1k, time to move back down to 20-30$ games and rinse, wash, repeat.

initially my goal was to reach supernova sometime this summer but as of this moment i m headed there by sometime next month. a nice little goal would be to hit SN by may 20th and qualify for the quarterly million $ freeroll.

70k VPP to go, 1500 about to get banged off right now.

had a pretty disgusting cpl days, dropped almost 2k

fired up about 20 tables tonight for 4 hours and so far i m +700 and looking to take down another 180 man. unstuckoville here i come.

and bang down it goes, +1.3k for the night session shipppp

not sure exactly what the volume plan is for today but tomorrow will definitely be another day of shot-taking after the unstucko session yesterday.

Originally Posted by Genitruc

200 sit n gos per day is a good way of keeping it real while waiting for the big score

you're my hero

Originally Posted by courtiebee

you're my hero

lol yah 200 sit n'gos is pretty sick... I mean I can't comprehend how sick it really is but it definitely sounds sick!

ended up grinding pretty hard, made about 2k vpps and started the day swinging up a few hundred then hit an amazing death run towards the end, finished down about 5 hundo.

today playing a bunch of 55$ buyins that i ll supplement w smaller donkaments and a few sng

bink wan thaiime?

this one hurt. 55$ 500-cap 6 max, 7 left so final table bubble. sitting in 3rd place vs 4th place guy :

PokerStars Game #60643545649: Tournament #383129892, $50+$5 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXIX (4000/8000) - 2011/04/10 20:12:06 ET
Table '383129892 46' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Genitruc (138198 in chips)
Seat 2: Bargeron_Qc (233419 in chips)
Seat 6: NoOneStop (126354 in chips)
Genitruc: posts the ante 1000
Bargeron_Qc: posts the ante 1000
NoOneStop: posts the ante 1000
Bargeron_Qc: posts small blind 4000
NoOneStop: posts big blind 8000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Genitruc
Genitruc: raises 8000 to 16000
Bargeron_Qc: folds
NoOneStop: calls 8000
*** FLOP ***
NoOneStop: bets 109354 and is all-in
Genitruc: calls 109354
*** TURN ***
*** RIVER ***
*** SHOW DOWN ***
NoOneStop: shows (a flush, Ace high)
Genitruc: shows (a straight, Six to Ten)
NoOneStop collected 257708 from pot

just reaching FT was a 300$ jump, 1st was 5k ffs

despite two huge letdowns (8th in a 38$ 180-man for 150$ after entering FT as chip leader) and the hand i posted above, had a pretty great run tonight. went on a sit n go heater and ended around +1.1k, not including a bit of staking that's still like live. only grinded like 1.3k VPP's but it was a fun time.