Operation: Starting Over

I have a problem with discipline...
I like to win. I am very loose agressive by nature.
I like to set the texture and pace of a poker game.
I am a winning player... usually.
It was often more fun for me to win pots than win money.
Unfortunately for my bankroll that was not my motivation for playing. I liked the excitement, especially the fear of losing.
For a very long time I couldn't play stakes within my bankroll. It wasn't the same type of "fun" for me.
I would often find myself in games where I had more than a month's pay on the table. It was exhillerating.
My goal this past year was to break even playing poker... strangely enough. I did a pretty good job.
I wanted to make my "learning curve" as steep as possible without it hurting too much.
If I had the buy in for a game for bigger stakes than I was playing, I would often jump in, head first... and hope for the best.
I have played every limit online up to 30/60 limit and 2000NL. "The best" never quite came... but I didn't go broke.
I kept jumping back and forth... moving money around.
The most important thing that I learned through this experience is no matter what your skill, If you play outside your bankroll... or don't allow yourself enough room to play, and lose... You will, inevitably, find yourself on a downward slide.
There have been a lot of posts lately about goals and where people are at after their short time playing poker. So, I decided to make my own.
I have been thinking a lot about where I want to take my game in the future. I have learned a lot about the game and what it takes to be successful. The way to win is to make less mistakes than your opponent. period.
Now many mistakes don't necessarily have to do with your play, but affect them none the less.
It is a mistake to play outside your bankroll.
It is a mistake to play under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
It is a mistake to play on tilt, or upset about something in your personal life.
Just like all other mistakes you can make in poker, often people make these mistakes and still win. They reinforce the idea that these things are okay.
Well, I personally will no longer make these mistakes.
Another mistake I made this past year was to play with no plan or direction. While it may be silly to force yourself to make goals about what you will win or what limits you will be playing in the future, It is important to have a clear path, to understand what you want from this game.
I was playing for fun. I thought that if I just dedicated myself to learning the game, everything else would fall into place. That didn't quite happen.
One thing I can be proud of is that I am better than I was a year ago. I want to look back each month from now on, and know that I could beat the me from the month before.
One of the ways that I will help myself do this is to set myself on a path.

I have withdrawn all but $1200 from my online bankroll. This is enough for 300BBs for 2/4 limit. 2/4 is the highest limit I have consistently crushed without a notable downswing. Therefore it will be my "starting over" point.
I plan to grow this bankroll each month without withdrawing or depositing, only moving parts from one site to another through neteller to take advantages of bonuses and such. I am not yet worried about how "big" I can get it, or how "fast" I can do it.
I was partially motivated to start this specific operation based on the 100K in a year? thread that Pingviini posted.
I will set goals on what I want to accomplish for the short term such as:

I have 2 bonuses waiting for me at Poker Stars, and one on Party.
I have to clear another 1000 FPPs for my Stars bonuses.
I can clear FPPs at about 100/hr multitabling 2/4 limit.
I want to clear my Stars bonuses by this Friday, and the Party bonus by Monday.
At that time I will reevaluate may bankroll, available site bonuses, quality of games, and come to another conclusion about the best way to devote my time.

Dr Alan Schoonmaker wrote about Planning Your Personal Development In the current issue of cardplayer. His bullet points were:

• Set good goals
• Objectively analyze your assets and liabilities
• Write a plan for reaching your goals
• Monitor your progress and revise your plans

I plan to take these four things into account on each step of my journey.
So far, playing 2/4 I think I have very few liabilities. My greatest problem is playing too agressively against 1) players who will call my bluffs and 2) Players who are runnning better than I feel their play entitles. e.g. I give too little credit to maniacs and will often throw money at them in places I wouldn't against a good player. Admittedly this is often a sound strategy as you have to put a maniac on a wider range than a rock given the same action, but I probably often assume the maniac always has nothing instead of objectively considering what range he may have and how my hand compares to that range.

My liabilities will increase with each step up the ladder, as my opponents get better-skills that may crush the 2/4 game become more common place. I will have to reevaluate each step and work on plugging my leaks.

My goal overall is to win money. This concept was surprisingly never that important to me before. I however cannot maintain my elitist attitude and confidence in my skills without concrete evidence, and money is how we keep score.


I also want to seek out more advice from my peers in the poker community. I have learned a lot on my own, and I have learned a lot from all of my friends at FTR, but I need to ask more specific questions, and actively search out some coaching from those more experienced than I am.
I have discussed poker coaching services with Fnord as he offers Here
Not because I want help with what hands to play preflop, or why I am losing money with overcards that miss the flop... but because I think it would be helpful to get one on one advice from another winning player.
I recently read a thread on 2+2 by BicycleKick (one of the winningest High Stakes limit players online) about how he was considering hiring Tommy Angelo as a coach. (a mid limit live player) because there is a lot that he could learn. You are never too good to learn from others.

So, if anyone has any advice on my upcoming struggle to go from winning play to winning money, please post your thoughts here. If anyone with experience at my current limit would like to discuss some coaching arrangements, (mutual or not) please PM me.

Updates to follow

I'll delete this if you dont want others to see it, but play the 2/4 6 max games at Stars. Once you learn and can master 6 max (just do 2 bb/100 over 10k hands at each level) then you'll be more than qualified for playing higher limits. 6 max has got to be the number one thing that kept me from really improving my game and I wish I had learned it well before I actually did.

Next week I will probably switch over to the 2/4 6 max at crypto. I have a few thousand hands there with a good win rate.
Thank you for the input.

Stars has good tables, no reason to not start right now.

Originally Posted by elipsesjeff

Stars has good tables, no reason to not start right now.

Good point. I hadn't really considered it since the rake is relatively higher at 6 max, so I have shied away from it while clearing bonuses.

Great post Demi. Good luck

good luck!

damn right
good luck
and may making money be fun

Good honest post. Wish you well with your operation.

Moving to a discliplined, goal-oriented style of play is a huge step. Given that, what I've seen you post, and the experience you have to date, I don't think there's much need to wish you good luck. You'll succeed. And now you've made a major upgrade in vehicle to get where you're going. Congrats.

{This post has been removed}

talk about an uncomfortable pillowcase!

Good luck with sticking to your goals Demi.

Well, I think I am playing well.
I did lose $140 today on a single table... $100 of which went to a maniac who was catching good. I said that I wouldn't pay these guys off though, and I screwed that up today.
I cleared my October bonus from Stars and have 400 more FPPs to clear the November bonus.
Overall I am up 1.6BB/100 over 1600 hands. I feel like I am running a little worse than I should be though. (and giving away $100 didn't help)
I am going to switch to the 2/4 6 max games to finish out the Stars bonus as elipsesjeff suggested. Hopefully I run well and don't wind up losing what I get from the bonus. Stars just seems really tough since I started this operation.
On the plus side I was down about 25BBs for the day at one point which is really close to my "blowup point" where my play starts to sufer out of frustration.
I kept my cool, played my best and finished the day up. I am really proud of that. I made a point to monitor my play, and I was ready to close the tables if I felt upset. (whether I was making mistakes or not) But the long run overcame the variance and everything turned out well.
I am losing a lot from the small blind, where I normally break even or am slightly negative. My difference without blind is actually (-$50) which I need to go through and see if I am doing anything different than normal.
If its just bad luck, that would make a huge difference in my BB/100 so far.

I had an insanely good run today at 2/4 6 max.
0.85 hours for 40BBs
17BB/100 3 tabling.

I still have 300FPPs to clear at Stars. Hopefully I'll have a healthy profit on top of that.

My stats today: 29/16/2
230 hands VP$SB 44 FSBTS 100 FBBTS 17 ATSB 32
W$WSF 42 WtSD 37 W$SD 53

The big secret to crushing 6 max is to remember:
Its okay to fold the best hand -AND-
Its okay to showdown the worst hand.

My questions for the day are:

1)Where should I go once I am done with my bonus whoring at Stars and Party?

2)What should I take into account before deciding to move to 3/6, once my bankroll supports it? (which will be very soon)
Should I stay at 2/4 for a while longer like I would recommend to someone who hasn't played higher before?

I have a few thousand hands at 5/10 through 15/30, but I have historically avoided 3/6 for some reason or another.

Well, no one answered my questions, So I'll try to answer them myself.
I finished out the Stars bonuses at 2/4 6 max, but unfortunately started out with a quick 50BB downswing in about half an hour 4 tabling. I brought it back into the positive, but unfortunately could not maintain my 17BB/100
After 1000 hands at 2/4 6 max I am at 4.5BB/100.

I am now technically bankrolled for 3/6 (as I had expected) but I'll stay at 2/4 for a while. My next stop will be the $600 Eurobet bonus (now a pokerroom skin) The bonus plus rakeback should be a healthy addition to my bankroll.
I'll play the 2/4 tables until I feel comfortable with the new room, then probably jump up to 3/6 by the end of the month.
I will also jump over to Interpoker this weekend and clear their $90 monthly bonus (again with rakeback)

My criteria for going up in limits will be to make the difference in bankroll requirements at my current limit, not including bonus or rakeback.
i.e. I have the bankroll for 3/6 now because of bonuses, but I am only halfway to making the bankroll difference at 2/4.
1800-1200 = 600 profit required at 2/4 before moving up.
Hopefully I will have met the requirements before the end of the month.

Watch out for the eurobet limit tables, they are tight as hell. (At least the 1/2 and 2/4 full ring). They are full of bonuswhoring rocks, but maybe thats a good thing for anyone who knows how to beat them Haven't played any 5-max or higher stakes there, so. Good luck!

(Oh, and just so you know something about the bonus: I've played 2300 hands at 1/2 full ring and have cleared 850 of the 6000 required bonus points for the $600 bonus.)

I finally got around to trying out Eurobet... I have been really busy at work.

It looks like I can clear points at at least 100 per hour at 2/4,(4 tabling) but it will still take me a while to clear the bonus.

luckily I have 3 months.

I am going to go on a bonus whoring rampage this weekend.

does anyone have any suggestions on quick bonuses to clear? (like less than 10x raked hands)

I have heard that William Hill and Bet365 have good bonuses. I will look into those before Friday.

I just submitted my PokerTracker database to www.pokernomics.com

They offer a free review for anyone who sends in at least 10K hands.

We'll see what they have to say about my play and if I get any good advice.

I am really interested in this project. It looks like it may revolutionize how some people look at the game of poker. Maybe I am getting too into it, but I would recommend that those of you with PokerTracker databases send in some hands.
It couldn't hurt, right?

William Hill have a good bonus where you are paid a certain amount every hour you play at sufficiently high tables ($2/$4 maybe - you'd have to check). If you do join there, can I recommend you? I've played about 20,000 hands there and I did the FTR review on William Hill so I'm kosher

You can also get 23% (I think) rakeback on Hills - if you're interested in any of this do PM or AIM me (I'm markelby on AIM).

I am going on a Bonus whoring rampage this weekend

GL, Demi.

PokerPlex is a crypto site with a bonus-glitch. I guess last month they gave $50 for 300 DEALT hands. This month it's $50 for 250 RAKED hands. People at BW are reporting that they got $50 at 300 dealt, then $50 more at 250 raked. I got the first $50 and will keep playing to see if I get the other $50.

This could disappear at any time.

EasyT

Quick update:
I played a nice game of 1/2 6 max last night with Midas and ake. +210 in a couple hours.

Current Bankroll Status:
Poker Stars: 300
Eurobet: 650
Neteller: 1500

Total: 2450

I need to come up with a plan to best take advantage of the bonuses available this weekend, while tying up as little money as possible.
Since it often takes a few days to cash out from a number of the sites, I can't move too much around this weekend.
So what do I do with $1500?

1st priority is Poker Plex.
2nd is Interpoker, which along with $90 for 450 raked hands has a pocket kings promotion Saturday where every time you are dealt pocket kings you get $10 bonus. odds of getting dealt pocket kings is 220:1 so its about a 20x dealt hands bonus
3rd is william hill which gives you 5GBP for every "table hour" you play up to a max of 5 hours. since I could 5 table this at 1/2 and 2/4 I could do it in an hour

So it looks like a crypto Saturday.

If I can clear these (which I should) Then I will move to Party on Sunday. With the new beta they have, I can clear their reload in a couple hours.

Then back to eurobet to work off a bit more of their silly $600 bonus which may take me the whole 3 months I am given.

The trick is doing it all with $1500.

If all goes well, I should be playing 3/6 on Party on Sunday, to start working off the 1200 I need to clear before moving to 5/10.
Wish me luck!

Postion Stats from 1/2 with Midas and Ake:

33BB/100!




This reminded me of something.

For all those people who think they could win more playing at higher limits where people don't suck out as much...
As someone who has played at higher limits my whole time in poker: You're wrong. I know everyone always says you're wrong, and you never believe them. But seriously, I have never been able to dominate a game as much as I do now that I have moved way down in stakes.
I almost feel bad for taking their money.

Good luck.

My Stats from Crypto this weekend:




I didn't do Interpoker, because I way overestimated how much poker I can play in a day.

I got both bonuses from pokerplex, for a total of $100, and the £25 (about $45) from Will Hill on top of my winnings...

And check out that rake! 25% rakeback adds another $50... too bad I won't get it 'til January.

I also have to wait for a PIN to be snail mailed to me to withdraw from pokerplex, which is a little ridiculous, but whatever.

Still need to move over to Party.
Good news is I can add some 3/6 games into the mix now.
There are a lot of Party bonuses I haven't cleared... the Players Association, and reload, and IGMPay. I haven't ever done IGMPay, because I am so happy with neteller, but hey, its free money right?

I am still amazed at how much I am making playing small stakes. With an average of 3 tables, my true win rate for the cryptos was almost $70/hr.
Not sure why anyone would want to play higher limits (lol)

Started off 5 tabling on Party to clear this ridiculous 12x 7 day reload bonus.
After 500 hands I am down $150 at 3/6 full.

My stats so far:

17/11/2.2

I am losing money so far with both straights (-$12) and boats (-$32)
throw on top of that KK (-$24) AQ(-39) JJ(-$17) and a nice ATs that missed a royal draw for (-$21) and you have most of my losses.

I went ahead and stopped for a while to cool off a bit. I think 5 tables might be too much for me to keep good track of, and I was tilting a little near the end, overplaying some hands.
$150 is right at that 25BB blowup I mentioned earlier, and it was definitely there today, so I walked away from the game. If I can't be proud of my play, at least I can be proud of not continuing to play poorly.

I'll come back later tonight and try 3 tabling for a while.
The Party Poker beta also sucks a bit. It tends to just shut down every so often when you push a button.
Other than that, when party fixes the bugs it'll be a great tool.

One of the things that bugs me the most is probably the fact that I am going the wrong direction in getting to 5/10.
I need to make 1200 at 3/6 according to my rules, and this past 500 hands just added more than 10% on top of that.

Maybe I need to work a little more on not being results oriented, and just playing my best.

Originally Posted by Demiparadigm

Started off 5 tabling on Party to clear this ridiculous 12x 7 day reload bonus.
After 500 hands I am down $150 at 3/6 full.

My stats so far:

17/11/2.2

I am losing money so far with both straights (-$12) and boats (-$32)
throw on top of that KK (-$24) AQ(-39) JJ(-$17) and a nice ATs that missed a royal draw for (-$21) and you have most of my losses.

I went ahead and stopped for a while to cool off a bit. I think 5 tables might be too much for me to keep good track of, and I was tilting a little near the end, overplaying some hands.
I'll come back later tonight and try 3 tabling for a while.
The Party Poker beta also sucks a bit. It tends to just shut down every so often when you push a button.
Other than that, when party fixes the bugs it'll be a great tool.

One of the things that bugs me the most is probably the fact that I am going the wrong direction in getting to 5/10.
I need to make 1200 at 3/6 according to my rules, and this past 100 hands just added more than 10% on top of that.

Maybe I need to work a little more on not being results oriented, and just playing my best.

3/6 6 max is a much more softer game, more hands per hour, and your aggressive edge will treat you better there.

This is silly.
(thank you jeff.. for making me stick to 6 max, I just wish I could beat the full game, lol.)

Ed Miller says I should play 6max too:
http://twoplustwo.com/magazine/current/miller1205.html

620 hands of 3/6 6 max

22/15/3.5

6BB/100


Started off dropping another $100 to some sick beats, because these guys will call down with anything.
But, I pulled it all together and am now up $65 at 3/6.

I don't feel comfortable limiting myself to only 6 max though, even if I am crushing the game.
I don't think I should move up to 5/10 6 max until I can prove I can beat the 3/6 full game.

Another minus- Of the 1120 hands I played on Party, only 600 were "raked" so I have to somehow play twice as many hands as I already have in the next week to clear this sick bonus. well, write it off as a lesson learned. 12x bonuses are craptacular.

I have already paid $134 in rake ($87 in 6 max, and $47 in full ring), so the bonus is clearly -EV. I was hoping the fishiness of Party would make up for the crappy bonus, but it seems to have not quite worked out that way.

The Eurobet bonus is actually clearing faster for me.

I had a really long week at work and didn't get to play much in the way of poker.
I realize that my multi table skills are lacking so I am gonna finish out the Party bonus playing as many .5/1 tables as I can keep track of.
right now I think I probably make about as many errors per table as number of tables I have open.
This is just a multitasking excercise that will hopefully lead to greater profit at the 3/6 level tomorrow.

Does anyone have any multitabling "tricks" or advice?

Don't do anything else(than poker) and don't act quickly. You have a lot of time(well, 30 secs is a lot) before you are timed out so use it wisely. You don't get money for clicking
bet/fold/call quickly, so take your time and asses everything.
That and don't scare away all the fish at .5/1 ... I wanna find SOMETHING left when I move back there.

so I 9 tabled Party .5/1 for a few hours.
This is what the partypoker beta looks like on my crappy lcd screen.





My stats for the 9 tabling: Way worse than they should be. I was constantly making bad calls and timing out with good hands.
I managed to fold the nut straight once, an OESD once, and call with no pair no draw about 5 times... and that's just what I know of lol.




On the plus side, I do think it was good practice for multitabling.
I am just not sure playing that many tables is for me.

Well, I precticed 10 tabling again to clear the Player's alliance bonus from party.
I just about broke even over another 1300 hands, dropping my BB/100 at .5/1 to 1.37
I got the $100 bonus though in 2.5 hours. Not too bad.
I also timed out a little less this time than I did before, so I started getting the hang of it. Hopefully when I go back to 4 tabling 3/6 it will be a bit easier for me.
I cashed out from Party and stars today. Once everything is in my Neteller account, I will give bankroll updates.

Where are you going after this?

Originally Posted by midas06

Where are you going after this?

Well, my bankroll is actually getting big enough that a large percentage of it is just sitting around doing nothing, which I don't like.
I ma going to deposit into Negreanu's site to take advantage of some of the Charter member freerolls.
I also still have this huge Eurobet bonus to clear, so that's what I'll be working on this week.
On the weekend I will try to clear the IGM pay bonus for Party. Then I'll get more practice 10 tabling .
I don't know anything about IGMpay, though. Does anyone have info on what I need to do to open the IGMpay account? Specifically, I think I need to move money from Neteller to my bank account to move back to IGMpay... which will take a few days.
I still haven't cleared the Interpoker bonus, so I may tackle that this weekend also. I haven't figured out what my plans are for Christmas yet, since that may cut into my poker playing time.

Neteller: 2593.44
Eurobet: 631.65

Total: 3225.09

I am technically 'rolled for 5/10 now, but have only played 1000 hands at 3/6 lol. If all goes well, I should be able to clear another $1200 at 3/6 before the end of the year, and I can start January at 5/10.
wish me luck

I am working a lot of overtime at work, so I don't have the time to devote to poker that I would like. I am not willing to kill myself trying to get in hands, so I may come up a bit short of my goal, but that's okay too. As long as I finish out the year a better poker player than I started, I will fell good about myself (how sappy).

Finished a quick session at Eurobet 3/6 5 max
1 hour, 149 hands. +104.5

I got 130 points (of the 6000 I need) so it looks like I can clear this bonus at about 10x. not too bad.

It may be possible that these players are worse than party. We'll see how the week turns out.

Meh, another hour, another $90.

I was up about 180 at one point, but donked it off quick to people who I guess decided to quit letting me push them around.
I had a hard time changing gears, so I left, and salvaged a healthy win.

Well, i haven't been playing much during the holidays... but to give a quick update:

Today I played 3/6 on eurobet, and i got outplayed. I just wasn't on my game at all, and cut the session short -$150 after about 45 minutes.
I got sucked out on in 2 HUGE pots, and that just tilted me enough that I was playing too many hands and going too far, trying to make it up.
I played 3/6 last weekend on crypto and did really well. I was up $700 in 2.5 hours. Then the idiot fish t omy right went on uber tilt and started capping every pot preflop.
I tried my best to get some of his money before it was gone, and donked off $200 to some of the sickest beats I have ever seen... runner runner 2 pair to his 46o etc.
He left after an hour up $500!!! literally capping every hand preflop, and very very rarely folding.
I have been working on my HU game at the eurobet 1/2 HU tables. I lost $189 so far in less that 1000 hands. I suck HU. The rake is oppressive though, and there are a lot of hit and run artists who will play until they are up 10BBs or so and then take off. since it is suck a swingy game, it is hard to beat this strategy of stop-win. Even when I feel I have a big edge, I'll lose 10 pots in a row, and whoosh, there goes my opponent

Overall I am still at about 6BB/100 at 3/6 SH over a little more than 2K hands (I ran at 10BB/100 at crypto)

I have decided to quit playing sessions after work at 3/6 SH on Eurobet. The game is too swingy for me to not be 100%. I will play some smaller games after work that require a little less thought.

I will also start playing the 5/10 games on the weekend if I can find a good game.
so I am somewhere in between 2/4 and 5/10 right now I guess

Posting this as a reminder to myself:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...Number=2361595

As I mentioned earlier, I don't play well if I get down around 25BBs. I also don't play well when I get up a large amount. I get a little too self confident, and think I can win every hand.

I really need to work more on being less results oriented, and playing my best game.

Well, I am officially ending this operation.

I just had one of my worst weekends of Poker ever, which capped off a horrible week.

In total I lost over $1000 over the past week, dropping me out of 5/10 bankroll status. I am now in the red for 3/6 on Eurobet. Nothing was working out at all.

I think the most painful part is going from close to $100/hr for the first month only to lose a large percentage of it in the last week.

I am going to go through my PT Database and hopefully figure out what the hell happened.

I am going to take a bit of a break here... hopefully come back a better and stronger player.

Expect a new Operation in the next few weeks.

As an aside I have heard back from neither Pokernomics nor Fnord as far as hand analysis goes.

On a happier note, I made the final table in the FullContactPoker Charter member freeroll, finishing 9th. Had an ugly AQ v QQ hand when blinds were big, or I would have done a bit better.

Good Luck and Happy New Year.

gl Demi, you're a smart guy and I know you have what it takes to fix your leaks.

I know you are aggressive player, but I think sometimes you are too aggressive.

Instead of raising with marginal hands postflop, try calling when in position against players more likely to pay you off with junk.

Also, fold that offsuit broadway connectors in EP. They're pretty dangerous.

Demi... I'm disappointed.

A little downswing and you're giving up?

Pick it up man, you are good enough to play at those stakes and higher, and you know it too.

Hi from malaysia btw