July Results, August Goals, and How do I play so many tables?

Here were my goals for July. The month isn't quite over yet, but I can pretty safely assess my progress.

1. Play enough to win the monthly TLB on AP (challenge)
Moved to Stars...didn't get this one done.

2. Don't be results oriented
Did pretty well here

3. World Domination (work in progress)
Making progress...still a ways to go here...someday

4. Don't tilt and play nl cash
D'oh! Didn't really tilt, but definitely played alot of nl cash on stars for a change of pace...I guess I'm just destined to always need a break from the grind and switch things up...meh.

5. Destroy the 109 level and don't doubt myself at that level.
Check. Killed this game before I decided to move.

So the big question: Why the move to Stars? Well, basically, I'm tired of the BS at AP. Its just retarded. I paid them about 30k in rake this year, and they kept coming up with dumb excuses as to why I could not recieve reload bonuses for $200 a peice. Absolutely the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You just alienated one of the top 5 tournament rake generators on your site. Good thinking. Way to go. I'm gonna go where my business is appreciated...or at least I'm made to feel that way. Peace.

I'm playing the 27s on Stars this month just to get a feel for the game again and to figure out how many tables I can realistically play without too much dropoff in my play. On August 1 I'll move up to the 60s and hopefully not look back. Its pretty clear that I'm as good as anyone in the 27s, but we'll see about the 60s. I always lack a bit of confidence moving up and I usually find that people aren't that much better...again...we'll see what happens. In any case I'm more than adequately rolled for the 60s so if I have a big downswing or I just don't think I'm a winner I can move back down and be fine.

Here are my goals for August:

1500 60s

Continued progress towards world domination

Have fun playing the game - I need to be PLAYING poker...not working poker...I haven't done a good job of this in quite some time

That's about it for this month. Pretty simple.

Next, I'm going to answer a question that I recently recieved. Someone recently noticed me at a large number of turbo sit n go tables. The question was asked: How do you play so many tables? Well, I don't really do anything special. I just play my game. I've been playing SNGs for about 3 years now and using a basic, ICM pushbot, its fairly easy to play a large amount of tables because almost every decision in SNG play is a no brainer. There are a few basic steps to successful multitabling. For starters, you need to be a winning player at a single table. Sooooo many people who are terrible at SNGs have a short term upswing, think they're great players, start playing more tables, have their luck run out, and bust. Then they think that its a result of multitabling. In reality, they just aren't winning players. So, make sure you are a winning player. Talk to other winning players, post hands on forums, and constantly try to improve your game. When you can be sure you're a winning player playing one table, its time to expand to more tables. At this point its basically a question of personal comfort. At first, two tables will seem rushed. Then, after a while, two will seem easy, and you can add more. After you add a few more two will seem really slow. From that point, its just a matter of adding tables as you feel comfortable adding more. At some point, you'll reach a sort of breaking point at which your hourly rate decreases by playing more tables because the quality of their play decreases due to playing too many tables. This # is different for everyone. Some people can play 20+ tables and not lose much profitability. Personally, anything over 12 and my decision making starts to suffer. Normally, I'm somewhere between 8 and 12 tables depending on how many I have on the bubble or in the money. If I have like 5 tables at that point and I bust one, I'll probably wait a few minutes to start another since its important to focus on those tournaments that are in that stage.

I hope this was helpful. If anyone else has a question they'd like me to address leave a comment here or email me at absolutepokeraccount@hotmail.com

Sooooooooo...I shipped the 1k for that prop bet plus another 200 because a guy bet me that I couldn't hit 40k TLB points for the week on AP. That was a bad idea for him. I basically got that done a day early and completely destroyed the other two guys who were in the bet. So that was a nice 1.2k just for playing for the week plus another 4.5k for the week in winnings. I've moved up now and I'm playing a mix up $71 and $109 sngs on AP. These are so ridiculously soft its just amazing. I love it. That's that.

I've started making monthly goals so here they are for July:
1. Play enough to win the monthly TLB on AP (challenge)
2. Don't be results oriented
3. World Domination (work in progress)
4. Don't tilt and play nl cash
5. Destroy the 109 level and don't doubt myself at that level.

Side bet that I WILL ship

So I'm in a TLB race next week on AP. Three of us are putting up $333 so there's gonna be basically a 1k pool. There's basically very little chance that I won't win this. One of the guys is getting a 1.5:1 handicap but he still doesn't play high enough to compensate for this. Nor do I think he'll play the type of crazy volume that I think I will. The other guy is really good, but I think I can play more volume than him. I'm pretty confident...now its just a matter of me putting in the hours and shipping it.

If you want to follow my progress you can do so in this thread.

Ship it one time...

I'm currently 13 of 177 at the second break of the AP 60k Sunday tourney. First takes down over 15k. That would be sooooo nice. I just reached Elite VIP at AP so now I'm pretty much gonna have enough Absolute Reward Points to buy into the Saturday 150k and the Sunday 60k for free every week. Nice! I'll update as the night goes on...unless something catastrophic happens and I just completely forget.

JUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I played 1000 SNGs last month. I won about $2850. I've played about 150 SNGs this month. I've won about $2850. Go figure. I'm glad April is over!

HHHHHHHHHokay

May is over. Exhale. I HATED poker last month. I played exactly 1000 SNGs in May for a profit of just under 3k. That's WAAAAAAAYYY below average. For the year I have an ROI of ~16.5%. If I had run normal that would have been a profit of 7260. Plus, I was bubble boy in the MATH this week when I made a completely idiotic resteal against TripJax. There were 5 of usI had T30k with about 100k in play and 15 people left. After that I lost every single race. It was just absolutely disgusting. That was a great way to cap off the month :). Basically, since my last post I took an AMAZING trip to Texas, and then, since I unexpectedly had no internet while down there for five days, I played about 350 SNGs (so that I could avoid paying kurokitty $500) in the final four days of the month. On Absolute, with no turbos and not a ton of traffic, that's a TON of poker. Ugh. Glad that's over.

On the bright side, the trip to Texas was an awesome experience. I've never been to a mountainous region and southwest Texas definitely fit the bill. We went to Big Bend National Park and basically spent a day hiking through the mountains and throwing rocks at Mexico. I'm not a big nature buff, but this was some cool stuff.

Just incredible views all around...















Well, that's really I have for ya. I'm almost through two chapters of the book. An excerpt will very likely be posted early next week.

SNG Bankroll Requirements

I'm going to answer a question that was asked by kurokitty. If anyone else has random SNG questions or just general questions I'll probably be willing to dedicate a post to it since my life is generally boring and finding a lot of topics to write about is a challenge.

Note: specific questions are good...questions like "what is your SNG strategy?" obviously are not answerable in one post

kurokitty: What are your 'roll requirements for SNGs, how many buy-ins do you need?

Well, its actually a somewhat complicated question. Its a little bit differnt for every person. For me, its very simple. I like to have 100 buyins at all times because I expect a large portion of my income to come from poker.

How many buyins YOU need to play SNGs is dependent on a few factors:
1. What is your ROI?
2. Are you willing to move down during a downswing?
3. Is your bankroll replaceable if you go busto?

The higher your ROI, the smaller your bankroll can be. If you're beating a game for a sustained 20% then you can probably get away with having 50 buyins. If you're beating a game for 5% or less you probably should keep about 200 buyins. Of course, if you're willing to move down then you can keep whatever roll you want as long as you're disciplined enough to move down when needed and not take shots outside your roll. If you can replace your roll (and you're a winning player of course) then I think it can be appropriate to take shots on occasion.

Basically, if you're looking to play recreationally, you can get away with 50 pretty easily, but if you're going to play professionally, I'd recommend at least 100 buyins. I'm beating the 44s on Absolute Poker for about a 17% ROI (that's DESTROYING the game) and I'm still keeping 100 buyins. Could I get away with less? Yeah probably, but when I went 3 for 56 a couple weeks ago I would have been basically broke if I had 50 buyins. Now, those kind of runs are basically unheard of (easily the worst run I've ever had), but if you play long enough they're going to happen. That's just variance.

Hope this is helpful for everyone.