when other outside factors are involved...

i had said in my first post that one of the reasons i stepped away from online poker was due to burnout. looking back at my spreadsheet (and i highly recommend anyone who plays online poker to keep one of these up and current), i was logging in alot of hours for practically miniscule financial gain. the profit margin was just not there for the time committed. it was like physically participating in the interest rate growth of a bank account.


having upped the ante now, sticking mainly to MTT's, as opposed to the S'n'G's (which i was mainly sticking to), i've found that the profit margin increase is tremendously generous in comparison. the downside though is the time committed. as opposed to an attack that would take roughly an hour (if the cards were running your way), i find myself having to make room for a four hour rollercoaster ride if i find myself going deep into the 180 player tournament.


i had some success over this weekend, cashing in 4 tournaments, making three final tables (winning 1). but in the past couple of days, i haven't come close. i noticed that what burned me out before is slowly creeping up on me again: the determination to play until i cash. on monday, i ended up playing 3 MTT's (going as far as 46th place), and as of last night, playing 4 MTT's (placing 62nd in the first one, and 60th in the fourth). so basically, my investment loss over the two days has totalled a sad little $30.80. the convenience of tournaments beginning ever several minutes makes my mouse clicking finger go trigger happy. so, i am going to discipline myself by putting a stop loss to my account for the day.


yes, there are many factors that contribute to this maniacal behavior:


* donkeys who don't fold ace rag
* players who chase
* big stacks who steam roll over the other players with rag hands that pair up on the turn or river
* the occasional all-in every hand player who cracks your monster pairs with a lucky runner runner straight, flush, or two pairs.


i am willing to accept the fact that this is normal. i don't want to believe anymore that luck is the reason, and that it was not meant to be for me. i see the way my opposition play and remember the days when i too made the same wild calls and donkey decisions.


this is definately a grind, so i must continue to look at it that way. therefor, i am going to discipline myself to play no more than two (perhaps even one if i place in the money the first time) to deter a rapid loss of my profits.


my goal by the end of 2007 is to withdrawal from my account a handsome pocket of change. and in order to do so without sufferring the burnout again, i must accept the fact that not every day will be my day, and that there will be days where even sometimes the donkeys get the best of you. so, today, i will go on to work as i do every day, so that when i return to play at night, i will approach my tables with an open mind, and a stop-loss plan in mind.


i'll end this entry with an updated graph to show where the seven losing games have put my progress. hopefully, the cards and opposition run better for me tonight. enjoy! :)

a cool way to track your winnings and percentages in MTT

thepokerdb.com

it'll give you a whole bunch of percentages to let you see where you are at with your poker progress. although this seems to apply only to MTT's, as opposed to S'n'G's.

so far, i am looking at it like this:

total winnings: $329.04
biggest cash: $216.00
average cash: $82.26
biggest buy-in: $4.00
average field: 180

wins: 1 - 7.14%
seconds: 0 - 0%
thirds: 1 - 7.14%
top three rate: 14.29%
final tables: 3 - 21.43%
cashes: 4 - 28.57% (this is equivalent to the ROI [Return Of Investment] percentage)
total played: 14

tourney results (for ITM [In The Money] finishes, which is the last remaining 18 players or top 10% of field):
7/29/2007 - 1st place - $216.00
7/28/2007 - 3rd place - $85.68
7/27/2007 - 14th place - $8.64
7/21/2007 - 8th place - $18.72

go check it out! it'll let you see the results of other players as well, perhaps even the ones that may face you off at the final table. ;)

let's try this again!

ok folks. so, this is my second attempt to keep my own poker blog. my mission to stay currently updated was heavily thwarted by many overwhelming things in my life at the time. and although they have changed slightly, my determination to commit to writing in this, hopefully, are still the same. my goal here is to spend a short period of time every day, just adding a story or several side notes of my previous days outcome in the world of online poker, sharing with anyone who comes to read, my ups and downs, on what i eventually hope is something that could greatly change my life in the future.

a quick background -

so, like most others newly fresh to the world of texas hold'em within the past several years, i too quickly became an regular internet poker player; and for several reasons. i started showing up to a home game with several high school friends a few months after returning home from college. my skepticism was strong at first when as little as $5 dollars was thrown into a pool for each game. i was handed a strength of hand chart and basically was taught how to play as i went along. at first, it was the family pot type of game, whereas most of us all knew nothing more than what we witnessed on episodes of the WSOP a la ESPN. every week, one of us was walking away with winnings comparable to the equivalent of gas money, enoug to keep us all in. at first, i looked at it as nothing more than a fun social gathering. but with my english degree in hand, i soon found myself diving in to books about the game (as well as history and biography snipets of more recognizeable names), and also relying as well on the internet for as much information as i could absorb in a short period of time. to the lack of my liking though, we were only meeting once a week, if that at all. this did not coincide with my growing interest in the game. so i found the world of online poker.

but let me back up again for a moment.

and so, with my fascination in researching he most random of things, which to this day is a proud habit of mine, i read the poker stories: of overnight success, the changing of lives by the deal of the cards, the emotional triumphs and misfortunes, and the determination by many of what i now too deam as a continual grind of building a bankroll out of either nothing more than a little bit of pocket money put away.

at 27, money is not easy for me to hold on to. i see about 90-95% of it disappear to bills and obligated back debt payments from college every month. basically, i'm working just to keep from being broke. having to let go of money saddens me for the most part. i find it harder and harder to squeeze by as the year goes on. and having failed or lost interest in many other extracarricular endeavors, i decided to give a real money account a try.

of course, there was naiivety involved in the beginning. like most others, i started out with the play money games, having gone from the intial 1,000 in play to 0, and over and over again, until i finally started to stop following the all-in method everyone else was using in the beginning hands and play like i did at my home games. so, over a period of several months, i built my play money up to 80,000+ with many different buy-in levels through the S'n'G and MTT's.

i placed a minimum deposit allowed of $25 dollars on line, and initially had the same up and down experience as with my play money account. i would play the $5 S'n"G's, and watch my account soar in the matter of a few days from $50+ dollars down to my final buy-in. this happened many times over a month or so , until i fould myself spending more time on it than anything else. so, i stepped away for a bit to really research as much strategy as possible. if i wanted to succeed with it, i need to obtain as much knowledge of the game as i could allow myself to.

i'd like to add here that i also promised myself that if i went broke within the $25 dollar deposit, that was going to be the end of poker for me as a serious endeavor.

so, to continue, i learned about bankroll management, disciplinning myself to try as hard not to exceed a percentage of loss in any given day. the standard is 5%, but because i was playing in the $5 dollar S'n'G's, i was basically absorbing 10-20% of my bankroll per day. i would score a big win, followed by several losses in a row. i ended up accumulating the bonus money based on the number of FPP's (Frequent Player Points) that have to be earned so that the site will basically give you another 100% free of your deposit. the jump in money was nice, but soon went away.

through my first 200 games, i watched my bankroll go as high as $175 dollars to as low as $6 dollars within a couple of days. the variance of wins and losses was overwhelming. so, along with other factors involved in my life, both socially and monetarily, i soon found myself in poker burnout. with my account sitting at $146 dollars, i signed off, not to return for what i thought was eternity. i averaged about a $1 dollar profit per week, which realistically got me nowhere.

and so, i went on to other endeavors, until the return of this years WSOP on ESPN. i went looking for my account on my computer, and after watching a few episodes of the final tables for Event 1 and others, i decided to see if i still knew a thing or two.

rather than play the $5 dollar S'n'G, i went down to micro limits, and decided to give an MTT a try. on saturday, with not much to do, i entered a $4+.40 buy-in for a player field of 180 entrants, and coming to the game with an attitude that was very foreign to me: not bringing my emotions into the game. to my surprise, i found myself at the final table within a few hours, going out in eigth place as the short stack at the table for a nice little profit of $18 dollars, and was convinced that i needed to give this thing another go.

as of today, monday the 31st of july, i have cashed in 3 MTT's, winning one tournament the other night for my biggest score ever of $216 dollars, and placing third in a previous one for a profit of $85 dollars. so, to sum it up, after sitting on my ass for a saturday and sunday in the accumulation of about 10 hours of play, and making a total profit of $319 for, that puts me way above my in a shorter period of time what i previously grinded out in the S'n'G's over a period of several months. if you think about it, i basically made about $32 dollars an hour for doing nothing more than playing online poker. i guess i could say that the time away was good, and that i still know what i'm doing. so, to leave off on this very first post, i will insert a graph chart showing the grinding process through my first 200 games, to the enormous profit jump i made within the matter of a weekend. more to come. i'm excited again! until tomorrow...

cheers,

brandt