It's Been A While

Hell, I'm not even sure how many people check this anymore. I know Nikki has it in her RSS feed so she'll see this. If there's anyone else out there still checking in - Thanks!

A couple weeks ago I started doing a thing online called the Monopoly Challenge. Here's what the board looks like:



Basically the goal is to make it around the board - building your bankroll as you go. You start with a $100 bankroll so you have to play the $5.50 HU SNGs until your roll is $112.50 - then you move onto the next square. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Well let me say that it took me freaking FOREVER to make it past the first square. 66 frakkin' SNGs later I finally made it!

As I type this I'm playing square two - a $5.50 MTT on my own dime. This one happens to be a Pot Limit Hold'em game. I currently am chip leader with 7 players left. Go me! LOL

In other Robbie Robb poker news, I played in the Pokerstars WSOP Freeroll last night. The top 3 places all get a $12,500 WSOP Main Event prize package. 3048 players started the tourney and at one point midway through I was sitting in 3rd. Unfortunately I had a couple bad hands and ended up busting out 78th. So no $12K for me but I was still quite happy with my play.

During the course of my Monopoly Challenge I'll do my best to keep this updated with the current status.

Monopoly Challenge
Level 1: COMPLETE!
Bankroll: $113.50

Level 2: COMPLETE!
Bankroll: $146.75

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 3913841

Gasp! Twice! In a Week!

So, over at the forum a bunch of people have been giving a SNG Step Challenge a shot. Basically the way they're working it is that you start at the lowest level SNG. You win, you move up a level. You finish ITM you stay at that level until you win. You lose, you drop down a level. I'm tempted to try it but I have been running so horribly bad in SNGs that I don't think I'm going to risk it right now.

My $10 HU matches are still going quite well. Been a little busy so usually only squeeze in one or two a day. I'm 7 for 8 now. Can't complain about that.

Yes!

Almost 5 months since my last post. God do I suck or what?

Poker has been...no wait....*I* have been poker's bitch this past month. The bankroll has taken a real shit-kicking. Went on a horrible downswing on the $16SNGs and $50NL was also not terribly kind to me.

The past couple days I've started playing some $10 NL HU matches. So far I'm 3 for 3 on those but whenever I try to play one of the 4-player ones I can't win. (tried a $5.25 one yesterday and busted 1st round. Today I played a $10.50 one that I finished 2nd in. Unfortunately it's winner-take-all)

I don't know why...

...I can't keep this blog updated on a regular basis. Just a quick update right now. I decided that this month I am sticking to ONLY playing $16 SNGs. I had a money making month in January and I lost a bit of money in February. The thing is, I'd have actually made money if it wasn't for my little experiment at the $27 SNG. I only played six of them or something like that and only placed in the money once so they were an overall loser for me, bringing me down into the negatives.

This month, however, has been going quite well. So far, other than an $11 tourney and a $3 tourney (which, on the whole, was entirely -EV for me), I've stuck to my guns and haven't ventured outside the $16 realm. So far so good. I've got 53 under my belt with a 47% finish ITM showing a 33% ROI. That's pretty good.

As a comparison - my numbers for the entire year at ONLY $16 are: 265 played, 40.75% ITM, 20% ROI. So, well the sample size is still small, it does seem show I'm trending upward for better finishes.

This is a good thing. As it gets me one step closer to my goal of playing almost full time.

January

Wow...it's been a long freakin' time since I wrote on here. Let's do a quick recap. November SUCKED. December was better and January has been pretty kickass! I decided in early January to pretty much forego the cash games and play strictly SNGs to build up the bankroll. I'll occasionally sit down at a $25NL table if I've only got 15 or 20 minutes and REALLY want to play cards. I had actually kinda forgot about this blog until Ash posted on Nikki's blog saying I need to update.

So anyway, I've been playing the $16 turbo SNGs at Stars for the past month with the occasional foray up to the $27 turbos. Up until the past few days I have been making money hand over fist. Then the past few days hit. I don't think I had a single hand where I was all in with the dominant hand win - including aces against 59s!!! Oh, and the reverse doesn't hold true. I end up with something like sevens or tens in position, jam and end up against queens, kings, or aces. Of course THEIR dominant hand holds up. But those beats don't really bother me - they had the better hand, they deserve to win it most of the time.

Yesterday I played in a $3.30 tourney for fun and the crippling hand was AK. I raise it up, it gets reraised, and, to make a longish story short, three of us end up all in. I flip over the AKo, reraiser flips up kings and the follower flips over ATo (!!!). Wanna guess who won? Here's a hint: ten on the flop, ten on the river.

There's four more days of poker left in the month. I'm hoping to turn around my $100 slide from the past few days and build it back up. Prior to Thursday my winnings graph looked like Google stock. Now it looks more like Nortel...

It's been a while...

Wow, it's been a awhile since I posted here. Obviously, lots has gone on in the poker world in the past week or so and there isn't really much more I can say that others haven't said better than I. So instead I'll talk about the game itself. Specifically, I'll talk about Season 3 of The Talking Poker Forum League on PokerStars.

The season kicked off this past Sunday with a NL event. Unfortunately, I ended up going out on a horrible beat to jillaj. It sucked. It was horrible. I wanted to kick a cat. Well, okay, not really, but it was a bad beat. I didn't place anywhere near the money OR the points in the first event.

Last night was event #2, PLHE. I think I played a fairly tight, aggressive game that served me well. I was consistently near the top of the table until I made one bad play that cost me about 1/4 of my stack and actually ended up dropping me down to short stack for a while. I fought back and by playing tight, managed to outlast many above me until it was HU between Boobie Lover and I. Needless to say, once HU, I loosened up a bit and actually ended up getting dealt some kickass hands. When HU started Boobie had about 18,000 to my 3,000. I fought up to 9K at one point. The last hand was both of us all-in on the turn. I had K9 and he had KT. The flop gave him his T, the turn gave us our K, the river gave me my 9. I lost. Still, it was a kickass game that I feel I played really well. That 2nd place finish bumped me up to 3rd in the league standings, but it's still REALLY early. The next event is a NL event this coming Sunday.

Talking Poker Radio is ON THE AIR!

Hey everyone! I've just launched a new side-project, in conjuction with the Talking Poker forum. It's called Talking Poker Radio and is a (hopefully) weekly podcast bringing you the latest in forum news, poker news and gossip, and poker strategy from around the internets. You can download the first episode by visiting the forum and looking for the Talking Poker Radio thread. It should be right at the top.

We'll soon have a RSS feed up that you can subscribe to using iTunes or your choice of Podcast aggregator as well.

Busy tourney day yesterday

Wow, had an insanely busy tourney day yesterday. First up was the UltimateBet.com $1M Freeroll monthly qualifier. The top 300 from this event wins an entry into next week's big game - a shot at winning over $500K US. That started at 2pm. While it was still going on, I had an Online Forum Challenge $5, $6500 Added tourney start over at Stars. Unfortunately I got into a hand with queens against kings and neither of us improved. End of game for me. The UB one was still going on though, and, while somewhat short stacked, I managed to finish in the top 300 so I'm playing a BIG one next week. I've shown that I'm capable of doing well in large fields. I figure this field will be around 2500 or so. I just need to play my 'A-game' and not take any stupid chances.

Then last night I was playing daily $500 freeroll that I've done well in my first two attempts. Well, last night I bubbled which sorta pissed me off. I was short stack and dealt 55. I pushed all my chips in and had a big stack call me and flip over A6s. Flop came 789. Anyone wanna guess the turn??? If you guessed T, you get a cookie! At that point I was pleading for a 6 or a J. No such luck. Just call me Bubble Boy.

Then there was the final event of the Talkingpoker.com forum league. I *NEEDED* to finish top two last night to win a spot in Wednesday's Tournament of Champions. I'm not playing in Wednesday's ToC. I had one great hand that I completely played wrong. I had 66 in the big blind. TP limped in so the two of us saw a flop of 695. I checked, TP bets 65, and I raise to 130. He calls. The turn comes a 5. Fireworks are goin' off here. The only hands I'm behind right now is 99 or 55. I check, TP checks. The river is a 9. I sink. I *KNOW* TP just filled up with nines full. I check. He leads out for 265 and I make the crying call.

One good thing that did come of this hand was that TP critiqued my play on it. He thought it was "weird" that I would check-raise the flop then check the turn. Looking back, he's absolutely correct. I completely misplayed the slowplay and it ended up costing me some chips. I should have bet out the turn. Maybe 1/2 pot or something like that. He also had congratulated me on not going broke on that hand. If he had bet more than about 300 on the river, I was laying it down. I was SURE he had a 9, and probably should have laid it down anyway, but I just couldn't get my hand to click the fold button. Anyway, that 265 hurt my stack and it didn't get much better after that. I busted out 12th. So the defending champion passes the crown over to the new league champion: Rogue23 (aka TP). Good game! I'm looking forward to Season 3 of the league.

Tourney scores

Well, I dropped $50 into poker.com simply because of their "Initial Depositor's" Bonuses (Bonii???). First, I get an entry into a Freeroll next week where the winner walks away with a $12,500 WSOP ME package. Right now there are about 140 people in it. The other bonus is that I get 7 days worth of "$500 Freeroll" entries. I've played 2 now. Both of them, oddly enough, had 63 people. The one yesterday I finished 4th in for a $50 score and tonight's I finished 2nd in for a $100 score. I've now quadrupled my money and still have 5 days left to play! My original $50 has already been moved away from that site and now I just have to see how the rest of my week goes for tourney cashes.

Go me!

I'm sorta back.

Well, I'm back playing some cash games. I scored a payout in the one league event so I decided to splurge and invest 80 cents in a round of .02-.04 limit. I've since played 8 sessions and have had 7 winning sessions. My current BB/100 Hands is 19.88. Of course, the sample size is REALLY REALLY small so I'm not putting anything in that amount. I fully expect it to drop to a more reasonable level.

I'm certainly not expecting to build up my roll to the thousands playing 2c/4c - it's more of a way to pass the time. You can only watch sooo much HNN and court shows.

I'm still alive!

Hey All,

Just wanted to check in here and let y'all know (you know, all like 5 of you that visit this thing. Well, maybe 5...) that I'm still around and still playing poker. Right now though, I'm completely freeroll whoring. If there's a freeroll, and my schedule works, I'll be there. You can find me in WSOP freerolls at FTP, beginner freerolls @ Titan, Million Dollar qualifier freerolls @ UB, "Fun Step" SNGs at Poker.com. You name it, I'm there! :)

The best freeroll I've played in recently was the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP). That was a blast. 2247 peeps all dukin' it out for a kick-ass WSOP entry. Nope, I didn't make it.

One other quasi-freeroll is the Million Dollar Freeroll at UB. I say quasi because, while they do offer completely free freerolls, they also have UB point freerolls (pointrolls???) which is what I'm playing. Last week I played in the daily and won a seat to the weekly last Friday. In the weekly, I won a seat to the monthly the next Saturday. (as did Nikki) We both played in the monthly along with 816 other hopefuls. The top 300 would win entries into the big event on July 15th. First place in it wins a HELLA COOL prize pack. USD$500K, WSOP entry, Aruba entry, 4 other tourneys, a year's worth of Sunday tourneys, lessons from UB pros. Some crazy shit man. Right now there are about 1800 people registered for it. That's a pretty decent sized field for a person's odds at winning (compared with some of the others).

If you haven't checked out this freeroll from UB, definitely check it out. If you've got the UB points to spend, I recommend going that route. In today's daily, there were 27 people started with an additional 7 alternates that joined the game. So 34 people, 10 spots move on. While I was short stack at one point (18/18), I doubled-up a couple times and finished in 5th. So I'm playing this Sat. night in the weekly where something like 200 people move on to the monthly final. Maybe I'll see you there!

Stone Cold Busted

I'm broke. I lost my last $1.78 last night. I had considered trying to turn it into a bigger roll but it was simply too frustrating to have to play the .02-.04 levels. It just simply isn't possible to apply ANYTHING that is learned in poker books at this level. Raise with strong hands? People call you anyway. I could raise every street to the river with the best hand and some donkey will chase with some stupid hand like 47o and catch his straight. Yes, I know - overtime he's going to donate more of his money than he'll win. However, at this level, it's more likely that he'll end up donating it to a fellow donkey who chases a board of AA7 with JTo to runner-runner broadway (or RR a boat).

So here's my plan: finish up the league events. Nikki's bankrolling me for those :). I don't anticipate winning the league but if I get my ass in gear and get my act together, I SHOULD, at the very least, make the ToC and possibly finish ITM for the league.

Completely read/re-read HoH Iⅈ Sklansky's Theory of Poker, Advanced Hold 'Em, and SSHE. I'm also going to read Lee Jones WLLH. I'll probably also re-read Phil Gordon's Little Green Book. And by re-read I mean commit these motherfuckers to memory.

When I redeposit I figure that I'll save up and drop at least US$300 back into play. Then I'll start playing Limit at the .10-.20 levels until I'm crushing that then slowly start to move up levels. I haven't got an exact number in mind to move up levels (as I'm going to start out bankrolled for levels higher than .10-.20 (I suppose, following the 300BB rule, I'd be able to start at .50-1.00 but I'd be far more comfortable having a larger roll before playing that level)) but I would imagine that I'll keep it around the 1200-1500BB area. I'll also play the small buyin NL tourneys ($5 or less).

Of course, I'll also keep playing the forum events as those are great fun!

So things will probably get fairly quiet around here for a while. I'll probably make the occasional forum event related post and also post thoughts on what I've read but there won't be much other than that.

I suck

I'm almost broke. I suck.

I'm going to continue playing in the forum league events but that's only because they're fun. I don't really mind losing the $10 there.

I'm going to bunker down with a decent collection of poker books and not resurface until I'm confident I can crush the lower limits.

Saturday's Thursday & Friday recap

I suck. I had meant to make these posts at the end of each day of poker playing but didn't get around to it. So Thursday and Friday were days of ups and downs. I actually didn't play much poker: four $6.50 SNGs and sat a .05-.10 NL ring game for about 45 minutes. Results were mixed.

Daily net (both days combined): -$4.65
MTD: $28.06
PMTD: -$105.07

Thursday's Wednesday recap

I didn't feel like posting last night. I only played two games yesterday, a $6.50 turbo and the 3rd forum league event. I finished in 3rd in the turbo and 5th in the league event. I was actually really happy with the way I played the league event though. Unfortunately my QQ ran into Wes' AK and the poker gods decided to flop an ace. Oops. Ah well. The shittiest part of the whole event was that I bubbled the point bubble. That sorta sucked. I'm still in 3rd for the league but I need to get my ass in gear.

Daily net: -$6.70
MTD: $32.71
PMTD: -$77.87

Tuesday wrapup

Played the WWdN tonight. Unfortunately I busted out 67th. It was absolutely horrible. Nikki made it a hell of a lot further than I did but it seemed that almost EVERY all-in race the underdog won. Alas, Nikki was usually the best hand going in...

After busting out of the WWdN I played a $6.50. I finished 3rd in it. Not my best work.

Daily net: $2.90
MTD: $39.41
PMTD: -$105.70

Tuesday, DoR 9 and a Rant followup

I sat down at a 6max .05-.10 NL table at Stars just now (there were no 9 max running). Bought in for the max ($10) and proceeded to dominate the table. I played for 15 minutes. Why only 15 minutes? Everyone else left. I was there by myself. Well, not totally. One other guy was at the table but he was sitting out (as he had been for most of the 15 minutes I was there). So I left the table, putting my $19.60 in my pocket and strolling away. For those not so mathematically inclined, that works out to almost $37/hour. If only I could do that consistently.

So on the forum there is a "reputation" system where you can assign positive and negative rep to people regarding certain posts. I checked my rep today and found a negative rep from some anonymous coward that said "not only collusion but falsifying hand history". I laughed. Nikki then checked her points and found negative rep as well, one minute earlier, presumably from the same anonymous coward. What actually made it even more funny is that this asshat, who I am pretty sure I know exactly who it was, has no power to give negative rep (as he has either no rep or a negative rep). So it doesn't even change our rep score. The unfortunate part of it is that this dumbass isn't even part of the league that we're playing in so I can't even school him on the poker table. So, ******, if you want to grow a sac, feel free to post in the forum publicly or leave a comment here with your forum username - I'll gladly set you straight. Coward.

Monday night wrap-up

Okay, so I didn't play anything else tonight except one .05-.10 NL table for a bit. I was up as high as $13 but left at $10.80. Had too much TV to catch up on.

Daily net: -$23.40 (ouch!)
MTD: $36.51
PMTD: -$105.70 (bigger ouch!)

I knew I didn't like Mondays...

Wow, had an absolutely horrible morning. I started off playing an $11 turbo double shootout to the weekly $1million guaranteed. I like the concept of these particular ones because if you make the final table you get paid (if it fills up). Unfortunately, I didn't make the final table.

Then I played a $6.50 turbo. It had to be the single most, absolutely horrible game I've ever played in my life. There was this one jackass at the table from Rome who was arrogant enough to believe that he was capable of playing 10 tables at a time. Yes, ten! Stupid fucker slowed the game down so much that by the time I went out 4th blinds were 400/800/50. Last time I looked at the lobby the idiot had a 3:1 chip lead headsup too. I hope he isn't representative of all people in Italy. If he is, I never want to visit there. Asshat.

So I tried again, mouse hovering over the 'unregister' button in case he joins. Fortunately he didn't. Unfortunately, it didn't matter. Another slow-ish game that I was up and down in. I ended up down, and out, in 6th when my KcTc all-in is called by 8c4c. Wanna guess the flop??? If you guessed J88 rainbow you win! Which is more than I did. Sure, I caught a king on the river. A little too little a whole lot too late.

I may play some more tonight, but right now it's 19­°C outside and I should probably do something other than sit in front of my laptop.