Belated Update

Long time no post, despite a couple of slaps on the wrist from Mr Wealthall, sorry Nick.

So the challenge update, barring some major binkage in a tournament i’m going to fall short of the $50k target, I suspect i’ll end up somewhere around $40k up for the year. Which whilst it will be an improvement on 2008 both in terms of bottom line and roi, will not be $50k. I’m currently just over $33,000 up for the year, but will be spending most of November in Vegas (mbn etc). Heading over there to play most of the Venetian Deepstacks festvial. BlackBelt Poker are putting me into $3k woth of events and have sold some shares in two other events. In all liklehood i’ll play about 8-$10x$330 events  (depending on how many day twos i make) and 2x$550. Realistically i’m hoping for two cashes and one deep run. I’ll also be buying into some evening events in the $60-$150 range and will play some cash if at all possible. Will be out there for the WSOP final table, which I’ve got a media pass for so will be working/railing that.

Back to the challenge for a moment, it was always going to be steep to succeed, and an effective six weeks taken out for the BlackBelt Grading process meant that for that period of time I was playing in games (sit and gos as opposed to satellites) where my hourly rate was far lower than expected. Coupled with a lazy June, and a poor September and the low volume i’ll be putting in during November and December and there’s no doubt i’ll fall short. There’s always next year!

I’d like to thank Nick for giving me the opportunity to write this blog at On the Rail, barring a cash chirp in Vegas or a big mtt score between now and December31st this will be the last update, i’ll just have to think of another challenge for 2010.

The Shipping News

I won my first online no-limit hold’em tournament for quite a while on the 16th July. I play the $16.50 turbo that starts at 22.40 on Stars quite a lot, it’s a fun tourney to play as it usually gets over 2k runners and generates a first prize of $5k plus and is done in under four hours. I’ve bubbled the final twice in the past so it was all the more sweeter to win it. I went to the final table tied for the chiplead and allthough the joint chip leader was on my left i was always in control, well as much as you can be in a turbo tournament and the $5,519 that i got for first is my biggest single win on Stars. I might put the final table up on a re-player such as the Cardrunners one. The win really couldn’t have come at a better time as Friday 17th July was my last day as Strategy Editor of PokerPlayer. I’m now a freelance journalist/semi-pro poker player. I’m quite excited about not working a 9-5/10-6 as i’m definitelynot a morning person. I think i could get used to the get up at midday, do a few hours work in the afternoon, play poker in the evening/early morning, routine that i’ve been keeping this past week. 

Juuuuuuuuuuuune

June was a good month

I always get the urge to play live poker during the WSOP which is good as my motivation to play online poker during the hot 30 degrees days that we’ve been having has been minimal. As previously mentioned I finaled two £500 events for a combined score of just over £6,000, although some of that went to backers.

As for the $50,000 challenge, three weekends of live poker and the aforementioned lack of motivation to play online poker meant that online wise June was my worse month to date with the bottom line being a profit of a little over $1k.

In July i’ll be playing two events at the Vic’s London Poker Championships a £200 and a £500 but that’s the only live poker i’m planning on playing so will have plenty of time to grind.

Adventures in live and online poker

Apologies for the lack of updates,  here’s what i’ve been up to in May and June…

Online:

- I completed the BlackBeltPoker Grading and 45,000 hands, 1100 sit and gos and 120 hours of online poker later i attained Blue Belt status, which i was delighted with.

- With the BBP profit and a bit of online play on my usual sites, i cleared a little over $2k for the month of May so the $50k challenge at the end of May was $19,000

Live:

I’ve had a lot of live success recently literally doubling the number of lines on my Hendon Mob database profile in the last month. First i min-cashed in the monthly Dusk Till Dawn deepstack for £450 (buy-in = £330), i’d satellited in online for about £80 though.

The next weekend i went to Bristol for their festival, the £550 freezeout had 95 runners had 15k starting stack and one hour levels with loads of play. I got a good stack early and pretty much cruised to the last two tables, upon which esccalating blinds meant most players were short stacked. Still i payed well and eventually busted 4th for £4500.

The week after saw me make my BlackBelt debut. I went to Aberdeen to play the GUKPT summer series. Three events a £200, £300 and a £500. I made two finals finishing 7th in the £200 for £630 and 3rd in the £500 for £3280 (it only got 39 runners). I was gutted not to win the £500 as i had a third of the chips in play when nine handed (mbn) and half of them when three handed, i misplayed a hand and then lost a race though and that was that.

As for July i’ll be back to the online grind and hopefully play a live comp or two as i always get the bug to play live during WSOP time, there are a couple of festivals in London so i’ll probably put in an appearence at a £200 or £300 pound freezeout somewhere.

A third of the way there

To quote Nick Weallthall from a recent edition of PokerPlayer, ‘There’s nothing sweeter than to be on a bloody great heater.’

Dear reader(s) if only all months were as good as April has been then this challenge would be like value betting a calling station when you are holding the immortal nuts. I’ve continued to run above expectation on Stars and have run at least somewhat decent on Full Tilt. Add in a quick $1585 profit player hyper tubo six man satellites* on Stars (the ones to the Nightly 100k, they run from about 0.20 to 1.40a.m) and you get a $7144 uptick (wiiiiiiiiiiiii)

For the next four weeks I’ll be grinding away on BoylesPoker playing $10-$50 sit and gos, had my first session on there last night (my username is durrrrballs if you want to sharkscope me to see my progress) and was down a few buy-ins. I got a $600 first deposit bonus (won’t count towards challenge totals, as my Full Tilt rakeback isn’t) and hopefully i can make about $1-$2 game and still add $2000+ of so to the challenge total. Will still be playing a bit on Stars/Tilt on my days off from Blackbelt but not a lot in total.

*Online sit and go expert/coach reckons the max attainable roi% in these hyper turbos ($54 buy-in, top two win a  $162 seat, 4th – 6th $0) is about 3-5%. Currnetly i’m running at 5% over a 934 sample size. I;m keeping these stats seperate from the mtts/satellites stats as they’ll skew everything.

With all that being said here’s the maths bit:

Cliff notes – on track (just) to reach target

Monthly/Yearly totals

April: (mtts etc)

Buy-ins total $15485

Profit $5559

Roi%: 35.8%

+ $1585 in hyper turbos = $7144

 

Yearl Profit:

(profit to March $10,011+$7144) = $17155

 

So a third of the way through the year and i’m just over a third of the way to my target. However with Summer around the corner i’ll likely play less in July/August than i normally would and December is always a funny month. So that means June and September through November will be key, hell i for one would welcome the April showers to continue throughout the year.

 

Next blog will be a recap from the first BlackBeltPoker training session which takes place Tuesday 28th April.

April Update

So far April has been going really well, im about another $2.3k closer to my target and am running at 36.5% ROI which is good for me.

Now to the interesting stuff I’ve been selected to do the grading process at Black Belt Poker which you can find out more at blackbeltpoker.com. It’s an honour just to have been selected among the 50. There are at least three GUKPT champions doing the grading and a lot of quality players most of whom if not all play for a living. In fact i may well be the only one doing the grading who’s job isn’t professional poker player.  The grading involves playing four tables minimum for six hours a day, five days a week – or an average week for me . I jest of course I only play for five hours a day! 

Anyway so gg free time and social life for the month of May, but although the sacrifices are high so are the rewards. I’m not sure what i can and can’t say regarding the specifics of sponsorship deals but of the 50, eight players will become brown belts. These players will be the faces of BBP, they will get a serious monthly sponsorship package and a large WSOP sponsorship package.

I’m determined to give it my best shot and learn as much as i can from the weekly workshops that will be held and  learn as much as i can from the talented players that have been selected. It’s a cliche but i feel like i’ve already won something, just to be picked among the 50.

Bring on the grind.

First Quarter Summary

Here’s a summary of how the first three months have gone:

Jan: Average

Feb: Good

March: Stinker

Overall: Must try harder

I got off to a typically sluggish start in January as there was the standard festive hangover and also at work we re-launched PokerPlayer which took up a lot of time as it should. February was awesome apart from my laptop going busto, which meant my volume for the month was low, but I ran hot like the sun so my profits were well out of proportion with what they should’ve been. In March it was one of those months where you just find yourself playing to break even.

Luckily at the end of March I had a bit of coup and this blog could’ve been over before it started as I was 4/30 in the Ipoker $320 tournament and it was $55,000 for first. Sadly I lost a race and then ran a pair into an overpair and busted in 20th for $2,000. Still musn’t grumble as that was about 90% of my profit for the month of March.

The stats bit:

Jan:

Buy-ins: $8102

Profit: $2497

ROI%: 30.8%

Feb:

Buy-ins: $5880

Profit: $5411

ROI%: 92%

March:

Buy-ins: $16892

Profit: $2103

Overall:

Buy-ins: $30874

Total Profit: $10,011

Total Roi%: 32.4%

So ROI% wise I’m on track, volume wise I’m slacking. But with a few big tournament series running in the next two months and WSOP satellites starting everywhere I should be able to hammer out some volume in April-June purely as they’ll be more games to choose from. Also this is necessary as it’s inevitable that I’ll not be as motivated to sit in front of a computer screen in the summer months, that being if we get a summer this year.

How I plan to go about making the target

Next post will be a first quarter update…

I warn you there’s a bit of maths involved in this post.

I’d guesstimate about 90% of my play is satellites, with the other 10% being made up of multi-table tournaments and the odd sit and go. On a number of sites there’s a system where when you qualify for a bigger event – say the PokerStars Sunday Million – you can withdraw from the event and get the $215 paid into your account as $T – these are dollars that can be used for tournaments and sit and gos, but not cash games. Now you can’t withdraw these, but there are a number of sites and forums where you can sell these $T for around 98-99% of their value. So that’s what I do, rinse and repeat these satellites, and there are many other regulars who do the same, too many really, shame.

One of the reasons most of my play is satellites is that they usually only take one to one and a half hours to complete and I can play many at once and I don’t have the time to play tournaments during the week. I’ll get into some more satellite specifics in future blogs.

To make the $50k target I need to average $4,166 profit a month, over the past two years I’ve ran at approaching 25% ROI over a sample size of 3000+ multi-table tournaments and satellites. So that means I need to put somewhere around $17,000 worth of volume in a month to have a shot at making the target, if I run to expectation of course. Also to put in more volume I need to play either longer hours or more tables at once or a combination of the two. Any of those options should make my ROI drop a bit, although I’ve put that volume in for a few months in 08′ with no adverse effects.

Next post will be a first quarter update…

$50k Challenge Intro Post

Hey there,

So to the challenge, it’s quite simple in that I’m aiming to make $50,000 profit from online poker in 2009, shocking given the title of this post

Now to some that amount may seem mental and to someone like Brian Townsend it’s roughly one buy-in, the point is its all relative. Looking at my average buy-in for 2008 it was right around the $50 mark so I’m aiming to win 1000 buy-ins.  To put this in perspective that’ll be about a 66% increase on what I managed to eek out last year and I’ve got a full-time job too, although it helps that I work in the poker industry.

So what can you expect from this blog? The good news is that as I mostly play satellites there will be very few hand histories as there just aren’t that many interesting spots. Hopefully I’ll be able to give a good insight into what it’s like to combine an aggressive hobby with work and as I work on a poker magazine I should be able to add some interesting anecdotes from the players I get to meet as part of the job.