Hey all,
Thought that my 1000th post might be a good time for me to share a little bit about myself and encourage some of the newer guys to pratice bankroll management and game selection, study lots, and who knows if you will be writing a post like this next year.
Before I begin, I would really like to say that without the help of the guys who consistently provided top notch advice in late 2006 and Early 07, I would not be where I am at in sngs right now. Im sure you guys know who you are, hopefully I will have the opportunity to personally thank you if I am ever able to get to a STTF wsop gathering or something.
A little over a year ago, I had been playing live in Toronto every night, a life which I am thrilled I got myself away from. Near the end of a month I had back to back nights losing 4 buyins ($2000), which combined with the rent and credit card bills took a large toll on my bankroll. After reviewing my play and decisions to continue sitting at the table those nights, I decided that I wasn’t being very responsible or 'professional' if this was going to be my sole source of income. My game selection was terrible: I should have moved to one of the three softer 1-2 tables instead of sitting with 5 regulars on nights when the 2-5 was slow. To make matters worse, I started both nights losing a buyin to a river beat when all the money was in the pot and the cards exposed, I was playing 'stuck' and frustrated, and definitely not on my best game.
With a few days left in the month, I decided that I would relax and play a little bit online, and return to the live game when I was recharged and ready. I logged into Ultimatebet and saw that I had $4.40 in my bankroll, and thought to myself 'what if $4.40 is all that you had to your name?' Instead of pulling out the credit card and sitting in the types of games I was used to playing, I decided to set a goal for myself - Play 500 $1.1 sit and gos. I figured playing them to teach myself a lesson was far better than playing them because they were the only games I was bankrolled for. I think since the number 500 was far more about the goal than the results or profits, my enthusiasm was much higher to achieve this goal than it had been in weeks of playing live.
I am pretty big on record keeping, and at the time I didnt know about tourneymanager (even though it isnt supported by UB anyways) and kept all of my stats in a text file. Heres what that looked like (not the hilarious comments at the beginning, like QQ meets AA and flopped set vs flush):
At the beinning, I only had enough to play 4 tables at once (as you can see) ... after that, things took off.
After 500 of these, a ROI of 44%, I realized what a huge beat it was that I was playing regular speed tournaments. For the $5.5 tournaments, with a roll in the triple digits, I moved to the $5.5
I didnt stay there long, because I set a goal for myself to move up to the $11s when my roll hit $500, and after clearing an 'ultimatepoints' promotion for a $70 bonus, I was there after 110 ish $5.5s
Then my BR hit $500, and since stakes were now doubling every time, I moved up to the $11s and set a bankroll goal of $2000 to begin playing the $22s. The $11s were going well, and I decided to get myself an early christmas present, cash out some of my roll, and buy a 2007FP. Making multitabling a ton easier on my eyes. My roll hit $2k for the first time on Dec 2, which was awesome to me considering it was $56.20 on Nov 9. At this point I started mixing $11s and $22s.
At this point, I started to realize that writing down every single sng finish in notepad really wasn’t accomplishing anything other than making me inefficient with screen space. So with the $22s came the end of these hilarious notepad files, RIP:
All of this time, what I should have been doing is moving to somewhere like Stars or Party that supported Pokertracker ‘profit’ results (UB only supports hand statistics) but instead I moved on to an equally hilarious way of tracking my results: tally sheets with pen and paper. Is it just me, or was I moving backwards with technology?
Anyways, no more pretty notepad screenshots from ultimatebet. I then moved to partypoker, swapping a friend of mine $1000 on UB for $1000 on party. I cashed out a nice chunk of my roll on UB, and left $3k in there (which I would later donk off playing 15-30 HU LHE, a mistake which I regret and still pisses me off to this day.) Why would I play a game where I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing (compared to sngs?) and blow money in an hour or two that took me much longer than an hour or two to earn? It was a good learning experience.
Things kept going well on party. At this point, I was browsing 2p2 a ton and really learning from all of the content there. Theshadows thread was a huge help to me.
Here are some easier to look at graphs from tourney manager:
22s, I set a $3k profit goal for these until I would move up to $33s:
33s, I planned to win $3500 at these, for $7500 in my party account, then cash out $ 2500 for some personal spending (new computer, second dell monitor) and move up to the $ 55s:
WOOOHOOO, $7500 in my account, now I am playing high stakes $55s …. Oops, running bad or playing bad, gotta move down cuz not winning was tilting me, affecting my confidence, and I wasn’t enjoying it as much, this is in march/april of 07:
Ok, that didn’t go as planned. My new idea was to move down to the $ 33s, rebuild my confidence and really work on my game. I wanted to earn $6k, for a $10k roll , and start with the $55s again. At this time, I also bought idleminer so I would have PT stats on almost any player that sat in the sngs with me. I took note taking, session review, and game selection to a new level.
At this point, with $10k I figured its time to move up. I started observing the $55 and $109 games, and it was a coincidence that at t hat time, there were a bunch of regulars loading sets for the $55s, and t he $109s didn’t have many common players. With my stomach pretty nervous, I ‘took a shot’ and loaded a set of $55s. It turned out pretty well, and from here I never looked back  Not long after, I splurged on a new computer and a second 2007fp. For the most part, it was $100+ buyins for me from here on, unless they were loading slow and i needed to fill up:
This post is getting pretty long and Im getting sick of taking screenshots, also since moving up to the $100s I have played on three different computers (upgrading is fun!) I dont feel like taking the time to combine all of that. I will leave you with my last 2.5k games on my current PC:
Recently I took 6 weeks off of sngs (I have taken two breaks in the last year of playing, to not get burned out) and Im pumped to get back at them. I was also approached by Stoxpoker and hired as one of their SNG coaches, which I took as an enormous compliment. It felt great for me to feel like I had come that far in just a year of really taking this seriously. For those of you looking to improve, I would rank the following three skills as most important:
Bankroll management. If you are busto, you arent going to make monies. If you manage your bankroll well, you shouldn’t go busto.
Play games you can beat (game selection) and whenever possible, play them only when you are at your best.
Study.
a)You wont beat the games as you move up for a significant rate unless you play significantly better than your opposition. Don’t just read the forums, read them with a purpose. Every time you load up STTF, tell yourself you are doing it to get better (or to post in the [censored] thread.
b) Study your opponents. If you see the s ame player frequently, use t his to your advantage by either avoiding him or exploiting him. Tons of regulars have tons of holes in their game, find out what they are, and you will reap huge benefits. (Idleminer helped me huge with this)
Give back.
a)There have been a ton of posters who have given quality advice for long periods of time, Im sure many of you recognize their names/avatars every time they post. Some of them arent posting as often, they have moved on to different games, don’t visit sttf anymore, or just have different [censored] going on in their lives. I think if you’ve learned from them, pick up where they left off and return the favor.
b) Post quality responses. I think there are sometimes too many people posting ‘fold’ ‘push’ or even worse, just quoting someone else that posted that. Why don’t you try and help the guy who is attempting to learn? When I have the time, I like to let the poster know ‘I would be mucking AJ, AQ but probably calling AK, JJ+’ or ‘I think 66-88 is close here, but would probably push 99’ …. The worse thing that can happen is that your range might not be right, and this is a good thing – DUCY? You can learn when a more experienced player might see your post and explain why his range would differ. Be paitent when you help the new guys, you never know if they might learn a ton and really be able to help you with some advice in a future thread of yours.