Quietly Satisfied

Dangerous to say I know, but things are going ok at the moment, I couldn't stop lookign at my results in the end, its just too tempting lol, but and I am quite happy with my play and knowing how I am doing hasn't had any negative effect. Still not able to put in the volume that I would of liked and I think I have only played about 280 $5.50 sngs this month. I have stayed at 9 tables for now as I still don't feel confident of adding more as I think it would affect by roi too much at the moment. I am sure I will get used to it and add more as time goes by, but for now I think 9 is going to be limit for another month or so. The problem with only doing 9 tables and playing the 5.50s is that I am not clocking up enough vpps. I have only knocked up about 780 this month, so just crept into Silver and probably have no chance of reaching Gold by the end of the month. I think therefore my over nitty bankrolling is going to have to change. Even though I set out my bankroll rules on a previous post, I have not been sticking to them and I am still being over cautions. I have £2.1k in my poker roll ($3.5k) and I am still playing the 5.50s lol. So I have decided I am gonna move back up to the 11s in March and take it from there. If I can crank up the volume on them and still get a similar roi, all will be rosy again.

So the aim for the rest of this month is to just keep plodding on at the same rate, aiming to complete about 400 this month, will the aim to double the volume next month. I think Supernova this year is already out of the window, but you never know, if I can keep winning at the rate I am now I may be able to move up the stakes later in the year and play more of the 20s and 30s. I am not sure where the split is that makes the levels mainly decent regs, but I suspect that is is around the 33s mark, as I am sure I have heard this is where the difference starts on the turbos, which again is something I may have to dip my toe in the water at, mainly because over the 280 I I have played so far this year I am averaging about 55 mins per game !!!

On a personal front, this month has seen us start to possibly think about moving house. The problem that we have is that we love where we live, in a nice village, in a cul de sac around 20o yards walk from the village square where there are local shops that inlcude a small coop, butchers, greengrocers, off licence and more importantly my local pub, two other pubs, a chinese, an indian and also a chippie. No wonder I am such a fooking lard arse !!!

The only reason we have even thought about moving is that our garden is a little on the small side and its also on a slant and since we have taken in a couple of rescue staffies at the end of last year I would like to see them tear arsing around a bigger garden and having tons of fun. The only other reason is the fact that, although the house is big, it doesn't have a downstairs toilet, which basically means that the drain on the patio by the kitchen window is my makeshift urinal when I am mass tabling and the missus ain't too please about it !!!!

Ideally we would love (or I would love) to stay in Alvechurch as I have been here for 19 years now and really feel like it is my home. But trying to find a bigger house with a large garden here is probably gonna be beyond our budget and at 43, I don't want to take out another 25 year mortgage, but just want to keep the length the same.

We are having the house valued on Friday and even went to look at a house in nearby Bromsgrove last week, which to be fair, was very very nice. But we are still not sure and can't really do anything until we get the valuation back on our current property. As we have only been here 4.5 years, I highly suspect that it will only be worth what we paid for it, which isn't too bad, but will severely restrict our ability to move up the chain a bit.

The other option that we have thought about is to stay put and put some time and effort into the house that we have, we can't expand the garden, but could def spruce it up a bit and make it better for the doggies. We also have the option of converting the garage, I don't think that we will be able to afford a full extension, but we couild possibly be able to convert the garage into a gym type room with a toilet and en-suite shower room, which could also be used as a bedroom in the future. I think this would add a fair bit of value on the house for when we eventually plan to retire and move into the countryside nearer the see (long way off !!) The only problem that I can see is that all the services terminate in the garage and I can see that the gas feed disappears into the concrete floor in the garage and pops up fook knows where, the same I think for the electrics and water. I am sure these can be diverted, but its just gonna add to the cost and will also prob need a new driveway as this will almost certainly have to be dug up !!

I guess with all the above happening, I am really gonna have to crank up the stakes and the volume and bring in more mooolah !!!!

I guess as this weeks post is all about moving up and moving house, there really can be only one song, I know its not the hard rock that you expect from me, but I do love the band, so there !!!

M People -Moving on Up

SNG Grinding

Well, following on from my last post, I have had mixed results on my start of grinding out sngs. As I think I mentioned in the past, I used to mainly play sngs on stars (GothmanUK) but never really more than 2 tables at once. Last year I found I could comfortably 15 table 50NL Fullring cash without losing track of what was going on (although my results may beg to differ) However over the last 7 days or so I have been 9 tabling the $5.50 regular 9 mans on stars and have been struggling. Its not really the results that I have been struggling at as I am in profit over the 150 or so games that I have played, its keeping track of my stack sizes in relation to the blinds that I am finding difficult. Losing track of the above has the result of missing obvious shove opportunities and also sometimes getting too short in relation to the blinds and losing any fold equity.

I am currently tiling my 9 tables so I have them all in view, I think I may have to experiment with different options, maybe try cascading which I normally hate. Maybe even just moving the tables that are getting large blinds on to my 2nd monitor so I am more aware that I should be concentrating on these tables more. My only worry is that if I start moving tables around that one table may end up popping up behind another and I might miss it totally. I am sure I have sat out one whole tourney already doing this !!

If anyone has any advice on the best setup for mass tabling sngs I would be really appreciate any comments as I know I want to increase it to 18 by the end of March and I seem to be disappearing up my own arse at the moment.

One thing I had forgotten was how sick the beats are at sngs, being mainly a push strategy at the end game I can't believe how many times I have been called by Ax when I have Ax+ and they hit their 3 outer. In fact after one session of excruciating suckouts I even thought about giving up poker all together as the profits were just not gonna be worth it. However I seem to have gotten used to it now and to be fair, I do laugh my socks off when I also hit my one or two outer on the river, so I guess its all swings and roundabouts.

Another thing I am trying not to do is look at my results too closely at the moment, so I can't update my P+L on this blog until the end of the month. I am hoping this way I won't go on monkey tilt after a few bad sessions. Hopefully I won't get an "insufficient funds in account" message pop up when trying to auto join the next SNG lol. If I do, I think I will cry.

I know one thing for sure is that I will have to be playing the $11s by the end of March to stick any chance of getting to supernova by the end of the year, I have already missed a month by not playing on stars in january and at the moment I don't even think I will reach gold this month due to too much other stuff going on. I think the most I have played in a day so far is 40, which only equates to 110 VPPS and I think I need to average about 278vpps per day over the whole year to get to supernova (or summat like that)

I also have only just noticed the Battle of the Planets promo which looks pretty cool, I am hoping I can cash in a few of those a couple of times a month, it will definitely be a nice boost to the bankroll if I do. I might try to keep track of my points and post them up as part of a monthly round up as I do love stats.

So in summary, not going too bad at the moment, just need to increase the volume, hopefully make gold by the end of the month, with a view to getting close to platinum in March and April.

Placebo - Pure Morning

Deep Thoughts and decision made

January didn't exactly go to plan, the excellent start followed by the poor middle of the month continued in that vain and I finished the month about a buyin down at 10NL. I know I only played about 12.5k hands for the month but I have come to the decision that I am completely wasting my time doing what I am doing. If I am going to put in a decent portion of my spare time playing poker, whats the point in doing it for nickel and dime shit. I don't go on msn chatting with my m8s while playin MTTS anymore which I deeply regret as I miss them all so much. So if the only reason to play poker is for money, why the fuck after playing the game for nearly 8 years have I regressed to playing 10NL cash, when in 2006 I was playing $20 sngs and make a profit at it WITHOUT rakeback. I know the games were easier then, but it really is time to get my priorities right and either play the game for the enjoyment and get on MSN and have a laff or start playing summat that I can know I can beat and get some decent $$ at.

Its not just the above that has been bugging me, I have been thinking long and hard about my failed attempt to get to supernova last year on stars. I really think I let myself down and failed, I kept blaming running bad, but at the end of the day, I just played bad. 50NL full ring should be easily beatable by someone with my experience, but I managed to donk off almost 2k over 300k hands chasing the points for supernova. I know I left it late to start, but I should of still broke even while chasing the bonuses, but I didn't.

I have therefore decided to go back to my roots and do what I know for a fact I can win at in the long term and at worst break even at and that is SNGs.

To be fair, I I have not tried multitabling much playing sngs and my plan over the next couple of months is to build up to 18 tabling the £11 9man regular tables on stars. Hopefully I can build up enough points that by the end of March, I will have a realsitic chance of getting to supernova by the end of the year. The aim then for next year will be supernova 500k. Then in 2013, Supernova Elite. I know to get to Elite I am going to have to move up the stakes a lot and also get involved in the turbos, just to get the volume in, this is obv gonna be an issue, as all my success on stars has been on the 9 man regular tables, so some adjustmants will have to be made of course.

In preparation for the change I tried 9 tabing the $5.50s on stars tonight. In 4.9 hours I managed to knock off 37 sngs and managed to end up $53 in profit. So not a bad start. I did only managed to get about 105 vpps though, so will struggle to get to gold by the end of the month as I know I can't put 5 hours a day in cos of the dogs a that moment, but as I said, hopefully I will build up to 18 tabling. Will carry on with 9 or the next few days, then start adding a couple till I feel comfortable at 18. You never know, if I can can get a 2nd 28inch monitor, I might be able to go to 24 as I currently have 1 28 inch and 1 24 inch.

So Ideally the plan for this month is to get to Gold playing mainly the $5.50s with a few $11s thrown in. All being well, can then start in anger on the 11s in March.

I have dumped £300 into my stars account today for this new challenge and I already had about £100 in there. Will probably not top it up while playing the 5.50s as hopefully I will not need to, but unless I run like god, will almsot certainly need to add a few ££ for when I move up to the 11s in March.

So in a nutshell, the 10NL challenge is off and the 2011 Supernova challenge is back on (gutted I wasted a month grrrrr)

The new bankroll plan is as follows:-

SNG Buyin.........Min roll Comments
$5.50.............£1000 50% of roll stored in savings
$11...............£2000 50% of roll stored in savings
$22...............£4000 50% of roll stored in savings, 50% of play to be at $11

I think if I can get enough hours in, the above plan should potentially get me to supernova by the end of the year. I know I am not going to be able to keep my current ROI of just over 20% in ~900 games. But even if I can get close to 3-5% its gonna be a lot better than my cash turnover over the last few years.

Will also try to fit in a few MTTS to help boost the roll, to be fair I have not played a single MTT this year !!!

Well, I guess I better wrap up this post, been a long one. Hopefully this time I can stick to my guns and actually achieve a goal I start out to get and be profitable getting it.

I guess only time will tell how it ends......

DeVotchKa - How it ends.