Poker Blog – icemonkey9 on PokerStars

I accomplished both goals I set a few posts back of getting the $50 Stellar Bonus as well as achieving PlatinumStar level of PokerStars.  This marks the first time I have reached this VIP level, so that’s something to acknowledge.  See:

So there it is, finally.

The ultimatum I am issuing is of course unofficial and in no way something to reflect my professional standing as a writer in the industry.  But as a player and consumer, I do get to choose where I play online.  If PokerStars does not address the shortstacker issue as they say they will make an announcement about (either way) in mid-April, I will move my entire roll to Full Tilt Poker and play there for the foreseeable future.

Here’s some of the criteria that have made me think about this decision:

1. The RakeBack at FTP and the VIP System (at Platinum) at Stars is about a wash
2. Cash game players are perceived by many to be slightly worse at Full Tilt
3. There are no shortstackers at Full Tilt
4. Full Tilt plans to revamp their VIP system to something kind of awesome (allegedly)

Those are just the first four thing off the top of my head.  It’s not to say that PokerStars doesn’t have a lot of attractive things going for it.  Such as:

1. Best table software / more reliable software
2. Biggest pool of players
3. SuperNova > rakeback at Full Tilt
4. SCOOP & WCOOP > FTOPS (in my opinion)
5. Better customer service

But the shortstacker issue really seems to be the kicker in this situation, so it’s really what is going to sway me to one side or the other.

Next week I’m doing another feature on table, deck and chip mods from TiltBuster.com, which is a site where these three guys put up some amazing modifications for PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and other sites.

As a little preview, check out the table below, it’s using the “Raven No Images” theme which is a little dark but kinda cool.  The deck is “3D Stars John” and the chipset is the Paulson Chips.

A few people snort at the notions of mods, but I think they are great.  If they work with TableNinja (they do!) and they help the HUD layout, then I am all for it.

Here is the screenshot of the setup I am testing out (click to enlarge):

You might notice my stack size at this table.  I had insomnia so I put in another session which went well!! Yay!

Well, the last post couldn’t have been more prophetic.  I had one of my worst sessions results wise at 100nl in a very long time.  It’s not devastating but it’s tough to lose 4 buy-ins in a session no matter what game or stakes you are at.  It always stings a little more when you have just moved up.  I really don’t want to think about what it did to my monthly bottom line.  I’ll probably cry.

I have to admit I felt the pangs of tilt creeping in at the end of that fateful 1,000 hand session.  It started to feel like no matter what I do, it would come out all wrong.  Sound familiar?  Ya, sounds like every other 10-15k hand bad-run I’ve gone through.  Keeping in mind I’ve put in a grand total of 2,700 hands at 100nl, the number of bad beats and coolers is disproportionate to their expected level, thus I am well below All-in EV and other indicators.

So, this is a good reason why I set aside 60 buy-ins for moving up, I’m still doing fine bankroll wise to hang here and I am 1000% positive I can play here.  I can’t run into coolers and lose every flip and get outflopped and hit only 5.6% of sets over the long haul.  The real issue is just making it through another rough stretch.  Here are the major hands from the session I put in, if you care to look.

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Here I am with KK. You might remember that last session I had AA lose to KK AIPF. Here’s the opposite-double-negative of that.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 9 players -
MP2: $98.50
CO: $147.85
BTN: $139.85
SB: $76.85
BB: $100.00
UTG: $100.00
UTG+1: $101.50
UTG+2: $49.90
Hero (MP1): $100.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP1 with K K

3 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, MP2 calls $3.50, CO calls $3.50, BTN raises to $16, 2 folds, Hero raises to $50, 2 folds, BTN raises to $139.85 all in, Hero calls $50 all in

Flop: ($208.50) Q 5 A (2 players – 2 are all in)
Turn: ($208.50) 6 (2 players – 2 are all in)
River: ($208.50) 9 (2 players – 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $208.50

BTN shows A A (three of a kind, Aces)
Hero shows K K (a pair of Kings)
BTN wins $205.50

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This hand was actually at the EURO tables. The villain is a 38/22 over 50 hands with a 10% 3bet figure.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players -
BB: $101.50
UTG: $122.60
UTG+1: $46.50
MP1: $118.70
MP2: $70.65
Hero (CO): $100.00
BTN: $105.50
SB: $44.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with Q Q
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $3, MP1 calls $3, 1 fold, Hero raises to $12, 3 folds, UTG+1 raises to $46.50 all in, 1 fold, Hero calls $34.50

Flop: ($97.50) 6 3 5 (2 players – 1 is all in)
Turn: ($97.50) 7 (2 players – 1 is all in)
River: ($97.50) 3 (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $97.50
UTG+1 shows A A (two pair, Aces and Threes)
Hero shows Q Q (two pair, Queens and Threes)
UTG+1 wins $95.50

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This was against a 34/17 with an 11% squeeze number.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 9 players -
UTG+1: $109.65
UTG+2: $100.00
MP1: $87.15
MP2: $100.00
CO: $100.90
BTN: $174.45
SB: $39.75
Hero (BB): $100.00
UTG: $103.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with A K
6 folds, BTN raises to $3, SB raises to $39.75 all in, Hero calls $38.75, 1 fold
Flop: ($82.50) 6 6 3 (2 players – 1 is all in)
Turn: ($82.50) T (2 players – 1 is all in)
River: ($82.50) J (2 players – 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $82.50

SB shows 4 4 (two pair, Sixes and Fours)
Hero shows A K (a pair of Sixes)
SB wins $79.50

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I grabbed this hand to show what happens when I do flop something, this didn’t come from the “big loss” category…

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players -
MP1: $52.70
MP2: $50.00
CO: $215.60
Hero (BTN): $101.50
SB: $127.00
BB: $117.75
UTG: $101.50
UTG+1: $140.20
Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with J A
4 folds, CO raises to $3, Hero calls $3, 1 fold, BB calls $2

Flop: ($9.50) J 7 2 (3 players)
BB checks, CO bets $7, Hero calls $7, BB folds

Turn: ($23.50) 9 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $14, CO calls $14

River: ($51.50) 5 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero checks

Final Pot: $51.50

CO shows K K (a pair of Kings)
Hero mucks J A
CO wins $49.00

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So that’s all I care to show at this point. Standard? Sure. Sucky? Absolutely. Tilted? Not exactly, but I think it’s a good thing I am calling it a day and heading out for a dinner with some friends. See you next time and in the meantime send your positive mojo and good luck my way, por favor.

I’m going to tell you the story of a groundhog.  You all know one and chances are, we’ve all been one at one point in our poker career whether you are a recreational player or seasoned professional.  A groundhog pops out of his hole and sees a shadow, then dives right back to where he came from.  The mere sight of potential trouble has him scurrying back to where he came from.  He barely ever stuck around to see if the shadow was even really there.

Sound familiar?  It should.  Whenever we move up in stakes, be it for Sit & Gos, Tournaments or Ring Games, we’ve all been the groundhog.  As many people believe, as soon as you move up in stakes, the doomswitch is activated and you will immediately go through a rough 10k-ish stretch of terrible hands.  It happens everytime and to seemingly every player.  If you don’t believe me, ask your friends that play regularly, it’s as sure as the sunrise is in the morning.

This is where the importance of bankroll management comes into play.  Two years ago when I was first climbing the micro-stakes into the small stakes games, I thought 30-35 buy-ins was plenty to “take a shot” at the next level.  The only problem is that it really didn’t leave me much wriggle room for that inevitable run-bad.  Many players have never gotten over this hump and keep taking 3-5 buy-in shots at the next level, which in my mind is just always poised to fail.  I drop 3-5 buy-ins regularly in a session, but in the end, always come out a little bit ahead for my modest but consistent win-rate.

After reading Dusty Schmidt’s book I realized the issue without him totally going into what was exactly affecting me.  He advocated that 100 buy-ins is the way to go, which I don’t think works for me at all.  But the concept of having more than enough buy-ins to withstand a rough stretch was one I never ever really accounted for.

During my Phoenix-like rebuilding of my PokerStars bankroll, I moved from 25nl to 50nl and started a prop bet to get me to play a bunch of hands rather quickly.  Of course, I ran bad for a while then played through it and won at a decent enough rate.  But one thing I did was decide that 60 buy-ins was what it takes for me to move up.  There’s plenty in there to withstand a terrible swing and recover without freaking out too bad.  I thought about the number for some time and 60 was a little more than I thought was really necessary for me.  That’s when I knew I had the right number.

So, with 66 buy-ins I moved back to my old stomping grounds on PokerStars, playing 100nl Full Ring.  Some old names were still plodding through those stakes, playing their 10/8 nit game, 20-24 tabling and making 0.4BB/100.  Lots of fish are there too and the games really haven’t changed much at all, thankfully.

Of course, within the first session, I ran three buy-ins below EV.  In fact, here’s one of the first hands I played after moving up:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 9 players -
MP1: $101.90
MP2: $166.05
Hero (CO): $100.00
BTN: $100.00
SB: $49.00
BB: $194.90
UTG: $110.60
UTG+1: $111.25
UTG+2: $161.80
Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with A A
2 folds, UTG+2 raises to $3, 1 fold, MP2 calls $3, Hero raises to $12, 3 folds, UTG+2 raises to $24, 1 fold, Hero raises to $60, UTG+2 raises to $96, Hero raises to $100 all in, UTG+2 calls $4
Flop: ($204.50) 8 3 Q (2 players – 1 is all in)
Turn: ($204.50) 9 (2 players – 1 is all in)
River: ($204.50) K (2 players – 1 is all in)
Final Pot: $204.50
Hero mucks A A
UTG+2 shows K K (three of a kind, Kings)
UTG+2 wins $201.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Wow right? He didn’t show his cards right away but by the river, I figured my goose was cooked. Then there’s a marginal cooler in this hand where I lose with a boat:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 8 players -
BB: $61.70
UTG: $103.00
UTG+1: $142.20
MP1: $120.65
MP2: $177.00
Hero (CO): $118.40
BTN: $102.50
SB: $100.00
Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with J A

4 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, 2 folds, BB calls $2.50

Flop: ($7.50) K 5 J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $5, BB raises to $10, Hero calls $5

Turn: ($27.50) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($27.50) J (2 players)
BB bets $16, Hero calls $16

Final Pot: $59.50
BB shows K A (a full house, Kings full of Jacks)
Hero mucks J A
BB wins $56.60
(Rake: $2.90)

Not terrible but hey, it always sucks to lose with a boat. Then there’s this that always seems to be the kicker:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players -
Hero (BB): $100.00
UTG: $108.55
MP: $100.00
CO: $108.75
BTN: $100.00
SB: $49.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with A A
5 folds (A walk)

Final Pot: $1.50
Hero mucks A A
Hero wins $1.00
(Rake: $0.50)

Funny. I snorted actually when this happened but didn’t tilt like I usually do. I was rather proud of myself for just taking it in stride.  I didn’t panic and I didn’t freak out and yell and scream and just say “F THIS I ALWAYS RUN BAD!!!” after I lost a few other pots later in the session.  I just stuck with it, fought back, won some hands, and minimized the loss for the session and made sure I reached my target goal of hands played for the session.  ”This is why I set aside 60 buy-ins,” I would tell myself.  And thus, the groundhog became a Phoenix.

Just got two goals to hit by the end of this month and they are both volume based (good thing cause I’m going through another fun rough stretch).

• 565 VPPs until I unlock another $50 Stellar Reward.
• 1248 VPPs to achieve Platinum Star.

At 50nl FR, that would mean I need 3,531 hands to get the stellar reward and 7,800 hands for Platinum Star.

At 100nl FR, that would mean that I need 1,822 hands for the reward and 4,025 hands for Platinum.

I have 6 days to achieve the goal!

Poker in Vegas!

My wife felt a little guilty realizing that her plans wouldn’t allow me to play any poker during our trip, so she said she’d love to go shopping at the complex at Planet Hollywood and I could play some cash game poker for 2-3 hours.  Awesome wife.  I sat down right before noon and then I saw a bunch of guys in suits show up near where we were playing.  One guy stepped up, another stepped up and they shook hands.  What I found out from the dealer was that it was at that exact moment that Planet Hollywood became an official Harrah’s property.

Anyways, at the table, the fourth hand in I am on the small blind and complete with 9To and flop a boat with 99T.  I check, the other two players also check.  Ace on the turn, I bet $5 into a pot of $4 and get two callers.  River is a 7 and I bet $25 into the pot and then get min-raised by the guy on my left and the other player folded.  I re-raise and the guy insta-folds.  Won about $75 on that hand!  About 2 hours go by and I’m completely card dead but make a few steals here and there and am up about $85 when I get dealt AJ suited in the CO.  Three limpers and I raise to $20, all folds except for the player to my right who called.  Flop comes A52 rainbow and he donks for $10 and I flat call figured him for a weaker Ace like 99% of the time.  I had seen this guy call down with 3rd pair twice so far so I figured I am just going to let him bet off the remaining $80 he started the hand with.  The turn is another 5 and he donks another $10 so I just put him all-in.  He tanks, then calls and shows … omg … AQ.  Really?  Turn is not a jack or a five, so I lose a $160 pot to a guy that limp-called AQ in the HJ.  My run-bad in Vegas continues … anyways I got to play, I did have a lot of fun and left the table down just $20.

The PokerStars NAPT

I was not at the Venetian on official business but did manage to grab a press pass both for myself and my wife.  She had never seen the Venetian poker room and was really amazed at its awesomeness.  Here she is outside the hotel and casino:

As you can see the weather in Vegas was perfect, about 65 degrees!  We got inside and got our passes, which we were not ID’d for.  We got to have a nice breakfast, complements of PokerStars in their very nice media lounge which had an area to film interviews and plenty of tables with internet connections.  Inside the poker room we saw a few familiar faces, including Dennis Phillips who came into the media room and said hi to a few people.  If you’ve never met Dennis, he’s every bit the nice guy he comes across on television and is really a great ambassador to the “every man” of the game.

Once the tournament started, most of the players (I think it was 800 entrants into the $5,000 Main Event we saw) had taken their seats, which took up the entire poker room and tournament area at the Venetian.

The tournament featured just about every big name player that PokerStars (and other sites) have to offer.  My wife’s favorite all time player is Daniel Negreanu, so we spotted him in the tournament area and stood next to him as he played to watch him in action.  My wife was obviously stoked to see him and he turned to her and gave a smile.  Since she’s very attractive she had no problem getting smiles from most of the big-name pros

Here are a couple of pictures I took at the tournament.  I didn’t want to take too many because they had an official photographer already taking shots for us media types.  Also, I was feeling like CRAP because I had actually come down with a cold the night before which absolutely SUCKED.  Anyways here’s a picture of a table in-action:

And here is a picture of Randy “Nanonoko” Lew (member of Team PokerStars Online) checking out the board:

Cool stuff.  I can’t begin to tell you the names I saw at tables.  Maria Ho, Greg Raymer, Havad Khan, Kathy Leibert, Joe Cada, Vanessa Rousso, Chad Brown, Jeff Madsen and countless others.  Once the tournament got started, the number of railbirds at the Venetian grew to epic proportions.  There were also a few celebrities playing, including Montel Williams.  The official “Shuffle Up and Deal” was announced by none other than Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld) himself:

Good stuff.  The entire tournament was well organized and considering this was the first major tournament that PokerStars had sponsored and organized in Vegas, they did a great job.   After about 30 minutes of just milling around I got real tired (again, feeling like crap) and decided to meet up with my wife and her friends who were in town at the Lux Cafe (awesome place to eat).  We got a table outside near the railing, and who walks by fashionably late to the tournament but none other than Joe Hachem himself.  I had to say something so I just said “Take it down Joe!” and he looked over with a HUGE smile on his face and waved and I waved back.  Apparently Joe loves being recognized as a celebrity, which is probably not a shock to anyone

That was my Vegas trip in a nutshell.  After the cafe we went back to the room and took a nap so I could have enough energy to make our show.  We bought discounted seats to see “Mystere” at Treasure Island which was a fabulous show.  I saw things in that show I didn’t know were humanly possible.  Anyways, a good trip to Vegas, got to see the NAPT and play some cards too while enjoying a short vacation with the wife.

Well this is lame but doesn’t look like i will have poker time during my stay here. wife stuff. this typically happens when I come to Vegas with her, never get to do “my stuff” which I am not tremendously upset about. I get that me playing poker requires her to either play, sit there bored, or have her find some other activity.

Anyways we checked out the new Aria which was amazing. It is everything they say it is. Below are some pics.

Tomorrow I am checking out the NAPT with a press pass at the Venetian which should be fun. I also think that we are getting home early enough so that I might buy-in to the special F40 Sunday Millions on Sunday (first time).

i planned our drive to Vegas around a tournament played at the Hard Rock Hotel, a $50 tournament with 25 minute blinds and a 5,000 starting stack. When I went to the lobby of the new “Poker Lounge” I said I wanted to sign up.

Response I should have gotten:
“I am so sorry sir but we stopped having that tournament due to lack of interest. We know our brand new website released last week hasn’t reflected that new policy. I can seat you immediately at our 1/2 cash game and if there’s anything I can do just say the word.”

Response I got:
“Oh. Yeah we don’t do that one anymore. (looks back down to her magazine). Oh, you say our website says we have a tournament now? Huh. (shrugs shoulders and goes back to magazine again)”

Let that be a lesson in customer service – it sure as hell doesn’t exist in the new and unimproved poker room here at Hard Rock.

I have returned to Vegas for the weekend with my wife and we are going to have a great time!!

At the Hard Rock Casino and I had to take a picture with this sign for a bar!

I’m not sure how interesting it was for the readers of my blog to follow my progress during last week’s prop bet.  Judging by the dearth of comments, I’m guessing it wasn’t of much interest to most of you.  That’s fine.  But what I think might help is writing out some the lessons learned from participating in the prop bet, because I think I definitely benefited from putting myself through that torture.

For those of you that follow LOST I kind of feel like Sayid did after the episode where we see him learn to become a torturer.  He does what he has to do in order to save himself and his loved ones and basically tortures a bad guy commanding officer of his to get the information he needed.  At the end of it all, he’s changed and gets taken to outside the city by the Americans.  They drop him off in the middle of the road with the American tell him, “Looks like you picked up a new skill set.”  He handed him a wad of cash, then left him there and drove away.  I feel like that because I feel like I went through this very difficult process, gained a valuable skill (massively multi-tabling) but have been left out in the middle of nowhere (with some money) asking myself “well wth do I do now?!”.

Anyways, enough of the random and vague metaphors.

The first thing I learned is that as soon as you start a prop bet, you will, without fail, go on a downswing.  It’ll suck and be frustrating and irritate you and every end.  Life will seem dull, gray and horrible.  It happened to me, it happened to Zachvac and its happened to countless others.  I don’t know why or how it happens, but I just know it does.  If you ever decide to put yourself through something like this, just be ready for the fall-out.

One surprising thing I learned was that if you do add more and more tables, it doesn’t necessarily mean you just play ABC autopilot poker.  In fact, if you arm yourself with the right poker software you can definitely play a great thinking poker game.  Here’s what you will need:

• Holdem Manager or PokerTracker 3, with a HUD chalk full of stats
• TableNinja (or its equivalent) for assistance and shortcuts
• A good playlist for iTunes (or no music at all!)
• A great ergonomic mouse that won’t kill your wrist after long days of playing
• 2 monitors, with your main monitor at least being a 24″ 1920×1200 resolution monitor.  Your second monitor should be the same but if its a 22″ 1600×1200 that’s fine too.
• Experiment while not playing with table layouts and try to get it so that you can always be able to click on a table.  If you can do this you can jump to tables during short breaks and hit the fold button if there’s a hand that’s an obvious fold.
• Eye drops. Lots of ‘em.
• Comfortable chair with arm and back support

You have to create an environment where you can focus and you get a system down that works.  There’s no way that I could play even 15 tables if I didn’t have the dual monitor setup along with the shortcuts program.  We all operate differently and you need to experiment to see what works for you.  Make sure you save your table layout within the poker client so you don’t have to redo it every time you start a new session.

Another important lesson is knowing when peak hours are for your time zone.  For me in the Pacific Time Zone, I found that the tables were “best” starting around 11am and were good until about 10pm during the week.  Thursday nights were exceptionally good, and starting from about 10am on Friday through about 8pm on Sunday games were fantastic.  I think if anyone ever went “pro” for online poker they would forced to adapt their playing schedule around peak times at the sites.  Clearly, you can’t play 8 straight hours no matter who you are – you have to eat, you have to go to the bathroom and you need to simply close your eyes to rest.  Factoring in these breaks and creating the right schedule is really important.

One very underrated thing about playing “full time” or in my case undergoing a prop bet is pacing.  Setting the right pace every day and outlining your schedule a week in advance is very important.  For me, once I got through the first two days of the challenge, I realized I couldn’t just wing it.  I set myself a daily hand requirement schedule and stuck to it.  In the morning each day I outlined my time schedule to estimate when I should play and get other activities accomplished.  That was one huge piece of the puzzle for me in my success.

Before this challenge, you have to realize that I was used to playing 4 or 5 tables of 6max games, which I had done for the better part of 3 months.  When I last played Full Ring regularly, I think I only played 9-10 tables at a time.  By the end of the challenge, I was playing 19 tables without any issues and no time outs on any table.  You just have to push yourself, experiment and not get freaked out when your computer starts beeping and flashing.  Stay calm, make the right decision and quickly move to the next decision to be made.  I kept telling myself I do have a timebank which is automatically clicked, which helped me remember that I have time to think through my decision making process in a hand.

I am not sure if I will remain 19 tabling (or more) Full Ring moving forward, but I know I can do it.  Most likely at 50nl FR I’ll remain 19 tabling to keep myself in a groove.  My upswing out of the downswing didn’t really take off until I started doing the 19-table sessions and that allowed me to get in a lot more hands per hour.  I played 30,000 hands in 30.5 hours which is just crazy.  Last year I think I played 180,000 hands total, so to get 1/6th of those hands in for a year within the timeframe of a week is quite an upgrade.

Sometimes you have to push yourself in order to make leaps in your game and often times it will be very frustrating and uncomfortable.  If I didn’t have money on the line in my prop bet, there’s no way I would have finished the challenge because I would have bitched and moaned about the break-even stretch that was just destroying my mindset.  That tilt would have forced me to “take a break” and come back later rather than fight through it, which I have so often struggled to do.

I’m not sure what else there is to say but I am hoping this long entry helps a few of you learn some of the lessons it taught me.