Monday 7 May 2012

Crazy Day!

Hi everyone!

So, as most of you already know, yesterday was the first day of the SCOOP. Same as every other online player I was prepared for some serious grinding, yet I was not prepared for what was about to come. Andre and I woke up early to go to the office and when I sat down in front of my computer I hadn't even had breakfast yet. I prepared a coffee, opened 8 tables and started playing.

Unfortunately, the day didn't start very well. I was losing a ton, and at some point I felt like I wasn't winning any tournaments at all. I didn't even need to check the cashier to know I was going down fast. When your tableninja says that you played 90 tables in one hour, you just know it can't be good. Just to give you an idea, when 8tabling, I play more or less 60 tournaments per hour. 90 is just too many within that time frame and the only explanation is losing. To make things worse, I pulled up my graph from sharkscope and was surprised to find out that I had only won 4 out of the last 40something tournaments I had played. That's just tragic. Really. And of course, I was losing like $250 which is a serious hit for my bankroll.

Shortly after that, we went to a restaurant nearby to have lunch. The break couldn't have come at a better time. Andre was checking his phone and showed me a tweet from a guy who said that the first day of the SCOOP was to him what Christmas was when he was a kid. "Yeah, right", I thought. Exactly like it. I finished my lunch and went back to playing. I was already feeling bad about losing, so I stopped checking the cashier and sharkscope. After playing a bit, I felt tired so I decided to take a nap. I set the timer for one hour and when it went off, I disabled it and went back to sleep. 

Another hour later, I woke up and went back to the tables. It was a loooooong afternoon, but I started recovering the money I had lost. At some point, I checked my graph again and saw that around lunch time I had touched the magnificent point of -$350. That's like 38 buy-ins negative. Crazy! On the bright side, I only realized what had happened after the damaged was kind of repaired. Had I known at that moment that I was -$350, it would have messed with my psychology so badly, that I would have probably stopped playing.

Since I'm going for Platinum this month, I set a limit to myself to play at least 350 games per day. However, when I reached 350 games I was close to breaking even and I was feeling fine (which is expected after a two-hour nap), so I went on playing. And then I started winning more and more. The weird part is, that the opponents didn't change. I was playing with the same random people I was playing all day. The games were soft, apart from me there were one or two other regulars at each of my tables. Maybe the opponents I was playing against were regulars at different stakes or different games, but for all I know I did not have statistics on anyone. I was running so good, that I completely forgot to have dinner and whenever the time I had set on tableninja would finish I would put another half hour, and another half hour, and another...

It's the first time that I could not get away from the computer. I said to myself that I would either stop when I started feeling really tired or when I would have a $100 downswing. They kind of happened at the same time and I stopped playing around 1:00. Without further ado, here is the craziest graph I got since I started playing poker:


As you can see, I ended up +$336 and played 581 tournaments which is my record both of winnings per day and tourneys per day. Andre told me that I only needed to play 19 more to make it a nice round 600, but I was starting to get a bad headache so I didn't go for it. What makes the graph super crazy though, is that from the lowest point to the highest, there is a difference of around $840 or to put it in perspective, an upswing of 91 buy-ins!!! I've heard people say that you get crazy swings at the hypers, but this is the first time I truly feel what they mean.

So, all is well that ends well. The only negative thing is that with this and that I only slept 4 hours last night, so I don't know how capable I am of playing 350 tournaments today. And I can't help but wonder when exactly I should check my account balance. I've heard of players that don't check it until the end of the month, but I find it extreme and nerve-wracking, not to mention that you need to have a much bigger bankroll than 100 buy-ins to make sure that you won't have to drop down on stakes. With the swings you get at the hyper turbos, especially in my case that my bankroll is around 100 buy-ins of the stakes I'm playing, you can be forced to move down in just a matter of days. On the other extreme, I find that sometimes I tend to leave the cashier's open and hit the refresh button every 5 seconds, which can't be good either. So how often is it optimal (and sane) to check your progress? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that...

Also, I'm on the hunt for blogs of other hyper-turbo players (preferably in english). If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Oh, and if you have a blog and would like me to add it to my blogroll, just add mine to your list and then leave me a comment with your link!

Thanx and... see you at the tables! :)

8 comments:

  1. That's never-ending dilemma how often to check your cashier. Dangerous thing is that looking at cashier can get you on tilt, so the answer is check your cashier as little as possible especially if you feel you are running bad.
    Personally i never check the cashier within a session (playing too many tables and different buy-ins and coz of that a lot of main tournaments have been registered so this number says nothing to me at that moment) but what i do is checking my EV graph in HEM from time to time.

    Remember, there is only one thing to focus on and that's making the good decisons.

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    1. Ooooh, you touched another never-ending debate: whether the EV line of HEM is reliable or not... After a lot of arguing and experimentation, I've come to believe that it's not. Anyway, you're right, the only thing to focus on is the decision you make each time. I'll try to check my balance less often...

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  2. yep, i am one of those who believe it's reliable. I have read about that a lot of articles but this one (http://gametheoryinpractice.blogspot.com/2011/10/hem-red-line.html) seems to be the best.

    The problem is that we need to be looking at the bigger sample size and that's imo hundreds of thousands of satellites and truly have to say not everyone will achieve those numbers and even if some1 will, there is no guarantee to have a chance to see red line close to green line, coz this has most to do with term "variance".

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    1. Ok, so let's assume that you are right, and as you say it works after hundreds of thousands of games. If you have played so much, then you are looking at your results on the LONG run, so what you see should be little affected by variance. I'm sure we agree that if you play 10 games you are greatly affected by variance whereas if you play 1 million, you still get some variance but your results are closer to the EV ones and reflect your skill as a player. In that case, why would you need to look at HEM's EV line? It's just pointless, plus if it's working, it won't be far from your true results anyway.

      The cool idea with the EV line (and what I think they were trying to achieve)would be to show you what your EV results are within a shorter period of time, where you ARE affected by variance, good or bad, but you can't know what your EV is cause you are only looking on the SHORT term results. And the EV line was supposed to give you a reflection of the long run, but unfortunately that just does not work.

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    2. The most important fact is that EV line has much more lower variance than the green line, that's the point why we should look at the red line.
      So if you want to know your performance, red line will tell you much more accurate information.
      Also based on a monthly volume of games/hrs and EV line for all my played games i calculate an expected profit for each coming month.

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    3. See, this is why it's a never-ending debate. We can go on and on like this forever and never convince each other about our point of view... :P

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  3. I agree with both regarding the general ideas about looking at the cashier. I personal don't feel that affects much of my play, If I am making a good bankroll management looking at the cashier it will be the same as long as you can detach from money.
    I don't play hypers but because they are a high variance format, I think you need the biggest sample size as possible.
    I don't care too much about the HM red line, as long as I can make best possible decision at the tables, that is the most important.

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    1. Hi Luis!

      That's exactly the thing, it always affects me when I see the money in the cashier going away. Not because the amount is that relevant to me, but because the bankroll that I've worked so hard to build is disappearing into thin air... Something to work on I guess!

      Good luck at the tables!

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