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! :)

Collusion, Server Breakdown and Goals for May

Hello everyone!

April was a rather busy month for me, so I have not been blogging as much as I would have liked to. I went to Greece for about a week, and that changed my daily routine a lot. I tried to play the $7s while I was there cause I really needed the VPPs since I was going for GoldStar, and for the first couple of days I succeeded, but then catching up with friends filled up my schedule. I knew that upon my return to Portugal I would have to play poker like crazy to make it up for the vacation time, but fortunately PokerStars had special satellites running for the upcoming SCOOP events. There were hyper sats of $9.18 running all day long and since those were within my bankroll I played them for the rest of the month of April. I made it to Goldstar on time, and even though I had to do some planning to keep me on track I can't say it was too difficult. Here's April's graph:

I finished the month with a $221 profit, which is not bad, but there was definitely something wrong with my last 1000 games... That's a $500 downswing more or less... I don't know if it's because of bad luck or bad play... The truth is during the whole month I don't think I got a single hour of coaching from André. Sure there were the occasional tips here and there, but for the most I've been improvising and self-improving (or self-deteriorating, not sure! :P ). I'll start bugging him to give me some coaching during May, but since it's a SCOOP month, I don't know if I'll be having much luck with it. Anyway, I am now 8tabling, I made it to GoldStar and got some profit so I guess it is safe to say it was a good month overall.

While playing some bubbles, I noticed some weird plays from certain opponents. When I checked the countries, I noticed that both of my opponents were from the same country so for all I know, they could be best friends playing together. I showed the plays to André (we are talking about 2 different occasions) and both of the times he told me that I should report it. I sent a mail to Pokerstars support with the number of the tournament and waited for their reply. I was very positively surprised that they took my mail pretty seriously. I mean, the buy-in of the games I reported was $3.74 which is insignificant to the amount of money PokerStars deals with. Nor am I one of their best clients that they give extra attention to. But still, they investigated into the situation, running checks on the players involved and sending me detailed emails about the results of their investigation. Turns out, there was no collusion in either of the two cases but the point is PokerStars takes this matter very seriously. I guess they are doing their best to keep the play as clean as possible.

Another incident during the previous month was their server breakdown. One afternoon, as I was playing, all of the games froze. Like no hands being dealt, nothing. At first I thought I lost my internet connection but I soon discovered that it was not the case. People were still able to use the chat, and everyone was wondering what was going on. We got some messages like "We have server issues, we are trying to fix them and apologize for the inconvenience" in the chat box, but what was funny was that even though the games were frozen, the blinds kept going up. Now, in a hyper-turbo you can imagine that by the time they fixed the problem and the games resumed (which took around 45 minutes), all players were obligatorily all-in! 

I took a note of the number of all the tournaments I was playing and sent a mail to support to ask for a refund. In case some of the players did not think of doing that by themselves, PokerStars sent out a mail informing about the server problem and saying that anyone affected should send a mail and ask for their money back, which I think says a lot. The reply I got was kind of funny:

"We appreciate your patience whilst we dealt with your refund request.

You actually won a seat to SCOOP events from 5 out of the 6 tourneys you referenced, as such we don't feel you are due any further compensation for those events.

For tourney 550997265 you were massively affected by the blinds being huge due to our server issues. We feel this warrants a refund as your ability to play the game you signed up for was completely hindered. I have credited $9.18 to your account for this game.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you."

Lol! Without really noticing, I randomly won 5 out of 6 tournaments I was playing. They could have taken that money back and just refund me the buy-in of those, but the let me (and everyone else for that matter) keep the winnings. Now, for the 6th tournament where I lost, they could have told me to forget about it since I was obviously positively affected by the server issue (what are the chances of winning 5 out of 6 tournaments you're in?). Instead, they refunded me that 6th game. Seems like a win-win situation for us players, lose-lose situation for PokerStars. Overall, they must have lost tons of money during those 45 minutes, but they made sure that the players would not feel like they lost something. I suppose it is a company that truly cares about satisfying the clients. And that in the poker world, post-Black Friday, is very important. Good work PokerStars!

So... Plans for May... I've decided to go for Platinum! SCOOP months are the busiest of the year for online players, so I shouldn't have any problems with the traffic. The only "problem" is that the SCOOP ends on May 20th, which gives me less that a month to benefit from the $9.18s. I get 0.99 VPPs per game and Platinum is at 7K points, which practically means I'll have to play 7K games until May 20th... It's gonna be tough, but let's see...

Before I go, here are a couple of pics so that you get a taste of Greece...

Profiterol from Kosmikon. One of the best chocolate sweets in the world!

Typical greek meal: Souvlaki, french fries and tzatziki!

View of the Acropolis from a cafeteria at Thisio...

...cause that's how we drink our coffee in Athens!

See you at the tables!

Update and Goal for April

Hello!

As you may have noticed, I didn't make a post last week. That's because I was running pretty bad and it was starting to affect my mood and the way I played, so I decided to take the week off. Initially, I was planning to only take a couple of days, but eventually I decided to only go back to the tables when I was feeling ready for it. I enjoyed some days of sleeping until late, spending time with friends and organizing things that I was always postponing because of lack of time. By the end of the week I was feeling much better and the downswing was like a distant memory. I came back to the office on April 1rst, all ready for a fresh start. But for the record, here's the graph for the month of March:

As you can see, it's not very pretty. I played around 2K tourneys and ended up losing $461. That was quite a hit for me, cause that amount represents almost half of my bankroll... Ouch!

Fortunately, the month of April started a lot better, and I have been recovering some of the money I lost. So far I am up $197 for the month, which is pretty good considering that I have only played 4 days. Also, I'm pretty comfortable with 6tabling now.

Another big change was that the MicroMillions events finished on the 25th of March, so lately I have been grinding the regular hyper-turbo satellites. It was quite a challenge at first, cause with the MicroMillions I was used to playing the same thing all day long and only unregister once at the end of the day. Now, I have to constantly change stakes and keep looking at the tournaments that are about to start so that I unregister on time. It definitely demands a tighter schedule than before. It took me a bit to figure out when each of the satellites were running. There is no schedule available online, so I had to be monitoring the games day after day and taking notes. I have most of it figured out, although I'm still missing some information. It is very important to do this though, otherwise you can't really plan anything. Since I have decided that I'm not going to play any tournaments with a buy-in higher than $10, that leaves me with three options: the $3s, the $3.74s and the $7.49s. I'd say that most of the day I'm playing the $3.74s. It seems that I'll be playing these stakes for a while, cause then you only have the $18.77s, which is quite a jump and I don't see it happening anytime soon. I pretty much need to double up my bankroll to get there.

Apart from that, I've been quite disappointed at Hold'em Manager lately. I mean, it still is good to study your game and the game of your opponents, but it fails to do one simple thing: monitor results. That thing is simply not made to monitor hyper-turbo satellites. And the results it gives are so misleading, that just to give you an example, on a day that I'm winning $100 Hold'em Manager says that I'm losing $300. Nowadays I rely on SharkScope which is pretty accurate for graphs and stuff like that , and of course the only 100% reliable source: the cashier.

As far as April is concerned, I have one goal: to reach GoldStar. Last month I made it to SilverStar without much of an effort, after all it's only 750 VPPs. GoldStar is going to be more difficult though, cause it's 3K VPPs and I only get from 0.33 to 0.83 VPPs per tournament (depending on the stakes). To make the situation even harder, I'm visiting my family in Greece this month. I'll be in Athens for Easter and I'll stay there for a week, during which I can't see myself playing much, if at all. It's not that GoldStar holds such amazing benefits (although it is an improvement comparing to SilverStar), but going for it will keep me motivated to put in more volume of play.

That's all for now... See you at the tables! :)

MTTs are bad for your health

Yesterday, I confirmed my suspicions that MTTs (=Multi Table Tournaments) are bad for your health. And if we cannot accept it as a general rule, I assure you that they are bad for me in particular. I played one yesterday and I'm still paying the price. Huge mistake.

Now, you're probably wondering why I found myself playing an MTT since I'm only playing the hyper-turbos... Well, let's not forget (like I did yesterday) that the hypers I'm playing are actually satellites to other tournaments. Which basically means - and no, I'm not kidding- that if you register at a satellite at 17:25 that feeds a tournament that starts at 17.30 and you win (which should be your objective anyway), then as soon as the satellite window closes, another one will open taking you directly to your seat in the main event. No chance to unregister or anything like that. Welcome to the MicroMillions event #32. The buy-in was $11, which I would prefer to not have paid considering that the event gathered a bit more than 40k people, but only paid to the top 5.300. Chances of getting my money back: slim.

So there I was at 17.30, starting an MTT tournament with 8 more people in my table (which seemed strangely crowded if you are used to play with 6 people total), and 5.000 chips which I had no idea how to use that deep. The blinds were 10/20 on the first level, which comparing to the hyper-turbos seems like another universe! Wondering what on earth to do and how to play, I opened my old notebook from a year ago, from when I was giving a try to the 9max turbos. It must have been funny to see me trying to play well at the hyper-turbos that I had opened (I wouldn't give up an afternoon's work for an MTT), trying to pay attention to what's happening at the MTT , while at the same time going through the pages of my old notebook and trying to quickly remember how to play poker and flops (as if there's such a thing as quickly remembering how to play!). 

My strategy was to focus on the hyper-turbos, and only play premium hands in the MicroMillions main event. And that's what I did. However, I found myself getting quite a lot of playable hands, and so I started playing more and more. I didn't get involved into any really big pots, and kept getting chips from here and there. Mostly, I would raise preflop and my opponents would fold so nothing too exciting. However, I saw my stack growing and growing, at some point I had more chips than anyone else at my table and things were going well. I might be able to make it into the money after all, I thought. Even when the blinds got significantly higher and I was no longer the "richest" person at the table, I still maintained a respectable stack. When we reached the bubble, my stack still allowed me to play comfortably and walk away from any complicated situations. I was far from blinding out, so I mostly had to fold to make it into the money. Which did happen eventually, and I was at least guaranteed to finish with around $20, not bad considering I got there through a $4 satellite. 

But the tournament was still running and I was among the top 1.000 players out of the 5.000 that were still alive. The blinds were 1500/3000. And around 21.00 o'clock (after 3 and a half hours of playing the MTT), I got aces on the button. Wow, I thought, this has potential. And I see the person under the gun shoving. He was kind of short, so nothing too exciting, but a good thing anyway when you are sitting there comfortably with your aces and you're just waiting for the action to get to you. Suddenly, I see the player on my left shoving a stack of 100k chips!!! WOW, I mean, WOW, what more can a player ask when holding such a hand, right? I'll tell you what they hope for: to win. When all the cards were revealed, the first player showed JJ and the second (with the juicy stack) showed TT. Do I need to analyze how bad it felt when the flop came K-T-3? It was the worst case scenario, cause even if I somehow lost to the Jacks, there would be still a huge sidepot for me to collect. But no, the guy had to get his Ten, leaving me with less than 3BB and practically eliminating me from the tournament. 

I finished 4232th in a field of 40k+ players, which sounds pretty good, right? Yet at that point, I didn't care about the $24,46 I received (which in a normal situation I would be happy for). I could only see my opponent sitting on the 15th place of the tournament with a 202K that was almost mine. True that it doesn't mean much, and even if I had that stack I could just as well lose it later either by losing another all-in or by seeing it slowly go away with my rather ignorant way of playing. But it just felt awful and unfair.

Had it been a sit-n-go, I would "take it like a man" (or in this case like a woman) that I lost with AA and I'd go open another sit-n-go. But there's something about the fact that I dedicated 3,5 hours to one specific tournament just to see all my efforts disappear in one second that gets to me. I know that it is an MTT and that their very nature is like that. That's probably why I don't like them and why I will probably never grind them. I spent some time thinking about it afterwards, and I think that so many people are drawn by MTTs because of that rush of adrenaline whenever you know that you may double up or lose everything. To me, their behavior is similar to that of people playing the lottery. They know that the chances of them winning something big are next to none, yet they play over and over again. That's how I can explain the fact that the Sunday Million gets thousands and thousands of players every week despite the $215 buy-in. I bet that the vast majority among them does not have the bankroll to play that kind of tournament. 

Apart from the rush of adrenaline that may motivate some, I believe it's also because both lotteries and MTTs give you the opportunity to dream. No matter how thin, you do have a chance to win the first prize. And you start to think about what you would do with all that money. Even though it's far away when you are starting the tournament, the more you play the closer it gets. That's why it's so devastating when you lose. That's why yesterday I felt like I lost $40k when I lost that hand, instead of winning $24,46 which is what actually happened. And yeah, I know that there was no chance I'd win the tournament unless the gods gave me aces and kings every single time. I started this post saying that I had no idea how to play. Yet the MTTs have a way of messing with your emotions in a way that sit-n-gos don't. And that's exactly my point.

As for the rest of the day, I was running pretty bad at the hyper-turbos (I think I was like -$150 at some point), then I recovered it all and was more or less break even, but André had not finished his tournaments and asked me to stay another half hour. In that half hour, I managed to lose quite a bit, finishing the day negative. It's all in the graphic below:

On the positive side, I increased the number of tables to five and sometimes I even played six (although that was not for long cause it gave me a headache). Not only that, but I was playing ok and got an upswing during that 5-6 tabling period.

I went back home feeling exhausted and disappointed. I was so tense, that even though I was tired and should be sleepy, I couldn't relax enough to sleep. I ended up going around the house long after André was asleep, checking random stuff on the internet and watching comedies on our Blu-Ray. When André woke up at 5.00 am to host the final table of the Sunday Million, I was still awake and full of energy. We watched the sun go up, and after the Sunday-Million was over we played a couple games of Magic: The Gathering. We had some new decks to try, and it seemed appropriate to do so at 6.00 a.m. in the morning. After that, tiredness started to kick in and I finally fell asleep.

I woke up at 14.00 today, too tired to do anything. The combination of an MTT and a bad run at the hypers is the recipe for disaster, that much I guarantee! Not being able to do much, I limited myself to study and write this post. I'll resume playing tomorrow, after a good night's sleep. See you then at the tables!

It's a long long long way down

Hi everyone!

After my last post, I went up in stakes and started grinding the satellites of $8 and $4 for the MicroMillions events. Sometimes I would also play the $3. I also increased the number of tables I'm playing, and now I'm at 4. I am pretty comfortable with 4tabling, but whenever I accidentally open 5 tables I start losing focus, so I'm definitely not there yet. Also, I'm playing with my chat off. At this point I need to focus completely on the game and I don't need any distractions.

One thing I noticed immediately when I stopped playing the $0.35s is that people were not playing flops. I mean, it can happen from time to time, sure, but it's nothing like what was going on in the lowest stakes. That means that multitabling got a bit more difficult since the games run faster. 

But what I really want to comment in this post, is that variance finally caught up with me (as always!). After my initial good run, during the past week I have been running from bad to awful. I've only had one single winning day, and it was not anything great since I only had a $7 profit. The rest of the week I've been losing, losing and losing some more. It's really frustrating, because sometimes it really feels like the universe is conspiring against me. When I go all in with my aces or kings and lose, even though it sucks, I can understand that I'm just being unlucky and I can rationalize my feelings. But when I'm going all in with more controversial hands, even though at the beginning of the day I know that a certain play is correct, at the end of the day where I have been called by 34o and lost because the opponent got a 3 on the river, I am suddenly not so sure about myself. I don't want to turn this blog into my own whining place but I think it's really interesting how a downswing or bad luck can affect your mind.

I personally think that I have a very low resistance to downswings. And since losing is part of the game, any player that has trouble accepting it, like me, has a problem. And what makes the situation even more difficult to deal with, is that there is no obvious cure even after you admit you have a problem. If you admit that you are a bad player, or have X leaks, you study and try to fix them. What do you do when your problem is purely psychological? I honestly don't have an answer to that. The fist thing you can do I guess, is bankroll management. If your bankroll is at least 100 buy-ins of the stakes you are playing, then it will probably be able to go through all the ups and downs of luck. If it drops really low, that can only mean one of the following: 

a) You are being extremely unlucky, or

b) You are not good enough to beat the stakes you are playing and it would be wise for you to move down.

That being said, it still bothers me when I constantly lose. It's not about the money, at least not at the stakes I'm playing. I'm not playing with the rent of the month, nor is the amount I lose relevant for my everyday life. Since I'm still in the learning-how-to-play process, everything was calculated so that bad luck does not mess with my emotions. And yet it does. After spending a whole day in front of the computer, it brings me down to go home with a loss, even if the amount I lost would not be enough for me to buy a chewing gum. I know that I've been unlucky, but then I start the "what if" questions. "What if I'm a losing player?", "What if I lose all of my bankroll?", "What if all hell breaks loose?", and so on. In my attempt to think rational, I start being completely irrational. Funny, huh? I think it takes a lot of time and patience until one can train themselves to think and react in a different way. 

I've been talking with André about it and he said that recently he had a 10k tournaments downswing. That number made my head spin. Ten thousand tournaments where you keep losing money? That is crazy! Think about it, most of us do not play that many tournaments in a whole year! I asked him how long that downswing lasted. He said it was about a month. Then, he recovered the money in one single day. What's really impressive is that he kept being cool (or as cool as possible) during the downswing, so that when good luck came his way, he was at the tables playing his A game. If I were in his shoes, I would have quit playing poker way before I got to be lucky. And that alone says a lot.

Anyway, my bankroll has suffered a hit, but I'm still far from having to drop to lower stakes. What's going to be interesting is that from today the MicroMillions main events started running, so I will not be able to play those satellites anymore. What was good about playing those, is that I set my TableNinja filter once in the beginning of the day and then I did not need to worry about it. Now, I will need to be constantly checking when this or that tournament is starting in order to find games to play and unregister from the main event in time before it starts. Since I don't have a program of the games that are running every day, and sometimes they are different from one day to the other, it's going to be hard to make a consistent playing schedule... But there's no alternative!

Before I go, I will leave you with the highlight of my bad beats... So there we are, playing 4-handed when the button goes all-in. I happily shove over the top with my kings... How did I lose the hand and shortly after the tournament? You can see it here:

Thank you all for reading. See you at the tables!

Quantity vs Quality (+office tour!)

Hello!

I hope you are all doing great! Some days ago, I had to go through a pretty intense conversation with my boyfriend about what stakes I should be playing and how many tables at the same time. As you probably remember from my last post, I was playing the $18.77 satellites, one table at a time. 

However, last Sunday we noticed that there were tons of satellites running for the MicroMillions, some events that Pokerstars will have between the 15th and the 25th of March. The satellites had pretty low stakes, with the lowest one being $0.35... André thought that it made sense for me to increase the number of tables I was playing but decrease the stakes. I, on the other hand, thought the exact opposite. To me it makes more sense to stay at the $18.77, pay attention at only one table and actually learn. I think I should only increase the number of tables whenever I feel more comfortable.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective, but on this subject our perspectives were different. If I was feeling like the players at the $18.77 were a lot better than me, I would voluntarily move down. However, I didn't feel so much behind and I could learn a thing or two from the better players around me. André kept insisting that I should focus on increasing the number of tables first and then work more intensively on my game. He wants me to be able to play 6 tables by the end of March, by the way. Just to prove his point, and even though I never said I could 6table, he opened 6 satellites of $0.35s and asked me to play. During the first level of blinds I managed, but at the second one I started losing it, making mistakes that I wouldn't make had I been able to pay attention to all 6.

I complained that there is no point in playing many tables against the people of those stakes because the game they play has nothing to do with that of the higher levels, so I'm not really learning much of anything. Not to mention that even if I can 6table the $0.35s, I will probably not be able to 6table the $18.77 because the average player is much better and therefore presents you with more complicated decisions. I don't want to sound like a know-it-all, cause that's not the case, but people play a loooot of flops at those stakes. And how many flops can you play with a starting stack of 10BB? Not to mention those guys who are chipleaders on the bubble, yet they are trying to make sure that they finish the tournament on the 1rst position and shove like there's no tomorrow, even though the prize for the 1rst is the same as that for the 2nd.

And yes, I'm well aware that in poker you should always be happy to play with players worst than you, because with every little mistake they make they leak equity to you and increase your long-term profits. In the case of the $0.35 though, where the prize is $1 for the first and $1 for the second, I don't think I need to talk more about the "profits". Also, I played around 120 tournaments yesterday and got something like 7 VPPs. At this pace, I won't ever make it to SilverStar even if all I do in my life is eat, sleep and play poker.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash the MicroMillions or the micro-stakes in general. I think they are excellent for certain people, like those who want to built a bankroll literally from zero, those who want to qualify for a bigger even or those who simply want to have fun playing poker. I'm just saying that they are not suited for me in particular. But since André was insisting and one of us had to back up eventually, I let it go and I have been playing the $0.35s.

The very next day after that conversation, I spent some time with him reviewing some of my games. From the questions I was asking and the comments I was making, he decided that I should be playing higher than that. He told me I could move up as long as I had 100 buy-ins, which means that with my current bankroll I can play up to the $10 satellites. I guess he also realized, while reviewing my games, what I was saying all along: that these games are not at all educational. But since I'm a bit stubborn myself, I refused to move up and told him that since his plan was for me to play the micros, then that's where I would stay. I did keep playing them for some days. I like 3tabling during 4 hours to get 7 VPPs... Kidding!

Nah, I think a week of the micros was enough for me to prove my point and from now on I'll play higher. I haven't decided on the stakes exactly (with my limit being $10 per tournament), but I think I'll go up gradually so that the difference of the players doesn't make a huge impact.

Apart from that, I keep running good. Since I started playing again, I've only had one losing day and it was something like 4 buy-ins so not a bit deal. André has been quite helpful with answering my questions, even though I'd like to have more coaching. But he is pretty busy with his own stuff so, can't have it all I guess.

In my previous post, I mentioned that we have an office. André thought that it would be more productive to have a working space outside of the house. No more playing in my pjs! :( On the good side, it definitely helps you stay more focused at what you are doing cause there are less distractions. Anyway, since we will be spending a lot of time in the office from now on, it was important that both of us feel good in there. Therefore,  we both contributed equally in the decoration and the setup of the space. Here are some pics:

Cozy, isn't it?

André discovered that couch while we were shopping at IKEA. Excellent if you need to take a nap in between sessions!

FBI headquarters. Kidding, it's just our desks from the back...

My desk! With my beloved Mac keyboard of course.

André's desk. From this angle it kinda looks like the interior of a spaceship, don't you think? :P

My froggy and my plant! 

Entrance (Kitchenette on the left, printer and writing materials on the right)

Kitchenette with all the essentials: a toaster, a boiler and my new love: a Nespresso coffee machine!!! The microwave was already there but we never use it.

Fridge and food supplies

The idea was to make it comfortable, but not too comfortable at the point where we get lazy and we feel like we're at home. Cause then what would be the point of moving our working space, right? I hope you enjoyed reading this post. See you at the tables!

Poker Break Over

Hello!!! :)

As you can guess from the title, I AM BACK! My poker break lasted quite a bit longer than Ι originally expected... The reasons for that are more personal than poker related, which is why I don't see the point in writing anything more about it here. I just want to apologize to the people that were regularly following my blog for disappearing without a trace. I know that some have asked André about me... Thank you for your interest!

So... Around the end of January I decided that it was time to go back to playing poker. The question was... where do I go back to exactly? Playing 9man turbo sit-n-gos like before? Or should I try something new? And what could that be? Initially, I was almost convinced to try playing cash games. I think that cash games players are some of the best poker players out there and that they have a deep understanding of the game. And I mean, even if I decided to play the 9man turbos eventually, the time I would have spent learning cash games would not be a complete waste, since my postflop play would get a lot better.

But then my boyfriend, André, was like "You know that what I'm best at is hyper-turbos, I could teach you how to play those". Yep, good argument. If I chose to learn cash games he could point me in the right direction and tell me what to study and what to do more or less, but he could not actually teach me himself cause that's not his format. With the hyper-turbos, it's completely different. He's one of the top players in the world, so he definitely knows what he's talking about. I do feel kind of bad that I won't be playing flops anymore cause that steals a bit of poker's magic, but hey, I'll go with the pro's advice, can you blame me? :P

So in the beginning of last week, I arrive to the office all ready for my first day of hyper-turbos (yep, we have an office now! More about it in an upcoming post!). I sat on the other side of the table and André gave me 5 spreadsheets. Needless to say, I had absolutely no idea about how these games are played. I spent a day in the past converting my FPPs into money playing hyper-turbos, but that was about it and it's been mooooonths since then. Could have been a past life, that's how much I remember about it. So I took the spreadsheets in my hands and looked at it like it was Chinese. He spent a bit more than half an hour explaining to me how to read them and some basic rules, and then we went to my Pokerstars lobby to set the filters.

Hyper-turbos basically run in satellites, which means that the stakes you have to chose from vary depending on the day of the week and the time of the day. It works like this: you register at a satellite that starts with 6 players. The first two win an entry to the tournament for which the satellite qualifies. The third player gets a small amount of money, but it's irrelevant comparing to the buy-in, so we'll just assume that the third player gets nothing to make things easier. Now, if you register at another satellite but when you win, you are already registered for the tournament it qualifies for, then Pokerstars deposits the buy-in of that tournament to your account in the form of $t money.

I started playing some $3 tables, but those run out quickly as the tournament that they were giving entry to started. Then the lowest satellites I could find were those qualifying for some Sunday tournaments and the buy-in was $18.77. Not even in my best days of poker have I played that high. But since there was no other option, I had to play those.

The day went by with me one-tabling (OF COURSE!) and trying to find where on earth among the spreadsheets that I lay out all over my desk was the answer to the play I had to do. And I had the luxury or 8 full seconds to find what was the correct play before the clock started ticking. Cause yeah, that's how much time you have to react in those. HYPER. TURBOS. I was feeling lost to say the least. In retrospect, that day was kind of Karate Kid style. You know that classic scene from the movie, where the student shows up to Mr. Miyagi's house to learn karate, but ends up painting the fence instead? Then, after a lot of hours and while he's about to go home disappointed, Mr. Miyagi shows up and the kid realizes that by painting the fence he learnt some defense techniques... Well, after a day of "What on earth am I doing", "I don't know how to play this", "Why did he leave me all by myself in front of the computer" and "Oh, that was the calling range, not the shoving range", I went to have dinner with André. He asked me "What did you learn today?". I was like "Are you kidding me? Nothing!!!". But then he asked me a couple of questions and to my surprise I answered correctly. Hmm. I guess the day was not a complete waste after all, even though I probably know less poker than that kid knew karate.

Anyway, the rest of the week I pretty much only tried to get better at using the spreadsheets, which is not as easy as it may sound at first. Right now, I'm pretty confident with what to push and what to fold during the first level without checking them. Once the blinds go up it gets tricky, and the bubble... That's a whole different story! As you may have already guessed, the info I have on the papers in front of me is not nearly enough to cover all of the situations that come up in a tournament so eventually I need to make my own decisions and learn how to play the game. I think the next thing I'm going to challenge myself with, is playing two tables. I tried it a bit the other day and lost every single tournament I registered to. At some point, I also registered to a third table by mistake, and nearly went crazy!!! Apart from that, I think the poker gods have gifted me with good variance as a welcome back present, and I have been running amazingly good. My winnings are something like $700, which if you take into account the fact that I'm one-tabling and have been playing for about a week, is pretty awesome. I just brace myself for when the other side of variance comes my way...

So for now, my poker time goes by the following way: play one satellite, review my game and study it, play another satellite, study another satellite, interesting part, boring part, interesting part, boring part... I really don't find it that exciting to stare at the re-player and squeeze my mind about what I did right or wrong, but I guess that if you want to learn it's inevitable...

And before I go, here's a funny one:

The funny part is not the hand itself, but my opponent's name... For those of you who are not greek and do not understand what it means, let's just say that if Pokerstars had a way of controlling what each single nickname means in every language, they wouldn't have allowed this one! ;)

Anyway, keep checking back for updates on my adventures in the hyper-turbo world. I'll be blogging again from now on!

See you at the tables! :D