Quick Update

I wanted to give a quick update as the end of January is quickly drawing near.  I haven't put in a solid session at Pokerstars in the last 2 weeks due to a few reasons.  The week following my last big session I had family come in town which left little time to put in a solid session, the following week after that I got really busy with work (which will likely continue this next week) which prevented me from getting any solid sessions in.

One thing I have been doing lately is playing HUSNGs as they are much more convenient for my semi-chaotic schedule.  It's easy to get a few games in here and there between doing things around my apartment; basically makes the grind a bit more manageable instead of having to set aside larger blocks of time to multitable.

I had originally started the year with only about $3 or so in my FT account, I ran this up pretty quickly but then hit a downswing that kind of wiped it out.  Well, I hit a downswing and then decided to redeposit a much larger amount if I actually bottomed out, so I moved up to the $2.15 games to reduce the rake %; naturally downswing continued and I ended up with $0.25 in the account.

I deposited $100, originally with the intent of using $50 of it on a volume prop bet but now I'm thinking that I will not do that as I don't want to set myself up for failure immediately.  Instead I will use this and keep grinding the $2.15 games up to around $150 where I will move up to the $5 games.

The overall game plan will be to build my roll up on full tilt until I'm comfortably rolled for the $11 pokerstars games, at which point I will transfer part of my roll over and begin grinding the $6-$11 turbos.  I have been playing a few of the $2.20s but would rather stick to the turbo format for now, and I've been running bad on PS so that motivation helps me :).

As an update on the challenge with my brother, we've had some set backs as he had to move and no longer has internet access.  He's anticipating a move out to Phoenix with me in a few months at which point he will resume the grind.  This will make the $50K challenge quite difficult, but if I can get myself in gear with these HUSNGs we might be in decent shape for a late year push.

To end, here's a graph of my Full Tilt HUSNGs for 2011 thus far, hoping to get in way more volume this week :)

45 Turbos

Volume this week has blown to be frank.  I desperately need to change that as I'd like to be in the $1 games this weekend at some point.  That said, I said screw the BRM tonight and loaded only the $0.55 45 turbos.  I only played 21 as I didn't want to do my usual 30+ tabling on a new and relatively unfamiliar format.

45 Turbos

Thoughts? I love the turbos.  Mainly due to the length of time they take (essentially half that of the reg speeds obviously).  I don't like to discuss strat too much for a few different reasons, but I will say that players are definitely too tight given that it's a turbo.  I remember looking at one of my last tables thinking to myself "I'm 6/16 and I have 7 BBs... wtf?"

Results were encouraging.  I know that upon hitting my target 80 BIs I will be doing nothing but mass tabling these bad boys, until then I may continue to do a 50/50 split between these and the reg speed games, I hope this isn't -EV but I think I can handle the diff structure types simultaneously.

OK, enough talking time for the results.

Overall

BR: 32.45

Stars Is Awesome

It appears that Stars has added $0.55 45 and 90 man turbos with no rake.  This is the perfect stepping stone from the $0.25 45s to the $1.10 45s.  Much Kudos to Stars.  After a bit more BR growth I will begin grinding these much more prevalently; for the time being still crushing the $0.25 45s.

BR: 28.50

Still Disappointed

Still disappointed in my volume.  I'm keeping this short but will do a full update later on this evening most likely.

Most recent graph:

First Update

Hello peeps,

So my brother and I launched into it at exactly 12:00am EST on 1/1/11 and started off with a solid 7 hour grind session.  I was a bit underwhelmed by the amount of tables I could get going, however; just not that many people playing at that time.  I'd guess that on average I was around the 15-17 table mark.

One thing I was forced to do a bit differently with this challenge at the onset that I believe will aid me while grinding is to actually keep my cashier open and keep an eye on it.  I agree that results aren't necessarily what's important and that making the correct decisions during play is what is striven for; however when you're trying to mass table with an extremely short bankroll it's important to know where you stand.

The first session I was having OK results, I saw my roll dip under $5 a few times which was definitely disconcerting at first.  My thought process on it was "screw it, I'm going to keep loading" mainly because it was only $10 and I knew that I could reload if I busted my roll initially.  Low and behold I went on a hot run at the end of the session to put me up around the $16.50 mark.

I got a few hours of sleep and then woke up and started up another session.  I probably shouldn't have started up this session because I was so tired but I wanted to get some volume in.  In point of fact I believe it's my first actual losing session in a very long time, so I just tell myself I was due.  My BR at the end of it was $12ish which was definitely better than it could have been.  I took the remainder of the first off and opted to get some studying in as I had already played around 140 games and definitely had a decent sample to review some spots in my newly purchased SNG Wiz.

The next morning, after 12 hours of sleep (the longest I've slept in recent memory), I decided to focus on the 360s.  I had changed a few strategic points of my approach towards these SNGs as they are very different than the 45s I was playing.  I made a point to not count my tables and not pay attention to any results, I literally just made sure that I regged every single 360 for over an hour (upon review I discovered I had up to around 35 tables going, per HEM).  I thought it was going to be a losing session until I ended up getting 3rd in 2 of my final games, cashing for $4.00 in each.  This brought me up to the $16.01 that I'm at now.

I was hoping to get a large session in tonight after work but a few things came up that prevented me, so I opted to take the opportunity to update my blog instead.  Additionally I'm going to get some more studying in so that I can hit the tables hard tomorrow.

BR $16.01.