Friday, 7 February 2014

Rocky Ride

Week 1 Update

This week has been very swing. I ended up in the green by around $80, but was up around $400 only a couple of days ago, and this signifies just how much variance are in these games! I did however start playing some 9.25's and 9.50s yesterday which did contribute to my downfall towards the end.



I ended up doing around 3/4 hours of studying which is around half of what I planned. While I played 2099 games, which is 99 games more than I planned. So all in all not a bad week!

I've slightly tweaked my short-term plan because I feel I need to address this point. Playing against regs is very very tough! They know a lot about you because you've played so many hands against them, and they adjust well. That is why I'm going to be concentrating on adapting to regs, while also looking at some hand history's on the way. But fighting these regs, will help me to beat the 9's!

Good Luck on the Tables!

NewOnTheScene

Saturday, 1 February 2014

Achieving Supernova

Pokerstars offers one of the best VIP programs in the world, and without it I almost definitely wouldn't be playing hyper turbos! This is not so much a factor at the microstakes but at the mid-high stakes because ROI is so much lower and getting the odd cash bonus and money from rakeback can really make the difference!

Supernova... can I do it?

To make Supernova I will have to make 100,000 VPPs in 2014 and since I only made around 3300 VPP's in January, I will now have to make 96700 VPPs in 11 months which is 334 days. This works out to be approximately 290VPPs in a day. That is a lot dont get me wrong, but it is definitely achievable! I would need to play over 700 games per day of $3.75 but....and there is a big BUT since I'm also studying for a full time degree, this is very tough...  and I mean very very very tough!

However, the good news is that if all goes to plan, I won't be playing $3.75's for the whole year! I definitely have a lot of scope to move up to playing any of the games up to the $12's. The implication being that my average stake would be a lot less, and would be able to probably play around 250-300 games a day to be on pace. 

The reason why I haven't stated that I wanted to achieve Supernova as one of my goals is that plain and simply at the moment, I'm looking to put in a lot of work studying! I want to improve my game, and although I think volume is important, I'm definitely not going to be playing 1k games every day!

I will be re-assessing this (half) goal in the next 6 months and will adapt accordingly. I also hope to add an article at some point about the adjustments to my daily routine to cope with the pressures of achieving this goal (focussing mainly on mental game issues).

Good luck on the tables!! 

NewOnTheScene :)
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/grinding-hyper-turbo-satellites-1411002/


Thursday, 30 January 2014

Sir, "It's 2014...what's the plan?"

Background

I'm 20 years old and a final-year year student in the UK studying Maths and Economics. Since the age of 18, i've been playing a lot of online poker and have been dabbling in pretty much every format of the game, whether that be in Mtt's or HeadsUp PLO but never really found too much success in any of them. The main reason was that I had terrible bankroll management and was always too eager to move up stakes. This meant that half the time I was at university, I was rebuilding my bankroll rather than trying to actually get better at the game....which sucks! But the one positive I can take from this is that the last 2 rocky years has been a really steep learning curve for me, all those months spent rebuilding my bankroll definitely improved my skill level and also has a positive impact on my mental game. So Lets just hope this carries on throughout 2014!

So What's the Plan?

I've found it! That one format which brings huge action and huge swings (and im actually alright at it.....for once). Thats right, its 6-max Hyper Turbo Satellites! I've currently got a filter on which only lets me play games which are between $3 - $8 and thats what I'm going to stick to!. Over a 10k sample size I'm beating the $3.75's for about 3% ROI which is kinda cool. While the higher buyins around $8 I'm slightly above breakeven on a <1k sample...so I cant really gage much from that.

Belated 2014 Goals
  1. Play 2000 games per week
  2. Spend 7 hours a week studying the game
  3. Move up only when I have 200 Buyins of the stake above
  4. Update 2+2 every week!

Anyway, these are the games I'm going to be playing for the next few months until I can move up 


Will be starting the challenge on Thursday when I'm back in the country 


Good Luck on the tables! Hope you guys enjoy my posts!

NewOnTheScene 

The Scary First Session

Re: Grinding the Hyper Turbo Satellites

Thought I would just show you guys my first couple of sessions. It started pretty immensely and then just started to slowly but surely die, but you know what a pretty good start 

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 800x554.


One thing that I did notice is that I was playing in games at around 17:30 GMT and they seem to be reg-filled! I mean I was playing with 4 or 5 regs in a 6max sng...which seems insane! The implications obviously being that ROI is significantly lower in these games, but rather than avoiding these tough spots, im going straight in. I'm going to try not to game select at these stakes. The main reason, is that I'll learn how to adjust accordingly to both regs and recreational players, which should (I hope) make me into a better hyper player .

My plan is to update every Thursday to see if im achieving my targets. I might even update twice a week if i've got time.

Good luck on the tables!

NewOnTheScene