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Positive Poker
SatelliteToStar
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April 1, 2016 - 9:29 pm
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His eyes closed before his chips hit the felt. Three stacks of red tumbled forward toward the pot, and my heart fell with them. The drunk in seat seven had just lost his fifth buy-in in a row. The rest of the table was abuzz with excitement, eager to get a taste of his easy money. As I pushed the pot toward the winning player, I cringed when the drunkard regained consciousness long enough to call for more chips. Those were the worst few minutes of my career as a poker dealer.

What I witnessed in that Las Vegas card room has stuck with me to this day. It wasn’t the craziest, the wildest, the crudest, or the most obscene thing that happened during the two years I spent at the poker table, but it was the saddest. I didn’t feel sad for him. I felt sad for the game. That was not poker. There was no skill or strategy behind what happened that night. Instead, that moment in time represented the degeneracy that casts a shadow over the game I love.

That is not the image I want for poker players. My whole life I’ve dealt with the negative stigma that is associated with playing cards, and I don’t want that to be the only example of what it means to be a poker player. For me, poker is not about mindlessly throwing money away or gambling for an adrenaline rush. It is about the challenge, the competition, and the fun involved with playing a great game. This seems to be a message shared by everyone at TPE.

I was drawn to TPE after listening to people like KB, RonFezBuddy, Carlos Welch, Andrew Brokos, and all of the other guests featured on the TPE podcast. They are the people I aspired to be like, not only as players but as positive examples of poker professionals. So in future posts, I will write about my poker experiences, and I will try my best to show the positive sides of poker.

Keep on grinding.

 

@SatelliteToStar on twitter

joelshitshow
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April 10, 2016 - 2:41 pm
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I hear ya. To me it’s the same as the bus. Every city has the degens on their buses. The ones who’ve had a rough go, the ones who won’t stop talking to the driver.

The good cities have the degens on the buses, too, but they also have lots of other people as well. I want that for poker as well. It’s not so much about getting rid of the degens as it is building a community for everyone.

SatelliteToStar
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April 10, 2016 - 7:19 pm
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Well said Joel, I couldn’t agree more. Good luck at the tables.

SatelliteToStar
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April 10, 2016 - 7:21 pm
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I can’t start this journey without a destination in mind. So below I list the two short term goals I have in poker. I’d like to achieve both goals within the next three months.

1. Have a winning record in $10 HU sngs over a 50 game sample size.

Purpose of this goal: to take myself out of my MTT comfort zone. Due to focusing on MTTs and 9 man sngs, I’ve grown accustomed to playing a tight and mostly preflop based style. As a result, my post flop skills are nearly non existent. By setting a HU sng goal, I hope to put myself into the uncomfortable position of having to play hands, and maybe seeing a turn and river for a change, oh my the terror! This will challenge me in many ways, and it will help me improve as a poker player.

Plan to achieve this goal: watch all of the HU videos on TPE, while jumping into the games and starting to play. I will begin at the $1 level.

2. Final table Bovada’s $22 buyin $4k GTD 10K chip starting stack tournament. This tournament usually gets between 250 – 300 players with first place receiving around $1.1K.

Purpose of this goal: practice playing in MTTs that allow for post flop play. The goal of getting deep in the tournament is not about winning a certain amount of money. Instead, it is about learning to play my best when the pressure begins to build and the impact of each decision is magnified.

Plan to achieve this goal: watch all of Andrew Broko’s TPE videos, and review the hands I play in my MTT sessions. I’ve always connected with the way Andrew teaches so that is why I’m going to start out by focusing just on his videos. In terms of reviewing hands, I will download the tournament hand histories and go over them to see how I can improve and also to see what my opponents were doing that made things difficult at the tables.

Bankroll management for each goal:

1. Have at least 20 buyins for each stake in HU sngs. Drop down in stakes at the 15 buyin mark.

This is a very aggressive management strategy that I will only use for my short term HU sng goal. It is designed to allow me to move up quickly while also teaching me to move down in stakes as needed.

2. Make a profit of $66 in HU games before playing the $22 MTT.

For every three MTT buyins of profit I make while pursuing the HU goal, I will take a shot at the MTT goal. This will be my form of satelliting into the tournaments.

Starting bankroll: $50

In my next few posts I’ll provide progress updates and give some feedback on the experience.

SatelliteToStar
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April 13, 2016 - 10:59 pm
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Utterly lost. That is how I felt playing the first few HU sngs. It felt strange playing so many hands and being in so many marginal spots. My mind was begging for a break after only three games. In MTTs, I tend to mentally check out a bit when I’m not involved in a hand, but I don’t have any time to do that in HU games. So at first I was not accustomed to the constant decision making that takes place in one on one poker.

 

Eventually, I got more comfortable and started to shift my focus onto how to beat the games. Even with the five minute levels of a turbo sng, I found there were plenty of opportunities for three street play. This allowed me to adapt to my opponents and avoid getting into too many short stack shove fests.

 

Due to the micro stakes I’m playing, it seemed like most of my edge came from opponent errors rather than from anything remarkable in my own play. Most opponents had a rigid strategy that did not vary based on my tactics or adaptations. So even after a shaky beginning, I ended up with a winning record in the $1 games and feel comfortable moving up to the next level.

 

My bankroll was boosted a bit by a small zone poker session I played in preparation for a live cash game with friends; however, I don’t plan on playing too many cash sessions going forward. I’ll be more than happy to use the fortunate run of cards and success at sngs to move up to the $3 sngs tomorrow.

 

Current bankroll: $83

Starting bankroll: $50

SatelliteToStar
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April 27, 2016 - 10:29 pm
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It has been about a month since my last post. That time has been filled with an unexpected mix of both excitement and boredom. The excitement came from the unbelievable amount of luck I’ve had during the start of this challenge, and the boredom was due to being without a functional computer for about 3 weeks.

 

I began playing $3 SNGS without much expectation for how things would go. My guess was that they would play very similarly to the $1 games. I did switch to regular speed games, so I felt this might change the game dynamics a bit, but overall I didn’t foresee any dramatic differences in play. My plan was to play at least 20 games and then move up if possible.

 

Things started off pretty well results wise, but I still didn’t feel 100% comfortable at the tables. Sometimes I’d play a match and not really know what to do. It felt like I was clicking buttons a lot. I tried my best to figure out how my opponents were playing (too tight, too loose, too much of a calling station) and then adapt in game, but I found it was easier to analyze the play afterward when I had more time to consider my options for future games against similar villains.

 

By far the hardest opponent to play against was a smart aggressive player. Frequent button raises, small blind 3 bets, check raises, bluffs, etc made for very tough opposition. I only encountered 2 or 3 players like this, but I could instantly tell they were doing some things really well. I tried to think about plays they made that put me in difficult spots. Anytime I felt confused or unsure of what to do, I took a mental note on what they were doing to me. I hope that over time I can not only figure out the best way to counteract these aggressive and intelligent players, but I also want to try to incorporate some of their plays into my own game. With that said, onto my results…

 

As far as I know, Bovada games are not tracked on any SNG sites so I will try to attach a picture of my Bovada account showing the games I played, the results, and my current bankroll. After 20 games, I finished with a 19 – 1 record. The screenshot below shows a 16 – 0 stretch. It also shows the long period of downtime I had when having to wait for my new laptop to arrive. Needless to say it was pretty laughable how hot I ran in these games. I got lucky to win almost every flip, to get pair over pair, flush over flush, and so on in game after game. I think there were also times I outplayed my opponents, but I’m confident the poker gods were simply on my side for the majority of the SNGS. No point in arguing with good old fashion positive variance though.

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Since I now have more than 20 buy ins, I will be moving up to the $5 SNGS. If I drop back to $75 (15 buy ins) I’ll move back down to the $3 games, but if things go well I’ll move up to the $10 games once my bankroll gets to $200.

 

I did manage to mix in a $22 MTT, finishing 47th out of 285 entrants for a whopping $0. Before playing my next MTT, I plan on reviewing the hand history to improve on my still developing game.

 

Training videos watched: hand reading series and getting paid series (by foucault82).

 

Current balance: $118

Starting balance: $50

SatelliteToStar
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May 5, 2016 - 12:25 am
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Just a quick update for this post. I focused on putting in more HU volume and increased my bankroll enough (more than 3 $22 MTT buyins) to play the 10k starting stack $22 MTT on Bovada at 6:30 pm PST tomorrow. This will be my second attempt at goal # 2 of this thread. I’m excited for the opportunity to play in a tournament that can provide a +$1k score. It should give me a chance to practice MTT play, and it feels nice that my plan of grinding away at HU while using the winnings to play MTTs seems to be working so far. 

 

I would recommend this sort of approach to anyone. Find a game that interests you or helps you develop as a player, then use that game as a way to build your bankroll enough to take shots at MTTs. There are certainly other ways of going about bankroll management, but I thought this was an interesting alternative to “just dealing with” the swings of nothing but MTT grinding.

 

As a side note – if anyone has any recommendations for hand replayers that support Bovada HH please let me know.

 

Current bankroll: $151.23

Starting bankroll: $50.00

SatelliteToStar
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May 13, 2016 - 9:55 pm
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Mini update: slight change of plans, I’m going to the WSOP!

 

I will be spending the next two weeks preparing for a five day trip out to Vegas with a few of my friends. We will be playing the Colossus II flight E and also some Rio / Aria daily tournaments. It feels somewhat surreal to be going out there to play in my first WSOP event. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with a few TPE pros/members. Looking forward to seeing everyone.

 

In order to prepare I’m going to be focusing on MTTs only and watching MTT theory/game play videos. My $22 Bovada shot ended with a deep run but no cash. I felt I played pretty well and learned a lot, so it was a big success. A couple days later I fired up 4 micro MTTs after work. I busted two, min cashed the third, and won the $4 beginner tournament. It was a tiny cash but a fun experience:

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Keep on grinding!

 

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