First day of my Challenge went very similar to Andre's. 

I started playing a mix of $1 and $0.50 tourneys ranging in players from 45 to 360.  This is probably a mistake.  After reading the first week or so of Andre's blogs, I decided to drop the $1's out of my play for now.  I still mixed player ranges however.

I ended up playing 40 tournaments, and finished down about $20.

I did however get A LOT of studying in.  I was kind of all over the place with my study however.  Everything from Watching Andrew Brokos' Hand reading series (very interesting/helpfull) to some of HITTHEPANDA's 45 man video.  Add to that reading Andres blogs and starting to read the MTTSNG “Welcome” thread's suggested reading on 2+2.

I'm really trying to concentrate my efforts right now on figuring out push/fold dynamics and how to adjust my play in the different levels of the tournent.  Some of it is refresher for me, but clearly I need it.

I've decided I'm going to follow Andre's lead again, and stick strickly to the $0.50 45 mans until I get back to my starting $100.  Then I'll move up to 90 mans.  If my BR gets down to $50 though, I'll drop down to the $0.25 45 mans.

That's all for today. 

Thoughts and comments allways appreciated.

Thanks,

A. J.

Well, it's been a rough couple of days. So far, I've played 170 + tournements, and I'm down $26 or so.  That's the bad news.  The good news?  Things are getting better.

The 45 mans are/were a rough one to get used to.  At first I was almost 100% Push/Fold, and quite frankly, my push/fold game, well…. Sucks.  Because of this, I wasn't seeing much in the way of final tables.  I actually abandoned the 45 mans for a little while and decided I was only going to play the 360 mans.  Over all, I feel these are a little better value for me.  They seem to offer a little more “Play” and in the end, if you win one, you make up A LOT more ground ($33 first place, as opposed to $6.30 in the 45 mans.)  Of course, more runners means, more varience, but overall, I seem to do better in these than in the 45 mans.

But the 360 mans come with an additional problem.  They don't fill up very quickly.  Especially if, like I do, you play mostly at night.  So after running away from the 45's for a day or so, I started filtering them back into my play to fill my screen while I waited for 360's to fill up.  And you know what?  I found a way to find “play” in those too.

I'm finding my way to more FTs, which is good.  Sometimes I'm busting out in 8th or 9th (out of the money in the 45s) but I'm finding my way into the money as well.  I haven't won a tournament yet since the start of my challenge, but I have a couple of 3rds, and 1 second, as well as some smaller cashes.  It's help my BR rebound a little from it's low of $64. 

I've been doing some more studying.  Going over the 45 Man Strat guide on 2+2, reading Andre's blog, going over some video's and posts right here on our very own TPE.  I also followed Andre's lead and picked up a digital copy of Kill Everyone.  Just started reading it tonight, and was suprised how much it got me thinking about almost right away.  It starts out talking about the LAG style of some of the top pros.  Up until now, I've pretty much tried to play a straight TAG style (and of course added my own spazzy tendencies to such,) but this is the first time I've ever really ready anything that had to do with the structure of how a good LAG style works.  I tried to put a little into practice in some of my later sessions tonight/this morning, and of course I over did it at first.  But I think I'm starting to get to a point where I'm incorperating bits and peices into my game.

Sticking to BR management and to these 50 cent tournements only has been a challenge.  I allowed myself one indulgence on Sunday, playing the Nightly $55 30K.  This is a tournament that I've played from time to time as a replacement to playing the $70 nightly tournement at Ceasar Windsor.  It's well outside of my BR, but I make a seperate deposite for these when I play them.  I find that they have better value than the nightly's at the casino, and frankly, the rewards are better (even if the Ceasars nightly gets 50 players on a Sunday…which is rare… First is only worth just over $1K, and most of the time, the regs in there start looking to chop as early as 5 people….then you get to be the outcast if you don't want to chop, yadda yadda…) Anyway, no cash in that one, so right back to the 45's and 360's.

The reason I bring it up at all, is 1)Because it felt like cheating on the challenge, and I kind of wanted to confess the cheat, and 2) Becasue it was and interesting experience going from the super micro's, to what I kind of refer to as mid stakes (I know, it's not really mid stakes, but to an ultra micro grinder it is! :P)  The biggest stand out to me is how similar some of the play was in some instances.  I had noticed it before when I played these tournements, but it was so pronounced this time that it was kind of shocking.

As a poker player, starting out in the micros, you kind of look at those higher buy-in tournements as “The Big Leagues.” You assume that since you're pounding away trying to figure out all the minutia of the game, that everyone at those stakes has already done the same, and are then obviously much better poker players than you.  And in some cases, for the really good players, I'm sure this is true.  But it doesn't take long to figure out that for a lot of people in those tournements, the ability to buy in to a tournement does not equate to skill level.

And of course this is true.  It's as true at the $55 dollar level as it is at the $1K level, as it is at the $10K WSOP Main event.  And while this may not be a lesson to many people here, at the very least, for guys like me, it's a sign that maybe all this micro grinding may be worth it one day.

And that just makes me more eager to grind out, and start winning at the micros!!

Here's my Graph So far:

Thanks for reading, feedback, comments, thoughts questions, jokes and concerns are always welcome!

l8r,

A. J.