Aggro $200 NL players? LOL.

Wait til you hit $1000 NL.

Update - now playing the $200 iPoker tables and playing OK over first 1200 hands.
Stats were 23/11 for $100; now 20/15 at $200..




Have raked $853 to date this month so on course for the $1200 rake I need to reach $360 RB top up from my RB affiliate. I will also make the 2nd highest VIP level at the site for next month (boosting my effective RB incl. affiliate bonus to about 65%)

38 hrs played short-stacked @3.74PTBB/100
4.2 average MT ratio

+$1020 at tables + $455 RB + $200 bonus = $1675

=$44/hr

Also played 5 hours MTT's for +$662


Grand total +$2337 at $54.35/hr

Still running OK.

Only played for 20 minutes or so tonight but was on form...

I spent most of my play time tutoring a new player (from work) short-stacking the 5c/10c tables at Party with his free $20...we just about managed to win by doubling his short buy in - but most of the stuff was about basic concepts of position and aggression...

Roll is back up over $8000 now, but I will withdraw back down to $6000 at month end..as I'll be shortstacking the $200's at least for the next month and $6k is way more than is needed for that..

Well I got smacked around by the variance fairy (as usual when I move up to $200).

At least it's a lot less painful short-stacked.




So I am actually playing better than I was at $100, but my results are -0.7PTBB rather than +4PTBB/100. At least I am within $150 of rake of my VIP level and $360 affiliate bonus RB target. I can stop then for the month.

OK - and we smack the variance fairy right back

and she smacks me back








The good news is that my RB and bonus means I have still made a little money at $1/2 and also that I am now running at 2.5PTBB/100 adjusted - which is a great indication that long term this is going to be very profitable indeed

350 hands/hr = 3.5 x 4.5 (2.5 at tables + 2 RB) x 4 = underlying win rate now at $63/hr

Getting off the laptop and upstairs would probably mean more like 440hands/hr so that would be $81/hr...

Well a real bad beat bloodbath during the $200 hands wiped out all my profit in them (even allowing for my bonuses and RB).




So I should have won $368 and in fact lost $410 at the $200's.
Still I suppose running bad is better than playing bad and 1.7PTBB/100 expected win-rate (especially with good RB) is OK for $200 I guess.

I ran very well at the $100's of course, so overall I'm about where I should be.

Just very very frustrating

This is the graph for the entire experiment..I have finished for the month now:



Total time 50hrs
Total hands 16,800 (MT 4.12)
Won at Tables $220
Bonus and RB +$880

Total +$1100

$22/hr meh

Mind you - running at an expected return of 1.7PTBB/100 at $200 the figures look at lot better - more like $50/hr 4 tabling.

I think youre doing fine...for a beginner

I played about 10000 hands or so at lower stakes practicing SSing before I was ready to try the 5 / 10. I can see by your graph that you still need a bit more work, although $22 / hr while youre tweaking your game doesnt sound bad at all to me, because there is BIG money to be made IF you can make the right tweaks.

I say you need some improvement because looking at your red line graph, I see a few spots where you were either tilting or playing less than optimally.

Around hand 2800 there is a really bad downward spike. You should never see that. A downward spike in the blue line is bad luck. A downward spike that severe in the red line is tilt or something else you dont want. My red line is a continual upward line that never even changes angle hardly at all. My red line's angle is also quite a bit higher than yours (if I had a protractor I could measure them both). This also tells me that your not playing best possible strategy but also I think some of that has to do with this just being easier at higher stakes as strange as that sounds. The red line in my graph of $100 NL hands slopes up at about the same angle as yours but again its a constant slope. Very little deviation.

From hands 9500-12000 you were on a slow road to bustoville. Thats 2500 hands with the red line sloping down. Again, you should never see that for more than 100 hands or so. If youre tilting froma few bad beats, get up and walk around the block or something.

Im not sure what hand number you started playing $1/$2 but if it was around hand 14000, then you just lost your wits when you moved up. The red line starts spiking up down and all around.

Ice I started playing $1-2 at 10k or so.

I have continued getting bad beated to hell in a hand basket at iPoker $1-2. My Poker EV stats for the $1-2 tables now over 6k+ hands show me at an expected earn of 1.6PTBB/100 and an actual loss of -2.44PTBB/100. That is running over 4PTBB/100 worse than I should (just under $1000 worth) and I think it's about as badly as you can run short stacking for 6000 hands to be honest.

The time I got in 7 times vs the same 60%Vp$iP player (usually ahead and never worse than 40/60 with money in the pot each time) and lost every single one was probably my low point luck wise. It probably does affect my play eventually but any tilt is nowhere near as costly as it would be at full ring.

The expected return of 1.6PTBB/100 at $1-2 is fine and in fact better than my expected oevr the 10k hands of 0.50c-$1, so there is no reason to back down.

On a positive note, as it's a new month I have also been playing the 50p-£1 tables at Will Hill short (not shown in Poker EV as it doesn't work for Crypto sites) and have been destroying them for 36PTBB/100 over enough hands to net me about $450 in the past two days. I also won at about 10PTBB/100 there at the beginning of last month over a few hundred hands.

I can assure you that these would improve my PokerEV red line significantly if I could incorporate them!

However a bigger downer is that my rakeback affiliates are no longer 'allowed' to run their +30% RB bonus for NoIQ from this month on. That means my base RB is back to 35% (lousy as I get 50% at Prima without any minimum hand requirement). They do have both site and affiliate specific 'rake races' that in theory make up the gap for 'pros' but as a part-timer I could never really make use of those. Sigh - 65% RB was too good to last I guess..

I think I will wait for the site and RB affiliate to pay me out the $640 or so they owe me so far in RB and then may take my $1200 or so overall profit from NoIQ and go somewhere else, at least once I have cleared off the oustanding $280 balance of my sign up bonus (as that together with my 35% site RB left should still get close to 45% RB or so which is acceptable I guess).

I do like iPoker though as it's incredibly well set-up for shortstacking. It's just a shame that they threw my doomswitch to 'on' when I moved up to $1-2 and took away 30% of my RB

Can you post the graph for just 1/2 hands? Something doesnt sound right.

Also, I dont really think you can use the graph your using that much. I like the "all in before river" only

On the one your using, if you have [Jh] and bet a [7c][2d] flop and get called. Then you bet the turn and he calls or shoves or whatever..and you lose to [5c], you get credit for some Sklansky bucs, but you really werent that unlucky. ]The guy had a flush draw and an overcard and you paid him off AFTER his card hit. Now your play may be fiine there, but I just dont like looking at the graph that way because I might not pay him off and you might....or you might pay one guy off a little and another guy off alot if they guy makes a bigger bet. In other words, there is still skill involved in the hand and how much you win or lose will vary depending on who youre playing.

There are lots of examples of this. Another would be where you have [8s] and bet a [4d][3s] flop and get called. The turn is the . Do you bet or not? Again skill and hand reading now comes into play. I think we only want to use pokerEV to calculate pure luck factor.

I only like to use this for determining how much good or bad luck Im having because iIf we get all in on that same flop, then skill level is taken out of the equation and we can see how much we won / lost compared to hom much equity we had.

hmm but that would reward donk pushing over playing it more slowly for maximum extraction...

Anyway here are the graphs you asked for:



ThePokerEV hands here include some non-iPoker ones.
The overall loss rate at $1-2 is 1.6 or so.
The expected win rate is 1,6PTBB/100 too, so the 'expectation gap' over all my $1/2 hands is -3.2PTBB/100.

Switching to all ins before river only as you requested



You see that the gap is actually worse (-3.5PTBB), so my play when I don't get all in before river but do see a SD is saving/making me +0.3PTBB.

Make of that what you will.

Wow. That IS some seriously bad luck.