First impressions from the $22’s
posted by fox on December 29, 2007

I have been really busy with all the changes on the site in the last few weeks, and the holidays kept me busy too, so I haven’t played on the bankroll builder project much. Played 6 $22 turbo’s tonight, and I saw about what I expected, much better play than the $11’s, which were quite a bit stronger than the $6’s. There were certainly some weak players, with one guy getting all-in on the first hand with K8s, but overall the play was stronger than the $12 level was, though the difference was not as big as the difference between $6 and $12 was.

Research tells me that a 20% ROI is probably close to the max at this level, and a typical solid player will have trouble making even that. I did find a few players who were above or at the 15% mark, with Elwood3 (sharkscope him) on Full Tilt being a good example. He has a 15% ROI over 750 games or so at the $33 level, which is a damn fine win rate at that level. The 39% ROI that I have for the project so far will undoubtedly be dropping, though my ROI for tonight was almost 30%.

Assuming a solid player who had done his homework, I think a 10% ROI is easily achievable at the $22 level. That yields $2.20 per SNG, plus $0.54 in rakeback, for $2.74 per tourney. At eight SNG’s per hour, we get $21.92 per hour. Of course I expect to do better than that, somewhere around a 15% ROI at this level seems quite reasonable to me, but for a typical player to be able to make $22 an hour with a $600 bankroll is awesome, and better than anyone can expect to do with that size bankroll playing cash games.

I did play a few more speculative hands early, as I will continue to do as I move up for a few more levels. The players here are better, and my ROI is lower, meaning that my chips are not worth quite as much at the beginning of the tournament and it’s a little better to risk them than it was at the lower levels. I am playing against better players, and need to get the fish while they are still in the tourney, so playing a few speculative hands early on looks good from that perspective too.

While playing those speculative hands, I am very much looking to flop the nuts. AJo doesn’t look any better to me than A2o in the early rounds; both hands are worthless and unplayable in most cases. 68s however might be playable depending on the situation, and I may try to take a shot even in middle position if I get good speculative cards in the first few hands. I won’t get involved in a pot at all with a weak flop, even if it’s top pair, and if I flop a draw I have to get VERY good odds or I muck it. There is no sense in getting involved in big pots early unless you have a monster.

Taking notes is more useful at the $20 level, where you have a smaller pool of players and you will see more people multi-tabling. Seeing an opponent again is very likely if you are playing the $20’s regularly, and it’s a big help to have some notes on them when you see them again. PokerTracker is still very useful at this level too, and once you have a few hundred hands on someone you can get a pretty good feel for their game, especially when combined with notes that you took in previous games.

Sharkscope can be useful too, though it’s too hard to use that and still concentrate on the game if you are playing lots of tables. I will probably only be using sharkscope if I am looking up a player who I see multi-tabling often, so I can get a good accurate feel for how well they play.

I think playing small ball may be good for me in these things, though I’m not sure it’s the right thing for a typical player. I can steal quite a bit as long as I do it by stealing from the guys with a low VPIP and pick my targets carefully. Staying out of big pots is nice, especially considering the big advantage you can have in later levels and how valuable it is to still be alive when the blinds start to get big.

More SNG’s in the next week, and I hope to get the $20 SNG guide written once I have a good feel for these games.

Rolling Along Nicely
posted by fox on December 4, 2007 @ 1:26 am
SNG's are definitely the easy way to build a bankroll for the first $600 or so. I'll be doing more research once I get to the $20 SNG mark, which will also put me in the right range for $25 buy-in no-limit hold'em and pot-limit Omaha. Until then I'll keep rolling along whipping the SNG's handily. I've got $13 in rakeback coming from Full Tilt to add to the roll soon, and another $9 coming in rakeback from the cash games I played on Cake. Those additions bring the current bankroll up to a whopping $360. Not bad so far from a start at $145, with about 16 hours of play.

I did some research over the last few days as to how many SNG's I was going to see per hour playing four tables with staggered start times. It looks like I'll end up at around seven and a half tournaments per hour, and with a very conservative 20% ROI (I'm currently running at 25% for the project) that would be $15 per hour. Playing $10 SNG’s. Wow. I guess if you want to make $15 an hour, you can read on, I’m going to talk about how I did it in the next blog entry, which will include the $10 SNG guide. For now, here are some stats.

Back to SNG's (and why)
posted by fox on December 1, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
After doing some research I am back to playing SNG's. The numbers I talked about earlier this week we accurate, and I have played enough cash games at the micro-limits now to see that SNG's are much more profitable at these levels. My only interest at this point in the project is to find whatever yields the highest hourly rate for the size of the bankroll. Once we get into a little bigger games, a few other considerations might be involved, but for now it's just hourly rate.

SNG's have a number of things going for them at these low levels -

1. A formulaic winning strategy that doesn’t require a lot of thought to play well. This means that running at least four tables is very easy to do, especially if you stagger them so that you don’t end up heads-up at three at once.

2. Very weak opponents. In fact they are so weak that VP$IP and PFR% are usually the only stats you need to figure out who is solid and who is clueless. This makes the whole process easier and simpler, and plays into #1 as well.

3. An hourly win rate compared to bankroll size that is excellent. At a 25% ROI, and 25 buy-in bankroll, you are making 1% of your bankroll for each SNG, and you can play 7 per hour very easily. 7% of your bankroll per hour is not possible in any other form of poker as a consistent win, and it won’t be possible to maintain it as I move up levels in SNG's.

Current Excel spreadsheet for my SNG results is below. My ROI is down after a rough patch yesterday where it seemed like I lost every race, but I'm still over 20% and I’ve recovered to be at $299 for the current stats of the roll.

Back to SNG's?
posted by fox on November 26, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
After another 5 table hours of cash no-limit on Cake, I feel like I have a good feel for the games now. The ups and downs are large, possibly requiring more bankroll than SNG's, but the income can be very nice. The key seems to be table selection and rakeback, Without those two things it's very tough to beat the micro level cash games for much because the players are very unpredictable and most of them play well after the flop.

Of course the games are VERY beatable, with tons of weak players, but these players are not as passive as I would like, and playing more than a couple tables is tough because you don't know if you are against a weak player who is passive or a monster who is slow-playing. With no real reads on your opponents it's much tougher to beat these games unless you play one or two tables, take notes, and basically treat it like I treat the much bigger games. At one or two tables, even with a good win rate of say 20 big blinds per 100 hands, you are still only going to see 150 hands an hour, netting you 30 big blinds, or about $6.00 per hour. With the way the swings are it requires at least a 20 buy-in bankroll, which makes SNG's look better.

With SNG's, at a conservative 25% ROI at the $10 level, I will be making $2.50 per SNG, which is around $14 an hour, depending on how many I feel like squeezing in. Of course I can’t play them at Cake, because they don't have enough SNG's running. This is sad because the play is super weak in their SNG's and the rakeback is nice. Back to 27% rakeback and lots more SNG's at Full Tilt I think. That should build things up quickly.

And for those of you following along, the bankroll currently stands at $281 and you'll be able to track it directly from my results on Full Tilt in the $10 SNG's, which I will post here as I play them.

Videos Coming Tonight
posted by fox on @ 12:58 pm
Recorded some video playing on Cake last night, the first time I've played as part of the project in a few weeks. I'm mostly caught up with work now, it was a huge pile when I came back from vacation, but it's manageable now, so I have some time to play. I made two videos, one fairly boring of me playing a table of $.10/$.20 on Cake, and one that was entirely instructional on preflop hand selection in micro-limit games. Both should be up tonight.

I'm actually down about $20 in the last day or so in the project, almost all of it from one badly played hand where I overplayed jacks. Only have about two and a half table hours, but like I said above, I should be back to the grind more often now and will be able to put in some serious table hours soon.

Current bankroll - $270.

Vacation
posted by fox on October 31, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
I’m headed out tomorrow afternoon on a five day road trip and after one day at home I'll be off to Costa Rica for a week for some poker business. The likelihood that I'll be able to play any poker in that time is pretty low, so there may be no progress on the project until I get back. My commitment to the project remains strong, but my free time has been so thin that it's slow going.

When I get back I've scheduled two days to spend entirely on the cash games at Cake to see if I can get to $500 and make some video of it for pokerfox.

Good news for site members, I have recorded the entire 6max $40k guarantee tournament where I took third place a few months ago, and it will be going up on the site piece by piece while I'm gone. Great instructional stuff in this video, and I think it’s the first big 6max tournament video we have on the site. It’s over 4 hours of video for one tournament!

A New Site
posted by fox on October 28, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
I did a little hunting around to see if there were any easier cash games to beat, and I believe I have found a gem. I remember seeing people talk about Cake Poker on forums over the last few months, but I stayed away from the mid-size and smaller sites because they usually don't have the selection of higher stakes games that I was playing. With a monster sign up bonus, 33% rakeback, and incredibly weak games, Cake looks like a great place to spend the next few weeks, and possibly longer.

The games are as weak as people say, on par with how wild BoDog used to be, or Party 4 or 5 years ago. It can’t last long, it never does, but when a site like this pops up you just take advantage as much as possible for long as possible, so I'll be spending my time on Cake. After deciding that I really liked the site and would be recommending it, I got ahold of the affiliate manager and they set up a max percentage rakeback deal for us. Click HERE to download Cake and be part of our rakeback program. 33% automated rakeback, paid by the site itself, for the lifetime of your account. Doesn't get much better than that.

I transferred the bankroll over to Cake, and it stands at $289.60 right now. I have put in about 14 hours of play into the project, and made about $145 (remember I bought Pokertracker right away so I started at $155). I may have been lucky to run at almost $10 an hour, but that is certainly an achievable win rate for someone who was used to these levels. That win rate should increase now that I'm playing on Cake.

I also made a video last night showing how weak the play is on Cake and it should be up on pokerfox.net within 24 hours.

Fox is a slacker
posted by fox on October 25, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
Actually that title is incorrect, the problem is that I work entirely too much these days. I have taken on video making projects and a number of articles over the past few weeks and I haven’t had a chance to play hardly at all. I played a few hours of $50-$100 Omaha for fun, but other than that I haven’t played poker in a week. My apologies to those of you who are regularly checking the blog, I haven't given up on the project at all, and in fact I'm switching to a new site in a day or two once these other projects are finally done.

I should have more free time within a few days and then I'll be gung ho about the project again and working on some more guides as well as getting a bunch of hands played and putting up some pokertracker stats.

Maybe cash games aren't so bad…
posted by fox on October 22, 2007 @ 4:40 am
I had to populate a pokertracker database for a video project, and I decided to play some cash games for the project to do it. With 3 tables running, only half paying attention, I was surprised at how little effort it took compared to playing SNG’s where each decision could be critical and so many extra factors come into play.

Not having to worry about my stack size, the blinds going up, how the stacks are relative to each other, my tournament equity, or anything else except straight forward cash game no-limit, made life awfully easy. I made some cash too, about $6 in 30 minutes, and I took some beats or I could easily have made more. I may have fallen in love with SNG’s too quickly in this project, and with the upcoming move to $10 SNG’s I will have to reassess them compared to cash games.

I will be fairly short bankrolled for $.10/$.25 games at $300, so I’ll have to consider buying in short to drop my variance, and sacrifice a little win rate to do it. Buying in for $15 would give me 20 buy-ins, which is pretty reasonable as long as I’m willing to move back down if necessary, which I certainly am.

As an aside, I finally got enough time to play some of the games I was playing up until I started this project and took on a mountain of other work, and I remember why it was that I liked mid to high stakes poker. Making $3,000 in two hours leaves you feeling pretty good for the evening.

A few mistakes
posted by fox on October 18, 2007 @ 3:19 am
I played ten $5 and $6 SNG's tonight, and managed to make a few bucks, but I definitely made some mistakes. I am finding myself having to limit my aggression a lot because I'm so used to playing much higher limits where aggression is so important. At these micro-limits I tend to be too aggressive early when I really should jsut be farming the nuts for the first few blind levels.

My bigger mistake is not appreciating the monster ROI that is achievable at these levels. I'm taking too many risks, which includes the aggression I mentioned above. I also played WAY too tired, and the two things combined to help me make a terrible play, probably the worst mistake I've made since starting this project.

The blinds were 15/30 and it was one of the first hands of a $6 + .50 SNG. There was a raise to $270 from under the gun, and I had Ace-King of hearts in middle position. My thoughts (which were wrong) are below -

“These fools will play anything, the guy is making way too big a raise from under the gun which makes him a bad player, and I may very well have him dominated or get him to fold. I can't let him see a flop for free, because if I miss the flop he's going to knock me off my hand, and if I raise I'm committed so I might as well get all-in preflop.”

I didn't overestimate my opponent, he ended up calling all-in with JJ. My mistake was gambling way too much way too early. I took a coin flip, his stack for mine, when my stack was actually worth almost 50% more than his because of my high ROI. Of course the point was also driven home by a later position player calling all-in as well with KK. And it was driven home extra deep when the JJ flopped quads and I made a flush to make it sting a little extra. The poor KK, the only player who played the hand correctly, finished the hand in third place.

I wouldn't usually get all-in there, and in fact I would almost always just fold, but I was WAY too tired to be playing, and not sure enough about my strategy to stick with it when an odd situation came up. I won't make that mistake again. I don't need to gamble with these people, I can find much better times to get my chips in when the blinds are still small, and I have a hgue skill advantage so I'm going to try harder to remember to use it.

Current stats for the bankroll -

Cash game profits - $13

SNG Profits - $116.40

Rakeback - $8.10

Making my total bankroll a whopping $292.50, which is close enough to 30 buy-ins that I can move up to the $10 SNG's and see how they treat me.

If I can play seven SNG's per hour, at an average ROI of 42% at the $5 level, which is about what I did for the 46 SNG's that I played, I will be averaging about $14 an hour plus rakeback and Full Tilt points, which would get me over $15 an hour. With a $200 bankroll. I have to admit a little surprise that it's so easy to make that kind of wage at such micro-limits.

Not that I am trivializing the players who are beating these games. I've spent six years studying the game and playing with some of the best players in the world, and there are some very good players at the $5 level. It's not easy to attain a high skill level, and it takes time and study, but I think most people could attain the skill level to make better than $10 an hour within a few weeks of serious study. Starting with the guide I wrote (you can click on it to the right), reading Jennifear's articles on pocketfives, and then moving to a pokerfox.net membership and watching the $5 SNG videos I have made, it shouldn't be tough to do.

Distinct Lack of Time
posted by fox on October 17, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
Yeah, you could call me a slacker because I played a single hand of poker in three days, thus leaving me nothing to blog about for the bankroll builder project. Of course the slacker part would be wrong; I haven't had a chance to play because I've been working my ass off. Writing six full length articles and recording over three hours of produced video for three different projects I'm working on.

I promise, I am not taking on any more of these projects until after I am done with the bankroll builder project, and I'll have some time to play in the next couple of days.