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Can Duesenberg cut it as an MTT reg? Let's find out...
Duesenberg
Member Posts: 1,742
in Poker Chat
Afternoon all
For those who know nothing about me, I've been playing poker online with varying levels of enthusiasm since 2003. For the first 10 years I was very much a recreational fish and never did anthing to learn about the game or improve - I just did what 'felt right'. Seeing as what felt right usually involved being a massive nit, I never really lost any money playing, but I never made any either. When the penny eventually dropped that winning at poker may actually involve a bit of work away from the tables, I finally bought my first poker book. I loved it. With a little bit of knowledge behind me I suddenly found the game so much more interesting and began hoovering up all the poker content I could lay my hands on, which resulted in me eventually becoming a profitable player. 6max NLH cash games were my game of choice and from 2014 onward I cut my teeth putting in decent volume on most of the major sites before starting to play on Sky in early 2017.
By 2018 my enthusiasm for poker was beginning to wane so I started dabbling in Sky's MTT's for a change and had a little bit of success along the way (albeit with very low and sporadic volume). Cash still remained my main game and I also blogged about a profit challenge for the year to help lift me out of my slump, which kind of worked, but it did run out of steam a little. 2019 has continued in generally the same vein in that although I still play frequently, it's all a bit half-a*sed and low volume, so it's time for a new challenge!
The challenge is short and simple - play 500 MTT's in one month.
I can't say I've ever really fallen in love with tournaments but it's also true that I've never given them my all either. Although 500 MTT's in a month is a walk in the park for many players here, it'll be a significant challenge for me given that I've only managed 170 for the entire year so far. The purpose of this challenge is not about a profit goal but rather to answer the follwing questions about myself as a player...
1. Do I still have what it takes to put in significant volume?
A few years ago I could easily grind out sessions of 10k+ hands at a time without breaking too much of a sweat but these days I rarely get more than 4 tables on the go at once, and often less than that. Whilst this might just be due to a lack of desire or getting bored of the game, I have begun to wonder if it's a sign of me starting to slow down a little as I get older (I hit the dreaded 40 mark last year). However, having read about the exploits of @Essexphil this last month, I remain both hopeful and inspired by the fact that he can still grind out big volume whilst being almost the same age as Doyle Brunson
.
2. Do I have the mental fortitude to cope with the swings of grinding MTT's?
I've gotten rather accustomed to grinding out a fairly decent winrate in low stakes cash games. Although it's never always plain sailing, more often than not I'll finish a session in profit and will very rarely experience prolonged downswings. Variance in MTT's is far more acute and the financial swings will likely be larger than I'm used to, so will I be able to handle this?
3. Can I remain profitable at these volume levels?
From an admittedly small sample size, I have thus far achieved a fairly respectable ROI from my MTT play (graphs to follow). However, I'm mindful of the fact that this has mostly been done through a low table count high-focus approach (as well as a low ABI). I'm still an MTT novice in the whole scheme of things so many of my decisions are less automatic/straightforward compared to playing cash and the decrease in thinking time will inevitably lead to more mistakes. I realise a 500 game sample will be meaningless for determining anything concrete about profitability, but I still think it'll give me an indication - even if it's just in terms of how many more fundamental errors I think I'm making in game.
4. Will I enjoy grinding MTT's?
As I said above, I've certainly yet to fall in love with tournaments. My two favourite things in poker are the complexity of deep stacked play and low variance, and MTT's probably represent the antithesis of these. However, I will also concede that my biggest highs in the game have come from some of my few (so far at least!) tournament wins. Hopefully more volume will equate to that euphoric feeling of victory coming around a little more often and somewhat alleviate my frustration at having to play so many hands with ridiculously small stack-to-pot ratios.
As for my schedule, I'm generally happy buying in to most games up to a maximum of £33. My overall ABI will likely be geared towards the lower end of things though (especially at the start of this challenge) as I get acclimatised to the increased volume in a game format I'm still a little unfamiliar with. I won't be playing satellites as they throw up a whole new set of tactical considerations I've yet to work on and I won't be playing any of the timed tournaments either - they're not real tournaments anyway, rather a cash game with a cr@p structure imo. Finally, I'll only be playing holdem as I already get confused enough with 2 hole cards and 4 might make my head explode.
June is actually a really rubbish month for me to be doing this as the 1st is my other half's 40th birthday (no poker on day one then!) and I'm then taking her away for a long weekend the following week as part of the celebrations. With that in mind, I'm going to allow myself to extend this challenge up until July 5th if required. I'll also be setting a stop loss of £1,500 for the challenge and reserve the right to throw in the towel if I've managed to punt off that much of my bankroll. It's also more than likely that I'll just get fed up with MTT's or super flaky within a few days and abandon the whole plan, but at least I'll have tried, even if only briefly.
Below is my Sharkcope graph covering the entirety of my MTT play to date. In terms of financial results, it is somewhat skewed by running well in the only £220 I've ever played (not that I'm complaining of course!) and nearly 20% of it also consists of freerolls, which effects the overall flow of things a bit too. Therefore, to give a more accurate picture of how I've fared so far in similar games, the second graph covers all my play in the £1-£33 buy-in range.
All MTT's played to date...
All MTT's £1-£33...
So that's the unnecessarily long introduction over and well done if you've made it this far. I've often set myself poker challenges in the past but they frequently run out of steam so making this public will hopefully mean I'm more likely to stick at it. Any advice or questions are most welcome and I'll try to make regular updates on progress.
For those who know nothing about me, I've been playing poker online with varying levels of enthusiasm since 2003. For the first 10 years I was very much a recreational fish and never did anthing to learn about the game or improve - I just did what 'felt right'. Seeing as what felt right usually involved being a massive nit, I never really lost any money playing, but I never made any either. When the penny eventually dropped that winning at poker may actually involve a bit of work away from the tables, I finally bought my first poker book. I loved it. With a little bit of knowledge behind me I suddenly found the game so much more interesting and began hoovering up all the poker content I could lay my hands on, which resulted in me eventually becoming a profitable player. 6max NLH cash games were my game of choice and from 2014 onward I cut my teeth putting in decent volume on most of the major sites before starting to play on Sky in early 2017.
By 2018 my enthusiasm for poker was beginning to wane so I started dabbling in Sky's MTT's for a change and had a little bit of success along the way (albeit with very low and sporadic volume). Cash still remained my main game and I also blogged about a profit challenge for the year to help lift me out of my slump, which kind of worked, but it did run out of steam a little. 2019 has continued in generally the same vein in that although I still play frequently, it's all a bit half-a*sed and low volume, so it's time for a new challenge!
The challenge is short and simple - play 500 MTT's in one month.
I can't say I've ever really fallen in love with tournaments but it's also true that I've never given them my all either. Although 500 MTT's in a month is a walk in the park for many players here, it'll be a significant challenge for me given that I've only managed 170 for the entire year so far. The purpose of this challenge is not about a profit goal but rather to answer the follwing questions about myself as a player...
1. Do I still have what it takes to put in significant volume?
A few years ago I could easily grind out sessions of 10k+ hands at a time without breaking too much of a sweat but these days I rarely get more than 4 tables on the go at once, and often less than that. Whilst this might just be due to a lack of desire or getting bored of the game, I have begun to wonder if it's a sign of me starting to slow down a little as I get older (I hit the dreaded 40 mark last year). However, having read about the exploits of @Essexphil this last month, I remain both hopeful and inspired by the fact that he can still grind out big volume whilst being almost the same age as Doyle Brunson
.2. Do I have the mental fortitude to cope with the swings of grinding MTT's?
I've gotten rather accustomed to grinding out a fairly decent winrate in low stakes cash games. Although it's never always plain sailing, more often than not I'll finish a session in profit and will very rarely experience prolonged downswings. Variance in MTT's is far more acute and the financial swings will likely be larger than I'm used to, so will I be able to handle this?
3. Can I remain profitable at these volume levels?
From an admittedly small sample size, I have thus far achieved a fairly respectable ROI from my MTT play (graphs to follow). However, I'm mindful of the fact that this has mostly been done through a low table count high-focus approach (as well as a low ABI). I'm still an MTT novice in the whole scheme of things so many of my decisions are less automatic/straightforward compared to playing cash and the decrease in thinking time will inevitably lead to more mistakes. I realise a 500 game sample will be meaningless for determining anything concrete about profitability, but I still think it'll give me an indication - even if it's just in terms of how many more fundamental errors I think I'm making in game.
4. Will I enjoy grinding MTT's?
As I said above, I've certainly yet to fall in love with tournaments. My two favourite things in poker are the complexity of deep stacked play and low variance, and MTT's probably represent the antithesis of these. However, I will also concede that my biggest highs in the game have come from some of my few (so far at least!) tournament wins. Hopefully more volume will equate to that euphoric feeling of victory coming around a little more often and somewhat alleviate my frustration at having to play so many hands with ridiculously small stack-to-pot ratios.
As for my schedule, I'm generally happy buying in to most games up to a maximum of £33. My overall ABI will likely be geared towards the lower end of things though (especially at the start of this challenge) as I get acclimatised to the increased volume in a game format I'm still a little unfamiliar with. I won't be playing satellites as they throw up a whole new set of tactical considerations I've yet to work on and I won't be playing any of the timed tournaments either - they're not real tournaments anyway, rather a cash game with a cr@p structure imo. Finally, I'll only be playing holdem as I already get confused enough with 2 hole cards and 4 might make my head explode.
June is actually a really rubbish month for me to be doing this as the 1st is my other half's 40th birthday (no poker on day one then!) and I'm then taking her away for a long weekend the following week as part of the celebrations. With that in mind, I'm going to allow myself to extend this challenge up until July 5th if required. I'll also be setting a stop loss of £1,500 for the challenge and reserve the right to throw in the towel if I've managed to punt off that much of my bankroll. It's also more than likely that I'll just get fed up with MTT's or super flaky within a few days and abandon the whole plan, but at least I'll have tried, even if only briefly.
Below is my Sharkcope graph covering the entirety of my MTT play to date. In terms of financial results, it is somewhat skewed by running well in the only £220 I've ever played (not that I'm complaining of course!) and nearly 20% of it also consists of freerolls, which effects the overall flow of things a bit too. Therefore, to give a more accurate picture of how I've fared so far in similar games, the second graph covers all my play in the £1-£33 buy-in range.
All MTT's played to date...
All MTT's £1-£33...
So that's the unnecessarily long introduction over and well done if you've made it this far. I've often set myself poker challenges in the past but they frequently run out of steam so making this public will hopefully mean I'm more likely to stick at it. Any advice or questions are most welcome and I'll try to make regular updates on progress.
Comments
PS-I am so old, I am old enough to be Tikay's son
Very best of luck to you
Inb4 you get bored after day 2!
Hope you see it out though
Will you still be playing cash?
Will you be cbetting in any of these 500 games..?
...providing you don't throw in the towel early - don't do that; suck it up and crack on.
Happy hunting and see you out there.
GL @ Duesenberg.
I think you'll do this comfortably, and make a few bob along the way.
Good read and best of luck.
I might have to get Tikay to close the thread as I'm not sure this post can be topped!
I'm predicting whinging posts about procrastination and mental meltdowns about £50 downswings
Knowing what I'm like, the amount of cash volume I put in will probably depend of how results go in MTT's. I hate losing money at poker so if the tourneys turn into a bit of a spew fest, I'll be trying to make it back at cash. If tourneys go well, I'll just put my feet up afterwards and feel generally smug, convinced that I'm the new Fedor.