I finished July with just under 2000 games played and a loss of $4600 so its now a new challenge of $45k in 5 months. I played alot of 1000+ player tournaments where it is possible to go months without a nice hit so this was a big reason for most losses and was maybe an error to not start the month trying to lock a profitable month with a lot more small field tournaments.But then even my sky stats that only average 80 players per tournament gave me a return of 7.8% total roi. It is quite hard to win tournaments here.Maybe the players got too good.
I won a Sunday mill ticket yesterday but did not cash again.I also won entry into the sunday major here but bubbled.Ill continue to try get into these majors that can boost the roll but will focus more on smaller fields tournaments for August.
switching from sky non antes to non sky antes MTTs is certainly gonna take time. you'll know yourself having antes require you to extend you defending range this is both as caller and aggressor but that's not the only problem because it also causes your stack to go down quicker when running cold.
You'll also have the difficulty of facing far more 3bets pre and people are firing far more cbetting post flop way more than the sky field so again it's gonna be harder for you to take down pots than it is on sky. As you try to ajust more to antes MTTs and avoid over folding too much vs their over agression you might start making too many calls preflop and post flop on sky. As someone who has switched from sky MTT to antes MTT I know the difficulty well
I would recommend you spending a week playing just a couple of antes MTTs at the same time so you'll gain a decent idea how the antes player pool is playing
U are right Craig, you kind of have to play 2 different types of game for sky and for other sites which can get tricky. Thanks for the tips and gl on this months grind.
It's such a shame that your first month went as it did, in terms of heading towards the goal. It'll just make it that more difficult.
My fingers are crossed that this month is a bit better and you smash the target in the coming months. Hopefully your nice win in the Main last night is the start of a lovely upswing. The good thing though, is the challenge will almost certainly never be out of reach. A deep Sunday Million run is always very possible!
All the very best at the tables, except when flipping against me, of course!
Thank you.The first month was the worst it could be so it can only be better and so far it has been in August.
Over the weekend nearly hit jackpot with top 20 in 2 tournaments each worth 8k first which i sat into and 8th in another that had 3.6k first.I also had a deep run in Sunday storm which held 13k first but lost jj vs ak vs ak for a top 5 stack close to day 2. Yesterday was tough mentally when you have many tables and you bust big money moments and have to shrug it off and maintain focus on the other tables you have going.
Still, the adjustment of smaller fields and one gameplay tweek have given another profitable weekend and i head into tonight with 3 day 2s. If i final table any ill post on twitter for the fans to rail.
Craig made a good point about adjusting to ante games, if you are not used to grinding those games. I find they take a bit of getting used to, especially if you are used to playing Sky non-ante. I have no doubt you will adjust accordingly but do think it will take time if you are not familiar.
For this reason, I didn't think the challenge was possible but who knows if you run up a few decent scores in some big field events.
Fair play for continuing with the challenge and posting updates after such a rough start.
All credit to you for posting when things haven’t gone as well as you’d have liked
Is slightly too much being made of the antes? I played live with antes for many years alongside playing online on Sky. It never even entered my mind in all honesty. I’m barely average but I adjusted.as necessary and did ok. You’re a good player and I’m sure you adjust quite comfortably to a game with antes
No problem if you want to keep this purely poker But I’d be interested in knowing more about the man behind the mouth 😉
Have you been playing for many years? Professionally? Did you start low and make your way up? Did you start live? What are your long term aspirations? Is this goal something you believe is really attainable or is it a number to give you the motivation to put in so much volume? What do you do away from poker? Hobbies etc
U are right Craig, you kind of have to play 2 different types of game for sky and for other sites which can get tricky. Thanks for the tips and gl on this months grind.
This seems like it should be true, but I play across 3 sites and probably don't change my game enough. I also play O8 and 8 game, so am probably aren't playing optimum in any game anywhere. I think it is probably possible to be a winner playing like this, but not playing optimum in any game makes your target even harder than it appeared.
As an aside, sharkscope has a new insights section, that analyses the type of games i do well in. Here is a selection of those "insights" from my play in over 2,000 tournaments over the last 2 years.
Avoid playing Bounty ... Turbo and Multi Entry tournaments and focus on playing Deep Stack, ... Rebuy, .. Super Turbo ... tournaments.
Of course I have a higher ROI on Sky where nearly all my play is in bounty hunters. I crush super turbos and am useless at turbos? And I am a monster at rebuys, but a total failure in multi entry tournaments?... I should play big stack poker, but also superturbo crapshoots? Think this just shows the reality of variance in MTTs, and where I got luckiest in that time.
I'd just assume that much of the variance over the last month is just bad luck, and the biggest change is going to be adjusting to full ring and not antes,
FWIW My insights on Party are pretty much the opposite of those on Stars!
Im a gambler.Over the years ive gone from roulette to all types of sports betting, building and busting many bankrolls.I had no idea of math, br management etc but always believed i could get rich from gambling. After a couple of years of this i came across poker on tv, think it was on channel 5, partypoker poker den big game and others like european open with that great commentator Jesse May.These shows got me into the game.
I cant remember how much i deposited but the first site i played was pokerstars and i grinded $1.75 18 man sngs. At this point all i knew was hand strength and i just wait for jj+ and shove all in pre and somehow this was enough to profit.After doing this for a while i started adding in these sngs calles steps. There would be 6 steps with the top 2 in each step moving to the next level and i think 3rd would get another shot at the same level.Somehow knowing nothing i got to step 6 which you could also buy into for $2100.I dont know if everyone else there was a pro but i remember the team pro who was a big deal back then was at the table.He was called Dario Minieri. Top 2 got the prize, a 10k main event entry to the world series of poker but at the time i was pretty busto and i took the cash.
After cashing that i think i probably lost about half of it and then decided i needed to do something different so via poker forums i joined a study group.We all were micro stakes players and started of in 180 man sngs and the majority of us went onto to have great success in poker.
After collecting a good pay cheque for a while things started to dry up.More stables started to pop up and the games got tougher.One of my greatest abilities in poker is to move and adapt and this is when i moved onto sats. Many players will know about how good i am at sats.
So there was a new goldmine. Sats where you could take the seat or cash the ticket.I grinded these for not sure how many years but i kept printing till the same scenario of more players clocking onto the potential and regulars coaching others.The games started dieing so thats when i had to find my next project and at the time sat grinder Dara O had to write a book.
I had to decide what was the next project. Mtts at stars?Roi was strong there but variance was insane.I searched and scouted other sites seeing earning potential and eventually came across Sky. I decided to give it a go and lost around 4k. What i had been doing my whole career did not work here.I was experienced enough to know that it wasnt variance.So i decided to watch some re runs of old poker shows and Phil Gordan and Chris Ferguson full tilt academy poker training videos which lead me to become one of the highest earning mtt players on sky.
Which has brought me to here. Im still a gambler but with poker i can gamble and win which is pretty awesome for me, and have learnt some math and br management along the way.I still like to bet but i try to stick to major events only as it just consumes too much time and im not good enough to beat it.My next bet will be in the joshua usyk rematch.I love boxing, no interest in UFC.
Wow, great question from Jac, great reply by Arrogant.
Fascinating stuff.
I knew Dario Minieri back in the day, looked about 12 years old, but very good & won a WSOP bracelet. Not heard of him for years though, not sure he's still in the game.
Antes dont matter too much to me apart from when u are getting short in a tournament.On sky you can wait longer for a jam hand as ur under less pressure with no antes eating ur stack.Its a good for rec players i believe but really isnt fun in say the £110 major when u usually have to wait forever for the bubble to burst and ur handicapped for too long if ur a middle of the pack stack.
Filtering stats can be useful but 2k games wont tell you much i think.Everyone seems to be a winner in rebuys as they dont seem to be counted correct and turbos have the worst roi.I think bounties are currently the easiest games to beat on all sites.
Why 40k? I believe its achievable but its not easy.I needed a challenge to push me a bit as ive been slacking so went for that number.Probably anything over 3k a month average is a big challenge for most regulars at these stakes and 50k is rare unless landing a mega score.
Also get to find out is poker really tougher?What site is toughest and who are weak.So far ive lost the most on partypoker. Variance maybe but no location shown for players is a big factor for me.I notice alot of trends when i play and know usually what i wanna do and what not do vs players from particular nations.
Think rebuys are counted correctly on Stars and Party, but on Sky it just works out an average number of buyins. You can just assume that my ROI is not close to what sharkscope says on Sky. Rebuys are pretty soft in PLO8. Like the 3.30+rebuys plays much softer thsn the 16.50 PLO8 even though the average buyin is about the same. There is a 16.50+rebuys which is softer than the really tough 82s and so on. Genuinely think rebuys are easier than re-entries. I think the chips/BB stays higher longer, which is also good as it deters the max late reggers that plague a lot of non rebuy/bounty PLO8/NLO8 games.
Antes dont matter too much to me apart from when u are getting short in a tournament.On sky you can wait longer for a jam hand as ur under less pressure with no antes eating ur stack.Its a good for rec players i believe but really isnt fun in say the £110 major when u usually have to wait forever for the bubble to burst and ur handicapped for too long if ur a middle of the pack stack.
Filtering stats can be useful but 2k games wont tell you much i think.Everyone seems to be a winner in rebuys as they dont seem to be counted correct and turbos have the worst roi.I think bounties are currently the easiest games to beat on all sites.
Why 40k? I believe its achievable but its not easy.I needed a challenge to push me a bit as ive been slacking so went for that number.Probably anything over 3k a month average is a big challenge for most regulars at these stakes and 50k is rare unless landing a mega score.
Also get to find out is poker really tougher?What site is toughest and who are weak.So far ive lost the most on partypoker. Variance maybe but no location shown for players is a big factor for me.I notice alot of trends when i play and know usually what i wanna do and what not do vs players from particular nations.
That's interesting , youd think globeally we'd all be the same Hope you smash it mate
Last week was a slower one, i took a few days off and returned on Saturday banking a small profit.Sunday was really poor.I started at 1pm and finished 2nd in a mtt for $400 early on and it looked like it could be a great day.But after that i made no runs in any tournaments and it was just a really boring day.I hate playing poker with no sweats.I think i made a loss overall. That was also a shame because i sold action for $55 and $44 gg wsop events and managed to sat into $215 wsop, sunday major here, 100 major ipoker and cashed for 0. Selling action for events out of the br rules seemed like a good idea as i free up more table space not having to try sat in, but of course only works on ggpoker as they have the sell tournament piece feature.
Now with gg wsop, wcoop coming soon and other online site series coming its a fun part of the year for online poker but one i need to be careful with.The hype sucks me in always but its easy to lose a lot of money in these series.I will probably try to stick to mostly the big events on sundays and continue to grind lower variance during the week unless i hit something big soon. Its a shame sky dont have any series this time of year when every single other online site does, even just a fri-sun mini series.
Comments
I played alot of 1000+ player tournaments where it is possible to go months without a nice hit so this was a big reason for most losses and was maybe an error to not start the month trying to lock a profitable month with a lot more small field tournaments.But then even my sky stats that only average 80 players per tournament gave me a return of 7.8% total roi. It is quite hard to win tournaments here.Maybe the players got too good.
I won a Sunday mill ticket yesterday but did not cash again.I also won entry into the sunday major here but bubbled.Ill continue to try get into these majors that can boost the roll but will focus more on smaller fields tournaments for August.
I resume tonight.
Hope it goes better in August Mr Arrogant.
You'll also have the difficulty of facing far more 3bets pre and people are firing far more cbetting post flop way more than the sky field so again it's gonna be harder for you to take down pots than it is on sky. As you try to ajust more to antes MTTs and avoid over folding too much vs their over agression you might start making too many calls preflop and post flop on sky. As someone who has switched from sky MTT to antes MTT I know the difficulty well
I would recommend you spending a week playing just a couple of antes MTTs at the same time so you'll gain a decent idea how the antes player pool is playing
My fingers are crossed that this month is a bit better and you smash the target in the coming months. Hopefully your nice win in the Main last night is the start of a lovely upswing. The good thing though, is the challenge will almost certainly never be out of reach. A deep Sunday Million run is always very possible!
All the very best at the tables, except when flipping against me, of course!
Over the weekend nearly hit jackpot with top 20 in 2 tournaments each worth 8k first which i sat into and 8th in another that had 3.6k first.I also had a deep run in Sunday storm which held 13k first but lost jj vs ak vs ak for a top 5 stack close to day 2.
Yesterday was tough mentally when you have many tables and you bust big money moments and have to shrug it off and maintain focus on the other tables you have going.
Still, the adjustment of smaller fields and one gameplay tweek have given another profitable weekend and i head into tonight with 3 day 2s. If i final table any ill post on twitter for the fans to rail.
For this reason, I didn't think the challenge was possible but who knows if you run up a few decent scores in some big field events.
Fair play for continuing with the challenge and posting updates after such a rough start.
Gl and keep us posted with progress.
Is slightly too much being made of the antes?
I played live with antes for many years alongside playing online on Sky. It never even entered my mind in all honesty. I’m barely average but I adjusted.as necessary and did ok.
You’re a good player and I’m sure you adjust quite comfortably to a game with antes
No problem if you want to keep this purely poker
But I’d be interested in knowing more about the man behind the mouth 😉
Have you been playing for many years?
Professionally?
Did you start low and make your way up?
Did you start live?
What are your long term aspirations?
Is this goal something you believe is really attainable or is it a number to give you the motivation to put in so much volume?
What do you do away from poker? Hobbies etc
As an aside, sharkscope has a new insights section, that analyses the type of games i do well in. Here is a selection of those "insights" from my play in over 2,000 tournaments over the last 2 years.
Avoid playing Bounty ... Turbo and Multi Entry tournaments and focus on playing Deep Stack, ... Rebuy, .. Super Turbo ... tournaments.
Of course I have a higher ROI on Sky where nearly all my play is in bounty hunters. I crush super turbos and am useless at turbos? And I am a monster at rebuys, but a total failure in multi entry tournaments?... I should play big stack poker, but also superturbo crapshoots? Think this just shows the reality of variance in MTTs, and where I got luckiest in that time.
I'd just assume that much of the variance over the last month is just bad luck, and the biggest change is going to be adjusting to full ring and not antes,
FWIW My insights on Party are pretty much the opposite of those on Stars!
After a couple of years of this i came across poker on tv, think it was on channel 5, partypoker poker den big game and others like european open with that great commentator Jesse May.These shows got me into the game.
I cant remember how much i deposited but the first site i played was pokerstars and i grinded $1.75 18 man sngs. At this point all i knew was hand strength and i just wait for jj+ and shove all in pre and somehow this was enough to profit.After doing this for a while i started adding in these sngs calles steps.
There would be 6 steps with the top 2 in each step moving to the next level and i think 3rd would get another shot at the same level.Somehow knowing nothing i got to step 6 which you could also buy into for $2100.I dont know if everyone else there was a pro but i remember the team pro who was a big deal back then was at the table.He was called Dario Minieri.
Top 2 got the prize, a 10k main event entry to the world series of poker but at the time i was pretty busto and i took the cash.
After cashing that i think i probably lost about half of it and then decided i needed to do something different so via poker forums i joined a study group.We all were micro stakes players and started of in 180 man sngs and the majority of us went onto to have great success in poker.
After collecting a good pay cheque for a while things started to dry up.More stables started to pop up and the games got tougher.One of my greatest abilities in poker is to move and adapt and this is when i moved onto sats. Many players will know about how good i am at sats.
So there was a new goldmine. Sats where you could take the seat or cash the ticket.I grinded these for not sure how many years but i kept printing till the same scenario of more players clocking onto the potential and regulars coaching others.The games started dieing so thats when i had to find my next project and at the time sat grinder Dara O had to write a book.
I had to decide what was the next project. Mtts at stars?Roi was strong there but variance was insane.I searched and scouted other sites seeing earning potential and eventually came across Sky.
I decided to give it a go and lost around 4k. What i had been doing my whole career did not work here.I was experienced enough to know that it wasnt variance.So i decided to watch some re runs of old poker shows and Phil Gordan and Chris Ferguson full tilt academy poker training videos which lead me to become one of the highest earning mtt players on sky.
Which has brought me to here. Im still a gambler but with poker i can gamble and win which is pretty awesome for me, and have learnt some math and br management along the way.I still like to bet but i try to stick to major events only as it just consumes too much time and im not good enough to beat it.My next bet will be in the joshua usyk rematch.I love boxing, no interest in UFC.
Wow, great question from Jac, great reply by Arrogant.
Fascinating stuff.
I knew Dario Minieri back in the day, looked about 12 years old, but very good & won a WSOP bracelet. Not heard of him for years though, not sure he's still in the game.
BBZ, RYE, RIO etc. should have a game selection course - a few sky regs would be good candidates to teach it
Really interesting stuff
Filtering stats can be useful but 2k games wont tell you much i think.Everyone seems to be a winner in rebuys as they dont seem to be counted correct and turbos have the worst roi.I think bounties are currently the easiest games to beat on all sites.
Why 40k? I believe its achievable but its not easy.I needed a challenge to push me a bit as ive been slacking so went for that number.Probably anything over 3k a month average is a big challenge for most regulars at these stakes and 50k is rare unless landing a mega score.
Also get to find out is poker really tougher?What site is toughest and who are weak.So far ive lost the most on partypoker. Variance maybe but no location shown for players is a big factor for me.I notice alot of trends when i play and know usually what i wanna do and what not do vs players from particular nations.
Hope you smash it mate
Last week was a slower one, i took a few days off and returned on Saturday banking a small profit.Sunday was really poor.I started at 1pm and finished 2nd in a mtt for $400 early on and it looked like it could be a great day.But after that i made no runs in any tournaments and it was just a really boring day.I hate playing poker with no sweats.I think i made a loss overall.
That was also a shame because i sold action for $55 and $44 gg wsop events and managed to sat into $215 wsop, sunday major here, 100 major ipoker and cashed for 0.
Selling action for events out of the br rules seemed like a good idea as i free up more table space not having to try sat in, but of course only works on ggpoker as they have the sell tournament piece feature.
Now with gg wsop, wcoop coming soon and other online site series coming its a fun part of the year for online poker but one i need to be careful with.The hype sucks me in always but its easy to lose a lot of money in these series.I will probably try to stick to mostly the big events on sundays and continue to grind lower variance during the week unless i hit something big soon.
Its a shame sky dont have any series this time of year when every single other online site does, even just a fri-sun mini series.
@Arrogant
id like to hear a little more on the 'trends' you notice and what your thoughts are on a 'no location' player.