Multi Table Novice

Since my last posting I have been cautiously multi tabling. I had previously felt reasonably comfortable playing a couple of tables simultaneously but my results had not been good. Whether that was down to variance or because I wasn't able to focus on the other player's styles and betting patterns, I'm not sure.

When things are running smoothly at the $10 games I can cash in about 50% of the games I play so I set myself some rules, a stop loss if you will. I would play 2 tables at once and if I didn't cash in one of the games I would revert to single tabling until I had recovered the two lost buy ins. If I cashed in at least one of the games I would continue playing 2 tables.

I also mentioned last time that I seemed to be stuck on a plateau at around $200 profit and was going to try and be even more patient at the tables as I felt I had perhaps been a little impatient.

Well the batch of games I've played over the last few days have seen me consistently cashing whilst multi tabling and I've broken away from my £200 plateau, so I'm a happy boy. Of the 2 x 2 table sessions I played last night I picked up 2 x 1st out of the 4 games. So I'm delighted, that's another little mental hurdle cleared.

Running Total: Played 170 / ITM 45% / ROI 18% / Profit $287.40

Life is Good

It's now 2 weeks since I left the grind of the rat race and I have to say I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Today is an excellent case in point. I had an excellent sleep last night, got up felling refreshed then walked my youngest daughter to nursery. I then sauntered at a leisurely pace towards the train station and hopped on the first available train into Glasgow.

Arriving in the city my first priority was to find a nice comfy couch at Starbucks and read some more of this month's particularly interesting Poker Pro Europe magazine, whilst enjoying a coffee and a muffin. Bliss, no dashing to an office or endless meetings for me today.

Then it was off to Borders where I picked up a my highly anticipated copy of Des Wilson's new book Ghosts at the Table and a few other interesting looking new poker titles. A few more errands and it was back home in time for lunch.

This week I have been working on a website for a wedding photographer, the site looks great and the effort I put into the Search Engine Optimisation is already starting to pay off with the site ranking 26th out of 1.3 million.

I have also found some time to work on my secret poker site this week and am gettign a good feeling of acomplishment and satisfaction as it starts coming together. I can't wait to share more info with you and start enrolling some beta testers.

Next week I have another website to build for a new client. It's quite a simple one and should only take a couple of days but it's going to look good, the design concept I've got is really sweet.

At the moment life is good and I'm really enjoying the freedom of being at home and in control of my own destiny. I guess the honeymoon period is nearly over though. I'm feeling reasonably chilled and refreshed and I need to start focusing building some revenue streams over the coming weeks.

$200 Barrier

It's been all quiet on the blog for a few days but I've still been plodding away. As always not getting through as many games as I would like to. It's difficult to find the time with a family, young kids and the pre-occupation of trying to make a living.

I've played another 12 games since my last post and seem to have found myself stuck at around the $200 profit mark. I arrived at this point with great momentum and hoped to power through it onto $300 and beyond. But I seem to be stuck, one step forward, two steps back. From the last 12 games I've picked up 3 x 3rd, 1 x 1st, 1 x 2nd.

Running Total: Played 152 / ITM 42% / ROI 15% / Profit $205.40

I think a little lack of patience has crept into my game. I'm going to tighten up a bit over the next few games and see if that improves things again.

Humorous Disconnections

I played 5 games on Tuesday and even had a bash at multi tabling again. The multitable experience was a bit frantic as I am currently focusing hard on making really good notes on all the players, capturing all cards that get shown along with level, position, hand result and how it was played. I guess a lot of better players can just watch the game and remember all these details for each player but I find the act of making the note and the fact I have all the players notes open simultaneously while I play helps me get a great read on my opponents. The multi-tabling was frantic because I was struggling to keep up to speed with my note taking. I managed a 3rd and a 5th playing two tables simultaneously so not bad.

The most notable thing about yesterdays games though was the last Sit and Go of the night. The first player to bust out did so on the second hand. I picked up a nice hand a few hands later and won a few chips boosting my stack to 2640 chips, about a 32% gain on my stack. Then my connection went down. This didn't worry me at first as we were only about half way through level one and I now had an above average stack. My connection has been going down intermittantly recently but usually for never more than a minute or two, but last night it went down and didn't show any signs of coming back. I settled back and started reading a magazine whilst waiting for it to come back.

After an hour my connection came back and I logged in to see what had happened, fully expecting to have been blinded away in 5th or 6th place. I requested a hand history email of the last 12 hands and started to read it. Wow four players left, but I only had 140 chips and am all in on the Small Blind for 140 chips the blinds were 200/400. So I was going to get blinded out in 4th, hang on, Dealing Hole Cards [6d,6c] and they held up, now up to 280 chips. The next interesting hand happened when the Big Blind got back to me, I'm all in for 280 chips and get 2 callers. Dealing Hole Cards [5d, 7d], Flop [3c, Jh, 5c], Turn [5s] River [2c] and I triple up to 840 with a set of 5's.

Compared with the other stacks (7400, 8260, 3500) I'm hideously short and the other players, particularly the guy with 3,500 chips, must surely have the sense to just wait until I get blinded out as the blinds are just about to go to 400/800, but no, a fight ensues, the 3,500 chip dude busts and I pick up 3rd in a game that I was only present in for the first 5 hands. You gotta laugh.

I was going to try and post a nice pretty hand history but none of the hand history viewers would do what I wanted them to and the format of the e-mail histories from Party aren't compatible with a lot of them, so you've had to put up with my narrative description. This has however got the cogs in the entrepreneurial corner of my brain twirling a bit and I've just gone and purchased 3 new domains that would be ideal for a rather special new kind of hand history viewer. I feel some rampant scribbling and thinking coming on :-)

Back to the challenge, Tuesday was OK but not great. Played 5 got 3 x 3rd.

Running Total: Played 140 / ITM 42% / ROI 16% / Profit 197.40

Longest Sit & Go yet

I only played two games on Monday night and one of them turned into a bit of a marathon. The game went to 163 hands, that's the longest $10 Sit & Go I've played, I had to take a little break after it as it left me a bit frazzled. Unluckily I went card dead heads up and only managed to take second.

Running Total: Played 135 / ITM 41% / ROI 16% / Profit $192.40

September Challenge Results

I've reached the end of September and it's not a huge surprise that I haven't managed to hit the targets I set myself for my challenge. It's been pretty obvious for the last week or so that I was struggling to get enough games in and the bad run early in the challenge certainly didn't help things. I did finsh on a high though, check out the nice upward direction on the graph below.

Final Results: Played 133 Games / ITM 41% / ROI 16% / Profit $184.40

I am not disheartened though, the challenge has been good for me. I feel my game is a lot more disciplined now and because I am sticking predominantly to one game type and level on just one site I have been able to get into a consistant playing style and therefore get more of a feel for my own style, strategy and that of my opponenets. Happy Days.

I have learnt that it's difficult to grind out a high volume of games if only single tabling and only playing after a day at work which means I can't get started until the kids are in bed, usually about 9:30pm. I'm rearing to try multi-tabling again and I'll definatley give it a tentative shot again in the next few days, but if I'm not achieving > 30% ITM & > 10% ROI I will revert to single tabling again.

I certainly finished the challenge with a great run at the $11 x 10 player games on Party Poker and go forward feeling really comfortable at this level. I achieved 62% ITM / 93% ROI / $164 Profit in that last run of 16 games and am delighted, it certainly makes up for the frustration earlier in the month.

At the start of my challenge I said I was going to get stuck into the books and training videos but in truth I've found myself only really doing that when things haven't been going so well. I think they help to restore my confidence when it takes a dent and re-affirm things I already know. When things are going well the pressure to get more games in means I fire up another SNG rather than taking some time to study. I am aware that there are books I still want to read, books I want to go back over and a ton of great videos I want to watch so I need to try and put aside a bit more time to study even when things are going well.

I mentioned in an earlier post that there could be an argument for playing on until the 6th October as I didn't start my challenge right at the beginning of September. I am going to freeze my results there in my bankroll spreadsheet for September and start a new page to record October to keep my records consistent with previous months, however I am going to take a copy of the sheet and continue to update it, so I guess the challenge isn't strictly over. My challenge was inspired by an article by Alex Martin in Inside Poker magazine which suggested two months to grow to $600 bankroll in $10 games, so I'm going to keep going and follow the goals in the magazine. To be honest I was pushing it a bit by trying to do the whole challenge in one month, but you know what they say, shoot for the stars and all that.

So, onwards an upwards. How long will it take me to reach $400 profit? Can I do it by the 6th?