Focus On Fish

If you want to progress in sit n gos you need to focus on fish. That was the message from Nick Wealthalls latest marketing campaign for his new online training course Sit N Go Shortcuts. The solid premise being it is easier to win more from poor players than improve against the good ones. Sounds good. Count me in. For me this is a chance to update my game, review my strategy and focus once more on maximising my win rate in the jackpot games. 

A few weeks into the course I am happy with my decision. The material is interesting, useful and sometimes quite amusing. I tend to listen/watch the videos whilst playing which is probably sub-optimal in lots of ways but I am enjoying them and my game is improving. I have definitely already made a couple of adjustments. I am changing the way I deal with a specific tricky spot and have an improved heads up approach. I still though have a long way to go to entrench this material and work through all the action steps. Most of all my general confidence has improved because I am working on my game and enjoying it and as a result my results have progressed.

Recently I have had a couple of near miss sequences on the Jackpot trail. The Maui games saw a sequence of 11151 when playing for 41000 Euros and in the Rio games I played a run of 151111 for 110000 Euros. In both cases I was a coin flip or two away from the big one. Having won four Rios I had a realistic shot at a big pay day, perhaps one in twenty-five to win £100,000! Normally my fifth place in the next game would be a source of great frustration but not following my recent work with Nick and some personalised feedback relating to the jackpot games. I had e-mailed him a very specific question about the adjusting your approach/game once closing in on a jackpot winning sequence. This is part of the deal for the first sixty days after sign up. My response was in short excellent. I consider myself a bit of an expert in this sphere having played around 15,000 jackpot games and I liked/agreed with what he had to say - but it also meant quite a lot to hear another point of view on this specialist area. Without giving it all away there was three key aspects to his advice that I empathised with most:

1.Having won three or four games jackpot games on the bounce you will probably lose the next one - that's just the maths. Very true.
2.Keeping the jackpot situation out of your mind is very important. Agreed.
3.When in the later stages of sequence be absolutely playing your best poker, disciplined, focused and always aggressive. Good stuff.

Cheers Nick.

Flipin Obvious

Earlier this year, following the end of the Daily Double promotion on Full Tilt I was looking for some new action to satisfy my multi table tendencies. I found two options that complied with both my time frame and my bankroll:

1. As a sit n go player who really loves an MTT but hasn't really got the time the new Flipout Tournaments are great. The tournament begins with a shootout round, which features a flip tournament format. In this round, all players go all-in automatically on every hand and one player per table progresses to the next round. The bubble bursts at the end of the first round and all players who reach the second round in a Flipout Tournament will share in the prize pool. They are effectively a sit n go disguised as a MTT - but with an added bonus - random players not the best players make it to the latter stages. My results are as below. A higher than normal win rate with super time efficiency built in.

2. I also identified a knock-out tournament which fitted perfectly into my poker evening. OK so its turbo structure was a bit on the fast side for my patient MTT game and at $24 was a little pricey but surely I could adapt and get stuck in when needed. Or perhaps not! See below. A series of min cashes has done nothing for my overall result. In these tournaments the money is at the final table and I have only made one brief guest appearance finishing ninth. Whilst the graph does ignore probably $200 worth of bounty prizes there can be do denying my poor run playing this game. Certainly whilst luck plays a bigger role in this type of turbo structure I probably played bad as much as ran bad.

Incredibly, given the charts above, this is the same player, playing the same site, the same variant of poker at the same time. I wonder which game I should focus on - Flipin obvious really. I have removed the knock-out game from my options. See you at the flipout tables soon. 

On the sit n go front I have just embarked on a new learning chapter designed to give me the best chance possible to improve my Jackpot game win rate.  More next time. I continue to play the Maui games and this new information should help me maximise my return whilst working on improving my game.

Good Luck.

Five A Day

I am introducing a shift of strategy which I think will be good for me. So far this year I have enjoyed some solid progress and profit. However, my good run in the dirty dozen games has waned of late. I have become a little unfocused and also distracted by other less profitable games. I have also not been enjoying my poker as much. Ultimately I think I am a little unmotivated by the goal of winning a 2000 Euro Jackpot. Sure it is a decent amount of money but great as it would be, it would not really be a big step forward forward in poker or in life. To play at my best I need to be fully motivated so I am shifting back to the Maui games which conveniently has a current jackpot total of 31000 Euros. Enough to help me exceed my overall poker target of $50,000 and also enough to impact on my non poker world. As a family we could do something really significant with that.

In my first five Maui games for a long time I managed a win which gives me some encouragement. So I plan to play five a day to focus me back on the jackpot goal. If it also reminds to eat more fruit and vegetables that can't be a bad thing for my poker either.

Good luck.

World Cup Winners And Losers

Congratulations to Germany on winning the World Cup. Can't say I'm happy about it but there can be no doubt about their quality. They are one of only a few teams who would have been deserving winners. A great winning goal for Germany and a superb tournament. Fantastically this World Cup showed us that teams who are hard-working, organised and perhaps lacking in overall quality can mix it with the best countries in the world. Some of those collections of individuals who are better players just don't have the same discipline, desire and focus. The USA and Costa Rica demonstrated this more than any other. Very few, if any of their team would have made it into the England squad. As I prepare for a season watching Burnley in the Premier League this gives me great heart. Also a decent bet on Burnley to finish in the top ten at 16-1 should help pull me out of my World Cup betting hole! During the final I questioned my son Jake, now seven about England's potential in the next World Cup in 2018. Could we win it? "Don't be an idiot Dad, quarter-finals at best." Slowly but surely my unjustified optimism is starting to rub off on him! I still believe and one day he will too. 

Poker wise the World Cup has been something of a negative losing period for me as I tried to fit poker games around football games, played different games to my normal schedule and dealt with reduced leisure time combined with increased tiredness levels. My initial aim to scale down my activity and take a break never really happened. I am a creature of habit and need my daily poker fix. With the tournament over though I am ready to re-focus and get back on track with the good 2014 I am having. As long as I don't get too distracted by The Tour De France and the upcoming British Open Golf!

Five Hundred Games

In 2014 so far I have played five hundred twelve player jackpot sit n gos. My progress is charted above and below. I am particularly pleased with the positions chart and the fact that I am winning thirteen percent of games.Good, but still open to improvement. Interestingly first and fourth are my joint top results followed by second then sixth. Obviously these are all key targets  - winning, getting heads up, cashing in fourth and reaching the final table of six. My ROI is 18% which equates to fifty cents per game. Following a break for the World Cup I intend to literally double my efforts, playing a thousand jackpot games over the rest of 2014, at least maintaining the win rate described but whilst playing more games simultaneously. These will be played alongside some MTT games on Full Tilt where I continue to prosper despite the cancellation of my favourite games.

Whilst playing the jackpot sit n gos I also intend to develop a strategy document showing how to best beat this game, a process which in itself will help me progress. It will keep me focused on the correct approach and minimize my mistakes.

Good luck to England and lets hope its a great tournament.

Winding Down For The World Cup

The upcoming World Cup should provide a much needed mid year break from my 2014 poker exploits. As good as the year has been (currently up around $2000) I am currently somewhat frustrated. In their wisdom Full Tilt have recently cancelled the Daily Double tournaments which have been the source of two-thirds of my profits over the last six months! Over the next two weeks I intend to wind down my poker activity, playing only the Dirty Dozen jackpot sit n go games to complete five hundred for the year just before the start of the tournament.

England are 33-1 to win the World Cup. The biggest price they have been in my lifetime. They are third favourites in their group and should get no further than the group stage. Ironically I strongly believe this really improves their chances. Unburdened by expectation this newer England squad, filled with young talent, yet bolstered with experience have a real chance to make an impact on this years tournament. Anyone who has watched the likes of Sturridge, Lallana, Barkley, Sterling and Shaw shine in the Premier League this year will know they can offer both real quality and a significant threat to any opponent. Sterling in particular excites me. The composure he showed in front of goal late in the season (especially the goal against Manchester City) tells me he is ready. I can only hope Roy Hodgson feels the same and gives these fearless youngsters some significant playing time. My optimism however was brought back down to earth the other day by my six year old son Jake (above) who is currently obsessed with football. I asked how far will England progress in the tournament. He considered the three group fixtures and after significant thought concluded we probably won't beat Italy, we will lose to Uruguay and beating Costa Rica won't matter. "Group Stages Dad!" I was really impressed and saddened at the same time.

He might be right. Certainly England's chance can seem exciting until you look at the squads of the leading competitors. Holders Spain have more options than current GCSE students while Belgium have a quality squad and an easy group. I see both putting in strong tournaments but neither will be able to touch the quality of the hosts Brazil. Whilst I have had a small bet on England and Belgium, I am currently in the process of re-mortgaging my house to secure a decent bet on Brazil. Hosts have a great record and all tournaments held in the Americas have been won by a South American team! In Hulk they even have a genuine superhero on their team. So confident are the hosts that they are currently protesting against the tournament, presumably because the opposition is so weak. They are even taunting their rivals by naming their players after my dads bowling team-mates William, Bernard, Oscar and Fred. The main danger to Brazilian victory is possibly their over confidence or perhaps massive domestic political revolution!

In my next post I will review the five hundred Dirty Dozen Sit N Go games I have played this year. I am currently winning around 50 cents per game and have a win rate of 13%. Pretty good but I am aspiring to do better.

Come on England.

Stars Align - Finally

For at least a year things have not gone well for me on Pokerstars. My confidence has been affected when playing which in effect kept the bad run going. This year I took the slightly cowardly approach of not playing very much on Pokerstars, concentrating instead on Ipoker and Full Tilt where things were going well. When I have played as almost expected the losses have continued...........

Until the other day when something changed. Things went well and kept going well. Finally success. A tentative entry into my old stomping ground, the $7 forty five man sit n go ended in victory. A truly international final table below looked on in shock as one of the worst players on the site over recent times recorded a win and a $90 cash, almost wiping out my year to date losses. Whether it was cosmic forces, probability just catching up with itself or my lucky underpants I really don't care. I just needed a win to get me back on track. Over the next week or three I will see if I can build on this progress.

PokerStars Tournament #904915668, No Limit Hold'em

Buy-In: $6.42/$0.58 USD
45 players
Total Prize Pool: $288.90 USD 
Tournament started 2014/05/03 17:42:14 ET
Tournament finished 2014/05/03 19:01:23 ET
  1: Kartajana (United Kingdom), $89.58 (31.007%)
  2: gyumo34 (Hungary), $62.11 (21.498%)
  3: edge_n (Norway), $47.66 (16.497%)
  4: Japoska2 (Russia), $36.11 (12.499%)
  5: Guzman092 (Mexico), $26.00 (8.999%)
  6: tdenhamer (Canada), $17.33 (5.998%)
  7: tiaguafonsu (Portugal), $10.11 (3.499%)
  8: mephi54 (Germany), 
  9: LaBanda014 (Argentina) 

Two days and two tournaments later I won another forty five man sit n go for $90!