#04 - Positive ROI!

It's official. So far I now have a positive ROI over my very small sample size of games. Not much else to say. Been playing a fair bit, and feeling a bit ill today, so more games!

Lets look at the graphs I have so far :D

This one includes regular MTT tournaments (Been playing a couple up to a buy in of $1.10):

And this is just SnGs:

The initial dip we see is me trying to get my head around the format, and right now I feel it is definitely going in the right direction.

Right now I'm itching at getting above the $100 dollar mark so that I can focus on the $1 buy in tournaments. Of course it's still early days.

#03 - First proper finish and some lessons

Right, just a quick little post to the non existent readers of this blog (*wink).

I couldn't sleep and played some games to pass the time. I worked on 45 and 90 man 25c buy ins and it went very... very... veeery badly for a long time. I think I had something like 18 straight bustouts. Then I came in 2nd in a 45 man due to some horrible HU play from your's truly.

Now I've been thinking a bit about the bust outs and I think it has to do with the fact that I have previously been grinding 9 handed sng's, which are a completely different beast. I am beginning to realise that I need to be a lot more patient in picking my spots when I actually have a comfortable stack. I kept going overboard with steals and I really think I need to find a middle ground between nit mode and OMG BUBBLETIME GO CRAZY mode.

I also took a shot at a $1 180 man which I had running on the side. There I did fairly well, right up to just before the bubble when things started getting hectic on the final table of the 45 man I was playing at the same time. I had difficulty switching between modes when operating on each table. This probably had to do with me being incredibly tired. I ended up min cashing in the 180, so not a loss, but definitely felt I was in a good position to make the final table.

Lessons for the day:

Be patient, protect thy stack, make sure you know what table you are on before making an action!

Basics in other words :P

Now for some sleep -.-


zzzzz

#02 - First Cash, and some suckouts.

Well... I played 2 sets of 4 games today making it 12 buy ins in total. Basically to make any kind of profit (30 cents) I would need a win. I had a couple very promising spots before the final table in several of the games, but due to some bad timing on my part, some failed steals, a couple suckouts and not being able to win a flip to save my life I busted short of the final 9 in every situation but one.

I did make it on to the final table on my "last" game, and was pretty short stacked (along with the rest of the field, but hey... turbo's). Pretty much everyone except the players on either side of me is M7 or below and its an all in fest. Basically, position and picking your spots carefully is the only way to go, except of course waking up with AA.

The pivotal hand in the early stages of the final table was this one:

UTG Shove KT with 8BB's

Basically shove as a steal. I have been sticking to my positions and playing tight, so figure I should get some respect from UTG. Turns out I don't and get called by a MP player with 44. Luckily this is one flip I take down leaving me with a top 3 stack. I can tell you, I was pretty confident at this point and was gunning for the top spot. 

Now that I had a fairly large stack I basically sat back and watched the bubble burst. On the bubble, Freeze called off most of his chips with AK against Jackessens leaving him severely short and mr Jackessens the overwhelming chip leader. 

The next couple of prize jumps went fairly well, some stealing here and there and calling off the re-shove of one of the short-stacks with A6s brought me up to 19k at one point and I was feeling confident that I was picking my spots well and wouldn't be donking off my chips in a hurry. 

Then this happened: 

Defending BB with AKs against CUT "steal"

Yeah.... He min raises, I shove, the rest is history...

Bit of a cooler really. I don't see it going any other way. Either I shove here, or 3bet, where he probably shoves and I call. Or we go to the flop, I check, perhaps he bets... etc etc... I just see this hand happening this way every time.

The very next hand I have KQo and shove in the SB, get insta-called by Q6o and he hits a 6 on the flop. 

A cash and a step in the right direction, but still frustrating as hell. I'll be playing the standards this weekend and seeing how I fare with a slightly deeper stack and a tad less variance. Maybe we can even get to see some post flop play?!

Cherio folks,

Robin out!

#01 - The first mini session

Ladies and gentlemen! We are off! To a bit of a rocky start I must admit. I just played 4 Turbo 45 man sng's and would like to run through a couple of the deciding hands.

JJ reshove from SB

This hand was the one that really decided my fate in "Game 1". The blinds were at 100/50 and I was sitting on 14BB, by no means a dire situation but I was still looking for a spot to get it in. In retrospect I do not think this was the one.

Agressive player shoves for 12BB UTG2 and I pick up JJ in the SB. He had been fairly active, and though this was his first open shove that I had seen (warning bells) I decided to go with the boyscouts and reshoved for 14BB.

According to Poker Tracker I was 54% fav preflop so technically a flip. With hindsight I feel the reshove with JJ in that position with 14BB behind was perhaps a bit on the loose side and maybe I should have waited for a better spot. What do you guys think?

Calling off 10BBs with 55 in SB

Well... this one... Now I would like to justify it by saying he was incredibly loose from what I had seen and had been fairly active last orbit in late position, but I just can't really bring myself to say that calling off with 55 against a fairly equal stack is good. At the very best I was looking at a flip and I will try to be more conservative with my calls in the future.

Please share any thoughts, though I do think it will often have to do with personal preference. ICM wise though this is a massive -EV spot to call so slapping myself a bit for that. 

10BB deep steal attempt in SB goes bad

This last one for the day is not very interesting. Everyone folds to my SB and I look down at A4s. Antes have just entered the fray, I'm getting short with 10BB's and my neighbor in the BB barely has me covered. 

No brainer to push and I will do it again in a heartbeat. He unfortunately had AKo and though some people might argue that AKo is a fold in this spot (hmm...) he obviously was not one of them. Bad timing and no 4 on the board led to my farewell from "Game 3"

4 down, many to go.

Well, thats it for the first update. Not much of interest I'm afraid. 4 games played, 4 final tables missed. Granted I do feel that I ran rather badly, only winning about 1 flip out of the set of 4 games, but that's variance for you. And indeed Pokertracker agrees and says my All in Equity was mostly good. 

Looking forward to playing more games. Till then, Good night!

It has begun!

As you can see, I have made the deposit! And the gods saw fit to grant me more than my original estimate of $30-$35. I will be starting with a hair less than $41 giving me 163 buy ins at the $0.25 level.

Looking forward to getting some games going soon :D

Welcome to Roblomax's Bankroll Challenge!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this blog. 

 Let me start off with an introduction. My name is Robin Lomax Bjerke and I have been a recreational poker player on and off for the last couple of years. It has been a rocky ride, but I have grown and developed my skills consistently in this time. Now you may be wondering why I have created this blog? The answer is simple: I have always been aware of an inherent problem in my game, namely my inability to stick religiously to the stakes that my Bankroll will allow. I have previously tried to adhere to it, but ultimately ended up looking around, realising no one was watching but myself, getting bored and wasting my BR on long shots. The plan with this blog is to have a forum where I will document my sessions, my progression (or regression, time will tell) and be in some way accountable for my actions!

The Plan:

At the moment I am incredibly broke, but plan on making a £25 (Roughly $30 - $35) deposit at Pokerstars (My preferred site). The games I will be playing will be $.25 45 and 90 man SnGs. The deposit give me around 120 - 140 buy ins at this level.

I will stay at these levels till I can afford to move up to the next level with roughly the same amount of buy ins, perhaps making the jump when I have 100 buy ins. 

I will be multi tabling at least 4 at a time, probably 6 with a view to get to 9 fairly soon (at least in the early stages of the tournaments). 

As I (Hopefully) progress through the levels I will be doing more MTT's and satellites to bigger events, but never exceeding my 100 buy in limit.

This Blog:

Now as you may have guessed, I will be posting updates on how things are going, as well as posting pivotal hands and situations which I will discuss and hopefully learn from. I would absolutely love any and all feedback from the few of you who might end up reading it and hopefully we can all grow, be prosperous and profitable together!

SO! Now it's time to purge my hand history in Poker Tracker and start from a clean slate. You can also follow the stats on OPR 

Plan will commence this weekend, so expect updates then :)