Rolled On The River

Well, its been a while since I’ve written a blog entry (for which I apologize) and a lot has happened in that time.

The Book

The book is very near completion. We’ve tagged a couple of extra guest chapters on right at the end but the authors we chose along with the content is worth the added work / delay. I’m hoping by this Sunday Johnny and I can have everything that’s required from us more or less complete so our editor can make more headway and the book can hit publication in the very near future.

Poker

For the most part I’m pretty happy with everything going on around me. Dusty and I had a bit of a break from coaching for a while so he could catch up on his various business ventures and also play in the Party Poker Big Game but now that is out of the way we’ve resumed regular coaching sessions which I feel is helping my game progress at a steady rate. In addition to that I have a very active and tight nit study group consisting of primarily mid-high stakes players that has meant I’m never short of somebody solid to sweat me or to discuss a hand with. I’ve been meaning to get back to writing more strategy posts on RolledOnTheRiver (and will do so) but unfortunately between the book, poker and CaptureRake I either lack the motivation at the end of the day or simply don’t have the energy.

I’ve also started playing live poker on the weekends. There’s a couple of very soft 10/20 and 2/5 games running lately at StarCity and although the rake is rather bad (albeit improved recently) – it’s a change that keeps poker more interesting for me. Both games (on initial impressions) play much softer then any online table (100nl and above respectively) and I definitely think I have a large enough edge to justify taking a night away from online play to log some live hands. Oddly enough I’ve never lost my taste for live poker even though almost every online pro that I know can’t stand the thought of it. I’m hoping that by resuming a semi-active live schedule I can get some interesting posts on the topic as I think a lot of people coming from online poker to live poker either disregard the live table dynamic or continue stacking light in situations where many a live player wouldn’t (button vs blinds being the primary example).

CaptureRake

The affiliate Johnny and I started just a couple of months ago (http://capturerake.com) is now finally making considerable money that makes it feel a lot more like a legitimate business. I thought that the FullTilt affiliate change would be the nail in the coffin but it seems that it hasn’t slowed us down in the slightest. We’ve continued bringing on board 10k+ MGR guys who are converting from PokerStars to FullTilt (thank-you horrible shortstack changes) and are now at a point where if we didn’t bring anybody else on board at all we’d still have money to burn.

Life

Not too much to add here. I’ve made a few interstate trips recently but nothing too exciting and for the most part I’m just content playing and improving on my poker. I’m more or less working as much as possible now as of mid June I’ll be travelling to Hawaii, New York and Las Vegas with my study group (very much a social poker group also) so I don’t see any reason to travel between now and then and would rather get hands logged.

I played 6-max No Limit Hold’em at 200nl until February of this year, at which point I decided to change my focus to Full Ring. Although unconventional, since most players don’t move from 6-max to Full Ring, I’ve found I can play 16-20 Full Ring tables quite comfortably, but only 8-10 6-max tables before losing focus. I felt that if I could achieve a winrate close to that of my 6-max play, I would be able to achieve a higher hourly return.

Thankfully, with the help of coaching from a coach, I did manage to accomplish this. I have since played just over 70,000 hands of NL100-200 Full Ring, playing 21 VP$IP / 19 PFR over 16 tables for a little more than 7 big blinds per hundred hands.

I intend to continue working on my No Limit game; however, I’ve also turned my attention toward Pot Limit Omaha Hi, and have begun coaching with StoxPoker coach Onassis for an hour each night, with the hope of beating these games in the near future.

I’m now 25 days into becoming a No Limit Hold’em player after playing Limit Hold’em professionally and semi-professionally for almost three years. When I started out, all I had was No Limit Hold’em Tournament experience, and hours upon hours of StoxPoker videos in my head.

Although I don’t have time to log several thousand hands per month, I’ve done quite well for myself. At the end of the day, if there is nothing outstanding for StoxPoker and I don’t have any other commitments for a few hours, I’m generally opening up Telescope, finding 8-10 good tables between NL100-NL200, and grinding it out. Results shown below:

Hoo-rah!

Ack! August… This month is truly making poker feel like a grind. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to focus on poker this month (particularly the last couple of days with the new StoxPoker backend being launched) and every time I’ve sat down to play a session I’ve either broken even or lost a few buyins. However! Things are pulling up over the last couple of sessions and hopefully I can turn August into a profitable month!

See below for a graph of winnings:hands from PokerTracker for August:

For comparison here is the final graph from July for No Limit Hold’em (I’m not including my Limit results in this graph since I’ve only played $1/$2 NL Hold’em in August so far):

Well No Limit went incredibly awesome for July and I’m over the moon about it. Below are my last two weeks in July (click the images for a larger view):

FullTilt:

PokerStars:

All in all I think my No Limit game has improved dramatically. I think the two biggest reasons for this is hitting the tables and of course the number of poker videos I watch each day by working for StoxPoker. Without StoxPoker I can easily say that I wouldn’t have made half of the money I did and definitely wouldn’t feel as good about my No Limit game as I currently am.

Added to this I also booked a good lot of hands at fixed limit and as soon as I get my Hold’em Manager database working again I’ll post those also (I personally find PokerTracker to be by far the best HUD for No Limit and Hold’em Manager to have statistics which I refer to more in Fixed Limit – I hope to elaborate on this more in a future post).

Well my first week truly focusing on No Limit is over – so how did I do? Overall I’ve had a pretty odd week, I started on the deepstack $1/$2 (400bb’s deep) No Limit tables and made almost $1500 in just under 150 hands with one incredible heater (I doubled up early and then doubled up through another big stack with a set of Aces verses a set of Ten’s on a dry board). Unfortunately this pretty much closed the books on my No Limit action for the week since I spent the rest of the week mostly doing StoxPoker work and playing a few hands of Limit Hold’em here and there.

Overall I’m quite surprised at how easily a lot of the 200NL players are willing to stack off for 100 big blinds or more. I can’t understand how so many players are happy going broke with top pair / top kicker on dry boards. If a player is willing to stack off with you on a relatively dry board then he is either way ahead or way behind you, so why are these players happy putting the money in so easily? I am seeing so many players finding creative ways to call with the most ridiculous of hands. I love it – but it’s hard to understand what’s going on in these players minds.