Hey Guys,

So February has been pretty rough so far. I've played 93K hands which I'm thrilled about but I had to weather my worst downswing ever for about the first 65K of those. Its pretty demoralizing putting in that kind of volume and being down. Maybe its just the nature of the Rush games but they seem higher variance than the normal games and I must say my WR is nowhere near my WR at normal tables. I think I'll finish out this month on Rush and perhaps reevaluate before starting March. If I wasn't too embarrassed I'd post some of my stats but that will have to wait until later in the month.

Has anyone else played enough Rush hands to get a feel for their WR compared to normal tables? I'm interested to know if other people are experiencing the same issues.

gl at the tables,
AKAssman

Hey Everyone,

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and New Year's. Sorry for the lack of blog updates, I actually took over a month off of poker to visit family and look for a job. I was really motivated to find a job and applied for several positions on the North Slope of Alaska working in the oil fields as well as several positions in the Phoenix area as a CDL truck driver or banker since I do, after all, have a Business degree. The results were pretty disappointing to say the least. So after 0 interviews its time for me to make some money again. I'm going to try my best to eliminate the poker jargon because I have some non-poker playing family that will be reading this for the first time.

On and off for the last 2 years I've attempted to play poker online as my main source of income. Overall I've had decent results and I'm optomistic about the future since Full Tilt Poker (where I play) has introduced "Rush" poker. In the past I've played 12-16 tables at a time of $0.25/$0.50 no limit holdem. I buy in for $50 at each table and hope to play 800-1,000 hands/hour. Rush poker allows me to play between 1,400-1,500 hands/hour increasing my hourly winrate by about 50%. As you can imagine playing the stakes that I play, volume is the key - if you break it down on a per hand basis I make about $0.025/hand that I play and have played almost a 1,000,000 hands to back that rate up. This rate includes "Rakeback" that is guaranteed income based on the amount of rake I pay Full Tilt. To simplify: Overall I make about $31/hour playing poker and since I started playing Rush poker I make about $34/hour.

That all sounds good but playing this much poker is not without its highs and lows. For instance: On back to back days I could play every hand the same way and win $600 one day while losing $600 the next. My poker revolves around getting as much money as I can into the pot with the best hand and hoping I win. Some days I play for 7 hours and lose $. Those days can be pretty stressful.

In this blog I typically post results and interesting hands that I play. Occasionally I'll post graphs from my database or other relevant statistics. I look forward to updating it regularly again.

Good Luck at the Tables!

Hey Guys,

Its been a month since I blogged. Thats a long time but I haven't had anything very exciting to blog about. For the first few weeks of November I had some decent poker results in very limited volume. I was running above EV and unless today is horrific, this month will be the first of my poker career that I finish above EV. Pretty incredible really. In the last 10 days or so I've been putting in more volume, close to what I used to put in when I first started playing poker full time. The results were OK at 1st but I had a pretty awful day last Wednesday. Overall November has been a pretty lousy month. I'm feeling good about my ability to play 3K-5K hands/day again but over the last 2-3 months my WR has been pretty bad. I watch videos, talk with friends about hands and review them on my own and can't seem to get a firm grip on why my WR continues to get smaller. Are the tables getting that much tougher? Is my game not evolving fast enough to remain a winner? I don't know. It's frustrating and I don't know what the future holds for me. I'm going home to Alaska for 10 days at Christmas time and before that I'm going to Texas for my little brother's graduation from Air Force Tech School so until then I have no choice but to keep playing as much as I can. After the holidays I may have some tough decisions to make though.

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and I'll try to be better about bloggin in December.

GL at the tables,
AKAssman

Hey Guys,

I know I've been lazy about my blog lately, I'll try to get better the rest of the month. As you could tell from my last post October got off to a horrid start and it kept getting worse. I'm happy to report that counting RB I'm above even for the month. Not really that exciting I guess because I need to make a lot more than barely positive to keep this going. I haven't been putting much volume in because of a lot of reasons but I'm hoping that will improve if my results continue to get better. It is difficult to play much when you hit your stop-loss almost every session. I'm also a big Yankees fan and their playoff games have been cutting into poker time for sure.

Anyways, I've been considering a lot of options lately as far as life goes and I think I might be going back to school in January. I found a golf school in the Phoenix area that has what sounds like a good program and I'd be able to graduate in 12 months with an Associate's Degree in Golf Complex Management. The schedule is pretty sweet too, especially if you've been to a traditional school, lots of playing golf and taking lessons. Anyways, for the time being and possibly even during school I'm going to be depending on poker income in some way or another so I need to start focusing more. I hope that I'm up to the challenge. Maybe I'll actually have some poker to talk about next time I update.

GL at the tables,
-AKAssman

Hey Guys,

Sorry for the lack of updates. I went to Dallas last weekend to visit my brother and Mom and really just got started playing poker this month yesterday. Overall I'm feeling pretty sick to my stomach about how its going. I'll post my relevant stats and a series of hands. I don't think I've run this bad in a while and have been doing a lot of thinking about how I run overall. I guess thats what you do when you're running bad and I'm no different than anyone else in that regard. I've talked to friends that play and of course I know there are people out there that run worse than I do but I would say that most people do not. I've played 350K $50nl hands on FTP and I'm running 32 BI's below EV. You'll see that my last 2 days have done nothing to improve that. I used to tell people (mostly my wife because she insists that online poker is rigged) that over the course of 1 million hands your all in EV would even out. Well I'm going to revise that statement. Across all sites and limits in the last year and a half I've played close to 700K hands and I'm well over 50 BI's below EV. I've seen no signs at any point that would suggest I'm going to break out of it. What can I do about it? As sick as our game is, nothing. Not a god damned thing. Continue to get better and watch bad players beat you then give your money away to other players. That and look for a job. Even with my soul crushing $50nl results last month I ran below EV. Enjoy the freak show of hands you're about to see.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?4768462
Really bad player here, playing 39/10, anyone have any idea how he built this stack? I do.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4768466
This villain is actually a tight reg. How about this play? People play bad, I run worse.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4768471
Pretty self explanatory here. Obviously the winning villain was horrid and I wanted him to come along pf knowing he would stack off light.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4768478
Again, very easy hand to play vs horrid opponent. Sickening outcome.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4768484
Side pot one time? Nope.

Well that does it for the good ones. Here are my stats for the 2 days. The sickest part? Only 2500 hands.



GL Everyone.

-AKAssman

Hey Guys,

I know I sound like a broken record but here it is... I've had another great couple of days of $50nl. I made over 6 BI's yesterday in only 1400 hands and made almost 4 BI's today in 900 hands. The tables are still awful so I've been picking my times carefully and I continue to be worried about what will happen when I'm not winning a BI every 600 hands. I know I'm playing my best ever and I know I'm over 3 BI's below EV this month but I also know that my WR isn't sustainable, even at $50nl. I'm winning at 7.88 PT BB/100 so far this month. Again today I had some ugly hands that I'll post below. I also won a nice 3-way all in for a 300 BB pot that I'll post.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4722730
Wow this is a horrid play rewarded. You'd think he would know that when I raised his flop bet his gutshot was no good. I guess not.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4722734
Again absolutely disgusting. Vwp indeed.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4722737
Calling 8x pf with T high and a 40BB stack. Very very smart.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4722739
I get a ton of satisfaction out of these pots. Moron fish that think they're being clever by limp, small 3-betting with AA in EP, hoping they get a 3-way pot, then playing their AA like its the nuts on any flop. Very good outcome for me.

GL at the tables,
-AKAssman

Hey Guys,

Has anyone noticed how bad the tables on FTP have been lately? Pretty gross, I'm lucky to get 1K hands in before dinner anymore. Overall its pretty demoralizing - one of my least favorite things in the world is being at the mercy of the tables all day. I think that hanging out by your computer and checking the tables every 30-60 minutes can be worse than actually playing mentally. I like to be able to set my schedule and obv that has always been hard to do but its getting to the point where I must play any time the tables are good. I don't like being bound by that but I suppose it beats a real job. Despite hardly playing at all I continue to crush $50nl. I took a nasty beat today for a full BI but was able to recover nicely. Amazing how I'm winning at over 6 PT BB/100 this month and still running a decent amount below EV. I'll post a couple of hands below including the beat.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4718245
The villain here was a 13/8 reg. I think his range given the min 4-bet preflop is almost always AA or KK. Knowing this I like to check behind flop, call turn, and hope to hit on river. Obv the river was the worst of my outs but I went with my read and won a nice pot. Horrid river shove by him imo.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4718995
Pretty ugly here but what can I do.

GL at the tables,
-AKAssman

Hey Guys,

So my $50nl month continues to be amazing. I'm winning at just under 6 PT BB/100 and my pf numbers remain very strong at 16/12.5/3. How can I explain this change? Well first off I'm not sure its sustainable - I have some confidence because believe it or not I'm still running close to 3 BIs below EV for the month despite the amazing WR. 2 important changes I made this month - I went from 16 tables to 12 tables. I never thought that could make such a difference but it has. I used to think that my ability to play 16 tables proficiently was one of my biggest poker strengths and that no matter what I did I would never be able to post a 4-5 PT BB/100 WR so I may as well continue playing huge volume and being OK with a WR below 2. I was wrong, I've been able to think about a lot of situations in depth and also raise in +EV spots that I may not have had time to playing 16 tables. The other contributing factor has been my commitment to being a $100nl winner. I have not won anything at $100nl yet, in fact I've lost a decent amount this month but playing those games and putting in the effort to beat them has done wonders for my confidence at $50nl. I'm satisfied with my month so far and hope that I can put in some good volume the rest of the month,

Also - the tables continue to be lousy on FTP and from what I hear everywhere else. I will be the first to admit that sweats and talking with people doing the same grind as you are hugely beneficial. Anyone looking for support or just another person to discuss hands or problems with feel free to PM me. I have lots of time and I'm a firm believer that sweats help both players involved.

GL at the tables.

-AKAssman

Hey Guys,

So this week has been filled with highs and lows. The Mini FTOPS started this week so that has been pretty cool. Unfortunately SHROMI, darth_bozo, and myself collectively have one cash for a net of $32 so we haven't exactly been tearing it up. Luckily for me the cash was mine so I've taken the early lead on our Mini FTOPS leaderboard. I had to create an Excel spreadsheet using a formula I found on FTP to assign points. It almost felt like work! Anyways, we're all playing in the $22 one rebuy, one add-on right now so wish us luck!

Cash has been going OK. I've been crushing $50nl, I made 7 BIs on Tuesday - its good to see all the extra work I put into beating $100nl has actually helped me somewhere. I'm down about 5 BI's at $100nl for the month and I'm not sure I've stacked anyone. I'm not hitting many hands, I'm running bad (obv) and I don't seem to get paid off when I do hit. The regs are absolutely better at $100nl and that contributes to all of the issues I've been having. I feel like my game selection at $100nl could be better and moving forward for the rest of the month I'm going to do a better job of it. Overall I'm very happy with where my game is at - for the month I'm playing 16/13/3 which is a huge improvement for me. I hope everyone is having a good month.

-AKAssman

Hey Guys,

So I've been grinding some cash - 12 tabling so it feels like it goes really slow but my game has imrpoved a lot in the last couple of weeks and my numbers have certainly improved also. My WR is slowly coming around, I'm above even for the month thanks to some tourney luck.

So darth_bozo and I played some tourneys on Saturday and took 1/3 of each other in all the tourneys. Congratulations to him on winning a $10 MTT on FTP for $880! That won't hurt my month. I cashed in one lousy tourney out of like 10-12. Oh well, the Mini FTOPS is coming up and I'm due! Maybe on Tuesday or Wednesday I'll blog abouty some big cash winnings, still yet to have those this month.

GL at the tables,

-AKAssman