Friday, August 29, 2008

Moving up to $10 NL cash

I'm moving up from $5 NL to $10 NL. I've reached my goal of winning 4 buyins ($20) at $5 NL so I'm going to move up to $10 NL. I definitely have plenty of bankroll for it so it's a good time for a move.

It took a while to get here. It took around 5500 hands with a win rate of 3.7 BB/100. In calendar time it took over 16 months. During that time I had to stop playing poker for a while. I also gave up on $5 NL for a while. It was a LOT longer than I thought it would take.

It was pretty swingy. I started out running well. I was up 3 buyins pretty quickly and looking forward to moving up again. Then a horrendous downswing hit. 8 buyin downswing bringing me to 5 buyins down. That was tough. But variance can also be positive and after bottoming out and playing break even for a while I went on a tremendous heater, +9 buyins. According to PokerTracker3 I've been running at 21.6 BB/100 over the 2200 hands since I started using PT. Within that I've been at 27 BB/100 over the last 1800 hands. So a nice upswing.

At $10 NL I'll try to ease into it. I think I'll try playing around 65-75 BB stack single tabling for around 200 hands to start out. That's just a tick more than the $6 I bought in with at $5 NL. After that I'll try around 200 hands buying in full at 100 BB, $10 single tabling. After that if things are going well I'll try 2 tables and see how that goes. It went pretty well on PokerStars $5 NL. I think I need a bigger monitor for more than 2 tables.

I'm going to play starting out at ultimatebet. Some of the $10 NL tables I've seen at UB look pretty good. Plus I have a 200% initial deposit bonus there which is nice and 30% rakeback. I wish PokerTracker 3 had ultimatebet support. They say they are working on it so I hope to see it real soon. I'll miss the HUD which I really liked at PokerStars. I'll probably play tournaments mostly on Stars.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

I've joined ultimatebet

I joined ultimatebet in the last week. I wanted play in a WWE freeroll. I'm a wrestling fan and my kids are too.

I was thinking of just joining they pla money site. But then I decided to join the real money site. I got set up with 30% rakeback from this is the nuts. No special reason for choosing TITN. I just clicked to the rakeback section on 2+2. Their ad came up first so I just clicked through. The rakeback was set up successfully so that's OK. I made the minimum initial deposit of $50 using my Visa credit card. I wasn't sure if it would go through but it did no problems. Yay Canada.

I was thinking of starting up at a new site anyway so this is as good as any. I can only hope they've cleared up the issues and can be trusted now. If I don't like it I can cash out or there's an exchange on 2+2 where I can exchange my UB bankroll for the same amount in PokerStars. I had always thought I'd join Bodog but I'll see what happens with UB.

It was a bit of a challenge getting into the WWE freeroll. Fist it didn't show up in the lobby. I e-mailed UB support and they got back to me a short time later and said I needed to go through the play money .net site. So I downloaded that and when I started it I found the tournament but I got a weird error message about the tournament not being for my card room. I e-mailed support again and they got back to me again and said the tournament was meant for just the play money people. I had told them in my earlier e-mail I only joined UB to play in the tournament.

They resolved it by changing the tournament so I could play. I don't know if they opened it up for all of the .com players in Canada or just my own username. But support was pretty good, no complaints. It seems weird though having a freeroll tournament for play money only. I don't think PokerStars would ever exclude their real money players from playing in any freeroll if they want to. No matter though. The tournament is three stage. I got through stage 1 pretty easily. Stage 2 is tomorrow night at 9 PM my time. I hope I can reach the final.

After the freeroll, I'm thinking about how to work UB into my play. They have some tournaments that look interesting. Also their micro stakes NL hold'em scene looks OK. I'll probably try out some NL cash and see how that works out with the rakeback and the 200% bonus which is nice.

Monday, August 04, 2008

Back in black at $5 NL

I've been on a crazy heater lately at $5 NL. In the last short while I've gained about 7 buyins. With this upswing I'm now up nearly 2 buyins for a win rate of around 2 BB/100. It has taken me around 5000 hands to get to this point.

I've been running very well. Mostly due to flopping sets and then having them hold up for huge pots. The set mine is good. The play is pretty bad at this level so I'm trying to be patient and wait for good hands. I've been trying out multitabling and that may have helped a bit as it makes it easier to just fold marginal hands and pay attention to the other table.

I got the trial Poker Tracker 3 and that is really good. The summaries are an eye opener, especially how unconverged everything is. It just shows what type of sample you need to get a clearer view of how you are doing. When the trial runs out I'm surely going to purchase it for it is a great utility. I wish I had had it from the start. I love data and I didn't realize what I'd been missing all this time.

Under PT I have my last 1600 hands. It says I've been running at 22 BB/100 during that time. That shows how well I've been running. My stats are 10/5/3 during that time so I feel I've done OK at playing tight and I have dropped some hands preflop that I used to play.