Two Weeks In: I Miss Week One

This last week has been dreadful in the $1k challenge. Started the week at $351.90, and while I temporarily climbed as high as $380, the 'roll went crashing down. At my nadir, I hit $287. A run-good, play-against-giant-donks 45 minute session that just ended salvaged the week a bit, and the 'roll is back "up" to $338.03, with rakeback.

Honestly unsure that I played too poorly this last week. Had a couple tilt sessions, but predominantly I had experiences like this. $.05-$.10 6-max NLHE. Effective stacks $10. I wake up UTG with AA and open to $.30. Dude to my 3-bets to $.90, button calls, and I raise to $2. I considered flat calling, but decided that I wouldn't mind scaring one of them off. My 3-better calls, and the btn folds. I like that. Flop is QJ4, two diamonds. A little over $5 in the pot, and I have $8 left. I have the lead and the board is wet, so I bet $3.75. Villain obliges by shoving all in. I call, and he turns over 22. WTF? A 2 hits the turn and I toss my laptop across the room (in spirit, at least).

Had a few of those, and only recall doing that once to somebody once myself. So, the Fates owe me a couple.

I also played a bit of Rush Poker. I adopted a quasi-Sushi Cowboy approach. Narrow pre-flop range. While I earned lots of FTPs, I was upside down about $11 in ~ 1200 hands dealt. The variance is, um, high, and while I'm sure that Martin and others can do well by exploiting the natural Rush Poker junkies, I'm not fond of how it changes my poker perspective. Given that my primary goal here is to learn to play better, I'll stick to the regular old boring ring games.

Back to a question I asked before, but didn't see a response to ----> is there anyway to make a URL of FTP hands so that I can post them??? Marty? I'm looking at you....

One Week In: so far, so good

One week into the $1k or Bust challenge, things are going pretty well. I've played almost exclusively $.05-$.10 on FTP. FTP offers the game full ring, 6-max and heads up, and at each table size it offers regular buy in (100BB), short stack, deep stack, "capped" (haven't looked to see what that means) and with antes. My game of choice is 6-max, deep-stack with antes. Seems to drive greater action (avg pot size definitely bigger). Overall, rakeback and signup bonus* included, I'm up from to $351.90. A little over 3000 hands of play in a week (a lot for me).

No particularly notable hands. Normal # of bad beats, suckouts and coolers. In fact, it's unclear to me how to URL'ize hands played on FTP. Anyone know how? Overall, the larger player pool (as compared to Cake) seems like a huge advantage. Not super impressed by the quality of play, overall.

* As for the signup bonus, I deposited $300 back on March 12 in light of 1:1 signup bonus. For every dollar deposited (up to $500, I think), FTP matched it with a dollar. I failed to read the fine print, and didn't play much while the Cake Challenge II was onoging. Last week, when I started the $1k or Bust challenge, I took a closer look at the FTP Cashier, and noticed two things. First, the bonus isn't a simple deposit, but instead is redeemed $.06 at a time, for every FTP earned (so, every dollar in rake = $.06). At $.05-$10 stakes, it takes a while. Second, I noticed that the bonus is paid in $20 increments, meaning you have to earn $20 of redemption, $.06 at a time, before anything is handed over. With 3000k hands of play in a week, I've earned just over $20 in bonus, so at least I got something out of it. Finally, I noticed that the promotion expires on 7/12 (4 months from signup), and thus my $300 signup bonus will likely amount to $20. All of this is my fault, obviously, as I'm sure the terms of the bonus were readily apparent...had I bothered to look. Anywho, at least I got $20.

$1k or bust

Given my assumption that there will be little interest in an immediate beginning to Cake Challenge III, I've decided to begin my own quest. Gonna try to turn my $300 on FTP into $1k in a year. Unsure if that's an overly-lofty goal or a soft one. My instinct is that it'll be difficult, especially given the smaller rakeback and the (presumably) tougher opponents as I'm playing in higher stakes games. I'll start off at $.05-$.10 and maybe $.10-$.20, and will endeavor to abide by proper bankroll management principles (which I understand to be 5% buyin; 10% at risk). Of course, if it's June 15, 2011 and I'm at $412, proper bankroll management may go out the window.....

Interested in:

1) thoughts on whether this is overly- or underly-ambitious;

2) whether anyone else wishes to join in the challenge; and

3) whether a sushi/jason-like book should be established, regardless of the answe to 2.

The Challenge Endeth......

I'm over 95% certain that the Cake Challenge is actually ending today. I've been certain before, but all signs point to July 1 being six months from January 1. Ended at $204.27, up (obviously) 104.27% over six months (and 30,464 hands)....but (more importantly to me right now) up 1300% from my June 4 end-of-session low of $13.07. Hard to (generally speaking) recommend the June POA, but (win or lose) I took the right approach given the enormity of the hole, the remaining time and my somewhat limited opportunity to play.

A rough breakdown of how I did over the six months in various games. Subject to the inaccuracy of today's tabulation, of course. [If someone wants to audit my google spreadsheet, let me know.]

$.02/$.04 NLHE (17k hands) -- $22.28
$.05/$.10 NLHE (1.5k hands) -- ($54.16)
$.10/$.20 NLHE (3.5k hands) -- $4.47
$.25/$.50 NLHE (1k hands) -- $127.38 --> sweet spot or pure, unadulterated luck?
Omaha (various) (2k hands) -- ($48.51)
SNGs and MTTs (various) -- ($74.80) --> tournament specialist

In the end, my best game was clearly Rakeback. Earned $111.20, or 107% of my overall profit, from Rakeback. Super scary. Never figured out HEM (actually, had it set up on wifee's laptop, but never got it properly set up for my laptop bought in February/March).

This experience had two clear phases, and I'm ok with both. The first phase (January-March, when I ran out of steam due to family drama) involved grinding $.02-$.04, one $4 buy in at a time. Played between 3 and 7 tables at a time, and I felt as if 4 was probably the ideal # given my peculiar attention span. Got as high as $200, before dropping back to $150ish. Certainly no master (and probably a pure middle of the road player, at best), but I enjoyed the grind of staying within my means.

Phase two was the "oh shit, this is about to end, I've been unable to play for two+ months, better throw caution to the wind" period. Because of my unique calendar-reading skills, I actually got two cracks at phase two. While some may question whether this approach (single tabling with a huge buy-in) was consistent with the spirit of the contest, it absolutely was. The contest had a finite time period to it. Some blew through their $100 'roll in one or two or ten sessions, early on. So be it. I accepted far greater risk in phase 2 (2a and 2b), and I had many opportunities to bust out. High risk, high reward. Certainly acceptable under the allotted time frame, in light of the scoreboard at the time. No other way to play it out.

Who's ready for Cake Challenge III? I am. I propose starting at $200 or $300 this time. Having climbed to greatness (ok, acceptable mediocrity) via imprudence, I'd be interested in communally giving it a shot using proper bankroll management at slightly higher starting stakes. Any takers??? (chirp, chirp, chirp.....)

One Day to Go in the Challenge

About 30 hours to go, I'll have very little remaining time to add to the Eeyore roll, which (proudly) stands at $167.43, plus about $14 in rakeback coming today/tomorrow). After reaching the $194 apex (and bragging about it my post), I had a horrible session (punctuated by my overplaying AQ), dropping down to $110. Never deterred (again, sole motivation = Whitmore's "I'll gladly short Adam" face), I kept plugging away, and have climbed back up near my June high.

I know Marsh (likely as a result of me raising the topic with him--duh) is re-engaged somewhat, and who knows if $180'ish will be enough to take it down. Regardless, I'm pretty pumped to have climbed out of my late May hole. Some interesting lessons:

* My game (or at least my attention span) seems best suited to play a single table, with stakes that cause me some level of concern. I'm not sure what would happen if I bought in $4 into a single $.02-$.04 table. I like to think that I habituate well to the stakes I'm playing, but I imagine I'd be hard pressed to respect the stakes when the downside risk is $4.

* I spent a lot of time (while playing $.10-$.20 and $.25-$.50) fixated on the 3-bet/4-bet tendencies of my opponents. By focusing significantly on that single facet of the game, and taking copious notes regarding those tendencies, I believe I've been able to exploit my opponents. In a way, the limited player pool of Cake has assisted me. Were I playing on FTP, I would have a much harder time leveraging that info given the huge player pool.

* One important tweak I made, as I put myself into the high risk world of putting a big % of my 'roll to work at one table, was to stop firing if I raised pre and then missed the flop. Assuming the board was accommodating, I certainly c-bet most of the times, but I resisted the temptation, when called pre and on the flop, to keep trying to push my way through. While I may've ultimately bought a few hands, I certainly would've blasted off my stack more often. And, working without a net (given the huge chunk being risked), I simply couldn't endure the volatility.

* It's ok to be bluffed. Again driven by life on the edge, I started to be more willing to simply lay down my hand when my opponent showed a ton of strength in the face of my apparent strength. I'm sure I've mucked quite a few winners, but I'm also sure the approach helped me survive the unique circumstances I found myself in.

Eeyore Has a Fighting Chance

So a good last week for the Eeyore roll. Motivated solely by separating Whitmore from his "I short Adam" money, I've played quite a bit (for me, that is). About 3300 hands since June 1.

My progress has been jagged, but that's to be expected playing $.10/$.20 (and now $.25/$.50) with a tiny stack. Nearly gave up when one cooler and one bad beat dropped me down to $52.20. [While I can hear Chuck and Marsh dismissing those hands as "standard," and they are, they didn't feel so "standard" given the percentage of the 'roll that was consumed.]

Instead of giving up --- once again nearly exclusively motivated by the vision of Whitmore paying Jeh one dollar at a time --- I did what any junkie would do with only a few days left. I bought in for $50 (of my remaining $52.20) at the $.25/$.50 table. In four $.25/$.50 sessions (totaling 300 or so hands), I've increased the 'roll from $52 to just over $194. The players at $.25/$.50, or at least the handful that I've encountered, are horrible. Station after station. I've definitely had my share of "run good," but I've been paid off at every turn. We'll see how it ends. Liking the trajectory of the graph, if nothing else......

Hello Variance, My Old Friend

One week into the $.10-$.20 ($20 buy in) experiment, things are up, then down, then way up, then way way down, then up. Considering that my post-catastrophe bankroll started at $13.07, these swings are huge. My session results:

* up $27.99
* down $20.00
* up $19.62
* up $11.16
* up $13.15
* up $5.83
* down $18.78
* up $5.30
* up $5.00
* down $40.00 (tilt!!!)
* up $32.46

With rakeback, I'm sitting at $69.00, having played over 1300 hands in my post-meltdown period. Heck of a lot better than $14, but a long way to go to get back into it. Check out the crazy graph. Glad I'm still in it, but I basically can't endure more than one or two lapses in concentration or coolers.