Predator314's Poker Journal

Sit N Go Challenge Day 3 Results:

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 30
Buy Ins: $568.00
Amount Won: $823.50
Net Amount: $255.50
ROI%: 44.98%
Finish ITM%: 46.67%
Avg Finish: 4.30
1st Place: 6
2nd Place: 5
3rd Place: 3
Other Place: 16

I moved up a bit and played 8 $27 turbos this evening. I still did pretty well. I won 2 out of 8 and placed in the money in half of them. I also logged about 2 hours. Bringing my approximate # of hours to 6.5 with and hourly rate of $39.31. Now we're getting up there. I'm happy with a $40-50 hourly rate considering the limits I'm playing. I'm not sure if that rate is sustainable at this level because I'm not sure how the average winning player's stats look. I don't know if I'm running good, running average, or what.

I'll probably play a few more of these things tonight. I'll update the stats on this post if/when I do.

Ok, that's not another banner ad for the site. Just the UB logo because I'm gonna talk a bit about UB.

I got wind of Ultimate Bet's 50% up to $200 deposit bonus. I haven't played on UB in quite some time. So I decided to give it a shot. I put in my $400, bringing my UB account balance up to $407 :) Isn't it great to find $7 that you can just add to the bankroll?

So I'm off to clear a bonus. According to their terms, I guess I have to achieve 2000 UB points to clear the bonus. I ended up clearing about 1/10th of that in my short session.

I played 2 tables of $3/6 6 max. I got 2 doozy tables too. The first was full of weak tighties, spouting of some babble about pot odds. This little tirade went on for 30 straight minutes. My other table had 1 big league donkey and 4 calling stations. Needless to say, it was juicy.

So now I'm playing 2 completely different games. On the calling station/donkey table, I have to tighten up and minimize the bluffing. Whereas, on the weak/tighty table, I'm playing almost the opposite. Both gameplans worked pretty well and I had a nice session. Check the stats on this KING donkey:

Hands: 62
VP$IP: 88.71
Att to Steal Blinds: 90.00
Amount won: -$333.00
BB/100 Hands: -89.52
PF Raise: 70.97

I made about all my money on this guy. I couldn't isolate him though, because the other guys were making desparation calls with low suited connectors and shit like that, even to 3 bets. You can lose a lot of money at tables like this, but I got lucky and most of my showdowns were good.

So, the games at UB are getting an A+ so far in my book, but it's a small sample size. UB's interface, however, is horrid. What's the deal with having huge hole cards, but having tiny community cards. I'm squinting just to see the suits. The clanks and clicks that they call sound are annoying as shit too. I have to turn on the iPods to drown out the sounds.

It looks like they are paving the road in my neighborhood, so I think I might be stuck here all day. I might get a shit load of poker in.

Sit N Go Challenge, Day 2 Stats:

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 22
Buy Ins: $352.00
Amount Won: $486.00
Net Amount: $134.00
ROI%: 38.07%
Finish ITM%: 45.45%
Avg Finish: 4.27
1st Place: 4
2nd Place: 4
3rd Place: 2
Other Place: 12


For some damn reason, my pokertracker is missing 4 sit n goes. I've compiled these stats manually (with help of OpenOffice.org spreadsheet), so there's a slight possibility of some errors.

I took some horrid beats tonight which left me on the bubble all too many times. There are some real donks in some of these things. Others have better players. None have great players. I feel pretty confident in the $16's on Poker Stars. The good players are few and far between.

I played 14 sit n goes tonight. I logged approximately 3 hours. That brings me to a total of 4.5 hours and a win rate of $29.77/hr. Again, not exactly a great win rate. I might try some of the $27's later in this challenge or as part of a new challenge.

OK, listen up. You'll notice the Absolute Poker banner at the top. This is probably the last time you'll hear me pimp that banner unlike some other bloggers that have to promote their Party Poker signup code every 3rd sentence in all their posts.

Absolute is a great site for the little man. If you are struggling to build a bankroll, use their 200% up to $200 bonus for new signups. They also have tons of reload bonuses.

Thank the Good Lord... It's finally Friday! Man, it has been a LOOOOONG week. I'm gonna try to work my ass off today so the day will pass by quickly.

I didn't play as much poker yesterday as I wanted to. I had dinner with my Mother last night and spent some time at her house. On the way over there, I got pulled over. The cop pulled out behind me as I passed the gas station below my house. It's about 3 or 4 miles to my parents' house from there. He followed me all the way until I turned into my parents' neighborhood. As soon as I turned, he hit the lights. I got pretty pissed too, because I didn't do anything worthy of being pulled over.

As the cop gets out of the car, he shines his flashlight on my license plate. Uh oh, I knew the problem right then. Actually, I figured it was one of two problems. If you take a look at my truck, you will see the license plate has a smoke colored cover over it. This thing is pretty dark and makes seeing my license plate damn near impossible at night. Also, if you notice, I have 2 4" exhaust tips coming out the back. Those things are no longer connected to a muffler. Straight pipes baby. Needless to say, my truck is pretty loud. Also, I have a very loud stereo system and I happened to be blaring out SRV's rendition of "Little Wing", which in my opinion is far from noise pollution.

Now the cop comes up to my window and asks to see my license and registration. I reach in my back pocket... empty! I check my console, no registration either. That can't be good. I explain the predicament to the cop. He was pretty cool about it. Finally, he just said he pulled me over to ask me to remove my license plate cover. I agreed with him and went on my merry way.

All this brings me to my next beef. I'm a big fan of police officers. They don't get paid nearly enough for what they do. However, during my little 3-4 mile trip with this cop behind me, I witnessed 1.) A car pull out in front of me and then went speeding on, oblivous to the fact there was a cop behind him, 2.) Another car pull out in front of me, then stop dead in the middle of the road for no apparent reason, then finally make a left hand turn with no signal, and 3.) 2 vehicles in front of me not stop at a stop sign before pulling out. However, I got picked to be pulled over because of my license plate cover. Such a bad beat. No ticket though, so I guess I sucked out.

Enough of that little story. Tonight is Friday night. There are no football games of any importance tonight. I do have a few DVDs coming from Netflix. I'll have PCU (great funny movie), Eric Clapton Unplugged, and Alice in Chains Unplugged. I know I will watch PCU and probably AIC unplugged to wind down before I go to bed. Also, I want to buy an Xbox game. I'm debating on a football game or that Far Cry Instincts game. I'm not sure what I want.

Also, on my agenda tonight, I want to play at least 12 more sit n goes. That will put me up to 20% of my goal being completed. I'm aiming for 20, but I'm not sure if I can stay focused long enough to get 20 played. I can sit and play cash games for hours because it's nonstop action. Put me in a sit n go and I do good to stay awake.

One last semi-poker related tidbit: I want a new TV for my new place. I'm really aching to get a new DLP televison somehwere in the 50" range. I bought one of these a year ago, but it was a gift for my parents. I would really like to have the same TV. I can hook my laptop up via the DVI port and play poker in 50" HDTV bliss. It would also be nice to have some HD programming, and I'm going to get the Comcast DVR package. The only reason this is poker related is because poker is gonna be the only thing that allows this to happen. So let's all hope I can run good through the end of the year so I can buy one of these jewels.

Night One of the Sit N Go Challenge Stats:

Summary: Play 100 Sit n Goes and check results
Games: 8
Buy Ins: $128.00
Amount Won: $189.00
Net Amount: $61.00
ROI%: 47.66%
Finish ITM%: 50%
Avg Finish: 4.50
1st Place: 1
2nd Place: 3
3rd Place: 0
Other Place: 4

I also noted by each entry in my spreadsheet of when I have taken a bad beat to get eliminated from the tournament. Tonight, it was all 4 of the tournaments where I didn't make the money.

I learned tonight, it won't take long to play 100. I only played about 1.5 hours. So I'm making a decent hourly rate. Very small sample size we're looking at though.

More to come...

I've been working on some ideas for different content for this site. As it stands right now, this site just falls into same realm as 938928374928374 other blogs out there. "I played this many hands and made/lost this much money. Oh yeah, all poker players are idiot donkeys". That pretty much sums up 95% of the poker blogs out there. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy many of those blogs. They just don't have anything to really separate them from the rest.

While playing a bit today this hand gave me inspiration for one idea:

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (6 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx


Preflop: Hero is UTG with Qh, Qd.

Hero raises, 1 fold, CO calls, 3 folds.


Flop: (5.50 SB) 2d, Kh, Jc (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


Turn: (3.75 BB) Kc (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


River: (5.75 BB) 3h (2 players)

Hero bets, CO calls.


Final Pot: 7.75 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has Qh Qd (two pair, kings and queens).

CO has 5h 2h (two pair, kings and twos).

Outcome: Hero wins 7.75 BB.

As you can see, this guy really just donked it up on that hand. This sparked an idea. How about every so often doing an article called

The Inner-Mind of the Online Donkey

. The title could use some help, but the idea is there.

The basic idea is to take a hand where you are a player at your table really just plain donked it up. Put yourself in the role of the donkey (assuming you weren't the donkey to begin with) and walk through the hand, sharing the donkey thoughts that flow through your mind and why you played the hand the way you did. This can get entertaining. Also, if you would like to contribute, feel free to email submissions to leonardw@nospam-gmail.com. Please remove the "nospam-" part.

Look for the first inner donkey article in a day or 2. I got some other ideas too. They will probably piss off 2+2ers and bloggers alike. Sometimes you'll have that.

Congrats on the 'Eers beating the snot out of those UConn fuckers last night. That score could have been 80-3 or so had Rodriguez not let up.

I've reached the end of my break. I'm all freshened up and ready to do some check-raising. I got some new goals to share.

Goals: Play 1 more month of $2/4 short. After my cashout last month, I think I'm gonna stay conservative with the bankroll and suck it up at the $2/4 tables for one more month. I'm winning at over a 4BB/100 on these tables, so they are still profitable. However, the play at the $3/6 tables is not any better. The tables are full of donkeys these days. Especially with the WSOP playing on ESPN.

I want to focus on cash games this month. They are my bread and butter. I love the fast limit poker style. However, I've been running good in the $16 sit n goes on Poker Stars too. I want to play at least 100 of these puppies this month. That's right 100 sit n goes. They are boring, they are gay, but they are profitable. That's what poker is all about to me. Fuck the pureness of the game. I'm here to make money.

So I got a nice little spreadsheet all laid out ready for some sit n go crazyness. I have no concept of how I'll end up in my 100 sng challenge, but it will be a learning experience.

Another thing I'm going to try to do is keep a log of all the hours I play this month. I want to try to come up with an hourly rate for my time. I'm not going to set a pre-determined # of hours I want to play. That never works for me anyway. Things have been going good when I play when I want, so I'll continue those ways.

Hopefully November will be good to me this year. Last November was my best month ever. I netted over $20,000 last November.

I'm gonna try to play quite a bit tonight. There's nothing going on this evening as far as I know. So I'll probably settle in after dinner time and put in a few hours at the tables. I'll probably 2 table some cash games on Full Tilt (clearing bonus), while I 2 table the $16 sng's on Stars.

Also, this evening, I need to call Neteller and see what to do about my account and Party Poker. I got my rakeback set up for Party, but I can't deposit because my Neteller account was used on my old Party account. So I emailed Neteller and they said to call them and they can fix it. It will be nice to have rakeback again. Especially when I'm getting ready to hit the $3/6 6 max tables wide open.

Happy Halloween. I got a bag full of Butterfingers, Hershey Bars, and Reese's Peanut Butter cups to satisfy all these freeloading ankle biters tonight. I'm not sure how many trick or treaters I will get at my new place. Hopefully not a lot.

I pretty much kept away from the poker tables this past weekend with a few exceptions. As you can see, I placed 4th in a 180 man sit n go on Friday night. I donked off almost 2 buyins in the blogger game while playing in the sit n go.

I also played a few single table sit n goes yesterday. I think I played 4 all together. I won 2 and finished out of the money in 2.

I spent most of my weekend cleaning. I did go to a Halloween party Saturday night. It was nothing special. I came home early.

Tonight, I'll take on last day off. I have to go to Columbus, OH tomorrow so I'll be away from a computer tomorrow night. Wednesday night will be my return to the grind. Hopefully this November will be another good month.