Catching Up

Wow, almost a month has gone by and a lot of stuff has already changed in my poker landscape. Since I wrote my last entry, I got into a big live poker tournament, the KFPT 440 EUR Main Event at Figueira da Foz Casino, an entry which I won in a live satellite the day before the main event. Unfortunately the tournament didn't go too well, as I got eliminated shortly after dinner, following a couple of missteps of my own. What was left was a bit more experience at this level which I hope to make into good use in the future.

Speaking of live tournaments, they are unfortunately really expensive and my cash from the early KFPT final table simply won't last forever and I don't want to burn it right away. So I've decided that for the next year or so, I'll be focusing on winning entries to these tournaments through live and online satellites. That and what I'm going to ramble a bit about in the next paragraphs.

Recentely (late July) I was offered a very nice rakeback deal and I'm trying to make good use of it, grinding it out online. I'm getting 55% right now, playing at a somewhat large network (not PokerStars, not Full Tilt) and I'm doing nicely so far. This network has some juicy Double or Nothing 6-max type tourneys, which pay double the buy-in to the first 3 players. I started out grinding these ones at the $5.50 buy-in, which means I get $0.55 in rakeback from every two tournaments I play. I've been trying to decide in which SnG type I have the most edge (if any!) and I'm still quite undecided. But I've been playing these double ups a lot.

The great thing about rakeback is how it attenuates variance A LOT. In fact, I can't live without it anymore and for me online poker without some sort of rakeback deal is just non-sense. You can't really on variance alone and it WILL bring you down sooner or later. Obviously, my idea with this is not to get stuck in these $5.50 but rather to go up the ladder and climb to bigger buy-ins, collecting as much rakeback as possible because you pay more rake the bigger the buy-in, of course. Since the beginning of August I've been grinding these $5 + $0.50 sits not really sure if and when to move up, until today I came across a great bankroll management video on YouTube which served as a good guide. I modified it a bit, to make it even safer and to cut to the chase, I'm basically moving up when I reach 20 buy-ins and moving down when I fall back to 15 buy-ins.

Looking at my bankroll, it became obvious in light of this strategy, that I could now move up to $11 SnGs, so that's what I'm playing now and having 14.6% ROI after 23 tournaments. Too early to say, but I feel the field isn't much stronger, only has a bit more regulars multi-table rocks. I'm also looking to unlock a $129 bonus at the room I play. For this I need to win another 5172 points right now, which by my calculations will take around two weeks to get. If I succeed in getting this by the end of the month, it's a massive boost to my bankroll and it will probably allow me move up again (to $22 SNGs). Mid-term objective is to collect enough rakeback that will allow me play in live tournaments monthly. We'll see.

From now on, as I did with my former challenge, I will post daily stats of my progress.

2010/08/01 - 2010/08/11
#SnGs: 188
ROI%: 8.7
ITM%: 53.7
Winnings (without rb): $100.50
Winnings (with rb): $158.50