20 Buy-Ins up at NL20

Havn't posted for a while as I've been enjoying playing too much. Finally up 20 buy-ins at NL20. Lost 2 of my biggest pots so far, QQ v JJ and a 3 way all in (I had nut flush draw with odds, hit the flush for someone to fill up on river).

Anyway it's annoying as I wanted to win 20 at each level then move up to the next. As my next is NL50 my bankroll needs to be $1000 (even though I know it should be 30 buyins but I'm sticking to 20).

Graph:

Starting Bankroll: $200

Current Bankroll (with Rakeback): $800.40

Hands Played: 48,393

NL20 Starts off well...

Played about 8,000 hands at NL20 and done quite well, here's my graph for my last 20,000 hands. black line profit, red line profit including rakeback. If you look closely, at about 6,000 hands my rakeback line glitches and sets back to 0. No big deal though.




Hands Played: 36,543
Starting Bankroll: $200
Current Bankroll inc. Rakeback: $630.76

Time to move up!!!

I havn't posted in a while as I've been on holiday, but hit the tables pretty hard when I returned 12 tabling and have finally reached my first goal of 20 buy ins.

Here's a breakdown. First I played on FullTilt:




Hands Played: 16,087
Amount Won: $65.86

Then I moved to cake to recieve some well deserved rakeback (notice stupid HU games in the middle):





Hands Played: 12,834
Amount Won: $78.12
Plus Rakeback: $33.60
Plus about $30 in tournament winnings overall.

Starting Bankroll: $200
Bankroll Now: $413.25
Total Hands: 28,921

It's not about the money but about me finally sorting out my tilt issues. I'll be giving NL20 a shot next time I play, maybe start off with a few less tables to get a feel for the new limit. Knowing me I'll hit a bad run and be back at NL10 in no time. Hopefully not!

Risky play pays off

So everything was going fine on Cake and I had returned to $305. I played as usual and dropped to about $285 when I decided to do something stupid.

Firstly I played a guy at NL20 Heads-Up. He was sitting at the table with onlt $12 so thought I could take a shot. Well 45 minutes later he was sitting there with $60 and I had rebought to $20.

At the same time this was happening I decided to enter a $10 rebuy tournament.

And worst of all...a $50 HU Sit and Go.

At the end of this and about 2 hours later I had won all my money back from NL20, I hadn't cashed in the $10 rebuy (or rebought thankfully), but most importantly, had won the $50 HU game.

So I got kind of got lucky. Well I didn't really as I played well and won. But what I mean is this could have easily damaged my bankroll. I don't know whether to be happy or annoyed about the fact that whilst I was doing this I was never on tilt. I just did it. Well I got away with it and won't be doing it again. Here's how I'm looking now (new crappy stat tracker remember). You can easily see where the NL20 cash guy stacked me stacked me a few times:



Bankroll: $337.92
Total Hands: 22,723
Rakeback (included): $21.52

Cake beats Betfair

So it was an interesting experience at Betfair. After about half hour of poker, I had already decided to bet on anything Betfair would offer me. I had also dabbled in some HU cash as they run these games at quite low stakes, which I swore to myself I wouldn’t do as I have issues losing Heads-Up…I take it too personally.

The cons for me outweighed the pros of playing here. Accessing my account was tedious, the currency was in £’s, multi-tabling was awful, the ‘21’ button on the poker client encouraged me to play blackjack, etc, etc. The only pro is that players seem to be more inclined to gamble…well it is a betting site, but as a result the poker client was in no way tailored to suit a poker reg.

After much contemplation I joined Cake Poker with a nice 33% rakeback. You cannot fit many tables onto 1 monitor but the cascading and pop-up system works very effectively once you configure the tables. One plus of playing here is that it doesn’t allow PokerTracker/Hold’Em Manager or similar tracking software and as a result the site is avoided by many regulars.
Saying that, I have managed to get hold of some software that tracks your own play only.

It’s not as glamorous as PokerTracker but it’s free and does the job. I've only played 2000 hands so once I’ve played a few more thousand hands I’ll post an updated graph.

Bad 3000 hand run/Possible switch to Betfair

Just as expected, I hit a pretty annoying downswing. Annoying in a sense that I didn't play bad at all. Had top 2 pair busted by a set twice on the flop (I can sometimes get away from these which is a little disappointing), I've had KK v AA twice AIPF and full houses beaten by bigger fullhouses. Some sessions I am finishing up 2-3 buy ins on 75% of my tables and still only breaking even.

Anyway, with rakeback at 30% I'd be up 6 buy-ins right now overall and the more I think about it, the more I know I need to change sites to accomodate this.

Seeing as I'm signed up to most sites already, I have opened up a rakeback account with Betfair. I think before I play my next session I will transfer my bankroll from Full Tilt to Betfair. This will be annoying as my stats graph will now effectively be starting from scratch, but here is my latest (and quite possibly final) graph from playing at Full Tilt anyway:



Hands: 16,087
Bankroll: $265.86

10 buy ins up, $300 reached.

OK, ran quite well the last few thousand hands and am expecting a downswing at some point. Been making some good laydowns (well I think I have) which have helped along the way:

One thing that's annoying me a little is that with rakeback (say 30%) I'd have an extra 4 buyins ($40). When/If I reach $500, I might consider switching sites, but that's a long way off yet.

Bankroll: $307.56

Hands: 10,925