Micro Millions Aftermath

So the Micro Millions came to an end today and as is fitting with the rest of the month, things ended in disappointment for my top 10 leader board quest. This was my best attempt at doing well on the leader board though and if I didn't register my highest point total throughout a given MM series, it was only because I stopped playing most of the events on the final 2 days once things were out of reach. I knew that reaching the top 10 would be a tall order and in hindsight it looks like you needed about 400 points to get there...that's averaging about 35 points per day. Over the first 3 days, I managed to hit 20, 20, 45 points with my deepest run coming in an $8.8 NLHE. Unfortunately, day 4 hurt a lot as it was brick city and I put up a whopping 0 points for the day. I didn't give up there though since 1 final table could have put me not only back in the game but ahead of it. I was pretty consistent over the next 4 days posting 20, 25, 15 and 30 points respectively. It was enough to hang on and stay in the hunt in hopes of breaking through for that really big day (don't even need to final table, just make a few deep runs really). Alas, it was not meant to be as the next day was another big doughnut and at that point there was almost no shot at making the top 10 so I called it quits. I still wanted to make the top 100 but I wasn't going to stay up playing around the clock just for the prize of 1 Sunday Million ticket. I also figured that I would have a decent enough shot at still making the top 100 if I just played events during the day alongside my cash game grind. It looked like I needed more than a decent enough shot to crack the top 100 though because I fell short of that too and landed in the top 200 instead. I ended up missing more events than I would have liked over the last 2 days (some just by accident/not noting how much late registration was allowed) and didn't really give myself a great shot at making the top 100.

In total, I played 73 events and posted a loss of about $183. It's hard to post a profit in MTTs without any Final Tables, even in micro-stakes games. I mean I ended up finishing in the top 100 in the $8.8 NLHE (deep run that I mentioned earlier) and first place paid almost $7k. I took a bad beat to bust and cashed for about $96, my highest score of the series. Anyways, I think that I ran pretty decent throughout the series overall but in the end the run-good was just too inconsistent and lacking in the pivital moments.

Highlights of the series for me included making a deep run in a $3.3 heads-up event, where I won something like 6 rounds before busting and a 6-max shootout event where I won my first table. I also enjoyed going crazy in a 10 cent rebuy and built a monster stack during the rebuy period and ended up cashing for some points later on. All in all, it was a fun series and even though it was tough playing so many events around the clock, I really enjoyed the challenge and already look forward to the next series!

The last longer promotion that I was running out of my facebook page was another big success! Thanks to everyone for participating and hopefully the winners were able to grab some cash from the Main Event (I heard that one person cashed for $127!).

I just wanted to keep this post breif and about the MM series, as I'll dive into more detail about how July has gone for me on and off the of the tables in the monthly review. Cliffs are that it's been pretty disastrous on the felt for a variety of reasons and I'm just trying to chip away at a sizable deficit at this point. No chance of getting into the black pre-rakeback I'll say that much lol.

gl at the tables!

Micro Millions Last Longers Are Back!

Back by popular demand, I will once again be runnning last longer events out of my facebook page over the first 7 days of the Micro Millions series (July 17-27). I will pick one event per day off the MM schedule and whoever signs up (free to join!) and outlasts the other contestants will win a ticket to the MM Main Event! Everyone seemed to have a good time being involved in these last time and I think that it's a good way to help motivate each other to go deeper into the tournaments.

I figured that I'd kick things off with the very first event, 001-$0.11+R Hyper Active. I'll make a new post on my facebook page announcing the official sign up details where you'll just have to leave your Stars ID in the comments to be registered. Also, I'm going to limit each winner to a 1-ticket maximum to spread the prizes around as much as possible :)

Anyways, I always get pretty excited for the Micro Millions series and will once again be trying to play all of the events (at least at the start) and make a run for the top of the leaderboard! I haven't been too successful in the past but 3rd? time's the charm!

I wanted to keep this post on topic about the MM so I'll talk more about how my month has been going both on and off the tables in another post when I get some time in the future. The cliffs are that it has been going pretty awful on the tables due in large part to me experimenting with a bunch of stuff. You might have seen me at the PLO tables at various stakes and wonder wtf is going on. I'm also wondering that. Haha but I actually am working on a plan to achieve SNE it may be through PLO but it may not we'll see how some stuff including aggressive shot taking works out. Like I said I didn't want to dive too far into this yet but I'll try and be less cryptic in my next post and be more detailed about what I've been dealing with at the tables this month.

I'm also back teaching at PokerSchoolOnline for the Sunday Special (July 20th) so come on out if you want to discuss some NLHE strategy in depth!

Alright, I hope to see you guys signed up for some last longers and enjoy the Micro Millions.

gl at the tables!

Slow and Steady-2014 June Review

June is in the books and the month really flew by! It's been especially busy over the last week or so because I'm currently in the process of helping my gf move into my place, as she's recently sold her place that was a couple of blocks away and we've decided to live together. We've been together for over a couple of years now so it's a nice step to take and the timing of the sale is good as well because my current roommate is moving abroad for a while starting in a couple of weeks. I'm excited to make some changes to my place, such as turning the 2nd bedroom into an office, buying some new furniture/tables, painting the walls and I've already ordered a brand new king size bed that I'm stoked on. Right now though, my apartment looks like a public storage locker with boxes piled everywhere and excess furniture scattered around each room. Moving sucks but once things settle down in the end, things will be great.

Things went fine on the poker front in June. I was playing 200nl normal tables (both FR and 6-max) for most of the month and things were moving along swimmingly. Unfortunately, as you can see on the graph, I hit a train wreck day where I lost somewhere around 10 buy-ins to knock down my upward momentum. It was just one of those days where variance was against me...pretty much lost every all-in, ran into the top of villain's range etc. Anyways, after that I decided to just play some zoom to cap off the month since I wasn't getting as many hands as I would have liked at the normal tables anyways. As you can see, it ended up being pretty uneventful as I went up and down in minor fashion (looks like I ran kinda bad in terms of EV just looking at that graph) and ended the month up about $5.3k.

Here's the breakdown by stakes. It looks like I lost pretty much everywhere at first glance but consider the sample size :) (think that 1 cent/2 cent was just HUD testing). So almost 75% of my volume was at 200nl normal tables and I ended up winning at 4.05bb/100, which I think is pretty good considering that I was "mass tabling" most of the time. I put "mass tabling" in quotation marks because it rarely was 20+ due to limited games running. That will factor into what games I play in July but more on that in a sec. June breakdown:

June

$5,301 Table Winnings
$1,970 FPP value
---------------------------------------
$7,271 USD

Once I factor in some salary and the US exchange rate I'm looking at my 2nd 5-figure month in a row, which I will pretty much always be happy with :)

What I'm not so happy with though is my VPP count, which is sitting around 165K. As ridiculous as it sounds I'm actually not giving up on SNE and think that I can still make it. I'm not sure if I've ever been so undecided as to what games I want to play though. What I'm leaning towards at the moment is actually something that will be pretty fun/outrageous. I'm thinking about playing 8 tables of 100nl zoom (FR+6max) and then every time I win $1k I'll just take a 2 buy-in shot at 500nl zoom and see what happens. It's not so much a desperation attempt as it is something to help me stay motivated to grind everyday. But yeah who knows, I could get sick of zoom pretty quickly and then I'll have to make a solid attempt to increase my hours at the normal tables, which I feel more comfortable at overall. Anyways, I'm going to try and make July more about the VPPs than I have in previous months so we'll see what happens.

Other than poker and the move things are good. The weather's been fantastic recently so hopefully that continues, even if I'll be stuck inside working for most of the day. I did the Grouse grind on Canada day and had a BBQ afterwards in the evening. We played some self-invented baseball-hockey pool game that could quickly catch on as the nation's next big sport!

Alright, that's all for now but stay tuned for some promo stuff in the near future and some more YouTube vids.

gl at the tables!