Calling it a night

Spent a couple thousand hands at .02/.05 Rush and basically treaded water. Nothing much to report. Switched over to ST SnG play and ended up a little. Went over to .05/.10 Rush and things started to fall apart. Top set gets sucked out by flush draw. KK vs Ax loses three times after getting them in light pre flop each time. Finally get KK vs QQ and he spikes a Q on the flop. AK vs AA on a K high flop. Stuff like that. Decide to switch back to ST SnG to change things up...except nothing changed. Dominating hands don't hold. Premium pair loses against A/rag. Reasonable shove hands running into AA in the BB. End up losing a bunch there as well. Down about $30 for the night and I'm going to pull the plug on myself before I do any more damage to the roll.

MMM: $564?

Hey Sushi,


Me again. Well it looks like you've had quite the month taking your $14 cashier balance to 40 times that now. So now I have a different bankroll management question for you. When are you going to move up? You're still playing the same Rush levels and SnG tourneys as you did over an order of magnitude ago.

Jesus F.

Pacific Palisades, CA

Hey Jesus,

Yeah, I know. Actually I moved *down* in stakes at Rush. I am back down at .02/.05 instead of the .05/.10 tables in an effort to be more EV+. But you're right, I am buying into them for the minimum $2, roughly the same as my $2 + .15 SnG tourneys. I know you're good enough at math to see that those buy ins are about 1/3 of one percent, a far cry from having 15% of my roll riding on one table, and well below usual BRM standards. Right now I'm so focused on the Cake 1000 challenge that I don't want to mess with the success I've been having. I'll probably move back to the .05/.10 tables for Rush and see how my progress goes. I'm still working on my Iron Man quota for the month and the nickel tables take...well...about twice as long to churn points as the dime tables so moving up will save me some time.

The ironic thing is that I think being too overrolled was what led, in part, to my earlier downswing. When the stakes just seem too irrelevant then my play gets sloppy and the bankroll takes a hit accordingly. Having more pronounced consequences for a bad call keeps your game sharper since you know it will take a chunk out of your roll instead of just a sliver of it. Moving up stakes might also be part of the equation of how to make up for the absence of bonus income coming up soon. I think I'll ride out the current stakes for the rest of July at least. That will finish off my mid-year bonus and give me some time to see where the chart goes without assistance.

Thanks for the mail!

Sushi Cowboy

I, too, will miss week one I'm sure

Adam had posted over at his blog that he misses week one. I'm not looking back at week one but I'm sure I will miss it as well. I had a couple hot sessions, one at Rush, and one at ST SnGs, but mostly have been pulling down bonuses like a banshee: $50 for playing Rush and my mid-year bonus who's time is running out. Fortunately those perks have given me a huge head start and it's better to be ahead of the curve than behind it but I'm also very aware of the fact that if I cannot match the slope of my goal line then I will eventually run underneath it. The good news is that I no longer need to play as much Rush since I cleared the Rush Week bonus so I can put in more time a more EV+ endeavors like the ST SnGs. I'm also have a few days of slack for hitting Iron level this month since I've cleared 200 points every day of July so far so I am running bad I can just pull the plug early and play another day.

Worried about where the other $500 will come from. I have a 50 days left and bring in about $6/day in rakeback for $300. I have about $50 left on my midyear bonus. That leaves me $150 short assuming exactly break even play. I have my August freerolls coming up and my August and September Iron Man medals that I can use to enter into Steps tourneys and, if things go well, move up the staircase and convert a Step 3 ticket over to a cash tourney like I did last month for about $28. Not sure if that will make up for the difference or not.

One half K

Just passed the five century mark. Lost about $7 at nickel Rush thanks largely to a my kings getting cracked by an untimely queen showing up on the board and the same thing when an aggro got caught overplaying his jacks then got rewarded for it. But I put in my 100 points worth of Rush play which got me the other half of my $50 bonus so my current roll (including cashier, rakeback, accrued mid-year bonus, and the Rush bonus) is currently $500.27.

No sooner said than done

As mentioned previously, it would take me punting off huge chunks of my bankroll to miss the 1/2 K mark in the next three days. Well, I did just that. A combination of suboptimal play, being tired, too long of a session, bad luck, and a slight flirtation with .10/.25 Rush dropped me down about $50 today. Fortunately I went on an absolute torrid run on the Super Turbo SnGs and patched up most of that. I'm net up for the day so far but considering I got about $10 in rakeback and another $10+ in mid-week bonus for the day I'm actually doing rather poorly and could not even sustain break even today. Still considering that my progress line took a big dip down earlier in the day I'll settle for coming out ahead after having the extras thrown in.

The "other" Rush poker approach

So occasionally I mix up my approach to Rush and get uber-aggro. That was much of my profit over the past day. The alternate approach is pretty simple: if it is folded to me then I will open with a pot sized bet with any two cards. If I nail the flop I will continue with pot sized bet on the flop and re-assess from there. If I miss then I just dump it and move on. I will also re-raise with JJ, QQ, and AK and mostly shove with KK and AA. Nothing but good ol' aggression which actually ends up not being that high variance either since, at .05/.10, you're only investing .35 at a time pre-flop most of the time. Granted, you are doing it a ton of times but such a small amount means very small moves in the graph. Though more profitable, this approach is far far slower than my normal one since you not only need to wait for the action to get to you but also have to wait for everyone behind you to act as well. Furthermore, if you do take down the pot without a fight as desired, you will pick up some change but get no Full Tilt Points to show for it since there was no flop and thus no rake. I play either way, just depends on my mood and the amount of time I want to spend.

Big uptick

Today has been very good for the bankroll. I'm up three cents shy of $30 on the tables. I'm worked off $17.77 more from the mid-year bonus. My morning rakeback report gave me $8.34 for yesterday's play. And since it was my fourth day of clearing 100 points or more at Rush I've earned $25 of the $50 that I will get for playing all week. All told that's an $81.08 push in the right direction and it puts me way ahead of pace for now. Grand total now stands at $469.80 and I have my eyes firmly set on going through the $500 barrier within three days since I'll get another $25 from my Rush week promo bonus, about $30 from mid-year bonus, and about another $20 in rakeback. As long as I don't punt off huge amounts on the table then it should be a milk run to half a grand.