This weeks theme seems to be how much time does one spend studying poker? I have been asked this question no fewer than four times this week which is something of a record. I am going to quote PokerTracker again in this post because it is highly relevant to both areas of poker and this is the playing of it and the study of it. PokerTracker for me is the industry standard that every other tracker needs to follow or to match and this is a serious reason as to why so many poker players have advanced their games in a very short space of time.
The ability to use computer software to analyse your performance has been used in other fields to great effect and so it was only a matter of time before the same thing happened in poker. It is no coincidence that a record number of Chess Grandmasters rated at 2600ELO+ are active now in the Chess world. But the balance needs to be right with regards study time and playing time.
Let us say that you have a projected earn rate based on 120k hands of ring game play at NL50 of 7ptbb/100. This is giving us a dollar figure of $7/100 and if this player is multi-tabling and seeing 300 hands/hour then our PokerTracker stats are showing us that this player is making $21/hour from the games. Now imagine that this player can only manage 20 hours of poker or study a week due to work commitments. This player would have a weekly projected earn of $420.
Now look at the situation if they spent 10 of those hours studying or doing other non playing activities. This would reduce their weekly earn by $210/week. This is fine if your study is an investment that will return more than this figure. But if you are a winning poker player then everything that you do that is not connected to actually playing poker is theoretically costing you money unless that extra knowledge is an investment to make you more money at some future point in time.
This is a crucial side of PokerTracker that is rarely discussed because if you know your earn rate then you can measure how much studying is actually costing you and whether you are making an investment or simply wasting money.
Why not coe and play at www.pokerloco.com and play me with me on some of the softest games on the net quoting bonus code DEAN600.
My house move is over as is all of the upset and I am well glad about that. I am also getting prepared for a real monster month in September of multi-tabling NL100. My goal is to play more hours than I have ever played before in a month and see what happens. I will try and play up to 10 tables at NL100 full-ring and the rake deal that I have should see me do very well. I want to play poker this way now.
I was seriously tempted last year to do a few things and one of them was to seek a backer so that I could play Tom Dwan for 500k after he played Sammy George. I don’t think though that there are many sites who would have stumped up the full 500k and I certainly would not have put up 500k to speculate with that I could have beat him.
Even over a 500 hand sample size then I would have been even money at best but I don’t much fancy sitting down in poker games in what are clearly –EV situations at the table unless I can see some huge value in other areas like sponsorship for instance. But I never saw much potential there if I were to have got hammered by him (distinct possibility) in what would have been available.
I reckon that I would have stumped up $50-$100k but that would have been it as far as I was concerned. I could well imagine that it would be one of those “fifteen minutes of fame” type things. So what has been happening in the challenge on www.888poker.com ?
Well the bankroll is now at $1344 and climbing and I am going to continue playing some NL50 next month around the NL100 play. Then hopefully when the bankroll reaches $2000 then I will merge the two with my NL100 play and hopefully crack the $10k barrier very quickly.
I cannot believe just how quickly things have turned around in the challenge but also keep a keen eye next month on just how much money I can make multi-tabling NL100….maybe NL50 and so will just have to wait and see as I may do some more testing with The Vulture so should be a great month.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson also plays at www.pokerloco.com where you can join him quoting bonus code DEAN600 and come and play some of the best games on the Internet.
Following on from my last post regarding certain levels based on PokerTracker big bets per hundred hands then I want to enhance on that here by looking at the question of moving up or staying at your current level. It is not a straight forward process of simply playing at a higher level and increasing your $/hour. There are clear differences between ptbb/100….bb/hour and $/hour.
Let us say that you are playing NL50 and you have a crushing earn rate of 10ptbb/100 and you are playing full-ring and so you are seeing 60 hands per hour per table. Let us also say that you are able to play eight tables successfully and are being dealt near as damn it 500 hands per hour. So here our hero is making 10ptbb/100 which is $10/100 and so is making $50/hour.
Now let us also say that this player was very successful at NL50 just by being technically better than his opponents and generally playing in good games. His edge per table is so strong that this allows him to play eight tables at once without it seriously affecting his ptbb/100. But let us also say that he is advised to move up to NL100 where the players are much better.
Now you would expect a player who is crushing NL50 to make money at NL100 and in this instance our hero makes a long term earn rate of 6ptbb/100 at the higher level. This is still very good except for the fact that at this tougher level then he can no longer play eight tables because he needs to watch his opponents more carefully to maintain an edge.
He also needs to be mindful of his own game as his opponents are watching him more intently. He finds that he can only manage four tables at NL100 where previously he was playing eight. So now he is only seeing 250 hands per hour instead of 500 hands. With his earn rate of 6ptbb/100 then this means that he is making $12/100 which means $30/hour at this higher level. Even though the $/100 is higher, the $/hour is substantially lower.
So now we have a situation where a player who was crushing NL50 has moved up to NL100 very successfully but is making $20/hour less at the higher level…….despite doing very well. This is an underlying problem with moving up and one that you need to be very cognisant of when looking at ptbb/100 at different levels.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays poker at www.pokerloco.com and you can come and play and recieve great bonuses using the bonus code DEAN600
This summer has been one of the most hectic that I can remember is ages and probably my most hectic ever. With the World Cup and the WSOP both converging at the same time then this made things very difficult for me. Then about a month ago I started moving house which just added to the chaos. I have only played 15 hours of poker this month and that has all been as part of the poker challenge on www.888poker.com and my bankroll currently stands at $1099 from the original $100.
Actually there is a chance that I may have to stop doing this due to other commitments but also next month I am looking to multi-table the NL50 and NL100 level seriously. I have been trying to cut my poker writing down for some time and my goal starting next month is to play 100-120 hours a month. I haven’t played any serious levels since I was playing PLO400 a few weeks ago but I am itching to get back to that.
I am finally at the top side of my house move as I have had to do it in stages due to a serious lack of time. Cannot believe that it has almost been a year since all of the furore on the Hendon Mob forum… all sparked off through jealously or resentment or call it what you want from one individual simply because one person who was inactive on the live poker circuit had deals with poker sites.
It is sad but if these people put that time and effort into something more productive then it would more than likely enrich their life as well as their bottom line. I did predict back in September 2009 that 2010 would be a great year and it has been. My year poker earnings is very healthy due to not playing at certain levels any more and mass tabling (seems like mass tabling to me but multi-tabling to others) lower levels.
Even at NL100 then at full-ring there is always value on the table. I play a much higher variance game than what I use in the challenge and I am doing very well with a $5k hold’em bankroll and I have never had more than a 9 buy-in downswing all year. I have an excellent deal set up that allows me to do well and so things could not be better at the moment and everything seems easy and less stressful compared to 2008 and I am so glad that I am through that period. I simply do not have the time or the inclination to dedicate myself to playing higher levels and much prefer the easier money. The middle stakes and above demand dedication that I am simply not prepared to give.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson also plays at www.pokerloco.com where you can join him quoting bonus code DEAN600.
“The Dean” can also be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk for all poker writing, coaching and other poker related enquiries.
Looking at earn rates and what are respectable earn rates in poker is often a confusing subject. What is a good earn rate for one player is not for someone else and the ever changing table dynamics makes the situation even more complex. To start things off then I will look at what is a generalised standard for calculating earn rates as you will no doubt have seen ptbb/hour or ptbb/100 in some of my articles and wondered what it meant.
Well the term ptbb refers to PokerTracker big bets which are twice the big blind. This dates back to the days of limit hold’em where players used to calculate big bets and not big blinds and big bets are twice the size of the big blind in limit play. So when you see ptbb/100 then this is not the same as bb/100 as PokerTracker uses the measure of twice the big blind.
So an earn rate of 5ptbb/100 at say NL100 would be $2 x 5 = $10/100 and not $5/100 which confuses a lot of people. I think as you go through certain levels then all we can look at are earnings ranges and nothing can be definite. A sample size of 100k hands will not be high enough for confidence levels to be high and you often have wildly fluctuating results over different 100k sample sizes.
I always calculate rakeback and bonuses in my earnings but some players do not and there are very good reasons for doing so. Firstly let us say that you have made $3000 in a given month but all that 3k came in rakeback while you recycled money in the actual games themselves. This certainly indicates that you may not be ready to move up a level if you technically cannot make money at a level without rakeback.
You could make 5k in rakeback at the higher level and if you can stay recycling money then that will be a good move. But if you were losing say $1500/month due to the games being tougher then the decision isn’t so clear cut anymore! Over the coming posts I want to look at what I personally consider to be fair earnings ranges for most of the levels starting at NL10 and above both for FR and six max which I think should prove valuable for many readers.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson plays at www.pokerloco.com so why not join him quoting bonus code DEAN600?
Carl can also be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk for writing, coaching and other poker related activities.
I have been playing an awful lot of double or nothing SNG’s lately in a bid to keep my head in my bankroll challenge. Actually of course this is slightly out of date because I have finally got my head into gear and started playing NL50 while multi-tasking. Actually I do need to pass on the good news with regards my $100-$10k challenge on www.888poker.com and this is that my bankroll has just passed through the $1000 mark and is now at $1033 and hopefully climbing.
But back to Double or Nothing SNG’s and they are really great ways to build your bankroll and they are perfect for players who have little tolerance of variance and who do not have the skills to play NLHE deep stack. What I have found about double or nothing SNG’s is that there are clear ways to play them for easy profit. You do not need a large bankroll as even an average player would cash 50% of the time in a ten man field when the final five players double their buy-in.
I have devised a strategy for beating these types of tournaments but the key to beating them is not to treat them like real poker. The strategies that I have been using have nothing whatsoever to do with real poker or the playing of poker hands in the conventional way. I think that a 65% strike rate of cashing is easily achieved.
Imagine if you can play ten of these things and out of every ten at $10 then you cash 6.5 times on average. If the buy-in fee is $1 this means that you will win $9 a total of 6.5 times for a total of $58.50. But you would lose $11 a total of 3.5 times which equates to $38.50. It is not difficult to see that a player who would stick to the strategies that I have been using would achieve circa $20 for every ten SNG’s that they played or $2 profit per SNG.
Even when the juice is taken into account then this is still a huge ROI taken comparatively.
The Dean can be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk for information regarding his DON strategies. Why not come and play with Carl at www.pokerloco.com and get some great bonuses by downloading the software quoting bonus code DEAN600.
I thought that I would post the second part of this series on PokerSharkpool about how to build a PokerTracker HUD fairly quickly after the first one. To accompany the video though then I want to inject game play into the equation once again by looking at what statistics mean in actual game play. It is no use using PokerTracker if you don’t know what the numbers mean or what to do with them right?
At most of the lower levels then you are going to encounter a lot of average “standard” players. For ages I didn’t use a tracker for the simple reason that I site hopped too frequently to stop tracker users exploiting me. This is fine to a point but you prevent yourself from having reliable data on many key metrics simply because you never build up an adequate sample size. Areas like Folded to River Bet for example take about 1000 hands to be accurate in six handed limit. Your profit that you make on individual hands takes far more and you would need c15,000 hands to see a clearer picture and even that wouldn’t be conclusive.
As stated previously the Won $ at Showdown percentage needs at least a thousand hands to be accurate and so it is clear then that skipping from site to site does not allow you to see a totally clear picture of your opponents and this is especially the case if you site hopped as frequently as I did.
You will see many players who fit into what I call “standard” or “typical” players. Because they do not understand what ranges they need in certain games or what to do with that range then statistics like 39/13/1.2 are common at levels like $5-$10 although on certain sites over others granted. The VPIP is slightly too high and the AF is not high enough which indicates someone who is slightly loose but definitely passive. Likewise if a player had 30/11/1.1. This player has pretty good VPIP at 30% but what lets them down is that they are not being aggressive enough.
Either they are calling raises too frequently or open limping instead of raising which has led to a player who is leaning more towards tight-passive. While 30% VPIP does not make him a super nit, they are certainly passive and that is not winning poker in limit.
Come and play poker and get a great sign up bonus with Carl “The Dean” Sampson at www.pokerloco.com by quoting bonus code DEAN 600.
Carl can also be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk for coaching, writing and other gambling related matters.
During my involvement playing poker then it has become increasingly clear that in order to get an edge in online poker then using tracking software is often a necessity and there is none better than PokerTracker at this time. I will be going into depth on this wonderful piece of software over the coming months while I explore it myself and then write about it.
Today I want to reveal part of what I already know with regards to the more advanced metrics that go beyond mere VPIP/PFA/AF. In the no-limit games that I play then I look at other areas of my game besides VPIP/PFA/AF and one such area is the Won $ at Showdown. If this is low for both you and your opponent (excluding low sample size) then this is a clear indication that you are getting pushed from hands too often or you are playing too tightly post flop. Maybe you are calling too often with speculative hands and then releasing when you don’t hit.
This metric usually takes on a fair degree of accuracy after about 500 hands although 1000 hands are more reasonable. I also like to look at the folded big blind to a steal percentage as well as this allows me to take advantage of players who simply do not defend their blind adequately. For instance when I am playing six max limit then I would estimate that in an average session that I would fold between 35% and 55% of my hands depending on game dynamics.
But LAG’s with position will be opening with wider ranges and this is a statistic that becomes quite meaningful after just a small sample. Here I would look at 100 hands as meaningful and certainly 150-200 as being conclusive almost to what a player is doing from their big blind. In both no-limit and limit play then I also think that aggression by street is important too of course. Following is a video that I like on PokerTracker3 and building a HUD which I think is a good tutorial although it does little for game relevant data which I think it is very important to combine to build up you all round understanding of PT.
But getting back to aggression by street and it is clear that this is a very important metric in poker as it allows you to see the biases that your opponents have towards certain lines. For example some players prefer check-raising flops before the pot gets too big whereas other players try to mimic actual big hands by delaying aggression until later in the hand. I will be featuring some more videos on PokerSharkpool shortly so watch out for them and also my articles on PT.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be seen playing at www.pokerloco.com and you can come and join up and get a great sign up bonus by downloading the software and using bonus code DEAN600.
The Dean can also be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk for writing, coaching and inquiries regarding his poker systems and his Double or Nothing SNG strategies.
Regular readers of my blog will no doubt have been following my $100-$10,000 challenge on www.888poker.com where I have been trying to convert $100 into $10,000 since April 1st. I have now moved up to NL50 full-ring from the opening $0.01-$0.02 games that I started at and I have had three wins this week of more than $100 which has took the bankroll to $951.76. The move to NL50 has been both premature and necessary. It has been premature because I only moved with 16 buy-ins and while my style has been very low variance, I didn’t feel comfortable having so few buy-ins.
But at $951 then I think that the move was successful and my mind is right for the first time. I am also multi-tasking as well which usually isn’t a great idea but in this instance, my technique coupled with the value has seen me do really well by keeping my head in the game and not doing silly things. It is amazing when you think about it but I have taken my head out of the game to keep my head in the game……weird!
However there is a possibility that I may have to end the challenge at $1000 due to other commitments and that would be rather sad. But the hard part is over and the struggle has ended. I now know that I will convert $1000 into $10,000……there is no doubt anymore. I could simply multi-table NL50 and stay at that level and “The Vulture” will do its stuff and make $1000-$2000/month based on the hours that I would put in. If I increased the hours playing this way then I think that I would make the $10k before Christmas.
It no longer seems a challenge to me and I am also afraid that it may de-motivate me but will just have to wait and see.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson can also be seen at PokerLoco where you can come and join him downloading the software at www.pokerloco.com and using the bonus code DEAN600.
“The Dean” is also available as a poker writer and coach and can be contacted at Carl@Pokerquest.f9.co.uk
A few people have asked me recently why I am not active on the tournament circuit. To be honest I have absolutely no interest in tournament poker and certainly not when it involves travelling all over the place. I have got into my comfort zone of playing in my office and just firing up the computer. To me now, poker being played in a live game setting would be about as alien as England having a good World Cup and probably about as often.
I did go to see the Dusk Till Dawn card room in Nottingham in 2008 but that was purely business and nothing to do with actually playing. You would have to go back to 2003 to find the last time that I played poker in an actual casino setting. I have played private cash games since then and always done well as a rule but it is strictly online for me these days.
So if I simply cannot be bothered to travel the forty or so miles to Nottingham then what chance me ever getting to Las Vegas for the WSOP? I have never been to LV and have no intentions of ever going but you never know what is around the corner. Speaking of not knowing what is around the corner, I have just switched to using PokerTracker from Poker Office and even though I found it somewhat confusing, I am starting to relish the switch.
But speaking of trackers, someone asked me yesterday if I still think that they are important and the answer is that they are still a very powerful online tool. Even if you use PokerTracker for basic metrics like VPIP/PFR/AF then you will still be ahead of many of the other players who either do not know what these statistics mean or how important they are within the context of their overall online poker game.
I received a personal message from someone yesterday asking me if I could expand on trackers and how to interpret the data and I will be doing that in coming posts so watch out for that.
Come and play poker with The Dean at PokerLoco and sample some of the best bonuses on the Internet by downloading and using the bonus code DEAN600.
