Online Poker Tournament Rankings

I have never seen bullets (or one hand of poker, for that matter) played worse than I did yesterday. I play $20NL 6-max cash, and so this is in the context of that.

Play is folded around to the cut-off (shortstack) who limps in, the SB (full stack) completes and I find KK in the BB. It had been a VERY loose and passive table until this point, so I wanted to at least get heads-up. I bump it up to 1.40. I then look at my email or something (bad habit, I know) and look back at my table to find that the shortstack has jammed for about $5.50 total. Great, I think, I'm going to get something out of this. Review the action: open-limp, jam. Makes no sense, even from a shortstack. Then, out of nowhere, the SB FLAT-CALLS that bet as well! So he's flat-called with one player to act behind after just completing the SB? What on earth could he have? I decide at this point that if they've given me an opportunity to play for all the money preflop with the second best possible starting hand, then we're going to play for all the money. I ship it in, and the SB calls... he has pocket Aces.

Let's look at his play. We have a cut-off who limps followed by a completion by the small blind. At this point, he can be almost sure that he's going to be playing the pot against two people. We know that Aces don't play well heads-up, and there is a likelihood of a 'BB special' when I hit a miracle two pair on the flop and he stacks off against me. He has no idea what the cut-off has (does he not care, because he's a shortstack? That's still $5 he could lose) and he's likely seeing a 3-way flop with no information at all. The single positive is his hand is very disguised. If one of us flops top pair and is likely to stack off with it (I generally don't) by the River, then he's played it well. Otherwise, he's putting himself in the position to do the worst of the two things that happen with AA: losing a big pot.

Turns out he got lucky that I was there to get the money in the pot. It would've been interesting to see some flop play. Especially considering the flop and the hand which the cut-off had (99).

Flop comes: 3 / 8 / K rainbow to give the SB two outs and the cut-off needing perfect-perfect. I would've probably checked this flop if my raise had been called around, waiting for a good card (Ace, Queen) to come off to at least give my opponent some idea of having a hand. Had SB bet into me, with no idea of his holding I would've flat-called. Who knows what the cut-off would've done, short-stacked or not. I think he would've had to fold.

Turn: 9. Perfect card for me if we're playing the Turn. SB has overpair, I have the nuts and cut-off has the second nuts. The money would be going in here regardless.

All you can do in poker is to get your money in good. Some people MAY argue that the SB played this well because I had no idea where he was at and he did get his money in good. But the way he did it put him at incredibly high risk. If I hadn't put the money in for him, he would've been reduced to calling off on a flop which had only 2 outs for him. This line relies on me having a hand, which he couldn't know for sure, which would allow me to put money in on all three streets without improving past a pair of Aces. He played it awfully.

Cliffnotes:

-Full ring at an aggressive table: limp UTG or UTG+1 with AA to come over the top.
-6-max at a loose, passive table: take the small pot with AA rather than lose the big one

I've discussed before on these forums about my bankrolling by Badbeat.com. They provide me with cash with which I play cashgames. I'm fairly successful in these games.

Just before Xmas I decided to put some money on Full Tilt in order to play some tournament games. I chose Full Tilt over Pokerstars because I believed that I'd enjoy the Matrix games. I've since decided that I'd have preferred to be on Pokerstars because - at the $1/2 level at least - the rake is a little excessive. Not only that, I didn't enjoy the Matrix games.

I think I've reloaded twice since then, and I'm finally in profit on my Full Tilt account after about 350 games or something. About $70. Doesn't sound like much, but quite a few of those (I think at least half, though I might be wrong) were before I understood SNG play and so my profit could be much higher and my ROI certainly could.

But then I let Sharkscope show me my MTT results. I don't have too many of these: the odd HORSE, a couple of $3.30 KOs and a limit tourney. But if I include these in my overall Full Tilt results, I'm only about $7 up. I only really played those tournaments in order to get some points for the Sortable rankings board (which I did, albeit only about 9 haha!), and also because I thought that I could transfer my reasonable success in SNGs at the micro level to some sort of tourney success. I get reasonably deep but then crash out  either short of the money or only just into it. Do I have an edge in MTTs? Nope! I seem to have a reasonable edge in SNGs though, and I'll see how far I can go and how profitable I can make that.

I started with exactly $50 about 3 weeks ago and have ground that up to $130 in order to finally reach the level which Jennifear's bankroll management suggests I'll be comfortable playing $2.20 STTs. I'm actually playing $2.25 (thanks Full Tilt) STTs, but same sorta thing. I'm going to follow the bankroll management guidelines and get a decent roll behind me before I start an assault on 18-man, 45-man and 180-man tourneys. Maybe then I'll move onto the larger micro MTTs.

My luck is absolutely awful. My only break has been calling a guy's open-shove from UTG with 99 for 50BB with AK and catching on the flop.

Highlights from today include my A-9o raise from the SB, flat-called by A-Q in the BB and the flop coming A-Q-9. I check, BB min bets for 0.20 (wtf is that?) I raise to 0.80, he raises to 1.60 and I start to worry about A-Q but there's no way I'm laying this down, especially considering he only had a half stack. We get it all-in, and of course I can't hit 2 outs. He then proceeds to say 'ty', which is my least favourite habit of poker players.

And THEN, as I am steaming from a combination of this and getting no action when I bet out with a flopped set (which I NEVER do, but wondered if it would work this time), I get dealt JJ, raise it 0.80, get flat-called once and the button raises to 2.60. Possible squeezeplay, but I'm not stacking off with JJ so I flat-call, as does the original caller (he must have something like TT). Flop is a beautiful, yet ugly, J / K / 6, all diamonds. Pot is $8 already so I bet pot as first to act, overcaller folds and button jams for twice for my bet. I have to call and pray he has AA with Ace of diamonds so I can at least try and fade a diamond draw. Nope, he has KK. The K looked so ugly when it flopped, but I am NEVER laying down a flopped set. Ever. Give me 2s on an A-K-2 flop and I'll get it in all day every day.

I'm getting on the good side of variance with tournaments, and on the bad side with cash games. It really sucks.

I had a decent month in August. I was up about $400 by about the 20th just grinding away at $20 6-max. Then something in my brain just switched over and I bombed out. I'm currently a break-even player, having pretty much wasted 2 months-worth of spare time.

So I've had to take some time to reassess how I'm playing. I think I began to ignore position, believing that pure aggression was going to be enough. I began calling 3-bets with 10-9s in hope of that perfect flop. I must have every leak going.

So, I've decided to set myself a target for the rest of September. By September 30th I want to be $200 up. That's pretty much half a buy-in per day, is nothing, but is achievable.

I've also decided to start being serious about reviewing my play, and actually reviewing my sessions using Poker Office. I wish I could afford Poker Tracker right now, but it's pointless while I still have a valid PO licence. I'm going to make myself a hard-copy graph to track my progress over my sessions.

And I'm going to tighten-up. No more calling 3-bets with drawing hands OOP. No more shoving the flop with A-K cos I don't believe that the player who has 3-bet my raise every time in the last 5 hands has anything and I can take the pot away. I can't.

Pointless post? Maybe. But I'm posting firstly to affirm to myself that I can, and will, do this, and secondly in the hope that you guys may have some constructive suggestions to help me on my way.

If I fail in this, then I'm taking the rest of the year off to concentrate on learning more about the game, and on my University degree. If not, then we'll see how it goes...