PlauZee's HU SNG Poker Blog

After I had have a very sick downswing some days ago I could manage to fight it all back. I lost 3,5k within 90 minutes, most of it cuz of a match vs a huuuge fish at 230 ending 1-10. Even after  losing so many matches vs the same guy I still felt I got a huge edge vs him, but he declined to play more. He had a very sick run and hit almost every 5 outer on the river – and obv need it cuz he is such a big station. I quit playing for the day and sat down again next day at 230. First player who sat me was the same station who still got thrilled of his “great 10-1 win”. I think it was the first time ever that I tried to play obviously bad in a HU SNG, only to make a deal after the first match to play until 10 again. End of the story: He lost 4-10 and insta-declined afterwards.

I’m still not sure if it really was +EV to let him win the first match, but in the review I think it was a very nice move, cuz I was almost 100% sure he would play until 10 this way. No matter if +EV or not – I was definitely not tilting when he sat me again, even after losing so many games vs such a fish only one day later. I’m doing pretty well at the tables – not only considering game skill itself. To improve my mental strengths even more I bought “Poker Mindset”, hope it’s readable and that it will help me to decrease tilt-donations after losing vs weak players.

Recently I played about 5k hands 4tabling RushPoker at FullTiltPoker, 6max NL50. I enjoyed the game and the action, but playing 6max bores me more and more, cuz of standard-moves you can see almost all the time. Especially at RushPoker where it’s almost impossible to get any reads of the opponents it doesn’t make any sense to balance ur range. Long time ago I thought the same about FullRing when I started playing 6max. I haven’t ever played FullRing CashGame seriously though, but even FullRing MTTs bores me to death quite often. Playing Poker means playing ur opponent. Heads-Up is the one and only game of Hold’Em where you really can enjoy the thrill of a Poker battle including ALL facets of the game.

The great donator I wrote about last time hasn’t played any game afterwards. Maybe he’s broke. Maybe he finally cashed out at least 30k.
On the one hand it makes me feel sick when I try to imagine how he does feel at the moment – very sad story of a 26 year old guy who threw away $130,000 within a couple of hours.
On the other hand people like him are the reason poker – especially HU SNGs – is a game possible to beat.

Enough for the moment – here are the unfiltered stats of last days:

I’m off for the weekend and will only play some more games on Sunday evening before January does end. Maybe I can finally play the weekly $215 HU MTT this week. Just one time!
Including rakeback I’m up $11,000 in January and collected 46,500 VPPs. Let’s see how far I can get this year. 600,000 VPPs would be a very lovely overall-rakeback of 45.4%

Railing high stakes HU SNGs can be so much fun!

At the moment 2nd winner of Sunday Million of January 3rd, is just playing a LOT of $5,600 HU SNGs. He played 115s before and was something like break even after 2k games at these limits. Now, with $180,000 more in his pocket it seems like he can beat everybody at any stake. NOT!
Actual screenshot of his HU SNG turbo stats

Guess who was the guy who pushed with Q9 in this hand? The pro who always plays 1k buyins and up or the donk who won a lot and will be broke veeery very soon:
Q9 re-re-shove on J56 good?

Update just 10 hours later:
When I wrote this above the guy was down “only” four buyins or something. In the meantime, some hours later, I guess he almost completed Supernova Elite playing highstakes all day. At the moment he’s down 21 buyins. Oh, and don’t forget he’s not playing 115s anymore, but $5,600 turbo HU SNGs. He’s down more than $120,000 TODAY!
This all reminds me so much on a guy called “mombasi” who won the TurboTakedown a while ago and lost more than he won within some weeks. Sad life.
Must be nice to be a reg at 5,6ks these days…

He had won ~180k at the Sunday Million just some weeks ago (I’m not sure how much it was cuz of possible deals, though) and I guess he lost almost everything already. Stats of his games >1k buyin:

Complete Stats (One-Day-”Downswing”):

Edit on 29/01/10: Corrected the date of donator’s Sunday Million 2nd place. He became 2nd on January, 3rd 2010. Thx to Romania for the information!

Please guess how many times I’ve played the weekly $215 buyin HU MTT so far!
Yesterday I wanted to participate the FIRST time and arrived just two minutes too late at my home. The fkn bus didn’t come so I ran home the 2 km from the donk-cashgame-homegame. I was online at 11.17 pm – just two mins too late to register. I run so bad.

Instead I grinded some HU SNGs and railed Dennis until he busted 9th in the 3Rebuy-MTT. KK vs AA at 6am, 5th hand of the FinalTable…

Recently I moved up to 230s and 345s again. My roll is increasing almost every day I’m playing – even though I cashed out some k when the dollar change was down to $1.41. Guess my EV at the HUs is mostly linked with the dollar-swings. Sure, I can run good, I can run bad and I can tilt some dollars away. But imagine playing poker with my buyins when the €/$-change was almost 1-1.

I’m teaming up with diBasio and mtvdeuem (both Supernova Elite’s) a lot atm, so it was time to add the link of diBasio’s Blog. Everytime I’m teaming up with any of the regs I see nothing else but Elites. It seems like every HU SNG reg could reach the 1mio VPPs last year. Well.. not everybody – I’m such a fish!

Last but not least – Three hands I’ve played recently:

• Check at the flop makes the call pretty easy
• Very, very funny way to play set of Aces
• Overbetting river for value vs station

Geeze! Finally something REALLY new and amazing has been published.
Some days ago FullTiltPoker added “Rush Poker” to their software. I read the newsletter and just thought “blaaah.. sure.. new way of enjoying poker… blaaah..” something like they always try to tell you when they just come up with another software changing the layout. But this time I really have to admit: It’s definitly a great way to enjoy poker.

The idea of “Rush Poker” isn’t something new, though. It just speeds up the game in a very sick way. And I love it! I don’t need to play 12 turbo tables 6max anymore to get the action I was looking for. I just need 4 of the “Rush Poker” tables to get the some action. Beside the speed I enjoy they way of mixing up new tables a lot. I can play my game all the time, because nobody can pay attention to the hands I played before or even track my hands precisely.

Here’s the link to the video made by FullTilt: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker
All I can say about it: Try it! If you love the action of seeing cards and facing hard and fast decisions, this is the game you were looking for!

I ran way better lately and finally could manage to increase my actual profit to little more than 6k so far. My RushPoker-Sessions with NL25 6max doesn’t help lot of course. But, hey, it’s all about fun. Even playing for pocketmoney at the NL25 table can be great.

Finally: A new challenge is running!

Yesterday while drinking with some friends I got offered a bet which I just couldn’t reject:
500 games, $11 turbo HU SNG, win 73% or more!

Today, I’m pretty sure that it’s almost impossible to win the bet. But I won’t lose much and I’m really interested how many games I could win at the small stakes. I often had problems to play vs donks at my standard buyins, recently. So I’m pretty sure 1-tabling the $11 buyins is exactly what I need at the moment to increase my ROI – on the small stakes, but at my levels as well. I definitly have to avoid flips and need to outplay them as fast as I can before the higher blinds arrive. It’s kind of standard, but thinking of maximizing the ROI makes me to overthink some possible moves I could do and I maybe would normally just do. One-tabling with a very high motivation can definitly improve the game in the long run. Even at $11 buyins!
I will post stats of the challenge regularly and have reset my SharkscopeStats before I played the first Challenge-HUs.

I’m allowed to rematch and can switch on or off my VIP status whenever I want. Beside my motivation for the challenge and these two little things there’s not much I could do. Crushing is all what can help me now. Let’s do it!

Some days ago I busted in the top8 in the daily $22 buyin HU MTT, worth $250 or something. I can’t remember when I have tilted that much before as I did after losing to the donk who played his FIRST HU SNG, ever! I lost a huge pot with QT on Q33..4..A against his A8 when we had already 1k in the pot before the river.
Today I got lucky in the $44 6max MTT and had a very lovely stack when we came to the FinalTable. I was 2nd in chips when the FT started, lost some smaller pots and busted in 6th position (worth ~$450) with AK vs KK pre-allin against the 2nd biggest stack of the table. Later, I was thinking about committing with AK that deep preflop, but there was just nothing I could do the agressive way we played all the time. Dennis helped me a lot and I guess I already busted way earlier without his help. Thanks again, buddy! I really hope I can help u as well next weeks if u’ll need some HU coaching

Today, I played some higher HU SNGs. And I played the following $345 HU:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5086952P (remember! $345 buyin!! wtf…)

Recently I cashed out twice and “went south” with almost all of my January profits at PokerStars. I’m doing pretty well at the 57.50 4mans at the moment and planning to stick to them mostly for maybe the rest of the month to decrease the risk and to regain a better feeling for tilt-control. For me it’s pretty hard to play vs. complete donks these days, so I think it’s the best choice to take some risk out of the game and crush them at their smaller buyins. After my CashOuts my bankroll at PStars is only about $700 atm, so there isn’t much I could lose at tilting sessions. Let’s see how I’ll do – now, when I finally realized I can’t handle donk-play at the moment as well as I could a month ago.

People asked me to write  more personal stuff about me from time to time. I will try to do so while not giving too much information away. My parents always told me not to believe to strangers without being careful and double-checking all information – maybe, that’s a reason why I’m a calling station at HU SNGs. I dunno.
Well.. At the moment I’m sitting in the office of the company where I got a great 9€/h student job, I’m enjoying my lunch break, watching out of the window and can’t see anything else but snow. I really hate the winter-months when it’s not possible to take the bike and when I can’t do as much sports as I need to do.
I got an one-year old notebook from Acer and I’m pissed that I have to ship it to the support very soon. My display is broken, cuz of an insulate contact. During this time I won’t play much, because my old notebook is just too slow to enjoy any game – better not even considering playing multi-tabling.
There’s only one huge advantage for the time when I won’t have my notebook at home: The time of exams is coming up very soon..

I’m thinking about going to Vegas this year. Do you guys already have some plans for this year? I haven’t been there, yet – and it’s definitely time!