PlauZee's HU SNG Poker Blog

In August I made a sick profit of $35,500 and I need only 24,500 VPPs more to complete SupernovaElite. If you know I had even sicker months before you might wonder why I write it was my most decent month ever. I made more profit/month two times before already, true. But I always had sick swings as well and only could make so much profit cuz of a MTT-win in June and cuz I played nosebleeds as well. In August it was all different:
I played almost only 230-570 HU SNGs, had only 5 days with bigger losses than $500 and felt a decent improvement in my game vs random fishes. In August I made about a profit of 41k with HU SNGs with an average buy in of $441 and had a profit of $36/game. I played some MTTs and Satellites as well where I lost about 5k in total. I made 2nd place in a satellite for EPT Vienna just to bust as bubble not receiving the package worth 5,000€. I will play some more of those in future and hope I can play the event at the end of October. Here are the HU SNG stats of August:

I will continue playing in 2 days, won’t play at the weekend and guess I will reach SupernovaElite on Tuesday, the 7th of September. Probably together with treezer flipping at NL2-tables. Hope we can do that, would be a lot of fun. We’ll let u know if it’s gonna be happening.

Thanks once again to all of my readers who motivate me a lot to continue sharing my story. 10,000+ visitors in August is pretty sick. I hope to get some more feedback from you in future. Just leave a comment and let me know what you want to read more about.

Gl guys!
Chris

Link to trailer

This evening I watched the movie “Inception”. All I can say is: AWESOME! If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should do! And if you somehow think you are kind of good poker player you will realize very soon some similarities. It’s all about levelling the opponent.
The end is best I’ve ever seen in a movie like that. I love it and for me “Inception” is by far best movie of 2010!

At the end of July I decided to play some smaller buyins in August beside bumhunting at 1ks. I sticked to that aim, was able to grind a fkn nice profit out of 230-570s and felt a decent improvement as well. I took my game to a new level while playing fishes and improved my play of potcontrol a lot. In August I didn’t have those huge swings as I had in July anymore and are pretty happy to have only five losing days this month.
FullTiltPoker treated me little better as well, but I didn’t play many games there. My actual profit of August is 28k and I’m sooo close to reach SupernovaElite: 964,000 VPP now.

My daily HU SNG stats (including all platforms and rakeback) of last two months since I track every game with my excel sheet.

When reaching 1M VPP for SupernovaElite you can choose two out of several packages or as the second option one package and $10,000 in cash (read the Pokerstars summary for more information). I’m pretty sure I will take the PCA Bahamas package and the 10k. I will try to win some satellites for live tournaments next year or just buy in to them from my FPPs, both seems reasonable and best choice for me at the moment instead of choosing two packages.

How I met treezer in mid of January 2010 at the $57.50s. A story to inspire:
In December ’09 after few months of playing 115s-345s I decided to block myself from playing for 2 weeks and to cash out the rest of my roll after I tilted pretty hard and lost all my December winnings within some days. It was the 2nd of January 2010 when I reloaded my account for $600 and started playing the $57.50s willing to climb the ladder again, as fast as possible with a very aggressive “Bankroll-Management” (see “Cashing Out and Moving down” for more).

It was the 12th of January 2010 when I played against a pretty big fish on the $57.50s. A fished called “treezer”. A fish who often is called one of the luckiest persons ever. A fish who wasn’t that much a fish and who would become one of best high stakes HU SNG grinders and one of my closest friends in the scene just some months later. And that’s how I met him: Read the rest of this entry »

Day 14 – Sunday, Author: Tanja

Today’s last day of the two weeks coaching. During last two weeks I kept myself busy with poker some hours every day. I’ve learned a lot. Well, in the beginning I didn’t even know the rules and now I take a look down the board and already know, which kind of combinations are possible and I consider, which strategy is the best to win the pot.

I finally started the $11s and we realized, that most opponents there are pretty much the same like those on $6s.

It’s quite plain to me, that I cannot present to you a big game experience. It’ not not possible to be gained in just 2 weeks. But in spite of having time learning the game by trial and error (as the most of you) I got taught play and strategies by Chris. For me it was pretty difficult to remember all his input and to use and transfer it into real game situations. But in the end I belief I got it!

Now training is over, from now on I have to proof that I’ve learned enough to cope with the $11s. My holidays are over and I’ve to go back to berlin, where Chris can not help me any more. So I’m on my own now – the next two months will show, if it is possible to win the $11s after just two weeks training. To show, if it’s really possible for me to win this challenge!

Author: Chris
Tanja learned a lot during last two weeks and I’m pretty sure she could beat the $6 Heads-Ups in future. But the goal is to beat the $11s what will be pretty hard and close. I’m not sure about the average opponent strength on that buyin and I hope she can reach her goal. 14 days of coaching (about 1,5h per day in average) and self-learning are over. I transfered 50€ in the beginning to play the 1€ and 2€ games and send $50 more when she started playing the $6 HU SNGs where she had a very bad run. Her EV was in the black, but the results were pretty bad in the end. We played four $11 HU SNGs together yesterday just to get intouch with the new level, but didn’t have time for more.
She had $29.86 left in her Cashier and is down $86 in total at the moment at sharkscope. I just increased her roll to $287.50 – exactly 25 buyins. She will start playing $11s very soon and will try to prove it is possible to beat them with just two weeks of hard learning. She will be allowed to play lower buyins as well in case she needs to get more self-confidence in her play or thinks she is tilting. But her games at $11 buyins are which counts to win the challenge.
From today she wants to play at least 250 games at $11 buyins within the next 2 months. The challenge is lost when she won’t be able to win >52.3% of her games (break-even point) or if she will be broke before.

Facts of the challenge:

• Two weeks of preparation with absolute zero knowledge before are over
• Starting Bankroll: $287.50 – 25 buyins for $11 HU SNGs (no addon allowed)
• Goal: Win >52.3% of next 250 $11 Heads-Up matches within 2 months

Gl JoooZee

Day 9 till 13 – Tuesday till Saturday, Author: Tanja

I conclude the days 9 up to 13, cause they show my development on $6s:

After starting with $6s on day 8 I went on playing them. Unfortunately I got a lot of poor turns. First I lost more than 70% of the games on $6s, then I went on with $2s – just to lose a lot of them, too. I was desperate. Did I really play so poorly? Hadn’t I learned so little or was I just on tilt after losing $6s? I really didn’t know.

Well, I grabbed my laptop, went to Chris and showed various hands I had played to him. Chris analyzed the games and the result was: I had bad luck again. That’s variance, he told me – that’s the game!

For my happiness, bad luck vanished on day 12 and 13 and I finally could go on to repair a big gap in my statistics, so that I’m almost balanced now.

Statistics of the $6s:
Total Games: 65
Won Games: 30
Lost Games: 35

I haven’t played much last week. Not only because of coaching Tanja, but it was a reason as well.
After I won huge on FullTiltPoker with SuperTurbos I felt kind of doomswitched there. I was up to 14k profit. Well, what can I say. Turn 14k into 2,5k profit within some days is a lot of fun. In the end I’m way behind EV in those games, but I don’t wanna cry too much. I won big on PokerStars the same time so I am still at 16k profit for August (best was approx. 22k about a week ago).

My funny graph on FullTiltPoker:

As I said I don’t play much these days. When I play you will find me almost always only at 230-570s where I’ll hopefully grind my way to 20k+ for August. I’m at 921k VPP at the moment and hope to reach Supernova Elite (SNE) before the WCOOP will start. It’s possible to change the MainEvent ticket (worth $5,200) which all Elite’s receive into smaller buyins for other WCOOP-Events. If I’ll reach SNE in time I will play like 7 or 8 events instead of the huge MainEvent where I would be biggest fish in the tournament.
I will post my VPP-pace more often after I reached the 950k mark. I’m almost there! wooohooooo!

Actual thoughts about Tanja’s challenge:
The whole challenge is a lot of fun and I heard a lot of comments so far. From friends, from micro-regs, from HU SNG pros and – of course – from Thomas.
“JoooZee” is playing almost every day, talking, thinking and reading a lot about this fun game. She is even more motivated as I thought to reach her goal and has definitely good chances to beat the $11 HU SNGs after these 2 weeks of preparation. She started playing the $6s HU SNGs yesterday and is doing there pretty well so far. I would love to take those bets you guys offered me, but of course can’t accept them, cuz there is no way to prove she is playing all the games and not me. When you rail her games and have any idea about my game you will realize very quickly it can’t be me who is playing, though. The style couldn’t be more different I guess..
I know her for 5 years already and I do know her strengths and weaknesses pretty well what makes it very easy to spot those leaks I have to teach her. Before we played the first game I was pretty sure she would be pretty passive and would try to control the risk in each game – maybe too much to make it profitable. After a couple of games it was obvious she was afraid to push all-in, so we had to take some highblinds lessons for fold/shove situations. But she’s doing awesome, improving very fast and I’m pretty sure she has a decent chance to win this funny challenge.

Stay tuned! Next post will be about how I met treezer in the beginning of January this year when we played $57.50s regularly (!) and we both thought the other one was a huge fish (compared to today we def were!).

glgl,
Chris

Coaching JoooZee

Day 8 – Monday, Author: Tanja

Second half has begun: Today I started with another 22 games on €2 level. This was necessary, cause of yesterday:
I already told you, that I had a bit bad luck. But it was worse. After gambling a bit, I suddenly had only hands like 35 or 24. And when there was a playable hand, even a good hand like 99 – my opponent had KK. I got 3 of a kind, my opponent 4. I got a Full House – my opponent got 4 of a kind again!

What a big fuck-up was that??? -> Chris just smiled at me, what made it even worse. Then he told me “Come on, Honey, stop gambling – you’re on tilt!”
I really didn’t know, if I had been or not. Never before, I had ever thought about being “on tilt”. But I followed his advice and stopped gambling.

Today it was different – for luck. I won enough, to switch to $6 in the evening. To do so, I first changed my whole money from € to $, therefore you can see two bankroll statuses down in statistics.

Read the rest of this entry »