Welcome to April!
Well so far this year has been pretty much a fail. I am running a ton under expectation and to compound things even further I have been such a volume fish! April is my month to turn it around and start grinding again... Even though it has also not started well :p I'm positive I can find my feet and start winning at my true expectation again, it is just going to take a lot more grinding and a LOT more focus!
Last week I had a nice deep run in the 750k gtd on FTP, but unfortunately finished 23rd... I cannot complain because I won a ton of flips and 60/40s to even get that deep, to go with a couple of big pots with around 100-200 players left that i lost with AJ<9T. I mean, i cannot complain but i really felt that if i won those pots it would have put me in a much better position to make a solid run at a final table. I have always loved online MTTs but I think people often fail to understand just how much variance is involved in all of the Sunday majors. You can have an ROI well in excess of 100% in the Sunday majors given the overall softness of the field, but never actually even break into profit because of the extreme nature of variance which is gained through the massive field sizes. Sure, the Sunday majors do a lot for the online poker economy, but playing them on a regular basis ain't for the faint hearted. Trust me when i say, you have to run extraordinarily good to win one of them!!!
I was however impressed by the structure of the 750k on FTP as i felt that it allowed the better players to have a bigger edge as we got deeper. Admittedly I was never in that position because my stack never really got up over 35BBs in the lategame, but there were definately some much deeper stacks as we got deeper which is how it should be when you are playing for that kind of money.
I'm not going to dwell on the "so close yet so far" though. What's done is done and I guess that is one thing I have learnt in time. MTT's are so brutal that you have to try to push things out of your mind once they are done (in poker in general). I am not saying that we shouldn't review our play and look at our mistakes critically, because this is something I believe is necessary to be successful. But more that when we take sick beats or have made an error that we know and can acknowledge may have cost us a lot of money, it is often best to move on and not dwell for too long. Sure, it is frustrating to go deep in MTT's and play for 10 hours only to walk away with 5 BI's, but if you can't handle that then I guess I would suggest you didn't play any MTT's.
In other news, i'm beginning to dabble in some PLO. Nothing to serious at the moment but I believe with action getting consistently slower in HUSNG's it's useful to have another form of poker I can play when action is slow. HUNL cash games are a good option for me, but it is equally as hard, if not harder to get a decent session out of anyone there. PLO seems to be the action game at the moment so I am really trying to learn the game a bit more and particularly short handed play.
Anyways... Happy Easter to everyone!!! Hope the Easter bunny is good to you all and I will hopefully be bringing some more successful blog entries soon!!!
GL in your games!
Matt
NPC4 is over…
Well the NPC was pretty much a fail in a nutshell. I was very pleased with how i played throughout the series but unfortunately only managed to scrape to break-even for the series.
I did however manage to grab a win in the teams event (Event 6), playing with Nathan Ruprecht and Glenn Randell. Was a fun event and very cool to get a win but the profits were obviously small from that event. I played the 'Pineapple' leg of the event, with the 3 legs being NLHE/PLO/Pineapple. Even though i had contributed throughout the tournament in building our stack, it was the final PLO leg with Glenn getting it in on a 99TJ board on the turn holding J9KQ against a naked AJXX which really got us in there. I was next up and preceded to try to lose the tournament with around 50% of the chips in play 4 handed. Fortunately, after i had dumped off 1/3 of my stack, Nath jumped back in and got it done. Even though we won this tournament, it kinda highlighted the week for me. I was having no troubles at all building my stack and playing a lot of small pots. However, as soon as it came time to play the big pots i found a way to lose. As frustrating as this is it is a part of poker in general and is why the economy continues to remain relatively stable. The mere fact that random donks can get lucky a few times and take down these tournaments drives the economy.
I also Final Tabled the Deepstack event (Event 8), finishing 6th. Was also a fail given that i really hadn't had to play any major pots but when i finally got my stack in and got called i come up short against run good child Ken Curry (who ended up winning the main event, big congrats!). When it came to the ME, it resulted in another fail. I built my stack up very easily from the starting 30k to 70k before i took a massive nosedive in the evening session resulting in the first time i've genuinely tilted in a long time. Getting run down by stations always seems so much more brutal in live MTT's because you play so few hands per hour with the following hand a prime example.
My Stack: 65k
Villain: 50k
Blinds 300/600, I am in MP1 holding AcQs.
UTG+1 (villain) limps, I raise to 2200, folds around to villain who calls.
Flop ~ QcTc3h (pot:5300)
Villain checks, I bet 4200, villain calls.
Turn ~ 5c (pot:13700)
Villain checks quickly, and i decide to fire out a big bet of 11000, villain calls quickly.
At this point in time he never has me beat and im pretty sure he has a draw or a pair + FD type hand.
River: Ah (pot:35700)
Not the best card in the deck. But in saying that, it improved our hand strength and only completed one draw. Albeit that it was the only genuine draw out there. Villain checks pretty quickly and I contemplate a bet. If he really had KJ here I cannot understand how he can be c/c and potentially not getting any value when he gets there so i decide to go for a small VB to try to get calls out of his one pair type hands that missed the FD.
Villain checks, I bet 6500, villain instantly announces raise and makes it 15000.
I sigh and feel retarded for betting. I really cannot fold my hand for 8500 into like 60k with top2. So i tell him to show me his KJ as i toss me chips in and obviously he obliges. That was just a premium example of what was to come in the ME for me. I definately regret V-Betting the river in that hand, but in the same sense I don't feel like it can ever really be that bad.
Anyways, I'm very much looking forward to getting back into the online grind. Hopefully things will start looking up for me. Im contemplating playing maybe the opening event and the HU event at ANZPT Sydney coming up in April, and would love to be in a position by May to think about getting to the WSOP. For now though im just going to focus on grinding out a ton of games online and spending time with my new family...
GL in all your games~!!!
Matt
Pokersavvy Blog.
Hey guys!
Pretty cool addition from the guys at pokersavvy to have member blog options now. I will begin cross-posting all my blog entries to here from my other blog location.
All my former blog entries can be found in the link below.
I look forward to updating this more regularly!! GL in all your games!!!
Matt