Friday, April 21, 2006

You Know You're Running Bad...

Glenn has been running bad the past few days. Yesterday, after hearing him grumbling about his umpteenth set that got cracked, he came into the room where I was working.

He put a five dollar bill down on the arm of my chair and told me his bad beat story.

Felicia :)

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Mastering the Micros

(Guest post by Glenn)

Felicia asked me to guest post again. Kind of funny,
since I have my own blog.

I just never post anymore.
Just haven't been into it too much lately. I feel like
I'd be just talking mostly about hands; have the
desire to post Hand Histories (which she hates, lol...
can you tell I'm my wife's husband--or is that
redundant??--since I have the "lol" fever).

However, I just got through with doing the max reload
bonus on Eurobet on micro-limits. Originally, I
thought that I'd be playing primarily Draw Poker. I
have 700 hours on that game at the $1/$2 level and,
prior to the last 100 or so hours, had earned an
average of about 3BB/hr, or $6/hr. I had been
3-tabling and was looking to go through the bonus
quickly and earn a bunch at the same time.

Talk about best laid plans... Last 100 hours I'm
under 2BB's/hr.. on the last 50, just over 1BB/hr.
There was a month that I didn't have one winning
session. Month! I have never had a full month that I
didn't win at Draw before.

This really got me. I was used to NO variance.
"Security" at Draw was a big point for me. One of the
reasons that I quit dealing poker. I figured, jeez, I have
60,000 hands on this game and am beating it at $6/hr
per table and can 3-table it.. so that's $18/hr! I'll
be making almost as much as I do at work without having
to drive a half an hour each way; which of course will
save on gas and it will be like making more. I didn't
have to 'worry' about what I was missing from health
insurance, since they never gave me enough hours to
get health insurance in the first place. My own hours,
blah, blah, blah.

So I took the plunge and what happened? The big
Variance hit (note the capital "v" -grin-). Boy did
that make me nervous!

Live play was the same thing. I had almost 100 hours
playing NLHE at $2/$5 blind level, making close to
$20/hr. Suddenly I was losing, losing, losing. Lost
playing mixed games. Lost at Omaha 8-or-better from
$10/$20 down to the low $2-$6 spread limit game they
spread here in Laughlin.

What the heck was I going to do?

I started playing all different games online. I
wasn't comfortable playing $1/$2 or higher on any of
the games since I don't have the hours in on them like
I did with Draw; plus with my current down-swing, I
wasn't comfortable trying higher. So I started playing
the different games at the micro limits: $0.25/$0.5
and $0.5/$1 levels.

I tried Stud and Stud 8-or-better; talk about
variance. There'd be times that I hit-and-run for $8-15
on the $0.5/$1 tables; and times that I'd lose
that same amount. I have a $0.42/hr win rate for the
40hrs that I've played Stud 8-or-better at $0.5/$1
levels. LOL
Stud I'm a loser (only played 6 hours though); Razz,
I'm pretty much break even too ($0.2/hr).

Omaha 8-or-better? $0.76/hr at $0.5/$1 levels; but
twice that at $0.25/$0.5!

Hold'em? $0.47/hr at $0.5/$1 levels; but again, more,
even 3 times that at $0.25/$0.5. At two different
sites, I currently have a 3BB/hr (per table) win rate
for $1.5/hr per table.

So what did I do? You guessed it! I have, and
currently am, multitabling $0.25/$0.5 Hold'em (O8
tables are slower and take more brain power). On one
of the sites I can get up to (and actually handle) 9
tables at a time. Though normally I sanely run 6
tables at a time. Therefore, I can make about $10/hr.

Now I just have to stop hitting and running... after
playing 6 tables for an hour, I get a little mentally
exhusted.

I just thought that was indicative of Draw before when
I was doing that. I figured that it was just so taxing
playing 3 5-handed tables. After an hour of that, I'll
have played a fast 300 hands at short-handed tables.
Geez, now, after about an hour, I can get in 400-500
HE hands!

I did have to force myself to play several times a day
to work off the one bonus though. I needed 6000
points, and ended up having to get over 100 points a
day. Just think of all the hours that I had to put in
in order to generate enough rake to build up 100
points a day at $0.25/$0.5! (This is why, to me, the
current Party reload bonuses are a such big joke;
there's no way I want to have to do a timed bonus
again--and they want you to work off the bonus in just
a week! No offense, but blow me!)

Therefore, once again, I'm taking my tag-line of
"bilking the internet poker machine, six dollars at a
time" to heart once again!

Don't worry, though! This hero is building his
confidence back up ;) I'm just currently sticking to
ye' olde Limit Holdumb for the time being. I even
currently have a good 2BB/hr average going at $4/$8 HE
for my last 40 odd hours of live play. (OMG, it was
SUCH a good feeling racking up 5 racks of chips at the
Orleans one night!!)

So there's life yet in this playa!

Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend and are doing
well.

God Bless :)
Glenn