Full Tilt: Tips for Salvaging What You Can

The poker shutdown's Black Friday came and screwed up my day, and my favorite hobby, but I'm doing what I can to make the best of it and have done something new and exciting that I've never done before: Redeemed my Full Tilt points for merchandise!

I've always held out since it cuts into your rakeback, but seeing as I won't be playing for a while, and might not be able to do anything on Full Tilt ever again, I decided to give it a shot.

Yes, my order went through, but it's exciting how I really have no idea whether or not they'll be able to honor it. We will see! Here are the steps necessary to do this yourself:

1. Download the software update from to access the FTP client again
2. Open client
3. Redeem FT points at the FT store!

I ordered the 60" umbrella, the velour bathrobe, the Logitech z313 Multimedia speaker system, and a teddy bear for the wife.

Wish me luck; I hope I get it!

Riding the Rollercoaster

Today was a little crazy. I went up and down a couple hundred dollars, tried new games, had a PokerTracker3 malfunction, scored my biggest online tourney win to date, and finished the day $50 down.

First came the bad. I decided to stick my head back into cash games for the Take 2 Promotion on Full Tilt, where if you play 2 or more cash tables (or just RUSH) every day, there's some stupid prize at the end of a week. Just the carrot to lure a cash fish like me to open up EIGHT six-max tables. 30 minutes later, $61.44 down the drain. Hmmm how about heads up games? No luck there either, another $12.00 down the drain over the course of 2 hours.

WTF cash games! I hate you. I'm quitting you, for real this time! So I mosey on over and pull up the STTs again. I play two sets and lose about $20. Still, I don't feel bad about it. Unlike with the cash games, I actually understand the STTs inside and out and can pretty much assure myself I just ran really, really bad.

That means I need a change! MTT land it is! 45-mans and the Daily Double. Gotta dream big! Except I donk out of the first 8 45-mans, including one painful bubble and one near-bubble, and both Daily Doubles. I've lost over $200!!! That's worse than my RUSH downswing debacle.

I had one left and had just made the final table... and then my HUD stopped working. Right at the MOST IMPORTANT PART! AGH! And then I win it all to take back $171. SCREW YOU PokerTracker3! I don't need no stinkin' HUD to win it all! And now I'm drained. So this is what it's like to grind MTTs. Made me feel like this guy.

I think I'll do it again some time.

Exercising for life (and poker)

Exercise is good for your life, both physically and mentally, for my muscles and my poker. It keeps you sharp. I know this, but I've been a slacker. Since doing 80 days of the p90x program to get in shape for my October wedding, I haven't done anything but lose all my progress, enjoying the lazy married life and throwing sticks of butter into my cooking (the wife makes me do it, I swear!).

Waffles has been doing some really inspiring exercise programs lately. I mean, if this pushup program whipped an ol' mess like him into shape, it's gotta work for everybody!

Just the type of exercise program I need, actually. It holds your hand, tells you what to do, and sets your schedule FOR you. Perfect for a guy like me.

I'm in. And I think I'll throw in the situps program too, on the pushup rest days.

Cashing the Dank!

I decided to play in the final Survivor Dank.

I came in third, finishing behind 23Warsaw and Shabazz Jenkins when my AQo failed to hold against Shabazz's KJo all in pre.

So it's been forever since I last cashed in the Dank. It was actually still called the Mookie back then. And I definitely can't complain about losing to KJo because it took a hell of a lot of sucking out for me to get that far!

I pretty much couldn't lose the tourney until the bubble burst, cracking DDionysus multiple times, including his AA with QQ all in pre, taking down Josie's top pair with 3 outs after getting it in on the flop, and conquering Numbono's AK vs. my A3, also all in pre.

It was fun, but I'm tiiiiired. Goodnight!

If you want to join in the fun, look for The Dank on Wednesday nights at 10:00pm, and visit to hear a live webcast from the organizer! Password is vegas1.

March wrap-up: Impressions of the STT scene

Current Bankroll: $1,135.94

Since my switch to tournaments from RUSH poker, I've had a very good run of luck at the STTs. I call it luck because I've only played 119 of them, and my ROI is at 37.34% (thinly veiled brag) which is ridiculously far above what is supposed to be sustainable: 15% for the best of the best.

After a really rough February, I'm loving poker again. I've learned another poker skill, too! The ability to really multi-table. I'm up to 8 at a time!

Observations on Multi-tabling:

1. Full Tilt has an "auto-tile" function if you are playing multiple tables. So long as your monitor resolution is high enough, if you select a table and push CTRL+9, it will arrange them all in a nice little series of boxes net to one another so that you can see all the tables at once, like so. This is me pretending I'm good enough to 9-table NL 5/10.

2. Eight tables is definitely my limit, and even then it gets a little crazy if I end up surviving late in 6 or more of them. I tried playing 9 once, and had the good fortune of cashing in 7. That was a little ridiculous.

3. Above the $11 level, it looks like the STTs on Full Tilt really don't run too often. While they fill and go every 45-60 seconds at the $11s, the $22s looked incredibly slow by comparison. I guess that's a price that's too high for your average Full Tilt donkey. Definitely not my friend if I want to move up and multi-table them. If my success continues, I very well might put a part of my roll on Poker Stars again because their games actually do run fairly often at the $22 level.

4. I'm seriously considering getting TableNinja to help me multitable better in the future. What it does is use AHK scripts so I can fold, raise, bet, or open a new tournament with the click of a button. A whole lot less mouse clicking, but a whole lot easier for me to mistype and screw things up. Also, on their website, it explicitly says their software doesn't work with PokerTracker 3, which is what I use. That would be a problem since I would need to buy Hold Em Manager, but I've seen posts on forums, etc. that it actually DOES work with PT3. Not to mention, I can always just try the free trial first.

Does anyone out there use TableNinja (hopefully with PT3)? Thoughts? Anything I should know before TableNinja is my undoing?

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

DAMMIT! I'm done with you, RUSH poker cash games! I've injected you into my veins one too many times, enduring your hellish swings and illusions of riches. GET OUT, I SAY!!!

I'm sorry, honey. It isn't you. It's me. And it's tough for me to say that.

I'll remember you fondly for teaching me better preflop and postflop skills, the ability to mass multi-table, for bringing me out of being a losing player at NL5 and NL10, and for building up my roll.

I'm not sure you're going to want to hear this next part. There's... another game. I've been playing you both, baby, and I want you to know the truth. That's right, I'm going back to my first love: the tournaments. They know how to treat a man right. And it's partly about the money.

Cliff Notes: Lost more at RUSH cash games, bringing me down to ~$650. Tourneys brought me all the way back to $994. So long, cash games!

Thorn's Big Mistakes: Tilting Down

February brought a rude awakening: I'm still a tilt-monkey. Shortly after my last, glorious post about a storybook January, I hit another 10-buyin downswing at NL25 Rush over about 3000 hands, just before I hit my oh-so-close bankroll goal of $1500. At least three buy-ins were lit on fire due to tilt.

But wait, my tilt problem got even worse. I somehow convinced myself that I was close enough to my $1500 goal, and following my beat down, not only did I fail to cut my losses and quit, I MOVED UP to NL50 Rush.

"I crushed NL25 over 50k hands, right? Screw those last 3k hands and ten buy-ins, I can win it all back with just 5 buy-ins at NL50, DUH!!!" And that's how my bankroll dropped to $850, cutting off all of January's profit aside from $100 (all of which comes from rakeback, so my graph is actually negative again).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you light over 40% of your bankroll on fire. Thank you, thank you. But there's good news! Coming next time (hopefully): a thrilling tale of recovery! I'm a man of faith... plus I'm still up $141 for the year, so even though I feel like a huge moron, it's hard to be too disappointed when my bankroll has gone up almost 20% in a month and a half.

Current bankroll = $891.

Staying Positive,

Thorn

January 2011 Results and Lessons!

January was awesome! With rakeback, I took in a little over $700. I'm just 3000 hands shy of my fairly ambitious hand goal and about 1.3 buy-ins short of being rolled for NL50. I should get there by the end of the week (yay rakeback!), unless another downswing hits me.

I learned a few useful tips this month. Allow me to share :). First, I found out how incredibly swingy the game gets from NL25 and up. People really don't give NL25 and NL50 enough credit because they're still "micros." There's a 10-buy-in downswing there in my graph. I also had a super hot 8 buy-in upswing just a few days ago. This game is CRAZY!!!

Also, more importantly, I found out that I am much, much better 3-tabling Rush than I am 4-tabling. I tend to lose track of the action with 4, and way too many times this month I ended up folding premiums preflop because I couldn't get to the screen in time. AA, KK, QQ, AK... you name it, I folded it. It's pretty horrible when you click the raise button and think you just got it in time... but you didn't. Because you were an idiot and played too many tables. IDIOT!!! That may or may not have had a lot to do with my downswing.

So I got smart, cut down to the number of tables I could handle, and things took off with a bang. It also doesn't hurt that I luckboxed a couple buy-ins to end the month today :). And that's how you double a bankroll, folks. Can I keep my success up in February, and at NL50? Is it THAT much harder than NL25? Was this all just a 50,000 hand pipe dream and I'll wake up as my true fishy self in February? Stay tuned.

Folding Kings Preflop

Here's an interesting hand where I ended up folding the second best hand in poker pre-flop. I'm pretty sure this is the only time I've ever done that. I think it turned out alright.

Full Tilt Poker $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
UTG+1: $48.59

UTG+2: $98.60

MP1: $60.71

Hero (MP2): $26.48

CO: $21.15

BTN: $47.45

SB: $17.10

BB: $29.90

UTG: $67.26



Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is MP2 with K K




UTG calls $0.25, 2 folds, MP1 raises to $0.75, Hero raises to $2.25

TIME TO POUNCE!!!



4 folds, UTG raises to $14, MP1 raises to $30

UTG limp, 4-bet, 5-bet?!?

Hero folds


I smell aces...

UTG requests TIME, UTG raises to $67.26 all in, MP1 calls $30.71 all in



Flop: ($124.02) 7 J 6 (2 players - 2 are all in)



Turn: ($124.02) 4 (2 players - 2 are all in)



River: ($124.02) Q (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $124.02

MP1 shows A A (a pair of Aces)

UTG shows A A (a pair of Aces)

UTG wins $60.51

MP1 wins $60.51

(Rake: $3.00)




Third best with kings preflop. What's the world coming to?

So remember, folks. A word to the wise. The UTG limp, re-raise, re-re-raise is ALWAYS aces. Maybe even double aces. You heard it here first.

I'm Alive!

Hey there! I'm still alive and kickin', haven't gotten hit by a bus or murdered by the wife yet :P.

My bankroll's about the same as my last update, but it sure dipped down by $300 at NL50.

Lucky for me, RUSH called my name in the new year, though, and now I've got it all back! I swear, it's like crack-cocaine, and every poker junkie known to man seems to be on and donating me their money :) Also doesn't hurt that I've been getting smacked in the head with Aces and Kings. Here's the year's pretty graph! Comment now before the downswing (That's right, I'm pre-empting you, karma)!

My wife also pointed out how I'm a short to medium term planner only. So I'm not going to set some sort of silly monthly or yearly goal for poker.

Next stop: Get to 50000 hands at NL25 RUSH and see where you stand. Have I finally cracked the NL25 RUSH puzzle?!? Stay tuned for more...