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Jaconda78 · Message Board Junkie Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 4177

Before I start, no this is not a poker-is-rigged post, or an FTP stole my money they suck post. Those who like reading about rigged and unfair sites, go no further.

This weekend I�m at home, and that involves a 3 hour bus ride from school. Having nothing better to do with my time, I decided to start a serious look at my pokertracker results. I�d looked at them before, of course, but never as a whole � mostly as separate chunks. I look at how I do at certain limits, but more specifically I look at individual sessions. As I play very, very loose aggressive (not a strategy I�d recommend for the micro limits, by the way � it hasn�t worked for me at ALL there. Just rock up � but that�s a separate thread topic) and at shorthanded tables, I find myself playing many hands that are marginal at best. I look at hands that I think may be problem hands for me (for example, how I play baby suited aces, if it�s profitable, what position I win with them from, where I lose, and why. Same for pocket pairs, big cards like AK, not so big cards like KT, suited connectors, etc). I take these sets of hands one at a time and find where they cost me money and where my strategy works. Due to such intense scrutiny of individual groups of hands, I realized I had never, in the 7 months that I�ve had pokertracker, looked at my results as a whole. Honestly, what I found shocked me.

Now here I throw in a disclaimer. I do not post this thread to brag, but because I think that learning from my mistakes may be helpful to others, and that�s what this forum is all about. Why learn from your mistakes when you can learn from others mistakes far, far cheaper? Hence I throw in how I�ve done, and I do not mean for it to sound like bragging. I merely find it shocking the difference between where I am and where I should be.

In the past 10 months, since I started playing online, I have done very well for myself in online poker. I first deposited, like so many players, for $50. I promptly lost it, and tried again. I lost the second deposit on Full Tilt too, and put in a larger one. I also put in a deposit of $200 onto poker stars. I had done some poker reading, but nothing intensive. I stopped playing as much for a month of my summer vacation and read voraciously while working at Barnes & Noble (a very convenient job, as I could borrow any hardcover for up to two weeks for free). The $200 on stars, which I used to play over my roll at $0.25/$0.50 tables, grew. And grew. And grew. I took money off stars, I spent money, and I saved. I also continued to grow my roll. In a few months, it ballooned to over $4,000, which I used primarily to play $2/$4 NL hold �em. As the roll continued to grow, I stayed mostly at the $2/$4 tables that were so insanely profitable for me (average of $125 an hour), and also played a bit at $3/$6 (where I broke even) and even $5/$10 (where to date I am down about $2200 over 18 sessions � clearly I�m not quite there yet). I eventually managed to buy a new car (Acura 3.2 TL type S). Soon after this, when my roll was just under $14,000, my parents gave me bad news � I could bloody well afford to pay my own housing and tuition. This came to a grand total of $13,850 or so � pretty much my whole roll. Since then I have been building a $30 transfer from a friend, added to a $100 deposit by me (later) into what is now just under $600 on stars.

Sounds great, right? Not a bad place to be for a college student, having a nice car, a part-time (well, full time really � I play far more than 40 hours a week) job that pays over $100 an hour, and still manage to get decent grades and have a great boyfriend. I thought so too � and then I looked at these stats.

(continued in next post, which actually gets to the point)

Jaconda78 · Message Board Junkie Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 4177

Turns out, I wasn�t doing nearly as well as I should. I open up my stats and find that overall I am up just over $40,000 in the past year. I then find that at $2/$4 hold em, my best game by far, I am up $50,653.50. Needless to say, I was shocked. Ten THOUSAND dollars had disappeared � where had all that money gone? I had certainly had losing sessions, but I didn�t remember any that big! Here I started looking in all earnestness. I had known that I did well at mid level limit ($15/$30) but was down at $30/$60 limit. Turns out that I was indeed up about $600 at 15/30 (only 12 sessions logged) � but also down $3800 at $30/$60 � which I should never have been playing to start. I may have had a bankroll (at times, not always when I played that high) to take the limit, but I had won it at a different game � my limit game simply wasn�t up to that level. I found that MTTs, which I love to play but have always admitted aren�t my strong suit, had cost me $3100 overall � and they weren�t the big buy in ones either � only a few bigger than $100+$9 (usually when I had a huge roll I would play $50 buy in ones). Another $2200 can be attributed to $5/$10 NL. That money I�m ok with losing, as I always had the roll to sit there when I played that limit and considered it as taking shots � I just took a few more than I really should have. That�s $8500. Looking through my spreadsheets, I find that another $800 was lost when I attempted to learn to play stud hi/lo beginning at $2/$4 � an incredibly STUPID idea. $900 had gone to stud, also at $2/$4. That�s $10,200. I was actually up about $400 at omaha 8, bringing the total down to $9800 of the money accounted for. $600 was lost playing PLO � again, starting at a far higher limit than I should have been playing. And that accounts for the grand total of $10,400 missing.

The thing that infuriates me is, it wasn�t lost to variance, to bad beats, or to a rigged site. It was lost to my own stupidity. I got cocky, and jumped up to where I should never have been. I barely noticed how much money I was dumping because I was making up that and more at the hold �em tables. This does not make those losses acceptable. If I had not lost that money, I wouldn�t have had to rebuild my bankroll from scratch. I would have had a comfy $10,000 to play with � or spend! As I write this out to post it, I feel like an idiot. I am tempted not to put this up, in order to avoid having others think I�m an idiot. And then I think that I would have been so much better off if I had read a post like this before ever sitting down to play, and perhaps would have stopped the dumping earlier. So I put this up, and hope that others can learn from my mistakes. I apologize for it being so long � I�m sure very few people will actually read it all. To those that do, however: beware. If you do well at a certain game, it is extremely easy not to notice how much money you are throwing away elsewhere. Keep a close eye on how much you have and how much you SHOULD have � and make sure the two are, if not identical, at least very close to each other.

Good luck.

malrah · Four of a Kind Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 303 Location: MN

So I read this, and then well read it again. Wow. Thanx for posting what you had doubts of doing.

Anyone who reads this ( and yes I expect a high read and response count. ) is not going to think ill of you. Most I am betting wish they could be that in depth in the total. (Damn skippy I am) You were not sure to post it but how could you not of. ( not that we all haven't written something to and then deleted it before anyone knows it was ever written in the first place). For all the stuff you have written, this could be one of those really powerful things that make people want to do what we really all should be doing (for poker and well life over all) It makes so much sense in what you say. Which in a way says know what your good at, learn what your not, (and no harm in making money along the way.)

se7en10 · Four of a Kind Joined: 09 Jan 2006 Posts: 308

Good post. Thank you.

-7

wobz_4 · Three of a Kind Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 77

thanx for the advice, u explained this well, i will be careful from now on.

DC11GE · Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 5:20 am Post subject:

I'm glad you posted it as well. I haven't been anywhere near that level of success, but in a much smaller scale, I notice the same thing. I do very well in Hold 'em, especially tourneys, but not to many other games. I'm getting better, but slowly. I ordered Doyle's book to get some knowledge on other games. Omaha is my reason for not doing as well. I love playing it, cause it's still so new to me, but I have no strategy at all. I stricktly play the cards, and rarely play past the flop, but I do see alot of them.

I started keeping strict records of my progress and I'm seeing where I go wrong with my BR and where I do well. Even in a 15 minute session, I track my progress. I hope to be at your level soon Smile

matt2411 · Royal Flush Joined: 07 Jan 2006 Posts: 559

Jaconda, I am in the EXACT same boat. I was looking at my PT records since January 1, and i was astonished a couple weeks ago as to what happened to all of my 'winnings.'

I, too, take shots at higher games. And When i looked at my PT records, i sorted them by the sites which i play at normally, and i had a couple sites that i played on which didn;t support PT.

All in all, over UB, PR, and FT my cumulative profit was somewhere in the ballpark of ~ $11,550. Not bad for about 3 months playing 1/.25 then .25/.5 then .5/1 and finally to 1/2 while rebuilding my roll over the span of a month in the feb.... but something was wrong, thats not right...

I went back to my excel documents associated with my old bookkeeping system, I was -1900 at Noble poker (their support is out to screw you, i will never go back there - they cost me $800 and i dont even trust this site anymore, will never EVER play there again... very very shady), and I ended up -450 at Absolute.

Heres my stupidity... add up the tourney buy ins over that time period for BIG events and thats an additional -3200 (including 3 200+15s, 3 500+30s, and 13 100+9s as the bigger ones).

My records indicate on UB/FT/PR, i am +1930 at .1/.25 (lol i know insane since i only played at that limit for like a month), +540 at .25/.5, -985 at .5/1 (err... dont know why...), +7580 at 1/2 and +2500 at 2/4 (not many hands, havent really had the roll to do so but the 2/4 game is much softer overall).

Now, this does not account for deposit bonuses either, and ive cleared over 1200 in deposit bonuses in the past 3 weeks alone on UB, but you see where im getting at...

My revised excel spreadsheet which logs all my sessions (per table basis) is by far the best thing i could have ever done.

I now know everything i need to, as my spreadsheet tracks tourney buyins, deposit bonuses (very important when you look at how much profit they contribute), per table/session winnings, allowing you to FULLY analyze everything, going back to PT to see what happened and where.

Pokertracker is awesome in its current form allowing you to go over hand histories, and see stats per hand, and per session, but it should supplement your existing poker ledger, so you can reference things back and forth, and keeping an accurate log of how much you have made (or lost) including deposit bonuses is critical - because as much as i love PT, there are holes in it, and lost hands which arent recorded. My actual poker balance and what PT shows is off saying i have won 2700 less than i actually have due to deposit bonuses and hands that simply werent recorded and if that were true, I couldn;t have paid tuition this quarter.

all in all, i feel your pain, and i wouldn;t say that its stupidity, but the only way for people to learn, is the hard way. Youve learned your lesson, and ive definitely learned mine (regarding tourney buyins), so the the real question is, now that youve seen the mistakes, are you going to continue taking shots at bigger games? I sure as hell am not buying into big tourneys again, thats for darn sure...

honkythunder · Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 3:42 pm Post subject:

Excellent post Jaconda. The $10k lost in games and limits outside of the 2/4 which you have obviously mastered doesn't necessarily need to be considered 'wasted' or 'stupid'. It is an effort by you to make yourself more well-rounded and versed in other forms of poker. That has some value too. You are learning new elements.

Also, getting away from your normal game from time to time can have its benefits as well. It's possible that you play better in 2/4 if you have some variety mixed in.

Granted, the value gained may not equal the entire $10k but I'm just saying that certainly it offsets some of it.

...and let's all be honest - taking a rare shot in limits higher than you should be in is INSANELY FUN AND EXCITING! Just so long as it is in fact a very rare occurance...

Good luck rebuilding!

Jaconda78 · Message Board Junkie Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 4177

The thing about the loss at the other games isn't that I tried other games and didn't do well, it's that for some reason I thought I should try those games at far higher limits than I should first start playing them. That $10K could have been far less, and I still would be able to play other games. So now, when I get the urge to play limit, I'm not going to $30/$60 - I'm going to $5/$10, maybe $10/$20. If I feel an urge to play a tournament, it's not going to be a $100+$9. I have no intention of quitting all other games forever, I simply will go about it in a far smarter way.

BoxingPikey · Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 7:25 pm Post subject:

That was a cool post well worth the read. Very cool that you put yourself out there like this. We've all made huge mistakes and it speaks well of you to try to educate the mob because of your mistakes. Wink

Richman8802 · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 1:14 am Post subject:

I read the topic title and thought this post was gonna be one of those "FT stole my money" threads, but the post was quie useful as I will now really look in depth to where my money is going....

Thx Jaconda!

Jaconda78 · Message Board Junkie Joined: 06 Jul 2005 Posts: 4177

WatZot · Full House Joined: 23 Jun 2005 Posts: 216

WOW! ...... This was a great post....

I myself have done similiar things with PokerTracker, and have noticed I have done some similiar things as you did Jaconda78..

Thanks for sharing, as well as the other posts..

Good Luck All!!

krazybangs · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 3:46 pm Post subject: Play above limits

While everyone recognizes the levels they play at at no time should you guys give up on the Tournamnets, just invest in the SNG satellites and aim for maybe the tokens.

You guys certainly have elarned and grasped the games extremely well, just find a cheaper way in.

mathman1115 · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:10 pm Post subject:

Ok it was a good post in terms of learning a lesson......
But you said early on that it was not at all to brag about your success, yet you felt the need to tell us EXACTLY what kind of car you bought with your winnings.........
I believe learning and playing other games using money you won from holdem is a very GOOD idea as long as you stay within your roll. You made it seem like it was a no-no, and i disagree. Remember some people play poker because its fun, not because they constantly need to tell others how much money they make.
And if you are losing money that you already won trying to learn a new game, then atleast you are not risking money you can't afford to lose.
I have taken holdem winnings (much less than you describe) and learned omaha and stud, and in fact i am planning on dedicating my whole summer to becoming good at 7card stud (reading books, playing live, etc)
Knowing many poker games is a good tool to have, both socially and with regards to poker.

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