Wednesday, May 29, 2013

100 Billion Hands Celebration! on POKERSTARS!!!


In June POKERSTARS be reaching the landmark of 100,000,000,000 hands dealt, and we will be celebrating like never before with a selection of special promotions awarding a total of $5,000,000 in prizes! In addition to the Road to 100 Billion finale - including the Million Dollar Hand - there will also be millions awarded in other cooler promotions (here are details + my comments about each promotion that I am interested in):
  • Road to 100 Billion: Million Dollar Hand - Play for your share of $2,000,000 in Milestone Hand rewards --- cllasic milestone promotion, but the megamilestone hand will award 1.000.000$ split in the following way:  The winner of hand 100BN will receive at least $100K, with those dealt in receiving a minimum of $10,000. In addition, they will receive a prize of $2,000 per VPP earned at the table in their last 50 hands!!! Once all prizes for the Mega Milestone have been calculated, the remainder of the Million Dollar Hand prize money will be split across all other players seated at the same game, betting structure and stake when the hand was dealt (for example: $0.10/$0.25, No Limit Hold’em)!!!  ***Hands dealt on Zoom tables are not eligible for milestone hand prizes. To win a prize, you must be playing on one of our regular ring game tables.***
  •  World Record Tournament - Help set a new record for the biggest ever poker tournament and take your share of a $300,000 prize pool... The tournament will have a 1$ buy-in, 25k$ for 1st place and a guaranteed overlay of 75k$!!! This is great value!!!  ***Participants in this sunday's edition of the sunday storm will receive a free 1$ ticket for the world reccord tournament!***
  •  Ultimate Freeroll - Special free-to-play tournament with a $1,000,000 prize pool, with $50,000 for the winner availeble for all players to play. To play you either have to win a trivia freroll or deposit 50$ with bonus code ‘ULTIMATE’... This tournament has a value of 6.66$ (because it will have 150k players - I hope they don't raise this cap) and will have a soft field which is great....
  •  Zoom & BOOM! - Win in a Zoom ring game with our specially selected hand and claim a cash prize.... great promotion - still waiting for details....
  •  Golden Sit & Go - $1,000,000 in cash prizes awarded on Sit & Go tables across all stakes and game types
  •  Zoom 100 - The first ever $1M guaranteed Zoom tournament with a buy-in of just $109... this format improves greatly the edge of mid-high stakes mtt players, because the tournament will have about 6 more times the number of hands compared to a normal tournament... So I think it will have a tough field and that it is -EV for micro stakes players....

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

SCOOP 2013 review


This year's Spring Championship of Online Poker was the richest online tournament series ever held, Pokerstars paying out $75,585,435.05 in prize money, more than $10 million more than last year. The bigest stories from this year are:
  • Daniel Negreanu who won his first his first major online tournament Event #39-H ($5,200 PLO 6-Max) for $216.000
  • Viktor "Isildur1" Blom was won his third huge SCOOP title after crushing the $10.300 main event final table and winning $1.096.000... :D
  • Team PokerStars Pro George Danzer wins overall SCOOP 2013 player of the series title, after playing 130 tournaments, over 16 days, cashing 24 times, making 4 final tables and winning 2 events... For his efforts he received a package to the 2014 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure an the EPT 10 Grand Final.
 Here are the top money winners for the 2013 SCOOP:
Below you can see highlights from my favorite 2 events from this years scoop:



In the second video everyone must watch the two hands from minute 5 and minute 22 ...!'\?>!?... It is incredible for a HU match especially at this level with so mutch agression. And combined with the hand I posted below(vs other agro villains...:)) it shows why I am a tournament donk. =So far I did not make a single final table on any tournament on pokerstars, lol. I only played 1 event this year(the low stakes 109$ main event) and did not cash in it.

Monday, May 27, 2013

some more quality & free learning material

Update for my free poker material section:

Poker podcasts:

http://www.thinkingpoker.net/category/podcast/ (I am not a fan of podcasts, but these are extremley good quality material, +EV and nice to listen podcasts).... My favorite are:
http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2012/11/thinking-poker-podcast-episode-9-featuring-lee-jones/
http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2013/05/9398/
http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2013/02/episode-20-featuring-steve-day/
and all the others that have book authors as guest...

Tournament Videos:

http://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/freevideos/ - best site with poker videos for mtt players
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3zKVIJFdQk - this is a extremly good video and you can also watch the other videos posted by acoimbra...

 MIT poker lectures:

Poker lectures presented at MIT university by Will Ma  (on right side of webpage click on videos)

Mental game videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvDbemInVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJzjsPknlSo

Videos for micro stakes players:

micro stakes leaks
some 6max theory videos:   part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5


Saturday, May 18, 2013

Rare hand

This is the first time I see 4 players, get all in preflop these hand combinations, in my first 2.5million hands so far. Its very possible however that I had more of these hands, but villains folded them at some point. Villains in this hand are all randoms. My equity was really nice and I managed to scoop the side pot...lol

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

conspiracy theories

In the past days I have been searching for a solution to a problem I have... And while doing this, I saw some funny stuff on the internet (funny for regulars that have experience playing), but stuff that can be really damaging to the online poker games if recreational players, or politicians that have no experience with online poker read it and if they believe this stuff is actually true. I will post below a couple of links with this stuff(I don't think this stuff deserves more than 1 line on my blog):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKbRn_L1Udo
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/british-government-carry-out-a-full-audit-of-online-poker-sites
http://fuckpokerstars.com/emails.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfQBhbRiqnE
The players that write this stuff are "small stakes live pro's" that play in really soft live games and without studying poker theory at all they are able to break even or even be marginal winners in those game formats... Below I will write what I think are the reasons why they are frustrated with having worse results in online games, compared to what they are used to in the live games(this apllies to both cash and tournaments but I will just focus on cash for simplicity):
  • A "200NL live pro" that has not studied the poker game and worked a lot, but who is used to playing very soft live games, will never be able to sit down at a 200NL online table and expect to have simillar results as he does in live games. These days online games are extremely tough and a avarage 100-200NL table has 7 regulars(that are not dumping money on the table) and 1-2 fish, or even 8 regulars and 1 weaker regular... So a live player has almost no chance of breaking even in this type of game, even if he used to having a small edge in live games. People say that 200NL live= 25NL or even 10NL online... If you choose to play 10-25NL online you should also not expect to make a lot of money(I play 150.000hands/month to get some decent profit for example)
  • "small stakes live pro's" have huge leaks, that surface when playing online games and facing a mutch stronger oposition. In live games those leaks are less signficant just because of how soft the games are and the fact that noone is capable of exploiting those leaks....
  • "live pro's" don't have reads or decent sample sizes on online regulars which makes it even harder to table select or to survive in the tough games.
  • "live pro's" usually will play a very small volume online, just because they are not used to play many tables. By playing a small volume they will experience a lot of variance and this will impact their emotions. And even if these players might be marginal winners in online poker formats, they will still not win a considerable amount of money, just because if u want to win online you have to play a lot of hands... 
  • In tournaments variance is a lot higher than in cash games. You should have at least 300buy-ins bankroll and you should expect 100-200 buy-in downswings on a regular basis even if you are a very good player(this is the reason why I play cash games).
  • the "live pro's" that complain about "pokerstars is rigged" don't  know even the most basic probability math behind poker.
Below I will post a  "Analysis of 100,000+ random hands dealt at PokerStars" made by a neutral party. I have also done this analysis on my own database using holdem manager(but I did mine on a more basic level):
For people who complain that "my four flushes don't make it" or that "Aces flop more often than they should when I have AK" can now see that the distribution is normal, and that players make their hands at normal rates (expected number of pairs, 2 pairs, flushes, straights, etc).
Starting cards:
Total hands you were dealt cards:       125852
All suited starters dealt:      29595 (23.52%)
All suited starters expected:   29612 (23.5%)
All connected starters dealt:   19493 (15.49%)
All connected starters expected:        19741 (15.7%)
Suited connector starters dealt:        4837 (3.84%)
Suited connector starters expected:     4935 (3.92%)
Paired starters dealt:  7364 (5.851%)
Paired starters expected:       7403 (5.88%)
AKo dealt:      1202 (0.955%)
AKo expected:   1139 (0.905%)
AKs dealt:      373 (0.296%)
AKs expected:   380 (0.302%)
Any AK dealt:   1575 (1.251%)
Any AK expected:        1519 (1.21%)
A's dealt:      603 (0.479%)
K's dealt:      543 (0.431%)
Q's dealt:      558 (0.443%)
J's dealt:      551 (0.438%)
T's dealt:      546 (0.434%)
9's dealt:      585 (0.465%)
8's dealt:      568 (0.451%)
7's dealt:      597 (0.474%)
6's dealt:      542 (0.431%)
5's dealt:      532 (0.423%)
4's dealt:      603 (0.479%)
3's dealt:      582 (0.462%)
2's dealt:      554 (0.440%)
Each pair expected:     569 (0.452%)
(Note that only data for hands where a flop was dealt and you
were dealt cards preflop are used. Hands where no flop was dealt
are skipped.)
Total hands you were dealt cards:       125852
Times a flop dealt when you were dealt cards:   80610 (64.05%)
When user dealt AK, flops at least one A or K: 346 (33.11%)
        expected: 339 (32.4%)
USER HAS ANY TWO SUITED CARDS (dealt 19446 times):
Using both user's hole cards, flopped a:
        3 flush:        8164 (41.98%)   expected: 8087 (41.6%)
        4 flush:        2226 (11.45%)   expected: 2128 (10.9%)
        5 flush:        147 (0.76%)     expected: 164 (0.842%)
Three cards on the flop make up a:
        3 straight:     612 (3.15%)     expected: 620 (3.18%)
        2 flush:        10728 (55.17%)  expected: 10718 (55.1%)
        3 flush:        981 (5.04%)     expected: 1015 (05.22%)
        any pair:       3303 (16.99%)   expected: 3292 (16.9%)
Hand user flops:
        High card:      10257 (52.7%)   expected: 10233 (52.6%)
        Pair:           7868 (40.5%)    expected: 7858 (40.4%)
        Two pair:               757 (3.89%)     expected: 786 (4.04%)
        3 of a kind:    302 (1.55%)     expected: 306 (1.57%)
        Straight:               97 (0.50%)      expected: 80 (0.412%)
        Flush:          147 (0.76%)     expected: 162 (0.835%)
        Full house:     15 (0.077%)     expected: 18 (0.0918%)
        Four of a kind: 3 (0.015%)      expected: 2 (0.0102%)
        Straight flush: 0 (0.000%)      expected: 1 (0.00589%)
        Royal flush:    0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.000654%)
USER HAS ANY PAIR (dealt 5218 times):
Using both user's hole cards, flopped a:
        Underpair (to flop):    1224 (23.46%)   expected: 1225 (23.5%)
        Overpair (to flop):     1215 (23.28%)   expected: 1225 (23.5%)
        Set:            647 (12.40%)    expected: 601 (11.51%)
        Quads:          5 (0.096%)      expected: 13 (0.245%)
Three cards on the flop make up a:
        3 straight:     168 (3.22%)     expected: 166 (3.18%)
        2 flush:        2860 (54.81%)   expected: 2872 (55.0%)
        3 flush:        305 (5.85%)     expected: 269 (5.16%)
        any pair:       896 (17.17%)    expected: 895 (17.1%)
Hand user flops:
        High card:      0 (0.0%)                expected: 0 (0.00%)
        Pair:           3707 (71.0%)    expected: 3748 (71.8%)
        Two pair:               841 (16.12%)    expected: 843 (16.2%)
        3 of a kind:    597 (11.44%)    expected: 562 (10.8%)
        Straight:               0 (0.00%)               expected: 0
(0.00%)
        Flush:          0 (0.00%)               expected: 0 (0.00%)
        Full house:     68 (1.303%)     expected: 51 (0.980%)
        Four of a kind: 5 (0.096%)      expected: 13 (0.245%)
        Straight flush: 0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.00%)
        Royal flush:    0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.00%)
USER HAS OFFSUIT CONNECTORS FROM 54o to JTo (dealt 5026 times):
Using both user's hole cards, flopped a:
        Open ended:     414 (8.24%)     expected: 430 (8.55%)
        Double belly:   24 (0.48%)      expected: 27 (0.531%)
        Straight:               70 (1.39%)      expected: 63 (1.26%)
Three cards on the flop make up a:
        3 straight:     180 (3.58%)     expected: 158 (3.15%)
        2 flush:        2804 (55.79%)   expected: 2766 (55.0%)
        3 flush:        259 (5.15%)     expected: 260 (5.16%)
        any pair:       852 (16.95%)    expected: 851 (16.9%)
Hand user flops:
        High card:      2641 (52.5%)    expected: 2646 (52.6%)
        Pair:           2025 (40.3%)    expected: 2031 (40.4%)
        Two pair:               200 (3.98%)     expected: 203 (4.04%)
        3 of a kind:    87 (1.73%)      expected: 79 (1.57%)
        Straight:               72 (1.43%)      expected: 62 (1.23%)
        Flush:          0 (0.00%)               expected: 0 (0.00%)
        Full house:     1 (0.020%)      expected: 5 (0.0918%)
        Four of a kind: 0 (0.000%)      expected: 1 (0.0102%)
        Straight flush: 0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.00%)
        Royal flush:    0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.00%)
ALL FLOPS SEEN BY THE USER:
Three cards on the flop make up a:
        3 straight:     2630 (3.26%)    expected: 2568 (3.19%)
        2 flush:        44329 (54.99%)  expected: 44383 (55.1%)
        3 flush:        4176 (5.18%)    expected: 4173 (5.18%)
        any pair:       13699 (16.99%)  expected: 13656 (16.9%)
Hand user flops:
        High card:      40153 (49.8%)   expected: 40400 (50.1%)
        Pair:           34179 (42.4%)   expected: 34063 (42.3%)
        Two pair:               3863 (4.79%)    expected: 3832 (4.75%)
        3 of a kind:    1770 (2.20%)    expected: 1703 (2.11%)
        Straight:               357 (0.44%)     expected: 316 (0.392%)
        Flush:          147 (0.18%)     expected: 158 (0.197%)
        Full house:     131 (0.163%)    expected: 116 (0.144%)
        Four of a kind: 10 (0.012%)     expected: 19 (0.0240%)
        Straight flush: 0 (0.000%)      expected: 1 (0.00139%)
        Royal flush:    0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.000154%)
(Note that only data for hands where a river was dealt and you
were dealt cards preflop are used. Hands where no river was dealt
are skipped.)
Total hands you were dealt cards:       125852
Total final boards seen when you were dealt cards:      44325
USER HAS ANY TWO SUITED CARDS (dealt 10628 times):
Four flushes flopped:           1262 (11.87%)
        expected:                       1163 (10.9%)
When flop four flush, got flush:        464 (36.77%)
        expected:                       441 (35.0%)
Hand user has at river:
        High card:      1871 (17.6%)    expected: 1852 (17.4%)
        Pair:           4465 (42.0%)    expected: 4532 (42.6%)
        Two pair:               2290 (21.55%)   expected: 2349 (22.1%)
        3 of a kind:    463 (4.36%)     expected: 461 (4.33%)
        Straight:               494 (4.65%)     expected: 484 (4.56%)
        Flush:          786 (7.40%)     expected: 692 (6.51%)
        Full house:     236 (2.221%)    expected: 236 (2.22%)
        Four of a kind: 15 (0.141%)     expected: 13 (0.126%)
        Straight flush: 7 (0.066%)      expected: 7 (0.0663%)
        Royal flush:    1 (0.009%)      expected: 1 (0.00781%)
USER HAS ANY PAIR (dealt 3264 times):
A set flopped:          470 (14.40%)
        expected:                       368 (11.3%)
When flop set, got boat or quads:       153 (32.55%)
        expected:                       157 (33.4%)
Hand user has at river:
        High card:      0 (0.0%)                expected: 0 (0.00%)
        Pair:           1126 (34.5%)    expected: 1158 (35.5%)
        Two pair:               1253 (38.39%)   expected: 1290 (39.5%)
        3 of a kind:    435 (13.33%)    expected: 383 (11.7%)
        Straight:               45 (1.38%)      expected: 62 (1.90%)
        Flush:          63 (1.93%)      expected: 64 (1.95%)
        Full house:     316 (9.681%)    expected: 279 (8.54%)
        Four of a kind: 26 (0.797%)     expected: 27 (0.842%)
        Straight flush: 0 (0.000%)      expected: 1 (0.0160%)
        Royal flush:    0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.00182%)
USER HAS OFFSUIT CONNECTORS FROM 54o to JTo (dealt 2655 times):
Flopped open ended:             244 (9.19%)
        expected:                       227 (8.55%)
When open ended, got straight:  69 (28.28%)
        expected:                       75 (30.7%)
Hand user has at river:
        High card:      445 (16.8%)     expected: 457 (17.2%)
        Pair:           1140 (42.9%)    expected: 1135 (42.7%)
       Two pair:               561 (21.13%)    expected: 591 (22.3%)
        3 of a kind:    112 (4.22%)     expected: 115 (4.35%)
        Straight:               259 (9.76%)     expected: 242 (9.12%)
        Flush:          60 (2.26%)      expected: 52 (1.95%)
        Full house:     72 (2.712%)     expected: 59 (2.22%)
        Four of a kind: 5 (0.188%)      expected: 3 (0.126%)
        Straight flush: 1 (0.038%)      expected: 1 (0.0209%)
        Royal flush:    0 (0.000%)      expected: 0 (0.00110%)
ALL RIVERS SEEN BY THE USER:
Hand user has at river:
        High card:      7614 (17.2%)    expected: 7718 (17.4%)
        Pair:           19268 (43.5%)   expected: 19424 (43.8%)
        Two pair:               10327 (23.30%)  expected: 10414
(23.5%)
        3 of a kind:    2271 (5.12%)    expected: 2141 (4.83%)
        Straight:               2095 (4.73%)    expected: 2048 (4.62%)
        Flush:          1468 (3.31%)    expected: 1341 (3.03%)
        Full house:     1195 (2.696%)   expected: 1151 (2.60%)
        Four of a kind: 74 (0.167%)     expected: 74 (0.168%)
        Straight flush: 12 (0.027%)     expected: 12 (0.0279%)
        Royal flush:    1 (0.002%)      expected: 1 (0.00323%)
Four to a flush on board 2042 (4.607%)
        expected: 1902 (4.29%)

Anyone know how to make this window appear next to the right table?

In the last 2 months a weird pokerstars software bug has been annoying me a bit.
 How I want it to be and how it used to be before....
How it is now in some sessions.... You can see the closing table window appears on another monitor!!! This causes me to lose about 5seconds in dragging the mouse over monitors and back and turning my neck, etc each time I try to close a table, which happens a lot when 24tabling long sessions.
This bug is at really making me lose focus when masstabling and also making me have a higher averege responce time/hand which stops me from getting a table cap increase... Does anyone else have this message appear in the middle of the monitor or even on a another monitor, like in my case? Pokestars technical support just thanked me for giving them a improvement ideea and told me that have many 1000's of these, so I should not expect any resolution to this.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

April 2013 results

In april I made 2 years since I made my first poker deposit...But I totally lost motivation for grinding last month.  At the middle of the month I won  my biggest pot ever , but after that, I hit a extremely brutal 30buy-in downswing which caused me to take a couple of days off. Overall my winrate was very poor and volume was even worse.

I don't have any new legal information about the political regulation of online poker in Romania, but so far the signs are not pretty. Since 30th april 2013 Party Poker Stops Accepting New Players from 18 Countries, including Romania (because of their new player pool segregation policy - too many romanian regs compared to number of fish/too mutch withdraws and too little deposits, etc... and a uncertain legal future). Party poker was the first poker site on which I made a deposit and I built my poker bankroll there starting from 50$, in my first months of playing, so it makes me feel a bit sad/dissapointed regarding all the actions they took this year... A simillar action was also taken by Bodog/Bovada poker a couple of months ago (they now only accept countries with softer reg/fish ratio and strong economy/weatlhy population).

April 2013 poker results:

130,880 Hands Played  --- 10,500 VPP's
+2,536 $ (cash game profits)
-100 $ (tourney losses)
+588 $ (FPP value)
------------------------------------------------------------------
+$3,024 (Total profits)


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