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Hi Gary. The top five hands is far too narrow a range to be playing, even early on in a DYM. Don't necessarily isolate your own hand strength as the only factor to consider. Position and stack size matter too. Poker would be very simple (and a little boring) if we were to be as regimented about our moves as you are suggesting here.
Getting dealt rubbish cards? Well, see that guy who keeps on raising pre-flop? There's just as much chance that he's been getting rubbish cards too, but he's putting pressure on everyone else. Sometimes the numbers on the cards don't matter as much as you'd think.
Your chip stack:
FAILED EXPERIMENTS (Weds)
After deciding to mix-it-up a little bit, following some light reading of how other people got their lives truely started here on Sky, I got into reading GARYQ'S Story of how he has spun up £50 into massive profits.
After receiving a message of support from him I decided to hit the HU S&G's...Not after I made a brief attempt at Lambert's DYM Ladder challenge...Ended up crashing out Level 2.
So, an evening session of 5 games followed against the same opponent and I won 2...More disasterous results followed later that night when I couldn't BINK a single HU match, topped it off with 2 str8 fails at DYM's too.. OH DEAR!
BETTER TIMES-TURN IT AROUND (Thurs)
So much reading and a re-visit to Johnconnor's DYM guide followed and then some practice during the afternoon hours... Finally after dinner I signed myself into my first DYM...Cashed it...Second...Cashed it..
A forum friend, Matt237 came and railed one of my DYM's and found me sitting pretty on 4000 chips - "What's going on here - thought Gary was struggling" he must of thought! Well I'd just hit a luckbox spot, calling with KJ to two short-stacks who'd just gone ALL IN...and my KJ held to knock BOTH out..cemented ANOTHER cash!
Matt then joined me for my last three DYM's of the evening. first and last were long-winded afairs, we both cashed in the first two games...
Then in the second game some serious hands in the early going, and we ended up with an elimination! Then a few hands later three players are all-in and its “good-night nurse”..DYM conluded before hardly a ball had been kicked! I Like those ones!
The third and final DYM of the night was a more tougher afair, and more like the kind of game I am used to - Big Boost early on when I tried the same after getting AA's..and got rid of one..then the rest of the table really tightened up..another player gone and we were four left heading into the later stages..the short stack luckboxed the river in three straight hands, for flushes, str8's and more and then all of a sudden I'm the shorty and ended up getting out-beat to end what in short was a very, very positive and encoraging night..
6 DYM's were played and I cashed in 5. Can't argue with that, and a significant chunk of wednesdays losses and ill feeling erased!
Well when I last posted to this diary I'd just come off from a session of playing a run of DYM's with another forum REG, cashing a large quantity of them.
It's quite pleasing to report that my good progress did continue...Friday, I managed just TWO DYM's due to various reasons but I managed 50% in them 1x Fail, 1x Cash.
Saturday, again I played in only a few DYM's but this time I achieved my second 100% day, cashing in all the DYM's I played.
SUND: With plenty to watch on TV and plenty of events going on Locally I didn't play any "competative" poker at all, but managed my first final table on another site where I dabble on the play-money tables ONLY..
MOND/TONIGHT
Using my profits from Saturday I played in DTD#2, a £1.10 B/I deepstack tourney, the monday equivilent of the usual 7:45 deepie.
Don't think I played very good in this one, lost a fair bit of time having been called away at one stage but as it was a deepstack not much of my balance had disappeared by the time I came back..
Not much going on in this one and when I shoved whilst getting low, I failed to get a call, and when I did get a call to my ALL In, I ran into a set of tens for my eventual elimination in 65/184. I KNOW I can play better esp with recent results in the daily Turbo FR's where I am coming close to cashing, the only problem with these is that the balances are very low until you reach final table territory...
Very much a question of whether it's sometimes worth shelling out the addon, just to come a few spots higher and break even, or as in my case recently, adding on only to scrape barely into the money..halving my outlay!
BR CHANGE: -£2.35
Well my weekly challenge is complete and time to review the week in general.
No play Monday as planned due to family funeral, and then a B/Even day before the implosions on Wednesday due to experimenting around with differing game types cost me around 1/5 of my BR!
Made good steps towards the end of the week to reverse the trend significantly. According to my log, my last two thursday's have resulted in very good results...will need to look at whether this might be an ideal night to play some of the other MTT's around - perhaps the 2005 B/Hunter??
On further review of my daily BR movements for may, the results are showing less & less red entries towards the end of may - proving the apparent progress made!
Well end of another week on Sky Poker (well for me anyway – doubtful I'm playing Sunday but will probably be around for chatting/comments).
I must admit even despite the fact when I looked at things on Friday, it looked like I was actually doing quite well for the past couple of weeks – I must have been dreaming, as I clearly haven't done too good, and including the £1.10 Deepstack on monday, I logged arguably my WORST week in May, despite feeling quite good about things on Thursday/Friday.
Most of the week apart from Tuesday I've been the wrong end of 50% Win-rate and logged 40% and under for the remaining three days, just when I was starting to iron out my leaks I felt...
Alas though, it's not as depressing reading as the end of April had because I still have a reasonable bankroll and know I have a reasonably decent game for the level of DYM I am at (as that's ALL I am at present, a DYM player, who dabbles in MTT's but rarely has the skill OR LUCK to end up cashing).
MAY CHALLENGE COMPLETE!!!
Well I set myself up a “Challenge” at the start of may and I'll now post my review and comment on how I feel I did and summarise where I think my play is at presently.
MAY TARGETS:-
BR – Increase from £6 to £12
Play sufficient volume to earn 100 ppts
Cash in 1x MTT
Earn win-rate of > than 50% of games played.
#1 – This took care of itself on day #2 when I was nominated (Very Kindly) by Larson7 to take part on the “Top of the Posts” STT, a competition where players are nominated for their commitment to the forum and as a thank you earn a little bankroll boost with even 6th place taking home a prize. I finished 3rd in this for a very welcome boost of £25!
#2 – Earning 100ppts, which turned out to be pretty easy and with the very high volume of Turbo DYM's I put in early month I coasted to success here
#3- See #1 but although the TOTP cash was indeed my ONLY cash in the month I did come very close on a few occasions to winning small prizes from the £20Gtd F/R that I sometimes play at lunchtimes.
4# Earn Win-Rate of 50% or greater at DYM's.
Funny one this target – I finished with a percentage of around 45% which was marred by a relatively LOSING record left-over from the many turbo DYM's I was unsuccesful at early month. I then quickly learned how to play the slower standard variety and finished the month on these at around 53%.
SUMMARISING MAY
So how do I feel I've done in my “May Challenge” well in Very Critial fashion, it's not a total Disaster, but it's not pretty by any means. On a weekly basis I've kept running totals of my BR movement and each and every week I'm logging losses anywhere between £2.50-£4, which would suggest on General I'm quite a losing player – confirmed by when I look at my Sharkscope profile, I currently have the “Fish” Icon displayed next to myself, which makes very poor reading...Anyone who looks at this, they must be rubbing their hands with Glee when they see me at their table.
So what now? WELL I can definitely say that playing with another forum regular has helped my game somewhat, but from the results of the past few days, it shows I've got a lot of HARD WORK and READING to do before I can consider myself any sort of a reasonable player and begin to get rid of my “Fish Image”
I for ONE will be staying WELL AWAY from the cash tables, unless I can set aside part of my BR to specifically enroll on the master-cash tables in the vain hope that I can get my play analysed by one of the TV Show's.
BIG few days coming up for me in the early stages of June... Monday 2nd is DTD deepstack day and I'm definitely playing DTD#2 which has just a £1.10 B/I and is usually a much bigger field than the usual £100Gtd Deepstack which kicks off daily at the same time.
Tuesday is a repeat of the TOTP'S, but this time it's the NEW annual afair where ALL previous players are invited for a return rematch, with just top six being paid AFAIK.
Wednesday is the game everyone wants to play ATM, Rainman's 2.20 @ 2:20 deepstack. He's invited all the well known players from Sky Poker and the forum to come along and give this game a go, and FWIW, it doesn't look at this stage that I will have found work by then, so I'll be playing too as I've also been amazingly invited..so YES I expect to report a hammered BR by the time I review my play next week!!!!
Athough I've yet to decide on targets for June I'll still be tracking my BR movement throughout the Month, and yea I think that I can indeed work upon getting that 53% win-rate up some more.
And yes wednesday's looking like a very interesting couple of hours!
Thanks for your comments. Yea I know about the Rake eating into the BR whilst playing Micro-Stakes DYM's, But first I gotta learn how to become a winning player and start to formulate some more break-even/profit days of play, as I've had far too many losing days during may!
With my limited BR, There's No way I feel anywhere near ready to jump upto trying out £3 DYM's, especially with my BR meaning I would only be able to tackle a handful of these!
I would prefer to stick to the cheaper games initially whilst I hone my skills and learn how to become a winning player, as just by keeping my spreadsheet going, it's showed, very evidently that I still have LOADS to learn when it comes to playing poker and playing DYM's.
Hopefully soon I can then start to see Profit day's happening more & more often, and then start to see the BR moving in a positive direction, which although It certainly hasn't done, I am pleased to report that I've had nowhere near the catastrophic damages which occured at the end of April when I was battling with the Cash tables....even at 2p/4p level, they are a brutal beast!
GL in your own endevours, thanks for reading and posting on my thread!
Regards
Gary.