My Results

Although I've been playing single table sit-and-go tournaments for as long as I've been playing online poker, I've never really played then in enough volume or taken them seriously enough to have a realistic idea of how well I could do.  That is, until this month.

After throwing away far too much money chasing a dream with EPT Steps on PokerStars - a series of single table tournaments that play with turbo blinds (in the lower levels, at least, the first time I got to Step 4 I was completely unprepared for the "normal" blind structure!) - I'd started to feel I was getting on OK with that format but never quite got lucky enough to parlay $5.50 into a twenty grand seat package.

There's no prizes in between worth speaking of, just odd dollars here and there, and although a poker trip to Warsaw would be nice - as well as a little bit scary - I wasn't going to go mad over it.  So  I thought I'd play a few more for, like, actual money.

Turbos SNGs never last more than an hour, and often they're over in 30 minutes - even if you make the money.  I soon realised that this speedy format should give me a chance to play enough tournaments to see a pattern emerge without having to stick with it for months and months - particularly once I became comfortable playing four at a time!

Here, three weeks later and thanks to a spreadsheet I had to knock up in Excel as I couldn't work out how to get Poker Grapher to read my tournament results, is that pattern.

I like the pictorial view much more than the dry output from Poker Tracker, which simply tells you how great you are through the medium of green numbers.

So, yes, 425 is not a huge sample size but it's definitely a start and those early signs are looking good.  The Two Plus Two forum FAQ speculates that a "very good player" could achieve a return on investment of 14% at this level, so I think I have every reason to be pleased with this performance.

So what's my next step?  Time for an enforced break now while I nip off to Vegas for a week or so (T-2!) but if I can carry on with these winning ways I'm going to need a plan to try to maximise the money I can make from these tournaments.

The results above equate to a win rate of about $8/hr in real terms (playing four tables and waiting for each set of four to complete before starting again), which is not to be sniffed at but it doesn't compare to most of the casino bonuses I've been playing lately, and even though poker is much more interesting than blackjack this probably isn't enough to keep me focused on playing intently for any longer than any of my previous poker fads have lasted.

So should I consider moving up limits yet?  Or perhaps try to play more tables at once at the same buy-in?  Or maybe I should stick with what seems to be working but look to improve, nay perfect, my game using tooks like Sit-and-Go Power Tools or SpadeICM?

I'll have to have a good think about that over an all-you-can-eat buffet next week...

So you wait weeks for Sporting Index to do another promotion, and then two come along at once.

It's back to back weekends of bet refunds, this time with losses up to £30 given back so you can try out their latest "why wouldn't it be random when nobody knows how it works anyway?" novelty game - Top, Middle or (you guessed it) Bottom.

 Would the real Michael Barrymore please stand up.

And now, hopefully, I'm not the only one with that theme music stuck in my head.

Dooo do-doo do-doo do-doo do-do-do dooo.  Do do de do.

"The principal of this game", the instructions began - pushing my pedantry meter into overdrive after just two words: it's principle goddammit.  What's that, you used the spell checker?  Plstryharderthx.  Shall we continue? ... "is very easy".

Actually it's not very easy.  It took me at least a dozen goes using play money to even start to understand what was going on, so I'll try my best to explain it but can't guarantee it'll be great.

Picking top, middle or bottom reveals a symbol.  You advance to the next column if you pick either a single arrow or you move across two columns with a double arrow.  To get the maximum score you have to pick arrows all the way to the other side of the board and your current score is determined by the number shown at the top of that column.

If you reveal a question mark you then have to pick one of four boxes.  Three boxes contain your current score value and selecting one of these awards you that score and the game is over.  The fourth box contains a green arrow and you move to the next column and continue.

What is a Hot Spot?  Not a good spot, of course.  But in this game it's a red cross.  Just different enough to avoid a lawsuit I expect.  If you reveal a Hot Cross (not a good cross) the game ends with zero points no matter how far you got across the board.

So far that actually sounds quite simple, but it's complicated no end by the fact that it's a spread betting game, and once you move across the board you are offered the opportunity to quit the game and take the new price offered, but that price is not going to be the same as your score because you haven't actually finished the game until you get all the way across or end it with a red cross or question mark.

Very easy, yes?

Assuming that you are at least 1-in-3 to hit some kind of arrow and proceed is one thing (all the games I played did reveal at least one arrow in every column) but knowing what advancing one step is worth versus how much you're risking to get there is a totally different matter.

To be honest, I just didn't care enough about this game to work it out.  If it wasn't for the £30 free bet I'd have been long gone.  I guess there must be demand for this kind of thing among spread betting degenerates for whom there just isn't enough sport to bet on, but I don't see the appeal.  First they have to get me to understand how the game works (in this case they didn't do a great job) and then they have to get me to trust it, and if it's not based on something that's random in real life that's usually tough.  TV game shows are random?  I think not, and nor does the chap from the video above if you check the comments on YouTube.

Anyway, after a few play money games with the minimum stake, I noticed that if I hit a double arrow the first time or two single arrows I could then take the offer for a £1.50 profit, whereas a cross was a £2.00 loss.  To avoid thinking any longer, this was good enough to start playing a few minimum bets to qualify for the refund - I needed ten bets at this level and finished up £7 down on the deal.

So with a further £23 that could be refunded it was time for one larger bet to try to find a profit.  This worked out at betting £1.15 per point, a maximum loss of £23 and a maximum win of £1160.  Of course, I wasn't going anywhere near far enough across the board to win a grand and decided that a tenner profit or more would do.

I went "middle" and got a green arrow.  The game offered me £5.75 profit - not enough to get me back into profit overall so I would carry on, right after I took a screen grab.

See that timer in the bottom right corner?  9 seconds it says.  Well it took me a bit longer than that to paste and save the screenshot and while I was finishing up I heard a ding and some cheering from the other window.

With my back turned, apparently I had gone "middle" again.  Whether this is a random choice or just a repeat of my last selection I have no idea.  Can't say I was pleased about it making the decision for me.  Surely if it looks like I can't be bothered to play any more, it should hit the "take profit" button and cash me out rather than gambling it up on my behalf?  And really, 15 seconds in total to act?  Why?  What damage, exactly, am I doing to your bottom line by not gambling any faster than that?

Fortunately it was a winner, or I'd really be ranting about it.  The new offer: £17.25, which just pushed me into enough profit to make my target.  A total win of £10.25.

Good game good game? No. 

If you listen carefully, you can hear the clinking of a single champagne glass.  I'm finally done playing on Paddy Power Poker, and that's cause for a mini-celebration.

I actually quite like the iPoker software and there's usually good game selection at the levels I play, but the problems is that I never really knew where I was with those games.  Mixing and matching so many different limits probably didn't help though.

I was up and I was down and I was swinging all over the place.  Every limit I played I was in the green for a while, and then it swung back in to the red and back up again.  Some of them stayed there.  While 23,662 hands is be a reasonable number to start seeing getting an idea of how I played, it's not much use with only a few thousand hands on each of the fixed limit games. 

However, looking at the percentage of hands I played at $3/$6 compared to the other limits, I should probably re-evaluate whether I'm actually comfortable playing for those stakes.  The only thing that kept me coming back was my data on the players at that level suggested they could often be much looser than the usual nits at $2/$4, and so I thought I was finding good spots.  I just never really made them pay.

The good news though - despite being a loser on paper, I'm still leaving the site with about a grand more than I came with, thanks to signup bonuses, monthly cash rewards, player point redemptions and a friendly affiliate referral.  But boy was it hard work, and barely worth it.

But now that I've used up all of the $600 sign up bonus and been left with a mountain to climb to get back into VIP status (their member level formula looks at the last 3 months activity, so I'd now have to over-compensate for a quiet January) and I'm moving on.

At least I got a nice little hot streak to end it all with.  These all happened within five minutes of each other (check out the timestamps on the screenshots!) and were part of a very welcome $200 upswing.

1. My biggest pot ever at $1/$2

Well, I can't be sure it was actually the biggest I ever had but it felt like it, and the action was amazing.  $65 is a 33 big bets pot, and I took it down with pocket kings which made a full house on a board of 556KQ.

It was capped on every street except the flop, with the two other guys involved seeing something I obviously missed in their KQ and 99 hands.

Click the thumbnail to see the full hand history.

2. Table selection paying off.

I'd seen a particularly juicy-looking $3/$6 table but it took me an hour to get the right seat.  I'm quite fussy about where I sit now.  Playing fixed limit in particular, there's so many good players that you have to try to sit as close to the immediate left of any mark you find to play the maximum number of hands against them in position.

I'd had my eye on seats 6 and 9 who were both seeing over 40% of flops.  By the time I got into position in seat 2, two other seats had also been filled by fishy players.  Click the table thumbnail to see what a good game should look like.  On iPoker, this almost never happens, and especially at this level.

The first hand I got involved with was perfect.  Mr Loose had limped in and I raised him with AJs.  Everyone else got out of the way for a magic all-heart flop.  He'd limped in out of position with two small hearts, I had two large ones and he paid me off very nicely thankyou.

3. Royal flush, baby

It's only seven months since my last one, but this always deserves a picture.

I got called to the river by pocket kings, which had flopped a set but got scared by the possibly flush and straight options.

Shame the board didn't pair on the river, really.

I am delighted to report that my first trip to Dublin - which of course involved a little poker - was an astounding success.  I'm about even.

I played at Cool Hand Luke's, which is in the process of being converted to Gutshot's Dublin venue.  The basement is already decked out with orange and black G-swirls, and has a fine internet cafe and deli open until 4am.  The casino and card room upstairs, however, are quite different - and different to anywhere I've ever played before.

It's a very homely place, in fact it all just feels like a big house, like you're playing in someone's living room.  Very laid back, very friendly and very loose poker.  It's just a shame I couldn't find a hand to take advantage!

I went deep in the EUR 20 rebuy tournament, making the final table and just missing the money by 5 places.  This is an even more impressive achievement if I reveal that a massive six players started the game, although numbers had swolen to 18 at one point.

This hand presented an interesting ruling: at 25/50 and on my big blind (the cheek of it all) the player to my left raised to 150, his neighbour re-popped it to 500 and the next player moved all in for 1350.  A surprise fold next, followed by another re-push for about 2000.

The next player to act realised he had only been dealt one card and asked the dealer what happens now.  The floor came over and explained that theres' no way it's a do-over with all that action and he mucked his card without even looking at it.

Back to the original raiser who obviously didn't like his spot and called a different supervisor over for another ruling on the same thing.  Just in case, I suppose.  Of course, he said the same thing - the action all stands.  "But you can play with one card if you want", he added.

Would he want to, facing three raises?  I'm actually not sure.  It's feasible if he had a good card like a jack or queen.

However it was too late and Original Raiser realised that he could negate his positional disadvantage by getting all the chips in pre-flop and called, and four hands got flipped over for a marathon.  One of them actually had pocket kings, the rest all ace-rag and the worst one - A4, but it was sooted - spiked two fours to take it down.

After my elimination, the only game running was Omaha.  Short handed too - just five others when I joined the game - and as I've never played Omaha live before, this was going to be interesting.  I bought in for the minimum, sat tight, waited for the nuts and then showed it down for a 3-way chop.  Fantastic.  We all had the straight on the turn, but I was the only one with a flush redraw - does that qualify as a bad beat story in Omaha?

An American exchange student turned up wanting to play Hold'em and so the players agreed to change our game to round-of-each so he could join in.  The action was fast and furious in both games and I was glad I'd only bought in for EUR 50.  I'm actually a little more fond of the Euro now I've heard the Irish call it a "quid".  Take it a step further, call it a "pound" and tweak the exchange rate a little and I'm all for it.

After one player called off EUR 230 on the river with a set vs the nut straight in Omaha, he created an awesome tilt pot in Hold'em a few hands later.  Betting and raising in the dark for most of the hand against a player who flopped two pair with king-ten in the small blind, he was finally forced to look at his cards after being check-raised on the turn.  The board showed KT3A and, somehow the blind raiser had been sitting on ace-king all along for a EUR 800 pot after all the money made it to the middle.

It lasted about three rounds before we were back to just Omaha.  The token American had busted and went home, although he did last long enough to try to explain how the presidential elections work.  He must had made a good job of it too, as I actually feel like I have a clue now.  In the last hand of Hold'em I folded 35o face-up to a button raise on my big blind (realising I'd hardly played a thing and wanting to show why) only to be advised "that's not a bad hand in a two-handed pot".  I'm not convinced - there's only two hands it dominates, and one of them is The Powerhouse - but unfortunately it was too late to adjust my style anyway.

I carried on leaking at Omaha until my host for the trip (apparently I was there for work) joined the game, at which point I suddenly doubled up through him and then stacked him!  The most impressively bit was when my pair of kings and two spanners got there on the river on a QQ7AK board.  Hey, don't blame me, I never pretended to know anything about this game!

This is exactly what's supposed to happen when you limp out of position and then call raises with medium pocket pairs.  Although of course it hardly ever does, so it was particularly sweet to catch a miracle - and get paid - twice in a row.

Button ($37.40)
SB ($21.12)
BB ($8.50)
UTG Hero ($50)
UTG+1 ($22.05)
MP ($20.25)
MP ($17.50)
CO-1 ($48.75)
CO ($50.45)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 8 8
Hero calls 0.50, UTG+1 raises to 2, 1 fold, MP calls 2, 5 folds, Hero calls 1.50.

Flop (6.75) Q A 8
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets 5.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to 48, UTG+1 moves all-in for 14.55.

Turn (74.80) T

River (74.80) 4

Hero shows 8 8
UTG+1 shows A Q

Hero wins 74.80 with Three of a kind, Eights

Button ($20.87)
SB ($8)
BB ($50)
UTG Hero ($72.50)
UTG+1 ($20.25)
MP ($15.50)
MP ($48.75)
CO-1 ($50.45)
CO ($37.40)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 7 7
Hero calls 0.50, 4 folds, CO raises to 2, 3 folds, Hero calls 1.50.

Flop (4.75) 9 3 7
Hero checks, CO bets 4, Hero raises to 70.50, CO moves all-in for 31.40.

Turn (110.65) 8

River (110.65) J

Hero shows 7 7
CO shows A A

Hero wins 110.65 with Three of a kind, Sevens

I promise these were back-to-back hands on the same table.  It says I was in the same position for both, which makes that sound a little fishy, but it's totally true!  A new player sat down to my right to take the big blind for the second hand, so I really was first to act on two consecutive deals.

Seeing as I'd already unticked "auto-post blinds" and was just getting ready to finish for the night, I'm quite glad he came along to give me one more hand...

I've been 4-tabling 50NL on the iPoker network for about a week and starting to get some decent data into Poker Tracker.  Not yet sure if I'll make a mission out of it like I did on PokerStars earlier in the year - I'm not convinced it's a great game, and there's barely enough time before the end of the year to get in enough hands for a reasonable win goal.

Mostly I just want to retain the VIP level I achieved playing $2/4 limit (running like God for a couple of weeks, then crashing back down and giving up) for a sweet $100 monthly cash bonus.  Playing for points is only marginally foolish, of course.

I've been thinking that there are a lot of super-tight - I mean really stupidly tight - players on there and have been seeing some Poker Tracker stats to that effect, but I just wasn't really sure if it was just an anomoly at first.  There's always some nits in every game, but when I seem to be always sitting down to see table averages of % flops seen instantly pop up in single figures, it's a little unusual.

Sure, I still don't have enough data to know the figures are accurate, and I often have only half the table tracked, but it's still a whole load more rocks that you'd like to see at the table.

As my data is grows, these trends continue.  Just now I was playing against two of the nittiest players I've ever seen.

The first had paid to see 6.3% of flops - that's 30 hands played from the 480 I'd seen him be dealt.  Even 12% would be awfully tight, and he's playing half that.  It's just one every 16.  That's only just more than the frequency you should be dealt a pocket pair.  Even if that's not his strategy, we know he has a very narrow range of hands when he does decide to play which means he's a fairly predictable opponent (which I like) but he's using a seat that could be taken by a player who is more likely to dump off his stack the next time I get a lucky flop (which I don't like).

The other was an impressive 1.8% VP$IP ("voluntarily put money in the pot") over 220 hands.  That's just 4 non big blind hands played from a sample that's one less than enough to include every possible starting hand (it won't - that would be a statistical freak - but it's big enough to start seeing patterns).  Of those hands played, we saw two at showdown: he raised JJ from middle position and completed a small blind with 88.  Those crazy gamblers.

There are many more players sitting at about 10% VP$IP and that means I've been jumping around tables a lot trying to find somebody to actually play with.  There is the occasional juicy loose player that helps to keep the table average out of the gutter, but actually very few who fall in-between these extremes.  A cynical man might say it's just full of bots and shills...

It does seems like it's been much easier than I'm used to to steal blinds and stab at pots, but also much harder to get payoffs with monsters so I've tried to start adjusting accordingly.  I'm hesitating to go too far with the all-out aggression though because it just seems so unlikely that there would be so many players in one place - a poker site, of all places - who just don't want to play poker.

I was starting to think that it never, ever went to 3 bets pre-flop in this game, and that all-ins were never called unless it was AA vs AA, or occasionally KK on a short stack.  Plenty of ratholers about, but mostly also sitting back and waiting for a big pair.  Seemed like winning a full stack was virtually impossible.

But you wait around for a week, then two come along at once.

My pocket kings got it all in pre-flop against an ace-jack for a full stack and it held up, and I flopped the nut straight with AK and re-raised all in against two players to be instacalled by AT - bottom pair, but top kicker.  Yummy.

The other player - a 12% rock - said he folded a set.  I believe him.

Those two hands literally doubled my win rate on the week.  Obviously, I still need more data but here's a graph that I can savour for the time being.

I think it's fair to say that I didn't know how to adjust to the standard of play in the EPT satellites.  Particularly on Sunday, it seems I had a lot to learn.  The following mania all happened during level 2 (blinds 50/100).

The under-the-gun player raises to 350.  A frustrated Scandinavian calls and the next player re-raises to 900.  The re-raiser only has 700 left, so he's going nowhere and I'm suspicious about why he hasn't just moved all-in already.  I find pocket jacks in the cut-off.  It's the best hand I got to see in either tournament, but with an UTG raiser who has me well covered, it's not a good spot to gamble my stack so I fold.  UTG makes the powerplay of a smooth call.  Obviously he wants to take the flop 3-way, but the other guy dissapoints him.  Naturally with a pot of over 2000, the remaining 700 gets thrown in on a low flop.  We see the re-raiser's pocket 9s hold up against UTG's T8s.

Lessons learned: Pocket pairs are always raising hands.  Folding to a re-raise is weak.

I stayed out of the way for this one.  All folded to the button who raised to 350.  He had 98o, but the steal attempt is OK.  Big blind defends with J5, a little stubborn but in fact the best hand.  Soulscan successful.  When the flop comes J97, carnage ensues.  BB check-raises all-in with his monster top pair and the button decides it's a great idea to not get pushed around, calling his last 4000 chips to win about 6000 with a gutshot and middle pair.  Seat open.

Lessons learned: Always defend your blind by calling out of position with garbage.  Folding a straight draw is weak.

That bustee had used up all his luck in an earlier hand when he had raised small preflop with pocket aces, followed by a massive all-in overbet on a 952 flop.  Just go ahead and tell everybody how strong you were before the flop and hope nobody caught up.  For sure you won't get called now unless they got very lucky to outflop you.  But outflopped he was, by pocket 2s.  Then turn 5, river 5 put him back in front in the cruelest way possible.

Next, I limp after three others with 67s.  One more player calls and the short stack big blind moves all in.  I'm starting to get desparate and wonder if there's any reason to call here after it's folded back to me.  I decide it's not even close - the pot odds aren't good and the raiser has been quite tight.  In fact, in the land of the results-oriented, my 67 would have made a straight.  I know this because the player on the button called and also made the straight with 63o.  Pocket aces went home.

Lessons learned: Limp with any old shit if you have position.  Folding once you have put chips in the pot is weak.

I didn't survive long into level 3.  In fact the levels were a complete trainwreck.  We were sent on a break at what I thought was the end of level 2, but when we got back it was still the same level.  "Another 2 minutes at this level", they announced.  About fifteen minutes later, the blinds actualy went up.

In level 3, blinds are 100/200.  The only reason there are still t25 chips in play is that antes kick in on level 4.  And to think I was worried that I might not be able to make an 8pm train home if I did well.

I was down to a thousand and change on my small blind and with 3 limpers already wanting to take a cheap look I completed with 78s.  The big blind pays no attention to the action so far and makes it 500 to go.  One of the limpers now decides to fold, but two do come along for the ride.  Having been unable to find any spots to gather chips so far and expecting to be called if I actually get chance to open-push in the next orbit, I decide I have to play this hand.  I could call and close the betting, then be the first to throw my chips at any flop that looks good, but I don't fancy pulling a stop-and-go against three other players, and with less than 1/5th of the pot size left to bet.  By moving all-in here, I want to re-open the betting to allow the agreesor to isolate, and leave plenty of dead money in the pot to give a reasonable payoff if my second-best hand improves.  Not a superb situation to be in, but I'd run out of time and couldn't expect to see much better.

In fact we take a flop four ways, and it doesn't really surprise me - even though one of the callers has left himself with just 300 chips now.  Never mind.  I'm right back in the game if I get lucky here.  Flop: 89T with two spades - a pair and open ended straight draw.  Could be worse, until I see the other cards.  67 is loving his made straight and I can only split with him.  But we're both actually drawing dead to QJ in spades - the current nuts with a flush draw to boot.

So there ends my EPT journey.  £660 for less than three hours of poker.  Next year, I think I'll probably not bother.

Worst £300 tournament ever?

3000 chips, 30 minute clock and skipping just about every other blind level.  They got me all excited to start with by giving out 5000 chips, then cruely taking them back.  When this happened one of the know-it-all regulars was saying how he'd prefer the larger stack but would want a faster clock, maybe 20 minutes.  Yeah, that would be swell.  Now fuck off and go play blackjack if you just want to take two cards and let somebody tell you if you won.

I didn't really get going, then when I had to push - after just an hour and a half - my QT was called by another QT (fantastic) and then my pocket 3s ran into a bigger pair and I was done.  The board showed JJ99Q and the dealer tried to convince everyone that it was a split (I tip handsomely for this btw) but obviously the other guy's tens played.  Hey, at least he was reading the hands and not just assuming that no 3 on board means I didn't improve.

Even with just 40 people, this structure was too fast.  Yet, off I go again shortly to give it another go.  I had considered waiting until Monday evening after I discovered they had scheduled a 200-max satellite, but if it's going to be a push fest the smaller field is less likely to be heartbreaking.

So, here's the live update graph for today's satellite (and I have set it up with the correct phone number for text updates now!).  Blink and you'll miss it, probably.

I've been playing promotions with Sporting Index whenever they've offered anything that looks favourable.  These are usually offers to refund your losses if you play a set amount on their novelty games, but I've always come out losing and getting the refund.

If, like today, the requirement is ten bets with a refund of net losses up to £30, I'll usually play an even money bet nine times and then lump whatever I have left on one final no-lose bet for the win.  In what must be close to ten previous efforts (I wrote about a couple of them here and here, and then stopped counting) the bet that matters has always lost.

Not that I'd ever imply that online gambling could be easily rigged, oh no.  Especially not stupid novelty games like "soccer shootout" where a cartoon footballer that you cannot influence kicks a ball at goal a few times and gets awarded points if he scores against a computer-controlled goalkeeper.  The number of points you get is related to where the ball hits the net - just like real life.  Goooooaaaaaallll!  You win, well, let's say six points this time.

Assuming that their roulette game is fair, and forgetting that games of chance don't have a memory, then was definitely owed before I hit a massive £26 profit today.  Nine bets of £2 betting red all the way with four wins and five losses put me in good shape for one last bet... and it came in!

My shot at NL100 lasted just over 3500 hands.  I lost the 5 buy-ins I'd allowed myself, mostly in spectacular fashion.

I've never seen so many flopped sets get beaten!  It's pretty difficult to say how I thought I was playing at that level, because whenever it felt like I'd got going, the doomswitch flipped in and spoilt it all.

Spoken like a true loser, I'm sure you'll agree.

Really, five buy ins just isn't enough to know for sure - my last two major beats alone could have been a $320 swing in the right direction if the poker gods had just smiled in my direction a little.  After being so close to getting back even, too...

I did have some rotten luck, but I also came up against both players who were tougher than at 50NL and, apparently, also more terrible moves than I'd seen at that level.  I wasn't quite sure how to adjust to this mix, or even whether the guys calling me down with bottom pair were really that bad, or just had a good sense of when to do that and it worked out for them often enough that they could afford to keep up this image.  Oh for a few thousand more hands to try to find out...

NL50 definitely seems more weak-tight, and either my style already suited that game, or I'd already adapted to playing in those conditions.  I know there's some adjustments I still need to make to do better at NL100 the next time I get there.  Assuming that I can grind my way back up, and I wasn't just on a 40 buy-in upswing all along...

But for now it's as I was just three days ago.  Wow, that's a bit depressing, but I need to stay patient, try to forget anything I was trying to do to adjust to NL100, and above all remember that $2 pre-flop isn't a minimum raise any more.

I reached my target of $2000 won at NL50 today.  After the steady climb from $0 to about $1300, everything went very erratic with a frustrating long period without any overall win, a massive upswing, a big downswing and then another big upswing.  I was in two minds whether this was indeed the right time to move up - I really didn't want to do it on a massive upswing because I knew that wasn't sustainable and the doomswitch would be just around the corner.

Tonight I took the plunge.  This is only a shot at the higher limit, and I decided that if I fall 5 buy-ins then I should drop down again for a while.  It's difficult to report anything after one session (I played about 800 hands) but I don't think the higher stakes are particularly scaring me yet.   I had something of a baptism of fire, running into quads with a full house on my first orbit and then being treated to the wrong end of a set vs set battle three times.  I don't actually have the figures for how rare this is (probably something I should know) but I don't think I'd been on the losing end of set vs set three times in total at the lower level!

I know it'll be tough if I continue to see my bankroll slip away so rapidly, but so far the game doesn't feel too different and I felt like I was in control.  I'm used to raising using clicks on the bet slider, so a 3x pre-flop raise is still two clicks, even though it's now $3, not $1.50.

Watch this space - more graphs to come for sure!

Perhaps I should have waited before fudging my graphs.  Variance is playing games with me, but this time I'm not too bothered.  Just look at this!

 Slight recovery.

I appear to be broken.  Tell me this is no big deal...

I've already jinxed myself by doing something as results-oriented as actually having a win goal and writing about it here.  I've just further done myself damage by waiting until the very second I passed the half way mark to take a screenshot of my graph.

A few minutes ago, I passed $1000 in profit playing only $50 NL on PokerStars.  The magic number was $1000.10, in fact.  Out came Poker Grapher, and here's the story so far.  All you graph lovers can click on it for the full size version.

As you'd expect, I've since dropped back under a grand.

My win rate is clearly lower than it was at the last checkpoint.  It took under 6,000 hands to win the first $500, but over twice as many to make it to $1000.  My  overall win rate just clears $5 per 100 hands.  I'm getting very close to 20,000 hands played now, which is starting to resemble a decent sample size.  I don't know whether I should assume I ran hot to start, have just had worse than average cards for a while, or if overall 5BB/100 about right and it all evens out in the end.

The main thing though is that the line has kept on moving in the right direction.

Plenty of added value at Stars right now too.  Seeing as I only started playing $50 NL there to clear a bonus, I was pretty plesed to see another $150 reload bonus come along today.  This time it's because of the impending momentous occasion of their 10 billionth dealt hand.  In addition, there's a money aded tournament every hour, and FPPs clock up at twice their normal rate.

I'll easily make it to Gold Star this month now.  Double rakeback too.  Given that I've paid just over $300 in rake this month for enough FPPs to buy about £20 in Amazon gift certificates, I figure it's usually about 12% rakeback for a Silver Star player.  Should be about 16% for Gold Star.  Not the best by any means, but not a bad deal considering you don't have to jump through any hoops to get rakeback.

It appears that I'm doing somewhat better than I expected at no limit ring games.  This really is the first time I've tested myself over more hands than I needed to play to clear a particular bonus or to gain a particular membership level.  After nearly 6000 hands, I've been beating $50 NL on Poker Stars for just over $8 for every 100 hands.  Not too shabby at all.

Of course this started when I had a bonus to clear.  I still had about 1400 points left to earn towards the 1500 I needed to unlock a $150 bonus on Stars.  The bonuses now have an expiry date and I just couldn't see myself clearing it before June playing $12 turbo sit-and-gos.  $1 in tournament fees is 5 player points, so that'd be nearly 300 tournaments.

I started off by trying their $25 NL as I'd done OK at this level clearing Party Poker bonuses in the past.  It didn't take long to realise that you earn virtually no FPPs at this level.  $50 NL still doesn't generate the abundance of rake (and hence the freely flowing frequent player points) that you get from $2/$4 or $3/$6, but the last time I played fixed limit at these levels I was constantly frustrated.  I felt I was playing OK, but the game on Stars was tough and I wasn't good enough to beat the rake.  I maintained Gold Star status for a few months, lost a few hundred dollars but earned enough points to get a jacket I didn't really need and couple of hundred quid to spend at Amazon.  About even, obviously.

I'd also expected the no limit tables on Stars to be tough, but so far so good.  I've now hit the $500 profit milestone.  The graph from Poker Grapher uses my Poker Tracker database, which treats one big bet as twice the big blind amount.  So with $0.25/$0.50 blinds, the scale on this graph is 1 BB = $1.

It took two weeks to get here, and even though I finally cleared the bonus a few days ago I decided to keep playing as it felt like I'd fallen into a groove playing four tables at this level.  A good, winning groove at that.  I could get a rhythm going with up to 8 tables at $2/$4 but it was often be painful.  Literally.  If a session turned bad quickly I'd start to cramp up.  That just hasn't happened (so far) playing no limit.

It's still not a massive sample size but the graph direction is definitely reassuring.  I know there's room for improvement.  I'm going to find it and I've already spotted some pretty big mistakes.  For example, I knew pocket kings was no good to a fifth raise pre-flop, but I had to prove I was right.  Was the satisfaction of being right worth more than the $30 I lost?  Not quite.  It took nearly 400 hands (on average) to win that back.

But now I have a target, although obviously it if all goes tits up there's a chance I'll never write about it again.  If nobody has coined the phrase "blogger's discretion" yet, I want to be the first.  I'd like to think I'll stay on top of this one and in fact the timing works out just nicely.

Providing things stay good at this level, I'll move up in stakes once I've won $2000. I want to be comfortable playing $100 NL by the time I go to Vegas in July.

I'm sticking with $50 NL on Stars for as long as there are no bonuses I need to play anywhere else.  If a juicy reload comes along then I'll probably stop to play that through instead, but I'm hoping that Stars can be my home for a long time to come.