Made a final table Sunday night

I played a few tourneys Sunday night:

The $200 mulligan on full tilt (busted in hour 2)
The $75 7:00 PM tourney on full tilt (busted in hour 2)
The $11 (one rebuy, one addon) at stars - busted in hour one
The $22 rebuy on full tilt.

In the last one, I made a run. I went into hour 2 slightly above average in chips, then used big hands to propel me to 3rd chip position out of about 60 left after the 2nd break. Starting the 3rd hour, I literally raised every hand first in. It was a 6 max tourney, so fewer players to go through, but I chipped up from 34K to 66K by doing this, and getting action twice when I had hands (I certainly got more action because of my image).

However, after changing tables to a very aggro table and losing a 12-out coinflip, I only ended hour 3 with 44K in chips. This was still above average with about 35 left, as we neared the bubble of 24 players paying. I chipped away, restole where necessary, and got lucky twice (KK beats AA, and J9 beats QQ on a J82 flop) and made the final table.

I busted in 6th (which is first out at a 6 max tourney) at the final table when I restole from "tilting guy" who happened to have QQ that time, and that was good for a $475 cash. I am happy with most of my play, but will review my hand history. I think I got too timid raising first in the later stages of the tourney, although I did resteal a lot.

1/2 NL cash games

14-18 tabling 1/2 NL is going OK, although I can't play as many tables on full tilt, I think. Their software lags a bit, and the fact that I don't see images for players makes it tougher for me to track who I am playing against and their tendancies. I think at full tilt I have to restrict myself to 8 (which is what I can play with 2 monitors in tile mode). Last week was a profitable one, although slightly below expectation, in large part due to losing a fair amount trying to 14-table full tilt (where I think I made a few mistakes).

Going to mostly grind this week, although I might try to play tourneys one night.

Downswing over?

After winning over 3 buyins earlier in the day, I played for a bit at night. Mostly 17-tabling 1/2 NL, but at the end I came back to play some limit.

Sometimes poker seems so easy.



In my NL games, I made over $0.80/hand. Poker seems so easy sometimes.

VPPs for the month

I am not even to 15K VPPs for the month. Given the double VPP promotion, that is slacking. Thoughts of 30K VPPs are long gone. 20K VPPs would be a stretch, although I do plan on playing several hours tomorrow.

Grinding Stars

I have been playing quite a bit on stars the past few days. They have a double VPP promotion that started July 1st and goes through July 6th. I was hoping to get about 5,000 VPPs per day, for 30,000 K total, but after 3 days I had barely broken 10,000 VPPs. Not bad, but not great.

The games are a bit tougher, as all grinders are multitabling, and I am about even for the past 3 days. I am up some at NL cash (16-tabling), but down at limit. I think the NL earn rate is about normal for me, and I have been a tad unlucky at limit (e.g., last night I only got AA 4 times in 1350 hands, and lost money with them). However, I might only be a breakeven player vs. all these grinders right now. The problem I run into is I can get a lot more VPPs with limit.

Will be playing quite a bit the next 3 days on stars, then I have to play tilt to work off a $250 bonus I got from them. I think I need about 5,000 Tilt points, which should not be too tough to get if I can 8-10 table NL games, as tilt points accumulate more quickly than stars points (but they are not as valuable).