Living a dream...NOT

Transition to PLO

2012-01-12T23:23:00.001+02:00

Hey all,

as you know i am planning to switch to PLO this year. Initial plan was to switch anytime until September 1st, however, recently figured out that i better do it sooner, to be more exact, until the end of March :)

Quite fast, huh? Doable imo, i have some savings which will be enough for at least few months, so i don't need to be a winning player by that time, all i want is to have pretty solid understanding of basics(which actually should be enough to at least b/e @ PLO50).

So, as i have 2,5 months remaining until i switch, i will have to play some 180mans in that time to make some more money. Currently aiming at 3,000 games during Jan-Mar (played 200 so far :D ). Ofc, i have no idea what variance will decide, if i'll run hot, most likely i'll play less games, otherwise might need to play more than planned. Basically, 3,000 is almost $5,500 at my current $1.81/game winrate. I'm aiming at ~$5,000, that's where i got the number from and variance will decide whether it's gonna be more or less games :) (If someone doesn't want to see me at 180mans, you can pay me $5,000 and we have a deal :DDD )

During TCOOP, i'm planning to play only $15 180mans, it's gonna be quite small volume, but i don't want to mass-table, especially during higher stakes events and obv i'm expecting to have best $/game at 15s :) If i manage to get a significant cash in TCOOP i will just switch to PLO after it ends (again, i could switch now, but i just want to make sure that i have more money aside and definitely don't want to wait until i run out of money!).

As for PLO, i'm playing quite a lot. Learning quite slowly, think i should spend more time watching vids as the studying : learning ratio is ~ 30:70 or smtg like that. On the other hand, i find it pretty hard to learn from the videos if i haven't found myself in similar spots that i see in the videos, so getting some more experience at the tables should be helpful imo. Also, will take some coachings really soon. I think everyone will agree that it's the best and fastest way to learn and even tho it's most expensive one, but it will pay off really fast :)

That's about it for today, let's have a great 2012 everyone!

Bigniux

TCOOP. Best day ever...again!

2011-12-20T17:09:00.001+02:00

TCOOP

Weeeee, as you all probably know, yesterday PokerStars announced Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP), which will take place Jan 19th-29th. Damn, looking forward to it. Will definitely play all HE events(except High-Roller :D ). Most likely will have to sell some action, but not sure about that, will make a post here if i do :) Now i gotta save up some rungood until it comes :D

Best day ever...again!

Only a month ago i reported about my best day ever in 180s, didn't take long to break that record :) Not much better than the last one, only ~$100 more, but it's still exciting. And i finally had a great feeling about it, i was actually happy about making so much money. Also, this is second 2k day in 180s this month!

Here's the beautiful graph:

Looks awesome :) Not that many 1st places tho as it usually happens on such days, you can see final table finishes on the right.

Also, i finally exploded in freezout 180mans, after having really long b/e stretch, it feels great to finally see a giraffe at the end of the graph :D

Ok, enough of brags today :D Wish me gl at TCOOP and gl to everyone playing it ;)

Bigniux

Rungoodaments

2011-12-17T02:31:00.002+02:00

Yoo,

as you might have guessed from the topic, the post is about me running HOT this month! :D

Ha, that's quite nice :D And i spent only 48.3 hours playing this month, not that i'm happy about it tho. Gonna try to get my last stellar for this year, need 6,000 VPPs, which is ~1,300-1,400 games, shouldn't be hard :)

Few days ago opened an account @ Betfair for PLO studies. Got a little nice surprise too, they have PLO15 limit, so will be able to move up somewhat fast i hope :D Will try to get the basics ASAP, so i can clear a nice chunk (maybe all) of my $1,000 FDB. With a huge PLO rake it shouldn't be too difficult!

I also started to add 10-15 turbo MTTs(up to $16.5 BI) into my sessions on PokerStars. I think i missed out quite much of profits by not playing them, will probably add more of them soon and some higher stakes, tho that depends on how i run at 180s :) Would be nice to bink something soon, you know, it's Christmas time, i would take it as a present from PokerStars :D Hmm, probs gonna ask them for that, they have nice support, should be fun :D

Gluck!
Bigniux

The Future

2011-12-08T04:11:00.001+02:00

Hey all,

as promised, this post will be about my future plans :)

So, the way i see my future, i need to switch to cash games. I'm still trying to figure out whether should i choose NLHE or PLO. But most likely will go with PLO, because my plan is to end up there anyway, so would kinda waste time learning NLHE. Why cash games? Well, i pretty much have to choose between HS MTTs and cash. MTTs would obv be quite cool, however i want to have more freedom and especially free evenings and that's not really possible if i would grind MTTs. So that leaves me with cash games and even tho, PLO is quite sick and difficult game, i believe that i'm good enough to pwn PLO tables sooner or later :)

As some of you know, i gave PLO a shot during summer and it wasn't anywhere close to success. Why? I'm not sure but i guess because i tried to learn it for the wrong reasons, i was kinda running from sngs. But now i just want to make more money. I don't have plans to be poker pro for really long, well, actually it is quite long :D I want to do something better than poker after i get bachelor degree(which is 4,5 years from now), but might go for master degree right after that, so i might even have 6,5 years to play poker. Well that's actually a lot! But i'm not gonna try to plan that, just too difficult to know where i'll be after such long time. So, basically i don't want to spend a couple of years playing sngs while studying at uni, which would mean that i couldn't even make $100k/year. And well, i think that in cash games i could make much more money after reaching PLO200 stakes. Because of very simple reason - time management. As a sng player i can't squeze in 1-2 hours sessions few times a day, just seems as waste of time to spend 2 hours to play 20-30 games while it takes only 4 hours to play 100 games in one session. And CGs would allow me to manage my time as i want and it would also be much easier to have balanced lifestyle, which leads to better overall quality of life :)

Also, yesterday i finally finished my deal with SNGProtege, i was only staked since Nov 1st, because i felt as i don't need coachings to keep my game at top level, but i didn't have bankroll to play on my own. Finally, i have my own bankroll and will play on my own :)

That said, the plan looks something like this: make $1,000 and deposit them to some other site and start playing+learning @ PLO10. That would be 100 BI bankroll for PLO which should definitely be enough (i could obv reload that). The reason why i want to have separate bankroll for PLO is just because it would keep things easier and i could know how i'm doing without help of HEM (i won't use HUD at micros). That's the start and i will definitely keep playing at other sites at least until i am comfortable @ PLO100 at which time i'll make a decision to either move to PokerStars or just keep playing at other sites. However, i think it's more likely i won't move to PokerStars. But well, that doesn't really matter now, since i'm still far away from PLO100 :D

So, the next part of the plan is the main game switch to PLO. When will it happen? Most likely when i will be winning player @ PLO100, even tho my hourly would be lower than at Sngs, i think at that time i'll want to focus on PLO to reach higher limits where the earnings should be better as fast as possible. There is a deadline tho, September 1st, when i start studying at uni. Depending on my skill level, i would either just switch even at PLO50 limit, because i won't be able to play as many sngs as i can now and so a switch at that time will just speed up the process. 8 months might not seem as a lot of time, but with my current poker knowledge, learning skills which i gained while studying sngs and amount of free time i have, i believe i can do it :)

That's about it for PLO, i have some things in mind for the further parts of the plan, but now i need to focus on first stage of the plan :)

There is another thing which i want to learn. FOREX.

FOREX - The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a global, worldwide-decentralized financial market for trading currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends. The foreign exchange market determines the relative values of different currencies.

Yep, i want to be a trader :) And it not necessarily ends with FOREX, that's just a start and depending how things develop, it might evolve into something huge :) However, it will definitely take a lot of time and dedication to achieve something in trading, but since i always admired that(and it actually has some similarities to poker) i think i must do my best and become professional trader! It's gonna be way tougher than PLO tho, cause i'm starting from 0 and overall it's way more difficult than poker.

I don't really have such a good plan for it tho. I bought a book few months ago, so that's how i'm gonna start, also there are a bunch of free sites with various articles for beginners, which will definitely be helpful. After i will understand some basic stuff, since i'm 100% sure it's way easier to learn anything having a coach, i will look for personal training(i already know some, will just need to make a choice). It's not expensive also, which is really cool, something ~$40-$50/hour for 10-20 hour packages and one great thing about them is that they're not done through internet. You need to go to company's office and you study there with a coach!

So, that's pretty much it about my future :) It sums up my plans for whole next year. The new journey begins after New Year celebration. Obv, I might read something before that, but official start is Jan 2nd. Hopefully i'll be able to post more often when i'll have more things going in my life than just sngs :)

Good luck,
Ignas

The Past

2011-12-05T19:19:00.001+02:00

Hey all,

November wasn't best month, been lazy most of the time and also had some troubles with internet connection, so overall had A LOT days-off and so played only 1784 games :( Results aren't really bad for such volume. But i feel quite dissapointed with myself. One of the reasons why i didn't play a lot is prop bet i was on. Thought it's gonna motivate me to play a lot, however i focused on results too much and since i wasn't running too well, i was feeling bad during most of the sessions at the beginning of the month, which caused me to take a bunch of days-off. I don't regret participating in prop bet tho, even tho i burned $500, but i learnt from my mental mistakes and will be better in the future.

Recently, i'm feeling as i don't have any motivation to play. The only poker related thing i still enjoy is coaching. I guess the reason is because i need to think way more while coaching compared to playing and also, it's still interesting to discuss poker strategy, add that in coachings there's no variance which leaves only positive emotions :)

I haven't been running too well over last 3 months, only @ 15s i'm running quite good (which is obv great :D )

Overall, it looks like 6000 games should be a fine sample, however, when you break it down in stakes, it such a small piece of each. At 3rs i had a little over 1,500 games b/e stretch and i couldn't say that i'm out of it already. 8s quite suck so far too. Made $2,000 quite fast, then 150 BI downer -> recovery -> and ~200 BI down after today lol. Only 15s graph looks fine, some 100ish BI downers, but going up steady. Oh well, sooner or later that will even out!

Good luck,
Ignas

The Next Step

2011-11-08T03:47:00.000+02:00

Hello,

i was planning to make this post more than a week ago, but was feeling lazy every time i though i should write it... but, i'm finally doing it!!! :D

As some of you (most probably) already know, recently i've been promoted to a coach @ SngProtege. I'm really grateful to Matt for giving me such a great opportunity. Not only it will help me stay on top of my game, but it's great to share the knowledge you've got with someone else :) I already had two coaching sessions with my first student and so far it seems to be going quite well, definitely gonna make him a beast @ 180s!

I will update "Private Coaching" page later this month, so stay tuned if you want to book a session :)

Another step in my career might be becoming video producer @ PokerStrategy. First, i will produce some videos for SngProtege, so i can get some feedback on the quality from the proteges and then will decide if i want to apply for it or not :)

Only 362 days ago i started working with SngProtege and i really didn't expect that in such short time(well, maybe not that short :D ) i will be as good as i am now. That just shows how much and how fast you can learn from the coaches, it took me ~6 months to become breakeven regular @ micro stakes while learning from videos/articles only and now i'm beating small stakes with quite nice winrate :)

Well, it didn't actually take me 362 days to learn how to play well, there were some ups and downs during the year which made me a better player overall, probably biggest lesson i learned was that i realized how important (and sometimes not that easy) it is to not let things go out of control. What things you may ask? Things like BRM, sticking mostly to game you're good at and not playing whichever game you feel as playing, controlling the way you play(so your game doesn't devolve) and NOT PLAYING TOO MANY TABLES!!! It's funny but the last thing can lead to all others:
Playing too many tables -> Your game devolves(well, you can play as well with less tables, but overall quality decreases a lot with too many tabs) -> You start playing other games, cause you're not making as much money as you used to at your main game -> Taking shots out of BRM too often.

^^That's pretty much what happened to me :D It's a bit annoying that i didn't realize what went wrong earlier, cause now i kinda lost 6 months of quality poker this year and i don't feel that the lesson i learned is worth 6 motnhs, but well, i won't let it happen again in the future, i'm a pro and pros don't do this :)

Speaking about future, i will write a post soon about my future plans/thoughts so stay tuned :)

Out for now, best of luck @ life,
Bigniux

October Wrap-up

2011-11-01T16:30:00.002+02:00

Hey,

October is over and it's time to wrap it up :)

Couldn't achieve my volume goal(again). But i'm fine with that, played 3,000 games which is decent volume imo and i'm always aiming for 4,000 just because i never played that much and it would be nice achievement :)

Here's the graph of October:

Nothing impressive imo, 2,000 games b/e streak wasn't helpful to make more money :D Hopefully won't experience any big downswings or b/e streaks in November, need to win that prop bet!!!

Freezouts are still quite annoying, i think i'm playing well, but i'm still waiting for real heater :D Having 7% ROI at former 7.7s, 12s and current 8s and 15s isn't nice :( Here's how my overall graph looks for $5-$15 stakes, rebuys excluded:

Well, the end is quite a heater, but i would like to win more haha.

Since i'm in a prop bet for November, i won't be able...hmm...no, i will be able, but i won't let myself to play PC games which i'm waiting for. No big deal, i'll just take a week off in December, maybe even more, since i'm planning quite a lockdown month :)

I'm starting to realize that most likely i won't achieve Supernova status this year, need 38,007 VPPs for it :( I'm not saying that it's not doable, but i would need to play shitloads in next two months and i'm not RB Pro :D If somehow i would manage to collect more than 19,000 VPPs in November, then yea, would probably get it, but otherwise it's a clear no imo :(

Some goals for November:

[ ] 5,000 Games (that's gonna be quite a big challenge)
[ ] Average 200 games/day (when playing)
[ ] Max 5 days off

That's it for now, have a good November everyone ;)

Prop Bet

2011-10-31T03:12:00.001+02:00

Yo,

found out about prop bet in 2+2 180s thread. Rules are simple, the one, who has the most profit in November, wins. Each participant bets $500 and winner takes all, so far 6 people are in and 3 still have to make their decision.

It's gonna be tough to win it, but should give me lots of motivation to play a lot and do my best at the tables.

Will update how it's going in the mid of the month :)

Oh, btw, didn't ship Unibet Riga Open sat today, AKs < QQ. Hoping for a better run on Tuesday, if not, well there'll still be some time left to sat in ;)

Out for now, gl :)

Unibet Riga Open

2011-10-29T03:09:00.001+03:00

Few days ago decided to take a shot and try winning myself a €2,500 Unibet Riga Open Main Event package. Since i want to start playing some live tournaments, this one seemed as a good place to start my career, cause it's quite close to my home (only 300km away).

There are various buy-in sattelites running, cheapest ones are freerolls with €0.5 or €0.25 rebuys. Here's all of them:

I've already played €110 final once, no luck :) Tho, today won €275 and €110 tickets(always starting at €2 or €4 rebuys) and so will have two more chances to win it soon :)

Made few deposits for a total of €260 and so far spent ~€180 of the them. Fields are really soft and small (there were 36 players in €110 Tuesday Final) which makes it quite easy to advance through steps(didn't get a ticket at €4 only once, because ran out of money for rebuys :D ). Had one super easy win @ €2 rebuy, it had 6 GTD tickets and only 6 people registered, so insta win lol.

Unibet has really annoying late reg system. If there are 10 players at the tournament (10max tables) and you late reg, table won't be split into two 5handed and 6handed tables, instead you will have to wait until someone busts out of the tournament so you can take his seat. Also, you can't unregister while you're waiting for a seat. I saw people late regging into rebuys at 200/100 blinds and being seated only at 1k/500 blinds with 3,000 chips lol.

Software is of course not the best either, takes ~10 seconds until the table loads, lobby doesn't have enough filters(like none at all, unless i can't find them). Also, i'm having troubles with HEM, can't get a HUD working without using "Table Finder" and even then, it sometimes doesn't show up for some players and for some there are two HUDs lol. But well, since i'm not playing many tables there, i'm fine with it :)

So, that's it for now. Follow me on twitter if you want fast updates on how i'm doing in weekly final sats(Sunday and Tuesday evenings) !

Good luck at the tables,
Ignas

Best day ever

2011-10-23T03:10:00.001+03:00

Ok, this is worth a blogpost :D

That's how it looks :)

+$2280, 200 games, 4x1st @ 8s, 2x1st @ 3rs and 1x1st @ 15s, also 2nd and 3rd @ 15s.

Pretty damn awesome, huh? :D It's nice that my effort and hard work are finally paying off (lol, 2k doomswitch incoming? :D ). Hopefully will have more great days soon :)

Bankroll Management. Samples

2011-10-22T16:57:00.000+03:00

Hey guys(and girls in case any of you read :D )

Recently i remembered about nice forum post made by Pzhon (coach @ Pokerstrategy). It's about bankroll management mainly. Here's the link to it. I'll copy/paste it here and will add some of my own thoughts and a bit of explanations about math :) (Quoted text is in italics)

The bankroll you need depends on your ROI, which games you are playing, and your personal risk tolerance. A simple, consistent formula is

Bankroll = (comfort x SD^2)/(win rate)

comfort is something which depends on your risk tolerance and your ability to move down in stakes if you hit a bad streak. A comfort level of 2 is generally considered aggressive. A comfort level of 4 is conservative. You can use the same comfort level across many forms of advantage gambling. One other meaning of the comfort level is that your instantaneous risk of ruin, your chance to go broke if you stay in your current game, is about 1/7^comfort.

SD = standard deviation measures how spread out the results are of each tournament. For single table tournaments, this does not depend much on your playing style. In a 50-30-20 structure, your standard deviation is going to be about 145%-155% of a buy-in. In larger tournaments, the standard deviation is larger, and it becomes more sensitive to your playing style and how much you win. In a 45-player tournament, the standard deviation may be 280%-330% of a buy-in. In a 180 player tournament, the standard deviation may be 500%-800% of a buy-in.

Your win rate should be expressed in the same units as the standard deviation, say in buy-ins. You can include rakeback and bonuses. If you regularly take money out of your bankroll, then you should reduce your win rate by these withdrawals.

For example, if you use a target comfort level of 3, and you have an ROI of 5% in STTs, then you should have a bankroll of 3 x 1.55^2 / 0.05 = 144 buy-ins. With the same level of risk tolerance and in the same games, if your ROI is 10%, then you only need 72 buy-ins. If you have an ROI of 40% in 180 player tournaments with a standard deviation of 6 buy-ins, then you should have 3 x 6^2 / 0.40 = 270 buy-ins. MTT buy-ins are much easier to lose than STT buy-ins.

If your bankroll falls to below the target bankroll, that is ok, you don't have to move down immediately. However, if your bankroll falls to less than half of the target amount, then you should move down. Playing with less than half of the target bankroll means that playing should be viewed as an expense.

Well, i don't have what to add about BRM, but here's some things about sample sizes:

It is normal not to know exactly what your ROI is. You can make tentative calculations, and update them as you get more information. A rough 95% confidence interval for your ROI after n tournaments is your observed ROI +- 2 SD / Sqrt(n)(2.6*SD/Sqrt(n) for 99% confidence interval and 3.1*SD/sqrt(n) for 99.8% confidence interval). You might want to play enough that this confidence interval does not include 0 before moving up. Be prepared to drop down again if you do not have good results at the higher level.

Some of you might not understand what 95% confidence interval(CI) means, so i'll try to explain it. Let's say that we have played 1,000 games and we find our 95% CI. This means that in 95% of 1,000 games sessions our ROI will be in that interval. Quite simple, huh? :D (Ofc, don't hesitate to ask if i made it unclear to you :) )

So, now let's look at some examples. I'd also like to note that because it's difficult to know your exact SD in 45s/180s, i'll just use the average of provided SDs (so, 305% for 45s and 650% for 180s).

Let's start with 45mans.

Well, let's say that we have 10% ROI(which is not really decent, but pretty good) after 3,000 games. So, to find our 95% CI, we have to calculate 2*SD/Sqrt(n), which is 2*305%/Sqrt(3,000)=11.1% Oh wow, so 95% CI of our ROI is 10%+-11.1% or [-1.1%, 21.1%] Well, that's quite large interval and our real ROI for sure can be really different from our current 10%.

Let's see what's our 99.8% CI with same sample and ROI.

3.1*305%/Sqrt(3,000) = 17.3% now it's really huge, 10%+-17.3% or [-7.3%, 27.3%] is a damn big interval so our sample size is damn small.

Now, let's find out what sample size would be pretty good, i'd say it's quite good if the interval is going to be ROI+-2%. I'll use 95% CI here

2*305%/Sqrt(n)=2%

610%/2%=Sqrt(n)

305%=Sqrt(n)

n = 305^2 = 93,025 Well, you can see that it's a damn huge sample size and i guess no one has it.

Few more examples:

95% CI after 3,000 games is going to be ROI+-11.1%

95% CI after 10,000 games is ROI+-6.1%

95% CI after 50,000 games is ROI+-2.73%

What about 180s? I'll provide only results without calculations, cause math is the same only SDs differs :)

95% CI after 3,000 games is going to be ROI+-24%

95% CI after 10,000 games is ROI+-13%

95% CI after 50,000 games is ROI+-5.8%

Here's a real life example:

Username	Games Played	Av. Profit	Av. Stake	Av. ROI	Total Profit	Form	Ability /100	Network	Filter
Bigniux	11,093	$1.5	$9	17%	$16,690	LLLLLLLL	N/A	PokerStars	E180-180 S5-15	x

95% CI is going to be 17%+-12.3% or between ~5% and ~29% which is well, quite huge but maths prove that i'm at least small winner most likely :)

So, to conclude, i'll just say that you should make your own conclusions from the numbers :D Try not to underestimate variance and don't take your results for granted, unless you have huge sample :)

Good luck at the tables,

Ignas ;)

Recap

2011-10-21T03:55:00.001+03:00

Well, that's how i'm doing since Sept 5th, not happy with my volume obv, but it's better this month :) 145 games are 45mans (+~$170), the rest are 180s(3r,8s and 15s). Kinda long b/e stretch, but i'm feeling good and not too worried about it, can't wait for some good variance tho :D

Blog title

2011-10-18T03:22:00.001+03:00

Just got an idea for a bit better blog title after reading whyme's blog post :) thx for idea, whyme :D

Shopping

2011-10-13T14:34:00.004+03:00

Currently that's my favorite song, turn it on and chill while you're reading further ;) It's one of those kinda romantic songs, but i like them, esp since it's not sad, so i can just relax while listening :) Oh, and also you might want to check out my favorite internet radio here. Love it, lots of great songs(german radio, but german songs are really rare). Wonder what you might hear there? Well, lots of popular new songs (and some remixes of older ones), artists such as David Guetta, LMFAO, Flo-Rida, Bruno Mars, Taio Cruz, Chris Brown, Katy Perry, Kesha, etc.... They also play some house tracks(i think it's house, always have trouble with correct genres :D ) and some other genres too. Another thing i love about it is that i hear new tracks way before they hit local radio stations, best example i have is with "Dj Antoine vs Timati feat. Kalenna - Welcome to St. Tropez (DJ Antoine vs Mad Mark Remix)". It took over a month until local radio stations started playing it since i heard it on that radio. Of course, i think that people from Mid/South Europe won't have such delays, since i'm living in pretty much "third" country. Ok, but enough about music, let's get back to topic.

Went out for shopping yesterday, didn't have much time + got stuck in traffic jam (10min drive turned into 35min lol :f_confused: ), still managed to buy most of the stuff i needed.

A wallet, nothing fancy and really cheap (~$20), i always love stuff with good brands and usually avoid cheapish, but this doesn't even have a brand, i mean, not even something attached saying who made it :D only some paper saying that it's "leather wallet" :f_biggrin: probs would have gotten something similar from stars, only with stars logo and 4x more expensive haha

Ran out of perfume recently, ofc, i'm not expert, but luckily nice girl helped me out and made my decision pretty fast, took these:

damn cool bottle, love it :D searched for some info and scent consists of lemon, cedar and amber(wtf, does it even smell? :f_confused: ). Probs doesn't say you much, uh? Wouldn't to me either :f_biggrin: but i like them :)

And well, i finally bought a watch! Just checked my blog and i was planning to buy it 8 months ago haha. Here it is:

looks great(better irl than in pic :) ), just need to shorten bracelet so i can start wearing it :)

also bought sweatshirt, so pretty much all i need now is few jeans and a nice sweater(damn, that's gonna take long till i find those i guess, gotta take a girl next time i go shopping :f_biggrin: )

Oh, and i saw really nice Nike shoes today, but my fuckin foot is small and there wasn't my size in that shop, but shop assistant told me that there's one pair of almost my size at other shop, so gonna take a look soon and hopefully get 'em :)

Figured out that i need a new phone too, smartphone obv, the choice is pretty much between iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S2. Would pretty much snap iPhone, but the problem is that i would need to change my mobile operator to one who's prices are fuckin big, after i left them, i'm paying ~3x less/month for pretty much same amount of service usage lol. While i could get Galaxy really cheap at my current operator with a pretty good deal for services. Tho, i wonder if they will start selling iPhones soon, so i'm kinda unsure what to do now, probably will buy Galaxy some time soon and will wait for iPhone 5 next year and switch if i won't fall in love with S2 :) any opinions on these phones? maybe someone tried both and could give a decent opinion on both?

Out for now, gl everyone,
Bigs

Deep run. PC games

2011-10-11T16:24:00.001+03:00

Hey all,

decided to play few MTTs on Sunday, didn't play as much as planned, cause got kinda bored only 2-3 hours in a session lol, after all 180s finished and busted all but one MTT, got left with a great stack at Bigger $11, so well, just opened "Rage" (PC game) in windowed mode and played the game while 1tabling :D Played quite strange, felt as i'm not trying to run over opps and thought that i'm playing tight, but my stats were showing 30/24 and that didn't change for over 200 hands lol, i guess it's not that tight for FR table :D ofc, bluffed few times, here's one of them:

$900/$1800 Ante $225 No Limit Holdem • 9 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	the_thorpdeo	$78,598
UTG+1	eklektos11	$76,477
MP1	panoramix3	$49,051
MP2	perevozchik	$54,618
MP3	s73f4n	$23,774
CO	Bigniux	$55,342
BTN	mcandrews3rd	$104,263
SB	mrato699	$40,847
BB	Nebelsurfer	$212,857

Pre-Flop ($4,725, 9 players)Hero is CO

the_thorpdeo raises to $3,780, eklektos11 calls $3,780, 3 folds, Bigniux calls $3,780, 3 folds

Flop ($16,065, 3 players)

the_thorpdeo checks, eklektos11 checks, Bigniux bets $8,750, the_thorpdeo folds, eklektos11 raises to $17,500, Bigniux goes all-in $51,337, eklektos11 folds

Final Pot: $84,902

Bigniux shows

Bigniux wins $76,152 (net +$20,810)
the_thorpdeo lost $4,005
eklektos11 lost $21,505

Pretty easy imo, UTG was a nit, so decided to flat. When he checks this flop 3way, i'm pretty sure he doesn't have anything (well, maybe 99-QQ, but i can bluff those off) and i couldn't think of a hand that agrro UTG+1 could play this way, basically it's a spot where i'm FOS and probs he knows that, combine it with the fact that we both were agrro and it looks like a nice ch/r, but not against someone who can think(me :D ).

And here's the key hand that i lost deep in a game, few hands later i ran T6s into KK and busted 39th for $299 :(

$18k/$35k Ante $4.4k No Limit Holdem • 8 Players • PokerStars

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	bkmzee	$1,904k
UTG+1	mig121	$2,991k
MP1	Janush Poha	$382k
MP2	bucknuck303	$406k
CO	artic91	$1,461k
BTN	WRXST1	$1,419k
SB	LillaLejonet	$1,712k
BB	Bigniux	$1,711k

Pre-Flop ($88k, 8 players)Hero is BB

1 fold, mig121 raises to $77k, 3 folds, WRXST1 calls $77k, 1 fold, Bigniux calls $42k

Main Pot : ($249k)

Bigniux		29.90%	-$2698.50
WRXST1		70.10%	$97198.50

Flop ($284k, 3 players)

Bigniux checks, mig121 bets $105k, WRXST1 calls $105k, Bigniux raises to $345k, mig121 folds, WRXST1 calls $240k

Main Pot : ($1,044k)

Bigniux		49.40%	$170489.00
WRXST1		50.60%	$183011.00

Turn ($1,079k, 2 players)

Bigniux bets $447k, WRXST1 goes all-in $993k, Bigniux calls $546k

Main Pot : ($3,029k)

Bigniux		31.80%	-$29471.94
WRXST1		68.20%	$1072971.94

River ($3,064k, 2 players, 1 all-in)

Main Pot : ($3,029k)

Bigniux		0.00%	$0.00
WRXST1		100.00%	$3028692.00

Final Pot: $3,064k

Bigniux shows

WRXST1 shows

WRXST1 wins $3,064k (net +$1,645k)
Bigniux lost $1,419k
mig121 lost $186k

Oh well, shit happens :D

It's quite annoying to feel that i might not accomplish 4,000 games goal...again. Had such a great start, in 4 days (Oct 2nd-5th) played 1,000 games, thought that i'll easily hit my goal, but next 5 days really suck, 200 games lol. Kinda have to blame PC games for that, specifically "Rage". Loved it, but well, should have just finished it in 2-3 days instead of playing few hours each evening and not playing poker :(
There are 4 more games coming out in next 5 weeks:

Stronghold 3 (Oct 25th): Well, probs won't spend too much time playing it, but will for sure try it out.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Nov 8th): For sure gonna finish campaign, luckily it's usually short so depending on release hour, shouldn't spend more than 1 day on it!

Assasin's Creed: Revelations (Nov 15th): Damn, i love this game soooo much. Last release took me 20 hours(played that much in 48 hours i think, lol nolifer) to complete campaign, well could do faster, but sometimes need to complete side missions to earn some $ :D I wouldn't expect to be shorter this time either, so -3 more days.

Need for Speed: The Run (Nov 18th): Hmm, wonder how much of it i'll play, usually i get annoyed pretty fast, cause i really don't like them, not as interesting as NFSU(2) used to be :) so this shouldn't affect my poker time much :)

Well, gotta hope for the best and hopefully i'll manage to put poker > PC Games :D I don't think that it's bad to play them, but more important things should be my priority :)

That's it for today, good luck at the tables ;)

Ignas

Intro!

2011-10-04T03:52:00.002+03:00

Hello all,

most of you probably know me, but it's standard to right introduction at the start :D

My name is Ignas, i'm 21 year old professional poker player from a small country, Lithuania (Eastern Europe, check map on the right :D ).

Usually, people of my age are studying at universities, but year ago i made a decision to quit it, because i wasn't really interested and my results were really bad. Was studying econometric (maths+economics+statistics+IT), it's actually great subject and most likely i'll start at it again next year, but that's different story, let's get back to poker :)

Long time ago i knew that there's such a game played for real money, named "Poker", but have never tried it and even seen how it's played until, in 2008, i got a poker chip set as a Christmas present from my parents. I started searching for game rules on the internet and found that it can be played online. Of course, why should i wait till i can play it with friends if i can just do it now. I don't remember what was my first site, but after some time playing for play money, i found out about "no deposit" bonuses and this led me to Pokerstrategy.com where i got free $50 at FTP. For obvious reasons, it didn't take very long till i lost it :D With some other bonuses i played for ~ 2 months and then, when i couldn't find any, i just quit.

It took almost a year when i started playing again(2010 February) and decided to learn it seriously. Started out with freerolls, won few $ there and it was enough for long 5 months where my bankroll never passed $150 mark (busted multiple times, but was lucky enough to rebuild after i get rakeback payment :D ). In the mid of summer, decided to deposit 30$ on FTP and learn how to crush turbo 9mans. Again, i busted in ~ 1 month.

Right before busting at FTP, i remembered that Pokerstars have cheap($0.01-$0.25) MT Sngs, didn't have much money back then, so started with only $11. I already had some knowledge(well, that's what small winners at micros know, so not much :D ) and with some huge luck, made around $1,000 in one month. Felt like i'm living a dream, had never made sooo much money in such a short time. But well, because of my low skill-level i breakeven'd next 3 months...

After my hot run, i joined SitnGoGrinders.com, that helped a bit, but most importantly, i found out about SngProtege.com there. Was lucky enough to be accepted and started out at $2.2 180mans with Matt as my coach. Breakeven'd another month, while was getting better and then it started. My volume jumped up 3 times and i started crushing. It took me only 3,5 months to finish the deal (8,000 games) with a total profit being close to $20,000. I learned sooooo much in those months AND i became really, i mean realllyyyy, greedy. Started taking a lot of shots at $100-200 MTTs, trying to hit a big score, while in same time my MT-Sng game devolved which led me to ~$8,000 "downswing" overall. Tried to recover the loses playing 180s only, but still didn't get my game back and so decided to have a break for 2 months and have a great summer :)

Now, the summer is over, i have signed another deal with SngProtege.com and my game is great again. Of course, there are some things i need to work on, but it will never change, cause there's always room for improvement :) I'm so grateful to Matt for the opportunity to learn. God, that really changed my life. Even tho, i still live with parents, but now i have a substantial income source and i could just as easily live on my own :)

So, that's how my short career looks like, not a very impressive story, but it's really nice to know that i already achieved something :)

Oh, and you'll probably ask "what's the dream?", here it is:

Not M5 most likely, but i'm looking at 535 :)

Cheers,
Bigniux