Stephen Groom Taking a shot at becoming a Poker Pro

All good things must come to an end

It seems that today it has happened. Well not today, ever since the beginning of this month. A combination of cash-game happy hours, rake races, the new VIP system and a small player pool has; for this month at least; rendered the games on sky unplayable.

It all started at the end of December when Sky changed their VIP system, effectively lowering my Rakeback % from 31.3% to 28.8%. I posted in detail about this at  skypoker.com and here is a quote giving my thoughts on the changes:

So I recieve £1,152 instead of £1,250 for next month's £4k rake.  This is a 7.8% pay-cut of the majority of my income and Sky now retains an extra £98.  That is to say I make more each month from C4P than from in-game winnings.  To view it as Rakeback% we are now being given 2.5% less rakeback.  This now makes sky one of the least competitive euro sites for grinders.
[snip]
And to add insult to injury Sky are now encouraging rakeback grinding via their rake races (Full House promotion).  Assuming this promo leads to some people reaching 60,000 points this month lets also analyze the new VIP system's effect upon their Cash4Points:So as you can see the new changes are negative for all players from microstakes to high-volume grinders.

I suspect that I will be spending January away from sky searching for a new network/site so hopefully the impact won't be felt for the 50nl players who's winrates will increase to compensate :p.

Please give answers Sky as to why you have made these changes.
Stephen G
GLifUlose

So that is the new VIP system.  I was quite quickly talked down by my account manager Dan who tried to explain that it was not all bad and to be fair to him, he did a pretty good job as always.  By January 1st, for a number of different reasons I had decided to stick with it for the foreseeable future at Sky, move up to 100nl with a 10bi stop-loss for moving back down.   That is when this happened:

Not get that iPad you wanted for Christmas? Did Grandma get you a Downton Abbey pencil case instead of that 3D TV you asked for?! Well don't let it ruin your 2012 because you've got another chance…If you earn more poker points than any other player in January you will win a prize bundle worth £3,000! If you earn over 60,000 points then you are guaranteed the prizes even if you're not the top earner. It's as simple as that!

So, the 1st of January rolls over, I sit at 100nl and it is absolutely disgusting.  They also introduced "Happy Hours" at this time.

To help give players a leg up on the Cash for Points ladder, Sky Poker will be running three Happy Hours every day of the week. In that time all Poker Points earned on cash game tables from 5-10p and upwards will get a 50% boost, giving players a fantastic opportunity to boost their Cash for Points payout!

As more regs get on it the games get worse and worse and now we have the site's 20 regs playing 16 tables each compared to maybe 100 fish playing 1-2 tables each.  To put it the way I have experienced so far:  At normal peak times where I'd expect to sit with 1 or 2 other grinders on all of my tables, I am now guaranteed to be sitting with three others.  During these new "happy hours" which occur three times per day, two of which are at times when I would usually be playing, if I am to play, I am forced to share my table with a at least three other grinders.

In my opinion we have reached the sad point on Sky where I can no longer make enough money to live from by playing 50 or 100nl.  I promised that I would keep results well away from this blog, but let's just say that I made good use of my 10bi moving down stop-loss and I lost far in excess of £1,000 at 100nl for the first week or so of the month.

Yeah so in continuing my story... I moved down to 50nl and expected to continue the grind as I was in December, playing ~60k hands and expecting to cash out about £1.5k.  Oh how wrong I was.  Lady luck has not been behaving as I would have liked this month, and in total to date this month, my AIEV is around -£1,600 across all limits.  This doesn't help my bottom line when my expected value in the games is to be either slightly losing, or break-even.

So now what?

Now that I have lost my only source of income, I now need to find something else to play before I go completely broke.  Here we meet again with my old friend:  MTTsngs on Pokerstars.

I plan to play another 12-13 hours on Sky in order to maintain my VIP level and because it just makes sense given the difference in rakeback which I will receive by grinding on.  I also managed to freeroll into the £220 Sunday Roller on Sunday evening so I will be playing that also.  Beyond that, I will be cashing out what little is left of my bankroll on Monday and putting at least $1,000 on Pokerstars to start the grind over there.

I did for one month while I was working full-time choose to play 45man and 90man MTTsngs on Pokerstars with a little bit of success.  Back when I used to be a terrible recreational player used to dump off money playing MTTs over there too.  As I remember, the fields were hilariously soft and I did have a small stable of friends who all played small MTTs with a lot of success.  So... I have a lot of good people around for discussing MTT strategy, BRM etc.  Add the availability of good advice and MTT players to my confidence in MTTsngs and we have my plan for Jan/Feb.

Assuming a $1.5k bankroll, my plan is as follows:

• Play 22 days/month
• $15, $8 and $3.5r 180-mans
• $3-$11 , $51r1a and $3.3r MTTs
• Play 1,500 games per month

The volume target is based on my calculations of what is required for Platinum/Supernova status.  Assuming that the end of January goes well and I make the decision to continue to grind on Pokerstars, I would like to maintain a high enough VIP status to get at least 30% rakeback.  ie. Platinum (28%-31% according to pokerstars.co.uk).  By achieving Platinum star VIP level, I also enable myself to become a Supernova by the end of 2012.  Achieving this means that every month afterwards my rakeback is increased to 35-38% (alot!).

This plan for pokerstars is very much a first-step and as of yet I have no idea if the volume targets are realistic.  I believe that after around two or three days of playing I will be able to assess whether it is and will report back with amended plans.

If you have any experience, advice or input regarding any of my plans (VIP scheme, MTTs & MTTsngs on stars or anything else) please leave a comment below.  It would be appreciated very much.

Thanks for reading
Good Luck
Stephen

Wow. Turns out I’m pretty degenerate

This week has been pretty fun.  I went and visited an old friend down at her new place in Brighton and met alot of cool people down there.  A few drunken nights spent with a bunch of squatters and students in Brighton taught me that I really do enjoy travelling, meeting new people and broadening my horizons.  I am 100% going to travel more in the new year and I am going to go as far as making it a new year's resolution, with some goals and targets too.

As far as poker is concerned since I last blogged I have played very little.  I continued with my roll on 888poker for a couple more days and probably lost about 1bi but then I decided to cash it back out for the following reason.  I am a tablegame degen!

I realised this as a result of a number of events in the past week which has taught me that I definately have a problem, leak or addiction which needs addressing.  After a brutal losing session in Teesside I was seen spinning my change to the nearest £100 on blackjack and letting it ride.  I did about 5 spins in excess of £50 and let the original wager ride for about 5 in a row until I finally lost (not letting profit ride unfortuaneltly) and I thought that this was totally out of character for me.  I put it down to stupidity and decided to forget about it.

The next time was on Tuesday at the circus £100 game.  I played in a deep 1/2 game (with an unbelievably soft lineup) and couldn't win a pot due to being totally carddead.  I lost about £200 by blinding out, 3bet folding and folding lots of failled c-bets and left the game.  On the way to the cage to cash my chips back out I was again seen playing £50 blackjack hands and higher.  This was starting to look like a problem.

So I was playing on 888poker, had one of those sessions again, couldn't win a pot, couldn't get a 3bet or cbet through and lost a few bi.  As I felt my mouse sliding to blackjack on the way to the [x] button to close 888poker I realised I was in trouble.  I resisted, went straight to cashier and cashed out the remainder of my roll.  Having $1k sitting right next to a high limit online blackjack game is totally unsuitable until I am sure that I can resist.

Now that I have recognised that I have a problematic tilty-degenerate blackjack streak in me I must think of a way to address it.  I have a pretty good group of friends who travel with me most of the time when I visit casinos and I am damn sure that they would give me a slap around the head and ask me WTF i'm doing if they saw me spinning £100's on blackjack.  I don't want to rely on this though.  I need to convince myself that I have the self control to have £1k+ sitting in an online casino and know that it will never be exposed to negative expectation table games.

I think for the mostpart this will just require willpower and there will be no quick fix for putting a stop to this.  I think that the longer I go without touching tablegames the easier it will be for me not to play.  My friend Ben has a philosophy that he won't play table games at all.  While I respect this I don't think it is completely healthy either.  I believe that often it is fun to play micro-limit blackjack or roulette in a casino whilst drinking, waiting for a game to start or whatever but I need to address the problem of playing so high.  I think that I will attempt to adopt Ben's ideal for a little while and set a target to not play tablegames completely for a period.  Maybe another new year's resolution.

With that in mind, if anyone would like to lay me some money for a prop bet about me not playing tablegames for 1month, 3months or maybe even 6months to a year in 2012 then I'm all ears.  We should discuss it in private however.  No silly £5, £10, £50 wagers though.  It would have to be a figure which it would hurt to lose.

Back to poker... On sky this month I have stopped tracking my progress via pokerjournal and the only measure of how well I have been doing is my cashout history.  I am very happy with the amount of money I have made in the last 30 days to date but not too pleased with the volume.  I don't know for sure how much I have played but I am pretty sure I've fallen below my 120hrs/month target.  I think that I will begin tracking meticulously again in december either via PokerJournal or find a way to do it online (suggestions anybody?).  This way I will know if I've been excessively lazy and know how short of my target I have fallen.

I think that is about all I have to say this week so please leave a comment if you want to discuss anything I've wrote.

Cheers
Stephen