VTBalla34's Poker Spot

Poker Stars

2009-01-27T20:28:00.002-05:00

I finally started looking at Poker Stars to take my business. They are compatible with Sharkscope HUD, Poker Tracker 3 HUD, and are obviously open to U.S. players. The only thing they don't have is rakeback, but their VIP program apparently compensates for that. I'm not sure if rakeback is a better deal or not yet, but I estimated that I could make an extra $225/month in bonus cash through their VIP program playing at my previous volume.

I reactivated my account on there and made an initial deposit via e-check....this deposit option is AWESOME....they basically just withdraw the dough straight out of your real bank account so I didn't have to jump through any hoops to get it there....real nice. I made the max deposit I could at the time ($100) and will probably deposit the rest incrementally after they finish verifying my bank account. I should have it all in there by the middle of February, at which point I will be ready to smash the tables!!!

Anybody know how well their e-check cashout option works?

Pokerstars also has these interesting SNGs called "Double or Nothing". The name is self-explanatory....10 players pony up the buy-in, and play until there are 5 people left, and they split the prize pool. The $5 games (haha bankroll nit even though my actual bankroll is much higher than the artificial $100) are so soft. People still try to play for first in those early, and bust out chasing stupid draws, but play super tight on the bubble. Such awful strategy.

Real easy to steal from the nits on bubble to keep yourself alive while they get grinded down. The turbos are a good structure, with blinds going up every 5 minutes and an ante at the 50-100 level. So many bad players don't take ante into consideration, and that is especially costly when there are 6-8 players left contributing dead money to the pot. The turbo DON games also have a real light rake (I think it is $0.20 at the $5 level, compared to $0.50 for the normal games) which will make a huge difference. I'm definitely looking forwarded to getting the rest of my roll on there and playing more of these.

Atlantic City Thursday!!!! oh fuck yes....i can already smell the cigarettes, sewage, and italians!!! peace bitches

Full Tilt closure, Rakeback, and Cake

2009-01-21T18:10:00.001-05:00

So yeah, i really suck at keeping up with this blog. Not like I have more than one reader anyway (hi mom!!).

It has been pretty eventful in my world of poker this month, but unfortuantely the poker stuff is mostly administrative and didn't include very much actual playing. I really gotta get that straightened out too, cause the extra money was straight cash. But I've been hittin the gym lately, and eating better, so at least I will be in shape once I get back to the tables and that might actually keep me from playing hours on end in the evening.

But since my last blog, I finally got a rakeback account signed up at Rake The Rake (gratuitous ad below). All the percentages are pretty standard, but they seemed to be one of the most established so they'll probably be around for a while. The extra $2-$3k per year I've been sacrificing without rakeback is just insane....i want to shoot myself for not finding this sooner.

Bullshit Full Tilt poker refused my plethora of requests to retag my account to be rakeback eligible, so I finally went ahead and closed it down. Really sucks because Full Tilt is the only site that: 1) allows U.S. players 2) is supported by Sharkscope HUD 3) is supported by Poker Tracker 3 and 4) has rakeback. These are my main criteria for a poker site and I obviously am going to have to compromise somewhere. These tools are EASILY worth the money at the frequency I play, especially the HUD addons....its so helpful to see limping/raising percentages and postflop aggressiveness, as well as how big of a donk they are, right on the screen. They easily pay for themselves in the first week. Hopefully FTP will come to their senses and reopen my account and retag it, but until then, FUCK YOU FULL TILT!

I signed up for a new account on Cake poker (which is good for all, except #3), but their deposit options are horrible and I've heard cashouts take a while to complete too, so I'm probably not going to deposit on there unless I get into a real jam. Sucks too cause the games on there are reportedly the softest on the net (hence the name Cake I guess), so i may have to spread my wealth around.

Well that's about it bitches....I'm looking into moving to Poker Stars, so we'll see how that goes...plus Atlantic City is coming up next week!!! hooorah

2-month update

2009-01-07T10:42:00.000-05:00

So hey guys, I forgot to blog for the past 2 months. I really suck at this. Who invented the term blog anyway? It sounds so lame. Anyways, I'm going to start more, just haven't had the time.

November was definitely the best month on record, as could be expected for a close to ~$500 score in the first session! Turns out that the table I posted had left off another first place win, so most profitable online day was easily crushed. Combined with an Obama victory and the Hokies securing an improbable ACC Championship birth, I'm not sure November 2008 can be topped. I played about 20 sessions in the entire month and didn't have a single losing session. I don't know how that is possible, but I was running so good it was insane. I scored about $2,500 in November, rivaling my take-home pay at my real job! And I didn't log anywhere close to the same amount of hours online as I did at real job. I know I was just on a nasty heater, but locking in a profit in every single session was one of the best feelings I've had in my poker career. Just when I thought I was ready to start my pro career, December happened.....

I guess you can't run good forever, and December was living proof. I started off the month on the same heater I was on in November, finishing up about $400 for my 3 sessions. I was on travel in Kings Bay, GA for the first part of the month and got some good playing time in at my hotel room. On 5 December, I finished up my tour in GA and headed to the ACC Championship game in sunny Tampa. I got a speeding ticket on the way there (lame ass Florida cops and their speed traps and 9 mph over speeding tickets!!!), but met Maggie, Will, and Jen at the airport for a weekend of drunken debauchery and HOKIE FOOTBALL!!!!! Man it was great to avenge a regular season loss to Boston College for the 2nd year in a row! We looked really good and I had a great feeling about playing the Big East *champion* Cincinnati in the Orange Bowl. Tampa was a lot of fun, the weather was AWESOME, and we definitely took advantage of the 72 degree weather and the 3rd story swimming pool/hot tub at the hotel. Shit was pimp.

December 8 was back to life, back to reality. Posted a $225 loss first day back. Excellent. Couple small scores, couple small losses, until doomsday (aka 14 December 2008). Posted worst loss ever on that day ($545!!!). Man that really sucked. That was good for about 20% of my bankroll, but I am still rolled for the level I'm playing, so its all good. Just variance kicking me in the nuts. Proceeded to split sessions for the erst of the month and ended up only $263 for the month. Considering I played 262 tourneys, my ROI obviously took a HUGE hit (only 3% for the month, compared to about 20% overall). Not happy times.

Had high hopes for January, especially after the Hokies wrecked Cincy in the Orange Bowl! BOOOOOOOmmmmm it felt good to finally win a BCS bowl. Unfortunately poker wasn't as kind and I finished down $500 in 3 sessions by 4 January.

At that point I looked into the possibility of rakeback. It is basically a percentage of your buyin that the site gives back to you by signing up with one of their affiliates. At Full Tilt, the rakeback is 27% of all rake paid, so for every $33 + $3 tourney I play, I would get back 27% of $3, or about $0.75. I really can't believe I have played this long without knowing about that, its like I was just lighting free money on fire. Considering I played about 1,800 tourneys since July, I would have basically gotten a check for about $600. I estimated that, given my current rate of play, I would give up close to $3,000 this year alone without rakeback. That is assuming I stay at the $33 level, if I move up and play $50, or even $100, you can see how much free money I would be giving up. That is unsat.

Unfortunately, Full Tilt is being a bunch of douchebags about retagging my account as rakeback eligible because I signed up under some other shitty affiliate (I think it was SNG Planet...do NOT sign up there...sign up through www.rakeback.com). So I withdrew my entire bankroll and am moving it to another site, and closing down my Full Tilt account until they see things my way. Not sure where I'm going to play at yet, but probably Poker Stars or Ultimate Bet *Cringe*. I hope they've cleaned up their act....we'll see!

So that means I won't be playing for the next couple of weeks while I wait for my Full Tilt cashout and wait to deposit on a site of choice (with rakeback, of course). But once I get that squared away, I will be ready to roll and be sure not to neglect the blog.

Until then, peace bitches....

November is off to a great start

2008-11-03T00:03:00.004-05:00

So I decided to start November off with my most profitable single-day take in my poker career. Maybe starting a blog helped? Who knows, but SHIP IT!!!!!

So glad to have last month behind me. I made almost as much today as I did the entire month of October. Short term variance, obviously, but who gives a fuck? It feels awesome. Not to mention I woke up at like 1 p.m., didn't put on pants, and just sat around on my couch all day drinking bourbon, playing poker, and owning fantasy football. Pretty awesome day.

I only played 16 tournaments today and pretty much ran in god-mode for all of them. I finished in the money about 50% of the time, which isn't too much higher than my standard finish, but I won 6, with 1 2nd, and 1 3rd. I felt like I was paying more patiently down the stretch after the bubble broke and was able to up my finishes. Good cards obviously helped, but I was able to find some good spots and exploit weaknesses I had noticed in my opponents. Damn it felt good. No screen shots from my sessions, though. I will try to remember to take more of big hands for future blogs.

Started my first session at 4:23 p.m. and finished up at 8:30, so just over 4 hours. I think I could get used to a $91 hourly rate. Hopefully I can keep it up...

What is wrong with Tiffany Michelle?

2008-11-02T01:08:00.001-04:00

I just finally got around to watching last Tuesday's telecast of the Main Event tonight, and my god, I have never wanted to smack somebody so hard in my life. What is wrong with this girl? I mean, I know she has to create an image for herself that she won't be pushed around like a little girl by the big boys and whatever, but can you be any more of a cunt? She called clock on a hand she wasn't even involved in when the guy was making one of the biggest decisions of his life. Was she trying to put everybody on tilt? I am watching this 2 months later, and it put me on tilt!!!

I've never understood how people can be so calm after stuff like that goes down. I'd have lost it.

October Results

2008-11-02T01:05:00.004-04:00

For my first real post, I'd like to take advantage of the new month starting to put October behind me. I ran like complete ass for the first half of the month, and only managed to pull ahead towards the end. All in all, it was easily my least profitable month since moving to FTP, with the exception of July where I only played $5-$10 tourneys.

I'm a member of Sharkscope and all of the stats I post are pretty much going to be screenshots from there. If you aren't a member, I'd highly recommend it (no I'm not a shill; companies tend not to sponsor unknown people with only one blog under their belt). Its really helpful to find out who the fishies are at your table, and play them accordingly.

Here are my graphs for October '08 (click to zoom):

As you can see I had just about 200 games logged this month. I was on travel for about 90% of the month (I actually only slept in my own bed 5 nights all of October!) so I didn't put in quite the volume that I wanted to, but as bad as I was running that might have been ok. I didn't get even until about game 100. It was such a frustrating run; AK < AJ, KK < KJ, AA < 44. It was just so frustrating to run so bad. And if I was even slightly behind when the money went in, I might as well have just logged off, because there was no chance in hell I was drawing out on somebody.

If it hadn't been for me running in god-mode on the $22 turbos for the month, I would have had my first losing month on record. Not happy times. But overall, a $387 profit for the month (not counting live wins in Atlantic City). I can't really complain since there are people out there losing my yearly salary every month (Dreg's List). I have a feeling November is going to be much better. Let's get to the tables...

Welcome to VTBalla34's Poker Blog!

2008-11-02T00:48:00.001-04:00

What's up everybody? I don't know how you stumbled across my blog, but thanks for coming out. I wanted to start this blog to track my poker results and help find leaks in my game, and generally keep me off tilt when I'm running bad. First a little about myself:

I'm 26 and am a proud graduate of Virginia Tech. Go Hokies!!! (Even though its VERY hard to root for them sometimes). I am an engineer for a defense contractor in Maryland. We work with the Navy's TRIDENT Submarine weapon system, which is basically the most badass thing known to man. I've been doing that for 3 years now and really enjoy it. I live right beside of work, so my commute is pretty awesome. I want to get back into the gym and play more basketball (since I played in college), but at the end of the day, I'm usually just too lazy. And besides, its really tough to not come home and get on the internet when there are so many poker players just waiting to hand you their money. Which brings me to my second point:

I am kind of addicted to online poker. I've logged about 1,000 SNG's since mid-July on Full Tilt Poker and have made a pretty good profit in that time. I'll be posting graphs and shit to track my progress, so all of you can follow along. Don't worry about selling me out to the IRS; I pay all my taxes in April!

Since starting with $5 SNG's on Ultimate Bet (as TKEStunna) in the Fall of '04, I have probably logged close to a million hands of poker. Ultimate Bet's software sucks when it comes to interfacing with add-ons, so I'm not sure how much I made on there, but I did pretty well. In around the July timeframe, I received Colin Moshman's "Sit N Go Strategy" book and have improved my game significantly. Around that time, I made the move from Ultimate Bet to Full Tilt (as VTBalla34) mainly due to the superuser scandal, but also because FTP has >>>>>>> volume than Ultimate Bet, which makes multi-tabling so much more profitable. I usually play between 4-6 SNGs at a time and am going to work up to about 10-12 once I get a dual-monitor setup. Since moving to FTP, I've made ~$3k in just over 3 months. Not bad part time, but I'd certainly like to up my volume and try to pull in more disposable income. I post on Cardplayer Forum as VTBalla34.

So without further ado, welcome to my blog and tell your friends. Feel free to leave any comments, be it praise/hate/indifference whatever. I've made a lot of people angry online with my Phil Hellmuth-type banter, and have come to terms with that. So haters, bring it on. Let's roll, ya'll........