Sunday, September 30, 2007

Cake Challenge - Marsh

Update: Played for 3 hands on Thursday night, picked up KK on the third hand and doubled up when a guy with an 8 on an 8 high board just couldn't get away.

Thursday night: Played for about 20 min, and ran QQ into KK for a full buy in loss preflop. Scraped back .50 of it at another table and called it good for the night.



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Same format as Ryan's here roughly. I need to get the spreadsheet he made and get that linked up too.

So far my strategy has been to play the smallest stakes I can on Cake, (.02-.04) and the 1.00 tourneys. I have mainly played the 6-max cash tables, but I have played quite a few tournies also. The first day I played I had an awesome day at the cash tables and had my roll at 59.00. That lasted one day exactly. I biffed all of the winnings back on SNG's and poor cash play. That left me at about 48.00 after my second session. Bummer.

Since then I have rinsed and repeated those steps 3 times total. Going to as high as 60.00 with the roll, then getting back down to basically even somehow. I mixed legitimately bad beats with legitimately bad play to achieve the downswings.

I have kept strong though, and am now sitting at 72.00. I have made incremental steps in the cash games, and have ran pretty well in them also. I also have had decent results in the 10 and 30 person SNG's, with 2 firsts, 3 seconds (one of them in a 30 person), 2 thirds, and 1 fifth place in a 30'er.

The mindless fray that is online poker never ceases to amaze me still. Bad beats are delivered left and right, and poor play abounds. It's pretty awesome.

I have been taking this very seriously also, and the stakes haven't been affecting my play at all I don't think. I haven't caught myself saying things like "Well its only a quarter" at all. I think its because I know that A) I am making these records public and don't want to disappoint my hoards of screaming fans, and B) I don't want to "lose" to Ryan. For me, the competitive part of this is pretty key. If it were just me alone, I think I could have just said hell with it by now and played my bankroll on the .25-.50 table.

I think that once I create some wiggle room, I can start looking at different options as far as bankroll management goes. As it stands now, I am pretty much forced to play the smallest stakes possible, but once I make the monumental step up to .05-.10, I might have some more to take shots with etc. I have to say its very tempting to play those stakes now as I am very comfortable there, but putting around 20% of my total roll on one session doesn't seem like the way to go.

Any of the other participants have any updates? Is anyone busto yet?

8 comments:

Ryan said...

Transfer me $5 from your cake account to mine, and the spreadsheet is yours. ;)

Austin said...

I would have made my own post about it but unfortunately I don't have access to do that. I've been playing fairly solidly lately and have been feeling my way into a lot of tournaments because I haven't played a lot of those and wanted to learn the format a bit more. I'm up about $5 right now, but I fluctuate a bit similar to what you do. You can see here my last go at it a night or two ago. There's rarely a night in which I'm not up at least a little bit from the $0.02/0.04 tables, which is nice. I don't feel comfortable moving up quite yet since I don't want a string of bad beats to move me back down, but I have a feeling I'll pull the trigger fairly soon and do so.

I've been working on playing fairly aggressively pre-flop and then slowing down a bit on the flop to re-evaluate my hand a bit more. It seems to be working fairly well since I'm able to get away from hands when necessary and make the pot a bit bigger since it seems like everyone likes to call raises pre-flop as long as they're not too big.

What do you guys think about that one hand I link to here? I had pocket jacks and had no idea what this guy was doing. It screamed AA, but it may have very well just been a donk play. I certainly didn't want to put my whole tournament bankroll on it though.

Austin said...

Oh, I'm Sarcum in those hands I linked.

Ryan said...

At a $1 buyin tournament, I'd actually be inclined to call with JJ there, just because, as I've said in my own cake poker posts, so many people play in $1 tournaments and $.02/$.04 cash games specifically to gamble, not to play poker.

It's possible he was doing the microstakes overshove thing I've talked about, but I think of that more as a flop play than a preflop play.

How did that guy end up playing the rest of the tournament? Not that hindsight is there to help you make the call in the heat of the moment, but it might tell you what you *should* have done.

If he continued to overshove and generally behave like a maniac, he was probably pretty weak. If not, he probably had something good, but he might just have been gambling.

Austin said...

He didn't do anything out of the ordinary at all the rest of the time I was at the table with him (which wasn't that long considering the other two hands I had shortly after). I think it was on the second hand he did this actually now that I think about it. Just bizarre. I probably should have called so that I could either be way ahead or suck out and be huge, but I just wasn't thinking tournament style instead of cash style.

Marshall said...

As for the hand when you had JJ, his open push on the first hand has nothing to do with AA. It doesn't scream it, in fact it doesn't even whisper it. On small buy tournies, it's common to have 1-3 people busted before the first orbit. A lot of people just want to double up or go home early. A push like that could even just be flat out ATC, but most likely its something playable like: AA-22,AK-A10,A9s-A2s,KQ,KJ,QJs.

I don't hate your fold, as you were likely flipping, but still, a call there isn't bad. You really do want to make a run at winning these things, and JJ is plenty good enough to be ahead of a random donks range.

EDIT: Just saw that Ry beat me to it.

jsola said...

I've only played two sessions in the cake challenge, both of which I bought in for $12 on a $25 max table.

My strategy was to play very tight and very aggressively, looking to double up with good hands and then leave.

This worked well the first game when there was a fish I could work over, but the second game I had a beat put on me, got a bit tilty, and ended up losing two $12 buy-ins in the process.

I'm pretty sure this method isn't going to work because of a) too much variance and b) tilting is too dangerous when you have this much of your bankroll on the line.

I'm down to about $40 right now and am probably going to drop down to a full buy-in on the micro stakes. I haven't had much time to play lately so I'll see what I can do when I can get a few free hours to devote to it.

jason said...

Congrats Marsh on being a frontrunner. I am one of those screaming fans so I hope you do well. I have had some luck on Full Tilt again and have almost tripled my miniscule bankroll. I consider myself ineligible for the cake challenge as I started with a slightly bigger bankroll and have not applied any bankroll management techniques.

Card runners has helped particularly on line. Here are a couple tips. Instacalls on line are generally a sign of weakness. Most monster hands generaly want time to thnk, should I smooth call or should I raise. Often times instacalls can be bluffed on the next street, particularly if the next street blanks. I even so a pro on cardplayers use this technique with the insta min raise, reraising with nothing. Takes a bit more gumption. Try it a couple times on the instacalls on line. May not work at the microstakes as maybe all the newbies need time to think.

I have also noticed tournies with the 2/3 bet continuation bet is usually weakness. Especially if the turn bet is 1/3 of the pot or less. Good time to bluff on line.

Good luck!