Up to $11 and back down

I started off 6-3 at the $6s moving my bankroll up to $165 so I could start the $11s. I proceeded to go 3-3 at those and the rake moved me back down to the $6s where I went 3-3 in 6 frustrating games. I don't think the skill level at the $11s is that good, but the players I got in general were much better than the people at the $6s. Small sample size so I bet I just got a harder batch this time. I ended the day at $161.75 I wanted to get up to the $11s again before I stopped for the day but I couldn't quite make it.

Over the past couple days I did a couple of hand history reviews with some people on 2+2. Its very helpful to see their comments and think about hands in a different way. Even if you don't change your game its good to think about all the different lines you could take. It is something I want to keep on doing.

Grinding it Out

Another good day going 8-5 putting me up at $150.50. In 10 days I have 78 sngs (definitely could play a lot more) for a $100 win. It feels really good to be solidly back in the winning column, and this is definitely sustainable.

I ran some numbers for bankroll management (using my probability and computing knowledge (its a class)). Assuming my win rate is 55% (its actually like ~61) and I only play a level if I have 15 buyins for it then my risk of ruin is 0.01% (one time in a thousand) assuming I can only move down two levels. If my win rate is up at 60% then that drops to 0.000001 (one time in 100000000). So I'm feeling pretty safe about my bankroll (I'm planning on formalizing this and then posting a little web app that people can use).

Interesting Day at the Tables

I started the day off up 3-2 but then I went on a 5 game slide. I then dropped three games to the same person. One flop all in preflop, and two games where we went all in on the flop and I had 75% equity. After I win one back from him all of a sudden he wants to quit, even though he got the money in good! After that I was back down to like $90 and was not very happy at all (Bronocos were getting crushed on Sunday Night Football). But I rallied really well in the next 11 games and won ten of them.

The last one was just weird. The guy played like a maniac the first few levels c/r and bluffing a ton. Once we got to 40/80+ he turned into an uber nit. He would call oop and give up every time. I started to cbet 100% and he would always fold every time. When he got short he doubled up a bunch of times (he got the money in way good a bunch), but I could always grind him back down in a few hands. I don't know what that guy was thinking. He also needs a copy of preflop push/fold tables...

I ended the day at 13-8 through 21 games for a profit of $24.75. That puts my online bankroll at $135.75. My confidence is through the roof and I'm excited to start crushing the $11s soon.

Poker Meanderings

I have had trouble with tilt while playing poker and that is what killed me in 6 max games. I was break even at 50NL over a decent sample (25K hands). The number of times I donked off a buyin or a half buyin is amazing. I probably was beating the games when I wasn't monkey tilting. I'm going back to Heads Up Sit in goes where I first built up my bank roll. They seem to be less tilting for me, and a good win rate.

I cashed out of all the poker sites at the start of my tilt problems. Then when I decided to put money back into poker I put the minimum of $50 into full tilt. Since then I have played 44 turbo $6 + $.25 HU sngs. I went 27-17 for a 61.3% win rate and a 17.6% return on investment. That puts my online bank roll up to $111.

My plan for bankroll management is to always have 15 buy ins for the level I want to play. So to play the next level ($11 + $0.5) I will need to have a online roll of $165. I think if I play a lot (and assuming I keep on beating the games at this rate) I can go up a level in 3-4 weeks. From what I can see of higher stakes games up to like $20 sngs is that they aren't too much better, maybe fewer fish compared to regulars, but it doesn't look too bad.

Everyone Is Doing It!

So I figured why not make a blog to pontificate upon the various things that interest me, so here goes.

I have been doing a lot of competitive programming practice lately (getting ready for ACM world finals) and I have noticed one of the biggest differences between individual and team contests. Obviously keyboard time is a big difference, but an offshoot from that I didn't recognize until later was using the computer to solve the problems algorithmically not just for writing code.

For example the last problem I worked on (over at stack overflow) was much easier to solve once I quickly coded up a brute force solver. The brute force solution took just a few minutes to write, and it gave me the insight that eventually allowed me to solve the problem.

The number one ranked TopCoder is Petr. He posts videos of his monitor as he competes in TopCoder SRMs. Quite frequently he writes a brute force solver to the problem and tests his own solution against it. An especially awesome case of this was when he used the brute force solver to find a test case that his code failed on and saved that test case for someone elses code in the challenge phase.

Another example of this was during ACM practice. We had solved all but two problems and were having a hard time coming up with anything on the last two. We wrote a brute force solver for one (the game of nim but with the winning player on end states reversed) and were quickly able to deduce the answer.

Writing a brute force solver only works in some cases. There have been times when it gives me no insight, but in general when you are stuck on a problem where a brute force solver is just a few minutes to code it is probably worth it.