theonlinepokerleague.com Blog

Bryan Micon and Brett “Gank” Jungblutt

October 13, 2007 on 10:52 pm | In General | No Comments

Well not many posts recently and the reason is that I have been busy trying to roll up my bankroll after listening to the latest products from Bryan and Gank.

Micon Secrets came out around June/July time and was over 16 hours of mp3’s and a few hours of video tutorials. This was a totally comprehensive training package including bankroll management, No limit cash, limit cash, Multi table tournaments and Sit N Go’s. As with all of Bryans stuff it makes great listening and is on my mp3 player for listening during my 4 hours travelling each day!!

Next up came Sit N Go Domination which was originally 4.5 hours of mp3 with Bryan and Gank which was very interesting as you can start to understand that successful players have a lot in common but in certain situations would make differing plays.

Following the purchase of both of those Bryan and Gank kindly let me have a pre release version Poker Surveillance which is basically about online and live tells. Most of the stuff on here is about live game play but there are some good online details to note.

Finally this week we a Cash Game session which will form part of a new product due out at the end of the month called Cash Game Domination. This one is very good folks and I can recommend that you look for it from 31 October.

In addition I also have the first product of Bryans that I bought called Micon System 2. This is a 6 hour mp3 session on playing Multi Table Tournaments and covers early play, middle of the tournament, late. bubble and end game and I can personnaly vouch for this helping me to cash nearly $4k in a big Sunday night tournament earlier this year.

Happily my stats have been showing significant upside over the recent months and Bryans teaching tools have helped to give me the confidence to move up through the levels whilst correctly playing within my bankrolls.  Long may it continue..

Data mining, Everest and the Olympics!

September 2, 2007 on 7:23 pm | In General | No Comments

An odd combination but then again it really explains whats been happening the last week!

On the playing front I have played a number of games in the UK Football Fans Olympic series that took place this week. There were a number of freerolls and buy in games in differing events. I managed to cash in 4 of the freerolls this week with a second place in the heads up tournament in which I found myself all in on a King high flush against the Ace!! The final events took place yesterday and I final tabled the $400 freeroll for just over $10 and whilst this was on I entered the main event which had a $22 buy in. At one point I was getting very short and raised for 40% of my stack and I was reraised all in which I had to call because of the blind structure. I was behind but managed to suck out on the end and this was the boost I needed to go on a roll and win the tournament for a $220 pay day.

I have joined the Beat The Donk forum and they had a freeroll at Everest Poker a few days ago so I have downloaded the software for that. Everest Poker have a nice player interface but it takes an age to load up on Vista. One of the good things here relates to the bonus and that is that they will give you a $100 bonus when you deposit which is released as you play on the site. Most sites make you play a number of hands before releasing bonuses but Everest will credit you with $0.06 even if you only play the $1.10 tournament which only has a charge of $0.10. This is definately looking like a site that I will play at a bit so that I can release as much bonus as possible in a month.

Earlier in the week I wrote an article on The Online Poker League News site about the data that I have been mining on one of the top websites using Poker Usher that I mentioned in my earlier post. I have now collected data on over 100,000 hands at $10 NL level and 10,000 at $25 NL Level so I plan to update that article shortly.

I have also spent some of my time this week writing and setting some pages with regards to a new section of my website on bankroll management and I have also put together a free downloadable chart guide for identifying the best level of game to play depending on bankroll. The link to those pages was sent to some of our members yesterday. I am currently researching SNG table selection and sites that offer good bankroll building opportunities (such as Everest above).

I found the following video today on YouTube so it would be remiss of me not to post it the link here: The Poker Song by Marcel Luske.

Player Profiling

August 25, 2007 on 11:39 pm | In General | No Comments

I have recently come across a product that allows you to download hand histories from up to 16 tables at your favourite site so that you can use this data to find weak or avoid strong opponents when it comes to playing cash games. OK its not cheap - I couldn’t get mine for free as I already had accounts at the various sites so I paid $99 for the program and then $54 for an Idle Miner license to mine the data. I am starting from the bottom so I have mined over 20,000 hands at NL $10 level in the last couple of days and I need to go through the data shortly. I have, however, used some criteria from the Black Hat program to mine the data within my Poker Tracker software and I have about 30 names from over 2,500 players at this level and I have included those 30 as buddies within Poker Usher. Poker Usher will then tell me if any of my players are online and in addition it will tell me the strength of the opposition at the table that they are at. There was one table today which unfortunately I didn’t get on where all the players had negative balances and the rating was 5 stars. These are the sort of opportunities that this software can help you find. Hopefully it will not take too long to get back my investment in this software. It is possible to get the software for free with just a license for your favourite poker room on Idle Miner to pay for which would make the software even better value.

 

Poker School!

August 23, 2007 on 8:38 pm | In General | No Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently looking at Poker strategy sites such as Black Hat which I mentioned yesterday. Whilst Black Hat is definitely on the darker side of the poker world there are more traditional trainers. It was therefore no surprise that PokerRoomSchool would come across my path sooner or later. They have ten 1 page lessons on their site and a quiz at the end. Now PokerRoomSchool operate closely with CDPoker which is part of the Playtech network. Once you set up an account with PokerRoomSchool they will automatically set up an account with CDPoker and then once you have taken the test on the school site you will receive €30 into your account. I signed up yesterday and took the test and I have received the money in my account today so I’m going to have a bit of fun on CDPoker now!

Black Hat Poker - Poker training course

August 22, 2007 on 10:25 pm | In General | No Comments

I signed up with Black Hat Poker on Monday and I have been going through the stuff on their site since. There is so much material here that it is going to take me a few days to get to grips with the whole thing.  In essence this is a poker training course with a series of videos, podcasts, pdf’s and spreadsheets. The idea is to take it nice and smooth and work your way through the 8 days lessons and then you can also access up to 40 other downloads. I’m on day 3 at the moment and I will post a full review of the program here when I have gone through all of the days. The course is not that expensive at just £35+vat so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

PokerStars puts pressure on statistic sites

August 17, 2007 on 4:43 pm | In General | No Comments

The following is an email that PokerStars have recently sent to statistical database site pokerdb. Presumably the restriction on data will also be found at Online Poker Rankings and Sharkscope….

In the month of August 2007 PokerStars mandated that websites displaying player’s rankings and ratings require players to opt-in before displaying certain data.  Within thepokerdb this only pertains to PokerStars data.  

PokerStars’ Policy Regarding “Rankings/Ratings” Services

To ensure player privacy regarding certain player statistics and financial information gathered by websites (hereinafter “Service Operator”) that collect and organize PokerStars players’ results by various means, PokerStars has devised the following rules with which such Service Operators must comply:

1. No player profitability data (i.e. ROI, net profit, etc) may be displayed on any player unless the player has explicitly opted into such display by transferring $0.03 to a prominently published PokerStars account owned by the Service Operator. This request must be acknowledged by the Service Operator by sending the $0.03 back to the player as confirmation within a reasonable time frame not to exceed 5 days.
2. Any player may choose to completely opt out of having any information about them displayed on the Service. To do so, player will transfer $0.01 to the service operator’s PokerStars account. This request must be acknowledged by the Service Operator by sending the $0.01 back to the player as confirmation within a reasonable time frame not to exceed 5 days. Note that the amount here is different, in order to distinguish an opt-out request from an opt-in request.
3. The use of the “transfer from user to Service and back again” method for opt-in and opt-out is required. This method permits these requests to be handled privately and securely without the disclosure of the player’s Email, real name, or other private information. Only the player’s PokerStars User ID is required.
4. Both the opt-in and opt-out options must be prominently displayed on the main / front page of the Service (at minimum, a normal-sized link on the front page to a more complete description elsewhere).
5. If the service’s operation pre-dates the establishment of these guidelines (December 2006), there shall be no “grandfather clause” for existing data. 100% of historical profitability data must be removed from view until such time as a player explicitly opts in as above.

Any Service Operator found to be in violation of these rules risks having their access to PokerStars’ game client restricted and/or the service impeded, including but not limited to the warning of players who access the Service while the PokerStars client is open.

I think that this may end up being an own goal on PS behalf as many players use these stats and if the databases are incomplete at PS but still good at Full Tilt etc then players may move over and play other sites more.

August 15, 2007 on 11:02 pm | In General | No Comments

I played another 3 STT’s at Vegas 247 this evening and I struggled in the first two when I managed to get all my money in in front but got rivered on both. In truth both were 60/40 so fair play to the caller I suppose. The last game had me in deep trouble being 4th and on the bubble but I managed to ratchet it up and steal a few pots to get back into it. I managed to just get into the money and then had pairs 5 times in 6 cards which either held up or caused me to push to steal the blinds so I ended up getting myself back into the game with a good chip stack and thankfully I managed to take this one down.

Bankroll now up to: 34.20

August 14, 2007 on 11:21 pm | In General | No Comments

I only managed to get in another 2 single table tournaments this evening as I was watching the footy again. This time Everton turned over Tottenham Hotspur which doesn’t help me too much as I have two Spurs players in my fantasy football team!! Anyway I blew it this evening..I was well placed in both tourneys but managed to go against a bigger stack in one and go out in 5th and in the other I was chip leader by quite a way and managed to throw that away to only finish third. A bit disappointing really as I should have won that one and a move too many in the other cost me making the money.

Bank balance is now 33.30.