Take three slightly-worn WPT Poker hacks, bung ‘em $100 a day and let them loose on the online SnG tables. But who came out top after a month?
Inevitably for a bunch of poker journos, the office banter (when not concerning great WSOP comebacks and who’s making the next cup of tea) usually centres round who’s the best online player.
Well, there was really only one way to find out, and, with the help of online mentoring outfit BadBeat.com, three of WPT Poker’s finest took to the virtual felt for a month to see who could make the most profit from 150 SnGs.
Only a few rules applied: Students would receive $100 a day to play with, with tournament buy-ins set at a strict $5 maximum (to maintain optimal bankroll management). Lose more than a week’s bankroll and we were out; and, of course, we’d be assigned a professional player as mentor who could watch us play (via the magic of TeamViewer), offering advice and dishing out abuse if we made that silly call with J-3 again. The prize at stake? Bragging rights, of course, and the little matter of a live seat for the winner (with the losers’ profits added to the pot). Let battle commence…
Name: Jon Young
Alias: “swampster74”
Poker room: GrandSlam (iPoker)
Style: Tight-Aggressive
Mentor: Paul Rigg
Total P/L: -$43
Understandably, the editor of this fine publication finishing his own bloody challenge in the red isn’t great for his poker credentials. But doing an online challenge like this teaches you some key skills in becoming an online pro.
Things had gotten off to a flyer back at the start of the challenge. An online SnG old hand (before I discovered the joys of cash a couple of years ago), I immediately set out on a ‘tight is right’ policy, spending the opening couple of levels sticking to my tried-and-tested hand range (big pairs, A-K), and folding pretty much everything else. Raggy aces go straight in the bin, even from the button, and I don’t start making moves till the later stages when an aggressive attitude is needed. This, however, doesn’t mean that I’m averse to the occasional c-bet post-flop. Using position with something like A-K when you’ve utterly missed the flop and the action is checked to you is the ample time to start chucking in ¾ pot bets. Often at the lower levels, unless you have some outrageously loose players at your table, this will see you win the pot there and then.
So, some 10 tourneys in (mainly sticking to 10-man SnGs and playing two at a time), I’m up $36. I’m playing solid poker, and even the odd bad beat (pocket 6s running into J-Q that makes a runner-runner-runner straight) don’t get me down. I’m ahead of my rivals and the weather’s fine. Then the inevitable downswing comes. I go 10 tournaments without a cash and I suddenly find myself in the negative. The bankroll is holding up though - $5 is an optimum 5% of my daily bankroll – and there are plenty of buy-ins left.
Reaching the halfway stage and I’m still in the red. I can’t seem to get out of the bad variance. The odd 1st place takes my profit back towards the $0 mark, but a combination of suckouts, tilt, and the irritating disconnections my ISP seems to be inflicting on me, see me stuck in a serious rut. Even my mentor Paul Rigg shrugs and says, ‘you’re doing nothing majorly wrong. Just keep at it.’
By the end of the month, and with the 150-game mark in sight, I’m still down but slowly turning things round. I’m multi-tabling the 20-man tourneys and hitting the weekend GTD prize pools for a bit of added value (admittedly, not strictly SnGs). If I find myself on tilt, I hit a couple of the ‘double up’ tables (where top 5 places ALL pay double the buy-in), perfect games to cool off after another A-K vs A-Q loss. I cross the finishing line, down but most certainly not out. Now, who’s up for a 2-month challenge?
TOP TIPS
1. Buy a big monitor and learn to multi-table. If you can do it well, your hourly pay rate will go up.
2. Take player notes. This will make it easier to hunt out those little fishies in future.
3. Hunt out value. 20 and 30-man SnGs are relatively easy to final-table in, and of course the prize money is more.
4. Get a good internet connection. There’s no point investing a lot of time in a tournament if your internet is prone to crashing on you.
Name: Allan Turner
Alias: “OdiihamPosse”
Poker room: GrandSlam (iPoker)
Style: Rock
Mentor: Gary Avery
Total P/L: +$12.50
In the Cash (%): 29.3% (14 1st places)
Now I don’t think I’m a great poker player by any stretch of the imagination, but when I do play online, I normally play low-stakes STTs, mainly so I know just how much cash I’m likely to lose. That said, I do typically make a small profit so when our esteemed editor came and asked if I would be up for playing a month on GrandSlam Poker as part of this challenge, naturally I quite fancied my chances.
I was pretty confident going in, only to have that confidence crushed when I realised what I’d signed myself up to. On realising that the challenge was over a minimum of 150 games in a month, I did the maths and realised I would be doing nothing else but playing STTs for the entire month. With me working a normal 9-5 (plus) and also with my own pub poker duties, it dawned on me just how much of a commitment is needed to play poker full-time. Before I know it, two weeks have gone past and I’ve only played 40 games out of the required 150. Luckily, I’m in profit to the tune of $80, but I’ll be needing to up my work rate if I want to get this thing finished.
The biggest problem I found was learning to multi-table effectively. Being new to playing more than one game at a time, I find myself having to make 2 or 3 decisions at once, and subsequently, my game suffers, and with it, my bankroll.
At the same time I start losing money, Duncan starts performing to his usual high standards and I’m finding myself behind the pace. In a quest for big returns I start playing the 30-man tourneys as the first prize is $60 and I’m thinking I just need to win a couple of these to be back in with a shout. After a particularly harsh hand (see Key Hand), for the remainder of a bad day I go on to lose $50 in a tilty rage and from that moment on the challenge was lost.
Well done to Duncan, very well played, although if we didn’t have a time limit for 150 games and I could play at my own pace I reckon I could give him a run for his money. But I guess that’s what sets the full-time grinders from the amateurs like me.
KEY HAND
“OdiihamPosse”: Ah-4h
Villain: Ad-3s
After deciding to hit the 30-man games I find myself heads-up at my very first attempt. My opponent has been playing pretty passive and any raises from me are good enough to take down the pot. After winning a 40-60 race, I pick up A-4 suited – a monster heads-up hand. The villain puts in a minimum raise, I decide to push to force him out and he immediately calls, turning over A-3. Unbelievably, the flop comes A-2-4, the turn a meaningless J and as I’m off registering for another game I look back and to my horror the lucky chap has hit a 5 on the river to make an unlikely straight. Sometimes, you can do everything right and it still kicks you in the guts.
Name: Duncan Wilkie
Alias: “LiLBuddh4”
Poker room: GrandSlam (iPoker)
Style: Tight-Aggressive
Mentor: Richard “Strummer” Herbert
Profit/Loss: +$203
Percentage Cashed: 34%
So there we were staring down the barrel of a brand new challenge. The terms were simple: play 150 STTs in one month, record your profits and secure office bragging rights on your road to victory. What could possibly go wrong?
Well for one, I absolutely hate single-table tournaments. As a cash game player, I’m no stranger to variance, but whereas in cash you can always reload in a bid to gut the fish who just hit backdoor clubs to felt you, with a tournament it takes just one donkey suck-out before it’s game over. If it was necessary to illustrate this fact further, my first 20 tournaments provide the perfect reminder of just how swingy the world of small-stakes STTs can be for the uninitiated.
My mentor “Strummer” notes I’m doing nothing wrong, but he has an interesting take on how we can beat the variance.
“It looks like we’re playing tight-aggressive against nine other players who are doing the same and that’s just not going to work. You should definitely raise here,” he tells me as my eyes hover to the hole cards he’s referring to. “I have 8-3 off-suit,” I tentatively reply.
“Strummer” goes on to explain that for one session we’re going to try something he the calls the “manic-aggressive” approach. It involves raising with any two cards in late position and firing at the flop regardless; it reaps instant results. A 1st and a 2nd in quick succession later and it looks like we’ve found our style. Needless to say, the relief is short-lived.
In the coming days, it appears that my session with Strummer was the exception rather than the rule as the “manic-aggressive” style backfires spectacularly. It seems that most players are happy to call off their stacks with marginal hands - which are nevertheless good against eight-high - and before long it’s back to the drawing board. At the 50-game mark I’m still rooted around break-even and the opposition fires a broadside with the news that our Ad Manager, Allan, is $85 up.
Dejected, I switch back to the tried-and-tested TAG approach with little hope of mounting a revival, but then the breakthrough moment finally comes – I win a 30-man STT for $60. Lady Luck’s fickle finger is finally starting to point my way.
As I rattle through the remaining tournaments at break-neck pace to hit our monthly deadline, I’m suddenly aware that the unthinkable is starting to happen – I’m enjoying myself in tournaments. The variance is evening out the way Strummer always assured me it would, while a sick heater and some good decision-making has me racking up a shed-load of cashes in 10-man and 30-man tournies alike.
All the while I remain conscious of booking winning sessions and occasionally drop down levels to conserve my daily profit, all of which combines to see me go from $0 to $203 in the space of two weeks to overhaul Allan and my faltering editor in textbook rope-a-dope fashion.
Key Hand
“LilBuddh4”: As 4s
Villain: Jd 10d
It’s the first level of a double stacker and I see three limps in front of me. Holding As-4s I elect to follow suit in the hope of playing a cheap pot and flopping a flush or big draw. The button calls behind me and the small blind completes. The big blind checks his option and we go eight-handed to a 5c-Js-3d flop. The action is checked around to the button who makes a pot-sized bet of 140 which surprisingly picks up three callers. It is now costing me 140 to play for a pot of 540 and though I only have an inside straight draw, with all my opponents having over 2,800 in front of them, my implied odds if I make my hand are huge. I make the call and the perfect 2h falls on the turn. Action is again checked to me and not wanting to lose my customers I make an intentionally weak bet of 320 into the 700 pot. Sure enough all three villains call and a safe 10h hits on the river, but the player first to act goes nuclear and snap-shoves for 2,500 into the 1,980 pot. Holding the second nuts I make the call and a quick trawl through the hand history reveals I was up against Jd 10d for top-two.
DUNCAN’S REPORT CARD
Richard “Strummer” Herbert has enjoyed major success in both the online and live fields since picking up the game in 2003. Last year he became the only player on the planet to win two titles at the Ladbrokes European Online Championships of Poker. On the live circuit, meanwhile, Strummer has notched over $273,000 in tournament cashes across Europe, including victory at the 2005 PokerMillion.com Portuguese Open and a top 40 cash at the EPT Grand Final two years later.
“At the start of the challenge, I expected the winning formula would be the standard solid starting hands from solid position, with big hands played for maximum value. I passed these thoughts on to Duncan, who, being a good, solid, aggressive player, had little trouble accommodating that style.
“However, it was something of a shock in our first playing session that everyone at the table was playing serious TAG poker. Has the game really got so tough that you have to mix it up at the lower levels too? After 3-4 STTs it was obvious that playing TAG wasn’t going to beat the game, so I put forward the manic-aggressive approach. Despite having an immediate impact, Duncan soon reported that our first session was a one-off and that ‘Plan A’ would indeed win us the challenge.
“A way to really force home Duncan’s edge was found a week or so later in 30-seater STTs, where the extra chips in play meant a solid player like Duncan had more time to find the right spots and get his money in good. And good he did. We agreed from day one that $200 would be enough to win the challenge and so it proved. Well played my man!”
Strummer’s Rating: 10/10
ALLAN’S REPORT CARD
A former circus clown (no, really), Gary Avery mixes up the balloon animals with taking down massive pots online. He has a few decent live results under his belt amid the impressive online stats, coming runner-up at a GUKPT leg in 2008.
After 5 days Allan was off to a flyer and some $75 in profit. We had our first session and it was clear he had a good understanding of the game; his positional play, hand range and bet sizes were all perfect in the early part of the game but it became clear as we had more sessions that we had to improve the mid-to-late stage play as the blinds moved up to 100/200 and we had to increase our starting range as more players were eliminated. I noticed that Allan was doing what a lot of players do with 4 players left - sitting there waiting for big hands to come to push with rather than taking advantage of the bubble and pushing in position with any two cards. He’ll need to learn to multi-table if he wants to make serious cash online, but the signs are good.
Gary’s Rating: 7/10
JON’S REPORT CARD
A solid online player, now residing in Thailand, Paul Rigg has won the $15K GTD on Crypto twice. He has live tourney winnings of over $100,000 including a 4th spot at the Thanet leg of the GUKPT last year, where he bagged over £19,000.
Variance can be a funny thing and we don’t know what would have happened had Jon had another 150 SnGs to complete. His internet connection problems obviously cost him a few dollars and there were a few bad beats along the way but he played solidly enough, keeping his raises nice and standard and playing his good hands aggressively.
Paul’s Rating: 6/10 |
