Deciding to take my game to the next level

I have decided to take my game to the next level. Firstly I am going to more actively participate in the forums in order to intake poker culture, and secondly I am going to have a formal documentation of my online playing. Previously I have only played in "brick and mortar" games, I have done quite well - winning (placing in the money) two large land based tournaments. I believe the online world can help me tune my game. Does anyone have any suggestions / is willing to show me the ropes via msn/yahoo messenger etc..

I am going to record my bank roll in excel, and slowly work my way up the limits / online tournaments.

Just looking for general advice. What sites do you recommend. Currently I play Royal Vegas and PokerTime.

Ka0t

Never played on either of those sites. My first site was PokerStars and I still favor that site. The tournament competition is pretty tough there, but for me I think that helps my game. There are of course a LOT of fish as well which makes it difficult to do well a lot of times when you run into people calling your big raises with any 2 cards. But if you want a wide variety of tournaments and sit-n-go's, it's a great site.

As far as general advice, I think you are off on the right track by tracking your results. Make sure you keep track of everything, it can be really helpful for finding the weaknesses in your game. Poker Tracker is a great tool for tracking your hands and results. I also track buy-ins and number of players and results in Excel. This makes it easy for me to produce graphs of how well I have done at different levels.

From the sound of it, you already know what you are doing with the cards. You'll find online poker is a bit of a different animal then playing live. You lose one of the most important tools in poker, reads. You still can get reads on people, but they are much more subtle online.

Best of luck to you!

My AIM is Virtuex6 if ya ever want to play on PokerStars, my name on there is virtuerostov. Good luck man!

Grumbar - would you be able to help me set up a good excel method? I am very good at using excel (being an accountant) however, I just haven't been able to get a good system in the works. (and I haven't thought of using graphs before.)

virtuex- im going to get aim and add you its too bad you dont use msn or yahoo!

tty guys soon

If you are a winning live player you should have no problem going online and winning there aswell.

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It's not my picture in my avatar...it's my twin brother

My spreadsheet is pretty simple, I have columns for the following:

Date, Entry Fee, Players, Place, Winnings, Place %, Running Winnings

Place percentage is just column D/column C

So lets say I played a 9 man SNG and placed second, my entries would look like this:

12/15/05 - $11.00 - 9 - 2 - $27.00 - 22.22% - $16.00

The last column is a running total so this would be true only if it were the first entry in the spreadsheet. The formula here is (-b+e+g), so if I were on the 3rd row it would be (-B3+E3+G4). The G4 picks up the total from the previous row.

Then off to the right I have two graphs, both over a date range. The first one shows my place percentage. This isn't too useful for this level, since placing 9th in an MTT is pretty darn good, but placing 9th in a 9 man SNG is pretty horrible. But when I filter the data for different entry levels I can use a trend line to see how I'm doing at various setups. The second graph is overall winnings over time. I just track the G column across the date range and toss in a trend line and hope the trend goes up over time.

I have a separate tab for ring games, which has the following entries:

Date, Game, Start Time, End Time, Start Amount, End Amount, Winnings, Time, Winnings Per Hour

So if I played a ring game I might have an entry like this:

12/15/05 - $1/$2 L - 13:20 - 13:59 - $50.00 - $96.25 - $46.25 - 0:39 - $71.15

Then I have another tab that tracks my wins and losses on a daily basis. So I take the totals from my ring games and tournaments and compile them together. This helps me see my hot and cold streaks over time more clearly and keeps my total winnings or losses.

I've also started creating duplicate tournament tabs for different types of tournaments, 9 man SNG's, MTT's, 45 man SNG's. Rather then filtering the data, I just enter it in the main tab and copy it to the appropriate alternate tab, this lets me easily compare the results from various formats and see where my strengths might be.

Did any of that make sense? If not, let me know. I'll be happy to put together a basic file of what I have with some dummy data in it to send you if you'd like.

thank you so much for donating so much time to assisting me.
I think I understand, but I will try to put it together later after work. ( I will let you know how that goes.) I am just heading out. I need to tell you guys of this website I found : www.pokertime.com - its pretty good because it gives you $10 free without a deposit. (3 days post sign up you recieve a promo email for 10 bucks.) its alright.

I am slowly building a bank roll there (without deposit) but I would like to deposit some cash at a good poker site. What site should I use??

Taylor

Hey Ka0t,

WARNING: LONG READ ( but has some important information inside)

I'm not sure what you play mainly cash or MTT & SnG but this is a very well put together tracking system on excel for SnG and or MTT.

www.bluefeetpoker.com/2p2SNGspreadsheet.zip

Slim Pickens and a few make updates on that at the 2+2 Forums but that will be the link at all times.

Now do you play on playing MTT & SnG or cash games? If its MTT and SnG go with this.... (ive modified a few things but the 95% of the arcticle is by sk8gitar23)

How to build a bankroll for Beginning Tournament Players BY sk8gitar23

Like most starting poker players, I never started with a huge bankroll. I'm going to tell my experiences good and bad, and what I did to resolve problems on a journey to be a tournament player. My Bankroll started at $50 back around January. About a year before I played a few months until I blew $400 on 1 hand in a ring game. After basically blowing my whole roll on one hand, I quit playing until this year. I had the itch to play again, but this time, I set goals and focused on managing my bankroll.

January 2005, my goals was very clear.

1. Become a tournament player
2. Don't lose all my money I earned from hours of playing.

I can't stress how important setting goals are in poker. The satisfaction of reaching any goal small or big will give you great confidence which is a BIG advantage when playing poker. I'm not talking about being egotistical but being confident in your ability will make you a strong player.

SNGs are in my opinion the best way to build from a small bankroll and at the same time it is great practice for future tournament players. Here are a list of things that I have done during my SNG months that have shown to be a cause of negative profits.

1. Multi tabling - Like a lot of people I thought I could double or triple my earnings by playing in 2 or 3 at the same time. Some people have success but the majority of people that start out playing poker do not know the ins and outs of the game to full understanding. ( If you are just starting online I would start with 1-2 tables max then maybe after 2-3 weeks try 3-4 and make sure you are comfortable before you add any more tables)

2. Playing to get "in the money" - Not only does this show weakness in a player but to play 40mins-1hr+ to win $4 is just a serious waste of time. I realized I could make more $ at a normal minimum wage job than playing poker. When people play to get ITM, they will most likely find themselves short stacked 3 handed or finish 4th a lot of times.

3. Not paying attention to the game - TV, dozing off, talking on the phone, etc. Every hand played while not paying attention is a missed lesson. I could have easily won the pot by betting at it but when I wasn't concentrating, I just folded if I had no hand.

4. Not taking notes - Don't be like how I used to be and just get lazy to type in a few words every now and then. A couple things that I like to put in my notes are things like, "limps in EP 97s", "weak bet = weak hand", "calling station, don't bluff". Simple things like that can give you a HUGE advantage when playing heads up in a pot.

5. Feeling the need to redeem - Every now and then when things were going slow or down, that little voice tells you to play in the higher buy-in. Complaining about losing to bad beats all the time against donks because they all play in low limit SNGs? If you can't beat a $5 enough to show a decent profit, it won't get any easier playing in higher buy-ins. Donks are every where, from $5 to $5000. If you can't learn to beat the donks, then YOU are the donk.

All the things above are the mistakes I have made during my time. The things I have done that has helped and improved my game even now.

1. "Look in to their soul" - As cheesy as Phil Hellmuth sounds, this is a very very VERY important thing to do whether you are in or out of a hand. The ability to read your opponents cards or get close can help you make the correct call or the big lay down. There's really nothing more satisfying than seeing what you said the person had. Not only does this scare the crap out of your opponents but over time, you can just play any 2 cards against a person just by the read on what you have on him.

2. Books and Articles - Some people say that they don't need books to get better at poker, even I thought that way when I first started. You might think all poker books are the same or everything in poker is situational, both are some what true. The books that helps the most are tournament oriented books. The books I recommend are any of Skylanski's, McEvoy's, and Cloutier's books. Most of their books are highly tournament related.

3. Sticking within bankroll limits - I laid out certain amount money I had to reach before moving a step up.

4. Keeping track of every SNG played - I used SNG tracker. It keeps track of your ROI (return on investment), ITM (in the money), graphs of where you placed, etc etc. I started keeping track at $20 SNGs and these are my overview results. (using the link I have for the SnG tracker is a different program then he uses but I think is highly useful- plus the stats he has her are VERY good so dont go in expecting to get this right off the bat)

ROI 35%
ITM 54%
Tourneys 79
Buyins $3560
Vig (rake) $354
Total entries $3914
Prizes $5294
Profit $1380
Avg. Time 54 mins
$/tourney $17.47
$/hour $19.56
Itm from bubble 82%
Bubble % ± 7%
1st place - 19%
2nd place - 15%
3rd place - 21%
4th place - 13%
5th place - 13%
6th place - 7%
7th place - 12%
8th and 9th place - 4%

If you can be near or around these results, you will show a steady profit.

5. Being very selective in playing MTTs - I wasted a lot of money playing MTTs. They drain your bankroll if you play even $20 MTTs at the start of your bankroll building. The fact that you have to beat out 300+ people in $20 buy ins and 1000+ people in $1 2 3 buyins makes it very difficult to win.

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I have changed inside these lines

(I changed his bankroll size for the limits I belive they are a bit low and mine are just on the safe side) Only move up when you feel right doing so. I have the limits between 30-60 buyins including the rake - people have been known to go on bad streaks were they dont make the money 25-50 times tho rare it does happen and can deplete the bankroll if you are not in the right limit.

$180-$360 - $5 SNGs
$330-$660 - $10 SNGs
$660-$1320 - $20 SNGs
$990-$1980 - $30 SNGs / 1 or 2 $10 MTT a week
$1650-$3300 - $50 SNG / 2 or 4 $20 MTT a week
$3270-$6540 - $100 SNG / 1 or 2 $100 a week / $20-$50 MTT 5-10 MTTs a week

$2500+ - Keep only $2500 in the account / any earnings take out / only MTTs

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If dipping below any of these steps I would go back to the step I was at with the bankroll. Until proving I could show a profit of playing MTTs, I kept my bankroll exactly at $2500 if I gained money. The reason is I didn't want to blow it all by playing big buyin MTTs. If I lost a significant amount I would have to go back to SNG grinding and by that time, I was sick of SNGs. The main goal after becoming a MTT player was to get a $1000+ payoff. After getting a $1k payout, I knew I was basically set to play MTTs without worrying about losing my BR.

This guideline was the one way out of various methods I have tried that has worked. It might not be for everyone but you can use it as a rough sketch of planning out your bankroll building strategy.

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Now if you plan on doing cash games I am deff not the man to ask for help there.



Now sites:

I have only played on PartyPoker and Pokerstars but UltimateBet FullTilt and Paradise are also huge sites to play on. PP is deff an easy site to multitable the SnGs and make an easy profit.

If you have any questions just post and ill try to help as much as possible

Kato, please make sure you download your poker destination from this site. We get credit for it, and its no more difficult to do. Look at the left hand column, all the way down, and youll find the list of sites we partner with. Just click on the button of the site you want to download and presto, Fonz gets credit!

Thanks!