Sunday, April 25, 2010

The exciting game of Badugi

Ba...what? Badugi? What is that? Your pet name? :)
Badugi is another poker variant, let me explain a little bit.

There are 3 popular types of poker variants:
1. Draw Poker, where players are dealt a complete hand, hidden, and then improve it by replacing cards. Five-card draw is the most popular.

2. Stud Poker, each player receives a combination of face-up cards and face-down cards in multiple betting rounds. Seven-card stud and Five-card stud are among the most populars.

3. Community card poker, each player receives a incomplete hidden hand that is combined with shared face-up cards. Texas holdem and Omaha holdem are the most popular.

Badugi is a draw poker where each player starts with 4 hidden cards. During each of three drawing rounds, players can trade zero to four cards from their hands for new ones from the deck, in an attempt to form the best badugi hand and win the pot.

Curious? Watch the video so you can learn how to play Badugi on Pokerstars.

Poker is more than Texas Holdem

Texas Holdem is the most popular type of poker, specially No Limit Texas Holdem, what I call the Cadillac of Poker. You see on TV, on live tournaments, on famous cash games, and most poker players play No Limit Holdem online and most of the time at Pokerstars.

But you know what? There are more fantastic and exciting type of games on Pokerstars besides Texas Holdem. You can be a more complete poker player by learning a new type of game. If you want to know How to Play 8 Game Mix check it out the video and start today playing this exciting new game!

See you at the tables!

Monday, April 12, 2010

April Feedback

April is a different month, I still have no profit made because I am trying new games and see how I behave on each type of game. I started playing only heads-up and I made about $40 in one night but on the night after I lost it all! Then I tried Double or Nothing and I played just a few but I did not like it so much to be playing right now.

Right now I am trying 6 Max. Turbo SNG on the $3.25 buy in and they are soft but I am still negative for now. I am properly rolled for them, I have more than 100 buy-in on my bankroll. I could also be playing the regular SNG of 9 players at $3.40 buy in, but I figure out that I need to take more profit from my time at the tables. I play in part-time and the Turbo format is particular well to my time and skill.

Let's see if I can grasp the 6 Max. SNG strategy and end the month in positive ROI on them. I will try to put more volume by playing at least 2 games at the same time. I am also trying to go for Silverstar this month. I will keep updating here and more often on twitter. See you soon!

Btw, as MTT concern, I played 2 Sunday 1/4 million but I did not cashed in any of them. I have a Final Portuguese League this month on Titan network.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

1st Trimester Review, 2nd Trimester goals

25 % of the year is completed. I have accomplished some yearly goals, but first let review March. Here are the numbers:

Total games played: 130, these include:
- SNG's of 9 players: 67 games
- Heads-up SNG's: 58
- Multitable Tournaments (MTT): 5

I set a goal to March to play at least 100, well I surpassed that one in 30 games. Now let's look at the profitable goals:

Total Profit in March: 216,16 €

I do not set up money goals because they are hard to set up. I do not play full time so, I do not put the volume that I need to set up any measure profit goals. No limit Texas Holdem is a high variance game and it is hard to set up profit goals when you do not put enough volume (if you are a good player). I prefer to set up ROI % goals.

SNG 9's ROI: 39%
HU ROI: 8%
MTT ROI: 539 %

I had some "coolers" on the last Heads-up games, that why my ROI dropped to single digit. My MTT ROI is the big surprise on this month, I just played 5 but won 1 MTT and ended deep in another one.

I played about 275 games this year, with some effort I think I can put at least 1000 games (total) before the last trimester. I have a ROI of 36% on SNG games (about 209 games) and 10% on heads-up games (about 66 games played) for the 1st Trimester.

Yearly (almost) Accomplished Goals:
1. Educational goals:
(- Read 4 new poker books;) 50% done, I read already 2 new poker books.
(- Watch more MTT/SNG videos during the year;) 0% done, I did not watch any video.

2. Pokerstars goals:
(- Becoming Silverstar more than once a year;) 0% done.
(- Qualify for a live tournament;) 0% done.
(- Increase my bankroll in 300%) 100% done, I already tripled up my bankroll on Pokerstars. Still on 3 digits roll but it's building along the way.
- Reach a final table on a online MTT; 100% done, I reached a final table and won that online MTT.

2nd Trimester Goals:
- Read 2 new poker books.
- Watch 3 videos.
- Increase my bankroll in 100%
- Reach a MTT final table.
- Go deep on the Steps Pokerstars SNG's to qualify for a live MTT.

April Goals:
- Play at least 150 games.
- Maintain a 20% ROI-
- Play at least 4 MTT's.

Will post very soon the reason of my strategic changes on my decision to play Heads-Up Games. I will focus on HU games on the 2nd Trimester. This include HU SNG's and 4 players SNG in HU format. I will also maintain focused in qualify for online MTT's and play some of them.