Crushing The Microstakes | Online Poker | Texas Hold'em

I’m still undecided about wordpress

crushingthemicrostakes — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:20:41 +0000

I guess I’ll need to spend a couple weeks with it to make sure I know which route I’m going to go in. I have to say I like the look and feel of it, and the templates. I’m not sure how I feel about the community yet. It seems more vocal. I’ve had a few random comments already, and some are warning me to abide by the terms of service because it’s easy to be shut down, who knows. I’m just trying to get a feel for it.

So I Decided To Check Out WordPress.com

crushingthemicrostakes — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:12:37 +0000

My blog is currently at http://crushingthemicrostakes.blogspot.com. However, I decided to check out wordpress.com because people talk so favorably of it. There are some very cool features, such as being able to importand export your blog, and it appears some of the management features are cleaner. One problem – no Google Adsense. So, I’m not sure if I’m going to bother to keep it. From what I understand, there’s a pay-for-play option, but I’m not sure how much it costs, so I don’t know what to do at this point. I’m holding my breath for now. I don’t think I want to maintain two separate blogs. I’ve purchased some hosting, so I may use the wordpress.com software from my new hosting company – http://www.1and1.com, but I haven’t decided yet.

Ouch! Maniacs Hurt!

crushingthemicrostakes — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:23:00 +0000

So I 4 tabled 25NL tonight, and had a maniac 65/20/1 at 3 of my tables. I had a couple hundred hands on him, so I knew he was crazy. He kept reraising my raises. I took a stand with AJs, he stacked me with AA. 2 minutes later, another table, I have JJ, he reraises me, I go all in, he has AA. I got him back later a few times, but I was still down about 30 for my session. He was luckboxing everyone, always had a straight or a flush, or a weird trips. The only time I saw legitimate hands were those 2 aces, and he stacked a guy with QQ vs. JJ. Drove me nuts. He was over $100 at 2 tables. Everyone was paying off and he kept hitting big hands.

He later told me I was terrible because I snapped off a bluff on a scary board with my paired A. What did he have? An A with a weaker kicker. He berated me for 10 minutes. Later he kept telling everyone how he is making 20bb/100. Who knows.

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Another Weekend Trip = Not Much Poker

crushingthemicrostakes — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:23:00 +0000

I was gone all weekend, so just a tiny bit of poker before I left. I played about 50 hands of 25NL at one table. It was very quiet except for the first hand.

UTG limps, 2 others limp, SB calls, I check with Q6o. Flop comes QJx, two spades. Numbers on UTG are 25%/4%/1.x (yay UB prefetching!), so I’m thinking if he has AA or KK and was going to limp-reraise preflop, he’d raise me on the flop, if he had AK he gets away, if he has AQ/KQ, I’d think he’d raise. I’m focused on UTG, because he’s the most likely to have a big hand due to his position. I don’t think he calls with an underpair. He could have AQ for top pair, so we’ll see. I bet with garbage top pair, hoping to take it down, representing a big blind special with no real strength shown preflop. UTG and another limper call. Turn comes a Q – I have 3 Qs. I’m hoping he’s slowplaying AA or KK. He could have AQ, but he sure doesn’t have top set, although he could have JJ and I could be in trouble. He could have an underpair and I could be in the lead, but I’m going to press the issue. I check, planning to check-raise. Sure enough, he bets a small bet of 1, which isn’t even a quarter of the pot. I’m thinking he’s got the overpair and I have him, or an underpair and he’s stealing, and he’ll fold to the checkraise. Otherguy calls, I figure he’s got to be on the flush draw, although UTG could be as well. I checkraise to $4, defining my hand. UTG calls, otherguy folds. I’m sure I’m beat that this point. He must have JJ or a big Q like KQ or AQ, or QJ, but I don’t understand why he didn’t shove it. He must just be trying to get every last dollar out of me, so whatever, I plan on check-folding the river. I can’t beleive he calls a checkraise with AA or KK. River comes, it’s a 6. Uh, ok. I have a full house – QQQ66. If he has QJ, whatever, I’m stacked, but I’m surely going to get all in, and I’m ok with that, because I have 3rd nuts, but there’s no way he has the QX better boat based on the fact that he’s tight and he’s UTG, so it might as well be 2nd nuts. So, I lead out with 11 bucks, which is about the size of the pot, figuring he shoves and I stack him, unless he has magic QJ. He calls? No straight, no flush on the board, which would be the only hands I’d call with, because the board is paired. Anything else, I’m shoving if I’m ahead or folding if I’m behind, but I can’t believe he called. He turns over AQo for 3 of a kind, top kicker, and curses me repeatedly before getting up and leaving, keeping his last 6 bucks or whatever it was.

He could have taken the hand away from me preflop, on the flop, and POSSIBLY on the turn. Why is he mad at me when he played the hand so passively. He can’t think he’s slowplaying a monster, because he doesn’t shove the river when we’re committed, but I can’t think that he thought he was behind, because he wouldn’t have called a checkraise on the turn and a pot sized bet on the river. Those plays are completely incongruent and make no sense. Bottom line: Bad player/Buddy List. He doesn’t think he’s way ahead or way behind, he’s just weak.

So, I was up to about 45 right off the bat. I lost a couple of hands and got down to 40, then had to go about my business. My UB roll is hovering around $300, my PS roll is $100+, so I’m about 16 buyins of 25NL. Legal enough for me at this point.

I hope to get in some more hands this week, so I’ll keep you updated.

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More Info on Adsense and Internet Advertising

crushingthemicrostakes — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:41:00 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately about how to generate traffic and revenue through internet advertising. You’ve been seeing a lot of changes to this blog in that vein over the last few weeks. Some of the things I’ve learned:

Google Search tool – revenue doesn’t come from making searches, it comes from clicking the ads on the search results that the search tool returned.
CPC ads – CPC are cost per click ads, revenue is earned when an ad is clicked. Self-explanatory
CPM ads are cost per 1000 impression ads – Advertisers running CPM ads set their desired price per 1000 ads served, select the specific sites on which to show their ads, and pay each time their ad appears. For the guy who has the ads showing on his website, this means revenue in your account each time a CPM ad is served to your page. You don’t get paid until you’ve shown 1000 ads.
CPM vs. CPC ads – CPM ads compete against pay-per-click (or CPC, cost per click) ads in the Google ad auction, so only the highest performing ads will be served to guys like me. Advertisers will need to bid a higher CPM than the existing CPC ads in order to show. While I still don’t get it all, it seems you’d get paid more with CPM (passive) ads that don’t require clicking.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. There are ways to design your site to increase its page rank in search engines, which generates more traffic, which means more ads clicked. I’m in the process of making some of those changes to the website. I’m hoping I can do this without making it too busy and annoying looking. More info here.
SERP – Search Engine Results Page. You do SEO in order to increase your SERP ranking. Makes sense.
Supposedly lots of people make over 100k a year doing this. So far, I might be lucky if I make 10 dollars. I’m a little over halfway there. My goal was to make enough to add into my poker bankroll. I might get one buyin a year for 10NL. LOL.
I’m not supposed to click my own ads, or ask others to do so. Doing so can get you banned based on the Adsense terms of service (TOS).
It appears I’ll never sell anything via my Amazon afilliation. I still don’t know if I can buy stuff from my own store.
Keyword Stuffing – unethical SEO technique where you load keywords into your site to make it move up to the top of a search engine results page (SERP).
Google Adwords is for people who are advertising their products
Google Adsense is for bloggers, webmasters, and people that want to display ads to generate revenue.
Google Analytics is probably more appropriate for Adwords than Adsense.

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Google Analytics

crushingthemicrostakes — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:03:00 +0000

I’m testing out Google Analytics, a way to track who is coming to my blog. I want to see if I’m getting any non-friend hits. I’m not even sure how it works, but the code is now being tacked on to the end of each post. This is the first one.

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4 Day Weekend Trip

crushingthemicrostakes — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:36:00 +0000

I’m taking a 4 day weekend starting tomorrow and heading up to northern Michigan with my buddy. It will be the first time I’ve had an extended time away from my family since my daughter was born 2.5 years ago. While I’ll missy my girls, It will be nice to get away, get back to basics, and de-stress. We’ll be staying at my wife’s aunt’s cottage. It’s fully equipped, and I expect we’ll have a lot of fun.

So, no updates after today until probably Tuesday.

Quarter

crushingthemicrostakes — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:20:00 +0000

I’ve gone and done it. I changed my picture in my profile from a dime to a quarter. My last 3500 hands have been 25NL, minus my 6max Experiment, so, it only makes sense. I may drop down to 10NL if I have a bad run, but for now, that’s where I’m at. I don’t have 20 full buyins, but I have enough to play 20 buyins of $20, so that’s what I’m going to do. If I drop below $200 on UB, I’ll drop down. I don’t feel nervous or uncomfortable playing at 25NL. There are a lot of rocks, but a lot of them are weak tight (I consider myself weak-tight, but they are way worse than I am). There have been no players that have had me scrambling yet. I don’t always know where I’m at, and I’ve gotten myself into trouble, but I haven’t ever felt like I was the sucker at the table. I feel like I’m still one of the top guys at every table I sit down at.

I’m still seeing the same betting patterns – making a smaller bet on the turn than was made on the flop – guaranteed to fold to a raise or river bet, min blocking bets for bottom pair or a draw that will usually fold to a raise on the turn. 2 barrel bluffs that give up on the river. I still occasionally run overpairs or top pairs into sets, or kings into aces, but I think that will always happen. I’m slowing down a bit with them depending on the player, but if the stack to pot ratios are reasonable, I’m going for it.

I’m tightening up and calling fewer raises, playing less out of the blinds, playing more on the button, and playing strong with my big aces and pairs.

We’ll see how it goes.

The Return Of The 6Max Experiment

crushingthemicrostakes — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:29:00 +0000

All that being said in my last post, I did get a chance to play some poker last night. I played full ring 25NL and was up about 1.5 buyins, which is great as far as I’m concerned. My PTBB/100 for 25NL is still at about 7.5, which makes me happy. I got paid off on a set of queens and a set of sixes. I would have been up another buyin, but a crazy loose player rivered 2 pair on me against my TPTK on a very non-threatening board. We got it in on the turn and I was way ahead.

In addition, I’ve been sneaking in some 2NL 6Max. I’d still like to work on my shorthanded game, so I’ve been playing it when I have a chance. It’s fun to play 2NL, because even if I get stacked, it’s not painful. I haven’t doublechecked my stats, but I’m up pretty good in my past 2 sessions – about 1.5 buyins. I still think I’d like to make the conversion, but the game is wilder and the swings are bigger, so we’ll see. I guess I’m just too conservative

The Rockstar Returns

crushingthemicrostakes — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:11:00 +0000

So, I’ve been playing a little less poker the past few days. The reason? Long story. In short, I’m doing some coordinating. I don’t really mention it too much these days, but I used to play guitar in a local bar band throughout most of the 90s. We weren’t anything special, but we made a lot of friends, and for the most part, had a good time. We gave it up in 1998 to move on to other things, like real work.

I went out on Saturday to see some of those friends play a 10 year reunion show for their old group. My band and their band used to play a lot of shows together, and became good pals, so I went with a former bandmate to show some support. When we were there, we basically got harassed by several people, including a booking agent, to put together our own ‘reunion show’. So, it looks like we may be getting the band back together for a little one-off fun reunion show.

There’s a lot of organizing that needs to take place in order for that to happen – figuring out if everyone can do it, when, picking out a set list. a venue, re-learning the tunes, finding a rehearsal location, actually rehearsing, etc.

Two of us are pretty rusty, because we don’t play much anymore (one of them is me), 2 are currently playing in a band together, so they won’t have much of an issue, and one guy we can’t find (our last bass player). Fortunately, one of the guys flipped back and forth between being ‘lead singer’ and ‘bass player/shared singing duties’, so he’s going to go back to playing bass and splitting vocal duties with the keyboard player. However, it limits some of the stuff we will be able to play. Paul was an exceptional bass player, there pretty much wasn’t anything he couldn’t play. Mike just doesn’t have that ability, and when you throw singing into the mix, it makes it a little more difficult.

All in all, it’s going to be a lot of effort, and we’re not going to set the world on fire, but it should be fun. It will probably be 90% cover songs with 10% originals. We’re going to keep it simple in the name of trying to keep it clean and tight.

It seems like everyone is on board, so now it’s a matter of picking a venue and a date. It will be neat to play in front of a lot of people that I’m friends with now that have never seen me play, as long as we don’t really butcher anything. In the meantime, poker may take a back seat to re-learning guitar solos I haven’t played in 10 years.