UB: SNG Challenge

As I noted a few weeks ago I am starting 2010 with a personal goal/challenge to turn $100 on UB into $500 by the end of January. I started off strong in my early days of UB but then between 12/22 and 12/28 (only played 30 SNGs) I dropped down from $293 to as low as $234. I attribute this to variance but it still did not come easy. I took a slight break and ran reports on my play to see what I was doing wrong and managed to find a few leaks. Also I think I got a bit cocky on UB thinking I could not lose.

I started things back up on Jan 1 with $253 and have had four short sessions totaling 18 SNGs over 2 days with positive returns each session to manage to finish Sunday with $315. With the holidays and being sick I did not get in as much poker as I would have liked over New Years weekend but... oh well. I will probably not get too much play in this week either since I will be on location for a photo shoot in Chicago for three days and then the RPL Main Event on Sat. That will just make reaching the goal more of a challenge.

Days Remaining:....................... 28
Bankroll:................................ $315
Need:.................................... $185

Running Hot

After running hot in cards in 2009, Trinity managed to finish the year by running hot one more time. Trinity participated in a nuclear hot wing eat-off on Daytime Tri-Cities. The challenge: to eat 20 Beef O'Brady's Nuclear hot wings in less than 20 minutes. "I feel pretty confident that I can do this in under 10 minutes," Trinity said when ask prior to the beginning of the challenge how he thought he would do. Friends and co-workers were all in agreement that Trinity would go untouched in this challenge.

The Results: Trinity (1st on left) finished in 6min, Mike 7min (2nd from right), Kevin 7min45sec (1st from right)...

To quote Andrew T (2nd from left) from Beef O'Brady's "Impressive".

Trinity hopes to continue his hot streak with a win in the 2009 RPL Main Event on January 9th. Trinity was also the 2009 Player of the Year and is going into the Main Event as the defending champion.

Phil Ivey's Marriage gets Flushed on the River

Phil Ivey, one of the most dominant professional poker players in the world -- isn't suited for marriage ... dude was just granted a from his wife Luciaetta. full story

2009 Reed Poker League Tourney of Champions and Main Event

First of all, thanks to everyone for playing again in 2009. We have had 70+ different players play in our game over the 3+ years. Our numbers fell off somewhat this year, but that's expected the economy and "real life" has been over the past 12 months. Hopefully, we can get back to two tables in 2010. Before we can get into 2010 we have the 2009 Tournament of Champions and Main Event to play. Both will be played on Saturday, 1/9/10 with the TOC at 4:00pm and Main Event at 5:30pm.

The TOC is a winner-take-all freeroll for a $75 seat into the Main Event. The Main Event is obviously a $75 buy-in deep stack finale with added money to winner, trophies, non-playing final table dealer (hopefully), etc.

Looking towards 2010, the first tournament will be played on Thursday, 1/21/09 at 7pm. If anyone has any suggestions for changes in 2010 please let me know. I think the $10 rebuy was a success, so I see another one of those. Let us know! Thanks!

Tournament of Champions Qualifers 4PM 01/09/10
Shorty - confirmed
Brian R - confirmed
Mike K - not coming
Derrick N - confirmed
Adam B - maybe
Chris S - confirmed
Daniel
Trinity L - confirmed

Main Event Qualifers 5:30PM 01/09/10
Sean - confirmed
Trinity - confirmed
Vern - confirmed
Adam B - maybe
Kevin D - confirmed
Mike K - not coming
Brian R. - confirmed
Derrick - confirmed
Aris - confirmed
Chris S. - confirmed
Bean - not coming
Shorty - confirmed

Hot Turns to Cold, at Least For Today

I played nine SNGs tonight and managed to mincash once, bubble once and the other eight times were not good. I probably should not have been playing tonight. It didn't exactly feel right before I started but I pressed on anyway (especially since D was not home). I managed to drop 8 buyins for the evening. I attribute this to my mood and of course variance. I like to think this is my hot streak with a minor correction. I decided to stop while it was going downhill and not donk off another 8-10 buyins. I am still up a significant amount but just wanted to move past the $300 mark as I work to reach $500 before the end of January.

My overall ROI for UB is 60.1% over 46 games with my bankroll at $252.

A Short Snow Session

I got back from Pigeon Forge Sunday morning to find lots of snow and no cable or internet. Around 4PM I got both the cable and the internet back.

Around 10PM, I decided to play a quick session of four to six tables before going to bed after a full weekend. I managed to do well on two of the four for most of the session and then on one of them I got to around 10BB and ran AA into QJo, all in preflop... and of course he hits two jacks for the win and bust me eighth. oh well. Instead of opening another table I decided just to play my three remaining tables and call it a night. On the second table I managed to get in the money and run into a bad run of cards only to bust out third to a better pair. I'm gonna need more than that cash to keep climbing to break $500 in January for my UB bankroll. On the remaining two tables I am sitting comfortable on one and very bad on the other which was on the bubble. I finished the third table in first fairly easily especially HU. The last table was four handed for some time and the blinds were climbing. With the blinds at 150/300 I was down to just over 900 in chips and managed to stay alive and then take a calculated move and regain a comfortable stack. When I got HU I had a 5:1 chip lead and took it soon into the HU play.

My overall ROI for UB is 94.6% over 37 games with my bankroll at $292.

After Four Days of UB

I made a $100 deposit on UB on Dec 13th. I have since played approx 33 nine man $5 SNGs and have turned a pretty profit ($160 profit) along with maintaining a beautiful ROI (88.4%). Here is my graph so far.

and here is my graph for SNGs between PStars (mostly $3 SNGs and UB $5 SNGs combined for approx 375 SNGs. While I was turning profit on Stars it was a serious grind as I would go up then would drop down some due to the usual variance. The players on Stars are just so many and seemingly much better than those on UB. (totals approx $250 profit and 45% ROI)

I contribute my steady climb to a number of things which include playing multiple tables at a time (4-6). Holdem Manager software to track my hands and those of my opponents and the book Sit'n Go Strategy .

I am going to probably take the weekend off since it is my anniversary and then hit the tables hard again next week. I would like to grow my UB bankroll to $500 by the end of January.