2009 Goals & Why Pokerstars Tilts me.

Looking back on 2008 with a full years of being a “pro” under my belt I had one goal in mind to start the year:

Play 500k hands

While I did not achieve this, something like 120k hands short I’m still happy with the way 2008 went, feel that my game has progressed tremendously and that while I may not be 10 times the poker player I was a year ago(though I have improved a ton maybe only like 3 times) I certainly believe I am 10 times the professional poker player I was a year ago having improved in many other aspects that goes along with this profession. As for 2009 my goals are the following:

1. Not play any 10/20 until I make a post showing I have 100k online
2. Stick to my new schedule and focus on getting 25-30 hour tilt free poker playing in per week
3. Always maximize my hourly rate when playing. If this means 6 tabling 2/4 because that’s the best games running now so be it. If it means 2 tabling 5/10 so be it. The one exception I will add to this is learning a new game. So for example I’ve been playing some more PLO recently and obviously 1 or 2 tabling 1/2 HU PLO is not maximizing my hourly but hopefully this will improve my lifetime hourly rate as a poker player. This also means game selecting well, playing longer when winning, quitting if I am starting to tilt etc.

Sure only one of these goals is really quantifiable and measurable but I think having a I want to make x money is bad and doesn’t really accomplish anything while these goals are something I can work on from day to day, week to week and always be in the back of my mind.

Now that that’s done I’ve been playing on stars again a bit recently trying to unbusto my account because more high stakes game run there for some reason – I have no idea why but there’s a lot of minor things that tilt the shit out of me on stars as follows. I’m not going to go into the reward system or no pot button BS everyone knows about those but these are minor but way more tilting things IMO.

1. When starting new tables the visitor gets the button. That is if you start a new table and someone sits down to play you THEY get the button for the first hand. This is just ass backwards and encourages people to grim you. Clearly the person who was there first is more likely to stay for the long run while the vistor is likely to leave after only a couple hands and is why the first person there should always get the button like it is on FTP.
2. When opening a table the lobby is minimized. This one fluke alone probably doubles my clicks and wastes a good 10 minutes of my time per day when I play on stars. It also causes me to only open one table at a time where as on FTP I just click them all and open them and find the best ones to play.
3. When two people are all in the hands are not flipped over until the you see the river. Seriously wtf, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten all in with AK, board has ran out K54J75 and I’m like ship me the pot only to see them flip over JJ at the last second. So tilting not knowing what outs to root for/against.
4. a)You can’t buyin for more than 100 big blinds.
b)Game speed is slower
c)Game selection is harder (no colored notes or tags, lobby minimizes, can’t datamine, etc.)

You might be wondering why I threw all these together into one category and how they are related. These are not software flaws so much as how stars does things and contributes to how the games play on stars IMO. I played a couple thousand hands of 2/4 6max on stars and they played like complete monkeyfests with lots of games that are just 6 regs sitting with each other(poor game selection) who play a million tables at a time (slow gamespeed promotes this), who 3 bet loads (100bb deep this isn’t bad its just unoptimal IMO but 200bb deep which you can’t buyin for its really bad when out of position)

Sitting in these games I still won decent but my variance was huge and think mine, along with other regs winrate, would be way bigger if any of these things were changed. For example when alot of my profit is coming from flatting AK or AQ vs someone who’s always 3 betting A9 an ace only flops so often when I stack them where as if I’m deep I win double when this happens. The other way you can go is just auto 4 betting AQ and 99+ in position or whatever but then the game is all preflop and is basically like playing shortstacked which I hate. Dunno why I post this, just to let off some steam I suppose and maybe they’ll change some of this stuff in the future who knows. Happy new president day.

Worst Night Out EVER!