Finally playing

I was finally able to get some money online and have been playing the past two days... because of my other committments with mentoring and writing articles I have modest goals of making $100 a day when I play. Once I've reached that goal, my day is complete. I plan on playing some tournaments here and there but for the most part I am going to stick with my newest method of grinding... PLO and PLO8 heads up matches because they work pretty well for me. I use a blackjack betting system to play these, I'll explain in a bit, and it's pretty relaxed. I play one at a time and usually am watching some tv, listening to some music, or something else that I enjoy at the same time. Yesterday it took me 3.5 hours to hit the $100 mark, today it took 5.5. I had a bit of a bad run today, which is why it took me so long, but as is usually the case in heads up matches (and why I use the blackjack betting system), I prevailed eventually.

During the bad run today I actually lost with two nut full houses to straight flushes. Much more likely to happen in PLO then in NLHE but still, that sucked. :)

So anyway, the blackjack betting system is the Martingale system, and basically what I do is start with a $10 (or somewhere close to there) heads up match. If I win it, I play again at that level. If I lose at that level, I move up to the next higher level ($20 for example). If I win, then I move back down to $10. If I lose, then I move up to the next level. The reasoning behind this is I believe my skill level is good enough in these (especially at PLO and PLO8 where the play is fairly bad/predictable) that I will seldom lose more then 3 or 4 in a row. I start the day with a cap. If I lose that cap, then I'm done and consider the day a loss. The cap is $500. I almost hit that cap today... only the 2nd time I've been playing a heads up match with all my daily cap on the line. Basically for me to get to this match I would have had to lose 4 in a row. If I lose the 5th one in a row, I'm done for the day.

I tested this out last month by starting at the $2 level with a $100 cap and managed to turn $300 into $600 relatively easily. I never lost 5 in a row and I think my W-L record over the month was 110-45. Yesterday was a good day... I was 12-3. Today was a bit tougher, I finished 10-8 and I'm going to show you how the system works using today's results as an example (it's possible to make a profit even finishing less then .500).

Start Time Buy in W/L Profit (Loss) Daily Profit (Loss)
10:23 11.50 L -11.50 -11.50
10:44 21 W +19 +7.50
10:54 10.50 W +9.50 +17
11:26 10.50 W +9.50 +26.50
11:58 11.50 W +10.50 +37
12:19 10.50 L -10.50 +26.50
12:31 21 L -21 +5.50
12:51 52.50 L -52.50 -47
1:10 105 L -105 -152
1:27 230 W +210 +58
Break
7:11 10.50 L -10.50 +47.50
(at this point I am 5-6 and have made a profit)
7:21 21 W +19 +66.50
7:30 10.50 L -10.50 +56
7:42 21 W +19 +75
7:57 10.50 L -10.50 +64.50
8:20 21 W +19 +83.50
8:38 10.50 W +9.50 +93
9:09 11.50 W +10.50 +103.50
Done for the day at 9:17

Now obviously you have to be able to stop at a certain point, this system could cause someone to tilt off a large bankroll... but I know my limitations. Basically if I hit the $500 cap (which I imagine will happen sometimes) it just means I am using my profits from previous winning sessions to cover for it.

I'll keep you all up to date on how this goes, I've allotted $2000 for this, so it would take 4+ cap loss days to bust me... I don't see it happening. Anyone want to bet against me? :)