PokerTableRatings

February 2012 UGL

 

Results for February 2012 UGL 200NL, 400NL and 600NL:

Pokerstars regained its dominance at the 1/2 UGL leaderboard, with Stars grinders claiming all top 5 spots. Mayo the Don followed up a 4th place finish in January by winning his first very well-deserved UGL badge. He won $16,264 with a solid 5.82 BB/100 winrate, beating out the 2nd place finisher Ice_Fruit88 by over $2k. Platoniko finished 5th in the UGL by grinding out a staggering 120,214 hands at $1/$2 in the month of February. His almost $12k in earnings to show for this hard work doubled his lifetime earnings to just over $24,000.

Full 200NL results

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Halozination Has a Career Day, Wins $160k

The week of July 11th began with a bang, as railbirds were treated to some high-flying action at the PokerStars tables. With games running as high as $100/200, there were bound to be some monstrous swings. High-stakes regular and hold-em specialist Halozination was apparently ready to capitalize.

Halozination began the session in the waning hours of July 10th (EST) by pummeling Breckster79, taking over $35,000 from the high-stakes newbie in a one-sided 82-hand battle. Amazingly enough, Halo was up $31,125 after just five hands in the $50/100 NLHE affair. The match was extremely short-lived and ended with Breckster79 enduring the biggest loss of his PokerStars career.

Although Breckster was done after his crushing defeat, Halozination kept the gambling going by taking his talents to the $100/200 NLHE tables. His decision turned out to be a great one. After battling some stiff competition from Zypherin and altiFC, Halo's 679-hand effort was handsomely rewarded, netting him $120,505 in only a little over three and a half hours at $100/200.

Here are some of the key hands from his best session to date at PokerStars:

Halozination flops trips and baits his opponent for the day ...

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Eunjong Byun Hits the Jackpot

Sometimes it feels like you can grind for days, weeks, or even months waiting for that one big session to push you over the edge. All that effort occasionally leads to an epic session when the stars align, but the emotional toll of logging hour after hour and never seeing that game-changer can crush even the most optimistic individuals. As players, we hope (and sometimes expect) the former to come without too much pain and suffering. Most of the time, however, you have to go through some heartache to get to the heartland.

This is especially true for a relatively unknown member of the poker community who finally felt what it was like to have his lucky day. A true grinder of mid-stakes NLHE cash-games known as Eunjong Byun, who has played almost 3.5 million ~break even hands at FullTilt, finally decided to really ante up at PokerStars on Tuesday and test his skills at $50/100 HU NLHE. Stars regular venced0r had the unfortunate "pleasure" of sitting across from Eunjong, and he undoubtedly wishes he had pulled a Rip Van Winkle until Wednesday.

Here are some of the biggest hands from their encounter:

Eunjong Byun gets some help ...

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PLO vs. NLHE – Heaters, Downswings & Variance

Coming from a no-limit hold'em background, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I sat down at my first heads up PLO match. I knew PLO had a reputation of having a ton of variance. I figured that the downswings are probably going to be extra soul-crushing and the heaters will be hotter than the sun. But just how much more variance are we talking about here?

PLO vs. NLHE Average Pot Sizes
The graphs below compare the average pot size for PLO and NLHE. The data is averaged from a gazillion hands on the PTR database.

At low-midstakes, the average pot size for PLO is pretty much double that of NLHE. So even accounting for the times that it's just folded preflop, the average pot at $.5/$1 PLO, is $20 (1/5 of your entire stack)!

Another common metric to measure variance is standard deviation. My standard deviation in HU NLHE is 75bb/100. My standard deviation for HU PLO is 130bb/100. Again, the variance of PLO is roughly double that of NLHE.

Why does PLO have twice the ...

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Nanonoko smashes the $1m profit barrier

Pokerstars grinder, 'nanonoko', has earned a Pokertableratings top hat badge this week for surpassing the $1m profit mark , but he's a poker millionaire with a difference, having rarely played higher than $5/$10 games to achieve this vast sum of money that most grinders can only dream about.

So how has he managed to produce such high profit playing such relatively small stakes? Through the art of multi-tabling. Pokertablerating's player search feature shows 90% of his winnings have been earned playing 20-24 tables of $2/$4 and $3/$6 short-handed cash games, which just goes to show, you don't have to put your house up for sale and play colossal stakes with hardened pros to be a poker millionaire.

Nanonoko has amassed an astounding 2.25m+ hands on pokerstars since late August 2008, which to gain perspective is about as many hands as 76 year old poker legend Doyle Brunson has probably seen in his entire life. A lot of pros play more than one table to boost their hourly profit rate but playing 24 tables and still managing to muster up a win rate of 3.7BB/100 takes a very special talent.

There has been ...

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Congratulations to Joseph Cada, the new WSOP champ!

Shelby Township MI resident, Joseph Cada, emerged victorious this week, defeating a field of 6,494 entrants to win that most coveted of awards (apart from PTR's shiny $10m profit badge of course) the WSOP Main Event champion bracelet, along with a staggering $8,546,435 in prize money. Winning the title at the age of just 21 makes Joseph Cada the youngest WSOP Main Event champ in history, and as he addressed the cheering crowd, teary eyed, he said "I've dreamed of winning this tournament, and to do it first year out of the gate is unbelievable"

After a grueling 2.5 hour heads-up match against the Maryland 'logger', Darvin Moon, he managed to overcome Moon's aggressive play and win it all with his pocket 9's holding up all in against Moon's QJ suited. The pivotal hand heads up came when Moon reraised Cada all in with 7s8s on a board of 10c 5d 9h 10d, and after some deliberation, Cada made a great call with Jh9d, earning himself a commanding chip lead when the river drew a blank 7s.

It was 6 years ago that Joseph and his brother, Jerome, put their initial ...

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Beating the Bully

We have all been on those tables where there is the type of player who raises every hand and reraises everyone's bets. They always seem to be the player who is taking down the pots. So, how do we beat the bully?

Yogesh "eL_Yogi" Chandarana takes a look at two strategies....

Whether you play online or live; tourneys or cash games, eventually you are going to come up against a bully. Typically, the bully is going to play a loose-aggressive brand of poker, raising up any two cards in any position and hammering away at pots.

As with all playing styles in poker, this type of play does have advantages: namely, bullies will tend to pick up a lot of small pots, dominate the action and shake down the weaker, more passive players. Famous pros with this style of play include Gus Hansen (plays under the name: Gus Hansen at FullTilt), Daniel Negreanu (KidPoker at PokerStars) and Patrik Antonius (Patrik Antonius at FullTilt) – its worth having a look at the PokerTableRatings database to see their playing style.

So, the million dollar question: how do we beat them?

One of the best answers I have come across has been given ...

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