Challenge/Guide: How to make money on Unibet Poker in Feb

[SkilfulPoker]

Hey all! This is a little challenge I've setup to keep myself motivated for playing microstakes poker this month.

It's seperate to my main blog, as it's just a 1 month challenge, that is starting today on 3/2/2017.

In this blog I am going to complete the Unibet Missions, and involve in the MTT League promotion, and share my progress doing that.

I'm also going to share strategy and mental game advice, throughout the month, I hope on a pretty much daily basis.

I'm going to try to play different formats and games, as this will interest me and hopefully give the challenge a little wider appeal. As I'm writing this I think this might be a good point to start off with a little poker strategy...

Strategy:

'Being results orientated'. In poker it's generally a bad idea to be results orientated. This is because in the short term you can make winning plays and still be a loser in the hand, the session or even your week or month of play! So when you are selecting your goals, and what you are attaching your success to, the things that will motivate you as you play, you should always choose aspects of your game / your play that under your direct control.

End Strategy

So... That is why there are no monetary goals in this months challenge for this blog. Instead the goals are concerning things that I have direct control over: -

Challenge Goals

1. Play every day.
2. Update this challenge thread every day.
3. Share strategy content and mental game content that might help other people.
4. No sports bets for more than 5% of the bankroll at any one time.

So that's the goal of the blog, I will keep a running bankroll account in each of the posts, because of course the bankroll is important, and ultimately that is something I would 'like'to see on the increase, but for the reasons I just suggested above, this is not something that I will be focussing my attention on too much of a daily basis around.

Evening 1:

I'm starting this challenge on Friday 3/2/2017 at 6PM. (half hour from now). A tricky aspect will be getting the Unibet software to function , I seem to have more success lately with the web client, so I'm going to try the web client, as the desktop client crashes every few minutes for me.

The gameplan for this evening.

Step 1. Deposit. For this challenge we will be starting with $29 (£23.40) , which is what I had spare in my e-wallet. Which is now deposited into my account.

2. Games

(a) Today I'm going to focus on completing any games I need to , to move the February mission forward.
(b) I'm going to also play some 4 euro headsup matches, and record win/loss rate.
© I'm going to play some 4 euro cash and record win/loss rate.
© I'm going to play some MTTs from the MTT League on the low stakes track, these are: -

•     €4 euro €500 Bounty Deepstack   6pm
•     €150 GTD Evening Deepstack 7pm
•     €600 GTD Daily 4    8pm

Will update tonight with how things went. Good luck at the tables!

 

 

 

[SkilfulPoker]

Day 1 Results - in future I'll post results from the days session at the start  of my post the next day, seems to make sense to save  having two posts a day, but as I said I'll update tonight here is the update!

I started off with the 4 euro MTT deep bounty, as part of the low MTT league. I was doing OK in this, but got a little impatient about an hour 40 minutes in. I was playing on the desktop client and it was disconnecting every 5 minutes! This tilted me a bit, i think I disconnected in about 5 seperate hands. But overal I played OK i think.

I finished in about position 108th.

'getting a little impatient' is not good at all, and I think it's useful to be aware of yourself if this ever happens. For instance I took a short break after the MTT to refocus.

Leo Tolstoy said it well:-

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time"

I like this quote because it reminds me that an action that is usually considered passive is a sign of great strength at the poker table. Similar to folding cards when you are running on a streak of weak cards preflop I think, if you didn't know about poker you might think folding was a sign of passivity, or even weakness, when in fact it's a sign of strength. I imagine it a little like an animal in the wild just biding their time waiting to pounce. Similar to when lions in the wild or other carnivirous animals start circling their prey sizing up the best angle etc before they attack.

Patience is a key skill for poker, and I'll try to build a bit more of it into my game over the coming days and weeks.

I played 28 x 4 euro headsup sngs,  and won 12 of them. So that wasn't exactly as planned! I was reminded about just how much variance there is in headsup sngs though that's for sure. Having played the MTT and SNGs I checked out the Feb mission.

Mission step: All One Suit

For this part of the mission you just need to play some Omaha, and get dealt monotone hands (cards all the same suit)

Haha, did I say 'just'? It started off nicely, within about 10 hands I had my first monotone hand! Then my next one took forever, it was a little hair-raising, because I only had 4 stacks when i started the Omaha session, but it was all about completing the mission.

Alert: It's not usually smart to play anything with 4 buy-ins , let alone Omaha! But I was dead set on completing the missions this month for my challenge. :Cool:

Finished the Omaha session - 1/2 a buy-in down (which was miraculous in my opinion).

At some point during the session I saw a hand that I thought is most likey a fold... It was this: -

So I went ahead and folded it. I checked with a friend after who plays Omaha a bit, and he said yes it's a good fold pre-flop. Could open it on the button, and maybe the cut-off but not from MP or EP, and not to call a raise preflop with. So that seems reasonable, and turns out I made a good fold which is nice!

Eventually I did hit that green tick. Next it was time for the second objective of Part 2 of Feb's mission, which was to play NLH.

I had a little over 3 stacks and fired up 3 tables, after a bit of play I managed to win a stack, and then opened another table for 4 tables. I hit the target for day 1 of the NLH play, so am all up to date with the mission objectives for part 2 now. It's that easy really, just play a bit of Omaha (play tight preflop to save your money!), and play some NLH and win at least 3 hands at showdown.

So here's the mission progress at the moment:

I like the gamification aspect of the challenge it makes it more interesting to play , and it's one of the things that keeps me coming back to Unibet, even if I can only run the software in a web browser at the moment.

I continued playing for about another hour, and actually had a nice time of it at 4nl. Finishing up by about 3 stacks.

Finishing bankroll for today is: €26.61(£22.89)

I think with hindsight I'm pleased today was a slightly losing day, because it's demonstrated that key point I made in my first post about not being too results orientated. I played OK today, and enjoyed it, tomorrow is another day! Tomorrow I will focus more exlusively on the two games I think I'm best at, as I want to try to do my best to maximise the chances of success with this little bankroll, so that will be 4 euro cash, and some 5max SNGs.

Thanks for reading!

[SkilfulPoker]

Woops! Played some more 4 euro headsup sngs... bankroll went to £10 didn't feel i could do a whole lot with that... so went for a bet, to try to recover some bankroll..

I'm on magic total payout £30ish if they win which will get things back on track...

Nice thing with unibet sports betting, always something to watch for a sweat.

Hopefully they win, and hopefully I'm not reliant on any more sports betting to save the monthly challenge this month if they do!

[SkilfulPoker]

Nice, they won. That's good.

 

Let's try to stick to the sports betting rule from now on of no more than 5%, that might be smart...

BR:

 

[SkilfulPoker]

Unfortunately we're in the danger zone! I played some 5nl Banzai today, and consistently got it in good, against against a complete and utter maniac, but consistently lost... such will happen with Banzai. He broke my AQ, AJ, with 72 and 53 preflop, amongst other things.

The bankroll is now zero again... the good news is we're playing on perhaps the most rec friendly site in the world so we're not quite out of the game just yet...

I have 200 points in the bonus shop balance, which I am about to convert to 1 euro sng tickets, and I have a 1 euro mtt ticket, which I am just taking to a 1 euro Sunday entitled qualifier. Also next week, we will no doubt have access to Double Trouble. So the challenge has entered a low gear right now, but it's still moving forward!

Will keep you posted.

[SkilfulPoker]

A9 < J8 AIPF for about 7bbs in the sunday entitled qualifier. 

So we're down to our two sng tickets now... 

We can do this, i have faith in the SNGs let's see what happens. 

For what it's worth today's strategy post is going to be about bankroll management (do as I say and not as I do :) )

[SkilfulPoker]

Finished second in the first one, getting it AIPF with 88 vs K 8,  but my 88 got cracked. But cashed which is the main thing. 

and took a 1st in the second one I played :Fist:

So the dream is still going! 

Bankroll: 

Going to take a break now, I put alot of concentration into those two! ;)

[SkilfulPoker]

Just played another 4, took a first and a couple of seconds, bankroll moving nicely up, will keep the updates coming while we're at this crucial stage of the rebuild then switch back to daily updates.

Strategy

Bankroll management is the term that poker players and writers use to refer to the idea that a poker player should always be protecting the capital they have with which to play. However this is of course if you are playing professionally, or at least seriously. If you are just playing 'recreationally' i.e. for fun, then bankroll management likely isn't a concern for you, as you will just deposit some money whenever you feel like playing.

Some of the best players in the world have gone 'busto' and some multiple times in their careers. Daniel Negreanu in the film on Netflix, 'KidPoker', talks about how he found himself on the curb outside the casino a few times in his life! He also talks about how he would make money grinding his local casinos then head to vegas with just a couple of thousand dollars in his pocket, he did this multiple times before finally 'breaking through'. Correct bankroll management will ensure you are not ever experiencing the same!

Bankroll management is simply in theory. You simply take the capital you have available for your poker play, and divide it by a number depending on the games you are playing to figure out what buy-in level you can play.

For large field MTT's, the reccomended norms these days are at least 100 buy-ins, more likely 200 for whichever MTT you want to play. On Unibet however, because the fields are so small you can reduce this significantly and still adhere to bankroll management. I would suggest maybe 70-100 buyins would be enough for low and medium stakes MTT's on Unibet (I haven't played many higher buy-in mtts on Unibet so can not really comment as I am not sure of the standard of play there).

SNG's are one of my favourite game types, but they are also high in variance, unlike a deep stacked MTT for instance where you will have over 100 big blinds (bb) for many hours, with a SNG you will find yourself at 20bb's or less within a very short period of time. This means you need to take more risks which increases your variance.

Variance is a technical name for 'luck' in poker, and refers to the idea that in a short period of time you can play exactly the same but your results will 'vary'. It's a term borrowed from statistics, but essentially we just need to keep in mind how volatile the format of game is that we are playing.

For SNG's (5max) I would reccomend a minimum of 50-buyins, and 100 is a better amount as this will protect you mentally from variance, and mean when you hit a 20-buy in downswing (which can happen more often than you might think in SNGs) you are less likely to be stressed by your diminishing bankroll. ;)

For headsup SNG's likewise I would reccomend 50-100 buyins.

For cash play, where you are at 100bbs stack all the time, I think you can take a more aggressive approach to bankroll management. For 25nl and below I would say 30bi's is enough to start your campaign and at 50nl and above I would say 40-50 buyins would be a better option.

A key skill that goes hand in hand with the concept of bankroll management is emotional management. How well you handle yourself at the table, and how disciplined you are when it comes to following the strategy you have previously decided sensible to give you the best chances of success.

Poker is a great game, with many rich and diverse aspects to it, by thinking about your bankroll management, and following a bankroll management strategy, you ensure you are always on the right side of the rail!

End Strategy

Bankroll:

[Mrdonklee]

You said "SNG's are one of my favourite game types, but they are also high in variance,"

This is not true sit and goes are the lowest variance especially 5max on uni. Other sites have double your money sit and goes and these are even less variance.

Also just to add to your BRM strat, it also depends on the amount of tables you are playing at the minute i play 6 so i always have 100 buyins at my sit and go level. One tabling recs probably 20 to 30 buyins will keep them going for a while.

I joined uni at the end of last year and finding the 5max games brilliant, hopefully meet at the tables sometime.

Hope you dont mind me replying good read and GL in your challenge.

[SkilfulPoker]

Nice comments Mrdonklee, I think the style of your play can have a big impact on varience as well, I'm quite agressive in SNG's especially on the bubble, and I think this increases my variance, I'll often also take chipEv spots in the first or second blind levels, where SNG 'staying alive' mentality, would suggest I shouldn't be taking them. I think it's interesting because it's a balance between risk:reward, when you take decent chipEV spots early, and double, then your chances of taking a 1st is alot higher, whereas if you nit it up in the early blind levels like conventional SNG strategy suggests (i guess it's conventional for a reason... it works!) then you may well cash more of them, but when you do cash you get less 1sts...

I tend to go for the cash less, get more 1sts approach, which increases my variance, which is why from my own experience there is a lot of variance in SNGs (I have had 20bi downswings on unibet 5 mans, at 4 euros, more than once...) of course, the question i guess is, is this just a downswing , or am i just playing like a fish ! :P

I think I was playing OK, but who knows!

About what you said about how many tables you are playing and BRM, I find this very interesting too. I have heard people say that you should have more buyins if you are playing more tables, but I've never understood myself. The variance should be the same in my mind.

If you play 10k hands 1 tabling, and 10k hands 6 tabling. You should experience the same variance in my mind. The only reason for having more buyins when multi-tabling I would say, would be to reduce the psychological impact of losing multiple stacks across multiple tables? Interesting to hear what you and others think of this.

---

Hope you dont mind me replying good read and GL in your challenge.

---

Definately not, feel free to add your ideas etc anytime, it's nice to have different views to think about! Thanks for the kind words about the thread.

Update

OK, so currently we are at a stand-still... The $1's 5man were going OK, but as mentioned at the start of the challenge I was also keen to complete this months missions, the second part of this months mission, requires you to play 4nl cash and Omaha, I had already completed the Omaha objectives, but had to win 3 hands 3 days in a row at cash. Two days ago I hit the first 1/3 marker for this ; Yesterday I had a go at getting the second 2/3 but the bankroll was down to €4.33 euros with just one stack, it wasn't to be... I got in with QQ vs AA , AA 3bet me from the blinds. So I think that's a cooler.

Next strategy post to appear soon, haven't decided what it will be about yet... if you want to see anything in particular , just let me know! It can be about any format, or maybe some aspect of the mental game?

In the meantime... tomorrow night we have double trouble... so with a bit of luck that will get things back up and running again!

Today with 0.33 left in the current bankroll, I thought I'd try to get it up to a 1 euro ticket to play an MTT or SNG.

So just placed this bet, the guy I bet on leads the H2H, but the most recent encounter last year the opponent won, but will keep you updated with how that ones goes...

Did anyone watch the superbowl yesterday? I was working all day yesterday from early morning, but stayed up to watch it, Atlanta got off to a great start and I fell aslseep at 14-0, I woke up to see them still leading, but had to go to bed as I couldn't keep my eyes open ;)

A friend backed patriots, and told me today, patriots somehow come back out of the dust, to win it! Ha, wished I could have stayed awake to watch it now.

Have a great week!

[SkilfulPoker]

Hmm not a bad start, no sooner do I place the bet, that he goes on to break, and now has won the first set: - 

Looking good so far ;)

[Tillus]

You stated "I'll often also take chipEv spots in the first or second blind levels, where SNG 'staying alive' mentality, would suggest I shouldn't be taking them. I think it's interesting because it's a balance between risk:reward, when you take decent chipEV spots early, and double, then your chances of taking a 1st is alot higher"

But also ''I tend to go for the cash less, get more 1sts approach, which increases my variance''

These two statements contradict themselves if you are convinced trying to build up a stack early in order to get more 1st places is the optimal approach. I see your point, as on Unibet 1st gets 2/3 of the prizepool, so there is a significant payjump between 1st and 2nd. Or do you mean this is the right approach in general, but you haven't yet managed to implenet this strategy in your own game correctly? 

While you might be right with your statement (go-for-1st approach = optimal strat), if this approach makes you more money in the long run, it would actually decrease variance, as you'd achieve a higher avg. return on your investment. A winning player with a higher ROI, is always less likely to undergo swings as big as another winning player with a lower ROI.

The margin with which you actually beat your games, should also be incorporated in your bankroll management. The closer your ROI approximates 0 (presuming it is still over 0, i.e. you're playing profitably), the more buyins you should budget for your bankroll. Because in reverse, the lower your ROI, the higher the likelihood of undergoing big swings. 

Keep it up, have fun and enjoy the game!

Tillus

[SkilfulPoker]

---

@Tillus wrote:

You stated "I'll often also take chipEv spots in the first or second blind levels, where SNG 'staying alive' mentality, would suggest I shouldn't be taking them. I think it's interesting because it's a balance between risk:reward, when you take decent chipEV spots early, and double, then your chances of taking a 1st is alot higher"

But also ''I tend to go for the cash less, get more 1sts approach, which increases my variance''

These two statements contradict themselves if you are convinced trying to build up a stack early in order to get more 1st places is the optimal approach. I see your point, as on Unibet 1st gets 2/3 of the prizepool, so there is a significant payjump between 1st and 2nd. Or do you mean this is the right approach in general, but you haven't yet managed to implenet this strategy in your own game correctly? 

While you might be right with your statement (go-for-1st approach = optimal strat), if this approach makes you more money in the long run, it would actually decrease variance, as you'd achieve a higher avg. return on your investment. A winning player with a higher ROI, is always less likely to undergo swings as big as another winning player with a lower ROI.

The margin with which you actually beat your games, should also be incorporated in your bankroll management. The closer your ROI approximates 0 (presuming it is still over 0, i.e. you're playing profitably), the more buyins you should budget for your bankroll. Because in reverse, the lower your ROI, the higher the likelihood of undergoing big swings. 

Keep it up, have fun and enjoy the game!

Tillus

---

Hi @Tillus thanks for reading, the statements aren't contradictory, you can get more 1sts and cash with less frequency than someone that is getting a mixture of 1sts and 2nds and cashing more often.

I don't nescesarily think going for 1sts and taking more risks in the early levels is the optimal strategy, I haven't investigated it with any great detail, but It's the strategy I prefer to play, in the absence of any concrete evidence proving the more passive early play is definately the way to go ;)

Here's a video that discusses the idea in more detail, in MTT's obviously the benefit of coming first is even greater, so risks on the bubble would seed even more reward if they influence your chances of taking 1st. But in 5man SNGs, where the difference between 1st and 2nd is great in terms of ROI, i think the same principle is certainly worth some thought.

(see time index 3:35)

 

Update

Bet lost so next play now will be double trouble tomorrow.

[SkilfulPoker]

OK here we go!

Double Trouble just started, here's to a cash!

[SkilfulPoker]

Crazy guy shoving all in , in double trouble, he's up to 29k...

I raise 22 from late position, he shoves... I fold....

few hands later I have AK, I raise he shoves, another caller, I call... win a few K chips, splitting it with another crazy guy who gets it all in with Ace Rag preflop!

Oh yeah this is an action packed game right here...

 

Listening to this while I play... for a bit of energy...

haven't heard the song at 9:22 in years!

( @MoreTBC maybe you should play next time you do a set :Cheeky: )

[SkilfulPoker]

oh no... just lost crazy guy shoving every hand ! =/

[SkilfulPoker]

 

Nice double up here, (although we are down to 9k now!) but anyway...

Interesting hand, EP has a tonne of unpaired hands in his range here shoving for 10bbs and we are still a way from the money, I decided to reshove it with 55. Worked out well.

 

[SkilfulPoker]

OUCH!

And that's the end of that...

12bbs, I shoved A7o bvb with over 10% of my stack out there in blinds and antes (and ran into AQ)!! Oh well. It was a valient effort. Next strategy post tomorrow. Will have a rethink before deciding what to do next!

[MoreTBC]

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@SkilfulPoker wrote:

( @MoreTBC maybe you should play next time you do a set 😏 )

---

Someone did a house rework of it last year, I play it most weeks 🆒

[SkilfulPoker]

Nice i love this type of remix music, went to a night club for first time in literally years and years 2 weeks ago, i was surprised, had a great night, dancing hard, and that seemed to go down well lol.

The challenge is still alive, we will be seeing what we can do with a free bet tomorrow... a promo which is now closed , but i found this quite funny when i just got back and noticed it on the recent posts ha...

[SkilfulPoker]

Converted my free bet, into £4.50 thanks to a lucky result in a tennis match (I choose one of the two players purely at random as they were both about even money).

Now the challenge can resume, it's the 9th now so we have a bit of ground to make up. I think we can still end this challenge in profit come the end of the month. The most crucial part for it, is going to be discipline, and playing the limits that it's bankrolled for.

Essentially this challenge is now, what can we run our free bet winnings up to on poker?

Will do my best to be consistent and smart in the games I play, which means to start with I'm going to play 100 1 euro 5man SNGs and then re-evaluate the next phase of games.

 

 

 

 

 

[SkilfulPoker]

Played 10

Br: 4.76

 

[SkilfulPoker]

This has been out a couple of years now, but I never got around to watching it, think I'll have a go at studying it, alongside the 1 euro mtt I just fired up for the challenge.

If you want to study it yourself you can just head over to here...

http://bit.ly/2kxa1pM

 

[SkilfulPoker]

Somehow the challenge is 'staying alive'

Bankroll down to £1, decided to place an 'outlandish' bet with odds of about 7/1 and then logged out. Fully expecting the challenge to be back at zero this morning.

Well what do you know, it went and won. Very difficult with just a few buy-ins to survive the early stages of the challenge now, but if I can get up to about 80 euros, I think they'll be no looking back! We'll see for now, I'd say we are still in chip and a chair territory.

Going to play the Unibet Community MTT league tonight.

 

[SkilfulPoker]

Jeez... so he calls a 3bet pf with this trash, aaaaaaaahhhhh

Not exactly what you want to be running into on the flop with a little under 3 buyins... :D