After another bad day at the micro stakes tables, Daniel Negreanu decided enough was enough.

He sent out a tweet that he's going to be sitting at a $100/$200 NLHE on PokerStars with $20,000 and dared people to try and take it from him.

I think his ego got a little bruised and he wanted to prove he can win at online poker.

It's understandable that this might have gotten to him and he might have been a bit on tilt. When you normally win and lose pots that are some people's annual salary and then you struggle to beat the spare change games, that's a bit hard to take.

Negreanu started at $0.01/$0.02 NLHE with $10 and slowly worked his way up to to $0.10/$0.25 NLHE where he ran his bankroll up to $254.68. He had a harder time at $0.10/$0.25 NL but he managed to beat it.  $0.25/$0.50 proved a tougher nut to crack. Out of 12 sessions, only 4 were winners and of those, only 2 increased his bankroll by more than 20%. As of his last session, his bankroll was down to $80.38, a loss of $173.30 from when he started playing the current stakes.

That's almost 70% of his bankroll gone, most of which was lost in the last 2 days. He had to play over 4,500 hands to earn that $173 in the first place and then in just 550 hands it's gone.

Watching Daniel Negreanu (KidPoker) playing $0.25/$0.50 NL on PokerStars for his $10-$100k bankroll challenge. Posting some big hands. Will fill in some details later.

Chart on right shows his challenge bankroll progress.

The micros have been pretty hard on Negreanu lately. Do you think you can do better? Use my free bankroll management spreadsheet to help you get started.

Continue reading this post to see some of the key hands from the 4 tables he played tonight.

Last night I spotted a tweet from Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) stating he was going to hit the $0.25/$0.50 NLHE tables on PokerStars for his $10 to $100k bankroll challenge. (At the time this post was authored, his last session was #89.)

I copied the hand histories from his session. The rest of this post has some of my usual rambling as well as my detailed analysis of some of the key hands from this session.

I just noticed something new in the Holdem Ring Game Filter on PokerStars. There are two new options "Tables with antes" and "Tables without antes".


So far no ante games have been added but according to a recent tweet from the PokerStars team it should be coming soon.

Our latest client version has a software change to allow Hold'em cash games with antes. This is not deployed yet, but coming soon.

These new tables will have a different dynamic. Somewhere between full ring and 6-max tables I think. 6-max ante games should be even more interesting.

The additional cost of antes will mean players will need to mix it up more since each orbit will cost more than just the small and big blind. The increased size of the pot

Ante games are sure to create more action. These aren't going to be tables where you can camp on 16 tables waiting for premium hands trying to get a 1-2 BB/100 win rate. That just won't work.

I'm curious to see what levels will start to have antes. My guess it will be at higher stakes tables. Can't really have an ante at $0.01/$0.02 NLHE.

On FTP, Ante games seem to start at $0.02/$0.05 with a $0.01 ante. Tables without antes still seem to be more popular though.

This is a good move by PokerStars. It's the largest online poker room out there but it doesn't really have the nose bleed cash game traffic that Full Tilt Poker does. This might help them attract more high stakes online players.

I wonder if we'll see a "run it twice" option soon.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to playing with antes?

Daniel Negreanu (KidPoker) has lost another buy-in today at the low stakes no-limit hold'em tables on PokerStars.

This is his 3rd session since he moved up to $0.25/$0.50 NLHE and so far it's been 1 for 3 with one small win and two buy-ins lost.

His current bankroll is at $177.78, down from the $253.68 he started these stakes with.

Time for another update on my Double or Nothing Sit and Go Challenge. The sessions since my last update are around 340-530. My current challenge bankroll is $501.60.

As you can see from the chart, things haven't been going very well in this challenge.  February was a brutal month.

The only impressive thing about the chart is that I figured out a way  to color it so that I can indicate where different blog updates were. The first set of sessions is covered in the first update, second set in red in the second update, 3rd set in blue 3rd update etc.

When I posted my last update my bankroll was up to $514.60. My low point for February was when my bankroll sunk to $371, a loss of $143.60 or around 26 buy-ins!

I received an email from PokerStars today that confirmed my suspicions of collusion at a Double or Nothing Sit-n-Go. Both players were banned from the site. Thankfully they played fewer than 100 games before they were caught and now their profits have been returned to players that were cheated.

By the way, in all the times I've spotted cheaters at the DoN SnGs I always won the game. So if you were playing the $5.40 DoNs in the last 2-3 months and got an email from stars about a refund due to being cheated feel free to leave a thank you in the comments. :) At least that way I get something out of it.

In this case I suspected there might be something fishy going on before the game even started. I joined this particular game to have a close look at the action. It turns out my hunch was right.

Here's a look at some of their plays that I reported to PokerStars.  Maybe it'll help you spot cheaters at your table. (By the way, PokerStars chooses not to reveal the identity of the cheats to other players so I have changed the names of all players at the table.)

After my last post on Daniel Negreanu's Bankroll Challenge I decided to look into his results a little further. I've created my own spreadsheet using the results he posts on his forum. I'll try and keep it updated and the chart on the right (most charts in this post actually) will update whenever I update my spreadsheet. So you can bookmark this page and come back to it to see how he's doing.

Since the charts will be updating, for reference, this post was made after his 83rd session when he just started playing $0.25/$0.25 NLHE.

In my last post, I questioned whether his aggressive bankroll management might make it difficult to achieve his goal of reaching $100,000 which is why I wanted to take a closer look at his results to see if variance might be creeping up on him. Lots of charts and math if you like that sort of thing.

No he's not down gazillions of dollars but he did lose almost a third of his $10 to $100,000 bankroll challenge. According to his last blog entry on the subject he started out with $10 at $0.01/$0.02 NLHE, moved up to $0.02/$0.05 with $25.26, $0.05/$0.10 with $50.86 and finally $0.10/$0.25 when he got to $126.58. At some point he hit $250 and started playing $0.25/$0.50.
Before his latest $0.25/$0.50 session his bankroll was down to $177.78 but he lost one $50 buy-in tonight with this hand. He's KidPoker in case you didn't know. So he's back down to $127.78 which might mean he has to move down to $0.10/$0.25 but I think his strategy is to stay at the same level but buy in shorter.

In this post I'll post some hands from the session and compare Negreanu's bankroll management to Chris Ferguson's Challenge as well as some other more conservative bankroll management strategies.

My latest results from my DoN SnG Challenge have left me a bit frustrated. I seem to be having a hard time staying above $500 so I decided to take a break and work on my ring game challenge.

It's been up and down but my last few sessions have been very good and I finally broke $100 to double my initial challenge bankroll. The CG Challenge bankroll stands at $100.05 to be exact. I was at $99 and change but played one quick session just so I can write this post. :)

I'm still playing loose aggressive (LAG) which seems to be working for me. My post flop play and hand reading skills look like they have improved against certain types of players so I'm more willing to call or 3 bet with speculative hands in position if I think I can get heads up. In multi-way pots I need to be more careful because I don't seem to be right about what all players might have often enough.

I don't want to sound cocky, I've had a tremendous amount of good luck as well. Some more details follow.

Things haven't been going as great as they were at first. My ROI has dropped. The current Double Or Nothing Sit-n-Go Challenge bankroll is at $514.60 which is a 243% gain from my initial challenge bankroll of $150.

My high was $527.20 but it's been up and down since then.

I've been having a bit of a hard time lately adjusting to playing 6 simultaneous tables. Not quite sure why since I've played that many and more in the past without a problem.

I'm not using any type of heads up display (HUD) and I seem to be finding myself in situations where I have to call a reraise from a player and I'm not quite sure what range I can put him on. Is he pushing fours? Aces? AQ? JTs? This has forced me to make some tough decisions and they haven't always been correct.  In the near future I'm going to invest in either Holdem Manager or PokerOffice. Not sure which yet. I've tried both in the past, mostly PokerOffice.

Because these games are fairly easy I also tend to do some other things like check email, update websites, return calls, etc, while the action is slow. I should probably play fewer tables when my focus isn't always there.

I've also run across some new regulars and I've been wasting chips calling them down just to see how they play. Maybe not a great idea but hopefully the information gained will start to pay off.

One other big factor is I've been tilting a lot lately. If I have some donk at multiple tables, and he does something stupid to bust me on one table, I'll wind up trying to get back at him at other tables and it just doesn't work out the way I thought. Need to remember this is a game where discipline is important.

On the plus side, I've earned $90 in Stellar Rewards Bonuses and VIP Bonuses. I'm more than half way to my last $10 Stellar Reward and have almost enough VPPs for another $50 bonus. I'm not including bonuses in this bankroll.

If I had started this challenge with a new account and deposited $150, I would have also cleared the first time deposit bonus. With all rewards and bonuses my bankroll would be at $754.60. So it seems the double or nothing sngs are good bankroll builders.

Time to make some adjustments, find my happy place and hopefully improve my performance, otherwise I won't reach my goal of $1k by the end of the month. :(

I'm not one to believe that online poker is rigged and that everyone is cheating, but cheating does occur from time to time. Mainly through the form of collusion.

Collusion is when one or two players work together to help one or both of them win. They will let each other know what their hole cards are and use that to their advantage as well as work together to build big pots when they think one is ahead, or help keep pots small against each other.

Collusion can be hard to spot but online poker rooms have advanced detection methods to help find signs of foul play. They also have staff that review players when allegations arise.

A few months ago I was playing in a sit and go where I was pretty sure two players were working together.  I also noticed that they were playing multiple tables together. After sending a report to PokerStars support they conducted an investigation which resulted in both players being banned and 'disqualified from events in which their unfair play affected the outcome' and players that were affected were compensated at the expense of the colluders. Neither time did I get anything because I won both of the games I spotted cheaters at.

I play mainly small stakes games so we're not talking about millions of dollars but the first two had profits in or around $1k. Even for such a small figure PokerStars took the matter seriously.

These last two were a strange bunch. They apparently hadn't been at it long and didn't seem very good at it or good at not being so obvious.

At the time I submitted my suspicions, neither was a profitable player but checking their stats now it seems they must have found the game in which they could profitably cheat at. Still small time and I'm not sure they ever saw a profit but they have been banned. I almost didn't report it because I just thought they were bad poker players but they were both from the same city, and I'm pretty sure one guy was in the other's avatar picture which I thought was hilarious.

If you think you noticed some suspicious activity at your table, don't mention anything in chat. You don't want to tip off the cheaters that you're on to them. More importantly, you might be wrong and you don't want to accuse someone unjustly. Instead send an email to the support address for your poker room. Provide them with the players names, the hands which you thought were suspicious (game #) and why, as well as the tournament ID or cash game table you were playing at.

Online poker rooms (most anyway) value their reputations. Without it they're going to lose a lot of business so they take these matters very seriously.

The PokerStars Haiti Appeal was concluded yesterday and this morning PokerStars posted the final numbers for the PokerStars Haiti Appeal on their blog. Final total, just under $1.5 million.

PokerStars players donated $746,390.26 which means a $1,492,780.52 donation to the Red Cross after PokerStars' match. This was the largest PokerStars had raised in one of their charity drives.

$50,000 also went to UNICEF when PokerStars met Alyssa Milano's Tweet Challenge to raise money for Haiti.

PokerStars recognized their players contributions with the following statement:

Poker is a solitary pursuit, one that some player construct around the idea that greed is good and the selfish means to the profitable end can be forgiven. In times like these, it is refreshing to see that the poker community can set aside profit motives and give away hard-earned money for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.

Many thanks to all who gave and organized fundraising efforts.. You are a credit to our community.

It looks like around half of the money raised through the Haiti tournaments were from players donating $50 or less and around half of that was from the $10 and lower tourneys. Not everyone is a high stakes player with a huge bankroll, not everyone is even a winning player and with the economy the way it is finances can be strained. Throw in being right after the holidays and giving money to people you don't probably wasn't on your to-do list. But seeing people suffering and fighting to overcome their adversity it's difficult to not have compassion and thanks to PokerStars every dollar players were willing to spare turned into two which turned into ~$1.5mil.

Unfortunately I didn't get too far in the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker. I was playing very well. managed to get an above average stack then was knocked out shortly when I had a big pair but ran into aces.

I should have known better. When a player accumulates a big stack and sits out then all of a sudden they come back, flat call a big raise, they generally have a big hand, usually aces. I was pretty sure that was the case here but the dry flop made it hard to resist getting it all in.

Only cashed in one event in the series for an $11 SCOOP ticket.

Even though I didn't win a ticket in the main event, I did manage to earn a small cash due to a prop bet another player posted. On Twitter I noticed the following tweet before the WBCOOP Main Event:

Daleroxxu forget that "Outlast The Pro" nonsense. Tonight is "Outlast The Turtle" @ #WBCOOP ME. MI_Turtle giving $1000 between those outlasting him.

I had dreams of getting to the final table with MI_Turtle and finishing 1st to his second but that obviously didn't happen.

However MI_Turtle busted out pretty early when he got it all in with Aces vs a straight draw that hit on the river.

As bad as it was for MI_Turtle, it was worse for Daleroxxu who was escrowing the bet and was faced with having to send a small amount of money to over 600 players.

The PokerStars tweeters were following the bet and offered to see if they could help make the payments easier. When PokerStars support offers to help it seems they usually come through. This morning I received the following email.

Thank you for participating in WBCOOP 2010 - we hope you enjoyed the experience!

This is just a quick email to inform you that you have been credited $1.58 from the player 'MI_Turtle'. He kindly offered to share $1000 amongst all the players that outlasted him in the WBCOOP Main Event. His final finishing position of 635th place meant the $1000 was divided between the top 634 players.

If you have any questions regarding this unusual prize, please let us know.

Playing in these games has made me realize my MTT game seems a bit rusty. I need to come up with a good schedule and hopefully get my game back.