PokerStars announced this morning that they will be getting rid of the Double or Nothing Sit n Gos on February 15, 2011.

PokerStars will no longer offer Double of Nothing Sit & Go Tournaments as of February 15th, 2011.

This is not a decision that was made easily as these tournaments have proven to be quite popular with players. However, after thorough evaluation, PokerStars has decided that the format needed improvement.

Newly introduced ‘Fifty50’ Sit & Go tournaments have been deployed to provide an alternative for players who have previously played the Double or Nothings. Fifty50s have many of the same attributes that attracted players to Double or Nothing tournaments:

• Half of the players who enter the tournament receive a payout
• The tournament ends when half of the players remain
• There is no shorthanded play
• They end quickly
• They have low rake

Fifty50s differ from Double or Nothings in their payout structure. Only half of the prize pool is distributed evenly amongst the top half of finishers. The other half is distributed based on chip count, with each chip having an equal value.

This difference means that players always have some incentive to care about the size of their chip stack, whereas in Double or Nothings this was not always the case. This added element makes the Fifty50s a more skilful and, to many, more interesting format.

The value of each chip in Fifty50s also makes situations where some players may softplay each other less attractive than in Double or Nothings. Some forms of poker invite this sort of implicit collusion more than others, as the rewards are greater and costs are smaller for making such plays. The Fifty50 format is an improvement over the Double or Nothing format in this regard as there is always a cost for a player to make a decision that doesn’t maximize the size of their own chip stack.

While it is understood that many players may miss the old Double or Nothing format, improvements and changes to game formats are necessary from time to time. While the loss of a familiar game format can be frustrating or annoying initially, PokerStars is confident that Fifty50s will prove to be a superior tournament format.

Rake
The rake structure is different for Fifty50s than for DoNs. It’s somewhat higher for Turbo Fifty50s than it was for Turbo DoNs at most stakes, but is lower at the $1 level. The rake for normal speed Fifty50s is significantly lower than it was for normal speed DoNs. The Double or Nothings offered rake that was in most cases twice as much for normal speed tournaments than for turbo tournaments. The Fifty50 rake is more in line with other PokerStars Sit & Go tournaments.

PokerStars is currently evaluating all Sit & Go offerings, including rake. The stakes offered and rake for Fifty50s are in line with the changes planned for all Sit & Go Tournaments on PokerStars in the coming months.

If players compare Fifty50 rake on PokerStars to the industry standard for similar Sit & Go tournaments, they will find that the comparison isn’t close; the PokerStars’ rake is much lower.

I'm not very happy about this news since I've been getting very into my Double or Nothing SnG Challenge. I've played a few of the new Fifty50 SnGs and I'm not too confident they will be a good replacement in terms of profitability. Especially in the long run. I'm not sure yet what this is going to mean for my DoN SnG Challenge.

There was a lot of speculation on the forums that the Fifty50's were going to replace DoNs because there had been so much cheating at the DoNs, especially with the big Chinese DoN cheating ring.

Based in part on the wording in the announcement as well as some other things I've read my guess is it's not so much the cheating as was the false reports of cheating.

PokerStars thoroughly investigates all reports of cheating. Because of some of the strategy involved in the Double or Nothing format some things may look like cheating, such as implicit collusion where two or more players may call a short stack's all-in on the bubble and check it down to try and knock them out.

Even though a lot of rake was generated by these games the time it took up for the fraud team must not have been worth it? At least that's my guess.

I'm really bummed out about it because I thought I'd have a real shot of making Supernova this year because of the amount of DoNs I play for my challenge. I wish they could have at least waited until the end of the month before killing these games since February is already a short month and I'm not sure if I'll be able to meet my VPP goal.

Daniel 'KidPoker' Negreanu, known mainly as a live tournament pro, has been tearing it up online for the past year or so on PokerStars. Playing in the big tournaments, big NLHE cash games, micro stakes full ring NLHE, $5,500 heads up Sit & Gos and lately 4 tabling heads up $5/$10 no limit hold'em.

He's been posting on the 2+2 forums looking for opponents willing to play 2,500 hands heads up against him across 4 tables.

It can't be a coincidence that the Superstar Showdown against Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom consists of 4 tabling HU over 2,500 hands.

Hardly a secret, I'm a fan of Viktor "Isildur1" Blom and watching him play the SuperStar Showdown on PokerStars on Sundays has inspired me to see if I can get to the point where I feel like I could be a worthy challenger for him.

Blom made a big splash in the online poker world last year when he fearlessly took on some of the best poker players in the world running up millions of dollars in winnings but eventually losing it all but has come back in action as a PokerStars Pro.

While Negreanu hasn't confirmed he's going to take on Blom he did say he's testing his metal to see if he can mentally and physically keep up with a game which at around 400 hands per hours is far far away from the 1 table, 30 hands per hour face to face battles that he's played for most of his poker career.

Online play can be tougher but has some obvious perks. Like being able to play in your bathrobe. :) 

He recently posted his heads up results on his blog and I've added in some recent matches.

Opponent	# Hands	Profit
adtina22	47	$1.00
serviobraga	248	$118.00
TCFromUB	323	-$3,213.30
knect_poker	1,035	$895.00
dim--trix	1,050	$6,913.50	REPLAY
FMyLife	1,546	$11,057.25	REPLAY
Nanonoko	2,501	-$854.50	REPLAY
ZeeJustin *	2,494	$16,277.75	REPLAY
bmwmcoupe	2,506	$11,252.00	REPLAY
Bonomo's numbers are a little off.

For years now forum posters, especially on 2+2, have been ragging on Negreanu's poker skills, especially after his losses on GSN's High Stakes Poker. A number of posters thought he wouldn't even be able to beat the $10/$20 NLHE online. Negreanu jumped in to defend himself and at the end a challenge was proposed where he would play 2+2 poster 2eazy (bmwmcoupe on PokerStars) in a series of heads up matches at $25/$50 NLHE. After 5,000 hands bmwmcoupe walked away with around $30,000 of Negreanu's money.

Winning 1/3rd of his previous losses back from bmwmcoupe in 1/2 the hands at 1/5th the stakes must have felt pretty good.

Before the 2009 match Negreanu posted response on 2+2 and on his forum.

What a lot of these guys don't get is that while playing 2-3 tables seems really easy to them, they grew up learning how to play poker that way and are comfortable splitting their focus between several games. I honestly have enough trouble focusing on ONE game online and picking up betting patterns, etc. that playing two or three games is very, very confusing to me and I can't keep up with the action. I get that all the kids multi-table, but I grew up playing poker a very different way.

When I grew up playing poker there was always a ton of information available on a player, not only before I sat down, but in between hands watching them eat (sounds weird but it's info!), hearing them talk, finding out more about them. The game was much slower obviously, so after playing only 30 hands I had so much more information on my opponents than I would if I played 30 hands online. Adding more tables online only makes it that much harder for me.

Many of them clearly underestimate how difficult it can be for a guy who's played live all of his life to get used to the idea that he is looking at little pictures instead of people and pressing buttons instead of using poker chips. My most valuable skill set is unavailable to me online and I'm not going to compound that problem by further confusing myself with even more little pictures and more buttons.

Negreanu also felt that if he put in the time and effort he could become a real contender on the virtual felt. After nearly 2 years of hard work his results seem to prove his statement true.

Coming up he worked hard at playing as well as promoting himself and the game. Constantly posting on the Internet and publishing articles in print media. His hard work has turned into enough success both as a player as well as a poker celebrity where he could continue to live a very good life without putting the effort he is in online poker. Between his tournaments, PokerVT, interviews, appearances, tv, movies, music videos and living his life, his schedule seems pretty packed which makes his dedication admirable. His renewed enthusiasm for the game is contagious and I've found myself playing more as a result.

Bonomo, bmwcoupe (and I believe FMyLife if I remember correctly) all had praise for Negreanu at the end of their matches commenting that he was a tough opponent.

Not too long ago players were lining up to get a piece of him and now a couple of the contenders quit him well before the 2,500 hand mark. Of the 3 players that did play all 2,500 hands only one profited against Negreanu, the other two lost more than 10 buy-ins.

Negreanu felt his toughest opponent so far was Randy 'Nanonoko' Lew, the first player to play the full 2,500 hands. He had this to say about the 24 tabling NLHE beast in his blog:

Playing against Nananoko was the best training I could ask for. He was five times faster than any other opponent I faced which forced me to not only time out a few times, but also led to a few misclicks. It's all part of the learning process, and I'm a big believer in going all out against the fastest competition I can find, because then when I play others, the pace will seem comfortable.

It's no different than a baseball player swinging five bats before he goes up to the plate, or a golfer taking some practice swings with a heavy club.

Nanonoko was also twice as aggressive pre-flop as anyone else I'd faced, 3 betting me 29% of the time, while my other opponents generally hovered around 15%.

The tide turned both ways during the match and Negreanu was up over 7 buy-ins at one point but Nanonoko fought back to grind out a small win.

In the matches I've seen, Negreanu has been playing very aggressively both pre and post flop especially in position. I didn't analyze the hands against others but versus bmwmcoupe Negreanu was a lot more aggressive than him preflop and even more so post flop. 2eazy played very passively, especially out of position. The last half of the match he was barely even c-betting the flop in position. Might have been disheartened after having lost so much already.

When Will Negreanu Take On Isildur1?

He hasn't said for sure but it's only a matter of time. My guess is it will be some time before the end of the year. If his momentum keeps up my guess is he might take on the challenge in the next couple of months.

Negreanu has been doing well 4 tabling NLHE HU so far but Blom is a different kind of heads up player that's very aggressive and has the balls to play 8 tables against Phil Ivey, Patrick Antonius and Tom 'Durrrr' Dwan all at the same time.

Playing against Nanonoko a few more times as well as other players that are willing to 3, 4 and 5 bet wider pre-flop and play more aggressively on the river, willing to check-raise shove anywhere from thin to the nuts and even total air, might be good practice.

Maybe players like Phil Galfond or Daniel Cates will be willing to drop down in stakes to help Negreanu get ready?

At this point I can't imagine him not taking part in the Superstar Showdown, it's just a matter of time. When it does happen it's going to be worth watching.

Do you think Negreanu will have the stones to take on Isildur1 and if he does will he have a chance or just get eaten alive by the Swede?

PokerStars came out with a new game type, the Fifty50 Sit & Go. They're a bit similar to the Double or Nothing (DoN) Sit & Gos where the 5 players left standing of the initial 10 get double their buy in and the game ends after half the field is gone. These games are available in Turbo and normal speed.

I played some to get a feel for the games and wanted to share info on the games and my thoughts.

There are a few key differences for Fifty50's vs DoNs.

Payout Structure

Unlike the traditional DoN SnGs where the remaining 5 players all get paid the same amount, in a Fifty50 SnG half of the prize is distributed evenly (winners get their buy-in, not including rake, back) and the other half is distributed based on chip counts.

The formula for payout is buy-in + (end chips/total chips) * (0.5 * total prize pool)

The different payout structure gives players incentive to accumulate chips otherwise they'll barely make a profit for the game if they finish in last place.

It can also reduce the incentive to implicitly collude. If a short stack pushes all in on the bubble and two players call they might fight over the pot to accumulate more chips and win more money.

Blind Structure

The blind structure of these tournaments is very different from DoN SnGs or even the regular full ring SnGs on PokerStars.

Blind levels go up in smaller increments but each level is 6 minutes compared to 10 minutes for DoNs and regular SnGs. Turbo Fifty50 games have 3 minute blind levels.

As a result the blinds go up faster. After 30 minutes in a Fifty50 SnG you'll be playing 40/80 with a 5 chip ante compared to 25/50 with a 5 chip ante.

Are Fifty50 SnGs Worth Playing?

I played a few of these to test them out. At first it seems like it might not be worth the effort if you're a regular DoN player. You'll have to cash in significantly more than 50% of the tournaments or end with a big chip lead enough times to make the games worth it.

The good news is that these games seem to be really soft right now so it's not hard to have a high ITM rate and a good ROI. These games also have 25% less rake than DoN SnGs. With a DoN you're paying 8% in rake, with these you're paying only 6%.

When they first came out I saw a few don regs playing them but they didn't seem to stick with them so the fields aren't all that tough. I usually play around 10 DoNs at a time so I tried doing the same with these and out of all my tables there was only one player that I had come across before.

I'm going to try and play a few more sets and get a better feel for them but they're not as horrible as I thought they might be. The problem for me is because it's less rake you're also earning less VPPs/FPPs and right now I'm on a bit of an FPP kick.

That time of year again, the series of freeroll tournaments for bloggers on PokerStars.

Didn't do that great in it last year. Think I had only one small cash in an 8-game tournament. Most of the games I learned that day.

Should be fun though and the prize pools are pretty big for freerolls.

All prizes are tickets into the Spring Championship of Online Poker.

PokerStars recently announced a new feature they are beta testing, PokerStars Home Games. The Home Games feature allows you to create your own Online Poker Club to set up private games for only the players you wish to invite.

You can create your own ring games as well as tournaments. Just like with a real poker club members earn points based on how well they do in tournaments. These points are tracked in the club lobby.

Right now it looks like it's only available in the play money client but from what I hear and the way things appear to be set up, it looks like it will eventually be available for real money too.

Setting up Your Own Poker Club

It's pretty straight forward, first thing is log into the PokerStars.net client and click on the Home Games tab on the right.

Underneat the Home Games logo are two buttons, click the one that says Create A Poker Club.

This will bring up the following window that will allow you to give your club it's name and specify the invitation code that people you invite will use to join your club. Don't forget to agree to the Terms and Conditions then click the Create Club button.

You'll be able to change the invitation code later but the name you assign to your club seems to be permanent so give it some thought before deciding on it.

Once you're club is created you'll be presented with a message that lets you know what your club id number is. That's it, you're pretty much done creating a club.

Now send the club id number and invitation code to your family and friends to sign up.

Creating Club Tables and Tournaments

It's been a couple of months since my last Double or Nothing Sit and Go Bankroll Challenge Update. I've been busy with a few things that didn't leave me much time to play a lot of poker or post updates.

By the way, I'm posting this update using a Google CR-48 Notebook running Google Chrome OS. I haven't had a chance to put it through it's paces yet but I have been using it to update and review my bankroll management spreadsheets. I'll likely post more about it at a later date.

I started this challenge with $150 and the challenge bankroll is now up to $2,804 only about $220 up from the last update. Win rate was pretty pathetic at around 55% with a buy-in ROI of just over 1%.

I'm running around $300 below EV for the period but I think the main problem has been adjusting to the $10 DoN games as well as getting used to playing again after having to take a number of long breaks from the games.

I've also been trying some new things. Some of them worked a lot of them didn't but I feel more comfortable with my game at these stakes now compared to when I first moved up in this challenge.

When I first moved up to the $10 games I played fewer tables than I was playing at $5 so I could focus more and have the time to take notes on the regulars. Playing fewer tables I was able to make a lot of moves I couldn't normally make, pick off more bluffs, trap more, bluff more, etc. The games were less boring but eventually I started over-thinking things more than I should and it cost me.

Eventually I felt more confident at these stakes and started moving from few tables in a tiled configuration to more tables in a stacked configuration like I used to with the $5 DoNs. I've been playing as many as 20 at a time but that was just to make sure I cleared another Stellar Rewards Bonus and achieved Platinum Star before the end of last year.

When I started this challenge about a year ago I had hopes that things would be progressing much faster than they have been. I was hoping to be at least one or two levels higher than I actually am now.  Part of the problem is I spent too time than I should have at the $5 DoNs to acculate FPPs to replace the TV in my office. Very happy with the TV from the VIP Store so I guess I can't complain too much.

Hopefully this year I can do much better. Now that I'm playing the $10 DoNs (and soon the $20's with any luck) it might be possible for me to reach SuperNova status this year but I'm not going to make that one of my goals.

My goals for this challenge are to continue to improve my game, keep moving up in stakes and keep that chart moving up :)

Some of you have been using my Double or Nothing SnG Bankroll Management Spreadsheet to track your own progress in these games. How have things been going for you?

I guess it's no surprise that Isildur1 was going to capitalize on all his fame. Everyone was after him and when he bailed on Tony G you had to wonder that this mysterious Sweedish poker player might have realized that he had value.

His only concern was that he wanted to remain anonymous. Even though there is wide speculation that Isildur1 is Viktor Blom, his true identity has not been officially revealed.

This morning PokerStars announced that they have added Isildur1 to their PokerStars Team Pro stable. This anonymous figure who created such a frenzy on Full Tilt Poker will now be playing on PokerStars.

If you want to play Isildur1 heads up PokerStars has created the Superstar Showdown.

A SuperStar Showdown is a high stakes, heads-up match consisting of a single session of 2,500 hands. The match is played across four tables of No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha, at stakes no lower than $50/$100. The winner is the player that shows either a profit after 2,500 hands, or wins all of their opponent’s match bankroll.

While PokerStars is the world's largest online poker room, Full Tilt Poker has been where the big online cash games have been played but PokerStars has been fighting to get in on that action.

PokerStars' Team Pro front man Daniel Negreanu has been playing more high stakes cash games online at PokerStars and PokerStars has also been revamping different aspects of their cash game tables to make them more attractive to online players.

Grabbing Isildur1 is going to attract a lot of viewers wanting to see his famous up and down swings. So far he's played about 2,500 hands and is up $8.7k. One of the first players to go up against Isildur1 on PokerStars is Phil Galfond (MrSweets28). Galfond has played 1,624 hands against the secret Swede and is down over $34k to him.

Maybe this time Isildur1 might want to try my bankroll management spreadsheets but that doesn't seem to be his style and I doubt PokerStars will funnel him more money to keep playing if he goes broke.

Reading various poker blogs has helped me think about poker in different ways.

I've been trying to increase my subscriptions to poker blogs in my blog reader.

A lot of poker blogs I found are no longer update. Some seem to have been sold to spammers.

I tried to whittle down the list to known good blogs but I know I'm missing a lot. There are many sites I visit regularly from Google search but I forgot to bookmark or add to my reader.

Other blogs I'd like to read regularly don't have feeds, like Phil Galfond's blog, which makes them harder to follow.

If you have any suggestions for good poker blogs that you read please let me know in the comments below.

You can subscribe to my feed with this link: http://blog.microrollers.com/feeds/posts/default

Note: if you can't see the list below click here

When I first started playing poker I thought I'd be playing mainly multi-table tournaments but I've barely played any lately.

Grinding SnGs and cash games brings a small but steady profit but tournaments have the possibility of delivering a nice big prize for finishing 1st.

Unfortunately I find that SnGs and cash games fit into my schedule better since I can start them whenever I like. But I think I can manage to fit in some more MTTs.

My goal is to try and play at least 30 (hopefully more like 50-60) MTTs a month. I should be able to swing that playing 3-4 tournaments a couple of nights a week. I'm hoping that's enough to get a handful of deep runs and one final table each month. As long as I still remember how to play :) I'll also try and find some time to study some more on MTTs and maybe get some new books.

PokerStars offers a lot of benefits to players as part of it's VIP Program. One of these benefits are free online poker tournaments with prize pools as high as $1 million. The buy-in to these events are either free or through frequent player points (FPPs).

Three $500 tournaments run every day for a 10 FPP buy-in. There are three weekly tournaments with $1,000, $2,000 and $30,000 prize pools, two monthly tournaments with a $2,500 and $100,000 prize pool and 4 times a year the big $1,000,000 quarterly freerolls.

These seem to be a pretty good value for your FPPs. I played one a few months ago and final tabled it. I keep meaning to play more but I lose track of when they are.

To help me keep track of these tournaments I've added them to my calendar.

If you'd like to add them to your calendar (Outlook, Thunderbird w/Lightnight, iPhone, Blackberry or other smartphone) you can use the following links to sync your calendar using either the iCalendar or XML feed.

I've split up the calendars into two groups:

PokerStars Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly VIP Freeroll Calendar

Use this calendar to keep track of the Weekly, Monthly and Quarterly PokerStars VIP Freerolls.

PokerStars Daily VIP Freeroll Calendar

The PokerStars Daily VIP Freerolls run every day at 12:40pm, 7:40pm and 10:40pm ET. I don't plan on playing many of these plus they run every day three times a day so they should be easy to remember. For that reason I've added them to a separate calendar feed if you don't think it will clog up your calendar view.

PokerStars VIP Freeroll Calendar

I've always found the portraits Team PokerStars Pros have as their avatars appealing. They have a very nice muted effect to them.

Some of the PokerStars portraits are nicer than others but they all have the same effect applied to them.

When PokerStars announced they signed Liv Boeree as a Team Pro member they linked her photos to some very high resolution versions. The amount of detail in the photo allowed me to make a good guess at how it was lit.

Since I had PokerStars Pro Portraits on my mind I figured I'd try and reverse engineer the effect.

Not everyone can be a sponsored by PokerStars but if you'd like to look like you are, here's how to do it.

PokerStars announced that starting on October 1st there will be some new changes to the VIP program. Some pretty great changes in my opinion!

First, VIP Reward Bonuses will now be available in your account instantly. In the past if you purchased a $50 VIP Reward Bonus for 4,500 FPP you'd have to clear that bonus by earning 350 VPPs (7 times the dollar amount) before that amount was added to your account.

Tomorrow, when you purchase a VIP Reward Bonus from the PokerStars VIP Store, the amount will be instantly credited to your account.

I really like this change except I recently purchased a bonus that I'm still working on clearing. Damn my impatience! Update: Thanks to a tweet from @fpppro I found out you could email PokerStars support and request a refund for VIP Reward Bonuses that haven't cleared and then purchase a new VIP Reward Bonus that clears instantly. Sweet!

Micro stakes players will also be earning VPPs faster at NL and PL ring games up to $0.05/$0.10.

This is an extension of the MicroMania promotion they held in July where micro stakes NL and PL games earned 10 VPPs for each $1 collected in rake. What came as a surprise to me was that the 10x multiplier didn't end in July. They continued to run the promotion without making a fuss over it.

I was trying to track my cash game VPP earn rate and I thought something seemed off. Now I know why.

The normal VPP multiplier is 6x for tables with 8 or more seats and 5.5x for tables with 7 or fewer seats.

The new VPP multiplier at each stake are at follows:

$0.01/$0.02: 12x
$0.02/$0.05: 10x
$0.05/$0.10: 8x

6-max players will realize the biggest gain going from 5.5x to either 12x, 10x or 8x depending on the stakes. Heads-up players are unfortunately left out since the smallest heads up tables are $0.10/0.25 which have been excluded from this new change even though they were part of MicroMania.

Still, these are very good changes, especially not having to clear VIP Reward Bonuses!

It's been a while since my last post and update. I've been busy with a few other projects and haven't had as much time. I have been playing my challenges but haven't had time to update my blog.

I really wanted to splurge and play one of the $200 WCOOP events but I just couldn't find the time. :(

Since my last update my Double or Nothing Sit N' Go challenge bankroll is up over $1,000 to $2,584. I'm currently playing the $10 DoNs. My winrate since the last update was only 55.6% giving me a little better than a 3% ROI.

Not a spectacular winrate but it's mainly due to one big downswing.

I started out this update playing the $5.40 DoNs even though my bankroll rules allowed me to play the $10.80 DoNs. There were a couple of reasons why I decided to stick with the $5 DoNs.

First, I just got used to playing a large number of tables and was having fun and showing good results doing so and I didn't want to stop.

The other reason (and this is longer than I wanted but I can't stop talking about new toys)  was I needed to replace the TV in my office and decided to use my FPPs to get a new TV from the PokerStars' VIP store. Sticking with the $5 DoNs I was able to generate FPPs faster since moving to the $10 DoNs would mean I would have to play fewer tables.

I had planned to restrict my FPPs to only cash bonuses but just couldn't resist. I'm the type of person that usually goes nuts looking at specs and comparing models before I make any purchasing decision. I hate wasting money and more importantly I hate getting something and then realizing for only a little bit more I could have gotten something better.

The downside is that I start out looking for something that costs let's say $300 and then realize for $50 bucks more I can get something better, and then for only another $25 I can get something even better. Eventually I say screw it if I'm going to spend $200 above my initial $300 budget why not just get the top of the line model!

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn't have time to do that and just blindly bought the 26" 720p Samsung HDTV that PokerStars lists on their store. It was the right size and I could do without 1080p in my office. I'm happy with it. The picture quality is good and it has some nice features. My favorite is that it comes with a USB port and I can connect an external drive to play videos from my computer.

OneCall.com seems to be the company that fulfills electronics orders for PokerStars's VIP Store. The TV was listed for $480 when I ordered it for 32,000 FPPs. If I chose to purchase bonuses with those FPPs I would have only been able to get less than $400 worth so it seemed like a good deal. Amazon put it on sale shortly after I ordered it and it would have been a toss-up. Check out Amazon's current price for the Samsung LN26C450 26-Inch 720p 60 Hz LCD HDTV
Overall I was very happy with the process and service and would buy from OneCall.com again but instead of purchasing something directly from the VIP Store I'll go about it a different way. I noticed that in the VIP Store you can purchase $200 gift certifcates for OneCall and that would allow me to be more selective about what item I purchase.

OK, back to DoNs...

After I earned the FPPs I needed for the TV I finally moved up to the $10 DoNs. I started playing one and then two tables at a time and things were going well. Very well actually.

Since I continued with the $5 DoNs longer than I should have my bankroll could actually support playing more than 2 tables at a time and I quickly moved to about as many as I was playing at the $5 level. That's when the downswing hit and it was a pretty big one. I never hit the point where my bankroll rules told me to move down so I kept at it trying to find my bearings.

Moving up quickly probably wouldn't have been such a big problem but a few weeks went by where I didn't have time to play any poker and I guess I forgot how? I should have eased myself back into it.

At the $10 level players generally make fewer mistakes than they did at the $5 level and I found I needed to focus more to keep myself from making mistakes myself. I dropped back down to 2 tables at a time to pay closer attention and make some adjustments to my game.

I slowly worked my way up to 5 tables at a time and I'm playing them pretty much tiled (with a slight overlap) so I can pay attention to the action easier.

I created a custom layout with 5 tables arranged as shown in the image to the right. There's a little bit of overlap but I can still see what's going on.

More important than seeing what's going on, this layout helps me remember the players. This is helpful when there's a player I'm picking up a read on but I don't have enough hands against them for the HUD stats to be reliable.

I'm not good with remembering names or avatars but I'm good at remembering something like the player in the upper right table in seat 1 raises loose and calls shoves light. Playing with my tables stacked doesn't allow me to remember players in that way.

My next step is to play 6 tables. I have a layout where I moved the center table up and added a 6th one just under it. After that 8 tables with a bigger overlap and then I'll see if I can go back to stacking tables.

The challenge is going much slower than I initially thought it would but as long as that chart keeps moving up I guess I can't complain. :)

Received an email today that PokerTableRatings.com is now offering Sit-n-Go hand histories for purchase. For a limited time there is a 30% discount if you use the promo code: SNGLAUNCH.

Plus you'll also get 14 free days of SnG daily hand updates with your order if you use the promo code.

PokerTableRatings has been tracking cash game hands for hold 'em and omaha for Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, Absolute/Ulitmate Bet, Bodog, iPoker/Titan, Party Poker and recently the Cake Poker.

Like other data mining sites they allow you to size up your competition quickly. Through their website you can review a players playing style, win/loss record and even watch recent sessions. Their new PTR Premium service gives you a more in-depth analysis and even provides typical HUD stats in the PTR replayer.

For months PTR has secretly been data mining SNG hand histories as well and has now made them available for purchase. Like their cash game hand histories these files can be imported into your poker analytics software such as Holdem Manager or Poker Office. This can give you more insight into players than just their win/loss record that other sites such as SharkScope provide.

One problem though. Data mining and trading/purchasing hand histories violates the terms and conditions of most major poker rooms.