The following accounts are an archived part of the Ultimate Bet section here at Unknown Poker.com.

Ultimate Bet Player Journal

This is a journal of my play at Ultimate Bet, which is pretty close to my favorite poker room online. I'm going to attempt to implement my own strategies that I've written about as closely as possible and track their results so I can determine whether or not they're good strategies. I think I'll probably focus almost exclusively on sit and go tournaments there for now, and track my progress and results here.

October 13, 2005

I'm going to take another crack at a $20 + $2 buy-in no limit sit and go at Ultimate Bet tonight. I'm going to play VERY tight and very aggressive. I'm only playing pairs of 77's or better plus AK and AQ unless I can get in dirt-cheap and from position with a small pair or suited connector. A friend of mine has been playing tourneys at Party Poker at the very lowest level and only playing QQ's or better preflop, and he seems to be doing okay, so maybe I can discipline myself to play ultra-tight and aggressive tonight. Tourney's starting, so I'll be back in a little while to finish up this journal entry.

Bankroll after buying into the tourney: $457.32

Okay - so I placed 7th. Stayed real tight til I got 10 - J diamonds in late position and limped in. The flop comes 9 - Q - K. The king and queen are hearts.

The guy before me raises, and I re-raise. Everyone else gets out, and he re-raises me back. So I go all in, and he flips over a KQ. Which was fine with me until the Q hit on the river.

Damn it. I guess I've won with that nonsense enough to deserve to bust out on that hand.

Bankroll after playing in the tourney: $457.32.

October 6, 2005

I deposited $500 via NETeller today, and got a 10% re-deposit bonus from the cashier at Ultimate Bet as a courtesy, making my total bankroll at Ultimate Bet now $501.32. The bonus amount hasn't been released yet, and I still have a few dollars from my last bonus there pending release too.

I'm going to be focusing on no limit sit-and-go's for now, and the bankroll guidelines that I keep seeing are 20 to 30 buy-in's, so I'm going to start out at the $20 + $2 buy-in's, because I'm fairly confident in my skills. If I drop to below $400, I'll scale back to the $10 + $1's for a while.

The structure for the first tournament I'm going to play works like this. There are 10 players.  Each player starts with 1500 chips. Blinds go up every 10 minutes, and the tournament pays out $200: $100 for 1st place, $60 for 2nd place, and $40 for 3rd place. This structure is a little bit different from the structure at Party Poker, because there you only start with 800 chips, and the levels change every 10 hands rather than every 10 minutes.

My strategy will need to change corresponding to this different play structure. I'll need to loosen up my starting hand requirements a very little bit, and I'll need to play a little less aggressively after the flop with certain hands, because I can afford to. The tournament started at 3:35pm.

The tournament ended for me at 4:05pm. I made several mistakes, including playing too loose, and not aggressively enough. I'm reminded of something I read in one of John Vorhaus's books - he says that to be a winning player, you have to play strong. Weak play never wins, whether it's tight weak or loose weak, weak always loses. Loose and strong sometimes wins, but I backed down at just about every show of strength I saw today.

But I did get some good news too. The cashier at Ultimate Bet actually gave me a 20% redeposit bonus instead of a 10% bonus. Maybe he was surprised because I made a $500 deposit and he was expecting something smaller, or maybe his boss said something about taking care of me because I'm an affiliate, I don't know.

Anyway, that's about it for today, because I've got plans this evening.

This page was last updated on January 5, 2006.