Letter to Full Tilt Poker

It is my hope that Full Tilt will approve my request to receive rakeback. Their policy is that current account holder can not sign up through an affiliate and that the rakeback is only available to new players, on new accounts. I have heard of cases where players have written Full Tilt and they have made exceptions to their policy, but have never talked to any of them personally. I decided to wait until I received the highest level in their frequent player program before making my request. I achieved that level today.

On another note it is the end of the month for my ring game experiment. It went well. I will post my results, stats and more for the month soon.

To whom it may concern:

First I would like to say that I enjoy playing at Full Tilt Poker very much. The selection of games, top notch software, customer service and atmosphere truly set Full Tilt Poker apart from other sites. Good Job!

"Dedication. It's when players hit the table every day. They're tough to beat, because they've stared across miles of felt and flipped over thousands of cards.

There's also another type of dedication, which is when you show your appreciation for a special group of people."

As a player who has recently attained the highest level of your rewards program, "Iron", exceeded that level of play with Iron Man Plus points on several days, and having not missed a single day at the tables in the entire month I certainly hope that you carefully consider my request and show some of the "appreciation" that you promise.

I joined Full Tilt Poker several years ago when I was first learning about poker, with no inkling of the concepts of "rake" or "rakeback". I did not sign up through any affiliate. As a frequent player and valued customer my request is that you allow me to align my current account with an affiliate who could offer me rake back.

It strikes me as patently unfair that a player who had never played at your site before would be eligible for those rewards and a loyal player of several years like myself would not be. Additionally I know personally other players who have had existing accounts with Full Tilt Poker, and who later were allowed to receive rakeback.

According to my records I have contributed $1,143.80 in rake during the month of August. I am anticipating increasing the amount that I play and the total rake that I contribute. I would like Full Tilt Poker to be the primary poker site that I play at however if I am unable to receive rake back I will have no other option than to choose another site as my primary site.

With your approval of my request I am looking forward to many years of rewarding poker on your site!

Warm Regards,

James Yeager
jyeager1@earthlink.net

10K+ Hands $100NL Full Ring on Full Tilt. Graph & Stats.

I started this experiment on August 1st. 4 losing days out of 17. At this level of play I have stats on 121 players with over 5K hands in my Poker Tracker database. Only 2 players have a higher BB/100 than I do and neither of them have over 6k hands. 64 of those 121 players have a positive win rate. Here are some average stats from the winners compared with mine:

Winners Stats: VP$IP 13.33 PFR 9.41 3BetPre-Flop 3.63 AF 2.72 AFq 43.62 BB/100 2.69

My Stats: VP$IP 21.00 PFR 14.26 3BetPre-Flop 2.90 AF 2.42 AFq 47.93 BB/100 7.56

Just finished my best session yet . . .

It's 11:45 on Friday night. I was 6-tabling for about an hour and finished ahead $226, $359 for the day. A nice boost to my winnings and win rate! Total winnings now $1292.10, BB/100 8.24. Of the 14 days I've played I have only had 3 losing days, and am on a 7 day win streak.

-Click on the image to expand it-

Monthly Winnings Over 1k

45 Sessions

2.61 Tables Concurrently

42.88 Hours

3.06 Ave. Hours/Day

7,386 Hands

23.34 $/hr

1,000.75 $Won

Right now I'm focusing on increasing my re-raise frequency pre-flop with position, adjusting the size of my flop continuation bets based upon the texture of the flop, and taking advantage of opportunities to bluff the river.

I ran some custom reports on Poker Tracker comparing stats of winning vs. losing players. My database has over 400K poker hands, containing info on 16,775 players, 62 of them regulars with over 5000 hands. I broke down those 62 players into winners and losers and compared their stats, things like what % of hands they play, how often they raise, attempt to steal the blinds, fold to re-raises, bet out on the flop when they were the last aggressor, and fold to lead out bets on the flop, etc. There are literally hundreds of stats that can be compared but I have picked out the ones that I think are the most useful. The average of the winning players stats and the losers is surprisingly similar. I think this is because each loser has different "leaks" in their game. One player may not raise pre-flop enough, another may be too aggressive, many fold to continuation bets too often. What was more interesting was how different my stats were than the averages. I'm playing more hands, raising more pre-flop, re-raising a little less (which I am looking to increase), and calling standard continuation bets on the flop a little more. Of the 62 players in my database who I have over 5k hand histories on, only 3 have a higher win rate than I do, and all 3 of them have a smaller total number of hands played than I do.

Dual Monitors Rock

So Far, So Good

My ring game poker experiment started August 1st. With the exception of a couple of small buy in tournaments I have played exclusively $100 buy in NL hold'em on Full Tilt Poker. Click on the image above to expand and see a graph of my winnings. Here are a few stats on my play so far:

Amount Won: $835.05
BB/100: 7.11
$/Hour: $22.63
Hours: 36.9
Total Hands: 5,875
Voluntarily Put Money Into the Pot (VPIP): 23.83%
Pre-Flop Raise: 15.29%

I have been steadily adding to the number of tables that I play concurrently, and while my overall average is 2.42 tables at one time, I have recently been starting each session with 6 tables. 5k hands is not enough to draw any strong conclusions from, 10k would be better, and 25k better yet. I feel like I have been running pretty good; I've taken a few beats, made a couple of costly mistakes, and won my share of coin flips. Overall I feel that these stats might be a pretty good indicator of my win rate. Time will tell.

I use a couple of tools to help me succeed. Poker Tracker 3 keeps all the stats and detailed hand histories for each hand I play. The software also displays a heads up display (HUD) which overlays keys stats on my opponents. I also subscribe to Table Tracker, which scans the available online poker tables and compares the players seated at those tables to the info I have on them in my database and then provides me a list of the tables which may be the most profitable to play at. In order to have enough information in my database to make this useful I have also imported 400K hands that are for the exact table limits that I play at.

In comparing my stats to other players in the database I notice that I am playing more hands, and raising pre-flop more often than most of my opponents. While I am loose and aggressive, I think that I may be leaving too much money on the table, especially on the river. In short I think that increasing the frequency of my bluffs on the river might increase my win rate.

Started Playing Ring Games Again

Just getting my feet wet in the $100 buy-in, 9 handed NL games on Full Tilt. 5 sessions, 5 wins. All while multi-tabling, 2 tables first, then moved up to 3 tables. So far this level plays much softer than the $200, 6 max, NL games I used to play. All short sessions, about 3 hours total but up $200. The multi-tabling keeps the lower limit, 9 handed game more "exciting", and I anticipate that it will also improve my winnings.

4 tournaments yesterday:

$24+2 Did not cash
$24+2 Finished 30th out of 1,448 for $81.09
$69+6 Did not cash
$69+6 Finished 11th out of 178 for $160.20