Looking back on the last month of poker playing, I'd like to say I've made a lot of improvement, but tragically, I haven't. In fact, my winrate is down significantly, hanging at around 1 bb/100 before rakeback. Still good enough to pay the bills, but I know it should be a bit higher. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd assume it's because I've gotten in the habit of watching TV while playing at all times. It makes it a lot easier to put in the hours I want, but I don't know if it's worth putting that many hours in if my winrate is that low. In December, I'm going to try and focus more on the tables and see if I can't get my winrate back up around 4-5bb/100, where it was for the first 100k hands or so of my pro-dom.
Another factor which may or may not be conrtibuting is my complete lack of effort to improve my play. When I drew up the plan for playing full-time, I allotted several hours a week to reviewing hands, both my own and other successful players, to see if I could find leaks in my own game and improve my play. In the past two months, I've done approximately none of that. I'm sure I have some leaks I need to address, and there's no doubt I could be more profitable if I loosened up a bit. Unfortunately, taking the time to concentrate on improving won't be easy in the next few months as I get ready to transition the business to a new location and focus on improving the product. The product improvement will take up enough time in itself, as I have to learn a new programming language and how to use a bunch of modules I've never used before. I know how they work in theory, but it's always more difficult piecing everything together. On top of that, I plan on traveling a bit in December, some personal and some business, so I might have to struggle to get in my regular poker hours too. So time spent on improvement is going to have to wait until later. On the plus side, December and January have historically been good months for me as the holidonks come out to play, so I should make a good chunk of change in the coming months. ON top of that, I should be getting a hefty tax refund for this year, so I might take a few weeks off for vacation and hand analysis. (Knowing me, it'll probably be all vacation and little to no hand analysis). Whatever I end up doing, the fact remains that at some point I'll benefit from analyzing my play and eliminating leaks to get my hourly profit up where it belongs.
On the 'Things I don't suck at' front, I ordered a new computer for my brother to replace his 4 year old one. He only needs it for poker, so we didn't go overboard, just got a nice, affordable one from Alienware for about $1,200. he got it last week and says it runs waaaay better than hsi old one. his old one coudlnt hack more than about 8 tables at a time with HUD up, so for him, it won't be too long before he recoups his investmentwith the extra profit from extra tables. Of course, shopping for a new computer only made me want a new one, but my 2 year old machine still handles everything I need it to (if with a little lag sometimes), so no point in spending any more money on a computer I won't see a return on. I am comtemplating ordering another 24" from the Full Tilt store though; one works pretty well, but 2 would be even better....plus my desk seems empty without two hulking CRTs taking up all the space. Not that another monitor would make me any more efficient, but it would be nice.
Speaking of computers, I really need to get my laptop fixed for all the travel im planning on. Nothing takes the boredom out of a long ass drive like playing poker while you're doing it! I can only do a couple tables at a time and still have enough concentration to drive well, but that's enough to make the drive much less boring. I figure in the approximately 50 hours of driving I plan on doing in December, even if I just run at 2 bb/100 with 4 tables open, I'll more than cover my gas expenses.
This past week has gone pretty well; for the first time in over a month, my bb/100 is at or above where it should be. It might be the higher volume of poor players; I've noticed an increase since about mid-November. If i ever get aroud to actually analyzing my hands, I'll know for sure. Till then, I'll just keep grindin. Probably wouldn't kill me to update this blog more than once a month though....
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Grindin'
Not much new going on. My trip back home was great; it's always a blast when I get to hang with my siblings. I slacked pretty hard that week poker-wise, only making $36, but it was worth it to have fun at home. The following week, I didn't even get to put in 30 hours due to a busy weekend schedule with the business, but I did well when I did play and pulled down a couple grand. I'm playing NL 100 exclusively now; after reviewing my stats, it's pretty clear that my winrate is better at NL 100 than NL 200, so it only makes sense to put my hands in there. In theory, I could make an argument for staying at NL 200 and learning how to beat it for a better winrate, but I don't think it's worth it. I only plan on supporting myself with poker for another year and some change, and right now, I'm perfectly fine with my winrate at NL 100 (about $45 an hour). I might experiment up there from time to time, but nothing too serious I think.
Full Tilt recently brought back the bank transfer method of withdrawal, which is great. It only took 4 business days to clear, slightly faster than the 6-7 it takes for the paper check and with less effort on my part. Slightly incovenient that the max is $2,500 per transfer, but since you can make one every week, it shouldn't be too big a deal. Even if I was consistently pulling down more than $2,500 a week, I shouldn't need to withdraw that much; if I did, I could always just get a check and get off my ass to pick it up.
Financially, I'm pretty comfortable. I don't spend much money as it is, but the $8,000 i've withdrawn since late September has given me a nice cushion so I don't have to worry about money much. I still have plenty of things I'd like to spend money on though, so there's plenty of motivation to keep grinding (at least for the next $200-$300k).
I'm looking forward to the holiday season, but it's going to be very busy. I've got a lot of travel planned in November and December, capped off by moving to Texas in late January. During that travel, I have to try to play as much as possible to take advantage of the holidonks. Last December/January was great for me, even by my current standards. I put in about 175k hands and pulled down about $9,000 (not bad considering 3/4 of that play was at NL 50). Obviously, this year I'm hoping for an even better payday. I don't think $12,000-$15,000 is unrealistic, and combining that with the substantial tax return I'm getting for the business, I should have my living expenses for 2009 pretty much covered by the time I head down to Texas. Better than I expected when I started this, for sure....still surprises me to remember that this time last year, the only poker I was playing was $10 SNGs. Hopefully when I look back a year from now, I'll be similarly surprised.
Full Tilt recently brought back the bank transfer method of withdrawal, which is great. It only took 4 business days to clear, slightly faster than the 6-7 it takes for the paper check and with less effort on my part. Slightly incovenient that the max is $2,500 per transfer, but since you can make one every week, it shouldn't be too big a deal. Even if I was consistently pulling down more than $2,500 a week, I shouldn't need to withdraw that much; if I did, I could always just get a check and get off my ass to pick it up.
Financially, I'm pretty comfortable. I don't spend much money as it is, but the $8,000 i've withdrawn since late September has given me a nice cushion so I don't have to worry about money much. I still have plenty of things I'd like to spend money on though, so there's plenty of motivation to keep grinding (at least for the next $200-$300k).
I'm looking forward to the holiday season, but it's going to be very busy. I've got a lot of travel planned in November and December, capped off by moving to Texas in late January. During that travel, I have to try to play as much as possible to take advantage of the holidonks. Last December/January was great for me, even by my current standards. I put in about 175k hands and pulled down about $9,000 (not bad considering 3/4 of that play was at NL 50). Obviously, this year I'm hoping for an even better payday. I don't think $12,000-$15,000 is unrealistic, and combining that with the substantial tax return I'm getting for the business, I should have my living expenses for 2009 pretty much covered by the time I head down to Texas. Better than I expected when I started this, for sure....still surprises me to remember that this time last year, the only poker I was playing was $10 SNGs. Hopefully when I look back a year from now, I'll be similarly surprised.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Lessons Learned
Been a bit since the last post, mainly because I hate posting about doing poorly. Even after I dug myself out of the hole, my laziness set in, but here we go.
I've mainly drawn back from NL 200. I'm not sure if the success was a fluke or people just adjusted to my play, but I can't seem to maintain a decent win rate up there. I'm making a little under 1 bb/100 at NL 200, which isn't as bad as losing it I guess, but considering I'm making about 6 bb/100 at NL 100, it clearly benefits me to play more at NL 100 than NL 200.
I closed out September fairly well, up $7,100 on the month. Just under 100k hands in 139 hours, and all in all, a result I'm more than pleased with. It's certainly more than I had hoped for when I decided to play to pay the bills.
October has been a different story so far. 92 hours, 71k hands, and I'm only up about $500. The first 2 days were the worst, dropping about $3,100 during that time. Looking back on my play, there were definitely some times I could have folded and saved some money, but the overall picture was pretty clear: aside from getting into it with the weak players when I had the nuts, I wasn't playing well, especially against the regulars. I shifted my focus back to NL 100 and NL 200, looking for fishy tables/players and trying to minimize losses to regs. NL 100 has given me no trouble at all though; my nittiness gets paid off enough by the players down there, or maybe it's just the lack of as many good regs. Whatever it is, I can grind out NL 100 in my sleep and make a decent hourly rate.
As happy as I am with the NL 100 hourly rate, I'd obviously prefer to be able to hang at NL 200 and make more, in theory. I picked up Harrington on Cash Games, and I'm almost done with Volume 1. A lot of solid concepts in there; some I knew already, but a lot of his assertions on hand stregths are things I hadn't given much thought towards. They sound like good ideas, but I'll definitely need to put in some practice before I'm ready to implement those ideas with 700+ hands per hour. I'll probably give them a try during the early afternoon, when there seems to be the most regulars around. Hopefully I'll have the patience to play only a few tables.
In other good news, the FT store added a new 24" monitor. It seems to be a pretty solid monitor, and it's certainly cheap enough (88k points, RB hit of about $120). I'm headed home this week, and I'll check out my brother's setup with his 24"; if I dig it, I'll probably get a monitor or 2 to replace my 17" and 19" behemoth CRTs. I've resisted the urge to do so before because it doesn't really up my productivity, as I don't need more screenspace; but it's not like I have anything better to spend my points on yet, and at some point, I'm gonna want/need better monitors. At the rate I'm going, I'm earning enough points for a monitor about every 3.5 weeks, so even if something else good comes along, I'll be able to grab it.
I'm visiting home this week before I head to a wedding, so I won't be able to get my usual quantity of play in. I'm shooting for 20-30 hours or so, but that might be too optimistic.
I've mainly drawn back from NL 200. I'm not sure if the success was a fluke or people just adjusted to my play, but I can't seem to maintain a decent win rate up there. I'm making a little under 1 bb/100 at NL 200, which isn't as bad as losing it I guess, but considering I'm making about 6 bb/100 at NL 100, it clearly benefits me to play more at NL 100 than NL 200.
I closed out September fairly well, up $7,100 on the month. Just under 100k hands in 139 hours, and all in all, a result I'm more than pleased with. It's certainly more than I had hoped for when I decided to play to pay the bills.
October has been a different story so far. 92 hours, 71k hands, and I'm only up about $500. The first 2 days were the worst, dropping about $3,100 during that time. Looking back on my play, there were definitely some times I could have folded and saved some money, but the overall picture was pretty clear: aside from getting into it with the weak players when I had the nuts, I wasn't playing well, especially against the regulars. I shifted my focus back to NL 100 and NL 200, looking for fishy tables/players and trying to minimize losses to regs. NL 100 has given me no trouble at all though; my nittiness gets paid off enough by the players down there, or maybe it's just the lack of as many good regs. Whatever it is, I can grind out NL 100 in my sleep and make a decent hourly rate.
As happy as I am with the NL 100 hourly rate, I'd obviously prefer to be able to hang at NL 200 and make more, in theory. I picked up Harrington on Cash Games, and I'm almost done with Volume 1. A lot of solid concepts in there; some I knew already, but a lot of his assertions on hand stregths are things I hadn't given much thought towards. They sound like good ideas, but I'll definitely need to put in some practice before I'm ready to implement those ideas with 700+ hands per hour. I'll probably give them a try during the early afternoon, when there seems to be the most regulars around. Hopefully I'll have the patience to play only a few tables.
In other good news, the FT store added a new 24" monitor. It seems to be a pretty solid monitor, and it's certainly cheap enough (88k points, RB hit of about $120). I'm headed home this week, and I'll check out my brother's setup with his 24"; if I dig it, I'll probably get a monitor or 2 to replace my 17" and 19" behemoth CRTs. I've resisted the urge to do so before because it doesn't really up my productivity, as I don't need more screenspace; but it's not like I have anything better to spend my points on yet, and at some point, I'm gonna want/need better monitors. At the rate I'm going, I'm earning enough points for a monitor about every 3.5 weeks, so even if something else good comes along, I'll be able to grab it.
I'm visiting home this week before I head to a wedding, so I won't be able to get my usual quantity of play in. I'm shooting for 20-30 hours or so, but that might be too optimistic.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Sustainable? Week 1 Summary
I certainly didn't expect my first week playing for a living to be this good. Here's the damage:
Hands: 42,023
Hours: 54.8
Winnings: $3,107.05
Rakeback: $809.61
240 Full Tilt medals @$0.15 each: $36
Total: $3,952.66
I'm obviously pretty stoked with these results, even if I did technically slack off a little bit by not hitting my 56 hour goal. I made a lot more than I expected; I went in expecting $25-$35 per hour, and I've nearly doubled it! Not just lucking out either, as I'm actualy about $40 down in EV for the week. Hopefully it's sustainable and I can keep it up. My decision to move up to NL 200 exclusively (instead of half-and-halfing NL 100 and NL 200) seems to have worked out well. Over about 30,000 hands, I'm running at about 5 bb/100. I still have some improving to do, mainly on being able to lay down against opponents I'm fairly sure have me beat.
What I was really happy with this past week was that I never got down or depressed, even after some sick swings and a string of beats. I can remember not too long ago when a -$300 session would bother the crap out of me, and I got over a -$1,300 one with ease! I guess it IS a little easier to do since I was making way more than I had thought I could, but still, hard to do when beats like this happen: http://www.pokerhand.org/?3253998 (The funny thing is, this hand didn't phase me either. I did wonder to myself what the AA guy's thought process was here. He was running 32/13, and I'm guessing he was crapping himself to magically (in his eyes) get such action. Was obvious to me that the other guy had bottom set, which is why I didn't mind flat calling to keep the original raiser in.).
I don't have any specific goals for this coming week. I'll just try to repeat the previous week and maybe break $4k winnings or $1k rakeback if I get some extra time on the weekend. It does strike me as funny that my expectations are raised this high; $4k was the size of my bankroll just 2 months ago, lol. Maybe the check from FT will come in this week. That would be nice; almost as nice as them finding a quicker way to pay me. Plus, I need to figure out what to do with my FT points. I made a little over 36k this past week, bringing me to about 270k total. If I continue at this rate, I'll have about 770k by the end of the year. I guess I could try to sell them on 2p2, but browsing through other peoples threads, it doesn't look like they're exactly hot items. I've thought about just letting them accumulate and then withdrawing all my money, rebuilding my bankroll with just points. Would be amusing for sure.
Hands: 42,023
Hours: 54.8
Winnings: $3,107.05
Rakeback: $809.61
240 Full Tilt medals @$0.15 each: $36
Total: $3,952.66
I'm obviously pretty stoked with these results, even if I did technically slack off a little bit by not hitting my 56 hour goal. I made a lot more than I expected; I went in expecting $25-$35 per hour, and I've nearly doubled it! Not just lucking out either, as I'm actualy about $40 down in EV for the week. Hopefully it's sustainable and I can keep it up. My decision to move up to NL 200 exclusively (instead of half-and-halfing NL 100 and NL 200) seems to have worked out well. Over about 30,000 hands, I'm running at about 5 bb/100. I still have some improving to do, mainly on being able to lay down against opponents I'm fairly sure have me beat.
What I was really happy with this past week was that I never got down or depressed, even after some sick swings and a string of beats. I can remember not too long ago when a -$300 session would bother the crap out of me, and I got over a -$1,300 one with ease! I guess it IS a little easier to do since I was making way more than I had thought I could, but still, hard to do when beats like this happen: http://www.pokerhand.org/?3253998 (The funny thing is, this hand didn't phase me either. I did wonder to myself what the AA guy's thought process was here. He was running 32/13, and I'm guessing he was crapping himself to magically (in his eyes) get such action. Was obvious to me that the other guy had bottom set, which is why I didn't mind flat calling to keep the original raiser in.).
I don't have any specific goals for this coming week. I'll just try to repeat the previous week and maybe break $4k winnings or $1k rakeback if I get some extra time on the weekend. It does strike me as funny that my expectations are raised this high; $4k was the size of my bankroll just 2 months ago, lol. Maybe the check from FT will come in this week. That would be nice; almost as nice as them finding a quicker way to pay me. Plus, I need to figure out what to do with my FT points. I made a little over 36k this past week, bringing me to about 270k total. If I continue at this rate, I'll have about 770k by the end of the year. I guess I could try to sell them on 2p2, but browsing through other peoples threads, it doesn't look like they're exactly hot items. I've thought about just letting them accumulate and then withdrawing all my money, rebuilding my bankroll with just points. Would be amusing for sure.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Swings!
So the last few days have been a roller coaster ride. Swing down, swing up, swing down, swing up again. Check it out:
The last 7k hands were especially brutal. Wasn't getting much action good hands for first 5k, missing a lot, having my cbets stomped on, etc. Then, for the last 2k or so, everything went my way and I swung right back up. My gameplay stayed the same for the most part, although I did take it down to 8 tables of all NL 200 to concentrate more. I'll continue to play 8-10 for a bit until I get more comfortable. Yesterday especially, it felt like a lot of my semi-bluffs were either being outplayed (not too likely) or just running into better hands (in which case I'm substantially off on range estimating). I've tightened back up a little and stopped using my semi-bluffs in most cases. as you can also see, I'm running pretty bad, about $900 below EV. That just about catches me up with what I 'owed' in EV this month...not that it actually works like that from any one given point to the next, but it's ahandy assumption to adjust winnings during a given time period.
The good news is that the rakeback alone earned during my few days of pro-dom is enough to cover my living expenses. That certainly makes it a little easier to take the ups and downs, along with the fact that my hourly winrate still exceeds what I need it to be. Kinda funny that I've put in almost as many hands in the last 4 days as the entire rest of the month. I think it's safe to attribute that to the novelty of grinding out poker for a living. once it wears off, as I'm sure it will, I'll probably be hard pressed to play 25 hours a week. But then again, I do like money, so who knows?
As you can tell from the graph above, I've also started using Hold 'Em Manager instead of PT3. For the most part, everything is the same, although I like the HEM HUD a little better. The biggest feature for me is the equity-adjusted stats it computes; makes it a lot easier for me to keep track without having to copy HHs, switch computers, run hands in PT2, then run PokerEV just to find out what my EV was. The layout is also a little better in my opinion. I've got almost 2 weeks left on my trial, but I'm pretty sure I'll be buying it. I need to get a separate hard drive for it though; doing anything else on my computer while I've got poker going is painfully slow due to hard drive usage by the database. I need more storage space too. I don't think I need to upgrade my computer; it's only a year and a half old, and it's not like poker is too intense on the comp. I thought about getting a new one because they're getting rediculously cheap, but why bother? It'll just be outdated again, and it's not like it will get me much of anything performance-wise.
Gonna be busy tonight and the rest of the weekend with the business, but I'm looking forward to htiting the tables hard when I can. It's a shame most of my business work hours are during prime poker hours, but oh well...just have to remember that the business is my path to financial independence, not poker.
The last 7k hands were especially brutal. Wasn't getting much action good hands for first 5k, missing a lot, having my cbets stomped on, etc. Then, for the last 2k or so, everything went my way and I swung right back up. My gameplay stayed the same for the most part, although I did take it down to 8 tables of all NL 200 to concentrate more. I'll continue to play 8-10 for a bit until I get more comfortable. Yesterday especially, it felt like a lot of my semi-bluffs were either being outplayed (not too likely) or just running into better hands (in which case I'm substantially off on range estimating). I've tightened back up a little and stopped using my semi-bluffs in most cases. as you can also see, I'm running pretty bad, about $900 below EV. That just about catches me up with what I 'owed' in EV this month...not that it actually works like that from any one given point to the next, but it's ahandy assumption to adjust winnings during a given time period.
The good news is that the rakeback alone earned during my few days of pro-dom is enough to cover my living expenses. That certainly makes it a little easier to take the ups and downs, along with the fact that my hourly winrate still exceeds what I need it to be. Kinda funny that I've put in almost as many hands in the last 4 days as the entire rest of the month. I think it's safe to attribute that to the novelty of grinding out poker for a living. once it wears off, as I'm sure it will, I'll probably be hard pressed to play 25 hours a week. But then again, I do like money, so who knows?
As you can tell from the graph above, I've also started using Hold 'Em Manager instead of PT3. For the most part, everything is the same, although I like the HEM HUD a little better. The biggest feature for me is the equity-adjusted stats it computes; makes it a lot easier for me to keep track without having to copy HHs, switch computers, run hands in PT2, then run PokerEV just to find out what my EV was. The layout is also a little better in my opinion. I've got almost 2 weeks left on my trial, but I'm pretty sure I'll be buying it. I need to get a separate hard drive for it though; doing anything else on my computer while I've got poker going is painfully slow due to hard drive usage by the database. I need more storage space too. I don't think I need to upgrade my computer; it's only a year and a half old, and it's not like poker is too intense on the comp. I thought about getting a new one because they're getting rediculously cheap, but why bother? It'll just be outdated again, and it's not like it will get me much of anything performance-wise.
Gonna be busy tonight and the rest of the weekend with the business, but I'm looking forward to htiting the tables hard when I can. It's a shame most of my business work hours are during prime poker hours, but oh well...just have to remember that the business is my path to financial independence, not poker.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Variance!
I guess I didn't have to wait long to see whether or not my previous day's winrate was sustainable, lol. I started my session a little nervous about the imminent repaying of my owed EV. Sure enough, within an hour and a half I had repayed over $500 in EV ($400 pot with AA vs KK all in on turn, river K; and $250 pot with AKs vs AQo preflop, flops a Q) and also ran some hands into better hands to be down almost $900. Can't say I was too excited at this point, but what really impressed me was that I didn't have the slightest urge to tilt or get upset. I was playing good poker, so I continued my session and ended up playing for 6 hours and posting a $260 win. The win was nice, but I'm much prouder of my ability to not have $900 in rapid losses affect my game play. Analyzing my play afterwards, my Won W/O SD stats were down a little bit. I'm not sure if thats because I'm making good folds, letting people bluff me out of pots or both. Still, I'm not looking to make any major changes to my playstyle. My currently hourly winrate is way above what I expected; if it's sustainable, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing for the most part. My equity-adjusted winrate this month is a lil over $50/hr over 50,000 hands. I sure hope that continues as I play more and more.
My half-and-halfing at NL100 and NL200 is going well, even if the NL200 side of things led to a shitton of variance and tested my ability to not tilt. I'm increasingly confident I can beat NL200 for a decent rate, but of course I'll have to put in mor ehands to be sure. it's only my second day of going pro, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Perhaps I'll look back on this post a month from now and wonder how I didn't see it coming, but I don't think so. prop bet anyone? :P
My half-and-halfing at NL100 and NL200 is going well, even if the NL200 side of things led to a shitton of variance and tested my ability to not tilt. I'm increasingly confident I can beat NL200 for a decent rate, but of course I'll have to put in mor ehands to be sure. it's only my second day of going pro, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Perhaps I'll look back on this post a month from now and wonder how I didn't see it coming, but I don't think so. prop bet anyone? :P
Monday, September 22, 2008
Going "Pro"
After debating the plausibility of it for months, I decided to stop going into the office and taking a salary, supporting myself entirely on poker winnings. I'm a little nervous, but more excited than anything else. I'm comfortable rolled with about 50 BI, my monthly expenses are minimal, and I've got the ability to support myself without poker for about 12 months. With these fallbacks in place, I'm not worried about downswings (especially playing like the nit I am).
Of course, as soon as I made my last post (about how I look at poker as just another job to grind out, not looking to improve), I suddenly found myslef reading 2p2 more, concentrating more on tables and wanting to improve my game. Go figure. I've started loosening up a little more with mixed results, and I don't expect my game to change drastically. I'm just going to try to gradually change from an acceptable winrate to a better and better winrate. Sounds simple enough, right?
I started half-and-halfing NL100 and NL 200 today. NL200 didn't make me as nervous as I would have expected...I just played my game, adjusted very minutely, and ran like God. Gameplay doesn't seem to be too much different up there, and doubling my winrate was very nice. Today was my first day breaking $1k; I ended up making about $1,400in just under 6 hrs of play. Hell of a way to start things off...pity it's probably not sustainable. But I got my money in good almost every time, had a good feel for the action and people's ranges, and I'm generally pretty confortable with my play up there. Of course, this is over the gigantic sample size of 1,600 hands, so obviously I need to see a lot more hands before I can accurately assess the level. I'm optimistic though, and I'll see if I can maintain my optimism after the inevitable downswing.
More to follow...I'm sure I'll use this blog more in the future to brag about upswings/bitch about downswings.
Of course, as soon as I made my last post (about how I look at poker as just another job to grind out, not looking to improve), I suddenly found myslef reading 2p2 more, concentrating more on tables and wanting to improve my game. Go figure. I've started loosening up a little more with mixed results, and I don't expect my game to change drastically. I'm just going to try to gradually change from an acceptable winrate to a better and better winrate. Sounds simple enough, right?
I started half-and-halfing NL100 and NL 200 today. NL200 didn't make me as nervous as I would have expected...I just played my game, adjusted very minutely, and ran like God. Gameplay doesn't seem to be too much different up there, and doubling my winrate was very nice. Today was my first day breaking $1k; I ended up making about $1,400in just under 6 hrs of play. Hell of a way to start things off...pity it's probably not sustainable. But I got my money in good almost every time, had a good feel for the action and people's ranges, and I'm generally pretty confortable with my play up there. Of course, this is over the gigantic sample size of 1,600 hands, so obviously I need to see a lot more hands before I can accurately assess the level. I'm optimistic though, and I'll see if I can maintain my optimism after the inevitable downswing.
More to follow...I'm sure I'll use this blog more in the future to brag about upswings/bitch about downswings.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Long Time No Blog
Hrm....well, the title pretty much says it all. It's been a long time since I wrote, and quite a few things have changed. I left my job and San Diego back in June to pursue my business full-time. I'm into my 4th month of operations in my laser tag business, and the growth is going far better than expected. I still make more monthly from poker, but I expect the business profit to exceed poker profit by late 2009. It's exciting to be working in a unique and exciting industry with such growth potential, and the future looks very bright as more and more of my business assumptions become proven.
On the poker front, I stopped short-stacking NL 200. Not only was it becoming more and more mind-numbing, but I realized that I very rarely got to force people to make stupid decisions, which for me is almost as satisfying as winning money. So I dropped down to full stacking NL 100 and I've done very well, despite having only dedicated about 20 hours a week to playing. I'm playing terribly nitty, but it seems to be working out just fine. EV-wise, I'm sitting at an hourly winrate of about $30 an hour over the last 2 months and 75 hours of play. This exceeds my expectations for poker and gives me a lot more flexibility to aggressively pursue growing my business (not to mention it's very emotionally satisfying!). At the moment, I've been getting sucked out on far less than I should expect, and I 'owe' about $1,500 in EV from TPTK/sets/etc not getting sucked out on. That's what I love about keeping track of my EV; when I ineveitably begin having losing sessions where nothing is going right and I'm getting sucked out on left and right, it's far easier to handle when I know it's simply a matter of probability evening itself out. Of course, it's also easier when I owe EV as opposed to being owed EV, but it all amounts to the same thing in the end. PokerEV is single-handedly the most un-tilting tool I have, and I'm very glad I started using it and tracking my daily stats so meticuously.
Going forward, I'm mainly looking to continue playing my style and maintaining my winrate. I'm sure I could up my winrate were I to loosen up a little or focus more on improving my play, but to be honest, I just don't care about cash games enough. One of my weaknesses is being too aggressive, and in the past when I have tried to loosen up, it has usually led to me overshooting the proper level of aggression and making -EV decisions. With enough time and effort, I might be able to improve, and indeed, I have become slightly less nitty over the past few months. I'll continue to play and adapt very slowly instead of making changes to my game though. I enjoy being better than most at poker, but I have little desire to be a master or to even work my way up in stakes. I'm mainly treating poker as a lucrative part-time job with flexible hours. Moving up in stakes and loosening up might improve my hourly winrate, but I'm unwilling to put forth the effort and take the chance as long as I can maintain a decent winrate at lower stakes. It's not a major part of my future, as I believe my business will provide a secure future for me. Who knows? Perhaps someday that will change and I'll feel the desire to pursue poker as a passion, but until then, I'm content to make good part-time money.
Another pain in my ass: Full Tilt is running out of convenient options to withdraw money. Seems like I finally have to get off my lazy ass and get cleared for check withdrawals. The sooner the better; I've decided to play it super conservative and keep 30 BIs in my account, plus the amount of EV I 'owe' so I never feel strapped. Even with this and my relatively few hours of playing over the last 4 months, I still need to withdraw about $3k. While it's fun to have a ton of money in the account and be close to 5 digits, it's pretty pointless from a financial standpoint, when I could be using that money to grow my business.
So that's about it. I'm not sure how often I'll keep posting here, especially given my changed goals with poker. I'll try to post periodically and at least post monthly summaries to keep myself honest and for review (plus I would hate to dissapoint all 3 readers of this blog!). Till then!
On the poker front, I stopped short-stacking NL 200. Not only was it becoming more and more mind-numbing, but I realized that I very rarely got to force people to make stupid decisions, which for me is almost as satisfying as winning money. So I dropped down to full stacking NL 100 and I've done very well, despite having only dedicated about 20 hours a week to playing. I'm playing terribly nitty, but it seems to be working out just fine. EV-wise, I'm sitting at an hourly winrate of about $30 an hour over the last 2 months and 75 hours of play. This exceeds my expectations for poker and gives me a lot more flexibility to aggressively pursue growing my business (not to mention it's very emotionally satisfying!). At the moment, I've been getting sucked out on far less than I should expect, and I 'owe' about $1,500 in EV from TPTK/sets/etc not getting sucked out on. That's what I love about keeping track of my EV; when I ineveitably begin having losing sessions where nothing is going right and I'm getting sucked out on left and right, it's far easier to handle when I know it's simply a matter of probability evening itself out. Of course, it's also easier when I owe EV as opposed to being owed EV, but it all amounts to the same thing in the end. PokerEV is single-handedly the most un-tilting tool I have, and I'm very glad I started using it and tracking my daily stats so meticuously.
Going forward, I'm mainly looking to continue playing my style and maintaining my winrate. I'm sure I could up my winrate were I to loosen up a little or focus more on improving my play, but to be honest, I just don't care about cash games enough. One of my weaknesses is being too aggressive, and in the past when I have tried to loosen up, it has usually led to me overshooting the proper level of aggression and making -EV decisions. With enough time and effort, I might be able to improve, and indeed, I have become slightly less nitty over the past few months. I'll continue to play and adapt very slowly instead of making changes to my game though. I enjoy being better than most at poker, but I have little desire to be a master or to even work my way up in stakes. I'm mainly treating poker as a lucrative part-time job with flexible hours. Moving up in stakes and loosening up might improve my hourly winrate, but I'm unwilling to put forth the effort and take the chance as long as I can maintain a decent winrate at lower stakes. It's not a major part of my future, as I believe my business will provide a secure future for me. Who knows? Perhaps someday that will change and I'll feel the desire to pursue poker as a passion, but until then, I'm content to make good part-time money.
Another pain in my ass: Full Tilt is running out of convenient options to withdraw money. Seems like I finally have to get off my lazy ass and get cleared for check withdrawals. The sooner the better; I've decided to play it super conservative and keep 30 BIs in my account, plus the amount of EV I 'owe' so I never feel strapped. Even with this and my relatively few hours of playing over the last 4 months, I still need to withdraw about $3k. While it's fun to have a ton of money in the account and be close to 5 digits, it's pretty pointless from a financial standpoint, when I could be using that money to grow my business.
So that's about it. I'm not sure how often I'll keep posting here, especially given my changed goals with poker. I'll try to post periodically and at least post monthly summaries to keep myself honest and for review (plus I would hate to dissapoint all 3 readers of this blog!). Till then!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Update!
Haven't posted in a bit, for which there are several good explanations. To begin with, I dropped about $800 last Friday.....couldn't seem to catch a break, ran into better hands like crazy, and capped it off by slow playing a flopped set into a runner runnered one card overpair straight for a full stack on NL 200. The best thing to do of course was take some time off, which I did. I helped a business colleague of mine run his laser tag event all last weekend; was a load of fun, I can't wait to do some of my own. I was sore as fuck for a few days afterwards though; taking cover behind 4 foot obstacles as a 6 foot tall guy is hell on the legs. Needless to say, I was way too tired to play during those days.
For most of this week, I've been in Indianapolis doing some training for work. a combination of being too tired/too drunk kept me from playing much; I finally managed to log a session yesterday and it turns out like this:
Brutal....easily the unluckiest I've been for a long time....runner runner flushes, 2 outters on the river....just silly. Gonna try and get some hands in tonight, but it ain't lookin good for the EV challenge.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Recovery
Trying to grind out some hands to recover from my spill at NL 100. Working out fairly well; netted $300 today. My EV did great at first, but after a silly play or two and some hand over handage I couldnt get it much above $200. Still, that seems to be enough to increase my lead over PokerxPro, so good enough!
So I played almost exactly as long as I had budgeted today and did fairly well. Happy with that, and hopefully I can keep it up. I am gonna have start putting more time into the business though; I have a lot of design work to do with my prospective field. It has no natural cover at all, so I pretty much need to build everything. I think I can build a decent map for relatively cheap, but I don't really know yet. Hell, I don't even know if the landlords will be cool with me using the property, so one step at a time I guess. In the meantime, I plan on focusing on squeezing the max amount of $$ out of poker....to do that, I need to minimize my bad plays. I've made some progress with this lately, but I still have a ways to go I think.
So I played almost exactly as long as I had budgeted today and did fairly well. Happy with that, and hopefully I can keep it up. I am gonna have start putting more time into the business though; I have a lot of design work to do with my prospective field. It has no natural cover at all, so I pretty much need to build everything. I think I can build a decent map for relatively cheap, but I don't really know yet. Hell, I don't even know if the landlords will be cool with me using the property, so one step at a time I guess. In the meantime, I plan on focusing on squeezing the max amount of $$ out of poker....to do that, I need to minimize my bad plays. I've made some progress with this lately, but I still have a ways to go I think.
Whee
As you can see by the graph above, my stellar performance suffered a bit of a hiccup...to the tune of -$500 or so. I did well in NL 200 despite quite a few hand over hands, but NL 100 was KILLING me.....straights vs boats, donks hitting a hand vs my AA, and more than the 20% of 2 outters I should expect. The hand over hands and the stacking off with straight, AA limited my EV gain, allowing PokerxPro to catch up :( I have to admit some of that was bad play...despite trying my best not to tilt, I shoved a few places I shouldnt have, catching once or twice but netting a loss and even more importantly losing EV. Ah well, guess all I can do is keep trying.
Played a bit more tonight and did well; not a lot in the way of cards, but I was fortunate enough to have donks involved in my good hands and pay me off with the usual holdings (gutshots, bottom pair worst kicker, etc). End result: I picked up about $150 EV, which should put me in the lead for now. It's definitely a close one though; this is shaping up to be a pretty good competition.
After the $500 shakedown 2 days ago, I'm nowhere near as far ahead of my goal as I was; at the moment, I'm actually slightly behind pace. I'll be trying to put in more hours to compensate for it. Not that I wouldn't be happy with another $5k+ month, but a) I'd like to maintain a positive trend and b) every extra buck I make and invest in the business will get me a huge return and move my success timeline slightly closer. To this end, I'm going to keep my online bankroll limited to about $4,000; so in addition to withdrawing $500 a week, I'll withdraw anything in excess of $4,000 once a month. Only makes sense; I shouldn't experience any 100 buyin swings, and that money could be put to better use than making me feel important with a bigger bankroll. If somehow I do have a huge downswing, I can always dump it back in.
Sleep time!
Played a bit more tonight and did well; not a lot in the way of cards, but I was fortunate enough to have donks involved in my good hands and pay me off with the usual holdings (gutshots, bottom pair worst kicker, etc). End result: I picked up about $150 EV, which should put me in the lead for now. It's definitely a close one though; this is shaping up to be a pretty good competition.
After the $500 shakedown 2 days ago, I'm nowhere near as far ahead of my goal as I was; at the moment, I'm actually slightly behind pace. I'll be trying to put in more hours to compensate for it. Not that I wouldn't be happy with another $5k+ month, but a) I'd like to maintain a positive trend and b) every extra buck I make and invest in the business will get me a huge return and move my success timeline slightly closer. To this end, I'm going to keep my online bankroll limited to about $4,000; so in addition to withdrawing $500 a week, I'll withdraw anything in excess of $4,000 once a month. Only makes sense; I shouldn't experience any 100 buyin swings, and that money could be put to better use than making me feel important with a bigger bankroll. If somehow I do have a huge downswing, I can always dump it back in.
Sleep time!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
The Good and the Bad
Well...bad news, I used up 2 $26 tokens playing 90 man KO SNGs. Fairly uneventful for the first one, was blinded down and sucked out on when I made a move. 2nd one sucked....was 3 outted instead of tripling up and moving in the top 10 or so :( Ah well.
The good news is that I kicked some ass in cash games....lil over $800 in winnings and $115 in rakeback. I was very tempted to stop after I was up $400 or so, but remembering my goal of getting my time in while the money is good (so to speak), I perservered and did great. My best single day performance to date....previous best was $130 less and took me 4 hours more playing as well as 10k hands compared to 3400. So obviously, I'm pumped about that....exceeding my target winrate by a little bit, lol. 18% done with my goal for the month and I've only logged 8% of the time I plan on....good times.
I also racked up some more EV for the challenge....tragically, I started running well towards the end, so my showdown winnings pulled ahead of my EV by about $75. Oh well...I guess I'd rather have the extra money, and besides, there's still a lot of the month left for some unluck and a chance to dominate the 'Worst Luck' Category.
Oh yeah, and I'll be keeping an updated February pokerEV graph on the top of the blog to facilitate following along with progress in the Challenge, and also to remind PokerxPro how hard he's gonna lose everytime he reads my blog ;)
The good news is that I kicked some ass in cash games....lil over $800 in winnings and $115 in rakeback. I was very tempted to stop after I was up $400 or so, but remembering my goal of getting my time in while the money is good (so to speak), I perservered and did great. My best single day performance to date....previous best was $130 less and took me 4 hours more playing as well as 10k hands compared to 3400. So obviously, I'm pumped about that....exceeding my target winrate by a little bit, lol. 18% done with my goal for the month and I've only logged 8% of the time I plan on....good times.
I also racked up some more EV for the challenge....tragically, I started running well towards the end, so my showdown winnings pulled ahead of my EV by about $75. Oh well...I guess I'd rather have the extra money, and besides, there's still a lot of the month left for some unluck and a chance to dominate the 'Worst Luck' Category.
Oh yeah, and I'll be keeping an updated February pokerEV graph on the top of the blog to facilitate following along with progress in the Challenge, and also to remind PokerxPro how hard he's gonna lose everytime he reads my blog ;)
Bang bang bang!
Man....seems like ever since I started focusing on it for the challenge, I've been racking up EV like crazy. Pity my showdowns aren't the same, but my total winnings are close enough to exceed my goals, so it's all good for now. After getting sucked out on twice on a donk-y table, I bought in for a full stack and more than doubled up over the next 80 hands or so.....this was an idea I was experimenting with a few weeks ago, but I was a little worried about stacking off $200 at a time. I was plenty comfortable with this though, so perhaps there's some full-stack NL 200 in my future.
I normally don't play this early on the morning (per my population-conspiracy theory), but I was lured by the fact that Full Tilt gave me a $75 bonus out of the blue for being such a stellar customer (read: person who plays too much). So I did exactly what they wanted me to do and promptly logged on and started messing around with tables. There was more action than I expected, so I ended up putting in almost 3 hrs. That, combined with the several hours I put in last night while on the job, puts me up $380 on the month. I'm about 7% of the way to my goal and I've only put in a little less than 4% of the time; so far, so good.
Just as importantly, I've racked up some nice Sklanksy Bucks! Check it out:
At this rate, those pizzas are mine! I wonder if it's too late to up the wager to include a 12-pack too...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
January in review and the Sklanksy Challenge!
New month, new start! (Kinda). January treated me fairly well, netting a hair under $5,400. That's pretty good considering I played pretty badly for some of that; if nothing else, I've learned to be more attentive to when I'm not on my 'A'-game (if I can be said to have one) and stop making dumb plays. The earnings exceeded my hourly goals by about $2,000 and my monthly goals by about $3,300, so I'm doing ok there.
For February, I'll try to focus on playing smarter and getting my money in better (see below) as well as improving at MTTs. I'm looking to play the same volume (about 100k hands), but I'm shooting for $6,000 net this time. I think this is completely attainable if I play smarter and avoid tilting when I get luckboxed out of big pots (strange, when I luckbox out I never go on tilt...so I'm halfway there ! guess!). Another area I want to address is volume...often in january, I would find myself putting in far less time some days than I had allotted; I would make $200 or $300 in 2 hours and stop playing....basically, I made enough to reassure me I was doing well and then stopped instead of continuing to make money, for fear of losing and 'ruining' my winning session. This month, I'm going to make sure I keep playing....as long as I play well, I've got nothing to fear.
To facilitate getting our money in better, PokerxPro and I are undertaking the Sklansky Challenge; 'Sklansky' because it's a competition to see who can earn the most EV and 'Challenge' because it sounds more meaningful with 'Challenge' on the end. We'll be competing in 3 categories: Most EV earned, Best EV/100 and Worst Luck (Showdown winnings - EV). As I play higher stakes, I should (hopefully) win the Most EV Earned category. PokerxPro's a pretty good player, so it should be a good comeptition for Best EV/100. Worst luck, of course, is anyone's race.
We'll be posting updates every monday as well as a recap at the end of the month. The winner of the majority of the categories will have bragging rights, with further awards being mutually agreed on at some later date.
Think you've got what it takes to try the challenge? Well, tough cookies, this month is only between us....but let me know and next month we'll hook it up.
Update: We've both agreed to additonal terms: winner receives a large 3 topping pizza! Now it's on ^_^
For February, I'll try to focus on playing smarter and getting my money in better (see below) as well as improving at MTTs. I'm looking to play the same volume (about 100k hands), but I'm shooting for $6,000 net this time. I think this is completely attainable if I play smarter and avoid tilting when I get luckboxed out of big pots (strange, when I luckbox out I never go on tilt...so I'm halfway there ! guess!). Another area I want to address is volume...often in january, I would find myself putting in far less time some days than I had allotted; I would make $200 or $300 in 2 hours and stop playing....basically, I made enough to reassure me I was doing well and then stopped instead of continuing to make money, for fear of losing and 'ruining' my winning session. This month, I'm going to make sure I keep playing....as long as I play well, I've got nothing to fear.
To facilitate getting our money in better, PokerxPro and I are undertaking the Sklansky Challenge; 'Sklansky' because it's a competition to see who can earn the most EV and 'Challenge' because it sounds more meaningful with 'Challenge' on the end. We'll be competing in 3 categories: Most EV earned, Best EV/100 and Worst Luck (Showdown winnings - EV). As I play higher stakes, I should (hopefully) win the Most EV Earned category. PokerxPro's a pretty good player, so it should be a good comeptition for Best EV/100. Worst luck, of course, is anyone's race.
We'll be posting updates every monday as well as a recap at the end of the month. The winner of the majority of the categories will have bragging rights, with further awards being mutually agreed on at some later date.
Think you've got what it takes to try the challenge? Well, tough cookies, this month is only between us....but let me know and next month we'll hook it up.
Update: We've both agreed to additonal terms: winner receives a large 3 topping pizza! Now it's on ^_^
OK, maybe I'm a newbie, but still...
....it felt good to rock this tourney. 90 man turbo double stack KO SNG...was bored, cash games were dead and couldn't sleep, so milled about looking for tourneys to waste some money on. This one was one of 2 that were filling up, so I registered for this and the $3+0.3 version (a not-so-surprising 67th in that one). This one was smooth sailing the whole way though; took the chiplead with KK over AK over QT and pretty much held it all the way to the end. Going into the FT, I had about 70k chips, only a few k more than the 2nd stack...but from there I knocked out 6 out of the 8 other players and just rolled over everyone. Heads-up has always been a weaker area of mine; plenty of times in SNGs I would be too agressive or not agressive enough and end up giving away 1st. This time, the guy was passive enough where it worked well....nothing fancy for a finish, just A8 over JT that held. Between the prize and the 11 KOs, a $240 return.....but more importantly, I feel good (despite not always playing optimally; I donked off some chips trying to bluff the 2nd stack when I should have learned a little quicker). Was a great feeling just destroying the table like that, and of course, it makes me want more...so perhaps I'll try to work a few more tourneys into the schedule. Nothing big of course; perhaps the SNGs are the right fit.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Thoughts from the road
Playing on a laptop can be a little annoying after getting used to 2 monitors. Plus, I really miss being able to full stack NL 100 and SS NL 200 at the same time, made things much more exciting. Despite that, I've done pretty well for the most part just SS'ing 4-6 tables on the laptop; yesterday was the exception though...horrendous calls and a lot of unluck, and to make things even better, I tilted a little bit chasing my losses. Never a good idea of course, but I HATE ending a session down. Wouldn't have been such a big deal if I didn't have an appointment later that night; if not, I think I could have kept a level head and played as long as I needed to. As it was, the best thing was for me to stop playing ASAP. So I finally acknowledged this and had some dinner, did some work, planning on revisiting the tables later. That part worked out well; I calmed down and felt like I was ready to play well again. Unfortunately, my internet connection at the hotel was crap; it gets like that at this one particular Hilton when it's busy, and when I've called support in the past, they're no help, so I just hit the sack.
Today has been so-so; have had to work on business and work, so can't focus 100% on poker, but I can play in the background and do ok. For shits and giggles, I ponied up 1/12th of my bankroll on Poker Stars and entered their $0.25 tournament (yes, that decimal place is correct). The idea was to get some large field practice on the cheap, and it's worked ok so far; about 4k players turned out and I'm currently hovering at 45th out of about 250....obviously not even comparable to the play I'd expect from a tournament with a respectable buyin, but if nothing else it's a confidence booster (although it's difficult caring about the outcome, as even FT'ing is worth as little as $12....needless to say, I'd like to FT it, but more to say I did than to increase my bankroll by .0012%). Oh well, I'll still take $12 I guess, everything helps when you're $250k in debt, lol.
Update: got down in chips and had to start shoving, ran A9s into JJ....flop is an A, turn is an A, river is a J! 116th and a little over a buck for me, yeehaw!
Today has been so-so; have had to work on business and work, so can't focus 100% on poker, but I can play in the background and do ok. For shits and giggles, I ponied up 1/12th of my bankroll on Poker Stars and entered their $0.25 tournament (yes, that decimal place is correct). The idea was to get some large field practice on the cheap, and it's worked ok so far; about 4k players turned out and I'm currently hovering at 45th out of about 250....obviously not even comparable to the play I'd expect from a tournament with a respectable buyin, but if nothing else it's a confidence booster (although it's difficult caring about the outcome, as even FT'ing is worth as little as $12....needless to say, I'd like to FT it, but more to say I did than to increase my bankroll by .0012%). Oh well, I'll still take $12 I guess, everything helps when you're $250k in debt, lol.
Update: got down in chips and had to start shoving, ran A9s into JJ....flop is an A, turn is an A, river is a J! 116th and a little over a buck for me, yeehaw!
Monday, January 28, 2008
Revenge of the Luck
I had previously been runnig pretty hot at NL $200....I was up about $1700 and almost $600 in all in luck. I fully expected it to swing the other way at some point, and that point was yesterday....craaaaaazy. Kept getting it in best and losing time after time. I eventually tilted a bit away too to end up down almost $500 before rakeback. I'm still kinda proud of that, considering my EV for the session was about $600....means at least I was playing well despite the luck, can't ask for more than that I guess.
However, I'm making the right plays, and as I'm significantly overrolled for NL $200, I'm in fine shape to keep on doing what I've been doing, kicking ass and taking money :D So I played about 450 hands today while on the road and it seems like things are back to normal...+$180 in under 2 hours, much more like it. I should analyze yesterdays play some more however...i know I made some bad plays, to the tune of $150 or so, but maybe I'm playing sub-optimally as well with hand selection/agression. Something that's worth looking into.
Tourney-wise, I cashed all my ironman medals for $26 tokens for a whopping 4 (hey, only been playing cash at FT for 2 months now and I allready cashed one :P). The idea behind this is that while concentrating on only one tourney at a time like I'm supposed to is boring as hell to me, I can play an 18 person SNG while I work out on the bike/elliptical; the field doesn't seem too tough (taken down 2/2 so far); now all I have to do is figure out the best spot to get my $75 token in. I could go for another 750k entry, but I barely made it past half the field, and I'm thinking it would be better if I got some experience in cheaper before I head back. My current line of thinking is I'll just focus on making $26 into $75, hoard the tokens and then spend one week on the road playing $75 token SNGs for cash. I've always done pretty well at SNGs (actually subsidized my unemployment with them spring of '07), so this is probably the best place to get my money in. For experience, I'll try running some $5 deepstack tourneys in between weekend cash sessions. I need to make sure I'm putting enough time into the business too though....for now, that time is gonna have to come out of my poker time :( But who knows...if things keep going this well, I'll be able to quit the job in a few months and run the business/poker pro it :D
However, I'm making the right plays, and as I'm significantly overrolled for NL $200, I'm in fine shape to keep on doing what I've been doing, kicking ass and taking money :D So I played about 450 hands today while on the road and it seems like things are back to normal...+$180 in under 2 hours, much more like it. I should analyze yesterdays play some more however...i know I made some bad plays, to the tune of $150 or so, but maybe I'm playing sub-optimally as well with hand selection/agression. Something that's worth looking into.
Tourney-wise, I cashed all my ironman medals for $26 tokens for a whopping 4 (hey, only been playing cash at FT for 2 months now and I allready cashed one :P). The idea behind this is that while concentrating on only one tourney at a time like I'm supposed to is boring as hell to me, I can play an 18 person SNG while I work out on the bike/elliptical; the field doesn't seem too tough (taken down 2/2 so far); now all I have to do is figure out the best spot to get my $75 token in. I could go for another 750k entry, but I barely made it past half the field, and I'm thinking it would be better if I got some experience in cheaper before I head back. My current line of thinking is I'll just focus on making $26 into $75, hoard the tokens and then spend one week on the road playing $75 token SNGs for cash. I've always done pretty well at SNGs (actually subsidized my unemployment with them spring of '07), so this is probably the best place to get my money in. For experience, I'll try running some $5 deepstack tourneys in between weekend cash sessions. I need to make sure I'm putting enough time into the business too though....for now, that time is gonna have to come out of my poker time :( But who knows...if things keep going this well, I'll be able to quit the job in a few months and run the business/poker pro it :D
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Diversity
As I'm continuing to do well in cash games (another $300 plus day over a little over 1k hands), I decided to try to be more well-rounded as a Hold 'Em player. To this end, I'm going to use my Ironman medals to buy $26 tokens and get in some SNGs; will mainly be focusing on the 750k chain (2 Table $26 that pays out 5 $75 tokens and a $57 cash prize). I'll use the tokens to play the single table SNGs which award 3 entries into the 750k. After getting into the 750k, I'll continue to play these SNGs, as any additional 750k qualifications will get me $200 instead. This should give me a solid, cheap way to get my feet wet with a major MTT and if I become good at it, a little extra cash as well. Switching gears between tourney and cash play (or playing them simultaneously) should improve my situational awarness as well.
My first attempt was promising: turned $26 into a $75 token on first try and the $75 token into a 750k entry first time around as well. I strongly suspect that I won't be able to maintain a 100% winrate or even half that, lol; but it was nice to get there on the first shot. I'm going to try a few more before the event tomorrow; instead of just repeating the same tourneys, I'm going to mix it up and do some of the $26 token ones straight to the 750k. This should give me a little experience in a larger field, which will probably be necessary seeing as the 750k is my biggest tourney to date (previous largest field: a 400-or-so person $2 tourney,lol). Not really looking to win the $200 entry as much as I am to practice applying what I've learned. I'd be THRILLED to do well tomorrow...and realistically speaking, I think at this point in my tournament experience, just cashing will be doing well. I'll play to win of course, but in a tournament that attracts a significant number of good players, I'm fairly realistic.
My first attempt was promising: turned $26 into a $75 token on first try and the $75 token into a 750k entry first time around as well. I strongly suspect that I won't be able to maintain a 100% winrate or even half that, lol; but it was nice to get there on the first shot. I'm going to try a few more before the event tomorrow; instead of just repeating the same tourneys, I'm going to mix it up and do some of the $26 token ones straight to the 750k. This should give me a little experience in a larger field, which will probably be necessary seeing as the 750k is my biggest tourney to date (previous largest field: a 400-or-so person $2 tourney,lol). Not really looking to win the $200 entry as much as I am to practice applying what I've learned. I'd be THRILLED to do well tomorrow...and realistically speaking, I think at this point in my tournament experience, just cashing will be doing well. I'll play to win of course, but in a tournament that attracts a significant number of good players, I'm fairly realistic.
Friday, January 25, 2008
The good run continues
Been switching it up last few days; SS'ing NL 200 and FS'ing NL 100. i think playing likethis will a)sharpen my focus, making me pay attention to tables more and b)improve my FS play, which was starting to get pretty bad as I ended up getting more and more agressive with solid players. Today I actually stayed sharp and didn't stack off light, and the results were much better: about $280 incl. rakeback opver 1.5k hands. It's strange...show me a breakeven or $30 session and all I wanna do is play more...when I do well like I have this week (no less than $50 an hour with a multi-table ratio of no more than 7), I don't want to play any where near as much. I've made $1500 this week which is a new high for me...gonna try for $2k. Shouldn't be too hard with 2 days left, especially when at my current winrate that will only take about 10 hrs compared oto the 20+ I normally put in on the weekends.
I finally got my business documents and business checking accounts. I reeealy need to spend some time devloping a marketing plan for website/logo/etc and get it out there ASAP. In reality, it's not gonna be long before I will actually be operating. If I can continue to perform this well in poker, I'll be able to balance work, the business and still getting a profitable poker fix in most days. Only time will tell i guess...just glad that my success in NL 200 doesn't seem to be a fluke.
I finally got my business documents and business checking accounts. I reeealy need to spend some time devloping a marketing plan for website/logo/etc and get it out there ASAP. In reality, it's not gonna be long before I will actually be operating. If I can continue to perform this well in poker, I'll be able to balance work, the business and still getting a profitable poker fix in most days. Only time will tell i guess...just glad that my success in NL 200 doesn't seem to be a fluke.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The perks of travel
Having a job where I do a lot of traveling has upsides and downsides; one of the bigger downsides, especially for flying, is that I usually end up wasting time at the airport waiting for a flight. One of my New Years resolutions was to get better at time management and harnessing these 'lost' hours of my week, so I fired up the laptop and played some poker (3 cheers for free wireless, thanks BFL!). As a result, instead of doing what I normally do (catch an un-needed nap; I sleep too much as it is), I played a few hundred hands of poker and did fairly well. A fair bit of it was running good of course, but I'm happy that my equity-adjusted winnings are well above my goals. This hasn't always been the case for me, and I think paying a lot more attention to getting money in ahead as opposed to getting money in when I might have odds has really helped with this. I feel like I'm also stealing much better, resulting in my total winnings actually ending slightly above my showdown winnings this session; I'd be happy with it just being fairly close, as that would be a huge improvement. In summary, very happy with how I played and of course with running well, even over so few hands. I think playing 4-6 tables at once goes a long way towards limiting my spew; the rakeback isn't as nice as course, but if I can make even half of my recent hourly rate, I won't need it.
Edit: played another couple hundred hands and ran well....VERY happy with the equity adjusted winrate...almost as glad of that as I am of the actual winrate :D
Running Goot
Shortstacked NL 200 for a bit today while I did some paperwork. Worked out very nicely, made way more than my hourly and daily goals. Only time will tell if it's sustainable for more than 4k hands. I have gotten a little better too, stopped shoving so much, as it's been my experience that even with decent fold equity, most people won't take it against me and will call with bottom pair or even just a draw. So I've gotten better at using this to get paid off on my made hands and to avoid losing semi-bluffs when I just have overs.
Obviously, I'll be hoping to continue doing this well.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Hard to fold the nuts...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966464
Great play...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966535
2nd Verse, donk as the first...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966922
2nd pair top kicker=nuts!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966556
2nd nut flush draw =nuts!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966569
Me at 16 hr pt, donking off
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966731
Great play...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966535
2nd Verse, donk as the first...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966922
2nd pair top kicker=nuts!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966556
2nd nut flush draw =nuts!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966569
Me at 16 hr pt, donking off
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1966731
Saturday, January 19, 2008
It starts....
In the true spirit of copy-catting, I started a blog....I see it mainly as a tool to keep me honest; by posting here regularly, it'll be harder to fool myself when a session goes bad 'cause I donked off. More to follow...
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