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 ^_^

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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...