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.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
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!
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