Posts Tagged ‘Poker Month in Review’

What a month. It started out well enough, and after about a week and a half I was well on my way to a very solid January. Then all hell broke loose, and I lost heavily for the rest of the month, finishing it well in the red. I already made one whine post, so I won’t do any more of that here.

The good news is that the month is over and I started February off yesterday with a great day, digging myself about a third of the way out of the hole. First a graph, then we’ll look at progress towards the year’s goals:

Resolution One: Keep Grinding NLHE Cash Games

Goal 1: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

Ha. At this rate, I’ll be busto by the end of the year.

Goal 2: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

I’m already a Gold Star, not that that takes much. I earned 9022 VPPs, which actually wouldn’t see me hit Supernova until November. However, I now have more money on Stars than I do on FTP, so hopefully I’ll be playing bigger and more often on there. Probably I’ll make Supernova by September, certainly by the end of the year.

Resolution Two: Diversify My Income Streams

Goal 3: Monetize This Blog  Read the complete post...

Despite a pretty rough WCOOP (or maybe because of- it did compel me to put in a lot of hours), September was a solid month. Even after some of those long sessions, though, I barely averaged twenty hours a week. I just don’t think I’m going to hit my goal of averaging 25 hours per week. Thanks to the WSOP, though, I’ve already hit my monetary goal for the year, so I guess that’s alright. then again, I crossed that line back in July as well but ended up sliding pretty substantially back under it and only recently dug myself back out. Nothing’s guaranteed, of course, but I’m feeling pretty good at the moment.

I played about 28K hands of NLHE ring games online, and despite losing money at the highest stakes I was playing (10/20), I was at 8 BB/100 for the month, so no complaints there.

There are no major tournament series coming up this month, and I’m starting to have less responsbility with the BDL, so hopefully this will be a good opportunity to grind some higher stakes cash games. I’ve pretty much obtained my goal of becoming a winning regular at 10/20, so with a little work, I think I can definitely be there by the end of the year.

Didn’t get many NLHE cash games in this month. The month started with FTOPS, so I was playing more tournaments than usual. It wasn’t a good series for me, but I was doing alright on the side. Then I spent the second half of the month running a summer camp for the BDL (hence the slow pace of posting- that will pick up next week). When I was directing the League, so much of my job was like administration, management, politicking, advocacy, and I rarely spent time actually working with students. Generally, working with them was like the amphetamine that got me excited and kept me going through the more tedious work.

I must admit, though, that spending five hours a day, five days a week in charge of a bunch of teenagers is more than a little exhausting. Even though we had a great group that was for the most part eager to learn about debate and easy to get along with, it was still a lot of work and pretty draining. I was in no mood to play poker at the end of a day, that’s for sure.

Here’s me taking notes on the board during a short debate two of our students had about the morality of eating meat.  Read the complete post...

I had the best year of my poker career last month . Obviously that was thanks to cashing for $193,000 at the WSOP. It’s pretty freaky to think that there were several spots in the tournament, most notably when I was all in with AK vs JJ and spiked an Ace on the river, where a single card would have ended up changing my fortune so drastically. Of course I know that’s a stupid way of thinking about it, but it’s just an eerie feeling.

Here’s my year-to-date graph. As you can see from the little blip after the huge spike, I’ve actually done pretty well in the few hands that I’ve played since as well.

I actually haven’t quite hit my goal for the year yet (yeah, I’m ambitious), but I’m very very close now, so I think I’m actually going to spend less time grinding NLHE. I want to focus my attention now on getting better at some other games, especially PLO. I may even hire a coach- any suggestions?

Hey, a winning month! Maybe I am not so bad at this game after all. There are still a few days to go, but I probably won’t be playing much if at all. As you may have noticed, I haven’t been playing the last few days either. I leave for Las Vegas on July 1st, and once out there I’ll obviously be devoting quite a lot of time to poker, so I’m buckling down now on some of my other projects.

Granted I’m about to turn around and spend all of June’s winnings in Las Vegas, but I was going to play the main event anyway, so the winnings are still very meaningful. And if you count staking profits, June turns into a damn fine month.

I was playing smaller stakes, though deep-stacked, and ran at about 4 BB/100 over 19K hands.

Non-poker stuff, which is where I devoted a lot of my time, is going great as well. The school system is really excited about the debate league and committed to investing in it, and we’re very close to hiring an extremely qualified new director. I wish I had a bit more time for poker, but as I said, the first part of July will be dedicated to it, and once there’s a paid employee working on the debate stuff, I should have more free time as well.

15K hands at -2.5 BB/100 is the short version of the story. And despite a final table appearance in an FTP $100 rebuy, I lost money on tournaments as well, thought I didn’t play that many. I very nearly rallied on the last day of the month, only to get myself into some flush trouble. This first one may just be bad luck. It was against Jason Strasser. Though we’d never sat together before, I have some idea of how he plays, and I’m pretty sure this is a reasonable line to take against him. Guess I’m just going to lose some money when I hold the third nuts to his nuts:

Full Tilt Poker No-Limit Hold’em, $20 BB (5 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

SB ($3338.50)
BB ($2272)
Hero ($5000)
MP ($4314)
Button ($11909)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Ks, Kd.
Hero raises to $70, 1 fold, Button calls $70, 2 folds.

Flop: ($170) 8s, Qs, Js (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $120, Hero calls $120.

Turn: ($410) 3s (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $320, Hero calls $320.

River: ($1050) 7s (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $800, Hero calls $800.

Final Pot: $2650

Results in white below:

Button has 9s Ts (straight flush, queen high).

Hero has Ks Kd (flush, king high).  Read the complete post...

I’m taking tomorrow off, so I guess I just played my last hand for April. I put in about 20K hands over 50 hours this month. That’s about half of my monthly goal, but this was a particularly busy month for the Boston Debate League (just under 100 hours): I was in Chicago for a few days for the UDL Nationals, then we had our City Championships as well.

The month got off to a rough start, but I recovered reasonable well. I ran at nearly 2 BB/100, but because my win rate was best at smaller stakes, I was actually in the red for the month, though not by a lot.

I played a touch of PLO and Stud/8, but not enough to be worth talking about. I will say though that I need to realize that those games require a lot more focus, both because I have a lot less experience in them and because there are fewer automatic decisions than in NLHE. Playing three tables of Stud/8 and talking on the phone is not going to work, even though that’s no sweat at almost any stakes in NLHE (unless I’m playing HU).

Most importantly, I accomplished one of my New Year’s Resolutions by getting affiliated with Poker Savvy Plus. My first three videos, which comprised a series on Flop Fundamentals, was well received, and it looks like I’ll be doing some more.  Read the complete post...

Oooph. Man I feel like I just got brutalized all month, but the truth is that I was nearly even until about 10 days ago, and then things really hit the skids. It was some combination of running bad, getting frustrated, and once finding myself in an expensive game with a player who may have been better than I thought.

On the plus side, I got in a lot of hands this month, nearly 38K. Unfortunately, I ran at -1 BB/100, which combined with a continued failure to thrive in tournaments, resulted in my worst month ever. It was enough to wipe out the gains of February and then some. I haven’t added in my rakeback yet, and hopefully that will be substantial, but either way I’ve got some rebuilding to do.

Also, I played NLHE cash games almost exclusively, so I’m not going to bother with PLO or tournament stats or anything. I’m now just under 2 BB/100 for the year, which isn’t great, but still means I’m making decent money given the stakes I’m playing. I’m at about 80% of where I wanted to be for the year, but honestly if I continue at this pace for the rest of 2008, I’d have no room to complain. Downswings are always frustrating when you’re in them, but my big picture is still bright, so I try to focus on that. Here’s my really swingy graph for the first quarter of the year:  Read the complete post...