December and 2008 --> 2009

I put in my highest monthly volume ever in December, playing 55 tournaments. This sounds like a lot, but is actually pretty modest in the online world. The results have been confirming my suspicion that I'm actually not horrible at poker and just need to remain focused over the course of a tournament/session and not make any boneheaded plays.

For the most part I played well in December, with a few minor exceptions, and here are the results:

Tourneys - 55
Cashes - 11
Buyins - $260
Winnings - $605
ROI - ~130%

NL $10 Hands - 439
Profit - $24.10
BB/100 - 27.45

Obviously running a bit hot in both tourneys and cash. I think I can sustain an ROI of ~90 in tourneys and a BB/100 of ~12 in these micro cash games.

For all of 2008, this month finally puts me in the black.

Total profit for 2008 - $350.

Not exactly where I wanted to be when 2008 started out. My 2007 numbers were insane, and I was hoping to repeat that in '08, but I highly doubt it would have been sustainable. Nonetheless, I didn't play as high in limits as I anticipated and I played significantly less volume as well. So my 2009 goals look a lot like my 2008 goal. I'm making them a bit more realistic and also more in terms of volume, since that has been my problem.

2009 Goals:

200+ tournaments
Avg Buyin - $5+
ROI - 90%+

40k+ hands cash
9+ BB/100
Start playing NL25 and possibly NL50

Considering my December volume, I think this is attainable if I really care at all about progressing as a player. However, school and internship may get in the way. Hopefully poker can turn into a very lucritive side income for me, but I really do need to work at it much more than I did in '08.

Happy New Year to all! Good luck on the tables and off.

Final Table Blues

This seems to always happen to me after getting heads up. Whatever.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00+$0.40 Tournament, 800/1600 Blinds 150 Ante (2 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t214230)

Button (t55770)
Hero's M: 79.34

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, A

Button raises to t55620 (All-In), Hero calls t54020
Flop: (t111540) 8, 10, 6 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: (t111540) 5 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: (t111540) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t111540

Results:

Button had J, 10 (one pair, tens).

Hero had K, A (high card, Ace).

Outcome: Button won t111540


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00+$0.40 Tournament, 1000/2000 Blinds 200 Ante (2 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) (t154010)

Button (t115990)

Hero's M: 45.30
Preflop: Hero is SB with K, A

Button raises to t6000, Hero raises to t20400, Button raises to t34800, Hero raises to t153810 (All-In), Button calls t80990 (All-In)

Flop: (t231980) A, 5, 5 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t231980) 6 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t231980) 3 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t231980

Results:

Button had 6, 6 (full house, sixes over fives).

Hero had K, A (two pair, Aces and fives).
Outcome: Button won t231980


The second hand isn't so bad for the odds, I was a dog going in, but the manner in which it played out. It was brutal. Oh well... I battled for a while after this but ended up getting ~50k in pre with 3's and ran into his jacks, to get second. Again.

Another Blah Month

School ate a huge chunk of my time in the last week or two of November. But in the middle of the month I was able to get in some decent volume, at least for my standards.

I ended up playing ~12 tournaments, cashing only once for a -85% ROI. No big deal I suppose. I am mostly confident in my play lately though, so that's good. If there's one thing I would change, it would be that I loosen up a bit. I'm basically still a nit.

I also got in just under 400 hands of NL $10. Just two one hour sessions, but it's more cash than I've played in the last three months combined. I was up ~$17 at like 22PTBB/100, so that was good. For some reason though, it felt more because I was running pretty hot than playing really well. I'm still too tight in the 6-max format. I think I was running around 14/10 or so. I want to be 18/14 or 18/16 at these levels, possibly going as high as 22/19. Whatever, it's just one more thing I have to work on.

That's all for now. Happy Holidays and whatnot.

lol Updates

Haven't posted for a pretty long while. Woops. Haven't played much poker, due to a lot of school work this semester and more recently xbox 360. But I was able to play a total of 9 tournaments in October, mostly over a three day stretch in the middle. Unfortunately, I failed to cash in any of them, so for the month I was down just over $50.

Anyway, this month will hopefully see some more free time from school, but I don't know how much of that free time will be spent on poker. I've been too absorbed in Fallout 3, which I highly recommmend. It's a damn fun game, and so far I've spent about 20 game hours on it in just about a week.

Thats it for now, hopefully it won't take another month for the next update.

September Results and October Goals

So I ended up not playing any poker whatsoever in September. I was pretty busy with school and work so I didn't even really care about the lack of poker.

I did finally take my remaining cash off UB. Due to the cheating (out of principle, not because I was swindled, I don't play nearly high enough stakes) and the crappy software, I never played there anyway.

For October, my goals are to play a bit of whatever I want. Maybe 5-10 MTTs and some hands of cash. Just so I don't get too rusty for when I want to return to the game for some side income.

But starting October 28, I'm probably going to play significantly less poker, at least for a while. That is the day Fallout 3 comes out for xbox 360, and I've been looking forward to it for months. Hopefully it won't interfere too much with school and work... :)

Stuff

I haven't yet played a hand of poker in the month of September. My last session was on August 27th. I've had a lot more homework than I expected, the result of my Native American history class. We have three book reports and a research project to write for that class, in addition to whatever other assignments the professor decides to cook up.

The result of this homework is that my weekends have been devoted to homework, to the tune of 5 hours a day, leaving no time for poker. A somewhat surprising corollary is that I haven't missed it too much, at least not as much as I thought. Though I guess I should have known, the last 6 months or so I've looked at putting in time at the tables as more of a chore than a fun, money-making hobby. So meh, I may make this an extended break until the end of the month, but I may get back into it when I start to get a handle on the homework.

In other sad news, my grandmother passed away at the beginning of the month. She had been morbidly overweight for a number of years and had health problems as a result, so this was not totally unexpected. Nonetheless, it still hits you when hear the news. My dad flew back to take care of everything that was left over, and he seems to be taking it alright, but I can only imagine how hard it would be to lose your mother.

All in all, a fairly crappy month; hopefully things start to get better soon.

August Rap-Up and September Goals

In August I failed to hit my volume goals. This is fairly typical of me, because not only am I lazy, but I have a hard time doing more than two tabling. I have a hard time more than two tabling for two reasons. The first is that I suck at multitasking. The second is that it's hard to put much more than 4 tables up on my laptop screen and even harder to run 2 tables with pokertracker etc in the background. Just not enough juice in the computer.

Thankfully, the second part of the above is now remedied. My very awesome girlfriend just got me a brand new MacPro (not that she really has the money, but because I bought her an engagement ring). Anyway, the computer is spectacular and I couldn't be happier with it. I just have to wait about a week to get 64-bit windows in the mail, as they only put 32-bit in the box. Then you have to go to the vista website and order 64-bit with your product key that you got in the box, and they send 64-bit for an additional $10 for shipping.

Anyway, here's how August ended up for me:

MTT's:
Goal: 30 MTT's, no profit goal.
Result: 11 MTT's, at 391% ROI, profit of $207.

As you can see, I ran very well in tournaments for August. I still play way too tight in the mid-stages of tournaments, and it's something I need to remedy.

Cash:
Goal: 1k Hands, no profit goal.
Result: 800 Hands, at ~(-4BB/100), profit of -$15.75.

As well as I ran in tournaments, I ran almost equally bad in cash. I played poorly on a few occasions, but there were several days were I was playing very solid and just not catching well/getting paid. Oh well, not a big deal.

September goals will be as follows. Since school has started up this past week, I'm cutting back on the MTT goals, since I couldn't hit it even when it was summer vacation still.

MTT's:
Goal: 10 MTT's. No profit goal.

I'd say that I'd like to run at ~100% ROI, but thats very unreasonable given that I'll only be playing 10 tournaments as a goal. The amount of variance in such a small number of tournaments means that any ROI I have at the end will mean almost nothing anyway, so setting a goal is pointless.

Cash: 1k Hands, (+7BB/100)

Though 1k Hands is also a very insignificant sample size, this goal is more reasonable. Because of my school time constraints, I should have shorter opportunities to play that lend themselves more to cash games than tournaments. The only problem will be actually playing rather than just blowing it off and doing something else.

So that's that, thanks for reading, and thanks again to my wonderful fiancee, Courtney! You are the best, honey!

$10 NL

I've decided I can't beat it. These examples should serve as proof. I was three tabling at the time, these examples are from a 5-minute span.



Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
BB: $10.70
Hero (UTG): $14.05
CO: $6.10
BTN: $18.80
SB: $10
Pre-Flop: J J dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $0.40, CO calls $0.40, BTN folds, SB calls $0.35, BB raises to $2, 2 folds, SB calls $1.60

Flop: ($4.80) 4 K 2 (2 Players)
SB checks, BB bets $2.50, SB folds

Results: $4.80 Pot ($0.20 Rake)
BB mucked and WON $4.60 (+$2.60 NET)


Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
UTG: $8.90
MP: $5.05
CO: $8.40
BTN: $11.15
Hero (SB): $9.80
BB: $8.90
Pre-Flop: A K dealt to Hero (SB)
2 folds, CO calls $0.10, BTN folds, Hero raises to $0.50, BB calls $0.40, CO calls $0.40

Flop: ($1.50) 7 2 6 (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB checks, CO bets $0.70, Hero calls $0.70, BB calls $0.70

Turn: ($3.60) Q (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB bets $1.20, 2 folds

Results: $3.60 Pot ($0.15 Rake)
BB mucked and WON $3.45 (+$2.25 NET)


Poker Stars, $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
MP: $9.10
CO: $7.40
Hero (BTN): $11.70
SB: $10.15
BB: $3.40
UTG: $6.40
Pre-Flop: K A dealt to Hero (BTN) UTG raises to $0.30, MP calls $0.30, CO calls $0.30, Hero raises to $1.50, 2 folds, UTG calls $1.20, MP calls $1.20, CO folds

Flop: ($4.95) 7 T Q (3 Players)
UTG checks, MP bets $0.20, Hero calls $0.20, UTG calls $0.20

Turn: ($5.55) 9 (3 Players)
UTG checks, MP bets $0.80, Hero folds, UTG raises to $2.40, MP calls $1.60

River: ($10.35) J (2 Players)
UTG bets $0.70, MP calls $0.70

Results: $11.75 Pot ($0.55 Rake)
MP showed 5 8 (a straight, Eight to Queen) and WON $11.20 (+$6.40 NET)
UTG showed 9 9 (three of a kind, Nines) and LOST (-$4.80 NET)


The first one is actually a pretty good fold IMO. His range is QQ+, AK, and IMO its definately weighted towards the pairs, because three-betting is so incredibly uncommon at these stakes.

The second one is the only one I think I played questionably. I probably should have led this flop, but having two callers was disconcerting. The BB insta-called my pre-flop raise, and the limp caller hit some of his range on the flop ( he was playing 60/10/2 through 50 hands). Nevertheless, once the BB flats behind me on the flop, I'm done with the hand unless I improve, which doesn't happen.

Third hand tilted the shit out of me. WTF is going on. After getting called by two players, there is basically no way I'm ever good on that flop, but I call because he bet 0.20 into the pot which makes no fucking sense. Whatever. When he leads the turn tiny again, I decide to let it go, since drawing the the three offsuit jacks seems pointless since I'm not closing the action. Sucks that I would have hit it, but WHAT THE FUCK was he doing there with 85s.

I was seriously outplayed by these players, especially the guy with the 85s. I can't beat $10 NL. I am so outclassed. This being toward the end of a 330 hand session (my longest in months) I still managed to finish up $2. Woo. $2. That's not pointless. I'm so glad I took the time out of my day to play $10 NL.

A Fun Hand

I didn't play this hand very well (I should have raised more PF and I'm not sure about flop play against three villains), but it was interesting to see what they all called with pre.

Poker Stars, $3 + $0.30 NL Hold'em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
BB: 1,500
UTG: 1,820
UTG+1: 1,690
MP1: 1,470
MP2: 1,490
Hero (CO): 1,540
BTN: 1,100
SB: 1,400
Pre-Flop: (30) Q Q dealt to Hero (CO)
Observer folds, UTG raises to 60, UTG+1 folds, MP1 calls 60, MP2 calls 60, Hero raises to 240, 3 folds, UTG calls 180, MP1 calls 180, MP2 calls 180

Flop: (990) 3 8 5 (4 Players)
UTG checks, MP1 checks, MP2 bets 320, Hero raises to 1,300 and is All-In, UTG raises to 1,580 and is All-In, MP1 calls 1,230 and is All-In, MP2 calls 930 and is All-In

Turn: (6,070) A (4 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: (6,070) 3 (4 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: 6,070 Pot
UTG showed 9 T (a flush, Ten high) and WON 100 (-1,440 NET)
MP1 showed A 4 (a flush, Ace high) and WON 5,910 (+4,440 NET)
MP2 showed K J (a flush, King high) and WON 60 (-1,430 NET)
Hero showed Q Q (two pair, Queens and Threes) and LOST (-1,540 NET)