Monthly review- July 2010

Monthly Review- July 2010  
Cash winnings: $874.47
SNG/MTT winnings: $0
Rakeback: $468.39 FPP value (11,709.65VPPs * 2.5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
Stellar Rewards- $150
Current Bankroll- $3,658.70+35,093.64 FPPs x1.6c= $561.50= $4,220.20
Hours played|$/hr: 95.93| $15.56/hr
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$1,492.83 profit

It was an interesting month to say the least.  I played a decent volume (91 hrs) but hit some tremendous variance (15 buy-ins under all-in ev) and so my hourly rate suffered.  Yesterday was the worst where I dropped nearly 14 buy-ins in less than 2 hrs.  

I do keep having to remind myself though that this is a hobby right now and anything gained is a step in the right direction. 

On a positive note, I did a ton of review of my game.. watched a lot of videos, read hand histories, studied opponents, and feel like I made great strides in overhauling my game and plugging leaks.

Not to go into any great detail, but I did purchase the leakbuster software that comes as an add-on to hold'em manager.  It is not necessary for someone to review their game, but it definitely makes things a lot easier.  However, I take the "acceptable" ranges of stats with a grain of salt.  The program's real merit is in its ability to break your game down into individual components and tell you whether you are winning or losing money in that area.  For example, light 3-betting. It showed that I was leaking a ton of money 3-betting suited connectors but was making a lot with suited blocker hands like Q8s, K2s, A5s etc.  The reason being obvious, the villian will be less likely to have AA/KK/KK and big Ax hands thus by process of elimination the light 3-betting works immediately to get more folds.  And if they do call ip you have big suited cards that can continue on a lot of flops.

There are a few other areas that I won't go into.  Maybe I will do a writeup sometime on plugging leaks via HEM.  (which so far is leaps and bounds better than PT3)

 To summarize the month, I struggled trying to find the best games for me and finally settled in on standard 100bb games.  The 50bb thing was getting very old and while it was nice to build a roll from the ground up with low variance, I felt like it was holding my game back.  A monkey with a stick can win with a 50bb stack.  I want to be a monkey that can win without a stick and lots of chips :)  In August I will continue to grind 25NL until 5K.  After that I will move up to 50NL hopefully for good.  I feel that even if I could "beat" 50NL before now, I wanted to make sure I plugged most of my big leaks before starting to splash more money around the table.  I am pretty sure I am there now and just need the 100 buy-ins to move up.

By the way, I have been meaning to start setting targets both short term and long term.  I will go ahead and do next month  (I don't call them goals by the way, because then you feel like crap when you don't reach them.. its a mental thing)

Targets for next month:

1. Get rolled for 50NL and move up.

2. Stop looking at the how I am doing during sessions.  Focus on playing hands and table selecting and only check the cashier once a week (Sunday evenings?) 

3. Work on continuing to lop off my C-game.

4. Set a more rigid playing schedule.

5. Start working out again and continue eating well.

6. Play 200,000 hands.