Disappointing volume

I haven't been able to play near as many hands as I'd like but turns out it's a good thing. It means my rl job has finally started picking up a bit do there's a lot less pressure on picking up some dough other places. Hopefully one day I can rely mostly on poker to make a living, but it's very nice to have something to always fall back on.

I have often wondered how things would be were I like 20 in 2003 just discovering poker. I was always kind of a nerd and a wiz at every game I played. I am pretty sure I would have likely been one of those "internet wiz kids" and made a killing off the game in the early years of the boom.

I saw a video recently on bluefire poker on how poker has become a kids game. It's actually pretty good and I recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

Ultimately I have no regrets. I have a fairly lucrative career that allows myself and my family to live a comfortable lifestyle on my income alone. My wife is a stay at home mom and we are able to raise the kids ourselves solely and put them in good schools.

Poker has always been just a hobby but of course I have always dreamed of turning it into something more. I guess that is why I work so hard at it in my spare time. I firmly believe it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. I have never quit on anything in my life and I won't start now.

Getting back to this month; I am running decently at 50NL and kinda meh at 20NL. Better than vice versa for sure. I am + about $500 after rakeback so far and almost have my 'roll on one of the sites big enough to hit 100NL. If all stays on track I will be fully grinding 50NL/100NL by months end. No rush though, I am actually enjoying my grinds lately. It's amazing how fun this game is as you begin to actually figure out what you are doing. :)

By the way, Cake has still not processed the $2,500 I cashed out on the 12th of February. Over one month and counting. I read somewhere that the average is 2-3 months right now.. which is pretty dang ridiculous. Living in the land of the free and we have to deal with this BS. I truly love the South but man do I hate conservative politics.

On another note, I was just looking at my stats and noticed that I hit 2 sets in the past 9 hours of play. I do only play 400 hands an hour but that still seems pretty dang low. I sure am glad that making sets are but a miniscule part of my strategy.

Imagine the post I would be writing if I were still the 12/10 full ring super nit I used to be and had gone that long without a set. I'd be whining like crazy about the big downswing today.

I will close with this today's run good graph. (only +$50AIEV).

February Graph

Decent volume but little money due to the cashout on 2/12. However, I have just gotten back to 50NL on both sites, +$620 since cashout at 10NL/20NL.

Now I am 12 tabling 20NL/50NL, about $350 from moving up to 100NL on one site and $600 on the other.

Here is last February's graph:


Goal for March is at least 40k hands of volume.

100K Hand Stats

I have now played 100k hands since seriously getting back into online poker. Here are the positional stats:



Now if only I could put in 100k hands a month.

I did purchase a 21" monitor which will allow me to tile a few more tables. I am trying to get my hands per hour up from 450 to around at least 600. This should give me an hourly rate increase of around $5 or so.

My ideal number of hands would be in the 750 range, I am going to experiment once the monitor comes in and try and find the optimum setup. I will post the results here and screenshots of the new monitor once it's setup.

Changed my "business" plan a bit/cashed out some

I cashed out $2,500 as a rl necessity because we are currently building a house. In order to qualify for a loan we needed a bit more liquid cash in the bank before we can get approved. Long story short, I am self-employed and show a lot of deductions on my tax return.. therefore it is hard as hell to show enough income to qualify for a loan these days. Even though our mortgage will be the same as our current rent that we have been paying 4 years, it doesn't matter to the mortgage company. Since the financial crash due I can't blame them, it's just a pain.

At any rate, I moved a bit to another poker site and now I split my time between the two. I have $650 0n the main site and $350 on the other. Since it's a 33% rakeback deal on both sites, there really is no incentive to put in all my volume in one place. Besides, the cashout time on Cake poker sucks so I like having some of my roll on another site which I can access funds quicker on.

I am now grinding $10 and $20 NL. I have also been experimenting with my bet sizing and bluff frequencies quiet a bit as well. Better to do that for lower stakes imo.

I also will be trying a bit more aggressive bankroll management plan for a time. It seems as though for the most part my daily fluctuations are usually not more than 4-5 buy-ins one way or the other so I am taking a calculated risk. I have no problems moving up and down if I hit a swing, so I am not worried about tilting it all off.

I am putting in a lot more volume lately and try to get in at least 2k hands a day. I would like to at least put in 50k hands a month going forward. I have plans to get a 24" monitor once we are in the new house, I definitely need the extra desktop space as I can only tile 12 tables at a time right now. And that is with significant overlap. I just want to be able to tile 16 tables with a little overlap so I can increase my hands per hour from the current 420ish up to around 550 or so.

On another note, I went and hit golf balls the other day for the first time in like 2 years. I hit the ball pretty dang good considering and look forward to hopefully getting a regular game together in the next few weeks. In case I never mentioned before on the blog, I am a 2 handicap and averaged around 76 a round back when I played a couple times a week in a my 20s.

Golf is a lot like poker in many ways. It's very much a mental game and you have to control your emotions in order to succeed. The only difference is you are only playing old man par and that bastard is the ultimate grinder!

Downswing now = breakeven stretch

Today I finished my comeback from my big downswing last month. I didn't really have much time to play due to real life obligations, so it took a little while.

Here is my graph since the downswing:


Tomorrow I will add a couple of tables of 100NL and slowly transition into playing the next level. Last time I think I got carried away by loading 12 tables of 100NL right off the bat.

I will try to remember to post my weekend results here on Monday or Tuesday.

Still rebuilding

Thus far I have recovered about 2/3 of what I lost in the 100NL fiasco. It's amazing but as soon as I moved down I instantly ran normal again. This crap can really mess with your head.

All-in-all I know I am a better player for having gone through such ridiculous swings. Due to analysis of my play during the last nosedive, I made a couple major tweaks in my game that has really cut down on the variance.

I am looking forward to getting back to 100NL instead of having the normal feeling of dread.

Back to 50NL

I am $900 under AIEV over my first 3k hands at 100NL. This is like a repeat performance of early 2011 where I ran 4k under ev over like 2 months.

I have now lost to a gut shot when all-in 5 straight times... two of those times was on the turn.

Is that even possible? Seriously.. what are the mathematical odds of that happening? I better buy a lottery ticket.

The whales keep trying to hand me their money but the poker Gods won't let them.

Oh well, that's poker.

With 1/3 of my bankroll gone, I am moving down. I am not going to give up. When I hit 3k I will give 100NL another shot. I can't get F@#$@ forever.

Just to cheer myself up...

...here is my 50NL graph from the past few weeks.



I'm going to try and channel that run good mojo going forward. :)

Moving up= you can't win at showdown

After smashing through 50NL with a 12bb/100 win-rate over 30k hands, I finally made it to 100NL.

Excitedly I fired up some tables. There is probably some sub-optimal play here and there as I adjust to the regulars, but overall I feel I played very well.

I wasn't really paying attention to how I was doing, although I did notice that I was losing some races.

After the session I checked the graph and almost threw up.


In 3 short hours I blew a weeks work at 50NL. Good times.

I know that this kinda stuff happens, but it's odd that it seems to always happen as soon as I move up. It happened multiple times at 50NL before I got a foothold, now it here we go again at 100NL.

This is the kinda thing that woulda really bothered me a year ago. Now I know I just need to grind enough hands to turn it around. If I have to move down, oh well.. no biggie. I'll be back at 100NL in a week or two. :)

-----------------------------------------
(Continued- 2 hrs later)

It's been one of those days where my opponents mystically hit whatever combination of runner runner if all-in on the flop or 1 or 2 outer if all-in on the turn.

This may seem like a small sample, and it is.. but since I only play 2-4 tables at a time, it's like 8 hrs of play today. What a strange game this is.

Well, I'm $200 from having to move down. Almost 1/3 of my BR gone since yesterday :(


I wish somehow this graph showed the 9 times that I flopped the nuts and got all-in on the turn or river only to find out they had turned a gutshot or some other wierd suckout. 9 times. That's a lot of dough.

It's funny though, I haven't run this bad since my first move to 50NL in February. I am not going to get frustrated, tomorrow is a new day.. I'll be back strong then. This is why we practice BR management, no?

I decided to not pay blinds today

Not really, but since I won money in the blinds it almost looks like it. I feel like I played at the top of my game today, even if I can't win a 60/40 or 70/30.

Here's today.



And here are my positional earnings for my entire foray into 50NL on Cake thus far.



BR is now just under $2,400.

I got another odd "CSG" payment into my account from Cake today. It appears as if their rakeback system is slightly off, so from time to time they make up for it by depositing money in player's accounts. This is my theory and I'm sticking to it. If anyone knows the real reason these mystery deposits keep showing up, please feel free to chime in.

A day of run good?

Today I actually ran decent. Although I couldn't win a flip early, things started clicking at about the 3/4 point. BR now stands at about $2,300.



I have been working lately on the light 4-bets. Since I steal more often than any human on earth, I tend to get 3-bet extremely light by conscious regulars. Against a few players I profitably 4-bet ATC. Now who's getting exploited?

Another aspect of my game I have worked on is the dreaded redline. Now about 40% of my earn comes from non-showdown winnings. If you have a free falling redline, I suggest disallowing yourself from calling. This is the best and quickest fix. I oversimplify, but that's the solution is a nutshell.

I'm baaaack

I have slowly but surely began playing again. I deposited $40 on Cake poker over the summer but didn't really start grinding until mid September. Here are my results so far:



50NL positional stats. I don't think I have ever seen anyone else break even/win money from the SB as I have done over the last 60k hands and am very proud of this.


Overall the play on cake is very soft compared to Pokerstars. Maybe this is why my win-rate is so high. Or maybe it's because the traffic is so much lower, I can only play 10 tables at a time now. Either I have improved while building the BR or am just running hot. Time will tell.

The bankroll is currently around $2,100. Another fact I am proud of is that I went from $40 to $2,000 in just over 100 hrs using a very conservative BR management plan.

I plan on beginning to play 100NL once I hit $3,000. The only problem is there are typically only around 3-4 100NL tables running, so obviously I will just start mixing in 100NL tables at 3k. The odd thing is that there are usually more 200NL tables running than 100NL so when I hit 6K I can put in a lot more volume >50NL for sure.

I will not be posting much strategy here. After Pokerstars got shut down in the US, I spent a lot of time studying the game and kind of came up with my own style of play. It is completely different than what anyone else is doing (that I've seen)and seems to be working very well. I'd hate to divulge it here and suddenly have a bunch of n00bs doing it on my tables.

The only thing I will say is that I have worked very hard on figuring out where the money comes from in poker and built my game around that notion. Some of the results of that quest are counter intuitive but nonetheless profitable. Anyone can figure it out if they just put in the time.

Work work work

Its been one hail storm after another so far this year. I have been on the road a lot more than home since March. At least I'm able to make some dough and since I only have one job now since the demise of PS, its nice to be busy.

I am planning my trip to the WSOP and since work is busy I can't be away too long. I definitely need to go since I have a full ride there from my staker. There will be no makeup so all I need to worry about is expenses. I have settled on going for about a week and playing in 3ish events.

I will summarize events here as I go if I am able to make it out there.

The future of online poker

So the 3 major sites are temporarily (hopefully) shut down. I will refrain from calling it "Black Friday" because it is silly of us to compare the loss of online poker with a positive day for retailers. Once again this is just another way the election of George Bush has screwed us royally. As for the future of online poker.. who knows... hopefully legalization occurs sometime in the next decade and we can get back to playing the game we love without government harassment. I am one of those who has no recourse and has to find other avenues to get in hands. I play in a free poker league and now plan on playing in some live tournaments/cash games whenever I can. Unfortunately I live in a state with no poker rooms and since I have a family I can't just up and change my locale. So my dream of supernova elite is all but gone. At least my main job has been busy so far so I am, for now, not reliant on poker as a side income to make ends meet. Two people have offered to stake me in some WSOP events.. hopefully I will have the opportunity and time to go play in them.

My first run good session in a month and CAP graph thus far

Today:

And my CAP journey so far:

The run good part only lasted about 10 minutes.. but man was it nice to see for a change. This past week has been good for my poker game as I feel I've made several breakthroughs. I had my first coaching session ever last Tuesday and my game immediately saw results.

Notice I am still almost $3,500 under all in EV. I am not really concerned about it.. as you can see I still made $25/hr even with the run bad. If I had just run at even it would have been $48/hr. Keep in mind my lifetime hrly rate at 25NL was like $22/hr or something.

I will likely get moved up to 200NL by my staker this week.. and since the highest I have ever played is .50/1.00.. it will be kinda scary there I'm sure. At least its still only $40 on the table at risk at once. Losing $200 in one hand still seems like a ridiculous thing to me right now. Of course a year ago, losing $25 in a hand was a huge thing to me. Me=nit.

If anyone is interested let me know, I might throw together a video of me playing micro CAP so you guys can get an idea of how the games play (if you don't know already) I never realized how complicated short stacking is and I assume most 100bb players don't know as well or else they wouldn't hate them so much lol. I don't have camtasia though and I have to figure out how to make cam studio work passably well.

For krikey sake..

Today played out like a bad poker movie script. I just couldn't do anything right. Preflop all in average equity 52%.. hands won at showdown when all in preflop= 42%.

Flop average all in equity of 58%, hands won at showdown when all in on flop= 46%.

Turn average all in equity of 60%, hands won at showdown when all in on flop= 54%.

I actually lost money today when all in preflop with QQ, avg all in was 65%.. over 50 times.

The graph is actually deceiving.. I was nearly breakeven on non-showdown winnings over the last 7k hands.. so my postflop play had to be spot on. All of the losses are at showdown.

So what gives?

I am not sure where to go from here.. I am now $3,500 under ev over the last 6 weeks... 175 buy-ins. This is the most brutal negative variance I have ever faced. The sick thing is I feel like I am playing better than ever.. I review hands and study this friggin game like 30 hrs a week. I just feel like I'm getting screwed right now. Now I can see how people think poker is rigged lol. I know its not.. but has anyone ever ran this bad for this long?

Blah blah blah

-$1,100 ev this week, ended up down like $400.

Played 52k hands and 39 hrs. Going for even more volume this week.

Going to throw mega volume at variance in an attempt to slay it.

Just when you think you got it all figured out..

...poker bitchslaps you back into your place.

So I was going to play all week without looking at the cashier. Today I accidentally saw my earnings in HEM and almost threw the laptop out the window. I dropped $1,200 since Monday (-600 ev). So now I am glad I looked because I am playing terrible and definitely need to adjust quick.

It seems I had become Mr. weak tight passive again, a problem that has plagued me in the past. This game is all about aggression and even though I know that.. I tend to go on auto pilot and try and make hands before putting money in the pot. Yes, I'm an idiot.

So back to square one. I dropped a couple tables so I can focus better and will have to live with less hands per hour for awhile until I can correct this BS.

I did play 4500 hands after realizing how bad I was playing and focused more on winning dead money, picking up pots no one wants etc. I was -$10, +$70 ev. Not too bad.. I may have overdone it a bit as I was +$100 in non-showdown earnings.

So I will spend the rest of the week trying to be the most aggressive bastard I can and at least if the bankroll crashes and burns, I will have gone down swinging.

A lot of thinking, not so much time spent playing

I only played about 28 hrs this week managing about $750 in profit. I just didn't feel that confident in my game so I spent my usual 60+ hrs studying preflop and postflop scenarios trying to determine optimal ranges and lines. My ultimate conclusion through all of this work is to forget what I know now and remember what I knew then.

What I am talking about is my focus this year on the minutia of playing "perfectly" in various spots instead of focusing on the simple stuff, like recognizing fish and extracting value. So starting yesterday night I took my game back in time with a hybrid on what I've learned lately and felt considerably more comfortable.

Decisions were a lot easier and even though its a very small sample, I am encouraged by the results. Note this graph is 3 hrs of play and I actually ran $100 under AIEV.

So this week my goal is a lot more volume and give yesterdays "changes" a decent sample size so I can see where I'm at.

Had my best week ever

After rakeback I had $1,025 in profit this week, which is my best cash game week ever. I didn't exactly play very well imo, but things definitely are starting to improve as my grasp for CAP games increases with experience.

I played just under 30 hrs this week and 42k hands. I am looking to get my volume up to 60k hands a week. I am increasing from 16 tables at once to 18 this week to see how it goes. This should put me in the 1650 hands per hour range which seems ideal since I am now getting around .35 vpps/hand at 100NL.

At 250k hands a month I'd be bringing in 5k/month at 100NL in rakeback alone.

My target this week is to play 36 hrs and 60k hands.