Thursday, February 23, 2012

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.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

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!

Thursday, February 9, 2012

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.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

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.

Monday, January 16, 2012

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.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

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?