January 2011

January was very similar to how December went for me.  I went through an extremely long stretch where my blue line ($ won at showdown) flatlined.  In December it was over 30K hands.  This month...50 friggin' thousand hands.  Yep - 50,000 hands where I won a grand total of 6 buyins AT SHOWDOWN.  That is very very low.  This is obviously a huge leak.  When most people have a flat blue line it is because they have a positive redline.  Me... well, I had a flat blue line with a negative redline.  It doesn't take a genius to figure out I'm leaking like a sieve in showdown pots 

In reviewing my showdown hands, it boils down to:

• Getting it AI too light (i.e. with a one pair hand)
• Calling way too many rivers when I'm not likely to be ahead.  I become a horrible calling station on rivers. 

If I can improve on those two areas I think I will improve overall. 

Overall, I played almost 100K hands between my computer and laptop.  And the silver lining to all of this:  I am once again in the positive thinks largely (okay, ONLY) due to bonuses and rakeback. 

I am making a promise to myself this month.  I will simply not play more than 2 Rush tables or 6 tables in total.  Early on, I will only play 4 tables.  It will feel PAINFULLY slow, but I can pretty much pinpoint my decline in winning at poker was when I started multi-tabling.  I probably did it before I was really ready.  I need to go back to playing just a few tables so that I can actually THINK through my lines.  IF I can start winning with less tables I can try to up it again in March.  But February is the month where I forgo volume (and bonuses, and rakeback) in order to fix my broken game.  If I can't, well then I'm pretty much done with poker - at least insofar as thinking of it as a way to make some nice side income. 

2010 Results

2010.  Goodbye. 

Ha.  Yeah, 2010 wasn't one of my best years for the pokerz.  The good news is that at the end of the day I was a winner (thank you very much Rakeback and Bonuses).  As far as the actual poker playing goes, I was a slight loser -- my "winrate" (or should I say "lose" rate) was -0.92 bb/100. 

Volume:  was good.  I played over 1 million hands of online poker.  That does not include any SNG's our MTT tournaments I played. 

December was also kind of a "meh" month.  I felt that I played fairly well, but my blue line (win/loss at showdown) was flat for the last 30k hands.  Some of that was bad luck but a lot of it was making a lot of bad river calls and getting it AI when quite frankly I shouldn't have been. 

2011.  Welcome my friend.  I look forward to being successful with you. 

November Month End Results/December Goals

November 2010 Results

Twas a tale of two halves this month.  The first half of the month was the same ol' struggling player.  The 2nd half was a complete reversal.  Why?  I got a new coach and unlike the last time I had a coach, I am LISTENING and studying.  I do not think this is a reflection of my past coach -- but a reflection of my willingness to really make an effort taking notes and understanding what was being taught and then following through.  Most importantly, not being stubborn thinking I know what the hell I'm doing. 

So... the results compared to my goals:


[  ]  100,000 hands:  [I only go in 80,785 hands in.  I'm ok with that because I spent more time learning/studying.]
[X ]  Positive winrate.  [For the month:  .72bb/100.  LoL.  After the 15th:  5.56.  That is a huge friggin' difference folks!]
[  ]  Stop looking at your results/graphs.  Seriously dude, don't look at it.  Poker is a long-term game.  No more than 1 time per week, okay?  [Fail.  I looked at it quite a bit.  And it tilted me.  And it frustrated me.  And it got me to invest in another coach which has completely turned things around.  So, I failed the goal, but in the end it helped me.]
[ - ]  Do session reviews at end of 5 of 7 days. [I didn't keep track, but I was pretty close]
[  ] Lose 10 pounds [Ha ha ha ha ha ha]

December 2010 Goals
[  ]  80,000 hands
[  ] Get two more coaching sessions
[  ]  Have a positive winrate
[  ] Take shots at 50NL
[  ] Make Iron Man for 12th consecutive month and earn nice year end bonus.
[  ] Have fun in Disneyworld with the wife and kids. 

October 2010 Results / November 2010 Goals

Another month, another struggle for this online dabbler of the unlimited Texas hold ems.  First, let's take a look at my goals vs. what actually happened:

[X ]  Play at least 60,000 hands (I played 116,444 hands)
[ X ]  Watch at least 1 CR video per week
[  ]  Improve Double Barreling.  I'm not sure how to measure this exactly, though.  But want I want to do is to dub when a) I turned more equity (or still have good equity); or b) a scared card hit (scare card based on my opponents range of holdings). (Fail.  I never really paid much attention to it.)
[  ]  Do not look at HEM results or cashier more than 2 times per week. (Huge fail.  I looked at cashier and HEM results constantly.  I really need to just.stop.doing.it.)
[ / ]  Get to, and stay at NL50 (I almost have enough roll to play there now, but I will prolly start at 25NL mixing in some 50NL. (we'll call this 1/2 accomplished.  I played 27910 hands of 50NL Rush but I stunk.  Getting to 50NL will not be a goal for November.)
[  ]  Read Tommy Angelo's book again. (I did read some excerpts but ended up reading the latest Dexter release instead.)
[ / ]  Study for a minimum of 15 minutes per day -- generally in form of HH review; do at least 1 equity calculation. (I studied a a bit in the form of HH reviews, but didn't do much in the way of equity calcs.)
[  ] Edit:  Whenever I play 50NL+, I will play a maximum of 2 tables.  If I feel like "grinding", I will play 25NL or lower only (As discussed in a previous blog, I dropped the whole maximum of 2 tables.  In the end, I I love mass tabling and playing tons of hands). 

Overall, I ended up for the month thanks to bonuses and rakeback. 

November 2010 Goals:

[  ]  100,000 hands
[  ]  Positive winrate
[  ]  Stop looking at your results/graphs.  Seriously dude, don't look at it.  Poker is a long-term game.  No more than 1 time per week, okay? 
[  ]  Do session reviews at end of 5 of 7 days.
[  ] Lose 10 pounds

Stats for 2 Table Rush vs. 8 Table Rush

As I discussed in my last post, I have been playing 8 tables of FR Rush lately (4 of one level, 4 of another level). 

Here are the results and stats side by side (sorry about the formatting -- I'm a blogger newb):


                        2 Tables           8 Tables
Hands:              30,615             25011
$                      - 433                +306
Winrate:           -2.95bb/100     +6.82bb/100
VPIP:               13.4                 11.0
PFR:                 11.2                  9.2
3 Bet:                4.0%                2.9%
AF:                   2.33                 2.43
Steal:                39.2%              31.7% 
WTSD:             26.2%              26.1%
W$SD:             54.7%              59.1%
CB Flop:           68.9%              70.2%
CB Flop Win:    50.6%              49.3%
Riv Call Eff:        1.44                3.07
Sets:                   13.1                11.4 

In analyzing the stats, I am obviously playing tighter, stealing less, and 3 betting less.   I am winning more at showdown (makes sense since my starting hands are slightly better).  I am actually hitting less sets.  The biggest difference in stats appears to be my River Call Efficiency.  While this sounds the opposite of what it should, I feel like I am doing a better job with my river play - mostly in that I am not making hero calls on the river.  I think this is mostly because I don't have the time to talk myself into the call.  Instead I am relying on my insticts (based on reads, stats, how the hand went down) to quickly decide if it makes sense to call.  

For now, I will stick with 8 tabling Rush because a) I am winning; and more importantly, b) I am having fun getting tons of hands in.  It remains to be seen if in a few weeks I will be writing to say that I need to play less tables and really "think" about each and every decision.....   

Mid-month update

I promised myself that I would use this blog more often.  It is cool to look back at what I was thinking/doing with poker a year ago.  Man, I was a fish.  Man, I'm still a fish.  :-)

So this month has been difficult thus far.  I really struggled at the start of it with two tabling.  One of my goals was to only play two tables for the month of October.  I have failed that goal, but at least it was a conscious, thoughtful decision.  While two tabling does allow me to concentrate more, it also allows one of my biggest leaks to fester, and that is overthinking.  I am a classic overthinker.  I overthink even the (relatively) smallest of decisions.  When I overthink at a poker table one of two bad things usually happens:  1.  I get FPS thinking he has to be bluffing; or 2.  I fold too much thinking he has to have me beat.  Also, when I take a bad beat it affects me more and I go on tilt more easily.  I guess that's 3 things, lol.  Math skillz FTW.

When I play multi-tables I don't have time to overthink things and I don't tilt as much.  Granted, I am on auto pilot and I am not good enough that auto-piloting will make me a big winner, but it does cut down on a few of my leaks.  I would love to be able to find a coach that could that could devise a strategy that would allow me to just crank out hands because that is one of my favorite things to do.

So anyway, I decided to 8 table rush.  I am playing 25NLFR and 10NLFR and I'm really enjoying it.  I can get in around 1900 hands per hour, which is pretty sweet.  I am stacking the tables and I color-code them so I know which one is which.  I also use TableNinja for FT and that works great and helps lessen the confusion on which table since it auto-puts in bets.

 Anyway, I'm going to play like this for awhile and see what happens.  Like anything else I've tried, I will probably be blogging in a few weeks that I suck at playing that many tables and I need to play less tables to improve.  True story. 

Week 1 of October

has sucked thus far.

It is very depressing.

That is all.