May Results

I played 35,350 hands this month. I ended up $482.35 for the month (including rakeback).

May 2009 Goals

Here are my goals for May 2009:

• [ ] play 50,000 hands
• [ ] improve $ won w/out showdown by being more aggressive and taking more b/f lines than c/f or c/c lines
• [ ] look for spots to steal from the hijack and cutoff spots
• [ ] Increase VPIP significantly on BTN and CO (40/30 ish, respectively)
  
• [ ] reach Ironman status on FTP Ironman
• [ ] get rolled for, and take shots at, 100NL
• [ ] watch at least 4 videos at either Stox or CR.
• [ ] make video for pokernewspage.com

April 2009 Results

Overall, April was another disappointing month. It was my first "losing" month in 10 months. I quoted "losing" because I was down a whopping -$13, so its really a break-even month when you consider I played nearly 60K hands.

Here are my results compared to my goals for April 2009:

• [-] play 60,000 hands. I played 58K hands.
  
• [ ] improve $ won w/out showdown by being more aggressive and taking more b/f lines than c/f or c/c lines. Nope. Still pretty pathetic. I'm still seeing way too many showdowns and I believe its because I take too many pot control lines.
  
• [ ] look for spots to steal from the hijack and cutoff spots. Nope. Still only stealing from the CO @ 27-28%. No improvement.
  
• [ ] reach Platinum again at Stars and reach at least Gold Ironman status on FTP (not sure this is possible with 60k hands. If its not, need to decide where I'm going to put the majority of my volume -- I miss rakeback!!) Nope. Made silver and Ironman ironman status. I will be playing a major majority of my hands at FT this month.
  
• [X] get rolled for, and take shots at, 100NL. Yes! I got rolled for it and played some towards the end of the month. Unfortunately, I hit a 5 buyin day towards the end of the month and am no longer rolled for 100NL.
  
• [X ] watch at least 4 videos at either Stox or CR. Yep. Did that.
  

• [ ] make video for pokernewspage.com. Nope. But I did make several attempts, none of which turned out particularly well so I did not publish them.

Detailed April 2009 Results:
As I said earlier, it was a pretty disappointing month. I just never could get things going and dropped 5 buyins at NL100 and 2 buyins at NL50 over the last 2.5K hands of the month. YUCK! If you remove those last 2 days, and it would have been a decent month.

50NLFR:
Hands: 49,134
P&L: -$103.25
BB/100: -0.21
ATS: 37.8%

100NLFR:
Hands: 9,350
P&L: -$207.05 (+392.10 prior to Apr 30)
BB/100: -1.11 (+2.42 prior to Apr 30)
ATS: 39.1

April 2009 goals

Here are my goals for April 2009:

• [ ] play 60,000 hands
• [ ] improve $ won w/out showdown by being more aggressive and taking more b/f lines than c/f or c/c lines
• [ ] look for spots to steal from the hijack and cutoff spots
• [ ] reach Platinum again at Stars and reach at least Gold Ironman status on FTP (not sure this is possible with 60k hands. If its not, need to decide where I'm going to put the majority of my volume -- I miss rakeback!!)
• [ ] get rolled for, and take shots at, 100NL
• [ ] watch at least 4 videos at either Stox or CR.
• [ ] make video for pokernewspage.com
  

March 2009 Results

Here are my goals for March 2009 compared to my results:

• [X] play 60,000 hands. Played 68,810 hands of NL50FR and NL25FR. Plus some PLFR in both.
  
• [-] have a relatively flat redline by being more aggressive and taking more b/f lines than c/f or c/c lines. Kinda/sorta. I had a nice flat redline for a spot in the middle but it fell off at the end. I still need to work on this. I sometimes still float the flop with no plan for taking it away on later streets.
  
• [X] look for spots to steal from the hijack and cutoff spots. I stole from the CO 27% of the time this month. Up a few % from my normal, but would still like to work on upping this next month.
  
• [X] put more thought into each decision and always have a plan. Especially towards the end. Now I have to actually follow through with my plan. If I'm planning to C/F, then I should C/F, even if I'm getting the odds to call.
  
• [X ] reach Platinum again at Stars. Reached Platinum for the 2nd month in a row (thanks Stars for lowering the requirement!)

Other results stuff:
Overall, it wasn't a bad month. I finished up $1,025.85 for the month at NL25 and NL50 with an overall ptBB/100 of 2.22.

25NLFR:
Hands: 24,022
P&L: +$500.35
BB/100: 4.17
ATS: 35.3%

50NLFR:*
Hands: 44,796
P&L: +$525.50
BB/100: 1.17
ATS: 37.4%

* last 20K hands I my ptBB/100 was 4.00. Hopefully this means I'm doing some more right things than I have in the past and this is not a heater (time will tell).

March 09 Goals

Here are my goals for March 2009:

• [ ] play 60,000 hands
• [ ] have a relatively flat redline by being more aggressive and taking more b/f lines than c/f or c/c lines
• [ ] look for spots to steal from the hijack and cutoff spots
• [ ] put more thought into each decision and always have a plan
• [ ] reach Platinum again at Stars
  

February 09 Results

February was another tough month. Its months like this that I really miss the rakeback. That said, I continue to run like carp at Full Tilt Poker and I don't plan on playing there much. I do like the Pokerstars software and I love Pokerninja.

Let's look at how I did compared to my goals:

• [X] play 60,000 hands. I played 71,662 hands.
• [ ] have a total steal % of over 40% by increasing steals from CO. Close - 36.9%. But I didn't steal enough from the CO -- only 23.6%. I need to start treating the CO more like the button.
  
• [X] work on getting more value on the turn/river by taking less c/c or c-behind lines. I think I did better at this, particularly towards the end where my redline managed to flatten.
  
• [X] reach Platinum Star on Pokerstars. Yep - did it with 4 days to spare.
  
• [ ] play enough on FTP to maintain Ironman (200 FTP points per day). No, and I don't care.

Let's look at my results in more detail:
50NL/PL FR
Hands: 52,837
ptBB/100: - .082
Profit/Loss: - $431.75
VPIP/PFR/ATS: 12.7/10.5/31.9

25NL/PL FR
Hands: 18,825
ptBB/100: +2.11
Profit/Loss: + 198.71
VPIP/PFR/ATS: 14.9/11.6/33.7

I like my 25NL VPIP/PFR/ATS stats better. I was playing a lot more aggressive/open from the last 3 positions. I plan to adopt that for my 50NL play in March.

Overall, I ended up (are you ready for this?) a whopping thirteen dollars and 13 cents for the month! I earned $0.07 per hour!

Here is my garph for February 2009. You can see that my last 12K hands or so I got my redline to stay fairly flat. Unfortunately, it coincided with my showdown winnings being flat, too.


2009 YTD Profit/Loss: + $1,431