January 2011 Review

The first month of the year has come to an end and for me it has been an epic fail. I was down almost $6,000 at the tables at one stage before recovering slightly at month end.

I started the year with a very positive outlook and an attempt at SNE was to be my primary goal.

It all began at NL100 where I began 24 tabling while trying to gain 2740 VPPs each day. I believed firmly from my calculations that this was feasible at this level. However it soon became clear that I was regularly getting only between 0.21 and 0.25 VPPs per hand when I had forecast the year at 0.27. This meant that I need almost 9hrs a day to make SNE instead of the 7.5hrs that I thought. Dam.....

I had been inspired by the SNE story of player dannyohboy who worked a full time job, had 3 kids and made SNE at NL100. He only sleeps 3hrs a day btw, insane..!! I thought if he could do that, I could easily do it without a job and any kids.

My main problems were a terrible start and a poor initial bankroll. January the 2nd or Spewfest Day as I have named it saw my attempt fancy play after fancy play with occasional bad beats thrown into the mix. The culmination was my 2nd worst day ever and almost 13 BIs down at NL100.

I continued at NL100 for 6 days and was then at around 20 BIs down and around a day behind SNE pace. I decided that the SNE chase would be too hard at this level and had to be carried out at NL200. This was also mentioned to me by player OMGBentley.

Since I did not have the roll to play my normal 24x 100bb Tables I decided to try for the first time the gamboool that is 50bb poker vs the 20bb short stacks. This meant that I would still sit down with $2,400 in play but with the increased VPP rate. I knew my ranges and strategy had to change to counter the edge the SS player gains from the All-in shove move that they continually employ. This form of poker is far less interesting and basically eliminates 2 streets (Turn/River) of poker as u will find your stack in the middle on the flop or pre.

I haven't played well until the final week of the month and have suffered many bad beats while being ahead with all the money in the middle. This took me to around $6,000 down by around the 23rd of the month. At this stage I got quite negative about the SNE chase and decided to have a few quiet days. WBCOOP began and I decided to play most of the events. During the day I played DoNs and Fifty50s with a little bit of NL200 and in the evening I would fire up WBCOOP.

I did well in this Series of Events, Final Tabling 1 and cashing in 3 events altogether. I also finished high up on the leader board and was the top player from the UK.

Doing some analysis on the bigger hands in HEM I can clearly identify around $1,500 in spew this month. I used to be so solid after I had played poker for a year. Now coming up to 6yrs experience I seem to be tilting more and more. Note to self: Eliminate Spew

I successfully cashed for the 3rd time in a row in the Turbo Takedown. This gives me an additional repeat cash bonus.

I am now around 10 days behind SNE pace and my goal for Feb is to try to close the gap by playing the 50bb tables for the first 10 days. Then I will switch to the 100bb tables but I will only play 10 tables and work on my game. I have to become a winning player again. If I can do this then I will go back to 24 Tabling and pursue SNE again, if not then I will play less tables and aim to be a winning player in 2011 and ignore VPPs. I may also add in a few new sites to my play if this scenario plays out. Stars is often touted as the toughest site out there. I am interested in and have been looking at William Hill. If anyone has any experience of this site I would be grateful of some feedback particularly with reference to traffic, software and player ability at NL100+.


The final numbers for January are as follows:

164,000 Hands Played
55,334 VPPs

-$5,380 (Cash Game Losses)
+$ 159 (Tourney Winnings)
+$3,000 (FPP Cash Bonuses)
+$ 600 (Stellar Rewards)
+$ 200 (TT Repeat Cash Bonus)
+$ 237 (3x SCOOP tickets)
-$ 30 (New Mouse)
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-$1,214 (Total Month)

See you all soon