Monday 31 January 2011

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)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
-$1,214 (Total Month)

See you all soon

 
 

11 comments:

  1. Dam sorry to hear this, i also moved up to .05-.10 9 player FR and lost 20 buy-ins this month .Ended up 5 buy-ins down just because i had profited from .02-.05 early in the month .This is my first losing cash game month and really sucks. I hope you have a Fantastic Feb and win lots.Good luck.
    Chris

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  2. not to bad an outcome for the month man only minus $1214 considering u lost over 5k at the tables, hold in there i got a feeling February will be your month to shine (:

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  3. Still an impressive VPP finish considering all the crap you went through. You're not even close to out of the chase! Your resilience is impressive, most people would have given up after hitting the down swing. Good luck!

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  4. I also had a really shitty start but managed to just lose a little in January. I like your blog and hope we can both reach supernova elite. Let's hope the games get better after the 20-50BB tables die out.

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  5. Thanks Guys for all the support. Lets hope for a solid Feb for all of us..!!

    R

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  6. keep going Rosh, $1200 down overall aint that bad mate, certainly not a disaster or anything.

    Hopefully the change in structure at pokerstars will help all us grinders.

    I think you should stay on Pokerstars m8, fook william hill.

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  7. Cheers Rossi, Yep the loss is pretty small. Will aim to break even this month and pick $4k in bonus. I'd be happy with that. :P

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  8. uh oh, 55.3k vpp's is not 83.3k vpp's!

    Get to work in Feb.

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  9. Not, Yeah I got some catchin up to do...

    El, cheers, GL in the SCOOP, i'm sure we will meet at the tables

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  10. This is why I chose not to go for SNE this year, good luck for the grind ahead though!

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  11. Frankie, u made a good choice!, GL Man

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