Bahamas in the Books

It ended up being a very successful trip poker-wise. I had one of my best 60K hand stretches in terms of big bets won and have run at 2.25 big bets/100 over my last 100K hands or so. I'm definitely running above average but I think a lot of the work and changes I put into my game are paying off as well. In terms of money won it wasn't my greatest month but that was mostly due to running poorly at high limits for a week. I'm not in any way disappointed with the results though. I actually went through one of my worst stretches ever in terms of money lost, losing over 40 thousand. Amazingly, over that same stretch I broke even in terms of big bets.

I feel like I played my A+ game for about the first week and a half and maybe my C+ game for the rest of the trip. The drop off in my level of play coincided with playing much longer sessions for the purpose of earning VPPs and maintaining SNE status. Almost all the sessions early in the year were very focused short sessions where I was motivated to play. This is the major drawback to going for SNE but the obvious benefit is ~80% rakeback. I'm still struggling to determine which of those things outweighs the other. For now the plan is to continue the SNE pursuit. As it stands I'm at about 130K VPPs, ahead of pace and have met the monthly minimum for January and February.

It's back to the US tomorrow, we are visiting my family in Florida for a couple days and then heading back to California. I'm planning on doing a lot of work on my game when I get home. Mostly I'll be reviewing long sessions and analyzing hands where I think I've made mistakes along with taking notes on regulars. HEM is great for this. And of course, I'll be playing a lot pool while I can.

I also have my yearly Vegas trip with best friends planned for early March and then it's off to Costa Rica for three months. We have a great apartment on the water in Jaco so I'm really looking forward to that.

Good luck to everyone playing.