Sunday, June 30, 2013

June In The Books

June ended up being a great month, my best of the year.  Looking back at the previous thirty-six months, it ranked sixth in terms of money won and I believe second or third in terms of big bets won.  I was up 1000 big bets after twenty-six thousand hands this month which I believe is the shortest amount of time I've ever reached 1000 BB's since playing on Stars.  I was playing a lot of heads up earlier this month against several regulars including Jama-Dharma, whom I'm sure many of you are aware of our public feud.  The added heads up hands were probably the single biggest contributor to that stretch, I ran at close to 10 BB/100.  Considering how dead the high limit games were, I'm extremely happy and fortunate with the results - 61% of my hands came at 15/30 and lower.

This will be the last month I post any results in my blog aside from posting losing streaks and perhaps an end of the year recap.  I'm finding a lot of the regulars are employing my strategies against me and it's undoubtedly due to me making my success public.  I've made three major changes to my game over the last year or so and there are several regulars now that have implemented the same or similar changes to their games. It's really quite frustrating because I put a lot of work and thought into my game and I almost feel like my ideas are being stolen. So I don't think it makes sense to keep publicly posting about my success and having people copy my strategies.  I realize people are still going to copy my strategies regardless of whether I post results here but I do think it will help the situation somewhat over the long run.

I've had several people either write in the comments or email me that they really enjoy reading about my downswings, my mental state during them, and fighting through them.  So I will continue to post those along with my thoughts.

On the VPP front, I'm up to about 535K and need to average 4400 a day for the rest of my time in Cabo.  That should be very doable.  I'm going to shoot for 5,000/day so that I have the flexibility to take time off if necessary.

I hope everyone has a profitable July, good luck at the tables.







Sunday, June 23, 2013

Halfway Home

I mean that literally, I just earned my 500,000th VPP of the year and am halfway to heading back home to California and hopefully taking the rest of the year off.  I've been on an incredible tear this month and am on pace to break my single month big bet record.  As of today, I'm up about 1100 BB's and at one point was up close to 1300.

This month in terms of games has been the slowest of the year.  This is undoubtedly due to the World Series.  Some good comes with this though as most of the top tier regulars aren't online and this certainly has contributed to my success this month.

Looking back at the first half of the year, the games on a whole have been a lot more active than I anticipated.  It's still nothing like it was even two years ago but given what I expected particularly after my post about the death of limit hold-em late last year, I'm quite encouraged.  It's very fickle though, all it takes is for two or three of the higher volume recreational players to stop playing and suddenly the games are near dead.

In terms of my play at the tables, I'm very happy overall with my game.  I'm ahead of last year's pace in terms of money won and big bets won though still off my pace of two and three years ago but that's largely due to the lack of high limit games.  My game has continued to evolve and improve particularly the mental side. I've had incredible emotional control all year and it's likely the single biggest contributor to my improved results.

We've extended our stay in Cabo San Lucas until October 15th and I'm planning on making SuperNova Elite by then.  I believe I have to average around 4600 VPPs a day which is about 500 per day less than  I've averaged over the last six weeks.  Barring the games completely drying up, I should be able to make it in time without much problem.  I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that last three months of the year where I can play pool, relax, and not worry about grinding every day.

On the subject of the end of the year, I am giving serious consideration to offering coaching this fall.  The price will likely be $500/Hour and would include follow up conversations and emails in addition to an hour lesson.  I haven't ironed out all the details yet and am not positive I want to make the commitment but it's more likely at this point than any point in the last few years.  If anyone is interested in receiving coaching, please email me at tony.pirone@gmail.com.  I'd like to get an idea of the type of interest before I make a decision.  My guess is that I could take on two or three students a week.  Ideally I'd like to work with serious, dedicated players who love the game and want to take their game to the next level.  If I do decide to offer coaching, I will be sure to post here with all the details of what it would include.

Good luck at the tables everyone.  And this is what my year has looked like so far, I will be thrilled if the second half is as successful.