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.

Grinding in the Bahamas

As expected I didn't do well in the main event, busting out after about 5 hours. I played one big pot where I lost 2/3 of my stack with aces against a set. After discussing the hand with several people, I'm quite sure I should of only lost about 30-50% of my stack. No regrets though, aside from that I think I played well and didn't run particularly well. I didn't play any of the other side events or cash games while I was there. I played a decent amount of blackjack though and ran pretty well which helped offset the outrageous costs at Atlantis.

The trip itself has been a lot of fun, I had a few poker playing friends that we spent most of our time with. We ended up renting a cabana one day, jet skied, clubbed, and ate a bunch of restaurants. I didn't do a whole lot of playing online but that's about to change. We left Atlantis today and moved into a condo next to the ocean and will be here for about eight days before moving to another condo. The plan is start playing 8 hours a day, six days a week, for the next three to four weeks. I feel motivated to play right now and am really looking forward to getting back in the swing of things. I'm planning on devoting an hour a day to reviewing sessions and studying hands as well. This is something I was doing in the US and I found it extremely beneficial. Somehow I need to squeeze some exercise into these days and there's no gym here so I'll probably be jogging along the road or beach in our neighborhood. I'm not a big runner, I normally use elliptical machines, so it should be interesting.

I should have another update towards the end of the month. Good luck at the tables.

Getting Ready and Focused for 2012

I haven't done a whole lot of playing so far this year mostly due to being unmotivated. The sessions I have played have lacked focus and have been far from my best unfortunately. The high limit games have been pretty dead, at least the times I've been on so the majority of my play has come at 15-30. I'm hoping the games pick up towards the end of the month. I'm intending on playing the majority of my hands this month during the last couple weeks.

I started doing cardio again yesterday and have been eating a lot healthier than normal. I'm hoping to continue the healthy trend and regain my focus and concentration at the tables. I'm confident it's only a matter of time.

I'm planning on taking a much less results oriented approach this year and as a consequence won't be posting too many graphs of my results. I also intend on looking at my results tab in HEM as little as possible. I'm sure I'll have a decent idea of how I'm doing by my account balance but the idea is to give as little attention as possible to results and give all my attention to making the best decisions at the tables. It's not going to be easy, nevertheless it's one of my primary goals this year.

In other news I turned down an offer to write for a magazine. I actually initially accepted it and changed my mind after realizing the amount of time it would involve. I hate doing anything halfheartedly and the amount of time it would of taken to produce quality articles wasn't worth the amount of money I'd receive in return. Also, educating the poker public and my opponents has an attached cost as well. Though it would be nice to say I write for a magazine, I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs.

I'm sure most reading this know about the change in rake methodology implemented by Poker Stars this year. It's going to negatively impact most regulars and some quite severely. It's the biggest news in the online poker world right now and the players are doing everything in their power to negotiate something better. Personally, I'm not sure how it will affect me but I don't think it will hurt me nearly as bad as most players, if at all. So far this year I've played 1400 hands and have actually earned 5% more FPPs/VPPs than I would of under the old rake structure. It's hard to say whether this is an aberration or the norm but it's probably safe to say it won't have too big of an impact on me.

If anyone's wondering how I fared with Jose Parica, I fought pretty hard the first day and was even after about five hours of play. I lost the longest game of 1 pocket I've ever played, a 2.5 hour game in which I was ahead six to negative one and from there lost the last 3 games, losing 4 games on the day. The second day I played some of the worst pool I've played in over a year and Jose beat me 8 or 9 games. Jose is a really, really difficult opponent to play. He's exceptionally deliberate, to put it bluntly, he's slow. I played the two longest games of one pocket in my life against him, the 2.5 hour game and a 2 hour and 15 minute game. I found myself losing patience and interest at points so that's an area I need to work on later this year when I start playing again.

At the moment I'm in Cozumel, a view from our room is below. We're heading to the PCA in 3 days. I'm playing day 1B of the main event on Sunday. I have the lowest expectations I've ever had going into a major tournament, mostly because I've put no time into my NL game. I'll report back Sunday but I don't anticipate good news. Either way, I'm happy to be in warm weather and have a nice view of the ocean.

Vancouver Review

After running insanely well for the entire trip, I finally got a dose of negative variance today. At one point I was down almost 25K which would have been my worst day ever but I managed to win back more than half of it. Overall, I had one losing day, today, and never experienced more than a 170 big bet down swing over 14K+ hands. A pretty amazing run playing almost exclusively 5-6 handed at high limits.

Overall the trip was a huge success, I ran way above expectation. I played exceptionally well the first week but my game and focus seemed to fade the longer I was here. Part of it may have been running bad but I didn't have the same motivation and focus the last three or four days I was here. I took a much more targeted approach the whole trip though. Instead of 4-5 tabling for 8-10 hours a day, I game-selected mostly at 30-60 and higher. Often I was 2-3 tabling and as a result was able to really hone in on what my opponents were doing and adjust. It's made me wonder whether this would be a better approach for next year instead of going for SNE and subjecting myself to endless hours of grinding at lower limits. We'll see how the games are when I get back on in January, that will likely determine the path I choose.

It's back to California tomorrow. I have a couple of one pocket matches scheduled with Jose Parica this week. I played him earlier this year for two days, about eight hours each day, and ended up down 7 games total. It's was a very competitive match at times and I played really well. I'm out of stroke at the moment but plan on doing a lot of practicing in the next couple days to get ready. It'll probably be my last opportunity to play pool for quite a while.

I don't mention pool too much in this blog but it's the only activity I enjoy more than poker. If only there was some money in the sport.

After California, it's off to Boston for Christmas and then Cancun for New Years and Jamena's birthday. After Cancun, it's off to the Bahamas for the PCA and then Costa Rica to play poker for at least three months. It's going to be a really busy first half of the year for me, hopefully I can continue improving and have another solid year at the tables.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Sweet Start in Vancouver

I came here with fairly low expectations, in fact I would have been thrilled if you told me ahead of time I'd make 20K in the two weeks I was here. Fortunately, I'm already far ahead of that. I'm running so well that I played some 5-10 and 10-20 NL trying to make the Stars Leaderboard and promptly stacked someone at 10-20 catching a gutshot on the river to crack a slow-played set. I don't know if I ended up making the leaderboard, I'll find out at 5 PM tomorrow. Going into the last hour I had 3900 VPPs and 4000 VPPs was the bottom spot which pays $500. I ended up with ~4450 so it's going to be close. $500 may not seem like it's worth chasing but that's 5 big bets at 50-100 which is approximately what I average over the course of 2.5 hours playing a single table of 50-100 so it is significant. These are exactly the types of things I look to take advantage of to reduce variance and improve my bottom line.

As expected, I was pretty rusty after my three month layoff. It was by far the longest stretch I've gone without online poker in the last eight years. In fact, I don't think I ever missed three days in a row over the course of those eight years. I started playing two tables and I felt dizzy trying to keep up with action which was amazing to me at the time. But after a half hour or so I felt fine. This is one of those times I felt like I needed to run well and thankfully I have. I did a lot of studying the week before I came here and made some significant changes to my preflop game, I'd like to think it's paying off. Overall I think I've played pretty well. My gauge as to how well I'm playing is how many medium to big sized pots I think I'm winning with the worst hand and there have been several in the last two days. Maybe I'm getting lucky running into the bottom of people's ranges, regardless I'm happy with my play.

Hopefully I haven't put the hex on myself with this post. Ten days to go, the goal as always is to make the best possible decision, each and every decision.

I should mention I only had half of my action playing 200-400 so the results aren't quite as spectacular, nonetheless it's one of, if not the, best four day stretches I've had.

Good luck to everyone playing this month and Happy Holidays.