Sunday 28 February 2010

February review

Its been a record month in many ways and one where I've begun to understand what "grind" really means.

I've topped my record volume by over 20k hands putting in around 67k hands and have also had record results managing to earn as much as I did in a month of my old job. I've put in a lot more hours than I would have done at work but for all the other benefits its definitely worth it. Unfortunately I'm left feeling a little disappointed in the end, as the last 8 days of 20k hands has been breakeven after a huge heater for the first 20 days of the month. I don't think I've let my game slip too much if at all - I've just been running into sick turn/river cards after getting my money in good most of the time. I am pleased that I've managed to keep putting in the hands when things haven't been going as well as I wanted them to though.

Its the time of year when people are starting to make plans for going to Vegas for the WSOP. I REALLY want to go this year, but I'm going to need to have a really solid March/April before I can commit or I could risk curtailing my poker career by eating up a chunk of my precious contingency savings and putting pressure on myself to win. I've wanted to go to Vegas for a long time, well before I started playing poker so I want to make it a memorable (and therefore not cheap!) trip.. if that means I have to delay it until next year then so be it. My plan would be to go for a month, stay in a house with other poker players, play a WSOP event (prob one of the cheapest ones.. $1000 entry). I've only played live twice this month, but have played pretty terribly when I have.. its something I definitley need to improve upon, especially if I do go to Vegas. I picked up Mike Caro's book of poker tells yesterday so will definitley study this to help me read people better as well as hide my own tells.

I've got a 4hr session tomorrow of someone going through my poker database looking for leaks so it should identify problems in my game as well as let me know what I'm doing well and should keep doing. This should give me the impetus to have the good months I need to be able to commit to Vegas I hope.

Plans for March..

  • Play 50k-75k hands (50PL / 50NL)
  • Play more tables
  • Play less hours
  • Study/analyze more
  • Do more sweats
  • Play some events in the miniFTOPS series