anomaly16

Cash has been disappointing this month - a lot of runbad and some bad play by me (in some part induced by the runbad) kept my winrate down. My volume was a little higher than the last couple (41k) but not as much as I'd hoped.

I've just noticed now that I've put in the least hours in a month since June, so the plan to increase number of tables has gone ok, but I think the runbad and some other stuff has kept the volume down. I don't feel I can attribute any of my bad play to the number of tables I was playing so I'll continue to try and play more hands/hr.

Results were boosted by FT's end of year bonus clearing and some tournament winnings as well as a small cash heater these last 2 days so it tuned out ok in the end, although not quite as good as the record last 4 months of last year.

I'm disappointed that I've done no studying, hh review sessions or villain analysis. I've given one coaching session but have yet to make any steps forward in finding a coach for myself.

We're close to getting a house sorted in Vegas for June and July so I'm getting really excited about that and will be booking flights soon :)

In other news I started a job today for a few weeks.. I was offered a contract out of the blue by the company I worked for before Vegas last year. As before I have mixed feelings about doing it but am working Mon-Thu only this time which leaves me Fri-Sun to get some hands in and make the most of the softer weekend games. There are a few good reasons for me taking the job, but the most obvious of which is having guaranteed money so that I know I can cover the cost of flights and rent for Vegas now as well as some money to save to cover bills at home while I'm away.

This will definitely affect my volume target for this year, so I think a wiser goal is for me to aim to increase my hands/hr which I should be able to achieve no matter what else might be going on. For the last 6 months hands/hour have been

253
203
230
188
200
178

so my goal for next month is to get > 270/hr. Getting the next tier of black card is also out of the window for now I think as my average is much the same as at the beginning of the month - 843ftp/day and a long way off the required 1500ftp/day. If I can get my hands/hr up then it should follow in due course.

After the disappointing start to cash this month (b/e results, horrible non-showdown winnings) I approached my session today differently after reflecting on some of the possible short-term leaks I'd developed:

• playing a bit too loose for my post-flop skills
• not paying enough attention to 3bet ranges esp when opponents are quite deep
  
• playing for value that can be too thin and against a very specific portion of villain's range
• playing too many speculative hands in late position
• ignoring reads
• autopiloting too much
• not finding fold button enough
• taking too many opportunities to isolate
• not always taking time to use hud information available
• not believing and ignoring hud information when I do look
• overestimating implied odds
• taking weak lines and folding when I do have odds because of how I'm running
• cbetting too much (esp multiway and oop) and taking thin opportunities to barrel
• not questioning myself on reasons for betting
• not bet sizing correctly given action, ranges and villain reads
  
• making mistakes becuase I feel like I deserve to win after some runbad and stacking off incorrectly compounding the issue
• trying too hard to win every hand
  

I went to the casino last night to play a live donkament for some fun and to get away from the virtual felt. Live action can be pretty slow but it gave me the opportunity to think about the above list and try and get my thought process back on track in the live hands. I played well but was shortstack by the time we made the final table of 9. I finished 7th in the end and mincashed but it payed for the event, some food and a little petrol for the car but I think the time to reflect and take a break was much more of a win.

I thought my session stats today would end up reflecting a more nitty approach but I was a lot more aggressive and also called a lot less so my VPIP/PFR gap was much lower than it has been recently. Its a small sample and I did run better than I have been with some great river cards to contrast the recent terrible ones so that stats might not mean that much, but it was my decision making process that I was most pleased with today and selection of spots to play. I could be blinded by a good day of results so I need to make sure I am as focused in my future sessions and to come back here and read this If I feel like I've let things slip.

I think getting the list of things above right and consistently is what can separate the winners from the b/e players who might appear at a glance to be very similar in nature. I saw a reg today squeeze 35o at a 5-handed table from the BB vs a minraise with two very fishy players who were very likely to be calling and how he thought his hand would play well against them oop and multiway I've no idea. He obviously flopped the nut straight and stacked one of them, but he is clearly not a thinking player despite having very TAG-like stats. He does seem to be a small winner but the sample size is fairly small so I'm not sure it will last.

Anyway, here is my brag graph for the day -


With today's session and the MTT cash the other day the month is definitely back on track :)

Here is a trivial hand today from a $2 Omaha Hi/Lo Rush Rebuy (I had a small cash in the end finishing 29th / 683), but always nice to beat a pro in a pot :)



Volume target : 750k+ Current: 15.4k Projected : 620k
BC rolling avg target : 1500 Current : 869.26

Its not been a great start to the year at the cash tables.. I'm below EV and some non-EV coolers, but I think there is a degree of me not being on my A-game too. In contrast to December I'm running bad at the higher stakes I play and better at the lower stakes which also doesn't lead to good results.

My volume is a bit higher than usual as I try to play a few more tables to reach my volume target for the year. I don't think it is the cause of my bad start but I'll definitely keep an eye on it.

On a more positive note I had my best MTT cash for a while last night... an epic 9.5 hrs but worth it in the end and finally managed to win some money for Gary as he had 25% of me.


Volume target : 750k+ Current: 12.4k Projected : 647k
BC rolling avg target : 1500 Current : 873.02

The month started out really well with a couple of awesome days but soon I felt like I was having to pay back for my early good fortune and I ran below EV and breakeven for a few thousand hands. Volume and motivation dropped a bit as they usually do for me during periods like this, but I managed to get back on track and make the most of the soft games over the holidays to finish strong.

It's not quite a record month, but a very solid one matching November. The last four months of the year have been my 4 biggest months of all time.. all within $500 of each other, so it has been a great way to finish up the year.

I've now updated the final results for the year.

I hope everyone that has been reading my blog this month have found it useful and/or interesting - thanks for all the comments. However, the primary reason for me doing it was as a way to review my own year and think about what I want from the next.

Hence my goals for 2011 are:


Volume

I think this has to be my primary goal for next year. 470k hands feels like a lot to me still, but I know lots of people who are doing 70k-100k/month regularly. I'm not going to find more hours in a day for poker, so the only way I am going to get the extra volume is through playing more tables. Where I'm playing 2-6 tables now I need to be aiming for 6-10 I think. I started playing a few tables so that I could fix leaks and get better and I think I have achieved that this year, so I should be able to cope and I've put some 10-tabling sessions in recently without any problems.

As for a number, 1 million hands could be a little ambitious but I'll be pleased with 750k+. I'll need to work on playing with fewer distractions as well as all the other aspects to achieve it. It is expected that Full Tilt will add another tier to the Black Card programme in the next few days requiring 1500 ftp/day for an extra multiplier of full tilt points. As of today my average is 817.27 so quite a way to go to average 1500, but I think my hand target and reaching the new black card level will be closely linked so that is some extra motivation to achieve both.

Results

I'm not going to set any specific results goals. Playing extra volume and continuing to work hard should lead to good results. I'd obviously like to do better than this last year, and it would be a nice milestone to achieve a $10k month at some point.

Coaching

Its been over 12 months since I last had coaching so I think it is definitely time to find a coach to help take my game forward. I hope to get something organised by March if not sooner.

Within the first few months of this year I'd also like to get to the stage where my student feels he is able to go solo without regular sessions and be winning at a decent rate. I'll take time to review with him how it went so I can evaluate my own coaching skills and think about taking on more students.

Tournaments

I feel like I've been due for a decent torunament score for a while but it hasn't quite happened yet. I've been close a few times this year... coming 49th of 28,000 people in one of the miniftops events recently was a bit frustrating after playing well for several hours, going out JJ v KK aipf. I'll continue to keep trying as well as do some work on my MTT game.

Live Play

I'm going to try to approach live play with a bit more dilligence than I have so far. This will involve trying to build a proper live bankroll, keeping better records and accounting for it along with my online play. Vegas 2011 will account for a large part of my live play this next year but I'll also look to play a few larger live events than I have this year in the UK. With my online record I feel I should be better placed to sell some action so I hope this will create some more opportunities.

Study

I'd like to up the amount of time time I spend studying this year:

• at least 1 training video per week
• continue regular hh reviews with Gary & Darren
• continue to do more villain analysis
• spend more time with pokerstove and understanding odds and equity and general theory
• do more sweats and talk to other players
  

Travel

I'll definitely be heading to Vegas for all of June & July but I'd also like to go somewhere else new this year and stay in a house with other poker players. Thailand, Australia or somewhere else in the US are all possibilities. If Gary will have me, I'd love to be able to go see the Redskins play in Dallas.

Other goals

Other goals I have are a bit harder to put specific targets on but I'd like to

• continue to work on my mental game
• try and live more healthily
• achieve a better life balance

So, thats it for 2010. Just a few hours more of grinding and then I'll post my December review and update the year's results.

Best of luck to you all for 2011 :)

As I've been making the posts this month I've been thinking about this one and wondering if I wanted to post an actual $ amount for how I've done this year. In a "real job" I certainly wouldn't tell people my salary and they wouldn't ask, but when it comes to poker I've been asked a lot, even by people I didn't know well. I guess the perception of it is different even though it isn't really.

However, the fact is that a lot of this information is in the public domain if you know where and what to look for. So, in the end I've decided to post the info for this year at least. I'm only going to cover $ won at the tables, so exactly how much I've made from rakeback, bonuses, tournaments, live play, coaching/staking, the contracting work I did in April/May and the overall total can remain a mystery making me feel a bit more comfortable with sharing.



I'm obviously really pleased with the results given the stakes I play and volume I put in (it helps to run above EV too!). I think it has exceeded my conservative expectations that I had at the beginning of the year and is exactly what I needed to prove to myself I can make it work as a pro and gives me a lot of encouragement for what I can achieve next year.

Finding hands to pull out from almost 1/2 million is pretty tough, so I've only got a couple to share.

Hand 1

This isn't an amazing hand by any means and the cards fell really well for me. However, it sticks in my mind because by the time we got to the river I knew he had AK, and I knew he was confident I had AQ which allowed me to get max value. I guess it was one of the first times I felt really in control of a hand against a decent 100 TAG reg on all 3 streets and good hand reading made it possible to raise river with complete confidence to win a stack without have the stone cold nuts.

$0.5/$1 (9 handed)

Known players:

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9, 9.

UTG1 folds, UTG2 raises to $3.00, MP1 folds, Hero calls $3.00, 4 folds, BB calls $2.00.


Flop: ($9.5) Q, 9, 6 (3 players)

BB checks, UTG2 bets $7.00, Hero calls $7.00, BB folds.


Turn: ($23.5) A (2 players)

UTG2 checks, Hero bets $14.00, UTG2 calls $14.00.


River: ($51.5) K (2 players)

UTG2 bets $22.00, Hero raises to $117.50, UTG2 calls $90.65(All-In).


Final Pot: $281.65.

Results follow:


UTG2 shows two pairs, aces and kings(K A).

Hero shows three of a kind, nines(9 9).


Hero wins with three of a kind, nines(9 9).

Hand 2

This hand was the biggest pot of the year .. a whopping 780BB vs one deep fish. We'd both been dominating the table (me more skillfully than him obv!). We were both very deep with 388BB effective stacks vs each other and he was playing 59/24/3 with 17% 3bet, 8% fold to 3bet, 4bet range 5.5% over 200 hands. I was aware I'd been in situations before being deep against volatile fish and hadn't felt comfortable.. mistakes can be a lot more costly and there is always the danger they just get lucky on the river and cause a lot of pain. It is hard not get attached to a large stack and losing it hurts a lot more than a 100BB stack. I was thinking if I'd got AA vs his pfr I obviously keep reraising this deep, but there would be a good chance that he would flat at some point and not put it all in preflop which could put me in a nasty spot. I thought jokingly to myself that it would be nice and easy if I could only flop quads.. 5 minutes later this happens.

$0.5/$1 (8 handed)

Known players:

Preflop: Hero is BU with A, A.

UTG2 calls $1.00, 2 folds, MP3 raises to $4.00, CO folds, Hero raises to $14.50, 3 folds, MP3 raises to $25.00, Hero raises to $77.50, MP3 calls $52.50.


Flop: ($157.5) T, A, A (2 players)

MP3 checks, Hero bets $35.00, MP3 calls $35.00.


Turn: ($227.5) 6 (2 players)

MP3 checks, Hero bets $107.00, MP3 calls $107.00.


River: ($441.5) 6 (2 players)

MP3 checks, Hero bets $169.00, MP3 calls $168.80.


Final Pot: $779.3.

Results follow:


Hero shows four of a kind, aces(A A).

MP3 shows two pairs, aces and kings(K K).

Hero wins with four of a kind, aces(A A).