April Recap

Well as mentioned in my last post earlier today, work made it hard to focus on my poker game. I started out the month pretty even carrying over from last month, but then started to go on a heater. I only played on pokerstars because I was getting pretty comfortable there and trying to even out my bankroll on fulltilt, which after my heads up win will have to continue to be the trend I guess. I played a total of 120 games and profited $74. That comes out to about 62 cents profit for every game or a ROI of about 61% since my average buy in is usually $1. I cashed 33 times and got heads up in 9 of those cashes winning 5 of those games. I set numerous records for my monthly tlb points on stars, but also ended up setting my new monthly best at 1056.62 points. My yearly total is already about 500 points higher than last year and I'm still shooting for that 6 k point mark or better.

Those stats to me seem pretty good and I'm really pleased with getting heads up a little under every four games and winning over half of those games. This is still a very small volume sample however so I'm not reading into it too much and just trying to keep making progress and learning something every game. I have yet to play a game in May other than the heads up match, but I hope to get a decent volume going here soon if work allows it.

That's a recap of really my best month to date, even though it really was 2/3 of a month of play. That just shows me I have made some great progress and there is still room for more. Hopefully I'll get some more time to update and start to make these posts a little more humorous and interesting rather than just the blah of statistics. Thanks for reading anyway and good luck out there!

March Madness

March is in the books! After starting out on quite a downswing I finished the month strong, but also on a little slide. I managed 131 games, which I originally thought would be higher, but for missing over a week of playing I'm not too dissapointed. On both sites I actually managed to turn a small profit of $16 which means I made about 12 cents every time I hit the register button. Quite a bit down from last month, but anything in the green is good with me! It is however important to not manufacture win streaks and still analyze my play and figure out where my leaks are and plug those bastards so the ship will continue to sail onward!

The above graphs are again my games on FullTilt and Pokerstars. As you can see I hit my stride late, but lost it again slightly on Stars. That could be because I introduced the $2.20 180 man games to my play and actually cashed in a couple, but may have to remove them again until I build back up. I managed to win a few 45 man games to boost me up back into throwing in the $1.75 18 player games again too. Progress son! On FT I had a hot streak at the end of the month as well to boost my bankroll up and I'm getting oh so close to actually playing on other people's money here soon! If only I hadn't been so foolish in the beginning, but hey you live you learn!

Moving forward into April, I'm focused on continuing to improve my game and I want to destroy that volume number (double would be nice to come closer to meeting my goal), which will in turn boost my overall profit. I've also found a nice little challenge a player on pokerwit is doing so I may incorporate that into my own bankroll building although it may take me a little longer time. Here is a link fyi-- http://www.pokerwit.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=63

Spring is in full bloom here in the south too and I've also recently begun playing golf again after not playing regularly for quite awhile. There is a really reasonably priced course not far from my house so it's nice to get out and enjoy some beautiful weather before it gets sweltering out. It is nice to have some balance in life, but I don't want that to take away from my focus on poker either. Hopefully I'll have some good updates in the recent weeks and start to make strides in my play as I have continued to do this year. I really feel I'm playing my best poker ever and it is only a matter of time before the rewards really start to be seen! Until next time, good luck at the tables and thanks for reading!

February recap, looking forward

February is in the books! There were a few ups and downs for the month, but overall it was good and I learned a lot. I ended the month on a terrible downswing losing about 10% (or about 15 buy ins at my current level) of my bankroll on Stars after a huge upswing early in the month. Although I fell short of my goal monetarily I still managed making $.62 per game average, which for an average buy in of $1 equates to an ROI of 62%. Not too shabby if you equate that to making other investments. If only my bank account would show that sort of return! The bottom graph is my games to date on Stars. Although I am running bad there still seems to be a slight uptrend, so I'm optimistic on turning things around this month. If you read my previous posts then you know obviously I didn't come close to my volume goal, but like I said... Poker is a second job, not my life at the moment. I still have to go out and have fun! I did however also begin to play more on Full Tilt as a few of my close friends are playing there more now too. Always good to try and take a friends money! Plus I have found the MTT fields are much smaller which can equate to less variance and hopefully a decent score sooner. So moving forward I plan to play more on FT as well and keep that in my stats. The graph on top is my games to date on FT and obviously I'm still in the black, but I plan on changing that this month and continuing in the future! Until next time, good luck and thanks for reading!

Weekend and January Recap

I didn't play as much as I would have liked this weekend due to a lack of motivation and mental commitment. Saturday I had a good session and finished up a bit. Had no wins, but three seconds. That gave me a boost for the weekly SNG leaderboard and I actually finished 208th in the $1-$4 Low Orbit (20 game block). A huge improvement from my 2108th place the week before. I would like to make the top ten one of these weeks to be able to play in the monthly $50k shootout, so that's something to strive for. Sunday my head just wasn't in the game so I quit playing with no cashes and down a bit. Still up for the weekend though so that's nice.

January was probably the best month to date that I have had playing on Pokerstars. I played more games than ever and that translated into more than doubling my bankroll. I'm now closing in on the $150 mark and hope to hit at least $250 by the end of February. With my turbo only SNG schedule I think that is easily achievable. I noticed that since I went to turbos my volume has increased tremendously so I think that will help me reach the 400 game a month mark as well.

I also scored more tlb points this month than any month prior to this. Ended the month with 847.22 tlb points in my top 20 cashes which beats my best monthly total by close to 200 points. I had 28 cashes towards the tlb (that doesn't count SNG cashes) and my yearly stands at 1005.31 points. So far a great start to the new year, and lots of room to build on as well!

Although February is the shortest month of the year, I think now that I have moved onto turbo only format my volume will also increase this month. Hopefully with that so will my $/game and points. I have still yet to run really deep in a large MTT field, but I'll keep trying to make that breakthrough cash that will propel me onto bigger and better buy-ins.

In some future posts I am going to move away from all the time results talk to some topics I find interesting in poker games and observations I have that can give anyone an edge over the micro limit games that are almost laughably easy. So stay tuned for that!