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!

Mid month

April is almost half over already! I'm on track to have a new record in volume, and while it's still not nearly the volume I would like I'm happy that I am making progress. I must have been running really hot back in January though because my results aren't nearly up to where I was. I'm not focused on that though, just playing optimal poker and grinding out the games. I've almost set a new record high for monthly TLB points and with one or two more high placings should eclipse that. I'm also over my yearly total for last year as of yesterday. The games have been up and down lately, but I am on track to grind out even some profit for the month. I am still shooting to move up in some stakes by next month too, but will not force the issue and become a bankroll nit. Keeping focused and playing within the proper stakes is really what bankroll management and staying off tilt is all about. Sure tilt is bound to happen, but at least if you stay in your bankroll limit you don't go broke.

I also purchased 200 searches on Sharkscope which will allow me to refine my search results and give monthly graphs as opposed to showing my overall graph. Makes it much more interesting to analyze stats and really find the places where I make the most ROI.

Life has also been pretty good lately. Spring is in full bloom and the weather has been just phenomenal lately. Definitely allowing me to get out and play/practice golf, ride my motorcycle, and drive my garaged sports car. Good thing I have this full time job to make me live like a "balla" until one day poker does. Work is still work though no matter what it is you do and I'm sure the guys grinding the tables, while making a decent living, still get burnt out. As the old adage says about poker, it's a hard way to make an easy living!

Well that's about all my musings for now. The future is looking better every day, but I still don't need my shades all the time yet! Until next time, thanks for reading and good luck at the tables and in life.

On a roll

So far this month has been going great! I've already played almost 50 games, 48 to be exact, and look like I could be on pace for a record month for me. All the games have been on Pokerstars as I'm just trying to get into a good rhythm. I had been varying my game selection to include $1.10 45 & 90 plyr and $2.20 180's occasionally but seemed to be only break even at best. Granted 50 games is a very very small sample size, but I felt that if I stuck with one particular game my strategy could develop more. So the last two days I've played only the 45's. I have been dominating these it seems as I made it to heads up three times just last night. Was only able to win one, but really had a shot at all three just took some bad beats to lose. That's poker though and I know as long as I keep getting my chips in good I'll come out on top.

I still plan on trying the same scheme laid out in the link from the last post, but will be sticking with the 45's until my roll on stars hits the $300 mark. Hopefully by the end of this month I will be grinding out the $2.20 180's and can move up to the $3.25 45's next month too!

I've been in such a focused zone when playing lately too it just seems like the chips come my way and the decisions I make are falling into place. One key I have found is to not get yourself into tough spots and don't be afraid to fold to find a more sure spot. A lot of these donkeys think they can win the tournament in the first two hands, when in reality it will be at least 150 or so hands to win a 45 plyr sng. Patience really is a virtue!

I have also accumulated more TLB so far this month than any other month to date. I'm actually ranked in the top 20k players so far, which is way higher than I've ever been. To put that into perspective, lately the highest I've been ranked is like 60-80k. I've already almost accumulated as many points as my previous record and we are only 7 days into the month! Of course they only count the top 20 scores per month, but I still see my previous record (January) being smoked. I'm also nearing the total points I had for all of last year and should easily have that eclipsed this month. What does all this mean? Well it means I am actually starting to put in a decent volume for the time and setup I have. I can still only comfortably play four games at a time due to screen size, and my sessions are usually 2.5-3 hours long. This does allow me to keep a good focus though and thus keep making good results. Eventually I would like to get a nice pc and a bigger monitor to be able to comfortably play 8 to 12 games at once (gradually working up to that of course), but for now I'll just keep plugging away.

Well that's a quick, although long winded of course, update of April so far! Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables!