Tuesday, April 1, 2008

March: good riddance!

March review

Well march sucked. Definitely my worst stretch considering how many hands I played. I gained some invaluable experience, but can't say that I'd prefer what happened to winning another ~$1500. Having this disastrous month couldn't have come at a worse time now that I'll be moving in the next few months and need the money.
  • Played 25k hands of 100nl FR, 50nl FR, 100nl 6max and 50nl 6 max running at a sad -0.1PTBB/100 overall
  • Failed yet again to achieve platinum status, maintained gold
  • Played a good chunk of 6-max and didn't fare too well
  • Withdrew $1000 for personal costs, bankroll dipped low enough to have to drop down to 50nl
  • Really came back to study and work hard in the last few days, watching plenty of coaching videos and reviewing a lot of my hands
  • Can't believe I was down about 'only' winning $1600 last month, heh


Looking at the overall results they're really not all that bad (at least I wasn't down $1500), but the fact that I missed out on a possible $1500 in profit means it left an especially bitter taste in my mouth.

I'm back with a vengeance though. Mark my words!

April goals

Unfortunately I'll have to grind my way back up through 50nl, but it was so profitable last time around that I really don't mind it all that much.
  • Play 25k+ hands of 50nl full ring
  • Don't touch 6-max
  • Watch and study more coaching vids
  • Post more HA hands
  • Get out more! It's spring!
  • Finish The Selfish Gene and start reading The God Delusion
  • Get back to my $1000+/month ways
  • If all goes well money-wise, pick up Elements of Poker, Professional No-Limit Hold'em and the Harrington on Cash series
  • CRUSH the fucking rings. No more chump change.
  • Play more sweat sessions with Liam/Jagsti/Zach or whoever else!
I'm setting my sights high for April. I should have a lot of time on my hands which means plenty of hands to get in. Taking a pure numbers view of it, I can easily manage platinum, it's just a matter of me putting in the hands. Playing 50nl FR I won't be able to do it (I only make .23 VPPs/hand which means I'll have to play upwards of 43k hands), but at 100nl I make .38 VPPs/hand which equates to only having to play around 26k hands. Scratch that idea I guess :/

For the past few months I tend to play a lot of hands in the beginning of the month ('I can make platinum!'), end up accumulating so many points that I think platinum will be a breeze and slow down mid-month, then squeeze in a lot of hands at the end of the month too ('shit! Crunch time!'). Hopefully I'll be more consistent this month.

I don't like setting cash goals, but I'd like to crack $2,000 this month. Setting cash goals is a little silly since it relies on results, which of course as poker players we realize are never set in stone, so I think the primary goal is to play more, secondary is to win.

A nice problem to have

I've debated for around a month now on what I want to spend my points on, but I think I've finally decided what to get. I want something that will be an asset, not a liability. Having a Canon digital SLR camera would be great, but that would spark a(nother) time-consuming hobby that would actually cost me money in both the sense of directly losing me money (batteries etc), as well as the sense that the time I spend using it could be used to make money instead.

I think for now the best choice is simply to get myself a new monitor (or three). Added monitors at better resolution means more tables which means more hands which means more profit. I was going to grab the 24" samsung from the FPP store, but as Zachvac pointed out it's really not worth the money. That one costs 55k FPPs, while three $250 'Canadian electronics store gift certificates' are only 52k points. I know a 24" monitor doesn't cost $750 any more, so maybe I'll go and pick up a couple 22"s or something. Still looking into it. I've emailed PS support about their asking them if it's actually guaranteed to work. I just don't want to order these things and have them denied at my local futureshop or bestbuy or whatever.

Sweat sessions are a go

Well I had my first sweat session with Tenbob yesterday and it was a lot of fun. It's not every day that you get to actually talk intelligently to someone about poker. Liam didn't want to play, so I fired up four tables of 50nl FR and ran pretty damn well. Luck of the Irish I guess. Bad joke, I know Liam :p Here's the link to the video. Unfortunately I fucked the audio up so you can barely hear Liam's commentary, but we'll get it right next time.

I tried later on last night to get a session going with Zachvac and unfortunately my mic decided it didn't want to work anymore, so we couldn't get it going. I did a system restore, everything's working again, and I'm actually off to play right now with him! I'll post that video as well and hopefully everything works out this time.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You have very good taste in books, sir.

April is going to be almost exclusively spent playing no-limit for me, and I'm picking up new things every session. I've yet to get the stack-to-pot ratio idea (from Professional No-Limit Hold 'em) to sink in all the way, although I'm getting there. The idea of making bet sizes in a way to avoid tough decisions later on is starting to make much more sense to me.

Anyways, good luck in April! I'll be keeping close tabs on ya.