Saturday, December 31, 2011

Crazy December, lets evaluate.

This month has been pretty hectic.  Between my full time job, gym time, foosball, and christmas, I have somehow managed to play 300 games.  Although this really isn't a lot of games, I am pleased to have reached this many given that my personal best for a month is 400.


Foosball:


Since I don't own a foosball table anymore, I have been trying to get in shape for the ITSF 2012 foosball world championships.  I have been trying to get practice anywhere possible.  As a result of this, I went to Lincoln, NE (about 4 hours east of me), and Denver (3.5 hours west of me) a couple of weeks later just to compete in some local tournaments.  Thankfully I made each of the trips worth it by winning both tournaments.  A combination of this local tournament practice plus numerous hours of watching www.insidefoos.com DVD's has put me in about the best foosball shape I have been in for some time. Both mentally, and technically.  I travel to Nantes, France on tuesday for the tournament. 


Gym time:


As planned, I have been to the gym 3 times a week since the beginning of the month, and feel physically great as a result of it.  Increasing weight as and when it feels right and genuinely feel like I've made each session count.  I'm proud of myself for this as its not always easy when you don't have a partner to motivate you during your lifting. 

Christmas was great.  My lovely wife bought me gifts even though I told her not to.  Of course she got me things I would love.  Shes awesome.  I got the poker mindset book which I am enjoying every page of, as well as the Arnie 'Pumping Iron' documentary.  After I watched the Arnie DVD I went to the gym ready to destroy myself :P 


And now onto my poker month.  Lets start with the overall stats:

Current bankroll:  $1657






As you can see, dissapointing to say the least.  The most frustrating part was losing about $450 within the first 2-3 days of the month and having to play catchup from the start.  I had what I felt were pretty bad stretches of running bad, but also I feel I played pretty awful overall.  Reading the poker mindset has helped me to refocus lately, and I feel I am playing to my potential a lot more now than 3 weeks ago.  


Poker like anything is about continuing to strive for improvement and success.  I'm proud to say that when I got knocked back at the beginning of the month I didn't get stubborn and continue to play at the $30's, or even worse, move up in stakes trying to chase losses.  I dropped a level to rebuild, and now I'm back at the $30's ready to destroy this level in the early part of next year. Slow and steady wins the race!  Marge Simpson taught me that pearl of wisdom.


Here's my EV graph for the month:






Somehow the graph doesnt show quite how badly I ran at the beginning of the month, but I assure you it was nasty.  The $30 level generally speaking was no different to the $20.  A little slower in action but still mostly weak recreational players to play against.  Thats why it was even more dissapointing that I didn't kick on from november.  Ah well, these things will happen over and over again.  

Last but not least, this is a graph for every game I've played since June:





Seeing this definitely gives me some reassurance that I am going in the right direction, and that short term luck is influencing my results thus far.  Approx 100,000 chips below EV with the average buyin of all my games being $17.80.  That comes out to be around $1186 below expectation on all in luck so far.  Bring it on variance!!!





Thursday, December 8, 2011

Rebuilding from the disaster...

I haven't written since I made my goals known for the month.  The start of this month has been disastrous lol.  Lets recap on my goals, and where I currently stand with them:


1).  Play at least 350 games. 


So far I have played 80 games.  Yesterday was the first wednesday in a long time where I didn't play at all.  The gym has taken its toll, and I don't feel in the mood when I get home.  I'm sure that'l change the longer this becomes routine, but for the moment I just wanna kick back and relax when I get home.


2).  Play exclusively $33's only dropping to $23's if I have a negative ROI after 100 games, OR if the action is crazy slow. 


The action was kinda slow, but not slow enough to play mostly $23's.  So far I have played 35 x $34's and 45 x $23's.  The main reason is because I started the month losing $400 in 2 days playing $33s!


3).  Try to make as few mistakes as possible.

I have made so many mistakes that tracking them at this stage is just far too much of a headache.  I am nowhere near good enough yet, nor am I that experienced/in the habit in marking each and every potential mistake.  As a result I forget to mark a lot of these instances, so I am going to scrap this idea, and maybe take another shot at it sometime in the future. 

4).  Continue to study (typically on monday / tuesday) by watching videos, contributing in forums, and using pokerstove to improve my knowledge on hand ranges.   

Not really done much of this either.  TBH, gym time and foosball have been my main focuses this month.  


5).  Achieve a minimum win rate of 55%


Lol, currently at 47.5%, but it was a lot worse before tonight.  I went on an 8-2 run tonight which has helped.  


So yeah to summarize, I have completely lost the love for this month after the first 2 days of raping I recieved at the $33's.  I started out so motivated and excited to see what kinda money I could make this money after moving up in stakes, but now I am having to rebuild, it is simply not as fun.  


I must stress that I was not outplayed at the $34s.. I played a few more regs than at the $23 level, but most of this downswing was tilt/running bad.  When I get back to $1500 for bank roll then I will start playing $34s again.  As for the other goals, I will continue to aim towards 55% winrate and 350 games.  Other than that, the rest will go out the window :P


And Man Utd got knocked out of the champions league.. What a load of shit that was!! 


Current bankroll:  $1393