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!!!