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Big Update this month ... Cliff Notes @ the end.
Old Style Versus New Style
February was a whirl wind of a month. January lured me into the feeling I was going to move on to a new style and new way of playing, but by this month's end, I've come to the conclusion that I never needed to change. Improve? Yes. Change? No. You should dance with the girl you brought to the prom
To clarify, I looked back on my game towards the end of when I stopped playing last year and believed that maybe I was too loose, too combative, and that I could do better to play more straightforward, but more tables. That worked well enough at $25NL with 12 tables, but when I decided to jump up to $50NL the week BEFORE Stars' awesome new cash game structure changes, so I'd be ready to hit the ground running, it started to backfire on me. I started running into the same problem I ran into last year: I couldn't get paid anymore. I'd fold, fold, fold, hit a big hand, and the villains folded, too. Last year, I thought I was just running bad by not getting paid in the sense that my villains just never had hands. What I now realize is that it wasn't running bad then or now.
The real problem is that, for me, I was just missing out on too much action, missing too many notes, and missing too many opportunities to extract value. I was generalizing all of my villains instead of coming up with a customized, villain specific plan to exploit each player as I usually would. I was missing out then and most recently because of too many tables. On Full Tilt, I don't remember trying to add too many tables, but the action goes quicker than Stars so I think maybe I had added one or two new tables prematurely and didn't make the connection that my "running bad" was actually a multi-tabling leak.
Another part of the problem is if you play too straightforward, it becomes much tougher to get paid off even against fish at times. So, early this month, I cut back from 12, sometimes 13 tables on Stars, to 10 tables max and usually 9, sometimes 8 or less. It's made a world of difference and I feel like I'm starting to get back in my old groove. And, it's not just a matter of winning or losing to be in a groove. It's about having a good handle of what hands villains show up with and how they will react, it's about being in the moment and knowing your spots. It's about taking notes and knowing the table dynamics, and even when you are losing or things aren't going your way, you know why.
Who knows? Maybe if I keep inching my way up the table ladder, I can play with more, but I know that note taking and paying attention to table action and flow is pretty vital to my success. I'm not sure how some players can be so successful at mid to high stakes with 15 to 24 tables. It's a very impressive feat from my point of view. I guess maybe if you play a lot of the same villains across multiple tables, it becomes easier, but at micro and small stakes, you're going to run up against a LOT of different players.
I made about 10 buy-ins at $25NL before I moved up to $50NL and then I THINK mainly through too many tables and also getting used to poker again, I ended up losing about 10 buy-ins @ $50NL before Stars made their new buy-in changes. BUT, since the first full day of new cash game changes when I also started playing less tables, I've won back those 10 buy-ins and feel like I'm headed in the right direction again.
I'm still treading water carefully moving forward, though. Who knows what other new obstacles and discoveries lurk in the future, but I'm really focused on trying to string together several months or a hundred thousand hands of consistent, good results before I feel TOO good or bad about anything.
Searching for Supernova
I was very pleased this month to regain my Platinum Star status and have an early path paved towards getting my first SuperNova. Basically, if I can maintain the pace I made in February for the next 10 months I'll make it, but it's only a month sample, so a lot can change for better or worse. This is particularly important to me because IF I can get SuperNova, I'll be in position to unluck $8k of instant cash back in the form of two $4k bonuses @ 250k FPP's each. If I were to not make SuperNova and instead used those same FPP's to get ten $650 bonuses @ 50k FPP's each, that would be $6500 instead of $8000 and thus $1500 of lost value. Plus, getting SuperNova makes a lot of future money due to the 3.5 multiplier versus Platinum's 2.5 which is 40% more FPP's. A year of FPP's starting and ending at exactly Platinum each month would yield $2925 of value whereas a year of FPP's starting starting and ending at exactly SuperNova pace each month would yield $5200 of value - $2,275 difference in value. Furthermore, if you can exactly maintain a pace each month to maintain SuperNova for the year, not just get it by the end of the year, you'll have $7,466.67 of value, which is $4,541.67 more than Platinum.
So, long story short (too late), SuperNova >> Platinum
Results Oriented
Financial results are below but I'm still not really focused on any specific goals related to money. Simply being a "winning" player in 2011 and reaching SuperNova to unlock maximum FPP value would be fine with me. I also can't hide my enthusiasm for the new cash game tables on Stars. I hoped and predicted the new structures would be a huge positive change for players who had previously been playing 100bb max NLHE on Stars and I feel like that has already come to fruition and I don't think the bubble has settled yet either. I think many players, like myself, will be moving up due to the games being better and this will in turn make the games even better as better players are in higher games. Basically, fish and casual players were being funneled to 50bb max. Now, they are funneled to 100bb max games, and life is good again. Now, if we can just legalize online poker in the US, look out - I think that would mean you could jump up 2 or 3 levels and maintain a commensurate win-rate.
February 2011 Total profit/loss: $511.51
Venue ---> Profit ---> Profit%
PokerStars ---> $381.01 ---> 74.49%
PokerStars Bonus ---> $110.00 ---> 21.50%
Live Games ---> $20.50 ---> 4.01%
2011 Summary
Total YTD profit/loss $865.64
Total YTD VPP's 11,658.51
February 2011 ---> $511.51 with 8,196.88 VPP's
January 2011 ---> $354.13 with 3,191.63 VPP's
Taxes
I did my taxes this year and got a big refund because I had been withholding money from my paycheck to cover a year's worth of poker profits. I didn't adjust it back half-way through the year when I stopped playing, which meant a big refund. This year, I had to fill out Form TD F 90-22.1 which is a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts and required if at any point during the year, the SUM of the MAXIMUM balance of your international accounts during the year exceeded $10k. I've been told the penalties for not filling out the forms can be severe:
- Failure to File Penalty – up to $250,000 and/or up to 5 years in prison for any person "willfully violating" the requirements to file. (31 CFR 5322a penalty)
- Fraud Penalty – up to $500,000 and/or up to 10 years in prison for any person "willfully violating" the requirements to file "as part of a pattern of any illegal activity involving more than $100,000 in a 12-month period." (31 CFR 5322b penalty)
New PC versus Old PC
Finally, my desktop was cutting edge back in 2004 when I bought it to run Doom 3, but here in good ole 2011, I can't listen to music without it skipping when HEM is importing hand histories. I also can't run HEM Table Scanner or Table Ninja because everything slows down too much. I also have a bad hard drive that makes Windows want to do a 15 minute chkdsk procedure on every boot-up. I had enough and decided it was time for an upgrade. Behold a bullet point list of PC goodness:
- AMD Phenom™ II X4 945 Quad-Core CPU
- Windows 7 Pro
- 4 GB DDR3-1333 Memory
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 - 1GB
- HD - 64 GB ADATA S501 V2 SATA-III SSD Read:355MB/s Write:75MB/s
- Data Drive - 1 TB HARD DRIVE 64M Cache, 7200 RPM, 6.0Gb/s
- 12X Blu-Ray Pioneer BLU-RAY Re-Writer, DVD±R/±RW Burner
My hope is having the ability to use table scanner and table ninja will eventually help this PC pay for itself. Even if not, just being able to listen to music and run comfortably should make it well worth it. It's not here yet, but it's been ordered.
Cliff Notes:
- Decided to change my style at the end of last month, but at the beginning of this month, decided the change was a bad idea and went back to normal.
- Since beginning of the year, won 10 buy-ins @ $25NL old (bad) cash game tables with "new" style
- Lost 10 buy-ins @ $50NL old (bad) cash game tables with "new" style
- Won 16 buy-ins @ $50NL NEW (good) cash game tables with "original" style
- On pace to get SuperNova and very excited about accomplishing that to unlock maximum FPP potential
- No financial goals this year - just focused on playing well and finding the right stakes for me to play at regularly -> right now, that's $50NL Full Ring 100bb max on Stars
- Finished my taxes and got back a big refund since I stopped playing poker last year
- Had to submit a form to the US Treasury this year declaring off shore bank accounts since I had over $10k in my poker accounts last year
- Upgraded my PC - it's >>> old PC
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