YTD Total $7,380.80 ( $952.53 BEHIND pace)
April Total -$369.00 ( $2,452.33 BEHIND pace)
March Total $2,254.70 (+ $171.37 ahead of pace)
February Total $2,982.97 (+ $899.64 ahead of pace)
January Total $2,512.13 (+ $428.30 ahead of pace)
April Total ---> -$369.00
Venue ---> Profit ---> Profit%
PokerStars Bonus ---> $150.00 ---> -40.65%
Live Games ---> $-224.00 ---> 60.70%
PokerStars ---> $-295.00 ---> 79.95%
PokerStars moved my cheese ... those bastards! The good news is that I think I found where they moved it. The bad news is that I had a costly losing month in April while searching. Early in the month I was on pace to have a great month around 3 or 4 G's. My trip to St. Louis with live play didn't go so hot and set me back to just on track. Then, I put myself back ahead of my goal for the month with a third of the month to pad my winnings ... or lose it allTwo unfortunate things happened that I attribute for the bulk of the bad month. First, I ran really bad for 2 days in a row where all-ins I was ahead when the money went in led to suck-outs and losses in fully stacked 100bb plus pots. I remember one of those days I got all-in 11 times where I was AHEAD 6 times and behind 5. I WON 1 of the six I was AHEAD and won NONE of the five I was BEHIND - not all of those were 100bb pots, but several were. That's unfortunate but I can deal with all that as long as I play enough hands.
The second, more difficult problem was PokerStars new buy-in structures. I have been playing 20bb to 100bb since I first started playing $2NL. I'm used to it. I understand it. That's my game. I always know where I stand and where I'm going. I don't play 50bb to 100bb tables. Those play different and are good for other players but I haven't cut my teeth on them. I next to never play deep. I never play shallow. It took me a while to realize the effect of these changes, but from MY POV (I know everyone else has their own opinion for their own situation), these buy-ins have really hacked into the quality of full stack play @ the upper small stakes to mid stake levels. I feel like 200NL 40bb to 100bb poker is the 20bb to 100bb equivalent of at LEAST 400NL if not 50bb-100bb 400NL or some 600NL+ hybrid in terms of quality of players and ratio of regs to fish. I was seeing completely different tough aggressive players now that I presume have dropped down in stakes. The tough regs of before are now average. The fish are far and few in between. I used to start my own tables and get fish to average or bad regs. Now, I either sit by myself for minutes on end or get ringers or tough regs to sit down with me. I mistakenly thought my game would stay @ 40bb to 100bb, but in reality I just WANTED it to stay there. I tried to stick with it for a few days but the results were bad three days in a row due to some combination of bad luck, bad play, and good villain play which accounts for the rest of my losses in April. Ironically, on the night of the last day in April I actually got it all-in AHEAD in a pot, that had I won, I would have had a "winning" month for April with a set of 3's versus a shortstack flush draw and a full stack pair of Jacks on the flop. I beat the shortstack, but pocket Jacks rivered a Jack for another appropriate stacking for the month. It looks as though most of the fish and casual players are gravitating to these shallow games. It appears to me as a result, the 100bb games have gotten tougher across the board and to compensate, some players are dropping stakes or at least adding more smaller games to their rotations. That's my observations and conclusions for the time being. However, for players that ONLY played 50bb to 100bb old tables, these new changes may have improved that game or made things better. I just don't have that perspective.
As a result of these changes and bad results, I had to rethink my approach and accept the fact that my old game of 20bb to 100bb has been moved to 20bb to 50bb, so that's where I'm playing 200NL FR. Since I don't want to lose the skill of playing 100bb, I have decided to pick those up @ 100NL. I had already been playing 100NL before the changes, so that's no big deal. Once I earn enough buy-ins @ 100NL 40bb to 100bb, I'll allow myself to move up to 200NL 40bb to 100bb. Once I earn enough buy-ins @ 20bb to 50bb 200NL, I'll allow myself to move up to 20bb to 50bb 400NL. Fortunately, I'm off to another good start with my new strategy of table selection. The bad news is that I'm not earning VIP's nearly as fast. If I am going to hit double nova for the year, I will probably need to move up at least once from 100NL/200NL to 200NL/400NL. I'm currently @ ~ 57k VIP's for the year which is ~23.5k VIP's AHEAD of pace for SuperNova and ~10k BEHIND pace for double nova for the year.
The big lesson I learned from this is to tread carefully whenever any big changes happen to you or your site. I lost a nice chunk of change exploring Rush Poker when it first came out. I lost a bigger chunk of change this time when PokerStars introduced their new buy-in structure. It's better to error to the side of caution and move up later than the other way around. Try not to operate off too many assumptions.
Hopefully I'll be back to my winning ways when May is over. It's off to a good start, but, then again, so was April
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