My first full month of playing poker is in the books and it felt GREAT. I was definitely rusty at first and I probably haven't shaken off ALL the rust yet until I get into enough tough spots, BUT I was VERY surprised how quickly everything came back. It was very akin to riding a bike. In fact, I felt like I immediately started learning MANY NEW things about my game that were leaks before that I am plugging now. It was like I could just see things I couldn't see before a lot more clearly. I specifically think the time off and perspective is a tribute to that. However, next time I decide to take some time off, I want to try to avoid burn out and keep it around a week or two and not six months... but, I still don't think there was anything I could have done to avoid that in hindsight. I was heading for a crash. I'm just glad I'm healed and back.
I started at $25NL on Stars because it had been so long since I played at Stars and even poker in general and the 100bb NLHE games have gotten a LOT tougher since I last played them and it felt like a good jumping in point despite my massively overrolled bankroll of 360 buyins
- I felt like when I stopped playing, I was finding myself in a lot of "standard" spots - enough where adding tables where the benefit would outweigh whatever specific notes and action I missed.
- My game before was a little too laggy. I did this intentionally to try to get more action and outplay people, but it also had a downside: I couldn't play as many tables AND as I moved up, it made playing more difficult as players are more apt to play back at you and it's harder to know how you are being perceived. I've come to the conclusion I don't want players "coming at me" where as my game before was somewhat built on that concept.
At the same time, I don't want to be TOO automatic in my actions or turn into a robot - not by a LONG shot. The tradeoff I decided to make was to play enough tables where I could keep up with the action in hands I was involved with AND take notes with hands I was involved in. I would give up taking notes in hands and action I WASN'T involved with. All the time I had been playing before now, I did my best to keep notes and take hands that I wasn't involved with. I would even bring up the hand history window if I missed something so I could take notes. This DID suffer some when I got to around 6 and 7 tables and I started missing half of the action in hands I wasn't involved with and now I'm just going to miss all of it.
The downside to this strategy is I am not expecting any sexy high winrates as I used to get, but if you can play twice the tables at half the win-rate, it's basically a wash.
At the moment, I've settled at 12 tables. That's a nice number because it's the most tables I can tile and easily see the stats window on my HUD plus it's challenging to keep up with all the action and take notes. I spent most of my time playing $25NL but towards the end of the month I felt comfortable enough to add some $50NL tables when there weren't as many $25NL to choose from.
January 2011 Total profit/loss: $354.13
Venue ---> Profit ---> Profit%
PokerStars ---> $213.13 ---> 60.18%
Live Games ---> $101.00 ---> 28.52%
PokerStars Bonus ---> $40.00 ---> 11.3%
2011 Summary
Total YTD profit/loss $354.13
Total YTD VPP's 3191.63
January 2011 ---> $354.13 with 3191.63 VPP's
I'm VERY pleased with this result to start and hope I can just keep the ball rolling. I should also mention I only played 3 of the 4 weeks as I was out of town on vacation one week. I didn't feel like I ran good or bad, just normal, fun poker. A couple of hands to welcome me back that I remember: I had a set of Tens in a 3 way pot and trippled up against a set of 2's and a fishy player who had AK and turned an ace and was willing to stack off. Contrast that when I flopped the nut flush and villain runner runnered a straight flush using just one of his hole cards ... doh!
The really exciting news is Stars announced they are getting rid of 50bb max tables. Introducing those tables really threw a monkey wrench in my plans last April and I ended up moving to Full Tilt to maintain a comparable hourly and enjoyment. Now that they will be gone, EVERY player who wants to play NLHE has to have at least 40bb's and can play with 100bb if they choose. This is literally the best news I could have hoped to hear OUTSIDE of legalizing poker in the US. I just love Stars' interface, customer support, VIP program, and player pool. Now that the games should be good again, it's 'so much win'. Based on the games I played at Full Tilt, I have no reason to think fish will play CAP on Stars from $2NL to $200NL - in fact, fish CAN'T play CAP from $2NL to $25NL. If you've been a winning player at 100bb NLHE on Stars at any level from $2NL to $200NL, my prediction is you can move up at least one stake and maintain the same win-rate after this change. Obviously, don't do that if you don't have the bankroll, but if you DO have the roll, get ready to test the waters and consider taking a shot soon ... on 02/10/2011
My goals are still pretty simple: have fun and get back in the flow of things for now. Later, figure out what stakes I want to play long term. I'll continue playing a mixture of $25NL and $50NL until 02/10/2011 and then I'll probably move to $50NL exclusively IF enough good games are running. Then, if the games look as good as I'm hoping, I may start taking some shots at $100NL. Outside of that, I'd LOVE the chance to go for SuperNova by the end of the year, but that's still far out and to get that, I'll have to work my way into 12 tabling $100NL exclusively and possibly some $200NL, too. So, one step at a time and hopefully I'll have a clearer picture of which way the wind is blowing by March.
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