The Eye of the Storm

So far April seems to have been the calm after the storm. I think I burned myself out more than I realised after putting so much volume in during March. The $4000 pot of gold at the end of the Gladiator rainbow was such a good incentive that I tricked myself into believing I had overcome the motivational issues that have plagued me this year. As it turns out... I haven't, and with the promotion over they are back with a vengeance. The good news is that another promotion is starting next Monday and I plan to get back to some major grinding. So maybe April is really the eye of the storm?

Interestingly, the new promotion is VIP only (Palladium+), and to get max value from it a truly epic grind will be required. Pushing myself hard last month worked really well, so I'm going to give it my best. I'll need to rake $15,000 in 21 days (about 1500 party points per day). I was raking 1200 points per day in March so it should be easy, right? The problem is that I have a friend's wedding and other commitments that will mean I can't play at all on probably 4 of the 21 days, meaning I'll have to rake closer to 1800 points per day, which will be really tough. As I'm typing this I read an interesting quote on the Party Poker thread on 2p2:

I was thinking about grinding those 60 cards but then i realized i don't hate myself that much.

 -OMGKaraScott

A fair point. I'm going to hit it hard for the first week and see how things go. On the plus side if I succeed I think all the bonuses will tally up to over $10,000 (depending how lucky I am with the random prizes). Not bad for 3 week's work!

Although I haven't been playing a lot of poker this month I've been using my time fairly productively getting on with wedding plans, home improvement and spending time with friends and family. I've also upgraded my setup with a new PC tower. I went for a fairly basic model and with the help of a friend installed a better graphics card and an SSD to run my OS and all my poker software. So far I'm loving the SSD: Windows 7 Ultimate loads completely in under 10 seconds and it should handle mass multi-tabling a lot better than my poor laptop. I'll post a few pictures of my setup in a future post.

So wish me luck for grinding my ass off for the next 3 weeks! Today I just feel like doing this...

Palladium Elite, Gladiator and Pussies

Well so much for more regular updates in 2012! Must try harder...

Poker Updates

At the start of the year my plan was to multi-site Pokerstars and Party Poker, with the aim of retaining my Supernova status on Stars whilst attaining Palladium Elite status on Party. I found it harder than I expected to juggle 2 sites, so I've focussed most of my attention on Party. As a result I sadly lost my Supernova status at the end of March. However, I was successful in attaining Palladium Elite on Party.

Turbo SNGs on Party have very short levels which leads to smaller edges and lower attainable ROIs. Therefore my income this year will be much more dependent on rakeback. Fortunately, in my experience so far, Party have been really good at providing regular bonuses and promotions.

In March Party Poker ran a huge promotion called Gladiator. This promotion was heavily dependent on volume of play, leading to a lot of grinder regs making the games extremely tough. A lot of the turbo games running were -EV to play pre-rakeback. However, with all the bonuses I accrued translating to a rakeback percentage of over 80% there was still a lot of money to be made.

Raking $15,000 in a month to reach my Gladiator goal meant some serious grinding, so in March I put in a lot more volume than I ever have in a single month. Pushing myself in that way has been a real eye-opener for me to realise what I'm capable of, and I plan to push myself to keep volume high throughout the year. So far including all rakeback and bonuses I'm up around $22k this year. I'm actually above EV (!) although I'm down a bit at the $109s and $210s. Fingers crossed for some run good in those in the months ahead. My EV line in Party turbos is worryingly low, although perhaps partly due to the toughness of the games in March. I think card distribution is also a massive factor in those games so it's hard to know how much to read into it.

Life Updates

In other news, my fiance and I bought 2 kittens at the end of 2011 which we've named Leia and Starbucks. I've never been a big animal lover, but these two have really won me over. They're playful, full of personality and good company. It's hard to be too annoyed by a downswing with a kitten purring on my lap.

I'm also very excited for the return of Game of Thrones this month. I started reading the books last summer and pretty much lived and breathed them for a few months. For anyone who hasn't checked out the books or the show I highly recommend both!

Good luck at the tables

David

Gone Fishing

Oops. I've become a fish.

When you're winning it's easy to convince yourself that you will be able to cope with the inevitable downswings and breakeven stretches. However, in the midst of one of them I'm discovering that it's not nearly as easy as I expected. It's surprisingly easy to fall into a pattern of negative self talk, and I'm disappointed to find myself repeating "I just can't win", "I'm so bad", "why do I even bother" and other similarly unhelpful mantras. Unfortunately I have been running slightly below breakeven since Black Friday, over 2 months ago. On the plus side I am now about $7k below all-in EV for the year. While this is not an accurate indicator of my true expected results, it does indicate that things have not gone terribly well for me when all the chips are in the middle. If I keep doing what I'm doing it's most likely a matter of time before things turn around.

I've ended up taking a lot of time off during June, first to go on a long weekend for a best friend's stag do. Secondly spending nearly a week in Ireland due to a family emergency. It's put me massively behind on my Supernova targets, but I have to say it was great to spend some time with friends and family, relaxing and clearing my head.

Now it's time to hit the tables with renewed vigor. Keep working on my game. Keep putting in the hours. The results will come!

Wish me luck.....

May profit: -$496

Yearly profit: +$16,258
Current VPPs: 69,198

Supernova Challenge

Poker-wise May has been something of an epic fail, and it looks almost certain that I shall end the month in deficit. Somewhat depressing, although not wholly unexpected in a game with so much short-term variance. I'll post a full May review, but for now I want to focus on staying positive and motivated for the month ahead. With that in mind I've decided to challenge myself to achieve Supernova status on Pokerstars in just over 6 weeks.

One of my goals at the start of the year was to reach Supernova by the end of June. Unfortunately so far I've only managed to accumulate a measly 63,500 VPPs, so I'll need to average over 5000 VPPs per week from now on to achieve my goal. There are many grinders out there who could manage that in their sleep, but for me it will be a challenge and will hopefully motivate me to put in more hours and focus less on monetary results at the tables.

Supernova Challenge:
1. Achieve Supernova status on or before 17th July 2011.
2. Keep a daily record of VPPs to aid motivation.
3. Review monetary results only at the end of each day (not during a session).
4. Update blog every Sunday with a running total.

Wasting Light

I treated myself to a few days off at the end of March, and it didn't take long for my motivation resurface. I'm naturally an ambitious person, and given that poker seems to be a viable way to earn a good living for the short-term future, I hope to make the most of the opportunity. A short break really helped me to re-focus on that and begin April with renewed vigor. Two weeks into the month I had already made over $3k from 350 games and was on schedule to have my best month yet. However, it wasn't meant to be as the announcements on April 15th led me to another short hiatus from the game and a disappointing end to the month.

The views on what poker players have dubbed "Black Friday" are numerous, diverse and almost entirely speculative. The general consensus is that it's only a matter of time until poker is legalised in the USA. But we have yet to see what legalisation will look like. Initially I was very disappointed by the news. However, so far the impact on me personally has been minimal. Traffic is down, but there are still plenty of 6 max STTs running and fewer regs to contend with. The main impact may be increased variance as I will now have to play more turbos.

On a brighter note, Pokerstars are scheduled to announce improvements to their SNG rake calculation and structure during May. This can only be a good thing. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

April profit: +$4153

Yearly profit: +$16,754
Yearly VPPs: 49,651

If you walk through the garden...

March is over and we're 3 months in to the year; time for a brief update.

I failed to meet my target of 1000 games played during the month (again). I had a few things going on in real life, but more importantly I struggled with motivation for the first time this month. When I dreamed of playing poker for a living I imagined that playing all day every day would be the easiest thing in the world. It isn't. Concentrating for extended periods, consistently playing my A game and dealing with the emotional and financial swings is all mentally draining. Therefore putting in 30+ hours a week mass multi-tabling is harder than I expected. However, it's a lot easier that the job I used to do. Every time 6:45am rolls around on a Monday morning I remember how much happier and better off I am now that I was in my old job. Mike Caro says that the two hardest challenges a poker play faces are:

1. Motivation
2. The feeling that you aren't really achieving anything

March has shown me that I need to more pro-active about the first issue. I look forward to the second issue surfacing down the line...

On a more positive note March was my best month so far at the tables. Moving forward my goal is to (you guessed it) play 1000 games in April and also to increase my average stake my mixing in more higher stakes games. While this will increase my short-term variance it should also improve my long-term results.

In other news I finally got round to watching season 1 of The Wire, which my brother bought me for Christmas. It is scarily good, and my fiance and I enjoyed it so much we ordered season 2 the day we finished season 1. Highly recommended!

Time to head to the gym. Good luck in April.

March Profit: +$5167

Yearly Profit: +$12,601
Yearly VPPs: 39,339

Fitter Happier

If you've ever worked long hours in a demanding job then you'll know that it's easy to form some bad habits. I know I did. Fast food at lunch time, drinks after work every Friday, and just enough energy to put that ready meal in the microwave before slumping in front of the TV. Playing Poker professionally has afforded me the opportunity to change some of those habits, and I'm now regularly working out at the gym, playing sports again for the first time in years and eating a healthy, balanced diet. The effects have been dramatic. Personally I'm happier and more content than I have been in a very long time, and the benefits of that extend to my fiance, my family and my friends - many of whom have commented on a remarkable change in my temperament in the last couple of months.

At the same time, my persective on many aspects of poker is evolving. My perception of the luck and skill involved in the game is really changing now that I'm putting in so much more volume than I ever have before. Perhaps more importantly, my own ambitions are evolving. Initially my only concrete aim when going pro was to prove I could make a living from this and find out whether I enjoyed it. Now I begin to wonder whether I may be able to achieve more. Personally I believe that SNG poker has a limited shelf life, and I hope to nake as much hay as possible while the sun's shining. I therefore think it's very important to continue to push myself to improve as a player and challenge myself to play higher stakes, and more tables. Got to keep getting outside of that comfort zone! Otherwise I'd still be one tabling $5 SNGs...

I've been thinking a lot about longer term goals, but haven't come to any concrete conclusions yet. For now my aim is to focus on improving my multitabling and hitting that 1000 game target in March. February was a mixed bag of variance and I'm currently about $3k under all-in EV for the year. However, I'm not sure how much I can really read in to that and I'm certainly not complaining. In fact it gives me some peace of mind that hopefully my results so far this year have not been a fluke!


February Profit: +$2698

Yearly Profit:  +$7,434
Yearly VPPs: 26,550