"Big" Review

Ok it's been a while. There's a lot to talk about, but I'll try to keep it short. Basically, I'm a little too used to playing poker. I'd much rather do some other things right now. The bankroll is doing fine, and August was ok. My FTP bankroll is a little under $16.8k. I was at $19k until I spewed off $2k, to end August just OK. August taught me a lot, and I got a subscription to DeucesCracked.com (DC). Lots of interesting, helpful things there. My rakeback for the month of August is approximately $2k.

I can say that my hourly rate while playing poker CAN be a steady $100/hr. If I play 80hrs next month, I should land somewhere in the $8k for September range (plus rakeback puts me close to $10k net for the month). I'm still racing to get to $30k. So the money seems fine and all, but my everyday life isn't near where I want it to be. Also, September will be for studying, so I don't see myself making the time to play much.

Oh, by the way, the four month bet is officially "over" September 5th. Also, I'll be moving money slowly over to PokerStars. The goal is to get the whole bankroll to Stars by the end of the year. Also, I'll take Aaron's advice and keep a minimum of 10% of my bankroll in my savings account for a little added interest.

Still Tryin

I'm still trying to have a $10k August. So far, it's only $4k ($5k if adding rakeback). This month I didn't put as many hands in, but I'm trying to play as much as I can these last 10+ days. My FTP bankroll is currently $15.2k, and I haven't checked my rakeback account to see what's sitting in there. The goal is still to have a $10k month (strictly poker earnings), but I'll settle for $8k in poker and $2k in rakeback.....

On a side note, I have had the luxury of not having to dip into the poker bankroll yet. I REALLY don't want to take any money out and just pad it so I can continue playing comfortably and giving myself a chance to move up as soon as possible. However, my monthly expenses come out to about $1.5k (paying off my car and debt). Going along w/ that is the fact that FTP has been experiencing withdrawal hangups, i.e. checks needing to be re-sent, moneygram being canceled, bad customer service, etc. So, I'm still trying to stretch my money as far as I can until I HAVE to make a withdrawal (a sad day that will be). J still owes me $1k and A $100; if I get that soon, I can postpone my withdrawal to about mid-September. By that time, I would hope to have about $21k--and would do everything I could to keep my roll above $20k.

The three of us are still trying to meet our goals ($10k for J, $30k for me, and $100k for A). I'm hoping J gets there first, and then me so that we feel like we're "catching up." So for now, I'm just thinking about getting trying to make this month as best as I can. I will post the August graph as soon as the month is over.

Oh, and 49ers offensive schemes didn't look half bad!

Quarterly Review

May 5 - August 5 (about). It's been a quarter of a year so far and it's time for a little review, observation, and conclusion. As you already know, I started playing poker "seriously" on May 5th to win a prop bet from a couple of friends (make $10k in four months playing poker). I succeeded in that on July 5th. However, since then I have stopped putting in the hours, dedication, concentration, etc. I've been playing much less and have been trying to focus more on a relationship, seeing daylight hours like a normal person, studying for an upcoming engineering exam, going to the gym 3x a week, and eating enough calories to actually put weight on.

I just recently purchased Holdem Manager (HEM) for $80. I've been hearing good things about this product as opposed to (PT), but have put it off for a long time. To be honest, I feared I might get TOO involved in just looking at stats and lose focus on game flow. But I'm playing $200NL and I can feel the competition as decent enough where I want to get used to reading more in-depth stats for when the competition gets even tougher.

HEM, after just a little exploring seems pretty damn nice. Very customizable, MUCH better at finding leaks (I already see some), and many more advanced stats to observe. As soon as I got it, I read the tutorial and got a little familiar with it. Then I graphed all my hands from the beginning of the prop bet and it definitely got my attention. So the graph below is from May 5 to August 12. You can see that HEM makes a sweet graph that includes rakeback! So keeping in mind I started out at $50NL, played $100NL, and played the last 75k hands at $200NL, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping the gap between the blue and green lines would be smaller--that would mean more of my money was coming from my poker winrate as opposed to having rakeback be such a large portion. My goal from here on out (and always has been, but I guess more attention to) is to CONCENTRATE on doing what it takes to build a better winrate.

HEM has so many stats to disect that I'll be experimenting and concentrating on different aspects all the time. I will post up a picture of my HEM stats soon enough, and from time to time I'll talk about which ones stick out to me as in need of improvement; I'll be trying to plug these leaks one or two at a time.

Well, for now, I'm happy and a little disappointed at my winrate for the first three months. This is due to a lack of trying to improve. My problem is that I tried to improve in the beginning, it worked, and then I just went on "cruise control" since then. I need to find something to improve, work at it, and then find something else to improve--and there will always be something else.

Also, my $1,991 from July rakeback came in. It's also a little disappointing because I haven't put the hands in, but like I said above, I've been concentrating on other things. My FTP bankroll is currently a little bit over $14.4k. Yes, I'm one of those corny people that have poker chips in front of them to signify their bankroll. As corny as it is, I like it--it's a consistent reminder of where I'm at. I'm always trying to "color up" and can't wait to turn the black chips into lavender ones.

Finally, I just made a sort of "motivation" bet with Aaron. It's a "race to x amount" bet, and I haven't had one of these since Justin and I did a race to $10k a few years ago. I'm racing to $30k and he's racing to $100k. We both just installed HEM and are sort of enthusiastic about trying to make money with this new "toy." He is at exactly $60k, so has $40k to go, while I only have $15.6k to go. I can't wait to beat him.

On a funny note, I've teasted Justin a bunch of times that I'll buy my house with poker money and I'll tell my kids, "you know your uncle Justin leant me $500 when I needed it, and you can thank him for this house." And for my weak-ass motivational talks to Aaron he just told me, "hey u have already got ninong status." So, cheers to helping each other succeed. Justin's success is right around the corner, and might be a LOT bigger than hoped for if what he's been working on takes off..........

Heater/Cooler

This was an annoying session, obviously. I QUICKLY won 10 buyins. And since that, as you can see, it got worse and worse. I was losing 100bb buyin after another, until it finally got to me. I didn't necessarily play bad, but the quick up and down got to me--even my good thin calls ended up with another stack being shipped over. This isn't a problem, it's just when they compound...

I actually said, "this looks like something 88 would do," here before I called. There was zero history and he hadn't gotten out of line--it was just a good read. (I was happy I was right, but it wasn't the consolation I was looking for at the time: http://www.pokerhand.org/?3014993

I played a little over 6k hands, and as you can see, ended up down a buyin after this NICE heater. (The heater was getting my stack to near $600 and playing a overaggro player w/ QQ vs A6 on AQx flop; this was followed by AKs vs KQ on J97 flop: http://www.pokerhand.org/?3014580

$15k roll by Sunday is the goal; I'll update later...