Slightly Sour Ending to a Really Nice Month

Overall, just a super solid month of poker and I couldn't be happier (Ok, if I didn't drop $500 right at the end of the month I might be happier). But really, its just a little blip on the radar and a reality of poker that you just have to accept. I had decided to take a shot at 200NL a few days ago and ended up with a $150 profit over 3200 hands even with that nice little slide right at the end. Even though I feel like I can beat 200NL, right now I just don't know if I can handle the swings there. I'm a college student and $200 is quite a lot of money to lose on one hand of poker. I actually thought of the fact that 5 Buy-in downswings are fairly common, and I don't know if I'm mentally prepared to handle $1000 downswings regularly yet. I know one day I will (hopefully sooner rather than later), but for now 100NL will be fine for me. I plan to play a mix of FR and 6max next month and I will probably be staying at 100NL for the whole month.

I'm to the point where I am making some pretty good money playing poker and it is starting to cross my mind that it might be feasible to play for a living when I'm done with college. Whether I really want to do that or not is still up in the air, but I think it's definitely an option. My hourly rate at 100NL so far (without bonuses) is $65/hour. I only have 26k hands at the limit, but I think that figure is at least close to sustainable. I am actually ~$700 below all in EV in those 26k hands, but I have probably been running well in other aspects. If you figure in bonuses, then my win rate is even higher than that. I'm pretty sure that $65/hour is better than any job I could hope to get right out of college, so its kind of tempting. If I could continue to beat 100NL for a good win rate and eventually start beating 200NL or even 400NL I don't think there would be any way I could not play for a living as the profit would be just too great to turn down. I'm really starting to speculate here as I have no idea how I will react to playing 200NL let alone 400NL. Whether I would ever be able to beat 400NL is another uncertainty by itself. I can only hope that one day I may be playing 400NL comfortably.

The thought of going out into the workforce and working a 9-5 job is just mind numbing to me. Lately I can't stand any of my classes and I really just want the classes portion of school to be over with. My classes this semester just bore the crap out of me. Seems like every day I have to read a primary research article and then either summarize it or prepare a class discussion on it. These research articles are so ridiculously boring to read that I feel like shooting myself every time I sit down to read one. Not to mention that the material flies way way way over my head and is almost impossible to understand unless you have a doctorate in the field that the article is about. So yea, seeing so many profits coming from poker, and the potential for even larger profits is really uplifting to me. Its something that I love to do and I think I would love doing it for a living. I've never put in a 40 hour week playing poker though, so I would have to try that a few times too see if I could handle it. I plan on playing a couple 40 hour weeks during Christmas break this year, just to see what its like. I can't really do it when I'm in school as I'm just too busy and I'm lucky if I can get 2 hours to play in a day.

Anyways, enough of my ranting about how much school sucks and how I basically don't want to get a job and just be a lazy bum playing poker my whole life. Here's the graph of my ring hands this month. Along with this, I also won 2/5 5400 FPP sattys and had some tournament winnings. My total profit for the month with the tourneys and sattys included was $3270 which makes September my most profitable month. I also played less hands than the last 2 months, ran worse (in terms of all in EV), and feel like my game has improved a lot.



P.S. Made a trip to Boston last weekend and it was an absolute blast. Going to Washington D.C. in another week. My roommates and I are actually gonna try to make a visit to a different major city on the east coast each month for the rest of the school year.

Solid Week

So school has started to get busy lately and I'm a little pissed that I haven't been able to put in a ton of hands this month, but I am still winning a decent amount of money and will easily achieve Platinum Star by the end of the month so I guess I can't complain too much. I could probably play more, but this is my senior year and I'd much rather be out having fun than playing poker. Also, graduating and getting my degree is definitely the number 1 priority in my life right now so I have to make sure that poker is not getting in the way of me getting work done. So far its balancing rather nicely. I'm averaging 1-1.5 hours a day playing poker and still accomplishing everything I want to. I feel like I am playing some of the best poker in my life and perhaps its because I'm not playing for hours and hours at a time every day.

I'm going to Boston this weekend with my roommates so I won't be playing at all Friday-Sunday which is fine. Breaks from playing are always nice and I love coming back to the tables feeling refreshed after a couple days off. I can't wait to get to Boston. I've always wanted to go there since I was younger and I'm finally going this weekend. We're staying with one of my roommates friends so the only expenses I will have are gas money and whatever I want to spend money on there. I was hoping we might be able to go see one of the Red Sox Yankees games that weekend, but I'm guessing it will be $200+ per ticket. I would actually have no problem paying up to ~$300 for a ticket, but I don't think anyone else I would be with would want to. I was just up in Toronto on Saturday and only payed $9 for a ticket to a Blue Jays game. Hard to believe that prices differ so much between certain teams. Anyways, Boston should be real fun anyways.

Even though I didn't put a whole lot of hands in this week, I still managed to get a nice sample in and did great (Thanks to a nice $600 swing today). Looks like I'll have another really solid monthly report to post in the next week or so. I'm loving 100NL FR right now and hopefully by the end of October I will have a roll big enough to take a shot at 200NL. I've heard that 200NL FR is pretty hard to beat for a decent win rate though, so I will have to see. I might need to switch back and play some 100NL 6max and learn that way in a little while as 200NL 6max is definitely beatable. I really feel confident that if I apply myself and continue to get better I will be able to beat the mid stakes games (FR or 6max) eventually. One thing I want to do is to be able to excel at both FR and 6max. So hopefully, by the end of October I'll be playing 200NL or at least learning 100NL 6max.

Here's my latest graph of the last 7 days.

Looking Back: A Little bw07507 History & A Brag

Was just screwing around with HEM and looking at different graphs of my play and decided to look at my FR career. As some of you know, I started out as a S&G player. I played quite a few S&Gs over the last couple years and had only dabbled in cash games up until March of 2008. In that month, I cashed in a big tourney, giving me a BR for 25NL.

I started playing 25NL 6max and ran super hot for ~30k hands. Given that I was only playing at max 4 tables, this is a large sampling of hands. I would constantly bring my BR above $1000, try out 50NL 6max, either run terrible or tilt crazily and freak out and withdraw half my money so I would go back to 25NL. After one particularly bad run at 25NL, ChuckTs got me to try out a little FR. This happened in early/mid July and since then I have played very little 6max (under 7k hands to be exact). I started 6 tabling FR and am now 12 tabling very comfortably and occasionally 14 tabling. As soon as I started playing FR, I hit another heater and my roll skyrocketed. I was playing 25NL at the time and quickly decided that it was time for 50NL again, but this time FR, not 6max. Again, downswing ensued and I withdrew in a panic, afraid I wasn't good enough to win anymore.

After this incident, I decided, enough is enough. I've withdrawn a healthy amount from my BR (way way way more than I deposited) so I need to take the next downswing in stride and not flip out and withdraw most my roll. So from then on, any time I hit a downswing I didn't withdraw. I have withdrawn since then, but it has mostly been for purchases/spending money. I have vowed to never withdraw so much that I will not be fully rolled for 50NL (40 BIs) and now that I am fairly comfortably at 100NL, it would be great never to go back below those stakes. I'd have to say that my switch to FR has been one of the most pivotal points in my poker career. It has taught me to heavily multi-table effectively and to handle swings better. Since I'm playing so many hands at once, one or two or even a string of bad beats doesn't set me off like it used to since I know I can make it all back easily. Although I'll probably be moving back to 6max at some point in the future, I can't see myself totally giving up FR any time soon.

Anyways, here's the brag portion of the post. Here is a graph of my FR profits since I started playing heavily in early/mid July. I really can't thank ChuckTs enough for introducing me to FR and getting me on track after that one horrendous downswing at 6max. Some words of wisdom to anyone who is trying to get really good at poker and make some decent money. Just try to learn everything you can and just keep at it. I've been playing for years and its seriously just starting to pay off now. I spent a good year single tabling S&Gs and doing ok, winning a few bucks here and there, but now, playing cash feels so much better. Alright well I'm slightly drunk and I've got to go to bed. Sorry I rambled on for so long, here's my FR graph.

School is in Session

Alright, sorry I haven't posted in awhile, but I've been pretty busy as school just started up again last Monday and I've been pretty busy. Well, I really can't say that I've been really busy, since most of my days have been just me hanging out with my roommates drinking, watching movies, etc. Classes really haven't gotten into full swing yet since it was just the first week, but I will probably be busier in the following weeks.

I've actually played a fair amount of poker in September. I am currently 12-tabling 100NL/PL FR and so far I'm doing pretty good. I'm surprised how beatable it is. I really don't see too much of a difference between 50NL and 100NL. I think I could probably legitimately run at at least 3 PTBB/100 while 12-tabling. I'm up $256 on the month and I haven't even been running well at all. I'm $250 below all in EV and I have been coolered quite a few times. I'm also loving how fast the FPPs are flowing into my account while playing 100NL. If I can manage to run decent the rest of the month and not hit a huge swing forcing me to move back to 50NL, then I should easily make platinum for the 3rd straight month. Unfortunately, there was no Sunday Million this week so I didn't get to play any 5400 FPP sattys. I hope they come back soon as they are my favorite way to spend FPPs. For now I'm just saving them up til I can start playing them again. I'm planning on making a video of myself 6-tabling 100NL FR in the next few days, so watch out for that one. Right now its bedtime since I got 8am class in the morning :\

The graph is mostly 100NL, but some 50NL mixed in aswell