Wednesday, April 30, 2014

#April#Month End Review#May Goals#Thoughts

#April#Month End Review#
Thank God for Rakeback

Not too much to say except, I ran extremely well throughout the majority of the month. Just goes to show how much variance can play into your win-rate and results. 

Throughout the whole month my game was all over the place; which usually was a result in over-adjusting to tendencies of opponents. I frequently found myself 3-betting 8-10% at the full-ring zoom games; which is certainly high by most standards. 

Easter weekend- gave me a huge upswing; shots at 200nl-zoom went extremely well and I believe that I've fixed a few leaks in my 6-max game. 

Typically speaking my full-ring zoom game is much stronger than my 6-max game, however for this month be it variance or just my style of play my winrate has been much higher in the 6-max games than usual. 

I'm not too sure why many players who post results are keen to hide their "VPIP/PFR/3bet" stat as those numbers tend to converge within 2-3k hands of playing and will give very little information as to how you play.  

Over-adjusting to "anomalies" was a huge leak of mine nearing the end of this month which I found. Rather than considering my entire range as well as opponent's entire range I found myself justifying plays by "feel". 

Not that I personally berate the idea of playing by "feel" or whether or not I "believe" that opponent will look me up light, or what my image was; I think those aspects are secondary to range-construction, pot odds, implied odds, position, relative hand strength. 

For the entire month I ended up playing roughly 183 hours; with around 7-10 hours of "off-table work" which almost entirely consisted of me browsing forums; watching old videos, and reviewing my own hands. 

Thoughts and Reflections


For the upcoming month a lot of factors will end up affecting the goals in which I have in mind. 

SCOOP is coming around the corner as everyone in the online poker world should be fairly acquainted with, and Pokerstars has given me the option of splitting up my 5200$- WCOOP main event ticket into smaller chunks. With that in mind; one of my goals is certainly to play in a handful of these events and hopefully cash in a few.

The weather is also starting to clear up with many more sunny days are predictable weather, and due to the nature of only 3-4 months of "sunny season" in Vancouver I'm inclined to drop my volume down a bit in order to enjoy the beautiful beaches. 

As regarding to moving up stakes; I use a fairly conservative bankroll- management, as well as regularly cash-out. I'm an avid believer of having multiple streams of income from different sources and have been actively putting away some money and riding the US.Bull market for the last year, as money sitting in my bankroll isn't doing much to increase my hourly.

Since I'm also looking into purchasing an apartment in Vancouver in the foreseeable future it will be awhile before I start building my roll large enough to handle the swings.  

There has been some scepticism that the current market is due for a correction in response to the last 30 or so of "boom". My guess is that the shift of money from the real estate market into stocks resulted in declining of real estate and interest rates. Immigration policy being tightened up is also a likely cause for the result in Vancouver however doesn't entirely explain the mortgage rates throughout Canada. Because of the speculation, I'm convinced that it's likely a good time to purchase property with the notion of either "rental income" or a rebound due to a shift of money from stocks into real-estate. 

Variance, psychology, confidence. 

I've gotten a few questions regarding whether as to why I'm not playing any higher than 100nl. The answer is quite simple and segregated into 2 parts. 
1)- It's all about the hourly, 2) The mental side.

I'm a big proponent of the ZooM games, for reasons which I will discuss in a future post. Since 200nl- Fullring zoom doesn't run, or hardly runs at all; my only remaining option is the 200nl-6max games. 

My 6-max results historically have not been my best and would much prefer to see a solid winrate at 100nl-6max over a large sample size (500k hands) before attempting to make the jump fully. With a higher stake, smaller edges, a increase in variance of "downswings" will occur. I don't think I've personally matured to the point of being apathetic towards the temporary loss of money as a 4-8k downswing at 200nl will certainly affect my mental game. 

So hypothetically speaking; if my "A-game" results in a "3-4bb/100 winner at 200nl", a variance induced downswing may result in a prolonged downswing via playing a "C-game" of "-5-6bb/100".  At 100nl-zoom on the other hand; I've yet to experience any down-swing of that nature in the last 8-10 months and am fairly confident that my B-game is still profitable enough to justify grinding. 

I will eventually make the jump after; 
A) Showing extremely solid results at 100nl-6 max over an extended period of time
B) Getting over the habit of constantly checking my results and losses/ letting it affect my game.



Goals for May

  1. Obtain a subscription to training site.
  2. Enjoy the weather, eat well and exercise.
  3. Maintain 50k VPPs for Supernova Elite
  4. Constantly work on bringing a solid A-game and A-Mental Game to the table.

Cheers~ Best of luck to everyone else on the tables~ =)

Good luck in May ! 


12 comments:

  1. Those are some sick results and a very solid month. To tell you the truth you inspire me in a way! Make me want to grind more, put in some extra hours to get prepared for the SNE chase next year. As for moving up to 200NL, I agree with the mental side of things. The only thing that would justify moving up is the rake back and playing about 25% less a day. Hey, who needs 200NL and all the extra thinking and headache that comes with it when you're making 20 big ones by playing a game you're comfortable with and a game that you can play subconsciously eih?

    How much did you make per month on average (profits + rake back separately) when grinding for SNE? How many hands did you play per day and how many days per week? If my calculations are right, I need to play 10kh of 100NL per day, every day till about approximately December 15 to get SNE. Or play 7kh 100NL and 2kh 200NL for the same amount of time. What do you suggest I do, which is the best option do you think? Adding 100NL 6max Zoom...?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would advise against chasing supernova elite at 100nl, it really hurts your game a ton and is quite stressful .

      Have you made 100k vpps per month before? It's better to ease into it then to jump into chasing sne

      Delete
    2. Just go through some of my previous posts,
      I started chasing sne at June2013-dec2013, created thread.!

      Delete
    3. I'm not planning on chasing SNE at 100NL, and no, I have never made 100k VPPs per month. Actually it has only been a few months since I play on Pokerstars.com. I used to play on a french website (Winamax) before.

      I'm most certainly not going to start chasing SNE this year. I'll start next January. Currently i'm only grinding 100NL (4 6max zoom and 2 FR). I'm playing around 10kh (1,6kh an hour when playing 6 tables). I'm doing quite well for the moment. I plan on playing 250kh till the end of May to see how things go and move up to 200NL in 3 months or so. BUT, when I go to the Pokerstars website and use the VPP calculator, it shows me that I should get 3,2kVPPs for 9k hands played at 100NL 6max, I usually only get about 2k VPPs.. Why is that? Are their calculations based on a 30/20 player or what?

      How the hell did you make SNE from June to Dec? That's sick.

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    4. thats cause you're probably playing really tight...and 6max zoom will always be less vpps/hand than regspeed.

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    5. It's not so much too tight or too loose vpp.

      The more involved you are in pots the more rake!

      For example- if you have 20% 3bet but person always folds; no rake is generated.

      A little more active post flop is probably good for winrate and vpps :)

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Thanks Pete:)

      And naw , just fish on heater :)

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  3. Hi!
    As I see, you had about 230K hands per month. Hou many hours do you spend in a day at poker and how many tables in same time do you open?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I mentioned both in posts.

      This month about 183h /6h per day.

      I play 6-tables

      Delete
  4. Any updates for may? I think you should post every 10 days, like 10º 20º and 30º day of the month! haha.

    love this blog, it motivates me a lot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. On a ridiculous downer at the moment. Getting cracked preflop, running into nuts, 20stacks below .

      Bleh will post eventually :P

      Delete