Making a Little Progress

Thursday, November 15, 2007

I've now tucked most of another week of 9-tabling NL$200 under my belt and things finally seem to be settling down a little. I really hope this isn't a case of speaking too soon but I think/hope I've found my game and something I can consistently beat. I'm sure Smart Poker and Raylapsley will be the first to point out if I'm actually playing the level like a muppet and thus must be running hot.

So far I've made $3,881 running at 2.69ptbb/100 over 36,000 hands. I'm trailing by $600 for my all in luck so my adjusted win rate would be just over 3ptbb/100 (6bb/100). As I said in a previous post I'd take that 9-tabling and, of course, this takes no account of rakeback which is piling up pretty quickly as well.

I was introduced mid-week to a program called Set-o-Meter which is yet another quirky little poker program that reads info from your pokertracker database. It tells you how many pairs you are dealt, how many flops you see, how many sets you've made, how much money you've made with each set and also gives you info on set vs set, AA vs KK and set vs overpair. I've already mentioned that I'm underperforming in all in luck according to PokerEV and I'm pleased to see that I'm not running hot with hands that I'm hitting. I've had AA vs KK 5 times and won 3 yet I've lost all 4 times I've had KK vs AA. I have also not flopped a set as often as I theoretically should and, annoyingly, I'm down for all times I've flopped a set of eights. I checked the HH and it's grim as fuck (beats).

So all things considered I don't think I'm running sick hot and thus I've got my fingers and toes crossed that I can maintain a more consistent and reasonable win rate. As for my bankroll, it has finally broken through the $10,000 barrier for the first time and currently sits at around $11,700 (including this months pending rakeback). Theoretically, if I average 25 hours a week I could hit $20,000 before Christmas if I can maintain my current rate of earn. It would be a big relief to be able to withdraw $10,000 during the festive period to keep us ticking over and still retain a $10,000 bankroll for play at the NL$200 level.

Hopefully I'll be in a position early in 2008 to consider buying a new computer with a 30" monitor allowing me to play 12 tables or more. That and some discipline to keep pushing my hours up per week would hopefully yield nice profits. However, no chickens are being counted from the delicate eggs that I'm currently nurturing.

As a final aside, I ran Set-o-Meter against my old database to examine the state of play for my 6-max 'play for a living' sample since August 2007. As I've already reported previously I was running about $2600 down on all in luck for that period and I was encouraged to see that my Set-o-Meter data was truly horrible reading. I had my overpairs cracked waaaaaaaaay more by sets than the other way around and I definitely don't have a wild leak for not laying overpairs down. I simply wasn't hitting sets when my opponents had strong(ish) hands. I was also getting raped in the battle of aces and kings and generally performing below mathematical expectation across the board. In short, I was running sick bad! I've said it before (and it caused a stir) but I still believe (know) I can beat 6-max games however, the variance drives me nuts and I just don't need the stress. I think the only way I'd return to 6-max is if I had like 500+ times the buy in and thus could drop 10+ buy ins in as many minutes and not batter an eyelid.

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