January Round-Up

Thursday, January 31, 2008

As months go January has been my best so far with the bulk of my results compacted into this last week. Over the course of the month I have earned approximately $850 in rakeback, bought a 22" monitor from the store, cleared a $365 bonus and made $4254 at the tables over 41,300 hands. This lot totals around $5500 and works out at around $81 per hour played - a fantastic rate.

I don't want to open fresh wounds from recent comments within the blog, but my all in luck for the month finished at -$1361 so a significant recovery was made there latterly. My ptbb/100 this month was 2.6 and with all in equity adjustment it would be around 3.4. I'm happy with the money I've made and I'm glad that I made some recovery for my all in luck, as it was running away there for a while.

This month I qualified for Iron Man status for the first time so I'll be able to play in the 30k freeroll and I'm racking up a fair few bonus medals in the process. I didn't get through as many hours as I'd like to each month but I didn't play at all until about the 7th and it was probably the week after that before I got really stuck in. In February I'll hit the ground running and will be aiming to get through 60-80,000 hands. Achieving this goal should be easier as my 22" monitor from the FT store finally arrived giving me the ability to play up to 12 tables and potentially more if I'm willing to live with a little overlap on the vertical. It seems like just yesterday I stumbled onto Narena's blog and wondered how the hell he could play 12 tables of poker at a time and now I'm doing it myself with ease. I have every confidence I could play another 2 tables without affecting my overall performance.

To aid my multi-tabling and to keep the tilt monster at bay I emailed FT last week to request that my account be subjected to an indefinite chat ban. I simply could not help myself but argue with and criticise (i.e. educate) fish about their bad play when they got lucky. I have now played 3-4 days with the ban in place and it is bliss knowing that no matter how wound up I get I can't speak to them and thus arguments simply can't happen. I also have loads more time to make decisions as the only distraction from playing hands is when I'm trying to bash out a quick note on a player. In anyone finds chat a distraction to their game I highly recommend you request a chat ban. I wouldn't be surprised if it was worth 0.25ptbb/100 to my win rate such was the distraction and tilt that chat could cause me.

As for my play and strategy there really isn't much to report as it hasn't changed much. I've dropped a fair whack of my ‘SB complete' range meaning my VPIP from the SB is just 12.8% but is now a profitable playing position when there is no raise and I VP$IP. Unfortunately, dropping so many SB hands has brought my overall VPIP down to nit like levels but I think the money saved in the SB is probably worth more than appearing to be 2% looser overall. Besides, as I'm growing in confidence and bankroll I'm finding I'm a little more willing to play marginal hands and situations, where before I'd more readily take a low variance line. In the future I hope to move my bankroll up to $20,000 minimum and that will allow me some room to experiment with a few ideas I have. However, for the foreseeable future I'll be concentrating on income generation to prop up our finances as opposed to building a massive bankroll and working up through the levels.

Below is my Jan 2008 graph and below that my PokerEV graph for the same month:

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