Thursday, December 24, 2009

Small Gains

I won a small amount, still a win.

BR - $329

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Finally

I had a winning day today, a real winning day, thankfully. I realized I had been making mistakes, which I hadn't really realized. I think I've refined it a bit more, become a bit more patient. I think I had been going all in earlier than I should have. We'll see.

Today's BR - $321.53
Yesterday's BR - $283

New Goal: When I get back to $400, I'll move back up to 10.4 DoN SNG-T

Monday, December 21, 2009

SNG

I have been playing lightly since Thursday. I have played a small sample of normal SNG's and I have a positive ROI, so i'm going to keep playing. I continue to lose at DoN... not sure why. Standard SNG's are a lot more fun, but hard to play many at a time.

BR - $305

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Back to Playing

I went back to playing this morning. I played a few standard SNG turbos. I am going to go back to playing these and see how they go. It had been a while since I had played them, forgot what playing Heads Up is like... I am going to start really low limits, like $3.4, because I have to re-learn how to play SNG's. Double or Nothings are just too frustrating. My ROI in them dropped from 5% (acceptable) to %1.5, which is a waste of time.

The one downside is that I find it much harder to multi-table SNG's as opposed to DoN's. I think I can get 4 going at a time. Standard SNG's also seem to take longer.

The frustrating part is that I feel like I am starting over a bit and my bankroll may suffer even more since I have to re-train on SNG's and may lose a bit at first. I'm going to play 100 at the $3.4 level and then see what my ROI is and go from there.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Horrible

I don't know. I really don't know. During November, I made consistant money. It wasn't huge numbers, but it was consistant, over 1000 games. December has been disastrous. My Bankroll has been more than split in half. This morning I went down to the 5.2 games and did even worse.

My game is about the same, so I'm really not sure what is happening. I'm going to make some changes.

1. Only play 5 games at a time (not six). I need to focus a bit more and I think playing 5 games helps.

2. Take days off. I have played about 50 days straight and I think burn out may be a big problem with me right now. I am not going to play another game until Thursday morning. I also need to distance myself from this horrible run.

3. I may set a number of games to play each day. I'll play that number if I'm winning or losing. Probably about 25 or 30.

4. This isnt' specific... but I need to look at the big picture and not each day's individual win/loss. I'm still going to record it but I need to look at the big picture.

5. I'm moving down to 5.2 games. Hopefully the competition will be worse and I'll be able to lick my wounds.

I could be titlting. When I have a horrible run, I just want to quit, and the SNG's I'm involved in tend to suffer because I play a little worse.

This has been frustrating. I worked hard, played well, and made about 600, now it's down to about 300 in a matter of days... and I cannot tell why. The idea of making 1000 in profits now seems laughable.

My New Goal is to work off my bonus while not losing. Seriously, I'd be happy with breaking even for a week.

Today's Stats
Win/Loss: -42
# of Games Played: 10 DoN SNG-T $5.4
BR - 321

Yesterday's Stats
Win/Loss: -10-ish
# of Games Played: 26 DoN SNG-T $10.4
BR - 363.43

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Another Horrible Day

I lost 105 again yesterday. I'm not sure what is happening. I won almost every day for a month, then within 4 days I have 3 losses, two of which are huge (over 100). My game hasn't changed, but that is such a huge loss to just think it's variance. I had a 9 game losing streak yesterday. How is that even possible in Double or Nothing?
Overall, I"m still in the positive by over 300, which is good, I guess. It's just so frustrating. I might experiment with ring games today.

Yesterday's Stats
Win/Loss: -$105.6
VPP: 78
# of Games: 39 DoN SNG-T 10.4
BR - 372.35

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Win

I only played for about an hour yesterday. It was important for my poker self esteem to get a win, so once I had a decent win, I quit.

Yesterday's Stats
Win/Los: +$36
BR: 477.95
VPP: 20
# of Games Played: 10 games of DoN SNG Turbo 10.4

Friday, December 11, 2009

Bad Day

I am no longer going to Gold VIP this month... here's why...

I was waking up at 4:45 AM every morning before work, in order to get enough games in. I was forcing myself to play 51 games/day in order to stay on pace for Gold VIP. It was a mistake.

I was exhausted yesterday and it strongly effected my play. I had my biggest lost so far, $138.4. Basically a week's worth of work is gone. On the positive side, I had a horrible loss but my bankroll is only back to what it was a week ago.

I had some horrible bad beats that caused a lot of my losing. A lot of it was just variance. However, in the later games, I just could not focus and made a couple horrible decisions. I should never play when I'm exhausted. I also realize the importance of not playing everyday.

I slept over 10 hours last night and will probably not play at all today.

It was very frustrating to lose $156 in two days, but I wont $100 three days ago, so I can absorb the loss. Lesson learned.

Yesterday's Stats
Win/Loss: -$138
BR: $442
VPP: 94
# of Games: 47 DoN SNG-Turbo

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Stats

Yesterday, I lost 12$ and played a ton of games. I had a horrible downswing in the morning, but almost fully recovered.
What I learned:
I need to take breaks and not play too many games in a day. I get tired and start playing worse.

Yesterday's Stats
Bank Roll: $580.75
Win/Losses: -$12
Played 71 DoN 10.4
VPP's Earned: 142

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Goals

I like to set goals in poker. My goal this month is to make Goldstar VIP status. I have to play 51 games per day (I play DoN 10.4 SNG). I might not be able to accomplish this goal because when I go home at Christmas break, my parents might not have a reliable internet connection. If I don't make it this month, I'll try it again next month.

My secondary and larger objective is to get my bankroll up to $1000. At that level I'm going to take a shot at the $20.8 DN SNGs.

To give a little background. About 2 months ago I started playing poker online. It was mostly for fun but I made a decent ROI at SNGs on Full Tilt. I deposited some money into Pokerstars, mainly to take advantage of the deposit bonus. I started playing DoN because I can play many of them at a time. I started making some profit, but I'm still burning off the $600 deposit, which will take some time.

My bankroll is $589 (this does not include my $600 seed money, because I plan on pulling that out once I clear the bonus).

Yesterday's Stats
Bankroll - $589
VPP's Earned - 108
Win/Loss: +$100