February ended up being a pretty epic month. I squeaked out something like $10k, but I’m going to go ahead and call this month a fail. I was on pace for my best month ever got up pretty quickly to $80k at my peak, but after that it was basically just straight down to finish up only $10k. I had one +$30k day and two -$30k days along with a bunch of plus or minus $5-$20k days thrown in. I think my game selection really fell off at the end of the month and when good 7 or 8 games stopped running I still really wanted to play and ended up sitting with some fairly tough regs which it’s pretty questionable about whether I had an edge against or not.
On the bright side, I think it improved my game immensely (though cost me a lot to find these leaks), improved my tolerance to big $$ swings and I did manage to end up with a pretty good profit I suppose. It’s just a bit frustrating I let the monster month get away from me but you know what they say, “Easy come, easy go” right?
For March I’ve officially sworn off pokerstars. I seem to continuously bust my account and have to redeposit there. I don’t know if it’s the software, the players, my bad luck, my psyche from having a large % of my stars roll at each table at any given time or what, but I’ve been losing there for months now. It took me awhile to accept it, but much like Dodgyken did I’ve just decided I’m going to stop playing there with the exception of the occasional Sunday donkaments as it’s just a big money pit for me which I’ve got to stop.
Here’s a breakdown of the various games for the month. I’m positive I’m missing some hands as there’s like a $7k difference between my recorded and actual results and obviously the 2-7 TD hands aren’t here, but this is what I’ve got.
NLHE
Not much to say here other than I played some big pots this month. I had both some run good hands and not so run good hands
LHE
I had another session with BigBadBar the other day which went great. He really hammered home some nice points and plugged a couple of leaks I was obviously having. Since then I’ve been playing some 5/10 to 15/30 headsup LHE and really improving in this game I feel. The only problem with headsup is the rake can be a real KILLER as pretty much every pot sees a flop and at least a cbet which is obviously raked and starts to add up pretty quickly.
PLO
Pretty clear I ran bad in plo this month as it’s one of my best games relative to everyone else and there’s just no way my expectation is breakeven here. These hands come to mine where I hit my nut anti-gin card and easily fold the river otherwise. Binking bottom set and Q high flush no good
O8
My run bad in plo is obviously made up for my run good in o8 here. I think I have a firm understanding of this game and play it pretty well now. Clearly my “tuition” aka huge losses I took almost six months ago when first learning this game are starting to pay off.
Stud Hi
I changed my style a bit this month and tried to play a bit more pots and fold less. It didn’t work out so well. I’ve gone back over my hand histories and tightened up considerably since, and hope to see my results go back to the green for this game next month.
Stud8
Pretty clear I still suck at this game. My goal for march is to play a lot of low stakes stud8, get some more coaching and finally crack this game and figure out what I am doing so wrong.
Razz
By far my best stud game right now. Some good 100/200 razz games were running for a couple days I had a nice win in. I’m definitely still learning and improving though. Here’s a monster razz hand I played. I played it bad, but Eli played it even worse. At the time I thought I had 35-40% equity on 4th, but was a bit surprised afterwards to learn I was only 32%. Definitely messed this one up and overcalling 4th is absolutely the right play. 7th is a bit interesting I think, in pro poker tools I’m 54% vs alexonmoon if he has two cards seven and below that are unpaired on 4th and got a random 7th street. I have Eli boardlocked and know he’s calling, still not sure I like the raise and this just shows the danger of not drawing smooth (76 is so much worse than 75).
Thats it for now, gl in March!