The holiday season hasn’t been kind to me – in the second half of December I’ve thrown away $150. A lot of it was literally thrown away too. In a recent session I discovered that turning up the aggression slightly was working well – one move in particular where you’re out of position and it’s the kind of flop you’d cbet (dry board, single A or K on it), so you check and let your opponent do the cbet, and then you raise. Previously I’d call, and lead the turn, but obviously this has the downside of giving another card. So the flop check-raise was proving successful, and then I watched an awesome video on being a LAG. This unfortunately had the effect of me spewing $40 in a few hundred hands!

I think the differences between the session where the aggro worked and the one where I spewed were;

a) First session I’d already played for a while, and hadn’t shown myself to be anything out of the ordinary, while the second session I sat down and started firing away. Any idiot could put down as a aggrotard, and this is what happened (my check-raise was reraised every time just about).
b) I picked my spots more carefully the first time. I had got to know the players at the tables, and was able to pick and choose when to push harder. The second session I’d just started, and was basically trying to bully complete unknowns.
c) The second session I didn’t back down. I often continued against those players who pushed back at my 3bets. Consequently I ran into AA several times quite quickly. At one point I had to three barrel bluff, and the final river push finally made the guy fold, but how stupid is that! It worked once, but I don’t think it was a profitable thing to do…

So anyway, 2010 I will stop being an idiot. I’m still bankrolled for nl10, but only 10 buy-ins above the move down point – if I don’t even out I’ll be back at NL5 by February. However, you’ve got to experiment with your game I believe, so I don’t feel too bad (it’s not as if I’m going to turn pro any time soon).

Ok, onto the 2009 review;

Cash:

Tourney:

Well, it’s in the black! (the $40 lost yesterday was 2010, so close thing to ruining the year’s results, lol).

The New Year, 2009
This time last year I’d dropped right down to NL2 – most of my game up to that point had been NL10 at Full Tilt (which was their lowest stakes at that time), and it hadn’t been going very well. So I moved to Pokerstars and dropped down, first to NL5 and then to NL2 as I continued to lose.

The Redeposit – April
In April I finally lost my entire account. I redeposited, and for some reason known only to myself at the time I went back to NL10. I then had a massive heater, gaining $350 in 20k hands. How that happened I’ve no idea! I should go back and look at those hands in detail, but as far as I can remember I was very very lucky – PokerTracker all-in performance says $120 over expected value at its peak.

The Cash Out – July
Inevitably the heater ran out, and I lost a bunch of $$$ pretty quickly. I think I’d upped the number of tables I was playing, plus overconfidence, and that led to much spewage. As it came crashing down a personal credit card problem suddenly arose and I had to withdraw my entire roll to pay for it. In hindsight this was actually a useful thing to happen to me. Firstly, it showed the kindness of friends as they immediately transferred to me a little bit of spare cash to keep playing. Secondly it made me decide to follow bankroll management properly. Up until that point I’d play NL10 if I had over $100 in my account (or over only $50 sometimes). Starting from $30 with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to redeposit in the next couple of months really made sure I did the right thing to avoid going busto again.

The Grind
So I returned to NL2 again. This time my game was much stronger and I rapidly built up enough to move to NL5. I carried on playing well and clipped $200 to move into NL10. I then lost a few buy-ins, and moved back down. Ground up, bust down. I did this 3 times (the three peaks at 41k, 51k and 65k hands). I suddenly realised I was doing the bankroll management slightly wrong – I had a single threshold of $200 where I moved either up or down. What I needed to do was set the move-up threshold higher than the move down one (ie $250 to move up, $200 to move down). This way I’d have a 5 buy-in margin to lose before having to move down.

The Donkament Win – November
I was within $20 of the $250 threshold, and it was taking ages (it says $60 on that graph, but I was also getting rakeback and bonuses which aren’t shown on the graph). It was November now, and I seemed to be on the most miserable downswing ever – no big spews, but not a single +ve session for ages and ages. Then one Sunday I was messing around playing some MTTs (as you can see from the graph above, I don’t tourney much), and suddenly went deep in a $2 180 man SNG. I walked away with $70 – I was finally in NL10 territory again.

The Final Fall
I seemed to be playing well and built my roll up to $450. It didn’t feel like a heater this time, and I felt confident that I was winning appropriate hands rather than sucking out. I decided to look closer at rakeback and see which site was the best for me, and so I split my roll amongst 4 sites – Full Tilt, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet and Party Poker. The difference between the sites was amazing – at NL10 UB and PP was full of limpers who’d try to see every street, while FT and PS still had its usual compliment of 2p2 players. Despite this I’ve failed to profit from them, and even worse seemed to have spewed a ton of money.

Final Roundup
So what’s the roundup of the year? I have to be honest with myself and say I’m not very good at poker. Almost 100k hands, and still being buffeted around by variance and barely keeping above the rake. In fact since my chart shows only +$44 profit, it’s obvious my entire roll ($350 at end of 2009) is made entirely of rakeback and bonuses.

Is that a big problem? I guess not as I still enjoy playing. I still enjoy the challenge of learning a game where it’s clear that gaining knowledge and experience will lift you through the ranks. The frustration is coming from seeing the stakes I play as a goal in itself.

So my resolution for 2010 is to let go of the idea that I’m not a winning player if I can’t ascend rapidly up the stakes. I will play poker at the stakes my bankroll allows, and concentrate on being the best player I can for those stakes. I guess ascending graphs of $$$ won will show whether I’m succeeding, although for me it’ll be how I achieved it that’ll be more important…