March Review - Three In A Row Makes A Streak

I should probably feel better about March than I do. I ran pretty brutal for a good part of the month resulting in a few pretty major downswings (two being of the ~$2k, ~15BI variety), but despite this still managed a very respectable winrate. In addition, I had money riding on two prop bets (in one case my $2k to win $500, in the other my $1.25k to win $500) and I shipped both. Finally, I also binked the 200k VPP milestone bonus, thus giving me a lot of profit in March that came outside of pure table winnings and FPPs. Due to this additional profit, I managed my third straight month of > $20k profit. Not a bad start to 2010.

I still feel like the game quality at Stars has been good, though March did perhaps see a slight regression in this regard during the latter half of the month. The Flames continued shitting bed, and I broke out FFXIII for the PS3 to which I will dedicate a blog post with my thoughts in the near future.

More importantly, I also finished all the necessary booking for my big EPT Monte Carlo trip, which is followed by a week spent in France and England. The trip begins on April 23rd, beginning with a week in Monte Carlo where I'll be playing the EPT finale Main Event (using my second SNE tourney package for the buy in and accommodations). We'll then hop the train to Paris for two days (we being myself and my girlfriend, obviously), followed by four days in London with my father (whom emigrated to Canada from Britain immediately after graduation) as our tour guide.

Anyway, here's my graph/table for the month:


The Bottom Line:
$12053.30 table winnings
+$5166.56 FPP value (65482 VPPs x 5 FPPs/VPP x 1.6c/FPP)
+$2600 200k VPP milestone bonus ($3400 - $800 worth of FPPs to buy)
+$500 booger369's 10k in March over 200k max hands of 100NL FR prop bet
+$500 hard2tel's 40k in 31 days at 200NL FR prop bet
-$18 takesix loldonkament staking
-----------------------------------------
$20,801.86 USD total profit.

Because I'll be spending the latter week of April and the first week of May out of the country, I highly doubt my streak of $20k months will continue. Honestly, it would take nothing short of a miracle, given I plan on putting in a paltry 50k VPPs worth of volume each month. Hopefully I can keep the winrate steady, though the way I've been running lately that doesn't seem terribly likely. You never know though, maybe next session will be the one where I can occasionally win as a 90%+ favorite.

We've Got A Turd In The Punch Bowl

After watching the season premier of South Park, I've been trying to use the expression "turd in the punch bowl" as much as possible. Fortunately for me, it applies fairly well to two avenues I can blog about: poker in March, and the Calgary Flames.

Beginning with the latter, the Flames' season is all but done and it is nothing less than a colossal disappointment. That said, many hardcore fans are (understandably) overreacting. Going nuts and trading Kipprusoff and Iginla for picks to rebuild would not end well - luckily I don't think even Sutter (or whomever may be taking his job) will be that insane.

In terms of poker, I've encountered a ton of utterly ridiculous runbad in March. I've had three fairly significant downswings due to this, one of which came today (though I managed to almost entirely recover). You know it is getting bad when you are pleading to just win one out of ten times you get it in with 90%+ equity. On the positive, booger369 conceded his 10k in March at 100nl prop bet, which means I win $500. That's 2/2 on prop bets in March for me, bringing in $1k side profit. I'll also reach the 200k VPP milestone in a couple days which will yield $2.6k free money.

Despite not being close to the worst suckout in either equity or pot size that I've taken in the past week, for some reason the hand below struck me as funny. 4.5% equity is tons - I've been one outed with one card to come three times already in March, so if 2% can win 4.5% is a fistpump stackoff!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
UTG+1 ($376.40)
MP1 ($200)
MP2 ($202)
CO ($177)
Button ($133.65)
Hero (SB) ($394)
BB ($254)
UTG ($227.40)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, A
5 folds, Button bets $8, Hero raises to $28, 1 fold, Button calls $20

Flop: ($58) 6, 6, Q (2 players)
Hero bets $23, Button raises to $82, Hero raises to $278, Button calls $23.65 (All-In)

Turn: ($269.30) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($269.30) 8 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $269.30 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had 9, 10 (straight, ten high).
Hero had A, A (two pair, Aces and sixes).
Outcome: Button won $266.30

First One Down

I have now officially binked one of my two props this month, with hard2tel giving up on his quest to make 40k table winnings over 31 days at 200NL FR (on FTP). I put up $2k to his $500, so I'm +$500 on the deal. Total action on the bet was his $25k vs $100k from various 2p2ers, so it was truly a man's bet when you consider the stakes.

I couldn't wait any longer to bust out FFXIII, so since Sunday I've been putting in serious time. I think I've played a shade under 20 hours so far. It starts slow in terms of gameplay, but so far I have nothing but excellent things to say about it. I'll save anything else FFXIII related for when I have a blog post entirely dedicated to my experience with the game.

I did manage to play some poker on Tuesday, after slacking mightily and not playing a hand on both Sunday and Monday. My Tuesday session was decent (though a bit on the boring, not many 200bb pots won/lost), ~3k hands and ended up +$450 in addition to ~$100 FPP value. I should hopefully hit my first major milestone bonus of the year (200k VPPs) on the last day of March.

Prop Bet Action

I've been running pretty abysmally lately, it feels like 2009 all over again. Rather than rant further, I really should mention that I have given action to two prop bets this month. The results of which have thus far been positive from my betting stance.

The first prop to which I gave action was booger369's 10k in March over 200k max hands of 100NL FR bet. I met booger in Vegas (good guy), I've played a bunch with him at both 100NL and 200NL on Stars and he's a respected 2p2er. He ended up getting 2.5:1 odds, with me personally putting up $1250 to win $500. In hindsight, I think this is actually a pretty reasonable line for the bet - at the time of my betting, I thought it was definitely a +EV wager, but with the state of the games in 2010, 2.5:1 is likely a good line given the variables. Thus far booger is moderately behind pace with a little less than 80k hands left to be played.

The second prop I'm participating in is hard2tel's 40k in 31 days at 200NL FR bet. This is a very large scale bet, with h2t putting up $25k to win $100k, getting 4:1 odds. I personally have $2k on the line to win $500. In this bet I'm absolutely certain my wager was +EV, as earning $40k at 200NL FR in one month is borderline impossible. h2t is an awesome guy and great player, but he's behind pace and appears to be pretty close to throwing in the towel.

Anyway, here's a random hand from Saturday where a fish shows us the expert way to play AA:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)
MP1 ($100)
MP2 ($44.65)
MP3 ($73.80)
CO ($18.50)
Button ($100)
SB ($130.10)
Hero (BB) ($111.05)
UTG ($20)
UTG+1 ($104.15)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 6, 6
7 folds, SB calls $0.50, Hero bets $4.50, SB calls $3.50

Flop: ($9) 4, 7, 5 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $6, SB raises to $18, Hero calls $12

Turn: ($45) 8 (2 players)
SB bets $21, Hero raises to $88.55 (All-In), SB calls $67.55

River: ($222.10) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $222.10 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had A, A (two pair, Aces and sevens).
Hero had 6, 6 (straight, eight high).
Outcome: Hero won $219.10

Waking Up

Nothing much to report from the poker front lately. I took both Sunday and Tuesday off, playing only a short session on Monday during which I ran comically bad.

On the weekend I received in the mail an alarm clock I had ordered that among other things had internal memory and was able to play MP3s. Unfortunately, it ended up being Hong Kong garbage with brutal firmware, English instructions that were impossible to comprehend, and to top things off randomly wiped its memory and reverted its language setting to Chinese.

Needless to say, I wasn't terribly impressed. So, on Monday I decided I might as well get spendy and I picked up Sony's ICFCL75IPB Multi-function AM/FM Clock Radio. Thus far I am very happy with the purchase, and hope it will help me shave off an hour or more of unecessary oversleeping each day.

Winrate

To most serious online players, winrate is everything. Even when sensibilities suggest that average hourly earnings be the statistic of importance, it seems that time and time again the poker macho man is all about the winrate.

In 2008 as I broke into small stakes and became a high volume regular, I established a solid winrate over a fairly large amount of hands (I believe the figure was in the 2.5-3ptBB ballpark, it's been a while!). In 2009 I embarked on the SNE grind, and my winrate dropped some - it was still respectable (a shade under 2ptBB on the year), but no longer upper tier. Thanks to the huge amount of rakeback SNE generates my hourly was most definitely higher than the previous year, but through the massive grind and tonnes of well documented run bad I couldn't help the nagging feeling that my results weren't where I would have liked them to be.

In 2010, my winrate over the ~450k hands I've played to date is the highest its ever been. I feel like I'm crushing the games, especially considering I'm a 24 tabling nit that plays heavy volume relative to most. This lead me to think: what changed?

I have mentioned in previous posts (mainly in January) that I tweaked my game a bit to start the new year. This has surely been a factor, but to be honest, I don't think it is as significant as I would like it to be. In 2009, I had to play a pretty insane amount of hands to reach my goal. This was poor for my mindset and focus level. In addition, it meant playing more hours outside of prime time and prime days - that is, the days and times when the games are the softest. I believe this is the largest factor contributing to the improvement. Further, I feel like the overall game quality of Pokerstars SSFR has improved in 2010. This means that Pokerstars is doing good things, and if the upcoming changes do (almost) put an end to shortstacking, things will only get much better.

Finally, variance has most definitely been a factor. Even over extremely large samples variance isn't negligible, and I'm certain that I have run quite a bit better this year than last.

2010:

3.25ptBB/100 works for me. To be honest, if at the end of the year I'm a 2.75ptBB/100 winner I'd still consider the year a massive success. Hell, even 2.5 sounds pretty appetizing.

I guess I should also mention my Saturday grind was great. I ran well (no fooling, not just average, but GOOD), and was happy with the way I played. Add today to a great Friday and pretty decent Thursday, and it's been a damn sexy weekend financially.

Near Miss

During the past week I've run the worst of this year thus far. Thankfully, after a large downswing (~15 BIs) early in the week I did manage a respectable Thursday followed by a rather monstrous Friday. Had I been able to fade a couple 2-3 outers in huge pots on Friday I would have easily had my first ever 3k profit day, but alas it was not to be.

Here's a graph of the full stretch, huge downswing included at the start:


Below is my favorite hand from Saturday. Villain is a bad reg who almost never folds to cbets, but manages to break even so he's obviously not going to mindlessly stack any pair 100bb deep. I really like my river c/shove because he basically can't have straights/sets but I absolutely can. In addition, he has busted draws a fair bit too.

(Ugh, I can't convert the hand because the convertor I use doesn't support Euro tables! You'll have to deal with raw text I guess.)

PokerStars Game #41068901513: Hold'em No Limit (€0.50/€1.00 EUR) - 2010/03/12 16:18:37 MT [2010/03/12 18:18:37 ET]
Table 'Sampo V' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: Ronfar3 (€100.50 in chips)
Seat 2: bertucho (€130.75 in chips)
Seat 3: machiaktzu (€232.15 in chips)
Seat 4: Levy Process (€111.40 in chips)
Seat 5: SoNe1988 (€144.90 in chips)
Seat 6: floppeyone (€100 in chips)
Seat 8: CI58 (€145.90 in chips)
Seat 9: TheGraveWolf (€157.35 in chips)
Ronfar3: posts small blind €0.50
bertucho: posts big blind €1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ronfar3 [Ah 8h]
machiaktzu: folds
Levy Process: folds
SoNe1988: folds
floppeyone: folds
CI58: folds
TheGraveWolf: folds
Ronfar3: raises €2 to €3
bertucho: calls €2
*** FLOP *** [Jd 9d 7s]
Ronfar3: bets €4
bertucho: calls €4
*** TURN *** [Jd 9d 7s] [6s]
Ronfar3: bets €11
bertucho: calls €11
*** RIVER *** [Jd 9d 7s 6s] [Qh]
Ronfar3: checks
bertucho: bets €20
Ronfar3: raises €62.50 to €82.50 and is all-in
bertucho: folds
Uncalled bet (€62.50) returned to Ronfar3
Ronfar3 collected €74 from pot
Ronfar3: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot €76 | Rake €2
Board [Jd 9d 7s 6s Qh]
Seat 1: Ronfar3 (small blind) collected (€74)
Seat 2: bertucho (big blind) folded on the River
Seat 3: machiaktzu folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: Levy Process folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: SoNe1988 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: floppeyone folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: CI58 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: TheGraveWolf (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Some additional positives: Lunar remains awesome and the Flames have won four straight. I really do hope the Flames can sneak into playoffs, but given the schedules of the three teams fighting for the last two playoff spots in the West, it is going to be really tough and they're definitely an underdog.

Polarizing

Over the last couple days it seems like things have either gone really well or really poorly. I ran into the ass end of variance on Thursday, ending my sessions 550bbs ($700+) below AIEV. Thankfully I booked a solid win on Friday, shipping $1.5k and running a beastly 150bbs above(!!) AIEV. To continue with the polar positive/negative theme, thus far in March I've run really awful at 600NL (over a super small sample, obv), great at 400NL (again, smallish sample), really awful at 200NL, and great at 100NL. Everything is happening in polarized pairs.

Similarly, the Flames played a lousy game against the Wild on Wednesday, but rebounded nicely and actually managed to score a bunch of goals against the Devils on Friday. I still don't believe the new look Flames will be make the playoffs however, and even if they did somehow squeak into the 8th seed their chances against SJ or CHI wouldn't look good.

On Wednesday I picked up my copy of the PSP Lunar remake. As someone who very much enjoyed the first remake of Lunar: Silver Star Story for the PS1, I've been very impressed with this latest offering. It doesn't hurt that it must be 7+ years since I've played the first Lunar - but at the very least the upgraded visuals have been down right impressive. I'm going to have to use some big time willpower to not interrupt my Lunar play through with FFXIII when it is released in a few days.

Here's a fun hand from Friday vs a very LAG reg whom for whatever reason was playing 100NL rather than his usual 400/600NL and had been spewing like crazy.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (8 handed)
MP2 ($40)
Hero (CO) ($118.10)
Button ($87)
SB ($220.15)
BB ($20)
UTG ($101.50)
UTG+1 ($18.50)
MP1 ($32.65)

Preflop: Hero is CO with A, 7
4 folds, Hero bets $3, 1 fold, SB raises to $11, 1 fold, Hero calls $8

Flop: ($23) A, 5, A (2 players)
SB bets $12, Hero calls $12

Turn: ($47) 3 (2 players)
SB bets $31, Hero calls $31

River: ($109) 10 (2 players)
SB bets $166.15 (All-In), Hero calls $64.10 (All-In)

Total pot: $237.20 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB had 8, 5 (two pair, Aces and fives).
Hero had A, 7 (three of a kind, Aces).
Outcome: Hero won $234.20

WTF Are You Thinking Sutter?

Boyd for a 4th? BOYD FOR A 4th!?

I can live with bringing in Staois. He's a warrior, but too old and his 2.2 mil contract being added for next year is retarded. I don't mind the McBackup for Toskala trade because his contract expires after this season.

But a good, young player who should have been given far more opportunities up until this time in his career for a bag of fucking pucks? Fuck you Sutter! You're officially insane.

(Oh yeah, it's trade deadline day in the NHL.)