April Review - Great Winrate, Fail Volume

Going into April, I expected that I'd have a reasonably big month as there were five full Fridays and Saturdays. Additionally, I projected that I'd put in 150k+ hands of volume and hit the 200k VPP milestone bonus for a free $2.6k. I failed pretty hard in the volume department, and came up just short of the milestone for this month. I'll be hitting it tomorrow to kick off May in all likelihood. Part of the volume issue can be attributed to the whole "Black Friday" fiasco, which demotivated me a little during that particular weekend until things got figured out, and going forward definitely altered the landscape of game quality relative to time of day, which I am still in the process of adjusting to. More than anything though, I simply failed to put in as many hours as I would have liked, which is something of a theme for 2011 so far.

Fortunately for me, during the latter half of April I ran as well as I have since January of last year. Hands actually held up most of the time. Game quality has been solid, and the result was a very nice winrate. Thanks to the table winnings being so high, I managed to earn in ~130k hands what I had hoped to in ~150k+ with a $2.6k milestone thrown in. In this respect, I'm very happy with how April went. To put things in perspective, I took more off the tables this month than in January and February combined, and my winrate wasn't epically fail in either of those months. It certainly helped that a lot of my run good took place at $200NL this month, rather than lower.



The bottom line:
$12,118.99 table winnings
+$2,897.05 FPP value (51733 VPPs * 3.5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$54.66 FTP rakeback
+$200 FTP deposit bonus
+$470 coaching
+$200 SCOOP deposit bonus
---------------------------------------
$15,940.70 USD total profit.

It was great to have a strong showing this month given that 2011 had been on the rough side so far. Hopefully I can keep things going into May, which will get off to a strong start with an immediate milestone bonus. I know I seem to say this every month, but perhaps I'll work a little harder over the next 31 days and not be disappointed in my effort level come review time in May.

Cream of the Crop

It appears what may have changed most in the short term with respect to the game status on Pokerstars is the time at which the games are the juiciest. Given the US market was instantly removed, this shouldn't surprise anyone. Late night EST used to be a great time to play, but it seems now early afternoon EST is best. I guess we'll see how it looks going forward.

There's a pretty damn epic MSPaint thread on 2+2 using a "before/after Black Friday" template. There are many awesome contributions, but I'd like to post my favorite three - kudos to the authors!

Video Games Live

Even though the games weren't that bad on the weekend following Black Friday, I had a rough couple days due to running like ass. It didn't phase me near as much as usual because every US reg is running a hell of a lot worse. It looks likes once a bunch of US regs relocate to Canada or elsewhere game quality could take an immense dive for the foreseeable near future which would be awful, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes.

I took Sunday completely off, and spent the evening with my girlfriend taking in some culture at Video Games Live which was in town.



It was an entertaining show, and strangely enough my first time in the Jack Singer Concert Hall, which is a very nice venue. The Megaman set to kick things off was very well done, and the featured pianist did an excellent FF medley which contained a solid minute of "At Zanarkand", which is quite iconic. Even though it's not a real favorite of mine, I'd always thought that hearing One Winged Angel performed by a live orchestra/choir would be great, and it was. I was very happy when the encore was arguably my favorite video game track ever, "Time's Scar" from Chrono Cross - a game which was saved from being a huge disappointment by having one of the greatest soundtracks of all time. At any rate, it was definitely worth the money (wasn't cheap), and I'd go again.

I finished up Radiant Historia for the DS very recently, and while it barely held my attention through to completion, it felt average at best. I'll be trying out LoH: Trails in the Sky for the PSP next, which has been reviewed quite well.

So, Professor: would you say that it's time for everyone to panic?

Professor: Yes I would, Kent.

As I'm sure just about everyone who reads this blog knows, today has quickly become known as Black Friday amongst the online poker community. The FBI/DOJ have indicted the three major online poker sites (Stars, FTP, Absolute/UB). We really don't know much at this point, but it really does seem as though at the very least US players will be screwed for the time being.

Thank God I'm Canadian. Barring a complete meltdown this will obviously affect game quality, but as long as the sites stay open and player money is accessible it won't be the end of the world. Still, until I know more I really don't feel like grinding today, so I decided to hit and run a +$500 session over 1000 hands. The fact that the sites haven't published official statements at this point is perhaps the most troubling indicator.

*Edit*
Looks like for now it'll be business as usual for the rest of the world on Stars, minus the US regs and US fish. I feel really bad for US based pros who are having their livelihood eliminated for the time being.

Hockey Tape and Carpet Spot Cleaner

I was reading Frosty's latest blog entry (see blogroll for link) regarding the passing of his computer chair and it occurred to me I forgot to mention my own chair issue which occurred a few weeks ago.

I'm still using the same chair I purchased in 2008 a few months after I started this blog and took up online poker. I even blogged about the purchase back then. It has been a very good chair to me. A few weeks back after what I can only assume was something of a bad beat I stood up and quickly dropped down harder than normal into my chair, at which point one of the wheel bottomed legs broke at the wheel. For those that don't know me, I am not anywhere close to being a heavy individual so this was something of a surprise. That aside, this event obviously did not make me happy, and to make matters worse the broken wheel distributed grease onto the rug underneath it.

Fortunately for me however, two products came to the rescue. Growing up in Canada, a great many children - boys in particular, learn very quickly just about any problem can be solved with hockey tape. I rarely play hockey days, but still keep hockey tape well stocked in the house not for its intended purpose, but because it is awesome at just about everything. While the broken chair leg no longer rolls, it is solid as a rock being held together by nothing more than hockey tape.

The carpet grease stain was similarly easy to remedy. I'm still a fairly recent home owner - it's been just over two years since I bought my house. Early on in my home owning experience I discovered that carpet stain removers actually work (the first major stain I had to deal with was my girlfriend exploding a pen on the carpeting, which is pretty close to worst case scenario!). While they may not work entirely flawlessly, given the difficulty of the job they have, you would expect a cheap supermarket solution to be half assed at best - yet the results are anything but. I have in the past described the effectiveness of the product as witchcraft, but I'm certainly thankful it is as useful as it is.

Not much to report in terms of poker over the past two days. I had a pretty awful short session yesterday, followed by an absolutely not awful half hour session today where after ~600 hands of close to $1/hand poker I elected to hit and run for a couple reasons.

Tomorrow I get to drive my parents to the airport for the second time in ~20 hours as their flight today was cancelled but the airline didn't bother emailing or phoning them. Just. Not. Acceptable. After I get home I've got a coaching session scheduled, and then on Wednesday my girlfriend and I will heading down to the 'Dome to watch the Flames take on the Oilers in a game that is hopefully still meaningful, pending the results of whichever of the Ducks/Blackhawks/Stars are in action tomorrow.

Currency Variance

I've complained now and then about the strength of the Canadian Dollar relative to the US one over the past two years, in which the $CDN has gained an enormous amount of ground. In fact, it's been worth more than the USD for the entire year so far, and today is at what has got to be something like a 30+ year high.

You might think this would be good for Canada in general, but in reality it is a mixed bag economically. For me however, it is obviously almost entirely negative. Back in 2008 when I started this blog, the CDN was running around 0.80 USD with obvious fluctuations. Lets use that number as a baseline for a few calculations for kicks. At 0.80, 1USD = 1.25CDN. So, in my native currency I wasn't really playing 100NL - I was playing 125NL. 200NL was 250NL, etc.

Today, 1 CDN = 1.037 USD. This means when I'm playing 100NL, I'm effectively playing 96NL in the currency I care about. So in a sense, I've "moved down" in stakes without actually doing so. It sucks. Hopefully the USD gets back to par sometime in the next year.

The weekend was pretty solid poker wise. I didn't quite get the volume I wanted in Saturday due to the games dying, but didn't fail Friday. On Friday, I had two pots against the same player who while is somewhat loose/weak preflop, is one of the spewiest of his kind I have ever encountered postflop. I had seen him before over the past couple months and probably stacked him once or twice previous to our encounters this weekend, but the hands below speak for themselves. For the record, its because of hands like this that I can still win even when I can't win a flip, 85/15, etc!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (8 handed)
BB ($100)
UTG ($111.60)
UTG+1 ($100)
MP1 ($244.40)
Hero (MP2) ($211.50)
CO ($105.55)
Button ($117.15)
SB ($184.60)

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with 9♦, 9♣
2 folds, MP1 bets $2, Hero calls $2, CO calls $2, Button calls $2, 2 folds

Flop: ($9.50) 9♠, 3♦, A♦ (4 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $7.50, 2 folds, MP1 raises to $15, Hero raises to $39.50, MP1 calls $24.50

Turn: ($88.50) 7♠ (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $65.50, MP1 calls $65.50

River: ($219.50) 6♠ (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $104.50 (All-In), MP1 calls $104.50

Total pot: $428.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
MP1 had 6♥, 5♥ (one pair, sixes).
Hero had 9♦, 9♣ (three of a kind, nines).
Outcome: Hero won $425.50

Yeah, he called the flop 3b with no pair no draw.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (9 handed)
BB ($40)
UTG ($100)
UTG+1 ($97.50)
MP1 ($100)
MP2 ($300.65)
Hero (MP3) ($113)
CO ($92.60)
Button ($100)
SB ($198.10)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A♠, A♦
3 folds, MP2 bets $2, Hero raises to $8, 4 folds, MP2 calls $6

Flop: ($17.50) 8♣, A♥, 2♠ (2 players)
MP2 bets $8, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($33.50) 4♦ (2 players)
MP2 bets $216, Hero calls $97 (All-In)

River: ($227.50) 9♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $227.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
MP2 had J♣, 9♥ (one pair, nines).
Hero had A♠, A♦ (three of a kind, Aces).
Outcome: Hero won $224.50

Overshoving 97bbs drawing dead, a bold plan.