May Review - Midstakes to the Rescue

May was an interesting month. Coming off an April during which I ran as well I had in a year or more and with a milestone bonus ready to be reached I had pretty high hopes going into May. In every monthly review so far this year I've noted that I wasn't happy with my volume, and in May I put in less hands than in any month of 2011. Oddly enough, I don't really feel like I let myself down from a volume perspective, I simply resigned myself to cut back on work hours and enjoy the other stuff going on (NHL playoffs, outdoor activities, etc). I imagine I'll be more motivated to grind after I get back from Vegas and have had a nice 10 day break from online poker.

With the reduced volume in mind, I certainly can't complain about my table winnings. Thanks much to the 2.6k milestone bonus, I definitely am happy with the total profit number as well. While my winrate was ok (though much lower than April), the really significant factor is that almost half my table profit came from $600NL, $400NL or E200NL (effectively $300NL due to Euro/USD exchange) - what I would classify as "midstakes". Without midstakes chipping in almost $4.5k, my paltry volume would have taken a much more significant financial toll on the month, even with a decent winrate.



The bottom line:
$9071.99 table winnings
+$2285.08 FPP value (40805 VPPs * 3.5FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$2600 200k VPP milestone bonus
+$560 coaching
+$20 FTP deposit bonus
+$1.12 FTP rakeback
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$14,538.19 USD total profit.

I don't have huge expectation for June, as I'll be taking a ten day break in Vegas to play a few smaller WSOP events. Barring some good results there, it could certainly end up being a very modest month, and I won't be disappointed if that is the case. I think the break will be good for me, and motivate me to put in heavier volume when I return. Of course, it is always possible I'll make a deep run in an event and have a record month. I certainly could use a bracelet for my mantle.

Finally, I was pleased to see that when I pulled up my 2011 results as a whole my winrate on the year thus far is a smidge north of 2.5ptBB/100. This is a small increase from 2010 (~2.2ptBB/100) and a nice bump from 2009 (an exact figure is absent from my yearly review, but iirc it was ~1.9ptBB/100 or so). Granted, in '09 I was playing double the volume to reach SNE, and in 2010 the 50bb tables were around for much of the year. Still, given that the games are always getting tougher I'm pretty happy with how things are going, even when weighing the volume reduction.