July Review - 3/10

July had the potential to be a strong month as it contained five Fridays and five Saturdays which are typically the strongest days for game selection. Additionally, I was inevitably going to hit the 300k VPP milestone bonus during the month, so I was hoping for big things.

Unfortunately, I ran pretty terribly for much of the month, finding myself out a little north of 1bb/100 in AIEV along with being on the wrong end of a ton of coolers. Plus, like every month if I pot/pot/shove QQ on Q82r into a whale's A5o that isn't folding I am drawing stone dead to his backdoor gutshot.

On the positive side, the last two days of grinding were pretty successful, and I did bink $444.50 for being involved in a promotional milestone hand this month. Last year I was dealt into a milestone hand holding 62o and took the thing down for double prize money, but this year 62o was drawing to two outs on the river and couldn't connect for sweet victory. Still a nice bonus though!



The bottom line:
$4850.36 table winnings
+$2897.27 FPP value (51,737 VPPs * 3.5FPPs/VPP *1.6c/FPP)
+$2800 300k VPP milestone bonus
+$444.50 milestone hand #64,985,000,000
+$100 deposit bonus
----------------------------------------------------
$11,092.13 USD total profit.

Not a pretty number considering the potential, though five figures is never a complete disaster. I do not have high expectations for August, as I'll be taking a week of vacation near the end and I'll also be cutting at least half of my usual grind on the first Saturday to take in a Stampeders game. With a little run good hopefully my table winnings rebound some during the month, but even if that is the case it'll be tough to reach ten dimes simply because the volume won't be there.

As for the remainder of 2011, I'll have something of a decision after August, when I figure I'll be sitting around ~350k yearly VPPs. In order to maximize relative rakeback level (and as a result, hourly), I should either slack off mightily the rest of the year and only put in another 150k VPPs worth of volume over the final four months finishing at the 500k milestone, or grind quite hard (not quite SNE level volume, but not terribly far off) to reach the 600k milestone putting in ~62.5k VPPs/month. With my girlfriend starting school in September, getting myself into a better routine and playing more hours might not be a bad idea, but currently my gut feeling is I'll be going the former route and spending the extra time looking at some business ventures outside of poker.

Two Types Of Milestones

Thursday and Friday at the tables were particularly awful, crippling any real chance for July to end up as a solid month. On Friday I basically had two ~$1k downswing/comeback combinations, which wasn't fun at all. Today was much better, as I booked a ~$1k win.

Additionally, I profited from two different types of milestones this weekend. On Friday I rolled over 300k VPPs, and collected the $2.8k bonus for that achievement. On Saturday I was dealt into a Milestone Hand as part of Pokerstars' 65 billionth hand promotion. Unfortunately I couldn't bink a 2 outer on the river to win the thing, but still picked up $444.50 in bonus money for the hand (which cost me ~$40 or so calling down trying to improve with 62o for double bonus money). I've run really well in terms of being dealt into milestone hands during these promotions - this was the fourth time I've been involved in one (with two coming last year, and one in 2009 I believe). The only unfortunate part is that it occurred at a table which had formed ~25 or so hands previous, and as the prize money is relative to how many VPPs you have earned at that table over the last 50 hands, it limited the payouts some. Either way, the ~$450 bonus together with $1k off the tables and some FPP value made for an encouraging day.

Reminiscing

Over the last two days I've spent a little time going over some of my blog entries from 2008 (and fixing some of the HHs associated which were broken due to a now defunct converter). When you look back at the ecosystem that is online poker and how it was three years ago compared to today, it really is night and day. Outside of few specific moments (see: Black Friday), the change has been gradual, yet it really hasn't happened all that slowly.

Obviously, the games today are significantly tougher to beat. I was (relative to my current self) terrible in 2008 yet had no problem crushing the games. Additionally, game selection is now very hard for a mass multitabler. In 2008, and even through much of 2009, it was easy to get 24 decent tables of small stakes full ring action open on Pokerstars within minutes of starting a session. Today, at all but peak times 24 quality tables can be very difficult to impossible to find, and to maintain them requires constant lobby attention. This made putting in volume a heck of a lot easier back in the day, as you'd have 24 tables open almost right away and if a game died finding a replacement was easy. It's still a little scary to think that I put in 150-200k months back then while working a 40 hour week at my 9-5 though.

It sure would be awesome for another poker boom to occur at some point in the next few years. Regulation in the US, done right, could lead to one, though my feeling is that even if US fish find a way back into the market, it might only add another year or two to the lifespan of the online grinder. I'll certainly be riding the wave as an online pro for another year or two, but it definitely seems as though every dollar I earn today I had a work a hell of a lot harder for compared to 2008 or 2009.

Seven Straight

After the month started with ~50k hands of terrible variance, the last week was refreshing though I certainly wouldn't call it a heater. I did manage to play on all seven days of the week, which is something I haven't done in a long time. I also turned a profit in table winnings each day, which was nice. Game quality was decent, though tonight in particular it seems a little spotty for a Saturday, which is why I'm posting here rather than grinding at the moment. I'll likely put in one more session later tonight regardless.



When my hourly in table winnings alone is north of $100/h, you won't find me complaining.

I recently finished up the entirety of FFIV Complete Collection for the PSP, which is a remake of the original featuring updating sprites, character portraits and an arranged soundtrack, along with a remake of the much more recent "After Years" content that was released for cell phones in Japan and for the Wii in North America. While IV ranks as my third favorite Final Fantasy of all-time, the remakes were fantastic and I had a lot of fun. I'll inevitably end up going through the original FFIV again several more times, so for $30 the package is pretty amazing value.

Having Fun

The fact is, I typically don't have a lot of fun playing poker anymore. This is natural for any hobby that becomes a "grindy" job I'd imagine, but it is definitely something I miss. Fortunately, there are still forms of poker that are indeed quite a bit of fun and I've taken to playing some micro 6max PLO again purely for the enjoyment. I learn new things, and get to play on tables where with no game selection whatsoever there are on average 4 droolers. Pretty sure someone with basic PLO knowledge could sustain 15ptBB/100 at 2PLO quite easily, especially since you can buy in 250bb deep on all tables.

The NLH grind was really painful at the beginning of the month due to epic runbad, but my last few short weekday session have been ok. I actually played a hand last session that I thought was super interesting (these don't pop up all that often) against a pretty spazzy reg where I took a weird line with a flush draw, turned the second nuts and flatted his lead, and then had a sick situation where he overbet (only a little, like 48 into 40 or something) the blank river. As he'd assume I never have a flush due to the flop check back folding is out of the question, but if I raise he's crazy enough to jam the bare ace blocker some of the time, which is the hand he ended up with. I ended up just flatting, but I think raise/calling is better.

The CFL is back in season, and the Stamps are 1-1 so far. I watched their most recent game in which they held an 8 point lead, with the ball, with just enough time left that they couldn't simply take two knees to run out the clock. Somehow our (overall, very good) QB Henry Burris manages to botch the hand off and turn the ball over, making for an interesting last minute where the defense had to step up, and did. The thing about Burris is that while he's great most of the time, when he is not great it can be some of the most epic fail on a football field you have ever seen. He played one series last year that is by far the worst possession from a quarterback I have ever witnessed period, and I watch a lot of football.

That's A Lot Of Cameos

Tough to decide which cameo is my favorite. Perhaps the Kara Scott "hadouken".

June Review - Vacationish

I don't really have a whole lot to say about June. I opted to take what I'd consider to be pretty close to a vacation month, spending 10 days in Vegas (busting a $1.5k WSOP event to a back door flush draw). When I was in town I really only played Fridays/Saturdays and didn't work terribly hard on those days either.

The result obviously isn't very impressive financially, and it didn't help that I ran like ass over the ~50k hands I put in. That being said, given the -$1.5k WSOP handicap and the volume, at least I didn't have a losing month!



The bottom line:
$2069.20 table winnings
+$1233.34 FPP value (22024 VPPs * 3.5FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$46.29 coaching
-$1500 WSOP #18
--------------------------------------
$1848.83 USD total profit.

I've got pretty high hopes for a July, for four reasons:

(1) There are five full weekends!
(2) I feel fresh, as I haven't been doing a whole lot of grinding lately. 50k VPPs minimum, hopefully closer to 60k.
(3) I'll hit the 300k milestone bonus in July, for $2800.
(4) Pokerstars just launched a new deposit bonus for a free $100, which should hopefully also improve game quality.

Time to get to work.