April Review - ZOOM Joins the Mix

I was originally planning on grinding some today, but as I've come down with a cold I'm instead going to call it a month.

April was the first month where I put in any volume into ZOOM poker. Though the fish play a ton tighter at ZOOM and it is next to impossible to use any game flow information to help with decision making, I found the ZOOM games soft enough to be worthwhile. This was mostly due to what I assume were a mix of SNG/MTT/6max regs playing 100NL ZOOM FR, and playing quite terribly against the ranges of full ring regulars postflop. I'm not sure how long this will continue to be the case, as I assume most of those "regulars" will either get better or stop playing when they release they are unprofitable.

Unfortunately I ran quite awful overall, ending ~$3k below AIEV and eating some horrendous beats at midstakes, a few of which weren't reflected in the AIEV total. I had strong results and rungood at 200NL to compensate a little, and oddly enough my winrate as 100NL was higher at ZOOM than at the regular games (excluding pot limit and Euro games, which I murdered for something like 12ptBB over a paltry 10k hands), though I'm positive that is simply variance. It is encouraging that when running bad I can still pull off a 2.5ptBB/100 winrate.

The bottom line:
$8018.08 table winnings
+$1499.68 FPP value (26780 VPPs * 3.5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$400 stellar bonuses
+$250 despoit bonus
------------------------------
$10,167.76 USD total profit.

Due to having one or two ZOOM tables open much of the time, my hands per hour jumped around 25-30% from previous months. This is a good thing, though I did see a few bad habits resurface when I was adjusting to the higher volume of decisions. Hopefully I can correct them while maintaining the additional volume in the future.

Overall, I'm a little disappointed with the way things went. In reality, if you adjust for AIEV or allow me to fade runners at midstakes once or twice the month would have been somewhere between average to downright solid. Five figures can never be that poor a showing, but I'd really appreciate a stretch of rungood in the near future.

Blog Reflections

I started this blog more than four years ago after I decided I was going to take online poker seriously and deposited $500 on Pokerstars to serve as a $25NL bankroll.

Since that time, this blog has:

• Received 145k page views since August of 2009. It obviously had a non-trivial amount before that as well, but it was at that time I began using google analytics.
• Received ~28% of its traffic from the US, ~27% from Canada, ~11% from the UK, ~6% from Germany, with Australia, the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, and Estonia each clocking in near 2%. Since Black Friday the traffic breakdown has changed drastically, with US visits dropping significantly.
• Had 380 posts including this one.
• Never strayed from a very basic and somewhat boring blogger theme, which is kind of odd given that I'm a Software Engineer and my last job was maintaining a fairly cutting edge web application.
• Had multiple offers for advertising, none of which seemed appealing to me. This included one offer to become a "team pro" for a smaller skin on a network which doesn't allow Canadian players. They obviously did their homework.
• Chronicled my journey turning five hundred dollars into more than half a million, through a lot of hard work.

To be honest, I'm not entirely certain why I feel like I should continue blogging. I do mildly enjoy writing, so I suppose it is mostly a self indulgence on my part. I certainly get more traffic than I would have dreamed of in February 2008.

VIP Dinner: Round 2

This evening was the second Pokerstars VIP Dinner I've attended, the first being during October of last year. There were a couple familiar faces, though the majority of the attendees were there for the first time, and turnout was at least double that of the previous event.

With so much happening in the Pokerstars universe since the start of the year, including a bombshell rumor dropping earlier in the day about Pokerstars buying FTP, we had a great deal to talk about. The meal was excellent, and I had a thoroughly enjoyable night. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the decisions made by Pokerstars in the recent past, it really does seem as though they desire feedback and legitimately care what their players think.

I'll save comment on the potential FTP purchase until the deal has been verified.

Free Money

In the last few years Stars has released a reload bonus in spring, usually just in time for the SCOOP. This year the amount is 50% up to $250, which is the largest reload bonus I can remember. I'm pleased with the figure, though it is a drop in the bucket compared to the money going the other direction due to the VIP changes from the beginning of the year. I wonder if this means the changes combined with the introduction of ZOOM have resulted in significantly increased profits. I know that promotion dollars are not necessarily the result of strong financials, but they certainly could be.

I'd also like the state for the record that the officiating of the NHL has been utterly terrible for the latter half of the season and now the playoffs. This is not directed at one particular series, or an excuse for the failures of the Calgary Flames. It has just been painful to watch them get it wrong so often. The NHL quite frequently makes the other major professional sports leagues in North America look exceptionally well run by comparison, which is just embarrassing given how great a game hockey is.

I'll be attending a Pokerstars hosted dinner for the second time tomorrow at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Looking forward to it as I had a good time at the first one and I love the food there. I expect I'll see a few of the same regulars from the first dinner as well. There certainly is a lot more to talk about this time with the VIP changes, ZOOM introduction, and PTR lawsuit.

Sweat Over

After getting about as close as possible to the worst case scenario last year during the NHL postseason before being rescued by the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, this year my sweat ended after only five games. Darryl Sutter and the LA Kings have my gratitude.

Cease and Desist

A couple days ago Pokerstars issued a Cease and Desist letter to PTR, and as of today PTR has complied by blocking access to player profiles of Pokerstars players.

What interests me most about the whole situation is that PTR has been on the radar and something Pokerstars has claimed they "are working hard to stop" for over three years now. I'm under the impression that having your lawyers issue a Cease and Desist order is one of the first things that comes to mind when a company wants to stop another organization from doing something. Assuming this is in fact the case, one of the following must be true:

* Pokerstars were incompetent and up until now it didn't dawn on them that a Cease and Desist order might be a good course of action, or have a chance of being complied with.
* Pokerstars lied to us repeatedly and actually were not concerned with the presence of PTR, and not working to stop it. That is, up until something changed recently, and they decided to take the fairly trivial action necessary to do something about it.

While over the past year or so I think a lot of the decision making at Pokerstars has been highly suspect, three years ago I would have said the opposite. Because of this, I highly doubt that incompetence has anything to do with things. That simply leaves intent, and begs the question: why now? PTR clearly has its pros and cons for the poker community, but if Stars was content with leaving it be for three years, what changed? The only thing that jumps out me in particular is that the Pokerstars Security Department will no longer have its work being double checked by the public as easily for cases of collusion, botting, and such. Hopefully that has nothing to do with it.

Overdue Maintenance

In attempting to update HEM1 to have a working ZOOM import/HUD, I was forced to create a new database as my old one was so large the update process would time out after about 45 minutes of trying. The database I was using previously was entitled "2009 SNE Chase", and actually contained my last few months of hands from 2008 as well. The new database was long overdue, simply for performance reasons.

I put in a fair number of ZOOM hands today as the regular games were excessively dead for the first couple hours of my play. The fish definitely play tighter and the regulars seems to be far more spaz prone than normal. In all the day went pretty well.

Even though I bought the game in 2011, I didn't get around to playing Catherine until recently. I finished it the other day and it was as advertised: a unique, very adult themed puzzle game. The game builds up a ton of suspense through the first 80% of its story, but I was really disappointed when the twist arrived. Without spoiling too much let me say that what bugged me was that despite the creators being best known for their work on the Persona series and other Shin Megami Tensei games (which are fantastic in their own right), Catherine's world and plot seemed to be something quite unique - until the twist hit. In terms of the style of the game and the puzzle gameplay, I can sum it up pretty well with just one quote from the game's protagonist, Vincent Brooks: "I'm going to climb the shit out of these fucking blocks!"



On a related note, I noticed that three of the games I've recently played had the same voice actress (Laura Bailey) doing one of their leading ladies: Serah in FFXIII-2, Cheria in Tales of Graces, and Catherine in (you guessed it) Catherine. While she does an admirable job, a little bit of variety would be nice. Looking back over her career credits, Laura has actually quite possibly contributed to half the RPGs I've played since 2005 or so which have contained voice acting. That's a lot of work. Her range isn't that bad, as while some characters sound pretty close to identical (Rise in Persona 4 and Catherine, for instance), I would have never guessed that Raspberyl of Disgaea 3 and Jaina Proudmoore in WoW were voiced by the same person.

Rebounding

It really sucks to start out a session in hyper-runbad mode, which was what happened today. Pulling off the comeback does feel really good, maybe even better than booking a much larger win in a more traditional fashion.



At least I managed to grind out over 2k VPPs, which these days is a lot for me. Sick how during my SNE chase a super high volume day would result in ~5-6k VPPs.

March Review - Deja Vu

March as a month was a lot like February, aside from that it had a handful more days and an additional weekend. As in February, I ran lousy at the start of the month but well during the latter half.

I ran exceptionally well at 600NL, though equally poorly at 400NL. Better than the other way around, I guess. I also had very strong results at 200NL, and a down right solid winrate overall.

Where I fell short simply came down to volume. In a month with 31 days including five Fridays and Saturdays, I only managed 99k hands. Much of the time volume fail is simply a work ethic problem, but I ended up putting in ~29 hours a week in March, so I wasn't terrible in this regard, though I certainly could try to work more. The problem was simply that the games were really bad for the first three weeks of the month, though during the final week we did see some light at the end of the tunnel. Zoom Poker splitting the player base doesn't help of course.



The bottom line:
$10,534.41 table winnings
+$1418.31 FPP value (25327 VPPs * 3.5 FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$200 stellar bonuses
----------------------------------------------------------
$12,152.72 USD total profit.

Happy with the winrate this month, but not the volume. My results so far this year have been very consistent so far on a month to month basis. I do really hope the online poker industry gets shaken up with some good old fashioned competition sooner rather than later, as I'm sure it would help my bottom line and it is frustrating that Stars is getting away with treating their regulars the way they have in 2012.