July Review - Vacations and Variance

July ended up being roughly two thirds of a regular month due to my spending the first ten days on vacation in Vegas to play the WSOP ME. The experience was good times, though it would have been nice to have dodged the fairly early KK < AA cooler in the tournament itself.

The online month kind of sucked. I ran terribly at limits higher than 100nl, and at the end of the month experienced the largest downswing of my career (it ended up being around ~19 BIs or so I believe). If most regulars ran like me they'd be busto so fast - if someone has outs against me with one card to come they are a favorite, number of outs be damned. Being out several buyins in AIEV every session like clockwork isn't a whole lot of fun.

Here's the graph, excluding the AIEV because it's depressing and I promised a few people I'd stop complaining for a bit (yes, I realize much of the above paragraph was in fact complaining):


The bottom line:
$5731.85 winnings
+$174.91 loldonkaments
+$5200 milestone bonus ($6k - $800 FPP value to purchase)
+$3264.97 FPP value (58303 VPPs * 3.5FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
-----------------------------------------------------------
$14371.73 USD total profit
After considering the really lame exchange rate, that's about ~$15570 CDN

Note that I didn't include the -$9k WSOP ME action (80% of my own for -$8k, 10% of Jrock's for -$1k) in the month. It's not really fair to attribute big buy-in tourneys to a single month, but it'll come into play when I do my yearly review. Same goes for the tourney package value of like ~$40k+ when I hit SNE. It doesn't really make sense to count that all in November or whenever I crack the 1 mil VPP mark.

The good news is I'm 72%+ to my SNE goal for the year, and can somewhat coast my way there.

Donkaments Tilt Me So Much...

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	712,085
SNE Pace:	142,165 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Aion Beta (PC)

It's been a long time since I've updated the blog given how much I have to talk about. I guess I'll try to go chronologically. Around the time of my last post, my account was credited the 100k VPPs for playing the WSOP ME. This put me well over 600k, and I was able to purchase the 600k VPP milestone bonus, $5200 of free money ($6k - $800 FPP value to buy). Cool.

I also managed to finish Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor for the DS for the first time. There are something like 6 unique ending paths, and right now I'm almost through it again to check out a different one. It was a very good game, despite getting pretty crazy hard near the end of my first playthrough.

Moving on, last week I wrote the Concept of the Week for the microstakes full ring forum of 2+2. It spent the past week stickied, and I'm told has garnered more replies than any previous CotW (mine is the 25th in the series). I think I did a pretty decent job on the topic, which was "Playing Professionally". You can find the thread here.

Poker wise, I still run worse than anyone (ok, besides one person who knows who he is) but win quite a bit of money regardless. Today was especially painful though, as I decided to try my hand at some of the qualifying tourneys for the America's Cup of Poker. They run daily for three weeks, and if your country makes it (Canada will) the top five point winners for their country travel to Argentina to represent in a televised event. I busted early out of the first two small time tourneys today, but in the big $5.50 buy-in (lol) event I managed to make the final table, and then all the way to the final three. We were all very even in terms of chips, when I was dealt QQ in the BB and got it in vs the BTN's 55 preflop. Of course he spikes a 5 and it's GG me. After some quick mental math, a win of that tourney would likely have gotten me about half the way to the Argentina trip points wise, instead I'm stuck with a measly 1/3rd of that. On the upside I did ship $183.60 from the third place finish.

Finally, I pre-ordered two copies of the Aion Collectors Edition today and as a result have two beta keys. Aion is an upcoming MMORPG that looks like lots of fun. My girlfriend and will be trying out the next beta event. Hopefully I don't need to upgrade my system for it to run decently. My box is getting very, very old and I do always enjoy building myself a new toy, but I really don't want to go through the hassle of moving my poker databases. I guess we'll see how it pans out.

Another $2k day already!?!?

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	691,696
SNE Pace:	146,436 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS)

I had a brutal Friday, and at one point was stuck around $1k but fought back and ended up slightly better than break-even before considering rakeback (of which I earned around $250).

Saturday however, I learned how to occasionally fade 2 outs with one card to come. The result was a +$2100 profit session, $250 of which was rakeback. Saturday graph below:


Here's a fun hand from Friday which helped me get unstuck. MP2 villain is a 13/6 nit, BTN is a big donk, and the overcaller in the BB is ChicagoJoey. 88 is way too big a hand for him to get away from preflop when he's on tilt, obviously.

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 7 Players
MP3: $106.70 (106.7 bb)
CO: $100 (100 bb)
BTN: $51.75 (51.8 bb)
Hero (SB): $105.20 (105.2 bb)
BB: $125.95 (126 bb)
MP1: $156.50 (156.5 bb)
MP2: $100 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is SB with Ac Ah
MP1 folds, MP2 raises to $4, 2 folds, BTN raises to $12, Hero calls $11.50, BB calls $11, MP2 raises to $41, BTN raises to $51.75 and is all-in, Hero raises to $80.75, BB calls $68.75, MP2 raises to $100 and is all-in, Hero calls $19.25, BB calls $19.25

Flop: ($351.75) Ts 5s Tc (4 players, 2 are all-in)
Hero bets $5.20 and is all-in, BB calls $5.20

Turn: ($362.15) 9d (4 players, 3 are all-in)
River: ($362.15) 5h (4 players, 3 are all-in)

Results: $362.15 pot ($3 rake)
Hero showed Ac Ah (two pairs, Aces and Tens) and won $359.15 ($253.95 net)
BB mucked 8d 8s (two pairs, Tens and Eights) and lost (-$105.20 net)
MP2 mucked Kh Kd (two pairs, Kings and Tens) and lost (-$100 net)
BTN mucked Ad Qc (two pairs, Tens and Fives) and lost (-$51.75 net)

I could get used to a $700 hourly...

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	681,962
SNE Pace:	142,182 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS)

Where to begin. Poker since my return from Vegas was really lame to start. From Saturday through Wednesday I put in a great deal of volume (~50k hands total) but ran abysmally, making me little more than an FPP pro for the duration. Technically I was up around $400 plus the ~$1k rakeback.

That all changed on Thursday however. First, I logged in and noticed that I was credited my 100k VPP bonus for playing the WSOP ME. Note that it is reflected in the Status Update, and thanks to it I am very well ahead of SNE pace. I've also exceeded the two thirds mark of the journey.

I put in a short session of around an hour and a half before going for dinner with my girlfriend and mother, and ended up winning around $400. At the end of said session I fired off a quick email to Stars support asking about the status of a cashout in USD that had gone a month without arriving. They confirmed it was sent, and was a postal problem (which doesn't surprise me, I've had other issues with Canada Post lately). If the cheque doesn't arrive soon I can always just have them cancel it and recredit my account. Pokerstars support was awesome as always.

My inquiry regarding the late cheque must have caused them to activate my boomswitch, as over my second hour and a half session of the day I rode a massive upswing. I only played three hours total on the day, but ended up with the graph below:


I believe this is my best single day ever, which is especially remarkable given that I played far less than my typical volume. It's even more impressive given that I took a pretty sick beat in the hand below (villain is a fish, obvious from the 3b size):

Poker Stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
MP1: $361.85 (180.9 bb)
MP2: $216.55 (108.3 bb)
MP3: $223.60 (111.8 bb)
Hero (CO): $312.10 (156.1 bb)
BTN: $62 (31 bb)
SB: $200 (100 bb)
BB: $201 (100.5 bb)
UTG: $226.95 (113.5 bb)
UTG+1: $276.40 (138.2 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with 5s 5h
UTG calls $2, 2 folds, MP2 raises to $8, MP3 calls $8, Hero calls $8, 3 folds, UTG raises to $14, MP2 calls $6, MP3 calls $6, Hero calls $6

Flop: ($59) 5c 2d As (4 players)
UTG bets $20, MP2 folds, MP3 folds, Hero calls $20

Turn: ($99) Ac (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $59, UTG raises to $192.95 and is all-in, Hero calls $133.95

River: ($484.90) Kd (2 players, 1 is all-in)

Results: $484.90 pot ($3 rake)
UTG showed Ah Kh (a full house, Aces full of Kings) and won $481.90 ($254.95 net)
Hero mucked 5s 5h (a full house, Fives full of Aces) and lost (-$226.95 net)

The day could have reached legendary status without that beat...