October Review - Finishing Strong

Perhaps the largest event that occurred during October was my building a new computer, replacing the fine machine I built five years ago. I'm thoroughly enjoying the new box and Windows 7 hasn't made me angry yet, so at the very worst it's as good as Windows XP, which was a very good OS.

In terms of poker, I started the month slow and finished rather strongly. October was a lot like August in that I ran quite poorly at 100nl, which makes up the majority of my volume. However, due to taking a lot of money out of 200nl and even 400nl, I managed to have a fairly strong showing. I'm pleased that a healthy 16% of my volume was at 200nl+ this month, and I hope that number keeps going up steadily. As I've already cleared all my milestone bonuses for the year, all of my profit this month will be from straight table winnings and FPP value.

On the negative side, October had five full "weekends" (Fridays + Saturdays are my high volume weekend days) as well as thirty-one days total, and I still only managed 186k hands. I've really started slacking off on weekdays, because I know I can get away with it. That said, I put in higher volume during the final weekend of the month than I have played in a long time, so at least I sucked it up a bit at the end.

Here's my monthly graph + table:


The Bottom Line:
$12,388.80 winnings
$3954.83 FPP value (70,622 VPPs x 3.5 FPPs/VPP x 1.6c/FPP)
------------------------------
$16343.63 USD total profit. At current exchange rate (which has gotten considerably better over the last week), this is ~$17,726 CDN.

I'd really like to wrap up SNE in November, but I know myself well enough to know that I'll probably end up actually hitting it during the first couple days of December. That will still allow more than enough time for Stars to book my PCA reservation and for me to book Westjet flights, so there's no real downside. 72,748 VPPs to go.

Come On US Dollar, You Can Do It!

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	922,799
SNE Pace:	92,579 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Persona (PSP)

On Friday I put in around 14k hands, which has got to be the most I've played in a single day in months. The US dollar has recovered substantially vs its Canadian counterpart over the last week or so, which is great for me. Hopefully the trend continues. My Thursday and Friday sessions went well (Thursday especially). Even when I'm running good I still can't manage to catch up to my AIEV line, but that's status quo. My month should be fairly decent considering there's no more milestone bonuses left in the year, though it's mostly because I've done well at 200nl and 400nl. Look for a monthly review after my sessions tomorrow. Here's a graph of the past 2 days:


Below is a fun hand from Thursday. Villain is a megadonk who makes one of the most heroic river calls I've seen in a long time. In reality it is almost as hilariously bad as the hand from last year where the guy calls off his 100bb+ stack with the nut low. The megadonk from this hand would later go on to get another 100bbs in vs my overpair with no pair no draw (not even a live overcard) and catch runners to scoop, hence some of my AIEV issues.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
UTG+1 ($274.65)
MP1 ($261.35)
MP2 ($185.20)
CO ($202.30)
Button ($295)
SB ($267.75)
Hero (BB) ($200)
UTG ($248)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, Q
3 folds, MP2 calls $2, CO calls $2, 1 fold, SB calls $1, Hero bets $13, 1 fold, CO calls $11, 1 fold

Flop: ($30) 8, J, J (2 players)
Hero bets $17, CO calls $17

Turn: ($64) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $50, Hero calls $50

River: ($164) Q (2 players)
Hero bets $120 (All-In), CO calls $120

Total pot: $404 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had Q, Q (full house, Queens over Jacks).
CO had A, 6 (one pair, Jacks).
Outcome: Hero won $401


Here's a hand which is actually pretty interesting. Villain is a decent reg. I iso a fish and get 3b very large by villain OOP. If I had AKo here I'd either 4b or fold (likely fold due to the sizing, but who knows, we are only 6 handed). He likes to 3b a fair bit so I flat with my AKs. Once the flop comes QJx and he checks, his range is weighted heavily towards KK/AK, with some AA as well. Since my range contains QQ and to a lesser extent JJ, I decide he's probably good enough to fold so I empty my stack and it works out. Note that I always have chat off, so until I posted this HH I didn't get to see his "KK no good?" comment. Maybe he wouldn't have been good enough to fold AA here? On that note I think his c/c with KK on the flop is really bad, he should probably be c/fing as sick as it is.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00 BB (6 handed)
SB ($100.50)
BB ($100)
UTG ($46.70)
MP ($60)
CO ($100)
Hero (Button) ($100)

Preflop: Hero is Button with A, K
UTG calls $1, 2 folds, Hero bets $5, SB raises to $17, 2 folds, Hero calls $12

Flop: ($36) Q, 3, J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $21.50, SB calls $21.50

Turn: ($79) 7 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $61.50 (All-In), SB says: "KK no good?", 1 fold

Total pot: $79 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero didn't show A, K (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won $76

When You Run Bad At Life, Just Buy A New Computer

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	913,648
SNE Pace:	94,388 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Persona (PSP)

On Saturday the Flames dominated the Oilers, leaving 3-0 versus the Greasers this year (5-0 vs the division too, die Canucks die). I also had a rather stressful session in which after going up to +$1400 I preceded to get owned back down to +$800 table profits on the day. The most memorable hand during the fall was getting 77 in on J87 rainbow vs an utter retard who min 3b me with Q8o. Sure enough he goes runner runner straight. Despite the poor ending to the session, the overall profit and huge Flames win had me feeling really good. However, when I went to take a shower before bed, the towel rack in my bathroom decided it no longer wanted to bear the burden of towels as one end ripped from the drywall. This annoyed me greatly as I am just getting used to home ownership, have quite a bit going on right now and really don't need something extra to eat up time.

Unfortunately, things would get worse. I should mention first that I have planned to build myself a new computer for some time, and the task was scheduled for late Novemmber/early Decemmber, after I reach SNE. I was going to consider it my celebration present to myself I suppose.

As I have a degree in software engineering and have always been software saavy, up until yesterday I have never been bested by any sort of virus or malware. On Sunday, my computer picked up some sort of very new rootkit (which hides in kernel files you can't see) and started causing me major problems. Scouring the internet, there were several other reports over the previous two or three days of people with the same infection, and so far, zero solutions to the problem. Obviously my AVG anitvirus had failed, and while there are a few tools available to detect and attempt to remove rootkits, many of them will recommend you format and get a fresh start because the operation is simply so dicey.

Thus, as my options were basically to format my existing machine or build my new machine with Windows 7 a little ahead of schedule, I chose the latter. On the positive, it is Monday night and I am posting from my new box which has been functional for 5 hours or so (after purchasing the hardware around 4pm, Monday), and is predictably being barraged with installs and a massive database import of my last ~3 million hands of poker. This was by far the cleanest build I have ever done (I've built four machines previous to this one), and most definitely also the quickest. I also picked up a new pretty baller gaming keyboard, mostly just because it looks awesome. Windows 7 seems to not suck which is nice.

Here's a breakdown of my new machine:
Case: Antec 900 Ultimate Gamer Case
PSU: Corsair 750W Modular Power Supply
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965
Motherboard: Gigabit GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
Memory: 8GB (4x 2GB) Mushkin Redline Dual Channel PC3-12800
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 1.5TB + an old 200gb drive to transfer stuff from my old box
Video Card: ATI Radeon 4890 1GB
OS: Windows 7 Professional Edition

Anyway, the biggest issue I've had so far is that I couldn't get BetPot AHK working properly even after all the tweaks 2p2ers have recommended for it to work on Vista. Luckily this caused me to try out TableNinja, which I have configured to behave just like my Betpot used to, and it has far more awesome options I'm sure I'll start using in the future. I'll be purchasing it for certain. You'll likely see me back grinding a little as early as tomorrow, as my massive import of 3.2gb of HHs should finish in about 7-8 hours.

90%

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	909,648
SNE Pace:	98,608 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Persona (PSP)

As you can see above, I've now crossed the 90% mark of my SNE chase. I ran like absolute garbage today, but instead of posting all the hands where I get it in with 90-98% equity and lose every time I'll leave you with this:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)
Villain is an 88/30 megadonk who LOVES to bluff when shown weakness.
SB ($201.80)
BB ($37)
UTG ($132.20)
UTG+1 ($231)
MP1 ($200)
MP2 ($37)
Hero (CO) ($266)
Button ($336.55)

Preflop: Hero is CO with K, A
UTG calls $2, 3 folds, Hero bets $10, Button calls $10, SB calls $9, 1 fold, UTG calls $8

Flop: ($42) 5, 4, A (4 players)
SB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $23, Button calls $23, 2 folds

Turn: ($88) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $60, Hero calls $60

River: ($208) J (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $243.55 (All-In), Hero calls $173 (All-In)

Total pot: $554 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had 3, 3 (two pair, fives and threes).
Hero had K, A (two pair, Aces and fives).
Outcome: Hero won $551