May Review

It's time again for a monthly review. May turned out to be a pretty solid month for me. As a whole I may have run marginally above average, but my luck was probably pretty close to neutral over the month. I played a ton of hands, and definitely saw great returns on the improvements I made to my game.

To start, here are my winnings results for the month:


Represented in graphical form they look like:


Here are my general stats for the month:


As you can see, I'm still playing around 13/10. I'm comfortable with this, but I'm going to look to be opening up my range a little bit in the future, hopefully eventually settling into 15/12 or so.

My positional stats:


I'm pretty happy with these, and I think I improved my play from the small blind somewhat this month. I think I can improve my play from the big blind significantly by raising hands like KQo, QJ, etc. in pots that have a couple limpers in an attempt to gain initiative or steal outright.

Here is my EV graph for the month. As you can see, I ran pretty much close to dead average in terms of equity during May. That said, I was probably +~$200 in terms of heater versus cooler hands, so I think I ran marginally above average.


Next lets see if I met all my goals...

(1) Play 40,000 hands
I crushed this, playing 60k hands. I doubt I'll play so many this month, but who knows.

(2) Buy another 22" monitor and start playing 12 tables effectively
Check. I'm twelve tabling comfortably on my new setup. Is it scary I'm already thinking about getting dual 26" monitors so I could go up to 18 or more?

(3) Post a winrate of > 3.25 BB/100 over the month
Exceeded this significantly (4.46ptBB/100) thanks to not running like crap and the changes to my game. After a significant sample at $50NL, I think my true winrate playing my current game is probably ~4-4.25ptBB/100.

(4) Have a >$4k roll along with the confidence to move up to $100NL in June
Check. I've already played some $100NL and it's just like $50NL. I'm looking forward to the increase in earning power!

(5) Be more aggressive, a three part goal!
Part 1: 3-bet more preflop
I have been 3-betting more, though I could probably still take this a step further and throw in a few more bluffs, as well as marginal spots with AQ. I'll consider this goal met, but I can still improve in this area!

Part 2: Bet/fold more instead of check/calling
Wow, I forgot this was one of my goals. During the month, I actually had a major breakthrough in my game regarding pot control when OOP. The cliffnotes is that with a hand that you think is best a lot of the time, you need to be taking b/f lines on the turn against the vast majority of villains. Checking for "pot control" is garbage in these situations (remember, we're OOP; checking behind when IP may have some value sometimes, but b/f is still likely better). As a result of this, I've been taking b/f lines a lot more on the turn, and even sometimes the river for thin value. I still wimp out sometimes and need to improve, but I'm a lot better than I was. Again, this goal has been met, but has further room for improvement.

Part 3: Raise more
My total AF went up a half point this month, partially due to this goal (I've been raising more than calling, especially preflop). That said, it can be very difficult to find non-obvious places where value raises are good on later streets. I don't think I adequately met this goal. As my game gets better, I imagine I'll start raising for value more often, though it's going to take a "eureka" moment to get there methinks.

Finally, the state of my bankroll (after taking this screenshot, I also made my first withdrawal, which shall become a monthly occurrence now):


To sum up my monthly earnings:
$2681 winnings + 37k FPPs ($555) = $3236 total. I didn't only have my first 2k month, but my first 3k month. Huzzah!