In 2008 as I broke into small stakes and became a high volume regular, I established a solid winrate over a fairly large amount of hands (I believe the figure was in the 2.5-3ptBB ballpark, it's been a while!). In 2009 I embarked on the SNE grind, and my winrate dropped some - it was still respectable (a shade under 2ptBB on the year), but no longer upper tier. Thanks to the huge amount of rakeback SNE generates my hourly was most definitely higher than the previous year, but through the massive grind and tonnes of well documented run bad I couldn't help the nagging feeling that my results weren't where I would have liked them to be.
In 2010, my winrate over the ~450k hands I've played to date is the highest its ever been. I feel like I'm crushing the games, especially considering I'm a 24 tabling nit that plays heavy volume relative to most. This lead me to think: what changed?
I have mentioned in previous posts (mainly in January) that I tweaked my game a bit to start the new year. This has surely been a factor, but to be honest, I don't think it is as significant as I would like it to be. In 2009, I had to play a pretty insane amount of hands to reach my goal. This was poor for my mindset and focus level. In addition, it meant playing more hours outside of prime time and prime days - that is, the days and times when the games are the softest. I believe this is the largest factor contributing to the improvement. Further, I feel like the overall game quality of Pokerstars SSFR has improved in 2010. This means that Pokerstars is doing good things, and if the upcoming changes do (almost) put an end to shortstacking, things will only get much better.
Finally, variance has most definitely been a factor. Even over extremely large samples variance isn't negligible, and I'm certain that I have run quite a bit better this year than last.
2010:
3.25ptBB/100 works for me. To be honest, if at the end of the year I'm a 2.75ptBB/100 winner I'd still consider the year a massive success. Hell, even 2.5 sounds pretty appetizing.
I guess I should also mention my Saturday grind was great. I ran well (no fooling, not just average, but GOOD), and was happy with the way I played. Add today to a great Friday and pretty decent Thursday, and it's been a damn sexy weekend financially.
3 comments:
Winrate is such a pointless, retarded stat. It's only an accurate stat for morons who refuse to work on their game and stay at the exact same level forever, otherwise it's completely inaccurate. I'm not just saying this because my winrate on PTR is like 1.something. Actually, my winrate this year is better than yours at 4.2 over 580k hands. To get an decent measurement on winrate I would say that you'd need like 10mill+ hands. It's ALL about hourly anyways, are you kidding? The only "macho men" who quote their winrate are those who are too slow in the head to either have the skills to run 24 tables or realize that they can make more money at a lower winrate. Haha this rant wasn't directed at you Ronfar, I've been meaning to rant about this in my blog for a while and just took the opportunity here. Keep killin it.
Amazing how you've played 450k hands this year and I've just played 10k this month and thought I'd grinded like a lunatic.
Would you say such huge volume has been a big factor in your continued success?
re: frosty,
I agree that maximizing hourly is everything - but one can't forget that winrate is a large part of that equation. Of course, it's such a mysterious number because over small samples it is so variance prone, but over large samples one's game or the state of the games one is playing in is likely to have changed significantly.
re: York,
Being able to play both 24 tables and a lot of hours are most definitely huge contributors to the success I've had. Of course, you could also argue if I cut tables and put a serious effort into beating 600NL+ I could potentially achieve a higher hourly than I have now - though it would almost certainly be a more variance prone one.
Post a Comment