February Review - Pulling Through

I think I can sum up February as a month in four bullet points:

(1) Ran excessively terrible for the first half of the month.
(2) Ran significantly better during the latter half of the month.
(3) Game quality sucked all month. With Pokerstars reducing the effective rakeback of the vast majority of cash game regs and dividing it between themselves and the recreational players, you'd think the opposite would be the case. Obviously they're doing something wrong, though it likely also reflects a lot on the state of online poker as a whole.
(4) My volume sucked, partially due to (3) but also because I had a difficult time finding any sort of motivation.

As I'm sure I've said before, it is always better to go from running awful to decent than the reverse, so I feel reasonably positive about things. I do wish I had put in ~15k more hands though.



The bottom line:
$9574.64 table winnings
+$1187.03 FPP value (21,197 VPPs * 3.5FPPs/VPP * 1.6c/FPP)
+$185 coaching
+$300 pace bonus
+$300 stellar bonuses
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$11,546.67 USD total profit

Hopefully the five full weekends in March yield some better numbers in terms of both volume and profit.

Flame Fail

The Calgary Flames are killing me. Over the past three games they have shown zero killer instinct, heart, or pride. It's painful to watch. Due to our abundance of No-Movement Clauses, we won't be able to unload much to recoup assets on Monday's trade deadline either. I suppose they might turn things around and sneak into the playoffs, but it really seems doubtful at this point. Regardless, I'll have a first hand look on Monday at the game against St. Louis.

Poker this week has been all about the comeback. On Friday I was -$500 early on but battled back to reach +$1.2k. Today I found myself stuck over $1k more than half way through my grind but ended up +$100 thanks mostly to two big hands. The first was stacking a whale at 400NL in a limped pot. The second was a bit more interesting almost 200bbs deep with a maniac running around 60/40 with a 25% fold to cbet at 200NL. The HH is below. He sure trapped me good!

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed)

BB ($332.72)
UTG ($609.59)
UTG+1 ($199.48)
Hero (MP1) ($380.64)
MP2 ($200)
CO ($334.07)
Button ($227.17)
SB ($336.08)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with 9♥, 9♦
UTG bets $4, 1 fold, Hero raises to $16, 5 folds, UTG calls $12

Flop: ($35) 3♦, 9♠, 10♠ (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $26, UTG raises to $52, Hero raises to $134, UTG raises to $216, Hero raises to $364.64 (All-In), UTG calls $148.64

Turn: ($764.28) 6♦ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($764.28) A♠ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $764.28 | Rake: $2.80

Results:
UTG had K♣, K♦ (one pair, Kings).
Hero had 9♥, 9♦ (three of a kind, nines).
Outcome: Hero won $761.48

Due

Up until today I had been without a truly big session so far this month. I've had a very bad (but not disastrous) one, a couple run of the mill bad ones, five or six of the average variety, and a couple lukewarm types. Midstakes was very kind to me over the last couple hours, and as a result I ended up with a 1.6k hand heater with a winrate of ~$1.20/hand. It helped that of the ~250 hands at 400NL and 600NL I must have been dealt AA seven or eight times.

It was also nice that the only memorable mistake I made during the grind didn't cost me any money. I check/called a river shove with middle set against a reg on a drawy board which ran out clean. It was a spot where doing anything but shoving myself was retarded as there was a fish all in on the turn and the side pot was so tiny that it's tough for him to shove the rest with a bricked draw, assuming he's paying attention. Fortunately he was coolered and jammed it in anyway so I missed no value.

Obligatory graph:

Sometimes It's Good To Be A Homer

I haven't blogged a whole lot lately because the content would have been predominantly negative and whiny. The Super Bowl was like reliving a nightmare. Poker has been terrible so far this month, as I've been running awful in just about every way possible, though the last session I played was solidly positive.

The Flames are well into their patented late season playoff charge, and I'm hoping they won't fall short this year despite them being utterly decimated by injuries (Glencross, Backlund, Jones, Stempniak, Moss and Derek Smith all out). They've been playing really well of late however, with the top line of Jokinen, Tanguay and Iginla being incredibly dominant. They even played well enough tonight to score me and my homer drafting first place in a Draftday freeroll with 408 total entries. If I had increased the homerism another notch and gone with TJ Brodie and Mark Giordano (a much cheaper option than the two defensemen I chose) my lead would have been even greater! In the interest of fariness, clearly Jason Spezza had a whole lot to do with my success as well.



I finished 100% completion of FFXIII-2 today, and while the game as a whole was reasonably good, both the ending and the "secret 100% completion" ending were intensely disappointing. Without spoiling anything, they pretty much guarantee a third entry at the very least.