A Little Run Good

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	763,598
SNE Pace:	127,918 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Secret of Mana (Wii VC) + other stuff

I was a major slacker early this week, neglecting to play at all on Tuesday and Wednesday and very little on Monday. I finally put in some decent volume on Thursday with the following result:


I've added some traffic analysis/logging to the blog, and I'm always surprised how many people find it, given it is basically only referenced in the SSNL Regulars Blog List over at 2p2.

Hopefully I get in good volume this weekend and slack less on the remaining weekdays of August. Dissidia for the PSP should be released on Tuesday, and should be lots of fun - looking forward to it. I think I'll also finally get off my ass and do some of the furniture shopping I've been talking about for the past month during the coming week. A new leather couch and kitchen set is what I'll be looking for.

Reload Bonuses, Warped, Permanent Doomswitch, 75% mark, and more

-- Status Update --
2009 VPPs:	754,438
SNE Pace:	135,198 AHEAD
Currently Playing:	Secret of Mana (Wii VC) + other stuff

August has been a shit month poker wise. I really don't know how anyone can run this bad. Being an underdog when you're supposed to be a 19:1 favorite isn't much fun. Today was my first real solid day of the month, and I believe the first day where I didn't run under expected AIEV. Instead, I ran less than a BI above and made $1.5k + FPPs. I'm also starting to feel comfortable at 400nl, and feel I'm game selecting well enough to be very +EV there on the tables I play. I think I've played around 1% of my volume there so far this month, which isn't terribly significant but it is still nice. I believe around 10-15% has been at 200nl.

Two days ago my tenant/roommate/poker student and I went to Warped Tour. Saw some good bands including Hit the Lights, Valencia, All Time Low, Silverstein, We the Kings, and There For Tomorrow. It was a good time, though there's a good chance it will be my last Warped. Getting too old for this stuff.

Earlier this month Stars put in a $300 reload bonus, which is a good chunk of free money. The reload and first deposit bonuses have really brought in the fish, and game quality has definitely improved. Of course, since the fish are favorites with two outs and one card to come, it doesn't translate into more money.

You may also have noticed that I've crossed the 75% barrier on my journey to Supernova Elite. It is somewhat difficult to motivate myself to play long sessions these days because I'm so far ahead of pace, but at the same time I know I'll appreciate some time off late in the year. Hopefully I reach SNE in November. It would take nothing short of a cataclysmic event to prevent my reaching the goal at this point.

Oh, I've also entered ChicagoJoey's Fantasy Football League this year, and I'm looking forward the season. I'm a FFB fiend, and while the $200 BI was more than leagues I've played in the past it'll just motivate me to do my homework and draft well.

Sorry for not updating the blog more often. I know it's been awhile, but pretty much all I would have posted in the last couple weeks would have been ranting about how poorly I've been running, so it's probably for the best.

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.