Monday, May 08, 2006

May update

I've delayed updating, but I think it'd be smart to get down some of the things that have happened lately without stealing too much time from work:

  1. Came close to a WSOP seat at Martinspoker (well, making it to 40th out of 160 where the top 10 get seats). Considering I got in for free (VIP points) and all three tournaments (two satellites) had significant overlays, I'm pretty happy with that. I'll probably take another shot in late May and maybe another shot in June -- the overlays are just too big to pass up.
  2. I'm continuing to have a huge hot streak at the Wednesday games -- 11 of the last 12 tourneys cashed, six 1sts, three 2nds. An unreal run, but I definitely feel like I've been 'dialed in' for the structure of the game. Done pretty well in the cash games, although one night I dropped $60 (mostly kings and littles) :)
  3. Burned a bonus on PokerClubEurope (B2B skin). Awesome signup and referral bonuses, but hard to make a buck at those tables. Dropped almost 60 euros over 6 hours. Ouch.
  4. Burned through two bonuses on Party. The first, a $35 reload, went really quick (too quick, I believe their software screwed up) and I came out ahead at NLHE by $16 or so. The second, a $100 reload, I experimented with 4-tabling 1/2 LHE and dropped about $45 due to a -$60 final session. Gotta love resizing the party tables. Oh well, I still came out ahead at least.
  5. Related to the previous two topics, I still suck at LHE. I think I'm just a bit better suited for big bet games. My latest theory is I've been stressing decisions on the flop instead of the turn (which is ideal for big bet games, but not small bet games). I threw some money back onto UB to try to do some three-tabling in the near future and test this hypothesis. I will try to avoid multitabling LHE on sites that I can't fit all screens up at the same time -- just too much effort switching back and forth.
  6. And, again, I've been noticing a disturbing trend in 2006 of losing money online. Granted, I'm still ahead overall with the bonuses, but I've lost a significant amount since the first of the year (when the slide started). To be specific, it is approx -$650 over 125 hours of play, or about -$5 /hour. It directly correllates to when I've been burning bonuses, so I'm sure I'm modifying my play, game selection (i.e. playing LHE), etc. to fit with the bonuses. Obviously, this is something I'd like to fix, but as yet I haven't truly identified what is wrong.
  7. Played the $100 NL at Garden City a few times and booked a few wins.
  8. My bankroll is scratching that $2,000 milestone. That's pretty cool.
Actually, maybe I should focus on this lost money online. It really is getting pretty bad -- if I had just played break-even poker over that time, I'd be up a ton of money. Looking at the stats and graphs, it really appears LHE is my achilles heel, losing -$460 during that time over 54 hours of play. I did lose ~$160 at tournaments, but that I attribute more to variance than anything else (I had few cashes).

Probably the biggest leak was playing larger limits at the end of a bonus session -- I think I push too much to finish the bonus and it hurts me. For instance, about $400 was lost at 2/4 in two sessions alone (with another $100 at 1/2). That, along with the fact I usually chase bonuses at smaller sites (less fish, more bonus whores) makes sense. I think it is time to strengthen my limit game some more, but depend on NLHE to grow my bankroll. I also think I need to leave the game (or at least switch tables) when I'm running bad, very few times have I been able to turn a bad session around.

2 comments:

CC said...

First, thanks for dropping by.

I have gotten away from bonus whoring. Like your suggesting, I've tended to never do more than break even net, losing as much as the bonus to being slightly up. Maybe it's because I tend to underbuy the bonus (depositing $300 to get the max 20% $60 or something), which takes me to uncomfortably low limits which impacts my play. Would bonus whoring be better if we kept our bankroll at NetTeller and simply deposited as needed? I don't know. Anyways, good stuff, and I'll add more when I have time to review more.

CC said...

Oh, and let me know if you want a book.