Year end review - 2006
The year 2006 was an interesting year to say the least. So much happened, yet there's a lot still to come. My growth as a professional, a poker player, and most importantly a person was significant in the last 12 months.A year ago at this time I was finishing up 8 months straight on the road travelling for work and getting ready to start another out of town contract. I was heading towards my 2nd full year of dating Missy. My mom was still working away as a doctor down in Mississippi, sis was starting her second semester at Marshall University, and Dad was ready to get back into college football coaching.
As far as poker, I was working hard being a SSNL grinder in my spare time playing .50/1nl and $1/$2nl full ring and 6max, dreaming of the days I'd hopefully be good enough to compete at mid and high stakes. Ask me last January, and I'd have said playing $5/$10nl would be mostly a pipe dream...half heartedly of course. I knew I would make it someday, just not sure when. With a lot of hard work and coaching, I made it in the 4th quarter of this year.
Poker went through quite a metamorphisis as well this year as well. The online gambling "ban" really shook things up and there were times where I really thought online poker was doomed. Thankfully, the degenerate gamblers still persist and tens of thousands of players are still online stacking their virtual chips. The bad news, of course, is that the competition is so much tougher than it was a year ago at all but the smallest stakes. Players are getting better. TV ratings for tournament poker are declining and there isn't as much "fresh meat" as there was a year ago. Things aren't all doom and gloom though. Like anything in nature, poker is about survival of the fittest. Play has shifted to be quite a bit more aggressive than it was. A year ago, 5-bet all in bluff pushing preflop was virtually non-existant, or at least, very few were doing it. Now it's fairly common. The LAG style is the new black.
Party Poker pulling out of the USA took literally millions of dollars of potential profits out of the hands of the Party Poker regulars. Many, including myself, have gone through long dry spots after the party fish were no longer plentiful and jumping into our boats. October 13th, Friday the 13th, (when Party left the US) was a historic date in online poker and who knows how much potential money I lost because of it. A true shame.
So at this time, Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars are the new big kids on the block. It doesn't appear that will change anytime soon. It's sort of crazy that we're in a lull where the games aren't as juicy as they've been in the past few years, yet simultaneously there are more and more ultra nosebleed stakes running consistently. Anywhere from 100/200 to 300/600nl on FTP is running quite often...mostly with the same old crew including Phil Ivey, SBrugby, Ozzy, Durr, OMGClayAiken and the occasional whale such as Skywalker (who is rumored to be Charles Barkley).
Anyway, we're at an interesting time in the online poker timeline. It won't be much longer until the banks will start enforcing the legislation created back in October. That will be the next test of the survivability of online poker. Neteller is pulling out of the US whenever the banks start enforcing the legislation (supposedly 6-9 months from last Oct), so we'll have to see if another online funds transfer service will pop up and take over that market. Party Poker was a punch to the gut, hopefully neteller leaving won't be the knockout blow. I'm fairly confident, one way or another, online poker is here to stay. How profitable the games will be is another story.
Ok enough rambling and time for some graphs. Here's my final graph for the month of December. There's $3,000 profit missing off this graph as I took a shot at 25/50nl when a huge fish was there and 2+2's tcorbin took 1/2 my action. Well I dropped $6k that's reflected on this graph (around hand 32,000) but he reimbursed me $3,000 of it. So final tally of the month was just a hair under $10,000. If it wasn't for a final week rally, I could have easily been break even or worse this month. I can confidently say December 2006 was the most extreme combination of playing well and running horribly I've had in my poker career. It can (and will) get worse, but I felt like I played excellent poker in December, yet my results were pretty awful.
As for the final year recap, I played 345,421 hands of poker and made $103,612 (includes $3k from above). All the hands are reflected here on these two graphs. The first graph is 01/01/2006 through 06/30/2006. Most of the play there was .50/1nl through 2/4nl. The second graph shows 07/01/2006 through 12/31/2006 where most of the playw as from 2/4nl through 5/10nl.
So there you have it. My 2006 has ended as a poker player with me being a regular at 5/10nl on FTP and PS and smoked my goal of $30,000 profit set in January 2006. In my 2006 personal life I got engaged to Missy, my rock to lean on and the love of my life and we bought a house together. In 2006 my professional life has come to a close with the conclusion of my first independent programming contract.
I'm excited to see what's in store for 2007 and I hope you "holla" at me and check out my blog to see how it's going.
Happy New Year!
Aaron
posted by WiltOnTilt at 6:23 PM
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