January Recap
January was my first month as a "poker pro" and it went off without a hitch. Despite being out of town a good chunk and running poorly early in the month, I managed to make a comeback and run about as hot as I ever have in my life.I felt like I was playing ok (maybe even a bit weak/tight) but I was running extremely well. Draws were hitting, people were paying me off, and my hands were actually holding up for once. Basically I felt like I had been running like crap from the end of November through the beginning weeks of January, so I was pleased that it finally turned around. I hope I can keep this up as we've reached another point of online poker uncertainty. But before I get to that, here's the graph from Stars/FTP this month:
Besides playing PokerStars and Full Tilt, I spend a good chunk of time on two smaller sites that do not write hand histories to the hard drive and therefore cannot be tracked with PokerTracker. Since the hands can't get into PokerTracker, they aren't reflected in the above graph, so here's how it went. I estimate that I played roughly 10,000 hands on these two sites in January. In Mansion (now shut down to the US), I finished -$3,000 and the other site (no I'm not going to say which one, sorry) I killed it for +$26,197. So counting the above graph's +$17,419 and the other two sites net of +$23,197 my total for the month was +$40,616 in about 35,000 hands, which constitutes my best month ever.
I took two days off at the end of January to try and regain some strength and prepare to put in a shit ton of hands this February. As everyday passes the profitability of online poker deminishes. Right now it's very difficult to get fresh money into poker sites, therefore the ability to beat the other regular winning players becomes more important than ever before. I think online poker will survive, but we're going to be in a lull until some big e-wallets step up and decide they want to cash in on the millions of dollars in the business of transferring funds from US banks to gambling sites. The easier the better, so more casual players can come take their shot. When will it happen? Who knows... could be months, or more. I can't imagine setting up a new Neteller clone would be very easy.
Speaking of Neteller, fuck them. I had over $31,000 stuck in there because they were stopping all transactions with US customers. Rumors are swirling about the hows, whos and whys, but from what I understand the Dept of Justice is trying to do some investigations on them with regards to money laundering. Basically from what I understand the DOJ claims that neteller's whole business is money laundering... who knows WTF is going on... all I know is that I needed to get my money out of there.
I called up the Neteller VIP support to see what my options were. The rep said that if I transfer funds to a Canadian or European, they could withdraw the money to their bank account and send me a check... um ok, well i don't know anyone that well and that's a long process. He said if I transferred funds from my neteller to a euro's neteller, then the euro deposited to a gambling site, then the euro's account would be locked. So basically neteller doesn't want to be the pass through (which, by putting two and two together, tells me this is what the DOJ is pissed about).
Long story short, I got it worked out and I got my money safely in Pokerstars. Others are not so lucky. I still know of several people who have tens of thousands (and sometimes more) stuck in Neteller. They told us last week it would be 6-8 weeks to process check withdraws and all EFT withdraws are suspended...When I talked to Neteller yesterday, they said they had NO TIMELINE for processing cashout checks. Basically that's what prompted me to make a move and try to get my cash out of there, and with the help of a well respected 2+2'er I was able to do just that.
On another note, I got my first "official" student that I'll be coaching. His name is Matt and he plays 3/6 on Full Tilt. We had our first session on Wednesday and it was fun to sweat him while he played. While Matt isn't a novice to NL Hold'em, I feel I can provide him a good amount of advice and support to get him to the next level. I can't wait to see where it goes. To those of you who currently play 3/6nl on FTP, there will soon be a new sherrif in town!
So at the beginning of the month I said January will be my one month shot as a "poker pro". I decided that I'll give it another shot in February and we'll see where it goes. I don't have any delusions of repeating the month I had (in fact I'm probably due for a downswing and the good old "brag on my blog curse") but I'm going to try to play my ass off and get as many hands in as possible.
So here are my goals for February, short and simple:
-Play 60,000 hands wherever the games are best... 2/4 through 5/10.
-Play my A game as much as possible.
-Help Matt improve his game as much as possible.
Good luck,
Aaron
posted by WiltOnTilt at 11:45 AM
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