March Recap
So I have to admit, I've been dreading the idea of making this latest entry. The end of march was a pretty big disappointment for me. On the final day I had one of the single biggest (if not the biggest?) losing days I've ever had, and April hasn't become any better. I also had to pull some extra money out for taxes, which still aren't done. I hired a CPA that told me I should be able to file as a pro last year, which will help me with deducting a lot of things such as my cardrunners membership, coaching sessions I had with Jay, Internet access, and perhaps some other things too. The bad thing is I'll have to pay self employment tax and all that other BS that goes along with being self employed. We'll see how it goes. Ugh. Stupid taxes.I meant to post a nice little guide (obv didnt get around to it) for extracting your sessions from pokertracker such that it lumps all your wins/losses for a given day into 1 session. That can be really helpful for those filing as a hobbyist. If you're interested in this, I can help you get it set up. Send me an email... aaron AT plusevpoker DOT com.
So anyway, back to the March recap, it was a double edged sword... on one hand, I was very close to having my first losing month. I made a late month rally only to explode on March 31st for basically a -$14,000 single day loss. Needless to say, it was ridiculously brutal. After looking back through the hands, there was basically one hand that I lost where I shouldn't have lost my entire stack (just part of it) and another where I could have played slightly better, but beyond that if I had to replay all of the big losing hands, I wouldn't have done anything different (well, maybe I would have prayed harder to the poker gods that my 92% chance of winning was enough...).
Here's my final March graph. I think it's been a while since I've done a graph. There are about 18,000 hands not recorded on this graph, played on another site, but I was only up like $2,000 there month...until the last day where it was erased.
So as you can see, a pretty much disaster month where I played a shit ton of hands with very little to show for it. Yea yea I know, How can you complain about making $10,000 in a month?? That's more than I make at my job! Yea, I understand, there aren't any tears being shed for my crappy results, but just understand that when you put 8-14k in play all day everyday at 5/10nl, and you play 60kish hands, and you're good, you should be making way more than $10k profit...
So why have my results been so poor? Well for one I believe I've been receiving way more negative variance these last 120,000 hands or so than I deserve. Like WAY more...Constantly getting these setup hands and coolers such that there's nothing I can do except lose my stack and if the deck isn't cold, then it's me getting it in with the best of it only to be outdrawn. It just really seems like I should be "due" for a huge upswing in the near future...
In truth though, part of my lackluster results have to be attributed to the fact that I'm trying to make a push up in stakes...to 10/20nl. The increased stakes are definitely hard to get used to, and I'm playing noticeably more timid than I would at the 5/10 games. That said, playing an extra cautious style should lead to fewer swings, not more/deeper swings -- as the case has been.
Take today for example, it was another day of poor results, like 3,000 hands and nearly -$10k (um, yea, that great profit from last month doesn't look quite as large anymore does it?). 2 outers here, failed coinflips there, big draws miss, theirs hit... before you know it I'm in the red 5 figures.
The final straw was this hand, which sort of spells out why it can be hard to move up in stakes, especially when my recent results haven't been all that great... Top 2 loses to big draw. By all accounts this is a fairly standard hand. On the flop we're basically 50/50, and on the turn I'm a solid 2:1 favorite but when I push he's getting pot odds to call, so he does and of course he hits. All fairly standard stuff, except for the fact that we're $3000 deep, which in my typical game is 3 buyins (at 10/20 of course, it's only 1.5 buyins for the math-impaired) so it definitely stings a little bit. This hand happened after I was already "stuck" about $7k so it prompted me to just get off all my tables before starting to tilt.
So here's my current month of April:
So yea, in case you're wondering, my previous entry on self control has been haunting me ever since my brutal final day of March, but I guess it was a good reminder to help keep me mostly tiltless.
In other big news, I've got my WSOP schedule pretty much set in stone. I'm planning to be there from June 8th to June 25th, and I'll be playing in some of the NL Hold'em events between those dates. I haven't finalized which ones yet. I still haven't won a seat into the Main Event yet, but I'd like to get that done this month. After the wedding on June 30th, Missy and I will be going back out to Vegas for the Main event which starts on the 6th of July.
April Goals:
- Break my February Record of 80,000 hands -- hopefully over 90,000.
- Break my January Record of $40,000 profit (fat chance with how awful I'm running, heh)
- Win a seat in the WSOP Main Event
- Add good 10/20 games into my regular playing schedule
- Try and make Supernova on PokerStars (current 36,000 FPPs to go, this will be tough to accomplish)
- Play as close to perfect poker as possible
Run better than me,
Aaron
posted by WiltOnTilt at 1:18 AM
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