Well, how did 2008 start? Poorly. 31 December 2007 I had been playing for almost 6 months and had built my bankroll up to $2,658 after taking off my inital deposit which was actually $800. On the 1st of January I then managed to lose 50BBs on the $1/2 tables, and then on the 2nd I lost another 50BBs, which meant i'd lost almost 10% of my bankroll in two days. January did turn around though and ended up boosting my bankroll by nearly 50%.
In February I decided to start this blog which seemed like a good idea at the time. I should actually look back through those first few posts where I talked about table selection, bankroll management, rakeback/bonuses, reading material and software.
April saw me fire up a few of the double up sitngos just for a bit of a changeup from cash. I still play them from time to time today, although obviously still play mostly cash.
May was my best month in terms of total return ($1,750) where I had a decent heater on the tables for table winnings of $1,200. Even then one third of my return was from rakeback/bonuses.
June I scored my most bonuses in thanks to a juicy Littlewoods bonus and rake race. I actually lost at the tables that month to the tune of $670, but made $1,820 in bonus cash, so it still ended up being a pretty good month. A real cooler compared to May though.
August turned out to be my worst month of the year, as my cooler continued and I dropped another $460 on the tables. Partly this was due to a shot at $4/8 on bodog where I got slaughtered. Accidently played an orbit of NL400, and ended up winning my largest ever pot at the time of $191 when my pocket 4s turned trips. Rakeback/bonuses kept my return positive for the month. I guess its easy to see why you need to have a good deal or two going.
November turned out to be a fairly ordinary month results wise again, and was again due to taking another shot at Bodog. It could have been a disaster but I won my biggest ever pot of $281 when I hit the nut flush on a paired board on the $4/8 tables. November does contain a couple of important posts for me to revisit though - attributes for a successful poker player, and long term poker goals.
December saw the WBCOOP, where I actually qualified for the final, and made it into the prizes .. just. Took another shot at Bodog $4/8, and managed to fail again, although a late turnaround averted complete disaster.
2008 also saw me implement a withdrawal strategy to make sure I do get something out of the effort I put in. At the moment i've withdrawn about $8k, and am simply withdrawing $1k for every $2k my bankroll increases. I still do keep it as bankroll but i'm unlikely to call upon it.
The year also saw me find a bunch of fellow bloggers who are a great read and often post useful comments when i've played like a muppet. Cheers guys, and good luck in 2009.
Overall Results
I finished the year with a bankroll of $15,800, so all up a gain of $13,100ish - which to me is more than I could have expected at the start of the year as a low volume casual player. About 1/3 of my winnings have come from the tables and about 2/3 from rakeback/bonuses.
Bonuses cleared
- Fulltilt iron man year end bonus from 2007 + rakeback - RakeTheRake
- Pacific sign up + more - RakeBackStat
- Interpoker sign up plus monthly no deposit plus rakeback - RakeTheRake
- Bodog monthly reloads - RakeBackStat
- Ultimate free cash kickback - PSO
- Mansion kickback - Rakeaway RakeAway
- GNUF kickback - PSO
- Sun monthly no deposit plus rakeback - RakeTheRake
- Party poker various reloads
- Littlewoods huge sign up + rake race + rakeback - RakeTheRake
- Cake reloads - Raketherake
- Pokertime kickback - rakeaway
- Pokerstars kickback - PSO
- William Hill - sign up bonus + rakeback - RakeTheRake
- Everest kickback - PSO
- Chan poker (rip) kickback - PSO
- 24 poker kickback - Rakeaway
- Pokerroom kickback - PSO
Regular sites - actively playing on now
- Cake (RakeTheRake)
- Bodog (RakeBackStat)
- Interpoker (RakeTheRake)
- Fulltilt (RakeTheRake)
Regular sites - deals that I could and do use from time to time
- Pacific (RakeBackStat)
Current bankroll: $15,800
2 comments:
Great blog and I must say your attention to detail is superb. Your playing like a pro ie like runing a business with SMART objectives. 13K for a partime player is great and I will be following this years progress with great intrest. i will link you up when i have a minute. One question for you is have you played on any of the ipoker network sites and whats the bonus schemes like compared to others? i say this because of the impending move to the network by William Hill. Any way good luck for the new year
Cheers mate.
In terms of Ipoker, I played a titan bonus last year, and found it pretty soft but you did need to table select and occasionally switch tables as the tags were queueing up in the wait lists for any fishy tables.
I haven't checked out the rakebackstat deal there, yet, but its probably pretty good. Actually might email em now.
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