Sunday, February 28, 2010

February 2010 summary

Well, I finished the month with a big fat turd.

The last 1,500 hands resulted in a loss of about 160BBs ... or a little over 10BB/100.

I ran my top boat into quads twice, an A high straight into a river flush, and 3 of a kind was a losing hand for me over that sample as well. Quite ugly really. And it was also getting frustrating to see several players on my right running with a vpip over 50% with a pfr of less than 5% but still going to showdown 60% of the time and winning 65%. Unreal.

After a half decent recovery, it also took my January downswing of 400BBs even further to 500BBs which is getting pretty nasty. Although in total February still ended at a profit in dollar terms thanks to rakeback and bonuses.

For February the goals in order of priority were:

• Clear my remaining Cake reload (done)
• Qualify for the Cake freeroll (done)
• Play the January Cake and Fulltilt freerolls (half)
• Make a profit! (loss on the tables but an overall profit)

The profit of $200 for the month was made up of:

Bonuses/vip/rakeback: $ 270

• Bodog $70
• Cake $100
• Fulltilt $100

Poker bankroll Interest: $80

Poker profits: ($150)


Goals for March are:

• Clear a chunk of the newest Cake reload
• Qualify for the Cake and Fulltilt freerolls
• Play the February Cake and Fulltilt freerolls
• Make a profit on the tables would be nice ...

Current bankroll: $23,500
February time played: 20.6h
February hands played: 5,414
February profit / (loss): $200

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Treading water ...

.... in a couple of ways - firstly in the pool to try to fix my back which i've managed to stuff again, and secondly with my bankroll not moving at all in the last few sessions.

I had the chance to put in a lot of hours this week, but got sidetracked with softmodding my Wii so I no longer have to keep using my Wii discs and then secondly with getting lightheaded in the pool and feeling sick the rest of the night the other day. I guess you really dont want to be passing out in the pool, so I got out pretty quick, but then couldn't even look at a computer screen, let alone concentrate on poker.

On the tables, when I have been playing the fish have been pretty scarce on Fulltilt, so table selection has been relatively tough. Nevertheless, i've almost qualified for next month's freeroll, and should do so comfortably on the weekend, even though we're pretty busy once again.

Current bankroll: $24,050
February time played: 17h
February hands played: 4,227
February profit / (loss): $750

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

A new fulltilt bonus

Looks like Fulltilt has come through with the goods again - this time the Rush bonus which is worth a minimum of $50, although luckily mine has come through for $100.

Fulltilt seem to be doing a lot more bonuses these days - i think in my first year on there I never received another bonus, which was disappointing. Now there have been several in the last few months. Keep it up Fulltilt I say.

I started clearing it ... well thought i'd started but actually for about 10 minutes i'd forgotten to actually opt into it so I was not actually clearing anything which was a rookie bonus chaser error. Ooops.

My aim will be to make sure I clear enough points this month to also qualify for my affiliate freeroll, and then finish off the bonus in March to again qualify for the next freeroll.

I also played a bit of Cake last night, taking a risk by opening four tables, however, this time it all went smoothly with no crashes or bugs or other random errors. Hopefully Cake continues to be stable for me.

Current bankroll: $24,050
February time played: 15h
February hands played: 3,770
February profit / (loss): $750

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Why cake, why?

One of my favourite sites, Cake poker, was giving me grief over the weekend.

It seems that the latest update did not agree with my PC.

I played in a freeroll on Sunday morning which was running fine, but opened a couple cash tables at the same time.

On the first table, I couldn't actually see my own cards .... that makes things kind of tricky. The other tables were working fine, so I adjusted my table selection filter down to allow me to see $0.50/$1 so that I could open several tables without it costing me too much.

They all seemed to work okay, except I couldn't always get the hand history up, and at one stage when I closed a table, the whole cake application crashed me out. Luckily I could reload it and get back in before being timed out.

All this, however, does not give me a great confidence in playing on cake, so I might continue at the lower stakes until it looks like it's running better. I know in the past i've had bugs and glitches with Cake, but never so many in such a short space of time.

Current bankroll: $24,050
February time played: 14h
February hands played: 3,519
February profit / (loss): $750

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Little heads up

Struggled a bit to find tables worth playing on last night across opening bodog, cake, pacific, and microgaming, although when I did find a table they generally paid me off a few BBs before breaking up relatively quickly.

One Cake table turned out to be the opposite though, taking a quick 20BBs from me before it broke up leaving me heads up with the table fish. It was only a $1/2 table, and the last table I had left open, so I figured since he was pretty fishy it might be worth a bit of heads up practice. He limped in most hands, so with anything decent I raised, and he'd often call the flop but fold to a cbet on the turn so most pots were getting to a reasonable size for heads up.

He eventually started spitting the dummy though as I went from my -20BBs back up to even in pretty quick time. He limped in two hands from the sb in a row where I had pretty much trash in the bb, only for me to flop a straight on both occasions which ended up pushing him to quit.

Must admit it was quite fun playing heads up, but i'm still not sure i've got the strategy for it. I should really read some more on it.

A couple rakeback credits also helped the bankroll, and now i'm not far off recovering January's losses.

Current bankroll: $24,000
February time played: 12.4h
February hands played: 3,000
February profit / (loss): $700

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Little time, little play

Only played a few hands again whilst waiting for the Missus. Was a bit disappointing that I couldn't stay longer, as there was a huge fish on my right who i'd seen call a raise with 53o and then bet every street when the lowest card on the board was a 5.

He donated me a few chips while I was there, but not enough to make much difference to the bankroll. This was again on a $4/8 table by the way, so yes you can find fish as you go up the stakes - you just have to look a bit harder.

I've now converted my Fulltilt notes successfully from my old PC, which was a piece of cake in the end. I've also done my microgaming notes, although haven't checked whether it worked or not. Read about Bodog last night storing notes in the windows registry - i'm hoping that was a much older version of the software as that would be completely bizarre if that were still the case. I'll send them an email to find out for sure how to do it.

Current bankroll: $23,850
February time played: 11.4h
February hands played: 2,861
February profit / (loss): $550

Monday, February 15, 2010

Still converting

I think i've sussed out how to convert across my Fulltilt notes from my old PC, so now only really bodog and microgaming to go.

Only played a few minutes last night and hit a stack of premium preflop hands as well as a couple flushes. Up about 15BBs at $3/6 in the end due to a couple suckouts in those hands, but can't complain at all about that.

I've now recovered about 140BBs of my 400BB downswing, so the bankroll is starting to go in the right direction again. Hopefully it continues. I'm not expecting to get in a huge amount of play this week, and it seems every weekend for the next couple months we've got something on at least one day, if not both. Poker will be taking a backseat for a while.

With the baby due in the next three or four months, I dare say this whole year is going to end up pretty light on for poker volume.

I guess i'll wait and see ....

Current bankroll: $23,800
February time played: 11h
February hands played: 2,827
February profit / (loss): $500

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Back in business ... again

Whilst my earlier call of being back in business may have been premature given my PC dying and all, I believe i'm now all set to go.

I've got PT3 converted across and four or five poker sites are up and running and importing correctly. I've copied my Cake notes across, although still have to work out how to copy across notes for Fulltilt and microgaming, but its not quite as important, since i'll have a HUD for those.

Played a bit over the weekend including the Fulltilt freeroll, but most of my play was a bit stop and start, checking with PT3 that everything was working correctly after an orbit or two before trying another site.

That being said, I found one super fish on a nice $3/6 table, who I believe played every single hand for about 100 hands. However, in that time he ended about 60BBs up and had about 25 of mine. Another table paid me that back though so I ended even for that particular session.

Cake have also come through with the goods and i've taken up another reload for $300, which came just in time as I cleared my last Cake bonus on the weekend. Thumbs up to Cake again so I'll be sticking with them for a minimum of a couple more months whilst clearing the bonus for effectively 50% rakeback.

Current bankroll: $23,700
February time played: 11h
February hands played: 2,799
February profit / (loss): $400

Thursday, February 11, 2010

New PC almost there

Bought all my pieces for my new PC Thursday, with only one change to the build where I ended up going with an Intel i5 instead of the AMD cpu as well as a corresponding motherboard change. It all went together fairly easily, and is pretty quiet and uses about a third of the power of my old PC. I've still got to put in the TV tuner card, but I don't think that will add much.

Had one false start with the new PC where I installed about 10 pieces of software without rebooting when requested. Next reboot, and windows would no longer load ... so I had to start all over again.

I've finally got all the poker software installed. The one last battle will be transferring over my PT3 database and then setting up all my hand imports. Not as simple as i'd first thought as my old database is version 8.2 and my new one is 8.3, so i'll have to check the forums on how to do it, as backup and restore didn't come close to working.

Current bankroll: $23,650
February time played: 9h
February hands played: 2,385
February profit / (loss): $350

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Biting the bullet

Going to bite the bullet and buy a new PC in the next day or two. My current machine booted okay the first time last night, but after a required reboot, had to be rebooted again twice more to get it to run without freezing up.

I've specced it out as follows for you geeks out there:

CPU: athlon 2 x2 235 45w
Mobo & GPU: GA-MA785GMT-UD2H
RAM: Gskill 4GB DDR3-1333
HDD: Samsung F2 1.5TB
Case&PSU: antec nsk2480b
ODD: Sony sata
O/S: windows 7 home premium 64bit oem

Pretty low specs, but should be enough for poker and htpc purposes. I'm a bit annoyed the phenom 2 905e chips aren't available in Australia, otherwise i'd get one of them instead. That will have to be a later upgrade now.

Hopefully i'll be back in business on the tables properly soon.

I played a few more hands last night when the machine was running and had a horrible run on a $4/8 table where I ran into a boat with my set, as well as a couple sets when I held TPTK. However, I ran like god on the $3/6 tables to make up for it and ended just in front for the session.

Current bankroll: $23,600
February time played: 8.5h
February hands played: 2,350
February profit / (loss): $300

Monday, February 8, 2010

PC trouble continues

Well, last night I fired up my partially installed vista pc ... and promptly was asked to enter a system disk. Not a good start.

I then tried installing vista on another drive and that wasn't successful either, so i've reverted back to my original drive, which is hit or miss on whether it decides to boot or not.

I played a few hands then, but figured i'd be better off trying to work out what is wrong with the PC. Ran a memtest, and memory is okay, so my latest guess is there's a problem with the motherboard.

Perhaps it's time to invest in a new machine .... Might happen in the very near future.

I have to agree with blindman's comment on my last post - even without the hud, with decent notes most sites would still be EV+. That being said, with my original drive I still have my database and hud operational, so will use it until I get a new machine.

Current bankroll: $23,550

Sunday, February 7, 2010

A new vista battle

Finally got round to rearranging the hard drives in my PC so that I could install windows vista on a different drive to work out whether my problem is a vista one (well it is three years old without a reinstall) or a hardware one.

I couldn't remember vista being this painfull to install the first time round, but now i'm thinking I should have just ponied up for windows 7 instead.

After the install i've set it to just get all the windows updates automatically, so first up 102 patches which takes a couple hours. Next up 3 patches, followed by another 40 or so. About 20 seem to have failed to install for some reason.

In the mean time i've tried to reinstall PT3, however, the underlying database won't install without Vista service pack 1 being installed which is one of those automatic updates that it hasn't gotten round to yet.

Several hours later, and I check the updates, and it has 'failed' next to service pack 1. FFS. How can it fail? It's a clean install.

So when I get home from work i'll be back trying to finish off all these updates so that I can hit the tables again with PT3 and hud running. I'll probably play some Cake while i'm waiting since I have no HUD there, but won't bother anywhere else unless I stick to very low stakes, or already have notes on most of the players at the table.

So overall for the weekend - a few hands of poker friday night, and none at all Saturday or Sunday. I only started my vista install sunday afternoon, but I can't see it being finished all that quickly.

Current bankroll: $23,500
February time played: 8h
February hands played: 2027+
February profit / (loss): $200

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Just when I thought ...

... I was back in business with my internet connection, and all of a sudden my PC decides it no longer wants to boot as of this morning. ARGH.

Before that happened I had been able to play a few hours yesterday when I had to leave work early for a guy to come round to measure the back for some sliding security doors. Obviously this means its time to play some poker.

It continued in the same vain as my last few sessions - commencing with a loss of a couple hundred dollars, followed by a claw back of my losses over the next hour or so. I'm looking forward to having a nice session where I start in front and stay in front.

Hoping to play a few hours this weekend, assuming I can get my PC up and running again shortly. I realised the other day it's nearly three years old, so maybe this is a hint to go buy a new one....

Current bankroll: $23,400
February time played: 7h
February hands played: 2027
February profit / (loss): $100

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Slow start to Feb

I've put in a couple hours but haven't really gotten far. Dropped a fair few BBs on the $2/4 tables, but won a bit on $3/6 and $1/2 for an overall loss of $50 on the tables according to PT3. It's just missing those one or two big pots that makes all the difference, although my W$SD stat is still a bit down from normal so far this month. Small sample though so should improve with any luck.

The bankroll has moved up slightly, mainly due to rakeback. My pokertracker isn't quite 100% accurate as it missed a few hands right at the start of the month when it wasn't picking up my bodog $4/8 table correctly for some reason.

Table selection has been a bit of a struggle at the beginning of the month, with a lot of the larger stakes tables (large for me) way too tight to be worthwhile playing on, and relatively few juicy smaller ones running as well. Although i've notice that when it rains, it pours, and when i've found a juicy table it has had three or four huge fish on it even, rather than just one or two.

I might get in a decent session on the tables on Thursday, although it will be in the off peak time so table selection may again be a challenge.

Current bankroll: $23,350
February time played: 3h
February hands played: 738
February profit / (loss): $50

Monday, February 1, 2010

January 2010 summary

Well, January turned out to be my worst month ever. I put in some high volume at the start of the month, and ran badly. And then at the end of the month with the house move I had limited internet access for over a week, so hardly got to play at all.

Ended slightly better than -400BBs for the month, but not by much ....

For January the goals in order of priority were:

• Clear my ironman Fulltilt bonus (done)
• Clear some more of my Cake reload (done)
• Qualify for the Cake and Fulltilt freerolls in January (done)
• Play the December Cake and Fulltilt freerolls (missed one. played WBCOOP though)
• Maybe do the William Hill new year bonus although ipoker has been a little tight (didnt get round to it)

The loss of ($750) for the month was made up of:

Bonuses/vip/rakeback: $ 350

• Pacific $50
• Cake $120
• Fulltilt $180

Poker bankroll Interest: $80

Poker profits: ($1,180) (ouch!)

Goals for February are:

• Clear my remaining Cake reload
• Qualify for the Cake freeroll
• Play the January Cake and Fulltilt freerolls
• Make a profit!

Current bankroll: $23,300
January time played: 38h
January hands played: 9,067
January profit / (loss): ($750)