December 2012 review

December was the second most swingy month I had this year. I had two 40000+hands breakeven streches. It is a shame I could not run better because the games where so good and I could have made a lot of money. In the last day of the month I had my worst session ever (-600$ at 25-100NL) and eventually had to stop playing before I lose even more. Its just variance...

 

The final numbers for December are as follows:

135,909 Hands Played

11,612 VPPs

+$2,056 (cash game profits)

+$650 (FPP value)

+$180 (coaching)

------------------------------------------------------------------

+$2,886 (Total Month)

 

And the graph and results by stakes:

 Here are my goals for 2013.  Happy new year and good luck to everybody in 2013...

Not results orientated

I want to thank everyone for following my blog in 2012. It means a lot to me... I wish all my readers a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! and a better 2013... I will post my december and also 2012 results after the last session I will play today.... 

The guy that shoved was a huge tilted whale(who wanted to gambol a bit - read his chat). The cold caller was a 12/10/3 nit. The nit has KK+ 100% of the time there so I just ended up folding. The flop would have been pretty nice for me. But we can't be results orientated.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players
WinsLucky- (SB): $50.25
Mr.smith12 (BB): $53.77
MVFB51 (UTG): $182.11
Hero (UTG+1): $72.39
ran2jen (MP1): $23.80
farfui45 (MP2): $50.00
Elena1959 (CO): $50.00
outlierplus (BTN): $81.39

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG+1 with K A
1 fold, Hero raises to $1.25, ran2jen raises to $23.80 all in, farfui45 calls $23.80, ran2jen says "gl", 4 folds,
--- Hero is thinking about what he should do....----

ran2jen says "call", 1 fold

Flop: ($49.60) K 8 K (2 players - 1 is all in)

Turn: ($49.60) 2 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($49.60) 3 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $49.60
ran2jen shows 7 7 (two pair, Kings and Sevens)
farfui45 shows A A (two pair, Aces and Kings)
farfui45 wins $47.37
(Rake: $2.23)

Today I won my biggest pot ever...:)

When the hand happened I had both villains at 80/60 and 80/20 over 5 hands. So I can't really do anything else, but stack off here(this hand solved the all in ev problem I had this month):

Poker Stars $2/$4 Pot Limit Hold'em - 7 players
golovorez777 (SB): $418.00
Hero (BB): $400.00
FrederickH. (UTG): $607.78
NesterStar83 (UTG+1): $396.30
tomekpe (MP): $452.86
LadyMaCe86 (CO): $443.15
LiftGrind (BTN): $432.58

Pre Flop: ($6.00) Hero is BB with A K
FrederickH. raises to $8, NesterStar83 calls $8, 1 fold, LadyMaCe86 calls $8, 2 folds, Hero raises to $42, FrederickH. raises to $99, NesterStar83 raises to $349, 1 fold, Hero raises to $400 all in, 1 fold, NesterStar83 calls $47.30 all in

Flop: ($901.60) J A 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Turn: ($901.60) 8 (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($901.60) 6 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $901.60
Hero shows A K (a pair of Aces)
NesterStar83 shows K K (a pair of Kings)
Hero wins $898.80
(Rake: $2.80)

My goals for 2013

After thinking about going for supernova elite in 2013 for a while, I have decided that it is too soon, to try it (mostly because I would need a 40k$ bankroll to be comfortable in the sng's that I intend to play and now I have only 20k$). So I will play it safe and start by going for the 400k VPP/year milestone and if my bankroll gets a bit healphier and the smaller buy-in sng's (I will play the 35$ buy-ins for now) work well for me, I will resume the chase for sne somewhere in march or april. 

My goals for 2013 are the following:

• to create a daily schedule for playing poker and respect it (in 2012 I just played whenever I felt like it - which is not a optimal strategy)
• to play 250k hands/month
• to make 150buy-ins profit each month(I need to maintain my 2012 winrate and play 250k hands/month for this)
• to make 33.000VPP's/month
• to add CAP tables to my normal tables, so I can make more VPP's 
• to never check holdem manager results again, while playing in a session (I allready started doing this this week - this concept will be huge for me in terms of tilt control and also playing more hands) 
• to make 10.000$ profits/month (including all types of money like winnings, rakeback, staking, etc)
• to find a way to stop losing money when I cash-out [I lose money mostly because of pokerstars-moneybookers-bank curency convertion rates(each one also adds a couple of %'s to the conversions) which have really screwed me so far --- I lose like 200$ every time I cash out 3.000$, which is a lot of money for me]
• to start investing my poker profits in a low variance business in order to overcome inflation (just keeping the money in a bank is a losing strategy in my countrie)
• to start donating 5-10% of profits to charity
• to eat only healphy foods and go to the gym regularly

I just found out this week about the progress bar that stars offers, which is pretty cool and also usefull... I used to have it set to show how mutch I have left to the next milestone, but now I set it to show my VPP progress on a daily basis (which will allow me to see how mutch volume I put without checking holdem manager). Very nice feature...

Merry Christmas to everyone

Lol

My best day ever in terms of all in EV

Today was the best ever of my poker carer in terms of all in EV(871$), and the second best day ever in terms of profit(841$). The games where really good today and I did not get coolered that mutch. I had to stop the session because of some internet problems, but I will continue playing in a couple of hours after I rest a bit. These last 3 days saved my graph from this month, that was pretty affected so far by negative variance.

Here are my top 5 most profitable days ever since I started playing poker last year:

And here is the biggest hand of the day. Both villains where regs. The MP reg used his entire time bank before shoving the chips in the middle and the bt folded TT(bottom quads...lol-almost got coolered again):

The first buy-in I won this month at 100NL

After a pretty brutal downswing at 100NL this month, today I managed to win my first all in. It feels good to recover a bit of my losses. Sadly a couple of orbits later I got coolered again (and lost the buy-in). Here is the hand I won(feels good):

2 different ways to play kings

Today I survived the end of the world.... That is allways nice!!! I also played some poker...

In this hand bt was a 24/17 reg over 6900 hands and bb was a 66/1/0.7 whale (I had reads on him that he allways limp/3bets only AA and calls with everything else). When he squiezzes I am 120% he has AA. So I decided to just set-mine, given the great implied odds:
 
Nice hand sir... One orbit later: Hello kings again.... I get involved with the same villains again, but this time I have the best hand(on the flop and I forced the reg to fold the eventual winning hand and made him tilt in the chat -see the picture below)....

Here is the HUD of this unique whale... That 1% PFR is so sick...:

My poker setup

My PC poker setup is the biggest investment I ever made, after my apartment. I bought it 1 year ago and kept upgrading it. The total investment was around 3000$ in it. Here it what it contains and a picture with it:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R with water cooling sistem
• CPU: Intel I7 920 2.67GHz
• Memory: 24GB DDR3 (6x4GB) with coolers
• Hard disk: western digital 2TB SATA3 and 120GB Kingston SSD
• Video card: Gigabyte ATI 4850 1GB 256bit
• Power supply: Sirtec 500W
• Monitors: Dell 27" and Samsung 23"
• Mouse: Verbatim Rapier VI (3200DPI)
• Keyboard and headphones: the cheapest ones I found.

The memory update I made recently from 8GB to 24GB really helped my PC run a lot faster. Now it has almost no lag when 24 tabling or playing games. This configuration would probably be good for the next 2 years.

Let's gamble a bit

Unexpected result

I don't quite understand this hand that I played today:

Both villains where 20/0/0 over 10 hands. Given the preflop action, I decided to make a pretty healphy 4bet, so I can isolate someone and take the flop HU. I get 2 callers(witch is a bit weird, given my sizing) and have less than a pot sized bet left. I decide to check, because I had the board crushed, villains range can't have a lot of strong hands and I have 2 streets of betting left with a small spr. 1 guy bets small, gets called and I also call. The turn brings a straight draw and a flush draw. I shove to get value from all the draws and worst pairs and sets. I am really surprised to see the hand that villain had(he was only 20VPIP so I did not expect him to call a huge 4bet that light preflop).

Free poker videos and software

I think it is important for new players, that don't have a big bankroll, to have some quality free poker resources availeble, to improve their game. I came up with the ideea of creating a list with usefull free poker training videos, books and software. I will keep updating this list on a regular basis.

Poker podcasts:

http://www.thinkingpoker.net/category/podcast/ (I am not a fan of podcasts, but these are extremely good quality material, +EV and nice to listen podcasts).... My favorite are:

• http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2012/11/thinking-poker-podcast-episode-9-featuring-lee-jones/
• http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2013/05/9398/
• http://www.thinkingpoker.net/2013/02/episode-20-featuring-steve-day/

and all the others that have book authors as guest...

Tournament Videos:

• http://www.tournamentpokeredge.com/freevideos/ - best site with poker vidos for mtt players
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3zKVIJFdQk -this is a extremely good video and you can also watch the other videos posted by acoimbra...

 MIT poker lectures:

• Poker lectures presented at MIT university by Will Ma  (on right side of webpage click on videos)

Mental game videos:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbvDbemInVg
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJzjsPknlSo

Videos, books and articles  for micro stakes players:

• micro stakes leaks
• some 6max theory videos:   part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5
• The pokerbank videos - a great collection of strategy videos and articles and tips
• Mt-micro-2011-part-1 and Mt-micro-2011-part-2 - a couple of great videos that show Verneer playing 4 tables of rush poker, during his 2011 challenge in witch he goes from 200$ to 10.000$
• 13-scariest-small-stakes-leaks-przytula - a video that shows leaks that new players often have
• Veneer's ebook - a great strategy guide for new players

 Free poker software:

• Pokerstove - a great program that shows the equity'es that certain hands have against certain ranges 
• PokerStrategy Equilab and PokerStrategy Equilab PLO - another great program that shows the equity against a range of hands 
• variance simulator - a great variance simulator that will show you how mutch variance you can experience over time and what kind of bankroll you should use
• starscash script - a program that allows player to multitable on pokerstars with less effort by removing minor distractions

Sunday spew

Today I had one the most tilting sessions from the last months. My runbad moved from 100NL to 25-50NL and I quickly lost about 6buy-ins because of coolers. 2 good TAG regulars observed that I was not quite playing my A-game and decided, to adjust, by calling my preflop shoves with AQ for 100bb(this is the the first session ever in witch, I get more than one reg to pay me off with less than a premium holding preflop - most of the time the chinise regs love to call me light). The entire session was pretty filled with spew both from me, other regs and fish. Sadly I finished the session break-even and 4buy-ins below all in EV. Here are some interesting hands:

 

This hand was almost a flip preflop (60/40): 

100NL failure

Last month I ran horrible at 200NL and decide not to play 200NL for a while. Lol... This month I have exactly the same problem at 100NL. In the entire month I won only one pot that was bigger than 50bb(this is pretty absurd given my style of play). I guess maybe I should also stop playing 100NL for a while (it is so tilting having to grind 4buy-ins at 25NL for each cooler I get at 100NL). My winrate at 100NL this month is -29bb/100 (pretty crazy - most fish have a better losing-rate than this...LOL)....Here is the graph so far and a hand played today vs a reg:

I guess I was not really repping mutch here, vs a reg with 30% fold vs 3bet (nice hand sir if you are reading this):

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players -

CO: $68.99
BTN: $100.21
SB: $67.41
Hero (BB): $100.00
UTG: $100.00
UTG+1: $35.00
MP: $100.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with A A
2 folds, MP raises to $3, 1 fold, BTN calls $3, 1 fold, Hero raises to $12.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $9.50

Flop: ($28.50) 7 4 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $13, BTN calls $13

Turn: ($54.50) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $31, BTN raises to $74.71 all in, Hero calls $43.50 all in

River: ($203.50) 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $203.50
BTN shows 8 9 (a flush, Nine high)
Hero shows A A (two pair, Aces and Fours)
BTN wins $200.70
(Rake: $2.80)

The overall graph from this month looks a bit more promising: