Rollin rollin rollin
This is going to be a bit of a brag post, but hey, I need to feel good sometimes too.
So since I’ve moved up to the $55 games, I’ve had a ton of mixed results. I do really good one day and really bad the next. And a “bad” day of playing the $55 games can be really bad. Like want to rip off my own face with my hand just to distract myself from the pain of losing hundreds of dollars bad.
But I think I’ve gotten more used to it now. Well I still get a little suicidal when I book a daily loss, but the anger has definitely subdued.
Early in March I was experiencing a long stretch of break even play - and when you play for a living, break even play fucking sucks. So I was sitting there last Friday after a week of playing for hours with nothing to show for it and was wondering if I should even be at the $55 games at all. Then I went over each hand history just to study the nature of my knockouts and possibly find some places where I should be pushing, or calling all-in’s where I wasn’t. After about 30 hand histories I couldn’t see any discernable bad play or leaks, although that makes sense since I was the one who played those hand histories. But I did notice a lot of the hands where I went out were all in’s that I got sucked out on. Usually a dominated situation like AQ vs AT or maybe something a bit less drastic like AT vs 89 but generally I was the favorite going in to the hand.
But it all changed this week.
That’s the beautiful thing about poker. You can change absolutely nothing about your game and get completely different results on a week to week basis. This week I don’t think I’ve lost a coinflip or better situation, which is truly remarkable. I actually can’t remember the last time I received a bad suckout. That is saying something.
But it’s just a heater. I can’t get too overly confident about my results this week, but I have to get them down on the blog just to remind myself about the other side of variance and luck. The side that poker players dream of but rarely comes.
So while I didn’t play anywhere near the amount of games I should be playing this week, my profit was one of my all time highs. That combined with my early March blah week puts me about right on target for my monthly goal.
Total Games: 66
Total Buy-In: $3,960
Total Winnings: $5,742
Total Profit: $1,782
ROI: 45.0%
ITM: 54.55%
$ / Hour: $162.0
1st’s: 9
2nd’s: 14
3rd’s: 13
Included in this streak is today’s profit of $913.50 after only 12 games, which is by far and away my best single day total that doesn’t include tournaments. My previous most profitable day was $450. Again, I wasn’t playing especially good, wasn’t getting all AA and KK, I was simply playing my regular game. The same game I wonder why I never make money with when I’m breaking even for a week.
Now 66 games is basically nothing. I’ve set a daily goal of 30 games since I moved up to the $55 games, and since I played every day this week, I am clearly falling way short of that goal. But I plan on maintaining that goal for the future weeks, as 30 games is about 5 hours of play. And given that I have all hours of the day to play I can easily get that in, not sure why I’m slacking so much.
One of the biggest changes I am trying to make doesn’t involve my game at all. Results greatly affect how I play. It’s unfortunate but if I know I’m up a couple hundred for the day, I’ll play much tighter, and much weaker. If I know I’m down for the day I’ll become a stupid aggressive idiot pushing any 2 cards hoping for a miracle double up so I can make some money. In order to counteract this horrible tendency I have I’ve been ignoring how much I’m up or down all day. I just start up the games, play, and win or lose I just start up a new round and don’t add up the total results. This way I can hopefully keep a clear conscious while playing. It’s pretty pathetic that I, a grown man have to trick myself so I don’t get emotionally attached to my money, but hey, if it works, it works.
And these short term results would indicate it works. Of course, 66 games is at best a bad indication of how it really affects my play, but I’ll take it as a good sign regardless. I think the real secret of winning sit and go’s is just being able to win one coinflip. You double up once in a coinflip situation, and you have a shot to finish in the money. And it really is that simple.
So since I’ve moved up to the $55 games, I’ve had a ton of mixed results. I do really good one day and really bad the next. And a “bad” day of playing the $55 games can be really bad. Like want to rip off my own face with my hand just to distract myself from the pain of losing hundreds of dollars bad.
But I think I’ve gotten more used to it now. Well I still get a little suicidal when I book a daily loss, but the anger has definitely subdued.
Early in March I was experiencing a long stretch of break even play - and when you play for a living, break even play fucking sucks. So I was sitting there last Friday after a week of playing for hours with nothing to show for it and was wondering if I should even be at the $55 games at all. Then I went over each hand history just to study the nature of my knockouts and possibly find some places where I should be pushing, or calling all-in’s where I wasn’t. After about 30 hand histories I couldn’t see any discernable bad play or leaks, although that makes sense since I was the one who played those hand histories. But I did notice a lot of the hands where I went out were all in’s that I got sucked out on. Usually a dominated situation like AQ vs AT or maybe something a bit less drastic like AT vs 89 but generally I was the favorite going in to the hand.
But it all changed this week.
That’s the beautiful thing about poker. You can change absolutely nothing about your game and get completely different results on a week to week basis. This week I don’t think I’ve lost a coinflip or better situation, which is truly remarkable. I actually can’t remember the last time I received a bad suckout. That is saying something.
But it’s just a heater. I can’t get too overly confident about my results this week, but I have to get them down on the blog just to remind myself about the other side of variance and luck. The side that poker players dream of but rarely comes.
So while I didn’t play anywhere near the amount of games I should be playing this week, my profit was one of my all time highs. That combined with my early March blah week puts me about right on target for my monthly goal.
Total Games: 66
Total Buy-In: $3,960
Total Winnings: $5,742
Total Profit: $1,782
ROI: 45.0%
ITM: 54.55%
$ / Hour: $162.0
1st’s: 9
2nd’s: 14
3rd’s: 13
Included in this streak is today’s profit of $913.50 after only 12 games, which is by far and away my best single day total that doesn’t include tournaments. My previous most profitable day was $450. Again, I wasn’t playing especially good, wasn’t getting all AA and KK, I was simply playing my regular game. The same game I wonder why I never make money with when I’m breaking even for a week.
Now 66 games is basically nothing. I’ve set a daily goal of 30 games since I moved up to the $55 games, and since I played every day this week, I am clearly falling way short of that goal. But I plan on maintaining that goal for the future weeks, as 30 games is about 5 hours of play. And given that I have all hours of the day to play I can easily get that in, not sure why I’m slacking so much.
One of the biggest changes I am trying to make doesn’t involve my game at all. Results greatly affect how I play. It’s unfortunate but if I know I’m up a couple hundred for the day, I’ll play much tighter, and much weaker. If I know I’m down for the day I’ll become a stupid aggressive idiot pushing any 2 cards hoping for a miracle double up so I can make some money. In order to counteract this horrible tendency I have I’ve been ignoring how much I’m up or down all day. I just start up the games, play, and win or lose I just start up a new round and don’t add up the total results. This way I can hopefully keep a clear conscious while playing. It’s pretty pathetic that I, a grown man have to trick myself so I don’t get emotionally attached to my money, but hey, if it works, it works.
And these short term results would indicate it works. Of course, 66 games is at best a bad indication of how it really affects my play, but I’ll take it as a good sign regardless. I think the real secret of winning sit and go’s is just being able to win one coinflip. You double up once in a coinflip situation, and you have a shot to finish in the money. And it really is that simple.
posted by RikkiDee at 3:13 PM
4 Comments:
$1782/$162/hr = 11 hours? 11 hours of play in 10 days? Are you burned out already?
Hmmm, I guess these stats are just for this week....still pretty lacking. Is it hard to remain motivated when poker is a full time gig?
yea since I play 6 at a time, 66 games makes 11 sets of play. Each set takes about an hour, give or take, so yea, 11 hours total this week.
I agree, it is pretty pathetic, but this week was a little wonky as I had a few non-poker things to take care of.
But you are right, I am for the most part unmotivated. I don't think it is burn-out, just a lack of incentive to play at times. Motivation to play for me is as simple as a desire to play to make ends meet. In a way I probabbly am a little burnt out as I don't truly *enjoy* just playing as much as I used to.
To contrast though, last week, I played 119 games over 4 days played, which is almost 30 a day, or 5 hours of play each day.
Maybe you could add other games to your mix for variety (plus perhaps broadening your skill set/experience) such as small stakes no limit ring games.
From what I interpret from your posts, you could do without a lot of negative variance. Small stakes no limit ring games provide a good hourly rate with pretty low variance.
Currently, I'm cutting way back on my multitabling in an attempt to improve my game and move up in limits. However, in the past, I've found that n-tabling $100NL at Party yields (with 7.5PTBB/100h) me the same hourly rate as n-tabling 55+5 Stars Turbos (assuming 12% ROI which is low but reasonable when considering 6-8 tabling).
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