Still here, nothing new to report

It's been a while. I'm still here, still playing occasionally, still running like a warmed up turd.

It's been a remarkable run. I've played 29 months of online poker now, and the last three months have each been worse than any month prior to those three. And two of those three were three times as bad as any previous. The net result is I have lost almost exactly 50% of my bankroll in three months. The total losses in BB terms are probably in the vicinity of 1000, and bonuses and rakeback are not remotely close to covering it.

I took good advice, taking a break and slowing down my play only to come back to this sort of shit:

My graph now looks like this:



As you can see, there's really been no let up. The situation now is that I cannot afford to play the stakes that would recover the losses in anything resembling a reasonable time. As a result, I am now essentially a casual player only. I'll still try to get to the casino occasionally, as the 10/20 there is juicy and I can but hope my turd ball does not extend to the actual felt.

Running good when it really Matters

baby Alexander, born last night:

What a great way to put the rest of the world in perspective.

A litany of shit

Here is a snapshot of how my last two months or so have gone. It continues to get worse, and I will very soon not have an online bankroll left. Oh well, it was (sort of) fun while it lasted




I didn't play all of these perfectly, but there is some element of kick in the arse to almost every hand.

Good luck on the tables everyone. God knows you need it.

Bad.

So bad. Horrible.

This describes the last month, the last week, the last hour.

The worst month I have ever had by a factor of three. The worst week I have ever had. The worst hour I have ever had. My 2010 profit flatlined.

My graph now looks like a teepee, and my ability to play the games I want to is in some jeopardy.

I think I might be too busy to play poker for a while.

February summary

Ok, it looks like I have hit my targets, but not before taking a bit of a bruising in the last couple of sessions. I tend to tilt a bit when my sessions start badly, reacting by getting looser and more aggressive (i.e the opposite of what I should do).

Nevertheless, it was another strong month, with a net profit of $2236 , consisting of $450 from a RedStar rake chase, $150 from a deposit bonus and nearly $1000 in rakeback. As you might gather, it's been a pretty heavy month at fairly high stakes (for me), and positive in that play came out in the black to the tune of around $636 - that was hammered by a loss of nearly $700 in the last couple of sessions.

The month was also marked by another of my horriffic $1000 coolers mid-month, but compensated by a $1000 heater the next day and a pile of rakeback.

RedStar is great value for me right now. Between the bonus, rake chase and rakeback, I am netting nearly 70% of my rake back. That's pretty great value.

I have a pretty busy few weeks coming up, with the start of semester and all that jazz, so I'm expecting to take some time off from the pokers. Except for a live tilt or two at the ANZPT in Perth, I might even try to take two or three weeks off from poker completely. Now that is a real challenge!

So I look down at AA

So I look down at a beautiful pair of aces (spades and diamonds) and raise (playing 8/16 6max limit). Only the big blind calls. Flop comes down JdTc6c, bet, call. Turn 9c - an ugly card, but I bet, and he calls. River Qc. Check, check.

He turns over 8h5c for the runner-runner 6th nut flush, which is why poker is clearly a game of skill. Or limit is, at least.

For his next trick, he runs down my KK with the mighty T6 suited.

Table selection shmabel selection

This month I am chasing a $450 rake chase bonus on Red Star, and as a result have played nearly all my sessions on there (Cake). Apart from choosing first the tables with the high % of players to flop, I have virtually stopped table selecting - I just hop on as many tables from 3/6 to about 6/12 as I feel comfortable playing. I am pretty confident that I can beat any table at these stakes (on this site at least), and with rakeback, rake chases and a deposit bonus I am way into green territory. And I am still constantly surprised at the number of poor players who hover around the higher stakes.

Case in point was a nice little half hour heater at 6/12 which netted 25BB or so. The player on my right was an awful, awful loose passive player who would play way too many hands preflop, call too many bets and then fold the river if he didn't have a pretty strong hand. Earlier, I played with a mouthy guy at 4/8 who is a dreadful weak tight player - he plays way too tight preflop and then completely fails to get value from his monsters (his set of kings went check-check on the turn and river because someone raised him on the flop).

It's probably obvious from reading the above that I am running well - up nearly $2500 since the last cooler just over a week ago. I am planning to take a bit of a break once I hit this month's $2500 rake target, since I have been playing way too much and have a lot of other stuff going on in my life.