Day 60/365

Well February is over, and that makes me pretty happy. The problem with February is that its such a short month that I didn't ever really feel like I was gonna put up big numbers. March on the other hand has me excited, I can't wait. I'm going away for the day on Friday, so if I am able to put together a couple of winning pace days tomorrow and Thursday I will be able to go clear my head with 180k VPPs and a solid start. I really want to crush January's total.

I feel like my game has improved a lot in the past week and I've had several epiphanies, particularly with regard to game selection. I've started working on my shorthanded game a fair bit as well again and may start 9 tabling that a bit too. I think seat and game selection will be the decider in whether I end this year in the black or red pre-rakeback.

I honestly dont have much else to say, not much else of relevance to this blog has really happened.

February total profit graph below:

It's funny that I ended at $6842, but I made about $4k in the first 5 days or so, and made about $3k in the last 5 days or so, most of February was pretty bad haha.

Graph without rakeback:



And to add to February, just to show what I was discussing in my last blog post, here is my graph in big bets, to remove the fact that this month I just ran insanely bad at higher stakes:

Finally, the numbers:

VPP/Pace = 173,594 / 163,014

$Poker = $4032 ($16357)

Day 53/365

I guess on review the past week while often frustrating was fairly solid in terms of winnings. No real big winning or losing sessions, but a solid amount of hands and a decent amount of rakeback got the job done. Weeks like this one are really the bricks that build the house of sne I think.

A couple of people have mentioned that my mental state is interesting to talk about. I think like most sne grinders I have a pretty decent perspective on life which means I don't really sweat winning or losing at poker; at least as much as most other people. For me I think it comes from two things: the first is spending a decent amount of time in the 3rd world travelling and working which makes it impossible to take for granted the gifts I have been given in life, and the second is having a really strong knowledge of who I am and where I'm going which is why the phrase 'It's a marathon, not a sprint' has special meaning to me.  If I run bad and have bad downswings, the only thing I'm really thinking about is it means my goals will be reached a week or a month later than before, and that I have an opportunity to learn something and get stronger. The past few years have just been sooo amazing, and I know that from 2014 onwards they will be amazing again, if I can just sacrifice these few years and do the hard work needed.

Random winrate thoughts: In terms of my overall winrate, I obviously expected to do much better at the start of the year; although on the other hand I'm not sure I fully expected to have been able to put in as many hands as I did.  However, I feel that when I analyse things closer I think I am actually doing very well and am set for a good year. Currently at the tables (not including rakeback) I'm down about $1.6k. However, when I filter my results for just 3 handed and heads up play I'm down over $1k in that scenario. When I filter my results and remove T/20 I'm actually up about $1.3k. When I go another step and filter out the early hands which included rungood at the start of the year and a massive downswing in which I feel I played pretty bad and made several adjustments immediately following it, I'm actually up ~$3.7k.

Looking at the data like this gives me a fair bit of confidence that the next few months should be better than my first two. I feel like if I avoid spots where I'm a dog (such as shorthanded and solid higher stakes tables) as much as possible, and play my A-game as much as possible, a decent winrate is still possible this year.

Not much to report on the business front. Things moving along at a snails pace I guess.

Finally, as always, the numbers:

VPP/rate: 154,680 / 143,836

$Poker: $4147 ($14,656)

Day 46/365

Well, first ever losing week, dropping close to 5k in a pretty sick downswing. Interestingly enough I'm still up in BBs for the month though; all my runbad has been at T/20, while I haven't run that far below ev in the lower stakes games. I've been dealing with an annoying headache/cold as well which hasn't made things easy.

VPPs/Pace: 136,018 / 124,658

$Poker: -$532 ($12,076)

Day 39/365

The past week has been good, in money, points, and mental growth. One thing I've realised about myself and achieving SNE is that I am not a stable person and I need to allow for that and use it as a strength rather than try to change myself and form rigid schedules. By this I don't mean that I'm emotional or anything like that, but rather that sometimes I feel ultra-motivated and other times I just wanna do anything but play/work. I'm learning that it's ok to have slack days even without reason, as long as when I feel pumped up I make full use of my energy and do a lot of work. For reference, my past week's daily vpp counts are: 3.4k, 1.8k, 4k, 500 (I went out this day), 1.1k, 4.5k and 3.8k. Whilst there is a lot of variance, I still roughly average pace days across the sample, and that's all that matters in making it.

Brief other updates: My business finally has a working name that I'm happy with, after about 6 months or so thinking about it almost daily. I'll post the name on here as soon as I've purchased the domains required. I've also got some software for design/prototyping so now I feel like I have a good plan for the next phase of development. My sportsbetting plans are being pushed back as unexpectedly numbers aren't available for the pre-season competition which means I'll have to wait til round 1 of the regular season.

As always, numbers below:

VPP/Pace = 114,378 / 105,480

$Poker = $2806 ($13,451)

One interesting thing about the numbers this week is that I have made about $4k in the past week, making it already my best week so far this year. However, the past two days I think I've about broken even, whereas the last day of December I crushed; so from the 30-37th day I believe I had about a $5.5k week... which is nice.

Day 32/365

So the last week has just been unbelievably frustrating with regards to poker. Internet problems due to a dodgy firewall on a modem cut me out from playing for 3 days straight, destroying all my goals for January. It is hard to express the annoyance to push myself so hard and work my ass off to fly ahead of pace and get in great shape, then to just sit wasting time for 3 days playing with modem settings and talking to internet support people trying to get things fixed and watching pace gradually catch up. I'm sure there is a lesson to be learnt and hopefully I'll learn it in the coming days, but right now I've just got to use all my energy to refocus and start pushing out my pace gap again. I feel like I've lost my mojo too as today I had to push myself hard just to get a 2.9k day.

Anyway, in perspective January went ok. It was hard to really work out where I would be at this point prior to the year beginning because I couldnt even really be sure I could string together a week of pace days at the start of the year. I obviously didn't expect to be down in $$ after my first 138k hands but again, I couldnt really estimate anything. I think I've just gotta focus on getting better, fixing every leak, and working twice as hard in February and more importantly three times as hard in March. I still hold out faint hope for 200k vpps by the end of Feb, but realistically I won't complain with ~185-190k vpps with even a little profit.

I'm also going to make the next few blog posts more poker oriented, I will only post about non-gambling stuff when I have actually achieved something worth posting about.

Let's do some January graphs.

This is total profit including rakeback:

Not including rakeback (the green line in more depth):

And finally, my stats as they stand now:

VPPs: 95,248 / 86,301

$Poker: $1085 ($9656)