January Review

So the challenge was basically to play at least 1000 $55 double up sngs in January to see whether or not it was a consistently profitable endeavour. Given that I have a new VIP deal rewarding the amount I rake on the site, I was hoping that playing the sngs would result in a nice profit. I did manage to play the thousand sit and gos throughout the month with mixed success. I finished $2,140 down, but earnt a VIP bonus of $3,280, so finished +$1,140 at the end of the month.

This figure was a little disappointing as I was hoping to come close to breaking even while playing the games and the majority of my bonus would be profit. There were a number of reasons as to why this was not the case. Firstly, instead of playing 40 games a day for 25 days, my volume was much more inconsistent. I had a side bet with Jeal, which involved the person playing the most sit and gos in January winning a share of the other's VIP bonus. I had played 500 games after 9 days while running good and was around $1,000 up. Unfortunately Jeal had to withdraw from the bet due to a nasty downswing that was no fault of his own. So, I lost my motivation to keep playing every day and assumed that since 500 games only took me 9 days, the other 500 would be easy to finish in the month. I played 100 games over the next 2 weeks, being far too lazy and barely playing. With one week left I still had to play 400 games so I started playing regularly again.

At this time my luck turned and I started a week long run of form that was truly horrendous. I lost so many ridiculous showdowns in a row it was hard to take. With 5 days to go I still had 300 games to play so started playing 60 a day. Playing 60 sngs a day when you can't win a showdown, is very very hard. I was losing money every day and it was emotionally draining to carry on playing. Due to my bad form and not having many breaks I started tilting and played worse as a result. Also my concentration would be good for the first few sets of 6 but would be poor in the last few sets. This week was one of the worst weeks I've spent playing poker, and I came close to quitting at various points. However, I finished it, having lost around $3,000 over the last 500 games to finish about $2,000 down. I was truly mad at myself for taking two weeks off instead of slowly keeping up the games.

I think that if I had spread the games out more evenly, had a break every 18 games instead of every 30, and not been cursed for the last week I would have had a much more successful month, but it was largely my fault for leaving myself too many to play and not allowing for the possibility of running bad. However, I still earnt $1,100 on the month so it wasn't a disaster by any means. I think if I continued to play these sngs and learnt from my mistakes I could probably earn around $2k a month on average. It really wasn't much fun at times though, I personally didn't see it as playing poker, it was just playing a set formula and hoping to win flips. Some people can grind 1k sngs a month but I don't think I am one of them. I would rather be playing tournaments or cash where the full spectrum of poker is being played, rather than following a formula like a robot, which is necessary in double up sngs. And although it is clearly profitable, I think that tournaments are much more profitable for me at the moment, as I am playing very well and running well also.

The plan for feb was to play more sngs to take advantage of the double up promotion on ipoker but on closer inspection, and after 2 days of playing it was obvious that there was no value in playing it as I would have had to play 200 sngs a day for a week, to earn about $500. Playing 18 hours a day non stop for a week didn't seem worth it to me, as my sanity would have probably gone after 3 or 4 days. So I've just been playing some comps for the time being, and luckily had some good results.

In recent news I finished 25th in the sunday million two weeks ago which won me $6k, but I was gutted not to go further obviously, 6th prize was $100k, and 1st was $600k. I went out with AJs vs KQs allin preflop, but I had lost half of my stack a few rounds earlier bluffing every street, before having to fold to a check raise all-in. The AJ would have put me back above average which was a shame but if I hadn't lost half my stack then i'm sure KQ would have folded preflop, so in some respects it was avoidable. The day after I won a PLO8 tourn for $1.2k, and the following sunday I cashed in the sunday million again, finishing 500th for $500, but was very unlucky when someone open shoved 14BBs (2/3rd average stack) from the cutoff with Q5o and I had JJ on the button. I had average stack before the hand and it was a huge pot which left me crippled. Great shove sir, are you really that desperate to steal the blinds? Standard sunday million donk.

Played live for the first time in a while last night in a dealers choice game in yarmouth, hosted by a friend of mine. I ran good and won a monkey. It was a lot of fun, with so much great banter all night it was hilarious. And I saw some old friends who I had not seen in a long time so it was a very good night. Hopefully i'll start playing live again in Norwich and yarmouth, as I do enjoy it and it makes for a nice break from online poker sometimes.

Rich x