Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The Girls

Cute, huh?

Monday, June 23, 2008

SNE Quest - June 23: Fighting Downswings

VPP COUNT: 459815

A while ago, someone wrote, "Eventually, everyone runs worse than they ever expected." This is incredibly true. After playing professionally for years at a time, you are bound to have that one month where things just never work out.

I had an anonymous request in the previous post to give more detail about my recent downswing. Since he called the blog "inspirational", my ego urged me to fulfill his request.

The downswing from this month lasted 65k hands and totaled 22 buyins (from highest point to lowest point), evenly spread through the 600-200NL level. This is probably about 50% more than any previous downswing, as I have a pretty low-variance style. Eventually you just have a month where nothing works out, and much of June was like that for me. I still technically haven't fully recovered. I'm up a bit for the month, but am still about 5-10 buyins away from my previous peak.

SNE has really made it easier to get through downswings. Even when I get repeatedly cold-decked, at least I'm accumulating VPPs and getting closer to my goal. If it weren't for that alternative encouragement, those big downswings would be much more devastating, and would kill my drive to play.

The best advice I can give someone who is currently getting cold-decked: Just step back and look at it from a long-term perspective. If you have lost enough that it has significantly damaged your bankroll(I'd call 50% significant, if you are properly rolled), it may be time to move down or completely re-assess your game, because something is not working. In my case, though the amount of money lost was extremely significant, it worked out to less than 10% of what I've made this year.

So I ended yesterday at about 15k points behind schedule. I'm still on a solid pace to hit 500k by June 30. Unfortunately, this is not going to leave much room for a day off, as my Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays are all pretty much limited to a 3hr session each day. Life is busy.

Hopefully I'll be able to end this month the way I ended May.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

SNE Quest - June 17: Almost in the black.

VPP COUNT: 441374

I put in about 15k hands yesterday, and had the kind of day I've been waiting for all month. It is in my top 3 all time cash days easily. Even after the huge upswing, I'm still slightly down for the month. I am in fine shape after VPPs and bonuses though. It is nice to know that I can have the biggest downswing of my life and still have my monthly nut more than covered after 16 days. Poker is awesome.

Sophy is learning to crawl. It is fun watching her figure it out.

Monday, June 16, 2008

SNE Quest June 16: Took a well-deserved break.

VPP COUNT: 435347

I have taken the last 4 days completely off of poker. I think the last day off I took before that was in mid-May. I had a vacation coming to me.

I bought myself a new 20" HP laptop, and will be concierging that ASAP. This giant beast isn't exactly the most mobile computer, but it will be perfect for my media/poker uses with 1-2 trips a week to my dads house.

Speaking of Concierge and Vacation, we are getting to the time where we need to book our honeymoon, and it ain't gonna be cheap. I would have already booked the damn thing if June hadn't been such a crappy month in terms of winnings. Fortunately, I have about 850k fpps to spend, and it will cover the trip completely. In the next couple weeks I will be putting that all together and getting it booked. Maybe if the rest of June goes better, we'll do the combination Galapagos/Machu Pichu trip. I'd have to run pretty damn good though. The next couple weeks will tell if that kind of upgrade is possible.

So I would really like to be at 500k points by the end of June. I would have to average something like 4.3-4.5k points per day, which is fairly hard to maintain. I may come up slightly short, but I will be very close to SNE pace by the half-way mark.

I've put in 3 hours so far today, and have set aside time for another 7. Hopefully a big day.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

SNE Quest - June 8: The day after

VPP COUNT: 420092

I put in a solid 9 hours yesterday, and had a decent profit. Nothing astronomical like I was shooting for, but still a solid day. I cleared the 400k milestone bonus like I had planned, and am now within 14k points of being on pace for SNE.

I'll only be putting 3 hours in today, which will keep me at ~14500 from pace. In 1 or 2 more weeks, I should be back ahead of schedule! Nearly half-way through the challenge and I'm going strong.

This was my favorite hand from yesterday.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2725936
He must have been wasted.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

SNE Quest - June 7: Gonna be a big day

VPP COUNT: 412563

I ended yesterday at about 19k points away from being on pace. I only put in a 2 hour session, because I ended up having the worst 1-day downswing of my career. This is only 2 days after having the previous "worst 1-day downswing" which was just a few hundred dollars shorter. So I am down overall for June, and more than a bit frustrated with the way the cards have been falling.

So this morning I was up at about 5am, which has become usual for me lately. I took Nala for a walk, had my coffee, and decided that I'm going to put in a ton of time today and take advantage of the weekend fish. I'd like to clear my 400kVPP milestone bonus by tonight - should take about 9-10 hours. This would give me a big bankroll boost to make up for the downswing. With a little luck, and including the milestone bonus, today could very well be my biggest earning day of all time.

If I am not a zombie by the end of the day, I may come back and update.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

SNE MAY - Smashing the records

VPPS EARNED: 115932 *record month*
VPPS TOTAL: 391515
HOURS: 152
$$$ EARNED: *record month*


I ended the month only about 25k VPPs behind pace, and slowly but surely closing the gap. I wont have much time to play today (6/1) because we are having Sophy's half-birthday party for most of the afternoon and evening.

March and April really threatened to knock me out of the SNE race. I only played a total of 121 hours for both of those months combined, and really did not put in enough effort. I knew I needed to make May a killer month or my chances of finishing would drop dramatically.

My earnings for May beat my previous record by about 30%. I attribute this to finally moving up to 400 and 600 buyin games as my regular level. I really only fully made the move up on the 22nd, and almost half of my earnings from the month came in the last 10 days. If I can maintain my play at this level for all of June, I expect another record month on the way.

So with only 25k points behind, I will be back ahead of pace before the end of June.

PokerStars is about at 17.8 billion hands. I still highly suspect that the double points promotion will be at 20bil. As long as that doesn't happen around Sept 12th, I'll be happy.

AMAZING month. Lets keep it rolling!