Milestone Hand

I received the milestone hand nr. #74.709.000.00 on Pokerstars:

But the best of all is that I WON this milestone, so my prize was doubled!!

Thank you to the one and only Pokerstars.

Mid Month Feedback

Middle of the month, I think this is a good time to give some feedback.

What I have been doing? Well, I have been playing cash games, full ring no limit holdem to be more precisely. I am more disciplined than ever and I will be playing only one type of game. Of course, once and a while I will play some tournament, but my main game is full ring cash games.

I have faced one major downswing (you can check on my graph below), and another one more recently. I was going to put the toilet on the floor during my major downswing but I thought to myself that these swings are normal and if I want to be good on this I have to deal with the swings and keep going. I learned during the process.

Anyway, this month is going positive, I have already won more that the last month, and getting close to November profit. I have made more profit during the last 2 months than the last year. I think I more suited to cash games than sits games. Here is the current month graph.

Total hands: 15409 for a 12.82 bb/100.

December and Overall Performance

December Results
Last Month I played about almost 30k hands. Witch was reasonable good compared to November, where I played only 5k hands. I ended in the profit zone with basic the same amount of profit as November. I think I miss some +EV spots due to my mass multitabling sessions, where I was playing with 24 tables at the same time for about 60 minutes. Anyway, here it is the last month graph with the net amount won:

Can you see the major 2 downswings? The first one is a smaller one between the 8k hand and the 13k hand. Then I was hit hard with no mercy for about 8k hands, this was the time where I learn that downswings of this kind are normal, and I must expect them, that's why bankroll management is so important. My major downswing was no more than 5 buy-ins, I read on professional blogs that 12 buy-ins downswings are common to good poker players (ouch!).

Cash Games Overall
Anyway, after playing sits, where I put my sharkscope on the positive side but did not make it on the good profit side, due to lack of volume, some skill and variance, I decided to move on to cash games. After reading some blogs, forums it seems to me that they can be less prone to variance and more profitable in the long term. Here is the picture of the 2 months, November and December cash games sessions.

I played about 35k hands with a 10bb/100, making a VPIP of 12%.
This month I reduced the amount of tables to the 14-18 range and increase my focus on the tables. I am not pursuing any kind of VIP status or bonus right now. I think at this level it's not +EV to pursuit rakeback in detriment of profit and improvement, The VIP pursuit will be for another season.

2011 Thoughts

I will not play any game today, I am going, (with my wife and son), to my father-in-law house to dinner and we will spend the all  night there. I have Internet and a laptop there, if I awake up early tomorrow morning, I will probably start my 2012 grind in the morning.

I played more cash games hands this month than any month of the year, I am satisfied about my current game at the tables. The key factor that I miss most of the time during the year was volume. But that is not so bad, because I consider myself a novice player in many areas on Holdem, so not playing many games per day is not a big issue. After all, this is not my job, at least for now.

I consider a 2011 a rich experience in terms of learning but also, somehow, disappointing due to my lack of discipline in grinding one type of game. I will correct this error next month, I may just have corrected because I only played one type of game during this month.

I will put December results on the next post, just leave here a picture of my final VPPs 2011 year.