January In The Books

Overall, it was an exceptional month, if I count with the milestone prize it was my best month in terms of profit. Disregarding the prize, it was a good month, I played about 32k hands. I started grinding the NL2 with all my effort. After a positive start, I get a reasonable downswing of about 5/6 buy-ins. My confidence went a little down but I realize that I should keep playing, this is part of the game.

The downswing did not last very long and I was on an upward path during the all month until...today! Yes, today I went to play NL5 and i experience a downswing of almost 4 buy-ins. Hey NL5, is this the way to treat the new customers? :-)

Anyway, I lost big pots with big hands like AA, KK, and I also lost with a straight and a two pair hand (you can check out the hands on the graph below). This is all part of the game, I will keep playing at NL5, if at some point I feel uncomfortable I just leave NL5 and return to NL2. 

Enough talking let´s go to the numbers and graph. By the way I made about 300 vpps.

Overall Cash Graph:

Results by stakes:

Overall Performance:

You can see on the last image the hands were I lost most $ on NL5. Preflop I am a huge favorite with those hands, so at long term I will make $, they are +EV hands. By the way, my kings were broken for a 3333 hand (yeah, quads right on the flop!).

I will work to have better results at NL5 next month.

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.