Not great overall - I won $750 (don't laugh too much) over 50k hands all at $1/2 6-max.

I've just got pokertracker3 running and there's a cool graph feature in it. One of the options is to show overall money won/lost, money won/lost with a showdown and money won/lost when there's no showdown.

My money won/lost when there's no showdown is negative. I assume this suggests that I am either playing too many hands (and therefore having to give them up) or giving up too easily post-flop.

I would say it's the latter. I play roughly 21/18 so I'm no lunatic pf, although I'm not sure but I would say I'm not polarized enough positionally, i.e. I think I play too many hands UTG and not enough on the button. I.e. my button numbers are 27/23 and my UTG numbers are 15/15. I wonder whether it should be more like 32/28 (button) and 10/10 (UTG) - just plucking figures out of this air.

As I mentioned in my previous blog I think I make too many crying calls on the river, so this would mean my win/lose money at showdown would be better (even though it's positive at present).

As for win/lose money with no showdown I'm not sure what I need to do. The graph seems to suggest I'm not aggressive enough in winning my "fair share" of pots without showdown on the later streets.

I need to give that some more thought.

Paul

After the great start to the month which I knew was unsustainable I've been throwing money awat.

Having been $4,500 up early on in the month I've lost most of it and am now just $1k up over 48k hands.

This week I've been off work and spent the time trying to "be a pro" - I managed to play 21k hands and lost almost $1,700 - all you pros out there must be really jealous of those numbers.

I checked out the pokerev graph software where it shows, amongst other things, how many sklansky bucks you should have made in your all-in situations, not quite sure if that includes when you get all in on the river but presumably it means all in before the river.

Anyway, according to that over this week I'm down about $1,200 which means the loss for the week would have been less if I'd run to expectation but still would have been a loss overall. Another graph it shows is called the "game analysis graph" and that shows a "showdown amount won" and "actual amount won".

If the former is greater than the latter (i.e. showdown greater than actual) then by all accounts this means that your post-flop play is weak tight, i.e. you're folding too much post flop when you probably shouldn't. Conversely if the graph is the other way round then you're much more aggressive post flop causing players to fold when they shouldn't.

Looking at my pokertracker aggression numbers they are 5.75 (flop agg), 3.69 (turn agg) and 1.69 (river agg), which definitely seems to back up that assertion. Watching a CR video in the last week or so (can't remember which one now) I think it was Daut who said that the turn and river agg. numbers should be high (3-4 I guess) and very similar (he also said that the flop agg numbers are generally higher bearing in mind that you will CB a fairly large %age of the time).

So while that seems fairly indicative of a problem, intuitively I seem to think making too many bad river calls might be my worst leak and therefore, going to the showdown more often is not necessarily the answer. Note, I am aware that making river calls and being agg on the river are different and maybe that is the crux of the issue.

However, just to show that I am also running "slightly" bad, I've made quads three or four timesin the last week or two and lost 2 of them.

First one was a classic. I raised pf and called a r/r (we were I think 150BB's deep so not necessarily a leak), I hold 77 and the flop comes 77x (weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee).

All the money goes in on the flop and the villain has AA of course. Turn A, river A, gg 150 BB's.

The second time I had 66, not sure of the pf action exactly but the flop comes 66J, weeeeeeee again. I think the flop action is fairly minimal (both trying to trap), turn J and it all goes in and he turns over JJ, if he's trying to trap the turn it still doesn't mean he has JJ he obv. could be trapping with an overpair, so me even contemplating that I could get away from it is ludicrous (weak-tight?), but that's in hindsight when the hand played out I was eager to get it all in and was happy when we did, for that split second before his hand was turned over anyway,

On the bright side I did flop a royal flush and won a mid-sized pot with it which is always nice.

A profit is a profit of course and the goal of playing 50k hands a month seems reasonable as I missed 5 days earlier in the month and am crusing to it at the moment. 20 days of 2,500 hands should be ok. Let's just hope I can run better and plug a leak or two. the intention was to move upto 2/4 in Feb. but I've decided to stick with 1/2 for now. I'm well rolled for it and I guess I want to make sure I can beat it before moving up.

Take care.

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8923/graph1nx7.jpg

Up over $4,200 over 19k hads so far (1/2 : 10 ptBB's).

Would be more than happy to keep that rate up.

Let's see if this graph thing works...

http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=graph1nx7.jpg

Played 2113 hands in one session 1/2NL 6-max 6-tabling at FT and won $2002.70.

10 buy-ins is almost certainly my best ever session. I was pleased with my play but unbdoubtedly ran well :)

Only managed one session in the first two days of the year and I'm unlikely to be able to play today either so my goal of 50k hands per month looks like it could be in jeapordy already, especially as I'll be away on a work trip for 4 days next week. Oh well, will have to make up for it when I get back.

2007 Recap.

My goals for 2007 poker-wise were to increase my $12k BR upto $30k. I went over $30k a few times this year but the last 3 or 4 months were quite brutal and I neded the year at about $20k. Although I failed in the ultimate goal I still had a pretty good year. Even starting 2007 with $12k was huge for me in that I'd been used to my BR yo-yoing between $2k and $5k and the only reason it was at $12k was that I played a tourney in December 2006 I wasn't rolled for (BR $5k, buy-in $500, doh) because I'd had a couple of drinks and felt like taking a shot. Well I finished 2nd for an $8k score (gg BR management).

January 2007 started fantastically as well in that I won the Friday Special at Party 2 weeks running. The first time I chopped while having the chip lead (for $10k), the next week I won it outright for $12k. So the monetary goal for 2007 had already been accomplished 12 days into 2007 - ez game. Well variance then hit and I didn't win another tournament until 2 weeks ago when I took down a $30r at Party for $4k. Three days later I came 2nd in the same tourney for $2.5k (do you get the impression my tourney results come in bunches?).

Anyway, 11 months without a tourney win was a huge dent in my confidence, well it would have been if another of my 2007 goals hadn't been that I would attempt to become mainly a cash player (cos that's where the money is, right!).

My 2007 cash game results were mixed. I played everything from 100NL upto 1000NL, with 400NL being my mainstay game. My laptop crashed a month or so ago so I lost my PT database but I was a winner over the year playing cash although I'm only estimating about 100k hands or so and 3-4PTBB's profit. However with my tourney game really sufferring I never really saw the benefits of that in my bankroll and it see-sawed between 15k and 35k all year.

New Goals for 2008.

1) Concentrate on cash games. I know I said this last year and I love tourneys but this really is where the money is and if I ever want to reach the ultimate goal of telling my boss where to stick his job then this is the route I will have to take. It's not as if cash games bore me or anything I love playing them. I just hate the big losing sessions.

2) Play 50k hands per month. This is quite a lofty goal for me bearing in mind I work full-time, have only ever managed 30k hands once before and I have time committments family-wise, but I want to give it my best shot.

3) Spend time studying the game. I already subscribe to CR and PxF but I want to spend more time reading about HH's on the forums, contributing to other peoples questions and posting my own.

4) Play at 200NL until I have 100 buy-ins for 400NL or at last 100k hands whichever takes longer. The same rules will apply for any move up in limits. With any luck, I will be playing and winning at 1000NL by the end of the year and have a BR of 100k. I can then decide on whether to pull the trigger on the "ultimate goal".

Why the Blog

Couple of reasons. I have enjoyed/been inspired by many blogs this year and also I wanted to put a little pressure on myself to keep fulfil my goals.

And if I can work out how to create those cool graphs and PT screen shots people publish I'll do that too and make the blog as interesting as possible.