Upswinging and a Question

It's funny how spending an hour really concentrating on a solid video can result in a 10 buy-in upswing.  Was it the video or the practice of concentrating?

Hmmmmm....may have to investigate this one further.

Million Dollar Freeroll Cash

One benefit of all the hands I put in last quarter was that I was able to achieve Supernova.  A benefit of that is a quarterly $1 Million Freeroll put on by PokerStars.  Today's tourney got 6180 entrants.  I was able to finish 765th for a cash of $300.  Not bad for a freeroll.  Really not bad considering I haven't played a tourney forever. Really didn't make any mistakes until the knockout hand.  Early position minraised, shortstack with 19k stack shoves.  I'm in the BB with about 16bb, a 42k stack, and find myself with AJo.  I reshoved and got snapped off by KK from the original PFR and AQ by the minstacker.  No miracle straight for me and I go home $300 richer.

A good experience and looking back, I should have folded.  I had enough play left to get to the next cash breakpoint of top 702.  The pay jump was $100 if I would haven't gotten there and after that point the pay jumps decelerated immensley (top 600 got only $50 more).  Oh well, lesson learned.  Hopefully I can convince the wife to allow me the time to try a few more tourney's down the road.

And, oh yeah, my bankroll has reached it's highest point ever.  /brag doomswitch on??????

2011 Poker Goals

Main 2011 Goal:  Be playing 1/2NL by the end of the year

Sub-goals required to meet main goal:

• 500k hands in the year
• 42k hands per month
• 10k hands per week
• 2 hours of play per weekday, minimum of 3 hours per day on the weekends (16-20 hrs play per week)

Study:

• Finish and comprehend a book, "Poker Math That Matters" 
• 1 video reviewed/studied per week.  This includes posting feedback to author and actually asking questions

Mental:

• Control tilt.
• Maintain 3 buy-in stop loss at all times

Physical

• Eat better, drink more water and less caffeine, exercise more (which means exercise period)

And do more of this, remembering constantly to analyze the villians and there hand ranges.  I would say I was about 80% confident I was ahead making this +EV (now I just need to do the actual math to see if I was right):

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 1110128

DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BTN: $74.10

SB: $15.50

Hero (BB): $64.75

UTG: $51.65

MP: $50.00

CO: $105.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with A 8

3 folds, BTN calls $1, 1 fold, Hero raises to $4, BTN calls $3

Flop: ($8.50) 6 5 3 (2 players)

Hero bets $4.50, BTN calls $4.50

Turn: ($17.50) 6 (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $6, Hero calls $6

River: ($29.50) 4 (2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $10, Hero calls $10

Final Pot: $49.50

BTN shows T K (a pair of Sixes)

Hero shows A 8 (a pair of Sixes - Ace kicker)

Hero wins $47.10

(Rake: $2.40)

Congratulations! You have achieved Supernova.

Wonderful message received from Pokerstars.

Supernova

Sorry for the lack of updates.  I decided in mid October that I was going to make Supernova.  Since then I've been pushing hard.  With a screwy schedule and an 8 month old, every spare minute has been put into getting hands in.  I went from averaging 12-15k hands per month to getting in approx. 20k in October.  November saw that jump to over 63k hands.  I'll top that mark in December as I'm already approaching 65k hands.

At first I tried mass multi-tabling 18 tables AND jumping to 100NL.  Big mistake as I suffered some significant (to me at least) losses.  Dropped back to 50NL and recovered to only 15% of my starting bankroll to month being lost.  

That was nothing compared to November where nearly a third of my bankroll disappeared.  Took some heavy losses as my basic game is not strong enough to make good decisions at the rate required.  Fortunately bonuses from the store kept my bankroll able to absorb the losses.

For the last two weeks, I scaled it back to 6 or 7 tables but putting in more hours after discussing with wife the benefits of hitting.  Winrate has sky-rocketed and my confidence has been restored.  I'm over 65k hands so far this month and will probably approach 70k.  I've also restored a bit of the bankroll with profits. Supernova bonus will put me back at my original bankroll from back in November.

So I definately learned a lot throughout this experience and am hoping to share some of this insight after the new year.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season.  Take care and be looking for my Supernova screenie.