Pre 2011 Goals
1 x 10k Score
2 x 2k Scores
10 x 1k Scores
To Improve/Get a cash game
Notable Binks/Scores
7.7k for the Sunday Millions 10th
5.5k for the Main Event Bink
3.9k for the Prestige Bink
2.5k for Primetime (Turbo Triple Chance) Bink
2.3k for Xmas Omaha Masters Bink
2.1k for Sunday GP 2nd
1.7k for Terminator Primetime Bink
1.7k for Monte Carlo Bink
1.7k for Monte Carlo Bink
1.7k for Rebuy Primetime 2nd
1k x 8
Online Performance Review
My stats dont really paint a true picture of my year on the virtual felt. My 3rd and 6th biggest scores came in the same weekend in October and the top two didnt arrive until December. The year started well enough but then I had a 6 month spell in the middle where it just wasnt happening for me. The only profit I showed in this time was largely taken up by the Prestige Bink and the 2nd in the GP. Taking those two out of the equation and I was pretty much a break even player during this period and no matter how much experience you have thats always going to prove damaging. During this spell I was still managing to keep my game relatively together but most MTT journeys had a common theme. I was getting deep often enough but as soon as I got in around the FT bubble or just onto FT's I just couldnt win a race for love nor money. Not just standard races but 2 and 3 outer shizzle and this is largely what knackered my bottom lines. I started to cut back and play less so that I could cope better with the run meh and at one point I only managed to put in 1 months standard volume in a 3 month period. This was never going to improve my stats but at least it stopped me from digging a bigger hole for myself.
After having such a shitty run in MTT's I knew I would have to finally take the jump and learn the cash game shizzle. I was having a long hard look at myself and my continued participation in the game and it seemed pretty obvious I had to act while I still had a full compliment of options. I have some obvious mindset issues regarding cash games in general because for me they seem like such mundane affairs. If I could just get a true read on what all these are I could then concentrate on fine tuning my game and plugging in-game leaks. I've always dabbled in cash (NLH+PLO, Full ring+6 seater+HU) from time to time but never seriously enough to have a large enough sample to analyse (1k here, 2k there etc). I think my biggest leak is left over from my early spunky-monkey days and I guess its fair to say that my fear of monster degen tiltage is greater than any fears I may have about not quite being upto beating the games.
I did dabble earlier in the year with some NLHE and PLO 6 seater cash games but due to my lappy spunking on me I lost all the data. At the end of Nov, start of Dec I decided it was time to try and get some sort of sample in. Enthusiasm proved to be my downfall again and although I was relatively successful (I probably run quite good situationally) it felt like a grind in the truest sense of the word. Over the course of 11 days I managed to log the paltry sum of 29 hours. This is a pretty big fail given I would have logged something in the region of 60/80 hours if I had been grinding MTT's.
My brick walls in cash are:
Enthusiasm (although I share this one in MTT's from time to time)
Almost Static Dynamics - My brain feels programmed for big shifts in dynamics due to my MTT background. PLO cash players at the stakes I was playing basically just played as they played and stack depths or how they played different villains was all pretty standard ABC stuff so it felt like the only thing I had to do was click buttons and hope to run good. This is obviously something I struggle with given I have to control my creativity at the best of times.
Exhaustion - I was only 4 (sometimes 6 on PKR) tabling but I found the repetitiveness of constantly clicking buttons and making basic decisions draining. When this was added to my dire levels of enthusiasm it meant that my sessions were generally very short (usually an hour) and infrequent (at most two a day).
Cash Session Results
My cash sessions were split between PKR (22 hours) and Pokerstars (8 hours). Combined I run approx. $300 above EV.
PKR
496 hands @ PLO25 with $33 loss (-26bb/100)
1320 hands @ PLO50 with $181 profit (27bb/100)
1031 hands @ PLO100 with $517 profit (50bb/100)
620 hands @ PLO200 with $518 profit (42bb/100)
Pokerstars
1483 hands @ PLO100 with $1,205 profit (81bb/100)
The sample is small and I intend to make sure I have more specific cash game targets for next year to try and motivate myself into getting a reasonable level of volume in. The above cash samples would have been bigger had it not been for that MTT wench delivering my best results of the year in my very next session.
My top 2 scores for the year arrived in consecutive days. I bubbled the FT of the Sunday Millions when my AK came unstuck against AJ aip for a 3rd in chips stack. To say I was dejected is something of an understatment. I've been close to 100k top end scores 3 times now and I still dont understand how I came up short (No Final Tables) in any of them. So far a 2 outer, a 3 outer and a lost flip (villain snap calls 20bb with ducks in the BB) are the hands I will have to carry with me for some time to come. The one true positive I took from this Millions performance was that I was pwning on an epic scale and I knew I was at the top of my game. During my Millions adventure I was also involved in the Main Event on PKR and managed to get through to day two with a top 5 stack. In truth if it hadnt been for having to play day two I may well have taken some time out from the virtual game in order to lick my wounds. As it turns out I learned a lot about myself over this weekend and it was nice to top it off with a bink. Its not every weekend that you make two good scores and feel that you played to the best of your abilities. Pwning Staszko in the Millions, making a sick Ace high call v Cody and coming back from being a 6 to 1 dog in the ME heads up were obvious highlights.
Overall I have to be satisfied with how things turned out given that this year has been the most testing since I got involved in the game. The most satsifying thing has been how I have managed to grind out the worst patch without having my game implode like it did during my first real swong. I might not have hit the heights that I was hoping for but I did manage to come out of the other side of it.
Roll on 2012.
