Poker: Financial Results for January 2012

I didn’t have a bad year in 2011, but still have a lot to learn and want to improve my game for sure this year.

Plan

My monthly targets are:
- Play 700 hands of cash on NLHE $0.50 Full Ring, 700 cash hands on PLO $0.50 6-max and 350 hands PLO8 $0.50 6-max, all with target of breaking even
- Play 20 STT hoping for 10% ROI (around $20 per month)

Monitor

Overall results for the month are:

Pokerstars : +$2.35
Black Belt Poker : -£131.44
Live Play : -£40.00

PokerStars I had 5x 8 game cash sessions, winning in three of them,  but still posted a loss of -$39.35   I also played 6x 8 Game STT, cashing four of them so ended with profit of +$41.70  

For Black Belt Poker, the results were:

Cash Results (-£262.61 loss overall)

NLHE HU ($0.20) 179 hands -£74.56
NLHE ($0.50) 635 hands +£24.54
PL Omaha ($0.50) 818 hands -£81.78
PL Omaha HL ($0.50) 306 hands -£130.81

For the last three months, my cash results are:
NLHE 50     +£0.110 per hand
PLO 50      -£0.046 per hand
PLO8  50    -£0.188 per hand

Tournament Results (+£131.17 profit overall)

5 MTT (4x League games) +£71.62 
15x 2 seat STT   +£14.55    (+13% ROI)
8x 10 seat STT   +£45.00   (+64% ROI)

Reflect

After watching some Deuces Cracked videos on Head Up, decided to give it a go.  I won half a buy-in first session making me think it was easy, lost a buy-in second session making me think there's a lot of variance, but dropped a whole load the third session making me finally realize this ain't such a doddle as it seems, even at this level!  Needs a whole lot more work and study before committing to a new format...  must stop having these spur of the moment diversions!     Other than that, my normal NLHE cash results are pretty OK and happy with my game. 

PLO was a little disappointing this month, but the poor results were basically down to three hands where I stacked off.   Each hand I am still happy how I played, so hopefully is just the dreaded "variance"

PLO8 is still not good... with me losing in all three sessions.  

My Heads Up tournament results are quite pleasing, although with 9 wins to 6 losses it isn't huge volume but still happy to be the right side of average.   

I also need to keep an eye on my 8 game cash, as the last four months have seen my results getting progressively worse.  My rolling three month profit is actually –$10.45 so need to turn that around as well.

Adjust

I am most disappointed with my PLO8 and definitely need to up my game in this area.  I think I will give it a rest for now and come back to it after studying more.  I'll try and beat my simulator first perhaps then come back in a month or two..

The NLHE heads up adventure was a bit of a mistake, although I did have fun it isn't +EV for me to just jump in blind to a new format !

Performance against 2012 targets

Having set objectives for 2011 in January 2011, I didn’t really think about them again until doing my year end review   so this year will actively think about my progress against years objectives every month

* Keep to my revised Poker Plan
Achieved hand targets for cash and STT numbers

* Play BBP London Live and UKIPT Brighton tournaments
Have the buy-in set aside for UKIPT already.   Should all be doable

* Aim for break even month on month on all cash tables
NLHE yes, PLO no, PLO8 definitely no ! 

* Use learning tools and resources to learn and improve my NLHE, Omaha and PLO8 cash and tournament play
Am putting in the effort to do some learning, PLO8 is the main worry at the moment but also need to improve PLO as well.

* Avoid entering any BBP grading process !
So far so good

* Win a BBP league :-)
Won a league game, but may be a little optimistic  to think I can win League XIII due to my lack of consistency