Poker: Financial results for February 2012

I was wondering whether to continue my monthly updates, but actually find them quite therapeutic to write and actually useful to review and reflect on what I achieved (or didn’t achieve) in the previous month…. so will carry on for the moment

January 2012 was kind of mixed and mostly negative moneywise so hope my adjustments will help improve my performance for February…… lets see….

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 : +$71.51
Black Belt Poker : -£228.76
Live Play : -£40.00

PokerStars I couldn’t resist playing a couple of UKIPT Nottingham Satellites.  Despite getting through one of them, faltered in the next round, so –$17.39 for no return.    Five sessions of 8 Game cash saw 4 up and 1 down, for a total return of +$93.02 so very positive result.  Despite cashing twice out of four 8 Game STT, they ended up –$4.12     

Rolling 3 month total for 8 game cash is +$24.47

For Black Belt Poker, the results were:

Cash Results (-£277.06 loss overall)

NLHE ($0.50) 813 hands -£89.26
PL Omaha ($0.50) 846 hands -£147.45
PL Omaha ($1) 102 hands -£40.35

For the last three months, my cash results are:
NLHE 50 -£0.006 per hand
PLO 50 -£0.151 per hand
PLO $1  -£0.400 per hand  (** 1 month)
PLO8 50 -£0.188 per hand  (** n/a)

Tournament Results (+£48.30 profit overall)

6x MTT (4x League games) -£10.47
15x 2 seat STT -£11.78 (-13% ROI)
7x 6 seat STT +£74.88 (+85% ROI)
7x 10 seat STT -£4.33 (-9% ROI)

I also did  4 session on the PLO8 simulator.   Three sessions were up, and did 344 hands with $322 profit

Reflect

My Pokerstars results are pretty good I think.   Will perhaps need to try and play more 8 Game cash as seems to be where I’m most consistent !   Also want to try and find some easy way to analyse the results as currently not got anything other than manually running through the hands.

BBP is a little disappointing (again!)  Looking back at my NLHE there are only a few hands where I’m loosing big and not all of them are huge mistakes so I’m fairly content overall.   The PLO results went hugely against me this month.  I did make a few big mistakes, but also had some big suck outs as well, but have been trying to play more aggressively, which will always be a bit swingy.   

Adjust

I didn’t get to side tracked this month so happy with that.   I did play one session of single table PLO $1 rather than 2 table PLO 50 as wanted to try and analyse my game more and make sure the cash meant something to me.  Didn’t do to badly at this level and made loss (rather than small profit) due to one hand where I made a mistake.

My NLHE cash game is pretty solid, so although took tumble in Feb, hope it is just a blip.   PLO is another story though and really want to get better quickly, so am aiming to spend March focussing on PLO cash and hope it leads to better results.   This will consist of reading, posting hands on the forums, using the simulator and playing of course.   

Another objective is to try and qualify for Black Belt Live via Satellite.  I’m already bought in, but hope can get in a bit cheaper!

Final objective is to get to Purple belt this month if at all possible (without going broke!)   This is partly as I’m quite close in points this month, but also due to more benefits from being Purple for Black Belt Live.    This ties in nicely with my focussing on PLO this month, as it will generate more rake/points

I haven’t sat down and worked out my new schedule for March yet, but will be a bit different this month for sure.   Will focus on my PLO cash game, but still want to put in some hands on 8 Game and some NLHE cash as well.   STT/MTT will take a back seat, but will play Sats for BBP Live and also the next BBP League of course.

Performance against 2012 targets

* 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, but seems there is no Brighton trip.  Not sure I’ll get to any other event so sadly looks like no UKIPT this year.   Not decided whether to keep buy-in for next year or not….

I am going to BBP Live in April, so might go to DTD and Vic events later in the year instead of UKIPT

* 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 :-)
Next season will start soon