Down the Mountain-February Review

February is in the books and I'm disappointed with my results in the second half of the month but am pleased with my effort throughout the entire month...for the most part. I could have played a bit more, especially over the last few days but I was still entirely focused on poker and just chose to watch some 6max training videos and vastly improve my HUD instead. Without further adieu, let's get to the results and talk about em a bit.

 

6-Max

 

Starting by looking at my monthly graph, you can see that my results take on the shape of the dreaded mountain. I guess it's better than a slide but I'd much rather have a ladder...

I wasn't very surprised by the time I checked my results. I felt like I was slowly losing money since mid-month and was checking my 6max results anyways over the last week or so and had a ball-park idea about where I was at. I was running pretty hot for the first couple of weeks but the slide in my results is almost entirely my own doing. As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, I began getting away from my game plan and started playing way too fancy and sub-optimal in the full ring games and then switched games entirely to take on 6-max.

The full-ring play is whatever, that can easily be corrected and I don't regret switching over to 6-max. The thing is, I need to start thinking longer term sooner rather than later if I want to make SNE. 6-max might not be the answer but I want to play something that earns me more vpps/hand and I think that my results would be better by sticking to NLHE then playing PLO or something. Like, ultimately making SNE is 99% about the money (maybe 1% status bragging rights) so I'm not going to play some game where I'm losing money or breaking even when I could be clicking buttons in my sleep and printing money at full-ring (slight exaggeration). That said, I'm pretty turned on by the thought of moving up stakes aggressively at 6-max at the moment so that's what I'm going to try and do at least for now. I think that the profit ceiling is higher at 6max and the convenience of 200nl/500nl zoom is something that isn't even an option at full-ring, unfortunately. On the other hand, Stars is rolling out their anti-shortstacking measures in early March, which is obviously awesome in every way (especially at full-ring, where there are an abundance of SSers). I don't know how/if this would affect my win-rate but I might be tempted to find out, especially if 6max is going brutal.

As for volume, I fell well short of my 60K VPP target but did end with my highest total in a LONG time, clearing a bit over 40K. I actually feel pretty ok about that number considering that it will be easy to make up for lost time is I can do alright at 6max/higher stakes. If I do poorly, I'll have to either try playing something else or just stick to my profitable games and see how many VPPs I can grind out by the end of the year. I'm going to give 6max a pretty legit shot though, like I'm willing to stick it out until I lose something pretty demoralizing I think...probably like 50 buy-ins or so but we'll see. Usually a downswing of 10 buy-ins tilts me for a week lol so I can see myself calling it quits a lot sooner than 50 BI. At the end of the day though, it doesn't matter if I clear 8k or 14k over the first few months if I can be cranking out 5-figure months for most of the latter part of the year through playing higher stakes.

Oh yeah, almost forgot the numbers:

February

$3, 217.93 Table Winnings
$2, 240      FPP Value
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$5,417.93 USD

Factor in some coacing, other stuff and a sexy USD/CDN exchange rate and I'm approaching 10K so I'm pretty satisfied with the money when it's all said and done, even though the total could have been much better given how things started.

Away from the tables, things really weren't all that exciting considering that I've been grounded in my own house due to my fractured ankle. I try not to think about all of the hockey games that I've been missing and about how long it's going to take before I can do anything active again. The foot's feeling a bit better everyday but is still pretty useless when it comes to doing anything remotely taxing. I've got a doctor's appointment on the 4th and if things look alright at that point I'll be able to start doing physio on it. I'm hopeful that I can be back in action before the end of the month but really wouldn't be surprised if that's not the case. I have managed to watch the 2nd season of House of Cards though and actually finished the finale yesterday...fantastic show.

As for March, I'm going to set my VPP target at 70K. I really think that I can attain this but it will be very challenging. I'm going away for about a week in early April so I'll have enough motivation to grind hard until then before taking a week off to recharge.

That's it for now,

gl at the tables!