Movin' on Up- March Recap

Well, all of the work that I've been putting into my 6-max game finally started to pay off in March! I've finally nailed down what I think are near optimal opening ranges from every position, although I could be slightly off for sure and also think that the ranges are probably different at various stakes. At 100nl anyways, I feel comfortable with my opening frequencies for now though. I haven't come up with anything groundbreaking by any means and my strategy falls right in line with the standard tight from EP/MP and loosen up in later positions. It does get quite complicated, particularly in late position, when you have to decide not only with what percentage of your opening range that you want to defend with but also how you want to defend (ie calling or 4betting and what hands to do what with). Again, mainly through trial and error, I think that I'm more or less comfortable with my defending strategy and it seems to be working well so far. I don't want to get into the specifics of my opening percentages, defending %'s and defending strategy...I mean it's pretty unexploitable anyways but at least for now I'd rather keep the finer details to myself for obvious reasons.

With that said, I didn't make very much money overall in March but I'm hoping that what I learned will be valuable in the coming months of 2014. Also, considering things went so poorly for most of the month it feels good to end the month on a 25 buy-in upswing, consequently right after I made a couple of key changes to my opening ranges. I did also just flat out run way better in pretty much every way possible. Here is the month graph:



 

 

 

Session by day: 9 winning days after said changes

 

 

 

Alright, well my plan was always to move up stakes aggressively so I see no reason why I should deviate from the plan at this point. I'm going to start April off at 200nl 6-max zoom on a 10 buy-in shot. It's not much and even the very best players can rip through 10 buy-ins in a day but if that does happen, Plan B will be to drop to 100nl again until I pull back to even and then take a 5 buy-in shot at 200nl, rinse and repeat. That's obviously the worst outcome and while it is fairly likely, there are 2 other outcomes that boast very well for me. 1) obviously I win from the start and never look back and 2) I break even or stay within the 10 buy-in range for a while and earn much more VPPs in the process. This is basically how I approach moving up stakes in games that I'm not very confident in...I find a game that I'm quite confident that I can beat to fall back on (100nl) and then take a fairly low-risk shot in terms of dollars at the next level.

Volume-wise, March was decent in terms of hours and hands played but lame in terms of VPPs. I earned just around 23K, which puts me about 150K VPPs behind SNE pace at this point. Obviously, I'm hoping to make up for this in later months by playing higher stakes games :)

I'm going to not bother with a March profit tally since I'm treating April almost as a continuation of March and the $1k+ table winnings is funding my 200nl shot, more or less.

Volume will be important in April but is still not a top priority (that would be results and learning). In May, that will change as volume will most likely be my main point of focus not only for that month but the remainder of the year as I try to chase down SNE.

At this point, I may or may not be going to Mexico for a week in April. The trip is booked but I'm waiting for my passport to arrive before my flight...dealing with the passport office is one of the most tilting things that can be done so we'll see if it arrives in the mail as it's supposed to. Alright, have a great April everyone!

gl at the tables!