August Review and September Goals

August has been a very frustrating month for me. I’ve had swings far beyond what my bankroll is set to handle and I even managed to have my biggest losing day ever last week: -$8000. Consequently, I’ve decided to lock my Party and Full Tilt accounts for a month, partly so that I can complete the loads of uni assessments that I have coming up, but mostly to take a breather and re-analyse my game. I know that there is a lot of short-term variance involved in poker and that I shouldn’t read too much into this month’s results but I feel I’d rather step back now and make sure that I don’t have any glaring leaks instead of waiting till it’s too late. I certainly have run fairly badly this month; EV-adjusted I’m actually still in the black and I’ve lost about $5000 from running QQ+ into KK+ preflop which I’m sure I’ll recoup in the future when the hands are reversed. Still, the thing that clinched my decision to lock my accounts is that my non-showdown winnings started deteriorating. It’s certainly true that non-showdown winnings don’t tell the whole story, just as EV graphs don’t, but I’ve always felt that positive non-showdown winnings are a pretty good indicator that you beat a limit. To illustrate, here’s my 1/2 non-showdown winnings graph from earlier in the year.

Compare this now to my graph for midstakes (2/4 NL+).

As you can see, the red line is break-even for almost 50,000 hands but then it starts rapidly declining, around about the same time that I dropped 2/4 tables from my play and added more 5/10 tables. Clearly, I’m having difficulty earning those extra small to medium pots at 5/10 compared to 2/4.

Another factor in my decision to take a break was that I felt that I was getting a bit lazy with my game. While playing, I’d often play too many tables and/or play far too ABC. Away from the felt, I virtually stopped watching videos and analysed hands a lot less. In short, my game was once again getting a bit stale and in need of a creative injection. I think that when you’re on an upswing, as I had been for the few months prior, it’s all too easy to just want to keep playing and keep winning and you stop doing the little things that got you into that upswing in the first place. Hopefully I’ll learn from this lesson and continue keeping my game fresh in the future.

Anyway, here are my results for August.

My plan for September is to continue to watch a lot of videos and study up on the game. I was doing this a lot earlier in the year when I was trying to work out how to beat 2/4 NL but got really complacent once I did so. As a result, I’ve got a pretty big backlog of videos to watch so I’m going to try to get through as many as I can. I also recently added Leggo Poker and PokerSavvy Plus to my portfolio of training sites so hopefully the new instructors there will offer some fresh insights and perspectives that will help my game.

When I restart playing next month, I’ll only have about 10 days left in the month so I’m not going to set myself any monetary goals for September. I do hope however to make some good inroads into recouping the money that I lost this month.

I’ve now got a bankroll online of exactly $30,000, having spent about $300 on the Leggo Poker and PokerSavvy Plus subscriptions and cashed out the remaining amount above 30K (about $800) to reward myself for the hours I’ve put into poker over the last few months. I think I’ll use the money to buy a Wii and a new iPod since I’ve been planning to buy those two items for quite a while now and it’s high time that I actually did.

Once I do restart playing, my ultimate goal (revised from before) is to eventually get my bankroll to $120,000. I’ve decided that I do want one day to become a 5/10 AND 10/20 regular as opposed to just a 5/10 one so the extra bankroll requirement is a reflection of that. Since this new goal will take me a while to achieve I’ve also decided to begin making regular cash outs. I’ve always had trouble balancing cashing out with growing my bankroll but generally I’ve gone with the “never cash out, always grow the bankroll” approach. Last year for example my goal was to hit $12,000 and I didn’t cash out a cent till I hit that figure. When I decided to move up to 2/4 and beyond I revised my target bankroll to $60,000 and was happy to not cash out until I reached that new figure. But my new target now of $120,000 is going to take some getting and not cashing out for possibly another year while I reach that target is a thought I don’t particularly enjoy having. Thus, I think that making regular cash outs is the only way forward for me now. In any case, the amount of buy-ins I need to cash out nowadays to allow me to spend freely is a lot less than it used to be so the stunting effect of a cash out on my bankroll will be a lot smaller anyway.

Anyway, I think that’s enough for this entry. Good luck at the tables!