2010 Poker Goals – January Update

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

With the start of the new year I posted about several goals or “resolutions” for my poker game with the calendar roll over. I generally don’t go with the entire “New Year Resolution” idea because I am a weak willed individual but I do have a little self control in the poker realm unless I fire up Full Tilt after a long night on the town. Then I’m liable to dump my entire bankroll in one super turbo shovefest. The month of January saw me hit some of my goals with others already a distant memory.

Bankroll management, Ironman Challenge, and live poker were just a few things I want to improve upon throughout the year. Running the Chris Ferguson Challenge was my path to the first two and the Borgata Winter Open provided the third. I found myself on February 1st feeling pretty good about my results for the month even if I’m a little less sane for the effort. Perhaps the life of a daily grinder is not in my future. The low levels prevented me from earning an Ironman badge but I did grind away enough to earn a spot the Ironman Freeroll. I made a few trips down the AC Expressway for some live poker including the Borgata Winter Open Event #1, some insane low-limit action, and one fun table of 3/6 HOSE with friends.

You can find my January wrap up after the jump.

I started with $10 in my imaginary Ferguson Challenge bankroll, allowing me to skip straight to the micro-limit games instead of destroying my soul in a hundred freerolls to earn a buck here and there. Starting as soon as the clock hit midnight on January 1st I pulled up my first micro-limit table to start the grind. For some reason I thought Limit would be my best option since it’s my first love. As you’ll see from the grid below, it was pure torture. It didn’t take long to make the move over to (god help me) 1c/2c NLHE to try and ram the bankroll higher and faster.

My thoughts on Mother Variance are well documented and the swings in the smallest games are not large in a real money sense but brutal in terms of trying to make correct decisions. Your monster hands will get paid off more often than not but the bad play makes dodging land mines tough. It’s not cocky to say I’m one of the better players at each tiny table but you can’t do anything besides ABC poker. Get the max from your big hands and limit your losses with small ball, Fancy Play Syndrome will only cause you pain in the long run when bottom pair decides to call of 100bb. Everyone assumes a raise means nothing but a weak ace and each bet is a bluff attempt. Easy stuff to exploit.

But have no fear, your kings will get cracked by J5off because it was suited or was that players lucky hand or “I just knew it was going to hit”. It seems silly to get tilted over losing a buyin that is 100 times smaller than one round of drinks at your local dive bar. But it happens. I finished the month of January up a nice 588.2 big blinds, down a little from earlier but my latest sessions have been a little insane.

The live poker portion of my month consisted of a few short trips to Atlantic City where the Borgata Winter Open was kicking off and a lot of friends were in town. I somehow found myself standing in a really long line with Lemke 30 minutes after the start of Event #1 with hundreds of players between us and the registration desk. I drew a decent table assignment and saw exactly one hand before the break, the hammer, which I folded and moved to the food area.

My run came to end before play was done for the day. The table was pretty solid except for one super soft spot and that’s who I ran into. He called off his entire stack with no pair backdoor flush draw versus my flopped top set. Naturally it got there and I was in short-stack poker mode. I picked up some pots without a showdown until I finally three-bet shoved with AQh and got a nice long tank from my opponent. I’m now pretty sure the dealer counted down my stack incorrectly giving him a much lower number to call. Which he did with AJo telling me he thought I had a small pair. He hit his Jack on the flop and then Ace/Jack Turn/River to punch a little harder. Nothing I could do other than rap the table, shake his hand, wish everyone luck and hit the B-Bar.

The cash game portion of the trip went much better. I wasn’t willing to lay too much on the line this trip for a simple reason. Too many friends in town and my cash would be much better spent for recreational purposes. Since the only limit spread at Harrah’s Resort was a puny 2/4 game, that was my poison. I would have preferred to donk around 5/10 limit but you go with the hand that’s dealt.

These games are as crazy as the micro-games online but easy enough to make money with proper limit poker strategy. You will never push a player off if they caught even part of the flop or have a marginal draw, just need to make sure you get as many bets in the pot when you have the best of it and fade the donkeys the rest of the time. In an incredible run that will eventually turn around, I never left my four live sessions up less than 20 big bets. Not interesting money but better than the other option. Add in the dealer/cocktail tips and it was a pretty remarkable run. There were quite a few old grinders who dusted off their social security checks to the hippy at the end of the table.

The truly fun game was in the Borgata Room when a bunch of friends and ARGers talked them into spreading a 3/6 HOSE game. For those unaware, Razz is verboten in Atlantic City thanks to the Gaming Commission. The game was about as much fun as you can have and still try to make money. Cocktail service was in non-stop motion, action was often capped preflop in the dark, ace high won more than it’s share of pots. Bob “scsuhockey10″ Lauria was fresh off his 3rd (or 4th?) place finish in the Borgata Heads Up tournament and was sitting small ball poker with a brick of cash behind. Dan “danny04″ Suied attempted to pay the $1 Stud/8 bringin with a $5,000 chip. The insanity was a nice change of pace after a long week of acting the serious poker player.

Here are my online numbers for the month:

- 2,616 hands played over 31 days. Nothing spectacular considering I was busy a large portion of the month but I did get some play in every day. The number come out to just over 16 hours of play for the month with an embarrassing win rate but that’s expected at these levels.

- I played at least once per day even when I wasn’t in the mood or found myself with crazy action in AC. I qualified for the $2,000 Ironman Freeroll which rolls around sometime later this month but it is impossible to grind away an Ironman medal at these levels and still pretend to have a real life.

- I will not be mentioning my win-rate per hour this month. It’s just to silly to bring up at these levels. I will admit that I went above my “Ferguson Bankroll” to test out the waters of Rush Poker. At that game it was unsustainable 295 BB/100.

- Every single one of my friends understand I am a first-class poker nit. I like the tight-aggressive label but I am too tight and improved as the month rolled along. My VPIP was a disgusting 9.8% for the first week but moved to 15% by the end of the month.

- Another stat certain to go south quickly, I was dealt AA 17 times during the month and they were only cracked once. That is really saying something considering quite of a few those occurred during the failed Limit experiment. The one beat was versus a min-buyin player who gambled up with KQ after I mis-click shoved instead of raising.

- On the other side of that coin, I was only dealt KK four time. 3 times I won smaller pots and lost one monster versus ATh preflop.

Here’s my graph for the month. It’s easy enough to see when I switched to NLHE. I’m rolling right along just two days into February and hope to keep going well. Maybe sooner or later I can dream of moving up to 2c/5c then I’ll be a big baller.