The Shark Tank

On Feb 29th, PokerStars ran a promotion where you earned twice as many points as usual for your play. I heard about it late in the day, but realized that it would be a great opportunity to boost the old point total. In response, I played one table for about 20 minutes. I doubt there are many grinders who can beat that. There are just so many different things pulling me in so many different directions that I had no time for poker.

It was not my best month. I had up and down results for most of the month and there were definitely stretches where I wasn’t playing my best. On the upside, I think I have put in the effort I needed to study my game and identify some of the flaws. In the latter part of the month I am pretty sure I was playing much better than I was at the outset. Once all was said and done, I ended the month with a net loss of $77.90 overall. Technically, I was actually up a little bit, but that includes my brief experiment at Cake, which doesn’t count because PokerTracker won’t import it. If you include that, I’m actually up about $200. They say a picture tells a thousand words, so here is mine for February:

As you can see, there were a couple of fairly ugly stretches in that graph. It is a long way from the beautiful upward diagonal of the January graph.

Let’s review some of the numbers in detail. We’ll start with the key performance metrics from my original goals.

I’m pleased to see that I am well ahead of pace in terms of my hands played and points earned. Given how many hands I’ve played, I think I’m actually earning less than predicted, but under the circumstances I’m happy to just focus on the bottom line. 82% of the hands I played this month were limit hands and 18% were no limit. I won $164.60 playing no limit and lost $242.50 playing limit. Here are the results broken down by game type:

Once again, I have better results at higher limits. I think there are multiple factors affecting that. One is that my table selection is better at higher limits. I don’t feel that my edge is that large at $30/$60 and I’m even less sure at $50/$100, so I sometimes pass on games that run at those limits. I usually play the $30/$60 no matter who is sitting, but I will not always do so. I only play $50/$100 when I like the line-up. So table selection is one factor in the results. Another is the degree to which I multi-table. I almost always play 4 tables at 10/20 and below and I usually play 2 tables at 15/30 and up. This allows me to concentrate more and make better decisions. Finally, I tend to avoid short-handed games at the higher levels and I’m still erratic at short-handed tables.

After last month, I avoided playing heads-up. I actually did have 5 hands of heads-up, but I included it in short-handed. All in all, it wasn’t such a hot month, but I’m continuing to get plenty of hands in, which will be good when I have more distractions later. I also am actually pretty happy with my game right now. Let’s hope March works out better!

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