4-12

Boooooooooooring day today. The games were really bad (only pros, no amateurs) so I had a tough time getting volume in. Only played 7,600 hands for 3,900 VPP's and a marginal profit. The goal for this week is to get 222,200 VPP's and I am at 204,000.

200k Milestone

20% of the way to SNE. The 200k milestone is $2,600 and the first and smallest of 8 milestones. At 200k VPP's, a player will have cleared $14,000 of the $100,000 in bonuses for the year. The next milestone is at 300k which I will hit around May 5th. To give a little perspective, last year I hit this bonus on December 31st so I am a little ahead of that pace this year.

I ran another $1k under EV today but unlike yesterday I still finished with a nice profit. I played 9,000 hands and made 5,000 VPP's.

End of the Week Recap

Never a good day when you run over $2,000 below EV. While I was due for a run-bad correction, it never feels good to know that your net worth is 2k below where it should be if you had just run normal. One silver lining is that I played almost 9,000 hands today and it felt like I barely played. This is good as it means I am getting accustomed to long sessions and playing a large amount of hands. At the beginning of my SNE chase, 9,000 hands felt like a marathon.

For the week, I played 50,000 hands and made 28,500 VPP's. Despite dropping a couple g's today, I still managed to make an OK profit on the week. Next week my bonuses hit so that will be nice. I am 19.5% of the way to SNE and very happy with my first month of progress.

After playing 6-max almost exclusively for the last week, I have decided going forward I need to mix in 9-max to increase my profit. Today is a great example of what can happen if I stick with the low win-rate of 6-max. One day of this is fine, but what happens when this goes on for 5 days in a row, 10 days, 15 days etc. Luck has no memory and I am just as likely tomorrow to run 2k below as I am to run 2k above. I don't want to go back to full-ring exclusively so I am going to sandwich "short" 2,000 hands sessions of 6-max around 1 long session of full-ring. If I can't get 24 full-ring tables running, I will mix in some 6-max. My hope is that the higher winrate of full-ring will minimize the luck factor involved in 6-max. I also miss being on top of the profit leaderboards everyday with my full-ring play :)

4-9

Since I am already at my weekly VPP goal, I was only going to play a short session tonight and focus on improving my marginal profit for the week. 4 hours later I was robusto (again) for my 6th consecutive disappointing profit of the week. I was like the Robin Hood of poker taking money from other pros only to donate it to the weekend donkeys.

The good news is that since I don't have any losing days this week, even the small profits add up. I am also about three days away from a $2,600 milestone bonus and about five days from a $4,000 regular bonus. After that, it will be another 3-4 weeks before my next round of bonuses.

I have a fixation with watches. The watch I really want is an IWC Portuguese:

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q136/phidelt799/B7Uh5FQBmkKGrHqIOKpIEyjCoKTBMz0YHLDFw_3.jpg

Unfortunately, I just can't get myself to invest that amount of money into a watch yet. However, tonight another pro posted a picture of a watch that I really liked. It's called a Maurice Lacroix Pontos:

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q136/phidelt799/Watch.png

It's about 1/3 the cost of the IWC and I like it almost as much.

4-8

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q136/phidelt799/4-8.jpg

The graph above represents what those of us in the poker community call "robusto". It's when you grind out your loss and don't stop playing until you get back to profit. There are two possible results I have achieved when trying to go "robusto": 1) you get to profit like the graph above or 2) you play for a day straight, post an enormous loss and then waste a month digging yourself out. I always find it funny that psychologically posting a marginal profit after going robusto feels like a great win but if I made the exact same amount and had not been negative I would have just felt OK.

8,200 hands for a little over 5,000 VPP's. 18.6% of the way to SNE.

4-7

Yesterday was a lighter volume, light profit day. Only put in 5,500 hands.

Today, I put in 8,500 hands for 5,000 VPP's. I have been playing higher stakes so my VPP/hand rate is higher. A nice profit today although it was primarily from running significantly above EV (lucky).

I am still unsure about how I will continue my run to SNE. While I have shown a profit everyday this week playing exclusively 6-max, I am supposed to be breakeven but I am running lucky. The games Monday-Thursday are significantly tougher than they are on the weekend so I am hoping I can log a bigger profit on the weekend. However, I just don't know if I can spend 4 days a week hoping to breakeven. Right now, I am leaning towards cutting down my tables from 24 to 18 and focusing more on table selection so by the end of my session I am not playing only other pros. I might also mix in some full-ring and see if I can play both without getting confused.

I am 18.2% of the way to SNE.

4-5

Yesterday played 10,000 hands for a marginal profit and 4,500 VPP's. Today played 8,000 hands for a marginal profit.

Marginal profit is my biggest fear with playing 6-max. While the number of hands and VPP rate is phenomonal, the game just isn't very profitable. I have played about 40,000 6-max hands and have a good feel for the game and the other professionals playing the game. I have looked up all the pros and very few are winning players, the ones who are are marginal winners at best.

While breaking even and taking $100,000 in bonuses is great, the swings involved with being breakeven are huge and create an incredible emotional rollercoaster. When you are a significant winning player, you will go through downswings but they are short in duration and light in volatility. When you are a breakeven/ slight winner, your downswings can be very damaging.

I have a couple options, I can go back to playing full-ring and play 40% more hours to get to SNE but with a considerably higher hourly winrate. I could also try to breakeven at 6-max during the week, hit my VPP goal and then use the weekend to work on my profit. I'll keep grinding 6-max until Friday and see where I'm at.

4-3 - End of the Week

Day #2 of 6-max went very well:

If I hadn't dropped over a grand to ikasaxd (top profit player of the day) I probably would have been first instead of third. I actually didn't plan on putting much volume in today since I was already at my weekly VPP goal but I still wound up playing 6,500 hands for 3.600 VPP's.

This week I played 50,000 hands and made 26,500 VPP's along with a profit above expectation. Next week, I would like to play at least 50,000 hands again and be over 180,500 VPP's or 18.5% of the way to SNE. I didn't clear any bonuses this week and I won't next week but in two weeks I will clear a $2,600 milestone bonus and a $4,000 standard bonus.

4-2

Forgot to post last night, yesterday was a pretty standard day playing 8,000 hands and posting an average profit. A nice start to the month.

Today was much more interesting. When I started playing cap, I decided to play full-ring (9 players at a table) instead of 6-max (6 players at a table). A month ago there were 24+ full-ring tables to play between 11AM and 10PM. However, over the last week I have really had trouble getting 24 tables going so my VPP/rate was lower than I had planned. This forced me to play a lot more hours this week which is not good.

I decided today to try 6-max which usually has a lot more tables running. I have avoided 6-max because there are a lot more good professionals playing on these tables than the full-ring tables. Win-rates are usually considerably lower on 6-max than FR. However, I am going to have to learn to play this game if I want to get to SNE without playing all day everyday.

9,000 hands and 5,200 VPP's today. 16.2% of the way to SNE.

The benefit of playing 24 tables of 6-max is you get 2,000 hands/hour as opposed to 1,500 hands/hour. The VPP/hand rate is also higher so I can get 1,100 VPPs/hour at 6-max versus 650 VPPs/hour at full-ring which means I need to play 40% less hours to get to SNE.

For my first day of 6-max, I posted my first losing day in weeks. I would have had a profit if I hadn't tried to play at home with the kids running around. Playing 1,500-2,000 hands an hour requires all my concentration and emotional control and playing at home isn't conducive to that. My dad was in Italy for the last couple weeks which allowed me to play at his house in quiet which I think is a large part of my profit last month. I will have to figure something out going forward. Don't be surprised if you see A and A on ebay in the near future.