Boom! $20K Nov, nbd…

So I know I haven’t updated in a while, but things have been extremely hectic. I did as promised and packed my life into my car and drove across the country to Vegas, and now here I am. Things are great out here, the house is sick, my roommates are awesome, and I just shipped my first 20K month

It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows though. I cashed out like 9K in the months leading up to my big move for expenses, enjoying my time in NY, a new bedroom set, rent, deposit, ect and then obviously went on the post-large-cashout downswing. I kinda want to punch myself in the face for not following my own advice and easing myself back into poker at the lower stakes and playing less tables like I swore I would in my last post. Instead I decided to 12table everything between the $110s and the $330s the first session I fired up here at the new house and dropped like 7K. Worst day ever, all of a sudden I’m looking at 16K less in my account than I’m used to and kinda freaking out. October pretty much sucked poker wise. According to Sharkscope I lose just shy of 8K, after rakeback:

0% ROI over 750 games, $79 Avg buying, -$10.76 Avg Profit, -$7,983 Total profit

What a FAIL! October was my first losing month ever, and I gotta say I didn’t enjoy it. It was kinda deserved, b/c I didn’t put in much volume at all during Aug, Sept or October. I put more volume in during Nov than Aug-Oct combined, so those 3 months are pretty much just lol-sample size. I ran sick hot for August and September making like 9K in a combined 500 games, so the doomswitch had to get flicked at some point. I also didn’t ease myself back into playing in October, I just jumped right in to 12 tables at high stakes like a monkey and probably made some maladjustments, played too aggressive, and ran bad to top it all off. Things were looking pretty down coming into November.

I decided that I wanted to play well within my bankroll so as to not add to the stress I was feeling coming off a big cashout followed by a losing month, so I decided to focus on the $42+3 super turbos, which i had about 250 buy-ins for. I kept those as my main game while mixing in some $70+5 supers and some $55+5s and $110+9s. I played 470 $42+3s at a 6% ROI for $1,228 before rakeback. At this point I realized that although I was top 30 on the Full Tilt High limit leader board, I wasn’t moving up to the top fast enough, which is where the most money is, and even if I did get to the top, my prize would be in multiples of my most common buy-in ($42.) If I could start playing more $110+9s I would move up the LB at the same speed b/c the rake is 3x higher but the time they take on avg is about 3 times longer, but I would get a higher multiplier ($110 instead of $42) since leaderboard prizes are handed out in terms of your most common stake for that month. So I stopped playing the $42s, and focused on the $110+9s while still mixing in some $70+5s and $55+5s and I upped my volume.

I moved up the LB in quick fashion, moving from top 30 to top 5 in the last few days of the month. Since my Bankroll was looking decent again, I started mixing back in some $220+16s, $330+20s and even a few $525+30s. That obviously helped me run up the TLB, and it doesn’t hurt to run pretty sick either. Sat the 28th I had the sickest single day of my life, winning over 11.5K in one day.

I had a silver star on sharkscope for $14+1 Super Turbo Avg Profit, but this run got me my first set of Gold Stars. One for $100-$300 Total Profit (19th) and then one for 9-10 Seated Turbo Avg Profit (5th.) At this point I really wanted to just call it a month, up $26K, happy as shit, but I know that’s not the proper way of thinking about poker. There were 2 days left in the month, and I knew if I put in another 4K in rake, I would make an additional 1K from the combination of the Full Tilt Leaderboard Bonus and my Rake Chase. That means I’m getting an extra 25% rakeback on the next 4K in rake I pay, so with that set-up I need a pretty big excuse not to play. Unfortunately, knowing there’s no way to keep running so sick is not a legit reason turn down that added value, boy I wish it was.

So obviously I ran like crap the rest of the month, dropping like 6K on Sunday and another $1300 on Monday. Pretty annoying, although I did reach my TLB and rake race goals. This has me ending the month as follows:

5% ROI over 2062 games, $92 Avg Stake, $6.97 Avg Profit, $14,369 Total Profit

Add to that $3879 in Rakeback, $1320 from the Full Tilt High Stakes TLB, and $1K from my rake chase and I ended the month at: $20,568.

My biggest month ever, by a landslide (eclipsing my 11.8K July) and yet somehow, it’s hard to feel too excited after being up $26K with 2 days to go. Poker is the only game where you can make money at a rate of a $250K/yr and still be pissed off.

Since I’ve been moving up higher in stakes fairly quickly over the last few months, I’ve been making more money exponentially, but the swings have also become pretty mentally taxing. Obviously playing for 12 hours Saturday and making $1K/hour felt super sick, but in the last 2 months I’ve had both a 7K and a 6K losing day, and those are scary and hard to take. The most stressful part is what could happen if I had 2 or 3 -7K days in a row. I would obviously move down and grind my roll back up at the $45-$119 stakes, but the risk is still quite stressful.

Moving up and having the mind to cope with the large amounts of real life money being won and lost is the only route to making it to the top in poker. I don’t want to be grinding mid-stakes SNGs 2 years from now. I find that during my big losing days, I start to feel my mind getting foggy and a feeling of mental dizziness comes on. When I’m having a huge winning day, I generally feel crisp, sharp and focused. What I’m trying to figure out is whether I play worse when my mind is not on my A game, or if it’s playing well and getting unlucky that puts me off my A game, or if it’s a combination of both. I’d like to know if it’s playing subpar that brings on the poor results, or just running bad that tilts me. Obviously it’s going to be both to some degree, but I feel like there must be a predominate direction.

For December, I’ll probably rewatch the Jared Tandler video series on mental states and tilt control. I also plan on doing a little more cash game playing and some MTTs; I might even dick around with learning PLO and playing some real low stakes. I’m not going to be shooting for any big leaderboards since I’m going home for a few weeks for the holidays, so it seems like a good time to have some fun and branch out, while hopefully still making some decent money.

Outside of Poker, I’ve opened a Sportsbook Acct and I’m opening a Bodog acct this week too. I don’t consider myself much a sportsbetter, but I know a lot about MMA so I think I can bet UFC profitably since the lines are based on who the public thinks will win, and the public is a bunch of fanboys who don’t know shit about wrestling or jujitsu. I made a pretty clutch bed on Josh Koscheck over Anthony “Rumble” Johnson at +125 for a $250 profit, and I won money on both Forrest Griffen and Randy Coture. I did lose a little on another fight but I’m still up a decent amount for the last few months.

This Saturday my friend Matt “The Hammer” Hamill who trains BJJ back at my home gym in Upstate NY is fighting Jon Jones. This fight reminds me of the Koscheck/Rumble fight, because somehow, the person who strikes me as the favorite is listed as a significant Dog. Jon Jones looked impressive when he beat up Stephan Bonner in his last fight, but Stephan Bonner is a has been IMO. Matt Hamill looked pretty bad in his last fight against Rich Franklin, but that’s b/c Franklin is a personal friend who Matt really didn’t want to fight. Rich caught a really bad cut to the eye in that fight, and I just don’t think Matt wanted to go after him. Bottom line, Jon Jones may be a good wrestler, junior college national champion or whatever, but he’s not better than Matt Hamill (who once pinned Kurt Angel.) He’s also in no way a better striker, and Matt has a better ground game and knows more BJJ. I just don’t see what the heck Jon Jones is better than Matt Hamill at. He’s just bigger and blacker, but as we saw in the Rumble/Koscheck fight, when someone who’s running hot finally fights someone good, they don’t win on athleticism alone. Right now I have 1K on the fight, by far my biggest UFC wager. I have $200 @ +170 and $800 @ +200, meaning if Hamill wins I’ll get my 1K wager back +$1970. I just noticed Bodog has Hamill at +$250, and I have a half a mind to put another 1K on it. I just don’t see how he loses, bets like this don’t come along very often. The fight goes down Dec 5th, and unfortunately it’s live on the East Coast @9pm, but it’s on at 9pm here in Vegas too, meaning it will have already happened. I want to try not to follow it online so it’s exciting to watch, but it’s gonna be so hard when I have so much $ on it. Having it not live is so retarded. If anyone knows a live stream plz let me know.

So hopefully I run good. I may go to the PCA in January with 2 of my roommates. Andrew has a package from being an SNE on Stars. It would be sick to have an extra 5K for degen’ing it up out there (C’mon Hamill.) I’ll try to update more often from here on out. It’s a lot easier during months when I’m not gunning for leaderboards. I have a sick post explaining exactly how much rakeback you get on Full Tilt after Iron Man and Ftps that I’ll post in a few days, should be very useful. Check back soon and post me some run good in the comments please.