still a grinder

I'm still grinding.  putting in the hours, trying to make enough money to stay out of that cubicle so I can pursue things that really entertain me.  I think my game has improved by leaps and bounds in the last 50 days.  I'm not sure if I've ever studied harder or played with more focus over such a long stretch.  I've played mostly nl100 and nl200 because I don't want to have my roll all in one spot and I'm not comfortable playing higher on a short roll.  Obviously the return of FTP money would be a huge boon to my situation, but I stopped planning on having that cash when budgeting and paying taxes quite some time ago.

I'm proud of my results for this last stretch too:

























EV wise I should have won about $12,250 over that stretch, but I've run fairly bad and only made $9,582.  That's 3.94 ptbb/100 (7.86bb/100) and would be over 5ptbb if I was running at expectation.  That just goes to show that hard work and study can still pay off.  This stretch wouldn't even be in my top 12 months, but considering what I have had to deal with since black friday it might be the poker result that I'm most proud of.

For the year I'm still running fairly bad, just at 90 buy-ins under expectation for NLHE and about 35 buy-ins under expectation for PLO.  I've stopped playing PLO for the most part because I feel that I'm a good enough NLHE player to overcome a lot of the run bad and still find ways to win.  But in PLO I was playing poorly much of the time while trying to learn the game, and that in combination with running bad produced terrible results.  It's much harder to overcome the variance as you learn PLO as well, so for my sanity and bankroll I've taken a break from it.  I will say that the process of trying to learn PLO may have been the catalyst for my NLHE game getting back to a top tier level.  It forced me to take a more studious analytical approach to poker than I had in some time, and gave me a lot of new things to think about when considering how to improve my game.  It cost me a decent chunk of money, but maybe in the long run the time and money will be worth it.

I need to write a blog at some point about the freak injury I suffered early this year.  It resulted in me having tendon surgery on my hand and is the reason I'm not playing baseball this summer.  It's been another busy year with lot's of other stuff away from the baseball field and the poker tables and I just haven't really had time to type out the story/my thoughts on the accident.  I'll try to find the time soon.

Also I started coaching a client again, and would consider taking on more clients if someone is interested.  My rates vary depending on the number of sessions and the stakes you play, so contact me via the comments section, 2p2, or an email if you'd like to discuss.

I hope everyone is having a great summer/winter (depending on hemisphere) and running good at the tables.

later

jim