Whilst it is not the most exciting part of Poker, reviewing the financial results is still an essential part of Poker life. I'm not planning to do a blog article of my results every month, but will certainly be doing the comparative analysis of my monthly results to ensure I am heading in the right direction and it also gives me a chance to think generally about my Poker life and what I'm doing right or wrong. I also happen to know that my Feb results will give me a brag opportunity ;-)
My January results were unremarkable, but at least I did post a profit for the month, so how was February for me
Plan
My monthly targets are:
- Play 1000 hands of cash on NLHE $0.50, 1000 cash hands on PLO $0.20 and 500 cash hands of PLO8 $0.20 (all 6-max) with profit target of 2 BB per hour. ($16.00 for NLHE, $6.40 for PLO, $3.20 for PLO8 = $25.60 per month)
- Play 20 STT hoping for 10% ROI (around $20 per month)
Monitor
As expected, I missed one week due to holiday, but also struggled in to get the cash table time in due to live playing
Overall for the month
PokerStars -$70.43
BBP -$49.98 (-£30.81)
Live play +£1390.00
Comparing to Feb 2010, I had lost $446 so am hugely up by any measure !
The breakdown of my BBP results is quite intriguing
Feb 2011 Cash results (£31 profit overall)
NLHE 567 hands +£41.03 (+0.8 buy-in)
PLO 447 hands +£42.37 (+2.1 buy-ins)
PLO8 886 hands -£52.36 (-2.6 buy-ins)
Tournaments (£62 loss overall)
11x MTT -£20.68
5x 2 seat STT +£16.97
17x 6 seat STT -102.84
17x 10 seat STT +£67.16
2x Other STT -£22.46
Reflect
I am still not hitting my cash hands target and need to knuckle down more. I am actually pretty happy with the NLHE and PLO cash results, as feel have been playing these tables well, but a good PLO8 strategy is eluding me at the moment.
My MTT game is OK, having achieved 3 small cashes out the the games played.
The 6 seat STT is clearly where things went wrong for me this month and am actually at a loss to understand why this happened. I only managed 2x seconds places and 2x 3rd place cashes in Jackpot tables. On a brighter note, my 10 seat results were pretty good, with 4 wins and 1 second place (+43% ROI) and won 4 out of the 5 heads up games (+52% ROI) but those 6 seat tables smashed me to pieces this month.
I played two live tourneys and one cash session in my local casino and managed to lose £110 the first tourney, then win back £70 in a cash session. The next trip was a bit more succesful, with a decent sized "win" ! (full report at http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2011/02/poker-casino-trip-for-staking.html)
Adjust
For my cash games, will continue with NLHE and PLO but will try to beat my PLO8 simulation software before going back to the cash tables there.
The STT and MTT I am happy with, apart from the 6 seat results obviously, so will need to try and work out if I am playing incorrectly or just getting unlucky. January saw me win 2 and get 2nd x3 out of 9 attempts, so will just have to see how March goes.
With London Live coming up on 1st April I will try to play a few more live tournaments in March and focus more on NLHE online as well (cash and tourneys) so this will have an impact on my targets. Probably will put PLO8 to one side and just play a bit of PLO for a "rest" from NLHE
In the end, February was a great month for my Poker bankroll, so am pretty happy. I realize my big win is likely a windfall which will be difficult to repeat, but even after "re-investing" half my winnings on a couple of shots, will still have doubled my normal bankroll. I will certainly be sticking to my normal strict BMR policies so hope will continue to gradually grow my bankroll and work my way up by improving my game
March will certainly be interesting, but already looking forward to April :-)