Poker Wannabe: 12/19/2004 - Pre-Holiday Madness Update

December has been a much more interesting month than November was. That's not really a good thing.

I'm reminded of that saying that goes something like this, "May you be blessed with an uneventful life." November was uneventful. It was, almost without fail, a long slow positive gain. I started playing in early November, won, won, won, and 600ish BB's (plus another 200ish BB's worth of bonuses) later, the month was over. It was extremely profitable--the best month I'd had online by far--but uneventful.

December has been anything but. Now, I look at the good ol' spreadsheet and it's about two-thirds of the way through the month and I'm about two-thirds of the way towards what I earned last month. That's good. If I can earn what I did last month every month, in addition to the income from my new job, I'll be one happy SOB.

But the way I've been winning has been, well, stress-inducing. The month started off with a string of nice small winning days--much like how all of November was--but then I hit a rocky patch. I'd win, say, $400 one day, but then lose it the next day. Or I'd win a good amount over two days, just to lose that exact amount over the next two days. Then I hit Black Saturday, 12/11. It took me just four scant hours to blow through over 130 BB's, for by far the worst run online I've ever had--I've had bigger than 130 BB downswings, but never in such a concentrated period of time. I won't go into too much detail (indeed, I've blocked much of it out of my mind) but, for example, three times in the span of 30 minutes I flopped a full house and lost. It was that kind of run. I was playing on Empire Poker and PokerPlex, and let's just say that by the end of it, I was convinced they were both rigged.

The next week was a return to November-like ways, as I consistently won modest sums every day, so that by that next Saturday (yesterday, 12/18) I had won back all I had lost on Black Saturday, plus a little bit. It's somewhat annoying to play for an entire week and essentially break even, but it happens, I guess. I was much happier that it was a 15 BB win week rather than a 130 BB loss week.

But then I found out about PartyPoker's 20% reload bonus up to $200. That's a great bonus, but I would only have a week to play it off...except I would be leaving for Costa Rica on Wednesday, so I would only have four days to play it off, all 1400 raked hands. I'd been playing almost exclusively full table 3/6 at Party and its skins recently, and continuing to do that for this bonus would probably take 10 hours of play. To expedite things, I decided to take a stab at 6-max 5/10. I'd been playing 6-max on Interpoker at the 2/4 and 3/6 GBP tables (~$3.80/7.60 and $5.70/11.40) with much success and so the Party tables shouldn't be too much different, in ability or stakes, I thought. Heck, I'd played a small amount of party 6-max 5/10 a few months ago with modest success, so why not.

Three+ hours, 1180 hands, 790 Raked hands and 79 BB later (6.7BB/100 for those keeping track) I was feeling a lot more confident. The games played very similarly to the way the Interpoker 6-max tables play, although I have to say that the average Party player is better than the average Interpoker player at six-max. Obviously, a 6.7BB/100 winrate is not maintainable by any stretch of the imagination, and who knows, maybe I'm downright horrible player having an amazingly good run, but for one evening it was plenty good enough for me. And now I only have about 600 more raked hands to play over the next three days to hit the bonus. And who knows, but with my consistent short-handed success now at three sites (UltimateBet, too), maybe within a few weeks I'll be primarily a 6-max player.

So, yeah, the ride has been much bumpier this month. And, as opposed to last month's 3:1 winnings-to-bonus ratio, I'm currently at less than 1.5:1 (more bonuses, less winnings this month). But as long as my play is solid and I'm making money, I'm happy. I guess if my worst complaint is the manner in which I'm winning money, well, then, I really don't have anything to complain about.

Poker Wannabe

Life at the bottom of the barrel

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12/19/2004 - Pre-Holiday Madness Update

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