1 Year as a Poker Pro - Week 1

[scapegote]

January started off with a bang, because of an extremely akward situation in my social life I had no plans for new years, I ended up playing all night and starting out on a rush. 5/10 has been an interesting level, the swings are rough to understate things quite a bit. I've had two downswings of 100 BB's in the last couple weeks, and a couple more of about half that. The upswings however are a ride for sure, and I've managed to finish out ahead so far.

My goals for January are:

1. 5,000 hands a week, which is about 750 a day. Two tabling 5/10 that's about 3-4 hours a day, which shouldn't be difficult.

2. To pay for 1 semester of Community College, a car, and rent/living expenses. Plus still build my bankroll this should be in the range of $4000, with rakeback this is do-able as 20,000 hands should be about 4k before rakeback.

3. To focus on heads-up play to a greater degree.


My "week" is going to be from Monday to Sunday, with Sunday hopefully being a somewhat slower day as I have a full day usually.


Saturday, January 1st

Not technically part of the week, but I played anyway. I continued my massive rush from the day before. I played for about 5 hours, knocking off 798 hands for a profit of $354. A nice little rush. My bankroll is looking good at this point, right around 3k. I still get really wrapped up in my bankroll fluctuation, and am taking steps to try to stop this. Basically I'm buying in for odd amounts and using the Empire Poker "Stats" instead of Poker Tracker to keep track of the amount of hands I've finished. I'm trying to not play results oriented, it's somewhat easy when I'm winning, very challenging when I'm not.



Sunday, January 2nd

Sunday's are my day off, and I ended up taking actually not playing. After church, I went home and watched a couple episodes of CSI, specifically season 1, episodes 1-4. I just signed up for netflix, and am loving the service. Especially since they have no late fees, and all I have to do to return the movie is drop it in my mailbox. Once in high school I ended up with a 85 day late fee from Hollywood Video, I went and returned the DVD finally and the girl at the counter waived the fee. I later found out she had a crush on me, and we went out a couple times. Our movie tastes differed though, and it wasn't meant to be. The DVD was Driven, not a great movie to keep for 90 days, I watched it a total of 1 time.

In the evening I went out to a movie with an old friend from my hometown and a mutual friend that lives close to Grand Rapids. We went to this great pizza place that had a dinner and a movie deal. A large pizza, two drinks and $20 in movie gift certificates for $25. We saw the aviator, great movie. We then went back and played gamecube and X-box, a little old-school Sonic, and Fable. Both great games.



Monday, January 3rd

The start of my 1st week of my year as a poker pro, my approximate goal for the day is 750 Hands. I figure if I can get between that and 1k hands every day I'll be set for a nice sunday. I started of on a huge rush, running myself up several hundred dollars, than lost some, and won some, evening out towards the end of the day. I ended up having friends stop by at night so I came up short (not a good sign for my year), and got in 625 hands, but finished up $449 for the day. I find it's too easy for me to quit when I'm ahead and I really need to learn to plug away at the rest of my hands and finish out the goals. However, if the rest of the days this year went this well, I'd have nothing to complain about.


Tuesday, January 4th

Man did I have a good day today, I blew through 1,008 hands and went on a huge rush. You can tell you had a good day when you are up big, but you have won only 50% of your showdowns. I think I made a ton of plays where I picked up the pot with the worst hand and a couple of on the money call downs.

Anyone who's read SSHE should be familiar with the concept of calling when the pots laying you the right odds. Like 10:1 but you figure your hand is good over 15-20% of the time. Well I think a ton of the swings in shorthanded play can be attributed to this, it's not so much when your draws come in, and when your big hands hold up. Instead, when that 15-20% chance comes in a couple times in a row, you are looking at an extra couple hundred for the day.



Wednesday, January 5th

This is the kind of day you both dread and expect after running extremely well for about a week. I lost $874 over the course of 994 hands. The amount lost actually eclipsed 1k at one point, and my emotional control was working hard not to go to complete shit. When I hit the 1k mark I thought about stopping for the day, but the games I was in were good. I decided that if I ever want to play professionally, I'm going to have to learn to push through times like this. So I kept playing, and won back $150 or so before I finished out my hands. Overall a nasty day, one that had me questioning whether I was actually a winning player at this level or not.


Thursday, January 6th

Today was the day I messed around on pokerstars for a long while. I could have easily been up 200-300 but a hard loss with AQ to AJ, followed by a hard loss to KK with AA in two consecutive $50 HU SNG's caused me to cash out with only the $50 I started with for the day. I only got in 254 hands, although I did review some of my play from yesterday to reinstate some much needed confidence. It worked, and I played well today but lost another $195 over the course of the hands. I'm just short of 3k hands for the week though, so I need a decent amount of hands Friday and Saturday to be able to have a slow Sunday.


Friday, January 7th

Wow, today was not the day I needed to get in, way to few hands. I did hang out with some friends, who took me to get groceries and we went to a movie (Lemony Snicket, not reccomended) and dinner again. Overall I got 400 hands in, enough to bring me to 3281 hands for the week. I need to get in about 850 hands each saturday and Sunday to be able to reach 5k. Hopefully it will happen. I ended up $406 for the day, which was much needed relief from the downswing the last couple days. $1/hand is when it really feels like a rush.



Saturday, January 8th

I played several smaller sessions today, testing out a new type session management. 250-400 hand sessions 2 or 3 times a day. It's about an hour or two of playing, one when I get up, and then two longer ones at night. I managed to destroy the hands today, finsihing of 1332 hands. I started off the day way down, but I told myself I would play till 500 hands (knowing full well I'd continue past that point), and after a while my swing (which was about -500) evened out and then went into the positive for an overall day of $314. A good day, putting me within 400 hands of the weeks goals.


Sunday, January 9th

I played 408 hands today, playing 3 tables for a while, it was a little hectic at points. Some of this was due to overlap, it got especially bad when one table became shorthanded with 3 players. I played 3 tables for about an hour and then geared back to 2 to finish off the rest of the hands. I need to get a bigger moniter (may add that to expenses this month). Overall the day started out on a rush, but quickly started to drop and I finished the day down $11.25. It's my first day in a while that's been within 10 BB of even so it's a little weird, but I'm not complaining.


Week Totals:

Hands Goal: 5,000 Hands
Hands Actual: 5,010 Hands
Total Won: $619
BB/100: 1.24
Bankroll Total: $3792

Overall the winrate is lower than I'm hoping for long run, but the week doesn't include my huge rush on New Years Eve/Day, so for a week where I ran pretty bad some days, I'll definately take a proft.

Scapegote[/b]

[nsidestrate]

I love reading these kinds of posts. I hope that you keep it up over the course of the year. You seem to be dealing with the swings pretty well, which will be the key to your success, I think. As a "hobby" player, it is really easy to me to maintain emotional control, because the money doesn't really matter to me. When it pays the rent, it must be more difficult.

[robrobrob]

Get the monitor. I am amazed at the difference it makes. I hated playing more than 2 tables on my older monitor, but I picked up a 20" lcd (1600x1200) for $449 recently on ebay (there are more available as of a couple of days ago at this price) and it has changed everything. I play 4 tables as relaxed as 2 tables were before. Even if a table or 2 gets short handed. Anyone interested in multi-tabling should have one of these.

rob

[geormiet]

Good job scapegote. Sounds like nothing will stop you now - keep on 2 tabling, and I think you will be clearing around $1k a week from this point on.

I also like breaking up my sessions into 200 - 300 hand chunks.

I know that the $800 losses are hard to take when they are happening, but go back and read over your week, and you will see it how we see it - a (necessary) blip.

I recommend you start keeping records with pokercharts.com, and also stick to 2 tables, at least for a few more weeks.

[scapegote]

Thanks everyone, I'll definately be getting the moniter as soon as it becomes possible to do so and not take my bankroll below a level I'm comfortable with. I'll also be sticking to 2 tables for the remainder of the month I think. This will give me time to bolster my confidence and get my hands up to 25-30k range so I can have a decent fix on my true win-rate to see the effects 3-4 tabling will have.

Thanks for the replies, it helps to know that people read my posts.

Scapegote