A New Year is always exciting for me because it presents a blank slate for my poker results. It brings about a new bench mark for achievement, a benchmark with exciting possibilities.
At times in December I thought I was surely going to try to see if I can win a lot at shallow 6 max games this month, because I think they could be tremendously profitable for me. There are 10-15 tables of good games to sit in running regularly at the 10/20 and 25/50 levels. Shallow games seem to represent the most fishy games for high stakes out of any game type. I wanted to see if I can make a decent winrate diving into them, because if I can I’m encouraged I could make a killing at those games.
But as I tested the waters at the end of this year I noticed some differences in 6 max cash games and hu sngs that are significant. First off, no 6 max cash player bluffs nearly as much as a hu sng player, and for good reason. The opportunities to make good bluffs is much less prevelant at 6 max cash begins ranges are much tighter and more defined. Therefore, to win at these games you have to be folding super exploitable amounts. But to this is instinctually difficult because its the opposite at hu sngs. You often want to be exploitably stationy because of how prone people are to bluff. Max said it elegantly when he wrote in a previous blog post how hu sngs are much more theoretical than cash. You don’t need to know optimally what spots you need to call light in because you just fold in all those spots in cash. But I’ve been building the opposite habits in my sng game for the past one and a half years.
It’s hard for me to stick want to stick to hu sngs because of the results I’ve had in a year and a half playing them. But there are some more reasons why they may be my best games to play this year. One, I’ve felt like I have been playing better than ever at those games. My ROI 6 tabling 345′s to 1ks is near 5% for the month of December. A small sample, but encouraging nonetheless. Two, I have a lot of potential to possibly even break the Pokerstars single year VPP record, and the last two players to break the record both have gotten sponsored (George Lind, Wizardofahhhs). I average making about 2500 vpps an hour, which I believe is more than anyone on the entire site. If I make 15k vpps a day (Which I was doing easily in december) 5 days a week, that would mean I would make 300k VPPs a month. About 35,000 a month in rake back alone and puts me on pace for the stars record even with a month off. That is over 300,000 in rakeback alone. Add on a 5% ROI over all those games, over 30,000 of them averaging $500 of buy ins, that is 750,000 on top of the rakeback for over a million dollars in profits.
Yes, it’s all a fantasy and a best case scenario that everyone seems to dream about at the beginning of the year. But it’s possible. And I don’t know if its possible for me doing any other games.
So I’m going to set out for that goal. See if I can set the VPP record on PS this year. It’s a lot of pressure but the ceiling outcome is so alluring I have to give it a shot. So wish me luck, and let’s see if I can get my name (and Max’s by default) out there as a known name in the poker world.