This month I’ve been focusing a lot on HU cash, and I’ve been loving every second of it. I’m loving it not only because I’m up a lot (in fact, I’m up more than I ever have been in a one month period), but because I’m having so much fun and playing so well.

My journey of learning HU SNG’s helped me improve in cash in a lot of ways. I understand preflop theory so much better now, and I feel my preflop game is far superior to anyone I’ve been playing. My valuebetting has drastically improved as well. There were so many places in HU cash where I was betting with one pair that I didn’t realize were bad bets. But when I played Isildur awhile back I noticed something surprising; he wasn’t value betting very thin at all. After analyzing the merits of this and running over ideas with poker buddies, I made a huge shift in my value betting strategy. Lastly, HU SNG’s helped me reign in my aggressive mentality. I give up on bluffs at better times now, and in better places.

Because I went on such a long hiatus from playing cash regularly, I’ve been getting a pretty decent amount of action. I can normally find a regular within 10 minutes who wants to play. Almost all of them have the same sort of leaks in common:

1. They play too tight preflop

2. They don’t bluff nearly enough in spots where I’m folding a large amount of the time

I have, however, played two very good players. One, to my surprise, was aejones. I say to my surprise because I expected him to be pretty good, but I didn’t expect him to be very good. And he was, in fact, the latter. Another was Kanu7/IReadYrSoul. Of the two common leaks I described, he was the opposite. He played well preflop and often bluffed in spots where I had no intention of calling unless I had the super nuts. I feel like I have the potential to beat both of these players, but it’s only a challenge I’m going to take if I am desperate to find action… or if I have a big tournament score .

Max is 4th in chips currently at The Wynn Classic. 9 players left, first place is about $320,000! What a tournament beast!!

The only place I know of that will likely give live updates is twitter. You can follow Max at http://twitter.com/SuitedAAces.

GOOOOO MAAAXXXX!

Since I quit my chase, I’ve been playing a lot more HU cash and faring quite well. I honestly feel like I’m playing the best I have ever played. The wide variety of games I’ve delved into over the years has had a positive effect on my cash skills.

Today, I played the tightest regular I have ever played in my entire life. He was so tight even in the face of enormous aggression that I had Max get on Skype and Teamviewer just to laugh at how ridiculous my strategy was. Here are the stats to show just how crazy it got.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7579/nit1w.jpg

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/2024/nit2.jpg

If you look at the 2nd link, you can see my redline going up drastically for the first 250 hands. For those first hands, this was the gist of my strategy: 3bet all hands (yes, even 32 off suit), except those that can cold call preflop but don’t have much 3bet value. Since he was folding 77% to 3bet in the beginning, I decided I would employ this strategy until the normal adjustment of 4betting a lot as a bluff and value came. But it wasn’t happening. He still was folding to 3bet 70% of the time. At that time, my 3bet% was just as large, in the 70% range.

After awhile the madness ended as he slowly began to start calling more 3bets, and 4betting a thin value range as well as bluffs. At that point, I switched to a linear value range for my 3bets. But I still did not want to start folding.

Looking for other ways to play my weak hands profitably, I started to realize he was folding a lot to flop c/r’s, as well as checking behind midpair, bottom pair, and ace high. My new strategy? C/r nearly every flop until he started to cbet his weak showdown value. I continued to rarely fold preflop. This basically went on until I had to quit for dinner.

………………………..

It’s a lot of fun playing cash again. I’ve been away for awhile so hopefully I start getting more action. I’m willing to take on basically anyone at this point. I don’t remember feeling this confident since the spring of 2009, it’s nice to have some swagger back.

VPPs this month: ~305,000

VPPs this year: ~503,000

This month went as well as I could hope a month to go. I made money, I hit my VPP goal, and I improved. There’s not much more I could ask for. But I’m going to end my pursuit for the VPP record despite firing on all cylinders.

Why? Basically, I think my chances of making 3.4 million points is pretty good. But I think the chances of getting 3.4 million points and that being the record is pretty slim. There are a handful of people going for the record this year, one of which is 500,000 VPPs ahead of me and announced yesterday he is going to go for the record. With the possibility of the record dwindling, there are just too many negatives to keep going. For one, going for the record restricts me to only 6 tabling HU SNGs on Stars. There are a lot of times where that is not even close to my best option game selection wise. I’d like to play some on Full Tilt as well. There are also times where I don’t want to play 6 tables.

Still, there are going to be times where I do the exact same thing I have been doing. But by not going for the record I’m going to give myself more options, and I think this will improve my expectation. It’s somewhat depressing because I wanted the recognition but I’m going to try to get recognized in another way: By moving up the ladder of stakes and sitting with the best players in the world.

VPP for the week: ~63k

VPP for the year: 485, 682.50

Last week I put in no full work days and nearly hit my goal. This week I put in almost all full work days and didn’t reach my goal. The reason? Lots of time with no action. I hope this was just a fluke week, but I wasn’t able to get up to 6 tables for most of the time. I had two regulars say they didn’t want to play me anymore, which certainly didn’t help too.

Despite this, I’m pretty happy. On Monday I should hit 500k VPPs for the year and that will mean I will have a very solid winning month and one where I hit my VPP goal. I’m also 4th in VPPs on the entire site this year. One player ahead of me, Isildur, I’m sure will not be a threat because he will either stop getting action or decide to stop playing. Another player is an unknown, so not sure how much of a threat he/she is. And way ahead of everyone is Azntracker, who can and will beat me if he decides to do so. He is nearly at 1,000,000 VPPs already and is regularly putting in 30k VPP days. But it appears that there is a decent chance he is not going to go for the yearly record, as he wants to travel a lot and play a lot of live tournaments. He hasn’t yet made a commitment either way. Nonetheless, record or not I’m going to keep going with this.

Play quality wise, I was up and down. I intuited that this was true, but I can literally tell in my graph this was so because I have a redline in the shape of a mountain. Non showdown winnings is normally a pretty good indicator of how well you are playing. High or breakeven is good, steadily going down is bad. For me, the first few days it was break even and up, for the last two it was steadily down. However, I do think my spectrum of quality of play has made a jump upward. Even on the last two days where I didn’t think I played as well, I still felt like I was playing winning poker. Previous weeks I don’t think that was the case.

But there were times in my play where I just didn’t know what my opponents were doing and therefore did not know what I was doing. There are two things I’m going to work on this week to improve this weakness. One, whenever I don’t know what my opponent is doing, I’ll try to find out. I’ll look through Pt3 and put a lot of focus on remembering previous hands I’ve played with the player by memory and looking through instant hand history. Two, at times where I still can’t figure it out, or am hazy, I will default to balanced play. I will simply play my own range as optimally as possible. If I can do that, I think my play quality will boost.

VPP for the week: 64k

VPP for the year: ~423,000

Looking at the VPP totals alone, this week may seem mediocre. But it was far from it.

I made the most money this week I have made the entire year. I don’t know the exact number, but I was up 58 buy ins, and ran hotter at 1130′s than I did at lower stakes. I played 1 2250 against Joe Cada and won to add on the the high stakes run hot. I ran about 20 buy ins above EV, so luck certainly played its part this week.

Despite 64k vpps being 11k below my weekly goal, it actually was slightly above my goal this week. I took the day off completely for valentines day for obvious reasons, so I only booked 4 days, making slightly higher than my daily 15k vpp goal. But what is so promising about this week for me is that I didn’t put in any full days. I had all partial work days and I still hit my goal and then some. What does this mean? Well, in part, it meant that I got a lot more multi table action from regulars. But it also means that I have increased my vpp/hr. I am getting more comfortable 6 tabling, and am now even letting it get up to 7 or 8 tables if I have a multi table match with a regular. With this new comfort I am going to put in a lot more 20k vpp days, and possibly even some 100k vpp weeks sans isildur.

So as you can imagine I’m excited. Making a good chunk of money makes it way easier for me to stay positive and keep perspective, but it also helped me learn an important concept. I said it in my journal best:

“This week has been a really good week for me poker wise. I feel like I’m playing well and have won a lot of money. I also checked my EV graph for the year and found that my expectation is actually much greater than my actual winnings. All of these have reinforced the belief that I am good at poker and this year is going to go well. But I don’t want my emotions to be governed by my results. What I’m realizing now is that these beliefs I have aren’t just true this week, they have been true all year. I am great at poker, and I my expected winnings this year are going to be high because of that. It’s hard not to get wrapped up in the swings of luck, swings of play quality, and swings of learning, and feel like in the bad times that everything is bad. But I have to realize there is so much variance of so many aspects of poker. I have to stay firm in my belief that I’m a winner every time I sit down and play because that is what I’ve proved to myself over time, and results on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis cannot bog down that belief.”

Look for me to shoot up the Sharkscope and VPP leaderboards in the next few weeks.

I played Isildur against across 6 tables and this time it went badly. I went 11-21 over 32 games, for a grand 2 day total of 56-62. It’s not as bad as it sounds, as I had most of my action taken. But I think its the last time I’m going to play him.

Today, I got less lucky than yesterday, but I also did not play as well and he played a lot better. There was one big mistake he was making yesterday that he shored up today that closed up my edge against him a lot. I felt like I played spectacularly yesterday, but today I just played pretty good. Prittay, prittay, prittay good. And what can you do when your opponent wins 60% @SD.

He did one thing very badly the entire time I’ve played him, a mistake that is well documented and I suppose speaks of a degenerate gambler within him: He rarely 3bets and folds. I was 4betting a tight range the entire time I played him and he would repeatedly get it in with Q8s or K6s or random hands like that.

There were other things he did that were kind of bad. But are his big mistakes and small mistakes enough to justify an edge against him, even when he does so many other things so well? Possibly, but not enough I think to make me want to continue to play him, and nor enough to justify anyone buying my action.

Anyways, it was good while it lasted. There were a lot of positives to take away from all this. One, a lot of VPPs (Cha ching!). Two, I learned a lot from playing him as opposed to watching him. Specifically, he did a lot of things as far as value betting goes that were a lot different than how I normally played but made a lot of sense. Lastly, I’m still having a good week. I’m up a good chunk and have earned a lot of rakeback on top of that.

I’m not going to lie, it was depressing to lose to him today. But I’m hoping this is only a small blip to a good year.

VPPs for week 4: ~26k

VPP total: ~194k

Pace: (106,000).

Because February is 28 days long, I am going to count January 31st as my February, and March 1st as February’s last day. Therefore, my month is officially over.

On a good note, I was up for the week. I’m not sure how many buy ins, since its scattered across my desktop and my laptop, but it was a solid amount of buy ins.

I noted last week that I was going out of town this month and that I would make a good faith effort to put in full volume. I put in the effort, but it was just impossible. I was having such a good time on the trip, I wasn’t going to stray away from my desire to connect with my mom and friends just to play poker. Also, I can’t 6 table on my laptop, its way too hard. I either need to buy a laptop with a big screen like Max has, borrow someone elses laptop when I go out of town, or just use Max’s laptop when I’m out of town. Probably not going to do the first one, but may use Max’s, at least on trips where I’m with Max.

I think I could easily look at this month negatively and say I failed because I didn’t reach my monthly goal and I’m in too big of a hole to catch up. I may have had that perspective too, but I got better clarity about this challenge and how to handle the year when I talked to Jared Tendler this week. Talking to him made me realize a few things. One, I have never put in this sort of volume before, and I need to let my mind build its endurance up. I had a lot of times this month where my focus was lacking after a session had gone on for awhile and I felt like I was playing losing poker.  That may always happen occasionally, but I think over time of doing this for awhile my mind will improve and it will happen a lot less, if I stay mindful of it, journal, and work on it. But I also have to be mindful of my limits. So I have set this gameplan for the rest of the year:

Start out getting up to 6 tables. If I feel like I have lost focus or something of that flavor, I will go down to 3 tables until my awareness comes back to a more full focus.

I think this is a good plan, it will guarantee that I’m not sacrificing my best profit strategy at the expense of this challenge. I don’t want to play 6 tables of losing poker just for volumes sake.

The truth is, 194,000 is the most VPPs I have ever made in a month before. To expect myself to be able to do 300,000 right off the bat was a mistake. But I’m really confident I can make up the pace. I know that if I manage a session well, and as I get more and more used this regimen, I can put in 20-25k vpp days. Then if all goes as planned, and I’m making a large amount with my game selection strategy (which is basically play anyone), then I’ll be able to add 2k’s and 5k’s to my stake spread, which will allow me to make VPPs. What I’m saying is, just because I’m off pace by 100k vpps, doesn’t mean its all over.

My goal for next month: 250k VPPs. If 300k comes, that’s great too. But I’m going to try to not push it to harder than my brain is able to go. I have to remember that poker isn’t a normal 9-5, its so much more mentally draining, and therefore requires more care.

VPP total: 60.5k

So if you didn’t already know, I’m going for SNE this year. It’s my first time going for it and I’ve got to say I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy its been so far. I’m usually playing 2 tables at a time (almost never more than 3) and mostly at the 570 and 345 level. I didn’t play the first 4 days of January so getting 60k vpps in what is essentially 8 work days is pretty awesome. My goal is to get over 120k vpps every month and hopefully get this thing done by September, giving me the last 3 months to squeeze out the 1.25 mill milestone bonus if I choose to do so.

I’m very very happy with my play so far this month. I’m transitioning back from Superturbos on ftp, so I have a great foundation in my 25bb and under play. Sadly, my 30-70bb play wasn’t really up to par, and consequently I went on a little downswing. Now I think that a lot of that was bad luck, but over the past weeks I’ve been watching videos and talking to Danny a lot, and I think my play has improved drastically already. If I continue to put in the studying and work with Danny over this entire year, I think that I can achieve a extremely high level of play.

I also find myself getting really excited over the prospect of Danny getting the vpp record. What he’s doing is truly astounding and I suggest you watch him play if you get the chance, the level of play he’s able to achieve while playing over 6 tables at a time is totally insane.

Go Danny!

I’m not going to sugar coat it (not that I need to for anyone who has seen my sharkscope graph), December has been a very bad and frustrating month for me. The bad is that I have lost a lot of money. My ROI at 2250 turbos is -17.5% since the beginning of December. I believe I have went 0-6 or 0-7 in 5600′s. The frustrating is that I’m actually up a lot if you go by buy ins, and feel that I’m playing the best I ever have played at SNGs.  Objectively, the competition I have been playing is obviously tougher at the higher stakes, but nonetheless I don’t play in games I don’t feel like I have a greater than 0% ROI playing.

Most of the games have been vs a player named Berndsen12. He is a very good player, and I have been playing him mostly to make the 180k vpps I needed to make in December a lot easier, which it has. Although he is a very good player, I believe that I am a very good player who has a small edge on him. Despite this, the results have said otherwise. This entire month I don’t recall more than one session out of the more than 10 sessions we played where I was up on him.

I had a mini meltdown one morning after losing to him for the third straight day. I called my life coach brother Aaron and Max up for some consoling. Downswings can be really tough, especially when they are the consistent losing type of ones. You forget what its like to win, and it becomes hard to believe your objective opinion that you are a winner. But after talking to my brothers I got a lot more positive, realized that I’ve been getting unlucky and need to stay in my right mind to turn that luck around.

Consequently, I have done very well in the past few days. I have dabbled into the short stack cash games I’m going to try on a more regular basis next year with some great success. Yesterday I had the best day buy in wise I’ve ever had playing SNGs. I try not to subject myself to the fallacy that everytime I run well I have played well, but running well has made it easier to see the very goods and the some bad aspects of my play.

While downswinging, I could not wait for next year to come so I could play much less SNGs. But now I’m excited to finish the year strong. I am planning not to go for SNE next year, but it seems like it is something that may happen anyways. If my main games are SNGs and 6 max cash, I should rack up VPPs non stop. But I’m not going to pressure myself to get to one million. I want to give myself to option to play in other, non VPP accruing games if I feel like they are the best for me to play.