Last time I blogged here, I talked about a volume prop bet I had. Considering my free hours in September, my goal was a little ambitious, but I was on pace to JUST make it by the end of the month.
However, I’m sad to say that there is no happy ending! I caught a very annoying cold on September 29, so I ended up buying out of my bet and spending the next few days in bed.
I briefly considered playing low stakes in an attempt to finish my bet, but I quickly decided it wasn’t worth it. Playing ill is almost always a bad idea.
I’m still happy with the volume I played last month, although the results weren’t very good:
# MTTs: 30
# SnGs: 1237
Hours: 115
Net result: +$982.78
Hmm… maybe I should get a job at McDonalds ;)
There are at least three reasons for the bad results:
1) I was learning a new game. SnG shoving ranges are quite different from MTT shoving ranges once it gets close to the bubble. I was definitely making a lot of mistakes at the start, especially in pots without antes. It’s also worth noting that even when there ARE antes in SnGs, they are usually much smaller than those in MTTs.
2) My MTT buy-ins could not be supported by my SnG winnings. I was playing low to medium stake SnGs and high stake MTTs. Doing this may maximize my hourly, but it doesn’t really help to reduce poker variance (which was my reason for switching to SnGs in the first place). Right now I am willing to sacrifice EV for reduced variance.
3) I ran badly. Not much to say here.
It wasn’t the month I was hoping for, but I guess I should be happy to end the month positive while also having learned SnGs. I still make lots of mistakes on bubbles and I have a long way to go before I’m excellent at them, but I am definitely a winning player. Many SnG regs make very blatant ICM mistakes, which makes it easier to win money despite making mistakes myself.
Here are my online poker results for the year so far (excluding rakeback and bonuses):
# online MTTs: 2,244
# online SnGs: 1,343
Net profit: +$24,819.42
Because I was sick, I’ve only played a few days of poker this month so far. The numbers are not bad:
# MTTs: 10
# SnGs: 240
Hours: 24
Net result: +$1,313.44
I don’t expect to play many MTTs this month, so I hope to see a steady increase in profit as October goes on. Although PokerStars is running an extra version of the Warm-Up and Sunday Million this coming Sunday, which is admittedly hard to resist! And an extra few hundred dollars in MTTs every day can really add up quickly…
I’m just happy to be healthy and back on the grind. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables!
Visit www.pokerlistings.com