So 2006 has come and (almost) gone. Overall it's been a really great year, albeit there are a few things i'm going to do differently next year. I started off the year about probably about $1k to my name and I was playing $11 and $22 SNGs. I did fairly well at them at the end of last year, but broke even for about a month at them this year. I made the decision to switch over to NL cash which is the best decision I could've ever made. At this point my knowledge/skillset was very basic and elementary but I was still confident I could beat the games.
I started at 50nl and smashed the games for a few weeks and moved up to 100nl fairly quickly. I was bonuswhoring all the time and i'd approximate about half of my profit came from bonus, the other half from actual poker winnings. I think around the start of April I officially moved to 100 NL. I was still playing FR at this time, and chasing bonuses a lot. I stayed at 100NL for quite a while. I had one of my biggest downswings here (I think about 13 buyins) and it really showed me just how bad you can run. It was a bit of a wake-up call and I reworked my entire game, came back, and started winning again.
Eventually I made the move to 200NL and, honestly, I was still a really average player back then. My thought process was fundamentally wrong and I had a few of the basic concepts and theories incorrect. I won, slightly, but I had HUGE swings and wasn't comfortable playing those stakes. This is around June when I started hitting up all the casino bonuses. I probably made about $5k from bonuses that month which was amazing, I ran so hot on slots. I made about $5k through poker and thus June was my first "5 Figure Month" - even though it wasn't all from poker, I was thrilled.
July/August were terrible. The beginning of July was my like poker fiasco. I dropped about $5k in less than a week playing live, having the worst run ever. I came back with my confidence shattered and slowly started to play online again. I think this is about the time I was into limit omaha and shit. I decided to take a shot at PLO and long story short, I ran hotter than ever and owned shit up. I made about $1,700 one session which was about an hour long. I then made the decision to move to SNGs and played the $55 Turbos almost exclusively, with a few $27s and $109s thrown in. I played pretty well and ran well and won a decent amount.
Then came August. OH BOY. This was the most painful month ever. I had a FIFTY buyin downswing playing SNGs. Yes that's right, 50 buyins. I was numb and kept playing, the money didn't matter to me at that point. I kept reviewing my play, and I was playing fine. I even got a damn coach and he said I was playing well and that I probably didn't need to coaching. I finally crawled out of the hole and got back above even, but soon after I decided it was too stressfull for such little reward to play these SNGs so I decided to go back to NL ring games. I think it's about this time I made the switch to 6max and was back at 100NL, I started tearing shit up and thinking I was the best thing since sliced bread. I was not. I simply ran hot. I moved up to 200NL and ran super hot, then super cold, all about breaking even.
September was the infamous "prop-bet with shamdonk" month. I seriously tore shit up this month. I played close to 250 hours of poker. Yeh, seriously. I ran so-so at 200nl, my game had definitely gotten better and I think I was about a 1.5 - 2.5 PTBB/100 longterm winner at that point. This is also the month where I played a fucktonne of HU SNGs and made about $4k from them. Mostly thanks to the $200 + $10 ones at Pacific. It was a great month and my first month making $10k from poker endeavours alone. Needless to say, I was thrilled. My hourly rate was around $45/hr I think.
October was a pretty retarted month pokerwise. I barely played any poker since I was in India for the bulk of the month, however the little I did play I won about $1,000. I also went to Melbourne again to play live and lost about $3k on the trip (THANKS TO $1000 ROULETTE SPINS THAT I COULD NEVER WIN FIUAW()AWU*WHRHA). I think I actually made money through poker, but due to roulette, expensive meals, accomodation, airfare, etc, I lost a fair bit.
I came back in November and decided to play solely 200 NL 6max cash games. This is pretty much what i've done from then till now. My game REALLY improved in November and I made a couple of big changes to my game. I realised the importance of handreading and 3betting with position. I also started practicing table/seat selection and stopping playing if I was playing bad or tilting. For some reason though, I had trouble putting in hours. In November I put in about 55 hours, and December only 40 or so. 8-tabling however, this is still a decent amount of hands. I don't really have a graph of my entire year since i've been moving around sites, limits, and games (sngs, omaha, holdem, whatever) but I can give you a graph of Nov-Dec playing 1/2 NL, and also my lifetime graph at 1/2 NL.
Lifetime Graph of 1/2 NL:
Nov + Dec Graph of 1/2 NL:
Some PT Stats, cause.. Well. I dunno.
So there you have it. Next to come is a write up of goals and hopes of 2007.
Poker is silly.
It is not enough to be good at chess, you must also play well.
Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win.