OK - got some more hands in - a few at $400 and some more at $200 - have now pulled myself to +ve in cash games (incl. $330 RB), by about $100 this month but blew $150 on MTT's last night.

So overall my roll is currently $50 less than I started the month at but I am shown as +$600 in my affilate's rake race and suspect if I maintain the move up to $400 NL I may even make it to +$1000 or so from that by month end.

Played about 10k hands so far this month and am $800 under expected on iPoker (minus 2.2PTBB/100) (and, trust me, at least another $150 under expected on Crypto).

I suppose it's only half way through the month but I'm sure glad I don't have to make a monthly nut (although I aim to cash out minimum $1200/month as a rule with $2k in the good months)

Mind you to turn pro I would need to average at least $8k/month (and given how tough a player as decent as BK found it to make a $2k nut, clearly that pipe dream will stay just that)

PT stats for Saturday and Sunday.
I love weekends when I'm at home in the evenings - just sit back, limp big hands and watch the overaggro donks stack off 20BB time after time...


Geo - PokerEV graph as requested here. I just (finally) ran good in my midnight $200 session tonight - so you can see the blue line playing a little catch-up.
RB adds about another $350 and proportionately there is also another $300-$500 'earned' in rake race monies.

Tat - thanks - I certainly might be worth looking at esp for the 3 handed hands - the pre-flop pushbot decisions one on one are trivial to work out and I've done pen and paper calcs/pokerstoved to work out ranges pretty accurately - it's also not accurate to assume top 10% or whatever for a villian's calling range actually represents say pokerstove's top 10% - - some folks will call you off with 66 long before ATs and vice versa..

Ive liked PokerEV less and less over the past month or so and now its gotten worse. The latest version doesnt calculate SB in hands where you are all in and there still 2 or more guys with more money and more betting to do on later streets.

So if I get all in 3 ways preflop with KK and the 2 other guys have $1000 each and still need to play the hand, it doesnt calculate SBs for this hand even though they may have AT and 99 or whatever. The program is becoming of less and less use to me.

Another decent session and I'm catching up closer to where I ought to be.
Up $844 at the tables over the last 6 hrs.

I'm happy enough with 1.8PTBB/100 expected over the 10k hands so far this month.
That's pretty solid (considering the effect of the rake at the $200's is pretty noticeable)

Well it's been a hard slog this month.

I have at least been playing a few more tables and managing an MT ratio of 5.
I have put in 14.5k hands over 37 hours so - mostly at $200 ipoker but at the weekends I move up to $400, so I have 1500 or so hands there.


I have found myself putting more hours in than usual to sustain my $500+ bonus position in my iPoker affiliate rake race and I have not been playing well to be honest.

My actual and expected win rate has only been 0.5PTBB.

As a result, including rakeback and assuming a $500 end of month rake race bonus (and counting 2/3 of it as earned so far) I am running at just under $40/hr.

At least I will make 'black' (the top) NoIQ VIP level for next month (base 38% RB and 'email in for special deals') and have over 100k VIP points to spend when they eventually open the shop...but to be honest I'm feeling a bit burned out after 3 months of shortstacking and many more hands than I am used to..also some of the players I come across are SO bad that I can't help but feel that I am giving up EV in being so short against them. When I see folks pushing 22 pre-flop for full stacks I obviously wish I had more than 20BI in front of me - but resist the temptation to buy-up as it would ruin my stats and probably confuse me with 5 other short tables..

If you have 14,500 hands in 37 hours and an MT ratio of 5, they must deal very slow at i-poker. Thats 392 hands per hour or 78 hands per table hour.

I normally play 4 tables but only have an MT rate of 2.75 and still get 285 hands per hour....103 hands per table hour.

32% more hands per hour at Full Tilt than i-poker. Its hard to believe they deal that slow. maybe they give too long to make decisions also?

and the good karma goes on !






Running at $58/hr for this month now.
May just fall short of black VIP status though.

wow.. Earl (my name is Earl TV show) also believes in karma... I mean, so do I in a way... but that's not the point... the point is gogogogo.. nice to see those greeeen numbers there..

last 7 days...with RB etc. this good run has now taken my hourly rate for this month to just over $60..



Also of interest to the shortstacker is the varying effect of rake at different levels.

At $100 I am showing rake of 3.8PTBB/100, at $200 it's 2.6PTBB/100 and so far at $400 it's 1.6PTBB/100 (which may be a tad high as I'm winning more pots than I will over the long haul - my guess of the expected rake is 1.5 or so)).

This means a couple of things.
First that it's much easier to show a +ve PTBB/100 figure at the higher stakes. Assuming you could replicate results exactly across the levels, a rake-free win rate of of 3PTBB/100 would show a loss at $100, a small profit at $200 and a healthy profit at $400. As a short stack system tends to have a large mechanical component that is equally good against all opponenst then it benefits greatly from being played at the highest stakes you can afford.

Secondly it emphasises the relative importance of RB/bonuses at lower stakes. A 50%RB deal is worth +1.9PTBB/100 at $100 (more than your likely win rate short). By $400 the same deal is only worth 0.75PTBB/100 and the win rate at the tables becomes the overriding concern.