January Results; February Goals

January has been a roller coaster month for me at the tables - I moved up to new stakes and went heater of my life and then immediately went on the downswing of my life. Here is my final results graph for the month:

And here is the breakdown by stakes:

As you can see, in spite of a big downswing that inspired all of my whining for the past few weeks, I'm still up nearly a grand on the month. I also shipped about $500 of rakeback and cleared around $300 of bonus, making January 2010 by far my best poker month yet. I'm obviously running unsustainably hot at NL100 but I'd like to think that I'm also underachieving at 1/2.

I don't attach too much significance to the EV line and how good or bad I'm running in terms of all-in EV. I think poker players in general focus too much on this one measure of variance just because it's easy to quantify and put on a graph, and don't realize how many other ways there are to run good or bad. Just because you got it in with 78% pot equity and lost doesn't necessarily mean you ran bad - your equity could have been a lot worse against villain's range and you just lucked into a really good spot and he happened to resuck. This doesn't get reflected on the graph. Likewise, getting it in with 3 outs on the turn will kill your EV line but you could easily have been doing well against villain's range and he just happened to have the nuts this time. That said, I do take some comfort in the fact that I'm running somewhat under EV and that my EV-adjusted winrate at 1/2 is positive.

Interestingly, my redline is positive for the month. This has never happened before and I have a few ideas as to why my non-showdown winnings have become positive. I think part of it is that villains at NL100 and up are just better players and are less willing to pay me off when I have a big hand and fold to my valuebets more. But I also have been trying to make some minor adjustments in my game that I think manifest themselves as redline boosts. For example, I've become a lot stabbier in limped pots where I would otherwise have given up and folded, and I've been trying to rein in my cbetting somewhat when I have air so I lose smaller pots when I don't connect.

Back in August and September I grinded out sick volume and put in 30,000+ hands each month. I think those days are pretty much over and I doubt I'm going to be volumegrinding at that rate for the foreseeable future. I'm at a stage where there are just too many nontrivial decisions that require careful thought and time for 8-tabling to be manageable. I expect to be playing between 10,000 and 20,000 hands each month for at least the next couple of months.

Additionally, I'm pleased to report that I finished clearing my deposit bonus on Cake and have little reason to continue playing there. The 33% rakeback plus Gold Stacks bonuses are extremely appealing, but the game selection is just so limited compared to Full Tilt or PokerStars. I'll be moving to Full Tilt within the next few days and depositing to start working on clearing that bonus.

Goals for February

1. Deposit on Full Tilt and get on pace to clear the full bonus. Additionally, investigate the feasibility of grinding Iron Man and whatever other promos and bonuses FTP offers and maximize EV with respect to those.
2. Focus on making good decisions and improving my thought process, rather than being results-oriented and crumpling psychologically in the face of variance. Downswings are an unavoidable aspect of poker and I need to toughen up psychologically so I'm not miserable when they happen.
3. Live a more balanced and healthier nonpoker life. This entails fulfilling my academic and professional obligations (i.e. going to class and finding something to do over the summer), getting my sleep schedule under control, not letting dirty dishes and laundry pile up, and just being less shitty in general.
4. Continue posting on this blog, expanding to include more posts on nonpoker subjects. This will hopefully help broaden my audience (which I think currently consists of one dude who has it on his RSS feed [hi kydub]) and also help me organize and process my thoughts and feelings about other aspects my life.