Oh dear, oh dear.

The green line hasn’t improved much since my last post. I’ve even taken the ultimate step, the last resort:  posting some statistics onto the EatMyStack forum for general ridicule and potential ideas on causes of leaks.

Anyway, deep breath, here’s the cash graph for January:

I would like to say  that this is just variance, that I’ve carried on playing well and just been unlucky. But that would be a lie; in the last couple of weeks I’ve made some very poor plays that deservedly cost me. Just one example will do for now although there is an alarmingly large set to choose from:

Texas Hold’em NL $0.10/$0.20
Villain is BB ($11.41 in chips)
UTG ($17.01 in chips)
Crumble is Dealer ($20.99 in chips)
SB ($20.74 in chips)
SB: Post $0.10
Villain: Post $0.20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Crumble A♦5♦
UTG: Fold
Crumble: Raise $0.60
SB: Fold
Villain: Call $0.40
*** FLOP *** A♣Q♣J♠
Villain: Check
Crumble: Bet $1.00
Villain: Raise $2.00
CrumbleFMP: Call $1.00
*** TURN *** 8♠
Villain: Bet $0.20
Crumble: Raise $4.40
Villain: Raise $8.81
Crumble: Call $4.41
*** RIVER *** 9♦
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $21.78 Rake $1.14
Villain: Shows A♠J♦
Villain: wins $21.78

Writing up last year’s Vegas holiday (look over there ————–> ) has made me want to go back there again soon, so I definitely need to get my game in order pdq.

However it’s not all bad, the cash loss in January was ameliorated by some small tournament cashes and some rakeback from December.  So the overall picture is of a break-even month:

Also I will get a decent start to February with the rakeback from this month, so if I can just stop hemorrhaging cash (aren’t spelchekers grate?) then  everything will soon be rosy again.

Roll on the springtime!

2010 started so well.

The idea for this year is to get stuck in to the regular players. There aren’t enough fish to go around us all, so the winning player is going to be the one who can run rings round the smaller sharks.

For the first few days everything went sweetly. But then the wind changed. See if you can spot the turning point on this winnings graph:

I wasn’t aware of doing anything different during the slide; nothing jumps out from the stats (apart from win rates of course). It’s just that suddenly:

I run into the top of people’s ranges
When they are behind they chase it down and hit
When they give me the odds to chase I miss
When I have a premium pair the rag ace calls and hits the flop
When I have a decent ace the flop comes rags

etc. etc. All the usual stuff, and the mega multi-tablers will already be laughing at my puny 6 buy-in downswing (this was $50 NL 5-max). But the strange thing about randomness is that it is always so much lumpier than people expect! The more you play the bigger the run of luck (good or bad) you will see.

As someone once said, “one day you will run worse than you ever thought possible”. I’m not looking forward to that day…

In the meantime I’ve dropped back to $25 NL while I still have a bankroll. I dropped another couple of buy-ins at that level, then suddenly, out of the blue, I got it in good and my hand held up. Then I did it again, then a third time. So at least the curve has bounced.

But I’m going to do some work on the hand histories tomorrow and see what’s what.

Those nice people at PokerStars are once again hosting the WBCOOP this year – the World Blogger Championship Of Online Poker.

I did rubbish in this last time, so if you have a blog why not sign up and take advantage of the dead money?

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 223360

There follows Crumble’s annual report of his poker doings.

They say that any profit is a good profit, so that’s something. Here’s my 2009 profit broken down by game type:

Now lets look at how the profit built up month by month. A bit of a mixture really with a disappointing finish – historically December has been very good to me but not this year:

As usual I spent table time on lots of different sites. I multitabled more this year than previous, usually having between 2 and 6 tables on the go:

Virgin was a clear favourite for time spent as well as money won. That’s because it’s where I was playing my cash games for my 2009 challenge. The next and final graph shows how the cash winnings progressed:

The increasing jaggedness over the year reflects a movement through the levels, from mostly $10 NL at the start of the year to mostly $50 NL at the end (all 5-max tables). I think you can see that I’m not yet a clear winner at the $50 NL tables, which is disappointing because that was a target I set myself at the start of the year (hence the “meh” in the title of this post). I do feel I’m a significantly better player than I was 12 months ago; unfortunately the opposition seems to have improved as well. I guess that means I have to work harder in 2010.

Onwards and upwards!