September Song

September is history, and it's time for a quick recap of the good and the bad. First the good:

My Hold'em game has been pretty solid overall. I posted a net $230 gain for the month, playing mostly $10 and $25NL Rush full ring. Over the course of 26K hands, I averaged just under 4 ptbb/100, which seems low to me, but, according to the forums, is considered "crushing" the game. My average VPIP was 15.12, with a PFR of 10.91. I think these numbers aren't bad, but I'd like to work on getting my PFR up a point from where it is. I've cold-called too much, too, but at least I've been doing it in position more than OOP. My ATS is right at its usual 39%. I think this is OK, but based on some winning players' stats I've been looking at this week, I think it might actually be a tad too high for a FR game. A few weeks ago I mused in this blog about steal stats, but I'm frankly still confused as to what is the ideal number to shoot for. It obviously depends on opp stats and tendencies, my steal bet size, etc., but against an 'average' player, I think 33-35% might actually be better than where I am right now. More experimenting is called for.

One thing that I believe has helped my game a lot in the past few months is watching training videos. The Guru and I have agreed to disagree on this subject. He thinks they tend to be deadly dull and not very helpful. I think they're entertaining and useful. Even watching a so-so player flail away, I tend to pick up little hints and tips. For the past month, 3-4 times a week in the morning I have been doing 30 minutes on an exercise machine (elliptical trainer) before work. I've got my computer set up where I can see my monitor and hear the speakers, so it's easy to pull up a video and mentally speed up the drudgery of exercise. It's like killing two birds with one stone. I call it my Cardio & Card-io workout. (Boy, I crack myself up sometimes...). Anyway, here's my Hold'em graph for the month:
Okay, that was the good news... now for the bad: Omaha. What started out as a nice upward graph in the (Im)Perfect Omaha experiment, stalled about 10 days into the month, and then nosed over into a dive that would make a Stuka pilot proud. I'm damn lucky to have posted any gain at all. Here's the plot for the month:
I went through my PT3 stats in gory detail yesterday and today, trying to understand what the hell went wrong. Per a suggestion from Mr. Multi, I broke the stats up into three separate chunks. The first data set was for the initial 10 days of the month, when I showed a steady upward progress. The second set was the middle 10 days, where I seemed to founder. The third lump was the last 10 days of the month, where I went into the aforementioned Poland-under-Blitzkrieg point of view.

The curious thing is that my raw stats were actually "better" as the month went on. I tightened up and played a lot more positionally-aware later in the month than I did earlier. I also was somewhat more aggressive, and had what would be better numbers overall the later the month went on. Well, better except for the fact that I gave up all my profit . There were a few bad beats, but they weren't disproportionally occurring later in the month, nor was I getting better hands more frequently early in the month.

It's really weird, and frankly I'm at a loss why the results tanked so badly at the end. Maybe it's just a too-small data set; 4500 hands ain't a lot in the big picture. Or maybe it's just the natural variance of Omaha? Or maybe I just still suck at the game.... Dunno. I'm not giving up my self-taught Omaha lessons for the coming month, but I will be scaling back. I'll also be watching more Omaha videos to learn whatever I can and, hopefully, nose this plane back up into the sky.

For the next 30 days, the plan is to focus on Hold'em, where I will be playing only $25NL and above. My bankroll is now officially big enough to play full-time at this level, so I'm not heading back down to $10NL unless something bad happens.

I'm also planning on getting in more SnG's and even some MTT's this month. My cash game is pretty good (knock on wood) so I figure it's time to start working back on my (completely stagnant) tournament game and skill set.

Finally, I will head back in a week to play at my monthly live tournament game. After winning last month, the pressure is on to see if I can repeat (or at least just make the money). We'll see. I've got my parachute packed just in case things don't work out quite as planned....

All-in for now....
-Bug