Monday, October 06, 2008

Prelim findings















As you can see, my preliminary investigations (which are actually of my last 6 months of play) into the differences in my playing style on 2 different sites reveals.... not very much at all. It looks as though the only significant difference is my flop aggression factor, where on the UB site it is double that which I display on FTP.
Really though, there is nothing that explains why one site provides over 80% of my income. I do play at higher limits on UB, but I don't think that alone explains my far better results with that site. I'm seeing my good friend and fellow pro later this week, and will try and get his input on the subject to see if any further light may be shed.
Enjoyed a solid week just gone, despite the odds seeming to be stacked against me over several sessions, and of course hoping to have another good one this week. Wish me luck, hope you are still enjoying the game and winning all your 60 percenters!

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Breaking even

If you happen to look at my stats on tableratings.com, you might be a little surprised to learn that I'm not a profitable player. According to that site, I (on average) lose money by playing, and am only kept afloat by rake. So have I been lying all this time, pretending that I make decent salary by playing this game for a living? Of course not, but that doesn't change the fact that on FTP I just don't win very often. I don't know why. I try hard. I focus. I think I play well. But, still, I don't really turn a profit. I resolve to change this fact.

Up until now my 'cash cow' for poker profitability has been Ultimate Bet. Always has been. But my cousin, friend and fellow pro has been crushing the games from 1/2 to 3/6 on FTP for the last year and I can't let him be the only one. So, I'm going to start picking my FTP game apart on PokerTracker, studying and using all available tools to turn my results around on that site. There must be something fundamentally wrong with my game to have such different results, and I need to find out what it is.

Aside from PT, I plan on getting more familiar with PokerEV to evaluate my play and see whether I'm getting my money in good or bad. I also plan on using the latest tool for calculating poker hand odds kindly provided by the folks at PokerListings. With these 2 applications I should be much better able to evaluate my play, and clearly see where my problems are. There is of course an outside chance that it's all down to variance, but I think after more than 6 months of play I can file that idea into the 'Highly Unlikely' folder.

Think that's it for today, after a long, brutal and ultimately unprofitable session yesterday (including losing a 2k pot on a 75% AIPF) I plan on playing just a few short sessions today and getting back on track. Luckily I've already won several hundred on FTP, maybe things are turning round already.....