MARCH 2006 ANALYSIS

March left a sour taste in my mouth, so I didn't want to recap it until I got back on track. April started off pretty bad as well, until I revisited Dan Harrington's genius book, which got me back to basics. Lately, I have changed my approach and I am back to making final tables. But this blog entry is about March:

TOURNAMENTS = ($910.50)

I actually went 5-5 in heads up matches this month, turning a $245 profit. It's good to flex those muscles now and again. I generally find that I have a lot of success playing heads up. I like to practice playing $50, $100, or $200 matches, but I don't count on them as a source of income because of the high volatility over the short run paired with the high vigorish. I just want to stay sharp enough in my short-handed play that it will occasionally pay off at the final table of a MTT.

I played six STT in March and cashed in only two, essentially erasing the profits from heads up play. I have not had much luck lately in STT. I start out playing nice and tight, waiting for my spot to pounce, but when that spot arrives, I never seem to win the hand. I have found that I do rather well in Turbo STT events, since everyone is so antsy to double up while I am waiting for solid value before getting involved. If the good hands never come before the blind start getting large, than I go into blind stealing mode and build my stack that way against the shorter stacks.

The real disaster from this month was my MTT play. In 88 attempts, I cashed in only 9 (10%). This is notably down from February, during which I made my target 25% cash rate. Whenever I have some success, I seem to get overconfident, and start playing as if I can control the game regardless of my cards, position or chip count. This was proven false repeatedly in March. I finished in the bottom half of the field an astounding 50 times. Yes, that is nearly 57% of the time! That is not bad luck, it is just bad play.

Lately, I have changed my approach in the early levels. I am still trying to make a big hand on occasion, but I am paying much less for the attempts. I have tightened up and accepted that often my stack will stagnate through the first few levels. The benefit of being patient is that when the blinds get to be worth stealing, there are several short stacks at the table, so there is a nice combination of not much action, which becomes ripe for blind stealing, and too much action, when the shorties try to bully me out of a pot when I've got a monster. If the cards don't come early, I've still got time to accumulate before things get completely hopeless, so long as I've retained most of my starting stack.

I reached the top twenty percentile in 14 of 88 events (17.5%), which means I bubbled five times. Of the nine cashes, there were a few highlights. In a $100 rebuy at Stars, I finished 18/123 for $540 after investing $200. I like these tourneys because the multiple rebuys makes for a nice overlay, so long as I keep my investment low, and the field is manageable enough that I feel I can go deep without needing a lot of luck along the way. I played my first Sunday major at Full Tilt and managed a 24th place finish in a field of 1031 for $784. The cost was $200 and I got to rail Erik Siedel along the way, which is entertaining.

I did manage one victory during March, when I began my workday with the promise to myself that if I don't win something, then I'm taking a one-week break. My subconscious found that unconscionable and forced me to play to the height of my ability. It was a $50 event at PokerRoom and I finished 1/266 for $3325. That should have made my month, which goes to show how poorly I played the rest of the month that I finished over $900 in the hole.

I also won a ticket at Stars to a $1050 event, but donked out of the big one in level two. I spent the next several hours railing FossilMan, who went on a mad card rush and wound up finishing second in that event, winning $187k or so. I do think I will make the final table of one of these Sunday events by the end of the year. I did make the final table of a $69 event at Full Tilt, but went out soon after in 8th place for $412. I hung onto a short stack for over an hour to make it that far, which drew raves from my opponents at my inevitable exit. So there were some good days in March, but they were far overshadowed by the bad days and provided me with my first losing month of the year.

CASH GAMES = ($2195.50)

Okay, here's where it really gets ugly. When I'm running good, I am making final tables in the MTT and earning steady profits in the ring games. When I am running bad in the tourneys, I often try to recoup my losses in the side games, but when my game is in the tank, I am bound to lose wherever I sit. I had some massive swings in NLHE during March. I was anywhere from two grand up to two grand down over the course of the month. Unfortunately, two of my final three cash sessions were brutal, each costing me $800, and I finished the month down $1295. The remainder of my losses came with one bad night at The Bike, in which I dropped $800 playing limit for two hours without ever having a hand hold up. Other than that, I dabbled in Omaha and Stud and broke even overall in those games, though Razz cost me another $87.

I recouped $306 in bonuses this month, but overall took a $2800 hit in March. My game was shit nearly the entire month except one magical day when I cruised to victory, and a couple other paydays sprinkled in amongst the destruction. The cash games were simply brutal, accounting for the bulk of the red ink. Things got so bad, I questioned my ability for most of the month, and wondered if I would ever become a consistently winning player. People have told me before that they like my blog because of the self-doubt, and that I'm not just a know-it-all bemoaning my bad beats. Well, everybody has bad runs, but I'm willing to call March 2006 what it was - not an unlucky month, but a major step backwards. To grow in any endeavor, it takes a good crisis to realign the mojo, and I'm hoping that I am getting realigned moving forward and getting ready to do some real damage to the other players' bankrolls.

MARCH 2006 = ($2800)
TOTAL 2006 = $6509