Cain is Abel

I was only able to put in 5 hours yesterday, and the session went extremely well.

Despite the 2 biggest hands of the day being bad beats or coolers, I ended the day with a very nice profit.

I had Q9s vs ATs on a Q9x board. ATs was played by a reg, who absolutely butchered the hand. It was 3-way on the flop. Random donk lead out about 25 into a 40$ pot. Reg calls, I raise it to about 125 with my top 2. Donk folds, and Reg just pushes his bare A high flush draw. I was about 66% to win when the money went in, but he caught his flush and won the 850$ pot. If anything, this hand gives me more confidence that the 400$ games are more beatable than I originally thought.

I played EXCELLENT poker yesterday. If I could keep playing that well for all of 2008, I will be a very rich man by the end of the year. I didn’t skip a beat. Layed down my overpairs at the perfect times. Took down many more uncontested small pots than usual. My attempt to steal was about 42% by the end of the day, which is great for FR tables. What a great day.

I will be playing about 10 more hours of poker before the new year, and I am already significantly ahead of my year-end goal. Barring a massive downswing over the next day, I would say that this year has been a great success.

I’m maintaining a great income with my SNE training. Today, I reached my secondary goal for the year, and hopefully will be able to pass it even further by the end of the year.

I’ve put in 8 hours per day on Wednesday, Thursday, and Today, bringing me to 24 for the week, despite the 3-day Christmas break. I plan on doing a session tomorrow and Sunday, and taking New Years Eve off.

I’ve got about 70k hands of 18-tabling now, and if my results continue like this, I could make upwards of 200k next year. For now, I am going to set this as my goal, but I may modify it at the end of January.

Adjusting to the schedule is getting easier every day. It really isn’t very difficult to put in 8 hours worth of poker if you divide it into 4 2-hour sessions. I’ve also been maintaining a decent little floor exercise routine that I do after each session, so I’m getting healthier as well.

Sophy is getting noticeably bigger and more aware of her surroundings every day. We’ve really started to connect this week, and I am getting much better at keeping her calm and occupied when Mary is busy or tired.

Life is going pretty well

Had a very solid day today. A total of 8.5 hours and 9.2k hands. Nearly 5000 vpps for the day.

I played much more 200NL tables instead of 100s, in an attempt to up my VPP rate. After an hour of my last session, I didn’t have a single 100 table up. If the current results continue, I will probably make the move to 200NL+ by Jan 1.

Still extremely excited about SNE. I have to keep myself in check, because generally when I get a surge of motivation like this, it only lasts a month before some serious burnout. Not allowing myself to exceed 9 hours in a day.

Looking over my 2007 results, I’ve fallen about 15% short of my goal for this year. Considering the ridiculous number of life-changing events that have occurred in my life this year, I don’t feel very bad about missing my target. I’ve probably matured more in this past year than any other. It’s amazing how suddenly your adult instincts kick in after having a baby.

Gonna be trying for a few more of these days before the end of the year

Christmas is absolutely insane.

I am about to go to my 5th (of 6) Christmas gatherings. I’m more enthusiastic about getting back to my SNE training schedule than I am about presents.

I’ve been reading up on the forums occasionally the past few days, and it looks like there may be some good changes to the SNE program in 2008. Looking forward to any news on the updates.

In my preparation for SNE, I didn’t take the (rare) double VPP days into account. Just estimating here, but if there are 2 double VPP days in 2008, I should be able to get in ~15-20 hours within the 24h period. That would amount to ~4% of the yearly goal taken care of in 2 exhausting days.

Back to training tomorrow – and starting the real thing in less than a week!

Let us gogogogogo!

I put in 8 hours on Thursday, and another 9 hours on Friday. Bringing my week total to 36hrs. I’ll probably have a bit more time tomorrow to keep up the routine and bring myself above 40h for the week. A total of 41k hands. I started the challenge off very strong, but the deck has been against me the past couple days. Currently at 1.68bb/100. I’d really like to be around 3-4, and probably will be when the deck starts working a little better in my favor. After the FPPs and the bonus I cashed in, it will be a pretty solid week.

I am pretty sure I will need to take Sunday -> Tuesday off as well. Christmas is on its way…

I am currently at a measly 163k VPPs for the year. This leaves me 37k VPPs away from the milestone bonus. Including Saturday, I have 6 more working days before the end of the year. At 500vpps/hr, it would take 74 hours worth of work to finish. About 13 hours per day average… No.

Something along the lines of 40 more hours by the end of the year sounds more reasonable. It wont be enough for a milestone, but it will be enough to get me another big bonus.

So this week is not over yet, and I have accumulated 20k VPPs. If I repeat this week all next year, I would reach my goal. This week really wasn’t hard either. I am more confident that I’ll be able to pull it off.

Now, a moment of silence as we all pray for my doomswitch to be lifted.

Later.

I was only able to get 5 hours in yesterday. It still added up to about 6k hands, but I was intending on putting in 10 hours to make up for the 2 I missed on Tuesday. So far, my preparation for the SNE challenge has consisted of:

Monday: 8 hrs
Tuesday: 6 hrs
Wednesday: 5 hrs

…for a total of just over 21K hands.

I’m probably going to have to figure out a more efficient system. I should be pulling in hands at a rate of 40k/week every week if I want to reach SNE next year. Ideally, I would like to put in 50k/week to give myself some room for emergencies, vacation, etc. To reach this, I’d need to put in something like 45 hours, which should be very doable. If all goes according to plan, I could have Sat/Sun free, which should hopefully be enough.

I’m still anticipating some major burnout, loss of motivation, maybe even depression before this thing is over. When it comes down to it, I put in about 1200 hours in 2007, and I didn’t even push myself very hard. I fully think I’m capable of pulling this off.

When this crazy Christmas season is over, it will be much easier to find time to put in those hours. Christmas has become a ridiculous monstrosity, and having a baby makes everything 10x more hectic.

We are having 4 Christmases this year. 4. We might as well convert to Judaism with my sister and do the Hanukkah thing.

Sophy is doing better about falling asleep for longer periods of time at night. We had to start doing it the hard way and letting her cry it out (when there was nothing actually wrong).

That’s it for me today. Will probably be able to sneak ~4-6 hours in after Christmas shopping.

Well, I kept this secret mostly to myself throughout the year. Now that Bodog has decided to willingly screw up their software, lose their PT support, and randomly crash while I’m in a hand – I have decided to leave the site.

The information included in this post could be used by many of you new grinders to increase your $/hr in a very big way. Of my close friends who I let in on this little secret, ALL of them saw an extreme increase in their earn over a large sample.

For those of you who play 8+ tables and are reliant on HUDs, this probably won’t effect you very much.

**Bodog has the absolute best table selection at mid-high stakes that I have ever seen.**

Over a sample of ~400k hands on PokerStars 100NL(mostly) and 200NL, my earn was about 3.2ptbb/100. Pretty decent considering the toughness of the tables.

My 109k hand sample at Bodog showed returns of a whopping 7.1ptbb/100. This win-rate is pretty much unheard of for long term FR players. About 60% of my play was at 200NL and the rest was played higher. I even played a few thousand hands at 1000NL, which went very well. The 200NL game on Bodog plays like the 50NL tables on PokerStars. That is how extreme the difference is.

For most of you multi-tabling grinders, this wont make a difference. If you can 12+ table for 2+ptbbs, you’re better off staying where you are.

For the mid-level players who aren’t pulling a great win rate, or don’t play very many tables (or for all of the tuff_fish’s out there) There is absolutely no reason for you to stay with Stars/FTP. Non-Americans would probably have the same result with iPoker, Boss, etc. Even if you can’t get rakeback on the smaller sites, in the long run it will probably be worth it for you to make the move.

I wish someone had given me this advice around the time of the UIGEA. My bankroll would be much bigger right now.

Well, I was planning on doing 18 tables, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week until the end of the year (excluding chrismas/eve).

The way that has worked best for me has been to limit every session to 2 hours, and give myself a mandatory 1-hour break in between each one. With this system, each session pretty much flies by. I was only able to put in 3 sessions yesterday though, as Sophy was especially needy and by the time all of my other obligations were taken care of, it was 11pm. I still got about 6.5k hands in, but I plan on making up for the lost session today, by extending each session to 2.5hours.

Not sure if I will be releasing graphs or results in actual $ amounts yet. If I continue with the SNE challenge I will definitely be updating VPPs and hands though. I may even write a little graphical web page script to make my progress easier to follow.

Goals for the day:
1) 4 separate 2.5hour sessions of 18-tabling. Estimated 11k hands (new personal record)
2) Generate lifetime Bodog graph and do a spoiler/writeup on the site. Those of you who have been milking that site will hate me.
3) Continue healthy living schedule in between sessions/obligations.

I am currently just under 150k total VPPs for the year. I may not be able to reach the 200k milestone by Jan 1, but I’m sure as hell going to try.

After Bodog got rid of PT support and screwed their software up something awful, I have made PokerStars my primary site.

I’ve been 18-tabling NL100-NL400, and it really hasn’t been very difficult. The swings are a bit more crazy due to my lower win-rate, but the mass amount of FPPs accumulated helps to keep the edge off.

I accumulate ~500VPPs and >1000 hands per hour at my current rate. To reach SNE, I will need to put in a full 2000hr work year.

Considering my newborn baby girl is still extremely demanding, this will be a very challenging feat.

The end of December will be my testing period for whether or not I want to seriously pursue the SNE status. Will continue updating as my progress continues.

Well, Bodog is officially forcing everyone to update to their new crappy software. Unfortunately, the only handgrabber available has basically been discontinued for the last 1/2 year, and it seems unlikely that they will have an update in the near future.

So without hand histories, HUDs, rakeback, or tolerable software, it is time for me to say goodbye to Bodog. Since I wont be playing there any longer, I think I might include my lifetime Bodog graph in another post, just to show how profitable it was in its prime.

As usual, I’ll have PokerStars to fall back on. They are easily the most reputable, have the highest traffic, and a very solid VPP program. The games are really rough, but I have ~1/2mil hands there as a solid winner, so I’m not concerned. Plus the recent ability to 18-table has been pretty sweet.

Sophy is nearly 2 weeks old now… This parenting thing is much easier than I expected… Nothing exciting aside from an endless wave of soiled diapers and the occasional diaper-change-while-multi-tabling.

I have also applied to prop at a couple of smaller poker sites. They don’t support HUDs or PT either, but if I’m being paid 100%+ rakeback, I don’t really care.

Lifetime Bodog graph, and propping updates to follow!