Cain is Abel

VPP COUNT: 550815

I’ve only put in a few sessions this week. They have been damn successful, but I haven’t put in enough time. Mary’s classes are ending tomorrow, so that will free up my Wed-Thurs work days.

The wedding is less than 2 months away, and I need to have quite a bit of cushion before then. I currently have a 10k point lead, and should probably have about 40-50k lead by the 10th of Sept. That gives me a max of 56 days to do it, requiring an average of 5 hours per day. That should not be difficult at all. If I can get in another big couple of months, I’ll be at 750k+ points and 3 full months to finish.

Sophy is almost 8 months old… I guess time seems to fly by so much because our days are just jammed full of things to do.

Life will calm down much more after Friday.

VPP COUNT: 544824

So I took a total of 5 days off, from Mon-Fri. My breaks always tend to go longer than I plan, but at least I still have a significant cushion on SNE pace.

Table winnings have been pretty boring and small this month, but July is looking to be my biggest bonus month.

Sophy has figured out crawling, and has been crawling to, and propping herself up against pretty much anything she can get near. The more she can move on her own, the more difficult taking care of her is going to get. She also figured out how to chuck her toys out of her crib…oh boy.

The wedding is less than 2 months away!

VPP COUNT: 538016
Just a short update today.

I took Monday off, and will be taking today off as well. The first week of July was way too freaking stressful, and the break has been amazing.

I earned a total of 51,523VPPs for the 6 day 2X event. Not bad at all. I went from 10k points behind pace to 25k points ahead. It was a very significant boost.

I’ll be back at the tables tomorrow, possibly this evening.

VPP COUNT: 525847

So the week actually did fall on a pretty bad time for me. Mary is still in her summer classes, 4th of July, other random time-consuming things that could have been rescheduled if I had more warning. It really would be nice if Stars would just give me…say 24h notice before an event like this so that I could prepare accordingly.

I’ve put in about 30.5h in the past 5 days, and will be putting in another 2 or 3 tonight. This brings me to just above 6h/day avg, and is pretty pathetic considering how rare these events are. Oh well, by the end of the night, i’ll be near 20k points ahead of pace and will have 1 2x-day left before the next part of the promotion starts.

I get the strong feeling that the next 3 weeks of 2X promotions wont be near as profitable as the first 6 days. If they were, I’m pretty sure stars would be losing $$ to me in rake… In fact, I think they already are.

So I’m psyching myself up for my last 2-3h session tonight. Including the 5k milestone bonus I cleared this morning, I am very close to having the biggest cash gain day of all time. I’ll be playing 90%+ of my hands at 400NL+ and will be table selecting at 1000NL. With some luck, I’ll break my record If I do, I’ll come back and give an update tonight or tomorrow with my good hands.

Cross your fingers for me. If you happen to sit with me in the next few hours, just dump a few stacks my way, it’s for a good cause.

VPP COUNT: 500067

Well, July 1 marks the half-way point in the year (less days in Feb), and it is also the first day since late March that I am ahead of pace! Pretty nice to know that I can hit the halfway point after taking a vacation, taking care of a baby, and all of the other random distractions of new-family-hood.

The 2xVPP promotion has been kind of a mixed experience. During the early hours, the tables are absolutely awful. The average stats at almost all of my tables just hovered around 15/10 and the fish were scarce. I really think that my win rate suffered more than the 2xVPPs helped. The tables were so significantly tighter, the VPP rate actually decreased drastically. I generally average about 750-800vpps/hr when 24tabling, so I assumed I’d be getting about 1500/hr today. It was more like 1200 though, because so few hands even went to the flop.

Oh well, I’m just a little bitter that I ran badly. It is very good that I am back ahead of pace, and the remainder of this promotion will help me get a nice lead. Ideally, I’d like to get about 40 hours in the next 5 days.

It’s hitting me how easy this challenge really is, if poker is your full time job. The # of elites will probably grow significantly in the next few years as everybody starts to find out how easy it is to make a huge amount of $ and travel the world.

I’m predicting July to be my best month ever. Between the 2xVPP promotion, the fact that i’ll hit the 5k and 6k milestones within this month, and just the sheer volume of hands I plan on putting in, it would take a hell of a dry run to have a bad July.

VPPS EARNED: 95022
VPPS TOTAL: 486493
HOURS: 122

This month, I even surprised myself. The first half of June, I was in a downswing that was about 30% bigger than I’ve ever had. I kept putting in the hours, and finally, during the last week of the month, it paid off big. I ended the month with a MAJOR upswing, which left me completely satisfied with the month as a whole.

I have stopped with my .xx bets for a short period of time, just to see what kind of difference it makes. I think I will randomly switch back at some point in the future as well…just gotta keep everybody on their toes.

I also stopped the preflop minraise. I’m starting to believe that as long as your bets aren’t overly large and exploitable, it really doesn’t matter what amount between 2-4xBB. This is actually a very interesting piece of information, which I may be able to use to my advantage in the future.

Great month.

In the May recap post, I mentioned the 2x promo, and how it would probably come at around 20billion hands. Well, apparently it is the first week of July instead.

WOOOOOOOOOOOO

I’ll be out of my cave in a week.