Cain is Abel

VPP COUNT: 1000007

WINNINGS: Great!

HOURS: 1685

HANDS:1932845

I’m still somewhat in a state of disbelief now that this is over. It really is incredibly satisfying to work so hard on something for an entire year, and to finish the way I planned.

I did plan on doing a little recorded video for my final point, but when I got to that last hour of play, I just decided to finish it all off.  My final day was actually shaping up to be one of the better days of the year – until that last hour.  The graph of my play will show very conclusively that if your mind is on something other than poker, you’re not going to play very well.  So I booked a small loss for the day, and finished off the year.

This goal really put me to the test.  I think that accomplishing any endurance trial like this is much more of an inward battle than outward. By this, I mean that the biggest part of the struggle was with my own personal willpower, as opposed to learning and playing poker.  I think one could learn the poker theory/knowledge needed to reach SNE in less than a month. It really is not difficult to beat the lowest level needed to accumulate the vpps. However – to teach someone to be able to play >2mil hands in a year while maintaining their sanity would take much longer.

My poker future is still a bit vague. December has definitely re-infused my motivation, as the results and new style have been very positive. I will be doing some serious work on my tournament game over the coming months.  After my results with Doug (WCGRider), I think it will be pretty easy for me to find a top-notch coach.

Another major lesson I learned this year was how easy it is to let your game get stale, especially during long exhausting periods of play.  I experienced a breakeven stretch for an amazing 800k hands this year. It was initially triggered by a huge downswing at 400 and 600 buyin levels. After this downswing, I decided to cool down, tighten up, and just grind vpps for a while. This was the absolute worst decision I could have made, as the regulars were getting much more aggressive and taking advantage. Because of this, it took me a long LONG time to recover from that initial downswing. I now know I’ll need to be much more assertive about maintaining and improving my strategy, and not settling for just sitting back and grinding out points.

I am incredibly glad I kept a blog through this challenge. It really helped to keep me focused throughout the year.  During downswings and breakeven stretches it was very nice to be able to come back and read that I’d gone through it before and come out fine. It will be nice to be able to go back and read it in the future to reflect on this year.

I am feeling more positive about going for SNE again next year.  With 1 year already under my belt, I should be able to do it even better next time, and the rewards are even better.  I’ll still be putting in the minimum 50k vpps/month to maintain my SNE status until June. If I’m in good shape by the end of February, I’ll probably follow through in 09.

Every single year I’ve played poker, I’ve made more money than the previous. This year went far beyond my expectations, and it was due to having a clear goal and the will to pull it off. Most years I feel like I could have done more or worked harder, but not this one. 2008 was a success on every level.

Will detail later

VPP COUNT: 998036

I was about to start the last session of the year, and something strange happened…

There are close to 240k players on pokerstars right now, because of their world record promotion. Apparently the Stars servers cant handle that many players, and tables are extremely laggy and unplayable. Hopefully it will pass in the next hour or two.

It is so close I can taste it!!

VPP COUNT: 985291

I’ve been putting in the hours the past few days, and it has been paying off.  I even got confident enough with my game to move back up to the 400$ tables last night. The results were pretty good! Despite having a sick string of coolers that lost me about 2k in 10 minutes, I ended a bit above even at the 400 tables. The important part, though, is that I know I’m ahead of that level as long as I avoid the bad seats.

With less than 15k points to go, I decided to take the 23rd-25th off. I may put in a session at some point if there is time, but I wont force it. It will only take about 24h worth of work to finish this thing off, and I’ll have 6 days to do it after Christmas.  This will actually end up being pretty close, but I’m still very safe.

I’ve got a pretty good idea for getting my final point – expect a little video some before New Years.

Merry Christmas

My CardRunners video series titled “Mass Tabling” had the first video release last night/this morning! And so far, it looks to have been received very well.

The beginning of the video is a demonstration of me playing 24 tables on Stars and 16 tables on FTP for a whopping…  40 TABLES PLAYED SIMULTANEOUSLY.

The second half of the video is a PowerPoint presentation detailing some of the ideas behind my strategy, and highlighting some of the important things to come in future videos.

If you do not yet have a CardRunners account, you can either use the links throughout this post, or click on the banner located on the right side of this blog. In addition to my video (and future series), the CR vids are a huge source of insight and new strategies for serious players. Definitely consider a membership.

I hope you all enjoy the video! I will be posting a SNE update tonight.

I had forgotten to mention the other day, “The Eureka Kid” published an interview that he and I did for his FRNL friends series. It can be found at http://www.eurekakid.com/.

And also…

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 504872

I registered cainisabel.com to be the home of my blog! I’ll be using Wordpress instead of Blogger, so it will give me a bit more options as far as customization. It also has a nicer/cleaner feel, in my opinion.

The title “CainIsAbel” came partially from my middle name, Cain. The “Is Abel” part, is a biblical reference with a pretty dark twist. You could also look at it as “Cain Is A Bel” as a reference to my screen name, Belok.  All in all, I thought it would be a pretty fitting title for my new blog.

And because wordpress is more dynamic, I’ll be able to use this site for more than just spewing my random thoughts every week.

Leave comments if there are any thoughts/suggestions/problems with the new site layout, as I’m fairly new to wordpress.

SNE updates soon!

VPP COUNT: 956505

My head is above water in a couple different ways.

1) As of last night, I am ahead of the linear SNE pace for the first time in months! This brings the average number of points I need to earn per day down to about 2.8k, which is chump change.

I’ll be continuing the hellgrind, which has consisted of a minimum of 6 hours a day for the past week. I need to do this for 1 more week, and I’ll be close enough to finished that I can spend the 24th and 25th with family.

2) I am finally above the incredibly massive soul-crushing breakeven stretch I was experiencing. In $, the stretch lasted somewhere in the ballpark of 800k hands. This sounds incredibly terrible, seeing as most players wouldn’t play close to 800k hands of poker in their lifetime. I may post a graph at some point, but I’m not too enthused about that. In BB, the graph is not nearly as harsh, which just means I ran really bad at higher stakes.

The year is coming to an end and I’ve barely had time to reflect. I’m glad I kept this blog.

VPP COUNT: 908435

I have averaged about 4.2k points per day for the last 2 days, which is a good enough pace to finish by Christmas.

Unfortunately, I stopped running well in DoNs, and have been only making a little at FRNL.

I’ll be trying to put in some late night sessions, as there are supposed to be more vpps/hr, and more fish. Tonights’ session was a terrible nightmare of 2 outers and under-boats, and I ended the day even.

I think I’ll be able to keep up this pace fairly comfortably…but would really like to run better for the last month of the year.