PCA seat

Last night I won my PCA (Pokerstars Carribean Adventure) entry. I entered a $175 Double Shootout and won the 12k package. A Double Shootout starts with 9 tables w/ 9 players each. Then the winner of each table advances to the Final Table. The winner of the Final Table gets the 12k package. Everyone else at the FT gets their buyin back. Luckily, once I got heads up at the end I had about a 4:1 chiplead and I was able to win pretty easily.

So the PCA is a WPT event with an 8k buyin. It's in the Bahamas January 5th-11th. The package includes the buyin (8k) plus hotel & food (3k) plus travel money (1k).

The nice thing about it is this was the first satellite I played to get in. Unlike the WSOP seat I won, which I spent about $2500 in sats before I got in. It was a last minute decision to play in it too. Sunday was the final day of sats & since I was only playing 2 other MTTs I figured I'd throw the PCA sat in there too.

November Results

Here's November's Results. I was very happy to end this month in the black. I was 6k in the hole with less than 2 weeks left in the month. A few nasty NL cash sessions (-4k, -3k, -2k) hurt.

Live Play: -$2300
Cash Play: +$1040
SNGs: +$2920 @ 8.4% ROI
MTTs: -$454
rakeback: +$392

Total: $1600

October Results (late)

OK, here's my belated October Results. Like I said earlier, it was a disappointing month (heh, that was before I knew November was going to be even worse :)). I did drop about 2500 playing a couple of live tourneys + a 1k satellite at Foxwoods. That didn't help.

Live play: -1970
SNGs: +5060 w/ a 7.4% ROI
MTTS: +1290
cash games: -2100
rakeback: +550


Total = +$2830

ouch

Had my worst day ever yesterday, dropping about $4000 at 5/10 NL. Kept losing in nasty ways like set over set & flush over flush. Problem was I didn't win any big pots to offset the beats. Overall I don't feel like I played that bad though and I'm not worried about a 4 buyin drop. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do in this game.
I have decided to focus more on NL cash instead of SNG's. It seems like there's much more money to be made in NL cash for skilled players. I've been having good success, yesterday notwithstanding. I want to continue playing a few sets of SNGs per week though. That way I don't lose the knack.
October was a pretty blah month. . . made a little over 2k, which was disappointing. I'll post complete results once I get my rakeback totals in.

The New World

Actually it ain't that different from the old one, except that I'm running horrible. My move over to PokerStars started off with me dropping 15 buyins at the $114/$225s. I'm not worried though. I've been encouraged by some of the bad plays I'm seeing regulars make. Now I just have to figure out how to get my hands where I'm a 3:1 favorite to actually win. Of course there are some very good regulars too and I'm trying to avoid sitting at a table where there are 5 other SNG pros sitting.

I've been playing some 600 & 1000 NL cash over at FullTilt, since I get rakeback there. It seems like the level of play is better at FT than it was at Party. It's not that the general play is exceptionally phenomenal or anything. . . it's just that there doesn't seem to be many really awful players there. Who knows. . . I've only played about 1000 hands there so far. There's still much to see.

I also heard that Harrah's will not be accepting any 3rd party registrations for the WSOP next year. That means no internet qualifiers. I guess it has to do with the new law. That's too bad. Obviously there will be nowhere near the 8700+ players they had this year as long as that rule is in effect.

September Results, New Legislation

As most of you may know. . . Congress passed a bill last Friday that prohibits financial institutions from funding online gambling sites. Obviously, this is not good for online poker. This news made a lot of us in the poker community worried, and unsure of what the actual impact would be. Then the biggest pokersite around, Party Poker, announced that they will be closing their doors to all US players. That pretty much sent everyone into Apocalyptic mode. But now, with a few days of panic under our belt, it looks like things are going to be OK. Even though Party has bailed, there are a few good sites that are stepping up & saying they will stick around (Full Tilt, Bodog, UB and others). Some sites, like PokerStars, are still undecided.
This Bill does not address the legality of playing poker or making online bets. It only deals with banks and pokersites transferring money. Basically there are pokersites & online banks that are not US businesses and don't feel like they are governed by US laws.

For me personally. . . I'm hoping that the changes to my poker playing will be minimal. Instead of me playing the majority of my SNG & cash games at Party, I'll soon be doing that somewhere else. Where will that be? I don't know yet. A lot depends on what PokerStars decides. They are the 2nd biggest site out there, not far behind Party. If they decide to keep their doors open to US players then they will undoubtedly be the most popular site. If they leave then Full Tilt will prolly be the next big site. We'll see what happens. For me to maximize my winnings, I need to go where the masses go.

Enough about that. . . on to my September results. It was another good month, just no big MTT scores since I only played a few. I don't know yet what my rakeback totals will be, but I'm estimating them at $600. That will put me over $8300 for the month with ~45 hours played.

Cash Games (all 600NL & 1000NL): $3490
SNGs (109s & 215s): $4445 w/ a 13.7% ROI
MTTs (only played 5): -$186
Rakeback: $618

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September Totals: $8367

August Results

August was my most profitable month to date with a total net of almost 28k.



Live Play (pretty much all 2/5 NL in Vegas): +$1,826

Online Cash Games (600NL & some 1000NL): +$2,826

SNGs (109s & 215s): +$4,644 w/ an ROI of 21.3%

MTTs (only played 5): +$17,911

RB: +$493

I wish I could turn that kind of profit consistently. Who knows. . . someday maybe. I'm already noticing a big difference in earn since the beginning of the year. In January I was playing $55 SNGs & 5/10 limit. Now I'm comfortable at the $109 & $215 SNGs & $600NL.