The past few months

I'll admit it, I was worried. Even with my $12k score in the beginning of December making it my best month ever in terms of pure money won, the month was overall very frustrating and almost had me thinking about what I was going to do if and when the money started running out. My bankroll after the score was up around $30k - by far its highest point ever, and after withdrawing $4k to handle some expenses, I felt like I was in great shape overall.

Then the wheels came off. Here's my graph of December, up to and including the first few days of January.



For what it's worth, in all-in EV I was down about $1600 in this time frame, but that's beside the point as my play was simply not good. I took a long break and dove back in, and since January 5 my graph has looked as follows:



I've been running hot in this timeframe, to the point where it more than made up for my all-in EV drought in December, but my play has been pretty damn good as well. You can't beat NL200 for 4.4BB/100 over a nontrivial sample without playing well, and while I hold no illusions that that's my true winrate, I'm very confident at the moment. I've gradually adopted a LAGgier style. My stats ever since January 5 have been 16/12 at Full Ring; in December I was playing 15/10. In November I was 14/10. October, 14/9. September, I was 13/8.

No single transition is earthshattering in and of itself, but bouncing from 13/8 up to 16/12 over the course of a few months is very significant.

Not surprisingly, the composition of my graph looks much different than it once did. I don't feel like uploading all of the pics, suffice to say that so far this month I'm within ~$100 of breakeven in my non-showdown pots, something I've never been able to do much of before.

My aggression factor is still not very high, hovering around 2. The top players at NL200 on Full Tilt (and presumably elsewhere) - players like Kush789, BerlinsBest, and ChkRazed - all have AF's pushing 5.0, meaning they're generally more confident in their reads and know when to push or fold. I'm calling too much, and missing too much thin value. Still, I'm pretty good at snapping off bluffs - better than some others, maybe - so I'm not overly unhappy with my stats.

I need to get more volume in - I've known that for a long time - but I'm never comfortable on autopilot after more than a couple of hours per day, and I'm prone to taking breaks. This month's break - over a week - was justifiable, at least, as I got very ill and was in no condition to play. Stupid flu.

But, it's off to the tables now, to catch some of the Friday evening Eurodonks. Friday nights are great too, so maybe another session later tonight.