Fish, sharks and taking a shot at Supernova

Hello everyone!

I've been kind of absent from the blog during November, but it has been a pretty busy month for me. First of all, I focused on studying poker and improving the way I play. I didn't want to have another bad month like October so I did my best to avoid it. 

Halfway in November, my coaching sessions changed. Instead of sitting in front of the computer with André to review my recorded sessions, he would take the recordings and watch them by himself instead. During that time I would continue playing normally while he was taking notes on my videos and creating a review file for me to study the next day. It takes longer to do that than to make corrections through discussion while we are watching a video together, but I have more time to play like this. Also, the best part is that I have the files to review whenever I want and everything is in full detail so it's much better than me taking quick notes while he's talking.

Anyway, studying has been going pretty well and I feel like I'm significantly improving the way I play. But before I go on, here's the graph for the month of November:

As you can see, I finished with a profit of $3.368 after 5.311 games. Not bad at all I must say. On the negative side, I forgot or didn't have time to unregister from some main events so I had to play them... It was a total of 8 MTTs and I didn't manage to make a cash finish in any of them which took away $1.177 from my profit. Now that I add it all up it's actually quite a bit of difference, I could have finished with $4.5k profit in November but... Oh well, I think my frustration for being obligated to play those MTTs is enough of a punishment.

As you can see in the graph, the month was not missing its ups and downs. Around the 1.5k hands mark I got a good downswing and then between the 4k and the 5k hands you notice a significant upswing and an equally brutal downswing. I think the last two were in the same day (a Sunday) if I'm not mistaken. From that point of view, during the past month I've hit several highs and lows that were new territory (at least for me).

I discovered that when one is taking one bad beat after the other, being extremely unlucky or simply plays bad, Sharkscope has a special "reward" for them. They add a nice little fish next to the player's name when you search them up in their database. You don't believe me? Here, I took a printscreen:

And to be honest, the prinscreen doesn't do it justice... The little fish has animation and all, showing it swimming happily in circles in its fish tank and jumping out of it every now and then. Oh, and just in case you didn't get it already, when you move your mouse over it a label appears reading "Fish".

Great, just great! I had never seen that before, so I didn't know that Sharkscope did that. To find out this way, with the thing swimming next to my screen name was kind of harsh. As if my downswing was not enough... Anyway, at least the Fish shows up only when you search that specific day and those specific stakes (damn those $18s!) so I didn't get permanently stained with the Fish label. If it showed up in my lifetime winnings it would be worse :P And to make a last comment about this, wow, -27% ROI? I bet most people cannot do that even if they try (unless they sitout all day long, which was not my case). Talking about running bad!

And now the positive side... After discovering about the Fish, and following my tradition of getting excellent results after the really bad ones, I soon found out about the Shark:

At least it's good to know that I'm not just a fish, I can be a shark too sometimes. Lol. The Shark is animated too, moving its tail left and right. When I rolled the mouse over it, it read "Medium Shark", so I guess that unlike the Fish, Sharks actually have levels. Anyway, I got another shark icon yesterday, but that falls into December news so I'll leave that for later.

I took the last week of November off, because there was a big tournament of Magic: The Gathering that André and I wanted to attend. We had people from many different countries staying over at our place and  it was so much fun! Here's a photo from the tournament: 

Good thing I rested and enjoyed myself during a week, cause December is not only the last month of the year but also the hardest one. The situation is like this: 

Basically, if you consider that PlatinumStar is 7.500 VPPs per month and Supernova is 100.000 per year, you only need to make PlatinumStar 1,5x per month to finish the year with the Supernova status. Which, at my current situation is a very reachable goal. The only problem is, when I first started playing the hyper-turbos back in March, I started by playing the $1,5s or the $3s or whatever was the lowest stakes they had at that point. I was moving up and down in levels until July and only in August with André's more intensive coaching I started moving up higher without having to move back down so much.

Therefore, from a VPPs point of view, I lost half a year. The past couple of months the VPPs have been coming in faster since I play higher stakes and have increased the number of tables, but still... Supernova is far away. To be more exact, I'm missing 45.250 VPPs in order to achieve Supernova this year. I calculated the working days that this month has (I'm not really going to work on Christmas and I still need to take some time off every week to rest) and it's 20 days, today included. So I need to make around 2.2k to 2.3k VPPs per day. Which is crazy, and far more than I've ever done so far. Yesterday it was the first day in December that I worked and as you can see in the printscreen above, I only made 1.6k VPPs which is far less than the desired 2.2k.

I'm not saying that I'm going to kill myself at work trying to achieve Supernova. I think it's a far-fetched goal for me at the moment. However, there is a chance that I will make it so I'll give it a shot. There are some factors that I can't control of course, such as not having enough games running or getting a downswing. Currently, I can play up to 12 tables. If I'm obligated to be 2-3tabling because there aren't any games running, then so be it. I have no control over that situation so I'm not going to stress about it. Same thing goes for swings. Up to now my highest stake were the $74s, but yesterday I went up to the $109s.  I will also cut on the $18s for now because they only give 1,93 VPPs each which is rather irrelevant for what I'm trying to achieve. If I get a downswing while playing higher stakes and I'm forced to move down, then I will have to give up Supernova for this year cause I'm not willing to risk my bankroll trying to get a VIP Status. Since there are some important things outside of what I can control and I am extremely pressured by time, I don't know if I should be calling this a goal but... Here goes nothing!

Before I go, I'd like to share with you my graph from yesterday...

It wasn't my best day in terms of buy-ins (even though it was pretty close), but it was my best day in terms of profit. +$3.332! Awesoooome! :D

Anyway, now I need to take it day by day and see if making Supernova is still possible. Wish me luck cause I'll need it...

See you at the tables!