February Overview

Hello everyone!

February was a good month, both at the tables and away from them, but I admit that I neglected my blog a bit. What happened was that after my first post this month I started preparing for my trip to Greece. Normally, that shouldn't take much time or effort. I tend to get super excited when I'm about to visit my family and friends and that makes me lose focus a little bit, but overall I'm doing fine with keeping my working schedule.

This time however, for some reason I decided that it would be better to earn my monthly salary before leaving for Greece. Now, my departure was planned for the 14th, so that didn't leave me much time. In retrospect, I completely disagree with that way of thinking cause it's similar to setting a money goal over a short period of time which, in my opinion, can only lead to frustration. But hey, it was more of a sentimental decision than a rational one. I just wanted to have my "February business" sort of concluded so that I could go and enjoy my holidays with no worries on my mind.

Fortunately for me, it all went well. I spent some time studying (even though not as much as I should have), but the most important thing is that I redid the notes I keep on opponents from scratch. It took a bit more than a full day of work but I think it was well worth it. I studied my opponent's statistics, results (for those of them that have them public), and got to know some a bit better overall. It's good to know who is using the hypers as fillers of some other game and who actually specializes in them and has them as their main game.

I also stayed away from the $74s for the biggest part of February. I don't think I've studied enough to be able to play with the good players that frequent those games, so I would only start opening tables that high when the traffic was really really good. Which, as you can probably imagine didn't happen often. Sometimes, I would even see the great jorj95 migrating down to the $74s to play with us mortals. He's a really nice guy and all but I definitely don't want to play with him, thanks but no, thanks! Not to mention that he would often bring some other $357s+ players with him, people I also don't want to see at my tables... Anyway, it was mostly $18s-55s for me this month. Here is the graph:

I'm very happy with the result, it was definitely a good month. What I'm not so happy about, is the total number of tournaments I played: 3,5k. Even less exciting (but also expected) is the number of VPPs I gained this month: 11.720,34.  :(

Okay, the trip to Greece is partially to blame. I spent one week there. But even after I came back, I wasn't very keen on playing or studying. Yesterday for example, I came to the office with André and didn't play a single table. I wasted my time reading magazines, browsing on the Internet and other trivial stuff like that. Today, I figured I'd give some love to my neglected blog, but it's already night outside and I still haven't played at all. Making a blog post doesn't take a full day.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think I'm kind of lacking motivation. I was super excited with the perspective of going for Elite at the beginning of the year, but when I saw that goal slipping away I got a bit disoriented. Of course earning enough to pay for my monthly expenses is quite a motivation, but I feel I need something greater to push myself outside of my comfort zone and put in a lot of volume in terms of hours and tourneys.

On the positive side, back in January I had the brilliant idea of joining a Pokerstars promotion of setting a VPPs goal per year. You could choose among 100k, 200k or 300k VPPs. Since at that point I was aiming high, I registered for the 300k one. The first check to see if you are on pace (and therefore the first payment for those who make it) is on April 3rd, more or less a month from now. I need to have 75k VPPs by then to be on pace. Right now I'm at 41k, so I can still make it, but I'll have to work a lot more than the past couple of months and be on a tighter schedule. It's not so much for the $150 I'll receive if I make it (although I'm not the one to snob any amount of money) as it is for not wanting to fail. So that's good, I have one little thing to keep me motivated!

Other interesting poker news is that last Saturday André was talking about the Goldstar monthly freeroll. He was very very close to reaching Goldstar status that day and only missed the tournament for a few points, which got us talking about it and I decided to play. By now you probably know about my love-hate relationship with MTTs (it's more like hate-hate to be honest), but I thought, oh well, it's a freeroll so I might as well give it a try!

At some point, an interesting hand came up. The player on my right, who had the second biggest stack at that point, got involved in a huge pot with an early position raiser. When they both revealed their cards preflop, the EP raiser was all-in and showed KK. The player on my right showed pocket Jacks and got a cooler since he never hit his outs and lost a huge chunk of his chips. On the very next hand, I was the one to be holding pocket kings. The player on my left min-raised and I thought, okay, this hand has potential. I reraised and to cut a long story short I ended up all-in pre-flop. My opponent revealed QQ. I thought "Oh man! This guy is soooooo unlucky, he got JJ and QQ only to shove into pocket Kings two times in a row! Brutal!!!" I should have kept my mouth shut, cause the unlucky guy hit his queen on the turn and eliminated me from the tourney. You can check out the hand here.

I got 94th out of 9458 players which is not at all shabby and won $55 out of nothing! Pretty cool huh? Of course I was feeling kind of disappointed for losing the opportunity to continue playing the tournament with a huge stack and have a better chance at a final table (the first prize was $15k!), but it was fun to play cause  at a freeroll you always think "I have nothing to lose". Who knows, maybe I'll make a habit of playing these freerolls! And I might improve my MTT skills along the way! :P

Of course, something had to go wrong in this wonderfull story... When I opened the freeroll I was also playing my hyper satellites. After the bubble and with the blinds getting higher, things got a lot more interesting and it required more of my attention so I stopped opening satellites and dedicated myself to the MTT.

Around half an hour later... Pop! I see another table opening up next to the freeroll! Of course I had forgotten to unregister from the $109 + Rebuys tourney... Same old story! As I was mumbling to myself all the appropriate greek bad language I could think of for the occasion, I went to unregister from the rest of the tourneys I had won a ticket to. Pissed at myself, I spend some time playing the two MTTs. At some point, I lost at the freeroll and was left with only the $109+R. I refused to rebuy, I just wanted to be over with the thing to get back to my satellites grinding. 

But it was one of those times that it was meant to go well. The tournament was a lot smaller, only 57 entrants so it wasn't very long before I made it to the final table. What's best is that I was in pretty good shape in terms of chips. I don't remember exactly how I lost cause I was pretty tired by that point, but I remember that I felt kind of bummed for being eliminated before another player that had less than 20BB and a much smaller stack than me. In any case, the overall outcome of the tournament was great!

I finished at 4th place an got a nice $1390 prize. Neat! :D

That's all for now... During March I plan to get a lot more serious in terms of volume of play, and organize my everyday life a bit better so that I include my dance lessons and a better diet, things I have been neglecting lately. There's also the WBCOOP starting tomorrow and I'm seriously considering to participate!

See you guys at the tables!