Thursday, December 23, 2004

State of the Nation

YTD: +$ 44161.01

So a year in Poker is finally over. Or as near as we can get to it with Christmas and the New Year just over the horizon. As promised, I am going to share all my detailed stats on how I did over the year. All the win rates are taken in $ ph and are only used when they are a reasonable number of hours played. Yes, some of these results were the result of extensive multitabling; because the program I use for tracking Omaha results is less reliable than PTracker, all these figures are based off my spreadsheets instead of the more usual $/100 hands commonly used for the Net.

PLO + $27938.78

Although it certainly didn’t start off that way, this soon became my bread-and-butter game, contributing the vast bulk of my profits.

Best result: 5-10 at $159.40 ph; hours played 154 hours

PLO8b +$12,652.03

I didn’t play enough plo8b, which is strange considering I always considered it my best game. I guess I just lost sight of it and got caught up in other games. My 2-4 result was the best ph I had proportionally speaking. I was also disappointed with my result in the 5-10 game on Stars, where I basically broke even, although in my defence I only played very few hours.

Best result: 2-4 at $ 118.40 ph; hours played 93 hours

Limit Holdem +$5446.67

Holdem was the fallback position for when my play went awry during the year. It’s nice to know that I have a B game plan that I can turn to for a break. The main problem with it is that I basically find it too boring and routine, especially when I have to multitable to generate a healthy win rate. Also I found that my concentration tended to wane after a while and it was hard to put together long sessions.

Best result: 15-30 at $106.25 ph; hours played 112 hours

Limit Hilo -$2526.63

Despite pretension to the contrary I have to finally accept that I suck at this game. Last year was a mediocre set of results. This year was a slight negative. The game brings out the worse in me, putting me on tilt. And when the game gets short handed I’m mostly clueless and even more tiltful.

No real meaningful hours except 10-20, where I was a 21 bucks ph loser

Tourney -$234.04

Once again my tourney results have been nothing to shout home about, although I have played very few MTT at all. My worse game by far was NLHE, with 9 comps, $2736 outlay, no return! However this result was very skewed by the fact of a tilt/unlucky go at a $100 rebuy comp.

I have a 13% ROI on turbo 1 tables, which shows how little effort or focus I put into them. Most were $105 although some were $55. In general I returned a paltry 10% on NLHE across all types. I was a bit disappointed to see that I was -1% on MTT satellites for the big Sunday comps on Stars, especially as I had extolled their money-making virtues. But also I did play them kinda wild and often used them as a means to “let off steam” from the 5-10 PLO. I still think they are good value tho’. Surprisingly, I had a –VE PLO year, although again I only played a handful. PLO8b was a more impressive 52.5% although this isn’t as good as my 80% ROI across all kinds of Omaha comp over the last two years.

In general though, these figures highlight the main problem I have with MTTs. Even with a very good ROI, my hourly rate for them still ends up less than a good cash game. So why bother?

Best site

Stars of course with +$27k, followed by Party and its Skins with +$12k. Better still - no negative sites!


For Chaos – Rake was $10.5k as far as I could track it in cash games.

Goals for Next Year

Focus on PLO and PLO8b almost exclusively
Play even less tourneys but take shots at the big ones.
Don’t spend the bankroll :(
Win $60k (I think this is very achievable and I hope to be nearer 80 than 60)

Good luck and best wishes to you all!

9 comments:

steve said...

Thanks Dave, that's less than I thought it would be.
But I guess you are part-time and you don't play too much SH. 10.5 k is still a lot of money, but given your profits it isn't a bad ratio.

If you are bored with limit holdem then I suggest you play it SH.

Well done for publishing your YTD it took a lot of guts - now you have toi start at zero!

chaos

redsimon said...

Thanks for the breakdown Dave. Something for us aspiring players to aim for.

You seem to have confirmed something which I found during 2004 (though mine is a MUCH smaller scale!) that is NLHE tournies are not good for your bankroll. I found I was treading water in Single table NLHE,losing in NLHE MTTs, winning well in PLO8 and LO8 MTTs, and contrary to you doing well in low limit LO8 cash on Party, UB and 'Stars.

I think a lot of the "sucess" I had in 2004 was to play well within my bankroll (unlike 2002, remember the 10/20 LO8 game on 'stars :().

My target for 2005 is much more modest, hopefully to double my "cage".

One final thing. Did you play "live" in 2004 or is the job/family limiting you to PC poker?

Good luck and best wishes for 2005.


Simon

Big Dave D said...

Chaos,

You may recall my views on SH holdem. Also the variance would drive me mad. I forgot about the setting the YTD to zero thing...poo :-(

gl

Dave

Big Dave D said...

Hi Red,

I'm not really sure why I didnt play at all live last year. I think part of it is the effort and time required, normally from 10-11pm until 4-6am in the morning. Also I am not sure how "tell-less" I would be now after not playing with "people" for so long. And also the action online now is as good as live anyway. Its nice as well not having to spend time with the "characters" that populate the cash games as well :-)

gl

dd

Milkybarkid said...

Can't you get some kind of rakeback deal with Pokerstars?

Scary resetting the YTD to zero. I am tempted to do one on my blog for live poker.... not for online though ;-)

Anonymous said...

Hey howdy Dave,

What program do you use to track your Omaha, O8 results. I hate the fact that PT won't do it for me, but have not seen any alternatives.

Thanks much and congrats on a successful year.

-Wals

Big Dave D said...

Wals,

Tx for posting. The only program you can use for Omaha is pokerstat at www.thsoftware.com. Its not as well developed as PT, despite being older. Its main use for me is to (a) look at how people play (b) review big pots and did I play them correctly. For this its dear, but for the stakes I play just about worth it.

gl

Dave

SimonG. said...

Dave,
Your limit HE results stood out to me.

Your play at 15/30 eaned you about twice your final result!

Did that mean that you played higher and lost or somehow managed to lose at lower levels?

Big Dave D said...

Simon,

I had my bollox kicked off playing the 30-60 on Stars, mostly because I was playing scared in a bad run, also because I was having a run of typical holdem-esque beats. Its down in the Blog in the Darling Buds of May post.

cheers

Dave