September-What a wild ride

Well what a crazy month it was indeed. Now I don't play poker for a living. A few of my poker buddies say that I am a "semi-professional" poker player at this point. I guess that is right since I do have positive expectations in terms of winnings and those winnings help to pay for little things, keep extra $$ in my pocket and give my wife some extra cash for whatever. Unfortunately, I don't put the volume of hands a true professional needed to smooth out some of the variance associated with poker, particularly on-line poker where the skill level of the players is much higher than live games. My goal each month is to earn between $2,500 and $4,000 between live play and on-line. With that in mind here are the results.

The first part of the month was really good both on-line and live. I shot out the first two weeks and was up ~$2k live and about $1k on-line by September 15. Add to this, I was very close to unlocking a $1k Supernova bonus and a $1.5k VIP bonus and I was looking at a really strong month. Then it happened:



I fell of a cliff somewhere in the middle of the month. After this point I was completely incapable of winning a pot, particularly on-line. NLHE and PLO8 were equally dreadful. Whereas I had run a decent amount ahead of EV in the first two weeks I was so far from EV the last 2 weeks it was clear that Stars had flipped my doomswitch. When it was all said and done I ended up losing all my profits for the month on-line and then some...thank goodness for the VIP rewards. Here are the final tallys:

Live Cash Games +$825
Live Tournaments +$1,000
On-Line Cash <$765>
On-Line Tournaments +$100 (approx.)
Poker Stars Supernova Reward +$1,000

Total +$2,060

So while it was an up month it was a real bummer the last 2 weeks. Those numbers are actually a little better than they appear since I had investors in the 3 Borgata Poker Open events I played. So technically they had 1/2 my action or $515 and my profits should be $515 higher.

I am going to do a few sessions with a poker coach to help improve my NLHE 6max game. The game is so much different than full ring games and even at the lower levels that I play there are competent aggressive regulars. So I need to respond to those and just want to talk to a player who has won at these levels and moved up limits.

On the positive side, I did make the Supernova status on Stars about a week ago and am now going to attempt to get to Supernova 200+. Given my work load in the 4thQ this should be pretty realistic. The real value in this program comes from obtaining the status and then maintaining it going forward. I also stand comfortably in a 4 way log jam for the 3 WSOP ME seats in my league at the quarter pole.

Finally, Full Tilt Poker announced their long awaited revamped VIP players program and it was met by most of the 2+2 poker community with a resounding thud. The so-called "Black Card" program has some positives but just doesn't even come close to the rewards program offered by Stars.

Of course, Stars responded by upping the ante (pardon the pun) in their program. They now are not going to require a player to clear a VIP bonus. Rather it will be an immediate cash reward. For example, if I wanted to buy the $1,500 VIP reward for 100k FPP I used to have to earn an additional 10kish in base VPP before that reward would be "unlocked". No longer. Now as soon as I push the "Order This Item" button the cash shows up in my account. This is the reason I did not get the $1,500 bonus as there is more value waiting until the $4k VIP reward now that I don't have to clear it. Once again Stars laughs at the competition and simply provides better service, options and rewards to their players.