2009 Poker year in review

I wanted to put together a quick post for the 2009 year. First, thank you, everyone who reads this blog. Thank you for your participation in the comments. Thank you for taking time to digest, what my wife sees as, my nonsense. It is very cool that I started out writing because I needed an outlet to vent my frustrations and second-guesses in poker; it turns out that people actually seem to like my stream of thoughts.

I'm not going to make any resolutions for the 2010. Nor am I going to predict what will happen in 2010. The only goal I have for this year is a very tangible one, which is to use Hold'em Manager and migrate away from Poker Tracker. However, I will break down my 2009 half year career. Since meeting up with Josh in June, I learned how to properly play Texas Hold'em as a tight aggressive. I learned about hand ranges, positions, equity, and bankroll management. Only a half year ago, my learning curve was exponential, like Google's stock chart. Although my learning has slowed as of late, I am constantly in the mode of looking to increase my knowledge base. I am picking up subtle things, like when to overbet a pot on the river, as an "either you got a hand or you don't, but I'm not betting pot to get a call, I'm shoving and either you're calling or not" type situation, or folding small pocket pairs, OOP, against a short stacker, because there isn't enough reward to benefit me in the long term. I'd say my learning curve right now, to use the stock market analogy, is more like Walmart, where it's more matured, slower and steadily increasing. I want to continue to stay one step ahead of the donks, and move up in stakes, but looking back, I've jumped 2 levels in 6 months ($10NL to $25NL to $50NL). I hope this pattern continues.

The year ended on a low note, with my earnings showing a marked decrease within the last 3 months. I attribute that downswing to running $-850 in all in expected value. There isn't much I can do about that; how many times can I get myself in a position to be playing for stacks as a >60% favorite and lose? I look at these loses as pent-up good karma; I should have a nice run for 2010 because karma owes me :-).

Looking to 2010, as I talked about in my December wrap-up, I have the Iron Man bonus of $400. I also have a $69 Iron Man token to convert to cash, amounting to $470 in January bonuses on Full Tilt. Additionally, PokerStars is offering a reload bonus of 25% up to $150 (if you reload $600) which I may or may take advantage of. I *WILL* take advantage of the VIP Stellar Rewards program that they are running, though. The short of it is that they are offering $10 for each 750 VPPs earned up to the first 4 sets of 750 VPPs (i.e. 3000 VPPs = $40). Not a great payout, but good enough if I want to increase my bankroll there. I'd imagine they are moving towards a quasi-rakeback system, but the payouts at each level diminish the higher you go in VPPs. Not very well thought out, but a bonus nevertheless.

Now to the summary:

	Full Tilt	Poker Stars	Rakeback	Bonus	Live	Total
July '09	$ 709.00		$ 70.97	$ 100.00		$ 879.97
August '09	$ 530.00		$ 93.81			$ 623.81
September '09	$ 935.03		$ 158.75		$ 39.00	$1,132.78
October '09	$ 27.16		$ 319.46	$ 50.00		$ 396.62
November '09	$ 59.72	$ 84.65	$ 301.08	$ 100.00	$ 70.00	$ 615.45
December '09	$ 147.82	$ (10.35)	$ 161.95			$ 299.42
Sum Total	$2,408.73	$ 74.30	$1,106.02	$ 250.00	$ 109.00	$3,948.05

I can't complain about ~$4K for 6 month's work. I'm very happy with the outcome. The greatest thing about it is that the $4K includes all stakes ($10-$50NL). In theory, assuming I continue to show profit at the higher levels, I should be able to earn larger returns this year.