2007 poker review/retrospective

ionapaul

As asked for in the 2008 poker ambitions/resolution thread, a thread where we review our poker year and try to achieve some elusive analysis of where we are with this damned game!

I'm gonna break mine down between online and live play. I started the year off living in Sydney and playing live cash 3 or 4 days a week to pay the bills (in addition to getting a temp job), didn't play much online there. Left Australia start of June to travel for two months before getting to Ireland in early August - no poker during this time. Since August I've been playing mainly live tournaments, online cash, some online STTs and a few live cash sessions.

Online:
While I was in Australia I hardly played online at all. Since August, I've played 17k hands (mainly $.10/$.25 and $.25/.50) and am $78.16 in the red. I'm up a few hundred when bonuses and rakeback are taken into account. I don't feel I've progressed at all over the past 5 months with my online cash game, I really need to devote time to it to improve. I think I reason I didn't turn a decent profit is my problem with big pairs, I give no respect to my opponents and allow myself to be stacked when they hit a set with their middle pairs. Haven't played much over the last 6 weeks, hardly any hands. Played a few dozen STTs but no movement here either, I find it easy to get to the final 4 or 5 players with a decent stack but when the blinds get big I seem to blow up or just cannot close it out. Played less than 2 dozen online tournaments over the year I would guess, lost a few hundred dollars there.

So overall online I'm probably down $500 online over the year and what is more worrying to me is that I don't think I've improved much online. I am starting to see that I need to really think about whether online play is for me at all, as it doesn't attract me as much as live at all, there is no comparison in the levels of enjoyment for me and I am not interested playing online for the kind of stakes where enjoyment is unimportant (i.e. if I were making $100,000 a year online I wouldn't care so much if I liked playing live more! but making $10,000 isn't enough to matter for me).

Live:
As mentioned above, I played quite a few live sessions while in Australia, I lived 5 minutes walk from Star City casino which make this very easy! However, I didn't really take it very seriously, as the easy money was to be made on Friday and Saturday nights when people would play drunk and I played mainly weekdays from 12 noon to 6pm or so. The reason being: I was in Australia to enjoy myself and not to waste my weekends playing poker. I didn't care enough about the money to focus on playing at the optimum times. I really enjoyed playing live cash (despite the big rake) and made approximately €3,700 over the first 4 months of the year at Star City. I worked in a corporate office during my time there (wanted a reference for my CV), which limited my play during the 6 weeks I worked.

Since August, I've played 41 live tournaments and currently am showing a profit of €1,850. Last two months haven't been profitable. My last tournament of the year will probably be tonight, the Eglinton is running a €10,000 freeroll for the top 50 players in their tournament league, any sort of decent result here will really boost my profit figures! I've also played a handful of live cash sessions, turning a very small profit. I've realized recently how much I enjoy playing live, that I am a stronger player live, not only because I am playing against on average weaker opponents, but because I am much more focused on the game. I think I should make an effort to play more live cash.


Overall I've made about €5,000 (approx. $7,000) from Hold 'Em poker this year (also made a hundred or so playing variations of 25 with friends, awesome game! anyone play it anymore?), more than twice as much as I made last year. The year before (2004) I was probably down so the trend is good! I was frustrated with my online play this year but heartened by the live scene. I need to have a good think about my thoughts for 2008 before posting in the relevant thread!

P.S. If anyone posts on this thread, no need to go into the detail of winning amounts, etc like I did (particularly those who have won enough or lost enough to be private about it), I used the post as an excuse to finally bring all the figures from the various spreadsheet pages all together finally!

zuutroy

I'll throw in my 2c:

Didn't know the rules of poker in June...Started playing on Betfair in July and donked around there playing $2.50 STTs, joined Stars and started to play MTT's. Had a couple of nice results which got my initial deposit of $40 up to $500. Started playing cash in September ish and did a bit better than breakeven. Moved to 6 max in October and beat $10nl handy enough. Beating $20nl and $25nl reasonably and had enough to move to $50nl where I went on a massive heater followed by a bigger downswing, so I'm now just short of rolled for $50nl.

I wanna be beating $100nl nicely and have enough to withdraw a WSOP buyin by June so that my goal for the first half of '08.

meathman 007

zuutroy wrote: »

I'll throw in my 2c:

Didn't know the rules of poker in June...Started playing on Betfair in July and donked around there playing $2.50 STTs, joined Stars and started to play MTT's. Had a couple of nice results which got my initial deposit of $40 up to $500. Started playing cash in September ish and did a bit better than breakeven. Moved to 6 max in October and beat $10nl handy enough. Beating $20nl and $25nl reasonably and had enough to move to $50nl where I went on a massive heater followed by a bigger downswing, so I'm now just short of rolled for $50nl.

I wanna be beating $100nl nicely and have enough to withdraw a WSOP buyin by June so that my goal for the first half of '08.

good luck with that, but its a crazy plan imo - theres no way a low-mid stakes player should pay 10000 to buy into a single event. If i were you, i would set myself a budget of about 1-2000 a enter as many satelites as possible...thats the only way i would even consider going to the main event

zuutroy

meathman 007 wrote: »

good luck with that, but its a crazy plan imo - theres no way a low-mid stakes player should pay 10000 to buy into a single event. If i were you, i would set myself a budget of about 1-2000 a enter as many satelites as possible...thats the only way i would even consider going to the main event

Sorry I didnt mean the ME...I meant the cheapest crappiest structured one going @$1500!

meathman 007

zuutroy wrote: »

Sorry I didnt mean the ME...I meant the cheapest crappiest structured one going @$1500!

ok that makes more sense, but be aware that for the 1500 event you only get something like 1500 chips, so its not exactly a great structure... i suppose the prize pool would be massive though

El Stuntman

2007 review:

still crap :mad:

made more than last year

should have made double but for tiltiness/stupidity :eek:

poker is still fun :cool:

zuutroy

They've actually doubled the stacks so its 3K now. I know there would be far better options to play while I'm there, but its kind of a 'because it's WSOP' thing.

5starpool

A summary of my review.

Online - Not worth talking about tbh, as I have played feck all of it. Not won or lost anything much.

Live Tournies - Disaster. I have played less and less of them as the year went on, but 07 was a big disaster from start to finish in tournies.

Live Cash - Better this year than before. I feel my Omaha game has improved, and I am playing some live Holdem cash occasionally as well. Considering how obviously bad the standard is though in both HE and Omaha, I should be making more of a profit I think, but this is the only thing stopping my year from being an utter disaster rather than just a bad year.

This is the first year I have lost money playing poker in the 3 years I have recorded. Not exactly a large sample size admittedly.

Glowingmind

Online - All over the place.

Live - started really horribly, lots of bubbles in Jan and Feb. Then started to pick up, a few decent cashes in march and april to make up for the earlier losses. Then between May and July went on an absolute stormer. 2nd in the SE monthly game for 2.8k, 2nd in one of the early 100DC's for 1.8k, a few really good cash sessions in the fitz for about 1.5k and a bunch of final tables in the fitz and se. Pretty steady amount of cashes and good live cash games from Aug to Oct.
Last two months had been going pretty badly live, but an online upswing has countered that.

Shadowless

2007 is the year I cashed out online. It all got too much of a grind for me. The money I was winning was tiny compared to the hours I was putting in and I don't get the kick out of it that I do from live play. Think I'm up about $50 for the year online (drunken blow-ups included )

Live I'm up almost a monkey which I'm pretty happy about. Most of that coming in the last 3 months. Nothing spectacular I know but meh. I'm starting a new job earning silly money during the summer so I'll prob play alot more live then. At the minute dropping 100 quid means not eating for the week so my degeneracy is being kept in check.

Killme00

Twas a good year, mainly cause im a lucky ginger bastard

Live Cash - I play Omaha too loose and Holdem too tight. I made a few thousand overall

Live Tournaments - I won the Jackpot Cash League and a €50 NL tourney but thats it. I generally dont play tournaments. I made about 5k overall maninly because of the cash league vixtory though.

Online Tournaments - Played some STT and MTT, im winning overall but nothing worth shouting about

Online Cash - I cashed out most of my BR to pay the deposit for my new house so ive dropped from 2/4 to .50/1 and 1/2 PLO. Overall i play far too loose to make serious cash and hopefully i'll rectumfy that this year by becoming more anally retentive about pokertracker and the likes.

Edit to add: Technically the Cash League was a chop but i got 4.8k and the next got 2k and a few others 1k so im being an egomaniac and calling that a win..if you have a problem with that you can speak to my left nut..ALRIGHT

cooker3

Live, I won the Jackpot 20 game twice in a month which is pretty much the only thing I've played live so up a grand I suppose.

Online, I started off the year playing 25nl on full tilt but I was also doing final year in college so pretty much bearly played for the first 6 months. I doubt I did more then 10k hands.

In July I was in the states, start playing 50nl on stars as no other choice, very up and down but grinded it out.

I came home and started playing on GJP in October where I also started 100nl, first month was decent but from Novmeber my account got switched to god mode and I have been crushing it since. Now playing and beating 200nl for decent amount although only played 15k hands so that doesn't mean much.

Overall very good year where things have gotten better and better as year progressed.

YULETIRED

Poker Review : online spinning and live, made 15k profit for the year, according to my badly maintained s/sheet. Ran badly at final tables about the 200 mark but good year for modest little me. (money level that is)
In the last month I'm playing like a donkey, calling hands where I know I'm beat etc and playing like a giddy goat. In fact I've been like a giddy goat in everything this last month never mind poker.. I think I lose the run of myself in December every year......(or as Lenny 'laughing boy' Leonard would say, I go radioactive) For example, I told the breathalizer cop that I needed a drink to prevent gridlock stress and nearly failed my lunchtime (ONE BEER) pigs stop. Phew......no sense of humour. I think he is a mod on the Gardai forum.

One big gripe, plyed my 1st 1k event and ran into Joeseph and Marys Donkey........Jesus Christ it's not a 50 euro rebuy you dope...(inside I were screaming, I were)
Just as well I won the bloody ticket....worst poker moment of the year.

Best poker game of the year. Playing the charity EPT charity event. Started off chinwagging for ages with Steve very Interesting Davis, then had Mad Marty singing 'Vidic is from serbia' he's going to murder ya.' as I hmmm along, Then another Marty Irish Open champ, gifted me his stack..(nice boy for a ginger) then on to the 2nd last table where I traded abuse with Tony smelly socks Casgarino...I wouldn't call if I were you I've a big hand....CALL. oh you have a small hand....I win ;-) also at that table was Ken Docherty and a very locked Rory Liffey (the strangest accent I've ever heard) , who sent smelly socks packing..(gone off that Tony C bloke big time) . Made final table after some beats and pushed with any two and was called with any two, but I had a great time in that event. Pat Storan won it....(Player of the year?)

Oh yeah , took some cash off cardshark (maybe a tenner) in a brief flirtation with him at the cash table . He's not very good I wrote in my notes. (and probably broke) .

hf4z6sqo7vjngi

......

DeadParrot

Online: Lost heavily over the year by playing (spinning) while drunk, although not enough to be a heavy loss, and feel it in the real world, it really hurt me in the ego dept.
Overall across all accounts I'm up circa $5000 but that figure should be a lot bigger

Live: I stated the year pretty much a live novice and had the habit (and to an extent still do) of give far to much respect to the man in the street player.
Tourney wise, not much to write about, cashed in a few of Jp's games, won one, cashed the IPO plus a few live STT's and home games about maybe €1800, after buyins and stuff, maybe up €800
Cash, in my limited playing I have had a very good run up about €3500, mainly from ROE games, almost 100% exclusively lukes.

I feel once I cut the drunken stupidity out of my online game, I'll be a much more successful player.

smurph

2007
Funny, I have done really well in the deepstack tournaments that I played in except the one that I wanted so badly to do well in "the Irish Open.....
january 07 was great start, to get to final table from 311 runners in the Poker events game was brillant and really helped my confidence..
I feel however that I tend to "fall asleep" during the middle part of tournaments and rely on cards rather than opportunities of picking up pots. this needs to be worked on.

I feel that I will have to pick and choose the tournaments that I play in. €200 + tournaments are becoming weekly occurance nowadays and with festivals etc., it can get costly.

I only played cash sporadically so although I did well in it I find I have no patience for really drunk cash players.. I know, something i'll have to work on.

Ace2007

smurph wrote: »

I feel however that I tend to "fall asleep" during the middle part of tournaments.

Ah well sure ur 40 now, fallin asleep will become easier and easier :D

jbravado

Grim year-regression for the win.Shudder thinking about it but you live you learn.

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

meathman 007

as said on another thread, up about 10k dollars online without putting much effort in, up around 2000 euro live