End of Month Update

As my regular readers know, 2006 thus far has been a much better year poker-wise for my bankroll than 2005 proved to be. January saw me make my first three final tables in genuine MTTs (more than, say, 10 tables), winning one, coming in 4th in another, and 6th place in the third. February has not had those specific bright spots that January had as far as the three MTT final tables over 10 days, but February was still my best month overall in playing online, other than January which managed to just eke out February (not counting tonight's games, of course, but I am assuming, hopefully, that I won't go on supertilt and donk off the entirety of my remaining bankroll on three different poker sites this evening). So, my last two months of online play have far and away been my two best months profit-wise, and that fact alone is worthy of some good feelings as far as I am concerned.

My big story for February was the party million dollar guaranteed tournament back on the 18th, which I had qualified for by winning a $10 satellite in January. For my $10 satellite buyin, I got to play in the largest-buyin regular tournament offered by *any* of the poker sites which I frequent. At first I was very intimidated at the thought of playing against a field full of high-buyin tournament players and people who won MTT satellites to get their seat to the million dollar tourney, but as the day approached I became much calmer, and almost happy by tourney day that I would finally get my wish of not playing in a field full of donkeys for the first time ever online for me. I ended up playing really, really solid poker, ensuring that I didn't donk off too much on any one hand if I was semi-bluffing or just sure that I was beat, and I cashed in 203rd place out of 1830 entrants for a nice payday of $764.40. So February not only included my first appearance in one of the big regular tournaments, but my largest-yet single tournament payoff of $764. Otherwise, I had four top-50 finishes in February in MTTs of more than 1500 players, and another 6 finishes between #50 and #100, so I was very pleased with those performances as well. Even though the payouts are not so great in those spots, every little bit can go a long way towards a winning month in that those payouts can pay for the next few buyins for similar-sized tournaments that I enter. Specifically, I also became quite adept at turbo sng's and turbo tournaments generally during February, which was an area that I had expressly avoided up to this past month online. And of course, I made my first WWdN final table also during February, as blogged about earlier in the month, so that's all goodness for me.

In all, here are some personal summary tournament stats that I find interesting, and really hope (and expect) to improve on in the coming months:

1. PS 180 sng's: Played a lifetime total of 20 for a $440 expenditure. Cashed in 1 of the 20 only, a 4th place finish in mid-January for a payout of $288. So I'm down about $150 in that 180 sng structure overall, although that of course is only temporary since I'll be winning that tournament tonight and taking myself well into positive territory there.

2. Party 40k guaranteed tournament: I have played in 5 of these, all in February, and I just cashed in my first one last night, coming in 141st place out of 2311 entrants: . So, I've spent $110 and gotten back $31, for another loss (also only temporary, of course!)

3. Full Tilt 15k and 20k guaranteed: I have played in 3 of these tournaments, failing to cash yet in any. That is $78 down the drain with nothing to show for it other than some regoddamdigulous bad beats in late stages near the cash. I vow to cash in at least one of those daily ftp tournaments in March.

4. FTP 18-person sng's for $6, with the top 4 finishers getting $26 tokens to use in things like the daily guaranteed tournaments mentioned above. This is a structure which seems custom-made for a tight aggressive guy such as myself, and I figured going in that at an absolute minimum I should be cashing in 4/18 or 22% of these that I enter, since the top 4 out of 18 players receive the $26 token. Nonetheless, I am currently just 1 for 8 in cashing in those sng's, and to this day I can't figure out or explain why. I've been playing great poker but something always seems to happen, or I fail to pick up on an opponent's slow play of flopped quads, something like that. All I know is, ONE top-four finish out of 8 attempts in an 18-person sng where I feel like the best player at the table is wholly unacceptable, and I will be changing that shortly. Ideally I intend to use that sng to win enough $26 tokens that I can always do the nightly guaranteed tournaments using an existing token.

5. WWdN: In 9 of these tournaments, I have been the first one out once, the second one out once, I have final tabled once (going out in 7th eventually), and all the other times I have finished at or better than in the top 40th percentile or so among the players. I've definitely been playing better just lately which is great, but so far I've lost $99 playing in this tournament too, so again I have a lot of areas for improvement as we head into March.

The important thing overall is that January was my best month ever after a dismal 2005, and February was right up there with January. I'm through barely 1/6 of 2006, and I've already reached my #1 goal of winning an MTT, and I've had three significant cashes in large tournaments to boot (significant for the bankroll I choose to devote to online poker, anyways). I just need to keep hammering on doing the right things, and keep the tiltmonster at bay, where he has been basically since the new year when things seem to have started turning around for me.

See y'all tonight at the final table of the latest WWdN. And don't forget to congratulate Wil Wheaton for his performance at the WPT Invitational last week!