October 2010 Poker Results

This was a strange month. Technically, I had a winning month since I'm ending the month with more money in my account than I had started with. Only about 5 buy-ins (at my current regular level) worth more, but still that's better than a negative amount. Really, my losses were offset by clearing some bonuses. So I actually had a losing month.

If you look at this month graph in big blinds, the way I normally post it, I had a winning month...

But if you look at the actual dollar graph, it shows me as being below the zero line....

I do feel that the dollar graph is a better visual representation of the month as a whole, since it depicts the drastic swings more accurately. The differences between the two graphs are simply because I played at three different stakes this month.

I didn't play as many hands, and usually less tables, than I normally do or attempt to do most months. Instead I concentrated on quitting, studying, and combing my game for leaks.

By far, my biggest problem is not quitting when things are going badly. The other day I sat down and went through my database and took every session for the last five months where I went over what should be my stoploss. Turns out those few big losing sessions a month always added up to 100% or more of the amounts I lost in each of those losing months. In fact, had I quit those sessions when I should've my losses would've been cut by more than half.

Even worse, this month was jumping back up in stakes when I wasn't rolled for it again, and then ignoring my stop loss and losing a bunch. That's that huge dip in the dollar graph around the middle of the month. Had I just stopped when I hit my loss limit, or even better, had just played my regular stakes that I'm rolled for and stopped if things weren't going well, I would've made more money this month. I lost more in that single session than my final losses came out to for the month (since obviously, wins can offset the losses).

So my goals for November are simply...

• to keep plugging any leaks I find
• to have a winning month without relying on bonuses to do so, even a small win is fine
• to continue studying and applying new concepts to my game
• to hopefully have a winrate high enough that I can add more tables back in
• to play at least 10k hands, preferably closer to 15k
• to remember to quit when I should

This month, I was just psyched that the final session of the month wasn't a loser. Not to sound superstitious, but the last two months where I had a losing final session it carried over into losing the following month.