Results for March 2008 - switching from speed to regular
April is here! It’s time to count the beans for March (and the other past months)…
December and January I did not play much poker, because I was busy with other stuff. I finished the two months at about +$500 each for very few hours of play.
February I played quite a lot of poker, and hit my biggest downswing to date. 32 buyins at it’s worst hitting an all time low -700$. I have had a 40 buyin downswing in the past, but that was at the 11s, not the 22s. This underlines the importance of bankroll management. The downswing of course sickened me, but in hindsight I feel I kept playing very close to perfect. I also analyzed my results using a luck analyzer, which confirmed that I was just running very bad, and actually had a decent ROI if I had not been kicked in the nuts by lady luck!
However, I switched from playing the 22$ speeds to playing 11$ regulars, and starting killing these. I feel my edge is quite a lot bigger here, since we play more hands, and we don’t get to push/fold terriroty quite so fast. I believe swings are less, but in order to maintain the same hourly, you need about a 50% bigger ROI than playing speeds, since an average speed lasts about 28 minutes and an average regular SNG lasts about 42 minutes. I might get back to this subject in a future post, since I find it quite interesting. I then mixed in 22$’s (also regular), and now I 22$s, unless there is not enough action. I ended up with a small profit of about 200$ in February - which actually felt good, because I dug my way out of that downswing and felt on top of the game.
In March, I have played 60 hours of poker, which is like the third most I have ever played. I have 12-tabled the 22$s and 11$s regulars at Party Poker for 56 hours and two multitable tournaments for an additional 4 hours, where I took second place in one of them for 600$.
I played 421 22$ - for a 21% return on investment and finished in the money in 40% of them.
I played 248 11$ - for a 0.07% return on investment and finished in the money in 34% of them.
So I won 1920$ on SNG’s and 550 on MTT’s, my best month ever.
My hourly for SNG’s alone is $34.40 this month plus the value of “rakeback”.
I am quite happy about this result, mostly my ROI on the $22s though (which is probably not sustainable but just a semi-hot streak).
In April I am going to continue 12-tabling the $22s (regular) and start mixing in some $33s. I am also pursuing a great promotion goal, which is Party Pokers rakefree days, which requires me to earn about 2000 party points to get 4 rakefree days (and a chance to win more in a tournament). I rake about $20 an hour, so adding 20$ to my hourly for these 4-5 days is a solid promotion, and I plan on playing until my eyes bleed or my hands fall of - whatever comes first. 
April 20th, 2008 at 10:30
Hi,
as you said you need a 50% higher roi on the regulars, which might be achievable, but not when 12 tabling i suppose…
80% of your edge are wihtin the push or fold phase so you should be happy to be there fast. (Of course it’d be nice if this phase would last longer).
I love the turbo(not speeds) on party. Even faster, and still a good roi. So even I’m only 8-tabling i have a higher hourly, but on the 11$ tourneys…
Should think about staying at the speeds imo
Keep on grindin
April 20th, 2008 at 16:32
Thanks for your comments, Freddy.
I like playing the regulars much more than the speeds.
I am running at 17% ROI over the first 900 22s (12-tabling), and feel this is close to sustainable. I ran at around 9% ROI for 2-3000 speeds (11s and 22s), so right now I am making a better hourly playing the regulars, so that’s what I am going to keep doing for now.
April 21st, 2008 at 15:50
Sounds solid, even though in poker variance will never let you know what roi you are actually playing with
Hope you can keep your roi though, maybe you want to look more into your pof game, because imo the difference between speed and reg should not be that big.