Results and Analysis, Week and Month Ending 3/31

Wow, I can't believe that it's been a week since I've posted.  After living with undiagnosed ADD for so long, and having to break all the bad habits that I learned, I guess I'll always struggle at least a little with being organized and dilligent.

Last month was defintely a mess.  The numbers aren't good.  But at the end of the month, something very positive happened, in fact, I think it will be a game-changer.  I won't cover all of that in one post, but without further ado, here are the numbers:


Weekly Results, 3/25-3/31
-$26.34  Profit or loss on poker
   +1.00 Released amount of original deposit bonus
----------
-$25.34


Monthly Results for March
  -$3.67  3/1-3/3 (partial week)
     2.93  3/4-3/10
   19.16  3/11-3/17
    -9.93  3/18-3/24
  -25.34  3/25/3/31
---------
-$16.85

What was looking like a decent month fell apart in the last two weeks.  There are several reasons for that.  Some of I have no control over, some I have some control over, and some are very fixable.  Here are some of them.

1. Variance.  It happens.  A pro can be the World Series of Poker or World Poker Tour player of the year one year, and barely break even playing live tournaments the next year.  I didn't have a lot of things go my way last month, and there is nothing I can do about it.  It goes with the territory.  At one point last year, one of the poker rating sites had me in the 93rd percentile at my tournament level, even though my cashes were in about the 25th percentile.

2. FPS. This is very fixable.  As mentioned in an earlier post, it's easy to get too cute and fall prey to Fancy Play Syndrome.  I was getting way too tricky in my SNGs, and I'm sure that it cost me some cashes.

3. Play options.  The choices on Americas Cardroom have been limited.  The number of players is growing steadily, but with only 8,000 players on the site during peak hours, and the player pool divided into a lot of pieces, playing different games and variants, the things in which I do the best haven't been available.  Add to that that the schedule has been changing regulary, and they only show the tournaments a few hours at at time, and most of the changes haven't been for the better

I'm definitely disappointed. Whenever players post on 2+2 that they have never had a losing month, I'm always envious, even though I know that most of them probably aren't tournament specialists (the variance in cash games is not nearly as nasty as it is in tournaments.)

All that I can do is try to make lemons out of lemonade, and make the best table selection and game selection decisions that I can.  At some times it mught just be better to not play at all, and study or do something else instead.

The good news is that in the last few days things have changing for the better.  The site is accepting user input (including mine), and things are changing for the better.