February is Over

February is officially in the books. The month started out as an attempt to make some great goals. Let's revisit them briefly to see what we set out to accomplish:

• Read Mathematics of Poker
• Post more poker strategy talk and hand analyst on the blog
• Take down 4 Guarantee tournaments on WPEX
• Final Table a Mookie on FTP
• Get back on track with my exercise
• Build more confidence in my game
• Visit A.C. at least twice

What actually happen is February turned into a training month and none of the goals really got accomplished. I spent tons of cash this month practicing new theories, playing games blind (practicing position), and working on strategies discussed in books and on the web. It's amazing how much money I spent on "finding out what works" I am surprised I finished in the money for the month. Before we get into my Win/Loss record for the month, lets look at what we did accomplish for the month.

• Read "The Poker Tournament Formula"
• Reading "Mathematics of Poker"
• Played more live games (just not in AC)
• Practiced playing blind and worked on position
• Watched hours of videos from PokerXFactor
• Started note taking and critical analysis of my SNGs

Over all I feel that I still have a lot to learn about SNG playing and feel I can really turn SNGs into huge profits. SNGs are so different then normal poker it's really not even poker. It's about time, patience, knowing when to bet and how much to bet. It's really a different animal all together. My leaks are definitely closing up, but I don't feel like I am as solid as I can be. Most of the time I bust out by making the right move while some donkey makes a horrible call and sucks out. I turned this into an "F Results" matter. Before I would be pissed that a guy would call my all in with A-2 OS and bust my pocket Queens; now I say, "good luck to ya" and hope I play him again. As long as I make the correct moves all the time, I will be the one in the positive at the end of the month/year. I consider it a donation to the poker community, one that I know I can get back when I am in another game.

On the downside of things I installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate and forgot to backup my player notes. So now I am starting fresh on all my player notes. Really sucks because I had tons of people labeled in WPEX. Almost every table I sat at I knew how they played, now I am clueless or guessing... "I think he's super aggressive, or is he a fish...."

Well while I am on no set topic I will also say I still do have tons of material I want to discuss on my blog. It seems that every time I want to blog something comes up, or I get wrapped into things. One night I spent 9 hours running push/fold EV calculations and didn't realize it was 2AM in the morning with work in about 4 hours. I lost that night and the night after (sleeping!) I guess you can say I been really wrapped up on studying the game and what's behind it than I had time to play and write. Even with the limited play time this month, most of the action I played was to learn and not win which makes my record this month look pretty bad. But without further ado, here is my Win/Loss record for the month.

Tournament Count: 79
Total Buy-ins: $1,186
Total Payouts: $1,380
Total Won/Lost: $194
Average Won/Lost: $2

Like I said, nothing spectacular, but as I mentioned before I am really surprised I came out ahead this month. I am, of course, hoping for a better month in March - we will see what happens. Even though I anticipate a better month I still will be focusing on new tactics and strategies that might end up costing me money. Time will tell what happens.