Another lucky month...

I've always hated it when poker players complain about their luck, seeming to believe that they are the unluckiest player in the world. I've always thought that there were just unable to deal with a bad beat and didn't really understand the mental aspect of the game. However, I'm starting to think that the reason I have no sympathy for this is because I have never really been unlucky at poker. Infact, I think I am very lucky.

For about a year I have been checking out my All-in EV every now and again and I don't think that in that period I have had a month where I have been over $100 down in luck. However, quite often I have been $300-$500 up. I don't really notice when I'm playing, as it's not that I suck-out on people a lot, it's more that no-one seems to suck out on me. I can play a session and think that there was no real luck one way or another, but I check the stats and I should've lost $100 more.

This month was no exception. The way I played meant that I should've lost $327 this month. However, I won $103. Standard.

So overall I lost $55 at $100NL over 8.5k hands and won $158 at $25NL over 1.5k hands. Very poor. Rakeback and tournies took me to a total for the month of about $260 though. However, I do think I played well at $100NL (despite my VP$IP not breaking the 20 target) and it felt like just one of those months. Obviously All-in EV only measures one kind of luck, and makes no allowances for how many times you run KK into AA, and I'd like to think I lost out a bit on situational luck this month. No idea though.

Hand of the month - pretty standard and just an ideal turn.

So next month I want to keep playing the same, no real changes to make, and I just hope the luck doesn't catch up with me or it could be a very nasty month!

Close to a target...

Not a bad month. I played like a bit of a dweeb and got fairly lucky (about $200 up in luck) but I ended the month up $725 and made another $155 through rakeback. At one point I was on $990 total and I really wanted a $1000+ month but it wasn't to be. That's my target for the next few months though!

This month I've been very busy with work and studying and so when I did play poker I often didn't have much time and wasn't feeling my A game. Because of this I played quite a few sessions at lower levels this month. Overall I played about 6k hands at $100nl, running at 9.7 BB/100, and I'm particularly pleased because I loosened up even further, playing 20/16.5 this month. I think it was in May last year when I said I would try and play with a VP$IP of over 20 and it's taken me 8 months but I'm finally there! The other 7k hands were mostly dossing around at $25nl where I ran at 27/22.

I'm still going to be very busy this month but I will try to play more $100nl as I'm still not completely comfortable with this level yet and that only come from playing thousands of hands.

Hand of the month - I think I played it very standard and just got the perfect turn - any comments?

Targets - obviously I want to break that $1000 mark but I would be happy with a month where I play well, run at over 20 VP$IP again and then the winning should follow.