2009 Review

Going into 2009 I wasn't sure if I wanted to play poker or not. I gave online a shot a few times depositing into Full Tilt 50 on a couple of occasions. Problem was I would play in 24+2 tournies mostly and bust out after a tourney or two. I did manage to win a 10 dollar 45 man sng on full tilt fpr 170 dollars, but quickly gave the money back by entering big tournaments. I really felt that I could do well, but my bankroll management was terrible. I was left on the rail after a few tries.

I managed to save up some money and decided to give Ultimate Bet a try as I had rakeback on there. I started with 50 bucks and began to play the lowest game on there .01/.02 NL holdem. I did well and managed to work my way up to around 200 dollars. From there I began to play .05/.10 NL holdem, which on UB is a 20 max buyin. I did ok, then started getting coolered one hand after another. I remember one hand I had KK and the flop came AKx, we got allin on the flop and of course my opponent held AA. My bankroll quickly dipped to under 100 dollars.

At this point I thought about things and decided in my glory days I had done best at limit holdem. I redosited another 100 and began to play .25/.50 limit 6 max. To put it mildly I got killed, I couldnt believe what was happening. Every hand I'd get in with better starters and lose to some junk hand that made 2 pair or something. I was crushed. I took my remaining 50 of the site and began to rethink things.

My brother had been playing on pokerstars with some good results so I put my 50 on there. I was gonna grind .02/.04 limit. This lasted maybe 2 days as I couldnt bring myself to play that low. My brother had been playing PLO and I decided to give that a shot. At first I played so bad because I didnt know the game, but managed a few wins. I think I worked my bankroll up to around 150 bucks. I decided that PLO was for me so I took advantage of deposit bonuses (one Im still working off) and made deposits of 50, 100, 250. So I was now 450 invested into pokerstars. I did well on .01/.02 PLO so I moved up to .05/.10. I did well at first, but I soon found out the high rake at this level plus my bad play took me down. I reached 750 in account at one time, but cashed out at 550 for 100 profit. I left 6 dollars in my account which I'll get to later. So between UB and Pokerstars I was down 50 bucks.

I also played on fulltilt in 2009. I deposited 100 and worked of a 100 bonus and came out 50 ahead as well playing nothing but .01/.02 PLO. I had the account up to 400 at one point, but I cashed out at 300, for a 200 profit. Fulltilt offerred another bonus and I put 250 back into account to try and work off bonus. I was playing .25/.50 limit holdem and did well for awhile but then started getting killed again. I cashed out for 100, so down 150 for that deposit. Meaning I was up 50 for the year on fulltilt (this included bonuses and rakeback so in the games i actually lost). So +50 on fulltilt and -50 on UB + Pokerstars; has me even for the year.

Back to that 6 dollars I left on Pokerstars, I entered a 5.50 tourney with 20k guaranteed in prized money for basically all of my account. I finished 179th out of 5409 good for 27 dollars. The next day I played in an 11 dollar tourney and 16th out of 1204 good for 98 dollars. So I now had over 100 in my account. I started playing .01/.02 PLO again and won some more. I then entered a sattelite to the Sunday Million which I won and traded the tournament cash in for cash. I now had around 400 in my bankroll. This bankroll is still what I'm playing with today.

Basically it was a trial and error year for me online, I figured out which games were beatable by me and which ones werent. Alot of the factor in playing so low is the impact of the rake. Even games in which I mentioned I got killed, I beat without a rake. The following is a breakdown of game I played and my won/loss and I also noted rake paid:

Full Tilt

Game: .25/.50 Limit Holdem
Hands: 16,700
Won/Loss: -50
Rake Paid: 312

Game: .02/.05 PLO
Hands: 7,800
Won/Loss -89
Rake Paid: 160

Game: .01/.02 PLO
Hands: 24,700
Won/Loss +11
Rake Paid: 176

As can be seen the games I played at Full Tilt the rake had a huge impact.

Poker Stars

Game: .01/.02 PLO
Hands: 70,300
Won/Loss +251
Rake Paid: 251

Game: .05/.10 PLO
Hands: 14,770
Won/Loss: -65
Rake Paid: 298

Game: .01/.02 NL
Hands: 4,300
Won/Loss: +31
Rake Paid: 10

So really the only game that I 'beat' was .01/.02 PLO on stars. This is for a few reasons I think but the biggest one is the rake. The rake on stars doesnt start until the pot reaches 1 dollar. Stars takes 5 cent for every 1 dollar in the pot. Since most pots dont reach 1 dollar in .01/.02 the rake doesnt 'kick in' that often. As can be seen the rake 'kick in' much more on .05/.10 PLO as I paid more in rake there then in .01/.02 PLO with alot less hands.

So in review i made about 400 dollars in the year 2009 online, but I have new plans for 2010. I'll go into detail on my next post.