Supernova run

Since my last post I haven’t felt like blogging here at all. Blogging over the last few months has come to feel like a bit of a chore and I’m sure that that’s come through in some of the writing (or lack of it). Even the challenge I set myself in December failed to keep me entertained for the whole month. Even to the point where I was too bored to finish the blogging month off properly, with a summary.

But December went well overall and I haven’t been back to ‘work’ since I quit at the end of November. If it wasn’t for a little blow up cash-wise at the end of December, which led to a dramatic drop (it was pretty much a halt, actually) in volume, I would have easily reached Platinum star status for the month playing $5, $25 and $50 nl and pl O8.

O8 is the form of poker I most enjoy and I do enjoy it a lot. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across it part way through last year and my success in the game over the year, and especially in December, finally proved to me that I can make a better living playing O8 cash than I can working. So I made the decision at the start of this year to stay off work and commit myself to a big push for Supernova VIP status playing O8 cash. I hope to be there by October, whilst making what I would consider to be a comfortable living at the same time.

So, as I’m playing more poker now than I ever have, I think it makes sense for me to bring the blog back and write a bit about my progress through the year. I’m bound to have problems along the way but I hope that keeping an honest account of my successes and failures, as well as how I’m coping with the challenges that a run for Supernova will bring, will be helpful to anyone planning a Supernova run of their own one day, as well as being something that anyone currently heading for Supernova can relate to.

It took me 62k hands of 10c/25c O8 cash to reach Platinum in January. I 12-tabled full ring for most of the month (which feels very comfortable now) until I started getting a little pushed for time towards the end of the month… I had some hilarious 6k hand sessions of 20-tabling. This was great fun, if a little tough to do on my laptop screen. I had some very good days and some horrible days over the month and did very well to keep my tilting to just a couple of days this month. A $200 loss was my worst session, which didn’t feel too bad at the time but, on reflection, an 8 buy-in losing session is quite horrific. The rest of the month was fairly smooth though. It seems that, as I have no actual work to fall back on at the moment, I am much more likely to stop playing after a bad session rather than carry on and play badly.

I have actually grown up a lot (as a poker player, at least) in the last couple of months and I feel like there’s no danger of a huge blow up similar to the one I had six months back when I lost half of my roll playing 10c/25c and won it all back playing 50c/$1! I really can’t see this happening at all at the moment and my head seems to be in the right place at the tables. Though if I did move up a couple of levels after each losing day I’d probably be Supernova by April. I’d just be a very, very poor one!

Looking back at how January went, one of my concerns about my plan to be putting in sick volume every month is not spending enough time with people. The hours of the day I play really don’t help matters here. A common complaint for British players playing on an American site must be the unsociablnessness of the peak times. And given that I played at least 22 days in January, it means that the few days I did have off I was usually too tired to do anything or was sleeping. So, my main aim in February is to manage my weeks a lot better so I have at least one full day a week of awakeness to spend time with people and do things. My sister and her young kid live very close to me and it’s wrong that I only saw them once in January.

Apart from that, I’d like to start earning a little bit quicker… 62k hands of 10c/25c and only $1.5k profit on the month (a chunk of which was made using the 20k fpps I earned). My game improved a lot over the last two weeks of the month and I hope that February will be a bit more financially rewarding as a result.

What I learned in January:

- Platinum star is reachable each month playing just 10c/25c cash.
- I can have an 8 buy-in loss one day and come back the next day playing properly.
- To play more than 12 tables at a time.
- Women can be an absolute nightmare.

So, my main aims for February:

- Plan my time away from the tables better so I feel awake enough to do things on my days off.
- See my sister and nephew more often.
- Maintain Platinum.
- Win more!

Will hopefully be back during the month to talk some more.
Later.