Wednesday, April 30, 2008

April Is the Coolest Month

April 2008 was my third-best month everSpent a little time today looking over the April stats. Turned out to be a terrific month -- my third-best ever. My previous all-time best month was last April, actually. Something about the springtime, I suppose.

Ended up playing a lot of different games over the last thirty days. I could go back and check, but I probably played fewer hands of Hold ’em (a little under 400) during April than in any previous month since I started playing online poker.

Altogether I played about 8,200 hands of poker, not counting tournaments (of which I only played a couple, the only significant cash being last Saturday). Most of the hands were pot limit Omaha (61.1%), followed by Stud/8 (20.1%), H.O.R.S.E. (12.3%), and limit Hold ’em (4.6%). I played one short session of Stud Hi and PLO/8 (both times having accidentally sat down at those tables). Also played a few hands of five card stud on Bodog.

Essentially broke even in those Hold ’em hands. Won a little at H.O.R.S.E. and a little more at Stud/8. But by far most of my winnings for the month -- nearly 90% -- came at the PLO tables.

Why did April go so well? I ran well, I know. The biggest difference, though, had to be the fact that I rarely bought in short all month. I had been in the habit of buying in for $10 at the PLO25 tables, employing the short-stacker’s strategy of looking for spots to gamble and double up. Was mostly working, I suppose, but I had come to realize that once I did get a bigger stack I tended to make better decisions.

Finally I just started buying in for the max. every time, and while I did get stacked every once in a while, my overall swings were actually less dramatic than they were when I was primarily buying in short.

Of course, it helped to have hands like this one (from last night):



What a massacre! Bodies all over the stage. Doesn’t hurt to have a big stack, I suppose, when the cards come out so agreeably.

Let’s keep it goin’ in May, why don’t we?

Labels: , ,

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The ever-popular underfull, a PLO classic and a leak I quickly learned to plug.
The short-stack strategy is starting to pay off for my but it can be a tedious grind. After a few months of very little poker I found my play to be very rusty and only this month I started breaking even again and went up to $0.25/$0.50 with a measure of confidence.

In any case, pot limit Omaha is the game to clear your bonus with ;)

I have picked up Stud poker as a cool down game those times playing PLO really gets to my nerves :)

5/01/2008 6:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like Omaha, but Omaha hates me. I am probably the worst 0/8 player in the world too.

Out of interest, why only Limit hold em? I find it dry in comparison to NL and as for strategy, a lot of the time I read a hand history on 2+2 the advice is check call, check call, check call, because you're always getting the odds. What do high stakes limit players do, just share the money out and let the rake get them?

5/01/2008 4:52 PM  
Blogger Short-Stacked Shamus said...

Kind of gravitated away from NLHE a couple of years ago, Chris. Was playing nothing but LHE, essentially, for a long time, then got into PLO more last spring.

Should have added here a couple of other reasons why I think the month went well: (1) most of my sessions -- with a few exceptions -- were short ones; and (2) I didn't multi-table as much as I had been doing previously.

5/01/2008 10:05 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Newer Posts
Older Posts

Copyright © 2006-2021 Hard-Boiled Poker.
All Rights Reserved.