One Month Down

Well, January was pretty much a disaster all around, the only positive is that I finished with 92,000 VPPs, which puts me a couple days ahead of SuperNova Elite (SNE) pace. I was down close to $8k for the month at one point, but made a nice recovery at the end to cut losses to only $1800ish for the month. It's the first month in which I played 50+ hours that I've finished in the red for quite some time.

The recovery was due to about $2700 in cash game winnings from 2 days of PLO and NLHE. I don't plan on playing cash games very often, but every once in a while it's a nice diversion from SNGs. I also ran pretty well in $60-$114 buyin 6 and 9 max SNGs. I couldn't ever get anything going in my main game, Double or Nothings (DoNs) which accounted for most of the losses.

I've really struggled with the decision on whether or not to keep going with $104 DoNs or just move down and stick to the $52 level. My results long term in the $52s have been pretty phenomenal for the number of tables I play (usually 30-38 continuously), I've now logged 17,112 of them for a profit of $28,076 according to Sharkscope. That's good for a 3.2% ROI. My thinking is that if my ROI is 3.2% at $52s, then it should be about 1.5%ish at the $104s, but that just hasn't been the case. I see a lot of awful plays in the $104s and a couple of the regs are really bad, but for some reason my results there just have not been any good. I've now played 13,683 of them at -0.6% ROI. That's a pretty substantial sample, and while I really, truly believe I should be a slight winner in them, I don't know if I'm just running terribly in them or if I'm delusional, maybe a little of both.

Anyway, I played my first session of February and lost $476 overall, and lost $800 at the $104s. I really don't feel like going through another losing month again, so for the time being I'll probably just stick with the $52s and grind out a decent profit for the month and then make a decision later on in the month.

The only problem with giving up the $104s is that I think I'd probably be about 95% to hit SNE if I could just play those most of the year, but if I drop down to $52s, then I think my chances of hitting SNE probably drops to 70%. I really, really want to hit SNE, but it'd probably be silly to make it and then end up dropping $20-40k at the tables. The Stars VIP program is really addicting b/c all the rewards you get along the way are really great and sometimes you play games that aren't as profitable just for the rewards, but with $104s, I thought I could get the best of both worlds, but that really hasn't been the case, so for now, profit will be the primary goal, with VPPs put slightly on the backburner. I can still rack up tons of VPPs at $52s, but now SNE will require a ton more work.