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peterbirksWell, I've ploughed through a few more Glastonbury hours today. Not that I actually get to watch a full set. It's just categorisation. I sometimes wonder if I spend too much time categorising and too little time living.
However, a few gems have appeared. One was the surprise appearance of Beirut, whose Gulag Orkestar was one of the highlights of last year. I had always assumed that this was the kind of stuff put together in a bedroom, but, lo and behold, here he was, live, with about half a dozen players of obscure brass instruments, knocking out Balkan folk songs in a southern California-stylee. The weird thing is, Beirut looks like a Southern California kid, but his music sounds nothing like (think Klezmer meets the Romanian AntiChrist). An idle passer-by, on hearing the opening bars, would have thought. "what the... ?!"
Marvellous. He got the crowd going by the end, as well.
Here's some figures for the first six months. Sorry, no time to put together a table. I hope that this comes out readable. All figures are dollars. Games where less than 1,500 hands were played have been excluded.
Stake---------BONUS-----$2-$4----$1-$2(6)---$3-$6---$1-$2----$100NL----$50NL
Hands Played----0-------21795------3053-------1626------7955----3780-----27191
Win (Loss----+2,863-----($201)-----+$42-------($181)----+$246---+$268---+$1,387
W/R(Loss) per 100-------(0.92c)-----$1.38------($11.14)---$3.09---$7.10-----$5.10
I put these together a few days ago.
My figures for the half year to date are:
393.50 hours
67,910 hands
$4,319 won
$10.44 per hour
$6.36 per 100 hands
I should also point out that I've actually only played for five months in the first six months of the year, owing to a greater than usual time away, and a short period of no broadband, So, although I am on a par with my performances last year and in 2005 (at the same date), I've actually played about 15,000 hands (and 80 to 90 hours) fewer.
The charts for the year to date are somewhat revealing:
Blue=Party: Red=IPoker: Orange=UB; Browny-Purple=Stars: Purple=Full Tilt
A spurt at the start, several months of shit, and quite a performance at the end. All down to shifting to NL. There is little difference between my performance at various sites. I tended to do poorly on UB when I was pushing to clear a bonus. It's definitely best to "let a bonus go" than play when tired, for too long, in an attempt to clear it. In fact I did just this with the FTP bonus offer (let the bonus go, rather than play too hard in order to clear it). I cleared $60 of $300 and decided that the bonus offered wasn't worth my estimated loss of EV playing in the tougher games.
Although this looks as though bonuses (the line heading steadily upwards!) make up a vast proportion of my profit, this is a bit misleading. Firstly, by April or thereabouts, I was showing a profit of the year of about $1500, and $1700 of it was bonus/rakeback. In other words, I was losing at the tables. A look at the $2-$4 and $3-$6 lines (the $2-$4 is in turquoise, the $3-$6 is in red, $1-$2 6-max is purple) confirms this.
Since shifting to No Limit (the main light green line is $50 buy-in, the smaller dark green line is $100 buy-in), I've won about $3,000, of which $1300 has been in bonuses and rakeback. Although this is a more satisfactory ratio, I think that, in defence of rakeback and bonuses, the pair saved my arse from February to April. As the first chart shows, despite losing at the tables, the line was still edging upwards. It wasn't a sustainable position from my point of view, but it was sustainable economically.
Finally, the performance this year compared with the past few years. Note the greater number of "flat lines" in this year's line; these are periods when I did not play at all.
Aims for the rest of the year? A good question. Being the eternal pessimist, I wonder if I am just running good at the moment. However, I suppose that the rule is, when running good, move up. I had my first tentative foray into 4-tabling $100 buy-ins last night (previously I had restricted myself to three tables at this level) and it seemed to go okay.
Any move to $200 would probably necessitate cutting down to two tables for a good while, and the inevitable drop in hourly rate. I think that any move to this level would be more for the challenge than for economic gain. I've kind of resigned myself to being a en-buck an hour player. I think that's my limit, in the long run (although it should rise with inflation!)
My nightmare of getting money out continues. I assumed that, although I couldn't transfer cash to a US account, that I would have no problem withdrawing dollar-denominated cheques. Not so. Pokerstars will only send me a cheque in euros or GBP, and neteller is the same. The illiterate response I got from the Neteller customer support merchant was worse than useless, but seemed to confirm that I had no chance of a dollar cheque.
Andy told me that he got money into the Citi dollar account from his HSBC sterling account without exchange rate charges, but it seems I am stiffed into receiving cheques in sterling, which rather defeats the point in opening the Citi account in the first place. Oh well, I shall trudge arround the sites in search of one that will send me a dollar cheque. I guess that it will then be a matter of sliding some money in and seeing if I can get it back out by cheque. However, most of them seem to insist on sending most of the money back in the way whence it came (i.e., to Neteller). So, the only solution would appear to be to try to get the Citi bank account slipped in as an EFT account on Neteller. I don't really fancy my chances on this one, as I know that they use New York for their clearing operation.
This really all is a pain in the backside, this stopping people from functioning in the currency of their choice. I think that what is most annoying is that I feel there ought to be some get-around, if only I looked hard enough.
PJ
However, a few gems have appeared. One was the surprise appearance of Beirut, whose Gulag Orkestar was one of the highlights of last year. I had always assumed that this was the kind of stuff put together in a bedroom, but, lo and behold, here he was, live, with about half a dozen players of obscure brass instruments, knocking out Balkan folk songs in a southern California-stylee. The weird thing is, Beirut looks like a Southern California kid, but his music sounds nothing like (think Klezmer meets the Romanian AntiChrist). An idle passer-by, on hearing the opening bars, would have thought. "what the... ?!"
Marvellous. He got the crowd going by the end, as well.
Here's some figures for the first six months. Sorry, no time to put together a table. I hope that this comes out readable. All figures are dollars. Games where less than 1,500 hands were played have been excluded.
Stake---------BONUS-----$2-$4----$1-$2(6)---$3-$6---$1-$2----$100NL----$50NL
Hands Played----0-------21795------3053-------1626------7955----3780-----27191
Win (Loss----+2,863-----($201)-----+$42-------($181)----+$246---+$268---+$1,387
W/R(Loss) per 100-------(0.92c)-----$1.38------($11.14)---$3.09---$7.10-----$5.10
I put these together a few days ago.
My figures for the half year to date are:
393.50 hours
67,910 hands
$4,319 won
$10.44 per hour
$6.36 per 100 hands
I should also point out that I've actually only played for five months in the first six months of the year, owing to a greater than usual time away, and a short period of no broadband, So, although I am on a par with my performances last year and in 2005 (at the same date), I've actually played about 15,000 hands (and 80 to 90 hours) fewer.
The charts for the year to date are somewhat revealing:
Blue=Party: Red=IPoker: Orange=UB; Browny-Purple=Stars: Purple=Full Tilt
A spurt at the start, several months of shit, and quite a performance at the end. All down to shifting to NL. There is little difference between my performance at various sites. I tended to do poorly on UB when I was pushing to clear a bonus. It's definitely best to "let a bonus go" than play when tired, for too long, in an attempt to clear it. In fact I did just this with the FTP bonus offer (let the bonus go, rather than play too hard in order to clear it). I cleared $60 of $300 and decided that the bonus offered wasn't worth my estimated loss of EV playing in the tougher games.
Although this looks as though bonuses (the line heading steadily upwards!) make up a vast proportion of my profit, this is a bit misleading. Firstly, by April or thereabouts, I was showing a profit of the year of about $1500, and $1700 of it was bonus/rakeback. In other words, I was losing at the tables. A look at the $2-$4 and $3-$6 lines (the $2-$4 is in turquoise, the $3-$6 is in red, $1-$2 6-max is purple) confirms this.
Since shifting to No Limit (the main light green line is $50 buy-in, the smaller dark green line is $100 buy-in), I've won about $3,000, of which $1300 has been in bonuses and rakeback. Although this is a more satisfactory ratio, I think that, in defence of rakeback and bonuses, the pair saved my arse from February to April. As the first chart shows, despite losing at the tables, the line was still edging upwards. It wasn't a sustainable position from my point of view, but it was sustainable economically.
Finally, the performance this year compared with the past few years. Note the greater number of "flat lines" in this year's line; these are periods when I did not play at all.
Aims for the rest of the year? A good question. Being the eternal pessimist, I wonder if I am just running good at the moment. However, I suppose that the rule is, when running good, move up. I had my first tentative foray into 4-tabling $100 buy-ins last night (previously I had restricted myself to three tables at this level) and it seemed to go okay.
Any move to $200 would probably necessitate cutting down to two tables for a good while, and the inevitable drop in hourly rate. I think that any move to this level would be more for the challenge than for economic gain. I've kind of resigned myself to being a en-buck an hour player. I think that's my limit, in the long run (although it should rise with inflation!)
My nightmare of getting money out continues. I assumed that, although I couldn't transfer cash to a US account, that I would have no problem withdrawing dollar-denominated cheques. Not so. Pokerstars will only send me a cheque in euros or GBP, and neteller is the same. The illiterate response I got from the Neteller customer support merchant was worse than useless, but seemed to confirm that I had no chance of a dollar cheque.
Andy told me that he got money into the Citi dollar account from his HSBC sterling account without exchange rate charges, but it seems I am stiffed into receiving cheques in sterling, which rather defeats the point in opening the Citi account in the first place. Oh well, I shall trudge arround the sites in search of one that will send me a dollar cheque. I guess that it will then be a matter of sliding some money in and seeing if I can get it back out by cheque. However, most of them seem to insist on sending most of the money back in the way whence it came (i.e., to Neteller). So, the only solution would appear to be to try to get the Citi bank account slipped in as an EFT account on Neteller. I don't really fancy my chances on this one, as I know that they use New York for their clearing operation.
This really all is a pain in the backside, this stopping people from functioning in the currency of their choice. I think that what is most annoying is that I feel there ought to be some get-around, if only I looked hard enough.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2007-06-30 09:38 am (UTC)as I have suggested before,I think your understanding of the game allows you to beat the smaller stakes NL where the play is at times very poor. I am pleased your results so far back that up.Good luck and hopefully a few more of your thoughts on NL.
Ben
Liverpool