How am I running?

Last night I took a few minutes to run a few of my numbers to see how I have been running in my $5.20 DON’s now that I have a few more under my belt. Since I started playing $5.20 DON’s I have run 46 out of 75 total for a 18% ROI overall. This past week I ran 15 out of 25 for a 16.7% ROI. Since I still don’t have very many logged that Monkey Tilt session I had really hurt me when I ran 0 for 5. If I would have logged off when I knew I was tilting before I did those 5 DON’s my overall ROI would have been 24.5% and for the past week it would have been 42%!!! Three things just screamed at me when I saw this! 1st: It’s very easy to see why you need a very large sample to gauge your ROI accurately. The 5 tourneys I blew when I was tilting lowered my overall ROI by 6.5%!! 2nd: DO NOT PLAY WHEN TILTING!!!! It will devastate your ROI and your bankroll. 3rd: Every single time you sit down it’s extremely important to focus and play the best you can. Never give up in a tourney just because you are almost out of chips. Out of 100 tourneys if you run at 25% ROI and you give up or lose just 1 tourney that you could have won if you stayed focused your ROI will drop 2%! EVERY single tourney is important! I see it so often when someone loses most of their stack on a hand and then move all in on the next hand because they have given up. If you want to be a winning player you can never give up! Just seeing these numbers short term is going to help me stay focused on the long term. Right now I am all about the short term since that’s all I have being a newbie. I am however thinking about the future and where I want to be in 3 months, 6 months and a year from now. I am also thinking about how I am going to get there and what ROI% I would need to get there given the amount of time I play. I have tweaked my bankroll requirements for moving up to the next levels some now. I knew the $10.40 level would play harder, but I didn’t like the feeling I had when I played those two tourneys last week. I am pretty sure I was playing scared since I was playing at a level I never had played at before. I’d rather 2-table $5.20’s that I am comfortable at instead of playing 1 $10.40 for now. I think I am going to hold off taking shots at the $10.40’s until I am at a $300 bankroll. At that time I think I will start 2-tabling a $10.40 along with a $5.20 to get my feet wet slowly at the $10.40 level. Once I have at least 15-20 of the $10.40’s under my belt I will review then to see if I can start playing them exclusively. I set a goal to reach by summer last month, but to come up with the goal I layed out some figures based on different ROI% at different levels. I did this back when I only had a $50 bankroll and so far I have to say I am pretty close to on track with each step I layed out. Of course each step becomes more important if I want to reach my goal. I also think each step will be harder and hopefully I will continue to grow in my abilities or I won’t reach it. I wasn’t going to put too many details on my blog about my plans or how I would reach them but what the heck it’s pretty basic anyway. I started in November with $25 initial bankroll.
My initial Goals were:
11/1/2008 : BR $25 play $1.10 DON’s @ 30% ROI
11/15/2008: BR$90 play $5.20 DON’s @ 25% ROI
12/15/2008: BR $300 play $10.40 DON’s @ 20% ROI
01/15/2009: BR $600 play $20.40 DON’s @ 15% ROI
02/15/2009: BR $1000 2-table $20.40 DON’s @ 15%ROI
03/15/2009: BR $1700 3-table $20.40 DON’s @ 15% ROI
04/15/2009: BR $2600 4-table $20.40 DON’s @ 15% ROI
05/15/2009: BR $4000 make 1st withdrawal $1,000
Now I layed this out based on some hopefully realistic attainable ROI% that I have pulled out of the forum’s. First off I have no idea if I can reach these ROI% to begin with, but if I want to reach my goal based on the hours I play then that’s what it will take. Second I am almost positive that this is going to change now. I am already seeing that I am going to blend two levels instead of just jumping up to the next one cleanly. Third I am pretty sure I won’t end up 4-tabling the $20.80’s. I think IF…IF… I ever get to that point that I will move up another level instead of 4-tabling. I just prefer to focus on fewer tables..my personal preference. I would prefer to 2-table the $52.00 DON’s @ 10% instead of trying to 4-table the $20.80’s @ 15% ROI. But that decision is months away AT BEST and I will cross that bridge if I ever happen to see it. Wouldn’t it be nice if I saw that bridge though!! LOL Back to the present.. Since I was up until 3:30 the previous night I just ran a few DON’s last night. I went 2 out of 3 and my loss came w/ K-K vs A-A at the 50-100 blind level. 8 remaining and I had 1,600 chips. I raised to 400 early position and was called by guy in middle. Flop came Jack high rainbow and I pushed and he called of course with his aces. Oh well..nothing you can do about that. The ONLY thing that would have saved my stack is an ace on the flop. At that stage of the tourney I would have folded my kings with an ace on the flop.
C-ya at the tables
Dave
Starting BR: $225
Ending BR: $230