Back on the 14th of May 2007 I posted that my online game in 2007 was not going as good as I had hoped for. I wasn’t going to stick for that however and I’ve been busy rectifying that. I have achieved a big improvement over the past 2 months and this is how I have done it.

1. I pored over my past history in pokertracker and identified a number of minor leaks which I have begun to address.
2. Totally abandoned playing outside of my bankroll.
3. Identified the sites, games and levels where I do best at and which games are most profitable in my current bankroll level.
   1. I have done this in big detail, including bringing together all my past pokertracker data into one database. I made a shocking discovery. My average $ hour in hold’em pokertracker was $34. If I hadn’t been taking shots at big games like 20/40 NL and stuck to 5/10 NL it appears that even taking a conservative estimate of my returns playing 2 to 3 tables of $5-$10 NL would have earned me an average of over $200 an hour, a massive almost 6-fold difference. A thumbs up for bankroll management if ever there was one.
   2. I have created spreadsheets using statistical formula and done some VBA programming to determine best game selection vis a vis current bankroll.
   3. Abandoned playing online Mtts, they have never been a source of revenue for me and even if they were I can’t conceive that I can ever make money in them to the same extent or consistency that I do in cash games or even in Sit N’ Gos.
   4. Restricted my Sit N Gos to Everest Poker where I have a massive ROI(Return on Investment) so far, the structure and the play standard in here makes these by far my favourite place to play Sit N Go’s. Even so I have cut back on these, with my current bankroll it only makes sense for me to either play two or more $200 games at a time or play the $500 games and these don’t happen quite as often as I’d like.
   5. I’ve progressed from $1-$2 NL to $3-$6NL and with some occasional $5-$10 NL play on Green Joker Poker and occasionally on other sites on the IPoker network. I’ve had a good time of it there the past couple months, been satisfying to work my way up levels. A lot of the regular guys are tough enough here, it’s the guys who are not so familiar to me, the people who by and large are taking shots out of their bankroll and who are out of their depth who provide the profit.

The results so far have shown a dramatic improvement, even above my forecasts based on my pokertracker review. May and June have seen me make $13.5K in No Limit Hold’Em with a return of ptBB/100 of 8.97. More recently in the 3/6 and 5/10 tables I’m running even better earning $158.33 per table per hour. I do need to work on the amount of these tables I’m playing at one time, my MT(multi-tabling) ratio at 3/6 and 5/10 is just at 1.48(this low figure is partially accounted for also because I’m playing some 2/4 at the same time) so my overall $ per hour at 3/6 and 5/10 is $233.72. A massive improvement to what went before, I don’t see any reason either why this can’t be sustained. I just have to avoid moving beyond 5/10 until I have a massive bankroll. Hopefully that might be the case after my trip to Vegas.

In my pokertracker reviews my Pot Limit Omaha returns were a lot better than my NL returns. I was running at over $60 an hour in this game, considering I only took it up in March 2006 I think I did very well, though I think there is room for serious improvement here also.

I have been concentrating more on No Limit the past couple months. I have played a small bit of Omaha though and have had returns of $85.63 per hour since May 14th the date of my previous post. I think this can be further improved upon but feel I haven’t been playing my best Omaha as No Limit Holdem has got more of my attention. For the time being this probably will remain the case, I felt I have made too many silly plays in Omaha when switching from Holdem, and it makes sense to stick more with what’s bringing in the money.

My Sit N Go performance on Everest has continued strong, I have averaged over $200 an hour there and that’s with just an MT ratio of 1.03, my ROI is savage at 57.47% at 200 and 500 NL there. I know a lot of people would argue that this level of return is unsustainable and I wouldn’t disagree that it’s likely to drop, but the structure is so good on Everest and the play standard so bad I really think a ROI as high as 40% is sustainable, though whether that bears out in actuality I would need to play a load more to get a better idea of the truth of this belief.