frosty's blog

So I’ve been back at the tables for a few days now and things have gone pretty well. My sessions have been pretty short and brief (3k hands) but that will pick up over the coming days and hopefully set the tone for the rest of the year. I’ve just been playing 100nl so far because there are wayy more games running than at midstakes so it’s easier to get tables up and choose better ones to play at. I’m up a few buy-ins but have been running pretty well but it’s just been over a small sample regardless…

Based on the data from my early sessions, I now have a much better idea what to expect in terms of VPPs for this year and what kind of goals I want to accomplish for 2012. Basically, I’ve been hit pretty hard by the new VPP changes-as expected. Instead of getting about .28 VPPs/hand at 100nl, I’ve been getting .20 lol I play somewhere around 14/11/4, which is far from an uber nit but is definitely on the tighter side of the spectrum. It sucks that some players will benefit immensely more than others from these changes just because they have a different playing style…especially when the looser players are almost all brain-dead, break-even aggrotards. Oh well, I get what Stars is trying to do with regards to making the games more entertaining for recreational players and I support that. I think that a couple of things must drive the recreational players crazy: 1) Having to wait a long time for the regulars to act every hand because they’re on so many tables-even I get annoyed when I’m in a hand against a reg and they’re taking forever to respond…that said, I’ve definitely also been a part of the problem on many occasions (especially when I run to the bathroom or something and almost time out on every table). 2) Having to play with short-stackers that never flat pre-flop and instead squeeze the recreational player out of every pot. Fortunately, I think that Stars is headed in the right direction when it comes to addressing both of these issues. The VPP changes should have a positive effect on deterring short-stackers since most of them play so tight that their VPP count will drop drastically, which will force them to either log even more hours or change their play. When it comes to the issue of taking too long for regulars to act, well it looks like zoom poker (http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/zoom/) could solve that problem once it comes into effect! Only time will tell what kind of changes come about in terms of game quality due to these effects and we’ll all just have to wait and see.

Anyways, getting back to my plan for this year. The weighted-contributed VPP distribution method probably should have been in place a while ago since it seems like the most fair and rational system…the more money you put into a pot (and thus the more rake you pay), the more VPPs you should earn. With that in mind, even though I’m coming up on the losing end of the deal here I can deal with it…especially since I’m not going for SNE this year. In fact, the reduction in VPPs will just mean that I’ll have to play a little extra longer each day to obtain my annual goal of what is now going to be 500K VPPs. I definitely won’t be changing my playing style to cater to the VPP changes. I’ve never been a player that simply plays for VPPs, I’ve always been a winning player and have thought of rakeback as a bonus-even though it makes up such a large portion of my earnings. As I said already, I think the people that are going to be royally f**ked by these changes are losing shortstackers that may not be able to stay afloat with less VPPs (which I view as a positive thing for the games, obviously). I wouldn’t expect any winning player to have their poker creativity hindered by these changes to the point where they would consider changing their winning style…I certainly won’t. I will be more open to experimenting with different limits and formats, however. For example, I’m definitely looking forward to trying out Zoom poker and might dabble in some more 6max. I’ll also probably cut back to around 18 tables and look to get about 1200 hands/hour instead of 1500.

My tentative plan for the year remains to sticking to primarily 100nl full-ring. My daily schedule is going to be two separate 3500 hands sessions, which will earn me about 1500VPPs for the day. Under the old VPP system, I’d earn closer to 2K VPPs but luckily that difference won’t matter a heck of a lot to me since I’ll be hitting close to 50K VPPs each month anyways (and will thus reach my 500K target by years end). Also, I’ll likely be playing a lot of midstakes tables as well and that .20 will increase…most likely progressively as the year unfolds. It will be interesting to see how this year turn out…I expect it to be not as good as last year but still pretty healthy.

Just a reminder that the is starting up tomorrow! Unfortunately, it turns out Team Online members aren’t in fact eligible for the $5K prize or leader-board prizes, which makes sense but kinda sucks Regardless, I’m still sticking to my full schedule and expect it to be a ton of fun. I look forward to playing with some of you guys! First event starts bright and early tomorrow at 7am for me and it’s a NLHE event…I’ll be late but I’ll be there fo sho.

gl at the tables!