Blog of Professional Poker Player & LockPoker Elite Pro Jared Hubbard: January Monthly Update: Upswing

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January was quite the start to the year. If I told you that I had a $19K downswing and serveral $10K downswings you probably wouldn't think I had a very good month. However, you would be wrong:

Please click images to enlarge.

I played 2,721 HU SNGs, with an average stake of $329, and profited $47,231.55. I started off the year running like hell in $500s & $1Ks. Right before my big upswing I was running about $14K below EV if I remember correctly. Then a monster fish came to Lock and started playing $500s & $1Ks very regularly. He also bragged to me about how rich and good looking he was, so it felt even better taking his money. Seriously, what kind of a pathetic tool brags in the chat of an online poker game about being how rich and good looking they are? Anyways, this guy was a huge tilt monkey and just all around awful poker player, and I'm pretty sure he lost about $60K in a week before resetting his stats. Unfortunately, he hasn't played in a while, so maybe he got sick of losing money. I also had variance helping me out this month, as you can see here:

These are my HEM EV adjusted stats, with my HEM EV adjusted ROI/ITM graph. Those of you familiar with HEM and Lock probably know that super turbo buy-ins don't import correctly. Therefore, the adjusted profit and average stake will always be off. You can see in the picture that HEM lists my average stake for the year as $572.46, whereas sharkscope lists it as $329. That's because I changed my default buy-in to $572.46 in November. At the time that was my average stake. I don't see any point in changing it back, because it will just mess up overall EV adjusted ROI numbers. Since buy-ins don't import correctly, HEM treats a $90 no differently than it treats a $1K. Therefore, the adjusted EV ROI number in HEM is based on average ROI, not total ROI. However, I've always put more stock into average ROI anyways. Small samples of games at your highest stakes can skew total ROI too much. Regardless of whether you use average ROI or total ROI, there's always a chance for outliers that make the adjusted EV less accurate than it seems. For example, if you play a monster fish in $1Ks and you have a 10% ROI against them, the average ROI method will understate your EV ROI and profit. Using the total ROI method, if you card rack the shit out of somebody at a smallish sample of $1Ks, it will overstate your EV ROI and profit.

That was a bit of a tangent so hopefully you're not sleeping. As you can see, my adjusted EV average ROI for the month was 3.6%. This means that my adjusted total pre rakeback profit for the month is $32,227.52 (0.036 x $329 avg. stake x 2,721 games), which would still have me leading the network in total sharkscope SNG profit. Of course this isn't a perfect adjusted EV, but it's a lot more likely to be accurate than unadjusted EV numbers.

I spent most of the month 3 tabling, compared to past months when I was usually 4-6 tabling HU SNGs. I'm pretty sure mostly 3 tabling is going to be the way to go for me from here on out. I started up a global alias for Merge HU regs in HEM & it appears that about 46% of my games were against winning regulars. Considering that, 3.6% is an EXCELLENT ROI for 3 tabling super turbo HU SNGs. Needless to say, I'm very happy with where my game is at. I am still learning a lot. I think I have really taken my game to the next level over the last couple of months. Not only have I learned more stuff to apply at the tables, but I'm playing an optimal number of tables, taking a good number of breaks, and focusing very well. Despite the fact that I've played over 25,000 HU games between Merge and Full Tilt, I'm still relatively new to HU SNGs. I didn't play any HU SNGs until around mid March last year. I then didn't play any for about a month and a half after Black Friday. Then my focus was still split between HU and 6 man SNGs until late last year.

I think my life balance is also very good right now, which helps at the tables. I've been putting in 40 total hours of poker-related activities per week. That includes playing, studying, social media, etc... It's enough to still be motivated by stuff like profit and leaderboards, but not too much where you dread putting in the hours and aren't on your A game. I think not having a pinched nerve and being able to exercise again helps a lot too.

Outside of poker I went to a few T Wolves games this month. Ricky Rubio has really made the team exciting to watch again, and I think we're going to be a force to be reckoned with in the West in a couple years. We're right where the OKC Thunder were a couple years ago. We also went to a Wild Game dinner and had lots of birthdays to celebrate during the month: my mother in law's, my mom's, my wife's, & my own (I'm 28 now). Winters in Minnesota really suck. We usually end up watching entirely too much TV. We finally got around to watching The Sopranos and are currently in season 5. I like the show, as expected, but I certainly don't think it's even close to the best show of all time, as many seem to think. I'm almost never just dying to see the next episode. In my opinion, it doesn't compare to Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, the first 4-5 seasons of Entourage, the 1st few seasons of Weeds, or Prison Break. Surely there's probably plenty more better shows that I haven't seen yet either. I would put it in the same category as The Wire. It's a good/borderline great show, but there's plenty of better shows. Maybe it gets amazing in the last couple of seasons that I haven't seen, but Curb Your Enthusiasm is the only show I can think of that gets better toward the end of the series.

For extended daily updates you can check out my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jared-Hubbard-Poker/221586851240049

Don't forget about my February promotion. In case you missed it, you can read about it here: http://www.easiestpokersites.com/lock-poker-elite-pro-jared-hubbard-challenges-fans-to-heads-up-battle

http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/2012/01/free-coaching-merge-tournament-series.html

Lock Elite Pro Mike "bigguylegend22" will be the next installment in my weekly interview series so look for that post later this week.

Here's a bad attempt at a family photo on New Year's Eve: