Feb wrap up+early March heater

I said I wasn't gonna go so long without entering on my blog a few entries back. I lied I guess. Feb was a tough month for me, but I ended up doing OK in the end. First off here are my Feb #'s....

Heads Up - $1,435
Other SNG - $1,332
Rakeback/Bonuses - $2,072

Total Profit - $4,839

$1,435 is definitely the lowest monthly profit I've ever had for heads up pre rakeback profit. It really helped to run good in the small amount of random sng's I played to boost me up a little bit, plus the 2k in rakeback.

I'm not really sure what happened in February. I started off running just fucking awful though. Almost unbelievably so. I went on a 3 day downswing from the 7th-9th losing about $5,000 during those 72 hrs. That was kinda painful. I think I lost confidence for a week or two stretch which is just a complete fucking killer in HU poker. There is just so much edge lost when you're not feeling confident and you're not reading situations correctly. I got over it though and am back to feeling that confidence in every game I play. Towards the end of Feb I had a 19 match winning streak on Pokerstars. Kinda amazing looking at it in sharkscope and seeing all those consecutive wins.

I did take off a week of playing for a Las Vegas trip which was fun. Probably kinda cleared my mind up a bit. I stayed away from poker for the most part while I was there. I played one session of $1/$2 NL for maybe 3 hrs or so and won $120 or something like that. I did make a $200 bet on the roulette wheel which I'm pretty sure is the biggest non poker bet I've ever made. I had bet $100 on black the previous spin and won, so I let the $200 ride on black and won again :). Boom. Fun times. Las Vegas is always a great time.

Despite taking the week off, I still managed to play 535 games in Feb. Just like Jan I did good in the $230 and bad in the $345 again. This month I went 128-97 in the $230, good for $20/game. I went 138-140 in the $345 which accounted for a loss of $17/game. I hate when you can so clearly see the effects of rake. Just 2 games under .500 in the $345, yet down 4.8k. Sick.

Ok, time to put Feb behind me.

Onto better things.

Like March.

March has been great so far. I'm on a super heater and am up 7.7k after 4 days. That puts me on pace for a 60k month!!!!!!!! That won't happen, but would love to bank a 20k month like I did in Dec.

Since I made more $$$$ in 2009 than I originally estimated I have big tax bill coming on April 15th, so it would be nice to have a super solid month to pad the blow a bit. Only part of the bill is taxes I still owe on 2009 income. The other part is my 1st quarter 2010 payment. It sucks so hard to pay such a large lump sum of money at once. It's just so much more depressing than spreading it out.

Which also brings me to another point. If you are a professional poker player who lives in the U.S. and you file as a professional, which means you use the Schedule C for business income and you pay self employment taxes, you should really think about opening up a retirement account. A SEP-IRA is great. I think it is very foolish to not do this if you are filing as a professional. You are allowed to contribute up to 20% of your net income up to a max contribution of 49k/yr. Very solid investment. Very +ev. Just my 2 cents.

That's all I have for right now. Will update again soon.

March Profit $7,733

bartchalker