A grand total of 51,000 vpp's has taken over 5% of my goal for the year. I have suffered from a bad start but things are looking better now. Over the weekend I have gone from something like -$900 to +$3,659. My winrate is pretty close to what I wanted but the even better news is that if this run keeps up I could improve on my initial goals. But then again I have already suffered losing streaks of approx $2,000 on 4 occassions already this year.

Short one. I had a bad run again so decided to take a look at my game. After 2 hrs working thru tracker stats I found some leaks. So started playing again and immediately managed a $2100 profit. But yesterday I went on and lost $1900. So sickening so I spent another 3 hours on poker tracker. But this time I found all my stats to be ok. So looking thru the hand histories I found that I had simply run bad. Really bad in fact. Two sets on flop ran into higher sets. Two flushes into higher. KK into AA pre twice. AA lost to JJ etc etc.

Anyway today I started again and got it all back in 2 hrs . I have played and lost tonight but am running $2400 up for the day.

So I am still not happy with the winrate but when things even out it should improve.

I have released the next $4,000 bonus so that is $8,000 for the year and $1,400 profit from the games.

I also now have 47,000 vpp's so approaching 5% of annual target.

Oh I have also gone part time at work. Not for good, but at least for the time being and hopefully thru the Summer so I can get my golf handicap down to scratch.

Oh I also had my biggest ever pot on $1/2. $1430 pot which is massive at that level. You can view it here.

It's been a tough few days. I have certainly run bad but I have to admit there have been a few problems with my game. I am looking into this now.

I also dropped to 50c/$1 for a while, not because of bankroll issues, but just to try out new things. I seemed to be going great there before a few bad hands and a little tilt.

So unfortunately I am only $365 ahead for the year in the cash games. This is way off what I wanted to be.

So profit is $4,365 with the bonus I achieved and I am very close to reaching another $4,000 bonus (probably later today). I now have 33,500 vpp's so approaching 3.5% of the way there. I am happy with that as I have not had much time to play poker yet am ahead of schedule.

I started the challenge on New Years day and immediately went up $1,700. It didn't last long and after a strange run I was $2,000 down. I did improve this to finish about $1,200 down on the day.

This has continued with me getting back to level then dropping back to -$1,000 etc. My poker tracker graph is crazy.

Anyway I was analysing my game after every session and I was well ahead in Sklansky bucks. My game was in ok shape. It was bad beat after bad beat. I will not list any here as this is not a bad beat blog and we all know they have to happen. But eventually things level out and good play gets rewarded.

And today my cards began to hold up. I lost a few big pots but overall things went well and I have finished the day being $1,639 up for the year. It may not seem a lot but it is bang on track almost exactly for what I want my minimum win to be for the year. So here are the stats up to now;

39,010 hands played
$1,639 profit
1.05 winrate (tracker BB100 rating)
33 hours played ($49/hr)
12.58 tables at a time (average)

18,188 vpp (1,000,000 required by end of year so nearly 2% complete)
77,450 fpp (each 250,000 is worth $4,000)

I will explain more about these figures in later posts but the points I have earned up to now (if I hit the 1million) are worth another $1,800.

Also today I cleared enough points and received a $4,000 bonus from the end of last years play.

So overall $1,639, $1,800 and $4,000.
The $1,800 will show itself over later months so it is not banked yet.
So I am listing my profit up to now as $5,639. Although it seems a lot for 5 days it only appears that way because of the 4k bonus. But it is exactly what I expected to this point and I am well happy with it.

I am also clearing another milestone bonus from the end of 2008 and that $4,000 should be achieved within a week.

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I explained what I was going to do in 2009 to quite a few people and some said they may also have a go at this. Well I know of 2 others who are hammering Stars. One is going for Elite and the other is going for about half Elite status so he won't maximise the full rakeback. I will keep you updated with those two also but not name them at the moment.

And finally a point of interest. There are a large number of people who don't play at Poker Stars because they don't get rakeback. But if you make some calculations you will be surprised at what you do get. I would be surprised if Stars doesn't beat any rakeback scheme you may be on.

In fact, if you are a very very high raker you can even get as much as 75% back. It will be about 65% for me this year if I achieve what I expect. And that would move up next year as once you hit Supernova Elite you get points faster.

Good luck to Animal who is sitting at Heathrow tonight en route to Aussie Millions. Wish I was going!

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It's New Years Eve!
Tomorrow I begin my push to Supernova Elite on Poker Stars. I shall explain more about the reasons for this as the blog continues but briefly it is an attempt to rake $200,000 over a calendar year. I will do this by playing $200NL cash games and need to play approximately 2,250,000 hands.

In return I will earn the following for simply breaking even.

1. $38,000 cash in milestone rewards as I hit certain levels.
2. $50,000 value in frequant player points (fpp's) which I can cash in at the store.
3. $12,000 package to WSOP main event, Las Vegas.
4. $14,500 package to Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure, Bahamas.
5. $5,000 entry to World Championship Of Online Poker (WCOOP).

All of this is for breaking even but I am expecting to also run in profit. I have a figure in mind that I expect to reach but won't disclose it at this time.

I need to play 6,000 poker hands a day. Each table plays approx 94 hands per hour but i shall be playing a lot of tables at a time. If playing on the laptop at home it will be 12 tables, laptop on mobile connection approx 9 tables (sometimes 6) and home on the desktop with 30" screen it will be 20 tables.

At present I am working full time so it will be difficult to fit all this in. After playing 500,000 hands I shall be re-evaluating everything. I have a winrate in mind and if I manage that through that many hands I may make a change to this situation.

So $90,000 for breaking even! It sounds good to me. I will make regular updates and explain as much as I can to assist anyone else who wants to try this. Thanks for reading.