January Overview

So January is over and there are some few things I would like to discuss.

First off, lets go into some detailed results:

This week I decided to move up to $10 games since I had alot of free time I thought it would be good to increase the earnings, plus I had a personal vendetta from last year playing these games where I ran like absolute garbage in this stake. 

This time was no different, I started off fairly good and back into the trend from last year with a big soul crushing downswing on Friday. Personally I went through a different type of tilt I'm not to familiar with where I had this thing that Its always the $10 games on 888poker where I just can't catch a break feeling, where I think the recreational players are still the same and the quality of play is no different. However, I also did notice there were a few more regs than the $5 games which is expected but I easily avoided them for the most case, and when I did play them I did pretty well against them. Not the same case against the recreational players. This time I decided to stick it out at the $10 games to try overcome the my personal issues with the stakes and try to get back on track.

Below is a breakdown between the $5 games and the $10 games




As you can see, I ended the month slightly losing at the $10 games but did pretty well in the $5 games.

With a 6.85% ROI in the $5 games I did pretty well but not where I would like to be. Eventually I would want to fix this and will be playing the different levels to fix this win rate to meet up to my standards.

Now lets talk Rakeback and Reward System:

First off, I cashed $21 in rakeback, however this was a combination between December and January, where half the first month in January I was earning 2.5% Rakeback under Bronze status which improved to 4.5% Rakeback under Silver status.

Now me personally, I am very much upset about the reward system and I have been thinking about moving before, slowed down that thought after the Pokerstars changes were made to their loyalty system waiting to see how the rest of the poker site would respond and see if competitors would try to compete for the players who want to grind elsewhere because of this. However, not much happened as expected and I am back to square one where I am highly considering moving elsewhere.

888 Poker to me has the best rewards for MTT players with ton of free money for grabs, a ton of status tournaments etc. but I feel they personally neglect the other type of players but I can't complain too much because their method keeps their games relatively soft.

My main concern about the reward system is for days like I had this weekend where I want to play despite going through a downswing and most of that downswing happened because of the rake. Look at my chip graph, there isn't a dent in the graph (plus the fact that my downswing was the result of being like 34 - 35). At this point its time to make a closing decision on playing elsewhere because personally, I feel with my skill level, I would expect tougher games on the major sites like Pokerstars and full tilt but finding how much of a decline in my winrate + the rakeback rewards offered may prove to actually earn me more money.

It's a very delicate subject  and I do need to highly consider this move for the better of my game.

Here is some slight numbers to put out there for those who may not understand exactly where I am coming from:

Silver Status on 888poker: 4.5%
Lowest level on both Pokerstars/Full Tilt: 10%

Rake Paid in January: $438.30

Rewards:

888poker: $19.72
Pokerstars/Full Tilt: $43.83

Keep in mind, that as I grind higher levels I get higher rewards, and judging by my output I calculated for reaching gold on pokerstars and silver on Full tilt for about 20% rakeback (or more, its hard to pinpoint with their system setup) for: $87.66

A huge difference in that extra earnings, of course though you have to take into consideration that
1. Pokerstars don't have $10 games
2. Rake is actually cheaper on Pokerstars/Full Tilt which affects rake paid
3. Traffic, Pokerstars will probably allow me to get more games in and Full Tilt, I may get less games in.

I scratched Party Poker off of my list, their husng formats just isn't good for me and traffic is pretty low, I do not want to play on the iPoker network ever since I had my account frozen on Titan Poker because they stop taking customers from the Bahamas.

I will make it my goal this week to check into Microgaming Poker Network since I saw that I can get a 30% Rakeback deal somewhere + it has more traffic than Full Tilt so that sounds really good for me.