2006: Year in Review

This is x-posted from the year end thread in MTT Community on 2+2.

I started the year with approximately an 8-9K bankroll, after losing 4K over Christmas when I moved up to $100+ tournaments for the first time and did poorly. I was not happy with my game and the "huge" downswing had hurt my confidence some. So I moved down to a lot of $22-$55 tournaments with occasional shots at the $100s. Unfortunately the year started very badly with a 3 month break even streak. I was playing a lot better again though and I knew it was just a matter of time until I broke out. My results in NL tournaments were terrible, with no top 3 finishes over the entire period (maybe one 2nd in a 20/180 or something small). However, I was killing limit holdem tournaments and the $22-$55 stud hi/low tournaments on Stars to stay even. These were small tournaments and I basically won one every week.

Finally, in April things started to turn around. I won a few small tournaments like 20/180s and got moving in the right direction. May was my breakout month. I finally started running good in NL tournaments and put up several 2K-5K scores. I also won my WSOP seat, my first ever big live event. At this point it was still kind of depressing that the WSOP package was worth twice as much as my largest cash, and an enormous % of my bankroll. However my roll was over $20K and I was playing all the big $150-$200 tournaments and even $100 rebuys on Dise and Stars when they had the bigger fields. At some point in here I had -10K week but then won $10K over a weekend. My introduction to real MTT variance. In July a few weeks before the WSOP I won the Stars $162 for $20K. Finally that huge breakthrough cash. I'd also started playing some NL cash with immediate success and that helped me really understand the game a lot better. I went to Vegas as confident as ever in my game.

Vegas got off to a slow start. I wasn't doing great in the cash games and I busted Day 1 of the WSOP after 12 hours of my chip count yoyoing when I made a fairly bad mistake. When in Vegas bankroll management goes out the window so I started playing a lot of the daily $1000 Bellagio Cup events. These things were incredibly soft so it seemed somewhat justifiable. On my 5th try I chopped one 6-handed with the chiplead for $44K (I wouldn't normally want to chop so early but for several reasons this was indredibly good for me).

I continued to do well when I got home playing a lot of 5/10 NL and big tournaments. But I couldn't stay on the good side of variance forever. I lost about 15 buy-ins at 5/10, several more trying out shortstacking the 25/50 games, and a whole lot more when I failed to cash a single tournament in the WCOOP and FTOPS, despite playing most events. In total it was a $40K downswing. Forunately, over the last 2 months I've made the money back and more. I moved down and killed 3/6 NL for about 6ptBB/100 over ~25K hands. My tournament results finally turned around this month with a couple wins on UB, and most recently I won a $100 rebuy on Stars for $23K to erase what was left of my downswing. I also won my PCA seat so I'm actually ahead since August now. Finally, on the last week of the year I cracked the Pocket Fives rankings.

Cliffs Notes:

-8K roll to start
- 4 month break even streak
- Make 5 figures plus WSOP seat in May
- Win stuper for 20K in July.
- Donk out of WSOP but chop $1K Bellagio Cup event for $44K.
- $40K downswing.
- Pwn 3/6 NL.
- Win PCA seat.
- Win $100 rebuy on Stars for $23K to get out of downswing.
- SirWatts ranked.