"To Live and Die in L.A., it's the place to be"/Early SNE chase update with Graph!

"California---no matter what you say about Los Angeles/still the only place for me that never rains in the sun and everybody got love."

-Tupac, To live and die in L.A.

In case my very clever foreshadowing went over your head, I'm headed out to L.A. tomorrow for the national championship between Texas and Alabama on the 7th.

I'm driving with a few friends, which should be somewhere between brutal and epic, we shall see. Once we get there however, it's going to be nothing but awesome. Drink a few beers or ten, go out, see an old college friend or two; then tailgate and watch UT spank that ass and cheer them on while secretly envying my friends who get 2 Football national championships in their college careers while I'm stuck praying Michigan can have a winning season next year (one time?). Ahh well, I live in Austin and I've always liked the Longhorns, so when they win on Thursday, I'm claiming half a national championship, seems fair right? Then when they win the NCAA tourney in hoops in April i can add them up and have a full one.

As for poker, I've started out the SNE (supernova elite) chase pretty damn well. I currently have 8,334 VPP with the pace being 8,220. Obviously it's still ridiculously early, but I've been doing well in putting in the hours. I'm going to be missing 4 or 5 days because of the Cali trip, so the plan is to just bang out a week or two of 4,000 VPP days (daily pace is 2740) when i get back to get caught up.

I've been running pretty hot to start the month and the chase, which is always awesome, but the poker gods are fickle mistresses and can turn on you at any point, so ima try and stay humble.

Here's a graph and stats of the year to date(click on graph to enlarge):






















VPPs earned: 8,334
hours:16.63
VPPs/hour:501
$ made: $1,972.55
$/hour: $118.59
# of tables per session:18 (would like to start getting this up to 24 as soon as possible as more tables=more vpps/hour and less hours needed to be played overall. 24 is the max number of tables pokerstars allows you to play at one time)

Also as a quick explanation, for each VPP i earn, pokerstars credits my account with 3.5 FPP (frequent player points) which can be used to purchase electronics, books, and cash bonuses. I will be using them pretty much exclusively for the cash bonuses. As such they are worth $.016 cents each. So when i refer to rakeback, im talking about the value that these points are worth.

So far this year I've made 29,169 FPPs worth around $465. I for sure expect my hourly at the tables to go down as i'm running really hot right now, probably to something around ~$50 an hour or so, but with the FPPs they add around $28 or so extra an hour, so i'd be pretty damn happy making $78/hour.

I definitely don't wanna be one of those guys who only blogs when he's winning, so i plan to keep a good record throughout the year of all the ups and downs. For anyone else that's interested in the life/emotional roller coaster of a poker player it should serve as a cool window through which to view it, and for me it should serve as an outlet for my joy and my heartache throughout the year.

Anyway, much love, and do the damn thing Texas,
mikey miz