Cartesian Pokery

My total poker income is the sum of 2 categories: poker wins and other. The first category is self-explanatory. The second category is income from various promotions that online sites use to attract players, net of poker-related expenses (travel and lodging for casino play).

Since I play mostly online, "other income" is a fairly consistent stream, linearly correlated to the number of hands I play. It is nice to have that stability in an otherwise highly volatile business.

The graph below is the cumulative sum of each category over the 14 weeks I've been doing this.




Observations/Analysis:

• As recently as week 11, I'd made less playing than I made from other.
• Almost 70% of my total poker winnings have come in the last 3 weeks. I'm on a huge upswing right now.
• Overall, I've made as much in the last 3 weeks as I did in the first 11. Again, huge upswing.
  
• Weeks 7 through 9 were brutal. Sooner or later I'll have another downswing like that. Sooner or later I'll have downswings much worse than that.
  
• In week 10 I switched from playing 4 tables of $5/10 to 2 tables of $10/20. You can see that the poker wins immediately skyrocketed while the growth of other income modestly declined as a result of playing fewer total hands. I'm not planning to add a 3rd table any time soon. I might move up to $15/30 soon though.
• Generally its just good to see a positive trend. I don't expect to continue crushing the games like I have the last few weeks, but hopefully my long term trend won't look as flat as the first 9 weeks here.