As you guys know from my last update, I played a little 6max to break up my pretty poor run in full ring. Upto the 24th of this month, I was running a little below all in expectation and I was also playing pretty poorly as well. So I definitely needed to have a little break from the FR grind.
25th of June
Played 1800 hands for a profit of +$391. Another good day were my aggression is paying off, also like the previous day, I was on a real heater. That feels soooo good after the previous 2 weeks of pure frustration and cooler city.
At 6max I try to maintain stats of around 20/17/3 if I can. These seem to be the target of most TAG's at 25nl upto say 100nl. I'm sure as one progresses further, then the general accepted stats seem to be of a S/LAG to LAG style. C/Bet is at approx 72%, which I would say is bare minimum for 6max. During these last 2 sessions I have been playing as aggressively as I can, whilst still maintaining some degree of control. I have been double barrelling more often and certainly 3/betting light, mixed in with isolation/squeeze plays. Now while I'm on a heater, things seem to run well, however, these type of plays become extremely expensive when things don't go your way, so we'll see how it goes.
There have been some interesting discussions on CC lately involving 'non showdown pots'. Normally, I lose a lot in non-showdown winnings (NSD), so I was quite impressed that my red line on the graph above (showing my last 2 days at 6max) is trying to follow the path of the $0 line. Under normal circs, for me that is, the NSD red line usually mirror images (-$) the SD winnings line, which is something I hope to improve.
Selected Hands
One of the biggest differences I find with FR as opposed to 6max, is the standard of short stack play. In FR the majority are nits, so if your up against one you make sure you have AA/KK or your crushed. In 6max its totally different as this hand suggests.
Again another s/s play. Usually I'd be wary of a limp/min r/r from utg, but this just confirms my point on 6max s/s'r are pretty gross.
If this were FR, I think I'd chk the turn for pot control, as FR is full of setminers. I think here in 6max though 3 streets of value against a 59/0/1 villain is just easy money.
So no poker today as I was knackered after work and basically fell asleep after my tea. I'll play the remainder of this month at 6max I think, I dunno, I'll see how it goes.
Played 4100 hands for a loss of -$379. Hmmm that sound familiar? Seriously cant get anything running at 100nl. I was chatting to Vanquish on AIM the other night (he's on a pretty bad run as well, hope it turns for ya soon mate), and he was saying to take a break. Well, I'm almost at that point tbh. My roll has taken a battering, I've got a few buy in's left before my bankroll management kicks in and I'll have to drop down a level.
A warning to you guys about some of these horror hands I'm about to show you. When running break even or d/swinging, yep we try to push things and plays look kinda spewy, there thats my excuses out of the way:).
I obv think I'm good here, top two is like the nuts. I put him on flush draws, Str8's.... I dunno. I think 16/11/2 does this type of thing on the button, but I just cant find a fold here. They hit the top of their range all the time lately!
At this stage I think that I haven't got a clue what I'm doing anymore. Again they hit the top of their range, and I spew $ to him and he gracefully accepts. He's got aggro stats (23/14/3) which makes my decision a bit more acceptable but meh!
Tue 24th of June.
Played 3500 hands for a profit of +$630. Whoo whhoooo! Has my luck changed? Hmm not really as such. You see I continued at FR for my 1st session and things slowly improved. I was getting my CB's home and hands were holding for me. I went up $300 early on, then spewed like a f***ing spew monkey on a tilt with 2 hands in particular. I feel kind of embarrassed showing them but hey it might make me focus a little more!
I've played against this reg a lot of times. His stats are pretty tight, but that couldn't be further from the truth. He plays 10/9/5. Bearing in mind I see him stacking off with A2 on A high flops against TAG's, and spewing all kinds of stuff I was hoping my read was gonna pay off here. Unfortunately I spew off on the river once again.
Well the next hand doesn't get much better. I honestly have no f***ing clue what I was doing here. Really I was just kind of pissed off with 100nl FR I suppose. I was actually quite surprised with what he turned over, as I don't see a lot of this especially this deep at 100nl FR!
So as you can guess I wasn't thinking straight at all. Time for a break!
Now when I say a break.... I mean from FR. I mean if I'm gonna spew, I may as well spew against some other spewtards. So I loaded up 4 tables of 100nl 6max!
Jesus, there's some serious donkey stuff going on in there, so I sort of felt at home!
This hand is definitely standard for 6max:
Apparently this is also standard:
Playing 6max is just an e-peen contest at times. I try to maintain stats of around 20/17/3, as a result your constantly raising/stealing/3betting light etc. This was a deepstacked hand, that I'm not sure I like my turn line much. I just don't see him having QT here, I think he has a big piece of this flop, but I'm fairly confident I'm ahead. I was quite surprised with what he turned over.
There were plenty more hands like this so I won't bore you anymore, but seriously 6max is truly crazy. Hopefully I'll get to play some more, we'll see.
VPP Update
Well the VPP's and FPP's are coming in thick and fast now as you can see from the update in the side bar.
I have like 145k FPP's now, so by the time I reach Supernova I should have well over 250k FPP's which will net me around $3750 ish. That will come in real handy after this shitty month!
Been at work this weekend which kind of sucks, because I have to miss some of the nice tourey's that Stars runs over the weekend. Anyways, I was in the works van on the way back to the station late Saturday afternoon when I saw this gorgeous bit of stuff heading towards me,
No LDO not her but this!
The Bugatti Veyron! This has to be the most gorgeous looking car ever imo. Rumour has it, the owner of the Veyron I saw on Saturday, has two! Yes Two! At £800,000 each (apprx $1.2million) that's just WOW! Now if only I could run good at 100nl then maybe ......
So back to the real world!
Definitely Not CSI Miami!
Most of the members of CC know that I'm a CSI. Now I have been a CSI for a 7 years now, and it's been a wonderful job for me. I've worked on some really interesting cases over the years and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time as a CSI. But as with a lot of people, we love to moan about our jobs and I'm no exception to that. We also become a little stale in our working environment and I think that is certainly affecting me lately.
So on Friday, I got called to a elderly lady that had been found dead in her living room. She had sustained a severe head injury, that had bleed profusely. Now at first glance this looked sort of suspicious, but by the time we had analysed all the information, it was obvious that this poor lady had just fallen and hit a cupboard edge.
This type of incident just puts a lot of my moans and groans into perspective for me. It takes something like this to realise that, yes I do have a good job, and no it doesn't matter if I lose 5 buy in's tonight.
Poker
The only +ve thing I can tell you about my last 3 days of poker is I've played around 7.1k hands, and earned some VPP's. Yes that about as positive as it gets. Sunday night was most definately my worst night at 100nl since I started, losing 6 buy ins. I had the pleasure of Zach and Chuck on several of my tables. TBH, I'm not sure how they were playing, all I know is I'm spewing buy in's left, right and centre. I'm not suffering a lot of bad beats that I can bemoan even, it's just a helluva lot of coolers, most notably KKvAA off the top of my head at least 8 times this month. AA/KK are also running in to sets a lot as well. So tbh I don't think there's a great deal I can do except to just accept it and grind it out. GL all.
Upto now the only tracking software I've ever used was PT2 (Poker Tracker) and PT3. I loved PT2, and was looking forward to the advanced features that PT3 would offer. This would include a HUD and a whole host of filters and reports etc. Now I must admit I wasn't really impressed with the new layout of PT3, it seemed to lack some of the nice features of PT2, but hey that wasn't really a big issue. I was more concerned with the HUD, which was one of the primary reasons I wanted PT3.
Now I can understand that things wouldn't be exactly smooth running, whilst in the development stage of beta versions. So when they released the product sometime last month, I was hopeful they would have these glitches ironed out. I have to say I was quite disappointed with the product. The Hud just caused the software to lag really badly, ok it was a vast improvement on the beta, but still, 20 tabling was pretty horrible. There were the inevitable crashes as well, which again, if your multi tabling can be really frustrating.
Now I knew there were other poker trackers on the market, so when ChuckT's did a review on HEM on CC the other day, my mind was eventually made up. I used the trial version up, 5k hands, and 20 tabled with no problems or lagging whatsoever. I paid the $80 and I'm absolutely delighted with it. It's huge to me, that I can multi table with no lag, no crashes and no focus stealing of tables. Now if only I could run good at poker this month then everything would be fine and dandy..... so onto the poker!
Poker Update
Wed the 18th - Played 3800 hands, down -$164.
Thu the 19th - Played 5800 hands, down -$224.
Well, the only +ve out of these 2 days of poker is VPP's. I've probably earned around 3k in VPP's which is obviously good. As for the poker, well I can honestly say my poker play isn't that great, but who knows, maybe I'm making some great laydowns. I feel like I'm spewing a shit load of chips post flop. When I have a decent hand, I'm trying to isolate a limper to get HU. Then by the turn it just seems I'm never ahead. When I do look them up they always have the goods. Well that's just the way it goes sometimes I guess.
I don't want to dwell too much on the last 2 days worth of play, because putting that much effort in over 2 days, to come away with a 4 buy in d/swing is obviously frustrating.
My Setup
Just thought I'd give you guys an idea of my setup. I bought a new laptop about 3 months ago which was a huge improvement on my last one. It's a 17" Acer Aspire, which has an Intel Core Duo processor, 2GB of Ram etc etc, with Windows Vista which is meh!
So when I'm loading up my tables, I start up HEM, then load up my AHK scripts (see the overcards website in the sidebar for more information). I use Stars Planner, which allows me to sit out of tables, or re-join them, in one click instead of having to do it individually. It also enables me to auto buyin to the cash game table, saving a lot of time. I also use Stars Assistant, this enables me to auto register to cash game tables in the lobby and provides a table urgent highlighter. Lastly I use Stars betpot AHK which is basically what it says, I can press a mouse button and it auto sets my bet to a pre-described level, ie 66% of pot or whatever, varying it on different streets if required. If your multi tabling then you seriously need to consider using these scripts as it makes life so much easier.
Now as I have told you I play upto 20 tables. I set them up in a stacking formation. Most people use tiles, cascading or stacking. I originally used cascading which is fine, but I've since moved onto stacking which I like a bit more. I set it up were I have 2 stacks of 10 tables. On the 17" laptop there is a little overlap but it's more than manageable so I'm quite pleased with the way things have worked out with the setup. I may decide to tinker around with it after I have reached Supernova as I'll have some spare time, but for now it's fine.
Music Vid
After a crappy 2 days poker, I need a vid to cheer my up. I love this vid, the song is awesome as well and Dolores Oriordan is fit imo!
Updates only to talk about today I'm afraid. Was hoping to get some hands in on Sunday. Was kind of busy in the daytime, it was Father's Day after all :). Got a lovely card from my kids with a nice bottle of aftershave, which was perfect timing as I had just run out of the stuff. Anyways, was just about to settle down around 7pm and grind about 3k hands, when the door bell rang. My uncle and aunty decided to visit, so my poker evening was cancelled.
Mon the 16th - played 2100 hands for a profit of +$221.
Here is a hand of how not to play the idiot end of the str8 when deep, wtf!
Well this is one of the pitfalls of multi tabling, sometimes you just don't see the damned obvious. I actually thought he had 2 pair and didn't even consider the nut str8! Anyways, I preach all the time on CC about losing stacks in limped pots, this has come back to bite me in the ass!
Tue the 17th - Played 3400 hands for a loss of -$41. Wow that was such a frustrating days poker. Up a buy in early on in the session, then a steady losing streak over 2k hands, followed by a late rally in the last 500 hands.
It just sums up my poker month. I can't get a good run going. AA/KK is just meh, I can't get paid off with them at all this month. When you consider, most peoples profits (I think it's been worked out at like 60%+) come solely from these 2 hands alone. I have won only one buy in with AA this month! Winning buy in's this month is seemingly difficult for me, losing them is LDO so easy!
BTW, my play isn't all bad this month. I like this hand as at showdown I beat like nothing here!
P.S. Did I tell you I spew sooooooo much in non showdown pots, it truly f****ing annoys the shit out of me! Apart from the above hand, I think every steal attempt I've made this month and every CB, has been met with resistence, wtf!
Supernova
Apart from my meh month, I'm still raking in the Vpp's/Fpp's. Only 40k needed now. I managed to get Platinum status yesterday, so I'm off work today and tomorrow so hopefully I'll get in around another 10k hands. I will hopefully get to somewhere near the amount of hands needed to reach the goal I set at the beginning of the month, 75k hands.
Fpp's are coming in thick and fast, I have around 125k. So in August I will be able to cash them in for $3k which will be nice. Maybe I'll be able to try 200nl then, we'll see. GL all.
Went to the Seniors Welsh Open at Conwy golf course yesterday and had a great time. Father in law had complimentary tickets so I took my son to have a look at some of the great players of yesteryear. Managed to follow Ian Woosnam, Sandy Lyle, Bob Charles to name but a few.
You know, I used to be addicted to golf, spending every spare moment I could practising. I used to bunk on at the local golf course and practise chipping and putting. I managed to achieved an ok standard, playing off an 11 handicap (in my mind I was always a lot better than this, but putting was a huge leak in my game). Then around 2 years ago I was playing at a works society day and had the most horrendous round of golf imaginable. I haven't had a round of golf since! This was due to pure frustration because I know, I should have definitely been a single figure handicap player and I realised my game had stagnated. Plus I was now getting into online poker at the time of my golfing demise. So inevitably since I'm playing online poker almost everyday I really didn't have a lot of time for golf.
Anyways, it was a great day watching the ole' pro's. The one thing that amazes me whenever I go to watch live pro golf, and I know most casual golfers will agree with me here, is watching their golf swings. You see, when you play golf, your very instinct is to thrash, and whack that little golf ball with all your might. When you watch these guys, with the exception of the likes of Woods + Daly, they swing the club so effortlessly, almost in slow motion. WTF! It's amazing, it's like they're hitting it with a 3/4 swing and at 1/2 power.
So hopefully I will endeavour to play some more golf this year. It seems such a waste that I played nearly 20 years of golf to suddenly let it all go just like that. I'm also hoping to attend Royal Birkdale (my local course) in July to watch the British Open Golf Championships. I will make sure to give you all a nice little report on that and some photo's.
Poker Update
So enough of the golf coaching sessions.
It seems I'm not the only one whose finding June a swingy month. As you guys know, I spend a lot of my time on Cardschat. Well a couple of regs there are finding June's a swingy month also. I sincerely hope they come through it because d/swings are truly, emotionally and frustratingly depressing. But as I said on CC, it's a measure of a good player just how well you handle these swings emotionally. How you can manage your bankroll effectively to enable you to eliminate the emotional stress a swing can have. I will hopefully go into this in greater detail in a later post when I have my 1000 milestone post, hint-hint.
13th of June - 2600 hands played, +$147.
Played 2 sessions, 1st session was typical for this month, set over set bullshit, and QQ v KK. Yes I know getting my money in with this v a decent reg is asking for trouble.
2nd session I ran a lot better, great starting hands like 74o always help imo:
River: ($18) 4 (2 Players) Hero bets $17.15, CO raises to $34.30, Hero raises to $115 and is All-In, CO calls $58.70 and is All-In
Results: $204 Pot ($3 Rake) CO mucked 6 7 and LOST (-$100 NET) Hero showed 4 7 (a full house, Sevens full of Fours) and WON $201 (+$101 NET)
I like the way I played this next hand, although I'm sort of tempted to push the turn as I like the fold equity that gives me against most of villains holdings. Little did I realise how strong of a hand he had..... never slow play your big hands folks!
River: ($58.50) 9 (2 Players) Hero bets $81.50 and is All-In, BTN calls $71.60 and is All-In
Results: $201.70 Pot ($3 Rake) BTN mucked Q A and LOST (-$100.60 NET) Hero showed 6 7 (a straight, Five to Nine) and WON $198.70 (+$98.10 NET)
14th of June - 2026 hands played +$251 up on the day. Still running like meh! Had a flopped straight against a villain playing 95/20/2, he likes his hand and a betting frenzy starts on the flop. I min r/r him, he min r/r back. Then we get it all in on the turn for him to hit his boat on the river!
Then I get AA oop against a really good reg OTB. I blow off a full stack on the flop to her set! What the hell I was thinking of, I know she has me beat but wtf! I just can't lay them down.
I've made a decent comeback up to now, but I still feel I'm running way behind expectation. Unfortunately I use Pokertracker3 so I cant use PokerEV with that. But AA/KK are seriously -EV this month for me.
An interesting thing happened to me the other day, I went on a works seminar, hosted by a motivational speaker, and actually enjoyed the bloody thing. You see, I'm one of those guy's who thinks 'Good god what the hell are they wasting my time for sending me on this type of thing. What on earth am I going to get out of this? I'm gonna be bored shitless!'
S.U.M.O?
Surprisingly, this guy was very entertaining and had some great things to say. He started by describing me, in fact, everything he had to say was basically about me. WTF I've never even met this guy before! In a nutshell, he describes how we become reluctant to change because we're always operating on automatic pilot. How we blow things out of proportion, how we dwell on problems and feel 'Why does this always happen to me?' syndrome.
S.U.M.O - 'Shut Up Move On'
Don't get me wrong, he's not trivialising peoples problems, he's just putting them into perspective and tbh, it was very refreshing for me to realise this. Hopefully I will be able to use this and move on with things, and I certainly believe this will help me with my poker when it comes to the dreaded downswings.
Anyways if your interested in this type of thing I've added a link in the sidebar to his website.
Poker Update
It's a good job I went on the S.U.M.O seminar because poker this month is really quite depressing.
Mon 9th - 1900 hands down -$396. Didn't win one buy in, biggest loser KK. Tue 10th - 1300 hands down -$565. Again didn't win one buy in, biggest losers were AA/KK. Wed 11th - 1400 hands up $111. At last a green day - but still haven't won a 100bb stack in 3 days. Suited conns were biggest losers today.
Thur 12th - 2300 hands up $307. Well last nights play basically continued with 2-3 buy ins down. Then over the last 500 hands or so I started winning some buy in's at last. I was playing around 20 tables at first, but it gradually whittled down to about 16. Thankfully one of my tables had an absolute maniac on it. He was basically playing every pot and overbetting every street. I lost a stack to him early on but managed to gain a couple back from him. When I finished for the evening he still was 4 buy ins up!
As you can see I'm way behind pace on hands played, work and downswing isn't helping there!
So anyways I'm gonna S.U.M.O - Shut Up Move On. GL all.
Well I'm sort of still trying to catch up with reporting what I've been up to this month, and TBH I've been quite busy. Usually I go to work, then when I get home I'm a huge couch potato, watching sport and playing poker, yes my wife is a saint. Speaking of which:
Birthday Celebrations!
My wife celebrated her 40th birthday on the 30th of May, so she decided to have a big birthday bash. She invited loads of her friends to the local British Legion club (I have no idea what the equivalent of this is in America/Canada) and I invited some of mine. Well as party's go it was a really great night. However I was totally shitfaced and the end of the evening was somewhat of a blur. The only thing I remember was walking home with my daughter, and her 2 friends, and decided I was gonna scare them shitless as we walked past the local cemetery....
(Currently there is a advert on British TV warning of the pitfalls of drinking heavily and gaining 'beer muscles', thinking your invincible)
.... Yes I know I'm supposed to be an adult, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Anyways as I ran away from them, I ran down the steep steps to the cemetery in pitch darkness. I then decided to jump over the steps side rail, not realising that there a considerable drop on the other side. As I was free falling I was thinking to myself, 'I really hope I hit the bottom, soon' - As I braced myself for landing I eventually belly flopped onto the cemetery undergrowth and after a few moments of realisation, I was still alive and not in a great deal of pain.
Not only did my trick work, as the girls had to entererd the cemetery shaking with fear to find where all the groans were coming from, but I did literally crap myself. WTF was I thinking of! Anyways after I found my glasses and brushed all the leaves and undergrowth from my face and clothes, we all returned home safely. Obviously my wife had a few words to say, fortunately I was too pissed to remember them.
Weekend Away
So after the Birthday celebrations, I booked a weekend away for me and the wife. It's the 1st time in 20 years I have been away with my wife without the kids, and I was quite apprehensive about the whole thing. I mean what the hell would we talk about? I don't think we've ever spent more than a day without the kids in our lives. I needn't of worried as we had a great time. We went to Edinburgh, which is a lovely city. Steeped in history and tradition, beautiful architecture, lots of shops, restaurants and bars and a lovely hotel.
CC 500k Post Celebration Tourny
So we returned on Sunday afternoon and picked the kids up from my mum's. Once I returned home I was itching to play some poker. I played some sats to the sunday million, wasted 2500FPP's in the process and failed miserable when my JJ ran into AQ. I hate MTT's.
I decided to enter CC's milestone achievement tourny and did quite well by finishing 2nd. Nick had added and extra $100 to the prize money (cheers Nick) so it was quite a good night. I was extemely fortunate though as I sucked out twice so I apologise to my fellow CC'ers. Congrats to Bryan24 who was the deserved winner and thanks to the railers who made it a great night. I really should play in more of these CC tourny's as I usually do quite well in them
More updates tomorrow as I'm almost up to date now so GL all.
Footnote: My ribs are really quite sore now. There's no bruising and It's taken nearly a week for the pain to appear, so I guess I didn't have the softest of landing after all.
Well I'm gonna give you a summary of my poker month up to Sun 8th of June. These will get a little more in depth a bit later, but for now my month can be summed up as follows:
6max Mayhem.
Started the 1st two days of the month playing 100nl 6max. In brief, I run like crap at 50nl 6max earlier this year, so I thought I'd give 100nl a try after my success at FR.
Well I ran like god winning just over $1k over 2 days. 1st day I was 4 buy ins up and on the 2nd day I was up around 6 buy ins. Up to this point I had played like 2.5k hands and was thinking, hey maybe I don't suck at 6max!
Then I went on a crappy d/swing like no other. I decided to play a few more tables, I was originally playing 4-6. I upped it to 10-12 tables and within about 1500 hands had lost all my profits, sick! Well, if I learned anything it's I can't multi table the amount of tables like I can at full ring. 6max requires constant aggression and knowledge of villains tendencies. This seems to work ok for me with 4-6 tables but after that I'm pretty clueless. I will return to 6max soon, because seriously, some of the crap people were pushing with defies belief. This has to be major +ev in the long run. Back to FR for the time being.
FR Grind.
So from the 1st of June up to the 5th of June I have played 12k hands and I'm +$624. That includes 3.6k hands at 6max. Meh! I'm seriously lagging behind this month. I set my monthly goal on CardChat to play around 75k hands. I failed last months goal miserably, so I would like to get this on in.
OK just to give you the heads up on what all this talk is of Vpp's, Fpp's, blah blah blah.
Pokerstars is my favourite poker site. It's probably the biggest, and imo, safest poker site out there. It has the biggest game selection, and a huge customer base. That's great because there's a lot of sub-standard players who are willing to donate their money. It's also got some of the toughest regular players as well, which is both a problem and asset. What I mean by that is, with good table selection we can avoid a lot of the regs, as these guys are the hardest to beat. But conversely, the really good regs, we can learn a lot from, so it balances itself out.
Anyways apart from the above, Pokerstars awards players with Frequent Player Points (Fpp's) and VIP Player Points (Vpp's). The Vpp's are used to indicate what level you're at in the VIP programme. This starts at the basic entry level 'Bronze', you can then progress to 'Silver' when you achieve 1500 Vpp's in a month. 'Gold' is at 4k Vpp's and Platinum is set at 10k. After this is Supernova and to be able to achieve this you have to gain a yearly total of 100k Vpp's.
Fpp's are issued out depending on buy in's to tourny events, or raked hands in cash games. Depending at what VIP level you're at, determines how many Fpp's you gain. For example, if you are at Silver VIP level then for every Vpp you earn you accumulate 1.5Fpp's. Fpp's can be used to purchase items from their online store, or used to purchase cash. The higher up the levels you go the more Fpp's you earn.
Now Stars doesn't have a rakeback system as such, but the Fpp's does actually serve as a rakeback if you accumulate them on a regular basis. Checkout the VIP section on their website for a full description on Vpp's and their benefits.
Welcome to my poker blog. My name is Jay and I'm addicted to poker :)!
I've been playing poker for around 3 years now and this is my poker story.
I started depositing small sums of money on several sites, including Ladbrokes, Party, Pokerstars, Bet365, Stan James to name but a few. Guess what? I sucked at poker!
Any Light Bulbs?
This continued for quite a few months, until I had my light bulb moment. What was it you may wonder.... Well I was sick of depositing £50 here, £50 there (that's around $100 US - to convert for my overseas friends) and watching it disappear in a matter of hours. I eventually decided I needed to research some basic poker stuff and stumbled across a couple of poker forums that have managed to turn this failing poker player into someone who can grind out a fairly decent profit. Believe you me, that's no mean feat as I'm a bit of a thicko when it comes to learning new skills.
After researching a vast wealth of information available at my fingertips, I decided to make a fairly substantial deposit to Pokerstars. In March 2007, I deposited £100 ($200) and I have managed to attain a bankroll of $5k up until now. I have made a couple of withdrawals since then, so all in all not a bad 15 months.
'But hey, what exactly was your light bulb moment FFS!'
OkOk! As a result of this new found knowledge I discovered something that is extremely basic to knowledgeable poker players, Bankroll Management (BRM). Yep something as simple as BRM is quite possibly, the most important lesson I have learned in poker. I realised that playing within my roll, I could actually cope with the swings that the poker gods, in their perverse wisdom, heap upon us.
Yes I learned all of the other crap as well that we all have to wade through to be able to squeeze out a profit, like pot odds, implied odds, table image, CB'ing blah blah blah!
Poker Forums!
So where did I get all this information from? I have browsed several poker forums over the years, and there are two that stand out for me. Cardschat and 2+2.
Cardschat (CC) is a great place to be and there's always lots of stuff going on in there. There's loads of links to the major poker playing sites, were sign up bonuses are available through their links. They also have a host of freerolls and value added tournies for members. Strategy can be discussed in a friendly atmosphere and newcomers are always welcome, with a wealth of strategy articles available to you.
2+2 is an entirely different beast altogether. Strategy is discussed to a greater degree and with some vigour. Each facet of poker and the various levels of the game, are catered for at 2+2. I have gained a lot from my time at 2+2, but sometimes there's a lot of aggro on the site from various member and this detracts from it somewhat.
Anyways FWIW, I regularly post at Cardschat, my name is Jagsti, and I have made some good friends on there.
Poker Goals anyone?
Well LDO!
At the start of this year, I decided I want Supernova, I need Supernova. 100k VPP's? Definately!
I really wanted to start a thread on this on CC (or blog for that matter), but was kind of scared I'd balls it all up and make a fool of myself. Plus I wasn't at all confident that I was a decent enough player, shit who am I kidding, I still don't think I am wtf!
So at the end of last year I started out on the cash game scene at 100nl, 50nl and 25nl 6max games. And yes in that sodding order! As you can guess I was crap at it and went down limits pretty quickly. I then stabilised at 25 and 50nl killing the games for like 12ptbb/100...... yeah LOL! Ok 4ptbb/100 maybe ;). Then in February, I went on a downswing of almost epic proportions, dropping around $1300 for the month, over 20 buy ins. I eventually got my shit together and read some strategy on CC and 2+2. For the next month it was still quite painful TBH as I was break even for well over 100k hands. I eventually decided to have a go at 50nl full ring. It's quite simply the best poker decision I have made. You see, I was multi tabling 6max upto 12 tables at a time. What I failed to realise is that 6max depends greatly on aggression and knowing villains tendencies. Playing that many tables, I seriously lacked both.
Full ring has enabled me to play as many tables as I wish but utilise some of the skills I attained in 6max. I can now earn lots of VPP's and hopefully get to Supernova status for August 2008.
I'm not that far from Supernova, I only need around 45k Vpp's to get it, this blog is about my poker experiences and my quest for Supernova....... and beyond!
I started playing poker in summer of 2006. I made several unsuccessful deposits on Ladbrokes, PartyPoker, Pokerstars and just about every other poker site going. Then I discovered Cardschat and 2+2 poker forums and started to actually learn poker theory.
In Spring 2007, I made a $200 deposit on Pokerstars with my new found knowledge, I thought I had a chance at this game. I played the $10 sng's and quickly increased my balance upto $1500.
After realising my future belonged with cash games, which took quite some time to make the transition, I began playing them seriously at the start of 2008.
Hence this blog, 'Champagne Supernova'. 2008 was always going to be a Supernova year, and it was a great year. Lets hope 2009, will be an amazing one!
7
dealt to Hero (BB)
(6 Players)
and LOST (-$100 NET)
