Gutted!

2293 hands / Profit -$177

More about the poker later.

On to the title of this post. I can't really put into words how I'm feeling at the moment that would do it justice. I'm at a very low point as I received some crushing news today (and no, no-ones dead btw). Now it may seem like I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but believe me it hurts, it hurts a lot.

My 19 year old son was due to go back to University next month to start his second year. Now for a while I've been asking him how he did in his exams, and when will he be getting his results. Each time he basically shrugged his shoulders and said 'don't know'. Now that's not unusual behaviour for my son so, I just let it go. Anyways after prolonged pestering, things came to ahead today, when I told him he has to sort out the finance for this years studies, so he needs to find out his exam results etc etc. He eventually came downstairs and told me he had failed his exams and he didn't want to go back....

Now to some degree I wasn't entirely surprised, mainly because of his previous behaviour when questioned about this, but if I'm honest, I knew he wasn't putting in the work he should of been. Usually I would have given him a verbal volleying like no other, but by my standards I was very reserved, but he certainly knew how I felt. What was also very disappointing was the fact he knew this news some weeks ago, possibly months.

So why am I so disappointed? Well guess what, I did the same thing when I was his age. I fell out of my 1st year, basically because I was lazy, couldn't be arsed doing the work and not a very good public speaker. But my son is so much more able than I was, he hardly revised for his A-levels and still did very well. All he needed to do was just work a little..... arrgghh whatever. Believe me when I tell you, I'm so deflated by this news you can't even imagine. You want so much more for your kids, I want them to be better than me. I want them to have things that I couldn't have....

He had a great chance, he was at a really good Uni, doing a diverse course. And now he's out with a 1st year debt of £8000, GREAT!!!! I've been in debt all my working career, and I don't just mean mortgages, I mean almost bankrupt stakes, and now he kicks off with this FFS!

Actually after typing all this, I don't really feel in the mood to tell you about the shite day in poker so hopefully I'll be in a better frame of mind tmoz. Sorry for venting, GL all.

Swong Citeh!

2457 hands Profit -$188.

It could have been so much worse, but incredibly it should have been far far better. -$400 in all in EV luck today, plus some f'kin horrible coolers. I was hoping to build on the last 2 days profits today, and still I feel I'm playing quite well in NSD pots. There are 1 or 2 spots were I still spew, but I'm well impressed by my NSD winnings. Today was still good as I was only down -$78 in that area.

Oh well here are the horror hands for you to cringe at, either how badly I played them of purely how unlucky I was.

This 1st hand is pretty bad play all round by me I think. This should be a fold to a 3/bet, but he could be squeezing wide here, however calling is spewy as it should be fold or shove. I hit the dream flop and I know the min bet is gross, but lets face it it doesn't change anything as its going in regardless. He's got a fair bit of equity so not really a bad beat tbh, but this was just the start of the suckouts:




Not for full stacks but still pretty hard to take:





The next hand is against a calling station type, I'm looking for 3 streets of value with this flopped str8, the river is kind of scary, but I'm not really worried about the flush. His push is gross, but I just can't find a fold!




What's this, another flopped str8?





Oh, and just to finish on, a lovely little example of how not to value push the river with the 2nd nuts, WTF!





Positive News

Just got some stuff concierged from my holidays, so in the next few days I will be getting $1600 added to my account (oh the joys of Supernova :p). It still leaves me with 80k FPP's, so unless I buy something else, I may keep these until Christmas. Hopefully by then I'll have in the region of 400k FPP's.


Video Time

Well it's not much of a video, but the song is really catchy imo. People over this side of the pond will recognise it from the Magners commercials. GL all.

Make Your Mind Up!

Poker really annoys me at times, or should I say, I annoy myself. I love the excitement and action that 6max brings, but I also love the fact I can 20 table FR and rake in the FPP's. I've mentioned this before, I do well at different limits at 6mx v FR. For some fecking reason I'm just easy money at 100nl FR, whereas I was winning quite easily at 50nl FR. It's frustrating the life out of me in all honesty because if ( and it's a big IF, ) I do decide to go for Supernova Elite, I need to be winning at probably 1PTBB/100 TBH. Also I need not only to be playing 100nl, but realistically 200nlFR. 6max can be equally frustrating as the variance seems to be a lot higher in 6max v FR. Now at 50nl I was pretty much a break even player, but at 100nl I do ok WTF!

Poker Update

Anyways, since my last update I decided I wanted to mix my games up a bit so I went for a little HU. I played some 50nl and did really well the 1st day. I played a couple of tables and won a few buy ins, mainly through really aggressive pf and post flop play. My NSD winnings were great which I was really pleased about. The next day started off in similar vein, but unfortunately I was suffering a little at SD and went on a bit of tilt against 1 particular villain. Ended up down 1 buy in for the 2 days, but it was a welcome change.

I honestly feel my post flop play has improved over the last month or so, so I went back to the 6max tables and ended up playing around 5k hands over 2 days or so. I'm up $1k over that period running a hot 10PTBB/100, but what's most pleasing is the NSD winnings, see graph:




Ok I know it's a miniscule sample, but heh it looks good to me.

I got into some real tricky, deep pots in over this period. I played this hand totally horrible imo. Even at 6max against this TAG I shouldn't be stacking off deep with TPTK. there's some discussion on CC about the merit of 4betting deep with AK, obviously it's situational but w/e.





Another tricky spot, deepish. This dude is like 30/20/3 so I don't think I have much option but to fold (still not sure about that) however his push here fucks me up for the next hand I have with him, he even said in the chat 'u have JJ?'.



Then this, same villain:





So yep there were some good hands, this one in particular was very satisfying. Villain is an 85/1/1 type. I dunno these guys hit everything against me. I'd already lost a fair bit to this villain, raising with the likes of AK, KQ type hands, and he's still there at the river holding the 73o trash whilst I'm there with A high and he's there sitting pretty with 2pr.

I've since realised that sometimes in 6max you just have to call down light. Ok this is not a particulary great example of that, but given villains AF I think it was ok.





Ok, thats about it. I'm off work still until next Monday so I need to get some hands in before I go back to work. I'm a bit down this month on hands played,due to my holidays last week, and playing 6max so hopefully I'll get in at least 10k before I return. Just one more thing, Congrats to Irexes on CC for doing well in this weeks Sunday Million. No doubt he'll get to the final table soon imo. GL all.

Difficult Times

Still getting over the marathon journey home from my holidays, so thought I'd relax and play some poker. Played around 3.3k hands over 2 sessions and felt ok at first playing around 16 tables. Ended the 1st session down just over 3 buy ins. Made some great call downs along the way, but having to make difficult call downs on a regular basis basically just puts tremendous pressure on you. It usually stems from losing big pots with the bigger hands, so it gets to a stage were you think that you have to make the marginal call downs in the smaller pots just to make some ground. As I said I did make some decent call downs, but I feel I'm putting too much pressure on myself in having to play like this.

The second session was a real struggle. I managed to reduce my daily deficit to below a buy in. Again constantly making tough call downs along the way. Then over the last 500 hands I ended up the day a total of 4.5 buy ins down. This certainly wasn't helped by KK>AA on 4 fecking occasions. All in all I got paid off with one set, whereas I constantly seem to give value to setminers when I hit tptk.

New Goals

I was planning on sharing some new goals today, but I feel it's gonna have to wait a little. I was hoping that a week's break from poker was going to change things, maybe I have to be realistic about my skills and progress at 100nl FR. It's strange that I actually feel I have improved in certain areas, but I can't continually blame coolers and bad beats on this prolonged break even stretch at 100nl, even though that's exactly how it feels.

Tomorrow's a new day, GL all.

Summer Holidays

Just got back after a gruelling 14hr journey. Set off from St Malo, at 7am this morning and I'm pretty much knackered atm. Just thought I'd make my blog post though, because we had a wonderful time and just thought I'd share it.

Great Start.....Not!

We set off last Thurs at around 6:30am, for a 250 mile journey to Poole in Dorset to catch our ferry at 12:30pm to France. We were cruising along with about 80 miles to go when the traffic started getting a little busy. Not only that, but the last 100 miles or so were pretty much all country roads. It suddenly dawned on me that this was gonna be a little tight for time, as we had to be at the port at least 45mins before departure! With around 30 miles to go we were about 45 minutes left before the ferry departed. I put my foot down with the forlorn hope, that the ferry may be delayed. We made the port with about 10 minutes to go before the departure time, but unfortunately we were too late as the doors had closed and the preparations had been made for the ferry to depart. Shit!!!!

Thankfully, the Brittany Ferries customer services rep, resheduled us on another ferry 3 hrs later from a neighboring port at Portsmouth some 50 miles away.

We arrived at Cherbourg at around 7:30pm and checked in to our overnight hotel. The next morning we left on a 2hr drive for a 3 night stay in the small town of Dinard, just a few miles from St. Malo in Brittany.

Dinard is situated on the Emerald Coast of Northern France. It has a lovely little beach, and the Centre Ville is composed of small shops and plenty of restaurants and bars. The beaches are great in this part of the country. Right along the coastline there are little island fortresses that originate from medieval times. As the tide goes out, this exposes little paths to the islands, which also provides a great wealth of little rock pools ready for exploring for me and the kids.




St. Malo

For the remainder of our holiday we stayed in St. Malo, a few miles up the coast. St. Malo is a walled city of great medieval tradition. It consists once again of small quaint shops, with a rich array of wonderful seafood restaurants. Again the City is protected by island fortresses, which provide lovely little walks when the tide is out. Our hotel was situated on a the promenade about a mile or so outside the walled city, so most evenings we would walk along the prom dodging the crashing waves against the sea wall, which provided great entertainment for the evening.















Mont St. Michel


Our last day was spent at a truly remarkable place. Mont St. Michel is an granite island that has an Abbey and walled town built upon it. Walking onto this island is like stepping back in time to the medieval ages. Seriously I've never seen anything like it, absolutely breathtaking. If you ever get a chance to go and see it, you won't be sorry.




So then, we had a great time, spent an absolute fortune, and now I'm ready for poker. I hope the break from poker has done me good. I feel thoroughly refreshed, so back to the grind. GL all.

Off on My Hols!

Well tomorrow morning, I'll setting off with the family on a weeks holiday to France. We'll be setting off bright and early from Liverpool, driving down to the south coast to Poole in Dorset where we'll be getting the 12:30pm ferry to Cherbourg.

We'll spend the night in Cherbourg before setting off to stay in St. Malo in Brittany. Really looking forward to it as poker is sort of pissing me off at the mo.

Poker Update

Poker sucks! Poker sucks and poker sucks!!!!!!

So then a short post, but been kind of busy getting some hands in and getting ready for my holiday. I promise to update more frequently when I get back, GL all

Champagne Celebrations

At long last, I finally made it. And it wasn't without it's fair share of up's and down's. Seriously today just sums up my last couple of months, but more about that later.

At the start of the year, I vowed to myself that this is the make or break year for me with poker. I desperately wanted to achieve Supernova, just for the shear hell of it. I reached it way in advance of when I expected to, so now it's time for some new poker goals.

Today's Session

I needed just under 2k VPP's today, and as you may know by now I have been 16-20 tabling mainly 200nl FR with some 100nl as well. This month had started off well, but then got swingy. Today I got off to a flyer when at one stage I was up just on $700 over 2.5k hands. To reach the 2k VPP's I needed for the day, I would have to play around 4k hands. Things started going against me but I was still up around $400. Then the Supernova doomswitch was activated and in just over 700 hands I went from +$400 to almost -$400. Thankfully I checked my cashier box and saw this message:





Sweet!

New Goals!

Well now I earn FPP's at the rate of 3.5fpp/vpp but my next major goal, is to go for the 200k VPP milestone bonus. If I achieve this then I should earn approx $6.5k in FPP bonuses.

Play more 6max

Move up to 200nl permanently. Who knows maybe 400nl by the end of the year, lol.


Thanks for the support guys, and a big thank you to Cardschat and it's loyal members. Now I'm off to Concierge some of my 190k FPP's :). GL all.

$1k Milestone Day

Well as I only need a handful of VPP's to make Supernova, I sort of decided to try to get them as quickly as possible. The reason being, I'm going on holiday in a couple of weeks, and I want to Concierge some of the stuff for my hols.

I decided the best way to do this would be at 200nl FR. So I loaded up around 12 tables of 200nl and about 6 of 100nl. As you can guess I ran like god at 200nl, but still running shite at 100nl, which is kind of baffling to me.

I'll show some hands form the session in a mo, but going back to may last point. It seems strange to me that I can do well at one level, but not at another. Don't get me wrong, I've only played a couple of thousand hands at 200nl, but when I was at 50nl 6max, I struggled like crap over 100k hands. I went to 50nl FR and did well, soon progressing to 100nl FR. Then at 100nl FR, again I struggled for around 100k hands, so moved to 100nl 6max and again did quite well. It's frustrating the shit out me tbh, but meh!

Anyway here's my graph for yesterday:





Session Review

A decent hand at 100nl for a change. 3 way pot here makes this a little interesting. I'm still not sure about the flop, I'm torn between shoving/calling here, but he's giving me decent odds here I think.




Another 100nl hand against the same villain as above. Can't remember the last time I had a set paid off at 100nl.






OK 1st significant hand at 200nl. Villain is 96/46/2 over 50 hands or so, he was floating shit loads of pots so it was time to make a stand here with my 99 and bluff catch the river imo!





With this hand I flop a monster, now I play this one of two ways usually when I see a possible fl dr on the board. I sometimes re-reaise here to try and make them pay for there draw, occasionally though I'll see a turn, and get aggro on a non fl dr card, as this cuts there odds dramatically if they call my bets or they get aggro themselves. It worked well for me on this hand.





Against same villain on this hand but a different table. On the river I'm trying to get him to believe I'm on a busted fl dr here. I figure he's potted the river with a strong hand, he banks for ages, Damn!




So I only need like 4k VPP's now, I should definitely have this in the bag by Tuesday at the latest. GL all!

It's Been a While...

Since my last post. Why?, well just been really busy with work, spending time with the kids watching 24, playing a little golf etc etc. Been playing some poker too, but you all know how thats going atm!

July Monthly Summary

The last 2 months have been just like 'WTF!' I mean, I'm not even on a f'king d/swing as such. Only played just on 47k hands, which considering I played like 15k in the 1st 3-4 days of the 2xVPP promo, just shows how disinterested I became.

Cash results look like this: Played 47k, Profit +$762, earned like $700 in VPP's. Half of the hands I played were at 100nl 6max, and I ran ok there. Nothing special but at least I made back the losses that occurred at FR.

In the middle of the month though, I played some SnG's, not sure how much I lost exactly, but around $100. Disaster struck in trying to qualify for the f'kin Sunday Million! Spent like 20k FPP's and around $100 and still never qualified. So overall I think I made around $7-800.

Just to show how shitty I run at 100nl FR, I'm like -$800 on ALL IN EV for July!




Well all I can say is, that I doubt I can have 3 meh months on the trot, so cue the major d/swong or hopefully upswong!

Goals for August

Jesus, I hate setting them, but it's kind of boring if I don't so here goes.

Achieve Supernova status - should make it by the 1st week.

Min 50k hands - probably a 60/40 split in favour of 6max to FR

Shots at 200nl


Leisure Time

Played 9 holes of golf the other day with a mate from work. The 1st time I have played on a course in over 2 years, and I really enjoyed it. The 1st hole was a par 5, so a decent drive was essential, cue me topping the ball around 80 yards off the tee into the rough! Things went quite well thereafter and I ended up scoring a 43 on a par 35. Hopefully I can get some golf in this month, as I'm off work for 3 1/2 weeks, woohoooooo!

Well as 'It's Been a While' enjoy this video. GL all, and bring it on Supernova!