Good Weekend

79.3k Hands / +$1684 Profit

Probably not gonna make anywhere near 150k hands this month, more like 130k at a push. Ran a lot better since my last update, but today was frustrating a shit tbh. Was up 2 buy ins early on in the session, but then a series of coolers (mainly to the short stacking nitty mo fo's) and bad beats left me floundering around 2 buy ins down for the majority of the sessions. This hand pretty much summed up my day, as you can tell I like to call with Axs a fair bit. According to HEM I'm a 54% favourite over both villains who are like 20% each ish..... would have been nice to hit that flush imo!






So I nearly have my 250k Fpp's which as you know is worth $4k, so by the end of tomorrow I will be cashing in those Fpp's. I took out $1500 last week out of my Stars roll, so it will be nice to top it back up a little, even though I'll be taking another $1500 out pretty soon. It looks as though I'll make the 200k Vpp milestone around December time, which is worth a net $1.2k, nice imo ;o).

Didn't get to play as many hands as I'd liked to at the weekend. Went out on Friday night with the wife to town for a nice meal. Checked out this little latin/tapas place, had some cocktails to start the night off followed by a lovely Brazilian main meal of Fish with mussels with white beans in a coconut sauce. After that we met some friends and basically went on a pub crawl and had a real good time.

So had a good weekend that was finished off nicely with a win for Lewis Hamilton, lets just hope he does a good job in Brasil in two weeks time. GL all!

Rough Time Continues

63.3k Hands / +$818 Profit

Probably around 13k hands since the last update and another $200 loss. As the title suggests this is a really rough time at the moment. I'll post a few hands just so you can see wtf I'm talking about.

I guess a good player adapts to swings like this. I've heard players before talking about not changing your style when going through swings like this, but I'm not a supporter of that. As I've said before, my game consists of aggression, so raise, bet, raise, bet etc etc. The problem over the last 35k hands has been, seriously, everything getting called or raised. So to continue that aggressive style is just like burning $$$. As a result I have had to nit it up, my stats have gone from 15/11/3 to a nitty 11/8/2.5. Also the rate at which I'm earning Vpp's has decreases substantially. I've gone from an average of 350Vpp's/1000 hands to around 290Vpp's/1000.

Yesterday's session saw a slight improvement, in the fact I was actually getting some hands and getting action from them. Unfortunately for me though I was hitting the nuts on the flop/turn, getting the money in and the villains hitting their boats on the river. Well yeah, that's frustrating as shit as you can imagine. Another thing, why the fuck do I get AK/JJ when a short stack pushes on my steal attempt. They always have the fucking nuts! I don't know about you guys, but I just can't fold AK/JJ when the shorty has 20bb's!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, it's not all coolers, bad beats and the like, there's a fair proportion of bad play as well. When running this shit, it does lead to poor decisions unfortunately. I just have to try to minimise them as much as possible.

Selected Hands

This is an example of how passive I've become lately, really this was bad!!!!





Example of villain hitting the top of their range!









So I'm halfway through this challenge, with 63.k hands played. After a great start, I'm somewhat disappointed at how it's gone, results wise. I'm still coping with the volume, and I hope to get somewhere approaching 150k hands for the month. I'm nearly upto 250k Fpp's, which will earn me $4k in a cash bonus Stars does, so I will be cashing that in in the next 3-4 days or so. I will be withdrawing around $3k of that as we need some $$$ for Christmas. GL all!

Timeout!

4014 hands / -$419 Loss

Well since last Thursday I have only played 4k hands in cash games. Ran like complete shite tonight. I mean really f'king shitty. Which on the back of my last losing session on Thursday was a complete pisser. I'm not gonna bore you with the details, but I ended up 4 buy ins below EV.

Just didn't play much at all over the weekend what with work, and feeling absolutely exhausted. Not sure if the volume of hands is actually taking it's toll on me mentally, but seriously this weekend I was just knackered.

I had a day off work on Friday and well, ended up being a little busy so didn't get to play. I also took the wife for a meal which was nice, and is sort of becoming a regular occurrence of late. Why? Well tbh, I now have some disposable income thanks to the pokah.

Debt

Pretty much since I started working 20 years ago, I have been in debt. We started a family very early (accidently I hasten to add ;o) ) so things were a struggle for a number of years. We always used up our overdraft facility at the bank and had numerous credit cards maxed out as well. Every so often we would consolodate our debt with one big loan, then the viscious circle would repeat itself.

Well, 2.5 years ago I sort of had a light bulb moment (at that time our debt was approaching £45k not including mortgage ) and decided enough was enough. My wife and I were completely miserable, constantly juggling finances on a weekly basis just to keep the banks of our backs. I came across a site called Martin Lewis Money Saving Expert which gave us some invaluable advice in cutting down our monthly outgoings and debts.

Anyways I was introduced to Matched Betting, which basically makes use of a gambling loophole to earn free money from Online Bookmakers. Sounds too good to be true, well thats what I thought, but believe me I made around £2k from free bets that these companies offer you to open up an account with them. It's simple to do and risk free and totally legal. Yes Free Money WTF! I will at a later date make a post on how it's done.

So with some extra cash, I thought I would deposit some money on Pokerstars and concentrate on buidling a bankroll, and that's exactly what I've done. I have reduced my debts a little (now below £30k) and I now have some surplus income at the end of the month on a regular basis. I know it sounds daft, but we can now enjoy going out on a regular basis, without having to worry too much about how much it gonna cost, or if we can afford it. We've also been able to go on holiday this year, and we'll be able to have a really nice Christmas as well. I certainly hope this continues because I'm starting to enjoy it. GL all!

Progress Report

45.6k hands / +$1456 Profit

Here's my graph for the month so far. Had a really good start, running at around 3-4PTBB/100, then the downswing started yesterday.





Well I have been expecting it for a day or two now, and the purpose of this month as you're probably aware, is to play a certain volume of hands as if I'm going for SNE (Supernova Elite). I have to play through the d/swing, pure and simple! Of course, I'm not going to go reckless and lose a huge chink on my roll, but if I seriously want to consider SNE, then I'm sorry I just have to suck it up!

After my session yesterday, I actually tilted!!! Well, the story of yesterday's session went something like this. My game is pretty standard when playing 24 tables. I raise in position, I iso/sqz, I steal, I CB, I bluff catch and I value bet. This works well when things are going well. But what happens when it doesn't? Simply this, Your steals get called or r/r, your iso/sqz get called or r/r, your CB's get called r/r. This is pretty disastrous when you consider, we miss most flops. Of course when we're running well, everything works out fine wether we hit the flop or not. But when our villan hits the top of their range on a regular basis, then we lose a shit load of non showdown pots, or even worse, spew all the way to the river.

The downswing I have just experienced was pretty much summed up in the above paragraph. The actual result of this is that I actually become a passive nit, as I know I'm spewing $$$ left, right and centre. So it was pretty horrible, and not a lot I could do about it tbh. So after the session Yesterday, I tried a little $100nl HU..... Yes I tilted like fuck! Ok I only lost $275, after winning $100 to start off with, but that's something I don't usually do, so I was a little pissed off about that.

I'm actually pleased with the amount of volume I'm getting in. I have tried to explain this to my wife, why I'm playing so much poker. She doesn't really understand, but I think it's imperative for me to understand what's involved and use this month as a learning experience. I'm pretty sure once this month is over, I will make a firm decision about SNE one way or the other. There will have to be some sacrifices along the way, but I'm sure it will be worth it. Gl all!

Running Goot IMO!

Days 2, 3, 4 & 5

23,559 Hands / +$1828 Profit


So total hands for the month up to the 5th of October is 27,542. Managed to get in a 7k hands day yesterday for a little profit of around $500. Running extremely hot atm at around 4PTBB/100, but can't help thinking that a d/swong is just around the corner.

Vpps's earnings so far for the month is around 11k, which equates to approx $600, which is not too shabby imo. I've got to work for the next 2 days :o(, so if I manage to get around 8k hands over that period I'll be happy. Hit a bankroll milestone earlier this morning, with a cash total of 5 figs, $10k. Add that to my Fpps, and it looking pretty good. Sorry it's a short one, GL all.

Good Start

Day 1: 6k hands/+$818

Good start to this challenge I have set myself. Played 4 sessions, lasting approx 5.5 hours. Ran really hot, picking up a lot nice hands. A little disappointed with the last 300 hands though, as I was +$1000 at the time.

Obviously I had a day off work today, but tbh I felt like I could of played another 2k hands at a push. I'm back at work tomorrow, so getting the 5k hands is gonna be tough. I was 22 tabling today, getting approx 1100 hands/hour. So tomorrow I'll be happy with around 4k hands.

I doubt I'll get the time to post much content this month, so I'll update the blog at the weekend. GL all.

September Summary

46.6k hands played / +$2,717 Profit





I earned 19.5k Vpps which equates to approx 68k Fpp's and a nice little $1100 added to my total earnings this month.

Total for the month of $3,800.

The month started off really well, even though my attempt at 200nl was short and not very sweet. Then I went on a 30k hand break even stretch, which was pretty frustrating to say the least. The root cause imo, was seeing too many showdowns. I had a SD % of approx 33%, which is probably a little high, I usually maintain a level of 27%.

Played in a few donkaments this month as well. Did well in last weekends Supernova Freerolls, cashing for approx $115. Busted out very frustratingly in the $55 buy in, $80k GTD just on the bubble with KK losing to AK, which seriously pissed me off, I could have easily folded ITM, but meh! Then I played in tonights $11 rebuy. Seriously, I didn't have one f'kin hand in 2 hours! No wonder I hate donkaments.

October Goals

For some time now I have been interested in Supernova Elite. To achieve SNE, you need approx 83k Vpps/month. So at 100nl you would need to play approx 200k hands a month, at 200nl approx 150k hands/month.

Now that's a tall order, especially as I have a full time job. So I just want to try it out and see how I can handle the volume of hands, the swings and the time management of working/playing. At least then I'll be in a better position to make a decision once and for all about SNE. So October I hope to be playing around 5k hands/day at 100nl FR, of course my primary concern is my BR, so if it all goes tits up, then I will abandon the attempt.

I have been speaking to Zach about this on AIM recently, and I think he may have a trial run at it this month as well, so it should be interesting to say the least. GL all!