Champagne Supernova

HeadsUpaments!

2009-02-08T17:05:00.002Z

Think I made mention to the fact that I was gonna cut down on tables, and it was going ok. I was certainly improving in my hand reading and hence my NSD winnings were improving at a steady rate. However, I still couldn't consistently show any improvement in SD winnings. I really don't know what's going on in that department, as it was such a strong part of my game.

I had opened up 4 tables of 6max early last week, and within 100 hands, I had lost 3.5 buy ins. The hands are un-important, but needless to say I was running very bad. I took a break for an hour or so, then I remembered something Vanq said. He was talking to me about HU 'n stuff so I thought 'In for a penny in for a pound'.

So since that day I have played solely Heads Up at 100nl on Paddy Power. At the moment I'm 2 tabling, and have got about 9k hands in so far at this level. The play is absolutely shocking I have to say. Things are going really well over this small sample, but I'm trying to play a low variance type of game, if that makes sense. The way I do it is basically just play really aggro in position. The regs are pretty tight to say the least so basically I just raise atc otb. They just give up like a high % of the time, so it's free money really. You'd be amazed at how nitty they are.

Then you get another type of reg who like to think he's thinking on level far beyond their ability. But they just bluff away there stacks liker there's not tomorrow. And then we have the ATM's who basically play over rolled and are looking for a quick spin up. They seriously are atrocious, along with most of the short stackers as well tbh.

So enjoying winning again, I hope it continues, but I won't post an update on my winnings until the end of month summary. In the meantime I'll just throw up some posts on how it's going with some hands as well.

Oh by the way, I was supposed to be having my coaching session last week, but unfortunately I was too ill for it. So I'll have to re-arrange that some time in the near future.

GL guys.

January's Monthly Review

2009-02-01T11:57:00.006Z

Sorry for the lack of updates this month.... It's been tough!

Since the last update I've now placed 1/2 my roll at Paddy Power poker (Ipoker network) and managed to get an ok deal there. Basically I get a $600 deposit bonus (and boy do I need that atm!) and I get promoted to the top of their VIP status, which apparently brings me something in the region of 33% rakeback equivalent at 6max. Obviously I have yet to confirm this, but if it's someway below that figure, then I'm dumping Ipoker pretty quick as the software can only be desribed as SHITE!

My first weeks play there has pretty much gone the same was as most of my January.... constantly getting my money in behind to the likes of JJ v qq, qq v kk bollocks a host of flipping with AK.

The sense of delight I felt after getting unstuck at 30k hands was truly inspirational almost. Then to go on another soul destroying d/swong, 2 in the space of 40k hands, well you can't even imagine the absolute dejection I feel atm.

What Now?

Well the beauty of being a bankroll nit is that I have been able to plan for days like this. I still have like 50 buy ins at 100nl, so there's still something to play for. But, I seriously CANNOT have any more months like this..... So I have to change something.

I had already taken measure before I spoke to Vanq earlier this week, but something he said actually hit home for a change. I know it's also been said my numerous other ppl on CC as well.

PLAY LESS TABLES!

I made moves into actually getting some coaching as well, and I spoke to my coach earlier this week and he basically told me he want me to play 2 tables of 6 max from now on.... and no more than 4. Basically Vanq said as much as well. So I tried it yesterday and I'm going to play 4 tables max for the whole of February.

So I'm looking forward to Tuesday as this will be my 1st session of 5 I have booked with him. He's a Deuces Cracked coach and has some really great reviews by his students and peers, and after speaking to him last week he seems a great guy. He plays 1 & 2knl and he has a degree in Mathematics so I'm sure he can teach me a thing or 2. If after this series of coaching sessions I cant improve at 6max, then it's time to re-evaluate my poker goals. So February is really gonna be an important month for me pokerwise.

Any Positives?

Well yes there are.

I can't remember how but a couple of 10nl guys on CC actually approached me for some coaching/sweat sessions. 'LOL' I hear you say :). Well believe it or not they went surprisingly well. I've had around a 8 sessions with Jurn8 and just the one with The Shrog. Jake's game has come on leaps and bounds since we 1st started and his results have been extremely consistant. He's already upto 25nl and seems to be running well there so I hope he'll be upto 50nl by the end of the month.

Brad's only session with me, proved he already has the foundations to become a really good cash game player, and I hope he wants to some more sweats in the future. Jake has mentioned that he believes I could do some coaching (micro stakes), and tbh I feel I can look at other's game's better than I can analyse my own, but I don't want to go down that road until I sort myself out, so maybe in the future. For now I'm more than happy just helping out the 5-10nl guys out should they seek my advice (when I have the time). Oh and Custo if your reading this..... I haven't forgotten you m8!

Oh and BTW, thanks for everyone who posts in the comments giving me support.... It really does help and means a lot. GL all!

Disappointing End!

2009-01-20T03:20:00.002Z

Well I haven't posted much this month. I'm sure you guys can guess why. I'm pretty low at the moment, not much else I can say to describe how I feel. Got fed up with my play/how I ran/constant bs that I've had this month. I could post a shit load of hands of how bad I played, how bad I ran but wtf! There's absolutely no point! I don't profess to be a good player or anything, I never have. And at my lowly winrate, I expect to have some horror downswings. But it's just gone on for too long now.

Last November was the start, a 35 buy in d/swong to boot. I stayed at 200nl for too long whilst that swong was underway. I made a recovery in December, but January has been just as demoralising as November. I'm nowhere near as bad as Nov, I mean I'm only -$2.5k, but earlier on in the month I was like down to -$3.6k, then I rallied back to -$200, then back down again.

Withdrew all my money out of Stars, which I feel absolutely gut wrenched about. I had high hopes for making a decent living on Stars, but I have to be realistic, I just can't beat 200nl. And my winrate just isn't good enough at 100nl (just under 3ptbb/100 and steadily decreasing).

I'll post some more another day, coz i'm just pissed off atm.

Great Start to the New Year!

2009-01-04T12:19:00.010Z

Not poker wise!

Took the family to my father in laws in North Wales for a couple of days, and had a really good time. Plenty of wine and lovely food, in fact I've certainly over indulged in both over the last 2 weeks. My wife's father lives in a converted barn not far from Betws -y- coed. It's a lovely place, situated on the side of a hill over looking the hills and valleys.

So, on Friday we all went to a nearby reservoir, which is surrounded by some beautiful scenery. We managed to walk around the whole reservoir, total of 7 miles. Well I can tell you now, I'm paying dearly for that. It just goes to show, how you can underestimate your own levels of fitness. I mean, it was a 3.5 hour walk over varying terrain, but I felt refreshed after it. However, 2 days later and I feel like someone has stuck a kitchen knife in by 2 calf muscles, plus I have tendon problems in my right foot.

So here's some photo's of the reservoir:

Me and my daughter:

Poker

Played my 1st hands of 2009 yesterday. It was a pretty nasty day, villains were hitting the top of their range almost everytime I got into a hand with anyone. So it wasn't pretty and not worth talking about in all honesty. Down 4.5 buy ins.

2009 Life Goals

Guess what? I actually have some non poker goals for this year.

Reduce my debt by 50% - If I manage this then that will be huge. Currently my personal debt is approx £32k

Laser eye surgery - it would be real nice not to have to put my glasses on 1st thing of a morning to be able to see where the hell I'm going.

2 Holidays - I love going on holiday. We haven't had a real 2 week vacation for, god, I dunno about 8 years I think.

Excercise - Yeah, I'm the ultimate couch potato. I really need to start some sort of physical fitness programme.

That's it for now. BTW, I'm getting really broody for SNE, I cant tell you. I really must resist the urge, but I find it so appealing the thought of being a Supernova Elite!!!! GL all!

2008 Yearly Summary

2008-12-31T18:51:00.004Z

Been busy over Xmas, so I haven't had much chance to update the blog. Anyways December has been an ok month for me made $2450 in winnings and around $1100 in fpp's, so total of $3550.

Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to post any yearly graphs or give any reasonable accurate stats as I have had to endure 2 database malfuntions. So I emailed Pokerstars and they gave me some stuff, so we'll have to make do with that.

So my poker year!

Started the year off playing Stars and PartyPoker with a balance of $1500 on Stars and $35 on Party. January was a really good month for me as I found PartyPoker had put in my account a $35 bonus. I managed to spin this upto like $2000, before going on a little d/swong. I eventually withdrew the lot out for a nice little earner of $1400. Not bad for 4 weeks work from $35! Party was a really fishy site and in all honesty, I could probably make a fair bit more money there than I can on Stars. But my goal at the start of the year was to make Supernova.

Stars went steady for the 1st month, where I was playing a mix of 25 and 50nl 6max. Then in Feb, I took a shot at 100nl, lost a buy in or 2, then dropped down and went on a hideous ~25 buy in d/swong. This was my first real cash game swong and it really knocked me back. I lost half of my roll and a hell of a lot of confidence. I took a small break and eventually got back in.

I continued with 50nl for a bit, but for some reason I just couldn't beat it, even though I was a small winner at 100nl, a decent winner at 25nl and a significant winner at 100nl on Party. I was becoming a little demoralised with the whole thing, because I knew I should be making more progress. Now on Cardschat Chuck, Tenbob, and Zach were full ring players so I decided to have a shot at that, and have some more input on stats/analysis with these guys. I suddenly started winning at 50nl at a decent rate and not only that I learned the art of multi tabling :).

So by now were entering the summer months, and I'm 16 tabling 50nl with some shots at 100nl. Also I'm now earning Vpp's at a decent rate, and it looks like Supernova will be easily achievable before the end of the year. From memory I had decent winning months in May, June and July. It was around this time that I had increased my tables now upto 24 tabling, which sounds kind of insane, but it's really easy when you have the correct AHK scripts.

Because of the 24 tabling, I managed to get to Supernova in super quick time. My 1st real poker milestone achieved. I was extremely proud of myself at the time, thinking it was a monumentous achievement. Little did I realise that its really easy to get to 100k Vpp's as my next 100k only took like 3.5 months lol.

By this time I had been following a thread a thread on 2+2 Supernova Elite. In fact I'd been following this thread for a few months and was totally fascinated by how much money could be made multi tabling and raking in the Fpp's. Once I hit SN, I pretty much convinced myself that come Jan 2009, I would be making the grind for SNE! I set myself a hands goal in October, to play at least 150k hands at 100nl FR, as this would be something like the monthly hand goal I would need to achieve SNE. I managed only 110k hands, but I really slacked off completely towards the end of the month, if nothing else it gave me a taster.

So things were going along nicely. I was well on my way for attaining the bankroll I needed to go for SNE, $20k. Then November happened!!!! WTF!!!! Just mentioning the word November makes me cringe. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I get goose pimples and shudder at the thought of that f'kin insane piece of shit month!!! Up $3k in the 1st 10 days or so, then BOOM! 15 days of losing poker! Every day a losing day. I dropped around 35 buy ins wtf! My 2nd losing month of the year, and a average winrate pretty much destroyed.

Totals

Well thats pretty much it. So what about the figures!

Total hands played = 650k (not including tourneys)

Starting year balance = $1500

End of year Balance = ~$12k

Total cash outs = ~$9.5

Total profit for the year = ~$20k

Oh I forgot to add, I got my $2k milestone bonus this month for getting 200k Vpp's.

Goals for 2009

Continue with my 6max development, including studying more and coaching

Improve my winrate

500k Vpp's (so no I don't think I'm setting out for SNE, not at this stage ;) )

400nl at least, by the end of 2009

Contribute more on CC

500k Vpp's

That's all I can think of right now, there not far reaching goals. I want something thats fairly achievable, so GL to me and GL to everyone with their goals.

So to summarise: I've really enjoyed my poker experience this year, it's been great year all round. Yes I'm an Fpp whore, and a fair proportion of my winnings is based on that. My winrate is pretty shitty, and that's something I'm gonna work on in the new year. Thanks to everyone at CC who has offered support to me and helped me out, you know who you are. I look forward to the forthcoming year. Let it be a profitable one for us all, except the donks LDO!

Crazy Buzy!

2008-12-10T15:14:00.003Z

Work has been manic over the last 2-3 weeks or so. We normally have 9 CSI's working from our base, but unfortunately we're down to 6 due to abstractions. This, along with the build up to the inevitable Christmas increase in crime, has really put a strain on things. In recent weeks we've had a Murder, Aggravated Rape, Fatal Fire and 3 post mortems, along with all the other day to day stuff.

You can read about the Murder here

Fatal Fire incident here

Poker News

Made another withdrawal from Stars this week to pay for the Christmas prezzies, so bankroll is getting hammered once again. Took $2.2k, making my withdrawals totalling around $7k or so over the last 4 months. Still 8k Vpps left to get my $2k milestone bonus, so hoping to hit that by next week.

Still playing 100nl 6max, and it's going quite well this month. In fact I looked in HEM today, just out of curiousity, to find ouot how many hands I've played and my winrate for 100nl 6mx. Suprisingly to me I was a fairly decent winner (compared to my overall winrate) at 3PTBB/100 over 120k hands. Now I know that's not great, but I was somewhat surprised by it, given that also I had a shitty month last month.

So summary so far:

Total hands played 18.2k / Total profit +$926

GL all!

November Monthly Summary

2008-12-03T00:42:00.004Z

Total hands played 46.6k / Cash game loss -$1534 / Vpps value +$900 / Total loss -$634

Took the last 5 days off from playing as it was pretty demoralising to say the least. Cannot believe how it's ended this month, really I'm feeling absolutely flat about my game. I lost well over 30 buy ins from the high point of the month, which was a long time ago, and I'm actually wondering what the future holds for me on Pokerstars! Seriously I feel I have gone from a moderate winning player to an absolute no hoper. Here the sorry looking graph for the month fwiw!

It's my 2nd losing month of the year, and whilst the monthly total doesn't look too bad when taking into account the Vpp/Fpp's, it still a pretty devastating run of hands.

Played today for the 1st time in almost a week, and the bullshit just continued, playing 100nl 6max, I lost 9 buy ins in around 1.5k hands. I wouldn't mind but my NSD winnings have been ok, but I just can't win a hand at showdown. So once again I dropped down to 50nl and thankfully, after what seems like an eternity, I have cleared that $4k bonus which has brought my roll back up a little.

Goals for December

To be honest all I want to do is hopefully get this milestone bonus which is worth a net $1200 once I attain 200k Vpp's for the year. I only need like 12.7k Vpp's, then I'll have some serious decisions to make.

At this stage I'm pretty disallusioned with life at Stars. I'd hoped I would haave gained enough bankroll to go for SNE next year, but that seems dead and buried now. If I'm not gonna go for that then I'm wondering what the draw will be for me at Stars. There are a lot fishier sites that Stars, and I just seem to be going backwards and not progresssing as much as I'd hoped there. I dunno, it's difficult to be objective in light of a +30 buy in downswing. Maybe I'll feel a bit differently if I ever run goot again, who knows! GL all!

Epic!

2008-11-23T15:29:00.004Z

Monthly Totals: 38k hands played / -$860 loss

So looking at it from a monthly perspective it doesn't look that bad does it? However this covers up an epic downswong! Here's my graph for the last 11 days:

I've played these last few thousand hands, fairly confident that whatever hand I'm holding when the money goes in, is either way behind or will be by the time the river card hits. It's an insane downswing that has got me totally re-evaluating my poker goals for the forthcoming months. Pokerstars has been good to me. I've loved playing on Stars, and I've made some decent money this year, probably in the region of $18k (including bonuses) but I don't know how long I can let this downswing continue before I say 'enough's enough!' The last 11 days has included 10 buy ins at 200nl, 15 at 100nl and even 1 at 50nl. Yes my last 1k hands have been at 50nl!!!

My current bankroll still consists of +50 buy ins for 100nl, plus I have around 3k Vpp's to go before I release the $4k cash bonus, so it's not the end of the world. Well I'll see how the next few days go, GL all!

Wow, Just F'kin Wow!!!!

2008-11-17T21:28:00.004Z

Monthly Totals: hands played 26,000/ +$366 profit

Well it's really difficult to explain and put this into words how I feel at the moment. Things started going downhill for me towards the back end of last week, but this weekend was totally fucking brutal, and it just continued today. Usually I just power through these d/swongs, but this one is particularly disturbing. How much of it is down to tilt? Well if you count tilt as continuing to play through it, then yeah it's certainly contributing, but it's not like I'm totally spewing off stacks. So my sets are being over-setted, my flushes are getting boated, my big pairs are getting setted etc etc. I'm constantly finding myself in brutal post flop situations were my overpairs are in 3bet pot's and by the turn it's totally f'kin valueless.

What's making this d/swong more excruciating is the fact I'm working off a $4k cash bonus. I've heard lots of players who are gong for SNE about how they run so shit whilst working off the bonus. Well now I know how it feels as basically the bonus has almost been wiped out from my monthly peak.

I also qualified for the Sunday Million again this weekend.... Why do I bother! Now I'm not lying when I say this, the best hand I hand in almost 3hrs of play was AJo! How did I last so long, well I managed to steal 5 big blinds when I was otb, lol, and once I just shoved when a btn tried to steal my BB. Needless to say I went out long before the bubble.

So it looks like I'm just gonna mess around at 100nl 6mx/fr for the time being as I'm a bankroll nit, and I don't like playing with less than 40 buy ins at any particular level. This d/swong has serious implications as to whether I'll be able to go for SNE. Unless I run particularly well in December, it's looking really doubtful at the moment :( GL all!

Slow Progress....

2008-11-12T21:53:00.007Z

Monthly Totals: hands played 14,700 / +$2825 profit

....trying to play out this $4k bonus. Still need approx 12,000 Vpps, which is taking me an age playing 6max. It would be so much quicker at FR, but I'm determined to stay at 6max this month.

Gradually I've increased the number of 6max tables I'm playing. I really don't wanna play anymore than 12 tables tbh as I'll just become a nit, which I don't thinks overly profitable (if at all) at 200nl+ imo. So for now I'm playing anything from 6-12 depending on how I'm playing/running.

The banroll's taking a bit of a battering lately. I've started taking a small income from it on a monthly basis. This month it looks like I'll be withdrawing around $3k, which is obviously great, but I just love the thought of my roll building and moving up the levels as a result. Still need to make some substantial moniez between now and end of December before finalising my decision on SNE.

Just a short update, I'll post some hands in my next post, GL all!

Updateries!

2008-11-10T01:46:00.003Z

Monthly Totals: hands played 8077 / +$2076 profit

Holy shit! 8k hands played, I mean wtf is that all about? I love playing 6max but I just can't seem to play more than 9 tables. I certainly don't have the concentration to play mega multi tables for more than say an hour or two. Not that it matters this month as I'm just relaxing really, and just trying to concentrate on improving at 6max. The only downside to this though is that I'm trying to work off the $4k bonus I bought which requires me to earn 28k Vpp's. Still need like 15k Vpps before I clear it, DAMN!

So Sunday I decide to qualify for the Sunday Million, played in the 5400fpp 6max hyper turbo qually and made it. Seriously those fuckin donkaments make me sick. Why the hell do I put myself through it. I hate the structure of that tourny anyways, but I was card dead for 2.5hrs and went out like a lame duck!!!!

After that I played a few 6max tables, and as you can see from my graph it was a rollercoaster. But overall I'm happy with the way the month is going. Hope it's going well for everyone, GL All!

Hungover!

2008-11-04T21:27:00.003Z

2.2k Hands Played / +$1180 Profit

After last months challenge, it feels like I'm sort of hungover from my exploits and have only played 2 small ish sessions. As I think I may have mentioned, I'm back playing 200nl 6max, which over the very small sample I've played, is going quite well. Trying to just ease myself back into it, learning to re-adapt back to 6max ways i.e more isolating/squeezing.

Not sure if anyone else feels the same, but there just seems to be way to many regs on my tables. Yeah some of them are poor, but I would rather there were more fish. Maybe it's a sign of the times, there's been some debate lately about the credit crunch affecting players re-depositing or whatever. It could be that I'm playing at the wrong times, or just the fact that the fish are just getting far less as we progress up the limits. Either way, I suppose as we continue to play and progress, then we need to adapt to the changing times. Play different styles maybe, or even change games altogether. I suppose there's the possibility of changing sites as well, maybe to a more European based site as they seem to have more fish. Anyways, no need to hit the panick button just yet, just thinking out loud regarding some of the observations I've made lately.

Watched the Formula 1 finale at Brazil on Sunday night and wow, what an amazing race! I've been privelidged to watch some amazing sporting moments over the years, but what happened in the last 2 laps, especially in the last bend, when all looked lost for Lewis, then I think that it ranks right up there imo. Really exciting stuff!

Won't be playing tomorrow as we're going out, but I'll have a couple of days off after that so hopefully get some hands in then. GL All!

October Monthly Summary

2008-11-01T09:32:00.006Z

Totals 110.1k Hands played / +$1649 Cash game profit / 37.4k Vpps = $2.1k / Monthly Profit +$3.7k

Total Vpps for the month was 37.4k which is like 131k Fpp's, translated = $2.1k. So all in all it was an ok month for me.

Summary of the month, well my goal was to play 150k hands. Started off really well and as you can see from my graph, I went on a real heater in the first week or so. Around the 35k hand mark though things went on a real downer. 20+ buy in downswongs hurt, they hurt a lot. I honestly don't think I tilted much in that run, it consisted mainly of coolers and beats. I was really struggling against short stackers, and I still do tbh. Consistently getting JJ/AK v nitty s/s just doesn't cut it against their shoving range of AA/KK, but I just find it so hard to fold after rasing it 3.5bb's and having to call for 16.5bb's!!!

After the big d/swong, I then went on an equally frustrating break even stretch of 60-70k hands. This consisted of losing lots in NSD pots, were every raise/steal attempt was called or raised and every CB called or raised. Everytime I didn't believe them, guess what.... They had it. Fortunately my SD winnings were ok and saved me from losing my mind. If I'm honest, even with the d/swong and break even stretch, I was amazed at how calm and relatively tilt free I was. I was concentrating so much on getting the volume of hands that basically I forgot about my bankroll and winnings. This will stand me in good stead if I decide to go for Supernova Elite, as you have to have a substantial enough bankroll to forget about it and just play hands. Volume is the key and worrying about b/e stretches and d/swongs just isn't a consideration.

The last 10 days of the month were a real disappointment for me. The volume I put it was pretty poor tbh, only 21k hands. Was I burned out, did I lose interest? The problem for me was that there were a couple of days I just didn't get to play. The other problem was the World Series of Baseball.... I just couldn't play poker and concentrate on watching the baseball. Lastly was work, I was just so knackered after going to work for the day that I could only get a few hands in. I'm pretty sure that I could easily have made the 150k hands goal I had set myself if it wasn't for the baseball, but hell I only get to watch it once a year so it was worth it!

So then the million dollar question!

Do I have what it takes to go for SNE?

Wow it's still such a tough question. I really think I have the ability to put in the volume of hands required. The problem is my job. If I was playing full time, then it's a no brainer, the volume would be fairly easy to achieve tbh. But if I get stages like I did in the last part of the month, then I'm gonna fall well short of the volume required.

Playing 100nl and going for SNE is definitely not gonna happen, it has to be 200nl minimum for me, that means needing around $20k bankroll for this challenge as a 100 x buy in is essential I think. To gain the required amount of Vpp's/month, I need to be playing in the region of 170k hands/month at 200nl.

So at this stage what have I learned? I now have some idea what its like trying to fit the volume of hands in and my work commitments. It will be tough, seriously tough and at this stage I just don't know. I'm gonna take nov/dec off from playing major volume and go back to 6max for a bit. In dec I'll make a decision once and for all about SNE. GL all!

Good Weekend

2008-10-19T22:40:00.003+01:00

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

2008-10-15T10:35:00.004+01:00

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!

2008-10-13T02:02:00.003+01:00

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

2008-10-09T23:19:00.004+01:00

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!

2008-10-06T12:02:00.005+01:00

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

2008-10-01T22:42:00.002+01:00

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

2008-10-01T00:29:00.006+01:00

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!

Return of the Max!

2008-09-25T11:49:00.004+01:00

3238 hands / +$841 profit.

Well, I really needed to focus on some stats and look for leaks. Chuck made an interesting comment in my last post, basically saying there must be something wrong if I'm suffering swings like that. I mean, don't get me wrong players will suffer with swings like that on a fairly regular basis I believe, but I felt I had to search out any flaws in my recent stats.

I'd felt over that period that I had become a bit of calling station. When looking at my stats, it sort of proved that. My WTSD was around 33%, normally 27% and I was calling 3bets far too often for my liking. So over the last few sessions I certainly had that in mind and the results were a lot better, plus running well obviously helps.

I noticed there's a couple of CC players going through a similar swingy period. In fact theirs are probably a lot worse than my own. Downswings are really difficult for player's to deal with. They really affect your ablilty to actually make rational decisions, or even to rationalise why the hell we play poker. Many players who experience downswings obviously tilt off a lot of $$$ as well. What sets a really exceptional player from a marginal winning one is the ability to cope with tilt and the d/swong period. One day I hope to be able to cope with them a lot better that I do now. Hopefully those guys fortunes will turn for the better soon.

So hopefully I will have a more stable time for the remainder of the month. Ready for my next months goal ;). GL all.

Sick of 6max

2008-09-22T11:49:00.005+01:00

Yeah I hate to say it, but I'm pretty sick of 6max at the moment. I really don't think I tilt that much, and after the last few months of mega swings I think I coped quite well. But in 6max I'm having like 8 buy in fluctuations on a daily basis, and I'm starting to tilt a little.

This morning just summed it up, I get 4 buy ins up playing 5 x 100nl and 1 x 200nl tables. Then a mega lag raises it up on the 200nl table, I 3bet him he calls. I have TT on a blank flop he bets out I r/r, he calls w/QQ. Yeah I run shit at 200nl thats for sure.

Anyways this mornings session I donk off $400ish after being +$450 up at one stage. So mentally I'm finding it difficult to cope with the swings, and I'm not playing at my best tbh. I'm also becoming a bit of a calling station, which is also pissing me off. I'm not sure why it's so swingy, whether it's my style of play, my aggression or what, but it's pissing me off big time. Here's the graph showing the swongs since my last update:

Believe it or not, I'm actually running at 5PTBB/100 at 100nl this month. The attempt at 200nl has soured that though. I moved down to 100nl basically b/c I had to withdraw $1k from my roll, and I lost 6 buy ins, which isn't a lot, but I work to like a 50 buy in rule so while my confidence is a little low I dropped down. GL all.

Moving Up?

2008-09-15T00:19:00.003+01:00

6393 Hands / -$65 Loss

Well, I looked at my history for 100nl 6max and over around 80k hands I was running at like 3.3 ptbb/100. Ok it's not like I'm crushing it but It's ok. Things have certainly improved, since my coaching. Maybe not shown in my results, but I feel I'm playing a helluva lot better pre flop and post flop.

Now Chuck and Zach have been experimenting at 200nl, so rightly or wrongly, I thought I'd give it a go. Well over the last 2 days I played 3k hands at 200nl, and it's been swongy as hell. I've been up a couple of buy ins and down a few, but upto this point I'm break even. Now the differences between 100 + 200 nl shouldn't be that big, and I'm not sure they are. But I was getting a shit load of aggro when I was isolating limpers, or making squeezes. Maybe I was genuinely beat, but I can't help but think I'm gonna need to be a little more careful at this level. 4bet bluffing I think is gonna have a bit more value at this stake I think. I dunno maybe I'm just over thinking the move up, and it's just a settling in period. I'll see how it goes, if I lose like 4-5 buy ins then I'll be moving back to 100nl.

I posted a hand on CC that is probably total spewy to look at, but you know what.... I was fairly confident he was taking the piss. The build up to this play was he had position on me, and basically everytime I opened up the betting, he 3bet me. Now I had stats on this table of like 33/29/2, he was like 31/27/5, this was over about an hours play. So I varied my play as we were deep, so sometimes I would call his 3bet for set mining purpose, or just to see how he played post flop. Post flop he would fire 3 barrels almost always against me. I 4bet bluff twice, 1st time he shoved, second time he folded. So my thought process is basically he sees me as weak post flop. Now I was hoping to get a real decent hand to exploit this fact but it never cam and he kept 3betting.

So here is the hand in question, if he 5bet shoves it's hand over and I fold, regardless if he has a hand or not, but I felt this was just one bet too many for him. I knew that when I made the 4bet, he knows that I 4bet bluff, so multi level thinking was just personified here. I'm still not happy with it coz it was sooo deep, but I just had to put him to the test. LDO I look a fool when he turns over aces, but I just had to trust myself here.

Poker Stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

SB: $351.25 (175.6 bb)
BB: $316.25 (158.1 bb)
UTG: $224.25 (112.1 bb)
MP: $212.05 (106 bb)
Hero (CO): $363.40 (181.7 bb)
BTN: $404.80 (202.4 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with T Q
2 folds, Hero raises to $7, BTN raises to $22, 2 folds, Hero raises to $54, BTN raises to $114, Hero raises to $363.40 and is all-in, BTN folds

Results: $231 pot
Hero mucked Td Qc (high card Queen) and won $231 ($117 net)

Other hands that came my way at 200nl

Still not sure if I'm gonna saty at 200nl yet, I'm at the bare bottom end on my BRM with it so I have to be a little cautious. GL all!

Coaching Review

2008-09-09T22:03:00.006+01:00

2725 hands / +$81

Meh! I dunno, didn't think I'd be disappointed with an $81 dollar winning day, but I am. 1st session went well, got to about 2.5 buy ins up. Second session started great as well and was up around $450, then I just lost a shit load in NSD, basically all my islolation/squeezes got mullered, all my CB's got called or raised, and I got frustrated and stacked off light.

So Monday night I spent almost 3hrs with my new coach who had reviewed my 1hr video I made him. I was a little sceptical prior to this, as basically he's quite cheap as coaching standards go at $35/hour or $120 for a 4hr review. I have to say he impressed me a lot. Considering he's new, he helped me loads with the recording of the video, and his review was very structured and detailed. I wish I was that organised, because I should have recored the bloddy thing, doh!

So my goals for the next few weeks are:

Don't let villains limp from the SB on my BB

I actually didn't think I did this, but on the video it happened quite a bit.

Isolate/Squeeze more, certainly I/P

He picked up on a lot of spots were there was a lot of limpers, and I should have been isolating i/p, Also 3 betting regs i/p, and oop to constant blind stealing. Again I thought I did this to some degree, but there were a shit load of spots he noticed I should have been doing it on the vid.

Concentrate on betsizing

Because I use a betpot script, my betsizes are sort of automatic. But he notice a few times that 75% pot Cbet was too much against certain villains/boards, and if it was 50-66% then that would have the same affect, plus it saves us a little money as well. If you playing 500k hands a year then this can add up.

Less flatting oop

LDO!

Value bet more on river

Again this is something I've been working on lately, betting the river. Sometimes it has to be a thin value bet as well. The only problem I have with this is if I value bet the river thin and villain shoves, sometimes I convince myself to call. There are times when a bet/fold on the river is the correct line. I just have to practise this I suppose.

Hone hand reading skills, (Well I would if I had any to start of with :) )

I'm shit at this, and hopefully in a few weeks I'm gonna do some more work with him on this.

Well I feel kind of inadequate if I'm being honest. I mean I think I'm an ok player, but I could tell this guy was fairly young, but he had a really deep thinking of the game. In some respects a lot like the guys on CC, like Chuck, Zach, FP, C9 etc. There have been some really deep thinking posts on the likes 4-bet bluffing and c9 has just started a discussion on ways to combat light 3-bettors. I just feel this is like way beyond my comprehension at times, or I don't feel competent to express my thoughts on it. I'm amazed by their knowledge a, and I'm glad there on CC, coz I hope a little of their knowledge will rub off on me.

Bankroll Milestone

I'm gonna post this now, coz who knows it may not happen again :(. If you include the monetary value of my Fpp's, my poker bankroll is now $10k :)

I will make a nice official post on this if I ever get my BR to $10k without the Fpp's. GL all.

Running Well!

2008-09-07T21:19:00.003+01:00

3905 hands / +$957 Profit

LOL! You haven't heard me say that in a while, and I hope it's not the kiss of death. This month I'm on an overdue heater, imo. Obviously I'm on a heater and that's great, but I feel like I'm playing well as well.I don't know if it's beacause I'm concentrating on this NSD stuff, but it just seems to be clicking atm. It's not like I'm being super laggy or anything, I'm still fairly TAG, but I'm showing aggression in the right places, and I'm floating at the right times.

Selected Hands

Fist pump hands imo:

UTG villain is like 19/15/4, I see him raising any PP's here, possibly SC's and certainly some broadway stuff. I'm still not sure about calling down here. Obv I'm putting him on the lower end of that range:

Managed to get myself in the shit with the turn call here, but dug myself out again with the river bet.

Ok floating OOP isn't ideal, but I knew this villain was gonna bet the flop once I checked, as soon as he gave up on the turn the river bet was inevitable. Not the way I was expecting the hand to play out, but sometimes you just gotta act on the weakness.

So, I'm still not playing the desired 3k hands/day, but after tonight, I'll be off for a couple of days so time to cram in some hands. Got my coaching video review tomorrow night so looking forward to that. I'll give an update on how that goes in my next posting.

I've almost reached another poker milestone, so hopefully in the next few day's I can update you with that, any guesses? GL all!

Solid 6max

2008-09-05T11:11:00.005+01:00

6512 hands / +$812 Profit

Played 7 sessions over 3 days. Having 2 x $500 days which is always nice. Seem to be getting to grips with my NSD winnings somewhere closer to the break even line. This is mainly due to constant steals, and squeezing a fair amount from the blinds. Mixed in with some floating and I've had a constant red line in my HEM graphs, just hovering under the $0, well -$300 to be precise.

Had another go at the WCOOP steps again today..... Why the fuck do I bother. For the second time running I get upto step 4, (which gets me a buy in of $700 to step 5) and go out as a fairly convincing 80%+ favourite. Not only that I went straight out with no parachute to a lower level, Damn!

Coaching

Did my video for the coaching session. It wasn't that great tbh, regarding getting into tricky spots. There were some stuff to analyse, I'm sure he'll pick up on my flatting OOP stuff, but w/e I'll see what his review is like and we'll take it from there.

Also did a sweat session with Zach. He played 4 tables of 100nl 6mx and ran like god. Mainly through some good LAG play, and I certainly picked up on a few things I liked in his play. I thought I squeezed a lot, but he does it a bit more than me and with any crap as well :). Hopefully we can do some more because I tend to take more in when I talk things through and see the actions, rather than just reading strategy all the time, I guess it's my age and trying to absorb lots of text tbh.

The only thing I'm a little disappointed with this month is the number of hands I'm getting in. I dunno, I just can't seem to play as long with the 6max. Maybe it just takes it out of me having to really concentrate with all the decisions I have to make. Only played like 8757 so far. I was sort of hoping to put in 3k/day, but I'm well short of that.

So next up should be a review with my coach of the vid I made so we'll see how it goes. GL all.

New Beginnings...Hopefully!

2008-09-02T22:21:00.003+01:00

2250 hands / +$360 Profitz

Well after that god awful month of August, I decided, enough was enough.

I need some coaching!

Now, unfortunately, I don't easily absorb information by reading, reading and reading. I need someone to 'explain it and show me' sort of approach. So, I know Chuck was getting some A1 coaching from one of the Stox pro's, so I thought I'll give a shot.

I looked at the coaching thread on 2+2 and have gone for a new coach, who has come highly recommended by mods and customers, and more importantly, is quite cheap. So I'm gonna do him a video of me 4-tabling 6max 100nl and we'll see how it goes.

Bored

Well the new update for Stars brought down all the pokertrackers, so I didn't fancy playing a shit load of 6max without a HUD, so I thought I'd give the multi tabling video a shot again. I'd previously been having trouble compressing it, but my new coach gave me a few tips, and although the rendering of the video takes an eternity (even though I have a fairly new, decent spec laptop) it seems to work ok.

So then I made a 15-20 minute video of me 20 tabling 100nl full ring. It's not really to show you how to play that many tables, it's more to show some of the guys on CC who just play 2-3 tables at a time. Just to see how manic it looks/gets. Funnily enough, I'm really quite used to it now, so it's definately within most peoples capabilities I think. Anyways, I don't think my play was great even if I did run ok. I think most of my winnings for that day though came about 5-10mins before I started the video though, Doh!

So tomorrow I'll be doing my 1hr video for my coaching session. I may also post it on CC, but I'm a bit shy so we'll see. GL all.

Monthly Summary

2008-09-01T21:36:00.004+01:00

Hands 43,039/Winnings $23.20

Bullshit..... Total fucking bullshit..... That was the month of August.

Even before the last 3 days of poker, August sucked bad, but at least it was gonna be an ok green month. Then 'Boooom' I actually tilted for like 3k hands or so and -$900 to boot, and played some shit poker. I couldn't bring myself away from the game, it was that comical WTF!

I think I was just pissed off with running so up and down, it just got to me. I haven't tilted like that since last March when I lost a horrific amount of buy ins at 50nl 6max.

Then not only that, I had played some WCOOP steps and had managed to get to level 4 ($215ish), next step would get me to a $700 buy in. Pretty card dead and needing to make a move, Donkster raises from ep (this tit has just hit runner, runner, runner, runner, runner for his all in AQ to beat AK!) and I push w/JJ, he calls w/AT to hit...... runner fucking runner again.... jammy &%*&!!!!

OK so I'm thinking fuck it lets play in the Turbo Takedown, thats just like easy money yeah? Fook me in almost 2 hours I had one hand, fucking 88! Went out with 100 left before the bubble.

So bye August and my -$1100 all in EV luck as well FFS!

Thank God for FPP's as I think I managed to make around $850-900 or so.

Sorry for the rant and the profanities, GL all.

Gutted!

2008-08-28T02:37:00.006+01:00

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!

2008-08-26T20:27:00.004+01:00

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!

2008-08-26T00:21:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-22T22:00:00.002+01:00

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

2008-08-21T23:35:00.009+01:00

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!

2008-08-13T21:11:00.002+01:00

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

2008-08-06T19:40:00.003+01:00

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

2008-08-03T10:48:00.003+01:00

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...

2008-08-02T11:52:00.005+01:00

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!

So, So, Slow!

2008-07-23T13:02:00.004+01:00

That's how it feels at the moment. My bankroll is just static, my VPP's are just like accruing at a snails pace, and I just don't feel like playing a shit load of poker presently. Of course it has to do with the way I'm running. This is this mornings graph:

The day started out nicely, up just over 2 buy in's, then it was pretty horrible after that. This hand started the slide off.

I'm looking to isolate villain here as he's horrible. He limps/min raises, so I'm getting great odds to call pf here plus were deep. Well you can guess the rest.

Then I get Aces losing to a set of Queens on the turn, Kings losing to a flush yada yada yada!

Despite this variance, I'm actually enjoying my return to 6max (I doubt I'd be saying that if I have a 20+ d/swong like I did in Feb, but meh). I feel I'm playing really well, as you can see from the graph above, I'm actually doing well in NSD pots. I seem to have improved in this area whilst playing 6max. I'm floating more, I'm bluff catching more, and generally I feel I'm quite aggressive. It can get a little hairy at times, b/c your going to showdown a lot lighter than compared to FR, but you just have to trust your judgement.

I'll play a session later today and keep ya posted.

Busy Time at Work!

Well following a post I made earlier this month, about work being a bit boring lately. I think I'll keep my mouth firmly shut in future! Since then we've had 2 murders and a double fatal RTC.

Last Thursday night I was watching the TV with about 20 mins of my late shift left. There was a huge bang outside, so we all ran out to find 2 cars had been involved in a collision. One had overturned and was lying on the roof. It wasn't pretty and basically 2 of the occupants of the overturned vehicle died at scene and another was critical in hospital

Well I went into work this Monday to find out I would be attending the post mortems of the 2 deceased. Finished work on Monday night at 11pm after 6 hours at the mortuary, with my legs absolutely aching. Came into work yesterday to find out, yes you guessed it, another post mortem, this time of a man who had died somedays later after an assault. Got back to the office at 10pm last night after another 4 hours at the mortuary.

I'm so, so glad I'm off for the next 2 days!

GL all.

Weekend Bliss!

2008-07-20T21:07:00.002+01:00

Been watching a shit load of golf this weekend. Just finished watching the last day of the Open Golf Championship. Unbelievably difficult week for the pro's in that wind. But a great champion imo! Padraig Harrington was rock solid in the last round and hit some amazing shots on the back 9.

Interestingly, when I went to the practice day on wed, one of the 1st guys we come across was on the par 5, 15th. He was practising on his own, but he was a huge, blond haired guy I hadn't seen before. I thought he was Scandinavian or something but noticed his name was Wood. Anyway he hit the ball beautifully into the wind. Little did I know what an impact he would have on the Open. He was an English amateur named Chris Wood, who had an amazing week, finishing a few shots off the lead and winning the Silver Medal.

Favourite Pastime

Seriously, I'm a huge couch potato. I'll watch any sport going. As a kid, if I wasn't out with my mates playing football, cricket, basketball, swimming, golf, whatever, then I was sat on the couch watching it. I played many sport's at school for the school teams, some at City level, but never progressing it further than that. I always thought I could have excelled in something, but it wasn't to be.

Anyways, this weekend has been great for me. We've had the golf, the Tour de France, MotoGP, Formula 1 etc etc. So I haven't played a lot of poker.

Just about to watch MotoGP, there at Laguna Seca in the states, which is one of my favourite tracks of the year. If you guys have played with me at Pokerstars, then you will have seen my avatar. That's me on my Ducati 748, hence the screen name. That was my pride and joy, but unfortunately I had to sell it due to financial reasons, hopefully next year I'll be able to buy another motorbike.

I also love watching American sports. I played basketball as a kid, and reached a decent standard by UK standards. But the game I like best when it gets to the Fall, is baseball. I love watching the final stages of the season.

So not much to talk about in poker terms. Sorry I didn't do the multi tabling video, I will do it some time this week, GL all.

British Open Golf 2008

2008-07-16T17:46:00.016+01:00

Royal Birkdale

I'm gonna start today's post off in a positive way. Took my son to watch the last days practice round at Royal Birkdale today, the venue of this years Open Golf Championship. Royal Birkdale is situated a few miles from were I live on the North West coast line between Liverpool and Southport. It's a beautiful traditional links course with some really interesting holes, and I have to say its in wonderful condition. I swear the fairways are good enough to putt on.

Got to the course at about 9.30am and immediately watched Scott Verplank and Steve Stricker tee off the 1st hole. We decided then to walk the course backwards and try to catch the big named players as they were heading towards us. The 1st big named guys we met were Angel Cabrera and Miguel Angel Jimenez. Angel Cabrera was an amazingly humble guy, spending an enormous amount of time signing autographs between shots (probably to the annoyance of his playing partners), but this really impressed me.

Jimenez enjoying a fine cigar

We continued round the course when we came across Greg Norman getting some bunker practice in. The wind was blowing real hard today and if this continues over the weekend them I'm sure the bunker practice will pay off.

Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood playing alongside Big Earnie Els.

David Duval having a relaxed round with Big, Big John Daly.

As I mentioned the wind was blowing real hard today. The way these guys hit the ball into the wind really does need to be witnessed. They strike the ball so solid, it amazes me everytime I go to see them.

Had a really good time today, but I'm absolutely knackered with all the walking.

Poker Update

Tilt? Well I'm not sure if I am, but probably tbh. Last weekend was one to forget, for some f'kin reason I really wanted to play in the Sunday Million, so I decided to have numerous attempts to qualify for the thing. Well I probably could have bought in direct for 2 SM's for the amount of Fpp's and cash I spent in trying to qualify, WTF! I really don't want to dwell on that now as it's seriously pissing me off. Needless to say I was card dead and out shortly after the 1st break.

Congrats to CC member Zach who went quite deep for a nice little cash of $2.2k, well done dude.

As you guys know I'm running sort of bad. It's been like since I moved up to 100nl FR things just haven't gone well. I mean last month wasn't a disaster, I was still up for the month. But you can just sense when things are not going well, even though I'm not on a mega d/swong or anything. Mainly I win a buy in, then I lose 2, that type of thing.

So to break the monotony and to take advantage of the added Fpp's promo this week, I decided to revisit SnG's. Holy f'kin shit, WTF!!!!!! I must of played like about 20 in 2 days comprising of $38 6max and $55 games, winning 2, cashing in 3 and bubbling in about 10 (5 of which were 2 outers FFS). Seriously I run shitter than a shit thing in SnG's, now I remember why I left them.

So all in all, I'm not playing much atm, just slowly raking in the Vpp's to Supernova. Which leads me onto another Congrats, to CC member ChrisTC, who has just attained SN. Hope to join you soon m8.

One last thing before I sign off, Ninelions on CC mentioned he would like to see a video of someone crazy multi tabling. Well, I'm that bored I thought I'd have a go. I'm hoping to do it by the weekend and whilst it will more a fun type video, I will be showing you some of the AHK scripts I use and the different type of setup etc so hopefully it will be a little informative as well.

GL all, and for once GL me!

Be Careful What You Wish For!

2008-07-11T21:46:00.002+01:00

Well, I don't know what to say. I'm actually a little numb tbh. I never actually considered for one minute that as I was writing my blog yesterday this happened:

BBC Local News

I walked into work this morning, and was told of the events that had unfolded last night. Yes, we cover this area and yes we had to process the scene. I was actually tasked with attending the post mortem and assisting the pathologist in the recording of the PM and collection of exhibits.

Seriously, I wish I could take back what I said yesterday :(

Unfortunately I can't, and I feel like shit!

Bored!

2008-07-10T21:31:00.003+01:00

No not with poker. Pretty bored with work lately, tbh. The last few years has seen a major drought of decent (big) jobs in the area I work. So what constitutes a big job? Well, suspicious deaths, murders, serious assaults, major drugs operations etc etc. When I first started as a CSI, we literally had a murder once or twice a month. The unit worked great as a team, working long hours and many consecutive days to get the job done. Everyone contributed and it was all hands to the pump. It's been so long since our last big job, that I actually fear, we may have lost our edge so to speak. There seems to be so much bitching in the unit lately because management continuously ram individual performance figures down our throats at every opportunity. It has created a culture of 'cherry picking' and division in the office. Now I know our professionalism will see us through if a big job does come in soon, but I can't help thinking that management have contributed to the apathy within the office, turning a good team spirit into a unit that doesn't really care about each other any more.

I know it sounds really callous talking about looking forward to the next big job, so I apologise for that.

Poker Update

Played 5.2k hands since the last update, which is pretty lazy, but I have been working for the majority of it. Even so it's still way below the volume I usually play. However, I'm playing 6max now so there's no way could play the amount of tables as I did with FR. 8 tables seems optimal at 6max, at a push I think I could handle 12. Buth there's no need for that yet tbh.

So 5.5k hands for a profit of +$544. Still down for the month, but only just. Earned around 15k in Vpp's, only 14k to go before SN. Stars have just added another cash bonus to the VIP store, were you can trade in 250k worth of Fpp's for $4k, which is cool, as this works out at almost equivalent to their Concierge conversion rate. Now I have just on 180k Fpps at the moment, so I reckon by the end of Aug I should have the required amount for the new cash bonus.

6max is still providing plenty of fish. Yesterday I went on a nice heater early on in my session getting 5.5 buy ins up, then I went on a bit of a d/swing stated off by this hand.

Against this aggro villain, I certainly have enough equity to call this pf.

This hand seems to be a standard theme at 6max. I'm not sure I like stacking off so lightly if I were villain, as he is quite TAG for 6max at 16/14. I think maybe my flat call on the flop probably confuses him. I actually thought he had an overpair here, so if its a blank turn, I'm committing my stack.

This next hand is just so weird the way villain played it on the turn, he even delays slightly calling the river. But it's so gross ;).

I think I will be playing in some tournies at the weekend, make the most of the 2x guaranteed promo thats on atm. So GL all.

Stars Promo Week 1

2008-07-07T10:00:00.004+01:00

Well that certainly wasn't the week I was hoping for. I was looking forward to this week so much, but it ended being a huge anti-climax. Apparently I wasn't the only one as there were lots of other guys who had 'their worst d/swing since playing poker' during this week.

Summary

Played 20.2k hands, for a loss of -$773. Earned 12.7k Vpps' for the week which equates to around 31k fpps.

Got nowhere near the amount of hands I had set myself, was hoping to get nearer 40k hands for the week, but meh! Started playing 100nl fr but I had a 13 buy in d/swing in the 1st 3 days. Went over to 6max, played around 5k hands and recovered just over 5 buy in's.

Unfortunately, I can't give a more detailed analysis of the stats/figs, because I have come across my first little glitch with HEM. When looking at your winnings on the reports page, it appears, that if your FR table, gets reduce to 6-7 players or something, then it classes it as a 6max table and all the hands you play at that table become 6max stats. Also if your FR or 6m tables gets as far down as 2 i.e you could have several players sitting out or w/e, then it appears to class it as HU. This is a little annoying, but hey it makes up in so many other ways.

6max

Gonna play 6m for the remainder of this month. As you guys may know, I'm originally a 6m player, but transferred to FR after a huge break even stretch. Now this seems to have gone the other way I'm back to 6m. In all honesty, I love 6m, your more involved, there's more fish and your going to showdown a lot lighter than at FR, which I suppose suits my style. Yes variance can be a bitch at 6m, but I just hope I can be a profitable proposition at 100nl and above.

Selected Hands

Unlike FR, pushing AK pre flop is uber standard!

6max is not really about set mining, so when you do hit your set, most regs will happily ship their stacks with overpairs.

This guy falls in love with his TP and beautiful kicker!

CC 1k Post

To celebrate my 1k post I had been thinking for some time to write a meaningful article on Bankroll Management. It's very important to me, the fact I have gained so much from CC (and 2+2 for that matter) over the years. There are some wonderful, knowledgeably guys there who contribute so much, that I wish I could have just a small %age of there skill and know how. Anyways, I thought that giving just a little back to some new guys just starting out in poker so here it is if you haven't already seen it Bankroll Management.

Haven't had a music vid for a while so here's one I haven't heard for a few years, but I just can't stop playing it atm, hope you like it.

Obsession

2008-07-04T10:52:00.003+01:00

I was speaking to Vanq yesterday on AIM, and he actually made me STOP and THINK!

What are my goals? Why do I play so many tables, even though I'm playing shite and running even worse.

Yes Supernova has become an obsession and the double VPP promo isn't helping me atm. Well LDO I'm getting lots of VPP's, and SN is almost within reach now. But it's now at the detriment of my game, and more importantly my roll. As you guys know, last month wasn't great but I still made a profit. This month is just like a nightmare.

I'm actually at the point now were if I get AA, KK, QQ, I know my stack is gone. You see, when I get to the flop in a 3bet pot and the money goes in on the flop or whatever, I know I'm coolered or they have hit the top of there range big! OK, shouldn't I be folding?, Well seriously I have been making some solid folds as well, which I don't think I would have made under normal circs.

So as Vanq says, 'cut down on tables', and I hate to admit defeat here but I'm gonna have to take this solid advice. I definitely intend on taking some time off and studying once I get SN, I just hope my roll hasn't been decimated in the process!

Poker Update

Well it ain't pretty, played 3 days, 15,900 hands for a loss of -$1300.1st day I was actually in profit, but the next 2 days were pretty gross. I was hoping to get in around 10k hands in yesterday, but there was no way I could continue just shipping off stacks the way I was. Onlymanaged to get in 6.7k hands in the end for a loss of -$590!

Positives?

Well only the fact I made 9,722 VPP's this month, and I only need like 19k to SN. For the remaining days of this promo though I'm gonna cut down on the volume of tables by at least half. Hopefully get a little more focussed on making quality decisions.

GL all!

Monthly Summary - June

2008-07-02T18:16:00.007+01:00

Stats

Played 61,700 hands around 13k of which was 6max, the rest at FR.

Run pretty dire at FR, thank god for my 6max heater, 5PTBB/100 and dragged my ass out of the mire.

Ended the month up $744 up. Earned 21,700 Vpp's which equates to 54k Fpp's and approx $800 when converted.

Summary

I started the month playing 6max and went on a mad heater winning over 10 buy in's in 2 days. This was followed by an equally brutal d/swing, and me thinking I'll return to 6max another time!

FR was pretty brutal for me in June. I never got going, constantly winning some buy in's then losing them, as you can see from my graph. I account the main losses to just being coolered on a regular basis. Yes there were times I should have layed down my king's on the flop or turn, but I was constantly getting coolered with kings. 4 times I was up against aces, and numerous times I walked into villains who hit set's on the flop. Well sometimes that just happens.

Towards the final week of the month, I was pretty much drained with FR and thought I needed to focus on something else. So I decided to play some more 100nl 6max and run really goot for the remainder of the month.

Bring on July!

OMG Double VPP's!

I've been waiting for this for a couple of months now as I had heard a rumour on 2+2 that it 'May' be in happening in May! Anyways Pokerstars is having a double Vpp week which is absolutley amazing as I will be able to really push for Supernova this month. But I just wish they would give a little bit of notice as I was really hoping to take time off work and grind the week out. Just so happens that of the 6 days the promotion is on I'm in work for 4 of the ...Doh!

Played last night, 1st day of the promo, and played 24 tables for the 1st time over a prolonged period. Managed to get in 2.8k hands and earned 1,400 Vpps as a result. It seems that there were a lot of regs pointing out that there respective Vpp/hand had dropped considerably since the promo. I know mine dipped from like 0.33 to like 0.25Vpp/hand.

I'm off for the next 2 days now so I will really be pushing now, playing an insane amount of volume, by my standards anyway. I hope to play around 30-40k hands between now and Sunday, so fingers crossed all goes well.

Updates are gonna be short and sweet for now until this promo is over, so GL all and enjoy the extra Vpp's!

6max Heaterz

2008-06-26T22:21:00.013+01:00

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.

GL all!

Grind, Grind, Grind...

2008-06-24T20:45:00.004+01:00

Poker Update

Mon 23rd of June.

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!

GL all.

This is just Gorgeous IMO.

2008-06-23T01:44:00.005+01:00

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.

Holdem Manager.

2008-06-20T17:57:00.003+01:00

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!

Weird Poker Month.

2008-06-18T11:51:00.004+01:00

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.

Golf Day Out.

2008-06-15T19:03:00.006+01:00

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:

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 PL Hold'em Cash Game, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG: $90.95
UTG+1: $78.40
UTG+2: $109.55
MP1: $121.55
MP2: $23
CO: $100
BTN: $60.35
SB: $87.80
Hero (BB): $122

MP2 posts $1
CO posts $1
Pre-Flop: 4 7 dealt to Hero (BB)
2 folds, UTG+2 calls $1, MP1 folds, MP2 checks, CO checks, BTN calls $1, SB calls $0.50, Hero checks

Flop: ($6) 7 Q K (6 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG+2 checks, MP2 checks, CO checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($6) 7 (6 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $3, 2 folds, CO raises to $6, 2 folds, Hero calls $3

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!

Hand History Preview

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $148.80
MP1: $180.20
MP2: $100
CO: $15.90
BTN: $100.60
SB: $99
Hero (BB): $110.50
UTG: $181.10

Pre-Flop: 6 7 dealt to Hero (BB)
5 folds, BTN raises to $4, SB folds, Hero raises to $11, BTN calls $7

Flop: ($22.50) A Q 8 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($22.50) 5 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $18, Hero calls $18

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.

GL all.

S.U.M.O. Time

2008-06-13T10:27:00.004+01:00

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.

Catch up.

2008-06-10T19:22:00.007+01:00

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.

Poker Update.

2008-06-09T20:44:00.007+01:00

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.

GL.

Stars VPP's

2008-06-05T12:19:00.002+01:00

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.

My Poker Story... Seriously Collecting FPP's

2008-06-04T21:34:00.015+01:00

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!'

Ok Ok! 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!

GL at the tables.

Champagne Supernova, Enjoy!