HeadsUpaments!

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

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!

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!

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

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!

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

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!