2011!!

The year is almost done.  I played my last Sunday online on boxing day and it was not great but had so much potential.  I bricked most of the early tourneys pretty quickly.  Most were pretty standard stuff.  Then I was 4 tabling my last four tournaments, which were the $5quad, the $55 DNG 300k, $16 turbo 30k and the $11 lotto.  I bust the 5quad after butchering a hand pre flop and having to more or less go with it post.  The other 3 were in the money.


I got coolered in the lotto AK<AA and in the DNG AA<JJ and bust the turbo in a pretty std 12bb shove into the nuts spot.  All of this happened in around 10mins, which was pretty titling as I was pretty deep into the money in them all.  Could of been a fantastic end to the year.

On the cash side of things the back end of December has not been too good either.  This is mainly because I have not played a bunch,  I have been really busy around the holidays and then had trouble with my iPoker account at paddy and obviously missed a few days due to VCs move to the entraction network.

Also made some mistakes taking shots at rush and not following good BRM, but w/e every ones got some gamble in them ;).  Hopefully all of this can be improved in the new year.  So this brings me onto goals for the new year.  I am not usually great at setting goals in terms of volume and $, as I find it difficult to motivate myself if I fall behind early.  So I will continue to avoid making those types of goals for now.  So in no particular order the things I would like to do/achieve in 2011 are:

• Decent score in a live tournament.
• Play more live cash
• Adhere to good bankroll management (including shot taking, but sensible shots only at the correct times)
• Play MTTs most Sundays (I started this blog saying I have gave up MTTs bla bla bla but the fact is they are super good value on Sundays and people play bad.(also who doesn't love turning $11 into five figures - ONE TIME!))
• Be a regular at $100nl (with shots at $200nl here and there)

My last goal is maybe one that will not be completed this year but it is a goal I am actively trying to get to, which is to play poker professionally!

So that's about all I can think of in terms of poker.  Apart from the last one I really don't think any of them should be to much trouble (which is probably a bad thing, as setting "easy" goals is not a great idea imo).  But this is really the first time I can start a year with some sort of plan and positive attitude towards poker, so those will do for now.  Maybe 2012 I will have some really tough goals.  I guess my only non poker goal would be to get back in shape.  I quit smoking when I found out I was to be a Daddy, so since then I don't think I have stopped eating, so I need to lose a few pounds and get back into shape.

This probably wont be my last update of 2010 but just in case - I hope you all have a fantastic new year and hope it continues throughout 2011!

<3

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone had a fantastic day and wishing you all a great 2011!

Loving the Rush

Been playing a bunch of rush poker over the past few days.  Been having a lot of fun and running ridiculously good, which is always nice.  The main reason for this is that paddypower have recently locked my account.  They are claiming that I have deposited from someone else's pay pal account.  This is completely false, so I am now in  the process of getting access to my account again.  In the meantime I will continue to play a mix fo rush and MTTs.  I will hopefully be playing MTTs on Boxing Day and will get back on the 6max grind in the new year, hopefully on iPoker!

Ramblings.

One of the main reasons for writing this blog was to try and improve my writing, as I think I suck.  This post will more than likely be an example of that.  I was trying to figure out a structure and w/e and couldn't really come up with one.  So I will most likely write about whatever comes into my mind at the time.

As I said in my previous post I was going to play some MTTs this Sunday.  It turns out a buddy of mine was having a few friends over for a "grind session" and invited me along.  So there was four or five of us grinding, which was cool.

I played and ran absurdly bad in the early part of the session and I was pretty tilted in all honesty, as a few of the other guys had stacks going everywhere.  The MFTOPS main event was due to start at 10pm local time and I bust all my other tourneys at 9.45, I considered unregistring but thought i would play super lag and bust or get big stack early (tilt talking obv).  So I proceeded to donk away half of my gazillion bb during the first hour.  I then talked myself into playing well and built a great stack.

I ended up busting in something like 300th place from 17k runners.  Pretty deep run the last hand was pretty interesting I thought.  I will post it here:

No-Limit Hold'em Tournament, 5000/10000 Blinds (9 handed) - Hold'em Manager Hand Converter from HandHistoryConverter.com

MP2 (t160000)
MP3 (t460366)
CO (t376035)
Button (t88557)
SB (t329877)
BB (t559937)
Hero (UTG) (t445220)
UTG+1 (t751861)
MP1 (t442896)

Hero's M: 29.68

Preflop: Hero is UTG with , 
Hero bets t22222, UTG+1 calls t22222, MP1 raises t95550, 6 folds, Hero raises t421998, 1 fold, MP1 calls t346346

Flop: (t921014) , ,  (2 players)

Turn: (t921014)  (2 players)

River: (t921014)  (2 players)

Total pot: t921014
He had KK :(

While I was waiting for the action to get back to me, I was thinking this a fold.  I really wanted to fold.  But I just thought it was so nitty.  I still don't really know what is best here.  I have  a nice stack here very deep in a huge MTT and don't think I am ever in great shape here. Its tough, if i have 100k less i can shove np but these stacks were so awkward.  I'm going to try to get as many opinions as possible on the hand and go from there.

Im going to play a live event the Tuesday after Christmas with on online friend.  So its going to be cool meeting up with him.  Also enjoy playing live.  I think somewhere between Christmas and New Year I will try  and think and blog about my goals for 2011.  So that may well be my next post or it maybe a mini trip report from the liveament.

I think that's all I have to say for now..

Donkaments

As much as I really wanted to grind cash and move on from MTTs the first thing I wanted to do when I couldn't log on is play some tournaments lol.  had like $50 only to deposit at like 6pm.  Thought I would fire up some micro MTTs.  Managed to get 3rd in a $3 for $700+ :D.  Played the rush turbo ftops last night too and cashed there, so maybe a mini heater coming :).

I am probs going to play a fairly big session on Sunday.  Going to a friends where a few of us will be grinding online and miniFtops main looks appealing.  After that will be busy with Christmas and stuff.  I am still hoping to get more 6max hands in but might have to wait until the new year before I can put some serious volume in.

That's about all that's going on right now, wish me look for Sunday and good luck to all playing!

iPoker it is!

Took almost 15 hours before I could get onto entraction network after being told 90 mins by support (good job I decided to reg MTTs after waiting 60mins).  The software is awful the traffic seems terrible, so basically I have decided to withdraw my funds and get back on iPoker.  PaddyPower will be the new skin!

iPoker or Entraction?

I have been currently playing on Victor Chandler on the iPoker network and today is the day, which it moves over to the Entraction network.  I currently have a great VIP/Rakeback deal, if you would like to get more info on this then just hit me up and I can put you in touch with some great guys.  So I have got another deal on a new iPoker skin (PaddyPower).  However I have not organised myself and moved my roll over.  As we speak there is one hour downtime while they switch over to Entraction.

Where to play seems like a no brainer.  Now I must admit I have not researched and analysed this greatly but there is a lot more traffic on iPoker and Entraction has a bad reputation when it comes to fish.  It's pretty common knowledge that the amount of good players in relation to total traffic is higher on Entraction than probably any other network.

Since I am not organised I will probably play a couple of sessions at entraction and hopefully the micros will be full of fish.  The software is most likely going to be better than iPoker and in terms of the future entraction seem to have a lot of plans and desire to improve and move forward in the industry.  Whereas iPoker seem to be just taking the rake!

So we will see.  Maybe VC will keep a lot of its fishy iPoker users who will now become entraction regs as moving rolls really is a pain in the arse.  But at the moment I think I will most likely be back on iPoker by the new year.

HUD

I have been playing around with my HUD lately.  When I first switched to cash I had no real idea of what HUD I should use.  So I found a HUD configuration on the holdem manager forums and used that one.  I now have a better idea of what I use and dont use.  The above is my current HUD.  I am thinking about the changing or tweaking the colour scheme.  I will first explain the numbers.

1st Line:                                VPIP / PFR / AGG F / #of hands

I increased the size of thefirst three stats, as I look at these firstly (more so VPIP and PFR).  Also VPIP has a seperate colour scheme compared to other stats.  Basically Green is too loose 30+, yellow is laggish I guess 21-29 and Red is tight 1-20.

2nd Line: The 2nd line has a text abbreviation before the stats, which I will probably remove over time, as I add in more tables and need to stramline HUD but I like it for now.  The stats are:

    FlopCbet / fold to flop cbet / 3b% / fold to 3b % / Attempt to Steal / Fold BB to steal

The last line is obviously player name.  So thats basically how my HUD looks.  I won't bother with screenshots of the POPUPS yet, as these are pretty standard atm.  I am trying to work on them now to get them better, so if anyone has any advice let me know.  The stats I am currently using from POPUPS are "squeeze" and "donk bet" along with stats for turn and river decisions.

One thing I feel is missing from the HUD or POPUPS is check raising and maybe just raising flops in general.  I feel this gives a good indication of whether the player has any bluffs in his range on the flop.

OK I will now explain the colour scheme, which is the same one that I picked up from the HEM forums, so maybe I will change this.  I already went over the VPIP colours.  With the exception of # of hands all the other colours are either blue or grey.  It's basically set, so that grey is about normal or decent and that blue is exploitable or a possible leak.  So a blue stat could represent a cbet number that is too high and too low.  This is ok for the most part but I think I would prefer to have a colour scheme, so I can look and think "OK, he's Blue...he is most likeley a super loose" or "OK he's Red...super nit".

I am happy with the HUD overall, would like to tweak the colours and maybe the POPUPS when I get more skilled at doing so.  I also think some stats indicating how often a player barreling maybe a good idea.  I am also always ready to add knew stuff into the HUD but I think its a good idea to keep it small where possible.  The stats I had on the HUD that I have now removed are:

• Call Open
• Limp Call (thinking of getting this on the HUD again or more likely in a popup)
• WTSD
• W$SD

OK I guess thats it.  Let me know your thoughts.

Another quick one :/

Volume was not something I worried about when making the switch to cash. When paying MTTs my shortest session was probably 5 hours and sometimes they could easily last over 12 hours.

However since playing cash I find it really difficult to focus for long sessions. I have only managed to play 8461 hands so far in December and my average session is right around 2 hours. My longest session is 4.5 hours but this involved some breaks.

I am not too concerned with the number of hands, as I am only playing between 4-6 tables and usually sticking with 4. I used to play up to 12 tables with MTTs but I wanted to keep the tables low for cash. The reason for this is simple, I am new to the game, so there the automatic decisions are not automatic to me yet.

My concern is that I am really struggling with playing long sessions.  i am not too sure of the reason.  I suspect its easier to stay focused in MTTs, as the longer the session the deeper you are for the most part, which helps you keep focused.  Another reason is that you are usually playing multiple formats, so you will have freezeouts, re buys, cubed tournaments, turbo, non turbo, etc.

I guess this is something I can talk to other players about to try and get some advice.  I think I'm going to leave the post here and this could be my first non tl;dr post :p

Good luck at the tables!

News in Briefs

OK so unusually for December there has been quite a bit going on within the online poker industry. I am pretty sure all of you will of heard of the Harry Reid bill. If the bill passes there could be regulation very soon but it will come at a cost. Likeley a 15month blackout where there is no opnline poker to be played and possibly up to 4 years before US players can play with the rest of the world. There is tons of information online, just got to 2p2 legislation forum or google the Harry Reid bill. I recently read Conans cliffs, which you can read here

Durrrr Challenge



There has also been a decent amount of hands played on the most recent Durrrr challenge. They have played 4 sessions within the last few weeks with the following results:

Number of hands - 30,366

Durrrr wins $74,197

although there were some big 6 figure sessions from both players. Overall in the challenge Durrrr is still down $585,035.00, so there is still a tough time ahead for Tom imo.

Isildur1 joins Team PokerStars



In other high stakes news. The mysterious isildur1 joins Team PokerStars. This goes against the standard, as usually the cash players seem to be at full tilt and the tourney players at stars. This is a great result for stars though,as isildur1 is a railbirds dream. We all seen the huge swings he had at full tilt and for stars to bag him is great for the cash games on stars. We have already seen the likes of Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond making a rare appearence on stars. I highly doubt this is a one off and think we will see much more high stakes action over at stars.

Now I remember...

For some strange reason I forgot the reason I was sick of playing MTTs yesterday. I decided to fire some up. I played like 11 MTTs on starts and cashed in 4, which is a nice in the money rate but as usual it doesn't tell the story and it was a very frustrating night.

I final table bubbled the 7 turbo. I built up a really nice stack pretty early and managed to main tan it until around 27 players left. I then went super card dead for a while, which was sooooo annoying, so I ended up dropping to 15th when we got down to 18. Then I won 2 flips and was just above average with 12 to go. On the exact FT bubble it folded round to the small blind who decided to ship it in, I called with KQo and couldn't outdraw his J3o, so that was that.

I had my other cashes in the $16 turbo where I finished like 20x from a huge field but nothing significant there and a similar story in the $5 turbo.

My last run, which last until 3am :/ was in the 3r. My first table was pretty awesome and I managed to get a stack of 25k after adding on and re buying only once. Pretty quickly after the re buy period another 200BB stack decided to spazz out in a multi way pot with middle pair when I have a set, so that was nice :). Pretty soon I was chip leader with 5000 or so to go lolz and 400 big blinds. With that stack it was pretty easy to just pick up chips steadily w/o any large risks.

As it got deeper some spots came up which showed my post flop play has improved from my short time playing cash. When we got down to around 250 left it was just all pre flop play almost, which is common in MTTs, one good thing was that this was the 15min level 3r, so there was always plenty of time.

Then the inevitable bust hand came. With 60 left I had like 28Bbs, which put me in the middle of the pack. I was dealt AKo UTG and opened, it folded around to the SB who has been playing very questionable and loose/bad. He had around 40 blinds and opted to call. The flop came down K45r, which is obviously a great flop for my hand. At the time I opted for the check. I was checking as this guy had shown he would just bet relentlessly when checked too. I'm not sure if I like the check now (don't know whether I am being results orientated or not) although i still believe he bets when checked to a huge amount so idk. Anyway, I checked and he checked it back. The turn was an 8, which brought a back draw flush draw and I decided to lead for like 55% of the pot. He waited maybe 10-15 seconds and shoved. I didn't really think I could fold there given stacks and I definitely think he does it with worse. He had the 67o for the turned straight and I was drawing dead. Was pretty frustrating but that's the way it goes :).

Until next time.

Coaching.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had just started a month long coaching program aimed at small stakes 6max players. I guess I will talk a little more about it today. Basically I get one live session per week, which lasts for 2 hours. My coach is also available to talk about anything throughout the week.

Basically I will send him every hand I play throughout the week, so he can upload them into his HEM and have a track record of every hand I play. I will also send him over individual hands and we will talk through them through email/IM or w/e. Then when it comes to the 2 hour session he will usually have a couple of hands he thinks we should talk about. The time this takes usually depends but I would say around 20 mins. Then we will usually do a live sweat for around an hour, sometimes this will be less,as a lot of talking points will come up. So the last 40mins is spent discussing the live sweat. Then obviously the process is repeated until the month is up.

I personally think that the format is great. 2 hour sessions work very well. I have not had an hour session but I can't imagine much gets done in an hour. Also talking through stuff midweek or whenever is great especially if I have a really bad session where I find a ton of mistakes or wtf spots. In addition to all of this I feel I have most probably got a friend for the foreseeable future and that Danny will help me out after the sessions and I will probably continue coaching with him after this too.

OK rambled a bit more than I thought then but ya basically I am really happy with my coach and my first couple of sessions. I have just finished my second session where Danny identified a bunch of spots with a recurring theme. basically a small leak but one that is huge for my bottom line. As i mentioned I am new to cash poker (25k hands total) and I feel with Danny's help I am developing a decent overall startegy and should be a decent winner at the small stakes pretty soon.

Coaching was all I really wanted to talk about with this post, so I will leave it here. if anyone is interested in some coaching then just let me know. hopefully I can post some pretty graphs and stuff soon atm mine looks like its upside down :/

Peace.

Get reading imo

I have links to a lot of the big name players who write blogs and some not so well known guys. If you have some time on your hands I suggest you check some if not all of them out. There really are some fascinating reads and great stories out there!

Also I'm new to this game, so if there is any i have missed please let me know!

For the lulz :)

I thought I would put this up here. I know almost everyone will have probably seen it by now but maybe the odd person has not :p. And lets face it watching it again can't be to bad of an idea.

For those of you that are clueless to this, its a pilot episode of a new series named "The Micros". Its a great first episode and I am definitely looking forward to more. if you frequent the 2p2 forums then you will understand it all completely, if not its still awesome but you may be scratching your head at some points.

First Post v2.0

I left out a bunch of stuff I should probably mention in my first post, so i thought I would have another crack. I started this blog for a couple of reasons. Firstly I suck at writing (If you don't know this already then you will soon) and I am hoping that writing regularly here should help improve my writing skills. Secondly it should help me stay focused, I will probably jot down my aims/goals and having them in writing will help me keep to the job at hand.

I never really said much about me or my background either. My name is Sam I am 23 years old and am from the UK. I first got interested in poker a few years back watching late night poker with my dad along with him and his buddies playing. I joined in occasionally after my dad was busto :). I found online poker shortly after and began to donate a few $100 here and there. "Here and there" started to become too often for my liking, so I decided I would try to get better. Around this time I found the forums over at 2p2 and decided that MTTs and SNGs were my thing (FUCKING IDIOT). I met a few cool people and learned a bunch at 2p2 but was still loosing, although at a MUCH slower rate. The guys I had met and some of the "online superstars" were crushing and pulling in five figure scores regularly. Knowing this made me not want to give up! So I started adhering to bankroll management, which was most likely the main reason for my losses until that point. I started beating the smallest stakes MTTs and SNGs over a decent sample and thought I was on my way. At this time I was in school trying to complete my first year if UNI (econ fwiw). My roll was still pretty small, as I had cashed out a few times after a decent (relatively speaking) score. Me and my partner then found out we were having a baby :O. This was not planned and a complete surprise. This changed things pretty dramatically obviously. I pretty quickly realised I would need all the money I could and cashed out my roll :(. I tried to distance myself from forums, AIM, SKYPE, etc.

Having a baby is tough. I had to drop out of school and work a lot more hours. I played small amounts of live poker in between and realised how much I missed poker. Once I got back online I ended up getting into a backing deal to play small stakes MTTs and SNGs, as I just could not justify using my own money at that point. This deal continued through the pregnancy and continued after my daughters birth. I had moderate success initially with the staking but I knew it really wasn't for me, so around 6 weeks ago the deal came to an end.

By this time I had put a lot of time, effort and money into this game and I still enjoyed playing(Fuck knows why). I talked it other with wifey and decided I would take a small amount and start playing cash poker. With a limited roll I would have to start at the smallest levels.

So this is about the point I am at now. I am currently playing $20nl on iPoker with 55% rakeback. I am trying to learn the differences between MTTs and Cash, which are huge and it definitely hasn't been easy. In the past for some reason cash never really appealed to me (maybe I enjoyed dreaming of that big score :/) but I am really glad I have found it now.

i have set myself like 6 weeks to learn to beat the games. I decided to take advantage of a steal of a coaching deal. Its a month long program aimed at smaller stakes (I found my coach through 2p2). We have a had a couple of sessions, so far and I am very pleased so far. So I hope to be beating the games by the New Year and then I will just be putting in as much volume as I can and moving up as soon as possible.

My current working situation is pretty meh, so if/when I get up to 100nl I could probably make more than my current job and 100nl doesn't seem too far away, so that keeps me motivated.

As I said before this blog will be almost entirely about poker but there may be some other things thrown in here and there. Once I get into my stride in the New Year I will try to include goals, graphs and stuff and maybe some BBV :).

Well this is a fucking lengthy post. i think I will end it here. No doubt there will be plenty of errors and what not, probably still forgot to mention some things too :p.

Sup?

Hey all. I thought it was about time I started one of these blog things. I have had some blogs in the past, which I have not updated as frequently as I would of liked. Hopefully this one can be different.

OK, so this blog will mainly be a place to write about whats going on with my poker playing. I used to play a ton of tournaments online but found the variance pretty rediculous and having started a family recently playing for 8hours+ is a no no.

So I decided to start playing cash poker and am really dedicating a lot of time in learning to beat the games. My long term goal is to become a mid-high stakes regular and make a living from the game.

At the moment I am playing 10c/20c 6max no limit holdem on iPoker (so I have a long way to go :p)

I guess I will update here with monthly results/reviews along with other stuff here and there that will most likely related to poker in some way.

Well I think that will do for my little introduction/1st post. I guess there is a bunch of stuff I should of probably mentioned that I failed to. I will fill this in as and when it comes to mind.

Until next time...