Long time no blog

Sup folks?

haven't posted in a while.  I guess mainly because I haven't had much to say aprt from giving results fo my daily sessions, which I think is pretty pointless seen as though I try give a fairly detailed review at the end of each month.

Well i have a few things I can talk about now.  Firstly I played some MTTs on Sunday including the epic Sunday 5million, which I didn't cash in.  In fact I played roughly 15MTTs and only cashed once.  This was a very deep run though.  I finished 36th from 10k+ runners in the DNG 300k on stars.  the cash was just shy of four figures but with $60k up top it was pretty disappointing.  Was feeling a final table :p.  For those of you that don't know it's a $55 donkament.  Overall though I'm happy with the way I played, so that is certainly a positive to take from this.  I ran good to of course :).

I kinda got the taste fro some donkaments again :).  So I will be playing a decent sized schedule this Sunday including a few minftops events, so again some huge prizepools on offer.  The following week is Mini Ftops main event day, so I shall be playing another Sunday there.  I'm also planning on playing the 2day 6max event.  I played this event and made day2 last year with a decent stack.  I then managed to blow up and punt my stack in a ridiculous spot.  i think with my no limit 6max experience gained this year will stand me in much betetr stead this time and I feel I should have a good edge in this tournament.

The Tuesday in between the Sundays I will be playing a live tournament.  It's a £100 freezeout with a pretty good structure (in terms of the usual local offerings) and a £12k guaranteed prizepool.  I've been playing live a decent amount lately, cash and online and done fairly well.  I feel really comfortable in teh live enviroment now, so I', really looking forward to this.

OK so that's all the good stuff now onto the bad stuff :/.  Well bad maybe the wrong word.  Over the last few days I haven't won a pot online.  Lol, of course I'm exaggerating but it really seems that way.  I think this maybe my first downswing, since playing cash or I just forgot how to play i don't know.  My confidence has definitely taken a hit also and all of these mixed in with some tilt have been  a recipe for disaster in terms of results/confidence.  So I think for the next few sessions I will reduce tables and just take extra time over decisions and try and keep an eye on things to make sure it is just coolers/beats/general runbad.

Well that's all I got for now.  I will most likely update after Sunday or the liveament and let you readers know how I got on.

Peace!

Febuary

I'm undecided on whether I will play today or not, so this may not be the entirety of my February but it's close enough.  After looking at my results this month I have noticed a few interesting things.  I have drastically increased my tables which has caused my redline to shoot down and if I'm honest turned me into a bit of a nit.

I'm not super pleased with this, as I enjoyed having sick redline and playing a ton of hands :p.  This month was a little different tho, as I really didn't start playing until the 17th of the month and wanted to maintain platinum for them FPPs :).

I do think I will continue to play a decent amount of tables but I will play around with the exact number.  The month was also relatively swingy with some bad stretched, which weren't down to variance.  I'm happy about this though as it gives me something to work on.  Anyway here's the graphs and what not:

Pretty severe dip in the middle there, which is most likely the session I made a post about where I felt myself tilting and quit after some horrific beats/coolers/retarded play in the space of like 5 minutes.  Overall I guess I'm kinda happy.  I ran a little below EV this month but I'm actively trying not to think about that to much.  I mean we play poker (or should do imo) believing that EV will even out in the long run, so pointless wasting energy thinking about it.  I think if I lose maybe 1 or 2 tables, game select a little better and always (or as much as possible) play my A game my winrate can improve a significant amount.  Again I'm happy there is many spots to improve and will strive to work on these things form now on.

Some pretty swingy sessions lol.  I have spoke to a few different people now and have had mixed responses.  Some say they also lose more sessions than they win and some have said they win more than they lose.  My theory for my case is that I often get a little tilty and quit sessions if I'm losing and then start again later that day or another day.  If I'm winning I'm generally happy to keep playing.  Overall though I'm not really concerned about this.  Going back to the long term thing, I don't think we can concern ourselves to much with results from session to session.  I will keep an eye on this though and see how it goes over a larger sample.

LOL euro's.  A friend of mine who played a bunch of 50nl and is now 100nl reg told me to expect much higher winrates in the euro games compared to the dollar games.  In game I never really noticed much difference in the standards and this is a very small sample, still pretty interesting non the less.  As you can see all my my profit this month came from the euro games. 

I have outlined earlier that game selection is something I need to work on, so again I will monitor this over a larger sample and see what the results are when I'm game selecting better.  Hopefully I'm not a losing player in the dollar games next month :).

Goals for March:

1. Play 40k hands
2. Watch 2+ training videos
3. Review hands/sessions twice per week
4. Read poker mindset

Well that's all I got, until next time...

Swongs.

As the title suggests, tonight's session was rather swingy.  Seems my sessions can often be swingy and maybe this is a result of my current aggressive style.  I often seem to drop a buy in or 2 right at the start of my session, which makes it tough as starting out in the whole is not great, especially for someone like me who lacks emotional control at times.  This happened again today on larger scale, so I'm definitely going to look into preparing fro sessions better, so that from hand number 1 I'm ready to play my best.

Will post graph for the lolz :), I tried my hardest to grind out a winning session, which worked out, so I'm definitely happy about that.  So here's the graph followed by a VPP update:

Back on the grind

My last post was after my first session back online for a while.  I have gotten in over 16k hands since then (17th Feb) and I played 0 hands over 2 of those days.  I was out trying to be a live pro on those days :).

I have been playing a minimum of 12 tables and up to 16.  I didn't think I would ever feel comfortable playing that many 6 max tables but it really hasn't taken me long to get used to it at all and it feels really comfortable now.

I don't think I will increase this but I think 16 will be the most regular number in the future.  With the extra tables I'm pretty sure I will be able to maintain platinum status on stars this month despite not playing anything until the 17th, which is great.

Tonight's session was pretty terrible and I ran very badly for the first time in a while and I cut the session short as soon as I felt my play deteriorating.  Although that seems like a negative I'm seeing it as a positive.  Not so long ago I would most likely jump into a $200nl game on monkey tilt and spew money.  So tilt is still an issue for me but it seems it's at least a controllable one now, which is progress in my book.

I FT bubbled the live donkament I played and then pretty much broke even in the cash games, so this certainly hasn't been a good week in terms of poker.  Having said that I'm really enjoying being back at it.  Again this is a good sign that with work and time I have what it takes to take the good with the bad and come out the other side.

I should be putting a ton of hands in over the next few days and the main goal is to stay platinum star.  Like I already mentioned I'm pretty sure this will be doable.  I will post my results at the end of the month.  I'm now starting to mark hands with HEM during my sessions and going over those either at the end of the session or the next day, which is definitely something I will continue doing and see as a valuable learning tool.

The main thing in terms of studying I have not made any progress with is watching videos, so this is something I will try work on from now on but something that I have been saying for a while hopefully I will do it this time.

Sam

Been A While.

Not been updating with much poker content lately.  I unfortuantely went back on the MTT binge and punted most of my January cash game profits.  I then proceeded to forget what bankroll management meant and played way above my roll and skill level.

This is something I have constantly struggled with and most probably the reason I have been stuck at micros for so long.  Anyway to cut a long story short I ended up way underolled for the games I was playing before $50nl.  However a good friend has put his faith in me and we have arranged a 3month backing deal, which hopefully after that I should have some sort fo roll togetehr again.

I have much more respect for other peoples money than my own, so punting a friends money is not a concern.  I have self excluded anything above $50nl for now though for my buddy's piece of mind and will be a good thing to get used to when I'm back on my own roll.

I Just finished my first session back and it was a good one, which should help my confidence.  I will most likely lose my platinum status this month now unless I grind super hard but that's not a primary concern anyway.  I am also behind supernova pace but this will  not be a problem so long as I stay in the game.

This is the first session I have played since the ring game changes at stars and I have certainly noticed the difference.  I found many ridiculously soft tables and made many more Green stamps :p.  Hopefully the trend of really soft games continues <3 stars. 


I will post today's stats and graphs seen as tho I haven't put any up in a while.

Lets hope I can keep it up this time when I get back on my own roll.  I know staking is always an option but its a pretty big leak to not be able to keep a roll due to degeneracy and something I intend to plug.  After all if I want to be a professional someday this certainly has to change.

Peace

Ashton Fucking Griffin

I guess most people will of heard but just in case.  A pretty sick prop bet went down.  Where griffin laid 3:1 that he could run 70miles in 24 hours.  Anyway I will link you to a blog that tells the story excellently.  Super story, superbly written:

http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/internetpokers/the-million-dollar-bet-pt-1

http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/internetpokers/the-million-dollar-bet-pt-2

Not been playing much poker lately, made a few bad decisions on that front.  Hope to get things going again shortly, will blog about it soon I guess.  Please read the above tho!

January review

So the first graph is obviously cash games and the second MTTs.  Sick fucking redline imo :S.  This redline basically shows my not wanting to fold, like ever.  I knew my major leak was not folding enough.  Although now when running decent it's not a problem but this is a pretty big leak.

Overall for the month I'm happy.  I won a decent amount from both cash and donkaments.  The latter half (3/4) of the month was pretty terrible for MTTs, variance was a big part of this no doubt.  However I did start to play some tougher tournaments and make bad choices in game selection.  Also probably played too many tables at some stages on a Sunday whilst playing after 4-6 hours sleep and a 12 hour shift.  That's pretty clearly a recipe for disaster.

I have definitely fell in love with tournaments again tho and really think I will never quit them, so I guess I should concentrate on getting good at them.  I'm happy I started playing cash games also and will definitely continue to do so.  I think I will play both rather than specialise tho.  I think variety is good.  One thing I would like to do in 2011 is learn a hi lo game or any other game really.  Just helps to keep poker fun imo.

So I'm not a 100% sure of my future in terms of MTT/cash schedule but I will definitely be playing more tournaments and working hard on my tournament game.  Not sure how much volume I will get in for February but we will see.  My main focus now is playing well and improving rather than playing X number of hands or tournaments.  This does not bode well for my supernova bet, but I'm basically freerolling anyway, as its a push if we both don't make it and I'm pretty sure he ain't making it :p.

I just feel this is the better decision long term than smashing out 100k VPPs with a bunch of leaks is just going to turn those leaks into habits that are hard to budge.  My approach now is to spend the first 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 of the year building a solid profitable game for both cash and tournaments and then make piles of money in the latter half of the year :D.

Also anyone who wants redline coaching let me know :p.