Enough BS'ing

May review

Put simply, I played pretty well throughout May, but I'm really unhappy with the small number of hands I put in.

• Played ~24k hands
• Dabbled in 50nl HU (very successfully) and 6-max (very unsuccessfully), mainly sticking to FR though
• Netted $1,093

I did have some other issues which ate into some poker time, but I easily could have played like 60k hands had I really applied myself. I'm not going to set any unrealistic goals for the coming month, but I KNOW I can put in a hell of a lot more effort into playing more.

June goals

Expecting a lot out of myself this June. I took a step back today and asked myself why I'm still playing 50nl with a $2,500 bankroll and experience that will definitely get me moving through 100nl, and couldn't come up with a legit answer. So I played like 1,000 hands today. Had it not been for two terrible calls, both with AA vs what turned out to be sets early on, I would have had a very solid session. Anyways I only broke even today, but I'm very happy with how I played and I'm ready to dive right in next month (ie tomorrow) and get on my way to being a solid 100nl winner again. Even thinking about 200nl already.

So, some stuff for June:

• 30,000+ hands
• Start table selecting better to avoid the regs
• Study & crush the regs
• Watch every stoxpoker NLHE cash video they put out in June
  
• Post at least one hand analysis thread per session
• Play >1,000 hands of HU; really think about how to beat certain opponents rather than just trying to run them over
  
• Fix speedbag, work it and the heavy bag every non-rainy day
• Finish vol 2 of Harrington On Cash, finish Dawkins' book ffs, start another one
• Manage my money better

I'm taking a break for the rest of the day (got a stanley cup game to watch) but as soon as I wake up tomorrow I'm going to kick the month off with a nice chunk of hands.

1,791 hands, $189 profit

Still a slacker

I'm just really not happy with myself overall. Although my results have been nice this month, I know I can play a LOT more, and of course profit a lot more. I have been a little busy this month with RL stuff, but really I should have logged 50k+ hands this month. I think out of spite/fear of 100nl and the terrible results I used to get there, I'm feel pretty much happy sticking around at 50nl. But really I want to move up. I want to be up to 100nl asap (I'm rolled, wtf am I doing?) and 200nl by the end of the summer. By the end of the year I want to be making enough to afford some 6-max coaching unless I somehow really jump over my current hurdle of playing like an enraged, blind gorilla at the tables. Maybe HU will fit somewhere in there; Bryce's videos are pretty much more than enough to get me well on my way up the limits.

So although my results are ok this month, I'm really unhappy. I'll post a monthly review tomorrow, and I'll be posting some pretty ambitious goals along with it. Whether I actually follow through is yet to be determined. We shall see.

My buddy came over yesterday and we basically were porch monkeys all day. We grabbed some italian sausages, some stuff for some salad, and had a nice little 7 hour barbeque.


He kind of came over unexpectedly and I really wanted to get some hands in, so later in the day he said it would be fine if I played because he's never really actually seen me play. Started the session with a nice downswing (which seems to be the norm, who knows why). This guy had AA the very hand before this and overbet shoved, wp :(



Jacks vs a short stack, pretty standard imo although I got it in pretty grudgingly:



...and other irritating hands like:



but in the end I ran pretty well and got a few stacks back, enough to net me like $80 or $90 on the ~hour long session. Some of the winnars:



lol AQs



lol AK



aaaand lol 65


Monthly review and some big goals tomorrow!

1,691 hands, $180 profit

LOL HU

Seriously, I think I have fallen in love with a new game. HU. It may have just been sample size, but apparently HU stats/variance normalizes much quicker than other forms of poker, so I'm guessing my 50ptbb/100 is completely sustainable. But really, I had so much fun.

Villain 1: he was already sitting with $30 and change, I sat down, raised %100 of my buttons and basically picked him apart. He eventually got sick of me 3-betting light, got Q8o in against my AJs, won, and ran. Nancy.



Villain 2: joined shortly after, also with only $30. He was a maniac. Raised my c-bets and basically played aroudn with me for a good half-dozen hands before I got him with the hand below. He left after:



Villain 3: Much tougher. Was still a little weak tight (sorry if I laugh, as a FR player, 40/20 is 'weak tight'), and generally played straight forward. He 3-bet light a little bit, so I 4-bet him light once in a while. PF action got pretty heavy, and I still stand by my decision to get AQ in here:



I chipped away at him more, getting really lucky with this (admittedly ugly) hand:



Took a good handful of pots with light 3-bets and 4-bets, and eventually felted him with AQ vs his 77 AIPF.

Villain 4 was pretty good too, but still easily exploitable. Folded too much to steals, only raised like %20 of his hands on the button, but he 3-bet well and played well on the flop too. I chipped away again. After many preflop raises and c-bets, many light 3-bets and 4-bets, and one triple barrel, he eventually got sick of me:



Fun stuff, will definitely play again, and will of course pots results here.

WOO FUCKIN PARTYYY

Nuit Blanche runs tonight. My buddy who has an art studio downtown is throwing a party on his roof, so if you happen to be in Kensington Market and see some asshole pissing off a rooftop, holla!

5,882 hands, -$71 profit

Roller coaster ride with a stopoff in 6-max city

In part due to the fact that I was running badly for a good 3k hands, in part due to my constant yearning to be able to beat the marginal situations that come with it, I caved in and played some 6-max again, and yet again with bad results (-10BB/100). I ran bad, played worse, and got run over. Eventually I do plan on making the move to 6-max and probably playing 9 tables consistently. I'm falling into the multitabling trap of not thinking about my hands in-depth enough and it's hurting my game. I'll probably actually hire a small stakes coach when my roll is deep enough and see if they can tell me exactly what the hell I'm doing wrong and how I can fix it. Until then, I'll stick to FR where I know I can make money.

I was actually starting to doubt even my FR play up until yesterday. What seemed like the beginning of another long, drawn-out losing streak started. Overpairs getting setted, set over sets, second nut flush losing to nut flush, etc etc. Ed Miller wrote a nice post over at stoxpoker; since I think it's illegal to copy his post considering it's a private, payed subscription forum, plus the fact that I'm too lazy to find it, I'll loosely paraphrase him: It's not the 2 outers, but rather the marginal favourites that hurt and affect your confidence. For example if you CRAI with a big combo draw and happen to be up against a set four out of the last five times, you start to doubt if CRAI is the correct play, and your game suffers. You know with the 2 outers you put your money in good, and you have nothing to worry about as they'll eventually start going your way, probably sooner than later.

Anyways, fuck streaks. Just play your game and good results will follow. I'm still down since my last post, but not even by two buyins, and I know I'm playing a lot better so I'm content.


Overall on the month I'm still doing well (+$700, only $3.75/100), but I'm still a little unhappy that I've only logged 19k hands in so far. I've been busy with RL stuff though, so I'm not really pissed at myself or anything.

Spring fever

Crazy beautiful girls running around in their little skirts and their silly pretentious celebrity glasses. I'm falling in love every other day. It's like dangling cheetos in front of a fat kid. GAGHHFDSKL. I think in part from running bad and wanting to up my spirits, in part for the fact that I haven't bought anything new in ages and look like a bum when I'm out, I went out and dropped like $300 on some sickkkk new khakis, some Chucks, and I'm about to go get a second pair of shoes today too. Money really does go fast when you don't watch what you're buying. I had $1800 in my bank a few weeks ago and ignoring my shopping spree, all but like $500 left has been spent on booze, food and probably more booze. Sigh.

Island fun

We butchered a vodka watermelon, so we blended it up and used it as pig slop chaser.


Ike, Mack, Taylor:


Getting our soccer on before it got dark:


Bonfiya!


Toronto's skyline including the 2.5 million dollar LED lights on the CN Tower:


By the end of the night we found ourselves in a big globe:


Sparkler fight:


I've been drunk for like 4 days straight now, time to eat a few good healthy meals today and take a break. I need to get some hands in too; I'll keep you updated.

844 hands, $89 profit

Finished a nice little session earlier today, even through a few nasty spots.

I'd been beating up on this guy and the table really for a while, picking up a lot of hands, raising limpers, attacking weakness. This guy was obviously fed up with me and I guess he just thought he was good here? Funny stuff :)



A few big pairs and sets like this kept me alive though:





A friend of mine is apparently leaving town tomorrow or sometime soon and we're all going out for drinks tonight. Should be fun; if there are pics I'll post em.

3,623 hands, $112 profit

Rusty the clown

I played my most uncomfortable session in weeks yesterday. I think it was the combination of not playing in days, getting a new monitor and getting a new chair, but my whole vibe was just fucked for the session. I started out dropping like 5 buyins to some beats and a LOT of terrible play, but I ended up slapping some sense into myself and playing well for the remaining 3/4 of my session, nearly breaking even.

Started again today with some shitty play, but broke out of that even quicker, and aside from one terrible hand (see the dip at hand ~2700 or whatever), I played well and ended the day up enough to have made a good profit over the last two days.



I'm kind of impartial to the new monitor. It's great for obvious reasons, but there are definitely some things I don't like about it. For one, the viewing angle is kind of messed up - it's giving me a weird distorted effect even when I look at it from a fraction of an angle away from the perpendicular, and the colours are all a little off. The stand is a little wobbly, and any time I find myself bouncing my knee, the whole monitor rocks back and forth. Even so I'd say it was well worth the money, but I don't think I needed it more than I needed actual money. Oh well, it'll last for ages and make me more than enough to pay for it. Hell, I've already payed for it with poker, who gives a shit.

My chair is great, but it's a little too big for my desk. I'm actually a little uncomfortable in it's infinite cushioniness, but I'll make it work.

The camera is a thing of beauty. It's a Canon SD 870 IS, and I know nothing about it. I got the rare feeling of kind of a rich kid going in there and buying a $300 camera without knowing dick about it, but I'm quickly learning about all the features and working everything out. It's an 8 megapixel camera with a load of features I still have yet to explore. Nice 3" LCD screen, video recording, 389432890x zoom...expect a lot more pictures in the future. Maybe I'll even have a pic of the day or something.

The Apprentice

So my brother and I have half seriously been talking about getting him into poker. He knows how much time I spend on the game, and knows I could tutor him and set him on the right track. There are a few problems I foresee though: for one, he's got terrible ADD. I know he can't just jump right into the game and profit, but I really really can't see him 10-tabling for 3 hours straight :p He's also not really any good with maths, but again I think he can grasp basic poker maths with practice.

This could actually get pretty fun - I enjoy helping people understand concepts, and if he really puts some dedication into it, maybe we'll see him start posting in the forums and hopefully eventually making a good consistent profit like I do.

Pics

Chair:



9 tables and PT looking nice:



The whole set up:



Me eating dog for breakfast:

New office...kinda

Grabbed a beautiful leather chair yesterday, easily the most comfortable thing I've ever owned. I've been working with my mom and her store lately, and after coming home today saw a lovely looking little fedex package on my doorstep and knew it was the futureshop gift cards. I'm not %100 sure I can grab my monitor (and camera) today, but as soon as I do I'll have some brag pics up.

Like a kid on Christmas morning :)

6,833 hands, $270 profit

It's been a while

Long story short, I got really sick (again), finally hooked up my boxing rig and have really not been playing too much poker, or blogging for that matter.

I mentioned I found a heavy bag/speed bag rig up my street a while back, and my brother and I finally got the impulse to run out and buy some equipment to make it all work. We got some hand wraps, a pair of bag gloves and a speed bag. I've basically been hooked on this thing, beating the crap out of it every morning when I get up. It took a while to get used to and is actually a lot harder than you'd expect. You can't just punch it to the rhythm; you have to make sure your swings take pretty exact motions, all in near-perfect timing, so that the bag swings directly back and forth. I finally got pretty good at it getting a pretty quick beat going, but ended up breaking the swivel - the part that holds the bag in place and lets it swing properly. Kind of a pain in the ass, but it looks like the part is relatively cheap and pretty easy to replace, so it should all be back up in no time. The guys over at speedbagforum.com have helped me with a few things, they seem to be a nice group of guys. Most of them are monsters on the bag, look up their youtube videos they link to.

Still half-assing it

With the boxing rig and me struggling to breathe through my stuffed-up nose, I really haven't put many hours into the grind, but I've run pretty well when I do play. I'm actually on pace for a ~30k hand month, but as I've mentioned before, the actual number of hours I put in really isn't enough.

Last night I came home piss drunk and played a very profitable 300-hand, +$120 session. I've actually played like half my hands drunk this month. Kinda sad, heh.



I got a call on Thursday from my 'boss' asking if I wanted to work Friday, but I was so sick that I told her I just couldn't do it. I could barely breath through my nose and was coughing up lovely green stuff for my first three waking hours or so for like a week straight. It's all clearing up now, but I'm still not sure exactly what to do regarding working or sticking to poker. I think the healthy thing to do is probably to just go and start working with her part-time and play poker when I get home - I spend most of my day being lazy anyways, so why not get out, get active and make some extra coin on top of poker? Not to mention she's like the best boss ever. There is one serious problem in that I've had a bad back since high school hockey (took/gave too many hits my body couldn't handle) and I really don't want to mess it up more. Some other potential workers are nipping at my heels so I'm going to have to start next week if I'm working with her at all. I can already smell the horse manure and feel the dirt under my nails.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mums out there, hope your kids and hubbys got you something nice or made breakfast or whatever.

1,681 hands, $93.55 profit

10,000 posts

I spend wayyy too much time on cardschat: 10,000 posts and counting. For those who missed it, we set up a celebratory bounty tournament which got a nice turnout and ended up being a lot of fun. In the end I had $35 on my head which Jagsti gladly took down when I shoved my shortstack with AQ into his AK and it held, nh sir. I also wrote an article which I think was a pretty good success - definitely the longest and most comprehensive article I've written, and I'm glad it got such a great reception. Here it is if you're interested.



We ended the day with the 25nl hands-up session. I played very aggressively basically trying to run over the table, but you can only go so far when the whole table is basically filled with knowledgeable, thinking players. They are mostly nits though, so it wasn't too hard ;)

It's funny how the dynamic of knowing everyone at the table and knowing that eventually the session was to be replayed with everyone's hands up completely changed some people's styles. I'd say the people I was most surprised about were Zach and Chris (Dorkus Malorkus). Zach LAG'ed it up and Chris started doing weird things like calling EP raises from me with KTs or A6s which eventually put him in a few tough spots, but also just playing generally kind of aggressive which is uncharacteristic of him. Fun stuff anyways, and I hope we can play more of those sessions in the future. I'll have to tone my aggression down or at least pick my spots a little better next time as I barely broke even for the session.

Session analysis

IceMonkey9 requested that I take a look at a session of his and I obliged. I turned it into a video analysis after plugging the hands into pokertracker for the replayer, and I think it turned out nicely. He played a pretty solid game and aside from a few minor mistakes, I think if he plays this way consistently and takes my advice from the video then he's well on his way to some nice profits and a move up in stakes.

Progress, or lack thereof

Unfortunately I've been kind of lazy with poker the last few days. I've only plugged like 1,500 hands since my last post, and most of them were in one day. I'm probably going to play some later today, but right now I'm a little hung over and need to get some food in my belly. I've got to make sure I stick to my poker goals for the month and really grind out the felts. Enough half-assing! Enough pussy-footing! Get the fucking job done already!

REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER

If it weren't for someone mentioning mother's day over at cardschat I would have completely forgot. Make sure you get your mum some flowers, take her out to dinner, or order her a big burly stripper. Whatever floats her boat. Remember, that's May 11th, so this Sunday!!!

So it's been 13 days since Stars' FPP support told me it would be 10 days until my gift cards were sent, and I'm getting a little frustrated. Their support is great, but I think the fact that I requested to ship the orders separately kind of slowed everything down. If you remember I ordered the book and the gift cards back on the 2nd of April, and although they always say to expect delivery in 4-6 weeks, I always expect it earlier since they're usually so fast. I guess I have to wait a maximum of two more weeks...sigh. I was really excited about the monitor, but it's been so long that I've lost enthusiasm. I know I'll be like a 9 year old kid on Christmas morning when they finally get here, but for now I'm just blegh.

772 hands, $249 profit

Home game

My brother and I have a heads up game every once in a while and last night was the first time we played cash. I was actually going to make a half-serious post about how to beat him since he literally has edged me in every game I can remember in the recent past. We used to play small $2-$20 heads up tourneys, he always used to get his money in as a significant dog, and ALWAYS managed to suck out. Bastard.

Anyways we played 10nl last night and if it weren't for him making a couple of marginal calls (or rather me making a couple of marginal plays knowing he wouldn't fold), I would have absolutely creamed him. This really isn't much to be proud of since I've got, oh say, a few thousand more hours of playing experience than he does, but considering how much he'd whooped my ass in the past I was happy. I think it was the fact that in tourneys usually hands resulted in 3-bet all in pots preflop, and against him it's impossible to tell if he's doing it with J3o or AA. I picked up on his actual playing tendencies last night because the deep stacked format actually allowed for 'real' play. Either way it was fun, and I only really managed to take one buyin off of him.

By the beard of Zeus!

Yeah, I'm still running like a god. Aside from the HU session I didn't play yesterday at all, but this morning's session was a pleasant thing to start the day with. I actually started the session with a rather annoying hand...



...but after that it was clear skies. Here are a few of the more interesting hands and a results graph:









Not sure I'll play any more today, but I'll update you if I do.

New MO

With some reading and the advice of some peeps, I've decided I'm going to have to really save up to make a successful and 'safe' move to the apartment (whenever that does happen). I've read it countless times but it never really occurred to me, but I should have at the very least 6 months rent saved up if I want to be able to sustain myself completely through poker.

Having said that, I have the first and last taken care of, and considering I'll actually be paying a fraction of what you would think I'd be paying for rent, as well as the fact that the place probably won't be available until at the very earliest in June, and I think I'll be alright. The worst thing that could happen would be me going on a massive losing streak this month, find out I've got to move in by the end of the month, and still manage to have first and last's rent in the bank as well as whatever's left in my BR.

I've got a bit of pocket change on me and saying as how I haven't bought myself any clothes in like a year (kinda sad really), I've decided to go and get a pair or two of cheap jeans or khakis and probably some white Ts too.