CANADIAN DREAM

Site has been moved

2009-12-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

My site has officially been moved to ChuckTs.com.

I'll continue posting my blog there (WAY more frequently, I promise), as well as offer coaching in the near future.

Trip report: Niagara Falls

2009-10-10T11:12:00.000-07:00

This was a pretty spur of the moment thing. BW got a hold of me at the beginning of the month saying he and Zach were going to take a trip to Niagara Falls for some poker before doing their whole San Diego thing on the 17th, and that I should come down with them. The greyhound bus was only like $20 each way and the hotels/motels we found online were pretty cheap too, so I decided why the fuck not?

I got in around like 2:30pm Thursday and got a taxi to Fallsview Casino. BW booked the room so I couldn't get in until they did. I checked out the Fallsview poker room but soon found out they only spread 2-5 (100-300 buyin), 5-5 (300-500) and bigger - above what I planned on playing. They mentioned the 'old' casino spread 1-2 but I had no idea where the fuck that was, so I wandered around looking for it for a good hour or two before getting a call from bw saying he was in the hotel.

(Fallsview hotel: sick looking room, nice TV, but the internet connection sucked, and they didn't even have wireless. At like $150/night it was too pricey imo, thankfully we split it 3-ways though.)

It was cool meeting bw, he's a super nice guy and we had a lot of fun. So in about 5 minutes we get the itch, and we're off to find the old casino for some 1-2. We pretty much play poker all day, grab some food, then play some more poker until 2-3am.

I ran pretty good - should have noted some hands in my ipod but I was just too lazy. I remember playing pretty snug for a while, but loosened up once I got reads and found some spots to value bet thinner and bluff. Some hands, from memory:

I come back from lunch break to a big pot, one guy playing AJ on Jxx super fast, the other guy felting kings and taking it down. AJ guy (who will now be known as 'Huge fish') rebuys with a $500 chip which the dealer almost doesn't accept because noone uses them for poker. Later, huge fish limps in EP, I iso to like 15-20 or so with KK, folds back to him and he calls. Flop comes J8x with two clubs, he check-calls ~pot. Turn is a Tc and he donks something like 1/2 pot, I call without the Kc. River is a jack, he checks to me and I check back, he shows 97d for the gutter turned straight. This guy's sitting on like $500 and is only a couple seats to my right, but unfortunately he tightens up enough that don't get any of that stack back by the time he leaves.

Later, I raise 9T on the button after a bunch of limpers, get one caller directly to my right: nitty old vet. type of guy. He like 1/4 pots an AK2r board, I raise smallish, he gives a hilarious hollywood, sip-his-drink, stares me down for like 3 mins, then pitches probably like QJ or some garbage.

Soon after, I get AQ, bump it up with several callers and flop AQQ. I decide people might chase gutshots and never fold Ax, so I cbet. Caller behind, folds to another guy who calls to my right. Turn and river are bricks and I get the rest in against one of the two guys who slowplayed Q4o. Yay monies.

Another hand I open deuces big w/limpers in the pot, get like 3 callers and flop T23r. I had some aggro guys behind me who just fold their air should I cbet, so I go for a c/r or a c/c, c/r turn. Flop checks through, turn's a K, checked to me and I bet big. I think I got like one shorstacked caller then got the rest of his money on a Qr river and he mucked.

I remember at this time there was some bulgarian dude sitting to my left who was pretty aggro and was fucking up my game by repopping my isolation raises and stuff like that. I would have switched tables/left because of him, but it was already late so I just headed back to the hotel with bw. Zach had by this time lost a couple buyins at 1-2 and then headed over to Fallsview to play 5-5 I think. I think I ended up like a buyin on day 1.

Back to the hotel, and we remember we only have 2 beds so we call for a roll-out thing and flip coins for it. I lose, fuckedy fuck fuck.

Day 2, we get some breakfast and immediately hit the tables. We get put on a new table, and I'm lucky enough to have Zach directly to my left and bw a few seats behind him. Yay. We have some predicted fun with limping, iso'ing, 3betting and 4bet jamming each other, mostly between Zach and bw. One notable hand saw bw open 24o utg, get 3bet by Zach from the blinds, and call. Zach cbets an 865dd flop, bw jams thinking he has a gutter and not the double gutter(!), and Zach calls. Yes, you read all that right. bw hits a 3 and takes it down. Table thinks they're insane. They are. I can't stop laughing.

I get JdJx in EP and open, bw calls IP on me (asshole). Flop is Q9x, two diamonds. I cbet, he calls. Kinda sloppy already. Turn is a wonderful Kd, I c/f and he shows K7s, hahah.

Later I raise 24h utg cause I get bored and the table's playing weak, and bw flats IP on me again. I cbet something like K62ccc, he calls. I decide to barrel a Qr turn in a low-level-thought 'I REMEMBER U FLOAT ME' play, and he jams. I fold, he shows KQ.

Another hand I open A8c and get like 3 callers, flop comes ATx with one club. First player donks like 1/4 pot, next guy calls, I make a kind of sloppy call. Turn's like a Qc, donk bettor puts out like 1/3 pot, I call after middle guy folds. I river a nice 6c for the nuts, he bets another ridiculously small fraction of the pot again and I jam for the rest of his stack. He calls and I rake his stack with an invisible fistpump.

Another big-ish pot: one guy who folds pf accidentally flips up a Q. I pick up AQo and see the action go limp, limp, raise to ~$15 from a pretty tight player and I flat. Probably a bad idea given my read and the fact that one of my queens is in the muck. Folds around to the two limpers including one bluffy guy, and only he calls. Flop comes Qd9d4x, and bluffy guy donks smallish. PFR folds, and I flat. Turn is the 4d, donk bettor leads again, this time pretty big. He's definitely still donking Qx, JT and sometimes something random like 9x with a diamond. River bricks off another 4 and he bets like 1/2 pot, I don't see any merit to raising so I flat. He shows KdJx and I take it down.

Last hand I remember is a while after this dudebro sits to my right. He was actually kind of funny, definitely one of those portuguese construction workers my hood in toronto is home to so many of. He's limping a ton, and literally minbetting every street which even he is making fun of. I iso him for the millionth time with 67d in EP/MP, he calls. He donks a 589ss flop for like minimum, I pot raise, he calls. Turn is a Js, he c/c my ~2/3 pot bet. River is a random spade, putting four on board, and I decide to look up his weird river ~1/2 pot donk. He shows 85o. Why the fuck he's not reraising flop both confuses and frustrates me since I only got like 1/2 of his stack instead of everything, but whatever, I can't complain too much I guess.

That's that and I make my way back to our shitty motel through the misty rain that engulfed the whole city all of Friday. Next morning I wake up bw and zach for a quick goodbye and take off at like 9:30 to catch my bus back to Toronto.

The trip was awesome, it was nice seeing Zach again and great to meet bw. I'll definitely be considering visiting you guys in San Diego in the coming months.

The great depression begins

2009-10-01T09:00:00.001-07:00

Toronto winters suck. I mean the only thing I look forward to in the winter is watching and playing hockey - aside from that, Toronto's nothing but a big depressing pool of dirty, salty slush for like half the year.

It's only 8C and I'm already busting out the box heater and blasting it on full. (That's right, I don't even have proper heating in my house).

So like I've mentioned a million times before, I'm going traveling this winter. I still have responsibilities here at home, but they'll just have to wait for a few weeks while I go on a nice trip to South America with Deb.

Speaking of Deb, it was both our birthdays (12th and 16th) in August, and for presents we decided on Leafs tickets for myself and a Cirque du Soleil show for her.

OVO is a bug-themed one, the only one currently showing in Toronto, and the show's this Saturday! So excited, this has to be one of the best shows on earth. I cheated and watched some youtube footage of the ovo show and it looks fucking awesome. Tickets were like 250 for two great seats, about half the price I expected. I'll let you guys know how it was after the show.

Leafs are looking pretty solid this year. News articles say good and bad, and basically the gist is that we've improved but still aren't top contenders. Brian Burke, our new GM with a very solid track record moved quite a few people around, including bringing Phil Kessel in which is awesome, but he definitely can't carry a whole team. I'm just excited to watch some more games and potentially see an awesome game live down at the ACC :)

Oh, this is a poker blog, isn't it? Looking at it now, I actually played 20k hands in September...considering my ipoker account has been locked for about a week now I'm not so disappointed. My site's been undergoing a merger for a while now and they really fucked some stuff up, so a bunch of players like myself are left hanging with no info (only info I have is through my affiliate who knows the site manager).

Anyway I ran kinda bad, a little spew in there...ran good at 50nl and 100nl, ran like poop at 200nl. Still a positive month with lots of studying and thinking about the game which I'm happy about. My first stox video came out, and despite it being pretty slow and tbh a little boring, it got good reviews. I now have two videos scheduled for October, the 17th and the 31st I believe, and am working on coming out with something a little more exciting for them.

As I'm writing this my affiliate's actually giving me the OK that my dafa account is now good to go. Now I have the fun of choosing a new nickname :)

Off to grind after that's done, happy October everyone!

LOL HEY GUYS!

2009-09-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Long time no...write!

Been pretty busy with poker things and real life things lately, so I haven't been around forums at all really.

My days now are mostly spent grinding/studying, having fun with my very special lady, seeing friends, and just enjoying my summer. I've been trying to stay off my PC as much as possible, but that's been hard with the grinding, the seinfeld watching (seinfeldx.net is the shit), and blowing off steam playing call of duty or whatever. I actually just bought Mass Effect. Stupid fucking idea iyam, especially for someone that's a 'completionist' (gotta find all the stupid little secrets and stuff, and that game's full of them). Still a geek at heart, I can't help that.

Anyways I figured I'd just give you guys a little update on what's up in my life.

I'm still playing at ipoker which is going pretty well. I was running like god for a while until a few bad days brought me back down to earth, but I'm still very happy with my ~3ptbb/100 and ~%50 rakeback (tangent: get at me if you want a rb deal there. I can't give direct quotes of acutal rb %s, but the guy's super reliable, pays out daily, and I don't care about taking referrals, so you get a solid payout. Just PM me or whatever, I can't gives stuff out publicly. End tangent). Overall I've crushed this year's downswing in BBs, but I've been playing smaller stakes so I don't think it quite adds up. Not that it matters - I feel good, I'm cutting down the dollar variance a ton with the higher rb and smaller stakes, and am making pretty good strides in my game.

I mentioned in the forums that I was on trial as a stoxpoker coach. Although my first video (released Sept. 5th if you want to watch it) was a little slow and really not that great imo, it was well-received and they seemed happy to keep me on the team. The pay is good enough for me to really try to punch out a solid video or two per month, and to really keep me on my toes. I think it's a great thing to have happened to me, and really see it as a potential catalyst to my improvement. I think I'm on deck for another video next month, so watch out for that if you liked my first one.

Winter is somewhere down the road and my girlfriend and I have decided that we'll have to kill ourselves out of depression if we stay here for the whole season. We thought about a cheap all-inclusive type of thing, but to be honest that just sounds so boring and touristy. Lots of my friends have gone traveling and several of them have some cool tips on really cheap <$10/day shacks on the beach which would be awesome. Wake up, take a half our run up and down the beach, wash off in the ocean, then explore the jungles, or rent a motorbike and double-ride through the countryside or go check out nearby cities. All the while grind here and there on my laptop to fund the trip a little bit. Should be a lot of fun. We're thinking about South America, but there are some other places on the wish list too.

That's about it. I will be posting more in the future, looking to do more pokerazor stuff, equity breakdowns and other stuff I'm not as keen on as I'd like to be.

Las Vegas: Day 6

2009-07-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

Today was the day I thought I was leaving but didn't realize I had time for another big session, yay!

I had to check out by 11am, so I packed my bags and went out for breakfast at caesar's again. My flight leaves at 9:45 so I had nearly a full day to do whatever I wanted (that means poker), and headed over to the MGM where so far I'd seen the softest play. The room's also pretty nice and service is good, so off I went. Surprisingly, I actually run into Debi again randomly in the casino, she says she's going to go get something to eat and then come sit with me for my last session.

Ended up having a pretty good session overall; I think I made almost a buyin without any big pots so I was pretty happy. Table was pretty juicy, lots of limping and calling pf opens.

Some hands from the session:

Early on I iso with AQd, get only one caller and he checks what I thought was a 997 or 998 flop. Turns out it was something much more coordinated like 986 or something. I only realize this after I cbet and he calls, so I check down two bricks and he shows something like A5. I start to get excited.

Shortly after, maybe even next hand, I open JJ and get two $50-80ish stacked callers. Flop comes J85ss, I cbet, both call. Turn comes an offsuit ace, both have less than a pot bet so I shove when checked to. First calls with A9, second folds. Cha-ching.

A while later I make the mistake of not checking stack sizes. UTG fish limps, folds to me in the BB and I bump to $10 with QJs. I didn't notice he only had like $30 or $40 left, and when he jammed I was committed. I end up flipping with 66 and winning, lucky me!

UTG fish limps (same guy I think), UTG+1 lag-ish player who hates to fold opens to $12 slightly deep (effective), and it`s folded to me. I decide to call with 67s, dont really like it but meh. Fish calls too. Flop comes 754ss, no flush draw for me. I check-call the flop, the fish folds. Turn comes an offsuit 7 and I donk big. UTG hates it but eventually calls. River comes an offuit 9 and I decide to donk out again, but I think I prefer c/r or c/c instead. He ended up folding which shifts my decision, a little results oriented but I think if I check river he`ll bluff missed draws and will value bet strong overpairs whereas if I donk he folds a good chunk of that range.

I end up dwindling about $40 in smaller silly pots later on (pair+FD played passively and missed, two AJ hands where I iso`ed but couldn`t continue, etc), but overall I made almost a buyin.

I only realized now that I left the casino WAY too early, and am now stuck for like 3 more hours at the airport. At least I`m on time. Excited to get home and see my lil lady and treat this sunburn!

Had a ton of fun with all the guys and girls on this trip and will %100 be coming out next year if I can afford it then. As long as I`m still with my lady I`ll be dragging her out next time too. I`m definitely disappointed I didn`t end up actually making money in what is easily the softest player pool relative to the stakes, but I had a great time and after not playing for weaks before the trip, I`m motivated to grind my online bankroll out and get myself back on track. It was awesome meeting all of you guys and I guess Ill see you around the forums!

Las Vegas: Day 5

2009-07-10T01:09:00.001-07:00

Another interesting day. I woke up late to a call from Sean who wanted to go hit up the pool and meet up with Debi, Fredrik and Lori later. Pool was nice, but looked like a puddle in an alleyway compared to other places. I only just realized I got completely fried; my chest is burnt and will hurt like fuck tomorrow. Will have to pick up something to help out with that...

So we finish up at the pool, then head over to meet up with Debi at the MGM, then over to the Monte Carlo to have lunch with Fredrik and Lori. Had a nice time, couldn't help but gawk at little Ben's cuteness, and the meal filled us all up great.

Next, it's back to the MGM for some poker, with Fredrik for the first time.

He unfortunately had a horrible time in terms of running well, but we had fun nonetheless.

Some hands...let's see if I can remember more than 3 considering all the booze they fed me.

For the first hour or so I can't really recall any big hands, but there were a few iso spots where I either took it down pf or cbet the flop successfully. After that I moved seats to the other side of the table so I could get the bigger fish to my right, and less importantly the tight Debi and Fredrik to my left.

The big difference today was that I actually played tight and stayed away from bluffing, at least for the most part. One instance where I definitely could have slowed down was where I iso'ed with J9d or something, one of the blinds called the limpers folded. Flop came K77ss, and the blind player donked into me. He was unknown at this point, but had a slightly smaller stack and seemed kinda bad (I think he may have limped or something a few times). He donked out for like 1/2 pot and while I tried to raise it up I accidentally string bet (put in amount for call without verbal announcement of a raise, then put in the raise amount after). He got a little scared of that, and checked to me on the turn. I bet small, basically to fold out his bluffs which either had me beat or had some kind of equity against me, and he called. I gave up on a blank riv and he showed KQ which was never folding. Considering his whole range though, he either had a flush draw, Qx, 7x (none of which are folding), or a very rare bluff. So I don't like messing around there at all really.

Tag to my right opened in MP, I call IP on him with 22. Flop comes pretty good: 26Qss, and I just hope he caught a piece. We end up getting it in, not sure what he had but I took down a full stack in what seemed like the first time all trip.

Orbit or two later I limp in EP with 55, get several calls behind and we see a 456ss flop. Fishy player to my right check-raises me, and while it's not a fantastic spot to stack generally, I thought he'd felt any overpair, 67 and other pair+draw hand, some flush draws, any two pair, maybe 6x once in a blue moon. So I got it in, turns out he had 44 and I held. Looks like I'm finally winning!

Our session is winding down, everyone's kinda playing tight, and then Mr. AJ sits down directly to my right. He's about 14 drinks deep, loud as fuck, correct in his ways in every way possible, ignorant as can be, and he's sitting with a full stack. Nom nom.

Early on he raises A8 like utg or something, gets a call from tattooed, 9 1/2-fingered biker guy who busted Fredrik twice, and bets an AQJ flop. Biker calls. Q comes on the turn, AJ starts freaking out about how he must have just drawn out, checks it to the biker who drops a stack in the middle, and AJ check-raises all in. Biker had KQ and called, and AJ loses it, becoming even more of an asshole than he was before. I'd have minded if he wasn't so horrible at poker, directly to my right, and sitting with a full stack - he rebought right after that hand too.

Unfortunately I don't get any piece of him by the time he leaves, but he was definitely entertaining.

Next was the most interesting hand of the trip by far for me. Llater on, I'm sitting comfortably on 300 or 350bbs, and have Debi behind me who has me covered.

I limp-call 22 utg against her, and flop comes 2TJ. As much as I like Debi, I was pretty excited about winning a big pot at this point. I check, she cbets large, and I check-raise. She thinks for a bit and repops to $145 total. Remember we have about $600 behind. At this point I'm completely 'wow'ed, and am seriously considering folding a set. She raises pf with AK, JJ+, maybe TT, and only repops the flop with TT, JJ, AA and maybe KK, and both overpairs are pretty likely to call as well instead of repopping.

I decide to call to induce more from AA/KK, plus I can't fold a set yet because I'm a fish. Turn comes beautiful, an offsuit A. I think this card saved me, actually. I have about a pot bet left, check it to her, and she thinks after a while. She's actually a little off-put by that A. Or at least she's acting like it. She ends up shoving, and I hate life just a lil bit. I really think it saved me though; she's now tripped up with AA, KK is slowing down, and AJ/AT/KQ doesn't reraise the flop and may not even be in her range at all, so it made the turn a much easier lay down than had it come a 5 or something.

I fold, she shows JJ, and I pat myself on the back. Turn fold is actually probably standard, but I think I can even fold the flop.

That was that, I actually feel good about losing nearly a full stack, and we decide to call it a night.

Las Vegas: Day 4

2009-07-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

Played at the Mirage earlier in the day with Sean. Had a decent table of nitty players, a few fish on the other side of the table to my right-ish.

While Sean is railing me waiting for a spot to open, I get AA with a raiser in front, bump it up, get folds all around back to him. He asks how much I have, I say a little over 200, he sort of reluctantly calls. Flop comes nice, J42ss, he checks, I cbet 2/3 pot, he calls fairly fast. Turn comes an offsuit 8, he checks, I bet a committing amount, he CRAI, I call, he shows 8s. Fun stuff.

Short while later I've won back nearly my entire stack with iso pots and stuff like that.

Later on one of the fishy players limps along with several others, and I bump up AA again. Villain has been playing really loose, calling a not-so-shortstacked player's shove with T6s for example. Flop comes J89, he checks, I bet nearly pot, he calls. Turn is a brick, same thing: he checks, I bet big, he calls. I'm putting him on a lot of pair+draw hands and even single pair no draw hands here and am pretty excited about a decent pot. River comes an A, I shove my less than pot bet when checked to, he folds. Poo.

Next was a hand I'm not happy about, again. UTG is a loose-passive fish who I've seen call down light and stuff, and doesn't open very wide pf. He opens $8 utg, gets a caller or two, I squeeze to $30 with AK. I think this is a %100 standard squeeze/fold since he's calling all his marginal hands that either have beat or have good fold equity against (AQ,AJ,pairs up to TT,JJ), and shoving all his monsters. He ended up raising all but $25 of his stack and I jammed, losing the flip to QQ. I think his range is pretty much AK, QQ+ there though, so I hate jamming.

And that's it for the Mirage. Sean took off while I was in the crapper, and I decided to take a nice long walk and potentially play some other juicy place. The bigger the room, the more prone it is to attract the WSOP guys who are all pretty much decent, so hunting for the small rooms with drunks and old farts is probably the +est EV. I end up not playing anywhere since all the games look kinda dry, and head back to my hotel for a dip in the pool which I hadn't even done yet (and I bought a pair of swimshorts just for the trip!). Pool ends up being closed, and I when I go back to my room I get a call from Sean who wants to meet up with Jason and Debi over at the Venetian. Jason was playing the $550 deepstack and was doing fairly well in like his 8th or 9th hour. Sean, Debi and I have a nice meal while Jason grinds away, then we decide to hit up the Mandalay Bay which I hadn't been to yet.

Pretty fishy play, and unfortunately I think I end up $100 down or something with some annoying plays. Some hands I can remember off the top of my head:

AK I open, get loose fish to call, nitty tag reraises to basically min. Cold caller behind, one of the limpers I iso'ed calls, and I decide to flat as a weird play instead of reraising. Probably the AK hand from earlier had me a little afraid of stacking it pf, especially with the "please call me" minraise. I end up check-calling a K98ss flop and have to fold after some heavy action, and fish beats the tag with a suckout, KJ vs AK.

Soon a new guy sits down who is awesomely bad. Doesn`t know what the hell he's doing, but is obviously here for fun and looking to 'get lucky', so we chat it up and stuff and I try to keep him seated at the table. He soon busts with some random crap, thinking he has a straight when he's one card short or something, and heads out. About 20 seconds after leaving, he comes back with an "I can't leave on a bad note" attitude which gives the table a little smile and I start licking my chops. Long story short, he ends up actually leaving with a few stacks and I don't get a chance to make anything off him.

Can't remember anything else; I delayed writing the second half of this post until later in the day so I apologize. I do know I dropped a little bit but started to feel a lot better compared to the day I went to the Venetian.

Las Vegas: Day 3

2009-07-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

I promised myself that I'd play a long session yesterday, and while I reached that goal, unfortunately it was with the caveat of losing like 3-4 buyins.

I can sum up the answer to my problems with one sentence: stop bluffing and start value betting thinner. I made what I think would be very effective bluffs in a typical 1/2 online game where people can hand read and potentially fold marginal and weak hands, but live is a different story.

Zach, Sean and I started the day by heading over to caesar's for breakfast again, and decided to meet Jason at Binion's. The card room turned out to be pretty dead. We checked out the Golden Nugget across the street, but it was just as bad. So Zach and I headed back to the strip to hit up the Venetian while Sean and Jason went to Treasure Island I think?

Zach and I went to our separate tables and managed not to find each other by the end of the day. I sat down at a table with like 5 hilarious danish guys who seemed to have pretty good knowledge of the game but were just there for fun; straddling and chasing and goofing around. Unfortunately I ended up OOP against the loosest of the bunch who was also sitting with the shortest stack at like $100. He foiled several hands of mine where he donked into me, leaving half his stack left and stuff like that. I thought about leaving for another table, but the rest of the players were bad enough that I thought it was a pretty +EV table.

Yesterday saw me lose quite a bit, and while I'll review some hands here, the solution was simply to play tighter and value bet the hell out of these guys.

I opened J2s (mistake one) in MP and got a call from one of the Danes who had position on me. Flop came QQ5ss, no flush draw for me, and he flatted my cbet. Could be Qx, a flush draw, but more likely I thought 22-44 and 66-99. Really hate my turn/river play here, but I double barreled a offsuit 6 turn, he called, then I check-folded a 5 river. What I really like in spots like those is betting really small, especially if you weight his range more heavily towards draws. We get an insane price on our bluff and these guys think well enough to realize it looks like I'm going for thin value. Anyways I really hated my play because he's rarely slowplaying a Q there unless he's boated up (live players are terrified of FDs because most other live players love to play suited cards), so he's more likely to be on a draw, and since the only real draws he can call with are Axss and 6xss, I feel like I get tons of folds with even like a 1/4 pot or 1/3 pot bet.

A short-ish player sat down behind me and there were a couple hands I played against him. He seemed tight but ended up being really weak.

One hand I opened 77, he flatted. Flop is 874 and I bet big, he flats. Turn is a Q and I bet huge, trying to rep a double barrel, he thinks and calls. River is a T and I stick him in for less than pot, he folds. I ask if he had 9s, he doesn't answer but asks if I had AQ (so he must have had 8x/99/9T/some other crappy pair).

Another hand I open 97 in LP, he flats from the blinds, and we end up stacking his ~$60 stack on a T97 board. I improve to a FH, he says I sucked out. Yay!

Only goes downhill from there though.

Another one of the Danes opens in EP, gets two loose callers, and it's on me in the BB with JJ. EP Dane at first seemed like a nit, but opened up like crazy later on and at this point I thought he would call any pocket pair to a squeeze, and tons of big card hands like KQ/AJ/other random shit, and obviously jam some better hands. I squeeze his $10 open to $37, he gives the stare and asks how much I have, and shoves. He either outleveled me or is one level below what I expected him to be (just showing strength when he's strong), but he did win the pot with QQ. Thought my read was right, didn't mind the stack, but it was disappointing.

Few hands later, a bunch of limpers in EP, LP tag bumps it up to like $14, I call with 33 from the blinds to get calls behind, everyone calls. Flop comes A35 with a flush draw, I end up check-raising the preflop raiser who folded. HATED my check-raise. It was pretty much a textbook spot for a lead to trap all the weak limper's calls in between, hope the tag raises AJ+, then get in a big reraise. Hate hate hate my c/r there. Lesson on that hand is to slow down with your decisions. As soon as I checked I regretted it.

A couple more hands here, both of which I played horribly, and both of which I got punished for.

Old fart sits down across the table from me and has been doing weird shit like baluga'ing Q9 on T965 and rivering trips (not against me). He limps utg, I iso J6s, everyone else folds. Flop comes 854ss, no FD for me, I cbet, he c/c. I raised enough pf and on the flop that the pot was pretty big on the turn. K drops on the turn, perfect barrel card even though he's still chasing some draws, and I double barrel fairly big. He thinks a bit and calls. River comes a 6, and I end up checking back. I reeeally thought about betting river, but I thought "I'm actually beating most busted FDs (except Kxss/bigger 6xss), he's never folding two pairs (56/86/K6/etc), and a 7 is a pretty big part of his range as well". He flips over A8o and takes it down. Getting frustrated at this point and decide to leave fairly soon.

A few hands later I get my cue. New guy to my left who I remember flatting QJ pf, calling a cbet on AK2, and checking it down calls my LP raise with A7o (which I hated too btw; tilt showing). I cbet T85, he calls after some thought. I put him on any pair, some random overs, most straight draws, and the rare monster. Turn comes a J putting a flush draw on board. I double barrel big, he thinks long then calls again. River comes a Q and I decide to jam for nearly pot. He thinks forever and ends up calling with AQ. "Good luck guys", and I stand up and leave.

So like I said, in summary: value bet more thinly, and stop bluffing with air.

I grab my beer and head out to the strip (oh yeah, drink anywhere outside in Vegas btw :). I take a nice walk, cool off and decide to head back to my hotel after getting disconnected from Zach and not knowing where everyone is. I end up getting a couple messages that everyone's at the MGM having drinks and that they're about to play poker on Joe's last night in town, so I head on over there. I can't find them or get a hold of Debi (she never picks up her phone :p), and start to head over to the food court area to grab some eats, but bump right into her and Joe. Looks like everyone headed over to the Sahara to play some tourney at 11pm, but it's already started and I'm pooped, so I say goodbye to Joe (very nice, classy guy and it was a pleasure meeting you Joe :), grab some food, some more cash for the next few days and head back to my hotel to pass out.

I feel pretty rested today and ready for more poker, but dammit yesterday was dissapointing. I think my goals for the next while will be to make sure I've got good position at the table and to quit or find a new table if I don't like it. There was definitely an element of chasing losses yesterday and I'm really not happy with myself. I think the thing with live poker is that you're usually at some really loose table, and considering it's full, 10-handed, ring, you simply have to play super tight and get it in good. I mean isolating a single limper with any broadway is fine, but usually there are like 3-4 limpers, or a raise and a couple callers, and you just can't get carried away with trying to push them off a flopped top pair or something.

I'll be back at it today. Took out some more cash last night and will be hitting up the tables once more. Maybe back to the MGM, but the Venetian was pretty juicy. Just have to play more sensibly.

Las Vegas: Day 2

2009-07-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

Day 2 started with breakfast at Caesar's Palace with Zach and Sean and it was awesome. Will no doubt be going back today.

Then we headed out to meet up with everyone at the Rio to watch Fredrik play (he's in the WSOP ME remember). His registration ended up getting delayed through some fuck-up in the system, and he didn't play until we all left the casino. Last update I heard was he dropped to 20k (30k starting). All the luck in the world to ya Fredrik! (minus a little for myself this trip..)

Then Zach, Sean and I headed over to the MGM to grind for an hour before heading up to the cardschat party in Nick's suite. I came out a little more than a buyin up with a nice card rush. Some memorable hands:

Literally the first four hands I get dealt, I pick up preflop monsters and win about half a stack. I purposely show a couple of them to see if I could lay down an image and start running some bluffs later.

Very next hand (yes, 5th hand), I pick up KK, open, get a caller or two, and a young internet(?) player squeezed to like $35. We're both about $300 deep, so I 4bet to $90 or $85 or something. He folds, and I show again.

A little while later, a fishy player to my right who's friend says he's playing in the ME opens. His friend to his left calls in the SB, and I squeeze QQ to like $25 I guess, and cbet a 994ss flop. He folds.

Next I open AK in EP and get 3bet by a $40-60 shortstack from Toronto who's tilting like crazy. I ship obviously, and win the flip against 99.

Last, and definitely most interesting hand: UTG (guy who squeezed and folded to my 4bet) limps, a couple limp behind, and I iso to $15 or so with AK. Folds back to UTG who 4bets. I have serious doubts he does this with worse hands for value or bluffs often enough to get it in good. Not really sure about it though; on the one hand I'd been pushing the table around pretty bad, but on the other hand I had been showing lots of legit hands. Pretty sure a taggy utg limper doesn't just decide to turn JTs into a bluff there, but I could be wrong.

Not sure there were many other hands that session, but I do remember leaving an hour later to some grumbles. Probably felt I was hit and running.

Next, it's Nick's party. He has a ridiculously awesome suite up on the 357th floor of the MGM hotel, and catered with drinks and everything. It was tons of fun and nice to meet more people and get to know others better.

We all agreed to play a STT downstairs, and ended up playing two $60 games. Structure was horrible, starting with 20bbs and the blinds doubling every 12 mins. Was still fun; I busted in both getting my money in bad, and was left itching to play some 1-2. The game also featured some hilarious play and commentary by Jason, aka Alien Genius, including a hand where he lost an all-in, and fell backwards to the ground from his chair to the disapproval of the rest of the room. Had us all in stitches.

I don't know what was going through our sick little heads, but we decided to play each other with 1-2 instead of playing the fishy casino regulars. Obviously it's fun to have an all-CC game going, but I have to say I'm going to be avoiding these guys so I can actually play a significantly profitable game.

Some hands from the session (don't remember all that much after like 10 beers though...):

I open AJd in EP, get a flat from Zach in the SB. Flop is something like 2d6s8d, and he leads for like 1/2 pot. I bump it up, happy to get it in, and he 3bets me. Had Zach been anyone else at the table I'd have seriously considered folding there as the worst they have is a combo draw and monster made hands, but he'd been playing pretty aggro so I shipped it in. He later told me he had A3s or something for a gutter with a backdoor.

Later, Zach opens, I think Joe (Debi, aka Dakota-xx's husband) called the SB, and I squeeze AA to $26. Both Zach and I were like $250 deep and in retrospect I like a bigger squeeze pf, to like $30. Zach says he has AA, then when the flop comes Kh9xQh, he says he actually has JT. I cbet like $30, he raises to like $70 or something.

I can't see him stacking any one pair hand here; he doesn't flat PF then raise that flop with AK, and doesn't stack worse kings or other pairs obv. If he had a flush draw I don't really expect him to raise an inducing amount there; I expect him to jam or flat it. I mean if he has 67h there, raising and calling it off is just going to kill his equity since my hand range will be so strong that he'll only be drawing to a flush. Also, I really don't see him bluff-raising a wet board like this since it hits my range so hard. So I don't like my play of not raising more pf, since it gives him some room to call and make pain in the ass moves on boards like this, and gives him better odds on a set mine. I also don't like my play of jamming here, since basically he only calls with huge combo draws (like GS+NFD or 9x+FD) and hands that have me crushed. He snapped my shove and my heart sank: he had JTs.

Reload!

A few isolations later and a couple small pots lost, I'm too lazy to reload and I have like $160. I open QQ in EP, get a call from Tammy, and JD gets a little shaky-handed as he squeezes to like $35. I'm genuinely worried at this point; although JD had been a little aggressive today, in general he's a fairly tag player, and I put him on a very strong range. That said, I think the fact that we were shorter stacked, there was some dead money in there, and a significant chance he was squeezing AQs or TT/JJ and calling it off, I don't really see a fold here. I end up getting it in against aces and kick myself for not reloading when I suck out on the river. Sorry Brian!

Not too many hands after that. We all were playing fairly seriously until Zach started getting minraising wars going which was hilarious. He also posted an interesting hand in HA with minbetting involved, funny but interesting stuff.

Last hand was against JD. I open AK, he calls in the SB, we're heads up. Flop comes QQ2, he weak leads for like $12 into $16 or something. I put him on 33-99 pretty much exclusively, and figure raising definitely doesn't get folds on the flop, and gets too expensive on the turn if I decide to fire again. So I flat with the intention of getting aggressive on scary turn cards, and baluga'ing some blank ones because I strongly feel he has to fold 33-99 at that point. He bets like $30 on a blank turn, I raise to $80, he folds. At least I actually thought about one hand well and executed.

Don't remember many other hands; got to bed crazy late last night and somehow woke up early this morning, ready for more. Think I'm going to the venetian today which supposedly has an awesome card room. GL me!

Las Vegas: Day 1

2009-07-06T08:20:00.001-07:00

Figured I'd give you guys a bit of a rundown of how each day is for me and how the trip is going. It's been fun so far.

Wake up time is 3:30AM EST, but I'm completely on edge, excited about the trip. I'm freaking out a bit about whether or not I packed everything and have the proper paperwork for tickets etc.

Get to the airport, am completely lost, but end up finding my way to my first flight by 7:46AM. Lucky me, I'm sitting behind 3 skull-candy-sporting, fluorescent pink wayfarer-wearing loudmouth 15 year olds. End up wanting to reach over and slap each one in the face, but restrain myself. Flight is something like 3hrs.

Next is a 2.5hr stopoff in Denver. Didn't do much there, just tried to get some sleep, watch a dogisheadsUP video, and hopped on my next flight to LV.

Second flight is much better, everyone's quiet and I get about an hour of sleep before waking up over I guess what was the grand canyon. It was a little hard to gauge how big the canyons were since we were so high up. Got some nice pictures.

Finally I arrive in LV, get on a shuttle bus, check in to the Imperial Palace, and get a phone call literally within 30 seconds of opening my hotel room door. It's Debi, she's at the MGM, and apparently everyone's already there and having drinks.

I can't tell you how surreal it was to meet everyone. It reminds me of meeting a celebrity: you've seen tons of pictures of everyone, but when you meet them in person there's just this weird surreal feeling. Anyways everyone was super nice and friendly, and made me comfortable as soon as I sat down. We knock back a few, then we all get the itch to play some cards (we are in Vegas after all...). We sit down at a 1-2 game at MGM, and almost have a table full of CCers. There was one aggressive but fishy shortstacking lady with $40, and a couple of decent but slightly weak-tight Swedish guys who were nice, and later on a weird weak-tight player sat down (who did stuff like donk 1/3 pot with 88 on KT9r).

First hand, I toss in (literally) a raise, and as Sean (Icemonkey9) put it, "he nearly took someone's eye out". "I'm used to a mouse", I reply...

Anyways I calm my nerves a little bit and settle down. Not too many interesting hands to post, but I played aggressively for a FR table and took down a few isolation-spot pots, some bigger than others. I was held back a little bit by the aggro shorstacker behind me who loved to get in on every pot and spoiled some of my iso attempts.

We end up heading out for dinner a couple hours later and have some really good mexican food which was nice.

After that, I head back to my hotel while everyone else decides to play some more cards. I'm exhausted, my eyes feel like they're melting from the 40C (100+F?) heat and decide I really need some rest.

So the first day was awesome. Met everyone from CC, some of which I've known for like 5 years!??! Had a nice intro to live poker as well, a nice dinner, and finally got some rest to overcome the jetlag.

Speaking of which, my internal clock is still a little off. I woke up at 8am today LV time, looks like I'll have time to wander a bit before railing Fredrik's first day at the WSOP ME.

More to come tomorrow morning about the day ahead, hopefully more poker to talk about!

Long time, no post...

2009-06-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while you kind of need to take a step back and evaluate what's going on in your life. Right about now would be a good time for me, and where better to do it than this rarely-updated archive of boring shit some people call a blog.

I guess we can start with poker.

Last year was fantastic. On pokerstars I moved from 50nl FR up to 100nl, then switched to 6max and played as high as 400nl with solid success. I studied frequently and learned tons about poker theory; enough that my biggest problem was (and still is) no longer what to do and which spots, but applying it all with the proper frequencies. Anyways, I did well, ran well, and thought I was the shit. So much so that I viewed 2009 with a big goal of making 100k. Laugh out loud.

(That's nearly exactly the same actual dollars and EV at $25,000)

This year...well this year was another story. I started off with a nice 25k hand boomswitch, but since then it's been downhill. The differences between this year and last year are simple:

- Last year, I ran well in EV. Dollar-wise, I ran almost exactly the same, but relative to the stakes I ran very well.
- This year, I've been running like shit. Much worse though, than I ran good last year. ie, this year 2BB/100 EV, 0.2BB/100 actual rate. Last year, 3.8BB/100 EV, 4.2BB/100 actual rate.
- Last year I felt I ran relatively even with coolers
- This year I'd literally guestimate that, Feb-May especially, I lost probably $10k in coolers. I could easily be off since guestimation is never really accurate though. Who knows - maybe last year I ran like a god, and this year I'm running even, so my actual 2bb winrate is showing it's depressing face.

(That's $3,500 actual dollars, $9,300 EV)

- Last year I played a 'snug' 24/21 style.
- This year I've played 26/23, and 27/24 at 100nl, my main game of late.

Playing looser is my way of 'rushing' to pick up lots of money ASAP. That of course doesn't work. Well, not really...

- Last year I played exclusively at pokerstars.
- This year I've played at stars, gnuf (microgaming/prima), and most recently expekt (ipoker).

Both gnuf and expekt have completely different player pools than PS, and my adjustments have maybe not been the best. At gnuf, I could literally play 30/28 (very) profitably since the majority of the player pool was either 12/10 nits, or 50/2 fish who folded very well postflop. I could isolate to my heart's content, and rarely got punished for it. I guess I could call expekt the middleground between PS and gnuf. Lots of fish, but a much bigger, tougher player pool too.

For various reasons, I've come to the conclusion that playing tighter - maybe even tighter than my previous 24/21 style - is ideal for my current situation. There are a ton of good tags on expekt, and I just don't think raising more than %20 of hands is doable without some very high variance, even if I played postflop perfectly. I'm not going to list out all the benefits of playing tighter; FPau listed them quite nicely here and definitely influenced my decision.

I've got an awesome rakeback deal, but it only pays out once a month, and my rakeback guy has actually been on vacation for the last few weeks so I feel almost as though I'm not making anything.

What I really need at this point in my poker career is low-variance. Playing a tag style, more tables and soaking up the rakeback will definitely help with that.

Finally, the last difference between this year and last year is that this year I'm spending money like there's no tomorrow, whereas last year I saved it a little better. I'll have to come up with a plan for that too.

So, given this depressing-ass post so far you're probably wondering why I haven't killed myself yet.

In a word, the answer is probably "summer". I've been getting out as often as I can. I didn't really take advantage of summer last year, only going out to have drinks, really. This year I've been to the zoo (with a nice bottle of gin, wee), bike everywhere, have been doing some running, have been seeing lots of friends, went to my cousin's wedding, and am about to go to vegas! I'm ripping through my roll right now, but at least it's for a good cause: I'm actually having fun.

My personal life has been pretty fucked up the last while, and it feels good to smile again. My aunt had a stroke - she's recovering well by the way, we have a drug problem in the family, my mom and Joe, her partner and main supporter in the house, are probably about to break up, collection agencies call us about 9 times daily, our house is 100+ years old and is falling apart and isn't worth anything on the market, we can't even afford it, and now my motherfucking fridge broke down.

Right now though, I'm super excited about Vegas and am not even thinking about all that shit. Fuck it, just fuck it. I have a list of shit to pick up and do, and have to get on it asap, so I'm out.

Steady as she goes

2009-06-02T09:19:00.001-07:00

Gotta say I'm feeling pretty good right now. Poker's going well, it's finally (well, almost) summer, and I'm just feeling more healthy.

I bought a beautiful Kona Jake bike a week or two ago and am finally getting a chance to ride it. The first five days after I bought it, it literally either rained or I had to stay at home to take care of my Oma. Was just itching to get on this thing.

Finally the weather's cleared up and I've taken a couple trips down to my old school to get a few sprint-jog-sprint-jog laps in. They also have monkey bars for a few chinups as well. It's funny how quick my body reacts to exercise; I'm already bulking up a little bit (lol, compared to my normal skeleton frame at least) and am constantly craving healthy foods.

I bought the bike through Pokerstars' concierge service which at first felt awesome. Slap it on my credit card, take it home, scan the receipt, shipt it to PS, they take points away and ship the cost of the bike to my account.

Then the assholes had to announce instant cash/fpp exchanges exclusive to June. 150,000 points for $2,400, and before I bought my bike I had 132,000 saved. I tried to reverse the concierge service but they won't let me :(

Would have been a nice boost to the bankroll instead of fpps just sitting there waiting to get spent on something I don't need.

Gnuf (microgaming) is going well. It's pretty killer with the shorstackers - at least two at every table - but I've still managed to grind out a nice 5ptbb winrate over almost 15k hands, clearing $780 so far of my $1k bonus. That will be a nice, welcome addition to my ailing bankroll. Looks like I have like less than 5k hands to play.

I also hooked up with Stosh recently for another Stoxpoker video. If you have a subscription you can view it here. Turned out pretty well and we plan on doing more; who knows, maybe I'll turn into the next Owen Gaines and have my own series at some point :p

So that's about it! Poker's going well, life is going well, and I feel good. I do have to say that one of the main reasons poker is going well is because I'm learning more. It's something I haven't focused on enough in the past, and can definitely attribute my last swing in some part to. I was paying too much attention to my winnings, and not learning enough. I was probably not so far behind the player pool that I got run over or anything like that, but the more you learn, the better you get, and the more money you make. Worrying about each and every buyin is one of the biggest leaks you can have, and its' something I'm in the process of fixing.

I'm not even bothering posting monthly summaries anymore. I guess I'll throw a graph in here and there for fun, but I think my main focus will be to grind hands, study even more, stay healthy in 'real' life, and see where it takes me.

Expekt and the Gnuf bonus

2009-05-23T06:40:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note.

My expekt deal (ipoker) finally went through. I get a certain percentage through the site, and a certain percent through my rep, and it adds up to %50. First full month I get more than that though since my rep wants to make up for having it delayed for so long.

On the other hand, I'm 5500 points into clearing my gnuf $1k bonus, and I'm not sure it's more worth it to stay there and grind it out or to start hitting up the ipoker tables.

The expekt deal lasts until November, after that my rep says there will be other deals available.

Very excited about this as it will bring a lot more consistency to my profit line, give me some experience adjusting to a(nother) new player pool, and will also force me to play fewer tables, in turn giving me time to think deeper about my decisions and in turn forcing me to play more hours to make good volume.

2009-05-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

"This did not go well. I think I might be allergic to them."

Also check out his drink recipe video with David Cross.

...and the run continues

2009-05-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

Welcome to poker hell. You big hands don't get paid off, when they do, it's because they're up against better hands, your bluffs never work, and it happens for so long that you start to doubt every single aspect of your game.

This is how it's been for me for a good 3 months now. The money I've lost from the beats, coolers, and bad play of my own have dwindled my bankroll to a fraction of what it once was. It's not the end of the world, but I can feel myself approaching that point where I just don't give a shit anymore, but obviously I really don't want to see myself vaporize the rest of my bankroll. I still believe there's money to be made in the game, and that I can propel myself either into a full-blown professional poker career, or kickstart some other career for myself should I choose to leave the game.

So I need a plan. I need to figure out what's wrong, what I need to do to fix it, and how I will do it.

One thing that I can't help is the luck. I'm down nearly $8,000 in EV in the last 75k hands, and would guesstimate there's another 2k in coolers in there. Not fun, but there's absolutely nothing I can do about that except play within bankroll restrictions to ensure I don't go broke. That by the way has led me back down to 100nl for the first time in months. A big hit to my ego in a sense, but as I said there's just nothing I can do about it. Moving down might actually help me in that the regs and fish are so much worse that it may boost my confidence again.

Otherwise, I have to spot the leaks in my game. I'm not a stats genius and am having a little trouble running filters and stuff to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I could get coaching, but my bankroll's so small I just don't think I can afford it. Luckily, both Alan and Stosh are in a position where they can offer free sessions here and there. Alan himself has been on a massive 300k hand breakeven stretch (remember he's formerly a massive mid-high stakes winner over millions of hands). It scares the shit out of me to think that someone so strong can run bad for so long.

Talks with CC members (Fredrik, BW, and coaching Icemonkey) have been great. It always helps to discuss poker and start thinking of it in a logical way rather than "for fucks sake, he's got the nuts again" type thinking.

So with respect to poker, I can apply myself a little better and start bugging you guys and the stox coaches for more sessions. That has to help.

With respect to my mental game, I'm not sure how much longer I can afford Jared's coaching. He's phenomenal, but he's about 250 per session which is starting to hurt. I unfortunately fuck up my side of the bargain by not doing a lot of the stuff we talk about, so maybe I can simply get coaching less often from him and apply myself more to try and actually get the stuff we talk about done.

One more thing that's been taking way too fucking long is this rakeback deal. There's all type of delays happening with Expekt's rep and a mixup with my username, and it looks like it'll still be a while before we close the deal. That should be a huge help, providing some sort of consistency to my profit with %50 rakeback(/bonuses). I've even looked at propping, but there are so many restrictions with it that I'm not sure it's something I want to do.

I have a feeling that once the ipoker deal goes through, the change of scenery and added rakeback could spark a change in my swings. I reeeeally hope so, because I'm really getting sick of all this shit.

So anyways, my plan is:

- more skype/aim talks with friends/coaches
- mark hands in HEM for general leak-finding
- replay audio of last session with Jared, take notes
- maybe reread Elements of Poker
- get out more, spring's always good to put a smile on my face :)

Yet another reevaluation

2009-05-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

I'm still running like shit, it's still tilting me, I'm playing bad because of it and I need to fix this, or I'll go broke. Plain and simple. I realize there are a select few people who actually read this blog on occasion, and to those select few: I'm sorry it's been the same old bullshit the last few months, and that this has turned more into a self-help/self-analysis thing than anything else even mildly entertaining. I wish I had awesomely successful months to tell you about, and advice for you on how to make 10k+ per month, but I can't do that if I can't even break even anymore.

It seems like the way it used to be was that even on my worst runs, my poker abilities were enough to push through it. I didn't need to have a constant eye on my mental state, I didn't have any confidence problems, I didn't have nearly as many -$1k days as I am today, and I didn't need to hire a mental game coach to help me manage it all.

Ultimately it comes down to me running like shit, dropping from my A game to my B game, and having such bad results that the tilt pounds me down to my F game where I lose massive amounts if it goes unchecked.

The beats are one thing. Looking at the theory, if I keep getting my money in good, in the long run I will profit. Fine, but when I run bad for long periods of time, I eventually fall of the "F game cliff", and have a LOT of trouble getting back on top of it. I've been on and off this cliff since the beginning of March (and counting). So how do I make sure I don't fall off again? One thing I can do is define my A/B/C/F games so that I know how close I am to doing so. Have certain characteristics and traits for each stage written down so I recognize where my head's at. Let's do that here:

A game:

-Always checking stats
-Can play 6-8 tables, but usually I'm playing 4-6
-Aware of opponents' state of mind
-Owning the preflop game
-Thinking before each decision
-Quitting when I need to
-Relaxed, clear mind
-Folding well with marginal hands vs lots of action from fish
-Managing pot size well
etc

B game:

-Forgetting some minor stats
-Playing more tables than I can manage
-Not aware of opponents' state of mind, dropping down a level in thinking?
-Making a few mistakes PF (not checking stack size, 4bet bluffing a bad spot, making weak calls vs 3bets etc)
-Not thinking before each decision fully
-Mind a little distracted, not focused
-Paying off fish a little
-Not paying attention to bet sizes
etc

C game:

-Often forgetting stats completely
-Playing 8 tables, refusing to drop tables because they're juicy
-Not thinking at all about opponents' states of mind
-Sloppy preflop play
-Rushing decisions
-Distracted, on autopilot
-Making sloppy calls, just 'hoping' I'm good
-Using betpot instead of thinking about bet sizing myself

F game:

-"On tilt". Furious, enraged, apeshit crazy tilty state of mind
-Not paying attention to breathing at all
-Backraising silly hands all in
-4bet bluffing way too much
-3betting too much
-3 barreling too much
-Check-raise bluffing in horrible spots
-Spewing in general

Just as both Tommy Angelo and Jared Tendler preach, if I can chop off the times when I'm playing at my worst (read: F game), I'll play poker with a higher percentage of A-C game, and as such make a higher hourly. Knock off the time I play my C game, and my hourly rises even further. By that logic I don't really need to even improve my A game in order to run a bigger winrate. I guess improving my A game will help me beat 2/4 for a bigger winrate and push me through the midstakes, but right now I need to stabilize myself to get back to actually winning at 1/2.

When I ordered Mr. Angelo's book I asked him to sign my book along with some advice for me, an aspiring professional. His advice: "Remember - order to win at poker, you have to be very good at losing". So that's #1 on my list: recognize when I'm approaching that F game dropoff, and quit. Wish me luck.

No really, I need some luck.

2009-04-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

Dont Stop Believing - Journey

Had another session with Jared, will post a fully thang soon. Lots to look forward to, and I'm foreal about actually applying myself this time.

Winning? wat?

2009-04-22T12:41:00.000-07:00

Yep, finally winning again for a change. I really forgot what it felt like, and oh god is it sweet.

What did I change? Well for one I took that huge long three day break from poker. This cooled me down, I took a quick look at my game and saw obvious leaks left right and centre (mainly that I was playing like a raging maniac), and fixed them. I'm back down to my usual 6max style, still changing small things for the better, but sticking to a solid lag/tag style. No 30/26/%12 3bet, raising every other flop as a bluff. It just doesn't work unless you're playing completely abc players, which there just aren't that many of at 200nl anymore.

For those running like shit, please heed my advice: take a break. Seriously, if only for a day, take that break. I hated the fact, but not playing poker actually felt good. I know you insist that you're playing your A game still and that there's little to no tilt involved, but believe me, there is. There always is when you're not running well unless you have no pulse.

BalugaWhale's book now has a price and a release date; you can find the info on his site. There's also an option to get it for a certain amount of MGR through one of their rakeback deals. Sounds pretty good, but moving to a new site with different software, no info on the player pool and having to figure out bet pot and all types of other shit is just going to be a pain in the ass. Might not be worth my time.

I've thought for a while about moving to a different site with straight rakeback, and although that deal is enticing, I just don't think it would be worth moving without a rakeback deal worth more than your standard %30. Stars' support, the familiarity, the info I have on the players I know, keeping supernova, I'm just not sure it's worth it.

I'll think about it a bit, but either way I'll be getting the book when it comes out early May.

It's a little surprising that I started running so well before even having a session (since my recent shitty stretch) with Jared. I've got one booked tomorrow and will get my act back together. I'm almost on pace for a 'good' month in terms of number of hands, but could definitely play more. Spring stuff has gotten itself in the way of that for the meantime. I haven't done any mental game exercises at ALL this month, despite setting a goal to do my warmup/warmdown stuff for %75 (was it?) of my sessions. I dunno, I think I just have to take a step back and look at what I'm trying to do with Jared and my mental game, and get it done. I can't keep dropping hundreds on sessions with him only to dick around and not do the stuff he's laying out for me.

Speaking of coaching, I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning it but Icemonkey9 approached me for coaching a while back and until now I wasn't sure I was going to do it. I still don't have much experience coaching one on one, but I think all the posting and videos I've done have convinced Sean I'm good enough to help him out with 6max for a reasonable price, and we're starting soon! I'll be taking a look at his DB, spotting leaks, and preaching to him what I think is a winning 6max style. Should be fun, Sean's a great guy and hopefully we can get some videos of the sessions out for you up and comers.

I think that's about it. I realize I haven't posted a graph or even a hand on this piece of shit blog in ages, so here's this year's madness. I'm sure you can understand why I was getting so frustrated now that I put the swing in perspective huh? :)

Cooled down?

2009-04-16T09:23:00.000-07:00

To recap, March was a disaster, dropping a few grand and tilting worse than I have in a long while, only to nearly break even by the end of the month, lifting my spirits. Then April started with a nice downward ~$4k slope. Since then I took a break, did some fun stuff outside of poker, got back to review my play and get back on the grind. I think I was having a somewhat frustrating break even stint before a few winning sessions brought back some confidence. The biggest difference? I'm tightening up.

One factor in me playing so loose (I think I was 28/24 for a while there, with proportionally high 3bet/4bet numbers) was the HU play on the side. I think I've improved my HU play dramatically lately, and that includes my tilt control during those sessions which was undoubtedly my biggest leak, but it has a side effect of altering my perceived ranges in 6max. I think everyone's making plays when really they simply have hands.

Mr. Paulsson has recently been playing a much tighter >20 vpip style, and honestly I'm starting to think it might be optimal in today's low/mid stakes games. I guess you could swing that argument back and forth, but for now I think my MO should be to drop my game down to somewhere around a 22/20 instead of the approaching 30 vpip style I had.

A big problem with playing tight is that it's an ego thing for me, honestly. I do believe I'm in the 5th percentile at 200nl 6max, and kind of wish more than believe that I can play superduper aggro and run the tables. That of course has it's detrimental side in that I try to play that style, people play back at me or show up with dominating hands in big pots, and I get furious that they 'show up with the top of their range'. Of course I am running like shit lately, but playing so loose is definitely a part of it. While a 19/16 style is definitely exploitable, it very well could be the highest earning style atm. Honestly if you look through the PTR ratings of highest grossing 200nl 6max players this year, most of them are the nits who we 'good' players think we're exploiting! Like 17/14 nits! What the fuck!

Not to mention that with that style they can play a million tables, increasing their hourly wage tenfold or whatever. Fuckers.

Anyways, that's the first thing on my plate: tighten up. Not quite 17/14 or even 20/17, but at least back down to my usual 24/20 or 23/19 or whatever.

Some other stuff on my plate:

I was going to do coaching with BalugaWhale, but looking at the guesstimated price for his new ebook coming out in a few weeks, the courses don't even look worth it to me. The book covers 'everything', is in a format you can constantly refer to and have forever, and is only ~$1000. The course I'm looking at is specific to 'beating aggressive games' (not entirely sure how much content or the variety of content is in there compared to the book), is a one time thing that you can't reread (maybe they record it as a video though?), gives you the advantage of speaking directly to BW himself, but it's almost 2.5x the price of the book. So really you're paying extra to interact with BW and the other students. Not sure the price difference is worth it for me.

The course doesn't start for a while and not all the info is out on the book, it's pricing, etc etc yet, so I'm seeing if I can wait before deciding.

Another thing I need to do is have another session with Jared to get myself even more level-headed and get some goals set out. I simply can NOT afford another blowup like March/early April.

Kind of a scattered post, but that's the way I feel right now.

I almost completely abandoned this month's goals so I could clear my head of poker for a while, and I kind of regret it. Haven't done a bunch of shit on that list, and some of it I think I'll benefit from. If any of you low stakes 6max guys want to start getting some sweats going, let me know.

Cheers guys. I know for some of us cardschatters, poker's been pretty shitty for the last while. Keep your chin up and get through it. Remember those 5k+ months and they'll come back :)

One step forward, two steps back

2009-04-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

MAKE IT STOP!!!

A couple days ago I was in such a bad mood I really truly was thinking about quitting poker and moving on. The variance is bad, but the stress it was putting on me just added to the problem.

I haven't played since then and although I'm already getting the itch to play again, I think I should keep breaking for a few more days. I'm running like shit, but my tilt is at such a level that the variance is but a fraction of the million bbs I've lost lately. I don't care to look, but I think I'm down 3800 this month alone in about 3 (long) sessions. Not fun.

So just like I always suggest to downswingers in the forums, first and foremost you should take a break because most likely the variance isn't the only thing contributing to your bad run. I know for a fact my tilt is the HUGE overwhelming factor.

A good way to explain my state is with another concept of Jared's which I've mentioned before. I'm too lazy to draw it, but think of a graph with a bell curve. Left to right is your emotional state, top to bottom is your performance level. Imagine dead centre, a '50' on the x axis, is your tilt threshold. You cross that, and it's very hard to come back from it (which coincidentally is why Jared preaches paying close attention to your state relative to this point so that you can't cross it). Usually you have to quit your session. Anywhere in the ~40-50 range is your ideal place to be in. "The Zone".

Now my problem is that instead of starting off somewhere around a '0', gaining more focus as I wake up and warm up my poker brain, I'm still tilted enough from the dark cloud above my head that says I'm down $X in the past day or week or month or whatever, and I start at say a '40'. That would be ideal if I could stay there, but I get upped on the emotional scale so quickly if I lose a make a mistake, get bad beat, or coolered, or whatever, that I much more easily cruise past that '50' mark, the tilt threshold, and there's no turning back. Most of my recent sessions have been marked by constant desk slamming, forhead on keyboard action, "you can't be serious"s, "why does this always happen to me"s, and "why can't I ever run good"s.

So, what's the plan? I think the break will help me forget about all this shit and bring my starting point on the emotional scale back down closer to a zero. Then after that, I most likely have to look over my sessions and see (aside from the tilt) what I've been doing wrong.

Thanks to Fredrik, I'll be talking smart poker once again with him soon, and can hopefully straighten myself out.

I've also got another very lucrative learning experience available to me, but unfortunately it costs $2400. Balugawhale, the coach of all coaches in my mind (you're great too Alan!) does group coaching, and is available for I think the 15th of April. If you haven't watched his DC videos, do so, and you'll understand why I'm willing to drop so much on him.

The course runs over 8 weeks, once session (which is ~1.5hrs) per week, and the group is no more than 8 people deep. It works out to $300/week which sounds a hell of a lot better than $2400 in one plop, but it's still most probably out of my range. I have zero doubt in my mind that this is what I need right now (alongside some more mental game coaching), but considering how much my bankroll has dropped recently I just don't think I can afford it. Really unfortunate :( I suppose I can wait for his next session, but as we all know, coaches increase their rates over time and I just don't know if he'll be worth it for me in a couple months or whatever.

So anyways, I'm making progress in some areas (scheduling my time better, playing WAY more), I'm failing miserably in others (warmup/warmdown, tilt control, quitting). I'll break for a little while longer, but when I come back I have to address those things I'm failing at. Right now, my dog has developed some kind of skin thing just this morning where his face swells up like crazy. It's sad because I can tell he's in some pain, but I can't help but giggle because it's like looking at a fat version of him. teehee. Time to take him to the vet.

A long first day, looking ahead to next week

2009-04-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Had a nice long session yesterday, but unfortunately definitely tilted big time.

At first I hit up Prima for some easy HU action. I 2-table a 50nl (maybe euro, nto sure) who turns out to be a maniac. He's extremely aggro but is very spewy. Early I decide to call down AK in a 3bet pot oop on a 4889ss board and he shows K4. Next, he 3bets into my ATs, I call, peel a KT6 flop and get the money in on an A turn and he shows KQ. I run goot. Last hand before he runs, I 3bet KTs and ship it on a Kxxss flop against his Q5s for a flush draw, I win, easy game. I've played very few hands on Prima, but even their regulars are just horrible, and I mean it.

Next, I decided to 2-table what seemed like a 100nl reg HU, now on stars, and I can probably say he ran me over. I'd like to think I was coolered, ran bad and didn't get my chance to value bet the hell out of him since he was calling down so light, but I think he may have just played better.

For one, he minraised his buttons, even when we got 400bbs deep, which I give him credit for because it made it very tough to adjust to. Building pots was harder, as was 3bet bluffing, the minraising gave him more room to bluff postflop, and it just plain was a pain to deal with. I probably shouldn't play any more minraisers until I really study how to exploit them.

So the stacks got deeper and deeper, and we began the postflop crazybluff war. In other words, he'd raise button, I'd 3bet, he'd call, I'd cbet the flop, he'd bluff raise me. Then occasionally I'd rebluff him. Most of the time he made the last bluff, often committing too much for it to be profitable in my mind, and I was just waiting for a spot to get it in with some kind of equity or made hand, but only got that chance maybe twice in the 1,000 hands I played him. That's the part where I feel unlucky, but no doubt that fact is because I was 3betting so light that my hands were too weak to flop that kind of equity often enough.

Anyways long story short, I started battling back from a lowpoint of like 8 buyins, stacked him a few times to get to ~2BI down, then the biggest hand of the match: 400bbs deep, I open J9s, he 3bets, I call with the intention of flopping a big hand/draw and coaxing another re-re-rebluff out of him, and making some moves unimproved. I flop KQT with a flush draw, the raising war begins, and I get my money in vs AJ. GG, he remembers he has to go to sleep directly after that hand...great timing.

Credit to him, he played very well, and I'm not sure I'll play him again without more HU experience, but it would have been nice to run well. Such is the game of HU I guess. I really can't complain, I spewed in a few spots for probably 2-3 stacks anyways.

On to 200nl 6max and I run pretty bad, dropping like 5 buyins or something before making most of it back.

I think my girlfriend is getting sick of me whining to her over the phone, heheh.

So I played a grand total of 2,700 hands yesterday which is an awesome start to the month in that category, but I both forgot to do my warmup/warmdown, as well as my plan for the week. I'm not sure I'm playing much today, so I won't be able to fix the warmup/warmdown problem, but at least I can set out my week's schedule now:

Today: Play 1-2hrs if possible

Fri: Busy with Oma, but can squeeze in 1hr of HU during the day. Play 2hrs of 6max if you have the time

Sat: Wake up at 10am, walk dog, play 11am-1pm, break for an hour, play 2pm-4pm, go party!

Sun: Wake up at 9am, walk dog, play 10am-12pm, break for an hour, play $5 CC WSOP satty, possibly multitabling cash alongside.

Mon: Busy with Oma, squeeze in 1hr of HU play. Play 2hrs of 6max if you have the time

Tues: Wake up 9am, walk dog, play 2hrs, break 1hr, play 4hrs.

Wed: Same as above, redo next week's schedule.

Why haven't I been posting as many reviews?

2009-03-30T16:52:00.001-07:00

Well first and foremost I'm lazy. On a serious note...

Although goal-setting is extremely powerful and almost essential imo, the fact that they are required to be set within predetermined time zones like days, weeks, months or years forces us to form bad habits and develop bad thought processes. By that I mean, for example, instead of just looking at our poker goals (like number of hands, strategical improvement, tilt control, hours of study etc) from month to month, we also look at our actual poker progress as broken up into months. I think it's destructive because it pushes us from the position of looking at poker as one big game, and instead we look at the results of smaller chunks of the big game, and as such focus more on the day to day variance. And that kills your tilt.

So instead of looking at each hand individually and separate from others (with metagame considerations obviously), we look at the results of our session; "FUCK, today I lost $X, and it's going to be harder for me to win $Y on the month now". Of course the results of each month are insignificant and arbitrary, and the important thing is simply playing each hand as best you can.

So that's one of the reasons I'm trying to ignore monthly results. That, plus the laziness of course.

So this being the end of month wrap-up, I'll be looking at my poker goals instead of my results, which have obviously been less than stellar.

One of the reasons I shied away from getting mental coaching from Jared in the beginning was that I just didn't feel there was enough time before, after, and during each session for all his warmup/warmdown/breathing exercise stuff. And I think it's partly true, but I could definitely have done better in that area this past month.

I only have 9 entries in my warmup/warmdown booklet for the entire month, and a good chunk of those don't contain a warm-down. This was mostly for the reason that I was so enraged after so many of this month's sessions that I didn't give a shit about writing down "why I felt angry", or "what can I do next time to improve". But therein lied the problem of why I was so tilted every time I started the next session.

How did I get out of the loop without actually adhering to the entire process? I have no idea. I think my desire to hit the ebooks, coaching videos, forums and sweat sessions helped boost my confidence tremendously and I've been on a nice heater for the past few thousand hands because of it.

It's just hard doing the warmup/warmdown every single session. I'll have to revise something, but it's just not going to happen when I decide to play a 1/2 hour-1 hour HU session on Prima with a horrible reg. Maybe it should, but I'm far to impatient and lazy to do so.

I think, before I start really ranting, my month can be summed up as such:

- Played 25k+ hands despite having my internet cut out for 1/4 of the month or more
- Was put to a real test with my tilt control, failed miserably in the beginning, but pushed through like a champ in the end
- Did warmup/warmdown for well under 1/3 of my sessions. Big fail.
- Really improved my work schedule and have been playing far more hours than I ever have. I can now actually visualize playing 4 hours a day.
- Really took a look at my game and studied lots. Very happy about that.
- Even played HU with all my tilt problems.

And although I'm posting a a graph below of my winnings (or lack thereof), I'm doing so purely for entertainment value. It's not any measure of anything except maybe my tilt problems early in the month. Most definitely the swingiest month I've ever had in my poker career, and I hope it will hold that title for years to come.

I mean really. I've made almost $34000 in my career, and this month is but a drop in the ocean. I finished the month ~$1000 under, but what the fuck does that even mean? It means relative to the beginning of the month, another completely insignificant point in time, I've dropped that amount. Relative to the beginning of my poker career, I've won $34k. So what does the month matter?

Obviously results are what we're looking for in poker, but paying attention to the monthly or even daily variance is just going to do nothing but break your brain. That said, here's the horror I've been complaining about all month, along with the slightly depressing all in EV line :p

My goals for next month:

- Play 35k+ hands
- 5k of which HU, 50nl-200nl
- Play at least 3/4 of my sessions with a >5 minute warmup and >5 minute warmdown.
- Get at least one more hours of coaching with Jared even if you feel like you don't need it
- Persue coaching with balugawhale
- Play all the WSOP satties from CC
- Set weekly goals including certain days where you have a certain number of hours to play, starting tomorrow
- Do at least two more sweats with fellow CCers, post videos of them (one of Icemonkey and myself coming soon btw)
- Spend less on sushi
- Go skydiving if you can find someone to go with you
- Get sub to gym before the 5th of the month

Can't think of anything else at the moment, but that's quite a list as it is anyways.

I should probably start making weekly summary/goal setting/review posts from now on. Think I will.

Here's to making progress, gl at the tables guys.

Improvement!

2009-03-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

This is by far the month with the biggest difference between all in EV and my actual winnings. Normally that would freak me out and send me on monkey tilt (ahem, see the beginning of this month...), but right now I feel truly good about my game.

At one point I even took a small 100 hand shot at 3/6 to try to win some quick moneys back. Something I haven't done since my Titan poker days where I was playing 2/4nl with a $2200 bankroll. That actually makes me laugh out loud now that I think about it. I truly thought I could make it back then :p

I think my work with Jared has done a lot for me. Unfortunately I've slipped off with my warmup/warmdown stuff, but I've been paying a ton of attention to my mental state and working really hard on keeping it on an even keel. Usually what happens after a bad streak is I hit a good streak, and voila! My tilt issues are solved. That of course was the problem since I never worked on my tilt issues, so the next time I hit a rough patch I would blow up just the same.

Not to say I'm some zen master now, but I do feel a lot better.

Another thing I've decided to take a swing at is heads up. It's been a nice test for my tilt control, to say the least. Lots of typical HU craziness like stacking an overpair in a 4bet pot with tiny SPRs, only to see my opponent has 78 for a straight. Tilting stuff in the moment, but I've dealt with it well. Take the beat, realize he's calling 4bets way too much, adjust.

I'm still in the red with HU, but am running at a solid 6.5bb/100 sklansky winrate which isn't bad for someone who used to spew stacks left right and centre.

One thing Jared's taught me is that money 'lost' to fish isn't money lost at all. They're borrowing it. You can look at them as a huge school of fish; they are all one entity, and they are unending. You get unlucky or make a bad play and they win your stack? Another one is just waiting in line behind him to give you his stack. Make those winning plays in the long-run, and you will make that money back.

So instead of looking at real dollars (which I still obviously can't help but do), I've tried looking at each hour, calculating my average winrate over my career, and figuring out what amount of virtual bucks I've made, which in the long run will converge of course.

In the past week, I'm up nearly $4,000 virtual bucks. In reality, I'm only up $1,300.

Another thing that's helped tremendously is actually studying and posting HHs again. It sounds completely egotistical and is just nonsense, but I thought I'd got to a point where I could just figure out my poker problems myself, and would only post if I found myself in a really, really tough spot. I've tried changing that recently and am pleasantly surprised at how much response I'm getting.

I've made some significant changes to my game too, mainly (and from solid advice from some material and former coaching) to semibluff WAYYYYY more in big pots. A quote from one source of material says (and I have to note this is about mid-higher stakes where you can actually get floated light and can fold out your opponents later) is that if you decide to bluff, unload the whole clip. Don't just fire a cbet, or cbet and turn cbet then give up. Fire all three. And that's helped.

I also made a video which some may have missed:

Other than that, not much happening I guess. I've dropped so much dough lately that I had to kind of give up on the apartment for now. I just don't have enough in the bank anymore to be sure I can hold up that one year lease. It'll still be there in a few months and by then I might even have changed my mind, but for now I'm fine getting back to grinding.

My week so far

2009-03-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

-Losing
-Losing
-Losing
-PS gets laggy
-Internet dies soon after
-Called internet provider, turns out they didn't bother to tell me they halted my account until I called them about renewing my service with them
-Internet back up
-Try PS, still not working
-Find out modem is dead
-Replace modem
-Find out router is dead
-Dump router, so wireless is dead until I buy a new one
-Try PS, it's working, but lagging like fuck, and cuts me out in-session twice
-Call ISP, it's not them
-Phone is dead
-Call phone company, play phone tag with 3 different assholes before finally getting someone with half a brain, and only today is my internet 'working' (still lags some)
-I barely trust my connection playing online
-Go out to dinner with the lady to blow off steam
-Drop my awesome headphones on the way and step on them, crushing an earbud

Usually what happens is the phone line comes into your house, into a demarcation box which splits the lines so you can have more than one phone jack, and everything's good. What's happened in our house is that we did renovations, somehow lost the location of the demarcation box, and because of that they put a line directly into our house and into one phone jack which leads to our wireless phone hub. The problem with that is that there is no longer one rubber-coated line coming into the house. It's a flimsy little wire that's been connected outside our house that can easily be affected by rain, snow, or a fucking chipmunk running across it.

***
right on cue, my internet has cut out. Thank god for Blogger's post saving system.
***

So you can tell, this hasn't been the best of months. I've still managed 10k hands somehow, but they've been pretty horrible. Dropped 3k within the first 4k hands, started to claw my way back up to a highpoint of 1k under, then had another horrible day that dropped me back down to 2.5k under or so. Ran well today but I'm still pretty disappointed this has all come down at such a critical point.

I'm trying my damn hardest to work on all the stuff that Jared has been teaching me, but it's been hard. Well that is it's hard when I play. When I can't play, I can't practice tilt control or following the process model (of prep., play, and evaluation).

I'm planning on moving out, getting my own place and having my girlfriend live with me and pay her side of things while she does. I've still got about 20k CDN, and I think that'll be enough for a place with ~$1500/month rent. I figure for one or two people with utilities and food it shouldn't be more than 2k/month. And having said that, I believe having 10 months expenses is pretty safe. Not that that 20k is static and guaranteed, but at least it's there now. Most don't even have first and last saved up when they get an apartment.

Once I did move out and got everything sorted (I figure one month to move all my shit, maybe two if there are delays), I think I'd be in the clear. All the time in the world to grind and start actually having to take care of myself.

The apartment is also awesome because it's a huge warehouse, something that the owner doesn't care about taking care of. ie, I could drill a speedbag mount into the wall as well as my flat screen and all that type of stuff.

Not to mention an ACTUALLY CONSISTENT internet connection!!! Imagine that!

I think before I make the commitment I need to really sit down and calculate everything to make sure it would work out alright. Unless I go on some ridiculous run where I drop 10k or something, I'm not really in any danger of not being able to pay for the bills though. That feels pretty awesome.

I played for an hour or so today, ran really well which was nice for a change. Still have a bad taste in my mouth from the rest of the month, but at least I reminded myself what it's like to actually win.

Spring's here and I'm sitting writing a blog, how lame. Gonna go grab a beer and chill on my porch, invite some friends over and then go celebrate St. Paddy's day! Have fun all, and don't die Liam.

Clawing back

2009-03-09T21:05:00.001-07:00

Back on the upswing, still in the red for the month though. Have felt a lot better the last few days - still tilting, but to a much smaller degree, and my results were break-even before tonight as opposed to losing $500+ per session. It's so easy to lose confidence and just give up, but in my experience all it takes is getting back to the fundamentals, studying more, playing more, and trying your fucking hardest to stay level-headed. My arms are feeling pretty strong from all the pushups I've been doing. Knuckles are a little sore.

I have a feeling a lot of the tilt comes from the fact that I've been trying to 6-8 table as opposed to my now 'normal' 4-6 tables. I feel %100 fine following the action, but it's a little harder to tell how much the tilt factor is increased with the added tables. It was starting to feel like 40k+ hands per month was going to be a breeze 8-tabling, but after this past week or two I've realized I have to work with at most 6 tables for a while longer, and that means either the same hours and lower volume per month, or I'll have to kick in some more hours to make up for that.

I've gotten to rereading and reviewing some material I hadn't touched in a while, and am comtemplating rereading Elements of Poker again. Stosh also contacted me about doing a second Stoxpoker video with him, this time with his hands, so that should be fun and will no doubt refresh my poker mindset. Sweats with Fredrik have been great too, it's just a little coordinating it sometimes even though he does a great job of freeing time for them.

On a side note, the videos entitled "Sweat session with Fredrik Pt. 2" and "Taylor Sweats Fredrik" sparks a little bit of confusion with the girlfriend. She jokes about my homoerotic side :/

Can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I've been trying to find myself a really good rakeback deal on another medium-volume site. That includes some form of prop playing, but so far nothing's worked out. I put $500 on BetOnBet (prima) and like the software (even bought PrimaEye for table selection), but there are a ton of small problems that keep popping up that keep me from moving more money there and putting in more volume. I got an offer for a really awesome %40+ rakeback deal on ipoker but it turned out I already had an affiliate tagged to my account, bunk. The tables are so incredibly soft (even the regs!) on ipoker/prima/any other site other than PS and FTP, but even so I'm starting to think it's not worth the hassle. Who knows, maybe I'll try in another few months or something.

Thinking about more coaching, but to be honest I'm just not in the right state of mind and my game isn't sharp enough for me to be learning new shit right now. DeucesCracked and Stox are enough for me at the moment, on top of my regular studying and rereading old material.

Errm, that's about it. Here are some more interesting hands from today:

Against wwwBTHEREcom who's a solid winning reg. Don't think I can fold given I was playing a loose 30/25 game at the time, and the fact that there are just so many draws out there. I dunno, it could be a fold utg vs btn, meh. Don't hate stacking.

tee hee.

Against a good but tight (postflop) reg. Not so sure about the push; a lot of my decision was just tilt, I was desk-slammingly tilted at the time. Don't think it's terrible, but he had really low raise cbet stats.

Other than that, been paying more attention to my value betting and have been experimenting with overbetting (bluffs and for value). Things are looking up again :)

In the gutter, but nowhere to look but up

2009-03-04T14:45:00.000-08:00

Just checking my HEM now, it looks like I'm only down like $500 since my last post. Was up a good $2200 in the first 2k hands since the 21st, but since then I've been on an ugly downward swing that has more than erased those winnings. Looking at the big picture it's just a tiny blip in my graph, but it feels like I'm about to lose my whole bankroll. Just another shitty run; I'm laughing in frustration as everyone keeps showing up with hands that always seem to be one pip above mine.

I know a good chunk of my streak is bad luck, but I also know I'm very rusty from not playing at all last month. I think I logged like 10k hands total, didn't even bother writing up a monthly review.

I've been in raging monkey tilt mode while I play, but away from the tables I feel fine. It's starting to creep out of my poker life, but I still feel fine. Case in point, I just had my biggest losing session in quite a while ($1500 lost? yay,) and I feel fine after nearly breaking my keyboard, desk, floorboards and my knuckles. Almost all of that discipline is from the work I've done with Jared (and/or his videos).

I've mentioned this in previous posts, but the biggest things on my list are my tilt, motivation to play more, and organizing my personal life to make point 1) and 2) easier for me. First one is going good - sounds weird after losing a half dozen buyins and going apeshit, but it's true. I can calm myself down faster than ever. I'm also able to actually quit when I realize I'm too close (or way over) that tilt threshold.

My motivation is pretty high now. I'm already at the point where I'm starting to lose my confidence, but I realize that this is only a 5k hand stretch and as soon as I cool myself off and have a solid session, I'll be back in the green.

That's what poker is all about: the long run. Fuck the short-term daily variance, it's just luck. Stay in check, make as few mistakes as possible and continually improve your game through practice and study, and you profit in the long run, simple as that.

My personal life is still all fucked up, I guess that doesn't help. I'll be joining the gym soon, especially with spring coming along so I can have a warmup run before training. Been talking to my girlfriend and although it sounds much more like a big commitment than it actually is, we're thinking about moving into that warehouse I've been looking at for ages. As long as I can bounce back from this bullshit I'm trudging through at the moment and can bump my roll back up to at least 17k, I'm really confident it'll work. She already basically lives here at home with me, so moving out won't be much of a difference.

So one of the things Jared has taught me is that setting big goals is fine, but in order to achieve them you need to set periodic smaller goals. So for example my goal this year was to play 500k hands, but I simply can't do that without setting monthly, weekly, daily, even session-by-session goals. And that's what I'm trying to do.

Again, looking back at my overall graph, this is literally NOTHING compared to my other downswings. It's not really surprising how much it's affecting me mentally since I played so little last month and am obviously rusty. All I have to do is keep grinding and make sure I practice my tilt control. Get out of the rusty zone, get out of the tilt zone, and get back to winning 4BB/100 and rising.

2009-02-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

Basically since Valentine's Day I've dropped about two grand and my nice start to February flip flopped into an ugly downswing. Even so, I feel great. For the most part it's because of Jared's videos and the small session I had with him. To reiterate what he wants me to work on:

-Tilt management (paying close attention to my emotional level in-game, keeping reference cards on-hand, etc)
-Training my brain to go through the process model (pre-session warm-up, post-session warm-down, evaluating my play and my progress with my tilt management, etc)
-Organize my life so I can have defined times to play poker, and defined times to do everything else.

So far, I've basically failed everything except watching my emotional level, but I really feel like that alone has reshaped my mental game.

I was doing the warmup/warmdown stuff for a good 5 days or so, but eventually I crept into the "fuck this, let's just play" mindset and haven't used that little record book since.

Nor have I done any organizing! My mom and I agreed that we should come up with a schedule for my work and for when she needs me for other stuff, but we still haven't decided on what that schedule will be. I haven't joined the gym, but I've started training my brain to wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier which will help with everything.

I figure my ideal schedule will be something like:

-Wake up at 10am.
-Eat, walk the dog, then be at the gym by 11am.
-Train until 12 or 1pm.
-Get back home, eat a snack, shower up, and play poker until 4 or 5pm
-If I feel good, keep playing, otherwise relax and do something other than poker.

Feeling pretty excited about slowly changing my habits; I've never been a very structured person, and this isn't just about poker.

So as Jared has suggested and I think I need to do, I should start setting some more daily/weekly/monthly goals. In the next few days:

-Decide on actual schedule
-Start doing the warmup/warmdown stuff again
-Rewatch Jared's video with the process model in it (FOAPP #4 I believe)
-Do more sweats with Fredrik! The videos have been a lot of fun and are great for everyone involved. Another one's on the way, just having some editing problems.

Some hands since my last post:

Against a maniac/fish who likes to raise some flops. I get lucky.

Against another aggro fish. Really set him up for that one, posted about it in the Feb chat thread.

I get lucky again.

Aside from that, those are really the only full stacks I've won since the 16th. Sad.

Against yet another aggro fish. Frustrating, but I think I could have layed down the turn.

One of the things I've been trying to do is experiment with more flatting. It's something I definitely don't have enough experience with. Got set up here completely obviously, but I think I played it fine aside from the dubious preflop call which I don't care about.

And about a half dozen coolers like the one above. Fun times.

Just gotta keep on pushing. I always remember thinking during the downswings "man, I wonder if I'll ever get that feeling of winning 10BB/100 over 20k hands again". Then when I'm on said upswing, it's "how the hell could I ever lose at this game? It's so easy." Then the cycle repeats itself. I'm nearing that "what's it feel like to win!?!?" point though :p

You can't delay the inevitable

2009-02-16T16:46:00.001-08:00

I cracked. I feel good though because I'm cooled off now and can take a completely non results-oriented point of view towards my day yesterday.

Don't want to make this a long post, so to put it simply, this happened:

Started the day off well. Stacked AK vs a very aggressive reg's backraise all in with 86s and I held. Some other minor hands, and unfortunately I'm feeling the effects of expecting a big day. Then the slide started, and I made all types of bad bluffs and call downs in between the monster pots:

And one semi tilt-induced/semi reads-based shove:

At this point I gave up completely on all my little reference cards and note-taking and was just plain steaming. I haven't tilted like that in quite a while, mostly because I haven't run that bad in so long and I just couldn't take it. Surprised that my $10 keyboard somehow survived my punches. My knuckles sure didn't.

Today I came back and played a decent session with one massive mistake and the rest of the session played well, I think. I 5bet shoved Q8s in an ok spot but really you don't need to ever really do that, so I'm not happy about that. Didn't set out any goals or anything today, just played more for fun than anything. Yesterday was the problem.

So I failed. It's not the end of the world though - just as Jared pounded into my brain, I have to look at this as an opportunity to improve. Review my hands, learn from my mistakes, and learn from my mental game mistakes as well.

So, let's go over my goals for the session:

1) Play 6 or fewer tables - check

2) Play until 10:00, take at least a 15:00 break, think about playing more if you're still on your A-game - Played 'til 10, took a 5 minute break, then played til the wee hours of the night chasing losses. Fail.

3) Recognize the triggers of tilt and write them down - Losing a half dozen coolers in the span of a few minutes really got me steaming. I realize those are hands that I played completely standard given the dynamics and everything, but it stung. The key thing is I lost money, and that hurts. Realize those plays will reap a profit in the long run though.

Getting outplayed by my opponents also hurt. I have a massive ego and I hate losing. Solution? Learn to accept losses. Like many have said, namely Tommy Angelo on the inside of my book, "To win at poker, you have to be very good at losing". Assess the table conditions objectively, figure out if it's more profitable to find a new table or to stick around, and act accordingly.

4) Constantly assess mental state. Be aware. DO NOT CROSS THE THRESHOLD. - Fail. I guess I was paying attention to my mental state for the first half hour or so, but the next two or three hours I didn't even care. I just wanted my money back.

There you have it: confessions of a childish poker player. I still have the same mental problems I had back when I first started playing. Pinpointing them and running through this process can only help though.

Tomorrow, maybe I'll head over to the gym in the morning, then no doubt I'll be on the felts again to keep pushing along.

Keeping the ball rolling

2009-02-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

When I watched Jared's videos a few months back and tried his warm-up, warm-down and whatever other processes, I remember feeling like it was just too much stuff to do with too little reward. Obviously it didn't stick too long last time and so I didn't get the chance to see it work it's magic, but this time around I feel as if I'm past that initial "aw I gotta do this shit again?" hump and I'm starting to get used to it. I guess it's only been like 2 sessions since I started doing it, but it feels right.

Broke even today, felt like it was a big losing day though to be honest. Most of that feeling definitely spawns from the fact that I find really juicy tables in position on massive fish, but can't capitalize on the table conditions. Ran kinda bad today in the sense that I think the fish showed up with the top of their range (most hands I double barreled I had to fold to a check-raise or a donk or whatever).

Was close to getting tilty but I kept myself in check, stuck to my goals, and I'm happy with myself.

Probably the only hand where tilt really affected my decision was the one in the replayer below. The only real thing was that I didn't think long enough on the river with my decision.

The reason I don't really think the river bluff will work is because he was so fishy that he might not even fold a naked top piar here. Even so, most top pair hands have kickers that hit two pair or even a straight at some point during the hand, so I like just giving up. Blegh, my bet sizing sucks too. There are enough Qx/random other shit in his range to definitely consider it though.

Yeah, now that I'm looking through my database, the only big pot I lost was the one above. Aside from that it was just cbets and double barrels that didn't work. Just one of those days. Take it in stride, and move on.

Day 2: improvement!

2009-02-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

I actually recorded today's brief session, but scrapped it after it took ages to render and also after I had second thoughts about people actually watching an hour long video of me doing breathing exercises and only playing for 1/2 the time.

Although I lost about a buyin today and nearly hit the tilt threshold I've talked about before, I'm pretty happy now that everything's blow over. I did everything I planned on doing: pre-session warmup, laid down goals, paid close attention to my mental state, learned from my mistakes and ran the post-session warm-down too. I'm also happy because my computer problems are starting to get resolved. SavagePenguin and PCMech.com have helped me isolate what was actually a virus on my PC, and Telescope fixed itself after I reinstalled it. Haven't tried running the opener yet, but I'm finding that opening each file separately isn't that bad anyways, I might just forget about using the opener.

I realize most of my readers probably check my blog for actual poker progress, so here are some of the interesting hands from today:

Against a 70/2/1 (or similar) fish. I had one note on him from several hands earlier when I isolated him with suited crap, double barreled my top pair, then check-called a blank river expecting him to bluff his missed draws, and he bet really tiny with a slowplayed AA.

I'm not sure that note is indicative enough of his play for me to make a really solid fold on the river there, but I know that calling down light is definitely one of my bigger leaks.

This hand, I don't think I can fold the turn, but I definitely think it's possible on the river. Let me know what you think about that one.

Against a pretty passive tagfish. I would have shoved any 5/heart river, but I think there are a lot of AJ/AQ/QJ hands in his range that make my two pair look a little uglier. Not sure I can fold here...

Against a tagfish regular. Funny how spazzy they get when you simply 3bet light. I was actually a little worried about AQ, but I don't see how I can fold with the flush draw out there.

Villain seemed like a pretty bad 30/20 lag, but he really surprised me with that one. Just odd.

I have to admit I don't balance this enough with my big pairs; it just seems like I'd get folds too often. Plus since I 4bet bluff so much I love 4betting with my monsters any chance I get. Maybe stop 4bet bluffing so much? Doesn't seem to work half as well as it used to a few months ago. Not sure if that's variance or if it's actually the game changing.

Awesome when you get a reg to spazz out this much. This was in the middle of like my best session ever - I think I made like 1600 in 200 hands or something. I think I 3bet light like once before this, then went on a mad card rush. I picked up hands like these non-stop, and every time I did someone went spazzy with a bluff, or had a hand good enough to stack me with.

That's that, I'll be off the tables tomorrow as I have shit to do.

I'm not sure I expect to play 30k or even 20k hands this month. I'm going to take things really slow. Build up the habit of running all that mental game stuff, slowly get myself going to the boxing gym, enjoy some time with my girl before she starts working full-time in a week or two, and just hope the poker goes well. I think if I really work hard with this mental game stuff, I'll be playing at the very least 30k hands in March.

I'm also thinking about running a prop bet just like Mr. combuboom is. That would provide awesome motivation.

Day 1: FAIL

2009-02-11T17:20:00.000-08:00

Well, in one sense of the word at least.

Been having some trouble with my PC the last few days, and unfortunately it had to all blow up today in my face all at once. Telescope stopped working, my scripts were all buggy, my hard drives are getting all weird on me...and all this on my day where I was planning on putting all of Jared's tilt-control and organizational stuff together. Needless to say, it tested me.

I ended up just playing a session without my table selecting helper, Telescope, and ran sick good anyways. I did however fail with my warm-up and warm-down. Didn't do either. *slaps wrist* Do it tomorrow.

I did at least write up a process for both though. Again, Jared has his whole course over at Stox, and he explains everything better than me obviously, so I'll just give you the outline of what I've got written down, not so much all the reasoning for it. I have both of these saved on my usually spotless desktop as pdf files, and my plan is to open them before and after each and every poker session.

PRE-SESSION WARM-UP

Make sure you're prepared

-Go to the washroom

-Eat a snack/meal

-Get a glass of water

-Clean off your desk

-Turn off your phone

Write down your goals

-# of hands

-Strategic plays

-Recognizing triggers of tilt

-Assessing mental state

Warm up your poker brain

-Read HHs

-Watch a stox video

-Look at overall graph

Deep breathing

-Diaphragmatic breathing for >30 secs

-Clear your mind

-Get focused

Visualize

-Visualize your A game

-Compare that with your C game

-Refer to Ideal Game card

and...

POST SESSION WRAP-UP

Exctract learning

-Evaluate what you've learned

-Things about opponents

-Things about yourself

-Random other things

Evaluate goals/progress

-Did you meet your goals?

-Note small improvements

-If you made mistakes, note what you did wrong so you can do it correctly next time

Review your play

-Review hands

-Mistakes

-Hands you played well

Drop the poker

-Breathing exercizes

-Answer Jared's questions from the Warm-Down video

-Do something else!

I used to try a dumbed down version of this and just thought it too much to do every day or even every session. But now I'm thoroughly convinced it's worth it. Try it out yourself for a week or more and see how it works out.

I also wrote down some of those cards for use when I'm actually playing. I'll no doubt be editing them or rewriting them completely as time goes on - the way they're written now isn't guaranteed to work. The basic purpose for them is to have them written when I'm in a completely objective mindset and can see things clearly, and so that when I'm in a subjective mindset during a session, I have these perspective cards to refer to when I start tilting, or when I go off track in any other way.

The first one's for when I'm tilting. It simply reminds me about the long run, and to make sure I quit a table if I'm past my tilt threshold, or if I'm sitting with people who are either better than me or close enough that they're not worth my time. It just keeps me in check so I don't go apeshit and makes sure I'm sitting at profitable tables, basically.

The other isn't too organized; it's a reminder of how I play when I'm on my A-game. Stuff like "constantly checking stats", "constantly adjusting", "aware of my opponents' mental states", "constantly assessing the table conditions", "usually playing less than 6 tables", etc etc.

My other big problem isn't in-game, but rather getting myself in-game. I often have trouble getting the motivation to play, especially when my family's running all over the place and shit is constantly popping up for me to do.

I haven't solved that yet, but one big thing to do is discuss with my Mom and others about my job, explain that I need a certain amount of time each month/week/day to play, and that I can't be disturbed. I also need to free up time when I can get other stuff done, like taking care of my Oma and chores. I think what I'll do is bunch up both of those in the same day, then the rest of the week I'll have free to play and study.

I've also dropped some good coin on a nice set of noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones. A little over 200 CAD IIRC with everything included. They look pretty sick to me though:

This way, I can work while others are running around without having to yell "WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR A BIT" (which actually came up during my session with Jared! lol).

So, tomorrow will be more play, more refining of all this mental game stuff, and hopefully more profit. I'm still running like 50BB/100 this month which is just ridiculous.

First session with Jared

2009-02-10T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've been bugging Jared for a while about coaching, but he's so popular in the coaching world that he was booked for months with students among other things I'm sure. Recently he got back to me with an email saying he'd freed some time up, that I'd been bumped up the waiting list and that he could squeeze in an assessment session at 4pm today.

Well we had that session, and I'm the most excited I've been in quite a while.

Without going on a huge rant, my current living conditions are a huge pain in the ass and I've been having a lot of trouble logging anything more than 30k hands in a month. I'd heard a lot about Jared, and although I didn't get much out of his videos because I didn't understand and apply them properly, I knew there was something there that could help tremendously. I made a goal at the beginning of this year to play 500k hands before 2010 rolls along, and that means I need to play an average of like 42k hands per month.

Last month I logged a solid (by my (previous (I think I use too many brackets (don't you think?))) standards) 24k hands, and profited $7k, the most I'd made since last September, my best month ever. So far this month, it's the 10th, and I've only played 1200 hands.

I guess you can say I'm a little off pace. I plan on fixing that, and in 1.5hrs of coaching we already essentially laid out a basic plan to do so. I tried to record the skype call but something fucked up which is unfortunate, and although I'd love to share everything he taught me with you, I both can't remember it all and I think it'd be too much for a blog post anyways.

What I do suggest though is watching his videos if you're a stoxpoker member. I watched them all months ago and they didn't stick unfortunately, but I rewatched a few of them before my session with him and for whatever reason they made perfect sense. So watch them, rewatch them, and take notes the whole time; I can almost guarantee they'll help if you're having any trouble with your mental game.

That said, here's some new stuff I'll be doing to help push myself down that road:

- I think he called them perspective cards or something, can't remember the term, but I'll be writing down ideal thought processes on cards for use when I'm playing. Things like my mental checklist that I go through before every hand, stuff to remind me of the long-term game, stuff to remind me to quit if I cross the tilt threshold, etc. When I actually write them down maybe I'll post them here word for word.

- Organizing my personal life and scheduling time during the day/week to play, something like having a real job.

- Buying noise-cancelling headphones for when I play so that I don't get distracted and therefore tilt.

- Write a mental checklist. Dusty made a video or two about this - what he goes through before each session and the list he follows. Stuff like the breathing exercizes, setting goals for the session, visualizing how I'll go about general situations, how I'll deal with tilt, how I'll pay attention to my emotional level, etc etc.

- And finally, writing in my blog more. Mostly he's referring to me keeping track of my mental state and my progress dealing with tilt and everything else, and I think it'll help tons. Expect a post at least once every other day from now on.

I'm sure there was more on the list, but like I mentioned, unfortunately I lost the whole session audio and can't remember it all. It'll come back to me, especially when I review his videos.

I jokingly told Jared that his 1.5 hours of coaching could change my life, but I really do think that's true. I felt like it was almost more life coaching than stuff relating to poker, and we'll see how it all works out in the coming months.

Good start to '09

2009-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Haven't played nearly as much as I'd like to, but at least I'm playing fairly well and am running really well. My EV is probably around neutral, but I know I've had my fair share of favourable spots this past month. Spending lots of time with the ladyfriend, and even more time lately watching over my Oma whose health hasn't been tops lately, so I have no qualms about only logging like 24k hands this month.

January review:

Ran well, played fairly well (barring the occasional skizo 3bet shove with overs which probably helps my image anyways), and ran well. I'd like to have played more hands, but meh.

I only just realized I didn't set any goals for this month at the end of December, only yearly goals. Those, however, included 500k hands for 2009, and I'm not off to a great start in that respect.

Biggest pot won:

Biggest pot lost:

February goals:

- At least 25k hands. I was busy this month, but I still could have logged more hands.
- More study away from the tables. Try to spend at least 1 hour every day either studying flop textures or watching DC/Stox videos.
- Think more about coaching.
- Post more in the forums.

I've been thinking yet again about moving out into my own apartment. With a guesstimated $1500 in rent and probably another $1000 in other stuff, this is easily doable. Something to think about. I'd kill to have a nice loft/warehouse space and get out of this god forsaken hunk of shit house.

15,184 hands

2009-01-17T10:27:00.000-08:00

Well as usual I haven't updated in a while, most likely as a result of running so badly in the late parts of December and early January. When I run ridiculously far under EV in all in pots and run into other types of bad luck I don't feel much like posting about it. No one wants to hear me whine.

I do feel pretty good with how I dealt with the bad run though. I've thought countless times about getting coaching from Jared Tendler, and while I have no doubt his $350/hr (if I rememer correctly) coaching would help tremendously, I feel like another really important aspect to maintaining a level head is simply to keep studying. When you play for a month and run a million dollars under EV, if you're not studying away from the tables, all you can think about is the run you're on. You stop playing hands with an objective point of view, and instead all you're reminded of is the fact that you're running bad and that you kind of expect to run into hands.

I started doing more work around the turn of the new year with stuff like pokerazor analyses, and I wrote an ongoing guide thing for HUD stats. Doing stuff like this keeps me off the tables when I'm tilting, and most important of all brings me back a step or two to rekindle my awareness for keeping my game simple. Not necessarily tag, but simple. Keep my decisions easy. I also had a fantastic opportunity to make a video with stoxpoker coach Stosh McConnell. The video is up, and thanks to a lot of support from you CC/stox members (myself included...), it's getting great ratings. The video was a replay of hands I played in that tough stretch I talked about, and there were some really interesting spots in there. A few of the hands were no doubt a result of my non-%100 state of mind. Not necessarily monkey tilt, but most definitely 'act too fast' tilt, or 'not check for alternative lines stat' tilt. Interesting video nonetheless. If you have a stox account you can watch it here. If you don't have one, I'd seriously consider getting one unless the cost is a significant hit to your bankroll. I signed up when I had just a few hundred bucks in my account for half a year ($190), and it's easily the best poker investment I've ever made. If you do sign up, please do so through the link at the right. [/referral whoring]

So I was running terribly through this late Dec/early Jan stretch, but I stuck to my guns, kept studying, and lo and behold, it turned around. I'm still like $4k under EV since the beginning of December, but it's really turned around in the last bit. My monthly graph looks exactly like last month's midway graph. Break even for what feels like forever, then shoot up out of nowhere to like 4k. Hopefully this time it holds, or better yet keeps rising. I feel great though. I feel like my game takes a leap every single day.

Two more things to tell you about:

1) I've cracked $30k in rings! Yay meaningless but fun milestones!

2) I'm finally exactly back to neutral EV for that same time frame. Guess I can't run like a god forever. Just another reason I can't complain about 'running bad' anyways.

Now my next big obstacle is getting the motivation to play some real volume! Only 12k hands this month! And the lady friend gets back from Cuba tomorrow! Eek!

DANCE, MONKEYS, DANCE!

2009-01-13T10:33:00.001-08:00

2008 in retrospect

2008-12-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

It's so easy getting caught up with the daily, weekly, monthly swings. I know you and I have heard it a fucking million times, but all you should be concerned with is the hand...at hand...and the results will come in the long term. A year is a good long-ish term, and I really can't be disappointed with how things have gone.

January of 08 saw me move from where I started in the rings at 25nl to 50nl. I still remember my first session, even one of my first hands when I moved up. I was playing full ring at the time, and I distinctly remember playing a hand with AA where I overplayed it a little bit on a Kxx board where someone limp/cold called my 3bet, and we ended up getting it in. I won the hand and his $50 stack against what turned out to be AK for top pair, and I got a taste for what could be some potentially big money to be made in the ring games. I don't think I'm way past my wildest dreams considering where I ended up, but I did pretty damn good, and am pretty proud of myself.

I've made my way from playing 25nl full ring to now playing mostly 200nl 6max with some 400nl mixed in when the games are good, and I've sustained a nice winrate the whole time. I've definitely had some trying times (namely March, where I lost about $200, and October where I lost about $1,500), but overall I've made a fuckload more money than I ever did in the tournies, and my game has progressed at a tremendous rate.

Last few months I've been taking a much more serious approach to playing and studying poker, and hopefully that will yield some nice 2009 results.

Real life has been a bitch. My aunt getting a stroke, my Oma moving in because of it, our whole financial situation being fucked up on top of it all...it's been tough. It's been tough on me, I guess it's hard having to be around all the time to take care of my Oma...

[pic removed]

...ok maybe it hasn't been that bad, but I just yearn for more time to dedicate to poker. To the friends and family who don't understand what I'm doing, it seems to them like I just want to sit on my ass and play games all day. Those who do know me know that I'm trying to set up my future here.

I have no doubt that my current situation is the root of my stress problems and my tilt. I had planned on moving out or traveling this winter, but instead I'm stuck at home taking care of everything, and that means I can't play as much as I'd like. Things are clearing up some, and I expect to play a lot more in the coming year.

I've mentioned I've been getting coached by Alan. One of the things we discussed was his poker career. It seems odd for me to pay him 200/hr to tell me about his trials and tribulations as a player, but it helps tremendously. He talked a bit about his coaching from Jared Tendler. Alan was in a real rut at one point, and without straying too far off topic, Jared told him that basically at that point he wasn't setting his sights high enough. He made something like 300k one year, and decided that 380 or something was enough for the next year, so that was his goal. He was failing miserably, and Jared basically shook him up and said he should be shooting way higher. He didn't have enough motivation. So Alan changed his goal from 380k to 1M. In the end, Alan says, he's failing miserably for his 1M goal, but is crushing his previous 380k goal.

My point is that I need to set some really high sights for next year. I'm not big on monetary goals since that's something I really don't have much control over, but I can control the number of hands I play. I got through almost 275k in 2008. 2009, I'm shooting for 500k which translates to somewhere over 40k hands/month. I'd like to be positive and say I will reach that goal, but I think it's a little out of my reach. The main purpose of setting it so high is to try to get that high. Better to try and fail than never to have tried at all. If I play anywhere over 400k hands, I'll be very happy. 500k is the goal though :)

I'm starting to rant here, so I'll close up with my little condensed review and goals thangs.

2008 overview:

- 275,000 hands
- $25,000 profit
- Went from 25nl FR to 200nl 6max/taking shots at 400nl
- Ongoing battle with tilt, my biggest enemy
- Got coaching from Stosh and Alan of stoxpoker, both of which have helped tremendously

Comparing my big bets vs hands graph with my dollars vs hands graph, you can see why overall it all seems good, but lately it's been tough controlling the tilt. In 'real' terms, it's just swingier. In the terms I should be thinking about, it's been absolutely fine.

Overall, I'm happy with how the year went though. I'm sure I lost like $5-10k in tilt, but that's something I'm working on. And will most probably be dropping a few K trying to fix.

This month was pretty good btw. I ended it on a pretty bad run with pretty bad tilt, but I can't be too disappointed. I cleared 30k hands like 5 days ago and haven't played since due to RL business, but I'm still pretty happy with how it went. Going to start coaching with Alan again in the next week or so.

2009 goals:

- 500,000 hands
- Sticking with the 'possibly out of reach but motivating goals,' $100,000 profit. Bam.
- Continue coaching from Alan, look into coaching from other 1knl+ monsters, get coaching from Jared Tendler
- Beat 600nl by the end of the year
- Go sign up at the boxing gym
- Develop a firm schedule to make sure you reach these goals, including study time away from the tables
- Possibly take a cross-country road trip over the summer
- Enjoy life

GOGOGOGO 5k+/month, 100k/year, midstakes beat-down time guys. I know you'll be up there with me, let's just try to avoid each other on the tables :)

14,085 hands

2008-12-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

...and it's been a challenge.

It's all good experience I guess. It's just frustrating when you have days where you're like a grand under EV, or when said swings make me lose another grand from raging, frustrated tilt. I'm thoroughly convinced that tilt has me sitting on somewhere between 2-6ptbb/100 under where I would be without it, but realize my technical game still needs a ton of work. It's not just the beats and coolers that get to me. When I get in a spot where I'm not sure what to do, and in a confused 8-tabling rushed state make a mistake that loses me a half stack, then repeat the same process several times in one session...well that doesn't feel good either.

It's just hard. It's also very challenging which is what keeps me going. Like Tommy Angelo says in his book, every bad session is just practice for dealing with the next bad session. Every time I tilt, all I can do is just try to do my best to suppress it (usually by concentrating on breathing really deeply and tightening up on the tables to free up some focus), or just quit if it's too much to handle. Usually it's the former as I'm not a very good quitter.

Not much else to say I guess. When I found out I was going to be getting more free time through december and on, I got pretty excited about making lots more money, but that hasn't been the case so far. I'm fluctuating around 3k on the month which is good, but not great. I guess everything feels small after a monster month like september's 9k. There's always more money to be made, or to be desired. I can't possibly be disappointed with 3k, but I can always strive for more by doing more work.

I'll be getting some more coaching sessions with Alan soon, will be looking into coaching from Jared Tendler some time soon, and will be doing some more work (similar to the pokerazor analyses I posted) away from the tables.

Of course the obligatory hand replays since last post:

Obviously an embarrassing one. One of the two things that happen to me when I tilt: I don't believe people when they obviously have a hand.

Funny spot. Villain folds to 3bet incredibly high, so I'm 3betting almost any two in position, and most OOP. Flop comes great, but I fuck up all the bet sizing, yadda yadda yadda, and I can't push out an overpair which holds.

1) my CRAI sucks, it was tilt, I suck. 2) WOW at villain's call. He's one of the laggier regs at like 28/22 or something. He's owned me in a ton of pots, but every once in a while he makes a ridiculously spewy play like this which leaves me in shock. No, you can't have his screen name. You might not even want it. He's a pain in the ass.

That's about it. KK vs AA for 10 hands in a row isn't too interesting. Bitch, whine, moan, yadda yadda yadda.

Thanks for reading. I hope my ramblings are half interesting, or that I make some of you feel better about your monthly progress, heh...

You have achieved the Supernova

2008-12-14T15:06:00.001-08:00

Poker goes well. Well, everything's kind of going well right now. My cousin has taken over for a good chunk of the week watching my Oma, and that means I'm basically free every day but Mondays and Wednesdays now. Even when I am busy, I have my new laptop to play with. That all adds up to more poker. Last few days I've been a little busy, but without feeling like I'm even playing that much at all, I'm already on pace for a record month in number of hands played.

Coaching with Alan has been phenomenal. We had another two hour session and talked a lot about flop textures, how exactly to use pokerazor, and other good stuff. I should get coaching more often. He charges $400 for a two hour block, but I always seem to make that back and then some after a session with him (or Stosh for that matter). I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but both Alan and I are confident I can both make it to the mid stakes, and win. By his guesstimations I'm better than %50 of the regulars, probably %60. That sounds pretty good, but I think I still need some more work done before I move up; I feel I'm better than a much higher percentage of 200nl regulars than %60, and would like to feel a little more comfortable before I move to 400nl.

Right now that's not really my biggest priority though. If I can really motivate myself to play more hands the rest of this month and next month, I can start reaching the 10k/month point again. I mean even if I'm making around 20c/hand (my overall rate has been ~10c/hand, my 200nl rate has been slightly higher than 20c/hand), that means I can clear $10k in 50k hands. That also doesn't include bonuses, which are significantly higher now that I've reached Supernova status on Stars.

10k/month is 120k per year. And that's fucking ridiculous for a degen like me. Moral of the story: play more, and you can set the rest of your life up with your poker winnings.

Now I'm obviously really high-spirited right now, and as you can guess, a lot of that is from me running like a god recently. But even if I'm overestimating my winrate or whatever, how can playing a ton more possibly be wrong? What's wrong with trying for $10k/month and only getting $5k?

I really mean it when I say this, but you guys will be seeing a lot more from me in the future. I'm motivated through the roof and will be playing tons more, and a lot better too with the help of Alan and some other resources. Oh, as an aside, I'll probably be coming out with a sweat style video for stoxpoker with Stosh! Should be fun. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to expose myself and my screen name like that, but I don't think it'll make much of a difference anyways.

So, this month's graph below. It's obviously a sample size thing, but my coaching literally started right at the base of that mountain.

7,720 hands

2008-12-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

Swinging confidence

Two days ago, I was feeling like I'd taken a huge leap in my game. Today, well, not so much.

I had a two hour coaching session with Alan Jackson (Dixon01) of stoxpoker, and it was awesome. We talked mostly about preflop stuff, lots on stats, and some mental game stuff. I go through a little more detail on cardschat in this post. As you might be able to tell, my attitude has changed a little since. I'm still %100 happy with my coaching, but my confidence has dropped considerably since then.

I'd rather not get into the nuances of the stuff I've changed lately, but it's getting tough. When you change your game, you generally don't get great results until you balance the rest of your range, and I'm having a little bit of trouble in that area. Some things are showing immediate, and very positive results, but I know I have a ton of work ahead of me. It's fun and challenging, but hard.

Sunday I played my longest session ever at 5k+ hands, and unfortunately ran pretty poorly. I can recall a good half dozen hands where I ran into the very top of my opponents ranges, all in huge pots. If you look at my EV graph, I'm basically running neutral, and that goes to show how little that thin green line means. The coolers lead to some tilt, and I'm sure I lost a good $500 making bad calls and running silly bluffs. One terrible defense vs a 3bet preflop lead to me winning a stack off of a bluffy opponent, but obviously I should know better than to believe that was a good call.

At least I'm playing lots. I'm putting in lots of work with my game, and I'll be looking forward to doing some sweat sessions with a fellow Dixon student, FPaulsson. Lots of work and playing at least means my FPPs are piling up. Supernova will be a breeze (only 2k vpps left) and when that's complete I'll have a nice raise in pay with fpps. I think I'll be gaining some weight with all the cookie baskets I'll be ordering.

Oh, on the subject of the fpps and all that, I finally got my laptop (via fpp store via $1,000 giftcard). I actually got it a few days ago and have been figuring it all out since. I can now use it downstairs with a wireless connection (which is surprisingly stable since I last tried it), and that means even more poker! I'm actually writing from my dining room table...

I'm pretty happy with it. It's pretty fast, has a great monitor with solid resolution, and surprisingly vista hasn't caused any problems yet. I actually like it. I only have one qualm with it, and that lies in the cd drive. For one, the actual tray rattles back and forth and feels pretty cheap, and it also has a problem of getting really choppy when I play burned movies on it. It seems to skip up every time it changes 'chapters' or whatever you want to call them. The bluray drive is pretty awesome, but it's too bad I only own 3 movies in that format, and they all came with the pc. Surf's Up (yay disney), Quantum of Solace (meh), and Hitch (have yet to see it, and probably won't). Otherwise, I'm happy.

The new laptop means more poker, and that means more profit (hopefully). I feel as if this is a big turning point in my poker career, and as long as I can maintain the swings I'll be just fine. I'm in good hands with Alan, and hopefully his coaching 'feels' cheaper than it does right now. It's hard dropping $400 for a couple hours when you're breaking even with your game.

Oh, you want hands right? Well too bad! Gonna have to go over to cardschat's hand analysis section for that. I've posted plenty, feel free to jump in the discussion.

November review, December goals

2008-11-30T15:46:00.000-08:00

I can't find my November goals post, so I'll just post results rather than how my goals went.

- 20k+ hands
- Good tilt control
- Played lots given the time I had
- Adjusted my play well
- Improved!

I was approaching monkey tilt during my ~3k downswing weekend, but I kept my cool, tried some new things and ended up having a fantastic last few days which brought me back up. I'm feeling really good about myself right now (and was even during my swong!). If it weren't for home life being really fucked up and twisted, I'd be a very happy camper right now.

December should be good. I'll be getting my laptop any time now, and that means more hands. More hands, more poker, more profits hopefully. One thing I'm looking for in either Dec or Jan is another coaching program. Mr. Paulsson seems to be having a great time with Jason aka code1234567 of stoxpoker. I think he's currently booked but will be opening up with a new program in January, and I'll definitely have a look at that. I've pm'ed him at stox to see what's up.

I've got some stuff that will keep my wallet busy in the coming month, so it looks like I probably won't hit 400nl for a good month or two, minimum. I think realistically I would win if I were to move up, but it would probably only be around the 0-3ptbb/100 mark, and the variance would be considerably higher than what I'm experiencing now at 200nl. So 400nl will have to wait until a) I get some more coaching, and b) my bankroll is >40 buyins for the level.

New goals:

- Breeze by SN while plugging a million hands
- Buy laptop with futureshop giftcard that will come sooner than later hopefully...
- Get back to practicing Jared's metal game concepts
- Look into coaching, also deucescracked/leggo/cardrunners
- Play lots, 25k+ hands
- Keep rehab'ing back
- Go to the boxing gym now that your back's better!

2201 hands

2008-11-27T12:40:00.000-08:00

Poker's going great for the first time in what feels like forever. I've been finding tons of really great tables lately and have generally just been running pretty damn well. What's awesome about streaks like this is that I'm really not running that great (all in ev says I'm miles above expectation, but as has been argued in forums, that stat isn't exactly accurate for all luck). I just feel really confident. I guess yet again I shouldn't get caught up in the winnings and start feeling like I'm unbeatable again. It's just hard not to when you catch a terrible beat (88>TT aipf), then go ahead and win the stack back within like 30 hands. So poker is good. 2k in two days is always nice.

Going to the chiropractor is awesome too. For a good day and a half there I was in the worst pain I've ever been in. I woke up after my typical shitty sleep feeling just 'kind of' shitty, then it just snapped out of place and the pain was so bad I wanted to puke. Usually I can lay on my back or stand straight and the pain goes away, but this felt like swimmer's foot for your back, multiplied by 10. Anyways I finally got it all set up and went to the chiropractors, and he's A+. I think he's done a good handful of nhl player's backs so I definitely trust the guy. There's something about someone physically shifting your back into shape. I walk out of that place feeling like I'm standing taller and straighter every time. Not having chronic back pain is nice too. Thanks Dr. Marv!

Just something that came to mind now, I think I'm realizing one of the big reasons I ran so well a month or two ago or whenever it was. Reading Elements of Poker is making me understand it. I used to play a ton of short sessions. Tommy Angelo preaches taking tons of breaks, and making sure you cut sessions while you're still on your A game. Put simply, if you cut your sessions off right when you reach your C game (or well before you reach that point), then your overall play will consist of a higher % of your A game, meaning you can lop that C game off and start playing your A game more often. I think I was quitting for the wrong reasons (I'd be up a buyin or two and quit mostly out of worry of losing it then finishing the session pissed off and feeling 'down' for the day), but now I know that it in fact helped me, and it's something I think I'll go back to. Short sessions ensure you don't start zoning out, which is something I often do too.

That's today's rant, just kind of rambling aimlessly yet again. Thanks for reading my boring shit, if you got this far. Oh, here are some hands since I'm guessing that's the only interesting part to the blog :)

Against a reg! hah!

Thank you Mr. Slowplay

Pretty marginal, but I like it. Villain is a reg who loves to defend his blinds, and rarely folds to 4bets. I could be wrong, but I think we're in pretty good shape here.

It's like looking at a mirror, except me last month!

Thank you Mr. Fish.

Little bit of steam coming off my head there.

Against an aggro fish. Pretty happy stacking there, especially after just flatting the flop raise.

Against another, less aggro fish. Probably a bad calldown. Snap minraises usually don't mean trips, but I guess here it did.

And those are literally the 3 losingest pots I've played in the last two days. I run goot.

Dippin

2008-11-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

So, this month took a turn for the worse. After a nasty day at 1/2 where I really didn't tilt, but still managed to lose about a grand, I decided to take a shot at 2/4. No, this wasn't some 'jump up and even your losses out' type thing. I've been thinking about moving up for a while, and for whatever reason decided saturday was the day. I took my shot, played some big pots, most of which were beats and coolers...

...and called it a day. There were a good handful of smaller pots, some of which I played terribly, others I played fine. They basically evened themselves out. The big pots ate me up though, but even then I still maintain that I'm playing my A game or very close to it. Looking at those 400nl tables made me realize that it's very very beatable. Granted it was a saturday night, but I found some excellent tables, even by 200nl's standards, within seconds of scanning them with telescope. Sure, the regulars are tougher, and the fish are fewer and farther between, but it's beatable. People over-adjust when they move up, and that includes myself. All you have to do is look at each situation and play it the best you can. It's not like players have some magical quality at the next stakes up, they just have more experience and are more well-rounded players. Look at their stats, find their leaks, and exploit them. The regs look pretty beatable, and maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself but I'm pretty confident about 2/4 when the time comes. In the future, I'll probably hop up when my roll reaches 40 buyins or a little more.

Anyways, hop on over to sunday, and we have another brutal day. I'm going to cut the whining to a minimum, but I'm really just running like shit. All in pots are killing me; I'm either running into the top of my opponents' ranges, or I'm getting sucked out on. This month's profits have been wiped out. Oh well.

Just trying to stay confident. The only thing that's really tilting me is the fact that my fucking giftcard for my laptop still hasn't come! I guess I'll email them one more time; this is the longest anything from stars has taken to get here, and it's only a fuckin gift card! How long does it take to grab a gift card, scan it in your computer, input $1000 in credit, then fuckin mail it!? Bah.

Oh also, I really really need to get back into shape. For about a week and a half now, my back has been in writhing pain. I slept wrong on it one night, and sitting at the pc every day hasn't helped it. I'm literally sitting here in spasms, groaning in pain every 30 seconds. I can't move my head past about...60 degrees in any direction, and I wake up about 10 times each night because of it. It's back to the chiropractor for me, and once that treatment has at least relieved the pain, I'm going to start playing hockey and going to the boxing gym again. Time to whip myself back into form.

So building on the exercise thing, I've got a few more goals which have become priorities for me:

- See chiropractor
- Go to gym and get a membership when the back's better
- Look into a serious ergonomic chair, maybe an Aeron or Steelcase
- Finish Elements of Poker and PNL
- Think about Christmas (it's wtf close!)
- Achieve Supernova

Supernova is going to be a big priority of mine, even though it's well within reach. I've achieved platinum the last few months and I don't even need to accumulate as many in Dec to reach SN, so all should be fine. It'll completely fuck me over though if I somehow fail to do so, since it's a yearly VIP level and since it's such a big raise from platinum. IIRC it means going from 12c/hand to 22c/hand in rakeback, but I could have done my calculations wrong. Either way 22c/hand is nothing to sneeze at.

Ending this with a nice sunset with the doggy:

Blanketed

2008-11-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

...and so the long battle with winter begins.

Really, it's actually very nice though. I know I'll be dead sick of it as soon as January and February come along, but for now it's putting a smile on my face :)

Tommy boy!

2008-11-18T14:08:00.001-08:00

Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker is my new favourite book. No, not just poker book, favourite book. And I'm only through about a quarter of it (ripping through it as fast as I can remember reading any book fwiw).

I have to admit that running well is helping lift my spirits and possibly instill some extra confidence, but this is the most confident I've been in ages. His writing style is pretty unique, and it's really hit home with me so far. He just makes everything so simple that it makes me want to drop the thousands on personal coaching from him to get even more out of his head. Anyways, I'm really excited and will no doubt reread the book several times. If you want to see a sample of what his writing style is like, check out his site above or look through his coaching bio page thingy over on deucescracked.

So like I said, I'm running well, but I'm also just gradually taking a different, more ideal mindset. Obviously we all know poker is about the long run, but I'm finally getting the feel that each session really doesn't matter. Not in the results category at least. Daily results, weekly swings, monthly reviews - they're all just kind of arbitrary. What really matters is playing each hand as best you can. Constantly reviewing the table conditions, your mental state, your opponent's mental states. Recognizing not only when you're tilting, but how close you are to crossing that line. Flat-out ending your sessions when you feel you're too close to it.

Naturally I'll still be posting monthly updates because I'm only human, but I really do feel like I'm progressing as a player, on and off the tables. Like I mentioned in earlier posts, my goals now are simply to progress as a player as much as I can, and make as much money along the way as possible. I knew I was going to make big changes this month and I'm starting to feel them :)

Unfortunately something else disastrous has fallen upon my shoulders. Left 4 dead was released. I'm just too much of a video game addict not to pick this up - it looks like such a fun multiplayer game. Cool thing is now that I'll have my laptop (still have yet to get the giftcard though), both my brother and I can play multiplayer games together, or maybe lan or whatever. This winter will be fun :) Unfortunately it's actually something that's going to dig into my poker time. Just got to make sure it doesn't take up too much.

Halftime

2008-11-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

Only about 1000 hands since my last post unfortunately, but it's been a nice 75c/hand. I didn't think it was really possible, but real life got even more fucked up. This time with details I'd rather keep to myself, but it looks like this is the real turning point for all of us. All I can do at the moment is take care of my grandma when I'm needed, and chip in a grand here and there to keep us afloat. I've decided not to buy my couch, instead helping out with the broken stove and broken washing machine. I'll have to buy the laptop since I've got a giftcard, but that will help with my hand-logging as I will then be able to play and take care of my oma - grandma in dutch :) - at the same time.

Poker has been going well this month, and unfortunately with last week's real life bullshit I had to really cut down on the number of hands I played, but even so I'm on pace for a great month. I'm just trying not to fall into the trap of seeing results and cutting down on playing, like last month. This time I really do have an excuse, but I want to make the most of my free time by plugging in as many hands as I can.

Another thing that's keeping me a little busy is study away from the table. Bryce's recent tutorial on the Stox Combo beta gave me motivation to start studying common situations so that they come more naturally to me at the table. For example, if my opponent is a typical tag with a %5 3bet, what will his distribution be on a Q92 flop? I have no idea! Hence the studying :)

With my crazy motivation earlier in the month, I was playing tons. I finally got the feel for plugging in big volume (relative to my 6-tabling style), and logged my biggest day ever at 3k hands earlier in the month. I can definitely see putting in a good solid number of hands in the coming months, maybe 30k or 40k. And with more hands comes more profit. It's just unfortunate that I've been snuffed a little bit.

Looking back at my goals for November, I'm following them pretty well. Admittedly I've really lost my way studying Jared's tilt control videos, the main reason being that even though I was breaking even for a good 5k hands or whatever, I still feel that watching his one video and practicing loose warm-up, wind-down and breathing exercises does wonders for me. Not that I don't need tilt coaching anymore, but I feel good right now. Otherwise, my goals have been going pretty well. Halfway through the month I'm at 10k hands despite not playing much for the last five days, and I've stuck to 6max the whole time. I've 'SUCKED IT UP, BITCH'. Now my problems are beyond 'how can I get rich and buy myself stuff'. It's now 'how can I help my family get out of his rut', and the answer is to help out with my oma, play as much as I can on the side, and put that money to good use.

Enough rambling. Here's my month so far followed by some fun hands from last night.

And the last hand I'll post will be in HA since I find it pretty interesting. Would like some input on it if you guys don't mind.

edit: oh, another thing! I finally got Tommy Angelo's book! Thanks for taking the time to buy it and ship it to me JD! This book is just awesome. It's the most excited I've ever been to read a book, hands down. Ever. And it's delivering. If you haven't bought it yet, do so. I love it.

8,521 hands

2008-11-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

Basically, shit sucks right now. Poker is going fairly well. I'm up about 2k since my last post and have been feeling pretty good about my play and my discipline. I plugged a good 3,000 hands today in what I think was my longest session ever at 7 hours (almost nonstop). Too bad I ran kinda bad and made a few questionable plays that left me at a buyin and a half under for the day.

Against a fish, had a set in the back of my mind the whole time.

Also against a fish, but I can't take anything away from him. I got %100 trapped here on a timing tell and his whole line in general. I was going to say this one was a little tilty, but I think it was more of me acting before fully thinking a hand through than me tilting. Semantics really, I guess it was just bad either way.

Barf. Against a fish who floats like crazy, turn check was with the intention of CRAI.

Against he same guy. This is where I cry about running bad and say that my sets never hold up and my combo draws never hit like everyone else's do against me :)

Against a tag. He calls the flop without much thought and I really didn't put him on a king, hence my turn bluff. I expected all underpairs to check back for the showdown, and all his floats to bet, so I went for a bluff raise on the turn and got stuffed on.

Plays like those definitely have their place, but I think I make them just a bit too often. If I had the discipline (which is slowly coming) to fold instead of run a bluff like that every time, I'd probably be up in the 8ptbb/100 area rather than the 5-6.

Real life sucks. Some new shit I'd rather not talk about (as well as rewatching the first half of Goodfellas) has given me the motivation to play lots more and basically get rich. I'm sick of this broke ass lifestyle, sick of living in this mouse-ridden, broken down, hundred year-old house, and I'm sick of my family not having enough money to fix it all. Time to suck my fuckin pride up, make good laydowns, grind more, stop running low-percentage bluffs, study more and move my way up through 400nl and 600nl so I can make some serious paper and fix this mess.

438 hands

2008-11-03T15:23:00.001-08:00

Bad session in that I played pretty poorly and by the end was steaming pretty badly, but a great session in that I'm kicking off Jared's system of warming up and shutting down and I feel just great overall.

Before I start a session, I read my newly desktop-linked txt file which reads:

1) Food/drinks/washroom/clear desk

2) Set goals on pad (hands, time, tilt, strategies)

3) Warm up poker brain

4) Bring important poker/mental skills or challenges to the front of your mind

5) Deep breathing for a minute
-Think about A game
-Think about C game
-Strategies to manage tilt

Also something that I simply can't just implement immediately and do every time, but by the end of the month I'll hopefully be doing something along these lines every session:

Warm-up:

1) Set goals
2) Review/warm up your poker brain
3) Deep breathing to get focused
4) Visualization and comparison of A game and C game

Ending a session:

1) Extract learning
2) Evaluating goals/progress
3) Reviewing my play

At the moment it honestly seems like a lot of semi-unnecessary crap to do, but I do understand all this will help tremendously. There's no big, easily-understood secret for curing my tilt. It's just going to take some serious work and understanding of what Jared teaches. To some this is all just voodoo bullshit, but for me it's essential.

My good friend is leaving for a working and/or fun trip to Vancouver for at least a month this wednsday. Already making excuses, I'm going to have to postpone some of that post-session analysis until tomorrow.

Some hands for your enjoyment:

'Meh' push against someone who started off as a maniac (not just raising lots of pots, but 3bet shoving $100 every other hand), but who tightened up to the point where I'm not sure shoving here is good.

A little over aggressive preflop vs a lag who folds often to 3bets, but postflop I think it's fine.

One of the hands that got me steaming. As Jared says, frustration is nothing but the lack of acceptance of reality - or something like that :). I fully undertstand I got outplayed here though. IIRC villain is funkeemunkee or something and is a complete nit at like 14/12. I'd been stealing tons and I often get the false feeling that they play back at me more than they do.

vs a fish. bleh.

971 hands

2008-11-02T14:42:00.001-08:00

I was serious when I said I wanted to make some big changes in November, and today's first session helps a little bit with the confidence. I ran into a few tough spots that, had they happened a few days ago, I would have been furious about. But I kept my cool, kept grinding it out, and decided to stop the session when I started to feel a little bit hungry and tired.

Funny how a two hour session can be considered my work 'day'.

No doubt my goals will change slightly this month as my original November goals post was written in an enraged flurry, but they will be similar to what I wrote down. Most of what I plan to do revolves around my mental game, how I prepare and wind down for sessions, and I'll be looking to post more HA stuff and study my own hands away from the table. I just may have to retract my point about not playing any HU this month as a new Stoxpoker coach, Cole Robinson, is coming out with a very sound-looking video series on HU play.

I've been taking a serious look at what went wrong last month, and although obviously tilt was the main catalyst to my losing month, I definitely feel like I wasn't on my A-game at any point in October. So...more HA, more review, more videos and video reviews, more everything.

Hands of the day:

Sloppy-ish call vs a maniac.

Only real tilt-induced play on the day, and I kind of smacked myself to stop going down that road.

Hooray for fish!

Times two!

Weird line from a tagfish. I actually almost folded river, but couldn't lay it down getting almost 3:1 against such a nonsense line.

Tomorrow I'll most likely be a little busy, but may get some hands in later in the day. I'm expecting my futureshop giftcard in the mail, which will go towards a new laptop. Stars has been so good to me and so quick with every little thing they deliver that I instinctively looked for the card the day after ordering it. I'm still hopelessly expecting it like tomorrow, but realize it could take up to a few weeks.

Pics of halloween and the new laptop to be posted when I get my hands on either one.

Jared's mass coaching may be the key

2008-10-31T10:24:00.001-07:00

I really wanted to get one on one coaching with Jared Tendler, sports psychologist of stoxpoker, but it looks like that won't happen for at least a month or more.

His videos on stoxpoker however may just do the trick. His most recent videos, mostly pertaining to the actual practice of his theories, are just gold. Preparation for a session (setting goals, mental preparation etc), finishing a session, and dealing with tilt in real time. All gold.

Right now I'm scrambling to get a costume for tonight so I have yet to watch all of them with %100 of my attention span, but I'll rewatch them tomorrow, make notes, and start putting all that stuff into practice. Pretty excited to be honest. If you have a stox membership and have yet to watch them, you're missing out. If you have yet to get a stox membership, you're also missing out. I always feel like a dirty whore spamming my referral, but if you do sign up, tell them Clean (my username at stox) sent you, and I get free months. Then thank me for putting you on :)

September, here I come!

...right after I get smashed and shitfaced tonight.

You know what helps keep me going?

2008-10-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

The smell of lots and lots of dirty money.

894 hands

2008-10-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

I take it back. Winning $300 or $400 does still feel good. $650 feels better.

I played one quick HU session a couple days ago which went well (I think I got a BI and a half off of a fish), and today after watching Stosh's new video and gaining some confidence, I played a good 850 hands and finally ran well. At first I was getting the shit kicked out of me by one fish who had position on me and just wouldn't fold. So I instamoved to the seat to his left when the player who was sitting there left, and lo and behold, it helped tremendously. Got to showdown easier, calling down his retarded 2x pot bluffs, getting full value from my good hands, etc. Position is the nuts. I'm also thinking of changing my name to UPAYMERAKE or something similar in regards to the nitty regulars. I think that's the best analogy for how easy it is to steal against them: it's like they pay you rake. Even the good 20-tablers (maybe especially) fold their big blinds like >%80 of the time, and of course that means steal with like a %90+ range. Eventually the better half of regs catch on and start to adjust, but even then it's easy to readjust and continue to run them over.

Such is poker when you run good. Or rather when you're not running bad - I swear if I could just run neutrally, not winning any massive pots but not losing any either, I'd still burn through 200nl at like 2 or 3ptbb. I mean I made $650 today with no full stacks won, and actually ran below expectation.

Some of the more interesting hands since last post:

Against a 70/25 long-term drooler. Yes he's been buddy listed.

Against an unknown. Was a little lost on the turn.

vs the same player, who turned out to be a massive fish as you probably could have guessed.

Odd line vs a nitty reg. Being deep really threw me off, really wasn't sure how to play the hand at all. After his turn bet I like just calling as he can't have anything less than 2 pair really, but otherwise it was just a weird hand.

vs the 70/25, lol

also vs the 70/25 who donked %80+ of flops.

That's it for now.

Had it not started pouring rain just a few minutes ago I was going to go play some pool with a buddy, but I just might stay in tonight and play some HU. I bought the new Brothers in Arms game the other day, so maybe I'll play some more of that.

2,875 hands

2008-10-24T16:27:00.000-07:00

I really don't know what to say about where I'm at right now. Last month's upswing bloated my ego to the point where I thought I would be crushing 400nl and the mid stakes in no time. Now, heh, well now I'm not so sure. I'm running like shit, and while that's obviously a big part of me not winning lately, I can't help but think I'm not up to par with my game at the moment. I dunno.

Last month everything went well. When I made a marginally +EV play, I would either be shown the very bottom of my opponent's range, or I would be shown the top, but suck out anyways. Either way, I wasn't tilted by the results, and I would see the situation as slightly thin, but didn't really care because I won anyways. This month, those marginal plays (as well as the clear-cut +EV plays) are just killing me, and I can't help but think I'm doing something wrong.

I might be playing just fine, and am just hitting a rough patch, but it's killing my confidence. I think last month's success lead me to kind of expect every other day to bring me in $800, break-even days being the worst I'd see. I'm still nearly a 6ptbb/100 winner at 200nl overall, and I don't see how I can possibly be disappointed with that. It's probably just a case of lifting myself above the clouds of variance and seeing that in the long run, I'm going to beat 200nl for a solid winrate.

Tilt has obviously been a part of my break-even month so far, but it's definitely getting better. Today for example I ran into a good handful of ridiculous beats and even though I didn't keep a completely level head, I managed to stick it out with a 5 hour session and played at least my A- game. Jared's videos are helping a ton with that. Understanding what triggers your tilt, why this trigger affects you in that way, and how you can prevent or subdue the effects of the trigger. All very good solid stuff that I'll probably have to watch several times to get it completely sunk in my brain.

I've noticed that a couple more things may actually be a factor in my downswings. The first being that unless I see the fruits of my labour every so often, I kind of forget about exactly what type of money I'm dealing with. It's easy to tilt and say 'fuck this, he can't possibly have me beat yet again' and toss out another $200 to call, but really that $200 is like a new monitor. Or a divono keyboard. Or like 1/6th of a new laptop (thanks for all the help by the way!). I've been planning on getting this loveseat for a while, and although a laptop isn't necessary either, I'm getting a pretty good price by way of the $1000 gift card from the fpp store.

The other factor is something that I haven't though about for months. My bankroll. Before I took out about 3k for the sofa and other stuff, my roll was sitting at nearly 15k (now 10k). With me playing 200nl, that gives me 75 buyins. Probably the biggest, both in terms of buyins and in dollar value, that it's ever been. There's absolutely no pressure of me dropping back down. Winning $300 or $400 in a day doesn't even feel that good to me anymore. I mean winning $500 back when my roll was at 4 or 5k was huge. Now that it's more than 10k, it's more like a drop in the ocean. I considered taking shots at 400nl, but as I mentioned earlier I'm not feeling tops with my game at the moment, and definitely don't want to tilt at double my stakes, so I held that idea off for a bit. Who knows, maybe I'll take some shots in the next couple of days and see how it feels.

4,115 hands

2008-10-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

I think I've had one session where I legitimately tilted since my last post and it cost me. Taking a quick glance through my DB filtered since that time, the biggest pots I lost were all within a few hundred hands of each other in the same session. AK stacking 200bbs deep in a marginal spot, KK paying off a beluga raise and river shove, some other smaller pots.

Overall though I've been running well and keeping my tilt under control for the most part which is good. Doing simple things like taking more time to make decisions and breathing slower and deeper helps tremendously. Sometimes I feel like if I take too long to run a bluff that my opponent will pick up on it and look me up lighter, so sometimes I'm putting out bets fast enough that my real thought process doesn't even have time to decide if it's a good bet or not. I've been trying to wait until the "ChuckTs has 15 seconds left to act..." message comes on every single time I make a decision. Helps a lot.

I really do feel like tilt is my weakest link though, and it's always a challenge trying to subdue it, or even harder yet, work through it. I'm confident I'm a solid winner (5ptbb/100 or better) at 200nl and that I'll be able to win consistently at higher stakes, but in order for that to happen I'll really have to work on my tilt problem.

Next up on my to-do list is to rewatch Jared's videos. It turns out that he only accepts payment by Paypal (ie credit card), and since I don't have one yet it doesn't look like that's a go. I do think his videos will help, but to be honest I've fallen asleep watching them before. They're just taught in a slightly different way than your typical training videos, and obviously deal with different topics, so it's a little tough. I think I'd benefit a million times more if I were to get one-on-one training and have him both identify the root of my problems and to fix them, but for now I'll have to deal with his stox videos.

$3k cheque arrived and was deposited a few days ago, and as soon as I get a chance to hit up Ikea I'm getting that reclining couch. Probably some new clothes too (winter is coming *sadface*).

Halftime

2008-10-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

And a much-needed one at that.

My tilt is to the point where I really think I need mental game coaching, and if possible I'll get it from Jared Tendler of stoxpoker. I think he charges about 250/hour, but from what I've heard about him I wouldn't mind paying even more. Or rather I wouldn't be surprised if he was worth more. Plain and simple, I need coaching in that area. I won't be able to sustain myself as a professional or amateur poker player if I don't fix this problem, and I need to do it soon. For the last few months I wasn't tilting at all, but that was mostly because I was running so good, and didn't really see any bad runs, so obviously I had nothing to tilt about.

I mean I'm running semi-badly through the 14k hands I've played this month, and I can't even begin to imagine running badly through a sample like 50k hands. I just couldn't handle it. Coaching from someone who's dealt with Leatherass who plays five hundred million hands a month can't hurt.

So, my goals for the rest of the month are to keep plugging away with the hands, get coaching from Jared if possible, and generally try to control my tilt.

One thing that should help is that I found a boxing gym really close to my house. I haven't fully looked into their programs but that should relieve tons of stress and get me healthier in general.

8,580 hands

2008-10-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

October has been swingy. Some sick beats, sicker coolers, but really it comes down to me tilting. I can pinpoint the exact point where it all started too.

Earlier this month I was doing the video series where I try to show how to beat all the stakes from 2nl through 200nl. Basically it was complete bulldozerage up to 50nl. 100nl saw me play even more lag for whatever reason, and it backfired as I ran into some big hands and some even bigger stations. Tilt ensued, and after basically (temporarily) abandoning the video series for my regular 200nl game, I've started the month pretty shittily. Down about a grand, but I wouldn't be nearly as tilted had I not lost most of that through tilt. I can't deny some of the hands were just infuriating though. Especially against 75/25 types:

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A few more spots where I believe I made great hand reads and stacked hands like TT and 99 pf with light 4betting history and the reg will show me a 5bet shoved QJ and spike. It's awesome how light you can get them shoving.

As usual it's been a real challenge keeping my tilt in control, and earlier in the month I definitely failed. Yesterday and the day before I played much more calm and collected which boosted my confidence some (just book a fucking win and end the day!).

I think I've decided to tone my whole lag style down just a notch. I've nearly reached the point where I'm 31/28 on each table and while I think it can definitely be among the most profitable of styles (laggier even), I don't think I have the postflop skills to keep it up. What I'll do is I'll tone it down to a 24/21 style, and try not to run so many double and triple barrel bluffs. When I run them successfully when I'm tilt-free, it gives me reason to try and throw my stack around when I'm on monkey tilt, and of course that's the root of this month's downswing.

Bah, even my sleep schedule is all fucked up because of this. Staying up til 5 in the morning playing poker, then going for a run at 6 before I pass out just can't be healthy. Gotta either stay up all night tonight with lots of tea and sugar and not fall asleep until tomorrow night, or I'll just put myself out with some booze tonight at like 10pm so I can get a full night's rest.

3 things...

2008-09-30T15:05:00.001-07:00

1:

As was requested by some peeps after I put out my 6-tabling video, I'll be putting out a small series of 4 videos where I play 10nl through 100nl 6max in hopes of showing players how to beat their respective stakes. ~30 minute videos per stake in which I'll be two-tabling while talking about the hands I play and the general strategy I think you should adopt. Should be fun.

I've already finished 10nl and 25nl today and I think I'll do the other two tomorrow.

2:

I won't be playing any more poker today. Why? Because the new Brothers in Arms game is out and I want to pop some tops.

3:

Best month ever. I've done too much bragging already, so this is it for September:

Biggest winning pot:

Biggest losing pot:

My only real goal from last month was to play more hands. I'm really not hating myself that much for playing what I did. I'm only 4-tabling and occasionally 6-tabling, and I'm thinking about poker like I never have before. My biggest strides in my game have been from this month and August. I do think I could plug more hands and I'll see if I can do so in the coming months, but honestly I'm happy plugging 15k-20k hands monthly and doing what I'm doing now.

Plans for the future include treating myself to some new shit, including a reclining leather loveseat for my room and probably some clothes. I own about 50 white and black tees, a pair of khakis and a pair of ripped up jeans. It's about time for some new stuff. I think long-term I'm going to stick around at 200nl for a good 50k hands minimum and see how that goes. If I maintain anything over 5ptbb/100 I'll probably start taking shots at 400nl.

1151 hands

2008-09-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

I remember falling asleep last night thinking about my play, and thinking there was really only one hand I felt I played poorly. AK stacked from EP vs a tag. Aside from that, I played well, ran extremely well again, and couldn't be happier.

Obviously I've been running hotter than the sun, but I do feel (when I'm not tilting) I'm playing a very good game which definitely contributes to my winnings. My NSD winnings are on a steady incline for the month and just at the tables I feel like I'm really running them over the majority of the time. Running 24/22 which is also a lot of fun :)

Yesterday was especially fun though. I ran into a fish or two who were just terrible. One guy at first just seemed bluffy and bad, but soon started tilting after losing some pots to the point where...

and

and

All three against said fish. Within 270 hands I'd made like 1200, and about $1400 total on the day.

More nomnoms

Same guy as above, weak tagfish.

Floaty hand against a good tight aggressive regular. Kind of interesting.

Easy to start second-guessing yourself in spots like these, but this guy is pretty lag and even right after losing I'm pretty happy with a stack there.

AK hand against the tag. Not a fan of stacking here even though my image was like 30/30.

One more I could have made a bad call on, and probably did. I think there are enough smaller flushes, trips and straights in his range to make the call, but it's close. His terrible slowplay certainly earned him the max this time - it's got to work once in a while or else they learn and start playing correctly :)

1,758 hands

2008-09-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Another swingy one. I definitely tilted for a good 200-400 hands or so, but I was running pretty bad too. My biggest problems were playing oop against aggressive fish who fuck with me on like every flop I cbet (and naturally I try to cbet more, duh), and also playing deep with a pretty tough lag while on tilt from the former.

Villain had just sat down at the table, and after checking my HEM database and finding out he's a 40/30 over a good sample, I decide it's good enough to ship. He stuck around and was obviously very drunk with all his table chatter, but it was a pretty big pain in the ass playing against him oop. Basically in a situation like that it forces you to nit it up which I hate doing.

Against the toughish lag. If you read the HA on cc/stox then you know I called the river, which imo is terrible. I'm stopping it at that point though because I want to hide the results. Still a little undecided about the hand, but I'm leaning towards betting the flop, and check-calling the turn since his range is so chock-full of floats.

Kind of marginal hand. Tough to get away from given my image and the fact that the 4bettor is pretty good and can be in there with some JJ/AQs hands as well as the occasional bluff. A little optimistic but I don't think I can let that one go.

Fuck you, fish! Top of his range, meh.

Against that good lag, this is after I got stacked by him though. Nice result, turned my frown upside down!

Against a decent tag. Easy when you flop a set on a board you can rep a bluff-raise with, but it could definitely get a little tougher on rag boards or Axx/Kxx/Qxx boards.

Aaand that's it. -$200 or something on the session, thought I played pretty well aside from the tilting and the AKs hand, and there's always room for improvement.

2,126 hands

2008-09-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

And the ball keeps rolling

I've been bragging incessantly and I think I'll save it for the end-of-month review, but this is just getting insane. That debate about going for fewer tables and increased improvement vs playing a kajillion tables and going for lots and lots of rakeback and rewards is definitely a legit one. I've thought a lot about that the last month or two and have yet to make a decision; right now though I'm perfectly happy playing 4 (or occasionally 6) tables now with my 24/22 style. I've improved the most in my newly found niche in 6max than I ever did before, and the results reflect that.

My only qualm is that I'm still playing a dismal number of hands, but a lot of that is a result of playing so few tables as well as the fact that my real life has been crazy busy lately. I could definitely plug more hands. Hell, I could just abandon sleeping if I really felt like it, but I don't think it would be healthy. I'm in a nice balance right now with my poker playing time, my cash flow and my real life. Aside from a few problems here and there I'd say my life is pretty damn good right now.

Enough bragging; here are some of the more interesting hands since my last post:

Wow. Checking my biggest pots lost, I don't even have a full stacked one. Biggest is $156, then $120, then $100 and under.

One of the many reasons squeezing dominated hands like AT is a dumdum move.

Gotta let them have one once in a while or they stop coming back :)

om nom nom

That was in my 6-tabling video actually. Villain is a reg.

Tight pf stats + superlow fold to any postflop street + super high wtsd = valuetown him!

AK high ftw!

That's about it, tons more coolers and flips I won, nothing too interesting. Last hand there is kind of a fun one I guess, but most of the hands are just boring to watch tbh. I'll be coming out with another video, next time 4-tabling for the forums, both cardschat and stoxpoker.

edit: oooh by the way, next thing on this consumer's list is a reclining leather loveseat :) Pics when/if I get it.

More mgmt, I'm just obsessed with these guys right now. Weeeeird youtuber video though:

4,277 hands

2008-09-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

lol swongaments

The hands I've played since my last post have been my swingiest ever. Two days where I dropped nearly a grand, then clawed back to bring myself back to even at 4 in the morning. I'm not going to post another long, drawn-out thing about how ignoring your results is key and how I have yet to master that, but as you can tell I was tilted by my swinging so much so fast that I couldn't help but cringe at the $1000 swings.

The good:

The bad:

The ugly:

I could go on...

But overall it's been fun. The challenge of controlling your tilt and sticking to at least your B+ game is always hard. At least the frustration of variance is making me plug more hands. I played some of my longest days yesterday and the day before, and today was a good ~1000 hands too.

323 hands

2008-09-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder - it's not about the results, but about how well you played. I lost half a buyin today but I felt I played great and ended the session with a smile on my face.

Fun wa/wb calldown against a pretty aggro player. I didn't have many hands on him though which made it a little more marginal.

"Let's see those jacks, let's see 'em!!!", and he did.

Against a hugely aggressive (and as I later learned, stationy) player who had fucked with every single one of my cbets up to this point, so I decided to take a stand. Didn't work. I think I probably should have basically waited for a hand before getting some money in. This guy just wasn't going to believe me unless I showed him a hand. Raising 52o pf knowing your opponent is going to mess with you isn't the best idea either.

I can think of a few more hands I played poorly, but in smaller pots. Taking the 'make mistakes, but learn from them' road rather than the 'play the same and never improve' one is much much better in my mind though. I've been trying some new lines and experimenting a little which is always fun, but definitely not always profitable.

A hand and a song

2008-09-17T16:53:00.000-07:00

Because I'm lazy.

Villain has %100 vpip after less than 1 orbit and that's all I know.

And an unfortunately unembeddable song from mgmt.

Mid-month review

2008-09-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Month started slowly but I've been playing more and more. Will hopefully reach platinum again this month, though I kind of doubt it. At least the results are still good. Started a session this morning before realizing I had a shitload of stuff to do and ended it early. One big hand:

New to the table, but with hands on everyone. CO is a huge fish that the BTN, a solid regular, will no doubt be isolating crazy-wide. I'm not sure what the real line is here since there's no dynamic yet between me and the BTN and I can't really expect him to be 4betting me that wide. It just feels so weak 3betting and folding to a 4bet in an ideal 4betting position.

1,125 hands

2008-09-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

Tilt!

First time in a while too. After contacting Hunter of stoxpoker about coaching and getting some advice to drop down a couple limits and play HU for hand-reading experience, I first went to a 50nl table. My opponent was very loose and very passive. I never won a 'big' (see >20bb pot), lost a full stack in a FH < quads cooler and still managed to clean him out for somewhere under a buyin. Decided to move up to 100nl. Found one huge fish and one decent player who I thought I still had an edge on, and two tabled them.

Long story short, they both caught some cards, I ran bad bluffs, tilted, ran worse bluffs, and lost lots. I was as low as about -$500 at one point, but after the fish hit n run on his last hand, I cleared my head and started to play well against the better player. Only about -$200 on the day, and I'm still not happy about tilting. I think as long as I have an ego and have some respect for money, there will always be the possibility of me tilting. It's always a challenge to try and level my head out though when I am steaming, and I'm glad I did it well today (albeit a little too late).

I do have to say that Hunter was right though - it improves your hand reading skills like no other game can. Value betting ace high and bottom pair in 3 bet pots can feel pretty sexy. Next time I have to make sure I don't multitable though, it's just too quick at the moment and puts me in exponential tilt when I run bad.

Some of the hands. Keep in mind HU is obviously a very read-dependent game. Also keep in mind a lot of this is just bad :)

(tilt!)

gah!

(tilt!)

gah!

Don't ask me why I'm raising someone who won't fold middle pair...thank god for the turn.

Those are most of the bigger ones, I'm sure there were tons of other interesting spots but I didn't manage to mark them in between the crazy-fast HU hands.

Looking forward to hitting up the 6max tables tomorrow and logging another solid day to get me back on track.

883 hands

2008-09-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

Posted this one in the forums, still not sure what the best line is. I'm thinking since there are a ton of draws I want to charge, but at the same time I think there are a good number of bluffs in his range that I want to keep in so they can barrel me. Also of course legit hands make up a decent part of his range, not sure if there are enough of them to make me want to fold.

I like the double barrel. Villain is like a 21/19 tag, I think most of his range on the flop is pocket pairs that just can't continue on the K turn. Looks like he floated me with AK or hit a set...well that or he slowplayed AA on me.

Not sure of the best line here. This one was in a video for Stosh so I'll get some nice feedback on it which will help. We're a little deep and I was debating on the flop whether I wanted to ch-r and barrel the turn or bet-3bet or bet-shove the flop. Not sure what tilted my decision but as played I don't think I'm ever getting him to fold the river so I shut down.

Villain is a huge fish, pretty bluffy, and very aggro. I like my isolation but the call of his limp-raise is a little sloppy. I actually don't like my postflop play either, I like just raising the flop to try and fold out 88-QQ and set up a nice turn shove. Turned out well though, I guess that's what happens when you're a lucksack.

Fun calldown vs a massively aggressive fishy-ish player. He's like 30/26 or something, never folds to 3bets and barrels so often it makes baby jesus cry. I guess his bluff here has some merit since I'm probably floating him often, plus on the river the draw's missed so meh. He's still a fish though :)

Fun spot. I'd been very aggressive taking lots of pots down, also making small cbets against fish to get a better price. Villain here is a good reg who was no doubt paying attention and I put out a smaller bet to make him think I was doing the same thing since it's such an obvious cbetting flop. Worked perfectly, got my ch-r bluff out of him that I wanted but unfortunately he didn't have KQ or a flush draw or whatever.

So things are good. Aunt is getting better, but it's obviously going to be a long, drawn-out process. My mom's business is still going slow, but her boyfriend, my step-dad, has been working a very high-paying construction job for the last few months and we're getting caught-up with our debt. As you can tell from my incessant bragging, I'm also doing very well. Bankroll is growing daily, often in $300-$500 chunks, and I'm feeling very comfortable at the tables.

I have more money flowing than I ever have in my life and it's actually to the point where I don't know what to do with it. Aside from letting my roll grow and moving up in limits (won't touch 400nl for a long time mind you), I'm thinking I'll grab some more stuff from Ikea since it's so damn cheap (leather loveseat and a new cupboard/shelve thingy). I've also been thinking about getting into a boxing gym or something and getting myself back into shape.

Some other stuff on the list includes coaching for Tygran (I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning this), and possibly getting a deucescracked subscription on top of my stox one.

Yeesh, looks like I'll be dropping a lot of dough in the near future...

880 hands

2008-09-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Interesting session, and a very profitable one again. Just going to drop some plop some hands on you since I don't have much else to talk about.

First, some 4bet pots:

Unknown who just sat down. I'd guesstimate that more than half the time a 3bet from a new player at the table is a solid player trying to set his image down. I guess this time he had a hand :)

Flippedy doo dah. I'd been stealing this guy's blinds like crazy and had 3bet light quite a few times. These hands get it in no matter what, but I think I had him shoving a much wider range than that and the big pairs.

I run so good. Villain's stats here after <50 hands suggested he was a good lagtag - something like 24/20, and a player like that is 3betting crazy light in a spot like that, so I took a shot. Postflop I decided I was probably playing for stacks, but had to play it wa/wb.

Villain was a 75/25/kajillion fish and although stacking TP looks fishy I'm miles ahead of his range. Funnily enough not only does he have the very top of his range, but I suck out :) That kids, is how to run good.

Bah. This guy ate me up. He was a huge fish, and barring one bad hero call I made for a >PSB with A9-high, he basically ran ridiculously well against me and just couldn't lose. Being oop against him sucked too.

Just ch-f right? Villain is a 40/10 fish, not sure I fold anything I beat here or get called by worse. Bah.

Another fish who had my number. He hit and run after this, little c***.

That was the one thing that got me a little steamy last night. I was trying to record my last video for Stosh and I remember saying "ok Stosh, well now you get to witness me try to cool myself off" before taking some long deep breaths, lol. It was fine though, I was sitting at plenty of fishy tables and got my money in good. Can't do much better than that. Another $500 day is nice too, I'm damn near at last month's (best month ever for me) total and I've only played like 4k hands.

In the back of my mind I keep expecting an 'inevitable' downswing, which is of course absurd. Swings, both up and down, are nothing but the product of our pattern-obsessed minds. Play good, and on average, you'll run well. Play bad, and on average you'll run bad. Stosh's comments in his most recent video review really boosted my confidence, maybe too much. He basically said "I know you say you're running well, but you're playing great too. It looks like you'll crush 200nl and are set to beat up the mid limits". Fistpump. No seriously, I fistpumped when I heard that. Then I gave myself a high five.

In other news, I think I have a fucking broken pixel! WTF!

I opted not to get the extended warranty and I'm not sure the 'standard' warranty will cover this...scared as shit. Right now I'm running a dead pixel sweep or something, it's an annoying TV distortion-looking window I need to keep over the dead pixel for a good hour. Wish me luck :(

1,800 hands

2008-09-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

Still going slow as fuck, but I can't really do much about it. I finally kind of slapped myself in the face and realized I needed to make a schedule for when I should be playing based around when I'll be taking care of my grandma. Several days a week she goes to an old folks centre type thing, and so naturally those are the days I should be plugging as many hands in as I can. I could play poker while she's here, but it's a little inconsiderate leaving her downstairs by herself all day and just dropping her lunch in front of her at noon.

Another thing that's been keeping the progress down at a snail's pace is that I'm sick. It's getting a little better, but bad enough in the past week that I even when I had time to play, I just couldn't sit there and play. I was getting headaches, sinus pains, my nose was running like a tap, and I was hacking up green shit all day. Not pleasant. Been trying to eat healthy and drink lots of water and it seems to be helping.

Even with the lack of hands, I'm still on pace for my best month ever. Trying not to pay too much attention to the results since I'm just running wayyy above expectation, but I'm feeling really good about my play right now. My tilt has been knocked down a few levels and my game is constantly progressing. I really feel like I can crush 200nl and although I know I shouldn't jump up for a long time, I'm already thinking about 400nl. It's all still pretty surreal to me.

I'm not really sure I could say any single event or influence is 'the' catalyst for me. Stosh's coaching has boosted my confidence like crazy; every time he reviews a video he says my hand reading is great and he only finds a few small mistakes throughout the sessions. I guess it's easy not to tilt when you're running as good as I am, but I've still run into some pretty nasty strings of beats and haven't tilted a bit.

I'm trying not to bloat my head too much though, obviously the rate I've been winning is far and above sustainable, but I do think I can beat 200nl over the long run. And that's nothing to gawk at. We'll just have to see how it all turns out in the long run though.

Speaking of Stosh's coaching, I just got my third hour and second video done with him. I posted it here at cardschat.

Hmm, otherwise nothing much is happening. I finally saw the Dark Knight and although I'm already a little sick of it after watching it like 3 times including an imax showing, it's still definitely in my top 10 or 5 movies of all time. I didn't really know or care much for Heath Ledger before I saw his part, but god damn he was great. Definitely every hilight in the movie included him. From the pencil magic trick to his "c'mon, c'mon HIT ME...I want you to hit me, c'mon c'mon...", he was just 10/10 imo. Two things I didn't like about the movie though: 1) it was just a little too long, and 2) I just can't stand Maggie Gyllenhaal, the old-lady looking chick. Just such a terrible choice for 'the girl' in the movie. Can you really say a billionaire who can bring the whole russian ballet down through the carribean on his personal yacht at the snap of a finger is going to go for a girl like that? Come on...

Anyways, as you can tell I'm a little obsessed with the movie now :)

Just for kicks, here are some of the bigger hands (wee, hand replayer is working again?) from this month as I'm sure I've bored you to death already:

BTN was ~44/10, SB was a huge fish. I really don't like my shove as I don't think the button 4bets with anything he's folding, and our AKs is absolutely dominated by that range.

Online poker is so dead.

I actually laughed this one off. Glad I don't go apeshit and break shit any more.

weeee

Off to the races...little bit of a boring hand I guess :/

Definitely one of the hands I asked Stosh about. He actually missed this one in my video and now that I think about it I just asked him this morning (or was it last night?) if he would take a look.

om nom nom

Inducing bluffs is fun. Got a lot more than I expected out of this guy since he was actually really tight. I think maybe that's the result of playing borderline maniacal on some tables, people just go nuts trying to beat you.

I'm so good. Seriously though I thought I could barrel him off tons of hands here, apparently I was wrong. PERFECT river card to save my ass though.

611 hands

2008-09-04T09:28:00.000-07:00

...and another crazy day. This is just surreal to me.

After finishing what seemed like a pretty solid session, I started looking through holdem manager for hands to post, and noticed I'd won another $670. I'm running fucking 30ptbb/100 this month, and 11 since the beginning of August. Just insane. I'm not sure I've ever run this good over this many hands in ptbb, and that includes going way back to 25nl.

Recorded last night's session for Stosh and I'll be sending it to him some time today. Of course once he sends me his reply I'll post them both for you guys.

Some hands from yesterday:

Against a guy who looked like a 21/17, but was going nuts that session. Must have had a huge beat before I sat down or something.

Just noticing the hand replayer is hiding my cards for some reason. meh. This was against a floaty type player. What a perfect river.

A little bit of a dicey calldown, but I think it was actually ok. I'd been 3betting this guy like crazy because he opens so wide, and this was the first hand he fought back with. I've also really underrepresented my hand. I look like I have AK/AQ etc here almost always after checking the turn (which may have been a mistake), so his bluffing frequency is going to skyrocket.

He called the flop really quickly (which to me is either a monster or a complete float, usually the latter) and took just as little time on the turn, which made me think. This is exactly what a made marginal hand like 9s will do, and I was really surprised he'd checked so fast with a float. His river bet didn't make much sense to me though - I look like I have ace high, rarely an overpair, and he basically 3/4 pots it. If he's got a monster like a set or 99, he wants me to call with marginal hands like a weak ten or even ace-high. Betting that large just didn't add up to me, so I called. Thoughts?

Was scared shitless here. SB is a nit, BTN I wasn't worried about, but I don't have much experience playing deep and really wasn't sure if I should be stacking there. Wasn't even sure about the pf amounts.

New toy

2008-09-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

Still haven't played a session today, but I'm about to hop on it right after this post. Don't exactly want a repeat (hands-wise at least) of last month. I think I'll make a video out of it and ship that to Stosh too.

My new $440 toy beside her twin sister:

It doesn't seem like much difference from my acer/samsung combo, but now that the resolutions and sizes are the same I think it will be much easier to use. Much sexier looking too imo :)

I think I'm done splurging for a good while now. I don't really *need* anything else (especially nothing relating to my workstation), but I'm sure the consumer inside me will find something else to blow some cheddar on.

0 hands

2008-09-02T14:54:00.001-07:00

Consumer

I can't help it - I love spending money. Not that I need to be spoiled more than I already am, but I love treating myself to a new toy after a good month. This time 'round my bankroll is sitting higher than it has ever been, and as I don't plan on moving to 400nl any time soon, I figured I'd blow a little bit of dough.

I mentioned the TV-monitor tradeoff I might do with my mummy. I give her my 32" Acer, she buys me a new 24" Samsung. I actually pay a small amount of rent, or room and board rather, but I whipped up a deal with her saying that I could be let off the price of the monitor for the next few weeks' rent, and we call the deal even. So tonight, if she's down to drive me downtown to futureshop, I'll be picking up a nice second hi-res 24" samsung and my mum will have a flat panel to watch in her room :)

Thinking about the future...

With this whole thing with my aunt and my recent move to 200nl, I've been thinking a lot more about exactly what I'll be doing in the coming months (and years). Before my oma moved in, I was planning on moving out or even going traveling. That's kind of out of the window for now because I have to be around to take care of her.

So I'm thinking going back to college (ie community college). I was going to say that there wasn't much point since I've already finished all the electrical courses, but that's pretty narrow-minded thinking. I could definitely expand my education and look into construction, business management, maybe pick up another language, who knows. I'll definitely blow the dust off the course list book and take a look at what else they offer.

Speaking of things I haven't done in ages, I need exercise! I used to play different levels of hockey at least every winter (several years in summer hockey), but ever since I surpassed the max. age limit I have basically done zilch to keep myself active. I walk my dog daily, work out every month or so at home, and recently was getting really heavily into speed bagging before my stand broke. Since there are issues with the speed bag stand (can't keep it outside during the winter, can't bring it inside, don't have space to put in a wall-mounted version), I think I'll have to scrap that idea. I thought maybe I'd join a boxing gym. That's something I've been wanting to do for ages.

So I've got a brand new list of shit-to-do on my bedroom wall, including getting my driver's license, updating my passport, getting a credit card, skydiving, and all of the stuff from above. Looks like I've got stuff to do aside from poker after all.

None of that today, btw. I might play later on once (if) I get my second monitor hooked up, but I was too busy walking my dog, giving him a flee-killing shampoo and cleaning the house to get any tables fired up.

836 hands

2008-09-01T15:04:00.000-07:00

WOW.

First, these:

Against a nit...

Against a massive fish...

Against another fish...

Just blagh.

But then, the poker gods smiled down upon me.

And the final tally:

A new record day, just two days after my previous record :) I ran like a god, can't really chalk this one up to good play.

That is all for today, not much else to add. I tried to make a video out of it for Stosh but my commentary was all over the place.

August results, September goals

2008-08-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well 6-max has been good to me. Even through a solid number of beats and a dismal number of hands logged, I've still got my best month to date. You've heard the same story a million times from me: I could have played a lot more. I don't hate myself nearly as much this month as in the past though. Some personal stuff has kept me busy, plus moving to 6-max has made playing a million tables a little tough, so I'm not going to kill myself over my results in that area. I guess setting a record day for me yesterday through a tiny session boosts my confidence some, but I still know I could have played more.

So, August results:

-Ran at:

-Coaching is going well, though I should ship him a few more HHs
-Played almost purely 6-max
-Didn't fix speedbag, didn't skydive, survived birthday binge (which was a marginal 7/10 vs last year's 9.5)

Next month is pretty simple.

-More hands. Seriously, MORE FUCKING HANDS
-I'll be coaching at the very least one person from CC, so that will take up some of my time

1,264 hands

2008-08-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

Big day

Ignore, this is a brag.

First thing's first, I'm not sure how prepared I am to share this with the public (or rather with the 10 people who read this thing). I can't even remember who I've shared this information with either, so whatever. My aunt recently had a stroke and has been in a sort of coma for several weeks now. She had pretty bad brain damage and basically the doctors told us not to keep our hopes up. Even through several surgeries and intensive care, she seemed like a vegetable when I went to visit her a few days ago. Just today however we got a call from my uncle saying that she's begun to speak, albeit not really 'sensibly' yet, but it's a HUGE step and I couldn't be happier. It looks like things are turning around for her and hopefully her condition continues to progress.

We had a mini celebration here at home after getting the good news, so all of us got a little drunk and played scrabble (WOOO PARTYYYY). But really, it was good fun. Time to retire, I come up to my bedroom and low and behold, have the best session I've ever had. 430 hands, some coolers and some solid play later, and I'm $900+ richer.

The winnings are nice, but really what I'm happy about is the fact that it gave me another huge confidence boost. I like playing a fairly lag style - by my standards anyways - when I play 6max, and it's a little intimidating at first moving to new stakes and expecting the regulars to eat you up. I feel very settled in and barring my roll dropping some in the next few months, I expect to stick around at 200nl. It's pretty odd seeing that 400nl is just around the corner. To be %100 honest, I'm terrified, and very excited at the same time. When I watch videos of stox coaches and they say they drop down to 600nl and 400nl when their regular (1000nl+) tables aren't good, well you can imagine what I feel. I expect to have to plug at very least 200k hands before I make another move up in stakes, but who knows. It could be 50k hands. It could be 500k. I could go broke trying :)

So I'm happy. Some of today's hands; some of them HA-worthy, others just for entertainment:

:(

:)

:)

Readless. I think it's a little loose, but pretty standard given everything missed and he so rarely has a 9x/4x hand.

HA thread on CC.

I somehow have managed to lose the other hands in HEM I wanted to post, whatever.

Happy day, happy day. I'm done gloating, gonna go get some rest. I stayed up til 5am yesterday trying to beat a certain part in Assassin's Creed that frustrated the shit out of me. Beat that today too :)

kk I'm done, see you guys around the forums.

944 hands

2008-08-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

Swinger

From 0 down to $200 under, up to $325, back down to zero.

I tilted for like 10 mins today for the first time in what feels like forever. Was kind of a good exercise trying to cool myself down. I was actually in the middle of recording a video for Stosh (which I will no doubt send, tons of tough spots) and I was just getting run over. Lots of floating me, 4betting me light, raising my cbets, finally hitting a set and then getting set over setted. meh.

Sucked it up, pulled my shit back together and ended up roughly break-even on the session. I felt I was playing pretty well, I think I just played a little bit too aggressive in spots where I should have been tightening up, and managed to run into a lot of hands. In the end I made some pretty good reads, 4bet bluff some restealers a couple times and brought myself back from down 2 buyins to -$30 or so.

Some of the hands I posted on CC and stox:

http://www.cardschat.com/f50/200nl-6max-kq-squeeze-turn-donk-bet-125562/

http://www.cardschat.com/f50/200nl-6max-99-slopppyyyyy-125560/

http://www.cardschat.com/f50/200nl-6max-44-calldown-125559/

http://www.cardschat.com/f50/200nl-6max-tptk-vs-dry-river-donk-125563/

1,570 hands

2008-08-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

A late berfday present

Mum promised me a gift back on my birthday and today she came through. I've been wanting/kind of needing a new desk for a while now and we finally decided to take a peek at the Ikea warehouse. We found a few nice options for tabletops with custom legs, but this combo stood out and I'm more than happy I got it. The desk is huge, I can now keep my overheating and dusty-ass PC off the ground (and stop using it as a footrest) along with my two monitors comfortably. It was surprisingly cheap for the solid model it is - it was $30 per leg (which is actually two adjustable legs which include a shelf thing...just look at the pic below) and $150 for the solid pine tabletop. I was planning on getting a glass table cover thing to put over it, but I think that can wait. It's just not something I need.

Note the open-case PC for aeration.

I mentioned it earlier, but I'll be getting another 24" samsung to replace the acer that I'm shipping to my mom, so that'll free up even more space both on the desk and on my desktop. Should be a pretty sexy setup imo.

Looks like it's gold again...

I guess that's not much to complain about, but I really have to stop slacking so I can keep platinum up and clear supernova (38k to go still) by the end of the year. It should be a grind. I envy the work ethic of you guys (bw, jay, zach) who plug in 30k-60k hands monthly. I just don't get it. It's doubly hard logging that many hands now that I'm playing 6-max (ie fewer tables), but even when I was 12-tabling FR it was tough for me to crack 30k hands. Just something I'll have to work on I guess.

Poker's been fun though. What I tend to do now is boot up 4 tables and record videos for Stosh (sometimes with two on the side making 6 tables of 6max). I've yet to send him a video for the third hour of our coaching bit, mainly due to the fact that I've screwed up a lot of the recordings by forgetting to turn my mic on, or misclicking to erase the video or whatever. My last few sessions have definitely been interesting and tough enough for me to have qualified them to send to Stosh. I think just about every 6-max session is for me. Always marginal spots, but I love it.

Been taking lots of shots at 200nl and am feeling very comfortable at the higher stakes. Unfortunately I'm only breaking even atm, but that's much better than losing. What I do like is that I pay very very close attention to each table and I actually think every decision through! It's been so awesome moving to 6-max. Such a relief from the robotic nut peddling full ring play.

Some hands...

Villain was passive which made me question shoving some, but I think it's fine. I'm not sure he can fold a jack (which is about the best we can hope for in his range), so it's still a little marginal. Don't think I can really fold or flat it though.

It's easy to say I don't get mad at these hands now - I'm sure I'll be going apeshit when I have it happen 5-10 times in a day, but really I'm handling beats so well now. I seriously yelled out loud (in a funny way, not like WHAT THE FUCKKK LEMME SEE IT I RUN SO BAD *CRY*) "SHOW ME 66! SHOW ME 6s!!!!!!!!!!!". And then he did. And I laughed :)

Villain was a massive massive fish. Him and the player to his right were going at it for a while, cussing back and forth, and I'd only wished I had position on him. I think calling the flop/turn is fine, but after he puts out that kind of bet on the river I just don't think I see many hands I beat. He's like 45/25 or something though, so whatever. Just a sick spot.

Really I don't have all that many interesting winning hands. Just a bunch of small pots, some decent coolers and just boring hands altogether tbh. I've been paying a lot less attention to results lately (*pats back*), but do occasionally check. The last few days have been pretty break-even, but I don't really care. $70 in the 1,570 hands. Uh, lol at like 1.6 ptbb/100 being 'break-even'. I'm gonna cry so hard when I hit an actual swing :p

Will be playing more in the next few days too. Played like 300 hands this morning, got a little busy with the new desk and didn't bother playing later on (ie now). Gonna have a nice healthy breakfast tomorrow and get back on the grind.

A great song from a band I've been getting more of a feel for. Good ol' Ontario boys, they're from up in cottage country area. Studio version of the song is pretty awesome too.

696 hands

2008-08-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

Slacker McSlackey

Yes, you read that number right. Stuff has been pretty busy at home, but even so I should have been able to stick another 5-10k hands in since my last post. The lack of play has brought a lack of content to write about, and so my blog has been pretty dead for the bulk of August.

Birthday binge week was a shit show as usual, but wasn't as great as I'd hoped. One of my good friends ditched me for a cottage trip on my b-day which I'm pretty cheesed about. The next day a friend came back from summer-long tree planting in BC just in time to get wasted and have a little fun on his birthday. Then the day after, my best friend ditched us all on his birthday for a road trip to Montreal, which of course I'm also cheesed about. So I dunno, things weren't that great. My brain is finally back to %95+ though, which is good. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera around that week, and while other people took some pictures, I haven't seen them posted online yet.

Another spending spree?

I'm sooo bad when it comes to blowing money. I've got like 10 >$200 things I'll be splurging on in the next while. Aside from house costs which I should chip in on (redoing the backyard, fixing the oven, buying a cage for my brother), a lot of other stuff has been falling apart and I really want to fix it all.

Firstly, my speed bag drum (wooden part) broke ages ago, and I'm craving a new one. A friend's dad is a serious carpenter, and I was thinking he could make me a nice one for relatively cheap. The problem is if I stick with my heavy/speed bag stand, it'll have to stay outside since it's so big. Canadian winters (even Toronto ones) aren't too pleasant though, so I've been thinking about dropping like $300 on a nice indoor wall mounted one.

My mom's been wanting a big screen TV for a while since her old CRT piece of shit is...a piece of shit, and I figured I could chop her my 32" samsung which I bought for like a grand for the price of another 24" samsung (~$400). I guess that won't be an expense, but that would be awesome.

My desk isn't exactly broken, but it's definitely getting there. It's also just impractical for what I use it for. All I need is a big open space, and it's got this retarded elevated portion of it that takes up like half the desktop. I want to buy something really nice, like a thin version of a butcher's block, but that would cost upwards of $500 which is ridiculous. Something simple, big, and solid oak or something would be awesome.

Then there's the skydiving. Unfortunately all my friends are broke pussies, so none of them will come with me. My dad (lol!) said he would love to come, but he's the most unreliable person in the world, so I'm expecting nothing of him. I'd hate to go by myself, but I really want to do it before the end of summer. That's another ~$270.

I also got a promise from mummy for a new piece of furniture for my room. My old chest of drawers is falling apart and isn't even big enough for the clothes I own (half of which are piled on top instead of inside), so I think we're going to scrap that and buy a cheap-ish new one from Ikea or something.

One more thing that's scaring me is my PC. Lately the CPU has been getting hotter and hotter, and I've seen it crash more often than normal. The smart thing to do would be to plan ahead by buying a backup CPU or something (maybe a new pc overall?). I think I'll just run it into the ground and fix it up when it breaks down.

Now that I put all that in a list it doesn't even look that expensive (excluding the PC problem), but I'm sure my pockets will still be like 1.5-2k lighter by the end of the month.

This is a poker blog?

So as I mentioned, poker has gone deathly slow. Which sucks. The poker that has gone on however, has been awesome. I'm still running at 10 big bets which is just sick, but then again it's only over an 11.5k sample, most of which happened in the first half of the month. Had a good session last night and I still feel very comfortable at the tables. A huge turnaround considering 6-max was by far my worst game a few months ago. One thing that's definitely given me some confidence is Stosh's coaching.

The first hour, a sweat session, was nice but we didn't really cover too much. Doing what I did for the second hour was much better. I prerecord a 4-tabling session with my thought processes, and he sends me an mp3 with his thoughts on certain hands and general critique back to me. I posted the second hour in cardschat's video section. Video and mp3. In order to get the 'full effect' of his coaching, you'll have to play his mp3 while playing my muted video. He has some minor problems with his eyes, so sometimes he'll say someone is 20/18 when they're 20/10, or he'll say something is at 15:20 when it's at 16:20. Just something to keep in mind. He seemed very impressed with my play which was awesome. Huuuge boost in confidence and I'm realizing now that my technical game is pretty solid, but it's my mental game that needs work.

I should be playing a lot more in the coming weeks now that I have some more free time (dog's gone on a one week trip to the cottage, no more walking!), and I'll probably be posting my coaching sessions as well.

Looking back, if I look at the actual money I spent per hour on Stosh and what I could buy in real life, I'd think "what the fuck am I doing!?", but looking at it in terms of two buyins and the fact that I made up everything back within a week of hooking up with him, I'm perfectly happy.

Back to the grind, see you guys around the forums.

Binge week

2008-08-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

My birthday last night, buddy's birthday tonight, best friend's birthday tomorrow night. Wallet's getting lighter. As is my head.

Going to mandarin today to refill the tanks, then it's off to kill some more brain cells tonight.

Haven't played poker in a good 5 days, so no updates or interesting hands unfortunately. I shipped my video to Stosh a few days ago and he said he'd be done by Monday or Tuesday as he's pretty busy as well, so that's about the only poker-related thing coming up in the next few days. It feels kinda good to get a break from it.

4,800 hands

2008-08-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

Still running like a god!

An insane 10ptbb/100 this month over the (almost) 10k hands I've played equates to about 2k profit. I'm kind of posting a half-month update here because I plan on being alcoholically handicapped for the next week or so, and probably won't be blogging. A handful of friends and I have birthdays in the middle of August, so naturally there's always a huge binge with tons of parties. Tonight is a lady friend's party and so the binge begins! I'll be posting whatever pics I can.

As for the poker, I'm still genuinely curious what I can sustain at 6-max. I've definitely made my share of bad plays this month for stacks, but have still managed an insane winrate. I guess only time will tell, but for now I'm perfectly happy with 10/100.

For the second hour of my coaching with Stosh I've played a 4-tabling session with commentary and he'll analyze it and basically give his feedback. I've recorded the video, but as it stands right now stoxpoker is down due to updates and upgrades to the site. Stosh's contact info is in my pm inbox at the site which I can't access, so I'll have to wait a day+ for that to clear up before I can ship him the link. I was initially under the impression that he was going to give his commentary over my video, but I'm not sure he's doing that. If he does make a video out of it, I'll be posting it at CC which should be fun.

So even through running like a god when I grind, I'm broke as a joke in real life. I'm owed money from a few people, but they're delaying the paybacks. So I had to withdraw another grand from my account which is ok because I'm overolled even for 200nl at the moment. As for right now though, I've got to go see if I can collect some debts, and if not I'll have to borrow money for the binge week :(

1,450 hands

2008-08-06T09:02:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I'm finding 4-tabling the 6-max tables makes for an incredibly hands/hour rate. I played 4.76 hours yesterday and only managed 1450 hands, something I'd do in well under two hours at full ring. Oh well, I'm not too disappointed in that as the FPPs are worth a little more per hand, plus the fewer tables I'm playing is really helping me play a good game. Unfortunately I still manage to make a few silly plays once in a while...

I knew this guy was floaty, and the turn makes for an easy check-call. The river however was one of those things where my hands acts before my mind can think, and I made a terrible call. I've been playing hands like these, marking them in HEM and going off to post them in HA after my session, but by the time I look at the hand history again, I 'solve' the hand. In this case, 'solving' the hand is just folding the river.

This one was definitely a result of me not being used to 6-max ranges. On the flop I'm putting him on a lot of overpairs, but basically only KK+, maybe QQ will stack if I ship it in there. Then again don't you think QQ- flat the flop? I dunno, this one had me a little confused. The turn brought an ace obv, but that card didn't concern me all that much since I didn't think he would raise the flop with any ace but AA or AKs/AQs. Turns out his range was much wider than I thought. Not sure about the river call either...

Blegh, against a fishy shortstack. Just spew, he probably doesn't fold AK there.

woops.

Interesting spot. Donk bettor is a chronic donk bettor....guy behind me is a nitty player, same guy as the A7s vs KK hand above. I like raising the donk because he'll have such a wide range there and I can often fold a lot of that out, but it puts me in a very tough spot if (when) the button 3bets or shoves on me.

fwiw I snapcalled that out of spite against the guy :p

Ship. Against that KJ vs 42s guy.

Why in the fuck are you leading?

Just love getting thin value with these guys' calling ranges.

moar value

I'd been very lag as usual and he'd started check-raising me a ton. Basically his ch-r here is an extremely polarized range, so either he's flopped a set or he's bluffing me. He's never got a big ace there, and would never take that line with it anyways. So anyways, a little bit of a silly bluff, but it felt pretty good getting that strong read on him.

Weee! I get lucky (for once in my life, I'm so unlucky, blah blah blah, whine whine whine).

So even through the retarded hands where I've played for stacks with KJ on a xJ345A board, or made silly bluffs, I'm still running at 11ptbb/100 in 6-max this month. I've only played short of 5k hands so far however and obviously realize with the extra variance in 6-max this doesn't mean dick, but I'm feeling good. I've heard about how 3ptbb is basically crushing any game (save like 2nl where you should be beating it for 100ptbb or whatever), but I really feel I can do better. Again, I guess only time will tell.

Off to have breakfast and start grinding. Stosh and I agreed our next hour of coaching should be a review of a ~45 minute 4-tabling video of my play, so maybe I'll record that today.

I don't know this guy, but he's awesome. Short but sweet...

CANADIAN DREAM

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Trip report: Niagara Falls

The great depression begins

LOL HEY GUYS!

Las Vegas: Day 6

Las Vegas: Day 5

Las Vegas: Day 4

Las Vegas: Day 3

Las Vegas: Day 2

Las Vegas: Day 1

Long time, no post...

Steady as she goes

Expekt and the Gnuf bonus

...and the run continues

Yet another reevaluation

Winning? wat?

Cooled down?

One step forward, two steps back

A long first day, looking ahead to next week

Why haven't I been posting as many reviews?

Improvement!

My week so far

Clawing back

In the gutter, but nowhere to look but up

You can't delay the inevitable

Keeping the ball rolling

Day 2: improvement!

Day 1: FAIL

First session with Jared

Good start to '09

15,184 hands

DANCE, MONKEYS, DANCE!

2008 in retrospect

14,085 hands

You have achieved the Supernova

7,720 hands

November review, December goals

2201 hands

Dippin

Blanketed

Tommy boy!

Halftime

8,521 hands

438 hands

971 hands

Jared's mass coaching may be the key

You know what helps keep me going?

894 hands

2,875 hands

4,115 hands

Halftime

8,580 hands

3 things...

1151 hands

1,758 hands

2,126 hands

4,277 hands

323 hands

A hand and a song

Mid-month review

1,125 hands

883 hands

880 hands

1,800 hands

611 hands

New toy

0 hands

836 hands

August results, September goals

1,264 hands

944 hands

1,570 hands

696 hands

Binge week

4,800 hands

1,450 hands

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