7,720 hands

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.

Blanketed

...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 :)

You know what helps keep me going?

The smell of lots and lots of dirty money.

New toy

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.

1,570 hands

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.

I'm itchy

srsly, so many bug bites. I count thirty on my left arm alone %*$&(#*

Cottage was fun. Ate a lot, drank more, went swimming, swatted skeeters and deer flies, and read.











Dubble VPPs this week and I have yet to even touch the tables. Time to get grinding, I'll see how many hands I can cram in.

Island fun

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


Ike, Mack, Taylor:


Getting our soccer on before it got dark:


Bonfiya!


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


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


Sparkler fight:


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

Pics

Chair:



9 tables and PT looking nice:



The whole set up:



Me eating dog for breakfast: