More of the same.

Well, I've been more than happy with my HUSNG self control. I haven't come close to tilting this last few days, no matter how I get beat. I've also been quitting or taking breaks when too tired or not focuses, which is awesome. I have room for improvement still, but I look forward to playing a lot of A game poker this year due to how I'm approaching the game right now.

Overall, I'm pleased with my HUSNG progress too. I can see a long way to go still, and might look at specific HUSNG coaching at some point. I figure I might put in March first, and see how I feel about that month before doing anything. I'm not completely over 6 max, and still have thoughts about playing HU cash at some point, but do feel at home in the HU SNG's right now. However, I know how poker works, and I'm sure there will be times I'm ready to quit HU, but I'm hoping I'm strong enough to work through that next time.

HU SNG's and tilt

So, my HU SNG's so far. I've played some $55 turbos, in fact they were the last thing I played before my poker meltdown last year, and I can see why. Last year, my tilt control was 0, even though I thought I was a generally tiltless player, I was very wrong. I've come to the conclusion so far that tiltless is impossible. We can only eliminate as many tilt factors as possible. And playing tilt free is the goal to good poker. Tilt happens so quickly, and takes over so unknown to us. I remember getting upset by suckouts in these things, and then playing another match without clearing out those thoughts, not pretty. You basically play the next game as your C game at best, and I also see players do that against me now. They are playing good tight aggressive, lose one pot and start calling every raise, and calling down 3 streets with bottom pair. They just stop thinking about what's going on around them, and start playing bad.

So how am I minismising tilt now? Firstly, Tommy Angelos tips on Barts show are fantastic. He talks about being in the now. If you are tilting, you are thinking of the past. How does thinking of the past help when you are dealt AK and have a J94r flop? It doesn't at all. Also thinking about "oh he'll just check raise me" is thinking about the future, and again not focusing on what to do now. What you should always be thinking is "what could he have here", "what will he do with different hands", and now "what is my best play". If you are busy thinking about him sucking out on you or unrationally thinking he'll probably just raise, you can't accurately make a good decision.

So the idea for me is simple. I am currently 2 tabling these things, and if I have a match end, I'll take a quick thought about how I'm feeling. If I'm thinking clearly, I'll fire up another, but if I'm a little tilted, or just need a break, or want to think more about this match, I won't. After the 2nd is finished, I can take a break. It can be however long I need. Often it's just a quick breather and re-focus before firing up 2 more tables. The beauty of this in relation to HU SNG's, is you can easily get to a break time if you just wait a minute.

THe ROI in HU SNG's goes up about 1.9% for each extra match you win in a 100. So if you win 54 from 100, your ROI is 3.3%. If you win 55 from 100 your ROI is 5.2%. Now lets say you play 400 $55 turbos, the difference between 3.3% and 5.2% is over $400!!!! I mean each win is literally $110 different to a loss. So tilting just one game every 4 nights can cost you $400 a month. Now do you seen the importance of staying tilt free?

So there is one more thing. You may play fairly tilt free and still get crushed, it happened to me the other night. At 10:30pm (I can go to bed 11-12 if I feel up to it) I took a quick break, and really wanted to play more to get back to even. However, I was playing a bit tilted by now, was tired and had a lack of confidence, so I quit. I felt great doing this, as I'm sure -EV matches would have followed, regardless of results. I lost money, but felt great about it overall. Last night I was up some money, and felt like quitting, however, I was avoiding tilt well, thinking the game through well, and really had no reason to stop. So I took a little breather with the intention of playing more, and sure enough I played well after the break too.

The point I'm making is in poker, there are many, many things you can control, and need to to be a winning player. What you can't control is luck, and yet so many people focus on that too much. Whether I won a bunch or lost a bunch last night, if I played A game poker, against weaker opponents, I'm a big winner in the long term, and that's all that counts. Luck can go fuck itself really, I don't need it to win at this game long term.

That's a load off, I hope that came out well, but it's probably more a mess of words than anything. Hope someone out there gets something out of this, or at least agrees.

Goodbye 6 max

Well, it's been just a little while. I think last blog I was really getting into the idea of not being results oriented, and that's still true. I did however fail at playing 6 max. I was going OK, playing maybe a little too tight, but there were problems.

I want to first explain some issues I have with 6 max. Firstly, when you datamine a decent percentage you soon realise some spots are not so profitable. What you actually find is that restealing off stealers is profitable, set mining with SC/PP's vs EP nits is profitable, and folding medium strength hands against tight ranges or OOP is also a good idea. So that's fine, but it leaves little left. Obviously its up to you to open up some more, but I'm finding myself making most money from 3 betting loose buttons, as even when I flop big I'm either not getting paid, or still losing. So you play 4K hands, get few great spots, and when things aren't going your way, the week is spent folding, getting it in bad, or getting rivered. Not pleasant. Also when you are waiting, waiting, waiting for a good spot, get a bad beat, but have fish on the table, you feel reluctant to just get up and take a break, but it's necessary. So I find myself grinding 2 hours straight without a break, and really just playing 1 hour good and 1 hour bad because of that. And if you do take a 15 minute break to clear your head, then it's another 30 minutes of table selecting to find good spots at the table. Nothing worse than getting on the 50 VPIP table to see two nits on your right and two loose aggressive players on your left.

So lets analyse reads. You make a read a player has check raised as a bluff. The rest of the session he never check raises you. I guess the problem I'm talking about is I'm watching players, getting reads, and it rarely gives me much help, as I rarely get into pots with people. If I'm only raising 15% of hands, I'm probably playing 5% of pots postflop, so in a 100 hands might play one hand against that guy I got a read on and he doesn't check raise anyway. Then I never seem him the rest of the week. I guess what I'm saying here is not so much reads are pointless, and certainly if you are getting reads off the loose fish on your right, that's great, but overall, even if you play 22% of hands, there isn't a lot to do but fold a lot, and bet when ahead or can get folds.

It just isn't that interesting to me, and especially when "running bad", it's very hard to untilt. What I mean is you get frustrated when AA < KK PF, then QQ < 99 in a 3 bet pot on 642r, and then you get 2 nights where not much happens. It makes you not want to grind. Then as soon as you start to get tired or tilted, you are discouraged from leaving the tables for 20 minutes for several reasons.

So hello HU. Cash or SNG, doesn't really matter, this is a game I can play. Now I've chosen HU SNG's for now, as they are a little easier again to untilt. I listened to half 1 of Bart's interview with Tommy Angelo, and he talks about physically sitting up, taking some deep breaths and refocusing. This has been a HUGE problem of mine. I sink into the couch, grind, grind, grind, and my mind gets further and further away from important issues. It's been a lot better recently, but still not ideal. Now I can play a couple of SNG's, do this excersize and focus on what's important. OK, how am I feeling, do I jump right back into the games, do I need a break, am I tired, am I tilted? OK, now take appropriate action.

So for now I'm HU SNG guy, playing the $55 turbos on Full Tilt. I do wish to move into HU cash at some point, but really want to play some HU SNG's for a while, at least til the end of the month. I figure I'll have played about 4-500 SNG's by that time, so I should have a pretty fair idea of how I'm playing them by then. Already I'm about 80 SNG's in and it's been swingy as anything. I'll report on this in another blog.

Happy with how it's going

I'll put in one more normal post, and come back to the tilt one which is still hot on my mind very soon.

So I played a bit on Friday and Sunday, and there is something in the air right now, because I feel like I'm crushing the game. Now this isn't a results oriented post, and there has been some sickness in some hands, but overall, my feelings are I've had great success at improving my game the last few months, and really feel like it's paying off.

Shout out to some skypers, joseph the coach mostly, but others too. But big shout out to HEM too. PT3 was a pretty big disappointment for me, but now using HEM, I'm finding I'm really using it, and using it well. I'm table selecting pretty hard for one, and finding myself on 2-3 soft tables on Full Tilt. From that point on I'm playing those tables pretty well. I'm probably playing a little too tight, but feel like I'm making good calls/raises/laydowns at different points in hands. I pretty much always look at positiong PF stats, and cbet/turn cbet %'s before making a call or raise PF. I find myself bluffing less and less, which I think is really helping, especially when you see what some people call down with, would hate to be bluffing these guys.

Anyway, whats really pleasing is I really find myself spotting more and more hands players are holding. I'm putting people on exactly AQ or 55 in spots, and getting it right more often than I'd believe myself. Last night I couldn't lay down T9 on a T55Tx in the slightest, but given the way he played it I thought he had 55 a lot and he did. I also value shoved TT on an ATxxA river knowing he had AK or AQ and would definitely call, and he did indeed have AQ. But it just feels great seeing their hole cards in your mind and getting it right a lot, really really pleasing, especially when most of the hands people show up with were in your ranges of what you thought they could have PF.

I'm contemplating leaving some BR on several sites. The reason is I'd like to experiment with multi-siting. If Full Tilt is tight or loose tables have waiting lists, then I'm pretty much buring money not sitting down, yet don't want to sit down on tight tables. If I had OnGame and maybe even UB or Party Poker open as well, then I could really sit down on 3-4 ultra soft tables most of the time rather than all soft tables 20% of the time I play, which I achieved for about 1 hour last night, but often don't have 3 soft tables. I passed it by a better player and he completely agreed it's a huge advantage to be able to play several sites.

Winning poker guide: Step 1 - Who is working

Well, as I said before in my recent blogs, results from now are completely banned from my blogs, my forum posts, my chats. So if I can't focus on my results, it does beg the question what is left for me to strive for. Well obviously, I'm aware that if I play well results will happen. You see I've been a believer of sorts that you have to play like the biggest genius in poker history to really beat games, and it will only get worse as opponents get more educated. The fact is it's not true. Think about sites like Cardrunners and their effect on poker. The training sites are improving players, no doubt and they have improved me a lot. But who goes there? Well if you listen to poker podcasts, everyone is going there. So lets look at some numbers. At any time there are well over 100K people on pokerstars, maybe half that on Full Tilt, and another 50-100K spread over all the other sites. So maybe 500K people playing online poker overall. Some are new and destined to play 1 month and quit, others are regs grinding 10 hours a day, fair enough.

So then look at the video sites. As at 6 months ago cardrunners had 10K members. That could be 20K now with all the publicity, but I can't see them being any more than that. Other sites may be doing well, but I'd expect a lot of crossover, maybe 5K of those guys are also on Deucescracked and another 5K are only on DeucesCracked. So lets so over 50K of players are members of video sites, which I think is high overall. So out of the 500K, we currently guesstimate 10% have ever seen a decent video on poker. Lets say for argument sake another 50K have participated in forums quite a bit too, making 20% of players more educated than just being self taught.

Now there is the obvious hole in that logic that it's very likely the 1c/2c players aren't on the video sites as much as the $2/$4 guys are. It's also safe to assume more players on the side of the smaller stakes. But with that I'd argue a lot of the 50-100K of "educated" players are just casually watching videos or surfing BBV forums rather than sitting down and logically working out poker problems for themselves and understanding what moves to make when.

The problems lies in that there is the big success stories, and there are the known tools of how to crush poker all out there. So you see mbolt1 go from a $30K per year job, to a $100K/month poker career. You are inspired, how did he do that? Oh he joined Stox, watched the videos, now he's $100K/month. Wrong. He worked, and worked, and worked, and worked. He networked, he worked at his game, he learned ways to avoid losing money, he succeeded. Isn't there a lot of work behind most success stories? Yes, there is. Now most people feel the inspiration, but most do not work hard enough to become an inspirational story. And yes some are becoming the competent grinders on Full Tilts $1/$2 etc, but most are not as good as they think they are. And while they manage to be better than break even, their work ethic, ego or tilt hold them back.

I will continue with a thread about tilt, that may very well include the essence of how to win at poker in my opinion.

Keep on changing.

Interestingly enough, I didn't run too good last couple of nights. However, this is it for complaints. I looked over the plays I made, and all but two were good, and all but one saw me mostly getting my money in good, or what would be good a lot. That one was a brain fade shipping it in with 99 PF against a guy who I thought was raising over 30%, but after figures settled down it turns out he was more like 20/16, lol. Either way, 99 AIPF is not a good thing at these stakes, almost ever.

Instead of bitch about how the pots shifted from me being heavy favourite to villains collecting them, I will mention a couple of interesting things. Firstly, after a while at the table, and down a few blinds, mainly from raising one too many hands and having to fold on the flop or after, I got AA in the CO. Raise, 3 folds, steal, YES!!! OK, so what happened there? I'm raising 30% so far on this table, yet when I get dealt AA, get no action. What's happening is people are still looking directly at their cards. They aren't saying "well, this guy is raising too much, I might try to exploit him" or "I wonder if I can 3 bet him lightly here" they are literally saying "I have J4o, I'm folding." So what you say, J4o is a perfectly normally fold. Well, it's just that you feel if you'd raised 12% of hands, that AA should never be called/raised, and that raising 30% gives you the right to get more calls/raises with AA. It does. However, it's not that much more often. Someone calls with 55 on the button, regardless of what you hold, because they want to hit a set. They might however, play a hand like A9 or 76s differently depending on the raiser and position. But it's still literally a handful of hands they might play differently depending on villain and positions, and the rest are all simple folds, raises and calls. Bad players may give you more or less credit postflop based on your PF stats, but to be honest, they are still looking at their hands a lot, and sometimes at the board textures.

So where am I going? Nowhere really. I guess the point might be that if you open Q7s on the CO, you need to realise what it's going to do for you. In higher stakes, it might help disguise your otherwise good starting hands, but in lower stakes, this isn't necessary, as people aren't putting you strongly on a range anyway. So waiting for the bigger hands is not a horrible play.

As for my read of other players, it's getting pretty good. I still have stacks of ideas off the tables, that don't always make it into my decisions at the time, but it's coming. I can now quite easily factor in some things, have an idea about possible scare cards, and thanks to Joseph, also think about not only what people would do with different made hands and drawing hands, but also how they would bluff.

I might set this as a short term goal. Try to work out what things I'm not thinking about enough at the tables and add those decisions in one by one, until they become natural. Like for now I might focus on putting people on a range on each flop, and see where that gets me.

As for where and what I play, I have no idea. I'm contemplating moving from OnGame for a while, and trying something different. If it means I get my game in a better place, then that's a good thing overall. I "might" get onto FTP again, but it's really quite hard to say. Time will tell, I haven't made up my mind yet, but at least it's never permanent.

Stuff is happening

Blog has been updated pretty poorly in recent times. It probably doesn't help that I'm not getting anything decent going for my efforts at poker right now. And I could swear at the end of January I was ready to start "earning" the monies from poker.

Feb so far, cooler after suckout after bad play after weak play. It shows massive amounts of immaturity. I have had some sick beats, and they just seem to weigh down on my play far too much. And then I'll play 50 good hands to start a session and won't be thinking anything negative. First beat happens, and I'm straight back where I've been all month, wondering how I'm ever going to profit from poker.

I have had some great chats with some players though, and I can't understand in any way that if I stick at it I won't be a very profitable player long term. It just seems unrealistic to me.

It's possible, although only a small chance right now, that I may not be grinding much longer. A possibly great web idea work opportunity has come up, and if it seems as good as it does now if a couple of weeks, I can only imagine I'll be shifting my time away from poker and into this idea. But if anything that puts my play into the perspective that I must make the absolute most out of the time I get to play. So I'll keep playing as well as I know how in the short term, and see how things turn out on the work front.

As far as my goals in poker go, I really feel like I've been playing my best this last week for no returns, but at least haven't kept the downslide going and really feel my next upswing will be "big". So I look forward to methodically tearing apart NL100 or NL50 games at OnGame this week when I play. I will know my opponents hole cards always, and will play those hole cards for maximum profit. It will be a beatiful thing, and the poker gods can do what they will with to make my week profitable or not.

Poker is sick

Well, it was bound to come to an end. My run good is officially over, and downswingaments are in it's place. I know I'd already lost a bunch this month, but with a big positive night, most would still be healed. Monday night was fairly fruitless getting up a BI, down a BI repeated over and over, to finish up barely.

Well last night looked much the same. The tables were OK, and I was playing OK, was up a bit. I took a break when a couple of fish left, and came back to a pretty dry scene. No tables with decent VPIP's, so I headed to HU. Nothin dramatic happened there, but I checked back to the 6 max, and tables were OK again. Once more things dryed up, and at one point when a fish left, I noticed all three tables were officially full of TAG's. This is really bad news. OnGame has been so lively, now it's back to grinding againt a bunch of TAG's. I'd have to say I won't be upset about leaving OnGame if it stays like this for much longer. I closed down my tables, and saw just one table with a VPIP over 40, which was a Nl200 table, so I joined, to one table it.

I had great position on the fish and the TAG's, so it was a good table, but I couldn't win a pot. I was the LAG in the end beating up on the 55/0, but whenever I made a hand, he made one better. J3o is always worth a 5BB isolation raise OOP, and of course it hits 2 pair. I donked off about $250 before hitting a couple of hands and reducing the pain to around $160, then the fish left. I insta quit at that point as 3 NL200 TAG's and a semi fish don't appeal.

I left for NL50 HU, and was up a BI shortly after. Then IT happened. Most bad nights involve an it, and in this case, a very 3 bet happy guy 3 bet me holding A2s. I decided to flat it for once, and flopped the nut flush FTW. Only when we shipped it in, his 97o was drawing oh so live with 2 pair, and got there. At this point this was for 150BB pot too, so I was down after being up a BI and stacking off with nut flush vs 2 pair. I lost the rest, probably playing some C game, and decided to up the ante and play NL100.

Down another BI there, I couldn't really stop, and suddenly starting running good for once. I stacked a guy who left, then was up another BI on the next guy, and things were looking up. That didn't last thought, and sickness prevailed, bringing me down to $0 against that guy and getitng stacked by another. There was certainly some bad play, but overall, I just can't get a hand to hold on, and so often I am force to fold TPTK on the river, and depending on how I feel and who I'm playing I either do or I don't.

I have to say, this was over several hours of session too long. At 11pm I should have just quit, but kept going until 2am for some insane reason. This is a sickness similar to drugs, drinking or degen gambling, and is not good for my mental state or health. I have to set session time limits, especially when I'm running bad, and maybe play big mega session when I'm running good (sounds sensible).

But that's OK. I can just keep trying to play my best, and I know that the thousands of winning players have battled through these streaks just fine and I will too, there is no problem there. Actually it's very satisfying having this happen, as it will give me strength when I realise I am up for the month by Feb 28. That isn't necessarily my goal, but my goal of playing my best for the rest of the month will hopefully see that happen at least in part.

That said, I may take a break from NL100 for a little bit. Or maybe just table select a little better, and if tables are too tight, maybe then move down to NL50 for some carnage. I have to make sure I'm not too proud to play lower stakes, as my bankroll is dwindling, and if I keep going on this sick streak, my bankroll will be too low to grind NL100 and I'll be forced to play NL50, which is far beyond what I want right now.

Profits are gone

Well, Feb has turned bad after a decent enough start to the month. So far it's gone like this. Day 1 was pretty unlucky, having big favourites get done and a couple hold on, down not much overall. Day 2 I felt I played a bit worse, but didn't have any bad luck really, up around $160 over the 2 days. Day 3 was pretty rotten, things went bad, and caused me to tilt a bit. I had passed a bonus $50 and still ended up down over $300, but missing a lot of all in equity I was due. Day 4 was more of the same, losing every imaginable cooler and suckout I could imagine. I finished down a further $600. Day 5 saw me swinging like nothing else, being up then down, then down more, then back to even, etc etc, to be down about $100 overall. Net result is close to $1000 down for the month, which is unfortunate.

So what happened? Well, it's a combination of things, but basically, I put a lot of blame on Day 4 or Thursday night. I had played pretty well until a huge suckout on Wednesday (KK vs JJ all in on turn, river J) and played a bit bad, and long after that. By Thursday I was a little jaded, quite tired and ready for a mental break. Rather than do this, I played a lot of poker, and in fact grinded some NL200, and NL100 HU, both of which are above my level, not a great idea when tired and not playing well. I don't think I played really terrible, but I got myself into more spots than I needed to, and found myself not playing my A game, yet playing good players, which is not a good mix.

Looking over the big losers, there is little I can effectively do with some of them. I mean there are the fold PF or fold flops here or there, but most situations play themselves out and see me winning money in the long term. I definitely didn't play each hand optimally though, so still plenty of room for in game improvements, which is always good news.

The one dissapointing thing was seeing a lot more regs hanging around last week. You had to go on waiting lists to get the best tables, and while the fish were still around, it could turn into a TAG 3 bet fest amongst the others at the table, which might see 1 real fish, 1 tight weak player, and 3 TAG/LAGs. I wasn't playing optimally against the TAG's or LAG's, and found myself giving money over to these more competant players, often by trying to outplay them. It was worst on Monday, and felt like a real grind, so I'll see how it goes tonight. But overall, I think I have to accept things may be a little tougher in the next few weeks, and make sure I don't spew to the more straight forward TAG players.

The best thing was taking a break last night. I could have easily grinded, but instead took the night off, and really feel refreshed after also taking Saturday off. I feel as though I'm more mentally prepared for poker tonight, especially after getting some sleep also. I'm going to grind out a fairly solid night of play tonight, and all I can say is watch NL100 on OnGame, because I'm going to be doing everything right tonight, and only need marginally good cards to make me a decent profit tonight.

Where did the fish go?

It was a rather strange night of poker last night. I've pretty much decided to keep all my play on OnGame, as the action there is so much better than Pokerstars/FTP/ most other sites, although I'll admit another fling at iPoker would be worth a look.

So I managed to pretty easily this time move most of my bankroll from various sites to Hey Poker, where I should get constant 8x bonuses, and possibly a decent points shop, although it's down at the moment so it's hard to tell.

So sitting down with my bankroll on there, I just felt a little suprised as I thought I'd have very little and have to muck around, or not even play possibly. I could play whatever however, so went about setting up the software and ... well playing. Only, tables were very scarce. The usual 40+ VPIP tables weren't to be seen, and when I sat at one that claimed to be 40+ VPIP, it suddenly turned into a bunch of 22/18 grinders!!! What the hell happened to my tables. It's possible this is usual for the early part of the week, but I'm panicking that my sickly sweet tables have dried up due to there being some crazy January deal that people were chasing like free ipods etc. We'll see.

So my only interesting moment there at 6 max was stacking off AKs to AA, down 1 BI. I decided to play some HU and was running over someone before he hit the nutz, down another half BI, but at NL50. I then tried to seriously look for 6 max tables, but only one on my page looked decent at all, and it was NL200!!! So I joined. I added a fairly loose NL100 table, but was focusing on the big table. I played a bit of this and was up just a little, but would have been more if it wasn't for a decent bluff that ran into the top of his range. I finished the night slightly down, but had a good confidence boost mixing it up and still managing to hold my own.

I'm not ultimately that concerned with the tables yet, but another week or two of dry tables, and I might be forced to take a look at iPoker to see how they run there. I can't say I'm that pleased to do that, but I'm not going to risk my bankroll too often just trying to find tables that suit me.

On another note, I'm more than happy with how I'm playing now. I feel I can mix it up with the TAG's just about anywhere up to the NL50/NL100 levels, but really focus on getting the money from the fish at the table. I've had it easy with so many donks donating money, but am getting very comfortable fishing finding and stomping. I'm certain I'm never going to be the big 10 tabling 6 max guy, but more likely to turn into a professional fish finder more than anything else. I will try to put extra emphasis on improving my fish finding skills this month I think, and start labelling people again as to where I want to sit like I have in the past. Obviously really loose or aggro players I want on my right, any tight or positionally unaware people I'm happy to have on my left. I think this is certainly where the easiest money is, and I want to feel comfortable sitting on a NL200/NL400 table if the fish find their way there, without giving away too much of an edge against the TAG/LAG's at those levels.

Back into it

January felt like a holiday and while I don't expect it to last, I will do everything I can to be a profitable player at least.

My first crack at Feb was actually still Jan according to Pokerstars. So I used that fact to tie up my Silverstar level, with some HU SNG's. It went pretty badly, down $70 without too much effort. Mix of running bad, and trying a couple of high variance semi-bluffs. One funny situation saw me run into a HU cash player I crushed for 3 BI's the other night. He instantly started chatting about how tilted he was that night etc, so funny.

OnGame was a normal night session, and started about as horrible as ever. The flop saw me betting as big favourite most of the time, but turn and river, people just hit. People just flopped flush draws against me all the time, and were hitting a lot. On top of that I'd have better pairs or kickers and people would hit their 2 or 3 outer, and of course I'd stack off. I took a break almost putting OnGame aside, but something kept me coming back, and I got some of my losses back, even though I still got coolered and sucked out on again a couple of times. I'm mostly very happy with my play, although there is still too many call downs that just don't make sense against any hand but bluffs. Even one winner would have been the same, only I knew the guy was a maniac, and that JJ overpair was good.

All in all, a pretty bad day for results, but very encouraged by how I played big hands. I also cleared my $250 bonus on OnGame, so my accounts did go up today at least. I now have to see how to get my next bonus at OnGame, which isn't overly clear just yet. I will probably end up going over to Hey Poker, as I've heard they have ongoing reloads and a points shop too. Certainly no reason to leave OnGame any time soon.

Thats how you end a month

Well, what a shame January had to end. I had a mediocre last week, mainly just avoiding too much damage, but still profiting almost every day. Then Friday, BAM!!! $400 in 6 max at OnGame, and $350 at pokerstars, mainly from a big tilted NL100 HU player. So not a little finish to the month by any means.

Obviously this just tops what has been by far my best month, well and trully cracking a $2K month in terms of poker profit. Obviously I want this to be my smallest month this year in terms of profit, and just as obviously I know this won't happen. Swings are inevitable, and while I thought late Jan would brings more downswings, it just never happened.

However, I still think it has to happen in Feb, so I'm just going to strive to keep playing as well as possible, and do what I need to do to give myself better long term expectancy this month. Goals will follow when I create some.

Got HEM

Well, I got some inspiration of some sort, and researched HEM a bit, after noticing they support OnGame properly now. So I spent some time setting that up last night, and though it wasn't super smooth, I managed to get it as I wanted it pretty much on the first night without much effort. I was playing some NL10 to trial it, and even turned on mini-tables, but on my already smaller screen (15" laptop with big resolution) I just wasn't comfortable with that. Obviously, I'd love to 5-6 table, and the mini-tables make that possible, so once I'm looking at more than 3 tabling, I will re-invest time with them.

My NL100 session followed, and I felt kind of out of it at first, donking off here and there, mainly getting sucked out on and paying off, but I was getting dealt a lot of big hands and getting action which is usually good. In the end I payed off with KK vs AQ when he hit an ace, to reduce my breakeven night to a $60 loss. But even that was lucky, as I hit a huge drawing/made hand on the river where I wasn't quite favourite when the money went in. Also I just generally hit some good hands when I didn't get sucked out on.

I headed over to HU, and things were pretty standard (down a bit) until I played a $15 short stack. He twice got it in bad and lost (with a "gg" after each reload), then reloaded to $30 the 3rd time. I caught a magic turn card in a spot and he paid off, and starting talking about his bad luck. This was a bad idea. He ran like crap after that, and almost every pot greater than a cbet ended up either him or me sucking out on turn/river cards. I think I called a few bad spots, but was getting rewarded :) It wasn't terrible either, usually he'd have me coolered, like Q high, QJ vs KQ and hitting a Jack on the end. I mean that is terrible, but it's not like I was getting it in really light and then just hit a card on the river, I did have a hand before that, but was certainly running above expectation on river cards. He wasn't pleased to say the least, and commented a few times that even though I came out +2 full BI's, he was the better player. He also whinged that this session crippled his nice night before that. But honestly, if you think you can win a good session, then cap it off at HU, you are mistaken. It's a wild ride here, and while it's saved my night, or capped it off before, it's also buried my bad nights even worse too. Still on this occasion, it did in fact save my night somewhat, I ended up profitable.

I'm debating whether to get the last few points I need to make Silverstar on Pokerstars for the month, or just grind out OnGame for a much more likely winrate. Is the extra FPP's you can gain worth anything at all? I don't know but playing a little HU won't quite get me there, I probably need to 3 table NL50 or NL100 for a couple of hours to properly reach it.

Breaking even in style

Well, another few days of poker are over with, and really, I've perfected how someone should break even, all on Pokderstars:
* Lose some in satellites for the Sunday majors
* Win some back in HU cash
* Donk off 200BB trying to get a nit off top trips in 6 max NL100
* Lose more in satellites for the Sunday million
* Buy into the Sunday million because you can't win a seat
* Mincash in that
* Lose some playing HU cash
* Move up to NL100 HU cash while losing, lose another BI there and win a BI and a bit back against another

And that's it. How to break even at poker, the interesting way. With some of the crazy pots I've lost in the last few days, it's barely believable my Pokerstars account didn't bust. What's even crazier is you pay a shit load of rake and don't really get any FPP's to show for it all, but that's another story.

The Sunday Million was fun, although once you reach the 1.5K blinds, everyone just shuts down and waits for the nutz, as you are all 20-30BB deep and can't do much else. Not really exciting. My 3rd hour was absolutely card dead, and in the end, I had to make a stand against the one aggressive player. He'd noticed both I and my left players were tight, so he was getting raises in before I could try any steals. I finally 3 bet him, and he insta folded, and NEVER raised again. It was like a leaking tap that was suddenly turned off properly, amazing. So this allowed me to steal enough to cruise into the money. At that point I ran QQ into the powerhouse that is A5o all in pre flop, and shortly after died trying to keep alive, when my A8s ran into AK, and was virtually dead when a king flopped. Interesting, but not as fun as I thought, because there really wasn't much poker after the first few levels. as everyone just fought to stay above 20BB's. Possibly the worst player at my table finished the deepest when I look at the results, so lol donkaments.

In the coming week, I'll have a few different things to think about. One is about showdowns. As a very brief, there is one time where your hand is important, and that's when it's shown down. It needs to beat your opponents hand at that point, but if it's not shown down, it doesn't need to be better. I want to think about this some more and flesh it out a bit. The other is to do with reprocity, which Tommy Angelo goes into depth about. His theory is if we flopped top set and stacked our opponent with their mid set, we've made $0 long term, because we also would have stacked off with mid set in the same situation. However, to make you a winning player, you must be doing things your opponents are not. Yet, this is really hard to understand just what these are sometimes for me, so I want to think about it a bit.

Heaterville

I have had yet another big day of winnings. It's rediculous, I've never come close to seeing the money rolling in that's rolling in every other night right now. I'm talking about more than my entire bankroll in October, a few separate times in the last week.

So last night didn't start ordinary. I had a lot of time to play, but I'm not really feeling comfortable playing the 500 hands of 6 max I'm setting myself. Still very early on I got a double up when I flopped a set. I then flopped a set or had an overpair in one or two other spots, and apart from the short stack flipping well against me or a couple of missed bluffs or laydowns, I was running over tables. In fact the best spot was when I had an image of an aggro donk, after missing with a couple of bluffs, so the following hand was perfect. I raised KJo and villain, very tired of me barrelling him, called once more PF (haven't you heard of a 3 bet?). He was tight except for my opens, and had folded a lot to me postflop, so I knew he was ready to play back. I flopped the OESD on QTx and see no reason not to bet and get called. I had barrelled before, and probably was going to again, when the ace brought me the nutz. Perfect situation, I definitely barrell now, as it looks like a typical turn scare card raise. He minraises and it's all I can do to stop laughing, as he either has a set, is splitting with KJ himself, or has a big problem on his hands. I contemplate calling, but his minraise actually looks very strong (I'd be folding a lot of hands), and shove the remaining. he snap calls with 2 pair and misses his 4 outs, for another stack in my direction.

Not much else happened, but after 370 hands, I found another 3 BI's in my account. I quit for a while, very pleased, then came back to donk at Pokerstars HU. I couldn't get a table, either players sitting out when I arrived, or playing 2 hands and then sitting out. I must be on some database as running hot right now. Eventually 1 player sat down with $30 and I got some action. It didn't take long to ruffle his feathers with some 4 bets and check raises, and of course, when he goes with it, I have close to the nutz and stack him. He reloads for $30 more, and I take another couple of small pots. He then reloads for $50, and that hand I stack him again, right after he reloaded to $50, rather than losing $20 less. A beautiful thing as my J9 flops two pair, turns a house and the river gives him a straight. He left. I couldn't get another game, so decided to 1 table NL100 6 max on Pokerstars. 1 fish, 4 nits and me. 1 nit tries a 3 bet or 2, but doesn't like my 4 bet. The rest get out of my way every single raise, and the fish comes along most of the time. I split one pot where we stacked off with the same weakish hand, then stack him good for $60. I basically steal flops and blinds from that point on, and finish up $70.

Huge heater like activity happening here, and it's a beautiful thing. It's hard to imagine this won't help fuel my interest in poker for some time to come, even if things do "normalise" in a horrible way.

On to my targets, I finally spoke to Joseph (coach) for the first time in a long while, and he suggested 5ptbb/100 is a little high to aim for. He said that's a very big winrate over a long period, and warned me not to get my hopes up. That's really unfortunate to hear, but we agreed that 3.5 would be solid and more reasonable, so I'm still aiming at 5 including my bonus/rakeback amounts. I will start the trek for leaks by having a lesson with him Friday, and will otherwise start to plan more coaching sessions after our initial 4 have finished. It's a little expensive to do too many, but when I think about how much 1ptbb/100 means in long term dollar terms, every little bit helps. I won't play tonight, but will look through pokertracker looking for leaks.

Nice rebound

Goals:
1. Look for spots to get more value out of your made hands
2. Put people on ranges and use reads when you make a hand
3. Work out what things about the fish you can exploit.
4. 450+ hands.

Results:
1. Hmmm. Not enough still. 6 max I feel too tense to really extract, as I feel like I'm always protecting against draws or putting in bigger raises so that only BIG hands could raise me. Not happy about this.
2. I feel like I did this pretty well, just didn't apply it to my bet sizing so much.
3. Well, I kind of had some reads going, and was fish hunting a bit, but ended up tangling with TAG/LAG's for most of my bigger pots, which is kind of like borrowing money from them now to give it back tomorrow.
4. 400 hands of 6 max, plus a bunch of HU, so not bad.

Well, tonight started off as bad as ever. Down a BI in no time due to flipping poorly against 2 short stacks JJ < AK and AQ < 77, plus was picking on a fish, who woke up with a miracle river card. I had to take a short break, as everything was going against me, but came back and opened 3 fresh tables. It was a lot more aggressive tonight, and I found myself getting 3 bet quite a bit, and having cbets raised more etc. I also found myself having to quit a few tables where the table had evolved into 4 TAG's against me, which is not profitable enough. The most aggressive of tables donated $60 worth my way in two small pots where I was simply value betting, before I isolated with KK. Aggro 200BB stack never believed me until I shoved the river (I had him on worse hands that might call), and he folded. But this added another BI to my stack, and saw me up around 1/2 a BI. I pretty much bounced up and down for another hour and finished up that 1/2 BI.

I moved over to Pokerstars NL50 HU. I must say, I"m starting to feel a little like a reg there. People are insta-sitting out against me, and when I match up against another TAG, they'll often quit me. I might have played 4 tables, winning on each, but only small wins, and smaller edges than I would have liked. Even though a couple of players played very straight forward and face up, it's still a small edge, as they fold a lot of small pots, and then build it up when they get something, so it's hard to profit much from just those small pots. I got onto a table against a $50 stack, and almost first hand I sense him as being weak with his small raise, and shoved an OESD and possible overcards thinking he'd insta fold. He called with underpair and held, and again I run bad at flips, this time for more than my previous 4 tables profits, DOH!!!

Eventually I got a live one. He started with the old $31.25 trick of "Oh this is my whole bankroll." I never fall for that anyway, but decided to see what he had. He started off aggro, and seemed overly so, so , with overcards and a Jack high flush draw (3 clubs on board) I happily stacked off for his $40, and he had nothing but the king high flush draw, actually making us another coin flip (I'm 50.2% equity, so favourite :)... which I finally won. Obvious comment, "Big Fish" and tilt came to town, and what do you know insta rebuy to $50 (what, it wasn't his whole bankroll?). He auto stacked off when I floppped top pair, HH didn't say what he mucked. I then 3 bet TT and flopped overpair, so was going with that against this guy when a king hit. I actually thought about this as a good card to get him to stack off light, as shoving looks more like a bluff than AK or KQ. He called, again I didn't see, but it was worse than TT. We had a bit more back and forward, him 3 betting 30% and me folding (my edge wasn't in shoving light) and this guy would 5 bet shove or call with nothing, so I waited for value hands, which never came. I eventually couldn't resist with a medium pocket pair, and shoved his big 3 bet. He called my shove with T3s and got there, but donated a lot of that back in nearly every big pot we played, while he took most of the small ones. Eventually he coolered me with AK vs AJ on an AxxxK board for about $40, but fortunately my TT held on for his stack after he 3 bet QJs and called my shove. He finally quite, so I ended up $200 for the night, and $230 of that from this guy, thanks for the bankroll boost if you are reading.

I worked out my OnGame bonus, and at NL100, it seems like bonus money is worth around 1.5ptBB/100 hands, so if you can beat the players for 3.5ptbb/100 then you'll reach a goal of 5ptbb/100 overall. This really makes it look very doable, and drives me to work out the best way to beat this site for at least a bit of consitant money.

Run good ends abrubptly

Goals:
1. Get 3 tables, and try to get reads going
2. Quit tables quick if there isn't good stacks in position or aggro players on left
3. Try to make the "good play" rather than calling/raising/folding without thinking it through

Monthly goal for hands:
20 hours left - 250 hands/hour = 5K hands by end of Jan

Tonights goal = 500+ hands

Results:
1. Yes, and a little. Reads were thinner than usual, partially because 3 tables, partially because I wasn't playing 100% A game and feeling tilt and dizziness at different points. I really missed out on hand ranging somewhat.
2. I actually did this pretty well, but the tables weren't the problem.
3. I feel a little rushed still with 3 tables up, and don't always make the best decision, especially in limped pots, or when a table is 3 handed for a bit.

I also added in a hand goal. I said I'd do that next month, but there is no reason why I can't start a 3 table goal for now. I figured about 250 hands per hour, or 500 over two hours was reasonable. I ended up very close to 250 hands/hour, but only got 375 hands in due to not being happy with either of my small sessions. I also snuck in two HU sessions, so I'm sure I achieved a decent play amount overall.

So to my performance. I have looked over pokertracker, and it's a lot of coin flips, all where I lose. AQ vs JJ, AK vs 55, KK vs turned flush where I had 2nd nut flush redraw and overpair, OESFD and overs vs top pair in on the flop (I am big favourite here). A couple of coolers like overpair in a HU match versus a set, and more coin flips there. Also plenty of ugly rivers that of course changed the result of the hand away from me. Even then I re-sucked when my flopped set was 2nd best hand by the turn when a flush hit, and one of my 10 river cards hit (why I love sets, you always have clean outs against straight and flushes), but this was only against a short stack.

So my night started at OnGame, playing 3 tables. I instantly got handed KK and lost $75 to a turned flush with a redraw. Sign of things to come. I pretty much got 0 momentum this session, and quit down $150 after about 50 minutes. I played some HU NL50 on pokerstars, and also ran bad. Overpair vs set and lost another coin flip. I took a break now, down around $250. I felt motivated again and started OnGame once more. I started playing better and getting some back, before I fell through the floor again. A missed bluff (really quite good, he just couldn't fold ace high, and it's duly noted), and quite a few missed cbets and turn cbets. Bluffing too much obviously. One more coin flip, and rather than being up I was down another $75, to now be $325 down. I didn't feel too bad and returned to Pokerstars HU, and coolered a decent (not great) player a couple of times, to finally get some back. I then won a flip against a short stack and decided that was it, down only $230 by the end, so at least not a bad finish.

Looking at pokertracker, I'm not disappointed by last night. I'll put it down to variance somewhat, and maybe try to get to a point where I can avoid getting too frisky against unknowns (who always end up being calling stations). On a positive note, my $100 PSO bonus was confirmed, and my $250 from OnGame is humming along (why is it you seem to get a lot of bonus points on big losing sessions :)), and should be finished sometime this month if I can keep 3 tabling NL100, which will be great. Still, it's nothing compared to running good or bad, so my focus will be far from here.

I think if there is one clear message to be learned from tonight, it's you need to distinguish the calling stations from the tight weaks postflop. I probably could have saved $100 if I'd just left these guys alone, but I felt like I had to go after them, because I didn't have the reads, but thought my hand looked stronger than it was. It's really hard to win at poker when you have some ideas of what your opponent might hold, but don't know if he can fold it. If you know what they hold, and whether they can fold it, you are really miles ahead.

Another thing I picked up on, is when you have air like AK on a 975dd or 87s on AK8r, you really focus a lot more on what your opponent has, but if you have KK overpair, you are worried a lot more about how strong your hand is, and how to extract value. Your first thoughts about what to do on a board would be to think about his range and what he'd do with that range, and play accordingly. Your hand only matters if it gets to showdown, so work out if you want it to get to showdown, and then work out if the board hits opponents range hard enough to extract some value while getting to showdown, or if you can get him to fold if you don't want a showdown.

Still running good

Well, what a difference running good makes. I have never run this good, just constantly finishing sessions up 1-4 BI's, and with few hands and little effort usually. I'm pretty sure a stuffed animal couldn't lose these sessions, people just continue to let me run over them or get their money in bad, and I'm holding more often than not. Since moving to NL100, I haven't lost a full stack yet, which is obviously just running WAY over expected value, as even AA vs 88 loses once in every 5, let alone the hands where I'm much closer to 50% equity holding.

I must admit though, I'm really starting to apply reads better. Last night I twice put villain on draws, and value bet very thinly, and both times I was right, and showed down a winner in two 50+BB pots with average hands. I'm also letting go of hands a lot earlier rather than chasing a losing battle against a range. It's a really liberating feeling to let go of a hand that might be good sometimes (against possible bluffs etc), only to get a big pot back later from the same guy. Finally, I'm bluffing very successfully right now. I know a little of that could just be variance, but I'm picking my opponents and their ranges pretty well, and even higher variance moves (like bluffing more than what's in the pot) are successful right now.

So I'm NL100, but still getting to terms with 3 tables, which I will probably be comfortable with very soon (2 seems a bore now). Next comes 4 tables, and then I'll be setting hand targets. It will be roughly in the order of 300-350 hands an hour, so at 10-12 hours per week, around 3000-4000 hands a week. I will see just how reasonable that is, then I'll be setting a hand target for every week once it stabilises, and try to achieve that. Obviously, I will bow out of playing some nights where I'm too tired, or playing/running bad, so I want to be realistic about it all. At 3000 hands a week, 5ptbb/100 (including rakeback), that's a pretty impressive $US300 a week, or $AU450. Very reasonable goal, and one I am striving to get within the next 6 months, after all the variance is ironed out. If all goes well, I'll be taking out anything over about $3K at the end of each month, and tracking how much I've taken out, as it will still act as part of my bankroll if I hit a big downswing and don't want to move down. Once I'm comfotable about moving up a level, I will make sure I've taken out at least $US3K, and put that back onto the site and play NL200. I'll make a tentative target to do that by June/July, so I really hope to have also taken out another $US2K+ for just spending money unrelated to poker by then, or realistically I won't really be ready. That is, if I've only taken out $US4K in total and yet played around 60K hands, that means I will have only won 2ptBB/100 hands (excluding rakeback) and really not worthy of moving up to NL200 after that.

NL100 baby!!!

Well, I just tipped over the 30 BI's for NL100, and that's even with a bonus cleared and not in my account yet and another $250 bonus half redeemed. So I'm officially taking a pretty big shot at NL100, and realistically hope not to step back down, but will if required. I haven't quite worked out what the amount I'd have to drop would be, but something like $6-700 after just starting a level would be enough to realise it's not working out I think.

Funnily enough I'm already playing NL100. I decided at 28 BI to start taking a shot, and sure enough ran good and finished up 1.5 BI at OnGame. As from memory the players were dreadful, and it was going to take very big coolers or suckouts to stop me from winning tonight. It wouldn't surprise me if some of these players hadn't played poker much. I have a theory some gamblers can't stomach playing 10c blinds to build up their skills and bankrolls and instead step into the $1 games as $100 is a decent amount to win or lose, and they aren't upset by losing $100. Of course online poker is rigged when they do lose. Tonights play pretty much confirmed that, and I really hope to find these players in the future months.

I quit right on the border of having 30 BI's, but decided to play a few hands of Absolute to make sure I have covered the PSO bonus. I'm not sure, because Absolute shows status points for the months and credits for lifetime. I think PSO pays if you clear enough status points, so I really don't know if I definitely made it, but my maths say I should be clear. I got on live chat with Absolute, which was the funniest conversation, and left me with "absolute"ly no faith in the people behind this sites. Still I thought I'd just grind a little more to be sure, at NL50 there. I ran up a 1.2 BI profit in no time to make sure the 30BI mark was well and trully crossed.

So with the goals, I have firmly set myself to play NL100 4 tables and that hasn't changed. NL200 isn't a concern, as I can make a decent wage from NL100, so I plan to withdraw a lot of my money above what I need in the coming months. Obviously I won't hold myself back, but if I was rolled to play NL200 by mid year and was playing well enough (big IF there), I'd be very happy. I'd have to grow my BR to $6K, so I'm going to make the tentative goal to withdraw a decent chunk, and keep my BR growing by an average of $500 a month after Jan. End of Jan I'll take out anything above $3K (hopefully it will still be above).

So how will I do that and what can I expect if I'm good enough to do this? Firstly, I need to get 4 tables going. I'm getting comfortable at 3, but will need to get more comfortable before even thinking about 4. That's one part. Secondly, I need to play well enough to make at least 5ptbb/100. I figure 10 hours a week at 350 hands an hour is 3500 hands. 3500 hands * 22 weeks = 77000 hands. So if I could get to profitably 4 tabling in 4 weeks time, I can expect $7700 profit up until mid year, for which I'd have taken out around $4.5K and left the rest in the bankroll to move up a level mid year.

This sounds great in theory. I'd love to fast forward to mid 2009 and see just what eventuated from all these goals :) I'll put a reminder in my phone to look up this blog post and see how well I predicted my next 6 months.

Still running hot

Well, it's been a really hot start to the year, after the first 3 days treated me like garbage. I can still count 4 times last night where I was rivered by a 1 outer, 2 3 outers and a 4 outer, but still managed to win over 2 BI's at Absolute. It's like printing money compared with Pokerstars from what I've seen. On Pokerstars you could probably just grind away at the tight weaks and get a decent profit, as long as you are very careful about who and when is playing back at you. At Absolute, you should probably just play good poker, at least up until the NL50 level, and return 10ptbb/100. I'm running at slightly less, but only due to my own fault for sure. And just for the maths, at only 4 tables, that'd still be $35/hour without thinking about the excellent rakeback and bonuses there. Only problem is the fields are thin, especially beyond NL50.

I'm almost fairly comfortably 3 tabling without giving away too much of my edge now, but have more work to do in that area. My reads are getting stronger though. HUD stats give you everything you need to know about preflop and flop, so if you are playing a lot of tables, you really just want to know how people play postflop, and use the HUD for PF and the flop. There is only one thing, which is what do people call 3 bets with, or limp call with. Knowing some of their starting hands, or how they play position can help define a range much nicer preflop too. But anyway, things like minraised a cbet and folded later on a very dry board, or miinraised the flop and showed down a set, or raised a flop and showed down a draw, or overplayed 2nd pair type hand. Probably at a much more general level you can label people as tricky, straight forward or just bad. I'll have to keep working on these concepts.

So I'm relatively free now, although I do have a half filled bonus at OnGame. I've just finished my PSO bonus for Absolute, so will have another $100 to put into the bankroll, leaving me almost fully bankrolled at NL100. In line with my new years resolution, I'll be staying where the fish are, which at the moment is a choice between OnGame, Absolute/UB or iPoker. All seem very soft, and really, playing NL100 and table selecting a bit and not tilting much, I should be printing money. If I halved the 10ptbb/100 I claimed should be possible at NL100, that's still $35/hr + bonuses 4 tabling, which at OnGame might be around the $40+/hr without winning too big. That'd be $600 AUD a week, which would be insanely good for our mortgage and bills at home. My definite overall personal goal stays at successfully grinding NL100 for 4 tables at any site for an average of $40/hr over a period of time, and cashing out a lot of my winnings, to help heal the amount of time I've spent away from other things I could have been doing up until now. I don't doubt that's still out of my reach, seeing as 3 tabling still seems a little hard and NL100 could be a lot tougher to play. But it's a good personal goal to set, as it sets me a real challenge.

I also want to come up with some short term game related goals soon. I sat down to write my list of nightly goals, and really couldn't come up with anything interesting related to gameplay. So in the next week or so, I'm going to set myself some acheivable goals that I want to focus on until the end of Feb, then each night I'll think about these goals before playing. I think I definitely need more work on turn and river play, and want to look at spots where my bluffs aren't working well.

Struggling with the finer aspects

Well, I've had some interesting days. It's one of those times that even though there really are no huge ups and downs money wise, it still feels like it's been swingy as ever.

The poker players mindset is brittle. Think about it. Lets say you play tennis, and just cannot win a point against someone. They seem to have your number at least tonight. But do you keep asking them to play more sets? Probably not, as you would rather be winning while you are playing. Poker is very similar. You always want to be winning sessions, yet this isn't a reality. If you are winning every session, you are either many levels above the players you are playing, or are just running good. If you can't take the negative days, you have a leak. What's more disturbing is the maths going on when behind. I have run bad tonight (may be true), and am down 2 BI's. These tables don't look like giving me any action, I'll move up a stake, where I'll only need one lucky hand to get that money back. Another more disturbing thing is it's a relaxing, fun game you can play on a computer at home, which is where I'm stuck most nights. I also enjoy a drink, and drinking and playing poker is bad, but it feels good. You are relaxing with your drink of choice and your pastime of choice, too easy. Only it's a damaging thing to your bankroll as you are easily more -ev while drinking, if not terrible while drinking.

So last weekend was a mix of the above paragraph. Fridays are my new super Fridays, grinding for as many hours as I like, and I was pumped before playing, and may a nice 1.5BI profit in no time. Rather than instantly spoil it all, I had a break, watched a movie with the Mrs, and let her go to bed while I went back to the tables. About 1 hour in I was going average at some HU on Pokerstars, and decided to end it soon, so cracked open a beer. It wasn't terrible, but I'd say I probably drank 2-3 more while playing, which didn't actually effect my game that much, and I ran up a 2BI profit on stars for a nice night.

Saturday is always a no poker day, but my wife is obsessed with a book, so soon enough forum searching and other stuff suddenly seemed secondary to poker, even though I'd probably had 4 drinks before starting the session. HU cash again at stars, and I ran pretty bad. I had a horrible 2BI loss against one average player, where I got it in with the better pair for stacks QQ vs AT on Txx, KQ vs JT on KJx, and lost both. It wasn't long after this that I decided NL100 HU would be better and proceeded to hit a flush and have top pair hold on against an OESD FTW. He left, and I quit, up five american dollars :)

Sunday, again I should not have played, as I had 3 drinks before and was enjoying the gentle art of watching sport on TV with those beers. However, I felt like running good again, and once more made a couple of tender moves and was probably down over 1BI. I didn't move up at least this time, but did run good, and managed to take 1.5BI's off a real donk, and another 0.5BI's off a solid player to finish up a little over a BI.

So as I said, no disaster stories in there, but plenty lurking if I keep this up. This weekend coming up is super important for my mental approach to the game now.

Last night (Monday), it's back to normal grind mode at Absolute Poker, except I'm really ready to 3 table NL50 now. I feel almost bored 2 tabling now (right up until now, I've been intent on getting great reads and watching players), and feel I can get those reads with less effort (becoming 2nd nature). So I opened 3 tables, and did feel a little rushed and confused for a while, probably tilting off 1 BI just playing like a donk, which is to be expected I guess. When I'm rushed I actually loosen up, which is weird. Anyway, I kept saying to myself that this was just something I had to work through. I still went further down when aces were cracked for a full BI, but managed to gain control and saw my profits returning soon. I probably just had it back, when I tried to semi-bluff (I had the best hand til the river) an overly aggro preflop player, but otherwise solid player. I was trying to rep a small set (had 44 unimproved) as I thought he had overpair or AK. The river came a king and I still donked $25 his way, repping a set pretty strongly. He tanked forever, before making the call. I kicked myself for trying to bluff him off TPTK, it's a very high variance play if it ever works at these levels. Still lady luck came a running and I coolered someone with Ace high flush versus King high flush (ATss vs K9ss, funny), and then top pair vs a donk, to be up $10 for the night. I was pleased with my 3 tabling efforts, very pleased with the results, but not pleased that most of the losses of the night came from trying to bluff people. I have to play more straight forward on these tables. It's probably a little bit of HU creeping into my postflop game.

So I will continue to 3 table, and try to make a video tonight doing that. I feel I'm ready to have my game re-assessed since making a lot of substantial improvements since last session I had. If anyone out there wants to see my video, just let me know. It won't be as educational as a Cardrunners one, but it's always good to see what the real strugglers do compared with yourself.

Super Friday

I played Super Friday last night. In my new years resolution I've decided to not play Thursday, but not drink Friday and play a few hours. I was really looking forward to this night for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's an out and out reason to gamble it up for many hours without questions from the wife. Secondly, I'd run good on Wednesday and looked forward to more of this.

Sure enough after not too long, I was up almost 1.5 BI's on Absolute. I thought about quitting, but decided to keep on playing, and finished up around 1 BI after a big call that saw me ahead on every street, but 4 outered on the river. Still nice session, and I loved how I played it.

I logged on Pokerstars intending to play a little and ses how it goes at HU, but ended up playing hours of HU cash. I can only remember 1 time where I got it in against big stacks (either I or they were shorter on all other occasions) badly, yet still managed to barely win in those big pots due to runnig bad, twice 80%+ favourite. Even so I still made a decent profit and now have had 2 good sessions in a row and am up quite a bit.

I actually feel like my thoughts on poker have really solidified and I'm very close to being able to crush the lower stakes like nobody's business. I feel like my hand ranging has mostly been a past time rather than an active endevour, even though I blog about it often. But all of the sudden, I'm hand ranging. I'm doing it almost all the time right now, which is so weird as even 2 weeks ago, I almost never did it. Just one night I started doing it, lol. So looking forward to what the next 3 months have to bring, as I really feel like it's all coming together right now.

When the world coolers, cooler it right back

Well, a couple of day recap. Before starting my session two days ago, I had been listening to an Ed Miller series on Stox about light 3/4/5 betting. I have a blog dedicated to this, as it's opened my eyes a bit about the subject, and in fact while only about 1 in 10 players I play against probably have any idea about this stuff in the slightest, I now realise what some of them have done in the past, like 3 betting, then check raising the flop all in.

So the first couple of days I couldn't get anything going, and Tuesday was no different. Every time I'd start to run over the table, I'd get coolered and be back to zero. It was a miracle, and even some luck that kept me even.

I call upon degenerate gambler at that point, and he correctly pointed me at the HU cash games, as I really needed to flesh out this light 3/4/5 betting stuff a bit more and the 6 max games were too damn boring with everyone folding to 3 bets or even folding to your raises too often. HU was mostly fun and yet frustrating, with two stacks going to absolute stone cold suckouts/coolers, and the rest being a mix of me playing well at points, bad at others. I also paid off the same guy for a total of 120BB's when he rivered me twice.

So a quick recap of my year up until this point. Day 1 I got nothing going at Absolute for -$20, so started my first session at Pokerstars, got coolered with KK vs set and a couple of other hands, played a bit meh due to new site and different playing styles. Day 2 saw me running over 2 Absolute tables when I ran QQ into AA for 120BB's. In retrospect it was close, but I think I could fold. I squeezed a TAG, and he 4 bet. I can't call, and didn't think I could fold, so shoved, expecting some folds, and the occasional AK with the KK/AA, but he flipped AA. Later I realised I don't think this guy can 4 bet light, so QQ is actually terrible against his value 4 bet range. Pokerstars continued to cooler/suckout, and I salvaged my bankroll by playing a couple of HU SNG's, but still ended up negative. Day 3 ran QQ into AA again, this time no regrets. Player was very light 3 bettor, and I 4 bet for value, which means I can never fold to a shove, but he had it of course. I also got monster coolered in two big pots (one was 87% PF, 93% flop, 40% after he hit his 2 outer turn, river dead other hand I flopped nut straight, he hit flush after the money was in). At the point I quit, I was down another $140 at Pokerstars for the day, and generally feeling rubbish about poker.

I will say I was happy with how I was thinking about poker though. I may not be playing well, but I know my mind is growing, and I know I will laugh at feeling like the first step of 2009 actually seemed like a cliff face. All up, I estimate I started 2009 down about $320 in a mix of games and sites. All played sober and reasonably untilted mind you.

Day 4 started off different. I was running over a tight table, and getting dealt rubbish on the other. However, my very first raise, which was about 3 orbits in was a 3 bet with AA from SB, to which BB cold calls (usually scary), and original raiser calls too. Typical low flop saw me cbet with the intention of getting it in, even if someone called with 55 or 99 and flopped a set. BB obliges and shoves, but his range includes TT+, with JJ/QQ being very likely, and sure enough it's QQ, and I cooler someone back. I don't like his play 100%, as I hadn't raised in 3 orbits, but oh well. The rest of the time saw me going up and down a bit (I was up $80 already by that point) and finishing up the $80 bonus from months ago, so quit and watched a movie up around $170. I will point out there was a fair bit of 3 betting going on, and since paying full attention to the Ed Miller series, I felt very comfortable in these conditions.

The movie ended giving me about an hour or so to grind, so I consulted degen who informed me Absolute NL100 6 max is probably quite weak, and looking at the PF %'s, he was right. I'm not rolled for NL100, but it's only money right degen? Damn straight!!! (I love degen, I really do) I was happily running over the tables when I hit a cooler versus a short stack, which brought me back to even. I was making a note on a player when I looked up at $21 of chips being bet PF, by me??? Something I typed in the notes made it to the betting, and I'd just 3 bet a $3.50 raise to $21 with 85o and got called. I considered cbetting, but decided not to and my opponent bets almost pot, knowing of course what happened. Not happy. I then made the same mistake for much less money 2 minutes later, and decided I had to be very careful with note taking from now on. I got in a couple of coolers, then hit a set vs AA and doubled up on one table. The other I got coolered in small pots, and finished up around $125 before quitting. So all up a nice little $300 night, or all up a -$20 month so far. It does show that when the world coolers you, you will eventually cooler it back, so the most important thing is to be doing everything else right outside of the cooler hands.

I'll be honest, I'm feeling super comfortable at all sites right now for NL50. I feel the 3/4/5 betting series moved my poker brain to a new level, and while it's not applicable much to my games, it is very interesting stuff. So I don't feel like I "have" to quit pokerstars, but still probably will just for the ultra softness of the other sites. I should finish up my Absolute bonus ($90) before maybe checking out OnGame again. I do like the idea of grinding pokerstars and going for Supernova, but realistically the site is tight, supernova is hard to get, and in the mean time I get better bonuses and rakeback from other sites. It's nice to know that in December I beat 6 max at OnGame for quite a lot, have so far beaten Absolute 6 max, and have now beaten Pokerstars 6 max even with some variance and over a very small sample. I also felt like I had reads on most of my players, and a little bored at times last night waiting for action, and definitely need to try out 3 tabling from now on. I think I will make this the aim for the rest of the month, to be comfortable 3 tabling NL50 at whichever site I continue to play. Sorry for the horribly long and pointless blog.

Kick off the year

I managed to finish off 2008 in crushing style, just not being able to put a foot wrong in December and November. I still scared myself by playing a lot drunk, so right off the bat in 2009 I started my new years resolution... Friday night. Friday is generally a weekend night for me and weekends were all about relaxing at pubs/restaurants until kids came along. They slowed that right down and now it's about relaxing at home, but with drinks too usually. And poker quite often. The last couple of months it's mainly been grinding some rediculous game like NL5, doubling up and then doubling stakes to NL10 etc etc. I'd usually try to run $5-$15 into something rediculous. My best effort in November was $15 into $800+, and I was playing NL400!!! Drunk as, playing a 40/38 style the whole time, and catching cards when I needed to.

So Friday night I've always noticed to be a good night for poker, as in, more fish seem to be around, so my new game plan is to not drink Fridays, and instead grind like nobody's business for 4+ hours on that night. Sweet!!! I also have to knock off an Absolute bonus (about half way there) and two Pokerstars bonuses, one for $80 which is about 2 nights away, and one for $150 which may take a few weeks. I mention these two sites as they aren't sites I'm attracted to long term, and I am really just playing to clear the bonuses as well as check out the fields while I'm there.

First up on Friday I played Absolute. Two tables, couldn't get a good table position going (but there were fish), and couldn't get the cards to fall my way. I ended up down $20, but really was itching to check out Pokerstars. I'm torn between learning more tables and playing NL25 or keeping myself going at NL50, but since I was excited to play and have the bankroll for NL50 now, I thought I'd start there for a big grind. It started bad. I couldn't seem to get a great table there either, mainly battling one or two fish and 3 or 4 TAG's. But the table count is huge. There are tonnes of NL50 grinders, I even played a couple of supernova's playing NL50!!! The hands weren't that exciting, just had me the loser on every occasion. I should have folded KK overpair, which I hate doing, then I found out he raised with air, and hit a set on the turn, doh!!! Eventually I finally cooolered a fish for a 220BB pot, but it really amounted to damage control, as I was almost freefalling at that point, and if I'd lost that pot (I had flopped a set, he turned trips) to an unlikely better boat, I would have quit for the night. As it was I kept grinding, and finished the night coin flipping a $20 HU SNG, and fortunately won. This again was damage control and saw me only lose $55 or just over a BI. Not the most pleasant night, and I felt like I played pretty badly at points, mainly just not being patient enough or folding enough. I understand losing nights are part of the parcel, but can honestly say I don't like playing when I don't feel I have a huge edge, and I didn't feel like that.

Stuck to my word of not drinking and playing poker last night as I had a few beverages, so I'm really looking forward to having more balance in my life and enjoying things other than mucking around at a poker table. Here's to 2009!!!

2009?

Well, it's here, and it's pretty darned real. For the first time I'm doing a new years resolution. In fact several. I'll keep this blog about the poker parts, but sufficed to say poker played a part in a few points.

I'll start by discussing 2008 very briefly. January I joined Cardrunners for the videos and thought that was a big step. I really wasn't playing the game well at all, and I can now explain why, even if I still can't explain how to play "really well". By about March or April I had improved enough to be consistantly beating any game I played in, even if small. I then started finding bonus sites and soft games, and my bankroll steadily climbed, reaching $2.5K. I started withdrawing money, and getting up the courage to grind NL100, which I had played just a bit, when I fell into HU. I ran pretty good and with bonuses and playing made it to about $3.5K roll, ready to grind either $55 HU SNG's or $100 cash games. Unfortunately, my ideas of how to play were still rather immature. I only managed to keep my bankroll from freefalling, but consistantly lost money, and then mixed in drunken play and ... Cashed out, grinded again from at one point about $17 I think. I since added a couple of hundred, but overall, have won since then every month, with strong winrates, and a really improved game, after admitting to some pretty massive leaks.

So I won't actually repeat my resolution, but will put a list of goals together. So the first point is to look at what turned my game around. It was definitely playing the game, and not the money system. There is a secondry lure around the rebates sites give you. Your winrate is this + rakeback. So if I play a lot, or a lot of tables, then my rakeback improves, and I can get away with winning less. Only, if you 6 table, when you should only 2 table, you will lose far more in one poorly played pot each hour than you will get in total rakeback, so you really must be on top of the grinding ability before deciding it's an easy way to make money. Likewise grinding higher rakeback games like turbo HU or multitabling SNG's. It's possible to win big and get great rakeback, but make sure you are a winner there before chasing the big rakeback. Now I will definitely still chase bonuses, but not to the point where I know I'm a losing playing trying to chase it. Maximising profit means playing the weakest players, not getting the most rakeback. Saying that, I'm planning to still "chase" rakebacks if they are profitable enough to do so, but don't want to be sucked in to thinking I have to 5 table NL100 to finish a bonus. It has to be a profitable decision, that won't cost me more bankroll than bonus in expected rates.

Secondly, I'm splitting my drinking and poker. Both are great fun to me, but now poker is too serious to allow me to drop $50 trying to push people off top pair at NL10 while playing like a complete maniac. This works one night, and suddenly you think it's the way to enjoy a few drinks. Guess what, 40/38 style is very hard when sober. Yes you will win some nights, but most times, you will lose in the long run, no matter how well you play postflop. So if I think I've lost $20 equity by playing for 3 hours drunk, and my bankroll is only $500 I get upset. Some nights I work hard to win $20 sober, and lose $50 drunk. Why? So I will be strict this year. Poker and alcohol do not mix, not even freerolls. I have to drink a little less anyway, so will pick some non-poker nights to have some drinks and apart from that happily grind sober and ready to crush. And nights I drink, I will be happy to call poker free.

On top of that I have to set a playing goal, and my medium term goal, which I realistically want to be very close to by say April, is to be taking money out of poker each month. Now I'm not going to do that now, as I'm only making enough to build a bankroll, so a couple of things need to change. I need to be grinding NL100, and I need to be playing 4 tables. NL100 alone will take a bit of time to achieve, but I played 3 tables the other night, and it wasn't too crazy. I think given a couple of months I'll happily be at 4 tables, and playing well. I figure 4 tabling NL100 with a decent winrate puts me at about an $800 withdrawel from poker each month, which is a great start. This is definitely an aim of mine, and from there when I feel like I'm crushing that all the time, I will look at moving up levels, and will hopefully move up one or two more this year.

Lastly, my game. I am happily moving forward right now, but I really just want to get inside the poker knowledge base. I feel like I know so much more about every aspect of the game just in the last 3 months, but I want every bit of that to grow a lot. I expect to look back at this blog and laugh and how I thought I knew quite a lot. But I won't let that ruin my confidence at the tables now, as all I plan to do in the short term, is play on tables where there are worse players than me. I don't need all the skills in the world right now, just enough to make me better than other players at the table, and that feels like a real strength of mine right now, leaving unprofitable tables. I want to learn more and more how to exploit fish, and more and more about how to find those fish. It really is that simple.

So 2009 is here, and it's looking promising from just about every aspect of my life, and poker is a big part of that this year I think. Here's to running good in January and all year.