driving me to drink

i just can't seem to win lately. after my last post i played a session where i was 3 tabling 200nl but was on a 400nl table that i noticed had 2 huge fish on. overall i lost $700+ that night including $400 to the fish on the 2/4 table.

i followed that up with a small win of like $300 or something 2 tabling and then another $400 loss the day after. tonite i played about 950 hands 6 tabling and felt i played pretty well other than a really spewy 5-b bluff that cost me a stack. anyways i dropped close to 1k tonight putting me a grand total of 2.7k in the whole over less than 5k hands for the month.

im kinda sick over it but kinda not at the same time. i think im playing well (lately) but i really don't know i guess. maybe shits just not lining up for me right now or this just could be a correction from running good up until a little while ago. i really can't say, all i can do is just keep blasting away at it and trying to get better.

bankroll is down to 12.2k plus a couple hundred bucks in my rb account. this game truly is depressing some times.

tg

im back

wow, full month w/o posting. so my return kinda sucked as i realized that i was still playing kinda bad and unfocused. my number problem by far is lack of focus but outside of going to a doctor and asking for ADD meds im unsure of what to do about it. im thinking of implementing a thought structure to every hand i play to ensure im going through a full thought process and not knee jerk reacting and kicking myself after.

anyways, i played a little bit of 200nl but prob only got in 8k hands for the rest of the month making like 3 or 4 buy-ins but ending in the red for the second straight month. one of the reasons i didn't get hands in was that i was spending some time with the gf before she left for a 3.5 month tour of europe.

so this left me pumped poker wise to play tons of hands before the end of the year however it's started off kinda shitty and im down like 4 buy-ins over my first 2.5k hands. i also have been in a bit of a mopey mood so at times i've stayed away from the tables but im gonna do my best to grind out hardcore and hopefully be crushing 2/4 by the end of the year.

my new coach is very good and although we haven't spent much time together i've got a copy of an ebook he wrote which is extremely good and seems tailored for me. i'll keep reading and studying that and in the meantime try to crush some souls at 200nl.

tg

aug results + more losing = small break

first losing month this year, but not really a big deal since my volume of hands is so low.



























my sept started off okay winning 2 buy-ins in my first session but then quickly unravelled again as i lost a couple thousand back and am negative again for the month. i must admit i got pretty tilted near the end of my last session even after i dropped down to 200nl.

so i've taken about 3 or 4 days completely removed from poker and think i'm ready to come back with a clear head.

i'll be coming back at 200nl though since my bankroll has shot downwards over the last 1.5 months. my bankroll high point was 27k+ but since then i've:

• had a 7k downswing
• shipped all kinds of money off to friends, training site memberships and coaching
• withdrew 5k to send my gf to europe

so all that has knocked me down to 14.5k online so my plan is to drop back down to 200nl and grind back to 16k before moving back up to 400nl.

tg

getting owned!

since my last post i've been getting absolutely destroyed. this is by far my worst downswing since i've started playing nl. im not sure of the amount of hands but im down roughly $5.5k which equates to roughly 14 buy-ins. now, i shouldn't really complain cuz my year so far has been a pretty smooth journy upwards. until now i don't think i've had a downswing larger than 5 buyins and they were usually just really bad sessions that i rebounded back from and never lost much confidence.

this one however has been like getting beat to death with a hammer. it's just a continuos pummeling and it's got my confidence down a lot. i've had points so far at 400nl where i feel im getting owned by regs and it doesn't help when everyone is owning me at the same time.

here's a couple hands from tonites session that caused me to quit my session:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3106005 - i've got no idea.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3106012 - this hands illustrates a running theme for me, i'm working on becoming more aggro post flop but every time i do i seem to stack off horribly. i have no idea what he's doing here on the flop.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3106032 - and when i get them to stick it in bad they bink.

ok, thats the end of my feel bad for myself rant.

here are the positives i can take out of the last week+ as well as what i have to look forward to:

1. i'm actually +1.5k in all-in equity on the month
2. i can only get better
3. i've made some very good "quits" and controlled tilting very well
4. i've hooked up with a new coach who im really excited to work with and have sent off a 35 min video of my play to him for analysis. he also has setup a bit of a program that seems to be right up my alley.
   
5. im running sick hot in the ftp nightly $163 and am 8/65 on the bubble.
6. i've run the $125 i had left over on stars after paying for coaching into $219 playing micro stakes plo.

tg

on the grind

so as most months i started off playing hardly any hands this month. i played maybe 1k hands in the first week of august and had continued to be lazy. i think there is a real fine line for me between not playing when in a -ev mindset (tired, tilted, stressed etc) and general laziness. this partly comes from starting the last couple months off great and being up a good number for most of the month. i feel no pressure to play since im up a good chunk and have a positive outlook on my game.

But recently i've been thinking about why my motivation to play is at a all time high when i'm stuck or running bad. i have no problem playing then because i'm eager to get back in the positive and work on my game. i need to keep that attitude while im running well and winning.
i'm at the point now where i can make some serious money at 2/4. the stakes are significant enough that winning and losing 2k in a session can be fairly common. to put it in perspective, a decent session for me is the same now as a two week pay cheque from my 9-5. i put a lot of effort in to get here and if i want to maximize the gains of that work i need to start grinding a little harder. now, im not gonna go off in another extreme and start 12 tabling and playing in a -ev mindset but i have been playing 6 tables lately and feel my play hasn't really dropped off from when i 4 table. the one thing i have to keep on top of is not getting too tight pre-flop which is easy to do.

so last thursday during my coaching session we set a goal of 10k hands played by today. i've logged close to 7k so far and will probably get another 1.5k in tonite. so 8.5k hand is very good production for me in a week and if i could somehow keep it up i believe i can become one of the bigger winners at 2/4 on ftp. my plan from here to the end of the year is to basically grind my ass off but to have fun at the same time. my gf is going to be away for a couple of months starting some time this fall and this will be by far the biggest money making opportunity i will ever have as far as poker playing goes.

oh and on a side, it's been cool to have enough br to be able to randomly buy into some of the ftops events. it was always my goal when i was an mtt player to satellite into them but i never really had many chances. now i can pretty much just buy-in without it being a big dent to my roll or affect me phycologically. i played the $216 4x shootout a couple nights ago and managed to get hu on my first table but got owned pretty hard by a 10/20 reg. then last night i played the $322 mixed holdem event and was up and down like crazy before busting shortly after 2 hours.

anyways, happy grinding!

tg

way late w/ july results

+ 4k tournament score. best month ever.

tg

final table?

sat down to play last night around 7pm and cashed in one of my freebe $75 tokens into the $35k guarantee and loaded up 4 tables of 2/4nl. i almost went bust like 5 min in as i had a bunch of stuff going on and was check/calling down w/ 77 on a T643 board before i wisened up and folded. after that i sailed slowly building up and being in the top 20% in chips for most of the tournament. there were 671 entrants and when we got down to the final 3 tables i was the chip leader. i held that distinction till there was about 7 left when shit started going sour for me. w/ 6 left i was 5/6 w/ about 225k to the short stacks 125k and called his jam w/ A6ss and lost the flip to T9ss to be crippled at 6k/12 + ante. he then went bust on the next hand and i managed to double up shoving J5dd utg 5 handed and getting called by A9o. i got there on the river when the board on the turn read 842A and i binked the old 3 ball to double up. i somehow doubled up again and we were down to 4 players left. the chip leader had a little over 700k, i had 470k, 3rd stack had about 400k and the small stack about 270k w/ blinds at 8k/16k + ante i believe. on the button, the 400k co opened, i 3-b w/ AKcc, blinds folded and we got it in for the chip lead and i bricked off against his TT.

first place paid 11k plus but i settled for 4k for fourth. not bad for a freeroll i guess and the adrenaline rush was pretty sick.

as for cash i made about $500 over the course of 1k hands before feeling really burnt out and just single tabled my tourny from then on. i think i played a little spewy in a few spots but also had some interesting hands playing pretty deep.

i'll probably play tomorrow and then have a good start to august with a wide open schedule on the weekend to play.

bankroll sits at about $23.5k, an all time high.

tg

since the last post

i haven't played much. i did manage to drop $1200 over the course of 900 hands or so last week playing kind of bad and unfocused.

then on saturday morning i got up and put in about 1k hands and booked about a 1k win. suprisingly the games were much more soft than that of the weeknights i've been playing.

not sure of how many hands i've played this month but i think it's going to be a record low.

tg

biggest day ever

i still had not had an official 1k day although i've been close a bunch of times. my first session at 2/4 was pretty good and i booked another close to but not quite 1k day. the 2nd session i did extremely well and killed two birds with one stone scoring my first 1k and my first 2k days ever. good times!

tg

movin on up

sat down the last two nites for short sessions and made about $700 over 1k hands which breaks the 16k threshold bankroll required to play 2/4nl.

i think im better prepared for the move up to 2/4 than i have been in my previous move ups to .50/1.00 and 1/2. i know i've played with quite a few 2/4 regs that also play 1/2 but i'll be prepared for a much tougher challenge. i expect there to be a lot less fish and a lot of tougher opponents that probably drop down from 3/6 and 5/10 at times so im going to stay on top of my game selection as there are still a ton of tables to choose from.

with that said, here's the graph of my journey through 1/2.

stuck/unstuck

played quite a bit since my last post and think i'm up maybe a $100 over 2.5k hands. my first session after my last post i got buried quickly and managed to come out of it in the green. since then it's been a bunch of break evenish sessions. on friday nite i played higher than i ever have before. i was playing with a mega fish at 1/2 who had been on a couple times earlier in the week. anyways he busts from the 1/2 table and i went to search him through the find a player to see whether he went to another table. there i find him playing full stacked on a 5/10 table. so i got on the waiting list assuming that he would bust before anyone left and i would get his seat and obv not play. instead i got a seat two to his left and sat down with the max 1k buy-in. i ran it up to 1.4k pretty quickly by bluffing the fish in a decent size pot and taking down some other small pots against the regs. i then lost a bit in blinds and getting 3-bet and having to fold. the biggest pot i lost was when the button limped, fish raised pot from the sb which meant nothing and i raised about 5x his raise w/ AKo in the bb. i made it larger since he was calling with a huge range. button folds and he calls, flop is 789cc and he donks out for pot and i fold like a girl. i left a short while later when the fish left and the end result was +$75.

i also broke my mtt cashless streak and cashed fairly deep in two tournaments saturday nite. the first was the fifty fifty and i finished 53/1070 or something close to that. the 2nd was the 28k guarantee $26 with 1300+ runners where i finished in the 60's somewhere. both tournies ended kinda shitty as i was in really tough spots with 10bb's and had no opportunities to jam steal. the end result was i ended up super short and a slave to the deck and got bounced in both tournaments. there must have been some spots i misplayed late but i guess im just happy to cash. i've got a couple $75 tournament tokens through the ironman promo so i'll probably play the 7pm a couple times to see if i can hit it big.

in all honesty i really felt like shit after busting those tournies and i can't really imagine how i was able to play mtt's exclusively before. i think when you have the experience of playing cash games and grinding out good money, playing x hours in a tournament and busting for 2x your buy-in just feels like such a waste of time. i was following the main event at the wsop and two guys that were probably top of the field skill wise when they got deep got busted out where they were waaaaaaaaay ahead. it would be so frustrating to play a tourny like that where you play great/run great for 6/7 days only to bust out as a huge fav. i guess thats just tournament poker but it seems rather sick to me.

every year i say im going to go play in a wsop event and every year when the time gets close i usually don't have the br to plunk down 1.5k in a 3k person tournament. this year however if i really wanted to go i could have. it wouldn't have been smart from a br management perspective but it wouldn't have set me back much at all. however when i look at the situation, what would i rather do: a) plunk 1.5k down on a wsop event or b) plunk down 1.5k in a live 5/10 game a take a shot. right now i'd much rather b and maybe i've truly lost my hunger to be a donkament champion. i still have a goal to go to the wsop next year, and probably stay for a good week or so but my plan is to play only cash games. im actually thinking that i might not even put a dime towards wpt fallsview (which i never have anyway) and instead will hope to have some roll and take a shot at some side games.

meh, whatever, thats my ramble for the day.

tg

pretty good start imo

nice start to the month. im back feeling focused and think im playing my best poker ever. i think i might have had such a hard time focusing before because i was eating horribly and not working out at all. im back on a good diet and working out regularly and it seems to really help.

im playing tonight and am about $750 short of the 16k required to move up to 2/4 nl. i have like $200 in rakeback so if i can keep running/playing good maybe i can get there sooner rather than later.

tg

* also note, im playing a little looser now as well, hence the 21/17 rather than 18/15.

june results + lack of focus

Here's June results:

Holdem:

plo:







So i really sucked balls at putting in hands. i also sucked balls at plo but have stuck to my goal of not playing plo anymore. the last few sessions i've played i've felt like i have been totally unfocused and seem to be going through the motions. i need to keep working on this, maybe even reducing the amount of tables i play until i feel i get a better grasp on the issue. i played my first session of the month last nite and won about 2.5 buy-ins over 1200 hands and also played 3 tournaments including the 7pm $75, 8pm $26 and 8pm $163. i bricked all three without cashing and this has run up my cashless streak in mtts to 29 straight which was surprising. i knew i hadn't had a deep run in a long time but that is by far the longest streak of my career. i feel like i should try and correct this but last nite even having some mtt's on the side was distracting me from my cash tables so i think i might just dick around with the odd tourny when bored.

i just came across a post on 2+2 where some dude had datamined all the limits on ftp and had the 15 or so biggest winners at 1/2. there were a lot of regs that i battle with daily on there that were making like 8-10k a month which i found surprising. they were also putting in a lot of hands, a lot more than i ever could, but it has motivated me not to be lazy and play as much as i can as long as im in a +ev mindset.

i think the dust off at the plo tables may have been a blessing in disguise as i really think i need to make a lot more improvement before im ready to tackle 2/4. right now i think i'd be led right into slaughter so im going to work my ass of this month and see if i can back on track and make some progress.

tg

omahaha

well i've played a little over the last couple nights and am up about $270 in holdem and down $220 in plo. my play in the plo games has been bad and i've come to the realization that im kinda terrible at it and seem to be on constant tilt. for some reason the game just makes me irresponsible and impatient. i said earlier this year that i would like to get into plo once im a solid winning player at 2/4 and 3/6 nl since i'd have more roll to play with. then earlier this month when i started messing with plo i said i would just dick around with 25plo so i wouldn't distract myself from my holdem game. well, i got carried away with it, probably because i had early success.

now it has become a hinderance, it's ruined what was likely to be my best month ever and pushed me farther from my goal of playing 2/4 nl. i've also probably played just as much plo this month hand wise as i have nlhe which was not what i envisioned. im going to retire any plo interests for the time being and if i do have a craving to play (it is a pretty sick game) i will play 50plo instead of the cap games.

anyways, i might get a good session in tonite playing exclusively nl and then i'll be off for 4 days on vacation. im also really anxious to move up to 2/4 nl but won't until i have the 16k required for 40 buy-ins. if i have to i will probably add some rakeback money to my account to get me there. my game is going to have to get a lot better to make the move up profitably but i have a great coach and am confident i can rise to the occasion.

tg

quick update

played a little last nite in small amounts. dropped $300 in plo and made about $400 in holdem. i've worked on getting my pokertracker omaha setup with hand categories so i can better review my play. i went through every hand i played in a cap pot in the last few days and found some leaks. i'll plug those and keep going.

will play some today.

tg

earning my stripes

so up until this point in my poker life, i've never really played regularly at stakes where i can get really stuck. in my limit holdem days my worst downswings would usually be about $500 and i had a 2.5k roll to withstand it. in my mtt and sng days, i would frequently lose a couple hundred in buy-ins in a night if i took shots but never more than $700 or so. i think the worst sng downswing i had was i lost $1100 in a weekend 8 tabling $55 turbos but luckily had a final table at the same time that covered the loss. fast forward to now, im playing 200nl and my biggest downswing so far has only been about $950 but both times i got stuck that much it's been mid session and i've climbed out to get close to even. i think this is pretty lucky, not getting stuck more than 5 buy-ins at a given limit. from what i understand, downswings of 10-15 buy-ins in nlhe games are the norm and not to be unexpected. i've heard of 30+ buy-in downswings from people who were playing great and making zero mistakes but often these people think they play great 100% of the time and don't look at their game with the same eyes that they view others.

anyways, this weekend everything changed for me. i've been riding high, having my best moth ever only half way through it, learning some plo and being succesful rather than the disastrous attempt i made at the game last november and my bankroll was up to just shy of 15k. i came home friday and decided to play for an hour or so before going out and quickly made about $200 in holdem and $300 playing 1/2 & 2/4 cap plo. i was feeling great, only about $500 away from moving up and playing 2/4 nl and maybe sticking at 2/4 cap plo with shots at 3/6 cap plo.

i went out, had a great night and came home around 11pm and decided to play some more before hitting the sack. it got ugly from the start. i loaded up 6 tables, couple 1/2 plo cap, couple 2/4 plo cap and two 1/2 nl games. over the first hour i made another $100 or so on the holdem tables but had lost my $300 profit from earlier in the night on the plo tables. a half hour later im now stuck like $500 in plo and like $200 total for the day. i wasn't really tilted and felt challenged to get unstuck. almost all the players in the plo games i was playing were just horrendous. on guy was playing 96% vpip and 66% pfr and went from $150 when i sat to about $1300, busted that, rebought for $200, ran that up to $3600 before going down to about $2700 when i left the table. (all at 2/4 $160 cap) so i closed out my holdem tables and 1/2 plo tables in favor for some 3/6 $240 cap plo games. a lot of the players that were in the 2/4 games were also in these games. shit kept going wrong and eventually one of the 2/4 tables broke. i opted to stay hoping it would get going again since now i was stuck like a grand. some random sits down w/ a $150 and instantly starts potting and repotting any 4 and stacks me like 4 times in literally 5 minutes and takes off. now im a little pissed so search the guy and get on a wait list where he is playing 2/4 uncapped plo hu. i sit down with him and take an early lead, then play a hand brutally and get stacked for a full buy-in, get stacked again and he's sitting on like $1500 after starting with like $500. i manage to stack him for a change to get back within $500 or so and he immediately sits out and leaves. i go back to my other tables, win a few pots, lose a few pots before finally deciding to call it a nite.

the end damage was close to $2600 in plo and i made about $300 in holdem putting my end result at a $2300 loss for the nite. at the time i wasn't that upset, it sucked but i didn't think that much about it. the next morning though i woke up and felt sick about it, i quickly started another session saturday and was down another $600 quick. i took a break and went to clear my head and do some thinking. i came to the conclusion that:

1. plo is high variance
2. i tilt easily playing plo more so than holdem
3. the games are great
4. i should stay at 1/2 cap for a while and probably not move up to 2/4 cap until im playing 2/4nl and get used to bigger swings.

so with that i came back and erased my $600 loss in plo playing 1/2 cap by making over $900 and putting +$300 on the day. i also booked a win playing holdem. then yesterday i played a short session booking another holdem win + a $600 win in 1/2 plo getting me right back into things. i think my holdem winnings over sat and sun were prob $500ish meaning out of the $2300 i lost friday night, i've made back $1400 of it. not bad.

in a year or so, i'll probably won't even blink at these numbers but for now, it's my craziest weekend yet.

tg

still not playing lots

i still haven't been able to put in a lot of hands of late. most of my sessions are small 1.5hr 4 tabling sessions which don't really rack up the hands like 4hrs of 6 tabling but i feel 4 tables is optimal for me and my winrate drops off a lot when adding two additional tables.

over the week or so since my last post im up about 1k playing 1/2 and 2/4 cap plo (had a small loss playing .50/1.00 cap plo) and down about $600 in holdem. last night i really felt like i played poorly in holdem and need to step my game up. being up a good chunk early this month has probably caused me to get lazy with my play so i'll get back on the horse and try and put good hours in over the next few days. combined between the two games i've only played 5500 hands this month which puts me at a pace of only 15k hands for month. i'd like to get that number higher but i will also be away on vacation for 4 days and won't be playing then so im likely to be lacking in the # of hands i get in this month.

might play tonite and have a small window for a coaching session tomorrow.

tg

not a bad turn around

cap plo results:

bankroll now > 14k.

tg

pretty........pretty......pretty good.

last nites holdem results.

+ about $35 from plo gave me a 1k session. (only a $900 day though due to plo losses earlier)

tg

cap plo is killing me

after my quick $200 score during lunch yesterday i've dropped close to $700 playing 1/2 $80 cap plo. (down close to $500 overall) i did however make a little over $400 playing holdem last nite but it still stung basically because i know i was donating and playing horribly in the plo games. i played at lunch today again and got stuck even more but made a nice comeback at the end. i enjoy the games though and they are incredibly soft, im just playing as incredibly bad. the good news is that i think i know the adjustments i need to make to absolutely kill the game at this limit.

1. tighten up a smidge pre-flop (i think im around 26% vp$ip right now but closer to 20% is probably optimal)
2. quit 3-betting all but monster hands, especially out of position
3. stop c-betting completely unless i hit
4. zero fps
5. only stack off with top two + re-draws or better

it's a little cookie cutterish but i think it's probably good enough to earn a good buck. most of my losses have come from assuming oponents will fold but im getting called down by just ridiculous shit like top pair and one guy even called my turn c/r cap with a bare nut flush draw when he wasn't even close to being committed. so, stop bluffing, start value betting. i also had a guy call down three streets today with no pair, no straight draw and a 3 hi flush draw. games are good.

i'll play tonite, probably mostly holdem though. i finally got my holdem manager hud stream lined and it's fucking awesome. i feel like a new man with it and it's definitly going to help improve my game.

tg