May roundup
Date: Sat, May 31, 2008
It's pretty suitable that i'm writing this roundup tilted. The session tonight went the same way that the entire month has... I was cruising along nicely then started getting screwed left right and centre. Fk May.
EDIT: Just after I submitted the post I uncheck blinds get sucked out on in a $1.3k pot to go from a 2 buyins up to a -$1.2k day. Fk poker right now.
2nd EDIT: -$1.4k ... dropped $2,000 in the last 45 mins to complete donkeys. Fkkkk poker.
2,200 hands at 3/6, +8.2PTBB, +$2176
16,300 hands at 2/4, -1.7PTBB, -$2237
Live cash games +$400
LeggoPoker & coaching -$430
Site loyalties +$1000
MAY: + rougly $1000
Wow really, fk that month. I don't believe that shit, having a -$1.4k day on the last day of the month. What a bullshit month. I guess I asked for it because I knew I'd be bothered if I lost a lot of money tonight. SO FRUSTRATING.
Most frustrating month ever in poker now over. Lets go June!
Veeeeeegas babyyyyy,
play loads live,
drink,
party,
profit?
Week as pro finished
Date: Sun, May 25, 2008
Woke up on Saturday morning after the shitty loss and didn't really feel like playing poker much, went out to enjoy the sun and hung out with a bunch of friends. Went to see the new Indiana Jones film too... man that put me on the megatilt...
*** SPOILERS ***
I rate the Indiana Jones trilogy amongst the best films ever made, the final 2 in particular I watched like a million times when I was a kid. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a great film, however as a fourth Indiana Jones film it SUCKED. Right from the start there was shitty hollywood cheese, one liners and crappy jokes about Indy's now being old. I'd say I hated the ending more than any ending I've ever seen in a film. All the alien shit, man what the fuck were they thinking, it was just utter nonsense and turning Indiana Jones into fucking Men in Black. Then CG segment of the UFO taking off, and the cheesy one liners about space at the end. Are you kidding me? It's Indiana Jones, not the fucking X-files! So ruined. :(
There were a ton of bits in the film that irritated the hell out of me. Shia LaBeouf (who was awesome btw) swinging through the trees with the Monkeys FAILLLL, Mac's entire pointless plot filling envolvement with the film MASSIVE FAIL, casting the Janitor from Scrubs... FAIIIIL, explaining every little thing in the shitty plot as if the writers assume the audience are stupid when noone gives a fuck anyway because the plot is ridiculously farfetched... FAIL.
All that said, the action sequences in the film are fantastic and the settings/props are great. It is probably great by regular action film standards, but it's not a great Indiana Jones film.
*** END SPOILERS ***
Man that was a solid rant. Anyway, needed to take Sunday off poker also due to the Indiana Jones tilt, went up norf and spent a bunch of time with my cousins and the family and generally just lazed about in the sun which rocked. So hmmmmm, not a very hardcore grinding end to week as a pro...
Here are the main things I took away from week as a (lazy) pro...
It's extremely difficult to stay disciplined
I thought this was way overrated but it's a lot more difficult than I expected. I was pretty easily distracted, couldn't get into a good daily routine, and generally just didn't put in enough hands.
A bunch of my time was wasted table selecting, soemtimes playing less than4 tables (as there weren't enough good tables available at iPoker), spending too much time on hand analysis, blogging and IM. Overall if poker was to be treated like a full time job I'd for sure need to be more efficient with my "working hours". I actually feel like I put in quite a lot of poker hours, and if my time management was more efficient then I would have got in an extra 1-2k hands.
Grinding on your own is lonely
I'm used to working in a large team and always having a lot of friends around to mess around with, chat, help each other out, take breaks, etc. Grinding at home it's just me and the computer. It's a LOT less fun. Also, sometimes I don't feel like working, but at least when I go to work there are people to talk to and stuff, however when you're not in the mood for grinding there's just grinding, which kind of leads on to...
When you grind part time you play when you want to play, this makes poker a lot of fun... I spend a lot of time at work looking forward to playing, it's also a good release from everyday life. However grinding full-time you *have* to play, and despite still enjoying it, it does become more of a chore because you know you have to get those hands in. You start looking forward to doing other things when you're grinding poker.
All of that being said there are a ton of positive things, like not having a boss, working your own hours, taking holidays whenever, etc, etc. I think with improved efficiency and self-discipline, and living with other professional players then it would be a lot of fun. However it wouldn't suit me personally right now. I think I'd need to be doing $10k+ months regularly to even consider turning pro, mainly because I really enjoy my job.
Graph is pretty meaningless due to being only 5.6k hands, but some people like results so here you go. It's useful just to laugh at the shitty last 1k hands anyway :)
doomswitch day
Date: Fri, May 23, 2008
Woohoo standard train wreck nearing the end of the week as a pro. Got 1.6k hands in and had my biggest ever losing day, dropping 6-buyins. $2k of that being in the last 60 mins. Played fine, just ran incredibly badly. Don't really feel that tilted.
At first I was a bit frustrated that it came close to the end of the week as a pro, then I realised that it just doesn't matter. Yea, it's just fucked all of my results for the last week, but it means absolutely nothing. Short term results like the last 10k hands just don't mean that much at all when you can drop 6 buy-ins in a day while playing well.
Analyse, accept, grind.
3/6 Donkey Battle
Date: Tue, May 20, 2008
There was a cool part of my afternoon session yesterday where this donk basically took me to pieces over about 10 mins... really pissed me off at the time and I quit the session because I was frustrated. Gonna go back over the key hands here and check to see if I made any mistakes, adjusting to superloose maniac villains can often be something I do badly.
SuperLagDonk plays like 60/40/4 with a WTSD of 32. Guy is just a complete spazzer, his spew is ridiculous, he floats and raises flop bets a ridiculous amount of the time... he's the reason I'm at the table playing 3/6. Nevertheless he put me in some difficult spots due to his wide ranges and aggression. Naming him SuperLagDonk as I don't really want to call him out on here.
Anyway, these hands all occur within like 10 mins of each other...
Hand #1 : River makes a straight on the board
Considering this guys image and the fact that he could easily be bluffing at this trying to take it down, is there any way I can fold here? Do you think he'd check maybe putting me on something like 89 if he didn't have an 8?
Hand #2 : Can't be +ev calling on the river here?
Given that I've seen the guy call light on the flop a lot, and float a lot I guess I have to give him a bit more credit this time as he's making the call OOP. On the river I doubt he value bets a Q 8 or 7, I think he must have QT, T8, T7, A7, A8, maybe J9. I know he's capable of making a small bet like that with no hand on a board that coordinated if he thinks his opponent is weak. How often does he bluff? Not sure... again tough spot. Difficult to get a handle on how often he'll have some retarded air hand here. Don't think I can call.
Hand #3 : Big river bets mean strength
I flat the BTN as I'm happy playing JTo in position against him. Very profitable. No way I can fold the river, however I do gain the information that he bets big with strong hands on the river, could have been to make it look like a bluff in this case. But it's possible he bluffs smaller.
Hand #4 : Double-barrell on pretty dry board
Preflop and flop are very standard here. Firing the turn here is actually a value bet, I feel that I'm genuinely ahead of his turn range... I'll get value when he calls with FDs too. When he calls turn I think he either has a piece or a draw now, river misses the big draws, he checks and I check behind. My AJ high is actually good here a lot of the time I think when he calls me 2 streets with draws.
Hand #5 : ... and I lose my mind
After the previous few hands I just feel beat up by this guy, and probably start tilting, wanting to win my money back and labelling him too much as a donk spewtard.
Pre is standard, then I flop the nuts, I just flat his bet as I didn't think there was too much value in betting. Probably should have just raised him up to like $58 here, I think there definately was value, and I can take the lead back. Turn he leads same again, kind of wierd, at this point I think his range is still pretty wide, like a Q, PP, or an 8, he has a piece for sure, never has air.
Now the river should define whether he has an 8 or not, as his turn bet could have been either a blocker or an 8. A small river bet would mean blocker, and my hand is probably good... but a big river bet means that he likely has an 8 and wants value after concealing it a bit on the turn. Then again would he take this like with 57/79? Not as often as he would with an 8 I don't think.
Think I talked myself into calling where I shouldn't have here. Pretty stressful playing against maniacs as the ranges are just much wider and you're under constant pressure from them... I'll get him next time.
Week as a pro - update
Date: Tue, May 20, 2008
Cheers for the comments in the previous post guys. I'm not going to be doing like daily $$$ updates or anything like that for 2 reasons really... 1) I can't be assed, and 2) I don't really want to post short-term results, it's not good for the poker mindset ;). So I'll post my results at the end of the week. I'm not really interested in results anyway, I know where my game is at right now. More interested in finding out what it feels like to play poker as basically a full time job for a week.
The biggest thing I've noticed is god damn it's hard to be self-disciplined and self-motivated. Have I got up at 9am yet? No. Have I gone to the gym yet? No. :S When all I really need to be worried about is getting some hands in at poker I don't really bother doing anything else. Think that's mainly down to me personally lacking a lot of self-discipline, I'm generally a very undisciplined person despite the best intentions.
Day 1 I put in I think about 1.3k hands. But I mean I felt like I played a lot of hands, I didn't feel like a cruised it. I still felt relatively motived to play, but I was easily distracted by other things. Day 2 I put in just over 1k hands, which would have been more if it wasn't for having to quit early. It'd help to be on another site too so I had juicier tables available, as I was sometimes only 2-3 tabling. I don't really think I'd have too much of a problem getting motivated to put in around 1.5k hands a day, 5 days a week or whatever. That only comes to around 30k hands per month though, which most would argue isn't enough. However I like to spend around 2 hours a day on poker outside of the grinding... reviewing hands for myself and others, railing people, coaching and watching videos. My point? Putting 40-50k hands in per month would be very difficult to sustain unless you're playing 8+ tables, so I've got a lot of respect for professional players who do pull that off.
So yea, they're the 2 main points that have stuck out at me so far. There's been a ton of intersting play over the last couple of days as I've been playing with the regs a lot more which is a lot of fun. Was about to wind up the session to take a break tonight when this hand came up...
Interesting Hand
$2/$4 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.comHero ($828.30) UTG+1 ($422.70) CO ($510.50) BTN ($387.60) SB ($694.90) BB ($400.00)
Pre-flop: ($6, 6 players) Hero is UTG
Hero raises to $14, 3 folds, SB calls $12, 1 fold
My table image is really aggro. I took a buy-in off of villain about 20 hands ago in a hand that he played like a complete spewtard. Villain is 19/16/3, other than previous stacking hand i think he's pretty decent.
I think he's good enough to know that he can open his flatting range pre here because we're deep. So his range pre is as wide as Axs, broadway, scs and pps.
Flop: 
($32, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $24, SB calls $24
Flop is obviously bingo, he checks really quickly leading me to believe that he's - at least - calling any cbet, I bet regular sized and he snap calls. Almost certain he has a hand with some sort of strength now, like an A for a FD, I guess a PP still fits too.
Turn: 
($80, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $58, SB raises to $128, Hero calls $70
Turn is a great card for me as it makes the flush so I lead out wanting a call. He check-raises me about 2.3x, at this point i'm putting him pretty strongly on a flush. AK/KK are extremely unlikely as he 3bets me pre with them for sure. I don't really feel like he ever bluffs here, so I'm putting him on a flush almost exclusively. At the time I decide to flat (repping my hand as AT+) and let him lead the river where I'll move in, as the stack sizes will be perfect and I doubt he'll be able to find the fold. In heinsight this is probably a mistake, if I put him on a flush here then I should raise as there are a bunch of turn cards that could kill my action, like another diamond, K or the case 5 or A.
River: 
($336, 2 players)
SB bets $136, $136 to Hero ($662.3)?
The only hand I can put villain on at this point that could stack me is AJ. However I think I get a shove called by any flush (he calls like 60-70% of the time), AQ, and maybe AT.
So I shove, villain calls with... JcJh. Gaaay. I'm pretty sure my shove is still correct. Nice -$1.4k river to end the session lol. That was probably just a bad beat veiled in strategy, lol. I quit all tables real quick and don't play for the rest of the evening, which i'm happy with.
Champions League final tomorrow... Gwannn the Man U!
Going pro (for a week)
Date: Sun, May 18, 2008
My schedule over the past few weeks has been pretty ridiculous, usually going to bed at 2-4am and getting up around midday most days. I'd like to use the rest of my holidays productively and I think it would be a fun experiment to spend the next week as an 'online pro'. Getting into a good schedule will help me increase fitness, health and poker volume before Vegas.
Here's my rough daily schedule for through the week...
9am - Get up, breakfast
10am - Gym
11am to 2pm - Free to get lunch, hang out, etc
2pm to 6pm - 1st session, probably 1 or 2 hours of study (videos, PT, hand analysis from previous days weaktight hands) and a 2 to 3 hours of multi-tabling
6pm to 10pm - Free for dinner, chilling out, etc
10pm to 1am - Main multi-tabling session feasting on the evening fishies, spend 15-20 mins at end posting key hands on weaktight
1am to 2am - Chill out
2am - Sleepage
I think it's a pretty good schedule, will be interested to see if it works. I like the idea of the afternoon break to chill out and meet people for lunch, or just hang out and enjoy the sun in Edinburgh. Also plan on using it to get a lot of drums practice in as the studio hire is half price during the day. I like the idea of having a bunch of free time in the evening too after dinner as I like to play sports and hang out with friends during that sort of time. Obviously the times aren't gonna be super regimented or whatever, it's just pretty much a guideline. I'd be interested to hear what sort of schedule online cash game players stick to.
Had a sweet lazy Sunday today hanging out with my family and having a BBQ, just chilling out in preperation for getting back into things tomorrow. Here comes the grind!
Swongs
Date: Sat, May 17, 2008
The variance at 2/4 has taken a bit of getting used to but I now feel pretty comfortable with the possibility of winning or losing ~$2k in a session. I think a lot of that is down to reading The Poker Mindset over the past week, which is fantastic by the way... but also just naturally adjusting to the higher limit.
I had a bad session on Thursday where I played well but dropped 4 buyins. Took the day after off from online and played at Andy's on Friday night, 6 and 8 card PLO ftw... crazy games, lot of fun! Back to the tables today and ran like god. Plan was to play ~500 hands in the afternoon, then ~1,000 hands in the evening when the games are really soft however after a wicked afternoon I've decided to go out tonight instead.
Thursday -$1.7k
Saturday +$1.8k
EDIT: Got back in after some drinks and railed Ecu's lesson with Brian on mikogo/skype. Checked the tables at 1am and there are some superfish at 3/6 and a couple of great 2/4 tables. A sneaky 40min session later and we have my biggest day ever in poker... SHIIIIIPP IT!
Saturday +$3.1k
Dusk Till Dawn
Date: Sun, May 11, 2008
The club is fantastic, even better than I expected. Running of the tourneys and cash tables was super fast and very efficient. Dealers were fantastic, all seemed to enjoy doing their jobs unlike the miserable fuckers you get in the Gala or Stanley. Food was just crazy good, the DTD burger and Eggs B I had were perfection. Extra points for having really hot cocktail waitresses. Overall it's 10/10 for DTD! I'll definately head back to play side games if there are any big tourneys/festivals on in future.
Didn't cash any of the tourneys, didn't play all the well in the friday night £85... quality of play is definately a lot better than casino tourneys too. Blonde tourney was a lot more fun, great banter at the tables as expected but after the first break it was push/fold to me which was just incredibly boring. I mean there's just very little skill in playing with <10BB stacks, it's just boring... was longing for the cash tables. Jen Mason won the BB6 main event btw.
Got a good taste of what changes need to be made to my game to adapt to live cash. The main difference is that in general the players are a lot worse, limp/call a lot, and can't play postflop. :) I played about 6-7 hours of £1/2nl over the weekend and finished up around 2 buy-ins. Really liked being able to play longer sessions and build up information on the players styles, betting patterns, etc and find way to exploit them. It's nice to have a lot of time in which to make the tough decisions too, rather than the 20secs or whatever you get online. Enjoyed live cash a lot more than I expected, looking forward to Vegas!
Blonde football tourney was a lot of fun. Geo only just managed to get 6 together for the Scottish team and we put up a pretty good showing, coming together well in the last stupidly high scoring game against the Wales, it was like 5-8 in 12 mins. We did manage to get one win, even if it was against the girls team, to be fair though they did have 3 goalies!
At DTD
Date: Thu, May 8, 2008
Didn't bother with Dublin, and will likely give Riga a miss... bit late in organising things. Pretty happy to concentrate on cash anyways. Headed down to Dusk Till Dawn this weekend for the Blonde Bash, gimmi a shout if you see me there.
Cash this month so far...
It'll take me 10-20k hands to adjust to the new style Brian's teaching me, but I'm loving it. Will maybe post some details on the changes we're making to my game later, they're a lot of fun, really enjoying playing and learning at the moment. Also, I'm DAMN happy to be beating 2/4... long may it continue!
April roundup
Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2008
In short...
- 10k hands
- Lots of beer = not much volume
- Vegas house booked
- New poker coach, hookem148
- $500 profit + $500 loyalties = Roughly +$1k month
- Bankroll now $12,500
Pretty swingy month really with +2k and -2k type sessions. The downslope at the end was a -$1.7k night where I played everything perfectly but got beasted... meh. Kind of felt like I didn't really run too well this month, hard to tell much over 10k hands really. No point in over-analysing a sample this size, I'm happy with the way I played.Enjoyed my first session with Brian... looking forward to more next month.
Next month is the warm up to the WSOP:
- As much NL cash as possible
- Irish Masters in Dublin, Ireland
- Blonde bash at Dusk Til Dawn, Nottingham
- Olympic Open in Riga, Latvia
- Book Cali/Vegas flights
- probably lots more beer...
Will likely be offering stakes in myself in some of the events above, will post details soon.
Plans for next few months
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008
Ughhh, feel horrible today. Heavy one last night with folk from work, mixing drinks for the loss. Stomach says Guinness and champayne don't go too well...
Spending today just completely lazing about watching the snooker and relaxing to mark the start of my holidays. I'm basically off work for the next 3 months, except for a week I have to go back in for before leaving for the US. So I don't fully return to work until mid-july at the end of the WSOP. Preeetty sweet! :D
Played about 9k hands this month, been pretty swingy... my last session was -$1.4k. Up for the month, but not by much. So anyways, there's a ton of stuff going on and will be going on over the next few months. I should be blogging a lot more, certainly when I'm in Vegas I'll be blogging a lot about what's going on.
Finished picking people and the house, so that's booked now. Should be a blast, I'm sharing the house with Dan from LA, Pete from NJ, and Roman from Sydney. Couple of the guys are pros, and everyone plays MSNL cash games along with live tourneys. All seem to have pretty similar interests, the house has a plasma HDTV so Pete's bringing his 360/wii guitar heroes, etc which is ace.
Super fucking excited about the wsop! Really looking forward to meeting people and hanging out, there are a ton of people I'd like to meet. That said, definately ship me a mail or something if you're gonna be at the WSOP and want to grab a beer or come over and hang out. Will definately need to get some parties on the go.
Oh yea, here's the house... lagoon style spa, pool table, fitness room, and glass office ftw. Costing us $1k each for the month which I think rocks.
Been thinking about what I'd like to play when I'm across there and reckon I'll mainly play 2-5nl, some sats to the ME, and a bunch of tourneys. I'll be making a post about staking for the tourneys closer to the time, but I probably want to play a couple of $1.5k wsop events, some $330 and $550 venitian deepstacks, and a bunch of other stuff. Looking at around $5-6k worth of buyins, hoping to get 50% staked... it'll definately be a +++++EV investment for anyone staking as these fields are so soft, and it's a lot of fun to rail on cardplayer if you're not in Vegas. Will do a proper post on staking next month.
Here's what I've planned so far... Gimmi a shout if any of this stuff fits with things u might be doing, it's always cool to meet people and hang out when travelling. Looking forward to meeting Marc and BTimm, would be great to hang out with other folk too.
April
29th - GTA IV release
30th - Launch party
May
3rd to 5th - Irish masters in Dublin?
10th to 11th - Blonde bash 6 at Dusk 'til Dawn Nottingham
12th to 19th - Olympic open in Riga, Latvia?
24th to 31st - Week as a professional poker player?
Or maybe like Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Prague or something if people can be assed
June
2nd to 9th - Back to work for a week
10th - Fly out to San Fransisco
12th to 15th - Drive down the west coast to LA?
15th - Catch a lift from Dan into Vegas and check in to WSOP house
July
7th - My birthday, wheeeeee
13th - Fly out of Vegas, back to Edinburgh
New coach
Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008
I'm real happy to be starting work with Brian 'hookem148' Rue! My objective for the coaching is to plug all of my leaks at 2/4 & 3/6 and make the move up to high stakes. Brian moved through MSNL up to high stakes while being mentored by Taylor Caby and is now a guest pro for CardRunners.com. Brian has previously coached Verneer and SirNeb, really excited about starting work with him. I'll be taking advantage of a lot of coaching over the next few months, will be taking longer coaching sessions lasting 2hours.
I'll be playing the first session with Brian tonight, him railing my play, all 1/2 to start with.
Learn from the pros
Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008
It’s not a bad plan… however unfortunately I’ve had to part ways with my coach, Messiah. He’s got a new job working long hours so he’s not going to have enough time to maintain a bunch of poker students. It’s a pity to lose him as a coach, I learned a lot and still felt we had a way to go. Congrats on the new job Dave, best of luck and hopefully catch u in Vegas.
So with a few things changing it’s really time for me to re-evaluate my current poker learning process…
I’ve got a subscription to LeggoPoker which I really like, the quality of content in the videos is very high. Been looking at DC quite a bit recently too and it looks great and a lot of fun, similar to Leggo. Think I’ll definitely be signing up there soon. Keeping my eye on Stox too, some of the mathematical work TheBryce is doing is pretty incredible.
After the coaching went so well with Messiah I definitely feel that I’d like to continue along that route. It just accelerates the learning so much faster as coaches are able to pick up on your specific weaknesses and offer fixes immediately. It’s the next level above video training sites. So I’m currently looking for a new coach with the immediate objective of improving my 2/4 and 3/6 game, then making the move to high stakes. If you can recommend anyone please shoot me a mail or a comment.
In addition to this I’d like to increase the network of poker players I know – particularly guys who are playing mid or high stakes. It’s always good to have people to chat over hands with, particularly guys that are thinking at a higher level. Should be a fun learning experience in Vegas this summer too, with a bunch of strong players staying under the one roof. That said, if you want to chat any poker feel free to add me on any of the IM softwares, I’m ‘bazclef’ or ‘bazclef@gmail.com’… always up for chatting over hands, etc.
Cheers for the comments on the previous hand by the way... more to come.
Hand dissection #2
Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2008
On to the next hand... I think this spot is really tricky, be interested to see what line people would take here.
Shortie shove gets in the way of 4bet spot
I guess we can just ignore the fishy short-stacks shove here and it's more of a question of whether we want to 4-bet the true villain, SB. I think we basically 4bet here every time but should I bet an amount that will let me get away from the hand if he shoves, or should I just go ahead and play for stacks here?
My preferred play is to raise to $110 total, meaning villain would have to call $86 into what will be a $262 pot. It'll leave us an effective $260 behind, should I be thinking about folding if he 5bet shoves? Or is there a better way to play this akward spot preflop?
Cheers dudes
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