2009 in review

Have been meaning to update this for the past week or so, but havn't been playing any poker at all so ended up never bothering with it. December started off a total disaster, I only played 6 days and averaged about -$350/day or about -$200/hour. To be fair to me though I ran horribly bad, instead of being down $2.2k I should have been up $450 but I sucked pretty bad at winnings pots when I was a huge favourite to. Last Saturday took the biscuit altogether with me losing 1.8k and after that I had decieded that that was enough for the month and was going to have an early end to my poker month and year. I decieded to play a few tournaments on Sunday which was pretty successful but in the end no major result. I did finish 14th/800 players on Everest for $2.5k but ran QQ into AA for a big pot and that dashed any hopes of a $57k first place finish.

So 2009 wasn't really all I hoped it would be, I went backwards in online cash, started the year taking shots at 5/10 6max and finished it playing 50c/$1 hu cash and 1/2 6max. I did have $8.5k of cash winnings and made about the same in rakeback so wasn't a total failure, I did withdraw a lot of my roll each month for about 8/9 months of the year so never ever really got to progress and move up levels, mostly moved down levels. I also was supposed to play the Irish Open but that never happened due to me basically being robbed of my ticket worth €3.5k. As it turned out I would not have played it anyway due to my uncle Michael passing away that weekend (God Bless his him). Graph of cash games below:



I guess the highlights for the year would have been winning a $13k package and living my poker dream of playing the World Series of Poker Main Event and playing at the same table with some truely amazing players like Elky, Kipster, Marty Smyth, Neil Channing, Scotty Neguyn, Steve Davis and Jamie Gold :). I made my first live final table in the Cork Poker Classic and taking home €5.5k for 8th place. I won the baords Division B heads up league for $2k.

Overall it has been a pretty great learning experience for me, I didn't run great this year and ended the year on a $10k downswing. I never played out of my roll and always moved down levels at some point. Sometimes I should have done it earlier but certainly never once put myself in any danger of busting my bankroll. Overall I made about $25k profit on the year which isn't to bad considering I do have a full time job and poker is getting tougher by the day to make money from.

2010 my aspirations would be to:

Start at 100nl HU cash, 100PLO and 200nl max cash but move up the levels more aggressively/quicker than I have done before. $50k online cash winnings (Fuck the 8k-100k challenge :) )

Play more live touranments including the Irish Open and WSOP ME with a side event.

Win the boards Div A heads up league

No doubt I will get a few hands in between now and 2010 but I would imagine 2k hands and a few tournaments would be the height of it. Havn't played now in a week and am really starting to look forward to 2010 already. Thanks to everyone that read this for the year and Happy Xmas and happy new year to everyone. Until 2010, good luck!!

October is in the past

The title is how I will view October, it was without a doubt my worst month ever since I started playing poker and there hasnt even been a close second. I lost in the region of $6.5k between 2 live tournaments, live cash, staking someone in a tournament and online cash games which was the biggest loser by far.

As I just said in my challenge blog, me starting sessions in the wrong frame of mind and knowing before I start that I wasn't going to be playing my best game has cost me a lot of money last month, I still have a decent bankroll so I really need to safeguard it this month. The last thing I want to do is go bust as I have no ambitions to start at micro stakes again and run my way back up.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I have made in the last 2 years regarding poker has been cashing out money. While this may seem like a stupid comment, I really should have cashed out less which would have left me overrolled for limits and be able to move up quicker. This is especially true when you are playing small stakes as the money you make for the month isn't that much so when you take this out your bankroll is not much ahead of were it was at the beginining of the previous month. So with this in mind I do not intend in cashing out in the forseeable future. I may reward myself at times but will not be taking out specific amounts at the end of each month like I have for the last year.

So for Novemeber my main goals are a change in my attitude when I start playing, quitting session earlier and playing well and results will be a minor goal.

Things can only get better (I HOPE)

Last 10k hands has been a bit of a nightmare, have being player terribly for the last 10 days or so and basically havn't being able to have a winning day. I havn't played in a few days now as I after I lost 5bi quickly in the last session I played on Wednesday I just said that was it until after the Boylepoker IPO which starts at 1pm today. So on the back of losing over $5k the plan is to win it all back and more in that today. But I have a sneaking feeling that won't happen. There will be 1500 others players to beat so its going to be a struggle and with a quick structure it will turn into who can simply run good so not looking good there for me.

My challenge obviously not going according to plan with me around the $4k mark at the moment, so will have a lot of work to do there considering I will be playing lower stakes when I start back into that next week. I've had a downswing like this twice before and also very long breakeven periods so I know that this happens and its no real shock. It's just a matter of keeping the head and riding out the storm. The good thing about these things that I usually find is that you go an a huge upswing after them so hopefully one is on the way very soon and get this challenge kickstarted again. Graph of the disaster below:

Started my challenge

Read all about it here

Not typing any more as my wireless keyboard has no juice left!!

Killarney and stuff

Headed down to Killarney last Friday for the €550 main event game, I struggled into Day2 with half the chip average so had about 20BB when I came back for start of Day 2. Day 1 was pretty uneventful, card dead all day long so just played very tight and played very little poker. Day 2 was more of the same really, I did pick up a few good hands but always got them in bad spots, my stack is about 15bb and I get AK in the BB after a limper in MP and the SB limps, I move allin but know I'm not getting called. At this stage of the day I would be happy to get called here as its early in the day and I would like to get some sort of stack together rather so I can have a decent stack for the bubble.

As expected I got no action here, I push allin a few more times and blinds go up and I'm back to 12bb again. I see 33 in the BB and after a MP raiser whos being pretty active makes it 2.5BB I go allin here but get called by AQ and the flop comes down a very scary JT5 with a K on turn to leave me heading for the rail.

I go play some live cash after this which I havn't played in about 1 year, I think it was this time last year when I played 2/5 in the MGM. The 2/5 game in Killarney was nowhere near as soft as the one in Vegas though. I had 2 young English pros to my right, (1 who makes videos for the biggest poker training site, Cardrunners) an old rock on my left and a few others who didn't do much wrong while they were playing. With the expensive rake this game turned out to be an unprofitable spot for me. I played until the dinner break in the tournament at which stage I was stuck for about €300. The worst thing about the game though was that I had no cash to reload. Max I could take from the ATM was €600, so going to have to sort that out in advance any more. Funny thing about live cash is though that I am kinda scared playing it in a way. I don't like losing real money, online I can lose thousands in a day/hours and not care to much about it at all, but in live games I wouldn't really like to flip for a €1k pot.

But, down there I did witness the funniest hand I've ever seen in my time playing poker. So the guys involved were a mid 20 year old from England, big build of a guy and a 25-30 year old from Dublin. So the Dublin is having a few beers and playing very aggressive. He's over bet shoving with his bluffs and slow playing huge hands. So the English guy raises to 800 and the Dublin guy calls. The flop comes down A56 with one club, the Dub check/calls a 1.2k bet or so. The turn is an 8c and the action goes check/check. A 9c on the river and the Dub checks and the English guy throws in a 5k chip. The Dub instant min raises it up to 10k (Earlier he done a similar one with 72 after he limped pre and made trips on turn, he also done it with QQ on an A and K high board and got someone to lay down a pair of As), so the English guy dwells for an age and makes it 20k, dub looks at his hand and at the board and anounces allin for about 3k more or so. The English guy is in distress now and is convinced that the dub somehow made a backdoor straight but obviously he is never folding and calls. The Dub asks him has he got and A?, english guys says no :) and throws over K7 for a straight. The Dub looks at his cards and looks at the board and is still not sure if his hand is no good. He eventually flashes JJ and leaves the table, much to the dissapoinment of everyone else at it.

One thing I have been thinking about the last few days is starting a challenge for myself. Someone else mentioned to me that they were thinking of doing a similar tone. Would basically involve turning $8k into $80k by being really strict with bankroll management and maybe giving myself a set time frame with clear goals along the way. At the moment I lack this and just take shots at bigger games when I feel like it. This approach hasn't worked well recently so maybe a change is in order. Will think more about this over the next day or so, but would like to start something ASAP.

September

Very dissapointing month this was. Started of reasonably well but had a lot of $2k and $3k losing sessions which gave a pretty stressfull month of poker. The main problem was that I couldn't seem to get 2 winning days in a row which lead to a very swingy graph



So in total I ended up about $2.5k after rakeback and bonuses BUT I managed to lose quite a bit playing online tournaments which I am going to have to stop buying directly into games that cost over $150, I bought into 7 of these this month and showed no return in any of them. I was quite unlucky in that I bubbled a super satellite for the PokerStars WCOOP ME which was worth $5.3k. So after taking the tournaments into account I ended up $1k in the green.

On brighter news I did buy my first car which I am delighted with so far, I got a 2007 VW Passat. It's a top of the range model and is in mint condition with only 35k miles on it. I bought it in Eniskillen and they bought it directly from VW who owned it previously. It has a lot of factory fitted extras such as heated seats, parking sensors, a VW bluetooth phone kit which is worth about €800, full leather, electric seats and has all the usual stuff such as electrics and AC etc. Really looking forward to driving her down to Killarney now for the Ladbrokes €550 game which is on this weekend. Came 28th/830 last year so would be a good weekend if I can beat this.

Live tournaments are much easier I think than online ones and also the fact that I don't get bored/frustrated as quickly in live ones as you don't really want to look like a fool in live games and I am less likely to spew off a stack (Already jinxed myself for the weekend) so fingers crossed I can run well but more importanly run well near the big money end as I failed to do this last year.

For October the goals will be to play 35k hands at 200nl and also play a lot of 100nl HU against easy competition.
Not to play any online tournaments unless they are satellites.
Do well in the Boylepoker IPO and qualify for the Paddy Power Irish Winter Festival or else buy into this and sell of some % to anyone that is interested.
Have $20k online bankroll at the end of the month: MOST IMPORTANT ONE

Thats it for September, was glad to see the end of it for poker reasons only as its nice to see a new month which I always look at as a fresh start, If anything eventfull happens in Killarney I will try post about it early next week.

First $10k month

Just had my best month ever. Online cash went pretty well with $5.3k in winnings from that and also the €3.7k profit from the Cork tournament means a total profit of $10.6k for the month. June was also really good but I ended up playing the WSOP in June so can't really count the $10k for that.

I did put in a decent amount of hands from Tuesday to Friday and made $1.5k over those 4 days so that helped things, that week was pretty swingy with me being in the hole for $2k at one stage but winning $2.5k on Friday turned it all around for me.

Goals for September would be to remain disiplined with my bankroll and just take shots at 400nl when the games are good. I would also like to play more 200nl HU as well, but will probably play most of my games at 100nl HU and 200nl 6max. I would also like to play some more tournaments so will try and make some time for them over the month. Poker Stars have a their big tournament series on in Septemeber so will try and satellite into a few of them. Graph for the month below:

Good weekend in Cork

Was down in Cork last weekend for the Macau Club Irish Poker Classic. I played the 2nd starting day and it got 158 players in total. My first couple of tables were ok, however I played pretty badly on the first 2 tables. I was playing 2 loose and just calling down bets the whole time, they were mostly situations were they either had the nuts or air, like I run AJ into K9 on a KKJ2K baord and such rubbish. My third table settled me down a bit as I had bigMickG on my direct left with a very loose guy to his left. Rob Taylor was on my right but there were no hassles there as he plays very tight. This table was pretty good to me and I finished the day on about 51k AFAIK.

Day 2 my starting table was ok again, no big names on it really until later in the day. I was a card rack for the first level of the day. I open AA utg and everyone folds even though I have probably been the most active at the table and I show the table. Very next hand its folded to the SB and this guy was a middle aged Cork guy who just wanted to see a cheap flop. He was asking me will I check if he calls and had being doing this the round before also. I was never ever checking to him and I was thinking this guy might be setting up a trap by calling. I look down at AA for the 2nd hand in a row and of course he instant folds when I raise it up. So AA back to back and I just take the blinds. I run so good yet so bad!! I do make a full house later on with A7 when I check back the A68 baord, turn is a 7 and I bet about 2/5 pot and get a call, river is the A and he leads out for 5k and I stick him in. He calls and shows 45 for the straight. He should know better than to be calling me with that rubbish!!!

Same story again a few hands later. UTG limps and I raise it up with AcKc, one guy folds and another guy calls. I put him on a decent hand here, a good pocket pair or maybe AQ. The flop comes down 89x with 2 clubs giving me the nut flush draw. I bet out and he calls. Turn (Jc) is the only card in the deck were all the money was going to go in. I bet and he raises allin over my bet, hes got QhTh and is drawing dead. My stack is now up to almost 100k and I am one of the chip leaders at this stage. The rest of the day I play snug enough, made a few moves that got picked off but played solid enough and laid down a few hands now and again which turned out to be good folds.

Next big hand, the button limps and the SB calls, I raise it up from the BB with KJs, the button goes allin and SB folds. It is about 35k more for me to call and there is about 15k in the pot. I really can't put this guy on a big hand here. I just kept thinking this guy wanted to see a cheap flop with a small pocket pair which I would be flipping against. I just never see him playing AJ, AK, AQ or JJ+ like this so I make the call and my read was correct, he had 88 but I failed to hit. Later on the same guy again raises UTG and I reraise him with QQ, his stack is short enough so I don't mind getting it in vs him here. Of course hes got the AA and I failed to spike a Q. so I've being allin twice so far with all 5 cards to come and lose both. Near the end of the day my table gets quite a bit tougher, Smoothcall from boards gets moved 2 to my left and we have a few buttons vs BB battles which I won!!! Then the overall winner gets moved to my direct left who was no fun to play with either. And to make matters worse the chip leader at the time gets moved into my right. We end up playing down to 16 players that night so I go back to Day 3 with €2k in the bag.

Day 3 my table draw is really crap, I am the shortstack at the table with all the big stacks, I fold and shove my way to the final table which wasn't the best draw either. I have John O Shea to my direct left where it will be very tough for me to shove into him as he will know exactly what my range is and will make the correct call on me most of the time. I end up going out in 8th with a short enough stack, I see 99 and go allin after the eventual winner raised preflop. He made an easy call with KQ as my stack was 9bb at the time I think. K on the flop and I was 3/3 loses for allin situations.

Overall I was pretty happy with how I played and I think the experience I got from the WSOP helped me a lot in this. €5.5k was also a good result even though I had sold 20% of myself before it started I still made €3.7k profit from the weekend after tipping the dealers and settling up with my investers. In October there are a few good tournaments coming up that I would like to play. I have already registered for the Boyle Sports Irish Poker Open and would like to play the Killarney event but there is no option to buy directly into this event without getting ripped off so I may just leave this one. Killarney is a bit far away and might just leave it out this year. The PPP Irish Winter Festival is on in October so I may play that and sell some % again.

Since I last posted up I have played 5k hands online and won about $250 from that, if only I hadn't of played like a donk in the last 20minutes of my session this morning that would have been 1.4k. :(

Yesterday I went playing pitch and putt with one of the lads from work out in Liffey Valley. I am shocking bad at golf but with a handicap we done some gambling on it. After the first 5 holes I asked for a handicap of 5 which was pretty bad deal for me!! We had €20 for the winner and also for every hole under I won by I got €6 and Kevin got €5 for everyone he done better in. There were also €10 for Kevin if he got a par and €18 for me. €60 I got a birdie and €25 for Kevin!! Very interesting prices. We also done a lot of side bets like giving odds for hitting the green and putting it. In the end I came up €27 in front, mainly due to pulling off a wonder shot on the 17th to leave me a 4ft put for the birdie. I sinked it and this put me up nicely for the day as I was getting destroyed by Kevin on the main bet. Kevin ended up winning by 8 shots so my 5 handicap wasn't the best deal for me.

This week I am working on Monday and have the rest of the week off. I am going to book my helicopter lesson that I got for my 24th birthday, it is almost out of date as I turn 25 on Thursday!! I also have 4 golf lessons to take which I got last Xmas, I am a bit slow at getting around to these things, so plan to take these lessons this week and kick Kevins ass at golf next time we play. Poker wise I will try and play 10-15k hands this week and also a few tournaments some nights as I won't have work in the morning. A few trips to the gym is also on the agenda.

Thats enough written now, will probably post up on Saturday with how the week went.

August going ok

August has been ok so far I guess, I've had a $3.7k downswing so far which was 21 buyings between 100nl and 200nl games. I did play pretty badly during these 3k hands and these swings do happen especially when most if it is at HU. 6max games have been going really well with some very good games on Full Tilt especially with the new ante tables that they have there, it makes the game a lot bigger than normal and pots can spin out of control easily enough. I am running pretty well overall this month so hopefully than can continue.

On Friday I am heading to Cork to play in the Macau Main Event, its a €1.1k buyin. I have sold 20% of myself which I think is a good idea as €1k is a lot for a tournament buyin. I did try a couple of satellites for this online but they didnt go well to say the least. I'm looking forward to playing it as it will be my first tournament since the WSOP. Upon reflection of the WSOP, I have thought about the way I played and some of the things I should do differently to give me a better chance of winning so hoping to put that into practice this weekend.

Graph of the month so far below:

July was good

July was a really good month for poker. Was in Vegas to play the WSOP, won a decent amount online. My heads up game is improving a lot and my 6max game is still very sharp. My online bankroll is in really good shape as I have plenty on 2 seperate sites to play 100nl heads up and also 200nl 6max.

My main goal for August which is to keep playing the above games and be ready in September to take shots at 200nl HU and 400nl 6max. I think the way I will do my roll for future games is to have 70BI for HU and 35BI for 6max at 400nl so I would need about $14k before I play these games regularly. Due to higher swings at higher limits I will add 10BI extra for HU and 5BI extra for 6max if I can move up to 3/6 or 5/10. I would really like to be within touching distance of 5/10 by the end of the year. This will take a lot of work between now and then as I only have 5 months and would need to improve my game a lot to reach these stakes as that is were the real money is in poker. A bankroll of about $45-50k woud be required to get there so its probably not realistic to be there by the end of the year especially if I cash out a lot.

Graph is below for July, up over $3k when I include bonus and rakeback with approx 25-30 hours played during the month. Had very little time for poker due to work commitments and also being in vegas for a week. This month I would like to be able to play 40-50 hours for the month.

Not much happening poker wise

Being really busy since I got back from Vegas so havn't got a chance to play much poker at all. I've got maybe 6-8k hands in so far this month which is about 25-33% what I normally play in a month for the last 18 months. When I got back from Vegas I worked 2 long days and then went to Killarney on the Thursday and Friday to be groomsman for one of the lads I was good friends with at college. Had a great time down in Killarney, great town to go out on the beer in but was a bit wrecked as I never really got a chance to recover the jetlag from Vegas.

To be honest I'm still not recovered I don't think. It just seems to be all go all the time. For example I get up on Sunday after 3 days drinking and have to drive from Killarney to Dublin to get home and get clothes and stuff for a return journey for work on Monday morning. Work a long day on Monday, then finish at 10pm on Tuesday night followed by a meer 10 hour today which is very short really for me lately. Weekend is coming up now so heading out on Friday for work drinks and then heading to U2 in Croke Park on Saturday night. The following weekend I'm going to plan to just relax and maybe get back to playing a bit of poker at the weekends once again. I have some golf lessons to take which expire soon and also a helicopter lesson to take so that weekend should be a good time to take them. But seeing as its a bank holiday weekend something will probably crop up.

Poker wise there is a festival coming up in Cork that I would like to play in. There are a few online satellites for this so will probably give them a go. I probably won't play it otherwise as the buyin is €1.1k and I can't really spend that much of my bankroll on one tournament. I might try and sell some percentages for it if anyone is interested. I guess I will see how this months results go.

Down in Bantry for work at the moment and there is not much to do here at all. I wanted to watch Dragons Den on BBC tonight but there is only the 4 Irish stations in my hotel room which kinda sucks. Will get it recorded and watch it again. There is some poker player on it trying to sell himself to the Dragons. They will buy him into some tournaments and he will give them a % back. Would be interesting to see how the Dragons react to such an offer. As far as staking goes I made a slight profit from the 2 players I bought stakes in for Vegas. I had 1% in Nicky Power who just transferred me a cool $300 as he cashed for the guts of $30k in the WSOP main event. A really nice man and was so happy to see him go deep in it. Was really hoping he was going to final table it so I could fly back to Vegas in November and watch him take down the $8.5million. 1% of that would set me going nicely!!!

Next update will probably be end of the month when I should have all my hands on the one laptop and hopefully produce a winning online month. Till then, good luck...........

Home time

So I got knocked out of the WSOP on Wednesday, really wasn't bothered in putting in an update that I busted out!! Of course if I had of made it through I would have been the firs to update!!! Heading back to Ireland now in a few hours, really long trip ahead of me and I am dreading it to be honest. I hate flying so much and the thought of an 11 hour flight and then another 1 hour flight scares me!!!

Vegas has went well since that, just after I bust from the main event me and another Irish lad go playing crabs with "Mc Lovin" from Superbad, hes busto and we all pool together $60 each and play together on the same table, 2 hours later we leave with $1.5k which was pretty sweet. I have just been on the beer since I got knocked out, went to an amazing night club last night called "XS", it really is the place to be in Vegas. The nightclub is out of this world and if you are single or even not you will definetly love it!!! Girls are amazing in there!!!

I played some live poker yesterday and lost $400, on my very last hand I pick up AA and of course I lose an $800 pot with them to an aggressive Norwegian high stakes player who is just after being busted from the main event and is playing some small stakes for the fun. He literally doesn't care about money!!

Overall the trip has been profitable, online I won about $1k for the 3/4 hours that I played, live was obviously not but I was freerolling here so not to bothered about that. Had a great time and played with some of the best player in the world, learned alot and really looking forward to coming back next year. Will keep things updated once I get back home with the usual online stuff. Also a bit hungover while writing this so apologies for any silly English!! Laters...........

Through to Day 2

I made it through to day 2, absoulety horrible stuff for the last 7 hours of play. I had the softest starting table ever and left it with 62k. I then get moved to a new table and I have Elky 2 places to my left (for those who don't know him he's this guy) and to be honest I was scared ****less of him the whole day, he just didnt seem to make a mistake the whole time at the table and chipped his way up to 120k by opening every other pot and not getting involved in any big hands. Pretty class act, and of course my dumb self tried to bluff him with 3 barrells. Hand went like this:

I'm at the table about 45mins or so and havn't had to show down a hand yet, I've got about 60k and Elky covers, so loose enough player who is starting to get a bit drunk limps in in MP, I isolate him with A7o OTB to 1100 with the blinds at 150/300, elky calls from the BB, which he has been defending quite a lot too, MP also calls. So flop comes KK9 rainbow and both players check, I bet 1700 and elky calls and MP folds. Turn is a 6c which puts 2 clubs on board. Elky checks again. I bet 3.5k and he calls again. River is a blank and I fire the third barrell for 7.5k I think. He thinks for 1-2mins and calls with AcQc. So after this hand I am in bits and quite annoyed, don't play a hand for ages because I am so card dead and also a bit tilty.

My stack dwindles down to about 33k or so and I get it back up to 52k again before the last break. After we come back, I make a bad call in a 15k pot and lose more momtemum, I play maybe 3 more hands after this were I cbet and am raised or I call and don't hit the flop and give up. Table was very very aggressive with there always been a raise and plenty of 3betting also with a few shortstacks who were shoving over raises and stuff. So after the blinds go through me a few times and just missing flops I finish the day on 22,175 chips. Was just glad to make the 2nd day tbh and get a new table draw. That table was easily the toughest tournament table I ever had to play on and was just delighted to get away from it with some chips. Easily the most frustrating day I've had in poker for a while. Also its pretty true that when you can't spot the fish at the table then you are the fish!!

Will be great to have today off now and I can relax and hopefully the jetlag will have left me by the time tomorrow comes around. Going to take it really easy today and definetly not playing any poker, was pretty sick of it after 10 hours of playing yesterday. Going to go to the Vegas Shopping Mall, then hit the pool/man made beach. Will probably go for some nice food then and afterwards catch a show somewhere.

Landed

Landed in Vegas yesterday, feeling a bit worse for wear at the momemt. Trying to get used to the time difference so stayed up until 5am Vegas time and got 6 hours sleep last night. Going to go shopping today now with Annette just to relax and try not think about poker or that too much.

Went down to the main even yesterday just for a look. Place looks amazing with all the lights and 1k players playing. The sound of people playing with chips is unreal, seen a few of the pros playing. Met up with a few Irish lads last night and went to one of the nightclubs in the Bellagio. Put $50 on black in the Rio before we went and of course we all hit. Had $25 on 27 as well as thats my birthday but 29 came up!! So we went to the Bellagio after this and I went to the ATM as I had no money yet. Went to bring out $2k and the ATM is charging me $55 so fuck that. The other lads are at the roulette table and of course I miss it because the ATM is trying to screw me and what do you know but 27 comes up twice in a row just as I am missing, just my luck!!

Went to "the bank" night club, Annette says its some famous place that people from the Hills go to but wasn't that great to be honest. Place is just a rip off. Cost $40 to get in and the was $15 per drink, pretty expensive for a night out!

Of out for the day now so will update tomorrow

June and Vegas

June is just over and it was probably my best month ever in poker. I won 2 satellites for tournaments in Vegas with one being the World Series of Poker. I have everything sorted for that now. I am registered for the main event, I just need to turn up on the day and show them ID and I get my seat number and I am ready to go. I got an email from the WSOP saying that I was registered and they also said that I could unregister if I wanted and pick up $10k instead!!

This was incredibly tempting for me and I was seriously considering taking it but ever since I started playing poker or watching it on TV all I wanted to do was play in that tournament. So now that I had the chance to play in it then I couldn't really turn it down. It's like the World Cup of poker with all the top poker players from all over the world meeting up in Vegas for the biggest poker tournament of the year. I guess it was the appeal of this that attracted me so much. It's not like there is many other sports in the world were you can actually play with superstars in their field. It would be like turning down the chance to play against Man Utd or Barcelona in the Champions League final.

I am heading off in the morning on a 6:40 flight to London and then a direct flight to Vegas, pity I hate flying but what can you do!! 4 flights in a week will probably scare the bejesus out of me but hopefully it will be worth it in the end. I will arrive in Vegas at 2:10pm (Vegas time) on Saturday and will probably just try and relax that evening and not do much, the following day I have off and will probably use it to go shopping or something not to stressfull. I don't intend to play any poker anyway!! The Monday is the day I am registered to start the event (Day 1D), there are 4 starting days for this as there will be 6-8k players in this tournament. Everyone seems to say that day 1D is the toughest due to more pros playing that day, but I think if I played the Sunday I would be to wrecked from travelling all day the previous day and the 8 hour time difference will have me in bits.

Regardless of wether I get through Day 1D or not I will have the Tuedsay off with more play then on Wednesday if I get through. Then on the Thursday is another break in the tournament were I am set to play in another small tournament that will have only 27 players with 6 WSOP packages for 2010 on offer and also $20k for the winner. I hope to do well in this, seems a bit more achievable.

Cash games in June went poor enough, hardly got to play at all and any time I did play I was probably too tired to be playing and thus ended up losing about $1k this month. I guess thats what happens when you work 99hours of overtime in 1 month!! Plus I said last month that I hadn't had a losing month in 7 months so I was due one at this stage I guess.

Thats it for now, I might bring my laptop with me to Vegas if I can get the screen to work again and keep this updated with how Vegas is going for me.

Run good continues

Had a really good week online and barely played at all!!! I qualified for another tournament in Vegas, it's a 21 person tournament were there will also be 6 pros/celebs, each of them has a bounty on their head worth a package to next years WSOP and $20k for the winner. Not many other details on it yet but should be fun. I booked my flights to Vegas, pretty dear at €809 and they are getting more and more expensive by the hour it seems.

I also just won the boards.ie Serie BA HU league were I won 10 from 13 and took the title with a nice bonus of $2014. Also played about 3k hands online and done well there too winning about $1k so a decent week and right in time for Vegas as well which suits nicely. Will boost my bankroll a bit if I want to play some cash games over there or buy into any tournaments.

Not much else to report on, still unreal busy at work, put in a 6am - 12.30 greuling day last Thursday were I was so wrecked I had to book an hotel for the night as I was too tired to drive home which was an excellent decision.

Also, many thanks to all the comments left, really appreciated. Nice to know people read it now and again. :)

Going to Vegas

Just won my $13k all expenses paid package to Vegas for the World Series of Poker

WSOP satellite night

I am registered for 3 WSOP satellites tonight. One on Everest, Ipoker and PokerStars. The really annoying thing is that they are all on at different times. Would suit me much better if they were on at the same time but they start at 6pm, 8pm and 9.30m respectively. I satellited into the $535 ipoker one, spun up $83 on my Everest account for the $503 buying and I bought directly into the $370 buyin for the PokerStars one. Satellites are by no means something I am good at but like every fish I may as well give it a try and hope to get lucky.

I have been trying some PLO at 50nl but it seems I am just as terrible at it. Played 200 hands today and just never won a hand and of course anytime I flop the nuts I get outdrawn in the sickest ways possible. But I am still going to keep trying at it. I have $1k set aside to get better at it with an account that has rakeback and a %600 sign up bonus so will just try keep trying to improve.

Thats it for now, bit of work to do shortly but then I will be back on this evening trying to luckbox a WSOP ticket, laters.....

Back at it

So after my last post I took a break for around 10 days which was refreshing. By the end of it I was looking forward to playing again. Breaks from poker are good as it can become quite consuming at times and after the last session I had it was definetly time to take a break from it. The month ended up respectable at the end of it but still not anywhere near were I want to be to cover my withdrawels each month. By the middle of May I was well on track to my best month ever but I had 2-3 very tilting session were I had 3 days of between $1.2k and $1.7k loses which were mostly from tilt and playing terribly.

I used to have this problem quite bad last year also but I managed to overcome it by quiting early on, for some reason I havn't being able to do that this month and will have to work on it. Someone said to me that you should just quit when you have made an amount that you are happy with but this amount is hard to define and also not a good idea to quit if you are playing well and the games are good. Quiting when playing bad and when the games are bad is a must though. There is no point in being down $1k and lets say your hourly rate is $50/hr and trying to grind back your $1k, in reality this should take you 20 hours to get back so whats the point in playing that extra one hour. I think at HU games this doesn't apply as much as you can be playing some guy who just ran really hot and is sitting there with your money. It's impossible and unwise to leave quit this guy if you are can let the loses unaffect you as you know that this guy is just in for a gamble and is going to donate all your money to some regular who you never have a hope of getting it back again.

So the results for the month are fair, I'm on a good streak of winning months at the moment with 7 winning months in a row now with an avergae hourly of $35 plus all the bonuses and rakeback which would probably bring it closer to $50. Graph and stats for the month are below, I had taken some shots at higher stakes when the games were good and my bankroll was about double what it currently is now due to withdrawing.




Also one last thing I am now top of the Boylesports HU league with 2 games to go, I think 3rd spot is guaranteed for me now, but really want to go on an win it. Hopefully I don't jinx myself now as its just over $2k for the win. One time!!!

A very very bad session

Was about to go to bed at around 10pm but went on PC for a few minutes first and then checked to see what fish were online. My biggest buddy fish who I was up 7k against before tonight was sitting at 6 HU tables so I just seen the $ signs in my head and couldn't resist. The guy has been feeding me all year took me for $1571.65 today. It could be worse as I am still up $5.3k on him but today was just a real kick in the teath. I was on tilt since I was down about $200 on him and just kept donating to him and he kept calling with the nuts and 2nd nuts against my air. When I did value bet my top pair and trips or straights he always rivered with some 2 pair, flush, house or what ever.

So far this month I am up about $800 with rakeback and that to be added on but my bankroll is in bits after this month because I have withdrawn close to 5k and days like today don't help.

My bankroll is down to $4.5k right now so going to take a break for a few days and then come back fresher next week. Have a couple of things planed for the next few days so that should keep my away from the tables. I'm going to have to go back to 100nl for a while I think and grind out again. I could probably table select well at 200nl and just play a few tables on my roll but will see when I come back. It's so dissapointing as I had been playing pretty well for most of the month. But I gotta stick to some sort of bankroll management before I tilt off the rest of my roll.

Anyway time for bed

Nice day

April

Good enough month overall I guess, online cash went well with me grinding almost 20k hands and also playing a few online tournaments but no success in them at all. Played a few satellites for the WSOP on Stars but had not joy in them at all which cost me several hundred dollars but I guess it will cost a bit more to qualify for a 12k package unless I get really lucky.

Cash went fine with me moving up to 200nl near the end of the month and even taking a shot at 600nl and 1knl when there was a big fish on, this made me $600 odd at 600nl and I lost about $300 at 5/10 so was still profitable. Felt pretty scary having 1k on the table again as I havn't played over 100nl or 200nl in about 3 months. Yesterday was a bit of a crap day when I lost $600 where I ran terrible but it didn't even come close to evening out how well I ran this month in total which was pretty sweeeet. Also I have had 6 winning months in a row which feels good :)

Heading to Liverpool tomorrow for a Stag party which should be fun. I havn't been on one before so looking foward to it. Will be trying to get tickets to see the Pool vs Newcastle match as well which will be tough to get I would imagine. I was working down in South Hill in Limerick today which was a nice eye opener to say the least. I took a few photos and video clips, might try to put them to music in the next few days.

Graph for the month is below as usual:

update

Not a whole lot going on really, have been playing away at 100nl mainly until I get to 50buyins for 200nl. Not to much further to go right now. I still have played a few 200nl hands when the gams are really good but mainly 100nl HU and 6max. I did manage to get a seat with direct position on a midstakes fish so I sat in and we played a 1.3k pot which I won, was ahead on each street and he paid me off with 2nd pair on a board that had a lot of draws but they all bricked, I had a full house so that was ok. It was a nice boost to the bankroll which takes my winnings for the month up to $2.5k so far.

I've been trying to get tickets for the Man Utd vs Man City game but not having any luck so far, the flights over are cheap enough so if I could manage to get 2 tickets now I would be sorted. I have been trying Viagogo but still havn't managed to pick any up, the tickets get snapped up as soon as someone puts them on sale. So I'm basically refreshing the page every few minutes while I am online.

I tried out MiniMaxMod for ipoker and I have to say that it is really really good. I was never one for using scripts while playing poker but this program does all that for you and even better it resizes the talbes so that you make them smaller because the ipoker software is so terrible it only gives you 2 table size options with one being too big and the other being too small and they are also badly laid out.

Thats it for now...

Update

April has been really swingy so far. I've been playing a lot of 100nl 6max and I have found it hard to adjust to these games after having not played them for over 6 month and also I have been used to playing mid stakes for so long and I seem to forget at times that 100nl players do not play or think like 400nl players which has lead me spew quite a lot. I am also playing too loose at these stakes, playing tighter and better postflop is were I will make money from these guys so I've been trying to do that and I am having much better results.

I have also being playing HU but not doing great at that as I just lose patience to much and I am always afraid that the guy will quit and run off so I try even harder to win it back off him which usually ends up in me losing more to him. So I know what all my mistakes are I just need to implement them. I have even being playing 50nl HU because my mate from the last post moved down levels so I sat in with him there. I actually had a losing session to him a few days ago were he was running so unreal hot that I just quit him as I wasn't really in the mood to play him. It's also no harm to let him win now and again as he is down a lot of money to me and I want to give him some encouragement to play me. Hustling FTW!!! Got it all back with good interest the following day so no damage done really.

I've played a few hundred PLO hands as well but don't really have a clue what I am at there yet so will try and watch some beginner videos on that soon. I also bought into a PPP Irish Open qua lifer on Sunday night but lost a flip and got knocked out in 24th or so, had I of won that flip I would have been in pretty good shape for a ticket but it wasn't to be. Results so far this month I am up about $600 or so which isn't to bad considering I was up $900 and then back down at -$600 all of which was in the space of 5k hands or so. Volume has also being pretty good this month with me having played about 9k hands already.

Irish Open is on this weekend and I had planned on giving the super satellite and the last online qualifier on PPP another go but won't be doing that now. I was also planning on heading out to it for a while over the weekend but not sure if I will be back in Dublin for this now. I guess if my some miracle that I get bought into this I will come back up and play it but otherwise I plan on spending the weekend in Donegal.

I also had really terrible news yesterday morning when my mum rang me at 8.15am and I just knew before I answered the phone that this wasn't going to be good news. My uncle/godfather died of a massive heart attack that night which devastated me when I heard it. I really was in such shock and cried for the first time in a long long time. I am heading down to Letterkenny for the wake now and the funeral is tomorrow. When things like this happen it really puts bad beats into perspective.

I found my best friend :)

So I came back from a break, or more of a half break I would say as I played some tournaments for the week I didn't play cash games, not much success in them apart from a few satellite wins. I got an Irish Open satellite ticket out of it which I must play tomorrow night as there doesn't seem to be a hope in hell of me getting an Irish Open ticket any other way :( :(

So when I returned to cash I found a guy on ipoker who recovered me from a near 3k loss into a winning month which I am gratefull to him for. I think this guy deserves a graph of his own against me were I will display his stats vs mine and we can examine the difference!!! Only joking about the examining!! Here it is:



Bad news is that I think I have busted him, poor guy was actually a winning player if he take out the 48buyins he lost to me which is really really sick when I think of it. When I played him earlier he wouldn't top up once he fell below 100bb which he always used to before but he let himself wittle down to 21bb earlier and then quit, lets hope hes wins a big tournament soon or gets paid or whatever.

My own actual graph for last month is quite disturbing looking, I played so so bad at the start of this month and went on tilt so often while playing in heads up games which you MUST avoid or else your winrate will suffer so badly. All in all the month wasn't so bad as I made about 1.2k from cash games including bonuses which I am happy to take considering how bad I was doing when I last posted.

In other poker news I am doing good in the boylesports HU league with me winning 4 games from 5 against some very good opponents so hopefully I can string a few more wins together and challenge for first place and a really nice price.

So I have some goals for next month:

Play more 6max and get good at it again
Keep playing heads up games
Withdraw $2k from my roll for savings account and still be in profit for the month
By some miracle play in the Irish Open
Move back up to 200nl 6max when I have 50buyins for it
Play 2k PLO hands, HM just added support for it so want to give it a go now

Thats it for now, more regular updates to follow once again I hope

Taking a break

That's it really

....................... and a little challenge

Poker has being going really really bad lately, just nothing is working at all. I have lost all confidence in my game at the moment. 6max is going OK I guess but I haven't really being playing much of it at all. At HU I have invested a lot of time into it in the last 6 weeks or so and I am not getting any rewards from it at all. In total I am up about $1.3k from it but all that came from hands at 1/2 when a mate was sweating me so really I am break-even at HU which just sucks so so much after having played close to 25k hands at it so far. My results for the year so far are pretty miserable and the targets that I set at the start of the year are looking hugely optimistic and at the time I thought that I was holding back at what I could achieve.

I guess when I set a goal of $50k in cash games it seemed pretty easy to do as its only like 11buyins per month at 400nl and you have it. Problem is I am no longer rolled for 400nl as I have taken out much more money that I am currently making so even though i am up 3k this year my bankroll is 6k smaller than what it started off at in January so I'm just going to have to stop withdrawing for the time being until I can get my roll build back up to a reasonable amount again and be better rolled for 400nl.

I've being playing some tournaments in the last while and they are just soul destroying, its quite sick the beats that I have taken when being deep in numerous tournaments. I dunno, I guess most lads that play them would say that their is a lot of skill in them but if you can't win flips or AQ against AQ etc then you are fucked.

Anyway I actually started this post yesterday when I was really annoyed and pissed off so today I had a while to think about it and I also read Spencer James Blog which I find good as I like the way he talks about the game and seems kinda level headed and he also seems to be having a shit time with poker. So with those things in mind I decided to set myself a small challenge, I basically took a screenshot of my HM winnings for the year so far in each stake and game type and seeing as its got a lot of red figures in it I want to turn them green. So here it is below:



So the idea is to beat each stake below 2/4 for at least 5BB/100. Hopefully the 100nl 6max will be easy enough to beat, I'm not trying to beat them over huge sample sizes or anything but one thing is for sure that by the time I get it done my roll will be much better than it is now, currently I have about $8.5k online with about $1k more in satellites and tokens. So with a fresh approach and some rules for HU set in my head I hope to get back into the winning way again because poker just ain't any fun losing or breaking even. So with that in mind off I go to start this challenge!

Snow Patrol - Run

I present to you: Snow Patrol - Run from the O2 last night


I was in the O2 last night to see Snow Patrol, my favorite band and they didn't disappoint, it was a great concert and the O2 is a deadly venue for a concert.

I did manage to play a few hands of HU yesterday and got the craziest action I have ever seen in my whole time playing poker. This guy just didn't fold preflop at all for any amount of money or % of his stack, he was opening to huge amounts and re raising 90% of my opens so I got it in pretty light against him a few times but he got it in lighter and obviously won them all. At one stage he had $800 on the table and I had $100 but I got it back pretty quickly as he was just so wreck less and crazy and wouldn't fold a pair at all or a gutshot or any part of the flop at all so was pretty easy to win it all back once I had some kind of pair. I was so scared the whole time that he would just quit me but thankfully he stayed to give all the money back and some more!!

months end

Have finished up poker for the month, played exactly 16k hands for some reason! Winning month online but not happy with it at all. I played about 75% HU and it didn't go well at all, the variance is pretty massive in it and I can see why you need a huge bankroll for it, 100 buyins is what I was using for 100nl as you feel completely comfortable at all times. I've had some 20BI swings this month in it and ended up finishing down $260 at it, its only 2.5BI so not the end of the world but hugely disappointing for me as I wasn't able to control my emotions once when I was running bad or getting coolered. I played one guy who was pretty decent and lost 5BI to him in 109 hands, I kept it cool and just quit him and said "gg" as there was basically no point in me playing on vs him, it wasn't even a deep table and I would find it hard to get money out of him unless I was able to cooler him like he done to me 8 times.

6max went very well over 3.2k hands or so, I am able to play a bit looser now after having played so much HU and I feel that HU improved my 6max game a lot as I am very comfortable getting into marginal spots and playing people in HU pots.

I have only played like 2k hands in the last 7 days due to being really really busy with work and I also have friends visiting me this weekend so poker is finished now for the month. We are going on the beer later to watch the rugby and then I am heading to the O2 to see Snow Patrol who have been my favourite band for the last 3-4 years I guess now, basically ever since they released "Run", this is probably going to be my 7th time seeing them live and can't wait to see the new O2 as its supposed to be deadly.

Monte Carlo was the one of the nicest places I have ever been to. The city is so small and really beautiful with everything being so clean and tidy. The place is ridiculously expensive though. In our hotel a bottle of Corona was €10 at the bar and a club sandwich was €27, just unreal stuff. Though to be fair they did upgrade our room for us when we got there so that was pretty sweat. I mainly just relaxed when I went over there and ate out each night. Went to a really really nice Argentian Grill in the Fairmont Hotel which is a top class hotel. I went for a the Wagu steak which was nice but not as nice as the one I had in Vegas, it had a lot to live up to in fairness.

I done some gambling afterwards in the Casino were I lost €100 at blackjack and won about €220 at roulette which was sweet, my girlfriend was playing roulette as well and she was always putting €8 on number 5 until and of course the one time she didn't 5 came up. It was so funny I thought, welcome to my world!!

I probably broke even with poker this month between live and online, the GJP deepstack tournament cost me about €1200 and I won about $1.5k online so possibly down a small bit but will probably be up with rakeback!! Graph below for online cash, played some sngs as well were I won a bit as well.

Monte Carlo in the morning

Going to Monte Carlo in the morning, really can't wait to just land there as I don't like air travel at all. I booked into a top class hotel so can't wait to just relax for a few days now and forget about work!

Haven't played much poker at all recently. I've started playing some 6max again and that's being going really well except that I am running hugely under expectation but I won't worry to much about that as I am still winning at a good rate, I'll only complain about that when I am losing.

Anyway just a quick update as I have to get up in about 4-5 hours and pack my suitcase for a 7.15am flight to Nice, here's hoping the weather is a bit nicer there and than it is here!!

Work has been busy

Haven't got a chance to play much at all in the last few days. I played a decent amount on Saturday were I ran terrible. I lost 13BI against one guy at HU. He was pretty bad and just got huge hands all the time and I kept having hands to pay him off with. They were mostly +EV but they all went his way and we even got it all in on the flop 250bb deep for a $500 pot were I had an open ended straight flush draw and he had QJ on a J high board and of course I never hit half the deck.

So Sunday I ended up going on a 20BI upswing and finished up about 18BI that day which was decent. I played for an hour on Monday and won a small bit, not even a full BI. I was playing in poor games against pretty tight players and lost a few flip against them. They are annoying to play against really because they never pay you off unless you can manage to get them on tilt and then its FUN!

Work has been very busy the last few days with me putting in very long hours and really early starts, worked 14 hours yesterday and 13 today so pretty wrecked now and won't bother with poker at all. I guess I should be grateful that I have a job these days and I wouldn't say I am complaining about it but its tough getting up really early everyday and I just be wrecked by the time I come home! Not much point in playing when I am wrecked tired so I will just leave it and hopefully Ireland will score a few goals and win this match, they are 1-0 down at the minute.

Also, I don't think I will bother with putting up results every Wednesday any more as it's just a pain to do sometimes. I will just put them up at the end of the month. Plus weekly results matter about as much as daily ones as they don't really represent anything at all. Instead I will just write up a post when I feel like it and post the results at the end of the month.

GJP deepstack report

Got knocked out of this late last night with 30mins left to go in day 1. I was pretty happy with my play all day but have been thinking about my exit hand quite a bit and have come to the conclusion that I should have folded it preflop but its pretty close.

I had a pretty tough starting table with some very good players and people with some very solid results on it. I even had the WSOP main event winner from 1999 on my table and to be honest he was probably the softest spot on the table. Rory Brown was on my right and I later on in the day I was able to pick off a few of his isolation raises against the early limpers who loved to limp and he loved isolating them so I had direct position on him and I done this a couple of times. The first hand I play was interesting, I opened J7s in LP and was called by Mark McKeever from the button. We were 1000bb deep so I wanted to get into a lot of pots early on and build a loose image and hopefully get paid of when I am able to make a hand later on. So the flop comes down QJx with no flush draw as far as I can remember. I bet 350 into the pot and Mark calls, turn comes another J and I bet 750, now it gets interesting. Mark makes a raise an he says he means to make it 2100 but he actually put in 20100 as he put in 2 10k chips instead of a 2 1k chips. He says he made a mistake but I don't know they guy from anywhere so I am a bit dubious, it could be some kind of angle shoot for all I know but to be fair it can be easy enough to mix up your chips at the very start of a tournament. Anyway I fold and show the J, he says great fold and later tells me he had QQ for a full house. He never showed so I don't know but he did say that he doesn't want to get into a raising war early on with QQ when we are so deep so who knows.

The next interesting hand I get is against http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=119895 when he opens in EP and I call with QTs, the flop is AJT and he checks and I check behind. The turn was an A and he bet it and I called, the river was a K making me the flush and he bet 500 into a 750 pot or so and I just called, I didn't see to much value in raising him here as he seemed pretty solid and most of the As in his range have made a full house so I just call and hes got KK for the full house.

I play a few more pots and I basically keep my chip count around the 48k-52k mark and maintain my loose image especially to Nick Slade who is taking a bit of an offense to me raising his blinds all the time
I raise another few hands after this and I am usually attacking Noel Furlong and Nick Slade's blinds all the time as they guys will both call with such marginal hands and I am happy to play lots of pots with them in position. After about the 6th time of me doing it he decides that he will call without looking at his cards. So that's fine with me!! I have AhQh and I make it 450 and he calls, blinds are now 75/150, flop comes down K9x with a spade flush draw, he checks and still hasn't looked at his cards, I check behind as I feel he will definitely raise me here as he's going to try and rep any 2 cards here as he says he will only look once I bet. So the turn is an A and I bet 650 and he calls, the river is another As and he bets 1150 and again I flat call as I feel hes only bluffing or has a flush, I really can't see him having the other case A here to often so I call and hes got Qs4s for a flush. Not looking at your cards it obviously the way to play poker!!

Noel Furlong has obviously had enough of me raising his blinds and for the 3rd time this day that I open and Derek Williams calls Noel 3bets from the blinds and each other time I folded, this time I have 33 and I had opened for my usual 3x to 600 and Noel makes it 3k, I go into the tank for a while and make it 7.4k. The 2 other times he had KQs and AQs so his range is most definitely not monster hands. Also, I have never once 4b or done anything crazy so I think he will give me plenty of credit here and he folded saying he had JJ. I also got the impression that his guy was really really old school and he will think that if I 4b here that I have KK or AA.

A bit later on I get AA and get 2 streets of value out of Mark when he folds Jx to my river bet on a J high flop. We then clash a bit later on in an interesting hand. Someone limps and this start an avalanche of limpers, so I complete in SB with 6d3d and Mark makes it 1100 in BB and everyone calls again so I peel a flop too. Flop is Q96 with no flush draw. Mark bets out 4k and it comes back to me after everyone folds. I tank it up a bit and count out ~12.5k hand put it in the middle, he folds TT after some deliberation.

I get moved table around the 8th level and I see one face I know, Sean Gregory whom I played with for a full day at the JP Masters game back in May. We tangled a hell of a lot that day, I raised almost every single time he limped in that day as he loves to see cheap flops with a huge range of cards. He is a good player and very hard to put him on a range of hands so a tricky player to say the least and a dangerous man to have a big chip stack. I fold all my hands for the first orbit or so just to see what the table is like, there are a few French players on the table, Troy Prendergast and a few other Irish lads.

So the first hand I decide to play is QQ which I have in the BB. Sean limps in early position and 2 more limpers follow, the guy on my right who I don't know the name of makes it ~3k and I make it 7.6k. Next thing I know Sean makes it 16k and I am in utter shock. Everyone folds around to me and I am getting almost 4/1 on the call with all the limpers and the original raisers money. Sean starts talking and he knows I have a big hand. I know hes got KK+, I really doubt he does this with JJ or AK and QQ is pretty unlikely. Sean says that he doesn't think hes good enough to fold it if I shove and he covers me and he could also be saying this with AA so I'm never thinking of shoving here. I was more thinking about calling or folding, I figure if I hit a set I will get paid here and I am getting immediate odds of almost 4/1 and about another 7/1 for his stack so I call and the flop comes A high and we end up checking it down and both know what each other has!!

I open 88 in late position later on and Sean calls me again, the flop is 8d9dQx and he check folds cheakily showing me a Td!! The blinds and antes go through me a few times and I am getting no spots to steal blinds as the laggy french guy and Sean are in the blinds when I am the button and they are never folding so I can't open too loose against these guys. So my exit hand goes like this. Blinds are 500/1000/100 and there is 35 mins left in Day 1. I have 44k and Troy covers slightly. Troy is a good aggressive player and looking back now I should have folded my hand preflop. Troy opened in early position to 3k and I called in late position with Ts8s, I was expecting the French guy and Sean to come along to but they didn't oblige. So the flop came down KsQsTd and he bets out 4k, at this point I had 2 options I though, call and see the turn and perhaps shove it allin on most turn cards or else raise now and commit myself to the hand as I will usually have 9-14 outs here and be in a flip situation unless hes got AsJs which would be a disaster. So I made it 13k and after 5 mins Troy shipped it in with AA and I missed 14 outs and was gone from the tournament.

Overall I thought I played pretty well over the day and picked good spots to make a few re-steals and a few bluffs. Thanks to all the lads that took a % in me and I hope you will know I put in my best effort at this. I plan on playing a few more small tournaments between now and the Irish Open, probably 1 or 2 at the weekend in the casino in Dublin.

2009 Week 5

I'm a bit late with this one. I didn't play any online poker on Wednesday or Thursday. I gave the supersat a go for the GJP deep stack event. Nothing really happened for me in this. I played fine I think, had a poor seat given that I the 2 fish at the table had position on me. They were 2 french players who were really really annoying with their slow rolling, collusion and running like gods.

The collusion was as blatant as I had ever seen, I'm not exactly sure what happened preflop or the bet sizing on the flop but the pot was 1600 I think on the turn, beardie French had bet a Kd2d2x flop and the shaved head Frenchie called. The turn was another diamond. Beardie checks and skinhead bets 500, they start talking to each other in french and beardie folds AdKx face up while the other guys shows him the Q high flush, now how this guy could possible fold here I will never know. We were still in the rebuy period as well so not a huge deal if he got knocked out. So he was basically getting 4/1 on a call and he folds top pair and nut flush draw!!

They also done some horrible slow rolling to some of the Irish players at the table to the fury of the rest of the table. They would turn over a Q on a QQ988 board and afterwards and wait for the other guy to show and then he turns over the 9 for a better boat. But enough about French players!!

February has started off pretty ok with with me winning about $400 playing HU despite playing pretty poor at times and running into coolers all the time. Avoiding tilt when playing is really tough. There has been a number of times were I am playing against some fish and he just keeps winning pots all the time because I never make a hand and he just cannot fold bottom pair so if you can't make middle pair its frustrating. More so when you eventually make a hand he folds or you 3 barrell yout 9-14 out draws but he calls you on river with middle pair when you miss. I've stuck with them and thankfully they havn't quit me to much yet and I eventually beat them but by the time you take the rake out of it you don't win all that much really!

I am playing the GJP deepstack at 2pm today. I really am looking forward to this event now. I have sold about 37% of myself which is a little bit more than I wanted to sell but I had mentioned it to a few people and didn't want to say no then when they said they would buy it. It's also good to know that I could have sold more than this which is good for confidence as well. I'm going to head for a swim now to freshen up for this a bit. I'm just after playing a few SNGs and some HU there for a little practice for it. Both went well, I played a $60 9 man which I came first and also a $104 double or nothing one which I came in the top 5 so doubled up there as well. Full Tilt site is still rigged towards me, played a $109 9 man one on it and with 5 left I get my money in on the turn as a 80% favourite but he hits his outs which would have given me a big chip lead on the bubble but it wasn't to be.

Results for the week were $400 in cash and $175 in sngs and -€210 in the super satellite for a poor week. Hopefully a big cash on Sunday can change all that around though!! I will try and do a trip report on my GJP festival.

GJP Deepstack

I've sold my 40% for this, thanks to everyone who took a piece. I'm still half thinking about playing in the super-sat but not quite sure yet. Its a 50/50 race at the moment I guess.

Have had a decent start to the month so far at HU, played 1900 hands for a little over $500 or 5 buyins so hopefully that trend can continue!! It's just so great when you sit down at a table and some guy sits with you. I check him up on table ratings like I do with all my opponents and low and behold hes a huge donater, pretty solid graph from this guy!!! At least hes going in some kind of clear direction!

January Results

By the end of January I was really really disappointed with my results, around the middle of January I thought I could be on for my first $10k month as I was up over $6k at that stage, but for some reason around the 15th of every month my results go BAD, but that's just superstition and I am not that type so won't worry to much about that. Graph and results for the month are below, I done pretty ok at 400nl and below but 600nl and above was frustrating over the all be it small sample.





So goals for February are very simple:

Improve my results on January
Play the GJP and have a good game at it.
Play only HU for the month but this will be subject to change and how well I am doing at it. Judging on yesterdays days play it may not last long but I will use the new month as a fresh start on it and forget about any good and bad results I had during January.

That's it for now, I still have 10% to sell for the GJP if anyone is still interested!! :)

2009 Week 4

Another disappointing week online, had 2 very tilting sessions in succession were I dropped over $2.5k between them. Best forgotten about at this stage and won't even recollect them on here. On the plus side my HU game is improving a lot and I'm starting to spend much more time playing it and really really enjoying playing it right now compared to 6max. I made $1.5k playing HU this week and lost a ton playing 6max.

On that note I have been moving money around online and have put 25BI for 100nl HU into 4 accounts and put the rest in the bank. No point really in having money online that I don't really need for my roll, hopefully it will be safer in the bank!! I'm going to learn how to play HU for the month of February. The aim is to get really comfortable with it and playing tons of pots against other reasonable opponents so I can move quickly up to 1/2. The games can be ridiculously easy if you game select well and try to avoid tougher opponents. Variance can be quite high so a big bankroll is paramount. I probably am one to make some rash decisions at times so don't be surprised if I am back playing 6max on the 2nd February!!

I tried a supersat for the GJP deepstack festival next week. I played uber tight early on, basically seeing no hands what so ever. I folded JJ in the very first hand on the turn on a T high board after and Trippie from boards opened UTG and bet the flop into 3 players, he also bet the turn into 2 players and after another guy called on a 436T flush draw board I gave up the best hand, just as well as I would have been rivered!!! Results oriented thinking for the win. I went out when my AK ran into AA and that was that. No complaints there, was some very good players in it compared to the rebuy one where I lost HU for a ticket around Xmas time.

I plan on buying directly in now, there is another live super sat the night before it but to be honest its on at a really bad time for me due to work and also the fact that its going to go on pretty late and the tournament itself will last 3 days its not great preparation for a live 3 day tournament in terms of being fresh and focused for a 3 day marathon. That's one thing I realized about Killarney, by the time the third day came around I was totally wrecked due to being nervous going into the final day and also the fact that I played 26 or so hours of poker over the previous 2 days which is tough going mentally and physically.

I will most likely sell 30-40% of myself for this as a €1650 buying is not an amount my poker bankroll can comfortably afford. Me playing it as a €1k buyin would be much better for me I think and would also reduce variance. If anyone reading is interested in taking a % leave a comment or PM digiman on boards.

Miserable results for the week are -$500 over 6.5k hands, will post a full graph of the month in a few days when its all over.

2009 Week 3

Pretty bad week results wise, 3/6 and 5/10 can put huge dents into your bankroll when you do badly at them so I've decieded not to play any more 5/10 until I build up a larger roll. I will still play the 3/6 games when they are going because for some reason there does be usually 1 really soft spot at the table but unfortunately the rest of the table I probably have 0 edge in so the swings will be even bigger when this happens. I deposited more money on Full Tilt and Poker Stars despite both accounts being rigged against me severely but I want to learn how to play HU so I just put more money on those sites as Stars is good for HU action at 100nl and the games play super fast so 2 tabling is really good and you get about 450 hands per hour doing this, plus the games are super soft at these stakes.

On other news, LOST is back on the tv in USA tonight and I am such a fan of the show I will be downloading it in the morning before I go to work so it will be ready for me when I get back home. I really can't wait to start watching it again. 24 has also started back on TV again so have been watching it as well.

My results for the week are below. I lost $3.5k playing above my regular game which is really disappointing but if you don't take shots you will never get anywhere so I will just try grind through them. Anyway screenshot is below:

Very bad session

Pretty awful session there, lost 2 stacks at 5/10, one was awful by me and the other one I ran trips into a house. Played 1300 hands over 2 session and both were awful and mostly at 400nl, in the 2nd session I was down 2k for the day within 10 hands and managed to get it back to -500 but then then lost another 1.6k in about 10 hands and just quit down 2.1k. To be fair I've had an unreal month so far so this was bound to happen sooner or later. Just gonna concentrate on 2/4 and 3/6 now for the next while till I get the roll built back up a bit after today's loss and a big withdrawal as few days ago.

2009 Week 2

I've been extremely lazy this week with regards to playing poker. Today for example I managed to play 3 hands. I logged onto the site and the games look pretty poor. There was really long waiting lists for all the tables and I got on one after a few minutes. I won all my hands as the table was breaking, they are all obviously scared of me and ran away. One guy stayed but the inevitable happened him and he lost all his money to me. He left and I waited for more tables to pop up but none were coming so I just logged off!! Laziness is a killer

But results wise its been a good week. I got 2k hands in and won a nice bit of money. I've been running pretty hot to be fair and also had my biggest winning hand ever when I won a $2.2k pot with AA against a very bad player which was very enjoyable. I played some more 5/10 this week and didn't really feel all that comfortable at it. There was one bad player on 4 tables so I 4-tabled it for about and hour and got nothing going at all, I was giving up on pots pretty easily which is unlike me but the higher stakes just got to me I think. I hope to keep taking stabs at it when games look good but will mostly try and concentrate at 2/4 and 3/6 as I took out a nice bit today as the dollar is strong against the euro again so its a good time to take some out. I'm going to south of France in a month so will be nice to have some extra cash over there as I hear its pretty expensive.

Anyway its getting late and I've work in the morning so will wrap up with a screen shot of my graph and results for the week.

Jman launches new training site

Just lost my biggest pot ever today when I was playing some 5/10. I played the hand like a fish and was pretty tilted after it. I won't even post the hand history as its so bad but it did involve me trying to bluff someone off an obvious QQ or AA and the $2070 pot got shipped over to AA. The session wasn't all bad though, I did manage to lose only $300 at 5/10 after playing pretty well on another table and losing the minimum with AQ vs AK on an AxxKx board so that was ok. I done well at 2/4 and 3/6 and won just over $500 in total so not a bad 30 min session. Games where pretty poor so didn't bother playing any longer and was just after losing the $2k pot so just quit.

I'm also updating my blog lists, I'm deleting any blogs that havn't been updated in a while and going to add in some other blogs from jman, aejones, krantz and FWF. Well I just tried adding in Aejones blog but it keeps linking to some post in the leggo poker forums so I will leave it out. Jmans blog doesn't seem to work properly with the RSS feed so it looks like it will be permantly stuck at the bottom!! Sort it out Phil next time you read this!!

Jman (My favourite high stakes player) launched a new training site today which I will sign up to later for 6 months at a cost of $229. The problem is I already have 3 subscriptions to other ones at similar monthly fees. I'm thinking of dropping Cardrunners as they are producing very little high stakes content recently from the likes of CTS and stinger and only get a video from raptor very rarely. The Brian Townsend videos are still pretty good but its hard to justify paying for all these subs when I only watch about 10 videos per month which costs about $90. Deuces Cracked is still really good as the Krantz and FWF video series are usually top quality and I have recently joined Leggo Poker for 6 months and intend on watching all the aejones videos there.

I'm still running very hot so the big downswing is not to far away I think. I've a feeling its going to come right now when I taking shots in the 5/10 games. A couple of buyins lost here is going to be $1k a go so will need to be cautious here for a while. Will put in another update on Wednesday hopefully.

2009 Week 1

So from this post on now, I'm going to be trying to update the blog every Wednesday with results and that from the previous week. I might put in random posts every now and again about more random stuff as I am planning on running a triathlon later this year and hope to put in some posts about how that is going or other random stuff like holidays planned etc.

So the year has gotten off to a flyer really, played 2.5k hands across all limits from 1/2 to 10/20 but the vast majority have been at 2/4. This will be my main game now as long as I have over 35BI for this. If the tables are poor then I will add play 1/2 as well. I have been actively searching all the games from 2/4 to 5/10 and if there is any soft spots in the 5/10 games I will sit in and play. I'm not exactly rolled for 5/10 but I don't think playing 1 or 2 tables of it when there is a big fish in the game will do to much harm if I play tight and try nothing fancy.

I did play some live poker this week, I met up with zuutroy (Robert) and RoadSweeper (Paudie) from boards for a few pints and some live poker in the Fitz. I actually hate live poker after this really tilting session. I played for about 2 hours and was completely card dead and ended up getting bored and spewing off money like a donk. I managed to lose €350 in about 2 hours so I went home around 12.30 and called it a night there. I went online to see if there were any soft games but the waiting list for the soft table was way to long, not surprising when some fish done $1.5k at a 200nl table. I got none of it but one of the players there wanted to do some flips so I said I would a $200 flip with him and in the first one my Ts3c beat his 6h8d and then we decieded to do one more and again I kicked his ass with my Ks5h beat his 5s6h. So that softened the blow of losing around $500 in the casino. I took the $500 out of my poker bankroll as I made a rule last year of my own money not going into poker, just poker money going into my personal account.

I am trying to tie my coach down to Monday evenings for coaching but hes a tough man to get! I hope to do one session a week from now on as I find it really helpful and definitely improves my game. It's great to have a high stakes player watch over you now and again when you are playing and ask him questions about tough hands and situations that come up.

So the graph for the week is below, very good week and a good start on my goal of $50k winnings for the year. So overall I won $2730 this week when I take the live poker out of the online winnings.