40k hands done now

Had a bad weekend of poker, lost $3k on Saturday at 200nl. Ran $2k below EV again but also played pretty poor and made a couple of tilty plays. Got a bit of it back today but still down about 1.2k for the month after being up 1k on Friday. Volume wise its going well so far, may not hit the 60k hands but I will be very close and happy with it as long as I can be in profit for the month also.

I had a really sick hand against Martin Klaesser, hes a German Full Tilt Pro. He is playing almost all the time, I dont think hes that good but he does seem to pretty well against me. I picked up AA on the button, the cutoff was after opening to $6 and I raised him to $18, myself and Klaeser were $500 deep at $1/2 and he raised me against to $48. I went for a call but could easily have 5b him here but he sqzes so much that I know his range is mostly crap and we have had quite a lot of battles in previous hands and he knows I would be flatting everything I 3bet against him here.

Flop came down 7c9s3h and he check calls my $55 bet into a $104 pot. The turn comes a 6c which I am not that happy about as I think it does give him some 2 pair hands and straights. We still have $400 behind and pot is $215, Klaeser checks so I bet $145 and he check raises allin. I more or less instantly called, as I think with the money already in the pot I have to call against his range. I also think he could play KK like this a bit as well and would have lots of combo draw hands in his range. I only need 24% equity to call him and I am pretty sure I have it. I also wasnt bet/folding the turn either as I think that would be a huge mistake with the hand I have.

He turned over Tc9c and had still had huge equity in the hand (39%) and he took down the $1k pot by hitting the T on the river. I am not sure about his post flop line, I like his c/c on the flop but the turn is tricky spot I think, he cant fold thats for sure but not sure if hes better to c/c again or play it as he did. Interesting enough hand I thought and the turn from his point of view is the most interesting.

I got my Black Card status on FTP today which should give me an extra few % rakeback through cash bonuses that can be bought with the points that you accumulate. I didnt get up any mornings this week as I was still hungover and tired from the weekend. I also added up my loses from morning play and I was quite astonised to see that I was down about $5.5k from playing in the morning time. I actually felt the games were softer then but I had no idea I was losing so much due to me winning in the evenings and almost balancing it out. I am going to try and give it a go again this month. Funds in my PP account are low and would like to boost them a bit so hopefully can book a few winning sessions this week.

10 days in, 20k hands played

On track so far to reach my goal of 60k hands this month. I have avergaed 2k hands per day so far but the results have been very poor thus far. I really need to get it into my head at the start of a session that people do make hands and are not playing back at me all the time. I sometimes get the idea in my head that this is going on and just spew of a couple of buyins. Its the mental side of my game that I have the biggest problem with. Skill wise I think I am pretty good and will win a lot of pots but I just 5b shove too much and its probably one of my biggest leaks along with calling too much.

Im just after a short 40min session and won $500 and felt I played very well. Managed not to spew at all and won a couple of hands which was nice. Overall I am down $1.3k so far but will keep grinding at it and hopefully can post a winning 60k hand graph. I just need to focus on the mental side and take a few minutes at the start of each session to play calmly and in the right mindset. This is such a crucial part of the game so really need to start getting this right.

Getting the hands in

Getting very good volume in so far this month, have played 8.5k hands so far in 3 days. Unforuntately Im down almost $2k. Running really really bad, playing quite well though and have had lots of very interesting hands. Played a 4 hour session there this evening at RUSH poker and lost 10buyins at 1/2. Won 3 at 50/1 but ran shocking. I think I played very well during the session. In the space of about 15 mins I just didnt win a hand and lost about 8 stacks. The thing I am very happy about was that I didnt tilt and managed to recover about $500 but should really have been a lot more.

Going to take tomorrow off as will be too tired in the morning and have astro in the evening. No harm to after taking a battering this evening.

Looking forward to a new month

Its great how the mind works, October was my worst ever month at poker, lost over $8k in cash games and now with the arrival of November I can just put that month behind me and look forward to winning the loses back. Its great to be able to put October away and even though nothing really has changed it has a great psychological affect on your brain.

I plan on playing a lot this month, days are getting shorter and weather is getting worse so there will be more time to play as there is less time to play golf!! My goal will be to play 60k hands of poker which would be a lot more than I have ever played before. But with RUSH poker on Full Tilt I can get around 1k hands played every hour while only playing 4 tables. Despite last months loses and a large withdrawal I am still comfortably enough rolled to play 200nl 6max games so plan on playing that in RUSH. Also want to play on ipoker as I have much better rakeback there than FTP so will mix in 100nl games there as well so I can play 8 tables at a time.

There will be satellites starting now for the Irish Open and also the UKIPT in Galway so will try and play some of them also. Would also like to play 1 or 2 live games also. There are a couple on this month that look good so might try them. So the countdown for 60k hands starts tomorrow, I would say the chances of me doing it are about 50/50, really depends how I am running. If I start of badly I will find it much harder to get through them so hoping for a good start. Going to aim to beat the games for 3BB/100 (6bb/100) which is very ambitious giving that the games are getting tougher every day but best to aim high anyway!!

Shipped an IWF ticket

Just won a ticket to the Irish Winter Festival which is on in 2 weeks time in Dublin, 20 players with 2 packages, very slow structure so never really had to gamble!!

Cash games on the other hand are still going downwards, playing a little better but still a bit of tilt in my play at times. Won a small bit today but lost a good bit a few days ago so still well down (-8k).

I'm not going to concentrate so much on trying to get back to even for the rest of the month. Just want to start playing better when I'm playing, especially HU as I have a huge leak in my game there which is basically tilt control and making dumb moves on the back of that.

Anyways bed time!

Booked a win

Played a very short session this evening. 34 minutes in total, yielding $173. Played 500 hands of rush poker and to be honest I've no idea how I ended down $100, finished the session thinking I was up at least $100 but its very tough to keep track of your hands when playing it but non the less I was down. A couple of hands I didn't play great, failed to get enough value after a bad turn and the other hand I valued towned myself when I value bet KJ on a K high board and got called by KQ, but not too worried about that.

Opened a bunch of HU tables and two regular played me, one on Paddy Power and the other on Full Tilt, the PP guy hit and ran me, won a 50bb pot on his 4th hand and insta quit. It's one of the most frustrating things that happens so often when playing headsup. On FTP I played over 100 hands with the guy before I quit myself, could only play a short session and let him know that before we hand many hands played but he still bitched and moaned at the end!! But very happy to have 2 winning days in a row, only $5.9k to break even for the month now, at this rate I wouldn't make it but I just want to build up a few winning sessions in a row to get some confidence back into my game again.

One aim this month, get even

Had my worst start to a month ever, after losing over $6k in first 2 days. For some reason anytime I have a good month the following one is always bad. This has happened everytime I've had a 10k month I proceed to have a losing month after that. So with that in mind my only aim this month is to play as many hands as it takes to get even. So I am around $6k in the red right now. Today I played 3.5k hands and made less than $50. It was all rush poker but will probably mostly play on ipoker for the rest of the month as I have a better rakeback deal there and if I'm putting in a lot of hands I may as well see the benefit of that at the end of the month.

It's so frustrating to get my bankroll up to over 20k, then make a large withdrawel and a few days later is almost cut in half. My own personal plan was to have a $40k bankroll to start 2011 with but that is very unlikely right now. If I had of wrote this a couple of days ago I would have been pretty confident to make it to maybe even 50k.

Since I last posted I played a live tournament were I played like an over aggro monkey. I find it very tough to play live tournaments and will not be buying into any in the near future. I will try 2 satellites on Paddy Power for the Irish Winter Festival as there is 2 big guarantees on there in the next couple of weekends.

Anyway going to try and update every day I play this month to motivate me to make sure I make some money this month. After a fierce downswing I am a huge believer in just booking a win no matter how small it is. I think its good for the mental side of your game just to see that you've had a winning day. So when I go back to even today I quit and hopefully I can string a couple of winnng days together now.

Lovely graph so far this month below:

Vegas and other stuff

Got back from Vegas about a week and a half ago. Was glad to be leaving by the end of it as I ran pretty badly in anything I done over there. Tournaments were a total disaster, I played the $1k wsop side event, got it in with KK vs AA and then got knocked out with my AK getting outdrawn by AJ allin preflop. Next tournament up was a Venetian deepstack with me getting a decent stack in against a very aggro Euro who 4b shoved on me with K3s against my 99 and I couldn't hold. After that it was a satellite for the WSOP main event were my AK ran into JJ allin pre again, so was on to the last mega satellite were I first got 4 outered on the river by some old American guy and then just to finish me off with live poker in Vegas another old American guy does the 1minute slowroll on me with the AA when I had put all my money in preflop with the KK.

So enough of the bad beats, the rest of the trip was really good with my mate Nelius coming 6th in the Sunday Million for $48k. Was a pretty funny story as he called over to my hotel room to rail me as I was doing well in a few Sunday tournaments. He brought the laptop with him and decided to play a hyper turbo for the Sunday Million and he just finished up the satellite 1 minute after registration and the poor lad had to play it then as it was too late to unregister. He had only planned on winning some $T as it was 4th of July and the plan was to go out in Vegas So another one of the lads called over and we had a few beers and room service arrived with the dinner as it was about 8 hours into the Sunday Million and no sign of him getting knocked out at all, Final table came along with the first few pay jumps being $15k so it was pretty exciting stuff. Unfortunately his 55 couldn't hold against AQ and we missed most of 4th of July but ended up having a pretty good night after that.

Before I left I had finished up with my job of 4 years, handed in my notice for pastures new when I cam back from Vegas. Was a pretty big move and who knows if it will pay off. Luckily enough I have managed to get a temporary 5 week job which will give me some very good experience in an area that I really want to get into. Poker has also being going really well since I have got back with me re cooping all my Vegas losses and some more. Maybe I just spoke to soon, just lost heads up as I wrote this for a €2k tournament in France. Oh well!!! Could be worse won my biggest pot ever earlier though were I sucked out pretty badly against 1 player in a pot that was worth €2.5k. My 22 was too good for AJ and JJ on a 264J board with a magical 2 on the river!!

Anyway that's enough bad beats for 1 day

Vegas time

Arrived in Vegas very late on Wednesday night, left Dublin at 12.30pm and it was 12.30am (Vegas time) when I eventually got to my hotel. Turned out to be a pretty nasty journey with our flight getting delayed and spending almost 6 hours in JFK as a result. Thankfully the hotel was amazing when we got here. Staying in one of these, the room is just pure class and have a pretty decent view as well up on the 42nd floor.

So far results wise I have got off to a pretty terrible start, I played the $1k event today which started off really well. I was playing super tight for the first 45mins or so when I opened 69s in MP and the button and BB called. The flop came down Q55 and I cbet 200 into the 300 pot, both players called me but the button looked in real pain when calling. The turn then came a 7 giving me a gutshot so I decided that I was going to take another stab at this one as both players seemed pretty weak. I bet 600 and the button tank folded and the BB called. The river was a magical 8 and he put me allin for my 1.8k, I duely called and he said you are probably good. His QJo was no match for my straight.

So was up to about 6k then when the blinds have just gone up to 25/50, I raise KK to 150 and I get 3bet to 450 by a pretty tight player. The guy with the QJo from earlier shoved the last of his chips in and I raise to 1.1k and got shoved on by the tight guy with the AA!! He turned a flush and I was drawing dead. So then had my stack put down to 2.7k and played really tight again for another few orbits, when the guy to my right min raised to 100, I made a pretty big 3b to 425 and he shoved allin, my AK was no good though against his AJo and to the rail I went. Not much I could have done different. I have % in 2 others players so hopefully one of them can take it down for me!!

Have played some live cash as well which I am also down in, playing just ok at that. Standard is pretty bad so hopefully can win some back in that. Also played a bit online which went well. Paddy Power brought us out last night to a very nice restaurant in the Wynn. SW lived up to its reputation as the best steakhouse in Vegas. Had a 4 course meal there which was very nice indeed. We had a private room just off the main restaurant free drink all evening so turned out to be a pretty good night out. Feeling it today though!!

I plan to play some more tournaments over the next few days, the deepstack games in the Venetian look good so will play some of them and also will try some of the megasats for the WSOP main event. Will probably play some more live cash, playing 1/2 at the minute, will stick to that until I can build up some cash as I am waiting for money to come in from Neteller which is taking its time to say the least. Anyway time for some rest!!

Early night

Was planning a late night picking up multiple WSOP packages but just after busting out of 4 satellites. I played Cake, Betfair, ipoker and PokerStars. Was planning on playing Full Tilt as well but it was going to depend on how I was doing in the others. Seeing as I had busted the rest of them before Full Tilt started I just had no interest in playing it then. Not going to rhyme out my bad beats for the night but it would have been nice to run like normal and win a few allins but wasn't to be. Will try 1 or 2 live satellites when I get to Vegas as a last ditch effort.

Would be nice to qualify obviosuly but if I don't there are still plenty of other great tournaments on while I am out there so intend playing a few of them anyway. Only 9 days to go now till I fly out. Can't wait!!

Finished

Well I finished the promotion earlier in the week. Took me almost $98k hands and over $12k in rake to finish it. Ended up winning smallish in the end at the cash games. Was up almost $10k with about 3 days to go but ran extremely bad last Sunday especially at 3/6 and 5/10. One particular bad 5 minutes was losing with AA on an A35K5 board to 55!!, getting AA and AK both beaten by AKo allin preflop with both making 4 flushes. But that being said I ran pretty well overall, I don't think I'll ever take on such a promotion again as it took me 177 hours of play in about 7 weeks which is far too much poker for me to be playing. Took up a hell of a lot of my free time and I am really glad to have that back again.

So after it all now I have the seat into event 54 in WSOP, 6 nights in a 5star hotel, $1.3k in spending money and picked up $2.7k in bonuses along the way also. Now I still have 67k points so have the option of getting to 70k and getting a $750 bonus or else I can get to 100k and have a ticket for the Irish Winter Festival which is on next October I think, the ticket is much better value but its also hard to turn cash so not 100% sure what I will do there yet. In rakeback % terms it wasn't as much as Paddy Power had advertised but don't regret this too much as it worked out at a pretty good incentive to play as there isn't a chance I would have played as many hands otherwise and probably wouldn't have went to Vegas either unless I was to get a ticket in the supersats so the incentives were good.

Tomorrow night there are a number of mega satellites for the WSOP main event so will be playing 3 or 4 of them and fingers crossed can pick up a ticket for that. Failing that I will try 1 or 2 live satellites in Vegas for it. If I don't make it there are plenty of other tournaments on while I am there which are pretty good value.

Swingy graph of the whole promo below, some strange enough stats as well. The amounts I won and lost at the different currencies is weird. I guess its probably just to down variance rather than the games being tougher at £ and € tables at 200nl. Even though the winrates are pretty small I can probably put some of this down to not table selecting enough and always playing 12 tables or more. I am looking forward to just playing normally again and not having to grind out hands so much. Hopefully now this can help me get up to playing at 2/4 more often again as I had decent enough success in the small sample that I played there.

92%, almost there

92% done with 1 day left to go!! Probably won't get it finished tomorrow as I would have to play about 8 hours to get it done. From what I hear if I can get it finished in the next few days it will be fine anyway but would really like to finish it tomorrow. Will depend on the weather I reckon!!

Today went well with me getting about 4% done and winning about $3.5k, played some €10/20 when there was a good spot in the game but didnt run all that well and lost a small amount in this game. At one stage I had €3.5k on the table and a couple of players had me covered, was playing fairly tight and not getting out of line at all. €3.5k is just way to scary for me to lose so took the cautious approach by flatting with AK a few times against the better players but ultimately it came down to a flip when I put my money in vs the fish. Pot was over $3k which is by far the biggest pot I have every played and ended up losing it with my JJ not holding vs AK. I even flopped a clean flush draw but couldn't hit my J or heart and the the fish got some more money which he eventually gave back to the table. Was a good experience for me and hopefully sometime in the future I can play there again but be actually rolled for it and not a scared pussy cat like I was today!!

70% there

Good enough week $ wise but really finding it tough to get the hands in. Played 10k hands since I last updated on Sunday. I have won every day I have played since so at the end of the day that is more important than just getting hands in.

Off to Donegal now for the weekend, can't wait to take a spin on the new M3. Will bring Donegal a lot closer to Dublin now. It really is great to see all these new roads getting opened up, one good thing about the Celtic Tiger era!!

I probably won't get a chance to play now until Sunday evening but with Monday being a day off I will try and make up some time there, basically only 8 days to go now!!!

60%

Disaster this weekend as I din't get to play a single hand. Friday was a decent enough day with me playing 2.3k hands but was hungover on Saturday morning and then went to Cork in the afternoon. I got back up about 8ish this evening and had to do a few things to was around 9ish when I got on the PC. I opened up my buddy list and scanned the tables but the games seemed pretty poor. Combined with the fact that I was tired and didn't really feel like playing I just said I will let it go tonight.

In spots like this I normally just play anyway but I think I made a good decision and watched Sopranos instead. I know if I had of played for an hour and lost 1k or so I would just have been thinking "Why the hell did I bother playing?", last thing I want is it to cost me $1k just to make an extra 1% or 2% of the challenge done. Instead I will feel more refreshed tomorrow after haivng a 2 day break.

So now I have 26% of the time gone and 40% to get through which is approximately 40k hands in 13 days or 3k hands per day. This is going to be almost impossible at this stage to get finished on time as next weekend I have to go to Donegal and will find it pretty tough to get many hands in while I am up there. Going to be really tough going over the next 2 weeks!!!

52% now and internet problems

52% of the way there now with 58% of the time gone. Wasn't a very productive weekend for getting hands in mainly because I was too hungover on Saturday to do anything never mind play poker. Sunday I did manage to play some in between the sun and had my most profitable day ever in cash games. Banking very close to $4k, unfortunately on Friday I had one of my worst losing days losing close to $3k so a small gain!!

Since Friday my Internet hasn't being working. Done all the usual stuff with resetting the modem and unplugging it but wouldn't come back. I have a mobile broadband modem so I used this as a backup but it was pretty frustrating as it was not very reliable which meant a few disconnects. Luckily for me none were too costly. But this evening I was trying to get connected and even though it would connect nothing was happening. With UPC scheduled to come in the morning I gave the modem one last effort. After all I am a telecoms engineer this should be a piece of piss for me. So one last go at dis con and reconnecting all the cables and coax and then giving the modem a hardware reset after about 5minutes it came back online. So good to have the reliable 30MB back compared to the unreliable mobile broadband.

So hopefully that will allow me to get some hands in tonight. Not to many though as I have the LOST finale to watch. Was tempted to watch it this morning "as live" but was far too tired at 5.30am to get up. So back on the grind again!!!

39% but a frustrating day today

Played the most amount of hands ever in a day today, played 3 sessions in total today with 4.5k hands in total. The morning session was very good with me winning $1.2k and then the second session was also good winning $300 but then lost it all back and much more in the evening session which ended up leaving me down $1k on the day. Not to sure what to blame that on but probably a combination of playing badly, playing to long and playing to many tables at once.

46% of the time is gone now and I am a good bit behind, I really need to up the volume now over the last 27 days. So far I have averaged 1631 hands/day but will need to up that to 2145 hands/day. One of my main problems at the minute is winning while putting in such volume, I am losing slightly so far but this is mainly from tournaments. It's hard to find the right combination between getting as many hands as possible and also making some dollars. Really going to have to work on this.

Finally graph attached so far, pretty desperate stuff. The 4k swing in the middle is were I took a shot at playing only 2/4 tables and failed miserably with me losing every flip, missing every draw and getting coolered. All the hands were pretty standard I think but bad all happened in the space of about 100 hands. Also lost $1.2k in another embarrassing moment which I won't bother describing here :)

Would be nice to have a nice 45deg line instead of the mess below!!

Falling behind

Have 31% done now with a few losing days there now. Didn't play any today at all as I am too hungover to play right. I probably won't play tomorrow either and don't know what I am doing over the weekned yet so will have to make a very big push in the 2nd half of this. I will try and get up early tomorrow morning and get in an hour or two. It's so tough though to get up that extra hour early in the morning as I love my bed at that time.

To add to that I am not playing the best either, losing pretty badly in 6max games but winning really well in headsup games but you can never get enough hands in at headsup tables so have no choice really. I will just have to work a lot on my 6max games from now on. PPP are having a rakerace promo on their euro tables so I will be playing a lot of them to try and finish high up in that. I have done well enough in their other races so far so heres hoping for another top 5 finish in that

20% there

At the moment I am just over 20% of the way to Vegas. I put in a lot of hands over the weekend. I am finding it really tough to play this amount of hands and when you read about some of the prop bets on 2plus2 and similar I begin to realise how tough the bets they undertake are. I heard that some online pro played about 40k hands in one day which is quite unbelievable. To think its taken me 10 days to play less than half that its some going. The good thing is that I am winning at the moment and my hourly is hitting around the $50/hour mark now but it has been fierce swingy so far with me having a -$2k day and also a +$2.5k so I probably won't be able to read to much into the hourly until I have around the 100k hands completed.

last night I went kinda deep in a super satellite for the WSOP. I had satellited in through a $80 seat and ended up getting knocked out in 8th place with 2 $13k packages up for grabs but I was never really near getting a ticket. I wasn't picking up any hands at the right times at all. I must also try and satellite into the $700 super sat on PokerStars as them and Full Tilt have the best package on offer because if you end up cashing in the WSOP they buy you into a PCA event or the WSOP next year respectively so its best for me to just try and qualify on one of them sites.

Putting in a lot of hands

Since I've started this WSOP for free promo on Paddy Power I've 12k hands in 6 days which is a hell of a lot for me, about 3 times as much as I usually play in that time. Worst thing is I really don't have the time to play all these hands, Looking at HEM it has taking me 18.5 hours to play this many which works out at a measly $18/hour in winnings which is much much lower than what I normally make when I would be playing heads up or when I am playing less tables. I'm finding it really tough to play so make the best decisions all the time when I have so many tables on the go. At the end of the promo if I could make over $50/hour I guess I would take that.

It's pretty tough going as I am getting up an hour earlier each day to play before I go to work and then play for another hour in the evening (Dedication FTW). With me starting to get more into golf there really is not enough hours in the day at the moment. I really could do with a 26 hour day I reckon!!! Overall though I am 12% of the way there now with 12% of the time gone. I would like to play about 3.5k hands per day at the weekend and 6k hands over the week which would make 13k hands a week and should get me there with a day or two to spare.

I booked my flights to Vegas for the 30th of June to 15th July the other night for €550 which was a pretty good price. I am flying out that day with 2 friends so should make the trip much better, starting to look forward to it already.

March/April and Irish Open

March was a fantastic month for me in poker. I had my biggest winning month by far in cash games winning over $9k but lost about €1k in tournaments trying to qualify for the Irish Open. I went deep in a few satellites for it but in the end I bought in and sold off some % to a few different people through IrishPokerBoards.com. In March I showed a lot of discipline in game selection and playing at times when I was really focused and determined to play.

April of course was the downfall of me, I was pretty cocky and confident that I was beating the games really well and not paying much attention to good games and generally squeezing poker in when I didn't really have time to play. Like maybe I had planned to go to the cinema at 8pm and I would sit down at 7pm and say I can fit 30mins in here now and would end up losing a $1k and going off to the cinema then in a rush and down a nice bit of money which ain't great for your humor but loses like this don't affect me too much but in cases like this they are avoidable which is probably what makes them more annoying.

So as I said before I played the Irish Open. I was really looking forward to playing this from the minute I had decided to buyin as I have been dreaming of playing this tournament for the last 4 years and especically after being conned out of a ticket last year. The tournament itself was a €3.5k buying with 10k starting chips which to be honest is not good enough for the buyin. I've played much better structured tournaments before with buyins of about a 1/4 of the Irish Open and considering I am much better at playing with deep stacks in these games I was a bit disappointed and even more so when I had only a 1/4 of my starting stack by the first break after having to fold top house which was basically AA in my hand on a QQ8KQ board. This hand has probably bugged me since but after chatting to a few different people I think I played the hand optimally.

During the game this hand kinda had me on tilt as I didn't get to see his cards and it was bugging the hell out of me whether this guy was capable of pulling off an outrageous bluff there. After the break I nitted it up so much and managed to get my stack back up to about 8.5k for the dinner break. I then managed to get my stack up to about 16k and with half an hour to go I see AK in early position and get 3bet by an young active foreign player and we get it allin and I lose to his JJ. Afterwards I wasn't too disappointed as I felt I played really well over the day and after making a mistake or 2 before the first break I recovered pretty well to give my chance of having an average stack going into Day 2 but I lost the race and that was that.

Last Sunday I played a few online tournaments as I was doing really terrible at cash games and just losing $500+ every session I played so decided that I would try some tournaments instead which turned out to be a great move. I entered the $100 buyin $30k guaranteed on ipoker and beat 302 players after a gruelling 8 hours play to finish first for a cool $7878 which put the month back on track.

During the week I seen an offer Paddy Power have of sending players to the WSOP when you rake a certain amount (~$9k) so I am going to give that a go. It's going to be extremely tough for me to manage this as I don't usually play more than 20-25k hands in a month and this requires about 90k hands in 2months so I will have to up the number of tables and hours this month if I am to succeed. Hopefully I will get a chance to update on my progress on this more often as its a pretty big challenge for me to play that amount of hands but its probably my best chance of going over for the WSOP, bare in mind its only a $1k entry but it also covers an hotel for a week and flights and I would try a few super sats for the main event while I am there unless I win the bracelet in the side event.

Getting out of it

Still in the midst of my worst ever downswing in cash games but I am about about half way out of the $14k that has troubled me for about the last 4-5 months. Have been really picky with game selection in the last month which has no doubt helped me win at the rate I currently am. I've been playing as little tables as I can, often only 2 6max at times but I could have up to 10 open in the background waiting for people to sit with me at HU tables from 100nl up to 400nl. I would basically play anyone at 100nl HU no matter how good they are on PTR but at 200nl and 400nl I am not going to be playng someone that I don't think I have a decent edge on.

Hopefully as my bankroll grows I will be able to play anyone at 200nl and be less selective at 400nl as even though I have been playing fish mainly at this level I have managed to lose over $1k at this game alone. But this is really nothing as its not even 3buyins which is just nothing at HU but my point is that its a lot for me and the less edge I have on someone the more chance I have of losing buyins!! But at 100nl its good to play stronger players as it improves your game as there are much less fish as you move up the stakes and inevitably you meet better and tougher opponents so I need to be able to hold my own against these types.

Heading over to Liverpool tomorrow, staying there Saturday night before I get the train to Manchester in the morning for my first game at Old Trafford. Really looking forward to the match vs Fulham as I have wanted to see a Man Utd game since I was about 7 or 8. So hopefully Rooney will continue his form and actually plays on Sunday and United can stay top for the rest of the season now :)

Overdue update

Havn't updated in a long time as I have been on the worst run of my life up until the last 2 weeks I guess. Things turned around for me last weekend when I came first in a tournament for $3900 and I won some money in cash games for a change as well as collecting some rakeback and bonus ended up making this one of my most profitable months ever.

Have been up until now playing in tournaments, played about 10 tonight. Most went really bad apart from 2 on ipoker were I was going well in the Irish Open supersat until I shoved allin with A8o for a lot of chips only to get a very relucatant call from QQ. Then in the 250k guarantee I was going really well with about 65 people left and I was over the average chips but my 99 could not hold vs A8 which crippled me, would have moved into the top 10 in chips had a club not fell on the river. Ended up cashing for $1k in that.

Also played a load of other tournaments but probably broke even at the end of them. So after things going well in the last 2 weeks my bankroll has got a considerable boost and I am back in the green for the year now so hopefully onwards and upwards from here on now. With WSOP coming up in July, I would really love to be able to go back again this year so have a lot of hard work and some luck needed before July.

2010

So first of all Happy New Year to all my readers. Just got back into poker today for the first time this year. Was away sking for the last week so haven't played any poker in the last 11 days which was a nice break away from the game. Saying that though I have been looking forward to getting back into it after the break off and hopefully will be refreshed and will get back playing better than before. Things got of to a winning start in the short sessions I played today which is exactly what I wanted. Got some heads up action against a regular and destroyed him so that was a confidence booster. Won about $300 from him before he quit me and also played a couple of hands against a few other guys before they went bust/quit. I am well set up this year bankroll wise now after finishing 2009 with a few tournament results and winning some in cash.

The plan will be to play only 100nl for this month mainly at HU/6max but also to get some more PLO hands in also. Going into February I aim to be in a position to be playing 200nl 6max. I have sufficent money on 3 different sites were I am very comfortable to be playing my games so with that I aim to game select much more this year and try play the best games possible over my 3 sites. Towards the end of last year I started playing some heads up SNGs. I done quite well in the small sample that I played so this is something else that I plan to play more off.

I have tried to make up an excel document to track all my profits/loses for the year. I'm not very good at excel, I can do basic stuff but wouldn't be much use at working out formulas across multiple sheets but am giving it a go. I am just basically trying to keep a very accurate track on how things are going for me. Nothing else to mention for now, will post again around the weekend.