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: