August is now done

August started of great for me at 400nl but ended badly to say the least. I got off to a great start at 400nl, I was running well and just not getting into any bad spots at all. Poker was going so easy, when I had a hand I got paid off and I was also able to lay down hands as well. Then something happened around the 13th August were every single big pot I was in was a pure nightmare, the most common theme was people playing badly against me and me paying them off all the time. Most of these are just coolers and I have to learn to accept them so once again a good learning month poker wise. At the end of the month I finished down $1650 across 200nl and 400nl with me losing around $6.5k in the last 12 days or so. I also had a few tilty sessions and there was several days were I lost over $1k but again this is nothing really to worry about when a buyin is 400nl.

The bankroll once stood at $15.5k during August but due to me cashing out $2k to buy an amazing 46" LCD and losing $6.5k its back down to around $7k. This isn't the end of the world by any means but is a big blow in my aspirations to have a $20k bankroll by the end of the year. In fact only about 2 weeks ago when I was ruling 400nl over a short sample I was thinking I'm going to be playing 1kNL by the years end. Dreams can fade fast sometimes.

The plan now is not to play any more poker until at least September and hopefully I can come back with a new self confidence in my game. When I start back into I think I will play 100nl for 10k hands or so and try to rebuild from there. I'm still rolled ok for 200nl but I think it would be no harm to play some 100nl for a while again. I'm also going to be 24 tomorrow, nothing much planned, will go out for a meal with the girlfriend and will most likely go back home to Donegal for the weekend. My trip to San Fran and Vegas is getting closer with it only being about 6 weeks away now so really really looking forward to that. I still have to book an hotel for San Fran, hopefully I'll sort something out there in the next week or so. I usually don't get all the excited by holidays but I really am looking forward to this one.


As usual I have my monthly graph above, pretty grim reading. Back in September.

My July, My July

Since I last updated I have taken some more shots at 400nl. They have went well in monetary terms but I did find it pretty tough. When there were no fish at the tables I probably was the fish so I stepped back and moved back down to 200nl again. While at 400nl I won 2 pots worth over $1500 each which was an amazing feeling I have to say. I was on such a high that evening, to be fair in one of them I sucked out a little. I opened 77 UTG and 2 fish call. We are all nearly 200bb deep and the flop is 478 rainbow. I bet into both players and I get minraised by the first player and the other guy folds. I re-raised him and he again min-raised me, I had a set so I wasn't folding and he showed me 56 for the nuts but an 8 on ther river shipped me a pot of over $1500. The sickest thing is this guy had just lost a $1500 pot to me 3 minutes earlier on another table so I ended up the day $1700 which was my biggest ever winning day in online poker.

The following day I played some more 400nl over the next few days and I lost most of what I had won the previous days. I have to admit I did get coolered a lot on those few days. I got AK in very far behind twice, QQ in vs AA and I lost AA to AQs. All those hands I got all the money in preflop and didn't win anything. Other than these I think I played well enough but I think I got a very cheap lesson in that I am not rolled for these games even with over 20 buyins. These hits are what made me drop back down and grind it out at 200nl for another while. I hope to be able to take a few more shots at 400nl in August. Most of these will be while I am getting coaching which has been working well so far. When you know that someone who is watching over you that you respect I tend not to do anything stupid and play very solid.

In other sorta non poker news I booked my holidays to San Francisco and Las Vegas in October for a week. I booked all my flights and also my Las Vegas hotel but I still have to book an hotel for San Francisco. I really can't wait to go. I'm going with my girlfriend and a friend of mine and his girlfriend so it should be a great time. I don't intend on playing any tournaments over there as they just take up to much time and I am going for a holiday rather than poker. No doubt I will play some cash games over there though!! I also want to go to a show, see the Grand Canyon and I read about this shooting range there that sounds like a good buzz. A helicopter ride over the strip is on the agenda as well. I'm going to start withdrawing $200/week from poker for some extra spending money while I am there which hopefully will allow me to do some things that I would not have done otherwise.

So the customary graph for the month is below. I really am delighted with how I done this month and I have to be honest I hope to beat it next month so hopefully the poker gods are listening and will give me some more positive variance for the month.

Half way review

I've been meaning to put up a post about how the year has went so far and as its been just over 6 months since I started at 50nl, so it seems appropriate to do this now. Looking back now, I'm not really sure why I couldn't beat 50nl but with the rakeback and sign up bonus I was rolled to play 100nl so I moved up anyway. Perhaps one of the reasons why I wasn't a winner at it was because I was running way to many bluffs versus calling stations and being overly aggressive in a game that you don't really need to be all that aggressive to win at. I guess I also had FPS (Fancy play syndrome) which just means trying to make the perfect plays/bluffs all the time. One thing I am sure of though I had really really bad tilt issues back then and I still have tilt problems but not to the degree as I had them back then. When moving up limits this will really slow you down and I spent quite a while at 50nl so my top tips for anyone trying to beat 50nl are:

• Get the basics right, cut out the limping, play your big hands strong and fast.
• Always play ABC poker, no need to do anything different to beat the game
  
• Make sure you have rakeback and a clear-able sign up bonus.
• Avoid tilt.
  
• Table select the best games (lots of NITS at 50nl trying to move up, loads of fish at this level so need to play against them).
• Sign up to a video training site, this will improve your play a lot by watching how experts can easily beat these games.

So I then moved onto 100nl and went on a heater at the start, making 20BI in about 4k hands so I was off to a flyer. I just ran really good, was putting coolers on so many people and rarely getting sucked out on and of course sucking out myself the odd time. I found the move from 50nl - 100nl really easy because of this but once I was settled in at 100nl and the heater was over I found things started going downhill and I needed to improve my game. The aggression at 100nl was pretty high and had lots of spewy regs stacking off PF with KQs, AQs, TT etc and I also found myself doing this.
At this point I took a step back and tryed to figure out what was the best way to couteract this. I figured folding to 3b was making me a lot of money. I could easily outplay most of these guy post flop so thats what I needed to do. There was no need for me to be getting into inflated pots with 78s and being OOP against some aggro guy. These hands play so much better in multiway raised pots not 3b ones. So my tips for 100nl would be:

• Don't call 3b OOP with less than TT/JJ and sometimes fold AQ. (This may seem weak but I found it to work well)
• 3b IP more than you do OOP. Regs at this level didn't like folding to 3b so you want to be playing these pots IP.
• Spew less, this is the biggest leak for all regs. They are just to aggro.
• Start figuring out good spots for value betting, this will improve your game a lot.

I took a very quick shot at 200nl when I had 20BI and well I was playing 50nl after that so enough said. I then rebuilt again and also moved sites. This worked very well for me as I again went on a heater when I moved to 100nl, I moved through 100nl very quickly and started getting some coaching and started taking shots at 200nl. This time 200nl went pretty well and I was up to 8k and was starting to think about 400nl again. Doomswitch then hit and I was back to 100nl again rebuilding my roll.
Around this time I decieded to get a new desk, comfortable leather chair and a new 24" moniter for the new desk. Set up below:

I think comfortable surroundings are really important when playing poker. I have the desk pointing towards the wall so its hard to look at the tv when playing so less distractions is good. The new screen is a great investment, I was able to 10-12 table without any overlap which is great when mulitabling. I really hated having to stack tables on top of each other and misclick quite often which is a pure pain.

So at the minute 200nl is going really well, I've also done a coaching session at 400nl and the games seemed good which is encouraging. I've got just over $9k now so I will try and hold off taking a proper shot at 400nl until I have at least 25BI. I guess my aims now for the year will be to have taken a few shots at 1kNL. This is highly ambitious but I am that way anyway so no harm in it. To play 1kNL I would really want to have at least $30k so time will tell if this is achievable. Hopefully it will be as I don't cash out to often. I'm also planning a trip to the US in October, going to visit San Fran and Vegas over a week, I've being to both places before but I loved them when I was there so no harm in going back again.

Below is all my stats for the year so far. 125k hands is a lot for me but I think I have learned a hell of a lot and I am 10 times the poker player I was 6 months ago. All the top players say that there is so much to learn in poker and I really am starting to believe this. I think I have come along way since I started playing 50nl in January. I've played a decent buyin tournament which I played well enough in. I've moved from 50nl to a stage where I'm starting to take shots at 400nl which I'm delighted with.


Looking at my stats I think its quite interesting how they have slightly changed since moving from 50nl to 200nl. There are constant trends in them all. So as I moved up through the levels the following has happened:

• Win rate has gone up in them all, but the sample size at 200nl is to small to really know how good of a winner I am at it.
• I've tightened up as I moved up levels but not to a point where I've got to NITTY, I would consider my 200nl stats as a decent TAG.
• My PFR/VPIP has merged closer to 1, 73.3% at 50nl, 81.8% at 100nl and 82.5% at 200nl.
• My 3b% has decreased, I put this down to playing better players who play back more at you so I had to decrease this.
• My 4b% has increased but this should happen as my 3b decreases my 3b range will have gotten tighter so my 4b range of hands is pretty similar, slighly wider if anythings.
• I am squeezing a bit more but hopefully I am picking better spots for it.
• My WTSD% has increased which I am a bit worried about but to be honest I am not really all that sure on the relevance to it for the way I play.
• W$SD% is fairly similar, I would love to get this higher but I bluff quite a bit so inevitably this will stay low when I bluff in bad spots.
• One thing which is good is that my W$WSF is increasing all the time even as I have moved up limits. I'm really happy with this as this is a really good indicater how capable you are as a poker player and how well you play post flop.
• My aggression has also increased which I think is natural as the games are more aggressive as you moved up.
• My 3 barelling is quite high as I do it quite alot and its even higher at 200nl than any other level. At 200nl I calculated it to be 5.84% of hands that I open with. This is probably quite high but it's not a stat I have really looked into and havn't compared it much to other players. It was 5.09% at 100nl so it just means that I am being more aggressive.
• So overall I think my stats are going mainly in the right direction and it shows that I have adjusted pretty well to each level I think.
  

So a recap on the poker goals for the next 6 months are:

• Play some more big buyin tournaments, the Killarney festival and the Paddy Power Winter festival. Playing one of these is a big ambition.
• To be able to beat 400nl and 600nl, with an aim to me ready to take shots at 1kNL

So thats it until probably August now where hopefully I will have more positive news, Until then good luck at your games.

Its been a while

Haven't got around to updating this in a while mainly because I'm playing bad. Right after my last update things went very downhill. At one point I was -$3610 on what I was. When you see the drop in my graphs you will see that I dropped $1k in about 40 hands, 4 of these were me just plain tilting, something I have obviously not gotten over. And once again I did $400 being an ass at 1kNL but hey I'll learn yet.


Things in July have been fairly swingy so far, I've had 4 -$800+ sessions but I am up about $1400 so far this month and I have played nothing but 200nl this month so far. I've been happy enough of how I've been playing so far this month. At the minute I am fairly confident about my 200nl game. I've racked in 22k hands so far and I am beating it for 4.25BB/100 or 8.5bb/100 so thats a fairly decent winrate but the sample size is to small really to take much meaning from it.
I've found the games a lot more aggro than 100nl and I've tightened up my game quite a bit since I was playing 100nl. I can have session at 200nl where I am 17/14 but so far this month I am 20/16/3.5 over 10k hands. I think I play my best around 18/15 when I try to NIT it up a bit and don't get involved with the insane 3b/4b that is going at these levels. In one session this month I was 3b 35/270 hands which is quite insane and 8 of those was from the same player who really was killing me and I dropped $450 to him that day, each time I shoved over his 4b, once with AQs and the other with 66, both plays aren't good so I gotta give him credit, he MADE me do it really so well played him!!

Currently my online cash bankroll is $7.6k. I really hope to be getting close to $10k by the end of the month and hopefully sometime in August/September I can start taking some shots at 400nl. This is where I want to be playing, the level above where I currently am!! I really want to keep moving up all the time, likelihood of me ever reaching high stakes game 10/20+ are slim to none but I will keep trying until I have resigned to the fact that it is impossible. Poker is only a hobby for me and the money I have in my account is all winnings so going bust wouldn't be the worst thing in the world but hopefully I will have the discipline not to do that. Hopefully valor will be back coaching me again after his WSOP was cut short due to a family death. My condolenscence to Gavin and his family.

My stats so far for this month are shown below, a few things I need to work on are my "W$SD%" and "Avg All-in EV%" as both are below 50%. I am also losing from EP and MP so far this month so I really need to plug those leaks also. Hopefully with getting in more hands and really working on my game I will achieve this. I have also signed up to Deuces Cracked which is so far been very good. I think Foxwoodfiends videos are excellent and he explains things really well.

I hope to have another update in before the end of July so until then. Good luck.

No WSOP, some APAT, tons of clapping and the usual cash.

It's being my 3rd eligible year to play in the WSOP due to my age and also since I started playing poker and I still haven't played!! This isn't a huge surprise, a few months ago I played a few satellites on Stars to try and qualify but I was only wasting money, played numerous Step 1s and never even made it on to Step 2, I could have played at least 7-8 of these and never to have progressed is just a disgrace I think. So what do all good poker players do when they can't beat a level or lose money at it......... yes they move up so thats what I did. I bought into a step 2 and was onto step 4 without having to replay step 2 or 3. So I decide to hold off on Step 4 for a few days and then one Friday evening I play, after about 4 hands I get a phone call and there is a mobile phone site down in Sandyford........ just great, have to go through the M50 traffic at 6pm on a Friday and leave me $215 buyin tournament. So I'm on the way over coming up to the toll bridge and I ring the network monitoring center and what do you know the site is back on air. Well this probably just sums up my WSOP attempt this year. I didn't play another sat after that and that was about 2 months ago now.

But I still really wanted to go as I thought my game has come on a lot this year and I have went from 50nl-taking shots at 200nl with 20Bi and moving straight back down to 50nl afterwards but I'm now back up at 200nl and very well rolled with over 40BI and getting closer to a magical 5 figure bankroll in so far less than 100k hands which is a good achievement in itself I think. I've also played a few live tournaments this year and played fairly well in them I thought so with that in mind I was going to buy into either the Stars 200 seat guarantee or the Full Tilt 150 guarantee but as it got closer to the time I realized that working Monday to Friday just doesn't really fit in with the playing satellites to 7am on Sunday morning. I could have asked for the day off and probably got it too but hell if my boss/parents/girlfriend thought I was going to take a day off work so I could play a poker tournament then this wouldn't go down well at all. Now don't get me wrong this wasn't really the reason I didn't do it. I just didn't really want it enough this year and I feel this time next year I want to be playing 600NL and 1kNL, then I will be in much better shape to be thinking of Vegas for the WSOP so I will have plenty of time and a much better bankroll to be playing such tournaments. I do intend to go to Vegas this year in October with my girlfriend and another couple, it won't really be to play poker thought but I'm sure I'll get a few cash hours in when I am over there.

I played the APAT on Saturday, was hungover as could be on Saturday morning, didn't get to bed to 6.30am but don't think it affected my game to much in the early stages anyway, later in the day I was getting tired for sure but in deep stacked tournaments this is probably to be expected. I started off on a table which has had 3 dead stacks and as these guys had paid in they weren't going to be lifted until they were blinded out which took about 5 hours, this left for lots and lots of easy steals and at one stage another dead stack came into my right. One guy from Birmingham wearing some Full Tilt gear had a dead stack to his left and 2 to his right, he had the best seat in the house as the guy who was button to his BB let him have 6 walks and this guy as counting them each time and letting the table know about it, unfortunately I was in way too early a position to be stealing them but that didn't stop me stealing other peoples blinds, by the time I was on 35k the biggest pot I had won was 4.5k which says it all really, the guy to my left who was just unbelievably tight I was able to take his BB 6 times in a row when it was folded around to me in the SB and he never played back once, same went for when I was on the button, nobody wanted to play back at me at all.

By the time I was on a stack of about 40k I got involved in a 36k pot against the only player at the table who was willing to play back at me. I opened AhJd to 3k at 600/1200 in early position and he called on the button. The flop was Ad3d3x and I lead for 5k, full sure I have the best hand and I was prepared to call a shove. he shoved for 9k more and I snapped called him, he tabled 7d8d with the flush draw and the fact that I had the Jd he was about 25% to win the hand, but he hit a 9d on the turn and even then I still had a good few outs to hit but it wasn't to be. After that I was back down to about 24k when I should have been on about 60k so it was a bit of a setback. My stack didn't get much bigger than this for a long time.

We got moved tables when we lost the dead stacks so I had to adjust a good because I had to go from 6 handed to 10 handed and straight onto a new table full of new faces. I played very few hands at this table, stole the blinds a few times and at this stage players were dropping like flies. When we got down to the last 30 people it slowed down a small bit as they were going to end the day when they got to 20 people or at the end of the 14th level, which ever came quicker. I was on about 25k and the blinds were at 1k/2k so I was in push or fold mode, I could never get a hand to push with and when I did someone else had pushed before me. I got 55 and 77 during this time but I felt they just weren't good enough to be calling off most of my stack with. So then a player with an 80k stack opens to 10k at 2/4k and I ship over for 13k more with TT and he calls with his AQs, I was feeling good about it as TT had been hitting sets on this table all day long, and when the flop came ATx I had the hand almost locked up. Now at this stage I felt is where I should have started pushing more to try and not get blinded out as the blinds were going to be 3/6k soon. Instead I played tight and eventually pushed with ATs and got called by AJ and he held up.

Now I was in deep trouble, we were on the 3/6k level and I had about 20k in chips and 1 more person needed to be knocked out before that day ended so it comes to my BB and I don't look at them until everyone else has, I don't usually do this but thought this was a good time as I don't want to be giving out any tells that I have 72o or something. So the SB pushes on me and I snap call him with my AJ, hes got 8sJs and even on a A8x flop which has 2 spades I get knocked out when the spade falls on the river. Overall I was very happy with how I played in this, don't think I done a whole lot wrong all day but just didn't catch the breaks when I needed to. I think I will play a few more live tournaments in the next few months, there is a €500 game on in my home county Donegal in 2 weeks so I might take a trip home to play that.

The one bad thing I would think about the tournament was the need to clap for every person that got knocked out, fair enough having a clap for the first knocked out and then one for yours truly when I was the last person to go on the day. It's just a bit annoying when you are in the middle of a hand and everyone all of a sudden and when it gets to the stage when people are getting knocked out quickly you are clapping every few minutes. Our table did have a really good clap when the first dead stack eventually got knocked out!! Was kinda funny to see people take a look around and nobody leaving the table!!

So I got in 5.5k hands of cash this week which wasn't to bad considering I didn't play at all on Saturday or Sunday. I ran good at 200nl and played less than 200 hands at 100nl. Will be playing 200nl full time now unless the games are really bad or I fall below 35BI for 200nl. I think I am adjusting well enough to 200nl and the added aggression so far. I started off really tight a few weeks back but I have opened up a lot more and have become more aggressive myself. I am also approaching 100k hands for the year so I will likely do an update with all my stats for each of the levels varying from 0.01/0.02NL to 10/20NL!!! Stats for the week and a graph are below:



Until my 100k hands update in a few days.......

A solid quiet heater of a week

Had solid week since I last wrote up here. I didn't play too much this week due to a mate being up for the weekend so had no poker on Saturday and very little on Friday or Sunday. Was hungover on both Saturday and Sunday and combined with the fact that I had little time to play I didn't bother.

Again this weekend is going to be similar, I have work day out on Friday. The boss is bringing us to the Rally School in Monaghan, I really can't wait to drive the Impreza rally car and the BMW, mk2 escort and the mini should be great craic as well. Heading on the beer then after than, followed by me playing the APPT in the Fitz on Saturday which is a 2 day event and should be good. Havn't played a live tournament in 6 weeks which is about normal for me. Hopefully I learned something from the JP Masters event and I can go deep in this one.

Sunday night I have bought in for the Full Tilt WSOP 150 seats satellite. The damn thing is on at 11pm on Sunday night so its not ideal. Its basically 1/24 chance of qualifying, there is one on Stars a couple of hours earlier but it works out at about 1/35 chance, buyin is smaller of course but I just decieded that if I was going to buyin I would give myself the best odds of going through. I could easily pull out of this at the last minute, will probably try a satellite as well as I'm not 100% comfortable with paying this much into a tournament ($535).

So to my cash games, I'm still grinding away at 100nl mainly and taking the odd shot at 200nl when there are some soft looking tables. I've been sticking to this fairly well and don't intend to play 200nl fully until I've got 40Bi for it, so cash BR has $1300 to go before I get to this stage. So I managed to play 500 hands of 200nl and 3.7k hands at 100nl. I done well in both and ran really good at 200nl. I only played the softest tables I could find and well it worked a treat. I won to pots worth $620 and $880 and a few other ones here and there. I'll post up the $880 one as I should have folded the flop but I decided to peel the turn and hit my set which turned out to be a real action card as it gave my opponent the nut flush draw on the turn and he went with it. Thankfully I held up and took down the biggest pot I have ever won. Screenshot of boards post below:

So the general consensus was to fold as he will only be firing the flop into 2 players with a strong hand and there are very few turn cards that I want to see and the size of the pot will be get really big and make it just to difficult to play.
So the weekly graph and stats are below:

So hopefully next week can go well with a couple of good tournament scores which would go down nicely. Would love to be able to go to Vegas this summer so fingers are crossed

It's been a crazy past 9 days or so

Things have been crazy since I last played, I've hit incredible bad variance at 100nl, played a tilted 18 hands shortstacking 2kNL, had a really good coaching session and done well at a small shot at 200nl.

So the bad shit first, well 100nl has been a disaster, I ran 11BI below expectation which has been damn hard to deal with considering I had played fairly well, just the usual bad beats from the donks but I have to admit it has just been really tough to deal with mentally. The strange thing was I ran the worst when the games were really really good. I went online on Saturday night and set up about 10 tables, loads of fish everywhere but I was down more than $700 in less than 30 minutes so I just left it and went to bed. Trouble was I couldn't sleep to well, just thinking about this bad beat and that one.
So next morning I get up an play some more, next thing I know I am down $400 more and tilting so bad. So instead of stopping I jump into a $2000 game with $200 and proceed to get stacked 3 times, each time it was like a 65/35 type hand in my favor but none of them held up so bah. Anyway this is just so wreck-less and I hope I learned a lesson from it. Funny thing is when I see some guy sit into my regular games with 10BB I laugh at him. Joke was on me this time. Graph and stats for the 100nl period are below.


Had another coaching session this week and I was very happy with it. I played some 200nl as I felt this would be better value and more educational for me and had valor watching me and advising on what he thought the best lines to take were and talking about the different situations that came up or could have arisen. I just played very tight and tried not to play OOP were possible. I then played about 2k hands myself in the following days and things went really well. I ran a couple of BI above EV and got paid off with a lot of my big hands which is nice when you start off. Graph and stats are below:

When I was trying to withdraw money from Everest the strangest thing I have ever heard off regarding a poker site happened me. I took out money twice from my roll to pay for the coaching and got it transfered to Neteller. About 7-8 days later I still hadn't received either withdrawal so I sent Everest a mail about it and they tell me that they never took out my original deposit of $500 from my CC as there had been some error with the CC company. Now the strange thing was they never told me this and let me play away with the $500. So now I need to withdraw another $300 and we are quits. So basically I withdraw the money to them!!! Quite bizarre I think.

There are 2 big WSOP satellites on Full Tilt and Poker Stars that I intend to play on Sunday 15th June, they are a $535 and $370 buyins with 150 and 200 packages guaranteed respectively. I'm not exactly rolled to buy directly into them so I will try a few satellites first but I do intend on playing in 1 of them and if that means having to buyin directly then I will. Other option is I have $600 on Full Tilt that I will probably try and spin up to the $905 required to play both.

Finally the total online BR at the minute is $5.6k with $4.8k of this for cash and the rest is on Full Tilt and GJP for the odd tournaments that I might play.