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.