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.