2009 in review

Have been meaning to update this for the past week or so, but havn't been playing any poker at all so ended up never bothering with it. December started off a total disaster, I only played 6 days and averaged about -$350/day or about -$200/hour. To be fair to me though I ran horribly bad, instead of being down $2.2k I should have been up $450 but I sucked pretty bad at winnings pots when I was a huge favourite to. Last Saturday took the biscuit altogether with me losing 1.8k and after that I had decieded that that was enough for the month and was going to have an early end to my poker month and year. I decieded to play a few tournaments on Sunday which was pretty successful but in the end no major result. I did finish 14th/800 players on Everest for $2.5k but ran QQ into AA for a big pot and that dashed any hopes of a $57k first place finish.

So 2009 wasn't really all I hoped it would be, I went backwards in online cash, started the year taking shots at 5/10 6max and finished it playing 50c/$1 hu cash and 1/2 6max. I did have $8.5k of cash winnings and made about the same in rakeback so wasn't a total failure, I did withdraw a lot of my roll each month for about 8/9 months of the year so never ever really got to progress and move up levels, mostly moved down levels. I also was supposed to play the Irish Open but that never happened due to me basically being robbed of my ticket worth €3.5k. As it turned out I would not have played it anyway due to my uncle Michael passing away that weekend (God Bless his him). Graph of cash games below:



I guess the highlights for the year would have been winning a $13k package and living my poker dream of playing the World Series of Poker Main Event and playing at the same table with some truely amazing players like Elky, Kipster, Marty Smyth, Neil Channing, Scotty Neguyn, Steve Davis and Jamie Gold :). I made my first live final table in the Cork Poker Classic and taking home €5.5k for 8th place. I won the baords Division B heads up league for $2k.

Overall it has been a pretty great learning experience for me, I didn't run great this year and ended the year on a $10k downswing. I never played out of my roll and always moved down levels at some point. Sometimes I should have done it earlier but certainly never once put myself in any danger of busting my bankroll. Overall I made about $25k profit on the year which isn't to bad considering I do have a full time job and poker is getting tougher by the day to make money from.

2010 my aspirations would be to:

Start at 100nl HU cash, 100PLO and 200nl max cash but move up the levels more aggressively/quicker than I have done before. $50k online cash winnings (Fuck the 8k-100k challenge :) )

Play more live touranments including the Irish Open and WSOP ME with a side event.

Win the boards Div A heads up league

No doubt I will get a few hands in between now and 2010 but I would imagine 2k hands and a few tournaments would be the height of it. Havn't played now in a week and am really starting to look forward to 2010 already. Thanks to everyone that read this for the year and Happy Xmas and happy new year to everyone. Until 2010, good luck!!

October is in the past

The title is how I will view October, it was without a doubt my worst month ever since I started playing poker and there hasnt even been a close second. I lost in the region of $6.5k between 2 live tournaments, live cash, staking someone in a tournament and online cash games which was the biggest loser by far.

As I just said in my challenge blog, me starting sessions in the wrong frame of mind and knowing before I start that I wasn't going to be playing my best game has cost me a lot of money last month, I still have a decent bankroll so I really need to safeguard it this month. The last thing I want to do is go bust as I have no ambitions to start at micro stakes again and run my way back up.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I have made in the last 2 years regarding poker has been cashing out money. While this may seem like a stupid comment, I really should have cashed out less which would have left me overrolled for limits and be able to move up quicker. This is especially true when you are playing small stakes as the money you make for the month isn't that much so when you take this out your bankroll is not much ahead of were it was at the beginining of the previous month. So with this in mind I do not intend in cashing out in the forseeable future. I may reward myself at times but will not be taking out specific amounts at the end of each month like I have for the last year.

So for Novemeber my main goals are a change in my attitude when I start playing, quitting session earlier and playing well and results will be a minor goal.

Things can only get better (I HOPE)

Last 10k hands has been a bit of a nightmare, have being player terribly for the last 10 days or so and basically havn't being able to have a winning day. I havn't played in a few days now as I after I lost 5bi quickly in the last session I played on Wednesday I just said that was it until after the Boylepoker IPO which starts at 1pm today. So on the back of losing over $5k the plan is to win it all back and more in that today. But I have a sneaking feeling that won't happen. There will be 1500 others players to beat so its going to be a struggle and with a quick structure it will turn into who can simply run good so not looking good there for me.

My challenge obviously not going according to plan with me around the $4k mark at the moment, so will have a lot of work to do there considering I will be playing lower stakes when I start back into that next week. I've had a downswing like this twice before and also very long breakeven periods so I know that this happens and its no real shock. It's just a matter of keeping the head and riding out the storm. The good thing about these things that I usually find is that you go an a huge upswing after them so hopefully one is on the way very soon and get this challenge kickstarted again. Graph of the disaster below:

Started my challenge

Read all about it here

Not typing any more as my wireless keyboard has no juice left!!

Killarney and stuff

Headed down to Killarney last Friday for the €550 main event game, I struggled into Day2 with half the chip average so had about 20BB when I came back for start of Day 2. Day 1 was pretty uneventful, card dead all day long so just played very tight and played very little poker. Day 2 was more of the same really, I did pick up a few good hands but always got them in bad spots, my stack is about 15bb and I get AK in the BB after a limper in MP and the SB limps, I move allin but know I'm not getting called. At this stage of the day I would be happy to get called here as its early in the day and I would like to get some sort of stack together rather so I can have a decent stack for the bubble.

As expected I got no action here, I push allin a few more times and blinds go up and I'm back to 12bb again. I see 33 in the BB and after a MP raiser whos being pretty active makes it 2.5BB I go allin here but get called by AQ and the flop comes down a very scary JT5 with a K on turn to leave me heading for the rail.

I go play some live cash after this which I havn't played in about 1 year, I think it was this time last year when I played 2/5 in the MGM. The 2/5 game in Killarney was nowhere near as soft as the one in Vegas though. I had 2 young English pros to my right, (1 who makes videos for the biggest poker training site, Cardrunners) an old rock on my left and a few others who didn't do much wrong while they were playing. With the expensive rake this game turned out to be an unprofitable spot for me. I played until the dinner break in the tournament at which stage I was stuck for about €300. The worst thing about the game though was that I had no cash to reload. Max I could take from the ATM was €600, so going to have to sort that out in advance any more. Funny thing about live cash is though that I am kinda scared playing it in a way. I don't like losing real money, online I can lose thousands in a day/hours and not care to much about it at all, but in live games I wouldn't really like to flip for a €1k pot.

But, down there I did witness the funniest hand I've ever seen in my time playing poker. So the guys involved were a mid 20 year old from England, big build of a guy and a 25-30 year old from Dublin. So the Dublin is having a few beers and playing very aggressive. He's over bet shoving with his bluffs and slow playing huge hands. So the English guy raises to 800 and the Dublin guy calls. The flop comes down A56 with one club, the Dub check/calls a 1.2k bet or so. The turn is an 8c and the action goes check/check. A 9c on the river and the Dub checks and the English guy throws in a 5k chip. The Dub instant min raises it up to 10k (Earlier he done a similar one with 72 after he limped pre and made trips on turn, he also done it with QQ on an A and K high board and got someone to lay down a pair of As), so the English guy dwells for an age and makes it 20k, dub looks at his hand and at the board and anounces allin for about 3k more or so. The English guy is in distress now and is convinced that the dub somehow made a backdoor straight but obviously he is never folding and calls. The Dub asks him has he got and A?, english guys says no :) and throws over K7 for a straight. The Dub looks at his cards and looks at the board and is still not sure if his hand is no good. He eventually flashes JJ and leaves the table, much to the dissapoinment of everyone else at it.

One thing I have been thinking about the last few days is starting a challenge for myself. Someone else mentioned to me that they were thinking of doing a similar tone. Would basically involve turning $8k into $80k by being really strict with bankroll management and maybe giving myself a set time frame with clear goals along the way. At the moment I lack this and just take shots at bigger games when I feel like it. This approach hasn't worked well recently so maybe a change is in order. Will think more about this over the next day or so, but would like to start something ASAP.

September

Very dissapointing month this was. Started of reasonably well but had a lot of $2k and $3k losing sessions which gave a pretty stressfull month of poker. The main problem was that I couldn't seem to get 2 winning days in a row which lead to a very swingy graph



So in total I ended up about $2.5k after rakeback and bonuses BUT I managed to lose quite a bit playing online tournaments which I am going to have to stop buying directly into games that cost over $150, I bought into 7 of these this month and showed no return in any of them. I was quite unlucky in that I bubbled a super satellite for the PokerStars WCOOP ME which was worth $5.3k. So after taking the tournaments into account I ended up $1k in the green.

On brighter news I did buy my first car which I am delighted with so far, I got a 2007 VW Passat. It's a top of the range model and is in mint condition with only 35k miles on it. I bought it in Eniskillen and they bought it directly from VW who owned it previously. It has a lot of factory fitted extras such as heated seats, parking sensors, a VW bluetooth phone kit which is worth about €800, full leather, electric seats and has all the usual stuff such as electrics and AC etc. Really looking forward to driving her down to Killarney now for the Ladbrokes €550 game which is on this weekend. Came 28th/830 last year so would be a good weekend if I can beat this.

Live tournaments are much easier I think than online ones and also the fact that I don't get bored/frustrated as quickly in live ones as you don't really want to look like a fool in live games and I am less likely to spew off a stack (Already jinxed myself for the weekend) so fingers crossed I can run well but more importanly run well near the big money end as I failed to do this last year.

For October the goals will be to play 35k hands at 200nl and also play a lot of 100nl HU against easy competition.
Not to play any online tournaments unless they are satellites.
Do well in the Boylepoker IPO and qualify for the Paddy Power Irish Winter Festival or else buy into this and sell of some % to anyone that is interested.
Have $20k online bankroll at the end of the month: MOST IMPORTANT ONE

Thats it for September, was glad to see the end of it for poker reasons only as its nice to see a new month which I always look at as a fresh start, If anything eventfull happens in Killarney I will try post about it early next week.

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: