2010 Review; 2011 Goals!

I stopped blogging for a long while but since we are just starting a new year now might be a good time to try to start blogging again.

2010 didn't go as well as i had hoped. I've settled into my new place now which is about a 30second walk from everything i could need/places i go (bars/club/sushi/chinese). The problem with this over my last place is that i seem to have a lot more things to do/people to meet and get far less free time to play. Last year i managed in total a little over 800hours of play, 15hours a week!! some of my friends work >50hours a week!! I know poker for a living is supposed to give you that free time but it makes me feel so lazy!


+$15,000~ fpp/bonus'
Total: $31,000~

So anyway here is my year. Was pretty upset about the last few months of the year, the swings mainly came from shot-taking at 200nl+ rather than just trying to grind out 50nl/100nl as i had the rest of the year.

2011 Goals
For 2011 i have set myself a goal of playing a lot more volume/hours than last year. My goal for now is 1500hours/1.5million hands but it will no doubt change throughout the year. Doing this would get me to about the 400k vpp milestone which would earn me $32,000 from fpp/bonus' alone not counting what i would win at the tables.

Goals for January:
[ ] 125,000 hands
[ ] +$6,000 profit /w rakeback
[ ] try to average 16 tables

6-max and real life!

After a pretty bad start to the month i got pretty annoyed at my play at full ring. My play was far from consistent and it seemed like if i wasn't playing my best game i couldn't seem to win. I chatted a little to my house mate who has played both FR and 6max (probably more hands than me of both), he had just come off a huge downswing where he had crippled his roll playing 5/10 HU and PLO so had to move down to 100nl and grind. He recommended playing a really tight style at 6max, saying it was easy money because most players at that level are idiots!

For the past 2 weeks iv have only played 6-max and i have to say i am finding it really easy compared to full ring. The average 6-max player seems to be about 10 times as dumb as at full ring and even the big winners are probably on the same thinking level as the breakeven rakeback pro's of fullring. It took me a while and a bit of money to find out that people don't fold flopped pairs to 3 barrels but once i worked that out i stopped spewing money by bluffing and focused on value and it became easy!


Now you might also notice i have only played 22,000 hands in the last 2 weeks. This is mostly down to partying a lot. Last week we had a few nights out in a row and the last night my friend had to go back to uni in Blackpool (a few hours drive away) telling us about a party there that night. We decided to head off and got to the party around midnight, it wasn't great but we had a really fun time after round my friends house.


The other day i also went for a viewing on a 1 bedroom apartment in town i had been interested in, it looked really nice, exactly the type of place i was looking for. I ended up signing the contract, still have some more papers to fill in but should be able to move in in around a month, cant wait!


I also bought the canvas above off my housemate who has a display on at one of the bars in town this week.

That's about all. My next post should be my review of The Poker Blueprint but i haven't quite finished reading it yet!

The Poker Blueprint

Tri Nguyen recently got in contact with me asking if I would like to do an impartial review of his latest book 'The Poker Blueprint'.

"The Poker Blueprint provides the infrastructure for micro- and small-stakes players to build their game on. It also offer advanced strategies that are vital to crushing today's online short-handed games up to 100NL."

I am looking forward to reading this book as I feel many of the things that I do, I do because I know that in the long run they are profitable, I don't, however know the exact reason I am making these moves. Perhaps this book will help me out in understanding why I am doing a lot of things.

Febuary Results, March Goals

Goals for Febuary:
[x] 100,000 hands
[ ] +$5,000 profit /w rakeback
[?] win team prop
[x] work on raising my winrate over volume

= $4,400~

Started off the month really well over the first 2 weeks not playing many tables and consentrating on my game alot more than usual. Ran hot at 200nl early on but then proceded to lose all my profits and in the end dumped off $1k~ at 200nl :/

I feel my game has improved, which is good though, just no more 200nl swings!

Goals for Febuary:
[ ] 120,000 hands
[ ] +$5,000 profit /w rakeback
[ ] play only 100nl/pl and 50nl.

Running good

Im not far off having my best month yet at cash games and its not even 1/2 way through yet!


Im currently entered into a Febuary Team Prop Bet which consists of 32 people drafted into 4 teams. The team that wins the bet at the end of the month is the one with the highest average winrate. My team consists of;

Team ****itIcall
Vanguard (Captain)
Tony Skaloni (6 max)
Ach Ja
Natisfinest
DaBomb
Alex0r
Danimal
Luka Allen

A pretty strong team, i think we have a good chance of winning this! Im obviously looking to win the individual best winrate prop (the prop is $100+10, ($10 for side prop for best w/r)).

Im pretty sure highest w/r will be scooped up by someone playing alot lower where really high winrates are possable, i don't think the difference in the 3.9x and 5.6x multiplier is really enough. Someone running at 5.8ptbb/100 at 25nl would beat me if i booked 4.0ptbb/100 at 100nl.

January Results, Feb Goals

Goals for January:
[ ] 120,000 hands
[ ] +$6,000 profit /w rakeback
[x] win at 200nl!

I got off to a horrid start in january, i lost about 20buyins at 50nl straight away, it was as if i had forgotten how to play. After a few days break i focused a bit more and started playing a bit better. I decided to move upto 200nl to try and get a bit more used to and and it worked out ok. I didn't win at a decent rate but was glad i wasn't losing.

The last couple of days went pretty well and i was able to increase my winrate and make a bit more money from a 100k hands volume prop bet.

Total: $3651

Goals for Febuary:
[ ] 100,000 hands
[ ] +$5,000 profit /w rakeback
[ ] win team prop
[ ] work on raising my winrate over volume

PokerStars WBCOOP

I have registered to play in the WBCOOP PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! You too can Play Poker Online at PokerStars.com and take part in the WBCOOP which is open to all Bloggers by registering on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 712483

Turned it around

Tables were sooo gooood!! Finally back in profit for the month. Got a bunch of FPPs saved up aswell to buy $2200 worth of bonus' in the sale!

Running bad, new mods

Running bad so far this month, and probably playing badly too. It feels like i have forgotten how to play poker all together. It's one of those runs where you get it in on a KJ8 board with KJ against his K8 and you say to yourself "ohh god the 8 is coming"... and then it hits. I'v never lost so many 1 or 2 outers in such a short space of time.

To make myself feel better i bought some new mods from tiltbuster. I loved the look of these cards and noticed the new coloured notes there too. Hopefully this will bring around a positive change and help my game. Incase it doesn't i also watched a couple of video's at bestfreepokercoaching just to sharpen my game up. Lets hope for the best!

December Results

+$1640 MTTs/SnG's
Total: $5170

December Goals:
[x] 70,000 hands
[x] +$5,000 profit /w rakeback
[ ] 90% 100nl FR
[x] supernova

Goals for January:
[ ] 120,000 hands
[ ] +$6,000 profit /w rakeback
[ ] win at 200nl!

Good last few days

As you can see i've had a good last few days and im looking on pace to hit all my monthly goals. I should hit SuperNova in a few days so i'll probably post again when i get there and do a little update for the month.

I've played close to 100k hands of 100nl now, when i first moved up from 50nl i didn't really get the hang of it and was pretty much breakeven. When i realised that most people at 100nl suck and stopped being scared of them my results have improved dramatically and im pretty pleased with them. here you can see my last 70k~ hands running at 4ptbb/100.

November Results, December Goals

November Goals:
[ ] 120,000 hands
[ ] +$5,000 profit /w rakeback


= $4,100~

Goals for December:
[ ] 70,000 hands
[ ] +$5,000 profit /w rakeback
[ ] 90% 100nl FR
[ ] supernova

So November went pretty well overall i guess. I felt i was playing really well throughout the whole of the month. I increased the ammount of tables i was playing from 9-12 upto 18-20 so i was about to get a huge ammount of volume in. I think this is the most ammount of hands that i have ever played in a month.

About 40k hands in a started playing some 6-max and within a few days dropped a ton of buyins and went 20bi below ev. No 6-max next month! I also took a shot at 200nl which went really badly so i think i will avoid doing that again for a while.

A small recovery

So after the failed 200nl shot i talked about in my last post i have been grinding hard to make back my losses. 100nl feels easier than ever right now. The other day all the 50BB min tables were packed with regs and i really wanted to play so looked at the normal tables and found there were hardly any good regs at them, just loads of shortstackers....

I won't repeat myself but rather link you to this post where you can see how i got on vs the shortstackers :) Of corse it hasn't been going that well all the time and i have had quite a few BE/losing sessions but heres a few pics of stats from the last 3 days.


Should be able to reach my 120k hand goal by the end of the month :D

Failed shot at 200nl

So i took a shot at 200nl yesterday that failed quite badly. It played alot different than i imagined it would and i think i tried to adjust my game to compensate by 3betting alot wider than i normally would. This put my in tough spots in larger pots than i was used too. I wouldn't say i was too out of my comfort zone but i remember one hand where i lost the nerve to fire large on the turn into 2 people beacuse it would mean shoving $200 on the river as a bluff if i missed my double gutter.


I've decided to grind the remainder of the year out at 100nl where im feeling pretty comfortable and should be able to make back $1600~ there by the end of the month.

$1k day right when i needed it

So Sexy :}

Took a break. playing shorter sessions.

So after losing a bunch last week i dont think my head was on very straight. If i ever play a session where instead of waiting till the big blind comes before sitting out i just kill stars to quit, then i know i should take a little break from poker.

This 'break' didn't really consist of much. I played a bunch of HoN and went the the driving range with my dad. I hadn't played golf in a while and we got a jumbo basket each. Hitting so many balls really tore up my hands and i have about 3 blisters on each now ;/


Last night a started up some tables again and decided i wanted to just book a win to save me any stress. I played 1k hands and made $220 which i was happy with. Since then i've tried to carry on just playing short sessions. I know alot of pro's do this and i think the reasoning behind it is to keep fresh and on your A game. Anyway, its going well so far so i think i'll keep it up. The only downside of course is not getting in as much volume!

Bad Downswing!

So the other day i lost around $1600 in 4000~ hands. I took a break and managed to get back on track and grind some of it back but it was still horrid. The first session was at 100nl 6-max and i think i was allin about 8 times in the session. I lost all but 1 flip and lost 3 times when i was 80% fav. At one point i was 16bi below EV over 3,000~ hands as you can see from the orange line on my graph.

Now i just have to grind alot to try and make $3,000+ by the end of the month.

Ended one stake, started a new one.

People who read the regs thread in SSNL will have seen that WCG|Rider has decided to end his stakes.

"Over the course of the past week stakes have really bombed, and with my new house, I'm looking to somewhat lower my variance on the staking front, so I decided to begin to end my Staking program."

Well i was one of these horses and have been staked since August. It was kind of annoying to hear it ending as i had plans to move upto 200nl and maybe even higher and had really not saved up much money at all for my own roll (just spending alot on nights out, eating out & new clothes). Anyway i have managed to get a new backer at a better % split so things should be ok :)

The stake with Doug started at 50nl and didn't really go well at first. It didn't go badly i guess but i was breakeven for a long time. I hadn't really played full-ring before and it deffinately took a lot more adjusting too than i though. What i have learnt now has really changed my game up, for the best i should add.

Here's a graph and some stats over the duration of the stake;



Anyway, over the course of the stake i was only playing full-ring (except for 1 session when i chased a fish to HU) and have decided to try and mix in some 6-max again. I played 2 sessions of 6-max (50nl and 100nl) and did pretty well, so i might start mixing in some 6-max from now on, depending on my mood.

Long Grind

I've been playing alot :x

And my month so far.. going to try and push for 120k hands!

Mixed thoughts on yesterdays session

First off i have to say i had a great session yesterday! I made a decent amount of money in the end but was and am still annoyed at myself for not quitting sooner. There was a point where i was up $980~ and though to myself "nice, another $1k day" so carried on playing to try and reach the 1k mark. I was forcing the action to try and get up to the amount and wasn't playing my usuall game. Of course i dropped a ton of buyins and ended up stopping just short of $600~ ;/


I played a lot more hands than i normally would in a day. I lent my 2nd monitor to my house mate as his broke and i felt really bad for him playing poker on a 13" screen untill his new order from FTP comes through. Because of this i havn't been playing tiled but rather cascading. I think this has helped alot (mostly due to eliminating fancy play syndrome) and now i feel quite comfortable 16 tabling 100nl.

Sadly the last hand of the session was a deep pot where i turned a Q high flush /w QJdd vs his turned K9dd flush :( My month so far..