Long Time No Speak..

4:15am..

I decided I was done with updating this blog a long time ago, but it's 4.15am here and I'm bored with nothing much else to do. I guess a lot has happened since my last few entries, I'm not going to go through everything, but I'm currently playing 25nl on Stars. I've played about 100k hands in about 5 weeks and it's going ok I guess. As expected really, I'm up enough to be satisfied that I'm good in these games but I've played like a monkey at times and I'm far from happy with my overall standard of play.

Tilt has only reared it's head a couple of times and that was mostly at the beginning. It's been really nice to run above ev for once, that's probably a big reason why tilt hasn't materialized so much. Anyway, I'm quite happy at 25nl, I might decide to move up to 50nl if I can plug some leaks and make a lot less errors. I'm not sure if it's even worth it yet, I guess I'll do it when I've got a bigger sample with hopefully a bigger wr in the future. Here's 25nl since around the 25th June:

+$100 in Stella awards
+$150 (approx) in fpps

So I guess it's +$1,550 for the last 5 weeks.

Only $775 for me personally though since I'm 50/50 with the staking group.

It'll be nice to have $2k+ months playing 25nl on my own in the future. I guess it's doable in the months I run well. I could've played more hands for sure, I've been somewhat lazy again, this will change from September though.

I'm not planning to cash in the vpps until I hit Platinum, which will likely be sometime in September with the Olympics holding up my progress for next month.

I'm fairly pleased with the results, but I can honestly say that I haven't been happy with my play after pretty much any session this month, every session I won I thought I could've won more, and every losing session was exaggerated by my own poor play. I only had one session where nothing went right and I ran into a bunch of coolers which is rare for over 100k hands. So I've actually run really, really well, which is why I think I need a bigger sample of hands for moving up.

I've been lazy in the last few days of this month, I wanted to get Platinum but I just couldn't be bothered to play much more, even though I only needed about 6k hands/day over the last few days, which would be fairly easy. The Olympics started over here a few days ago so I've been kinda getting into that. Any excuse not to play, haha. I'll probably use that excuse for the next couple of weeks until it finishes and then I'll look to get back on the hard grind I guess.

I'm actually being staked for this 25nl period, I need to play another 140k hands to complete that stake. I only did it for the coaching offered but I'm not sure it's worth it to keep with it. I guess I was expecting more from stories other staked players have shared with me in the past. It sounded like it was a good way to progress to higher limits, but the kind of attention on my game I'd hoped for hasn't happened. The stable is much bigger than I was expecting, and they mostly have tourney players with just a handful of cash game guys. It seems like we're almost like an after thought. I just expected too much, and had unrealistic expectations probably. It's probably quite standard, not their fault at all.

I would never take a stake to play such small games if I didn't think I was going to get a lot of coaching etc. I pretty much knew I was going to be a decent winner at 25nl. I suppose it has helped because I've been playing a lot lower over the last 6 months or so, I've turned into the biggest broll nit ever for some reason (must have something to do with getting older, haha), so at least it got me playing a stake that matches my ability, I'd probably have jumped back down to like 2nl after the first $100 swing, haha. That fearlessness of youth has deserted me over the last couple of years for sure.

I'm not sure when I'll continue with the updates yet, perhaps I'll do one at the end of every month with an entry or two here and there throughout the month. Don't hold me to that though. It'll be nice to do a synopsis for each month with end totals etc. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

I'd like to just erase most of the entries in this blog to this point tbh. It reads really badly, and it's a little embarrassing reading through some of those entries. I really suck at goals, and I change my mind constantly about what game I'm going to play, there's qutie a bit of random stuff that was just in my head at the time of writing too. I'm gonna stop and think about what I want to write from now on, and not just put down what's on my mind at that very moment, like some kind of disturbed mental patient writing on a wall with his own shit!

So, no more goals, no more disturbia and no more promises of updates, I'll just write up a monthly report if I'm up for doing it.

$2 180 Prop Betting

15:06pm..

Re $4k in a month at $2 180s

If ur gonna bet against those guys (latest 2+2 prop bet) in the 2s, put as much as you can afford on them imo, the more I think about it, the more I think it's not gonna happen. Just make sure they get a trustworthy escrow. They both have so few posts that there could be something dodgy there. Although the fact they're starting in March makes me think they're at least planning to attempt it, they've obv chosen March coz it has 31 days lol, I guess they thought of the idea too late to do it in January.

Anyway. They're gonna find it tough, there are a ton of regs now, and I know I'll be playing a ton too during that month, probably 3-5k games. It'll inspire other solid players to play too, they're up against it for sure. Plus they don't have massive roi's from all the games they've played and neither has a valid sample in 2s yet. They're over 30% but that's from small samples, I reckon they probably think that's std and they'll run like that again over 8k more games.

The thing is, in these 2s the bad beats are so brutal that it makes you think you'e run badly even when you run hot lol. I remember thinking I ran horribly when I was at 70%, it's not until you really run badly that you realize how good you've run haha. I guess you can just run hot for 8k games, it's possible, but running good these days is 20% for solid regs. For one person to do that over 8k games in a single month is unlikely, for two guys to do it at the same time is almost impossible imo. They say they can play more than 8k if needs be but I'm sure they'll only meet the daily requirement to make it to 8k for the first couple of weeks at least, if they're not close to $2k each by the start of week 3 they'll probably have to play 350 games/day which is gonna soul crush them and almost certainly reduce their roi's as they increase tables to get the games in. All that will be after 2 weeks of grinding 260ish/day too so they'll already be pretty drained by that point.

Plus, what happens if one of them has gone the whole of week 1 BE? It can happen easily, I had a 2,500 game BE stretch very recently, it's easily done, how are they gonna continue the grind when one of them realizes he has to make $4k in 3 weeks? It'll also affect the other guys motivation since they both have to make it. Even if they both start like a train, at some point one, or both of them will hit a wall, they'll BE for a long stretch or they'll encounter a downswing they could never even imagine, if they're not prepared for that it'll come as a big shock to them, and I'm not sure either of them have seen it in 2s so they don't have the experience to plough through it, this, imo is the key, you need massive experience to keep the faith, you need to have got through that kind of thing and come out the other side. Without it, you'll be more inclined to quit on it.

I've got that experience now, whereas before I just quit coz I thought it was ridiculous and I felt helpless, like it wasn't normal and so therefore there wasn't anything I could do, it's easy to quit when you feel that way. The 2nd attempt I made was similar too, I still thought I'd just run unimagineably horridly and just assumed it couldn't go the same way, I thought I was due a heater and that normal service would be resumed, haha, turnsout poker doesn't work like that, variance has no memory. I quit coz I fucked my back up, but tbh there was a part of me that quit coz I could only see it going the same way again, I genuinely couldn't have carried on because of the back injury, but I imagine I'd have quit anyway eventually coz I was seeing similar variance all over again. I wish those boys luck, but I don't expect them to ship this particular bet.

2 Day Madness

7am...

Last couple of days I've been kinda going off the rails. Not sure why, but I've been completely reckless, not really caring about anything, and ending with me quitting my job completely. Funny thing is I know it's probably one of the worst decisions I've made but tbh who cares!

I havn't slept for about 40 hours and I'm a little delirious right now.

I'm putting this out there though.. I WILL SHIP $5k IN A SINGLE MONTH @ $2 180s!

I'm either gonna do it or I'm gonna die, it's that simple!

It could take me all year, I don't care, I'm gonna keep going until I have $5k profit from 30 days play. Hardly anyone will read this so there won't be the pressure. I'm not gonna prop it this time, I'm just gonna fucking do it!

Might update here as I go, or I might not even look at results at all and just grind the shit out of it and look at the end of each 30 day period. Don't know yet, I'll probably update my mental state, if not my results.

It'll probably bring the end of me, either through total burnout or death lol.

I hate it..

7;44pm

..Coz is blatantly rigged up to the eyeballs.

That is all.

Quick update..

Another stretch under ev, I'm not that bothered anymore, it's just pretty funny now. I'm exactly $75 (32 BI's) below ev at 2nl after 337k hands now. It does seem that if I play any significant sample of anything I'll end up below ev eventually. It'd be a really strange feeling to run above tbh.

I rememeber Chiren saying he ran horribly during a million hand sample at 2nl. I was intrigued, after checking on his overall ev during that 1 million hand sample, he ran at $223 below ev. I've played exactly 1/3 of that and I'm bang on schedule, it'd be $225 if I ran exactly the same until 1 million hands.

"31k sessions but had to change it at the end due to ev downswings and an unimaginable high amount of bad beats"

^^ A direct quote from chiren during his 1 million hands at 2nl in a month. This is a guy who has probably played 5+ million hands in his life, and has seen just about everything I expect, so for him to say that just confirms to me that I'm running badly and it's not all in my head. I need to know that, you can get paranoid pretty quickly playing poker so it keeps me level headed, I basically know it can, and sometimes does happen.

I just had another look at my overall ev, I'm 86 BI's below overall, when you look at it in BI's I guess it's not so bad. I reckon some people have had it worse.

Just a quick photo..

Just thought this was worth an entry...

Lifetime Cash Game Results On stars..

10.33pm..


Ok, so I've decided to post my lifetime results in this blog. I've just uploaded the last 400k hands (it took ages).
























I'm actually only $3,337 down in ev, still a lot obviously, but I thought it was more. there were a few more 25nl hands in that last upload and it's not quite as bad as I'd thought.

I've been pretty fed up with how badly I run in higher limit games, I think rightly so after looking at this. It's almost laughable that the 3 biggest games I've played any meaningful sample of.. 25nl, 50nl and 100nl is where i've been shit on the most. Can't say I'm happy with running above ev in 2 games 5nl and 10nl. $145 basically, just over 1 BI at 100nl :( The 400nl session was a drunken mistake, I've got the hh in hm, I might post it on here if I can figure out how to, it's pretty funny.

Obviously I realise you can't choose where variance strikes, and I don't believe the site to be rigged, it's just a bit annoying lol. Oh well, I've done ok overall I think. Pretty good volume too.. 1.24m hands! I probably played around 200k on Full Tilt too, it's a shame I don't have the stats from those hands, I remember crushing 25nl on there for a while and doing pretty well in their 50nl games also.

Hopefully I'll just run like the wind at 2nl for the rest of my playing days and make that 3k back. You can only dream haha.

2nl or life...

5.21pm..

I'm completely bored of sngs. I might just play 2nl for the rest of my poker playing days. I'm kinda fed up with the game, even if I ran red hot I don't think I'd play very high tbh, the swings stress me out so much!

I played some 25nl for a few days, started ok then decided to play 10k hands/day for a few a couple of days, got burned by variance again and smashed by ev again. I'm about 55 BI's below ev at 25nl, standard for me really to be so far down on ev at the highest game I've played the most at. I checked my entire history on Stars and I'm only up in one game I think.. have a guess.. yep, 2fuckingnl. I might post all my hands on here soon, I'm not sure.

Below is the 25nl this month..















And this is 2nl so far..















The first session was an experiment trying to 18 table 6max. I can't.

So I'll be playing 2nl exclusively from now on. I'm heading back to work in a few days since my broken elbow is like 80% healed, can't say I'm looking forward to a 9-5again but I can't support myself sufficiently enough from poker anymore since the game has gotten so much harder. It'll be a nice hobby though. I'll play a fair bit still, without the pressure too, which is nice. I'll be happy with lots of small winning sessions, just enough to give me a few extra quid in my pocket each month.

I'm gonna try hard to increase my wr as much as possible. 9BBs/100 is pretty good at these stakes but I'm comparing it with some pretty weak regulars obviously. I think I'm a stronger player than almost anyone who plays 2nl for any significant length of time, so I want 11BBs or better tbh. Anyway, something to work on. I'm still not 100%sure about how best to play 2nl but it's evolving slowly, so long as I don't tilt (yeah right), I expect a fairly decent wr in the longrun.

Until next time..

HU Is Killing Me

1.40am..

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, 2.5 Tournament, 3000/6000 Blinds 600 Ante (2 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com



SB (t195579)

Hero (BB) (t74421)



Hero's M: 7.30



Preflop: Hero is BB with A, 10

SB bets t12000, Hero raises to t73821 (All-In), SB calls t61821



Flop: (t148842) 4, 8, 4 (2 players, 1 all-in)



Turn: (t148842) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)



River: (t148842) 3 (2 players, 1 all-in)



Total pot: t148842



Results:

SB had 3, Q (two pair, fours and threes).

Hero had A, 10 (one pair, fours).

Outcome: SB won t148842


If I look at my position distribution from 180s, my most common positions are 4th and 2nd. It's a constant stream of hands like this that's doing it. I'd love to see my ev from 4 handed onwards, it really is just insane. It's probably cost me THOUSANDS of dollars and I'm getting real bored of it now.

On the plus side, I only finished 170k below ev today....


















About 200k less than I thought it was gonna be. I ran well for 2 days, it's standard pratice to get my tits squeezed hard for a good week or more as punishment.

Payback Mother Fuckers...

1.35am..
















To be fair, I was due.



















Just another 1.5m to go..

....

1.34pm...




















1.9m

W T F

Ok I know I said every 1k hands but this is getting fucking epic now...














1.5m in 1200 games.. w t f


I checked my prop bet hands a while ago and I was something like 2.5m down from those games too, which was like only 3500 games. I think I just need to quit tbh.

Back To Poker.. For Now...

5.50am...

Ok, cut a long story short, I started a full time job back in retail (basically my old job from 6 years ago). I lasted 3 months and broke my elbow after tripping up on some boxes (left on the floor by me, so I can't even claim). Elbow is jacked up pretty bad, doc says it'll be a month b4 I can even drive (I think longer). So I've started playing sngs all day to relieve boredom.

Before I started back at $2 180s I checked my previous horrid run from when I last played them, it was something like 7k games running at approx 12%. Ok, so I likely ran decently in my first 5k but 12%? Come on. I was also in the middle of ANOTHER $500+ downswing. So I'm expecting it turn right? Wrong. I immediately lost a further $450 running just about as bad as you can, I've since made this back, plus a little more, but as I write now I've just had another horrible session and I'm back down to like 8% from approx 900 games:






Ok so standard blah blah blah. I'd agree if it was after even a slight bit of run good. As it is, it's just a continuation of being brutalized in these games. Of course, I do know ruins like this CAN happen, it's just you don't expect it to happen to you, and if it does you can't be expected to take it well and be ok with it. Especially when you see regs who are no better/worse than you avioding it for tens of thousands of games, which, of course, CAN also happen.

I saw a sng variance simulation video the other day that stated a 25% winner in $3 45s (a game with signifacntly less variance than 180s) CAN run at just 10% over any 10k game sample. It scared the shit out of me. That must surely mean that you can perhaps run at less than half your real winrate for maybe 40k+ games in 180s, given the bigger fields. I reckon I'm in or close to that in my last 8k, maybe it can continue for a lot longer than I imagined. :(

Anyway, I'm going to keep a check on my cev for the rest of the year. It's not all that accurate but it's the only thing I have, and I feel I need to share it, if only for my own sanity.

So, here is my cev from those 900 games:
















So 1.06 million down. I'll post cev every 1k games for the rest of 2011. It'll be a good thing for me personally as It'll remind me that a large part of struggling is simply bad luck, so I'll keep doing the things I know are working if you remove the luck factor, instead of changing things unnecessarily.

On other news, I've been thinking of going for 8k games in one month. $5k in a month in 2s is impossible, unless you can run at the hottest end of the scale for a large part of the month. I've learned that the hard way, as have others. Games also run less often since Black Friday and are undoubtedly tougher now. But I do believe $3k is possible if you can run decently in an 8k game month. It'll be tougher to play 8k these days but 15 hour days might just do it. I'm also intrigued about whether it's me or whether it's running bad that made me fail so hard at my two prop attempts.

Only a month off from the Miss Variance will tell. Watch this space...

Overdue update...

5:37am

I said I'd aim to update daily but tbh there isn't a lot to say on a daily basis. Results have been slow since my last entry. Some turn/river cards have left me wanting to pull my head off!

It's pretty ridiculous sometimes how things go, It's seemed like everytime I've bet the flop with a pair, 2 pair, or even a set, the turn has put a straight or flush out there, and of course there's usually 2 or 3 callers. It's made things really tough at times. I've had so many strong hands that suddenly become vulnerable to a better hand.

I'll be honest it's a real dilemma at 2nl. These guys float with whatever they have and they love suited shit aswell as gut shots etc. it's sometimes tough to give them credit for anything, but the board runs out so bad at times it's tricky to anything but check fold the river. I've left a lot of money on the table because of this.

I'm still learning how best to play 2nl but I think I might have been a little too aggressive over the last few days. I think I'm starting to shape a decent game for it now though.

One thing that's driving me mental is the min bet. A players limps, you raise, the pot is like 22c and they proceed to min bet the flop and turn, then sometimes they'll like pot the river or even min bet again. the problem is if you raise they SNAP it, so you're left guessing what they have half the time. It appears they're weak but I've tried firing again and again but get the same result SNAP SNAP SNAP! Obviously I don't mind when I have anything half decent but I've been raising these min bets with air half the time and it aint working haha. So now I'm left just calling down min bets in a 20c+ pot where they vaule town me with 3rd pair, but how can you fold A high to 2c bets? Oh well, I'm sure I figure it out some day.

It really is crazy what you see though. If it was 25nl+ I'd have tilted off about $1k by now I swear. Luckily $2-$5 pots don't tilt me quite as bad. I have tilted though, just not really badly yet. I think I'll stay in control for the most part, it's a comforting feeling that even when you get stacked twice in a row the next stack you'll win is just around the corner haha.

Talking of tilt, I've been trying really hard to eradicate emotion from my game. I think that's the key to tilt control, there isn't such a thing as tilt CONTROL actually, there is no cure for it if you tilt as bad as some of us do. I saw a CR video that talked about when emotions get in the way of rational thought there isn't a thing you can do about it, it'll damage your game until it's out of your system completely. So prevention is better than cure, certainly is when it comes to tilt. So the way to prevent an emotional response is to take emotion out completely. I've worked on this and it's getting there, I'm tyring to train my mind to stay calm and not let anything that happenes at the tables affect me. Ok, so that's almost impossible, but I think I'm going in the right direction. Avoiding huge losing session helps too obviously haha.

Thing is I'm a really emotional person. It's not like I cry all the time or anything (I haven't cried for a long time) but I tend to get seriously angry If things don't go exactly how I want them to, both in poker and in life. I'm starting to sound like a mentalist now but it's superficial anger really. It's not like I'm on the brink of going postal or something, it's more like "wtf, why does this always happen to me! Why, why, whyyyyyy!" Haha. I'll even swear sometimes if I drop something or perhaps if I change the channel on the tv by mistake, I get really fucked off about the smallest things. It only lasts for a second but I'll often have an overreaction to silly little things that don't matter.

I took a personality test in the past and from my answers it told me I was a cerrtain type, I forget the name now but the description seemed to fit. Apparently my 'group' liked everything to go as aspected and if it didn't it would 'unsettle' them. Sounds accurate to me haha.

Anyway, on to results (since last entry):



















So zero losing sessions. Obviously a good run but I'm a little disappointed if I'm honest, I made a number of mistakes throughout and definitely spewed more than I needed to. That said, you can't play perfectly all the time, so all in all things went as expected really. Almost exactly to ev too.. I'm calm haha.

I would try to save a few more hhs for the blog but It's difficult 12 tabling 6max and trying to dig out the right one. Did manage to save one though, a relatively interesting spot I think. I'm not sure calling the river jam is correct here, we're either splitting the pot or I'm beat. I'm letting go of about 60c invested but I don't think it's worth calling off a further $3+ when a split is the best I could hope for. I'll just assume he had A9 or quads, I'll sleep better tonight that way:



Poker Stars $0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players

DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter



BTN: $0.73

SB: $2.06

Hero (BB): $5.00

UTG: $4.50

CO: $1.85



Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is BB with A 8

UTG calls $0.02, 2 folds, SB calls $0.01, Hero checks



Flop: ($0.06) 4 4 A (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $0.04, UTG calls $0.04, SB calls $0.04



Turn: ($0.18) A (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $0.13, UTG calls $0.13, SB calls $0.13



River: ($0.57) 9 (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $0.40, UTG raises to $4.31 all in, SB folds, Hero folds




On a personal note, I forgot my dad's b'day again! I don't think I've ever remembered it in my life. That's terrible isn't it? :(

Didn't Make It..

1:53pm..

So I didn't manage 6k hands. Nevermind, I played 5k which isn't bad:







A decent day overall (+$35). Middle session was really frustrating, I missed just about every flop the whole time and ran into some pretty evil river cards in some decent sized pots, but was saved again by preflop allins.

Above ev yet again. This is getting strange, It's a little unsettling if I'm honest haha.

Boardwalk Empire And More..

2:20pm..

We've got a new channel over here on Sky (cable) called 'Sky Atlantic.' It's basically the HBO channel from what I can make out. Shows like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' 'The Sopranos' etc. All of those big U.S shows that I've heard are great but I've never got around to watching. I did watch the first 4 episodes of 'The Wire' after buying the boxset but it was a little slow for my liking, maybe i'll go back to it in time and give it another chance.

I have started to watch 'Boardwalk Empire' though and so far it's been pretty good, not brilliant but it's definitely a decent watch. It also has a great English actor in it called Stephen Graham who starred in 'This Is England. and 'This Is England 86,' as well as the film 'Snatch' and the tv series 'The Street.'

I hadn't even realised he was in it until his first scene came up, he plays a young Al Capone. I'm hoping his character will become a big part of the show as he's a fantastic actor. His Scouse accent leaks out fairly noticeably though, but then my mum is Scouse so maybe I'm hearing it more than most people. He got great reviews for his performance in the U.S though, so I guess they can't hear it so much. Anyway, I'm going to stick with the show to see how good it gets.

I've also started to watch '6 Feet Under' which was pretty good too, quite funny in places. I've only seen the first episode but it looks promising. I've series linked 'The Sopranos' too, hopefully that'll live up to the hype! That's a lot of hours of tv right there but there's nothing better than settling down to watch a really good quality show after a hard days grind. Talking of which...








A decent day at 2nl. +$28, not bad. Ran close to ev too which is nice.

Not the best effort in terms of hands played but I started late after I'd stopped for the server restart and by the time I restarted I was already feeling tired haha. Oh well, hopefully I'll hit around 6k hands today.

Unwell and frustrated..

11:04am..

Woke up yesterday with a mild sore throat and headache. Thought it was gonna be a nasty case of flu that's been going round in this area, decided to play a session anyway, it was tough to focus but managed 3k hands nevertheless. My reaction to being ill is about the only truly manly reaction I have to anything, I bacically just quit life until I'm 100% better haha.

Session:



A frustrating session in all, $5 from 3k hands isn't terrible, and at least I ran above ev again, pretty sickening to think how far below ev I ran at 25-100nl and how sick hot I'm running at cheeseburgers... standard I guess.

Found it really tough to flop anything all session and my cbets seemed to get raised a ridiculous number of times, most of my winnings came from preflop allins.

Strangely, I'm feeling much better today, must've been a 24 hour virus or something. Just started today's session but had to end after 400 hands because of the server restart.. forgot about that.

Micro grind: Day 1

8:55am..

After deciding to begin the micro cash grind, I was torn between 2nl and 5nl (lol). Both games are easy obviously, but If I want to do something that can't be matched I think I'll start at 2nl and crush the shit out of that first. Perhaps I'll move to 5nl once I'm satisified I've achieved something special (in both senses of the word) at the lowest stake out there.

The first session was really fun. I ran pretty hot if I'm honest, got AA vs KK like 3 or 4 times and won a couple of stacks with AA/KK vs QQ. I even managed to suckout with KK vs AA one of the two times it did happen. Unfortunately the other time it was for 250bbs.

I'm not sure what my feelings are about stacking off pre with KK at 2nl when stacks are that deep. He was a passive fish who raised 5x pre and just jammed on my 30c 3b. I knew it was a bad situation but I expected a player like that to min 4b AA or soemthing lol. Anyway, I couldn't fold it but whatever, It's ez to forget how deep you are when all you're losing is $5 haha.

So here are the results of yesterdays play:






Nice to run so far above ev. I wanted to play another 2k hands but I was feeling a little tired and didn't think my chances of making much were good after such a hot run. I'm going to try and aim for zero losing days for the rest of the month. Probably won't happen, but it's doable at 2nl for sure.

I'll be trying to keep a daily running update from now on.

I'm going to change the blog name yet again haha. It started out with "supernova elite in 2011" at cash, to "Sng madness" when I quit cash and went back to sngs, to "Trying to bink a score" when I switched to mtts.

My god, I change my mind constantly, no wonder I've never completed a single goal I've set in poker haha. My blogs just read like a ridiculous rollercoaster of plan switching. Time to finally stick one out me tinks!

Micro Mentalist

15:28pm...

Ok, so I've officially decided that making a good living from poker just aint gonna happen, so instead, I'll be looking to make a shit living from it for the next year or so. I was lying in bed last night thinking about money and it kinda just hit me that I'm quite content being poor. I've never looked at rich people and thought "wow, I wish I was them." As long as I have somewhere to crash, am warm and always have something to eat, I'm as happy as a pig in shit tbh. All these material things... you can't take them with you. Besides, who knows, I might not even make it to 40, so who cares, right?

I plan to just play the most fun, lowest variance games I can from now on. So long as I can pay my meagre bills each month I'll be happy.

So instead of putting pressure on myself to make an unrealistic amount each month, I'll be playing for fun only, making sure I make just enough to get by on. I've always believed I'd never make it to 40 for one reason or another, and have never planned for life after that age. I've never thought about marriage or children, it just never interested me. I have other reasons to think this way but I'd rather not publish them in a public blog at this time. I'm not terminally ill or anything (or at least I'm not aware that I am) but I have strong suspicions that my health won't hold up for much longer than another decade haha.

I've been thinking of a way to make the grind fun, bigger swings seem to stress me out more than they should, playing for big pots it's a stressful thing for me. I guess I do care for the money if it stresses me, but the stress isn't about not making tons of money, it's the worry of not being able to make enough to get by on, especially since I've now been out of proper work for about 3.5 years.

So to stay motivated, aswell as maintaining the fun aspect, I'm gonna try to become the greatest micro cash grinder there's ever been. I want to set records in microland that will be hard to match. Not from a skill aspect of course, there are far more skillful players than me, even some of those fellow cheeseburger grinders have more skill than I do.

No, I'll be looking to play a lot of volume at the very lowest stakes, a stake where no sane person would grind full time. I want to post some ridculous benchmarks that might never be matched (mostly since nobody will bother). I'm gonna look to annoy the trolls on ptr as much as humanly possible, I won't stop until I have at least 10 pages of frustrated breakeven/losing players projecting their own inadequacies by spamming my profile with the usual:

"wtf"
"loser"
"bot"
"fish can't beat higer stakes"
"nit"
"only plays abc"
"would get destroyed at higher stakes"
"makes less than a Chinese sweatshop worker"
"makes less than minimum wage"
"nice hourly"
"lol"
"why"
"doesn't make any sense"
And my personal favourite... "move up"

Hopefully I'll get plenty of the above coz it makes me 'lol' so much.

So yeah, as of now (by 'now' I obviously mean 2moz) I'm a full time Hamburglar. Perhaps the only one? Wow, I could end up being the new 'BlackRain79' Something to aspire to at least, haha! I'll know I've made it when I've surpassed the number of haters he has.

So yeah, I'm going to make a huge effort to keep this blog updated with my cheeseburger adventures, and hopefully I'll slowly build a following in microland. It will take some time, people won't notice me until I start appearing at the top of ptr leaderboards, which will take a while.

Eventually I'll surpass the top winner on the all time lists and hopefully that'll open up some doors in terms of coaching etc. Coaching is something I love to do, I get a lot more fun from it than playing. I'm sure they'll be players struggling at the stakes I beat who could benefit from me, and as I'm not looking to make masses of money, I'd be a pretty cheap option for those guys. Anyway, that's getting ahead of myself, I'll need to hit the tables consistantly hard for the best part of a year before anything like that can happen.

Fun times ahead....and that.

Until next time...

Been a while..

7:57am...

I shouldn't really bother with a blog tbh, I fail so hard at updating it. Anyway, I have some time on my hands so I guess I might aswell fill it.

On the poker front things have been slow. Yet again I've decided to switch games, and go back to cash. I'm not even sure why, just out of boredom I think. My results have been going fine in sngs/mtts, the non-turbo variety that is. Turbos have beaten me senseless over the past 6 months or so, I've barely made anything from them, so much so that I even started to breakeven at $1 45s (lol). Obviously small samples etc, but I'm completely over playing them now, and although I've said it before, I probably won't ever play another turbo again.

So after the small mtt success, reported in my last couple of entries, I actually hit another relatively decent score I think it was 2nd in a 2r for approx $550 on Stars. Forgot to screen shot the lobby for the blog, I'm blocked on opr too, but it happened.. I promise, haha. Actually got it in with AJo vs JTs allin pre hu and lost to a rivered flush, oh well.

Just remembered it's on my P5's profile:


















Got 17th in a large field mtt a couple of weeks ago too, first was approx $5k I think. I had a top 3 stack for a long time but went totally card dead leading up to the ft, and couldn't find many steal spots. I was pretty gutted not to hit another big one, but I can't really complain, I've done really well in just a few mtts played over the last month or two.

Spent some of December playing $2 180s, shot up to something like $1400 then went on the enevitable swong and lost about $450, afterwich I decided to switch to $4 180s for a while and again did pretty well. I think I made about $1800 in January from a mix of $1 45s and $4 180s (mostly $4 180s obv), and then about $100 from 2nl and 5nl for fun. January and February were the first $1k+ months back to back, I'm fairly certain I've never done that before. Perhaps I did in cash games a while ago, but I don't remember. I really need to keep making that kind of money month after month, only laziness prevents me from doing this really.

I've yet to play this month, so far, but I'm planning to play quite a lot of 5nl to see what kind of wr I can achieve, before a possible move back up to 10nl and then 25nl. Depending on what happens at 5nl, I might even decide to keep playing down there for longer. As lol as that sounds. I don't need to make much more than $750/month at the moment, so 5nl might be a fun, and relatively variance free way of doing that. Lots of hands but when the games are that soft it's easier to get through them. Auto pilot ftw!

So it's cash for the rest of the month, I'll reavaluate at the end of February before making any further plans. Perhaps I'll become a cheeseburger grinder for the rest of the year haha.

Edit: Just unblocked myself on OPR and SS:










Actually did $1k+ back to back a few months before too. I hadn't even realised.







And ship the $20k (overall profit) landmark on Stars! One of the few legit brags I can make. I think it's a brag anyway. I guess I could've done it quicker without $1 and $2 turbos but whatever, better late than never.