2009 Review + 2010 Goals

Hey all! Not blogged for a while as I have been super busy with family stuff. Had an awesome Xmas Eve night out, a fun Xmas Day, and lots of cool days since with various family members and family friends. I did squeeze in a tiny session but it was a losing one unfortunately. That leaves my December results as:

Tournaments Played: 66
December Profit: £565.27

However, I started December with make-up of £479.44 so my profit over November and December is £85.83. Obviously this isn't too great for two months grinding, but it was looking very bleak indeed a couple of weeks ago, so I am pleased to pull it around and net myself £40ish.

I started this staking deal with Ben in September and in those four months I have achieved a profit of £1300.32. My ROI in this period is 30.82%. I believe I can at least double this ROI in the next few months so that is an immediate goal of mine!

2009 started off really well for me on the poker front. I achieved a $1950 score on Stars in Feburary and notched up a few $100 scores in other tournaments in the coming months. Unfortunately, I withdrew over £1000 for a holiday and a laptop, and the rest was often blown on cash tables, nights out, takeaways etc. I am really grateful to Ben for the opportunity he offered me, and it has really helped me on the discipline front especially.

The three sites I have played poker on in 2009 predominantly are Stars/DTD/Bwin. OPR tells me that on Stars tournaments (45man+) in 2009 alone (using the filter), I have earnt a total of $1378. That equates to £853 profit.

My excel spreadsheets tell me I earnt £1042 on DTD and £258 on bwin. Therefore, my total profit in online poker tournaments in 2009 is approximately £2150. Obviously Ben will have taken some of this, as did the cash tables, but it is still a statistic I am proud of.

The above brings me to my first 2010 goal: DO NOT PLAY CASH GAMES.

Unless I am rolled for cash games, I am going to steer clear of them completely, all they have ever done is hurt my profits from the game and it must be time for me to realise I am -EV in them.

Infact, here are my 2010 Poker Goals in full:

- Do not play one session of live cash until I have at least 20 buyins put away for it.

- Play the UK Student Poker Championship.

- Other than the above, do not play a tournament with a buyin above £25 unless I have at least 50 buyins for it or have sold action. More than £25 is no longer ‘entertainment’.

- Continue to be active on the 2+2 forums and continue to blog.

- Profit £7,500.



I believe I can reach all these goals and I look forward to blogging about them in one years time. In some respects it is harder for me to plan ahead than for other players who are not backed, for example Ben will decide when I move up stakes. This makes monetary goals harder to set, so the final goal of £7,500 profit may be inaccurate.

I have set other goals in my life, such as academic ones and fitness ones, but I won't bore you with the details of those!

I am going to send myself a delayed email now. It has all the 2010 goals on it, and it will arrive in my inbox in exactly one years time.

Good luck to all, and happy new year!

Out of Make-up!

Hey all, put in my first proper session tonight since Sunday! On Monday I played a small one that didn't go great, and on Tuesday I was just relaxing and ended up seeing Steph, an old friend. Today went well though, I ran hot and ended up cashing in 5 of 8 tournaments, final tabling two of them! Unfortunately, like I said on a previous post, unless you win that crucial flip when on the final table, it may count for very little!

The five tournaments I cashed in were:

Ongame $11r - I min cashed this for $68
Ongame $22 6max - Came 13th in this for $69.
Boss €22 deep - Came 20th in this for €35.
Boss €27.50 - Came 7th for €174.
Boss €11 - Came 10th for €60.

So as you can see, four finishes between 7th-20th, enough to make anybody tilt surely? Maybe not! I enjoyed tonight a lot. It was pretty fun turning my attention from one deep run to the next with Ben sweating me on most of them! Just a bit unfortunate that I couldn't get the break to hit a big top three finish. Ah well, always another day!

The good news is that all those little cashes have pushed me out of make-up and I am now over £100 in profit for Nov/Dec combined. Woo! 8 days ago I was in £700 worth of make-up so it feels good to get out of it!

I won't be playing for a few days now for obvious reasons. I hope everyone has a great Xmas! I will try squeeze one more session in before the end of the year, and then I will do a 2009 review post with my goals for 2010!

Happy Christmas!

(also congrats to Breesy who got himself out of a downswing today, check out his blog named 'Poker and Me' on the right).

Breaking Even..

Hey all! Didn't grind on Friday night as I was out with my friends Sam and Phil. The drinking games are getting pretty intense now and it ended up in me and Sam getting pretty battered. Was a fun night though! My brother came home yesterday, so the day was spent chilling with him, playing Modern Warfare 2, and watching a film.

Anyway today was back to the grind! I ran pretty hot in all fairness, winning one hell of a lot of flips and coming from behind frequently. Unfortunately, unless these things happen on the final two tables, you still won't win much. Its funny really, I came 14th and 21st on DTD tonight and 37th in the huge $11r on Bwin, after running very hot, but only broke even for the night. However on other nights when I would assume I was running bad, I may win a few flips late on and get a $500+ cash and end up having a profitable night. I suppose they are the nights you are running nicely, even if they dont appear to be?!

Anyway enough of that rant which probably doesn't make sense and isn't at all interesting! The biggest score tonight was $129.60 in the $11rebuy, and I just love rebuys lately. Its incredible how many people play with just one bullet and the field always loses about 1/5th before the rebuy period ends. Thats so much dead money! They also have pretty deep structures which is always a positive. In the DTD rebuy my ROI is 116% while in the Bwin rebuy my ROI is 81%.

Anyway tonight I won £5, thats less than 1/3rd of an average buyin, so I can safely call tonight my first ever break-even session! Nothing to brag about though I guess, although they are more fun than losing sessions most definately!

Don't know whether I will put in volume tomorrow, I am going christmas shopping in the afternoon so it depends how I feel in the evening.

Goodnight!

Three tournaments. Two final tables!

Last night before bed I read a post by bond18 about how you should always play a tournament if you can, as long as it doesn't affect your EV in other tournaments. Its pretty obvious isn't it, just 'play when you can', but I rarely take the opportunity to fill all my free time with poker. So last night I checked what tournaments run from 10am-Midday and set my alarm to wake up accordingly. When I woke up I had to do a few things but managed to play three tournaments. I ran pretty well in general and managed to final table two of them. Unfortunately they were very small fields so when I came 10th in one it wasn't a huge score ($140). Luckily, I won a couple of races on the other final table and found myself pretty even stacked going into heads up.

All I could think about was how I am yet to win a tournament and how coming first would clear me out of make-up. Unfortunately, in a pot for 90% of chips in play, my A6 couldn't hold vs KQs and I came second for $550.

Still, this was a pleasing result and it shows that putting in the volume does really pay off. I am still in make-up of about £80 but this can be turned around pretty easily (I hope).

I am heading into town tonight for a few drinks with my friends, while my brother comes back tomorrow so I may end up not playing until Sunday, which is a definate grinding day.

Ben (f3nix35) is currently playing the Monte Carlo event at DTD so good luck to him, it would be sweet to see him ship the £93000 first prize.

Off to eat now. Bye!

Heater around the corner? Maybe not :p

Had a day off yesterday to chill out and spend some time with my Mum. Today I was feeling pumped to play and instantly kicked off a session. I was feeling good after my $858 score on Tuesday and was feeling confident a heater was on its way. Unfortunately my afternoon tournaments went awfully, and I was beginning to question this heater. I then chilled out some more, and came back for my evening tournaments with a clear head. Again, they went awfully. I ran pretty horribly but did manage a min cash for €30, yay! Unfortunately that huge score didn't help much and I am down about £150 for the day.

Anyway, I am now back to £400 make-up and feeling pretty far away from any sort of profits. It kind of sucks that this week I have dedicated SO much time to poker and I just can't seem to get anything going at all. There won't be many weeks available to me like this one so it really sucks that it can't go well. Ah well, tomorrow I am going to play like a king and run like god and ship many $$$, I hope :p

I am already preparing my '2010 Goals' post and can't wait to get it up here.

Off to watch Gran Torino now, I hope its worth it.

Bye bye!

My first ever bwin final table..finally!

Woke up today desperate to play so played a few afternoon tournaments where I had no success. I was now on £700 worth of make-up, needing a reload from Ben again, and pretty downbeat, so I headed into the cold for a run to clear my head. It seemed to help as when I got back to the tables for my evening session I was feeling pretty good.

Ran pretty hot early on in a lot of tournaments, but as soon as my Dad remembered Utd were playing Wolves, he rushed onto his computer to start streaming it live, meaning my internet slowed down and I was timing out of a load of decisions on bwin. I have to admit, this was tilting me pretty hard and I wanted to dropkick my Dad but he seemed pretty keen to watch united pass it around with 15 minutes to go already 3-0 up.

Anyway, the game soon ended and I got back to it, and it was looking pretty good as I was averagely stacked in three tournaments on bwin with about 90 left in each. I bubbled one, min cashed the other, then final tabled the $22! Sweet, I had never hit a final table on bwin and I think my ROI on that site was about -653210%. I won a few 60/40s, then lost AJ to AQ and finished 3rd for $858. Not the greatest cash, but trust me, I really needed it.

I am still in make-up of around £250, but maybe tonight was the sign of a heater? Lets hope so.

Bye all!

Another frustrating night..

Super frustrating night once again. Was doing soo well in my tournaments and was 8-tabling at one point because I just wasn't busting at all. Then the inevitable busts came thick and fast and before I could shout 'FML' I was one tabling the crappy $5 with no cashes. Now this $5 is a huge ongame field with about 1750 runners so its worth final tabling. Unfortunately on my two previous runs in this tournament I came 30th and 65th. Today I thought that might change, but nah, 40th. Oh well!

Enjoying being home a lot. Its ultra relaxing and the food is ace. Seeing a couple of friends tomorrow I think but I should still be able to get some volume in. I love poker at the moment as I am learning so much, but I am downswinging pretty hard (over £600 make-up) so it's hard to stay motivated. The way I am keeping motivation levels up is by setting targets and trying to plan/structure my days.

Fun little prop bet I did earlier with Ant Gaughan who can be found at

http://ant040689.blogspot.com/

He was to my left in the €20 deepstack on boss so we did a last longer which I ended up winning when he ran QQ into my KK.

Hoping to update this blog daily as I will be putting in volume (hopefully) every day.

Goodnight!

Update!

Long time without a post! Its been a crazy period for me with the amount of work thats been going on. But it's finally done now and I can relax and put in some serious volume.

Went to London the other day to see Breesy, it was a pretty fun few days but the inevitable session on live cash didn't go well, oops. Ministry of Sound was awesome though.

Put in a session tonight and guess what? Another deep run where I avoid the big score! Got to say it's starting to get me down a little. I am trying to be super calm about downswings these days but I do find it frustrating when I come back to the tables with a clear head, only to come somewhere like 14th yet again after losing AK to JQ bvb or whatever. But hey, this happens to everyone, and it could be a lot worse for me, I could have not cashed at all! This won't affect my play the next time I sit down, as I have good control now and I know I will have a fresh head.

I head home tomorrow for xmas, and plan on doing lots of these things:

- exercise
- eating out with friends
- drinking with friends
- enjoying time with family
- POKER

I will try and structure my days well so that I can do the fun things and have time for high levels of poker volume.

I better start packing now anyway. Bye all!