Ginger Viking

Don't think I have done a personal post before but looking ahead on the year I want to write down how I feel about poker and my life for the next year, I will try and keep it short. When I was about 15 I emigrated to Capetown in South Africa, I lived there for 6 months and hated it so when I came back to England for holiday I decided that I didn't want to go back to South Africa. Therefore when I came back to England I was 16 and had no GCSEs because I had been in South Africa during the time my friends had taken them. Due to me not having these basic qualifications I had to go back a couple years to get them, so how is this relevant?

Last year was the first year of university for my friends (and me if I hadn't moved to SA) and I was doing my first year of A levels but some of my friends had decided to take a gap year. Therefore I still had some of my mates around that hadn't gone to university and I had a girlfriend. Now it is the beginning of the new academic year in the UK and the guys that went to uni last year are now in their second year, and the guys that took a gap year are now a first year at uni. Moreover I have just ended my relationship with my girlfriend of two and a half years. To put it simply none of my good friends are around and I don't have a girlfriend :(

I am now starting my last year of A levels and plan to go to university next year (September 2011). This year I have accepted is going to be hard, I am going to be working really hard to get good grades at college and get into a good university. However I also want to really work on my poker game and this is the whole point of this post.

My motivation for playing poker is that this year is going to be hard work and not going to be a hugely sociable one so my thought process is "work really hard and then it will set you up for future years". For example when I go to uni I would love to be comfortably beating 100NL just so I feel somewhat financially secure and don't have to worry about a part-time job. I don't have a stupid and unlikely ambition in my head that I will be the next durrr, I would love that, but I need to take it a step at a time.

Cliff notes: This year I am not going to have a life, it is literally going to be college, poker, part-time job, swimming, working out. While I am grinding the shitty uNL: stakes I will be thinking about the future and that I need to crush these to progress and be slightly more comfortable in the future. Also if for whatever reason I fail at poker and haven't broken out on uNL by this time next year I won't regret all the hands and hours I am about to put in because poker will/has taught me how to be more disciplined, tackle problems better and to look at decisions rather than results which I think are all valuable skills in life.

Has been 2 weeks since last blog at which point I was starting "fresh", sort of ironic because I have started fresh so many times that starting fresh no longer feels fresh. I set a goal of playing 20K hands in 2 weeks, I feel this was sort of unrealistic because I tend to 4 table and therefore a lot harder to do than someone who 9+ tables. Over the last 2 weeks I put in a total of 12,926 hands with a bb/100 = ~5.

I don't know how to sum up this month because I played a lot of hands and was doing really well except for last night I managed to lose 1/3 of my BR. I feel that up until last night the month went really well however because of last night I now just think the month went shit.

 

The first half of the month was very up, down then break even. One night I randomly played a higher stake and made a few buy ins then lost it and more, I dropped down and grinded back up (at about the 8K hand mark) then seemed to break even. From this sample of hands I feel that I am beating the micro stakes but not as much as I should. I always seem to play hard and win then next session lose it. Too many of my hands from my history reviews where I have lost 100bbs are from stupid mistakes, its extremely frustrating.

As you can see from the graph my showdown vs non showdown is very similar to grindcores so I am going to try to watch all of his videos as we obviously have similar styles but I need to perfect it like he has. It is late (2am standard blogging time) and I don't know what happened this month, I am very confused but at the end of the month I am in the black so can't complain too much.

August Summary Points:

- Shouldn't have put myself in position to be able to lose 1/3 BR

- I want to be a good LAG player but think I was too loose when it came to 100bbs. Need to really avoid stacking off in marginal situations.

- Happy with my hand volume

- Despite me saying in last blog that I should play more rather than watch vids, I think I should have watched a few more videos.

September Goals:

- Play 25K hands this month, vary between 4 tabling and 8/9 tabling still unsure which is better for my style.

- Watch whole season of The Thin Red Line and any other Grindcore videos

- Need to avoid spewing off 100bb stacks just because its micro stakes.

- Better BRM than last month

- No MTTs until I move up in stakes.

I think I have come out the other side of the downswing tunnel, I hope I haven't just jinxed it by saying it. I had a really good session today, played well and looking back over hands in HEM I didn't give away too much $. The recent downswing sort of soul crushed me, I wanted to play because i knew I was playing well but the run bad was like a monkey on my back and since I only 4 table I can't just completely overlook 200BB pots.

I wouldn't say I am completely out of the tunnel but I am making my way out. I am not sure if I am playing better, running hot or just not getting unlucky. What I do know is I am doing a lot of swimming and eating pretty well and trying to go to sleep before 1am. I find now at the tables I think really quickly, I have already put villain on range before i can talk it out loud. I got into a 400BB pot pre-flop with AA, I was like "Sick going to get his 2 Buy Ins" turned out he had AA too and we split it.

Anyway I don't want to get too confident until I have a prolonged period of good sessions but hopefully this be the kick up the arse I need. I had a sort of revelation, I don't think it really counts as an official "Ah hah!" light bulb moment but I think it will have a big impact on my game. I try to read the forums and post and then watch 1 or 2 DC videos a day, but I just thought to myself that one of the best ways for me to learn is through experience so just hit the felt and rack up some hands. One of my main problems is lack of volume and so by designating a lot more time to playing rather than vids/forums I think will help me in long run. I still think vids/forums are super important but for me at my stage volume is more important and I will come back to forums and videos when I next hit a downswing or rut in my game. For now I think I have enough knowledge to break out of 10NL and into 25NL/50NL. Also I am planning to do some sweat sessions with a few friends which I find really helpful.

Goal:

Play 20K hands from now until the end of August.

Good luck at the tables :)

I have no idea how but at the moment I am really enjoying poker. Not just the playing but the listening to podcasts, watching DC videos, posting on forums, thinking and of course playing poker. The reason I am surprised is because I have been getting, as the title of this post suggests, bummed by poker. I checked out my graph for the first time in a while (I normally just look at session stats) and was shocked by the result:

 

The reason for the wierd massive up and down is because I play 2NL but decided to play some 5NL rush then tilted and played 25NL rush, however after the big fall/rise its back to 2NL.

Anyway as the graph suggests I am not running that great, I knew this before I looked at the graph but was surprised to see the graph back it up because normally graphs tend to be inaccurate about these things. I'm not that annoyed about being on a downswing because somehow I am still confident in my game, I think it is because I have been watching a lot of videos and I think I am learning with each day. 

To sum up: I am on downswing but my self esteem and confidence is still high and I am still enjoying poker. I look forward to battling through and coming out the other side, I just wish I hadn't played higher than my BR when I am running bad. Thought that this and the fact my graph is LOL was worth posting.

The title is from one of my favourite sitcoms How I Met Your Mother and its a motto I try to live by when it comes to poker. I have a lot of free time at the moment so I am often up late and all I want to do is browse poker forums, watch videos and play. However being on the forums and watching videos just makes me want to play, but I have had a rule that I have stuck to for a long time and that is to not to start playing poker after midnight. Tonight I broke that rule and my very strict BRM rules and nearly lost half my BR.

I started off playing rush poker at higher stakes than I should be while watching a DC vid (2 monitors FTW) but I wasn't concentrating and managed to lose 3BIs at those stakes which is equivalent to 8.5BIs at my current BRM stakes. I was super pissed off at myself and it was about 2am by this time (4am now as I write this) so did I think "go to sleep and work it back tomorrow, while grinding think about how stupid it was"? Nope! I did what I used to do when I was super noob to poker, I moved up in stakes and stuck pretty much whole BR on table on rush as well. As if it wasn't enough to have my whole BR on the table, I was playing rush so I couldn't even get reads on players or play proper poker. To make matters worse all that was going through my head was "Chasing losses" and cashier syndrome.

God knows how but I actually managed to make my losses back and end up in the black for the day. Looking back on it I can't believe I messed up in so many ways in the space of a few hours. Even though I don't have huge BR and I am only playing uNL it would have been a huge soul crush if I had gone busto just from not following my 1st and 2nd Golden rules.

I am really annoyed at myself and I feel like I deserve to have lost it all just because of how stupid I can be, and it pisses me off that one lapse in concentration and it's all over, but just going to thank my lucky stars and hope this is the last time this ever happens.

Nothing good happens after 1am and certainly not after 4.05am so I better head off to bed.

Im pretty disappointed that I am starting from scratch but after a bad few months I withdrew my BR to spend on holiday and have been busy so have had about a month off poker. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play but I know that there is still money at the micros and could easily cover my part time job. One of my long term goals is for poker to cover my part time job, that would be awesome especially if I plan to go to university.

Anyway like I said I withdrew my BR and have spent a lot of money on holiday and going out recently so I am starting from scratch, new BR new PT3 database. I have both HEM and PT3 and even though I like the HEM HUD better I like the fact that you can make notes on sessions in PT. I have been playing for a few days and started at $40. I have ample free time at the moment so am looking to put in a lot of time, the rakeback should help my bankroll grow.

It is sort of depressing playing 2NL but I am not trying to grind out a living from it and I just enjoy playing poker so the money doesn't matter. The money isn't really substantial until start playing 50NL and when I get there I want to be crushing it, so at the moment I am going to try and concentrate on my poker game. I have found that I am good at winning the money at the tables but my biggest leak is giving away a buy in.

I would like to be moving up to 5NL, when my BR is $100, in just under a week. Hopefully I won't get cocky and blow my winnings like I have dozens of other times.

Don't worry this isn't a bad beat post or me pissing and moaning about downswing, I just couldn't think of a another title.

I can't get past $150 in my bankroll. When I played on Stars I hit it then had my first major downswing losing 10BIs, this was a couple blog posts ago anyway I transferred my $100 to FT got to $150 then lost all the profits. Losing a whole months profits is a bit of a kick in the groin but like I have said before, I am not doing this to earn money but to be a good poker player. Therefore I have to have these big losing streaks to realise big flaws in my game. 

Just to clarify I don't think of a downswing as bad luck, I would consider a downswing as continuous bad play as well as a bit of bad luck, whether or not that is the correct definition.

 

That's my graph from the beginning of this month. It's pretty standard for me, to start with I concentrate really hard and do well I then hit a little bump in the road but looks like I managed to get over it pretty quick. Once I hit the climax of my graph I thought I was God's gift to poker and just cruised grinding out my Iron man on FT. I wasn't concentrating properly and over 3.5K hands managed to lose over half my profits.

Yesterday I was determined to play properly and I had a great session going up 6 BIs and my only big losing hand was when my AA got cracked. It all went south from there and I lost my entire months profits. At the time I was "Of course he hit his set" and then call all in with AA after getting raised on the turn knowing it was unlikely to be good. I did hit some big coolers but I should have got past that and continued to play optimally, instead I tilted. Some of the guys I was playing against I PTRd them and saw they have been playing for about a day or two on FT and they were really bad, somehow I managed to lose to them and then they pissed off before I could win my money back from them.

Anyway after that session I was convinced I was on a bad luck downswing but today I looked over my hands and I am thinking to myself "To be honest should have been an easy fold" so I have had the revelation that I am going to concentrate really hard on letting go of hands when I know they are beat, as opposed to not wanting to let the big hand go. This would normally be very easy for me but when on a losing session and grinding out for Iron Man it affects my game badly so easy things like folding top pair after getting raised on turn become non existent.

Poker is a bitch but you have to get through the hard times and learn from them to progress. I would rather have these hard times now than luck-box my way up the stakes and then get in serious trouble later. I had thought about stopping but after a nights sleep I recognise it was my own fault and most of the hands that I lost BIs on were my fault and could have been avoided.

With regards to my goals I set last time:

- Bronze Iron Man on Full Tilt

- Watch on average 1 DC video a day.

- Do EV calculations on the hands that I lost most

- Post more in the DC forum

- Do some more sweat sessions with my study group

- By the end of the month I want to be mid-way through grinding 10NL.

Iron man is going well I should just about be able to make bronze by the end of the month, despite going on holiday for a week mid month. I have watched about 1 DC video since that post rather than 1 a day. I find it hard to watch 1 hour videos and concentrate so I am going to try to watch 30 mins of DC videos each day. I do need to do some EV calculations but I haven't had that many tricky hands to use it properly, I still should have done it though. I haven't made one post in the DC forum since that blog post and I haven't done a sweat session either.

A new goal I want to set myself is to do some exercise, I am not fat or overweight by any means but I need to work out a bit and do some cardiovascular just to get the heart going and release some endorphins. When it comes to revising exercise is recommended and the same principal that it helps concentration can be applied to poker.

Bit of a long one today but I needed to get that off my chest and read back to keep me motivated to continue the grind.

EDIT: Don't understand how to change the font.

Its a new month so time to look at what went wrong last month and what I want to do this month.

Last month I hit a downswing and when playing micro stakes with a BRM scheme of 20BIs a downswing can be devastating. This made me less confident in my game and lost interest in poker, I just needed a break. It worked though because at the end of the month I wanted to play but I thought I would hold off and wait til the beginning of this month and really get stuck in again.

My goals for July are:

- Bronze Iron Man on Full Tilt

- Watch on average 1 DC video a day.

- Do EV calculations on the hands that I lost most

- Post more in the DC forum

- Do some more sweat sessions with my study group

- By the end of the month I want to be mid-way through grinding 10NL.

These shouldn't be too hard since I have broken up for summer holidays and therefore have a lot of free time, however I am working for my part time job a bit and have a holiday in the middle of the month.

My first day of grinding was yesterday and it was good to get back on the horse. I am 4 tabling so that I can concentrate on my opponents tendencies and look for spots to take small pots. My style is very red line, not intentionally, so taking pots by exploiting opponents is key to my game.

Going to hit the tables now, good luck.

After my recent stupid decision to go on PKR I withdrew within a day. I think the best way to build a BR at micro is to play on Full Tilt with rakeback and put in a big volume of hands because even if you break even or lose the rakeback can put you right back in the black. Also going to go back to PT3, I think I like having a change of scenery so even though HEM might be better I think ill try PT3 again for a bit. Starting from tomorrow I am going to try and get super into poker again, it is the 1st day of a new month and they 1st day of my summer holidays. Wish me luck :)

I am so fickle one minute I am thinking Full Tilt + RB, then Pokerstars + VIP club but I don't play enough or at the right stakes to get iron man or silverstar. Also my recent downswing has really ruined my confidence, which it shouldn't. I have been weighing up playing on EU sites because of the amount of fish so I have decided to go back to my roots and play on PKR. I feel like such a donk myself for playing on there but I did make $3.5K there and the fish are insanely bad.

My plan is to play on PKR until I work a bonus then make a decision from there. At the moment I am not feeling super passionate about poker and I feel that PKR brings the fun/recreational side back to it, although this is not the best decision for my win rate I do think I can build a bankroll on this site a lot quicker than others.

I am a bit disappointed in myself because it is the start of the summer and I wanted all year to grind a lot during summer but I am not feeling confident in my game, and I am going to try to have a higher ratio of watching DC videos to playing. Once I have watched a few series on DC I will probably go to Full Tilt and the Rakeback system to build my bankroll. Then when I am playing 25NL, which I hope to reach by the end of the summer, I will decide what I am going to do.

I know I can do well at poker, I have what it takes.