Riddlemedeuce

I'll start with the rant:

I usually don't blame sites about anything, but I hate Ongame. For some reason i "take shots" at ongame, and everytime it ends up pretty bad. I got a bonus and thought i could clear it easily. Yeah right, i forgot that ongame always tilts the hell out of me. For some reason i lose at ongame...every fn time. And i don't care why..i just lose. The games are good and all  that, but i lose. It might be that i don't adjust well..or it might be variance. But like i said i don't care and i'm done with ongame. The software is awful, i guess they have monkeys as programmers. But i promise when i have like 500 buyins i will try if ongame is beatable.

So i started playing 25nl..again. And it's going ok so far. I've been playing good, running good..everything seems to be fine.  The ongame farce tilted me a little bit today and i lost at other sites also. One bad thing about winning constantly is that you get used to it, and losing again feels weird. But this is again just results orientation, so let's forget winning and losing.

And now i can't remember what i supposed to write about..Ok maybe i'll just watch some videos and go through some hands. Oh and i have to cashout my ongame roll.

Btw, Red Dead Redemption seems cool so far. Finally a great western game.

I have been playing some 10nl euro (however the graph shows them as dollars) tables (mostly 6 tabling) to get some bankroll and confidence. It worked:

 

Wow you can actually upload images to blog, cool.  Yeah it's only a heater over a small sample but it's nice to experience some positive variance for a change. Not to say that the games are tough to beat lol. I also included the red line there, not sure if the line is ok for 10nl.

I've managed to study poker a decent amount. I've watched Coaching Kristy, finished watching Euro Trip + watched some other random videos here and there. Something i need to do is start reviewing my sessions, currently i really don't do that at all.  (Btw here is a hand i posted and tried to analyze a bit)

Next i will start grinding 20nl/25nl again, probably at Ongame and Full Tilt.

 

Tomorrow i'll have my final exam of this academic year. Then i'll finally have some time to actually focus on other things, like poker.  I have 2 or 3 months of spare time, and i planned to grind 2-3 hours a day + watch a couple of videos and read. Nothing too serious, but  i will try my best.

I really haven't played very much and i feel i'm not doing very well because the lack of studying and playing. I started playing again yesterday and been running terrible. I've also had some concentration issues. No sign of bad tilt though, and that's always good.

I hope i'm able to grind through this little summer project without spewing. And i hope i'll be better player at the end of the summer.

Also if i have time i'll try to continue my mixed games study, but not promising anything.

Let's see how it goes..again.

I decided to start learning other poker games than NLHE as a “side quest”. Just to make things a little more interesting. Plus i’ve always wanted to learn mixed games, but stopped after few tries. My plan is: LHE 6max → 7cs → O8 → stud8 → razz, maybe like two weeks studying and playing each. Then i might try some HORSE, maybe plo or 7-game. This is nothing too serious, just having fun and getting some basics about each game. I’m starting at the .25/.50 with a $200 bankroll, let’s see how it goes.

Of course i’m mainly gonna keep grinding nlhe. I started at 10nl to get some confidence and bankroll. I need both of them after that terrible run i had. The first 10nl session was the same as always, down 4 buyins, 3 below EV. The second was better, however i stopped watching results so i don’t know how it went. I have the bankroll and maybe some skills, so i’m gonna check my results like every 10k hands from now on. I’m also gonna play 40k-50k hands at 10nl to see if i can win before even considering moving up. Some might think i’m crazy…. and they are correct.

Now to watch some limit hold’em videos.

Ok, so i’m having pretty big ds now, so if you’re tired of reading this kind of shit just stop here. :)

So..a decent part of my roll is gone now. Couple bad beats, maybe a spew or two and just overall running bad. You know what it’s all about.

Times like this make you think your relationship to poker. I don’t usually watch those EV-graphs, now i did. I have now a database of 100k hands of micros, mostly 25NL. I’m about a break-even player, maybe slightly losing or about 0.5ptbb winner, who knows. I’m also running about 400 below EV over those hands. I guess variance makes it possible, especially when winrate is about 0.

It’s frustrating, i have used a good amount of time learning and playing poker. Thinking about it makes me feel pretty terrible. Not because i regret spending that time with poker, it’s because i feel i have failed badly. I also feel that i’m stupid or something…or just missing some “x-factor” needed to play successful poker.

I’m too stubborn to quit just yet :D I’m gonna cashout most of my roll, and leave 25 buyins or so to play 10nl. I’ve done this before and was able to move up. I’ve also thought of starting with plo, but i’m still struggling to understand variance, so that game is probably not for me yet.

I think i’m gonna try only semi-serious approach this time..

Ok, here’s a blog post about random stuff that is in my mind right now.

I was basically out of the poker scene(lol) last 2-3 months or so. Just had so much other things i had to do regarding to school etc. I was able to play about 10k hands a month(break-even) and had no time to really study the game. Well, i guess it’s okay, you can’t really force it can you?

Now i have found some time for poker, and have watched a tons of videos and played a decent amount. I’ve tried to keep it “quality over quantity” however, and played mostly 4 tables.

Unfortunately im still good at lying to myself that i try harder than i actually do. That’s why it might be a good idea to blog about things that i actually do to improve my game. Lately(maybe in the last 3-4 weeks or so) i’ve watched: Pretty mutch everything NLHE that has come out this season at DC: Euro Trip, Coaching Kristy, SSNL disease, The Riddler and the Base Camps. In addition i’ve watched 6 episodes of 1st season of The Coaching Tree. I’ve also been more active at the forums.

What I still need to do and what can i change: I have to finally finish watching the Math series and the Hand readers series. I should finish the SSNLHE book. I have been watching videos pretty passively lately, i should stop the video when an interesting spots come, make notes and think think think.

Hmm..this blogging thing might actually be useful to track my learning, i’ll try to keep it up.

WARNING! The following text includes a bad beat:

It’s amazing how the variance can still get in your head, even if you have played tons of hands, lots of hours etc. I sometimes find myself..tilting (probably that is the right word) even in super standard situations, like being down like two buyins. Yesterday, for example, I was down 2-3 buyins(and why the heck i was even following that?!), felt like shit, got up to a point when i was about break-even for the day(still following the results, why?) and felt like god. Then a 70/60 maniac openshoved and i of course snapped with AQs, he turned over A9o and i lost when he hit a 9 on the flop. I felt like shit again. Thinking that now feels just silly, i always think i understand variance, but still let it get into my head. It makes me feel so stupid. I don’t like feeling stupid, so i hope (and will work on it) that one day i can be friends with variance.

-riddlemedeuce

I almost became lazy again. In everything..

I haven’t been playing poker lately, I haven’t been studying, I haven’t been doing anything usefull. I almost slipped to that lazyass-mindset again. But I think I’ve overcome it (for now, at least).

I want to be good at poker, I’ve truly realised it now. I hope this will keep me learning the game and putting in the effort. I started watching WOT’s series Haj School, so I will get most out of my time in DC. I noticed that I’ve been studying/watching the videos really passively, not taking notes, not stopping the video to think for a few secs etc. I watched a video today, for the first time(ok, I have been doing this before, but it’s been a while) I stopped the video and asked some questions in my mind and really tried to think the situations. And quess what? The video was like 10 times more interesting and informative than it probably normally would have been! I feel so stupid now..But hey, better late than never.

Really looking forward to Mt Robusto, I think it’s gonna be great. Soon I’ll have to start clicking the e-mail refresh-button to get some more information about it..

Also excited about the Microstakes blogging group, I think it is a very good idea. That will hopely help people to blog more often and better, and maybe get some useful comments etc.

I’ve only played like 3k hands this months, I have some grinding to do for the rest of the month. I haven’t been playing my A-game for the most part, more like B-game maybe. For some reason, I tend to play better when I’ve been watching videos more actively and otherwise studying…

Blogging group(If I’m in) and maybe others too: Feel free to add comments about what I should blog about(hand histories, learning process like I’ve been doing now, BBV?), whether or not my english is understandable at all, and anything that comes to your mind.

I’ve posted my 2010 goals (or targets;EPTPE) across the internet already, but here they are again,only shorter:

Poker:

-Playing 100NL regularly at some point
-Playing 20k hands/month
-Being mindful
-Studying, studying, studying, learning

Life:

-Balancing my life. Studying(not poker), hobbies.
-Being healthy

I’ve been playing without HUD lately because Cake doesn’t support it. It’s been really refreshing actually. I think I’ve been playing mostly really well and finally managed to get my non-showdown winnings look nice. I have been reading SSNLHE and watched some videos lately, so I feel more confident than ever. Great mindset to start grinding the new year. December wasn’t so great overall, I didn’t play that much and ended up having a losing month. It sucks, but doesn’t really bother me.

I have trouble deciding where I will play next year. I’ve been jumping across the sites all the time, but now I feel that I want to settle down. Not gonna play at ipoker, that’s for sure. There’s been some really weird stuff going on there. Kicking out winning players and not paying the first prize to the winner of their biggest promotion yet. That just sucks, and it really pisses me off when a big company acts like that. But what can I do? Nothing besides getting my few bucks out of the site.

I’m really looking forward to year 2010, it feels like a fresh start. Happy new year!

Hi!

I decided to start a blog to support my poker learning and keep track of my progress. I had a poker blog once at another site, but I wasn’t very active blogger and decided to quit blogging..I also wrote way too much bad beat stories and so it had too much negative thinking. I’ll try not to do that in this blog and I will also try to write more frequently. As you may have guessed, this blog will be mostly for myself and will not be very entertaining. I’m also trying to learn some english..

I’m currently playing micro stakes NLHE, mainly 20NL and 25NL depending on the site. I’ve been playing about 2-2.5 years now, but I had six almost poker-free months. I started with losing a couple $50 deposits without bankroll management. Then I deposited like $150 to Full Tilt and started playing 10NL. I also did a ton of casinobonus-whoring and soon had a decent roll for 50NL. Then things started to get bad, I was grinding 8 tables mostly on monkeytilt and of course lost about 1/3 of my bankroll. I moved down to 25NL and ran bad there also.

In 2009 July or something I withdraw most of my br and started the project called “The New Beginning” :D. I started playing 10NL with about 30 buyins and slowly moved up to where I’m now. My problem has always been rushing with moving up and thinking of clearing bonuses instead of learning the game. I’ve also told myself that I’ve really studied the game when I have not. Now I really try to focus on learning rather than moving up as fast as possible.