slowlane123's poker blog

I did write up a post about why I wasn't planning on posting here anymore but I didn't like how it came out so I never posted it. Basically I felt like writing the blog was mostly life and slightly poker -EV so I stopped. Some big things have happened since and I'll list them out in no particular order.

1. I have left DC.

Mainly because I don't feel I can focus as much as I'd like to on new students and poker in general when there is so much going on with my music career. I have the best time at DC and really couldn't not have asked for anything more from their incredible team.

2. I shut down my band.

I did so to begin a solo career. I also recorded an EP and released it (search me on iTunes or amazon to purchase it). I recently played a gig at an amazing music venue in Sydney to celebrate its release which I did have a band support me for.

3. FTP opened back up

I was very excited to get my old bankroll back and have been grinding out bonuses since it opened. My results have been between good and very good playing mainly 200nl rush :-)

4. Loved iPoker

It took me a while to figure out how to play 6m but once I did I was able to feel very comfortable playing right up to $2knl. PTR my ipoker account for graph (slowlane123).

5. Loved Stars

Moved to PokerStars and had similar results there.

6. Big news (it's a secret)

I have some potentially very big news coming up that I will be talking about in my blog. It has to do with music.

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All is very well and good. I will now only be writing a music blog from now on. Please also Like my fb page which is linked from my website. Hope to see you round!

I'm having a lot of fun messing around playing 6m still. Yesterday was a 'bad day' as far as run good goes. It just seemed every decision I made was wrong and I ended up down 3 buyins. I didn't sleep well last night and decided I wouldn't play today but for some reason I woke up bright and breezy. I was more than ready to play.

I played for just under 2 hours and swung down early and up at the end. One thing I noticed today was that there was a lot of levelling going on with me and the other 2 good regs that were playing. Of the 200 or so people I have colour-coded on ipoker, I have about 6 tagged red (very good players/big winners). Two of them were on my tables today and we battled it out. All in all I feel like I'm playing really well and the main feature of this entry will be the HHs below. Got band practice tonight for 2nd time in like 2 months or something as we have a gig in a week.

Some hands for you with comments below each HH:

http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1591169

http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1591170

http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1591173

Well I was expectant of a heater sometime soon after my last blog post and it came. I've been playing purely 6m my last few session and will probably continue to do so for a little while. I was running horrid towards the end of that last graph and now it has turned nicely.

Playing 6m at the moment is a totally different experience to anything I've felt in poker in a while. It's new. It's exciting. I'm actually winning at 6m for the first time. Is nice. I've been playing really well and implementing A LOT from the DC 6m videos I've been watching mostly by Hielko and Ansky. Last night, even though I'd played several hours during the day, I decided to play a session (I usually never play at night). It has been years since I've played a session just because I was excited to play. With Betpot by my side I couldn't be having more fun.

I also started back on fitness today and it felt awesome though my ankle is still pretty avg so I'm just doing walks instead of runs. I'm looking forward to keeping that up. I'm also getting my guitar fixed tomorrow so I'll be recording a lot in coming weeks. I'm excited about everything right now, life rocks!

Here is one of my favourite hands. It really exemplifies why I'm currently enjoying 4-6 tabling 6m more than mass-tabling FR. Timing tells and interesting table dynamics. I've made comments below it.

http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1580898

Well, I failed with this blog at the end of last year. I was stuck in a bit of a cylindrical vortex. I wasn't able to exercise because of my ankle and when I don't exercise I struggle to sleep. When I struggle to sleep I'm constantly tired. When I'm tired I play poker poorly. Fortunately, I didn't play much poker. If I had the results wouldn't have been very good as a result of the above. I played bits and pieces when I felt good and my results were pretty good since my last blog.

Yesterday I discovered that betpot for iPoker is now free and it works beautifully. I loaded up a few 50nl 6m tables just to see if it was working well and ended up playing a 2.5hr 6 tabling session. I made 8 buyins against complete fish. It was pretty fun. Now that the software is working I have no excuse not to go with my initial plan to play some 6m.

Another bonus came along when I figured out why I've been having problems recording my vocals for different tracks lately (well, always). For some reason when I record using headphones it sounds weird and unnatural. I recorded some track just singing into a mic with my guitar and they sound great. So now I just need to figure out how to fix the headphone problem so I can record over band tracks and what not. It might be too much reverb, not enough volume, who knows but it will be fun to figure out :-)

Even though I haven't been playing quite as much as I'd like, my students have and they have been killing it. I've been coaching a lot and each time I check in with students they seem to be doing really well. One of my favourite examples is a player who was breakeven playing 25nl on Stars a year ago. When he first came to me he had a graph that was as breakeven as you can get over 650k hands or so. Recently he sent me this graph (I think it was his December):

He's now playing 50nl, with some 100nl and even some 200nl shots. Pretty cool to see.

Anyway, NYE was fun and so was xmas. Not gonna give long updates on what I was up to. I'm looking forward to playing more now that all my family has left town and I can grind :-)

My graph from 200nl on Stars so far (little over 5bb/100 and a little under EV) I was running horribly for my last week or so of play but I think I can expect a nice heater soon to make up for it:

The last 24 hours have been just horrible.

There are three main things that screwed up this last day.

In my last post I talked about polarisation in life and specifically women. I've decided that I'm not good at doing the whole casual relationship thing with women. It gets complicated if it goes on too long and people end up getting hurt. I don't want to go into too much detail but I think I can say with certainty that I will always be a 1-woman kind of guy despite, because of my band, my attempts to be otherwise. It just doesn't work for me.

Poker sucked today. I drank last night to celebrate my end of 'party time' and the beginning of fitness time which started today. I felt hungover and knew I was going to have a losing day. I played because today was the start of my poker, music and fitness binge, which is a dumbass reason to play (I learnt this lesson 9 months ago). I lost $600. Almost all of it HU to a massive loser on PTR. Grrr

Today I started my fitness again. Low and behold, 10 minutes into my run I cut across to another pathway and roll my ankle in the process. This was probably the most painful thing I've ever done. I lay there for a couple of minutes screaming 'help' inbetween profanities. I kept looking down expecting to see a bone popping out of my skin. It wasn't. Eventually someone rocked up and called an ambulance. It was easily the most pain I've ever been in. They took me to hospital and gave me some B-grade drugs (the whistle thing) which I'm not sure did anything to help.

After 5 hours I'd had x-rays analysed and got out of there. Diagnosed with a really bad sprained ankle that was an old injury re-ignited. I got bad directions from the receptionist and hobbled around on crutches for 20 minutes trying to find a cab. By sheer luck, in the middle of NOWHERE a fuckin cab rocks up and takes me in. I have no money, no phone, nothing, but he allows me to get in anyways.

This was my worst 24 hours in a really long time. It's probably the 2nd worst 24 hours I've ever had. First place is a miiiles ahead of this but that's another story.

I hope everyone out there feels a bit better about their last day or life in general thanks to this negative post. Onwards and upwards tomorrow, you can be sure of it!!!

Drive down was fairly easy and I'm now in my new pad all set up. I haven't played/updated since last time as I didn't have my desk to setup my PC on (it was at my sister's house). But now I'm good to go and just played a 2 hour session.

I opened up William Hill Poker to jump on some tables and I needed to deposit via MoneyBookers (damu downswing). For some reason my stars cashout hadn't gone through yet (I did it over a week ago) so I opened up Stars to see what happened and there is no recollection of the withdrawal ever being made even though several days later I checked my Stars account and it was still at the lesser amount it should have been.

Anyway, when I opened stars I saw some fish playing on broken down FR tables so I jumped on and was playing really well. I played a few regs HU when the fish left but they all quit me :-( I jumped on a bunch of other FR tables and usually had 1 HU, 1 SH (broken FR) and 5-6 FR tables. I was definitely focused and enjoying having tableninja by my side. Despite great lengths being tried to attain BetPot for ipoker, I haven't been able to and that is airring my away from iPoker for the minute.

I was playing 200nl and running fairly hot. I made 4 buyins and started to get tired so I quit for the day. I am pretty hungover as I stayed at my sisters last night which is 90 minutes away and we setup the xmas tree and got fairly drunk doing so.

Last weekend I made $4 I think on sports betting (I put $50 on WH for UFC fights). I picked Bisping to take out Miller and he did so easily and also went with Diegao Bramao who won. I had a chunk on TJ Dillashaw aswell but he lost in an upset. This week I'm betting on Machida at nearly 4:1 (he won't win but irresistable odds) and noguiera to take out mir and 2.5:1 or something.

I've started to notice lately that my entire life is fairly polarised. I'm either eating healthy and working out every day or not at all. I really only hang out with very close friends, I don't have many casual aquaintances. I play poker alot and study a lot or not at all. I've always been the same in relationships too. Usually I'm just a 1 girl kinda guy and I'm fully devoted. But lately I've been enjoying seeing multiple people at the same time and even though I like them all just keeping it chilled is really nice.

I've been writing a lot of music since being in the new house. Working a lot on my solo stuff. We've decided in the band that we're going to start focusing on more of a 'rock' outfit instead of so much acoustic stuff. This is mainly because the strongest elements of my chilled acoustic tunes is their lyrics. Musically, they're not incredibly interesting and within a band lyrics often get lost at crappy live venues so people really have no avenue to connect to the music. So we're going to focus on groove based tunes a lot more. Rock/funk/bluesy stuff. I've got a bunch of tunes we're putting together and will have some uploaded by xmas.

My new place is really great. Internet is unlimited and fairly fast. We have a nice view and I can see the Sydney Harbour Bridge from my room (pic below, though it's much nicer IRL). My roommate is cool. I've been cooking a bunch of meals lately and it's a fun way to save money.

No graph today (It's the same as last time but +700 hands and $770).

View from room:

 Me jamming with my brother in law while on the Gold Coast:

I'm just about to pack away my desktop as I head back to Sydney tomorrow (I decided to stay here an extra day). Thought I better update as I won't be able to tomorrow (10hr drive ahead) and who knows about the next day.

Anyway, yesterday was pretty f-brutal again. Play OK. Not great (first day I felt I played great just super unlucky). Yesterday, I played OK and got coollered a shit ton again. Lots of fish and some of the biggest losers around but I couldn't catch a hand against any fish. Infact, most of my money came from nice calls against regs. I played some HU against a couple of droolers but they all quit me after I won a buyin from them (broken tables, not HU tables). Was OK day on the whole, only down $400 (lost it all in last 20 minutes or so on coollers basically). You can see my redline start going to shit when I up it to 6 tables 1 of which was 3 handed and 1 HU. I played for just under 7 hours.

I think I am going to just play 4 tables for the time being. As a lot of the time I'm playing HU, or 4-handed (they have 4h tables on ipoker which is a lot of fun). I'm still adjusting to 6max and still convinced (perhaps blindly?!) that I can beat it for a good clip.

Down 12 buyins so far. So now I need to make 52 buyins to make my goal (decided to include whole of december in my 4w4k challenge. Gonna be toough especialy that we have xmas and a gig during that time. Note that VIP bonuses and whatnot are included in the $4k...

I'm starting to realise just how much I was missing out on by stacking. I make some seriously SICK reads based on timing tells. Infact, the hand of the day I was so sure he had something strong based on timing tells that I just randomly overbet for the first time in our HU session and I was right (too right sadly).

Graph for december and hand of the day (3b call is loose but he was 3b a ton and folding his cbet a lot to raises):

http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1544468

PS. that fucknuckle slowrolled me on the turn.. note to anyone reading this.. never slowroll someone who is running like shit against you HU (I quit for the day after he did that)

Alrighty.. I'm a bit over this crap blog and it's time get to serious business. I've been letting down all my fans (all 6 of you that read this) out there by not updating very often and by not playing heaps of poker like I should.

So here we goooooooooooooo........

Ever since I started playing poker I always stuck to FR. It's what I played live so I stuck to it and always I've done very well. Lately my results have been great on PokerStars and I feel really comfortable playing there. I dropped tables and in the last week or two I've been winning at 10bb/100 over around 10k hands at 200nl FR and playing like a 20/17 bosssss.

BUT

I want something new. Something exciting. Something I've never done before. So, I've decided to switch to 6 max (atleast for a while). I've always struggled at 6m and to be perfectly honest, the reason is that I run like shit at 6m. I don't know what it is. But every.. single.. time I play 6 max.. I run like absolute dog balls. Just buyin after buyin under EV. I always just thought it was some kind of curse and kept on crushing FR.

ENOUGH OF THE SUPERSTITIONS

I am going to once and for all stick to 6m and prove I can beat it and beat it goooood. hoooya *karate chop*. I played some last night and crushed. 3.5 buyins in 70 minutes and felt like I could play however I wanted and win. Then today I played a longer session (around 2.5 hours) and got hammered (graph below). Coolers, suckouts, you name it, it happened. As always with 6m so far in my life, I ran way under EV (normally I don't give a flying fuck about EV, but this 6m curse is something else). After which I decided I will no longer call it a curse, just a consistent bad run of cards every time I play 6m for a little bit. This time I'm going to battle through and win.

POKER POKER POKER

YES! You are about to get a bunch of blog updates that have to do with POKER! I'll be updating every other day. I will be posting graphs and sharing my crap & awesome results. Big pots won and lost! You name it, it will be here. So get ready for some slowlane123 6m action...

NEW GOAL

A while back I did a blog for $3k in 3 weeks. I did it in 12 days (back in 2009 @ 100nl FR). Now I'm going for $4k in under 4 weeks (by Jan 1st).  I've never claimed to be able to beat or crush 100nl 6m by any means. But, in my mind, I think I can do so and now we will find out if I'm right and can actually smash these noobix cubes! I'll be playing any stakes I want, table selecting like a mofo and doing all that I can to become a better 6m playa. The goal starts from tomorrow (gooo weekend poker). Buckle your seatbelts then slash them with a knife cos you're gonna wanna get up and boogie (not really sure where I'm going with this bit, maybe I'll just end it there).

PS. I'm trying out iPoker for a while, my SN is same as everywhere else. Also if anyone has any good pot betting software (I really like betpot but can't buy it anymore) please pm me.. I will reward anyone who helps me get something working well!

Hand of the day (biggest pot and rly sums up what I'm going on about): http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1541484

Day -1 Graph (remember we start tomorrow thank god, and also ALL graphs will include redline and EV line.. I ain't hidin, NOTHIN):

Well the gig was pretty good. Fairly chilled. We were on early in the day so there wasn't much of a crowd. Probably 40 people at most and 20 at the least.

The gig was the day after I found out that it was looking likely that an FTP deal would be going ahead. So afterwards I went out and splurged and drank a lot and had fun without thinking about the $$ which was nice. Haven't done that in a while.

Poker has been really great since then. I've been coaching a buttload (like 2-4 hours every day). My students are doing well and taking on board the things I'm teaching them.

My passion for poker is definitely burning strong for the first time in a while. I haven't really been playing a lot of music since the gig. But I have been playing and studying poker a lot. For the first time in ages I'm watching DC videos again and taking notes. They are fucking awesome!

It feels good. I think I'm playing somewhere near the top of my game at the moment. My results have been great at 200nl so far. Some run good, a lot of play good and not playing too many tables all helps. I think I was a little arrogant when I first started playing on PokerStars. I went straight into 24 tabling (having not played in 2 months+) and though I'd be fine. Dropping tables has helped me realised how well I can play this game when I actually take the time to think about decisions and it helps that almost all my opponents are stacking 24 tables/have sizable leaks in their game.

I'm picking up on a lot of timing and sizing tells from players as I'm currently 9 tabling tiled. In addition, I get to see any showdown that happens which is incredibly helpful in learning ranges at a new stake or site. It has taken me a while to adjust. I've been experimenting a lot with what style works best on Stars and seem to have finally 'found my game'.

I'm really loving staying with my family at the moment. I don't get to see much of them and I'm feeling revitalised and ready to take on the big city of Sydney again in a weeks time :-)

Haven't posted any hands yet so here is an interesting one for you. This hand is another example of why tiling is pretty bomb like. This player was a random playing like a mad man but his stats weren't really showing it. I've written some notes on my thought process for you to read:

http://www.handconverter.com/hands/1531768

To begin, sorry for the delay. Last 2 weeks have been hectic to say the least. It was probably a bad idea to set goals and ideals with regard to this blog and my play when I knew it would be crazy times, here's why: my lease ran out at my place in Bondi and I don't move into my new place until Dec 4th. In the meantime I've driven up to visit family on the Gold Coast for a few weeks and grind out/make music. So I've been flat out organising all that and making the drive.

So far so good. I've been grinding fairly hard for the last week and doing pretty well. I'm currently playing 200nl and have decided to drop my number of tables for a while in order to wrap my head around the regs and get used to the play there. I'm enjoying playing again for the first time in ages. There have been multiple session where I sit down expecting to just play a short hour or two session and up playing just shy of 4 hours as I'm enjoying it so much. Being back at 200nl is much better than the tedious lower stakes where all you need to do is play ABC and you win. At 200nl I feel like I'm battling with better regs now and it's more 'home-like' for me as leveling comes into play as well as some creativity.

Music is interesting at the moment. Our tracks are really getting there. I'm mixing them all myself and it's fairly difficult. Trying to get vocals done by myself is fairly difficult and I'm struggling to get the right sound.

Anyway, just a quick update. We got a gig this weekend in Sydney so I'm flying down for it. I won't get to grind any which sucks (I am really enjoying it at the moment!) but will be hard it when I return.

I've also picked up a bunch of new students thanks to dropping my coaching prices. They all seem really cool and our sessions have been great. I look forward to working with them further.

Pick of current grindstation/studio: