updateaments

How is everyone? Hope you are all good leading upto this festive period.

Quite a bit going on really, but lets start with the pokers...

I am still doing the stake, no major volume, just grinding between 20-30 games per night when not working. Still 12 tabling, but i might move that up slowly now I have worn the ring-rust off. It's as swingy as a mutherfucker, but I always knew that would be the case, just took a little remembering at the start when I kept on tilting like a twat.

I am now in profit, although my ROI is only at around 5%, but considering the best guys in those games are only at about 9% according to sharkscope, I don't feel too bad. I do feel there are some regs there that make a lot of mistakes, especially when around the bubble. I still make mistakes too, don;t get me wrong, but I am slowly but surely ironing those out and the confidence is starting to return. No doubt a downswing will now come and tear my bollocks off.

I really want to make a decent ROI for my backer in this. He's shown a lot of faith in me and never gets on my back or pushes for more, he just lets me get on with it, which stops it being a chore for me and means I only play when I am in the best moods, which has got to be a win-win all around.

If you are reading this cheers mate.

On a seperate note I went to the casino last night to play some live pokes. Just a £30 freezeout at blackpool (which happened to actually be a re-entry, where they can charge rake again..lol.) I was shocked to only see 28 entries, a few years back that game was regularly stacked out with like 80+ players on Fridays and Saturdays.

It was pretty uneventful for me, Missed a million flops early, everyone was loose as fack and some were just plain fucking awful. I was just trying to bide my time, connect and get the money in. I pretty much hovered between 10-15 BB's most of the night until I had a complete brain-fart and butchered a hand and I mean butchered...

I have 12 bigs, and it folds to me in MP with KTs (spades), blinds were 500/1k. I make it 2400. Short stack next to me shoves all in for 5k total. A retard and I mean the guy was awful, decided to flat this shove from the BB and he had me well copvered.... I was stuck. No way could I get this HU vs shorty because drooler was coming along for ride and if I call I leave myself zero room to mouvre.I fucked up and just called figuring if i even get a whiff of that flop i just push. Flop comes Q9Q and he checks and I check... error number 83217321, lol. Turn, K. No flush draws out there I figure if I am ahead I stay ahead, not really too much to worry about on river once he checks I figure him for a pocket pair. So he checks and I check again (I know what a twat). river is only a bastard Ace. FML. He immediately puts me all in. No way I can call,. what a fucking horrible hand. I probably shouldn't even tell it!

By the time the BB is near me it's gon up to 600/1200, I have about 8k and so push 79o from UTG (we are 7 handed at the time). Guy to my left immediately flats and the rest fold. He only has 99... fml. the case 9 hits the flop and I kiss my own dumb-ass goodnight in 14th or so.

My mate went pretty deep, but he was pissed as a newt and just made a dick of himself. I sat down to rail him a bit, pulling a seat from under a table nearby and when I went to get up realised I was sat on something sticky... some fucking knobhead had left a big piece of chewing gum on the seat. What a twat. So I have to trot off to bogs to try and pick as much off as I can. I can assure you that thoroughly pissed me off. Seriously which adult leaves chewing gum on the top of a chair. I hope someone shits in that persons christmas presents.


Another funny incident, we are walking past the cash table and my mate says "look at that twat there with the headphones trying to look ten years younger"... I look over and I notice it's only Hutch from the forum! hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Actually was good to see Hutch, must be hard work having to grind a living in the casino most nights. Some of those people are just fucking morons. Don't blame him for having the headphones on! Also reminded me about the APAT in March, which should be a great piss-up.

right, think thats enough for tonight.

cheers for reading

BM

Rollercoaster

Up and down like a brides nightie!

The swings are pretty shitty. You know early on if it's going to go bad or good, but you have to plough on through. I am still wayyyyyy too results orientated in the short term as you may have seen if you followed my thread: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=14324

This is how my graph looks (profit/loss graph)

Think that says it all.

It's fkin nuts maaaaaaaan.

Will leave you with this:

Steak progress...

I have been documenting my play here: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=14324

Only played 3 sessions, but it hasn't gone great. That said I have taken a shitload away from those first few sesssions... Initially I thought I was being too aggro around the bubble, it seems that my play was actually not too bad, but I did find a leak when I was reviewing my play that I am being a bit too aggro with the 7-10 BB range from EP when we are 5-7 handed. I had to tighten my range a lot. I was also calling a little too light in the BB when I had a reasonable stack vs someone I knew could be pushing wide. Turns out my calling range was too wide. I'd often snap with an ace, pair and connected broadways, but wiz showed me that I have to tighten that range up and I have.

Last night I had a brutal hit when my lappy died in the middle of a session. I was deep in a good few with decent stacks. For some reason when my lappy is doing too much it freezes up, but this time I couldn;t get it to fire back up. When I wanted reboot it just kept trying to get me to "fix the problem", but I knew I didn;t want to. The screen would just stay black if I tried to start in Normal windows mode. The frustration nearly made my head explode. I finally got it to work, but when it eventually loaded back up (felt like a fucking age) I had pretty much blinded out of most of the games. I was gutted.

I nearly quit there and then, I was around $180 down at that point according to PT3, but i re-composed myself and fired up another set of 12. Played well in those despite running really horrible in a few spots and managed to recoup some.

Stats so far:

I know I am on a downswing here, but to be very honest I really think I am gonna turn this around. In reality it's a ~15 buy in downswing and it's nothing. I am gonna crush these fuckers, I can feel the old skills returning and the ring rust slipping away.


COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Confidence Booster

Some major developments since my last post.....

Been contacted by someone offering me a stake, but to be fair it's more of a kind gesture as he wasn't really interested in profits and such, but I didn't think that was fair so we negotiated a deal that I think would be fairer for us both and also try and make us both a return and worth playing for.

It's actually really nice for someone to show that faith in you when you confidence is pretty low. I am hopefully going to repay that faith.

So my starting point now will be my old stomping ground, the $7 18 player SnG's. I could have gone higher, but I want to find my feet at a more reasonable level and get my mindset right for the grind. I am going to be running a 100-buy in strategy so that I have breathing room and might not be so results arientated in the short term.

To be honest even the best players only have a small ROI in these so I am not expecting miracles, but I am going to get the feel of the games. We are planning to review things on the 1st of each month and progress things from there.

Pretty excited actually, should give me a kick up the ass.

My backer has asked to remain anonymous and as such I will respect his wishes, but he knows who is is and I would like to thank him on here personally. Cheers mate.

Right, gotta run work calls.

Laters

BM

Such a knob

So I had a couple of days off whilst waiting for Full tilt to become active and I could transfer the $100 to Stars to carry on my grinding... or so was the plan. Instead I was a dickhead....

I tried to transfer the funds across and after pairing the accounts I attempted to transfer the wonga, but for some reason I got an email saying it had failed. During which time I had been reading a bit on the forums about Full Tilt and talked myself into playing some NL10 6max Rush.

To be honest I played awfully. I was getting 3-bet into oblivion so I started playing back and sure as shit they had it everytime and then I lost a 200BB pot when I got it in with my middle set vs a flush draw, which got there and stacked me and then it started.... tilt. I ended up spunking off 5 buy-ins like a tit. I forced myself to stop after that otherwise I would have probably blown the lot.

I then shifted the remaining $50 over to Stars and this time the transfer worked ok.

So, thanks to my own stupidity, I am now gonna have to grind the $1.50's. What a knob-end.

I just played about 6 games last night and the standard was absolutely fucking awful, but there seemed to be a few regs on most tables who were solid. Jesus, regs in $1.50 games, what has poker turned into?

This is going to hgave to be where I start. I am not dropping lower than the 1.50 games so if I bust that, then fuck it, I can not beat the games and will be best off just giving it up.

Lets see how it goes, but prepare yourself for more rants about the RnG and it's sadistic ways.

Trying to take some positives

Ok, so when going on a horrible loosing run it smashes your confidence a lot. You start to wonder what went wrong, are you a donkey etc etc.

So, I have been reviewing my play and I honestly am not making a lot of mistakes. I use SnG Wiz, pokerstove and Pokertracker to review hands and plays and It's left me convinced I was just unlucky. Granted there are spots where I am not pushing wide enough, but in my honest opinion, in a $3 donkament shoving so wide where people are going to be acalling with all kinds of shit is just asking to ride the variance train, for example in th hand below:

If I even alter the BB's calling range to like 40% it's telling me to shove J7o. Yes, against players who have a clue this might be a good value shove, but my confidence is low and I am missing some of these marginal spots on purpose.

Just realised I probably should have opened up the calling range of the big stacked SB too and see how that affects it.... hang on gonna do it now....

It's actually pretty thin. if he calls anything over the top 25% of hands then this is a fold, but upto top 25% I need to be shoving :

22+,A2+,K7+,K2s+,Q8+,Q3s+,J8+,J4s+,T7+,T4s+,97+,95s+,86+,84s+,76,74s+,64s+,53s+

Hmmmmm. If I had any confidence to win a showdown i would be shoving wide here, probably most suited cards and connected cards, two broadways etc, but maybe not as wide as this.

As you can see though below, an example that shows in general I am playing ok, with few mistakes:

Anyways I bust what I had left on Stars thanks to by bad run so now I gotta wait until the 6th and I can get my wonga off Full Tilt.

For anyone who plays SnG's and doesn;t use SnG Wiz you are missing out on a fantastic tool.

laters all.

BM

Getting silly.

Ok, this is a new graph, seperate from the other one I posted and this run on Pokerstars is getting silly.

Pretty sure a dominating ace shouldn't lose so much and neither should a big pair vs a smaller pair, but that the way it is at the moment. Quite disturbing actually.

Here is the graph, just for my own peice of mind really, I know I am playing well, but there is nothing I can do to control how the cards fall.

I am using a 30 buy in strategy, basically as shown below. The swings are somthing I completely forgot about and it's tough. Hope I can get ontop of it before I go busto.

BTW, I am adding the $100 I found in my full tilt account to my roll.

So please Poker Gods, give me a break and so run good!