Spinning wheels

I wish I knew how to win right now. I managed to donk out of the HUC losing two straight to Highonpkr.

I also can't seem to get my head above water in the SNG's right. I'm only down a small amount but with my recent withdrawal I may have overestimated my risk of ruin.

I have a bad tendency to lose when I'm feeling the pressure to win.

Light bulb moment: I finally realized as I'm writing this why that is. Bad beats affect me more when I feel the pressure. I literally cussed at the computer during play tonight which is something I rarely ever due. Hmmm maybe writing in this blog still has value after all.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Excuses are like...

and everybody's got one. While I'm playing more SNG's this month, I'm certainly not seeing an increase in my ROI. As a matter of fact, I'm faring much worse this month. In August I played 80 SNG's for a 15.5% ROI. In September I've played 114 so far with a 2% ROI.

I could equate my issues into forcing myself to play when I don't really want to, having other projects going, not concentrating, but those are all just excuses. The fact of the matter is that I'm not playing the way I know to play. No excuse makes up for the fact that I know I'm playing poorly yet make no effort to correct it.

Patience young padewan. If I could give one piece of advise to anyone wanting to play SNG's. That would be it. Patience is the single most important key to success at the low limits. I need to practice what I preach.

Where To Begin...

Let's see. I know my posting has been sporadic at best lately but I am still playing poker. In fact staying true to my word I'm still on track to double my play from last month. My problem is a severe lack of free time right now. I'm getting ready to embark on a very exciting, yet very scary career move.

Being known as the "tech guy" to all my friends I get called upon whenever someone has a PC related issue. Every time they call me, they also tell me I should work on computers as a business. I've heard this enough times that I've finally decided to do just that. It will start as a part time gig that hopefully grows into a full time job. I will be launching next week and getting everything ready has been very time consuming.

Playing poker has actually led to my being able to do this. You see all of my startup costs have been covered by poker profits. In fact, I believe that I will never have to spend a dime of "my own" money during the life of the business. I see no reason why I can't cover my small monthly costs (phone, advertising, etc.) with poker play.

This has led me to consider something within poker I've never really had to deal with before. Proper bankroll funding versus risk of ruin. I've really emaciated my bankroll during this process. The bankroll is currently sitting at about $750. I like to maintain a minimum of 45 buy ins but prefer 65 for SNG's. Presently I'm playing the $24 turbo's but I should be playing the $12 ones. Normally I would just drop down in limits and continue playing. The thing is that I believe I have proven to myself that I can beat these games. I feel it would take a severely freakish losing streak for me to be in bankroll danger. Thus I've decided to stay where I'm at and play a little thin.

At any rate look for some more frequent posting coming up. In the mean time go check out The Poker Grind.net and show some support for a new blogger on the scene.

Update: I received my money from Full Tilt a few days after posting about it so alls good.

Mobile test

This is a mobile posting test
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Foreboding

The last time I received a response like this the site went under and I never saw my money.

Hello Tom,

Thank you for contacting Full Tilt Poker 24 hour Email Support.

We sincerely apologize for the extended delay in processing your
withdrawal request and any inconvenience this may have caused you. While
withdrawals normally take 24-48 hours to process, we are currently
receiving an unusually high volume of withdrawal requests at this time,
making our average processing time longer than 48 hours.

We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience, and we anticipate
returning to our regular processing times of 24-48 hours as soon as
possible.

We value your business and appreciate your continued patience.

Regards,

And The Challenge Begins

The Heads Up Challenge 5 got underway today and I played my first match in the hearts bracket against the Surly Poker Gnome. I was fortunate enough to win back to back matches in the best of three series to move on.

To be fair I was running very good tonight. In my set of 4 SNG's I managed two firsts and a third. I then won not only the two matches against pokergnome but also one against some random player.

All in all an excellent night of poker.

ReFormat

I somehow managed to corrupt my OS last weekend and had to do a complete reformat of my hard drive. I couldn't find the setup disk that came with the laptop so I couldn't do a normal restore and it took me a while to get everything back in order.

Good news...my laptop runs much faster now.

Bad news...not much poker played because of it.

I was very happy with both the Poker Tracker and Tourney Manager people as they responded to my requests for new registration info almost immediately. I managed to save all my SNG data in Tourney Manager but I'm having to start over with Poker Tracker. No real loss there as I haven't been playing any cash games and I prefer the other program for my SNG tracking.

At any rate I'm debating an increase in play for the month of September. This will be difficult as this is the start of my busiest two months at work. I'll just have to wait and see.

300

I was reviewing my turbo stats for the year today and I found something interesting. I've played exactly 300 @ $6.50, 300 @ $12, and now 302 @ $24.

Since my games played at each level are identical I thought I would do a side by side comparison of my finish positions.


As you can see $6.50 was good, $12 was excellent, and $24 has been a bit of a struggle. I'm currently on my 3rd attempt of the year taking on the $24 SNG's and this time it's been going better. I still have work to do but since I'm currently only playing 4 a day it takes a long time to see if your really improving. Below is the chart for my last 50.



I've become profitable but the third place finishes are very much out of whack right now. The players are a bit more patient at this level so it takes longer to get short handed. I should probably start shifting gears a little earlier than I'm used to.

Is Anybody There?

I've been back from vacation for a while, I just haven't had anything to blog about. Still don't really but I thought I should make my presence felt. I'm still only playing 4 $24 turbos each day at Full Tilt so I can get my 50 points for Iron Man status. I haven't played a MTT or a cash game in forever. It's not that my interest is waining, it's that I have non poker activities taking up my time.

My kids and I decided to do a short film and this has been very time consuming. I'm loving the process of writing, editing, and effects though so I may have found a new hobby. I'll have to wait and see how it all turns out. My goal is to have the post completed by the 24th of this month.

Poker Pays Off

I think this may be my first post this month. It will also be my last. I'm on vacation and will be out of town the rest of the month so no poker or blog for me. This month poker has taken a back seat and I've only been playing the bare minimum of four SNG's a day. I had to play these whether I wanted to or not so I could maintain my continued Iron Man status at Full Tilt. Thankfully I've been running good and have a 21% ROI for the few I've played.

The TV featured in the photo was delivered to my house today thanks to the Pokerlistings treasure hunt. I managed to win first prize (a drawing, no actual poker skill required) which was a 52" Sony Bravia LCD. This baby is sweet and it's something I never would have bought on my own. It will replace our aging 29" Zenith which we bought at Sears nine years ago. Adding this to the Cruise I won in a freeroll, and the two NUTZ card protectors I won during the Bluff Poker Tour and poker has indeed been very very good to me.

Yippy Kayay

Bear with me... the song seems like it sucks, but you will be singing it at the end...guaranteed

Cob Webs

The desire to play any form of poker has been waning a bit for me lately. In fact yesterday was the first time I had played any poker in about 5 days. I started with an hour long session of 25NL which produced a nice profit of a little over a buy in. I then decided to hit the SNG's. After a sixteen day hiatus from these it was evident I was a little rusty. I was lucky to finish with one first out of my first set of four to break even. I fired up a second set and things went much better as I played my way to 2 firsts, 1 second, and 1 third. Managing to finish the day with a 106.3% ROI it was a very nice "welcome back" to the game.

A Shitty Month

I've now had two losing months this year. Sadly the two losing months outpace the four winning ones making me a small ($100) loser on the year so far. This also marks as the worst year I've had at the tables. Technically the years only half way over with so all this could/will change but I've never been down at this point in a year since starting in 2003. Granted my bankroll also hasn't been this small since 2003 so that may have something to do with it.

This month was a combination of losing at .25/.50 NL, having a bad run in my SNG's, and continuing my bad streak in the MTT arena. When it all happens it seems to happen at once. If you refer back to my June goal post I fell victim to weakness number one. I took shots at hight levels that failed and then I let number four keep me from dropping back down.

I'm confident July will turn out to be a different story for me as I'm going to stick to playing within my bankroll (really I will this time, I promise).

Calling Station

If you looked up "Calling Station" in the dictionary, you would see this guy.



Click here to view a larger version.

This guys was so tight and so weak that I became a little scared of him having QQ so I pussied out a little on the river.

The Biggest Loser #1

In what has been a disastrous week at the tables so far I bring you my first Biggest Loser hand. I'm actually bending the rules a little because this was not my actual biggest losing hand. Exactly two hands after the one listed I lost an entire buy in when preflop I got all in with QQ vs. AA. Chalk that one up to tilt. I also had a winning hand that was slightly more than this losing hand but it was just a case of my having a bigger two pair and a donkey to pay me off.

I find this hand to be a little interesting because I have what looks to be the best hand at first glance. The check raise by my opponent on the flop should have been more of an indication to me what my opponent had, but I locked in on my opponent having a weaker Ace and I blocked out all other possibilities. The turn card locks me in and I'm committed at that point.

My question is this. Did I just get coolered or should I have been able to read my opponents holdings better and been able to get away on the turn?

Here's the hand:



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KING OF THE WORLD #2

Sunday was tournament day for me and I managed to come up with a big goose egg. In fact I only played one event half way well and in that one I definitely brought my "A" game. I unfortunately was sucked out on by the overall tournament chip leader and it soured my willingness to play for the rest of the day.

I took Monday off and then my SNG play yesterday amounted to a -50% ROI effort.

mmmm... poker goodness.


So in a last ditch effort to make a little scratch I headed of to some low limit no limit action. My only hand of any note for the session also ended up being the KING OF THE WORLD hand for today. As is my style I like to open up for a raise when I'm first to act and then the continuation bet is a large part of my overall strategy. The best ways to combat someone who employs this strategy is to either call the continuation bet or just lead out at the flop. This puts the pressure back on the original raiser as they now have to decide if it's worth firing another bullet at the pot.

The player I'm in this hand with has been my designated whipping boy. He was the loosest (68.57% VPiP) and weakest (Aggression Factor 0.9) at the table and had continually folded to my continuation bets. He chose to call me this time but I couldn't give him credit for a real hand since he only called my bets. His bet on the river screams of a missed flush/steal attempt so I acted accordingly.



Click here to view a larger version.

KING OF THE WORLD #1

In an effort to display my cash game idiocy to the world (while possibly learning something along the way) I'm introducing two new features to the blog. King Of The World, and The Biggest Loser.

The day after I play a cash session I will revue the Poker Tracker numbers and then post either the biggest winning hand or the biggest losing hand depending on which is greater. Yesterday it happened to be a winner.

Staying true to my work (kinda) I started the day at a 25NL table. Within an hour I was up three buy ins and decided to take some of that money and buy in to a 50NL game. About forty minutes later that buy in was gone and I was back at a 25 table. I managed to take a little more money and ended the day up around $60. I don't know why but I can't get a handle on the 50NL tables. It seems from looking at the histories that I'm bluffing way to much but I don't know why I keep doing it.

Anyway let's move onto my KING OF THE WORLD hand.

I could try to justify my play here but from an odds standpoint I really had no business staying in the hand after the SB pushes. I really felt I had the best flush draw and I just knew the button would call based on his past play. In the moment I thought the call was right. Feel free to rip in with constructive criticism.




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Is This Common?

I've become addicted to the cash games now. I find myself whipping through my SNG's so I can get to playing them. This has lead to some bad play on my part as I've ignored my own guidelines for quitting recently. To get back in the groove I'm dropping back to the 25NL games.

In an effort to gain some insight I'm posing this question. Is this a common play from opponents at this level with a flush draw? This seems screwy to me but others at the table berated me for my bad read of the situation. Pleas comment on this.





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Up or Down

Still no MTT's played this week but I did start playing the $24 Turbo's and the $50NL games by the end of the week. I'm going to see how things go and I may split time and different levels for a while. I'm not going to update the stats for SNG's based on every 100 anymore. Since I may be switching out at varying levels it will just be easier to start doing the stats on a monthly basis, utilizing the stats from that month only along with year to date charts on occasion.

Speaking of year to date I was looking at my best and worst day of play since I started with the SNG's this year.

After 1,048 SNG's that ranged from $5 HU to $24 Turbo's
best day: $193.50 on February 1st
worst day: -$410.40 on May 23rd

It would be so much nicer if those numbers were reversed. It's amazing that I'm still up after such a big loss day. That day accounts for me having a 5.5% ROI overall for all money levels combined this year.

Multi Table Apathy

My enthusiasm for MTT play has been severely lacking lately. I played a total of five events in May and four of those were blogger donkaments. So far in June I've sat down for four tourneys. Again mostly blogger events. I'm in a MTT rut.

What was once my favorite game has been reduced to an effort in just throwing money away so I can move onto something else. I'm not sure what can be done to get the spark back. I'm tossing around the idea of putting some money on PokerStars and trying to qualify for the Sunday Million. Then I can just take the tournament dollars and play a bunch of events on someone else's dime. At any rate I'm done with the blogger events, at least for the next little while. I don't enjoy them and really just dump my chips anyway.