Mental Block

I'm making this post to kind of clear my head and get all my thoughts written down. I need to move forward from this terrible stretch I'm in and I need to do something about it. I can't just sit back and keep saying "My luck will change, I'm playing great blah blah blah" when the truth is, I'm playing horrible poker, tilting literally every session and I need to do something different. I've attached my year graph below and you'll notice I run real good for the first ~170k hands or so and then break even for the next 220k hands. Sure, over that 220k hand stretch I am almost 50 BIs below EV, been coolered left and right, and been running into the top of peoples ranges, but theres just no way that a 220k hand breakeven stretch can just be normal variance. I've admitted that I have been tilting hard lately and that has always been my biggest problem.

I need to do something different and figure out wtf is going wrong. I need to stick to one game type. I really need to choose to play 6max or FR and quit switching back and forth every damn session or every time that I run bad at one game. Anyways, hopefully i can put this breakeven stretch behind me and start winning again soon.

College Graduate

Woooooo!! After 4 years at college I finally graduated yesterday. It feels so wierd that the whole experience is over and it really hasn't set in at all yet. I can't believe I will never be making the trip back to school to go to my dorm. Its really a bittersweet moment. Its sad that I won't be seeing a lot of my friends every day like I have been for the past 4 years, but its great to be done with classes and to have my degree. I now have a B.S. in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Economics. The rest of my life is totally up in the air right now and tbh, I have absolutely no clue what I am going to do. I'm not worried in the least though, I know things will work out no matter what I end up choosing to do.

First things first, I'm taking a month and a half vacation to florida with my girlfriend and I have a bunch of friends coming to visit at different times throughout the month and a half. I'm really planning on just relaxing during this time, and although I know I will play some poker, I really don't want to play a ton. I want to enjoy my time off. My parents have a really nice condo in florida that they rent out and they are giving me a nice discount on it for the next month and a half. Its only 10 minutes from the beach and I know it will be an absolute blast. I leave on May 14th and will be down there until the end of July. Who knows where/what I will do after that. I'll just figure it out when the day comes I guess. I don't like to plan things out really far in advance and I like to just live my life on a day to day basis.

Poker has not been good this month at all. I've been running terrible, playing worse (tilting TERRIBLE), and I'm really just disgusted with the game right now. I really haven't enjoyed playing in a few weeks now and I haven't played much the past 5 days or so. I think the vacation will do great things for my mind and allow me to clear my head for a couple months. I'm still planning on playing for a living, but this recent ~150k breakeven stretch has really taken a toll on me. A lot of the stretch I have been running extremely terrible, but I know that a lot of it is due to terrible play and tilt too. The hardest thing about playing poker is keeping a cool head. I don't know what it is about it, but once a few beats/coolers pile up for stacks, something just snaps in my head. I know it happens to a lot of others too and if I could get over it I know I could be great.

Anyways, its mothers day so I should probably spend some time with my mom. I probably won't post until I get to florida, but look for an update next week sometime.

Its Been Awhile

Wow its been a good long while since I posted on this blog. I've been super busy with school and trying to play as many hands as possible lately that I kind of forgot about this thing (Thats not entirely true, I've thought about posting many a times and ended up just saying fuck it). I've been running extremely bad lately and its causing me to tilt and spew off stacks like no other. I know I can't complain as I've run good all year up until the last 60k hands or so but it still is frustrating nonetheless. Even more frustrating is that a lot of my losses could have been avoided if i had just kept my calm and not tilted.

Im currently in my last week of classes and will have finals next week. Less than 2 weeks til I am done and graduated from college. I will have a B.S. in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Economics and I plan on playing poker for a living (atleast for a little while). Kind of interesting that I will have this nice expensive education and won't really be doing anything with it. Atleast I have my degree to fall back on if online poker dries up or I just get sick of it though.

Since my last post I bought a new car. A 2009 Honda Civic Si. I had never driven a manual transmission til I got this thing and now, after learning how to drive it I absolute love it. Can't imagine going back to an automatic. I attached some pictures of it below. I've been zooming around in that thing quite a bit the last month or so.

Anyways, I attached my profits for the year also down below just to show how I've been doing. I have an extra $1000 profit that I won on my laptop that I didn't import into my desktop HEM. So far theres absolutely nothing i can complain about with the year so far. Hopefully will be making ~$80-100k this year. I will be updating this thing much more frequently so check back soon for updates.

Refocusing

As a lot of people who I talk to frequently know, tilt is by far my worst enemy at the poker table and the biggest problem I have when it comes to poker. My tilt over the last month and a half or so has just gotten to be absolutely out of control. I think I've probably lost close to $3000 from spewy, tilt-induced plays over the last couple months. I'm really baffled because I thought that I was really close to getting it under control in late November. I'm not sure if I was just running better at that point in time, making me believe that my tilt problem had gone away or if it was the switch back to playing mostly 6max that caused it. Anyways, whatever the reason is, I've decided to switch back to FR for awhile since the last time I was playing exclusively FR my tilt was almost non-existent. After losing $1000 at 200NL 6max yesterday, I won it all back playing 100-400NL FR. Normally when I play FR I table select between 100 and 200NL tables and play ~20 tables. Yesterday, however, I noticed that there were some huge fish sitting at some 400NL tables and decided to play a little bit. I was absolutely shocked at how bad the competition was. I'm not sure if it was just because it was a Saturday night, but if that is the typical play at 400NL, I'm quite positive I could beat it for a pretty good win rate. Problem is there aren't that many tables that form, so I would have to mix in 200NL too. My BR is not quite as large as I would like it to be playing 400NL, so for the rest of the month I play on grinding out 100 and 200NL FR and building my roll so that hopefully sometime in the next couple months I can switch to playing 200 and 400.

Anyways, despite the constant tilting I have been going through this month, I haven't actually done too badly. I'm up $1666 and have accumulated ~30k FPPs which is equal to $450 in rakeback.

A Long Overdue Update

Hey guys, sorry I haven't updated in so long, but December was an extremely busy month for me. In the beginning of the month I had finals and end of the semester papers/presentations to prepare and for the last 2 weeks of the month I was on vacation in Florida. And all at the same time I managed to accumulate 25k VPPs during December to achieve Supernova. Hopefully I will be able to update more frequently in the coming months.

Alright, I'll just start by talking about my results in 2008. I had a very very good year. I deposited $50 in March and turned it into $26,000 of profit by the end of the year including bonuses. It was a pretty sick run and am really glad I decided to deposit that $50 what seems like ages ago. I feel like my game has improved so much over the course of the year and feel confident enough to beat FR/6max/and HU up to 200NL (Ok, well I haven't really played any 200NL HU but it cant be that hard right?). The one thing that I haven't conquered yet is controlling my anger and tilt and not caring about the money. I really thought I had made great strides in my tilt control lately but last month was an absolute disaster. I'm not sure if it was me playing so many hands trying to get SN, or my move to mostly 6max, but I tilted like no other and it cost me a lot of profit i think. I've decided to quit HU play b/c that tilts me like no other. I am going to get a copy of Tommy Angelo's Elements of Poker and hopefully that will help me. I posted my year graph at the end of the post if u wish to see it.

So now that it is officially 2009 I guess I will talk about some of my poker goals for the year. I am planning on playing full time for a living after I graduate in May and would prefer to be at least playing 400NL at that time. I am planning on playing 100NL 6max for the rest of January while playing the 200NL tables when they look juicy. February is where I plan to totally transition to 200NL and stay there. I'm currently more than Bankrolled for 200NL so that's not really a problem and I don't think its that much harder to beat than 200NL, I just have to get used to the limit and not outlevel myself. I also plan to get some more coaching over the next couple months to really prepare myself for 200NL and beyond. I'm planning on playing ~80k hands a month while in school and 120k hands a month once I graduate.

Here's the graph for 2008. GL to everyone in 2009.

Movin On Up

Well, since my last post I've been playin a lot of 6max and I recently made the jump to 200NL. I've tried to move to 200NL (FR twice) and I've run absolutely horrible each time. Well, I'm happy to report that I have run very good since my move this time at 200NL 6max. Im up $1500 over 3700 hands and now, after an absolutely horrendous start to the month, I'm up almost $5000 in November including bonuses. 6max is just so much more interesting than FR and I think I'm going to be staying there for quite awhile. The only reason I might play FR again is to try to grind out Supernova next month. I still have quite a bit of VPPs to get (~23k) so I might need to just sit around for hours 16 tabling 200NL FR next month when I'm on Christmas vacation. I also am getting 6max coaching from a guy named Terp on deucescracked.com and I just had my first session today. Terp definitely knows what hes talking about and is only charging me $100/hour for 200NL 6max coaching. I definitely think that when i get 4-5 hours put in with him I will be a much better player.

I'm definitely going to take a shot at playing for a living after I'm out of school. I will be graduating with a B.S. in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Economics, but to be honest, none of that excites me at all. I am so sick of classes and schoolwork this year. Every class I am taking just seems so tedious and boring that I almost can't stand it anymore. I absolutely dread the thought of sitting through even an hour long class. I've stopped going to one of my classes completely since I have all the old tests from the class and the teacher never changes them so basically I just have to memorize the old tests to get an A. I can't really ever see myself being happy working any type of 9-5 job. Whether it be in an office or a lab or whatever, I just don't think I'd ever be happy doing it. I really hope this poker thing works out and that I can play for living next year. Its so depressing thinking that if I got a job next year I'd probably be making 30-40k a year working 40 hours a week considering I'm pretty sure I could make well over 50k playing ~20 hours a week at 100NL. Hopefully i can be beating 400NL by the end of May, which would mean well over $100k a year playing part time.

So, after all that rambling about how jobs suck and what not, I'll give you an update on my month so far. After an absolutely horrendous start to the month I've bounced back nicely and am extremely pumped. If I could post two $5000 months in a row that would be absolutely amazing.



Btw, here's a couple interesting 200NL 6max hands:

Villain here is an ultra aggro reg and I decide to look him up



Just to show theres still plenty of donks at 200NL

Halftime Report

Alright, I've been seriously neglecting this blog lately, but what can I say, I've been busy with schoolwork/playing poker lately. I've really had no time to hop on here and post updates. I also can never think of anything to write on here, so I just don't post. A couple things happened earlier this month that really put my life into perspective and made me kind of stop worrying about poker so much. I think I finally realized that poker is just a game, and losing a few hundred dollars here and there is absolutely no big deal. I've won so much in the past that I can't complain about anything that has to do with poker, ever. Even if I lose my entire BR tomorrow, I will have still cashed out well over $10,000 from what is essentially a fun hobby for me. I still do enjoy playing. After everything that has happened to me in real life this month, I actually feel like a total fool for ever complaining about being -EV, running badly, taking a bad beat, etc.

All that being said, I have played a lot of poker this month. I think part of it was that I needed to take my mind off of everything going on and poker was one thing that I could do which would take my entire concentration. I try not to think about anything other than playing well when I am playing a session and although I get distracted sometimes, I usually stay totally focused. Alright, now for the part you've been waiting for: how I've been doing this month.

The month started out extremely rocky. Took a shot at 200NL, ran absolutely terrible and decided to move back down to 100NL. I started playing 100NL FR again and just found myself bored as hell for some reason. I couldn't just sit there and play a TAG game on all my tables. I started trying to make plays at every pot, calling regs just to try to outplay them postflop and generally just spewing chips. After spewing for a little while I decided to get my shit together and start playing good poker again. I knew I was bored with FR so I started to play 6max again. 6max has gone pretty well even though I've still run pretty terrible. At least I'm not totally bored with it and I feel I am playing optimally. I also started playing some HU again (with great success). A lot of my profit this month has been from 100NL HU. The play at 100NL HU is just so utterly bad that I keep considering switching full time. Problem is that VPP/FPPs suck at HU and I am going to try to get Supernova next month. I've got ~28,000 VPPs to go for Supernova and I think I will 20-table 100NL FR til i get SN next month. I will be on Christmas vacation for a lot of the month, so it will definitely be doable.

Here's the graph for the month so far. I'm ~$2000 below all in EV. It sucks, but I am not whining about it. I know that its going to happen at times and it will eventually even out in the long run. Just kind of sucks knowing that I should be up a lot more this month, but whatever, I have still won a good amount. Like I said, there are more important things to be worrying about in life than poker EV. I've been pretty happy with my play (only a couple small tilty sessions mostly due to boredom) and my volume of hands. Hopefully I can get another 20k hands in by the end of the month. I've also placed in two 5400 sattys for $214 each, so all in all I guess its a pretty good month so far.