Monday, November 24, 2008

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

Sunday, November 16, 2008

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.