June results, July goals

Hey, just a quick update to let you all know how its gone for me this month and to see how i got on with my goals from last month.

Like i said in my last update, i wasn’t too optimistic about the amount of volume i’d be able to get in this month as i’ve been busy as shit with the army, so last months goals then.

-Get in 15k hands, not a lot but i'm busy so this would be a good number.

Not completed, I only managed to get in 7300 hands so just under half of what i was aiming for, this kinda sucks but i have been a busy little bee and even when i’ve had 2 mins to myself i’ve honestly wanted to do other things, like chill out and relax, do stuff with the missus and her little boy, there’s been a lot going on this month and in the few moments of downtime life has had to come first.

- Move up to 5nl, working on a system where i take 3 BI shots i need to get myself up to $115 in the roll, currently at $81.

YEY, I never waited until i got to $115, instead i moved up at $98.40, just shy of 20BI’s for 5nl. My stats for 2nl then:

Kinda tight/passive really but this might come from raises not getting too much respect at the lower levels and the huge amounts of implied odds you get from the majority of players there, an 11% PFR translates to 77+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,ATo+,KQo which seems to me like im raising for value the majority of the time, its not on the pic but my steal % is 23% which i dont like, maybe i need to have a look at all my hands from the BTN/CO/Blinds and see where a raise could have been the best option over flatting, which would bring my vpip and pfr closer together, wow, can’t believe i thought of that all by myself right there lol. Small sample but i dont need anymore to prove i can beat 2nl, it was just a stepping stone imo and i've (hopefully) stepped right off it now!

- Finish PNL and maybe start reading it again, should be do-able.

Although i didnt have internet on the exercises i’ve been on its just meant that i’ve had plenty of time for study this month, i’ve read PNLHE and i’m now on the 2nd read b/c that book has helped my game soooo much and there’s bound to have been things that didnt sink in, also, my understanding of calculating your equity, SPR, and commitment, could do with a little work so i think a 2nd read should be just the ticket.

- Learn to lay down hands where its clear i'm beat, made some good progress towards this today, making a couple of good lay downs.

Definitely something that i have drastically improved on, my discipline when it comes to laying down beaten hands has been something that i feel has seen the most improvement and ultimately will lead to some big gains by saving me my stack when put to a decision to call a shove

So it’s not been a bad month considering i havent had much time to play, i’ve still accomplished a lot and i’m really happy with the way i’m playing and thinking about hands in real time, trying to put villains on ranges etc. Really glad i decided to move right down to learn 6max properly and now that i’m out of 2nl its time to start earning some vpps again lol.

Gotta end the thread with my goals for next month then.

-Play 15k hands, lol, still not gonna have a hell of a lot of time tbh so if i can make this amount of hands at 5nl i’ll be happy enough, got a feeling i might actually do it this month.

-Look through my hands from stealing positions to see where i could have raised, for example, i’m in the SB, folded round to the button who limps, just noticed today that coincidentally i had a few big hands in this exact situation and everytime i raised i took it down pf, might be just a coincidence but gonna investigate further i think :D

-Close the VPIP/PFR gap, less flat calling with implied odds hands and a tad more raising when IP against certain villains, like a typical nitty tag, sure i can flat call with SC’s, A-xs, small-med PP’s, given correct stack sizes of course, but what i think i could be doing is 3betting the fishie 50/20 guy more instead of just flat calling as i would with the nit.

Graph for the month then,

From about the 6449 mark is where i moved to 5nl, My first 700 hands at 5nl has gone well then lol, hopefully it continues, would be nice if i could have a 10 - 15BI month, please poker gods, one time!!!

Gl everyone, til next time :P

Technorati Tags: 2nl,5nl,6max,NLHE

Slow and steady wins the race

Hey, thought i’d do a lil update on my progress down at the donk infested 2nl 6max, it’s been quite a good week n a bit really. Like i said before though, i haven’t found much time to play this week as i am on an exercise with the army, joy, managed to get in 2700 hands since the last update so its not looking too good for me hitting my 15k hands goal unfortunately, i’m back at camp next week though so the nights will be my own once more and i’ll just try and smash out at least 2x1.5hr sessions per night to try and catch up.

So, as the title would suggest, my progress has been slow and steady really, had a bit of a heater at the start of last week which makes my graph look bad now b/c of the inevitable downswing straight after, ran awesome for 1k hands then ran badly for the following 1k lol, still, i have finished up another 4BI’s anyways and have ran at a nice 7PTBB/100 so far in june :D

Even though i’m not making huge gains at the minute i am very happy with the way i’ve been playing and the way i’ve been thinking while playing, i’ve decided to play a max of 4 tables at 6max from now on, i feel like this is the sweat spot for me where i can get in a decent amount of volume while being able to pay attention to the tables and get a feel for who the absolute donks are (most of them at this level!) and how they play their hands, this has improved my game in a number of ways, most notably value betting on the river and being able to lay down hands that i should know are beat, both of which will add hugely to any profits in the future.

I’ve decided as well to stop looking at the cashier as much, i’m going to try and limit it to when i update my blog i think, some may say that even this is too much and being too results orientated but i gotta start small and any improvement over looking at it every 5 minutes will be a big achievement for me lol

So then, below is the graph for the last ten days or so, nothing spectacular but i’m in profit which can’t be a bad thing, i really just wanna run goot this month so i can get myself up to the $115 mark where i can move up to 5nl!!

Like i said, nothing amazing, but running at 7BB/100 can’t be bad.

Hands Played: 2780

Profit: $7.94

Current Roll: $89.23

BI’S needed to move up: 12.5

So next week i’ll be trying to up the volume a notch, starting this weekend when my fiancee goes shopping with her bridesmaids for the day and then stays at her mum’s up the road, leaving me free to poker it up all bloody day if i want to :D gonna shoot for about 4.5 hrs on saturday alone, hopefully the gods shine on me this weekend and i can profit from the uberdonks that fill pokerstars between fridays and sundays lol

Til next time

Swingy…….but good

Hey, this week has been a bit nuts really, i guess i’ve just been having one of those periods where every time you win a stack you seem to lose one 10 mins later! and of course if you play at 2nl like i am atm then the frustration is tenfold b/c when you lose a hand at 2nl chances are it was a bad beat of some sort!

I’ve had people hitting runner runners, miracle cards on the river to make their 2 pair of Qx a winner vs my AQ, people hitting when they’ve been drawing to a gutshot straight on a flush drawn board, people set-mining in 3bet pots with <50BB in their stack. It’s really been unbelievable at times, and the only thing thats getting me through this ordeal is the fact that i know i’m flying so far above the levels of my tablemates that i’m not just shitting on their heads as i soar up above, i’m dropping lumps of ice turd on them b/c i’m that high up it’s froze by the time it hits them lol

Of course i have been keeping a level head and, trying, not to get too cocky, after all, the winning formula at 2nl is clearly to just get the volume in and play your good hands, even at 6max tight is right this low down. I’m kinda glad that i’m going back up through the limits at the same time as reading PNL b/c it’s giving me a chance to put into practice all of the things that i’m learning, as i’m playing hands i’m constantly thinking on each street about if i want to commit my hand to that certain villain, i’m starting to think a lot more about peoples ranges and choosing better spots to get in that extra value bet on the river, this was something i rarely did before, i guess i was only playing my cards and the villains vpip stats. Something else that i’m impressing myself with is that i’m getting good at putting people on quite a small range of hands from their actions through the streets, i’m not exploiting this too much atm though, after all, even if you do have a strong feeling that someones on middle pair and you should represent the jack or w/e, at this level it just doesnt work b/c the villains really aren’t thinking about what you could have, they just see middle pair and jump around the room while calling every bet you make!

So, bankroll since the last update and a graph for my 2nl adventures so far lol,

Starting Roll: $70.66

Profit: $9.41

Current Roll: $81.30

Which means i’ve had a nice 5 BI week with $1.23 profit from PLO on the side :D

 

Next month, well i'm quite busy so not sure how much poker i'll actually be able to get in but some rough goals for me would be to:
- Get in 15k hands, not a lot but i'm busy so this would be a good number.
- Move up to 5nl, working on a system where i take 3 BI shots i need to get myself up to $115 in the roll, currently at $81.
- Finish PNL and maybe start reading it again, should be do-able.
- Learn to lay down hands where its clear i'm beat, made some good progress towards this today, making a couple of good lay downs.

Until next time people :P

2nl and a bit of PLO on the side

Hey reader, thought i’d chuck in a quick update, its not been all that long ago so nothing spectacular has happened really, played approx 2.3k hands at 2nl and i’m 3BI’s down, 2nl really is about volume so there's not a huge amount of hands that i could post on here that i’m having trouble with, the average player there is just soooo unbelievably bad you’ve just got to get the hands in against them and hope that your ‘actual’ ev line stays somewhere near your ‘expected’ line lol.

In my case, sadly, this week it hasn’t but hey, i know that 6max is a swingy game anyways and playing it this low is bound to be more volatile in terms of variance, i’ve just really gotta grind it out to get my roll up to the $115 mark when i can take shots at 5nl, hopefully i run good when i get there as well :D

Apart from playing 2nl HE i’ve been playing some $2 PLO as well, not much, but i’ve decided to start mixing it up a bit to keep me entertained, also, PLO at the $2 level is insanely easy so it’s a good way to help build the roll, i’ll be the first to admit that i don’t have a huge amount of knowledge when it comes to PLO but i do know that a good place to start is to try and make sure that all 4 of your cards are working with each other, or the odd 3 card hand with a straggler, like 9TJ5 for example, the basics is plenty to beat $2 PLO though, so it'’ll hopefully work out as a good way to take my mind off the micro HE grind, who knows… maybe one day i might play only PLO if i discover i’m better at it.

So graph since the last update then:

Like i said, nothing spectacular, just thought i’d throw in a little update, my all-in ev graph is saying i’m running at about $6 below expected so i can take a little comfort from that, what i’ve lost playing 2NLHE i’ve pretty much made back playing $2 PLO though so its not too much of a disaster i guess.

Current Bankroll: $70.66

2nl BI’s needed to move up: 22

Got a bit of time off this week so hopefully i can get in a bit more volume and the next update will see me a bit closer to the $115 mark, i really hope i run goot lol

Peace out

Back to the grind bitches

So i’ve been gone for a while and for that i apologise, i know this might have caused an adverse effect on some readers lives and i feel kinda selfish you know, everyone just must’ve been breaking down into tears when they checked my blog and found that i’d let them down again by not updating, so i’m sorry, it won’t happen again i promise.

The past month or 2 of poker for me has been a downward spiral really, i took out a chunk of my roll to pay for some wedding stuff, which i was happy doing as it was all profit from poker which made me feel good, i left enough to be still rolled for 10nl but then of course the downswong came and i ended up back at 5nl and getting my ass handed to me by the deck on a regular basis, i ended up in a really negative state of mind and my play definitely suffered as a result, a load of spewy, tilty, generally horrible play later (losing $80 at 5nl is rather horrible) and i found myself right back down at $50 in the roll, $50 down from my original deposit after 40k hands and 3 months of grinding!

I think a graph would be more effective in showing just how bad a time it was for me, notice that the huge drop starts at about 6.5k hands and $90 later finishes at 7.8k, that 1k hands was like a kick in the balls for my confidence and it took me nearly 2 weeks to pick myself up from that, inbetween i was kinda just flitting about playing any old game really, even gave SnG grinding a shot once and stacked 10 $1.25 Sng’s lol

But anyways, enough of the whinging, i’m back now, i' realised that not all of those loses were due to bad luck and suckouts, i stopped feeling sorry for myself and instead looked at my game and realised that the majority of them were from getting into bad spots with hands that never warranted being in those spots, i was breaking the “big hand big pot,small hand small pot rule” over and over and it showed in my results, i was playing too loose and too aggressive for the micro’s, not paying enough attention to position and most of all stacking off far too lightly.

I think i needed this fall back to earth, i’d grinded up $300 and felt like i had this game cracked, which is stupid b/c i was only playing 10nl, and not very successfully at that lol I think i have a character flaw of sometimes getting too confident in my own ability, which can have its good points but it can also lead to me being cocky and slacking off when there's still improvement to be done. This has reminded me that your always learning in poker and if you take your foot off the gas for one second when it comes to self-study and improvement… then your not going anywhere, and for someone who dreams of retiring early one day to do this for a living its just not good enough.

So i’ve flung myself right back into this grind, starting from 2nl and $50 i’m going to play 6max exclusively and grind back up the limits, i thought i’d have trouble playing the penny games again but one good thing thats came out of this so far is that its made me completely detached from the monetary side of poker, all i think about now is buyins, and whether that buyin is worth $2 or $25 all i’m going to be thinking now is how many buyins i need to make to get to the next limit. I heard an interview with haseeb, or internetpokers, on mediocrepoker’s podcast where he said he used a BR system of moving up when he had 23BI’s for the next limit and taking a 3BI shot, so i’m going to do the same, a 20/23 system and see how it goes, I’ve made 13BI’s at 2nl this week so far, and thats not running hot, its just me crushing it, 15 more BI’s and i’ll be back up to 5nl, from there who knows :D

Sorry again for not updating in a long time but i was in a rough spot for me, but i’m back now and more focused than i’ve ever been so keep checking back here and see how i’m doing, any advice or comments on anything i discuss are greatly appreciated as they always were.

Next update approx monday me thinks, laters.

OMG An update!!!

Hey, some people reading this might know already but theres quite a significant reason why i haven't been so regular with my blog updates atm lol, a full explanation will come at the end of this update for those who might not have a clue what i'm talking about : )

Pokerwise then, I haven't updated since the 28/03 so this will cover my progress from there and in future i think that my blog will definitely have a less regular update i'm afraid, for the next year or so at least lol fear not though b/c any updates will be worth waiting for i promise you that : )

Soooo, when i left you last i had just switched over to 6max and was not only enjoying it loads but running fairly hot as well, which always helps, since then my poker life has been quite the rollercoaster, i'll save you the gory details but a quick summary of the past week and a half goes something like this:

- Move up to 10nl 6max @ $300

- Lose 5 BI's and move back over to 10nl FR @ $250

- Own 10nl FR and drag my sorry ass back to $320

- Instead of focusing on one game i now play both 6max and FR : )

So, after all my, i love 6max, it soo rocks, it's totally amazing, i ran badly and in a last ditch attempt to stop me falling back to 5nl (my original move up strat at FR was 25/20 so i thought i could still stay disciplined with the BR and not need to move down) i switched back to the more calmer waters of FR to steady the ship, which, i'm happy to say, has worked : ) 

Don't get me wrong i still love 6max, its so much more fun and engaging than FR, and i still think that switching over full time (albeit temporarily) made me a lot more sharper and aggressive than i've ever been, i think after a while at 5nl FR i was getting too comfortable, i was just logging on, firing up 8 tables and grinding for 2 hours playing ABC poker, after all, good cards, played aggressively, in good position with the odd pp limpage is plenty knowledge to succeed at that level and i think this made my game go a bit stale tbh, i wasnt enjoying myself as much either which is no fun at all! 

I think that i've found the perfect combo for me now, if i'm feeling good about myself and feeling like a challenge i play 6max, if i'm in lazy mode but still energetic enough to play and give it 100% then i'll play FR, if i start off playing FR and feel like i'm slipping and getting slightly bored i'll close the tables down and open up 3 x 6max, if i'm playing 6max and starting to get annoyed with the swings or whatever then i'll switch over to FR next session and do some grinding. I feel like its a good way to keep my game fresh and keep me improving, i'm the type of person that needs new challenges and if i feel like i'm ever good enough to do something then i'll generally go on cruise control, not try has hard with my study etc and my results suffer, this new strategy will hopefully keep that from happening.

A couple of choice hands now from the past week or so, the first one is awesome, you gotta love it when you flop the nuts and someone keeps betting into you, i made the call in pos b/c we we're both full stacks i was worried about the BTN at all b/c he'd been sat on that 80c for about 25 hands and tbh i thought my call would initiate a calling-fest from both of the blinds coming along to give me 4-1 straight off, only the BB calls so that never went to plan and i had to think a bit as to how i could keep both of them in the hand, i think i played it well in the end but any thoughts would be appreciated as usual.

The next hand gave me a few problems and i tanked this for ages, in the end i made my decision to fold from his wtsd stat being so low and his flat calls seeming so fishy, villains stats over 35 hands were 57/23/13 with a wtsd of only 6 (1 in 17)  i don't know if i made a mess with my flop betting, should i have overbet the pot so that i could shove on a brick river?? this stops him repping the flush/straight on the river when the worst possible card for me hits, i'm really thinking of buying PNLHE now b/c i have a feeling this hand could have been played better with a good understanding of SPR, plus its been recommended a few time now???

The next hand was quite troublesome as well, the villain here is 16/16/inf, i know checking the river looks sooo weak and the shove could very well be him spotting this but as we're both deep this is an easy fold right?? An unaggressive villain shoving the river, i just get the feeling this is a set, straight, maybe a rivered set of jacks, i dunno, i've not got too much experience of playing 200bb's deep but i know that i dont like stacking off with an overpair there for 200bb's, thoughts????

So... thats the poker nearly done with for this update, just got the regular BR updates and summarys etc to go, before that though, a bit of life news for me, the young and (relatively) free willed peelie is going to be a dad in november :) yep, hard to believe i know but it seems life has caught up with me, i'm 25 so it was going to happen soon i guess, was quite shocked when i was first told but i'm coming around to it now and tbh i'm even looking forward to it a lil. The major issue now is that i'm due to go on a 6 month tour of afghanistan in october so theres a chance i might miss the birth, which sucks ass, but i'm going to have a word with the powers that be when i go back after this easter holiday and see if anything can be done at all, i really doubt it but theres no harm in trying i guess, this also means that a wedding is on the horizon for me as well, within the next few months i think, so as you can imagine life has been rather hectic at the minute for me so no blog update lol

Quick summary then of the past 10 days or so...

Starting BR : $269.86

Hands played : 7,591 (2,389 5nl 6m, 1,369 10nl 6m and 3,833 10nl FR)

Profit : $81.34 ($78.69 @ 1onlFR, $28.84 @ 5NL 6m and -$26.10 @ 10nl 6m)

Current Roll : A p.b. of........ $351.20 :D:D:D:D

So a good week really, i've found a happy medium and i'm going to just keep flitting between FR and 6m now i think, i'm happy doing that and i think it'll be better in the long run for me with regards to enjoyment and learning lol, good luck at the tables everybody, til the next time, laters 

Gotta love a 14BI first 6max week!

Hey, this is going to be quite a short update b/c i was a tad drunk last night and i'm paying for it today, really dont have the energy to do much, even typing is a pain atm lol!

This week i switched over to 6max from full ring, I was saying in the last update how i think that my edge over the bad players there is a lot bigger than at FR and this week has kinda confirmed it for me and reassured me that the switch over was the right choice, I have been running quite hot but i still feel like good play has had a lot to do with this weeks results as well as a bit of luck and a good run of cards :)

There hasn't been many standout hands for me to go over here like i normally do, so no replays this week, the play from most of the villains at 5nl 6max is terrible to say the least, theres been a few times where i've been truly baffled at what the vill thought he was beating or what he thought i was trying to pull off, but thankful for the chips all the same lol

Of course there's still a lot to improve with my own game but i feel like i'm adjusting fairly well so far, to make sure i'm fully adjusted to 6max before i move up though i've decided to not move to 10nl before either 10k hands @ 5nl or $300, whichever comes first, this is just to ensure i'm comfortably rolled for 10nl and well experienced when i move up.

So, stats for this week then, its been a good week for me, i know i've ran a tad hot but i've got my confidence back after it being crushed when 10nl FR kicked my ass, really glad i made the switch over and here's to a bright future between me and 6max cash games :D

Starting roll: $200.62 (as at FRI 20/3)

Hands Played: 4,057

Profit from cash games: $58.57

Profit from Fpp satt: $10.67

Current Roll: $269.86

Below is a graph from my 5nl 6max play so far :)

Laters

10nl kicks my ass and I move to 6max : )

Well, first off, sorry the updates late this week, i've just been really busy over the weekend with mothers day, my sisters b'day and a nice 8 hour drive up to edinburgh, there was just too much life going on to fit in an update : )

Last week i had built up my roll to $250 and was just dipping my toes into 10nl, i was quite happy about moving up and was already picturing silverstar and wondering how long it would take me to grind up the $500 i needed to move up to 25nl, well, the poker gods put paid to all those dreams quite quickly lol.

Not going to go into huge amounts of detail b/c it was basically just a lot of run of the mill bad beats and coolers but i lost $42 this week and moved back down to 5nl at $208, i've never seen so many rivered set over sets in my life and the shortstackers just seemed to be hitting anything they needed to beat me in all in's preflop, must have lost at least $12 to pesky 20bb shortstackers doubling up through me! Anyways, when i moved down i thought it was maybe the best time to move over to 6max cash games instead, i was already finding multi-tabling FR quite robotic and REALLY frustating at times so i'd been thinking of playing some 6 max on the side, this week i thought that after i ran so badly at 10nl there was no time like the present to make the  move to 6max, i'm really glad i did so far, i have more fun playing 6max and i feel like i have a much bigger edge over the bad players at 5nl.

Next weeks update will go over my first week as a 5nl 6max player, I'm thinking of building the roll to $300 before moving up though, just so i can get a bit more experience of play at a 6max cash table before i move to 10nl, thats not 100% yet, still mulling it over really.

I've read a shedload of HA threads on 6max and i'm also reading ryanfee's guide, which is awesome, another thing thats bound to help my game is that dsvw56 got in touch with me on cc and offered to give me a bit of help, we've already gone over 1 session with him picking out about 20 hands where he thought i could have done things a bit, or a LOT, differently : ) He's gave me 900 hands worth of his session as well for me to look over and see how he plays, i've already been putting into practice some of the things he's picked me up on, I have a feeling he is really going to bring my game on and i appreciate it very much.

Anyways, til next time when i will be making my "First week of 6max" update, the graph from this week is below, although it's not really much to shout about, laters.

My best week yet, but could have been sooo much better

Guess who's a 10nl player?? :D:D

Well this week I finally made the move up to 10nl, which was awesome, and i've managed to get in 2.4k (very swingy) hands there all ready. It's not been the best of introductions to a new limit but i'm still up, just, and some of the hands i've lost there so far have been real coolers. First impressions are that the play is definetly no different from the standards at 5nl, only thing is that the fish have more money behind them and the beats hurt more. 

One of the hardest things i've found so far is adjusting to the amounts of money i'm playing with, it's took a bit of effort to get into my head that when i do lose in a session at this level it could be about 20 or 30 bucks i'm losing, at 5nl if i dropped $20 in a session it would be a disaster, at 10nl it's only 2 buyins.

So... After winning $30 in my first hour of 10nl i've proceeded to lose most of it in the last 2 days, I think this has a bit to do with some beats and cooler hands but after looking back at my sessions i have to take the blame for some of it as well, I havent exactly played my best poker since moving up and i've made 2 or 3 bad decisions that have cost me a bit of cash, but below are a few hands where i wasn't to blame. 

This first 2 hands, the villain here was the worst player ive ever had the luck to sit at a table with, the whole table was just raking in the profits from this guys spewy play, his stats where 72/48/9 over 50 hands, the AA vs KK, trust me to run into him when he's actually got the goods, the QQ vs A4 just shows how bad this guy was, luckily i stayed at the table and made most of this back but when ur moving up to a new limit this isn't what you need.

In the next one you could say i played it badly by paying him off on the end but really, calling down to the river with 4 outs, whats this guy doing???

This has been the general theme of my move up so far, none of my AK-AQ's are hitting the flop and the majority of my cbets are being called/raised, when i've got a biggish pair like JJ or TT i raise pf and get 2 or 3 overs on the flop! It's been quite hard to take but i remembered when i first started at 5nl i was down 4 BI's after my first 2 days, been playing 10nl for 2 days and i'm up $6, as long as i don't get anywhere near $210 in the the roll i'm doing better than when i started cash lol

So if it wasn't for a few beats i'd be up and the tone of this update would be a lot better, but this is poker and variance is a bitch, I know from the absolutely toss play i've seen so far that i'll beat this level eventually, just gotta keep plugging away and keep my chin up when the deck's smacking the fish in the face, I'm glad i'm learning these lessons now when i'm at the micros because so far they've been the hardest to learn!

So, stats for this week then, as i said, it has been my most profitable week so far so i can't complain too much i guess, but at one point the roll was at $298 so it could have been a lot better.

Starting Roll: $207.40

Hands Played: 5943

Profit: $42.00

Profit from 210fpp Sattelites: $10.67

Current Roll: $256.62

Below is the regular weekly graph, plus my total stats for 5nl, incase anybodies interested :) 

Peace out, hopefully next weeks update will be slightly cheerier lol

My first full week 6-tabling and above $200!!!

So, as the title suggests, this was my first week 6-tabling 5nl... and it's went well, i got to over $200 near the start of the week and i was bobbing around the $198-$202 mark all week but i'm now comfortably above $200 in the roll :D

Near the end of last month when i was looking back over sessions i was noticing that i'd started to make some dumb moves, and was maybe trying too be a bit too fancy, which isn't needed at 5nl, i was still making a profit but it could have been much more had i not raised A10o UTG and called a LP 3bet etc etc.

So... I had a play around with the stars layout manager thingy and decided that if i condensed my HUD i could fit 6 tables cascaded with a slight overlap on my laptop screen quite easily, i decided to try this out for 1 week, and planned so that if i was posting a big loss i'd cut back down to 4, quite a pessimistic view but.... i'm glad i'm a pessimist because i'm always surpising myself :D

I'm so glad i've made the jump up to 6 tables, it took a bit of getting used to at first but its now just as easy as 4 was, the bonuses of playing 2 more tables are starting to show through already, the picture at the bottom of the post shows my progress in feburary compared to march, which is only 1 week long so far! The best and most important thing is that i've upped the tables and total hands for the week but i'm still beating the level at 4.85bb/100 which is infact a better winrate than for the whole of feburary, at this rate i will easily make 10nl by the end of the month, so avoiding any major downswings, custo better watch his back :D hehe

Anyways, I'm still amazed by some of the unbelievable play at 5nl, the hand below shows exactly why hands like KQ,KJ,QJ are called trouble hands, because they get you into trouble, like this hapless villain who really should have know he was beat when i 3bet him on the flop.

The next hand it's worth noting that the villain had stats of 59/18/13, under no other circumstances would i call the push on the flop but this guy had been playing like an idiot and i just couldn't fold here, i was about 80% sure he was either drawing or, best case, had total air, turns out he was drawing.

So overall it's been a good week, i'm making good steady progress towards my No1 goal at the minute of getting to $250 and 10nl. I think my play is improving as well, my postion stats are looking good with a nice increase in vpip as i get towards the button, all this time spent at 5nl is not going to waste, also, i completed a survey for stars this week as well which i'm going to be recieving 300fpp's for, so with the fpp's in the bank i'm going to be able to play another 2 210fpp sattelites in the near future which will hopefully bring me at least another $10.67 in sold T$

So figures for the week are:

Starting roll: $184.79

Hands Played: 4664

Profit: $22.61

Current Roll: $207.40

Below are a comparison of this week to last month, notice the bb/100 is a respectable 4.85 this week so theres been no hot streak to make my figures look better, and a graph for the week.

Til next time readers : )

End of feburary update and goals for march

Well, the last week of the month has been my first losing week yet :( Due to some bad luck and some equally bad spewy play i've finished this week down, thankfully though i racked up enough fpp's to play in another 210 sattelite and placed again , thats 3/5 now, so my roll has increased but not through the 5nl tables.

It all started with a big losing session on saturday night, i ended up down about $30, and since then it's just been about trying to build back from there really, technically i've made $22 this week, but overall i'm down $7.30 on the cash tables, which is only 1.5 buyins but i was kinda hoping to clear the $200 mark this week.

I've upped the amount of tables i'm playing now to 6 because i felt that i was starting to get too comfortable playing 4 and was making some plays that i was looking at afterwards and being quite dissapointed with, it's crazy how i used to have trouble playing 2 tables at a time and within a month i'm playing 6 quite comfortably, i think its going to be better in the long run because i already noticed yesterday that across the 6 tables i was playing between 15/10 and 17/13 which are good stats imo.

So a quick summary of the month as a whole then:

Starting Bankroll: $100.34

Hands played: 10,941

Profit at 5nl: $52.44

Profit from 210fpp satt's: $32.01

Total Profits: $84.45

Running at: 4.79BB/100

Current Roll: $184.79

So not bad really, i've played nearly 11k hands which i'm happy with and i've made 10 buyins at the 5nl tables so i can't really complain, the fpp sattelites have been a nice source of income too so, as they did this week, hopefully they'll help out a lot when i'm having down swings. Not as good as custo but i've made money, what more can i ask for really :D

My goals for next month then are:

Play 15k hands.

Get roll up to $250

Be playing 10nl by the end of march

Not many goals at the moment lol but at least it's a few things to aim for.

GL at the tables everybody, til the next update, goodbye.

My best week yet

Hey, this is going to be just a quick update as i am feeling a tad rough after last night and as it's such a nice day i'm going to go freshen up with a good old fashioned walk with the missus :)

As the title says, i have had my best cash game week since i started! I feel like i'm really edging towards 10nl now and it feels like i've done it quite quickly as well, only 3 weeks has gone by and i don't know if i'm getting stupidly lucky or what but i've been a very consistent winner at 5nl. 

As always there are still a lot of things to improve though, i'm still trying to tighten up and bring my vpip down but i have a feeling that this might come along better when i move up a limit, or maybe it won't, somebody in the micro stakes thread said something along the lines of whatever works for you is the way you should play, this makes a lot of sense to me, poker is a very individual game and even though there may be guidelines to try and stick to the fact is that everybody is going to develop their own style of game, i might be playing a few more hands than i should be but it's working for me at 5nl, obviously when i move up i might get a wake up call and have to concentrate on tightening up but right now i'm coming along quite steadily so i must be doing something right and as such my vpip isn't too much of a worry at the minute.

Just one quick hand replay this week, it's been a fairly standard week otherwise, i've had a nice run of sets being paid off which must have gone some way towards my good profits but otherwise it's been pretty standard, i also had one hand where i stacked 2 people when my tens ended up all in pf against 2 people holding AJ, i was in mp, folded to me, i raise, button calls, which i never noticed because i just raised then went straight on another table, a 69/5 short stack small blind comes all in for $2, i call because my huds blocking me from seeing that the button called my raise, the button then goes all in and i'm like, where did this guy come from, i call because at this point (at least i think) i'm pot-comitted, a ten flops and they both turn over AJo :D anyways back to the hand replay i was talking about. 

The villain here was a bit of a mix bag, he was good in terms of the starting hands he played but bad in that he was THE most passive calling stationy type player i've ever seen in my life, he had stats like 13/2 or something, he was giving me no respect whatsoever and was generally really annoying me, i should have moved really but i thought i had him when this hand came up, obviously i would have slowed down had the 9 not came on the turn but i knew his hand when he min raised me on the river, i just knew it, sucks to be me :( Serves me right for trying to mix it up, looks easy when negreanu does it lol

Anyways, bit longer than i had planned really, below are a few screenshots of myprogress over the whole month and a bankroll update for this week, i only noticed today that i haven't had a losing day since the start of the month, theres only 2 words that describe how my 5nl plays going at the moment, crushing it! 10nl here i come!!

GL everybody and as usual i always welcome comments or constructive crit, just be gentle :)

Progress this week:

Starting Bankroll: $150.05

Hands Played: 2067

Profit: $31.37 (a personal best)

Current Roll: $181.42

A good week, if a little pokerless

Hey, I haven't managed as much poker as i would have wanted this week due to me going back to work :( I'm in the army and when this blog started i was on my relocation leave after being posted from germany to my new unit in aldershot, subsequently the first few posts of this blog were written when i had literally all the time in the world to play, this week however real life has caught up with me and i've had to concentrate on something other than cards.

So... when i play i usually do sessions of 4-tabling for about 1.5 -  2 hours, after 2hours i tend to lose focus so i usually take a break and if i have the time i'll play maybe another similar session later on, unfortunately with me being back at work i only really have the time and energy to put in about 2 hours per night. This week i've only managed to play for 3 nights, and got about 1200 hands in, which as i said, is not nearly as much as i would have wanted.

I think i've really started to get used to cash games now and i might go as far as saying that the transition is now complete from my old SnG playing, i'm raising it up in position a lot more, noticing who i can steal from on the table, cbetting a lot more effectively and starting to use the HUD stats to better effect, generally i think my games quite good at the min and it seems like, as long as i can avoid any huge downswings, only a matter of time before i move up to 10nl, i'm really starting to enjoy playing as well which is a nice bonus lol

A few highlights from the past week then....

First hand i make a standard raise in lp with big sc's get a re-raise from the button and as we were both 100bb's deep i thought i'd see a flop, i love it when a flop hits you like this lol, i also love people who over play big slick...

One thing thats started to bug me a little bit is how my aces just haven't been making me any coin at all, i've had my fair share of rockets but i always seem to raise and steal the blinds and the odd limpers 5c which isn't good at all lol below is a hand where i actually got paid with them and i think i got max value out of this with my big bet on the river, i nearly timed out thinking about how much i could get out of him and decided that the big scary bet on the end might be seen as a bluff, it worked thank the lord 

The next hand i didnt play well, at all but luckily for me the villain played it far worse, far to much aggro from me but you don't get action without creating action, i'll just blame it on the meta-game or something hehe i was trying to build up a crazy image..... lol Really though, did he honestly think i was folding to a 40c raise, when he pushed i thought i was way beat but there was still no chance i was folding and i actually pmsl when my 6's held up against his ace high lol athough if an ace or an eight had hit the river my laptop would have surely exited stage left out of the window :) 

So, below is a quick summary of my 2nd week as a cash game player and my graph since i started. It's not been a week of huge pots so i'm thinking a lot of my profit this week came from really grinding it out with steals and cbets, which i'm really happy about because thats whats going to keep me building the roll when the cards dry up now and then. Only $100 to go and i'll be movin on up to 10nl :)

Good luck at the tables guys and as usual any comments are hugely appreciated.

Starting Roll - $130.85

Hands Played - 1248

Profit - $19.20

Current roll - $150.05

Finally in profitz and fpp sattelites, a good week

Hey, well i've decided to do a weekly update from now on, this will happen generally every saturday morning i'm thinking, but any time over the weekend is more likely.

So... after my disaster start to 5nl where i dropped to $81 i have finally righted the good ship peel and am now sailing off into the sunset towards 10nl haha :) Seriously though over the last few days my cash game has seen some big improvements, i've increased to 4 tables for a start which has definetly tightened me up, where last sunday i played my first session at 29/9 on 1 table i put in a session yesterday where i played at 14/9 over 4 tables, which may even be a bit too tight now lol 

Below are some highlights and low points of the week since tuesday for your viewing pleasure

If you read my first post after my first session you might remember a hand where i was dealt AK in the blinds, played it quite passively and ended up losing a big pot, well with that still fresh in my mind and thanks to some good advice in the comments i am now playing AK a lot more aggresively when i am out of position and i think this hand proves that

This hand was the first hand that i had played at a table, now normally i will wait for the big blind before playing but if i sit in and the button passes me straight away i will sometimes post the blind in the CO because at least i'm in a good position, thank god i did here anyways, seeing as the guy that had put in the raise had a fair sized stack i figured that i might be getting some good implied odds for my 65 suited so just flat called to see what the flop brought, it couldnt have hit me harder if it tried and was a VERY good start to a new table lol what followed was a whole load of donk, idiot etc comments but i dont care i dont think its that bad a call given the guy had a huge stack.

I havent seemed to be hitting very many sets this week, been calling peoples raises when they have a big enough stack, just havent been hitting any, except here where a queen thankfully came on the river and my set mining paid off for once.

Now the low part, In the past tilt had been a bit of a problem for me, especially playin cash games, mainly because i was no-where near rolled for the ones i was playing in and i was playing for money that actually meant something to me, below are 2 hands of tilty peel in action, i think it was caused by my aces losing to Q9 or something like that, luckily though i am a bit better at recognising tilt now and nipped it in the butt quite quickly.

Something else i discovered last night was the 210fpp sattelites to the sunday 200k on stars, since i've had an acount on stars for a while i'd managed to build myself up to 920fpps without even realising, my original plans were to save for a porsche but with that being a bit too much of a long term goal i thought i'd save for a hoodie instead, until i found these little beauties :D 

They were brought to my attention through the micro stakes thread on cardschat and after watching icemonkey's video on them i thought i'd give them a try, the basic strategy is just to play incredibly tight and when you get a decent hand, and i mean 1010+ or AQ+, just push... and thats it, you'll generally be called down with some shocking hands and hopefully double or triple up, at which point you could, if your lucky, fold to the money. 

The first one i played i got pocket tens in mp, pushed, was called by QQ and KJ, the queens held up and i was out :( i played 3 more last night and out of the 4 i played in i placed (6/20 get paid) twice which is a good ROI for these, hopefully i can keep that up lol basically the top 6 get a seat in the 200k worth 11 tournament $ if you unregister, you then google for a site that will trade you T$ for cash and voila your BR just went up $10.27. Some of the play in these is comical to say the least, people with huge stacks pushing it in the middle with ace rag or something on the bubble when they are easily in a position to get paid if they could just fold their hands, obviously on the bubble if your on a healthy sized stack and theres say 3 or 4 people that are a few thou below you , you fold aces if it comes to it (unless of course a shortie pushes, then you can be the hero and pop the bubble) because your pretty much gaurenteed a seat anyways. It's a really fun way to up the roll and requires very little skill, except in the last one i played in where i had to fire up the hud and find who i could steal from as i was getting a bit short myself!

Sorry for the long post, a bit of an up n down week really, i think because i have only really ever played sng's and tournaments regularly its been a bit hard to move over to cash games, theres obviously still leaks in my game but i'm a lot more focused and determined to improve on them now i have an aim (to get to 10nl and beyond) so a brief summary of the week so far....

Starting roll - $100

Played hands - 2345

Profit at the 5nl tables - $9.15 ($29 if you consider i dropped to $81 after the first session lol)

Profit from 210fpp sat's  - $20.60 approx

Current Roll - $130.85

So a good week in the end, i've increased my tables to 4 and this has helped me tighten up, i'm stealing more, isolating fish more, and c-betting with a lot more effectiveness, i think my games improved so much from just this week, and a lot of its down to cardschat, all the guys at the microstakes thread and the guys who've replied on the hands i've put up for analysis, so thank you all, good luck at the tables and i'll post again this time next week, where hopefully my roll will have carried on movin on up towards $250

A few graphs and stats

Dragging myself out of the hole

Hey, seems weird saying hey when i don't even know if this is being read lol, might just start with dear diary from now on, it's probably not all that interesting to the guys that are playing the higher levels though so i don't really mind, its serving its purpose as a self analysis tool anyways and if anybodys actually reading, well thats just a bonus. Plus when i'm up there playing 100nl it'll be good for someone just starting out to be able to read this and know that everybody starts somewhere, like a lot of the blogs from the other cc guys have done for me.

On to the poker, with the snow leaving me house bound, whilst on leave from the army (i'm not a bum on the dole lol) pokers taken up a lot of my attention, i know, its a hard life! Not as much playing as i could have done but ive mixed in a bit of reading Harrington on Cash Vol1 as well.

Anyways, up until today i was down $18 and already getting a bit disheartened with my cash game venture, now i know it is going to be a long road and variance is a bitch but it wasn't exactly the best of starts to something that i had been excited and focused about doing, i'd even thought up plans in my head of when to drop down to 2nl if my roll carried on nose diving, add in that i had made 1 or 2 big errors and things were not looking rosy at all........

Until today!! Overlooking a session last night were i finished a whole 90c up today has been the first time that i have actually shown a profit at the .02/.05 tables. I couldnt be happier really, sure i got lucky once or twice in particular but i also got unlucky a few times too so cut me some slack! 

I'll post a few of the highlights of the day below

Tried to isolate the short stack that'd pushed here, really didnt want a call from the other guy but was glad when a king hit the flop, caught a bit of luck there

This hand i got very lucky with but the villain had been playing at like 80/6 and making little re-raises all over the place, I never seen pocket kings coming, i figured he might have put me on a button raise with 2 pictures n decided to put the pressure on, i call, oops, ran it through poker stove and i was like 25% here against his kings, he lost another big pot later when he limped with QQ as well, a very loose passive player indeed. 

After those 2 strokes of luck heres a few hands where the poker gods werent on my side, as if to even the score a little, man i hate those gods! Is this the mystical variance in action?? or i have got the complete wrong end of the stick in terms of that concept? 

On that last one with the kings the guy who called my UTG raise with Q3d!!! had seen his monster hand and obviously clicked the "call any" box because he called it faster than a horde of housewives heading for primark on the opening day of the january sales, the chances of him having a queen were slim so i just put him all in and low n behold he had it, grr, that was my last hand that i was going to play as well, i'd clicked the sit out next blind button and was ready to go when i get dealt cowboys, those gods can be a funny bunch sometimes.

There was a few other choice hands but i won't bore you with them, not going to play anymore today so todays stats have ended up at, over 246 hands and 2.10 hours, i'm up $11.88 and i've managed to tighten myself up to 22/10 which is an improvement over my first few sessions, still could be a tad tighter and more aggressive i think but i'm happy that i'm making progress, still down $6.15 since i started out on sunday but i'm slowly climbing out of the hole and hopefully i'll be back in the black in no time, and working my way up to 10nl.

Peace out and gl at the tables

Well, just finished my 2nd session on stars, once again 2tabling .02/.05 FR, was a kinda mix bag really, flashes of good play mixed in with 1 dumb ass mistake in particular and one bad beat.

As i said yesterday my first session didnt exactly get me off to the best start, this time i went back focused and (at least thinking that i was) ready to not make any more stupid mistakes. Below are the highlights and some thoughts...

I'll get this one out of the way first, if it wasn't for this hand i would have finished the session up instead of down so i'm really annoyed with myself for playing like a moron

I hardly fit the name of 'hero' there lol Tbh i havent got a clue what i was thinking with this call, i'm not too bothered about the re-raise semi bluff but the call when he pushes, seriously..... what a dumb ass.

Next hand was a bit of a cooler i guess.

Was unlucky that he flopped the house but his stats for the session were vp-16 pfr-7 so because of his flat call pf i put him on maybe a medium pair like 8's or 9's, most probably a hand like AK, AQ (is this thinking ok??) when he raised me i thought he was making a move and pushed, unfortunately for me i ran into a flopped boat, typical lol

This hand is one that i didnt lose any money from but at the same time i don't know if i played the hand well??? i think i need to do a search on cc for "how to play an over pair on the flop" because straight away i've noticed that whenever i seem to stack off its when my over pair to the board is miles behind a better made hand, definetly an aspect i need to improve on.

On the bright side i did make at least one good play, these 2 hands pretty much followed each other and i was quite pleased with myself for taking the second pot down on the turn.

Proving that the ability is definetly in my head somewhere and using my amazing memory, i remembered that the villain had bet pot the last hand and figured my tens were good, my plan was to fire again on the turn if it came a brick and evaluate it from there... it paid off but i'm still unsure lol ....... Maybe i'm just lacking confidence in myself.

All in all the session ended as follows. Stats : VP-25.17 PFR -8.5 W$WSF - 39.71 WTSD - 23 W$SD - 43.75 Net Won (lol) : -$6.63 Which is an improvement results wise over my first session but still leaves me down $18 since i deposited $100, not trying to make excuses but if it wasn't for 2 of the hands above that would have changed to a profit of around $8 and only about $4 in the red so there is a glimmer of hope. Just got a few little niggling leaks to iron out and my transition from SnG's will hopefully be complete. To prove this (to myself as well as you) i have annotated a small graph for the session and in it you can clearly see that if it wasn't for 2 painful hands in particular this post could have been a lot cheerier

Thanks for the comments by the way guys, glad to know some people out there actually read this and i'm open to linking peoples blogs so just ask nicely :)