2 Year Update

Well, it's been a while since my last post, but since then I've played almost exclusively No-Limit Heads Up. I love this game -- and hate is sometimes too!. I haven't played very much live poker at all, and online probably only averaged 10 hours a week for the last two years. Still, I've had many months playing 30k+ hands -- which is a very decent amount for heads up. Other months I've taken breaks and hardly played at all.

Anyway, here is a my graph for the last two years:

It's okay I guess but never reached the goals I set, especially for last year. I've had very mixed results at 200-1000NL which area about one third of the hands.

Here is the graph filtered for 50 & 100NL:

Even at those stakes I have lost a TON of free money through monkey tilt! I've lost count the number of guys I've lost 10+ buy-ins too in one session, which could easily have been avoided with a bit more discipline!

More recently I've been playing very well and hopefully will double my long term win-rate at these stakes. I've recently enlisted the help of coach and hopefully this will help me start doing as well at 200-1000NL. I must say after dabbling with coaches before how important it is to find a GOOD COACH, and not just anyone. It must be someone who compliments your game, and in my opinion someone having a different approach/mentality is very useful. My new coach has a VERY different approach to the game than me (I was very conventional), although I doubt I will ever play exactly like him, adding these elements to my game is proving to be exceptionally helpful.

This year has started well. And who knows... maybe this will be by 100k year! I hope so.

December Results

Since I’ve started playing some £ games it’s now a right pain the arse to make any decent graphs! You can enter exchange rates in poker tracker to change everything to dollars, but once you want to make graphs, etc, it all goes skew!

In any case, I didn’t play all that much online in December. Here is my poker tracker snapshot:

I played about 8K hands 6-max on Crypto and then the rest was $100 NL HU on Stars. All together about 17K hands but I lost a chunk of the crypto hands during some problems I had about a week ago. This missing hands included one big pot at £200 6-max, which I won!

I’ve really enjoyed playing heads-up cash. I’ve played thousands of HU SNG’s, but never really HU cash. As you can so far I’ve run pretty well. Here is a poker EV graph for the heads up play (includes a few days from January however):



At the start of the month I played a lot of live cash and was going really well. Towards the end however, I lost a huge pot – set over set – at 5-5PL!

I qualified for the fist leg of the GUKPT in Brighton too. That package is worth $2,750.

In a hurry so have to go.

TB

Tilt King

Psychologically I’ve improved leaps and bounds. A good example of this is the heads up match I played today: 100NL on Stars.

I haven’t played heads up for sometime, but after watching some recent Cardrunners videos, it got me motivated again. Anyway, less than 30 minutes in and I’m down 4-buy-ins. Nevertheless, I felt I was playing great poker and had lots of reads on my opponent.

He was quite bad and one of his biggest leaks was that he’d over bet the pot on the turn – by 2 or 3 times – with top pair and a weak kicker! I lost one buy-in with 4-6 on a 2-4-6 board to his 77 – he rivered a set. Then I lost another with AQ on an ace-rag-rag board; only this time he hit the rag on the turn. Anyway, you get the idea: Bad player, high variance. On top of all this, he’s talking trash saying how bad my calls are to his massive over bets, to which I politely reply, “yeah, keep playing like that and you’ll win lots more money.” He replied: “Well I got all night if you have the bankroll before I bust you.”

I know it’s not a bad idea to quit a game like this – especially when your opponent has the momentum – but this player was just too bad and psychologically I was in complete control…not an ounce of tilt.

Anyway, 1 hour later and I’m sitting with $600 and him with $15. No reload this time and he quits. I was only up $100, but it was incredibly satisfying.

Add that to the fact I made $1,700 at 1-2 and 2-4 and it was a pretty good day!

I haven’t really played much this last week actually. I’ve just been really busy with other things outside of poker… oh and playing A LOT of live poker at the weekends.

4-betting essay coming soon…

TB

A look back at November

I was meant to post this Friday… better late than never though!

My basic goal was to play 80 hours online and 40 hours live; I managed 69 hours online and about 45 hours live.

My online play took a bit of a kicking 10 days into the month, causing me to take a very long weekend. Also since changing to crypto I can only average ~350 hands/hr compared to ~500/hr on Stars.

I changed over the database on poker tracker to PostgreSQL so I can no longer make those nice pokergrpaher graphs. Instead, here’s the one from PokerEV:

Yeah, the first 9K hands were sweet, and then it just went to shit for the rest of the month! Most of it is bad ‘all-in’ luck…down about 10 buy-ins from that! Then maybe a little bit of tilt and playing at bad times (tired, not focused, etc). Also I lost about 2,000 hands so the graph is not a true representation really – add another $500 spike during that break even stretch.

I did get some bonuses too, and I’m using some my Stars points to buy all my Christmas presents from Amazon!

Live was pretty much ‘meh’ too. I think I’ve ran pretty bad in the tournaments lately…keep getting deep or making the final table and then missing out on the good money! It’s been a while since I’ve had a good live tournament result, but then again I’ve only played about twenty these last four months.

I’ve been reviewing my game and working hard to plug leaks. Sometimes when you don’t run that well, one of the hardest things is to stay positive and patient. Personally what works well for me a simple little reminder: “Keep making the correct decisions and you bankroll will take care of itself.”

I’ve already played over 1,000 hands today so I might go play the £50 rebuy tonight. I don’t normally play live on Tuesdays, but I really feel like I’m playing well in live tournaments lately (despite the results). After all, I know the results are coming sooner or later!

I did it!

The last few days have been a right pain in the ass…

I started playing on a crypto skin a few weeks ago mostly because of another project I have going on, but also so that I could see what the standard of play is like. Anyway, the deal is that you have to amass 1000 player points in a month to earn 30% rakeback –normally not a problem, but I’ve been playing Stars too and didn’t really keep an eye on it. This all meant that two days ago I still had to get 350 points to get the rakeback!

I must admit, I almost give up yesterday after 3 hours. But I did hang in there and got 6 hours in (almost impossible for me in cash games). I was actually surprised how quickly I got the rest of the way there today. But it’s done now – I did it! Phew.

I’ve been writing a piece on 4-betting this week. It’s almost done so will post it up soon.

Right, I’m taking the weekend off now…except the tournament on Sunday of course.

A quick update…

As you can see from my previous post I ran quite badly the week before last. This prompted a break last weekend, which was good but kind of slowed me down. Other than one live tournament last Sunday I didn’t play at all from Saturday through Monday. I did play the rest of the week – running quite good again – but probably only half as many hands as usual.

I’ve been playing on a few different sites too. The change is really good again but I do miss 100+ hands per table/hr. This week I’ve only averaged 80 hands per table/hr and on that particular site (crypto skin) I can only 4-table. I don’t really mind 4-tabling as oppose 6 or so on Stars; the good thing is that at those hand rates – and only 4-tabling – I feel like I have all the time in the world to think about my decisions! Overall that will make me a much better player.

Today was pretty much a relaxation too; I’ve been to the gym and then spent all afternoon watching the darts on TV. I have a few things to do now, and then I think it’s the local for a few drinks with a bud.

Sundays are fun…I see some of the family for Sunday lunch and then it’s off to the Casino for the tournament. It’s the only live tournament I play these days, but the structure is great. Typically there’s around 8K in the pot and about £2,500 for first.

Wish me luck!

I want to be lucky!

So far November is going well, but the last few days have been a little swingy. I haven’t been feeling so good either whenever I get my money in. I have to change that feeling though – I want to expect to WIN my all-ins and no expect to LOSE them. I guess that just happens when you feel that you’re running bad.

Anyway, just to confirm my instinct I had to run my hands this month through Poker EV to see how well I’ve run in these all-in situations.



So yeah, my all-in luck sucks so far this month!

A lot can still happen yet, so I’m just riding it out.

Later, TB

Got Unstuck

So I’ve not played much online this weekend. That was the plan anyway – grind, grind, grind Monday to Friday and relax some at the weekend.

So what did I do to relax? Well, I played some live poker of course!

Saturday night started out well – up a few buy-ins in the first half hour! Then the following hand came up (1-2PL):

I have AQ of clubs in middle position and raise the pot to £13 (three limpers in front of me). Drunken guy on my left re-raises to £26 – he has about £250 behind and I have him covered. Now there’s no reason to put this guy on a really big hand since he’s been talking some trash and I know he’s coming after me. So I just call and see the flop:

Q – 5 – 2 two diamonds.

Perfect.

I check to let him bet. Sure enough he ‘pots’ it - £61. Now I’m pretty comfortable with my hand in this spot against such an opponent, but just be sure I tank it up for a minute to see if I can get a read. The guy is staring me down so badly! I mean I look at him and he looks back even harder. Under the table his legs are shaking. The guy is drunk too, so all of this could mean nothing. I think about just calling for a second and checking the turn, but my call will look strong and I hate giving free cards. Then again, if he has any sort of hand at all, he’s not laying it down. The SPR (stack-to-pot ratio) is just over 3 – plenty enough for top pair/top kicker against this opponent. So I raise all-in for his other 190 pounds and he snap calls! I turn over AQ and he turns over JJ. Wow! Early Christmas! Well it was until the dealer flipped the turn card…another jack and he takes down the £560 pot!

That was just the start. A few coolers later and I’m down a few buy-ins or so. Normally I wouldn’t mind so much, but the game was REALLY good and I was desperate to take advantage of that; especially since I was down from my last live session too. I even changed seat to have position on the drunken fish that two-outed me. And remember: he’s sitting with almost £600 now! He wasn’t the only one either; there were a whole group of them and they’d each turned their initial £50 buy-in into a few hundred!

After one of them cracked my pocket kings with 67 off-suit he actually got up and left! Good for him really – it was his first time in a casino and probably his first time playing poker. The knock on effect, however, was all the ‘hit and run’ banter. This caused Mr. Jack-Jack to start playing scared money – he really didn’t want to lose his winnings, and especially not to me as now I was back to about £500 pounds again and sitting directly to his left. I was in almost all of his pots and stole about £200 back from him due to his new weak-tight nature.

Finally they all left; most of them still up a few quid. I was about to go home too – about 100 pounds down – until I noticed the 5-5 game was only 4-handed. As an added bonus there were two live ones, one weak-tight regular, and only one decent player. Needless to say – I was in.

We only got to play for about 45 minutes until the game broke, but I did manage to run them over for a few hundred quid. I ended up finishing +£115 for the night. Phew.

After that, I’ll not even bother explaining what happened today. But I did play the tournament. And I did bust out to runner-runner flush…again.

It’s Monday tomorrow – back to the grind.

Finding leaks and changing style

So after moving to Stars last month I really started looking at certain aspects of my game.

Gradually, throughout October, I realised that certain things had to change – finding leaks in your own game can be a very difficult task indeed. I enlisted the help of a coach too; although so far I’ve only taken one lesson.

See Poker Stars has quite a different style of player compared to the Ongame network. Generally, I’ve found the typical Poker Stars player a lot more tight-aggressive then the looser/ laggier players at Ongame. Of course, Ongame is only 5-max…compared to 6-max at Stars. I think the other factor, however, is that a lot more players multi-table at Stars, and at a lot more tables too.

So I guess that’s why Ongame is generally viewed as having some the softest games available, whereas Poker Stars have some of the toughest – I don’t think so.

The games are very different. Yes. But it’s how you approach the games and plan to beat them that make the difference: At Ongame I became tighter and tighter – going from a 26/22 player to 19/16 or so. At Stars exactly the opposite is happening!

I think that’s why I enjoy Stars a lot more: I much prefer a LAG style to a TAG.

Anyway, since making various changes to my game and identifying some leaks, I’ve so far dramatically improved my win rate. It could just be a heater, but I know how hard I’ve worked and how much I’ve changed!

Let’s just wait until the end of the month…

Let’s get blogging!

I haven’t blogged for November yet, so here we go…

So far though, poker is going well.

I couldn’t tell you if I’m up or down for the month yet because I’m trying not to be too results orientated. Short term results mean nothing anyway - if anything paying too much attention to them can only hurt your confidence…If you’re running bad that is.

I’ve played over 5K hands this month and still plan on getting another 500 to 1000 more in today. I really need to work hard on these Mondays to Fridays so that I can relax a bit on the weekends. I prefer to grind 4 hours a day, 5 times a week; than 3 hours a day, 7 times a week. It’s still my goal to get around 40K hands this month.

So I played live last night too. Sure enough it was my turn for the ass whipping! That’s okay…it’s about time anyway. I try my best to keep the fish happy too. After all, it’s what keeps them coming back!

I’ll be posting some more shortly I hope. I plan on writing a few essays this month too. I mean it’s about time I completed part 3 of the SPR stuff! Now’s a good time though. I’m looking forward to going over it again and putting all my thoughts together in writing.

October Graph and November Goals

Okay, October is done. I’m quite happy with the way things went. I may not have made mega bucks but dropping down and moving to Stars was definitely a +EV decision!

Here’s the graph:

Yeah still only 24K hands but I’ve made a lot of changes to my game and playing procedures which in the long run will definitely be worth it. All together I logged 60 hours online with a multi-table ratio of 4.27. My ptbb/100 was 3.8bb/100, but I was down an extra 350BB from ‘all-in luck.’ Most of these coolers were near the end of the month where I had to endure a 7-8 buy-in downswing!

I have a new screen too so that I can extend my laptop. The result is that I can comfortably 6-table now.

So here is what I predict for November:

1) Will play 20 hours a week online: So 40K hands for the month.
2) Going to play mixed limits 100NL to 400NL: 6-tabling probably 3 tables of two different limits. i.e. 3 tables of 100NL and 3 tables of 200NL. Maybe some 400NL later.
3) Will play 10 hours a week of live cash games.

I’m not even really setting these as goals. I basically just do whatever I feel like anyway. However, I’m very confident that November will be my highest playing volume month yet.

Tonight is live cash game night so no more online play today. I guess this is still October so it won’t count towards my 10 hours a week!

Pot Limit Hold’em Graph

It was quite easy modifying the excel sheet to show my live win rate/hr and also ptbb/100 (based on 30 hands per hour). It’s all automatic now.

Overall I ran at 19.88ptbb/100 over the last 214 hours!

I'm actually down for this month, but have only played 3 short sessions! This month has been an online month for the most part.

Still deciding whether or not to go play tonight - the weekends are definately the most profitable.

Later. TB

St*rB$cks

I’ve just finished a one hour session on Stars, my Latte is cold and it’s getting dark outside. Problem is that if I try to head home right now I’m screwed—the traffic is just plain stupid.

I played live last night…it was good!

Seriously, I must be killing that game. I’ve not played very much this month, but I did quite a lot last month. I have all the records for the last 3 months in excel format and I have the records from the last few years on my PDA. At some point I’m going to enter everything into the excel sheet and see exactly what I’ve done. I really don’t know what to expect, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to find I’m beating the game for 10-15ptbb/100. My sample size is not HUGE, but I think it’s enough—I’ll find out when I put it all together. I might be able to put a graph together too!

The game I play is 1-2 Pot-Limit Hold’em. It’s GBP, so you could say equivalent to a 2-4 PL/NL game in the States. The fact that we play Pot-Limit doesn’t really make that much difference. If anything it gives me a greater edge against weak players who don’t know how to build pots and can’t simply go “all-in” when they don’t know what else to do.

We have a 5-5PL game too: I’ve played it a few times but when I chickened out of £1500 pot one night, I realized I wasn’t ready. The more experience I gain the more I realize how over bankrolled I want to be for the games I play in. I can’t wait to play that 5-5 game full time, but I’ve set myself a target in the 1-2 game and only when I achieve that am I moving up. When I do play it though, I’ll be so well bankrolled that +/- 2K night after night won’t even flinch me. There are only a few good players and an aquarium of fish—the kind of guys who wipe out their entire bankroll in one night, but always find a way to return the next—and then we have the guys with more money then sense!

Okay, it’s cappuccino time. Ciao.

A Royal Flush

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: toughbeats ($100.50) - (28.6% / 25.2% / 5.01/ 520)
Seat 2: Mr.Zacard ($100) - ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)
Seat 3: darkcaller ($152.65) ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)
Seat 4: Bj0nn ($202.20) ( 32.1% / 15.2% / 1.02/ 172)
Seat 5: johnnyk11 ($142.10) ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)
Seat 6: sodapop ($225.30) - ( 0.00% / 0.00% / 0.00/ 1)


PRE-FLOP:

toughbeats posts small blind $0.50
Mr.Zacard posts BIG blind $1
Dealt To: toughbeats


FOLD darkcaller
RAISE Bj0nn ($2)
FOLD johnnyk11
FOLD sodapop
RAISE toughbeats ($8)
FOLD Mr.Zacard
CALL Bj0nn ($6)


FLOP:

Pot: $17.5


BET toughbeats ($14)
CALL Bj0nn ($14)


TURN:

Pot: $45.5


CHECK toughbeats
BET Bj0nn ($180.20)
CALL toughbeats ($78.50)


RIVER:

Pot: $304.2




SHOWDOWN:
toughbeats:

MUCK Bj0nn

toughbeats collected $199 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $202 Rake: $3

Final Board:


Seat 1: toughbeats small blind showed [As Qs] and won 199 with a Royal Flush - Net Gain/Loss: ($98.5)
Seat 2: Mr.Zacard big blind folded before Flop - Net Gain/Loss: ($-1)
Seat 3: darkcaller folded before Flop didnt bet - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 4: Bj0nn mucked [6s 7s] - Net Gain/Loss: ($-202.2)

Seat 5: johnnyk11 folded before Flop didnt bet - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 6: sodapop button folded before Flop didnt bet - Net Gain/Loss: ($0)


Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Another Week....

So the weekend is over and yet another week lies ahead…Monday to Friday are the real grinding days!

Yesterday wasn’t the best start but it could’ve been a lot worse! After about 500 hands I was almost 5 buy-ins down due to some pretty sick coolers. The most important thing is that I was playing well, and despite the heavy ass whipping I was nowhere near going on tilt. This has to be one of the most improved aspects of my game I’d say.

Anyway, it wasn’t all bad because I had I pretty good final session leaving me only one and a half buy-ins down for the day over 1200 hands. I was playing super LAG too—having just watched the latest CTS video. Actually I think it works very well at Stars because everyone is multi-tabling and playing so TAG—it’s definitely something I’m going to experiment with.

A look at the month so far...

Here's October so far:

The main thing to note from this graph is the transition from Ongame to Poker Stars - also a drop in limits. It's so obvious that I don't even have to tell you when it was.

Ongame is meant to be one of the fishiest sites out there and Stars one of the hardest! Actually, up until the last few months I had great success at Ongame, rising to and maintaining a +win rate at 2-4NL.

To be honest, I feel that the player database hasn't changed that much - like a sudden influx of cardrunner members! Rather, I just feel like I was burning out there. Also it's quite fidgety to multi-table well. You can't resize the tables properly and the slider is bar is crap, meaning that you're using keys a lot.

Anyway, Stars is a breath of fresh air at the moment! I can easily 6-table there and it looks a lot better. The downside is no rakeback, but I've just bought myself a new - 3rd generation - ipod nano using the FPP's! Oh and a few of those cool looking stress balls, lol.

I'm saving FPP's for a new monitor now or one of the ipod sound stations!

You Crazy Americans!

I’ve just finished a late night session on Stars…

It’s 2am on my side of the pond, but “peak” time in the States. I don’t usually play this late but I can’t believe how bad the play has just been!

4-tabling, I was surrounded my super donks—the kind you only dream about! I know it’s the best the time to play and all, but I was seriously surprised at how good the games can actually be! Yeah, it’s going to be high variance, but super +EV too.

I won tonight’s session for 15ptbb/100. I was running at 30ish, but then some uber donks got lucky. That’s okay though; it’s what keeps them coming back!

New Books

I finally received my latest Amazon order. I thought the package had been lost because it’s a week overdue. I just received an email from Amazon today, actually, stating that they would make a new order free of charge. Five minutes later, some delivery guy is at the door with an Amazon box. Eh? That was fast! Yeah, as you can guess it was actually the original order, so I had to quickly email Amazon again to cancel the new order—I’m such a nice guy…I know.

Anyway, new books include: Poker Tournament Formula (should be well suited to the live games I play); Making time (I’m starting to like this kind of self-help, mind and body shit), and The Psychology of Winning (not a poker book, but another self-help).

I don’t know which I’ll start first. I’ll probably read Poker Tournament Formula in the coffee shop with my Grande Latte’s, and Making time while in bed; just before I sleep.

I never used to be much of a reader really, but that all changed when I started playing poker. I’ve read tonnes of poker books, and if they weren’t strategy, they would be poker novels or biographies. More recently, however, I’ve started branching out.

Anyway, it’s getting late and no more time for blogging!

TB

Alcohol is bad

No, I haven’t just blown half my bankroll during a drunken late night session at 50-100NL. It was 25-50!

Really, though; I’m just kidding. Luckily, I mastered the art of never playing drunk a few years ago. I can safely say that poker is the last thing on my mind when I stagger through the front door these days.

But really, staggering through the front door? Now that can’t be good! That’s exactly what I mean: Alcohol is bad!

So that’s it. I’m giving it up! It’s not that I’m an alcoholic or anything; I’m just fed up getting drunk on a Thursday or Friday and taking all weekend to recover! Hangovers aren’t really that bad for me, but I definitely feel the difference. I mean it screws with my fitness program; It fucks up my diet, and most importantly to the relevance of this blog—it makes be play very little poker for 2-3 days!

I know what you’re going to say:

“Why don’t you just drink less when you go out?”

Well, I wish it were that easy.

Look people…I’m British. We (the British), are well known as a binge drinking nation. To make it worse: I’m a Geordie too. At the end of the day it’s all or nothing (once we start, we can’t stop). Well, for me it’s nothing. That’s it. It’s over. Bababoom!

EDIT: I’m not saying that I’ll never touch another drop of alcohol again; just no more binge drinking! I’ll still drink at dinners and social events, but never again am I going some place just for the sole purpose of getting drunk. J

A quick update

I’ve not blogged in a while, but I hope to be back a lot more soon. Since my last entry I’ve spent most of the time reading forum posts, making notes and playing 6-tables on Stars. I’m still playing there now and enjoying it a lot more. The only downside is no rakeback, but after thinking about it I really like the VIP and FPP program they have. Basically instead of the cash back I can use the points to buy i-pods, books, poker chips, clothes; anything really! I’ve been browsing the catalogue and they have a lot of cool stuff.

In any case I think that’s a very important aspect of poker. I was going to write a separate post on this, but basically it’s the art of balancing poker with life. The point is, what I really like about buying material stuff with the points on stars is that you have something to enjoy and show for your poker playing skill!

Anyway, have to run because I’m playing live tonight – juicy cash games!

Later,
TB