Swongs

Date: Sat, May 17, 2008

The variance at 2/4 has taken a bit of getting used to but I now feel pretty comfortable with the possibility of winning or losing ~$2k in a session. I think a lot of that is down to reading The Poker Mindset over the past week, which is fantastic by the way... but also just naturally adjusting to the higher limit.

I had a bad session on Thursday where I played well but dropped 4 buyins. Took the day after off from online and played at Andy's on Friday night, 6 and 8 card PLO ftw... crazy games, lot of fun! Back to the tables today and ran like god. Plan was to play ~500 hands in the afternoon, then ~1,000 hands in the evening when the games are really soft however after a wicked afternoon I've decided to go out tonight instead.

Thursday -$1.7k
Saturday +$1.8k


EDIT: Got back in after some drinks and railed Ecu's lesson with Brian on mikogo/skype. Checked the tables at 1am and there are some superfish at 3/6 and a couple of great 2/4 tables. A sneaky 40min session later and we have my biggest day ever in poker... SHIIIIIPP IT!

Saturday +$3.1k

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Dusk Till Dawn

Date: Sun, May 11, 2008

The club is fantastic, even better than I expected. Running of the tourneys and cash tables was super fast and very efficient. Dealers were fantastic, all seemed to enjoy doing their jobs unlike the miserable fuckers you get in the Gala or Stanley. Food was just crazy good, the DTD burger and Eggs B I had were perfection. Extra points for having really hot cocktail waitresses. Overall it's 10/10 for DTD! I'll definately head back to play side games if there are any big tourneys/festivals on in future.

Didn't cash any of the tourneys, didn't play all the well in the friday night £85... quality of play is definately a lot better than casino tourneys too. Blonde tourney was a lot more fun, great banter at the tables as expected but after the first break it was push/fold to me which was just incredibly boring. I mean there's just very little skill in playing with <10BB stacks, it's just boring... was longing for the cash tables. Jen Mason won the BB6 main event btw.

Got a good taste of what changes need to be made to my game to adapt to live cash. The main difference is that in general the players are a lot worse, limp/call a lot, and can't play postflop. :) I played about 6-7 hours of £1/2nl over the weekend and finished up around 2 buy-ins. Really liked being able to play longer sessions and build up information on the players styles, betting patterns, etc and find way to exploit them. It's nice to have a lot of time in which to make the tough decisions too, rather than the 20secs or whatever you get online. Enjoyed live cash a lot more than I expected, looking forward to Vegas!

Blonde football tourney was a lot of fun. Geo only just managed to get 6 together for the Scottish team and we put up a pretty good showing, coming together well in the last stupidly high scoring game against the Wales, it was like 5-8 in 12 mins. We did manage to get one win, even if it was against the girls team, to be fair though they did have 3 goalies!

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At DTD

Date: Thu, May 8, 2008

Didn't bother with Dublin, and will likely give Riga a miss... bit late in organising things. Pretty happy to concentrate on cash anyways. Headed down to Dusk Till Dawn this weekend for the Blonde Bash, gimmi a shout if you see me there.

Cash this month so far...
It'll take me 10-20k hands to adjust to the new style Brian's teaching me, but I'm loving it. Will maybe post some details on the changes we're making to my game later, they're a lot of fun, really enjoying playing and learning at the moment. Also, I'm DAMN happy to be beating 2/4... long may it continue!

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April roundup

Date: Tue, Apr 29, 2008

In short...

• 10k hands
• Lots of beer = not much volume
  
• Vegas house booked
• New poker coach, hookem148
  
• $500 profit + $500 loyalties = Roughly +$1k month
• Bankroll now $12,500
  

Pretty swingy month really with +2k and -2k type sessions. The downslope at the end was a -$1.7k night where I played everything perfectly but got beasted... meh. Kind of felt like I didn't really run too well this month, hard to tell much over 10k hands really. No point in over-analysing a sample this size, I'm happy with the way I played.

Enjoyed my first session with Brian... looking forward to more next month.


Next month is the warm up to the WSOP:

• As much NL cash as possible
  
• Irish Masters in Dublin, Ireland
• Blonde bash at Dusk Til Dawn, Nottingham
• Olympic Open in Riga, Latvia
• Book Cali/Vegas flights
• probably lots more beer...

Will likely be offering stakes in myself in some of the events above, will post details soon.

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Plans for next few months

Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008

Ughhh, feel horrible today. Heavy one last night with folk from work, mixing drinks for the loss. Stomach says Guinness and champayne don't go too well...
Spending today just completely lazing about watching the snooker and relaxing to mark the start of my holidays. I'm basically off work for the next 3 months, except for a week I have to go back in for before leaving for the US. So I don't fully return to work until mid-july at the end of the WSOP. Preeetty sweet! :D

Played about 9k hands this month, been pretty swingy... my last session was -$1.4k. Up for the month, but not by much. So anyways, there's a ton of stuff going on and will be going on over the next few months. I should be blogging a lot more, certainly when I'm in Vegas I'll be blogging a lot about what's going on.

Vegas
Finished picking people and the house, so that's booked now. Should be a blast, I'm sharing the house with Dan from LA, Pete from NJ, and Roman from Sydney. Couple of the guys are pros, and everyone plays MSNL cash games along with live tourneys. All seem to have pretty similar interests, the house has a plasma HDTV so Pete's bringing his 360/wii guitar heroes, etc which is ace.

Super fucking excited about the wsop! Really looking forward to meeting people and hanging out, there are a ton of people I'd like to meet. That said, definately ship me a mail or something if you're gonna be at the WSOP and want to grab a beer or come over and hang out. Will definately need to get some parties on the go.

Oh yea, here's the house... lagoon style spa, pool table, fitness room, and glass office ftw. Costing us $1k each for the month which I think rocks.


Been thinking about what I'd like to play when I'm across there and reckon I'll mainly play 2-5nl, some sats to the ME, and a bunch of tourneys. I'll be making a post about staking for the tourneys closer to the time, but I probably want to play a couple of $1.5k wsop events, some $330 and $550 venitian deepstacks, and a bunch of other stuff. Looking at around $5-6k worth of buyins, hoping to get 50% staked... it'll definately be a +++++EV investment for anyone staking as these fields are so soft, and it's a lot of fun to rail on cardplayer if you're not in Vegas. Will do a proper post on staking next month.

Rough Schedule
Here's what I've planned so far... Gimmi a shout if any of this stuff fits with things u might be doing, it's always cool to meet people and hang out when travelling. Looking forward to meeting Marc and BTimm, would be great to hang out with other folk too.

April
29th - GTA IV release
30th - Launch party

May
3rd to 5th - Irish masters in Dublin?
10th to 11th - Blonde bash 6 at Dusk 'til Dawn Nottingham
12th to 19th - Olympic open in Riga, Latvia?
24th to 31st - Week as a professional poker player?
Or maybe like Amsterdam/Copenhagen/Prague or something if people can be assed

June
2nd to 9th - Back to work for a week
10th - Fly out to San Fransisco
12th to 15th - Drive down the west coast to LA?
15th - Catch a lift from Dan into Vegas and check in to WSOP house

July
7th - My birthday, wheeeeee
13th - Fly out of Vegas, back to Edinburgh

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New coach

Date: Sat, Apr 26, 2008

I'm real happy to be starting work with Brian 'hookem148' Rue! My objective for the coaching is to plug all of my leaks at 2/4 & 3/6 and make the move up to high stakes. Brian moved through MSNL up to high stakes while being mentored by Taylor Caby and is now a guest pro for CardRunners.com. Brian has previously coached Verneer and SirNeb, really excited about starting work with him. I'll be taking advantage of a lot of coaching over the next few months, will be taking longer coaching sessions lasting 2hours.

I'll be playing the first session with Brian tonight, him railing my play, all 1/2 to start with.

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Learn from the pros

Date: Thu, Apr 24, 2008

It’s not a bad plan… however unfortunately I’ve had to part ways with my coach, Messiah. He’s got a new job working long hours so he’s not going to have enough time to maintain a bunch of poker students. It’s a pity to lose him as a coach, I learned a lot and still felt we had a way to go. Congrats on the new job Dave, best of luck and hopefully catch u in Vegas.

So with a few things changing it’s really time for me to re-evaluate my current poker learning process…

Video Training Sites
I’ve got a subscription to LeggoPoker which I really like, the quality of content in the videos is very high. Been looking at DC quite a bit recently too and it looks great and a lot of fun, similar to Leggo. Think I’ll definitely be signing up there soon. Keeping my eye on Stox too, some of the mathematical work TheBryce is doing is pretty incredible.

Coaching
After the coaching went so well with Messiah I definitely feel that I’d like to continue along that route. It just accelerates the learning so much faster as coaches are able to pick up on your specific weaknesses and offer fixes immediately. It’s the next level above video training sites. So I’m currently looking for a new coach with the immediate objective of improving my 2/4 and 3/6 game, then making the move to high stakes. If you can recommend anyone please shoot me a mail or a comment.

Chatting poker
In addition to this I’d like to increase the network of poker players I know – particularly guys who are playing mid or high stakes. It’s always good to have people to chat over hands with, particularly guys that are thinking at a higher level. Should be a fun learning experience in Vegas this summer too, with a bunch of strong players staying under the one roof. That said, if you want to chat any poker feel free to add me on any of the IM softwares, I’m ‘bazclef’ or ‘bazclef@gmail.com’… always up for chatting over hands, etc.

Cheers for the comments on the previous hand by the way... more to come.

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Hand dissection #2

Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2008

On to the next hand... I think this spot is really tricky, be interested to see what line people would take here.

Shortie shove gets in the way of 4bet spot
I guess we can just ignore the fishy short-stacks shove here and it's more of a question of whether we want to 4-bet the true villain, SB. I think we basically 4bet here every time but should I bet an amount that will let me get away from the hand if he shoves, or should I just go ahead and play for stacks here?

My preferred play is to raise to $110 total, meaning villain would have to call $86 into what will be a $262 pot. It'll leave us an effective $260 behind, should I be thinking about folding if he 5bet shoves? Or is there a better way to play this akward spot preflop?

Cheers dudes

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Hand dissection #1

Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2008

Gonna dissect some hands I posted a while back, hopefully get some input on them.

Here's the first...

Turn double barrell?
Do you fancy firing $120 on the turn? Are we folding out enough? I'm putting villain on a middle pair type hand. I guess he could have A7 or a set too.

I think the flop raise is fine. SB has shown weakness by leading out superweak, he has some sort of draw like 90% of the time so I think he folds to my big bet like 80% of the time. I only have 1 other player left to act behind me and he's going to need a stronger than usual hand to call as my flop raise represents strength. I think the flop raise is +EV on it's own, but if it doesn't take it down I can fire at a non draw completing turn card and some scare cards and take it down a ton of the time. I've got 2 overs, a gutshot and a backdoor flush draw too so I've got some value to improve.

On the turn my hand has lost a ton of its value. I've got gutshot and pair outs but they could easily be counterfeited. So now I'm more inclined to bluff as it's likely to be the only way I'll win the pot. The A is a great card to bluff at, if he has a middle-pair or draw type hand without the A he's likely to fold it. Pretty unlikely he flopped a set or 2pr as he didn't try to protect it. I only need to bet $120 into $172 to bluff and I think he has a draw and folds to my double barrell about 50% of the time. So I think double-barrelling is most profitable here.

I guess the question is how often is the A in his range? (He's 16/10 over a tiny sample) Also does he ever play a set or 89 this way?

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Ship it

Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008

Yea this is a poker blog, but I've been working on this game for the past 3 years so it's a huge achievement for me. Now that it's done I should be able to play more poker for a bit too... that's the theory anyway however beer seems to be getting in the way pretty frequently.

GTA IV will be in the shops on the 29th of April. Go pre-order it, and stuff.


Also, check out the full UK 360 TV trailer here. Love the camera pan at the end to show the city skyline. I saw it on TV tonight but it was some gay cut down 30second version.

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Irritating first half of the month...

Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008

Boooooooooo.

Most of the brutality in the graph is due to variance at $3/6. Definately the most crazy half of a month I've ever had. Felt like I was cruising up $2.2k early on then getting slammed back down really hurt.

Last night I played a 1000 hand breakeven session, felt like I ran pretty bad, didn't make too many mistakes. Tonight I played another 1000+ hand session finishing down about $400. Towards the end of the session I lost a couple of big $3/6 pots where it's possible I made poor decisions, although they certainly weren't terrible.

I don't want to overthink things because it could just be that I'm not running too well at the moment it's only 5k hands. However I kind of feel like variance has fucked me up a bit. Since the -$1.5k day I've been pushing my play a little too much. Maybe subconciously trying to "win back" the money and get back up to where I was. I do feel irritated that I was $2.2k up for the month, and I'm now breakeven and I don't think that's a good attitude to take into sessions.

Another thing I feel at the moment is that I've kind of set a target in my head that I'd like to get my bankroll to $20k before leaving for Vegas. Giving me $10k cash, and $10k online. This is a nice idea, however I'm basically setting myself a monetary goal, and a tough one at that. I'm completely against $$$ goals, they've got no benefits and they fuck with your game a ton, adding anxiety, stress, etc.

So... before I move on to play my next session I need to do a few things

• Clear my head of any monetary goals.
  
• Do a PT review of the month so far, find out where any issues in play are.
• Lose any thoughts of trying to "win back" the money that I had earlier in the month.
  
• Assess if I should continue to play $3/6 or if the swings are a bit too much at the moment.
• Fully review all hands from the previous few sessions.

I think sorting these things out will help me move forward with the month profitably, because at the moment I feel in a kind of gamble gamble mood. Like I want the $2k back I had earlier in the month... which isn't like me.

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bleh

Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2008

I should really stop posting pictures of variance and work on my game and psychology. Seems that I've maybe lost focus a bit in that.

After looking over the biggest hands from tonight it's pretty clear that I was running bad, but that made me start playing bad also. Wasn't analysing ranges and hands enough, and was basically auto-pilotting the session... first time I've done that in ages. I'd say about 2/3 of the losses were variance, 1/3 were bad play... which I'm real annoyed about.

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lol ru serious?

Date: Mon, Apr 14, 2008

Kind of follows on from my previous post...

brb, going to set fire to things. :)

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Chillin'

Date: Sat, Apr 12, 2008

Not too much grinding been going on since my last post, just lots of chilling and drinking which has been wicked. Had a quiet one today though so put some hands in from midnight-2am, prime Saturday night time for soft games. Ran really well and had my most profitable single session to date. Ship ship!


Vegas
In the final stages of sorting out the house now, picked a place and finalised the other 3 guys that I'm staying with. I'm really happy with the house... It's a spacious 4-bed place with a lot of cool extras and really good surroudings, about 8 miles from the Strip. Will post a bunch more info on the place over the next few days once I finalise the booking. Suuuuuper excited about Vegas and the WSOP, 2 of the guys staying in the house have already won Main Event seats, I'm gonna set aside some of my roll to play sats on Stars.

Cheers for the comments on the previous hands (Marc), always appreciated. I'll be reviewing them over the next few days.

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