$100000 goal for 2011

Hello

Well as the title says i am going for this goal by the end of the coming year. I have not thought about the reality of such a goal, about what i would have to make in a week or month or whatever. I am just a man with a dream and a decent approach to the game every time i play and if i bog myself down with too many immediate goals in what i should make in a week or a day i would find myself putting myself under undue pressure.

I will tell you what though i will be finally documenting my ingoings and outgoings financially for the sole purpose of seeing if i do make that much this year, the fact that i am still this lazy on that front is frightening. I think with more control with organising my finances and actually seeing how everything is going i can push on with poker with more dominance knowing how much of a gift i do have with such a money making machine and not holding too many moments pondering on anything else other than pwning hardcore, not letting any doubts set in that will always have a negative affect.

I have noticed that variance isn't what has made my income in this game a little varied (i play enough hours and tables to iron this out) it is more my own confidence and somewhat susceptibility to irritability lol. What a phrase. If i combat my own demons of restlessness over such long periods of time playing by being very disciplined and stop the mantra of WHY ME? Why am i getting so unlucky, why am i feeling so stressed about playing today? Should i be playing today? All i seem to be doing here is losing (as i go all in with 72 on an unnecessary bluff). I think that i will be a fucking machine of making money and will be making it look easy.

I am not letting myself easily make money because i never make anything easy for myself so how can i expect to? Hmmmm. This is more a personal trait i have to get to grips with and i am happy to be sharing this mental breakdown with you lol.

For me to have no excuses and i can swear to you that is all i have come up with at any given point, i need to list all of the things that i think will make me ready to win at poker and then go about in winning without unnecessary overthinking.

This includes trying out holdem manager for a change. Will the insight of knowing a players history really affect my play against them or will the added screen presence of these irritating boxes prove much more detrimental in tilting me? That is a question that can be solved through actually bothering to set this all up and to stop worrying about it. Another question is if i went to the gym today will i be buzzing and more up for this grind? Yes it would. So instead of playing while thinking fuck i should have went to the gym, i go to the gym. There are other things that need to be noted as well but i notice i just need to get on with doing things rather than not and then obsessing about them.

As you may see i over analyse things until they are crushed. This is a great thing if you can hone in on this but a nightmare if you let your mind run riot.

So i have my end goal in $100,000 for the year set up. I have my finacial records ready to find out if i am going to be making that, and i have a daily routine for when i do put in a tournament shift. I am going to abide by all of them religiously so i can be content with the preparation before i start each session.

I am sorry about the length of this post, i felt i needed to get this out of the way before all of the next posts that will hopefully show you my uprise in fortunes. I have over a $20K br to play poker with at the moment and have shown a poker record in the past weeks that has made me think i can really get down to some serious business for this new year, but i have had some blemishes in the last two days of tilting that just need to be eradicated now so i can become a machine and can think about how to invest all of the money i am making without any tilting urges ever coming across me again. If i do feel like i may tilt on a certain day after i have gone to the gym, have eaten healthily and done everything right i will listen to my body and just avoid poker.

Going to see what its like to be properly prepared everytime i play poker, i think the confidence will result in unbelievable plays and even better wins, but we'll see.

I wish you all a good xmas and if i don't post again before the year is up a happy new year.

Ant.

Accidental Binkage

Hey

I wasn't feeling too good today. That is why i unregistered from my normal grind for damage limitation. Started at 5 and cancelled regging for all tourns up until 6 knowing i was tilting all over the place. I duly went out of every tourney but had accidentally remained in a 7 o clock 109f 18k gtd.

Was gutted when it popped up as i wanted an early kip and a film or summin. But it turns out i go on to win it for $4.7k. I was down $1.6k the last night i played but now this has me up nicely for the last two days. Long may this run continue.

Ant

In top form

Hello

Have only put in four nights of poker mtt grinding since the 16th of october as i am at university and taking it pretty seriously. But i have won over £3000. This has made me think that i shouldn't really do anything else other than work towards uni and play poker, and i am very much looking into the philosophy of one day on and one day off to keep things fresh.

So yeh. I may be a serious baller if things continue but i doubt they will something will have to go wrong. What i have noticed is that i have reduced the amount of tables i am grinding to around 9 and this has helped me concetrate more and made me get better results.

Also i have noticed i have no real fear near the end of the tournaments and am getting good at seeing them off. Tonight in particular was a sign of my ruthlessness. I was in the last 4 in a $5k GTD tourney with $1350 for 1st and $350 for 4th and i was joint chip lead, and then two other medium stacks. The other three guys all called for a deal. I remained quiet revalling in the fact i was against scared players and i was abusing them with a sense of sadism. Eventually i had an insurmountable chip lead and took down the tournament despite cries, as each player bit to dust, to have an updated deal proposal. NO! I'm gonna take this down instead brooo.

Going to Sheffield for the weekend today to watch Crystal Palace FC playing tomorrow. Also my mates 21st so it should be a great weekend.

Will let you go anyway. Just to say i expect my downfall to come soon, but while it doesn't i will continue to fill my boots. Take it easy.

Ant

On the Uni Grind

Hey

I have a lot of work to do for uni and will be doing that now. I am going to be concentrating on this mainly and play poker whenever i have time. Doing this just so i can live with myself next october when we all graduate and i can be truly happy with the grade i get. If i don't get a 2:1 then i will be content that i did all i could, and whatever grade i got is what i deserved. However, i am a relative perfectionist and if i don't get a 2:1 I will be dissappointed, so i need to assure now that thats not going to happen. So while i have loads of time before all of the deadlines I am going to prepare the work properly for the deadlines set and then see where i can fit poker in.


As i find if i have any nagging thoughts while i try to play i lose loads. When i am content and eager, with no other worries, i often have eye of the tiger like concentration levels and make a serious killing. Like the run i had recently of having £500 nights was made because i was playing with a inpenetratable swagger on the tables. I just followed my instincts and wammo i was pulling off some great calls, some great bluffs and it was like i was in a boxing match bobbing and weaving with superior confidence.

However if i have anything else on my mind at all that day that will annoy me, it all goes to pieces and i needn't have started. So the lesson here is to only play when i feel comfortable doing so. I have been talking a while about preparation for poker and along with the general knowhow of the game (mathematics and stuff like that) you are nothing without your temperament. I am noticing now how strict and disciplined i need to be to play poker for a living after uni and i won't play another hand until all other things in my life (uni mainly) are in place, so then this will allow me to enjoy my poker, the success that it brings and play with a long lasting confidence. Which in the past i just haven't had.

This may sound negative but my bankroll is healthy and i am keen to get back into the game as soon as possible, but i just won't rush myself. Uni is first as it is the backup to the "real world" so it will ease the pressure on me having to sustain only poker for the forseeable future. I will also be looking into getting a part time job to help the CV tick along.

So thats it for the meanwhile i hope to come back to you with news of a big win and eventually next year with my uni success, because if i am being honest the latter means so much more to me.

Ant

oh no beaten by sweets!

Hey

I spent sunday night going for a relative gamble. I had a massive uprise in profts previously which had my roll at about $19K so i thought i could lay about $1k on the line and just go for it!

Didn't go to plan but i really was on track! I had started at about 8.30pm and was looking to play until about 4am. I started in dominating fashion getting big stacks early and playing aggressively whenever i could. Raising most pots in position and eventually taking it down either pre flop, post flop on turn or on the river with complete bluffs always knowing when to stop when there was no chance of winning the hand. You could say i was in the zone.

And what a time to be in the zone i was doing great when i was playing tourns i am not bankrolled for. A result right? Well yeh i assume it would have been if not for my complete indiscipline on the eating front! I will explain now.

I had eaten a glorious roast dinner cooked by mum at about 6.30pm, twas lovely, then i decided i wouldn't prepare any food for the rest of the night. By 12.30am i was starving but still doing great in these tournaments. And i saw these packets of sweets i had not opened. These 39p midget gums. I opened them and let loose, eating the whole packet very quickly. There was another packet and i did the same.

2 mins later and i am off my face on some sort of Sugar Rush! It lasted about 45 mins and had me go out of nearly half my tournaments. I couldn't concentrate, felt ill and it was just the worst timing! In the tourns i had left i was just too tilted to play properly even when i had decided to go get a sandwich quickly from the kitchen. It was tough knowing how much money i had squandered and i was too disgusted at myself to see the remainder of the tourns through properly. Opting instead to just play hastily and load up some more episodes of The Wire.

Also i decided to tell everyone on msn what had happened and every which one of the replies i got from people were of shock one even pronouncing he was "scared" of my convo antics. As i was talking so fast in a crazy rage i didn't let anyone get a response in, plus i was talking complete nonsense. But when you do say that you have taken some "sweets" and it made you go on a trip i doubt they are going to think of the situation as innocent!

O well. I lost $700 for the night as i had binked a third in a small 100 person sit and go to recoup some losses, so i think i got away with it a little bit on sunday. I then proceeded not to play poker until i felt fresh about going back on. I have noticed, with me anyway, i normally always win, barring ridiculous bad luck, if i am mentally and physically prepared for a 12 hour grind. When i am not i often tilt and lose money. I still havent, after 3 years, got the perfect discipline for this game. However getting that may be impossible. Day in and day out to do the same routine to enable perfect concentration levels, meh, it just wont happen!

I guess it will be about damage limitation whenever i have a grind started and feel off by unregistering for tournaments where i can and stopping early. But if i want to be a true soldier of the game i need to give myself the best chance of playing 12 hour days for as many days as possible. So gym, healthy eating, having food prepared during the grind at close proximity to the computer to make it so i don't have to sit out of all the tourns as i rush to the kitchen, a lot of drink at the ready, and a good music playlist lined up. If i get the perfect formula i should be able to rake in loads of money as my game is pretty tight now.

I had the right idea for the last week when i made the £4000 by playing superb stuff on a consistent basis, but sunday just showed that one hiccup in preparation and you can be sent flying into a world of pain and a spot where losing money will just happen!

Wow this has been a long post but i just felt i would let some frustration get out! I don't know if i will be playing again this week as i am going to the Isle of Wight on friday and Malta next wednesday. But rest assured i will only play when i feel right in doing so, and with poker i think that is already half the battle won!

Good luck peeps

£4000 in 7 days, could get used to this.

Hello there

I have been rampant recently on the mtts across a lot of sites. Mainly focussing on the tourns that have less runners to start maybe 500 or less and i then commence in 12-16 tabling them for about 12 hours a pop. I try to keep it to 12 tables but if i am running well in more tourns than anticipated i can just about manage to take on board 4 more without completely oblitorating my chances in all

It is the regularity of the profits that is so nice to see, its nearly as if i can say before i start playing that i will be making £300 or more today. I play lots of tournaments on a nightly basis, probably in the region of 40, and normally get some good luck in at least one to secure a profit for the night. It keeps me at ease if i am running bad at any one time because i know i am likely to bink something or another. Just ridculously, supremely confident about my game.

Recently i have been making about £500 a day but for only the last 7 days so can't say that is my regular wage. Probably should be looking at £300 for every 12 hours played which is a great hourly rate and if i can maintain that then happy days.

Be interesting to see what i do when uni starts later this month. I am going to get a feel for the written work i have to do and see what best suits me. How am i going to incorporate poker and uni? I guess i will have to see. Whatever i do i will be going for a 2:1 and to maintain a steady wage throughout my studies.

Also i feel like if i am going to be hard at poker and writing i might as well try for more poker holidays! These would be a great escape from everything and i know my uni isn't the best in keeping records of attendances or being too bothered about it all so hopefully if i just get my work handed in on the deadlines to a good standard then perhaps i needn't bother with the lectures and instead strive for one 4 day abroad holiday a month haha. I could try and make this year the most hectic and enjoyable of my life and if i somehow get poker, work and 5 holidays in with a nice steady profit then that is lovely.

I am in a weird place right now as i, for the first time, have no doubts in my game, the money keeps pouring in on a daily basis and i am seemingly utterly unphased by it all. Which i think is key because i can deal with final tables better where i am not too concerned about money jumps as long as i make the right move and i know that being aggressive is always a plus.

So there you have it i am doing great and i really think this will continue at the same steady rate for months to come. However i would be lying if i didn't think its gonna go wrong somehwere!

Loving it

Hey

Finally got a sort of grind pinned down for myself. Have been playing most nights for the past two weeks with great success. On about £300 a night avg with winnings happening pretty consistently each day close to that number, just in case you thought i have had 13 losing days and then one huge bink.

I just know i have got to carry on with what i am doing and see what it will be like when i finally allow myself to play 22 dolla rebuys and 109f's, i wonder if my winning rate will go up. Not sure as of yet but i think it would.

Sorry for the short and pretty uninteresting post, i haven't had much go on recently and not really been in the mood to blog but i am desperately looking forward to Malta in 2 weeks time. Got a 1100 euros entry in the Malta Madness main event which i assume will have around 100 runners so its about 20K for the win. That would be nice!

Also had £120 on France to be Bosnia & Herzegovina at 6/4 whcih came in so things are on the rise for me atm. Just need to keep on winning

Ant

The last tourney comes through again to save the day!

Hey

Mental proceedings tonight. I really wasn't playing at my best and my results were showing this. I was getting very close to the big monies in the tournies up until i spazzed out and didn't quite receive the massive prizes. I really am too tired to explain everything that happened but it was truly eventful.

I had played for 13 hours non stop and eventually won a little over £500. I was £200ish down before my last tourney of the night, which from 9/10 i went on to complete another great escape.

I am worried that i have not been able to say once in my poker playing that i have ever had a faultless grind. This meaning that i did the best possible move in any given spot according to the info i had in front of me. I would say that i make on average 6 mistakes a night. These mistakes aren't tilt persay, this is normally a rarity, but instead a move that is marginal but is just the wrong thing to do. I have a habit of calling these spots acts of tilt by me when they aren't really its making marginally wrong decisions

Regardless i am going to grind again tonight and hopefully have another £500+ night. I am sitting out of playing on sunday to play in a five a side tournament as a mate was in need of a goalkeeper and to be honest any excuse not to feel the pressure of a big sunday was always going to be welcome!

The real test for me now will be to see what sort of monies i can hold down in a 40-60 hour week for a number of months. Just so i can get an idea of my rate to sort of normalise things and be able to tell people that want to know how much i really do make in the average hour as opposed to what i have done at one time, because any poker player could say yeh i go at £1000 an hour if they have had just one big win once!

Feeling happy at the moment and looking forward to the grind that will start again in about 12 hours. Man i love this shiz.

Ant

Quick Update

Hey

I still haven't completely settled on "the grind" to play but i have basically got it down to a certain amount of regular tournaments and i chop and change only a few now. It's been going well. Yesterday i made £460 but had some very near misses for much bigger scores. I have also had to deal with a £2000 downswing on one site as i push on in all the others i play on lol. It's painful to deal with that really just nothing going right when i play on it but not to bother if i am up overall.

I am yet to play a whole month or possibly even a week of a grind as if treating it like a job and am curious to see what i could make on average in a week/month over the course of 6 months to give me some sort of bearing to if i should do this as a career after uni. Would be great if i can. Also looking forward to uni in september!

Things look on the up i am nicely rolled for the games i want to be playing and am a nice winner at them and i really just need to push on now into the big time.

Ant

Knew this was coming

Hey

I had the session from hell on tuesday night. I got unlucky but also really just didn't play that well. It resulted in a $1300 loss and it was because i didn't listen to my own set guidelines of only playing when in a fit condition to. I started the grind because i had nothing else to do that day but i knew deep down i just weren't up for it. Would rather have been somewhere else but just played out of boredom.

I picked up an injury from a football match on sunday which prevented me going to the gym which would have probably have given me the motivation to be focussed and crush like i know how to but on tuesday i was just poor. Afterwards i was in relative shock. Wtf was that was my immediate reaction. It's never happening again. FACT. I will no longer play massive grinds when i am not in tip top shape to do so.

Regulation for doing a massive $1000+ nightly grind

I have to be buzzing. Now this can come about in so many different ways. It could be that one day you wake up and just think yeh i am in the mood to crush but a lot of the time you will just feel normal and eventually once one or two bad beats hit you you can be quick to fall off the tracks.

To defend against this i can have a daily preparation schedule to have me primed to win loads of money on a daily basis. I will be repeating myself now but it includes 1 hour of the gym and no shitty foods or caffeine. Let the endorphines kick around the body and it will also give me the stamina to play 12 hours if needs be.

This won't defend against short term variance but what i do know is that i only ever really lose money in this game when i let myself do this. It is sort of a constant battle with myself to maintain the steady temperament needed to deal with the horrid/amazingly beautiful swings of this game. It is like you are experiencing what it feels like to be bipolar on a nightly basis and if you haven't got the physicality and mentaily to deal with it you will lose the plot and your money.

In the past i most definately haven't prepared myself properly for playing poker. Tuesday being one of those days! However, it has served as a welcome reminder that for some players like me that know how to beat the game and are pretty comfortable with their knowledge and capacity to learn new stuff, the main battle about attaining poker profits is with yourself. If i get in a stonking good and healthy routine and i could well be a big dog in a year to come. However if i stay on the beaten track of being volatile and an on/off player i think i will get burnt out, i could well barely make a living in the game but it would be one hell of a depressing life.

This last week i have seen the results of having a great prep and a bad one and i know it is only on the short term evidence that i am basing a huge amount of my faith but the logic would suggest i am talking sense and i am genuinely intrigued about how well/bad things will get for me following a strict healthy lifestyle.

My prediction is after this post i won't be looking back.

Bring on the binkages imo.

Ant

Jeeeeez that was close!

Hey

Had a torrid time playing tourns yesterday. Should never have started because i wasn't feeling right. I nearly quite at around6.30 a couple hours into the grind to prevent more losses as i just weren't on it, but the gamble in me just couldn't let a big sunday go past.

So i proceeded to lose 800 quid over the course of the night playing like a complete fish. Like beyond belief, the nonchalence was amazing. I deserved to face the brunt of the pain of losing that much but i got saved by a 1.4k bink which had me up about 400 quid for the night.

So today i plan to start a routine that i will be able to maintain. It involves 1 1/2 hours in the gym and then whatever i want to do after. This just means i am in good physical and mental shape going into whatever i want to do. This is most important for poker of course and i think yesterday i missed the discipline to play well and just got plain old lucky. I know most days this won't happen so i just need to prepare better. Bring on the next grind!!

Ant

7500 dollars in 3 days

Hello

Well as the title says i have pretty much been killing tournies all over the shop. The 6000 prof includes a $3K package to Malta which includes a 5* hotel and 1100 euro entry into a main event. I believe its four days in all over there and it will be a nice break in late september, just before uni starts!

Erm not much really to say apart from how lucky i have been in a lot of fifty fifties late on in tournies and how i have did well to maintain a stack from 100 odd runners down to a final table. Been really improving my game by just obsessively self evaluating my plays and experimenting. The chancy plays i have been trying of late have shed sum light on how abc i have been playing over the years. ABC is fine if you a decent enough winning player because you can always live off that wedge however i believe the real money is in trying new stuff out and just dominating a table.

All of this would be pointless though if hands hadn't held up and all that jazz but from memory i am going to give you some of the results i have seen in the past few days. 1st in a 5K GTD, 1st in a 3k GTD, 1st in a 6k GTD, 1st in a 3k GTD, 2nd in a 5k gtd, 2nd in a 7k gtd, 2nd in a 10k gtd. However i had sum horrible form on one particular site that had me cancel out the true profits i should have been seeing!

This still remains a problem i still play too many tables! I think with the new style i am adopting i need to be playing a maximum of 9 tables. As i find it hard to keep track on 12 tables. Mainly because the tiling is too overlapping. I think i would like to get in another big 24' monitor to have beside the one i already have to see what 2x9 tables is like playing on. It may just be that i am fine with playing loads of tables, its just that it needs to appear on a certain way per screen.

If i do get comfortable like this on 18 tables then i can finally play a fuller grind without the annoyance of knowing i played too abc on a particular table. It could also mean a rapid rise in consistent winnings so i think a trial is necessary next week.

I'm loving the game right now and feel very comfortable in the knowledge i have for the tourney game. I think before i was very pessimistic and down on myself always overthinking hands and wondering if a play was bad or not. Now i just accept i can only play according to the info in front of me and my instincts. Throughout loads of hours of play the instincts will get better and through winning more and more i should get used to it and start to dominate poker and life in general.

I must have already lost about a stone in the Gym and the added fitness has helped with concetration. I have stopped drinking soft drinks with caffeine in it where possible. I tell you though they are hard to find. 7up free is the best, honestly. Although it may sound it i am not a health freak prick who has a go at people for eating "empty calories" or is constantly wary of what i eat, i just go with the flow and try to stick to a loose guideline. Mainly the mantra of eating when you are only hungry, not to over eat, and try to stay away from crisps and chocolate. Ewwww i am so gayy.

So there you have it i have a BR rivalling Fenix35's now which is great as it will spur us both on to try and out do eachother. We soon will be basically playing the same tournies as well so it will be interesting to see who will persevere over the coming weeks. I will not reveal my BR to you anymore in fear that i will be adding pressure on myself to keep telling you i have a higher one each time, so instead i will just tell you the general shiz and let you sort of work it out for yourselves.

I am going to let you go now.

Sorry for the length of this *That's what he said*

Ant

The secret to success with poker, well for me anyway!

Hello there

Well the title is already very alluring and i believe what i will next write is only setting you guys up for a fall. For starters this could well be written after a massive winning night where i met absolutely no variance and now i think i know it all. But regardless i will say what i will have to say :)

Today i managed to get up at a decent hour and get a good breakfast in before having a mad 2 hour session at the gym including a solid 60 mins on the cardio machines, the rest would be recovery and i walked to the gym aswell :). This had me buzzing walking out of the place. Decided to not rush into poker when i got back home though and just chill watching tv until i felt the time was right and i heard the feint sounds of my name getting called out my various poker rooms on my laptop.

Basically played 10 hours tonight and won a lot. The sorta victories that feel good, mostly it was a combination of a lot of final tables instead of one massive bink which can feel like you have cheated. Felt in control throughout apart from i would say two plays that i undoubtedly overthought at the time and didn't remember the guys i am coming up against may well be mentally not all there.

I lay my concetration levels to the gym sessions. Healthy body is a healthy mind and that. Also i would have to say that playing without music was great for the 12+ tables aswell. I could hear myself think and it was as if i was back at school again in a test room figuring out an answer and i just felt like a it was a whole new me. Yes that last line was intentionally supposed to sound gay and what im feeling good right now! The boredom u may think might be unbearable just playing poker for that long without music, but i enjoyed the games i was playing a lot more and felt more involved and excited by proceedings. Mainly because i felt like i was doing well on every table i played.

I also had 16 tables up at one point! This was mental. I wasn't opening as wide as i would have liked to just because i wouldn't have had enough time to play the flops on all the tables i would have to play. So was playing ridiculously abc for like a 2 hour stint, but oddly i found that i was doing well during this time. I may well have been saving myself from my stupidly loose plays!

Just thought i would put down the law and say going gym and not listening to music (perhaps classical though!) are a lot of help to play your A game. Tonight i pretty much did and am now basking in a gloat blog. Need to keep this all up now and for once continue some sort of dominance of online tournies!

Ant

binkety bink

Hey

I had a grind last night starting at around 4 and ending at about 1am so relatively mild for me and found that i was dancing around the edges of some big wins but it really didn't go my way.

One in particular was a 12k gtd 10r with the prize pool at about 15k where i was on the final table in about 4th with 14 bbs and i get AK opening in mid position. I obviously jam it all in and get called by a 40 bbs chip leader thinking im in for a race here i am screwed. Best case scenarion was obviously AQ but even that would have been a relatively loose call.

Cards get turned over and he has AJ. I'm shocked. I think everyone in the room was shocked. We're playing for $3k first place monies next out gets $200 and i take the latter as i am axed on the headpiece after a J10924 board.

the night was ending as a £60 loss up until one last tourney i played on a euro site. It came in and i won 1100 euros which was bloody fantastic. Big hand there HU was i had Q2 the other guy 10Q both had about 15 bbs. we both limped pre flop to see 2Q9 board, he checked to me i raised 3/4 pot he rr me i rr all in he calls and i take it down not long after that basically.

It just shows you the fragility of tourney poker that i was so close to being 60 quid down but am now actuall 1000£ up. I guess that is why its such a rush to play as well though. Bittersweet you might say.

Anyway i am playing tourns now that are few in runners and i have a high success rate on to keep my sanity and i am really enjoying playing. I am a little iffy on some plays but i think i will be fine tuning things shortly. Hopefully onwards and upwards from here hey!

cheers

Ant

Looking forward to recovering.

Hey

I am just now arranging my e mail to full tilt to prove my worth in the battle to reclaim the $1600 that was removed from my account. I cannot finalise it today as i am a little hungover and i am gonna write the bulk of it tomorrow. If i get positive feedback from them after i send it, happy days. If not then i will have to do with what i got and stop bitching.

I have a big enough roll to play $22 and $11rs if i wanted to and i am looking forward to binking some big tournies.

I am a little fucked today because yesterday i played cricket and opened the batting, staying out at the crease for a full 40 overs on a very humid day. I swear to you i nearly keeled over. And then when our team fielded, our captain decided to put me in positions that involved the most running. You couldn't write this sort of script. And to top it all off i went out and had one too many drinks in Crystal Palace before coming home and sleeping for 12 hours :)

I am out again tonight for a mates 21st, out tomorrow to the Epsom races (making sure i don't mess about with too much money!) on friday i have another mates 21st to attend. Then saturday and sunday is both cricket days. This is an amazing schedule for someone so reclusive to sitting at home stuck on 12 poker tables and ordering pizzas. The only real spice of life i did have was using different pizza outlets, will it be Pizza Go Go or Dominos today?

Might get a taste for the busy life and really restrict my poker play to sit and gos when i can fit them in rather than time consuming multis all night long. We'll see though.

It's very likely that i am going to have a full week off from poker with me being busy and i think this will be great for my game. Will come back fresh and much less tilty than i was on sunday. Will try also not to be as moany as my last post but only to have the odd occasion where it boils up over the course of some months and i lose the plot all over my blog space, on like some big massive fuck off tirade against everyone and the world. As long as it is not coupled with a mass murdering spree all would be cushty. My psychiatrist said that using a blog to vent the pressure of my stressfull life would be a good thing :)

Will see all you guys probably on monday. Hopefully with some news back with full tilt but primarily about my plan to get back on track and completely crush whoever gets in my way!

Ant

FOOLISH GRIND!

ARGH

not often i feel like writing in caps but i have a loss nigh on £1000 tonight. Mainly because my internet couldnt handle 15 tables on two monitors. I feel if i am going to do this in the future i will have one computer per monitor to help with the computer memory. Could also be because my laptop can't handle it, so i might need to just use a desktop pc. But whatever it is i was on loads of expensive tables and it was taking me 4 seconds per tab once i turned my attention to it to get the action to happen. Which is way too long and had me sitting out of a lot of tables. This tiled me also and it just went wrong.

Also have news that full tilt may well be taking $1600 from me but more on that story when it is finalised. And if it remains i am $1600 out of pocket i am going to let loose on them in my next blog and explain the full story.

I even ended early tonight so as to not completely lose the lot. So aggrevated right now. I am going to be taking a break of about 3 days and in the meantime trying to sort out things with FTP. If i don't get my money back from them my roll has been decimated tonight and in no way shape or form should i have been playing so high.

Have to break for a while so as to keep my cool and come back winning. I have At least £3500 left of my roll if all goes badly with FTP, so i can still grind that up nicely.

O well.

Ant

Brave or Foolish Grind?

Hey

I am playing across 12 sites today on what is likely to be a 15 table grind at any one time. I am prepared for this mentally and with my two moitors up however bankroll wise its a little gambly. My bankroll permits me to play $44 dollar tourns and $11r tourns only. I have those on but also a lot of $100, $150 and $50f's on the go. Don't get me wrong though the average buy in for tonight wouldn't exceed $70-$80 so i am playing with only 100 buy ins effectively, so it's not ultra bad.

Mainly this is as a one off as i am normally rather considerate of my roll nowadays, but i am feeling good, my last grind on friday secured £1300 profit and i am buzzing. I am looking to ride the crest of the wave today and bink huge. However, i am a realist. A stark one in fact. I am committing my buy ins today as a loss and anything more comes as a bonus. It is just lotto time. An opportunity to cheat bankroll wise by winning in a tourney i should never have been in.

Feel composed and am reacting well to beats, i hope not to have too many tonight but will make sure it doesn't act as too much of a detriment to my other games, and i guess that is all you can ask for.

Will report back at the end of the expected 13 hour night to report on what happened. Cheers for reading

15.4 inches is just too small oi oi

Hello

I did a massive grind last night involving many a $10r $5r $10f-$100f and was dissapointingly break even. Got late on in a lot of tournies but found myself only min cashing or being whittled down too low due to inactivity of playing too many tables. The problem was i just couldnt see the action sometimes!

I have a 15.4' monitor for my laptop and if i grind just the one site i find i can grind 12 tables at once easily because its easier on the eyes, and the table sizes are the same. Yesterday i was playing 5 different rooms with varying table sizes and found myself sitting out all over the shop, which would tilt anyone! Some of the tables just appeared too small.

I have a 24' external monitor with me here but have found everytime i use it that the internet stalls up to a snails pace and i find having to act on every table at once in a matter of seconds to save a sit out. I am going to try it again tonight playing 0.02/0.04 cash tables, mayble up to 20 tables just to see if the lag is still there.

Another problem i have with the external monitor is that its not pumping out at its max res becos my laptop doesn't recognise it as being able to which is so frustrating. In laymans terms it means i can't fit as many tables as comfortably on the external monitor becos the wrong resolution makes the tables appear too large.

Going to ring dell in the week and finally get it all sorted and hopefully also work out a way to get 2 external monitors up on this laptop but i believe by definition you can't have two external monitors on a laptop? Would prefer 2 so i could just have 2 big screens which would help my eyes a lot, and i could also take pictures and pretend to be some sort of baller television watcher to my friends who will be like wtf he has two big fuck off monitors here. I will be like yeh one is for porn and one is for sky sports, what of it. You see i want to experience that, so Dell pull your finger out and help me here!

The grind yesterday ended at a very little loss i believe after i binked a second place in a $3k GTD that saved my ass. Had me only like $100 down but could have been so much worse. I am happy to have paid that to prevent myself going under the same routine really and now i am only going to play on one site if i ever just use my laptop screen.

Yesterday was frustrating, but i feel for the first time i am getting close to some sort of decorum with tourney grinding whereby i shouldn't have any more excuses. I am playing heavily overolled, (will soon be) playing a comfortable amount of tables and should be making loads of profit. One thing remains that i think i will just never bother with and that is having HUD stats up on players as when i have tried to put them up in the past they have been too large and annoy the hell out of me. I still use the Holdem manager to help review my game after hands though but the HUD tilts me hard. If anyone can help me configure it so i have less stats and be able to sort the layout a little bit then please do tell.

Anyway thats your very boring rant over. Will see you in a bit.

Ant

Not much happeneing here!

Hey

Sorry about not updating this as much as i should be. Experienced somewhat of a transition month getting a feel for the euro mtts as a change from the american sngs and it took me a while to adjust and only in the last week of the 4 since i last posted can i say i have posted positive results. Have had to adapt my game. Mainly just had to calm the fuck down and appreciate that not all players are on the same deep thinking process of playing poker. They may well make rash plays, i needn't regard it any higher than that. Have found myself making calls or plays thinking surely he can't be this obvious he's gotta be bluffing/telling the truth.

Soon after my last post i transferred a lot of money to euro accounts and in the first two weeks lost quite a bit of money, then the third week broke even, and the last week got some good results in. I think i am on the up now even though i have only made $2000 for the month ($1000 of which is added to my BR so it's now at around $9000, the other $1000 wildly spent :)).

Future should hold some decent results on the euro sites, and a lot less on the american sites, mainly as i don't hold rakeback on Full Tilt and this kills my soul when i play on there and can lead to tilt and before you comment, i have tried rakebackpros but i am already under a non RB affiliate so it's a no hoper.

I am sort of only going to use FTP for their big tournies for a shot now and again. The same with pokerstars really and try to make my main bread with the euro Mtts with lesser fields and lesser variance and i think more value. Most importantly now i feel, is that i am enjoying my poker again, have a very strict game going and am quick to stop playing for a couple of days if i feel frustrated on the virtual felt, so i am always constantly in a perpetual state of happiness towards the game. That is unless i start losing or get some horrid variance!

Aside from online i may well play some live tournies now. Have two cashes live in $1400 and $7500 but that was a long time ago now and i need to build on those. Feel i have a good live game and i just need some run good and more volume to prove my real worth.

Cheers for reading anyway guys and GL!

Ant

3 final tabs and with one Victory

Hey

The ipoker grind went appalingly. I am not going to play there again in a long while i managed to lose £400 grinding their tournies. Tonight though i cleaned house on other sites and made $2700.

Brings my bankroll up to $8000.

I believe i was on $500 in early may so i am extremely happy atm.

Will give a better review of things in my next post, for now bed. Gl all but not against me :)

This is probably where it all goes wrong lol

Hey

Been running consistently on a certain american site at about $200-$400 a day for 6-8 hours work which is great. However as i am never satisfied and how i am addicited to euro site mtts i am going for a trial run across so nice "local" sites. Ipoker and ongame are the main target with a touch of partypoker thrown in for good measure. I tell u one thing though i am shocked by the lowered guarentees across these sites. As soon as i leave see what happens?

Still playing $10rs and $30fs across these sites and the odd $50f aswell. My BR is at $6000 atm so i shouldn't really be playing $10rs with my 200 buy ins rule as well as the odd $50f but i will get off the euro sites tonight if things don't go well or just play the $10 and $20f's.

I am really looking forward to this as i can see some familiar usernames and say high to them aswell as some mates being able to rail me if they would like that normally play on ipoker. Just need to give them a final table win to rail hey!

Some people would think i am crazy to be changing up a winning formula and that i am silly to not be happy with what i have got, but i am just trialling new areas to see what the perfect grind content would be so i can incorporate these euro mtt's with the american sngs i am already playing to try and work out the best way to increase my hourly rate. Also there is an undoubted buzz to be playing at old stomping grounds and i would love a great start tonight to really set the foundations for a meteoric rise up the ranks!

COME ON!

Was i gay eye raped yesterday?

Hey there

So there i was just minding my own business in the gym. I was on the bench press leg weights and i see this guy staring at me and i am like alright that is a little freaky. Especially the look on his face, it was sort of awe. It was quite unnerving.

I then closed my eyes for about 20 seconds as i was getting some serious burn on my legs crunching the last few reps and then when i open my eyes, the guy is standing right beside me and looking directly at me. My intital reaction was to say fuck off but i thought no there could be some sort of reasonable explaination to this. I could have something on my shirt or something but no he was just pervy. I was followed by his glare all the way around the gym and i was fearing for my arse.

I tell you what though, other than the eye rapes that are normally directed from fat men towards very fit women other strange stuff goes on. All i think comedic unless you are on the wrong end of it.

Picture the scene you go onto a treadmill and start running on level 7 of 16. It's a fast tempo and has you're getting a sweat on. Another guy goes on the treadmill next to you. He starts on level 5 and you and fist pumping in your head that you are undoubtedly better than he is in every way. But o no. He has had a glance over at the level you are on and bumps his up another 3.

You see this as an evasive action and putting your manhood into disrepute so you think fuck this i am going up to level 10 surely he wont top that. O no that is 11 he has raised his to.

You are both running at full speed.

You because you are a prick decide to go the full whack of level 16, last 4 unbalanced strides and then slip off the treadmill smash your face against it and get propelled about 6 feet away. Matey boy looks at you in pity as he then reduces his level to 4 and is basically doing a leisurely walk. Adding a swagger as he knows you are looking as if to say you don't mess with me fool, look you see what happens!

The egos on show are also amazing. You get the beefed up arnie's just prancing around with an air of self importance looking down at the rest as if to say what is taking you so long to look as beautiful as me. You have a barrier mostly between the fit people and the not so fit. Normally its new not so fit people each week to feel bad about themselves and then not come for another 3 weeks before again delaying their embarrassment.

If i win enough through poker i think i would come up with the idea of fat gym sessions. Where only a certain weight bracket can join and feel comfortable that they are not competing with people than outclass them. And yes i feel strongly about this because i am indeed a fattie! lol May have to lay off the gym detail, but i am trying to go every other day to achieve some sort of decent physique for next years footie season.

Aside from the overthinking on the gym front i had my birthday celebrations last night in leicester square. Was thoroughly enjoyable and involved a bit of clubbing at the Zoo bar before heading into the empire casino for a little bit of fun and games. Now i have made it a general rule never to really play any table games again as they bring so much pain if you lose that it is just not worth it. I laid a stop gap of £200 and said if i lose that i have to stop playing. I lost that pretty quickly, with some silly red/black bets that were just not going my way, so i stopped playing.

However spurred on by my mates decent winnings for the night i thought i would have one last shot. So i took a tenner out split it into two fives and thought i will put a couple of numbers on. So i went for the number 23 and i missed. I then went for the number 17 and i hit and subsequently won £180 hehe. Only £20 down and i would have definately have paid that for the buzz of a 1/37 chance of coming in. Gotta Love it.

As you may know because of my website name its my birthday on friday. If you fancy making any donations to my poker fund as it is my 21st you can find me as "anup returns" on pokerstars. Will accept anything as little as $1 and i promise you it will give you some run good in one big tourney within the next 2 weeks. You have my word.

So thats your lot. Will be posting more after my birthday about how poker is going. At the moment i am getting around $200 a day when i play which is a great. Need to start playing more though but as its birthday week i don't think i can be blamed for not putting the effort in. Next week onwards will be poker addiction and hopefully mass success.

Thank you. God Bless you. Goddnight.

YES yes bloody hell yes.

Hey there

Brag warning. Got a 3rd place and a $4K win on an american site and that has basically tripled my bankroll. I am now rolled to play $24 sngs if i would like. I am already a winner at the stakes half of that, so i would hope my skills can transfer to the higher game. Hopefully this is the kick start win that will lead way to the life i should have maintained last year after the £5500 win.

Always gotta do it the hard way, but if i was to make mad G's now i will appreciate it that much more better becos i know what its like to be at the bottom of the barrell and it would make being at the top that much sweeter. A lot of talk atm i will need to actually get there first!

I do have supreme confidence at the moment though and finally i think i can safely say i am back on track to hunt Ben's (F3nix35) BR down and finally get back in the lead. He definately has had it easy for months now and would love to see him sweating in front of me (that sounds sexual). However i am improving my BR nowadays with a sense of realism. A sense i didn't have in any of my previous ascents previously.

I am prepared now to crawl up slowly instead of mad dashes up and down with the BR. Slow and steady wins the race. I will continue to play sngs and throw in the odd multi, maintaing a 200 buy ins rule and going up or down in stakes accordingly. The joy of including multis in the mix is that you can have serious excitement now and again when you make a final table to deviate slightly from the somewhat monotonous sngs. However i am not complaining with the way i am running at the moment.

The game now with me is to maintain my composure and build the BR steadily and hopefully play live more when my br says i can. I have noticed i have a good live game and its annoying i have played much. Anyway i will leave u be i am really tired at the moment and am not even looking back at the post to check for mistakes. That is how on the edge i am living my life at the moment, o yeh.

safe.

Carnage

I have never been as drunk as that before in this country. That is all.

Just what the doctor ordered!

Hey

I am seemingly content at the moment so i don't really feel the need to whine on about bad beats or bad luck or anything like that because things are going well. Had a $340 up day yesterday and now today a $440 profit, so i am absolutely flying.

Not much really going on otherwise, but i am going to get some pretty nifty headphones to make my grinding experience that much better.

http://beatsbydre.com/products/Products.aspx?pid=B3808

I am getting them from my parents for my bday, which from my blog name isn't very long away now! The section about extreme comfort got me all wet and has made my mind up for me instead of getting a £200+ pair of Sennheiser's instead (another reputable brand of headphone maker). Figured if i am going to be spending so much time playing poker wearing headphones listening to music i may aswell splash out on a top of the pair of headphones. The ones im wearing now can make my head a little hot. I do hope these new ones are big enough cos my head is huge.

I am thinking of some other pressies aswell i should be asking other family members to get, so comment ideas if you want. I know i can fleece a £100 pressie from one of my sisters so i just need to figure out what i want!

So thats your lot really. Hopefully the money keeps pouring in and i can start playing on the euro mtt circuit again.

Cheers.

Doing well

Hey

I am playing $3 $6 and $12 tournies, i would say about 50 a day 12 at a time and averaging around $150 a day so thats around £100 a day. I am enjoying things atm and the consistency is always a great feeling.

The link below is to a great show on the poker show that i would like to mention talking about the G casinos, the Brighton Party and an interview with Stuart Rutter.

http://bit.ly/GCasino

Cheers people.

Brighton Grosvenor Trip report and Palace staying up!

Hey there.

I was invited down kindly by people representing the Grosvenor Casino in Brighton to come down to the big unveiling of their newly decorated casino. I would be put up for a night at the Hilton Metropole, have my train tickets paid for and have some gambling money on the house to play with. So a result! Thrown in was also the great company that i had. The organisers were very nice and were good conversationalists which is great considering you don't know them before this but it was easy to feel at home with them.

The night started with walking into the casino and being greeted by 4 scantily dressed women prancing around the floor of the casino and free glasses of champagne, so it could have been worse! Then we got some money to play with and i decided to play a bit of blackjack and roulette to about a £5 loss, highrolling hey! I then went to spend the rest of the free monies in a £15 rebuy tourney they had running and was shocked by how bad the play was. I saw one or two good players that were effectively cleaning up and most of the rest were waiting for AK, KK or AA, so it was quite laughable really.

What was nice was that while i was playing i was greeted with a bit of a cheering section which was nice. Hopefully a sign of future poker greatness to come hehe. Soon after getting unlucky in the poker when i shoved A4 suited in the cut off with 10 big blinds late being met with two calls of A10 and JJ, i had a little scout of the casino room to see if i fancied playing any more table games, i decided not to as i had been drinking most of the night and i am a bit of a lightweight! The casino was lovely though and reminded me a little of other london casinos with how glamorous it now looked. A good choice of games and a very good party atmosphere made it a quality night. If you want to learn more about G Casinos or their online alternative visit www.gcasino.com

A big thanks to the organisers for arranging all of this as Brighton the next morning was really sunny and gave me the opportunity to catch up with my cousin who lives down there. Also got the chance to meet two guys from www.gamblingexclusive.com with talks of maybe having my blog up on their site which would be very nice. All in all a marvellous trip!

Now onto the business of Palace's survival on sunday. YEESSSSSSS! What a nervy game to be watching! I honestly thought we had the game lost when they scored to make it 2-2. They had about 10 mins to get just one more goal and with us sitting ridiculously deep in defence i thought there was every chance of them getting it and sending us down in the cruelest of fashions. With that said i thought we were cheated in the game with their first goal being a definite foul on one of our players who was trying to clear but got clipped by their striker Leon Clarke who went on to score. He then celebrated by kicking the advertising hoardings and thats a broken ankle right there. Real clever. They didnt really have a striker on the bench and to have him go off was a relief for the palace fans especially as he would have been buzzing.

When the final whistle came there was absolute hysteria in the palace contingent with the fans effectively going berserk. Some fans felt it was necessary to go onto the pitch even though we are at the ground of the team we have personally just relegated. I thought this was a little bit out of order but if the going was good on the pitch and it all look friendly enough i would have gone on too to embrace the players, who i think did a great job. I finally decided i would edge closer to the pitch to have a better look at things, finally deciding i was going to go on and then i saw hundreds of Wednesday fans coming onto the pitch to beat up our fans and players. When i saw Neil Danns get punched in the face i knew i wasn't going to bother!

There was a huge debate about what caused the furore but it was blatantly down to the lack of police presence in the palace end. We could just walk on with no problems as we were secured by only relatively inept stewards who weren't going to try too hard to stop a mob of palace fans running on the pitch in celebration. More police at our end and there would have been no trouble. O well. It doesn't really matter to me anyway i got the result i wanted and to see this historic game in the stadium with the crowd as fantastic and vocal as they were was amazing.

It was the icing on the cake to a great extended weekend and i am looking forward to blogging on more palace success and hopefully more poker success also!

Ant

Up the Palace! Up the Poker!

Hey

Playing on full tilt and stars has helped my bankroll out a lot especially at the lower limits. 12 tabbing is always fun when the tables are relatively easy and i made $150 yesterday from my first serious grind which you gotta love!. If i keep that up i will be dancing in the streets before too long!

Going a little eskew now i would like to mention crystal palace football club. Why do we always deem it necessary to put the fans under the most immense pressure going just to feed some sort of lurid sadism fix it has. We couldn't nick a goal against WBA to make it all so easy after having a shot cleared off the line and Stern John going so close in the final minutes both of which i know most the fans thought were goals!

It felt like having 66 versus JJ all in pre flop and getting a 629 flop but then having it dramatically taken away by a J turn and an overkill J river. Massive game on sunday against Sheffield Wednesday. Both literally playing 90 mins for our survival in the league. Only a win is sufficient for them to stay up while we need a draw or better, but the game is to be play at Hillsborough, so the game is really up in the air.

The question is will it be like 2001 for us when we victoriously avoided relagation with a Dougie Freedman goal at Stocport or are we going down in dramatic fashion like we did in 2006 from the premiership like we did at Charlton. I am going up to Sheffield anyway to watch the game.

My record of watching away matches consists of 14 non wins. One of the most elaborate being watching Ireland against France at the Stade de France when Thierry Henry decided to play a bit of gaelic football. Absolutely devastated. It was more the hope that was raised with the Keano goal being quashed so qucikly in that fashion when we had chances to win the game. Ah i was inconsolable. I hope that this isn't the case on sunday. I don't even care if we don't win either because of this annoying away day jynx i have. Just please can we stay up?

On another note i will like to draw all of your attention to the new Gcasino website. I had a little spin of the games like Deal or no deal and thought they were pretty good. The poker site though i liked most. Its on ipoker and the design is quite alluring to the eye in dark and light blue colours, but trying not to sound like a big advertisement, the main reason i am saying all this is because they are doing a freeroll promo where they are giving away £500 a day from now on in daily freerolls. And on some days even giving away £1000 or £1500 in freerolls, they guarentee at least half get paid as well which is odd but it still keeps enough of a heavy weighting up top to make it all worth while. Think you should all give it a look esp if you are a freeroll specialist. What i would do is press this link sign up and enjoy the freerolls. If you play them all you will get a free roll there (see what i did :)) and who knows what could happen next.

My outlook is good for my new tyoe of game i play and realise that i should have played this for a lot longer than just the last week or two! But whats the most important thing about all this is that i am enjoying my poker again and can't wait to be playing again. Cue the grinding!

Ant

Loving it

Hey

Well i have changed the type of sng i am playing and all of a sudden eveything is looking up. If you want to know the specifics i used to be playing double your money games to limited success. The games have got alarmingly tight and tough in those and my profits were definately limited. It was good for getting rakeback though in a very low variance way but i just wasnt making that much money.

Decided now to play 45 mans down to 9/10 mans and to 9 table them religiously for 10 hours a day, preferring to stick to the slower versions of the game as the turbos go too quick for me and i can never multi table them well. The rush of coming first in any form of tourney is great and these little mini rushes i get when i take one down really is a perk for me that keeps me content to play for long hours. Previously in my cash or double your money forays i was left bored and may well often start playing poorly. I hope now i won't be as i am studying my game a lot more, watching training vids and learning the exact maths of when to push or fold. Found out what i was doing previously was near enough the right thing to do but i have needed to tweak a few things and i have noticed there are some anomolies that have been left unanswered for me that i will post up on here to try and get some answers from you.

All i would like to get across in this post is that the fire has been relit in me. My enthusiasm has sky rocketed and i just know now that i am on course to make the big bucks and really enjoy the cushty living that playing poker well can give you. Roll on the big scores and steady winning!

Ant

Calm Before the Storm

Today i feel really good. Not about my poker in the past week or two because i have hardly played and when i have i have been slightly idiotic and loose, not really caring. But its dawned on me that i just havent been enjoying the game as much as i used to.

Scared in ways that i am not good enough to keep up even in the lower sngs and multis. Always wondering whether or not i did the right thing and always assuming i didn't. Because of this i'm getting bored very quickly with proceedings and opting for a more inane thing to do like ps3 or watching a film. Noticed that when i feel confident in my plays and self assured that i normally kill whatever game i play, mainly sngs and multis (self proclaimed fish at cash, but maybe i might give a fuck about improving myself in that?). My lack of confidence is because i am beating myself up about not being rolled enough to play higher multis and what is happeneing is i am winning loads one day and then the other i can tarnish all the good work when i feel shitty about the low stakes situation i have put myself in.

It's a sort of vicious cycle but i know there is only one way to get out of that and that is to face this shiz full on. Change all my bad habits and i mean all of them. I'm going to go cold turkey on everything i feel may be detrimental to my poker play. No booze, no junk food, more breaks in between poker sessions, more exercise and making sure that i leave myself no time to be completely bone idle. With this i will generally feel better. A healthy body is a healthy mind. Never had a healthy body. So does that mean all other fat people are as insane as me?

Going through a slight transition period now. I have realised that i am really looking forward to going back to uni for my final year in september and that i am going flat out to get the best grade possible and with that guarentee of a degree i then, hopefully, have avenues open to me to pursue if poker doesn't work out for me.

ATM i'm stuttering like Gareth Gates but i can't honestly say i haven't made any genuine efforts to pull myself out of the hole. Today i am going to grind sngs in the way i know how, to make enough money to buy the services of an online training site. With the added education should come assurance in that what i have been doing in these sngs was altogether correct but needed a little bit of fine tuning. I could live with that. If i find out i am a fish from some self important dude narrating over his plays in a mock up sng, i won't be best pleased. I wouldn't know how to tell everyone else using the site that he is wrong :P

So plan is. Go to the gym every day. Eat healthily = increased capacity to maintain concetration levels for longer. Gotta also learn from pros online through these training vids = more assurance in my own plays = more money = the want to play longer hours = when was the last time you got away with mixing maths and english through the use of a " = " sign?

Anyways i just think now this is the calm before the storm and all of a sudden this blog will turn into cringeworthy brag reading over and over and hopefully over again.

Laters

Ant

Run Good + Hard Work Needed!

Hey

Just an update to say that i am somewhat struggling at the moment to get out of the small sngs that i am playing. Been spending my profits as i make them because my br is quite low so im dealing with smaller profits. This just means that in the hopefully short period of playing these sngs i need to limit my spending to protect my profits so i can re-stream them into playing bigger sngs and/or small multis.

I havent been playing too much recently which has been another stumbling block for why i remain playing low limits. I haven't bothered playing my 8 hour+ days because i have been out a lot and just been generally putting it off. It may be my sub conscious saying im scared about how long it will take to get out of this rut but im just gonna get on with it before more weeks pass by and i am not where i want to be bankroll wise.

Gonna be interesting to see what my hourly profits are when i start grinding a lot and in a weird way i am looking forward to it.

Ant

Warning computers are harmful!

Hey

Recently tried an Anti-Glare Protector for the 24' monitor that i have but annoyingly its just a little too small on the width. A phrase i have unfortunately been noted on before :)

If you are wondering what one of these are, its a piece of plastic film that goes over your monitor that protects from glare and other harmful UV rays that can have an adverse effect on your ability to use your computer properly. People with CVS (computer vision syndrome), which i unfortunately have, can have bouts of migraine, blurred vision, fatigue, eye strain, dry, irritated eyes, and difficulty refocusing the eyes when using the computer. For people suffering from this at any extent i would suggest buying an anti glare protector for your monitor!

I had been suffering with these symptoms for the past year and have got on with playing poker regardless and found that because of this i was never really playing my A-game and that i was never far away from a tilt tantrum. I think anyone with regular headaches and blurred vision as a direct result from using the computer too much would also not be in the best state of mind to play poker.

On the Wikipedia page for the condition, it says that a lot of the symptoms are temporary. However i would imagine that if you use the computer for 8 hours a day daily that these "temporary" conditions would seem a lot more long lasting. To be honest though, i never helped myself with the way i was using the computer in the early days of playing poker. I used to lie down in bed with my back arched and the laptop on my chest literally inches away from my face. I would probably say that i was sat like this for a good year at least and near the end of that tenure i started experiencing eye problems and headaches.

I reacted by buying a 24' monitor and using a desk for it with a comfy chair, thereby being able to sit far enough away from the comp for it not to be a danger to my eyes. However i found that i was getting headaches just as fast from concentrating at the screen for too long, and no question this helped in fostering my bad poker play, through my edginess.

I didn't know what the problem was so i thought i should go to the opticians, and he told me i need a slight prescription but nothing too untoward. I don't need glasses for walking about with (that would be a walking stick, im here all week!) and when i do put them on for computer use or reading i don't notice much of a difference. I still got the headaches, blurred vision and dry eyes.

As a sort of last ditch i bought an anti-glare protector for my monitor. Apparently it can get rid of 99% of the glare that is emitted from your screen and i would have to say that it has significantly helped me! I know it doesn't exactly fit my screen perfectly but it covers most of it and when i look through the filter my concentration levels are improved immensely. I no longer have to look at the screen for a minute a time without having to turn away because i just couldn't take glare.

This alone won't combat the problem i have with computer screens. I think its a combination of a lot of things that i was told to do by the opticians. There is an apparent 20-20-20 rule, whereby every 20 minutes you should look away from the computer screen to an object 20 metres away for 20 seconds.

Obviously i will need to do some sort of an altered version of that because i am not exactly going to look away from my computer screen religously every 20 mins. Could you imagine it. Playing 9 tables having Aces on 3 of them and noticing on my watch, ahh shit its time. Then turn away, stranded by the slow ticking of the 20 seconds on my watch before i can look back at the screen, aghast to find that when i return i have been sat out of the AA bearing tables and hence forth being strickened by an unsurmountable grief :)

The altered version will be to notice when there is a lull in my multi table grinding and you guys know when that is, when you have those few precious seconds to yourself where you can just sit back, smoke a cigar and not worry about playing for a while as you have just auto folded all your tabs dealing with the 49 suiteds or the K2 offsuit. In this quiet, I would just need to look away from the screen, close my eyes and relax, hopefully this will soothe my eye muscles and thus keep them in shape. Then the dreaded reminder beep will have me scrawling back to some sort of poker situation i have encountered a million times. O the Joy.

So hopefully within the next few months with the basics of workstation ergonomics mastered i can finally relax while playing poker and experience the sort of upturn i was so akin to in the early days of playing. I would like to think the only reason i started losing was because of my reaction to the frequent headaches i would get from the comp and not knowing why exactly i was getting them, which added to the frustration. Poker was becoming ever more bitter sweet as i could only experience smaller spells of greatness when the effects of CVS were on an unexpected holiday.

There are only a few other things i need to do to be perfectly prepared for computer use but these now may appear more anal. Desk height, chair positioning/your position in the chair so as not to get back pain, the monitor being at eye level so you don't have to get neck strain from looking downwards. These things i will only combat if i need to so i can maintain some sort of laziness.

On the subject of hamful computers i will lay a worrying link up to those of you who still use their laptop on their bodies ie. on their chest or lap while using, because people who do this and have done for quite some time can be at risk of the adverse effects rtadiation exposure! The link itself has an initial article that is quite vague but the comments in response to it hold more info.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/green-girl-blocks-laptop-radiation.html#

So i think that is the lot on my bearing of bad news in terms of computer related illnesses haha! Food for thought at least and hopefully this sciency advice will help those suffering from similar problems to myself. I wince at the possibility it was CVS that made bad players bad and now i have given them the cure to be playing stable-mindedly, if i have done i forward my apology to all those pros now out of a job. Bye now.

Ant

Things going well!

Hey

Really can't complain at the moment. On a trend of about £500 a week which isn't the best i know but its very good in correlation to my starting roll. The sit and gos have been becoming more alluring, dare i say it, because they are convenient.

I can start up 7-8 of them and be over in an hour and a half, meaning i can fit it in around some sort of life if i ever decide to get one. However, i am riding high on the wave of optimism and industriousness so i am dedicating most days to poker and gym only. So that would mean 1 1/2 hours getting to and from and in the gym and the rest of my day playing poker and taking nice breaks in between.

In the breaks i can get away from it all and watch cash in the attic or an inevitable re run of sky sports news (that stuff repaests itself every hour i tellsya). When i am at a comfortable roll then i will look into the development of a more well rounded life. However i feel that that would only happen if i manage to have enough in the bank and have the capacity to further my funds nicely, to rent out where i feel i could branch out more with that independence and shit.

I feel that i will have to have a very nice amount to think about renting though as i wouldn't mind taking advantage of such kind parents who ask for hardly any rent from me.

So the plan is. Get cracking with playing these sit and gos. Maintain or better the £500 a week goal and with a comfortable amount in the bank i will re assess and see if i should start playing multis again. Life is simple atm, just waiting for some tilt carnage or summin to mess up this nice little bit of decorum im having here!

On the Crystal Palace fc front. Is Paul Hart really the man to lead us away from relagation? I think so, but am surrounded by pessimists who beg to differ.

Anyway gl peeps

Ant

Not going to Plan

Hey

Have spent much of the xmas period up until now just about paying for all the things i have been getting up to through poker instead of pushing on into the higher stakes which i know i should be in right now. But i need some more application to even think about it.

I have been playing a lot less recently through lethargy and just wanting to play the playstation 3 instead with no real great will to carry on playing. The main reason for this is that i am not liking poker right now as much as i used to. This being as i am playing much lower than i would like and the lack of the profit i was once used to starts to aggrevate me and sometimes this leaves me playing a break even game through tilt.

I am writing now to try and address the problem and calm down a little, set myself a gameplan and stick to it. The end goal is to have £10000 in the bank so i can play all the the euro tournies (10e-$100) i want and feel ultra comfortable with every play i make knowing that i never have to be results orientated because i have so much money to fall back on. At the moment i am banking on lower limit sngs to get me through the struggle i find myself in, and its going ok. However i find myself getting bored and putting in no where near as many hours as i used to. I used to do 10+ a day easily loving every minute of it, but now im struggling to piece together 4 hours and with that i am not even playing that well.

Have had quite a few things happen to me over the period i was absent from blogging that i will shed light on within the next posts, nothing serious, but some quite funny all the same. Was tempted to do a mega post with all i shud have posted in the two months i wasn't writing but thought i would like to save you guys lengthened boredom.

One reason i wasn't blogging was because i thought i wasn't doing it right and im not. All so random and unorganised, no real planning involved, just a sort of stream of poker-related conciousness. I never know what i am going to write in the next sentence i just sort of scribe and see what happens. Will address this in later posts but for now i would like to relish in the laziness that is my current writing style and look forward to feeling better about all future posts. No idea why i thought i should share that with you and my insecurity here must be blinding!

Anyway, i think my approach to the game is what is most at fault at the moment. I am remembering the days of my former relative glory of having a £10K+ roll and taking it easy, pretty much crushing life along the way and its this that makes me remain in the doldrums of false starting with any roll i try to build. I think back constantly to the mistakes i have done and this aggrevates me and therefore affects the poker play i am doing currently.

Just an issue of manning up really, learning from mistakes and examining what i need to do to avoid the "i could have made it" tag i am placing on myself as if i have no chance of fully recouperating. I see my mate F3nix35 pushing on with his tourney success and knowing i could have been in the same spot if i was equally careful in bankroll management but c'est la vie i wasn't and i am where i am now. There we go again another thought that has me slightly agitated! lol.

I think its a matter on getting into a daily routine to crush the online lower stakes sngs that will help me push on. Go gym an hour a day, take regular breaks away from the comp, feel good about the profit i am making and be safe in the knowledge it takes little steps to make big goals. There is a rushing element in me that wants everything now and its in that i have in the past made so much money so quickly but the pitfall of doing things too fast is that you can lose the money just as quickly.

Lesson really here is to just enjoy my poker within the comfort of good br management and hopefully with my skill (if i have got any or if the games are so tough now that its all break even stuff lol) i can pussh on slowly into the promised land of going back to the multis, where no one can say anything against, that i am an above average player.

Cheers.