Recap of the weekend and yesterday

Hey ho

I am currently in uni so cant relay the exact hand history of the travesty that happened to me on sunday night in the sunday 35K, but i assure you its fresh in the memory for me to tell you quite accurately. First of all i need to set the scene. I was around 40th of 80 at the time when i decided to go completely crazy in opening every single pot i could with any two cards from two gapped connectors upwards so as to try and accrue as many non-showdown chips as possible. This was spurred on by the fact i had made the money in this competition 3/4 times in the last month essentially only getting double my buy in, so i didn't want to go out unless it was in a hail of bullets!!!!!

It started so well. I was on 25K in chips and had it as my goal to get to 40K without a showdown by stealing chips pre flop or if i do get a call, by outplaying them post flop, and you know what it worked! Had 69 suited coming in to save the day on a stone cold flop bluff and had many other crap hands becoming goldust. However this wasn't without getting re popped around 6 times of which i had to fold each time because i had nothing. I was literally opening 100% of the flops i could.

I had gained the maniac image of the table with people obviously praying to get a hand against me and milk me dry, they obviously didn't know i had a method to my madness. Problem was i wasn't getting any genuine hands to capitalise on my reputation. regardless i was now on 50K in chips and in 2nd of 25, so i had made the money, and then finally i get a genuine hand!

I get JJ in mid position and all the action folds to me, so i did what i did every other time this spot came to me and raised the pot up 3X big blind to 6000, everyone folds to the big blind who is on 40K in chips and around 5th place. He has obviously been becoming increasingly upset that i have been stealing his blind and he puts in a bizarre re raise to 22000, which is half his stack.

I had to think for literally a nano second to realise that if he had a genuine hand he would had re raised much smaller to try and entice the call from me, or even to just flat call as he knew i would continuation bet the flop. But no, he raises me massively, which shows massive weakness in my eyes. I don't have him down as a player of relative intelligence to confuse me with such an odd bet knowing i will find it as weak, so i re raise him all in with the Jacks. He stalls for a while, as if knowing he is beat but because he has been a spaz in his re raise he is committed tcall the rest of his 20K in chips and turns over AJ. The flop brings an Ace and i don't spike my one outer by the river so i am crippled on chips. With less than 5 big blinds soon after i find A* and go all in and for good measure get dcalled by the same guy who takes me out with AJ lol

If i had won that pot i would have been dominate chip leader and i feel that i wouldn't have given anyone else a chance to take me off that crown with so many chips to bully the others that just want to move up in the prize money, and to the players that were good and wanted to make moves i would just outwit them and put the pressure on them like never before. So it was a little disturbing to receive that beat because there is a part of me that thought if i didnt play that hand, i may well have found it safer to just steal pots pre flop and move up without showdowns. But i was there to win and found a spot to nearly double my chip stack as a 70/30 favourite so i am fine with what i did. Just annoying as it was in the biggest tourney i enter on a weekly basis and would have loved to take down the £10,000 first prize. Yes you heard me right, £10,000 smackeroons.

The day sunday on the whole was a £400 down day which wasn't good but was by no means the end of the world considering my last two days of play where i was up £1400.

Yesterday brought back the heater whereby i was back to my best as i was well rested and felt on top of my game. I had entered 7 tournaments and final tabled 4 of them the $1.2K GTD the £1400 GTD, the £1000 GTD and the £6K GTD of which i came 5th, 2nd, 2nd and 5th respectively. The two where i had lost heads up i was very frustrated with my play, as i wasn't showing it the necessary concentration because i was showing too much attention to the £6K where i was chip leader with 6 to go, first place getting £1700. Again with the bad beat story lol. I get it all in with second in chips with QQ against his JJ, i found his call very loose and was very happy when he turned his hand over. The Jack on the flop though changed matters and i didn't improve so i was crippled in chips and managed to sneak 5th place. Rather annoying hoever i have to be happy with another up day to the amount of £600

I am having a break tonight to go out and get pissed so crypto tourney regulars can breathe easy :) and it will be a well deserved break to meet up with mates.


good luck people!

Up another $700 today!

Hey Ho

I won the NTX £1400 GTD by luckboxing my way out of a paper bag heads up to take the title and £442.20. Apart from that i made a couple of final table appearences that would have had me just a little over break even before the NTX result came in so the latter was a pivitol result.

My tourney game is coming on leaps and bounds but i still notice that i am sometimes ill prepared to have a tourney stint, sometimes being too hot in my room aggrevates me and i steam both literally and in poker terms. Sometimes i look at the screen so long that my vision impairs (i think i need stronger computer glasses)(Yes i have computer glasses and WHAT!) Also the trips back and forth from the toilet makes me lose my trail of thought, which is never good. When i am on my game however, i make logical moves most of the time that have to get unlucky for me to get out. But i do fall privvy to some information i think i have on a player, like say i think he bets out on flops very weak, i would take that info and throw caution to the wind sometimes, when really a lateral play would suffice.

Hope the heater continues as i would like to think i am good enough to say i am good enough to be a full time poker tourney pro. I don't think this is the case, but i am getting there.

Peace.

£742 Profit today in tournies

Hey

I am chuffed with how things went today. I won a 1500 euros GTD on parbet and came second in the £1400 GTD NTX midnight on crypto along with other cashes that helped as well. I feel in the zone at the moment with my tourney game but am getting increasingly restless about my cash game.

I definately need to sit doen and map out where i am going wrong with it because it seems to me at the moment i am doing nothing glaringly wrong but i bet at closer inspection there are big leaks. I know some already but would have still thought i ould be making a sizeable profit but at the moment i am only up a small bit, bordering on breaking even. Which is ok i guess because i do get rakeback but still i definately need to see whats going on in that front.

I hope tomorrow i make more money in one day because if i can maintain £500+ days, i will be rich i tellsya! I kno it won't happen but somewhere in between break even and what i did today will be fine! Gl at the tables.

Peace.

Live tourney Fish!

Hey

I blew up tonight, and all because of my live game inexperience.

Clock was 25 mins, 8000 starting stack, antes introduced after 4th level. So the tourney was gonn get going quite rapidly. Second hand into the event i get 87unsuited on the blind, folds around to the dealer button who raises to 150, SB folds and i call, blinds 25/50.

flop 10 9 4 rainbow

i bet out 250 as a stopper bet to make my draw relatively cheaply by the turn, but i get re popped to 900. I think for about a minute and half on this one. My conclusion was that she was all over this flop and if i call the big raise and hit the straight on the turn, i could eventually get all her chips. As well with 8000 to start if i missed the draw on the turn i had plenty of chips to recouperate. So because of the implied odds i called.

Turn 6

Bingo. I Check, she bets out 1700 i re raise to 4000, she calls.

River 7

Ouch not a nice riverm but can she really put me on an eight here. Pretty committed now so i push all in for my last 3000ish and thought going all in will disguise it more than a 2000 bet, she calls and had 1010 for the set. I double up to the tournament leader very quickly. I liked my play here because of the implied odds, it makes sense to want to accrue a lot of chips to bully early on and calling a draw for so much on the flop will give you a loose image amongst your foes which i can exploit.

Soon after though i have Aces utg+4 and already have a raiser to 200 and a caller in front, i only raise to 600, which was a mistake in my opinion and i knew it at the time as soon as i did it, and get one more caller behind and the other two make the call so 3 others to the flop.

J 10 4 2 spades

i get a check and then a pot sized bet in front, im thinking to myself now that that is a drawy board i only have 600 invested and still have loadsa chips to play with for the next hand if i fold. But i just couldn't as i was feeling erratic (lack of sleep maybe?) and re pop to 4000, i get two folds behind and then back to the raiser who flat calls. I have him on a flush draw here.

Turn K of spades.

OUCH. He checks this to me i think, and me thinking he only has 1000 behind set him all in, in the hope i was wrong with my instinct, but also cos i thought i had him basically all in anyway. But i was Wrong!! He had 4200 behind on that turn. If i stopped to check that i would have given the pot up to him. Too used to seeing chip stacks online as clear as day. For some reason i thought he was really short. To my horror the dealer asked for 4200 more from me when he turned over AJ of spades. Gutted! I make the situation 52/48 in my favour on the flop. A situation i shouldnt be gambling on when i let three others see a cheap flop, if i re popped to say 1000 pre then i am committed to get frisky.

This tilted me sooo much as i felt i could take the beat on the turn on the chin, but thinking he had 3000 less than what he really had made me furious.

Soon after i am out after betting all in on a turn with three spades representing a flush, with the other guy having none of it calling with two pair.

I am happy i learnt the lesson of getting a good amount of sleep prior to an event and also to take your time in knowing the whole situtation of stack sizes. It was the mistake that tilted me tonight and after it, i was beating myself up to the point where i wanted to go home. I had enough. £165 that lesson cost me and i think that is a relativey cheap one tbh. Could have done it in a higher buy in.

Back to the online grind tomoz, ith the intention of playing a 150 or 200 pounds tourney again soon as i want revenge.

peace

Playing the £150 at the Gutshot tonight

Hey

Will be playing live tonight to spicen things up a little as the same internet grind can get monotonous. Doing it more for entertainment than for the money, as i do enjoy playing live, and i seem to play better when i just look to outplay opponents with a disregard about the money. There is going to be around 150 runners i believe, so prizepool at around £22500 so guessing first is around a third of that. It's a decent amount to strive for at around £7000, but going by the 250 tourney they had yesterday its gonna last nigh on 12 hours! and it starts at 8. Madness. Whats even more mental is that i have only had 3 hours sleep, got woken, and haven't managed to get back to sleep. So i am going to be truly fucked later but i knew this when i paid for the entry over the fone about 10 mins ago, and it's a little test for myself, if i do win this everyone else entering should be ashamed of themselves.

On the internet grind front yesterday i was in the last 30 of the three biggies across the littlwoods and crypto networks spazzing out on 2 of them and getting rele ul in the other. Annoying because i was playing some sound poker for the most part and would have loved a big score.

This morning i lost £200 in a 2 hour spell, playing ok in it with most of the losses coming from a £200 pot all in with QQ against AK, and having a threes full house getting beat by eights full. COuld have got away from the latter as the oppo raised £50 on top of a pot of a measley £8 but a flush was completed so i thought he may have had that. Not to be and pain ensued. Oh well. Tonight should be fun anyway. I believe that the action will be blogged by Gutshot forums at

http://www.gutshot.com/bforum/forumdisplay.php?f=32

if your interested. For now i'm gonna attempt some sleep and then trot down there to play in some cash games. Gl ppl.

peace

Life and Poker

Hey

Big dissappointment to find myself hardly making a dime in the month of february. It started so well with a few good tourney wins, but it was tilted away while i wasn't in the mood to be playing or playing limits just too high for my roll. Trying to get £50000 for the year now looks like it won't happen at this rate and the main cause for this is that tournaments tilt me. If i grind tournaments for a living i will be a losing player because the swings get to me and affect my skill towards them. How i am going to solve this is by only playing a maximum of three a night, if that, of the tournies i feel i have an edge over and of good enough relevance for me to want to play properly in them. I will trial this for the next two weeks but this too has a glaring problem.

I could spend 9 hours in total playing cash and make a profit of say £120 for the day which is good, and then in the 3 tournaments i am looking to play nightly, im digging into 3/4 of those profits towards a high risk investment. On the back of say 5 days of no tourney results my bankroll might be stationary and further frustrate me. But i am going to trial this to see what happens, maybe the combination will help settle me and i will play a better cash game as a result and increase profitablility like never before.

I was on for £1K a week just grinding 12 tables of the 0.5/1$ limits and its the tourney virus that has prevented me from sticking to that lovely track, as without tournies i feel lost and in comparison, cash can seem so generic. So the combination of the two artforms will hopefully come with great success.

Also another important thing to add is that over the past two weeks i haven't lived much of a life. I have gone out at least 3 nights a week which sounds about normal but it just seems all i do is stay in my room and play poker. Im 19 and life could pass by without me knowing it so i will be taking strides towards getting some sort of balance. It sounds like i am depressed but believe me i'm not i am worried im too relaxed in the environment i have set for myself.

Exercise is so desperately needed as well as i have maintained a comfortable state of chubbiness for quite some while now and see myself ordering a lot of takeawys and annoyingly find that i am ordering more each time which can't be good lol. Exercise will also get the endorphines (your body's natural happiness drug) running around the body and that will settle me in times of bad beats so that i can brush them off and play as if i was a robot.

Speaking of robots, I was thinking earlier i had picked up the best description in the world on the game and that is that being human in pro poker is a liability apart from one's natural intuition (or gut feeling) aside from that a freakishly robotic approach helps one succeed, away from emotions that can only tarnish your game. Even happiness, as this only heightens the sense of misery when you experience a bad beat, as you knew what is was like to be joyful and in contrast it feels much worse to be sad/angry. It's 5.40am and i haven't slept yet so apologies for the philosophy i feel i can all of a sudden embark on you, i hope it doesn't leave too much of a lasting impression and hope i can still garner respect as a player lol.

Back to the reformation anyway. Discipline is now my number one priority. I am going to set a loose daily plan each morning for how many hours i want to play in that day and how many tables i will play and i need to stick to it. Need to treat poker as if it really is a job that i can't afford to fuck up. Possibly act as if i have starving children to feed, struggling for money to pay the bills which will in turn get my killer instinct going and stop me from wandering away from playing properly, because you know what, there are no excuses. There is variance but this is so blatantly made worse by our reactions to it and a lot of people don't seem to notice it. Get get a bad beat and it can take a certain amount of hours/days to get back to playing a profitable game, as you were still mentally reeling over the bad beats, and chasing wins, when really you should have patience to let it come to you.

I seem to know all the ins and outs of what is going wrong with my game but seem to just carry on in my ways regardless. Not anymore. As of today i have to change. I am going to play poker responsibly with a level head, with no drink or any mental instability and i am going to make sure i give out as much pain to the losing player as possible. Sadism in this sense is a good thing, and in being a rampant sadist i may well have some fun in milking a clueless flush draw chaser, or value bet bluffing a tight grinder on the river who thinks I must have made my draw because I'm betting so little.

I am looking forward to changing everything, from the amount of exercise i get, to how much of a social life i have to how many hours i put in and so on. With this transformation should come results. If the wonga in my account is always rising then i don't give a shit how it got in there i just need to continue doing the do. Tournaments will try to fuck me over but i feel if i keep them on a tight leash i can use them to my advantage and couple them nicely with a solid cash game.

Big question is then, is it onwards and upwards from here? Or is it a rapid descent into having to get a real job for minimum wage? I guess you can place your bets in the comment section.

peace.

Massive tourney grind!

Hey

I have decided that enough is enough with tournament grinding and have seen the light in the way of cash games as the best way to make a living from the game, maybe sit and gos are also good but haven't been too exposed to them. As this is the case i am going to give the tournies a really good send off as it is going to be my last pure tourney grind in a long while so i want to go a little mental.

My bankroll stands at around £5000 and after tonights grind it will stand at around 4 fifths of that if all goes tits up lol. Without further ado here are the tournies in question.

40,000 euros GTD on devil fish for 100 euros 20.00 Ant040689
$20,000 GTD on party for $55 at 21.00 anup returns
$100,000 GTD on littlewoods for $140 at 20.00 Ant040689
$125,000 GTD on pstars for $55 at 20.00 anup returns
$50,000 GTD on full tilt for $163 20.00 Ant040689
£35,000 GTD on will hill for £110 20.00 Ant040689
super series (£2500 added) for £12.50 will hill at 18.00 Ant040689
£6,000 GTD on Parbet for £33 21.10 Gaughan
**$50,000 GTD on cake for $109 at 20.00 Gaughan
**$100,000 GTD on cake for $162 at 22.00 Gaughan

so wagering 100 euros + $684 + £152.50 = £718.82

** might back out of the cake ones though as i am using a notebook and the cake rooms take up a lot of space on my 15'' screen so may have to give it amiss, unless i use another monitor hich i may well do.

I am doing this as a sort of release from the tourney scene. If i win big its all going towards moving up the limits in cash, if i don't cash in any tourney i will grind on the 0.5/1 limits and move on up from there. So i am sorted regardless.

It is a little maniac-like but it's the way i roll, and these tendancies which i once layed upon the blackjack rooms or roulette i now need to somehow use in the poker world, and this is it methinks. Looking forward to it, and need to get some sleep in before it starts, as i only had 3 hours last night :(

By the way i have left my player ID next to the tournaments so you can see ho i am getting on in them in real time, might be an intriguing investigation lol.

Anyway good luck to you all at the tables tonight and in the future.

Peace.