A look back at 2009

It turned out to be a decent year for me poker wise. I'm gonna recap by reviewing small and midstakes cash, high stakes cash, online tournies and live tournies seperately. First up is small to mid stakes online cash games, these went really well since I began grinding and writing this blog in April. Its a pretty decent sample and shows that I can beat these levels pretty decently. Profit = ~$75k sfter rakeback



High stakes however has turned out to be completely different for me, I just havent managed to get a grasp of the better regulars, lack of fish etc. I'm pretty sure i will eventually but my first 100k hands havent been great. Beating 1kNL for a decent winrate over a large sample in 2010 is definitely going to be my main aim. profit = ~ -$25k after rakeback.



Online tournies went really well this year, I played some of the biggest online tournies that took place and had some pretty decent cashes in tournaments which had good quality fields. The highlights was obviously the 52.5k in the Sunday 500 for 3rd and the 35k win in the 100 rebuy. My profit across all sites is probably about $100k.




Live tournies went really bad, played about 8 and no cash, a few deepish runs but havent really played well in any. Hopefully i'll put this right next year. I have already qualified for the Irish open and once thats over I'll probably set my sights on the WSOP. Would like to play a few events. Will have to wait and see if I can get the holidays to have a good go at them.

My plan for the first 2-3 months of 2010 is to stop playing tournies for a while and concentrate solely on cash games. I might just play a few Sunday Majors but I'm going to stop playing the 100 rebuy, 1R1A etc. during the week. I think its the only way i'll ever get the better of high stakes as too often i end up playing 4 tables of 1knl along with 3-8 tournies at once. It might sound mad to quit my most profitable games but hopefully in the long run it will pay off.

Galway

Had a good weekned in Galway, great hotel, good atmosphere around and got to meet up with a few boardsies. Poker wise it wasn't great. Started with 20k in chips on Friday, dwindled down to 13k over the first few hours, recovered a bit to 17k then doubled up to 35kish with a set versus AA, for the rest of the day things went pretty bad, got 3bet every time I had a marginal hand and couldnt get any cbets through. Finished the day with 23k.

I won one or two pots on my first table of day 2 to bring me up to 33k and then got moved table. Played 2 hands in 4 rounds of blinds here before I exited! First hand I open 88 utg, button 3bets and the sb 4bets, I fold and button folds. Next round of blinds its folded to the button who opens, sb 3bets and I shove about 25bb with 99, button folds and I run into KK, no 2 outer and I'm gone. Cant really complain though just never got going in this again. Great to hear that Irelands first supernova elite BigMickG managed 4th in this though, a really nice score and another great result for him. Hopefully he's celebrating wont stop him reaching elite again this year!

Off to a flyer!

So this month has kicked off nicely, running good in cash. Up $8k, mostly from running above ev but I'll take it. I also came 2nd in the $100 rebuy on stars the other night for $13.5k and last night I managed to take down a package for the PPP Irish open 2010 on ipoker. My first coaching session went well last week also and already I feel I've plugged up some leaks in my game. I'm not sure if I'll get in too many hands this month though as planned, especially with the IPC this weekend and Christmas holidays fast approaching.

A breakeven month

So not much excitement this month, down a bit in cash and up a bit in tournaments for a pretty breakeven month. 5/10 hasn't gone well for me so far at all so I'm going to drop back down to mid stakes next month. I'm back at ipoker now too and have booked my first ever coaching session for this week. I've 5 hours in total booked so hopefully I'll get through these in December. I hope that this investment will improve my game and I'll be back at high stakes again soon enough. I'm going to aim for >40k hands next month and hopefully some decent profit. I'll be heading for Galway on the 11th also for some live action, hopefully i can get a run in this and break my duck for the year in live tournaments at last.

Booted out!

So I got kicked off VC last weekend, bit disappointing as it will be hassle trying to get money moved around to another site on ipoker. I'd doubt i'll reach my goal of 40k hands at 5/10 for the month either now. Manage 3rd in the $100 rebuy on stars last night so at least tournies are going better now for me. Played badly when it got 3 handed though which was frustrating.

Short update

Started the month off well at 5/10 winning 10-15 buyins but donked back most of it over the last few days, I'd say I'm about breakeven now. I suppose its better than the last 2 months where I've been deep in the red at this stage of the month. Tournaments have been going really bad, have only cashed in about 9% instead of my usual 16-18%, about time variance caught up with me in these things though too I suppose. Volume has been poor this month, mainly due to building my new PC which still isnt working! Going to have to accept defeat at this stage and get someone in to help me get it up and running. As soon as I get it going i'll post a few pics of my new setup. I did win a step 6 to the Galway UKIPT on pokerstars though the other night, looking forward to that already, twill probably be my last live outing for a while.

Another good month.

Cash went ok this month, I played better than I had the last few months and played 25k hands at 5/10, I was pretty breakeven with a profit of 2.5k + another 2.5k in RB, ran slightly down in ev though. Its the first month that i'm comfortable playing at 5/10 and I'm pretty confident that I'll beat it. Gonna aim for 40k hands there next month and some profit hopefully.



Tournaments went really well, about 5 final tables and one big score. I won just over $53k and also a $650 bonus on stars. I also won about $3k staking some boardsies into the 80k guaranteed. So I made about 60k profit in total this month which is pretty epic, I'd say I wont be topping that any time soon! I have splashed out a couple of k on a new computer and a new 30" monitor also which should be arriving next week, so i'll have no excuse for not playing well next month!

Big Tournie Score!

So the IWF went ok this weekend, got through the first day with a 52k stack, which meant I was nicely placed in about 30th of the 200 remaining for the second day. Started the second day well and was up to 85k after 3 levels. I then lost a flip with AK versus 99 for a 67k pot, this put me back to below average and I never really got going after, donked out about 9 o clock pushing Ad3d into 66. Went out about 75th i'd say.

Went back to my room in the Citywest and fired up a few tournies on stars. I ended up playing straight through the night and cashing 10 hours later in the Sunday 500k in 3rd place for $52.5k. Biggest score yet so I'm really happy with that, puts me well back in to the green for the month too!

Droping back down

Time to say goodbye to 5/10 for the month again! Running bad for the month has taken its toll and my last two sessions on sunday and monday at 5/10 were a complete disaster. I lost another couple of flips and was running about 18k under in ev. This lead to me tilting pretty badly so i've decided to drop back down to 2/4 and 3/6 for a while again. I'm well overrolled for these but dont see the point in spewing off any more money up at 5/10. Might take a shot next month again, just gotta run good next time I move up.

Played the IPO on Saturday, pretty uneventful. Drove up Saturday morning, started with 9k chips and fluctated between 6k and 11k for 3 hours, then lost a flip all in pre with Ako versus JJ, was home in Cork for half 9. Pretty standard. I'll be playing the IWF this weekend, having qualified online, hopefully I win a few flips in this one. Havent cashed in any live event this year which is pretty disappointing. I've played the IO side event, the wsop main event, a 1k event in Binnions, the macau festival, Kilarney and the IPO. So thats 6 events and nothing to show, you'd think i'd get the hint! The IWF and the pokerstars IPC in galway will be my last live outings for the year I'd say so hopefully I'll make a good showing in one of them.

I'm playing alot better this month than last but unfortunately my results aren't reflecting this. Running 14 buyins under in all in ev at the moment but hopefully I can keep playing well and it will turn around soon. This will be my first month playing 1000NL as my main game so it would be nice to book a profit. The tournaments have been going ok, up over 1k and I've had planty of deep runs, without breaking into the top 5 places. I managed to final table 2 tournaments in one night for the first time ever this week, came 9th in the $100 rebuy and 7th in the $100 1R1A, was short stacked in both and did well to make it as far as I did in them.

I managed to lose and win my 2 biggest pots ever in cash on Saturday night also. Arrived back at a house party at half 2 after my cousins 21st(slightly the worse for wear). Decided to download pokerstars on a laptop there and play something for the craic. Jumped into a 5000NL full ring game, thankfully I stayed away from anything higher. Lost a 5k pot by firing 3 barrels into someones top pair top kicker, but then won it back with AK on a 345 A 8 board versus AJ for a 5.2kish pot. Hopefully I wont be doing that again anytime soon.

Late September update!

I managed to be breakeven in cash for last month after a pretty severe ~25k down swing. Was after clawing it back to +6k but donked off 8k right at the end to leave me down about 2k but up 1k after rakeback. Ended up with about 40k profit playing tournies on stars, so managed to make a nice profit for the month.

The plan is to only play 5/10 this month, less volume than last month but hopefully a bit more quality. Off to a good start over the first couple of k hands anyway.




Played in Killarney last weekend, not much to say really, played pretty tight aggressive and went reasonably deep, went out in a flip with 44 versus A10 after dwindling down to 10bb. Came about 120th or 130th, not too sure exactly, 77 got paid. Gonna play the IPO and possibly the Irish Winter festival this month too.


Just thought i'd add in this graph of all my hands since I started grinding again around April the 1st. 280k hands in 6 months, won 49k + ~20k in RB, 2 big downswings greater than 20k make it look pretty swingy. Pretty happy with it, wouldnt have thought I'd move up through the stakes so fast.

Still in a downswing.

Pretty happy with my volume of play this month, the quality though still leaves alot to be desired. Down almost $14k but + 2.8k in RB in cash. I'm running below ev but I shouldnt have lost nearly as much this month, which is disappointing. Tournaments are still going well though. probably up about $31k in them this month which leaves me with about $18k profit in total for the month so far. Hopefully I can grind back a few k in cash in the next few days and start next month playing a bit better.

Another good tournie score.

I managed to take down the $100 rebuy on stars last night for $30k, got lucky in the end heads up but played pretty well throughout. Good nite for boardsies all round as Reilly took down a massive ~180k score in the Wcoop plus some others cashing in the same event! I have played really badly in all the Wcoops I have played. I'm probably gonna play the main event next Sunday if I can take the Monday off work, maybe one other event during during the week. I'm up about 35k in total on stars now for the month which is pretty good as cash has being going badly.

I was running bad at 5/10 so I dropped down to 3/6 after losing 10 buyins! Quickly lost another 10 buyins at 600NL so dropped down again. This was all in the space of 3 days btw! pretty sick stuff. Thankfully I seemed to have turned the corner in the last 3 days and have won back a bit. I'm still well rolled for 5/10 but gonna stick to lower stakes until I build my confidence back up again. I'm approximately -12k (-8k in EV) in cash so far this month but +~1.5k in RB. In total I'm up about $25k for the month which is pretty sweet, hopefully i can claw back some more monies in cash before the month is out and if I could make breakeven at this stage I'd be very happy.

I run good

Bascially I just ran good for ~3000 hands at 1000NL right at the end of the month. Couldnt lose a flip and just bascially coolering people left, right and centre. If only it was always that easy! Biggest winning month so far, winning $20k+ 3kRB in cash and about another 20k playing tournies on stars.
I played more tournaments than any other month even though i said i wouldn't play any more in a recent post! I'm gonna probably play a few of the WCOOP events on stars this month but overall try and reduce the ammount of tournies i'm playing. I'm ending up playing 5-6 tournies while playing 5-6 tables of cash. This is leading me to slip into old bad habbits and just generally not concentrating on cash enough. Gonna aim to play 40k hands next month, hopefully most of these will be at 1000NL now that i'm properly rolled. If i end up winning even half as much as this month it would be a good month!

Quick Update

Played live at the weekend in the macau but only lasted until near the end of the first day. Played bad and ran bad for must of the day. I seem to get bored live and get over aggressive, this doesn't work well when half the table are calling stations and are not gonna fold 2nd pair on an ace high flop, because they obviously know that they are gonna hit 2 pair on the turn and boat up by the river! Thats 4 live tournaments this year and no decent run in any of them, I'll probably play one or two more before the year is out and hopefully get a cash in something!

Online I'm up about another $2k in the cash games since my last post, so thats about $4k + $2k in RB in total for the month. More importantly though I won the daily 80k on pokerstars last night for $14.9k. I play this tournament alot and have final tabled it 4 times now I think. My biggest win previously was about $12k for coming 3rd in it one sunday when it was 200k guaranteed.

Swingy month!

So far this month its been really swingy, win 2k one day then lose it the next!! Glad to be in profit though because I'm not playing great, spewing a fair bit and calling down too light when I know I shouldn't. Up $2.3k though which is $3.6k in total with RB included so cant complain.Just gotta play better. Here's the biggest pot of the month so far, hopefully more of these will follow.

UTG ($400)
Hero (MP) ($983.60)
CO ($848.80)
Button ($1093.24)
SB ($1014.65)
BB ($470.20)

Dealt to Hero [ As Ah ]
UTG folds
Hero raises [$14.00 USD]
CO folds
Button calls [$14.00 USD]
SB raises [$63.00 USD]
BB folds
Hero raises [$122.00 USD]
Button folds
SB calls [$71.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, 8s, Qs ]
SB checks
Hero bets [$168.00 USD]
SB raises [$878.65 USD]
Hero calls [$679.60 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kc ]
** Dealing River ** [ Js ]
Hero wins $1982.20 USD from main pot
SB wins $31.05 USD from main pot
SB shows [9d, 9c ]

Bad start to the month

Really bad start to the month again, seems to be a bit of a habit. About 5000 hands done and down $3k, not playing great and cant seem to win a hand. Gonna take tonight off to get a break from it, as i dont want to drop any more and have to spend the rest of the month grinding it back again! Hopefully I'll be in a better frame of mind for it on Thursday or Friday. If not I might take a few days off altogether as there's not much point in playing when your slightly tilted and not playing great.

Played a few tournaments too in the last couple of days but I had no big score. Was going well in the Sunday million on stars but got card dead at the wrong time and exited about 320th of ~8000 when i pushed with 12bbs with A7o and was called with JJ. I was going well in a 100 rebuy on ipoker last night too but my QQ was no match for JJ all in pre for a nice stack nearing the bubble. I wont play any more for the month now I'd say as they take so long and usually the outcome is a pretty small cash. Looking forward to playing live though in two weeks, hopefully I 'll be playing better and more importantly running better by then.

Breakeven July

The first graph , from the last 4 months, is how I've got on since I've started grinding cash again. Pretty happy so far, almost 200,000 hands played and I'm up $22k + about $9k in rakeback. The interesting thing about the graph is that at about 100k hands my winnings fron non showdown started increasing. This is when I stopped playing 8-12 tables in favour of 4-8. I've also managed to run pretty bad in the last 40k hands but have stilled maintained a decent winrate so I'm happy with that.




This month however I was breakeven but I'm pretty happy as it could have been much worse. After I came back from Vegas I was playing and running really bad, this was leading to tilt and with these three conbined it meant that I was down $10k after about 8 days and only 8k hands played! At this stage I stopped playing 600NL, only played good 400NL tables and grinded the rest of the month out at 200NL mostly. This worked well and I managed to start playing better. I didnt think I'd be able to rescue the month but in my last session last night I won $1.5k at 400NL. With rakeback included I'm actually up $1.3k for the month. Next month I hope to get about 60k hands played and I'm also gonna play the Macau €1100 tournament which is on in cork in two weeks.

Leaving Las Vegas

Didnt get a chance to update the blog while over in Vegas unfortunately, well maybe if I had ran better I would have made time and there would have been planty of updates. On the poker side there really wasn't much to tell. I lasted about 4 and a half of the five levels of day 1 of the main event. Had a pretty good starting table which had two pretty bad players.The only hand I won in level one however was when I raised in early position and everyone folded, all other hands I played bascially envolved my cbets getting raised and I had to muck and I couldnt manage to isolate any bad player unfortunately until the second level. I raised in the cut off with A7o and the flop came A J 9 rainbow. I cbet and the bad player calls ( he was calling down really light with the last two hours btw) turn comes another J and I fire half pot, he calls. He checks again on a 7 river and I put out another half pot bet. He snap calls with 10 8 o for the rivered straight. He then proceeds to tell me that I should have bet more so he would have folded the flop or turn. I said thanks for the advice:-) I lost another pot where I had big draw and bet flop and turn but never hit, had to fold to a river donk bet. The third pot I last was with AK in a three bet pot, no A or K on the flop versus an old Italian guy who was pretty tight.

At this stage I was down to 6k or 20 Big blinds. I survive the next level by pushing over peoples raises and finally doubled up to 11k with AKs versus A6s all in pre. I remained at 11k until the half way through the last level. A young americian guy raised from the cut off and I 3bet 10 10 from the small blind, he instantly shoves and I call it off pretty sure I'm flipping. He tables AK both hearts. The flop comes 9 high with one heart so I think my luck might be changing for the day, unfortunately 6 of hearts on the turn and 2 of hearts on the river seal my fate and I'm gone. Meh, gotta win flips in these things to have any chance.

Decided to head to Binions on the following day for a 2 day deep stacked $1000 tournament. I lasted about 6 hours in another card dead day. During the rest of vegas I didnt spend much time playing live, just one 2-3 hour live $2-5 cash session where I actually won $135 to my surprise!! Overall though the week was excellent. Got to meet alot of new poker players, had some great piss ups, good food and the clubs over are excellent. Unfortunately our trip home took about 10 hours longer due to delays so I'm still pretty wrecked today. My plan for the month is too hopefully get in up to 20k hands at 400 and 600 NL so its back to the nightly grind after a week and a half off.

June done and dusted

Pretty good month overall, got almost 50k hands played, mostly 400NL but I also played about 10k hands of 600NL and 1000NL. I made a profit of $15k + ~3k in RB even though I ran terribly in all in EV, about $7k below. I made alot of changes this month, the biggest one being that I now play between 4-8 tables typically, usually 5 or 6, instead of the 10-12 I had been playing at 100 and 200NL. This has allowed me to concentrate on the gameflow and play more aggressively in general. I still have a few leaks to work on though, namely my 3betting frequencies from late positions are still a bit low and I'm also still calling too many 3bets. These have improved a bit this month but I still think there's plenty of room left to improve this part of my game.

Obviously the highlight of the month was my winning of the $13K WSOP package. I'm going to be flying to Vegas on Saturday the 4th and will be playing on day 1d on the Monday. I have played a grand total of 4 hours of live poker so far this year!! That was the €1500 side event of this years Irish Open so I'm looking forward to getting a good few hours in at the live tables in Vegas. I had one decent cash this month in a tournament, that was $5k for 3rd place in a $100 40k guaranteed on stars. I played a good few more and ended up with about $3k profit over the month. I'll probably only have one or two more nights playing poker before vegas and I'll spend these playing big field on line tournaments to try and get my head into nitty tournament mode rather than aggro 6max cash mode. I'll take my laptop with me to vegas and will hopefully have loads of updates to be blogging about, if not maybe some crazy bad beat!!

Vegas Baby!!!!!

So I managed to qualified on Sunday night for the main event of the WSOP which kicks off on July the 3rd. The package ($13k) includes accomodation starting on the 4th for a week and money for flights. I'll probably play either day 1c on the sunday or day 1d on the monday. Really looking forward to this now as I hadn't planned on trying to sat into it at all. hopefully I'll have loads of updates to post here in 3 weeks!!

Above is my graph for the month so far, pretty happy with the volume of hands and I've managed to maintain a good winrate so far even though I've been running pretty bad in all in EV. If i can maintain this for the month then I might even pull off a >20k month with my tournament winnings and rakeback included, I didnt think that would even be a possibility at the start of the month!

Running Bad

I suppose the month was going too well so the poker gods decide to make me run about 9 buyins under in all in EV. Hopefully the last two days of coolers and bad beats will turn around soon and who knows I might actually win a flip again.

So far so good

Good start to the month, up $7k in cash and up about $1.5k in tournaments thanks to a 20th place cash in the ecoop $100 rebuy event, lost a few crucial flips near the end so a bit disappointed that I didnt go further. Satellited into the $1500 main event on sunday also but never got going and went out with about about 400 left. My bankroll is now over $20k so hopefully this heater continues for another while.

Graph of the last 2 months

117k Hands at a winrate of 2BB/100 and about 5k in rakeback.

First Post

I've decided to track my on line results at mid stakes over the upcoming weeks and months. The story so far is that I deposited 2.5k near the end of March and began grinding 100NL, thankfully I ran well and jumped to 200NL when my bankroll hit 4k after 10kish hands, I made about $5k in April and $2k in rakeback so I was off to a good start. Straight away in May however I managed to drop $4k in a week or 2 through a mixture of coolers and downright terrible play, I grinded on however and managed to claw it back and somehow ended up with a $4k profit and $3k in rakeback for the month! I've played a few tournaments and made a small withdrawel which has left me with a bankroll of ~$13.5k to take a shot at midstakes.

I'll put up a graph of my results since April the 1st in my next post. I dont play poker professionally but just as a pass time and for some extra money, so I dont mind taking shots at 400NL with about 30 buy ins, I dont think it will affect my play and I can drop back down if I hit a 10 buy in down swing or if I'm losing at this level. So far I've grinded out >50k hands each month by 8-10 tabling but I think I'll cut back to 4-8 for 400NL as the regulars are alot better at exploiting robotic multi-tablers. I also have alot of leaks that will be alot easier to plug by playing less tables. I'm aiming to get over 45k hand this month but dont have a realistic idea what my winrate (lossrate) will be. I'll set a rough conservative target of >=10 buyins and probably $3k in rakeback for this month to be somewhat realistic. I'll post up weekly graphs to show how its going and any big or interesting hands.