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.