October Review

Crushed the $27s on Stars 6-tabling, ran like ass live... which is a given these days, and a sneaky wee profit on Blonde.

A bit of non-poker stuff, I'm officially a level 4 snowboarder after taking all day lessons at Xscape in Glasgow last weekend. I'd never been snowboarding before and it was fantastic fun, massively rewarding after a lot of hard work. Falling is pretty painful, but very much part of the learning! My mate got the worst of it though breaking his wrist and being relegated to the bar near the end of the day... jokes of stopping off at hospital on the way back from Glasgow were infact realised after he got his arm put in plaster in Edinburgh on Sunday night!

High Stakes Poker heats up next week with the minimum buy-in being set at $500,000. Esfandiari, Doyle, Negreanu, Patrik, Farha, Gold and Greenstien all taking part. The first of the big buy-in game will be on pokertube next Tuesday.

Cheers to people leaving comments, it's always nice to get some feedback or encouragement. Also, thanks to Amatay, Plan3tGong, etc for linking me up.


Live
Played a couple more circus freezeouts, that I probably blogged a bit about below. I bust out both of these running into aces after going pretty deep. Continuing to play well, not worried in the slightest that I haven't cashed in about my last 10 live tourneys.

Cash

Only played 500 hands or so this month, didn't even log a session until earlier this week! It was a beast of a session too, one of those ones where you log out an hour later a buy-in up after getting served up lots of delicious situations that you can't help but with good sized pots in. Then on the flip-side I played for a couple of hours last night and got slapped in the face with loads of situations that I couldn't help losing money in. Overall I'm happy with a megre $70ish profit over the 3 hours play at cash this month.

Only 2,000 hands away from the 10k mark now, and with the Stars bonus out of the way I'm clear to get fired back into cash games. I know I've said this for the past couple of months now, but expect lots of hand analysis and PT reviews this month!


SNG/MTT

Great month SNG wise, finishing nearly $725 up at the $27s on Stars. Cleared the $150 bonus too. I swung down over my last 10-12 SNGs so wasn't able to clear the $1k for the month, but that's certainly no problem. Not gonna repost stats/graphs/etc again, as they'll be pretty similar to the ones in the post below, except with a little downswing at the end. :)

Experimented with 6-tabling SNGs which seems to be the right amount for me just now. So I'm moving up from 4-tabling to 6-tabling for all SNG play in future. Buying a lovely new 20" widescreen monitor to hook up to my laptop in the new flat this month, so should be able to play 6 comfortably, 8 at a squeeze. Don't think I've ever want to go past 6 tables anyways.

Did a little bit of staking this month too, losing around $25 from that.


Numbers
+$60 BlondePoker (NL Cash)
+$12 BlondePoker rakeback
+$725 Stars (SNGs + MTTs)
+$150 Stars bonus
-$100 live

So $847 up for the month, which I'm happy with as I've not been able to concentrate on poker as much this month due to work commitments, and flat-hunting.

Bankroll check...
Live: £21 (I run baaaad - will top up to £100 from my Stars balance)
NL Cash: $1080 (11x buyins $100NL buyins)
SNG: $2625 (48 $55SNG buyins)

So my overall poker bankroll is currently $3747. My aim for the end of the year is really to play a lot of $100NL hands and maintain a good BB/100 rate. If I can do this then I start the new year where I want to be, with a $5k+ bankroll playing $200NL. All focus on logging loads of $100NL hands 'til the end of the year! Will be playing the odd SNGs and MTTs when I get bored of cash too.

Books
Bought a copy of Professional NLHE, only flicked through it so far bit it looks great. Overall not too much bookwork went on this month, although I did was quite a lot of CR videos particularly ActionJeff and Jackal69.

Digest
NLP related to poker by Zee Justin ~ This article was linked in the CardRunners low limit strategy guide and is absolutely fantastic. Explores how your subconcious and concious mind are used while playing and learning poker.
Fantastic SNG articles by Curtains ~ These are really top notch and cover things like continuation betting and playing trouble hands like JJ and AK. There are a lot of hands examples and quizzes. Some of the best free SNG articles out there for sure.
An Introduction to Re-Stealing by Jennifear ~ Great article exploring profitable spots to re-steal at in MTTs. Good examples of how different types of hands will match up against loose and tight call ranges.
Perspective by Assassinato ~ I have a huge amount of respect for this guy, he comes across as being incredibly mature for a 19 year old. Another great poker mindset based article.
What you should know before going pro by Ed Miller ~ Been reading a lot of Ed Miller's articles recently, some of them are really original. This is one of the best guidelines out there for players thinking about going pro. He draws upon his experience to discuss almost every aspect you should consider before going pro.

Goals
Last month:
* Hit 10k hands at $100NL
* Write in depth 10k hands leak review with a lot of HHs
* Stars bonus chase

This month:
Not too many big goals, as it's likely to be a busy month, with work being in crunch time and moving flat. I'd do well to...
* Hit 10k hands at $100NL
* Write in depth 10k hands leak review with a lot of HHs

On a heeeeater

I'm just running flaming hot on Stars this month. Only playing the odd bit towards the bonus each night but I'm really just crushing the $27s. Cruuushing them. I definately feel that my game has improved a lot, especially after a bit of study earlier in the month, but I also know that i'm running like a motherfucker at the moment too... Which is nice. 150 more VIP points left before I get at Stars before the $150 bonus, I'm $1,000 up for the month so far.

Here are some sick graphs/stats from Sharkscope...

I've played 52 $27 SNGs this month (that's around 10hours multi-tabling), about 2/3 18-man, 1/3 45-man. So this month on the graph is from game 600 onwards. Basically the massive upswing... wheee!

I'm running at 75% ROI, which is pretty awesome. :) I think 30-35% is sustainable playing 45s, maybe around 30% playing the 18/45 mixes.

This graph also shows that I'm getting close to beating my best ever month of SNGs, which funnily enough was back in October last year too!? Wierd. October FTW.


Also, Rangers run good... managed a great 0-0 draw against Barca tonight putting us in an awesome group position in the Champions League. A 3-0 in the Old firm game at the weekend too. I *heart* October!

Quiet few weeks

Not all that much to report on poker wise over the last week or so... I've barely been playing, mainly due to spending a lot of my time looking for a new flat. Got that sorted out now and I'll be moving down to The Shore at Leith next month (see above). Really looking forward to it.

Anyways, poker wise played no cash so far this month, just not in the mood. Continued with the SNGs while bonus chasing at Stars. Man I'm on such a heater.... Sharkscope shows my ROI for the month as like 100% or something ridiculously unsustainable like that. :D 90% of the way through the bonus, aiming to have that done for the end of the month. If I continue to run good through the rest of the bonus I could have a $1k month despite having hardly played at all... which would be delicious.

Played an OfficePoker tourney last weekend (I think) at Circus. I final tabled, but bubbled shoving KJ shortstacked and running into aces. I just can't win at that fucking casino! It'll come soon enough... :S However I went with a mate, Jason, and he took 2nd place in the first OP tourney he'd played. It was particularly sick when he amassed so many chips that he had a cardroom assistant stacking them for him while he continued to play. WP!

Rest of the month? I have to beast work, and sort out the move, so it's unlikely I'll be playing much. My only real goal for the end of the month now is to complete the bonus at Stars.

Wee SNG Rave

SNGs
Wheeeeeee $360 up tonight. Took down a 45-man, and came 2nd in an 18-man (both $27s). Boom! :) Ran up 350FPPs on Stars so far this month, played around 35 $27 SNGs so far, running real well! Up over $400 for the month so far on Stars, only 400FPPs to go 'til I unlock the $150 bonus too which I'll now easily clear.

Really enjoying SNGs just now, so I'm concentrating on them for a bit. Not played any cash at all yet this month. Been working late most weeknights, and playing footy/squash the rest... more in the mood for a few turbos when I get back rather than grinding. At the weekends I'm usually not in much of a mood for cash, usually end up playing live poker. Nae too bothered about this... I'll just play what I feel like playing.

More CR love
Been watching the Jackal69 (Phil Shaw) SNG videos on CardRunners, they're really fantastic. There's one where he plays the 18 and 45 man SNGs on Stars, which is exactly my game. Really good to get some insight on how to play the bubble compared to a STT or MTT.

Also been watching ActionJeff MTT/SNG vids. He doesn't chat as much during the videos (usually because he's playing another 4 tables on another monitor) but just watching the guys moves is prety phenomenal. Watched videos of him playing the Sunday tourneys a few weeks back and his moves are just awesome.

I had been watching a load of GreenPlastic and Sbrugby videos, but I figure I really need to clear out all of my leaks at the $100NL level. So I'm working through the Low Limit NLHE series by Brystmar. They're aimed at $50NL-$200NL, with a lot of good PT+PAHUD tutorials too. Brystmar does an awesome job with these, he's also got PDF files and articles on CR to accompany the Low Limit NLHE series of videos. They're definately gonna lock up my $100NL game so I can move up to $200NL confidently.

New Blogs
Added a few really sweet new blogs by guys from the low limit NLHE forums on Card Runners, which are really good. I'm really settling in to CR now, not posted much on the forums yet but they seem fantastic. Everyone on the CR forums seems to have a lot more focus/determination to improve their game than elsewhere, which is also evident in the blogs above.

Stars Blogger MTT

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