June

June is my new biggest month ever, finishing up over $35,000.

It's without doubt my biggest poker accomplishment and typifies the type of month I've always aimed to achieve as a pro. After how May went it feels great to be back on track with the $150k goal for this year. Shows how important it is to keep working hard and moving forward as things can turn around pretty fast.

I started out June grinding $200nl to get confidence back, within a few days I moved back up to midstakes and continued crushing. Picked up a lot of confidence and decided to play some 5/10 and then some higher games. From there just went on a tear and ran really well the whole month. Really happy with my game selection, shot-taking and play overall... although there's still a lot of work to be done.

I'm gonna take note of some of the most important things I think I learned this month, I reckon it'll be useful to read back over in the future and might be useful to some of you guys too...

Mental Awareness, Confidence & Goals
Being able to gauge how confident/happy/risk adverse I am at a given time has been important for selecting my goals for that individual session. If I'm low on confidence then I like grinding lower to regain confidence and book a win. If I'm high on confidence then I'll take on higher games.

I understand that for some people making a goal of playing X amount of hands in a month at a particular stake is useful to give them structure and help with volume, but I feel that it restricts your ability to adapt based on you current state. For me, keeping daily/weekly/monthly goals flexible is a much better way of achieving my long term goal of making as much money possible.

Changing and updating my goals throughout the month based on how I'm feeling and how things are going has really helped me keep as motivated as possible. There are a ton of scenarios which make this obvious to me. Here's an example: You told yourself you'd play 40k hands this month, but there's now only a week left and you're only 20k hands in. If you keep the 40k goal then you'll likely subconciously have the attitude that you won't make the goal anyway and slack off telling yourself that you'll play more and do it next month. I think it's better to reset your goal... look at your schedule for upcoming week and create a realistic hands target to keep your motivation (and volume) as high as possible.

Another slightly different example... You set yourself the goal of playing 2,000 hands today but 500 hands into the session you're down 6 buy-ins and on raging monkey-tilt. Is it still realistic to get those 2k hands in? And is it best for your long-term? Unlikely... so change your current goal to returning yourself to a confident/positive state of mind as quickly as possible. Don't beat yourself up about losing money and not getting your hands in, look at the big picture. If you get back into the right state of mind quick enough you might even still get another 1k hands in for the night.

Back to confidence a little... I've also found that my confidence level at the poker table can be improved by improving my overall confidence at that given time. Working out, going for a run or playing sports are all great for this... physical activity increases confidence and positivity a ton for sure. I've also found that eating well has helped a lot, eating big meals before sessions is a big leak too.

Wow, I'm turning into Raptor a bit :S

Tilt and Quitting
Keeping mentally aware while playing has really helped me to make fantastic quits all month and play my A game as much as possible. I can't remember any time in the whole month where I played tilted, even if there were good games. I can remember getting tilted... but I realised right away and made a solid quit, same with when I get tired. I really can't stress enough how much mental awareness has upped my game over the last month. I seriously think it's had a HUGE affect on my winrate, thankyou Tommy Angelo.

Working Environment
Another thing I think helped this month was having a good working environment to play in. Got a desk setup in my room, 2nd monitor and it's been nice and calm/quiet here with de-tilting furry cats to pet. Much different to Thailand where I didn't have a good calm workplace and found it difficult to concentrate. Been thinking about heading on to the APPT trail in a couple of months - not to play the tourneys but to grind high-stakes live cash and hang out - but I'm beginning to think that having a more stable workplace might be a lot more profitable. Hopefully I can find a compromise as I really want to travel.

July
Headed on holiday with a few mates at the start of the month, then moving when I get back... so might not be a whole lot of volume. I'll be continuing to branch out to both FR and HU NLHE. A few reasons for this... better game selection, benefitting my overall game and keeping things interesting for me. I'm really enjoying learning HU at the moment, the DogIsHeadsUP series on DC is without doubt some of the best poker instruction I've ever watched. Dude is mindblowing.

I understand it's important not to get ahead of myself... not to expect too much of future months and to keep working hard. I feel confident that I can stay on the top of my game so long as I stay mentally aware. I'll make sure to keep my head up if next month doesn't go as well.

Some hands from yesterday

TY to everyone for the congratulations on my last post... can hardly believe how this month is going, very happy! I feel like I should give you guys some content after just blatantly posting a brag graph lol. Here are some of my fav high-stakes hands from yesterday, in the order they went down. Hand #5 is my biggest ever pot at cash game pokers.

Totally addicted to The Yeah Yeah Yeahs 1st album at the moment... if you've played a bunch of Rock Band you should recognise this!


All at $10/20, converted at weaktight.com.

Hand #1
Learning HU at the moment, as you can see I'm pretty excited about having a gutter. I think a double barrell here is good. I know villain will call 3bets with broadways, suited connectors, pocket pairs, etc and he's gonna peel the flop a lot.

Stacks:

BTN		($2109.25)
Hero (BB)		($2144.75)

Pre-flop: ($30, 2 players) Hero is BB

BTN raises to $60, Hero raises to $200, BTN calls $140

Flop: ($400, 2 players)
Hero bets $245, BTN calls $245

Turn: ($890, 2 players)
Hero bets $650, BTN folds

Final Pot: $1,540
Hero wins $1,539.25 ( won +$444.25 )


Hand #2
Villain is the mark at the table, he 3 and 4bets very loosely and calls too much, hand plays out pretty standard.

Stacks:

Hero (CO)		($3021.00)
BTN		($4198.00)
SB		($2660.00)
BB		($3379.00)

Pre-flop: ($30, 4 players) Hero is CO

Hero raises to $60, 2 folds, BB raises to $190, Hero raises to $580, BB calls $390

Flop: ($1,170, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $700, BB calls $700

Turn: ($2,570, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero goes all-in $1,741, BB folds

Final Pot: $4,311
Hero wins $4,309 ( won +$1,288 )


Hand #3
Villain is a very very good HS reg. I'd been 4betting him light a couple of times and got to showdown on a $600nl table we're also playing on. He quit both tables after this hand :)

Stacks:

Hero (CO)		($4077.00)
BTN		($3694.00)
SB		($2673.00)
BB		($2796.00)

Pre-flop: ($30, 4 players) Hero is CO

Hero raises to $60, 1 fold, SB raises to $230, 1 fold, Hero raises to $620, SB goes all-in $2,673, Hero calls $2,053

Flop: ($5,596, 2 players)

Turn: ($5,596, 2 players)

River: ($5,596, 2 players)

Final Pot: $5,596
SB shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $5,364 ( won +$2,691 )


Hand #4
Pretty standard cooler, at least I gave the money to the fishay and not some reg. After this hand I dropped all my tables and chilled out for 10mins before deciding that I was cool to sit back in.

Stacks:

BTN		($2623.00)
Hero (SB)		($6548.00)
BB		($4061.00)

Pre-flop: ($30, 3 players) Hero is SB

BTN raises to $70, Hero raises to $255, BB folds, BTN raises to $785, Hero raises to $6,530, BTN goes all-in $1,838

Flop: ($9,173, 2 players)

Turn: ($9,173, 2 players)

River: ($9,173, 2 players)

Final Pot: $9,173
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

BTN wins $5,264 ( won +$2,641 )


Hand #5
My biggest ever pot at cash game poker. CO/BTN are both strong LAG regs. SB is the mark at the table, VERY loose and aggro.

Stacks:

CO		($4706.00)
BTN		($3931.00)
SB		($6283.00)
Hero (BB)		($4481.00)

Pre-flop: ($30, 4 players) Hero is BB

CO raises to $60, BTN calls $60, SB raises to $260, Hero raises to $680, CO folds, BTN folds, SB calls $420

Yea, $760 would have been better.

Flop: ($1,480, 2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1,000, SB goes all-in $5,603, Hero goes all-in $2,801

Villain is really loose/spewy postflop so I've go no option but to cbet and go with it on that flop. Felt sick when he shoved but clicked call before I could talk myself out of it. The money goes in and he has JJ.

Turn: ($10,884, 2 players)

At this point I had actually stood up and walked away as I couldn't watch lol.

River: ($10,884, 2 players)

Final Pot: $10,884
SB shows:
Hero shows:

Hero wins $9,080 ( won +$4,599 )


Hand #6
Final hand that took me up to the $10k is vs one of my favourite DeucesCracked instructors. He's very aggressive and very good at hand reading. He's 3betting a ton 4-handed, although way too much OOP imo. This shows why position owns deepstacked! Pretty sure there's no reciprocal value as he'd have played it the same way vs me.

Stacks:

CO		($2192.00)
Hero (BTN)		($9098.00)
SB		($3643.12)
BB		($4792.88)

Pre-flop: ($30, 4 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $60, 1 fold, BB raises to $200, Hero calls $140

Flop: ($410, 2 players)
BB bets $255, Hero calls $255

Turn: ($920, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $655, BB folds

Final Pot: $1,575
Hero wins $1,573 ( won +$463 )


Started using Twitter to rail the WSOP action, it's pretty cool. I'm Bazclef, feel free to add to I can follow your updates too.

The gods descended from the clouds and proclaimed...

... Bazclef, you will run like the flaming demon-jesus for ALL OF JUNE!

[x] First five figure day!
[x] I got up 3 hours ago and am now drinking beers. Winface.
[x] Games are still good but whatever, I'm booking the win!
[x] Am probably now doomswitched.

I'll post some hands and actual content later, one of the hands was almost a five figure pot ($9.1k I think)... for now, celebrationtown!

Multi-tabling & some $25/50

This is a response to some questions Malfaire asked in the comments of the last post. My reply got a bit long and I figure it might be useful to other people so I'll post it up here. Plus I wanted an excuse to post that wicked Outkast song ;)

"when can / should we start 8+ tabling?"
I'd say never. I was 8-10 tabling over the last couple of days for bonus/rb type reasons, but I came to the conclusion that it really wasn't worth it. When I play more than 6 tables my play is weaker and I get tired quicker.

I don't feel like playing 8+ tables is playing poker, it's just clicking buttons. I like to be able to spend time looking at shown down hands, making detailed notes on players, picking up pots where villain ranges are weak, having time for decisions and keeping track of ranges and lines. I struggle to do that most of the time while playing a ton of tables. It's a lot better playing 4-6 and having time to actually player poker rather than play tagfish poker.

Also, I'd probably agree with anything BalugaWhale says ever... and if I don't I'm likely wrong :)

"How did you get up through the ranks table # wise? And would you do it differently now that you've done it?"

I mixed it up between 4 and 8 tables at times. Over the last 6 months I've been sticking to 4-6 tables max and it's definately optimal for me. My goal has always been to be a solid msnl reg. Now that I've done it (probably) I'd say that I should have played less tables, preferably 4 but never more than 6. I'd also have game selected more and taken more shots.

If my goal was to make money than I might have been more inclined to get good at 10-12 tabling and beast $100nl and $200nl. But doing that is just playing ABC, feeding on the weak players and shuffling money around with the regs. Yea that makes monies... but it's dull, you're not learning how to beat good players, and you're going to have a tough time moving up to the levels where you make the real money. I'd say my game really took off when I stopped concentrating on taking money from fish and started concentrating on taking money from every single player at the table. I enjoy playing that way a ton more, owning people is fun.


I played some $25/50 for the first time tonight, it was a 4-handed game with a strong reg, a standard reg and a big fishay. I bought in for $2,500 but topped up to $5k after a couple of orbits when I realised that the table was set to be crushed. Never quite got a five-figure pot which would have been cool, the game was playing pretty loose/passive with a lot of small/medium pots... and to be honest I didn't want to get $5k of my money in without a strong hand. I ran well and finished up around $3k which made up for a bunch of money I lost at other limits tonight.

Here's a hand I'm not sure about... it's against a very good msnl/hsnl reg.

$25/$50 No Limit Holdem
4 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

CO		($4428.50)
BTN		($4621.00)
Hero (SB)		($2800.00)
BB		($4054.00)

Pre-flop: ($75, 4 players) Hero is SB

1 fold, BTN raises to $150, Hero calls $125, 1 fold

Obviously he's opening the BTN really wide, especially because BB and I are playing relatively nitty and there's not much 3betting going on. Villain tends to call 3bets a lot in position and my objective of being at the table isn't to create big pots OOP against players that are better than me, so I figure I just flat and keep the pot small.


Flop: ($350, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

I figure he'd fire the flop with most of his air, definately all flush draws, obviously Qs and strong Ks. I figure his range is mostly pocket pairs and stuff like weak draws with showdown value like AJ/AT.

Turn: ($350, 2 players)
Hero bets $285, BTN calls $285

I can rep a ton of stuff, a Q, strong K and the flush. I know he never has a Q or the flush. Also the A and T are likely outs for me. So I bet.

River: ($920, 2 players)
Hero bets $700, BTN calls $700

Question is really whether I should bet the river or not. After he calls turn I figure his range to be pocket pairs with a spade, gutters/etc with a spade and weak kings. Meh looking back over it I think I played the hand fine, my line merges sick good with strong hands too.

Final Pot: $2,320
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

BTN wins $2,318 ( won +$1,183 )
Hero lost -$1,135

C-game

Tonight I played very C-gamey. In Angelo's second video he talks a lot about 'lopping off the C-game'. The idea is to define the recent poor play as your 'last worst session' and never hit that low spike again. So your next incident of poor play at least isn't as bad as the last worst session. That way you gradually have less and less C-game, like this...

It's important to become aware of what caused your poor play so that you can notice the pattern next time and prevent it.

This morning there were some good games but it turned out to be one of those sessions where I won next to nothing at showdown (running bad). I felt like I played ok but was definately a little tired and made a few notable mistakes, not firing 2nd barrells when I should have (but only costing me ~$300). Anyways, I dropped $2k in the 45min session. Pretty frustrating as I made $2k yesterday so I felt like I'd undone yesterdays 2.5k hand grind with one shitty morning session.

The mistake I made was to then try to grind the money back. I decided to 8-table $1/2 to knock out a lot of hands, but I spotted a bunch of soft $2/4 4-handed games and 5/10 10/20 games too. I can beat $1/2 well on auto-pilot but that's not the case with higher games. So despite putting in almost 4k hands today I'd have been better off putting in either 3k 6-tabling, or just sticking to $1/2 tables.

So the things I want to avoid doing in future are:

• No 8+ tabling with 3-4 handed games and high-stakes games. 8 tabling $1/2 6m is ok, 6 tables max if I'm playing higher stakes.
  
• No $2/4+ when tired. Auto-piloting $1/2 is fine, but as soon as I go higher on auto-pilot I'm probably only break-even anyway.
  

At the moment I'm not really looking to cure how the tilt that caused the c-game to occur, instead I'm looking to damage control it when it does occur. I reckon that's a good place to start. So one of my new goals for the month is to make sure I don't slip into either of the bullet points above and also to try to keep as aware as possible of my tiredness and tiltedness while playing.

Here's to playing as best as I possibly can in every session for the rest of the month.


Cool track by The Whitest Boy Alive...

Awareness

I feel like Tommy A's new video series is have a huge effect on my overall awareness. Just by being aware of what state of mind I'm in and what I'm thinking makes me much more aware of the way I play and think about poker.

Results and Emotion
I used to want to acheive some zen-like stage where I don't feel results. Where I could finish a session $5k up or down and be indifferent and not let it alter my emotion. I've come to realise that sometimes I do want to celebrate results and sometimes there's no getting away from being down about a bad run. The ideal might be to become emotionless with regards to poker and results, but that's no fun and not for me. Poker is gambling and it's fun, winning and losing large amounts of money is one of the things that I love about it, it's a rush.

However I do think it is important to keep your emotions under control. This means not being egotistical, not being cocky about wins and remaining positive and realistic throughout bad stretches. It's also important to understand when you're running well, and when you're running bad and not let results mislead you.

To look at results or not?
This month rather than hiding all of my results in HM (like last month) I've allowed myself to check results outside of sessions. After trying out both ways I've came to a few conclusions... I really like looking at my results and I probably spend a little too much time doing so. Not viewing results focusses me more on decisions, when all to look at in HM is hands I spend more time on strategy. Seeing my results motivates me, last month I was really struggling towards the end of the month as I felt kind of disassociated from the $$$ aspect of poker (until I lost a fuck-ton of it). So no conclusion really, both options have pros and cons and I'll probably mix them up when I feel fit.

Goals, Targets and Money
At the start of each month I create goals or targets for the month, an important thing to do and very motivating throughout the month. I know that I shouldn't make a $$$ goal for the month as variance can play a major factor often throwing results off through no fault of my play. However, if I lose $3k in a month I'm still going to be unhappy, if I win $11k in a month I'm going to be very happy. I don't seem to have control over the way I feel in that sense, my mind kind of overrides non-results orientedness at a certain level.

I still do set $$$ targets in the back of my mind and my recent upswing has made me realise that. I've always wanted to get to the stage where I'm having regular $10k+ months and now I'm past $10k for the month I feel myself slowing down. Just because I try not to set monthly $$$ targets doesn't mean I don't, whether I like it or not there's still a certain amount of results orientation in my mind and I think it's important to be aware of it.

Yesterday I played a session where I felt like I was kind of floating through it, trying to concentrate but kind of on auto-pilot... I made a couple of light call-downs and quit, pissed off at myself. My head just didn't feel in it. It bothered me for a while and I re-read some sections of EOP and Poker Mindset without really finding any answers. Then I became aware... I'm already up over $10k this month and my results orientated mind has decided that it's met its goal already. Results are still ruling part of my mind and affecting my play at this present time.

I can't let this happen, not just because I need some $20k months to balance out the breakeven months, but also because I'd like to make a lot more and it's important that I keep pushing harder and harder. I can't just slow down when I make a certain amount of money that my mind deems that it's comfortable with. For now I'm just going to set a new target to make $20k this month and work towards that. Right or wrong, money is my motivation and setting a higher $$$ goal motivates me... and I need motivation for the rest of the month.

Five-figure week, you're doing it RIGHT!

I know I'm not meant to embrace relatively short-term results... but what the fuck ever, my first ever $10k week... SHIP IT! Still got Sunday to play too.

Now for some celebratory Jordan dunks...

$5k flipz

New biggest pot again... running like god this week.

$5/$10 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

Hero (UTG)		($2437.50)
UTG+1		($3320.25)
CO		($782.00)
BTN		($1133.75)
SB		($2333.75)
BB		($2000.00)

Pre-flop: ($15, 6 players) Hero is UTG

Hero raises to $35, UTG+1 calls $35, 4 folds

Flop: ($85, 2 players)
Hero bets $60, UTG+1 raises to $150, Hero raises to $390, UTG+1 raises to $1,255, Hero goes all-in $2,402.50, UTG+1 calls $1,147.50

Turn: ($5,280, 2 players)

River: ($5,280, 2 players)

Final Pot: $5,280
Hero shows:
UTG+1 shows:

Hero wins $4,886.50


I'm not really that happy with the hand, flipping for $5k kind of sucks... and I am flipping vs his whole range factoring in fold equity too. Thing is flatting the flop just seems completely gay. But I think I probably have to give that when I 3b I'm basically flipping.

I stack this all day at 1/2 and 2/4, but at 5/10 I want to be avoiding this type of variance. Posted on Leggo to get some feedback. Anyways... SHIP!

Daddy's back, bitches!

After depressing end to May I decided to take the rest of the month off and relax (drink) in the beautiful sunshine around Scotland. Beergardens and beaches ftw!

Back nice and fresh to the tables this month. First stop for a poker player on a downswing... regain confidence. There's nothing better than moving down to burn/rape/pillage the regs the level below.

Confidence achieved in the first 2 days :)

This is what graphs should look like... $1/hand all at 1/2 with sexy postive redline. Ship the cheddar.

E3 #1 - Xbox Project Natal