Baz for the win

Where to?

2009-07-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

So I'm in Edinburgh for the next month, but come mid-August I'll have no long-term place to stay. Really just posting here to put my shit out there and see if anyone is in a similar situation, has something available, has some advice, etc.

I'm looking to set up something cool for Sept/Oct/Nov, would like to share a house/apartment with other poker players. Kind of like the 3 months in Thailand earlier this year, but somewhere else. Preferably not a cold country.

Gonna kind of hunt around for a week or so and if I can't find something that works out will try setting up a house somewhere via 2p2.

My shortlist of good places to live Sept-Nov based on climate/fun are currently...

Seoul (South Korea) ~ APPT in Sept
Metro Manila (Phillipines) ~ APPT in Nov
Melbourne (Australia)
Sao Paulo (Brazil)
Buenos Aires (Argentina)
San Sebastian (Spain)
California or NYC (USA)

Any ideas, toss them over. I'd be happy to stay anywhere with friendly/fun poker ppl.

Cross-posted in 2p2 travel thread.

Ty ♥

Back in Edinburgh

2009-07-13T11:14:00.001-07:00

Managed to get home without a mullet, shellsuit or Russian wife!

Pics from my facebook

Some random Russia related stuff...

Had one ridic night of drinking kicked off with awesome Cuban style Fajitas and pints of Mojito at Club Che, then some wierd ex-pat bar with awesome live music which was full of stunning Russian women... that all turned out to be hookers (we think). A taxi ride from some drunk Russian later ended up having to get out after he almost knocked over some guy on the street. The dude lived, and showed us to an unlimited vodka club (for £6 entry lol) where things got ridic messy and ended up with one of my mates going back to our hostel wasted and pissing off everyone in our dorm... while another mate passed out and had to spend a night in a Russian hospital. Ended up getting in the ambulance there and a couple of us sorted things out and crashed in the hospital til the morning. Waking up sleeping on some consultation table in wet clothes after 4 hours sleep in a 70's Russian hospital ftl.

We missed our sleeper train to Moscow by 1 minute! Actually saw the train pull away from the platform as we sprinted for it. Spent a little too much time drinking at an awesome nuclear bunker themed bar called Lenin. Sweet.

Speaking of Lenin we also visited Lenin's Tomb at the Kremlin and saw his preserved mummified body. Pretty surreal, one of the creepiest things I've seen. There were a ton of super serious Russian guards surrounding the tomb keeping everyone moving past the body silently. One of them tapped my arm and told me to take my hands out my pockets, pretty hardcore.

Russian history is crazy awesome, read the history stuff in the guide books we had but will need to grab some more in depth books to read. The revolutions in the 1900s in particular are really interesting, it's incredible the way it's changed over the last 100 years.

Saw some Da Vinci paintings at The Hermitage which was cool, place was insanely huge... pity we didn't have a lot of time in it after queuing for over 2 and a half hours!

Ate at a Russian sushi place in Moscow on our late night which was fantastic. 2nd best sushi I've ever had (to Vegas).

Oh, and the Moscow Cat Theatre is in motherfucking NY, not Moscow! Guess I'll need to hit up NY pretty soon.

I feel like grinding, but got a ton of stuff to sort out. I'm moving to my aunt's this weekend to house-sit for her for a few weeks, that should be cool. Then after that I've not got flat sorted out in Edinburgh, so hopefully something will come up or might head back to to Asia or to South America or something to live for a while.

Poker related stuff to come soon, I'm sure...

Going to Russia, BRB

2009-07-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

Leaving for an 9-day trip to Russia tomorrow with 3 mates, it's gonna be sick. My Russian tourist visa arrived today, picked up some Rubles... Good to go!

Flying via Amsterdam to St Petersburg and staying for 3 nights. Taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow overnight on my bday, 4 nights in Moscow then headed back to Edinburgh. Hostelling it the whole way at like $15/night hostels which should be interesting!

I don't know a whole lot about Russia so not too sure what to expect, really looking forward to it. Will post some pics when I get back. I've heard St Petersburg is meant to be pretty Euro style and Moscow is meant to be rave central for nightlife... Vodka time!

Looking forward to some time away from the tables, I didn't take many days off last month so good to get a longer break now. GL to everyone playing the main event, particularly those I have pieces of ;)

I almost forgot this

EDIT: Will be updating facebook via twitter during the trip so check either for updates if you wish.

June

2009-06-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-06-25T11:48:00.001-07:00

... 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

2009-06-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-06T22:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

Five-figure week, you're doing it wrong

2009-05-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

Started out this month well, running up around $8k... then in the last week I've swung down around $10-12k. It's been my worst ever week in poker and is proving to be pretty confidence shattering. I played higher stakes than usual this month, the bulk of my hands have been at 2/4 but a fair chunk at 3/6-5/10 with some shots at 10/20 too.

I'm probably employing more aggressive shot-taking and moving up strategies than most professionals, but I'm comfortable with it. The high-stakes games have been really good and I'm +EV enough for it to be worth the variance. However I know right now that I need to drop down to regain confidence.

I feel some stubbornness in myself, that I don't want to grind 1/2 when I've been playing higher (and when I can see that some of the higher games are soft) but I know it's what needs to be done right now. There's no room for stubbornness or ego in poker. I see blog posts every week with people complaining about how they "should be" or "are good enough to be" beating a limit. So many people aren't willing to take full responsibility for their own results. The fact is that noone is as good at poker as they think they are.

On a personal level I'm very disappointed with how my first year as a pro is going. I made a goal to make $150k this year and it's becoming clear that I'm not going to get close to that. I can relate the way I'm feeling just now back to tough times when I was working on my degree or on GTA, having low confidence and not being sure if I'd be able to make it to completion. Getting beat down every time I try to move up is incredibly frustrating. I know that I just need to take things as they come and work hard and I'll get there. Results will come.

I'm off to the pub to watch Man U crush Barca... I'll leave you with some inspirational Michael Jordan.

Edinburgh Biking

2009-05-26T14:48:00.001-07:00

Supersick trailbiking tricks around the streets of Edinburgh by Scottish based Danny Macaskill. This shit rocks.

Payoff Wizard #2

2009-05-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

Here I continue the (worryingly regular) section where I publish some hand that I played like a calling station fucktard. Seems to work well as my punishment for being so motherfucking stupid... yes I'm tilted.

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

CO		($627.05)
BTN		($1236.00)
Hero (SB)		($1176.00)
BB		($1676.65)

Pre-flop: ($9, 4 players) Hero is SB

1 fold, BTN raises to $21, Hero calls $18, 1 fold

Flop: ($48, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $36, Hero calls $36

Turn: ($120, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($120, 2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $96, Hero raises to $295, BTN raises to $740

LOL he made the nuts, I'm never good here, right? But wow what a lovely price I'm getting...

Hero calls $445

Final Pot: $1,600
BTN shows:
Hero shows:

BTN wins $1,598 ( won +$801 )
Hero lost -$797

FML. That's the most fucking retarded call I've made in ages. Not even a monkey clicking buttons bluffs there 30% of the time.

Coming soon - Baz teaches you how the most effective way to set money on fire.

New biggest $$$ pot

2009-05-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

Was down around $5k in the previous 24hours leading up to this hand. If I got sucked out on I think I'd have probably set fire to something :)

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

Stacks:

CO		($936.48)
Hero (BTN)		($1995.00)
SB		($1977.00)
BB		($1974.04)

Pre-flop: ($15, 4 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $40, SB raises to $130, 1 fold, Hero raises to $330, SB raises to $910, Hero goes all-in $1,995, SB goes all-in $1,067

Flop: ($4,312, 2 players)

Turn: ($4,312, 2 players)

River: ($4,312, 2 players)

Final Pot: $4,312
Hero shows:
SB shows:

Hero wins $3,980 ( won +$1,655 )

And here's one from a crazy session last night. Villain was a huge fish playing extremely aggro. The 2 key things to this hand were that I expected his squeeze to be around 30% in this spot, and his potcbet to be 100%. Running maths on that the flop shove works out at around +$200ev.

$3/$6 No Limit Holdem
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($820.00)
UTG+1		($1040.00)
CO		($678.00)
Hero (BTN)		($1200.00)
SB		($718.00)
BB		($1172.00)

Pre-flop: ($9, 6 players) Hero is BTN

UTG raises to $21, 2 folds, Hero calls $21, SB calls $18, BB raises to $105, UTG folds, Hero calls $84, SB folds

Flop: ($252, 2 players)
BB bets $252, Hero goes all-in $1,095, BB calls $815

Turn: ($2,386, 2 players)

River: ($2,386, 2 players)

Final Pot: $2,386
BB shows:
Hero shows:

BB wins $2,384 ( won +$1,212 )
Hero wins $28 ( lost -$1,172 )

Also...

www.playhimoffkeyboardcat.com :)

The Professional

2009-05-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

Knocked up this background in Photoshop to help remind myself that shitty sessions where you run bad aren't worth stressing over. The quote is from Elements of Poker by Tommy Angelo.

Payoff Wizard

2009-05-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

I know I'm beat but I just can't click the fold button...

Stacks:

UTG		($200.80)
UTG+1		($299.40)
Hero (CO)		($400.00)
BTN		($107.35)
SB		($181.20)
BB		($178.75)

Pre-flop: ($3, 6 players) Hero is CO

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $7, Hero calls $7, BTN calls $7, 2 folds

Flop: ($24, 3 players)
UTG+1 bets $17, Hero calls $17, BTN folds

Turn: ($58, 2 players)
UTG+1 bets $48, Hero calls $48

River: ($154, 2 players)
UTG+1 bets $120...

He never has a boat, ever. But he's also never vbetting anything worse than my hand. But he's a LAG so he triple barrel bluffs 4flush paired boards, right?

Hero calls $120

Final Pot: $394
UTG+1 shows:

Sigh...

High-stakes variance, quitting

2009-05-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a bunch of 5/10 recently when the games are good. It's been going well so far and is very +ev however the variance is a lot higher than I'm used to.

Yesterday I played a session in the morning and had to quit after around 45mins down around $2k. I knew I wouldn't be on my game after taking such a quit beasting so went for a run, grabbed a shower and some food and came back refreshed to play another session. There were good 5/10 games running again so I jumped in and instantly lost around another $1.5k in 20 or so mins. I felt pretty tilted so quit out again and took a longer break and came back to play an evening session after dinner. I felt that my mindset just wasn't right, I could feel a little "win it back" mindset, and didn't want to grind the mix of 1/2 and 2/4 that was available.

While I'm pretty happy with my quitting decisions it's pretty frustrating only getting 400 hands played in a working day, when my target is 2,500. Losing $3-4k is usually where I need to stop for a day as I know it'll put me off my game and this is a lot more common when playing 5/10 than 1/2-3/6. Shit, it's only 3-4 buyins.

I don't want to quit playing those games because they're really good, also I expect them to toughen up my skin to be able to take higher amount of variance.

So what I'm going to do is minimise the amount of high variance spots I take. I played these 2 hands yesterday...

Stacks:

Hero (UTG)		($1035.00)
CO		($7241.50) --- He's a nit
BTN		($1800.50)
SB		($335.00)
BB		($817.72)

Pre-flop: ($15, 5 players) Hero is UTG

Hero raises to $35, CO raises to $120, 3 folds, Hero raises to $290, CO raises to $3,850, Hero goes all-in $745

Stacks:

CO		($493.00)
Hero (BTN)		($1264.00)
SB		($598.75)
BB		($3330.00)

Pre-flop: ($15, 4 players) Hero is BTN

1 fold, Hero raises to $30, SB calls $25, BB raises to $120, Hero calls $90, SB calls $90

Flop: ($360, 3 players)
SB goes all-in $478.75, BB folds, Hero calls $478.75

I'm not gonna bust out the math on you but both of those spots are roughly neutral EV. Meaning that at best I'll win or lose $50 in EV in the long run.

Now if my objective from sitting in a high stakes game is to get involved in very profitable situations because there are soft players playing, not to be flip for $2k pots. At 1/2 or 2/4 I wouldn't care, but if a couple of flips push me over the edge for having to quit for the day then they're not really worth losing 3-4 hours work for a small amount of EV.

Gonna cook up some steaks then here's hoping for a monster 4k hand night tonight!

Missing Vegas

2009-05-07T10:22:00.000-07:00

The WSOP starts in a couple of weeks and most of the pro poker playing population is flying out to play in it. I feel a bit gutted to be missing Vegas this year, super tempted just to fly over for a couple of weeks. I know it's not really worth it though money wise, so I've been looking at a bunch of alternatives to getting some summer tourney action...

First up FTOPS is this week, with a few cool events on the cards. Tempted to play a 6m shootout, HA and the $2.5m main event. There are a few live events on the cards too, GUKPT Scotland in Aberdeen in mid-june and the Scottish Poker Championships in Edinburgh at the end of August. Both of those events are kind of fucking dull compared to Vegas though and I know they're probably not worth the variance ride. Aberdeen instead of Vegas? FML. Will likely head down to the local casino and play a few smaller buy-in tourneys instead.

Just feels shit not flying out to Vegas at this time of year. I'm a whiney bastard right now about being in Scotland... back to the grind I guess!

May

2009-05-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

I really want to move forward this month and take my game and results to the next level. So far this year my results haven't been as good as I know I'm capable of so it's hard work time for the next few months.

April
April went well for me... I was away on holiday for half of the month and didn't get any play in, but in the last 2 weeks I got some grind in and had my biggest month yet (although still not breaking five-figures). I'd credit this to really working on game selection and playing a bunch of 5/10 when there have been soft games.

A few poker videos I've watched recently have got me pretty excited about taking my game up a stage, the level of instructional videos out there now is really amazing. Particularly Phil Galfond/PBJaxx/DRGiggy videos on BlueFire are amazing. Allso really liked BalugaWhale's new series on DC, and DearFoxwoodsFiend. Definately check out the recent Eagle314 vids on CR too.

Ranges
All of these videos put a huge amount of emphasis on hand reading and basing decisions on villain ranges something that I don't think I do enough, often due to auto-pilot or playing too many tables. And really something that hardly any players at mid-stakes do enough. I know this is something pretty common that's been said a million times, but it's really clicked with me this month. Watching some of the plays that Durrr and PA are capable of on HighStakesPoker has really made me interested in developing the skills to make such sick plays... and the info is definately out there.

Autopilot - the enemy of creative players
This is soooooo important as it's just not possible to have a high winrate at midstakes without developing reads on players and handreading well. Last month I mostly played 8-tables, often mixing NL and PLO and while I found that I could play that amount pretty well I really didn't have much time to observe reads on players and make notes. I'm gonna limit myself to 6-tables all this month as I think it's the right balance for me. Also, I'm gonna limit my session lengths to 2 hours. I played a couple of 3-4 hour sessions to get hands in last month and really don't feel like my concentration was good enough to be profitable after the 2 hour mark, definately a point where I moved on to auto-pilot.

Day to day variance
I've removed all results and $$$ stats from HM this month and won't be checking my graphs or cashiers. I've also removed all blogs/feeds from my RSS that post short-term results. I'm just sick of people embracing and talking about this stuff like it matters. I feel that it's incredibly important not to take any notice of day to day or even week to week results because they're just so full of variance. All that matters is playing your best game with the best game selection at all times and working hard on improving. It's pretty obvious that spending time looking at results from session to session is pointless, it's time for me to get more discipline and wipe it out completely.

Exercise
This has such a positive effect on not only my poker play, but motivation and confidence that I'll be trying to get as much in as possible. I'd like to run a half-marathon by the end of the year so I'm going to start training for that. I'll be aiming to exercise every day that I'm also playing poker... preferably before my sessions. Will be mixing it up with some squash/bball/footy to keep things fun, and staying away from the gym as much as possible as it crushes my soul.

New students
I'm looking to take on a few new 6max or FR NLH students this month. $50nl/$100nl students would be ideal but I'd be happy to consider anyone at lower stakes or that's struggling to move up to $200nl. Check out my coaching page for more info.

When to quit a session #2

2009-04-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

...losing a 2000bb pot at PLO.

Villain is like 90/85 and a complete monkey, lol plo. Backraise 5-bet ftw.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4166476

Cliffnotes: People suck at PLO and win.

When to quit a session

2009-04-21T18:54:00.001-07:00

Brag: I made $3 today
Beat: http://weaktight.com/1019709
Variance...
:)

Back in Edinburgh

2009-04-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

Arrived back in Edinburgh a few days ago. Where's the sun gone?

I was super unhappy for the first couple of days after getting back... really missed the hot weather, hot girls and awesome food of Asia. Really felt like flying back out to somewhere hot and new, but I've got a bunch of things to be around for over the next few months. I've settled back a bit more now, the weather has got better (14deg ;/) and most of all it's been cool to catch up with my friends/family.

Don't really have much motivation to blog about the rest of the trip... but I'll do some flickr photo albums over the next week or so. Here's the last batch of my pics... Hong Kong & Macau. Hong Kong was one of the most awesome places I've ever been, I think it's probably at the top of the places I'd like to live for a while. Such an awesome place, really vibrant with tonnes of stuff going on, AMAZING food, really nice gorgeous girls and some pretty cool clubs/nightlife.

Poker went badly during the trip. I felt like I played well for the most part but ran really badly, but who knows. I had a $5k day early on, followed by a bunch of breakeven then a brutal 25 buy-in downswing which really made me re-evaluate my play. I moved down to $200nl and crushed for 20k hands, then started playing $100plo which I've been really enjoying.

I've logged about 8k hands since getting back across $1/2-5/10nl and $.5/1-1/2plo. Aiming to get 25k hands in by the end of the month. In the future I'm planning on playing a lot of $1/2nl and $1/2plo as my main games and upping the amount of tables I play to 8-10. The truth is that I've never really had any variance at $1/2, it's been steady 3ptbb over 100k hands and games are really good. So I'll prob play something like 75% $1/2 and 25% $2/4+ over the next couple of months and see how that works out. The MSNL nl games have definately got a LOT tougher over the last 4-5 months.

As far as travelling goes I was kind of hoping to hit up the US and Vegas this summer, but I'm gonna put that on hold because it conflicts with a few important dates in the UK. I like being in Edinburgh around the summer anyways, especially around festival time and I really need to get my grind on so it makes sense to settle here til around September. I'll probably travel around for longer this winter, likely 6 months or so. Brazil, Argentina, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Manilla, Korea, Japan all intrest me at the moment, but I'll see what develops. I'd really like to do a Euro road trip in the summer too... hopefully can get out of the UK a bit at least.

I liked the living away and travelling a lot more than I thought I would. Seeing new places every day and living somewhere where the people and culture are very different is really intresting. I feel like I've came back a much more developed person than I would if I'd stayed in the UK for those 3 months. It's just cool going a ton of places, seeing a ton of things and meeting a ton of people, good times.

To wrap u the Asia stuff... here's pic from each of the places I visited over the last few months. Sweet times.

Drinking, Patong, Thailand
Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Rooftop of our house, Kata, Thailand

The lost art of seal-riding, Singapore

Kicking it on the beach from The Beach, Phi Phi, Thailand

Guarding the Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand

Kung Fu Skillz, Hong Kong, China