Plans

Well, in case you didn’t read the comments from the previous post, I’ve got a bet going with Verneer for $25 that says I can’t stay away from the poker tables until next Wednesday at 8pm. So far I’m hanging in there but not getting to play is tough 🙂

Given that my month is probably done poker-wise, I thought I’d do the usual bit of reflection a few days early. Overall, kind of a crappy month, at least in the sense that I didn’t accomplish many of the goals I had set out for myself at the end of last month. I’m having a good time and all, but the laziness is pretty frustrating. Bleh, I guess that’s part of getting used to not having any sort of schedule to keep you organized during the day.

At any rate, on to October! One of the things I really regret about this month was how undisciplined I was when taking shots at higher limits. I took a few random shots at 5/10 when realistically I’m way way under-rolled, and I think I played pretty poorly at 3/6 for the most part. For whatever reason, I just don’t seem to be quite ready for 3/6, even if only psychologically. So… the plan in October is to rebuild a bit and gear up for some more disciplined shots down the road. That means I want to do some serious grinding at 2/3 on Bodog and 2/4 on FTP, partially just to see how much I can make but mostly so I can get some nice rolls going on both sites. I think with a little bit of hard work I can be a regular in the 5/10 games within the next 2-3 months, but I’d like to wait until I have at least 30 BI before I take any more shots.

Given that I don’t really seem to have the grinder’s temperment, I really need to keep working on injecting some healthy structure into my day. Like, it’s 4:30AM right now and I’m still awake, typing a boring blog post. Gotta work on that. Basically I’m shooting for a more Patrik Antonius-like approach to poker. I need to be getting lots of exercise, read a lot, and play with discipline. I just know from experience that when I have zero structure I get really lazy and have trouble getting stuff done.

Also, I’m gonna try to find some opportunities to play more live poker in the future. There’s an off chance I might be able to get invited to some really fantastic games in Boston, we’ll see.

Finally, I’ve got this, um, friend who’s made it his life’s mission to play on Betfair from within the US. I’ll keep you guys posted on his progress.

No poker for a week

I’m playing the tiltiest poker of my life right now and I need to stop before I burn any more money. It’s been a rough week but hopefully I can come back strong next month.

Random thoughts

So… I haven’t been playing very well lately, and my results have been ugly.

Not the end of the world, but it’s definitely frustrating. Long-term success in poker is mostly a matter of managing your own psychology, and I’m just annoyed that I still let myself go on the same exact type of tilt-induced downswings every so often. The pattern is probably really common (crush for a while, get complacent, have a losing day, come back the next day expecting everything to be easy again and instead tilt like crazy), but still.

Heh, I guess the next part of the pattern is the annoyingly introspective blog post 🙂

So yeah, instead of the usual touchy-feely stuff I’m just gonna take a break for a couple days and try to get my head back in the right place. I’m thinking lots of exercise and reading should do the trick.

So fucking angry

Dropped another $1.4k today, mostly on Bodog playing 2/3. I am running like absolute shit and I’m going nuts. I can’t handle playing against complete fucking morons and losing every hand. It’s just fucking infuriating and I need to take a break. But I basically want to cry right now – I was up $13k on the month a few days ago, now I’m up like $8.5k. I want to break my computer.

Bleh

Today was pretty bad. I dropped $1.6k playing a mix of 2/3 on Bodog up to 5/10 on FTP. It wasn’t a fun session and I played horribly.

The really dispiriting thing though is that my shots at 3/6 just aren’t going well. It seems like I lose a few buyins every time I play there, regardless of whether it’s on FTP or Bodog. Pretty depressing. I know I can do really well at 2/3 and 2/4, so it sucks that I seem to have hit a wall. I feel like I have an edge at 3/6, but for some reason I keep playing really badly there.

Maybe it’s just variance but meh.

Also check out the graph for this month, the past couple days have fucking sucked. Pissed and going to bed.

Crazy session

So… today was pretty sick.

I started off the day (literally, since I woke up at 4:30) with a two hour lesson with luck. We played about half 2/4 and half 3/6 on FTP, and it was a shit show. I ran like complete ass and it was annoying.

Suited connectors can suck my balls.

Seriously, suck my balls.

Bleh.

The rest of the $1.8k I dropped during our lesson was pretty standard, just lots of cbets getting snapped off, getting 3bet like crazy, etc. It was pretty lame.

After the lesson I took a little break and then decided to play on Bodog for a bit. It didn’t start off very well.

This guy… well he can suck my balls. He was the biggest luckbox ever. Our entire table was on psycho tilt after a while, entirely because of him.

Same guy, I was pretty tilted at this point. I guess it’s a fold after he raises the turn? I don’t know, Bodog people can do pretty ridiculous stuff.

At this point I was down about $2.5k I think and pretty irritated. And then this happened.  Lol I was kind of pissed.

Thankfully I started to run a little better and crushed for the next 700 hands or so.

I would have had to kill myself if one of them had aces… but it’s Bodog so I just don’t think you can fold here. I honestly wasn’t too surprised to see them show up with such random hands.

Revenge is mine! Lol this felt so good. Also I think this is the first time I’ve ever run AA into KK this deep – usually I wind up on the receiving end.

I suck out with a big draw. Pretty standard I guess. I wasn’t really sure what to do when he check/raised the flop though… since it means my equity is probably not very good. Would it be better to just call his tiny raise? Fold equity or pot odds… I’m not really sure.

I cooler the shit out of someone. Nice to run good I guess.

Another cooler. We talked in the chat for a bit and he apparently had a set. I couldn’t really decide on how big of a raise to put in on the river. I feel like I could have gotten some more value.

Whew, long post, but that’s about it. I just started running really hot. At any rate it feels pretty awesome to be back in the green 🙂

Back in action

Played about 800 hands today at 2/4 and 3/6 on FTP. I picked up two buyins at 2/4 but for some reason I always run like ass at 3/6 so I only finished up $160 or so. Some of the bigger hands…

3/6 is rigged wtf

Balls. In hindsight I don’t know why I took such a weird line. Betting the river seems totally retarded.

I suck out… in my defense this guy had 3bet me about five times in the last two orbits. Apparently he was just running hot. I may also have been getting a little fed up with my tables – in general I was getting played back at a freaking ton today. Anyways about the hand, I’m not sure I can play it any differently once I decide to 4bet preflop.

Stupid people are awesome! I would have started crying if he had 99/AA though. But this guy was unbelievably horrible so I wasn’t too concerned.

That’s about it. Oh yeah and if I can figure out how to get it shipped to me before 2008 I think I’m gonna get one of these as my first big poker purchase. I sat in one the other day and it was amazing. I could (would?) play a sick number of hands sitting in a chair like that.

Update: just finished playing a quick 500 hand session at 5/10. I found a couple tables that looked really soft so I figured I might as well take a shot. It was a pretty slow session tbh but I managed to pick up a buyin and a half. I’m now up about $1700 on the day in 1300 hands, so not bad 🙂

But crap it’s 6AM. Wtf is going on with my schedule these days.

Note to self: don’t eat so many prunes

I finished off a tub of prunes late last night and am currently enduring some intestinal distress.

Lol anyways, taking some time off has been nice. I’ll probably start playing again tomorrow.

Taking some time off

I’ve been in a really shitty mood the past few days, so I think I need to take a break and focus on non-poker things for a bit. Back in three or four days I’m guessing.

Yuck

Just finished a horrible session playing 2/3 and 3/6 on Bodog. I thought I was playing pretty well at first but then I totally lost focus and, well, ended up with a horrible session. Pretty bummed at the moment… admittedly I didn’t run all that well, but that’s not an excuse to play sloppy and pay people off.

I’m definitely not playing my A game these days, probably because I haven’t needed to given how well I’ve been running. I mean, my month is still going great, but I just don’t think the quality (and obviously not the quantity) is really there at the moment.

Bleh, hopefully I’ll figure my way out of this slump soon.