December Mini Goals - Round Up!

It's that time of the month folks, and no I'm not in a bad mood! For those of you who haven't yet read my December goals post you'll be able to find it here! This months goals post was a mini edition because I was a little busy for the first week or so, but nevertheless, they gave me something to work towards. So without further ado, here's how I got on!

1. 2.5k Profit

Well I slightly missed with this one. A few things got in the way, like Christmas and falling ill for the last week of the month as well, but I still managed to put up slightly under $2k profit for the month, however it's still the 31st so you never know, there could be one last 2013 bink to be had! I felt like I wasn't playing too well in certain places but thankfully after reviewing the offending hands, I know exactly what the faults were and so hopefully I've learnt my lessons and will put it right.

2. Ship either the $5r PLO8 or the $3r PLO

Success! This past Sunday I chopped the $5r for a touch under $700. Actually on the same day I had a deep run in the $3r as well but came agonizingly close to the final table after my Aces couldn't hold in a pretty big pot to finish in 9th spot. I actually had the chip in in the PLO with 2 tables left but took the bum end of a few set ups to lose a chunk of chips. I ran pretty well in a couple of key spots in the PLO8 but otherwise I really felt in the zone and thought I made some great reads and plays. These two tournaments really are the softest on my evening schedule and every time I load up either, I feel like I'm going to win it. I feel very comfortable in the chip accumulation stages regardless of whether I'm picking up hands or not so believe I'm putting myself in some great spots to take them down should I run well. I also had 2 other final table finishes in the $5r this month so overall my ROI in these tournaments have been incredible this month, let's hope it continues.

3. Satellite into a Weekend Major

Another success! Also this past Sunday, yes I had a very good day, I managed to satellite into the Sunday Million from the regular $11 turbo Mega Satellite that Stars run just prior to the start. I've started to play a few more satellites this month and I'm really learning some interesting strategies, especially in the turbos. Normally in the turbo games, I try to take all the +cEV spots I can take while only making ICM considerations at the final table or just before. In these, I'm having to completely rethink my process and continually adjust based on whether I think I'll make it in or not. Regularly the average stack when the bubble bursts is close to 2BBs or lower, so survival becomes everything. If you believe you have enough blinds and antes to make it in based on a quick prediction then you literally should be playing 0 hands. It may sound pretty obvious but this lesson cost me a few dollars to learn. I didn't manage to cash the Sunday Million this time unfortunately, I ran QQ into AA BB vs BTN, but hopefully I'll be able to satellite into some more events next year and make a go of it then. In fact TCOOP is just around the corner.

So overall, 2 out of 3 goals isn't bad and I didn't actually miss the first one by much so I'm actually very happy with how the month went. Every day I play I can feel my game improving and having these goals to work towards actively encourages me to work that much harder. January's goals will be written up shortly but, more importantly, my 2014 set of goals has been finalized and I hope to be uploading them very soon. I've been pretty ambitious with what I've set for the forthcoming year but I suppose that's the whole point! I hope December went equally well for everybody else and I hope to see many of you at the tables in January!

Almost the end of the month!

Hey everybody, I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and are looking forward to a Happy New Year.

First of all, apologies for not posting for a little while. Unfortunately, I've been pretty ill for the past 10 days or so. I actually passed out at work last weekend and spent most of the day in A&E and no one's entirely sure why. In the meanwhile I've been on a few meds that are supposed to prevent me passing out again but actually just make me really tired so I've spent a lot of the past week in bed, excluding Christmas of course where I was more hyper than a 1 month old puppy.

But I'm feeling a little better now and looking forward to writing a few posts in the next couple of days. As the title suggests, the month, and year, are coming to an end so that means you should expect a round up of how my December goals are coming along. Spoiler alert, they're going well. I'll also write a summary of how I think my years gone and how I did with some of my personal goals, which although I didn't write down, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to achieve. Finally, of course, I'll be writing a long detailed set of goals for 2014, both in terms of poker and personally.

So that's a brief little update of what's going on and what to expect. I have an absolute ton of little bits and bobs I need to do now that I'm back in London so I'm hoping to get them all out of the way today, leaving me a good amount of time to write all these posts that I've promised and also to get a little grind time in. Hope everyone has a great time on New Years Eve, but remember, games will be sooooooft on the 1st! Speak to you all soon!

The Volume Question

It's an age old paradox among the grinders, "What is the right amount of volume?". Every player out there who's ever taken poker seriously or even considered playing the game for a living has at one point believed that the best way to increase the amount of money their making is to play more poker. After all, surely if a player is beating the games they're playing, then playing more should directly lead to more profits. But we all know that's not the case.

I've always spent a lot of time thinking about how much I should really be playing poker. It's not always been purely from the stand point of trying to increase my winnings, I've also considered about how I should play less to accommodate a more balanced life, i.e. spending a bit more time with the girlfriend or maybe taking the odd weekend off to chill out with friends. Especially after finishing university for good, I then had so much free time in which to play poker than I felt the need to organise when I was going to play as it now became feasible that I could play every day of the week. Luckily for me I'd been in similar positions before where I'd had nothing to do bar play poker and I'd learnt that playing all day, every day for a sustained period of time definitely didn't lead to a fat wallet.

Let's take a look at my "schedule" right now. I normally know well in advance whether I'm going to play on any given day. I'll usually know what days I  have to go to work, or if I've organised with friends to go out etc, so if I know I'm playing poker on a day, I'm immediately in that mindset. Some of the worst days I have are when I've suddenly had a bit of time free and I jump straight into the games. I'm not prepared and not focused so surely enough the results reflect that. If I do play, I register from 3-4pm up until 9pm, the last being the $22 NLO, then play out. That should encompass around 20 scheduled MTTs plus however many 180s I load up depending on how many tables I have up. Even this isn't an exact science yet, I'm still undecided on how many 180s I should have going at any one time because my play style in them requires a bit more work than simply clicking buttons.

I'm comfortable with this schedule and rarely feel overwhelmed by the amount of tables I have going, if I ever do, it's a good sign that I'm not busting tournaments and I'm having a good day so far. Sometimes I get to the end of a days grinding and I think, especially when it's gone well, that I should continue playing and keep going so that I can put up a huge winning day. But it doesn't work like that. Without a doubt, if you were to pull up a record of all the tournaments I'd played after a session should have finished, I would be down tons. When you I set up my schedule and stick it, I am completely focused on the task at hand. I know what tournaments I'm playing, what I' m registered in and vaguely when I'm going to finish. After the window closes, all train of decent thought goes out the window and I'm doomed to lose. It took me a while to learn this important lesson but it's definitely been worth it, I no longer throw away money unnecessarily. It's always best after a session to draw a line under what you've accomplished for the day, good or bad, and start again tomorrow.

Always interested on what you guys have to say on the topic so feel free to leave a comment on the post. I've tinkered around with the page layout to make it easier for you guys to follow the blog. You can follow using your Google account which most of you should have if you made a Gmail or Google+ account, I think Youtube accounts are linked too. You can also sign up for Email updates which prompts you when I upload a new post. But until next time, take it easy everyone and good luck at the tables!

$11 180 man PKOs - The Goldmine

As promised, I'm just going to give you guys some of my thoughts about these new SnGs now spread on PokerStars. I won't go too deep into strategy because I'm still not too sure myself about what works the best, I'm still testing out push/folding ranges.

First off all, for those of you who haven't played a PKO yet, this is how it goes. The buy-in is split into the regular prize pool and a bounty, much like in regular bounty tournaments. In the case of the $11s, $5 goes toward the prize pool and $5 towards the bounty, and of course, $1 as rake. Now here comes the tricky part. When you knock a player out, you receive half their bounty value while the other half is added to your bounty. For example, if you were to knock a player out on the first hand, you would receive $2.50 straight into your account, and your own bounty will increase to $7.50. SkyPoker have actually used this system for a while for their own bounty tournaments.

The main reason why these tournaments are so profitable at the moment is because the regs seem to be avoiding them, but I can't understand why. As soon as you introduce the word "bounty" into a tournament, the fish just flock to it. And it's because of these fish that are so narrow minded and solely focused on taking bounties that their calling ranges are so well defined. Basically, if the fish has you covered, you can shove pretty much any marginally strong hand and expect to be called by near enough any 2 cards. In the past week I've seen over 50BB shoves snap called by hands such as Q2o, 65s and much much worse. You can tell who this kind of fish are within around 10 hands at the table, and better yet if you have HEM, you don't even have to pay attention, it'll flag them up for you.

Then all of a sudden the situation is completely reversed when the fish get short, they become absurdly passive. Especially around the bubble, the fish decide to call 80/90% of hands pre-flop only to play fit or fold poker on the flop, it makes for very each chip accumulation.

It's a combination of these two factors that have got me thinking that a loose aggressive small ball strategy, if that makes sense, is best. Even with a short stack, I believe that min-raises pre with a very wide range followed by 1/3rd pot flop c-bets are the best way to go around these tournaments. A decent push/fold game can still work but it needs to be altered to take into account the serious drop in fold equity, e.g. 98s and similar hands become less valuable when shoving but are worth opening, even with less than 15BB stacks.

Well there's a few of my thoughts on the games, it maybe wasn't the most structured post in the world but hopefully it gave you guys a little insight into what I'm thinking at the moment, which is kind of the point of a blog! But that's enough writing for now, it's time to jump in and crush the games. Good luck to all you grinders and I'll speak to you all soon!

December Goals - Mini Edition

Unfortunately real life got in the way for the first week or so of the month, hence why I was so late in writing a November summary, and with almost half of December already gone it seems a bit silly making a full set of goals. Thus, I am setting some mini goals to hit before the end of the month that will hopefully keep me motivated over the Christmas period and encourage me not to slack off and gorge on mince pies.

1. $2.5k Profit

This is purely an extrapolation of how the month has gone so far and how much I think I can play over the next two weeks. I think I can keep my ROI in the $11 PKOs as high as it is now unless they become severely reg infested and my ROI in PLO and O8 MTTs has always been around the 50% mark so if I can continue at this pace, then $2.5k should be pretty easy.

2. Ship either the PLO8 $5r or the PLO $3r

These two are without doubt the softest tournament of the day for each of their respective games. The level of play is just atrocious and, compared to their freeze-out counterparts, the prize pools are astronomical. I've won the $5r in the past but recently I've being falling at the final few fences. Likewise with the $3r, I've made the final table a bunch of times but have never been able to take the outright win. This month, all is going to change!

3, Satellite into a Weekend Major

Currently I'm not cleared to reg the 215s on the weekend, whether they be the Weekly O8s or the Sunday Million but there are quite a few low stake satellites to these events and I've been told they're usually quite soft. I normally avoid these on the weekends but with the recent Pokerstars promotional push for their weekly tournaments, the prize pools are looking very tasty and I'd love to get my hands on some of that.

So there's a few mini goals to set out and try to achieve this month, or the next two weeks as it is. All three should be attainable and thus hopefully this month can be my first clean sweep of goals. I hope December goes well for all of you out there as well. Ta ta for now!

November Goals Review

Hey everybody, I'm back with my review of how my November goals went. If you want to read the original post where I outlined my goals and gave a reasoning for all of them, then you can find it here! So without further ado, let's get on with the show. s

1. Profit of $5000

So the first goal didn't go quite to plan. I started off the month pretty well, finishing up a few hundred over the first week but then things stalled. I'd run pretty well during October and so maybe I got a little over confident and upped the volume too much but I definitely felt like I wasn't playing my A-game. I didn't play enough games over the period to call it a downswing but I lost a little bit towards the middle of the month. Because of my birthday and other things towards the end of the month so the volume dropped for a week orso and I didn't get time to make the goal. Overall I ended up in the black for the month but it was definitely a lot less than I was hoping or than I anticipated.

2. Ship a Red Label

I'm sure after reading my post about my Red Label Heartache you can guess that I didn't ship one in November. There were many deep runs and too many near misses but I just couldn't keep the run good going. Good news though, I have managed to accomplish this in December! I managed to ship the $8.80 NLO8 Omania a few days ago for just under $1k. I'm really happy about it and glad that after all those close calls, I finally managed to put it to bed. There's a few funny stories from that tournament so I'll stick all the details in another post. Happy Days

3. Show a profit at 180 man SnGs

This goal I did manage to accomplish, thanks to Pokerstars' introduction of the $11 PKO 180s being introduced. Since they started at the end of November I've shown a pretty large profit on these games including 1 full ship and numerous final tables. Like I said in my previous post, the dynamics in this game are so interesting and there's so much to talk about that it really deserves it's own post. [Wow I'm making a lot of promises here aren't I?]

4. Win my MicroMillions prop bet

Another win in this column however it was technically by default. My friend who I made the prop with was another MTT grinder specializing in O8 but just as the series started, he decided to stop grinding MTTs and moved into cash games, thus he didn't intend to play the series anymore. As far I as knew, the bet was still on and I accumulated a large amount of TLB points in the first half of the series. Eventually my friend put all his eggs in one basket and decided to ship the bet just by winning the PLO8 event but unfortunately for him he couldn't navigate the 10k field, in fact I actually ended up running deeper than him. Sure it was a default win, but a win is a win and even though it wasn't for a lot of money, it was still a fun prop and served it's purpose of getting me to grind the series properly.

5. Only get drunk twice

And there's the hattrick! 1. Pokerstars VIP 2. Birthday. That's the win. Sure, the occasional beer was had but the "I won't get drunk so I can grind later" excuse seemed to work pretty well. The fact that I'm staying home to grind more is actually working out well for my liver and my wallet so I'll have to keep it up a bit longer. With the obvious exception of Christmas parties of course.

So there's a solid little recap. 3/5 isn't too bad and seeming as I managed to ship the Omania this month instead, I'll call it 3 and a half. I think I've left it a little late to start writing December goals, especially as I won't be grinding over the Christmas period. To be honest, I need to achieve the goal of writing all these posts that I've promised and that could take long enough! Oh well, until next time, good luck at the tables and speak to you all soon.

They say it's all over........Hell no it's not!

Indeed, I am not dead, just busy. I have a few posts that I need to write in the next few days so here's what should be coming up.

Following on from the last post, I did go to the PokerStars VIP Party here in London and it was amazing! I have tons of pictures, including pics with various Pokerstars Pros, but be warned I am pretty damn drunk in most of them, it was an open bar after all.

The week after the VIP Party was my birthday so I had a fair few events during the week including a night out with my mates and visits from my family and on top of that, my girlfriend's family also visited for a weekend so I even had to take a Sunday off! The horror. That did mean unfortunately that I didn't post a November summary and a conclusion to how the month's goals went so I'll be writing that pretty soon. This also means that I need a fresh set of goals for December, however they may not be as lofty as you'd expect, because.....

I got a job! OK, not a real job, just some catering and events staffing gigs. With Christmas just around the corner, a little guaranteed cash will come in quite handy as well as giving me a solid reference to put on my CV. Unfortunately, most employers don't consider "Professional Poker Player" a valid job so it's good to show that I'm not sitting around all day playing a game and writing blog posts!

I also want to write a more detailed blog post about the new 180 man $11 PKO SnGs on Stars because I think they're fantastic. Definitely the best new game Stars has released in a while and they create some pretty interesting dynamics where the fish will seriously call you with any 2 cards given the chance they can win your bounty. It makes for some pretty fun short stacking.

So anyway, I'll get started on writing these posts and I hope you guys stay tuned and read them. Quick shout out to MrScRuFFF and Pokerchef for shipping the NLO8 and PLO8 FTOPS events (Scruffy actually chopped the PLO8 with Chef too!). Enjoy the jerseys and, of course, all them $s! To all you grinders, have a big Sunday and good luck in the big Sunday Million!