My Breakeven February

Normally at this time of the month I'd do a short review of how my previous month's goals went but because of an insanely busy start to February and far too many real life commitments getting in the way I decided not to write any for last month. I did however manage to rejig my normal schedule and organise things a little better so that I could play consistently again and in the past two weeks or so I've managed to keep up a decent amount of volume.

Unfortunately though, it's not been all roses. For various reasons including being a little rusty after a few weeks off and also running pretty poorly, granted over a limited sample, so I haven't managed anywhere near my January results. It's not really a sense of a few near misses like it has been in past months but more generally bricking everything and managing a few select tournament victories in order to keep myself afloat.

I still feel like I'm playing well though. Whilst I was writing my previous blog post on 5 things I know I'm doing wrong I thought a lot about my focus and genuinely thinking through every hand I play and so I've found so many more spots where I can pick up chips by considering what kind of player I'm up against. They're mainly hands where, in hindsight, it's obvious that a small bet would have picked up the pot but at the time I was auto-piloting and simply mashed the check button because I hadn't hit the nuts. I'm sure if I could find out how to see my red line for tournaments like HEM does for cash games then I'd see a marked improvement over this time last year.

I've also started mixing in a few more 18 man NLO8 SnGs. I wrote a post many moons ago about PLO8 SnGs any many of the same points I made back then still apply now. Unfortunately nowadays the games can very reg heavy at peak times so for now I'm game selecting which ones I register for which tend to be at the very beginning of my session or just as I'm winding down, which I don't mind at all. For now I'm showing a decent ROI in the $15 games but I'm still aware how brutal the swings can be so I'm keeping grounded. I'm also finding interesting spots almost every day where I'm still not sure what the right line is but thankfully I have a few friends who are real SnG grinders to advise me. Cheers lads.

So that was my February in a nutshell. I'm still not entirely sure about how much I can play in March so I'll hold off for now on writing a March goals post. For now I'll be playing each day as it comes but I still will be keeping an eye on my 2014 goals for a little direction. I hope maybe February went a little better for all you guys and here's wishing you all a big March! Until next time, good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!br

Top 5 things I KNOW I'm doing wrong!

I read a blog post on PartyPoker's site recently where numerous UK Online Pros gave their thoughts on the best tips they could give on how to be a successful online player. These weren't strategy tips i.e. 3-bet more in position etc, but more on the poker lifestyle and mindset and how to prepare yourself to win at the game. It got me thinking not only about which of their tips I was already doing but about those I was not as well as many others. So without further ado, here are the top 5 things I KNOW I'm doing wrong.

1. Playing Tired

Over the past couple of months I have worked really hard on getting a routine in place and organising an actual schedule of when I play poker.  It's helped me to treat poker more like a job and to take it more seriously, however, it does have it downsides. Much like a real job, if you feel tired or ill, you feel compelled to still play, especially as you feel that you miss value by not playing. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Again, much like real life, you performance is greatly hampered by feeling tired and the usual win rate just doesn't exist. As a poker player, I am blessed that if I am tired, I am not forced to play and I think I should take that one day off to recover and feel fresh, rather than continuing on and maybe playing 3-4 days straight tired.

2. Chasing Losses

I think every poker player out there has felt this at some point. You have maybe two or three losing days in a row and then suddenly you're not thinking fully about winning the tournament you're playing, what you're actually thinking is where in the tournament you need to finish in order to get back to even. It's a truly terrible mindset to be in. The focus of every tournament I play should be to win, end of. I spend a lot of time working on my mindset and this is just the next hurdle to overcome.

3. Holding onto small stacks

This is a lesson that I've taken off some of the well known NLHE grinders. There comes a stage when the tables start to build up and it's hard to focus equally on each one. It's at this point that I start to build up 10BB and less stacks on some of the smaller tournaments approaching the late stages. It's in situations like this where I should be getting aggressive and attempting to shove and reshove my chips in order to build a decent stack, after all, I'm aiming for first, not a min cash. I know that keeping my eye out for spots like this will get me to more final tables and increase my ROI, even if I bubble tournaments a little more often.

4. Not paying full attention

Again, a problem I'm sure other grinders out there experience. I have a pretty short attention span at the best of times, so grinding for hours on end gets somewhat monotonous after a while and I tend to resort to watching TV as well or sometimes even playing other games. Needless to say this is diverting my attention away from the tables and directly affecting my bottom line. To combat this I've recently bought a pair of high quality, noise cancelling headphones and put together a super long grinding playlist that should keep my focus on the tables. I'm always for looking for new tunes to add by the way so feel free to suggest your favourites!
5. Autopiloting

This is somewhat different to not paying attention. Even when I am focused on the tables, I tend to get into a stretch where I genuinely am just clicking buttons. It's a mindset that's easier to get into with Omaha games which is a lot more dependent on showdowns and making the nuts. I definitely can tell when I've been doing it for a while, at which point I snap out of it and start thinking about each hand again but I'm still not entirely certain how to eliminate it all together. Hopefully some of you other grinders have experienced similar and can give me some advice!

As you can still see, I'm working on trying to eradicate these issues from my game but it's a long old slog. At least the first stage of identifying the issues is out the way, so I can work on techniques to focus more and improve my bottom line. Hopefully this helps some of you who feel that you're doing the same thing. That's it for now, so good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

Damn you real life!

Hey everyone, really sorry for the lack of posts recently. As some of you may have gleamed from my constant moaning on Twitter I've spent practically the entire last two weeks at what is supposed to be my "part time" waiter job. I've barely had time to play poker, let alone write about it, but I should be back to the tables now and thus should have lots of time to moan about that instead!

As I've mentioned before I started the part time waiter job mainly as a good way to show employers outside of the poker industry that I am out there working and employable. To companies within the industry, which I'd definitely prefer to work within, being a professional poker player works to my advantage, but to some gaming and statistics companies all they see is "gambler" and "degenerate" so I try to steer clear of bringing it up in cover letters and interviews. However, it leaves me open to the inevitable question of "What have you been doing for the last few months?".

The last two weeks the hours really stepped up, in fact I worked 13 of the 14 days possible mainly because some staff took some leave and I'd now been there long enough and learnt enough of what needs doing to fill in competently. It's my own fault really, I should have remained next to useless! It's now got to the stage where myself and my girlfriend, who I live with, were having a serious discussion that I need to work less so that I could play more poker! Not gonna lie, I had a beaming smile throughout the whole conversation.

I've just now got back from a quick weekend trip away to Copenhagen and I had a bit of time to write a few blog posts, so all I need to do is a little editing and revising then there should be a solid level of content production again, provided I don't get snowed under with shifts again.

I hope everybody's been having good luck at the tables since I've been away and I look forward to joining you all tonight! Speak to you all soon!

2014 Goals - Wish me luck!

So first of all I'd like to apologize for this post being slightly late. I know goals posts and threads are usually put up before the year has started but I really wanted to get these right as I fully intend on maintaining and achieving everything I set out this year. So far in my poker career, barring my initial miracle bink the first time I played, my results have improved year on year and despite having a very good 2013, I fully intend on continuing this run into 2014. So without further ado, here are my goals for the year!

Poker:

1. $30,000 online profit as recorded on Official Poker Rankings

Last year I unofficially set myself an approximate goal of $25k total profit. I ended up making just under $20k which I was actually very happy with. This year I feel I'm a much better player, I have a much better schedule and I am altogether much more focused on poker and thus $30k genuinely should be attainable

2. £5,000 live profit

Up until now I haven't really ventured too much into the live arena but recently the Hippodrome here in London announced a weekly £100 PLO tournament at their Pokerstars Poker Room so I'm hoping this will be a springboard into a better live poker career. I hope soon to separate some living funds to create a live bankroll which should also allow me to track my results better too.

3. To become a regular at the $55 level

I've always mentioned that I want to move up the levels and eventually become a mid-stakes MTT reg and this is the next step up. There's only one PLO8 and one PLO $55 that run during the schedule (two on Saturdays) but I'd like to play up to these games and show a profit on them long term.

4. Take 15 "shots" at Weekly Majors

This includes the Sunday Million, Weekly PLO8, Weekly PLO and possibly the Weekly NLO8. The satellite schedule for weeklies aren't great but there are still soft enough $3r's and maybe if I continue to progress through the levels then weekly shot taking could become part of my stake package. I know the games are tough and it's a long shot to become a long term winner in these but these tournament's have huge prize pools so bink potential is there.

5. Play one live "Main Event"

Building upon my earlier goal, I feel a good way to progress with my live career would be to play a tour main event. Obviously a £5k EPT Main is a little far fetched but the UKIPT run £700-£1ks, the GUKPT run £1ks. There's also the other small tours like the SPT which have £200-300s, APATs have £100-200s and other one's pop up continuously. I'll keep an eye out for events near to me and take appropriate shots based on the "live" bankroll.

Non Poker:

1. Maintain a running average of 100 readers per day

This might be a low number but on the days that I don't write a post or mention the blog on the forums or Twitter, the readership is actually very small. Granted this is a personal blog and the subject matter is a little niche but I still hope to increase the readership and hopefully make many more contacts within the poker community.

2. Have an actual grind setup

Currently I'm grinding on my 17" laptop, using the touch pad because my mouse is broken and sitting in a chair which if described as "uncomfortable" would be a great compliment. I don't particularly want an office to grind in as I'd never want to be completely shut off from my girlfriend in the apartment but I'd like to have a space for maybe a little desk with a purpose made grind PC. It wouldn't need to be spectacular or to cost very much but I really think it would help my game, especially multi-tabling.

3. Organise and structure my time more efficiently

I've never been much of an organised person, I've gotten a little better as I've aged and I'm far and away more organised than all of my Uni friends but compared to the rest of the planet, I'm pretty bad. My normal schedule is to wake up "whenever", shower "whenever", eat "whenever" and start grinding at 3.30, ish. Obviously sleep schedules have to be a little fluid when you play poker but I'd like to at least try to wake up before 9am every day and actually plan out days. Hopefully a little routine will improve my mental game.

4. Improve my writing skills

As many of you have probably guessed, I'm not much of a writer. I always took Maths and Science based subjects and throughout my time at Uni I only wrote 2 full papers, and even then, scientific writing is a completely different kettle of fish. Hopefully just writing here often will do a lot but I'd like to be a little more proactive about it, maybe read a few books and watch some videos.

5. Start "saving"

So after all the profit goals I've set out I should have some money floating about. As I'm getting older, I've become a little less frivolous with cash and I don't go out quite as often. That means I should have a little spare money to put away. I haven't got anything in particular on the horizon that I think I need to save for me if the few months after Uni without a job taught me anything it's that having a little extra cash tucked away can be a great help.

So there's my goals for the next year ahead. I hope reading these will inspire some of you guys to think about your own goals and I wish you all the best with them. There has to be a huge N.B. with this list though. I am still on the hunt for a full time career and should I begin one with absurd hours then poker will have to come second and I won't be able to put in my full time and effort. All the best for 2014 and feel free to leave a comment with your goals or even what you think about mine! Later everyone!

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!