GOOOOOOO DODGERS!

"It doesn't mean much, It doesn't mean anything at all. The life I've left behind me Is a cold room. I've crossed the last line, from where I can't return. Where every step I took in faith, betrayed me, and led me from my home. And sweet, Sweet surrender, Is all that I have to give" -Sarah McLachlan.

The heat wave is here AGAIN! I am really getting sick of this weather being so screwed up. But it won't matter for much long since I will be traveling out of the country back to the wonderful land of Zulu's and Biltong! Yup I'll be in South Africa for around a month or so and then making another trip to Taiwan in Dec/Jan. Don't worry, I will still be playing poker during my time abroad. I am kind of looking forward to it due to the fact I will be able to build a huge chunk of my online roll without consistently cashing out.

On to other things tho. Do you ever consider what a poker guru you are when you make a correct hero call? or when you catch that obvious bluff? I'm pretty sure all of us feel like the Four Kings when we do that. The problem is what about the other hundreds and thousands of times when our reads are incorrect and get valuetowned by a total idiot! Think about how often this happens compared to the times that we are correct, It outweighs the profits so dramatically, thus in the long term of things how much profit are you gaining from making all these hero calls? Probably not much to be honest. Of course everything is relative to stakes, stack sizes, reads, betting patterns and etc. But for a microstakes grinder, how important is this factor?

During the redeye session this morning live, it was very very transparent that this topic came into play. I was holding 89s, 4xraise preflop with 6 callers, raiser was UTG, I was SB. flop came 382. raiser leads for 1/3 of the pot, others fold. I raisex3, he insta calls. Turn is A, check check, river is 5. I check he shoves. So now I have to tank. what could he have at this moment. And so many hands pop up in my head such as PP's, Broadway cards, 4X(prob not), so the question is what ranges am I beating with my 98. Not much right? But then you consider so many other factors such as his bluffing tendencies, Why would he check the A on the turn if it hit him. Is he trying to rep the 4? Could he have me outkicked? Do they have good Ice-cream or yummy deserts available at this time? So I decided to make the biggest spewy call for the morning!

Why do we do these things when the losses outweighs the profits so many times over and over again. I think that this comes down to the relation of the psychology of the game vs standard ABC play style of poker. The emotions attached to making those great bluffs and calling those great bluffs are somewhat embedded in our game, but are they really that necessary in these low stakes? Are most of your profits from making great bluffs or catching them? I truly believe that within reason, this is such a small part of the game and honestly not of utmost importance until you move up into much higher stakes where more meta game comes into play. So at the end of the day, Value owning is pretty much where it is. GLHF, REBUY KTHX!

WHEEEE!! I love the poker ride!

"soore de houre, bouring gubooru ibustu, na sonzai daro, shouchi no suke, kowaresoude!" (let's let go, of that bowling ball. We lead such strange lives, You've gotta understand, we're gonna smash it!) Broken Youth.

Man this week has been so brutal! it's been a roller coaster ride of note. As some of you know i've been trying to mix in Live play with my daily online intake. It is way out of my bankroll but I'm still in the green which is huge smiles for me. All I can say is that there are TONS of fish EVERYWHERE! But when you are not playing at the peak of your game or not being able to destroy fishes cause you are card dead, it does get very frustrating putting in all those hours.

It comes down to the point when you ask yourself a lot of questions, this most definitely falls into the part of the theory behind poker and it makes you wonder a lot of things about how you look at the game. My biggest example is the night when I lost 1,5BI's in live play and also losing another 3BI's online in my morning session. I totally understand my losses online, they seems to be very easy to evaluate and it just seemed I ran into some bad variance and a lot of luckboxes, which is very very easy to handle. But what I came to understand and been very difficult to stomach was some of the issues which have been happening Live. I play a very standard ABC game with a tint of trickiness, but even though I played great and I made some monstrous lay downs I considered a large amount of things. Firstly I layed down KK on a J92 rainbow board due to dynamics of the table and a lot of betting tells. Eventually being shown AJ by the reraiser postflop and then another donkbet on the turn by another player that eventually showed AA.

I can tell my game has improved dramatically just on the basis I am going broke in that kind of situation so many times but I was able to get away from that kind of situation because the experiences i've had online. I tend to wonder and think that if I know I have an edge over all these players and I can pick up so much information just based on their tells and betting patterns, then why am I not winning? why did I walk out of there with 1,5BI's down the drain? Thus this led me to conclude the fact that majority of the time people are so focused on the outcome of 1 or 2 sessions, and even though they are very very dramatic losses, it starts to cloud your judgment on future plays which you will make. This is something i've been trying to incorporate so much into my general thinking and the way I would perceive my daily routine. I tend to look it as a form of work, for most of you that do go to work and are passionate about it, you work hard and strive to be the best in which you can be. I think the exact same concept applies whenever you sit down at any table, but also need to consider the fact that things aren't always going to go the way you planned. As long as in the long scheme of things, they are looking bright. If not then reevaluate your game, and take it one step at a time again. Being result orientated could be the biggest downfall for any poker player, but then again we are all human. It is just a matter of how you handle all the crazy emotions. 6 flags anyone?

I have some huge news coming up soon, will blur it out as soon as it's official!

So it's been a month since I've posted anything, been pretty busy with poker, been grinding my ass off since life aint cheap. Due to a lot of expenses, i've had to cash out most of my bankroll which seriously SUX a ton but it seems that i've been able to recover and make some good ground this month so far. At points of last month I was even grinding 10nl :(.

SEPTEMBER IS AWESOME!! I've been playing very well and still profiting every day pretty much made 12BI's in the last 3 days, and much much more before that too. I feel that my game has improved a large amount since I last posted, even though right after my post I ran into another huge downswing which led me to have a lot of disinterest in poker but that mindset pretty much flipped a few days later.

Been sweating a lot of my study group buds quite a bit, always trying to pick up any new things I could learn from them. Right now my current new project is also helping a newbie by the name of 'Novus' and hopefully I can help him become a winning microstakes player. He seems pretty new to the game with around 30k total hands played in his lifetime, which is like nothing I know but hopefully I can change things around so that he can start showing some profit.

Besides that, I have been doing some studying somewhat. Props to Krantz, WillonTilt, BalugaWhale, tubasteve, mdm13, jk3a, and the other DC guys for making such great vids. But still struggling to get through 'the maths of poker by WillonTilt' it's very ++EV but it's more like zzzzEV.

Well I'm still grinding 25nl but it's been pretty easy sailing tho, nothing really interesting besides winning(LOL). Here is my graph for the last month.

I will try post some interesting hands in the next posts. I plan on moving back up to 50NL in the next week or so depending on how much I can make in the next 2-3 days, which hopefully will be around the same win rate as the past 2 weeks or so.

That's it until next time! PZ!

OMGWTFBBQ!!

If I could do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing! This weekend was quite the sick session. I can't really say I ran extremely hot but pretty close to it tho, on a 8 session winstreak and still counting!

So Thursday was one of those days where you just feel numb from throwing up so much. Starting the morning off with a -4BI at 50nl was not fun, and even dropping back down to 25nl I was not covering any ground. So with some help, Wali was gonna sweat me but cooler after cooler I landed up dropping over $330 that day. But the day was not over and I was not going to let this initial birth of a doomswitch happen, so I managed to grind back to -$200 for the day. Oh by the way it was a mind boggling 4066 hand session that lasted 988 minutes!

Considering that I was on a dose of Runbad once again with the dreaded 50nl, decided to grind 25nl for the most part and take all the fishes monies! Friday started off pretty well with this hand, even though I did tank for a while I felt like I was felting it regardless. Nothing says I love you more than nutz! So as the night winded down I was in a mood to do some degenerate gambling, so 1/2 limit was my choice of drugs, and this hand made me BAKED OUT OF MY MIND.

So Saturday rolled around and things were still looking good, flopping sets over sets and in a nutshell nothing too crazy except having a lot less coolers than I expected. Due to my sessions on Friday I figured trying to play more sessions but cutting them a lot shorter was more effective. It doesn't really bother me much due to the fact that I don't get rakeback, and the only rakeback I get from bodog is their points system which you can convert to cash. So doing some maths in comparison to rakeback it's roughly around 4% rakeback which is AWESOME! Ended the day with +4BI's is always +ev!

So Sunday is pretty much a day of rest for most people besides Poker pro's. I figure I should tackle the 50nl beast again. And right off the start in BB I flop trips with AJ and turn the house! Things were looking bright and I was about to end my session with just under a buyin calling it a somewhat sucessful attempt. Until this hand happened. Thanks again for being such laggy donks! I played another session of 223 hands a couple of hours later and things were pretty rough for the most part but landed up with half a BI so my winstreak was still looking pretty good! Night session rolls around and things got pretty nutty with the cowboys! Gotta love those short stackers!

Overall this weekend was a pretty great run! Not 1 losing session and a lot of great hands held up as they are supposed to. Making a total of $454 in the mix of 25nl and 50nl is not too bad. Really happy cause I'll be able to chill with my boyz/girls sometime this weekend instead of grinding out the entire weekend! I'm pretty much still on track to be grinding 100nl at the end of the month, I just hope to be able to get enough hands in 50nl to solidify the fact I am beating 50nl. I'll keep ya guys updated on the winstreak!

In a galaxy far far away.

date bodog total
26/5 +0
27/5 +33.50
28/5 -1.10 Started MTT's
29/5 -1.10
30/5 -1.10
31/5 -2.30
01/6 +10.21 Started limit 10max Cashgames
02/6 +6.04 43.05
03/6 +22.79 65.84
04/6 +19.58 85.42
05/6 +12.49 97.91
06/6 +7.02 104.93
07/6 -4.68 100.25
08/6 -5.12 95.13
09/6 +9.01 104.14
10/6 +36.04 140.18
11/6 -26.62 113.56
12/6 -7.74 105.82
13/6 +6.0 110.82
14/6 +44.97 155.79
15/6 -29.68 126.11
16/6 -13.55 112.56
17/6 +59.81 172.37 start NL 10max fr
18/6 +12.61 184.98
19/6 +25.12 210.10
20/6 +50.57 260.67
21/6 +17.16 277.83

So that was how it all started, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a poker study group which showed me the way and coached me to play 6max(always grateful to u guys!). From there on it has been a difficult journey to reach the level I am currently am. Every day is still a struggle not knowing when the next doomswitch will hit.

On the 17'th of July i decided to purchase 'Bodog Hand Grabber' which helps me keep track of all of my sessions. thus it will be easier for me to lookup my wins or losess instead of typing them out day in and out! It's closing on a month now having HM, but here is where I stand so far.











I realize my stats are pretty terrible, but as my game improves, hopefully so do my stats! So that's how things are looking Session wise. now here is my all hands graph.




Last but not Least, here is my report based on Game type.


I'm currently trying to move up to 50nl which has been a Nightmare of note! But I'm certain can barrel through this bad streak of attempts to become a winning 50nl player! I am Currently rolled for 50nl, so hopefully in the next few days I will have some Good news on 50NL! PZ!