Joes poker blog

Pokerwise I had a great month in January. A great start of 2008



Needless to say, I ran very good obviously. Its been one of my best months ever in poker.
For the most part of the month, I played the 6 max midstakes games like I planned. I practiced some table selection and it was definately worth it a lot. I also played the NL 5/10 6-max game occasionally, when I saw some weaker players there and focused mostly on playing them rather than fighting the good regs.

Later in the month I started playing heads-up quite a lot and I found that I like it I got inspired by a cardrunners video where Aba and GP sweated Ezra while playing heads-up. I liked especially Aba's style a lot and found that it is basically the style that suits me best. Some things clicked in my head while watching the video and so far I have been doing very well in the midstakes HU games and also felt comfortable during all the matches. Of course I table selected and avoided the very good players.

I also ran good in live poker - managed to win several small tournaments in a local casino (usually $25+rebuy with like 15-25 people, first prize between $1k and $1.5k), which always feels good

Non-poker-wise I had my exams this month. I am not completely finished yet, but I successfully finished 3 out of my 5 classes. Hopefully I will manage to finish the remaining 2 succesfully as well.

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Ok they know how to keep balance.
Just that I dont like rollercoasters in poker too much, but its all good after Sunday.

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FUCK OFF PS!!!!

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Just a few things I wanted to post:

1. I have been running like shit the past few weeks and not playing my A-game either. I hope it gets better in January.

2. Year 2007 was good pokerwise for me, I became a midstakes winner and built solid BR for NL1k even with my nitty BR management.

3. I hope to make about twice as much in 2008 as I made in 2007. I want to become a winner in high stakes like NL 5/10, 10/20 and possibly also in NL 25/50. I intend to play mainly on PokerStars because Supernova bonuses make up for solid rakeback, but that my of course change during the year. I will start off the year by playing mainly midstakes NL 2/4 and 3/6 but I will frequently be trying NL 5/10 when the tables look good.

4. Today I did my first staking deal - I staked Logiabs with $400. He is suppossed to pay me back the stake + 1/3rd of his profit in 10 days (= 12th of January). I hope he will run good and make both himself and myself some money

5. Today I also made a side bet with lostaccount - he said he would make supernova elite in 2008. So, the bet is: If lostaccount makes supernova elite in 2008, I will pay him $410. If he wont, he will pay me $400.

Thats about it for now, gl everyone in 2008!

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[Warning: Brag Post]

In the past few days I was a little upset with Lee Jones for all the setups he kept giving me - I really hate setups because I am always second guessing my decisions and sometimes I feel really ill about the hands. Well I wasnt really down most of the days, because some players are just too awfull, but I was way behind my expectations.

But after today I like Lee again I got enough sets and setups in my favor to make up for at least past 7 days.

I dont really like posting my results and bragging about it, but I feel really good about today so I am going to make an exception this time

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I just won a satellite to APPT Sydney - a package worth $9,000!

Here is the screenshot:



Oh yeaaa baby!!!! Hu-ha-huhu-ha

I hope there will be no "technical" difficulties like school and I will be able to go to Sydney. Cya there!

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Yesterday I decided that I would try to achieve Platinum Star. I needed like 4100 VPPs. So, I opened up 12 tables of 6-max midstakes, mix of NL200, NL400 and NL600, I took first available tables basically and got to the grind.
It was pretty sick grind, I had to play like 8k hands which took about 8 hours or something. Pretty sick session, I hated it. Also pretty bad result-wise - I started good and kept it till like two hourse before the end, since when I began losing like crazy, lost everything I won before and a lot more :/

So September is over. I didnt play much poker because I returned from the US trip only like a week ago. It started as a promising month, but because of two disasterous sessions in the end of the month, I ended up breakeven for September :/ Well I won a bit in live game, but thats only like couple hundreds, so not a big difference.
Only good thing is that I managed to achieve the Platinum Star status and will soon have enough points for Ipod Touch

I hope October will finaly be a good month for me. It was my best month of year 2006... And today I played my first october session and so far it seemed promising

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Since I havent updated my blog for a long long time, I feel like writing a summarizing post about poker and stuff from the beginning of this year (2007) till now and my plans for the rest of the year.

So, I started off in January playing NL100 @ partypoker after recovering from a 2-months-long downswing.
I played well and probably also hit a heater, so I was able to rake solid money and move up stakes pretty fast. My good run continued over the course of next months and I was ready to move up to NL1k by the end of May being properly rolled for it (50+ buyins) even after some (minor) cashouts. I had my best month in march when I made over 33k.

But then June came and I started to run pretty bad and also the competition on NL1k was way better than on NL600 and NL400. Although I didnt want to admit it back then, I was probably only an average player there, maybe a small winner when I wasnt tilting.
I also had some problems at the university, I was close to quitting my school, but I managed to force myself to pass the exams, so I can continue. Now I am quite happy I didnt quit.
So, I lost quite some money during June and July, not a big deal, but enough for me to reconsider playing NL1k even though my BR was still quite safe for playing it. So I returned back to NL600 and NL400 in the second half of July and began slowly winning again.

In the end of July, I left home (and poker) for my 2-months-long trip to the USA. It was a pretty cool trip, we managed to travel all around USA, visiting like 40+ states, almost every big/interesting city and most of the national parks. I played a little poker when in the USA, some of it live in Vegas, where I lost a bit and then when I bought a new laptop - I won some, but nothing important.

A few days ago I came back home. I started playing poker again and so far I have been doing solid. I guess the break from poker helped me as I calmed down pokerwise and dont need to play for thousands of dollars every hand to not get bored (dont take me literally, but I guess you know what I mean). If I can keep the winrate I got since returning home, I might consider returning back to NL1k soon (if I feel like it).

As for my future plans - I and a few friends of mine (who also play poker) have decided to rent a house together temporarily. Its not 100% yet, but if everything goes as planned, then we might be moving within a week. Then we shall see if it was a good idea or not I hope it will help us all to get better at poker.

As for poker, I plan to grind NL400 and NL600 combined as my main stakes, but if I continue doing well and get the confidence, I will probably try out NL1k again within a few weeks. I set myself the goal to reach 6 figures BR before the end of year, which seems to be a reachable goal - neither too easy, nor too difficult I would say.

I guess thats enough for now. I am not sure how often I will be updating, probably not too often, so glhf, till next time!

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My opinion on Party NL600 game
Just wanted to ask, how other lp players view NL600 on party.

I am asking mainly because to me it seems like the game is getting tougher recently. It seems like it is becoming more and more regular-only game except from weekend evenings / hollydays.

Of course lot of the regulars are still pretty bad, but when I started to play in this game about 7 weeks ago, it was not much of a problem to find 3-4 good tables with at least 1 or 2 real fish (i mean, 60+/10-/1 or something). Now, it is really very difficult to find a table with these players except during weekends. Especially mondays and tuesdays are really bad imo. Also recently, I often see players that are NL1k regs to come down to NL600.

So, is it just me not runnning as hot as i did before or is it a fact, that the game got tougher recently.

And I am not writing this because of a downswing or anything, I am actually still winning in these games, but my recent winrate went a little down (not by a lot, just a bit) and more importantly I have to pay a lot more attention to table selection, because there often are realy awfull tables at times.

Progress update

March
Poker has been kinda nice during the whole month of March - I managed to like double my Bankroll. (I even made more than Saki hehe )

April
Since the beginning of April, I have been strugling a bit -started with a -10k downswing, since then I kept slowly winning my money back and now I am already quite decently up in cash games for the month after a few good days, like 7k or so, which I consider ok, given I have played only about 22k hands.

Tournaments
Finally, I also had a decent tourney success in April - I cashed in 3 tournaments during 1 day for a total of 4.5k net profit (2nd in $55 freezeout, 8th in $33 rebuy, 44th in $100 freezeout 100k gtd).

Future poker plans
I want to continue playing the NL600 game on party till I get really confident against majority of the regulars. Then I will try out NL1000 game and see if it is that much harder or not. It can be within next 3 weeks, but it can take me months, I dunno, I am definately in no hurry to move up.
I also want to refine my tournament skill, so I will probably play more of $50 and $100 frezeouts, maybe even some $200 weekly events here and there.

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I just finished a very long session, one of my worst ever. I lost about $4,100 total in the end playing NL400 and NL600 combined. At the peak I was down about $5,500.

Really pretty sick day. I hit like no draw ever, when i had overpair or TPTK, they either folded or when not then they always had a set and mostly it was in a BoB war so pretty inevitable.

Of course I didnt lose all of it just because of bad luck, I also played pretty poorly, which was caused by the constant suckouts. I am trying to think of the factors that made me do some bad plays and analyze what exactly was caused by it and why.

There is one thing that borders me a lot - when I am down and not running good, I always start to make plays here and there without really thinking if they are +EV, I simply just want to win the pots and get some money back no matter what. In almost 100% cases it causes me to lose even more.

I also start to be much more suspicious and when I finally get somewhat a hand, I sometimes tend to call river overbets just because I think they are bluffing me. I would have no problems pitching those hands if I was running good, but during a bad run I often make retardes river calls.

Although I fucking hate this session, I will try to get the best of it and think more about how to avoid doing the retarded mistakes I mentioned while running bad. I really think half of my loses could have been avoided if I played my A-game.

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