Poker Blogs

"Same thing, poker and life" -Mike Caro

Finally decided to start a blog of my own. Right now I'm in very low M life phase and blinds and antes are starting to threaten, so putting my thoughts here as well as getting different opinions should 'ground' me a little.

I started my poker career about two years ago at Everest poker with their freeroll limit SNGs. My idea was to take free money and never deposit a single cent of my own. Slowly I learned what TAG really is and up to about few months ago it was just a hobby, day-dreaming about Big Moneyz and buying some balla stuff. My lack of 'balla success' was mostly due to lack of time to play and serious lack of discipline a.k.a. bad BR management. But I was making profit, small but big enough to not give up. Sweet innocent days.

Back at that time I worked at small firm, partnership of my father and another woman, that has worked for years (food industry). As the times got tougher and profit started to decrease, partners started to quarrel and accuse each other on a regular basis - ending with a 'split pot' GG Firm. My father being old enough decided to retire and half of the 'Firm' (actually a so called 'healthy food' grocery) is now mine. I'm the boss. At first glance it's sorta cool, at second - if my math is correct, making decent profit will take a lot of work ... and luck.

Few months ago it was obvious where the whole [censored] is going to and that was the first time when I started to look for opportunities and the first time I started to take poker seriously. Interesting to note that only then did I started to play seriously and the results were above expectations. In July I made almost $1k, more than I have ever made in poker. It's funny how things change in a snap when you have really strong motive and 'crack addict'-like desire. And my motives are really really strong - I have a family to support: wife working at my 'Firm' (i.e. we're in the same [censored]) and 4 year old daughter. I can't afford to lose. And I need extra poker money (at times). So this is my extra job (that's why I'm semi-pro), but I need this supplement to cover life expenses (that's why I'm semi-pro).

Just recently I had to do what I hated the most: withdrew $300 from my $2k-ish BR. So far I'm fine and have a month to make another 300+.

As for play style I consider myself good thinking TAG with above average (for SSNL) hand reading skills. Recently my hard drive crashed so I don't have some sexy data to post. My game is 6max cash; 25NL and 50NL; VPIP/PFR/AF gravitate towards 19/12/3.5 .

"Same thing, poker and life" -Mike Caro



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Finally got internet after 3 days. I just moved to Eugene, OR with YoMeR (Sam) and our new place is sick. It will only get better too. We're gonna buy a poker table and have home games with some of the players/dealers at the cardroom over here and also we're gonna get a bigger TV. Probably a 40-50" Plasma sometime in the next couple months. Here are some pictures. We have a 2 story apartment.



Thats our living room
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1922.jpg


Heres our set up downstairs
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1923.jpg

Kitchen + Patio
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1924.jpg

Sam's Room and set up
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1925.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1926.jpg

My room and my ghetto set up
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1927.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y149/JcM3420/09-22-07_1928.jpg




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so here is in short what happened:
after i dropped to a 12 % roi on the 6.5´s i stopped playing poker for 3 month and played purely wow.

i got really tired of this at lvl 70 and started poker again.

currently i am running hot at the 13$ 6max , might have my first month where i make more than 1000 $ in poker !
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/4287/septembergg0.jpg

Wish me luck !

why i am not moving up in stakes ?
i will play at least 500 sng´s at each level.


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Started with this, now I've got 10k online again. A few K more and I'm back at NL400 and the great thing about that is that I played better poker then in a long time.




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Deal I discussed with Feiticeira, which I think works out good for both of us -

Initial stake - $1500
Terms discussed - Stake repaid and 50% profits over 75k hands (2 months or so), no rakeback is to be included as it is what I pay my bills with.




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yesterday I played a couple of MTTs 4/180. Had to jump start my tourney mind a little....went out early in 4 of em :-( the 5th was bad as well, went out 25th. 2 weeks ago I was doing quite allright in tourneys, mostly hitting the cash. I think it's because I exclusively played HU 5 and 10$ in the past 2 weeks (and really improved a lot!)...PT stats showin nice green colors for HU. Writing from work....2,5 hours till freedom


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Worst run of my life finally ended and I am very happy It started after very good month on NL200 as I took shot on NL400 and failed horribly... what then ensued was the worst run of bad beats, ocasional tilt and hopelesness :D
It forced me to play more hands and think more about my game and now I feel stronger than ever Planning to take another shot at NL400 in short time

variance: made 3,5k$ in bonuses during downswing so I am up actually


obv graph

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1527/ggdownswingly7.jpg

also possible brag/beat: I am university student again after I dropped out last year to pursuit my poker career I am glad I did that because back then I was very poor student and didn't have any money at all and was very unmotivated, but now I have some kind of freedom... I am very happy with my life right now and I hope the school will be fun (new girls and stuff )

See ya till next blog entry (probably next year :D )


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Hey everyone,

My name is Sean, and I play 25NL 6-max on Stars...or at least I did until yesterday, when a combination of bad beats, coolers, bad play and eventually supertilt saw me drop 16 buy-ins in one day and cripple my bankroll.

I've created this blog because I don't want anything like that to happen again. I consider myself to be a decent enough player, and I think I can beat 25NL quite comfortably if I play my A game, but my major problem is complacency, a lack of discipline and tilt. I'm hoping if I keep a record of my playing, especially one as public as this blog, it will force me to knuckle down and play well. So here goes...

Since my bankroll has dropped to ~400 thanks to yesterday, I've decided to be disciplined and drop down to 4-tabling 10NL until I get back to 20BI for 25NL. Hopefully, that won't take too long...


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http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j104/bxdiamondz2/1r1a-1.jpg




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http://www.liquidpoker.net/hand/id/1/user/23115

really thinking about quitting poker.

after my 15 buyin in few k hand downswing that kicked me from nl100 i cant win anymore.

after ~40k hands that i playd now on nl25 again i can really say i jsut cant win.


i mean my stats are ok, the players i lose against are horrible and i used to crush these stakes.

well now over 40k hands i barely can get a positive bb/100

i just dont know why. i know im better then 90% of the nl25 players. im not THAT bad. i grinded my way up from 5$ to over 2,5k while cashing out around 2k on the way up.dropped 1,5k in like 15k hands in the worst downswing ive ever seen.playd nl25. now i barely have enough to even play nl25(and i will NEVER EVER again drop down below that..). ofc i did cash out quite some cause i needed some quick money for some deals . but im almost broke online and dont plan to ever deposit.

i tried evrything from switching my rather aggressive game (~25/22)to more conservative stuff.
last 10k hands i playd 17/14/2,7 (even 54% won@shdwn )which resulted in amazing +1,7bb/100. with the loss of the great 100 hand session just now again breakeven.

i mean is it even possible to lose money/run breakeven at nl25 with such stats? with horrible nits and total donkfishes left and right how can i not win money playing totally basic abc poker(instead of the more fancy style i used when i crushed nl50 and nl100 at the beginning)

i jsut dont understand it. maybe i was just running amazingly hot for 300k hands and i dont know shit about poker. maybe im on a sick long bullshit swing.maybe im wrong and all these 70/5, 80/50 ,11/3 morons are way better then me.maybe the pokergod doesnt want me to play anymore. i dont know.

well if i have some more of these nice 100hands = -2buyin im broke and if no 1 wants to stake me(and why should anyone after not beeing able to make proft at nl25 for 40k hands...) or gimme free money for beeing the amazing guy i am im done with poker.


ya i know just another boring and stupid "zomg im losing!" post but well...

ps. if some read really till the end and has money on ps iwould like to transfer the ~70$ i have rotting on ftp for agesto stars. so if sum1 wants to help me out on that pls pm me. (ofc trusted member pls and i send 1st). because ftp is obv rigged against me(iirc i lost 200$ of my 250$ test deposit with aces which had amazing 23% win and ~ -210$ over 10k hands)


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ok so this is my first blog post..im by no means new to poker or this site..i just never created a blog here or posted many replys to threads..ive always just read them..

but i cant wait for this sunday as my poker accounts will be getting unlocked after i locked them out for a full 30 days..yup i locked my poker accounts out for 30 fuckin days. idk how i did it but i did...lets jus say i lost 650 bucks on tilt and felt like i needed a break. i still have 1k on my account so i will be grindin out 50nl. My goal for the month of october is to get 1k on pokerstars and ftp and have a winning month as a cash game player....


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anyone have cd key?


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My avatar works now so avril is looking over me on my tables, and i think my favourite canadian brought me some good luck too.

Started off great, then went shit, then recovered and then some, to end up +2 buyins over 1k hand. Pretty happy in general. Had a few puke hands, made a few bad plays but thats okay since im still trying to learn to play a more loose aggressive style of poker.

Atm i feel im having difficulty with the raising standards preflop in order to achieve around 25/22 stats, i dont get how i can do it without raising marginal hands OOP, or raising absolute junk like 82o on the button. Every hand that i can remotely play from button/cutoff im usually raising up if folded round to me ( any suited connectors/aces/suited one gappers pairs and high cards (TK+). I also worry about my aggression factor but the guys i play are just so aggressive i can check and let them bluff at me quite often.

I played football for like 5 hours yesterday so im totally exhausted, my legs ache like fuck since i havnt played all summer which meant that a marathon footy session was a bad idea but hey it was fun.

Anyway heres my stats for today and GL at the tables all.

http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/9358/monday24th1keb8.jpg


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I just attempted,and half succeeded 9 tabling on stars 6 max and mostly fast tables. It was intense as hell, got 700ish hands played in under an hour. I definitely won't be doing that again though, I'm up 2 buyins from the session, but I played pretty poorly, stacked off alot of times when I wouldn't have if I'd had more time to think, and played way looser and more aggressively. I shoved a 3 bet with aks against some 16/12 guy stupidly, and at the start of the session I misclicked and shoved jj overpair on the flop and lost to a set. I'd have thought that playing so many tables would naturally tighten me up, but it strangely had the reverse effect. Here's some stats and shit, these aggression factors are simply hilarious, though it's partially attributable to me raising the endless amount of minbets retards make on the flop.


http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6379/9tablingstatsjh5.png

Hopefully I can get back to a point where I can 8 or 9 table comfortably, I need to work back up to 6 consistently for now, that's about 500h/hour, and that's good enough for me. I'm still using a pirated copy of PT from when I started and was too poor to buy it, planning on buying it sometime this week as soon as I learn how to transfer my database and everything.


EMPEROR OF SPEW


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Hehehe so finally I managed to get my sorry ass in the green after a few good sessions for the last few days...

Sure there were bad beats,coolers etc,but I guess I didn't lose too much on em and when I won I'd win a buyin.

Managed to stay sharp,althou I did get a fever (again heh...),so after I took a nap from 8 to 10:30pm I woke up fresh played a 2 hour session which makes it today overall like 4-5 hrs pretty weak for me but I just don't feel like mass playing today idk why...

First my favorite hand from today which imo was pretty sick..

This was sweet...

I mean at river I didn't catch up really fast what I have lol 12 tabling now...

Big thanks for refering me that msging support can get you tables maximized,due to that I went back to my old nitty style 10.5 VPIP falling back to 9 and winnings going up.

http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/9464/ptstats2os7.png

Recently I have learned alot on tournarment strategy just by reading books and bumping into parts that refer to Tournarment strategy,so I'm thinking of giving some SnG or MTT a go after almost 2 months of not playing em.

Speaking of MTT's...Big congrats to Mig for winning WCOOP,I mean the guy is just insanely good and he deserves it,I really believe he will get more WSOP and WCOOP bracelets in the future,alot of them.

Luv ya all!

P.S. GL to Severin at Uni,love ya man.


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Okay since my Pokertracker database had problems due to partypoker
i am gonna post a pic.


ALl in all at the beginning of the month i felt like quitting Poker forever.
i ve run bad since i started in december 2006
and i ve donked off hundreds of dollars at SNGS.
I never made money from cashgame either.

I gave it one last try after seeing Deadman and Artanis
crushing the Nl 5 tables.
I watched their PT stats and thought omg
these newbes just start with Poker play a total no brain nit style 10 Vpip 6 PFR ... and make money while i play this game for almost a year and suck ass T_T ...

My Pride took over and i said to myself that i will just copy their nit style at NL10 and make money from now on
worked well and i decided to open up my game a bit and play from my experience.


love u 2 guys <3

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2792/finalresultssepttb4.png

I mostly played NL10 and NL25
at the end i tried some NL 50

This will also be my last blog post for a while.
I will come back and write here when i made enough money
to brag


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My desktop is all I need, I intend to trick it out with duel 20+inch LCD's..

This laptop can't connect to my free wireless from my house (off a neighboring connection), so I figure its better to just get rid of it.

Its in perfect shape and runs extremely well, its an acer.
You can see it here; (Can connect to cable / wireless / 56k)

any of you can buy it from me via a pokerstars.com transfer.
I bought it for $430 + S&H, I'm asking for $330 + S&H

I've used it twice.
Got it because I was planning on moving to Taiwan, and would need a poker machine. I decided to get a new apartment in my hometown though.
http://www.refurbdepot.com/productdetails2.cfm?Product_ID=5584

Let me know if you want it;


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Played about 3 hours of live yesterday. Had $110 to play with on a $1/$2 table. Seemed like a pretty regular crowd with 3 good players and a few laggy ones. I sat into a semi run of cards with KQ, 99, 22, QQ... hit a set with the 22's and doubled but lost money on the KQ and 99. Then hit the QQ and got raised PF by a passive guy and folded em after getting about 40 in the pot - he ended up having KK and hit a set on the flop. Then my cards got very very cold for about an hour and a half.... folded so much that everyone kept saying "Jesus play a hand" so I knew my image was tight. Finally hit AJo, played it strong and took it with a contb on the flop. Then floped top pair out of the blinds and took that. So I was starting to get more involved. But 3 hours had gone by and I wanted to go home and take my tiny profit of about 45 dollars with me, so I decided to leave on my next BB. Then this hand.

I picked up KQs UTG, and with my image starting to loosen up I thought it might be worth a try. Here's how it went down:

NewB ($155 in chips) - Bet $10
Villain 1 (to my left, ~$180 in chips) - Call $10
Villain 2 (2nd to my left, ~170 in chips) - Call $10
Villain 3 (Big Blind, ~$400 in chips) - Call $10

Flop (Pot - $41):
Jh 5d Qc

Villain 3 - Check
NewB - Bet $25
Villain 1 - Fold
Villain 2 - Hesitates for a bit then calls $25 (I start thinking a straight draw for him)
Villain 3 - Calls $25

Turn (Pot - $116):
Jh 5d Qc 2c

Villain 3 - Check
NewB - Bet $50
Villain 2 - Quickly calls $50
Villain 3 - Fold

River (Pot $216):
Jh 5d Qc 2c Ac

NewB - Check
Villain 2 - Slight pause, then gently bets $75 (he's almost all in now, like $20 left). His betting hand looks like it is shaking, just barely. After completing the bet he leaned back in his chair a bit, put both hands in his lap, and stared at the rail. I told him that he put me to a tough decision and he said "there's a lot of money in there" and when the dealer asked me for a decision the villain said "give him time, he's thinking".
NewB - Calls

Showdown:
Villain 1 - KcJc for nut flush
NewB - KsQs for a pair of queens

NewB = broke T_T

All my instincts told me to fold, and looking back at the hand his body language told me what he was holding the entire time, but I just didn't interpret it correctly. The shaking hand thing was huge but I wasn't sure whether his hand was shaking or if I was just seeing things, cause it was very very slight. The shaky hand thing is a tell from "Caro's Book of Tells" for when someone has a monster hand, so when I saw that I started thinking "shit he hit a straight." But then when he got so passive in his body language I started remembering how that's what bluffers do... but that's what bluffers do AFTER they make an aggressive bet, and he bet gently with his shaky hand... didn't put it all together properly at the table, just saw it clearly afterwards. Plus the things he was saying all fit with someone seeking a call (reminding me of the great pot odds, asking the dealer to give me more time). So there was lots of reason to fold despite the fact that it would leave me walking out of there w/ about $60 and a $50 loss for the night.

I ended up calling cause the pot odds were somewhere between 4-1 or 5-1, and I really wanted to see if my instincts were right (that stupid thing we do where we want to see if our reading skills are accurate). Seeing as this wasn't money from my real BR but the money I'd won when my stepdad staked me, I wasn't so worried about losing it. So I made a kind of stupid call, IMO.

Well, that ends my live poker run here in rica. Learned a lot more about live games though, which was good. I have much more difficulty paying attention in live games, but it is more fun with the social atmosphere.

My Mistakes:

1) First mistake I made was on the turn. I completely underbet the turn. I was torn on what to do. In my mind I was very worried about 2pair with someone holding JQ suited. I also did not see the new flush draw at all (I suck at knowing the pot size and reading the board cards for potential hands when playing live, just not used to doing it yet and focus on other things, while online it comes naturally). In my mind I thought "I need to make a defining bet here that makes a straight draw pay and also let's me know if I'm up against something real". Then I got a bit scared cause of my short stack and no BR to rebuy, plus I wasn't sure of the pot size, and I ended up betting $50. I really should have bet $75 to $90, but then again if I was going that big I should just push because it would leave me with barely any chips for the river. I was scared to bet too big and just easily pay off 2pair or a set though = What do you guys think? Is that a push situation?

2) After fucking up on the turn, I should have folded the river. All the signs pointed to him making a hand that beat me, and with the A completing a straight draw, creating a possible larger pair or turning AJ or A5 into 2 pair, and also completing the flush, I think I should have folded. The board was bad, his betting pattern made the board likely to help him, and all of his body language said he had a big hand.

Other than that I played w/out error all night. Tends to be pretty easy when you're folding 90% of your cards =)


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So I went out to play some live poker in downtown San Jose and could only find hookers, no poker players. I guess I was out too early, about 6pm. Only found one casino with a table and people sitting at it, but it was 2/5 with a $200 minimum buyin. Couldn't afford that and the place everyone kept telling me to go was a cab ride away which I didn't want to bother with, so I got online to play.

1) This first hand bugs me - I was pretty sure I was beat on the turn, but called it down anyway. Should I have dumped this? I hate this betting pattern where people raise PF, check/call the flop, then make a small bet on the turn.

Hand @ LP.net

2) This hand I realized I was vs an overpair by the turn. Was it stupid to stay so aggr?

Hand @ LP.net

3) Felt like I played this right, just got screwed.

Hand @ LP.net

4) This hand the opp was very tight/passive so I think his bet on the flop indicated a set or 2pair. I probably could have gotten more aggr earlier knowing that. by the end the pot was so big and he had so little that I had to showdown with him all in for sure, so I figured I might as well bet. Thought he probably had a boat =

Hand @ LP.net

5) Here I tried to take the flop with a contB, and when he called I put him on a low - medium pair. Hitting the jack I was almost sure I was the nutz. Think I just got unlucky here.

Hand @ LP.net

6) Thinks this was a bad double barrel... bad board for it?

Hand @ LP.net


Otherwise I came out really well tonight. Won 3.1 buyins too. Appreciate any input you guys wanna give on my losing hands here.


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