I have played 5K hands today which is a lot for me. Ususally my goal is to play somewhere around 1,75K - 2,5K hands per day. I have played a lot of £1/£2 the past month, which kinda sucks because the rake is higher but there is tons of fish at those tables so wtf can I do?
It was a pretty swingy day for me and it was extremely frustrating to be down 9 buyins in All-In Equity at worst. Ended up down 6 buyins in equity and down 10 buyins total at £1/£2. Fortunately I won 6 buyins at 2/4 so that comforts me a bit.
Have no idea how to post graphs in this blog. Maybe I learn how to in the future, who knows?
I spewed about 20 BI for no reason this month again.
No, this is not because I play too loose, and no, this is not because of FPS.
This is because I, much like Neilly and others, have a gambler switch in me and I still make plays that I would never ever ever ever do conciously when I am tired/tilted.
This month most of the spews account to me playing while having a flu (while I clearly agreed with myself that playing would be a very bad Idea), my body energy was at a total low and I went on multitabling again. Sigh.
/End negative.
+When I don't tilt I and I play 4-6 tables own/crush/destroy anything less than NL100 (which I didn't play yet. Super strict table selection is the cause of this from the most part.
+Worked on my HU as I start my own tables
I saw about 14 episodes of NL Grinder and 2 of NL Grinder Pro, 2 HU vids, one vd review with him nd Krantz and some theory vids.I plan on watching mathematics of holdem also from Wilt this month.
+Got some coaching pre-agreed, and I plan on taking shots at NL100 with the help of NL200 -NL400 regs during coaching sessions.
+My BR got a surreal boost
I started the month borderline busto with $400 at NL10
Bottom Line: Best month ever so far in regards to
-My skill improvement
-Total $ wise results
Best month since I started working in regards to:
-Cash game Winnings
-Tilt control (Believe it or not, but the roughly 20BI I tilted out for no reason is THE LEAST I tilted during a month since I started working.
6bb/100 NL50 pre-job winner being stuck at NL10-NL25 = thats a lot of buy ins burned trust me -.-)
December Goals
-Reach 4k
-Dont tilt
-Get the coaching going
It probably doesn't matter, nor is it likely anyone would actually check my blog for free info, but I don't really want to show my stats and showdown lines public just in case.
First and foremost, no I didn't do it to become a poker pro and I have no intentions of becoming a poker pro until I hit the goals I set out at the beginning which is a $10k poker roll and 6-9 months of living expenses in the bank.
Over the past few months I've had a lot of close friends and family say to me "you haven't been the same lately." Initially I just kind of brushed it off but lately I thought more and more about it and it's true. I've been very negative. Immediately I thought it could be poker doing it to me as I haven't had the success I want from it, but I've been playing for over a year and to be honest poker is more of a release for me than anything else. So I started evaluating all parts of my life. From my friends, going out, my hobbies, work, and poker. I realized the only thing that has changed in the last few months is my job.
The industry I work in is cell phone sales. It's based in a retail environment and it is notoriously known as the worst part of retail. Customers come into the store in a pissed off mood about 95% of the time, because let's face it the cell phone companies are just a bunch of shady bastards are screwing everybody, ldo. I worked in this industry for 3 years and when I first started it was very lucrative so the money kept me silent and I came to work and grinded it out. Every year the every company restructures their commission pay and every year you make a little bit less. I went from making $70k, to $60k, and to this year maybe $45-48k. All the while I'm still taking the same verbal abuse from customers on a daily basis and getting paid less and less. It just didn't make sense anymore.
Back in May I was transfered to a new store. I went from working in a store in Rancho Bernardo (one of the richest areas of San Diego) to Mission Valley (one of the most poor and ghetto areas just south of here in San Diego). Being that I'm a white guy working in a store with a customer base primarily consisting of Black, Asian, and Mexican customers things did not go well. I've had customers straight up not want to be helped by me because of my color and wait for one of my non-white co-workers to assist them. I didn't want to believe it at first but it was happening. It began to hurt my commission because of it and even when I would help some of them they would treat me very poorly and I would just have to take it for a measly $12.70 an hour. It's just not worth it.
I put my happiness above anything else and getting shit on for crappy pay is just not worth it to me anymore. I have living expenses saved for 4-6 months so I can take some time off and think about what I want. My main goal is to get back in school which would have been impossible with this job because of the swingy hours of retail. In the mean time I'm going to update my resume and look around online at potential thinks I could see myself doing. While I do this I'll be grinding NL100 and seeing where that takes me.
The feeling I experienced when I woke up this morning was awesome. I felt so free. I just put the top down in my convertible and drove to the beach to sit and think about the future and it's the best I've felt in months. I went to the gym had an awesome work out because I didn't feel rushed. I'm very excited for what the future has in store. If anyone has any part-time jobs that they are satisfied with and recommend for a college going person please let me know.
Rich
Cliff notes:
- Quit my job because it has had extreme negative impacts on my life
- Have living expenses for 4-6 months saved up, will take rest of December off to figure out what I want to do. Will use free time to play more poker
- No intentions of playing poker professionally until specific goals are met
- Anxious to get back in school and find a part-time job that is stable
- Excited for what possibilities the future holds and feel relieved
I just looked at my facebook page a couple of days ago and today got around to getting it a little up to date. Basically I pretty much just ignored all the old messages, to make room for new ones. Since I am too lazy to go through all of them. And while doing this I realized how many people from highschool/college and even my family i haven't talked to in forever. I hadn't even taken the time to log on facebook to see they had commented on my stuff and sent me messages. I felt kinda dumb because its so easy to log on for like 5 minutes every now and then and see what everyone is up to. Say some hello's and get some updates.
I had a slightly losing month in september (-1.5k), a slightly winning month in october (+2k) and made about 11k give/take this month which was nice. I didn't play online too much, I played around 50k hands but that is skewed since I was 24tabling so its not as much as it seems. And played a bunch live. but this was slightly a lazy month. I think I am up around 120k for the year so far BUT it might be anywhere from 110k-125k since i dont keep great records tbh :[
This year has been a tough, not as tough as last year but tough. Last year I had a lot of feast or famine stretches where my confidence would be totally crushed, and then I would have good results and then crushed again and it really hurt my growth. This year i started out with more of a grinder mentality with SNE being my goal but that created some problems around march/april where I felt i was really getting left behind. But then I had some epiphanies and in about 3 months from june to august I took more leaps and bounds towards getting good than I had in the previous 18 months. a TON of things started clicking and my feel for the game finnally started taking over. Before I was so mechanical and nitty, but I finnally started getting past that and started doing some exploiting.
Then I had a tough stretch in september, and with my new founds powers and lack of experience with them. I started to lose control, I became a station and a bunch of leaks happened. It was like my game was bursting with this energy it wasn't ready for. So since then I had been really doubtting myself for a little bit, as the downswing and breakeven stretch there after took a toll on my confidence. But now I feel like I am finnally plugging those leaks and more than that i KNOW what they are AND i know how to fix them. I had all these conflicting ideas and things to experiment with at the same time that I needed some serious calibration and understanding of them. And now I finally am settling and I feel truly better than ever right now. December I am going to pretty much finish out the year on a relaxed note and more just focus on my game. But the fire is back and I am really confident again.
I took a really relaxed approach this month, a bunch of days where I did pretty much nothing. Its wierd I love trying hard and working hard at poker, but outside of poker I have a hard time not doing nothing. I sit and watch TV. I saw season 1 of fringe this month, season 1 of criminal minds. season 1 of trueblood, season 8 of family (? it was the latest one but i forget). I finished the shield and I am going to be continuing with all the other series I mentioned as I liked them all. I also bought the boxset for the wire since I saw it and was planning on watching it anyway. And its like 100$ cheaper than buying it season by season. Oh btw if i didn't mention it before, i always buy the seasons except on rare occations. I love collecting them sadly sometimes i get shitty ones.
NO one watch the Sarah Conner Cronicals it was so insanely bad. same with firefly, and frankly I think 24 blows too, except for season 1. If it was called 7, i wouldn't mind it, but when the big conspiracy kicks in it just becomes boring.
Anyway guys ENJOY LIFE, STUDY THE GAME, MAKE GOOD FRIENDS AND LEARN. Open your nit minds and poker will open her legs for you
God I've been having a hard time, and I feel like I've definitely run bad for the duration of the month. The last 7 days or so (36k hands onwards) I have been feeling pretty good though. I do need to keep working on not making any tilty plays.. just took a look at my biggest losers this month and am like wtf. Really disappointed in myself with that.
I have a small prop bet with the cleaner, some things are still tentative but I think we're doing $500 on who plays the most hands from the 4th - the 18th. PoorUser the Magnificent is escrowing for us. The prop probably isn't thread worthy unfortunately
I planned on playing like 40K hands this month and only put in about 7,500. School work has been insane but winter break is coming in a few weeks. These next 2 months will be my last shot at getting back up to NL 50 again. If I do not succeed, I will stick to just messing around with poker and not taking it too seriously, just a hobby.
Overall my plan will be to play 2 2-3 hour sessions a day. This will include playing and then immediately reviewing my session to see what I did that worked or what was helping me suck. I don't plan on using a stop loss. This is because I tend to play what I have been told is a very high variance form of poker and I plan on toning that down.
I plan on playing 4-6 tables of NL 5 to get back into the poker mindset, then if that goes well I will increase tables as long as I feel I am still playing well.
Once I hit 20 buy-ins for NL 10 I will play 4 tables 6 max and to once again see how it goes.
With the 2 above limits I will probably play some small guarantee tournaments just to keep from getting bored with one type of game. This will also include PLO 10, that has been a good wind down game for me recently.
I would like to play NL 25 once I hit $550, that way I will have been playing well or one a nice heater. I plan on playing 6 max NL 25 to ultimately get up to NL 50.
The next 3 weeks are going to be pretty busy with finals so my plan will begin around mid December when I get home.
If anybody out there wants to exchange MSNs and talk poker, PM me and hopefully we can help each other out or whatever.
the last 2 months have gone a lot better though. i think ive fixed some leaks in my game and my tilt control has definitely gotten better. i used to have decent tilt control, but i really broke down this summer and got tilted by every little thing. things are turning around though.
Just completed my first 20 bi downswing everrrrrrrrrrrrr! Which means I clearly got carried away with the whole bluffing thing. Works great with a good image. But not so much when people see you get sucked out on in massive pots. Anyways I estimate I should only be down 10-12 buyins and the rest was probably bad play due to bad bluffs with bad image and being too loose oop which happens when u dont lose for 3 weeks. On both of my -10 bi days the 10 bi were all lost in a span of about 250 hands or less. The rest of the session had little variance. So I am clearly not adjusting my bluffing frequency correctly when my image is bad. Also im losing some massive deepstacked pots where im 300bb+ and so far I have had the best hand each time but cant get the job done. I just need to stay mindful of my image after losing a big pot like that and probably just nit it up ceasing any and all bluffing operations.
The good news is I do not even feel the slightest temptation to move up stakes and try to get even. In fact just the opposite. I feel compelled to play 25nl until I start winning and feeling confident again even though im still well rolled for 50nl.
Just a minor bump in the road. No big deal. I will go over my play and accept what happened like a mature adult and not like a spoiled child.
Spent all day today moving - insane how my entire life fits into the back of a uhaul... and a small one too, haha.
Was the biggest move I've ever made as I spent most of my "independent" life floating from apartment to apartment with just my bed, desk, computer and clothes. The desk was just a folding table so I could fit everything except the bed in my car, and I'd just borrow a friends truck to move the bed. This was my first uhaul experience and it went quite well.
I've been living in a 2 bedroom townhouse with my girl for the past year and a half. It was pretty big with a living room, separate kitchen with a small dining area, and bathroom on the first floor. The second floor had a full bathroom and 2 well sized rooms, one which we used for my "poker office". Then the basement had a lot of space and a washer/dryer. All for $625 a month. Sick value. I posted pics of it in a past blog.
The only "bad" thing was the thin walls and the rowdy neighbors. At $625 a month you can imagine the type of people we got living near us. Cops were called to our townhouses quite often and there were a lot of interesting altercations that went on. But also a lot of bad vibes - the first neighbors we had fought like crazy and the girl had to call the cops on the guy quite a bit. If they weren't fighting the guy was having never ending parties but the parties were just a bunch of 20 something guys who didn't graduate HS and just sat around drinking, smoking and screaming about the good old days.
We didn't move out cause of the neighbors though - we moved out due to travel. Asian travel. Yessiree bob. See in 2 weeks we're starting the "Family Xmas tour", an annual occurrence. We fly to Washington DC for a week and then Michigan for another week to visit family on both sides. We'll get back at the end of the month and then in mid January we fly to Thailand for a backpacking journey into Cambodia and maybe Laos, Vietnam and Burma.
So since we're not gonna be around much before we leave we figured it's best to move out now and save money on rent by crashing at my dads place for a bit. 2 weeks here, 2 weeks on the Xmas tour, then 2 more weeks before we head out on our Asian adventure. Seems like a really short amount of time left in the USA to me but I'm looking forward to every second of the next few months.
We plan to be in Asia for at least 1 month, at most 5 months. After that we'll come back to CO and find a new place and jobs and so on. Hopefully I'll be able to just grind and find a part time thing like I was doing before. The part time gig is nice for the mental stability of knowing money is coming in even if I have a downswing month, but it also helps deal with that feeling of not contributing to the world and just being alone, isolated and hermitish in my room staring at a computer all day by myself. Interacting with other humans face to face is good.
So I'm really tired and for some reason that has lead me to write a longer blog than I intended, cause my mind keeps wandering. The point I was trying to make is that we moved and I'm exhausted. I wanted to play poker but I don't let myself play tired anymore, so I guess this ranting blog will have to do.
Ok so sometimes at my job I take the supervisor calls when we get enraged customers (I do tech support). I usually get major laughs with these calls because they are mad about not having a computer for two weeks or something. OR they are retarded and run a business off of one laptop. But this lady called in about a Nintendo Wii that doesn't work. Her warranty contract however has been expired for almost a full year. She said that the reason she didnt call sooner was that she had complications with a pregnancy in which she had to be hospitalized for months. At this time she said that her fiance left her with the kids and split. Then she says her child was very sick and couldnt leave the house for a long time. Then the house got flooded and they lost everything.
Now I told her that it was expired and is no longer covered by the plan and she began crying hysterically over a 75$ repair bill that she couldnt pay. She says that she had to buy her kids winter coats and she cant afford one herself. And that they will have nothing under the tree this year. She told me that if I deny this I will steal christmas from her kids. She asked if I would like to tell her kids that they wont get anything for christmas. All the while keep in mind she is crying hysterically. I of course have no choice but to flat out deny it. Normally im a cold hearted bastard but I think she was definitely being sincere and not making up random bs like most of our customers.
Thinking of it afterwards though I actually began to feel guilty that im going to go home and play online poker throwing 75 around like nothing, when this hardworking lady has had the shit kicked out of her by life and can barely afford to feed her kids. I felt like maybe I should have shipped her 75 in the christmas spirit or something. I didnt think of it at the time, and its clearly not my place to do so... Nor could I even do so now if I wanted to because I have no clue what her name was or anything.
Will be starting this prop bet tomororw morning between 10-12AM eastern and hope to play 50k+ hands in a 24 hour period and show a profit. I am putting up about 13k of my own money in hopes of winning 30k! I will be playing all hands at NL25 on PokerStars and am very confident in my chances here. I feel like I have a good game plan going into all of this and should be able to be victorious. I will post daily updates on my blog and in 2+2 thread tomorrow and hopefully set a new world record for most hands come Tuesday Morning.
Thank you for the support from the LP community! Alot of nice people out there!
Any nl100 for a small prop bet?by Night2o1, November 29
Wondering if anyone wants to have a 1-2 week prop bet at the beginning of dec. Put something like $500 on who plays the most hands at a given limit in that timespan.. figured it could be fun as a little motivator.
Anyone interested? Not really looking for someone who regularly like 16 or 24 tables cuz I'm not looking to just give away money
Cliffs for last 3 months:
Complete failure going for elite
Won 500 fpp sat to 10k fpp sat to EPT London, binked that, 3rd lvl mincash at EPT, ship 13.5k.
9.7k in 2 WCOOP events
Didn't play at all for like 6 weeks. Broke totally even when I did.
Realized not hitting milestones is incredibly stupid.
Realized I'm REALLY behind for hitting the 600k one (432k atm lol)
Grinding like I never have before
Running good.
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