I know I said I wouldn't make a blog post again until I was rolled for NL100. However, this time I feel that I could not resist. I realized today that I need this blog. I need people in the poker world to talk to. To sympathize with, to empathize with.
My last blog entry was back in February I believe. From that time I've been bouncing back and forth between NL25 and NL50, mostly playing NL50. While I have times I feel like I'm starting to have success, I have days like this that just crush my soul, bring out the worst qualities in me, and just down right make me depressed.
I know I can beat this game and when I'm at these tables I feel an edge over the competition. I don't even know what to write. I'm sure it's all been said before. I'm just sick of running in circles. I can't give up though.
A new pressure has been put on my shoulders. It's 95% certain I'll lose my job within the next 2-3 months. I have enough saved to live for 8-10 months but I'm really going to look to poker for some income while I job search. I've been playing more and studying more. I've really begun to feel like poker is what I would want to do for a living anyway. I have a passion for nothing but money. That was a problem I had when looking for a major in school.
But anyway on to today. I loaded $600 onto PS to take advantage of the 20% reload bonus. My intentions were to just hit the bonus and then withdraw the $600 like many people do. Well I am here today to tell you that over ~1300 hands I lost $618. I didn't stand a chance. I really need to do a 3 buy-in stop loss. I'll admit I tilted a little bit, although I did stay quite focused and slowed my game down and took extra time to think. I still should have made a stoploss.
Today I acted in ways I had not acted since I was a juvenile playing Starcraft. I was shouting at my computer, cussing. I even punched my wall. I took a break to get myself together. Had a long conversation with a girl I've been talking to and went for a drive to the ocean to just think and cool off.
Between my this job crisis, my grandpa being hospitalized, and this poker circle it's just been too much lately. I can't quit though. Anytime I've ever quit at anything in life success has been just around the corner. I try not to quit at anything any more as I know giving up was something I used to be bad at.
Anyway, if you read this I truly appreciate it. If not, it felt good just to get it in words and out there. I'm looking for some more poker friends so if you have MSN and would like to talk poker, life, or just anything feel free to add me. MSN: ez4utonv@hotmail.com
so i just woke up a few hours ago, just in time for the bruins to sweep les lâches in the NHL playoffs.
anyways, last night I realized I play too much poker because I had a bizarro dream about Nazgul and Raszi, whom I don't even know whatsoever in real life. It was one of those things where I don't even know what they look like but I know it was them in the dream because of context etc.
I rarely remember dreams too so when I do remember one it freaks me out. Anyways, so check this dream out.
I get off a plane in some middle-eastern city, like, Beirut or Baghdad or something. I show up at some car auto-body shop and Raszi shows up and is like "yo me and nazgul borrowed 120k from you man" and I was like "dude come on! you can't just do that!" and they were like "nah it's cool we'll pay you back."
So I went to a computer and checked and it said like "120k loaned to Raszi and Nazgul" and I was all bummed out about it because they didn't ask they just borrowed it without letting me know until I got off the plane in the middle east. So then I go back to the auto body shop and find Raszi again and I'm like "yo Raz, what the hell did you need the 120k for anyways" since I cooled off a little bit. He was like "you really want to know?!?!" and got all excited and pulled back this curtain in the auto body shop and behind it was like a massive spaceship looking thing. Nazgul popped out of the drivers seat of it and is like "yo nolan! this shit gets 25 trillion horse power! sick right!!! we'll pay you back soon!"
I shook my head, walked down some middle-eastern street, and woke up.
Weird, huh.
p.s. i went through HEM and looked at my last 25 flips (AK vs QQ JJ TT etc and vice versa) that were all in preflop at 3/6 6m and 9m, and I'm 2 for 25. I don't think I've flipped worse than that in my life, and would be surprised if it ever happened again. Good news is I'm still somehow slightly in the positive. Anyone check out their longest flip cold streak? Bet there's some way better than mine.
ok so im looking into places my plan is to get there 5/28 for start of wsop, then through out the month eventually find a permanent fixture.
is anyones down to get a place for a month does anyone in that neighborhood want to house me (i will pay of course) any ideas or interest please let me know !
Today was fucked up lol. I lost a few big pots right away in the session and found myself stuck 4 buyins. I was thinking fuck this is going to be a long day agian lol. I ended up 15 tabling it for the rest of the day and managed to make a decnet profit for the day. Pretty nice upswing to get out of the red. I wish I started swinging up and stayed up lol.
Hey again. Seems I'm getting "addicted" to blogging about my success or lack thereof again, this was one of the reasons I had my blog deleted the first time, I spent so much time merely posting brags or beats and it's all a waste of time and space, but here I am doing it again.
Anyway, for the first time in about 2 years I had to move down limits due to losing money. I've moved down limits before, but it was never because I was losing at a limit, it was always because I made a withdrawal, leaving myself with too little of a bankroll to play a limit, but this time it's because I continued to lose at $3/$6 to the point where my bankroll is down to $12k. I'm using 30 buyins to move up, then move down a limit if I drop to 20 buyins at that limit, so I had to move down to $2/$4. It served as a bit of a reality check to me, I haven't been winning in poker the last 50k or so hands I've played, including just before I took a 4 month break and I'm beginning to think that, although I have been running below average, it's not just bad luck. I have to admit that I'm doing a lot wrong, and so I approached $2/$4 with a little bit of a different mindset, a refreshed attitude and I started to have more success again. I've been playing 6 tables instead of 4, playing a bit tighter preflop, making extra effort to adjust to preflop situations where players are overly aggressive, overly tight or shortstacked players behind me.
I have built back up to $18k and will be playing $3/$6 again later today, hopefully I'll be able to maintain this surge through $3/$6 and bounce back to the games where I feel I should be playing, $5/$10 and $10/$20.
My graph with showdown/non showdown winnings used to have me positive in both showdown AND non showdown winnings, but since restarting over this time my showdown winnings have been TERRIBLY negative. This is because I've been running bad overall and playing bad a lot too. Since moving down to $2/$4 some 8k hands ago or so, my showdown winnings have stabilised at approximately breakeven, which is a good start.
I had posted in the last blog that I would make another video, and I did exactly that. 3 times. However every single time I had a problem with Camtasia saving it, or producing it, despite changing the version of Camtasia and adjusting settings. I effectively wasted about 5 hours trying to make one and still don't have a video to show for it, so I'm not gonna bother. 2 out of the 3 videos I felt were really pretty good too, so I'm really disappointed, but at the end of the day I'm not gonna spend my time making videos that won't even save when I could be playing for myself at the stakes I normally play. I've tried to help people out a lot both back in the StarCraft days on TeamLiquid and here both by videos (I've posted 2 or 3 total) and on the forums so I feel like I've done enough for the community anyway. Sorry this video didn't work out, hope you enjoyed the $2/$4 one as that's gonna be the last one I make most likely.
Well I spent 10 days in Vegas. Got hooked up w/ a nice place at Caesars Palace by an old friend of mine who is a huge baccarat baller now. I'm not one to write long stories or anything, so I'll bullet point the significant things
1. Had Sushi Roku (~$100 a person) with my friend, the waiter thought we were gay lovers I think :|. Either way, food was awesome.
2. A bunch of friends from home came to vegas, we went to Club XS at the Encore, which was absolutely ridiculous (ly awesome), it's so huge and it has a nice ass pool in the middle of it, surrounding blackjack tables lolol.
3. The next day we all went to Club Rain at the Palms, which was a much shittier club but Above and Beyond played (which is why I went), and while I'm not a huge trance fan, I like A&B and it was pretty cool there.
4. Played at CP, Venetian, Bellagio, and MGM, 2/5 and 5/10. Ended up winning about ~2k on the trip which, considering I played like 30 god damn hours, is really really shitty (especially considering I didn't play online much during this trip, and missed out on 2 Friday nights where I usually make 2k alone online )
5. Got food poisoning from Caesars Palace room service. Was knocked out with a high fever for like over 24 hours. Never bothered to complain because I was too lazy
6. My busto friend I went with put $30 on the number 2 on Roulette as we were leaving CP on the last day and binked it for $1000 and some change.
Overall I think I was getting a bit bored with the city maybe a week in, I can't imagine living here for like 2 months without succumbing to my inner degen (Only played table games twice, came up $10 on blackjack booyah). Having said that, I'm still going back in like 2 months or so when all my online internet poker homies come for WSOP and I'll be playing more table games and just having fun (not 21 til August). I think that's probably mandatory for anyone staying at Vegas for a while, is that you have friends to hang out with - for the 2 weekends I was there my friends from home came so it was like hanging out with them, only in a much wilder scene.
The best thing I got out of the trip though was that in a way I sort of "found myself". It really put things into perspective...on the 2nd day we were partying at XS and my buddy who is 20 also was like "dude...who else does this?" (meaning compared to our peers who are studying for midterms, working min wage jobs, etc. we were out in vegas underage partying and ballin, etc.). Then on the night we drove back (it's like a 3 hour drive back to LA), we saw a couple stranded in the desert with their engine broken down, and it made me think wow, here I am having the time of my life as a 20 year old kid, going home in a nice BMW (although I hate BMWs) with thousands of dollars in my pocket, etc. how on earth can I EVER complain about my life?
So yeah I hope I didn't come off as too arrogant, and I know I suddenly broke into story mode even though I said I wouldn't write a story, but somehow the sick degeneracy of the city was able to bring out a very nice, humbling perspective for me. From that, I think I somehow have a better sense of what I want to achieve, how I'm going to achieve it, etc. So in the end, I thought it was very cool that on the drive to Vegas, I was filled with anticipation (to gamble, to have fun, etc.), and as I was coming back from Vegas, I still had a great sense of anticipation, only this time for my immediate future, my goals, etc.
I stupidly spewed 4BI in the morning NL10, during 25minutes. (Why do I play anyway? Always in sports, school, university, I can't bloody focus before 11am... but I always play...and lose. And when I play 30/28 NL10 it even multiplies. I was not going by equity but by hope)
Than I saw my luck is running out and I am getting tired, so I got back to my 14table NL5 Grind.
And guess what, although I try not to, my openness at NL10 affects my 14tabling as well. I ran 21/20 instead of the usual 17/13 and its actually a better approach as its 200bb. But now I know from NL10 what to do with those tiny SC and One gappers, and I am no longer taking free money from only from the mid-stacks, but with the suck out hands I also stacked the nitty regs here and there.
So i've taken a hiatus from the poker life and focused now on working to save up a bankroll. I've been doing delivery for Pizzeta, an Italian restaurant and so far since April 6th I've earned about $500 including working on the weekend doing casino night for an entertainment company and not including 2 more weekly paychecks that are owed to me for another $300-400. The job isn't bad and i don't mind taking a break from poker.
I've still been playing online mtt's on full tilt in my free time so between all of this i plan on just saving up a solid roll.
That's something i've never done before and in the past i've always built my bankroll from taking shots with a couple hundred bucks at 1-2 nl. I like this new approach as I know within me that once I have a solid 10k or even 5k bankroll that I will most likely never go broke again. I thought to myself, what would it be like if i just worked for 6 or 9 months and didn't play poker and just saved every dollar. I've been having poker dreams of what it would be like to have a solid bankroll and be able to play 5/10 and 10/20nl and learn with the game.
I think that's why it was necessary for me to take a break from school and to put in those hours at the 1-2 and 2-5 tables, just so i can prove to myself whether or not this is for me. Even though i went bust, all that time and all those hands did not go to waste. They hold real intangible value.
In the past though, working for me has been like pulling teeth. Mostly because the jobs were awful and i was miserable but with this new goal in mind i think it will give me the motivation i need to actually make this happen.
This is my first blogpost and first official post on this site. I was a spectator for a long time and finally registered. I hope noone will be offensive to me when my first post is like that.
I was introduced to the poker when I saw some advertisement on site back when I was 17yr old and started playing for playmoney chips on Stars for like months. After some time when it started to be legal thing for me I took a no deposit bonus on Titan and made some money. Next step was ongame network (betsafe) where I was until now. I made my roll up to about 500 and played 5usd SnGs (non-turbo). I tried some shots to 10usd which kinda destructed my bankroll and then I tilted alot because of it on cash and tournaments when I had no clue what I was doing. I started playing 5ones again and I made a good rebuild but then stupid cashout and cash again and it all went wrong again.
10usd sngs were just too much for me and now I realized I was kinda in a rush to be play so high buyins (for me). I didn't play too much on 5 ones so I lack some skill.
Here is my graph from sharkscope on betsafe using nickname gust1k - this graph shows all of my sngs with the 10usd bi downsing and tilting afterwards + then rebuilding. http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7994/cely.png
Tho I have some bankroll on ongame I would like to start playing on Stars too. But I don't want to move rest of my banroll from site to site I started thinking about staking.
Is there any chance to get staked on Pokerstars? I was thinkink about it for some time now and I would like to play 6.50 turbo's (260 bucks = 40bi), if that is too much 3.40 (136 bucks = 40bi) would be fine also.
I was thinking about some deal of exact number of SnGs and then paying back ammount of stake + half (or more) of the profit. Too bad there is noone that could vouch for me. If anyone is interested please feel free and post here on PM.
So as stated in previous blog entries my goal was to reach a bankroll of 10k by the end of the year. I have had my ups and downs throughout this process with my main focus being on moving up the cash game ladder. I did this pretty rapidly and I would consider myself a nl50 reg and ive also put in about 20k hands at nl100. I started running bad at nl100 and my BR which was once at 3k is now at about 1.5k. I have decided to try to make the switch to becoming a tournament regular for a few reasons, tell me how many of you agree with them and think it wise or not.
reasons:
1. Cash games at nl100+ are very competitive and I feel my edge is small.
2. I feel that my buy in for a $10 tournament is worth about $50 and I do not feel that my nl100 could be sustained at anything over 1ptbb/100 at my current skill level.
3. In tournaments I am confident that I am the best player at the table and in cash games i dont always feel that way.
4. I believe there is more free money to be had in tournaments than there are in cash games at the moment.
I am not claiming any of these statements to be facts, please tell me which of these 4 reasons you guys disagree with and I will try to reevaluate them. I've been watching MTT videos for a while now and the style of play is just a lot more appealing to me than nl cash. I've been playing around 8 tournies a night, usually risking about $100 in total. Last night I had a small cash in one of the daily doubles, won 2 Fifty Fifty seats(played in the Fifty Fifty), and Final Tabled the $10 rebuy. This is my biggest tournament cash so far, I know its nothing much to most of you but it felt pretty good and confirmed a lot of my thoughts about making the switch. So i will probably update this blog more often with tourny results.
I know I didn't have to go All-in, but these masculine shoves are just awesome+ there is no way he'd fold an over pair the way I was playing
Submitted by : LemOn[5thF]
PokerStars Game #27378627164: Holdem No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2009/04/22 22:27:20 CET [2009/04/22 16:27:20 ET]
Table Emma II 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: dvolik ($9 in chips)
Seat 2: sartarius78 ($12.25 in chips)
Seat 3: Nerice ($10 in chips)
Seat 4: DoC.LemOn ($61.05 in chips)
Seat 5: assendelft1 ($10.45 in chips)
Seat 6: killaherni ($10 in chips)
killaherni: posts small blind $0.05
dvolik: posts big blind $0.10
dvolik: checks
DoC.LemOn: bets $1
assendelft1: raises $1.60 to $2.60
dvolik: folds
DoC.LemOn: raises $58.15 to $60.75 and is all-in
assendelft1: calls $7.55 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($50.60) returned to DoC.LemOn
Showdown DoC.LemOn: shows (a straight, Three to Seven)
assendelft1: shows (a full house, Sixes full of Fives)
assendelft1 collected $20.20 from pot
Summary Total pot $21.25 | Rake $1.05
Board
Seat 1: dvolik (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 2: sartarius78 folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 3: Nerice folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 4: DoC.LemOn showed and lost with a straight, Three to Seven
Seat 5: assendelft1 (button) showed and won ($20.20) with a full house, Sixes full of Fives
Seat 6: killaherni (small blind) folded before Flop
...My luck clearly ran out, I go play some nitty NL5 ;o
playing the gukpt leg 4 main event in manchester on friday, buy in is £1060, have sold 10 percent to F4zi and 15 percent to Artanis. wanted to sell 35 percent of my action so if anyone is interested in buying up that last ten percent £106 which is about 160 dollars send me a private message or chat to me on msn ro_bo_robinson@hotmail.com
If you have a spare moment please do me a favor and take a screenshot of your poker set-up when you're playing at least a few tables. Right now I play 2 tables of Omaha at pokerstars. I'm going to be looking to start 4 tabling. I like the tile tables at pokerstars but I think I have a problem with my resolution because the text doesn't come in very clear. I'm using a 19" LCD wide monitor. Any tips/help is appreciated!
I try the best I can to stay balanced and in the middle of things and keep an open mind but in all honesty I do lean more on the right side when it comes to politics/economics and therefore in my principles of law. The traditional right is where my personal views and attractions come from and I'd be a fool not to know this. I'm sure some of u just duhhed =D
Anyhow the point of that background and me pointing it out is because I want to fully say that regardless of my tendencies, from the little I have seen of the Hannity and Colmes show (I don't have have cable) I don't like Hannity at all and actually prefer Colmes if for no other reason in just his way of handling argument and debate vs Hannity who seems like a pilled up nutjob that I want to instantly tune out.
I realize after tonight I had found myself saying this silently before *shrug*
This is a great recent podcast of Colmes interviewing Ron Paul that ups my respect of Colmes as a reporter and hits upon current issues. I wish we had more reporters like Colmes out there on both sides. He doesn't use the uncontrollable steamroll tactic that should rarely if ever be found in a reporters repertoire in the first place but seems an ever so increasingly common thing in mainstream media.
Even if drama is the reason a lot of reporters were probably hired in the first place I don't waste my time watching the ones that do that more than I have to. From what I've seen Colmes picks his spots fast and concise allowing the one being interviewed time to talk and maybe hang themselves in retort. Respect.
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(a full house, Sixes full of Fives)
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