October 2007 online results

The poker Gods hate me...

First hand at a new table online I get pocket aces... against a player who flops quads against me. Ugh...

Gut shots and sick calls

Well tonight's home game was pretty quiet, played only 3 handed. It was all going really well until the following hand happened (2 hands before the end of the night too!)

I am on the button and look at KJ offsuit, so I raise it to 3BB and the SB calls. Flop comes 9 J 3 rainbow. SB bets and I call. Turn comes a J. SB checks, I bet and SB pushes all in. I go in the tank for a while and end up calling. SB flips 33... and I lose a huge pot.

What pisses me off in this story is that I thought about it for a while and got stuck on 2 hands I was thinking that could beat me (AJ and J9). Figuring that either needs the case Jack, I call. I never even considered pocket 9s or pocket 3s!!! I guess I had a few too many beers/baileys/ports... I don't mind losing a hand and I can't even say with absolute certainty that I would have folded this hand if I had thought about it. I just hate the fact that, like a fscking noob, I called without seeing the obvious hands that could beat me!!! Oh well... let the steam go away and learn from it I guess...

On a good note... tonight was a gut shot fest for me. I seriously got at least 6 gut shots the whole night. This caused in me an epiphany : the way I play gut shot is a big leak in my game. I guess that's the good that came out of the evening... I lost a few bucks but discovered a pretty blatant leak. Now time to analyze hand histories and go back to the drawing board! Let's fix that!!

Hello my name is Nic and I'm a skate-aholic

Well I've made a big mistake last week which really took its toll on my poker playing. I fell victim to a new addiction. I bought EA's skate for the Xbox 360. That game is friggin addiction, I find myself playing for hours telling myself "just this one challenge and then I stop!". Of course after that challenge I forget to stop and move on to another challenge... and so on and on and on...

Anyway, last night I managed to put down the Xbox controller for a while and went to play a bit of poker. I have to admit that I was a bit scared having not played in almost a week. If you've read my old posts you know that most of the time after a short break my first few sessions are... not optimal to say the least. So I went and sat down at my usual stake pretty much expecting a rocky session. My goal was to minimize my downtime "tilt" and try to bring in a short profit or at the very least break even. I did not play very long but to my surprise I managed to get in the proper mindset right away and I picked up where I had left about a week ago. Once again everything seemed to click and my decision making was as good as I remember it being for quite some time. I ended up playing about 115 hands and raking in about $2 of profit, finally putting my bankroll above $70. My goal is still to just bring it up to $100 to climb up in stakes.

As I've said in my last post, I have decided to adhere to a strict bankroll management formula to climb up in stakes. I just figured that posting it here would help me keep it in mind and at the same time kinda make me accountable for it? I know it sounds silly since pretty much no one reads this blog but hey! If it works for me! ;)

So here it is :

Micro-stakes : Go up at 10 buy in, go back down at 8
Low Stakes : Go up at 15 Buy ins, go back down at 12
Med stakes and above : Go up at 20 buy ins, go back down at 17

Nothing earthshaking, but it's the first time I set myself guidelines like these and I think they help me a lot to stay disciplined and at the same time have my next goal always in mind.

If any of you (my imaginary readers) have been interested in the Absolute Poker scandal then I've stumbled upon a reading that might interest you. Some high stakes online player (whose name I always forget) made a pretty thourough investigation that he detailed on his blog. The evidence is pretty damning, and despite AP's effort to drown the story I find it hard to ignore. Anyway, you can read that and reach your own conclusions... In the meantime I have to go grind 60ft and land in a manual...

Focus

Well it's been a while since I made a blog entry. I've decided to drop railbirds for my real "blogging" so far, so good old blogspot will be the only place where you (my imaginary readers) will be able to check how things are going with my poker "career".

September was good for me on the poker side of things. Not only did I have a REALLY good month online after a slow start (finally coming back to playing seriously), but my live game in our friendly home game has brought constant gains. If the first few days of October are any indications, that hot streak seems to be still going on. Funny how sometimes some time away from an activity can bring you insight into it. I really feel that it all clicks now and I've been posting pretty much constant gains in micro-stakes. After putting some money back in my online bankroll and setting up my playing environment properly I have had very good results.

I have set goals for myself and I think this is one of the reasons everything is going so well lately. I stepped down in stakes, going back to 0.01/0.02 and I now follow a more rigorous bankroll management system. I'm not stepping up in stakes until I get 10 buy ins for the next stake and will step back down once if I'm ever down to 8 buy ins. At first, reloading and going down in stakes was a bit hard on my moral (and let's face it, my ego). So that's where my focus is right now. Getting my bankroll to $100 so I can move up to 0.05/0.10 again. Then up to $250 and so on.

I have been mostly focusing on No Limit Hold'Em cash games. I've stopped playing the daily railbirds freerolls, have not really done any Sit & Gos, have not played other games much either. I definitly feel that cash games is where you can get a more constant income. Tournaments involved too much variance for it to be really profitable although the payout when you win a big one is hard to beat. As for other games well I still love them, but it's all about focus right now so I try not to divide my energies on too many different things.

Sit & Gos are a place where I've traditionnaly performed pretty well, and they provide a pretty interesting return on investment when you can do well in them. I will most likely start playing a few sit & gos again (always with the same bankroll guidelines), even though lately I'm enjoying the cash games so much that I have to say I don't miss them all that much.

Last week we had a record home game, sitting an awesome 9 people! People were in a gaming mood too and multiple times people added more money on the table. As usually (and as you can see from my homegame ROI% posted in the results sidebar) I've performed very well there. The action we had last week was just awesome and makes me think that we might be able to up the stakes a bit pretty soon. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while and as a first step towards that I will try to introduce more and more straddles. Having quite a few new people last week it was definitly not the right time for it though.

I have been asked by a few people on railbirds to post a guide to using pokertracker and although I still haven't had the time to sit down and write this (ok that's a bit of a lie... I would have had the time I just decided to play instead) but I think it's an interesting project and should get down to it pretty soon.

I've been working on organizing a fundraiser tourney for a friend. This should be held on November 4th and we still have quite a few things to settle but it should be fun. I won't play in it, I will either be dealing or doing floor. Still not sure which one. Will keep you posted. That's it for now! As part of my "focus" moto I will try to keep this blog updated more regularly.

September 2007 online results

Starting now I will post my monthly results graph. These will include only my NLHE cash games results for now.