May thoughts and June goals... or how Nic failed

I guess I should be happy about having the best monthly results I've ever had. But I fell so short of my goals that I can't spin this in a way to make me feel good.

My May goals were :
- Play 15,000 hands of online NL Hold'Em
- Post a winning month
- Take a shot at NL25
- Keep updating this blog.

Now I definitly managed to achieve 3 of these goals. But 8885 hands in a month?!? This is nowhere near what I need to put out. The last time I played less than 9K hands was in december!

On the good side, I managed to move up to NL25. Actually most of my month was played at that level. One of my yearly goal was to move up to NL25 by this summer and doing so at the beginning of May is definitly satisfying. I also feel that I kept that blog updated pretty well. But I definitly have to play more hands than this. This is especially true since I want to make bonus whoring one of my focus for the next few months.

Now where does that leave me for June. Well, here are my June goals :
- Play 12,000 hands of online NL Hold'Em
- Post a winning month
- Deposit on CD Poker and start clearing the 200$ 1st time deposit bonus there
- Keep updating this blog.

Now about bonuses. Browsing through the bonus whores site I managed to find a few bonuses that are definitly clearable at NL25. This should help me take shots at NL50 earlier than anticipated. The first one I will attack will be the 200$ bonus on CD poker. Seems relatively easy to clear at NL25. Then I might take a shot at the 600$ deposit on FullTilt. Seems clearable at NL25, would also finally release the money I have on FullTilt and won in a freeroll a while ago! Clearing the FullTilt Bonus might be a bit of a stretch at NL25... but I'll evaluate things once I clear the bonus at CD Poker. By then my roll might be enough to take shots at NL50, so who knows...

Anyway, if you're a poker player and haven't checked bonus whores I think you owe it to yourself to take a look at it... unless you hate money

May 2008 online results

A spanking new PT3 graph!

PokerStars China quake relief fund

PokerStars is organizing a fund raiser to help the victims of the China earthquake (if you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, a big earthquake hit China and millions of people are now homeless).

I urge all of my readers to donate through this mean. Pokerstars will match any donation made by pokerstars players. You can find special "events" listed in the "Special" tourney tab. These events are not really tourneys, they are just a way to donate from $1 to $100 to the quake relief fund. Please donate whatever you can afford. This is a good cause, these millions of quake refugees need any help they can get.

Ultimate Bet (must read)

Well I know I don't have that many readers, but still. This story needs to get out so there it is. In short, there is a new superuser account scandal in online poker. This time it's at Ultimate Bet, which is strangely owned by the same company as Absolute Poker. Anyway, follow the link for a much better explanation of the issue than I could myself give.

http://www.ultimatebetcheats.com/

Week end recap

This week end was our first touch football tourney of the year. Our team has been through a lot of changes in the past year and the lineup is quite different. Actually there were a few players that were playing with us for the first time.

Anyway, things got off to a pretty bad start, we lost our 2 first "qualifier" games. The way these tourneys are done is the first 2 games you play are used to rate the teams and then the real tourney begins. We lost both qualifying games although they were both pretty closely fought. It all started kinda bad for me as in the first game I had a hard collision with another player that left me gasping for breath and with VERY sore ribs (not sure sore is the right word... they're hurting like hell is more like it.). That's the problem with being tall, in the event of a collision, other people's shoulders come straight in your ribs.

Anyway, on sunday we opened up and won all our games... except the finals. Oh well, it was fun seeing the progress we made as a team over the whole week end and I definitly see good things ahead for the Marauders this year! Now if only these ribs could heal...

What? Poker?? Oh yeah... I played a bit and won some money.

Mid month update

Well all it took was a few unexpected family matters to put me way behind on my May goals. I'm actually not doing too badly considering that I have been playing NL25 for the last few days, but on the volume side of things well I'm not even close.

With touch football tournaments right around the corner, family events popping up and good weather trying to bring my ass outside, it will be very tough to hit the 15K hands mark. But I'll still give it my best shot.

Results-wise, May is going very well so far. Yesterday I've had a sick day and managed to make about as much playing NL25 as I did working my day job as a software developer!

Outside of poker things have been going pretty good. As I've mentionned, touch football tournaments season is about to begin and I think we'll field a pretty competitive team this year. Anyway we should be good enough to make it interesting. For the first time in years, the QB position seems to be settled and has some stability. This should be huge. I see big things this year for the Marauders!

I've also been planning on brewing beer again. Not sure what we'll do yet, but a good buddy of mine named Charles and I will try to come up with something good towards the end of the month. Sadly, probably won't be ready to drink until the end of summer.

I've also started planning a trip for next year. I am still undecided on the destination. Finally watching "An Inconvenient truth" (if you haven't seen it go watch it! Like right NOW!) last week made me want to visit some northern place. Guess the great north needs to be seen before it's gone. Anybody knows of good tours in Greenland or Alaska??

April thoughts and May goals.

A quick recap on april and then I'll move on to my May goals. The goals I had stated for myself for april were :

- Play 12K hands of NLHE online
- Play at least 3 times at the casino
- Post a winning month online
- Keep updating this blog as frequently as I did in March.

Now other than the casino play I reached all 3 of my goals. I played over 12K hands and definitly feel like I could have played more. While I had a pretty big downswing (more on that later on) I still finished the month up which is always good. Means that in the last 6 months I've only had one losing month which I'm pretty proud of. Now the casino play took a backseat after that bad evening I had there at the beginning of april. This was a conscious decision and I'm glad I let that goal go.

Now what's next for May? Well I want to play even more than in April. I want to again post a positive month and, of course, I want to keep that blog updated. So here are my goals for the month of May :

- Play 15,000 hands of online NL Hold'Em
- Post a winning month
- Take a shot at NL25
- Keep updating this blog.

The most interesting thing that happened though in the last few days is that I had sort of an epiphany. I just realised why my game is pretty swingy. I play my drawing hands VERY aggressively. If I have an open ended straight draw or a flush draw out there I'll go out and fire bets. This means that when I hit my draws I will win bigger pots on average, but it also means that when I don't hit, I kinda "spew".

I am still not sure if it's something I want to change in my game. I think I'll just start by trying to pick my spots better for my semi-bluffs. Anyway, you can call me stupid for just realising this... I'm just glad I did!