The Chat Box

My assortment of games has changed a little bit, for the past couple of days in addition to the $5 45 mans, I've added $10 45s, $6 90s, and $12 90s. I've added in the 90s to keep my number of tables up (I can comfortabley do 9 tables now for short to medium periods of time). The 90s are really going to test my mental toughness because from my experience so far, they are far more prone to variance (more players, turbo blind structure, knockout bounties, only 9 get paid) and I've had some epic beats against fellow chip leaders that seem to have disgustingly huge pots because there are 4 times as many chips in play compared to the 45s. I'm still running very well in the 45s, and some of my luck has started to transfer over to the $10 level (I won two today).

I wanted to just say a little something about the chat box feature on online poker sites. I think most people know this already, but if you use the chat box, you are a donkey. End of story, there is no good that comes from chatting on a poker site, it is impossible to win an argument, sound smart, make a "friend", get useful information, literally nothing good comes from it. I thought about turning it off today, but I came to the conclusion that the chat box is actually useful for one purpose: to see the people that use it so you can properly label them as fish. At a final table today the guy to my left was getting so tilted by my blind vs. blind shoves he was spending almost all of his energy berating me in the chat box. The shoves I made were all standard, he ended up knocking me out at the final table before the money when I shoved 69o for 8 big blinds and he snap called with 33. The tilt he was experiencing actually allowed him to make a good call in this case, but this guy could not have given away his lack of poker ability any more.

Will try to continue playing a decent amount the rest of this week, it's been difficult, next blog will be a pretty heavy one about living at home, my future, and current state of unemployment.

1K

I had a feeling it was coming, but did not anticipate such dramatic fashion. I reached my $1,000 bankroll goal today, the new high point for my poker earnings to date. I have attempted to grind the $5 45 mans while at home, and it has been tough, there are a lot of distractions at home and no one in the house is supportive of me playing poker. While I was locked up in my new makeshift office I was trying to load up some tournies, they were taking forever to load and I had recently won some step 3 tickets, so I decided to use 3 of my step 3s to jumps into 3 $26 45 mans, they load up much faster than the $5s. Well, I ended up taking one down for $410 and catapulted me past the $1,000 mark. I'm really psyched right now, although I have also just started reading "Fooled by Randomness" so I'm trying to get my excitement under control as I do realize how lucky I just got. Just sent my update e-mail off to the Rainman and am awaiting further instructions on the next step in my journey, I assume it will involve some $10 45mans.

And for fun, below are some pics I took with my phone of my fully packed car prior to my return home from school. You can learn a lot about a person from the way the pack, what they pack, where they pack what etc., the garbage bags are all full of laundry btw, no trash or body parts.

Going back

Just finished a decent session, have a wicked headache from wierd sleeping schedule + staring at computer screen for so long. I have officially graduated college, it was a nice weekend, lots of family and friends. Actual ceremonies were awful though, very impersonal, time consuming, and boring. I actually brought a book to the main ceremony on sunday, thought it would be rude to whip it out so i ended up doing crossword puzzles on my phone. In addition to receiving my diploma, graduating means time to move out of my wonderful house at school, and move back home. It's going to be interesting to see how much poker I can play, my strategy is going to be to claim a room and declare it my office, set up shop, and see if my parents will leave me alone (unlikely).

My bankroll is has been around $700 for about a week, I feel like I'm very close to breaking through to my next goal. I've been using a lot of free trials for poker software lately and they are going to run out soon, today I was thinking of a list of things I will eventually need to spend money on to keep my poker solid: SngWiz, Hold'em Manager/PokerTracker, and TableNinja. I think I'm going to make these purchases once I move up in stakes, hopefully my trial software will last until then.

I'm going to try to start throwing in some more random stuff into this blog from other parts of my life other than poker, I'm really into music, my favorite site for finding new music is pitchfork.com , they are great at finding weird new music. One band they've turned me onto recently is Sleigh Bells, their new debut cd "Treats" is freaking awesome. Kept me really focused and jacked up for poker recently. It's a bit between a bunch of genres, kind of electro-hip-pop. Go buy it, especially if you have a nice pair of headphones or speakers to blast it on.

Feeling goodish

Been able to play a good amount the past couple days, just finished a nice session that was capped off with a win. My bankroll is approaching its previous peak which makes really feel a lot more confident about my playing. I also realize however that I have been running pretty hot lately (the win I just mentioned, came by way of my j6o flopping trips versus kqs heads up). I think that my feel for game flow has been improving. I tried to add tables for a little today and that did not go so well, I went for 6/7 to 8/9 and felt a little overwhelmed. I'll have to go over the hand histories later to decide if my decision making was actually worse during this or if I'm just being results oriented. Here is my updated graph so you can guys can see my current upswing. You can see from a couple posts ago where I was when this blog was started, around 700 total games (and when I joined Rainman Poker, coincidence?)

Even though this sample size is crazy small, and I still haven't hit 1,000 games (which I'm kind of bummed about) the recent success has really increased my drive to keep pounding out the games. I only have 3 days left that I can dedicate to poker because my family arrives for graduation festivities on Friday evening. I'm excited for them to come and to graduate, but it also presents a problem for my poker aspirations. Here is my conundrum: I don't have the cash to move out and live on my own, so after graduation I have to move back home. I don't think I'll be able to properly grind at home because my parents are very anti me playing poker whilst remaining unemployed. The more I think about getting a real job the less excited I am about it. I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that upon my entering the real world I now have real issues, not enough money, and not enough time.

Movin' on up

Still early in my post-finals, pre-graduation grind, but I was lucky enough to run good in some of the 180 mans I was playing recently, and took one down. That win got me above my first bankroll goal of $400. I think I learned a lot playing those, they are a lot more similar to the larger field tournaments. Looking back on the way I played I think I've definitely improved my ability to take measured risks in order to "play for the win". It was very funny the way my 180 win went down. I was literally doing everything I was not supposed to in order to be playing my best. My room mates have been moving out the past couple days because they aren't seniors like myself and don't have to hang around for graduation. Since it was their last night, and this particular tourny I decided was going to be my last for the night, I had started knocking a couple beers back once there were about 45 left. By the time I was three handed I was bordering on drunk. Not good on my part, but luckily the poker gods thought I deserved to celebrate and let me take it down with some favorable all-in situations.

Now that I've met my first goal I get to move up in stakes, and also get to return to the game I think I was starting to get a feel for before I had to move down in stakes. So now I will be grinding the $5 45 man sit and goes on Full Tilt, trying to reach my next bankroll goal which is $1,000. This is a significantly bigger jump than my last success, I will definitely be trying to improve my ability multi-table during this time as well. The 45s load up a lot faster than the 180s so this will allow me to work my way up from 6 tables to maybe 8 or 10 by the end of the month. As I type this I have just finished winning one of my first 10, by way of shortstack comeback, hopefully the good news will continue for me, although I have a feeling this next goal will be a lot tougher to achieve. I'll have a ton of time to get in some good volume this week, my house is almost empty (which is heartbreakingly sad), and I have literally nothing to do (which is fanfreakingtastic).

New Set Up, Long Day

After listening to the rainman talk about having a routine and treating poker was like a sport, I was inspired to make my set-up a little more legit. Previously, my desk was a chair, which upon it rested my monitor and computer, and a broke-ass couch that I would lie down on while I played (and often also doubled as my bed). It's pretty obvious that I was not giving myself the best chance to play good poker with that set-up, especially when you consider that I am infamous for having totally unpredictable sleeping patterns. I went to the Micro Center (best computer store imo) and bought a little do-hickey to make my laptop use dual screens, and a fancy mouse that I succesfully programmed to run my PokerNinja shortcuts, I was very proud of myself. Above is the pic of my new and improved set up.


Yesterday was a long day of grinding, I started around two after Bodeye's webinar, the 180 mans were taking too long to load so I added in some $2 MTTs, strangely enough the MTTs were where I had the most success yesterday. Got fourth in a random $2 non-turbo, for a decent $70 cash. I was feeling a little tired around 8pm, 6 hours is definitely a long session for me, but I was so amped on my new set up I just wanted to keep playing/perfecting my setting etc. On my last round of tournies when I was starting to get pretty tired I made a very poor decision by entering the Daily Dollar on Full Tilt. This is a double stack non-turbo and needless to say takes freaking forever if you a make run, which I did, ended up 40th of 7,000+. I think my fatigue led to some really poor play on my part in the mid-late stages when there were 90 or less people remaining. I went from contending for chip lead to shortstacked during this time, due 100% to poor post flop play. To keep myself awake I connected my headphones to my laptop, turned the volume almost all the way up, so when my turn came the "BEEP" would alert me if I had passed out. Not ideal. Still a solid day though, made some legit steps towards reaching my bank roll goals, today I'm going to try to do some intense sessions, but break them up a little more, the 14 hour session yesterday was a little excessive.

Starting to grind

I've been playing more than I ever have the past couple days, I'm really trying to get some volume to show that I can build a bankroll without relying on getting lucky when I take shots at higher buy ins. The rainman gave me some suggestions about what games I should be playing, I was having trouble deciding this on my own at the time of my last post. We've settled on $2 180 mans, and since I don't have any cash on PokerStars, I've been playing the non-turbos on FTP. They take a really long time to play and to load which I think is a big downside for my potential $s/hour. I felt like I was really in the zone playing well this morning/afternoon, I fell just short of taking a couple down, but I was pretty happy with my overall play. I was able to build stacks really effectively in a couple tournaments, I was trying to be more aggressive in taking plus ev spots. I've played more than 50 of these since Sunday, but wish it was more, at this point I'm comfortable 6 tabling, but these tournies don't generally load fast enough unless we're in the absolute busiest part of the day.

I haven't won one yet but I'm still pretty much even since I started playing these, gunna try to get to 100 games by wednesday.