A pretty normal day, a 4 hour dash at work then home in the horrid weather casing the north west at the mo with sprinkles of rain, hale and blasting winds with the bitter cold of a frosted lemon. This kind of maniac outdoors and no days off I think has effected my brain. Well, it's either that or I just cannot win.
Once at home I look at my PokerStars account. On Monday I made $25 before going to poker at the pub where I turned £10 into £75, Tuesday, that online number went from $42 down to $20 and Wednesday, even further down to a mere $10, tonight I kept going and eventually went to deposit $20 which then, overplayed down to $7. At this moment I then decided to play on my iPad to improve concentration, I entered a $1.50 Sit & Go. Whilst playing this SNG I wasn't failing, nor was I winning, however that stupid phone mass went down down my street AGAIN. This happens so often that of course I have a back up plan, my T-Mobile dongle so within 15mins at the price of £2 I was back online...but...what...what's happening??...why am I not being reunited with my game??? At some point during my internet failure I seem to have lost my place in my SNG, so short of bankroll and I have lost my SNG without even having a say!! Poker is supposed to be about decision making and this was not my decision. That was plain unlucky.
I decided that since I had spent £2 on the internet and even though by this point the last thing I wanted to do was play poker, I played poker. I thought it would be an awful idea. I kept to a 5c/10c cash game with the thought that the worst thing is I'll lose $4 but could get a milestone hand. Neither of those things happened, I made it up to $9 giving me my $10 bankroll back :) and Sexy Socialite by Chromeo is on the radio, so I can go to bed not ecstatic, but not losing the will to live! Which is good enough for me. I think that should be good enough for too.
@AntoniaChigurh
Thursday 19 December 2013
Sunday 15 December 2013
Sunday flipday
It doesn't matter what I do, Sundays are just bad news for me. I tried my first Sunday Storm today on PokerStars and I was up and down like a yoyo until I eventually hit the floor. Granted I did have a migraine and joined 40 minutes late and lasted quite some time, longer than Felix Schneiders, but still got caught out, in such a silly way too. I help AJ hearts and my opponent held Q7 hearts, I had a 6k stack which was well under average so decided all in was in order, only to find a bleeding 7 on the flop!! How many bad beat stories is that now?
Round 2, a $2.20 5k GTD, lasted a couple of hours, then again AK catching on the crown of QQ, bust!
Round 3, $1.10 2.5k GTD, notice how I get lower each time and didn't last as long in this one. Despite all of this, my play is actually getting much better, I'm noticing a lot more things, taking notes and vids and learning from my mistakes which is what I was meant to be doing this year. Like I said, I won't ever give up on poker ever again, sometimes breaks, this learning curve is great. It's just breaking the luck barrier that's a little harder. As I now like mentioning Isaac Haxton, he said he got lucky once and then everything seemed to set off.
So maybe I'll have to sit out for now (good idea since I have work in 7 hours and only 5 hours to sleep) but tomorrow I'll get up and try again...harder.
@AntoniaChigurh
Round 2, a $2.20 5k GTD, lasted a couple of hours, then again AK catching on the crown of QQ, bust!
Round 3, $1.10 2.5k GTD, notice how I get lower each time and didn't last as long in this one. Despite all of this, my play is actually getting much better, I'm noticing a lot more things, taking notes and vids and learning from my mistakes which is what I was meant to be doing this year. Like I said, I won't ever give up on poker ever again, sometimes breaks, this learning curve is great. It's just breaking the luck barrier that's a little harder. As I now like mentioning Isaac Haxton, he said he got lucky once and then everything seemed to set off.
So maybe I'll have to sit out for now (good idea since I have work in 7 hours and only 5 hours to sleep) but tomorrow I'll get up and try again...harder.
@AntoniaChigurh
Top to the bottom.
I get up this morning, get the blender out and mix some oats, soya and raspberries, a breakfast of some fit athlete or something. Or in my case just an avid poker player. I get all my things out: iPad, phone, note pad, poker for dummies book and get to I work on the 'the hot $3.30 (turbo) 6k guarantee' I went up managed to double my chips then having a player to my right with a wide calling and betting range, I decided to sit a lot of hands out and then an hour and 20minutes in we have 4 new players to our table, one with 38k in chips, by this point I have managed to make my way up just about average again to 9k. I didn't have much idea about this guy as he'd just sat down minutes before which makes me about as smart as a tea cup on this one. The stakes are 250/500 and I'm in the small blind with Q7spades, and he is just over half way round. The player bets 3BB, I had a good feeling so I called. The flop showed Q J Q, I bet 4BB, the player then raises to 6BB pushing me to make a fairly quick decision to put the other few hundred chips I had in too, so I'm all in, he shows T8c, there are no clubs just a straight draw. I thought he would have had at least a jack, but to my shock and horror he gets a 9 on the river, a flipping 9!! I couldn't help thinking I hadn't summoned this as I kept saying 'NO 9!!' repeatedly. A horrible moment, I had that awful awful stress feeling straight after, if you lose and it literally is 'I might get this' then it's kind of okay, but with a hand like that UUURRRGGHH!!
Well, I suppose the idea is, try again, but not straight after, the risk of tilting is far too great. However, after this terrible mishap, I then got the fantastic news that I have passed my dental nursing exam that I took yesterday woo! Almost qualified and all of a sudden, the balance is restored :).
@AntoniaChigurh
Well, I suppose the idea is, try again, but not straight after, the risk of tilting is far too great. However, after this terrible mishap, I then got the fantastic news that I have passed my dental nursing exam that I took yesterday woo! Almost qualified and all of a sudden, the balance is restored :).
@AntoniaChigurh
Thursday 12 December 2013
Concentration counts! Tourney style.
I watched one of Felix Schneiders' grinding it up vids on YouTube with his oh so cute Christmas donkey. Oh course the man has Hold'em Manager, probably a good idea since I have my own Hold'em manager which consists of a thick hard back note pad and video recording on my phone. This kind of stone-age style date capture takes real concentration and yes makes me very dull, but we can't change that, I'm more fun than you think...I whittled down to very little and thought 'fine, I'll get my Hold'em manager material out!'. It works, trust me (and if you trust me remember to trust Isaac Haxton too ;)), all I do is as soon as anyone does anything remotely interesting, and I'm literally talking anything from raising 2BB, take no time over this jot down name- raise by "bb, name callers, flop, raises/checks, the whole deal and what is revealed if anything. On my hands where I do nanny thing like that I record it on my phone, no time for me to be writing whilst thinking!
The way this works for me is by writing everything down, it means I've taken it in and it's hard to get distracted. Obviously you can't do this if you're playing more than one table at a time. I found myself making some really good decision though like folding KAo preflop as it's all about what your fellow players have. Unfortunately I got lazy, got moved tables to have someone majorly bluff me big time, they then put a fish <'))X (something like that) in the chat box and there I sat, like some cross child when their parents take their favourite toy off then, no fair. Or another kid makes fun of them...that's a better example.
Officialpokerrankings.com says my last tourney win was $18 on 2nd December. This cash isn't up there yet so I can't say exactly how many runners there were this time but I think it was over 2k and I ended in 250th position for a tiny $5.88. Better than nothing. But I'll have to try harder at sucking the fun out of poker next time :) serious shit we got here!
Getting back on the text book too, this will do me no good as it's poker for dummies and published about 10 years ago :/ and we ALL know keeping current is key in poker. So it will be more of a reference. But I will be trying out new things.
@AntoniaChigurh
The way this works for me is by writing everything down, it means I've taken it in and it's hard to get distracted. Obviously you can't do this if you're playing more than one table at a time. I found myself making some really good decision though like folding KAo preflop as it's all about what your fellow players have. Unfortunately I got lazy, got moved tables to have someone majorly bluff me big time, they then put a fish <'))X (something like that) in the chat box and there I sat, like some cross child when their parents take their favourite toy off then, no fair. Or another kid makes fun of them...that's a better example.
Officialpokerrankings.com says my last tourney win was $18 on 2nd December. This cash isn't up there yet so I can't say exactly how many runners there were this time but I think it was over 2k and I ended in 250th position for a tiny $5.88. Better than nothing. But I'll have to try harder at sucking the fun out of poker next time :) serious shit we got here!
Getting back on the text book too, this will do me no good as it's poker for dummies and published about 10 years ago :/ and we ALL know keeping current is key in poker. So it will be more of a reference. But I will be trying out new things.
@AntoniaChigurh
Haxton's the name, EPT's the game
After managing to rack up a small $120, I have been running bad, really bad. However thank you to the lovely PokerStars online pro Isaac Haxton, I don't feel like putting my head in my hands and selling off my computer to make way for a new hobby. No, in this months issue of PokerPlayer magazine, they have published a blog of his which should sends inspiration to us all! He reminds us that once he was in this pickle and everyone else who has made it to the top has also been in the same shoes. He says for us to keep the stakes low and keep it slow. It reads in PokerPlayer that 'he advices for new players' this, I've been playing for nearly 5 years, I haven't moved up many notches so, maybe this is it. Maybe I am not thinking about my actions as much as I should. I probably do before I think, that's generally what happens when life throws me things anyway so I can only imagine I apply this to my game as well.
The challenge is still on, I can't give you any figures as for my run bad.
My EPT blog will start tomorrow with Prague undergoing this second. So remember to check that too and keep up to date with all the action on PokerStars.tv it's really quite good even though you can't see the whole cards.
@AntoniaChigurh -twitter
The challenge is still on, I can't give you any figures as for my run bad.
My EPT blog will start tomorrow with Prague undergoing this second. So remember to check that too and keep up to date with all the action on PokerStars.tv it's really quite good even though you can't see the whole cards.
@AntoniaChigurh -twitter
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)