CHRISTMAS WEEK 08

Merry Christmas!

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24,000ish hands/ $186 profit/ 2,182 FPP'S

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Christmas time has come and gone. Still didn't get to crank out very many hands this week. The bankroll continues to grow. And so does the shot taking. As far as my play has been going. I am still working on bringing down my vpip and upping my pfr% numbers. But have basically gone from being a fish to a nit. Really trying to focus on raising based off position and hand strength. Which will lead to raising based off of opponents already in or left to act in the hand. It will be a slow progress. I think once I get a little more comfortable with this I can start opening up my pfr% numbers to bring myself up into a little more tagish range. Also something lacking is my 3-bet range which is mainly QQ, KK, AA, and sometime JJ opponent dependant. These are some of the immediate holes in my game, as far as full ring is concerned.

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I do think that an accurate rating of my own playing ability which is based off other players in the "Nano" stakes level. Which is the levels nl2, nl5, and n10. Based off a scale of -10 to 10, is right around the level +1. I hope to be able to re-evaluate my own play a little farther in the future once I am able to focus on moving to tag land and upping my 3bet and 4 bet numbers. I think my road is to continue to play at nl5 and take shots at nl10 and nl25 as my bankroll continues to grow until I get a good control over my game.

3rd week dec

BOOOOOOO!

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17,300ish hands/ $98 profit/ 857 FPP'S

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Didn't get to play much this week due to working. Played at nl50 and nl25 for a few hands. Mainly just to help push my reward bonuses over. Next week will be a short week at work because of Christmas so I should be able to rope in a 20-30k hand week. As well as the following week. I still need to stick with my current level until I hash out some vpip and fpr% problems to help shore up my game a little more. Plus help build my bankroll a little more. There is a live game I have been playing at micro stakes home game. I can only imagine that the play there was possibly close to the resemblance of how the quality of play must have been on the Internet around 2003. I am up like $600 in the last 5 sessions there which is including one losing session. Which isn't bad for a nl50 cash game. If only they played higher stakes :), and more often.

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Next week will be more grinding at nl5. I just need to stick with this level for a little while longer. I already have 260 full buy In's at that level. But my play is still very fishy and need to iron out some bad folding I think I have been doing lately.

Dec, week 2, 08

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Fire!, Reload, Fire!, Reload, Fire!, Reload Reload

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43,000ish hands/ $69 profit/ 1,494 FPP'S

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Took a couple more shots this week got to play a shitload of hands being out of work. I am already over 100,000 hands in three weeks. Probably without taking shots this week I think I would be up another $100. Cashed in on a cash back reward bonus, which is close to the only reason I was in the green this week. Have been chatting with another .02-.05 reg who has been helping evaluate my game. Don't want to post his name without permission. But thanks. With his suggestions I have renewed my drive to fix my fish stats. Maybe this is the reason why I have not been able to post a win other than at nl200. I think I will spend some more time at the current nano stake level nl5. I think this will give me more time to bolster my pfr% based off position. Which I hope is a big reason why I haven't won at the higher stakes. Also I would rather have a little more roll to back me before I move up. That way I have a little more cushion to absorb maybe an easy ten buy in downswing at the new stake. And not get devastated as it would easily equal to 25 buy in downswing at the previous level. I know this shouldn't bother me but what I see when I lose this is how long grinding at nl5 it takes to get this back.

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I will be going back to work next week. So my number of hands will be way lower. I don't know whether or not I will make my next cash back reward or not as I am 300 fpp's shy of cashing in and starting to redeem it.

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Things I have gotten from last week. I need to spend more time tweaking my game. I need to stick with nl5 for a while longer maybe even until I get my roll up to $1,500 or more. I think tweaking my vpip/pfr stats will take a little while and might have to adjust my post flop ag and other stats a little. I can only think this will be for the better for all aspects of my game.

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Onwards to next week.

Dec, week 1, 08

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"I am my own worst enemy"

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35,000ish hands/ $89 profit/ 1,189 FPP's

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Well took a couple shots, played a couple tournaments, and even played a couple hundred hands of PLO micro stakes. Since I only had one week during the last month my status was reverted back to bronze level. Meaning the fpp's will be minimal until I make it back to silver status. This won't be very hard considering that I am already %82 there in the first week. With the help of some shot taking at different stakes. I did play in some small stakes live "friendly" .25-.50 cash games and was up $400+. This kind of helped give me a break from some bad luck I could not shake free from.

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The first part of this week I was actually for the first time doing so or being really aware of the fact that I was playing fairly bad. It didn't help that I was running with the doom switch on as well. "The cost of poker" as I would like to call it was outrunning the "Winning of poker". I couldn't seem to dodge some pretty horrific play as well as a lot of bad luck. Twice this week my aces lost all in pre flop to another pair of aces? I guess I have not been getting set over set at my usual rate of once every 3,500 hands to this along with a horrendous amount of retarded beats took there place. Through my tilting I began shoving with the nuts rather than betting for value. This only seemed to obviously lessen my winning and also when I got called only ended in me getting drawn out on for some bigger stacks losses. Regardless of what stupid garbage they had. I had to end a few sessions almost immediately as I was starting to become tilted to the point that it was effecting my play. I ended up taking a shot way above my bankroll. Another big no no and was rewarded with my bad decision making with a few good hands that put me in the positive for the week. Hence the vertical line in this weeks graph. I lost about $120 taking shots between nl 10 (.05-.10) and nl 25 .10-.25. Looking back about $50ish was due to bad decision making but the rest was bad luck and the "Cost of poker". The rest of the profit was made through grinding it out and a little from PLO, Pot Limit Omaha. Which was a nice change of pace after a rough week.

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"Cost of poker"= Seems to me to be the ongoing amount of money you lose in between wins.

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If you play correct poker without a winning hand. You will continue to lose money. Whether it is being lost to blinds, set mining, raising to build a bigger pot while winning, or making correct folds, big or small. All these things as well as many more cost money. These situations far outnumber the other end of the spectrum which is winning a hand. As your money continues to fall through correct play I call this the "Cost of poker".

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So onto next week I will try and be a little more care full to notice my tilting or bad decision making. And trying to extract a little more value out of my good hands. Being a little more patient and being content with grinding it out at .02-.05.

1st week back

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34,723 hands/ $94 profit/ 700 ish FPP's
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Well my first week back to playing poker is under the belt. I had the whole week off of work but didn't seem to manage to bulldozer the poker in there. It was actually a little hard to just jump back into the 1,000 hands an hour plus range. Found myself looking toward the end of my sessions a couple times. And there were a few days (The most profitable to play online) that I didn't play online. Friday night I went out to play live in a lady's garage for some $1-$2 action. Saturday I spent mostly with the wife. And Saturday night most of Sunday day I was working on my newest poker table. This one will be the fourth one I have built and will hopefully be the nicest. I was thinking that as long as I am not working I might as well start up the Friday night game I used to have. Got the bankroll back over the $1,000 mark and plan to make the steady climb for a while in .02-.05. Then maybe making the jump up to nl10 once I get a little more of a buffer. Or just jump to nl25 I haven't decided yet.
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As far as the week in play went. I decided to continue playing at .02-.05 for a while longer. Maybe I will stay here for another month or so and see how it goes. All my hands on Hold em Manager seemed to contain some kind of error so I had to start over. And I am not quite sure it is working right still. I played pretty well for the first part of the week. And then for some reason Friday and Today's session I started playing really poorly and found myself forcing the session to end. Might I add that I was running pretty bad also. And was getting a little frustrated. I think this altered my performance a little and was dropping my play to my C game level and lower. My sessions near the end of the week were becoming pretty brutal to my Psyche. In the last two hours of the last session alone the following hands occurred.
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AA lost to KK preflop
AA lost to JJ preflop
AA hit set on flop and called all in against AQ which ran runner runner for flush
Set of 8's called all in on flop lost to two outer on turn
KK called all in on flop lost to 3 outer on river
set over set
set over set
boat over boat
nut boat loosing to quads
2nd nut flush lost to nut flush
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After a couple sessions like this was cracking my head. Normally this shit doesn't bother me but I guess the 5-6 weeks I have had off from poker lowered my defenses a little. Hence the extra time spend building a new poker table. I did already have the material ordered though so this would have had to happen sooner or later.