Week 4

30/04 - 07/05

If you told me that this would be my biggest winning week of the month on the 5th May i wouldn't have believed you. A mixture of negative variance and making a couple of questionable calls (ill admit it) caused me to hit a low point and i genuinely thought this would be my first losing week. Alas with SCOOP starting i entered the Event No.2 which was a $27 NLH 2  Day Event. 

I managed to rack up a total of 11 hours into Day 1 before busting the last level of the day for a prize of $451. A little short of the $63k 1st Prize but finishing 102nd/28,000 runners isn't a bad day at the office. Although going nearly 24 hours without sleep wasn't a pleasant experience and at times i was getting Omaha Hallucinations as I could see 4 hole cards! This score got me out of the red and into the black and i look forward to play some more SCOOP events especially the mixed games as i find these highly enjoyable......except limit hold'em.

I must point out that i said i wouldn't play any mtts over $10 until im playing the $15 stts but I used my FPP's to enter this SCOOP event so it was technically freeroll :)

Month 1 - Review

Right so that's 4 weeks completed and my 1st month out of the way so its only right that i show you my complete graphs of the month:

Month 1

10nl Full Ring Cash Games

Tournaments: +$795.45
Cash Games: +$31.76
STT Leaderboard Prize Money: +$120
Deposit Bonus: +$30
VPP Bonus: +$10

Total End for Month 1: +$987.21

Goals:

• Reach $1500 [ ]
• $100 Profit from investments [ ]
• Finish in the top 3 of the STT Leaderboard [ ]
• Reach $1000 [X]
• Place on the STT Leaderboard [X]
• Reach $750 [X]
• Comfortably play 7 tables [X]

Week 3

22/04 - 29/04

As you can see I absolutely stormed it at the beginning in what we would call positive variance. Now by positive variance I don't mean we get all the chips in behind and suck out or keep being on positive ends of coolers. Positive Variance is where we consistently win our 50/50 60/40 70/30 etc.. Now for the first 29 games of this week my hands just kept holding. I was in a sense "getting lucky", probability suggests if I'm a 66% favourite 3 hands in a row I should lose one. Therefore when i win more than 3 of these in a row I'm experiencing positive variance. As you can see though i ran into some negative variance but because of my edge over the players at the level I'm playing my negative variance doesn't equal my positive variance therefore I make profit.

The table below shows an extra benefit of positive variance, where i managed to complete one of my goals and place on the Stt Leaderboard. Not only do a get a cash prize i also get a free ticket to a 50k triple shoot-out that runs at the end of every month. You can win as many of these as you want and use them when you want, with a 1st prize of ~$10k its a great tournament to be in.

5th Place good for $120

!!AceWise Investment News!!

AWI have added their 1st horse to a winning stable who will be playing 25nl on the Boss Media Network. Im very confident AWI will make a reasonable return from this cash game expert and will look to help and support him to enter the higher stakes. I will like to add more horses to my stable when more capital is raised. Any new AWI Signings will be announced on this blog and I will be adding profit made from my investments in our month end review.

Goals:

• $100 profit from investments [ ]
• Finish in the top 3 on the stt leaderboard [ ]
• Reach $1000 [ ]
• Place on the stt leaderboard [X]
• Reach $750  [X]
• Comfortably play 7 tables [X]

Week 2

14/04 - 21/04

Ok then Week 2, as you can see by my "yo-yo" graph variance decided to enter the equation. In fact I broke even after 80 games! Now these kind of runs can be de-moralising and make you start to question your own game. The old me would've gone off the rail and started to sit at higher buy ins stts and try and get out the rut so to speak. The thing is as Poker player you need to embrace variance, its what makes the game so great and accessible to everyone. It means a complete amateur can in the short term can beat someone like Phil Ivey. The keyword here is "short term", this is why you should treat variance as a Grandma you don't see so often. She comes to visit you every so often and you just have to make sure you put on your fake smile hope you don't do anything stupid get through it and say goodbye at the end of the day and wait for her to visit again (on your birthday or something). I must now point out that i don't condone not visiting your Grandma on a regular basis!

Embrace variance....oh and your Grandma

Before i move on to some hand analysis i would like to bring your attention to the following video: Andrew Feldman Crying. Now when I've seen Andrew on TV he seemed like a stand-up guy that knew what he was doing who was often criticised for his "nitty" play and nicknamed Andrew Foldman. Now i dont think there's anything wrong in having your own style of play if your an opponent you would just adjust your play accordingly so the term "nit" being used as a derogatory term within the Poker world is plain stupid and if anything your just showing your unwillingness to adapt.

Now after watching this video i had nothing but disappointment at Andrew. Poker to the outside world has a certain stigma attached to it where its deemed shady low life gamblers play it and everyone is a big loser in the game. I'm sure you've had a conversation with someone about poker like this:

Work Friend: "So what did you do last night?"
You: "Oh i played some poker at a casino"
Work Friend:"Really? Did you win much?"
You: "Yeah i won about £120"
Work Friend:"But how much did you lose?"
You: ".........."

So when a young kid starts acting like he has his entire life is on one tournament and starts "praying" for a certain card to come down it reeks of desperation, the same kind of desperation that appears with de-generate gamblers. This desperation turns to anger about the minor things, in this case his water! Jesus Andrew just get a grip, its not the floor staffs fault your opponent just outplayed you. The same kind of behaviour you would experience if someone was playing a fruit machine or roulette. What should differentiate a Poker player to a gambler is that we know the Maths, we know the risks and we make informed decisions so in long term we will win. We should be viewed as Stock Brokers are viewed, we make calculated risks which we believe will give us profit.

Characters within poker are good for the game and make great TV. Your not going to get the average TV viewer with no experience of poker watch 6 poker players with their hoods up and IPOD on not saying a word. But you can physically see that Andrew hasn't "invented" this character and it genuinely pains him whilst sweating 5 cards being put down on a bit of green felt. The tears at the end kind of sums this up. I just hope all our flagship UK Players don't act in the same manor.

Hand Analysis

Stt Concept #42 - Push the bubble

So we are fortunate to make the bubble of a stt (e.g 4 players left 3 get paid). We have a situation where we have more chips than the the rest of the table or the 2 smaller stacks, what do we do? Basically we need to put the stacks smaller than us under tournament life pressure as often as possible, as they don't wish to have put all this time in without any reward, the following 2 hands i played hopefully demonstrate this:

(18man stt, 4 get payed)

PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|100/200 NL - Holdem - 5 players

UTG: 4,541.00
CO: 5,688.00
BTN: 2,818.00
Hero (SB): 13,036.00
BB: 917.00

UTG posts ante 25.00, CO posts ante 25.00, BTN posts ante 25.00, Hero posts ante 25.00, BB posts ante 25.00, Hero posts SB 100.00, BB posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 425.00) Hero has    

fold, CO raises to 500.00, fold, Hero raises to 1,600.00, fold, fold

(same sit n go)


PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|100/200 NL - Holdem - 5 players

CO: 4,566.00
BTN: 6,213.00
SB: 2,943.00
Hero (BB): 12,336.00
UTG: 942.00

CO posts ante 25.00, BTN posts ante 25.00, SB posts ante 25.00, Hero posts ante 25.00, UTG posts ante 25.00, SB posts SB 100.00, Hero posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 425.00) Hero has    

fold, fold, BTN raises to 500.00, fold, Hero raises to 1,600.00, fold


In both situations you can see that because there is a short stack with 5 BB, its very easy to 3 bet the original raiser with any 2 cards. If he shoves i can just fold and give him benefit for a real hand. But I'm making him risk his tournament life where if justs fold all of his hands 99% of the time he will finish in the money. Its vital to pick up on these kind of situations as its quick and effective way to build your stack and push for a top 2 finish when the bubble bursts.

One More hand..... (for brags)



PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|25/50 NL - Holdem - 8 players

BTN: 2,003.00
Hero (SB): 1,538.00
BB: 1,360.00
UTG: 3,982.00
UTG+1: 556.00
MP: 1,390.00
MP+1: 1,700.00
CO: 971.00

Hero posts SB 25.00, BB posts BB 50.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 75.00) Hero has    

UTG raises to 150.00, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 450.00, fold, UTG raises to 850.00, fold

UTG shows  

What this doesnt show is that i tanked the time bank whilst chatting in the box. When UTG puts in the 4 bet i type in "im folding kings here". I type this in not to brag as i might be wrong but to try and talk my opponent into showing his hand. If he has AK or QQ here he will show to make you feel stupid. Once i folded my opponent showed out of courtesy (he was a fellow UK player) needless to say the rest of the table didn't believe me lol! You make think i should never kings here, in fact i wouldn't recommend doing so. My thought process is this. He's raised 3x UTG which is strong in the first place, i then 3 bet out of the SB, my position here is important as i 3 bet out of the blinds vs an EP raise is much stronger than just a UTG opener. As im willing to play for a big pot OOP. UTG just clicks it back (the min re-raise). Now what can he possibly do this with? He is happy for us to shove or call as he's reopened the action for the minimum. QQ or AK dont want to see flops so would just shove pre-flop. Therefore in my opinion its Aces and Aces only.  Also the Pokertracker stats didnt signify that my opponent was a maniac which in case i would just ship as he could have anything from 1010+ KQ+

Goals:

• Place on the stt leaderboard [ ]
• Reach $750 [ ]
• Comfortably play at least 7 tables at a time [X]

Week 1

06/04 - 13/04

The above graph shows my mtts and stts together (even though i only played 4 mtts). As one of my current goal is to place on the Pokerstars' Sit n Go Leaderboard it requires me to play 100 stts a week. Its a pretty good promotion and isn't a volume whore like a lot of other network promotions. I currently play 6 tables at a time (3x9man, 2x18man, 1x27man). I would like to increase this to 7 maybe 8 tables to boost my volume allowing me to play some more mtts. What is noticeable at this level is the mixture of players, you have your 80/33/0 loose passive players and your 4/4/2 rocks. What this creates is an adaptable style of play needed to beat these games. If a rock 3 bets me and i have AA/KK and we are early stages 75-100bb i will often just open ship with a 4 bet rather than 2.5x the rocks 3 bet. This makes his 3 bet range AQs+ JJ+ hold to fold when i open ship as noone plays aces or kings this way right?! With the loose passive fish i want to get as much in pre as possible without actually being all in. These guys will try and set mine with an SPR of 1, but will fold if you shove pre.

I would love to say that my downswings was 100% variance that i wasnt able to control, but at this stage where im at DISTRACTION is my enemy mainly just watching tv and more recently the Rocky films on ITV4. I love these films and as soon as i see Rocky taking a beating knowing that he's going fight back im fixated on the movie. In fact this is what my graph should really look like:

So to counter this I've decided to purchase some colourful headphones and download some 80's power ballads and dance music. Hopefully this will increase my concentration and in turn increase my ROI. This also brings me to this poker chair i found whilst browsing for tools to help me:

For £1300 this is pretty balla, it has speakers and a cup holder also. Basically I WANT THIS! Maybe if i take down a nice tournament ill put it on my wish list.

Hand Analysis

Stt Concept #14 - Fold Equity in relation to stack size

Now i was pretty lazy when it came down to this, i forgot to tag hands that would be good to review. Also a big part of stt/mtt play is usually done with quite shallow stacks so its difficult to get into too many awkward spots. But there are still a lot of concepts that need to be perfected. I would like to have a quick look at monitoring stack sizes and fold equity, especially near the latter part of an stt. The following 2 hands are consecutive button opens and are perfect examples of this (we are 6 handed and 4 get paid)

PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|100/200 NL - Holdem - 6 players

MP: 11,144.00

CO: 1,719.00

Hero (BTN): 3,703.00

SB: 3,521.00

BB: 2,670.00

UTG: 4,243.00

SB posts SB 100.00, BB posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 300.00) Hero has  

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 400.00, fold, fold

PokerStars - $6.37+$0.63|100/200 NL - Holdem - 6 players

MP: 11,944.00

CO: 1,819.00

Hero (BTN): 3,953.00

SB: 3,171.00

BB: 2,620.00

UTG: 3,493.00

MP posts ante 25.00, CO posts ante 25.00, Hero posts ante 25.00, SB posts ante 25.00, BB posts ante 25.00, UTG posts ante 25.00, SB posts SB 100.00, BB posts BB 200.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 450.00) Hero has    

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 400.00, fold, fold

These are perfect examples where we can literally raise with any 2 cards due to stack sizes. There is simply no need to raise anymore than 2x. If either blind have a hand they want to go all in with, it doesn't make a blind (excuse the pun) bit of difference if 2x or 4x. We are risking 2bb to win 2bb, where the blinds would need to risk their tournament life (10-13bb) to take down 4bb. So we have a ratio of 1:1 the blinds if they move all in have 3:1 so they are risking 3x as much to win the pot, relatively speaking. Its important to adapt this play. If the blind have 1-8bb i would just open fold the button in this situation as their ratio now closer 1:1. When attempting this play it works better when the BB is shorter than the SB as the SB is less likely to move in lighter as the BB can call lighter if shallow. Its probably a small percentage added to your fold equity but you must always be looking for these small edges.

I would like to end this section with the following hand where i feel a "lesser" player goes broke:

SB: 3,286.00

BB: 2,353.00

UTG: 1,909.00

MP: 2,584.00

Hero (CO): 1,673.00

BTN: 6,093.00

SB posts SB 50.00, BB posts BB 100.00

Pre Flop: (pot: 150.00) Hero has    

fold, fold, Hero raises to 225.00, BTN calls 225.00, fold, BB calls 125.00

Pretty standard raise from the CO, i don't move all in here as i feel a 16bb push is to much for hand like KQ. If im pushing 16bb its for value and we aren't getting called by KJ. If i have say 12bb or less then its a shove to take the blinds no more.

Flop: (725.00, 3 players)       

BB checks, Hero bets 362.00, BTN calls 362.00, BB calls 362.00

Good flop, im pretty much committing this flop i have 14bb back in a 7bb pot, i lead out and both call, i was pretty shocked by this as the hand that beats me here realistically is K10. AK/10's/7's would 3 bet me pre right?

Turn: (1811.00, 3 players) 

BB checks, Hero checks, BTN bets 5,506.00 and is all-in, BB calls 1,766.00 and is all-in, fold

Dont like this card at all, as KJ and 89 now beats us too, we did pick up a straight draw but i felt i was beaten here. Position helps alot, the BB finished the betting on the flop and now checks. I check here so the button can help me by forcing the BB to reveal his hand strength if the button bets. Button moves all in and BB calls. Im never good in this spot, at best im chopping with another KQ. You probably feel, "whats so special about this fold?" Its more to do with the check on the turn when it was so easy to commit the turn. It now gave me relative position which was important on that particular turn, i must admit if the turn came a brick (e.g a deuce) i commit, but again its these small edges that help us become a winning player

River: (5343.00, 2 players) 

BTN Shows:      (straight)

BB Shows:      (full house)

Turns out i was pretty much dead on the flop lol! Why the BB didnt 3 bet pre is beyond me, set mining vs opener and caller with less than 15bb is stupid. I ended the hand with 10bb and went on to cash 2nd in tournament all because of my turn check giving me relative position.

Ok, thats the end of my first post hopefully week 2 will be a bigger winning week, with my purple headphones and NO MORE ROCKY!!

Goals:

• Place on the stt leaderboard   [ ]
• Reach $750  [ ]
• Comfortably play at least 7 tables at a time  [ ]

6th April 2012 - 6th May 2012

Now most starting points tend to begin at the start of a month. I’m starting on the 6th April because simply this is when my Internet was activated; coincidentally it’s also the start of the UK tax year. So if I’m going to run my poker career as a business why not start here? Also why not celebrate the fact that gambling winnings are not taxable!

Im currently voluntarily playing below my bankroll as ive withdraw most of my money from my poker accounts. I did this so you'll also be able to see (hopefully lol) my rise through the stakes. Graphs will be posted weekly (every Saturday)


Currently Playing


Site: Pokerstars
Games: $7 stts (9-27man), <$10mtts

Goals:

• Place on the STT Leaderboard [ ]
• Reach $750 [ ]

The Goal

Poker to me is a means to an end. If I were to ever hit the magical 7-figure mark poker would take quite a distanced back seat. This isn’t to say I would never play again; I would just play less often giving me more time to spend with my family and pursue other business ventures.

Introduction

Hi, my names Ricky and I’ve been playing poker for a number of years and I’m creating this blog to give me fresh focus and a motivational drive, which will hopefully give me that extra push to move my game onto the next level.

Throughout my poker “career” ive sat down at $5/$10 cash games, played $300 hu stts and generally tilted and played like a fish. My game has since “matured” and I would say I have been playing profitably for about 5years.

Now during this blog I will be posting graphs, hand history, analysis and basically anything I deem an interesting talking point. I don’t have what you would call a specialist game. I play stts, mtts and cash games (online and live) all profitably across a number of sites. All results will be posted and I will be highly critical of any mistakes I feel I may make. At the end of the day im making this blog more for myself more than anything to help me stay focused and so I can review my sessions, if anyone reading this finds any enjoyment in doing so its just a bonus and any comments are greatly appreciated.