Had my best month to date

In January, I had my best month yet in terms of total poker profits. I'm pretty happy with the monthly result, overall, as I have started off 2009 with a bang. I also played primarily $5/10 NL 6 Max and proved that I'm a solid winner at that level. The end of the month, however, kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.

I decided to play a session on Friday night, the night before I was scheduled to move out of my old house into my new house. And stuff did just not go my way. I dumped 8 buyins and I think one of the primary reasons for my failures on Friday was subconsciously trying to achieve a "milestone" monthly profit figure. It's so stupid to shoot for a certain $ profit in a particular month, but for some reason I did it anyways yesterday.

A few bluffs went bad at the beginning of the session then it went all downhill from there. I lost a lot of standard hands, flips, etc. but I made some really poor choices in those bluffs at the beginning and made 2 really bad stackoffs with marginal hands. I did, however, get coolered in a $4.5k pot when I flopped the 3rd nut flush vs the flopped nuts against a very aggressive opponent.

The sick thing was, is I probably shouldn't have played the session anyways, because I should have been packing up my belongings getting ready for the move. Instead, I decided to keep on playing past my 2 hour mark and played a marathon sesson and ALSO went on what I call "multi-table tilt". I ended up playing 8 tables for much of my session, which almost always results in me having a very swingy session. I haven't went on "multi-table tilt" in a while, which is good, but now I see why it's just so dangerous. You just lose so many small and medium pots that just add up and add up. I think this is true even when 6 tabling as well. It's clear that for me, 4 tables is BY FAR the most profitable route. I'll need to keep this in mind and make sure I just play 4 tables, max, in February... as it might be tempting to roll up a bunch of tables with two 30'' monitors staring me in the face.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll talk more about my new place in a future post. The closing of the house went well on Friday and I ended up moving all my stuff into the new house today. Due to my long session Friday night I actually didn't sleep at all Friday night/Saturday morning because I had to pack up all my stuff before the movers came.

I can't wait to set up my new computer. I should have it up and running in a few days. I'll post some pics of the house and new computer setup when I get the chance.

Played decently, but got a poor result

I think I played quite solidly today and was able to get the money in good an awful lot. I just wasn't able to get my hands to hold up, like I did yesterday. Lost about 4.5 buyins in total but it isn't even phasing me at all because I just am really satisfied with how I played. I did my job and that's all I can do. period.

I would normally go on now to complain about the fact that I ran $6k below EV but it just doesn't matter. I ran $3k above EV yesterday. Like INTERNETPOKERS said in his blog, there are all sorts of kinds of luck... for example, I got lucky to have people ship bottom pair when I had AA overpair in a 3-bet pot, etc.

I'm feeling so great right now. I feel like although I posted the results above in my blog, I am super close to being fully separated from my results and feeling extremely unattached to the results of a specific day. This, I believe, is a major key to become a massive winner.

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play over the next few days. I have to start putting stuff in boxes to get ready for my move, as well as go to the closing on Friday to finish up the deal on the new crib.

On Fire!

I've been trying to avoid looking at results and focusing on them, but I just had to check to see how I did today because it felt like I absolutely killed the game. I was right, I did kill it. +12 buyins in 2,212 hands. My second best day ever!

I played great today. Reading that blog by INTERNET POKERS really gave me a different outlook on the game and running good or bad. I am taking it to heart and just ignoring all the uncontrollable stuff and it's allowing me to make the correct play in nearly every situation. I'm playing the best poker I've ever played because I'm focusing my concentration on playing my A+ game as much as possible.

I also played in an intramural hockey game tonight with my team, "Blue Steel". We won the game 6-0 and it put us into a tie for first place in the league standings. It was a good game and our team played well. I played defense and the team held the opposition to probably less than 8 shots total for the whole game.

Winning Session

It feels good to finally book a decent win in one of my 2 hour sessions. I haven't had any considerable winning sessions over the past week, as I mentioned earlier. Today, after breaking even in my first 2 hour session of the day, I managed to win 3 buyins in the final session of the day.

I ran pretty well, as I caught some big hands in 3-bet pots and was able to stack a few regulars. I only really made two mistakes... once picking a bad 3-barrel bluff spot vs a regular and the other stacking off too lightly to a 50 big blind fish.

I read INTERNETPOKER's blog on CR today and I thought it was a really solid read. I think all of my students should take the time to read through it, as it had some really good stuff in it about the mental game, way to approach bad beats, etc.

I'm going to play super solid for the next five days and finish the month off strong.

Unfortunate situations

This past week has been pretty annoying. I feel that significantly more than normal, I've been in pots with great hands vs bad players and the sickest turn and river cards have peeled off each time. I can't count how many times I've had a hand like AA vs a 50 big blind player on a KXX flop and I bet the turn and he CRAI only to see that his King-rag turned two pair. It's part of the game but wow, the boards are just running out really really bad for me lately.

Also, pair that with not really getting any action on my big hands and I've had a bit of a fall the past week or so. It seems like all my 4-bet bluffs get jammed on then when I pick up AA or something and 4-bet to the same $ amount, vs the same player, with the same timing, then my opponent insta-folds.

Oh well, whatever, I'm sure it will turn around some time.

Anyways, the Sioux hockey games this weekend were great. UND absolutely killed Denver on Friday, whipping them 8-3. On Saturday the teams played to a 2-2 tie.

Also, on Saturday Denver's coach flipped out on the refs and like walked across the ice to talk to the refs after getting ejected. His whining worked though, as Denver got 5 straight power plays and the Sioux got 0 power plays for the rest of the game. Denver got the game tying goal on one of those powerplays that were awarded after their coach exploded. Here's the youtube link to the video, it's pretty funny and not too long.

Not much going on right now...

I've had a period of about 3-4 days where I've just been treading water. Winning a few buyins here and there then losing them back the next day, etc. I think it's pretty standard though, as a lot of my bigger losses have been unavoidable coolers or bad beats. I'll just keep grinding and the graph should start going up again instead of staying horizontal.

In other news, I'm buying a new house in town so I've been doing some stuff like hiring painters, carpet cleaners, etc. to get it all ready for me to move into at the end of the month. It's basically just an upgrade house from what I'm living in right now. Both my roommates (one of my friends and my brother) will be moving along with me.

It has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 living rooms, and a 2-car garage. Biggest difference between my new house and the house I'm living in right now is the garage. It really sucks to live in the arctic tundra of North Dakota without a garage, as in the winter every morning your car is full of ice on the windshield and freezing cold inside.

It's also a lot more spacious and has a lot better layout and overall look. It's only about 4 blocks away from where I'm living now, so I'll be right around the same area. I'm pretty excited, as I'm going to be setting up my new desktop computer when I move into my new house. Right now, it's just sitting in the box because I don't really want to set everything up twice.

Sioux college hockey games this weekend vs Denver... the series should be intense because the teams are battling for the WCHA league Championship. If the Sioux win both games it could put them in 1st place overall. They are currently in a tie for 4th in the standings.

Losing Flips

Not sure how I ended up overall today, I didn't look. I did lose my last four all-in pre-flop flips through, which is unfortunate but I think I played each hand well. The way the games were playing, if I didn't take a stand when I did, I would have just gotten run over.

The weather in ND during the winter pretty much sucks. It's been well below zero for the last week or so but today it was finally decently nice, around 22 degrees F.

I'm going to go workout tomorrow sometime, as it's been over a week since the last time I lifted weights. I did play hockey tonight though, which was a good cardio workout.

I am still trying to decide if I should sit down and make out an actual plan for 2009 or some goals or something. I seem to be pretty intrinsically motivated so I think something like a # of hands played target or whatever would be pointless. I don't want to set monetary goals either, as that's putting false pressure on myself and something that I can't completely control anyways. I'm going to think about it for a bit longer, even though we're already a half month into the new year.

Saturday

I played a decent amount yesterday and pretty sure I broke even. I think I'm starting to get a little sick, as I have a sore throat. I was going to work out sometime yesterday but never got around to it because I wasn't feeling all that great. I'm going to get some sleep and hopefully I'll feel a bit better in the morning.

Losing Day

Had a losing day today, pretty much because of these two hands:

I decided to bump it up on the flop and just get it in on the flop even though we were a bit deep (150bbs). Unfortunately, he had AA so my overs were not good. Still, it wasn't the end of the world since I still had a 38% chance to win on the flop. I'm going to have a set a decent % of the time here too so although his shove with AA here is quite standard, he's going to be drawing slim sometimes.

This hand was just simply unlucky, as I got it all in way ahead and just got sucked out on.

Other than those two hands, not a whole lot happened. I felt that I played pretty well, which is the most important thing. I just didn't win a few large, key pots. I'm looking forward to grinding a ton this weekend and stacking some fish.

Best Day EVER !!!

I definitely was on a big heater today for sure. I had my best day ever in poker, winning $13k over 1,749 hands in just under 4 hours of time at the tables. I ran so hot. I don't think I've ever ran this good in a single day. The running hot wasn't sucking out on people, it was just having all my big hands hold when I was ahead. I also was very fortunate that it seemed like EVERYONE had a hand they wanted to felt when I had a set or high pair. It also helped that a reg spewed like a monkey earlier today and I won $5.7k off of him alone. It was a great day.

Most of the play was at $5/10 NL, however, I did donk around for about 150 hands at $2/4 NL and lost 2 buyins there. So I won nearly 14 buyins at $5/10 NL and just to give you an idea of how great I ran... my W$SD% was 86.2% at $5/10 NL !!! I don't think I've ever had it be over 75% before for a full day.

I spent the last part of my night beginning to read "Elements of Poker" by Tommy Angelo. I'm only ~35 pages in so far but it looks pretty decent. It's already reinforced the concept of poker being a never ending session. Technically, running bad or running good is simply a figment of your imagination. The present is the only thing that matters. I'm going to really work hard on making sure I take that approach to the game.

The most important thing about today though, was that I played really well. I didn't get stacked for 100 big blinds a single time at $5/10 NL and I was able to felt multiple opponents. Even the biggest pot I lost was just a coinflip vs a medium stack.

I played great today and I'm going to do my best to play my A-game every single hand from here on out.

Played prety well today

I had a few solid sessions today. The final session I made a few poor call downs which may have been an effect of playing too long even though I was only doing 2 hour sessions. It's possible that 2 hours is a bit too long for me to play my A+ game. I think I might start experimenting with 1 hr and 30 minute sessions, as I always seem to have a bit of a drop off towards the end of my sessions.

I just need to really think about what % of the time a villain is going to be actually pulling the trigger on a large, multi-barrel bluff before I decide to do something like decide to call down no matter what. I really should pay a bit more attention to bet sizing as well, because some of the really weak regs just turn over their hands because they vary their bet sizes depending on how strong they are sometimes.

Overall, I'm happy with today and I'll build upon it for the rest of the week.

College Hockey

I went to a few hockey games this weekend. UND's archrival, the University of Minnesota, was in town for a two game series. The Sioux have been having a rough year so far, with a record of around .500. This weekend, they decided to kick it into high gear and actually try apparently. The Sioux crushed the #3 nationally ranked Gophers 6-3 on Friday night and 6-1 on Saturday night for the sweep. Both games were awesome.

Here are a few pics:

Center Ice Draw



2nd Period Faceoff



Chanting Sieve



What's a Sieve?



Fight



Salute

Pretty much broke even...

Played a lot Friday night. Pretty much all at $5/10 NL. Terrible result: up $200. Ran another $1.8k below EV, which brings the monthly EV runbad up to $10k below EV.

Bah, nothing I can do, but I need to remember to keep my sessions to 2 hours because it's sooooo much easier to get frustrated when I'm running like this.

I was actually up $3k about halfway through the day but I had two HUGE fish on my tables and they were super deep stacked. So I decided to sit and keep playing and not take my breaks. BIG mistake. They donated their chips to the other regs after they won a few decently sized pots vs me getting pretty damn lucky (3-outer on river).

My graph plummeted from +$3k to even for the last half of my hands. I don't think I was playing badly, just not my A+ game. I finished off the day by getting coolered AK vs AA AIPF in a squeeze situation.

Also ran KK into AA AIPF again today and I'm nearly positive this is like the 5th or 6th time this has happened to me over the past 3 days or so. And I haven't ran AA into KK AIPF once.

The whole fact of the fresh start with the "new year" seems to be making me put false pressure on myself to have great results. My results don't really matter if I'm playing well.

I'm having a difficult time with the mental game. I probably need to re-read the "Poker Mindset". I also have that Tommy Angelo book, "The Elements of Poker." I've heard it's supposed to be a decent book so maybe I'll read that sometime soon as well.

Frustration

It sucks to do a lot of things right and still lose. Lost about $500 today. Here's why:

Hand #1: Sickest thing about this hand, is how much he's crushed by my range. He runs into one of the weakest hands I'd ever play this way and I lose the pot even though I'm 53% to win on the flop.


Hand #2: I had set this regular up by 3-betting him, even on this same table, like 5-6 times before this hand over the past 15 minutes. I expected him to be about ready to 4-bet bluff me so when he did I was like, YES !!!

Hand #3: This was the very first hand of my play today. Off to a great start, huh?

Hand #4: Just got sucked out on here.

Hand #5: The customary KK vs AA all in pre-flop.

I could keep posting hands but it's pointless, there's nothing to learn from any of these. I played a few hands poorly but those hands were all small to medium pots and weren't that big of mistakes.

This month is starting to feel like that one month last year when I ran something like $20k or whatever below all in EV. Today I only ran $2k below EV and I'm about $7k below EV on the month so far. I wasn't going to look at this stat anymore but I just wanted to take a peek to see if I'm losing because of poor play or bad luck... looks like it's probably because of the latter.

Unbelieveable

Lost back nearly exactly what I won yesterday. I dumped $4.5k in 2,400 hands. Had to check the EV stat and I ran $4,300 below expectation in all ins. I run goot.

This one made my day. When we're 200bbs deep he binks a 3-outer on me to scoop the pot.

This hand happened right towards the end of my session. The villain and I have a lot of 3-betting and 4-betting history... of course I get one-upped. - 200bbs again.

My favorite TAGfish hits top set on the flop and holds vs my overcard and nut flush draw.

I lost a few more standard flips for stacks and the rest of the losses were just fish outflopping me when I had a good but not great hand. I'm not saying I played perfectly today... I definitely could have gotten away from a few hands vs a few of the passive fish. I made a couple bad river calls.

Things just didn't go my way today.

Ship it

I played pretty solid today and won $4.8k over 3,800 hands. I need to work on opening up a bit pre-flop though, as sometimes towards the end of each two hour session I auto-piloted a bit and that resulted in a bit of nitty play.

It's cool that I was able to win so much even after losing a bunch of hands I should have won and being on the wrong end of a few big flips.

Here's my biggest lost on the day. Villain was 4-betting me a ton before this so he certainly has 4-bet bluffs in his range, making both of our plays here standard. It always seems to hit on the river, lol.

Just got sucked out on here when I had the best hand. Another river rat.

This guy is a shortstacker who plays all the time and seems like he's terrible but he always gets the best of me. Here's two hands vs him. Here, he sucks out vs my trips. And here he 3-bets with 22 !?!? and calls my shove... weird, obviously shortstacks getting it in with 22 has to be terrible as they are flipping vs everything and crushed a lot. He's down a ton of money in my database but somehow he's a decent winner according to tableratings.com.

I gave a really interesting lesson earlier today in which I kind of messed up vs. a regular a few different times (we were doing a live sweat with me playing)... I learned quite a bit from it as well and I think that I picked up on something that is probably one of my leaks.

Cooled off a bit...

Over the past few days, my scorching start to the month has cooled off a bit. Sunday I broke even over a decent amount of hands and yesterday I lost about $2k.

I played mostly $5/10 NL yesterday and didn't really get paid off at all and wasn't able to stack a single opponent. I did, however, manage to lose a huge flip for 170bbs here. That was really the only hand of interest in the session and it accounted for the majority of my loss.

I'll look to play well today and try and turn a tidy profit.

Decent Result

Won about $2k today. Most of the my big losses were out of my control, which is good. I didn't make any mistakes for 100bbs stacks. I did, however, make one stupid bluff at $5/10 NL vs a LAG player who wasn't going to buy it... that cost me about 1/3 a buyin there.

Here's a few hands:

Biggest loss on the day here. This was vs. a reg that I have a lot of history with. He actually runs about 18/14 which is the hilarious part. He's the definition of "TAGfish". That's not the first time he's sucked out like this... he's outdrawn me like 2-3 times in AIPF pots with suited Aces when I have him crushed.

I get it all in drawing dead! Weeeeeeeeee

I like my line here vs. this fish. Unfortunately, I didn't get the result I wanted.

That is all. I think I might hit the hay a bit earlier tonight, I'm feeling a bit tired out.

Another solid day

I had a pretty good day today as well. I ended up winning about $3.2k with most of the hands coming at $2/4 NL 6 Max on Stars. I was playing on Stars to unlock a $1.5k bonus, which I cleared today as well. I played 8 tables to clear the bonus faster and it went pretty well, although I did make a few pre-flop mistakes. I also made one spewy bluff with Ten high in a 3-bet pot which didn't work out at all...

Anyways, Ryan, a HU pro from Fargo (who is also a member of my Destined2pwn poker group) came up for the night and he set up his computer just across from mine and grinded out some hands. He had a few very swingy sessions against wild opponents and ended up down a bit. I saw him play some ridiculous hands where his opponent shipped an underpair, pocket 44 on the flop and held vs Ryan's two overs and flushdraw. Sick life. Ryan also bricked on another huge draw when the same villain checkraised all in on the turn with TT on a JXXX board. They were deep of course.

I donked around at bit at HU, $1/2 blinds deepstacked. I finished up from my first match vs. the same opponent when 4 tabling. But then I lost most of it back to 3 random, terribly passive donkeys. They all ran really good vs me and I ran AK into AA AIPF for a stack once which hurt.

Anyways, the HU play was fun but I think I'm going to stick to 6 Max for sure. The variance in HU seems like it's pretty brutal. It isn't something I really want to deal with, at least not right now.

Back to the grind tomorrow.

Off to a Smoking Start in 2009

I'm wasting no time in the new year... I've gotten off to an excellent start and I'm up $7k over 6,000 hands so far. About half of my play has been at $5/10 NL and the other half at $2/4 NL.

I've decided that I'm going to try and play $5/10 NL whenever the games are good and try and play that stake as much as possible. I'm definitely rolled for the limit and as long as there's a fish in the game I can make much more money playing $5/10 NL than $2/4 NL.

Here's the biggest pot I've won so far. The UTG player was terrible so I was trying to get into as many pots as possible with that player. Once I hit, I played it pretty standardly in my opinion. No reason really to raise at any point in the hand as the board is pretty dry.

This hand sucked, as the villain was a HUMUNGOUS fish. I thought he had AK or AA or something, as lots of these terrible fish like to min 3-bet OOP then check the flop to slowplay those hands.

I'm going to do my best to continue this short term tear into a long term one and attempt to absolutely crush $5/10 NL.

2008 Recap

2008 was a great year for me. It was my first full year as a Professional Poker Player. I am extremely satisfied with my decision to pursue poker for my profession. I am having a lot of fun with it as well as making a respectable amount of cash. My poker gig is an perfect job for me. I am certain I wouldn't nearly be as happy or successful in my life right now if I had used my degree in business management to get a job in a management position.

As far as $ results in 2008, I far surpassed what I estimated I would make on the year and am very happy with the monetary result from 2008.

I really believe that much of my success in '08 was due to getting lessons from Tim Nuter in April. I owe much of my success to his tutelage. Without those lessons, I probably make half as much as I did for the year.

I'm glad I started coaching in 2008. I began coaching towards the end of August and have had many different students take lessons from me. Most of my students, especially the ones who have taken poker seriously since taking lessons, have shown significant improvements in their skill level. I think it's pretty cool that I can help others print money and it definitely gives me some type of fulfillment from my job.

As far as my personal life for 2008, it was average. I had a fun summer shooting in a lot of sporting clays tournaments with my Dad and brother and I had decent success in those shoots. We had a good duck hunting season as well.

I didn't work out as much as I should have and I'm not in as good of shape as I was to start the year. Also, I ended a relationship that I had with a girl that wasn't working out at all. Ending it was good because we weren't the right match, but since then I haven't really put that much effort into meeting or dating new girls.

So, overall, 2008 was an excellent year for me. I hope 2009 will be even better.

December Results

Overall for the month, I ended up making about $14k from poker profits. Obviously not nearly as good as my last few months but still OK. Much of that was actually from rakeback. I got a huge rakeback check from raketherake.com because I played so much in November. Of the $14k I made this month, $5k of that was from rakeback.

I didn't execute my monthly plan as well as I would have liked. I did follow it most of the time, however, which was good. There were times where I would play more than 4 tables, times where I tried bluffing big fish, and times where I didn't make the best decisions. I think I may have put too much pressure on myself by making so many different goals and plans. Next time I'm going to make it much simpler to focus on fewer things.

I'll probably do a recap of my year sometime tomorrow.