Playing a bit better

I played a lot better yesterday. I'm not sure exactly how much I won, but I know I was making pretty good reads and playing much better than I had lately.

I just stuck to my bread and butter of 4 tabling $2/4 NL 6 Max. The games were pretty good as I had a 50VPIP or higher drooler on each of my tables. I'm going to play a ton more hands today and keep on grinding.

played one more session... bad idea

Just continued to get crushed. Hard.

This guy is a total monkey from the blinds. I HAD to call pre-flop. Whatever.

Villain is a MASSIVE 50 VPIP fish. He check raised me huge once before but I folded so I never got to see what he had.

Actually seriously considered folding this pre-flop as the guy in the blinds was a massive nit... like 14/11, but I didn't trust my read and shoved anyways.

I don't know what to do anymore. I wish I had someone to coach me out of this epic suckfest. Because obviously I don't know what I'm doing anymore.

Fact of life: Sometimes poker just plain sucks

I've had a really frustrating time lately with poker. Part of me wants to blame my bad luck in pretty much all three aspects of running bad: getting sucked out on, getting coolered, and not getting paid off on my big hands... and part of me wants to blame myself for letting myself perhaps fall behind the skill curve and not putting in enough hours both playing and studying.

I just don't really understand it though... I sit back and watch some of my other professional poker player friends play and many of their styles are extremely similar to mine. I have similar though processes as them, make similar plays at the table, but for some reason or another they are just beating the tar out of the games while I've been a FPP pro the past 3 months.

I feel like I'm playing a winning style and for the most part making the right decisions... just in this short term period of 2 or 3 months I just can't seem to buy a string of 3-4 good days in a row with respectable results.

Hands like these constantly crush my soul and I'm wrong to let it mentally affect me, but it does. And more often than not, as in the example that happened earlier today I just linked to, the hands I get stacked are Vs. the fish. This, obviously, is not good... because the reason I'm AT the table in the first place is to take money from the weakest players. But I've been getting felted consistently by the worst players at the table.

I think I might actually look to get a mental coach or something because even though I KNOW the correct "Poker Mindset" sometimes I wonder if I'm even following it at all.

I'm sitting here writing this knowing that deep down inside I'm a great poker player, have won lots of money doing this, and it's been my sole source of income for over two years... but I just can't help to feel a bit defeated right now as I can barely even beat $2/4 NL ffs. I've had more than a few months where I absolutely crushed $5/10 NL in the past and I think I'm actually a better player now than I was back then. Which definitely baffles me.

But I really feel dejected and a bit distraught and for the first time in my poker career I'm sitting here wondering why I play this game. It isn't fun for me, at this particular moment. The levels of frustration I'm having with the game are canceling out any enjoyment I am getting from playing. I have had this sort of feeling before, but it's only been temporary or after just one big losing day... I normally snap out of it. However, this time it seems to be lingering over a period of a few weeks.

I came to the office today feeling good about my plan for playing 4 tables, then just proceeded to get crushed in various ways. Really disheartening. You will look at these hands and perhaps say, "standard." I agree, for the most part, but it's just so soul crushing to have this shit never end.

Vs. biggest fish at the table... my first hand of the day. FML.

Flip loss vs. a reg I had not even played with nor 3-bet before.

flop 2nd nuts vs. a massive fish and lose

my river shove here is pretty horrid probably since so many of his hands are helped by the Jack. But I felt I had the best hand almost always on the turn. I probably should have c/f the river but I didn't and another fish fattens his stack.

This was like my 10th hand of the session... happened less than 3 minutes after my KQ hand.

set no good

Looking at these hands again, it's obvious I just ran like shit this past session and am certainly fuming. I've ran bad before and I will have sessions in the future where I will run bad as well. I just need to figure out a way to not get so disheartened when I'm consistently getting crushed like this so I can just continue to put in hands while playing my best. Such a tough thing to do. I came super close to just taking my keyboard and lifting it above my head and smashing it into a million pieces on the floor today.

Whatever, fuck it. I can't get so emotional about stuff, but the pressure is higher than ever for me to win since my expenses in Chicago are significantly higher than they were in ND. I'm just going to try and forget about my shitty results lately and focus on the future and playing each hand to the best of my ability.

Off to grab a bite at Jimmy Johns...

Fuck full ring

I'm going back to 4 tabling 6 max. Full ring is a joke.

ughhhh

Had a pretty bad day today and yesterday. Basically, I'm losing the majority of my stacks from pre-flop situations. I've run QQ into better and AK into AA countless times.

Maybe full ring isn't the answer. I need to figure something out soon because I'm sick and tired of these inconsistent results.

I'm going to try and completely stop fucking around traveling, etc and doing unnecessary things in my life until my poker game is back on track. It is unacceptable that I've let my game fall down so much... that has to be it. Either that or I'm running like a midget with a broken leg for a period of 3+ months, which is pretty unlikely.

I've been a real bum when it comes to watching poker vids, as I can't even remember the last time I sat down and watched one seriously while taking notes. Lately, any vids I've watched have been 15 minute sections of a vid while I was eating food. It's tough to learn much from watching them that way.

I also need to start doing some sweats with some of my friends. I have numerous friends that are crushing that would be willing to help me get back on track but I'm not taking advantage of that and I have no one to blame but myself. For April, I'm going to set specific goals and start scheduling time in my day to watch vids and do sweats with other players. I also need to get a few lessons with Nutedawg in.

It's time to stop sucking and start crushing again... I know I have it in me, it's just going to take some time and dedication.

Full ring experiment continues...

So on Monday I totally dominated and did quite well... I also ran pretty damn hot as well. Today, my results were a bit more mixed as I finished down for the day. I feel that I just failed to make a few big, but necessary folds today and if I could have laid those few hands down I would have broke even approximately.

It's still a work in progress and I need to refine my playing style at full ring... I felt that I got a bit too over-aggressive today and was exploiting certain regulars too much... to the point they finally realized it and started playing back. I need to tone it down a bit so they don't pick up on what I'm doing to exploit them.

Put in a long day today though, playing a total of 8 hours. I'm going to try and play like crazy for a week so I get the feel of working 40-50 hours per week and see if SNE is even something to consider or try for.

Full ring

Decided to give full ring a bit of a shot... mainly just to reduce my variance a bit as I need to snap out of my mediocre results and start winning consistently again. I'll probably try it out for the rest of this month and re-evaluate.

Today was my second full day of playing full ring and I must say, it went quite well. I played as solidly as I could and the pots I lost were mainly due to coolers or river value bets that turned out to be too thin where I value-owned myself. I do like the fact that I have the ability to play a ton more tables and have my level of play not suffer much, if at all. I feel like I can easily play a good, solid, aggressive, winning style while playing 12-15 tables of full ring without much trouble.

I'm flying out to Phoenix tomorrow and will be flying back to Chicago on Sunday. Ended up getting free tickets to an NHL game there, since they ran a promotion last time I went to a Coyotes game where if the Coyotes won, the fans that were there got to choose free tickets for a game of their choosing. They will be playing the Blackhawks on Saturday night.

I'm going to bring my laptop and try to squeeze in a few sessions, but I may just play some 6 max as it's a little more difficult to mass table on a laptop.

St. Patty's Day Celebration in Chicago!

This past Saturday, the city of Chicago celebrated St. Patrick's day by coloring the river green, drinking basically all day, and I think there was a parade or something too.

Some people began drinking as early as 7 AM!!! I ended up sleeping in until like 11AM, got my haircut at noon, then headed out around 2PM and was out drinking with my friend Blair in full swing by around 3PM. I kept on going and ended up staying out until 5AM! That was by far the longest I've ever been in or around bars, clubs, etc. in one day. I didn't get completely smashed though, as I did a pretty good job of pacing myself so I had a good buzz going on nearly the whole time.

Blair and I went to check out the green river before we headed out to the first bar. It actually looked pretty sweet. Overall, I had a great day and had a blast on my first St. Patty's day in Chicago.

Poker has been pretty frustrating lately. The results are no where near what I would be satisfied with... the reason is a combination of some mistakes I'm making as well as an epic run-bad spell.

I am experimenting with full ring and might try to grind there for a few weeks to see how it goes. Also contemplating a Supernova Elite run on Stars, but I need to do more calculations and see if I can play well on numerous tables of full ring cash games.

Here are some pics from St. Patty's day!

Going to update more...

I'm going to try and update my blog a bit more frequently, as I've been slacking a bit lately. Over the past few days, I've been pretty busy playing poker and trying to get my friend Blair started up playing poker. He is basically starting from scratch, but I really think if he works hard, he will become a very solid poker player.

I've been in a pretty terrible sleep cycle pattern lately... waking up at around 2 or 3 PM, which is a little ridiculous. I mean, it's fine to sleep in until noon, since nothing really happens in online poker from 6 AM to noon anyways, but when I wake up at 3 PM it feels like have the day is wasted. So i'm going to try and get into a pattern of waking up around 11 AM or noon over the next week or so.

I'm also going to start going to the gym and lift some weights on a regular basis. I have no excuses as the gym is actually on the 9th floor of my building and it is included with my apartment rent. I also want to start using the steam room as well they have in the locker rooms there, as it's pretty relaxing to sit in one of those for 10-15 minutes. The guys I stayed with in LA had one at their house and I really liked it.

Poker could definitely be going better... I've come to the conclusion that I just need to work harder on my game. I've become lazy and this may have resulted in me being "behind the times" a bit as far as how the games are playing now. I also feel like I have not been running anywhere close to average lately as well, which never helps anything of course... but it's no excuse. I should be able to battle through it better like I have in the past.

Back to work!

I had both a fun and productive weekend. I managed to get a lot of poker playing in on Friday night and Sunday afternoon... while going out to a club called "The Underground" both on Saturday and Sunday night.

I'm back to the office today though, as I really want to get a ton of hands in this week and make some money. I'm going to focus on optimizing my time this week... because last week I had far too many days where I slept in until like 1 or 2 in the afternoon, which is a pretty big waste of time. I really only need 7 to 8 hours of sleep to feel fine during the day, and sleeping 9 or 10 hours just shortens my day too much. I'm going to start getting back into lifting weights again too this week.

Playboy Mansion Party!

I'm back in Chicago now after visiting LA for 12 days... and the most memorable event of the trip occurred last Saturday night. I ended up getting invited to the Kandy Masquerade party at the Playboy Mansion and it was off the charts!!! This was the second time I got invited to the Mansion and the party was even more fun than the first time!

The dress code was all black attire + mask for men and women were required to wear lingerie + masks. I ended up going there with three of my friends and we were on one of the first shuttles to the Mansion. We arrived at the Mansion near 8:00 PM and it was just as impressive as the first time. Tons of beautiful women, an open bar, free food, and great music complements of famous DJ Paul Oakenfold all contributed to a great night. I even ran into Chris Ferguson there!

I'm definitely headed back to party there whenever possible. The entire trip to LA was awesome as well. I had a great time visiting Seth and the other 4 guys in their new mansion. I also got to hang out with Adam for a decent bit and met a few of the UB regs at dinner. The dinner was at a super fancy restaurant called "Providence". There were 10 of us there... the guys from the house, Vanessa (aka "Princessdonk"), and Hardcory & A2Steaksauce from UB. We ended up getting a 9 course tasting meal on a Friday night... and it took 2 hours and 45 minutes. It was ridiculously tasty but took ridiculously long to eat. We also got a wine pairing with the dinner, so a wine connoisseur brought out a different wine to match with each of the courses. We were planning on going to a club after dinner, but didn't have time. Thank god I wasn't the unlucky soul to lose the credit card roulette... as the bill was $2-3k.

Can't wait to head back to LA sometime soon! I'm sure I'll visit there at least once before I head to Vegas in June for the WSOP.

Here are some pics from my trip: