Shitty Shitty Month

Last month was an absolute train wreck. Incidentally the majority of my losses for the month happened all in one day. On my last post I talked about FTOPS starting and how I was looking forward to playing in event #2. Well as usual, I got unlucky and was out the first 30 minutes of the tournament. Being a little peeved, I got this great idea to take a shot at the $1/$2 cash tables. Boy Full Tilt decided to punish me for making that decision. If you look at the graph the first 800 hands or so were the hands at $1/$2. Yep pretty much straight down. I ran unbelievably bad. I pretty much lost every all-in I played. And what made it even worse, is that at these stakes you have the option of being able to run it twice. For you non-poker players, running it twice means.. lets say you and another player get all your money in on the flop and agree to run it twice. The dealer deals out two sets of turns and river cards (if you dont know what the flop, turn, or river cards are well.. google it or pick up a poker book :-p). If you win the first set, you're guaranteed half the pot. If you win both sets you get the whole pot and if you lose both.. I think you know. So anyways the reason to do this is to help lower the variance as most of the time you will split the pot. Unfortunately I remember three times of dealing it twice and losing all three times, which is quite a feat. Needless to say it was nerve wracking. I shouldve been about a $200 winner, but instead I was a $600 loser. I dropped back down in stakes but never really recovered on the month and really just started to play bad which is evident from the EV line dipping into the negative. Another interesting thing to note is that I only played 11 days out of the whole month. This to me is quite unacceptable. I really need to cut down on the partying lol.

There was some good that came out of losing last month, however. It made me look over some hands and do a little studying of what's working and what's not. I'm still trying to figure out an optimal strategy for these shallow games as they are a bit different from the full 100bb games. I started off this month playing the same style but instantly went in the hole again (I did also run bad as usual but still), so I've made some changes and I feel really comfortable with the style of play and the results. Only time will tell if it will actually be profitable over the long run. On the tournament front I started off the month final tabling the same tournament back to back days which was kind of cool. Don't think I've ever done that. Unfortunately I went out in 7th and 6th place, which may seem pretty good but when you put into perspective that 1st is $1500 and 6th is $300 well.. it sucks. Nevertheless, it has put me off to a good start on the month and it's shaping up to be a big month for me.

MiniFTOPS started yesterday and although I didn't play event #1, I will be playing event #2 today which is actually in a couple hours. I'm definitely going to play seven events and possibly more, so hopefully I will be able to write a brag post this month. Well I'm gonna get in a quick cash session before the tournament. Wish me luck. Shipshape.

October Recap & November Outlook

Well October is in the books and it was actually quite disappointing at the cash game tables. Even though I was able to book a small profit, it was quite frustrating how bad I ran in the month. As you can see from the graph, I ran about $500 under EV (grr). But I am happy with how I've been playing and can only continue to keep getting my money in good and just hope the cards will start falling in my favor. There was a bright spot this month though, as I managed to make three final tables towards the end of the month. Good for a profit of a little under $1k. I literally made one minor change in my play towards the middle/middle late stages of the tournaments and it seems to be having a significant impact in my results. I hope this trend continues because FTOPS is coming up and I would love nothing more than to final table one of those bad boys.

Speaking of FTOPS, the first event I'll be playing in is actually coming up on Thursday. Its event #2 a $265 PLO Knockout event and as usual I'm always excited when FTOPS rolls around. I'm not sure what other events I'll be playing but I'll definitely try to get in at least one more event. Event #8 which is a $535 PLO 6max event is definitely one of my favorite events, but don't know if I can swing buying in directly at the moment, so hopefully I make a deep run in event #2 and won't have to worry about it.

As far as the rest of November looks, I'll continue to put in the hours at the cash games tables along with the occasional tournament. I really would like to become good at these cash games because the hourly win rate along with the flexibility of hours is a huge plus. Sometimes, especially while I'm finishing school, I dont have the time to put in the 5+ hours needed to win a tournament. So being able to play for 1-2hrs at a time and still rake in a good amount of money will be awesome.

In non-poker news, I was #1 in my fantasy football league before this past weekend. It's a money league and I would love to win it for the first time. Unfortunately, I believe I'm about to go on a serious losing streak. I just lost a couple players, and at this point there really is no one left to pick up. All I really can hope for now is for a bunch of luck and some favorable head to head matchups.

Well I'll be writing another post Friday (if I'm not to lazy) recapping event #2 (hopefully it's a brag post) and how I've done so far this month. So til next time. Shipshape.

P.S. I've started using my twitter account so follow me @RiverMePlz. I will be giving hourly updates on how I'm doing in the FTOPS events I play. Or if you have a Full Tilt Poker account search me: RiverMePlz. I always appreciate love from the rail. :-)

A Little Dose of Humor

My boy Jerry "Mouse" asked me to post this video on my blog, so I figured I'd oblige him and give him some promotion. Its a humorous short clip. Enjoy.

A Quiet Week

So this past week, I didn't play too much as I got sick over the weekend and felt like crap for most of the week. The good news is the little bit I did play was quite profitable. The avatar change appeared to be just what I needed as I had my first really good session at .50/$1 (gotta love the online poker superstitions). I ran well above EV in the 1300 hands I played and it feels good to finally have things start going my way. I don't wanna be too premature however, as this was just a couple of sessions and poker is really a long-term grind. So I just need to continue to play my A-game and let the results happen.

On the tournament front, I ended up final tabling the 4k guarantee last week, but couldn't ship the win. It really sucked too because at one point I was chip leader with four people left but missed a flush draw to become huge chip lead, so I ended up finishing in 4th place. I've made some tweaks to my tourney game and they seem to be paying off as I also final tabled a small tournament yesterday, good for a 3rd place finish.

Well since not much happened last week, I'm going to keep this short. Next post will be an end of month wrap up, along with future plans for November. With FTOPS coming onto the horizon, the anticipation is mounting for the day I ship the elusive gold jersey :-). Shipshape.

Another Week Down

Another week, many dollars made right? Nope! I started off down, and I ended down. I have yet to figure out the conundrum that is .50/1. The first session I put in had me losing almost $300, and as usual I was running bad. So I dropped down to .25/.50 for about a 1000 hands and built it back up. I then decided that I'm too good for .25/.50 and I'm gonna crack this .50/1 beast. I had some up and down sessions, but finally on Tuesday, I booked my first winning day. I thought finally, things are about to start turning around. WRONG! Wednesday and Thursday were the worst two days of the week. And the sick part was I played the best on those two days. Before I talk about the graph though, let me give a little setup of the past 3 days.

On Monday night after I had finished playing, I was reviewing my sessions trying to see if there was anything I could change and found a couple of holes in my games (well one was definitely a leak; the other one, meh, could go either way). I'll talk about the definite leak. At .25/.50 alot of the time when I get reraised on a c-bet and I have just a dry pair or gut shot, I would fold instantly and wouldn't even think about it. But at .50/1, it's as if I think everyone is trying to bluff me, so I'm calling off knowing I'm probably beat and 99% of the time I was. I dont know if this happens consciously or subconsciously, but I found out I was calling off way too often with marginal holdings at .50/1. So Tuesday, I made a conscious effort to fold hands when I thought I was beat and to not get too married to dry flush draws (simple concept I know, but you'll be surprised how hard it is).

OK so back to the graph. Tuesdays session is represented from hands 3155 to about 3653. It was a modest gain, but at least it was going in the right direction. I was thinking finally I've got it, but then all hell broke loose on Wednesday. It's as if Full Tilt was punishing me for playing so damn good. My EV line kept going up, while my actual kept going down. It was pretty sick. I think I played my best game these past two days, but couldn't hold to save my life. I mean come on, if I would've just broke even in my all-in situations, I wouldve made $450. Instead, I post a $114 loss. So this week, I'm gonna change the avatar, change the background, and start the week off at .25/.50 for a few hands and hopefully it will jump start the run good. So until next week, Shipshape.

Oh and on a side note. I played 3 tournaments this week and I lost all 3 of them on the very first hand I chose to play. It was awesome...

Run Good?/Run Bad?

The first week of October has gone by and I had mixed results. Last post I said I was getting back into cash games and even though I didn't get off to a good start, I was gonna drop down to .25/.50 and build up. Well .25/.50 started off phenomenal. I was owning the people at this level. It was quite ridiculous how bad people were getting it in with and just giving me money. I also tweaked my starting hand selection which seemed to help alot. I wasn't getting myself into the marginal situations I used to find myself in. So after close to 1k hands, I decided to move up. Well .50/1 was a completely different animal. The first thing I noticed was that the players were a bit more aggressive at this level. They also had no problem getting it in with dry gut draws and single pairs for stacks which is just ridiculous. The funny thing is, most of them played worst then the .25/.50 players but FTP kept letting them suckout time and time again. As you can see from the graph, you can probably guess which part of it is the move up to .50/$1. It's as if I was in the middle of a lie detector test and I just told a lie. The swings were just ridiculous. For the non-poker people that may read this and want to make sense of the graph. The yellow/gold line is the amount of money I should've made adjusted for the expected value of when I put my money in and was all-in, while the green line is how much I actually made. In other words, when the yellow line is above the green line, I'm running bad and when its below the green line, I'm running good. So currently, I'm running bad and it has all been at the .50/1 level. It is very frustrating that right when I move up, I can't get a session of running good. I haven't played a ton of hands yet, so I shouldnt let it get to me but I hate losing money when I'm playing good and constantly getting my money in as a favorite. But seeing the graph is a bit comforting to know I'm playing pretty good and just need my luck to turn around.

I was a bit shocked to see I've only played 2200 hands in a week. I'm gonna try and step that up in the upcoming weeks. Of course, playing at my best at all times is the main importance so I'm not gonna force myself to play just to reach a certain amount of hands a week but definitely would like to step up the volume. Well I'm gonna end this with the largest pot I played this week. A straight cooler that didn't go my way and just shows how unfortunate I've been at this level. Shipshape.

September Wrap Up

Well I thought I would have a breakthrough month last month but it was far from it. It was my second losing month in a row and I hate losing. I played in three WCOOP events and didn't cash in any of them. I actually started off good in the events doubling up my starting stack quite early but during the ridiculously long middle stages never really got any momentum. I got real close in the last one I played which was a $215 PLO/8 but ran like shit as we approached the bubbled and bowed out about 80 spots from the money. That seemed to be a constant theme to all my tourneys I played. I guess the day I hit my first five-figure online win will have to wait a bit longer.

The MiniFTOPS was a poor showing as well as I only cashed in one event (that event being the 9-handed shootout event in which i got 3rd in a couple series back). I got robbed too as I made it heads up on the 2nd table only to lose QQ v AT and then AK v 22. I did almost cash in another event but got coolered blind vs blind, once again right as we were approaching the bubble. Got knocked out about 40 spots from the money. It's quite frustrating because I know I'm playing pretty good but seem to constantly keep coming up short. Not getting the key holds/suckouts when I need them. Poker can be a cruel game.

This month I'm gonna get back into cash games, so that should be an interesting ride. I really want to work on my poise and tilt factor, as it's something I need to develop and make sure I constantly have it under control. I was going to take an aggressive approach (at least I think its aggressive) and play once I have 20 BIs for a certain level, move up, but it has back fired as I've played a couple days now and I've lost almost 1/3rd of my roll. So I'm gonna regroup, refocus, and start the month off at .25/.50 (a level I'm super comfortable with), and make sure I can beat it over say 5k hands (not that big of a sample I know, but I think its big enough since I believe I'm already a winning player.) and then move up. And when I say beat, I'm talkin an 8-10BB/100 winrate which I believe is very achievable at this level. We'll see how it goes, so prepare for the weekly graph updates. Shipshape.

Poker & School

The above graph shows the direct relationship between my profits and school starting back up. Haha, actually not entirely true but that indeed was the last session I played on PStars and needless to say it was a train wreck. Before the session, I was sitting with $1170 in my account, but this session brought me down to $900. It was then I decided to just cash out most of my roll and decide what I want to do. It wasn't just that session that rattled me. School started last week and I've noticed I tend to play bad in cash games when school is in session. For me to do well in cash games I need to be able to play multiple sessions a day, but school takes up alot of my time so I really only get to put in one good session. Because of that, I tend to put alot more pressure on myself to do well, and when things start going bad it compounds into the downswing you see above. That session inevitably would've been a losing session just because I got coolered in a couple big pots but it wouldn't have been as big of a loss. The worst thing you can do in poker (or any form of gambling) when you're losing is to play with a mentality of "I've got to get it all back right now". You will almost certainly just lose more money and that's what happened to me. I've also had some other leaks in my game, that I thought I had gotten rid of, resurface this past week and I believe they are also due to the time constraints of my schedule. So for now, I will take a break from cash games on both sites to get accustomed to my school schedule and will be back at it some time around mid-September. Until then it will be nothing but tournaments.

Speaking of tournaments. September could be a really big month for me. World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) will be starting on Stars along with the MiniFTOPS on FTP. I have mapped out schedules for both tournament series and it could be a jam packed month of excitement and/or heartache. The WCOOP will be the main focus as the prize pools will be much bigger and will have a 1st place prize of $50k+ in most of the events I will play. It will be nice to get my first five figure win. All this week, I'll be playing tournaments on both sites trying to make sure my game is up to par so I don't do like I did in event 8 of FTOPS last month. So thats it for now, I'll be recapping the events I play which begins on Sept. 6th (Labor Day). Shipshape.

Stars Update and Event #8

Well guess I'll start things off on PStars. My little stars challenge has been going extremely well. I've been playing really well and getting alot of the bad players to put it in pretty bad against me. I blew through the .25/.50 level in 1300 hands and right now .50/$1 is going equally impressive. Ive played 767 hands and I'm up a little over 7 buyins. I have decided that I wont move up to $1/$2 until I get 20 buyins for that level or $2k. This is more of a comfort thing as I believe at those blinds the level of play is going to get better (although I could be wrong lol) and I really want to stay moving in the upward direction. Since I've started, I've played exactly 4500 hands and have averaged a 15.95 BB/100 over the three blind levels. Pretty impressive and I can only hope that I can keep it up.

FTOPS Event #8.. the tournament that wasn't. Man I was really looking forward to this event. With what I knew was going to be an $80k+ first place prize, I really thought I had a shot at it. The poker gods thought otherwise. I was out the first 20 minutes of the tournament and felt completely lost. I probably should've played a couple small buyin tournaments in the days leading up as I haven't played a tournament in about a week, and was a bit rusty. But to be fair I really just wasn't getting the flops. I had AAxx three times and all three times I ended up folding on the flop, and losing half of my stack in the process. Even my last hand was a bit of a setup as I'm never folding in that spot and it was virtually a coinflip. I was really surprised to see that guy jam with only top and bottom and no sort of redraw but when you're running bad these things happen.

Full Tilt in general really has been ticking me off as I'm in the middle of a downswing on there. My plans to play anymore FTOPS has been pretty much scrapped as I've lost a lil over $1200 in the past week. I'm gonna regroup and maybe take a couple days off from cash on there. I wish they had more PLO tourneys on there as I really only get to play two that have any sort of real cash prize. Downswings suck lol. Welp until next time. Shipshape.

Updateaments

So I played a couple sessions over this past weekend and as you can see they went really well. I won a little over five buyins in 500 hands. The players at .25/.50 seemed to be even worst than .10/.25. It was quite comical. I had some hand histories I was gonna post, but my computer is being retarded so no go on those.

I haven't been able to play any this week as this is the last week of my summer school and its been jammed packed with tests and papers. Once school ends, which is Thursday, I will be definitely on the grind putting in as many hours as I feel comfortable. I'll be bouncing back and forth with the cash games on Full Tilt and Stars and have three weeks until the fall semester begins.

Speakin of Full Tilt, FTOPS begins tomorrow. I am planning on playing all the Omaha and Omaha H/L events but at the very least I will be playing Event #8 Saturday which is a $535 PLO 6mx and the $109+R PLO event next Saturday. Those two events will be my best chance of shipping the ever elusive gold jersey. I will be doing a recap of those events and any other events I play on this blog so stay tuned for that. Until then... Shipshape sirs.

Stars Challenge?

Man I forgot I even have this thing how rarely I ever post on it, but thats about to change as I will be starting a challenge, for lack of a better word. A couple weeks ago I deposited $100 on stars for no real reason and started playing some of the .10/.25 PLO shallow tables (20-50bb). Well I had a good session netting $40 (max buyin is only 12.50 so it was pretty good). Fast forward to today and I've just hit the $250 mark and really didn't have to hard of a time getting there. This intrigued me to see how fast I could get this bankroll up. So that's pretty much the challenge.. See how much I can run this up to. I'll be playing a super loose bankroll management strategy.. moving up to the next level as soon as I hit ten buyins for that level. As I wrote that, I just had a change of thought. Maybe I'll up it to 20 buyins once I reach 1/2 as I think the competition will start to get harder but we'll see. I'm gonna set a super lofty goal of 10k by the beginning of September mainly because the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) starts in September and it would be nice to have a bankroll to play in some of the events, but in reality I think 2-4k is a bit more realistic and I'd be pretty impressed with myself if I hit it. Having said that, I'm under no pressure to actually reach said goals as this is just more of a personal experiment and it gives me a reason to post something in the blog even if it is just a screenshot of the updated bankroll from day to day. Well thats it for now, I'm gonna go put in a quick session. Let the challenge begin. Shipshape.

Blog Resurrection

When I last posted, MiniFTOPS XV was about to start and although I didnt make a brag post it ended up being a really successful series. I cashed in 7 events with one being a 3rd place finish for 3.6k. It sucked being so close to getting that silver jersey especially since at one point I was chip leader while we were three handed, but an awesome result none the less. One of my poker goals for the year was to final table a MiniFTOPS event so I can now scratch that off the list.

Speaking of poker goals.. another one of my goals was to play at least one event at the World Series of Poker. Well looks like I'll definitely be able to accomplish that as well. Me and the rest of the Shipshape crew have rented a house in Vegas for two weeks so it should be a helluva time. I'll be playin event #41 $1500 PLO8 for sure and maybe another $1500 NLHE. I haven't really gotten too excited about it yet but I'm sure the closer it gets the more excited I will be. Until that time I'll be grinding nonstop online. MiniFTOPS XVI and SCOOP have been running on Full Tilt and PokerStars but I've had minimal results. I did make a deep run in the $109 PLO8 last nite on stars but ended up bowing out in 94th place. That $32k for first place sure would've been nice but it wasn't meant to be I guess. I did get a bit of good news this morning. I had sent an email a couple of days ago to FTP asking them to allow me to receive rakeback, and a little bit to my surprise they obliged and I will FINALLY be getting rakeback. Anyone who is a big online player knows how huge thats gonna be. Its like receiving a paycheck every week.. Well I don't think I have anything more to say so.... Shipshape.

Vegas or Bust 2010

Wow I totally forgot I have a blog!.. Hah im j/k but yes I know its been forever since I last posted but lets face it, IM LAZY. These blogs always take much longer to write than I expect, so I just keep putting it off until I'm like screw it I'm just not going to write it. But its the first MiniFTOPS of the year and I couldnt be more excited, so thought I'd make a "quick" post. For those that don't know, FTOPS is a tournament series that Full Tilt Poker runs every 3 months. It consist of 25-27 "big" buyin tournaments and huge 6-7 figure prize pools. Then sometime last year they introduced the MiniFTOPS which run the same events as the FTOPS but a month later and for 1/10th of the buyins. This is a low limit players dream. Huge prizepools but for a fraction of the cost. We're talking $22 entry fee and walking away with a first prize of $50k+. Not a bad ROI. Of course the tradeoff is that the fields also increase to 5-10x normal fields. Ranging from 8k-20k ppl in the NLHE events. Ive had minimal success in these series due to the fact I havent played much NLHE nor have I played in such huge fields so I chalk it up to inexperience. This series however is a whole new ball game. Not only am I ready for this series but I'll be able to play all the events I want to play. As you see this time the series falls on what happens to be my spring break. Of course the trade-off is I'll be spending most/all of my spring break playing tournaments but I figure I could use a break from all of the partying I've done past two months and sometimes you gotta to make sacrifices now to get to where you want down the road. However, the whole break may not be an entire grind of tournaments. As of now I'm gonna play 20/27 of the events but fellow Shipshape members Siva and Ben want me to meet them in Vegas on Monday. So if I can pull off a big score (10k+) between now and say Tuesday, I will be booking my flight to Vegas asap. I've never been to Vegas since turning 21 and alot of yall are probably thinking.. Wait you play poker and have never been to Vegas?!.. Yes a tragedy I know, so I would love nothing more than to ship a tourney and then head to Vegas to relax for the rest of the break.

Well wish me luck. Event 1 starts in about 3 hrs, so I'm gonna get some food and a little rest in to prepare for the 10hr+ tourney thats about to ensue... Shipshape.