Mtt score

*imagine new picture of smiling cat here*

Decided to play some mtts last night - was home ill so had a bit of time to spare. Went deep in a few games, bust out cruelly in a $25r on ipoker (allin on turn for massive chiplead with 15 left with KK vs KT on QJxx board, he dings his 6-outer). I was doing ok in a $109 mtt, but felt like absolute crap by this time, and was playing poorly. Didn't bust though, and starting concentrating again the final few tables. Ninja-shortstacked the whole way until about 8 left, then picked up some hands and went to 2/3. Then my internet cut out. Cue cheesies slamming his head against the desk for 10 minutes bemoaning his luck at final tables. I blinded out of course, but still managed to come 2nd :D ship the $4k and change. weeeee
Annoying I couldn't take the shot at the win though.

Sngs still going good too, so november's already my best month to date. Still 2 weeks to fit in a horrific downswongz though...

Fulltilt: $2000 (3950 withdrawn)
Rileys: $500
Ipoker: $7600
Pokerroom: $900

total online: $11000
LIVE: +$1200

2008 total: $38,500

More running good

Sngs are still going awesomely. Started mixing in a few $100 games - played 6, cashed in 5, won 4 lol. Always helps to run good in the expensive games!

I was aiming for 5%+ roi in these games. I'm at 34% at the moment. Whilst I know this isn't my true winrate, having an roi of nearly 7x my goal over 320 games is making me think I was underestimating slightly! I mean, at this point I'm pretty sure I can gaurantee a 10% longterm roi in the $50 games, at least for the time being. I can play at least 15 of those an hour. Including rakeback, that's ~$100/hr. That's madness! imo.

*warning: longish, cliff notes at end*
I've never wanted a 'career'. I've never been motivated profession-wise, and I'm at uni for something to do more than anything. I don't graduate for a few years yet, but I have a year out next year (doing a languages course, get to spend the year abroad), plus my girlfriend graduates this year, and it's all been making me think about, like, y'know, the 'future'. And stuff. As I say, I'm never going to join a coorporation and work my way up or anything. So what am I going to do? Really I just want to play music, travel, start writing again. Which made me think...why don't I just do that? Screw the whole 'get a stable job' thing.
I don't want to be rich and have fancy things, I just want not to have to worry about money, and I feel so lucky to have found poker - something that lets me do that.

So I'm thinking I'll play poker for a while, hopefully save some money (already got some savings too), and then travel around, maybe teaching english - whilst researching my year abroad I found loads of voluntary organisations requiring english teachers. How cool would that be? Just travelling around the world, seeing loads of amazing places - but not as a tourist (I hate being a tourist - partly why I'm doing a language course). If I run out of money, hopefully poker will still be there! Or maybe I'll spend half of each year travelling and the other half pokering. Something like that anyway.

So yes, there's my grand 'life plan'. I think I'll need to force myself to be proactive about it though, I can tell if I'm not careful I'll slide into a lazy degenerative heap and just play poker, forgetting the very reason I'm playing poker in the first place: to do the things I enjoy without worrying about the bills.

cliff notes:
-Poker is awesome.
-I'm never getting a job.
-Don't lose sight of why you're trying to make money - don't let work/poker consume you.


Fulltilt: $2100
Rileys: $500 ($2500 withdrawn)
Stars: $0
AP: $0
Ipoker: $6600 (crazy strong $$ means this is smaller than it should be as my balance is in £. I think... I really don't understand the economy/currencies/basic maths)
Pokerroom: $1150
Betfair: $0

total online: $10350

LIVE: +$1200

2008 total: $33,900

A good week, and a frustrating finish

So I final tabled the pacific 100k yesterday. Played pretty good for the most part, was a crapshoot by the final few tables, I was shoving like crazy and was getting away with it mostly :) then on the final table, 3/8, my aces go down in flames for a big chiplead at a terrible table, and there goes a very good chance at the $25k for 1st. Arg. So I was pretty gutted at the time of course. Was eyeing the top 3, 5-figure places, looking for my biggest cash to date. Twas not to be I guess. The $3k is welcome though...


Had a losing session on the sngs yesterday - pretty irratating since it probably would've been a slight winning session if my power cable hadn't broken and made me lose some games at crucial moments. But then today I played 23, and made 16 buyins, so can't complain :D So I'm up ~$3k on sngs this week (which is silly good imo) so it's been a pretty sweet week. Played 200, so another 12 weeks or so. If I can do half this good for the next 12 weeks... sweeeetness would ensue.

Fulltilt: $2100
Rileys: $500 ($2500 withdrawn)
Stars: $0
AP: $0
Ipoker: $3850
Pokerroom: $1150
Betfair: $0

total online: $7600

LIVE: +$1200

2008 total: $31,150

Sng goodness

Been playing an hour or so a day since monday, trying to get in my 20/day quota for this ipoker promotion. Happily, I've been running real good :) up $2.3k over 150 games, which is pretty awesome. And with the dollar getting stronger, it's like £1400. woop! Also the stronger dollar means I need to play less games to reach £7500 which is cool too. I'm sure it'll all come crashing down fairly soon, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Tripled my roll at ipoker in 5 days! 6 winning sessions in a row - never had anything like it.

Anyways, so yeah, this is just a brag post really. Go me!


Fulltilt: $2150 ($1500 withdrawn)
Rileys: $50 ($100 deposited)
Stars: $0
AP: $0
Ipoker: $3150
Pokerroom: $1150 ($2000 withdrawn)
Betfair: $0

total online: $6500

LIVE: +$1200

2008 total: $27,550

I feel like a pig shat in my head...

Had a few too many last night... fun night! No poker for me today though.

*groan*

Played 2 sessions since last post. Felt like I played pretty well the first one and had lots of near misses, but didn't manage to bag any scores and ended down $600-700. But yesterday I ended up winning $500 in small cashes, and reaching 3 final tables, 2 for $500 each and the third I took down for $1700 :) So that was nice.

I've decided to go for a promotion I've been told about - if you can generate $13k of rake from november until the end of march you get a £1000 seat at a GUKPT event of your choice and £200 expenses. It's more of a staking deal since the site gets 25% of any winnings and you have to wear logos and stuff, but still, I've wanted to play a gukpt event for a while, and this seems like a good way to do it. Good motivation too - I'll need to play ~2600 $50 sngs in that time, which works out at 130 a week. Which is a lot considering uni work, but I'll just go nuts over the xmas hols. I'll make $4k in rakeback alone! Guess I'll aim for... 10k total, which is like ~5% roi, should be doable.

Need to get pokertracker working again, I stopped using it on fulltilt because I couldn't get it to move hhs once it'd finished, so it took 20minutes reimporting thousands of hands everytime. But I think it should work for ipoker, and I think it's pretty important I get it working, especially seeing as I'll be playing at least 9 tables. I can get away with playing mtts without it, but getting even a tiny extra edge can mean a lot when I'm putting in this much volume of sngs.

Anyways, I'll stop rambling. I have a hangover to nurse and the screen is making my eyes hurt.

Fulltilt: $3550
Rileys: $0
Stars: $0
AP: $0
Ipoker: $1500
Pokerroom: $3250
Betfair: $0

total online: $8300

LIVE: +$1200

2008 total: $24,150

I'll be back...

...right now! Just finished my first session of poker in over 2 weeks. It was a pretty small session, broke about even, meh, whatever. Actually got the internet a few days ago, but haven't really felt like playing...which is weird.

Looked into some opr stats of mine and found that my roi for mtts isnt really that great... about 30%, with an average buyin of $50. Which works out at roughly $60/hr which is good, but I feel I should be doing better than that really. Or at least I definitely could be, and it feels stupid/lazy not to try and do the best I can. I think partly it's the huge gap between my B+/A game and the rest of the time (really really huge), but also I haven't put any effort into bettering my game in a long, long time. Haven't read any poker books since HoH a year ago, browse and post on the odd strat forum, but not often. I don't mind too much now, since I don't have much time for poker (this year at uni is going to be much tougher than last year) but next summer/next time I play a lot I'll probably get a cardrunners membership or something. 50% I'd be happy with, and I don't think is unrealistic. So I guess that's a long-term goal.

I'm not unrealistic in my poker goals, I know I'm never going to be a top tier player, but I can definitely improve a HUGE amount from where I am now. I remember working out my hourly rate this time a year ago and it wasn't much different from what it is now. I'm playing the same limits with the same bankroll. I should've made a lot more progress than I have this past year.

So anyways, with that ponderous thought, I'm going to bed. What with somehow not feeling much like playing poker and having loads of work, I probably wont be posting much... GLATT I guess.

Fulltilt: $3900
Rileys: $0
Stars: $0
AP: $0
Ipoker: $1900
Pokerroom: $950
Betfair: $0 ($500 withdrawn)

total online: $6750

LIVE: +$1200

2008 total: $22,650