Welcome back!

So I've had 3 days of the most frustrating grinding ever. yay! An insane amount of near misses. Like, silly amounts. I could easily be +$20k if a few hands went different ways. Instead I'm stuck a few $k. boooooooo. The good thing is that I feel I'm playing well, and my concentration has been good, especially yesterday (6 near misses) - a decent score has to come soon.

Doesn't it?

Back!

So I've finally returned from distant lands. After the hitch to zadar I decided to stay out there for a few weeks, went round croatia, bosnia herzegovina and montenegro, and flew back from budapest today. Had a really awesome time, was totally what I needed. I, however, now have a slight urge to play poker.

OH GOD I MISS POKER.

ahem. Too tired to play tonight, but gonna play a big session tomorrow I imagine. And probably every day I can possibly manage it for the mext 3 months. So yeah, lots of grinding, going to play some more live tourneys if I can - I've decided that some of money I have saved up isnt doing me much good lying around earning .25% interest or whatever, so I'm going to invest it in poker instead. yay! There's my gukpt seat to use, either luton or cardiff probably, and i'll try and make the monthly £300 at DTD whenever I can. There's also the £1k there in a week or 2, which I'll try and get a seat for.

Hoping to start playing more of the higher buyin games online too now that I'm actually building a roll. March was the rebuild from the $800 I had left after my xmas blowup, now I have a decent roll and no need to cashout. Hoping to reach 20k online by the end of june, so soon I can start playing majors without faffing about with sats. Still thinking about getting a coach too for a little bit, depends on what my plans are in the long term... seems a little pointless if I'm only around for a couple of months and then disappear for 6 months and not play a hand. we'll see.

I'm actually excited about grinding tomorrow - nothing like a break to renew enthousiasm. Time to catch me some fishies!

Aces suck.

So I bust the Irish Open soon after the dinner break on day 1. 22bb stack, AA vs 99 aipf, he flops the set and turns quads, weee. Quads are good sir. Happy with the way I played apart from my 1 obligatory blowup hand - shipping it over a flop check/raise vs a shortie with air for some reason. That got me down to 7k from the starting 10k, hovered around there until 150/300, then got the aces. meh, pretty disappointing, but also fairly standard, not like it was some massive beat or anything.

Was going to play cash but just learnt the charge at 1/2 is 8bbs/hr. 8bbs! 32bb/100 to breakeven. Totally insane, my hourly would be waaaaaaay lower than just grinding online, though it seems a bit boring since I'm here. 2/5 is a bit better, but I've heard it plays more like 5/10 since its uncapped, I'm just not rolled for it really. They've got some sngs going with standard 10% rake, so I'll probably play a bunch of 100s/250s if they're running. If I run good I might take a shot at the 1650mtt in a few days, I'll see - I'll need to win about 10 just to cover my beer costs, it's pretty obscene.

Sigh. Not quite what I had in mind for my first major. Oh well, I guess I'll get to see more of dublin this way. Silver lining...

Back from break

So I'm back from my break, went to Grenobe to visit an old friend which was great, and then to Verbier to visit another old friend, and to try snowboarding. The place itself was weird... full of very posh, insanely wealthy tourists wearing furs and sipping £18 beers (honestly) or arrogant swaggering boarders and skiers, or an intoxicating mixture of the two. So in some ways the town was my own personal hell...but all you had to do was lift your head slightly you and see this:



Which kind of made it all ok! Was just stunning. Boarding was fun, though pretty painful... got ok towards the end of the first day, then had far too much to drink and the next day was... well, I struggled. Dizziness, nausea and snowboarding as a beginner really don't go well together. I can laugh about it now though :)

So yeah, had a great time all in all. However, was much more expensive than I was expecting (silly prices for food, boarding stuff and ski passes were insane) so hopefully i can get a few decent sessions in before ireland. Got some family gatherings, but should be able to get 3-4 days worth of playing.

glatt all.

Breakeven

So I've played quite a bit this last week, though I've been ill so not as much as I'd like. Came pretty close to some big cashes, took down a small tourney for 1.3k, final tabled the pp 20k again, but most of the sessions i've played have been breakeven (which is pretty odd for mtts).


I'm off on my travels tomorrow, so no more poker for me this month. Really pleased with how march went, had 7 4-figure cashes, and ended up ~$10k in profit. as I said in my last post, I really needed a decent start to this whole thing to get me on my feet, went pretty much exactly as planned (slightly better in fact!) so yeah, feeling good. I really think that I'm going to progress a lot as a player in the next few months. The last year has been pretty flat in terms of progress, but I feel that I'm ready to start putting in a lot of hours, and spend a lot of time analysing and improving my play. I've got a cardrunners subscription which has already helped loads, and over at pfu we've started a replay section where we look over entire hhs in the replayer for analysis. I just did one for the 75$ mtt at fulltilt that I finished 6th in a few weeks ago, already noticed several fairly major leaks. Sweet! (well, assuming I block them...)

Also considering getting a coach when I get back from travels at the end of april. There's a few I'd be interested in advertised at the CR forum, and I really think it could help me. Wouldn't be a long term thing (can't afford it!) but 10hours or so of help from a top online pro would amost certainly do me the world of good. going rates are $100-200/hr so it wouldn't be a decision I'd take lightly, but I think it'd pay for itself pretty quickly.

Anyways, that's all for now.

Runs good

(picture taken from pfu - thanks sqrl!)

Been a good couple of days, with 3 decent final tables; $50mtt - 6th, cashed for $1200, $16mtt at stars - 2nd for $3300 and somehow I managed to come second in a $10 1r1a for $2700, depsite it being the only tourney I was playing for 4 hours and so me being incredibly wasted. Ya know, to pass the time. Was pretty funny! I have vague memories of some pretty huge suckouts, which of course made me giggle like a school girl. Ah, goodtimes. tbh I actually was playing pretty well, just got lucky in some spots. I totally lost it HU though, fairly decent player just crushed me, had nothing left in the ole cheese tank. Or something.

So I'll be grinding for the next 10 days or so, and then things kick off in april:
~1-4 april: visiting friends in france and switzerland (+skiing! never been, excited)
9-14th: Irish open in Dublin. Obviously this is going to be awesome.
16th-25th: Hitch-hiking to Zadar, Croatia. Really looking forward to this too.

Will be nice to get out of the country for a bit! Anyways, glatt all.

Good start.

So that's my main score for the last few days. Been playing this tourney for like 2 years, finally took it down, feels awesome :D Apart from this I've had a few frustrating days of no results, and 1 final table, $75mtt, finished 6th for ~$3k. Was probably the sickest exit in any tournament I've ever played - allin on turn with top set, he rivers the gutshot. $16k for first. Was absolutely livid at the time, but still feels nice to rack up some scores - have about 8k online now, bit of breathing room. aaaahh deep sigh of relief.

Got most of my totals from all the poker clients I've played at, not as bad as it could've been. About $12k less than the last total I counted up, which isn't wildly off what I thought, lost about 10k over xmas, and ignoring another few k isn't unlike me... but anyways, onwards and upwards. Let's get that 12k back ;)