Poker Update

Been awhile I know. I’ve really been struggling mentally lately. Had to quit today after I was too tilted to continue from this hand I even have the Qh blocker so I can’t lose to QhJh. On the one hand losing really motivates me to play a lot of hands and hours to get my money back, but on the other after you lose so many all ins in a row you just start to think “what’s the effing point?” So, ya I haven’t really been putting in tons of hours.

The bright side is I’ve gotten my roll back up to about $23k which is an $11k profit from my last poker update two months ago. Here’s the HEM report and graph. They make it look like I’m a big fat loser, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that I’ve made what appears to be $17k in the stud games and rakeback over this time. I don’t have stud manager installed on this computer so I can’t post those results unfortunately.

Now that I’ve gotten some standard poker blog graphs and whining done I’d like to talk about some more interesting stuff. First up here’s a cool hand I played last month. Okay, so the hand itself isn’t all the interesting, but the equity is. If you’ll notice I get it in with the stone nuts on the turn and am actually a 42% underdog vs my opponents two flush draws and three pair. It wouldn’t be too uncommon to be getting freerolled here by the nuts and flushdraw for example and be an underdog, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a scenario like this where I’m such a dog with the nuts vs my opponent on the turn who doesn’t have the nuts. Anyways, I thought it was kinda cool.

Secondly, I’d like to talk about motivation and goals. Over the past couple of months I’ve found that I’ve just been floating along treading water, not really sure what I’m doing with both my time and poker career. I’ve been lacking direction. One day I would grind some 30/60 stud games, next day 4 table 2/4 plo, next day 8 table 1/2 nl, next day play some 25/50 7 game if it pops up. I think this creates a major problem because I lack consistency from day to day and don’t really get used to the regulars or know what I’m aiming for. For example if you grind 1/2 nl every day, you eventually learn all the regs’ tendencies, have a bankroll goal monthly, yearly etc and are able to have a daily, weekly and month # hands goal. If you switch games a lot or try to play only 7 game every day will be different and you can’t really control your work hours and settle into a routine. If you are having this same problem I suggest one solution.

SET GOALS. You should set a monthly goal, a weekly goal and daily goal. Yearly goals are not so important in my opinion because it’s too easy to become sidetracked but they will come too if you just break down what you need to do day by day. I learned this from Jason awhile ago, but had to have a long talk with my girlfriend about a week ago to realize what I was lacking in my life. The truth was I lacked goals. I’m still in the process of figuring out what mine are at this point and even if I do figure them out according to this TED talk you’re not even supposed to tell anyone what your goals are as it makes you less likely to achieve them. You can still write them down of course, but I’m not sure which category blogging falls into in this case. If anyone wants to weigh in on this, please leave a comment.

Thirdly, the recent PokerStars ban has really affected my ability to grind mixed games. My plan was to just grind the stars 10/20 8 game until I got my roll up, but I’ve basically been priced out of the games as a result now. Below is a pic of the current FTP lobby.

Yes I could redeposit like $50k if I wanted and take a shot at the $150/$300 games again, but I told myself I wouldn’t and I’d stick it out at the lower limits for awhile proving I could rebuild there if I ever needed to. I will play literally anyone at 25/50 and 50/100 7 game, but it’s really hard for me to get action most of the time. If I could get your help please JOIN THIS FACEBOOK GROUP and invite all your friends to join to show your support for us WA residents rights to play online poker.

The threads concerning the recent ban have kind of died down relating to this issue lately, and it seems people have just kinda accepted this is how it is and are moving on. It’s pretty sad and I’m still not really sure what I can do in my power besides vote in November to get this issue resolved.

Lastly, I’ve been doing a bit of reading lately and just got done with


and


You may have read them in high school, but I didn’t and thought they were both quite good and thought provoking. Slaughterhouse Five was definitely the weirder of the two, but both are worth checking out if you’re looking for some good books to read.