What's up everyone. This blog is going to serve as a journal/tracker of my progression as a poker player. Feel free to follow me on this journey as I develop my game and have a lot of fun along the way!
***** Hand History for Game 446954781 ***** (Merge) Tourney Hand NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, December 04, 11:08:24 ET 2011 Table Turkey Room Heads Up Turbo (44695227) (Real Money) Seat 1 is the button Seat 1: AreDubz ( $1500.00 USD ) Seat 2: kaocs219 ( $1500.00 USD ) AreDubz posts small blind [$10.00 USD]. kaocs219 posts big blind [$20.00 USD]. ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to AreDubz [ 4d 4s ] AreDubz raises [$50.00 USD] kaocs219 calls [$40.00 USD] ** Dealing Flop ** [ Td, 4c, Th ] kaocs219 checks AreDubz bets [$80.00 USD] kaocs219 calls [$80.00 USD] ** Dealing Turn ** [ 8s ] kaocs219 bets [$1360.00 USD] AreDubz calls [$1360.00 USD] AreDubz shows [4d, 4s ] kaocs219 shows [Tc, 6c ] ** Dealing River ** [ 8c ] kaocs219 wins $3000.00 USD from main pot
So that was unfortunate. And even more annoying is that it happened over, and over, and over again over 20 games at the 11.50's. Here are some HEM numbers:
Wow, sorry for the infrequency of these posts. Life has gotten busy- midterms, extra hours at work (+ev), etc. My hours at the tables have been less than ideal. It wasn't until the past few days that I really got to put in some decent volume considering the lack of free time I've had. I had another pretty tilting session. I was on my way back from my last spill, and I decided again to shoot for some higher games. I ended up losing $277 I think in 23's and 34's. My ev had me at about -$25, so variance was somewhat on my side. Still, it was no excuse to take foolish risks while trying to rebuild.
Since that day, I've spoken to jackstack and straightened myself out a bit. I started using my HUD. I've used it before, but never really understood how to fully apply it. I still don't, but I'm learning not to let all of the data overwhelm me and take my focus off the game at hand. I've crawled back the past few days with some decent sessions only at the $11.50's. I'm still down a healthy amount, but I seem to be on the right track.
I've been trying to immerse myself in poker as much as I can. I put videos on my phone from husng.com so I can watch during breaks at work and/or just listen to the coaches while I'm driving.
I have another midterm tomorrow, a big project due in almost two weeks, and a final after that. With all this on my plate, getting some games in might be tough. If I can squeeze some games in here and there I can.
Some quick numbers before I go (from HEM):
Loss as of 11/20/2011- -$581.95
Loss as of 11/30/2011- -$406.70
It's important to note that these numbers don't include my 35% rakeback, and even more importantly, when I got my new laptop and imported all the data from my previous computer, HEM was all screwed up and had my wins/losses incorrect. I couldn't figure out how to get it to be accurate, so I just left it. On my carbon account, I'm -$315, so HEM is off by about $100.
Hey guys. I'm not too good at keeping up on blog updates, it's still not a part of my routine lol. At the moment, I am watching the WSOP final table. I've been sitting here for four hours watching the action (or lack thereof). While watching, I also took the time to finish setting up my new laptop that my fiancee got me as an early Christmas gift. She's the best. And by set it up, I basically mean install Carbon poker and spend 5 hours cursing at Hold 'em Manager to fucking work already! That whole process totally put me on life tilt, but now that it's finally working, I feel much better. If it doesnt work again for any reason, it's gona really annoy me. Anyway, now that all of that is out of the way, I can update my poker news.
Ever since that big downswing, I really haven't put in the volume that I would like to. I've played here and there, but my work schedule has been absolutely crazy the past few weeks and I didn't really want to play tired or feel rushed to squeeze games in. I have, however, been doing a ton of studying almost every moment I can. I've been reading The Mental Game of Poker, practicing 3-bet shove theory, and watching HokieGreg vids and taking notes, and then studying the notes I take. My head is much more clear now (finally) after the downswing, and I've been playing the 11's until I feel comfortable again at the 23s. My game has still been swingy, like I'll be up 50 for the day, then even, or up 100 over 2-3 days, then down 10. My most recent few sessions I'm up like 80 so I hope I stabilize my game. I'm going to schedule my session with PHMERC again soon, I just have to find a time where it won't interfere with school or work. This semester is more frustrating than I thought, but it's almost over.
So its been 10 days since my last post. Since then I haven't played as much as I would've liked to. I had my coaching session with PHMERC the day after my downswing and I feel it went well. I was introduced to some brand new concepts/tools and reintroduced to things I should have known already. Definitely money well spent. I bought three more sessions with him to be scheduled sometime in the future after I learn the stuff that was taught to me in the first session. I've been doing a lot of poker studying lately and I'm slowly memorizing stuff that I need to memorize. It's hard to squeeze in study time with work and grad school, but I'm managing. He also mailed me a copy of The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler (props PHMERC). Awesome book so far, I'm so pumped that I got it.
My poker playing has been unstable since my downswing. It really rattled my confidence. Aside from that, with the studying I've been doing I haven't been able to put in good time on the felt. The times that I have played, I've played mostly $8 super turbos just because I'm short on time. I'm not going to play much of them, the variance is crazy high. I find myself in a rush to get back to where I was before my downswing. That's a leak that has to get fixed up quick. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of it, so let's see what the next couple of weeks bring. I'll try to update within the next few days if I'm able to get some decent volume in.
As the title suggests, things haven't gone too well since my last update. My Carbon bankroll was up to a high of $809 (+$179) and thinks were looking great. I was playing well, making good decisions, and felt confident. But today I took a nasty spill that I don't even want to think about. However, this blog can't just be about when times are good, it has to capture the whole journey. I went from $809 to $504. A $305 downswing. I could go on and on about the bad beats I took, the countless 95/5 favorites that I got in and lost, but I'll just leave it at this- I lost $305 over a course of 41 games. A lot of the time variance got the best of me, and other times I tilted away. Either way, I have to straighten a lot of shit out with my game.
Tomorrow I have a coaching session with PHMERC. It's coming at a great time because right now the confidence I have in my game is a bit rattled. I felt like I was being push around today. Every cbet was repopped, every draw an opponent had hit, and my big hands somehow became meaningless by the river. I'm hoping to do 1 session a week with him and really work on plugging leaks I have.
I'm trying my best to stay positive. This is the biggest downswing I've had in online poker. I've lost more in single sessions live, but that can happen in just 1 big hand. To lose $300 playing games 11-34s, that means I got my ass handed to me time, after time, after time. Not just 1 hand.
Important things to take away from today's experience: I am definitely susceptible to some mean tilt. I used to brush off losses because the money didn't matter when I used to play the 5s, but since I'm trying to take this more serious it is taking a toll on me when I lose. I have to set guidelines or rules to follow to prevent another session like this happening. For now, these are- if I lose 3 games in a row, get up and leave the room for a few minutes. Walk outside, take my mind off it. Even if I'm not feeling angry, just do it. Another rule is related to winning- if I'm on a win streak, once the streak is broken, get up and follow rule number 1. Moving around to clear the mind will be a good thing even after a series of wins.
Sorry this was a long post, but it was a long day. I remember being down $40 thinking "man, I have to get back on track", and next thing I know I'm stuck $300 wondering how did I let myself dig a hole this deep. I'll get back up, that I'm sure. Stay tuned guys, the comeback is about to begin.
Here's a fun little graph that shows how my day was. Exciting, exciting... lol
What's up everybody. It's been a few days since my last update, and I finally got to get a lot of games in today and yesterday. It's been pretty roller coaster-ish, but I'm working on being more steady. I beat myself more than anything. Some pretty bad suckouts that really got into my head and messed me up for a few games. It's really hard to put in the amount of volume I want to with the limited number of people on Carbon, so I started playing basically everything from the 6s up to the 23s. The only thing I don't play in there are the supers.
Four times in the past 2 days I accidentally joined an 11.50 omaha game. I get so mad at myself when I do that. It's not a strong game of mine at all. Every time I joined one, it forced me to really be on my A game, which is a good thing, because I don't really have a grasp on omaha. Guess what? As luck would have it, I won all four of the mistaken omaha games I entered! lmao. Maybe I should change games? lol. Hopefully I don't make that mistake again. Carbon really needs to add an option to the filter for holdem only.
Yesterday was a losing session. I lost around 30-35. My bankroll was down to 636 I think, but after today's session its up to 727.03. Not bad for 7.5 hours lol.
Since my last update I haven't had much time to put in any games. I played two games while I was on a break at work two days ago, but that ended up in two pretty bad shoves and I lost both. I wasn't really focused on the games. I was too distracted and felt rushed since I only had half an hour free to play. Lesson learned- no more poker during half hour breaks.
Later that evening, I went on to Carbon to figure out why my deposits were getting declined. It turns out that for some reason they combined the information from my debit card and my credit card, so they had the card # for my credit card, but the expiration for the debit. Once I corrected that, everything went smoothly. I deposited another maximum of $300 and used a bonus code to get 10% instant cash up to $30. Easy way to make thirty bucks. I'll reload another $300 every month if they keep having that monthly promotion. It will cover the currency exchange fees (which are around $10).
I'm hoping to get some games in today. I worked 15 hours yesterday so I'm pretty tired. The money I made was great though because I didn't expect to pick up all those extra training sessions (I work at a gym).
So with my recent $330 added and my two losses from the other day, my current Carbon bankroll is $665.23.
Here are some numbers so far for the month of October: Games= 41, ROI= 9.7%, ITM= 58.5%
Just for comparison, here are Septembers numbers: Games= 39, ROI= -0.2%, ITM= 56.4%
I'm still trying to figure out all the HEM stuff, but that's what I've got for now.
That's all for now guys. I'll put up another post tonight about the session (if I get to play it). Good luck!
Nothing really interesting to update today. Yesterday I played 10 turbo 6s and my first 4man $6. I was about break even on the turbos, and I took down the 4man. I need to become friends with someone on Carbon so we can play the 4mans together and dramatically decrease our variance. I don't want to play these 6s much longer. They're fun because I don't have to worry or stress about any loss (unless I lose 100 straight! ha). After my coaching session with HokieGreg I'll have a better grasp on what I should be doing/playing. Until then, I'm grinding 6s just to be safe.
Yesterday I ended my night on a 5 game streak, and that carried on into tonight's session. I went 4 for 4, bringing this to a 9 game streak. I only played four games tonight because I'm feeling really tired and just want to lay down and watch Boardwalk Empire before I go to sleep. No real interesting hands tonight. I caught lightning on the river in one game to keep me alive, and for that I am thankful lol.
I've also been reading reviews of Jared Tendler's book "The Mental Game of Poker". It sounds/looks really good. I'm going to have to get it for myself as a bday present since it's coming up in 2 weeks. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
Like the title says, today I had my first royal flush. Hard to believe that this is the first time I've gotten one in almost 5 years of playing. What made it even more awesome was that it was flopped. Hand details below:
***** Hand History for Game 4135439724 ***** (Merge)
Tourney Hand NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, October 01, 08:36:29 ET 2011
Table Rattlesnake Room Turbo Heads Up (41353942) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: AreDubz ( $1525.00 USD )
Seat 2: whhhha ( $1475.00 USD )
AreDubz posts small blind [$15.00 USD].
whhhha posts big blind [$30.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to AreDubz [ JcQc ]
AreDubz raises [$45.00 USD]
whhhha calls [$30.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ac, Tc, Kc ]
whhhha checks
AreDubz checks
** Dealing Turn ** [ Jh ]
whhhha checks
AreDubz bets [$60.00 USD]
whhhha folds
AreDubz wins $180.00 USD from main pot
I didn't get much action for it, but oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
I had a really swingy night. I played 25 games at turbo 6s and one game at super turbo 2 (just to see the difference on carbon). The session was going well at first, then midway through the night I found myself down about 6 buy ins. I was tilting somewhat because of some beats I took, but I held myself together and shook it off. I ended the night on a 5 game win streak to bring me back to just about even for the night. I think I'm down like $1.50 or so, but I'm happy to dig myself out of that hole.
I think I get frustrated at these lower buy ins sometimes and then get into the "it's only $6" mentality. That mindset will only be a detriment to my game, so I have to correct it immediately.
I noticed that I haven't done a good job so far in these posts about keeping track of my bankroll on Carbon. My total poker bankroll is $2600, but only $300 of it is on Carbon (their max deposit is 300). So from hereon out I will post my Carbon bankroll at the end of each post to track my +/-.
After todays session: $300.48
On a non poker note, I PR'd my snatch today by 5lbs, making it a PR of 135. I was pretty pumped, as I wanted to reach that milestone for almost a year now.
So in my last post I ended up saying I was going to be playing 50's, but that has changed for the time being. Yesterday afternoon I decided to email HokieGregHU and ask if he was still coaching since BF and it turns out he coaches quite a lot. He has a trial coaching session for $75 and I decided to go for it. That's coming up on Tuesday, October 11th. He said I needed to have some hand histories for him to put into HEM, so when I went to check my history folder from Carbon there was nothing there. So after a 2-second "what the fuck" moment, I checked my settings and its set to erase hand history every 7 days. Oh well. The only reason I haven't played in 7 days was because I'm waiting for my Carbon cashout. But since I wanted to get some games in to create a new hand history, I had to cancel the withdrawal and I decided to grind some turbo 6s. I didn't want to play anything higher because I just wanted to play my comfortable game so he can give me a critique of how I normally play. Until the 11th, I suppose I'll try to play around with these 6s before I get some coaching on how to approach the higher levels.
I'll admit, I got a little tired/spewy at times. I have to stop doing stuff like that. Now some numbers:
15 games, ROI 1.8%, ITM 53.3%, +1.65 for the day. Not bad for 2 hours of work, haha.
Notable hand of the night: ***** Hand History for Game 4131056239 ***** (Merge) Tourney Hand NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, September 30, 09:58:29 ET 2011 Table Rattlesnake Room Turbo Heads Up (41309925) (Real Money) Seat 1 is the button Seat 1: AreDubz ( $1535.00 USD ) Seat 2: ProtectYaNeck1 ( $1465.00 USD ) AreDubz posts small blind [$25.00 USD]. ProtectYaNeck1 posts big blind [$50.00 USD]. ** Dealing down cards ** Dealt to AreDubz [ 6c 6d ] AreDubz raises [$75.00 USD] ProtectYaNeck1 calls [$50.00 USD] ** Dealing Flop ** [ 6s, Kd, 6h ] ProtectYaNeck1 checks AreDubz checks ** Dealing Turn ** [ 7s ] ProtectYaNeck1 bets [$100.00 USD] AreDubz raises [$250.00 USD] ProtectYaNeck1 calls [$150.00 USD] ** Dealing River ** [ Jh ] ProtectYaNeck1 checks AreDubz bets [$400.00 USD] ProtectYaNeck1 calls [$400.00 USD] AreDubz shows [6c, 6d ] ProtectYaNeck1 shows [Td, Kh ] AreDubz wins $1500.00 USD from main pot
So I've never blogged, twittered (tweeted?), or even fully utilized the social networking aspect of Facebook, but that's about to change. Well, the blogging aspect at least. I was inspired to start this blog after reading HokieGreg's blog (http://hokiegreghu.blogspot.com/) that he kept for a few years.
My intention of this is to try to stay (get) focused on improving my results as a heads up sng poker player. The majority, if not all, of the posts will be poker related with a little bit of CrossFit thrown in the mix because that's what I spend the rest of my time doing.
I am currently playing at Carbon Poker under the user name AreDubz. I used to have an account on Stars, FT, and UB, but since black friday this site seems to be the only option available for US players who haven't had a successful enough career to consider moving abroad. I haven't played much on Carbon yet because I'm testing out their cashout system. I've read on 2+2 that a lot of checks were bouncing or taking an absurdly long amount of time to receive, so I deposited $300, played a few games and broke even, and put in my request to withdraw the $300. There's a $15 fee with the cashout (def -ev), but doesn't look like I have much of a choice at this point.
In the months prior to black friday I was putting in a decent amount of volume on FT with mixed results and I'm hoping that this blog allows me to take an honest look at myself, my game, and inspire me to plug leaks and make corrections. I've received some coaching from jackstack99 (aisixer3jk on FT) and I'm hoping that will continue on my journey.
I feel since black friday I've learned a significant amount about husng's and poker in general, so I should be able to jump right in and feel fairly comfortable. It's going to take some time to adjust to the speed of online play again since I've been playing live 1/2 cash for the past few months. Thank GOD I don't have to deal with 25 hands per hour anymore! Also, I have 35% rakeback so that crushes live poker by itself.
Well sorry for the long post. The first one is bound to do that to explain my quest lol. With a starting bankroll of $2600 I will primarily play 50 regs, barring a downswing where I'll move to the 20-30s. Here are some numbers to give me a starting point to begin my tracking:
Starting bankroll: $2600
Goal by end of 2011: $3500
I know it doesn't seem like much of a goal, but I don't want to set myself up for disappointment if I don't get to a larger amount. I'm unsure of how much volume I'll be able to put in because I work mornings and I am finishing up Grad school. Plus, the amount of traffic on Carbon is like 1/10 of that Stars and FT were (and I'm sure I'm being generous with that ratio).
