time for work?

I've been slacking a lot recently. I was in super grind mode before I went to asia, and haven't really felt it since then. Thus I shall be in work mode this whole month.
I'm gonna start with tournaments, since I've really started to like them, and WSOP is coming too. The SCOOPS on pokerstars are this week, and I fully intend to do well. I haven't done well in any online festivals, and I'm putting it down to a lack of focus. I'm being too 'whatever' about them, and not taking the care I should. I'm probably gonna play some live poker too. PKR Live 2 is next month, so is GUKPT Manchester. Plus with the WSOP coming, it might be worth playing some live cash at the Vic. I've never really bothered to play much live cash, but I'm feeling it more. At worst its something to do if I don't wanna play online, but still wanna be productive.

Last weekend was the GUKPT London. Think I might just start sitting out the first 40mins. I probably made 2 pretty clear mistakes, and if I'm being critical probably 3. Sounds kinda worse that it is, a lot of run bad early losing almost all my chips KK vs JJ all in preflop. Somehow I ran like fire to go 12k -> 2k ->22k; but I play a hand bad, lose a coin flip and then I lose a 3-way pot to get back to 20k... in probably as good shape as I could hope for - flush draw vs a set vs 1 pair on the flop. Semi slowrolled because turn and river go check/check and flush is no good.

Anyway, I aim to be posting every other day for the near future because I just keep winning :D

swongs

Since my last post, I've been to Malaysia to see the family, and playing GUKPT Walsall. Kind of a strange bustout hand, where I probably should just pay more attention, and making sure others are too :(. I probably didn't play that tournament very well, but still had a reasonable stack without too much struggle.

Online donkaments have been 'meh', but so close. I came 4th in the party major the other Sunday, and just ran super bad in basically cooler spots. The other day I came 3th in the Sunday version of the 40k guaranteed on fulltilt. I also won the Saturday Big Shot on PKR 2nd time it ran :)

I'm about to go to sleep, having been awake a whole 36hrs now. looking forward to the sleep. Woke up at around 6-6.30pm, went for dinner and then headed over to the vic. was super bored for ages, since no tables broke. Finally a new one started, and I get a set in the first hand i play and lose, getting TT in on AKTsss in super zzzz spot. Lose a bunch online, then win back etc etc.

This week I might play some prelims at GUKPT London. They might even be full already. Definitely playing the main event, always a lot of fun.

manila

A lot of the times when I post, it's been after winning a bunch and then I'll post everyday. Recently I haven't been winning, actually rocking my new biggest total downswing ever. Don't think I've been playing terribly, sure there's been some spots that have been just plain awful, but it happens. A lot of the time I've just not been winning all ins, which apparently is helpful.

Since my last post, I got on a plane and went to Manila. Having absolutely no information on the place, I definitely had no idea what to expect. The extent to which I knew nothing about the place, was needing a very very quick google in amsterdam airport in between my transit flight. At first I was all 'hey whats the exchange rate?', then I realised I couldn't have even guessed what the currency is.

I played the Sunday session before catching an 8.40am flight on monday, thus getting no sleep. Didn't do too bad sleepwise on the plane, only because I couldn't actually stay awake if I tried. Arriving in Manila, I had to do some super quick math in order to determine how much to withdraw from the atm machine. Asking a local what 10k pesos could buy was probably a little weird and possibly insensitive. I was trying to guage PPP obviously, but I don't think he really understood. Getting a cab from the airport to the hotel I was fully expecting to pay 1900 pesos, but pleasantly i super misread the meter as he only asked for 190. Yeah that sounds more like it.

I enjoyed Manila. Spent a lot of time with the guys from pkr. First perosn I met up with was Kingkai, for food in the buffet place where I'd end up eating a lot. I hung out a bunch with PKR_JABBA from... PKR and soosick, plus all the other pkr satellite winners. The night before the main event we went for dinner, and then drinks after. Somehow between dinner and 3am I because increasingly meh about everything, and at 4am managed to puke my whole dinner up. Ok I thought, I haven't drunk that much I'm ok, calm down puking makes you feel better. Tomorrow is a big day. Nope I woke again at 6am and puked all the rest and all the water I'd drunk, feeling terrible and unable to get to sleep I baiscally just closed my eyes and prayed to not puke any more. At 11am I puked some good old bile, before going downstairs and playing the main event at midday. fml.

I started super super good in a kinda rediculous hand. To some extent I feel I'm lucky to have won, but at the same time wtf does he have. Old dude limps CO, I make it 225 from sb with AKo, he calls. KQxss. I bet 325 he clearly is about to fold then decides to call. I''m like wtf. ok turn As. I'm not super super excited but I have technically gone from 1 pair to 2 pair. I bet 500 just for the kicks and he makes it 1500. WTF DUDE HOW COULD YOU HAVE BEEN ABOUT TO MUCK NOW YOUR RAISING ofsdnsjdnfglsn. ok i call. River blanks I check relatively quickly and call his 2.5k bet. He flips A9hh and I lol. Clearly I cant really be excited vs heat often early in a tournament for like 45% of my chips, but at the same time I don't think he can seriously be leveling me this hard on the flop with his fake fold. I don't think he does it with either JT or any FD so it def didn't make sense. I'm pretty sure on flop he just didn't wanna fold even tho no history and no image, and then on turn he hits the A ball and is just in fire fire mode, because he... has an A too in his hand and hey thats pretty strong no??
I spend the next 9 hrs basically trying not to puke before I busted with 30mins to go. I got to 30k at 300/600/75 but then won no pots for 3hrs and just couldn't run good enough.2 hands I was meh about.

Pokey then reminds me that I'm in a different timezone and I scramble to change my flight to sunday, tog et to malaysia in time to play sunday tournaments at 2am. I bubbled two ft's in a fashion that I'm not totally excited about and end the session -$500 after losing a day in manila and paying fees to change flights etc etc.

I'm probably about to take an enforced break form the internet, which may be a good thing. I really hope to get what I need done here, not get malaria, not go insane from mosquitos, not die of boredom and not get lifetilted by the one dimensional thought processes I'm about to encounter. For the next two weeks I get to live like a normal kid from a small town in a developing country (albeit without having to work). I must be doing something wrong.


chinese new year is going down right now, its the year of teh ox which really means nothing, but its a little coincidence because I was born in the year of the ox

playing bad/running/bad probably both

I've been back from PCA a few days now. It was a lot of fun. I went out on the 3rd so that I could play Sundays. First one I was 1/7 in the ipoker major, but flamed out in 7th for a very disappointing 7.5k after QQ < AQ then A2 < QT and A7 < 77. super super fustrating. I expertly lose a small cc roulette then walking to rubens room i lose a 1k flip with kingdan who was stuck from the pit. Then lose a rando $200 on the end via rubber dice.
Never mind I thought, still up for the day and the main event is the next day! Get one of the toughest starting tables possible, helped not by the fact that all the action players were behind me and all the sng players to my right. Oh yeah and no one busted till 200/400/50 which is just rediculous since we just kept getting shorter and shorter (not to mention any new player brought in had to be worse than what was already sitting). I end up donking out in a spot I should probably always avoid, especially in live donkaments.
So i brick that, plus all the psotlims. 2k I managed to get AQ in pre vs aa and kk for 40bbs, then in the 5k lost a huge flip, in a pretty standard spot. Kinda annoying just because I was feeling good to play that day, but you just have to win the flips.
Then I have one of the worst sundays ever, not sure what i cashed in, if anything at all. Totally terrible. 7 days later I just had an even worse one. -7k for today cashing in a total of one tournament for $250. ghuiopshng sklhiopiopiopiophn.

Friday was gukpt brighton, and of course I busted before the first break. Pretty ****ing expert. I really don't think I've been playing very well recently, might have to take a break or something. I do think the lack of bananas has hurt me recently, since I like to use them early in sessions to basically make sure I fold.
(my other leak is i should just assume people always have it in live donkaments).

I plan to play a little on pkr, or play a few donkament sessions where I record my play just to check that I'm not thinking about things incorrectly. For the most part its been ok but I've felt like I've shoved in some perhaps bad spots, although there's been quite a few recently where I just keep getting shown AQ+ which is obv just running super bad, including seeing AA a lot :(
Somehow I reckon I'm only -£500ish since friday and actually up since being back from pca, because although I've played bad I can sometimes also play pretty good. However I ran kinda bad in the 90k gtd when I squeeze TT 35bbs deep and have someone flat what either has to be nuts or super retardedly wide and then lose the other 20bbs vs cl AA with AJ after he'd just raise/called 72s vs ~13bbs and rocking like 49/45. I did though win a 10k gtd ongame 109fo that day, as well as party 3pm day or so before. In both I was just in cruise control, so probably meant I ran pretty good.

Lastly congrats Richard 'zidane18' Lewindon who came 7th in Brighton. Sick unknown because he learns games rediculously fast. If he plays more of these, he's gonna have a bunches of chances to win and definitely one to watch when he gets chips.

Happy New Year!

2009 huh? Last year pretty much flew by. I'd post an end of year graph if I had one, or do some kind of estimate of +/- but I honestly have no idea. This is probably one of my worst traits. I think I play the game well for the most part, but I'm just terrible at getting round to menial tasks. I used to keep track of my wins/losses pretty accurately on here for a while, but I just lost interest.

For December, I'm up ~$90k give or take 5-10k. I probably should know this stuff. My aim for the next year is to be better at tracking stuff.

Tomorrow I fly to PCA, strategically planning to arrive on the 3rd, and leaving on the 12th (so that I get the joy of palying Sundays on my laptop). Would like to say I'm looking forward to it, but I feel indifferent either way. My goal is to just try and do what I can in the tournaments, and not lose credit card roulette when the big bills come.

In the last post, I was obviously complaining about running bad. Well I managed to close out the party 18k gtd in the end, basically luckboxing the crapshoot period that is the close of virtually every party donkament. I was convinced to play yesterdays nightlies by a lewi because of the huge overlays. I won a small 9k gtd on ongame (my 1/day cash), which lewi also ft'd but then my play went to complete shit. Rocked my D- game pretty damn hard, and deserved not to cash anything. Actually that's not true I did get a little unlucky in some spots, but I just didn't think I was in touch with any table flow. It's been a while since I've been so annoyed at my own play. It's gonna happen every now and then just out of pure variance, but playing bad really annoys me because it means I've left money on the table.

anyway gl for 2009, see you after pca

AARRRGGGGGGHHHHHH

fustrating weekend.

Felt like I played pretty good overall, but ran bad in ugly spots. Saturday started off indifferently, but got better when I finially binked a pca seat in a 100r. However no other joy, liek rejamming QJo in pkr major, when I thought villain would always fold because it was 5 from the money bubble, however the sb gets to have QQ which I think is ok because i doubt he ever calls AQ so his range is baiscally AK/QQ+ and I'd probably want to discount the number of times he calls AK to some region of 20-80% of the time leaning on something most liekly being like 30-45%. otehr guy typed in chat later that he had 77, so I defintiely feel it was fine.

Today started off awesome, missed the first 15mins of the warmuop and party major, not a problem. first hand back at 50/100 I 3-bet a Co open, bet/3-bet/call a Jxx lose to JT river T. MAybe a sigh of things to come. Run bad in pretty much everything, but I'm pretty sure that the large majority of the chips I lsot were all getting it in good, or some super cooler.

My best shots of the day ended up being the sunday million and mulligan, but it was never gonna be. with a rediculous image I 3-bet KK 50bbs deep, get cold 4-bet shoved on and lose to AA obv with around 100 let in the mulligan.
In the million i ran like god early to be 2/400 or so, but just couldnt get going and at one stage held my stack for about 2.5hrs before shoving atc into ak for 12bbs to bust 120-50ish. about b/e for the week and ive almost defintiely closed tlb top 100.

Today is tuesday, and as I write this I have a total of one left, party 18k gtd. Felt like I played another good day, closest stuff was busting the ftp 50k gtd with 40 left JJ < KK for like 75bb+ pot. Then in crypto £9k gtd, I lose JJ vs 88 ai pre for CL going into FT, but alas I FT bubble cos thats how good I am.

not sure what I'm gonna do tomorrow, but plan to play live cash on 1st and then fly to bahamas 2nd Jan.

its the weekend!

and its gonna mean a tonne of mtts. Sunday is the last sunday of the year, and theres a few specials on.
goals are:

1, up 20k+
2, pca seat on top
3, top 100 for tlb

more would be nice, but i'm gonna preemtive call the above and probably quit the year unless tlb isnt a lock (and/or going for 1st)

today's best tourneys are the 10 seat pca sat, and pkr xmas special. Can't be bothered to register before 8pm gmt, and probably will only register for a very short period, maybe 2-3 hrs.

ive been mixing around with the sunday scehdules and I've decided it can just sometimes be high variance, but this is the planned schedule:

12.45
warmup
party major

13.00
stars 100

13.18
pca sat $33r 3xturbo

14.00
brawl
ipoker 320
boss media 150euro
stars 100r?


15.00
pacific major
ongame 100 +1r??
ftp 163?
crypto £110
cake 100fo?

15.18
PCA 109r sat

15.55
party apt maillia sat

16.30
sun mill

17.00
$320 cake

17.30
ub 215 ?

18.00
ftp 750k
PCA 650


18.18
pca sat $33r 3xturbo

18.30
sunday 2nd chance

19.00
stars 109fo


19.05
ftp muilligan

no idea what i'm gonna win, but i'd better jsut for my own sanity. right now would be really clutch to bink a sunday major.