I'm no April Fool - Goals

I pretty much went through everything from last month in my previous post, so I just need to detail what my goals are for April. There are a couple of things I want to achieve this month & for my Full Till roll its most definitely volume. Last month I played 120 games which wasn't that much of a test, given that I didn't play at the weekend half the time. With that in mind, I think a target of 160 is possible and probably quite easy, if I play 6 days a week & 6 games per session I'm easily at 156 so any weekend games I can probably get in 8-9.

As for my stars account, I am aiming for a specified return form this month, I need to get at least another $20 in my roll, don't care if it takes me 11 games or 111, at the end of April I need to have enough to buy into the HU MTT for the SCOOP & have a small enough roll to continue to build. I guess these are the only targets I need to set myself this month, the aim is really to push things forward with my game, hopefully to get close to a roll for the $5 games & to be entered into the low buyin SCOOP event.

I also signed up to the 2+2 review group & have a pairing which we've already started to coordinate a process, hopefully this will help in some way & be the start of something good.

To summarise:

[  ] 160 games on FTP
[  ] $20 on Stars

- GOGOGOGO

March in review, on the up & up.

So here's to another month n the bag. Before I look at the goals I set myself, I want to discuss how my game has progressed. I feel like I've moved up a step this month in terms of my game. When I first started out, I was terribad I definite losing player, after coaching from Cog I managed to turn that into a confirmed positive ROI (3.8% after checking PT3). This month, I discovered aggression! i watched a couple of videos from HokieGreg where he reviewed a students session & it contained a ton of useful info that I've now incorporated into my game, while I've not fully adapted I feel it's come along way, in that before I noticed a heap of villains were aggro whereas there aren't that many, but I have the knowledge to adapt back to a passive trappy player if i need to.

Now, looking at the goals I set for March, here are the results:

[X] Play 120 games on FTP

[X] Play 25 games on Stars

[X] Stick to my schedule.

[/] Post 1 hand on 2+2 a week

[/] Reply to 1 hand on 2+2 a week

[X] Acheive positive ROI at $2 level.

[X] Hit the $20 bonus on FTP.

So I hit the volume on the button, although my Stars play was terrible, I did somehow get the volume in even though my roll was down to 2BI's at times! (I'm still only at 8 BI's!). Schedule is coming along great, although my review sessions may need adapting. Previously I was only looking at hands where I lost big pots, mainly due to the fact that i didn't know what else to look for. Now I have the knowledge of my raise sizing for effective stacks, my range I should be using for raising limps & small pocket pairs strategy. So my ability to get in my review session I becoming more complex, so maybe I need to look at that in some detail next month. I've been checking in on 2+2 every now & then, I'm not spending a huge amount of time there, mainly due to how much time I have to spend on poker being limited. I hit my positive ROI, finished up at 8.5% for a $22 profit in addition to the $20 bonus that I hit for the month & rakeback gives me a $46 profit from Full Tilt which is my biggest month so far. another couple of those & I'll be at the $5 level easily.

I'm going to take the next day to mull over what I want to achieve in April, given a big focus will be on volume, I have today's session fresh in my mind & need to retain the ability to quit when I know I'm not playing great which is a tough thing to do when I've set a volume target.

From Dec 6th 2009 to 31st March 2010, my HUSNG career earnings.

Volume: The next frontier

Just read HokieGreg's blog which was an interesting read, mainly due to his battle with getting in the volume. I'm not sure what the reasons are & as I don't know him I don't have the ability to make any assumptions. However, from my point of view this is a discipline issue. When I first started out I had no schedule. I pretty much made it up as I went along & tweaked it as I saw fit. Initially, I started out just jumping into a bunch of games & volume really was the motivator. This wasn't working out as I was trying to blast through the games & wasn't making sound decisions. From this I started to schedule my sessions more, starting by watching a video first thing, then reviewing hands & then playing a session & watching another video at lunch from work. The volume of videos seemed to be a bit much compared to the amount I was playing so I dropped the morning video to make sure I got a decent number of games in. This seems to be working out great for me right now, apart from my occasional inability to save the HH from FTP before PT3 steals them after I shut down!

Next on the agenda is to increase volume again, I'm going to take it steady to start with & I think it will be a stretch to start with but I'm going from 120 games a month to 150, so an extra 1 every day which is achievable so long as I stick to my schedule. I've struggled recently, especially at the weekends, to get my ass outta bed & I really need to make sure I'm up for this.

I'll post again in a couple of days to do a month in review session & write down some goals for the coming month. I'm actually really excited for the next few months, lets hope I continue to run good & get some decent results & I might just hit the $5 levels by May, which is a month or two ahead of schedule.

- Good luck at the tables. Jay

Clicked

There is only a week left of March & I thought I'd update my progress as I seem to have taken a giant leap forward in the past week or so but more about that shortly.

Just want to dwell on my targets that I set for the month as I seem to be all over it now.

[/] Play 120 games on FTP
[ ] Play 25 games on Stars
[X] Stick to my schedule.
[X] Post 1 hand on 2+2 a week
[X] Reply to 1 hand on 2+2 a week
[ ] Acheive positive ROI at $2 level.
[/] Hit the $20 bonus on FTP.

I'm on target for this, currently at 99 with a week to go so should hit at least 125. Kinda busted my roll on stars, lolz so when I get 10 mins I'm grinding the $1 DONS. FML! All over my schedule right now, I think this has been fine tuned enough & is working well for me. I'm currently reviewing my hands first which isn't taking that long to do 5 games, I seem to be losing fewer & fewer hands now so it has made the process quicker. I'm getting involved in hand posting, seems to have been fewer hands to reply to other than to agree with what has already been said & whenever I spot a hand I played horribly I am actively posting in 2+2. I scrapped my requirement to hit a minimum ROI last month & seems to have worked wonders, I'm currently at 9% ROI & although I know this might come down, it's my best moth so far. Bonus will be complete tomorrow, I have 2 games left to play & probably could have done it today but I don't want to risk playing more games just to clear the bonus a day earlier & end up losing the 2 games, kinda defeats the point.

I watched a couple of videos by HokieGreg doing a student review. For some reason this video made something click, it got me thinking about raise sizes compared to effective stacks, 3bet ranges & limp raise ranges. I liked it so much that I'm going to watch it again to make sure I haven't missed anything.

All in all this month has been the best since I started playing HUSNGs.



- Good luck at the tables.

One day as a poker player

I took yesterday off work with the primary goal of playing poker & nothing else. Just to get a sense of how I would cope with playing a large volume of games. I managed to get in 20 games for the day, which is normally around 4-5 days play for me, so I was quite happy with that. The results weren't too disappointing either, I finished 10-10 overall which isn't too horrible.

Overall, I'm happy with how the 'experiement' went. I broke up the day with several sessions rather than playing in huge blocks & got things done inbetween so I could refresh myself & start again. I've seen the tweets from Hokie & PHmerc & decent volume does seem to be in the range of 20-30 games so if I can get this amount of volume in while only working half the day I'll be a very happy man! Obviously this is a lnog term goal & as yet I'm no where near the abiolity I need to be. That said I think I shall make an effort to do this experiement a few times more throughout the year to make sure I can handle both the good & bad aspects of it.

Taking shots

So far march has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Started out at the $2 level & it went straight into a black hole as I dropped 5BIs after day 2, currently I'm sitting breakeven. Thank god for rakeback!

I've kinda lost my groove a bit over the past 2 days. I've only had small losses but they are effecting me. I lost 2 games on stars yesterday which kinda effeced me & I guess this was down to playing outside my roll. I have been very successful at the $2 games so far & decided to take a shot with my $40 roll so I loaded up a $5 game & ended up busting QQ vs AKo, I then took a shot at another $5 game but a 4 man this time. First villain was a huuuuuge fish, unfortunately he ran good when he got his K2 in on the turn vs my T4 on a T6K4 board & the river brought a 6 to counterfeit one of my pairs.

It's tough taking these beats sometimes & I guess it especially hurts when you take a shot. I'm not too concerned though, it didn't work out this time, but I'll rebuild & try again soon.

I'm struggling to get my lazy ass outta bed now too, only managing to get up at 6am giving me no time to review hands & this may well be hurting not only my development but the games I'm playing that day too. I REALLY need to get up in the mornings if I'm going to succeed and I WILL succeed.

- Good luck at the tables.

March Madness

I've been playing at the $2 tables for over a week now & while the ay is still donkalicious my play has been horrible. First session went ok, played 4 games & split 2-2. Then I dropped 5 buyins due to shifty play. I had a good day after & finished 4-1 only to follow it up with a 2-5 day. Today I pulled another winning session out of the bag. So for the month I'm down 3 buyins, which isn't horrible but it isn't great either. As long as I make sure I review all my previous days matches I know I'll grow my game & start to crush this level.

- Good luck at the tables.