Don't mention November!

I've jumped two footed into December, happy that November is out of the way. Didn't have a great month at the tables & lost quite a bit of ground building my roll. I'm around 10BIs away from the $5s & will bag it this month for sure.

Volume-wise, I'm determined to finally hit a 150 month again. It's been so long I've forgot what its like! So far I'm up 5 days in a row (mini-accomplishment FTW!!) & I'm slightly ahead on games for the month. 11/150. Last month I only played 65 games & finished down for the first time since I can remember. It's allowed me to take a step back & review my game & really start to concentrate on taking notes on villains which seems to have worked well already, specifically looking at lines villains take that show they are weak or strong & use this against them.

I've branched out over the past few months & started a £100 bankroll & trying my hand at financial spread betting. Read a number of books, one of which I refer to quite frequently is Winner Spread Betting Strategies by Malcolm Pryor. The book itself looks at about seven strategies (although a couple are the same strategy just used for a rising market or a falling market) to make money from trends in stocks. This is the 2nd roll I've put into spread betting, lost my first trading the FTSE100 without any kind of plan. Since then I sat down & read a number of books to develop a longer term plan. Seems to be working for now, at the time of writing I'm 20% up on my original stake with 3 open trades in GKN PLC, Elementis PLC & Afren PLC.

Good luck at the tables!



MrJayOMG

Welcome back!

So, I've effectively been off for the past two months. After the birth of my son my time has become even more precious. I've not played much poker at all, but I've kept my toe in the game & picked off sessions when I can. I've almost written the rest of the year off, I need to make sure everything at home & my family are in good shape before I can take time to build my game back up. But make no mistake, 2011 will be a BIG year. I set a goal to hit the $10 games, I made this quite comfortably but in the end it came at the perfect time, just before Nate arrived.

A little review of November as it stands, I'm not far off break-even. Coming back into the game I've struggled a little, gone back to looser ways ut I'm pretty sure I've been running like shit! As evidenced by a hand from last night!

iPoker - $2+$0.10|<> NL - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3: http://www.pokertracker.com

Hero (SB): 1,810.00
BB: 1,190.00

Hero posts SB 20.00, BB posts BB 40.00

Pre Flop: (60.00) Hero has 6h 6s

Hero calls 20.00, BB checks

Flop: (80.00, 2 players) 9h Qs 6c
BB bets 80.00, Hero raises to 240.00, BB calls 160.00

Turn: (560.00, 2 players) As
BB bets 420.00, Hero raises to 1,530.00, BB calls 490.00

River: (2380.00, 2 players) Th

Hero shows 6h 6s (Three of a Kind, Sixes) (PreFlop 19%, Flop 86%, Turn 95%)
BB shows Tc Ts (Three of a Kind, Tens) (PreFlop 81%, Flop 14%, Turn 5%)
Hero wins 0.00
BB wins 2,380.00

My post hand analysis, villain has been typical loose-passive. So I'm not looking to build a pot with a small PP. Magic card comes on the flop & villain bets out, ideal situation. Realistically villain can have any two cards here, he's been limping everything from big pairs, broadways & the hammer. Obviously has something he likes, which could include draws, I'm looking to get as much money in the pot right on the flop as I'm confident my hand is the nuts right now. When he flats the flop, it doesn't seem like he has a monster but he makes a committing bet on the turn & I just fist-pump ship & find myself a 95% favourite. River is a cooler, still went onto win the match after getting lucky myself building up my stack & winning a race Q5o vs K8o 5bbs (100/200) hitting on the river.

Build-a-Bankroll: 2

So, I've not played too many more games since last time due to my new found parental responsibilities! I've broke the 100 game mark & as predicted my ROI has dropped significantly, but its still in a decent place so I'm not too concerned. 

I cleared the requirement of MGR to get the free coaching from Broker so I've started stage 1 of that, which is covering Loose-Passive players. Although this is only the first session from Broker, I actually prefer the video style & the depth he goes into compared to the fundementals course I took back in December. I feel it looks at more things you need to consider such as range of hands, maybe this is because I've had time to play & develop my thought processes whereas when I took the fundementals I was like a rabbit in the headlights & didn't really know what I needed to think about & what questions to ask.

I'm still at the $1 games for now, a couple of wins short of moving up to the $2 games but should be able to hit this in no time.

In terms of FTP, I've played 77 games so far this month, the games played early on was when I was playing really bad & tiredness was kicking in from sleepless nights causing more mistakes than normal. Thankfully I've recovered from that, I'm picking my session times better albeit few & far between at the moment. I'm hoping the situation improves by month end & I can start showing some decent volume. 

When I can't get much time alone to concentrate, I've been loading up Stars. I tend to use Stars just for playing around & trying out new concepts. I've only got around $30 on there so I also tend to load it up if I'm a little drunk too! Better to blow a small $30 roll thats easily replaced than my main roll & regret it afterwards!

September: Poker is hard!

So I haven't posted for around 2 weeks now so I thought I'd give a quick update as t how things are going for me. I'm learning fatherhood is +EV for life but -EV for my roll & poker time! Hats off to anyone who can maintain their grind while dealing with a newborn.

Since Nate has been born I've not had a normal grind schedule & it's affected my play to some degree. My shot at the $10s started much the same as my start at the $5s, but it was mostly down to bad play on my part. Thankfully I came into the $10s over rolled, at one point I was down around 8 buy ins but have slowly brought it back up & I now stand around 2 buy ins down.

 So, where do I go from here?

I'm still progressing my little BR Builder series & I'm going to update it again soon. But as for my main BR I need to make sure that when I play, it's optimal. Making sure I'm not tired, rushing things just to get games in & I have peace & serenity in my surroundings. I'm pretty comfortable at the $10s I don't feel like I'm being out played or anything so I just need to play my best & crush. Hopefully things will settle down & I'll regain my schedule soon, also hoping to secure enough games to hit my requirement for the free training from Brokerstar.

Good luck at the tables.

- Jay

Build-a-Bankroll: 1

Hey all, in-between my last few entries I've joined TAGPoker.co.uk & begun building a new bankroll on Titan Poker. I've done this for one reason only, if I generate $15 in MGR I can get free coaching from BrokerStar. And free coaching is worth the time investment IMO!

So, the plan. I deposited the minimum $20 & intend to move up once I hit 20 BIs for the $2 level, slightly aggressive I know but I don't give any credit to these players at all so I'm pretty confident I can crush the $2-$5s no problem.

Progress so far: I've played around 35 games so far, so pretty small sample. I think my ROI is in the region of 30-35%, obviously running super HOT ;)
Another couple of buyins & I'll be at the $2s & ready to crush.

If I can, I might make my first video at the levels as I progress.

- Good luck at the tables.

Jay

Aug Week #4: MiniJayOMG

This week has been an epic fail volume wise. I'm pretty sure I've played like 10 games all week. That being said, I clawed back the loses I endured last week so it's not all bad. However, I did set myself a volume goal this month & it looks like I'm going to miss it, but for a valid reason. On Saturday we finally saw the arrival of MiniJayOMG which was pretty epic & always a proud dad moment. I have tried finding some baby poker clothing, turns out there isn't any decent retailers I can't find on the t'interwebs. Definitely a gap in the market!

So, I'm gonna write up my full review of the month in a couple of days, once I've had chance to review everything I've done & analyse where I want to go with things next month. Should be a pretty epic month next month hopefully, start of the $10s so hopefully September is rungood month for me.

Aug Week #3: Get rich or die tryin'

This week started out pretty bad for me. I had a severe lack of confidence, which was strange. I'd been running pretty well, had +10% ROI & around $80 profit from the games I'd played. But for some reason, I couldn't get my head into the game. Had a bad session Monday, slight winning session Tuesday & Wednesday was an unmitigated disaster! I played 26 games & lost 3 BI's. I was on full auto-pilot, spewing off chips in the wrong spot, calling light & I was getting sucked out on pretty hard in a couple of games which added to the misery.

I was due to have a Skype session with another player last week but his internet was down (seems to happen a ton in the US!) but I SS'd him & he is crushing the $5s & $10 for around 30% ROI, which got me thinking about something I'm reading in 50 cents book at the min. One of his keys to fearlessness is to rediscover curiosity. Explaining that as a child the world was a huge source of information & we paid close attention to everything, as time goes on we tend to close our minds off, thinking we know all we need to know mainly out of fear that our assumptions about life have changed. 


This strikes a chord with me when I think about poker strategy. There is certainly 2 definitive camps when it comes to HUSNG 'basic' strategy, you're tendencies are either passive or aggressive (As argued on 2+2) but no one really considering each others strategy to be effective. Maaybe this is a bad example but it got me to open my mind back up, remembering the style of play that Cog taught me & try a little small ball & it seemed to work. Hopefully I've moved past this roadblock of auto-piloting & found my creative side where I'm thinking more for myself & not just re-enacting the actions of my peers.


I finished the week off pretty dismally, Saturday I played way too much, I think I dropped around 5 BIs which is terribad TBH & tottally lost focus. PLayed a short 5 game session today, won all 5 for around $22 profit leaving my week around -$10 but a valuable lesson learnt. Volume wise I exceeded my target but the auto-piloting has hurt me pretty bad. Overall I've played 82 games this week, bit too much I think and my loss of $10 shows it.

Good luck at the tables.


Jay