Things are going good at the moment. Poker is amazing and i'm finally getting some life stuff done. To celebrate my body clock being back to some semblance of 'normal' I went to the gym yesterday and had a good workout. I also got a personal trainer since it seems to be the thing to do and he has a 3 week program worked out for me to get me back in the groove before we can move on to some more intensive stuff. I killed most of his projected workouts which I think surprised him given the shape I'm in, but what can I say, I'm hardcore.

Later in the day I went out for a steak with some old school friends and we drunk the night away so that was fun as well. Really great night out; there's something special about catching up with old friends. Poker wise I've played about 9k hands since I got back from Costa Rica and am wrecking. Hopefully I can get in another 20k hands before the end of the month and continue to ship the dizzle.

Thanks for reading,
Rob.

Today I played some 10/20, I was down almost 20k at one stage, no biggie, i'l just 4 table mezplz hu and win it all back.




To be fair, mez was only accountable for ~10k of the comeback and I obv ran super hot vs him, although I did trample on his face whenever he tried to fck with me deep. After that I found a couple of donators playing 6max and was lucky enough to be the donatee. I also got the kk>aa aipf deal which was nice as well.

Aside from this I've played some 2/4, 3/6 and 5/10 the last few days depending on what the games have been like. I also played some hu sngs and am down a few k playing 500s-2ks. I think I'm +ev vs quite a few of the regs and a marginal loser vs some of the better nits. I'd also like to point out how ridiculous it is that Adonis112 is up over 300k. I think this fact helps underline how dumb the variance in hu sngs is, esp turbos. I know I said I would not be calling people out in my blog but this guy is such a **** to everyone in chat I don't really care. I think stevesbets completely wrecked him the other day, and I was rooting for steve, that's how big of a dbag adonis is. Anyway, lolsngs and all that crap, I think i'l steer clear of them for a while they're so damn tilting.

For the rest of the month I will probably alternate between 4 tabling 10/20 and mostly 9 tabling lower. This will hopefully provide me with a mix of playing some really good players at 10/20 and working on my game, whilst getting a steady cash flow from multi tabling lower stakes (sounds good in my head anyway). It's not like 9 tabling makes me a robot or anything, but it is a lot easier to be thinking about theory and different lines/sizing playing less tables, even if those lines aren't always the ones you go for, there just tends to be more thinking and ideas swirling around in my head. I'l probably throw a few interesting lapt hands out there in my next blog, too tired to do in depth hand stuff at the moment though. Also Macio I do plan on getting back to you in the next few days, you are not forgotten!

Later,
Rob.

Blah 9th for 17k. Congrats to fees for winning all the money. Trip report to follow.

today was awesome. I had a good breakfast and a swim before the tourny and finished the day 1/38 with 180k. One time plz.

Since my last update I haven't been grinding a ton but I've put in some hands and had decent results. The charger for my laptop broke the other week and it took 5 days for a new one to arrive so during that period I mainly just substituted poker time with Madden/NBA but still played a few plo sessions on my parents computer when I was bored of that.

I played stars sundays for the last two weeks and have done pretty awfully, think I'm about 1/12 and that was only a meh cash in the 50r. I'm running up stacks and feel I'm playing fine, although probably worse than I would if I didn't have the NFL on in the background. I'm not giving up sundays with KC for poker though.

This sunday however, will be an exception, as I'm flying out to Costa Rica on Saturday for LAPT. Part of me feels pretty dumb for travelling half way across the world for a donkament but the other part of me wants an adventure or something. I also can't get cash for the seat I won (which I didn't know at the time) so I'd be throwing away some decent equity not playing.

My brother was there for 6 months doing conservation work and said I should check out the rest of the country if I get chance. Apparently you can go see a volcano so I might do that. Hopefully if I bust out early I'l be able to do something interesting rather than just sit about by the pool all week, although if worse comes to worst I'l just have to settle for that. I think I will probably be taking my laptop so I might get an update in while I'm out there.

My sleeping is all over the place at the moment, I won't bore everyone with the details of how fcked it is but it is definitely a November goal to get a decent sleeping pattern nailed down. Sometimes I slip back in to something decent but after a week or so I end up having an all nighter and it just degenrates from there. It's hard when the games are best in the early hours of the morning over here, but I can't go on like this otherwise I get nothing else done and feel pretty crappy about it.

I'l likely be sorting stuff for my trip tomorrow, so results from the last month:


About 60% hu and 40% 6max. I don't track mtts and plo although I'm fairly sure I'm 3-5k down in mtts and about the same up at plo. This is my best month ever and makes me happy given the thought I was grinding 100nl a couple of month ago. It's been a long time rebuilding since I blew through a 50k bankroll playing 200/400 limit (ya rly) back in April but I finally feel like I'm back in a position to make some decent money.

November I will miss the first week because of this tourny thing, but hopefully I'l be able to come back fresh and get some decent volume in. I'l probably be playing more 6max than hu though it just depends what the games are like, most likely 2/4 thru 5/10 6max and 5/10hu. I'd say there's a fairly high chance my next blog will be a loldonkaments rant. You have been warned.

Thanks for reading,
Rob.

EDIT: oh I see aaron just posted his month....

God my blog titles are boring. I'l try harder in future, it's late and I just wanted to write some things down.

The coaching session at the weekend went ok but I'm pretty doubtful as to whether he will have the time/dedication/ability to make a decent living playing online poker. I'm going to do my best but it's obviously a two way thing and if he isn't getting hands in during the week and applying the stuff we talked about AND actively trying to use all the resources available to him, it will be an uphill struggle. I'm thinking of doing 100vpip with him next week to get him some tough spots and break his thought processes down.

I got back to Doncaster Monday afternoon and bought NBA2009 and Brothers In Arms for PS3. NBA looks like a really sick game and I can imagine with all the features it's awesome if you follow the sport closely. I watch the odd game but I prefer NFL, football, boxing, cricket. Still I'm gonna start a dynasty up soon and hopefully get in to it because the gameplay looks really good. BIA is quite an original fps with standard fps gameplay alongside all the tactical and strategic nuances of using the rest of your units to get through different missions. The cut scenes however are super lame and way too long which is even worse since you can't even skip thorugh them.

I hardly played any poker on Monday. I started up a session but about 30mins in I was getting frustrated by people just sitting and leaving after 5 mins so I decided to quit and play ps3. I played a bit more today and had 3 sessions vs 3 good regs and ended a buyin down after about 2000 hands.

Tomorrow I need to get to the gym by midday! I also need to book San Jose flights or try and get some money for my seat, not decided whether to go or not but I need to make plans asap. I'm also going to give my old guitar teacher a ring and see if I can start lessons again. I'm considering buying a strat since they're cheap and good house guitars, my Ibanez kinda cuts straight through walls and i'd like something a little different at the moment. S'all for now.

This week couldn't have gone much better. Things really kicked off on Tuesday when I got to 2 table this whale at 5/10. I ran really good, made a load of hands and finished him off by out flushing him for a 500bb pot. Ended up taking just under 10 buyins off him and that set the tone for the week. The only down side to this week has been that I haven't got quite as many hands in as I would have liked. I think 10k hands a week is a bit of a lofty target for hu especially when you are only playing on one site. Stars is just full of bumhunters and sometimes the only action you can get is one tabling a 23bb stack (or some other random number) and hope to take his br off him asap before he doubles through 5 times and leaves.



I also suffer a little bit from 'don't play as much when you're winning syndrome' but I'm getting better with that and hopefully I can shut it down altogether in the coming months. This week I managed 2590 hands of 5/10, 3341 hands of 3/6 and 1505 hands of 2/4.

I may try and branch out to some other sites next month to try and increase my volume and get some better games. I don't really want to play on fulltilt since I made an account there when I was a n00b and didn't get rakeback. I also feel like the games are probably going to be just as tough if not tougher than stars. I have a betfair acct with rakeback but the software is hideous and I never want to play there again. I have a UB acct but don't want to play there because UB sucks. So I'm wondering where I can go to get good mid stakes hu action. If anyone has any suggestions please comment below.

Tomorrow I am going across to Leeds to do my first coaching session. I'm looking forward to it and hopefully I can do a good job. I've put some time in to planning things and I'm dedicated to seeing he improves as much as possible so that's a decent start I guess. I will likely stay in Leeds for the weekend and hopefully see some friends who live there and on Sunday I might go to the University Poker Society £10 freezeout. I helped run it last year and it'l be good to see some people I haven't seen in a while and see how the society is coming along.

Later,
Rob.

My first full week of hu has been pretty up and down. I'm not really game selecting at all and have encountered a wide range of players in my first week. I think this is the best way to improve and I always enjoy the challenge of playing thinking players rather than nits and fish all the time. I've managed to get in 9567 hands at 2/4 and 2983 hands at 3/6. The highlight was crushing a pretty bad reg for 10 buyins during a 4 tabling session of 2/4 and the low point was dropping 5 buyins yesterday vs a semi fish at 3/6. The 3/6 session was pretty demoralising as I think it was a good spot for me and I got him to 3 table as well. Most of the match was me winning the majority of the small/medium sized pots and him taking me to coolertown in all the big ones. Fortunately I grinded out some profit vs a few nits today and won some off a super aggro guy at 3/6. I couldn't decide whether he was good, bad or somewhere in between but he made this calldown which was kinda a head asplode. If only I had AhQh .http://www.pokerhand.org/?3273995

So anyway here is the graph for the week, pretty happy the green line didn't plummit in to the negative today. That would have sapped my morale a little. Fortunately I had a decent day and can put my first week in the books as a success. It hurts being this results orientated:




Tomorrow I am going to Hull with a few friends and seeing a few people I know that go to uni there. I think we are going to see Zane Lowe at the union which is w/e because he's always irritated me a little on TV. I'm sure i'l be suitably plied with alcohol to pay too much attention to him anyway. Also it's only his interviews that annoy me so maybe his set will be good who knows. I'l be looking to get my head down on Monday and try put in at least 10k hands of hu next week. Live for the weekend huh?

Later,
Rob

P.S. The new site is excellent, gj Leggo.

I've been playing hu the last few days. It's been going pretty well. I've always enjoyed hu but never really saw it as my regular game. I just get way to tilted by hit and runs and getting run over by fish to be able to play it day in day out. As I say the last few days have gone pretty well and the few annoyances I have had I seem to have shrugged off fairly well. I'l leave it till I have logged a few more hands to post any results.

The bad news is I tried sitting with Pistons87 who I did a post about how terrible he plays when he took like 6 buyins off me or something. Apparently he read it and now he doesn't play me so that sucks. You'd think he'd play me and not let me know that he knew what I thought of him so he could exploit my perception of his awfulness. This is mildly annoying and also makes me more reluctant to talk about hands and players in my blog. I've always been a bit conscious of going in to too much depth about this stuff but I thought it didn't really matter given that I play relatively low stakes and didnt really think anyone outside leggo would read my blog. Idk how you nosebleed guys do it.

Holy crap I watched this fight around 4am GMT and I've never seen anything like it. Mosley looked pretty ordinary and got man handled quite a bit by the bigger man. At his age he shouldn't be moving up a weight from welter to fight naturally bigger guys at light middle, esp Mayorga who is v rough and a real inside brawler. Anyways Mayorga dictated the fight and Mosley couldn't really get anything going until the 6th when he showed off some really classy combinations. Other than that though he didn't do enough to win lots of the other rounds and was only catching Mayorga with the odd single counter here and there.

Going in to the 12th the commentators felt Mayorga was well ahead, I had him up by 4 and he was taunting Mosley during the 11th/12th, raising his hands all the time and swaggering about the ring. Well in the 12th Mosley came out firing and knocked him down with about 20 seconds left. Mayorga got up and Mosley came running forward and landed a huge left hook which flattened Mayorga. With literally 1 second left on the clock Mayorga failed to beat the count and it was over. On the undercard Andre Berto looked really really good beating Steve Forbes on points. He has incredible hand speed and like to mix it up inside so I'm looking forward to watching him fight some big names, I don't think it'l be long unless Mayweather snr wraps him up in cotton wool.

Poker wise I just played a 1200 hand session of 2/4 and made 3 buyins. I'm getting in to a better sleep pattern now which is good since i'm starting running again in the coming week and also doing this zone thing. I also got Madden 09 the other day. It's pretty funny to see them try and better it each year with more and more features. The gameplay seems to be comparatively different from other Maddens though so it might take a little practice till I'm crushing All Madden. At the mo I'm 4-2-0 with the skins on all pro. I've made some great deals trading and am confident of a superbowl by the end of next season. I might disclose some of my trade secrets in my next blog.

Later,
Rob.