I was sorting out my old laptop early and saving anything I wanted before I got rid of it. I found this "blog" I'd started in Word back when I'd literally just started playing NL. I can't even remember starting this. I thought I may as well post it here as it's kinda cool to see my thoughts when I'd only just started playing NL.


"I’ve been meaning to start this blog for the last couple of days. I recently started out on the $100NL 6-max tables at Party Poker and this is my way of keeping track of how it’s going and any targets I have.

Targets

My initial target was to prove that I could win at the level. I’m currently at 1 PTBB/100 over 10,000 hands. I’m sure I will win at $100NL now. The first so many hands were littered with poor plays and I lost $400 fairly quickly. The last couple of days have also had some very poor play / strategy (e.g. 4-tabling). I think now that I am finding my feet and style at the level I should be able to look at a win rate of somewhere around 4 PTBB/100.

My first goal is to get to $4000 in my Party account. Once I hit this I have the 20 buy-ins for the $200NL game and I can begin to take some stabs at that. I may decide to have a few stabs earlier than that as the bankroll isn’t a huge issue – I’d like to move up as soon as I think I’m ready. I know in the past, and with other games, I have been in positions where I should have moved up and I never did. I don’t want to do that this time – I want to build my way up as quickly as possible. Hopefully I’m looking at somewhere around May to move up. I’ll update my goals as it becomes more apparent where I stand.

The ultimate goal is to be in a position come July to be able to support myself from playing poker. I think I’ll need to be making a minimum of $20 per hour to do this. If I can build up to 2-tabling the $200NL game by that point I’m sure that will cover it. If I can get higher than that it would be better.

Moving Up

First of all I want to talk about why I made the move up. I’ve been playing the $25 tables for a while as I hadn’t really played NL much before. I started by playing limit and then move to Pot Limit Omaha. After going to Vegas last summer I decided I wanted to learn No Limit as I felt there were big profits to be made. A few weeks back I went out with some work mates and they were asking me what I was going to do after I leave (I recently quit my job). I really have no idea what I want to do, but I do know that the thing I enjoy the most is playing poker. I also think that I have the potential to earn enough to live off it. So I decided the first thing to do was to get on the $100NL tables and see how we go. Bankroll isn’t an issue as I’m working and I also built up a good roll from limit and PLO.

The first few sessions didn’t go particularly well. I had a friend helping me out and giving advice on hands but it wasn’t really clicking and some of my judgement was certainly off. I learnt so much in the first 3 days playing the $100 tables that I honestly think it was more than I’d learnt about NL in the past 3 years! Anyway, things started looking up and I started playing better and understanding situations better. Then I decided to join Cardrunners as I’d heard about it a lot from forums and it seemed a good group of people to become involved with and learn from. I also really like the idea of watching videos of their sessions rather than just reading articles and forums.

The first 2 days after joining I had a fantastic run and everything I was trying new was working amazingly well. I was getting loads of action due to the new style they advocate, and I was hitting hands too – a pretty lethal combination! Then the last 2 days I’ve gotten a little over confident and pushed it too hard I think. I’ve found my VPIP/PFR is higher than normal, and consequently my results have suffered badly. I’ve also run into some difficult situations (which was bound to happen as I’d had such a good run of cards)."

It's my third day of manual labour from 9 - 4 ish and here's some things I've noticed:

• I enjoy it.
• It's amazing exercise.
• I'm weak. Very.
• My hands are softer than most female hands.
• They aren't anymore.
• I didn't even realise certain parts of my body that hurt even existed.
• Beer tastes a lot better when you've achieved it.
• At the end of the day I feel a much greater satisfaction than when I'm playing poker.

I think I'll probably try and find something else to do in the new year as I've enjoyed this. Although I'm going to go for something a little easier and less tedious than this task. And I'll probably pick someone else's house to abuse as mine's so messy right now.

Back to it now. I'm looking forward to when it's all done (hopefully tomorrow) and I can stand proud whilst taking a piss knowing that I helped to create the floor I'm on.

I'm having a new floor put in my bathroom, and before the people that are doing it can put it in I'm going to take the current floor up myself. Well, I thought it was going to be a couple of hours job, but I started on it this morning and it's a total nightmare!

I'd looked at it with a guy from the shop and there's this cork stuff underneath the two layers of laminate flooring that are on top. Well the part that was exposed came away really easily when we looked at it, and it looked like a pretty easy job. When I started it this morning it became obvious pretty quickly that that wasn't the case.

The cork stuff is stuck down so well that it's incredibly difficult to get off. It does come off, but it takes a long time and a lot of effort. I spent most of the day doing it today and it's going to take at least another full day (and probably a bit longer). As I write this my hands are hurting so badly and most of the rest of my body hurts too!

I was in a pretty bad mood with it earlier, although I know I'll feel a lot of satisfaction once the floor's down knowing that I got my hands dirty with it. Having said that, it's a total ***** right now and I'm not looking forward to tomorrow!

It's been one of my longest blog breaks. I've not been playing that much over the last few weeks. I had a pretty crappy early November (read; good lower limits, bad higher limits) and just didn't feel much like playing recently. I'm taking steps to get back into playing more though and I'm hoping to be back in grind mode pretty soon.

I've been hanging out with friends a lot recently which is good as I have a tendency to become a recluse when I'm grinding a lot. One funny thing that happened recently down the pub... (apologies to any friends/family that don't enjoy this story)...

One of my best friends, Andy, has a girlfriend called Lauren who pretty much always comes out when he comes out. Well a week or so ago we were in the pub and I was putting some songs on the jukebox (much to most people's dismay) and when I got back to our table everyone had this weird look on their face. I did my best Jack Bauer-esque interrogation and found out that Andy's phone had been passed around to look at some pictures from a recent night out, someone had scrolled too far and seen some comprising pictures of his girlfriend, Lauren. Well they quickly got passed around (naturally) but I missed them because I was at the jukebox.

Anyway, a few days later I met up with Andy again and he mentioned that another friend had sent some joke messages to Lauren later that night about sending him more pictures. We were all talking about this at first and then forgot about it and got on with the night. A couple of hours later I decided it'd be hilarious to send the text "Send me flange pics now" to Lauren's phone. (For the record, it would've been pretty funny in the context of conversation we were having and the timing of it).

Well I got no reply. So I assumed her phone was in her bag or summit. So the next time she went to the bar I mentioned it to Andy and asked him to try and get her to look at her phone. Another half an hour passed by and I finally got a text back from Lauren saying "What?". She was sat right next to me so I turned and laughed at her and she gave me this total blank look.

So I'm like "Yeah, you just sent me that text.", and she's going "Erm...what?!". Hmmmm. So after a couple of minutes of me trying to figure out what the hell's going on, I finally work out that the Lauren in my phone isn't the Lauren sat next to me. My first thought is that it's weird and a bit annoying. My second thought is that I sent the text, "Send flange pics now" to some random girl that I haven't spoken to for years.

To cut an already long and boring story short, I ended up working out it was another friend's ex-girlfriend's number, and I ended up saying I was a different Martin who's one of our mutual friends! It was pretty funny at the time, and I can't wait till this Martin and her bump into her the next time!

I just got Supernova on Pokerstars. Can someone please suggest to me what the best thing to do with regards to a bonus is. Should I just keep my points for now, or is there some good reward for me to get? I have about 220k FPPs and 100k VPPs.

We have our one year anniversary coming up and there's a really good contest we're running for it. You can find the information here. It's a cool contest in my opinion, and I definitely would've liked to have done something like this a year ago. Look it over and enter!

I'm having a poker night at mine on Saturday night. It's going to be fun as we haven't had one for while. At the last one I did some dodgy dealing when it got to heads up as one of the guys was about to get married and I thought it'd be fun for him! It turned out to be pretty funny, and noone really minded as we're all friends and it was only a fiver to enter. We also went out after and I got to share the winnings with him, which was a definite plus for doing it! We normally have shots if you win with certain hands so hopefully that'll be in full effect on Saturday. I get a little bored otherwise!

So I'm back to positive! The bit around hand 9k was pretty funny. I'd just got back to even for the month and then my friend John stacked me immediately. I need to get him back sometime soon because he's up on me lifetime at the minute! I also made a terrible river call right after that, which I was pretty pissed off about. No worries though because I took a break, came back, and owned.

I need to apologise to some guy called Hesselgren (I think) as well. I just made a really bad flop 3-bet against him because I thought we were only 100BB deep. I ended up sucking out on the turn and stacking him for 200BB so I got real lucky there. If you're a Leggo member I'm sorry! If you're not I couldn't care less! (joke)

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been playing as well this month. That's hopefully fixed now and I'm ready to go on my tear.

In other news, I think I was the most drunk I've been for a long, long time the other day. I wasn't planning on going out but my friend was going to some house party and then to the pub so I tagged along. It was his brother's ex-girlfriend's house warming party. She's Polish and there were a bunch of Polish people there. I was immediately forced to start on the Polish vodka (I don't drink spirits much) and it was a bad idea. Long story short, I end up hammered in the pub. Next thing I know, I wake up. Luckily I'm in my bed. My clothes from last night are on the floor so I pick them up and they're wet through. ****! I start to think I pissed myself.

So I'm lying around downstairs trying to convince myself I'm not dying and my mum rings up. Apparently I'd forgot my keys and was locked out when I got home (still not sure how I got home), so I phoned her to bring my spares round (she lives 5 or so minutes away). I have no idea what time this was, but it was definitely the wrong side of midnight (and probably quite a way past). So she gets round to mine and I'm asleep on my bench outside in the pissing rain. I didn't piss myself. Thank the lord. Thank my mum!

I felt like a complete tool though as I'm old enough to know better now. Those damn Poles and their vodka.

P.S. I think I was asked some questions in the comments of my last two blog posts - I'm about to answer them now.

Fun times.

I had a decent month winning around $36k. I didn't play as much NL as I would've liked due to playing almost a week of PLO and spending too many days drinking too much! I'd really like to start grinding more hands of $5/10 each month and really raking in some money. For that reason I'm going to set a goal of 60k hands of $5/10 for November. This shouldn't be too difficult to achieve, but it is a decent amount more than I normally play so I'll be happy with it.

On Sunday it's the biggest match of the season for my football team. It's Forest v Derby which is the local derby and just a huge match for the fans. We've been in different divisions for a while, so it's the first time we've played each other competetively for years. Forest are doing really poorly at the moment, although we did win our last game, and Derby have been doing ok. I guess that means that they're expected to win, but I kinda like that as there's less pressure on us.

I played again in the evening yesterday after having a good sleep. Unfortunately I got owned again, but I played much better and was happy with the session. I ended up losing $15k yesterday, which was my worst session to date. I think it was split about half and half between 5/10 and 10/20. Unfortunately it happened just after I took a bunch of money out (due to the dollar being strong again) - that damn cash out curse! That just means that i'll probably just play 5/10 until I win a bunch of buy-ins, although it's not really a problem as I obviously have the money to redeposit if necessary.

Just as a minor brag, I believe I made somewhere around $20k in the last couple of months just from the exchange rate changing!

I played a session just now that went pretty well. Hopefully I'm going to start owning again from now. I'm going to take a much needed night off now and go up Notts to drink.