Yo Leggo,

Novembers been a funny month so far. I'm posting early because it is finished pokerwise because ive run about 13 buyins under EV so i'm gonna have to move back down to 25nl which sucksss and means my run at platinum star is over for now, sad times.


The 10nl volume is on home games for our uni's poker club - crushing in that!

On the other hand I've been running shit hot at life!

I'm from an island on the west coast of Scotland called 'Islay', we have 8 distilleries spewing out tens of millions of litres of single malt whisky every year so I was pretty much brought up on the stuff which is why I guess I love whisky so much... So in summer I was working at Laphroaig distillery and met a guy who works for Diageo ( they're the biggest company in the alcohol industry globally) in recruitment who gave me his email and told me to send my CV so I sent it in the last week of october and he basically screened it and corrected the weaker parts.

3 weeks later and he's told me I'm pretty much dead certain to get through to an interview so i'm absolutely stoked, it's a 3 year global supply graduate scheme in procurement where you work in Scotland for 2 years then work in one of 25 countries for the 3rd. I guess this is another reason my volume will suffer because i'll need to do so much preparation to make sure I nail it.

Apart from that life heater all i've done is cope with man flu; watch 3 series of family guy; learnt some jack johnson on guitar and drink/club.

All in all a pretty decent month so far and I'll get on the grind again a bit in december.

Stay classy san diego, and leggo.

X

Yo Leggo.

October's been a good month lifewise. I'm getting well into my final year studying maths and statistics so it's been busy to say the least and i've managed to get in a pretty decent volume considering the workload. I have to say i prefer statistics by far this year because I can relate the concepts to real life much easier than maths and it's handy to have a daily reminder of the idea of 'variance' - the buzz word for dealing with that joyeous mode I tend to drift into sometimes called TILT but i prefer to call it being a suicidal idiot.

Asides from grinding, drinking and being a geek I've been hitting the gym quite a bit and getting back some fitness which has been cool, i've just been doing weight training and its been going awesome because i'm eating like twice as much food and not getting fat (i love to eat). I've also been dabbling with acoustic guitar which i started in january as a new years resolution and its stuck thankfully, i love it but i'm no jimmy hendrix...yet.

As for poker its been a winning month which i'm really chuffed with seeing as its my first at 50nl but the best thing is that i can confidently say I have only tilted once during the whole month which is a massive improvement, I've definitely played my best (when sober) but feel pretty dissappointed with my last two sessions which saw me drop a cool $550 (the first one cost just under $300 but i cant remember most of it because i logged on shitfaced).

Here's the damage,





As you can see i suck at playing with euros... This was so tilting because the games were super soft and i ran really bad at the wrong time but all in all its been ok.

Cash games : $130ish
+
Bonuses : $400
=

Here's my plan for november,
-Stick at 50nl.
-Try and keep platinum star.
-Leave that € shit alone.
-Loosen up some and get more aggressive. I've gradually become nitty which isn't cool - my red line is a sliding.
-Look into the possibility of getting coaching to achieve what is above, if any coaches need material for a leak finder at 50nl i'd be more than happy to provide it!

Real short post here but the funniest thing happened last night in the casino after a night out.

Its £1/2 blinds i buy in with a half stack and the table has one decent player the rest drunk fish and after a few hands im down to £87.

I have KTss on the button, 5 limps so i pump it up to £25, one caller (pished guy). Flop is Q95ss, he checks to me and i shove just about pot.

The dude had his chips on top of his cards and pushed the whole lot in the middle as a 'call' (with a 9). The dealer declared it as an all-in/fold because he'd technically mucked his cards so i scooped the whole pot without having to rely on any equity!

Good day folks,

It's the end of the month and soon to be the end of my social life with the arrival of university work this weekend so I got my grind on real good this month and managed about 45k hands. I did this playing a mix of $25nl and €25nl on between 6-8 tables and unfortunately in the first week i ran unbelievably shit on the €25nl tables in the (even worse than the 8 buyins i'd originally thought). It's a wonder i actually survived looking back because i was comfortably rolled even for the euro tables and after my dip at the start i had $450 in my roll but decided to not move down til $400 so thank fuck it turned around!
So overall in the first 20k hands i was -$600 and the last 20k i was +$600 roughly so it's a breakeven month which i guess i'm happy with looking back. The thing with variance is it can bite your ass so bad but i've learned that if you dont tilt and keep your head down it'll eventually give you a break or two.

Here's the breakdown, My 50nl stats are a bit nittier because i was 10 tabling to reach platinum star today (ship it!).






The plan now is to keep playing a mix of €25nl and $50nl, i've found that playing €25nl bridges the gap between $25 and $50 quite nicely for your roll.

Cheers for reading and gl in october!

Hey leggo,

I was originally planning to post to my blog once a month but this months been a proper rollercoaster so I'm gonna do a couple!

So September's been a tale of two halves, I ran so shit the first 4 sessions and tilted off i'd say 3 buyins in total so at this point I was a pretty pissed off because i'd been working hard on controlling my temper. After this i just got fed up of myself and had a weird eureca moment and decided to watch videos all day (it was freshers week at my uni so perfect way to nurse a hangover - 2litre bottle of irn bru in hand). A video which stood out the most for me was harangutangs $600 vid where for the first 20 minutes he talks about running bad and how over 100k hands he was just under breakeven, it basically hit home with me how ridiculous i was being getting pissed off at results instead of focussing on the process of playing well. Due to losing 8 buyins of €25nl i was back down to roughly €400 so i converted it to dollars and got on with it.

Right so the main point of this blog is just to write about my day yesterday pokerwise (although it was nice visiting my mum and getting free home cooked food). In a nutshell i had my worst session this month and my best session in the same day - it was pretty crazy. This was my first 4+ buyin losing session since the start of the month and the funny thing was that i wasn't even pissed off because i looked at the hands again and it was just a bit of a doomswitch so i took a break and made my dinner, played some guitar then got back on it and thankfully someone pushed boom.



I'll post my results for $25 next week after (hopefully) keeping platinum star if i get my grind on big style!

Adios amigos

Hello folks..

So my summer grind officially started in june where i deposited $500 in stars and was starting to grind away to get my 100% bonus but it all went tits up and i ran shit and tilted, leaving myself with about $130.

The thing with my poker is that i struggle to maintain consistency with my thought processes and looking back on my old sessions in holdem manager it seemed that I played completely differently in each one so i thought i would experiment a little and try to find a way to concentrate better. It was in a wee session of 10nl that i noticed i felt so relaxed and played great when i had some tunes on in the background so from that day on if i feel like im going to play shit i just stick on spotify and get some nero on the go and that perks me up usually.

So I started getting my grind on again in the 2nd week of august and i've put in my best volume for a month ever at about 33k hands of €10nl and 8k of €25nl and so far i've been playing +ev but I'm really motivated to get better and increase my winrate.

My plan is to grind €25nl for at least 50k hands regardless of what my roll is like and from now on my bankroll requirement is 30 buyins instead of 20 for moving up because at times I am a tilt monkey but im working on it.

Also can anyone help me here, I want to post my results for august and my stats for some feedback but i dont know how to.

Cheers!
Geo x

Dear Leggo,

Nice to see you again, its been a while - about 5 months to be precise! My last blog was a bit of a depressing read and it pretty much reflected the state of my life back then but now things are all good again. Uni is finished til september and I'm no longer with the ball and chain which was my ex-girlfriend so i am free and have a summer of golf, whisky, poker and travelling europe ahead of me. Life is good!

So on the subject of poker, after some crafty investment in single malt whisky ive managed to get a roll for 25nl again. Ive deposited $500 on pokerstars and im currently racking up the 100% bonus so expect to see a few posts as i try to get my +ev game in full flow.

See you all in the forums and good luck,
Geo x

Well december really didnt go to well. In my previous blog life was good and i had reached my christmas goal of getting my bankroll to $1k however my shot at 50nl ended poorly after a very unlucky multi table hu match against some dude which sent me on the most suicidal - almost unbelievable tilt in the world.

After my failed shot i had $900 in my account which i suppose overall wasnt bad but i had been up at like $1.3k, i guess i didnt take into account how fast you win/lose buyins at heads up. Heads up is still my favourite way to play NL texas holdem and i guess i just resented the fact i was no longer rolled for it.

So, after much frustration i moved back to 25nl. This is where it all went pear shaped, i quite obviously was not in the +EV state of mind from the start and my stats showed it - i crushed 25nl when i was moving up albeit over a relatively small sample (30kish hands) with steady/maybe nitty stats of roughly 20/17 with 3bet of about 7%, these changed to about 27/25 with 3bet %10. To cut a long story short i lost about $600 tilting all the way - with ******** helping me i had about $500 in my account just before christmas and with it being the season of lack of money.... i had to withdraw to pay for presents for people (mostly my girlfriend because she embarassed me last year with her awesome efforts in the present department so i decided to buy her a swarovsky necklace and other shiny things).

The personal lessons i have learned from my experience are,

- never let poker become your main priority (my studies really suffered in december at uni and i have a shitload to catch up on in january. Also my constant complaining about poker was driving my girlfriend up the wall.)

- stay within your roll. After reaching my 1k roll goal early and then seeing it dissappear before my eyes i kept taking tiny potshots at 50nl stupidly whilst in a red fog of tilt, compounding the problem.

-dont 'rush' when your not playing your best. Alot of my losses came from rush - it allowed me to make more mistakes in a shorter period of time making me frustrated and more tilted.

-dont lie to yourself - just because i crushed 25nl at one point doesnt mean im a legend at the limit and i dont need to post hands [ uber foolishness on my part]

-your supposed to enjoy playing poker - i hated playing because i knew i was playing badly yet i kept going. Its a hobbie at the end of the day for most people!


In the end i withdrew $300 and left myself rolled for 10nl with $200.
Im currently on $250 and im due a $175 year end bonus which ill try and get in the first week of january before i start uni.

I know i can beat 10nl and 25nl, i just wish i was thinking this straight a month ago - hindsights a wonderful thing. For 2011 my goal is to continue to play +EV at 10/25nl for as long as possible and to post more hands. If i find myself at 1k again i will not be moving up until i have at least $1.3-4k in my roll and i wont play heads up until i have even more buyins than that.

I guess im just glad i still have a roll

All the best Leggo members, Happy new year!

Geo x

Ok so my shot at 25nl went pretty well and i played it regularly for 2 weeks racking up about 15k hands which turned into a tidy +20 buyins overall. In the past week i took it slow and only played 1-2 tables whilst i spent alot of time scouring the forums for tips on 50nl and watching some heads up 50nl videos.

After some thought i finally took a shot at a mix of 50nl hu and 50nl 6max armed with my 1k roll and im really enjoying it! I lost a buyin or two in my first session but after 3 sessions im now up 4 buyins and life is good.

Im pretty chuffed with how things have gone and i can see myself specialising in heads up at some point because the flow of the hands is so much different and i feel it suits my game. Right im off guys, cheers for all the help in the forums!

p.s can anyone help me on how to post your graphs?

Geo x

At the end of september i joined leggo after my mate mark at uni (Headstroman) recommended the site after we had a random chat about poker on one of our first days back. At the time i guess my poker chat was a bit dodgy, i reckon i was really a 'bingo' player over summer busting out every couple weeks taking shots at 25nl with a bankroll of $50 always 'sure the flush will come....etc etc.', after making insane all-ins/calls.

Im glad to say that my outlook on poker has completely changed. On my old account i had just less than $50 left from my summer antics so i decided to take a pop at 5nl whilst going to the 2+2 forums and learning the basics from scratch, this worked a treat and with a bit of run good i got up to $130. Soon after this i heard of leggo and ******** from mark so i made my new account 'seoras' and deposited $150 after taking my $130 from my old account. I started playing 10nl and for the first week my EV was -$80 it was unreal i was losing with Aces and Kings almost everytime (all in preflop) it got kinda funny to a point.. only because my bankroll stayed about the same with the steady $15 coming in every 300ftp from my $150 bonus. Things evened out eventually and with the help of ********, all you leggo regs and the micro vids i grinded it up to $500 which felt awesome because my goal was to reach $500 by christmas.

A couple days ago i took a shot at 25NL and man it was smoking hot! I mean i ran so good for my first two sessions that i got up to $740 and i thought i was unbeatable. I've since learnt my lesson and after losing 4 buyins down to $640 i've put the brakes on and i'm posting my hands and watching more micro vids.

My goal now is to at least reach $1000 by christmas which i think i can do as long as i grind like fuck in my spare time in november because in december i'll have to do that thing your ment to do at uni..emmm.... study? fml but i guess its all good for the future.

Anyway guys if you've read this post thus far then good job, its not the most exciting thing you'll ever read lol i just felt like reflecting and making a goal for my bankroll because my last two sessions ive been sitting at the tables with no real purpose.

Keep grinding guys.