Anyway I just got destroyed by one of the bigger fish I have ever played.

It started off great I won 3 Bi's fairly quickly and easily and he reloaded for 75ish BB's. About this time he got seriously boomswitched, he started to lead/call the the flop with ATC and backdoor two pair and str8's alot. And just stuff like peeling vs large 4 bets (40% his stack) with K6s vs AK and flopping a 6 etc. I think my sizing of the 4 bets was atrocious, kind of lead to negative freerolls etc.

We started to get deepish around 250bb each and he has started to do stuff like make to between 8 and 25bb's pre on the button. He opens for 12x I make it 44x with AA he calls FLOP T83r I bet 3/4 he calls, TURN K i bet half pot he calls RIVER Q I shove he calls shows QQ.

Then a bunch more hands like that, Im stuck a bit, getting a little steamed but starting to build up stacks. Now every time I get up to 200bb+ plus and we play a big pot with 70% equity I get done. Included in this I lost an 1100 BB pot with the NFD vs middle pair in a 5 bet pot.

Now he is opening every button for 78 @ 2/4 so Im sitting waiting for cards. Pick up nothing, eventually he stops opening so large and makes every button 20instead. Somewhere I loose another stack and the very next hand I get AJo OTB. I decide my image is terrible and open shove he snaps with AA. LOL poker.

Eventually I peel a raise with QT flop Txx I c/r he mins I shove vs AK turn K. He insta-quits which is probably a good thing for me considering im so tilted my vision is going blurry (not a joke).

Anyway I ran like ass and got destroyed but I think I played incredibly terrible at certain points vs his donkish aggression. Im going to cool off and then hopefully examine my HM and look where to improve.

EDIT, cooled off a little and took at look at my HM. TBH I only ended up stuck 5.8 BI's to him. Which is a bit but not a ton, guess I just suck at the swings of HU atm.

He did a lot of random stuff that I had trouble adjusting to ie minraising everyone of my button opens for a time then snap calling a 4 bet everytime. Maybe its because I couldn't flop a pair but it was incredibly difficult to play against.

Anway I have been continuing to play HU and doing very well. Its been a great change of pace from 6max and a very fun, intellectual challenge. There is something very exciting and pure about battling one-on-one and constantly trying to out-think and out maneuver you opponent. A big change from 6 tabling 6max.

Anyway I thought I would share this youtube link I found of Gary Kasparov, discussing making mistakes in chess. It is surprising how applicable this is to poker and a very cool interview that got me thinking about a host if different things. Topics such as evaluating your own play, hidden random luck and why its so difficult to remain on top of the game. I think this is compounded in poker due to variance but hopefully you can see what I am talking about when you take a listen.


Note: I cant take credit for finding this someone posted it on 2+2 a while ago and I found it again while trying to fix some registry problems on my PC.

Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2KKfOGaR_w&

Yesterday I put in some volume at HU NL for the first time in a while. HU NL is a game which I have a love/hate relationship with. I feel it should be a games that I should crush as it emphasizes alot of my strengths as a poker player. Things like hand reading, aggression and above all game flow.

I ended up playing around 700hands of HU (not alot I know) and won around 4.5 BI's. For the first time that I remember I played really well at HU and didnt make very many major mistakes. I felt in control of all of my matches and only lost to one opponent (obv the biggest fish I played).

At the moment I am feeling really confident in my game and for the first time I feel like I am putting all of my poker knowledge in play when I sit at a table. Its very difficult to describe but I feel lost during a hand very rarely. I always know what factors I am looking for and how to balance those. Sometime I do overestimate my FE or misjudge his range slightly but those are things I have to work on. Overall Im just feeling great and really think that I am on the brink of posting some very sick results.

Just before I went to sleep last night I noticed I needed around 300 VPP's to make platinum star on pokerstars. So I fired up a couple of six max tables to grind out the necessary Vpp's. In that time I managed to win another 3.5BI's, playing and feeling great. Obviously Im running well but my play has improved dramatically in the last two weeks. Hopefully I can continue to play my best when I start to cool down.

I woke up early this morning and scrolled through my Foxtel hard drive (cabel in Oz) to catch up on some tv watching managed to watch an episode of ROME, Top Chef and The West Wing.

By the time I finished had some breakfast and a coffee it was 10.30am which really sucks because its around this time that most of the games on Euro sites break. There are probably two or three tabels running at my usual limits compared to 30+ at peaktime.

Anyway I fired up stars and a few HU tables on FTP and Stars and started to play. So far I am up about 1.5 BI's and for a change enjoying playing HU. I tend to have a very love/hate relationship with HU. I think its def a game that tends to highlight alot of my strengths but its one of the few games that can still put me on hardcore tilt.

One of my big weaknesses I have noticed from some of todays sessions is that I tend to bluff catch in bad spots vs bad players. Another big leak is calling the flop or turn because I think I have the best hand without any real consideration for what my plan is for later on in the hand and what to do on a bunch of different cards. Which oftgen leads to me going "ahhh ****it i call" and loosing the pot.

But anway will update later with results etc. The donk i was playing has returned from his smoke break.

I woke up early yesterday morning to try and get some jobs done that suddenly seemed to come from no-where. A little grocery shopping, going to the bank etc.

Then around mid-day got a call from my friend and he asked if I wanted to go for a beer and lunch in Freo. We ended up heading to Little Creatures which is boutique brewery for some lunch and some beers. We just sat around and bull****ted most of the afternoon which was a super nice break from poker.

After that we jumped on a bus and headed to another mates place for a few more beers, after which I headed home. I woke up this morning feeling a little worse for wear, which is kinda to be expected since i really dont drink much anymore. Usually the day after going out drinking I turn into a giant lazy useless blob mainly because when I drink I have a real hard time sleeping. So today I have been reading tons of strat posting in MSNL and HSNL on 2+2 and catching up on poker vids.

Ill prob fall asleep sometime soon and wakeup around mid-night which is right when peaktime tends to start on the Euro sites and get back to the grind. At the moment I am feeling really confident with my game and my results and I am really starting to feel like I am putting all my knowledge together consistently when I play. Added to that I dont feel like I am making big spaz blowups, so I'm happy.

I had to stop playing early today, not because I was stuck and steaming but I was ran sooooooo hot the first 1500 hands that it was starting to affect my play. I think subtle things like this can really lead to some nasty downswings if you are not vigilant looking for leaks as they develop.

Today I managed to get in 1748 hands, winning 15.5 BI's. I ran unbelievably well not really in a sense of sucking out or cooling ppl, but just everytime i made tptk someone had something else they wanted to play for stacks with that wasnt quite as good.

But I did wake up today extremely tired from my very long session yesterday (9.5hrs or something). Which probably affected how much I really felt like battling on and grinding out another big day (hand wise), add to that a bunch of jobs I need to do tomorrow (bank, grocery shopping etc.) I might as well call it a day and get into bed at the respectable time of 4.00am. I still think that I can achieve my goal of 150k hands especially if I can get volume in over the weekend, usually when the games are the best anyway.

In my last blog I said I was going to aim to play 150k hands by end of August

Today was the first day of said challenge, I ended up playing 4225 hands mostly 5 and sometimes 6 tabling. It was a very long day and I ended up winning 11.5Bi's and clearing a $125 bonus, add in some rakeback and it was a very good day.

To make my goal i actually needed to play 4500ish hands but hopefully I can make it up tomorrow. A friend of mine wanted to prop bet me I couldn't play 150k hands in a month at 1.5/1. Playing my current number of tables and with other stuff going on in my life I think im a decent dog and I'm not going to take it.

Playing such a long session was really good in terms of being able to examine some of the leaks in my game. I still play poker like a limit player which is kinda bad, what I mean by that is whenever I think I have the best hand I just bet. Without considering my opponents calling ranges, my plan for the next street and the implications of my bet (ie opening myself up to get bluffed). Another major leak of mine, which I have almost successfully gotten rid of, was randomly spewing off a stack every couple of hundred hands. I'm not sure how that leak developed but it has literally taken me about 12mths to almost totally get rid of it from my game. It may sound dumb but there was a time where I literally could not stop doing it. It would be very sick to go back and look how much EV that leak cost me, both in terms of opportunity cost of not moving up and there sheer number of $$$ i gave away. Sigh I would say easily a luxury car.

But anyway everything is looking up but I need my sleep to try and repeat this all tomorrow.

Also Im way too tired to proof read all of what I just wrote so if it doesnt make sense im sure u can figure out what I meant.

In the last blog I said I was bored and looking for a challenge and that challenge was going to be grinding live NL cash games. Well that lasted about two days, yeah very claytonesque i know. But yeah the games just play so so so slow and you can play hours without running into a difficult decision. Also your earn per hr playing live is incredibly small, I could make much more money playing 6 tables of 100NL online vs one tabling 5/5 live. And tbh I really dont want to do either lol.

I have been mixing in some PLO play over the last 8 weeks or so and wow that game is just gross. I guess it can be fun but it seems like there is a ton of pointless variance and it feels like as a winning player you are constantly playing very abc and stacking ppl who dont know that two pair isn't a very good hand. Overall its not a very rewarding game imo, yeah ppl suck but you get very few hands per hr per table (so even if your winrate is higher its not like you are winning any more overall) again NL proves why it is the Cadillac of poker imo. As an aside i ended up playing 15k hands winning at 11.3ptbb/100 and if you had asked me to estimate my winrate without checking PT I would have said I was probably a breakeven and perhaps a slightly loosing player. It just never feels like you are crushing a table playing PLO, which is one of the best feelings playing poker imo.

In other news it seems like I have found a room-mate to share an apartment in Melbourne. Which is something I am really looking forward to and hopefully I can make the move from Perth to Melbourne again soon. We have a bunch of things to organize and work out but I am pretty excited tbh. It seems that we both have very similar goals and reasons for moving over to Melbourne so hopefully it works out well. It should be very motivating living with another poker player to get a bunch of hands in and being able to run hands and ideas past him.

Also a big congrats to leggo with two great signings in US and Sauce, I've watched sauces first vid and it was really really good. Looking forward to checking out US's first vid tomorrow.

Basically my goal at the moment is to really improve my 6 max game and log a ton of hands before the end of August. My very lofty goal at the moment is 140k hands from now till September 1st. That should really set me up before my move and give me a great jumping off point for the rest of the year.

In the past I have struggled every couple of weeks with burn out which leads me to donking around a a mix of stakes, games and sites. This usually leads to small losses and a ton of wasted time. In response to this I have deleted all but 3 poker sites from my computer and am forcing myself to only play 95% 6max NL. If I get bored I can mix in some HU which I think will be good for me, and another area of my game that I think i can improve and have some fun with.

Also got my university results from my last unit and Ive passed everything, I submitted my intent to graduate so it looks like that is all sorted. Thank heavens for that, only took 2.5yrs longer than it should have.

Anyway ttyl

EDIT
Also I will be getting to that what online players do bad live article I promised.

Another thing, does anyone have any idea why I cant play any web-based audio on my computer at the moment? I can stream audio on like you-tube etc but no sound plays (no error message etc.), while the video plays fine (albeit no sound). This extends to skype people can hear me but I cant hear them. But if I download the audio or video file i can play it with no problems from the desktop.

Suggestions very welcome.

At the moment I'm feeling really burnt out, and it seems like im not the only one.

My good friends jimmyhat1000 and SEABEAST seem to be going through the same thing. Its weird that its all happening at a similar time to all of us, even though we are playing completely different sites and limits.

I tried to really get into PLO and did some coaching and I was really crushing it at first, 20k hands at like 15ptbb/100. Wasnt playing especially high just grinding along at 200 PLO. But as soon as I started to get bored and figure out how exceptionally boring PLO can be, its has showed in my results. Since about two weeks ago I really haven't logged that many PLO hands (around 2k).

I've been through periods like this before and the best thing to do is just switch it up and do something else. I've actually spoken to Jay (SEABEAST) about this at length and I agree with him that it really is detrimental to both you game and work ethic if you force yourself to play when you really aren't feeling it.

So I'm switching it up and for me at the moment that means live cash. I actually really enjoy playing live cash, I'm probably one of the few ppl that I know that does. To be honest I enjoy it much more than playing online for the most part. Only problem is that where I live the games are relatively small and the cardroom has weird rules and procedures that make the games play alot slower (hands per hr) than they should. For instance you buy chips and that table and if you need to rebuy you also do that at the table. Also your live hourly rate live can't come close to matching what it is online.

Also Ive really been thinking alot about the differences between live cash and shorthanded NL online play, someone please remind me and I'll write an article on what I think are the differences are and what adjustments you need to make. Because they are usually pretty simple and can make a huge difference to you expectation.

But anyway I went down on Thursday at around midday just at a 5/5 NL (usually the biggest game that runs) started. I played for around 6hrs and won 1625, which is a decent win for the game. Its a really nice feeling to get paid out your winning in cash rather that just seeing a few more numbers in your account balance. Overall the game was exceptionally soft but alot of the regs where complaining that the game was bad etc. But tbh I cant think of a lineup of people in Perth that I wouldn't play against and think of was an exceptionally big favorite.

So my plan is to not really play much online for the rest of the month and just concentrate on grinding out some cash playing live. On the 1st of August im flying to Melbourne for the Vic champs and am looking forward to catching up with jimmyhat1000 and logging some hrs in what I assume are going to be some very soft 10/20 games. Hopefully I can run good in some of the tournaments and luckbox something, really looking forward to the $1100 6max tbh.

Until next time

I spillt red bull -on my key b-oard

It is n-ow br-o ke n

tuhis is tilting me li ke u can t be lie ve

eknd li fe .........................................................