LOL variance

Having my most painful month in a long while. Last I posted I was trashing my room over a $350 loss. . . enter the 2.5k downswing! I've actually been keeping my cool for the most part since my last brainsplosion at the madness of poker brutality.

The newest and best thing in my life poker wise is definitely Rush Poker. . . only played it once but I felt like a drooling rake back monkey after I earned 2500 ftp points for my 5.5 hour session!
Sngs. . . are hell. Worst thing is documenting it by participating in the January 90 man contest on badbeatspoker.net. Pretty fucking gross!
Username Games Played Av. Profit Av. Stake Av. ROI Total Profit Form Ability /100 Network Filter
J4bberW0cky 29 -$24 $32 -86% -$697 Super Tilt N/A FullTilt <12Hours x
J4bberW0cky 37 -$3 $10 -29% -$119 Super Tilt N/A FullTilt 1/1/2010 1/31/2010 E90-90 S<=15 SNG Only x
J4bberW0cky 67 -$1 $20 -4% -$61 Super Tilt N/A FullTilt 1/1/2010 1/31/2010 E90-90 S20-30 SNG Only x
J4bberW0cky 35 -$21 $40 -49% -$748 Tilt N/A FullTilt 1/1/2010 1/31/2010 E90-90 S36-80 SNG Only x
J4bberW0cky 5,110 $12 $27 44% $59,390 Super Tilt 87 FullTilt x
J4bberW0cky 311 -$5 $31 -7% -$1,521 Super Tilt N/A FullTilt Year2010 x

the little things

Up until tonight January has been pretty crappy. My motivation has been low, I haven't been playing much as I've been too busy swilling this awesome scotch bar that I bought myself for Christmas, delving deeply into gourmet beers, and basically eating like a king from the Medieval Ages.

I played 4 or 5 session in the first ten days of the new year, quietly donking off a hundred or two a session (except for a nice little win at the 5/10 LHE tables- that was fun. Limit Holdem is a great, great game sometimes.).

Today I got straightened out. Instead of lounging around per the norm I actually made it to the gym after my morning smoothie, had a nice work out, got a balanced meal and all that, took my vitamins, some Piracetam, and I think most importantly- I really cleaned off my desk. All those nasty little smudges and piles of sticky tobaccoe and weed fragments- I saved the weed fragments obviously, but I really scoured the area and made my situation as nice as possible. I played a nice 42 game session in an excellent mood - hardly screaming at all - and capped what would have been just an okay night with a very welcome 4th place finish in the 23k K.O. tourney for just over 2k.

Mission accomplished. (except for the obvious failure at clinching the 23k- but if I really want to pursue that line of reasoning than I might as well be bitter that I didn't win every single tournament I played tonight.)

The lesson is- and it's a lesson I know but don't follow often enough- everything counts in poker. Poker is a Meta-Game of sorts. Every detail matters, even though sometimes none of it does. It's BIG like that.

And to really optimize your playing and profit making experience, take the time to set the stage. For me I've realized that this means getting some exercise. I find that my emotions are more balanced and my thinking is more clear after a work out. I'm also tangibly "more awake," which is huge when multi tabling because you have to make a lot of important decisions very quickly sometimes, and your information is often of an esoteric nature at best. Every little detail adds up at the poker table and the quicker and more efficiently you can take it in the better obviously.

I haven't gotten around to making my New Years goals yet, but you can believe that they're going to be more focused on maintaining my attitude and dedication and overall well-being more than they will be about winning some X amount of $.

2009- Year of The Fucking Finally

Awesome year comes to a close. . . I've been cobbling together income from small stakes poker games for years, always felt like I could succeed, yet I never was able to establish a real money making groove until this year.

My biggest accomplishment by far is finishing the year #1 on a Sharkscope leaderboard. . . now mind you there's a lot of categories to fight over. My category is

Most money won in 2009 in tournaments that started with between 4 and 6 tables, with a buy in between 16-$35. Any site.

To achieve this I played 2,285 $24+2 45 player sit and go's at a pretty spectacular %57 ROI for a total win of $33,772 in this category, which happened to be the most this year. There's a day left so perhaps I shouldn't be documenting this yet. . .

Add to that some nice wins in some other brackets, a recent slew of mtt successes (or near successes depending upon outlook) and 2009 completely outstripped my expectations and was an unequivocal success. For the first time since working in the casino's I earned a proffessionals living wage and I did it working my hours on my terms.

Pretty awesome.

What's on the horizon? I'm not sure. Cash games keep calling to me siren like just for the shear flexibility of the game. Being able to play as long as I like, whenever I like, for as little or as long as seems good. . . sounds awesome. I'm definitely going to work on improving my skills in that area, it's just a matter of figuring out which form I want to specialize in.

That's how I work. I specialize. If I'm going to play a game I study the hell out of it. I think this stems from my chess background and how much work needs to go into preparing your Openings. But it's true. Every poker format has it's own strategies and conditions. A friend of mine recently asked me for a book recommendation- specifically for NLHE cash games. Another friend present suggested Harringtons Tournament Series because it was an excellent book. . . and it is . . . but totally inappropriate for cash games! So many of the concepts just don't properly carry over.

Here's an example.

In a 45 man sng it can be appropriate to reraise, get all in with AK on the first hand.

In a traditional 9 man sng it pretty much never is.

In a cash game AK can be folded or played for less than all in preflop in many, many situations. Stack size and previous action play a large consideration and can lead to a variety of plays.

So about a year ago was when I finally decided to specialize in poker. I had seen some regular success in the 45 man sngs and wanted to see if I could get more, more often.

One of the problems was that I was only playing 2-6 tables a year ago, and I was often doing that in compromising situations, like while watching t.v..

Some of the biggest strides I've made in the last year have been in the realm of multi tabling. I now play 12 tables quite comfortably, and am now itching to get my second monitor working so that I can move to 16 without overlap.

Not only did multi tabling help me put in more volume, but it also helped me plug some leaks. In particular I'm a chronic sufferer of Fancy Play Syndrome, but in order to play 9, and later 12, games comfortably, I finally said good bye to a lot of the moves that I knew were marginal at best yet were difficult to play in even the best spots to account for the limited attention I could give particular hands playing 12 games at once. Basically, playing a bunch of tables at once forced me to finally play more or less correctly- which is pretty damn tight- at least in this format of poker.

There's a whole train of thought to come after this I'm sure, but it's a little late for that.

Happy New Year, Reader, Apologies for the rambling, it's been a sloppy, and happy holidays.

Good luck in 2010!

DUDE

Just had the most grueling night ever, except that I made $3500 on it! How could that be??

XXXXX <---- INSERT SHARKSCOPE GRAPH OF MY SUCKAGE HERE

Unfortunately the formatting on the sharkscope graph went to hell, and I'm too tired to fix it, but I busted out of everything I played tonight, or had to settle for penis cash, in almost every game but two. Agonizing soul crush after agonizing soul crush. . . except that in two games out of 40-whatever I actually went deep before being soul crushed. . . so made some nice coin.

In my big cashout, the 3rd place in the 25k guarantee- I had a rather dissapointing finish. After sparring with other final 3 players for almost 45 minutes (these rebuy tourneys have a ton of chips- they're awesome), both of them big winners, I raised 9To on the button to just over the minimum, the small blind flatted and the big blind folded. I very happily bet about 1/2 pot on the flop of QJ8- giving me the nuts! The bb called. He check called the turned King, and led on the river 3 for about half pot. I tanked and wound up shoving as the pot was so large I thought he'd be committed with many worse holdings. He snap called and showed AT for the turned nuts.

OUCH.

After shoving and winning a couple flips in the next two orbits I actually clawed my way back into contention for 2nd place but the blinds had gotten large and my 9x shove was called by the chip leader who was holding K4o which was more than enough to beat my 68s. GG. Both players at the final 3 were very competent so the third place didn't hurt as much as it might normally. . . but I'm definitely starting to get a little nervous about my short handed game as I haven't been able to clinch one of these in awhile.

The crazy, stupid fucked up thing about playing poker for a living is that even though I had a killer night at "work" it was absolutely dreadful to participate in! The wins came late in the night, and were a damn good turn of events for me since I was down $1000 in tournaments already- almost all of them $24-$50 buy ins and just getting fisted every single time I entered the pot until I was screaming at my monitor and pounding my computer mouse every ten minutes! I was livid, bent, frustrated, impatient, I think I went on tilt a dozen times tonight! Thank god for those 5 minute breaks I get to spend with my dogs. They really hook me up at times like that- the look of mortal concern in their eyes reminds me I'm being a total fucktard, and playing with them afterwards is great for the spirits. Dogs rule.

So yeah, the pleasure/pain ratio in poker is totally fucked. After having my mind ground to dust over 40 painful bust outs tonight I finally win some good money- but am STILL left to curse the HOWs of getting only 3rd place (the money for first and even second is much better, and good players take pride in being able to "close the deal"), and the actual money won. . . well it doesn't seem very real right now.

Fuggin lame. But I suppose there could be worse things. Some of my friends take orders, give orders and stand up for up to 16 hours a day. :P

I slept through another tournament

I really need to stop pre registering for tournaments. I just slept through miniftops 13, which only cost my $33 but still.

I've had very, very little motivation to play poker recently. I've just been feeling like there are other things I want to do. . . but I wind up just smoking weed and playing on my xbox or reading sci fi- (btw, The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is excellent, addictive reading). I don't know if it's this dismal weather (grey, cold, often wet) or what but I have not been wanting to play poker!

Even though "my game" is clearly the 45 man sngs I've just felt really bored with them lately. Today I played almost all mtts, and started the session tonight by playing 4 tables of 1/2 6 max N/L w/ antes (always a mouthful!) According to pokertablratings.com I made 1200 on the cash session. . . not too shabby at all. . . especially considering I got a bit tilty (and shnockered) and lost $700 playing $15/30 Razz two nights ago. . .kinda gross no matter how you consider it!

sorry for all the bitching

3k downswings are going to be really routine now that I've amped up the stakes a bit, and I need to not start moaning every time I have one!

In better news I put in my first serious session of the month playing 40 games, and due to taking $7,200 for 2nd place in the $30 rebuy (I re bought 6 times I think?) I booked a very welcome and fun $8,200 win for the night.

That tourney was excruciating the whole way through- I got beat up a little bit early so that by the time the rebuy period came I was in it for $180 and had no stack to show for it. A series of miracles happened and I had a top ten stack with 130 left (459 started) but went absolutely card dead only finding a couple spots to pick up chips all the way down to about 3 players actually. I was seriously just hanging on by my fingernails for most of that time with a 8-22 bb stack the whole way. It was a really aggressive tourney and my opponents had ESP for the most part since I was getting no action on my decent hands and they were 3bet shoving on my mediocre ones. So I folded. Folded. Uh oh, time for a button shove. Sweet! THEY folded! Then I fold some more.

The final table was the same- I clung for dear life, had a lucky suck out or two just to stay afloat, had all my raises reraised so had to stop raising unless I wanted to shove, and my hands sucked so I just folded. . . pretty much not playing poker at all with the exception of knowing when and with what to go all in. Luckily, the table as a whole was almost maniacal and I watched as much bigger stacks than mine exploded and disappeared all around me.

Okay I'm rambling. Good job me, g'night.

Crazy good

I have been putting off posting because I've been winning non stop and didn't know what to say about that. Not sure what that says about me.

For some reason the reverse doesn't hold as I was fairly prolific during my last downswing before and after Vegas (which I have been successfully not thinking about).

From about July 1st I've been pretty steadily crushing, with a few smallish downswings in there but nothing more than 1.5k or so which happened when I was trying to mix in more of the 75$ 45 man tournaments. I've played about 250 of them and I'm down $3,800 at that stake level. It's a small sample size and I've felt generally unlucky. . . but I'm giving up. I just feel cursed at that stake size and I'm raking it in in the 26 format so am feeling no need to tortue myself.

My stats in the 45 mans for this month are just surreal. . . nobody is good enough to sustain this ROI- all I can hope is it lasts a while longer. In other awesome news, I won the 26$ 17k guarantee last night for a 4k score and am very close to my goal of making more than 10k this month before I go on vacation next week.

It's good to run good. In other news I sold my business today so will be looking for new ventures to become involved with. The future sounds fun, and right now all I can think about is the travelling I want to do this winter and what sort of laptop set up I want to put together to grind on the road.

Username	Games Played	Av. Profit	Av. Stake	Av. ROI	Total Profit	Form	Ability /100	Network	Filter
J4bberW0cky	199	$28	$24	106%	$5,507	-	N/A	FullTilt	9/1/2009 9/19/2009 E45-45 S20-35 SNG Only	x