Reality Check

Been a while since my last confession lol
Holiday was great! good to catch up with family in a warmer climate. Sun , sea and snorkelling is how most my time was filled and then rest of the time i was drinking cheap ass nasty cocktails. But i have to be honest after 4 or 5 days i was missing playing poker and yet i have no idea why.

Now on to the reason im here. POKER!

When I returned from holiday it was quite hectic around here so I didnt play as much as I had wanted, therefore i didn't build a decent bankroll to play the upcoming SCOOP events. But as SCOOP got going I basically put all my money into it trying to chase a score as most of you will have done. In hindsight i regret it as i am now busto and relient on full stake events to build my roll up from micros which is one of the things i did not want to happen this year as defined in first blog. I lost focus of what would of been the right way to approach the series by playing micros or 180s to use the profit for some of the events instead of taking shots and risking everything. I feel like I played well in the events but certainly over the last few weeks I have not put the time or effort in to improve my game. There is only so many articles you can read and then it comes down to Volume, putting in the effort and the daily grind to be successful. This was recently pointed out to me by a friend who basically told me i was slacking, just casually playing for fun or to get lucky and told me to go read my blog. I felt kinda insulted by his remarks until I actually read my blog and then i just felt annoyed at myself because he was right.It was because of him whilst im writing this today because we all lose focus from time to time but now its time to get back on the horse and put real effort in. My blog served its initial purpose which was so i remind myself of my goals, just sometimes you need a prod in the right direction.

Im at full health now and i have no excuses, if i play my A game there is no doubt in my mind there will be Final tables in my near future.

Good luck on the Felt.

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
Elbert Hubbard

Failure to Launch!

Such a dissapointing month in every possible way. My health kept me from accomplishing my goals for the month and left a bitter taste in my mouth. As highlighted in an earlier blog I wanted to play 500 sngs through March and be profitable. I barely managed to play half the volume and I closed out my event eating a $70 loss. The amount of the loss did not bother me, it was that I had let myself and others down by not playing the set amount of games. I found myself not being able to motivate myself to play because of the illness and although when i did play I gave 100% it just felt like there was something missing. I often found myself opening the Pokerstars lobby and then just closing it down feeling disgusted at myself for not being more interested in playing. With the extra value micromillions mtts running aswell I tried to bring myself to play some of them thinking a change from 180s would ignite a spark in me which wasnt there at the time, but it didnt. I was run down, drained and just generally annoyed at being ill. My plan was to play over 20 micromill events and i only managed 3/100. This month just highlighted to me how important health is towards your mentality when playing poker because when your not 100% its really hard to motivate yourself to play a few extra games or even open the lobby.With the 180s I definately feel in the long run for a 10-20% ROI they are beatable if you can put in the volume, there is no doubt in my mind if I was at full health I would of destroyed my challenge.

It has been a while since my last blog post but to be totally honest nothing much has happened in my life worth commenting on. I got my 6th tattoo and only 2 remain until my leg is full. I will be showing them off in a few days as I fly out tomorrow to Cyprus for my cousins wedding. A long overdue vacation and two week break from poker where i will spend my day swimming , drinkin beer , eating BBQ and basking in the sunshine whilst dancing around thrusting to "IM SEXY AND I KNOW IT" in a leopard print thong, yeah that bit was a lie I wont be eating bbq :)

Well its time for me to stop writing so i can concentrate on these mtts that need shipping, Peace out guys and GL on the felt.

Cyaz in 2 weeks

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.

Success followed by Failure followed by ......

January was a good month for me , February not so much but March is here and im Feeling Good.
Through February I mixed in sngs with mtts and ended up at a loss, not due to bad play but Varience which makes it acceptable in my eyes. Along with my bad health it became difficult for me to play for long spells yet I put in more volume then the previous month. After various trips to the doctors/Hospital I think im finally sorted so im looking for a big month in March.

This month my aim is to play over 500 x $2.50 180 turbo sngs with a profit and also mix in some micromillions events. I have played 100 sngs so far but not going great but it is all I plan on playing until the Pokerstars Micromillions start so I hope for an upswing soon.

Touching on the Micromillions I have yet to decide how many events i will be playing but with the schedule pretty spread out I could probably guarantee to play maybe 20 or more. With such great potential I will try and play as many events as possible and make a run at the leaderboard :P
Im pretty decent at most types of poker so I will not just be sticking to NLHE as I feel I have an edge in some of the other games on offer such as PLO /PLO8 etc. I will be selling my action as usual on chipmeup if any of you guys want some let me know closer to the date.

I am going on holiday on March 31st to Cyprus for my cousins wedding for 2 weeks which has given me a problem as ive had to cash out some of my bankroll for spending money so upon my return I will be thinking about accepting fullstake sng deals for the 180s incase any of you guys are interested just send me a message. Hopefully it wont come to this as all it takes is a small score in the Micromillions to get me back to normal again.

On a side note i have put more ink on to my body and the tattoo count is now 5 , soon to be 6 at the end of the week. Once it is all finished i will post a picture in a later blog.

If you guys havent seen any of these yet check em out its Daniel Negreanu's Video Blogs

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/daniel-negreanu/video-blog.php?movieID=4



Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.
Doug Firebaugh

General Shiznit

Finished playing my set of 100 x $2.50 turbo 180 sngs last night with some success. Finished with a 15% ROI yet felt dissapointed. I am not sure why i wasn't happy because after all there was profit which is always a good thing, but there is a nagging feeling that there was so much more potential there. As already mentioned i got some coaching for turbos/180s and without it I can guarantee I would of failed badly with this challenge. In total I only managed 12 cashes with 6 final tables and 1 Shippage. Those numbers to me look awful and can be greatly improved upon. I played good poker but varience kicked my arse badly in the middle section of my games. Finishing as the money bubble sucked aswell on two occasions but i play to win not to min cash. I will be running another 100 and i honestly feel 25% ROI is a good realistic aim, as always i will be selling my action on chipmeup.

Micro Mtts were moved down in my priorities whilst playing the sngs but I will be trying to improve upon my good start to the year within the remaining time in February. So far this year i have an ROI of 68% which I would love to maintain for the rest of the year, I know with varience I will have ups and downs but aslong as I play my best poker I can guarantee a positive outcome.

Ok so in a non poker related note, at the weekend i was left really dissapointed after I got outbid on a 5 foot tall wooden carving of an Eagle at an auction. I know what your thinking "wtf did he want a big wooden eagle for?" well the answer to that question is because it looked fucking awesome and it was just one of them times in my life were I wanted something because it was cool yet i had no space or use for it . This was 5 days ago and i am still dissapointed by losing out, it was kinda like when you were a kid and your mam makes you share your toys and some little fucker breaks it lol.

Without getting into too much detail i have had some health issues lately, a severe kidney infection which took 2 lots of antibiotics to get rid of yet the pain remains so I gotta go have an xray to check for kidney stone and the worst part is next week i gotta have a camera up my penis to look at my bladder n kidneys yeeeeeha.

The day i found out i had to get the camera n stuff done i decided on the spare of the moment to go and get a tattoo, so i got one of a shark which has a meaning of "endurance" and then I got one of a bad ass frog which means "healing" and tonight im booked in for another one which is a hammerhead shark which shows "strength", it will be my third tattoo in two weeks.


Peace Out

If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

Plugging Leaks

The month of January was good for me and i couldn't be happier with how it went but with the good comes the bad. February has been frustrating to say the least on and off the felt. I have put in volume at micro stake mtts and so far this month I've got nowhere close to a final table, in fact even min cashes have been few and far between. But, you can never keep a good degen down so I will keep grinding and remain positive and the results will come.

As I outlined in my first blog post one of my goals for this year was to get some coaching from Takezo1980, that goal can be ticked off or marked continuous as I had my first session with him a few days ago focusing on turbos and 180s. Going through some of my hand histories was enlightening to say the least , I was missing so much value it was embarrassing. Having a different view on hands is a way to open your mind to other ways of playing in that situation should it come up in the future. Talking them through with someone who thinks on an extra level is definitely advantageous. Being shown possible leaks in your game can only improve you as a player and believe me everyone has them, so get someone else's point of view and plug them leaks or you will drown in your own misery. I would recommend coaching to anyone wanting to improve as a player.

I have started a set of 100 x 180 seater turbo sngs, I will let you guys know how they go in a later post. They will be mixed in with my micro mtts and hopefully give me a good balance.

On a side note , my monster Cigar has been smoked and it was EPIC!

Peace out

"Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement."

Close but still no Cigar!

Ok guys i will start off by explaining the cigar remark. Basically I have had a Cuban Cigar ready to smoke with a bottle of 15 year old whisky since Christmas and said to myself I would not smoke it until I shipped an mtt or got a score of 4 figures or more. Well finally I got my score finishing 3/4269 for $1408.77 + bounties in the $5.40 turbo knockout 6k guaranteed on Sunday but my cigar still remains unsmoked. Ive been in pain for over 3 weeks previous and when I went to the doctors they took a urine sample and give me some pills. The day after my score I got a call saying the results are in and that ive basically got a kidney infection and have to take more pills to sort it out, meaning no alcohol. So due to not being able to drink my whisky I havent had my cigar yet, but hopefully soon I can smoke that baby and toast victoryyyyyy. Maybe by then I will have two results to celebrate you never know.

On a side note i played in 5 TCOOP events total cashing in 1, busting A10 vs 23s all in pre flop inthe event (yes it was like bingo). Only reason I played in them was because i got free ticket and staking or I would not have bothered as I seen them as a distraction of my micro mission.

From my initial goals im going quite well, i have arranged with Takezo to do some coaching in 2 weeks, i am going to stick to good bankroll management and not play mtts over $5.50 at the minute. I put in over 50 hours of research to develop my game last month and that is going to continue with results already showing my continued improvement. The book im currently reading is Harrington on Holdem, gunna get through the series and hopefully i get some useful info.

Hopefully another good month

Peace out

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Progression

I received some feedback following my last post from people who were in a similar mindframe as me last year and it made me feel a little better to know i wasn't the only one. But that is in the past and im looking to the future.

So far i have put in about 40 + Hours of research and reading this month to improve not only my game but my overall mentality. I thought i would give you guys some insight into what exactly i have been doing to improve incase any of you guys n gals are trying to improve also.

• Railed some of the best Online poker players to see how differently they play in certain situations and compare to what i would do. Some of these players (Takezo1980, 1banditpanda, 810ofclubs,jymaster11).
• Ghosted with Takezo1980 through Teamviewer so i could get some more insight into late stage tournament strategy and he gave me pointers on skype whilst playing.
• Read two books: Theory of Poker by David Sklansky and No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice by David Sklansky and Ed Miller.
• Went over Hand Histories from past tournaments to see if i could spot any leaks in my game.
• Been through numerous strategy articles accross the Web to pick up some pointers. Check out pokerjunkie.com, pokerstrategy.com and pokerlistings.com
  Some really good material available you just gotta look for it.
• I have also signed up for a free trial on Deucescracked, some very good players on there discussing situations in videos for your learning. Not sure what to make of it yet as i have been focusing on the other things, still got few days left of my trial so will let you guys know.

If you Guys have any information which could help me please let me know in comments or on chipmeup.com

Obviously putting everything ive learned into practice is were it really matters and ive been playing really well lately getting fairly deep on occasion but the cards are elluding me when it matters. But, i know results will come aslong as i make the right decisions along the way and remain positive.

PMA (Positive Mental Attitude)

See you guys on the felt :)