Wednesday 30 April 2008

Taking a Break

I'm currently taking a break from playing poker full time. I've started working with my brother a couple of days a week because I was pretty fucking sick of the lifestyle I had developed. I was a bit of a mess to be honest. Playing through the night, sleeping all day, letting poker rule my life, letting the stress of a losing session or two get to me, drinking too much, being lazy, not spending enough time with my wife and kids, blah blah blah. You know the score.

In order to get some normality back I decided to return to my trade (painting and decorating fwiw) which I haven't done for about 7 years. This has gone surprisingly well. I used to hate it but there's something satisfying about manual labour when you've spent so long sitting on your fat arse. Making this change has given me a bit of structure and it's had a positive effect as far as poker is concerned. I don't really give a fuck about winning or losing and poker doesn't stress me out at all. I'm also sleeping a lot better which probably helps. This has all contributed to a pretty amazing week at the tables so long may it continue.

I've certainly not abandoned poker as a career and it'll still make up the vast majority of my income every month.

At the end of the day I had to do something. I think I could have ended up a gibbering mess if I didn't sort myself out.

GL

Saturday 12 April 2008

9 days on...

To ease my suffering after getting my arse kicked at the tables I went to Edinburgh to have a beer with one of my favourite bloggers Luckyjimm. We had a few beers and spoke about poker and life in general. It was a good laugh and I might write a full trip report later if I can be arsed.

Since then poker has been going pretty well. I don't even have much to moan about today for a change! Omaha 8 is going superbly and I reckon I'll be ready to move up to 10/20 on a more permanent basis at the end of the month. It's quite weird looking back on how much my game has improved in the relatively short time I've been playing. Obviously coaching really speeds your progression and props once again to danzasmack. I would have saved myself a lot of heartache if I had got some coaching when I was learning hold em.

After my last post I decided to take a break from 6 max for a few days and do a bit more studying to better equip myself. One positive aspect of getting killed at short handed play is that when you go back to full ring the decisions seem much simpler. I'm running at something like 8bb/100 over 5000 hands since taking a break. I've more than covered my losses so all is right with the world again. It might be that my thought process is a bit sharper after investing a bit of time trying to improve.

I've been trying to get to grips with 7 card stud for the past few days too and that's going reasonably well. I still pay a bit of HORSE and stud or stud 8 are by far my weakest games so I'm going to spend a little bit of time learning these over the next few weeks. If I can get to the stage where I feel competent then I'll be happy.

I feel like things are starting to come together a bit more for me now. I remember posting at the start of the year when I would sit down to play and have zero table selection as I played 5/10 full ring and there would be like 3 tables running. Today I got up and opened 4 different sites and had the choice of O8, hold em, 7 card stud and HORSE and I basically picked the games that looked the best.

I was spoilt for choice to be honest.

Thursday 3 April 2008

Shit Day

Got seriously fucked over at the tables today. Fuck you poker and fuck you limit hold em in particular. Never in my life have i been ass raped on the river as often as I have today. Sick. I think I dropped about 120 big bets in total. Lucky for me I'm only playing 1/2 while i learn (lol) 6 max. All I'm learning is how it feels to want to stab yourself in the eyes.

Don't get me wrong, I've lost a shitload more in $$ than i have today and not batted an eyelid. This feels personal though. I played pretty well for the most part despite the wall to wall suckouts but I could not for the fucking life of me get a hand to hold up. I was also playing against people who would not fold a hand under any circumstances and today was their day to runner runner 2 pair, straight, flush, full house... you get the picture.

To make things worse I'm shattered and can't sleep. My brain won't switch off even though thinking about poker makes me want to vomit. If I'm not torturing myslelf with poker I'm casting my mind back over all the times I've been a cunt in the past. I obviously just want to piss myself off even more.

Fucking stupid fucking arsehole I am. I need to get a grip and stop letting the fish get to me. Back to reading The Poker Mindset tomorrow I think.

End Rant.

Wednesday 2 April 2008

Solid

I decided that this month I was going to get the finger out and properly learn short handed limit hold em. So far so good.

I put in a just over 2k hands today and managed to achieve a positive win rate even though I seen some of the sickest coolers ever. I might go through my database and dig some out, there are a few absolute crackers. I'm pretty happy overall. I felt like I knew what I was doing the majority of the time.

I played a bit of full ring limit and O8 to break up the sessions and I've logged about 3k hands in total today which is pretty huge for me.

My plan for the month is concentrate on 6 max and O8, grinding up 50 big bets for the level above and using that to take shots. I want to log a shitload of hands in April because I've been a lazy bastard since I started this shit in January so it's about time i got myself sorted out.

I'll either have a huge month or burn myself out in the process but fuck it.