A Big Blip...

Oh well, after my last post I have managed to drop 11 buyins at NL100. Not really what I was wanting but not a disaster I suppose. Bankroll currently stands at $3800 (a couple of small cashes in interpoker freerolls boosted me a little). Anyway, I haven't been playing great, in fact I'd go as far as to say I've played like a total donkey at times, but my EV graph shows it's not only down to that. Here are the pretty pictures...


I'm not going to moan and say I'm so unlucky, as I really have played like a complete tool for a lot of this downswing and feel I probably deserve to be losing. Hopefully I can start playing better over the next couple of weeks but don't really feel like playing at all at the moment. Think it's unlikely I'll get any decent hours in before the weekend so will post again when I'm feeling more like it.

Up a wee bit

So played a few tournies and then a couple of hours of cash tonight. The tournies didn't go so well and I soon decided to stop and move on to NL100. I had a pretty successful night putting myself $50 in profit from NL100 now. Woop!

Everyone likes a graph.... so here it is:


I think the initial downswing was a combination of not running so well and failing to adjust to moving up but I've since started running pretty well and I also feel like I'm playing much better. (I know, easy to say when you're running hot...)

Anyway, bankroll is standing at $4400 so not too bad for now. We'll see how the rest of the weekend goes!

Sleep time!

It's been a while...

So, it's been a while since my last post, and a lot has happened again. My roll fluctuated between 2k and 3k for a while playing PLO and MTTs and eventually I decided to cash out everything and spend it on a fancy laptop as I was getting nowhere.

After going a couple of weeks with no roll and depositing a little here and there, I eventually decided to deposit $80 on ladbrokes, just as I thought the games were softer and I was planning on trying to teach myself Hold'em cash properly and really dedicate some time to learning. I started out at NL25 and made the decision to deposit more if I needed to, so that I could have a proper roll for it. NL25 went pretty well and within a few weeks I had $500 and had moved to NL50. Nl50 went ok too but I had a few 8-10 buyin downswings at times. I still turned my Ladbrokes bankroll into $1000 pretty quickly before hitting a wall and fluctuating around that mark for a while. I decided to go for a change of scene to stop the rot and deposited some money on interpoker where I get 32% rakeback. I deposited a $190 and started out playing omaha. I spun this up to $1000 within a month or so and continued playing NL50 and PLO50 on Interpoker. PLO ended up going not so well after I hit a (small) downswing so I've put that on the back burner for the time being.

During this time, I also started a deal with a good friend of mine, where he stakes me to play tournaments on FTP and Stars. This has been going reasonably well and is ongoing. Hopefully I can keep turning us both a nice profit. :)

Between the 19th and 29th of May, I managed to rack up 500MPPs on Interpoker and that allowed me to enter a freeroll with 2 Caribbean Poker Classic packages given away. (For those of you that don't know me, I played in the CPC 2006 and would love to go back. It was awesome!) Anyway, I managed to come 3rd (lol) and got a consolation prize of $2000 which was nice and a very nice boost to my bankroll. I was gutted but I have since gotten over it...maybe...

So where am I now...

I've just started playing NL100 and as soon as I moved up I dropped 8 buyins. Nice work! I was very suprised at the difference in standard between NL50 and NL100, and while I adjusted my aggression early on (3-betting and 4-betting light) there were some factors I was obviously not prepared for leading me to lose $800 in around 3 days. I have now played 6k hands of NL100 and have clawed back to only 3.5 buyins down. Tournies have taken a back seat while I grind 3 tables of NL100 in a quest to crack the game and hopefully push up to NL200 asap. I'm looking for a bankroll of $8k before I go for it though, and that's certainly a long way off. Current roll stands at $4050 with around 1k on ladbrokes and 3k on interpoker.

With regards to the non-poker side of my life, it's all pretty dull. I'm still settled in Aberdeen, working away in a crappy job for crappy money. I'm hoping poker is a route out of that though...

Obviously working full time is interfering with my poker playing allowing me to only play around 15k hands a month so it's hard to get anywhere fast but I'll keep you updated more regularly from now.

Settling Down

Since I last wrote a lot has happened but not really in my poker playing. I moved cities, bought a flat, got a real job (which really really sucks) and I'm a little bit too settled for my liking. Having gone without broadband for a couple of months, I'm finally sorted and can now start trying to rebuild my roll.

I don't really know what to do in terms of games at the moment, as omaha has not been going well for the past while and I think the swings are too much to handle with my sometimes lag style. I was thinking about going back to sngs, which was how I first started playing poker, but they just don't excite me as much as cash. Hold'em cash is therefore the only real option but I'm going to need discipline (which I don't really have) and the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is play disciplined poker. Gamble!

Anyway, I'll update in a few days on how I'm getting along....

Peaks and Troughs

I've been playing cards for around 3 years now and, after finishing uni in mid May, I decided to try to build my roll from $200 as that's all the money I have! I've probably cashed out around $8000 from online poker since I started to play, as being a poor student I desperately needed the cash, but now I really want to build my roll up and hopefully be able to move to mid stakes and grind out enough money for beer, cigarettes and paying the rent without having to get a real job. (I've made a reasonable sum of money playing live as well, but i tend to keep that separate plus I haven't really managed to keep track of specific amounts)

The main problem I've had over the past few years has been discipline, and that has already caused me a major downfall in my quest to get my roll to $10000.

I play omaha (high) cash most of the time, and as everyone knows this contains huge swings. I went on a big upswing and turned my roll into $3000 in around 3 weeks, and then i've just blown half of it due to lack of discipline, tilt, and an omaha down swing. So my roll is now on $1400 and I don't really know what to do. I have to drop right back down as i've been playing a mixture of $0.5-$1 and $1-$2 on Full Tilt. (In my silliest moments I even ended up playing $2-4 buying in short with only around 12 short buy ins) The problem is that playing stakes much lower than this I end up playing like a complete fool and find it very difficult to concentrate.

I also play mtts quite frequently and have probably had even more success in them than omaha in the past, however i think it would be very difficult to make money by playing multis alone.

So I need a plan, I also need discipline and I need to find a way to restrain the crazy monkey that sometimes takes over my brain!