Week 15

Bankroll is up to $9,800.

I cashed out $700 on Monday. I started playing The Godfather on PS2 and ended up not getting any sessions in Monday or Tuesday. That was pretty stupid since I was close to clearing a $250 reload bonus but it looks unlikely I'll get it cleared now.

Wednesday I put in a decent session, running well with regs making loads of spewy plays at me. Didn't have time for a second session.

Thursday I was playing Godfather again and went to a going away party for a friend that night so I didn't get any sessions in. I was too hungover to play on Friday as well.

Played a small session Saturday evening, I felt really weird, didn't feel in control or in the zone at all. I was getting in unusual spots, not sure what to do half the time, having to think about basic decisions. I just decided to quit early, hopefully it's only temporary. I watched a video though. My CardRunners subscription ran out, I'm going to leave it for a while before renewing, it's pretty hard to keep up with 3 training sites.

Didn't play at all on Sunday either. It's been a pretty bad week for getting anything done, I still have to organize a time for my next coaching session. I'm back to college tomorrow, last year I only played at the weekends and I'm not sure if I'll be getting in any hands during the week this year either. I'll see how my timetable fills out and try to find some good times for a session or two.

Week 14

Bankroll is up to $9,675.

Monday I had a frozen raspberry, fresh strawberry, whole grain summer fruits, apple juice and honey smoothie. Session was going very well until I got nut flush draw + two overcards in vs. top set in a 3bet pot 200+BBs deep and didn't suck out. I was happy with how I played, felt pretty in control and was getting away with a lot of stuff.

Tuesday went o.k. again, felt like I was running well but seemed to be getting played back at a lot. Had a sweat session with SlowHabit in the evening, ran pretty well, had a lot of fun and learned a good bit too. One thing I realized is that I tend to just auto fire cbets when it's a good spot for it (good board texture or backdoor equity, etc.) and don't just give up a small pot or two every now and then. By doing that I would improve my image with the donks I'm pounding on and, because they're less frustrated, they'll play back at me a little less and let me pick up more pots in future. The other argument is that I should just pick up the EV now and worry about future implications later. It was nice having somebody sweat me, even though I timed out a good bit, verbalizing my thoughts before every action helped a lot.

I didn't get a chance to play on Wednesday as I had a meeting but I did watch a couple of videos. CR and DC seem to be releasing a load of good content the last couple of weeks, having a set schedule and using series seems to work really well. I still have a soft spot for Leggo though, I love that they answer my questions. Tri (SlowHabit) sent me an article called "Line Variations" for us to discuss in our next session. It talks about 4 different plays you can make and basically gets you to think about what you're doing instead of just being a robot.

I didn't play at all on Thursday either, I really need to put in two decent sessions tomorrow. I went back through some of the hands in the sweat session and sent them to Tri with a couple of questions and he emailed me back a few hours later. I watched a video in the evening. I'm being pretty lazy at the moment and I have a bit of stuff to do between getting UCCPokerSoc set up for next year, writing my 1000th boards post and searching my database for some hand histories for my next coaching session. But the games are usually very good on Fridays so I gotta get some hands in as well.

I couldn't get to sleep Thursday night. I watched a video, had a strawberry, banana, peach yogurt and tropical juice smoothie and went back to bed about noon on Friday, woke up a few hours later and played a long (for me) session. It started off pretty poorly, was getting sucked out on, value betting into better hands, etc. It turned around after a while, I coolered a nit with AA > KK 200+BBs deep which was very nice.

Saturday I watched the Liverpool vs. United match and managed to get in two sessions afterwords. I'm glad I got in a few more hands in the last two days. The sessions went well which is always nice.

Sunday I watched a couple videos and got in a decent session later on. I'm getting used to not knowing how I'm doing until the end of the week. I find that I'm quitting sessions because of how I'm feeling rather then how much I'm up or down which is a lot more profitable and a lot less stressful.

Week 13

Bankroll is up to $7,238.

Monday morning I played a small session, I've decided to take the $won and BB/100 off my HoldemManager because I find I let short term results effect me too much. At the very least it should make it more awkward for me to find out anyway. I'll put it back on at the end of the week when I'm posting my stats though. I went to the post office delivery office to collect my LeggoPoker tshirt and hoodie that arrived while I was on holidays and played a second session when I got back. I paid another $50 for hand histories for the next month and started a $250 reload bonus I was offered for being inactive for two weeks. The offer was for 50% up to $500 but I only have 15 days to clear it and I didn't want to have to force myself to clear a big bonus. This way I should be able to clear it pretty comfortably.

Tuesday morning I tried to do a video but struggled to get 4 tables running, by the time I did I wasn't in the mood to do it so went for a break instead. I bought a smoothie maker at Argos, I got the idea off RoadSweeper's blog. I bought some juices (orange, tropical and apple), wholegrain yogurts (plain, raspberry and summer berry), honey, oatmeal, frozen fruits (strawberry, raspberry and summer fruits) and some fresh fruit (oranges, bananas, pears, pineapple and melon). Going to try mixing things together and seeing what comes out :).

I started with orange juice, frozen summer fruits, a bananna and some honey. I found the frozen berries very bitter so I don't think I'll be trying this one again. I managed to get a video recorded during my second session.

Wednesday I had a frozen strawberry, plain yogurt, banana and oatmeal smoothie. With a small bit of orange juice and honey. Much nicer taste even though there was a bit too much oatmeal in it. Played a decent session and then had a frozen raspberry, raspberry yogurt, banana and apple juice smoothie. This one was very nice. Didn't get in a second session but watched about three videos.

Thursday I woke up pretty late as I'm in a bad sleeping pattern since coming home. I played a pretty long session in the afternoon and SlowHabit sent me his comments on my video in the evening. He feels like I pot control too much, put too much emphasis on showdown value and tend to auto pilot with strong hands without putting my opponents on a range first. So definitely some pretty important leaks to fix there. I didn't play a second session as I was going through what he sent me and asking follow up questions.

Friday morning I had a fresh strawberry, raspberry yogurt, banana and orange juice smoothie with a little honey. Very nice again although there were a bit too many seeds in it, probably from the fresh strawberries and the raspberry yogurt. I got in a decent session, felt I was cbetting a bit more and not caring as much about getting my bottom or middle pair to showdown. I tried to pay more attention to my opponents range when I had a big hand but I'm not sure I put enough thought into it. Didn't play a second session but watched a couple of videos.

Saturday morning I had a pineapple, pear, apple, orange, banana and tropical juice smoothie. Nice to have something a little different to the strawberry/raspberry combos. Only got in one session again, I really need to start getting up earlier and starting earlier.

Sunday I got started pretty soon after I got up but didn't get up until about 2. Played a decent session and ran pretty well.

Here's an interesting hand.

Party Poker, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: $370.35
Hero (BB): $203
UTG: $210.95
MP: $282.08
CO: $390.87
BTN: $106.50

Pre-Flop: Q A dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG folds, MP raises to $7, 2 folds, SB calls $6, Hero calls $5

MP is playing 19/14/2.3 over 13k hands and the SB is playing 29/12/1.4 over 290 hands. MP is opening 17% first in from that position and the SB is calling opens 22% of the time.

I decide to flat because against MP I feel that squeezing would sort of be turning my hand into a bluff and with good relative position I'm going to have a lot of spots where I can check raise with overcards and back door draws. I could squeeze to isolate the SB and if he was a bit looser then I think the upsides of isolating him would outweigh the risks of turning my hand into a bluff against MP. I also expect MP and the SB to have dominated aces and queens a decent amount as well although that's a concept which would usually apply more to AJ/AT.

Flop: ($21) 2 T J (3 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks, MP bets $15, SB folds, Hero calls $15

I flop a gutshot and two overcards and check to the preflop raiser. MP cbets 71% of the time but has a turn cbet of 33% with a river cbet of 73%. I also have a note which says that he slowplayed in a limped pot and checked AQ on A76 as the PFR OOP. What this tells me is that this player will cbet with air very frequently, almost never follow up on the turn without a hand and will often check the flop with top or middle pair for pot control.

We have a weak but hidden draw , two overcards and a modest amount of showdown value. The K is a pretty disguised out which, if he does have a big hand, he'll have trouble getting away on. If I hit an A or Q my hand will often be best and I might be able to get a small amount of value on the river if the turn checks through, if he does bet the turn it would put me in an awkward spot, I think I'd probably call and fold the river but it would be close.

If the turn and river does get checked through I may have the best hand against a suited connector type hand. I think check raising is reasonable as well but this is a type of draw I'd prefer to play passively whereas something like As7s I'd usually play aggressively although that's also a hand that can be played passively.

Turn: ($51) 8 (2 Players)
Hero bets $38, MP folds

The 8 is a hidden bluff out which means that even though I was drawing to a gutshot, I can represent that I was drawing to a flush draw, so all the spades give me more outs to try and win the pot. If I check I would never check raise as I doubt he's going to bet the turn thin at all, I wouldn't be surprised if a turn bet was a flush only.

So I expect the turn to check though a lot of the time but a river bet isn't going to be that great as a bluff because he can be pot controlling any number of made hands which will happily pay off one river bet to show down their hand but may be more inclined to fold the turn fearing another bet on the river. So by donking the turn I can leverage my stack.

I would probably bluff any spade card and probably bet really small on a A/K/Q/9 to gain a crying call from a J but I think check folding an A/Q would be o.k. too. I wouldn't bet any board pairing card but other cards would be closer and more timing/feel dependent.

Results: $51 Pot
Hero mucked Q A and WON $86.45 (+$64.45 NET)

Looking at my graph for the week it's been very breakeven, just up and down accross the 0 line the whole time. I've got a sweat session on Tuesday which I'm looking forward to. I also highly recommend getting a smoothie maker, I've always struggled to eat enough fruit so it's a great help.

Late August Review

Sorry this got so delayed but between getting sorted after coming home, bad sleeping patterns and basically just being too lazy to upload all the photos I haven't gotten around to it until now.





There isn't really enough hands to do anything more specific but a couple things to note:

My steal % has dropped pretty significantly which has caused my VPIP and PFR to both drop about 2%, might be a lack of confidence or maybe the games are a little more aggressive.

My flop cbet% is down about 5% which I'll explain tomorrow in my weekly review is probably a leak and what I plan to do about it. My turn cbet and river cbet are both up significantly which, although it's going to be correlated to my lowered flop cbet%, I'm pretty pleased about.

My W$WSF has gone up a little, which is pretty good considering I'm down this month and was up considerably last month. I think this is caused by firing more double and triple barrels. I've finally been getting a little better at pulling the trigger on my triple barrels.

My WtSD has gone up, most likely because of my lowered flop cbet%, I'll get to that tomorrow. Although my lowered AF might also indicate that I'm calling too much. And my W$SD has gone down because I'm not running hot any more :(.

My 3bet% went up slightly, especially from the BTN. I'm happy with that although I think I may have been 3bet isolating the maniacs a little too loosely in some spots. I'm going to tone that down a bit.

I got the latest installments of Bobbo's Bible while I was on holiday, I've read them twice so far.

So here's a few photos from Fuerteventura. There was clear skies and hot sun almost every day bar 1 or 2 slightly cloudy days. Luckily we were close to the ocean so there was a nice breeze all the time, although it did pull a bit of sand with it every now and then.

Here's me and Lauren at a steakhouse we went out to on the second night. We didn't go out every night because we didn't want to get sick of it too early and other times we'd have to get an early start if we were going somewhere or else we were too tired after coming back.

Any time we passed one of these cars or horses or whatever else Lauren wanted to go on it.

This one was at a three story shopping center we went to. Despite all the shops there wasn't a huge amount of great clothes there.

Here's a few shots from a zoo we went to, it was a huge outdoor place and the sun was scorching which made walking around to see the all the animals pretty tough but we slogged through.

There was a swimming pool three doors down from us and even though there was usually a decent amount of people there it was never packed so we didn't have any trouble finding places to lie down.

This was at a European restaurant.

Me and Lauren posing.

Me and Jennifer after drinking too much.

We were coming back from a nice local restaurant and decided to have a go on the trampolines; my one was really digging into me, I think I ate too much.

We went to a big water park on the last day, all the sun tan got washed off and we all got badly burnt. Here's some action shots.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Week 12

Bankroll is down to $7,042

Monday morning I lost a little under a buy-in and a half. Lost another 4 buy-ins when I got back. I played way too long, pretty much on tilt because I couldn't get anything going, meh pretty stupid really. I found myself getting really annoyed with the donks when they sucked out and wanting to bust them (well, more than I usually do). Really unhealthy attiude. I'm on a 15 buy-in downswing now, wow they really flew by .

Tuesday I took a break. I've gotten onto aejones about his audio files a couple of times but he was in Vegas, then Michigan and now he's in Hawaii so it's proving pretty difficult to get hold of him. BobboFitos has updated his ebook and he'll be releasing the updated version on the 25th as well as setting up a private forum on LeggoPoker for discussion, which I'm looking forward to. I logged onto AIM a few times last week to try and contact him about coaching but he never seems to be on there. I got onto SlowHabit about coaching as well, paid $1275 for a 5 hour package. Details here. I think it's extremely important that I continue to improve, the games aren't going to get any easier and if I want to make some really good money I'm going to have to invest. I like learning poker theory anyway, I don't know how to describe it, it's just interesting I guess. I also don't like knowing that there's loads of important poker theory but not knowing what it is.

Wednesday I was really busy all day dealing with holiday stuff so no time for a session.

Thursday I played a very small session. I was trying to do a video for my first coaching session but my trial had run out on Camtasia so I tried reinstalling it which worked before but that didn't work. I uninstalled it and downloaded it again but that didn't work, then I tried uninstalling it and removing the registry keys but that didn't work either. I eventually gave up and downloaded CamStudio instead, it took me a while to set it up and get it working. I went through 12 test runs trying to get it to capture in the right place and get the audio working. When I did get it working I tried to get 4 tables running but even though I was on the waiting list for 15 tables at one stage I could only get two tables going at once, and they were pretty meh anyway. I had to go into town to do more holiday shopping so I couldn't wait much longer and gave up.

Friday I managed to record a video but there were loads of jumps in the video and the audio which made it pretty much unwatchable, I'm going to have to try again when I get back, or pay up for Camtasia. I made a buy-in and a half, which was nice. I'm going on holiday tomorrow so that's why I'm posting this week early as I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have over there. I also downloaded a few videos from DeucesCracked which I hadn't gotten around to watching yet. I got a digital camera for my birthday so hopefully I'll have a few pictures when I get back.

Week 11

Bankroll is down to $9,110.

Monday morning I didn't get in a session, I was woken up pretty early to catch a spider so I felt too tired to play. I finally got around to watching Greg's "Wellness" video on LeggoPoker and he recommended going to this to test your reaction times and see how alert you are. I got "Bobbing bobcat" most of the time but managed to hit "Rocketing rabbit" once, that suggested I probably didn't get enough sleep last night. It was a very good video and hopefully I'll be able to improve at least 1 or 2 areas of my life.

I brought Lauren into town and when I got back lost 3 buy-ins at $600nl and half a buy-in at $400nl. I had a fish river my flopped sets twice in the space of about 10 hands which was very frustrating. I decided to quit after that, after seeing my reaction times I hadn't planned on playing at all, probably should have gone with my first instinct. Ah well, my first -2k day, woohoo. I cashed out $1100 as well which now means I'm just slightly underrolled for $600nl but I'm not down that much on my shot.

Tuesday morning went really badly, kept getting sucked out on, fish rivering flushs on me, etc., etc. Meh, I guess I was due a bad run , happy now cooker? Dropped 3 buy-ins at $600nl and 1 at $400nl. Not going to play anymore $600nl for a while at least. I managed to clear my $100 reload bonus as well.

Wednesday I decided to take the day off and have a break from poker. I also bought some whey protein which Greg recommended.

Thursday I dropped a little over half a buy-in at $400nl and broke even at $200nl. I had gotten a $200 reload bonus but I only have a week to clear it and I need twice as many points as I've gotten any other week so it's pretty unlikely that I'll get it cleared in time. Didn't get in a second session.

I didn't play at all on Friday, just laziness basically, or maybe I wasn't in the mood. I watched a couple of videos though.

Saturday it was my birthday so I took the day off. I did watch a couple of videos though.

Sunday morning I won a little under a buy-in at $200nl and broke even at $400nl. I felt I was playing well, making some well time bluffs, taking tonnes of notes on the fish which I used to exploit them later. In the evening I lost 2 and a half buy-ins at $400nl, I think I played too long, I got a bit tilty with one fish who disconnect protected on me and then ran like the sun. I obviously e-mailed Party about it and they didn't ban his disconnect protect which pissed me off even more. I 3bet shoved over his c/r in a 3bet pot and ran into his set, decided that was a good time to quit.

I also cashed out $4500, that should hopefully cover the rest of the holiday. Which means I'm underrolled for $400nl now, no harm in moving down for a while anyway.

Week 10

Bankroll is up to $19,939.

Monday I took the family to Dingle. We went to the aquarium out there. We were planning on seeing Fungi the dolphin as well but the weather was pretty bad and we probably wouldn't have had time anyway. Had a nice dinner in Tralee afterwards.

I would have some photos but I bought a camera up there and all the photos came out black so that was a bit of a waste. I had brought a camera with me but I couldn't turn the flash off so I couldn't use it inside the aquarium. There should be some photos on that but the film isn't finished yet. I think I'm just going to buy a digital camera and be done with it.

Tuesday I made a little under 3 buy-ins at $400nl. Won another 1 and a half buy-ins in the evening.

Wednesday I won 3 buy-ins in the morning. Very busy in the afternoon so no time for a second session.

Thursday morning there was very little action going, I got onto a $200nl table and lost a buy-in. I was playing very spewy and overaggro, even more so then usual!!! I was annoyed with my play, although it probably wasn't terrible, but the money felt pretty meaningless, I guess that's a good thing when playing poker.

I managed to get some $400nl tables running, still playing a little too aggro and not running great, value betting into better hands and stuff. Started playing a bit better, getting away with more stuff and finished up just under a buy-in at $400nl. Had to go shopping and do my monthly review so no second session.

Friday I made a little over 2 and a half buy-ins before the tables started to go dead. Decided that was a good time for a break.

I came back and started playing again but the tables went fairly quiet after a while. My bankroll was over $19K at this stage so I decided I'd see if there were any good $600nl tables going. There weren't a lot so I added some 200nl tables as well. In the end I made a little under a buy-in at $200nl, another buy-in and a half at $400nl and broke even at $600nl. I got my holiday flights booked as well, we're going to Fuerteventura on the 16th for 2 weeks. Going to need to cash out some more money for holiday stuff soon.

I got a $100 reload bonus Saturday morning, shouldn't take me too long to clear. I won a little over a buy-in at $600nl but lost over 2 and a half at $400nl. Finally managed to get myself back into the gym as well.

When I got back I lost my $600nl winnings and made back about half a buy-in at $400nl.

Sunday morning I made about half a buy-in at $400nl and broke even at $600nl. In the evening I made just under a buy-in at $400nl.