Breakevenaments-galore and what it's like to play with a 80/44

Oct was pretty bad month for me, I hit one of the worst breakevenaments ever. I really wanted to move up to 200NL, but in the light of the way I was running I ended up grinding out 100nl for the most part. I am quite glad I did because I just couldn't get the ball rolling all month. Heres my graph:



I guess the nice thing this month is the blue line. Despite not really winning in the games, I still ended the month +1.8Kish. The giant spike up in the rb/bonuses is a nice 1k score I made in a MTT tournament. I played the 750K gaurantee on FTP and went super deep, busting out about 90th/3.5K people. Pretty disappointing finish tbh, 1st was 133K =(. I am planning on taking more stabs at those tournies in the future. I have actually been doing pretty well in these MTT luckboxes.

Anyway, the highlight of my month was definately a really sickkkkk session vs this huge whale. He ran 80/44 with 3bet of 25%. I have never seen such a big retard in my life and I have some pretty sickly entertaining hands vs this guy. And here we go....

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4831984

pretty standard against this guy, he only has one move and that is bet pot. I basically snap called all 3 bets.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4831996

lollerskates. I have the nuts obviously....

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4831992
I actually think this is a pretty thin shove, looking back I dont know if I should of shoved here. I would much rather be shoving the nut FD here instead. gg luckbox me though.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?4831987

This was such a gay hand. I had been winning the last 10 pots against him and he finally gave up. SIGH

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4831994

I LOVE SHOVING 475bb IN PREFLOP WITH 88!!!!! +ev imo!! so hilarious


So we now have a record of the biggest whale that ever lived. This is living proof that there is still easy money in poker. gg

New Month, New Grind, back to 200NL

So Sept is officially over and I finished last month off basically grinding 44k hands of 100NL. I ended up winning about 2.2K or so which is good enough given the fact that I didn't really even play until the last 2 weeks.

It's a new month now and I am planning on putting in some massive volume (for me anyway). I am going to be putting in 15K hands a week minimum, so roughly 60K hands for the month. I have been super lazy about putting hands in lately and I am going to up that number significantly this month. Also, I have decided to begin my transition back into 200NL. The games there seem so different since I played them 8 months ago, and it seems like a lot of the fish have really gotten eaten up, but I shall continue steaming forward and hopefully have some good results there.

In non-poker related news, Amy and I got a new addition to our family!. No its not a baby (well not a human baby), but we got a Maltese puppy! His name is Brody and he is my best friend! He's about 5 months old and a totally spoiled dog! Here is a picture of him:



As you can see, he has grind on his mind too just like his daddy! It's actually pretty nice to have him sit on my lap while I grind or just hang out with me during the day while I'm at home. I will be sure to post some videos of him soon!

Elite Poker Academy

So I haven't had too much time to update this blog the last month or so, its mainly because I have been working on a little poker website with my buddy Eric. We have decided to make a FREE online poker training website called Elite Poker Academy. Both Eric and I will be making cash game videos for the site to help our members learn how to beat the micro stakes games online. It really is not that hard to make money playing poker, I am confident if you watch our videos and sign-up you could learn quite a bit and make some extra cash on the side!

The link is www.elitepokeracademy.com

It is completely free for you to sign up. So why not?

Anyway, this month I have barely even played any poker. It is quite unacceptable how little I've been playing. I've been really busy with getting the site ready and producing content for it that I havnt had a lot of time to grind. I played about 20K hands this month and my graph is below.



As you can kind of see I've been breaking even a fair amount, which is quite frustrating but it is part of the life of a grinder. I just gotta keep putting in the hands. I am planning on playing 3k hands a day for the remainder of Sept. Stay tuned and be sure to check out elitepokeracademy.com!

July Wrap Up

So July turned out to be a pretty decent month for me. I ended up playing about 35Kish hands and winning at about 5bb/100 (something like that). With RB I ended up +2.5K. Needless to say I am quite happy with the results. Here is a graph of my month. Near the end I was breaking even for a couple of days but thats okay.



I played well for majority of the month, but the last few days I lacked discpline and made some pretty marginal calls. There was a really sick hand that occured on Lock (it says party on pokerhand.org but its actually on the Lock/Cake network).


http://www.pokerhand.org/?4524431

This is like the sickest hand I've ever had (second sickest was when I had quad kings cracked by royal flush). He 1 outers me on the turn and I 1 outer him on the river... so sick....

Thats pretty much all the updates for now.. classes are over and I am studying for my final exams.

Mid(ish) monthly report + extras

It's been a super long time since my last blog, I havn't been updating regularily mostly because I've been really busy w/ school. I just finished a massive assignment on Friday that took two weeks to do. It is definately the hardest assignment I've ever done and it feels really good to get it over with! I ended up grinding a lot this weekend to celebrate (so far played about 6k hands) and I am planning on playing the Guiness world record tournaments on stars and FTP which have like 50K people LOL. I figured it would be a good way to get in some good volume in cash games w/ the tournies forcing me to grind!

Anyway, this month is going very good so far. I am currently at +$1.3K over 17K hands for a WR of approx 6.5bb/100 which is very good for me. I am actually very happy with the way this month is going so far and especially happy with the way I am playing. I was running sick hot last month, but this month I am running pretty average but playing really really good to make up for it. Anyways heres my graph for the month.




Other then that I have some big plans coming up when I graduate, especially poker wise. I have been working on a poker related website which I will reveal when it is complete (probably in approx 2 months).I am planning on making my return to 200NL as a 10x better player then I was before.

Happy Birthday to me..

Well on Wed it was my 22nd birthday and man do I ever feel old. I remember when someone asked me how old I was I thought I was 21 for some weird reason, I never pictured myself ever becoming 22 ever...

I ended up watching Transformers 2 on Wed and the line was ridiculous... heres a picture of the lineup:



When Amy and I got to the theatre (it wasnt opened yet) there was a massive line up just to go in! It was pretty ridiuclous and it took like 15 minutes just so everyone could buy their tickets. I heard that buying the tickets online were completely sold out and when we got in practically all the showing times were sold out too, and the theatre just opened! it was pretty crazy. Good thing we got our tickets online a few days before!! The movie was actually really good, I liked it a lot despite what movie critics/reviews say. It was similar to the first one, but with a lot more funny/cheesy lines and 10x more special effects. I have no idea why the movie review for this movie was so low, probably because there really was not that much acting and a lot of special effects.

I also got a new 27" Samsung Syncmaster 275T for my birthday! This monitor is absolutely PIMP!!!!!! Now I dont have to have a bunch of tables crammed on my 22" which hurt my eyes. The coolest part about this monitor is that it doubles as a TV! I hooked up my xbox directly into the monitor and now whenever I wanna play xbox it is right beside me!!!! It's the coolest thing ever!

Anyways, since June is practically over I am going to wrap it up on a very good note. I am finishing June on Lock +2.5kish (so far) at 100nl over 20k hands. I didnt play much at all this month but hopefully I can log more hands next month.

What's going on with me

Its been a super long time since my last update, but basically I've been really busy w/ school the last little while and havn't really had that much time to blog. In addition, May turned out to be a pretty crappy month and I ended -1.1K mostly from playing bad. After a lot of thought I decided to stop mass multi tabling and begin to work on my game from the bottom up again. Ever since I moved to stars all I did was mass multi table to a point where my game just deteriorated so much and I was more concerned about making fast decisions as opposed to good decisions. I dropped down to 100NL and I am going to rebuild my game and come back bigger and better.

So anyway, my first plan is to get one of the best 200NL players on FTP to rework my game. In June I started coaching sesh's with Kush789 and all I can say is I am very glad I did. We set up a shared percentage profit coaching deal and I have been playing on Lock Poker (on the Cake network) since then. The first thing we fixed up was loosening me up! I have been trying to loosen my stats up for a long time now without much success, however voila I now run 17/14ish! Always a good feeling.. I am actually really glad I decided to drop down and rework my game because it turns out there is a lot of small leaks that I needed to plug, which so far consists of some preflop leaks in marginal spots. In addition were gonna be working on imporving my post flop player especially in 3bet pots which is something that I have a lot of trouble dealing with. I am confident that after this I will look back at my old 12/10 style and see how much progress I've made.

Anyways, last week was my first week of playing on Lock. It was a very big first week and I incorporated everything that Kush has been telling me and the results really showed that. I played 10.3K hands at 100NL and ended up +1.3K. It was the first winning week I've had in a very long time and I was definitely super happy.

That's all for now!

May (So Far)

Well I haven't had too much to blog about recently, but since my return from Orlando I've pretty much just been going to school. This is my final term before I graduate! Unfortunately job hunting has been pretty unsuccessful and I am currently looking for some jobs that are hiring a new graduate in the Computer Science. If you know of any or can hook a brother up let me know!! (looking for jobs in the Waterloo, ON region!)

Anyways onto poker related issues this month has been pretty crazy so far. I played about 20K hands at 100/200nl and am currently +714. I've had a lot of ups and downs and as you can see i'm also running quite below equity. Although I definitely feel a momentum change as I just had a real nice +900 session yesturday followed by another +650 today. Hopefully I can see some nice results in the next update. Anyway here is my graph for the month so far.



Also in other important news, I've decided to get some coaching from Kush789! That man is a total monster and I am 100% sure he can help me improve my game. I will be moving some of my roll over to Cake b/c he wants to me play there without a HUD. It will totally suck because I am so reliant on my HUD and I feel so naked without it, but it will make me a much better player. Thats all for now...

Orlando Next Week

Its been a long time since my last blog post so I thought id write about whats up with me!

Since this school term is officially over next week I am gonna be heading to Orland to chill out and relax for a week! I am super excited because I havnt been there since I was a kid and I can't wait to go to DISNEYWORLD!!!!!!!!!

Anyways, to continue from my last post I've hit the most ridiculous downswing I've ever had. So far its lasted about 60-70K hands and I think things are starting to slowly turn around. My br took such a beating at 200NL that I had to drop down to 100NL for the last 2-3 weeks and I've been totally getting my ass owned down there as well. Heres my 100nl graph for the month.. I'm running pretty below expectation but hopefuly things turn around soon.



Anyways, I thought I would post my first royal flush ever! omg it was my first time it felt so good zomg! When I hit my royal i was totally shouting to everyone in my house 'I GOT A ROYAL FLUSH!111!!'. I got some nice action from a donk too!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4143533

Heres another ridiculously sick hand at 200nl on FTP from earlier today. It was so sick and my first instinct was to actually fold my kings preflop to villain. He ran 13/11 its so sick!! i mean fucking 13/11!!(thats what was going through my head the whole time). But this is where my HEM came stats came in very handy. I looked at his 3bet and 4bet stats and they were ridiculously high over a 200 hand sample, something like 50% 4bet and and 18% 3bet, and his fold to 3bet was like 10% so I was like umm.. now its kind of a different decision, the dude is a total retard in a nit costume so i went with my kings and he had AK. Thank god it held up, i would have gone on serious tilt if i lost that one.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4143609

Thats all for now, I'm pretty much taking a big chill pill from stars and poker right now until the end of my trip in Orlando. I'm not quite sure if I will continue SNE yet but I am basically at 100k VPP's right now and severly behind schedule. Thats something I shall worry about after my break!

March Wrap-Up, Downswingaments and Goals for April

Well I guess I'll wrap up my month of March tonight since I got some free time.

My goal for March was to get 100K VPP points, but things were set back heavily when I had to go back to Toronto to visit my parents for two weekends (Weekends are when I get the most grind in), and then I had a very nasty flu + fever for an entire week. In addition, school was being really gay and throwing non-stop assignments and midterms at me. Anyways, I finished the month still in the green, which definitely makes me very very happy, especially since during this last week I hit a ridiculously nasty downswing (-2K in 5 days over 33K hands). Anyways here is my graph for the month, I ended up +1.8K over 115K hands so like .5bb/100. Obv a very small win-rate but what can you do its downswingaments time! I am not gonna lie I am happy to even be in the plus catagory this month!



Anyways, that was my March, and now lets talk about April.

April means it is time to put the pedal to the metal!! I am severly behind in VPP's and if I intend of achieving SNE this year it is time to get cracking! Classes are over, assignments are over and midterms are over so I have a lot of spare time to play poker between studying for finals. So here are my goals for April, which I will achieve! No more slacking, time to put in some massive grind.

1. at least 100K VPP for the month
2. Minimum 8K hands a day (Approx 5 hrs a day 24 tabling).

My current VPP Count is 68,618 and starting April, I intend on getting 100K VPP's each month to put me on pace for SNE for the year. Wish me luck!

Finally, I just wanted to post a really sick hand from a session a few days ago. This was the biggest pot I've ever played at 200NL and I am so glad I filled up, see that skill?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4049566


Anyways its time for me to go to bed

-Ian