300K and 2011 Goals

Woot! Finally hit the mark! I'm proud I reached it because in the earlier portion of the month, my classes effected my volume so, I had to put pretty big volume in the home stretch; yeah the grinding was good. I think this will help because this month was a teaser to prepare for the SNE chase. It gave me a good foundation of putting long hours and honestly, it was not so bad.

Ok, new year is upon us and I'm really excited! Here our my goals for 2011.

1) Obtain Supernova Elite (Quite the obvious one)

2) Maintain a 1+bb per 100 hands winrate. (I'm not just satisfied with a breakeven year, I want to improve as a player and show more of a profit! And this seems harder than it is, games get more difficult each year and winning 1+bb per 100 hands in a year with that massive volume is another feat itself.)

3) Save money! (I like to spend money and it's a fact, but at some point, I have to save. I don't want poker to be my only option in the future; I want to expand to other ventures as well, for example investments, businesses etc... Plus, I don't know how long online poker will be here, so time to play it safe!)

4) Exercise and lose my belly. Nope, I'm nowhere near fat, just been gaining weight around that area :(

5) Be a better boyfriend, son, brother etc... (Maybe one of the most important goals next to SNE, I guess it's self-explanatory)


And I'll be sure to update and post about my SNE chase and some other ramblings next year! I'm sure maybe it will inspire at least one person in the world because reading other blogs has gave me so much motivation. See you next year!



My new avatar at PS for 2011!

Closing it Down!

December is winding down and the new year is on the horizon. I am in full anticipation for this upcoming year and it will be probably one of the most important in my life. This is mainly because of my goal of achieving Supernova Elite. I never really set goals in my life; sure i do have many goals in my life, but there more futuristic oriented. This goal of Supernova Elite will be in the present and it is entirely in my own hands to achieve. I'll make a later blog post of what other things I want to accomplish this upcoming year.

So, back to the VPP goal of December. I'm currently around 55k vpps, so I'll need 15k more to finish this. I think I'll make it in the next few days and I would of achieved 300k vpps for the year (I know, seems miniscule to the required 1 million vpps for SNE). Still, I will be proud, since I originally set this goal somewhere around summer, not knowing if I will actually of achieved it because I was burnt out of poker at that time and my volume lacked. Hopefully everything goes well these upcoming days!

Happy Holidays!

December Goal Update

Have to catch up!

it's a scary thought

These last few days, I have been waking up at these odd times in the night, technically morning. I wake up depressed for some reason, I guess I can attribute that to waking up to the darkness outside? Being up at this time makes you feel like you're alone and often I think of life matters.

Sometimes, I ask myself what exactly am I doing in my life, along with my future. I'm confident I can make this poker thing work, even if there are doubts I have from time to time, but it's just more than doubts. When I break it down and analyze what it is in becoming a professional poker player, it's a very scary thought for me. Don't get me wrong, I do want to do this, but looking at it, there is just as many negatives as positives when you do become pro. One negative I can immediately think of is in a way, I am isolating myself from society. Aside from traveling around the world to tournaments, most of the time will be spent at home, grinding it online. You are essentially alone, working by yourself.

Another issue stemming right now, is the future of online poker and the recent talks of regulation. Should I be for it? Should I be against it? I have mixed feelings on this, but I am leaning for the bill. I know the 15 month blackout will be terrible, especially for players that do not see poker as a future plan. This will be horrible for me as well if it does pass, but it seems to be so +EV for the future games.

Here's a link to a great interview; the interview summarizes what is currently going on as well as why this bill should/has to pass now.

http://www.leggopoker.com/forums/leggocast-forum/steel-blinds-1-steel108-zbthorton-13860.html

December Goal

70K vpps. Classes are coming to a end this Friday, have some work to complete as well as finals on 17th, but I think I'll be able to do this.

remember, remember

eh, I actually rather not. Poker for this last week has been terrible, I really hate to say it, but I have been "running bad." Yeah, so I'll stop there and spare you my complaining. I started this month, like the previous blog post said, break-even, but I picked it up in the middle of the month and started winning. Then disaster hits, right before the day of Thanksgiving and I'm currently at my 8th losing session in a row. I guess it evens out because last month I did run good and had a pretty long streak of winning sessions.

But, times like these, it's hard to not question your play and your skill level. "Am I just not good enough?" always comes to my head. I'm still confident though, even though I'm a little down;I'm handling this better than expected. I'm actually more upset about my winrate on PTR, I was so close in obtaining 1BB won per 100 hands, but I'm back to somewhere like .50BB won per 100 hands now :(

I hope December really picks up, it's going to be a big month for me because January is when I start the SNE chase. I cannot afford to lose.

Swingy Month So Far

Like the title says, it has been a swingy first week in November. I feel like i'm running normally, even though EV wise, I'm up like 6 BI's or so. Obviously EV can be misleading and it doesn't account for hands like this.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (8 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com



Hero (MP2) ($274.30)

CO ($117)

Button ($423.30)

SB ($220)

BB ($146)

UTG ($145.15)

UTG+1 ($263.40)

MP1 ($272.75)



Preflop: Hero is MP2 with J, J

3 folds, Hero bets $6, 1 fold, Button calls $6, 2 folds



Flop: ($15) 7, J, 4 (2 players)

Hero bets $10, Button calls $10



Turn: ($35) 7 (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $28, Hero calls $28



River: ($91) 7 (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets $50, Hero raises to $230.30 (All-In), Button calls $180.30



Total pot: $551.60 | Rake: $3



Results:

Button had 7, 9 (four of a kind, sevens).

Hero had J, J (full house, Jacks over sevens).

Outcome: Button won $548.60


I was actually seriously just thinking of flatting river because of the way he played it, maybe i'm too nitty? But, I decided to take the cooler like a man!

BE so far this month, but fpps put me ahead :)

October

October wasn't bad, i need to put in more volume though. I'm too lazy.

Back to 200NL

100NL was frustrating to play for the last month, especially when I was running bad. I didn't make as much as I anticipated, but I made enough to be comfortable playing 200NL again. I've been grinding about a week and table selecting; it definitely makes a difference. The only downside of it is that your hands per hour really suffer, but hey if you're making money, nothing to complain about. If the rest of this month goes according to plan and I don't get hit by some downswing, it should be my biggest month in poker + my VPP milestone bonus.

I'm really considering the SNE chase for next year and might take a semester off school to try and achieve this or even do part-time school. Remaining in school is definitely a option, but I'll go crazy trying to maintain the balance of grind, school work/tests, and time with girlfriend and family. Contemplating my future...

Alright, let's do this.

After a break from August, I am refreshed and ready to grind. I have to drop down and play 100NL for this month, due to withdrawing a large chunk of my roll. I could be still playing 200NL, but rather be more comfortable with more BI's to play. I am going try to put up the most volume I have ever had in my poker career, this month. Why? To simply get a feeling of what it is like to chase Supernova Elite next year. Reading posts on 2p2 and various blogs, I gained inspiration in trying to pursue this. To say the least, it's very difficult and just calculating the amount of hands I have to play, makes me sick. But if I keep the long term goal in perspective, I may, just may have a shot in this. (More information to come)

Too bad classes had to start when I considered doing this...

Bleh

Lack of updates, lack of poker. I'll be picking it up soon...

Keep It Going...

Mmm... just had some nice Korean BBQ with a buddy of mine. Happy 21st to him and hopefully he can win big tomorrow!

Poker has been going really well lately. I've been running good and (hopefully) playing good as well. Since, the last update or so I shipped around 15 BI's and feel really confident about my game. I do think that running well has contributed much to the success, but I also feel my game has improved after the downswing I had. I want to keep this going.


Not a bad month so far, if you add the bonuses, it will be around 5K. Going to treat my girlfriend to a nice broadway show :)

(Last time after I posted a blog entry, I received more rungood. PLZ DO NOT DOOMSWITCH ME)

First Poast

I've always been into blogging, but I never really did blog much. Most of the times, my interest will die out and I will stop updating. Hopefully this time, it will be different because it involves my current passion in life, which is poker. Hm... for some reason that sounds lame. Um, yeah so this blog will mostly be about poker and maybe some parts of my lackadaisical life sprinkled on top of it. For people, who do not even play poker, you will find this blog boring. For people, who do play poker, you will probably find it boring too.

Poker. I am currently grinding the 200NL games on stars. I consider myself far from good in the games and I am striving like every other poker player to improve and win moneys. I guess, you can consider me an BE player at the moment. Checking PTR, I have 266k hands logged and an massive 0.16 BB winrate. I do feel like I am improving, even though I had an pretty bad downswing last month. I think I lost 4-5k around that time. Some people may consider it not much in the poker world, but it was kind of hard to deal with, since it was my largest downswing to date. I think it made me stronger as a player and kept my head in the right perspective because up to that point, things were going really well.So after the downswing, I did not play poker as much and when I did, it was BE poker at best.

I feel revitalized now and I've put more volume in lately and things are starting to look better. I tightened up on my spewing tendencies and adjusted a bit. Last night, I finally had a decent-good session logged and I am happy about it. Maybe it's a mini-heater of some sort. Here's the graph.



+ a 5400 fpp turbo win, so not a bad day.

(inb4massivedownswing)