CARDRUNNERS

DON'T PLAY TIRED!

Yes, that's exactly what you are reading. But pay real good attention because I have lost a lot of money trying to play through tiredness. I have read in a lot of places, my friends always tell me, but I am stubborn. So, I paid a big price for it.

Last night after my brag post (4:10am Brazilian time), I decided to grind a for another hour. What could be worse? The funny thing is I managed to stay focus for the first hour. I was about even given that I had 1 flip not go my way, and another hand where I 3barrel a calling station and he spiked a 3-outer on the river (he flat called the river making 2-pair). Right after that, I ran a bluff that got called. Then I lost with overpair to a set.

Oh well, I had lost 2 buyins, go to sleep you are tired. No, let's try to win it back. Before you know it I spewed another 3 buyins.

I am sick to my stomach and very upset with myself.

Don't play tired! I am not today because I had to wake up early to check out an apartment. I just got back about an hour ago so I am very tired. I am planning on moving to a nice neighborhood in Rio (Barra) near the beach. Actually I have to cross a lake with a miniboat provided by the condominium complex and voilá I am at the beach. It is a really nice complex with a club that has a gym, poo, soccer field, tennis/basketball/volleyball courts and other cool stuff. I have to figure out how I am going to fit all my stuff into the apartment (I live in a 3-bedroom and will move into a 2-bedroom), but I think it will work out. I have plans to move by March 1st. By the way, I get all of this for less than what I am paying now. Go figure!

I am going to watch 007 Quantum of Solace with my girlfirend and then I will try to fall asleep.

Is it just me that suffer from Fancy Play Syndrome? Oh well, I think I have tamed the beast. 

So, if you are following the blog I have had bankroll problems and I am making my way into the low stakes. I started the year playing NL25 and after a successful start, I moved to NL50. 



That's when the down fall started. I started thinking people were making moves on me, and moved away from what had worked at NL25. I know we need to adjust a little bit, but I did way too much and I became very spewey. But I couldn't move down even after one incredible 7bi down swing. I manage to grind it up a bit again, but I was suffering from FPS - Fancy Play Syndrome. It is amazing that while trying to establish myself at NL50, I managed to start playing incorrectly. It took a friend looking over a session of mine and point out a few things that I was doing wrong for me to get back to running the way I should. 



You can see that I managed to lose about 15 buyins in the process. Greatfully I have been able to recover and now I believe I am playing my A-game once again. Enjoy this graph which has my last 5.5k hands. 



So to round up this middle of the month update, I want to say I am up about $900 this month including 2 bonus (100 ironmen store and 175 end of year bonus) and rakeback (27%). I haven't counted the $400 I get to write a column for another pokerblog and also $60 for 2 lessons I gave to a micro-limit student.

That's all for now.

Hello,

This is my first post and one of many to come. I already have about 3 other poker blogs, all of them are in my native language (Portuguese), and for this reason, I decided to create a blog for an English reading audience. This idea came after I signed up with CR in the beginning of the year.

I have been playing poker over 5 years, the past 2 professionally, and the thought of me still playing NL50 is something many of you will laugh at. Differences in economies allow me to make a living playing NL50/NL100 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I have been a winning player for a long time, but my biggest problem is Bankroll management. Living in a party city like Rio creates a lot of situations where you are spending a lot of money and a lot of time away from the tables. This is a bad mixture, and one which can make you grind and grind the low stakes.

Last year, I was up to NL200. Played solid all around poker, but one 11 buyin swing made me go back to NL100. Since then, I have managed to turn my 12k bankroll into 1.5k. Mostly by playing only 150k hands in the past 6 months of the year, and every time I hit 30bi, I move down a limit. Most of the move downs were because I was spending more than I was making, and the reason I wasn't making enough is that I wasn't playing enough. I am confident I am big winner in NL50. I have consistently won in NL100, but I have to say my tilts at this level lower my ptbb to about 3.5 over a 200k sample. Another thing important to note, even with the 11bi down swing I was still a winner at NL200. I only moved down because I wasn't really confortable losing 2.2k.

This is basically my background. My goal this year is to make around 100k in winnings. Very hard goal to achieve given that I am starting at NL25/NL50. This goal is not set in stone and I will settle for 75k all around (rakeback+bonus). I also want to play at least 600k hands, but will attempt to play 900k. 

Since I mentioned I have three other blogs, I will describe them. One is created inside a brazilian poker forum and I rarely update. I normally use to talk about my soccer team :D, go figure! The other two I talk about poker, one is my personal blog (michelhelal.blogspot.com). Since I started being sponsored to write on another poker blog, I basically left this blog alone. It is really low content. Nowadays I use it mostly to talk about some achievements of Brazilian poker players and some news about the poker world. The blog I am constantly updating is (www.pokerblog.com.br). In this blog I write at least twice a week. This blog is shared by 3 other players, all of whom are my friends, and it is sponsored by 888.com. 

The goal of this blog is to tell my story of moving on up through the stakes by managing my bankroll well. Something I haven't been doing at all. At the end of this year I hope to be playing mid stakes.

That's it for now.

M.