CARDRUNNERS

I have to go to some training for my internship next week, so my year for poker has officially ended.

So i think my goals for the year were something like 300k hands, 100k monies and playing the WSOP.  With that said, alot happened this year and I was unable to come anywhere close to that.  I started off playing mid stakes HU and 6max but by march I got swamped with work, and then during the summer I was more or less forced to work at my internship which sucked because i was having the best June ever, up like 13k in a week and then went to work and there was a sweet downswing. My graph is a bit off, because I had to reinstall my database at some point and I missed out on a few hands that I know of, so its probably about 2k lower than it should be, nothing special.  Also, I think in staking+coaching+rakeback I am up another 10k and then in tourneys I am up at least 5k, if not more.  all in all that puts me at a whopping ~45k on the year, which is quite dissapointing.

All in all that resulted in a 3.5ptbb/100 winrate, pretty disappointing.  Also I ran pretty bad at my shots at 5/10 and 3/6 where I am close to 10 buyins under expectation.  While that is not alot or anything, it is annoying because had I ran good during my shots, I may have been able to continue to move up and possibly could have had more confidence and been positioned to be a 5/10 reg or something, but instead I lost some confidence and moved down to 1/2 and 2/4 for awhile and never really felt too comfortable moving back up. 

After taking one final shot at 3/6 and running pretty bad and losiing a couple buyins I got fed up with HUNL due to how hard it is to be able to grind hands.  However one of my friends continues to tell me that I could probably sit on 2 tables of 5/10-1/2 and just bum hunt and make a bunch, but I don't really think I want to do that and I would rather be able to play when i sit down, instead of wait.  So as a result I am trying to learn PLO.  I have been watching a ton of videos, and just read Slow Habit's Book.  And I think my game is rapidly improving, but I am either bluffing too much or folding too much atm, maybe both.  But since I started taking PLO seriously, I played just under 10k hands, here is a graph of that.
So obviously there have been quite a few swings and variance is pretty crazy, but I think I have been playing ok.  The games are quite funny, and the game is quite different that holdem, and there are still alot of concepts that don't quite overlap and there are a bunch of situations I don't really know what to do, but I think I am going to try to make PLO my main game and put in alot of work to get better at it.  If I can play 8 tables or so of 2/4 or 3/6 6max PLO i will be rather happy and will be able make a good amount.  One other thing that is a pretty significant advantage is that you can get a ton more from rakeback since so many hands see the flop, and the rakeback is almost double that of holdem, so that would also allow me to get some easy earned cash.

I am quite busy and have to get ready for tomorrow, gotta get up at 4:30... wtf.  But I'll throw out some goals of sorts for next year because it is important to have goals and all that jazz.

Monies: Low Goal: 50k by the end of May, 100k year.
High goal: 125k by May, 200k on the year

Hands: 150k by May, 300k on the year
High goal: 200k by May and 400k on the year

Other poker goals: stakees to win!!, qualify for a live donkament, WSOP or EPT.  And move up to 1/2 PLO by the end of January, and 2/4 by March.

The goals are generallly quite lofty, but if I am able to play anywhere close to the limits and number of hands I want to be playing, the low end goals shouldn't be that hard, especially with rakeback because I should be able to get liek 10k in rakeback by May.  The reason I have a May goal and then a year end goal is because I have no idea what my life will be like after I graduate.  So alot of my hands will have to be put in during this last semester, during which I don't have alot of school related work so I will actually be able to play.  After graduation, I am planning on traveling a bit at the very least, road trip across the US, maybe CHina, and maybe somewhere in Europe, and then I might have to start a real job since I didn't win a life changing amount of money this year.  So based on this stuff, I may not really get to play much during the second half of 2010, and might only get to play 5-10 hours a week at most.

Anyway, thats it for now, if I am feeling super ambitious when I get back from my classes I will put up some of the bigger or interesting hands that I have played during the year.

I hope everyone had a great 2009 and will have a even better 2010.  Happy New Year and good luck in 2010!

-Steve

Happy new year everyone!  I had an amazing time last night, I rented out a party bus and a bunch of my friends and me went out to a few different bars in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area.  I cannot stress enough how much fun this was.  I will post pictures when I get some, some of the girls who came took lots of them thankfully.  I hope everyone else had a fun New Year's Eve as well!

Since my big win earlier this month I've been taking it pretty easy pokerwise for a few reasons.  Mainly, I've been really busy, I had finals then came home for one day before flying out to Chicago to go to a Bulls game and the CR Christmas Party with Taylor, Wiggins, and some other good friends.  Unlike the last time I went to Chicago in the winter, the weather held up really well (actually 10 degrees warmer there than in the northeast when I was there).  I had a great time and I'm really becoming fond of Chicago.  One big reason is that the people just seem friendlier, small sample size but I've heard others say this as well.  Also, another quick story that shows why I like it - I was leaving my hotel one day around noon to catch a cab and head to the CR office, but I decided I wanted a quick bite to eat first because I was hungry.  I asked the doorman at the hotel and he told me there was a great deli a block away.  I went to said deli, which was a small, family-owned Italian deli, and had one of the best subs I've ever had in my life.  I just think being able to do stuff like this is awesome, I realize it's not exclusive to Chicago but having never lived in a big city before I just think it's so cool.  Chicago is definitely an option for living after I graduate this coming December.

Since returning from Chicago I've been spending lots of time with friends and family.  I'm only in PA for a few months a year anymore so I'm trying to make the most of this time.  It's not that I haven't wanted to play poker, it just hasn't been a priority.  Similarly, I planned on catching up on Mad Men this break and have watched a grand total of zero episodes so far (I've previously seen S1).  I did watch the Hangover for the 4th time though, such a great movie.  I'd imagine I'll spend most of the remainder of my break spending time with friends and family as well since everyone is home and looking to hang out as much as possible.  I've also been hitting the gym pretty hard over break and I expect to keep that up as well.

Now to resolutions.  I did this last year and thought it would be a good idea to check up on my progress.  I'm going to do that first then make some new ones for 2010.  Without further ado....

2009 Resolutions

1.  Make more productive use of my time.

I think I've seen some improvement here.  I still waste a bit more time on 2+2 than I'd like but I've kicked the bad habit of lying in bed on my computer for an hour or 2 after waking up.  I certainly waste less time than most of my college friends lol

2.  Get in better shape.

Making progress here as well, at least in the past few months.  I was pretty good in the spring but Vegas really killed it as it's pretty impossible to live a healthy lifestyle while living in a big house in Vegas with 8 friends + friends of friends visiting constantly.  I want to try harder this coming summer though.  After Vegas I also slacked for a bit but since October I've been pretty consistent with my workouts and I've eaten reasonably healthy as well, especially over this break.  I've definitely seen some nice strength gains but I'd like to drop 15-20 pounds.

3.  Perform well in school.

Nailed this one.  I got a 3.55 this fall and I think a 3.3 in the spring.  Couldn't be happier with my schoolwork.

4.  Improve my social life a bit.

Aced this as well.  I've definitely improved the amount of meaningful relationships I have with friends over the past year, and I think the main reason is that I've really opened up.  I was pretty shy in high school but now I feel like a completely different person when I go out.  Sometimes I used to force it just to fit in, now I still don't always feel like going out and stay in sometimes, but when I do go out I genuinely have lots of fun almost always.  I am extremely happy with all of this.

5.  Become a bit more of a bankroll nit.

Believe it or not I think I did a great job of this.  For the first half of 2009 I pretty much grinded a bunch of 25/50, played a little bit of 500/1k pretty heavily pieced out, and put up pretty subpar results compared to what I would have liked.  Regardless, I stuck to my gameplan.  I was fortunate to have some nice scores staking in the WSOP and as a result had some money to play with, and at the same time there were some really good nosebleed games running on FTP, so I decided to put more money online and share action in these games.  I'm happy to say that it really couldn't have worked out any better and I'm very fortunate for that.

2010 Resolutions

1.  Get in better shape.

Still plenty of room for improvement here.  I've been getting very serious about this all around so far over break.  The local gym is super nice and has a basketball court that I've been shooting around on to warm up and cool down and on off-days from lifting.  I'm definitely going to start going to a gym back at school, I had been working out in my house but it's just so much easier to motivate myself to work out when I leave the house to go to a gym.  As stated above I'd like to lose 15-20 pounds.

2.  Learn how to cook well.

This ties in with #1 a bit as cooking myself means I can make my own meals and know what I'm putting in my food.  Also, in my limited experience I've made some meals that taste pretty damn good, although the credit really belongs to getting good ingredients.  I have a nice grill at my house and don't even know how to use it, my roommate does so it's not going to waste, but this is pretty stupid and I'm going to figure it out asap.  I also got a cookbook for Christmas that really starts from the ground up and I've already read a bunch of it.  I think cooking will be fun and rewarding and I'm looking forward to getting into it more.

3.  Continue to maintain/expand relationships with friends and family.

I've really become closer with some friends and family members in the past year and this really comes back to opening up more and becoming more outgoing as I discussed earlier.  Same goes with girls too.  I hope to maintain the close relationships I have, especially with good friends who are graduating and who I won't see as much.  Life's just better when experiences are shared with others, imo.

4.  Remain hungry at the poker tables and continue to put up good results.

This might be a bit tough as quite frankly I'm more concerned with other aspects of my life right now.  That said, I'm very much looking forward to the WSOP this summer as it will be my first full Series since turning 21.  I plan on playing the 50k 8-game event, the main event, 10k HU, 10k PLO, and perhaps a few more, as well as playing some big cash games.  I want to spend the first half of 2010 sharpening up my mixed games online so I can play them live this summer if good ones are running.  Money is nice too but my primary goal is just to get the mixed game as sharp as possible.  I plan on still playing a decent amount of PLO too but it's a secondary goal as I'm quite content with my PLO game.  I also look forward to playing HU if there are good spots, although I think my days of waiting around for 8 hours for action on HU tables are pretty much done, I rarely spend more than 3 hours at a time playing/looking for games anymore.

5.  Have fun!

I doubt I'll have a problem with this, but just putting it here to remind myself that this is what it's all about.  2009 was arguably the best, most enjoyable year of my life to date and I can only hope that 2010 is even better.

Wish me luck with these resolutions and happy new year again to all!

Brian

After disastrous year 2008, i had a solid winning year 2009.

I didn't managed to play as much as i wanted, but that can actually be one reason my results where much better.
I only played when i felt like playing, and all my major losing sessions accurred while playing tired.
Alas, this year worst sessions where results of runnig bad/coolers this time.

My tilting wasn't that bad this year, but still my tilt always occurs as starting to play weak and not folding when i know i'm beat. Variance doesn't tilt me as bad as before, but total cooler session can still bring my B-game back.

I had my shots at NL400, and i was suprised how much fish there exists, and some regs are still abc-tagfishes. But good regs are better than me, and they snap called my stupid bluffs at river.

I played last 6 months at NL200, and i won there with decent winrate. My winrate at FTP was really good, but iPoker kicked to my balls. So, this year i will only play at Full Tilt, because i really like the software and have good reads/notes for lots of regs.

So, this year my A-game really progressed. I can exploit bad regs at NL200, and i'm not playing ABC-tag-poker anymore. I still need to losen up a little, and get more aggro in some spots, to not get run over by good regs at NL400.

My GOALS for 2010:

- play 300k hands.
- be a NL400 reg before end of year, with so shots at NL600
- get some coaching
- max play 6 tables
- play some HU and PLO
- improve my poker learning, by doing better session reviews and contributing more on forums
- maybe teach some uNL player (i have always been better teacher than doer :) )

And the here are the graph and results for 2009:

After devastating january i managed to put a decent february. But still every single hand since start of december seems to be a cooler/setup or suckout by me or the villain. Every dominated hand hits the 2 or 3 outer by the river or if we go all-in pf the worst hand wins.

Atleast i run good in all-in EV this month. But that doesn't mean i played bad this month. I lost most of my money in spots where i was almost drawing dead when going all-in on the flop. In NL100 Rush, same aggro donkey flopped set against my overpair in 3-bet pot 4 times!!!

Atleast i got my aggression up a little. But still i miss thin value bets on river. And my turn checks has got me in really uggly spots on rivers.

So, NL100 Rush was really ugly this month. I was against a better hand by river all the time. Also i called too many 3-bets and folding on bad flops.

At NL200 and NL400 i played pretty well. My WWSF was really good in both stakes. At NL400 i was too aggro in bad spots again. I play a little tighter at NL400, and still i think they 4-bet bluff me. LOL. But playing 4 tables NL400 really make me focus and think about my every move. It's a exciting feeling, when u sit at the same table with fish who has lost 100k and 4 regs who have won about the same amount!!!!!

I also played few HU hands at NL100 and NL50. Managed to win some, but is really annoying when all HU regs sitout after few hands. LOL, they prob beat me in HU every single day.

I have been really busy with work and hopefully next month i have more time for poker. I will continue playing some NL400, but mostly NL200. I have started to hate rush pokers, so propably i won't play it so much.