CARDRUNNERS

If some of you readers know that whenever I set out some goals to achieve, I never seem to do it. But thats about to change lol. I'm going to do it, I know I will and I have the will and determination to finally do it.

Okay so here it is:

-6,000 dollars on the grind + rakeback in 27 days.

-I want to take only 4 days off this month completely away from poker. (One of those days will be the day of my financial accounting 2 exam)

-I calculated how much I would have to make on average per day and its exactly 222.22. It is destiny because I'm also 22 years old. Hopefully I hit a lot of sets with 22 this month. 2 is now the theme of the month. If I grind enough I should make at least 122 dollars a day on rakeback. All I'm asking poker gods is to let me run semi good to earn on average 2 buyins a day. That's all I'm asking oh mighty jesus ferguson.

-I guess you kind of have to take my word, because Poker Tracker is not supported on Cake. Don't worry I have no intentions of lying. I really want to do this legitimately.

Okay so there you have it. I'll give as many updates as I can on how I'm doing.

Man Big Brother 10 is getting pretty crazy. I love how they brought American's player back on for a week, and what do ya know America chose my boi Dan. He really is a fan favorite, because he's humble, is not fake, and pretty much keeps his word. Way to go Dan!

Oh on a side note I'm playing three 4 dollar 180 man sngs on stars to test it out, and man the play is so BAD!!!! How did I not grind these things back in the day when I first started playing poker. These things can potentially be a money maker. I was thinking about putting 440 dollars back on stars to try and work on my tourney game. This would give me exactly 100 buyins for this SNG. I wonder how long it would take for me to go busto or onto the next level. I really do enjoy playing tournies on Stars, back in the day when I deposited only 40 dollars and ran it up to 1,200 (this actually wasn't too long ago) I would grind the 4 dollar 180 man sngs. I'd always final table, but never win. And then I remember that one day where I did win one and it felt really good. I mean it was only 215 dollars but still a tourney win is really hard to come by. I mean I've only won 2 (fields over a 100) of them and I came 2nd in 3 of them (which were higher scores than the 2 I won), but I tell you the 2 that I won felt way better emo than the 3 I came 2nd in.

Laterdayz.

Edit: That freakin new song "Disturbia" by Rihanna is the most catchiest song of the summer. That in the Lady Gaga song. I can't believe I like both those songs! LOL!

Ok since my last blog, Ive played 4 sessions, going LWLW, so I have a kinda dumb graph since sunday:

Even over a small sample, its pretty clear something isnt right! Ive definitely tilted too much in this period, I'll post a couple of examples of this to embarrass myself:

Because 26/24s never have a hand when they 3bet and double barrel...agree?? Sigh

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2187178

20/18s shouldnt hit sets, even when the flop hits their pf calling range so hard!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2187186

And if you see someone bluff once for stacks, obv they never have a hand after that event

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2187193

Ok enough of that, Ive only really got one hand that is worth analysis imo:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2187195

A lot of people have told me that this is really standard, but it felt bad at the time, and Im still not sure so if anyone wants to comment that would be cool. Villain is 15/12/2, does he bluff/shove worse the 30% of the time we need for this call to be good?

My biggest pot of the week, and also one of the funniest

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2187200

And just a quick look at what happens to regs on tilt

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2187201

So overall I think the mechanics of my game are quite good, certainly good enough to beat stars 1-2, but I desperately need to work on keeping a cool head for full sessions. In the meantime I think I am going to move my roll off stars, Ive never really played anywhere else, but Im pretty sure its the toughest 1-2 game on the net, meaning there are other much softer games. Im thinking I should move to a Euro site, cos we all suck at poker, in general! I need a site that ticks most of these boxes

1, Soft (obv)

2, Reasonable level of traffic

3, Rakeback which is higher than stars supernova (~27%)

4, Datamining allowed

5, Resizeable tables

6, Ok looking interface

If anyone has any suggestions Id really appreciate some input

I'll end with an image from this week, Im sure it happens a lot at 6max, but I dont recall ever seeing it at 1-2:

1000bb stacks are pretty hot!

Ok gl to everyone reading, and please leave comments!

John

The following was imported from Xanga originally posted on December 3, 2007:

This is my official Poker Journal. I have recently decided to venture into the world online poker. I have always heard of many success stories of many young college kids hitting it big online and changing their lives forever. But I always had doubts of those stories being true, but in the past week I had just discovered that one guy that I went to high school with turned out to be ONE of those kids who manage to turn online poker into a ludicris money making machine. As of now, I don't intend on making a rediculous amount of money right away. The guy that I went to high school with is known as cts on Cardrunners.com and he has a personal blog just like this documenting his poker experiences. What really made me want to start online poker is because he started out in the exact same position as I was. I was introduced to poker back in junior year of high school and felt like I was somewhat good and continued play house cash games with some close friend up until now. But playing poker has never really cross my mind as something that can bring in a continuous flow of money...as for me anyways. After reading some of cts's blogs, it really taught me a lot of ins and outs of the game such as managing bankrolls, knowing that swings are inevitable in gambling and how to get over such down swings. I also found a forum called 2+2. This forum is full of online poker players that gather and analyze all aspects of the game. Some, if not most of the guys on their seemed to have had a degree of success online. As of now, my goal is to become a student of the game and absorb as much information about how the mechanics/pychology of poker really works. I understand this might consume a large part of my life from now on. Knowing that it will consume a lot of my time, I want to train myself to have self control...so who knows, if this poker thing doesn't work out, I could at least gained valuable life experiences.


My First Experience of online poker with REAL money:
After reading cts's blog, all I did was think about what I can do to get as successful as he have in the past 2 yrs he has been playing. So, the only thing I could do yesterday was sign onto Full Tilt Poker and deposited $45 (I ended up shelling out $55 because I was a newb cuz ePassport charges you 5 dollars everytime you deposite money, and I had to do it twice cuz I didnt know FTP required a 45 minimum deposit)

Anyways, I read a lil bit of bankroll management stuff and decided to start at the .25/.50 blinds limit poker. I had intended on doing Pot limit but I was being a newb and accidentally stumbled into the limit poker, where you can only bet in increments of .25 at a time. I enter my first room and bought in 15 dollars since no one really had their full bank roll in there cuz the blinds were so small, it was not needed. I played for about and hr and I ended up breaking even overall. A lil frustration started to build, and I decided to add another table so I can increase my chance of winning by playing more hands. After half and hr of doing this, I noticed my winnings went into the green for a few dollars. So I decided to add a 3rd table. After playing for another hr, I started breaking even again and even lost a lil. At this point, frustration really set in and I decided to move up into the .50/1 limit poker to see if I can get away from breaking even. (This was a really stupid idea, since I just read about not moving up in blinds unless I had built a steady bankroll to support the swings in the game) I went into the room, and my luck did not get any better and I really started to push hard. I ended up losing like $10 and decided to quit playing for a few hrs.

After a few hrs of rest I decide to come back give it a shot. I took a look at my bankroll and got upset about losing $10 earlier in the day, so I decided to stick with .50/1 limit poker to try and win my money back. I play for a good hr and through out that hr I ened up being in the green as much as $15. Then as time went on, my winning started to go down and I was breaking even again. Then frustration really set in again after losing all of my hard earned winnings. I started to push on hands that did not needed to be persued and ended up loseing another $10 or so. So at this point I was really angry and decided that I didn't like limit poker at all cuz I couldn't win a lot on the hands that I had the nuts in. With that in my mind I decided to take what was left of my bank roll into the .25/.50 Pot Limit rooms. I got in their, sat out one hand to wait for the blinds to get to me. I was delt poket JJs on my first hand...which really made me happy so I decided to push with it and raised the blinds. I think 2 guys ended up calling me and the flop has some cards that were all below a J. I decied to raise like $5 and one folded and the guy on the left of me called and raised. This somewhat scared me but I thought he had hit the top pair on the flop which was not enough to beat me. The turn came and it was a Q, this somewhat scared me again but The chances of his having a Q in his hands were low and I decided to 5 dollars or so again. He called an the river turned out to be a insignificant card(that I thought!) I decided to check on the river cuz at this point I just didn't know what to do and all money was down to $6. The guy ended up putting me all in....I looked at my JJs and thought the only card he could really beat me with was the Q pair. I also thought the way he was being aggressive on the flop, he might have only hit the flop. So I called.....he ended up catch a FLUSH on the river, which came as a total surprised to me b/c I didnt even notice there were 3 spades on the board. His poket cards were some rags, 53 or something like that. I really couldn't belive he called my raise before the flop with a 53 of spades. I felt I just got robbed of my money immediately after that hand. But in the end I have to blame myself for moving up the blinds too quick without having much of a bankroll. Having a bankroll protects you from things such as this,
because having people luck out with rags is just a part of poker. Having a strong bank roll will help you take these hit a lot better....unlike me, where I just busted out. I feel like my poker game in general is not bad at all, I just need to work on my reaction time and be more observative of the cards that I delt on the board. I am gonna be able to get some money by the end of this week, so hopefully I will do a lot better then.

But until then, I am just gonna practice my game with play money and work on my reaction time to the game. I had a lot of success with play money today after I got myself into my "A" game. It took 1 reload of my chips but I did manage to turn my play money bank roll into 10K plus by starting with 2K in about 2hrs of playing. Even though I wished this was real money, I knew deep down that doing this will help me perfect my game and find my A game everytime that I play.

I downloaded a program called Pokertracker, I will post some of my stats next post when I start playing with real money at the end of this week. Anyways, wish me luck!

Since the last blog entry I was back at square one with my newly deposited $50. The original plan was to grind SNGs until I have $200 so I can start playing .5/1 LHE. But I remembered what happened with my last $50 and realized that SNGs variance is just way too high for me, especially with my tilty personality. I decided to fully concentrate on LHE starting at the .25/.5 level. This isn't my first time playing LHE so I have a pretty good idea of how the game goes. Right when I started off the bat, I went down BIG. I probably lost $30 by overplaying hands like AK,AQ, AJ, etc. Then I realized that my tight aggressive game really isnt fit to play LHE. Mainly due to the fact that premium starting hands isn't all there is to LHE. From my experiences, premium "drawing" hands are much more valuable. Of course everyone likes there premium starting hands such as AK, AQ, AJ, especially when they hit a top pair...most likely they won't be laying it down. But the truth is that top pair is rarely the nuts. The structure of LHE is designed for players to draw for their hands at a fixed rate. After realizing all of this, I readjusted my mind set and started playing a loose aggressive style. I based my decisions of how much money I am willing to put into the pot on the number of outs that I have and pot odds. After adapting to this style of play, I immediately started winning. I opened up my range of pre-flop hands so that made me a much more dangerous player to play against. But this new style of play is still in development, because due to the fact that I am drawing so much with some not so premium cards I have run into couple of coolers where my two pairs runs into higher two pairs or my flush runs into higher flushes. I will probably slightly tighten my range of hands that I play and hopefully will fix some of the leaks in my game. At this point I feel pretty confident. Next goal is to hit $200 in my bankroll and I will move up to .5/1 LHE.

Other then that, I am stuck. My bankroll is at arond $105. This was exactly where my bankroll was at the last time that I went busto. Today school was cancelled and I played for probably 4+ hours and I have just been swinging all over the place(up $20, down $20). Lets hope this isn't some type of curse.

Good Luck everyone!

I am super hyped about spring break starting on Friday. I will be going back home until sunday and then get together with my friends and head up to Atlantic City. This will be my first time ever going to any sort of casino in my life. What really makes this special is that I am gonna use this oppertunity to take a ultimate shot of buiding a sizable bank roll to play online. I just checked my wallet, and I have exactly $400 dollars in it and it was all from playing house poker games in the last couple of weeks. So by taking this shot, I am not exactly playing with "scared" money. But one thing that worries me is that I only have had experience with 1/2 NLHE once, and I played like a total nit. As I recall, I played like a total of 4-6 hands in about 2 hours of playing and never went to show down once....sooooo, I am not exactly too confident in my game at the 1/2 game. I don't think this has to do with anything with my playing ability. Its just due to the fact that I have never faced such large exchange of money in a short period of time. The biggest purchase in my life with my own money was an Apple iPod, and ironically I bought it as a gift to my girlfriend. So, the $400 dollars in my wallets is pretty much go big or go home for me on this trip. I'll probably stay away from actually playing any poker until I get up to AC. So that way my mind can be fresh when I sit down at the tables. I have a feeling that I'll just be a total nit until I get into the green....then I'll probably loosen it up and play my game.

On another notes I read some thing really interesting to me today. I been watch some clips of GSN's High Stakes Poker recently and I have always wondered who Guy Laliberte was ESPECIALLY when he got into a Million+ dollar pot with David Benyamine when he flopped two 2 pair and David Benyamine moved all in on a nut flush draw trying to push him out. Guy ended up being super nice and offered David to just forget about the hand and he'll just keep whatever small money was in the pot. Guy's reasoning was that he knew that a Million dollars was a lot of money to David and there was no need to take such gamble. I was just like....WHHHHHHAT? So, a million dollar isn't a lot of money to Guy? So I looked him up on Wikipedia and it turned out that this guy is BALLING. He is the sole owner of Cirque du Soleil and has a net worth of 1.5 Billion! WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. Man, playing 1/2 Million buy in on High Stakes wasn't exactly "scared" money for him. He isn't exactly a fish either because he has a total of 3/4 million in tournament winnings, including a 4th place finish at the WPT 2007. Impressive!

Last night I joined Cardrunners and I am really glad I did! I was inspired by JimmyRare, a friend of mine who has a blog here. I have never kept a journal, but you know what they say, it is never to late to start.

So this should be the start of my keeping records of thoughts, goals and evolution of my career as a poker player.

A little background of my experience so far:

- number of hands played: ~ 250K

- money earned from cashgames: ~ $40K

- level currently at: NL200 - 6max

- networks i am playing on: Prima and iPoker

My December goal is to hit $10K mark at least in one of my two poker accounts. In order to do so, i have to make a profit of approx. $4K on each of these accounts.

Progress this month (iPoker):

- distance from goal: $2,844.77 ( ~ 14 buyins)

Below you will see a visualisation of a bankroll management system JimmyRare and I have created:

Feel free to add comments / questions about it!

Later!

... Heaven, Happiness, HighStakes, whatever you wish.

Martynp asked this question related to the previous posted Bankroll Management Scheme / System:

"Regarding the cashouts, does this mean that you move up to a level, say 50NL with $1500, then play and cashout $2500 and then play again until you hit $3000?"

Yes, and no.

Yes, you have to cashout $2,500 while playing NL50 and have a remaining ballance of $3,000 into poker account in order to move up to NL100.

No, you do not have to "play again until you hit $3000" because before cashing out the last $500 your poker ballance should be $3,500. Why do I mention a $500 cashout? Because the cashout works like this:

For every level the cashout should match the equivalent of 25 buyins at the next level. By doing so, you allow yourself to gain enough experience, to get used to the money involved and the swings that you cannot avoid. Also, the cashout should not be a single withdraw. You should do like this (given the example at NL50):

- start playing NL50 with $1,500;

- make $1,000 profit (rakeback, bonuses, tourney winnings NOT included) and withdraw $500;

- repeat 2 times; you shoud now have $3,000 into your poker account;

- make the last $1,000 profit and get it all out;

- move up to NL100.

By making more withdraws instead of just one you constantly reward your efforts. This can be a great motivator.

Cheers!

This is going to become such a great community! I see people in the Microstakes forum that are so interested in improving their game... and they have no ideea how fortunate they are having found Cardrunners so early in their careers. And now with Daut having made the televised final table in a WPT event, even more are going to become members of this community. Of course, only a small procent of these, procent which I am not able to quantify, will become active in forums, and in blogs, thus improving their experience and the quality of the site itself.

Today I was interrupted 2 times from playing at that was annoying, and the session itself was a great rollercoaster: 1 buyin down, 3 up, 3 down again, ended by 3 up. And in just 400 hands. I started doing something new today. Thin value betting against stations and raising all flop donk-leads. I saw that this is something that lots of winning nosebleed players do. Just wanted to try it at NL200. Here's some examples.

Villan was a huge calling station:

Against same villan:

Raise flop donk-lead:

Over & out!

Verneer wrote on his blog about the fact that because he played HU lately, his 6max game kinda changed and he needed to readjust getting back to his old 6max style. This got me thinking.

Most of the great players of the big games online, when interviewed, adviced players who wanted to improve their games and move up the limits to learn HU play, as this will enhance their game. A close friend of mine - NL400-NL1000, 10tabler - asked me why I wanted to learn HU. His opinion was that you don't need it to beat midstakes shorthanded game. He has a lot of experience and he also made me wandering on the subject...

It is normal to assume that playing HU on a regular basis tends to loosen up your 6 handed game. If this may be good at nosbleed games, where games can become 3 or 4 handed... I still don't have enough data / experience / information to say for sure if it can help your MSNL 6handed game. I'll come back to this in the future, after some more thinking.

The housecleaning service left my apartment after 6pm. I gave them a tip for the extra time put in; they were sort of expecting it, so I'm glad I didn't think otherwise. I anxiously loaded up 6 table candidates and joined the waitlists. I needed $75 more for me to reach my bankroll management goal of 30 buyins for the next level, NL400, and make my first official jump (had played like 3000 hands in the past) with 5 buyins as a buffer. Lose the buffer, then step back to NL200 and grind it again for the second shot.

The first table I sat down, after waiting for the big blind, all folded to me, giving me back the blind. Then I was dealt KK on the SB, all folded to me, I put in a raise. The BB had half of a buyin and pushed it all in, I called, he had 24o, I won. I got what I needed. I waited for the BB to reach me, sat out, closed the tables, took a 10 minute break, then opened up 4 tables of NL400 and joined the waitlists.

I was very excited. I remember I felt the same way last year when I made the jump to NL200. I love the feeling. It's probably like having a regular job and being promoted. You are very glad, but you are also nervous because of the new responsability. There is not much to say about what happened. I played for 2 hours, 2 tables, no break, and ended down one buyin. I lost that buyin in a 3barrel bluff - he donkbet on the flop, I raised, he called, and stuck to my read. I was wrong. He had 2 pair. The lesson was this: Don't Try So Hard! I overestimated the difficulty of the level so I was overaggro. Which reminds me of the song with the same name from Queen. I haven't listend to it for a long time. Will do this before going to bed.

ZzzzzZZzzzzzz

It's time to draw the line for January. This is the month I moved up and played NL400. Had a pretty 'nice' downswing at NL400 that shook me a little. I took the last days off and spent some more time with my friends and analyzing the regs and my game.

I finished the month up ~ $7K (RB included). It would be unfair to say that I am unhappy about this result. But I am not ecstatic either.

Losing hand of the month (tilted):

Winning hand of the month (i read his soul - joking):

Hours needed: 120

Hours put in: 92

INSPIRON

Haven't played much lately due to some personal issues but I'm back on track now.

I want to address my number one poker related problem: I don't play much. I am dissapointed with myself for this. I have analyzed this problem and it comes down to fear. There are two main types of fear and I experience them both: fear of losing and fear of winning. If I play and have a series of losing sessions, then I take more breaks than necessary and maybe to much time off. On the other hand, if I win, then I fear losing back what I earned. So I end up winning, but with little time playing poker. My winrate is generally good, but you have to put in hands to get money. Add to this the fact that these two fears sometimes turn into losing and winning tilt and you have the complete recipe for amateur play.

There are two ways of getting rid of this problem. One is to actually make fear disappear. This is the hard way. This comes down to meditating, controling your mind and minimizing the strenght of emotions in general. This is what I need to achieve in time.

The other method is to eliminate the cause of fears. That is not knowing the results of my sessions. So I just focus on playing. And I can't fear losing or winning more because I don't know where I stand. I'll decide to stop a session only based on my mood and freshness of mind.

I started this a few days ago and I feel more relaxed, see it more like a job than before and I won't look at my bankroll till the end of the month. Also, to help my focus I put a quote from T.A. on my desk and on the frame of my monitor: "The Professional does not run good or run bad. [...] He just plays."

Here are some low quality (phone) pictures:

INSPIRON

There goes February! The results are clear, written with black text over white backround: I had a rough month. Some personal problems prevented me from playing 2 weeks. Problems were gone, but looks like they somehow put a mark on my play. I experienced a downswing of 18 buyins at NL400 in less than 10k hands, at Party and iPoker. After reviewing the month, I concluded that I played my B-game most of the time, unfocused poker.

I will continue to play NL400 in March and do my best. If things still don't go my way I will be forced to rebuild my bankroll at NL200.

As far as physical activities are concerned, I will really get in shape this month. I will do 2 workouts a day, 6 days / week. Tennis / gym in the mornings (10 - 11am) and abs / bicycle in the evenings (6 - 7pm). This should also help my game.

So this is it, looking forward for March!

Losing hand of the month (UTG was very nitty - I called to stack him, SB was xtra loose):

Winning hand of the month (UTG+1 was a fish, semi-deep stacked):

Hours put in: 90

INSPIRON