Apathy, complete and utter apathy

First off, April was an reasonable month. I ended up around 3k I think before rb. I ran really hot halfway through but was down 2k in final few days. This was the start of a bigger down swing which I am still on. This probably to some degree has led to a bigger problem. That being for the last week or so I just have no interest in playing. I doubt I played more then 1,000 hands. My broadband connection is really not helping me as it keeps cutting out and if I am playing then poker-room closes and I lose all the tables I was on which is incredibly frustrating. I am not really sure how to go about combating it. All I am doing now is procrastinating and visiting all those time wastings sites that I loved in college. I had improved my disclipline in that regard a lot this year but I have totally let myself go and I don't much care either.
Mentally I am not in a good place. This would probably be a good time to go away for a while and clear my head. Maybe I will just randomly book something *shrug*

Lost and Prison Break finished this week. The latter forever and thank god for that. It had gone downhill and I was just watching it out of habit more then anything. It finished of reasonably albeit 2 years too late. Lost on the other hand ended its penultimate fifth season. On first viewing, I got really blinded and annoyed by the final scene, why did they have to end right there!? On reading up on it and watching it again I realised how much happened. It was an fantastic end, the main highlights being the opening scene and the last well 20 minutes. No idea where they go for season 6. I can't wait for it but man I am going to be sad when this time next year it's all said and done.

Confirmation

The Irish open began about 90 minutes ago and as I have expected the last 2 weeks I am not playing it.
Bru e-mailed us and posted on boards his long awaited clarification on what was going on. The lack of communication from his end is because he claims he was in talks with an potential financier up until the last minute. He also admits he made a lot of mistakes. That much is obvious. To be frank It seemed like he had no real business sense at all. I would have put good money on the fact the LEPO would not get near the numbers they were hoping for. The IO promotion was crazy. They could have easily done a stand out offer for much cheaper then that would have cost them. I am no business expert but it only took a little bit of common sense to see the obvious. Of course I made a few mistakes along the way. Despite seeing these offers had a too good to be true feel to it I still went with it. I also never really pushed it as much as I could . So there was a good bit of naivety on my part as well.

The statement seemed fairly honest although he did try going for he sympathy card at the end by saying his house is likely going to be repossessed. Maybe hoping we do nothing about what has happened. On that point. I have yet to really talk with the others about what we shall do or what we can do. In total Leprechaun have promised 10k to me that I'm not getting. I would have gotten around 6.5k more for splitting first if they kept the 50k guarantee in place and now the 3.5k IO ticket. Psychology it feels different then if I had 10k and it got taken away from me. There is really not much difference but it certainly feels like that.

I am not going to go to the citywest and basically will just ignore the tournament is even going on. For all the hype it really is just another donkament. So I shall treat it like any other weekend.
I am still on target for 30k hands and hoping to keep up to speed.
Good luck for anyone playing the IO!

Scheduling

I've had an reasonable start to the month. I am up a few buy-ins but I am slightly behind my goal of 30k hands. I've been reading a few blogs which have almost made me feel guilty. The amount of hands others put in at ease always dwarfs what I can achieve. With that in mind I am going to put to use the scheduling software I've been using the last few weeks to see how I can approve. I am actually only opening boards and 2+2 once or twice a day instead of refreshing every 30 minutes like I tend to do, it's amazing how much time that 1 can lose just by doing that. I feel if I can have a bit more structure in my day it will help.

1 of my most time consuming tasks is my hand reviews. I review every hand I played from the previous day above a certain limit. This can take up to 2 hours and by the time I'm done it actually feels likes I've played a session and then I need another hour or 2 to "re-couperate" So I am going to alter how I do that. I am going to note the hands I want to review in HM while I am playing, usually only 2 or 3 and then once a week I will do a big review of that week. It will require me raising my threshold of what matters but tbh I don't think I am getting out of it what I should considering the time I put in.

On the leprechaun front. Derek "the clamper" posted yesterday claiming we will still get our tickets. For reference he worked with Bru and also part financed the operation when it got started. I frankly don't believe him and I think he posted it just to ease the pressure on him. He claimed he and his son are also owed a ticket so trying to elicit some sympathy out of us I guess. The worst part of all this is the slight hope Derek and Bru seem to give that it might happen. I wish they just have the balls to come on and say it's not going to happen and here is why. Either way the company is done but you may as well come out and be truthful. That way you can keep some dignity. At the moment it's almost a childlike thought process that if I forget the problem it will go away! The feeling of being in limbo is really head wrecking and I am just looking forward for Friday to arrive so I can be done with this whole process.

Alas March is at a end

I am rather happy to report I had a really good month both poker and non poker wise.
On the poker front, it was my best month results wise as the graph demonstrates. After rakeback I am up over 10k. I had two 4k days and generally ran hot throughout. Still, it feels good to have a month like this especially after having an break even one for February. I am also pleased with my work ethic. That improved a lot. I had a goal to play 25k hands and met it early. I kinda got lax when I met it and played very little over the final 5 days. As I said in earlier entry I worked on my productivity and time keeping and I feel that helped me a lot. Again, I kinda lapsed on that front at the end so I will be making sure in April that there will be no lapsing and I should hopefully get over 30k hands in preferably with similar results. I am trying not to get too excited though. I ran hot and I still feel like I need to work far harder on my game. I planned to work on the maths side a lot more and that never really worked out.

On non poker front, it was outstanding. Of course the highlight was watching Ireland winning the grand slam. Can you spell tension. The F1 season started of with a bang last weekend. I also completed a drama course that I had been doing for 10 weeks. I felt like doing something entirely different that would be a bit of a challenge. I'm really glad I took it. It was everything I hoped it would be. I've already signed up for the next course. A lot of my group are doing the same one which is sweet. It was a really good group so it's pleasing a lot of us are continuing on to the next step.

There was 1 downer though. It's becoming pretty clear that Leprechaun are not going to be delivering on the Irish Open ticket. There has been no contact and all the signs point to the fact that they simply don't have the money. I was always wary of this although I must confess I did think they would deliver a month ago. It's unfortunate and I am not sure what can be done about it. Clearly, it's something that I will have to look into. Still I haven't lost that much out of it. The biggest loss is the opportunity cost of what I would have gotten had I played on a different skin. There wasn't a huge difference but it's enough for me to be pissed about it. It's obviously a pity I will not be playing in the main event considering the money involved but still it doesn't take the gloss of the month for me. It's only a donkament after all.

Goals for April are
Play 30k hands or more.
Work on maths side of my game
Try to improve my productivity and organise my schedule better
Come up with plans for what to do during summer

Keep rollin

This month has been an massive improvement results wise. I am on track for a 10k month which would be super sweet especially after been near break even last month. I had a mega 10 buy in day on Thursday as the graph above demonstrates.
I am running very well though. I've won my fair share of flips, I'd say around 75% so not getting too worked up about it. I am still leaking money in certain spots and need to do a lot of work on my game.

I was reading HJ's blog and he was saying he tends to play 100nl a lot as it he finds it easy to grind it out during the day. This is something I may try to do as it means I can too get more hands in during the days when tables tend to be tougher and it also let me experiment with stuff and see how it works out without losing too much when I do spewy stuff. If I work on that I hope to get over 30k hands in this month and break the 10k barrier

February

Well got to be honest. I am feeling pretty demoralised about February and poker in general. I finished down as the graph shows. When you include rakeback I will finish up but like we are talking McDonalds hourly rate here. I wouldn't be too fussed by it if it was just an isolated month and I was dominating all before me previously but this isn't happening. I am for intents and purposes break-even since August online. That is just not even close to good enough. I have been saved by rakeback and the 7k from splitting the LEPO.

When I look back at what went wrong or what is wrong it's hard to put a finger on the exact reason. None of my stats are terrible. I suppose I can say I ran badly for the first few months but this is what demoralises me more about February. I didn't run bad, in fact I win my fair share of flips. The worst part is I am not sure what's wrong. If I am blunt it may well be that I am just a marginal to break even player and hence I experience volatile swings. This is what the stats tell me and no point lying to myself.

So what next? Well I am going to continue on for a few months anyway, I still have rough goals that I like to achieve but if something drastic doesn't happen then there will have to be a big change. Doing this, was always supposed to a stepping stone to something bigger and at the moment it's just leading to nowhere.

Yay poker!

Midway February

Looked at my results for the month so far yesterday afternoon and I am virtually break even for the month. I thought I was up a bit more so a little disappointed by that (although I ran like a good last night so finished up a few buyins) I've played around 15k hands, an vast improvement over last month. I have upped my game on that score. A slight annoyance is a cold I have picked up over the last week which I can't seem to shake off but it doesn't seem to be developing into anything worse.

Being somewhat disheartened with my results I decided to look at the biggest winners on Ipoker in my Holdem Manager db. What I found most interesting is that all the biggest winners at 400nl seem pretty average. There are guys I wouldn't worry about having on my table at all. The sample sizes are still smallish relatively speaking going from 10k-25k in some cases and people can run hot over that amount of hands but it just goes to show to beat 400nl doesn't require anything spectacular. A lesson for me.

At last a routine!

It's been a good start to the month. Results wise, nothing much to speak of but I am up overall. I think I have been playing decently, pretty solid although there are 2 or 3 buyins which are questionable on my part. By far the best news of February is my acquisition of a proper daily routine and sleep pattern . It has meant I feel better and I have played far more hands then I did in January. I am currently on for 30k+ hands although it's still early days. I have found myself 8-9 tabling for an hour and feeling comfortable. I am playing 3 sessions a day and feeling comfortable and most important I want to play. I really haven't had a proper routine of any sorts since I did my exams last May and I have never really had a good routine which facilitates maximising the number of hands I grind out. It's amazing the difference it makes. I am just hoping to keep this up and if so February could be a very good month.

January

January was a decent month. Main points are

• Finished up an reasonable amount
• Finished up big at 400nl. My first decent run at the level
• Finished down big at 200nl
• Played 16k hands, meh
• Sleep pattern were all over the place which caused the poor number of hands but did mean I watched a lot of the Australian Open which I thoroughly enjoyed.
• Ran like an absolute god for the 2nd half of the month
• Received Leprechaun contract for Irish Open
  

So January was a mixed bag. I am not happy with the number of hands I played. It's just not enough. Part of it is due to not playing until the 8th and as I said my dodgy sleep pattern. I need to deal with the sleep problem. It affects my play too much. I need to keep it stable and if I do the number of hands I play with easily increase. I see no reason I can't play 25k hands this month even though it's 3 days shorter if I keep a stable sleep pattern. To help me out I bought a Sleeptracker pro which HJ recommended in his blog, hopefully that keeps me in check and if not I will send him the bill.

After that I need to try to find a way of wanting to play more. I simply don't play if I don't want to. There is an argument for someone in my position should just grind it out more even when they don't want to but I still enjoy poker and I want to keep enjoying it. When I enjoy it the most and really want to play is when I am at my best. I may look into joining a gym. I started an evening course that I am enjoying. I am doing something totally different which is challenging me but it's a lot of fun and a really good group of people. I want to do more of that type of thing.

I started to look into coaching like I said I was doing. I found a guy on 2+2 who offers to do a total database analysis of your hands along with some coaching. The database analysis is interesting as he does a z score which means he analyses how reliable the data is. So if you check how often someone check/raises the flop and bets the Turn you may have say 15 examples of that but it's hard to gauge how reliable that is. It will help a lot to learn this. I am pretty excited to get that done and hopefully a lot of leaks I am not aware of are discovered.

Finally, I got the contract to play the Irish Open. It's not perfect and looking to get 1 part of it changed but think in the end everything will be good and I am now 99% certain that I shall be playing it!

Finally

It's been long overdue but I have ran like Usain Bolt over the last week. Every pair hitting a set, coolering everyone in site and so. I started off the week still in a hole for the month, now I am well out of it. It's the first time I have ran really well at 400nl which is nice so no complaining about running bad from me for a while.
I can't expect to keep that up but hopefully I can play well and close out the month well.

Hud tilt

I watched a 2 part series on leggopoker from Student Caine who finished third in 1 year birthday celebration competition. His videos were about how the brain works and why we have rather irrational emotional responses at the tables. It was an interesting video and I'd recommend watching it (on the link below)
http://www.leggopoker.com/videos/training/313/

It also got me thinking to my irrational responses and I think I have identified an mental leak I have which I am calling hud tilt. It comes in 2 forms.

The first and simpler form is from when my stats are nitty. So like if I find myself 9/8 after 50 hands I will feel the absolute need to get my stats up to some normality and a lot of the time end up monkey raising. I think this goes back to my fundamental fear of my own nittyness. When I first started playing I was really nitty and at heart that is what I am. As I read more I increased my aggression but I have to force it all the time. If you ever read 2+2 you see how nits are treated with almost derision. There is almost a peer pressure aspect to being aggressive which I partly subscribed to even when I shouldn't.

The second form is from my opponents. For example, if someone fires a turn continuation bet on a good card such as an Ace or King and I note they have high turn cbet stats this can on occasion really set me off. It will cause me to make retardo raises even when my line makes no sense. I will do it because I've forgotten my line and literally just looking at that red number(I colour code my hud so red numbers = good/aggressive stats) I literally just stop thinking straight. I think this has cost me especially at 400nl.

When I watch the really top nosebleed players like CTS, Aejones, FWF and so on something that strikes me about them in their videos is how calm and clear their commentary and thought processes are. They always have a plan and know what to do in x,y and z situations. Aggression doesn't affect them at all. I think that is pretty telling. it's also noticeable how they don't use huds as much and rely on gameflow much more. This is something I am deficient in and I think if I want to make the jump up is something that I think I need to address

Uninspired

I am feeling a bit down about poker at the moment. Ever since I had my prolonged break in August and September I have never felt fantastic about my game. I feel like I am always trying to get back even. When I started back in late September I took a huge dip early and took 6 weeks to get back even and just when I did I take another dip and so on. This has been the story of the last 4 months.

In the same period in 07 I ran soooo good. I just couldn't lose and it was how I initially got my roll for 200nl. I have improved a hell of a lot but can't seem to regain that feeling of invincibility that I felt during that period. I am constantly questioning and second guessing myself.

The same problems have cropped this month. I started of the month bad again and trying to claw it back, I also haven't played anywhere near as many hands as I like mainly due to not starting play to the 9th. Of course point 1 is I am being too results orientated. I can go weeks without actually looking at how I am doing but I always tend to have a good sense for it. I try to forget about it and think ahead and think in the long term but it's hard to do, least for me.

I think I will look into getting a coach. It would be good to have someone to have an overview of things and be able to tell me what is good and what isn't cause at times I feel like I have no idea. I also could do with some fresh ideas about how to approach things better, playing more hands, mentally preparing myself and so on. Everything I have done I have done on my own through reading forums, watching videos and so on. Maybe the fresh prospective would help me out. I need something anyway.

In more positive news. Lost is back this week. It's like Christmas day came early(or late) I am pretty excited by its return. Bring on thursday!

The year that was: 2008

2008 was a very mixed year in so many respects. From a poker perspective I would call it average to somewhat disappointing. From a larger "life" perspective I wouldn't have any idea how to class it. It's such an odd mix of nothingness and yet so much happened but this is a poker blog so I will concentrate mainly on that.

http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~cooker3/400nl08.jpg

The main headline of 2008 is my inability to beat 400nl(graph is above). The simple fact is I am a fairly big loser at 400nl. It's not a huge sample (20k hands) but the fact is if I had the same bb/100 but in the positive over that sample I'd be delighted and think I am the greatest that ever lived. I have been trying to pinpoint what is happening and there is definitely some spewy stuff in there. 5betting, raising all in over cbets with not much and such like. I don't think it accounts for everything or even a big amount of it.

So either I am running bad or I am just being outclassed and I amn't good enough to recognise it. There is evidence to support the former but there is always a danger of a confirmation bias effect. Fgators being the best exponent of that mindset. Although having JJ, QQ, AKs, KQ, 33, ATs in the top 15 biggest losing hands seems somewhat unlucky. If it's the latter then I am never going to realise it unless I get better or just keep losing and eventually realise that sample size is just too big to use variance as a legitimate excuse. I am still going to plug away. The great thing is 2009 is a blank canvas and I am break even from this point. I should have a pretty good idea where I stand at the end of the year. I honestly feel I can be a comfortable winner at the stakes this year.

As for 200nl, I started there, I primarily finished there which is not exactly inspiring. My winrate there is reasonable without being spectacular. It's hard to get an exact figure as I think I am missing some hands and HM doesn't take currency stuff into account but including rb I estimate I made over $20k.

Finally there are my rare live outings. That went pretty well. I can think of 5 tournaments I played, got 2nd in student Jackpot tournament in January out of around 40, got nowhere in an SE tournament. I finished 8th out of 120 roughly in DCU inter varsity tournament. I came 160 something in IPO and split the LEPO. I can't argue with those results. I think I am running hot a little bit overall.

From a non results perspective. I think I am a far far better player then I was this day last year. In fact it's not even close. I hope to be able to say that again next year. There is so so much I need to improve on. It's actually pretty daunting to realise how little I actually know but there is a certain comfort element to it. I mean if I felt I was as good as I could get then that wouldn't say much considering how low a stakes I am playing comparatively speaking.

For 2009, I first and foremost want to beat 400nl. From this goal all other plans and ideas come from it. If it comes to pass it establishes a base amount of money which I would be happy with, it's also a high enough level that I feel suggests I have what it takes to be good at this.

If I beat 400nl I want to extend my range of games. I would like to learn either or maybe both HU cash and Omaha. There is the obvious logic the more games I can play the better my game selection can be. It also could give me something different to concentrate on when I am running bad, bored with 6 max Holdem or whatever.

I also plan to play more live tournaments and more sats to tournaments. I did well live in 2008 and there is no reason not to continue on. I doubt I will play many outside Dublin as I don't like the extra costs like getting hotel rooms, being stuck there for a few days after being knocked out, playing side events and so on. It potentially could turn into a very costly weekend. When I get knocked out of a tournament I just want to leave and go home. So I am thinking of JP's tournaments especially the one in May and obviously the IO if Leprechaun come through. In terms of satelites, I just want to excuse to go abroad basically. What I said above does not apply when your in the Caribbean or Australia and so on. If I get knocked out I can just explore those places. In all due respect to Galway or Killarney there is a bit less to explore.

Underpinning my goals for poker is a change of lifestyle. I am not selfish enough to not realise I am very lucky to have what I have and I recognise I am better off then the majority of people currently alive but I need to do more. I need a change of lifestyle. My life is too centred towards poker. I need to get fitter, get more exercise. This will help me be a better poker player. It would be pretty handy if I knew what to do with myself from a long term pov but I am not going to hold my breathe on that one. I also want to travel, not decided where but somewhere!

If I get all this. I'd consider it a pretty good year :)