April - Quick graph

So here is my graph for April
By no means nothing special, still it's far better then March in every respect. I become much more aggressive so I think I am likely making way too many spewy errors where I bet when I shouldn't do etc but I am trying to work on it and think long term it will turn out good for game. I am happy that I am making money in non showdown pots as I am trying to work on that. I think what I need is just to play consistantly day in day out. That is what I did in february for the Unibet bonus, I think if I can do that then it would really help.

Feeling better

Not a huge update but I have been playing a bit more since the last entry. Up a bit, nothing major and haven't made up for my March losses yet. What I am happy with though is the fact I have been wanting to play much more. In the last few days I have been watching some of Seabeast videos on Leggopoker and they really have some good stuff in them. He talks a lot about how you should approach playing, what is the right mindset to have. How to think properly etc and it has really helped hearing his perspective on this.

I would be looking forward to putting a proper month of play in but alas it shall not be happening as my exams start in 12 days so obviously for a period of time poker(and most everything) will have to be put on the back burner and I am going to have to give full concentration towards the exams. I just want to do them and be done with college, well least that course forever so just require 1 last effort to cross the finish line. Hopefully when they are done come end of May and start of June I can really start putting the hands in.

Apathy

I haven't been playing much since the Irish Open. I played on Monday, then didn't play until Saturday as I didn't feel like it and not played since. That really has been the story since I finished the Unibet bonus at the start of March. I am not sure what's happening but it just feels like I have lost some of the passion to play. I have even noticed in last few weeks that I am reading poker forums less and less, example I logged on to 2+2 and start reading a really interesting thread on MSNL about a hand played between a poster and Taylor Caby from Cardrunners. I got 9 replies in out of 160 odd and just stopped reading as I didn't care. It's the same on boards, I am reading HH less and less. I am more interested in an online game I have been playing the last few weeks and reading up on that.

As for why this is happening, it's hard to say. I think it maybe an number of reasons. 1) I have not been getting much exercise and this eats into all aspects of life but I think the lack of exercise has meant I lost some energy. The previous 4 years while I wasn't exactly working out but I was walking to and from my house to DCU twice a day 4-5 times a week. That is an hours walk total and it certainly didn't do me any harm. Now with that gone and my lack of sporting activity means I am less motivated and my days are less structured which results in me being apathetic and lazy. Reason 2) is my general playing area. I play on my laptop sitting on my bed. This is bad for numerous reasons. For one my laptop is small and limits how many tables I can fit on screen limiting my number of hands. It also means I have to use touchpad and no mouse which is annoying and means I can't use a lot of scripts such as bet pot script etc. Another bad point is it's just not good posture and I do believe your posture and general playing area is important. As for why I don't just buy a table with desktop, well there is simply no space to put it. If I could I would have already bought it.
Reason 3) maybe I have just lost interest in general and I have come as far as I want to in poker. I don't want this to be true. I feel there is a lot for me to achieve but maybe I just don't want to do it or least put required effort in to achieve it.

So the question is how do I go about rectifying this if I want to. I think it's going to require a fairly big life change on my part which encompasses more then just poker. I need to start doing sport of some sort. I used to play squash, tennis, GAA, football back in the day and picking 1 or more of those back up would really help in lots of ways. It would keep me fit, give me an competitive outlet other then poker which I can look forward to and give more structure to my day/week. I also need to work on other interests and have generally more plans and things to do. I think ironically giving less time to poker which help me as it will make more focused when I do concentrate on it.

All of this is of course easy to say here, doing it is a whole different kettle of fish but I really feel like I have to. I am entering a crossroads now, I (hopefully) will finish off college next month when I do my final 2 exams. Assuming I pass then my fall back for the last 5 years which has helped justify me not comitting to anything and staying at home disappears and I am left facing the rather scary question of what I want to do with my life. So changes are going to happen irresepective and I think poker can be a part of it and a big part if I really want it to be. It's just a matter of how much.

IO general thoughts and stories

So as I said in my last post I was going to be dealing at the Paddy Power Irish open. It turned out better then I hoped and in general it was a pretty good week. I dealt for 57 hours and pretty happy with the money. General perception from most people is that was a successful and very well run weekend and in general I would agree with that. As much as I personally don't like the CityWest Hotel I do have to say it is a good venue for a poker tournament and Paddy Power do a very good job doing the room up and generally marketing and branding the tournament. The bar area was very nicely done up, with bucking bronco thing, computers set up in the lobby etc but most of you probably already knew that. A few things you may not have known about though.

The treatment of the dealers was a bit mixed. On the Friday which was Day 1b I think the room was very very hot. This was a problem throughout the weekend with the room either being very hot or cold, they never seem to be able to find an in between. Other problem was they were a bit short staffed on the day so it meant we didn't get a break for ages. This caused 1 of the dealers to just walk as she wasn't given a break to have a sandwich. Another one walked later on as she was pissed of with treament (so I was told) and then during the women's tournament 1 0f the floor staff wanted to get 1 of the male dealers sent home because he 1) didn't smile and 2) didn't layout the cards TV style when there was an all in called. I asked a few people and none of us do that for an all in. He was really angry about it and tbh I don't blame him. He didn't get sent home, just got a polite warning but when you have people walking out, people being sent home for not being up to the job and your short staffed then trying to get someone sent home for nothing is not a clever thing to be doing.

This seem to be a bit of watershed moment though as after all this things got much better, we were generally dealt with more respect, they were very appreciative and couldn't thank us enough. There was a nice moment when Liam Flood going on mike after the main event ended and asked the players to give the dealers a big round of applause so I think some of the criticism by the dealers who walked probably went a long way to turn it around.

Another interesting tit bit was on Day 1a, all the players got one 5k chip but about 2 or 3 hours in they were taken out of circulation and not used in Day 1b. I asked why just out of curiosity and nobody seemed to know. I eventually got told by TD he tell me when it was over. The 5k chips were eventually introduced mid to late into day 2 but were never really used all that much. When it was all done I asked David the TD about it he said the reason was they suspected that the 5k chips were being sold off, as it turns out they got it wrong hence they were re-introduced. I am not sure what led them to believe they were being sold off originally and how they found out otherwise but I always think they should use different chips each year to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen but I guess it would be pretty expensive to buy them every time.

1 final story which I found interesting and sort of disturbing. I was chatting to some of the people involved in the production side and they said that some of the players were not putting their holecards on the little window where the holecard camera lied until the very last second. This was sort of annoying them and they went to try and see why. It turns out what was happening was some of the players kept looking around at all the cameras and they picked up on something, when someone had a big hand the camera would zoom in on them before action had reached them so these players wanted to hold off putting their cards into the area assiged so that the cameras couldn't give them away to others at the table. If all of this is correct then that shouldn't ever happen but it is symptomatic of the biggest problem with the tournament as a whole. They whored it out for TV. This is true in both years I have worked at the IO in that they try to run the tournament to suit TV instead of how it should be done of TV being made to work around what is best for the tournament and the people who play in it.

Hopefully they sort out these issues next year and maybe make the structure a bit better mainly because I may try to qualify for it. I am hoping 2009 is my year for playing some big live tournaments.

Away from the IO, my sleep pattern is much better and I woke up today feeling pretty refreshed. I am likely not going to play today but hopefully start up by end of the week and get myself playing and running more like I did in February

The mehness of March

March has been continuing in much the same vein as first paragraph of my last post. I barely played at all this month. My sleep issues continued and my usual ways of remedying them have no worked like before. Twice I stayed up for about 26-30 hours trying to reset the body clock but both times I just end up sleeping for about 5 hours and waking up at 3am. This caused me many problems including the fact I wasn't awake or feeling fresh when ipoker was busy. The few times I have played have well been bad. I am down a good bit this month, I imagine the above contributing a good bit to it. So my move to 400nl has been postponed for a while until I start feeling it again at 200nl and start winning again!

From tomorrow on I am going to be taking a break of sorts from online play for the Easter week as I shall be dealing at the Irish Open in the Citywest. Last year in the lead up to the Irish Open I was really excited by it, this year is different. I don't feel 1 ounce of excitement about it at all. I'm really not sure why either. It might be due to my general lethargicness that I have feeling at the moment and also because it's in Citywest. I really dislike that place for oh so many reasons but on plus side I am staying there so annoying taxi journeys home. I am just looking to get through it, hopefully it goes by quickly and also hopefully being forced to be awake at certain time will ensure my body clock is forced into a more normal sleep pattern so when it's over I can look forward to April and put in some proper time and run more like I did in February!

Tiredness and some rare live action

I took a break just like I planned after unibet bonus. I intended on playing on Monday but didn't and the reason is something which is bothering me more and more and that is my inability to sleep. My bodyclock seems to naturally want to deviate towards going to bed at 10am and waking up at 6pm and I feel like I am in a constant battle against it. I don't mind it for a bit but after a while it gets to me. I don't know but there is just something depressing about waking up when it's already dark. In contrast after a good night sleep and waking up in the morning you tend to feel great. This also co-incides with me playing really well when I load up a few tables. I have really tried to go asleep a bit earlier, when I say earlier I mean like around 6am but I just can't do it. My usually remedy for this is to stay up 30 hours, collapse into bed at 10pm and have a big sleep. Following that I start the inevitable drift back towards non daylightness. Some people suggest sleeping tablets but I have issues with any sort of tablet or medicine, not a phobia but I just don't like taking anything unless I have to. I always like to let my immune system fix me when ill etc. Anyway hopefully it resolves itself and I can have reasonable sleep pattern which facilitates everything.

I took part in DCU student masters. Here is boards.ie thread for it
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=55325290

120 odd people took part in it. They had a pretty nice setup for it. The venue is a really good place to hold a tournament like that of that size. The dealers were actually good, I had a big concern going on about that but was proved wrong. Structure was decent early but turned into a crapshoot pretty quickly, I felt too quick but I always think that I suppose. My first table was the definition of perfect. I had an donktastic french guy to my right and 3 really tight players to my left. By the time the table broke up I manage to triple my stack mainly thanks to the french guy, I wish the table had never broken. In saying that my other table wasn't exactly bad either. In general play throughout was very very tight. Unfortunately for me the bubble was non existant, it lasted about 20 seconds and we didn't even play a hand for it. I could have stolen so many chips at that point. I got lucky a few times as is mentioned in that thread and got to final table on day 2 with an reasonable stack.

I felt pretty confident going into final table but within reason, ultimately skill wasn't going to play much of a factor, just a who is running well contest. The tightness continues and I stole a few pots early on but hour in I had pivotal hand. Guy raised all in for 2nd hand in a row. The first time he did it is worth a mention. Just as I was about to look at my cards I noticed at corner of my eye that he had stood up and was quietly calling his mate over, not verbally but waving his arm in that motion. I remember thinking looking down I hope I don't see a good but not great hand and of course I see 88. I thought for minute but my read was he was super confident and ended up folding. It was for about half of my stack. I would have had about 9-10bb if I call and lost. So on to this hand, his demeanor is very different, he stayed sitting down and pulled his cap down and generally looked uncomfortable. This time I look down and see 66 but feel I am racing nearly always and maybe occasionally be in a better spot. This, combined with the fact that it got announced blinds were going up next hand made me decide to go for it. Straight away, guy behind me insta pushes all in and I assume I am crushed and are dead to 2 outs. The original raiser turns over A9s, other guy turns over AJs. I was pretty shocked by how weak his hand was considering how confidently he pushed. Naturally though I was delighted with situation all things considered. Flop was 522 which was a lovely flop, turn was the Q of hearts giving AJ the nut flush draw and the river was 5 of hearts giving him the nut flush and decimating my stack. If I won that I would have had about 150k and being chip leader and would have felt really confident about taking it down.

I then went into push bot mode with 6 bb. I pushed 3 times in row, once it got folded, another with AK and split with another AK and final time with K3 which got called by 99. The flop was K3x but river was a nine so justice was served in end. My final hand I had 1bb and my A6 was no match for A8 and I was gone in 8th.

Boyle said they would add $200 to each of our accounts which is nice. I got €153 for 8th so made about 300 euro. I am happy enough with how I played final table. 88 hand is main disputable hand I think but overall no complaints.

Not going to play tonight, again tiredness, not feeling in mood. I will see how I feel tomorrow.
I got HM hud set up on mini view so I may try 6 tabling 200nl and see how I can handle it

Looking back and forward

So quick review of February. It was a really good month for me results wise. I completed the 2k bonus this evening and overall post a very healthy profit for the month. I would post up some stats and graphs but checkyourbets, pokertracker, holdem manager and Poker grapher all display 4 different totals which is funny. The reasons for this are 1) None of them really like the fact I am playing in euros. They were not designed with more then 1 currency in mind which is pretty poor imo and 2) I had issues with prima not writing HH properly so not every hand I played got imported. I do know I made over €7k anyway which is a very healthy profit so considering I was nowhere with the bonus on the 10th and happy to just make 2k in profit from the bonus itself, the final 19 days were an outstanding success.

I am going to take break for a day or 2 as need a rest after playing constantly for the last 19 days. I am hoping to read up more, I neglected theory quite a bit in Feb. I also signed up for a yearly membership for Leggopoker after hearing some pretty glowing reviews and they do have an impressive cast of winners. I hear in particular that Aejones vids are amazing.
I have also decided to go back to Green Joker not carlos and I am going to start to play 400nl. I am well rolled for it and I am going to try to make it my regular game but if action is slow then I am more then happy to play 200nl as well, I think this is the best way to move up, I can gradually adjust to it. If I can start to beat that for a good rate over a good amount of hands then I can really start looking at making a lot of money and maybe work on an idea I have in my head of what I want to do in the 2nd half of the year.

There is a thread on boards about a trip to Vegas. I am thinking of maybe heading over. Seems getting a bunch of us to rent a house works out pretty cheap. I have been to the US twice but they were on J1 visas so both times working holidays, it would be good to have a relaxing non working trip and also I would be in Vegas! Anyway just an idea now but who knows