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.