Not the best week..

I would love to talk about huge scores I’ve made the past week. Unfortunately it was a rather bad week. I’m not going to complain about my bad luck, because I know nobody likes to read whiny nonsense. The week hasn’t been the most productive one, I haven’t met most of my goals and I was having doubts if this is want I want to do for the next months.

After finishing my blogpost on Sunday, I was motivated to start the session. From the beginning I got real unlucky to the point where my mood got affected. In the last few tournaments, I played some terrible poker. The chances of winning serious money were really slim at that point. I was glad when the session was over. Losing money was less disappointing than playing bad.

I thought “Shit happens” so let’s work hard on getting in the right state of mind to grind again on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Tuesday morning my new 27” monitor arrived - a graduation present – so I was real excited to hit the tables. Again the session started off poorly, and lost my motivation pretty quickly. It took a few hours to quit the session.

While playing out my tournaments, I spend the time watching a pokerfriend playing cashgames. Although cashgames aren’t my thing, it was real interesting. The moneyswings were pretty big compared to mine, which made it more exciting.

What the hell, let’s play some cashgames! That’s what I thought that night. Considering my losses from the previous sessions, I didn’t want to lose too much, so I played real low stakes. If it wasn’t clear to you already, I’m not big on taking risks!

It was pretty fun to play these cashgames. Although I suck at them, the change of pace was nice.

When I was talking to a pokerfriend on Skype about my frustrations, he told me that I should reconsider my future if I have trouble dealing with the variance already. He’s absolutely correct; there is absolutely no reason to be frustrated already. Besides, I really want to be successful in poker, so I can’t let these things affect me. The only things I can do are working hard and staying positive. Realizing this gives me some peace of mind.

Since the tournaments weren’t good to me I decided to try something different on Wednesday and Thursday. Some people I met through poker advised me to start playing more Turbo SNGs. These can flatten out my variance a bit, which is nice when the money swings in tournaments are pretty big. I played a dozen of them, it was pretty fun. I’m not sure yet if I’ll keep playing them, I try adding them to my schedule. Watching a poker instructional video really helped my game in these.

Results

After a terrible Sunday, I grinded back a part of the losses in cashgames and SNG’s, therefore I’m down a little over the week. Like I explained, I didn’t put in the volume I had planned. I’m actually quite embarrassed about my results and levels of buyins, but playing a bit lower when playing a new format (SNG’s) and feeling unconfident made sure I didn’t lose a lot of money.

Other stuff

After enjoying a band called Graffiti6 on the festival Pinkpop, me and my girlfriend decided to buy tickets to their concert at Paradiso in Amsterdam, real exciting! Unfortunately we have to wait a few months, because the concert is in October. Considering I live in Amsterdam, it’s pretty stupid I never go to these cool concerts, it’s so much fun! When we checked out the concert agenda, we noticed all the interesting concerts are sold out for the next months.

My favorite song by Graffiti6.

Other than my poker activities, I haven’t done much this past week. Tonight (Friday) and tomorrow I have some social plans. Sitting at home most of the time is pretty dull, so I’m excited to hang out with my friends and do fun stuff with my girlfriend. The isolation aspect of playing online poker is the biggest disadvantage in my opinion, hopefully I’ll get used to it a bit more.

A few days ago, I started listening to some self-help audio Cd’s about motivation. I’ve listened to these a few weeks ago and got really inspired. It had the same effect on me when I listened to them for the second time.

These CD’s are a great way to see the big picture and focus on your goals. The author (Brian Tracy) has written many books, so I’ll have to check out a few more.

What have I learned?

Playing a lot of poker can be really draining when it’s not going well. The days are often long and it’s rather isolating. These are aspects I knew beforehand, so there is no reason to complain about it now. The positive thing about a week like this is that it makes me more motivated to do better. In order to be more productive next week, there are a few things I plan to do differently. First of all, I’m not going to post in any forums, unless it is about pokerstrategy. Second I’m going to concentrate on playing every hand the best way possible. Even if I lose every hand, I’m only going to focus on playing optimally and learning. If I keep putting in hours and try to get better, I’ll get big results eventually.

Just typing these words gets me motivated to play again and work hard.

Goals

Last week

- Grind a full schedule on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Huge fail

- Hit the gym every day accomplished

- Watch at least two pokertrainingvideos and make notes I did this as well, however I did this at times I should have been playing, so I’m not too happy about reaching this goal.

- Write in my diary before each session I didn’t do this before the Sunday session and it showed. I wasn’t as focused as lately.

- Start including tournaments on Party Poker in my schedule. Those are real soft and the fields are way smaller compared to PokerStars. Accomplished! I deposited $200 and played a $22, a $11 and a smaller one. They are really soft, the structure is great. I have to get used to the software however.

- Update my blog on Friday! Failed. I finished 80% of the post, but should have planned my time better.

The fact that it was a bad week and I haven’t met any of my goals isn’t a coincidence. Being productive and reaching daily goals generates endorphins, the happy drug. These endorphins will stimulate you to work even harder and feel better about yourself.

Next week

Since I’ve been slacking a bit, I’m going to really concentrate on being disciplined.

Unfortunately I can’t grind a full schedule next week, because of some obligations like getting my diploma and dinner plans.

- Hit the gym every day.

- Grind a full schedule on Sunday and half schedules on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I’ll probably grind some SNG’s on some of these days.

- Write in my diary before every session.

- Update my blog on Saturday (because it’s not a regular week).

- Finish my book (Sex Blogs and Rock n Roll). Cool Dutch book about the life of a young blogger.

- I would like to write short articles about poker and add these to my blog in the future, In my next blogpost, I’ll post concrete plans for this.

- I would like to look back at a real productive week in which I worked hard and improved.

- Only post on poker forums about strategy or my blog, don’t waste time posting in the sports section for instance.

Bankroll

After a bad session on Sunday in which I lost ~$250, I won some back playing rather sort sessions of low stakes cashgames and SNG’s.

PokerStars: $3 641

Party: $175 (deposited $210)

On Monday I will cashout most of the money on PokerStars. I will leave ~$1K. I like to have as little money possible on the pokersites given all the shit that has happened in the last months. However this money will be reserved and still be counted as a part of the bankroll.

Cheers, hope everybody has a great week!

PS. Would love some feedback, so comments are much appreciated.

Grinding and working hard

First of all my apologies for the fact that it took a few days longer to update this blog. Last Friday I threw a graduation party which took a lot of time to organize. Yesterday (Saturday) was busy as well so I decided to update today. I’ll extra try hard to update each Friday from now on.

Last week was the first week in which I grinded a full schedule, exactly the way I planned. I’ve met all my goals, but feel a bit discouraged. I’ve played full sessions on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. At the end of all these sessions I’ve lost a total of one (!) dollar. Every session I played, I broke about even. Only once I was close to a decent score, but got tenth (first place was $1.8K). I sold some percentages in the larger buyin tournaments I played and think the buyers lost some money.

The fact that I was disciplined makes me feel satisfied, but it sucks to work hard and have nothing to show for it. Of course it could have been worse result wise; I could have lost a lot. Although I broke even, I feel like I learned a lot. In order to improve, I did a reviewsession with a pokerbuddy of mine. He’s definitely a bit better than me, what makes it an awesome way to work on improving my game. The specific spots we spoke about come up often in each session, so it was extremely productive.

Looking back on my first week of full time poker, it feels pretty weird to be obligated to grind long sessions of poker four times a week. I was real curious if I would like it as much as I thought I would. It is definitely harder than expected, especially when the results aren’t there. I’m not complaining though, it feels great to have freedom and no obligations, except for playing poker. I still feel I have what it takes to succeed. It is important to stay real positive and focus on getting better.

The thing I’m most proud about is that bad sessions and annoying beats don’t affect my mood like they used to. In the past I got real pessimistic after a few beats and started complaining. I’m not saying that bad luck doesn’t affect me anymore, but I’ve gotten a lot better at it. It is possible I get more negative if I’m on a big downswing, but I’m definitely improving. Hopefully I can reach the point where I develop an attitude in which I stay positive no matter how bad I run.

Results

Like I said, I broke even last week. I got tenth in a $5 tournament on Pokerstars with 2k+ entrants. It was real unfortunate I got tenth, especially because I had a real healthy stack when there were 14 players left. It didn’t help me that the only decent players left in the field, were really lucky and built huge stacks. I got in a few difficult spots, in which I still don’t know if I made the correct decision. When we were 10-handed, I reshoved A9 for ~18 bb’s against the real aggressive chipleader, whom was one of the good players left in the field. He snapcalled with AQ and it held.

This deep run helped me a lot, because I discussed a lot of spots with a friend of mine whom was railing me via Skype. He plays a total different game from mine but has gotten huge results in the last few months. It was real interesting to hear his point of view on many difficult spots.

Other than this tourney, I had many big stacks in the money, but wasn’t able to get anything going after that. I’ll try to review some of these tourneys. Maybe I made some mistakes, but I think I played pretty decent.

Results this week:

Graduation Party!

So I decided to throw a graduation party last Friday, it was great fun. The party was at my house, so I had to do a lot of preparation. At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to throw a party, because I wasn’t real proud about the fact that it took me such a long time to finish my studies. However, I did work hard the final year and my girlfriend advised me throw a party, so I did.

Of course a few people asked what I’m going to do now. Most friends know I’ll be playing poker full time for the next few months, but it’s still a bit hard to tell that to someone who knows very little about the game. I’m sure most pokerplayers exactly know what I’m talking about. Hopefully I can get some solid results in the next few months. Those will definitely make it a little easier to explain people what I’m doing at the moment.

Next week

I look forward to next week. I learned a lot last week, and know what to expect mentally.

The most important thing about the upcoming week, is the fact that I want stay disciplined. I’m going to grind the full schedule on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I’m also playing an evening-schedule today (Sunday).

In order to improve, I’m also going to put in more time to work on my game. Hopefully I can do another session of handhistory reviewing with the same pokerbuddy as last time. I also intend to watch pokertrainingvideos from Bfizz11, an excellent player. His videos are great and I really look up to him because of his discipline and attitude.

I noticed at the end of sessions that I don’t value my tournament-live as I should. I realize this now and intend to improve in this area. So I’ll try to play every tournament like it is the late stage of the Sunday Million.

Goals

Last week

- Grind MTT’s on Saturday (today), Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. à Achieved

- Analyze my game on Monday à Achieved

- Hit the gym every day à I skipped Friday, but got some exercise

- Write in my diary before every single session à Achieved, really helps my attitude!

- Always keep a positive attitude à Went real well, but can improve even more in this area.

Next week

- Grind a full schedule on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

- Hit the gym every day

- Watch at least two pokertrainingvideos and make notes

- Write in my diary before each session

- Start including tournaments on Party Poker in my schedule. Those are real soft and the fields are way smaller compared to PokerStars.

- Update my blog on Friday!

Bankroll

After four sessions I lost a total of $1. The guys that bought percentages of me this week lost a little. My current bankroll is $3 720. Let’s try to double this!

I would love some feedback about my blog. For instance, do you guys feel I write too little of too much about poker strategy? Would you guys enjoy reading more details about myself? You can leave a comment or contact me through twoplustwo, pokernews.nl or pocketfives (all UglyNakedGuy).

Cheers!

Slacking already

Last week hasn’t been the most productive one. I planned to start my “full time poker schedule,” but decided to go to a great festival called Pinkpop. It was really awesome. We (me and girlfriend) had a great time. Unfortunately we had to travel ~3.5 hours each way to get there so we got home at about 03.00. It was really tiring. Because of the huge hangover, I decided to play a light schedule.

Kings of Leon @ Pinkpop

I played short sessions of turbo SNG’s which didn’t go well. I feel like I play them fine, but ran pretty bad, especially near the end.

Big Session

Friday (June 10th), before the festival, I had a very nice session in which I got a few solid results. I made a couple of final tables and won a $4,50/180man. I felt I was in the right flow. Of course it helps to run good, but I made lots of plays that worked out nicely. The last final table I made ($10 rebuy), was the biggest FT. I got 5th and was pretty happy with it. Of course it sucks to get 5^th for 1.4k, when 1^st is ~$5k, but I was pretty short. I was unable to get anything going, every raise got 3b and every c-bet got flatted, it was pretty annoying. I feel I was a little impatient and didn’t play optimally near the end. When we were 5-handed, I was the shortest stack by far, so planned to play really aggressively. I lost a 28bb flip, which sucked a bit. It was a great day though, so I was happy.

I also FT’d a $4 4max tourney which I love. I was a massive chipleader during the last few tables, but ran bad near the end. I busted in a 50bb pot in which I cold-4bet-shoved AK and got called by AJ, pretty disappointing. I ended up in 4^th place.

The other two FT’s I made, went fine. I won a $4,50/180 which is always a nice way to freeroll the rest of the tourney’s. A got 4^th in a $8 500 CAP. There was an extremely aggressive player to my direct left, so I couldn’t do much.

Cashes:

A nice +$1400 day (I sold 40% of the $10r because of my big cashout). Real solid considering the amount I invested in this session.

Mediocre Session

Last Thursday I played another MTT session. From the start I ran pretty bad. I started playing a little worse near the end. I did get nice stacks in two of the biggest tourneys I played (10r and 8r). Just in the money, I made a few plays that didn’t work out and couldn’t grind up. I broke about even for the session, so I can’t be unhappy about that, given the fact that I ran pretty bad.

Cashes:

Next week

Although last week was real fun, I’m a little pissed off about my lack of discipline. I was really looking forward to grinding and improving, which I didn’t really do. Realizing I slacked a bit makes me more motivated to work hard next week. This weekend I’ll spend grinding. I’ll hit the gym every day and have a review-session planned with a poker friend of mine. He is a little better than I am, but I think we’ll both benefit from it.

The thing I’m most disappointed about is that I got negative and frustrated near the end of the mediocre session. A new goal of mine is to always keep a positive attitude. There will be many horrible sessions in the future, so if I can’t deal with it, I shouldn’t even bother. Even if I brick every single tournament next week, I want to stay positive and think about ways to improve.

Goals for next week

- Grind MTT’s on Saturday (today), Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.

- Analyze my game on Monday

- Hit the gym every day

- Write in my diary before every single session

- Always keep a positive attitude

Bankroll

After the +1400 session, I lost a little in the next session playing turbos. Current bankroll: $3 721

Questions/Comments

If anybody has any tips or questions about me or my blog, please leave a comment or send me a PM on 2P2 (UglyNakedGuy).

Graduated! The start of the Journey

After a year of hard work, I finished my studies (Sportsmarketing) and it feels great! I looked forward to this moment for quite a while. It took a long time to finish my last assignment, way longer than I expected but it’s oke. My final year

was by far my best year, so I’m real proud. I haven’t done much lately, other than focusing on my final assignment. I played about 2 sessions of poker in the last three weeks, but nothing special happened.

I did listen to a lot of “self-help” audiobooks. Some of them were fantastic; I learned a lot of helpful stuff about achieving success and happiness in life.

Start

This Sunday will be my first session playing “full time poker.” I’ve decided to grind poker 4 days a week, mostly in the afternoon. This way, I can still go to sleep at a proper time and have breakfast with my girlfriend. I find it really important to create a solid weekly routine. My schedule will look like this:

Days of playing poker: Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I will register from 12.00 until 17.45. These will be rather long days, but I like this schedule and don’t want to miss the Ante Up at 17.45.

During the rest of the week, I will be doing things around the house, meeting with friends, spending day with my girlfriend, going to the gym and working on self-development. I also intend to work on my pokergame in during these days.

I’m very excited to see how this schedule will work out. If anybody has tips or comments, please let me know!

Money

About 6 weeks ago, I withdrew about 5.5K from my Stars account. I was a bit worried after Black Friday, so liked to have the money on Neteller instead of Stars. I still have about 2.5K on Stars.

Given the fact that I don’t have an income, I consider using that 5.5K as a backup for when I run out of life-money. I have a bit of money saved up and am expecting a serious chunk because of my graduation, but that can take a while. Therefore, I intend to play with the remaining 2.5K until I get my graduation-money. This means I’d have to move down a bit, which is unfortunate. However it seems to be the smartest thing to do. I don’t like to worry about money in the near future and don’t mind that much to play a little lower. It would be nice to start off well, so I can move up quickly.

With 2.5K it seems best to play everything between $5 and $22. I might sell off some action to play 10r/8r/33fo’s.

Excited

For about a year, I’ve looked forward to this moment. It is real excited to start playing poker full time. There are a lot of pitfalls in playing a lot of poker, but I feel I’ve taken them all in consideration. It would suck if it doesn’t work out, but at least I’ve given a hundred percent. The key is to stay positive and don’t let the beats affect me.

I’m also excited about the challenge. I look forward to improving every week, reaching goals and setting new ones.

Development

In order to keep improving I will create a poker-developmentplan. The goal is to undertake the maximum in order to reach my full potential. For instance, I will watch an instructional video for each session intensively and take notes.

This plan will be written this week. I’m not sure if I’ll post it here, I might post pieces.

Every Friday

My goal is to update my blog every Friday. This seems like the best day, because I play on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. I will reflect on the past sessions and write about my journey.

Hope this blog is a good read, let me know what you think! You can follow me on Stars (SlMSALABlM).

First Sessions!

It’s been about a month since my last blog. The most important reason I didn’t write an entry, is that I’ve been real busy with the last few assignments for my studies. The weather is also great over here, which is real uncommon this time of the year. Therefore I wanted to spend some time in the park and on the beach with friends and girlfriend.

Studies

At the time I’m working on my final assignment, which is an assignment where I reflect on the progression I’ve made throughout my studies. It’s rather interesting to see my progression in the last few years.

I expect to present this assignment in about two weeks. After that, I’m finished and can do what I want!

Routine

The last few weeks I built a good routine which consists of working out, working on assignments for my studies and doing fun things with my friends and girlfriend in the evening. In order to be more effective, I think it’s important to develop a good routine. When I’m going to start playing poker full time, having a solid schedule will be one of my key goals.

Poker

Because of the SCOOP on PokerStars, I decided to leave my hiatus and start playing some tournaments. I grinded a decent MTT schedule on Monday. There was a SCOOP 6max rebuy, which is a format that I love. I also played lots of small stakes tournaments, all on Stars.

It was great fun to play again. Luckily I was not rusty at all, and ran good. I took down a small $8 tournament for about $800. I also went real deep in the Badugi event in which I got 22^nd (out of 2k runners).

It was rather funny that I got deep in the Badugi tournament because I had never played the game. I have played a lot of 2/7 TD Lowball, which has some similarities to Badugi. I also rember listening to a podcast on Deuce Plays, saying you should play tight in Badugi, so I did. After I few hours I really started to understand the game, which made it real fun. In the later stages it got more aggressive and shorter handed, so I got in a few marginal spots and ran bad.

At the end of the session at 06:00(!) I was real excited with the result. I won about $1K in my fist session and only invested $150 tops. I felt like I played near the top of my abilities.

The day I looked forward to: Ante Up!

Yesterday was the day I looked forward to for about a half a year. The coolest SCOOP event took place: Ante Up! I really love this format. Every session I used to play, I HAD to play the daily $5,50 Ante Up tournament. I love the format and the fact that nobody has a proper strategy. I don’t want to brag, but I built a good portion of my roll playing the $5 Ante Up. I think I’ve taken top3 about 15 times.

In Ante Up only the antes go up every level, the blinds don’t. So you have to limp a lot of pots and play all sorts of weird multiway pots.

I sold some action to play the $162 medium SCOOP. I was real excited to play good players and see how they would adjust to the format. I started off slow, but at the middle stages of the tournament it went great. I felt like players weren’t adjusting well to the format and kept folding. Near the bubble everything went sour. I lost rather big pot where I got a real unlucky river in a HU pot where I rivered a set and the villain a backdoor flush. Then a few hands before the bubble, I lost 99% of my chips in a hand where we both flopped trips in a single raised, HU pot on TT5. I think he had no business being in the hand (I iso-raised large from late pos, he limpcalled oop with T8. Stacks were rather shallow).

In the low version I got coolered with AQ – AK in a spot where I had to shove pre because of the dead money.

I got stacks in a lot of other tourneys in which I played. Unfortunately, I couldn’t break though and make a final table.

Although I hadn’t played in such a long time, I felt like I played better than ever. I know that sounds weird, but I think it’s because I listened to a lot of poker podcasts about strategy and posted a lot on the forums during my internship.

What to expect

Next time more about what my exact approach will be in becoming the best poker player I can be. I hope it’s fun to read this blog. I you have any suggestions or comments, please leave a comment! I will update my personal information in the near future as well, so you'll know more about me!

A new beginning

Hi everybody, welcome to my blog!

This is the first of hopefully many entries. In this blog I’ll upload at least weekly about my progress in poker. Most pokerblogs are from successful professional pokerplayers, which I’m definitely not. However, I hope this blog will be an interesting read and possibly inspire some people.

In a few weeks, I’ll finish my studies. After that, I’ll start playing poker exclusively, at least for a few months. I’ll be playing mostly low stakes MTT’s. In this blog, I’m going to post weekly updates about my progress. I feel that I can “make it” in poker with a lot of hard work and a bit of luck. My life will be fully devoted to perform optimally at the virtual tables. There are a few reasons I’m going to start blogging, but I’ll get to those later. First, a short intro about myself!

About 4 years ago, I started playing a little bit of poker with friends. At first, it was just for the entertainment, but rather quickly, I was really fascinated and wanted to improve. To this point, I’ve played almost all games in poker as a “main game.” I’ve played NLHM cash, PLO cash, mixed games, sit and go’s and tourneys. It took me a while to figure out that MTT’s are best for me. I simply enjoy them most. Also, I feel my MTT is (by far) my best game at the moment. Therefore, I’ll be playing mostly MTT’s.

I have a few goals, but you can read those in my next entry.

I’m not that active in the forums, but will start posting on 2p2 (UglyNakedGuy). I was lurking 2p2 for quite a while, but will try to post a little more regularly.

Some personal information: I’m 24 years old, love playing/watching soccer, traveling, watching movies and hanging out with friends and girlfriend. Around November ‘11 I’ll probably be backpacking through Australia for about 2 months, so looking forward to that! Off course this is only a smidge of information about me, but I don’t want to bore everybody.

What can you expect from this blog? Well first of all, you get to follow my progress in becoming a better pokerplayer. I will talk about my ups and downs on playing poker professionally in low stakes tournaments.

I’ll also post some strategy and handhistories, but not too many.

I know everybody likes numbers, so I’ll update my financial progression as well. I have a nice bankroll to play lowstakes MTT’s, so there is no fear of going busto any time soon. I’ll be playing MTT’s ranging from $5 - $33 and sometimes higher. I also like to play the MTT SNGs, such as the non-turbo 180s on stars.

PS. My apologies for the typo’s! English is not my fist language.