A week "off" for good behaviour

With lectures starting again i've put in just under 700 sngs in the last 7 days which leaves me behind supernova pace. Not the best start but i've enjoyed doing other things. Can't get enough of playing snooker at the moment and my games really improving...if only i could say that about other aspects of my life. Hartlepool are doing the polar opposite of what they did in December. I can't help but feel they are suffering from the manager of the month syndrome. Going to see Hartlepool - Notts County tomorrow so fingers crossed.

 

Here's my graph so far this year. All in all, pretty disappointing. I had a crack at 6.50 45 mans and the right hand side of the graph shows just how well that went, so i'm back at the 3.40 level grinding VPPs. Just got over 6k so should make platinum with a little bit more play. I had another disappointing Sunday; I struggle to remember a successful one. I bubbled a sunday mil sat and lost hand after hand. My favourite had to be a sunday mil sat where my aq<a4 + a4 aipf. It's the worst kind of 2 outer. On a positive note, i shipped the first Poker society tourney of the term so i'm well on my way to defending the epiphany bracelet.

This week i've been playing with the chatbox up rather than info and if i see another person write jokerstars in the chatbox i'm gonna flip. Does anyone really think Pokerstars is rigged? I have, however, enjoyed all the "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"ers. Yeh i'm not the quickest to act at the table, that's because i'm on 34 other tables watching j7 cracking my aces. I'll endeavor to act that bit slower if anyone complains :)

Right! More volume!

Clawing it back

What a difference a week makes. With the br at $50 i got some staking from a friend for $150. From there i've got the br up to $440, having paid my backer $300 back.



Disappointed not to have made any leaderboards but you can't have it all. I'm back in Durham now and other than poker i've been playing snooker and watched Hartlepool get dismally beaten this afternoon at home to Dagenham and Redbridge. It's put a downer on things but at least I can rely on myself a little bit more than my football team. Lectures start Monday, my mental state after next week will be questionable...

The worst player ever is...me

...Apparently. The worst week of my life on Stars. I've played my normal game, the same one that won me over 200 dollars in one session last week and now I can hardly put in a profitable session. I've kept up easily with the demands of making Supernova in terms of vpps, 2223 from 6 days but if i can't keep a bankroll together then that's not much good. Like so many things in life it's a marathon and not a sprint.

I could moan for hours about how i've run and already have done. Naturally when you put a ton of volume in (over 1000 sngs) you're going to lose in some sick spots, but i'm losing the same sick spots over and over again. I've been two and three outed more times than i care to remember. The main reason for my downswing is my inability to move up the money ladders in the 18 mans. I get into the money and crash out in 3rd or 4th. It's vital to be winning or at least finish 2nd enough to make profit and whether I have the best hand or not I just can't do that

My 3.40 stats:

Played 862

1st: 49

2nd:37

3rd:52

4th:69

5th:59

6th:57

7th:62

All of which means i'm down $340 or 100 buy ins and i'm pretty down. It's too easy to blame your luck and ignore the leaks in your game, but i'm pretty realistic about what i'm doing right or wrong. I have tweaked my game a little bit in the last few days and I started to see an improvement until a very nasty set today where i bubbled as much as i finished in the money. On the bubble or in the money i lost kq to kq, aj to aj, ak to ak, 55 to 22 and 88 to 66, not to mention pretty much every race. I've put my faith in volume and the variance evening out but that hasn't happened and now i'm left with 20 buy ins. 

So it remains for me to put my faith and money into micro stakes MTTs. They're where i've always made the majority of my money and if i can land it big in the next few weeks then I can start to look at sngs again, though perhaps not 18 mans. If not then i'll have to redeposit and start all over again.

As an aside I don't expect to run much better in the MTTs, I lost qq to 99 for 30k in the 4.40 turbo on sunday whilst simultaneously losing aa to kk for 12k in the 1/4 mil. But it's ok, because I was going to qualify for UKIPT Nottingham...O wait no my a3 has to lose to 10 9 on a a66 board. I wish I didn't have to be so bitter about my luck right now but when you can't win a hand, there's just nothing else left...

The grass is greener on the better side of variance

What a run good day it's been today. Woke up at half 1, had some lasagne and settled into a 3 and a half hour stars session. I started out with the aim of putting in some serious volume but I ended up chasing profit instead. I can't remember ever running so good in my life, apart from maybe the days where i could actually run quite fast or quite far. Before my final session i'd logged 61 3.40 18 mans for $229 profit...INSANE. Got a 474 points score which will have me on the low orbit leaderboard for the mars level and now i can chase 1500+ for high orbit. Had a $3 down session at the end but i'll just enjoy the 88 fpps :)

I have been thinking about a way in which to treat poker as more like a job in 2011 with the possibility of assigning myself a wage and thus cashing out a certain amount each month. Just like a job I could reward myself for good performance/high volume which is slightly akin to an article written by Jennifear arguing that cashing out based on volume can be more rewarding. Obviously it's not much different to cashing out when the br reaches a certain level but it guarantees regular cash outs and the br will continue to swell if results are good,

I'm now going to treat myself to a bit of live action down at Big Slick so here's to hoping the run good continues.

2010 review + 2011

So 2010 is all but at an end. Maybe not everything i expected it to be but i can take a lot of positives out of it and look ahead to a challenging but hopefully enjoyable 2011. The main purpose of the blog is for me to chart my progress as i go for supernova status on Pokerstars but also to give me somewhere to spout random thoughts and get out all the frustrations that sit and go grinding can bring.

On the poker side of life i've had a very frustrating year. I feel like i should have achieved so much more and i've probably come out just on the wrong side of variance. I have however posted my most consistent year in terms of play and i think my results have proved that. Having lost the Pokerstars account on which i first played (under my Dad's name) in June, I had to start all over again as Ukanttouchme. Having my year broken up on two accounts i've never really looked back at my year and assessed how it went as a whole, that is until now. Using Pokerprolabs i've compiled the following stats:

All time profit: $13416.26
2010 Profit: $10145.92

For the hours i've put in I have to be very pleased with my 2010. Since I've been at Durham my game has come on leaps and bounds and, even though I haven't been able to get the 5k+ score i achieved in November 08 and have been searching for ever since, i've made enough deep runs in MTTs to make me think that it can't be too far away.

So what do I want to achieve in 2011?

1. At least a 2:2 in end of year exams
2. $10k+ profit on Pokerstars
3. Supernova status by start of October
4. Under 3:40 in London Marathon

Gonna be a challenging year but it's got to a point in my life where I can really do something positive and set myself up in good stead for the rest of my life so here goes!