It's a wrap

It's a wrap people. I just finished I think my worst month ever, I am however still in the green for the month due to 1/2 hu and one 3/6 session. I think I also made about 1kish off of bonusses.
I think I went through periods of suboptimal play and I noticed at times that the down got to me and made me play weaker in some spots.
However it's time like these that challenge your game and challenge you to think harder about it.
When I decided to start playing professionally I knew that a month like this could happen and so I was pre-prepared mentally.
I should add that I also won 3420$ in tournament buy-ins as I posted in an earlier entry which adds to the positives.
I'm gonna go post a couple of hands from my last session now and then probably go and watch the champions league semi-final Chelsea v Liverpool.

Omaha and studies

I've been studying a lot lately, because I have a lot of important exams. I had one yesterday which I think went ok for the time invested, but by far from great.
I started learning too late for it and that hurt my results.
Now I have to study for accounting one of my least favourite subjects for sure, but what can you do. I won't be specializing in it so it's just a basic course that needs to be done.

Poker has been ok over the last couple of sessions. I have been winning again and I think I'm break even at 2/4 and up on the month, because I'm up on 3/6.
Party Poker released a not so satisfying update to their VIP system yesterday.
I think it has some merits, but it is very volume-binding and I don't like this idea.
It's almost like your working a real job with 50% weekly goals that need to be achieved and so on.

I recently purchased a pretty good Omaha book called Pot-limit Omaha Poker, by Jeff Hwang. Here is the link to it:
This guy has also written articles for Motley Fool, the online investing guide and seems to be competent. I definetly find the book informative and it's just at the right level of difficulty for a NL player transitioning to PLO (ie not too simple, but not too advanced either).
Def worth checking out imo.

I've been having some problems with booking my flight to Vegas, I'm trying to reach the agency I booked over and see if everything has been processed and I hope it has been otherwise I may have to deal with extra costs.
I'm actually flying over London for about 600€, because the flights from Austria/Munich were 1.2k+ which I thought was ludacris. Yes, for you americans thats like 1.8k dollars. Anyway pretty sick.

Month is almost over and I think I'll post a summary of how things have been going down tomorrow.

TexasTournamentKing

I guess I just run good in crap shoot donkaments. I just qualified for the ECOOP II (European Championships of Online Poker II) through my titan VIP status and a special tournament. I won about 3400$ in tournament buy ins for the ECOOP II. There are some pretty sweet guarantees and I'm pretty excited to be freerolling on them.
Here is the entire listing for the series: http://titanpoker.com/ecoop_may_2008.html .

As for cash, things still aren't going my way and I'm now break even over 22k hands, but there are others I know that are running worse this month which is comforting (not because they are running worse, but because I know they are good players too so tough times just come and go).

RoR

For all of you that don't know what RoR means, it stands for risk of ruin. I've been thinking about bankroll management and this as of late. Now many people have a lot of different opinons on this and I agree that it is totally dependant on your situation, how conservative you plan to be with your bankroll or not.
As an economics student that plays for a living, I need to take several factors into consideration. For one if you play with a 40-50 buy-in bankroll, how will you deal with larger downswings, financially and mentally? I feel really complacent with my lifestyle right now and even though I'm in a pretty good position, it's not pleasant to have a month where I lose say 25% of my bankroll. I also think the fact that we lost x amount of our bankroll can impact our game, but more importantly our every day life.
Something interesting Raptor said about this in his blog was that being a poker player at higher stakes isn't healthy and that with a lot of the dollar swings comes a lot of stress, even if you are capable of dealing with it well, it has an impact on your life expectation.
Some things I should add are that I don't think you should have 100 buy ins actually online in your poker account, but say 50% of that in a high earning savings account, which is easily accesible, ie you could quickly wire more money from it to an online account and the other 50% online across say NT, MB, FTP, PTY etc.
Also I'm not gonna strictly not take shots at higher games when I have between 50 and 100 buy-ins, but I won't consider myself a regular at those stakes untill I have reached the 100 buy in or close to it mark.
Just my 2 cents on managing your bankroll as a professional player.

cntgetmedown

Down

I just hit another big downswing. 10 buy ins. Today I took some time off went running ate some good food and them came back to play again and that really helped with focus and tilt, but I'm still not winning. I've been going over my big losing pots and I think 90% of them are very standard spots.
I don't think a reg has showed me anything else than AK, AA or KK over my last 7k hands in a preflop allin or postflop rr pot.
All I can do is focus review hands and play it cool till variance swings around again.
I'm up only slightly on the month due to a successful shot @ 3/6 and some 1/2 hu winnings. But I will definetly grind it out on 2/4 for now and hope to hit some more 3/6 at the beginning of next month.

I'm a grinder

I just played 4k hands on Party Poker, because I was clearing a promotion where you get 5 rake free days plus the chance to win even more in a VIP freeroll.
I think I played pretty well with one questionable spot that Vbizzle was kind enough to point out, where I had JJ utg and got reraised by a tight player without history.
I called pf and felted a low flop. He proceeded to show me the rockets.
It's an awkward spot without any specific reads or dynamics.
Besides that I had a ridiculous amount of splits vs regs pf with hands like KK, AA and AK. They kept on showing up with the same hand and at the same time owning my QQ with KK and AA.
I'm really glad I got into some good spots vs some of the fish. Some of the hands are pretty crazy. Here are a few.


Multiway action

Here my bet sizing could have been slighlty too small. The original raiser was very loose and aggressive preflop so this was for sure a value raise with a ton of dead money.

Partyments

The funny thing was that when I saw the Q and the K I actually thought I could still be ahead here. Yes UTG called off 430$ with 98o.

busto

Busto in 26th place, shame. I went on a bad run where I lost AK v a5s, AK v 99 and 22 v KTs. What can you do, I still came pretty far though so I can't complain.

update

36 left, i have 8.7k blinds are 400/800.

ECPT Madrid qualifier

I'm currently playing this qualifier for the ECPT Madrid, which I qualified for through Titan Poker. 211 registered, 117 left. I have 4650 in chips with 100/200 blinds.
Top 10 players get a 3,000$ package to the ECPT which would be really sweat if I could go, cause I love Spain as you may have noticed :P.

Hmha

I just had a session that frustrated me for the most part, but somehow I came out ontop 4 buy ins @ 2/4 on party. The last couple of sessions have been frustrating me and it's odd, I don't quite understand it, especially running ok. I guess spots where I'm not absolutely sure about my play frustrate me regardless of the results.
I actually left a table because I just felt completely off of my game on that specific table.
Here are some weird hands:

dude

This guy had the stats of a reg and so no specific reads him besides that. I feel that I have to call down a reg here, because his line is very fishy for a monster, but may make sense if he thinks I'm always stabbing the ace and he can fold me out easily. Not saying I like his play by any means, but if that were the case there could be some value in playing draws like this. Now on the river all the draws miss and he makes this weird small bet. Against a fish I think I'd be beat fairly often, but he can also have a lot of missed draws. So I think in retrospect that it's a call, but I mucked given that I couldn't make up my mind fast enough and it's just spots like that that frustrate me. I have a strict fold when you don't know what to do policy, but I think I can make a case for a crying call here. He can also have weaker aces here that he wants to take down the turn with so more merit to calling the river, just meh imo.

nits

I usually don't fold AK pre with these stacks, but I do have 3 bet stats and this guy was an extremely nitty 3-better over 1kish hands. I only had 30 invested and would've had to commit 400 more against a guy with very tight reraising stats. Despite his tightness I'd still give myself around 35-40% against his calling range, but off the top of my head I figured this shove was -ev.
Let's do the quick maths with 37% equity:
(38+433)*0.37-403*0.63=174.27-253.89=-79.62
So I guess I'm pleased with my fold here given my analysis of his range.

All in all my fold when I have no clue policy has served me pretty well and sometimes I make weird folds, but I'd rather make a neutral ev fold than a guessing call. I think it also helps psycholigically.

:/

I just finished a 3/6 - 2/4 session up 1.4k and am actually a bit annoyed at how it went. I think the frustration comes from playing a bit tired and making small mistakes that I normally wouldn't. I also got in tricky spots where I felt beat, but ended up sucking out on villains, which is also annoying as it is not winning poker.
To my defence I also ran a straight into a higher straight. I decided to play today despite feeling a bit tired, but this session could've easily gone another way I feel.
I guess from a broader perspective you could say I got lucky. Lucky, because I ran well when not playing optimally, but in the future I won't make the same mistake again.
I guess my only options are to play lower when feeling tired or not play at all. I think it's silly to lose money when you know you shouldn't have been playing in the first place.

Dubai

Hi all. A friend of mine is currently working in Dubai and he invited me over to stay in his flat. I think this is a great opportunity to get to see the city and I accepted. I just booked the flight with another friend of mine who is also coming along for the ride.

poker things

Grinding out hands last month was a good experience for me. It was almost like I had forgotten what it was like to put in hands at a limit. I think me running well over small sample sizes kept me from striving to play more, but it is really vital for me to put in more hands if I want to reach my financial goal for 08 and improve as a player.
I'm thinking about putting some money on Bodog and playing in some of the 3/6 games that run there for no specific reason really. Table selection is low so I have no clue how good or bad those guys are, but it's nice to mix things up. If anybody knows anything about the 3/6 games , I'd be glad to here some input on it.