sick heater

This is my month up to date. I'm on a pretty sick heater over my last 4k hands as you can see. The rest of the month has been very swingy, but I managed to keep in the green all long.
I think a 23 BI heater is probably the biggest I've been on so far. I do think it is justified though given the amount of 80-20s I was losing. In the end everything is variance.

I spoke to Matt today about our hand bet and we agreed to call it off. I'm slighlty ahead of him, but we're both with family friends and having to play poker isn't optimal for me right now.
I think the bet fullfilled it's purpose though, we both put in a lot of hands (by our standards) which is great.
Since I've been in the UK I've been 4 tabling mostly, because I played on my mother's computer and she only has a 19" screen. I'm not sure it made much of a difference in winrate for me, but you definetly have enough time to think about hands and how you could have played them better, which is great.

I think I'll take it easy for the rest of the month since I don't have to play anymore. I'm thinking of getting in some nl100hu hands when if I decide to play. Basically to continue with my 5k hu challenge and work on my HU a bit.
When jan starts I'll jump straight into 2/4 with a healthy bankroll and reasurance in my game.
I'll also be getting xdsl and a new desktop computer with a second 20" screen.
I think at times I wasn't playing my A game, because my hardware tilted me. Somehow I've always managed to have computer's w/ compatability problems. This mainly due to the fact that I always try and get PC's that fit my needs and are not extravagant, but this time I'll try and aim a bit higher than the minimum. I'm looking into a medium-class PC and not an office PC. High-end is a bit over the top for me imo.

I've been watching a lot of comedy lately here on SKY television, I like comedy cause it helps me unwind from poker. A lot of people don't think playing poker is difficult (in a draining sense of way), but it is. The higher you play and the more you think about the game the more it is like studying and you constantly need to focus and be on the top of your game.
Anyways I saw this show called the Sarah Silverman show which is easily one of the most bizzare things I have watched so far. From what I understand main actor is playing an altered version of herself. One that has no shame whatsoever and says whatever comes to her mind.
It's a different sense of humor in a positive way. You guys should check it out and tell me what you think.

2 hands I thought I might share with you:

Pot of the Day

I was contemplating reraising pre, but decided not to. Villain is a reg. He was running @ 18/16 at this point. I had a tight image, but for some reason villain decided I was weak here. I got it in 80-20 and managed to win the flip ;). He must have been putting me on some weaker draw.
I guess the J and the T on the flop let him believe that I was less likely to have a set here and waited my range more to hands that he had FE against. His turn timing was interesting as he made a very quick check raise.

I make a good read

This hand was tricky. I knew I had played with villain before, but my HUD hadn't uploaded yet (when you play with HUDs a lot you tend to start relying on them too much, my bad I guess).
This was my first hand at the table so I tried to use the information I had at hand. I didn't even want to 3-bet pre, because I didn't know how villain would play postflop, but my hand figures to be ahead of an average CO player's range, plus there was potential dead money in the pot so I raised it nonetheless.
Basically I picked up some key timing tells that lead my poker instincts to tell me that I was good here and I guess this shows just how strong timing tells are with weaker players.

This was quite a long blog , I hope you all had nice Xmas dinners.

Take it easy.

edit:

And RTR hasn't been hacked, they sent an email a couple of weeks back and it's just something they're testing, so it's all good.

Hacked

I think my raketherake stats page was hacked. I am not 100% sure yet, but it definetly looks like it. I need to take measures fast to make sure they are unable to hack anything else related to that account.

thoughts on variance

This is my graph for my last 3k hands. As you can see I recovered from my 9 BI downswing within a short period of time. 9 BI is definetly one of my larger down swings in my career so far, but it can happen and you can also play perfectly and lose 12 BIs or play poorly and win 5.
Basically what I am getting at is that poker is a game of high variance and you have to be aware of this at all times. Imo it's crucial to have the correct mindset when playing. Always favour making +ev decisions over winning $ and don't get frustrated when things don't go your way.
Also don't make short term monetary goals. I honestly don't understand people who make prop bets over who can make more money in a given time period on a specific limit, because assuming that both players are of equal skill, play the same amount of hands and never tilt, it's negative ev gambling, because you'll be relying on luck to win the bet (I guess you could argue about this, if say both players were to play 100k hands, but I think you get my point).

I think this is also something to think about in terms of bankroll management. I believe I practice very good bankroll management and always have. I started off with a 15 BI rule and right now I am at 45. It definetly requires a lot of discipline to play 15 BIs well, assuming you don't want to busto. I wouldn't advise people who think they can easily tilt not to consider using this for obvious reasons.
If I were to start a new career from nl 2 like I did originally I'd most likely follow a 25 BI rule till I hit nl 100 and switch to 30-40 from then on.

I've played my 5k hands on 1/2 and I could move up to 2/4, but I am not sure if I want to do this right now. I'll prob wait untill january and give it another shot. Even though I am not playing with scared money large $ swings may effect my mood and it's christmas after all :).

HERE you can find my biggest hand for the day. When he checked to me I thought it was pretty apparent I had the best hand, but I was a bit worried about being check raised valuebetting so thinly. I thought about this for a second and I realised this is a good spot to bet to induce a check raise. It took villain 4 seconds to shove on me and I'm glad my play worked out. He obviously thought I wasn't repping much, but he wasn't either ;).

graph + KRANTZ

I decided to graph the session for you that I was talking about yesterday.
Right now I am rereading KRANTZ's well post from the 2+2 archives. Some interesting stuff in there, you should check it out. KRANTZ had a sick run this year and I believe is the biggest winner in NLH for the year. He is also the owner of the training site 3-bet.net which offers various coaching possibilities. The site however seems to be hacked right now (lol).
I think I am gonna go and chill a bit and then play some 1/2 when the games are good.

Huge Swings

Today during my session on Absolute I was down 2k at peak, which is the equivalent of 10 stacks. That is a pretty huge swing to have during one session. However my mental strength is probably one of the keys to my success and I was able not to tilt and win back 1.5k leaving me at -500 for the day. I am glad I am having this variance on 1/2, even for me being down 4k during a session is tough.
I am not going to bore you with HHs of coolers. Basically I couldn't win flips and was also losing as a big fav (80%+ equity).
I'll try and get back to posting some interesting hand histories.

Besides poker I guess all is well, I haven't been too social so far as I've been grinding to catch up on my hand prop bet. I'll make the minimum of 30k hands for sure, but not sure how much I can play after that. Unless I don't hit a heater soon I prob won't be playing 2/4 this month. But that's no biggy for me. I realize I have the skills and I just need to patient and disciplined.

lol ub

Seriously UB, your site could be so good, but you just don't get it. I was playing when all of a sudden the software crashed on me. It's not like this is the first time it happend to me either. It's a fairly well known waiting list bug which they claimed to have fixed. But whatever, I gave UB like a billion chances and they disapoint me time and time again (which is the main reason why I withdraws from their site). Atleast I was able to leave them on a "positive note" as I was up a little bit over 2 buy ins on 1/2 when this happend.

UB

I'll be playing on UB for the remaing days of December. I like to change sites when running poorly on a specific site. I think I'll play 5k hands on 1/2 and then go from there. I still have enough money to continue playing 2/4, but I think it will be good for my game to move down for a bit.

I transferred money from Absolute to UB and that took about 10 minutes which is pretty nice, however I shouldn't be playing right now, but packing (same procedure as every year).