Turkey weekend

So the plan was to just make a baked chicken for me and the wife. Instead she invited 4 others so while I was shopping I figured I might as well just get the free turkey at the grocery store. Of course there were only like 10 turkeys left at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, so I got the smallest one, which was a svelte 19 pounds, and after a couple of hours of hot water down it's throat, tom turkey was finally thawed enough to go in the oven.

I was definitely concerned that it wouldn't get done, but in the end it was just fine. We actually had a really good time with a co-resident and her husband... maybe too good of a time, as my wife spent the next day recuperating.

Today was absolutely gorgeous out so we took the dog for a nice walk, and then went and got a little shopping done. We topped it off with a movie and saw Changeling, which we both thought was one of those movies you should probably watch at some point, but isn't really necessary to see at a theater.

Pokerwise, I am playing a full day tomorrow and as usual after a little time off I am excited to play. Hopefully I'll remember it's just one mile out of the marathon so although I hope to have a great day results wise tomorrow all I can do is control my play and let everything else work its own way out.

Grindin' Some Back

I got 4th in a small tourney for like $1.5k. I took a bad beat 4 handed but I can't bitch too much because I gave a lot of bad beats as well. At this point I am just pissed at myself for donking away all that money playing cash - but there really is nothing I can do but move on, play well, and win it back.

I will be playing a small aft session tomorrow and then will be off for a bit again as my wife actually has Thanksgiving off.

So happy turkey day to all!!

Bad Sunday

I cashed just one of the 13 tourneys I played today. But my losses were all due to bad beats or coolers so I am playing very very well. Just going through a bad spell.

Unfortunately I lost quite bit playing cash as well this weekend so my bankroll has taken quite a beating. Time to start grinding it back - I'm due for a good win.

Meh x2

The horridness continued tonight. I am still playing fine so blah blah blah the results will come, but still tilts me to lose. I did win back about half my buyins for the night in 10 minutes playing 15/30 heads up limit so that makes me feel a bit better.

The wife is off this weekend so I should be back playing on Monday.

Meh

Well I finally got an afternoon session in and meh. I can't remember so many bad beats in a while. Only tourney i got really close to doing anything in was the $20 rebuy on tilt where I lost a chiplead pot with AK<88. So I played fine and ran bad. Seems standard.

I should be playing again tonight.

Tourneys are frustrating because you can play technically perfect and you still won't cash like 80% of the time. bad beats/failing to win races/card dead/etc and poof you're out. Adding to the frustration is that you put in 3+ hours and end up walking away a loser.

Here's to running good/keeping a good mindframe/getting in some volume.

Wheeeeeeeeeee.

Still trying to get back in the swing of things

Well I continued my delve into the sickness that is heads-up Limit Poker. It is different than any other game because you basically end up seeing on a flop on almost every hand. Since it's limit the biggest bet you have to call preflop is just one BB and since you're just playing one opponent who has position that person is raising close to 100% of the time. So you end up defending your blind an incredibly high percentage of the time.

It is a fun game but it is incredibly swingy - moreso than headsup NL in my opinion, which leads me to just get into these huge sessions where I just sit down and play and play and play and play.

Monday night I began a session and I didn't stop until noon on Tuesday. So I am still exhausted and just trying to get motivated to play. As always with me, motivation is my biggest hurdle. When you get down to it, I think I am just naturally lazy. Getting motivated to work out, to play poker, to clean the house, to do errands... it's just always more of a challenge than I think it should be. It's so much easier to lie down in front of the tv, fart around on the internet, and do nothing. Then again doing nothing gets pretty boring after awhile and so the cycle begins again.

Anyhoo - I'm going to get a run in today by running to Trader Joe's (ha killing two birds with one stone) and then will play my nightly schedule. Hopefully after a good night sleep tonight things will be start clicking back to normal.

Decided I wanted to play but didnt want to think...

So I played Heads-up Limit poker. I am now pretty cautious playing this game because even though you don't have to think, there is something about it that just sucks you in. My eyes glaze over, but I keep on playing. It's because of this that I've lost a buttload playing this game before so I was careful this time and stuck to one table. But it did suck me in again.

I think i've played like 16 out of the last 24 hrs. And I am basically even. LOL.

At least I earned a ton of points and am now super close to getting a new computer screen which should be nice.

Back to it

So the dogsitting is over and I got to actually play on Sunday which is a good thing.

The bad thing is I made a pretty spewy move in the FTOPs Main Event when I had a stack where it was unnecessary to do so and then I bubbled the only tourney I came close to cashing in which was the Second Chance on Stars. So I wasn't real happy about my play, but the leaks are definitely patchable.

I should hopefully get some real volume in this week.

Grinding some cash

I actually played one tourney today - I bubbled the FTOPs omaha event. Other than that I've been playing some small sessions of Heads Up cash on Tilt. Yesterday was about even - today was super positive. I won like 2 1/2 buyins in a small period of time. I know that HU is vey swingy so I just need to make sure to watch my tilt monkey and make sure I don't go nutso. The nice thing is I'm only playing 1/2 so I can't donk off that much. From what I've seen so far the players stick to their "normal" style and aren't real good at adjusting and adjusting is what heads up play is all about, so I might have finally found a cash game that I could excel at if I took some time to pursue it.

In other news it looks like Bush is going to storm trooper his UIGEA bill in at the last minute which has the online poker world up in arms. As I've told other people, I think a lot of people tend to take an attitude that the sky is falling when we still don't know all the info or what exactly is going to happen. If the worst possibility happens and online poker goes busto, at least I have my bar privileges...

Back Home

Well we made it back safe and sound. I haven't got back into playing because we are now dogsitting an ancient little dog that belongs to one of my wife's co-interns. Figuring out this dog's sleep routine has taken a little longer than I thought. I'm not sure how well playing tourneys will work this week, since he needs to be taken out whenever he wakes up or else he goes to the bathroom inside the house so I might try and focus on some cash - otherwise I'll just wait until next week to play again.

Vacationing

Just a quick update to say we are doing fine. Relaxing, eating good meals, getting out in the sun, running/playing basketball, and just spending time with the fam is always nice. Watching Obabma win was a nice cherry on top as well.

The party ends on Saturday and I should be playing again on Sunday...

Off to SB

I am going to have to hide in the garage for a couple of hours tonight when the first horde of kiddlies comes through our neighborhood since we didn't buy any candy this year. And by hordes, I mean hordes. They literally bring the kids in by the busload to our neighborhood since it is safe, the houses are close together, and it is wealthy enough that everyone has good candy. But as soon as my wife is off work (hopefully by 7) we are hitting the road.

Word on the street is that we might be able to get internet access for the first time at her mom's house, but I'm not going to put total faith in that so it's very possible I won't be blogging again until we return.

Another what if night

I took a bad beat somewhat deep in the 250k on stars and am now going through the inescapable "what if I had won that hand" phase. I won't bore you with the details but I was a 75% favorite postflop for a stack that I could have crusied to the final two tables with. Knowing that it's getting a top 3 in these big payout tourneys which basically determines whether you make good money or spectacular money in a given year always makes losing in them even more bitter. The fact that I've now gotten close to big payouts (over 20k) three times in the last week is encouraging since it shows I've been playing well. The fact that I haven't got there in any of those three still blows goats tho.

Still grindin'

I played a small aft session today because I quickly got bad beat in my first two tourneys and then unregistered for the other 3 I was going to play because my mind was not in it. I think a lot of my lack of volume comes from that - I know I'm in a crappy mindset so I don't play. It's good that I'm not tilting, but I do need to figure out a way to play through it so I can get my volume. One other big reason for my lack of volume comes from the simple fact that I am actually running much better than I thought. As a tourney player I am going to have many more losing days than winning ones, so it feels like I am constantly losing. In fact, I have not had a losing month since May, and the last 4 months (June-Oct)have all been really profitable months so I just felt no need to play.

I am going to play a normal session tonight and tomorrow, and then we leave for a week vacation (another reason my volume is never huge).

Since I have open time this aft, I'm going to go for a run and try and clean up the house a bit.

Another close call

I actually played a really light schedule today because my wife was on call last night and when she got home she said that she wanted to be woken up at 4:30 ish. I haven't spent time with her in like a week so i figured I could play some of the tourneys that started at 11:00 and if I got deep that was great, and if not, I would be free by 4:30. Well I got deep in one of the two "Sunday Majors" (the buy-ins at 215+ across all the major sites on Sunday). I got 12th in the Sunday Brawl on Tilt. 1st was over $70k, even 5th place was $20k. Unfortunately for me, 12th was only $2800.

I was definitely disappointed since I was so close to a huge score, but I sucked out like 3 times (cracking AA three separate times) just to get there so I can't bemoan my luck too much. The what ifs always go through your mind after getting so deep and then not quite getting the results you were looking for, but I played great and am playing great overall and as long as I keep plugging away the results will come.

Almost reversed the curse

I got 6th in the $100k guarantee on Pokerstars last night. For whatever reason, when I make a FT on Stars (which is not very often) I just can't finish the job. Last night was more of the same. I got it in 3 times where I was either a slight favorite or a slight underdog and I lost all three times. Alas, that's poker so although I will be going to bed with the dreams of the $20k that I almost had for first place, the bankroll still did get juiced about $5k so I won't cry myself to sleep.

1000 tourneys

I finally passed the 1000 tourney mark for the year today. For those that don't understand playing tournament poker professionally, that's an awfull small number. Considering that I can put in 12 tourneys a day (which is also considered a small number), that means that I've really only played like a little over 80 days this year. And for a fulltime job, that's obviously not many days. We talked about it last night, and I really just need a way to light a fire under my ass so that I can get more volume in. I feel like I should be at double this amount (at least 2000 tourneys) and even if I made just 50% as much as I did over the first 1k, I'd be at $100k profit for the year now.

As far as the stats go - I'm super pleased with my ROI which is at 73%. My itm is at 14.4% which seems low, but a lot of that has to do with my double up or go home mentality - I am working on relaxing a bit more w/15-25 BBs, so hopefully that will increase. My FT percentage is 2.5% - I don't know what to make of that. It seems low, but it also seems to be working. I think when I do make a FT I get a top 3 score a huge percentage of the time, so I'd like to increase my FT percentage in case I start picking up some more 4-9ths rather than 1-3rds.

Sunday

Sundays are big days for online tourney players as it is the day most sites have their biggest weekly tourney(s). It is a good day to play because you actually have the opportunity to win a huge (i.e. 6 figure) payout, but it can also be a frustrating day to play because all of the buy-ins are generally high ($200 ish) and if you don't cash anything you can easily blow through thousands of dollars. I generally don't play on Sundays because that's usually the day my wife has off. But yesterday my wife had to study so I actually got to play a bit. I was planning on playing a pretty full schedule, but I just wasn't feeling the mojo so I ended up only playing 4 tourneys and then packing it in. I didn't play excellent but didn't play horribly either. Oh well, it looks like I'll get to play again next Sunday so not a huge deal.

Today I am taking off from poker. I'm going to clean up the house. Maybe cook some meals for the week ahead, and tonight I play volleyball. So I'll get back to the grind tomorrow.

A little more light

I got 3rd in the 90k 6 max tourney on Tilt for $10k.

wheeeeeee - back to positive for the month.

A little light at the end of the tunnel

I finally cashed more than one tourney tonight and I even got 3rd in the small sniper tourney on UB to actually have a positive day.

It was nothing huge, but feels good to stop the bleeding at least.