2-thousand-and-11 .. New Year's Eve + 1st session.. Hrmpf!

Short review of today:

First of all: Happy new year. I hope you're all allright with every part of the body intact. Some friends and I were actually close to NOT being all-right because of some jackass-moron (!!!) throwing a maroon in the middle of our group (around 0,001 centimetre from where we stood). We ran like hell, but one of us didn't make it, so he got blind and deaf for a few seconds. He's allright today.

We were shocked - he was on drugs - and he tried to beat the hell out of us. I never really found out why. We got into a big fight, but luckily we were 10 'fitness' guys together not wanting to fight, so we could hold the idiot and stop the fight. A girl (maybe his girlfriend? She was f'cked up too) smashed a bottle and tried to use it as a weapon, but we got it out of her hands, and nobody was really hurt. Two punches, no broken noses or jaws, but 10 guys thinking: "We should've almost killed him...! But he would probably do it again tomorrow." The police came and we wanted to report him in for violence, but the police said they were busy, so we should turn him in today, if we wanted to... Pfff...

982 hands of aawch!
One thing is positive. I stopped according to my rule about stop-loss. I was down 3 buy-ins and I stopped. I was close to stop around 600 hands, where I was very close to being down the 3 buy-ins, but I fought my way back and was actually doing well.

There's not really much to analyse. I played seven 150bb+ pots, and I only won two of them. I made two big, costly mistakes, so two of them were all right, but I got big-time screwed in a 320bb pot against a very laggy player (donk imo). I got some beats, and I couldn't really connect with the board. I played ok but not fully my A+ game.


I have stopped cash for now, but I had a tournament going on.. and 11$ shorthanded with 4.500$ guarenteed. We were 620 players to start and at the time of writing, we're 273 left. I'm short but fighting. 92 players are paid.

Btw, roll of 2011
I started with 913$ after rackeback from December-2010, which means I can play tournaments up to 18,26$ in buy-in and NL30 in cashgame.


Cheers, C.P
 

I took a trip to the year 2010 (sing it!)

 2010 was....
Shit... Pokerwise. Not because I lost a lot, I just played too little and when I did, I didn't really feel like playing. I was up in poker, down in sportsbetting (f*ck sites where this option is available!). I don't really believe in all-in expected value in Hold'em Manager, but I had a period of four months, were I ran around 50 buy-ins under my expected value - and some how it affected me, a lot.

IRL-wise I run big time over my expected value! (insert smiley). I'm lucky to have a permanent job, where I work as a bank employee (student), which I'm done with when we reach September. I don't know if I'll stay or do something else.

I have the best girlfriend, you can imagine. She's understanding, open-minded - and extremely hot, cute or whatever you call it... We have our interests - not all are shared - but it's just perfect.

I've gained a lot from fitness (both physical and mental), I've moved to a new and better apartment.. Great!

Setup

 This is where I do my daily grinding. Well, not exactly. It's and old picture from my old apartment. The desk has changed and I have some other speakers as well. Who cares.

For those who are interested it's two 24" monitors giving me a resolution of 3840x1200 pixels. It's awsome and I can play 12 tables (but I rarely play more than 8) with no overlap. However, I'd like an iMac 27" or two 30" monitors, but this is fine for now.

I think I'll buy an iMac, if they make one in 30", and if I ship some medium MTT.
Note: I wasn't watching porn when I took the photo! I just erased the backgrounds because I didn't want you to stick around.

Who are you, pokerplayer?
I'm 21 years old and I live in Denmark. Lovely country, but it's fkin cold now. Gsssshh. Chrismas is over man - cut the snow!
To become where I am in poker (which isn't anything extraordinary), I've read three books (read below), read a lot on a danish forum (www.pokernet.dk) and talked with people like KC discussing hands etc.. I've also seen some coaching videos on DC (deucescracked) and PokerUni, but in the past 2-3 months I haven't studied enough.

I've read The Poker Mindset, because I have a MAJOR tilt-issue. Or I had. It's actually getting quite good (better) now. I do tilt, but I think we all do in some way. I've also read Harrington on Hold'em vol. 1 and 2, which is a lot about the basics in MTT's, but it can be used in cashgames as well.

Ok, here it is!
I mentioned, I'd show you my graph, so here it is. I think I've played around 500-600k hands all in all (both cashgame and tournament). This database in Hold'em Manager is only about 121k hands in cashgame, but I lost another database with almost 200k hands :-(, sad but that's the gratitude of no backup!

Take the all-in EV for what it's worth. Mentally I hate it, but I'll just think, it will come back someday :-)
I have played 120.638 hands to be exact, and I have a plus of 7.271,60 big blinds up. My bb/100 hands is 6,03.

/C.P

Goodbye 2010, hi' 2011.

Short notice!
I did this blog because one of my friends (irl and through poker - let's call him KC) and I were talking about poker (surprise!) one evening, where we'd played a few tournaments/some cashgame with a mediocre result. We're both what we call 'lowrollers' which means, we play for fun (not really life-changing money), but we do win a little, and like the game a lot. (should I argue, or?).

We were talking about  2011, a new year resoultion, dreams and so on, and one of us (probably KC) asked the other (me?) about my goals for 2011. I was like: "Goals? Ehhhhmm" ...

Do I have the time?
I'm kind of busy since I have a 37-hourjob which includes sparetime studying (not included!), I do fitness about 15-20 hours a week, I have a lovely girlfriend and in general a lot to do. I'm serious in all aspects of life, and I have high hopes for everything.. BUT, I've never really set goals (written them down) for poker. Why not? I spend about 10-15 hours pr. week doing poker, so it is somewhat serious.


.. If you study, you get a paper of your work.
.. If you play football, you have a coach who tells you what to do, what to focus on and he credit's you when you do good.
.. If you do fitness, your body changes
.. If you.. and so on.

A lot of things in life give you feedback in its nautral form, and it doesn't really make sense to write it down. Poker is easy to learn but impossible to master. I've learnt a lot, but it's basically just the easy stuff I've learned (which is enough to become a winning player on low limits), but more wants more...

I've realized I need to do something extra to improve, and therefore this blog.

Poker!
.. If you play poker, your (bank)account tells you, if you're good or bad.

Or does it? In the short run it does, but poker is (honestly) a game of both skill and luck, which for the unexperienced player might seem like a 10% to 90% instead of 90% to 10% (or whatever).. You easily win a lot, but play extremely bad, and you can play extremely well, and lose a lot! So how can you see, if you're good or bad? Luck is a short-term result, and if you play enough, luck runs out.

Goals for 2011  

General, cashgame (CG)
- Play 200.000 hands (average of 16.667 hands pr. month
- Achieve an average big blind winrate pr. 100 hands of 5 or above (bb/100 = 5+)
- Stick to BRM (bankroll management) and STOP LOSS rules (read below)

General, multi-table tournaments (MTT's)
- Play +150 tournaments with more than 100 entrants
- Achieve and "in the money%" of 15% or above.
- Reach 5 final tables or more.
- 1 win or more!

General, general
- Sign up on DC (deucescracked) and watch at least one video pr. week
- Spend one hour looking through HEM (analysis - hands, stats, leaks, etc.) pr. week
- Keep score every month (hands, tournaments, $$+/-, goals etc.)
- BLOG about the month (every month - obviously)
- NO (!!!!) sportsbetting with poker-money on worthless bets unless you know the betvalue is above 100 (via analysis, statistics etc.)
- Keep track of all hands in HEM (Hold 'em Manager).. and don't care about AiEV (all-in expected value!)

Money goals or goals derived from it doesn't really make any sense, but my goals are not in acutal $$, and I believe 200.000 hands is a (good enough) guiding principle to make the goals. If not, I have to reflect on a lot more in 2012 :-)

BRM for CG
- 0$-600$, NL20 (small blind 0,10$/big blind0,20$)
- 600$-1.500$, NL30 (0,15$/0,30$)
- 1.500$-4.000$, NL50
- 4.000$- ~$, Nl100
- "Shots" are accepted when I have more than 25 buy-ins for the current level, but losing 1½ buy-ins means I have to drop stop immediatly.


- You have to have played at least 30k hands on any given level with +bb/100 before you can move up


BRM for tournaments
My rules for tournaments are quite large, but I don't want to buy myself in a tournament with a buy-in of more than 2% of my roll.


Stop Loss (mainly cashgame)
Stop Loss is 3 buy-ins, which means I have to stop playing if I'm down 3 buy-ins. Take a break, take a walk, watch TV, play guitar, call your girlfriend, break something (non-value obv.) or whatever makes you feel better.

 So long for now, I'll follow up later with my setup (physical - where do I play?), what have I done to becomre where I am (?), some grafs for 2010 and a short story about what 2010 was like.

Cheers, C.P