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July started very promisingly. On the night of 30th June/1st July I was down to the last 2 tables of the Sunday Million. The field remaining was quite weak, with only 1 player whose game I really respected (EDWARDHOPPER). I was 2nd in chips at one point but eventually busted QQ v KK with ~13bb vs EDWARDHOPPER for 15th place. So close yet so far. Still, $5.1k profit was a good start and I expected to go on to having a good month. Sadly, it wasn't to be. I lost $1k in MTTs over the rest of the month and I barely won at cash. Still, barely winning is better than the previous month where I suffered a 40 buyin downswing and didn't win at all.

I've continued to experiment and make changes to my game, and largely I've been happy with the changes and my results. Mainly I've just tightened up opening ranges and done some work on my play vs shortstacks. Infact, until yesterday I was running at 4 EV bb/100 for the month which is no better than I was doing in the first 5 months of this year, but a lot better than in the last 2 months. Unfortunately I lost about $2.1k yesterday which was something like 15 buyins (More at 100 than 200) and that ruined the winrate for the month. Even still, my positional winrates are all higher than the year as a whole except for from the BB, and by a small margin in the CO. The Big Blind is the position where I've made the most adjustments in the past couple of months and it seems it's still not working for me. Currently I think one of my biggest problems there is a bit of situational run bad, but also I'm simply not 3betting enough from that position specifically. I aim to do better than -40bb/100 from the BB next month. I don't even really care too much about how I do from other positions because I'm quite happy with my opening ranges and 3bet ranges etc from those positions and results will improve with the more volume I put in, I feel that I really just need to fix the leak in the BB and I'll be winning at a good clip again as I was in the first few months of this year.

Life has been a bit depressing lately and it's definitely effecting my play. Tilt has set in on more than one occasion and I'm usually very good at resisting tilt. I'm already thinking about a future without poker and I'd really like to move on from it as soon as possible. If I won like $200k+ in an MTT I would probably play until the end of the year and then quit relying on poker for income, only playing a little when I felt like it. I have no better options for income at the moment and not enough money to quit so I'll continue until I do have enough money. I certainly need to cut back on expenditure. I estimate I've made $45~50k so far this year including rakeback/bonuses and I have no more money in my Stars account or bank account than I did at the start of the year. I don't even have any large mandatory expenses, I'm just spending too much on stuff I don't need. This has to change if I'm to make enough money to quit poker in the next 2-4 years (I REALLY don't want to have to play any longer than that). I have restarted dieting and working out lately and I expect that will help with regards to how I'm feeling in day to day life, so that's one positive going forward at least.

Volume wise I've put in about an average #of hands for the last 3 months, but given that I've tightened up preflop I'm making less VPP/hand. At the start of the year I wanted to go for SNE, which I gave up on by March, then I changed my goal to 500k VPPs. At this point that's an impossibility also unless I get back into $2.5/$5 Zoom full time, which I can't see happening as I'm not happy enough with my winrates at $1/$2 and $0.5/$1 Zoom or confident enough on not losing at $2.5/$5 unless the lineup is quite weak. 400k VPPs seems reasonable though, to do that I need just under 160k VPPs in the remaining 5 months so just under 32k VPPs a month which is around about the volume I've been putting in last few months anyway. I'd be happy enough with another $25-30k (Including rakeback/bonuses) for the rest of the year, and hopefully make cuts on spending so I'm actually increasing my bankroll, not just breaking even on my expenditure.

Anyway, screenshots:


Cash:

(Couple of hands at 100NL Zoom FR and 2NL Zoom were simply misclicks in the lobby haha)

MTTs:


Results:
VPPs: 26,673.12
Cash: +$946.32
MTTs: +$4,164.64
Overall: +$5,110.96 (Not including FPPs/bonuses)

Like I said, mainly just hoping to do better from the big blind, cut down on expenditure and make 30k+ VPPs next month. Feeling better IRL would be nice too.

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Comments (10)

Terrible month. Didn't play at all first half of the month as I withdrew the majority of my bankroll to pay for my new car which you can see here:



It's a 2008 E92 BMW M3 Coupe. 4L V8 with 420hp and 295lb ft. I love the thing. Don't love the 19.3mpg I'm getting so much, but I guess you know what you're signing up for when you buy one of these.

I did spend a decent amount of time watching/reading some game theory videos while I was unable to play so when I got money back online I started implementing what I had studied and started playing considerably different both pre flop and post flop to how I have been doing previously. As you can see below, it didn't work and I've ended up encountering a lot more variance which has ultimately resulted in my largest downswing ever in terms of buyins lost while playing 6max NLHE after 7.5 years playing (42 buyin downswing in EV). The main changes I've made involve blind vs steal position play, I'm defending a lot wider and I've made some pretty major changes to my 3betting and 4betting ranges too. Unfortunately my winrates from both blinds have declined significantly when compared to the previous months, so I'm probably just screwing up postflop way too often, as well as running very poorly in those spots. I started to recover a little in the last few days of the month, but wasn't close to rescuing the situation.



I will continue this pre flop experiment in July. Even if I have another bad month, putting myself in these marginal spots can only help me progress as a player long term, and hopefully eventually my winrates from the blinds will be an improvement over what it was in the first 5 months of this year. Relative to other regulars I suck from the blinds so I do want to keep trying hard to improve in those spots and don't mind putting myself in tough situations in order to improve in those spots.

Results for the month:
VPPs: 35,210.02
Cash: -$4,506.43
MTTs: -$15
Overall: -$4,521.43

Life wasn't good this month either and as a result of some high school style drama I will be seeing a lot less of one of my best friends, so it's almost certain that I shall be putting in a lot more volume in July and will hopefully get back to winning ways.

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Comments (16)

May was an awful month. Many things went wrong in real life and poker suffered both in terms of volume and results because of that. About a fifth of the entire month's volume occurred during 2 days where I was on major life tilt. I still made money in cash, but lost money overall due to more run bad at MTTs. One of my aims for May was to put in some work on my MTT game and short stacked play and I did do quite a bit of work off the table. Bought Holdem Resources Calculator and played around a lot with Nash Equilibrium ranges for 5bb+ante, 10bb+ante and 15bb+ante stack sizes and I definitely have a much better idea of how to go about playing those stack sizes now. A shame I lose almost every flip though; as you can see from the screenshot below I ran almost 4bb/100 below expectation in EV in MTTs. I know most people don't measure tournament results like that but it just shows how far below Chip EV I was.

This month my aim is to buy a new car , get in tad more volume (As always) and have better results. The car I'm currently looking at is an E92 BMW M3, there are 2 that I'm viewing this week, just hoping one of them is up to scratch and I can get a good deal on my part exchange. I actually put a deposit down on an M3 last month, but it was stolen from the forecourt the day before I was meant to pick it up which pretty much sums up how bad I ran in every respect in May. Maybe it will turn out for the best and I'll find a better example of that car this month. I hope so anyway!

Cash:


MTTs:


Results:
VPPs: 28,704.13
Cash: +$1,453.42
MTTs: -$2,900.54
Overall: -$1,447.12 (Before bonuses and fpps)

Hopefully June will be better.

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Comments (7)

April was by far the lowest volume month of the year so far. Part of the reason for this is that I went to Korea on the 2nd and got back on the 10th, so I was already a third of the month down with 0 volume. To make matters worse I didn't make up for that lack of volume in the remaining 2/3rds of the month. Here are a few pics from the Korea trip:

Me with d.Apollo, an old friend I met at UK WCG 2008 who is now a SC2 commentator baller


Rum bucket with Dream.t)gongju and Dream.t)kyu. Korean friends I've known online for god knows how long


With Sea[Shield]


With Dream.t)HyuN, HuK and ToT)HayprO(


Group pic on last night in Korea with Dream.t)M18M, Dream.t)gongju, Dream.t)HyuN, Dream.t)ANNA, Dream.t)kyu, me, SLoG4[pG] and Dream.t)Jangbi. Love my Dream.t clanmates obvs


I am considering going back some time between June and August depending on how life goes in my home town to live for a year. It's prob a coinflip whether I will or won't at this point. Seoul is the nuts, I just wish I could take my house and friends and dump them all in Gang Nam.

Poker results were pretty good when I actually played. I felt a bit rusty when I got back from Korea and struggled at first, hitting some mini downswing, but since then I started crushing when I played and won 16 out of 18 sessions played. Still, given the pathetic volume I obviously didn't win too much.

Cash games:


Tournaments:


Results:
VPPs: 16,447.36
Cash: +$4,632.16
MTTs: -$734.78
Overall: +$3,897.38 (Not including VPPs and bonuses)

I think I need to do some work on my tournament game, especially with SCOOP coming up. I'm already down $5k+ this year in MTTs, which is naturally easy to do given the variance with huge fields, but I just don't feel too confident in my short stacked play in general, and since it's useful to be good at short stacked play in cash given the state of games in 2013 I intend to spend some time next month working on improving my short stacked play and MTT game. Yearly VPP goal has to be set at 500k VPPs now considering the volume I've managed in March and April, but I've somehow even fallen behind that pace by now. I can't see myself catching up much in the next month as I have a lot more social plans etc. Going to Korea would almost certainly be good for my grind, or if I stay here, when the weather gets worse I'll start grinding a lot more also. 500k VPPs is still plausible, but I don't want to fall too far behind during the decent weather we're finally getting or it will soon become a 300k VPP year of disappointment.

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Comments (15)

There may still be a couple of days left in March, but I'm not going to be playing on either of them so figured I'd post results now.

I have put in extremely little volume this month, in fact I've made barely more than 20k VPPs and so SNE is completely off the cards now. It's gonna be tough to force myself to sit down and put in volume without having a volume oriented goal in mind and I think it's hard to feel the same incentive to play hard in order to make 500k VPPs or 700k or whatever is attainable for me. Just doesn't motivate like the benefits of SNE can motivate (Apparently that wasn't enough to make me play much either though). I have been going out way too much and getting way too drunk this month and so I've felt a bit like a zombie most days. It was a very fun month though and life enjoyment is worth more than money anyway so I'm not overly sad about the fact I fucked up my SNE pursuit.

Despite not playing too much I have managed to spend silly amounts lately. I've withdrew about £9k (~$15.5k) from my Stars acc in the last 2 months which I definitely cannot sustain for long if I encounter a break even or losing stretch. Too much of the stuff I've spunked on is useless stuff that I didn't even need, but one expenditure I made that I'm excited about is the fact I booked tickets for Seoul, Korea. I'll be arriving there 3rd April and staying till 9th April. No doubt I will be drinking every day. If there's anyone here that's in Seoul who'd want to meet for a few drinks or food or whatever I'd prob be up for it, just send me a PM or whatever.

When I did play I did well this month. I was up 55 buyins in the first 30k hands of the month which was about $8.5k or something, unfortunately I ran like shit since then and went on a 20 buyin downer which I've just started recovering from. Still, I feel like I'm playing a lot better than I did in February, just need to refocus and get more volume in when I'm back from Korea and will hopefully still be able to make a 6fig year when rakeback is factored in. Yearly EV winrates at 200 and 100nl are both around 5bb/100 with almost 200k hands combined now so I'm feeling pretty good about continuing playing at those stakes and making some good money without a great deal of variance. I'll prob try and jump into 500nl games at times, particularly if there's a lot of 1 tablers or known fish, but since I'm not going for SNE anymore I won't force myself to play there much.

Screenshot:


Monthly summary:
VPPs: 21,443.84
Cash: +$6,489.43
MTTs: -$270
Overall: +$6,219.43 (Not including bonus + FPP value)

Next month I just plan to enjoy Korea, get in a good amount of poker when I'm back but not force myself to play too much or even at all if I'm not in the mood. Basically just to play when I feel like it and get in a reasonable amount of volume without going crazy I guess.

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Comments (16)

After a good January I expected more of the same in February, but it was not to be. I set 3 goals at the end of January and I failed on each one.

The first and foremost goal was to get back on track with SNE by getting in greater than SNE volume in Feb. I fell a long way short and only managed to play enough to make 50,108.55 VPPs, putting my yearly total to 113,467.52, about 50k VPPs short of SNE pace. I've never been a high volume player so this is a lot for me, but given all the time I have, I really ought to do better. I do have a poor internet connection which has slowed me down and there has been a couple of other reasons for the lack of volume. One reason is that I got a new car and I've managed to tally up ~2k miles in the 3 weeks since I got it at a cost of almost £500 in Petrol and a lot of hours away from the tables. Secondly my social life was way busier than normal and I think there was probably only 1 day in the entire month where I did not spend most of the day out the house despite poor weather on the whole. Also, later in the month I replaced 500NL Zoom with 100NL Zoom tables so that obviously negatively impacted the amount of VPPs I could make per hour.

As disappointing as it is to not get in the volume I'd hoped to, I wouldn't mind that much if I hit my other 2 goals. I aimed to make a positive EV winrate at 500NL Zoom, and in short; I failed miserably. I've now played almost 100k hands of 500NL Zoom this year and I've "made" -$8.4k in EV. I have never played any limit of NL and had a negative winrate over 100k hands so I'm struggling to deal with this at the moment. I can't help but feel like I've ran atrocious, and I certainly have ran AK/QQ/KK into better hands way more than opponents have into me, flopped set % of <10, and when I do hit one have frequently ran into overset/straight/flush etc. way more than in my favour, but after a sample as big as this I also have to consider the possibility that I might only be barely better than a breakeven player running poorly at best, or sadly, perhaps even a slight long term loser. Maybe I've been "coolered" so much because I'm being outplayed, perhaps people are making hero folds vs me in some spots where I wouldn't fold in their spot. I definitely need to rethink some spots and see where I'm going wrong. I'm definitely motivated to improve because if I cannot play 500NL without donating, then there is no way I'm going to achieve SNE. If I 8 table 200NL+500NL Zoom I can make SNE with a little over 3 hours a day average, if I 8 table 100NL+200NL Zoom, that jumps to about 4.5 hours a day, which is simply too much for me. I couldn't sustain that for a month, let alone a year. Hell, looks like I can't even sustain 3 hours a day let alone 4.5 hours so I really need to plug leaks etc asap or just reduce my goals.

I've managed much better at 200NL Zoom overall and I had a positive winrate there in February also, but sadly not as big as the 4 EV bb/100 winrate I had aimed for. It's clear to me that 200NL Zoom is considerably easier than 500NL Zoom (Duh), but I don't feel like the gap is as big as the results I've had so far this year indicate. Yes it's tougher, but there's also slightly less winrate ate up in rake and a lot of the same players play both 200NL and 500NL Zoom (Though admittedly, not the best of the regs) so it shouldn't be THAT much tougher.

I avoided MTTs this month, and only played in the Quarterly $1mm freeroll, but busted not too far short of the bubble on a flip.

Obligatory screenshot:



Monthly summary:
VPPs: 50,108.55
Cash: -$5,067,31 (Not including rakeback and bonuses)
MTTs: +$0

I'm not going to set any win x or achieve x winrate goals this month. I really ought to pay less attention to short term results anyway. It's clear that you can crush one month and get crushed the next without doing much different (As is proved by my January and February results, although I conceed January's success was largely due to running way above EV), but I would like to put in a lot of volume. SNE was always the goal but I can see that quickly slipping away, especially as I have a bunch more social obligations in March which will severely hamper how much I can play. I'm mainly just hoping to rebuild confidence at 100NL+200NL Zoom early in the month and then get back into 500NL zoom if I can and not lose too much ground on SNE if possible. If I can not lose too much ground with SNE and end the month with enough confidence that I can win at 500NL Zoom then I'll still have an outside chance of catching up through April/May etc, and if not, then I guess my SNE hopes will be done by the end of next month. We shall see!

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Comments (9)

As I'm aiming for SNE this year, I thought I'd start blogging a bit more about poker and hopefully find some extra motivation that way. In the past I've talked about what's going on in my life as well as poker in my blog, but this year I'm just gonna post about poker.

I've been playing 8 tables of Zoom200 and 500 in the hope of making enough VPPs for SNE by the end of the year and, somewhat luckily, January was my best winning cash game month since early 2011, which was the last time I was going for SNE (Was on pace until halfway through Feb then made ~100k VPPs for the rest of the rest) and doing well at PLO. However January has been the worst month I ever remember having at tournaments, though this isn't the end of the world since I've never put in much volume in tournaments so it's not much of a loss monetarily. Clearly, I'm largely doing so well due to my running way way above expectation at Zoom500, but I think that situationally I've ran pretty atrocious there. I do think there's a sizable skill gap between Zoom200 and Zoom500, but not so much that I should have near enough 7bb/100 EV winrate at Zoom200, and a negative one at Zoom500. TCOOP was the reason for the poor tournament results, nothing good happened there and I was only close to a deep run in one tournament, the $320 knockout NLHE tournament where I had above average chips with ~180 players left, only to bust not long after due to 2 lost flips. A shame, because the prizes were increasing rapidly from then on out, but not really a surprise given that average chips at that point was about 10bbs.

HEM2 Screenshots:



So for the month:
VPPs: 63,358.97 (20k behind SNE pace)
Cash: +$20,496.21
MTTs: -$3,829.33
Overall: +$16,666.88 (Not including fpps and bonuses)

Next month I'm mainly just hoping to have a positive EV winrate at Zoom500, aim for ~4bb/100 EV winrate at Zoom200, and get in as close to 100k VPPs as possible and start to make some headway on SNE.

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Comments (15)

Don't really know where to start with this, perhaps a warning to all readers that a very long and most probably very boring rant is about to commence.

I've not posted here in a long time, intentionally so, I withdrew myself from the community because of some shit I was going through irl. It all started last summer when I was in Korea trying to make things work with my then kind of ex kind of girlfriend at the time. It was an up and down roller coaster and stress levels were at an all time high, not helped by the fact I was going through a terrible downswing in PLO at the same time. To cut the story short, as I'm not here to tell tales, point the finger or talk shit about anyone, but it ended a year ago today and for that reason it seems like a reasonable time to talk about the situation. Both parties were at fault really, but I didn't deal with the breakup well. Shortly after the breakup I incurred some big losses which rounded off a $30k downswing overall in PLO which was something along the lines of 100 buyins given the average stakes I was playing, so I withdrew the remains of my battered bankroll and took to some quite heavy drinking for comfort to overcome the breakup and downswing.

I would frequently blow £100 on a night out, which is very easy to do in some parts of the world, but where I live, that's a lot of alcohol. 10-12 double JD and cokes was the norm, which for a 155lb guy is quite a lot, it was ugly and the follow day(s) were invariably a blur but it dulled the boredom and pain of life for a while. It went on from the end of October to the end of December last year, and on New Years I decided enough was enough. I got some money back online and started playing Hold'Em again, I drew up a workout schedule and started to figure myself out. Despite that, I was not over the breakup and the constant reminders of her on facebook were a major problem, it was clear from her posts that she cared not a jot about the breakup and that just rubbed it in and made it hard to forget even a couple of months on, so I decided to delete facebook for a month. This was fine for a while, she was no longer on my mind and January was a good month. I enjoyed the entire month, however deactivating facebook wasn't a good long term solution as there was a lot of stuff from friends that I wanted to see, so I reactivated, but went a different way about removing the constant reminders from her and instead decided to delete her and every mutual friend I had with her. This was a total of about 160 people, the vast majority of which I really really liked and most of whom I wish I still had contact. Unfortunately only 2 or 3 of those 160 people ever bothered to message me to see how I was doing or show any sympathy about my situation so in retrospect I probably didn't lose out on any real "friends", just acquaintances that were fun to be around at the time.

I'm not going to apologise to those people for doing what I did as they never showed me any sympathy and it certainly helped me overcome the problems I was still going through, but I do hope they'll understand my point of view. Naturally, the way I acted, shutting out so many people from my life including some friends I'd known for years just to avoid seeing anything of my ex on facebook sounds very naive, immature and unnecessary but, I was struggling real hard to overcome it and at one point was seriously considering the prospect of marrying her. I'm not here to try and reconnect with said 160 people or even apologise, but I do wish to explain my feelings at the time and hope that any of them that read this at least understand my thought processes at the time.

One of the reasons I felt inspired to post today, as well as the fact it's been a year since the breakup is due to the fact I was going through some old blog posts I made 3 years ago. I've cut off this community for a long time, but memories came back of how positively I used to be viewed here. So many people were writing in my blogs that have long since equalled or surpassed my level of success in poker and I do kinda miss the positive reinforcement from the community I guess. I don't expect any of that after this blog post, but still, it was nice to reminisce about the past and I have connected with a couple of LPers lately in Oddeye and sChOuA and have enjoyed interacting with them about poker and life and whatnot in the past couple of months.

Anyway moving on, working out was a real help in the first 3 months of this year. I went from 155lbs 20% body fat to 140lbs 12% body fat in that time frame, which ok, that's very light for a guy who is ~5ft 10, but the plan was to cut to lower body fat, then bulk afterwards rather than bulking from a starting point of 20% body fat and cutting later. Unfortunately, in March I injured my shoulder and until 2 weeks ago never bothered to get back into it. I'm really enjoying it again, and even after just a couple of weeks am seeing some progress again which is one of the most motivating things. It's an enjoyable process and that is more important if not more important than the end results. It's something I've spoke to Ket about a lot recently, and it's obviously key to spend as much time doing things we enjoy as possible. I've certainly been more productive this year than the last couple and that's the route I've wanted to take for a while and spent more time enjoying myself than I did last year.

Certainly, I've been more productive in terms of volume at the poker tables too. I've been aided quite significantly by the introduction of zoom poker, which has helped me get in a yearly total of a little less than 500k hands so far. That is probably double what I achieved in 2010 and about 50% more than last year and far more than half of those hands have come in the last 2 months where I've really made an effort to increase my productivity and reduce the procrastination to a bare minimum. Despite the positives, I haven't ran well this year, and off the back of the $30k downswing at the end of last year I immediately ran 50 buyins below EV at Hold'Em in the first 80k hands. It wasn't helping me in any way having to overcome more bullshit after the last half of 2011, but I got through it just seeing that my EV winrate was quite decent and seeing the unreal retarded plays people were making on a frequent basis. The first half of this year I was actually down money in cash games after running 25 buyins below EV @ 100PLO and, at this point, about 55 buyins below EV @ 50NL, eventually I said fuck it, said to myself "stop wasting time at these dumb stakes" and put more money online and started playing Zoom 100NL and 200NL. I immediately started running much better and in the last 2.5 months have made 5.8k at 100NL, 9.5k at 200NL, but unfortunately dropped 4k at 500NL, still, given an average of more than 1.5k VPPs/day I've made a decent bit of rakeback on top and am up over $10k in donkaments this year thanks to a 2nd place finish in some Sunday Turbo tournament for $15.5k. Overall, including rakeback I guess I'm only at about +~$30k for the year which seems abysmal for all the extra productivity, but I am about $4.5k below EV in cash games still and think I've ran pretty bad in tournaments in general, including the 2nd place finish for $15.5k where I started the HU with a 4:1 chip lead. Still, it's been drilled into my brain by constant self reinforcement that dwelling on the past is a complete waste of energy, and looking forward I have to say I'm confident about poker for the remainder of this year and the entirety of next year. Zoom NL is fun, I'm playing as well as I've played in a while, the games are very beatable and my productivity and general happiness levels are higher than they've ever been in the past year. In short, I'm well over the past and I'm looking forward to the future in every aspect of life. I may have alienated a lot of old "friends" and hope they can understand why I completely segregated myself from the community, I would not be against reconnecting with some of them, though the vast majority of the 160 people are not poker players and will never read this so that's not likely, either way, it's out there now and I'm happy with the direction things are going regardless.

Graph of bb/hand for the year... Still 60 buyins below EV for the year -.-;


Stats:

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Comments (33)

Bit drunk right now and felt like blogging a bit, anyway, it's been a long time since I last blogged. Last time I posted, I was talking about how I was looking to play tons of PLO, make lots of money and VPPs and aim for SNE, pass my driving test, get a Porsche Cayman S and get sexy this year. Hasn't really worked out that way thus far. In April, I came back to Korea after leaving last September. I had lived in Korea for around about 2 years total time in between Jan 08 and Sept 10, but this time back was a little different. This time I came with Ket and we got a hotel instead of living in my own place. When I lived here, I always lived either near or with my girlfriend at the time, but we broke up in January, so it was a different atmosphere in April. Still, I hung out with her a lot, and truthfully, a large part of the reason I wanted to come back to Korea was to get back with her. In any case, all this time I spent with Ket and the ex resulted in a lot less poker, workout, driving related time, so I had put the back burners on a couple of goals, and completely destroyed any chance of making SNE by that point already. Not that I'm saying I regret it, but in some way it always feels depressing to set goals and fall at the first hurdle, like I wasn't even close to SNE or getting sexy by then.

As for my driving test, well, I failed my first attempt back in March, just before I came to Korea for the first time. However after 4 hours of lessons and a 2nd attempt in May, shortly after I left Korea in late April, I managed to pass. I still don't have a car though, but I am looking at a few cars. BMW 320d, Mazda RX8 R3 and Ford Focus ST-3 are the cars I've mainly been looking at. They're all very different, but I think I'll probably end up going for the boring, economical and comfortable choice in the BMW 320d, but we'll see how the next month goes. Going back home to England Sept 8th (My birthday) so will make the decision then, will see how poker goes, hopefully get some test drives in when I'm back and make the decision from there, maybe I'll even consider some other cars in the £10k-£15k price range if anyone has any other suggestions.

Anyway, I've actually been back here in Korea since late May, I left the day after my 2nd driving test and have been here ever since. For the first month I was mainly alone, stayed with the ex-girlfriend's parents for a few days and then found my own place. Some of her friends from the States stayed at my place, we all went to Thailand together for a few days and then we came back. Mid June, Ket came out again and we've been living together since, we're staying in some 2 room apartment in central(ish) Seoul. I's a fairly nice place, but nothing special. One plus is that it's quite close to my old apartment (7 minutes by taxi) that I lived in here in the past, so I'm familiar with the area and we end up hanging out in a lot of the old spots I used to hang out in. It's quite nostalgic, it reminds me of the good times and makes me feel quite regretful for ever leaving Korea and getting into a situation where I basically had to lose my girlfriend. Still, you do what you want at the time and obviously in the moment I wanted to be alone and play more poker, make lots of money, get SNE and all that worthless shit that actually means diddly squat. Oh well.

The "getting sexy" goal has not gone entirely to plan either. I mean, it could've gone worse I guess. After leaving the States in late Sept 2010 I weighed in at my heaviest ever - about 82kg (I'm like 176~177cm ish), after a month of atrocious eating in the States where I had gained about 7kg in 1 month. When I came back to Korea I was about 76kg and now I'm 74kg after 1 month of gymming with Ket so I guess it's some improvement, but it's pretty tough to get anywhere in Korea. This is largely because all the people I know here go out frequently, and this most often times involves lots of alcohol consumption and lots of greasy, unhealthy foods. Not that I'm saying that this is a bad thing, obviously I enjoy hanging out at good resutaurants and bars with friends having a good 'ol chinwag, but it's not exactly conducive to weight loss. It's ok though, I'm gymming a decent amount at the moment, showing some small progress despite the awful diet, and am confident that when I'm back in my home town I'll focus on this more and make more progress, but I mayaswell have some fun while I'm here afterall and not focus TOO much on the poker and workout grinding.

As for some poker results, this year started fairly well. I was up about $35k in cash games by the end of March and looking towards an easy ride to a $100k+ year on the tables and whatever else in rakeback, but a recent $20k+ downswing in PLO has fucked that idea over. I've ran pretty shit at $2/$4 and $3/$6 PLO overall, but on top of that, I've definitely let it get to me a bit too much aswell and have ended up playing some very poor PLO at times and spewing a lot of money. That's the thing in PLO, the variance is massive, and even if you're a big winner, it's only gonna be so long before you experience a big downswing, and how it effects you is going to make a huge difference to your long term winrate. Unfortunately, this is definitely the worst downswing I've experienced buy-in wise in my 5.5 year career of poker and I've definitely let it get to me too much. God only knows what I'll do if this continues for another 50 buyins, but let's not hope that happens. I think I have a reasonable edge in the $2/$4 PLO games on Stars, almost every table I sit at has 1 player with <3BB/100 winrate, and often times there are 2 players that are that awful, and yet I still can't seem to win. PTR is a little off with my winrate, I think it says I'm down like 8.1k total in $2/$4 PLO at the moment but in actuality it's more like -$5k and I'm almost breakeven in terms of EV, but even still, the games seem so soft that it's hard to take that I'm even "breakeven" in terms of winrate. I'm sure it's just variance though.

Hold'Em wise, things have gone much better. I'm above $1/hand so far in my database, though as a sidenote, this is just my laptop and I'm missing some hands that I lost when my laptop blew up in Korea, thus losing whatever hands I played from late May-late July when it blew up and I don't have the HHs from my desktop. That being said, there's not many Hold'Em hands missing anyway, infact, there's about $2k in profit from Hold'Em games missing, mostly from a 5/10Euro game I played where I won $1.5k in about 30 hands, unfortunately Ladbrokes won't send me the hand histories in a format I can import which upsets me a little cause I'm quite OCD and like to keep track of my actual results and not just stare at some half-true numbers.

Anyway, here's some obligatory screenshots:

Hold'Em:


PLO:


I also won a $109 NLHE headsup tournament for about $7.6k and came 7th in a $500~ PLO 6max SCOOP tournament for about $5.6k so I'm prob up like $10k~$11k in tournament winnings on top of this, about $14k-$15k in rakeback/bonuses so far, and probably another $4k-5k in cash game winnings that are either lost hand histories or on my desktop. Probably about a $50k ish year so far all inclusive, which is definitely better than the last 2 years but not really what I had planned at the beginning of the year, still, there's a few months left, I feel like PLO is very beatable and a big upswing is just around the corner and Hold'Em games are still beatable, I'm def gonna get sexier when I get home, I've passed my license and will inevitably get a car when I get home, so things can only get better and I'm gonna close in on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year.

Cheers,
maybe I'll blog again by years end, I do blog pretty infrequently though!

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Hey guys long time since I wrote a blog. I would've posted sooner but a combination of disinterest and lack of internet have made it tough. The reason I say disinterest is because I noticed in one of the comments in an older blog I did someone posted something along the lines of "Why do you get a featured blog and not me? I have boring life stories to tell aswell", I don't remember exactly what it was but it was something like that. Comments like that really demotivate me from posting at all, I only post cause I feel some people are interested and it's a good way of getting shit off my mind, but if people don't wanna read then there's no point in me writing anything. I don't say this cause I want people to start kissing my ass, just explaining why I haven't posted sooner. Anyway I didn't even choose to make my blog a featured blog, nor do I remember any mod asking me if I wanted it to be (They may have, but I don't remember it)

Anyway, quite a few things have changed in my life since the last blog post. I've been back in England since September and went halves on a brand new house with my parents, which we all moved into mid November. It's a 3 story 5 bedroom house, the 3rd story has 2 really big bedrooms, one which I'm using as a bedroom and the other is basically a games room with a sofa, TV, PS3, computer and chair in that I mainly just use for quiet poker time, but also a decent place to have some friends over and chill a bit. It's a tad boring living at home at times but it's comfortable at the same time and I definitely miss home when I'm away for a long time.

As I was saying about lack of internet in the first paragraph, we were supposed to get connected on December 7th. Well, December 7th comes and without notice or warning the technicians fail to show up, it turns out they sent us an email saying they couldn't come, but how in god's name are we supposed to read an email saying that they can't install our internet at the moment, when we don't have internet!? Naturally, we called to complain the following day anyway, and they said that the installation would be delayed until late December or early January at the soonest. Several phone calls over the next few days, horrible service from Sky and we told them to fuck off and ordered internet with Virgin Media. Unfortunately, the main reason we couldn't get internet was because the BT technicians in the area were very far behind schedule, and both Sky and Virgin Media had to use the same technicians to install our internet anyway, so we didn't get a better quote on when to expect the installation from them either, I think they told us January 9th or something. Because of this, I was unable to get online at all during the second half of November and most of December. I ended up getting a USB mobile broadband dongle, however it was unreal slow and choppy, and frequently dropped during the day hours, like multiple times per hour. So in order to get any poker hands in I had to wait until midnight or 1am when it was a bit more stable to start my session, and since I was/am trying to get on SNE pace I usually didn't end up going to bed until some time between 7 and 10am. Anyway, we didn't get ADSL installed until about 3 weeks ago and when we did get it, it didn't even work properly. Random disconnects were occuring very frequently, the router light would just turn itself off and then reconnect itself anytime between 10 seconds and a minute later. This probably happened 10 times a day if I spent a good amount of time in front of the computer. It has settled down for the most part now and for the past week and a half or so I've had about 2 disconnects, which is definitely still more than I'd want, particularly when pokering, but it's a lot better than nothing or the USB dongle I was using before. Highly tilting though to go 2 months without proper internet, and then when you finally get it, it's still tosh.

Without the internet I usually ended up playing FF13 or GT5 on the PS3, watching DVDs and Top Gear and getting super interested in cars in general. It motivated me to start learning, I know, I know, I'm 26 and don't drive and that's sad but better late than never I guess. I booked my theory test beginning of February and I'll be taking it on the 25th, if I pass I'll book my practical and start a 1 week, 30 hour intensive course the previous week before my test date and hopefully pass first time and be on the road before long. Being a lazy nobsack I've put about 1 hour studying in so far, if that, and achieved like 31/50 on a mock test with nothing more than common sense, like my knowledge on the subject is virtually nonexistant. Some of the questions are hilariously dumb and I'll be very insulted if I don't pass (Need 43/50) when I do the real thing. Here's an example of a stupid question:



Unfortunately they're not all quite this easy, lots of them hinge on actually knowing what various roadsigns are or various rules and regulations which you need to have learnt and can't rely on logic, but still, I'm gonna be pretty embarrassed if I don't pass considering about half of the questions are on a similar level of stupid as the question above.

Having an interest in cars motivates me to attain SNE, as it would provide enough FPPs to purchase a Porsche Cayman S by year's end, which is obviously a pretty sick car and is probably far better than anything else I'd likely be getting as my first car. I was even thinking of using the FPPs to pay for a part of a 911, and paying the rest with cash if the year goes well and I make good money on top of SNE, but naturally I'm a lazy bastard and as much as I'd like to end up with a Porsche as my first car, it's a real struggle to put that much time in for me particularly when running poorly as I am at the moment, in fact, last year I made a total of 45k VPPs for the entire year. I even set a picture of a white Cayman S as my desktop backdrop to motivate me some, I'm not sure it works, but can't hurt I guess, unfortunately though, I'm already quite far behind having spent a couple of weeks in London in January and having terrible internet until a couple of weeks ago. I'm currently at 89k VPPs and SNE pace is 147.5k VPPs.

I've been missing Korea quite a lot lately so I'm going back for a 3 week stay in April and I'm pleased to say Ket will be joining me. I can't wait to enjoy the food there and the bars I used to frequent and hopefully catch up with some old friends who are still there, if there are any left. There's virtually nothing to do or anywhere to go in my home town, it's weird that I start to miss home when I'm in Seoul for any length of time given how much better it is than here, but then when I'm back here I begin to miss Seoul too. Can't win I guess. Not gonna say much about it but I also broke up with my girlfriend lately, we're still close though and I'll be seeing a lot of her in Seoul. That will also be an obstacle to my SNE pursuit, so during my 3 weeks in Korea I really don't see myself playing much poker, and even when I do play I'm definitely not going to play anymore than 6 tables on my laptop, I struggle enough with 9-12 tables on a 30" monitor, but on a laptop it would be impossible.

Another obstacle to my SNE chase is World of Warcraft. Yes indeed, I'm wasting time playing that damn game once again. I don't think I would have, but the expansion came out late December or whenever it was and I was dying to get my hands on it when I had no internet, so obviously when my internet started working again I logged on, got from 80 to 85 in 2 days and have already put in like 4-5 days in-game played time in like 2 weeks. I don't really think Cataclysm is that great though, but it's still very addictive, currently the queues for heroics are really long for anyone but tanks, infact it takes about 25-35 minutes for me to get a group on my Mage. It takes an absurd amount of time to gear up compared to WOTLK, you need to grind all the rep factions to exalted, spend ages levelling professions up and farming mats, or pay insane amounts of gold to get your hand on epic gear now. Some people may think this is a good thing since it makes it harder for scrubs, but I disagree, it isn't really any "harder" to get the items, it just requires a lot more time, I mean it's not difficult to kill a bunch of mobs for mats or run x heroics, it's just a matter of time. In all the time I've spent on it I only have 3 epic items, in the same time frame I would've had all epics, would've at least BEEN to every existing raid etc in WOTLK. It's really just the amount of time you need to put into it to get anywhere that I'm disliking about Cataclysm, I like the way the talent trees have been reworked, some of the new content and spells and whatnot, but yea, just way too time consuming and that's very bad for anyone who wants to play lots of poker.

Anyway since this is a poker site and my life isn't really all that interesting I mayaswell leave the blog with a few screenshots of my year so far:

Here is the reports page, there's also like 4k hands of 2c/5c NL on top but it wasn't exactly serious and had no effect on the money won since it's such small stakes, so I filtered that limit out:



I still feel like my NL game is fairly competetive which is a nice feeling considering I've barely played any for months. I think I put in 15-20k hands of 0.25/0.5 euro on ladbrokes at the end of last year running at 8.5BB/100 or so, but apart from that really haven't played any for a long time. I'd like to win about $500 more at $3/$6 just to get that limit green on my stars PTR. I'm not going to try and make that winrate = x like I tried for so long at 50c/1 but I'd just like it to be green. I know it doesn't matter all that much since in my HEM I can see I have a lifetime winrate of 3.5BB/100 at 3/6, but still, I'm kinda OCD and I'd like it all to be green. Hopefully it won't take long to make 1 more buyin.

And a graph:



Currently 27 buyins under EV, but I was 32 buyins under EV at some point earlier in the year so I guess it could be worse. I also feel like I've ran really poorly in terms of flopping hands, running into hands, and poor board runouts on top of running below EV. I'm certainly not amazing at PLO by any stretch of the imagination and I've done some very dumb things even over the past couple of days, but I do feel like I have a small edge at $2/$4 PLO and potential to have a very large edge in the future with more experience in the game. It certainly doesn't help my winrate playing 9 tables (12 the last 2 days), which is a lot for someone who has 4 tabled for years, nor does having a connection that has disconnected me a sum total of about 10 times over this sample size and folded me off of every hand at every table, sometimes with reasonable amount of $ in the pot. It's hard to say if my feeling is correct though, the swings that are possible in PLO is just ridiculous, I heard that krmont22 had a 200 buyin downswing, and he's a 4+BB/100 winner at 1/2 and 2/4 PLO over large sample sizes.

Think that's all for now, gonna finish eating this paella and get grinding some more WoW like a silly little nerd and prob put in a bit of Theory test studying before going to bed at like 3 or 4am I guess. Feel free to leave feedback, positive, negative, neutral, hate, love, whatever :>

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