J

Ups and downs

Down: United lost
Up: +8 BI day today
Down: Still lost sklansky $$$ today
Up: I can pay rent
Down: United lost
Up: Close to getting to platinum star and my $650 bonus
Down: United lost
Up: I got demented to drown my sorrows:)

My stats at 25nl have turned pretty average to be honest. Beating it at a rate of 3.17BB/100, which isn't world class by any means, -though if you added on my sklansky bucks it would be a lot higher. Made just short of 1K since I started playing cash so I can't complain.



Despit this hand I still managed to run below ev on the day. I did rather enjoy sucking out on this dude, -I had been three betting him quite a bit so there was no way I was ever getting off it.



This one confused me a little, -it was against a supernova who I'm sure has a HUD and knows that I'm not splashing around with nothing. I suckered him in nicely but man it was just badly played on his part.

Running bad

Nothing hurts more than getting consistently unlucky at poker. It hurts so bad, especially if you plan to live off it for the summer. I just seem to be unable to get anything going, - sets aren't getting paid off, -I'm running hands into bigger hands and getting sucked out on. I have to play because I need to get to supernova again and get a $650 bonus to pay my rent.










I'm down about $250 in Sklansky bucks which at the moment is about 1/3 of my bankroll. And all-in ev only tells half the story.

I made a mental note since starting my blog that I wouldn't bitch about running bad, - so on a brighter note United are playing in the champions league final tonight. Gonna get drunk and forget all about poker till tomo.

Tipping away

Been playing quite a bit recently, -punching slightly below my weight with the following stats:

My hourly rate over 10 hours played worked out at $20.33 an hour which is fine but hopefully once I get out of a slump of running bad I will be making more. I felt at the start I played quite poorly but stepped it up a notch after posting my hands on 2+2 and getting some serious abuse. To top it off over those first 4K hands I didn't run good by any stretch of the imagination. There were a couple of key pots that help me maintain a decent hourly, The first outlines the merits of reraising with pocket kings:



This one is one that I posted on 2+2 and everyone thought I played it horribly, but I like it :) :



The early position raiser was running 13/5, basically raising AK or QQ+ and then calling pocket pairs, so I actually put him a big PP pre flop. Took a stab with a suited connector and got paid off... Lucky I know but I ain't complaining.

This is my pick of the bad beats:



and this tested my sanity too:



1 exam left on monday. Gonna see star trek tonight with Janis and then hit the books again tommorrow.

Over and out.

Exams, with a little grinding in between.

Just finished my fifth exam out of seven. It went really well I'm not used to coming out of exams and actually feeling ok about how they went. It's a new and strange feeling. Don't know if I've been just getting lucky or what but I think I've done very well in almost all of them so far touch wood. I have ground out another 7K hands or so since my last post. 3 hours ish yesterday. Wasn't bad at all, I made a few bob but it wasn't anywhere near my hourly rate.

Here is a beautiful hand I played v's some sucker slow playing a set, - the nice thing about this was the pot odds he gave me to catch up. He even could have folded the river (but I prolly wouldn't have, -then again I wouldn't have slowplayed it:) ).


I't seemed like this sort of thing kept happening to me over the last few hands, -Nothing to complain about, just a little variance to keep me on my toes. This is one of many I could have picked:












Stats:
Hours: 39.18
Total hands: 40,604
Vol. Put$ in pot: 12.95
PFR: 11.16
Hands/hr: 1036
BB/100: 4.66
$/hr: $24.19
Amount won: $947.75

PS, -39.18 hours put in total, - that's 1 weeks work during the summer. I'd be delighted with this return over the summer months :). Would set me up nicely for my final year in college.

For those of you who have just had one of those days.

Press play and scroll down...

Running Hot

Played a little yesterday and today and went on a really good run. Yesterday I finished upo $300 playing cash and I was just about to go to bed when I decided to short stack 1/2 omaha. Ten minutes and three buy ins later I finished the day at a total profit of $240. As a punishment today for losing silly money I woke up early today and put in a quick 1.5 shift before I went to gfs' party. Won A tidy $130 this morning so very happy. There are some serious fish around. I was 20 tabeling aswell and found it easy, may move up to 24 after I get used to 20.

Here are a couple of juicy hands:

Usually I would raise this pre but on this table I was running really high like30/25 or something and had only just sat down so I smooth called pre, -two donkeys.

SB special, served with a side dressing of OVER STRAIGHT. The thing I loved about this was the size of his raises. Trying to squeeze every last penny out of me and I was sitting with the nuts:) Fish.

Graph to date... Things looking good for summer.








Stats:
Hours played: 30.82
Total hands: 33,300
Amount won: $841.85
BB/100: 5.06
Vol. Put$ in pot: 12.96
Raised preflop: 11.29
$/hr: $27.3

Poker has taken a back seat over the last week or so for my exams, -3 down 4 to go inc. one tomo. I did drop about $80 playing 10$ donkament 90 man sngs and ran bad, 0/10. Also my usb wireless adapter has broken so am using my neolithic laptop. I timed how long it takes to load internet explorer this morning after starting it up: 10:27 mins. Not sure what state my bankroll is in exactly, I imagine about 1200 or so. I haven't mentioned it before but I am staking a guy also, -ninersrule16:















I am really happy with how he's playing though I haven't actually heard from him in a while, -I'll need to get in contact with him soon just to check in but he has exams too at the mo so he hasn't been playing too often. He's been playing the 6 dollars sngs but I'll tell him to step up soon. I gave him 600$ to start with and I'm sure he's made a few moola from battle of the planets so he should have 100bi's at 10$ soon. The one thing going against him is the volume, -he plays 4 tables which makes it very difficult to make money off unless you're playing like $110. SNGS=VOLUME.

Please leave comments, -happy to answer any questions:)

Losing session

One of those days that I just shouldn't have played. Kept getting sucked out on. Down $50 but considering I ran bad I'm actually just pleased it wasn't more.

Two of my favourites:
1.Lobotomised gibbon gets 58.6 big blinds in the middle with the nuts, -A7.

2.Bean #2 stacks it off with a flushdraw on the turn. (Villain was running something ridiculous like 50/30 hence re-raise pre)

Poker stats

SO, I will give a little poker background info here to convey where I'm at: a couple of well placed screenshots:



























Above are my current sharkscope stats for sngs and also my stats at 25nl. I've been running pretty bad for a long time now at sngs and have dropped down stakes from $39 to the $13 dollars to give my bankroll a breather, but my cash stats are promising and I can certainly get a much higher $/hr value at multi tabeling 18 cash than playing the $13 stts. Cash is tedious, boring as hell. But here's a mathematical equasion to clarify:

I heart $. $STT's<$CASH= Focus on cash.

At least until I have a bankroll big enough to start playing the $39 sngs again. Till that day:
Nana nana, nana nana, nana nana, nana nana, nana CASH STATS! (played to the batman theme tune)

Hands: 24,489
Hours: 23.05
Amount won: $651.75
BB/100: 5.32
$/hour: 28.28
VP$IP: 13.28
PFR: 11.59

I know it is a very small sample size, but I am happy with them stats because Joe heart $, savvy?

Hi my name is Joe Pegler, I am a college student in Cork, Ireland and am a part time-poker player. As of the start of the UCC term I attempted looking for a job around Cork city. I handed out maybe 20-30 CV's and did not receive one call back. I had money saved up from the summer so was not utterly desperate, but did need to start earning soon. I had been playing poker sporadically over the summer on pokerstars, but definitely not the stakes or the hours put in needed to make a regular profit. I decided to give a go at making a living off poker. If it didn't work out I could always get a student loan & start job searching again! My bankroll at that stage was very low ($40) So I used bankroll management to build my roll. I wouldn't buy in for more than 10% of my total bankroll, and if I ever had less than 10% I would drop down a level. I started playing the $3 turbos (6 at a time) and found the players there to be awful. That 40 was quickly ground up from 40 to $100 where I allowed myself to change from $3 turbos to $6 turbos. Players here were just as bad and it was in the space of a week I had that original $40 up to $170. This was all done playing 6 handed turbos. Week 1 profit: $130 I was delighted with my first weeks profit as a 'pro' but these kind of results are not sustainable at this level. So I pushed my self to move up to the $11 non-turbos. These games are probably my strongest considering the slow format of the non turbos. I had a big edge over the field picking good spots to get my money in. I also found I could play more than 6 games at a time so got through maybe 9-10 in one sitting. I'm always very slow to move up stakes and believe in excessive bankrolling but with about $450 in my account I decided again to move up stakes to the $20 non turbos. Again I crushed these games and consistently got my money in good at this level too. Some of the play here is terrible and a lot of average players here will make a profit if they can fold a hand and play solid preflop. At this point profits shot up and I made I think about $1600 from playing both the $10 and $20 in week 2. Again I was delighted. Week 3 hit and so did the variance. With roughly 2K in my account I again moved up stakes. It was at this point that I realised I could get through way more turbo games in one hour (despite only playing six at a time) than I could playing the non turbos, so to increase hourly profit I moved back to $25 turbos. I lost about $600 over 2 days and was looking at printing out my CV's again, when I came good. Everything kinda clicked into place and I caught some cards to turn this $600 deficit into a $100 profit that week. I was happy with the week despite the poor hourly rate because of some of the awful luck I had to put up with over the first two days. Week 4 was one of my biggest weeks. I hit cards left right and center and quickly spun the $2100 in my account up to about 3.5K This was done playing the $25 turbos and then the $39 turbos. The players in these turbo games are definitely poorer than the $30 non turbos. Although I have noticed some other big profit players sitting along with me at these stakes. Since then I changed to cash and multi table at the .10/.25 level for an hourly rate of about $30 an hour. I switched because I couldn't handle the variance of sngs, and my brother (http://finnianp.blogspot.com/) convinced me to change to cash. I currently do not have a big sample size at cash to determine which will be more profitable between the that or the $39s sngs, but with far more rakeback at cash and much less variance I can't see myself returning to sngs.