Running on Empty

I guess there comes a time in everyones life when you get dealt a serious kick up the ass to sort yourself out. Well I guess my time has come, the issues with my lungs haven't cleared properly so  I was referred for a chest xray which showed fluid between my lungs, now this may be caused by the chest infection, but they weren't sure so I was referred for a CT scan. The scan unfortunately has shown that there is further fluid around my heart, which is what is probably giving me most of my problems. I have been signed of work for the last 3 weeks and although with all of the rest I have been getting, my breathing has improved quite a lot, something is still obv not right as I am struggling to carry out even routine tasks like carrying a bag of shopping 200 yards without my chest starting to hurt and getting out of breath. I have two further hospital appointments this week, one a follow up for my original respiratory clinic I attended earlier in the month, then on friday, I have to attend a cardiac diagnostics clinic to have an E.C.G done and prob a few other tests.

I am hoping that all of this is a result of the infection that I had over xmas, but theres a small part of me that thinks that some of the small health issues that I have had over the last few years were just building up to something like this to happen, I guess its just a case of waiting till Friday and then getting the results back so at least I will then have a better idea of a course of action, wether that be surgery or hopefully just medication for a short while until the problem clears up. I have always been someone that goes through life taking things light heartedly and likes not to worry about things, but I have to admit, I am finding life a bit stressful at the moment, which is probably not helping matters at all as I do tend to bottle things up and keep them to my self rather than finding some sort of release mechanism, its not as if I can even go to the gym and blast the crap out of summat at the moment either !!!

Anyway, enough of the health stuff, you would think that being on my 3rd week off work, I would of been able to grind out 1000s of STTs and be on track for supernova...........Well guess what?.......It hasn't quite gone to that sort of plan, in fact I failed to make silver star on stars in Jan as I only played about 149 STTs for a total profit of $40. Due to the lack of energy that I have had I have not been able to concentrate much on anything at all so have not been in the mood to play at all. In fact the only real volume I stuck in was chasing the 75 Billion milestone hand, where I 18 tabled 1c/2c tables for a few hours trying to hit a bonus, but got fook all.

Feb has been sort of the same. My energy levels have picked up a bit over the last few days, so I am hoping to try and play at least enough volume to get to silver star, then hopefully if I feel better in March grind out enough to hit Gold Star so I can at least cash in some fpps for the $300 bonus to help boost the bankroll. The few games I have managed to play in Feb so far have been ok, currently played 27 $7 Reg 9 mans and I am up about $120, but I am running a fair bit above EV for a change.

Hopefully by the time of my next post, I will have some better news regarding my health and maybe I'll even be back at work, which I never ever thought I would say, but I actually miss it !! I am sure that won't last though as soon as I return :o-)

Madness - Cardiac Arrest

2011 Review

Bit late I know, but I am still getting over the problems I had with my chest over the xmas and new year period, been a bit of a downer really with the only good part of it is losing approx 10lb in weight since mid December, not exactly how I planned to kickstart my new weight loss and fitness program for the new year, but hopefully it will stay off and I can build from here when my chest eventually recovers and I can start training again. Went back to the Docs yesterday and it seems that the infection has now cleared but my lungs are still suffering a bit so I have been given an inhaler to use to ease the current pain and discomfort until it eventually eases and fixes itself.

On the poker front, due to the illness 2011 finished off with a bit of lull as I didn't play at all for the last two weeks of the year. Overall I have to be slightly disappointed. When I went back to SNGS in about March time, I got straight back in where I left off from a few years ago when SNGs were my main game, quickly clocking up over $800 in profit in about 750 games, but then Black Friday came and also stars changed the buyin structure and I hit a severe patch of variance and had about a 2000 game break even stretch, in fact it wasn't until I had the Team Moshman Coaching that I really started to pick back up again. I then had a pretty steep drop over another 300 or so games before starting to recover again. As you can see by the graph I only played about 3200 games over the year, this needs to go up substantially this year if I want to get anywhere near the profits I want to make.

I finished the year only $1901.85 up, but I do have about 18k fpps still to cash in which I will wait until I am back up to Gold Star/Platinum before doing so to get the better value. Its twice as much profit as last year, but still no where near what I was getting the previous few years, again this is down to not playing any MTTs and binking the odd $1k+ payday which I used to do a couple of times a year. I guess I do need to start putting a few of these back into my schedule, maybe even keep a seperate roll.

I still have one eye on supernova this year, but due to illness I have only played 4 STTs this year, so its gonna be a long grind and unless I can move up to be playing 15s/30s by July, I think I will struggle. But for now the plan is tro try and get enough volume in at the lower levels in the first few months that I will have at least a shot at it by the end of the year.

Thats it for now, a short and sweet review.

Rammstein - Keine Lust (need to crank up the sound on this one !!! )

Merry Xmas All

Well its that time of year when............well basically, we all get ill !!! I have been suffering with a really tight and sore chest for the last few weeks and have been living on ibruprofen to get by but basically I have been as miserable as hell and not been able to concentrate on anything, so much so that I have not played poker or drunk any alcohol for over 10days. Broke up from work on Tuesday this week till after xmas, hoping that all would be ok, but after getting the xmas food shopping done on weds morning, I spent the next two days either in bed or lay on the sofa, rather than my chest getting better by relaxing it was getting worse. My wife, bless her, eventually had enough and sent me to the doctors on Friday morning. As a typical man I hate going to the docs and I don't think I have been for about 5 years, but wifey knows best. For once wifey was right and it turns out that I have a severe chest infection and also possibly some pleurisy, no wonder I was in so much pain !! Luckily the antibiotics seem to have started to kick in as of today and I do feel somewhat better, my whole upper body still aches from all of the coughing that I have been doing trying to get up some phlegm from the depths of my lungs that refuses to come out. Hopefully I will also get my appetite back ready for the big xmas nosh up tomorrow as I have hardly eaten anything in the last few days either, but at least things are picking up and I should be back to health for the new year and the new goals/persuits.

On the subject of the new years persuits, the plan of possibly hitting Paddy Power in the new year took a blow as I didn't know that you were not allowed to play on your own affiliate links, so thats fooked up the extra rakeback plan on there for now. So I guess the only other option for now is to get my head back down on stars. Due to the serious lack of volume I will almost certainly be back to Bronze star at the start of the year, but that prob won't make that much difference to me anyway. It would be good if I could put enough volume in on the first few months of the year to give myself a realistic chance of getting to supernova by the end of the year should I manage to move up in stakes sticking to my strict bankroll plan which I blogged about last month.

I will def play a bit before the end of the year, but probably not much, only played 88 sngs this month for about $20 profit, but I am am not that bothered at the moment as all I care about is getting my health back on track ready for the new year.

Will probably have a more detailed think about next years plans and goals over the next few days and hopefully post on NYE.

So until then, Merry Christmas all, drink lots, eat lots and do everything to excess, oh and take time out and give a small thought for all those SNE wannabes desperately grinding 20k vpps a day over xmas cos they left it a bit late ;-))

Goth

Greatest song ever made...........

Joy Dvision - Love will tear us apart

November Review

November didn't really go according to plan, mainly due to lack of volume. I had a really good start hitting everything in site then the doom switch flicked and went on a $200 downswing, luckily it didn't last too long and I managed to finish the month off it profit, albeit only about $60. As I said the biggest problem was the volume, I still can't seem to get back into the grind and I only played 182 tournies in the whole month. This annoyingly means that I am going to probably miss out on one of the stellar bonuses, I think I need get about 2900 vpps in December to get another $50 bonus, with xmas and all of the pissups coming up, I just can't see me getting to this. Although if I do decide that supernova is a realistic aim next year, I might just try to get to Gold Star ready for the start of 2012. There is a chance that I might just use 2012 for bonus whoring around some of the sites I have not yet joined, amazing Paddy Power is one of those, they are doing a 200% signup bonus at the moment up to $2000. I have worked out that in the 3 months, I could probably get $1200 of that possibly more if I squeeze in some 6 max cash, althuogh I have heard mixed views on where iPoker is going at the moment. The added benefit of Paddy Power is that I am already an affiliate for them, so if I join up via my own link, I can probably get another 25% on top of any bonuses and VIP payments, so it could work out for 3 for the first 3 months of the year, would be nice to turn over about $2000 before any profits at the table.

I guess the main driver of what I do is what stars do the change the VIP system. They really need to do something so that the low stakes grinders who knock out about 3k VPPs a month can get a guaranteed 30% or so rakeback equivalent. The new year will also probably bring in a lot of ex Fult Tilt Regs who are waiting for the new year to start grinding for supernova, this might water the fish pool down a bit, but will at least keep the games going.

I also hear that Bodog has completely anonomised all of the tables, so I can really see a huge exit from that site of all the regs who can no longer use huds and tracking software, so again most of these will end up stars I guess which is quickly becoming the only real place to play.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Full Tilt evenutally comes back and what format it will come back with, will they come out with all guns blazing with large rakeback and VIP deals to attract everyone back and if they do, how many people will really trust them to go back?

I think 2012 is going to be an interesting year for online poker, lots of countries seem to be ring fencing it to their own countries so they can claim their share of the golden pie, unfortuantely I can only see this increasing. The land of freedom will of course come back on the scene, hopefully in 2012, but again, I have a feeling that all of the sites that they are allowed to play on will be completely ringfenced to just the yanks.

Part of me thinks the bubble as burst, the players seem to be getting more and more knowledgeable and the games getting harder, the other part of me sees this as a challenge to improve my own game and try to have my best year ever as again it seems that I am only going to be about $2k up by the end of the year, better than last year, but still no where near the results of the previous 3 years when I was probably only playing 1/5th of the volume that I have put in. Maybe I need to look back through my records and I am sure that they will show that I was winning a lot more playing MTTs that I thought I was and need to introduce them back into my schedule. Although funny enough, I have been playing a few of the $2.50 180s on stars, only played about 5 so far and not got a cash yet, I still gonna give them a go on the side of my 9 mans which I still think will be my bread and butter for a while.

Determined to get at least 500 STTs under my belt this month, then if it look I can get to Gold Star, will play some cash on side. I will probably end up playing a bit of cash anyway, as I think stars are doing another 72 Billion milestone hand promotion, so will def try and bink a bit of that, I'm due some after 18 tabling for 7 hours last time and not hitting a bean !!!

Bit of long update this one, but its been a while, off to the pub now for a nice couple of lunchtime pints before getting back to hopefully grinding a few tournies out.

Something mellow for you to chill out to today from my all time fave godfather of grunge......

Neil Young - Harvest Moon

STT (SNG) Bankroll Strategy

The Internet seems to be flooded with cash bankroll strategies, ranging from 30 buyins and take a shot at the next level, to the more nitty, 100-200 buyin approach before moving up to ensure that you never go broke. If you have read my blog regularly over the last few years, you will know that I favour the latter approach, which is why 5 years ago I was 1 tabling $20 STTs and I am now still 9 tabling the 7s lol. You may laugh at this, but even after my failed mass tabling effort last year to get to supernova, I have still made a profit every year and I am still living off my initial £100 deposit into online poker way back in December 2003.

I guess my ultra nitty bankroll approach and the fact that like most people, I have had to dig into my roll to pay bills every now and then ,means that apart from the odd drunken $200NL cash session, I have not played higher than I have. Now that I have decided to stick with STTs for the next year or so at least, I hopefully intend to move up to at least the $30s on stars by the end of 2012.

I have therefore developed s bankroll strategy that if all being well will see me happily taking shots at the higher levels with the big boys and hopefully with the bigger fish too.

I do tend to tweak my plan every now and then but the basics will always stick the same and should you choose to follow something along the same, it can suit most levels and bankrolls.

The basics involve never keeping any more money online than you really need to, which  is a rule that I am sure more than a few Full Tilt players wish they had adhered too !! but thats another story. In my case I have a VirginOne account, which is absolutely perfect, as this account is my mortgage/current/savings account all into one, so basically if any of my bankroll is in here, I am effectively getting my mortgage rate in interest, which is currently 3.75%. The account also allows the ability to set up virtual savings areas which look logically seperated. In here I have setup two areas, one called "Poker Stars Bankroll" and one called "Poker Winnings" How I use these areas will be made clearer below.

At the moment, my active bankroll is approx £1300 and I do have to point out that even though I play in $$$ I ignore this and treat it as ££, which to be fair, does make it even more nittier than if my stars account was in $$ to, but thats just a personal way I do things. My Roll is currently split with approx £1050 on stars and £250 in my "Poker Stars Bankroll" savings area. I do also have approx £1300 in my "Poker Winnings" savings account.

While playing the $7s on stars, the maximum I keep online will be £1500. Once my stars account hits £1500 I will withdraw £500. This £500 will split 50/50 with £250 going into my "Poker Winnings" account and £250 into my "Poker Stars Bankroll" account, so in essence if I was starting from scratch and this was my first withdrawal when reaching £1500 for the first time. When I withdraw I would have £250 in the winnings area, £250 in my bankroll area and £1000 online, giving a total bankroll of £1250.

As I work full time, I don't really have to eat into the poker winnings area, but if you are a full time poker player, you could easily adapt the above so that the "Poker Winnings" area in essence becomes your "income"

In my case, I intend to leave the poker winnings area until December 31st and then split the winnings area as follows:-

25% = Payment off Mortgage
25% = Towards a new car (seperate savings account for this)
25% = Luxury Joint Item (something visual my wife and I can reward ourselves with)
10% = For my wife to spend as she pleases
10% = For me to spend how I please.
5%   = Miscellaneous (possibly looking at a seperate MTT bankroll for the few I play a year)

Splitting it the way I have above, seems like a good balance between getting the mortgage paid off early and actually seeing something at the end of the day for all of the hours that you put in, which at the end of the day is why we sometimes play 40 hours plus a week on top of a day job, it def isn't just for fun !!!

So thats the spending part of the strategy, the next part deals with moving up the levels. As you know I am very nitty, so if you follow my strategy below, you may feel very frustrated in playing a lot at the lower levels, but if you do decide to follow it, you should never go broke, unless your a mega fish that is !!!

I think the lowest bankroll you should be playing at for the stars $7s is £750 (or $750/€750) and move up as follows:-

At Bankroll of £750 - £1500, Play 100% - $7s.
At Bankroll of £1500 - £2000, Play 75% - $7s + 25% - $15s.
At Bankroll of £2000 - £2500, Play 50% - $7s + 50% - $15s.
At Bankroll of £2500 - £3000, Play 25% - $7s + 75% - $15s
At Bankroll of £3000 - £3750, Play 100% - $15s.
At Bankroll of £3750 - £4500, Play 75% - $15s + 25% - $30s.
At Bankroll of £4500 - £5250, Play 50% - $15s + 50% - $30s.
At Bankroll of £5250 - £6000, Play 25% - $15s + 75% - $30s.
At Bankroll of £6000+ Play 100% - $30s.

Thats really as far as I have looked ahead for now, with my nitty withdrawal plan, I am going to have ro run well and play a shit load of hands to be able to get to be playing 100% at the 30s by the end of 2012, but I think it could be a realistic aim.

One other adjustment that I might have to make if I am putting in a lot of volume is the online level where I withdraw at, so I might amend the max amount I keep online as follows:-

100% $7s, max in account = £1500.
100% $15s, max in account = £2000.
100% $30s, max in account = £3000.

The above should allow for any real bad runs of variance, obviously if you do hit a real real bad run, you have to drop down the level of the game you play when your bankroll hitsthe levels that you came up on, but hopefully as you will be moving up slowly you should be able to adapt better to the higher skill levels that you will probably meet.

So that is basically it, very nitty, but I think it is very effective. If you don't have an all in one mortgage account, I still recommend you open up a couple of online instant access savings account for your bankroll and winnings areas, in this day and age, you should be able to move money around in a matter of hours and if you plan ahead, you should always be able to get some money into the area you require to deposit into your Stars account should you need it.

I hope some people find this article, feel free to comment as appropriate.

Good luck at the tables, this is GothmanUK on stars, signing off for today.

After putting up a Kristen Hersh track last week, I came across I song that I love and had forgotten about:-

Throwing Muses - Bright Yellow Gun

Struggling for Time

If your looking for a review of October and how the hundreds of games that I have played have gone you are going to be sorely disappointed. Since coming back from a couple of weeks away in Zante, which was by far the most relaxing holiday I have ever had I must say, I have bearly had time to play. So far in October I have managed a whopping 21 STTs !!!

To be fair, I was struggling to put the volume in before I went away, but since coming back, family stuff and work have seemed to taken priority, so much so that I have had to leave the Team Moshman coaching scheme as I was unable to commit to the time. I have to say it was a very positive experience and I have learnt a lot, I would def recommend it to anyone, especially if you are breakeven reg, it can be a very cost effective way of getting quality coaching.

The lack of time has however put me in a bit of a dilemma, I will almost certainly lose silver status this month so will be losing out on a fair bit of value on the rackeback side of things. My workload in November is going to be quite heavy, so I can't see it improving that much, I maybe ablet o get 200+ STTs in if things go to plan, which is not really enough.

I think the plan for now is fit in as many as I can in November and then hopefully have a push in December to get to Gold Star for the beginning of the month. The reason for doing this is that I am hoping for two things. One that the changes in the stars VIP scheme for 2012 will be of benefit for players like myself who log about 2k-5k VPPs per month and two that the changes for cashing in the fpps will be better for Gold Star in the new year so that I can get better value for the 20k or so that I still have remaining from this year which will give the ole bankroll a nice boost at the start of the year.

Talking of a bankroll plan, I have already developed a detailed plan for next year and will be publishing that next saturday, so if you are interested in a mega bankroll plan for part time players who don't need the profit for income, watch this space ;-))

Thats it for this week, gonna try and get back to weekly posts, with the compulsory monthly review, well the good months that is lol

Peace and good luck at the tarbs.

Song for Halloween this week

Kristen Hersh - Your Ghost

Early September Review

Posting my Sept review early cos I am off on me holibobs, 11 glorius all inclusive days in Zante. The plan is to do fck all....and I mean FCK all. After the hectic tour of Canada last year, we decided that this year was gonna be all about relaxing. So it will be beer by the pool, lots of reading, lots of sunbathing and not a lot else. I've never been on an all inclusive before, so I am just hoping that I don't come back a stone heavier and in need of a new liver !!! Got a couple of poker books to take with me and some note pads. Decided its about time I got more into the maths of the game, so have a couple of books on that and ICM. Also determined to finally read JD Salingers "Catcher in the Rye" always wanted to read it, mainly due to the fact that it Winona Ryders fave book and it will give us something to talk about post "rumps" when I eventually meet her and slip her off to the bedroom............

Anyway, back to the poker. September was my best month at the tables so far, finished just over $500 up at the tables, so it looks like the coaching is now really definitely starting to pay off. I think initially a lot of the agressive play that I was looking at putting into my game was a bit misdirected and I was "over" using it. Now I  seem to be be picking my spots and opponents better. Having your big hands hold up as well always helps too.

The one annoying thing was the lack of volume that I put in, considering i had the luxury of being platinum for the month I should of tried to put the extra hours in to get the benefit of the August 10% promotion, but just my luck, I had so much other stuff going on I actually played less games than any other month since I started playing stts, I ended up only playing 332 games, I know I am gonna lose 7 days, cos of the hoilidays, but I still should really be 500+ games at this point. Its a shame really, as I definitely think that the games were a lot softer this month, I was tagging fish at every table especially on the weekends and late evenings. I think this was the main reason for my profit. My stats and graph for the month are as follows:-

Games Played - 332
ROI% = 21.4
ITM% = 45.8%
Winnings = $500.10
$/hr = $10.17
 
So overall very happy with the results.

Still enjoying the coaching, Lasse has been trying to get me into other forms the game and I did a reverse sweat session where I watch him play some of the 18 man turbos, which he thinks are insanely soft at the moment. Some of the players in them while I was watching were truly awful, so I def think I will give these ago and see how I get on. I did actually play 3 of them this week, but never made the final table in any of um, after getting snap called by 10 7s and JT for 8BB vs my Q3s and 88 shoves. So as you can see the players are truly bad, so just need to get a few hands to hold up and maybe I can bink a few of them :-))

Thats it for now, got some packing to do and tidy the house before my Mother comes round to stay and look after the dogs while we are away. Ain't Moms just great !!!!

Greenday - Wake me up when September ends.