January Results

January has been a strange month, in a way, I suspect that this is a typical month in players life that plays cash a lot, the good start, the crash, then the slow grind back to a decent profit. A month full of if onlys, missed opportunities and of course the odd horrendous beat. Overall, taking into account the bonuses/rakeback and profit from cash/mtt/stt I have finished the month $1047.11 in profit. I finally got the last part of the Sun 3400 bonus last night and I have rewarded myself with a night off tonight, anyway its quiz night tonight, so I out on the piss anyway. I have attached my tracker graph for the month of Jan, it only covers the NL cash tables I have played, which has all been at the .25c/50c level, a mixture of 6 and 10 seaters. As you can see by the graph it was a pretty topsy turvey month, But at least I finished it in profit. I did also manage to find a leak in my roll. I have been playing a fair few 15c/30c hi lo 10 seater cash games just to crank up the points, just sitting with 10$ and basically playing hi lo foldem, but looking back through my stats, this hascost me over $120, which is over a fifth of the bonus. I have decided that I will not do this in the future, unless I am desperate for mpps, but will play the 10 seater NL games instead, which at least I can concentrate on a bit better and probably pull in a profit on by playing a basci TAG poker.

So, the decision is what to do for february now. The hours I have had to put in have taken its toll this month and I feel that I have neglected the wife and dog a bit. So for Feb, I have decided that I will not go for the 3400 bonus and try and concetrate on quality, rather than quantity. I might apply for the bonus, and if it looks like it could be worth chasing at the end of the month, go for it that way. Alternatively, do the 1000mpp $200 bonus on sun, and look at at playing another site as well and getting a new bonus on there. I haven't quite decided yet.

I will def be spending more time on the cardrunners forums and watching a few more of their vids, if I am paying for it, I might as well use it to my full advantage.

Not sure if I mentioned it previous post, but I have become a bit of a fat twat over the last few years, with a definite poker paunch. I had a small wager with a work colleague that by the end of December 2008, I will have weighed in, at least once at 11 1/2 stone. The starting weight in December at the time of the wager, I was 15st 12. So to win the bet, I have got to shed just over 4 stone. I have started off well and as of this morning, I was 14st 11.25, so 1 stone down. I am keeping a log on the pokergoth forum and I have put a link on the side of the blog, so you can all track fatboy goths progress on the slippery slope to buffness. But for now, its upstairs to get changed and off to the pub for 6 winonas. Cya

Goth

PS, for those new to my blog Winonas = Winona Ryder - Cider.

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2008 Profit/Loss + $1047.11

Todays Weight 14st 11.25 (-12lb)

How do you play

Been chatting to a few people about lately on what their setup is when they play, and inspired by Amatays joke Pc layout on his blog (still not convinced its not his by the way lol) I thought I would take a pic of my setup. I got some cash for my 40th buffday in august last year and splashed out on a desk and new chair, then treated meself to a new PC with a 24 inch monitor. I moved myself out of the lounge and into the dining room and now my setup looks like the above.

The setup consist of two PC's one is dual screened with a a 24inch monitor in the middle and 19 inch on the left. usually have 4 tables tiled on the middle one, and sometimes a further 2-3 on the left hand one, along with poker tracker/itunes/lesbo porn. I then have a 2nd PC with all my excel sfuff on and msn to me mates, + normally have whatever site they are on up to watch and cheer them on.

I think it has def helped my game, as I do suffer from lack of concentration, so being away from the TV is a big help.

This is the first year I am starting to take my poker a lot more seriously, I am approx $15k up since I first started in Dec 2003, I now want to move to the next level. This year I am just gonna concentrate on improving my cash game and build up my bankroll to a level where in the future I could seriously think about giving up work and playing full time. This will involve making a serious dent in my £180k mortgage which still has 23 1/2 years to run. If things go as well as I hope they will, I will review where I am in 5 years and if I can possibly move house and downsize a bit and have no mortgage, I will take a risk and take the plunge. We plan to move up to Yorkshire before I am 50 anyway, so hopefully the property prices will be a bit cheaper than where I live now, which should help the plan. To be brutally honest it is all a bit of a dream at the moment, and I know I am not putting enough effort in to the studying side of the game as I should as I am spending so many hours actually playing to get a small profit cos I am playing at such a low level.

This month has been a real topsy turvy month so far, with good winning days, which make you feel on top of the world, then bad losing days, which really question why the fck do I put the hours in that I do and is it all really worth it. Luckily the winning days are more than the losing days at the moment and I am currently about $650 in profit on the month, and it looks like I should make the extra $300 bonus on sun this month which will help the bankroll. Also I am building up a nice pot of rakeback which I will get next month, I reckon it should be $250-$300. So at the moment, all is rosey. Lets just hope the year carries on and I can increase my knowledge at the same pace my bankroll does.

Have saved a few key hands from the last few days, which I will post later during the week. If I can get off my lazy fat arse and post more often on this blog, might put up the days biggest winning and losing pots for comments and piss takes. Will try to put some more pics up of stuff as well, cos I know you lot don't like the big words and prefer the pretty pictures. :o)

As a starter for 10, this was a hand, where I thought my opponent could lay down his overpair, if I represented a monster and I got caught out big style. Oh but we do love the river sometimes don't we ;-)

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1969763

Goth

Hmmmm

Well I was right not to mention the good start, as shortly after posting the last blog entry it all started going Pete Tongue. I managed to donk off most of the weekends $300 winnings over the rest of the week. A good Saturday put me back on course, but then sunday went tits up again, at one stage being $200 down on the day, luckily a large pot right on the death of the night saw me finish only $90 down. Currently $450 up for the month, but this is not through my expert play, as $300 of it is bonuses and rakeback. The only consolation is that I am in small profit in Cash, MTT and STT. Had another FT in one of the Sun Head Hunter tourneys, but really annoyingly came 3rd after dominating most of the FT, especially as my exit was sick. I raised from the SB with 66, got rr from the BB (I had been raising a lot, a real lot) so I flat called, flop came down T high no draws, he checked, so I pushed. We were the two big stacks of the 3 and he insta called with KQ ffs. Of course donk hits his Q on the turn immediately and an unhappy little Goth leaves the table. As I type, NH good game, I almost hit the backspace key to say what I really wanted to say, but a couple of omg from the rails said it all really.

The cash play over the week could and should of been a lot bigger profit. But I made a lot of "hero" calls that turned out "zero" calls as my chips whisked away to the other side of the table. Also lost a massive pot when I flopped a set with 77 on a x7A board. I bet it he called, turn bought the 2nd Ace to boat me up at which point the chips all went in vs his AK and the K dropped out on the river for me to sob. At least I could understand his call.

Can't complain to much as I did win one $100+ pot when it was folded around to me on the sb and I raised it up with 88, bb called. A great flop of 478 dropped. I bet it, got raised, I rr then he pushed. I actually put him on an overpair or a flush draw, but he flipped over 56sooted, to give him the nut str8 and an open ended str8 flush draw. Turn bought a blank and the lovely river bought me the fourth 8 to quad me up and stand up and scream "get the fck in" I cooly then sat down, typed in ul, then went to find the dog who had almost shat herself and ran out the room in shear terror.

I might struggle to get to 3400 points for the extra $300 sun bonus, but I am still gonna plod on and try and make it. The 25c/50c tables on sun are few and far between and are full of nitty regs, so its no wonder I am struggling to get the points and extract money out of them. There are also some very good players who I try to avoid if possible, but sometimes they are on all of the tables that are open so you have no choice, just have to make sure that you have position on them as at least you know they can make laydowns.

Laddies, however is much softer and there are more tables, also the added bonus of being able to data mine on there does help. I have the exact same profit on lads as I have on sun, yet I have played 10k hands less, but I have been running good on lads and only 2k hands doesn't really give a real feel. But I do try and play an hour or so on one table a day especially around 11pm.

Downloaded some graph software for pokertracker, so may publish the graphs at the end of the month, so you will be able to see what a topsy turvey month it is with all the ups and downs.

Dream Team III tonight and our team "The crushed nutz" are doing well, however its $100 buyin tonight, so we prob only have a couple of entries in it. I will only be playing the minimum 8 to qualify for the live final as its a bit too rich for a lo stakes muff like me. Maybe next year I will be able to afford to play them all.

So its back to the grind tonight, need to try and get at least 200mpp to keep me on track for the bonus. Sigh, if only I could do this for a living, maybe one day.

Gonna revamp the layout of my blog soon as well as I have found a few good links that might be of interest to you all. Hope you like it, feel free to comment if you want anything added.

Goth.

A Good Start

Well, i know i shouldn't say this, but all is going well on the poker front at the moment, currently about $380 up in the first week, mainly due to a good run on the 25c/50c 6 seater cash tables on sun and laddies. The new year seems to have bought a freshness to my game and and a new found calmness. For some reason, all of the anger I used to have has now gone out of my game and I just try to carry on playing good solid poker no matter how bad the beats are. Just say nice hand and move on. Theres nothing you can do about it, so why whinge and have a pop at your opponent, the more I see people abuse other people at the tables, the more I think it is pathetic, it is definitely something I now want to get out of my game completely and I hope I can pass this calmness on to others, there really is no need for it and its not gonna help you imho.

Played 3 MTT so far and made 1 final table coming 5th, should of been top 2 easy, but my TT got rivered on an all in pre by KQ and then my QQ walked into the mighty KQ again. I am starting to play my MTT's in a very different fashion than I used to, hopefully this will lead me to advance to decent payouts in the higher tourneys in the future, time will tell, but for now, will stick to cash mainly.

Had the years first royal flush, when I flopped one on a 15c/30c h lo cash table, and duly won a $3 pot with it Grrrrrrrrr. Still at least he called my river bet, so it got to be seen.

Someone anonymous posted a comment asking me what the attraction to sun poker is, basically it is because I get a basic 40% rakeback, and I am also doing the $500 bonus a month. All you do is whack in $500, which you can take out again half way through the month to use the following month, get 3400 mpp over the month and you get $500. Once i move up the levels, I hope to go for the $1000 a month bonus, but this needs 9000mpp to obtain, but this is tricky at the stakes i play at and working full time as well. They also asked about my experience with Bad Beat. I think the setup is very good, but i think it would more suited to students, or people who don't work full time, as the hours you need to put in are quite a lot (40 table hours) so unless you 4+ table, which affects your overall perfomance imho. You are pretty tied down. The mentoring sessions are weekly and are done by one of their pros via skype. So you play two tables while they are on the phone to you giving you advice, this proved invaluable and changed my view on poker a fair bit, especially as an STT/MTT player moving in to a cash game, I now realise how different the two are. I got paid 50% of my profits directly into my bank account every month. So overall I would definitely recommend it. My only criticism would be the forum on bad beat, the layout of it is appalling and I believe because of this it did not get used like it should. I have since joined http://www.cardrunners.com/ and the forum on there is incredible, with tons of detailed hand history discussions going on and players discussing tactics/hands and all sorts of poker related stuff. I hope that answers any questions you may of had, feel free to contact me by email (address can be found on http://www.pokergoth.com/ home page) should you wish to know anything else.

Hopefully thinks will carry on and I can stay as calm as i am at the moment. We shall see.

Goth