2013 Review and Onwards

Well the year has come to an end poker wise as I won't be playing any more hands till the 1st Jan, a full 3 days off !!! WooHoo !!!

I am not sure what to think of how the year has gone really, I should really be pleased as its my most profitable year so far, but this was mainly down to luck boxing a $5k+ payout in an 800 runner tourney. I shouldn't really worry about how I win the money I suppose, but I can't help thinking it could of been a lot better. Saying that, I believe that it is the first year I have actually been in a profit on the cash tables over a 12 month period, which is a sign of progress in the right direction.

 The yearly breakdown of how the money came in is as follows:-

Cash = + $437.01
MTT = + $5400.06
SNG = + $126.11
Rakeback = +$350.00
Bonuses = +$395.21

Total Profit for 2012 = $6708.39

The plan for 2013 is another shot at Supernova on Poker Stars, this will mainly be done at 25NL Zoom, so it is gonna take a fair bit of effort to get considering I will be working full time and trying to spend more quality time with the wifey and doggies. I also have the goal of upping the fitness levels and losing at least 3 stone in weight. This is the same Goal that I set this year, but due to my heart and lung issues that I have had for most of the year, I have not been able to put any exercise in at all. Hopefully as I am slowly starting to feel better I can start progressing on this front as well. I intend to take some weekly topless pics to track progress, might even take a few in the old budgie smugglers, if all goes well, I might even post some before and afters for you to peruse and help you bring up your lunch !!

I have put up a progress bar on the left of the blog to track my progress, the code is courtesy of Glanza_Mike on 2+2 who is having his own shot at Supernova Elite in 2013, heres wishing him all the best in this, he has a PG+C Thread on 2+2 for this and I have linked his blog if you want to track his progress.

Apart from the poker and weight loss, I have a number of other personal life goals for 2013, not sure if I want to out these yet, will see how January goes and might discuss it then.

Will definitely be making a more concious effort to update the blog on at least a weekly basis with some tails of woe and the odd mandatory giraffe, also need to post some more "real life" stuff, as this blog is a Poker AND Life blog, seems to be too much of one and not enough of the other.

So thats it for 2012, no need to look back any more. Looking forward to 2013 and hoping it can be the best year of my life so far. I hope it is for all of you too.

Best Wishes and a Happy New Year.

Goth.

Lazy Boy + Live Donk Fest

Title sums it up really, poker seems to have taken a back seat to other things at the moment, I hardly played at all last month and just about did enough to get Silver VIP on Stars. This is a big shame as I had managed to get to Gold the previous months so it was a waste of a chance to build up some fpps. The good news  however was I had a decent month running at about 7.4bb/100 for the hands that I did play finishing up $365 on the month, also cashed in some fpps for a total monthly profit of $494.11 which I would happily take for most months.

Had my infamous xmas shopping day with Stu on Weds just gone with the drinking starting at brekkie and carrying on for the rest of the day. I landed at the casino at about 22:45 and still had time to enter the $25 triple chance, there was only about 54 runners, but the bar was open and the beer was still running good. I felt a I played really well for my drunken state and ended up bubbling the final table when I ran AhKh into KK + 99 aipf which was a bit of a wounder, if I had won that hand I would of hit the final table about 3rd in chips but it was not to be.

It was still fairly early at this point (2am) and the bar was still open so it was time for a bit of £1/2 cash. I wasn't in the mood to be pushed around and I played the most aggressive game I have ever done and things were going really well until I re-raised all in with my king high flush when it hit on the river and I hadn't noticed that there were two pairs already on the board loooool the other guy obv had the nut full house, what a muppet I was. Still I reloaded and went on another massive bluff fest and like an idiot showing most of them with a plan to get paid when I hit a big hand. The big hand unfortunately didn't come until there was only 4 of us left at 6.15am and they announced last 3 hands. UTG straddled for £4 I bumped it up on the SB to £13 and then he re-raised to £28. I decided to flat call as I still had about £140 behind me. The flop come down K42. I had already decided the money was going in, so checked to see if would have a stab, he surprised me when he massively overbet the pot sticking in a £100 bet, I was still convinced he was doing this as it was the last two hands so decided to shove. His face said it all and I obv had him. He was committed to call the extra £40 I had back and he flipped over AT, the turn bought another king and then the kick in the teeth when the river bought the ace. I just laughed as the £340 or so pot went his way. Don't get me wrong I would rather of won the pot as I would of had a free day out on it, but I had really enjoyed playing and I think I learnt a lot about live cash and also more importantly I learnt a lot more about what I am capable of when it comes to playing poker.

I eventually got home at 7.30am when I bumped into my wife at the train station of the way into work lol. Roll on next year.

I think poker this month will be pretty much the same, gonna just get enough for Silver Star and then between XMAS and New Year make a decision on whether to go for Supernova or not.

Prob gonna be me last post before XMAS, so heres wishing you all a great one and wonderful new year.

Goth.

Hoping for a better Month

Well last month ended up as a disaster, reckon I was about $600ish down at the tables overall. Managed to pull a big back on the stars Boom Bonus where I managed to hit 4/5 of the hands I got dealt for a $100 bonus, also got the 10k Stellar Bonus for a further $50 which limited the damage a bit, but still was net about $500 down on the month.

On the bright side, I did actually hit Gold Star for the first time this year and got about 3.7k vpps. I have got enough fpps for about $200 worth of bonuses. Not sure when I am going to cash these in. If I manage to maintain Gold Star status, I might roll them over, but if it looks like I am gonna drop to Silver I will probably cash in $150 worth and leave the rest till the new year. This is assuming that I don't go on another downswing like I did in October and I need to cash them in to keep a roll going !!

The other factor to take into account will be the Full Tilt factor, its possible Zoom will take a big hit on 6th November when Tilt opens again. If the traffic there is strong from the start and the Huds are working I might take advantage of the Deal Me In bonus of $200 that I have been offerered and play the remaining of the year there.

I will ultimately decide where I want to play in between Xmas and new year. Would love to go for stars supernova in 2013, but unless I know I can be at least +1bb/100 at 25NL over a large sample, it might just not be worth the effort, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Will be playing the 888Poker 20k Challenge tonight, lets hope I can bink some xmas cider vouchers.

Goth

'Aving a mare....+ Uber Tilt Monkey

Well the new PC was back up and running in no time after delivery all software installed and working fine. Thats as far as the good news goes !!!

I decided instead of going straight to 25NL Zoom, I would stay on 10NL while I was getting all of my HUD etc set back up and working, during this time I managed to donk off about 10 buyins, no bad beats, just KK into AA 2nd nuts into the nuts etc, all standard stuff, so I wasn't worried. Once I was happy with HEM and my Hud was working fine (did play for an hour not noticing the seating on the hud was out and I was 3 betting uber nits light as hell !!! lol) I was straight on to the 25NL tables, I had my whole plan worked out while I was on hols in Spain and this was it, I was there. After the first couple of days I was over 5 buyins up, things were going well and I was a happy little Goth.

The last few weeks however have been a total nightmare, again I am not running 20 buyins below EV, I am just walking into the nuts EVERY time and it does really seem like EVERY time !!! I am currently on a 20 buyin downswing and its driving me crazy. I know this is standard stuff and I shouldn't panic, but its amazing how you can have 8 winning months in a row and then get abs battered, surely it should level itself out over the year and not just come in massive swongs like it does....PAH !!!!

After one particular mouse smashing session I decided I had had enough, but instead of quitting like a good little boy, I went straight to the 200NL 6 Max Zoom table and sat with the max $200. I won a few pots that gave me some confidence, then managed to shove all in on the river for my remaining $102 with A5 on a A2479 board after betting flop and turn only to be called by 22 for a flopped set. I reloaded and then 3 bet light, missed the board and bet both the flop and the turn with complete air only to get shoved on on the turn. So reload up to $200. I was fuming, I was quite happy to blow my whole roll on stars at this point to "teach myself a lesson" It was then I got out of Jail, I 3 bet with QQ and got shoved on for a full 100bb stack, normally I would tank and think about folding, but the mood I was in I snap called and he flipped over 99 and my hand held. I won a few other pots and got my stack up to $530 and sat out a very relieved man. I checked HEM and I had played 167 hands and was about $29 up !!! The only good point was I averaged 0.72 vpp per hand !!!!

The following day after a lot of deep thought I limited my stars account to 50NL so I wouldn't do that again, I can see how it is so easy to go on mega tilt and I got off very light indeed.

Things haven't picked up that much over the last few days, I did try a few thousand hands at 6max and quickly won a few buyins in the morning session, but lost them in the evening session to be back where I started.

I have finished Verneers "Building a poker Bankroll" book and I think for the next few weeks I am going to concentrate more on the studying side, just doing enough to get to Gold Status. I have to admit, I have really slacked on the studying side, and when I say slacked off, I mean I have actually done none, no session reviews, no leak finding, nadir. I wrongly thought I could do all my learning at the tables and have paid the ultimate price. Its time therefore for a big change on the old learning curve. Also after my mad tilt sessions, I think its time to start reading Jareds Mental Game of Poker properly instead of just doing a few pages on the bog like I do !!!

Lets hope I can lower the stress, lower the variance, increase the knowledge and ultimately increase the $$$$ coming in !!

Goth

Aaaaaagggggghhhhhhhhh !!!!!

Foooking typical, about 3 hours after my last blog post, screen goes purple on my PC, big ole BSOD and its fooked, spent 6 hours trying to repair it and its really foooked now lol.

Can't believe the timing of it. Its almost as if it knew I was thinking of replacing it out of my tournie winnings and thought fck you, I'll go when I'm ready !!!

It has lasted 5 years to be fair and has been a decent investment, but the new one has been ordered but won't be here till about 18th !! So its no pokes until then.

Although i was able to get all of my important files off my old PC like photos and documents before I trashed it completely, I didn't bother getting my HEM database off, I decided as I was gonna move up to 25NL, I might as well start off a new database, bit of a pain I won't have the hands on a lot of people, but they may play different at 25NL than they do at 10NL anyway, so it might be better in the long run.

I do have HEM2 and I am debating whether or not to use this, I did try it when I was doing SNGs, but it was abs pants then, especially as the SNG wizard was not integrated, just have to see how I feel when it gets here.

I was part hoping I could get to Gold this month on Stars, but I will prob have to push to get to retain Silver by the time I have got all the new one setup and raring to go. Def gonna push for Gold in October and as per my last post, we should then have a better idea what is happening with the player pool size on Full Tilt so I can make a decision accordingly.

I guess for the next 10 days I will at least have the chance to get some study in and hopefully some decent excercise as I have got fook all to do in the evenings now !!!

Why is life never shimples !!!

Goth.

Moving on Up + New Cash Bankroll Plan

Well that time has come when one just has to make the move up to the next stakes, so as of tomorrow, I will be starting to play 25NL pretty much exclusively. I have played 159184 hands at 10NL and finished $654.17 in profit which equates to running at 4.11bb/100 which I am more than happy with. It could of been a lot better as I actually had my first negative month of the year in August being approx 4 buyins down, this was mainly due to a couple of tilted sessions which cost me about 15 buyins. I really thought I has managed to get those sorts of sessions out of me, but I guess the demons are still there. Its really annoying when you know you are tilting, you are actually saying it out allowed and that you should stop the session, but no, you carry on, calling 3 bets with dumbass hands and try to push anyone of anything cos you think you can. Oh well, lesson learned. Here is the mandatory giraffe of my time at 10NL.

I have also amended my bankroll plan to be a new uber nitty system. This time, I am not counting the money I have online as part of my poker bankroll for moving up. So at the moment, I have about £1k on stars and £2k in my poker bank account, it is only the £2k in the bank that is going to count towards me moving up to the next level. I intend to move up to 50NL when my poker bank account reaches £4.5k which is 90 buyins (again in £ not $ so its even nittier) I will finally move up to 100NL when it reaches £10k.

The main aim for playing poker at the moment is to get my mortgage paid off before Amanda reaches 50, its gonna be a pretty tall order and I really am going to have to work at my game and put the hours in, but I think I can do it.

I have set up a new plan to do this which involves withdrawals from Stars when my balance reaches a certain point then using 50% of that withdrawal to go into my Poker Bank Account and the other 50% will pay off the mortgage. The plan is highlighted below

Stars         Withdraw           Stakes       Bank Acc   Withdrawal Split

£1,500.00 - £400.00          25NL        £2,000 - £200 BR, £200 Mortgage
£1,600.00 - £400.00          25NL        £2,200 - £200 BR, £200 Mortgage
£1,700.00 - £400.00          25NL        £2,400 - £200 BR, £200 Mortgage
£1,800.00 - £400.00          25NL        £2,600 - £200 BR, £200 Mortgage
£1,900.00 - £400.00          25NL        £2,800 - £200 BR, £200 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £3,000 - £200 BR, £200 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £3,250 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £3,500 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £3,750 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £4,000 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £4,250 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          25NL        £4,500 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          50NL        £4,750 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          50NL        £5,000 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,000.00 - £500.00          50NL        £5,250 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,100.00 - £500.00          50NL        £5,500 - £250 BR, £250 Mortgage
£2,200.00 - £600.00          50NL        £5,800 - £300 BR, £300 Mortgage
£2,300.00 - £600.00          50NL        £6,100 - £300 BR, £300 Mortgage
£2,400.00 - £600.00          50NL        £6,400 - £300 BR, £300 Mortgage
£2,500.00 - £600.00          50NL        £6,700 - £300 BR, £300 Mortgage
£2,600.00 - £700.00          50NL        £7,000 - £300 BR, £400 Mortgage
£2,700.00 - £700.00          50NL        £7,300 - £300 BR, £400 Mortgage
£2,800.00 - £700.00          50NL        £7,700 - £300 BR, £400 Mortgage
£3,000.00 - £700.00          50NL        £8,000 - £300 BR, £400 Mortgage
£3,100.00 - £800.00          50NL        £8,400 - £400 BR, £400 Mortgage
£3,200.00 - £800.00          50NL        £8,800 - £400 BR, £400 Mortgage
£3,300.00 - £800.00          50NL        £9,200 - £400 BR, £400 Mortgage
£3,400.00 - £800.00          50NL        £9,600 - £400 BR, £400 Mortgage
£3,500.00 - £800.00          100NL      £10,000 - £800 Mortgage
£3,600.00 - £800.00          100NL      £10,000 - £800 Mortgage
£3,700.00 - £800.00          100NL      £10,000 - £800 Mortgage
£3,800.00 - £800.00          100NL      £10,000 - £800 Mortgage
£3,900.00 - £800.00          100NL      £10,000 - £800 Mortgage
£4,000.00 - £1,000.00       100NL      £10,000 - £1000 Mortgage
£4,000.00 - £1,000.00       100NL      £10,000 - £1000 Mortgage
£4,000.00 - £1,000.00       100NL      £10,000 - £1000 Mortgage

When you set all of your goals out in a table like the above, it all looks soooo simple, just play pokes take money out, rinse repeat lol. If only it would really work like that. As you can see the max I am setting to play is 100NL. In an ideal world, each of the above steps would only take a month to reach, this would be my ultimate aim, if I could acheive that, my goals of paying off my full mortgage by 2020 could easily be reached.

So thats the plan for now, but for those of you who read this blog regularly, you know how often the plan changes. Also the relaunch of Full Tilt may scupper the plan as the player pools may end up getting split between Zoom and Rush, although if I can get the standard rakeback on my old Gothman account on Full Tilt, it may be worth moving back to there as until I get to Supernova on Stars, I would prob be better off on Full Tilt, I guess I wil just have to crunch the numbers when it comes back online and we know what is going to happen on there.

Goth

July 2012 Review

Well what can I say about July 2012, If Carlsberg made profitable months for low stakes grinders, this would be it.

Apart from the $5.4k tourney win, I managed to only squeeze in approx 30k hands of 10NL zoom, but as you can see from the graph, I ran/played pretty well. I actually ran at 11.54 bb/100 which is pretty cool and if I could run like that even at 10NL full time, I think I would dump my job tomorrow. Luckily I know I am a bit more realistic than that, so will take the good times while they come.

I managed to also hit the 5000VPP stellar bonus for an extra $50, so finished the month $5756.92 in profit, which is just short of my overall best profit on a year, let alone a month !! Hopefully I can carry on and take the upward graph and play some more 25NL zoom this month.

I actually made a little more than that, as I am having some problems getting the money out of 888 Poker as they said I had to clear the $24 bonus before I could cash out, so I ended up 4-6 tabling the 10NL on there for a while, hence the lack of volume on zoom. I table selected well and the hud was just one big mass of green, the fish were unbelievable and before long after a week, I was 5 buyins down !!!, yep down, I seriously can't play against mega fish, I can't put them on any range, I try and bluff them off hands when they are never folding their bottom pair and I always pay their monsters off when they hit them. In the end, I got totally fcked off with it all and went and played some 100NL 6 Max, held my own and won 1.5 buyins to finish off the bonus requirements, although to be fair I did 5 bet shove all in with 9Tsooooted from the SB vs a button raise and got him to tank for an age before he called with his JJ, I rivered the flooosh to take a nice $200 pot, its always cool when it goes your way :-))

Still waiting for the $4500 withdrawal to get into my account, they seem to have processed about $130 of it and the rest is pending, dunno why, cos I have made $1k withdrawals from there in the past and I have recently submitted docs to them, I guess they are just making sure that I have cleared all the bonuses etc. I did play the same tourney again last Friday but came nowhere. I still have over $1k in there and intend to use it as a totally separate tourney roll, you never know I might bink another decent score before the end of the year.

Either way, this year is now my most profitable year so far since I started playing and I still have some FPPs to cash in, only about 5.5k, but it all counts.

 As for my goals from last month, the volume obv failed, the tourney win made me it back off a bit, plus having to play on 888 to clear the bonuses had an impact. I managed to lose 5lb in weight, not the 10 I had hoped for, but I did have a couple of nights out that I had to attend, one of which was a mega piss up. I have also struggled with a cold for the last week or so, so I have not been able to train at all, so overall I can't complain. I did play some 25NL but not as much as I had hoped, I think running so well at 10NL, I erred on the side of caution and stayed there for most of the month.

The only goal I am gonna have for August is to retain silver status on stars as I have some holiday coming up and won't be playing at the end of August/beginning of September, so will be looking to build up the volume in October ready for some serious grind in November/December.

Of course the news that Full Tilt is gonna be back on line within 3 months is immense and its great that most of the players will get their money back, although the poor yanks will have to apply to the DOJ and jump through hoops to get theirs back !!! Its all good for poker and a big thank you to Poker Stars. It would be great if my old Gothman account on there could get the rakeback if thats the model they go for and there is bound to be some sort of cool reload bonus going in at the start which could make it attractive to move there to play some rush, assuming the game is as profitable as zoom has been for me so far, that would be cool, although the draw of being a supernova and the dream of being a supernova elite one day still plays on my mind as a goal for life.

I do have to mention Bradley Wiggins before I go though, what a man, what an inspiration, he has become my new hero in life, its time I should look up to people like him and his single minded determination to succeed and bring that sort of drive back into my life, just need to decide where best to direct it.

Been waffling for a while now, think the scrumpy my mom bought me back from Devon is kicking in., I did play live last week, was an up and down sort of night, but will cover that in more detail on my next blog as even I am getting bored of this one.

Toodle Pip and c'mon the Great Britain !!!!!!

Big One Came !!!

I don't know why, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed a post on a forum mentioning an instant deposit bonus on 888 Poker, so I decided to put in £80, which gave me a instant $24 bonus, not a lot I know, but free money is free money. I decided to play the Friday night challenge, which is a $32+3 $20K guaranteed. Its a lot more than I would usually buy in, but I thought technically I'm getting it for $9. Its about 800 runners and a good structure. I was card dead most of the tourney and eventually went out about 273rd, but I must admit I enjoyed it. I think it was the first tournie I had played this year and made a change to the cash grind.

So, you may be thinking what the fook was all that boring shit about.....Well, this Friday, I decided I was going to play it again. Things went a tadge better this time, I managed to hold out rather nittily into the money and was quite happy with my $100ish score, desperately keeping an eye on the payouts I nitted up trying to reach the next payout level. I got really lucky with about 80 left and I shoved my final 8-10 bbs from the cut off with Ax and was snap called by the button with QQ, I spike the ace and doubled up. I managed to cling on for a few more places up the money tree, stealing pots where I could. Eventually I was down again to about 8-10bbs and shoved with AJ sooooted it, I was again snap called by QQ, this time I muffed the flush and doubled up again. I began to think, may this is my day. I was dealt a few hands then, hit a few flops, took a few steals uncontested and next thing I knew we were down from 809 runners to the final table.

I was nearly always the short stack and my plan was to try and hold on and move up to a $1k+ payout. I was fortunate when there was a 3 way all in, The big stack had AK, the other two hands had AJ and AQ. The flop came down xQJ and I was gutted, but the river hit the 10 and two players went packing in the one hand. Kerching, I was moving up the money tree. Once we were down to the last 6 I was happy with my payout and I knew the players left were good players and would of noticed my passive nittiness so I opened up a bit, 3 betting light and overshoving a few hands and getting them to fold. Eventually down to 4 handed I had about 300k chips with the other 3 players had over a million, but I managed to hold my nerve and again stole quite a bit and next thing I knew I was the chip leader with 3 left. I well timed KK with the sb shoving into me meant we were heads up and I had a 3:1 chip lead. I managed to get him down to his last 500k chips and we were all in pre, me AQ and him K7s. He hit the King and doubled back up. I was starting to think my luck was gonna run out and I was destined for 2nd. But chipped back at him, getting him back down to about 400k and again we were all in pre, me A9s and him K5, this time no one improved and I had just binked my biggest tournie win ever by more than double. It was 4:45am and we had been playing for over 8 hours and I was buzzing, so much so, as I couldn't scream out cos of the time of the morning, I have hurt my right shoulder from all the silent fist pumping !!!!!

After that, I just couldn't sleep, I think a managed about an hour, before it was time for a celebratory beer or ten, so the remainder of Saturday was a bit of a blur as I was rather pissed when I got back home at 21:00 from my lunchtime swifty.

I have decided to leave $1000 on 888 as a separate tournie bankroll. Put £700 into my Poker Bankroll in my savings account and use the rest to buy some stuff and pay a bit off the mortgage. I am still gonna stick to the cash grind, but will def play a few tournies a month in the hope that I can muff my way to another nice payday.

Start of Heads up as Chippie.....

The sweetest of leader boards :-)

Oh and I didn't get to play much cash last week, but the small amount I did play I won, didn't have a single losing session and I am about 25 buyins up for the month, even played a small amount of 25NL which I hope to play more of next week and hopefully start to get some serious exercise in as although I managed some this week, its no where near enough to start getting mega healthy again, I think I need another cunning plan.

Goth

A Good Lazy Week

With the goals for this month set, I have to say this week has been very lazy but very productive.

Volume - Fail. Only managed to play about 11.5k hands last week.
Exercise - Fail. didn't do one sniff of anything vaguely sweat inducing apart from a couple of stubborn dumps.

However,

Profit - Pass. Up about 17 buyins over the 11.5k sample running at 14.84bb/100
Weight - Pass. Managed to somehow lose 3lbs despite a night on the piss, a bottle of wine on two other nights and a chinese.

Bankroll now above £2000, so will also be able to take some shots at 25NL. So overall not a bad week !!!

My only worry I have now is the dreaded withdrawal doom switch. I try not to keep too much money online since the Full Tilt fiasco so at the moment, I take £300 out when my balance reaches £1000, the next withdrawal will be when I get it back up to £1100, take £300 out, then next at £1200. You get the drift, this should give me a decent amount of overall protection relative to the size of my bankroll and the stakes I am playing. I don't plan to ever keep more than £3000 online, as to be honest, I do not expect to ever play higher than 200NL.

Thats the poker news out of the way, I forgot to update my health situation on my last blog, so here goes.

Basically things are starting to pick up. I have been signed off by my respiratory consultant as everything is all clear in that area. I had my first appt. with my Cardiologist recently and had another Echocardiogram, which showed that all is functioning fine and also, not only have my pleural effusions cleared up off my lungs, but the scan showed that the pericardial effusion that I had round my heart has now also cleared up. The downside is that I also has a 2nd E.C.G and this is still showing some sort of anomaly.  This might not be too worrying though, my consultant suspects that when I was ill for a month, it was actually a rather nasty virus that has possibly left some scarring on my heart. I am being sent for a cardiac MRI at some point to confirm if this is the case, if it is, I don't think they will taking any action and I will just live with it.

I have also seen a vascular consultant, I was referred to them as I am still getting a build of fluid (oedema) in my legs so I had a doppler ultrasound scan to ensure that there were no issues with my veins, which in the event of no heart failure, is the most common cause. The good news is that the scan showed no issues and that all was functioning fine, with no signs any problems at all. I guess the only downside of this good news, is that we still don't know whats causing the buildup of fluid in my legs, although knowing my luck, its prob just being a fat bastard sat at a desk all day, no exercise and sitting at a PC all evening/weekends playing poker and writing dumb blogs that no one reads........cough.

So the plan for this week is to start exercising, drink less, more volume and also play some 25NL, this if the withdrawal doom switch is not firmly in the "On" state.

Goth.

[x] Volume [ ] Nice profit - June Review

Unfortunately the last week of June was the opposite of the rest of month, I knew I shoudn't of opened my big gob on the last blog about running hot !!!

It was partly my own fault, after my last post I tried a change of style and tested out some different lines of play, which, if I had thought about it, they may of worked at 100NL, but they def ain't gonna work at 10NL where no fcker is folding top pair shit kicker. This had the added effect of tilting me a bit in a couple of sessions and caused quite a big downswing.

I did however manage to double my volume of the first 3 weeks of the month and was only really 1 buyin down on my 28 buyins that I was up on my last post (although I did manage to get to 31 up at one stage in the month.

Overall, I cant really complain too much, ran at 4.44bb/100 over the 60k hands on the month. To be honest I would take that every month if I could. Had two Stellar Bonuses at 3k+4k so that was an extra $20 in the kitty to give a total profit of $289.50 without taking into account any fpps. I currently have about 4.8k fpps, but I am going to save them for later in the year when I hope to be at gold or platinum to get better value.

Not much else to say really, graph of the month is posted below, will still be play 10NL Zoom this month as my bankroll is currently about £1910 still, but hopefully will move up sometime this month for a few shots at 25NL again.

Goals for this month are:-

[ ] 100K hands
[ ] Lose 10lb in weight, currently 15st 3
[ ] Playing at 25NL by end of the month

So not much to strive for, the 100K hands will be a first me, hoping that this will get me to Gold level and the first step towards getting the roll ready for the supernova challenge next year.

I def think with a bit more discipline and study I can make some decent money over the next couple of years as long as the gov don't decide to fck it all up with new gambling tax laws which is always a possibility !!!

Goth.....

Volume [ ] Nice Profit [x]

Well as you can see by the title of this blog entry, I have failed at any significant volume, however the good thing is I seem to be running fairly hot at the moment and I am about 28 buyins up over 30k hands or so for the month so I can't really grumble too much, I guess its better than the other way around. Running at approx 9bb/100 over the 30k sample def makes you smile a bit :-)

I have already reached Silver Status for the month, but due to the volume fail I don't think I am going to be able to reach Gold as I had hoped for. The main reason for the lack of volume has been the Euros as I have been watching every match that I can so far, which means at least two hours out of my evening schedules being lost to watch the games and in the case of the England games the whole evening is gone as they just HAVE to be watched in the Pub.

I am off work now until the 2nd July, so I do have a chance to get some volume in over the next week or so, especially as the wife is off to Rome for 4 days. I will however, probably be without my internet on Monday as I am having it upgraded to BT Infinity which I am looking forward to, just hoping they don't fook it up and there actually is a big improvement as I am hoping to be able to watch the footy on my PC while grinding without the pics buffering all of the time !!!

I have decided to go back to my old nitty bankroll style and I am returning to an 80 buyin move up, 70 buyin move down rule. Currently my roll is approx £1900, so all being well will be moving up to 25NL by the end of the month.

I have also been reading the 2+2 forum a lot more, not so much for the hand histories, which I def know I should read more of, but for the poker goals and challenges. I think I will def put my own up next year as at the  moment I will be going for Supernova in 2013 as the volume I can put in on zoom makes it a lot more realistic with the time I can actually put in at the tables. I am pretty sure I won't be making it this year unless I can get up to 50NL by the end of August, which I will probably have to have some serious run good to do. Ideally if I can get to 50NL by the beginning of December, then get to platinum, it should be be a good start of the year and a great incentive to get the supernova grind on the go. I even hope if I can have a few stabs at 100NL that might get me to 200k-300k supernova which would be nice.......

It does make me laugh when I see myself writing things about having stabs at 100NL as back in 2008 when Crypto was still going, I was playing a load of 100NL, but as times get hard, the poker bankroll gets used for more important things like new TVs and golf clubs !!!

Hope to be posting a lot more over the course of the year to get me into a habit for my PGC thread that I will start on 2+2 in late December. With at least a monthly graph posted on the previous months review, maybe even a weekly one, not sure yet.

Thats it for now, will update you all on the state of my health next week as I wanted to concentrate on the poker for this thread.

Goth.

Zooooooooming back ????

Not quite give up poker totally just yet :-) Had a fantastic holiday away in Yorkshire with the wife and doggies, although we almost didn't go as on the Friday before we were due to go on the Saturday morning, Red my iccle old staffie started collapsing. We rushed the poor little fella to the vets who decided that he needed to have some x-rays to find out what was wrong, these were scheduled for the Monday, so the holiday was postponed for a few days while he had his tests. It turned out he has a very enlarged heart and a lot of fluid on his chest which was causing him to faint on any sort of exertions, so he was given some diuretics and some heart tablets which he now has to take for life. He was given the all clear to go on holiday. We eventually left on the Tuesday, which as we had booked the cottage for two weeks, wasn't really a problem. Luckily the tablets helped a lot and he was a different dog, not quite his normal self, but he was able to come with us everywhere we went and didn't leave our side for the remainder of the holiday. We know he won't last very long as its just a matter of time before his heart gives way, possibly a few months, maybe even as much as a year, but at least we can live with the memory of the holiday that we had with him and it was one of the best holidays I have ever had in my life.

The best thing that came out of the holiday is that I have now found out where I want to live, it will probably be when I retire in about 16 years time, but I live in hope of getting there sooner. Basically we came across a small little village called KirkbyMoorside. I have always said I want to retire to a place just like Alvechurch where I currently live that isn't Alvechurch. KirkbyMoorside has a much larger village centre with a load more facilities, yet the surrounding housing area is a lot smaller, giving it a much tighter nit community, there are many pubs and takeaways within walking distance, what more could a man want.

With the final destination for my life now sorted, I just need a cunning plan to get there as quickly as possible.

So, how do I get there quicker, well, you guessed it....POKER !!! While I was away, my priorities definitely changed from playing poker to spending more time with my family, especially with Red and his heart problems and also my current health problems which are still under investigation. However, there has to be a balancing point somewhere that I can fit in both. Playing Regular sit and goes, is just too time consuming. Even 9 tabling, If I was to play one session, I still would have to put aside 1.5 hours at least, this along with the fact that I am finding them mind numbingly boring has lead me to move back to the cash tables. I have decided to go back to basics so have dropped back to 10NL, For those regulars who read my blog, they will know I had a failed attempt at Supernova a couple of years ago 15+ tabling 50NL, basically breaking even even after the bonuses/rakeback. This was mainly due to the mass tabling. I believe I may have found a solution to this in the form of Zoom Poker, Poker Stars equivalent to Tilts old Rush Poker. This enables me to only have 4 tables open at a time, but still crank up between 1200-1400 hands per hour. So far things have gone ok this month, played about 20k hands and I am about 10 buyins up. Having only 4 tables open does allow you to follow the flow of the game much more, with the benefit of folding instantly hands you don't want to play and moving straight on to the next hand. I am still adapting my play to the nuances of playing zoom, but I think long term for me, it will be a lot more profitable/less variance than mass tabling regular tables.

I am also going to amend my bankroll strategy and take more aggressive shots at moving up than I normally would, which for me was always 100 buyins to move up. This time I am going to move up at 40 Buyins and moving back down at 30. I will still keep an extra £1000 back in a separate account as an emergency on top of what would be deemed my "Active" bankroll. I should get back to Silver Status by the end of the month. I have a week off planned in June while the wife is away in Rome with her friends which should allow me to really up the volume during that month and hopefully get to Gold Status, or if I can move up to 25NL during June, maybe even make platinum.

If things go really well during June an July, I have done some rough calculations that while playing zoom, it is feasible to get to supernova by the end of the year. This would the the ideal scenario ready for 2013, where if I could start on supernova level and then aim for 300k Supernova, some decent $$$$ would be coming my way, especially if I can get any sort of + BB/100 hands going at the tables.

So overall, even with Reds and my health issues, things are very positive at the moment and I am only looking ahead for the time being and not at the past which I have always been prone to do.

For now, Goth is back.........

AC/DC - Back in Black

Bored and had enough !!

The title says it all, for now that is. Since I have had a few health issues, I have really been struggling to sit down and play. Its so annoying as I know at the end of last year I was on a high, knew where I was going and knew the more I played, the more I was going to earn. Now sadly it has all gone, the enjoyment is not there and there I now have other priorities in my life that I need to concentrate on.

I am off on holiday for at the end of the weeks with the wife and dogs and have withdrew all of my roll from Stars and the limited roll I had on a couple of other sites. It will be a much needed break away from it all. Maybe while I am away I can have a long think about what I want to do with poker, playing the hours that I do for the money that I am now earning doesn't seem reasonable any more. I either need to go one way or the other. I guess when I come back from my hols at the end of April I will know more and post an update on here, but for now, I can't even be arsed to post a vid.

Good luck to all and hope to see you soon.

Goth

General Updates

Not posted for a while mainly as I have been struggling for enthusiasm to do anything at the moment. My health, although slowly getting better is still not right. I am still struggling for breath when walking up stairs/hills and carrying any sort of weight, but I guess there is a improvement, so at least I should be grateful for that. My blood tests have all come back ok. The Echocardiagram showed that there are no issues with the ole ticker, which is a relief and my liver ultrasound scan came back all clear. I did have some some of the pleural effusion on my right lung drained which involved a needle being stuck in my back and guided through my rib cage to get there which was rather uncomfortable but not overly painful. I am still getting some fluid build up in my legs and thighs which is obv not right and must be related somehow to whats causing the fluid elsewhere. I have got some further lung function tests and an appointment with the consultant in the next two weeks but I can't see that this is going to track down the underlying cause. I guess its now just a waiting game to see if my body will recover on itself if they are unable to find out any issues.

As a result of the health issues I really have struggled to put any volume in at the tables, I again failed to even reach silver star in February on stars which is a real ball ache as it does affect the bonuses quite a lot. Whats even more annoying is that when I do play I am playing quite well. In the 147 games I played in Feb I had a 16.1% ROI and 43.5% ITM for a total profit of $164.28. Considering that is the amount of volume I should be playing in a week at least, I am missing out on some decent money even only playing $7.

I haven't put that much volum in this month either, but I think I will be doing enough to get to silver status and then I think I will cash in some fpps just to boost the roll and then start to fit in some $15s as per my bankroll plan.

So thats it today, not even got the enthusiasm to post a decent blog at the moment. At least my health has improved enough that we I can take the dogs out for a nice walk somewhere today as the sun is out for a change, it doesn't get much better than that I guess.

New Order - 60 Miles an Hour.

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 Echo Cardiogram 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 !!! )