Oh June

So June came to an end. The way things were going I wished June was at least another couple of weeks. I feel like I met almost the goals I set for myself:

[x] 15k VPPs
[x] Study (videos, discussions, on my own)
[x] Play longer more focused sessions

What I felt like I missed was more of the life goals I set for the summer. Been working out way too little and getting to bed at ~2 am has worked out... Well let's just say semi-good... But everything poker related is going better and better and I'll talk more about what I'm doing to keep it that way in my next blog!

Obviously a lot of my results this month is due to variance. I've ran really well in online MTT's as well as in live cash. Adding it all together it ended up being a +$18.8k month which is obviously a great month for me.

Feel like I'm getting the schedule down pretty well now and will focus more on 180-mans during the weeks and add in MTT's more on weekends, especially Sundays. Maybe even skip out on SNG's all together during Sundays. We'll see though. For the following week I'll be playing mostly live cash and a $500 MTT that I'm looking forward a lot to. Talk more soon!

Golden Sit & Go week

So the past week has been pretty hectic when it comes to online poker. PokerStars, in celebration of their 1 billionth hand(!), had a bunch of promotions. One of them was the Golden Sit & Go week where they gave away a bit above $1.4 million to SNG players, and everyone had a chance to win:

After the tourney started, if you were lucky enough, you could be part of one of 3 different Golden SNG's; 2x, 4x or 10x. If say, you were part of a 2x, you immediately got twice the buy-in + rake of they tourney back, and also the price pool for that tournament was doubled. If you were even luckier, it could be 4 or 10 times your buy-in back and the price pool being 4/10 times larger.



I was able to get into 3 2x ones, and not cashing in any of them led me to a net total of an extra $170. Not a ton, but will look at it as some extra rakeback. I did put in a lot of volume (for me) with an almost 45 hour week and a total almost 500 180-mans.



With a few deep MTT runs in there I ended the week +$2.1k so overall really happy with everything. I like that I'm back playing a bunch, but it's come to the point to really put in some time studying. I feel like I'm playing better and better, just need to get deeper into theory.

As the girlfriend is staying with me for this week I'll play a really soft schedule this week and still make it to the 15k VPP's I set up as a goal for June. Will be nice to have a week semi-off, rest, and be prepared to get back at it.

Summer is here!

After a long year of school and waaay too little poker I decided to really get back into it this summer. This blog is intended to keep me on course and let me vent/share everything that happens during the summer. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up post summer, as I'm going for Supernova after a slow start (5 months) to the year. But more about that later.

So almost 3 weeks in I can say that I'm really enjoying it. A lot. That said I haven't played as much as I hoped for. It's interesting, as I was talking to my girlfriend the other day she asked something about "isn't it hard to motivate yourself to play?" and I realized; I've actually never been in a relationship while grinding big volume, and I can see why that helped. Don't get me wrong at all, she is the best, and that's the "problem". Even though I don't spend enough time with her, it still takes away from the volume. I do 100% believe that while playing a lot you need to have stuff on the side to help you stay sane, it's just a bit more to balance.

So for the summer the plan is to be grinding 180-mans weekdays with the odd MTT mixed in and focus on MTT's on Sundays.

Goals for summer:
* 30'000 VPP's
* Get into "the zone"
* Train 5 times/week

So far the volume is still lacking but I feel ok with that. Will dedicate an entire blog post to the mistakes I've been making the last while when playing online and what I'm doing to get better. As you see on the graph there's a big upswing in the later middle. I was lucky enough to ship The Big $22 for a hair less than $10k on Wednesday last week which felt great. Not just because I was down money before that, but because I felt like I'd started to do stuff the right way and getting a score then feels extra good.

As for live poker I'm getting better there as well. Via a friend of mine I've also managed to get into a good private $4/4 game. The blinds don't really tell the whole story though, as the game usually ends up being uncapped buy-in and depending on who's stuck it might be straddled to $32. Needless to say the swings can get pretty big. My friend has played mostly live cash for a long time on the side of his job so we regularly swap 25% to keep the variance down. The game runs 1-2 times a week so I try to get away from the computer and play some live then, and thus far it's been going great. Been playing better and better but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't running good as well.

Feel like I just spit out a bunch and not sure how it came out. I have a bunch more things I'd like to touch on but I'll have to stop here. Will keep you posted!