February Poker Goals

- Play 13k hands (Major fail! 4200)
- Play 6 tables MAX (Check)
- 3ptbb/100 (Check 7ptbb)
- Watch 5 videos (Fail 3)
- Work on hand reading (Check)
- Work on cbetting the right flops (Check)
- Get coached (Have a coaching session with Mpethybridge from 2+2 and Splitsuit a Stox coach later this week) (Check)
- Do not look at my HEM AT ALL until Feb 15, and again at the end of February (Ehh kinda had to)
- GET BETTER! (YES!)

-Update my blog with thoughts and track my progression

Non Poker Goals

- Work out 5 times a week again ( Hurt my forearm at work and it was difficult to lift 25lbs w/ my left arm) (Major fail I worked out 3 days all month. Arm still hurt and had a lot going on at work)
- Make sure to focus on school before anything else (Check)
- Eat healthier. I'm looking to bulk up a little more and then get cut (ongoing goal) (Fail)
- Manage my time better (Fail)
- Clean and re-arrange my bedroom (Fail)
- Fill out FAFSA (Check)
- Actually go out snowboarding a few times on my days off (Failish, I went but my bro broke his collar bone first run)



March Poker Goals

- Play 10k hands
- 3.5ptbb
- Watch 3 videos
- Make a video
- Plan a study group
-GET BETTER!

Non Poker Goals

- Work out 4 times a week
- Eat healthier
- Manage my time better
- Snowboard on 3 of my days off

So far so good I guess. I've only played a little over 2k hands but I believe I'm running at 5ptbb. I have run pretty well I'm not going to lie. I've only had 2 losing sessions one where I got it in w/KK on a dry flop to a donks AA, and one where I played horrible and was down a buy in without showing down a hand. I was a little over confident and tried to push guys of hands in spots where I shouldn't have.

So far this month my biggest losing hand is KK where I'm down 3 buy ins. However I'm hitting sets 18% of the time and winning stacks with them. I actually won my biggest pot this year where I hit a set and stacked 2 guys who overplayed TPGK.

One thing I'm excited about this month is filling out my transfer application to another college. Ever since my lazy ass procrastinated on my financial aid after freshman year I took 2 years off and then decided to go to a community college. While there are some good aspects of community college, it sucks as there are hardly and cute girls my age, and I want a B.S degree from a respectable college rather than an A.S degree from a community college.

I was having a long conversation with one of my friends about where our life is heading at 23 sparked from Ezra's past few blog entries. We are both in sort of the same situation although a little different. Basically, we are both 23, live at home and still go to college. I work my ass off and go to college and struggle with money, he however goes to college but is jobless and doesn't pay rent or worry about money. I would like to thank Ezra for unknowingly giving me a kick in the ass and worth on improving my life. Transferring colleges is a just a start.

This week is a week from hell work wise. President's week is the second busiest week for us in the Ski/Snowboard industry. If I didn't have school I would be working close to 65-70 hours this week. However CCV doesn't get holiday vaccations so I have to work. I still have to work about 45-48 hours in a 4 day period. I had to get up at 5am to be at work at 6am and I worked until 4:30. Tomorrow will be the same for the most part, except I'm going to be working K1 which is the most popular and busiest lift at Killington. Sighhh I'm so tired.

I'm also taking my little brother snowboarding all day Wednesday so there goes any chance of catching up on some sleep/homework. I foresee very little poker playing this week. No way will I hit 13k hands but I'm shooting for 8k at 25NL.

TV and sleepy time.......

Yesterday I had my sweat session with SplitSuit. I decided to move up to 25NL and have my session there. Overall it went well, I ran like GOD preflop. Even James was impressed lol. We played 280 hands in the hour 4-6 tabling and I had Aces 5 times, Kings twice and Queens twice. Of course I didn't bank on any of them and I ended up missing value in a few places.

One thing that really sucked was we never really got into tough situations on the turn and river. Thats kinda where most of my leaks are post flop. We did however go over some cbetting situations. I did learn a lot there. We also went over small ball where my game lacks severly. I learned a lot there and most of my profit came from non showdown winnings. I did end up making $15 in the session, which was my first winning session in 7 sessions. Most of all I regained a lot of confidence, which itself was worth the $55.

I played a session later that night and did well. I ended up losing one big hand where I got KK all in on the flop to an unknows AA. Other than that I didn't lose very many big hands and I made a little over $3 that session for a total of $18 yesterday.

I am about to play another session tight now as its almost ring game happy hour. I will probably play until 5pm then get ready for class at 6. I am going to keep my tables at 6 for the rest of the month. I realized that there are a few things I still have to work on.

A few hands from yesterday

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3847159

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3847162

Today I had part one of my "leakfinder" coaching session with Mpethybridge. We were supposed to have our session on Wednesday but Matt had something come up, and yesterday our emails got crossed, so today we settled on 1:00. I wasn't sure what to expect in a full on HEM DB analysis but I think it turned out pretty well. I was actually expecting us to have an hour session but we ended up going for a little over two hours until he had another session to prepare for.

The first thing he noticed was that I'm playing my blinds too passively. Actually my blind play is my biggest leak, and Matt even said that it wasn't a severe spewing leak. We went over some strategies on how to counteract blind steals, and how to play the SB correctly. I definitely never thought of my blind play as one of my biggest leaks, or even fathomed the way we went over how to counteract certain strategies.

My W$WSF is also a bit low. Whenever I post my stats people always tell me this but honestly I never knew how to fix it. So we ended up going over small ball with me a little bit. Small ball is something that I have never been all that good at. It will be one of the few things I will work on with James aka SplitSuit.

I also overplay over pairs. This one I knew was a leak of mine. This one stems from my stubbornness, over aggression, and lack of hand reading skills. I'm pretty sure that once I work more closely with hand ranges I will stop stacking off with them as much and exercises some pot control.

We went over all of my 95k hand DB, and then my 14k DB. We decided that I am running insanely bad, and that I've developed a new leak in those 14k hands. I seem to be cold calling too much, especially out of position. Matt told me that I should probably tighten up to my normal 12/8 game and ride out my downswing.

So right now I'm trying to schedule my sweat session with Splitsuit. Our schedules seem to conflict and he is going to be on vacation next week which will make it even worse. Maybe we will get the session over before he leaves but if not I will start playing again. And when I do play it will be at 25NL, even Matt told me I should move up to 25NL full time. I re-deposited $350 from the $700 I withdrew in Novermber/December so now I'll be playing 25NL with 25 buy ins.

In other news, I woke up this morning for class at 8 and I can feel that I'm coming down with a cold again. I just got over the flu less than a month ago. I'm so sick of being sick in the winter season. I seriously never get sick from April through October EVER. Its always in the winter. I know it doesn't help that I work outside in the cold and I'm in and out all day long. It just sucks. I hope that I just feel like shit today, cuz I got a ton of homework to do in the next 2 days as well as work.

For the few people who actually read my blog, or the FR forum know that January sucked for me poker wise. I am not going to go into a lot of detail or bitch about it, but I will say that I have never felt that lost before. It kind of felt like I forgot how to play and that's not a good thing when your running under expectation.

But January is over and now its a new month and hopefully a new beginning.

I will be redepositing about $350 out of the $700 that I withdrew in December. Right now my bankroll is not in my comfort zone. I'm a BR nit and my play starts to get affected if my BR gets below 25-30 buy ins.


February Poker Goals

- Play 13k hands
- Play 6 tables MAX
- 3ptbb/100
- Watch 5 videos
- Work on hand reading
- Work on cbetting the right flops
- Get coached (Have a coaching session with Mpethybridge from 2+2 and Splitsuit a Stox coach later this week)
- Do not look at my HEM AT ALL until Feb 15, and again at the end of February
- GET BETTER!

-Update my blog with thoughts and track my progression

Non Poker Goals

- Work out 5 times a week again ( Hurt my forearm at work and it was difficult to lift 25lbs w/ my left arm)
- Make sure to focus on school before anything else
- Eat healthier. I'm looking to bulk up a little more and then get cut (ongoing goal)
- Manage my time better
- Clean and re-arrange my bedroom
- Fill out FAFSA
- Actually go out snowboarding a few times on my days off

Today I had planned to bring my little brother snowboarding. Given my work and school schedule mixed with his school and basketball schedule today was the first day all season I was able to take him. We woke up at 7am got ready headed out to be there at 8:15ish. I love riding when its groomed so I try and get there as early as I can.

So we headed up with one of my brothers friends who I didn't know was going to be there. We headed out on the trail Fools Gold at Pico and less than half-way our first run of the morning he catches an edge and breaks his collar bone. I was actually ahead of him and had to hike up about 300 yards of trail to him.

The next 4 hours consisted of me and him going through to ski patrol then the hospital. It really sucks though because he is a basketball star and still had two games left this year, not to mention he will be out for the first few weeks of baseball season. He is a very athletic kid.

Plus, I only got one run in and that sucks. Sucks to see him hurt to as he is my closest brother even though we are 8 years apart. I have another brother who is the middle brother and is 18. We don't get along, in fact no one really likes him because hes a selfish stupid mother fucker.


And poker continues to go well as I am almost up 4 buy ins in 2500 hands. I am probably up $15 in rakeback as well. I don't know because HighestRB sucks and never updates my page.

Given my recent results/lack of confidence I'm going to try and play 10k hands without looking at my cashier or HEM. I generally look at my HEM while I play to see how many hands I've played during my session and to see my stats. This has made me results oriented, including how I run stats wise. Recently, I was told I could get rid of my Net $ won, and bb sections in HEM and that's what I intend to do for 10k hands.

After I play my 10k hands I will post a stats/hand review thread in the FR section here at CR. I will probably post my top 10 losing hands during that period even if they are standard. One of the reasons I hardly ever post hands in forums is because I find a lot of them pretty standard. But maybe that's my problem. I make a lot of small mistakes that are hard to notice but end up killing my winrate collectively.

So hopefully I will play and run better when I'm not so results oriented.

Edit: I feel bipolar

When you can't win. Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be Mr. Positive in 2009 but my winrate has dropped 50% in my last 40k hands of break even/losing play. I had the intention of posting my 92k hand graph and show how my steady upswing came crashing down to an unending miserable downswing.

While its still awesome to be up overall, all confidence is lost when my over pairs lose to sets, sets lose to over sets, Over pairs lose to runner runners. I can complain for hours but I won't. Somehow this little venting will help me focus on the big picture, the long term. After all, I'm still a decent winner overall!

Back to the grind.......

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3725118

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3725108

So far I am down 2 buy ins on the month after 2600 hands.

So far this month poker is very blah. I'm running at -2ptbb at the moment and I'm down less than 1 buy in. I'm running into a lot of big hands, getting walks with AA/KK/QQ, or just flat out getting my ass handed to me with my big hands. Its pretty shitty to think that even though my 2-3 month break was nice I seemed to fall right back into my 40k breakeven stretch and 3 month losing streak where nothing is really going right. Ive cut the number of tables I'm playing to 4-6 and focusing on my decisions better so hopefully things will change for the better.

I guess now that its 12:45 am on Jan 15 its ofically my 23rd birthday. I wish I could be excited but tbh my life is pretty damn sad. I work a full time job (55 hours a week), live at home, and go to college. My close friends from high school aren't even around but a few of them. And my best friend I haven't seen in weeks. We talk online but our schedules conflict. We keep saying we are going to haang out but nothing really comes together. I spend my free time either sleeping, TV/Internet, or snowboarding (alone most of the time cuz my friends are broke or my bro is in school).

I remember the days when I was 14-18 when I saw my friends every day. we hung out a lot and I was hardly ever home. We were either riding our bikes at the jumps, playing video games, or chilling at each others house jamming or doing something. I had a really good group of friends. Now James enlisted in the air force after HS, he would have been back this past summer but he ended up reenlisting for another 6 years. Rob is a mechanical engineer who just graduated and moved to Alabama for a year. My ex, which we broke up almost 2 years ago. Even though we broke up on good terms we hardly ever talked afterward. Last time I saw her she came over to give me money she owed me and only brough 1/4 of it. She told me she was moving to Virginia Beach in September and she would stop by to give me the rest, which of course she didn't. Nick, is the only one around and he doesn't have a job but goes to school full time. His ex, whom I was good friends with until they broke up, I never really talked to her after that. Randy, after HS we never really talked much and he actaully atempted suicide after he couldn't pass the psych eval for the marines. Johnny, turned into a pot head and was arrested multiple times. I see him now and again but we are not real close anymore.

I really need to get out more and find some friends. The thing is I'm not a partier or all that social in large groups. I work with people my age but they are all pothead deadbeats and I try not to surround myself with that.

I just need to find direction in my life. I have changed my major 3 times, and I've been to two different schools. Unfortunatly after I messed up my financial aid I never had the chance to go back to the university of maine, even though I've always had good grades.

Damn, this turned into one long emo post I doubt anyone read through. If you did, I'm sorry. I promise the next entry won't be Raptor-esqe.