Hey guys, been doing lots of grinding since my last blog entry, and things have gone pretty well. Here's a recap of my downswing/recovery in graph form.

As you can see, at the lowest point I was down about 6k. It's not my biggest downswing ever, not even the biggest of this year, but needless to say it was a ride. In other news, a couple days ago I did an interview with Cardplayer Magazine. Pretty cool to now have been featured in some form or another in two of the (probably THE two) biggest poker magazines on the planet, as I had an article in Bluff a year or two ago. Naturally, I'll blog about it when my issue hits newstands and make you guys all go read about it.

Hey guys! Well, as you might have guessed, I've gotten destroyyyyed ever since my last blog post. Apparently the poker gods are attempting to humble me lol. I think I'm down about $5.5k at the tables since my last update, so I'm going to forego posting the graph of that action (truthfully, I haven't even looked at it myself yet.) However, while I've been busy losing money to every fish and awful reg on Pokerstars, I've found some time to have some fun. This past week I went to Toronto to hang out with some grinding legends and some up and coming stars in the SSFR scene.

From left to right, you can see TheLife, myself, Woolly, Tonnamunz, OhCanada87, Gutter23, and Lydia12345. Pretty sure everybody had a good time, and for me it was nice to get away from the tables for a day or two.

Hey guys, long time no talk. I haven't been a very active member of the community here at Cardrunners (a fact that is soon to be rectified), but I have been on the grind and getting it done there. I figured that a mild brag post might be in order as I'm off to a pretty decent start for 2013, so let me post a graph and the winrate numbers for the year.

I've gotten to spend some time lately with fellow Cardrunners coaches Verneer (you may have heard of him!) and Awesomo, and it's been pretty nice having some kindred spirits in town. I guess it's the one and only upside to Black Friday, I get to have local poker friends lol.

Anyway, I am back, and I'll definitely be posting more than every six months or whatever the case may have been!

Hi guys, just thought I'd post a quick update on how the grind has been. Put in a pretty solid amount of volume this month at 100 and 200 and 6max (quickly becoming my main game) and full ring and even zoom and booked my biggest month in a little while.



With coaching and bonus and milestone monies it ended up being a good month indeed. Stay tuned also for some new videos. I owe you guys a couple zoom vids and then maybe both some 200nl and 6max, we shall see.

Hey guys! Long time no blog. Since my last update a pretty ridiculous amount of stuff (both really bad and pretty good) has occurred in my life, and I will probably make a blog post about all of that pretty soon. Could be interesting actually, I think I could probably write a pretty interesting book that could play as a cautionary tale to lots of people. In the meantime, I have news.

Some pretty awesome small stakes full ring players and myself are getting together to create a staking/coaching organization. You've probably heard of most of our coaches. Obviously we feature the one and only cb4mvp. We also have natisfinest, eaglesfaan1, icepaw1225 and fareed1234. If these names are new to you, let me catch you up really quick. Between natis, eagles and myself, we comprise 3 of the top 12 winners in the history of 100nl (according to PTR as of the last time I checked before they stopped tracking Pokerstars). Fareed has won more money than anybody ever at 50nl according to PTR, and icepaw is second in all time 50nl winnings. Pretty hard to top this crew.

We will be accepting applications between 25nl and 100nl, and you can read more about it at ricepaw's blog here. If you have questions or interest, pm me here or on 2+2 or pm icepaw through his blog, or email us at ssnlcbc@gmail.com

Hi guys, the time has come for me to get back into the coaching game. After much demand in the SSFR forums on 2+2 and even from some regs at the tables, I've decided I need to get started up again after about a year off from coaching. I'm excited to try and help turn things around for those of you who are struggling at 50 and 100 and even 200 and trying to take the next step and become a winner.

So without further ado I will introduce myself to those of you who don't know much about me and describe some of my credentials. I am one of the biggest winners (top 12-15 I believe) according to PTR over the last 3 years at 100nl across all the tracked sites and have a solid winrate at 200nl as well over a pretty decent sample, as you'll see here.



So as you might imagine, I'll largely be focusing on 100nl students but I am more than willing to take on people whose main game is 200.

I'll be coaching 50nl students at $65/hr, 100nl students at $85/hr and 200nl students at $110/hr, and these rates are open to negotiation based on affordability, number of sessions booked, and any other possible reasons we can come up with to negotiate said rates. So please feel free to PM me either here or on 2+2 (same sn) and we shall see what can be done for you.

Duncan

Another year has come and gone, and none too soon. I'll remember 2011 as a year where some fantastic and awful things happened, where I had some of the best moments of my life and some of the worst moments of my life. Considering how big a part of my life poker plays, it's no surprise that the same could be said about poker this past year. We started off playing MSNL and a little bit of HSNL (who are we kidding, it was like 5k hands of 5/10 but if you had told me in 2006 when I was playing 1c/2c that I would be 10-16 tabling 400-1k on both FTP and Stars and not sweating 1k pots, I would have called you crazy), and by the middle of the year I was staked for SSFR. Not what I had planned.

That said, there's hope ahead in 2012. Lots of hope. We've got a fresh start with the spectre of 2011 further behind by the day, and every day is an opportunity to wake up and make good decisions, play good poker, and simply live well. I'm gonna post an obligatory year's end graph (with ev simply because it's my damn blog and I'll whine if I want to), there's nowhere to go but up as you'll see here.





As for 2012, I have a few goals set, mostly things that I think I can control.

1. Play 1.2M hands (avging 100k hands a month)
2. Don't play when I'm not feeling it, don't force sessions. It'll be a challenge to play more this year than any year past while not forcing sessions, but I think that some improved time management skills I should be able to pull this off.
3. Go to the gym three times a week. Up until December I was doing this pretty regularly but I got out of the habit. No excuses, I need to improve this and maintain it.
4. Coaching, coaching, coaching! Yes I plan to begin coaching, possibly by the end of January. PM me and I'll keep you in the loop if you're interested. I plan on doing alot of coaching and keeping a pretty full schedule. Along these same lines:
5. Cardrunners. I've slacked big time on this over the past year and a half that I have been a member of the team here, and that's pretty inexcusable. It's a great way to keep my game sharp (nobody wants to look bad on camera!), it's a good way to help the 50nl and 100nl community and give back a bit. There's no downside, and the opportunities afforded me by CR that I have largely squandered thus far are really not acceptable. So expect a big increase in production from me on this front.

So as you can see, I plan on taking steps to make 2012 the most successful, healthiest and hopefully happiest year of my life. I can't control everything, but I plan to make the most of the things I can.

Good luck at the tables,
Duncan

Hey guys, been awhile since my last update. I've been putting in personal record breaking volume this month trying to finish off my 300k milestone, and as is typical I've lost at the tables almost as much as I would have gained from the milestone itself with about a 28 buyin downer as of this moment. I would have enjoyed December alot more if I had just booked the month on the 3rd or so lol. Ah well, such is December, lots of grinders hate their lives while they try and get that last milestone.

And my favourite part of this post, that one little mistake! During the big Sunday Million this past weekend, a little bit after the money bubble busted, I had about 3x avg as did BLAABAR. I mentioned this in the Stars SSFR regs thread and he offered to swap me 3%. I tend to not accept swaps even though this would have obviously been very +EV since we both had big stacks, a pretty big edge on the field and BLAABAR is pretty damn good. I busted shortly thereafter for $950 or so, BLAABAR busted many hours later for about $800k or so. WHOOPS

Hey guys, just played a few thousand hands and had some pretty good results. I also recorded a video during the day's play so I feel like it's been a pretty succesful day. Here's a graph:



There were remarkably few interesting spots actually and I think the few that were worth talking about were in the video so I won't spoil it by going over spots here but suffice it to say I feel pretty satisfied.

Hey guys! As you can see, I have decided to revive my long dormant blog. A lot has changed since the early days of this blog. Since those days I have gone from being a random dime a dozen microstakes player to being one of the biggest winners in the history of 100nl across all sites (according to that site that shall not be named), being hired as an instructor at Cardrunners, and running off a pretty sweet run at midstakes at the end of last year and beginning of this year.

Im proud of what I've been able to accomplish in my career thus far. I've been able to play a game that I love (maybe 40% of the time lol) for a pretty damn good living, be respected by my peers and basically have a dream come true thanks to Taylor offering me a role on CR. A few years ago working a menial low paying stressful job where I hated every minute of my life, I would never have dreamt I would be given the opportunities to live the life I now lead.

That said, it hasn't all been easy. The past six months or so have been the most challenging of my career and some of the most challenging of my life. I went from having a very comfortable life roll to being nearly IRL busto thanks to having some unexpected real life financial challenges, all the while going through a nearly 300k hand break even stretch with a 40 buyin downswing in the middle for fun. Considering my winrate at 100nl for about 400k bands before that was about 7ptbb/100, you can imagine the shock and disbelief this caused me. I was used to winning all the time.

In May, for example, I lost almost $100/hr. At 100nl. The level I beat like a drum for about 2 million hands. You almost have to try to lose that much, and while there was some tilt mixed in, after exhaustive review I had to conclude I still would have lost a ton even tilt free. Let me be a cautionary tale for those of you making the leap from the real world to playing for a living. If it can happen to me at 100nl, it can happen to anybody.

That said, the turnaround has begun. I'm winning at a solid clip at 100 and 200, my game is sharp and I've never been more confident. I'm looking forward to what the future holds and I've never been more sure that it's a bright future. So in conclusion, I hope to keep this blog at least somewhat active, at the very least sharing some hands with you guys and while I would love for all of you to get a little something out of what I have to say, I feel like I'm mostly going to be writing this thing for my own benefit.

Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables,
Duncan