I have put off blogging for the past several days because I've been wanting to avoid posting a rant about how bad I run. Unfortunately, I am still running horribly so I may as well talk about it. I have been getting slaughtered pretty much every day for the past week. I don't know what more I can do other than keep getting it in as a 70% favourite. If Jesus loves me (and I've heard he does), I know this has to turn around soon.

It's crazy how a downswing affects your confidence. When you're winning, you feel invincible. When you're losing you're scared to get it in with aces because you know that 4 flush is coming every time. Poker is a game of decisions and when your confidence is shot, you lose your ability to follow through with your reads. For the past 2 days, I have noticed myself playing much more cautiously - I'm not bluffing in spots where I normally would, I'm folding in spots where I would normally call.

It's so important to have a clear head and focus when playing. Anything in life that's fucking with your head can easily manifest itself in a horrible way at the poker table. Things haven't been awesome for me lately outside of poker, so that may be contributing to my poor results recently.

So far, every blog I've written about positive results has been followed by several losing sessions. Obviously, the only logical solution is to stop posting good results. That seems to be taking care of itself.

It's good to have people around me that are poker players. When jcmoussa or goodfella_84 tell me about their (much bigger) downswings, it helps keep things in perspective and makes me remember that excellent players go through the same thing that I'm going through now. Haseeb Qureshi just wrote a post about his $500k losing session. He seemed exceptionally spun about it. At least I'm in good company.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Good luck next week.

I just finished my biggest winning session since I started this thing. I won $4500 at 1/2 on the UK site, and around $600 playing 1/2 heads up on Full Tilt.

As far as interesting hands go, there was one that really stood out from the session. I was playing 2 tables heads up against Aggrobully, a solid regular. We were playing one regular table and one deep table.

I had been catching lots of cards and kind of running him over and making a bunch of money without getting to showdown. He must have been getting really frustrated because I was raising or checkraising him pretty much every hand. I set the stage for this by flatting from the big blind with AA early on the in the match. I checkraised a T22hh flop, and bet 1/2 pot on turn and river. I think this made him respect my checkraises alot more for the rest of the match.

Anyways, he opens button and I 3bet with 88. Flop comes 554. I bet here about 90% of the time, but for some reason I decided to check. He bet 30, and I decided to checkraise to 90. He calls.
At this point, I put him on a medium pocket pair, a 4, a 5, and some small% of the time some random air hand that he chooses to float with.
My flop checkraise to him represents a very strong hand (JJ-AA or a 5), or a complete bluff. I don't think he ever puts me on 88 here. However, on after his flop call I'm really not sure whether I'm ahead or not.

Turn is a J. I bet about 105 into 200. He tanks for a bit and calls. At this point, I am starting to think I'm beat with a hand like 99, TT, or a KJ or AJ type hand that floated the flop. I'm cognizant of how strong my line looks so far, and his hesitance to call on the turn made me think I could turn my 88 into a bluff on the river to get him to fold 99 or TT or a Jack. I was lucky to have only bet 1/2 pot on turn because that left me enough for about a pot-sized river shove.
River was another 4. I time down for a bit and shove for about $270. He times down forever and folds.

I was happy with my analysis of the hand and was sure that I had got him to fold a better hand than me. He was a nice guy and we talked about the hand after our match. He told me that he folded QQ. Honestly, if I had put him on QQ I would never had made that bluff. I really would not give most people credit for being able to fold QQ there. Lucky for me, he's a strong player and was able to see how strong my line was and get away from the QQ.

The day after my last post I lost a few buyins at 1/2 on the UK site, but the rest of the weekend went very well. I grinded hard, earned back all my losses and am well back in the black for October. Its really annoying to think of how much more my profits for the month would be if I hadn't taken that failed shot at 1/3. Oh well. Including a short session that I just finished, I made about $4k on the UK site over the past few days. I also played a bunch on Full Tilt. I only had about $1k on the site, and I was planning on transferring about $5k over there so I could grind 1/2. That was going to take a few days, so I just decided to play 2/4 and 3/6 heads up and either run it up or go broke. I ran well and ended up making about $3k on that site over the weekend. Now that I have a somewhat adequate bankroll there, I'm going to treat it properly and follow my normal guidelines on bankroll management.

That brings my winnings in October to about $6500. That puts me on track for my goal of a $10k month. I am very happy with how I'm playing and my ability to adjust to the different games and different opponents. I also think my heads up game is the best it's ever been and I feel confident playing anyone at 1/2 on Full Tilt. I'm excited to keep learning and building my bankroll so I can start playing the 2/4 and 3/6 games in the next few months.


Ffffkkkkkk i just wrote a few paragraphs about where I called a $600 overshove on a flush river with 2nd pair fora $1900 pot then accidentally navigated away and only the above was saved. I'm not redoing it. Summary is basically that I can read souls.

I really got my hole stuffed yesterday. I was gonna wait till Monday to blog, but I wanted to get this out so I can publicly embarrass myself for cheating on my guidelines. I said that I would only take a shot at a game if i had 25 buyins, then move back down once I only had 20 buyins. Yesterday I took a shot at the 1.5/3 game on the UK site and got stuck 4 buyins to one of the biggest fish on the site. lol

Then the fish quit so it was heads up with me and probably one of the best players on the site. Instead of quitting like a normal person, I started an epic heads-up session with the regular, which ended up with me losing about 2 more buyins. That's 1 more buyin than I should have lost. Also, playing underrolled heads up with a regular is probably one of the stupidest decisions I've made this week.

I'm reworking my guidelines. From now on, no shots at a game unless I have 35 buyins. That might seem a bit nitty, but I really don't like the sick feeling I get from taking a 5 buyin downswing at a limit thats higher than i'm used to playing. So, only 1/2 for the next few weeks.

As for my punishment, I'm open to suggestions. Right now i'm leaning towards 'sounding'.

1.	Sounding	576 up, 56 down http://static3.urbandictionary.com/images/thumbsup.gif?1255157229" style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; vertical-align: middle; padding-left: 3px; ">http://static2.urbandictionary.com/images/thumbsdown.gif?1255157229" style="border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; vertical-align: middle; padding-left: 3px; ">
	The practice of inserting plastic or metal 'sounds' (long thin and very smooth objects) into yours or someone elses uretha. Ultimately leads to streching of the uretha so that larger objects (such as a finger) can be inserted in the penis. Bob had sounded himself so much his girlfriend could shove a tampax IN his cock.

Immediately after my last (first) blog post, I decided to play a 2 hour session of GBP 1/2 before meeting up with a friend. I somehow managed to lose 6 buyins (GBP 1200) in that 2 hours. Except for one hand where I made a horrible river bluff, I don't think I made any mistakes - I just kept losing flips and getting coolered. However, this afternoon I put in a 5 hour session and won a bit of it back. As long as I run at expectation and keep playing lots of hands, I know I am going to continue being a consistent winner at these games.

Having to quit that session and socialize after dropping around $2k was not fun. But being a professional poker player means having to accept those losses and compartmentalize your emotions. I've become pretty good at not letting losses affect me. Its incredible how important having an adequate bankroll for the limits you play helps in that. Having a proper bankroll gives you the freedom to make whatever play you think is correct in a particular situation. For example, if i'm facing a shove on the river with 2nd pair, I have no problem making the call for my whole stack if my read is that my opponent missed a flush draw. However, if I was playing underrolled, I might decide to fold and wait for a better spot even if I think i'm up against a bluff, just because I don't want to lose a big portion of my roll. It also helps with shrugging off losing sessions, since a loss will usually only be a small portion of my roll.

I'll post interesting hands from today's session tomorrow.

Total Bankroll: $14,500
October Profit: $1,900

Hi everyone,

I'm Eskal. About a month ago I quit my job. Since then, I've been playing poker full time while looking for a new job. I've decided to start a blog to track my poker results, to keep myself accountable, and to analyze and discuss poker hands and concepts. I know that apart from poker people, people from from my real life will read this blog, so I will split every entry into sections. The first part will be the overview and results, while the second part will be more detailed poker analysis.

I currently play poker on Full Tilt and a very fishy UK site, the name of which I am going to keep secret because I don't want any regulars to start playing on the site. I play primarily the GBP 1/2 game on the UK site, which is about 4 times as big as my regular $ 0.5/1 game on Full Tilt. My Holdem Manager can only import hands from Full Tilt, which is ok because most interesting hands will happen on that site.

As I said, I'm going to use this blog to track my results, so I will start off with what I have accomplished so far. I started playing at the beginning of September with a bankroll of $2000. I began playing the GBP .5/1 games (under bankrolled), and luckily ran good and built enough of a bankroll to comfortably play the GBP 1/2 games. Since then, I have increased my bankroll to approximately $16,000, which includes a disastrous shot at the GBP 2/5 game where I lost 4 buyins (GBP 2000).

I do intend to aggressively take shots at the big games on the UK site since the games are so soft, but in order to avoid another disaster, I am setting certain guidelines. I won't take a shot at a game unless I have 25 buyins for the game. If at any point I drop to 20 buyins in that game, I will move back down in limits until I rebuild.

For the next few months I do not expect that I will be steadily building my bankroll, since I'll have to withdraw money to pay bills and pay off some things. Hopefully everything will be paid off soon so that I can concentrate on building my bankroll and start playing regularly in bigger games.

Profit in October so far: $3400
Total Bankroll: $16000