For some reason this month of poker seems like 6000 years. I am due to finish up iron man tonight, which is pretty much the only goal I've happily achieved. I'd like to have put in a few more 700+ point days, as I seem to get to 500 and cut off almost straight away. The other side of my goals of studying my game and playing good poker haven't been so great recently. Firstly, I made a simple goal to sharpen my skills more a couple of weeks ago, but couldn't follow through yet. The other side of it is holiday season brought a lot of drinking, and some sessions (OK most sessions recently) have been under the influence. I should just not play under these conditions, enjoy a drink and watch some TV, but that iron man/black card/rakeback bug convince me it's worth it. In unrelated events (OK probably directly related), I hit a bit of a downswing this last couple of weeks. I should be depressed about this and kicking myself for losing $'s while drunk, but I'm not. I've got more important things to be happy/depressed about to be honest. Who loves being human?

This is for sure. 2011 as it's currently planned is going to be a mega grind. If followed correctly, the plan will help set me up much nicer financially. If I can beat my goals, my kids may actually see college one day, and not only as a cleaner. If it all falls over, I guess I'll have to pick up the slack with some computer work or something, but obviously it's much more fun gambling the micros than doing that. I feel I may need a 2nd game to focus on (and not spew money at) to keep up the interest. Grinding out over half a million Rush hands is bordering on insane, and I'm not sure my insane gene is that strong.

So I've decided to not run any 2011 goals. I barely remember grinding out rush week 25 days ago, let alone trying to remember in July next year what goals I set 6 months ago. In fact at this stage my only goals are to grind out the final 500 points for iron man tonight, win some MTT's on Pokerstars on Sunday, and then grind out a bunch of hands between now and the 13th of Jan when I go on holiday. Once I get back from holiday, I'll start looking at my next goals.

Good luck to all those planning a big NYE, bring on 2011!!!

I did decide to try the note writing. It was going well, although I definitely have trouble writing down a note and not timing out. Hope I didn't fold aces etc :)

Anyway, after about 30 minutes, it was pretty obvious I was just running shit hot. Cbets got respect, CR bluffs got folds, CR value bets got action, slowplays got paid off and held (often from bluffs). I couldn't keep writing, as the hands I was getting were rediculous. I must admit there is still quite a lot of questionable stack offs there by opponents though, which I'm obviously thrilled about. Either way, I finished off a nice session results wise, and felt like I played pretty well, but then it's easy when every hand you are dealt is the nutz.

As it is, I think I might shift my goal slightly, as it makes a lot of sense. I think the writing while playing makes sense to some degree in order to keep focus. If you know you will write down a horrible play, you might decide not to make the horrible play in the first place. But rather than write down every situation while playing, I think I should filter my DB by VPIP pots that saw a flop. Here I can accurately write down notes, and work out common situations. I'll do this tonight, and try to work out if it makes sense daily after each session, weekly, monthly? But this will be a really solid habit to get into. If I'm doing this well by next year, I see good things ahead.

Just read Verneers blog about planning 2011, it's a very good idea, so I decided to set a small plan for the rest of 2010, 2011 will follow later in the year.

The problems I have always faced with poker is I play to death when I'm right into it, but still rarely work on my game. I don't mind the idea of the work, and pride myself on working through situations fairly well, but just rarely get around to it. Time is one factor, as watching a 40 minute video when I get 2 hours free time, seems like burning too much free time. Ipod videos are going to be great for me, because I do get plenty of ipod time each day with commutes, and listening to the ipod while doing chores/excersize.

So I'm going to keep it really simple, and work my way up. So my goal is to write down a few common spots I come up against, and flesh them out to the extreme at a later time. I'll try to group things as well as possible, but of course each situation is quite unique, so I have to be careful. But it might go something like, "Big ace hand MP, get called then squeezed by reg late position" or "Mid pair OOP to reg as aggressor, flopped 2nd pair" or "set mined EP reg raiser, low flop." I'll try to identify how often I find myself in certain tricky situations, and later on can try to work optimal lines for the more common spots.

The long term goal is to get the mind thinking more clearly during a hand, and to make sure I'm not making a completely exploitable or leaky play in spots that happen a lot.

Rush week is over, got the 4x gold days for $125 bonus. Add to that year end bonus coming up, should be a good rakeback month. Am also grinding away to get the black card status by sometime next year. All good incentives for keeping up volume I think. Nothing too spectacular about each thing, but it alls adds up to more money back in my account, so I'm happy enough with that.

Play wise, had an interesting hand. EP tight player raises, I call late position to set mine with 22, HU pot. Flop is 772r for the virtual nutz. He cbet strong, I raised strong, he called. Turn is a 5, he checks, I bet 4/5 pot, he calls. It turns out he had KK.

Full ring should be renamed big pair vs set miner. In this spot my range is really a set mining range, with a couple of big ace hands, my stats would say unlikely to be SC's. He's about 87% favourite against my range on the flop. If it was 752r, that would be only 79%. I think this is significant, as my hand goes from being one of those hands I definitely call with, 77/55/22, to the unlikely 77 or 22. So when I raise on the flop on a 752r, he has to be getting alarm bells going off big time, it's smashed my range. However, 772, how could I have the 22? If I thought he couldn't have JJ/QQ there, I'd just shove here. How often could I possibly have 22? He'd insta-call right?

However, I figured so little of my range has him beat, that my hand looks far more like a bluff, perhaps a badly played ovepair. I bet the turn strong too. Given he called preflop, I think QQ-AA is highly likely now, and I still can't rep 55 given the action so far, so a bluff/poorly played overpair is still most likely. Lets say my flop play eliminated some hands, I probably have poorly played JJ-99, a bluff and the 77/22. He still has 81% equity against my range. He only has 9% in reality, but again it's impossible for him to put me on exactly 22 or 77, still the only likely hands that beat me.

Now lets go back to the pretend 752r, turn is now a J. Now given I had an overplayed JJ in my range, 3 sets, and still a bluff, his equity is only 54%. He has to be able to find folds on the turn now. Even with the bluff, he is coin flipping, and still has 3/4 of his stack to go in. An in fact, you might see other pairs check behind on the turn, and just say the 4 sets and a bluff are your opponents range, making you only a 28% favourite when he bets the turn again.

Now I'm sure these ranges vary wildly between opponents, and J turn being another 2 makes some differences, but I found it really interesting to see some equity calculations based on two slightly different flops and turns.

OK, got my cardrunners membership back, can continue on with this blog.

So, what has happened so far? I played this crazy game for a couple of years, sometimes cruising, sometimes grinding and learning tonnes. I had one too many downswings at the end, and gave it all up. I withdrew most of my bankroll and occasionally I'd muck around the HU games, playing drunk often. Well, when my drunk bankroll went from $180 to $1100, playing mainly HU NL50 on pokerstars (BR management obv), I started to take notice. I withdrew $500, and put the rest of full tilt, aiming to grind HUSNG's again.

Things went bad straight away, and I got my roll back to $350, not really rolled for any good sort of level. I mucked around a little on cash 6 max to get it to $550, and decided to get away from HU for a while. 6 max cash turned to 6 max rush, 6 max rush turned to FR rush, and now I'm nitting it up at full ring NL50 rush.

The first month I've grinded out around 40K hands, and have a winrate, but I'm playing really nitty, and really not looking too hard at my game yet. My bankroll is OK for NL50 where I'm playing, but I do have a pretty aggressive approach to bankroll, so I just have to be sure to be ready to move down if things are going bad.

My goals are really to grind it up like never before. Hands wise, I'm looking at pushing myself to get to 60k hands a month, which should achieve black card if grinded out 3 months in a row. Once I have that, I'm looking at around $500+ rakeback a month, and will start to withdraw some money if all is going well. The aim is to build a bankroll on my winnings, and withdraw all the rakeback to pay some bills at home. As long as I'm not losing while grinding that rakeback, the plan should work.

So in order to build the bankroll (and to not lose money while playing also), I'll need to really start grinding the study too. Looking forward to the renewed cardrunners membership and all that brings. I have a new view on how to approach videos, unlike the old approach of watching then letting it go. I now realise focusing on these properly gives such a great insight into poker, you just have to listen hard to what's being said, study that, work out if it fits with your approach, then add that as a tool for your game. First two vids I've watched, I could honestly watch 5 times and not add all the tips as part of my game.

So December goals, keep all the rakeback and winnings online(assuming there are winnings) to further build my bankroll. Work harder on my game and improve at least clarify a couple of pre flop and flop decisions. Play 60k hands.

Not me unfortunatley, but congrats to tightagressive from pokerforums.org for his victory at the Sunday Million. I know his posting there has helped my game a lot, and it's amazing to see him take down this huge event for a $120K prize. I'm sure we'll see him taking on the best for a bracelet next year when he's old enough to play the WSOP.

Well, I feel like a true bonus hunter right now. Hardly really studying the game much right now, just trying to get a few bucks on the side. I cleared my PokerRoom PSO bonus in what was 3 nights and a few hands. I then started off on my Bodog bonus, and given that you have to clear 200 points and already have 50 in your account when you start, this will be more like 2 nights, maybe 2 and a bit, as I didn't quite clear 75 points last night.

As for bankroll levels (excluding bonuses), I'm about even, but with no shortage of excitement. I started on Pokerroom, to clear the last few points, with a NL50 and NL20 table. I doubled up on both, and had a break. When I came back I felt a bit over grinding NLHE and started a PLO session again, this time with a few 6 max tables to try to get some more PLO experience. Horrid game. Ran like ice, and made a couple of moves against players I shouldn't have. They were good moves against the hand villain held, but villain called, and my hand didn't hit the draw I was after either time. I just about bankrupted myself playing PLO, which would certainly kill any bonus I was making, and my account saw $40 before I quite PLO. Tilted and ready to bankrupt the account I fired up two NL20 tables, and played a 40/30 style. I actually ran pretty well too, and got my account back up to $90 before calling it a night.

I then had an interesting degenerate moment. I downloaded the mobile client. That's right, you can play OnGame from your mobile phone!!! And it works surprisingly well. So while I was mucking around with the kids, I was also playing some NL10, and won $6!!! And had fun with the kids!!! Woohoo, I'm a D E G E N E R A T E!!!! I then had time to think a bit later(?) and played it again while thinking, but this time I stacked off with a 2 pair and lost to a gut shot of all hands. Oh well, down to $86 in that account, the PSO bonus has cleared though which will give me PT3 (worth $90) and $75 to go into my BR, plus I'm about another 2 nights from clearing the $80 deposit bonus, so I'm still in reasonable shape. I'd still like to increase my BR on there before the bonus clears naturally.

So I wandered over to Bodog. I deposited $500, which gives me a $50 instant bonus, so my BR was $550 to start with. I figured I'd play a conservative bankroll style and fired up 2 NL25 tables, making it NL50 shortly :) AA < K6, TT hit trips but worse than gutshot that hit on the river after we got all in. Nice start!!! I had a break, fired up some NL50 tables later. This site is incredible for 2 reasons (at least). Firstly, the players are very loose. I don't have a HUD or PT setup yet, but they are calling with every random card. UTG raise and 5 callers isn't uncommon at NL50. The AA < K6 was top pair K versus my overpair until the river. 3 way pot, so I had a half pot shove on the river, he'd called me to the river with top pair weak kicker, then hit his 6!!! Noted. Again next hand, flopped top trips, got huge resistance from overcards and a gutshot, got it in on the turn, he still had air. River completed for him, nice. After this I scored two straight flushes, 1 quad, numerous flopped trips (not all winning), numerous nut straights/nut flops. I was involved in a set over set hand, but also saw a couple of others. No, this site isn't rigged at all, no!!! I'm up so far, but in all honesty, I think I'll be happy to get this bonus over with, as the frequency people hit monsters is mind blowing, it's like playing PLO for post flop hand strength analysis.

So back to my bonuses. The plan goes like this from here:
1. Finish the Bodog PSO bonus. That's $90 PSO cash plus the $50 initial deposit I got. Should be 1 nights play, maybe a 2nd for a few hands. Cash out, never play Bodog again :)
2. Start a Hollywood bonus, and clear the PSO bonus. That's $120, and a little less than 3 nights play at NL50. I'll have a deposit bonus there, but I won't worry about that too much just yet.
3. Finish the deposit bonus at PokerRoom. About another two nights play to do that, for another $80 bonus. I'm not sure whether to fully cash out here, the mobile phone app is a really nice thing to have when bored in a waiting room or something.
4. Finish the current Red Kings bonus. About 3 nights NL50 to clear another $150 bonus there.
5. Finish the deposit bonus at Hollywood. I haven't figured out how much that will be just yet, but I'm pretty sure I will have roughly $100-$200 to clear, so may play at Hollywood for a while to clear that.
6. After all is finished, play the Stox poker affiliate at Mansion poker (another OnGame). Only 50 points to clear for 6 months premium membership, so about half a night at NL50. May as well finish a small deposit bonus there too.

So in the short term I can see over $550 in cash bonuses, and PT3 clearing within the next 9 playing days (mid June at worst), add a stox poker membership for the 10th day if I feel like clearing that one earlier. Not bad just for bonuses. I'm sure after that I will focus on improving my play, but until then I'm in bonus hunting mode.

Mixed things up a bit the last couple of nights again. A little NL50, NL20, PLO25, PLO50. I can't seem to find a home right now. I want to play NLHE, but don't feel passionate for it right now. PLO is much more interesting to me TBH, and I think part of it is knowing that NLHE is getting tighter and tighter at medium to high stakes, meaning my future could be bleak there.

Adding to my confusion is OnGame changing their levels somewhat. No longer a NL10 or NL25, two levels I learned a lot of poker at, but disappointingly NL20 is now the lowest level, with a NL30 and NL50 above those. I can't help but feel that this will scare away a lot of fish who are too afraid to play NL20 as a startup level. On the bright side NL20 should now be softer, so it might be worth a bit of a grind there to try to win back a few buy ins.

The other bright note of the last couple of days (am down in money, thanks to a wicked bad beat at PLO50 with the nut straight and nut flush redraw on the turn), is that I'm really starting to apply my hand reading at 6 max NLHE. I'm watching betting patterns and taking notes. I always tend to just not do this for some reason, but now I'm doing it. Yay. I'm digging through hand histories and just watching more small pots in general to get a feel for villains tendancies. I really want to keep this going more than anything.

I've spent more time researching poker bonuses than I have playing the last couple of days. It all started with a look at the lovely new PokerTracker 3 software. As far as I can tell it's still as buggy as all hell, but in any case, I'll be buying it at some point, so why not now. At $90 it's no doubt worth it, but I of course couldn't help but think I could source it from somewhere for free. So I googled Free PokerTracker and found a few links (mostly old), but one stood out.

This is a semi-ad, as I've pasted a referral link at the bottom, but basically I've spent quite a lot of time scouring bonus web sites and the forums of this site, and after a lot of searching have a grasp of what is needed and what you get, so I thought I'd share for those not wanting to go through all the same research. And of course if you think I did summarize well, and are interested I'd appreciate it if you signed up using me as a referral.

Firstly, there are stacks of bonus affiliates out there, linking players with poker sites and mostly deposit bonuses or rakeback, or both. On ocassion you get slightly more than just a deposit bonus, but it's pretty rare.

OK, so the site I agreed with most is PokerSourceOnline. If you've used them before, you know everything I'm about to post, if you haven't, I think it's well worth a read. What makes this site attractive over any other bonus affiliate is they have their own gifts and the points to clear is quite low, and you still get a deposit bonus clearing at the highest rates. You don't get rakeback though, so this is only really useful for sites that don't allow rakeback, or sites you aren't likely to want to play at a lot for the ongoing rakeback. The latter is very good though, as there are a stack of sites that offer the free gifts, so it's not hard to pick 2 or 3 you won't want to get ongoing rakeback at, and basically play them just to clear the bonus. They also do rakeback deals on this site, but don't seem to combine rakeback and gifts. Also you can get a free starting bankroll on some sites, or a bankroll boost, but again it's instead of the gifts, not including the gifts. The gifts range from StoxPoker premium 12 months subscriptions (wow), PokerTracker 3, Nevada Jacks chips, gift cards and PSO points.

The PSO points can be used to buy the same gifts, and some others like a $50 gift card, iPod or $50 into a poker account. The clearance rate for the $50 cards is 5000 points, so if you earned 15000 bonus points joining up with one site, it's like getting $150 worth of gift cards, which could be put straight into your bankroll, or Amazon gift cards seem the next most useful. On top of that you still get a deposit bonus.

Now from my research the order of value from best to worst is the StoxPoker 12 month subs, then Stox 6 month, then 15000 points, through to 9000 points, then the rest of the gifts. Given that you can buy PokerTracker 3 in the PSO store for 7500 points, you should never just accept the PokerTracker 3 gift, as all sites allow at least 9000 points as a gift. Also all gifts clear after the same amount of points too, so getting something that seems like less value is pointless, as you still have to work just as hard to clear it.

The points on each site obviously varies, but it's very fair from what I've seen. For example, I have joined PokerRoom to clear the 15000 PSO points, and need to get 400 PokerRoom points. After one night I cleared 133 points, so exactly 1/3rd, which was just over 1000 hands of NL50. So in 3 nights I should clear $150 worth of bonus from PSO, plus another $50 of standard deposit bonus, which clears at 8x. So for 3K hands of NL50, $200 worth of bonus. If all sites are this good, then you can see it's amazing value, basically a 2x bonus, not including how much a Stox membership is worth making it more like a 1x in some cases.

After PokerRoom I'll be clearing HollywoodPoker and Bodog. Hollywood and PokerRoom are good for me as they are both OnGame skins, so I know the players and styles well enough. Bodog has a diferent edge. They ask for 200 points to clear (sounds quite easy to me, but I haven't tried it yet), but also give a 10% instant bonus, and 100% clearance bonus at 10x. Because the 10x is slower than the OnGame skins, I'll probably end up depositing $500, and get the $50 instant bonus and not worry about clearing the rest of the $500 bonus. Also, Bodog apparently (not 100% sure) gives 50 points up front, so the 200 to clear is really only 150, so that could be a very quick bonus.

Finally, as a small added bonus, PSO allows you to get another 750 points for reviewing how easy your bonus was, and posting a picture of your gift in their forums. It's not much extra, but if you clear 3 or 4 of these, it adds up, for very little effort. You also get between 500 and 2000 points per referral to new members.

So in the short term goal, I will have accumulated:
- 15000 PSO points, and $50 deposit bonus at PokerRoom (3 nights)
- 12000 PSO points, and $50 deposit bonus at HollywoodPoker (clears same as PokerRoom, 3 nights)
- 9000 PSO points, and $50 deposit bonus at Bodog (2 nights?)
- 2250 PSO points for the 3 reviews in their forums (hopefully get 750 points for each review)

So all up I think I'll be playing about 8 days worth of cash games, and clearing 38250 PSO points. This will get me PokerTracker 3, and 3 $100 Hollywood Poker gift cards (goes straight into your bankroll). That's on top of the $150 deposit bonuses along the way, so all up a free PokerTracker 3 and $450 worth of bonuses for 8 nights play. Breakeven play for the next week will see my BR boost by over 30%.

So here is the link, my referral ID is sb944 in case you don't use the link when you are signing up properly. It's all pretty straight forward to use, but I would definitely go to the trouble of clearing your internet cookies before downloading their software, because you could miss out on the bonus if you don't do that:

http://www.pokersourceonline.com/free-poker/?rc=sb944