Weekend away from poker

I have just come back from a really fun weekend catching up with my friends I made at uni and an old time friend I have known since I was young.

When I was younger I used to do a lot of graffiti art work. So now and again I plan to do nice positive pieces to de-stress from poker and have a time out doing some non standard things. We woke up early Friday morning, had 'beer for breakfast' and painted probably the best wall we have ever painted together and made me really happy as its quite self fulfilling to do nice pieces after the amount of time I have put into painting over my teenage life.

The rest of the weekend I spent it chilling and had a good 5 days off from poker which consisted of partying (craziest house party I have ever seen), eating out, going to cinema, and having a nice meal in.

This now does leave me in a situation where I dropped from 3rd to 10th in the fulltilt Husng leader boards so in order to get that extra 14 buy ins I need to work a lot harder this week to get myself back up to that situation.

Month results so far are incredible for the first month of the year but will give full updates at the end of the month.

Goals for this month

I am in a bit of confused spot in poker right now. I have moved up the stakes and have been crushing some games and then I hit a rut when I take a dwn swing and find myself 3tabling 200 super turbos with little concentration. I have decided to take a couple of weeks of playing as many super turbos as I have been playing, I feel like the swings are really effecting my game and makng me really play worse when I do play a normal speed husng, mainly because why am I busting my balls trying to wait out a fish when I could have taken 10 flips in the time this one game has taken. So as I want to get back to grinding some normal and turbo games I will make some doable goals for this month.

1: I will unreg all games when I have more than 2 tables of stakes above $100 up, I can still 4 table lower stakes if I ever get that kinda action.
2: I will not mix sessions of normal speed and turbo games with super turbo games, when I feel like a super turbo session I will set aside the day to playing them when I have alot of time to endure the swings.
3: I will have atleast 1 session reviewing atleast 3 games I played a week
4: I will re watch every croixdawg video on my computer (1 each day am grinding)
5: I will set sessions into timed and more structured sessions ie, 5hours at a time and then take sensible breaks as am not eating or exercising well at all.
6: I will buy a new computer and a monitor and a comfortable chair as lieing in bed just isn't professional.
7: I will try and get out of the habit of drinking so oftenly and freely.
8: I will not use msn/facebook whilst playing games and will not let real life problems effect my games, when I find this happening I will address the problem and deal with it before playing a session.

I know alot of these are a bit out there and maybe some are more doable than others, these are more guide lines for myself to gain some structure in my poker carreer as I lack massively structure in my life at the moment and am working hard on gaining more. I read notgoingnewheres post on being a professional and feel like lately I have just not been professional as I used to be. I guess as long as I notice it I can do something about it.

XMAS/NEW YEAR/MY 22nd BDAY

I'm going to lump all these 3 into ths one post as it has been a while sense I blogged. So after I came back from Prague all my friends/family were of work for the Christmas break so I decided I will take the time of aswel and get back to the grind in the new year when everyone else goes back to work. Well that day is tomorrow and I am back for the new year grind.

Over the xmas I have been drinking heavily and enjoying catching up with tonnes of old mates and really had a good time.
Xmas day is pretty chilled out in my house, we all wake up around 12 as me n my brother were hung over and guess everyone else enjoyed a lay in. We exchanged gifts (which I am really happy with, thank you very much) and then we eat the nut nut of dinners.  Then we all just chilled out and my mate came around to watch a movie (For anyone living anywhere outside the UK u should watch kidulthood and adulthood).

After splewing some money in the shops and gettin some new clothes new years arrived. We got tickets to some club London called On Anon, It was pretty shit and was pretty rammed n when I went to get a bottle of champs they were sold out moet + brands so was pretty shitty not to pop a bottle on the count dwn. Notgoingnewhere n Chrisrock07 were there too and was cool because was first night catching up with them over the xmas break (he doesn't binge as much as me) lol. I then went on to an after party which was really fun met a bunch of mates and ended up being a cool night.

My birthday was today and went out for some beers last night, nothing to big was just chilled and got pretty smashed up and celebrated with my close mates, thanks juscoolnaa n notgoing for coming along made my night with them jokes ahhaahhaa..

K so that bring me to here, I am sitting in my living room watching Jimmy Carr after coming back from watching 'Tron' wasn't that great but the 3D was cool. I am going to get on the grind now and try and get the new year of to a good start.

Prague continued

So its our last night in prague. I had a good time here and some not so good times here. We have had some real net d/cing problems and between that,serkules being a bubble boy and mersenneary and myself having an arguement I still ended up having a great time spesh with the more chilled out night last night which I took alot of time to think about some important things in my life. I would like to take this oportunity to say sorry to mersenneary for the big mis understanding and was really down to me being drunk and not understanding properly. I still have tonne of respect for u just didn't like the way we had to sort it out over 2+2 but each to their own. I didn't get to play half the amount of online which I planned on doing because of the rubbish internet they have in prague maybe its a weather thing but every spot we went to we had some problem except at the hilton which was charging up 27euro for 24hour use which is crazy imo..

Here's some pics to some up the trip.

1100 Euro NL Holdem event

Tomorrow I will play the 1k side event in prague at 16:00 local time.
I sold 35% so far and will probably sell 5% more. Mark up on % was 1.2-1.
I will edit this post as the event goes on to keep you updated on progress.

Currently:
Doc Nemesis: 10% Paid
Jasonc6: 5% booked
Hi bert: 10% booked
Serkules: 10% booked

Ok sorry I was lazy and didn't update the blog before now. Ok so I busted after the dinner break, It was a pretty annoying run, I started of ok but then as these things tend to do it all went against me, I never got a break and my timing was horrible. I lost most of my chips in a pot which i felt i played really well it went like this.

Blinds 75/150

I had a9o on the button, with 50ish bbs, 2 limptards limped in in early position (older passive stationy old school men but real easy to play post flop) and a more agro player limped in too but he seemed to have become a lil more passive in the last blind level (typical fish tendencies as stacks get shallower). so with 675 in the middle around 8-9% of my stack in the middle i felt like taking this pot pre would be vital with a9 in position or to isolate one or 2 of the older oponents. I made it 575 and really popped it to them if they wanted to play the hand it wasn't going to be cheap. blinds folded and all 3 players called. Marv but i still have position, neways I flop the world aa7 board, rainbow, so now I thought about my best line when it was checked to me. If I bet I would probably fold out every worse hand as not many 7s are in the range and even it is was they would still probably fold, so I decided that these guys wern't thinkin enough for me to bet and for them to float me wide enough so I decided to check and play the turn as there are no scare cards. The turn came 10offsuit, so still no draws on board bar 89 which can be apart of the limpers ranges, the 1st player checked and then the oldest man (more passive man) lead out 1k into the 2.5k pot, (alarm bells starting ringing) and felt it is possible he has an ace 2 but more likely something like 10x finding out where he is, the other player folded, I decided that if I raise here I am again folding out nearly all worst hands and my hand becomes face up, and this player can have limped like aj aq behind origional limper (u know the kinda players I'm sure)and never felt he would have lead 89 into 4 players so I just flat the 1k . other oponent folds. River brings j, wich imo wasn't the worst card giving he lead the turn n really didnt think he was capable of leading 89, he now bets 1.5k into me, I almost raised all in but for the reason I am only gettin called by better I decide to just flat call.. he ends up having 89o for the str8 which imo was a horrible played hand by him espesh to leave me with around 20bbs lol :).

After that I doubled up with jj and go my stack back to 9k 45bbs at 100/200 level.

The next level was slow and then coming back from dinner break I had 45bbs with ante's now in play.
Players started opening up a lil and I got JJ which i 3bet him and got snap 4bet by a passive girl so was easy fold for me when she showed kings :).. The very next hand I had 66, I raised again and got snap 3bet by the same girl, she was really confident and was saying 'sorry, but I have too' so was again an easy fold for me with these stack sizes and no set mining odds, she showed qq. Then the very next hand I got 99 and utg I almost wanted to fold 99 is too stronga hand to fold, I raise and got flatted by 3 players.

This is a real interesting hand and one I feel I played well again. 1st caller utg +1 real tite player and definately probs the easiest player to read at the table. 2nd on the button caller, shown to be a real good small baller and was playing really good imo, 3rd bb caller was the same guy i mentioned earlier capable of being agro. The flop came 10h 7d 2d I bet 1k into 2k, utg + 1 called and the rest folded. I had 5k behind and the pot was now 4k. I felt this player rarely has the 10 in his range cus how tite he was playing and felt it was more likely he had an under pair or a draw, but sometimes has A10 910s J10s and given I'm utg he wasn't happy with his 10. The turn bought 3h So now given his range I felt like I was winning to majority but didn't want to just open jam all in with the awkward stack size, so I would either check it dwn with him vs his range which I have around 50% equity against or would check get it in with him, I checked and he bet 1250, n now i even felt I can make him fold some weak 10s with the sizing (but never really expected him to fold), I snap shuved he called and had the ace high diamond draw which was defo the most likely hand he was going to show up with, river came 4h for him to make the str8 :(. leaving me crippled with 1k left in the bb, kj got shuved on n he had aq lost flip :(. gg doe and really enjoyed it as I always do regardless of results. Thanks for the investors hopefully nxt time bring back some cheddah for ya :).

Still smiling before busting :)

Prague

So i arrived at the Airport in prague at 4pm, serkules was waiting at the teminal looking like a big fish with a pillow on his suitcase hahaaha.. we went to get some cash and made our way to the hotel. We decided that we would go for something to eat and check out the town and then play some super turbo's while we have some drinks (as we both bought a bottle in the duty free) So we decided we will flip for most things on the trip, one piece of advice I give to anyone out there, if you are going to flip for things then do not flip with a super turbo pro hahaha 13-3 on flips to serkules, so I pretty much paid for his entire day and night :( and everytime I won a flip it was for like a couple of drinks or something cheap. So we went to the hotel and me being the fish I am I forgot to take my adapter for european plugs :( so I had to watch as serkules played. I learnt a tonne of things that I wasn't doing but are things I can recon I can adapt into my game to become the next super turbo champion. Props to serkules as he played really well but ran very under ev also towards the end he was gettin drunk and more willing to gamble :). I then played some games on his laptop and was up 3buyins when the server went down and a buyin was stolen from me :( but I have emailed fulltilt and am awaiting reply as the internet was fine and was just fulltilt that wasn't working so hopefully it will be a problem with fulltilt and not the internet here. So $400 up was still happy with it, better than a slap in the balls. So we decided to drink lots of belvadeer n redbull and took a shot of rasberry absalute (man if you think that it will taste nice because of the smell it gives off you would be very mistaken, as I nearly got sick before the night even begun :) ) haha we then grabbed a couple of desperados (cherry flavour doesn't taste as good as origional flavour) went to the nearest club and partied for the night, we got so wasted that I fell asleep in one club.. The night life seems good in prague but we was told sunday is the worst night to go out as every1 goes out on fridays and saturdays. We woke up very late today and ignored the house keeping ladies for as long as possible, we walked around town on what seemed forever to find some food, I don't think people eat in prague because finding a half decent place to eat took us over an hour FML.. Then we went for a massage as we have a thai massage salon beside our hotel and to be fair the standard of mine was okish but serkules said his one didn't even know how to do massages so we will have to find a new spa for the rest of the trip. I forgot to put my memory card in my camera so pics will come later in the week. :).

On a second note, I would like to congratulate Yasser and his wife on their newly born baby, I wish her the best of health. Christmas is gonna be an expensive time of the year for you hehehehe. :)

Interesting hero call

$300 Normal speed HU SnG vs respected, good, thinking reg..

RYAN O'DONNELL: *** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to MOCA CHOCA [Kh Jd]
Villian: they're so dum
MOCA CHOCA raises to 60
Villian: im sorry - but im so pissed they put them in
Villian calls 40
*** FLOP *** [6c 4h 6h]
Villian: killed all the reg speed action
Villian checks
MOCA CHOCA has 15 seconds left to act
MOCA CHOCA: me too but gota move with the times
MOCA CHOCA bets 80
Villian raises to 240
Villian: i guess
Villian: whats ur ROI at them
MOCA CHOCA has 15 seconds left to act
MOCA CHOCA calls 160
*** TURN *** [6c 4h 6h] [Qs]
Villian checks
MOCA CHOCA has 15 seconds left to act
MOCA CHOCA bets 285
Villian raises to 1,200, and is all in
MOCA CHOCA: 3%
MOCA CHOCA has 15 seconds left to act
MOCA CHOCA has requested TIME
MOCA CHOCA: this is wierd
Villian: what u got
MOCA CHOCA: wana make sick call
MOCA CHOCA calls 915, and is all in
Villian shows [7c 5c]
MOCA CHOCA shows [Kh Jd]
*** RIVER *** [6c 4h 6h Qs] [2s]
Villian shows a pair of Sixes
MOCA CHOCA shows a pair of Sixes
MOCA CHOCA wins the pot (3,000) with a pair of Sixes
Villian: i hate u
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3,000 | Rake 0
Board: [6c 4h 6h Qs 2s]
Seat 1: Villian (big blind) showed [7c 5c] and lost with a pair of Sixes
Seat 2: MOCA CHOCA (small blind) showed [Kh Jd] and won (3,000) with a pair of Sixes

Ok so I actually wrote like 2 paragraphs on this hand and then realised that I was giving away sooo much of my thought process and decided to take that away. But believe me it was a well thought out hand and made what I feel was a good call.. :)