February wasn’t the worst month ever but it didn’t live upto Februarys $4,200 profit. My records are slightly off but I made about $800 and added an extra $100 on top with rakeback. For the small sample of MTTs I had I managed to make a few deep runs, but fell short of the final table on a few occasions. Still mainly playing SNGs and will continue to do so in March. Showing a 23.3% ROI with an average buyin of $19 so hoping to keep that up through March.

I’m off to load my first set of the month, will keep this blog updated alot more than through February.

Thanks for reading.

From the first weeks total of SNGs I only managed half of the 300 I played in this week for the rest of the month and only increased the profit in these by $50.

However, it was MTTs where I was going to show a majority of the profit for the last week of the month, and on the 26th I decided to have an MTT night where, as you can imagine, I was only going to play MTT tournaments on the Ongame network. The volume wasn’t huge however and I managed five tournaments, but it was because of how deep I was getting that I kept the amount to a minimum, and over these I managed three final tables.

I hit two final tables at pretty much the same time, the $11 Shorthanded Deepstack whih had 257 entrants and the $11 rebuy 4.5k guaranteecd which had 288 runners. I donked out in the second hand of the $11 rebuy after shoving 12 big blinds UTG with AQo, was such an annoying spot as I didn’t want to raise fold and didn’t want to fold so ended up just shipping the whole lot and ran into Kings. I took ~$120 cash and carried on with my other final table where I got down to heads up from the beginning six pretty quickly after there were a few people who didn’t like to fold. However, with the other guy having a 10 to 1 chiplead it was going to be pretty tough getting past him. It only took three hands to end it after a limped pot preflop I checked in the BB to see a flop of 6h-3h-4x and I held 6d3d but I checked to him and he checked behind. I bet out on a Queen turn and he shoved all in which I insta-called. However, his flopped straight with 7h5h was way ahead when I thought it was me who was trapping on the flop. No complaints though and I was very happy with the ~$400 cash.

Alongside them two I had the $20,000 $5 rebuy which had 1927 entrants and the $11 rebuy daily Rehab tournament which had 819 players. I lasted just after the second break iirc in the Rehab and ended up donking out in 294th. I can’t remember the bust out hand though. I continued to battle on in the $20,000 $5 rebuy and managed to pick up chips fairly easily and one important pot I remember was when I held 9-9 in a limped pot with 5 players on a Q-Q-9 flop. I got it in for a huge pot at the time against QJ and managed to hold. At around 2:30am we reached the final 10 from the huge field and I was in the top half of chipcounts. Again, this final table was pretty wild and people weren’t bothered about going out. The table was whittled to the final three and I found myself with the shortest stack sitting with around 600,000 chips and blinds being 40,000/80,000, the other two had 2million and 4 million. This was the longest time I think without anyone going out and I kept shoving in many spots collecting chips here and there to try and make a comeback, I ended up getting it all in when the guy with 4 million made it 300,000 at 50,000/100,000 and I shoved my 1.2 million stack in with A8. He turned over KQ and was sick to see a King on the flop, however it looked like I sucked out on him when the three outer Ace came on the turn which would have put me in a very decent position. But one of the two remaining Kings fell on the river to seal the deal and send me out third. I was still very pleased and took ~$2100 which just about doubled my winnings for the month.

I tried another MTT day on the 27th but failed badly. I played in the $162 GSOP Event #3  which had 1070 players, however, I never really got anything going at all and my 8 big blinds ended up in the middle with 6-6 and ran into A-Q who proceeded to hit the nuts.

Was pretty annoyed as my spreadsheet became corrupt on the 29th and meant I lost quite a few results. However, i’ve just spent a while trying to input the results back in as I had a back up from the 21st and used Sharkscope who look like they’re tracking every tournament now which was very helpful. However i’m not sure how many rebuys etc I had and the prizes are different according to their averages so my numbers are not perfect but they aren’t too far away.

So the total for the month from SNGs & MTTs is around $3,950 but could be upto $50 out either way. However, i’ll be getting about $145 from rakeback and $50 from the rake race from last month too which should take it upto about $4100 which makes it a very successful start to the year.

Had a very good start to the month so far playing 16 SNGs and cashing in 13, showing a $280 profit. I’ve also been moved up slightly and can play $54 SNGs when showing a decent profit, so far played 10 of these and showing a profit of $160 so everything is going very well at the moment, just hoping it can continue.

Looking to play a bit of live this month as I now have a bit of money to do so and haven’t played in a long time. Will report on this later.

Will look to update at the end of every week or so from now on.

Thanks for reading,

Comments and feedback much apprectiated.

In total I managed 302 games, which is roughly half of that I managed in the past three months on Betsafe. Very pleased to be showing a $1,775 profit from all of those which doesn’t include the $85 rakeback too.

Here are the indepth results:

Just glad to be showing profit for my backers and obviously for myself. I’ve been mainly playing sets of 8 tables which consists of whichever tables fill up quickest which is usually 5-6 $11s and 2-3 $22s. Within a month or two I expect to be moving upto 12 tables as i’m comfortable playing 8 now after struggling a little bit at first moving between both monitors once it got down to the endgame. The reason the $11 and $22 profit don’t add upto the Total Profit for SNGs is because I played one $33 SNG and won which is why it’s out by about $120ish. Not really bothered with a column for this as they rarely fill as can be seen by the amount i’ve got in.

Away from poker, nothing much has really happened this week. Not been out at all since New Years so think a night out may be on the cards this next week. A few of my favourite shows have just started up so been watching these. The third season of Chuck started on Sunday night so have watched the two episodes that were released then. Vinnie Jones making an appearance in the second episode was pretty funny. The third episode was released this morning so just downloading that and going to watch it in a bit. The sixth series of Hustle started last Monday and i’m currently downloading the second episode in the season to also watch after Chuck.

Finally, the funniest thing i’ve read this week was the student who put a £4400 bet on the Angola v Mali match with 12 minutes to go. Angola were leading 4-0 and their odds were 1.01 to win the match, meaning for every pound put on you profit a penny. Anyway the student miscalulated this and thought he was a dead cert for a £440 return he expected, which actually worked out to £44. He didn’t even get this as Mali scored four goals in the last 12 minutes, including a goal in both the third and fourth minute of injury time, and the game ended as a draw and a loss of £4400 for the guy. The thread can be read here http://forum.fm-view.com/topic/10912-i-admit-it/
Thanks for reading,

Comments and feedback appreciated.

Increasing the amount of games i’m playing each day and also the amount of profit. Just finished up for the night and my daily profit today stands at the $290 mark which is the most i’ve won in a day while playing for Pokerisk and also played 48 games which is also a new high.

Discovered today on Sharkscope that i’m on the leaderboard for the Total Profit in 2010 for 9-10 Seated Non Turbo NLHE games with $5-$15 buyin range across all the networks it tracks. This is across all networks and, while I should be at 5th place, i’m only at 16th as Sharkscope seems to be missing alot of games recently and many of the $11s have not been tracked meaning my actual profit of $351 in the $11s is only tracked as $200 on Sharkscope. Ahhh well, it’s a good job i’m not using that to track results anymore.

Off to sleep soon, and up early in the morning to continue on the grind. =]

Thanks for reading,

Comments and Feedback much appreciated.

Managed to get up early this morning too and loaded up my first session earlier which consisted of 8 games. Got them all finished not too long ago and ended up being +$140 in total, and then finished for some breakfast/lunch. Just finished that all and going to get right back playing but wanted to make a quick update on here first.

I’m keeping track of all my games on some spreadsheet i’ve created. I did this as I wanted to know my current rakeback and accurate monthly profit due to Sharkscope not tracking all games and amount of rebuys not being able to be tracked.

With the $50 from my rake race it takes the total so far this month upto $500 which i’m very pleased about. Now it’s all about keeping up volume right through to the end of the month and throughout the year.

Thanks for reading,

Comments and Feedback Appreciated.

This post is mainly about what I hope to achieve over this next year, outlining aims I hope to have achieved by January 2011.

2009 wasn’t the worst year. I graduated University and made an OK amount on the poker scene, however, it all comes down to the thing I lack the most. Volume. I’ve compiled my results from 2009 over all the sites i’ve played on.

SNG Stats

screenshot courtesy of Sharkscope (http://www.sharkscope.com)

MTT Stats

screenshot courtesy of Official Poker Rankings (http://www.officialpokerrankings.com)

screenshot courtesy of Official Poker Rankings (http://www.officialpokerrankings.com)

I also played a little bit live and thanks to Dave Collins and Steve Wills from Newcastle Poker Forum I played in the £250 Grosvenor Poker Tour side event where I finished fourth for my biggest live score to date. Here are the full results:

screenshot courtesy of Grosvenor UK Poker Tour (http://www.grosvenorukpokertour.com/)

The next tournament I played I took down which was the £20 Grosvenor Friday tournament in around August where I took £600. The next and final tournament was the Newcastle Poker Forum Championships which was a quality day out, managed ~25th from 90 in this.

Reflecting on all these results i’m not too dissapointed. For the first half of the year I was into my second semester of the final year of my university degree so had work for this to do too despite trying to put it off for as long as possible. However I haven’t had anything to do for the final half except to look for a job which hasn’t been the greatest search ever but have applied to a few companies with no success so far.

As mentioned earlier in my blog posts I started a staking deal in September at Pokerisk. After four months at these I have managed around 750 games which should have been alot more with me not having anything else planned. This is one of the things I am definately going to improve on in this next year and hope to start making a steady profit once I increase my monthly games. I will be mainly playing 6-12 tables and hope to be able to grind 5-10 hour days no problem during the next few months.

Some realistic goals I hope to achieve this year are:

- Play 8,000 games on Betsafe
- Profit $15,000 on Betsafe
- Win King of The Hill Final
- Play the main event of a national poker tour
- Keep my blog up to date with at least two updates per week

I also want to go to Vegas this year but that depends on other things that may occur later in the year, for example, if I end up getting a job then this may prevent such chances so can’t put it on this list. Also some time in the year I want to go to Dusk Till Dawn after reading reviews of people who have been.

I could make some more aims but i’ll just leave it at a short list for now as I don’t want to over complicate things. I’ll probable extend on some points in later posts, but i’m off to load up my first games of 2010.

Thanks for reading,

Comments & Feedback Much Appreciated.

So tonight I decided to load twelve tables, six on each monitor and see how it went. In the hour and a half period I played fourteen games with $11 & $22 buyins and have just finished now. I didn’t experience any sort of lag problems which I was testing after loading each game because I wasn’t going to load anymore if it was going slow and crashing the software. Winning a SNG seems to be a pretty good challenge at the moment as I didn’t manage one victory despite a few HUs, and ended up profitting $35 over the fourteen games which isn’t too bad I just need to get the volume & consistency in.

Definately going to do this more often and it wasn’t boring in any sense with so many games loaded and loading new ones when I went out. This could be a regular occurence and now I feel I have the perfect setup, I just need to be motivating myself to put the hours in.

Not sure whether i’ll be playing anymore poker until the New Year as i’m off to sleep soon and going to Newcastle tomorrow for New Year. Will be making a post before I play anything next year outlining a few goals and how I intend to go about achieving these etc.

Hope you all have a good NYE.

Early on Christmas Day I decided to load up some games on Stars but realised I wasn’t motivated at all to play and couldn’t be bothered at all. Decided not to play yesterday either as I wasn’t in the house much. Today, however, I have got quite a few games in considering my usual amount. Tried loading up nine in a 3×3 layout on my monitor but once I tried to tile the tables to get the third row it wouldn’t do it and just hid the seventh table behind all the others. So ended up playing about and setup dual monitors for a bit but it wasn’t really working as my monitors are widescreen so there’s loads of gaps in the setup and it’s pretty annoying for me. In the end I just had a layout of six tables and loaded a new game once I went out of one. In the past fourish hours I have got in about 24 games but don’t know exactly as Sharkscope doesn’t seem to do a good job of tracking Betsafe. I only have one game left which is the $11 Rebuy $18,000 Nightly Rehab where i’m 139/148 and only have five big blinds. Well, just after typing that I crashed out after shoving 9Ts in the CO to be called by AQ. I flopped a flush draw but he flopped a Queen and I didn’t improve meaning I have no games going atm.

I’m in profit of $83 so far so not too bad but could have been more as i’ve managed many seconds in SNGs so far, falling at the last hurdle despite having a few big chipleads. Another game I played is the King of the Hill Round Three where I bubbled.

For anyone who has never heard of these, they’re a step structure similiar to those on Party Poker and Poker Stars where by there are different rounds to work up through and a final at the end. In the King of the Hill structure there are three steps then the final which is a 10 man SNG and has a ticket value of $215, however, the guarantee is $3500 as OnGame add money to these. It’s pretty top heavy with first place getting $2500, second place receiving $650 with third place winning $350. So far I have played three $25 feeders into the KOTH step 3 and have won two tickets. From these I have came third twice, which gives you another shot at step three and finished fourth from both these replays. It’s been pretty frustrating as first and second go through to the final. I am confident I will be able to work my way through these two tables, it’s just a matter of time.

Tonight was also the Pokerstars World Record tournament which carried a $1 buyin and a $300,000 guarantee. There are 149,196 entrants and I went out pretty quickly after treating it as an open shove tournament and shipped Tens to be called by Ace King after about six hands. He hit his Ace on the flop and the first prize of $50,000 was not going to be mine. It’s been playing for three hours and there are 1724 left with the structure being very fast. The person who wins has a pretty decent late Christmas present.

I was thinking earlier about the end of the month and I have no clue whether I am in profit or not. I couldn’t even hazard a guess but I want to put in alot of volume through the next few days to increase my chances of ending up in profit, even though I could be currently.

Going to see what the traffic’s like on Betsafe and see whether it’s worth loading up a few more sets or not. Otherwise i’ll probably play some XBox or watch Dexter &/or some films.

Managed to get some games in last night, but Sharkscope doesn’t seem to be tracking all of the games on Betsafe. Played the $11 Rehab rebuy and spent $40 and spent $25 in the $5 $20,000 guaranteed and didn’t manage anything in either. Thought I did OK in SNGs but in total I was down $100 for the evening on the site. Realisation has sunk in that I actually do need to be playing alot more games than currently so i’m going to try nine tabling on here for abit in the next few days. However, comments from other players who play alot of tables say the site lags quite a bit so I will have to test it out before loading a full set of games. But now I have Windows 7 installed it does seem to be running smoother than on Vista.

Later on, when not many SNGs were loading I decided to fire up 12 $3.40 18mans on Stars. Despite running deep in most I only managed a profit of $12, which is OK I suppose but could have been alot more. PokerTracker doesn’t seem to be showing the results for the tournaments on here though which I wanted to track this side project with. Will try it with HoldemManager and see if that works.

Decided to have some more play with this and added a “Featured Media” mini section where i’m going to add my favourite YouTube Clip or Image of the day. Also completed the “Contact” page which I wanted to have just in case. Got a few more ideas in the pipeline, however, due to Christmas not sure how quick these will progress. Also got some ideas for content and this should hopefully grow into an interesting site. =]

Unsure what i’m doing tonight, wrapping presents is top of the list. Think I want to get some volume in on the poker front but may go for Christmas drinks instead.

Finally, an interesting interview I read before concerning the unknown newest Internet phenom Isildur1 and his session with Brian Hastings where he lost $4,000,000. It’s come out that Brian Hastings had datamined information on Isildur before he played him and he’s pretty pissed. Should be interesting how it unfolds.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2009/12/pokernews-exclusive-isildur1-speaks-about-the-4-million-7714.htm

On the poker front, not played too much yesterday and i’ve only been up an hour today so not had time at all.

Here’s the weeks progression on Betsafe:

Not too happy with the amount of games played, but pretty happy with how i’m doing in terms of MTT finishes. Not so much on the money front but the amount of deep runs i’ve had in such a small sample of games.

Not too sure how much i’ll be playing in the next week, with Christmas and New Year coming up and i’m still not sure what i’m doing for it. Newcastle does seem the number one choice atm and should be a top night.

I also have $50 on Pokerstars which i’ll be playing on the side along with my Betsafe account to serve as a substitute when traffic on Betsafe is low or the slow structure SNGs are tilting me.

Not exactly sure what i’ll play tonight but hopefully get a good few games in with some decent results.