Baaaaaacck!

Miss me?

Ok so yeah, I've decided to start blogging again. Basically I moved my blog to DC in an attempt to re-inspire myself, but this didn't work, and I decided to pick up where I left off. I used to beat 25NL for a very decent clip back in October, moved up to 50NL where I ran terribly, then started tilting chronically, I couldn't deal with my downswing and it caused me to pretty much move backwards in my poker career if you like.

I had my first losing month, followed by another, followed by another, and I dropped over $1.5k of my roll. Basically I just fell out of love with poker, with a belief I can still be great at it, but without the motivation or the mindset, so everything was wrong.

In February I withdrew my roll, deposited $1k again and decided that I'd had enough, and the only way I'm gonna move on up is by moving back down. So that's what I did. 40BI at 25NL, and I'd move back up at 40BI for 50NL, simple. But I didn't play much, I just went out a ton, got back my social life and hardly played, however I've found a new balance in my life, which involves me sleeping at 5am and waking at 9am, that way I manage to fit in Poker, Work and a social life! EZ game right!

At the start of March I had a prop with a mate that we have to play 25k hands each, which would smash my monthly record by some distance. I've well on course. I ran terrible at 25NL 6max, and was 6BI under EV in like 7k hands, and just couldn't win an all in, however I tried out Rush and am smashing it at the moment, so I may look to build my roll at this, and eventually move back to 6max before heading to 50NL, but it's soooo nice to be winning again and not tilting.

I'm also working on my game a lot, my redline is improving a lot as I seek thinner spots and keep pushing my edge, and I'm looking forward to getting a hell of a lot better in the next 6 months. I'll also be combing my p90x adventure in here too, if you haven;t heard of it, it's a 90 day intensive training programme, a lot of 2+2r's have raved about it, so me and a friend are checking it out, I'll keep y'all updated.

So yeah, time to grind.

New Blog Location

http://www.deucescracked.com/blogs/runittwice

Please add it to your bloglists.

New Year, New Game!

So I kind of fell out of love with the game that I was obsessed about. Maybe falling out of love is the wrong term, because I thought about it every living fk'in second of every day, but volume wise, I didn't really put much in, or at least as much as I'd hoped. At the end of 2009, I figured I needed to sort my life out, and getting a permanent job was the first step to doing it. Regular income, parents off my back about earning money and doing something, and getting a new social life, which is taking off too.

New Years was so sick. Went to the O2, £80 to ged'dit in, kinda sick but meh. Mate really badly wanted to go, didn't really wanna let him down plus I didn't wanna wake up in 2010, regretting my last actions of 2009, so this was good. Fell in love with Deadmau5 while out, was also Justice and Calvin Harris DJ'ing, plus some others, including Eric Prydz who was God awful, musta been out of his head.

But yeah, I dropped nearly 4BI on New Years Day, first hand was set over set, had flush over flush, meh, can't be arsed going into it, but I felt like I needed a change. I already know NLHE, so I don't really wanna get into PLO, so I decided HU was the best route, and my word I've enjoyed it. Probably 'cos I'm crushing, up about 8BI so far, encountered no variance yet cos of my sample size (2k hands), but I'm enjoying myself at Poker for the first time in ages.

Hope everyone is running well this year, have added my goals into the right hand side for this month, and hope I can still by them. I have a 20k hands prop bet with a friend, so I think I'll have ot grind some 6max at some stage, cos I picked up DJ Hero (xmas), Modern Warfare 2 (xmas), Need for Speed: Undercover (£9) and World Championship Snooker '09 (£4) over the last two weeks, and they're all pretty fk'in amazing.

Good luck all!

I'm a Hero, Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS, Here are some hands from yesterday's session. Kind of standard seeing as villain rep absolute air. But meh, I haven't posted some hands in a while, plus I think I would have folded to most of these a little while a go.

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $30.45
BTN: $18.15
SB: $10.00
BB: $87.75
Hero (UTG): $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with K A
Hero raises to $1.75, CO calls $1.75, BTN calls $1.75, 2 folds

Flop: ($6.00) 5 2 2 (3 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $2.50, BTN folds, Hero calls $2.50

Turn: ($11.00) 8 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $7.50, Hero calls $7.50

River: ($26.00) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $18.70 all in, Hero calls $18.70

Final Pot: $63.40
CO shows A T (a pair of Twos)
Hero shows K A (a pair of Twos)
Hero wins $60.40
(Rake: $3.00)

I rivered a flush draw, and like a fish, called with terrible odds anyway. Meh.

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (SB): $50.00
BB: $35.95
UTG: $66.05
MP: $51.85
CO: $58.35
BTN: $62.90

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with Q K
4 folds, Hero raises to $1.50, BB calls $1

Flop: ($3.00) A 3 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $2, BB calls $2

Turn: ($7.00) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $4.50, Hero calls $4.50

River: ($16.00) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $11.50, Hero calls $11.50

Final Pot: $39.00
Hero shows Q K (two pair, Queens and Sevens)
BB shows 4 5 (a pair of Sevens)
Hero wins $37.05
(Rake: $1.95)

Meh, he 3bets all Ax hands that are good enough to bet the turn and the river with, plus all draws missed, so easy call in the end.

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (CO): $62.90
BTN: $81.25
SB: $39.40
BB: $50.00
UTG: $60.25
MP: $101.95

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is CO with T K
2 folds, Hero raises to $1.75, 1 fold, SB calls $1.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($4.00) 4 9 J (2 players)
SB bets $3, Hero calls $3

Turn: ($10.00) 9 (2 players)
SB bets $4.50, Hero calls $4.50

River: ($19.00) 9 (2 players
SB bets $30.15 all in, Hero requests TIME, Hero calls $30.15

Final Pot: $79.30
Hero shows T K (three of a kind, Nines)
SB shows 6 5 (three of a kind, Nines)
Hero wins $76.30
(Rake: $3.00)

Villains went off at me in the chatbox for this one "you gotta be kiddin me!!". I replied "Soz, I can see your cards." and he quit.

Also was browsing Shopto earlier and saw Need for Speed: Undercover for £9.95, World Championship Snooker 2009 for £4.95, and I brought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II for £42 aswell. Don't think I'm getting anything too exciting this Christmas, DJ Hero would be nice, but I thought it'd give me something to do after Christmas for when I'm not grinding.

I've been really focusing on my game recently. I'm a waiter in a restaurant, and all day long, when clearing tables or making hot drinks or meals for customers, I think about Poker. Different lines to take, past hands, how I can deceptively play hands, and it's starting to pay dividends for me. I've put in a maximum oif about 18k hands at 50NL, and I've lost about 10BI, but in the last 3k hands, my graph has been going upwards and I actually feel like I have an advantage over most of the players there now. I still need to refine my game a lot, but I'm feeling really good going into the New Year despite my results not reflecting my play so far.

I've also been asked to stay on at the restaurant into 2010 which gives me stability, I'm cool with working there for quite a while, there are some really good people there who are all super friendly, I've made a couple of good friends and everyone seems to have a laugh.

Good luck in 2010 everyone, may you all run goot!

Going for rustucko!

So last night I sat down for a 5 hour session, my 2nd longest session of all time (pussy), and I dropped 8BI at 50NL. I played okay for the most part, but I ran sooooo bad, like the worse I've ran before, and you'll find that when you're running bad, you don't tilt half as much as you do when you're running neither good or bad, but then start running bad, you learn to brush it off, and that's what I did through the session.


Meh. Click here for the hands.

Anyway, back on my grind tonight, going for rostucko this weekend, hoping to put in 3k hands tonight and tomorrow, and fingers crossed, I run okay.

No updates recently mainly because I haven't played much with work n stuff, but I'm feeling hungry again, I'm looking for a 30k month.

Worst Month Ever

I played hardly anything, I lost a whole bunch (best month profit wise only because of donkament score), and I ran like shit. I've decided to not play for the next week, I'm close to getting a staking arrangment sorted out also to help motivate me, the backer is in it for the long term, hopefully taking me to SSNL and beyond, and I'm looking forward to working hard at my game again.

My mindset has been a bit off, so when I sat down to play, I quickly quit because I just didn't feel like I was playing my 'a' game. I want a fresh mind going into the stake, as it'll be better for both me and the backer, and I want to work really hard at my game. I've got Stox membership, I'm going to rejoin DC next month and start posting a lot more in the uNL forum too.

Goal wise for November, I failed them all (almost anyway), goal wise for December, is just going to be to concentrate and improve. As part of the stake, he wants me to move down to 25NL and smash it for a decent winrate, which I'm happy with doing, I really want to get my confidence back, and at the same time, make us both some money.

Doubled my roll, ldo

So last night, I decided to enter the $200k Double Deuce @ FullTilt. Don't ask me why, I was just looking in the tournaments tab and saw it running, decided to give it a whack, $20+2, 12,620 entrants, and top 1,365 get paid I think it was. I didn't get many big hands, but the tables were nitty enough to be folding a ton pre, and just c/f flops, so I took advantage and chipped up to just above average without much trouble.

Then, my internet cut out twice in an hour, and I missed about half hours play when the blinds started to get a little deep. I couldn't reconnect, I restarted my PC twice and still feck all, and when I came back, I was down to 5k in chips while the average was about 16k. I managed to work my way up to 21k before the next break just taking down some smallish pots, but never really got going from there. I managed to get in the money by just being relentless at the blinds and antes. When the bubble burst, everyone started dropping like flies, everyone stopped being nits and without many hands coming my way, there wasn't much I could do and I ended up going out in 813th for a $45 'score', doubling my BI.

It got to about 10pm, considering I had work in 16 hours, the last thing I should have done was browsed for more tournaments, but I wanted to gambool. I sat down at a $5/$10 table, a couple of $2/$4 tables and some 100NL tables, but the good thing was I couldn't be arsed to mess around, so I quit 'em and decided to go for it again, so I entered the $28k GTD anyway, $24+2, 1238 runners with 135 getting paid. The payouts were measly until you got to the final table, but I kinda knew I was gonna go sick deep in it, I just had that feeling. I think 25th or something was like $70, 10th was $252 and 1st was $6.5k, and I fancied it.

I started well, but lost half my stack when a fish raised the turn on 4K7Qtt turn multi-way, I was holding AK. I could have shoved but I really didn't see what I beat, the Q was a horrible turn card for me and I decided it wasn't worth risking my tournament life this early when I'm rarely ahead, so I laid it down and decided to wait for a better spot. I kept picking up some pots and found myself doing pretty well come 12am.

I don't really remember much about the middle, I was above average for the majority of the tournament because of a decent pot where I called a bet OOP and donked the flush river w/nut straight, and managed to get called by AJ (one pair) on a super wet board, this gave me some life. When we were 100 left, I started to built the chips, I was relentless and was running about 28/26 while everyone else were really nitty, it was super profitable.

Cutting a long story short, I got to the final tables and was 7th, the villain in CO has been shoving tons and I called w/A9o against his 76o, which would have propelled me to 2nd (double 3rd's stack), and in a good position to bully the table some more. He turn and rivered two pair to leave me on the shortstack and about 111k left. I shoved next hand w/97o, got called by AQo and flopped a 9, he turned a Q and I rivered a 6 to double up. I repopped some hands, shoved a couple of times before this hand happened;

Full Tilt Poker $28,000 Guarantee No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t12000/t24000 Blinds + t3000 - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: t1449963 M = 26.85
MP: t837716 M = 15.51
Hero (CO): t311254 M = 5.76
BTN: t310101 M = 5.74
SB: t480017 M = 8.89
BB: t324949 M = 6.02

Pre Flop: (t54000) Hero is CO with J K
2 folds, Hero raises to t308254 all in, 2 folds, BB calls t284254

Flop: (t646508) 7 K Q

Turn: (t646508) 5

River: (t646508) T

Final Pot: t646508
Hero shows J K (a pair of Kings)
BB shows 5 5 (three of a kind, Fives)
BB wins t646508

2 outer on the turn, FML. 6th place for $1.3k, doubles my roll to nearly $2.7k which obviously is nice, but I really felt I could have shipped this. Props to DHM0219 though, he was relentless in his aggression and was unlucky not win it when he ran QQ into A9 and the flop was AAx for 4th place (I think), he was probably the best player at the table tbf and obviously knew what he was doing, he was so difficult to play against because he was 4bet shoving a ton, 3betting and opening nearly every hand, gg sir if you somehow read this.

So donkament finished at like 9:15am, I got something to eat and got my clothes ready to work, got about an hour of sleep in and away I went to work, stocked up on red bull ldo. I didn't feel that bad in work either tbh, was only a 14.00-18.00 shift which was fortunate, I would have called in sick if it was 10.00-18.00, no way would I have made that work out..

I'm going to leave myself with $2k in the roll, and withdraw about $685 for a new laptop, I'm not gonna take shots at 100NL just because I'm rolled for it because I don't beleive I have any significant edge up there, so I'm happy to have 40BI for 50NL while playing on a machine which is actually half decent instead of his heap of junk, gg I guess, your time is up!

I didn't proof read this and I'm tired as fuck so I apologize for any mistakes.