So I said that I would get in an update before the Pokerstars Montreal party and here it is.  

Still have the graph going in the proper direction even after some hiccups.  Some of the downswings early in the week are from a few problems (user errors) with TN2.  It’s not that frustrating though  because that is why I decided to grind out ~50k hands at 10plo.  There was a pretty big LOL moment where I made down on the joystick auto check/fold (This is the only hot key I continue to not be able to get set properly).  Another when I pressed esc. to minimize a window and shut off my hotkeys.

That being said I am pretty happy with the week so far.  I did fall short of my goal but that is mainly because I thought that I would be able to play about 1k hands/hour but I am currently somewhere around 800h/h.  I am not going to stress about trying to get my h/h any higher at the moment.  I am starting to get into the flow of playing this many hands and TN2 has really helped a lot.  

Volume : pretty happy, fell short but mainly because I was not able to get in the h/h that I wanted.  Will have to curb my expectations for August.  Also I did have to spend a few evenings running between my new apartment and old one.  As a result og in about ~30 hours, hoping to get over ~40 hours playing next week.

HUD/TN2/ Notecaddy.  I have been much better with my HUD and TN2.  I think that I could still do better setting up some notes and badges with notecaddy but I will probably focus on that more once I play some 25PLO were I expect to play about 50k+ hands and run into more regs. After 25PLO I want a good flow with my notecaddy setting and reg review to help plow through the competition at 50PLO.

Forum post/work ethic.  I am pretty happy with my work away from the tables this week.  Been spending sometime on the forums, and reviewed a pretty interesting spot.  It is when were I think I have probably used an exploitable strategy in the past but really liked thinking about the math and problem with the hh.  This was the post.

http://www.runitonce.com/plo/plo100-noobie-needs-help/

I do still want to take some time on Monday to look at villains response if he assumes that we are shipping our whole range on the flop.  I have not marked a lot of hands to review.  I am pretty sure that I can set up a hotkey with HM2 to auto mark hands in progress to look at some cbet/check back spots.  Also really want to do some range analysis on turns.  I find that my river call efficiency is low and I am probably making way too many hero calls when I should just fold (even if I am near the top of my range).

Next week I am going to start to mix in some 25PLO.  I feel like I have a good grip on how TN2 functions and have not had any terrible and frustrating mistakes because of it lately.  Next week I am hoping to put in over 40 hours of playing and fall around 35k hands total.  That should help to put me into striking distance of getting in 100k hands this month and set me up for next month and finishing off my SN bonus at 50PLO.

GL on the tables everyone and see you on the forums.

I have not decided on if I was going to grind tomorrow or not but all I know is that I plowed through a downswing, and some B/C game poker and felt pretty good about myself ATM so thought that I would pound out the update.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBoVPpwHIms

25PLO has not been kind to me this week.  To be fair I was running very well at 10PLO over my return so a little bad variance was to be expected at some point, but it is always frustrating when it happens the moment that you change the BI filters at the poker client.

As you can see over Monday and Tuesday I managed to pull myself out of the gutter, and in true PLO fashion had a 20BI swing for today.  I did get frustrated and play some hands poorly early.  I never try to hide behind other factors that I could contribute to these terrible session.  I lose some hands, maybe get coolered maybe play poorly, but I just start to play like a pissed off teenager and start to click buttons and not even trying to make reads, play my hand or opponent and start to bleed away some BIs very quickly.

After the afternoon session I took a break, went for a walk, had a bite to eat and thought about what I was doing poorly.  I did drop down to 12 tables and that obviously helped, but also got on the right side of variance too, and that has little to do with the table (or does it?)

Not really sure if the swing gets across in the BB graph so here is the week in cash.

Yeah I was a little frustrated that all my 25PLO shot money was gone in a session or two but knew that I was better than that and got home and put in some better hands over the evening.

As I mentioned on my blog I went to the Montreal VIP live party hosted by Pokerstars.  It was a lot of fun.  Got to meet a bunch of people.   I really like these gatherings, I wish that I made it to Vegas this year because I would have loved to get around the RIO booth.  At the event we got a freeroll ticket for a tournament were the top ten finishers are going to get a seat in the 1k montreal poker festival.  I am super excited about the freeroll, however I am not sure that after playing 250k hands of PLO before the game if I will be able to fold to a min 3b IP.  

Also it’s just for laughs in Montreal and I think that tomorrow I will be going to the comedypro brooklyn nine-nine conference.

http://www.hahaha.com/en/show/brooklyn-nine-nine

In case you have not noticed by my posts, blogs, HH or anything.  I love to create a narrative, and I am love with this show.  I am looking forward to hearing the discussion perhaps asking some question, and getting a feel for how something develops into something so successful, enjoyable, and lasting.  

So I need to hit about 5k hands a day in order to get to my 100k goal.  It is my wife's birthday next Monday so I am not sure what the weekend grind is going to look like, but I think that I am going to focus on getting in 10k hands Thursday and Friday.  What ever happen tomorrow is gravy and I want to pile in a ton on Saturday/Sunday (Sunday could be difficult if we do something all night for the wife's birthday).

That being said, if 25PLO goes well over the next week I really want to put my nose down and grind out the last of the month and really push to get to SN in August.  I have not looked at VPP/Hand for 50PLO but currently I am getting ~190/ hour at 25PLO so if I can get ~350/hour at 50PLO I should be able to get my SN bonus in August.

good luck!

GL gl gl man! Min 3b IP I am not folding on any poker game. 

Thanks for the good luck wishes guys.  This week was a bit of a grind.  Did not get in near the amount of hands that I would like.  First as I mentioned previously my h/hour are around 800 so I have had to readjust my expectations.  Second this week really sucked after my previous post.  That night we had some fierce storms.  The thunder and lighting was so bad that the car alarms where going off all night.   On top of that the heat was unbearable.  I bought some fans for our new apartment but they where just not cutting it.  So Thursday we went for a trip to future shop and got a new portable AC unit.  I was not able to put it by the window that I wanted and ended up having to put the unit right by my computer desk.  This is not going to fly for me because I have this thing about having a clean and area with as little clutter as possible, so having a 50 pound machine blowing into my ear all day is just not my idea of an ideal workstation.  So I spent most of Thursday night rearranging the whole apartment.  These are all just little nuisance but they kind of cut into my hours threw the week.  Friday to Saturday I got in some good volume, however I was not running good, then getting mad, then playing bad, then needing to take a break, I think you get the point of the vicious cycle that I can land in sometimes.    

Cliffs long story short I have gotten in about 15k hands of break even poker since my last post.  not to be unexpected with PLO and variance and all.  I think that tomorrow I am going to take sometime off from the tables and look at some HHs and do some reviews or how the population plays so far at 250PLO.

End of the month update.

So the last week of the grind went pretty good.  Last week was a total grind, so many ups & downs but I think that I am getting better at identifying when I am starting to tilt and avoid some costly mistakes.  With the way things were going I thought that I might have to put in an extra week at 25PLO but really started to run better at and managed to win enough to play the weekend at 50PLO (will use a stop loss)

I am also pretty happy with the results of my goals.  I did miss the hands but that is mostly because I had to drop down to twelve tables in order to increase my win rate and hourly (I think).  I got done a lot of the filters that I wanted to.  Still are some note caddy items that I would like to get crossed off my list but think that those are going to wait till Monday.  I have also been posting a bit on the forums.  I still would like to add more hands, I will set a more specific goal for this in August.

Games really start to tail off at 8 pm est and would like to start and get in five hours of playing before a late dinner.  I am thinking that I would like to get up eat shower etc.. play an hour, break, another hour, lunch, two more evening sessions and then dinner.  That should put my playing time around 4-5 hours each day not including the times that I will play after diner.

July highlight is probably finishing the month out for 10bb/100 at 25PLO.  Things were looking pretty grim early on and really felt like I was just going to have to camp out at that level a little longer than I wanted.  I am also really happy with the direction that my EV line took once I started to make the adjustments in my 3b game (around the 25k mark).  

GOALS FOR AUGUST:

100k hands (for real this time)

Finish last items from note caddy list.

Build roll to take shots on the weekend at 100PLO

Mark and post one hands from each session on the forum

Get up earlier to start my grind

GL on the tables everyone, and see you in the forums.

following your quest man, hope you climb to the top :) and hats off to your volume i wish i could play half the hands you do :) gl gg and crush :)

After weekend update.

There is no pretty way to say it so going to lay it out like I normally do.  This Sunday I played like a bratty, temperamental child.  And in return I got spanked.  Think it goes without saying where the rails fell off.  There is not a proper grade for my play but if I had to assign one it would be absent.  I made a lot of terrible calls in spots where my opponents were polarized (in my mind), but seriously, they always got it and I was in total disbelief mode and calling off stack after stack.  There was a few sick run outs, but I really should have stopped on the day sooner , fold more turns/rivers, etc..

It’s not like its the end of the world.  With my rake back boost I am not nearly as down as I could be.  I just simply got caught up in trying to get ahead on my hand count for the month and as a result set a lot of money on fire.  Worse things could have happened so really don’t care, just actually more disappointed with myself more than anything.  I think that I am consistently my worst enemy.  Often I find I beat myself more than anyone else at the tables just doing stupid stuff and going into blackout rage I gotta win/bluff/bet every pot mode.  For the most part I was very good at identifying when I was reaching these moments last month.  This month, an F so far at identifying when I am reaching a 5-7 on the tilt scale.  Its early though and sure that I will bounce back.

So like any bratty kid when they act up your punish them.  So Monday I did nearly 40 individual note definition with notecaddy to identify player tendencies.  I have been staring at my computer for so long doing tedious typing and clicking that my eyes are so tired.  On the bright side since I took poker off today I grab six beers and really put my head down and into this work.  I am pretty happy with the notes so far and the notes and definitions really help to solidify some of the tendencies that I notice in the player pools so far.  Tomorrow I am going to focus on getting the last few sets of notes done so that I can have them on my HUD for the weekend.

GL on the tables this week everyone.  And those that got some of my black out frustrated money.  Enjoy it, the rest will be harder to get in the future.

That was a pretty terrible week.  I played so bad, the smallest things were putting me on tilt.  I also did not get in as much playing as I would like mainly because I was taking a bunch of small breaks in order to try and clear my mind.  With the way things have gone I am going to have to go back to grind a bit at 10PLO.  I have enough to still push out play at 25PLO but I really need to book a few wins this week.  

That being said I did get done a bunch of the note caddy work that I wanted to do.  I have put together some filters and notes for various actions and board structures in order to see how many of the regs are playing in certain spots.  For the most part the regs are still very tight (more so post flop with very little semi bluffing going on).  I really just need to fold more turns and rivers to aggression mainly because the ranges are a lot stronger then I would expect.  The biggest problem I was having last week was tilting and playing too many hands (getting frustrated seeing the crap that was running down my hands so I start to play crap back and bleed away a lot of money).

My mom will be coming to visit next week so I think that I am going to finish some of the notecaddy / poker juice stuff that I am working on Thursday and grind my heart out on the weekend.

Some advice that you can take away from my graph.  It’s twice as easy to lose money playing bad as it is to win money playing good.  Going forward my goal will be to make some better preflop decisions.  I was playing way too loose last week and I need to drop a lot of the trash that turns into trouble hands on flops.  I am hoping to turn things around before the end of the month.  I might end up having to jump back into those silly two card MTTs in order to boost the bankroll.

So got in another week of though hands.  I cut down on the tables to focus more on my play but still struggled a bit at times.  While I struggled at times, I feel like it was a huge leap forward from the previous week where I was having bad session after bad session.  I am pretty sure it was Jared book where he talks about how during a downswing you can learn a lot of about your C/D game play and I think that I was able to identify somethings that where making me spew and cut out a lot of those bad sessions.  I would actually rate my play very high last week even though I had terrible results.  My preflop play was a lot better, I still was running pretty bad and on the worst day of my week I probably ran the worse.  Going into Sunday I was only 10 buyins down for the week, which after running bad, and really trying to get over my slump was feeling like a huge success.  I managed to then lose 20bis on Sunday.  The most frustrating of which came at the hands of a player playing 92/57/31.  I had the seat to his left and pretty well just had to wait for a good hand, cold four bet, and lose.  It did get under my skin, but I do think that I handled it about as good as I could this week (really hard to put these things out of your mind when you are playing bad).  

I actually am going to be getting in a lot less hands this week then I expected.  My mom came to visit so been off the tables through the week.  This weekend there are some really soft tournaments at Playground Poker in Montreal so I might be going to those.  It is hard to play two day tournaments live after playing online PLO but going and playing MTT donkaments is sometimes good for the soul and self esteem.  You get to see how bad some people play, and just how far you have come.  Oh and there are some really sweet prizes at the end if you run well.

Any how here is the sad graph.  Going to work on some of my game away from the tables this week, try to put together a plan for some better play next week and really push forward the last week.

 How are u doing lately? 

So August has come to an end.  The last two weeks I got in a lot less playing then I would have thought when I started the summer.  My mom did come to visit for about a week, and I managed to come down with a cold last week and put in only about half a grind.

That being said I did manage to move 40bis in the positive direction and the bulk of them were at 25PLO.  I decided to jump back up after having a good few days at 10PLO and thought that I had put in some good work to identify what was putting me on tilt.  I did have some touch and go moments the last two weeks but for the most part I was able to keep some composure and make some money towards the end of the month.  I was in the red, but with that juicy plo rakeback I managed to break even which after the first ten days of the month that I had I was not really aiming for.  Also the amount that I am down is about as much that I took the shot at 50PLO with so that can be expected to happen when taking shots.  Next month I am going to put in some more time at 25PLO and not rush up so quickly.  I do still find myself getting a little too raise happy preflop in some spots and I do think that I should be able to play against the 25PLO regs better.  I would really like to be able to punish the 25PLO player pool because I think that I will be able to breeze through 50PLO after that.

I will admit that I am pretty happy with the work that I have done last month with the amount of work that I have done with notecaddy and HM2 over August.  I think that I am probably getting close to nearly two hundred custom note definitions completed.  A lot of these notes are helping me analyze my play and that of my opponents at and away from the tables.  There is still a lot of work to be completed to get it all where I want to but I knew it was going to be a lot of work when I started it and I am not even close to throwing in the towel on it.

I have not really thought of any goals for September.  My main plan is to just grind away at 25PLO.  There has still been a lot of holes in my game that I want to correct and I think that a month at 25PLO will be good for the soul and self esteem.  My mom will be down for some time this month again and I have a good friend of mine visiting.  Since i managed to get 60k hands month I really want to get more hand in.  I think that I would like to aim for 80k plus, but really want to have a month where I break the 100k hand mark but I doubt it will be this month.

So here is the month end graph, a nice little bounce back in the end, and last but not least since my return for the summer.

So made it to the end of the year. I managed to get supernova status for next year. It was getting close at the end, and I actually had to add some tables, and put in longer hours in order to clear the rake. In the end I am not really sure what kind of mark/grade I would give myself. I really wanted to get in more hands over the last four months, but I had some work come up in October, and running bad every time that I moved up and then let that affect my play and causing me to lose more.

In the end I managed to break through in November and put in a lot of volume at 50plo over December. As I mentioned I probably sacrificed some EV on the tables in order to get of a bunch of time for the holidays, but I think that I am in a pretty good spot to move forward in 2015. I have got a lot of my HUD and note definitions completed. I would still like to put something together that can help me make notes for when I catch people making plays with blocker (either bluffing, calling or checking IP with good bluffing hands). I am not sure how or if this would be possible but it is something that has been rolling around in my mind.

2014 PLO graph, yellow is with rake back from making Supernova.

I think that I am going to spend the month at 50plo and work out some leaks in my game.

Definitely still playing a few too many hands OOP. Also I am still thinking that people are playing wider postflop then I would like, over the first few thousand hands that I have played over 25plo most raises are made hands and the strongest of them, a few people raise draws, but they are most always for value (nutty draws) and a lot less semi bluffing. Now that I have put in a bunch of hands over 25plo and 50plo I would like to look at some more population tendencies and make some more exploitable tendencies.

I have not put a lot of thought forward about my goals for January volume yet but I am thinking that i am going to aim for something similar to December but with about an extra week I should not have to be adding tables and without the end of year deadline looming over my head I can put back in some stop losses and do a better job at quitting sessions.

I think that my biggest goal for the month is going to be getting up a poker journal to keep a better log of my emotions before, during, after poker (did this in the past works well but have really fallen off the rails with it). Also I am going to do my best to not look at the cashier this month. I have my stop losses in place, and I just want to put in the hours to clear VPPs, and get my cash rewards from Stars.

Also as I mentioned before I have a big passion for games in general and in the new year I am going to really focus on blogging and sharing my passion for board games, and miniature games. I find that this is a great hobby away from the tables, and it probably is a way to still work on some tools that I can use at the tables, calculating odds, problem solving, leveling opponents, etc..

I will share some pics of models that I painted and I am going to be running a few games with my friend over Skype and will be adding these to a YouTube channel after and will share that for those who might be interested.

Pretty good start to the year. I broke my rule of not looking at the cashier when I was up over 2k after the first week. So I decided to take a shot at 500ploz. Played four hands, ran into quads twice (once I had FH blockers and bluffed it off, other time guy hit it on the river after gii on the turn). So I dropped ~$750 of the profits pretty quickly. Grinded back threw the weekend. My hand count is down, had a few problems with HM2 on the first Sunday of the year, so I played only three to six tables at a time, with some MTTs. Managed to ship the $16 PLO MTT for a few hundred and that was a nice little boost.

All in all pretty happy with 2015 so far. I will not be looking at the cashier and graph until next Tuesday when I get an update again.

Unrelated to poker, I have painted the majority of the miniatures for my new Star Wars Imperial Assault board game. They look pretty good, and will be getting some pics up at the blog soon and get a few of the better ones linked here by next Tuesday.

GL on the tables everyone

Is pretty cool that you began at 10plo and worked your way up and also achieved supernova.

It's inspiring.

Bit harder of a week, I have been fighting a bit of the flu. Volume was down, did little to no reviews, and actually had to bail on the Skype group this week. Also was running pretty bad most of the week, which really started to make it difficult to play my A game. I did very poorly with my pre flop game, and terrible on river play. Part of the problem was adding too many tables. I was trying to increase my hands an hour since my hours where down. This really hurt my win rate, and attitude.

Also there was a few times that I cheated and looked at my results after my sessions. First time was a terrible session where it felt like I did not win any of the 3b or 4b pots. I was actually worried that my tilt breaker was not set up properly since I was sure that my session was worse then -8bis. However after looking I was at -7.5bis. Not a huge victory but a small one none the less.

The next time was after the start of my Sunday. I was hotter then the sun, pretty sure that I won every pot over 200bbs, and had to see where I was. I was at about +13bis for the hour and it felt nice to actually get moving up in the right direction again after a difficult week.

Any how here is the year to date graph. I am still looking like I should be at 100plo for February. Also next week going to get back to playing no more then eight tables and try to get back into more A game poker.