DaPhunk old blog.

also you check this out such a good laugh definitly worth the watch

G.N.A.R

Guess where I started 20 tabling

hehehe

@xJCzZ - Gnar is great! I'm the best skier on Pokerstrategy! Claim!

Anyway, I'm also more about Big Mountain than park lol. I just love shredding pow rather fast and doing any cliff drop or pillow I fancy on the way down Hopefully I'll be able to get myself a gopro this winter so I can share some footage with my friends.

As far as hiking is concerned, its a must. I've become a skier that doesn't spend very much time in bounds anymore because it just gets tracked out too quickly. With as short a hike as ten minutes at the top and ten minutes at the bottom you can get almost untouched snow on a 2 mile long run as opposed to the 200 metres you get when you stay inbounds ♦

Check out this headcam video from Jackson Hole. I think its quite famous now;

Don't worry, I won't bore you with the names of all of the features he's hitting up there ♦ Peace!

I'm thinking about restarting with some updates in here. Not sure if I'll be able to commit though.

I don't really have much to post about apart from poker at the moment if I'm honest, my life-roll is pretty much too low to go out partying everyday..... but I should be back in the mountains by the end of July, Southern Hemisphere style!

Awaiting interest or lack thereof.......

Just realised I have quite a lot of photos and stuff I could potentially post and some graphs of my dubious success of doing well at microstakes..... Anyway, I think this is an appropriate place to put my sums to do with the stars promotion.

Pokerstars Billion Hand Celebration Calculation:

Question: When is it going to hit and how long will it take to play 300 million hands?

Samples Taken between 12:00 and 12:30 EST.

Test 1: Aproximately 40,000 hands counted increase in 60 seconds.

Test 2: 44,500 hands in 60 seconds.

Test 3: 43,000 hands in 60 seconds.

Average = 42,500 hands every 60 seconds which = 2,550,000 hands per hour played on Pokerstars.

According to my laptop clock at 12:30 EST on 06th June 2013 Pokerstars hand counter read 99,651,370,000 hands.

Answer 1 'When will the promotion start' This would put the target marker as being passed in 19.07 hours which would be at 5:34am EST June 7th according to my laptop clock (or 5:35am pokerstars clock)

Answer 2 'How long will the promotion run' If hands were to continue racking up at the same rate it would take 4.9 days or 117 hours for the 300 million promo hands to play out with the 100 billionth hand occuring on June 12th at around 2:30 AM EST. (While I will be on an international flight from Brazil to London......)

What If I was to build in a multiplier for the fact people will play more during the promo? Well, I can't because I have no idea how much more people are going to play but I think its probably going to be a lot more. If twice as many hands are played as normal we'll see the milestone hand happening on Saturday afternoon and if 1.5x as many are played it will happen on Sunday morning. We may see it even sooner than that.

I'm sure people out there will have already made some sidebets on when it will happen, but even this close to it I wouldn't be confident enough on any date to put money down ♦

A Restart to the blogging. What are the keys to success?

Where I've been: For the last while I've been somewhat wasting my time as it where playing nano-stakes. Time for some graphs:

I haven't played it for a while, but Stars NL2:

and Stars NL10:

I have been studying a lot and trying to put in as many hours as possible with the general goal of making midstakes this year. however, I've never managed to make one of my targets for number of hours played.

Where I'm going:

I want to use this blog to as a learning record as I progress towards mid-stakes. I will post links to hands posted on ftr because I never seem to be able to review all the hands I mark in holdem manager. I should probably also use this blog to post my goals.

I'm really not sure what I need to do to get to become successful in poker (by that I mean making a good hourly at mid stakes actually) Hopefully with this blog I'll be able to somehow glean some knowledge or help that will help me document the secrets to my success.

I'm currently playing a mix of NL10 and NL25 and skipping NL16 because there are not so many tables there. I dislike NL16, its a weird limit.

Hope you will enjoy reading my newly restarted blog.

WB, Thanks for your thoughts on the hand, Def will follow! Wouldn't mind getting you on Skype for some poker talk as well! Will add you on community tool!

Some nice graphs that you got there Sir ♠_cool:
Will follow your blog with interest - keep up the good work and ship it

Thanks for the feedback guys

Goals Post!

"I want to live here" - (Photo taken by DaPhunk in 2012)

So since my last post I have taken a flight from South America to England. Some 8000 miles or so and a journey length over 24 hours long. (Due to an annoyingly long overlay between two flight connections)

I shall be in England minimum of a month and a week (sister is graduating medical school so going to go and congratulate her) thus I need to make myself some goals for while I am here! So, lets get started.

Step 1: Outlining basics of making goals?

In September 2012 I was thinking about "self-improvement". I did the typical looking around and I believe found the usual culprits (Google Brian Tracy, Allen Davies, Anthony Robbins, there are more) There are some rather useful ideas contained among all the fluff and one of those things is goal setting.

In summary:

• To generalise people overestimate what they can do in the short-term and mid-term, and under-estimate what they can achieve in the long-term and longer-term. Thus you should make the most long term goals first.
• You can have long-term, mid-term and short-term goals. 1 year, 1/2 year and 1 month or 1 week respectively.
• For a one year goal list, brainstorm some ideas and make select the top ten.
• Don't forget to dream big when making long-term goals and think realistically in the short-term
• Write these goals in a format as if you have already achieved the goals
• for example: "On september 22nd 2013 I achieved my goal of making $2500 in one month in poker"

I think that in the short-term i.e. one month I should set myself half this number of goals and I will review my progress on each goal weekly. I will aim to make my goals realistic.

Note in spoiler regarding my skeptical viewpoint on Brian Tracy etc:

Step 2: My Goals!

1. Target: I played 6 hours minimum a day. (actually decided based on fictitious $10 hourly duly multiplied to equal the price of a plane ticket) I recorded this on my calender.
2. I studied poker for 1.5 hours each day minimum and recorded this on my calender. (80:20 play : study ratio)
3. I practiced my Spanish each day and have progressed significantly on Duolingo.
4. I continued to keep my sleep schedule on track and find time for exercise.
5. I was able to keep myself balanced this month and had plenty of time for me. (meeting up with friends etc)

If anyone has comments about how my goals etc could be improved or if I forgot to include something I'll be happy to hear it.

That's all for now. I'll put in a post soon with several links to hand-histories I marked during play this month.

Note to all. This is why you should play focused!

I was distracted by something else despite the fact I was only playing 6 tables and the result was I had absolutely no idea what happened in this hand.

On river I had no recollection of the previous streets and no idea why the pot was so large. The result is a pretty horrendous line by moi:

Poker Stars $10.00 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

MP: $10.00
CO: $19.20
BTN: $4.24
SB: $10.80
BB: $10.15
Hero (UTG): $25.36

Pre Flop: ($0.15) Hero is UTG with A A
Hero raises to $0.30, MP calls $0.30, CO calls $0.30, BTN calls $0.30, 2 folds

Flop: ($1.35) 4 3 9 (4 players)
Hero bets $0.75, MP folds, CO raises to $1.50, BTN folds, Hero calls $0.75

Turn: ($4.35) J (2 players)
Hero bets $2.30, CO calls $2.30

River: ($8.95) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $2.80, Hero calls $2.80

Final Pot: $14.55
CO shows 3 3
Hero mucks A A
CO wins $13.90
(Rake: $0.65)

I know I'm not the only guy who has done this, but this should be a good reminder to all to stay focused at the tables!

Like your goal orientated thinking! Keep up the good work.

A Hand!

Poker Stars $25.00 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

CO: $10.00
Hero (BTN): $35.95
SB: $26.20
BB: $28.91
UTG: $32.86

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with 6 5
UTG raises to $0.75, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.75, SB calls $0.65, 1 fold

Flop: ($2.50) 4 3 2 (3 players)
SB bets $1.75, UTG raises to $5, Hero calls $5, SB raises to $25.45, UTG raises to $32.11, Hero calls $27.11

Turn: ($92.17) 9 (3 players)

River: ($92.17) A (3 players)

Final Pot: $92.17
Hero shows 6 5
SB shows 8 9
UTG shows 3 3
Hero wins $76.85
(Rake: $2.00)

weeeeeeeee ♠_biggrin:

Originally posted by DaPhunk
A Hand!

Poker Stars $25.00 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

CO: $10.00
Hero (BTN): $35.95
SB: $26.20
BB: $28.91
UTG: $32.86

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with 6 5
UTG raises to $0.75, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.75, SB calls $0.65, 1 fold

Flop: ($2.50) 4 3 2 (3 players)
SB bets $1.75, UTG raises to $5, Hero calls $5, SB raises to $25.45, UTG raises to $32.11, Hero calls $27.11

Turn: ($92.17) 9 (3 players)

River: ($92.17) A (3 players)

Final Pot: $92.17
Hero shows 6 5
SB shows 8 9
UTG shows 3 3
Hero wins $76.85
(Rake: $2.00)

weeeeeeeee ♠_biggrin:

That's when you say Easy game, and walk a way like a cool guy walks away from an explosion. nh

In the north of England at the moment. Been doing quite a bit of socialising recently and been failing at my volume goal, that said I've still managed to get in some studying and have met my other goals which is nice.

I believe poker has been treating me kindly although I started feeling like I stopped playing excellently at NL25 and so decided to readjust and play mainly NL10 till I feel I've got my mojo back. Feeling quite a bit farther from taking a 2BI shot at stars NL50 than I did last week but I'm sure I'll get there soon anyway.

I am actually considering moving away from stars to a fishier site, possibly micro-gaming, as so far this year my volume hasn't been high enough to really give me any incentive to grind for stars rake-back targets etc. Likely going to be far higher ev to switch sites and cash in all my FPP's.

June Goal Review, Graph and July Goals

June Review

Here is my graph in big blinds for the month of June:

The Goals I made:

1. Target: I played 6 hours minimum a day. (actually decided based on fictitious $10 hourly duly multiplied to equal the price of a plane ticket) I recorded this on my calender. - Achieved on 9/17 days despite Internet problems + Travelling
2. I studied poker for 1.5 hours each day minimum and recorded this on my calender. (80:20 play : study ratio) - Successful, not sure but I think I exceeded this quota
3. I practiced my Spanish each day and have progressed significantly on Duolingo. - I did not practice every single day but have refreshed over half the material I have been through already
4. I continued to keep my sleep schedule on track and find time for exercise. - Complete Failure! Still waking up on American time and did not do my usual amount of exercise!
5. I was able to keep myself balanced this month and had plenty of time for me. (meeting up with friends etc) - Success! I went to the pub several times, had a couple of trips to London, so pretty happy with this.

I shall post in this spoiler links to AAALlllllllLLLLL of the marked hands I didn't review yet.

July Goals

I shall make 5 goals again, I think this is a good number, and I shall try to post every week whether I've kept up or not. I play two sites and on stars I've made an average of 38.5k hands a month so it seems fair to me to set a goal of 55 to 60k for a decent increase but not just launch for 300 hours or something silly ♦

1. Play minimum 5 Hours a day and study 1.5 hours a day. (so I make the goal on more days)
2. Make 55k to 60k hands this month on stars. (14k a week or 2k a day)
3. Keep practicing Spanish every day. Do some exercises to speed up arithmetic as well.
4. Get out of bed when my alarm goes off. If tired, do some exercise and have a coffee!
5. Leave time for myself to go see friends etc but don't spend too long games and do it as a reward. Dessert comes last in the meal!

This will be pretty challenging as I have a couple of trips to go on this month, lets see how I get on! Next month, Skiing! Hopefully I'll get some impressive views while I'm at it.

And with that I'm out. Have fun at the tables everyone!

Hi guys!

So far my goals have not been going so well, I managed to get 5/5 goals on the first 4 days before I flew to Switzerland on the 6th, only goal achieved in Switzerland was spanish practice then on wednesday evening after flying back I got 2/5, thursday 1/5 and Firday 3/5.

Today is Saturday its ten to 11pm and I have only practiced spanish and not played poker or studied it in any way! Whats more I'm going away again on Tuesday to north England not sure if I'll be back on Thursday or Friday. Shouldn't stop me working but it does!

Contemplating making a progress thread where I update hands played every day and posting a graph once a week. (Will actually be more checking of results than I currently do like that)

Edit: Just looked at my HM results for the first time this month and saw I only played 5k hands. loooool Guess I didn't meet my target on those first 4 days after all.

I've been getting into poker again recently with my little NL10 challenge (Clicky!. I lost a bit of motivation while playing NL25 and NL50 so this is really helping me get my volume back. Very happy and just feeling like I'm a consistent winner/crusher here even if the actual $'s I'm making are very small.

I didn't study as much as wanted but getting back into that now as well.

I did drift off a bit on Spanish practice recently and waking up on time but planning on getting back in there now

and amaaazingly I did manage to have quite a bit of free time with all my travelling, was very nice ♠_biggrin:

Went skiing last wednesday, bit of an adventure:

Ski-Day Itinerary (time estimates)

6:30AM drove to the mountains, car windows broke on the way there, but we got them fixed. Road into the resort was heavy with snow and the little car was struggling a lot despite snow chains. Turned out slow and careful isn't the way to go because you just stall without enough pushing power. Speed is key!

Anyway, Got into the ski area at 11AM.

Cold but fun skiing, wind was quite biting but not as bad as Jackson Hole.

5:35PM Cleaned snow off the car and got ready to leave, suddenly a heavy snowstorm hit and the amount of new white stuff on the windscreen broke the wipers so we couldn't see out. Then our front-left chain broke and came off on the road down the mountain and we got assistance from a resort worker passing by.

6:25PM After getting out of the resort and on the way home, we got passed very close by a pickup and our driver steered a little away from it, hitting some snow on the edge of the road that pulled us off into a ditch. We needed more help from passers by. Got the car back on the road.

6:50PM I agreed to drive from here and now it started raining again. Its impossible to see clearly out the windscreen which means I have to go kind of snow, but don't have a choice but to go on.

7:30PM Driving through the next town pulled over by the cops doing spot-checks and asked to change drivers as I'm foreign and don't know the roads very well.

8:00PM We are lost and our friends navigating in the back with cell-phones only seem to know the direction known as "straight on"

8:45PM Finally find the motorway to go home from the city we were lost in. We stop briefly before heading on.

9:55PM Driver pulls over to the hard-shoulder saying they just realised they were too tired to drive and couldn't see the road properly so I take over again.

10:20PM Driving along in 5th at normal speeds I feel a 'CLUNK' from the car and the throttle stops doing anything. I try changing into 4th but nothing, the engine is dead so I pull over and we ring the brakedown people.

11:00PM pick-up loader thing arrives to take the car along the motorway to somewhere safe it can be left. From there we will get a lift with one of the passengers parents who will take us back.

12:15AM We Fiiinnnaallly arrive home after a quick stop-over to borrow a replacement car from a gracious girlfriends parent(s).

THE END

Good luck Will follow

Hello All. SO, My NL10 Challenge is now finished and we are in the month of September. I did not reach any of my targets for the Challenge but September is a brand new month and I have big plans! I also had an interesting experience with a kitten rescue event when our cat was chased up a tree.

NL10 Challenge Cliffnotes:

1) Target was 100k hands in 90 days. I only made 70k hands but am actually pretty happy I got the volume up to this level as at one point I was a long way under 1/2 the number of hands I needed to have played.

2) My target was 10bb/100 aliev winnings. I was shockingly shy of this target with 3.5 (without checking) only. This is due to a couple of things:

• 2 sites, a lot of tables and micro stakes = lack of focus
• Trying to defend your BB passively with a lot of hands just doesn't work if you can't handread so well OOP
• Polarising your 3bet range as a standard isn't the best at NL10 I think
• and finally, I don't know how much I lost to spews but it must have been quite a bit. Adds a lot to losses!

The thread is here and I shall update soon enough: https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=265062&threadview=0&hilight=&hilightuser=0&page=1

This coming month I shall grind NL25 hoping to move up to NL50 soon and shot NL100. In other news we had to get some 'professional help' to rescue our cat from a tree 10m high ♦

Hello! For lack of much else to do I'm posting some links to weaktight hands here in my blog. I shall endevour to put some hands I'm pleased with as well as hands I find interesting or difficult.

I post basic stats as a comment under the weaktight hand.

Hand 1: Flush vs Full-House? http://wt.ag/13u4bH2

Hand 2: Light preflop 3bet check flop get raised turn. http://wt.ag/13u49ih

Hand 3: Accidentally missed flop-bet, bet turn and face interesting river-bet. http://wt.ag/13u466b

Hand 4: Big pot versus 53/19 feesh http://wt.ag/13u40LW