My Blog: From fish to shark.

To understand how I became fascinated by poker I will share some bits of my past. I promise that my posts from here on out wont be a huge wall of text!

I was introduced to poker at the age of 17 by a mutual friend here in Norway. This mutual friend was on vacation at my friends house when I was 16. The three of us ended up hanging out alot, BBQ'ing and whatever guys at our age would do. Since he was on vacation and lives in a different country and completely different timezones, holding to the friendship we developed became rather hard.

We started out playing first person shooter games online but that wasn't what we would spend most time on in the future. He told me how he used to play poker in order to make some extra cash while studying. He also told me about his adventures to Atlantic City. It opened my eyes for a completely new world. A world of chance and guts. Something I lacked.

He lives in the US and I registered on pokerstars. We went on the playmoney-tables at first to have something to do while talking on MSN. We eventually went on to play the MTT's. 27, 45 for 10k playmoney buy-in. It was fun and I eventually accumulated about 800k worth of playmoney.

He learned me the basics. I didn't focus too much on my game back then, just playing with him was fun.

The playmoney adventures was fun at first. One day I was playing at a playmoney table on my own. I ended up speaking with another person. Up till then I didn't know about the freerolls where you could earn an entrance to real money tournaments.

I joined Hubbles once.. I joined it again, and again, and again... The competition was ALOT harder from the playmoney tables. As I became better on the freeroll tournaments, my playmoney strategies got worse and I eventually lost the 800k I had little by little.
This was probably the first time I started to focus on strategies and the difference between playmoney and real money. I wanted to learn it the hard way first and thus neglecting to make a deposit or read anything. I had a theory in my mind; In order to understand the basics you need to fail at them first.

A few of my friends knew I was playing on pokerstars and the interest in poker grew even more. We was a group of 5-6 friends that played a little bit using the software.
One night we met up, got a hold of Cuban Cigars, the Godfather movies and other mafia flicks to really set the atmosphere to make our first night of poker perfect. It was fun. 17 years of age with booze and cigars. We didn't have real chips to use. We only had a deck of cards so the chips we used ended up being pieces of paper with value on them and a bottle cap as the button.

I lost at second place that night but that didn't matter. It was fun and a something I'll never forget. My most important lesson in poker got to me the second time played. I was chip leader by ALOT. It was me versus another friend. I was new at poker and he had literally given up. I went all-in with rags the first hand to end it, hit the flop but lost at the river. He went all-in again, I had AK, he won again. Eventually we was even in chips again and I was on tilt and eventually lost.
I learned that no matter how far behind or how much chips you have, the outcome is solely dependant on you and how you play. Because of this I never give up even if I only got 180 chips left in a tournament where the Big Blind is up to 200/400, a chip and a chair is all I need and I've managed to get back up from that several times.

The interest of poker in our group withered while my interest stayed. Another friend of mine was never introduced to these guys but he still had a interest in poker. We ended up playing the Hubbles freerolls on pokerstars alot. He eventually made it. I was destined to make it as well and three weeks later I did. Even though he didn't make it to the money in the 2000$ freeroll, I did. I made about 34 cents and I was really happy about it.

I grinded my way up to about 9$ that I eventually lost again. I didn't know what bankroll management was and literally played on tables higher than my bankroll allowed me to. I was frustrated and left poker by itself for about a year.

I take notice of the pokerstars commercials and downloaded the season for WSOP 2010 Main Event. Instead of jumping onto the pokerstars client I decided to check out strategies instead. I read a few tips here and there and went into the pokerstars client. Since it was only playmoney I ended up talking with another person about the differences in real money poker and playmoney. He told me to check out pokerstrategies.com and I did.

Since I was already a member of pokerstars I joined Betfair and got my 50$ there. I played a little bit on the real money tables and SnG's. The variance was huge but at least my bankroll management was alot better. The poor thing about Betfair is that there aint alot of players to choose from and the gaming in general became bland to me. I didn't really enjoy the software and I actually feel ALOT of remorse by the fact that I've been given money for free by pokerstrategy.com and the site didn't really do it for me.

Either way, I continued to read strategies and learned alot. I'm constantly looking at ways to improve my game. With the knowledge I got from pokerstrategy and Betfair I decided to make a deposit on pokerstars about two weeks ago and see how it goes, if it goes bad I'll get back to Betfair and try again.
In order to stay with the same strategies and learn the important aspects about bankroll management. So far the variance is still huge but at least I don't lose as much as I used to.

I've been up to 58$ but I'm down to 45$. I've yet to go below my starting capital though. I'm currently reading strategies on pokerstrategy.com and checking out hints and tips on youtube. Most of them have improved my game.

At the moment I go for 9 man SnG 1.50$ as there isn't anything lower. There are 0.25$ 45 MTT's and 1$ 90 man SnG's but I can't seem to do well in those. What I've made most money on is the 9 man 1.50$ knockout tournaments. I understand the psychology aspects and often make it seem like I'm willing to risks to get the reward for knocking them out while I'm already having the nuts.

I try to focus on a loose-agressive playstyle dependant on who I'm playing against. I will use this thread to vent, post hands and update how my playing goes. I don't use any huds or programs because I want to learn to play poker without help and rather based it on my instincts/skill-level.

Any hints and tips is appreciated.

- Signed, Metamorphis.

12th May, 2012. 05:43AM.

I've been on a pretty bad run lately. I was down to about 25$ when I started the day.

(Note: I know my bankroll management isn't exactly great at the moment, it's actually pretty bad. But I still got some kind of control over it even though the variance is huge at the moment. 1.50$ 9 man s&g's is those I usually manage to get in the prizepool of (about 6-7/10) so I go for it.)

Since Pokerstars don't allow Sit&Go's 9 man tables for less than 1.50$ wich is what I've been playing today. I have also tried to Zoom, but it doesn't really do it for me and I end up losing in the long run. My main focus has always been tournaments/s&g's and cash tables is a completely different style of play. Because of this I choose to stay to what I know unless I got $'s I can afford to lose in order to learn cash table play as well.

Anyways, I started the day with 25$ and got myself back up to 33$. I played one 0,55$ 3k guaranteed and one 1.10$ but got sucked out pretty early. I also played a few 0,10c 360 Turbo as well that didn't exactly go my way. Went for the depositor freeroll and managed to get 1.34$ (or something along those lines) from that. I lost at 213th place of 12xxx players. I went all-in at a bad spot, went over the hand a few times before I left and learned a few things about why I lost wich was a valuable lesson I wouldn't have got if I had won it. I also managed to champ two 9 man 1,50$ s&g's.

The reason I wanted to blog about my day in the field is because I'm actually feeling pretty good about my last game and the fact that I learned a few valuable things in the tournaments I lost. In my last s&g I was down to 8BB's. 4 people left in total and only the top 3 get to the prize-pool. Instead of going all-in in with mediocre hands I decided to stay patient instead. When I was down to 2BB's (Blinds: 100/200) I went all-in and won the hand. A couple of hands later I managed to double up again and I was back in with the starting chipstack.
In order to not fall down again I made sure to blindsteal a few times and bluff in position as the table respected me. The important turn in this s&g was when I was on the button and someone called my min-raise.
The difference this time was that I actually had a hand. The flop was pretty good as well wich I didn't complain about. I chose to slowplay the hand and checked the flop, so did my opponent. On the turn a dead card came up. I chose to disguise my hand as a bluff by raising and was hoping he had a draw or somewhere along the lines of one pair. He called and my read on him had been pretty much accurate most of the game so I knew I had him on the flop when he just called.
The river was another dead card to the board wich was exactly what I was hoping for. I chose to check the river and he raised me all-in as a result to him thinking I was bluffing or was on a draw and that his one pair was good. I called his raise and officially became the chip leader of the table.

Since I prefer the 9 1.50$ Knockout gameplay I managed to get a few bounties as well on my way to the win. Allthough I am still down by 9$ (based on my first deposit of 42$) I still got a good feeling inside of me after todays effort and will constantly look on more ways to improve my game. Even though I lost in the early stages of the important tournaments I still think I did a solid job in the s&g's.

- Metamorphis.