New year, New Blog, a prop bet and some 80s ballads! (6m turbo sng)

Will folow...
I also play 6 max turbo and i am on 3.5$ still,but be aware i am coming to 7s soon

cheers man, hopefully i won't be in the $7s anymore tbh, i was playing 15s before but had to withdraw most of my roll last September and start over from $300, now back to where I can play $15s comfortably
maybe see you at the tables

welcome to our blogs section bristolboy draw a smile on my face while reading through your first post! well done!

thanks, glad you enjoyed it
I did actually start a blog last year, but go slack on updating it, would you be able to delete my original one please?

Subscribed

BTW are you in Bristol, UK?

if you are we need to get in touch because so am I

is this a level thazar?! lol we already know each other I talk to you on skype...

Originally posted by bristolboy
is this a level thazar?! lol we already know each other I talk to you on skype...

skype me then ♦

hey m8,i am curious,have you ever won any prize from SNG leader board

... nvm ♦

hey m8,i am curious,have you ever won any prize from SNG leader board

yea I have placed a few times on Battle of Planets, had 1 or 2 top 10 finishes and a few other 20th-30th kinda ones.
I really dont pay attention to the leader boards tbh, if i hit a hot streak and win some $ then fair enuf, but I don't actively track my points and try to place on it.

BoP is so dependent on variance/hitting a massive heater, it really doesn't have much to do with skill level, otherwise the same people would win every week

only things I worry about during the week is volume and VPPs, check results once a week if im +$ happy days if im -$ then who cares aslong as i played well and got my volume in

How s your game going on m8?

slow week this week, been a bit busy with some other life stuff. Hopefully gonna get a good few days in then I'm away from Friday for the weekend for a mates stag do so I need to fit in some grinding before then!

Hey everyone, it's me again! Time for a new instalment of bloggy goodness. well….maybe

Since completing the prop bet weeks ago now, I have really struggled to get back to the tables, I have been away a lot and other than that I have been not feeling great mentally.

Those of you that are regulars to my blog on wordpress or the older version on pokerstrategy.com (search my username for link to old blog) will know I have a rather torrid relationship with alcohol and partying in general. I wrote a post last year called "slippery slopes" which talked about this, and how easily I can go from feeling great and motivated and focused about life, having a bit of a heavy weekend then slipping back into bad old habits.

This month has been less of a slippery slope and more of a terminal velocity freefall with no parachute. It all started innocently enough to be honest, after I finished the prop bet I shot off for 8 days for a job. After this I thought "Hey I've been working really hard these last few weeks and not going out much, I think i deserve a couple of nights out" Which is fair enough, unfortunately it just spiralled downwards, a few nights out, ruined 1 week, then I was away for weekend with some mates, ruined another week, too many beers at a home game, another day or so gone, popping out for "a couple of pints" ends up with me still drinking on my own at 2am at home, more days gone, I'm sure you get the picture. Even nights where I would go out and not get properly drunk and just have a couple of beers, left me feeling like rubbish the next day and not wanting to play and just avoid life and other responsibilities.

When I did get around to playing, it was awful, playing some of the worst poker combined with moving up stakes to the $15s has been really painful. I'm not gonna bore everyone with tales of variance and run bad or whatever. It's just been lol bad, and it's mainly my fault.

I have decided, as I did a few months back, to get back on the wagon with the drink, as I cannot and do not want to keep this cycle going, and when looking at things objectively, alcohol is probably the single largest thing stopping me from achieving all the goals I have set for this year. This isn't just poker either, I have missed shifts at work, missed meetings and let people down. I have always said everything (within reason) is fine in moderation, but when stuff starts having adverse effects on your day to day life, it's time to make some changes.

It hasn't been all doom and gloom though, I have kindly been offered a stake for the ISPT event which is a 300E buyin, starting online for Day 1, then Day 2 onwards being played live at Wembley Stadium, so that's quite cool! I have also been getting back into playing chess with some friends, watching tutorial vids on youtube and even bought a couple of chess books. I still suck really bad, but it's good for the old grey matter. Anyone that plays on chess.com feel free to add me and have a game sometime, I'm good for getting your ranking up with an easy win (nick: bristolbasher)

Down to the nitty gritty facts and figures from the month so far though, as I'm sure that's all a lot of you care about.

Games played: 588

Profit/Loss: -$735.63

I did cash in $250 worth of bonuses and make a small withdrawal, so I guess it's not uber bad financially. But as I always say it's not about the $ in the short term, my volume of games and motivation and mental state are what really gets me down. Which is part of the larger problem I guess, the less I do, the more I beat myself up and the less I want to do, and round and round it goes!

So it now seems that I have ended up in a similar spot to last month with regards to VPPs and volume…. this should have never happened playing the $15s as I need 50% less volume to achieve the same amount of VPPs, but with my low volume and awful results, I am now forced to move back to playing mostly $7s again and need to clear 4,376 VPPs in the next 7 days (by the 31st) which works out to about 218 $7sngs/day. So here we go again, hopefully I can get my arse in gear and keep my head clear and get down to business.

Thanks for stopping by guys, hopefully this hasn't been too depressing a read for you all! I will come out the other side bigger better and stronger, and hopefully manage to stop repeating this cycle every few months!

p.s. If anyone sees me drunk you have my permission to come bitch slap me

Hey man,glad you re back...I guess that we have similar problem.But i think that mine is even bigger.I assume that you don t play when drunk,but i love that a lot.I incredibly enjoy when i sit in front of my comp take a beer and play...We should do something about this....

Sad to see this downswing on your graph,did not expected that from you.I think you should just discipline yourself a little bit,and everything will be good...
Gl at the tables

lol no of course I don't drink when I grind, that would be ridiculous!
it's just the hangovers and stuff that really affect me and make me miss days, and feel like shit when I do play. and makes me less mentally strong and able to deal with the stress and swings properly, so i just stop playing, or cut sessions short

also you should "expect" swings from everyone, they are an unavoidable part of the game. especially in 6m turbo format. the difference is being able to be honest and able to admit what is actually your fault and avoidable, and what is actual run bad/variance

a lot of this has been my fault from playing badly, and not being focused

update?

Good afternoon all, I hope you have all had a good week and are enjoying your Easter sunday, for those of you that are that way inclined.

Last week I set some pretty lofty goals to maintain my Platinum VIP level, which alas did not happen. So after midnight tonight I will drop back down to Gold. Sad times! The original plan for this year was to be hitting Supernova by August/September time, unfortunately with my slack ness and other issues this is starting to look slightly unrealistic.

After a lot of thought on the matter and how I want to proceed this year I have decided to stick at the $7 level for a little while longer regardless of my current bankroll. I plan to keep adding tables though to hopefully offset the fact I won't be playing higher buy-in games quite as soon as I potentially could. I am quite keen to see how many games I can play at once and I have been watching videos and reading blogs by some of the top SnG multitbaling beasts such as Boku87 and Phase89. For those that might not know anything about these guys, spend a few minutes doing a google search and you will see what I'm talking about.

There are a couple of reasons for this decision, one being the challenge of playing as many tables as possible, and getting insane volume in as I think it's something I can do and would enjoy. The other and more practical reason comes down to $ and not wanting to have to endure swings at higher levels currently. I feel that I can stay at the $7 level and be able to consistently withdraw $, more so than I feel I can moving up to reg infested games. Given my current financial situation this is the best decision for me and will hopefully enable me to have a bit more financial freedom and also start paying off some debts. So I intend to keep my BR at a certain amount and withdraw anything over that amount every week.

This is not to say I am totally abandoning the Supernova goal this year, rather that it is now taking a back seat in favour of just making some actual cash money slightly faster. Where the plan with SN was to play as much as possible and not worry about the results, as in the long run the bonuses and VIP rewards associated with SN more than make up for running at a loss or breaking even for a few months.

My other goals last week were focused around alcohol and food intake, I set a goal of not drinking at all, which I failed at, I had a few pints a couple of nights, once while at the casino with friends and the other being Friday night. I did however refrain from getting drunk and waking up feeling like garbage, so not a total fail on that one. This also lead to smoking ciggies as well. boooooooo

I seem to have also consumed a vast amount of fried foods and other crap, so not so great there either!

I do overall feel a lot better than I have for the last month though, so that's gotta be a good thing and hopefully this trend will continue into April.

My game volume was down again this week, this was down to me really not feeling great mentally still, Thursday was a god awful day for my brain, I don't know what happened but I was all over the place. Thankfully one of my best mates decided to come for an impromptu visit, which helped immensely. I'm not sure whether it was coincidence or some kind of best mate telepathic link, but whatever it was, I'm bloody glad it happened.

Last week I mentioned I was getting a stake for the ISPT 300e buy in MTT, after chatting with my backer we decided that I could use this stake to play the cash games at my local casino. I had my first session there on Thursday, I only played for a few hours after being knocked out of the nightly tournament, but did quite well. I was pleased to see all the same awful players that used to play the .50p/.50p games sat in the £1/£1 games. My mate went on a sick heater and turned £80 into £590 in 3 hours! While my results were good, they weren't that good!

Overall a decent week, and I feel a lot better in myself and, I just need to keep my head clear and crack on with next month now.

Here's the results for the week:

Games: 375

Review/Coaching: 3/1

Profit/Loss: +$238.40

That's it for this week, enjoy the rest of your weekends, and GL at the tables. See you next Sunday

Hi bristolboy, on how many tables do you normally play at once? Cheers