Berzerger's battle: resurgence

Hey!

First of all, this is a great blog. After I read the last few posts I just had to read the whole blog and I did. As for the punishment you seek, how about running naked around the streets (at daytime), in rain/snow and having someone film you? It would surely be a good punishment + you'd probably have fun watching the video ;).

Alright, I know you probably don't care what I'll say or stop reading in the middle, but please do someday read what I'll write to you. About a year to half year ago I was pretty much the same as you. First of all, I've had similar poker BRM habits, which I somehow cured afterwards though. I too was a lay bastard, especially at school. I too wanted to become a pro poker player, I told my parents about it and they didn't understand it either. Well they told me I should move out if I want to do that or pay a 200€ monthly rent to stay at home. What I did was be my stubborn self, failed the last grade of secondary school and even looked at rooms that I could move out to. What happened then was a neverending downswing (there still are some pretty sick graphs somewhere on this forum) in both tourneys (400$ down I think) and FL, nothing went right. My roll went from over 1k to 300$, then I got some money back but made a withdrawal to cover some of the bills. Over summer I did a lot of thinking and before the school year started, parents gave me a choice: work or school. Well in the end I chose school because I was pretty much broke, had no money to play poker with and was too lazy to work. Then I hit an upswing. In real life. In merely 4 months, I've put my life back together. My grades are pretty damn good (we have a ranking system of 1-5, 5 being best and my average is like 4.2), I'm not even doing that much school work, I'm just not skipping school and I'm actually listening in school. I try to have as much fun as possible in school as well, playing cards or something during breaks, and I dance most of the afternoons (I love breaking). I also have a group of very good friends with whom I party most of the weekends and even though I go to school, my life is fun. Moreover, I've improved the relationship with my parents a lot. In school, I even have a chance to win a scholarship back. And because of the good grades, I am planning on moving to UK to study at one of the good universities there (i hope I'll get accepted, we'll see). And my parents will even pay me a part of the 3.5k€ tuition fee for the first year (and perhaps some for the next years if I don't manage to get enough money) and they will also give me 1k€ a month so I can live in UK normally without having to work until I finish uni. Why am I doing all this? Well here's the thing about poker and real life. First of all, in real life there are no downswings. At least in a job, the payment is steady. You don't have to worry if you can pay the bills in the end of the month or not. So unless you have a 10k$ or higher starting roll, things can get very ugly. Another thing is that I don't see studying at uni and then working 8 hours a day boring. I'm going to study computer science in which I'm interested and I will be happy to work with computers. Student life in UK is also way more amusing than here, in Slovenia student life pretty much sucks to be honest. And I play a bit of poker again, even though at micro stakes, it's fun. Did you ever think you could get bored of poker? And what will you do if you go broke? How will you pay the rent? With agressive BRM that you're using your roll could disappear within a few days. Where will you go? I really do advise you to get the diploma, you seem like a capable person that's just too lazy like I used to be. But with the diploma, you'll be able to get a job if you happen to go broke with poker and you won't have to live on the street. And it will be a better job than one without a diploma (at least in our country you can only get really crappy boring jobs without a diploma). So please think about this if something goes wrong, you can always apologise to parents and make up with them, finish the university and start fresh again, everything is possible! Trust me, your mother can't and won't leave you homeless if you show her that you've changed. Not that I wish you to go broke or anything, please just consider this as helpful advice. I wish you luck with poker and lots of upswings, will be reading your blog frequenzly :).

p.s. readers probably would really enjoy more frequent updates of such a great blog

Primzi

Sunday, April 4

Originally posted by Primzi
p.s. readers probably would really enjoy more frequent updates of such a great blog

*facepalm* if only I remembered it myself...

So, after a break of three months I stroll right back in here for another blog entry. Why only three months later? Where the hell have I been and what happened to my bankroll in the meantime? Well I'd be a moral sadist if I didn't explain. I didn't unintentionally forget about my own blog as I semi-seriously suggested above. The real reason is: I didn't want to lie about my game, but I'm not proud of it either.

Withdrew about 1,500 euro for RL expenses, and now I have 1,100 in my account. Which means I dropped to NL50 for the time being. My goal right now is to earn enough money to get back to NL100, and I'm planning on an aggressive BRM of 15BI. I'll move back down after losing 2BI, but I'm not moving up to NL200 even if I hit a 20BI heater. The idea is to move up to a limit I'm still comfortable playing (NL100) in order to double my winrate and increase my bankroll faster, but not to chase limits for the sake of quick cash. Since I withdraw 600 euro every month, it'll be a lot easier to manage playing NL100 than NL50 as I'll need to win only 6BI a month instead of 12, and all the extra profit will help me one day move up to NL200, for which I'll need at least 50BI.

Also, if I know myself I'm getting lazier by the day. Something I'm not particularly proud of either. In the past months there were weeks where I didn't play a single hand, or sometimes I only played one or two days a week. Lack of volume also made me drop from platinum Betfred VIP status to silver. I tried playing x hands a day in the past, but that didn't work out well. If I don't feel like playing, I don't play, and if I force myself to play I'll only end up losing. But I do need money, and it won't win itself, so certain minimum volume standards need to be implemented sooner or later.

Usually whenever I change poker rooms I announce it here. Can't say I'm disappointed in Betfred, but it's time to let it go. The volume I put in the game varies so greatly over time that it's hard to say whether it's best to pick one site with a promising loyalty program or another with direct rakeback. The poker rooms themselves don't make it easy on me either, I still don't understand exactly how much monthly loyalty bonus I get for x rake paid for different VIP statuses. But so far I only got $70 clearable (this is not a real word btw, I looked it up later) bonus for four months of play, excluding the FDB, but it's noticeably less than 33% rakeback I received on other sites. Maybe if I actually bothered to grind as much as I aspired to, I'd reap more rewards.

But for now I'll just make the best out of the situation, clear my last $14 bonus on Betfred and move to Bet365 until I clear the FDB. Luckily their VIP system is extremely simple, so after that I'll just exchange the points I made for cold hard cash and move on. Along with their promotions (rake free week/fridays) I think I can get a decent amount of RB without binding myself to the room. Plus I already have plenty of hand history on NL50/NL100, and a new screen name will eliminate any stats other people might have on me. The next room in line is PokerHeaven for a month of 43% RB. Then I'm off to FT probably.

A bitter slice of RL. I'm still living at home after all. Well, half and half actually. I spend 1/3 to 1/2 of my time in Antwerp, high as a kite. When home, I watch movies, play some online chess to start my day with a winning streak, catch a few episodes of some series, dish out a few headshots playing Modern Warfare 2, and maybe play poker for an hour or so if I feel like it. Usually I don't, though, which is why I need to motivate myself and grind like I did throughout the last week of 2009. Sad thoughts. Oh, and the girl I met, well... it didn't work out, unfortunately.

One of my best friends moved to Italy for a while, so it gets pretty boring around here. I don't go out as much as I used to. This is a good thing for my bankroll, less money spent on alcohol. But not a good thing for my social life. I'll take that blow for the time being, if I want to make a living playing poker I need to put it on high priority. Make 600 euro every month, survive. All else is secondary. But some secondary things can make your day, as they certainly keep making mine. I'm talking about shrooms, ladies and gents. I've never really "seen" music before, it was like the whole room was dancing to a magical imaginary song for my entertainment. Best experience of my life! Word of caution though, don't play poker on shrooms. Ever.

Disclaimer: Berzerger does not promote or encourage the use of psychoactive drugs, but there's nothing wrong with tripping balls.

iPoker is great for moving up in stakes quickly without having to be too aggressive with your BR and risk having to move down lots of times.

Before new year i had to withdraw almost all my roll and left myself 1k to build it up, after half month i was properly rolled for $100nl. Just play $ tables until you reach like 1,5k then euro tables, then pound tables, and finally switch to $100nl imo.

Monday, April 5

If I didn't periodically get bored out of my skull I'd probably never have started a blog to begin with. I literally wasted the past day (night actually) doing nothing. Just checking my Neteller account once every 20 minutes, trolling Facebook, compulsively clicking "new posts" and having regular lapses of concentration. All in the process of waiting for my money to arrive. Don't know what I was thinking when I expected to see my Neteller balance replenished on a Sunday. Why do money transfers always take so long anyway? It takes a split of a second to deposit, but try to withdraw and all of a sudden you're sailing against the wind.

So what does a poker addict do in the middle of the night when all normal people already went to bed, the forums are empty and there's no cash to play poker with? My activity of choice was comparing poker room VIP programs and bonuses. In the process I stumbled upon an old Absolute Poker account of mine where they gave me $5 for free as I haven't played there for a while since I withdrew whatever money I made there. Not a lot of money, but when a man's broke he'll take whatever's up for grabs. And since my effective balance is 0 until my money mysteriously appears from somewhere in the digital world, I can consider myself broke.

For a broke person I blew my last money away pretty quickly. After an unsuccessful $2.40 9man SnG I played another one, where I managed to come in third. The time it took to finish those two made me think I'd rather be playing cash games. Playing microstakes is a strange experience. Coming from NL100/NL50, I fell into the trap of deeming myself superior to all other opponents and therefore had difficulty taking the game seriously. I played spewy for 3-4 orbits, but after I noticed there's basically 0% fold equity on this limit, and that I was wasting the last few dollars I had left, it was time to apply professional attitude even though the stakes were so ridiculously low. Nevertheless I lost to some station who sucked out on my AT TPTK by making a straight. In the past I'd have said "easy come easy go", but that's exactly the kind of mentality new players waste their starting capital with.

So to hell with AP and to a milder place with Betfred, I'm moving my rollz. Not to Bet365 however. A few hours of research and porn led me to a conclusion that I want to move to EuroPoker instead. I already have tracked accounts on Everest and Pacific, so that's two $20k freerolls I can participate in. Bet365 doesn't require a deposit to participate in the freeroll, so now there's two left. Party and Euro. To be honest I always wanted to try Ongame, but I didn't like the Bwin software back then. I don't really want to deposit into my Party account: if I deposit the minimum just for the freeroll, I'll lose my FDB forever, and if I deposit a substantial sum I'd be playing in two rooms, which is obviously less favorable than paying all your rake to one room. Although I can also just mindep, play the freeroll, withdraw my money and skip Party when picking a new room for bonus whoring.

In any case EuroPoker is currently my #1 platform of choice at the moment, and I plan on jamming right in and playing NL100. To my knowledge there aren't any euro tables, only $, so the difference won't be that dramatic. Plus, I'll have $1,500 to begin with, if I drop 2BI I'll move back to NL50, I'm pretty strict about that. If everything goes well, I'll have another month like March:

Once again, HEM displays the values in $, but they should be in euro.

A slice of real life. I'll always be announcing that at the beginning of the paragraph so you'll know when to stop reading. I've updated my signature again. Every now and then I like to update it with an excerpt from Gambler's Fallacy, makes me feel like a poet

Sunday, April 18

Who's the self-proclaimed king of procrastination? Yes I am. Since my last post I've played only four sessions. Yes, four. That didn't prevent me from cashing out and still ending up on the winning side. So here's how Ongame welcomed me for the first 1k4 hands:

<-- this is a thumbnail, because the original image was stretching out the page. Just click it. It's not goatse or anything.

This time HEM displays the currency properly, and I'm playing in $ now anyway, so there will finally be no more conversion problems... Did I say no more conversion problems? Because I lied. Just recently I found out that all transactions involving a currency exchange are subject to a currency exchange markup-an average daily interbank market rate published by a third party foreign currency data provider plus 2.5%. Neteller retains this amount as a foreign exchange processing fee to protect against exchange rate fluctuations. Okay, all fun and games until I issue a withdrawal of $525.00 and receive €374.22 which, according to that day's rates, equals $506.55. Almost $20 for a transaction? So I paid like €14 just for withdrawing money? What the hell? Why was I not aware of this?

Rant mode continues as I present my biggest complaints about the EuroPoker software. First and foremost, why in the name of science are there no waiting lists? Every room has waiting lists, even brick and mortar casinos have waiting lists. Why not Ongame? And filters, boy did they screw up the filters. The only way you can make sure you're on a table of your preferred limit, size and stakes is if you pick it via quickseat option. Standard table selection sucks, and not just because there's no waiting list. They have 3max and 5max both marked as "short handed", so there's no way to get rid of the 3max tables if you don't want to play them. Stakes are grouped by category, so you'll never just get NL100, you get midstakes, which means NL100, NL200 and NL400. Both 5max and 3max. Easy as it gets. Oh, and the seating method deserves a thread on its own. You pick your spots on a FR table and sit down at any available seat. No set spots. This means that the HUD will always be misplaced at any new table. Damn.

I played in two $20k freerolls so far, busted out of both. Now, yesterday I was going to play the one on Everest, but after I came back from helping my mother with the gardening outside, I realized I've been eliminated for being afk over five minutes. What? $20k prize pool, I registered several hours before the start, and now my chances of winning anything have suddenly been taken away? Nice policy, yet one more reason not to return to Everest.

Sigh, enough ranting. It's time to get positive! Even though the sample size is insignificant, it feels pretty good to run at 57bb/100. I'm planning on implementing some kind of schedule for myself starting tomorrow. I know I'm too much of a free spirit to adhere to some time table, but I really have to give my imaginary crown away and end the reign of procrastination. Either that or I'll still have the same amount of money in my account after two more years. I want to reach NL200, but I also want to improve my game. More importantly though I want to earn a lot of money (yeah, yeah, pelt away if you brought rotten vegetables).

In any case, I'm glad I moved. Clearing the bonus will be hell without regular grinding sessions, but it is just what it is: a bonus. Something extra on top of your winnings. The only thing that identifies you as a good player is your winrate, so that's what I'll focus on. Especially in a room as fishy as EuroPoker. Happy for now, will post more later.

EDIT: accidental double post

Friday, May 21

It is no secret by now that this blog is constantly on the verge of negligence on my part. Perhaps weird from the reader's aspect, but for me it's as normal as smoking. Can't believe I actually said that. In any case, you know you've become lazy beyond measurement when typing a blog entry is too much of an effort to make. Which is a stage I've been lingering in for the past several weeks. I tried making a post earlier, but my connection didn't allow me to upload images, so I decided to wait. And look where that decision got me, I'm in a stage where I'm too lazy to upload pictures. Well, it's not that bad really, I just don't feel like showing off my bad play. After all said and done, I'm left with little over $700 in my account. Yes, life is expensive, and you guessed it, I lost some as well.

Slice of real life. I start with this one because I can't stand talking about poker right now, need to get away. So the most important and noticeable thing that changed in my life at this point is... something I created (or rather destroyed) myself. My desk has a wooden barrier of sorts under it that prevents me from stretching out my legs. After years of mild discomfort I finally sawed a hole to put my legs through, so now my feet are placed on a comfy little footstool. No real changes in the situation with parents. I do feel the need to mention that I turn out to be a pretty good tripsitter. To those of you scratching the back of your head, a tripsitter is a sober person who accompanies someone who's tripping balls to make sure there are no accidents.

Ah, that felt good. Now, on to poker. I was forced down to NL50 by bankroll management rules. What sucks even more is that I'm having a deja vu from the old days when I inexplicably used to start every session with a loss. Like for instance my last session. I started out playing, and in the first 15 minutes I was down 3BI. Some unbelievable fish sucked out on me with I don't even remember what, kings lost to aces, and finally I bluffed away an amount that should equal an entire BI in spots where even at the time I knew I shouldn't bet. Which makes me an idiot and I deserve to be bashed for it. Finally after half an hour of feint attempts to compensate for my losses, this hand happens. In retrospective I should probably have folded at some point, but my history with this guy and the fact that I was losing ticked me off.

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($58)
BB ($51.59)
UTG ($56.69)
Hero ($51.75)
BTN ($58.89)

Dealt to Hero A♣ Q♦

fold, Hero raises to $1.75, fold, SB raises to $4.50, fold, Hero calls $2.75

FLOP ($9.50) 9♠ A♥ 2♥

SB bets $6, Hero calls $6

TURN ($21.50) 9♠ A♥ 2♥ 8♠

SB bets $15, Hero calls $15

RIVER ($51.50) 9♠ A♥ 2♥ 8♠ 6♦

SB bets $32.50 (AI), Hero calls $26.25 (AI)

Hero shows A♣ Q♦
(Pre 58%, Flop 77.9%, Turn 72.7%)

SB shows 4♠ 5♠
(Pre 42%, Flop 22.1%, Turn 27.3%)

Hero wins $102

The guy was a borderline case between LAG and maniac, I couldn't quite make up my mind which one. In any case he left after that hand. After that I tilted some guy after I hit a set against his queens in a 3bet pot. Stacked him, so a few hands after he stacks off against my jacks (again jacks!) with 55. That alone broke me even, and fifteen minutes later I ended up a stack. I swear, I probably would have been another stack richer if it weren't for the retarded timeout system. A few times I could have sworn my hand was folded when the timer was literally only at 1/3, so I should have a few more seconds left, but all of a sudden... BAM! Into the muck is where my hand goes! Plus I time out and have to manually hit the "I'm back" button on time or I won't even be dealt in the next hand. Come on, what is this nonsense? And of course I have to either wait for the blinds or post out of turn because I didn't have enough time to react. I mean, is every single table turbo without notice, what the hell? Also, there's an option to rotate seats so that you get your preferred position, but HEM stats don't switch along. So if you afterwards don't like the seat you picked the first time, well, tough break.

I've been recording a couple of sessions for ge5sterne, but one has overlapping tables and I somehow managed to mess up the other even though the first one was recorded perfectly fine. I'm making another recording later on today, this time a proper one, no bad quality, no overlapping, no porn in the background. And if this video is going to be presented to the community, I don't want to make a fish out of myself in front of everyone, so I'll play extra attentively.

Now something a bit different, it's not poker related but it's not RL either. I really got into MW2 lately, playing it even more than I did back when I first bought it. To those who never played it, give it a try, even if you're not a fan of the series. The game is very noob-friendly, so even a complete beginner will have a wide arsenal of weapons to defend himself. This pisses off a lot of experienced players, but the game is pretty difficult to be good at whether you're facing noobs or pros, and good players don't need to complain, they just top the scoreboard and say "gg". Personally I believe the next CoD should have less of those features many label as "zero skill", but there are just so many interesting and captivating parts of the game that I'm willing to look away from the features I dislike.

Right now I'm trying to have a kill/death ratio of at least 2:1 in every match. Doesn't always work out (often I just suck), but it does so more often than when I first bought the game. It's extremely easy to die, so doing well implies not dying for a long period of time while at the same time getting kills. Not an easy thing to do, especially if your teammates are suicidal and keep feeding easy kills to the other team. This is where experience kicks in. And there's nothing more satisfying than going on a 15 kill rampage while surrounded by enemies. This game makes my heart start going even more than poker. It would be loads of fun to find a party to play with, but not many play Modern Warfare 2 on pc compared to consoles, and I can hardly catch any of my RL friends online these days. Nevertheless, I enjoy the game very much and I'll keep playing it until an even better game comes out to fully consume my time on the internet. Like CoD Black Ops, Diablo III or the long awaited StarCraft II.

Saturday, July 3

Hello there mr. bankroll. How are you today? I'm here to take care of you, don't worry, I won't let anything bad happen to you. I'll replenish you and let you grow bigger day by day. You're so precious!

Yes, I am creepy. Nevertheless, this is what I've been keeping myself occupied with for the past three days. Increasing my bankroll I mean, not being creepy. I've had regular sessions of little over an hour for the past few days, during peak hours to ensure I have the biggest amount of fish to play against. When there are few players online, most of them are usually regs. Not sure why as most tables I see then are just regs playing against other regs, I guess they just open up their usual amount of tables and don't care much for who sits down next to them. Oh well, their decision. By the way, stacked a reg today for 270bb, but more on that later.

First I need to clarify that I moved to Paddy Power Poker. I moved down to NL20, but at least I'm playing in euro again. And although my account is constantly displayed in dollars wherever I look, internally it's processed in euro so I don't have to pay a conversion fee when withdrawing to Neteller. No direct complaints about the software, only a tad too many turbo tables in the lobby. Sometimes I time out, but at least I can time out without sitting out thanks to a lovely software feature. It does require deliberately timing out on every table separately first chance I get, checking the "don't ask again" box on the pop-up and clicking "deal me in". Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I now make decisions on bigger or more important hands first, even if it means timing out on a table or two. Not calling 55 for set value is better than folding aces in a 3bet pot due to time-out, so I have to have priorities. Come to think of it, I talked a lot about time-outs, but they don't really happen often enough to cost me money.

Now, I've had quite a few debts in real life, so I had to withdraw the bigger part of my bankroll. At EuroPoker, I used to play 6 tables, now I play 8 because they're 6max, not 5max, so I have a little more time to make decisions. I'm grinding NL20 in hope of earning enough to move up to NL50 before I have to withdraw again. NL20 is pretty easy for a player coming down from NL100/NL50, and compared to the last time I played that limit I can say that higher limits really gave me a lot of experience, especially in hand reading. Often I call players down for stacks with just TPTK when I feel they're just trying to push me out of the pot, and very often my read is correct. Squeezing and 3betting works out well very often, and I'm way better at using stats and taking notes.

This one just played itself, but that's half of today's winnings in just one hand!

NL Holdem $0.20(BB)
SB ($97.22) 18/14/2.3/28/50 (VPiP/PFR/AF/WTS/W$S)
BB ($20.71)
Hero ($56.52)
UTG+1 ($8.51)
CO ($20)
BTN ($12.92)

Dealt to Hero 7♥ 7♣

Hero raises to $0.80, fold, fold, fold, SB calls $0.70, fold

FLOP ($1.80) 7♠ K♣ 5♠

SB checks, Hero bets $1.20, SB raises to $3.20, Hero raises to $9.60, SB raises to $22.95, Hero raises to $55.72 (AI), SB calls $32.77

TURN ($113) 7♠ K♣ 5♠ 6♣

RIVER ($113) 7♠ K♣ 5♠ 6♣ 9♣

Hero shows 7♥ 7♣
(Pre 81%, Flop 95.7%, Turn 97.7%)

SB shows 5♣ 5♦
(Pre 19%, Flop 4.3%, Turn 2.3%)

Hero wins $110

Slice of real life. I lost my Neteller credit card 3-4 days ago. I was kind of in a panic mode, since my withdrawal just came through, and I wanted to make a withdrawal to clear all my debts in time. Try and imagine the panic attack I had when I whipped out my wallet at the ATM and couldn't find my card. I emptied my wallet and carefully inspected the contents twice, but still no card. I went home and turned my room upside down trying to find it, no result. I never take it out of my wallet unless I want to use it, and I even tried forcefully shaking my wallet upside down to see if any of the other cards would accidentally fall out, but after a while they all fell out at once, apparently the friction held them together, so the card couldn't just accidentally have slipped out.

Really weird, I have no idea where it could possibly have disappeared and how. I spent about an hour calling everyone I'd seen in the past week to check if they've seen my card, saw me take out my wallet or anything that could point me in the right direction. Eventually I just came to terms with the situation, blocked my card, ordered a new one and withdrew my money to my bank account. Cost me 7.50 euro instead of 4.00 for standard ATM withdrawal, but I got my money in 3 days instead of waiting a week for the new card just to save 3.50 euro.

One of my best friends left to visit his girlfriend in another country, and my other best friend is soon flying abroad as well, so I'm looking forward to a hot and lonely summer. Maybe I'll find the time to get a girlfriend, but being the shy guy I am I doubt that event will occur. No seriously, I'll probably just spend two months at home baked in every sense of the word. Really, it's hot as hell in Belgium, 25 degrees at night, I'm practically naked and still sweating. But the days are even worse. I usually wake up because my pillow is wet with my own sweat, and it's too hot to fall back asleep. The fact that my room is just on the top floor at the sunny side doesn't help either, feels like I'm living in a greenhouse.

So for the near future I'm going to try and play every day and win enough money to lift myself up to NL50 without having to drop back down to NL20 after the next withdrawal. I used to be a solid winning player at NL50 (euro) back when I was playing at BetFred, so I can use my hand history from back then without the opponents having the same advantage over me. And in two weeks my parents are leaving for a vacation in Russia, so the house will be all mine for two weeks. I won't be able to leave the house for long as I'll be taking care of the cats, but most people I visit will be out of the country anyway. In any case I'm looking forward to it.

Thursday, July 8

It's that time again where I go on tilt, blow a few BI, come back the next day with the best intentions to slowly rebuild everything and just end up losing more. Blew about $50 on SnG and €130 on NL20. I suck, I just suck. Every time I think this won't happen again, I'm experienced enough to resist tilt and then it starts all over again. To combat this, I devised a small organigram that I pinned to the wall, but more on that later.

First, I'm running a few $5.50 SnG in the background as I'm typing this, and it's no random coincidence. I built up a small roll of almost $30 on EuroPoker after the $1.20 tournament ticket I bought after I left. Now I play there when I'm drunk, not sure of my play or when I just don't care about profits but still want to play poker. Or when there's no traffic on iPoker (ironic, I know).

Speaking of iPoker, I logged on a couple hours ago to play a little, but despite almost 6k players online there were only 750 cash game players according to PokerScout. No more than 7 NL20 cash tables were occupied, and it wasn't before I sat down at two of them that I understood why. First I thought I was lagging horribly for some reason, but that wasn't the case. After every hand there was a 40 second pause where it looked like everything froze, and then the play just continued normally. No kidding, I timed it. I checked the hands/hour column, and for every table it was something like 25. Even live games can go faster than that! Needless to say I quit with only 10bb profit or so, playing like that is a waste of time. Still no idea why this phenomenon occurred, but I hope it'll disappear soon so I can start making money again.

I've experienced a big spike in motivation recently and have been putting in a lot of volume. The motivation came from several sources, like realizing how difficult it is to make money like a regular person. I was thinking about last summer where I took a job in a warehouse for four weeks. Sometimes it was easy, like operating a plastic wrapping machine, but sometimes it was physically demanding, like unloading a truck. And when I think of the people who work there every day and probably will until they retire, it reminds me why I started playing poker in the first place.

Another reason is the amount of available information for poker players to improve their game. Look at this site, it offers people everything necessary to make it harder for you to take money off them. And there's more where that came from. People keep learning and improving, the average player is tougher than ten years ago, and it's an ongoing progress. So I want to play as many hands as possible now, before people get better on average, decreasing my winrate. I know losing players will always form the majority, but even a small drop in winrate will show itself over hundreds of thousands of hands.

Finally, I need money. I know this is not a good reason to start playing poker in the first place, but I really want it to work out. I know I have the skill to be a winning player, and I have the motivation to put in volume and work on my game. But in the past I only played for about 90 minutes three or four days a week. I really need to either play every day or at least 5 days a week with decent volume, without being forced to adhere to a schedule since I always preferred improvisation anyway. This realization creates a certain sense of responsibility for my own income, and that helps me try and play more every day, much more than any schedule would.

Now, as I'm typing I busted in 3 SnGs, QQ got sucked out on by AQs, KK lost to AK that just couldn't fold, eventually called all-in on the turn and caught his flush. 99 ran into KK, but god forbid I ever suck out on anyone. Got me a bit more pissed than I should be, after all I know how high the price of tilt can be, but it's still pretty frustrating to do everything right and still lose, lose, lose, and then lose a few more times just to rub it in my face. Two more to go, hopefully I'll win back at least something, wouldn't feel right to lose my little back-up bankroll.

The organigram I talked about earlier is still pinned to the wall and I find it really helpful to snap out of potential tilt inducing thought patterns. It contains pretty much all words of poker wisdom I could remember when making it, and there's always room for more. One of the most memorable ones (well, two pulled together) is "it's all one big session, there's always another hand". This helps me quit when I feel like I'm no longer playing my A-game, even though my session's on the losing end. I can try and make up for my losses now, or I can do it tomorrow. In both cases I'll have the same amount of money in my BR, but my winrate tomorrow will probably be higher. Another one is "would a better player do this?" It often helps me before making an angry shove in disbelief that my opponent has something to call me with for the sixth time in a row. How would Phil Ivey play this hand? What would he say when he saw my play? Would he approve or scold me?

What's also handy is the list of signs that I'm tilting. I spent some time thinking what kind of thought and behavior patterns I exhibit when I'm (almost) tilting, and wrote them down on a checklist. Here are some of the things I say to myself or in chat when on tilt:
- fuck it, I'll just call
- come on, not this again
- about time I win a hand
- he can't possibly have it again, he's bluffing
- but of course I lose again
- goddamn stupid fish

Also, when I tilt I tend to frown, look frustrated and angry, so I put a small mirror on my desk to glimpse at my face every now and then. Constant self-evaluation won't completely eradicate tilt, but it'll help reduce it until I have enough self-control to not have to worry about tilt at all.

Also thinking about running a few sweat sessions with someone, been a while since I last did. Not sure what format though, I find SnG easier than BSS, but variance can hit pretty hard and I can't just quit whenever I have to go to the bathroom or just don't feel like playing. Since BSS SH is my main game, I think it's best to work on it first and keep SnG as a back-up. Not sure I'll find someone appropriate to sweat with, but it's worth a try...

Saturday, July 10

A while ago I promised myself I wouldn't bitch about variance in the downswing section anymore. But I'm free to do so in my blog, so what comes next is a description of situations I had to cope with during today's $11 SnG session. That I ended 3BI down.

Why SnG instead of cash games? Well, since iPoker's lag stunt I played a few SnG on EuroPoker as I mentioned in my last post, eventually ended the session being up but it's not really worth the time compared to what I could win playing $11 ones on iPoker. Which, ironically, I did, spent 4 hours on it and still didn't win anything. Looking at my balance, I probably lost even more but released some of my bonus. The reason was first of all I needed a break from cash games that lost me so much money I didn't feel confident enough to raid the tables, so I needed a change of game. Also, SnG is an easier format to play, less decisions and you just need to know ICM. Last reason was I played 5 SnG earlier, and lost all of them, so I had 3 $11 ones and two $22 ones where I didn't make the money, so HEM said I had a -100 ROI. I wanted to change that, and make some money along the way.

I ran really really bad. When I though I ran bad yesterday, I was sure it was only temporary. Today I just thought what would happen to my poker career if this continued for another week. It's variance, who the hell knows if I lose my entire roll? And the worst part is I didn't play bad. How can this be the worst part? Well, I just didn't get enough chances to win. I did win one or two, but for the most part there was either some turn of events where I lose a part of my stack and don't get any hands to recover. Or I would not get any hands at all and be forced to steal with trash before I get blinded out when there's still 9 players in. Or I would actually double/triple up, get to the bubble and find a hand worth going all-in with that just loses to a better hand or gets sucked out on.

The most frequent position I bust in is 9th. And it's always something despicable, like the last SnG I played, a guy who only had 40 chips more than me raised, I push over him with AKs and a bigstack calls with JJ. Original raiser overcalls and shows AK. Big stack wins and I end up 4th with no payout for making the right move. The remaining player was a relative shortstack who was playing something like 12/8, don't even know how he survived without being blinded out by then. And the money I lost taking 3rd and 2nd instead of making the big payout... 3 players left, I hold KQ (7bb stack, SB has 6bb) and push, SB snap calls with KJ, and BB overcalls with A9. J on the flop, goodbye. The amount of horrible suckouts HU is just beyond any description.

Now that I'm ranting, I feel the need to mention Paddy Power organizes a $11+1k added tourney every Friday, and to compensate for the network issues they added $3k to it. I decided to play of course, and in the first seven hands or so I get JJ, half the table limps so I raise pretty big 10bb+1 per limper. Of course some guy limp-called me with 99 and hit his set on the flop against my overpair. When you raise for 1/8th of your stack pre-flop, you don't fold an overpair, especially if opponent check-calls and checks again on the turn. And it seems every time I try playing an MTT something like that happens. Either that or I end up raising, missing but cbetting anyway, and opponent won't fold, so I am slowly bleeding chips. If I do double up, I rarely if ever make the money, and I only made the real money once in my life (twice, but it was a pc I won, not money). Maybe if I played more MTTs I'd get used to it and perhaps even take one down. The whole format is just so heavy with variance I don't see myself playing MTTs as anything but secondary (or tertiary) game format.

Looking at my HEM stats, I see I have -$131 overall SnG winnings and my ROI is -23.4%, but when I tick the "show $EV adjusted" it suddenly says I should be up $5 and my ROI is slightly above break-even. Well, variance is a bitch, but you can't do anything about it, so all that's left is to keep trying and hope for the best. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow...

Friday, September 3

Well, I'm broke. Having only $70 after everything, I was sick of months of endless bullshit and decided to play NL10 to see what happens. A last ditch effort to maybe, just maybe finally catch an upswing after practically a career of runder under EV. But surely enough I lost every single cent to (surprise surprise) idiots. I apologise for unprofessional and condescending behavior towards people who ought to pay me, but that's always the key word. Ought. Over thousands of hands variance should even out, but I don't ever get to a large sample size without losing enough to drop to a limit, or in this case just go broke.

And anyone on this forum who hears this will immediately shout "BRM", pointing it out as the sole reason I went broke, and that's what I would tell anyone who did something similar. But the truth is I was just tired of it all. I could have moved down to NL5 or even NL2, but what for? Another few months of slow break-even or losing sessions that drive me insane? Slowly bleeding money while wasting a few more days of my life playing a frustrating game that gains nothing?

So at this point I'm not even surprised that I lost practically all of my remaining money to suckouts, except for one, a coinflip. Sigh, like it matters, lost money is lost. The fact that my pc crashed recently and I lost my entire database of hands just adds insult to injury. I've been broke before, so I know the feeling, but thinking about my career and the amount of hands I played it makes me depressed over the proportion of hands that I've been running under EV to hands where I hit an upswing. I can count the times the latter happened on one hand, whereas downswings just kept coming and coming, and I feel I'm overdue.

And I felt like that a few hours ago when I started the session, well aware that the odds are always the same. Still the thought that I can't possibly always keep losing just wouldn't leave my head. Apparently I can. I still have a little left, and after I cash in the remainder of my player points I probably get a small capital to start rebuilding, but I doubt I'll do that any time soon. It just doesn't seem like I can win at poker anymore, so I don't see any reason to continue playing it excessively like I did a year ago. If I know myself at all, I will return to poker some day. In the meantime, I'll just keep frequenting the forum, watching some videos and doing what I do every day.

"Remember, it's just a game." - Garry Kasparov

Forget the trace, erase the track
Break free from past mistakes and strains
There is no sense in looking back
Only the road ahead remains...

Wednesday, October 6

Reading my post from last month, I felt the prominent scent of pessimism seemingly emanating from my screen. But not without a sparkle of hope, as I vowed to one day return to this game, as captivating as it is cruel. And I have, with the help of new motivation and realization. What I realized was how bad some people around the world have it, and what they have to do to get the equivalent of $20, which is my current bankroll. Pathetically small by online poker standards, but it suddenly becomes a bit less measly when you come to think about the 2 or 3 hours of labor some people have to do before they get paid that much.

We all start out with a dream to become rich by playing a game, but few ever get that far. I, for one, never did. Sure, I earned a respectable sum of money, but I withdrew most of it and lost the rest. All by itself, that is an achievement, nevertheless, after all is said and done I can't help but feel like I have nothing to show for the endless hours I spent on poker. To rid myself of that feeling, I hope to one day return to the heights I plummeted from. If that means starting with $20, then so be it, would have been much worse if I started from $0.

Right now I'm playing $1.20 SnG on PaddyPower, the rake is awful and I've had a case of 7 consecutive OOTM finishes. So running below EV as usual. All bonuses (including FDB) are now expired, and so are the tokens. There are only a few benefits left that this room can offer me. One is an entry to a level2&3 VIP tournament, $300 prize pool. Barely worth playing for some, but when the first place pays three times more than your current BR, you tend to take your chances anyway. Another is a possibility to exchange my remaining points for $10 cash and a $5.50 token. Aside from those things I have nothing left to look forward to on PaddyPower, it's time to look for a new room.

Comparing rooms is always interesting as you're getting presented with all the wonderful ways you could make more money, and it's just a matter of preference where you like it best. I was planning on eventually moving my roll to FTP and staying there, but after a recent incident (which I will cover in a minute) it seems I won't be able to. Since my Stars account isn't tracked with no possibility of retracking for the foreseeable future, I'd better start looking for a new platform to settle at in the future. My eye immediately fell on 24hPoker since it offers 50% RB for as long as I enjoy the FDB. Although the loyalty program requires high amounts of rake to get more than the standard 30% flat RB, the standard currency is euro so I won't have to pay conversion fees upon withdrawing. Besides, to clear the whole 1,000 euro bonus in 30 days I'd have to rake something like 170 euro daily, if I pay that much rake I'd be entitled to 40% RB from the loyalty program assuming I keep it up the next month.

But realistically the FDB is nearly impossible to clear, just like those IPN network sites like InterPoker (played there) and PokerHeaven (next on my list). PokerHeaven also operates in euro, its FDB is also unclearable and it also offers 30% RB on top of FDB, so why should I choose to move my tiny roll there first? Well, a variety of reasons. First of all, the FDB is 200%, not 100% like at PokerHeaven, this means I will get a bigger bonus for the same deposit without feeling like it's a waste of an FDB because no one I ever heard of cleared the entire bonus in 30 days anyway. And let's face it, I didn't even release the full bonus on my current platform while it was active. Whether I clear the full bonus I receive after my deposit is up to me, but even if I don't at least I will have had the option.

Another reason to go for PokerHeaven would be their temporarily lowered requirements for rakeback. Given my current bankroll, which would be even smaller after the dollar-to-euro conversion, raking 100 euro a month would be harder than it sounds, but I'd get guaranteed RB if the requirements are ten times less. Starting next year it goes up to 100 euro again, which means I have less than three months time.

So the plan for now is to play in tomorrow's VIP tourney, hopefully cash and see how I feel about playing fishy yet overraked SnG. Eventually I'll just cash in my points to give my roll a boost (50% if it doesn't change until then), play one last $5.50 SnG with the token I will have received, and cash out whatever amount I will have at that time and move the money to PokerHeaven. During the waiting period I just might bleed dry all the platforms I ever had an account on. I appreciate every free dollar I can get at this point, and there's plenty of frequent player points I never bothered to redeem.

About my FTP account, I wanted to play in the big PokerStrategy freeroll recently, but the registration page for that tourney said my account had to be linked to PokerStrategy in order to participate. At that point I had no idea Full Tilt would suspend my affiliation to PS if I didn't deposit 180 days after account creation. I just assumed I could wait until I felt comfortable permanently moving to FTP, but they didn't even bother to notify me or anything. Matter of fact, they never did mention it, even when I mailed them to ask about the freeroll. This was their reply, and please note how they completely ignored my question.

Hello,

This is to inform you that the following multiple account has been closed:

Berzerger

Your primary account BerzergerR has been left open and you may continue using it to play.

Our policy is that one Full Tilt Poker account is allowed per player. We cannot permit you to use any account other than your primary account. If you would like a full explanation of our site terms, please visit our website at: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/site-terms

This closure applies to all versions of the Full Tilt Poker software originally downloaded from any of our websites.

We thank you for playing at Full Tilt Poker and appreciate your understanding.

Regards,

Sarah
Full Tilt Poker Support

The reply came way too late, a day after the tournament, it didn't give me any reason as to why I couldn't participate, and the only information it contained is that they banned some poor guy who they assumed was me. My nickname on FTP is BerzergerR, the extra R is because it's not allowed to have the same login and nickname, but I didn't know that at the time of creating my only account. Imagine my surprise when a long awaited reply from the world's second largest poker room's support came out looking like this. I literally didn't know if or how to reply to that, so I didn't, and it would seem rather silly reopening this issue out of the blue two weeks later, so I just let it all slide. Possibly I'll contact FTP support again to clear the issue out, but this experience makes me prefer other rooms for some reason.

Not sure if I mentioned this somewhere already, but I've bought StarCraft II and I'm enjoying the multiplayer experience. I'd probably spend more time playing it and honing my skills if I had some friends to play it with, but alas. I mostly play as zerg, but I occasionally try out other races to get a feel for how my opponents play and what they can do. I feel I'm getting better, but I'm still by far not as good at this game as I'd like to be. After all, part of my nickname is devoted to the StarCraft franchise, it would be rather embarrassing not to improve.

Slice of real life. In about two weeks I'm moving to Antwerp for a couple of months. Maybe I'll even get a part time job. I promise not to use any of the earned money to fund my poker accounts, that's a pretty strict rule I hope I'll never break since every addict honestly believes he'll win his money back and then some. But in my case I'll just spend some on rent and save the rest for times when I'm in severe monetary distress. Since my parents promised they won't take any money from me if I go back to school, it might be a good idea to get a diploma after all while still playing poker and enjoying life. Without regular withdrawals my BR won't suffer periodical hits and be allowed to slowly grow to or even past the amount I once had.

In any case, at least I'm hopeful now.

Friday, October 8

Just deposited and played my first 150 hands on PokerHeaven. Short session to make sure HEM imports everything properly, ended up 75bb. It felt weird playing NL4, like I'm starting from scratch all over again. But to some extent it's a character building experience, it helps me think in big blinds rather than money. And besides, even the lowest limit on PokerHeaven, NL4, requires me to buy in with 4 euro. That's enough money to feed me for a day and I figured I should really be more respectful to such amounts of money. Once I move up to NL10 and higher, I'll already be in the process of rebuilding my roll to its former glory.

Being a comparatively small network, IPN is softer as it's commonly accepted that the bigger a room is the more regs it has in relation to the amount of fish. The downside is lower traffic, and I feel like it's cut in half for me as I only play euro tables to, among other things, prevent undisclosed exchange fees. This is compensated by the fact that I have my hands full with just 6 tables. The game is much faster and considerably looser with just 5 players per tables. I've grown accustomed to it from my Ongame days, and InterPoker way before that, but coming back from 6max it takes a bit of adjusting. The only problem right now is that HEM won't show stats, which is weird as the HUD works, I see the black box on the left at every table, but the stats won't show up. I'll try to fix that before next session. Don't really need stats for NL4, but I'd like to make sure everything works properly before I end up ignoring it for some 50,000 hands.

SnG traffic is only bearable during rush hours, and I'd rather spend that time playing cash games as I don't put too many hours in anyway. So I'll just focus on NLSH for now, it seems to be the game that brought me the most money throughout my career. Now, before I left PaddyPower I busted in that tourney against a guy who played 76% of his hands. With about 60bb in my stack I raised with AQ, he randomly pushed over my raise, I decided to call. He had a pair and I lost the flip. So I just got that $10 cash bonus and $5.50 token which, as I learned only after purchasing it, can only be used for double-or-nothing tournaments. Not worthy of mentioning, I presume? Nevertheless I doubled up and got myself another $10 before I withdrew a grand total of $40. After my first session at a new room, I'm at 37 euro.

Being another one of those rooms where you can't really start a session outside of rush hours, PokerHeaven will force me to make time to play poker. I know it will be long before I will be able to rake enough money per month to be able to clear a bonus the size of 1,000 euro on this platform, but it's only about 13% in terms of RB, so if I can't clear the maximum anyway, I don't mind only having a part of it like I explained in my last post. I got about 70 euro of bonus to clear (200% of first deposit), which is attainable, so that will be my goal for the following 30 days. I found it beneficial to have something to aim at over a short period of time like one month.

Slice of real life. Tonight I'm going to check out my new place in Antwerp. Probably won't be coming home until Monday evening, that means 4 days without poker. Bit of a waste of hours that could potentially be spent on playing, but realistically I can't play every day. Need some time to blow off steam and just relax without having responsibilities constantly looming over me as a reminder that good times will soon come to an end. Reminds me of a feeling I had when I was younger and still in school, Sunday never seemed like a real day off because I couldn't stop thinking that I have to get up at the crack of dawn and go to school the very next day. But poker is a little more fun than school, so a few days off should give me enough fuel to start grinding properly again.

Friday, October 15

Starting to get fed up with poker. Why? It's not hard to guess, but I'll explain in a bit. First, a summary of the past week. Only three days of play, and in those three days I managed to win 2 euro, lose 20 and win 16 of those back. What I did then, well... I still consider it a mistake. I started playing SnG. Seemingly, they should be more profitable as the players generally tend to be bad. There were no 1.10 ones filling up, so I registered to the only SnG that had any people registered. A 2.20 DoN. Evidently lost, as I always do in SnG. I tried a couple of regular ones, haven't cashed to date. I didn't bother to count how many DoN's I played, but I know for sure I only cashed in two. I lost every single coinflip that happened to take place, and the remaining times I busted I got sucked out on. Everybody says that, but I actually checked. There was not one single hand where I was behind when the chips went in unless you count situations where I raise AA for 1/3 of my stack and push the flop where my opponent just so happened to catch trips.

Once I promised myself never to play SnG's again. Reason: it's just my luck. As happens so often, a more experienced player might call bs on that, but considering how I have been running in any kind of SnG for the past year some might reconsider. I feel it's not worth the trouble, all the time I put in playing SnG's and losing, losing, losing. Sounds familiar? Yes it does, it's the exact feeling a player gets in any kind of downswing. The difference is when I play cash games I know I can and eventually will recover. But when I play SnG's, I just lose. There's nothing more to it, the more SnG's I play the more money I lose. Right now I'm down to 11 euro, and I'm due another 5 from cashing in a 1k freeroll today. Money I never got, not when I busted, not an hour later. The best I can do is play 3 NL4 tables. And to think I once was a winning NL100 player...

The bonus is ridiculously hard to clear, I haven't been putting in tons of volume but it's been a week since I deposited and I haven't even cleared 5 euro. I can't talk to live support as they only work during business hours, so the money I won in that freeroll won't appear in my account for a while. Continuing the rant, the only type of SnG that HEM shows the HUD for seems to be turbo DoN, that's the one where the blinds increase two levels before they come back around to you. It seems the only format that doesn't bear a close resemblance to a total crapshoot is NLHE, but it's pretty hard to accomplish anything at all playing just 3 tables. If I get to play any tables to begin with, since the traffic outside of rush hours is awful, much worse than iPoker. Those hours do correspond with the time of day I normally play, but it really sucks when tables suddenly start breaking up towards... now pretty much. Only 6 tables open, only half of them full.

Since I no longer need to rely on poker to pay the bills I decided it's not worth getting worked up over. And that's easy to say, however the actual application of that mindset is way harder. It's hard for me not to feel disappointed when I spend hours on end trying to make good decisions and end up losing money as a result. The amount doesn't even matter at this point as I'm virtually broke anyway. I could, of course, wait for the rakeback, but that would mean not playing for what's left of the month and forfeiting the bonus. Eventually I'd have a bigger roll than now, but still not even enough to cover the necessary 25BI for NL4. So my plan is just to keep playing until I get 150 euro, and if that happens (key word here is if) I'll move up to NL10. But first I would like to prove to myself that poker is not all about luck and that practical application of strategy will eventually lead to profit. Beating the lowest stakes will be the first step to rebuilding my confidence in both myself as a person and my ability to make money playing poker.

Given my BRM it's likely I'll go broke trying. If I do I'll be disappointed, but given my current BR there's little I can do but take risks and hope the better hand holds up. Alternatively, there's still freerolls. Chris Ferguson turned $0 into $10k, no reason I can't give it a try. Off to a new poker adventure, hopefully not my last...

Tuesday, November 30

And I'm back from Antwerp. In between now and my last post I managed to amass 125 euro. Just a few more stacks and I'll take a swing at NL10, with this month's rakeback my balance should sum up to well over 150. I'm planning moving back to NL4 once I get down to 130 euro. No plans on when to move up to NL20, I'll cross that bridge when I get there. The most important thing right now is to make sure the transition goes smoothly.

Playing NL5 5max hasn't really been good for my game. Micro players are usually horrible, and even the regs are bad, so straightforward TAG style is sufficient to make profit, almost no one pays any attention to bet sizing and betting potsize with a good hand is almost mandatory. The real disadvantage is that in 5max the blinds pass you way more often, so you need to open up your range a bit. Which is contradictory to the basic strategy against loose players (tighten up). I still make mistakes, and usually I realize it during or just after the action, but at least I'm not constantly losing anymore.

I know I should detach myself from the monetary value of my chips and just count in big blinds, but thinking of what one could buy with 10 euro I can't help but have more concern for how I play when one hand could make me that much richer or poorer. An honest working man with a well paid job has to spend an hour of effort to get paid as much as my stack is worth. I never really put much thought into this before, but if I'm to play with money I'd best be sure I know what I'm doing. Sheer experience won't cut it here, at least not anymore. I need to crank up my winrate and start plugging more leaks. A dollar saved is a dollar won. So the plan is to study up, watch videos, read articles and lastly put in some more volume. More hands means more profit, and also more rake. That means more rakeback and a higher status to access more helpful articles and videos.

So you're still reading, I'm impressed. I hope it's not because I never mentioned how exactly I managed to go from barely broke to broke to back over 100 euro. If it is, let me explain. After I finally went broke trying desperately to make profit at NL4 SH with only 3BI, I lost it all. Due to bad play I might add, no mercy for my ego here. I got my rakeback later than usual due to some issue on PokerHeaven's end, but eventually I was happy to receive 10 euro. Before I got the rakeback I was taking a look at other platforms I previously played at, looking for any points or tournament tickets I could somehow convert to cash. That's where Cake Poker came to rescue.

I always thought their loyalty program was rather poor no matter how lucrative. The gold cards are worthless unless you're willing to either continue playing there for years or randomly check the daily lottery every day in hope you'll get lucky enough to either swap some directly for cash (never happened to me yet) or enter a relatively low prizepool tournament you'll most likely bust out of before the money. The latter case assumes you always have time to play the tournament whenever you have the necessary gold card(s) to buy into it. No experience with gold stacks, so no comment on that. Thankfully, they introduced the exchange feature that allows players to buy and sell gold cards. I have over 100 for sale, the maximum order timespan is 30 days so I'll have to check in every month to renew.

What really propelled my roll were, ironically, SnG's. Gold chip SnG's to be precise. I did play some cash SnG's when I had around $20 in my account, but it really wasn't much more than a waste of time as I ended down a few BI so I just stopped and decided to save my cash. I played 12 man DoN ones, same buy-in 16 man quad-ups, and several gold chip lover ones where you play to win more gold chips. In theory this could mean a virtually risk-free cash machine: you keep winning gold chips in those SnG's, and every time you win enough to buy into a gold-chips-for-cash SnG you do just that. In reality this would never work as there aren't nearly enough people willing to play for a decent amount of gold chips, and all the gold->cash SnG's fill up ridiculously slowly. The whole Cake adventure brought me about 50 euro to add to my PokerHeaven bankroll. Haven't had a losing session since.

Slice of real life. Spent six weeks with my buddy who bought Black Ops for PS3. Basically it was like a vacation away from home, no one to bother me about where and what I smoke, no uncomfortable tension, a buttload of series and movies, an interesting friend's company and a bong. Frankly if it weren't so cold I'd probably have stayed for a while longer. We should do this again in the summer. I haven't played much poker though, not as much as I would've wanted.

Meanwhile I've been considering some future plans, and my parents (meaning my mother and her husband) will soon start demanding money from me again. I figured it would be a nice idea to go back to school. Regardless of what my stepfather says or does, he can go screw himself if he thinks I'm going to study AND pay him. But if everything goes right, in two months I'll be studying applied linguistics, languages of choice being Dutch, Russian and English.

So all in all, I have no major complaints about life, so thus far I could say I'm happy and hoping that my next post will be about how I crushed NL10.

EDIT: forgot my own birthday again Since November 13 I'm officially 21 years of age and allowed to raid every casino worldwide.

Sunday, March 6

Holy hell, some ride this was. Looking back at when I were struggling with micros a few months ago seems like a blast from the past. I didn't post here back when I eventually busted after yet again flipping out over the perpetual and endless bullshit that, as I envisioned, would continue forever regardless of how I played. Then I simply made a thread saying I'd quit poker for a few months as I was sick of it all, and so I did, until I was lured back into the world of online gambling by a recent event, but more on that later.

In the meantime I managed to get myself into college, which I paid for myself, and now looking for a place to rent in order to get away from the house I currently live in, just to avoid the word home. Ever since my parents started forcing me to pay them with my poker profits, I have slowly yet steadily started to accept the thought that my poker career would not pay my bills for as long as I didn't have a chance to develop my bankroll into something sensible. If only I didn't have to withdraw money back when I had a four figure roll, who knows how my life would have turned out. I might have been a full time poker pro wiping my butt with $100 bills by now. Such is life, unfortunately.

A couple of days ago I received an email saying that dear old PokerStrategy decided they value me enough to provide me with a reason to try out William Hill. We all know what that means. Free $50. Few people would say no to free money, and I'm definitely not one of them. Now, in light of what previously happened to my money when its amount didn't surpass 200 euro I decided it would be wise to actually start with the lowest stakes and a decent BRM, progressively moving up when I feel I have enough money to get rid of the feeling that every lost stack is like a punch in the stomach. I'm at peace with the idea of losing that money again, but when I put it in perspective with the amount of money I once had and how much life is costing me right now, 30 cent pots don't feel like something worth getting worked up over.

So I'll swallow my pride and play NL2 for a while, see where that takes me. After all, if I can't beat the lowest stakes what the hell am I doing playing online poker? And iPoker welcomed me back warmly with a 3BI profit so that I don't get the "ZOMFG here we go again with this bullshit" feeling. Had my aces cracked for a stack after just 100 hands, but I was already winning and ended the session in green anyway. Some of my opponents' plays really helped me understand just how easy it is to take money off people on NL2 when they keep calling until they're all-in with K4 top pair no kicker.

So that got me thinking. 6 euro already earned in the first hour of play. 6 euro can feed me for 2 days. Not really a source of income, but still, not so insignificant. Money's money, after all. If I take it easy and continue playing just like I did before, slowly and steadily building up my roll, working on my game and plugging leaks, in theory I should reach the same roll and stakes that I was on during the peak of my poker career. Well, one way to find out.

Usually I'm hopeful when I post here, but hope alone won't accomplish anything. I'll put in some hours and report back here with results.

Monday, April 4

Almost a month has gone by, and I'm still playing. Successfully, I might add, but RL trouble is destroying my mood day by day. More about that in the "slice of real life" section at the bottom if anyone cares, but first... Let's talk poker.

My current BR equals 550 euro, coming just a few cent short. Now, I'll immediately admit having deposited 225 euro to take advantage of the 200% up to 450 euro bonus. Little did I know that for people receiving a free starting capital the bonus is actually just 100%, so that's $317.79 total. I already managed to release $100, which is approximately 70 euro. So without the deposit and the bonus my roll would have been somewhere around 250 euro. Well, probably not as I skipped NL10 and went straight for NL20 after my deposit with a 20BI roll. If I hadn't done that, my profits would probably be lower, but in retrospective it was worth it.

NL20 started out with two back-to-back mindfuck sessions where I dropped almost 10BI and recovered it all with slight profits on two(!) occasions. Looking at the embarrassing graph I can see that since I started playing NL20 my non-SD winnings have skyrocketed while the SD-winnings line dropped so far below zero at one point that I spent two hours re-reading basic strategy just to remind myself that I'm not a complete fish. Seriously, I made more money by outplaying my opponents than by having them pay me off with a worse hand. Need to work more on that.

I noticed that I tend to call a lot more than I should in spots that are obviously unprofitable, but I have difficulty laying down even weak overcards on a drawy board when someone min-raises my cbet. Although there were a few occasions where I tanked and made very successful hero calls, I don't think I should continue applying this kind of strategy. Winning by folding is the key here.

On the other hand, I 3bet and squeeze way more often, especially against people who often raise from late position. It's like no one is adapting to my reraises, they just keep raising and folding. It also has its advantages, one reg decided to stack off against me with a pair of sevens just because I 3bet his CO raise for the second time in a row. I had queens, worked out great. I'm starting to employ more tactics that I used to use on NL50 back in the days, seems to work so far. Most regs are exploitable, and I even spotted one guy I used to play like two years ago, he's still on NL20 and still plays the same way!

Concerning BRM, I'm not even considering shots at NL50 until I have 1000 euro at the very, very least. I mean, I thought 400 euro would be enough for NL20 until I lost half of my roll the very first session, took me like 5 hours to get it back. And the very next session the same thing happened, only it took me an hour longer to get back into green. According to BRM I ought to have moved down after losing like two BI, or perhaps not have played NL20 to begin with. But then again I didn't expect the world series of bullshit to rain down on my head from the very beginning. Here's the coolest (no pun intended) hand so far:

$0.1/$0.2 No-Limit Hold'em (6 handed)

Known players:
[tg]SB$20.75:///////;BB$20.00:///////;MP2$22.17:///////;MP3 (Hero)$34.00:///////;CO$31.62:///////;BU$27.45:///////;[/tg]

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with K:d, A:s.
MP2 folds, Hero raises to $0.80, CO raises to $2.70, 3 folds, Hero calls $1.90.

Flop: ($5.7) T:d, Q:s, A:h (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $4.27, Hero calls $4.27.

Turn: ($14.24) K:h (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks.

River: ($14.24) K:s (2 players)
Hero bets $9.80, CO raises to $24.65, Hero calls $14.85.

Final Pot: $63.54.
Results follow:

Hero shows a full-house, kings full of aces(K:d A:s).
CO shows a full-house, aces full of kings(A:d A:c).

CO wins with a full-house, aces full of kings(A:d A:c).

Reminded me of the movie Rounders where Matt Daemon says he knows it before the cards are even turned over. The first thing that went through my head is damn it, he's got aces. But what was I to do, fold the second nuts? He could have queens or tens full, maybe KQ or even just a straight with JJ/AJ. Had to pay him off. This was nicely offset by the guy who put in about 200bb with top two against my set. I have a reasonable excuse for the flop play, I tried bluffing this guy previously and he just didn't believe me anymore. This time I at least had a pair so I called in hope he'd give up after an unsuccessful flop raise.

$0.1/$0.2 No-Limit Hold'em (5 handed)

Known players:
[tg]BU$23.97:///////;SB$7.41:///////;BB$32.28:///////;MP3 (Hero)$42.43:///////;CO$36.98:///////;[/tg]

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 5:s, 5:d.
Hero raises to $0.80, CO calls $0.80, 3 folds, 2 folds, BB folds.

Flop: ($1.9) 3:h, Q:d, 4:h (2 players)
Hero bets $1.20, CO raises to $3.60, Hero calls $2.40.

Turn: ($9.1) 5:c (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $8.00, Hero raises to $38.03(All-In), CO calls $24.58(All-In).

River: ($79.71) A:d (2 players)

Final Pot: $79.71.
Results follow:

Hero shows three of a kind, fives(5:s 5:d).
CO shows two pairs, aces and queens(Q:c A:c).

Hero wins with three of a kind, fives(5:s 5:d).

Slice of real life. Had a heated argument over some nonsense with my stepfather. I was just minding my own business when he comes up to me looking for trouble. I needed every bit of self-control I learned from poker to transcend into my RL just to keep my composure. I don't think I ever came this close to actually ripping someone's throat out on the spot. This circus has been going on way too long. Tomorrow after school I'll ask again about that cheap room they promised me they'd look into, I sincerely hope I get one and the second I do I'm out of this shithole of a house. Because if not I might do up to 15 years for involuntary manslaughter.

Sunday, April 10

Well fuck me unconscious. Excuse the expletive, this has just recently become my favourite expression, and it's well suited for the occasion. I just finished a session where the quality of my play was inversely proportionate to the results. I was well aware that I were on tilt but was still trying to control it and pull myself straight by sheer power of will. And it worked for a while, but not completely. I ended the session some 6BI above EV, that alone should be an indicator of how well I did. In other words, I sucked balls at poker today and don't deserve the 40 euro I won.

I 5bet some guy with 87s, he snap called with aces. Given our history I'd probably have done it again, but not the QTs hand where I check-raised someone all-in with a flush draw. He called with a set and I hit the flush. Those times, and many others I can't directly recall, I played bad and got lucky. I think this inspired (for lack of a better word) me to do some more retarded plays that I now regret. In hindsight I should have just quit as soon as I turned some profit, would have spared me a few hours and the humiliation upon looking in the mirror.

I'll go out for a smoke and some food, maybe play some Black Ops to relax and then see if I'm in the mood to give it another go and play decently. I'm rather mad at myself for continuously playing like a person I normally make money off. I'd probably feel even worse if I didn't get lucky enough to end up in the green when I quit, and that's probably how it would have gone down if I kept playing. Lost a stack in a situation where I knew I was beat and still called. I just closed down the client, the hand didn't even get saved on my hard drive so HEM is showing a bigger profit than I really have.

Current BR is around 930 euro. And to think I was contemplating a shot at NL50, I would've been torn to pieces up there. For now, the plan is to get my game straight, review some strategy, hopefully learn something and take a few shots at my trusty old NL50 when I have around 1250 euro available. Should that take place next week, I'd be overjoyed from the bottom of my heart, but I'm well prepared to encounter a few unpleasant surprises along the way.

Slice of real life. I got the room, all that's left is to go get my keys. Also filed an application for a monthly government sponsored payment to support myself since I'll be living alone pretty soon, I'm apparently entitled to those, especially having domestic problems. The person handling the procedure for me should have called Thursday, but I haven't heard anything yet. I'll make a phone call the coming Monday to see what's up, because as soon as I get a confirmation I can just get the keys and move the hell out of here. Because otherwise I'll have to temporarily "borrow" some money off my poker account. Tried that once, it became a habit and destroyed my roll, which is the reason I don't want to withdraw anything until I'm rolled for NL100 and winning steadily.

Definitely a good read!

I can relate to your story in a way, except that my poker career back then was short lived but worked out well.

Good luck with your goals and hope you make it this time.!