What? CHARMANDER is evolving!

                                                                            MOVING UP!

So after roughly 2 months playing the 7$ games its time to move up! My last 4 weeks of games (3k games) have gone extremely well and my coaches and backers are happy for me to move up as of today!

This graph is 100% 7s and charts my last 4 weeks at the hypers so I'm obviously pretty happy with results! (Unfortunately I'm not allowed to post my expected value on this blog but its quite pretty :) )

So today my charmander avatar on pokerstars is ready to evolve! When starting out the hypers I decided as a little extra motivation (and a lot more nerdyness) to start the 3.50s with charmander and to evolve my pokemon every couple of level jumps. Now playing the 15s I will be playing as charmeleon, with plans to evolve it again at the 60$ levels+. 

This is my current pokerstars avatar....

And my glorious new avatar!

Still very much enjoying the challenge the hyper turbos bring and I have a few short and long term goals for 2014 which I will go into a lot more detail about in my first post of 2014. I'll also go into more detail about my previous year and hopes and dreams for the next 3-5 years with poker and general life. The best news for now though is now obviously is that I'm at the 15 dollar level and am now already making enough money to play full time once the hell that is university has finished!

 Don't want to go into too much detail right now though and bore you all to death.....

                                                                   Notable short term goals-

Keep on top of study

Aim for a solid 700-1k games a week

Get my blog read more! Advertise it and get a few more regular readers

Get back into fitness after an awful month with poker and uni taking up 100% of my time

Save up for the stables Curacao trip! (Blog post coming)

Crush the 15$ games and shoot for the 30$ games in February (fingers crossed)

ANYWAY.......

Hope you've all had an enjoyable/productive year and have a good Christmas! Also wish you all good luck in the new year!  Lastly have to thank my friends again at pokerhaven for giving me this amazing opportunity and for getting me this far already! I'll be back very early 2014! 

Update and staking deal!!

Well its been a while since I've updated this! As of yesterday I am in fact a staked poker player. I am now playing 6max hyper turbos on pokerstars currently at the 7 dollar level (having beaten the 3.50 level for 3k games) and recieve both playing money, regular coaching and regular strategy discussion with my friends and backers at pokerhaven.

(How I felt hearing the news I'd passed my trial month with pokerhaven)

 

With uni, poker and gym I'm now living an incredibly hectic lifestyle and from now till May of 2014 I'm looking at 6am-10pm days 7 days a week. Although this might sound a little excessive I welcome the challenge and hope my new poker ventures will be very profitable for both me and my backers. Im really enjoying the studying side of hypers and I feel I've already come a long way since the start of my trial month (6th sept). Study is extremely maths based and suprisingly to me most of my money is to come from t20 and t30 spots. Contrary to what some people may believe about hypers it is much more than just a push fold game. The 7 dollar games have been a suprising jump in difficulty but I'm plugging leaks and finding new +EV spots every day so both me and my backers hope to have me up to the 15s by next month and maybe even take a shot at supernova before the year is out (8k games from November, wish me luck).

 

Anyway, just a short update and now my life pretty much revolves around work (uni/poker) I might as well keep on top of updating this blog every week or two with graphs, interesting reads, interesting hands and any other general life chat. Cheers and watch this space!!

 

Just a quick update

What was looking like an absolute disastrous month has salvaged itself in the last few days. Although roll-wise there has been no improvement in the last week I have both secured regular coaching with a very successful CAP grinder and also solved the mystery of why this month has been so drastically different to last EV wise.... Looking over my HUD last night during coaching I made the worrying discovery that my HUD was displaying stats wrongly..... So for example, where a player is showing a 60 percent open on the button a quick hover over my HUD will tell me he is actually raising 20 percent and a player showing a 50 percent open from the sb is actually opening only 15 percent. Obviously this means my shoving ranges have been COMPLETELY off and this has no doubt cost me a hell of a lot of money over my last 85k hands. Although this is a small disaster it's encouraged me as now I realize where I've been leaking money and also I'm quite content that I've managed to break even with RB despite stacking the odds massively against myself without discovering this glitch earlier. Luckily within the next day or two my new laptop will arrive and coupling this with HEM2 I doubt I'll ever suffer this setback again. So overall although this month has gone horribly (BE post rakeback) I have secured regular coaching of a high standard and also discovered an incredible leak that is very easily fixable. Hopefully next month will have some peachy graphs to post again!

In the coming days I will also post a short update on a little competition/prop bet me and my HU coach are going to start next week. In short the challenge is 1k to 10k within 100 days. First to hit target will receive an extra 100 dollars. Will go into more detail on this once we have decided on the terms and rules. Once the challenge begins I will be making a new post every ten days with progress and any interesting hands.

Ouch.......

What started off as a horrible stretch of coolers quickly turned into a long stretch of sub optimal play and rushed decisions...... Crushed my winnings from last month unfortunately but took a few days off and recently had a sweat session over skype with my coach. Overall he is very happy with my play and my progression since he last railed me. He told me the few spots I need to improve are easily fixable and he also gave me a few hints and tips on where I can pick up extra EV and gave me some useful advice on stopping overthinking hands vs donks. Very happy with my session with him and its really set my head straight. Managed a meager 2k hands 8 tabling yesterday before having to go out but managed 2.6bb/100. Super lol sample size but I picked up my EV from spots I usually wouldnt and I lost a good 20 EV in a couple of spots I now have fixed. So overall although my giraffe may have broken its neck I'm confident I'll fix that in the coming weeks. I'm also done with setting myself big goals and overstretching myself. 200k hands this month is looking very unlikely and I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks studying hard (on my new laptop and with my coach) 8 tabling and then get back to grinding out the vpps and going for SN. Theres no doubt in my mind that I'll hit SN but its useless to me if I cash in my 5k of bonuses to break even. Time to study again!! Watch this space!!

PUKE.

An interesting start to the year...

Yerrrrrrr.... not the best start to the year. Not horrendous but not great either. Started the year with 30k hands overall down 10 BI's and up 1 BI with rakeback. Obviously its not like I've blown my roll or started playing awfully, just had a horrible stretch of hands running JJ+ into better hands too many times and being on the wrong side of coolers a hell of a lot too. Actually considering the hands I've been dealt I'm very happy with my results and today I truly believe I played the best poker I've ever played. So all is not lost! Pretty sure in the coming days I'll have a nice little upswing that I can blog about! Graph for this month looks like this;

An interesting hand from today:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 2053572
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

WavePervik (BTN): $24.13
kelisav (SB): $10.91
baslespattes (BB): $33.25
Hero (UTG): $25.00
ALFN8 (MP): $29.15
batbilegts (CO): $10.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with 8 8
Hero raises to $1, ALFN8 calls $1, 3 folds, baslespattes raises to $2, Hero calls $1, ALFN8 raises to $3, baslespattes calls $1, Hero raises to $10, ALFN8 calls $7, baslespattes calls $7

Flop: ($30.25) J 4 2 (3 players)

Turn: ($30.25) 5 (3 players)

River: ($30.25) 6 (3 players)


UTG+1 shows AK
SB show K7

Probably the weirdest hand I ever expect to play with 20 bb stacks...... Both players huge whales. Looking over the hand AK is way above villain 1's range and as for the other dude I'm sure you can make up your own minds. Standard raise utg and expected flat from 1st guy (running at something around 80/15 with a 13% 3bet stat) then whale small 3bets. I decide to flat knowing Im most probably ahead of agressor and almost certain utg+1 would flat giving me a chance to setmine and also the chance to stack off on a good flop. When utg+1 min 3bets it does confuse me but I dont give him much respect for a hand (apparently he did). Once the original 3better just flats I know I'm good a lot of the time and a shove would be the right move. Overall very happy with the hand even though I was suprised to see AKs be turned up.