I’m a firm believer that “those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it”. As I mentioned in my last blog I’m currently reading An Impartial History of Britain and it’s amazing how past mistakes are being repeated by Governments and leaders all around the world. But that’s a subject for another day, the point is that looking back in retrospect is an important part of learning from your mistakes and improving your decision-making going forward in life. This applies to poker as well and is one of the reasons I am going to write about my year. Hopefully by looking back and remembering everything I’ve done I can take the good points into the New Year, while remembering not to repeat the mistakes I made along the way.

That’s the theory anyway, let’s get stuck in!

In the beginning there was… nothing?

2007 was a good start to my poker career, I made decent progress, ran good and thus had some nice results and an extra bit of money in the bank. I made this post at the end of the year and was full of optimism for the future. Little did I know that my first proper downswing was around the corner and that my poker growth would grind to a halt.

At the start of the year I was playing $100NL and $200NL on Full Tilt. Looking back I think I was a marginal winner at these levels and although I’ve always been well within my bankroll, I wasn’t prepared for an extended break-even/downswing period and it did affect my play quite badly in the first quarter of 2008. I was too results-orientated and was constantly over-adjusting, for example if a normally tight player 3-bet me a few times then I’d start calling lighter, while now I would realise he was just running hot and I should probably make little adjustment.

I’d also worry about how much money I was making. At one point I’d played 66 hours for ~$100 and it would anger me making me think I was wasting my time. I missed out on a good chance to win $10k when I lost this hand here. Several times I threatened to quit poker. Again this was being results-orientated but also it was down to a lack of confidence. I did not have a significant sample of being a winning poker player and the doubts only served to increase my results-orientated thinking. A new low point came on April 17th with me lighting my Full Tilt roll on fire in HU. It’s the only time I’ve ever had a full blown monkey-tilt episode, I just sat there constantly betting pot and typing obscene language in the chat box. I didn’t reveal the amount at the time in my blog entry but I’ll tell you now it was about $600-800.

Although I was disappointed with myself at the time, I think in my heart I knew it was one of those bad experiences that would eventually turn into a positive. I haven’t monkey-tilted since and as long as I don’t forget, I won’t repeat it. And even though I’m obviously not proud of my behaviour, I do find it pretty funny to think back to how I felt at the time.

Even though this was quite a low point, the downward spiral hadn’t finished yet. I would say this blog entry marks the low point. But instead of taking a break like planned I decided to do a challenge, really focusing on my decisions. While I believe I played ok during this time I didn’t make any money and decided I needed to be playing on a site with rakeback. But with most networks cheating you, taking your bankroll or having crap software there was nowhere to go. And that’s when I decided to follow Bas’ suggestion and convert to Pokerstars.

It’s Getting Better Man!

Almost every blog entry in March and April ended with how I was going to take a break from poker. I never did take that break, not because I’m a gambling addict but because I believed in myself. I saw Bas and others making money from poker and still believed I could do the same. I’d made a lot of progress in 2007 but at the start of 2008 I seemed to be stuck in a rut, unable to win and not seeming to get any better. I knew I had room for improvement, I just couldn’t work out how.

I started spending more time on 2+2 and my game took off. I’d been looking at 2+2 for several months but it was only now I really “got” it, only now I started picking up new tricks and ideas. I also started running better and these combined factors led to an excellent month at Stars $100NL. Although I was a loser on Stars in June, I won on other sites and was definitely back in business. I also played live for the first time at the Virgin Festival in Nottingham and you can read the report here.

In July I went back to running bad and had a losing month, including a terrible run on double VPP weekend. However by this time I was much stronger emotionally and even though it sucked I continued to play well and avoid tilting. This would be my last bad month of the year as from August onwards not only would I win, I’d win bigger than before.

In August I ran hot and made close to double figures for the first time, playing on various sites and a mixture of 6-max and HU. It was around here that I finally started playing properly HU and winning money. In the past I had been too impatient, playing too many hands pre-flop and then giving up too many pots post-flop. I learnt to play a more disciplined game and playing against some terrible players managed to make some nice money. I also played FTOPS for the first time, albeit without success.

Over the next few months I continued along the same lines, playing similar games and winning a similar amount. I made no huge improvements but just kept taking small steps, gradually playing better poker, playing more hands, playing more consistently. Nothing exciting happened but this was a great period for me because I was running better, playing better and consistently making money. This continued until the end of November when I made the step up to bigger games.

Whenever I’d moved up limits in the past I’d actually play better than normal because I was really focused, I’d be nervous and desperate not to make a mistake that would cost me twice as much as normal. This time was different. There were no nerves but I still had that focus, and apart from having to use a calculator for bet sizing it didn’t feel much different to normal. Even though I lost at the very start it did not affect me negatively, I had become desensitised to the money and my decision-orientated mindset kept me focused on decisions rather than results.

Which brings us to the last month of the year. I wasn’t expecting much from December because the last few months had gone so well and I had exams to revise for, yet in the end I played more hands, higher stakes and won more money than in any previous month. My play was of better quality and more consistency than at any other time in my poker career, despite putting in almost twice my highest previous volume. It was a fantastic month and the massive heater over the Christmas period was the perfect way to end the year.

I don’t have a full graph for 2008 for several reasons, so instead I’ll just show you my Stars graph since I started there in May. I don’t know exactly how much I’ve won this year but this graph is missing Jan-Apr profit, rakeback, tournament wins and money won on Euro sites so maybe add $25-30k to it. The biggest pot I won is here and the biggest pot lost is here.

The Future is in the Future

So what will 2009 have in store for me?

Well obviously it’s impossible to tell!

I wrote down some goals in my previous blog entry that I hope to achieve by the end of the year. I also want to continue putting the hands in, making more money and continue improving as a player. Apart from that it’s out of my control and I’ll just have to see how it goes and adapt as the year develops.

I’ve really enjoyed looking back at 2008 and then writing this summary. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it, if you have any comments or questions then please add them here. Thanks for reading!

Finally we’re at the end of the month and I can call it quits and post up my results. December seems to have lasted forever but I’ve made the most of it, worked hard and enjoyed the month. I played more hands and higher stakes than before and have coped very well, playing consistently good poker. Obviously running good helps but I performed at a high level for almost the entire month and I’ve not always been able to manage that. The results have been excellent:

Graph Total: $14,000
Rakeback: $3,000
Milestone bonus: $880
Tournament wins: $300

Net Profit: $18,180

What can I say? It’s a lot of money to win! I don’t get too excited about results anymore but I’m obviously pleased that my hard work has paid off. I also feel vindicated. I always believed I could do this and that poker was worth my time studying and playing, and a month like this goes some way to proving it’s worth it.

Not every month will be like this. All I can do is continue working hard, play lots of poker and maintain a consistent high level of performance. After an unusual month like this I think a few weeks relaxation is in order, to let the results of December fully sink in and to refocus. I will then return to grinding hard and trying to repeat these performance levels in the New Year.

Goodbye and thank you December 2008!

It’s that time again where everyone makes ambitious resolutions to change their life for the better. But like after a night out the majority wake up the next day thinking “did I really say that?”, before lighting up a cigarette and eating KFC while slouched in front of the television.

I do not want to be part of that group of people who break their resolutions (88% to be precise). So instead of calling my plans New Years Resolutions, I have instead come up with some goals for 2009. So now if I find myself slipping or failing I can just make the target easier, or just say “well it was only a goal” and forget about it. I think you’ll agree my plan is foolproof.

I’m going to just post the basic goals here, I do have more detailed breakdowns of how I plan to achieve and measure success (or failure) and will try to keep the blog updated with my progress as the year goes on. So without further ado here they are:

- Improve physical fitness/diet
- Improve mental ability
- Become a qualified accountant
- Play a major live poker tournament

And of course I hope to have fun with friends and do other stuff that doesn’t qualify as goals. Here’s hoping 2009 turns out to be a successful year, not just for myself but for everyone reading this as well.

It’s been a week since I last updated so I guess I’ll let you know how my Christmas went.

I had to work Christmas Eve but as per usual we got to leave around 1pm and spend the rest of the afternoon in the pub. It was nice just to sit down and have a few drinks with some friends from work. The funniest moment was when this guy walked in and I recognised him but couldn’t remember where from. Then it dawned on me that he was an ex-employee who had suddenly walked out on us one afternoon, and the scared look on his face when he saw we were in the pub was priceless.

For Secret Santa I got an alarm clock, much to the amusement of everyone. I’m pleased with it as it is not embarrassing and is useful. The other Christmas presents I received (all from family) were as follows:

CD’s

AC/DC - Black Ice
Vice City Soundtrack - VROCK
Vice City Soundtrack - Wave 103
Vanessa Mae - Subject To Change

DVD’s

Derren Brown - The Specials
Steven Seagal - 8 Disc Boxset
28 Days/Weeks Later Boxset

BOOKS

George Cockcroft - The Diceman
George Cockcroft - The Search for the Diceman
Lance Armstrong - It’s not about the bike

I’ve listened to all my CD’s and they are all fantastic. The Vanessa Mae album was a bit of a gamble because I’d only heard Destiny from the album, however I’m very pleased with it. It’s very relaxing but also a “happy” album and it’s perfect to keep myself in the right frame of mind when playing poker.

Out of the DVD’s I’ve only watched 28 Days Later and unfortunately it is one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. How it was a commercial success and has an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes is beyond me. The idea and storyline has fantastic potential, it gets off to a great start, but as soon as they leave London it gets progressively worse and worse. So disappointing.

I haven’t read any of the books yet but I’m really looking forward to them, all three books were recommended to me by multiple people from 2+2. I’ve still got a couple of other books to finish first (including this excellent one) but I’ll let you know if I enjoy these books once I get around to reading them.

I did not get the Audi R8 I asked for, but that aside I got everything I wanted and am very pleased with my gifts. I think the family feel the same about their gifts and we had a nice Christmas this year.

As we didn’t have any extended family around or other engagements I was free to play a bunch of poker over the Christmas period. A combination of soft tables, running good and playing well has given me a smashing end to the year. I’ll post all my graphs and results at the end of the year but if you want to see my results over the Crimbo period then check out this thread.

Tomorrow I will post up my goals for 2009 and Thursday I will post up my results for 2008.

Poker-wise this weekend was pretty gay, I played about 17k hands and ended up $300 down. Won a decent amount at $200NL and $400NL and then lost over three buy-ins in 500 hands of $600NL. I had that sinking feeling here and here but apart from screaming “pair the board” there wasn’t much I could do. Maybe check the 77 hand and hope villain does something silly like bet $50 but I’d hate not to stack him when he has an overpair or let him hit a fourth club. Still never mind, I don’t feel bad about it and swongs are one thing after all.

The most gutting thing about the weekend was failing to cash in the Blogger Championship final. Over $50k in prizes, an incredibly soft field of 400 randoms and I get AQ vs 77 on QcJc7 board for like 70BB or something. I almost got away from it because like all “recreational players” he of course check-minraised me, however I had the effective third nuts on a super drawy board so I had to go with it. I had the same happen with the EPT London promotion, every week I would qualify for the weekly final but in the end I failed to win anything. But whatever, I still ended up with a Step 2 and 3 ticket from the qualifying games and it’s not like I can complain about my luck. I’d also just like to thank Pokerstars for running this promotion and that this type of thing is why Pokerstars is far superior to any other poker site.

Looking at the positives I again got a bunch of hands in and am close to clearing my $4k bonus, although I already include rakeback in my profits it’s nice to have the cash in the account as well. One thing that worries me is my non-showdown loss was quite high this weekend, probably just not running well but I think I also wasn’t spotting enough bluffing opportunities. My pre-flop game is a bit looser than most so unlike some I can’t really get away with playing like a TAGfish, I always need to look for barrelling spots and spots where I can bluff raise later streets to keep my win-rate up. That said I’m learning to have patience with myself, I’m improving quickly and it will come with time.

One of the reasons my game might have gone a bit stale is because of how much I’ve been playing recently, I plan to take a couple of days off just to free my mind. It’s not that I’m playing particularly badly or tilting or anything horrific like that, I just think I’m not at the very top of my game. I might try and get through some training videos, there’s a ton I want to watch but it’s just impossible to watch them all so I’ll have to prioritize. I’m also halfway through Where Eagles Dare and am looking forward to finishing it. I’ve read the book but can’t remember the ending, which makes it a lot more exciting! I’ve seen a few older films recently (The Wild Geese, Zulu, Where Eagles Dare) and I’m appreciating and enjoying these type of films a lot more than when I was younger. They tend to be a bit slower paced than more recent films and I never used to have the patience for them.

We’re doing Secret Santa in the office this Wednesday. The last few years I’ve received decent presents but I have a feeling this year will be different, I will let you know what I end up with. I ended up buying for a friend and decided to get the Newsbiscuit book for him, I think he’ll like it. I found it so funny that I had to get one for myself as well!

Be good.

I’m still writing up a review of 2008 and organising my goals for 2009 so this blog is going to be about something the majority of us would like, namely a cool million dollars.

There are two poker players who have publicly posted graphs showing them winning seven figures in 2008. I have a lot of respect for both players and both have indirectly helped improve my own game through their blog and forum posts. What I find fascinating about this is how different they are as people, how different their paths were and yet they both achieved a similar end result. Here are their results and some observations I’ve made on how they approach poker:

Dusty “Leatherass” Schmidt

(His graph link is broken so using stats instead. Also bear in mind this is taken from mid-November and he has won more since.)

- works hard, long hours
- tighter, more consistent style
- high volume of hands
- good game selection
- avoids higher stakes swings

Aaron “aejones” Jones

- puts in low-moderate hours
- loose, creative and occasionally spewy style
- low volume of hands
- willing to play most players
- plays regularly at higher stakes, experiences large swings

I’ve never spoken to or played with either player so I might be slightly off, but I believe it’s a good outline of their games and just goes to show how different styles can achieve a similar amount of success. Congratulations to both of them!

I’ve played a few thousand hands this week and not a lot else. I don’t feel like I’m playing my best at the moment and am conscious that I’ve made an occasional spew play recently, probably just through tiredness. However this is the most hands I’ve played in a month so I’m pleased with how I’ve been doing and after resting today I should be ready for the weekend. I’m still up a nice amount for the week and qualified for the Bloggers Final at the first attempt (PLO qualifier) so things have still gone well.

That’s all I’ve got for now, have a good weekend.

As I alluded to in my last blog entry this has been a strange month of poker. Overall I’ve run pretty badly, however because I’ve run good at higher levels I’m still up $5.5k. Even though you shouldn’t be results-orientated it’s nice to be able to look and see you’ve made a decent amount of money, I’m sure it would be a lot harder to deal with this run if I was only $1-2k up. I’m actually pretty tilted at the moment (see ring games **** thread for more details) but I’m sure tomorrow I will feel ok.

In this blog I want to talk a bit about moving up limits. In general players tend to move up when several factors come together. The two main factors are probably having sufficient bankroll and having a certain win-rate over a certain amount of hands at a lower level. I think this makes sense, however for better or worse I’ve always done things a bit differently.

For starters I don’t have to worry about bankroll as I have a job, live at home and don’t have much in the way of expenses, therefore I’ve never had to worry about going broke or being able to pay the bills. I also haven’t really considered win-rate when moving up, I just do it when it feels right. For example the month before I moved up to $50NL I had played 10k hands of $25NL and broken-even over that time period. Obviously a winning player could very easily break-even for 10k hands but the point is I didn’t have a record of success, I couldn’t point to PT2 and say “I’ve won at 3PTBB/100 over 500k hands, I’m now ready to move up”. I just did it and I did it again this year when moving from $100NL to $200NL. It’s obviously difficult for me to argue that my method is responsible but I do think people rely too heavily on stats when deciding whether it’s time to move up.

I’ve played about 7k hands of higher limits this month and I’m pleased with my decision to try out some of these different games. Again running good helps but I feel like even if I wasn’t winning much money then I would still consider it the right thing to do. I’m a strong believer that playing higher and testing yourself against tougher opponents is crucial in developing and progressing as a player. It’s very easy for even dedicated players to get stuck grinding out micro stakes because they are too afraid to step outside their comfort zone, but in my opinion if becoming a better poker player is your goal then you have to push yourself and try new challenges every once in a while. I’ve linked to it before but Daniel Negreanu’s article on Why Do Sharks Eat Other Sharks? is a great explanation of what I’m talking about. While I don’t go agree that you need to go broke over and over again and play in games full of pros, I do agree that after playing higher your regular limit becomes easier and to me that’s the main point of the article. Even if you find you can’t beat the higher limit at least when you drop back down you’ll now have a higher win-rate and thus hourly rate in your regular game. I know from my own experience that this is the case for me and I’m sure it’s the same for most people.

While I am suggesting a more aggressive approach to moving up the limits, I also want to say that it’s important to be able to move down as well. I’ve gained a lot of momentum in the last few months and have all the confidence in the world, but sometime soon I’m going to hit a horrific downswing and be whinging about how I’m so unlucky and debating whether I’m even a winning player. It’s irrational but it’s human nature and regardless of whether it should, the fact is emotions play a much larger part in poker than you would expect and thus you need to adjust to that. Therefore while I’m confident I should be willing to mix it up at those higher stakes and really test myself, but when the confidence goes I have to be willing to drop down stakes and grind it out in games that are less challenging but easier to beat.

Anyway those are just some of my thoughts on moving up. Due to moving up I won my biggest ever pot today, a whopping $2k. I probably could have folded pre-flop or on the flop but once I got to the turn I was getting decent odds and decided to gambooool it up. It’s pretty crazy to think that the pot was worth more than my monthly take home pay from work… I mean how can you explain to someone outside of poker that you just won more in one minute than they make in 160 hours of work? The sad thing is I ran bad in my other games so this pot only brought me to $100 profit for the session.

Oh yeah and I better mention I set another record today, at the opposite end of the spectrum to the above unfortunately. This is the biggest pot I’ve ever lost and it’s an absolutely sick 2-outer 400BB deep. As you can probably guess from the hand history villain is a massive whale but was having an amazing day and it’s just one of those things. Pretty funny how I break my records for biggest pot won and lost in the same day!

This week I will probably be playing a lot of poker as I’ve got the Stars Blogger Championships (see header) and will play a load of cash tables at the same time. There is a chance I could make 100k hands this month which I would be very pleased with. Hell even 75k hands would be great! I am really looking forward to this Blogger Championships, I’m looking forward to playing different game variants and hopefully winning a prize or two.

Hopefully my next blog will be a review of 2008 and a preview of what might be in store for me in 2009. You might think that I’m happy with the progress I have made this year, but the truth is I’m a bit of a perfectionist and am slightly disappointed. Not saying it hasn’t been a good year, just I think I could have made it better and want to make sure I can look back at 2009 and think “what an amazing year”.

The truth of all predictions is always in your hands.

(P.S I’ve suddenly had this feeling I might have wrote about this before but I can’t be bothered to check so I’m just giving to leave it up.)

As I suspected at the start of the week, I’ve gone and played some poker since the last update. As of this precise moment I’ve played 17k hands for $200 profit. That translates into a rate of $8/hr which is not the type of hourly rate that buys you an Audi R8. However if I include rakeback it’s actually $750 profit ($29/hr) so it could definitely be a lot worse, I’m playing reasonably well so all is fine and dandy. If you want to see the results click here. As you can see I’m running ridiculously bad at $200NL, yet running red hot at $400NL. And $600NL is just a black hole, no-one at 2+2 seems to win at this level and in the very small sample I’ve had the same experience.

I lost $20 in a prop bet with Reg this week, betting that Jonas “Nebuchad” Danielsson would last longer than Marty Smyth in the Poker Million. I didn’t really think he would but as I had said he was the best player left I felt compelled to and of course lost, no big deal though. Reg also won the challenge from my last blog entry so played the $10 deep stack on Stars with the stake. The actual date of the cheque is 30th October 2008 and Reg was closest with 12th September. Surprisingly it was only him and Steve who entered so either you lot don’t like free money or it’s only Reg and Steve reading lol.

Don’t really have much else to talk about so I’ll scrape the barrel a bit. My brother bought a game recently called Left4Dead which is an online co-op shoot ‘em up, you and three others (can be played single player with bots) versus hordes of zombies. Most of the zombies are the normal brainless charging creatures but there are also “boss” zombies that have special attacks, such as the hunter that pounces on heroes and immobilizes them or the tank that can give and take a lot of damage. It’s been produced by Valve so if you enjoyed Half Life and games like that then I’d definitely recommend it. I also had a dream last night that was very similar to L4D which I found amusing when I woke up. I don’t get the tetris effect that some people do after playing a lot of poker but for some reason my brain decided to dream about hordes of zombies attacking me and some friends. You don’t have to tell me, I already know I’m a bit weird.

Until summer anyway. I had a lot of trouble studying because poker is going well and I don’t have the motivation to do anything else except play at the moment. However despite my lack of work I think I passed the advanced audit one so hopefully I’ll just have three to take in June. Whatever happens I will be making sure to finish in June and will be ordering the next study books this week. Studying at weekends ain’t gonna happen so I will set a timetable and make sure to get the necessary studying done during weekdays over the next six months. Usually I say stuff and then don’t follow through with it but I’m very confident this will happen.

One of my goals for December was to reduce my volume of play while studying for my exams. I can report to you now that I have failed on an epic scale and have already managed 30k hands this month. As I said, I don’t always do what I say! I just find it really tough not to play and to be honest I don’t regret it, games are good at the moment and I’m running and playing well so I should make the most of it. I’ve mostly been playing $200NL with some good $400NL and $600NL games thrown in and I’m up $5k so far. I’m not mentally prepared or good enough to play medium stakes on a regular basis but I’m happy to play a couple of juicy tables while grinding a bunch of smaller stakes tables. It’s a lot of fun playing with the bigger boys and I’m learning a lot from the experience.

In other poker news the DTD Anniversary Cup is now finished and dean managed to cash for the syndicate, earning me ~$50 I think. Money for nothing is always nice, well played dean and thanks for the money! Bas also managed 3rd in a stud event so well done to him as well. Poker Tour Radio covered the four days as their debut event and there are plenty of interviews with various people uploaded to the site if you’re interested. I didn’t listen to the actual broadcast so can’t comment on the live updates, however it does sound like a lot of work so credit to the people who made it happen.

Not sure what I’m going to be up to this week, as always I have a load of little tasks that I should be doing but I never seem to get around to doing them. For example I have a £400 cheque for exam expenses sat on my desk that has been there since… well maybe we can play a little game here. Send me a PM on the forum with a guess on what date the cheque was written and closest guess wins a stake to the Sunday Two Hundred Grand (rules are same as for this challenge). Send me your answer before midnight Friday 12th and I’ll reveal the winner Saturday morning. I might even get around to banking it by then…

Also I’m approaching 4k posts on the EMS forum and when I reach a milestone I like to give something back. For my 1k post I wrote an article about the squeeze play, for 2k I wrote about pot control and for 3k I made a video that only one person commented on. I have an article idea for 4k but it’s nothing spectacular so if you have anything in particular you’d like me to write about or do then post in the blog discussion thread or send me a PM. Before you go sending me messages suggesting I repeat stunts off Jackass and video it for Youtube, please keep it to poker-related ideas only!

That’s all I’ve got, enjoy your week.

Well it looks like I’m not going to end up with a $10k+ month, instead it’s ~$9k at the moment. Still good of course but today has been my biggest losing day and it’s frustrating that it happens again at the end of the month. The total loss was just under $2.8k over 2.7k hands, an impressive loss rate of over $1/hand. I know it looks like I’m insane, but if you take a closer look I’m not to blame.

Games were very good at $400NL and $600NL today, in fact I’d go as far as to say they were better than the small stakes games so I decided to play about half a dozen of them along with half a dozen $200NL tables. I don’t really call it shot taking because I’m well rolled for these games but overall it was higher stakes than normal for me. Anyway to cut a long story short it didn’t go well, I spewed a little and ran shit and was unable to make any progress back at $200NL later on in the evening. I’m unhappy with the hands I played badly but after analysing the big losing hands and looking at my graph/stats I was surprised to find I didn’t spew as much as I thought. For a while I was really angry with myself for losing so much but once I sat down and worked out it was mostly bad luck then I felt a lot better.

As always I’ll look to take the positives out of it. It was good experience and I didn’t feel over-awed or out of my depth, I see no reason why in the future I can’t go back and play these levels in the future. I’m well-rolled and as long as I game select well and don’t sit with five regs then these medium stakes games should be worth playing. And even though I lost a ton of money today I’ve still had a very good four months, looking back over my blog entries it looks like I’ve cleared over $20k on various sites. I’m sure I’ve run pretty well over that period but it’s still nice to be able to look back and have some results to provide a little confidence boost.

I suppose I’ll show you some hands from the sessions:

1 - This is the old “oh noes my draw missed, ARRRRRRRRRRIN” move that you often see from donks. Sometimes I take this line with a set and people tank-fold the river but no-one is folding TT and I doubt this villain would fold an overpair, even though he probably should. Therefore it sucks.

2 - Pretty standard. Against some players I might flat but at a higher level I just wanted to play it more straight-forward. I think against most people this is fine but it’s especially good against this player because he’s Korean and I’ve seen HH’s where he’s done some weird shit, he could definitely call my 3-bet OOP or jam worse so I’m happy with this.

3 - Undecided on this one. Obviously I rep nothing but this guy was a fish so it’s unlikely he was thinking past his own hand, which from his line looked like a missed draw or some crappy pair. Folding is obviously reasonable and I even considered calling, however I didn’t want to lose to QT or Ad2d so I decided to put my stack in again. I didn’t expect him to fold the toppest pair but he did tank for a while so I think it’s probably ok. Marginal but I like it.

4 - Not really much I can say here.

5 - Man this was such a gay hand. I’m not sure if I like raising the flop, obviously getting it in can’t be terrible but flatting all the way might be even better. River was very interesting… I bet small hoping to get called by 9x or something like 8d8 and then he check-raised… I guess I should probably fold but I’m a station in these situations where I don’t have a clue what they are doing. FWIW I think he should just felt it on the flop.

I doubt you’re interested in the bad beats/bad plays at $200NL so instead I’ll finish with a turn move of honour. My image was so shit at this table so I felt open-shoving would look so ridiculous that it was the best way to get paid… SNAP CALLED lol.

I just haven’t felt motivated to study the last couple of days but I am going to try to get into it… I know with just a bit of revision I can pass these exams and get one step closer to finishing. I won’t be blogging again until after my final exam on the 8th of December so until then I bid you adieu.