Trying to get back into a routine!!

I have been trying for awhile now to get back into a routine.  I can remember trying to set a standard for myself to play 20 nights in a month which is basically 4-5 days per week.  The last 3 months I have had so many issues trying to do this for a bunch of reasons.  The biggest reason has really just been trying to enjoy the summer and our cottage.  We renovated our cottage over the winter and basically transformed it into a lakehouse, we spent a lot of time setting it up and have been there most weekends.

Also occupying a lot of my time has been my older son’s soccer team, I promised myself I would not try to control the team and be the manager so I settled for an assistant manager role but still ended up going to pretty much every practice and of course every game.  Lastly I celebrated my 40^th birthday this summer and it seemed like we celebrated for 3 straight weeks.  The highlight was definitely having a big party at the cottage where we drank like we were in high school for 48 hours.

I have also been doing a lot of private coaching and started group coaching over the summer which has worked out very well.  I had said at one point I didn’t want to have more than 4 students and I am now up to 8 but I like it so much everytime someone asks me I do not like saying no.  Hopefully when September hits I can get into a better routine between coaching and playing and I can get some decent volume in.

Lastly I can’t say no to open faced Chinese poker which seems to keep happening. This game is so much fun and my degenerate friends have introduced wild cards, magic cards (used in bonus it pays double) and the death card (you have to use this card in a bonus or your hand is dead).  In September I am going to curb my addiction and stick to coaching, videos and playing online.

I finally seemed to turn it around in August and had a winning month after my biggest drought in 4 years.  I hope to keep it going with a lot of momentum into September.  Next time I blog it should be about playing poker and not trying to play poker!

Long Time No Blog!

May 2012 will go down as a total blur. I had a very small profit in tourneys but spent almost all of my free time getting our new cottage ready. It seemed like all of our energies over the winter were into getting ready for when we opened the cottage. We spent almost every weekend at the cottage in May which made getting volume in very difficult however I still tried to play as much as I could. A small profit is always better than a loss although mentally sometimes I have found it tough to get up the desire to play when it feels like the wins are few and far between.

Rather than worry so much about how much volume I am getting in, I have tried to focus on making really good decisions when I play. One of the things that I have tried to use to help me do that is PL8 MTTs which I find really help you on playing proper position and reading flops and board textures. I had a couple of scores the same night I played these O8 tourneys so I have continued to play these to try to get some volume in.

I have also been experimenting with some other forms of poker like 6 max hypers. These seem to be nothing more than life tilting to me although I think if I focused on them, I can make them work. The problem for me is they just don't seem fun because to be profitable you need about 15-20 going which means you rarely if ever see what happened in them during your allins. They seem like such a roller coaster however the majority of the players make several fundamental errors which means the game is beatable.

My private coaching has been a bit of a revolving door as I had 2 really good students drop out because they couldn't dedicate enough time to practice so they did not want to continue however I picked up another new student also from the UK. I feel like I am doing a great job getting ready for the next Austin Powers movie listening to these awesome accents. I have some really good ideas to change my private coaching sessions into something a bit different. I am excited to try it out soon just need a couple of more students to get it going the way I think it will work preferably from the UK or around that time zone.

That brings me to my next brag about MWCON1. Martin who is a really great guy has been my student for about 3 months or so. The last time I blogged was about him getting a 6k+ score. His biggest lifetime score on stars was $278 before I started coaching him. I have to say he did all the work as all I did was point him into the right direction. Even after his 6k score he still took out sessions seriously. I coached him again this morning and tonight railed and watched him make another FT in the same tourney as last time this time chopping heads up for $9k. Basically Martin has about $15k in profit after pretty much breaking even before this. Martin's success makes me very excited about coaching more and I can't wait to take on more students.

My 40th birthday is fast approaching, it seems like it will be here so quickly but I am not giving in and hope to continue to improve this year's results no matter how far off target I am for now. I hope to blog some more in June hopefully about some really big wins of my own!

Closing out April 2012 on a High

April 2012 was non eventful losing month for me at the tables. I guess the biggest positive I can take out of it is mentally I think I feel ok about it. Usually constant losing for a month really gets into my head but this month I did not think about it much. I still think my Q2 goal is very attainable and I am working hard to get there. One thing I was guilty of was not putting in enough volume. I always tell people who ask how to get better or improve results that they should play more. I believe that playing more often and more tourneys gives you more of a chance to beat variance by getting enough chances at a score. There were a lot of reasons I did not get volume in but mostly was the Ottawa Senators playoff run. I watched every game with our 12 year old son. My fondest memories of my pre-teens was watching hockey with my father who passed away in 2001. Nothing reminded me more of being a kid than watching hockey with my boy who did not leave my side for any of the games. We even went to game 6 together and lost our voices cheering our hearts out. By now you are probably wondering what the heck is up with my title of this blog when I was a losing player in April and I cheered for a hockey team that lost. Well what I have not mentioned yet was my month as a poker coach. As I mentioned before I started private coaching about 4 months ago. I felt like I was making good progress before this month and I had worked out a style that could be successful as it has worked for me so many times coaching other things in the workplace. The method was all about ownership from the student and action plans that were easily attainable before we met again. Things seemed to be working and by the last few days of the month I had 2 players turn a 1k profit for April which is very respectable for Small Stakes MTTs. Then it happened, on Sunday April 29th I had a session with a player I am sure you will hear lots about. We were in our 5th session and this student really seemed to be clicking on his own play and picking up on some really small things I had pointed out that could make some significant changes to his game. It seemed like real minor adjustments but it kind of felt like he was really catching on by the end. Fast forward about 12 hours later and he sends me an email to look him up on stars. About 15 mins after our session he started to play the bigger 8.80 which had over 10000 runners and he was at the FT with a chance at a significant payout. After a lot of back and forth he took down a serious chop score of about $6800. I have to say that since I started playing poker this was one of the best feelings I have ever had and it rivaled some of my own big scores as far as sense of achievement. I really felt like I could be a good poker coach even though I had coached for awhile without any kind of quantitative results it is just speculation until my students actually get results. So even though as a player April was a fail, as a coach April was a huge success. With our newly renovated cottage opening in May I really hope this month is great both as a coach and a player. I hope to update later on in the month on my progress.

2nd Quarter Goals

I was pretty happy with the way the first quarter ended up as I broke the 10k profit mark in the last few days. 2011 was not the greatest year for me but 2012 has seemed to bounce back and if I can possible repeat 10k profit each quarter the year to me would be a huge success. Realistically though I realize a lot of my profit in the first quarter came from one score and I will need to have another big one to get anywhere.

April has started very blah after March ended so well. I know I am pressing too hard and every all-in I lose feels like the end of the world. This is for sure the worst part about grinding MTTs and I keep telling myself I will get through it as I always do. I find the worst mistake I can make during times like this is to not play for long stretches even though the temptation is there to take multiple nights off so far I have resisted the urge and have basically played so far almost every free night I have had this month.

I am looking forward to later in the week when the Sens returns to the playoffs. Even though most people reading my blog on Cardrunners don’t care too much about hockey it’s still a very big deal to me. Before poker my passion was NHL hockey and that passion is basically back. There is really nothing better than cheering your hometown team on during playoff hockey. Even though our team had the worst record of all the playoff teams I still feel pretty confident the Sens will at least make it an exciting. The best part is they were picked to finish last this year so making the playoffs make it a huge bonus. Anyway Go Sens Go!

As work has been insanely busy again as the summer approaches, I am getting more and more excited that our cottage will be ready soon. I am pretty sure I mentioned this place before but we basically rebuilt the place and its going to be awesome. Ange says we can’t call it a cottage anymore because it’s too nice so lake house it is lol. We will open it around May 18 so it’s just over a month away.


I will check back again later in April hopefully to update on my progress for April.

Back in the Normal Grind

It’s been a good few weeks poker wise. Not that have many big scores to show for it but I feel like that decent to big win is coming soon. Whenever I can get into a good rhythm of playing I find I kind of find a groove and the decisions I make at the table get much better. I also have this well played theory (for anyone that will listen to me) that winning MTTs is about volume that you need to play as many as you can as often as you can to show profit. I am squeaking out some small profits to keep my roll afloat and keep me from feeling like the next win is not coming. I am sure its coming just need to keep playing until it comes.

Also during March I am very happy with how my videos and coaching have gone. I release the end of my bigger 27.50 series and the video that came out today was a live video I did commentary on the actual play. The result of the FT was bad but I thought the video turned out well. I also picked up 3 new students during March which was best month so far since I started coaching. I find it’s getting much easier with how I approach coaching and I really look forward to each session.

The Micromillions Main Event got me to play Sunday afternoon this week. I had enough fpps to buy into the Sunday Million too so I kind of went crazy and played almost everything from 1:30pm to about 5pm. My PC has been lagging a lot so I had to watch how many tables I opened. I didn’t really run deep in anything but the million which I felt really good in but ran out of steam and ended up short. Finally with 13bbs I got KK in the cut-off. There was an MP open and shove from the hijack for 24bbs, I called, and then the button called. The original raiser folded and showed AK and I was up against JJ and AK. By the river I was drawing dead as a jack hit the flop. I was still happy with my performance and I definitely want to play it again soon. The fields on Sundays just amaze me and the poker feels even softer than pre-black Friday.

Tomorrow is kind of a dark day lol. I have 2 really great friends that I have been friends with since 1986. We were all born in 1972 and the first guy is turning 40 tomorrow. We are going out to celebrate because you are supposed to but I can’t figure out where the time went and how I can possibly be turning 40 this year. I feel more like 30+10. I still have a few months to worry about it and for tomorrow I can bug my friend and being really old.

I say this at the end of every blog but I hope to be blogging about a big score soon!

March isnt half over already is it???

So I had told myself I was going to blog at least twice a month then somehow the same thing happened and I had hard time keeping up. Just seems this year has been flying by.

I haven’t really broke free yet this year still kind of inching along not being able to piece together good nights. I would love to have a great excuse like I am not playing enough or been short on time. Truth is I have been playing like crap and having a difficult time putting my finger on what the issue is. The problem I have with my style is when it works it looks great, when it doesn’t work; it’s a bit of a mess.

I think one of my biggest issues is just calling off too light and not folding enough when I should be. Either I get too caught up in trying to win a particular hand or I just don’t want to fold when I have some showdown value and I think I could be good. The strangest thing is I am around even on the month even though I feel like I am in my biggest downswing since last year at this time. I am pretty determined to get through this latest downswing by staying positive and keep playing as much as I can.

It has been a little bit tough to put in volume it always seems like something comes up that seems better than playing. I usually do better when I can string 3-4 sessions in a row but it also isn’t easy to pull that off sometimes.

I managed to make it to the Hull Casino to play the Thursday tourney last week. The funny thing is, I have never played live poker there in the 3 years since they have had it. A friend asked me last minute if I would go and even though my first reaction was to say no, I have begun to realize that if I never go out anywhere I am never going to know what the outside of my house looks like. I had a good time at the tourney, I am not a big fan of not coming home after work but it’s difficult to make it to the tourney if I don’t come home so we went for dinner than the tourney. The structure was fast and fun; I couldn’t accumulate any chips but had a lot of fun shoving when it came time. I ended up losing vs. my friend in a huge 3 way all-in with 77, he had 88 and the bb had QQ. The board was J87xx so we had a lot of fun with that one.

Other than poker I am getting pretty excited for our cottage which we basically have torn down and rebuilt into a house. It started as a wider door for the bathroom and one thing led to another lol. Its looking like it will be ready in Mid May and we are really excited. Besides the cottage I am also really anxious for the Sens playoff run to start looking like they will be in tough stuck with Boston in the first round but still not bad for a team picked to finish last.

That is all for now....hoping to write about some big wins before the end of March!

Hello March

On my quest to blog 2-3 times a month I have not done that well since I did not do it in February and it’s only the 2nd month in. To say we had a lot of stuff go on would be an understatement but lets just say poker and blogging sunk really low on the priority list to the point where it was non existent and not important. I managed 6 sessions in February and turned a very very small profit but I feel like I made some good progress.

March has started ok, I have had some close calls and small profits and I managed to play 3 nights in a row so far even though 1 counted in February.

I will be taking a break for the weekend for our epic home game for zachjackmom's birthday should be a good time. I am hoping to get back into the grind again and settle into some kind of routine. Watching the Sens has gotten pretty much more exciting than I can ever remember so I have been enjoying doing that while grinding.

Coaching is going really well too as I now have 3 active students. I look forward to doing that almost more than playing sometimes because it is fun following progress on different students. I also find I learn a lot when I am breaking down hands and different hands and different situations. One of my students spent last weekend at Macau playing live so he wants to discuss live play which should be fun.

I have also had my favourite video series come out this month which was video of me shipping the bigger 27.50 on New Year’s Day. Part 3 comes out next week and it was a lot of fun to do. I did another video that has not come out yet but it is live video of me playing and giving commentary as I was playing in a tourney I ended up fting. I taped over 2 hours of it and edited it to about an hour but some of it is really really funny and good video too I think.

I will be back again in March hopefully to talk about some sick wins lol.