Nerdin' before birdin'

Last time I posted a blog, early this month, I had just moved from Stars to iPoker with the intention of playing $3/$6 and moving up to $5/$10 and beyond asap, but I came back to Korea on the 8th and couldn't get any tables going on iPoker due to timezones so I've split my roll across FTP and Stars again. Before coming back to Korea, this month started pretty decently, being up $3k in the first 5 days of the month. Despite only playing 3k hands and running $7k below expectation it made me feel like I was getting back in the groove, winning in the way I used to, however since moving back to Stars/FTP I've been losing again despite running above expectation as you can see here:



I'm still up for the month including the $3k won on iPoker and $500 won in live games here in Korea, but I'm still super super tilted. I spent 50k hands on Stars 100NL over the last 2 months and was barely above breakeven, and now I'm playing some $1/$2 deep on FTP and doing even worse than breakeven. I've definitely ran bad in terms of running into more than my fair share of coolers, and not coolering people very often, simply not making many big hands to start with and not being able to hit shit in a reraised pot. I know that I can still win at $3/$6 and $5/$10, but can't I win at $0.50/$1 and $1/$2? I know I don't play my best games at those stakes, and I get tilted easily because the shit I see is so stupid and yet I'm still losing to it, but I used to crush these games when I was playing them, and I sucked back then. Ugh. I'm interested in sweating people who play these stakes, and also being sweated if anyone is up for that (PM me). Although I think that I think a lot deeper than most players at these stakes, maybe I simply overthink things and end up playing bad because of it, it's like I valuebet thin in a spot because I'm repping tons of missed draws and not many value hands and they end up tanking and calling with better. I bluff in some spots where I'm repping almost no bluffs at all and they snapcall with some garbage that sucks vs my entire range, unfortunately I always seem to have the wrong part of my range in these spots, maybe I bluff more than I think I do in some spots, I don't feel like I am, but maybe I actually am.

I'd talk some about my life but not too much has been happening. d.Apollo has been here for more than 2 weeks and we've been going out often, he's been "birdin'" a whole lot and we've been to the casino a couple of times too. I've finally quit wow and have been getting up earlier in the morning the last couple of days, allowing me to put in a shitton of hands (5.5k in the last 2 days). Also finally been going to the gym some, something that I've been talking about doing for ages but never went more than a couple of times before and never with any consistency. Hopefully I can continue working out, getting up early, putting in a lot of hands and hopefully start running good or figure out if/what I'm doing wrong sometime soon.

I intended to move my roll to Prima, but I couldn't get a deal set up so I moved $10k to iPoker leaving another $10k on neteller to move to Prima at a later date. Anyway so far iPoker has been going pretty poorly, the games are not that bad if you can find 50bb or Full Stack tables, but I've been running so far below expectation due to a continuation of bad luck. Before moving to iPoker when I was attempting to make my stats pretty by playing 50c/$1 on Stars I ended up running about 30 buyins below expectation in the last 10k hands or so, and this trend has continued with me running almost 10 buyins below expectation in 2k hands at iPoker. To make things even worse I've had aces dealt to me _ONE_ time in almost 2k hands, and I'm -$1.3k with KK over this sample. At least at $3/$6 I've been playing more focused and tilt free than when I was messing around at 50c/$1 on Stars so that's a good start despite the results.





d.Apollo, who shall be referred to as Shaun from now on arrived here a couple of days ago, we've been wasting away the majority of the day just nerding it out in my room playing some poker, watching some videos etc. Later in the day the plan has been to get some drinks in and play some UFC Undisputed on the xbox for a laugh, it's kinda fun with friends and drinks. We also watched the Champions League Final where I won $10 from him on a bet, ship it!. We went out last couple of nights and met up with a couple of my friends. Nothing amazing happened I guess, though Shaun did do some strange antics on the way back home, for instance randomly doing pushups in the middle of the road, getting his cock stung by nettles and somehow ordering a hot n' spicy pizza with like 4 full chilis on them. The guy put 2 on and asked "you want more?", but he was some Indian guy and Shaun didn't understand so he just said yeah sure mate without knowing what he said, he was almost dying after he ate half the pizza and I had to help him out with it -_-. I did end up falling out with a couple of my friends last night, dunno if they were acting that way cause Shaun is here and they wanna make fun of me or show off in front of him or what but I got pretty tilted and walked out on them. I dunno I guess it sucks when your friends all have 0 money and they constantly try to make you feel guilty about having any success and suggest that it's the only reason anybody likes me etc, even though they have known me way before I played poker so they prob. aren't being serious, but still they do it so often that it just got to me this time.

Shaun had been talking about some event that he was saving/planning for in his blog and I learnt what that was the other day - he's coming back to Korea with me when I leave on June 7th. It surprised me a little, and although I did have a slight suspicion that his saving up had something to do with his visit to see me, I didn't guess it would be this. Anyway I'm pretty happy about it, will give me more shit to do when I'm back in Korea, which is one of the worst things about living in Korea for me at the moment. Another friend from home, Tom, is also gonna be coming to Korea in June also, as an English teacher so I'll have 2 more people to hang out with.

I feel this Summer is going to be a pretty important one for me in terms of life direction, in Korea I don't have that many friends, and those I do have are not gonna be lifelong friends. I mean I may stay in contact with them but everyone, myself included, is moving around a lot so I'm not gonna be able to see them much regardless. I leave Korea in December and after then I'm gonna come back to England and immediately start searching for somewhere to move, my "friends" are all gonna be outside of Mansfield, but I'm not sure if that bothers me the more and more I think about my friends anyway. I do need to settle down somewhere though and get a better set of friends, right now I really wanna just get a place with some poker players, preferably Ket and others since he's a far better friend than my "closer" friends anyway and it'll prob be way more fun to hang out with poker players than hang out with my broke real life friends who do nothing but try and make me feel bad for having money.

Meh, rant makes it sound like I'm feeling way worse than I am. It's good that Shaun is here, and that he's coming to Korea with me, and I'm also happy with how I'm playing poker lately even if I haven't been playing that many hands in the last week or so. I guess I just needed to reflect some considering I fell out with my friends and the upcoming life changes in the next half year or so. Anyway, that's all for now.

I can't stop. I posted in my last blog that I had finally quit playing 50c/$1 and moved back to my regular games, and then 2 days later I was back at those tables trying to push my winrate on pokertableratings.com a little higher, god I hate that site. I ended up losing 12 buyins and running a good 24 buyins below expectation over about 8k hands and now my winrate there is back to breakeven. However, I have found an escape! I have withdrew all of my money from PokerStars and will be moving to a smaller site, this is something I did when my confidence was running low and I was running bad around about a couple of years ago, and I'm gonna be moving back to that same site - Prima, I hope I can access that site from South Korea or my options are gonna be really limited when I move back there on June 7th.

Right now my confidence is extremely extremely low, and it's not because I don't believe that my A game is still good, just that I have wasted many many hours, about a month of time and 50k hands playing 50c/$1 just to make my stats pretty on some stupid website when I shouldn't even care, and even worse - failing at even achieving that. Looking back over those 50k hands I can say that I played awful, I don't think I played my A game for longer than a stretch of a couple of thousand hands, and was often times tilted from the moment I sat down at the table. Many small things tilted me even further at the table, when I saw people raise my 3bb button open to 13bb from the blinds with 100bb stacks that tilted me, when people would slowplay on like the worst boards ever to slowplay like 77 on 678hh I got tilted, when people would check back top pair on dry boards I got tilted even if I ended up winning the pot, when people flat called 4bets with aces I got tilted. I saw a lot of things that I deem to be either bad in a vacuum and/or game theory wise, people at these limits don't care at all about balance whatsoever and play in a very exploitable manner, and I'm really pissed off that I didn't exploit them anywhere near as much as I should've. I played against a few low stakes LP regs and I'm sure they are wondering how I won at $5/$10 for 5+ptbb/100 over 100k hands and 7ptbb/100 over 30k hands at $10/$20 last year, and frankly, I'm beginning to wonder to, maybe I just ran like jesus. I mean sure I struggle to take 50c/$1 seriously when I play there, I get tilted easily even though the money means nothing, but even so I should be able to DESTROY those limits and I just ended up getting beaten by unbalanced exploitable regs that make senseless plays and don't seem to understand hand ranges at all, and even worse, often times losing money to the vast amount of complete retards (a la 80/10 types) there.

This new start is going to be good for me I think, I will jump straight into $3/$6 games and there are no tracking sites that I'm aware of that tracks Prima hands so I can have the anonymity I would like. I tried to get my ID changed at PokerStars cause I really don't like people knowing who I am at the table (Not that I'm famous or anything, but I just prefer to be unknown), but it's not allowed so I'm definitely happy to be able to get a new screenname and play where nobody knows who I am. Despite wasting so much time, energy and running below expectation I've still made $8k profit in the last month and a half since restarting poker and I know that I can still play a good game when I'm on focus, in a good frame of mind and caring, I just hope that I can regain that frame of mind and my confidence when I move sites.

I don't have any screenshots of stats etc, I deleted my database from PokerTracker since I don't intend to play on Stars for a while and there is no other reason to keep the hands in the database, but if you want a laugh you can look up my stats on that gay site PokerTableRatings.com. Look at me! I can't even beat 50c/$1...!

I feel like my last few blog posts have mainly been about those OCD tendency and my overcaring about my statistics looking pretty, but hopefully this is the end of it and I can get back down to buisness, I'm looking forward to it because I'm actually quite motivated to play a lot of poker lately and am starting to enjoy the game more than I have in the last 6 months or so.

/whine. Peace!