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Bit drunk right now and felt like blogging a bit, anyway, it's been a long time since I last blogged. Last time I posted, I was talking about how I was looking to play tons of PLO, make lots of money and VPPs and aim for SNE, pass my driving test, get a Porsche Cayman S and get sexy this year. Hasn't really worked out that way thus far. In April, I came back to Korea after leaving last September. I had lived in Korea for around about 2 years total time in between Jan 08 and Sept 10, but this time back was a little different. This time I came with Ket and we got a hotel instead of living in my own place. When I lived here, I always lived either near or with my girlfriend at the time, but we broke up in January, so it was a different atmosphere in April. Still, I hung out with her a lot, and truthfully, a large part of the reason I wanted to come back to Korea was to get back with her. In any case, all this time I spent with Ket and the ex resulted in a lot less poker, workout, driving related time, so I had put the back burners on a couple of goals, and completely destroyed any chance of making SNE by that point already. Not that I'm saying I regret it, but in some way it always feels depressing to set goals and fall at the first hurdle, like I wasn't even close to SNE or getting sexy by then.

As for my driving test, well, I failed my first attempt back in March, just before I came to Korea for the first time. However after 4 hours of lessons and a 2nd attempt in May, shortly after I left Korea in late April, I managed to pass. I still don't have a car though, but I am looking at a few cars. BMW 320d, Mazda RX8 R3 and Ford Focus ST-3 are the cars I've mainly been looking at. They're all very different, but I think I'll probably end up going for the boring, economical and comfortable choice in the BMW 320d, but we'll see how the next month goes. Going back home to England Sept 8th (My birthday) so will make the decision then, will see how poker goes, hopefully get some test drives in when I'm back and make the decision from there, maybe I'll even consider some other cars in the £10k-£15k price range if anyone has any other suggestions.

Anyway, I've actually been back here in Korea since late May, I left the day after my 2nd driving test and have been here ever since. For the first month I was mainly alone, stayed with the ex-girlfriend's parents for a few days and then found my own place. Some of her friends from the States stayed at my place, we all went to Thailand together for a few days and then we came back. Mid June, Ket came out again and we've been living together since, we're staying in some 2 room apartment in central(ish) Seoul. I's a fairly nice place, but nothing special. One plus is that it's quite close to my old apartment (7 minutes by taxi) that I lived in here in the past, so I'm familiar with the area and we end up hanging out in a lot of the old spots I used to hang out in. It's quite nostalgic, it reminds me of the good times and makes me feel quite regretful for ever leaving Korea and getting into a situation where I basically had to lose my girlfriend. Still, you do what you want at the time and obviously in the moment I wanted to be alone and play more poker, make lots of money, get SNE and all that worthless shit that actually means diddly squat. Oh well.

The "getting sexy" goal has not gone entirely to plan either. I mean, it could've gone worse I guess. After leaving the States in late Sept 2010 I weighed in at my heaviest ever - about 82kg (I'm like 176~177cm ish), after a month of atrocious eating in the States where I had gained about 7kg in 1 month. When I came back to Korea I was about 76kg and now I'm 74kg after 1 month of gymming with Ket so I guess it's some improvement, but it's pretty tough to get anywhere in Korea. This is largely because all the people I know here go out frequently, and this most often times involves lots of alcohol consumption and lots of greasy, unhealthy foods. Not that I'm saying that this is a bad thing, obviously I enjoy hanging out at good resutaurants and bars with friends having a good 'ol chinwag, but it's not exactly conducive to weight loss. It's ok though, I'm gymming a decent amount at the moment, showing some small progress despite the awful diet, and am confident that when I'm back in my home town I'll focus on this more and make more progress, but I mayaswell have some fun while I'm here afterall and not focus TOO much on the poker and workout grinding.

As for some poker results, this year started fairly well. I was up about $35k in cash games by the end of March and looking towards an easy ride to a $100k+ year on the tables and whatever else in rakeback, but a recent $20k+ downswing in PLO has fucked that idea over. I've ran pretty shit at $2/$4 and $3/$6 PLO overall, but on top of that, I've definitely let it get to me a bit too much aswell and have ended up playing some very poor PLO at times and spewing a lot of money. That's the thing in PLO, the variance is massive, and even if you're a big winner, it's only gonna be so long before you experience a big downswing, and how it effects you is going to make a huge difference to your long term winrate. Unfortunately, this is definitely the worst downswing I've experienced buy-in wise in my 5.5 year career of poker and I've definitely let it get to me too much. God only knows what I'll do if this continues for another 50 buyins, but let's not hope that happens. I think I have a reasonable edge in the $2/$4 PLO games on Stars, almost every table I sit at has 1 player with <3BB/100 winrate, and often times there are 2 players that are that awful, and yet I still can't seem to win. PTR is a little off with my winrate, I think it says I'm down like 8.1k total in $2/$4 PLO at the moment but in actuality it's more like -$5k and I'm almost breakeven in terms of EV, but even still, the games seem so soft that it's hard to take that I'm even "breakeven" in terms of winrate. I'm sure it's just variance though.

Hold'Em wise, things have gone much better. I'm above $1/hand so far in my database, though as a sidenote, this is just my laptop and I'm missing some hands that I lost when my laptop blew up in Korea, thus losing whatever hands I played from late May-late July when it blew up and I don't have the HHs from my desktop. That being said, there's not many Hold'Em hands missing anyway, infact, there's about $2k in profit from Hold'Em games missing, mostly from a 5/10Euro game I played where I won $1.5k in about 30 hands, unfortunately Ladbrokes won't send me the hand histories in a format I can import which upsets me a little cause I'm quite OCD and like to keep track of my actual results and not just stare at some half-true numbers.

Anyway, here's some obligatory screenshots:

Hold'Em:


PLO:


I also won a $109 NLHE headsup tournament for about $7.6k and came 7th in a $500~ PLO 6max SCOOP tournament for about $5.6k so I'm prob up like $10k~$11k in tournament winnings on top of this, about $14k-$15k in rakeback/bonuses so far, and probably another $4k-5k in cash game winnings that are either lost hand histories or on my desktop. Probably about a $50k ish year so far all inclusive, which is definitely better than the last 2 years but not really what I had planned at the beginning of the year, still, there's a few months left, I feel like PLO is very beatable and a big upswing is just around the corner and Hold'Em games are still beatable, I'm def gonna get sexier when I get home, I've passed my license and will inevitably get a car when I get home, so things can only get better and I'm gonna close in on the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year.

Cheers,
maybe I'll blog again by years end, I do blog pretty infrequently though!

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Hey guys long time since I wrote a blog. I would've posted sooner but a combination of disinterest and lack of internet have made it tough. The reason I say disinterest is because I noticed in one of the comments in an older blog I did someone posted something along the lines of "Why do you get a featured blog and not me? I have boring life stories to tell aswell", I don't remember exactly what it was but it was something like that. Comments like that really demotivate me from posting at all, I only post cause I feel some people are interested and it's a good way of getting shit off my mind, but if people don't wanna read then there's no point in me writing anything. I don't say this cause I want people to start kissing my ass, just explaining why I haven't posted sooner. Anyway I didn't even choose to make my blog a featured blog, nor do I remember any mod asking me if I wanted it to be (They may have, but I don't remember it)

Anyway, quite a few things have changed in my life since the last blog post. I've been back in England since September and went halves on a brand new house with my parents, which we all moved into mid November. It's a 3 story 5 bedroom house, the 3rd story has 2 really big bedrooms, one which I'm using as a bedroom and the other is basically a games room with a sofa, TV, PS3, computer and chair in that I mainly just use for quiet poker time, but also a decent place to have some friends over and chill a bit. It's a tad boring living at home at times but it's comfortable at the same time and I definitely miss home when I'm away for a long time.

As I was saying about lack of internet in the first paragraph, we were supposed to get connected on December 7th. Well, December 7th comes and without notice or warning the technicians fail to show up, it turns out they sent us an email saying they couldn't come, but how in god's name are we supposed to read an email saying that they can't install our internet at the moment, when we don't have internet!? Naturally, we called to complain the following day anyway, and they said that the installation would be delayed until late December or early January at the soonest. Several phone calls over the next few days, horrible service from Sky and we told them to fuck off and ordered internet with Virgin Media. Unfortunately, the main reason we couldn't get internet was because the BT technicians in the area were very far behind schedule, and both Sky and Virgin Media had to use the same technicians to install our internet anyway, so we didn't get a better quote on when to expect the installation from them either, I think they told us January 9th or something. Because of this, I was unable to get online at all during the second half of November and most of December. I ended up getting a USB mobile broadband dongle, however it was unreal slow and choppy, and frequently dropped during the day hours, like multiple times per hour. So in order to get any poker hands in I had to wait until midnight or 1am when it was a bit more stable to start my session, and since I was/am trying to get on SNE pace I usually didn't end up going to bed until some time between 7 and 10am. Anyway, we didn't get ADSL installed until about 3 weeks ago and when we did get it, it didn't even work properly. Random disconnects were occuring very frequently, the router light would just turn itself off and then reconnect itself anytime between 10 seconds and a minute later. This probably happened 10 times a day if I spent a good amount of time in front of the computer. It has settled down for the most part now and for the past week and a half or so I've had about 2 disconnects, which is definitely still more than I'd want, particularly when pokering, but it's a lot better than nothing or the USB dongle I was using before. Highly tilting though to go 2 months without proper internet, and then when you finally get it, it's still tosh.

Without the internet I usually ended up playing FF13 or GT5 on the PS3, watching DVDs and Top Gear and getting super interested in cars in general. It motivated me to start learning, I know, I know, I'm 26 and don't drive and that's sad but better late than never I guess. I booked my theory test beginning of February and I'll be taking it on the 25th, if I pass I'll book my practical and start a 1 week, 30 hour intensive course the previous week before my test date and hopefully pass first time and be on the road before long. Being a lazy nobsack I've put about 1 hour studying in so far, if that, and achieved like 31/50 on a mock test with nothing more than common sense, like my knowledge on the subject is virtually nonexistant. Some of the questions are hilariously dumb and I'll be very insulted if I don't pass (Need 43/50) when I do the real thing. Here's an example of a stupid question:



Unfortunately they're not all quite this easy, lots of them hinge on actually knowing what various roadsigns are or various rules and regulations which you need to have learnt and can't rely on logic, but still, I'm gonna be pretty embarrassed if I don't pass considering about half of the questions are on a similar level of stupid as the question above.

Having an interest in cars motivates me to attain SNE, as it would provide enough FPPs to purchase a Porsche Cayman S by year's end, which is obviously a pretty sick car and is probably far better than anything else I'd likely be getting as my first car. I was even thinking of using the FPPs to pay for a part of a 911, and paying the rest with cash if the year goes well and I make good money on top of SNE, but naturally I'm a lazy bastard and as much as I'd like to end up with a Porsche as my first car, it's a real struggle to put that much time in for me particularly when running poorly as I am at the moment, in fact, last year I made a total of 45k VPPs for the entire year. I even set a picture of a white Cayman S as my desktop backdrop to motivate me some, I'm not sure it works, but can't hurt I guess, unfortunately though, I'm already quite far behind having spent a couple of weeks in London in January and having terrible internet until a couple of weeks ago. I'm currently at 89k VPPs and SNE pace is 147.5k VPPs.

I've been missing Korea quite a lot lately so I'm going back for a 3 week stay in April and I'm pleased to say Ket will be joining me. I can't wait to enjoy the food there and the bars I used to frequent and hopefully catch up with some old friends who are still there, if there are any left. There's virtually nothing to do or anywhere to go in my home town, it's weird that I start to miss home when I'm in Seoul for any length of time given how much better it is than here, but then when I'm back here I begin to miss Seoul too. Can't win I guess. Not gonna say much about it but I also broke up with my girlfriend lately, we're still close though and I'll be seeing a lot of her in Seoul. That will also be an obstacle to my SNE pursuit, so during my 3 weeks in Korea I really don't see myself playing much poker, and even when I do play I'm definitely not going to play anymore than 6 tables on my laptop, I struggle enough with 9-12 tables on a 30" monitor, but on a laptop it would be impossible.

Another obstacle to my SNE chase is World of Warcraft. Yes indeed, I'm wasting time playing that damn game once again. I don't think I would have, but the expansion came out late December or whenever it was and I was dying to get my hands on it when I had no internet, so obviously when my internet started working again I logged on, got from 80 to 85 in 2 days and have already put in like 4-5 days in-game played time in like 2 weeks. I don't really think Cataclysm is that great though, but it's still very addictive, currently the queues for heroics are really long for anyone but tanks, infact it takes about 25-35 minutes for me to get a group on my Mage. It takes an absurd amount of time to gear up compared to WOTLK, you need to grind all the rep factions to exalted, spend ages levelling professions up and farming mats, or pay insane amounts of gold to get your hand on epic gear now. Some people may think this is a good thing since it makes it harder for scrubs, but I disagree, it isn't really any "harder" to get the items, it just requires a lot more time, I mean it's not difficult to kill a bunch of mobs for mats or run x heroics, it's just a matter of time. In all the time I've spent on it I only have 3 epic items, in the same time frame I would've had all epics, would've at least BEEN to every existing raid etc in WOTLK. It's really just the amount of time you need to put into it to get anywhere that I'm disliking about Cataclysm, I like the way the talent trees have been reworked, some of the new content and spells and whatnot, but yea, just way too time consuming and that's very bad for anyone who wants to play lots of poker.

Anyway since this is a poker site and my life isn't really all that interesting I mayaswell leave the blog with a few screenshots of my year so far:

Here is the reports page, there's also like 4k hands of 2c/5c NL on top but it wasn't exactly serious and had no effect on the money won since it's such small stakes, so I filtered that limit out:



I still feel like my NL game is fairly competetive which is a nice feeling considering I've barely played any for months. I think I put in 15-20k hands of 0.25/0.5 euro on ladbrokes at the end of last year running at 8.5BB/100 or so, but apart from that really haven't played any for a long time. I'd like to win about $500 more at $3/$6 just to get that limit green on my stars PTR. I'm not going to try and make that winrate = x like I tried for so long at 50c/1 but I'd just like it to be green. I know it doesn't matter all that much since in my HEM I can see I have a lifetime winrate of 3.5BB/100 at 3/6, but still, I'm kinda OCD and I'd like it all to be green. Hopefully it won't take long to make 1 more buyin.

And a graph:



Currently 27 buyins under EV, but I was 32 buyins under EV at some point earlier in the year so I guess it could be worse. I also feel like I've ran really poorly in terms of flopping hands, running into hands, and poor board runouts on top of running below EV. I'm certainly not amazing at PLO by any stretch of the imagination and I've done some very dumb things even over the past couple of days, but I do feel like I have a small edge at $2/$4 PLO and potential to have a very large edge in the future with more experience in the game. It certainly doesn't help my winrate playing 9 tables (12 the last 2 days), which is a lot for someone who has 4 tabled for years, nor does having a connection that has disconnected me a sum total of about 10 times over this sample size and folded me off of every hand at every table, sometimes with reasonable amount of $ in the pot. It's hard to say if my feeling is correct though, the swings that are possible in PLO is just ridiculous, I heard that krmont22 had a 200 buyin downswing, and he's a 4+BB/100 winner at 1/2 and 2/4 PLO over large sample sizes.

Think that's all for now, gonna finish eating this paella and get grinding some more WoW like a silly little nerd and prob put in a bit of Theory test studying before going to bed at like 3 or 4am I guess. Feel free to leave feedback, positive, negative, neutral, hate, love, whatever :>

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Hello!

Last blog I talked about starting PLO and so far it's been going really well in terms of results. I've quickly moved up from $0.10/$0.25 to $1/$2 so far, winning at a nice winrate, although I've been running super hot at $1/$2 obviously. The game is really complex though and I'm still not very confident in my play despite the results thus far. One reason that I know my game is still very weak is because MiPwnYa keeps owning me and instantly sits in to play me HU whenever I join a new table and he's online, I feel like he may have added me to some buddy list as I've already spewed like $1k to him which is like 5 buyins at $0.50/$1 and 2.5 at $1/$2 despite winning a $1k pot at $1/$2 vs him. ! I'm getting better though and am sure I will continue to do so, hopefully I'm already good enough to beat $1/$2 and can continue learning and building my bankroll back up from there.

Here are stats so far:


Sidenote: One thing I love about PLO is how many VPPs you make, I'm not even close to Supernova and we're halfway through the year but it's definitely possible for me to get there if I'm playing $1/$2 PLO or above, even if I don't play that many hands a month.

On another note, I'm leaving Korea on August 17th. I'm going to be staying in New Jersey for a month, during my stay I'll be hanging out with the gf and her friends, many of whom I've already met when they visited Korea. I'm also going to be taking a trip out to Toronto to meet some nerds that we both know from World of Warcraft. Naturally I'm looking forward to sampling many "bad" (good) American foods, I', expect to put on a lot of weight and potentially have a heart attack, so let's hope I run good and don't die. Just before I leave, on September 8th, I'm gonna celebrate my birthday, so far I don't have any plans on what I'm going to be on that day, but I'm not planning on getting too hungover as I'm going to see Katatonia and Swallow the Sun in New York the following day. A few days after that I'm going to be returning to England "for good", where I'll go back to live with my family. I'm looking to buy a house with my parents and go 50/50 on it, so they've been looking around at houses and they like this one:



Whether we move into this house or some other house I'm planning on making the garage a home gym so I can work out without the need to go to a gym because I'm simply to lazy to travel there each day, particularly since the gym is like 4 miles away and I don't drive. I've tried to get into working out several times in the past but it never really stuck, I've gained a decent bit of weight during my stay in Korea and will obviously gain even more during my stay in the States so I'm remotivated and I feel like with a home gym I'll be way more likely to stick to some kind of schedule since it's no effort at all to just go into the garage and work out. On that note, if anyone has any recommendations as to what I should get, and potentially where I should get it from, I'd appreciate it!

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

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