Madness...

Where has the last few months gone?  I last updated this blog in February and prior to that there had been an extended period of blogging inactivity and its gotten worse, I can be such a lazy ass at times! but having said that I can also work my butt of when need be.

If you have read this blog before you may remember my obsession to beat micro stakes 6 max cash games online and how I would crazily swap back and forth between playing cash and sit an goes without putting all my eggs in one basket... well nothings changed, sigh. 

I swapped over to playing exclusively 180 player sit and goes on Pokerstars with some other small stakes tournaments on sites like 888, Merge and Ipoker and was really happy with my results especially in the 180's where I got some coaching by Tournament Poker Edge coach DannyN13. Danny helped my game massively and turned me into a winning player, but due to various personal challenges and demands on my time I wasn't able to get any real consistent volume in, multitable tournaments and sit n goes can take a long time to complete and I really struggled to find the time to grind, also they can get a little, dare I say it, boring especially the turbo's during the push/fold stages, this led inevitably to me playing cash games again...

Playing cash suited me as I just fired up 6 tables anytime morning, noon or night and play for 20 minutes an hour or any length of time I had spare, I have been really enjoying playing cash and have found myself putting more and more time into playing and studying the game BUT I'm once again not making any money at poker. and after all as much as I love the game my main motivation is money. Below is my hands played at 6 max and full ring cash games on Pokerstars. 11.5 buy ins down over just shy of 80,000 hands of poker. Completely unremarkable.

Now this graph below is for this month and the results are break even although a couple of times along that line I was super confident in my game and thought I had the beating of the games and it was just a matter of putting in the volume and staying on my A game but as you can see I was soon brought back down to Earth. The journey from micro stakes cash part time player to making life improving amounts of money seems like climbing Everest, I believe I am capable of doing it but what I'm worried about is just how long will this take? I'm not afraid of hard work but I'm doubtful that cash is the right vehicle?

This Graph is for 180 man sng's on Pokerstars the first 400 games was me learning the basics and and I started getting help from Danny around game 500 and in total I've played a microscopic sample size of 1032 with a profit of 1.35K and I'm still only a novice in these games, yes 1032 games is a tiny laughable sample size but that's me learning the basics, what can be achieved with the kind of focus and effort I've applied to cash games these last two months with zero reward? 

Surely I must be mad? I get coaching that more than pays for itself in no time at all and then let a few life situations blur my judgement and get in the way of progress and lead me to convince myself that my future lies in a form of poker I've never made any money at??

Blogging hiatus.

Defination of Hiatus...
an interuption in time or continuity : break; a period when something (as a program or activity) is suspended or interupted.

25th September 2011 was the last time I updated this blog, I never intended to let such a long time pass between posts, but I've not felt like I had anything worthwhile to say as I've been struggling in a few areas of my life after the loss of my Dad, In reality I probably had lots of worthwhile things to say but something deep inside me prevented me from expressing myself.

So whats been occurring?

My obsession with beating micro six max cash games didn't go away even after saying I was going to focus on sit n goes, I did dabble with 45 mans and 180 mans on Pokerstars for a short but profitable spell before feeling the pull of cashgames and going back to 6max resulting in December'11 not only being my highest volume month ever, but also my first winning month (thank goodness for rakeback) Cash games online are tough nuts to crack even a micro stakes, the regulars are fairly solid and the fish just don't like to fold! If you are going to play cash games or a new to playing poker I'd recommend Betfair which is part of the Ongame network, the guys who run Ongame have set it up in such a way to make it difficult for sharks to prey on recreational players and this makes the cash games a bit softer than most sites and the sit n go's are very soft and a good place to start playing.

Playing cash is proving very frustrating for me as I'm putting time and effort in and just not getting the kind of rewards I'd like, my game is improving all the time as I'm finding and plugging leaks however I can play solid for hours and then make one silly mistake and all the hard work goes to pot and this tilts the hell out of me.

I've recently built a relationship with a really solid Pokerstars reg who is currently doing very well playing the turbo 180's upto $15 buy ins, he also went very, very deep in the Sunday Million for a decent score and after discussing poker with him and a couple of other guys I know, I have no doubts whatsoever that I need to focus on Multitable SNG's and eventually graduate to large field Multitable tournements

180 man sngs can have large variance swings but take one of these babys down and its 157 times your buy in, so winning one pays for a lot of losers. I'm currently studying all the 180 man sit n go content on Deuces Cracked and will be posting hands in the tournement poker forum. My serious grind starts the 1st of March and I shall be posting my sharkscope graph here as well.