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.

Primal sit n go's

First post in around 6 weeks, just been letting my head clear after my Dad died. I hadn't fully realised just how massive a part of my life he was, some peoples parents are on the periphary of their lives but my Dad was a central figure, a supportive pillar and the foundation of my life. Dads death coincided with my step daughter Kirsty moving out of my house to start a new life with her boyfriend in a lovely house they are renting across town, this has resulted in me being alone and sometimes feeling very alone for the first time in my life.

In the 2 months since Dads death I have played a minimal amount of poker and done a massive amount of eating and boozing resulting in me topping the scales the heaviest I have ever been and this makes me feel shite, I feel sluggish, tired and unattractive. To combat this I've been on a diet of sorts for the last week I'm following Marks Sisson's Primal Blueprint a link to his website is here   http://www.marksdailyapple.com I'm really happy with the results so far 7lb lost in 7 days.

Ive been going the gym 3 times per week for the last fortnight or so but just doing cardio, however I'm going to pump iron this week for the first time since I injured my neck and shoulder in the car crash I had in april this year. I had been getting really great results following a program called Stronglifts 5x5  http://stronglifts.com and I'm going to throw myself headlong back into the program and I'm expecting excellent results coupling the primal/caveman nutrition plan with stronglifts.

On the poker front micro cash games became to much of a grind as I was experiencing a 60k hand break even run and for the life of me even at 10NL didn't feel I had enough of an edge on my opponents and poker was just becoming a tedious grind. I decided just for a change to play $5 10 man turbo sit n go's on ipoker just to freshen myself up and started to have a bit of success although over a tiny sample size. I've rekindled my enthusiasm for the game and definately feel I have an edge over a lot of the players on ipoker @ $5 single table sitngo's both turbo and regular. Ive also been playing turbo multi table sitngo's on Pokerstars mainly the 45 man and 180 man, comically I seem to bust out just before the final table in around 11th or 12th places but the more of these I play the more confidence I get and it wont be long before I start taking these games down. Below is my HEM graph for my 10 man ipoker sit n go's its a very small sample and may be affected by "positive" variance, however its giving me confidence that I can beat these games long term.

Rabbit in the headlights...

My wonderful Dad died last Thursday 28th July at 15.55 in the intensive care unit of Whiston Hospital, his 5 year struggle with CLL, a form of leukemia, had come to an end along with the suffering he endured in the last 6 months.

Since that day I have felt like a rabbit frozen in the headlights of an on coming car. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, strangely however the days are flying by, its a wierd paradox. I have so much that I feel I need to write about but can't at this moment in time bring myself to do so as this blog was originally about my poker ambitions, but Dads leukemia seems to have flavoured a lot of what I've written.

I'm trying to get back into some sort of routine as the void in my life created by Dads passing feels like it could swallow me whole if I let it. I know life is for the living but I currently get pangs of guilt if I do anything slightly pleasurable as though its immoral... lets hope this passes soon.

One thing I've discovered at times like this are the true qualities of people and I'm truly blessed to have some fantastic people around me. In my job I get to speak to a lot of people who I would describe as assholes and this was beginning to colour my judgement about the Human race so its been wonderful to have my faith in human nature restored.

I'm back playing online poker after a week off and will endeavour to update this blog on a more regular basis with poker related content being my priority, another priority is to play live poker, believe it or not, its something I've never actually done. Online poker is quite a solitary game and I feel as a single guy being cooked up at home playing poker is not ideal and I don't want to get the image of the local hermit who never leaves the house, so its time to get down to the casino's of either Liverpool or Manchester and play some live tournements, meet some new people and see how it goes.

Hospitals, poker, bed & work.

I hadn't planned on updating my blog today, I was waiting for the weekend and hoping for some inspiration to come my way, however I've just ended my poker session a little earlier than planned as I'm not feeling to great and it's effecting my game.

I was surprised just how fast time has past since I last updated, but thats understandable since I've been extremely busy. Since the last post my Dad has been in and out of hospital with leukemia related infections and on a couple of occasions I was sure we were going to lose him but he just keeps fighting.

Life for me has been an endless round of work - hospital - poker - bed - work - hospital - poker - bed.

One of the good things that has come from this is the conversations I've had with my Dad over the last few weeks, we have been reminiscing about all the years we worked together in the block yards, remembering some off the great characters we worked with, not forgetting the arseholes as well, also laughing at the antics we used to get upto! I feel the love I have for him just grows and grows day by day and I'm just truly thankful for winning the lottery of life and being his son.

NoiQ Poker

Since my last blogpost Ive changed pokersites, I wasn't enjoying playing on ipoker and was steadily watching my bankroll deteriorate and felt I wasnt getting enough back from the site I was playing on. I discovered NoiQ Poker via RaketheRake.com and signed up for a 30% rakeback deal also they do 3 rake races each month and its not exactly difficult to get paid out for placing in the rake races, when I calulated what rake I'd paid and what I had got back it worked out at a whopping 65% RB!! I recalculated again at the end of the latest race and I got the same figure. Wish I could get rakeback for hospital parking fees!

As for the actual playing itself, I've racked up about 25,000 hands on noiq the currency they use is the euro as opposed to dollars so 10NL on noiq is a bigger stake than 10NL on pokerstars, with that in mind i dropped down to 4NL euro tables and decided to start at the bottom and grind my way up, after 10,000 hands I was beating the limit by 9bb/100 so decided to step up to 10NL euro stakes and hit a brick wall, incredibly moving up coincided with my ego getting a little inflated and starting to believe I'm a lot better than I am, which in turn tilted the life outta me and in the space of 3 or 4 sessions I was down about 10 buy ins...shit.

                                                                   I am the red fish!

So I'm back down to 4NL and I'm gonna stay there and crush the life out of it for about another 15,000 hands then have another crack at the next limit, in the mean time I will just keep learning & playing, keep improving and slowly but surely I'll get there.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

HAPPY?

I'm currently struggling to get any kind of volume of poker in at the moment mainly for 3 reasons,

1) My Dads illness, I'm spending as much time as I can with him and I'm more than happy to do so.
2) The computer I'm using has seen better days and runs as slow as a snail with a hard on.
3) My overall frame of mind.

My Dads leukemia I can't influence. I would move Heaven and Earth to have the ability to do something about it but I can't its totally beyond my control.The PC I'm using is well within my control and in the next few days it will be replaced with a nice shiny new one.

My frame of mind is totally under my control, but sometimes I'm not so sure...

I truly believe I should have control over my mind however I'm currently having a daily battle to keep a smile on my face and feel positive, not for one minute do I think I'm losing this battle, its just such a struggle, an effort and a fight I could do without as its sapping my motivation in nearly every area of my life not just poker. This morning I was lying in bed having been awake since 5am, I didn't have work so was pissed off at the thought of being awake when I should be sleeping soundly. I was chatting with friends on Facebook and had sent a few "tweets" everything I wrote had a cheerful tone however I felt as miserable as sin.

On Friday morning I had some wonderful news when Jose 'Girah' Mecado contacted me regarding my previous blogpost, he loved it and has offered to help me with my game, I was elated! Friday night I had a fantastic time with my old school mates at our latest reunion and on saturday I went to Haydock races and once again had a good "craic" with some great friends, so whats my problem?

You Choose.

At any given time we have the option to choose our dominant thoughts and I'm currently not choosing mine very wisely. I'm focusing for some reason on whats missing in my life, I'm focusing on events from my past both positive and negative, when I have positive memories, after the initial warm glow I'm longing for those times and I'm feeling the pain of regret for my actions that led to those memories becoming just that, memories and not some ongoing part of my life. The negative thoughts, well that just speaks for itself, negative thinking is like a downward spiral, one after the other the thoughts just drag you down and attract more thoughts of the same ilk until something either internal or external breaks the cycle.

External things certainly do help but really, nothing outside of ourselves is permanent, it can be taken away in an instant, the people we love, the possesions that bring us pleasure, even things like hobbies that we enjoy and places that we like visiting, things can happen that can remove the external joys of life.

We as individuals should try to cultivate happiness and positivity from within and not be so reliant on the external influences to provide our happiness, that way the winds of change that blow through our lives and sometimes cause havoc, have less of an effect. Mindfulness is a technique from the Buddhist tradition that I'm currently using to combat some of the negative thoughts, images and feelings that I'm wrestling with on a daily basis, without Mindfulness I'm not sure how I would cope. Simply put Mindfulness is all about focusing on "NOW" not regretting the past or living on past glories, not worrying about the future, what I call anticipatory dread, that fear of the unknown, most of the time it never materialises so we waste valuable time and nervous energy on nothing. Mindfulness originally was a way of me staying fully focused on my poker, so I stayed calm cool and collected playing a game for profit that can truly drive a person round the proverbial bend! Now its quickly becoming a life saver.

When I decided I was going to write a blog, at the back of my mind I was hoping by thinking out loud I would put myself under positive pressure and follow through with the actions I need to take on a daily basis to realise my goals, well it's certainly doing that, as I'm writing this now its also helping me to clarify my thought processes and to count my many blessings.

I've got a new life now, with some fantastic people in it, I know where I'm going and believe 100% that I will get there, however I'm heading in that direction a wee bit slower than originally planned, but its all GOOD.

The Hawaiian House

This may be my first post were I deviate slightly from the main theme of this blog and touch on lessons we can learn from poker that cross over into our life. Just recently I came across an article on the web about a young Portuguese poker phenomenom under the alias GIRAH, apparently this guy was 18 years old and had more or less appeared from knowhere and had quickly progressed up the stakes and was winning at the highest levels and all this in what seemed double quick time.

This totally fascinated me. I did some research on him and found out his real name is Jose Macedo and he started playing poker for fun with play money on Facebook when he was just 16 years old and also admitted he wasn't very successful, in his own word he says he was continually getting "hammered" and now just 2 short years later he is mentioned in the same breath of Durrrr, Jungleman and OMGclayaitken.

Learning that Girah started off getting hammered on FB poker for playchips and saying he had zero natural poker talent intrigued me even further, how could this be? what does it take? what was his primary motivator? how on Earth could such a young man make such rapid progress? eventually I found the answer...

He had a DREAM.... and that dream was to own a house in HAWAII

To quote Jose, "It's a nice house in Maui and I REALLY  want it"

That quote above is the key, that quote reveals the secret of Girah's success and of any person on the planet who wants to achieve massive success. How can an 18 year old boy hold the secret to success in every walk of life? did a mystical guru from antiquity reveal the secrets of the ages? No, quite simply Jose Macedo had a burning desire to to own a home in Hawaii and poker was the vehicle that was going to take him there.

Everybody has dreams, we all want to be, have and do something more, however, how many people are prepared to put in the time, effort and money to achieve their dreams? by gathering info on Macedo one thing really shines through, his WORK ethic, he worked relentlessly for hours on end grinding  poker games and taking copiuos notes, he read book after book after book, he watch training videos created by the players who he respected the most, not only that, he actively sought these guys out and used his creativity to enlist the help of these elite players to further his goals.

Reading the above paragraph doesn't really capture and do Jose's determination and work ethic justice, you have to put yourself in his position, imagine the time and effort the endless hours of playing and studying, pursuing your heroes to extract the required knowledge, ignoring all the general day to day distractions and the merchants of doom, who we all have in our lives, who try to bring us down at every opportunity... wow its a massive undertaking but this young kid did this consistently day in day out.

I am pretty certain that when Jose started his quest as a 16 year old kid he had no idea how he was going to achieve his dream but he just kept taking the next step.

"The HOW doesn't matter, because the WHY will find a way"

Jose's WHY was the house in Hawaii, that was the fuel that drove him forward that enabled him to take massive action and make constant and never ending improvements.

Question:

"Whats your WHY?"
"Whats your house in Hawaii?"

I'm going to take inspiration from Jose Macedo and find my WHY and let that drive me forward and I suggest all who want to improve their lives follow Jose's example too.

Further reading: The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
                            Mindstore by Jack Black.