anomaly16

Its been a much better month than april and I've made $1100 in around 15k hands of cash and quite a few MTT&STT running well in both, and this is despite spending almost $400 on coaching.

Coaching with Kush has really helped me work out where I'm weak and what I need to work on. I've not managed as many focused A-game sessions as I'd like so I 'm going to try to improve upon this next month as well as study. A target of 20k-30k hands seems reasonable if I play less tournies. I'm going to try some sweat sessions with other players around the same level too with a focus on hand reading and post-flop play.

Live poker hasn't been so great recently.. its been quite a few trips since I last cashed. The variance of live play takes so long to work itself out so I'm not too bothered and hope to get lucky again soon!

Its now been a year since I started the blog and took poker more seriously, and in that time my game has improved and i've quadrupled my bankroll so I'm really happy. (If I can multiply my bankroll by 4 every year I'll be a millionaire in 2013!)

With WSOP approaching and people heading to Vegas I'm wishing I was there. Maybe next year?!

I managed to satellite into the mini ftops main event for 2750 FTP which saved me the $55 buyin. There were 12,000 entrants and a prizepool of $600,000 with $97,000 for 1st, so its probably the biggest MTT I've ever played in.

I hit a couple of sets early on to double up twice and made good progress through to the bubble with 1350 players left. I had some luck along the way as is needed for donkaments (KJ > AK in particular) but was on the wrong end of it for my final hand. I pushed allin from the button with TT and was called by SB with 77. I was good all the way until a 7 came on the river :(

In the end I finished 261st to win $286 after 7.5 hours of play. I don't think I made any mistakes along the way so pretty pleased with how it went even if I didn't make it into the big money.

In other poker news I went to the office poker event on Saturday but was card dead and went out pretty early as my shove with an open-ender was called and my outs didn't come.

I've also now had 2 lessons from Kush - the 1st was him watching me play 6 100NL FR tables as we discussed any spots that came up and the 2nd was a hand review session. There were a few hands he suggested plays that I would never have made myself. Its left me realising how terrible my hand-reading skills are and my thought process needs a lot of work including adjusting properly for the opponent I'm facing. Its going to take some time to really understand all of Kush's valuable words. I've got the hand review session recorded, but unfortunately the railing session camtasia file won't open :( At least I have the hands we played recorded in HEM. For lesson 3 & 4 I have to record a video of a couple of my sessions which I probably should have done soon after the lessons, but the miniFTOPS main event got in the way - I hope I'll get some time to record one tonight.

Good start to the month with my biggest winning day ever almost wiping out April's losses in one go :) But, much more importantly I feel my game has settled down and I played most spots really well with some great reads.


The last few days I've been reading some old 2+2 hand reviews and its helped me analyze everything so much better. I also gained some inspiration from watching Goldseraph's FR video series after buying a subscription to DC. I played a decent volume today and didn't feel my concentration waivered too much at all playing between 2 and 6 FR tables in a decent 15.7/11.4/3.32 TAG style. Some flopped sets with action definitely helped as well as stacking a nitty reg who is always tricky to play against. It gave me the confidence to really attack his blinds which I usually shy away from and I could feel him back down to me across the 2-3 tables we were both at.

Another change I made was to remove $winnings from my HUD so I can focus on player style/behaviour and to try and not focus on results but I couldn't help myself checking them now and again. I managed not to spew away any big pots for thinking I was running hot and couldn't lose though. To be honest I think it usually affects me more when I'm losing and can call down light in an effort to catch up in too big a pot that I shouldn't have got involved with in the first place.