Not updated for a while been waiting for a winning session but have had no success over the last month, didn't manage to qualify for any Wcoop events, qualified for a few events in the Winamax series but no decent cashes to report. 

Last weekend represented 5 years since I came second in the Sunday Million on Pokerstars it seems like a lifetime ago can't even qualify for it nowadays. Can only dream of getting a $100k plus score at the moment.

On the bright side my bankroll management has been excellent I'm taking my time and only playing up to $20 games and satelites to bigger tournaments. If it was my own money I'd have probably gambled it off by now but still confident in my ability and that I can slowly grind it back up.

Bankroll is currently $920 on Pokerstars, 840 Euro's on Pokerstars.FR and 700 euro's on Winamax.

For my non poker backers, the UK government plan to start a new tax on the poker sites and Winamax and Stars.FR are pulling out of the UK market so have to withdraw the Euro's from those sites will put it all back on Pokerstars to use between there and Full Tilt and continue to slowly grind for the next few months if everyone's happy with that.

The last month I've been looking for a job again and usually can get a contract within a week or two but the IT market seams very quiet at the moment and have failed to secure anything as of yet, but a lot of my days at the moment are spent scouring job sites and also realized that I've neglected my IT skills during the five years I played poker for a living so have downloaded loads of IT training from pirate bay and have been watching loads of videos and will start taking MCP exams again shortly. 

Don't think my current MCP's in Windows 95 and Windows NT attract the employers anymore, lol.

Hopefully will be settled in a job soon and be able to put some more hours into playing again.

Have been playing a lot more the last two weeks and really enjoying playing again.

Unfortunately not had any success, I've stopped myself buying into $50 games as my bankroll has decreased so $26 \$30 freezouts and $10 rebuys are my staple and then have to satellite into anything bigger.

Reached two final tables this week, I won a sat into the 50 euro turbo on Stars.FR but was 9/9 when the final table started and couldn't get anything going and finished 8th. Any my only other final was a hyper turbo on Pokerstars where I came 7th out of 1195 for $176.

Playing a lot of Knockout tournaments to try and reduce variance a bit so my bankroll doesn't go down too quick as I up the volume. Hopefully will satellite into a few WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) before the end of the series. 

Current bankroll: 

Will update again in a few days. 

My birthday falls on a Sunday for the first time since I started playing poker so hopefully i'll get a bit of birthday luck at the tables this Sunday.

Not been a lot to update with regards to poker in the last few months as have hardly played.. Have had far too much going on at home with building work about to be completed this week after four months, had a health scare in May when I had chest pains over a few days which led to a hospital trip and a number of checks on my heart including a 24hr monitor. It was a good warning and  led to me putting my health first before anything else. My weight had got to nearly eighteen and a half stone which is ridiculous at 5 stone 9. I joined Slimming World and started slowly exercising daily and have so far managed to lose two stones in three months. 

So with all the above I was struggling to get in the right frame of mind to play a session, concentration was very poor and wasn't enjoying it a couple times I played, therefore didn't play for a good period as I won't play If i'm not fully focused or in the right frame of mind. Poker bankroll is about the same as in the last post.

Before playing a few on Sunday : Pokerstars $1677 : Tilt $310. Pokerstars.FR 605 euro's Winamax 1184.

Played six on Sunday and really enjoyed it and felt I was playing well again. Came 10th out of 5000 on Stars.FR in a 10 euro game but butchered the last hand on the final table bubble when in 5th spot, 5 handed I raised J9clubs and got reraised by player who was 2nd in chips and was 3 betting way more than anyone else. I decided to call and flop came down 9hearts 6 clubs 3 clubs. All the money went in and he actually had an overpair this time and held. Gutted as a 5th place or above finish would have got the stake in profit again.

Hopefully I'm in a position to start playing full time again now and with Pokerstars World Championship of Online Poker starting, September is a good month to get back into it. I won't be forcing it and going to focus on 6 tabling at most but all being well will put some serious hours of play in. 

June 1st 2014.

Apologies for lack of updates but May has been a complete write off, hurt my back after coming back from holiday and for a few weeks I was in too much pain to play a big session, started feel a bit better towards the middle of the month only to find my concentration levels were really poor and after a couple of hours I was struggling to stay focused, which has meant I've hardly played in May, it's only been the last week that I've really felt up for playing and put in a big session yesterday played for 15 hours however didn't run well in the big fields and ended up a losing day.

Current bankroll is shown in photo below.

Not great news as stake is down to £2712. Therefore an initial 5% stake that was bought for £250 is currently worth £136.
As said the stake was supposed to be for three months and if anyone wants to cut their loses and take their share back now let me know. Otherwise I'm not now planning to go back to work until September, wife has booked a 10 day holiday in August for us so instead of looking for work after the world cup it's going to be after the holiday now so September time.
Therefore will carry on playing poker until then for those who want to extend and go for another three months. Last three months was disappointing as only managed to play seriously for good volume for about 6 weeks. The next 6 weeks online should be softer as the World Series of Poker is on in Vegas and most of the regs who play for a living will be over there so the games should be softer.

Have purchased Table Ninja 2 Holdem manager 2 and Note Caddy in the last few weeks which really help with the stats side of online poker and should give me an edge. Have to be a bit more careful as bankroll is getting low and will have to pre plan sessions well until the bankroll is going in the right direction again.

Let me know in the next few days if anyone wants to withdraw now and i'll ship the money and get another backer to replace them for the next 3 months.

Will start updated more regular again now I'm back into it.

April 8th

Have had a change of plan Neteller can take 5 working days to reach my bank account so if I did a profit cashout next Monday as I initially planned it might not reach me in time for my holiday. Also had a bad losing day yesterday so thought it would be a good idea to have a profit split now.

Have withdrawn £2400 from Pokerstars to my Neteller account and then cashed out to my bank.

This was $4070 on Pokerstars.

It works out that a 10% share will be getting a first profit payment of £144.

Will be getting in touch early next week when it reaches my bank to get my backers bank details so I can transfer to them.

Sunday 6th April.

Finally got a half decent win on Pokerstars, won the $5 after a 13 hour grind and beating 12492 other entrants. Started heads up play with 10 million chips to 27 million, got to 16 v 21 and opponent snap offered me a 7100 chop and play for the other $332, should have probably carried on and ground him down but was getting tired after 13 hrs so took it.

Current stake profit loss as above, going to have a big grind this week, get into as many of the Scoop, Ftops and Winamax series as I can and then providing still in decent profit, will do a split of the profits next Monday as will be needing some spending money as taking the boys to Lanzorote the Sunday after.

Last nights win came just at the right time as was getting low on the dollar sites. 

Now have $294 on Full Tilt, $9161 on Pokerstars, 1637 euros on Winamax and 1722 euro on Stars.FR.

Will move some dollars from Stars to Party, Full Tilt and 888.com this week. 

Friday 28th March.

I had a few days off last week on the Tuesday and Wednesday, came back to playing on the Thursday but within a couple of hours knew straight away that I was tired and tilty so stopped after the first couple of tournaments I played.

Played Friday 28th and again knew I wasn't in the mood for a big session only played 16 tournaments but got an early 2nd out of 125 in a baby 5 rebuy on Full Tilt for $353 which led to a small winning day.

Saturday 29th March.

Saturday was feeling good and started the day with winning the 5 rebuy I came 2nd in the day before for $471.  Had a few deep runs but went deepest in the 10 euro 15k guaranteed on Pokerstars.FR
Came 3rd out of 1851 for 1400 euro's however came away gutted as had total control of the table and was chipping away nicely against this one loony opponent was playing 3 handed for 45 mins and was comfortable had chipped up from 2million to 9 million in chips with Mr Loony now on 8 million and the other down to about 16 bb's around 2 million in chips. When I raised from sb with 108, flop came down 1072, I bet he called, turn was a 9, I chk and he bets pot 1,7 million into 1,7, he's been betting pot with draws or nothing and normally betting 2/3rds of the pot with his good hands, anyway I decide to jam with top pair and open ended straight but he insta snapped me off with Q10 and held. Was out in 3rd a few hands later.
Nice cash but was disappointed as missed out on a potential extra 1000 euros as with a little more patience felt I should have won that one.

Sunday 30th March.

Managed to get quite a few big stacks early on only for them to lose important flips when deep. Came 66th out of 2447 in the Double Deuce.
Had a nice stack in the $215 FTOPS 1 48k at 500/1000 blind level with 600 odd left 460 paid only for playing two hands very badly and getting knocked out before the money.
Ended up a small losing Sunday after lots of early promise, only 1 saving grace I had managed to get to Day 2 of the 100 euro Scoop 2 High tournament on Pokerstars.FR and finished very strongly the last hour to end the day in the money and 2nd with 343 players left out of the 3600 who entered and a dream of the 48000 euros for the winner.

Monday 31st March.

Wasn't going to play today and planned a day off as kids were off on teacher training, with qualifying for Day 2 of the 100 decided just to play that and fully concentrate on it.
However not to be I'm afraid. Had a horrible table draw with two very lose big stacks behind me and couldn't pick up a pot early on ended up shoving my last 16 blinds with 88 from cutoff into small blinds Aces. Ended up 92nd for 435 euros - sigh....

March finished with a tiny profit thanks to the French sites which I managed to turn around a 1400 loss to 1360 profit over the last 10 days. I definitely ran poorly especially in the first half of the month and got to a lot less finals than I would have expected.
I played the most tournaments I've ever played in one month and feel I've learnt a lot and definitely in the groove so here's looking forward to a successful April. Only playing three weeks this month though as  I have a week in Lanzorote with the kids from 20th April, however need to earn some spending money before then so will be grinding hard for the next two weeks.

Not been a very successful weekend, in fact it was awful didn't get close to a final anywhere.

Can't wait for the day when I get back to back wins as it's very much one step forward to steps back at the moment.

Current profit/loss.

Going to play a lot more satellite tournaments over the next few days as 3 sites are having special tournament series kicking off over next week and need to get involved in as many as I can. Especially looking forward to the Winamax series which looks quite impressive.

Full Tilt's FTOPS series starts Sunday for two weeks.

Pokerstars.FR starts its SCOOP series on the same day again for two weeks.

And then Winamax stars a schedule the week after.

Quite an exciting month for the online poker player. And then the month after Pokerstars themselves are doing a big tournament schedule.

19th March.

Biggest losing day yet, went mad and registered in advance for every tournament 20 and below on Stars for a 7 hour period going by the theory throw enough shit and something will stick. Played the most tournaments I've ever played in a day and have to admit it was too much, was 16 - 18 tabling at times and it was too much to cope with, ended up just button clicking and it wasn't fun, got stacks in a few but my closest was early on whereby I finished 8th out of 1088 in a 10Euro tournament on Winamax.


21st March

Finally got my first win on the stake, can't believe its taken so long, played over 700 tournaments before finally getting one won, really running way behind in the amount of wins and final tables I expected by now.
Anyway won the very aptly named Ring tournament my first ever win on Winamax as well.
1st of 719.

Heres hoping it's the first of many. Still experimenting but going to spend some days playing large volume small buyin tournaments and others playing lots of satellites early on to bigger buyin smaller field tournaments. Played a 100 euro tournament I satelited into on Winamax and the standard of play is as fishy as the smaller buyin tournaments.

Below's the latest Profit/Loss spreadsheet, small profit hopefully a few more green days will increase that.

Friday 14th March.

Played Friday and at the start of the session had this occur, a $5 rebuy on Full Tilt and your allowed two entries when the money bubble burst I was in 1st and 2nd place.

Still didn't manage to win the bloody tournament which really tilted me, your only allowed one account on the final table so my other one was given 9th place money and stacks joined together. Even with the stacks joined I was now in 2nd place and lost a few flips to end up in 4th.

I then got a 10th out of 1799 in a $2 2x Turbo rebuy on Pokerstars.
Was in 5th of 10 but with about 12 big blinds, button open shoved on me and I decided to call with KQs but somehow he had pocket queens. Got $124 when first was $2400.
By now I could tell I didn't have patience to grind out most tournaments so decided to change and just play Turbo's and hyper turbo's for the rest of the evening.

Had a close call in a $25 Hyper Turbo coming 33rd out of 1016 lost with AJ v A8 all in pre.

Then in another $25 Hyper Turbo 6 max version this time I got to the final but again lost a flip four handed
so still not won one yet.4th out of 926 for $1588 will do nicely though.

Third winning day out of 4 also brought the stake to break even.

Sunday 16th March.

Awful session biggest losing day so far mainly due to the big field sizes and getting no luck at all.
Made a few mini cashes in smaller tournaments but didn't go deep anywhere.
Sundays can either be great days or absolute carnage like mine was today.
Got beaten in the Sunday Million all in pre with pocket 10's v 6's, third week in a row I've had an overpair and lost.

Monday 17th March.

Only played a small evening session starting at 19.00, final tabled a $5 Turbo KO tournament, ended up dealing three handed as everyone was only 7 or 8 big blinds deep at this stage.
Therefore my ICM chop was $1887 which was basically 2nd prize money but made sense to deal.
Means I still haven't officially won one yet though, won't be far off though.



As soon as I break the duck and win one that should look healthier. Losing overall on the French sites but really do think there's value there so not giving up on them just yet.

£5k stake - 10 days in.


Have held off making a post as the stake started off poorly the first week, out of my first 8 sessions played I had 6 losing days and 2 break even. Felt I was playing well just ran poorly, had numerous bad beats and couldn't win a big race when just a couple of tables out. However as Tom Middleton said don't get telling people about the bad beats just get on and fire up another tournament.

Have therefore increased my volume and play more tournaments per day than I've ever played before.
I now play up to 60 tournaments a day over a 12 to 14 hour session.

I was 12 tabling over my two 30" monitors but have this week come to the decision I can follow the action more having the 12 tables on one monitor. Have also gone from having three different table ninja's for the different poker sites to trialing table ninja 2 which is a great piece of software saves you loads of vital seconds.

The increase has paid off have reached a couple of nice final tables on Pokerstars this week and had first decent winning day on Tuesday when I was deep in a number of tournies on Pokerstars including the Big 22 but ended up 20th in that but at the same time managed to reach the final table in the 18.00 $22 and ended up 2nd out of 904 for $2319.66. Disappointed I didn't get my first win but felt I played really well and my heads up opponent was a decent reg.

This was then followed by reaching the final table of the big 55 last night but ended up bowing out first, was the short stack in 9/9 and was down to 10 big blinds didn't really want the blinds to go through me again and ended up shoving 9 7 hearts from mid position a loose player made a questionable call in my eyes for a third of his stack with three bigger stacks still to act behind him with Q10 spades. Alas no luck and bowed out in 9th of 2355 for $1059. Gutting as 1st was $18k and each jump was at least 1k, however wanted to give myself a chance and not blind away hoping for a spot.

Confident it will be the start of many played really well yesterday throughout a 16 hour shift and standard of play didn't drop at all, managed to get stacks in lots of tournaments. Won't be long before I make a few final tables in one day and the stake will be in profit.

Current profit loss can be seen below, losing a bit on the French sites just getting bad beats from the mad gambling Frenchies once I'm inside the money.

Nice to have some green winning days on there.
Planning a 16 hour session tomorrow not playing Saturday due to Villa game kicking off at 17.15 and then a big session Sunday afternoon. Hopefully will be reporting of a win soon.

Saturday 1st March.

First days play on Saturday. Started playing and managed to mess up my poker tracker.
In the previous week I added a lot more stats mainly for turn and river plays and now my hud has 5 lines for each player. I tested this on one table in the week and it was fine but as soon as soon as I had 6 tables in play I realized it was far too crowded as I couldn't move the hud outside the edge of the tables much by default.
Therefore googled and found I had to add a line to the pokertracker.cfg file that allows you to move the hud as far outside the table as you want. I did this but found I couldn't save it as the folder was read only and somehow managed to save it somewhere else without thinking whilst dealing with my 6 tables in play.
This totally stopped poker tracker working so had to mess around sorting out admin access to put the file back in its parent folder as for some reason it was saying my account didn't have admin access.
Eventually got it sorted but with that and messing around with a new spreadsheet I was a few hours into the session and realized I wasn't as focused as I should be, only managed 3 mini cashes early on and decided about 21.00 that I wasn't playing my A game and was rushing things trying to get a result on my first days play, therefore stopped registering for new games and just played out the 3 I was already in.

Ended up playing the one tournament 20 Euro $15k Guaranteed on Pokerstars.Fr for a further 4 hours. 612 entries got down to last two tables and was 16th out of 18, needed a double and 1st hand after going to two tables got 6s on the button ended up getting it all in v AQ but Ace popped on the turn so finished 18th.
Played a number of Sats to the Sunday million but didn't manage to get a seat in any of them so ended up a disappointing day.

Played 32 tournies including Sats. Entries $520 and only recouped $120, and on the French sites, entry fees 75euros and recouped 95 in prizes.



Sunday 2nd March.

Couldn't do the full days grind as my son had a football game and then went to the Villa game that didn't kick off until 16.30 so wasn't back home until 19.00. As a complete one off I had to buy-in to the Sunday Million as couldn't miss this weeks special as it was guaranteed at 8 million instead of the usual 1 million.

Instead of the usual 8000 runners this pulled in a field of 48000+. Played really well for 3 hours slowly doubled my starting stack, and then came the crucial hand which would have given me a very nice stack with half the field departed.



http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7759607_BD0BD143F9

Got it in with one card to come and he managed to hit his 2 outer.
Gutting but still a long way out and you need plenty of luck in these tournaments, played well tonight though, plenty of time so will get back on the grind Tuesday.

Played 8 today entry fees $296 and 35 euros. Prizes - just one cash 101st out of 1017 in Pokerfest 4 for $40.

1st Day of Stake

Saturday 1st March, the first day of the stake, looking forward to playing have collected all money and it is deposited on the Poker sites ready.

Starting bankroll across sites looks like this:
Pokerstars $2000
Full Tilt $2000
Party $1000
Winamax 1000euros
Pokerstars.FR 500euros
Neteller £800

Will be playing a 12 hour session today starting from 13.00hrs, will be including plenty of satelites as need to ensure I qualify for tomorrows Sunday Million which instead of the £1 million guarantee has an £8 million guaranteed prizepool this week.

Have spend a number of hours improving my Poker tracker hud this week as well and included a lot more turn and river statistics which i'm hoping will help me exploit opponents more.

Here's hoping for an entertaining, enjoyable and rewarding three months.

Brummieboy £5k Stake.: I've done it before and I’ll do it again....

Brummieboy £5k Stake.:       I've done it before and I’ll do it again.


...:       I've  done it before and I’ll do it again. Background I’m looking at getting a stake together to enable to start pla...

      I've done it before and I’ll do it again.

Background

I’m looking at getting a stake together to enable to start playing MTT’s again.

Had 18 months off where I’ve been working back in IT but have come to a conclusion that I don’t want to waste all the time and effort and studying that went into my poker career of which I played successfully for a living for five years.

Overall Stats:

Proposal

I am looking at getting a bankroll of £5k to enable to play mid stakes online MTT’s across all sites to commence at the start of March 2014.

Selling 100% the split would be 60/40 in backers favour to start off with. Once we have made 10k profit on the stake the terms will change to a 50/50 chop.

Profit to be split and sent out if the initial bankroll doubles or at the end of each month providing it’s worthwhile.

It will be for an initial three months and at the end of this period we will discuss if everyone is happy with the stake and those who want to withdraw their initial stake or what is left of it can do so then.

Plan to play up to 30 Mtt’s per session choosing mainly euro sites up to $50 or 50 Euro freezouts and 10 rebuys. Expect my average buyin to be around the $30 and will probably have around $800 in play per night which would be about a tenth of the bankroll.

In the week will be heavily game selecting and ideally choosing fields in the 200 to 300 runners range for the higher buyins with a few bigger Pokerstars fields thrown in. Will be playing sats to bigger buyin tournaments and Sunday majors. If within profit for the week will allow myself the flexibility to buy direct into a Sunday major ($215)

Will give daily reports when played showing each game played and profit/loss for day and current bankroll on all the sites.

Everything I play will be on the stake will only play MTT’s and the occasional 180 STT on Stars when low on tables.

Selling in minimum of 2.5% chunks.

Therefore 2.5% = £125

  5% = £250  

10% = £500.