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.