Hello loyal readers,

In a nutshell, June was not great. It began with restarting @ 5/T 6-max in which I dropped 100s of BB and thus tried out the old heads up FL.

 For the first week or so it was great but then I hit a horrible run (-15BB/100) on a shot taking at 8/16 HU as well as 5/T (bad idea in hindsight) and basically  was 200$ from being even again after the 5/T 6-max debacle but instead burned 2200$ in less than 1000 hands. From there I vowed to play only 3/6 6-max with a bit of HU and spent the rest of the month grinding back to even. A few days ago I was again 200$ from being even this month but after a series of fun 45 W$atSD sessions I'm officially 2k$ in the red.

That being said, if I hadn't taken a shot @ 8/16 my heads up would be in the green this month, so in a way that was a success. I fully intend to revisit this game in July.

Some people just win steadily, for me it's periods of huge loss then amazingly huge win. June was a trough in this cycle. I think through the whole month I've no doubt been playing worse and worse and good habits have been undone after repeated reinforcement of losing showdowns and always having the second best hand.

July will be an early spring for me, like the trees that have lost all their leaves I will begin the regrowth of myself as a poker player and come back stronger than before.

In about a week I'm not going to be playing for 7-8 days due to a bunch of LANs that are going on, I'm going to have some fun & clear my head for all the relearning I'll be doing afterwards. For now I'll be 2-3 tabling 3-6 6-max or 1-tabling HU & reading some articles (haven't done this in months) and actually posting some hands as everything I do is now questionable.

Here's a graph of the carnage. The first two troughs are at 5/T 6-max then the big up then sharp cliff are the 5/T+8/16 session, the next sharp declines are also HU then the rest of the month is 3-6 6-max + HU.

After it all I earned around 2000$ in rakeback so the month is more or less even in those terms.

Anyways, I hope you guys fare better than myself in your games of choice,

TerrorBlade

Hello my (few) readers, 

Lots of things have happened since the last update, but I didn't really find time to write a new blog entry. It's been lovely weather here the last few days, and because I live like 10km from the beach I've been spending quite a lot of time there :) Somehow the sea isn't cold anymore, while I almost froze to death last week in it. But I don't care, I love the water (no I'm not a narwhal). But less about real life (who cares about that) and more about poker... 

Shortly after winning more than $40k in 3 days I got bored with the game. I really didn't play a lot, and when I was playing I wasn't playing my best game and I just kept on swinging around the breakeven mark. I only played 2/7 days, and last weekend I went to Rotterdam to participate and watch the dutch championships of gymnastics. I really enjoyed it and had a great time with my friends. I think it was a good time for me to get away from puker for a few days, as I got really bored of it, and actually it already started when I won the $40k. It felt like there wasn't a big challenge (lolwtf) and also that the game became really static, just do the same thing as I did a 1000 times before. The money doesn't bother me anymore, and I just couldn't get myself to open tables. 

Since monday I am enjoying the game again. I realised how stupid I was, and the only reason that the game became boring was myself. I played like a robot, and didn't really think about how I could have played my hands better, I just did things and thought they were fine. Obviously it doesn't work that way, not even for me. I've been thinking about what I actually want to achieve now that I'm a pro (yes I never really did that), and the conclusion was easy: Make as much money as possible without sacrificing too much for it. Up untill then I was just playing 50/100+, showing off my e-penis by making >$10/hand and >$2k/hour. It's still a lot of money, but I really couldn't get any volume, and 1 session could destroy my whole month. Yesterday I decided that it's about making as much money as possible, and since I'm waiting like 90% of the time anyway I might aswell play lower stakes aswell. So I opened up all 10/20+ tables on Partypoker, 888 and ipoker and started playing. To my surprise I really really enjoyed it, even though I ran pretty bad in the start, I ended up $750, which is pretty good actually. And all this without playing a single hand of 50/100 even though I had been sitting at those tables! 

So that explains the title of this entry, I now realised what I want to do and how I will do it. Also today I've been playing 10/20+ for a few hours, and actually won 4.2k by playing 10/20-30/60. I ran hot with 13BB/100, but not superhot and 4.2k is a really nice amount of money, and that by playing such "low" stakes. And the best part is that I enjoyed it, as you probably all know you can't play poker when you don't enjoy it, so that is really important for me. In fact, when I was writing this I played 52 hands of 100/200 and won 4.2k there aswell, but I didn't nearly enjoy it as much as playing more hands on the lower stakes. I'm up 44k this month and I really hope that I can make another 50k, as that would be a nice stimulation to keep on doing the same thing as I'm doing now. 

I also decided for myself that I want to make $500k this year, if I don't make it it's nothing terrible, but it's a goal kinda for me. If I get a 50k month now it means I will have to make $50k on average for the next 6 months. If I can stay motivated and if the fishes will still come I honestly believe that I can make it. I might actually be a bit disappointed if I didn't make it, since I feel like I have to make a lot of money in the year that I'm not studying. If I don't make enough money to never care about money again (upto a certain point) I will probably not be happy with the way I have done things. But that's a thing of the future, at the moment everything is fine again and I'm really looking forward to start playing more again, and also to start playing live tourneys. In the dutch community we've been talking a bit about visiting 1 or more EPT events next season. Even though I'm terrible in tournaments I would really like to just go there and play, atmosphere should be great and I can always practice to get better at donkaments. So if any of you guys wanna go to an EPT event, just PM me somewhere and we can talk about it :)

And a graph to finish the post ;)

The last month has been fairly rough. I have cashed 0 out of like 20 wsop events, which is never fun, although it isnt a first for me. If it wasnt for winning $15,000 at PLO online, it would have been a pretty awful month. Katy came up with the bright idea of going to LA for the next 3 days, as there are no wsop events I am actually excited for and I want to be in top playing condition for the main event and then the bellagio WPT tournaments. 

Speaking of the wsop events, I was actually excited for the $10,000 pot limit holdem tournament, which doesnt happen too often for me, especially for the first day of an event. I went into the event fully expecting to do well. I ended up not winning many hands, thanks mostly to a sick lucky french guy that lucksacked everyone at the table for the 4 hours I lasted. I eventually ran my AQ into his KQ to bust. It is tough to say that I think I played well, despite losing basically every hand I played, but I think I could have lost a lot quicker if I tried.

Anyways, I will be out of town for a few days. I dont expect that I will take my computer or check my email, so I will be out of touch, which is a good thing from time to time. Hopefully I will be back and ready to close out my last 5 wsop events.

    All in all, I am very happy with my play and very disgusted with my results. There are only around 10 more events left for me to play. Hopefully I can have some hands hold up and I can make something happen.

    Today was pretty rough although I feel good abouyt how I played. I got the nice set up twice, once with AQ vs AK on an Axx then later KQ vs AK on a Kxx to bust me. I did manage totally wreck from 5 to 3 handed to go from a little more than starting stack to 1/3 of the chips with no showdowns. Once we got 3 handed thouse, I decided to play for our 30bb stacks with KQ on a K53 and lost to the AK. I also couldnt make much happen in the $1500 PLHE the other day. I was running well, getting up to 15000 chips. Sadly, I ran top pair top kicker into a set twice shortly after that to bust me from that. All in all, I think I am playing pretty well but running fairly poorly.

     Tomorrow is another $1500 nlhe tournament. I kinda look forward to these as they are semishallow stacked, which means you will get to the "late levels" faster. I also like antes. Playing the pot limit the other day with no antes was kinda lame, as you could just play super tight and do ok.

    I wanted to also throw out there that I, Jonathan Jaffe, and Kenny Smaron were on/going to be on the All In Poker Radio Show. I was on it a few weeks ago, Jon Jaffe was on it last week, I will be on there again this week, then Kenny the next week. Be sure to listen to them as there is lots of great content.

http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=77255