Calm.

It has become harder to play right now because my mind has changed. Once again I am focusing on other hobbies such as writing and drawing leaving Poker at the sidelines. Nine tabling has not been very profitable for me and the only reason it became so was because of the sign up bonus it came along with. This of course was always part of the plan but I had hoped that my ROI (Return on Investment) would have increased by now. I did however come 8^th out 3500 in my first tournament for a while; Leaving with $40 minus the $1 entry fee. Top prize was $500 however and even the next two places were $75 and $140. I missed out a nice amount of money but it’s to be expected to happen from time to time... or usually... or ...most times.

Rage was always a problem for me when playing poker but playing nine tables at a time has taking all the emotion away and instilled a robotic voice in my head. In the past I’d only play one or two tables at a time and it would really get to me when I lost two, three or four in a row. It would extend the loss to last for the maximum time. In contrast to now when I feel as if I’ve become a bit too blasé about risking it all, with the idea of push/fold equity gone overboard in my brain; pushing with hands that I never would of in the past. Back then I’d care if I got knocked out, but now I’m just left wondering why it matters when I have eight other tables going and I’m bound to cash in someof them. Three is the minimum to make my money back and  that usually happens. I feel as though some of the magic was taken away, I always enjoyed played the game and now it’s become something else to maximise profit, which I suppose was always the goal. I’ve got no doubt I’ll get into the game once more but for now I seem to have calmed down and lost my passion, the sad thing is that I think it’s what I’ve wanted all along to become a better player. It’s like anything in life, if you want to be good at it you have to do it over and over and over again until it takes any sort of enjoyment out of it and you’d rather do anything else than that.

August Update.

The month of August has left me $46.89 up so far. Mostly made up of the $44.62 earned in a $1 MTT when I place 8th out of 3500 players. Although technically a good result, first place was $500 and the money increased exponetionally from then on with 7th earning around $75. The rest of the games played were single tables and so far this month have only been profitable with the sign up bonus I'm currently clearing. To carry on nine-tabling I'll need to play more consistently. It has however took away the sting of losing single games and made it easier to cope with downswings.

Playing times have been eratic due to current unstable living situation but hopefully should become more even in the near future.Due to Pokerstars August promotion I was able to attain SilverStar status will shall help build points up. That's all I have to report for now.

Intermission.

A lot has been going on in my personal life, getting set back up in the UK after travelling Australia for the last year. No access to constant internet access has set me back along with the whole Full Tilt extravaganza. Back in June I got my bankroll up to $300 after depositing around $27, taking out $250 before Full Tilt Went down getting around $50 locked in there. I'm glad it wasn't any more than that but it's still a nice chunk of my bankroll. I also lost $22 worth of Full Tilt Academy points along with a bonus I was close to completing.

I had a time out with poker for a short while before eventually depositing around $80 on Pokerstars. I signed up with HoldemManager.com as I want to get that program for free. I used the trial during my first days at Pokerstars – However I didn’t do it enough as I should of and still havn't earned enough points to unlock the full version of the program. That time was pretty much break even but I did earn $10.81 towards my deposit bonus & $2.30 towards my Stellar Bonus. I have earned 172points and I need 225 for the program to be released to me which is around 45 more $1.50 STT’s which shouldn’t be too hard to achieve.

I started to nine table the $1.50 tables but not really in a profitable way. I was cashing in enough to break even but not to make any money. It did feel that I was having a lot of bad beats but I thought that could be put down to how many games were happening at once.

For now I just need to get motivated again. I currently use Tournament Indicator but it isn’t installed on this laptop, only a small netbook I have with me. I won’t be able to nine table on that due to the resolution so it will take longer to play the 45games necessary to get Holdem Manager installed. At that point I can install it on here and start nine tabling once again.

I also need to work out the Pokerstars tournament list. I find it hard to look at and find games that I like. I had regular games on Full Tilt and I want to find the same thing on Pokerstars.

Up to $300 and Withdrawing.

Since the last update I'd gotten out of my slump and pushed up to $320. I had a good day of $5 STT's and then the next day I came 3/900 in the $1 Ferguson Tournament on Full Tilt. Looking back at my play three-handed I'm not happy with the play that got me knocked out. I was bluffing, pretty certain this guy didn't have anything and without thinking I'd bluffed too much and was pot commited. I luckily hit a straight on the river and even though I didn't realise I had a gutshot it was pretty certain that I had to go all in. But we turned our cards over and he'd made a flush on the turn and I was out. I think I could of waited for a better spot but unfortunately it seems I was tired.I had been up 36hrs - Playing the Daily Dollar all night, to cash just enough to get my money back. I was still awake at 6.30am when the Ferguson starts so I figured why not?


It was a good choice in the end it seems. Since then I'd had a bit of bad luck in the STT's and had fell down $295. I had a really bad day losing $18 which is the highest since starting to play again but I won an extra $9 playing the UK Freeroll, I came 3/1200 or so. In the midst of this I had decided to try and improve my heads up play. I played four heads up STT games. Two $1 games and Two $2 games winning them all. I have been trying to be much more aggressive heads up and I thought I'd cracked it. I played 18 the next day, winning 10, just about making my money back. I'm not sure how profitable they would be for me but they've made me think about things. It's certainly a fast way to build up points and I wish I'd done it when I had a bonus.

Full Tilt went down yesterday and I couldn't help but thinking that was it, they'd gone bust and all the money is gone forever. I know my $300 is barely anything to some people but it's alot to me and I couldn't stand the idea of that happening so late last night I withdrew $260 from my account, leaving $35 to play around with whilst I decide what to do. I want to move to another site but I'm not sure which. Pokerstars is one I've never registered to and although they were involved in this whole ordeal they have at least been paying out US players so seem more trustworthy and stable than Full Tilt. But I'm unsure whether another American site is a great idea. When this kicked off I looked at the UK laws for gambling and as far as I could see they are some of the best around. A UK site would be great but after looking at a few I couldn't find one I liked. So if anybody reads this let me know which sites you like.

Anyway for now I'll try and build this small roll back up - on $40 so far.

Good luck at the tables.

13days - 78games and nowhere - Inbetween $180 & $200.

It's the end of the month and so I thought just around the right time to do a summary of sorts, oh and graphs - I made graphs.
So as the title suggests the last couple of weeks havn't really been getting me anywhere in poker except for the fact that I've gained some Poker Academy Credits. Even then I should of gained more because I kept forgetting to change tasks when starting a different type of game.

Since the last update I've dropped a few dollars from $197.23 which has been my high point so far and that was eight days ago. So I've dropped $7 in eight days - did I only play three games?

Of course not! I played 50 games and only cashed in 15 of those just enough to get my money back. It seems that MTT's have been my weak spot during the second half of the month. I've been unable to secure a significant cash from any Multi-Table Tournament.

 When looking at my Stats here - it can be seen that I had a few deep runs at the beginning of the month but unfortunately kept getting cut short after that. Since then I've had 15/193, 16/90, 20/189, 23/189, 29/111, 26/165, 17/173.


I think I need to find a way to change my game - to increase my range in certain situations and patch up any leaks I may have. I'm not too worried about the small number of cashes in the MTT's as it's not expected to cash each time in them. I've also upped my MTT numbers by entering the 10c Rebuy every night along with my $2 MTT and alot of the time I'll play looser to see if I can double up without a rebuy.

The month trailed off from a promising beginning - unable to get going again and push past $200. I also pushed up and dropped back down from $5 STTs. They weren't proving profitable at the time and so I went back to $2 to get my head back together. However I think that it's time to try again as the profits from $2 games aren't getting me anywhere. Plus using my Bankroll rules I can currently spend up to $9.53 on a single table tournament so $2.25 is well below that. All I can do is try. I'll put my graphs below before I go. The first is just the graph for May, then April + May and the last is my Total Bankroll since recording.

 

 

Play Online Poker

Poker odds Caculator.

One of the things that I always use when playing Poker is Tournament Indicator. This tool is especially helpful if you like to multi-table and can't keep your eyes on all of the action.

Tournament Indicator works in STT's and MTT's which is perfect for myself because those are the games I play. It is equipped to help you make the right decisions if you use the information it provides correctly.

The feature that I tend to use the most is the VPIP reference. This calculates how often that player voluntarily puts chips in the pot. This is important because it is one of the key factors that determine what kind of player this person is. There are a number of different categories a player can fall into. These profiling icons are;

 Calling Station (Loose, Passive)  

 Gambler (Loose, Aggressive) 

 Tight, Aggressive 

 Rock (Tight, Passive) 

 Neutral, Neutral 

 Neutral, Aggressive 

 Neutral, Passive 

 Loose, Neutral 

Tight, Neutral 

 After 20 hands, Tournament Indicator still can't profile this player as one of the icons above.

 Not sure yet. Not enough hands or data to categorize this player. 

Even just these can help considerably when determining how to play against a certain player. But thats not all the Tournament Indicator can help you with. They are all caculated using a number of statistics that you can view whilst playing. They are;

VPIP which has already been discussed, 

PFR which measures how often a player raises pre-flop, 

3-Bet measures how often a player raises against an intial raise pre-flop
          - the/F refers to how often a player folds to a 3-bet after raising pre-flop

Steal measures how often a player raises in an unopened pot pre-flop from late position or SB     - the /F measures how often a player folds when facing a steal.

AF - Is the Aggression Factor measures how aggresive or passive a player is. If a player never calls and only raises the AF will be Inf. meaning infinite.
                            AF = (Raise% + Bet %) / Call %
These will show as Green for aggresive, Black for neutral and Red for passive. 


CBet measure how often a player Continuation bets on the flop after a pre-flop raise.
       -the /F referring to how often a player folds to a continuation bet.

WSD shows how often a player went to showdown when playing a hand. It shows green for solid players and red for those that usually go to the end if they are in hand.
        - The /W gives a percentage of how often that player wins when going to showdown.


Net shows the amount a player has won or lost in the last ten hands.

Streak shows how many they have won or lost in a row.
 


As you can see below. Tournament Indicator also caculates your win and pot odds in game to help you make the correct decisions. It also shows your current Mzone postion which is  the ratio of your stack to the blinds and antes. Letting you re-adjust you game and change your starting hand selection accourdingly. Not only does it cacualte your Mzone but everyones at the table so you can understand their situation and the plays they are making.

MZone = (Table Stacks) / ((BB + SB) + (Ante * Number of players))

All of the things that Tournament Indicator does can be done by yourself but it saves you the time of doing that. Most people who play seriously use a Poker Odds Caculator so you should be too. It'll even the score against those players and give you an advantage against those that don't yet use one. When purchased in comes with a lifetime warranty so that you will be safe in the knowledge that all your upgrades in the future are free.

Other features that come along with the program are a Heads Up Display (HUD) which make the stats easily viewable, this can be edited to show the stats you'd like and Tournament Indicator also comes with a hand replayer that you can use to analyse your games afterwards to further refine your game.

There are three ways to acquire Tournament Indicator;