Bump in the road....

I broached the subject with my parents last night that some of the lads wanted to go to Vegas in November and their response was 'Ahh that's a shame, the one place you can't go'.

Kind of lifetilting. My parents are a lot more laid back than most and just let me get on with my shit but this is one thing, after what happened when I was at uni, that I feel I may have to bite the bullet and accept.

I just soooo want to go to Vegas. Shall I just go and say I'm going somewhere else?

Argh mindfuck, what shall I do?

New strat and focus

Since I've got it in my head that I'm going to Vegas in November and it's actually happening I've found a new discipline to grind grind grind. I want to take £10k out there with me if not a bit more so the aim is to make double that between now and November. Doable if I keep my head. I don't want to use any money from outside of poker and I'm going to leave a lot of money locked up in shares over this time. Likewise my savings and salary are being put away for when I buy my first property soon. A good talk when I met up with Amatay recently about how I'm wasting my time and talent (that's not meant to seem like an arrogant dick comment, just can't think of a better word) grinding up and tilting down had an effect and made me realise I really do want to knuckle down and keep earning nice chunks from this game I love and actually hold on to them.

In the last 9 days I've made £3100ish at $2/4 plo. I've actually changed from playing 4 and 6 tables to playing 1 or 2. I think this really allows me to exploit my edge and as a result I've been playing close to what I think is my best game. Getting it in really good in a lot of spots rather than the higher variance 55/45s and 50/50 type spots you're more likely to get into playing $5/10.

I don't use any software, in fact I think it should all be banned. It's just not poker and having some system telling u a bloke checkraises flops a very high % of the time feels a little bit like cheating. I know it's not but I'm in the camp that these are things people should work out for themselves in poker. I don't feel I need it either when I play at 1 or 2 tables as I have a good feel for where everyone is at and what they are capable of which I lose when 4 tabling.

Got some time off in a week or two to play the festival at the Vic too. Looking forward to the £100 rebuy PLO in particular. Bought Rolf Slotbooms PLO book and it seems pretty decent though I've only read a little bit and it hasn't told me anything I don't already know yet.

gl at the tables

The urge

Everyone I know seems to have been to Vegas and I just can't handle one more person going on about how incredible a place it is and how soft the cash games etc are.

I really want to get out there for 2 weeks and I'm hoping I can get a few fish together to go out in November as I've heard this is a good time to go. The Venetian deepstacks are on around that then and hotels, flights are normally cheapest around then. Plus who wants to be in England in November?

I know the Amagay is up for it providing he won't have started his travels by then. My mate Figo will come and a few lads from the blonde forum may well be interested. Plan will be to play a few comps but just generally grind the hell out of the $1/2 and 2/5 cash games where at the former I've heard it's not at all difficult to make $1k a day.

I'm blog freerolling

I was gonna write a blog about the weekend and then the Amafish did it for me.

Click here..
http://amatay.blogspot.com/


In the meantime I haven't been playing poker this week because I've been busy with gym and other stuff. Will post more soon.

Weekend Plans

Ok so Amatay messages me on msn the other day and is literally like 'I have no friends...my blog is complete lies as I'm still a virgin and even that ginger bastard Scotch hates my guts'.

At this point I kinda feel sorry for the fish and agree to go with him to the masters football at Wembley. I insist that he must pay for everything though in return for the purchase of my friendship and he instantly agrees and buys the best tickets in the stadium.

Hopefully we will get drunk and end up at the Empire where I can put the fish even more out of pocket on the night.

Going to the 20-20 on friday too and busy on sunday so gotta find a bit of time to try and rape the tables.

Sooooo much going on atm

So much going on at the moment really not had time to blog although that's always a bit of an excuse as I haven't really been arsed either.

I don't know what it is or why but I am really comfortable playing PLO now. Things have been a bit swingy the last month or so and I've played regularly anywhere between $2/4 and $5/10 which probably isnt so sensible for my poker bankroll....

I've set myself the goal of getting out to Vegas next year and I'm not prepared to use my personal funds to do it as I want to buy a house soon (just waiting for what I believe is the best time in the market) and I've just lumped in the stock market too from a tip from a friend who's an investment banker and knows his stuff so fingers crossed that goes well. Ship me the lot pls one time! I know it's a fair bit of financial pressure to manage all this at 22 but I'll be fucked if I'm working at 50.

I don't get the mentality of a lot of people in this country who just aren't bothered about saving money and investing. I guess that's why so many people are in the hole for so much money everywhere. I'll elaborate on this point in it's own post soon as I want to discuss this and specifically how it relates to poker and why all these big names aren't the minted people you might think they are. Anyway plenty more to say on that before it makes sense so I'll leave it for another time.

I'm also cutting my staking ventures right down. I've spent in the region of £3k through blondepoker which is a fantastic forum but most people are clueless as to their value in a tournament. From now on I'm only going to buy pieces in friends or proven players selling at no more than 1.1 and that will be a rarity as I think people should be selling at 1.0. Ok I'm just as bad cos I've been buying pieces in a lot of these people but people who aren't rolled for events they want to play are charging premiums etc when they can't justify them really. If they could, they would probably be rolled to play said event! People are just too polite to challenge them publicly. I don't want to say too much more on this but it's a leak of my own I'm going to plug.

Finally I've decided to drop down for a little while as the swings have been a bit stressful lately...lots of +/- £1k-2k days aren't good and when winning or losing these amounts in a few hours I don't want to get off the laptop. Luckily playing as high as $5/10 hasn't really affected me and I'm even over the last few weeks but evens isn't doing me any favours.I just can't resist the challenge although 5/10 is noticeably a much more solid game in terms of skill. I'll still be playing $2/4 and $3/6, games I beat comfortably but I've set myself the challenge to win another £5k by the end of July before I allow myself to really be in these games only. The me of old would be playing $5/10 and moving to $10/20 until I busto'd so I'm obviously making a lot of progress in terms of bankroll management and mindset towards poker which is half the battle.

I played two sessions since, on sunday at $.5/1 which was a real test of my discipline but I did it and won £400 and then tonight in an hour whilst writing this post I've just smashed a guy for 5 and a half buy ins at $1/2 heads up plo.

Feel free to leave a comment so that I know I still have one reader!

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