January 2015 Goals!

Hey guys,

Happy 2015! Hope you guys have a great 2014 and are doing well. I have been busy lately with work and playing poker that’s explain the late blog post. For December result, I am on the loss side again. For those of you who have been following my blog since the beginning would know that I am struggling to be a consistent winning player on NL50 on Pokerstars. Of course I will still work hard on my game and I want to devote at least few hours to study my game in a week. Guess I get complacent after having seeing the result of my hardwork and I started to be lazy again and bad result came back to haunt me. Nevertheless, I am still on the profit side for 2014 thanks to a good start from January to March where I am running good.

To be honest, I am not sure if should continue to post my result on the blog as it somehow become a ‘pressure’ to produce good result as I know everyone is going to see my result although I had been uploading losing graph for a few months in 2014. I will think about it and will update you guys on the January review post at the end of the month and of course I am more than willing to post profit graph every month in 2015.

2015 is not going to be good for me pokerwise as Singapore government had already pass the bill in 2014 to ban online poker in 2015. Therefore I my time on the virtual felt is very limited and they gonna ban it early this year. When I came to know about this, I felt like shit as I had spent hours and hours grinding as studying this game and now SG government decided to screw me up. I am going for Supernova (SN) this year and hope to apply for Team online pro in the future but everything became impossible if I stay in Singapore. Moving abroad to play poker is the only option I have but it is hard for me to move abroad with a small BR. If anyone of you have an ‘extra’ space at home for me to stay, I may consider to move. I just need a place to sleep and grind so message me or leave a comment if you got extra space at home for me provided the country allow online poker.

Online poker streaming via Twitch is so popular right now and I have been following SetOverSet AKA Bryce nl200 cash game where he will be grinding four cash game tables and talk about his thought process while playing. Been watching a few cash game twitch and his stream is one of my favourite. He stream 5 days a week and each session is 5 hours long. I am thinking of doing my own streaming soon before online poker is ban here. The steam is going to show you guys how bad I play and to have fun with the viewers.

2015 Goals:

I will still set my poker goal as if I can still grind for the entire year.

• SUPERNOVA by October 2015
• Pokerstars to approach me asking me to be their first Asian Team Pro online and move me abroad J
• Move up to 6 max NL200 by end of the year
• Get to know more poker players rather than just following each other on twitter
• Form a study group with a few serious cash game players
• Play MTT on a regular basis during the weekend
• Stream my cash game session
• Update my blog regularly
• Exercise regularly and be fit again
• Learn Spanish
• Eat Sleep Poker Repeat until I am ban

That's all for now and good luck on the table!

Cheers!

November Review

Hey Poker World!

Gonna do a short review for this month!

November seems to be a challenging month for me as I tried what LadyMace86 did previously which was to stop looking at your cash game result for the entire month! This is very challenging for me as I am used to looking at my result at the end of the day after my sessions. Throughout the month, I knew I am doing pretty well until the last few days before the month end. Sessions were so bad and was pretty shock when I finally loaded the graph at the end of the month. Steep landslide at the very end of the month. On the other hand, things are turning around for me after a disastrous October.

Volume:                                    55,284 hands

Cash Game Profit:                   484.50

Stellar Award:                           100

Spin & Go Deposit bonus:       150     

                                                 734.50 USD

For the month of December, other than playing cash game, I will try to satellite to Macau Poker Cup Red Dragon event! Hopefully I can get lucky and play my first live event in Feb 2015! This month going to be a festive month so good luck to everyone who are playing on stars!

Good luck to everyone playing! Work hard and study hard! Last month of the year, better be a good one for me!

Cheers!

October Review - Land Slide

 Hey guys!

Picture speaks a thousand word.

As you can see, the graph is moving constantly in one direction for the entire month. I did not expect to lose 50 buy ins after a ok September and was wondering what is going on with my game. After the first week of October, I did not check my result until the last week of October but I knew I was doing badly for most session. To be honest, my confidence level on my game is at all time low where I am starting to question my play during hands.

 

I had a two hours of Skype session with Sipox after I whatapp him for a talk regarding my current situation and he took the initiative to go through on my stats for the entire month and gave advise on which position I wasn't raising enough or don't play well which was a good start for me. Then we talk about preflop and balancing range on each position. I am really grateful as I did not expect him to offer such a big help.

I bought a book 'Poker 1%' last month but did not have the time to read it until this month. Gonna digest it and hopefully it will improve my game! I will still continue to grind hard in November, hopefully things will turn around and gonna work hard on my game off the tables.

That's all for now!

Good luck on the tables!

September Review

Hi Poker world!

Finally completed one full month on Pokerstars playing 6max nl50. Things were not going so well in the second half of the month compared to the first half in monetary term but overall I am happy that I had completed what I wanted to do for the month.

For sweat sessions, I managed to do a few session with ZP and Ava. The session was good because I have to constantly think of my play during the hand so I could justify my play when a question were thrown to me during the session. For example, 'Why are you 3betting  on the turn instead of flat calling villain bet as you may be able to extract more value from him on the river?' Then I would explain my thought which is good as I am constantly maintaining the level of thinking for hours during the sessions. Sometime players would grind for the sick of grinding and they become a grinding machine without them knowing! You cannot maintain the level of thinking because you are so 'immune' to the game as this is what you do everyday. Hopefully I will have more sessions in October as I really enjoy those sessions.

Hand analysis wise, I am still marking hands during session to see what went wrong and what is the more optimal way of playing at the situation vs certain type of players. If I am unsure about the hand, I will then post it to players on skype for their opinion. I have to say a big thank you to Sipox because he always gave detail analysis from preflop play till the river talking about how to play each streets which was mind blowing. This will certainly improve my game as I wouldn't want to repeat the same mistake again especially in big pots. I am folding more hands than before and not putting myself in many tough spots.

Graph for this month,

Total volume:                                 67,952 Hands

Profit:                                             402.36 USD

Stellar Award:                                100.00 USD

PKR (HU Speed SNG)                  570.00 USD

                                                     1072.36 USD      

I am happy with my volume as you guys know that I am currently holding a full time job and time are limited during weekdays. Basically, I am playing 2-4 hours during weekdays and double/triple the time during weekend playing 6 - 8 table. In case anyone of you are wondering if I got the time to sleep, the answer is yes. I slept about 4-5 hours a day during the weekdays. Although I mentioned I have no volume target this month but I still manage 67k hands because I am very motivated to play! I had a number of bad session especially Sunday but it did not stop me from playing. In the end, I managed to pull off a small profit for the month.                                         

As I had stop playing at PKR, I had accumulated a lot of PKR points while grinding cash game which I had converted to MTT/SnG tickets. After a thinking it through, I decided to use all my points to play HU as there is not much value for MTT at PKR. I managed to win 5 out of 8 HU game ranging from $20 - $100 amounting to $570 profit with 0 buyin! I will be playing a 50k gtd mtt ($10k up top) on PKR in October as I was given a $150 entry for achieving their highest club level. Hopefully miracle will happen on that day.

Lastly, for October, I want to maintain my Eat.Sleep.Work.Poker.Repeat routine as I am still highly motivated to play. Why I am motivated to play? It is because I feel that players who were grinding the same limits had move up and they are improving tremousdously as they put in tons and tons of effort to get to where they currently are. No volume target for October as well because if I am motivated to play, the volume will automatically be achieve.

That's all for now!

GL on the tables!

September - Continue to work hard!

Hi poker world,

First half of September had been on the high until sunday grind where I dropped almost 9 buyins which was a disaster. I got no one to blame but myself for allowing myself to be on tilt and on top of that, I continue to play with tilt for awhile before finally hitting the close button on client.

On the other hand, I would say first half of the month went pretty smoothly (graph shown below). This month main focus is to bring back the momentum and 'correct mindset' to grind. I had carried out what I had planned  to do for the month like writing review after my session on things to take notes and what are the area that I had improve on. I would go through these reviews everytime before I start my sessions just to make sure I do not repeat my mistake from previous session. I suggest players who are climbing up the stakes should do because it really work!

Did not have any sweat session yet as everyone is busy grinding. I hope to have at least two sweat sessions by the end of the month. If you are interested, you can pm me on twitter. We can arrange for a 30min session with one another.

Current graph for the month,

Finally I am able to upload profit graph since May lol. Nothing much to comment since there is still second half of the month to conquer. Hopefully I will continue to run good and produce a nice graph by the end of the month.

Rest of the month:

• Continue to do a short review after my session
• hand analysis, hand analysis and HAND ANALYSIS
• Sweat session!
• Platinum status on PS

That's all for now. GL on the table!

Cheers!

September is here!

 Hi Poker world,

Just a short update for coming September, first of all, I had finally upgraded to HM2. Look pretty good but is obviously slowing my laptop down. I had adjusted some of my grinding routine where I will be having breaks every two hours of grind. This will only be implement for weekend grind as I have limited time to grind during weekdays due to work. Definitely going to have a few sweat session with a few players to see how bad I play and to plug my leaks.

This is my graph for today!

Great start for the first day of September and I hope this will maintain until the rest of the month. Post this graph to motivate everyone and myself to work hard and play well for September! I will be playing on Pokerstars and PKR (depending on the traffic) but I believe I will be spending most of my time on Pokerstars since PKR traffic is getting from bad to worse.

That's all for today. GL on the tables!

Cheers!

August - Short update!

Hi poker world! 

Just a short update for the month of August. There will be no graph this month as I decided to take a break for the month of August to have ample time to look back at my game and mental state when approaching the game. 

During this months, I had been reading some blogs and 2+2 threads on poker players who are trying to move up the ladder to remind why I started to play poker seriously. I realised that my mindset had changed when I had move up to NL50 and the mindset I am having for the past few months was not good at all. Just a reminder, when you are starting out at micro stakes, you are motivated to play well and keep studying to crush the table but when you move up the ladder, your mindset may start to change to a 'profit wise' mindset rather than continuing to improve your game. This is where you starting to feel the pain of being stuck to a limit or break even or on the losing end for months. I do believe this is the situation that I am currently in who think more about the profit rather than improving myself as a poker player. This is a wake up call for me to return the the improving/study mindset > profit wise mindset. Of course profit is important, that is the reason we play.  Most of the successful player have put in alot of effort to get to their current position unless you are a ultra luckbox who can climb the ladder with little knowledge about poker but you will not stay lucky forever. Hopefully what I said make sense and will serve as a reminder to some of you and ME.

Recently get to know a poker player who was sharing how to study poker. I find the blog very useful and send him a email regarding this issue and to my surprise, he is willing to share with me. Not sure if I should mention his name here just in case everyone flood his mail box. We had a few conversation on skype and the more we talk about poker, the more I feel like I am someone who just started playing poker. Coming September, we will be having sweat session, more discussion on hand analysis. I have to say it is pretty rare for poker players to share some of their insight on the game and study material as they want to stay ahead of their opponent but I was pretty lucky to get to know him who is willing to share some of his poker knowledge with me. Lets see how I do until the end of the year.

Although I had finished The Mental Game of Poker book one and two, I am going to revisit book one again as it is very obvious that I am not applying the advice given and past mistake that had been corrected had reappear into my game again. For example, I had become POW (Payoff Wizard) on the table again paying villians off more frequently due to massive accumulated tilt even though it is a standard straightforward fold on certain situation.

I will be using Evernote as the main apps to take note of everything related to poker like articles/strategy and etc. One of the most important is to do self review after my session. Had just started using the apps and find it amazing. Everyone should start using it!

That all for now! Cheers!