2013 Summary - Swings and Roundabouts

So here we are at the end of 2013, me having now completed 5 months of playing the game full time, and it's been one hell of a steep learning curve for things outside the actual process of playing poker.

When I first started out I got a lot of advice from a mate, TommyD who also plays for a living and looking back now, it couldn't have been more spot on. It's been far more mentally strenuous that I expected (and I thought I'd over estimated it in my head to avoid a shock!)

There have been some great times and some not so great times, so I'll list a couple of the high/low points below.

Biggest High Point
Just before this happened I can recall moaning to Emma about how bad I had been running recently, then through a small MTT cash and a bit of rungood at the cash tables, I managed to pull off my first ever £1k+ profit week to get me out of the hole.

Biggest Low Point
Before playing full time, I'd already experienced some pretty long and brutal downswings in cash but during these first 5 months I had my biggest ever downswing. No doubt, the longer it went on, the more my play deteriorated as bits of tilt came in etc but the end result was roughly -£2.5k over the course of about 2 months.

Biggest Near Miss
Sky run 2 freerolls per month for Priority members (a mini and a main), both of which are pretty great value due to how small the fields are. They usually have around £400 and £800 respectively for 1st place, and usually only get around 40 runners. On top of that there is a running jackpot for the first person to win the mini and the main before anyone else does which starts at £1k and increases by £100 each month it isn't done. Well in December I won the mini for £370. The following week I was down to the final 7 of the main (with 6 paid - mincash about £140), stacks are pretty shallow at this point and I shipped my 13xBB with JJ over a minraise... straight into KK to stone bubble :( The jackpot was £2k at that point so winning that main would have been £2.8k for a 40ish runner freeroll!

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Hand on heart, I know that towards the end of 2013 I've been a massive mental game fish and it really badly affected my winrate. The big downswing mentioned above really wrecked my head... I was playing worse, I was trying lots of different things like reducing the numbers of tables, then stupidly being frustrated when they (obviously) didn't show instant results, volume inevitably suffered which in reality is the one thing I needed to get out of it.

I spent the last month or so of the year purely grinding MTTs... probably more mental fish behaviour because at the time I just wanted to do anything other than sit at a cash table, but I know there's tons of value in the stakes of MTT I'd be playing and I've never really put much volume in at MTTs. That final month was ok and I made a decent profit despite probably like 20+ very deep runs in the month and fading a decent score every single time bar that one freeroll for £370.

All in all, I've made ok profits over the period but have seriously under achieved imo and the only person to blame for that is myself... which brings us to 2014 and how I'm going to go about changing that.

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I think 2014 is going to be a big year for me but that's not gonna just happen by chance, it's gonna take a lot of hard work and discipline. So what's the plan, well it's pretty simple really...

1) This is probably the most important point of all; I've taken a lot of advice on board from Ryan Spittles and really respect his attitude towards the game. So, no more ranting about runbad, no more slagging off 'bad' players or moaning about how good their results are/how good they run considering how bad they are blah blah. It's all just a complete waste of time and mental energy, and all it does is negatively affect my own mindset for the game when all that really matters is my own game/results.
2) It's back to the cash tables for the new year and back to being much more disciplined like I was at first. Planning to really smash the volume this year. No more distractions while playing and back to being stricter about getting the volume in that I plan to.
3) Allocate 6-8 hours per week on pure studying of the game, and actually do it!!
4) Later in the year, finally get out to play some live cash.

Sky Poker Tour - Grand Final

I've played a lot of events on the Sky Poker Tour over the last 18-24 months but have never managed to play the £330 Grand Final main event. This year I really didn't want to miss it again but I also didn't feel in a comfortable position to brick too many £20 quarter finals or £72 semi finals. I had a really small 'roll' sitting unused on Winamax so decided I'd play 2-3 MTTs on there alongside each cash session for a couple of weeks to try to grind up my SPT BI and just buy-in direct.

That plan went very well, I got the 3 FTs below (and a few small cashes) in €2-5 comps over the course of maybe 25 MTTs and that was my £330 buy-in locked up.

The grand final was held at Dusk Til Dawn which is always a great cardroom to play in and widely considered to be the best in the country, if not Europe. The only downside being that it's usually so busy that it can be a nightmare getting any food/drink at the tables. The tournament got just over 200 runners in the end resulting in a 1st prize of just over £17,000

Prior to the event I was talking to a mate and my girlfriend about how in the past I've always wanted to have a few 'big names' on my tables at SPTs and never get them, but that this was the first time I really didn't want that to happen, so sod's law it would do.

Well what dya know, I sit down to my first table to see Julian Thew, Dan Carter, Dave Nicholson along with a few good Sky regs... Adam Bromley, James Rann, and Simon Allen, so not the greatest of starting tables.

It was a bit up and down at first (mostly down) and I dropped to about 22k from a 30k starting stack by level 2 before getting an absolute gift... An unknown guy who has been opening big pre with all his hands makes it 800 @ 100/200. I 3bet to 2100 with AA, he pretty quickly 4bets to about 4.2k... I think for about 10 seconds, announce all in and get pretty much snapped off with TT to double up.

One of the perks of being in Priority (basically if you pay enough rake on Sky to earn 10,000+ points per month) was that they were giving complimentary massages to Priority members.

But anyway, after that early double, things were very slow and steady for the next few hours and I was pretty happy to see our table break and leave with a little over 50k. My next table seemed pretty soft in comparison to my previous one... it was the first time all day I'd seen someone limp. Pretty quickly spun it up to 70-80k by just nicking a few small pots. Then it all went downhill pretty quickly, one too many mis-timed bluffs and 3bet pots I had to give up on post flop left me back down at 40k @ 500/1k... frustrating but still plenty to play with.

Shortly after this downturn I got another table move and was sat to the direct left of Mclean Karr. I spent a couple or orbits mostly folding until blinds were 600/1.2k and I had about 32k left. Then someone opens the cutoff to 3300, Mclean Karr flats on the BTN and I look down to see KK in the SB (both players have about treble my stack). I toy with all options... peeling to check/jam any flop, 3bet/calling or just shipping now. I'm still not sure what is the best option is but I went with a 3bet to 10k, the original opener folded and Mclean Karr after a bit of a dwell up shipped on me with ATo so it worked out exactly as planned...

Runout is 892JQ

And that was that, the dream was over... until next time.

How it all started... (Pt. 2)

After a few of years of playing them 'SnGs' with my mates, I eventually moved out of my mum's house so the games stopped, as did all of my pokering.

Years later, I made my first deposit online of about $20 with Fulltilt Poker when I was 19. I was the ultimate bankroll nit in these days and used to play nothing but the $0.10 BI MTTs each night after I got home from work. Up to this point my poker knowledge was entirely what I had been able to pick up from Late Night Poker years earlier (so not much). I had a rough idea about hand selection and that was about it; I literally had no idea what position even was, no idea how to play a <20xBB stack or a million other things you learn along the way.

Somehow (I must have ran insanely good for one night) one of the nights I was playing the above MTT, it had around 4000+ runners and I managed to luckbox my way to 2nd place to turn 10 cents into a little over $200. It took me from 8pm until about 6am the next morning, which meant I got about 2 hours sleep before having to go to work. That was my first big win and it was a long time to come before I'd make any score like that again.

Circumstances changed again, I moved house again, and I stopped playing poker for a really long time.

It wasn't until years later when I was 23-24 and living with my girlfriend Emma that I first saw an advert for Sky Poker. I think we'd accidently stumbled across the Sky Poker channel and straight away it re-awakened my love for the game and I was struck by the great sense of community the site seemed to have.

I deposited shortly after seeing the first show and being the life nit that I am, only deposited £20. Again I started off playing the smallest games possible, mostly cheap DYMs. I must have ran pretty good in the early days because I was still rubbish when I first joined Sky and to this day I've still never needed to deposit again.

It was on Sky where I first started putting work into improving my game. I flittered between pretty much every game possible, DYMs, HU SnGs, MTTs, but always really wanted to be a cash player predominantly. I posted a ton of hands in Sky's Poker Clinic for analysis and with the help of Dohhhhhh's guide to beating micro stakes cash, I started to become a winning player at 4NL. Over the years I've improved every aspect of my game, built a roll, played at least 10 of the live Sky Poker Tour events all around the country including Newcastle, Cardiff, Brighton, Stratford, and Dusk til Dawn, have earned my first Hendon Mob flag and am now attempting to play poker for a living.

So there we are, pretty much caught up.

How it all started... (Pt. 1)

So let's go back a little to how my love of poker all started...

I'd always been interested in card games as a kid, whether it be blackjack, patience (solitaire) or gin rummy. I was only 12 when Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels was released but I remember seeing it shortly after it came out and being fascinated by 3 card brag.

It wasn't until around 12-13 years ago when I got my first taste of Texas Hold 'em. When I was 14 years old, every Friday night I would have my dinner and spend the rest of the evening watching channel 4 (back when Friday night TV was actually good!). I can still remember the line up from about 8pm onwards, it was Friends, Fraiser, Father Ted, South Park, Eurotrash (lol)... in later years Celebrity Deathmatch which was pretty meh but the night was always finished off with Late Night Poker starting at about midnight.

I was instantly hooked and, unknown to me, so were a few of my mates who lived in my street. It wasn't long before the show came up in conversation and we quickly started playing some 'home-games' in my garage. They were always very small games, there were 4-5 of us, and we'd all stick £1 in and play winner takes all. Small games but I'd already got the hunger for winning.

Lambo Goes Pro

Some of you will already know from my diary on the same site but for any new readers, I've been playing on Sky Poker now for the last 3-4 years. In that time I've been slowly improving and grinding up a roll. Over the last 12 months, with a lot of hard work, a lot of help from mates on Sky like Dohhhhhhh and some coaching from Coxylboro, my game has really improved.

I was recently made redundant and as I am in the fortunate position to be able to cover my living costs without a job I decided it was a good time to take 'my shot' at playing poker for a living. Many of you will know this has always been my ultimate goal from poker so while I do not have to voluntarily leave a job to try, it makes it the perfect time to try.

I set myself the goal of playing roughly 40 hours per week 6-7tabling mostly 20NL and 30NL and went from there. I didn't actually make the decision to try this until Sunday 4^th August (I hadn't played any poker in August at that point), so played my first session on Monday 5^th August.

You can imagine how brutal it felt to stand from my very first 4 hour session to be -£100.... not a great start to my plan! I didn't get too disheartened though and managed to turn it round that same night and finish my first week as +£235

A week into this venture, my girlfriend Emma had spotted a very nice monitor in Argos which was on offer for only £75 so she convinced me to go pick it up. I've always felt like I could play more tables but I really hate overlap so haven't been able to cope with more than 6-7 in miniview on my laptop. I picked up the new monitor in the afternoon on 13^th August and played my first session of 12-tabling that night. I jumped straight into it and had 12 tables up and running within about 15 minutes of sitting down to my session. It took a surprisingly small amount of time before I felt comfortable 12-tabling with minimal (unplanned) timing out so I continued with this volume for the month (action permitting).

I've changed a lot of things about how I set-up for my sessions this month to increase focus and concentration. My 'office' is now the dressing table in our bedroom where I listen to my iPod (generally Ricky Gervais podcasts); no more TV and no more Facebook/forum mid-session.

Mentally it has already been tough and I've played through some pretty rough patches of being constantly outdrawn or coolered but I think I've coped with it very well and come out the other end. When things aren't going well I just keep telling myself 'Every minute I sit at the table, I am making money even if the results don't immediately reflect that'.

For the nerdy readers out there, here are a few stats from my first month:

No. of Days Played: 23 days

No. of Hours Played: 129 hours

No. of Hands Played: 98,000 hands (approx)
Poker Points: 12297 points (equates to around £350 rakeback)

Finally here is a graph of my ups and downs throughout the month. Unfortunately it doesn't truly show the full swings involved because the graph displays the results per day (not per session) so if I was -£100 in the morning and +£100 in the evening it just appears as a break even day.

Note: The amounts above are in £££ but the site I use forces you to display a $ sign.

Summary

I started out the month playing mainly 20NL with a few tables of 30NL. As my bankroll increased I started to introduce more and more 30NL and have finished out the month including a few tables of 40NL in my grind. I will be sticking to tight bankroll management which is obviously essential when playing for a living but my plan is to have 100xBIs for 50NL before the end of the year.