Day 256/365

Internet fixed up late last week and I've managed to have a few days of solid internet which is enabling me to get above daily pace. I actually was 8k above pace for the past week. If I keep up this kind of effort I'll hopefully be back close to pace by the end of October.

I don't have much else to say right now, other than that the next month and a half I expect to be pretty monotonous and painful. Hopefully I'll run a bit better than I have lately and that will at least make it worthwhile.

Numbers:

VPP/Pace = 635,520 / 700,000

$Poker = $59,911

Day 249/365

Another week without stable internet has me getting more and more frustrated and is creating a lot of negative energy in my life. Amazingly enough even with all the choppiness I've managed to be slightly ahead of pace over the past week. However, not by anywhere near enough, especially at this time in the year. I think starting at noon today I am just going to call this company every two hours and hopefully they will get sick of me enough to actually fix the problem. It still has me in shock that it's been almost a month now since I paid for the service and I still have nothing. I am dealing with a company that has a 0/4 record now on actually following through on promises, and a 0/7 record on understanding my name or the basic alphabet when I spell it (my name is Peter and I have never had such problems on the phone with any other company ever; I usually get Teter or Peper as how it's heard, one guy even wrote it as Peper and then when spelling it back to me started with "Ok I have P for Peter".... can't even make this stuff up). I know this is a bit of a rant but it's honestly just how I'm feeling right now.

I feel like in poker development the last week has been great though. I think partially due to experience, and partially due to running average/bad, I am finally now at that level where I can start to see the spots I need help in. My 'unknown unknowns' are rapidly becoming 'known unknowns' and I expect to go through rapid development over the next couple of weeks in my game. As soon as I have internet I will be getting bluefirepoker, and I have started contributing more in the SSPLO section on 2+2.

Anyway, I better start grinding, so the numbers:

VPP/Pace = 608,371 / 680,822

$Poker = $60,030

Day 242/365

Some days are seriously just cursed. Today a series of annoying events (internet issues, waiting for connections, back problems interrupting sleep) left me with no time to play, and then when I finally get on to play at last the pokerstars server decides to shutdown for maintenance. And so I record my first 0 vpp day in Brisbane.

The rest of the week had distractions as well and I actually lost some ground on my vpp pace for the week. I've also still not resolved my internet issues and am still tethering which makes it impossible to grind for much of the day. I've now been told there are problems with the cabling within this building to my flat and have no idea how long this will take to fix.

It's all very frustrating as I feel if I just could get a decent connection right now I would be able to snap make massive headway; and living in a first world country that really shouldn't be as difficult to achieve as it has been so far.

On the other hand there is no point in focussing on what I can't do anything about, so at least I've had a mini-break from poker and will be able to get a good night's sleep and can come out swinging tomorrow. September is almost upon us as well, and given that August was pretty much a write-off with not playing for half of it, I'm pretty excited to be able to attack the 9th month of the year. I'm also excited to be about to crack 600k vpps, I feel like that's a pretty important number as from here on in it's really approaching the final straight. Finally, with WCOOP right around the corner and with pokerstars promos for high volume players being a complete joke so far this year, I have to think something big is coming soon.

Anyway, on to the numbers:

VPP/Pace = 587,561 / 661,644

$Poker = $60,059

Day 235/365

The week got off to a rough start but finished pretty well. I feel like the first few days after not playing for ages I was really stressed with trying to catch up to pace and played quite poorly, being overaggressive out of position and committing too easily postflop. That along with some serious runbad left me at -$8k pretty quickly. After the first few days I was forced to drop down to 100plo again and since then I think I've fixed up those leaks again and am doing better.

VPP wise I was able to push ahead with good success, the lack of distractions up here has definitely improved my ability to put in hands. I am also eating better and exercising more which has helped my focus dramatically. Unfortunately my internet is still unstable as I'm tethering with my phone, but I feel like once that is resolved I will be able to really start getting back ahead of pace. I started the week at 78.9k behind pace and finished it 71.7k behind. Ideally I would love to be ~62k behind by the end of this month, and 30k behind by the end of September. If I can achieve that I will hopefully get back in to the VPP black in October for the first time since I believe March, which will leave me to pursue other things for the rest of the year.

Anyway, the numbers:

VPP/Pace = 568,073 / 639,726

$Poker = $59,327

Day 228/365

So, my move to Brisbane was successful! The past two weeks I have barely been able to play poker unfortunately and am really far behind, however I am in a really good place now with no distractions and will hopefully have a massive second half of August and September.

Yesterday was my first full day playing again and I managed to hit a 4.4k day, if I can keep that kind of effort up I'll get back to pace in good time.

Just numbers for now, as I'm sure noone really wants to hear about my moving details:

VPP/Pace = 546,084 / 623,288

$Poker = $62,448

Day 221/365

Last 3 days I haven't played with internet problems and with all the hassles involved with the move, so I'll skip this week and do a double update next week.

VPP/Pace = 539,681 / 604,110

$Poker = $62,218

Day 214/365

I'm not sure when my last losing month was. I believe it was in 2007, but I can't be sure. However, from now on I will be able to say "My last losing month was July 2011". When I started this year I said that if I had a losing month I would snapquit SNE chasing. However I think its been made a bit easier by the fact that I had such a massive May and June.

I had an ok week anyway. I managed to make money at the tables, and wasn't too far behind pace, which I think I'm kind of building up to again. I feel like more and more distractions are gradually being resolved as well.

My real issue right now is getting in to a position where I can find full time work. Unfortunately I'm just too far behind pace to really consider it in the next month. I have a lot of stuff going on here for my final week in Melbourne, then will likely have stuff to sort out in my first week in Brisbane as well, so I will need to have an absolutely massive second half of August and September. I still feel confident that I can make everything work, but its going to take a lot of time and dedication and to be honest a massive downswing now could really derail it all (due to having to drop stakes again).

My July Graph:

And in BB:

One other thing I'm really hoping to be able to do when I get to Brisbane is to be able to get back on to many of the projects I've been forced to sit on the backburner for a while. Poker has definitely taken over lately and hopefully I can turn that around.

Anyway, the numbers:

Vpp/Pace = 528,204 / 584,931

$Poker = $61.264