Day 277/365

A week is a long time in poker. Countless times I have opened this blog this year, to put in my Tuesday entry, and have been absolutely blown away by looking at the prior post and thinking about how much things have changed since my last one. I guess it is one of the reasons I love this job; I can't sit still in life, the intense development, poker learning, bankroll swings and chaos make every day a new challenge and experience.

At the end of September I started to grow excited at the prospect of a new month. I had been a marginal winner in aiev for the past almost 100k hands, and felt like I was finally getting some confidence in my ploplo game. October 2 came (the first day of the month for me due to hem's timing issues), and I blasted out of the block with a $2k session. I ended up losing that all back later that day, but remained up a lot in aiev. The next day I shot 400plo and dropped another couple of k. Then on day 3 I basically broke even in aiev, but ran 12 bi under, and lost another $2400. I just felt like posting this as it's probably an extreme example of how plo can be. What's funny is that I'm actually making this post quite late on Wednesday, and today is my biggest of the year, by a decent margin (about +$5.2k so far), and now I'm pretty much back where I started and ready to start the October dream again tomorrow.

I'm not sure how much of this is rambly or interesting, but I do want to put a bit more effort in to my posts when I get a chance to as lately they have been mediocre at best.

In terms of the other important factor, vpp, I beasted out the early part of the week putting together a few 4k days, but then slacked off a bit later in the week with some 3k days. I ended up running 7k over pace and am now 47.5k behind. My goal right now still remains to get to 20k by the end of October, which requires just a little over 3.7k points/day. I have a mate coming up mid month for a day, but I still believe I can get there handily if I put the effort in. If I can get above that 20k mark at all, I will feel confident applying for jobs in November, so will also be doing some resume work this month.

Anyway, as always, the numbers:

$Poker = $58.568

VPP/Pace = 710,026 / 757,534

Day 270/365

Ended up having ridiculously bad headaches for the first 3 days of last week and was unable to put in as much volume as I would have liked. I'm definitely realising I need to work a lot smarter, especially given October is absolutely my make or break month. I'm mixing in a lot more outdoor type things, and cutting down a lot on anything in front of a screen that isnt poker. My basic aim right now is to get to within 20k vpps of pace by the end of October. In order to do this I hope I can get as close to 50k by the end of this month as possible. I guess I can feel good that despite playing mostly 100plo and having 3 days in a row at or below pace I did run a couple of K above pace on the week overall.

On the plus side, this was my best week of the year in terms of $, at $6433. I've done a bit of bluefirepoker study as well as going through other people's hands and feel that my game has definitely moved ahead in leaps and bounds. Over my last 70k hands now I'm roughly breakeven in aiev which feels good.

Anyway, on with the numbers:

VPP/Pace = 683,698 / 738,356

$Poker = $62,252

Day 263/365

I've run really badly over the past week and have had to move down to 100plo as a result. However, I'm finding it easier to put in hands at 100plo and am still doing well vs pace. I really hope my current runbad turns around soon, over the past two days alone I'm 25 buyins under ev and have probably had set under set or top two vs set about 50-100 times as well. I also had my biggest losing day of the year last Friday at about -$4.5k ($2.5k under aiev). Has not been much fun.

I will probably stay at 100plo for the rest of the month now, which means it will be harder to make serious inroads in to my pace numbers, but still possible. I ended up almost 8k over pace for the past week, and with 9 days to go if I can achieve 1k above pace per day I will end the month about 47k behind pace and in a really good position to get close to pace again by the end of October.

As always, the numbers:

VPP/Pace = 662,497 / 719,178

$Poker = $55,819

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