2009 Results, 2010 Goals

Disclaimer: This is a long post, with a lot of different topics.


December results


So this is my graph from December. I'm happy with the way I played and my results. But the number of hands is not good enough. I was busy with exams the first week of the month. Then I spent some time playing tournaments mid-month and then I went to my parents for christmas. So less time for cash games. I also keep my sessions somewhat shorter now that I play 2/4, so I can stay on my A game for the most part. Anyway, I made about 2k profit in tournaments and 700 rakeback, so total for the month was +$6.7k I'm definitely not unhappy with that, especially considering the low volume.


2009 results

Unfortunately I can't post a graph for the whole year as I simply don't have all the hands in my database. But here are my approximate numbers for the year:

Cash games: ~$25k
Tournaments: ~$15k
Live (cash and tourneys): ~$3k
Rakeback: $5k

Total: ~$48k

I am very happy with those results. In my post of January 26, I stated that "my immodest goal for 2009 is to win $50k at poker". At the time I didn't really think it would happen, but I almost reached that goal.


Current affairs

During christmas I played low - 0.5/1 for the most part. I didn't want to go on a big downswing and let that ruin my mood. I did have my best cash game day this year a few days earlier. A couple of friends I don't see very often was stopping by and they wanted to see me play, so I pulled up Full Tilt on our 46 inch TV for them to see. I won 1.4k, so I guess they were pretty impressed. :-)

In recent days I've been back playing 2/4. It's going well so far. Yesterday I had one of my swingiest sessions ever. I was 6-tabling 2/4. At one point I was running 1.6k below EV. A lot of that was due to losing a 1.1k pot when I got it in with the 57 vs. 66 on 346 and he spiked quads on me. But I managed to fight my way back to a positive results in a session that included 7 pots that were $800+. The biggest pot was $1,350. I won that when I flopped a set against an overpair. I had another good session today. In fact it was my 8th straight winning session at 2/4. I'm pretty excited about continuing my success there. My current bankroll is $17.3k

The reason why my bankroll is slightly lower than last time is that I went shopping today. My parents got me a new watch for christmas, but I decided to exchange it for something a little more baller. Unfortunately they bought it in a really cheap store. I got one of the most expensive watches they had there, and it was still less than $1k. Anyway, it is a Seiko Chronograph and it's really cool, so I'm happy. I didn't get the Armani suit I talked about in one of the previous posts, because they didn't have it in my size :-(. Instead, I bought a Tiger of Sweden suit that was really stylish as well. I did, however, buy a really nice Armani shirt and some other nice clothes. For New Year's Eve I got a bottle of Dom Perignon. That shit is really expensive. $200 for a small bottle. But it's only New Year's Eve once a year, right. So now that I spent around $3k on luxury items that I didn't need anyway, I'll probably lay low for a while.


2010 plans

On the 4th of December I'm starting in a new job, working for a newspaper for 10 weeks. I have to move to a different city where I don't know anyone, but it'll be a good learning experience I think. After that I'm working the next 10 weeks for a different newspaper, but this time in my home city of Stavanger. This is all part of my education. I will be payed. Not a lot, but a paycheck is a paycheck. I'm also receiving scholarship from the Norwegian government at the same time, so I will have a lot of money. More money than I've ever had before. During this time I plan on grinding 2/4 daily. If I have continued success, I will probably start taking shots at 3/6 when my bankroll is around 25k. It will be easier to build my bankroll with all that money flowing in. My ultimate goal is to be able to finally buy a car. Cars cost a fucking fortune in this country.

My plan for the summer is to go on an American road trip with a couple of buddies, starting in NYC and ending up in LA. We will be hitting Atlantic City and Vegas along the way (obviously). Hopefully I can be in the Vegas for the World Series. We'll see. However it turns out, I'm sure it will be a great summer vacation.

My goal for the entire year is to win $100k at poker. Not a modest goal this year either, but I think I'm actually being more realistic than I was a year ago. I've come a long way with both my skills and my bankroll, and I think this is perfectly doable, even with a full time job.

Happy New Year!

Vacation

Christmas vacation is already underways for me. As mentioned earlier, I had my last exam this year on the 8th. In the new year I will work for a couple of newspapers. I'll write more about that later.

I'm using my extra free time to play in some tournaments, mainly the mini-FTOPS series. I finished 5th in event #3, which was a NLHE triple shootout. That was good for 2k. I also knocked out Scott Fischman, so ship the t-shirt! :-)

As far as cash games go, I have played very little so far this month. I've put in about 5k hands, almost all at 1/2 6-max. But I'm crushing the game at a rate of 15 BB/100. That means that I'm up 3k. One change I've made is that I've started using a HUD (Heads Up Display) while playing. I changed from using Pokertracker 3 to using Hold Em Manager as my primary tracker. The hud in HEM is a lot better, and I already feel very comfortable using it, although I've hardly ever used a HUD before. Since I have been adjusting to that, I have hardly played any 2/4, but I will soon be at the point where my bankroll is large enough that I can confidently deal with the swings at 2/4.

Current bankroll: $18.0k

November Results

This is my graph for November. 9.6k profit + 1.2k rakeback + 400 at Carbon poker for a total of 11.2k profit, which is my best cash game month ever. The last few days I have been taking my first real shot at 2/4 and it's been going great so far. As long as I keep winning I will play 2/4. If I have a big losing session I will re-evaluate. But mostly I am just playing my rush now and trying to get my bankroll over 20k, which I feel is a good bankroll for 2/4. I withdrew some money today to pay rent and also for an new suit. I have looked at an awesome dark blue Armani suit that I'm probably buying. Anyway, my bankroll now is still the biggest I've ever had.

Current bankroll: $15.6k

Heater

On tuesday I had a pretty bad day. I was tired, ran bad and started tilting. I chased my losses at 2/4, lost two flips and turned what had been a $400 profit early in the day into a $1,200 loss. However, the last 3 days I have won more than $1k each day. Most of my winnings this month has been at 0.5/1 HU, but this week I mostly made my profit at 1/2 6-max. I also took a couple of new shots at 2/4 the last days that were more successful. In addition to that, I made a 1k deposit on Carbon poker and played a little 0.5/1 6-max there, winning about 500.

The next week I probably can't play that much cause I have to concentrate on my exams. But after the 8th of December I'm free for the rest of the month, and I plan on putting a lot of time into poker. My goal for next month is to get my bankroll over 20k and make a permanent jump to 2/4. I've basically achieved my goal for this month already, which was to win 10k. I'll post a graph when the month is finally over.

Bankroll: $14.4k

Back on the Grind

I haven't posted anything here since summer, and it's about to become winter. So what has happened since then?

Well, first of all, I moved into a new apartment. I'm really happy about the place. Here is my new setup:
And here is the view from my room:


I also have a pretty nice setup in the living room with a 46 inch HD TV and PS3.

But on to poker. After I made 25k in May and June combined, I didn't play much for the next couple of months. As long as I'm a student, the state of Norway gives me money as well, so I was pretty much well covered. I went to a couple of chess tournaments, and as mentioned, I moved into a new apartment (which I'm renting). But it was empty. So the first two weeks in the new apartment, I bought all kinds of cool stuff to put in it. Which means that most of my money disappeared!

At the start of november I started putting in a lot of poker hands again (and by a lot I mean about 30k hands so far, that's a lot for me anyway). It's been a good month. I started out with a 6k bankroll, playing mostly 1/2 6-max. As the month progressed, I also played quite a bit of 0.5/1 HU, where I am absolutely crushing with a 19.7 BB/100 winrate. Whenever I feel like relaxing, I may play 0.5/1 or even 0.25/0.50 6-max. I'm being really conservative with my bankroll, and I think that's paying off. I'm gonna wait with moving up to 2/4 until I have a 20k roll. My goal for the month is to make 10k solely off cash games for the first time in my career. With 7.3k in earnings so far, I am well on my way to reaching that goal.
Bankroll: $13.3k

Chopped a live tournament

On friday me and two good friends went to the local poker club and played the weekly tournament. I got heads up with one of my friends with a 2 to 1 chiplead. We decided to chop most of it and flip for the rest since we are friends after all. Of course he won two straight flips to take it down. :-)

That was a lot of fun, though. There's an ongoing ranking where the top finishers throughout the season gets entries into a big live event. This season just started, so I'm planning on playing a lot there. Next time will be on wednesday.

Sunday is tournament night online, and I endulged in the craze this night as well. I won an entry into a $500 satelite to the WSOP Main Event, where there were 150 seats guaranteed. I decided to unregister and just keep the T$s instead. That was a little nitty on my part, but 500 is a bit too much to spend on one tournament for me right now. I did play the Sunday Million, however, but went out before the money. In the Sunday Quarter Million, which is a $10 buy-in with 250k guaranteed (!) I went sort of deep, but didn't win any significant money. I also went deep in the $26 pot limit 6-max on Full Tilt, but had my aces cracked by tens in a very big pot with 15 players left.

Another tournament I played was the 6-max $55 super turbo, where you start with 300 chips and blind levels are 3 minutes. Out of 1276 participants I finished 10th, which was good for a little over $800. The way I went out was a little frustrating though. On blinds 1200/2400 I had 33k, which is a lot in that tournament. I picked up AQ UTG and didn't find a better option than just open-shoving. Unfortunately I got snapped off by the only player at the table who had me covered, and he had aces.

Cash games have started to go a little better. I was playing 2/4 this weekend, since weekends are so much softer. And even though I lost a lot of flips and quite a few 70/30s as well, I somehow managed to come out ahead. I also won a bit in razz and mixed games. No spectacular wins though. I'm gonna go back to grinding 1/2 and the smaller tournaments this week and then I'll take it from there.

Bankroll: $15.1k

Won a Main Event seat

I have been running really bad at cash games in June. Fortunately I have been running super hot at tournaments. My success culminated on sunday when I won an entry to the WSOP Main Event. I actually qualified through a freeroll. Full Tilt has these sick freerolls where around 800 players compete to win 8 ME seats. That's the biggest single win of my poker career.

I'm not playing the tournament, however. Since I have the option to keep the money, I'll just do that. $10k is significant money for me, and a nice bankroll booster.

Other than that, I have gone deep in several big tournaments, but no big cashes, just a bunch of ~$500 scores. I just played a good session at 1/2 as well, winning $500 in very short time. Hopefully my bad streak at cash games is over.

Since I have a lot of spare time this summer, I will continue to grind both tournaments and cash games pretty much every day. I might take some shots at 2/4 in the weekends when the games are softest, but the main plan is to stay at 1/2 until I have like 20k. Current bankroll: $14.2k

Summer grind

I'm back!

Exams are over and hopefully went well. I have a long and uneventful summer ahead. The next three months I plan on grinding poker hard.

2009 has been a great year so far. In April I spent $4k on a vacation to Thailand as well as $3k on a baller new laptop. I have also been spending absurd amounts on champagne. So there went a lot of my bankroll. But still, good times!

In mid-April I started building a new bankroll completely from scratch, starting out at 2NL (lol). Things turned out alright and I was playing 50NL by the beginning of May. And this is a graph of my May results:


As you can see it was a good month. Actually my best ever. I even managed to put in decent volume. I did spew/tilt a little at 1/2 mid-month, but played a really strong and solid game in all my 100NL sessions and was one of the biggest winners at that level on Full Tilt. My bankroll currently stands at $4.6k and I plan on staying at 100NL for a while. I've found that I probably play sub-optimally at 1/2 with less than 6k in my account. I'm expecting 1.5k rakeback in a week or so. When that arrives I'll probably be ready to move up.

This weekend I've participated in some donkaments. I came 6th in the $26 pot limit 6-max and 7th in the $75 pot limit 6-max on friday. Yesterday I won a $3 satelite into the $100 no limit 6-max and came 11th in that. I also came 7th in a big $3 rebuy a few days ago. Today I played satelites for the 750k guaranteed and qualified three times. I didn't cash in that tournament though. In the $26 pot limit I was a massive chip leader with 22 players left. Somehow I managed to totally blow up and go out in 19th. I also went deep in the 6-max $5 rebuy. That was a big field and I busted out in 6th, losing a coin flip.

As you can see there has been a lot of finishes in the 6th-20th range for me these days. There's obviously some money in that, but the big money is higher up the ladder. I might be up rougly 1.5k from tournaments this weekend, although I'm not sure.

Anyways, it's 9 am now, so I'm going to sleep with grind on the mind.

2009

Happy New Year!

I am sad to say that I will discontinue this blog in 2009. I have decided to step down a bit when it comes to poker. Although I will continue playing a little each day to make money, I will not use any more time on things like analyzing hands, watching instructional videos or work on my game. I have come to a point where I can pretty much play on autopilot and make a solid income. Especially now that I play on Pitbull Poker.

In 2009 the plan is to invest a lot more of my time on my chess career. Even though I will never become a professional chess player, I find great pleasure in developing myself as a player and playing in international tournaments. Chess is truly the game and hobby of my life. I'm using some of my poker winnings from December to go on an extended vacation to Thailand in March/April including a chess tournament.

I might come back to poker more seriously if I build a big bankroll and start winning huge sums of money. That's what I'm trying to do anyway. My immodest goal for 2009 is to win $50k at poker.

So long for now.