Turning Point

Poker has the unique ability to turn confident people into quivering wrecks. About every six months or so I tend to have a mini breakdown where I grab a large, stiff drink and talk at my girlfriend for a few hours about how poker is getting me down. She in turn mutes the TV and pats my shoulder at points when it seems appropriate.

The latest of these sporadic blips occurred towards the end of March when my online game was really suffering. I don't tend to have many losing months and so it still affects me whenever one crops up. Last month wasn't too bad numbers-wise; I lost $4K but that's just a day or two's natural swings when you're regularly multi-tabling $400NL.

I could rationalise it even further when I really looked at the details of my play in Hold'em Manager. At the start of March I had a coaching session with Black Belt Nik Persaud on six-max Pot Limit Omaha. I already felt my PLO game was competent enough to do well in softer $200NL games, and after a really productive session with Nik I was excited to start playing a lot more PLO.

While I may technically be a decent PLO player, I am an absolute fish in terms of appreciating the variance involved. Over just 4,000 hands I dropped $6,000 - a pretty impressive reverse win rate. I'm still not even sure if I was playing poorly or just getting unlucky. However, I definitely wasn't enjoying this scale of losing to find out the answer so PLO quickly got put on the 'ban list'.

Anyway, that $6K loss meant I was never going to make a profit in March, despite clawing a bit back from some mid-stakes NL games. No, the main reason why I was frustrated - and worried - last month was because I no longer felt I had a huge edge on the competition. There were certain regs I had always found incredibly easy to play against in the past that were now routinely outplaying me. I was also making errors against the fish, overestimating how loosely they'd be happy to get all-in preflop and so on. As you can imagine, this is a much more serious problem for a poker player than anything to do with variance.

A load of my poker friends are always surprised and impressed when I tell them how much volume I put in each month. I routinely play 70-100,000 hands, a lot of those on a network where it's tough to get much volume in. Playing that amount takes a hell of a lot of time. Motivation for poker (or work, as it is) definitely isn't the issue - but I do feel as though I'm not making the most efficient use of my time.

I hardly ever watch training videos, no longer get regular coaching and don't often look at stats through my HEM. To be honest, I find all of this stuff pretty dull, especially when compared to the ease of just sitting down and grinding. Fellow Blue Belt Jamie Burland recently posted a very interesting link on the Black Belt Poker forum about this topic. Here's the link again: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61/mtt-community/theory-grinding-tl-dr-822668/

It's a long article but basically MTT supremo Tony 'Bond18' Dunst is explaining how time is a poker player (or anyone's) greatest resource and how it is vital that we make the best use of time. In a poker context he goes on to discuss the importance of finding a good balance between playing poker and improving as a player - from activities which often occur away from the table.

My mini breakdown occurred because I suddenly realised that I had stopped improving at poker. I was so obsessed with playing a lot of volume and earning a monthly wage to satisfy the short-term that I was putting my long-term future as a winning player at risk. From now on I'm going to make a big effort to rejuvenate everything I do to get my game back on track. If anyone has any ideas on what they have done to improve as players please, please let me know.

The WSOP is nearly here and I don't really have an idea what I am doing yet. Twice last month I bubbled WSOP satellites worth $4K each, which was quite frustrating. I'm sure I can't stomach more than two weeks out in Vegas so I'm probably going to go out around the time of the Main Event and just play that - so long as I can get backing obviously! Besides that I'm very content to just grind out the live cash games and eat in nice restaurants. Also, around that time there's a very big UFC happening in Vegas which I need to go to. Is it wrong that I'm probably more excited about that than the poker?!

The month was pretty low-key besides poker. I just returned from a wedding in Belfast which was good fun. I'd definitely recommend the city to anyone - make sure you take a taxi tour around the outskirts where you get taught about the troubled history of the city. It's really fascinating stuff. There's also some great bars of course.

While March wasn't great for me I'm hopeful that long-term it could be a real turning point in my poker career. Good luck to everyone at the tables and I hope to be reporting from a more positive position next time out.

The Sultan of Swings

Two days ago, on Monday 6th March, I tweeted (@Starch_Jarvis): ‘Holy sweet Christ I ran so good in that session. I almost feel guilty.' It was one of those beautiful two-hour spells where everything goes to plan – you constantly hit hands, play brilliantly and always, always get there. In a mix of $1/2 and $2/4 six-max cash I was up $2,300 in less time than it takes to watch White Men Can’t Jump.
In the midst of these sessions - and afterwards when I’m going to sleep with a wry grin on my face - I often think, Why isn’t everyone doing this? Why isn’t everyone playing poker for a living? $2,300 is such a huge sum of money to be won in that short space of time. I’d hazard to say it’s substantially more than I was taking home per month from my old journalism job once taxes were deducted. I learned a long time ago, however, that if you get complacent or cocky then poker has a nasty habit of knocking you back down very quickly.

At 8pm on Tuesday 7th March, I’d lost all the previous day’s profits and was now operating at a -$1,050 loss. At that point I realised why the poker profession isn’t for most people. Daily swings like this used to really bother me. On my very first day as a ‘pro’, the Good Luck card from my girlfriend fresh on the desk, I dropped $1,200 – I think it was the most I’d ever lost in a day up to that point. Instantly the irrational side of your brain kicks in and wonders if quitting your steady job was a huge mistake, whether you’ll ever be able to win at poker again, whether you’ll ever be able to earn money again.

Losing cash has that effect on most people. No matter how much or how many times you have won in the past, a big loss hurts much more and somehow the brain finds a way to override the clarity of thought that knows if you continue to play better than your opponents the money will come back eventually. Instead, all you can see is that your online bankroll is much smaller than it used to be. Thankfully, with practise, your tolerance for such wins and losses grows considerably with the more experience you get.

Having been pro for about 18 months I’d still consider myself to be a bit of a rookie at this. I’ve only experienced one significant downswing and haven’t yet reached the level that I want to be at skill-wise. The one thing I’m especially happy with is my changed attitude to [poker] money. Daily losses used to rock my confidence and, conversely, I’d get too happy when I had big wins. Experience and training – Jared Tendler’s book The Mental Game of Poker is instrumental in this – have completely altered my mindset to these things.

A personal goal is to attempt to have the same demeanour to other people no matter whether I’ve been winning big or dropping tons. Not only does this make me more bearable to be around when it’s going badly, but I also think it’s pretty solid advice for anyone taking poker semi-seriously. You cannot get embroiled in the money swings at all. They’re just numbers on a screen. (Or clay discs in a casino for you live folk.) If I could offer one piece of metagame advice from my brief pro experience it would be to work on managing your relationship to money. When you aren’t emotionally invested in the game it helps you play much better and avoid tilt.

So things weren’t going so well at 8pm. I don’t think I’d ever bet-folded so many rivers in my life before. And I definitely hadn’t hit a set. However, the beautiful thing about poker is that it can all turn around so quickly. The epic comeback began with this hand...

***** Hand History for Game 2027410243 *****
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: MrStarch ( $2015.89 USD )
Seat 2: blinDDuke ( $498.01 USD )
Seat 3: callmebabe ( $1107.10 USD )
Seat 4: WillyBanaan ( $865.00 USD )
Seat 5: cevzy ( $1127.00 USD )
Seat 6: Najammq ( $1331.50 USD )
blinDDuke posts small blind [$5.00 USD].
callmebabe posts big blind [$10.00 USD].
Dealt to MrStarch [ Td Th ]
WillyBanaan folds
cevzy raises [$30.00 USD]
Najammq calls [$30.00 USD]
MrStarch raises [$110.00 USD]
blinDDuke folds
callmebabe folds
cevzy folds
Najammq raises [$265.00 USD]
MrStarch raises [$1905.89 USD]
Najammq calls [$1036.50 USD]
MrStarch shows [Td, Th ]
Najammq shows [Kc, Ac ]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, Jc, Tc ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 6d ]
MrStarch wins $2705.00 USD from main pot

I think my play is definitely questionable here; T-T is certainly the very bottom of my value range for making this play. The reason why I went with the hand was that the villain had been getting run over by me a little on this table and others and I thought he’d be looking for good spots to play back. Also, to my detriment, I didn’t give him credit for being able to flat a monster in the cut-off purely with the intention of back-raising a squeeze. With hindsight, it’s a great play by him. Obviously I had a mini heart attack once I saw the flop – he with a pair+gutshot+flush draw and me with my set – but somehow I held up to win the $2,700 pot.

Soon after I played another big pot vs. a different opponent who most certainly didn’t cover himself in glory.

***** Hand History for Game 2027416686 *****
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: callmebabe ( $745.95 USD )
Seat 2: Najammq ( $939.07 USD )
Seat 3: MrStarch ( $753.65 USD )
Seat 4: kanapes ( $654.00 USD )
Seat 5: flagginfinger ( $1490.55 USD )
Najammq posts small blind [$3.00 USD].
MrStarch posts big blind [$6.00 USD].
Dealt to MrStarch [ 9c 9s ]
kanapes folds
flagginfinger raises [$18.00 USD]
callmebabe calls [$18.00 USD]
Najammq folds
MrStarch calls [$12.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9d, As, Jc ]
MrStarch checks
flagginfinger checks
callmebabe bets [$36.00 USD]
MrStarch raises [$108.00 USD]
flagginfinger folds
callmebabe calls [$72.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 5s ]
MrStarch bets [$182.00 USD]
callmebabe raises [$619.95 USD]
MrStarch calls [$437.95 USD]
callmebabe shows [8c, Tc ]
MrStarch shows [9c, 9s ]
** Dealing River ** [ 4d ]
MrStarch wins $1509.90 USD from main pot

I think preflop and flop are quite standard plays by both. When deeper (we started at 125 big blinds effective or so here) you really need to start building a pot early with your big hands to have any hopes of stacking someone. Also, I really have nothing to fear on the flop. Given that my opponent just flatted a raise on the button, A-A and J-J won’t be in his range, yet many two pair and straight combos will be. I’m not a fan of his turn ship over my (nicely-sized, I feel) bet. Am I ever pure bluffing here? Does he get me to fold out J-9, which is perhaps the bottom of my check-raising range? I don’t think so. His best option is surely to just fold, but I’m not complaining.

After these hands, and a general spurt of running hot, I was back to where I started. Back to my +$2,300 from the day before. As it was 2am and I’d been playing on and off for 14 hours, I should have called it a day and gone to sleep. The games were just too good though and I had visions of a historic all-nighter where I emerge victorious with a new personal best score. So I made a coffee, took five minutes and sat back down. With the coffee still hot I logged off 20 minutes later after losing $1,500 by running Q-Q into A-A (I actually should have folded given the action) and losing K-K to 5-7 in a three-bet pot among other things. Despite clawing back $1,500 from my low point I couldn’t help feeling it was a missed opportunity. #sadface

Here’s the graph to show how it all unfolded:

Rather than do a traditional blog where I talk about how things are going in the wider picture I thought you may appreciate an insight into the regular ups and downs that a poker player experiences in a short space of time. It can be stressful sometimes and – unlike the glamorised image – it involves hard work and very long hours. But I wouldn’t change it for the world. See you at the tables.

Guerilla Journalism 101

I've never written a blog in conditions quite as absurd as this before. I'm currently sat in a €1/2 cash game typing away in the 'notes' section of my iPhone after busting out of the UKIPT Galway earlier on Day 2. Guerilla journalism 101.

The game is pure madness. Everyone is limping every hand and talking in thick Irish accents that are completely indecipherable to my (slightly crappy) hearing. In one hand, I three-bet the table fool with A-A. He called in 0.1 seconds before check-raising the K-T-J flop, betting €100 on the 2 turn and then moving all-in on the 3 river for €200 more. He is such a loon that I was tempted to call but he kind of gave the game away by staring me down, then flirting with the waitress, then making jokes. Suffice to say, he showed a set when I folded.

The very next hand I got dealt A-A again and won a €600 pot. So now I'm sat on €800 in a €1/2 game when everyone else on the table has about €100 except for Looney Tunes who is playing €600. Please, please let me get him before my flight home! I'll let you know if anything exciting happens later...

Oh God, he's now just told the only woman at the table that she should be home cleaning dishes. I now know two things about him: he's shit at poker and he's a raging sexist.

Let's rewind a few days. Getting to Galway is a massive pain in the arse - flight to Shannon followed by a two-hour bus journey from the airport - but the event has been a huge success. It's crazy that the UKIPT can now draw 700 players to a remote part of Ireland. It's also really cool that you can win over €100,000 from just a €700 buy-in!

Unfortunately, my bank account won't be getting a six-figure boost this time around. However, I think I played some great poker on Day 1 after getting what was undoubtedly the toughest table in the room. On my direct left I had Rupinder Bedi, online MTT superstar Jono Crute, Andrew Teng and Max bloody Silver. Argh!

While it's obviously better if you can draw a table full of fish, there are positives to getting a Table of Doom too. I find it really helps me to raise my game and have complete focus. In the early stages of a big MTT it's sometimes difficult to find motivation and refrain from playing too many hands - that's not an issue when you know there is quality opposition all around.

The most interesting pot I played was a big bluff versus Silver. We both had around 16,000 at the 150/300 level when I opened 7c-9c to 700 from the cut-off and he called from the big blind. I bet 700 on the Jc-6d-6h flop and he check-raised to 2,000. Now, he's obviously a really aggressive player and when he does this he will often have air, so I call and have a good stack size to shove over a turn bet if I pick up equity such as a club or gutshot, and can expect him to fold a high percentage of the time.

Instead, he checked the Ts turn and I bet 3,000. He called, and his hand looks a lot like something he really wants to get to showdown with now as I'm sure he'd bet all his really strong hands 100 percent of the time on that turn. The river was an off-suit king. He checked again and I bet 5,500 into the 12,000-ish pot. He tanked for ages and finally folded. I was really happy with my line in the hand and it gave me great confidence for the end of the day.

I finished on 28,000 which was just below average and translated into 35 big blinds for Day 2. Play finished at 9pm so I then went out for a few beers in town and chatted with Crute, Rob Angood, Sam Razavi, Sam Holden, Owen Robinson and lots of others - they're all really good guys and great players too.

Despite a small hangover I was up at 9am to go to the gym and prepare for what was going to be another long day of playing. As it turned out, I only lasted one hour. I lost most of my chips when a young guy min-raised the button (he had 16 big blinds) and I jammed from the small blind with J-Q. He tanked for a while, eventually made a good call with A-8 and held up for a 36 big blind pot.
I liked his remark afterwards: "If you were 20 years older I'd have folded." I rarely play online MTTs so my knowledge of these sorts of situations isn't perfect but I asked a few magicians what they thought and everyone seemed to think we both played the hand well. Phew... Anyway, that left me with 10 big blinds which I promptly shoved when I picked up T-T, only to lose a race versus K-J.

It's always disappointing to bust out of a tournament but it's a lot easier to handle when you know you played well. I'm already itching to get home and start playing online again as I'm sure the good results are coming.

The rest of the month has been pretty good; online cash games are going okay, and I'm up around $4000 or so after a few very swingy days playing $5/10. I've also finally started beating $100NL on Black Belt Poker for a really good rate, so I'm looking forward to putting in more volume there in March.

I celebrated my 27th birthday this month too. My awesome girlfriend booked a gastro pub/hotel for us in the Cotswolds which did great food - I had octopus followed by venison - and even had Anchor Steam beer on tap! I'm a huge US craft beer freak so any establishment that sells either Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn lager, Anchor Steam or Sam Adams automatically gets five stars.

Hitting 27 is a little odd though. It's pretty old for an online poker pro these days, and I really have no idea how long I want to keep playing poker full-time for. I love it now, and am doing well and hugely improving, but it's a little scary to think of supporting a family through poker or doing this for the next 50 years. I'm just taking it one year at a time at the moment.

And as for this cash game I’m currently in? Well, I'm €32 down at the moment and it's the epitome of excitement. Actually, it's not: our sexist friend left an hour ago so there isn't really much need to be here anymore.

I'm off to my bed to dream of home - and winning the next UKIPT.

The Men Who Stare At Graphs

Christmas is a strange period when you’re a pro poker player. You go through all the annual festivities – drinking and eating with my girlfriend’s family for Christmas Day before driving up to Chesterfield to drink and eat with my family on Boxing Day – and it’s generally great fun but at the back of your mind are all the drunk fools online waiting to give money away while you are busy socialising. 

While I probably missed out on a ton of value over Christmas, the enforced week-long break from poker served to get me hugely motivated for the new year. Since I started playing again on December 28^th I’ve put in some heavy hours, 45,000 hands, and had decent results too. As of January 12^th I’ve won $8,000 in that period and really played well on the whole. After a demoralising final quarter of 2011 the timing couldn’t be better. My love for the game has never really gone away but these last few weeks have really reminded me how it felt the first time I learnt the rules of Hold’em eight years ago and all I wanted to do was play every hour of the day. 

It’s not always like that. Poker has a strange ability to severely mess up your mind when things are not going well. Though I’ve made decent, steady money in the last two years any sustained downswing always makes me question my abilities. When it’s been going really badly for a month or more my confidence will be completely shot, even though in theory I understand the massive fluctuations in variance that poker brings about. The damaging aspect of this mindset is that a loss of confidence brought on by variance usually results in you not playing as well as you can also. For me, that means I 5-bet jam air at the wrong times or just generally make decisions that aren’t rational. 

One of my major goals for 2012 is to try and distance my play and mindset from results more than I ever have in the past. A poker friend of mine once taught me a good tip to use every time you are in the midst of a crisis of confidence; load up your entire career graph on Hold’em Manager and stare at the (hopefully) upwards-curving line. If you look closely at the graph’s deviations it becomes clear that most winning poker players have been through this a host of times before and came out the other side in more profit eventually. The 2012 mindset is all long-term, the short-term is for losers. 

Some decent results from 28th December 2011 to Jan 5th 2012.

I played my first live tournament as a Black Belt Poker sponsored pro a few weeks ago, a £330 event at the Fox Poker Club in London. For my column in PokerPlayer magazine I wrote how I was looking forward to sticking on the Black Belt patch and representing a site that’s shown faith in me. 

On the day I definitely had that sense of pride yet it was also surreal and strange too. I don’t feel like I’ll be fully comfortable as a sponsored pro until I’ve had some good results (or at least played great and got unlucky) and repaid that faith shown in me. The Fox tourney wasn’t the grandest of debuts – I was KO’d inside three hours. Still, while I was competitive with Audley Harrison in so far as quick exits go, I was generally happy with my play and unimpressed by the majority of the field. It bodes well for similar-sized events in and around London in the future. I did play one hand that I regret which I posted on the Black Belt forum. 

You can check it out in more detail here: http://blackbeltpoker.com/groups/white-and-yellow/hand-analysis

The next two events I have lined up are a £550 Asian Poker Tour the last weekend in January (again at the Fox Club) and the first UKIPT of the season in Galway which conveniently coincides with my birthday in mid-February. Hopefully I’ll get to meet the other Blue Belts and above at Galway too.

I’ll just leave you with a few hands from a pretty crazy $5/$10 heads-up session I played this week. My 6-max game online is far more solid than my heads-up and I shouldn’t really have been playing versus this villain, who specialises in heads-up. Still, it all started well… 

Seat 3: MrStarch ( $1974.00 USD )
Seat 6: ElJardi ( $1104.00 USD )

ElJardi posts small blind [$5.00 USD].
MrStarch posts big blind [$10.00 USD].

Dealt to MrStarch [  6h 4h ]
ElJardi raises [$20.00 USD]
MrStarch raises [$75.00 USD]
ElJardi calls [$60.00 USD]

I’d won a buy-in right away when he 5-bet jammed Js-Ts on me when I had K-K and definitely had the momentum in the match. While 6-4s isn’t the best hand in the world it’s cool to 3-bet with occasionally, especially when you’re in control of the match and it’s unlikely to be dominated ever. 

** Dealing Flop ** [ Jh, Th, 2d ]

MrStarch bets [$100.00 USD]
ElJardi calls [$100.00 USD]

Standard c-bet with the flush draw. His range can still be pretty wide here. He’s going to call with any T or J, all pocket pairs and a lot of Ace-highs. He’s rarely going to just flat K-Q, or two pair combos here and he’d just have 4-bet TT, JJ, AA, KK and QQ so I feel likle his range is going to be vulnerable to me barrelling all streets.

** Dealing Turn ** [ Qs ]

MrStarch bets [$225.00 USD]
ElJardi calls [$225.00 USD]

Pretty sweet turn card to barrel as I can very feasibly have AK in my range and he cannot. When he calls I’m planning on shutting down a lot of rivers. 

** Dealing River ** [ As ]

MrStarch bets [$1564.00 USD]
ElJardi folds

But not this one. It’s going to be super-difficult for him to call me with anything but a straight now. I suppose if he thinks I’m not sophisticated enough to value bet a set or two pair here (not sure if it’s +EV or if I would actually) then he can make a hero call with his Q-T type stuff but that seems unlikely. I’m glad that he folded :)

 

MrStarch wins $819.00 USD from main pot

After that it all started to go downhill though, starting with me losing a big $3,500 pot in what was essentially a cooler. I then played this final hand really poorly and logged off. 

Seat 3: MrStarch ( $1103.00 USD )
Seat 6: ElJardi ( $3290.00 USD )

MrStarch posts small blind [$5.00 USD].
ElJardi posts big blind [$10.00 USD].

Dealt to MrStarch [  Kc 8c ]

MrStarch raises [$15.00 USD]
ElJardi raises [$70.00 USD]
MrStarch raises [$185.00 USD]
ElJardi calls [$125.00 USD]

The 4-bet is fine. I wasn’t expecting to get flatted very often as it was the first time I’d seen the villain do this instead of just shove or folding. I think I completely misread his range here and perceived him as strong when I should have known he was more likely to be set-mining or attempting to crack a big pair himself. 

** Dealing Flop ** [ 5d, 6s, Qd ]

ElJardi checks
MrStarch checks

Terrible check, I need to bet here. It doesn’t even have to be big – anything between $180-$220 will do. 

** Dealing Turn ** [ Jd ]

ElJardi checks
MrStarch bets [$228.00 USD]
ElJardi calls [$228.00 USD]

I should just give up at this point but no… 

** Dealing River ** [ 7s ]

ElJardi checks
MrStarch bets [$670.00 USD]
ElJardi calls [$670.00 USD]

Horrible….

MrStarch shows [Kc, 8c ]
ElJardi shows [6c, 7c ]

ElJardi wins $2205.00 USD from main pot

I guess it would have been interesting to see if he would still call if the river hadn’t given him two pair. Still, I should either bet flop and turn or river or just give up completely. This check flop, bet turn and river line is pretty weak. The honourable Nik Persaud is taking charge of a 1-2-1 Enlightenment with me this weekend where we are going to go over a ton of heads-up hands so I’m really looking forward to that.

Finally, I took my girlfriend Hattie to Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner for her birthday right before Christmas and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had – highly recommended! The meat fruit (a piece of chicken liver parfait dressed up as a tangerine) is probably the coolest starter I’ve ever seen. Poker simply has to go well in 2012 so that I can keep up with my penchant for eating out in nice places. Good luck at the tables everyone.  

The amazing meatfruit starter at Heston's 'Dinner'.

Neil Channing's Golden Ticket

In early November, a golden envelope covered in glitter and sparkles dropped through the letterbox with my name on it. This doesn’t usually happen. Immediately, I thought I’d done it – I’d finally got an invite to look around Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory! When I opened it I was initially a little disappointed that no chocolate was inside but instead UK’s poker own Wonka-like figure Neil Channing was inviting me to a mysterious night out at the Ritz Hotel to discuss Black Belt Poker.

As I used to work on PokerPlayer magazine for a few years I know Neil a little from various interviews and chats at live events. Having interviewed most of the big-name pros in the world he’s definitely a favourite, the highlight being when he described how he pulled off a big bluff at the WSOP because he was eating sushi at the time and suspected his opponent would believe him due to the stress of breaking away from tending to his Japanese lunch. However, I hadn’t really seen Neil since I’d left PokerPlayer to play cash games professionally online just over a year ago so I was surprised, and honoured, to be one of a group of 50 young UK pros that Black Belt announced they’d like to sponsor throughout 2012 if we put in the hours to become Blue Belt by January 1^st. 

The night at the Ritz was great. I’d never been inside the grand palace before and it was quite the spectacle. Ginormous priceless artwork covered every wall, London’s posh set enjoyed £70 cream teas and a throng of Americans were attempting to take photos inconspicuously. Finally, in a separate room around the corner was a worldwide first: a large group of online poker players dressed respectably in a suit and tie. Though I don’t play much on the live circuit yet I recognised quite a few faces such as Sam Grafton, Sam MacDonald, Rob Angood and all of the current Blue Belts like Jamie Burland and Kevin Williams. 

Channing and Warren Wooldridge gave a presentation on the benefits of being a sponsored Blue Belt to us all and I was left feeling it was just the sort of fresh start and challenge that I wanted. My first full year playing online has been pretty good – I play anywhere from $1/$2 up to $5/$10 on PKR – but I was in the middle of my first major downswing and was struggling to find motivation. Despite never getting involved I’d always been a fan of the community aspect of Black Belt Poker and knew this was something I could really benefit from. I’ve made my own way in poker without much help from friends at all – none of my ‘real life’ friends really play or understand poker. It’s always been something that I’ve wanted to address as I know that probably the fastest, most effective way to get better at the game is just through talking about it with players that are on your level or, ideally, better than you. Joining a ‘team’ as such like Black Belt is perfect on that front. Also, I play a lot less live poker than I’d like to. 


Unlike most online grinders I actually enjoy playing live and think I may be a better live player than online (as much as I’d love that to be reversed!) so the opportunity to play in a ton of live MTTs next year is great. From my limited experience I’ve already had some relative success, and a few close calls, so I’m confident I’ll be able to do well in 2012. Also, the amazing Ritz canapés and constant supply of pricey wine helped convince me Black Belt was worth a shot too.
 

After about five weeks of solid 12-table grinding I’m nearly 75% of the way to becoming a Blue Belt so I should reach it just in time for Christmas which would be a nice present. I started out playing $1/$2 but hadn’t foreseen how differently the games would play on iPoker to my usual site and I got absolutely clobbered for a week before I started to adjust. Day after day I would lose four or five buy-ins and have no idea why. It took me about $3k to realise that the games were just so much tighter preflop than what I was used to. In the PKR mid-stakes games it’s quite normal to be 5-bet jamming 9-9+ and A-Q, and for it to be pretty +EV. On iPoker though I was just running into A-A and K-K literally every time. As I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes it took me a while to work out that some players literally don’t have a jamming range outside of these two hands. I feel like I’ve finally adjusted pretty good now and am having some consistently good sessions playing $100NL at the moment. 

I wrote out a small list of poker goals at the start of the year that I really wanted to achieve. I made them quite ambitious on purpose so I may not have achieved them all but if you achieve all of your goals then what more do you have to strive for so I’m not disheartened at all. Here they are and how I got on; 

1)  1) $80k total profit including bonuses etc
I started 2011 just playing $1/$2 so this was definitely the most ambitious target of all. At one point in September it looked like I would have a decent shot at making it but then I went on a $10k downswing unfortunately. Still, it was a decent year and I ended up making around $53k excluding all my part-time journalism work.

2)  2)  Stop being so nitty with bankroll management

I used to play $1/$2 off a $20k bankroll which was pretty ridiculous in hindsight. I’ve definitely took some decent strides in moving up to higher stakes this year, playing 100k hands of $400NL and 5k at $1000NL. Happy with this one.

3)  3)  Play 500,000 hands online

Completed this one pretty soundly, and am up to about 620k hands so far for the year.

4)  4)  Play the WSOP Main Event

This didn’t happen. There’s always next year…

Rock Bottom

My current mental state can be summed up thus:

Arghhh! I think this current disastrous swing is poker karma for failing to show any sympathy whatsoever to James666 when he has been whining about his bad luck for the past four years.

To be fair, I probably deserve it. Even after this horrific start to the month I'm still only down $1k or so in EV over my poker life - which is now about 700k hands. If I can stay almost bang on EV for the rest of my poker career then I have to be happy about that.

Still, in the short-term it's been affecting me more than it should be. I've been getting quite depressed about poker as I lose more each day and I'm also starting to feel less and less confident - which is completely irrational given that I have gone through two similar swings within the past year and recovered within a few weeks on both occasions.

There's a number of things I'll be looking at over the next few days - more mentality work, training vids, hand reviews (all the dull stuff basically) - and then I'll make sure I hit 70k hands for the month and hopefully claw some $ back. It's weird, it's not even the money that annoys me when I lose at poker, I just hate 'failing' at something I am fairly good at.

I played my biggest hand ever this month too - and lost. The guy in the hand was a complete fish so I think my line is pretty fine but what does anyone else think?

Hand info:

Date:	Friday, October 07, 09:50:05 ET 2011
Type:	Cash Games
Game:	Hold'em NL
Table:	40413926
Blinds:	$5/10

Table info:

Seat 1: sobaaad ($1,484.49)
Seat 2: gier1 ($1,616.07)

Seat 3: cevzy ($1,000)

Seat 4: KazakhstanAA ($2,174.12)

Seat 5: james666 ($1,080)
Seat 6: MrStarch ($2,785.34)

Dealt to MrStarch

Preflop: (Pot: $15)

RAISE MrStarch, to $30
CALL sobaaad, $30
FOLD gier1
CALL cevzy, $30
CALL KazakhstanAA, $25
FOLD james666

Flop: (Pot: $130)

BET KazakhstanAA, $130
RAISE MrStarch, to $300
FOLD sobaaad
FOLD cevzy
RAISE KazakhstanAA, to $900
RAISE MrStarch, to $2,455.34
CALL KazakhstanAA, $1,114.12

Turn: (Pot: $4,599.46)

River: (Pot: $4,599.46)

Showdown:

SHOWS KazakhstanAA

SHOWS MrStarch


KazakhstanAA wins the pot of $4,415.24

It seemed quite hard to put him on Q-4....

Funnily enough, I posted about this hand on Twitter when it happened and the great Neil Channing tweeted me back saying 'sorry to hear that. Switch the laptop off and get it back tomorrow. No steaming'. I know Neil a little bit from various interviews and work in the media (FWIW he's probably my favourite interview in the poker world & a great guy) but it's good to know that he has my back too :)

Besides poker - and thank God there is more besides poker! - all is good. I had a great holiday with Hattie on a small Greek island called Symi for a week which involved a ton of beaching, eating and drinking. Perfect. Then we came back and had four nights in a huge Devon cottage for her Dad's 70th birthday with all her family. I had my own Masterchef stress moment there cooking ten steaks to order on a massively annoying AGA cooker too!

I'll finish on a few pics to remind everyone that there is definitely more to life than poker!

The blog debut of Ms. Starch.

Food highlight of the holiday: a whole sea bream baked in sea salt and then prepared for you at the table.

About to eat said sea bream. Don't worry, the starch is just off-camera...

Good luck at the tables or elsewhere everybody!

It's Loud

When I first started this blog, I always envisioned that I wouldn't be one of those bloggers that only updates once every 76 days. You gotta keep the millions happy after all...buuuut as I can't remember the last time I updated I'm already officially slacking. Well, here we go , a new update!!!! (my loyal 14 followers will think Xmas has come early). 

I'm writing this post amidst a scene not unlike Saigon circa 1969. There are 6-year-old kids screaming that they don't want to visit Windsor Castle AGAIN, Total Wipeout blaring in the background and a chaotic scene in the kitchen as three women frantically rush about preparing seemingly thousands of egg and cress sandwiches. We're here in Windsor for my girlfriend's father's 70th birthday party. It'll be fun. Its just a bit loud right now. 

I'm on my iPad writing this so I dont have any access to poker gimpiness I.e. graphs and hand histories. This makes me happy as it means this update will be far less effort than usual. So what's been going on?

- I got an iPad 2 with PKR points. It's awesome. 

- Poker was really good in August. I played 55k hands, won $8200 in cash games and about $3k in tournaments. I ran a little above EV but also feel like I'm playing really well at the minute much of the time. 

- Been watching a lot of aejones's training videos on LeggoPoker.com - great stuff. 

- Amazing UFC show in RIO. Big Nogs KO was an awesome upset while Anderson Silva again proved what a monster he is. Going to BAMMA courtesy of PKR next weekend which should be cool too. 

- Had a nice day in Margate recently visiting my uncle Tony Jarvis who was the main inspiration for me getting interested in poker in the place. From about 1975-2000 he was a professional poker player - well before the term was widely accepted - playing every day in the Vic in London. Back then, no limit Hold'em barely existed of course and so he made his living playing in the country's biggest 7-card Stud games. It was around a £1,000 buy-in back then which, with inflation and so on would obviously be a really big game in today's money terms. Tony always has some great stories about the characters from those days. He basically played with everyone (and was friends with) who has ever been 'famous' in UK poker, including Devilfish, Donnachea O'Dea, John Duthie, the Hendon Mob and so on. Apparently the best player by an absolute mile was Ben Roberts, who earned so much money from those games in the 80s that he was able to buy the newly built penthouse flat directly opposite the Vic itself. Nice commute to work. 

- Off on holiday to the Greek island of Symi in about two weeks. Very excited as it'll mainly involve drinking beer and eating great food in the sun.

I'm being summoned to help out with party planning now - presumably to blow up balloons or similar - so I'm off. 

Cheers for reading Starchites and I wont leave it as long between updates next time. 

Have a good one!