Got an email from Party Poker:

"We would like to let you know that because it’s been more than 6 months since you last played for real money on our website, your account was charged an administration fee of £ 4.26 on 30-Nov-2016. This charge is simply to help us cover the costs associated with administering and maintaining inactive accounts such as yours.

If your account remains inactive, it will continue to be charged administration fees on a monthly basis until the balance is zero. After 6 months, we are going to withhold the remaining account balance."

^Just remembered I had to play on Party Poker in like June to Satelite into that live donkament I played in. Not cool with Party robbing me of admin fees so logged in to empty my account. Think I played some cash games on there at that time too so actually had £359 on there. Tried to withdraw the money and of course my attempts were promptly rejected and I have to contact customer support if I want any of my money. Not had any response yet.



Thought it was a fish at the time, but think it is actually a shortstacker who I am not familiar with who opens the pot. Reg cold calls and me and Reg play HU postflop.

After I X the flop I suspected he might try and bluff me off the pot so I expect to have to get into check call mode. I am thinking he has a range of 77, 88, 99, TT, KJs, AJs maybe 78s T9s and I block all of the Q hands.

On the river, I kinda felt like he had boated up with the 9 and he can defo have TT. But it also looked like a decent spot for the villain to bluff the river and rep KQs or 78s or a boat. I tanked until I had 4 secs left and given that I felt from the flop he might try to bluff me off this I ended up calling.

Just realised another month has passed us by. Bros Bday tonight so dunno if I will make it to the tables later on. I will go for a quick progress update now, complete with Giraffe.

*Note not all the hands on the below graph were played in November its just my last 100k or so hands @ 50NL.



Decent graph I suppose, nice meaty downswing in there too. I dont feel any compelling rush to move up to 100NL again just yet. I withdrew quite a lot of my Stars BR so I think I should grind 50NL for a bit longer to pad my Stars BR and hone my skills. Still a ton of scenarios in the BB where I am not sure what my ranges should look like. Could maybe start to mix in 100NL later in the month or just wait and review things in January.

I have done a few late sessions this year and grinded through the night when UFC was on and then stopped to watch the Conor McGregor fight at like 6 or 7am so I will leave you with a quote from the man himself:

Well done mate, really bloody impressed with everything you have done, it was not that long ago we were playing the same tables

Thanks mate, seems like ten minutes ago we were on the same tables. Get some volume in & studying and I'm sure you will be moving up in no time.

Continuing to run nicely right now:

Going for Xmas night out on Sat so wont get any of the fish

Graph moving the right direction.

Might just be some good variance, but I am hoping that the next two graphs show some improvement in my Big Blind game.

BB vs 1 Raiser


BB vs 1 Raiser and Caller(s)

Nice results!

Regarding the BB graph: whats ur average bb/hand?

Thanks.

My BB game has been consistently garbage. I think my winrate in the BB is usually something like -55 bb/100.

I had a look at winrates in HEM tonight and over the last 75k hands played my BB winrate is at -40 bb/100 which I believe is around the acceptable mark.

I am doing some off the table work right now on my BB game and then I will adjust my strategies some more. I am always concerned I make things worse by making changes but at the same time if I never trial and error some stuff I will never improve.

Yeah this is the worst. Nothing like coming up with some fresh ideas and get smashed the first couple of times you put them to work

True. Seems to be the Poker Gods way of protecting the inner workings of their game. Any time you figure something out and put it into practise they flip the runbad switch to completely confuse you.

Happy New Year 2+2!

Time for a recap of 2016.

I will unload some thoughts about where it went right and wrong. Around Feb/March 2016 DFS launched in the UK and there was also the Stars strikes going on at the same time. Starting to believe that Poker was dying off I felt getting into DFS would be the right move. I went on an instant heater in DFS and made $10k in around 2 months just playing soccer.

This was a big distraction and took my focus and study time away from Poker. As things progressed my DFS results got worse (regression to the mean) and I put more time into trying to work out what was going wrong. Most of it was probably just variance. I then realised that I wasent going to make any huge sums from DFS anytime soon and started to get my head back into Poker. The first goal for 2017 will be to find better balance between Poker/DFS and to realize that when I overcompensate my time towards something it is likely to hurt the other things I am no longer fully applying myself to.

I believe I set some goal for bench presses at the start of the year. At some point I developed a pain around stomach area. Went to Doctor who believed I may have a hernia injury and I then had to get it checked at hospital. Not sure, but I think I may have done this doing bench presses so had to take time off from doing them. I think there may be some metaphor in there about moving up weight/stakes too quickly and hurting yourself

I took a couple of days off to study my Poker ranges in December. I wanted to change some more of my BB game and have my ranges set and ready to go for 2017. But as usual the rabbit hole always gets deeper the further you go and I realised that there are a quite few things I need to change so improvements will be a continuing refinement process rather than something packaged and ready to go for 2017.

Started to mix in a bit of 100NL again towards end of Dec as 50NL seems to be going OK. Updated graph below which is mainly 50NL and some 100.


In for another year of the internet pokers. Here is something smoke inspired for the fire I will be bringing in 2017. Gl to all and on to the next one..

Happy new year to you mate and good luck in 2017 on and off the tables.

Im going to start at $10nl this year and still beat you ... so get prepared for that.

Happy new year mate and gl to you too

Feel free to post an update or a graph in here of your 10NL progress in 2017. That way we know you are playing poker and not spending all your time on the office blondes No FPL brags though, I dont wanna hear it.


Solid start to the year for team D. Told you I was bringing the heat this year.



Think I know what brought that on. Poker Gods, here is my present for you. More run good please

Running nicely, 50 & 100NL 2017 so far:



Here is a beauty. One of them where you sit and nod at yourself in approval when you see villains holecards.

Ooft, that's a cold one for villain.

Subbed! Great thread and GL.

Hands like that are kinda bs anyway cos the villain is getting my stack when the roles are reversed. Important thing is to not tilt when you keep getting on the wrong end of em.

Thanks mate. You from the Chi town, nice. I often listen to some Kanye on the daily grind.



Last 100k:


Last 50k by Position:


^What up Big Blind, I am the boss of you now motherf*****

Niiiice, we like the progress boss!

inspiring stuff in this thread - good work.

Thanks mate. I have something saved in my poker notes that goes along the lines of: "You dont become a poker genius overnight so dont get carried away during an upswing."

Right now I will put this heater down to sunrunning / good variance. When I can do it over a larger sample I will start to believe things are improving. Nevertheless running good is great for confidence and motivation so I will keep the giraffes coming while it lasts.

Gl with your poker and other studies this year, cant be easy tryna play this game and having to do essays etc as well.

Ty plenty more to come this year, stay tuned.

Very nice thread! As many have said before very inspiring and motivational.
Actually this is one of the threads that motivated me to start one myself, as I am in a quite similar journey.
Its nice to see how the desire to improve in poker leads to improving as a person in a lot of other aspects as well.

Obviously I didn't read it all, lol, but a lot of respect for achieving SN back in the day, at some point it was also a goal of mine for the future (was because now with the changes it is less appealing :/).
How many hours do you play in a day normally? how is your typical day of grind?

Subbed, definitely will be around watching your progress, gl!

Thanks for the support bud, nice one on starting your own thread I'll keep an eye out for it next time Im in the PG&C lobby.

Yeah getting Supernova the year I got it was a real tough grind cos I was working full time 9-5 that year so had to come home from work, eat then grind til bedtime and wash rinse repeat.

Supernova has changed to a monthly VIP status now and you need 10k VPP for it. I am 9k VPP right now so shouldnt be a problem if I can stay at the same stakes.

My daily routine has changed quite a lot over different periods as I had to fit poker in around different jobs that I was doing. Then 2016 I spent a lot of time on DFS stuff so my Poker hours were fitting around that. Right now I just try to do something Poker every day to keep the momentum going. I pretty much play 7 days a week and then I fit in some study too. I am trying to focus less on volume for Poker and be more about Quality than Quantity these days. Gl with yor journey.

----------------------------------------------------------

We are about mid way through the month already, time flies, so time for a Giraffe. Took bit of a wobble lately but back on track I think:

50 & 100NL


Meeting up with some mates Ive not seen for a while on Sunday for the United v Liverpool game. Unfortunately 2 of them are the guys that are 1st and 2nd in my Fantasy Premier League game. I won the league the first two seasons but been sh*t ever since so I will be in for a lot of stick 2m from them. I will need to improve my FPL game I am not happy unless I am winning at everything.

Your chances of ever winning the FPL game again have obviously gone.

Sometimes we just need to accept the obvious

thx man, the same to you

how many tables are you playing?
solid month so far, keep it going mate

I am firmly on FPL tilt.

Look at my stats from the last 4 years:

Year-----Points-----Overall Rank
2012/13-----2,202-----12,362
2013/14-----2,383-----15,314
2014/15-----1,981-----267,042
2015/16-----2,092-----248,390

Top 12k and 15k finish. Then a drop to 267k and 248k. Last few years obvs been concentrating on Poker and not putting as much effort into FPL, sounds like an excuse but defo something in it.

Was getting push notifications about Diego Costa not being in the Chelsea squad during my Poker session. Last thing before I went to bed Fri night I was gonna swap Costa for Kane. But Chelsea play Hull next so was really wanting Costa if there was any chance he plays in that game. I keep Costa, who doesnt travel and Kane bangs in a hat-trick. I captain Giroud who injures himself scoring and then goes off at 60' mins, then Alexis goes up front who everyone else has captained and gets a goal and 3 bonus points courtesy of Giroud going off.

Why does it always work out like that

After playing poker so much you can see similar patterns develop in other areas of life. In FPL terms I am at that phase of running bad which tilts the sh*t out of you and you end up playing bad and making more mistakes as a result.

e.g not changing Azpilicueta for Alonso when I wildcarded was a mistake.

Was almost finished my rant but just remembered wildcards. When the f**k did they change the rule that the 1st wildcard expires on new years eve? I was keeping that for a DGW and ended up having to rush use it before it expired. I will just need to make sure I have conquered internet Poker so I can get back to smashing FPL by August.

Maybe need to find an FPL forum and begin my next challenge thread:

From 250k to top 10 FPL - The Blueprint II