Plowing the field

Nearly two months has passed since my last post and it may seem like a short lapse of time to many but when you work as hard as I do on my game, put in countless +10hrs session on a daily bases and spend half or more of your free time discussing poker with other decent players and studying your game, it does seem like a really long time and guess what? Hard work pays off, no matter you're an athlete preparing for the Olympics, an underground musician trying to make it happen or a poker player like me, trying to make a living out of your passion, hard work always pays off!!

Moved and almost settled..

First post since I landed back in Taipei, it's been 3 weeks, so what have I been up to? Seeing old friends, eating good meals, lots of socializing, swimming/spa/gym sessions and of course, playing lots of poker.

Haven't set up my new Bodog account as I'm still dealing with some banking paperwork so I've been mainly playing live cash and online on PS, so far, 2 out of 2 winning sessions in Live cash, here's a photo of my stack in a home game (That's around 300$ usd give or take)

"May" I ship a big one?

May is here and this would be my last month in China, I'm preparing to move back to Taipei and quite excited about it.

In the past 2 weeks, I managed to take down the $3 1K Gtd coming into the ft as the shortest stack and working my way out to the chip lead which I lost again when down to 3 handed, had 6bbs at some points but with some good push fold game and a bit of luck, came back and snatched the title!

A bit of sunshine never hurts!

After months of cold/unstable weather, both literally and poker wise, the sunshine finally showed up and with it some nice scores, although I haven't been running good for the past weeks at Pokerstars, things picked up in my other account at Bodog, I've had several deep runs in mtts, many 10/20$ don cashes and ended up taking 8th place in 11$ 2K GTD and taking down the 2$ rebuy, screenshots below:

 

I'm hoping that this will spread onto my ps account so I can finish the month in beauty, fingers crossed, tables popping up like cherries in spring and finger ready on the trigger (mouse), later folks!

New Diet!

Well here it is:

Just kidding but as an online poker grinder, we do need our fair share of energy drinks, juices and snacks ready for a quick bite during breaks and I'm sure most won't disagree with this.

Micro Millions Half way...

Although the timing for lots of these events isn't quite suitable for players in Asia, I'm trying to play as many events as I can, so started with event 1 which was scheduled for midnight CCT time, I was quite tired that day so I went to bed 2 hours before the event and set up an alarm..

Event 1 attracted a huge field given the extremely small buyin and it was as PS named a rebuy madness 6max event, Pokerstars team online pro Jorj95 and Bryan Huang quickly grinded a big stack and so did I, from the starting 50 chips, I ended the rebuy period with 7000ish and this is how I finished overall:

My next 2 cashes would be in event 25 $1 and 39 $8.8, with respectively, 2 deep runs:

Poker gods turning their backs...

I'm sure there are tons of poker players who will relate to this post but I'm so blown away by how bad I'm running, I'm sort of speechless and experience some creative numbness and brain freeze but not the fun kind of way so I will get back to this a little later...

I'm back and still trying to put the words together, maybe some hands will speak better:

This hand happened in a $.55 tourney that had ~!260 entrants and we were down to the last 19..

And so the grind keep on..

February...What a month, didn't realize it was over until it actually was. I managed to complete 1 out of 3 for my January goals but that's more like 1 out of 2 since one wasn't available anymore so it's as follows:

Goals for Feb:

• Move up to 1.5$ 45/90 man

I moved up and ran at 20% Roi over 300 games, which is like 80~90% increase from January in volume, they were mostly $1 Turbo 90man and  $1.5 Turbo 45 man with 16% ITM finish% and 21 1st~3rd places finish which I'm not overly excited by, I'm pretty sure I could've done better but I also ran like crap for like 10 days total, I will keep playing these until I feel I have a secure BR for the next level and will move up accordingly, I've crushed the $3.5 level before and did pretty well at the $6.5 as well so it's no unfamiliar territory, just wanting to it right this time, bankroll management wise.

• Try to get a seat to APPT Seoul

It's been more than half year since my last post and here I am again,  near the end of last year, I started coaching a colleague of mine and it got me back playing seriously, reading a lot of poker related stuff and working on my focus which translated in a great 1st month of January 2012 come back taking it from the basics, slowly but surely, the way it should be done.

Here are the stats for my January sessions:

ITM: 33/175
IMT %: 19%
1-3 Finishes: 17
Finished Late: 13%
Prizes: 132$
Average BI: 0.51$
ROI%: 47%
Profit: 42$

Goals for Feb:

1. Move up to 1.5$ 45/90 man
2. Try to get a seat to APPT Seoul
3. Make the top 10 at least once in the weekly Asian Poker League

That's it for now, wish me luck and good luck on the tables!

Rollercoaster week

Great start in December, during the first 5 days or so, wasn't running bad and was doing some great play, final tabled a lot of $3.25 45 man, final tabled a $4.40 Mtt field was 1298 and was the first one out in 9th place with my AJs brutalized by a set on the flop, the next day, went pretty deep in a $4.40 180 man, once in the many I switched gears and built up a big stack and then....and then this donk came in my way, I doubled him up with my A9 against his A7 allin preflop, he flops 977, I reraise him all in later on with my 66s, he snaps with K9o and strikes a 9 on the river and my last hand would be AQs on the btn 6 handed (We were 12 left), I raise 2.5x and he calls, flop 356 with 2 hearts, he donkbet into me, here I'm putting him on a draw, either a flush or a straight, so I go on an call, turn is 10, a blank, so I go ahead and shove the rest of my stack, he calls with K4 and hit a 4 on the river....I was amazed on how lucky that donk is but anyways, yesterday and today, the variance hit me in the $3.25 and I barely cashed, whenever I'm dealt KK, I lose to some Ax and when I'm dealt AK/AQ some dude wakes with AA/KK...pretty disgusting.

Today though, I went deep in a $2.20 4K guaranteed, 2572 people entered raising the prizepool to 5kish, had a steady climb in chips before the bubble as well as in the money, then I had a crazy rollercoaster, where I was 2nd in chiplead with like 175 people left, then my stack got brutalized going from 216K down to 20K then grinded it back up to 230Kish with around 90 people left, lost a coinflip worth 100K and comes the golden hand, got dealt KKs in early position and what will follow is a 3bet then a 4bet by villain who was on a heater already (I should've known better) and finally a 5bet allin by me and he snaps with the rockets, good bye me in 72nd place....

What a week!

That might be just enough to describe it, I've been putting a lot of time into studying and analyzing my game and it's a feeling like no other when you can see some of the fruits of your hard work, translation, I had a great week grinding the $3.25/$6.50 45 man, I went deep in a couple of Mtts including a 4th finish out of 2285 in a $4.40 regular with a prizepool of 9K and a 9th place finish in a $2.20 turbo on stars as well, the field was huge, 9365 entrants forming a total prizepool of almost 19K, although I was a bit disappointed with the way I finished since with the 3rd biggest stack in the final table, I certainly could've looked for a better spot to jam all of my stack and have a better finish/cash but that's ok, It's by learning from your mistakes that you improve and that's the golden rule in life as well as in Poker.

October Fresh!

After breaking out even in September and reaching the Silver star status for the 1st time on Pokerstars, October comes with new perspectives and goals in mind, I have a couple of bonuses to clear up, with my new SS Vip level, I'm entitled to play in the 30K guaranteed tourney on each Sunday of the month for a buy in of 100fpp which I look forward to, my first day of October was alright I guess, right after coming back from a short trip and a live event in Macau, I immediatelly jumped in the action with 24 tables, managed to make 3 FT at the $3.25/45 man, one which I bubbled, a 6th and a 2nd finish, also managed to go deep in a $2.20 180 man, unfortunately couldn't make it to the FT after my A10o got outdrawn by AKo and finally played a $5.50 Mtt with 12k guaranteed, which went up to ~16k, 3181 entrants and 15 mins blind levels, I managed to build a relatively nice stack in the first hour, after the 2nd break and about 2 and a half hours in, I jam over the top with AJs from the btn on a J89 with 2 spades after UTG+1 3bet me on the flop, hoping he has KJ/QJ but he flips AQs for a flush draw and does hit it on the river, I go down from 8.9K to 2K in a flash, later on I got moved to a new table and the hand that will put me back on track was 108s in the BB after 4 people limped into my BB, I checked, the flop came with an Ace and 2 spades, the 1st limper bet, the 2 other limpers flats and I shove on top, get called by 3 of them and I hit a spade to not only doulbe up, triple up but quadruple up hehe, it felt very nice, got moved to another table once again, where with 8K I'll get in a confrontation with a supernova and my value bet on the river with A9s payed off, managed to grind my stack to 22K and lost 12K on a bad read, in the money, managed to go on with a read of mine and call a guys Jam with A10 from the big blind, and was right he had A2o, I hit a great flop 1066 and he makes runner runner for a flush with his 2 of diamonds for to hit the rail in 308th place, oh well...