The Swings

I've put in a lot of hands the past few days. I have to admit that I started to spew some when I got down. And something I will never try to do again is play more than 6 tables on my laptop. It gets out of control when I have tables 7 and 8 minimized and then they pop up when its my turn to act and block my other tables.

Have fun with this graph

Martathon session

Played a crazy session last night. Ill let the graph speak for itself.




Almost gave back all my money from the big day yesterday but managed to squeak out a small profit instead. Took me a lot of hands to do it, but it still feels good and now I can sleep easy. I actually made 11k at 5/10 in here in 5400 hands there, but I took a 10/20 shot that didnt go so well (-10k in 540 hands). There was huge fish sitting there and I had the golden seat to his left but he took some strange lines and I could not hit a hand once. I was playing 29/24 at that table which is vv loose for me because I was constantly isolating the fish and he would call with some garbage and I couldnt figure out how to take a pot away from him. I finally stacked him at the end but I had already given away a few buyins that had been dispersed amongst the table. Some tourny donk (had a gold jersey) was at the table too and I saw he was 4tabling 10/20 but he has some serious leaks in his game that I couldnt exploit as much because he was directly to my left and running hotter than the sun. I definately tilted away 2 or 3 buyins at 10/20 but other than that Im very happy with how I played tonight. Put in a looong session and was only tilted for about 10 minutes even though I was down almost 14k at one point. And the tilt didnt carry over at all to any 5/10 tables, just played extremely solid there the whole night.

Another interesting thing was that I was at a few tables with giggy and he seemed to be spewing pretty bad. He has a few leaks for sure (that he usually overcomes with just relentless preflop aggression) and I think I finally have a complete gameplan together for playing against him. He was probably just tilting or something last night, but watching the video he posted of himself playing actually helped me to figure him out better. Hes still a great player, dont get me wrong, but I think if he continues 8tabling 5/10 playing the same way he is now hes gonna run into some trouble because Im sure the other guys at 5/10 are gonna figure him out too and will be more focused on it since hes 8 tabling playing that way. I think his relentless aggression at 2/4 allowed him to get away with some stuff that he wont be able to get away with at 5/10 where the regulars are more in tune to the game.
Im actually up more on giggy (5k) than any other player in my PT database which was surprising to me considering he owned me and never lost a coinflip at 2/4.
For the month now Im at 51k in around 57k hands. I would love to finish at $1/hand for the month so thats my goal for the next couple days. At 5/10 im up 42.5k in 21k hands, hope that winrates sustainable ;)

Looking forever

Finally found my favorite picture! (Well looking is kind of an exaggeration, always wanted to find it never actually looked for it and accidentally stumbled across it but beside the point) This cracks me up every time. The old funny cuz its true thing.



This ones pretty funny too







gotya

(saw all these in thread in cardrunners pretty funny)

...

Alright so I almost feel bad continuing to post results because Ive been running so hot and Ive been talking with some people who have just run terrible this month, but I wanted to make a post tonight and I guess Ill include some more poker stuff so when the inevitable doomswitch hits I can look back on this month and feel better about it.

So last night was playing and doing well went up about 5k then was at about 3k and decided to call it a night and was gonna sweat for a little. Then something weird happened w my internet so went and got food then watched the wire (just finished 2nd to last episode of series man that show is sick good and am bummed this is the last season). After that decided to just play a little bit more before going to bed and turned a 3k win into 6k loss for the day so wasnt too happy w myself for even deciding to play because the games at 5/10 were terrible at this point in the night and I was 6 tabling against pretty much all regs, which is something just a week ago I couldnt understand when I looked at some of the 5/10 tables and saw all regs playing each other because I knew there was easier money from fish at 2/4 and 3/6. Man 5/10 is a rush! Addicting too in that sense I guess. I was running real bad (which I was more than overdue to do so cant complain) and wasnt playing well either but uckily I cut my losses.

My good friend bill came over tonight and we went to dinner at an italian place nearby that was very good. we hadnt thought anything of it, though, until we were sitting down at a table in a corner of this dimly lit nice italian restaurant w like a candle on the table just the two of us and actually contemplated leaving because of how we were sure it must have looked. To make it worse not only did we stay but we ended up asking the waiter if we could share one of the salads as an appetizer, good thing we dont care about how we look i guess.

AFter that was chillin on the computer undecided if I wanted to put in a session tonight or not because I was still a little upset about giving back the win last night but haupt motivated me by saying he was gonna put in a robusto session. that got me thinking positive so i opened a few tables started off hot right away and finished up w my new best day. so guess i owe haupt somethin for this.







On another note my bros bball team (carnegie mellen ftw) have big game on saturday against U. of Rochester. I feel a big win comin led by Geoff "his shits legit" Kozak.

Heres last nights graph:





Also wanted to hear peoples thoughts on this scenario:
"Heres the deal. You get two million dollars tax free deposited into your bank account right now, in return the only music you can listen to for the next 5 years is Creed or Nickleback. If your in public around other people listening to different music you will only hear Creed or Nickleback. If your watching a movie or tv and a song is playing, you'll here Creed or Nickleback. If your friend is singing a tune, it will sound like Creed or Nickleback to you.

Do you do it?"

At first I thought it was a tough choice but I wouldn't take it. After thinking about it more its an easy choice and I definately wouldn't take it. I love music sooo much and not being able to listen to all the stuff that I like in addition to having to hear nickelback all the time would irreaparably harm me for life. Not worth $2mill to me. I wouldnt even do it for 2 years. Such a long time. Maybe I would take $10 mil for 2 years. Anyway I found it interesting because this was posted at twoplustwo and so many people were saying they would take it in a heartbeat. I don't know what they're thinking.

Love February

Continue to run super hot and had my biggest winning day by far yesterday. Not gonna lie definately sucked out a few times, but I still think I played even those hands pretty well just a matter of running QQ into AA in 3bet pot and hitting Q on river lol. That being said I ran pretty bad at 3/6 (set under set, full house to quads, KK< AA). But Id rather run well at 5/10 and bad at 3/6 than the opposite. Didnt play that many interesting hands but here are a couple.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?2136890
first orbit at table and had never played with guy before, but apparently 5/10 reg obviously i dont like his play here.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2136900
This was a line AE told me works great against fish in our lesson last night. After he just called flop there I was betting turn for value and check-snapcalling river when draws missed. Didn't put him on 66 tho (which makes no sense because that means the hand hes putting me on flop and turn is a king and then he bets the king when it comes even though he has some showdown value). Anyway pulled this same line twice more later on to great results.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?2136925
Note to self: don't try cold 4betting 20buck. Even tho his 3betting range is so wide doesnt mean hes goin anywhere.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2136933
Don't know if I like my play here. Guy was pretty donkish so ordinarily I would like a 3bet or fold on flop but I thought his range was anywhere from A8 to even AA (you never know, and don't think hed raise a set yet hes a donk). So while I could still be ahead if I throw a 3bet in here I think Im folding out the A8-TT and air hands and only getting it in against a better hand. When he chks behind turn im pretty confident he has an 8 but could still have 99-TT so river is obvioulsy not a good card and I bet small planning to fold or squeaking out some value from a hand i have beat.

Placed the order for the aeron chair today so im pretty pumped about that. Figure its worth it to spend the money on a real good chair so i dont mess up my back. Also committed to vegas for a month this summer so im really looking forward to that now. Were gonna have a totally balla house and everybody in its a very good player so definatley gonna get a lot better at poker there. Anyway hope things continue to go well I might start grindin 2/4 again for a couple days because Im so due to start running bad at 5/10. Not looking forward to the inevitable downswing there but we'll see what happens. Alright heres my graph for yesterday. Oh yea link to vegas house I think were getting: http://www.vacationsvegas.net/?action=detaliu&vid=25

Almost a Winning Day

Almost had my first decent winning day in what seems like forever today but managed to lose it all back and a bit more in my night session. I don't think I played too poorly but ran into a lot of coolers/missed a lot of combo draws. I drank a Rockstar and planned on grinding for most of the night but unfortunately hit my stop loss and chose to stop. I was a bit tilty at the end as well but didn't spew at all because of it.

Here's a few hands from the night session, all from 3/6 - 5/10:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126996
The PFR was something along the lines of 57/22 so I 3bet PF here. I think the turn is a good spot for a semi-bluff after the flop gets checked through and the river appeared to be the nuts for me.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126702
Nomed is pretty crazy postflop but I'm pretty sure he's never bluffing here. I was going to take the line of calling the flop, calling the turn, and raising the river in this hand to mix it up and also because I think he likes to continue firing a lot when shown weakness. He should know I'm not going to have a huge hand here a lot of the time and may also think I was floating him on the flop.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126707
Villain here is pretty fishy and plays 42/17. The river is very bad for me since it completes the straight, BDFD, and also puts QJ ahead of me. But I still think the river is a value bet, albeit thin, since he is a pretty big calling station and will definitely look me up with at least any jack here and possibly less.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126719
This one I'm not sure if I like or not. It's against the same fishy opponent as the hand above. I have seen him make large pot-sized bets postflop as a bluff before but I'm not sure he gets too out of line squeezing. With that being said, this flop and turn are like the nuts for my hand so it's tough to get away from my hand against this opponent. This may be borderline spew though given that I didn't have a huge read on his squeezing/cbet range.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126730
Villain in this hand was very fishy but I haven't played too much on him. He seemed overly loose and that's about all I knew.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126780
I chose to flat PF here even though the isoer has a very wide range when isolating the fishy limper. I had been leaning on him a lot on a few of our tables and didn't want to get 4bet here since he hadn't played back at all yet. When Josh squeezes, his range is very wide and I think AQs is ahead of it.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2126879
This is one of the last hands I had played. I had been opening a bit at the table but really didn't get too involved with Josh the entire session, besides the AQs hand. I thought a flop c/r would be good to mix it up since I think he fires with almost his entire range and it looks like I am giving up with an AK/AQ type hand. I really don't like his PF call 100BBs deep...

I'm not sure what to do at this point since this DS is mentally draining me and causing me to not play as many hands as a normal month since I keep hitting stop losses/getting frustrated and taking breaks. I think I'm down about 8.5k this month so far but I'm definitely no stranger to putting a rally cap on for the tail end of a month. In January, I was down a few thousand on the 18th and managed to pull off ~+29k month. Let's hope I can find that cap for February.

Swingy Session

After playing 1995 hands I was down 4k at one point but ended up +1450.
Early on I made some spewy plays and then lost some coin flips. I never went on bad enough tilt to make me stop playing. I did have to take a 5 minute break to cool down, but after that I was fine. If I didn't think the tables were juicy enough to keep playing I def would have ended the session, but I kept playing and won some big pots. I remember Leatherass saying he plays so many hands and tilts very rarely. He plays through the bad downswings so he can get those hands over with.



Here is the MacDaddy flop and luckily my hand held up. I was a 55/45 dog. http://www.pokerhand.org/?2107671

Best week ever

Had another good session to cap my best week ever. Split up of hands is probably 65, 25, 10% 2/4, 3/6, 5/10.I've definately been running very hot, but i also have stopped giving away stacks. I have a little spewmonster in me that I've kept hidden recently, and I think a large part of that is because of talking with the rainmakers and our sweat sessions, as well as the sweat sessions Ive had with fees before this.
Had first lesson with aejones tonight and it was great. Hes definately gonna help me patch up the leaks in my game as I look to start playing primarily 3/6 and a little 5/10. The lesson went for an hr and 40 min tonight too and he only charged me for an hr which is awesome of him. Hopefully I keep running well and Im already looking forward to our next sweat session because definately took away alot from our last.

p.s. probably gonna fail first test of semester tomorrow because instead of studying tonight did the lesson which turned into me continuing to play after. hopefully i can bs my way through it.

Blahhhh

This month has been pretty piss poor so far. I think I've played ~18k hands and am down ~$5k. The fact that I played in the 10/20 NL cap game, ran like absolute garbage, and ended down a little over $6k on the first of the month didn't really help but since then my play has been sub-optimal. Besides not playing my A game all that often, the times that I do I feel like I am definitely on the ass end of coolers/suckouts more so than I am on the better end. But 18k hands isn't really all that many so I am expecting a boom switch sometime soon.

I have been looking to get coaching recently and decided on going with MYNAMEIZGREG, who plays mainly 10/20 and is a co-owner of Leggo Poker. I talked with him a bit on AIM and he seems pretty legit and I also watched one of his sample vids on Leggo (since I don't have a membership there yet). I decided to go with one of his package deals of 10 lessons for $3500. Although this seems like a lot of money, especially for my first time getting coaching, it's really only 3.5 BIs at 5/10 and I think his coaching will propel me to win much more than that in the long run. I start tomorrow so I will post on how things went and hopefully get some new tricks/confidence in my game and, more importantly, plug some leaks.

Running Hot

Continue to run hot this month, although I feel due since I ran so bad in Dec/Jan. Fees just came over and sweated me for about 2 hrs and I swear the few times we've sweated each other the person playing has flopped a set almost every time theyve seen a flop w a pocket pair. Wished I coulda made the rainmakers sweat on saturday but tennis match took forever because they only had 3 courts and we had to play 9 matches, so rigged. Really looking forward to the next one whenever we get a chance to do it (hopefully soon). Talked to aejones today about coaching and I think Im gonna do a lesson with him tomorrow night, so Ill see how I like him as a coach and let everyone know anything I learn.
Heres my graph from tonight Im probably gonna play some more, maybe take some shots at 5/10 if I see a good table. Although Im pretty due to start running bad so maybe Ill just play some 1/2 to waste it there ;)

Robusto week!!!!!

Well I didn't really play the hands I was going to play this weekend because once I started playing I realized I was playing very poorly. I decided I would wait until after our sweat session before I played anymore poker and then just felt like taking it easy Sunday afterwards. So I just had a few drinks, LAG'd it up at 1/2nl and fired up a stupid donkament Haupt talked me into playing.

As for the sweat session I think it really helped me get back on my game. I got a chance to sweat Haupt who I've done tons of sweats w/ before and got a chance to do my first sweat w/ macdaddy. I really feel like we will be able to learn a lot from each other. I really think the session got me back in a good frame of mind to be playing my A game. I didn't really run particularly well but I think I played very well except for a few mistakes.

I'm going to grind a ton this week and try to make sure I am maintaining 6 tables pretty much all the time. The goal is to just play a ton of hands and hopefully get robusto for the year. I'll try to post some updated graphs throughout the week and some interesting hands.

Making It Rain

Almost made it to 10 buy ins deep. Has to be the most buy ins I've ever made at one table. Hopefully this becomes a normal occurrence for the Rain Makers.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2071829

What do you guys think of my play here. On the river I was looking to get value from 88s-10s. I was confused with his shove. We had some history before where I tried to make a few bluffs and then folded to his raises. So with that, seemed like I had to call here.

Quick Session

Wanted to get in a quick session before going out tonight or whatever, so played for about an hr. Think I played very well and started with 4 tables and gradually added more, think that made a big difference and Im happy about that. Here are 2 hands:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2070359

Apparently I run well here, didnt think I could get away from kings here against random donk playing 60/12 here because he could definately have AK or something.


Heres a hand Im very happy about how I played:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2070367

When he raised flop his range is any overpair/set/random air. If I come back over top here Im almost never getting my money in as a favorite here unless maybe he has TT/JJ (but against this player Im not even convince hes ever raising TT/JJ on the flop. I think his range is actually more likely set/air here so I elect to call and evaluate on turn, and I might have even check-folded turn if I hadnt hit gin and he fired big again because most guys will give up after I call the flop raise. So when he checks behind turn I think hes basically given up on the hand and almost certainly doesn't have a set. On river I'm not going to be getting any value with a closer to pot-sized bet because I think he most likely just raised the flop with air and is done with the hand. If he does have a set and played it this way the moneys getting in either way. So I tried to make my bet look like a blocking bet w a TT/JJ type of hand that I still have plenty of room to fold if he shoves on. He tanked down for a while before shoving.

Just picked up a case of Labatt Blue and about to start pongin it up. Love weekends.

Where Greatness Begins

Like everyone else has stated I am also very excited about this group. I have always been meaning to seek out other regular players, so I'm glad we got this goin. I have been in contact with Haupt since the fall and I'm looking forward to discuss hands/strategy with luck and UMD.

Lately poker has been going very well for me. I had a great January and I've got off to a good start this February with the low volume I've put in. I hope to grind out 50k-60k hands a month. I'm mainly going to play 3/6nl still but really try to pick the best games from 2/4 through 5-10. I was at the Super Bowl over the weekend, and being a Pats fan I needed to take a few days off before I started to play again.

The weekly sweat sessions are going to be great. I hope to provide some good insight and also learn a lot from you guys as well.

Here is my graph so far through February.
-5.5k at 5/10
+11.2k at 3/6
-400 at 2/4

Holla

For my first serious blog entry besides the expected "first!" and a sweet "Make It Rain Remix" vid, I just want to say that I am pretty pumped about making this group for improvement/poker support. I have always wanted to have a real close group of poker friends to bounce everything off of and this blog site seems to officialize it. I have met luckhappens and MacDaddy through the limits months ago and they have both been my go-to guys when I have a poker problem/question/hillariously bad hand i've played. I just recently met UMD and talked to him but always remember him at 2/4 annoying the hell outta me when he was on my left :). So this should be a great group of players.



On another note, I can't seem to read our blog or even write this entry without scrolling down and playing the video to hear about other rain makers making it rain (the more official ones, I guess). Right now I am in Buffalo visiting my gf of a little over 2 years which is something I usually do every other weekend since I love about an hour away. I am headed to the Sabres vs. Bruins game tonight and got some nice front section seats I got off of stubhub which should be a great game. I plan on being fairly intoxicated primarily from pregaming with 1 or 5 of the following:



I should be coming back Saturday afternoon and I think we all plan on having our first group sweat later that day so it should make for some interesting blog entries afterwards. GO SABRES!

2008, you suck...for now

Sucks my first post is kind of negative but just on one of those runs right now. 2008 hasn't really gone like I planned so far but poker is like that all the time so whatever. I'm pretty much always the laziest poker play I know but I think getting some rivalry going amongst each other and trying to outdo one another will help w/ that some. When I see other people post sick graphs w/ tons of hands it motivates me even if only for a short period of time. So the plan is to try an log 40k hands this month and I've only done about 6k so far. Gonna hit it hard this weekend though.

On a more positive note though, I am really pumped to get a group of players together that I respect and that I can learn from. Even though I have always been a lazy player I have still focused very hard on improving and have spent tons of time in the forums and thinking about poker in general. I'm excited about getting some group sweats going and learning from one another. I can teach you guys how to make hero calls and you can teach me how to make less of them...hehe. I'm hoping through the sweat session that you guys can help me plug any leaks I have right now. I am pretty good about spotting them I think but I'm sure there are some things I do that I may not even realize. I was talking to UMD on AIM yesterday or the day before and once we got talking I started realizing a few kind of big mistakes I had been making. Just things that when I thought about how they were never working I determined, if it never works for me as a bluff then I'm going to only start doing it for value from now on until people realize it's always for value, then I can add bluffs.

Here is my shitty year so far(Guess it only posts photos at the top, oh well). Could be worse I guess but I played really well through most of this. Towards the end my play started coming apart a bit but I am completely aware of this and will be focusing really hard on playing my A game. Not a lot of hands I know. Gonna change that this weekend by getting in 8k hands between right now and Sunday before I go to sleep.

Tuesday's Graph

Just got back from Flat Rock, pretty standard thursday night. start drinkin, play some/alot of rock band, hit up flat rock sal00n. that place is by far my favorite bar in manayunk right now. they dont sell a single american beer which is awesome. all they have on tap is harpoon (a great microbeer) and spaten (a dutch beer that i hadnt heard of before which is very good). in addition to these they have about 100 other american microbrews and random other beers from other countries which, of the ones ive tasted, have all been fantastic. mike didnt even take his shirt off tonight so it was a win win all around. they also have this big asian guy that plays live music on thursday night and is soooooo good. plays anything we ask him too as well from oasis to weezer to beatles to enrique. its always guys at this bar (guys from mythbusters to be exact) but thats fine bc we have a great time. So quick summation to make sure everyone was following: got drunk, wished i was playing poker to make some money, had a blast playing rock band, went to flat rock to listen to verry talented asian dude play music, missed katie, did jagerbombs, tried to think of business to start w/ friends, came home, ate pats samoas (so good), ate my doritos, about to puke from eating too much, kicked bill out of my bed, its 6:15am im still typing, what am i doing with my life, i love everyone.

Last Nights Graph

First real post

I want to start off by saying I’m really looking forward to starting this blog and beginning to make it pour even more with some fellow rainmakers. Ive been meaning to start a blog for some time now and just never got around to it, so this was the motivation I was looking for. Guess Ill start off with a brief background on myself. Name’s John O’Rourke, go by J.R. to most of my friends, play poker under screename UMD Tennis on Full Tilt. Graduated from Univ. of Maryland last may , played tennis there and had best 4 years of my life. Also met my girlfriend Katie there who Ive gone out with almost 3 years (trust me sounds like a lot longer than its felt). I’m from Lower Merion, PA right outside Philly and currently live in Manayunk (which is part of philly so I can finally say im from philly without having to argue with people who tell me “youre not really from philly”) with 3 of my best friends from high school (St. Joe’s Prep ftw): slikky, xfactor, and uncle natty. Im currently a graduate assistant at St. Joe's U, getting my MBA and coaching the tennis team there.

Don’t wanna bore anyone with my poker story, pretty much same as everyone elses. Deposited a couple times, busted a couple times, got lucky to run up a roll on the “last time” I was gonna put money on when I was still horrible at poker. Found twoplustwo and cardrunners, realized how bad I was, started working hard on my game and started moving up through the limits after switching over from sitngos and multi-table tournys to cash games (best move I ever made). Currently still trying to improve my game so I can take some shots at some of the higher limits. I could write a more detailed description of my whole poker story if anyone’s actually interested in reading it just let me know.

The primary purpose of this blogs gonna be to post interesting poker hands, my thought processes behind how I played them, and my recent results. I think having to explain my thought processes behind moves I make and having other great players critique them is really going to help take me to the next level. The results will lead to some friendly competition with the other rainmakers which will help motivate us to play well and do well (and lead to some prop bets Im sure J). Not gonna be too boring w just poker all the time will also throw in some entertaining stories from nights out, pictures from said nights, random thoughts, random video clips or anything else I might find entertaining (granted Im easily entertained sometimes). (and if you haven’t noticed yet I like using parentheses when I write stream of thought so get used to it!)

Im probably going to be posting most of my entries on my laptop and I play all of my hands on my desktop, so there might be some delay between when Im talking about a session and posting a graph/hand histories from a session but we’ll see how it works out.

Last night played about 5k hands and went from being stuck 4k to winning 1k, but played from 12:30am-6am when I had planned on stopping at 2:30. Two things I know I do that aren’t good and are general leaks in terms of being a poker player are play too long when I get stuck and not being focused when I first start a session. Last night epitomizes what is unfortunately becoming a trend. Im sitting at my computer browsing the internet and talking to ppl on aim and then I just start firing up 8 tables on ftp. I don’t take any time to get in the right mindset to play, im not focused at all and before I know it im stuck a few buyins which actually motivates me to start focusing on the games. From now on im going to make sure Im actually ready to play and actually wanna play before I start (as Jman said its never a bad idea not to play) (there I go with the parantheses again) and im only gonna start with 4 tables so I can get some specific reads on how some of the regs are playing before I gradually start adding more tables. Last night was even worse than usual. Usually I only go down about 2k or so before I turn it around. Last night went down 2k then started running very bad and before I knew it im stuck 4300. I almost stopped playing then because this was at like 4am, I was not playing well at all, was tired, and could feel myself not really thinking about each hand. I wasn’t even tilted, just wasn’t playing well and knew I should stop. Then I started getting hit in the face with the deck and decided I was gonna play until I was even and wound up 1k.

The thing I don’t think about sometimes is that the games are always gonna be there and the fish are always gonna be there. Its never bad to stop a session when youre down and know youre not playing well. But I just think about all the fish at the tables and cant bring myself to leave until I make some of my money back. The good thing now is that I don’t get tilted at all by bad beats anymore at 2/4, so playing these looong sessions when im down isn’t the worst thing for me. Im sure theres some more minor things it causes me to do that I don’t even realize but in terms of it affecting my mentality or causing me to make straight up stupid plays it doesn’t happen anymore. Playing solely 5/10 for a month has played a large role in this im sure. While I could financially handle the swings there, I couldn’t deal with them emotionally. I started off there on a 22 bi upswing and thought pokers so easy then came the downswing that culminated in a -13k day and I was like I cant handle this anymore. 8-10 bi swings are very common for me at 2/4 meaning 13-15 bi swings have to be very common at 5/10. That’s a difference between winning/losing 3-4k at a time and winning/losing 13-15k at a time. A big jump. The way this works is that as you move up in levels your edge/winrate decreases which causes variance to increase leading to bigger swings in terms of buyins. Im a lifetime 4 PT bb/100 winner at 2/4 (including 100k hands when I first moved up after only 25k hands at 1/2 and should not have been playing 2/4 yet and was winning at like 1-2bb/100). Now I think im closer to a 5 bb/100 winner at 2/4 and a 4 bb/100 winner at 3/6, but im probably only a 2 bb/100 winner at 5/10. I wanna work hard on my game to the point where I feel my winrate at 5/10 is something over 3 before I take more shots. That being said I still play there sometimes now if a big fish is sitting (I’v even played 25/50 2 times bc of a big fish and have a maintainable winrite of 170 bb/100 over like 70 hands, probably dumb move on my part).

Alright this blogs getting way too long sorry bout that guess I just threw in a lotta random stuff for first entry and was real bored in class tonight. In future gonna be more short spurs of session or hands or something funny, just wanted to give some background. Let me know any other suggestions for the blog or anything you would wanna hear about.

Grab an umbrella!

first!

first!