NZ here I come!

Poker has rebounded very nicely and I am back on track. I have tightened up my game and instead of playing the semi loose aggressive / aggressive style I now play the tight aggressive / aggressive style. Even with my tightening up people still pay me off and my decisions tend to be a lot more straight forward (for the most part) and I get myself into less trouble.

In my last post I mentioned a date I was going on...well it all went excellent and she is now my girlfriend, although in 1 week I will be flying to NZ and staying there for 2 months so we wont be seeing each other for a while...

There are serveral things I am excited about in regards to going back to good ole NZ...

1. Seeing friends and family
2. Lots of golf
3. and NZ food!!

Hope those who have partners have a great and sexy Valentines and for those alone, go get drunk!

Poker blows

Since my first week of the yr poker has been on a steady decline. The variance of poker is having a lot of fun with me and has been for a couple of weeks. I can have monsters and my opponents will still hit their 2/3 outer to beat me. I grind and I grind only to have it all taken away from me in one fowl swoop from a crappy ass bad beat...blah blah blah.

On the brighter side if it wasnt for my great first week this first month would be fricken terrible. As it stands it ie merely very mediocre. I made a profit and I guess as long as the bills are paid and I can party life is still fracken good.

On Feb 21st I fly out to NZ and have a flight back scheduled 2 months later. I will be based with my folks and visiting friends around the north island. Should be a blast with lots of golf. I do not look forward to playing poker while living with my parents -- added pressure to perform for sure.

I met this girl last week and I have a date with her tomorrow night. Her and some of our friends are going out to eat and drink, should be a blast. I hope it goes well as it would be nice to have a girl in my life again. She also plays golf so we have a game planned for Sunday, could be interesting if we dont continue to hit it off, heh.

Happy New Year

Hope you all had a ripper of a new years eve like I did. I got rotten with a bunch of friends and enjoyed myself immensely and paid for it the entire next day, hehe.

Ended 2006 with about $100k profit having taken the last week off to just chill away from poker.

2007...didnt play Jan 1st as I was recovering, since then I have played one quick session every day and all of them have been winners. I have actually been holding when only a slight favoutrite, eg 3:2, 2:1, 3:1, etc. and even won a coin flip all-in PF my AK vs TT :-) Cant tell you how nice it is to be winning those showdowns. Not really into playing a lot of poker and in the 4 days I have played I have played approx. a total of 2.5 hrs, bahahahaha! And yet I am up $5k, HA! Lets see if Sat. and Sun. hold true to that formula...

Maintaining $100k

So once I got back to $100k I decided to keep playing at 5/10... Three more times I went down about 3k and three times I worked it back to $100k. This last time, being the fourth I got it back to $100k today and have said "enough!". I will quit 5/10 for the rest of the yr and just play at 2/4. I wont be able to do myself much damage at that level.

I am doing that because I would hate to jeopardize my personal goal of $100k. Thus it looks like Dec. may be my first ever losing month ever!! Do I care? Not really. I just want to be able to say I had a 6 figure year :-)

Now this last week or so I have actually played good poker but I have run into sooo many bad beats and setup situations its been painful. The most standout hand is KK. I have lost so many times with that hand in the last 8 days its sickening. I could list all the ways but who wants to hear about that? Anyway tons of other crap where if I had held up by the percentages I would actually be doing really well. Ah well, such is variance.

When it comes down to it I am tremendously happy with my year and look forward to next year. If I can repeat this yr then life will be very good!

The down side

I finally ended my winning streak and I did it in style, lol. I had my worst week ever!!! A lot of river beats, setups, situations I should have folded in, I assume some bad play and bad beats summed up to -$7850. Whatever.

In truth it is only money, my year has been fantastic and I am healthy and happy so who gives a fuck! Thats how I look at it anyway.

So that loss put me below $100k and today I just managed to get it to $100k even. Now I told myself a few days ago if I got it to $100k I would quit for the rest of the yr., but I dont know if I can do that. I enjoy playing poker and I have a ton of spare time, thus its hard to believe I wont play. Interesting...I just realized I have played for 50 weeks of the year and am up $100k which is an exact avg. of $2k/wk --- sweet. Hands down beats any job I have ever had, bahahaha!!

Tough Grind

A rollercoaster week with big ups and big downs. The week started off with some small wins then Tues. afternoon I lost $4k in one session! I havent lost badly in such a long time I didnt have the discipline to work away sooner. This reminded me to implement the stop-gap policy; if I lose 2 buyins I quit - simple as that. Then in my next two sessions that night I won $4k - so life was good again. Then on Fri. I won $34oo in one session and then on Sat. I lost $4k over two sessions having have to use the stop-gap plan both times. I played once more that night and won $1200. Thus as of Sunday afternoon I am somehow $2k up for the week. After the big swings this week I am very happy with that. I will be playing later today so who knows though...

Negative Variance

It finally caught up to me today.

Trying to remember...

flopped bottom set and lost to flopped straight
AQs floped top two and lost to a flopped straight
AK vs AQ all-in on turn lost to rivered Q high straight (gut shot) - he cold called 13bb's PF
QQ pot raised a raiser and was called by KTo who flopped a K (didnt lose much to him - same guy as above this time called 10bb's)
with QQ called a raiser who had KK, I flopped top set and got it all-in on the flop and lost to a runnered straight

Also lost a bunch of smaller pots to a ton of river cards.

My tip: dont talk about running good and impending variance - you are just asking to get slammed.

Didnt lose as much as you would think to all that but its my first big loss in a while...ahh well.

Tomorrow is a new week and I hope to continue what I have achieved over the last 3 weeks.
KNOCK WOOD!