As the title says unfortunately I wasn’t able to reach my goal of 10,000 games this month.  I started off the month super strong and basically just ran out of gas.  10,000 games is a lot of poker and props to anybody out there that has done it.

On a better note this was my first month I was able to take poker very seriously, without any other distractions(school), and I feel like all my hard work this year has paid off.  I’d like to thank Colin and James for all their help this year, I can’t thank those guys enough for all the work they put in to make me a better player.  There is absolutely no way I would have got to the level I am at now without the help of those guys.  I feel as though they really help you not only in teaching a certain topic but also in helping you apply it until you are comfortable.  I haven’t had any other poker coaches before but I can’t imagine many of them are even close to being on their level.

As some of you may know, James came up to my place to play poker this month.  It was pretty awesome to get one on one coaching pretty well anytime I wanted and I think it helped me a lot with my game.   I can’t really put a number on how much my game improved with him being up here but it was definitely significant.

Here are my official poker stats for the month.

Games Played: 8291

Profit: 5598.80$

ROI: 3.9%

Rake: 6352.60

Rake back:  1715.27$

Avg. BI: 17.52$

I’m not posting those to brag or anything like that but I think it’s important to all of James and Colin’s other students to realize what is attainable in these games if you put the effort in.  I actually ran a little below my red line this month and was still playing a lot of 10$ in there.  I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything but for those of you that are not giving James and Colin your full attention and sending in HH’s, I really don’t understand what you are doing.  These guys are absolutely phenomenal coaches and can teach you to either make a really amazing side income or turn this into a profession.  So, send in those HH’s and improve your game because you will get there!

I’m really looking forward to June, probably not going to have the same kind of volume but I definitely would like to hit 6k games.  That’s 200 a day which I think is definitely possible.  I have started to 7-9 table so my games per hour has gone up a bit and I feel pretty confident about it.  It’s very rare that I have to check the shove chart anymore and I have lots of notes on guys thus playing with regs has become a lot easier.  I’ve never been as confident as I am now in playing with another reg, which was a leak in my game earlier.  I’ll probably be playing mostly 20s, 35s, and 50s this month.  I doubt I will be playing many 10s anymore unless the other games are full of regs or I go on a huge downswing*crosses fingers.  The few 50s I played this month didn’t go so well and the 35s started out really terrible and then got to be really good.

The variance in these games can be really sick, so far I have played 15k 10s for a 1.1% ROI and should have had a 3.6% ROI.  I honestly think my true ROI in these games is 5-6% at the 10$ level and a lot of this was from when I was learning the game because I started at the 10s.   James also went on a disastrous downswing where at one point he was like 2400 dollars below EV or something.  So for anyone on downswings just keep grinding and studying because it’s going to turn around.

That’s it for this month.  Good luck at the tables,

Squid

Hello fellow poker enthusiasts.

It’s been a great month so far, and I have been able to put in great thus far 6-8 tabling mostly 10s and 20s (I mixed a few 35s & 5s).  I started off the month just playing relentlessly and in the last couple of days I have had some low volume days.  I’m not sure how attainable my goal is going to be, but thus far I am on pace to reach it.

Stats so far for month.

Games Played 5297

Profit 3100.90$

Rake Paid 3678.90$

If I hadn’t played any 35$ this would be much higher because I’ve been getting absolutely hammered in those games.

Unfortunately I got hit with some bad news as my rake back provider is most likely not running the rake race this month which I’m fairly positive I would be in either 1st or 2nd place.  This was like a 1200$ hit to my month which is super disappointing.  I’m crushing the FTP leaderboard and basically have 1st place locked there but the payout for that is hardly anything special.

Outside of poker, my dog has healed extremely well from her surgery.  We are back to doing our daily run which gets me away from the computer, always a good thing.   I’m trying to sell my 98 M3 but haven’t found much interest in it yet.  The car has become pretty well useless to me as I just don’t drive anywhere anymore.  Going to school you need to pay a lot for parking so I just started taking public transit.  Hopefully I can sell it this month so that I don’t need to pull out from online.  I told myself once I hit 12k I will play the 35$ ST quite frequently because I think you can make a lot more money moving up levels assuming the games are still soft.  Which for the most part they have been pretty good.

My Canucks are kicking ass and taking names lately.  If they make the finals I’m going to do everything in my power to get tickets and book a flight down.  I’ll be on a month long hiatus if they win the cup.  That franchise has broke my heart some many times in the past that it is just so awesome to finally see them doing really well.

Hopefully in my next post I ended up hitting the 10k mark for the month.

Well I didn’t expect to get that much volume in this month, but I surprised myself.  I played a lot of poker towards the end of April post black Friday.  I officially past my first practicum for my teaching degree and now only have one year left so that is pretty exciting.  The kids were awesome and I got to do a lot of stuff outside the classroom which was fun.  I ended up teaching just Math which wasn’t what I wanted however it turned out quite nicely.  I would have liked to teach some physical education classes and play some floor hockey.  That would have been bad ass.

Sedin my dog got spade this week so that has been an interesting task.  I feel bad for her because she can’t go for walks for another week because of the surgery.  IT’s probably worse for me than her because taking her for a run has forced me to stay in shape a little bit.

In terms of poker I ended up playing 4123 games and ran exactly on course with my red line for the first time ever!  I was up huge until the last 500 games where I had a super sick 1300$ downswing.

April Stats

Games: 4123

ROI: 2.3%

Profit 1514.55$

Rake: 2955.65$

I have some pretty sick goals for the month of May.  I’m going to try to break 10,000 games which is going to be sick but I think it’s doable.  I still plan to keep my regular study routine so I’m planning on putting in 8 hours a day to poker every day this month.  Since Black Friday the rakeback race for my rakeback provider has become very juicy and I could conceivable win it this month.  I’m also going to aim to top the low stakes leaderboard on FTP.  You only get 20 BI’s for this, but every bit counts I suppose.  Since it’s going to be mind numbing on the brain I decided to at least set a schedule for the beginning part of my day to help keep my mind fresh.

8am – 1030 am : Grind grind grind

1030 – 1130am : take the dog for a run

1130 – 1 : grind grind grind

1-130 : small workout downstairs in my home gym

Rest of the day I’m going to leave open.  I figure this should allow me to get at least 200 games in and I can play another 125 during the evening.  This will at least keep it so that I’m not pulling sessions until 3am and then sleeping until noon like I have previous summers lol.

Anyways looking forward to a sick month and would like to wish everyone else luck at the tables.  For those still in the program and wanting to do study sessions together this month hit me up.  Studying with others helps me keep the mind fresh and forces me to study more which is always + EV.  Good luck everyone.

-Squid

Hey guys,

Not the best month for me in March.  I started off the month moving into my own townhouse that I have rented out the past two years.  The crazy lady living in their basically destroyed the place and I had to fix everything.  If you ever rent out a property be very careful who is moving in there!   She had makeup all over the carpet in three rooms upstairs, leaving it completely ruined.  I had to replace everything with laminate and put it in myself on top of lots of other cleaning.  Combine that with exams and my practicum and I haven’t had a lot of time for poker.  I didn’t start playing this month until the 15th because of all the house stuff.

Here is what HEM had to say about everything.

1451 games

ROI 0.3%

exp. ROI 2.7%

avg. BI 18.30$

I tried playing some higher stakes games this month.  Playing a lot of 20s and 35s this week.  The swings are pretty sick in these games especially the 35′s.  One day I won 800$, then the next I was up 300$ and down 900$ at one point only to finish down 600$.

I think I’m going to wait until my BR hits 5000$ before I give the 35′s another go.  Realistically I think you need at least 6500$ to play these games but once I hit 5000$ I’ll play and only stop them if I fall below 4000$.  I don’t really mind the swings too much to be honest, and the level of play at these games is really poor.  What I found a lot this week is that there were more regs at the 20′s and less at the 35′s.  It makes it hard for me to play 20′s because I don’t see the point in sitting with 3 bad regs at the 20′s when I could sit with 5 fish at the 10s.

Looking forward to April however I think it may end up being a slow month too.  I’m in the last semester of school and although I am done classes for the year, I still have my practicum.  I got placed at a Junior High School that is close to my place and I’ll bee teaching Math, Physical Education, and hopefully a sports team this month.  I’m not sure what they have left for sports team this year, I know basketball is done which is disappointing.  I have already done one week, and then this week was Spring Break which is pretty sweet.  Not sure how much time it is going to consume next month but I’m going to aim for at least 2400 games this month.

Poker goal for April:

Volume – 2400 Games

HH Reviews – 25 of my own.

Videos to make – At least 4 of my best HH’s

Continue doing study sessions with DfmNet, as I think we are both learning quite a bit.  Very helpful.

That’s all for now see you next month.

-Squid

Hey guys,

I had a really productive month in February.  I got a lot of games in over reading week and studied quite a bit in my classes lol.

I got to 450 points on the black card, so I’m about a thousand games away from getting that.  This is really exciting for me.

This week I’ll be moving into my new place so that is pretty hectic, leaving not a lot of time for poker.

My other goals were to play over 4000 games last month.  I finished at 4265 games.

I wanted to make a profit of 2000$ and I think when I add on rake back I am pretty close to that goal.   I achieved an ROI of just over 3% last month.  My goal for this month is to get that up to 6%.  I had my heads up lessons last month which were quite complicated so I’m going to be spending most of my study time this month of HU and a small portion of the time on going over my shoves in HEM to make sure I’m not missing anything.  I highly recommend people do this, I was very surprised at some shoves I missed.

I did get ironman last month by a quarter mile.

Its still freezing here.  If anyone wants a vacation to the great white north where they can freeze their ass off rent free, I have a couple nice rooms for you.  It was -28 without windchill on the way to school this morning.

The Canucks added two players yesterday.  Christopher Higgins and Maxime Lapierre.  Not sure what to think of these guys yet apparently Lapierre can be quite the bonehead.  I’m really excited for a deep playoff run this year but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high because they seem to disappoint me every year.

Poker Goals for March

> 4000 games

> 20 hours of study time

> 6 HH reviews a week.  I will try and send the best 2 to Colin and James

Not going to put in anything about ROI because I can’t control it but ideally I would like to play closer to Yardle’s level and not 3Shells.

That’s all for now.

-Squid