Saturday, September 29, 2007

Not so good

Well i've not updated for a while so here goes and i could really do with your help and comments. This post is going to be like councilling for me, I don't know you reader, i may have had blog conversations but i am going to lay out, completely honestly, my life and any comments would be good.... This may be a long one....

If you have read my blog then you will know that me and my long term girlfriend split up in january. Even though we were having issues, i think one of the reasons was my poker play. She went to New York for 3 months august 2006 and the month before she went Virgin Poker were running one of their STT challenges to win en EPT copenhagen seat. Virgin had run one of these before with 2 WSOP side event seats as prizes along with flights and accomodation etc and, as a poker player, would have loved to have gone. Now i don't see myself as a great player that could win a big satellite to win a seat, but the system Virgin were running (STT results: 10 player STT win 5 points, 5 player STT win 3 points and heads up STT win 1 point meant that by just amount of play you could win) i felt that i could win. It just so happened that during the first challenge which I had started ok, myself and my now ex misses had a 2 week holiday to the bahamas booked. Now i don't like sitting on the beach all day every day, so some days i would go and sit in their internet room and play poker. It was a windowless room where i couldn't concentrate properley and realising my misses was getting pissed off by this I stopped playing. this however made me annoyed slightly as i really really wanted to go to the WSOP. Next time Virgin ran this tournament i thought THIS TIME!!!... So the month before she was going I was playing all the time and, ven though this will sound selfish, it was HER leaving for 3 months not me and she commented later on that i was more interested in the poker then her. I ended up splitting the prize with m3monster http://m3monster.blogspot.com/ and was told by Virgin that i could go to the WSOP 2007 and play a side event. My misses came back and we eventually split up and i don't know whether this was a reason, but at the time all i wanted was to be a pro poker player.

I started playing more when she left, all the time playing only $20 heads up sit and go tournaments on Pokerstars and was constantly winning. Once i tried moving up to $50 and lost a bit so moved straight back. I was winning a bit, but nowhere near enough to live on, around $400 a month every month. I don't know why but i always thought that to be a pro and good poker player you had to play cash games so i started playing cash on Full Tilt (to get rakeback) and Virgin. I would win a lot and then lose it all and more with hands i couldn't get away with. I would hold AA for example, the flop would come K 6 9 rainbow, all would go in with me thinking AK and my opponant would hold KK. Another point was when i had AK and the flop came A K 7 rainbow, i raise guy goes all in, how do i get away??? I call and he holds 77. The biggest pot i lost which was really bad was holding jack 10 suited. No raise before the flop and i'm in the big blind, the flop comes J 10 10, i bet, guy raises, i re raise and he pushes, i call turn 8 river K. No i know i did the right thing and was outdrawn but when you win those hands and win $50 and i lost $500 to a $1000 pot on this hand it's difficult to get back.

I bought poker tracker and linked it to Full tilt and played cash on there. I have been playing a while so played $0.25 - $50 and $1-$2 and was up for a bit but now after around 3,000 hands am $1000 down. I played $2 - $4 once and in the first hand lost the buy in when my AA was beaten by KK. My problem seems to be winning not a lot with premium hands and either being outdrawn or not being able to get away winning hands. I cashed high in a MTT on Pokerstars and started being stupid and playing $50, $110 and $220 heads up STT on Pokerstars and was doing ok but that was way out of my bankroll. What do i do? Can i be succesfull playing heads up STT or do i play that just to win $400 a month?? How do i get away from big hands like listed above???

I recently haven't played much at all, i met another girl who i have just split up with yesterday. She kept telling stories that i believed were not true, culminating in her telling me last night she was pregnant as i was walking out. She called later and i told her i was going to go round there in the morning with a pregnancy test, and half an hour later she was on the phone with her neighbour telling me she was having a miscarriage....

With everything thats happened in my personell life i haven't played that much and i think i got disallusioned with the cash game defeats. One thing that poker traker did highlight was the amout of rake you actually pay playing cash games... Fuck me... You don't miss it when they take it but it does accumalte a LOT.. I did have a thought though.. Would you like it if the poker room took DOUBLE rake as you don't miss it when they take it, but give you half of it back every month??? That would give you a nice bonus from money you don't miss when they take??

Anyway my head is fucked from everything that has happened, but please comment on anything that i have said, poker related or not, as any support would be greatly appreciated.

Also i have been out with a girl from my work. nothing happened but we got on really well and i really like her (she'll probably turn out to be a mentalist knowing my past history..). The issue is, is that i am 28 and she is 18 but an old 18 if that makes sense. Now if i was 40 ans she was 30 or 35 and 25 then i have no problem with that.. To be honest i don't have a problem with her being 18 but some people I have mentioned it to do.. What do you all think??? Is 18 to young as they are still not classed as an adult till 21??? She is an old 18 though so mature, funny and we get on well??? What do you all think????

She's also unbelievably attactive which helps...

Rant over

Matt