April wrap-up

Hey guys and girls,

the april is over and it was a pretty good month overall. I'll just start with the graph and then explain what happened:

You obv already know what happened at game 480 :D (for those who don't remember/didn't know: Brag Post ) Well, after the ship, i played way more MTTs for the next few days, obv up to $215 BI and combined with a pretty bad run at 180s (esp at 35s and 60s), i lost ~$4k in the next 3-4 sessions lol. It's pretty similar thing to what happened last year when i played too many tables and at way too high stakes, fortunately, i realized what's going on soon enough :)

The reason why i didn't recover from the downswing is basically 35s and 60s as i lost $3.7k in those in 136 games, lolsample and that's bit less than -100 BI, nothing to worry about it :)

The second best thing that happened this month is that i finally bought new PC!
Pretty good thing:
Intel i7-2600K (3.4GHz)
8GB RAM
120GB SSD drive (for poker mostly) and 1TB SATA3 HDD for the rest
Geforce GTX 550 Ti

Graphics card isn't great, tho i don't really need it. Only for occasional gaming nights :) However, i'm really happy now that i can play as many tables as i want WITH HUD and it's not lagging at all! (except rare <1s lags because of my internet) That's sooo cool, i actually had 44 tables open at one of my sessions and it wasn't THAT hard to handle them, tho i'm usually trying to keep ~36 games running. This definitely helps my volume as well, which obv is a great thing :)

Now a bit about other things in life, i'll start with bodybuilding. That's going pretty well, since my last post on April 3rd, i gained ~1.6kg (current weight: 60.6kg). It's not much, but poker messed up my eating schedule a bit in last two weeks, tho it's getting better now. I do enjoy pretty much every minute spent in the gym, even tho i don't like all the exercises i have to do, but it's really cool to feel that i'm way more powerful than i was ~2 months ago :) Also, quite a lot of people notice that i'm bigger now, so i'm happy that my efforts are actually showing up. Still got a long way to go until i reach my goal, but i enjoy every moment of it :)

The weather is finally great here (already had two really hot days +29 C ), now it's not that hot, ~+22 C, but there are no clouds so it's great and i've been spending way more time outside. I actually started walking quite a lot compared to what i used to do and it would probably sound really strange to most(probs all) of my real life friends, but i do enjoy it haha.

I'm quite happy about where i am now in my life, obv there are things that need some work and there are things i'm satisfied with, but that's just life, just gotta do what i gotta do to get where i wanna be :)

And this leads to the last and very short part, goals! I thought what i could aim for in May, figured that there's only one thing worth aiming:

[ ] Do my best at everything i'm doing!

(hopefully i put that sentence right)

That's all for now, have fun and good luck in May ;)

Cheers,
Bigniux

Brag post!

Yooo,

yea, thought that it's worth to make a brag post about it. Check out the image below and you'll understand what i'm talking about ;)

Feels great, first time i ever shipped an MTT! More to come (soon, hopefully).

Back to blogging!

Hello, fishes and sharks :D

Wow, it's been almost 3 months since my last update :O

Well, to be honest, there wasn't much to update with. Unfortunately, i'm not sticking to my plan for the year so far (facepalm). I just read my last update and i actually should have switched to PLO by now haha, guess what, i'm pretty much at the same skill level as i was when i wrote that post lol. Basically, what i need to do is take some coaching sessions which would give me the drive to play more (and obv improve as well).

The problem i realised to have was that i found it quite hard to learn and play PLO while i'm still playing sngs. Don't know if it's just me, but after i started playing more PLO, it became much more fun than sngs and i just played it for few weeks(obv not making any money), then i tried sngs and i didn't want to play PLO for a while. Need to work something out about it and then should be pretty easy to move on :)

However, there are some positive changes in my life which i'm really happy about.
First, i changed my sleeping habits a bit. Going to sleep at ~2-3am(before: ~4-5am) and getting up at ~11-12 in the morning (used to get up at 3pm :D ).
Second, i finally started going to the gym!!! Damn, i was delaying that for soooo long. That's was probably best decision i made this year :D It's gonna be pretty tough challenge, but i need to gain quite a lot of weight. I don't have exact number how much, it will depend on how i'll look, but probs at least 20kg (44 pounds). So far doing pretty well, starting weight was 56,5kg (125 pounds)(Height:1,73m / 5'8" ) and during first five weeks gained 2,5 kg. Obv happy about the results so far and should be able to keep it up quite easily :)

I guess this explains why i didn't have much to blog about, cause i pretty easily summed up last 3 months in 3 short paragraphs haha. I'll keep you updated with my "bodybuilding" challenge and obv various poker stuff :)

Good luck everyone!
Bigniux

Transition to PLO

Hey all,

as you know i am planning to switch to PLO this year. Initial plan was to switch anytime until September 1st, however, recently figured out that i better do it sooner, to be more exact, until the end of March :)

Quite fast, huh? Doable imo, i have some savings which will be enough for at least few months, so i don't need to be a winning player by that time, all i want is to have pretty solid understanding of basics(which actually should be enough to at least b/e @ PLO50).

So, as i have 2,5 months remaining until i switch, i will have to play some 180mans in that time to make some more money. Currently aiming at 3,000 games during Jan-Mar (played 200 so far :D ). Ofc, i have no idea what variance will decide, if i'll run hot, most likely i'll play less games, otherwise might need to play more than planned. Basically, 3,000 is almost $5,500 at my current $1.81/game winrate. I'm aiming at ~$5,000, that's where i got the number from and variance will decide whether it's gonna be more or less games :) (If someone doesn't want to see me at 180mans, you can pay me $5,000 and we have a deal :DDD )

During TCOOP, i'm planning to play only $15 180mans, it's gonna be quite small volume, but i don't want to mass-table, especially during higher stakes events and obv i'm expecting to have best $/game at 15s :) If i manage to get a significant cash in TCOOP i will just switch to PLO after it ends (again, i could switch now, but i just want to make sure that i have more money aside and definitely don't want to wait until i run out of money!).

As for PLO, i'm playing quite a lot. Learning quite slowly, think i should spend more time watching vids as the studying : learning ratio is ~ 30:70 or smtg like that. On the other hand, i find it pretty hard to learn from the videos if i haven't found myself in similar spots that i see in the videos, so getting some more experience at the tables should be helpful imo. Also, will take some coachings really soon. I think everyone will agree that it's the best and fastest way to learn and even tho it's most expensive one, but it will pay off really fast :)

That's about it for today, let's have a great 2012 everyone!

Bigniux

TCOOP. Best day ever...again!

TCOOP


Weeeee, as you all probably know, yesterday PokerStars announced Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP), which will take place Jan 19th-29th. Damn, looking forward to it. Will definitely play all HE events(except High-Roller :D ). Most likely will have to sell some action, but not sure about that, will make a post here if i do :) Now i gotta save up some rungood until it comes :D



Best day ever...again!

Only a month ago i reported about my best day ever in 180s, didn't take long to break that record :) Not much better than the last one, only ~$100 more, but it's still exciting. And i finally had a great feeling about it, i was actually happy about making so much money. Also, this is second 2k day in 180s this month!

Here's the beautiful graph:

Looks awesome :) Not that many 1st places tho as it usually happens on such days, you can see final table finishes on the right.





Also, i finally exploded in freezout 180mans, after having really long b/e stretch, it feels great to finally see a giraffe at the end of the graph :D











Ok, enough of brags today :D Wish me gl at TCOOP and gl to everyone playing it ;)

Bigniux

Rungoodaments

Yoo,

as you might have guessed from the topic, the post is about me running HOT this month! :D

Ha, that's quite nice :D And i spent only 48.3 hours playing this month, not that i'm happy about it tho. Gonna try to get my last stellar for this year, need 6,000 VPPs, which is ~1,300-1,400 games, shouldn't be hard :)

Few days ago opened an account @ Betfair for PLO studies. Got a little nice surprise too, they have PLO15 limit, so will be able to move up somewhat fast i hope :D Will try to get the basics ASAP, so i can clear a nice chunk (maybe all) of my $1,000 FDB. With a huge PLO rake it shouldn't be too difficult!

I also started to add 10-15 turbo MTTs(up to $16.5 BI) into my sessions on PokerStars. I think i missed out quite much of profits by not playing them, will probably add more of them soon and some higher stakes, tho that depends on how i run at 180s :) Would be nice to bink something soon, you know, it's Christmas time, i would take it as a present from PokerStars :D Hmm, probs gonna ask them for that, they have nice support, should be fun :D

Gluck!
Bigniux

The Future

Hey all,

as promised, this post will be about my future plans :)

So, the way i see my future, i need to switch to cash games. I'm still trying to figure out whether should i choose NLHE or PLO. But most likely will go with PLO, because my plan is to end up there anyway, so would kinda waste time learning NLHE. Why cash games? Well, i pretty much have to choose between HS MTTs and cash. MTTs would obv be quite cool, however i want to have more freedom and especially free evenings and that's not really possible if i would grind MTTs. So that leaves me with cash games and even tho, PLO is quite sick and difficult game, i believe that i'm good enough to pwn PLO tables sooner or later :)

As some of you know, i gave PLO a shot during summer and it wasn't anywhere close to success. Why? I'm not sure but i guess because i tried to learn it for the wrong reasons, i was kinda running from sngs. But now i just want to make more money. I don't have plans to be poker pro for really long, well, actually it is quite long :D I want to do something better than poker after i get bachelor degree(which is 4,5 years from now), but might go for master degree right after that, so i might even have 6,5 years to play poker. Well that's actually a lot! But i'm not gonna try to plan that, just too difficult to know where i'll be after such long time. So, basically i don't want to spend a couple of years playing sngs while studying at uni, which would mean that i couldn't even make $100k/year. And well, i think that in cash games i could make much more money after reaching PLO200 stakes. Because of very simple reason - time management. As a sng player i can't squeze in 1-2 hours sessions few times a day, just seems as waste of time to spend 2 hours to play 20-30 games while it takes only 4 hours to play 100 games in one session. And CGs would allow me to manage my time as i want and it would also be much easier to have balanced lifestyle, which leads to better overall quality of life :)

Also, yesterday i finally finished my deal with SNGProtege, i was only staked since Nov 1st, because i felt as i don't need coachings to keep my game at top level, but i didn't have bankroll to play on my own. Finally, i have my own bankroll and will play on my own :)

That said, the plan looks something like this: make $1,000 and deposit them to some other site and start playing+learning @ PLO10. That would be 100 BI bankroll for PLO which should definitely be enough (i could obv reload that). The reason why i want to have separate bankroll for PLO is just because it would keep things easier and i could know how i'm doing without help of HEM (i won't use HUD at micros). That's the start and i will definitely keep playing at other sites at least until i am comfortable @ PLO100 at which time i'll make a decision to either move to PokerStars or just keep playing at other sites. However, i think it's more likely i won't move to PokerStars. But well, that doesn't really matter now, since i'm still far away from PLO100 :D

So, the next part of the plan is the main game switch to PLO. When will it happen? Most likely when i will be winning player @ PLO100, even tho my hourly would be lower than at Sngs, i think at that time i'll want to focus on PLO to reach higher limits where the earnings should be better as fast as possible. There is a deadline tho, September 1st, when i start studying at uni. Depending on my skill level, i would either just switch even at PLO50 limit, because i won't be able to play as many sngs as i can now and so a switch at that time will just speed up the process. 8 months might not seem as a lot of time, but with my current poker knowledge, learning skills which i gained while studying sngs and amount of free time i have, i believe i can do it :)

That's about it for PLO, i have some things in mind for the further parts of the plan, but now i need to focus on first stage of the plan :)

There is another thing which i want to learn. FOREX.

FOREX - The foreign exchange market (forex, FX, or currency market) is a global, worldwide-decentralized financial market for trading currencies. Financial centers around the world function as anchors of trading between a wide range of different types of buyers and sellers around the clock, with the exception of weekends. The foreign exchange market determines the relative values of different currencies.

Yep, i want to be a trader :) And it not necessarily ends with FOREX, that's just a start and depending how things develop, it might evolve into something huge :) However, it will definitely take a lot of time and dedication to achieve something in trading, but since i always admired that(and it actually has some similarities to poker) i think i must do my best and become professional trader! It's gonna be way tougher than PLO tho, cause i'm starting from 0 and overall it's way more difficult than poker.

I don't really have such a good plan for it tho. I bought a book few months ago, so that's how i'm gonna start, also there are a bunch of free sites with various articles for beginners, which will definitely be helpful. After i will understand some basic stuff, since i'm 100% sure it's way easier to learn anything having a coach, i will look for personal training(i already know some, will just need to make a choice). It's not expensive also, which is really cool, something ~$40-$50/hour for 10-20 hour packages and one great thing about them is that they're not done through internet. You need to go to company's office and you study there with a coach!


So, that's pretty much it about my future :) It sums up my plans for whole next year. The new journey begins after New Year celebration. Obv, I might read something before that, but official start is Jan 2nd. Hopefully i'll be able to post more often when i'll have more things going in my life than just sngs :)

Good luck,
Ignas