awesome day/month+online poker under fire in MN?

I remember reading about the attempted seizure of "gambling" websites domain names in Kentucky in an attempt to stomp out internet gaming in the state and thinking what bullshit it was and how happy I was it wasn't my state dealing with it. Then earlier today I read articles on ESPN, cardplayer, and pokernewsdaily that my own state of MN is embarrassingly doing the same thing. The Minnesota Dept of Safety is responsible. I just feel there are so many better things people could be doing with their time. They have told the major internet providers in MN to block over 200 gaming sites IP addresses. The puzzling thing is just a few minutes ago the list was released and absent are online poker giants Pokerstars, UB, and Absolute poker. Lol. To make things even funnier many of the sites listed such as Partypoker don't even offer games to United States players. Jesus Christ, if you are gonna pull a bullshit move like this MN at least get your fucking shit straight you dumb motherfuckers. I am not too worried yet, but just thinking about it kinda makes my stomach turn.

Enough of that depressing crap, onto more exciting news. My April poker month. It has been totally ridiculous. The whole month. Just ridiculous. Absolutely 100% crushed/destroyed/owned/devestated/demolished the month of April. My #'s pretty much tell the story......

Heads Up SNG - $16,647.50
Other SNG - $857.06
MTT - ($394.50)
FPP Rakeback - $1,720
Bonus - $120

Total April Profit - $18,950.06

I was up like 16k coming into today and obv have a +3k day(new daily record) to end month to push me to 19k.

I played 573 HU games this month which I wanted to be about 125 more, but I can't beat myself up too badly. If I had pushed myself to play when I didn't feel like it, it may not have been such an awesome month.

The thing that really made the month is a 218-135 record in the $230, which was good for about $42/game. I have also won my last 13 $345's in a row. I finished the month with a 48-37 record in the $345's altogether. In the $115 i went 71-63 which was only good for like $210 in profit.

I'm not sure what else to say without sounding like a total bragging prick, so I'm gonna stop.

It is time to put this month behind me and move onto next month. I am not going to bother making a 750 game goal this month because it just won't happen more than likely. I'm not gonna try to get in extra games to make up for the week I'll be taking off in June. I will make a May goal of 625 HU games of $100 stake and up. I would like 75% of those to be at the $200 and up also. I cannot expect a repeat of this month, because this month was insane and will be hard to ever break. I would like to see a 10k month for May though. I will work hard to make that happen.

I will end this post with my April graph......

Still going strong

It has really been an enjoying poker month, and it looks like the awesomeness does not want to end. Yesterday, I quickly got up about 1.5k and it was really looking like it could be a 2k+ day. Then I started getting smoked. I took a shot in a $570 and obv lose.......MF. It wasn't a real good player either. Then I drop to a 345 and the same dude sits me and owns me again. He later sits me in another 345 and sticks it in me one more time for good measure......arghhhhhh!!! I think losing multiple matches to the same player(especially if you think you got an edge) is one of the most frustrating things of HU matches. I'm smart enough to take a break now though. It used to be bad for me on Full Tilt sometimes with that wretched rematch button. I'm actually a fan of the rematch button but I used to just keep playing the same player over and over and over. It didn't matter if they were dominating me. I think it was safe to say that by the time it got to game 11 and i was 2-8 I was pretty much a drooling moron at that point due to tilt, haha. I'm a smarter bartchalker now though. Anyways, my profit shot down to a couple hundred on the day before I took down a $60/45 man sng for a $700 score and still managed to finish up a GGGGGGG.

I saw I've made it onto 2 sharkscope leaderboards which is kinda cool. I kinda thought at the beginning of 09 that I could make the $101-$300 HU total profit for sure but didn't really make it a goal or anything. I don't really care that much, it's not like you get any bonuses for making leaderboards or anything, but I guess it's kinda cool to see my name up there. I think I'm #11 on the $101-$300 buyin HU board, as well as #19 on the $101-$300 buyin any game board. I have to say I was a little sad to see sharkscope replace my little swimming shark with that white spinning star. I mean the star is cool and everything, but the shark just looked straight up bad ass to have swimming next to my name. I wish they could them both up, like side by side or some shit. Now that I am on a couple leaderboards hopefully I can stay up there.

I should pretty much have my best month ever locked up. It would take a pretty sizable(sizeable?) downswing at this point to shoot me back below 9.5k. I'm pretty confident I'll be all right though. I've still been pretty motivated to keep getting games in and hopefully these last 6 days of the month can be profitable as well......later.

April Profit - $13,795.06

Record breaking month

Well, the title pretty much says it all this month. It's only the 21st and I have already broken my monthly profit record(barring downswing to end month). The main thing right now is trying not to be content with my profit and fall into the trap of slacking on my volume. I have run above expectation this month, so I have to get my games in to make up for the months when I don't run so hot. I don't think I'm going to get the 700-750 games that I said I wanted this month but I do want to play over 600 for sure. I should be able to get there. Saturday I experienced just my 3rd losing day this month when I dropped 1.4k but I handled it very well. It only took me 10 games to pull that off and I stopped playing after that. I actually was playing quite badly in a few of the games. My bro was visiting Sunday so I took that day off. I think only playing 10 games Sat then taking Sunday off was a good thing to do. Sometimes when I'm on a hot run I almost start to feel invincible and maybe a little over confident. I sometimes will make too many "moves" or take too many high risk chances against the wrong players. That's what happened on Sat in a few of the games and it brought me back to reality pretty quick that I need to be 100% focused on making the best possible decisions when I'm playing or I'm better off not playing at all.

I started playing again yesterday and got back to owning peeps. I even had a 10 match winning streak between yesterday and today. Pretty awesome. I am still feeling so confident in every match I play. Not cocky or overconfident, i'm just being very decisive in my decision making, and my hand reading ability has been spot on in many of my matches. It's a good feeling to have.

I went to the Twins/Angels game on Fri night and it may be #1 on most exciting game I've been to. Twins down 9-4 in the 8th and score 7 times to take an 11-9 lead. Kubel came up with the bases juiced and Twins down 9-7. He had also already hit a single, double, and triple. So he obv crushes it out to complete the cycle and hit the go ahead grand slam. I don't think anybody in the dome sat down from that moment until the game ended in the 9th. So exciting, just wow. Not a game I will ever forget for sure.

GO TWINS!!!!!!

GO BARTCHALKER!!!!!!!!!

GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

April Profit - $11,332.50

Mid April Update

It is pretty safe to say that the first half of April has been amazing. I have been very motivated to play, and seem to be playing very well in almost every single match. Basically I just am demolishing people every single day I play right now. I have managed to maintain a 63% win rate in the 230 for the whole first half of the month which is pretty amazing and is a major reason for my success. I am only about $100 away from breaking my monthly profit record and still have 2 weeks to play, so I am not only hoping to break it but to demolish it. *fingers crossed for a 15k month*

I finally have a 1,000 game sample in the 230(almost) and I have to say I am very happy with my #'s.....

Games Played - 967
Avg ROI - 9%
Avg Profit - $21.62
Total Profit - $20,910

I really hope this is sustainable long term but I am not sure. While 1,000 games is def a significant sample size it is still possible to just run above expectation in that period(although unlikely it would be a huge deviation). We'll see if my #'s are close to that after 2,000 games.

I don't think I have ever felt the way I do now when I play a game. I just feel like I can win every single match. I have not been tilting at all when things don't go my way and I feel like I'm taking a step forward in my poker career.

The big thing going forward this month is not to be disappointed if things don't keep going this well, because the reality of it is that they will not. It's just not realistic to think I can keep winning at this pace. However a 15k month is def attainable and that's what I am hoping for. I can't make that a goal over such a short period of time, but if I get my games in and play my A game there is a decent shot at that happening. I'll say a 72.46% chance.

I guess that's all I got right now.......holla

April Profit - $9,335.50

HARDCORE OWNED

Oh, shit I got owned hard today...........no not at the tables silly, by a foot long Philadelphia cheese steak sandwich from Subway. Hooolllyyyy shit, to much food too much food. I only at like 9", WTF!!!??? It owned me, oh my god I got owned by the cheese steak philly.

Poker is still going very well. I'm still chugging along hoping for a super month. I've been putting in some pretty decent volume every day and am not getting burnt out at all. I feel I'm still playing awesome too. Today was looking like it was gonna be a break even day until I ripped off 4 straight W's at the end. Stars has it's Sunday Million qualifiers running again so I can try to get some FPP rakeback up in this bitch. I'm thinking I might just bank the majority of the FPP's i made this month so far that I wasn't able to play because of the SCOOP. I already had banked about 100k fpp's so this will give me about 150k that I will just use on the 200,000 VPP and 300,000 VPP milestone bonuses which cost 50k in fpp's each. Then I'll still have an extra 50k fpp's left over for next yr!!! Thinking ahead!

Twins are getting me a little worried with this 3-5 start. Starting pitching has been shit with the exception of Perkins. Just horrible. Gotta remember that there are still 154 games left, plenty of time to turn it around.

I will do another update at the halfway point of the month.

Run good bartchalker

April Profit - $7,395.50

Looking for big month.......

This month has some pretty serious potential to be my best ever. Actually if it doesn't turn out to be my most profitable month I will be pretty disappointed. Today has been a little on the shitty side so far and I haven't got much going and am down about $500 but what the hell, I can't own people every day. My April profit is at about 5.4k right now and my best month was Dec 08 when i finished ahead 9.5k so I'm def on pace to snap that. There are absolutely no guarantees that will happen, all I can do is play the games, play my best and I'll see where I'm at at month's end.

With the SCOOP going on right now Stars is not running their normal Sunday Million Qualifiers so I've used none of my FPP's I've accumulated this month which is about 43,000. That's worth about another $750 or so. That will only help more.

The $230's have gone ridiculously well this month, I have like a 63% winrate which I wish could be attainable long term but it is def not :( I guess I'm just running pretty hot. Fuck it though, it all evens out and I've been running like semi garbage this whole yr so score one for the good guys!!!

Strong 1st week

Well, the first week of the month has been pretty successful. Since my last post I've just been breaking even overall which is all right since I had such a hot start.

Twins opener was not a very fun game to go to as they fell 6-1 to the Mariners. The 2nd game of the series just ended a few hours ago and was pretty awesome though, scoring 3 runs in the bottom half of the 9th to take it home!!!

I'm gonna keep this post short. Here's a hand I figured I'd share. It's just kinda a funny one. This was the 4th or 5th straight hand I minraised from the button and I wasn't 100% convinced he actually had a hand himself. However I believe I had already come over the top of one of his 3bets and I just really felt he would call me lightly if I overbet jammed. He was pretty bad. Let's just say I didn't think he would call me quite this light, haha.

Table '153977534 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: villain (1410 in chips)
Seat 2: bartchalker (1590 in chips)
bartchalker: posts small blind 10
villain: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [Qd Qh]
bartchalker: raises 20 to 40
villain: raises 80 to 120
bartchalker: raises 1470 to 1590 and is all-in
villain: calls 1290 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (180) returned to bartchalker
*** FLOP *** [9c 3d Qs]
*** TURN *** [9c 3d Qs] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [9c 3d Qs 6h] [8s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
villain: shows [2d 7c] (high card Queen)
bartchalker: shows [Qd Qh] (three of a kind, Queens)
bartchalker collected 2820 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2820 | Rake 0
Board [9c 3d Qs 6h 8s]
Seat 1: villain (big blind) showed [2d 7c] and lost with high card Queen
Seat 2: bartchalker (button) (small blind) showed [Qd Qh] and won (2820) with three of a kind, Queens


April Profit - $4,101.50

YES!!!!!

This is def the hottest start I have ever had to a month. Really sick right now. Playing so well. Running so well. Had a streak of 8 in a row today. I'm up 1.5k today and 4k on the month. That puts me on pace for a 24k month........HA!!!! Won't count on that, but def looking good for a 10k month. No downswing, no downswing, please please please please please.

Total brag post, I am out.

Killing April so far.....

I am off to a very hot start in April. Totally killing it. I have been playing the triple combo of $115/230/345 and it's going very well. The last 2 days I've actually only played a handful of the $115, the rest have all been 230/345. I think I am finally ready to move past the 115 on a more consistent basis now. That's not to say I won't play them anymore but I expect to play at least 2/3 of my matches in April at the 230/345. We'll see how it goes at month's end. I should have prob made this move sooner. The 115 turbo has been my main game for so long that it just became somewhat of a comfort zone for me and I was super comfortable with the swings at that level.
I just got around to thinking about it about 3 days ago when dibasio and I joined a 230 at the same time. We decided to chop and he asked me why I still play the 110 and I really didn't have a good answer. It's such a simple question, but one I really had no good answer for whatsoever. I think it comes down to one main thing. Complacency. I have just become happy with my winrate as is. I was always so excited to try new levels out, but for some reason once I made it to the $100 dollar level a part of my mind just said, "Well, that's it, you made it." I don't know why. Like I just thought of $100 as high stakes and that was good enough. It could possibly be that I had a few depressing days where I crush the 115 but played a handful of 230's in the same day that I did bad in to make me a loser for the day. Who knows, but I think I've finally gotten over whatever was holding me back. Even playing the 345's lately I don't seem to be phased by the swings(granted I've been running hot). Like today in a 345 I got it all in pre with AA vs K 10 and watched the board come out AJxQx. Usually I'd at least be a little pissed, especially since it was a 345, haha. I didn't even let it phase me, and I came back to win the match(little luck helped me out too). Below are my my lifetime graphs for $115, $230, and $345 turbos on stars, in that order. (obv the 345 is a very very low sample size)




Anywaysssss, my goal for this month is to play 700-750 games with 2/3 being above the $115.

I will say I do just get a bit impatient waiting for the lobby to open up in a 230, so my impatience makes me go down and play 115 also, haha.

The other night I saw my online sportsbook I used had a promo where if you make a $20 or higher bet on a NBA game you get 1/2 of ur wager back, win or lose. I could hardly pass this up so I made my first sportsbet in quie some time. I had a very good feeling about Cleveland @ Orlando(-3.5). Orlando did not dissapoint my 100% demoloshing the Cavs.

I made 2 seprate bets on the Twins upcoming season. They had the over/under for total reg season wins for Twins at 83 so I bet $150 on the over obv. I just don't see them not winning at least 84 this yr, no way no way no fucking way. They also had an over under for Francisco Liriano wins this yr at 12.5, so I bet $50 on the over. Seriously?? This guy has the potential to be one of the best ever!!! No way he doesn't get 13. That is as long as he stays healthy(fingers crossed) which is maybe why the line is kinda low. Also the Twinkies will have to score him some runs. We'll see, LET'S DO IT!!

April Profit - $2,541.50