Nov Wrap Up

I'm finished playing poker for Nov. Wow, this was a frustrating month. It's quite possible I've never been as frustrated playing poker as I was this month. Alot of it was bad luck and running bad and obviously a decent part of it was just not playing up to my potential. Thankfully in the final week I did not have a losing day and managed to semi turn the month around. For a while it was looking like it could end up being a losing month if I kept on the track I was on. I escaped though and turned a profit I am happy with, despite it being my 2nd worst month of the year.

Heads Up - $4,673.25
Misc SNG's - ($333)
Bonuses/Rakeback - $1,961

This all adds up to about $6,300. The way the month started I'll take that!

I tried playing a few more $570's this month and did end up playing 10 of them. I went 5-5 overall. I wouldn't mind getting a few more of those in but I don't know if I'm really 100% comfortable with the notion of being able to drop 2k+ in just 4 games. It'll probably be a slow process kinda like the jump from $115 to 230/345 was. It will probably be even slower because I'm pretty happy with the games I'm playing now and don't really want the added stress right now.

HU breakdown:

$115 - 15-6
$230 - 238-201
$345 - 81-73
$570 - 5-5

I wish some of those $115 wins could be transferred into the $345 column. Kind of annoying to run good there and run like trash in the higher stake.

I made an account on Cake and played a handful of games at the $208 and $105 which I put in the $230 and $115 columns above respectively. I didn't do to well, but only played like 10 games. My screen name there is "bartchalker1" in case anyone wants to know. Not sure if I'm really going to put much volume in or not, the games fill pretty slow sometimes.

I'll finish this post off in style with my Heads Up graphs for the month. Pokerstars & Full Tilt in that order.....






As you can see I actually did really well on Stars this month, but hit a bad downswing on Full Tilt, but managed to recover in the end. A few months ago it was the opposite though.

Crazy!!! Isn't it!!??

Good luck the rest of 2009, later

bartchalker

Nov starting to turn around

Yippee, I'm actually making $$$$ again the last couple days. Sweet little change from the 3 weeks prior to it. That kinda shit happens though, and man it can be tough to deal with. Poker is a tough business, no doubt about it.

I know I said in my last post I was thinking about taking the weekend off but I was playing like 1 hour after I posted that, lol. I can't seem to help myself sometimes, I should really give myself more days off. Sometimes the mind needs a rest from poker. However since my last post I've gone a combined 64-42 in the 230/345 combo. I also mixed in a handful of 115/570. Just one 570 actually, which I lost. On top of running better it feels like I'm starting to play good again too. I don't know, it's such a thin line sometimes that it's hard to tell how much of a downswing is due to just getting unlucky, and how much of it is due to making bad decisions. The 2 can kinda get blurred together over the short term.

Getting ready to go see "Ninja Assassin" in a bit. I hope it's an action packed ass kicking good time because that would make me a happy boy. Happier than that time I thought I had eaten the last brownie but there was still one left. Yum.

Happy Thanksgiving

Nov Profit - $4,105


bartchalker

Gotta grind through it

I am running awful this month. Real awful. It has made me play pretty awful in a few spots too. I'm not sure if I've ever run this bad in a month before. I didn't have a lot of time to play on Thurs, but I managed to get in a quick 13 games on FT and went 10-3 for a +$1,400 day. I really felt like I could feel the tide turning, but yesterday I got slapped in the face by a -2k day.

Poker can feel like a fucking cancer sometimes, I swear. I think this game could literally drive a person insane. I know it does to me sometimes. I know this is a game of high variance and small edges. I know that in the short term(which can be a lot longer in poker than people think) bad players can win and good players can lose. I know that one can be rewarded for making bad plays and punished for making good plays. These are not just things I know, but things I've known and understood for quite some time. However I'm not sure if I accept this all the time. If I truly accepted it I probably would not become angry and upset when the bad beats and set ups occur. I don't really mind the fact that I can get mega pissed when I play, I don't think I'd want to be an emotionless robot when playing, but when it starts infecting my game with bad play that's when I need to take a step back. I need to start taking breaks when I lose a few games in a row. I was getting pretty good about doing that for a while. Even if I don't bother getting up from the computer, just reading an aricle on MSN for 10 minutes or something usually makes a pretty big difference.

I've also become so used to having these +12k months I think that I got spoiled. There has only been 1 month in the last 7 that I didn't hit 12k. I think when it hit the halfway point of this month and I was still about even I knew I probably wouldn't make another 12k month. Once again though, I would not accept it. I think there were too many days this month when I kept playing after I was worn out or tired or just didn't really feel like playing. I kept playing because I was looking to score some of those days where I bank like 2k so I could get back on pace for my typical month. Those 2k days can't be forced though. You can't force the poker gods to be on your side. It will drive you mad if you try. Any time you make 2k in 30 games at 230/345 it's going to take a little running good to do that.

I haven't really decided if I'm going to play any poker this weekend. I might just take a day or two off and come back refreshed. There are still 9 days left in the month so maybe I can at least finish up a couple grand.

The difference between my #'s on Full Tilt and Stars this month are like night and day. I've done quite well on Stars....all my running bad has happened on FT. I'm down like 5k on FT but I'm up over 5k on stars.

Nov Profit - $640

2009 Profit(all that matters) - 112k


If I want to look at this optimistically, being up $640 in Nov after how bad I feel I've run/played isn't that bad. I'm still ahead $$$$$$, it's not like I'm -5k or some shit.

If at the beginning of 09 I had been told that on Nov 21, I'd be up 112k I would have happily taken it considering my 09 goal was 100k.

later

the soon to be running good bartchalker

Poker being stubborn in Nov

Whenever I start to feel the tide turning this month, it just decides to crap on me instead. I have not played my best poker in Nov either. I can tell. It just seems everything that I do is wrong. I have not been able to properly read my opponents hands. When I call a big river bet with a hand that can only beat a bluff I have been wrong the vast majority of the time. In a sense part of that is just running bad too, because they will flip up a very unlikely backdoor straight draw, or a low pocket pair that rivered a set, or just something else weird. It's always against the super laggy villains also.

Yesterday I dropped 1.6k after going a combined 7-13, cutting me down to under 1k in profit for the month. A big part of it was a series of $230 matches I played against a single opponent where I went 4-9. They were not good, but that did not seem to matter. I made 2 really bad plays where villain took a line of check/calling my flop cbet, then check/raising turn. I stacked off both times, once with 2 pair and another time with top pair. My hand isn't really the point though, this player would 100% not take that line without a monster. Both times he had turned straights. Folding in these spots to some opponents might be dumb, but against this guy it should have been a couple easy laydowns for me. I found ways to convince myself I was good with flawed poker thinking.

I'm not going to get to down though, I've played like garbage in a few spots but most of it has just been me getting very unlucky. I felt good when I woke up today and was all ready to get a few games in, but here's what happens the first game I play.







Then the 2nd game I play.........guy goes ape shit after I raise a few buttons.....



I stage a bit of a comeback then.....



This same shit has been happening for 2 weeks.....just standard bad beats, but I haven't posted any in a while so there you go! Pity me please! Plus I wanted to try to get video replays of a few hands on my blog. It worked!

It's amazing how impossible poker can feel sometimes. 2 weeks of losing seems like an eternity. Hell, I'm not even losing, I'm just breaking even, lol. Sometimes I wonder how I ever win at this game while other times when I'm running hot I wonder how I ever lose. Crazy.

Later

bartchlaker

Midway through Nov

I've been mega lazy with my blog this month so far! What kind of example am I setting for all the children out there!! I don't know what I'm talking about.

I guess I probably haven't felt like updating because this month has been a pile of shit. A big pile of tilt inducing dung. I have been unable to do anything this month for the most part, and managed to lose most of my FT roll after going on a vicious 2 day downswing immediately after cashing out. It wasn't super horrible though being that I don't roll with that huge of a roll on that site anyways, still sucked though. I just managed to pull outta the red a couple days ago for the month. Fuck I run like shit sometimes. Then I make it worse by tilting away a game or 3 before calling it quits for the day. There was one day this month I dropped like 2.5 or 3k, can't remember for sure, but I must have played my last 10 games playing my D game at best. My mouse was both verbally and physically abused by me during that stretch. My neighbors probably think I'm beating up my GF over here, lol. The cops are gonna show up one day and I'm gonna have to explain I am just scitzing(however you'd spell that) out over online poker. It's gonna drive me to drink!!

Today has gone pretty good. I've played nothing but 230's and am 10-6. I'll take it! Oh my fucking god, I'll fucking take it. My prayer to the poker gods......Please let me not run good the rest of the month, just normal!! Please, I promise if you do that for me I will not strike my mouse in frustration anymore. That is all.

I found something else that kinda annoys me about online poker. I'm not sure why, but when 2 people are about to play a game it annoys me when this happens. I mean if one person types "gl" and the other person types "u2" or "ty" whatever, it's cool. But what is up with people typing "glglglglglglglgl" and the other person typing "tytytytytyttyty". Seriously, does that just show how unbelievably excited you are to be wishing them good luck?

Also, the use of the words "epic" and "baller" really needs to be watched. I mean every once in a while cool, but jesus christ. Pretty soon we're gonna hear about someone eating an "epic" breakfast, then following that up by taking a "baller" shit.

One more....the use of "aments" as a suffix. Example - "downswingaments" instead of just the standard downswing. Just stop. Seriously, lol. STOP.

That's it!! I'm done, will not wait 2 weeks to update again!

Nov Profit - about 2k?

bartchalker

October Wrap Up

The month of October has come to an end, and my profits for this month are very consistent with my profits in Aug and Sept.....not more than $500 separates the differences in profit those 3 months.

Oct Profits below.....

Heads Up - $9,875
Rakeback/FPP's - $2,751
Other SNG's $211

Total Profit - $12,837

I ended up playing 628 games this month which is more than I've played in quite a while. There were quite a few days when I grinded pretty hard and I'm happy where it got me. I won 55% of my games this month and I feel like it should have been higher. The last 3 months now I've won between 55-56% of my matches, when I'm used to winning closer to 57-58%. I'm not sure if I've been playing just a little worse thsese last couple months or running just a tad more on the bad side. It only takes losing 1 extra game out of every 100 to have this happen so it's so tough to see what's causing it. Maybe the games are getting a bit tougher? Who knows....random variance.

Here is my HU breakdown

$115 - 10-8
$230 - 202-180
$345 - 133-94
$570 - 0-1

I finished below what I'm used to in the 230, but ran well in the 345 to make up for it. However I get there I guess.

Finally, my Pokerstars/Full Tilt Heads up graphs for the month....






I would like to put in this kind of volume again in November, hopefully with a little higher winning % which will mean a little extra $$$. I won't complain if I finish +12k again though.

Good luck in November!

bartchalker