bartchalker

July wrap up+Aug 1st half

2010-08-15T02:24:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a little while. About a month since my last update. Things have been going pretty smoothly as far as poker goes. I was busy moving into my new place towards the end of July and didn't play any poker at all from the 22nd through the 27th. I got back into it the last few days of the month. I was still able to finish July up a solid 12k despite the one week break. My final record combining all buy ins was 432-367, good for a 5% ROI and about $12/game. The more ST's I mix in the more that $/game number is gonna drop. Pretty unrealistic to expect $18+/game playing a lot of $200 ST's. Here's my July graph. I really put in a high volume on FT this month. I'd kinda like to change that. I still think the Pokerstars players club is much better and the rakeback comes out higher, but for whatever reason I've decided to roll on FT lately.

Aug has been going very well thus far. Got off to a super hot start the first 8 days before running into a vicious day on the 9th where I dropped about $3,100. However since then I've been hot again and even had a +$3,800 day yesterday. I think I'm up right around 10k for Aug right now.

I don't spend a lot of time on the poker forums, not typing on them at least. I do like to troll around them a bit and see what people are saying every once in a while. I just bring it up because of all the stuff I keep seeing about these EV calculators, or all in EV or luck calculators, or whatever the fuck they are called. They tell you how above or below EV you've been running, basically if you've been getting unlucky or not based on hands you get all in with. I think anyways? I'm not real up on what they are all about because I don't use them, but good lord. Seriously. It's like it turns into a contest about who can post the worst graph. A contest of who is more unlucky. Wah wah wah, look how far below EV i've run. Jesus. I guess it's comforting to know you've been getting unlucky after getting your ass kicked for a few sessions? I don't know, it's just a phenomenon that's popped up recently. Kinda funny how nobody posts graphs of how far above EV they've ran, but there are ones everywhere about how below EV people are running. Besides, what if your calculator shows you way below EV, but you've also won tons of matches by hitting coolers. Couldn't it appear you've been unlucky from an all in EV standpoint when in reality you've actually been lucky from a card distribution standpoint? I saw Jhub3000 touch on this subject a tad in one of his blog entries a month or so ago. It's probably something I'll never get into that much, I don't see too much of a benefit in it. Besides, if I've been losing I know it's because I've been getting unlucky. I don't need some dumb fucking calculator to show me that. ;) Just kinda joking.

I also have to laugh when I see people talk about prolonged downswings that stretch out for months. If you are having downswings that stretch out for months it's because you're playing badly, or your edge was not that big to start with. Either that or you are not putting in nearly enough volume monthly. When someone tries to tell them so much, they obviously get super defensive and spout off some shit about how it must be nice to never run bad, to run like god, blah blah blah. Sorry, get better or find another job. Quit bitching so much because in reality nobody gives a fuck about your downswing. Nobody with a 7%+ roi who is on their A game is going to lose money over several thousand games. I mean it's not 100% impossible or anything, but neither is tossing a coin and having it land on heads 40 times in a row. It's just highly highly highly unlikely. Shit like that just kinda cracks me up is all.

Not much else to say for now.

Till next time

bartchalker

Mid July

2010-07-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

Actually, it's a little past mid July, but close enough. Since my last post I've been alternating winning and losing days with my winning days being quite a bit larger than the losing ones. I was up over 11k going into yesterday, but got wrecked pretty good towards the end of my session yesterday. I lost 14 of my last 15 games. They were all super turbos. Those fucking things man, I tell you. They will make you a man. Put hair on your chest. I ended up finishing down close to 3k on the day, but the month is still going great other than that little road bump. Gonna get back into it today, but might stay away from the ST's for a day or two. Maybe. They kinda gave me a poker concussion.

My girlfriend and I will be closing on a house this week, so with the moving and trying to buy shit for the house and everything I might not get as much volume in as I'd like the last week or so of the month. A little time off will probably be a good thing though. I'm hoping when I start playing in my new office it's a little more +EV than playing in the living room of our one bedroom apt. I'm thinking I'll be able to concentrate better and get better use of my time when I have a place to go that I know is just for grinding and money making. I'll know when I sit down in my office it's time to work. Not that I make bad use of my time now or anything, I'm just thinking it will make it a little easier.

A.L. Central gonna be a close 3 way race between Twins, Tigers, Chisox. I smell another strong 2nd half of a season for the Twins and another Central title! More than likely followed by us getting owned by the Yankees in the 1st round of the playoffs :(

July Profit - $8,362

July going smoothly

2010-07-11T05:04:00.000-07:00

What's up everyone?

July is going pretty good so far. Friday was a real big day, actually the biggest of my career as I finished up $4,150(which included a $400 rakeback payment). Never had a 4k day before, it felt pretty good.

All the games but 1 were played on FT, so here's that graph.

I'd say about 2/3 of the games were prob super turbos. I've been putting in some decent volume in the $102/$203.50 ST's and it's been going decently well. I still def prefer the somewhat slower structure of the normal turbos, but if those aren't filling very fast what can you do? A lot of the donks seem to love the structure of these ST's, and I can see why. It gives them more of a chance to just get the chips in the middle and get lucky.

Although a turbo usually progresses fairly quickly into a game with effective stacks of <25 bb's(once blinds hit 30/60 this is the case no matter what) the thing I hate about the ST's is that you're going into these short stack situations completely cold if you don't have any notes on the opponent. At least in a normal turbo say if blinds get to 30/60, you've been playing for 9 minutes and prob played 20-30 hands. In this amount of time at least you can have some sort of reads on your opponent and have some sort of table image to work with yourself. Not quite the case in ST's, but regardless they are still profitable, just way more variance.

I've put in about 250 ST's this month and have a profit in them of about $2,000, so not that bad at all. I'll def be making these a part of my volume from now on, but do not want to play them exclusively. I'll still be playing turbos most of the time I think.

I've been grinding pretty hard each day this month. Putting in some pretty solid 6-8 hour sessions and seem to be reaping the rewards. If the games would fill quicker I could have better volume for my time. So tilting to have to wait 20 min between games sometimes.

I saw the WSOP main event got the 2nd largest amount of entrants ever. I think that's a good sign that poker is still going strong. First place like 8 million. So sick.

July Profit - $7,018

bartchalker

Solid month +14.3k

2010-07-04T12:13:00.001-07:00

I'm pretty happy with how June went, even though I became extremely frustrated at some points of the month. Looking back through the month I'm not really sure why I became so frustrated either. I didn't have any prolonged losing stretches, never even had 3 consecutive losing days. It's usually when I've been losing for more than 4 or 5 days in a row that I start to get a little pissy. I might have just been getting burnt out a bit? Not sure, feeling good now though.

I had a good time in the $345 this month making $30/game and finishing up 6.9k in that department. It was def a nice change from what's been happening to me in that game so far this year. I also spent some time giving the $203.50 super turbos on FT more of a try this month. I ended up going 73-64 there which was good for almost $10/game, which is pretty decent for super turbos I think. I really have no idea what would be a good winrate in that game long term or even what would be considered a good sample size. I'm thinking $10 a match long term would be very profitable though. There is just so much fucking variance in those things it can make you twitch. It's not uncommon at all obv to get all in within the first 5 or 6 hands. But in the end it's really not much different than playing a turbo once the blinds hit 25/50 and up. The effective stack sizes are uually under 25 bb's at that point also. It's just nice to have that little amount of extra time to outplay your opponent and win or at least be the one with the chip lead when blinds hit a crucial level. I might mix these in more though in the coming months as I think they are def beatable and are a good thing to play while waiting for other games.

The end of June is not just the end of the month, but also the midway point of the year. I am having a pretty successful year, and am about right on pace for 150k profit which was my goal at the beginning of the year. At the end of June I was on pace for 151k. I feel like the 2nd half of 2010 can be even better though. I feel like I've ran pretty bad in the $345 this whole year and if that can turn around I can have a bigger 2nd half of the year.

July has gotten off to kind of a "meh" start, but it's obv super early, so no worries there. I'm down about 2k right now for July.

Look for updates during July, I'll be putting up weekly posts. Even if I don't have much to say I'll throw up a couple paragraph update. I've been lazy maintaining the blog the last few months. Gonna change that this month.

bartchalker

May is finished, +$9,500

2010-06-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

"It's easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you're a winner, when you're number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you're not a winner." Vince Lombardi

Ugh. The 2nd half of the May turned into a bitch for me. After my last update I had a few good days pushing my profit to around 12k, but then I had a 3 day stretch where I dropped around $5,400 and spent the rest of the month recovering from that. I guess I did recover, but just to the point of getting back to where I was at the halfway point of the month. So I guess I just broke even the last 2 weeks. It probably wouldn't have been quite so bad if I hadn't tilted off a couple buy ins in a few sessions I played. I played really bad in a few of my games during the last 2 weeks, was just getting frustrated with the shit. I also had a dumb rematching session against some guy in the $345's on FTP. I played him like 35 games stretching out for more than 4 hours. I should have quit after about game 10. It was late night/early morning and I was getting tired and didn't really feel like playing, but for some reason I got stubborn with it and just kept accepting rematches. I eventually quit after losing like 6 of my last 7 games to him and being real spewy in the process. By the time it was over he had taken a few buy ins off me for about $2,500. I thought I had an edge on him so kept playing, but after game 10 or so it was definitely a mistake to keep playing. Just too tired and frustrated to think clearly and make good plays. It doesn't seem I'm ever real good in long battles with multiple rematches unless I'm winning. Even if we're splitting the matches 50/50 I start to lose a little something. I'm guessing that's the case for a lot of people though.

Anywayssssssss, it's not like May was a disaster, not by any means. While having a 2 week breakeven stretch doesn't happen often to me and is discouraging, it's just something that's gonna happen a few times each year.

I've noticed that so far this year I'm really getting the shit end of variance in the $345. It's kind of annoying. I'm doing about what I expect in the $230 with a winning percentage of 56.6% and $19/game. The $345 this year has been a different story with a winning percentage of 53.3% and about $6.50/game. I guess I can't bitch about it much cause that's the price of playing multiple buy in levels. It just seems ridic to be making more money in the $230 then the $345 so far this year. I've played about 2,500 $345 games across stars and FTP in my career with a $17/game avg. I think long term I could hit the $25-$28 range, but I'm not sure. I mean 2,500 games is a pretty decent sample size, but I don't think it's out of the question to run a little bad over that kind of stretch. Lifetime across both sites in the $230 I'm at $18/game and it would seem kinda weird that the competition is that much tougher at the $345 compared to the $230 that I would have the same $/game. I sure don't seem to notice that the players are that much better overall. There doesn't seem to be much skill difference between the two levels. I guess the nosebleed players tend to sit a 345 more than a 230. I've been sat my livb and other players who normally play $500-$5,000 stakes before at the 345, but not so much at the 230. I don't think that kind of stuff can make a huge difference unless it's happening a lot though. I guess only time will tell.

May was quite a success from a volume standpoint as I put in about 670 games which is definitely the most I have done in a long time. I'm hoping in June to have another 600 game month! Bring on June!!

bartchalker

1st half of May recap

2010-05-16T05:02:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty happy with how May is shaping up thus far. I've put in some pretty decent volume(300 games) and have gotten some good results. I took yesterday completely off of poker after a frustrating prior 2 days where I put in 35 games in each day, only to lose money each day. Now I feel refreshed and ready to do a bit of grinding again. Prior to those 2 losing days however I had 10 straight winning days. Streaks like that are always nice but seem to so seldom happen to me anymore. Bitchy variance. Even having 5 winning days in a row is kind of tough. It's not like the $115's where it seemed I always had streaks like that. I guess it's just a testament to the slightly higher competition at my current levels. It increases variance a bit.

My May HU stats so far:

Games Played: 298
Avg Stake: $269
Avg Profit: $28.29
Total Profit: $8,430

With everything else added in my total profit comes out to about $9,700 so far.

I'm gonna try to put in about the same amount of volume, hopefully with the same sort of results. Bring on the 20k month!

OK, change of subject.

I really hate the term "professional gambler" and I find I'm somewhat annoyed when someone refers to me as one. I usually find myself correcting them and saying that I'm not a professional gambler, I'm a professional poker player, followed by me trying to explain why I don't consider what I do gambling, usually followed by puzzled looks or a response of "well it takes skill but you still need to be pretty lucky don't you?". It's impossible to try to explain to people that nobody is lucky or unlucky, at least not in the long term. Luck is something that can only be talked about in the past tense. If you get you're chips in the middle and are 40% to win, you are going to win an average of 40% of the time no matter who you are. But I don't think a lot of people really understand this. So many people think that there are actually "lucky" and "unlucky" people. It blows my mind. Sure if somebody wins the lottery you can say, "Wow, they got lucky!", and you would be right. However like I said, it can only be used in the past tense. If they buy another lottery ticket the odds of them winning again are the same as any other person. To actually say that the laws of probability do not apply to a particular person is beyond ridiculous. It would be like saying the law of gravity does not apply to a particular person.

"Holy shit! Look at that! That dude is just floating through the air!"

"Yeah, the law of gravity doesn't apply to him."

Saying that a person wins more than their share of coin flips, or hits more flush draws or straight draws than somebody else in the long term is really just as ridiculous as the above mini conversation.

This brings me back to the reason I dislike the "professional gambler" term. I'm not sure how anything can be considered gambling when you have a long term positive expectation in the game. The definition of gamble is "to play at any game of chance for money or other stakes". For the professional poker player, poker is not a game of chance. I mean do the short term swings the pro goes through make what he does gambling? Even if they have shown positive results month after month, year after year? I don't think so because the pro knows how to use proper bankroll management and keeps his ego in check enough to stop him from playing higher then he should based on his bankroll. This is how he combats the short term swings that come with our game.

I realize though that it is probably a good thing that many people group poker in with games of chance like slots, roulette, craps, etc. It makes people think of it as a gambling game and many people treat it just like that when they play. I will say for many people it is gambling. For most people they treat it like any other form of gambling and are just as better off playing slots as they are poker. They have a negative expectation in both games.

Besides, to say a particular person is "lucky" and that's the reason they win at poker would be to insinuate that they could play games like roulette or slot machines and win long term. They are basically saying that me, or any other pro player could just sit at a slot machine 40 hours a week and win money long term. Sorry, doesn't quite work like that. Let me know when you find a professional slot machine player, or a professional roulette player. Although, you probably would get about the same reaction from a lot of people if you said you were a professional slot machine player, as you would a professional poker player.

I also realize that a lot of people don't really believe the stuff they spout off. It's just that many people have played poker themselves and tried to take it seriously but just didn't have what it took to beat the game. It's so much easier for people to say they were unlucky as opposed to not good enough.

I guess the main reason I dislike the "professional gambler" term, other than it being a complete oxymoron, is that it almost feels like a way to put down full time players. A way to say that someone is just lucky, and how nice it must be, and not giving them credit for the incredible amount of discipline, dedication, study, and intelligence it takes to play a game like this for a living. I never hear anyone refer to what the stock market players, day traders, or swing traders do as "gambling". Nope, that's not gambling is it? What they do is called "investing", when really the day to day swings, although I can't say for sure, are probably just as, if not more brutal than that of what a full time poker player goes through. Using the term "investing" makes it sound more legit and smart, while using the term "gambling" carries a negative connotation that makes it sound dirty and unintelligent.

IMO!!!!!

I understand that people who know nothing about poker are always going to group it in with other forms of gambling. They are all played for money and involve an element of chance. I just felt like spouting off a bit.

Kinda went off on a tangent a bit there. I'm out!!!

bartchalker

April recap+first week of May

2010-05-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

Once again, it's taken me awhile to throw up an update. I guess I just kinda go in streaks where I feel like posting and streaks where I don't feel like posting. I know a lot of poker bloggers tend to not post as much when they are on a bad run, but I'm just as unlikely to post on a good run as a bad run I think. And for whatever reason I have not felt like posting the last 3 weeks. I think it's time though, so here goes!!

After being up 10k at the halfway point of April, I had a decent finish to the month. Nothing spectacular, but definitely nothing worth complaining about. Towards the end of the month I went on a week long breakeven stretch, which started to test my patience a bit.

189-160 in the $230

131-104 in the $345

17-9 in the $570

After everything I ended up finishing up right around 14k. The 26 games I played in the $570 was the most I've ever played in a month, and the 17-9 record was pretty solid. It helped pad my profit a little bit for sure. I seem to be getting more comfortable playing at that level, but I'm still not really anticipating trying to play many more games than that a month at the $500's. I'm a week into May now and haven't played a single one, so it's just kinda one of those things I gotta be in the right mindset for. I'm just so comfortable playing at the $200 and $300 level, and making money so consistently there, that it's pretty hard to push myself to deal with even worse variance than I deal with now.

I had been semi planning on playing some the HU SCOOP events but ended up saying fuck it. Those things just stretch out too damn long for me. I hate potentially having to sit at my computer for 12 straight hrs. It would obviously be worth it to win one of the events, but to play for like 10 hours to get a deep but disappointing finish where I only double or triple my buyin is far too tilting for me. Maybe one of these times I'll suck it up and do it.

As for May thus far....it's going pretty good. I'm actually off to pretty hot start this first week, and am quickly up over $5,500. We'll see how it goes the last 3 weeks. I'll take another 14k month. I won't complain a bit.

That's all I have right now. Further updates to come folks.

bartchalker

Halfway through April

2010-04-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

April has been going really well so far. I've been pretty much playing every day, getting in between 15-25 games daily. I'm really happy with how I've played this month and have really just felt in complete control of most of my matches. I'm actually really happy with how I've played this whole year, and my results are showing it. I'm on pace to make my 150k goal. If I keep going along the way I am now I should have no problem achieving that goal.

I really feel I've improved as a player since this time in 2009, just like in 2009 I improved from 2008, and in 2008 improving from 2007. The main reason is just putting in the games, day after day, week after week, month after month. Just grinding is what improves my game so much. And for the most part it doesn't even feel like a grind, just because I enjoy playing this game so much. The downswings can be a bitch, but they just make the upswings that much more sweet. I've played about 20,000 heads up sng's in my lifetime now. After that kind of volume not only do I feel confident against almost anyone I play, but I've been though the inevitable downswings so many times that I think I'm getting way better at controlling tilt then I ever have before. I think the one stat that really shows how much I've controlled my tilt in 2010 is 0. 0 as in 0 broken mouses this year. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but in 2008 & 2009 I prob wrecked a total of close to 20 goddamn mouses. I mean that's almost a mouse a fucking month I go through. It prob sounds crazy to anyone who doesn't play a lot of poker, but I think anyone who plays poker on a regular basis can understand how totally frustrating it can be. But here I am midway through April, still using the same mouse I was on Jan 1. Overall I just feel so much more calm after taking a bad beat/cooler, or after getting owned in 6 straight games by some dipshit. I mean, I still cuss up a storm like it's nobody's business sometimes, just no mouse slamming.

Ok, enough of that BOLOGNA. Like I said earlier in this post, April is going quite well. Not quite as well as March, but good nonetheless. I've played 325 HU games booking about $29/game. My April profit is right around 10k. The last 2 months have just been too much fun. I'm really not looking forward to that next downswing when it comes creeping on me.

Twins are off to a hot 8-3 start. Best record in the AL baby!!! I got $300 on them to finish over 83 1/2 wins. They look like a really solid team this year. I'm hoping for 90+ wins.

I think that's all I got!

bartchalker

First week of April

2010-04-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

I've had a decent first week of the month. There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot to report other than having a +3k day today. The rest of the week has been real back and forth. I've been treading water a bit as far as my results go. Today wasn't the best day I've ever had, but in terms of profit to volume it was pretty good. I just put in 18 games and smashed out a 14-4 record. Also got wild in a 18 handed sng and took it down which kind of padded the HU profit.

Early in the month I played a couple of $570's. I don't play them that often so I'm not quite used to those kinda swings. And I have to admit taking bad beats in those stings just a little bit more. Just a little precursor to the hands I'm about to post. The first two are just bad beats that happened in a pair of $570's I played. A little boring maybe, but share in my pain if you like. The last is quite possibly the strangest fucking play I've ever seen in my life. Just mind boggling, lol.

This first one was a setup in my favor that went all wrong on the river. I still actually had plenty of chips and was only at a slight chip disadvantage after the hand. I made a hero call down with 4th pair to lose it a few hands later though. Possibly a questionable call. That hand will not be posted because I don't like to post hands where I get OWNED.

This following one was against some fish who was a real cocky motherfucker who had taken a few buy ins off me at $230/$345 earlier in the day. Took a shot vs him in a $570. This one tickled a bit.

Like I said earlier, this one is just weird. I guess a few hands earlier i fired a cbet with A high on flop then bet again on turn after he check/called and spiked an Ace on the river to win the pot. So he maybe thought I was really bluffy? I guess he could have put me on 35 or something. Or maybe he just likes the rush of playing with his eyes closed? Whichever it was it prob wins the award for strangest call down I've ever seen.

I guess I'm just gonna keep this post short. Not a whole lot to report and nothing is really coming to my mind to type about.

Good Luck!

bartchalker

Sooner or later, gotta cut you down

2010-03-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

March was such an awesome month for me. I ended up breaking my record month which was 21.3k in Dec 2009. Here's a quick little rundown of the month.

$115 HU...11-8...+$235
$230 HU...186-114...+$12,840
$315 HU...170-132...+$8,010
$570 HU...7-2...$+2,570

I lost about $600 in random sng's/tourney's and made about 2.5k in rakeback/bonuses. All in all my overall profit for March comes to $25,458. As you can see I really wrecked the $230 this month for a 62% winrate and $43/game.

I kept saying I wanted to hit 700 games this month, but I got kinda lazy towards the end and really slacked off on my volume. I ended up with 630 games played and had an avg profit of about $37.50/game.

It really feels great to dominate so hard in March after having sub par months in Jan and Feb. In Jan and Feb(Feb particularly) I got kinda worked up when things weren't going my way, like I tend to always do when the shit piles on. However this just proves to me once again how hard I can kill these games when I go on a hot run myself and the cards are all falling my way. There is just no need to get pissed off during bad stretches, because I can more than make up for it during my good stretches. In the end, after all the games have been played and variance has had time to even itself out, the stats show the true skill. There is no luck.

Ok, that puts an end to my bragging. I have to put this month behind me and obviously will not expect a repeat performance in April. I played good this month, but man, I ran hot. The first couple weeks especially, everything seemed to go my way. It's not too often you get positive variance for a stretch like that, so this kind of shit just doesn't happen often. It sure is fun when it does though. To me, winning at poker is like what crack is to a junkie. I can't get enough and I just want more. Actually that's prob not the best comparison......close enough though, fuck it.

I guess for April I'll just try to hit 600 games, maybe a little more. I just want to keep playing good.

Here's my graphs for March, Pokerstars followed by Full Tilt

I actually played more games on FT then Stars this month. I'm kinda shocked at how much more too. I didn't really realize it until just now looking at them. Probably the first time I've ever done that. I'm going to try to up my volume on stars a bit to make sure I can at least get the 200k VPP bonus by year's end.

I don't think I have much more to say. Bring on April and the 2nd Quarter of 2010!!!

bartchalker

Watch these fuckers jump when I get loose

2010-03-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

Not a whole lot to report since my last update. I've had one good day of +2k and the other days have been smallish losses offsetting that one day. Breaking even basically. No complaints though, it was still a very successful first half of March, in both profit and volume. I've already put in 360 games which is a lot for me. I'm still on pace for 700 games and will try to get there. I'm not feeling burnt out or anything, but it's hard to feel burnt out when the DOLLAZ are rolling in at a steady clip. BALLA DOLLAZ.

Now I'd like to take a little time to talk about the acronyms people use in the chat. I've never been a person to use these too much. I remember when I first started playing online poker I had to go type stuff like "gl", "gg" into google to find out what the hell people were saying to me. I only knew the basic ones, like "lol" and shit. At first I thought they were retarded but of course eventually started using them. The first time somebody typed "mbn" I didn't know what the fuck was going on. I didn't know if I was being insulted or complimented and it took a while to find out it was "must be nice". I've never been a fan of this one myself but I've noticed some players are quite fond of that little gem whenever the slightest thing goes wrong. They run AQ into my AK and there it is. "MBN". I'm just like, yeah man it's real nice. Like, what the fuck? Of course it's nice. It's fucking great. I want more more more. MORE.

Then there are the other classics like "rofl" "lmao" and the very awesome "lmfao" I've personally become a fan of the "rofl" over the years. Roll on floor laughing. I mean, boom. You're play is so fucking horrendous that I am literally rolling around all the fucking floor, laughing at your stupid ass. LSHIJPAPMFP. That's gonna be my new one. It's "laughing so hard I just pissed and pooped my fucking pants." Watch for it.

However my all time favorite is the "wp" when used sarcastically. I open JJ from button, villain shoves 40 bb's back with A3 and spikes A on flop. It's a perfect time to bust out the "wp". I mean, I guess "mbn" could be used here as well, or maybe even a combo of the two. However i think "wp" gets the point across well. Sometimes villain responds the ole "ty" and I'm never quite sure if they are needling me, or are really that dumb and think I'm sincerely telling them they played the hand well. You never know with these people, I"m telling you.

Oh man, I know I'm missing some of the other nice ones. Anyways reason I got on this acronym thing is because I've begun to see people start typing "y" for yes. That's ridiculous. Just stop. The first time somebody typed "y" after I asked them a question I thought it was short for "why" and some confusion ensued. I mean, seriously fellas , that's just fucking lazy. Just type the -es at the end. It takes another half a second. I can understand the "u2" or "b4" to a certain degree, you are saving a few extra keystrokes there, but just typing "y"? Knock it off!

Ok, enough of that. I figured I'd go off on a tangent being that my last few poker days seemed to be kinda uneventful and I didn't have much to type. I'll update again in a few days and maybe try to put some interesting hands up or something. Later.

March Profit-$14,127

bartchalker

Huge month thus far

2010-03-11T20:58:00.000-08:00

March is going really well so far. I'm off to what I'm pretty sure is my best start ever to a month. Today was my first losing day of the month, and it was only for a grand or so which is pretty easy to take after how hot I've been the 10 days prior. I've been winning at a 61% clip and have been averaging over $50/game. I wish I could run this hot all the time, it's so fun to just slaughter the games every day for 10 days straight. Plus it seems I've been playing a lot of the dumbest, spazzy, retards than I've seen in a while. Bless the dumb, spazzy, retards. They make the poker world go round.

I've also already put in around 250 games which is pretty decent volume. Usually I only put this kind of volume in when I'm having a shitty month. Bad habit, but kicking that in the ass this month. Gonna try to get in 700-750 games and hopefully hit 20k profit. Record month is 21.3k so let's fuck shit up!! Time to be a BALLER.

I'll throw another update up at the midway point of the month.

Later

March Profit - $13,715

bartchalker

Feb wrap up+early March heater

2010-03-05T03:24:00.000-08:00

I said I wasn't gonna go so long without entering on my blog a few entries back. I lied I guess. Feb was a tough month for me, but I ended up doing OK in the end. First off here are my Feb #'s....

Heads Up - $1,435
Other SNG - $1,332
Rakeback/Bonuses - $2,072

Total Profit - $4,839

$1,435 is definitely the lowest monthly profit I've ever had for heads up pre rakeback profit. It really helped to run good in the small amount of random sng's I played to boost me up a little bit, plus the 2k in rakeback.

I'm not really sure what happened in February. I started off running just fucking awful though. Almost unbelievably so. I went on a 3 day downswing from the 7th-9th losing about $5,000 during those 72 hrs. That was kinda painful. I think I lost confidence for a week or two stretch which is just a complete fucking killer in HU poker. There is just so much edge lost when you're not feeling confident and you're not reading situations correctly. I got over it though and am back to feeling that confidence in every game I play. Towards the end of Feb I had a 19 match winning streak on Pokerstars. Kinda amazing looking at it in sharkscope and seeing all those consecutive wins.

I did take off a week of playing for a Las Vegas trip which was fun. Probably kinda cleared my mind up a bit. I stayed away from poker for the most part while I was there. I played one session of $1/$2 NL for maybe 3 hrs or so and won $120 or something like that. I did make a $200 bet on the roulette wheel which I'm pretty sure is the biggest non poker bet I've ever made. I had bet $100 on black the previous spin and won, so I let the $200 ride on black and won again :). Boom. Fun times. Las Vegas is always a great time.

Despite taking the week off, I still managed to play 535 games in Feb. Just like Jan I did good in the $230 and bad in the $345 again. This month I went 128-97 in the $230, good for $20/game. I went 138-140 in the $345 which accounted for a loss of $17/game. I hate when you can so clearly see the effects of rake. Just 2 games under .500 in the $345, yet down 4.8k. Sick.

Ok, time to put Feb behind me.

Onto better things.

Like March.

March has been great so far. I'm on a super heater and am up 7.7k after 4 days. That puts me on pace for a 60k month!!!!!!!! That won't happen, but would love to bank a 20k month like I did in Dec.

Since I made more $$$$ in 2009 than I originally estimated I have big tax bill coming on April 15th, so it would be nice to have a super solid month to pad the blow a bit. Only part of the bill is taxes I still owe on 2009 income. The other part is my 1st quarter 2010 payment. It sucks so hard to pay such a large lump sum of money at once. It's just so much more depressing than spreading it out.

Which also brings me to another point. If you are a professional poker player who lives in the U.S. and you file as a professional, which means you use the Schedule C for business income and you pay self employment taxes, you should really think about opening up a retirement account. A SEP-IRA is great. I think it is very foolish to not do this if you are filing as a professional. You are allowed to contribute up to 20% of your net income up to a max contribution of 49k/yr. Very solid investment. Very +ev. Just my 2 cents.

That's all I have for right now. Will update again soon.

March Profit $7,733

bartchalker

Later January. Hello February

2010-01-31T15:51:00.000-08:00

Blah. Pretty much broke even since my last post. Days where I felt I should have been finishing up 1k or 2k, I was only making a few hundo, then today I dropped a grand or something. It's just how shit goes sometimes. I was down 3k at the halfway point of the month, so making 10k since then to finish ahead 7k I will consider a success. It kinda hurt me with being so lazy with my volume the first week and a half. I was trying to make up for it the last week, and prob played more than I really wanted. I could feel myself getting burnt out and tilty. I ended up playing 525 games, I guess about avg for my standards. I wouldn't mind getting that a little closer to 600 in the coming months however.

I ended up with about 4.6k profit from HU. It helped to get 2.8k from rakeback/bonuses. Had a nice bonus from FT, plus ran good in the Sunday Mil Qualifiers.

I played about a 50/50 split between the 230/345. I ran bad in the 345 which was a big reason for the slightly down month. I only banked a $2 avg in the 345 in Jan. Fucking dumb. $17/game in the 230 though. I also played 8 $570's.......4-4.

I'm just gonna try and shoot for 500 games in Feb. Heading out to Vegas for a little vacation in the middle of the month with my brother and a couple buddies. Gonna blow a little $$$$$ more than likely. Degen it a little. Should be fun.

I'm gonna keep this wrap up short......quite tired right now, been up for 24 hrs. Trying to get myself back on a nice sleep schedule after sleeping in til 2 in the afternoon a couple times. GL me.

Let's go Feb!!!!!

Jan Profit - $7,294

bartchalker

Jan shaping up decently+Vikings miss out on SB shot

2010-01-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

I took a break from poker on Sunday to watch the NFC/AFC championship games. 2 pretty good games, although seeing the Vikings come one game short of the Superbowl for the 3rd time in my life was a bit devastating. First there was the 1998 season, when they went 15-1 in the regular season and broke the NFL points scored record. It was really quite a magical year. We destroyed the Cardinals in the Divisional playoffs and were huge favorites against the Falcons and suffered a crushing OT loss. It was also the game where Gary Anderson missed a 30 some yard field goal with the 4th quarter winding down that would have given the Vikings a 10 pt lead and iced the game. This is the Gary Anderson that did not miss ONE SINGLE kick the whole season. It's a play that lives in MN infamy for sure. The most crushing loss I've ever endured as a sports fan.

Then there was the 2000 season, where we started 11-2 and backed into the playoffs with an 11-5 record. Still good enough for a 1st round bye. We pounded the saints in the divisional round to set up another shot at the Superbowl just 2 seasons after the crushing defeat at the hands of Atlanta. This game was brutal in it's own way. Not the crushing, tear your heart out and crap it out on your face kinda brutal the Atlanta game was though. It was more of a WTF just happened kinda brutal. Vikes down 31-0 at halftime and lose by a final of 41-0. I don't remember much from that game anymore. Selective memory I suppose.

Then there was Sunday. The big difference in this game is the Vikes were the underdog, not the favorite like the previous 2 NFC championship games. I went into it knowing there was a very good chance we could lose this game. However to see us lose the game in OT left an empty feeling similar to 1998. Also the fact that we fumbled the ball 6 fucking times left a feeling of wondering what could have been. We lost 2 fumbles in the red zone. One at the 20 yard line, and one at the 10. But if you watched the game you know what I'm talking about. It was still a great game. I'm sure especially great for Saints fans. Should be a good Superbowl matchup. I'm gonna have to say that Peyton Manning wins his 2nd ring though.

I watched the Federer-Davydenko match last night, not sure if anyone else did but it was kinda crazy. How does Davydenko go from looking sooooooooo good, and like he's gonna roll Federer in 3 straight sets, to just getting murdered? Federer beat him like 13 straight games at one point. Good match though.

Now to poker. I played on Monday and just couldn't get anything going. I went 7-10 and lost around $1,100. Then yesterday it looked like the month could possibly unravel when I started 1-5 and was snap down $1,400. However, after taking a break and enjoying a bowl of Coco-Roos I couldn't be stopped the rest of the day. I went 19-6 the rest of the way and finished +$2,600 or so. Boom. Somebody even threatened to slit my throat during a game. You know you're owning people when they threaten your life. Jackass.

I will probably be playing each of the last 5 days of the month and hopefully ending in a fun way. I wanna catch a case of the run goods.

Jan - $7,069

Good luck everybody

bartchalker

Nice 5 day run

2010-01-22T12:55:00.000-08:00

I've had a really nice run over the last 5 days. I've gone 67-40 in my HU games, and have also cleared a $525 bonus from Full Tilt. I've made about 7k the last 5 days and am well out of the red now. Good. I hate the feeling of still being down halfway through a month. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does I start to get a short fuse playing poker. I remained pretty solid this whole month though, and I've been playing really well even through the shit. No busted up mouses or anything!

Here's some random hands I played, haven't shared any in a while. Obviously I'm only going to show hands that make me look cool, not the one's where I look foolish :).

Me getting a little wild:

Opponent getting tricky and me luckboxing:

Me inducing my tilty, bluffy ho of an opponent to stack off:

I'm kinda hoping I can salvage an 8k month. It should be possible.

I tried out Full Tilt's new "Rush Poker" today for about 50 min. It's actually kinda fun. I played the .50/$1 and ended up making $61. I was actually up around $250 at one point. Kind of a cool little way to fuck around when you don't feel like taking the game all that seriously. Give it a shot.

Jan - $4,789

good luck grindas

bartchalker

Not a fun month so far

2010-01-18T01:17:00.000-08:00

January has really sucked so far. I was really feeling in the groove the day after making my last post but went on to have a horrible day. I ended up losing about 2k, mostly due to a 3-10 record in the $345. Then I followed that up with a $500 loss yesterday, which was my 8th straight losing day in a row!! I know that's never happened before. I finally snapped the losing streak today by going 16-12 overall in the 230/345 for about $750.

Like I said in my last post though, I've taken a lot of time off this month and have just started picking up the volume the last few days. I'm pretty confident I'll break out of this soon. Fuck, it was just 2 months ago that I was saying all this same shit!! November started off horribly for me and I still managed to recover and make a nice profit. Gonna have to have a repeat of that this month!

Know what I love??? When I bluff off my stack and villain calls me down to win the match then they type "ty". Thank You?????!!!! Is that some sorta pathetic fucking attempt at a needle you fucking fish? When you know that they had no idea where they were in the hand, and were calling you out of nothing but spite, and the only thing going through their stupid brain was "I hope he doesn't have it this time." Go suck a dick. Go suck a herpes infested cock and get the herpes all over your dumb fucking lips. Then go kiss your fat, ugly girlfriend who you've managed to keep your dick sucking secret from, and give them to her too. That's what you can do with your little TY. Moron. Then make sure you snap decline the rematch, then type in "GG fish" and go run back down to low stakes since you obviously just doubled your roll with some degen shot. In 6 days when you lose it, just make sure you come back to donate some more. You were probably just "unlucky" anyways. Whore.

I'm gonna start owning peeps again real soon. No lies. No lies.

I'm really not as angry as I sound, just wanted to rant. Poker is the shit obv, and donkeys are the BIG shit.

I noticed earlier today that Pokerstars had over 300,000 people on it!! Is that amazing or what?! I remember before Party Poker shut down to the U.S. they used to be the big site and would hit over 100k in traffic. Then I remember Pokerstars hitting 150k and thought that was just amazing. But wow, 300k peeps on stars and 100k on FT today. Some people were saying that poker would have lost it's popularity by now. Not in the online world I guess. The day will definitely come but I think it's at least several years away.

That's it, I'm done. Good night everybody.

Jan - ($2,163)

bartchalker

Slow start to 2010

2010-01-15T06:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a slow start to 2010 in both the volume and profit columns so far. I've taken about 6 days off already!! If you mix in a little running bad, then add a dash of playing bad, well that makes for a losing month so far. I've had 6 straight losing days now! It's not quite as bad as it sounds though. All of those losing days have been losses of between $200 and $550 which is obviously nothing. If I had actually been getting some normal volume in I'd probably be up at least a little. I'm gonna try to fix that the rest of the month.

The Vikings play the Cowboys in the divisional playoffs on Sunday! 2 games away from the Superbowl. I think the Vikes can win this game. My prediction is 27-17. I am definitely biased though.

Not much else to say other than; it's time to turn this fucking month around!

Jan - ($560)

End of the Year+Beginning of the Year

2010-01-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

Well first, I realize I was ridic lazy with updating my blog last month. It's kinda odd being that it was my best month ever. I shoulda been bragging it up hardcore, but was just never really in the mood I guess.

Anyways, 2009 really ended with a bang for me. See below for my bigtime Dec #'s.

Heads up - $19,589
Other Sng's - $319
Rakeback/Bonuses - $1,367

That makes for a grand total of $21,275. Pretty sick by my standards for sure. What makes it even more sick is how lazy I was with playing the last week or so. It was all good though since I'd just play like 8 games in a day and go 7-1 or some shit. It was nice to end the month in god mode after running like poo in Nov. I still ended up playing a total of close to 500 games, my hours just were not there like they usually are. I must have had a lot of quick matches or something.

Here are my heads up graphs for the month of Dec. I played more on Full Tilt this month then Stars which is a little strange for me, but I completely tore up FT so it worked out nice. In the future I think I'm gonna try to keep more then 50% of my games at Stars.

It feels great to have the kind of success I experienced in Dec. It would be sweet if I could score a couple 20k+ months in 2010.

I'm actually kind of shocked to see that I still made 3 spots on the sharkscope leaderboards despite playing a lot on Full Tilt the last few months. I made the $101-$300 HU total profit, the $101-$300 any game total profit, and the pokerstars total profit leaderboards. I prob could have easily hit top 5 on the first 2 if I had remained playing on stars 100%. However I'm sure there are a few people who could make statements like that.

I consider 2009 a success for me. Here are the goals that I had made for 2009 in an entry around this time last year:

1. Play at least 625 heads up games/month(at least 20% at the $230 level)

2. Control tilt(getting better at this all the time, but I still go a little retarded every now and then)

3. Exercise 3 times/week(gotta get back into doing this, healthy body=healthy mind)

4. Continue to study/improve my play

5. 100k profit(if I keep my 4 goals above this should happen)

I didn't quite accomplish #1. I averaged playing about 565 heads up games/month this year, however my % of games that were at $230 and up was way above 20%. Not sure exactly what it was but prob around the 85% range. My main game continued to be the $115 in the beg of the year, but after scoring a 19k month in April(9k more then my previous best at the time) playing mostly $230/$345 I never really looked back. So even though I didn't avg 625 games/month, I'm still gonna consider this goal as a success being that I killed the 20% at $230+ goal.

Goal #2 is kind of hard to tell. I def tilted. I don't think I'll ever get to a point when I don't tilt at all. It's just my style, I realize that now. Trying to get rid of tilt completely for me is just not gonna happen. However I will say I did "control" my tilt better overall so this goal was also a success.

Goal #3 was, without a doubt, a failure. Getting exercise and staying healthy is such an overlooked part of success in this game. When I play after getting in a good sweat I always seem to be thinking more clearly, and get tilty/upset way less when things don't go my way. I kinda started off strong with this goal the first 2 months then it went to complete shit until about Nov when I picked up doing it again and have been doing it ever since.

Goal #4 I will call a success. I think I study the game more then I even realize I do. I'm constantly reading different articles on poker strategy and whatnot. It's great that after all the time I've put into this game I still find different strategical concepts amazing. The game constantly evolves also, so there is always something to think about. I've also made a habit of going back through a game in the hand replayer when I'm done playing it and looking through all the hands. This is basically studying the game, and seeing where maybe I fucked up and could have done something differently etc etc. I feel I am a better player now than year ago. You have to constantly improve in this game. In poker not improving is like going backwards.

Goal #5 was a monetary target that I was hoping would be the end product of accomplishing the other 4 goals. I finished the year with a poker profit of $139,103, so I obv nailed this one.

Now it's onto 2010. My 2010 poker goals are going to be the same as above with changes to goals #1 and #5

1) Play an avg of 550 games/month.(I'm not gonna push myself with crazy volume goals or anything. I don't want poker to become too much of my life. I will be happy with 550 games a month. Quality over quantity FTW. Maybe if I'm feeling motivated I'll be able to avg over 600.)

5) 150K profit.(If I can match what I did this year I'll be happy, but 150k sounds like a nice round figure to shoot for.)

I'm also debating how hard I want to push playing higher stakes games. I feel uber comfortable in the $230 and $345 right now, but still can't help but feeling a little uneasy playing $570. I will prob just keep with what I'm doing now and randomly take shots in the $570 when I feel like it. Who knows, at the beg of 2009 I was very uneasy about playing the 230's. Maybe by the end of 2010 I'll be a 570 reg. Never know.

I am also going to try to keep updating my blog somewhat consistently. I'll try to not have a repeat of the 1 post performance of Dec. The times of making 10 posts a month I think may be over, but I will def update on a weekly basis. You can count on your pal bartchalker.

Good luck in 2010

bartchalker

Incredibly hot start to month

2009-12-05T11:58:00.000-08:00

Wow! It's like the first 3 weeks of last month me and online poker got into a big fight. Then we made up and the last 10 days have been the make up sex. I ended November really strong and have started off December even stronger. I've put in 115 games so far this month and have recorded a semi ridiculous 78-37 record. Most of this has come on Full Tilt where over my last 40 games on the site I'm 34-6. I think this is prob the best I've ever done over a 5 day stretch, it's pretty incredible actually when it seems I've won like every flip, hit every time I'm all in with a draw, have had my opponents miss every time they're all in with a draw, etc etc this month. I'll take it! I was kinda due in my opinion.

In December of 2008 I bested my previous best 9.1k month with a 9.5k month. Can Dec of 09 yield the same result? My best month is 19k, so I should have a real shot at it. We will see. It would be a nice way to finish off the year for sure. Just gotta keep playing as good as I am and hopefully run avg the rest of the month.

I guess I don't have much else to say. I'm pretty damn tired right now, think I'm just gonna chill the rest of the day.

Stay cool my babies.

Dec Profit - $9,487

bartchalker

Nov Wrap Up

2009-11-30T16:15:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-25T16:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-21T08:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T08:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-02T13:15:00.000-08:00

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

Another Record Day....

2009-10-29T09:04:00.000-07:00

Sadly, this is a different record. My worst losing day ever. I finished down around $2,600 yesterday after going a combined 10-17. I got really unlucky in too many key spots, and when I'm playing alot of 345 these things are gonna happen when I have days like that. Towards the middle of my session I played a $570 for the first time this month and lost also. I got all my chips in with 57hh on a 462hh and my opponent had 44 for one of the worst hands I could be up against. He filled up on the turn. Ugh. I'm only down $1,500 on the day if I had won that.

I gotta start thinking of losses like this in terms of buy ins instead of actual dollars lost. I mean 10-17 is only 7 buy ins+rake. It really means nothing. I got a little frustrated towards the end of my session, but overall handled it quite well. I will try to end month on a good note :)

3 more days in October!!

Oct Profit - $10,608

bartchalker

Record Day

2009-10-24T17:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a great poker day....played 34 games in the 230/345. I went 24-10 which was good for +3,460, a new daily profit record for me. Pretty exciting. It's fun to run hot. :) I managed to earn another $960 today on top of that.

I've been putting in some pretty high volume for my standards this month....542 HU games thus far!! Last month I only put in 446 total HU games. That was a lazy month for me. I just might be able to pump out over 700 games this month. I've had a handful of days where I've played almost 40 games which I never do.....little too exhausting.

That's it for now, check back soon!

Oct Profit - $11,718

bartchalker!

Back on Track

2009-10-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

I've recovered from that little 4k downswing the last few days. The day after that post I ripped off a 2.4k day, only to follow it up with a 1k loss on Sunday. However the last 2 days I've made back another 3k. I really played well yesterday, my mind was in the game and I was feeling super confident. I ran super hot too which felt nice. Man, I know I've prob said it enough in this blog but soooooo much of this game is about self confidence. When I'm on a hot streak and feeling confident and making all the right moves it just kinda builds upon itself. I seem to pick up on all the little things my opponent is doing, but more importantly have the confidence to pull the trigger on the moves to exploit these things. Yesterday I was even able to pick up a timing tell on an opponent that helped me lay down a big hand and call down with a weak one. Sometimes when running bad I play bad and lose my confidence for a while and kinda fall into the mindset "why try that, it's not gonna work anyways" or some similar line of thinking. STAY CONFIDENT

I think I've made over 200k in my poker career now. My sharkscope for stars/ft is at around 188k total and I know it missed about a 5k upswing I had a couple months ago, plus I know I've made about 10k back in the day on random poker sites like Party, Bodog, Pacific, Noble. I guess it's kinda a cool milestone to hit.

I don't think it's an issue, but I hope I don't come off as being real braggy when I type shit like above, or when I'm typing my monthly profits. I feel a little weird typing it at times, but being that it's a poker blog it would be kinda odd not to include it. Besides there are a ton of players who have made more and are far more successful in this game than I am....and are far better players too. When I'm adding up my profits I mostly think of it as more points then money....kinda like a way of keeping score you know??? Just figured I'd throw this little paragraph in here.

Here's the deciding hand I played in a game against Gavin Smith a while back that I meant to post but forgot.

Full Tilt Poker Game #15287608048: $220 + $10 Heads Up Sit & Go (112092656), Table 1 - 25/50 - No Limit Hold'em - 10:39:13 ET - 2009/10/12

Seat 1: bartchalker (1,665)

Seat 2: Gavin Smith (1,335)

Gavin Smith posts the small blind of 25

bartchalker posts the big blind of 50

The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to bartchalker [Qs Qc]

Gavin Smith raises to 1,335, and is all in

bartchalker calls 1,285

Gavin Smith shows [5s 8s]

bartchalker shows [Qs Qc]

*** FLOP *** [Ac Qd 2s]

*** TURN *** [Ac Qd 2s] [2c]

*** RIVER *** [Ac Qd 2s 2c] [Kd]

Gavin Smith shows a pair of Twos

bartchalker shows a full house, Queens full of Twos

bartchalker wins the pot (2,670) with a full house, Queens full of Twos

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot 2,670 | Rake 0

Board: [Ac Qd 2s 2c Kd]

Seat 1: bartchalker (big blind) showed [Qs Qc] and won (2,670) with a full house, Queens full of Twos

Seat 2: Gavin Smith (small blind) showed [5s 8s] and lost with a pair of Twos

Not exactly the most interesting hand to post and I'm sure in this case Gavin was just fucking around/drunk(although he was playing OK the first 2 levels) I just find it amazing that every sponsored pro I ever play is never that good. Obviously HU is not their main game, usually MTT's/cash games are and they have prob made more $$$$ than I ever will, but wow, you would think those skills would somewhat transfer over to HU and other SNG's. I mean Gavin Smith is down like 177k on scope...wtf??!! I really feel like the top online players whether it be in MTT's, cash games, whatever are better players and understand the game alot more than alot of the TV Pros. They should have some of the top 6max sng players online play on Poker After Dark against those guys. Those TV Pros would get killed.

In my opinion!!!!!

Oct Profit - $6,910

later ladies & gents

bartchalker

halfway through Oct+3.8k downswing

2009-10-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

The last 3 days have not been the most fun to deal with losses of $2,300, $300, and $1,150. The 2.3k loss on Wed has been my worse day in a while....played 22 games that day and only won 6 of them. As usual, it's the double combo of running and playing like fucking trash that made all this beauty possible. I'm only up like 1.1k in HU this month now.....luckily I've done pretty well in the rakeback dept making 1.5k or so. I actually just had an 11 game winning streak end in the 5400 point sunday million qualifiers....that's kinda sick.

That means I'm still up 2.6k overall which is not nearly a disaster. I'm sure I'll get it turned around the next few days and hopefully end +10k for Oct, although that may take a little luck now.

I've been a bit too spewy with my chips lately. That's gonna have to stop.

HU breakdown at halfway point of month:

$115.....8-6

$230.....102-101.....fuck rake

$345.....55-42

good luck from your buddy bartchalker

Off to a decent start in Oct

2009-10-12T03:18:00.000-07:00

I am pretty happy with my start to Oct being up around 3.9k, particularly since I've taken basically 4 days off. I'm not sure what my deal has been the last month or so.....I just can't seem to find my grind switch. There have been so many days when I just don't feel like playing, and when that happens I usually just don't play. I hate forcing myself to play if I don't feel like it because I get frustrated easier and tilt faster. However after taking the 6th, 7th, and 10th off I feel I am ready to get back into grind mode again!! Yesterday I actually got in 27 games which is quite a bit for me. Too bad it resulted in my first losing day of the month....I dropped $450. I was down close to $1,400 so it actually kind of felt like a victorious day.

I lost 3 or 4 in a row to some donk on FT and I think for the first time ever declined a rematch against a sharkscope fishbowl. I could just feel my blood boiling and had to quit.....it's amazing how someone so bad can actually start to outplay you once they've won a few in a row. It feels that way anyways. Confidence is so huge in this game. After I took a little break I came back and played well. I don't think a year or two ago I would have ever quit playing such a bad player even though it was obvious I was tilting and playing badly. My ego just would not have let me do it.....as if declining a rematch was admitting I was the inferior player.

I remember about 2 1/2 yrs ago, before I was playing full time, I was just making my way into the 115's on FT. My online bankroll was only about $3,000 at this time so I wasn't quite properly rolled for the 115's but would take random shots. Well this night I got sat my a player in a 115 who was by no means a donk, but a breakeven/slightly winning player. Back then I had a style that was alot more passive.....effective just less aggressive. This player was quite aggressive and loose. They raised 100% of their buttons and cbet 100% of the flops for a 3/4 to full pot bet. At this time in my poker career I probably called out of the BB way too much(probably a bad habit from the lower levels where I was able to outplay people out of position more often). Well the first 3 matches I got owned by constantly calling out of the BB and check/folding the flop. After the 3rd game I started mixing in some 3bets preflop and check/raises on the flop. It was like he could see my cards, every time I c/r a flop with garbage I got shoved on, every time I 3bet pf with a mediocre hand he jammed. On the rare occasions I hit the flop he'd fold to my c/r. I kept accepting rematch after rematch, in each match playing worse then the previous one, not wanting to decline and accept defeat. Well, if I remember right I lost 8 in a row, or 9 of 10 and he took me for over $900. This wouldn't be devastating much at all now, but then that was 1/3 of my roll, and my main game was the $57.50 HU turbo, so losing $900 in the 115 in such a short amount of time(the matches were prob only last 5 min on avg, lol) was crushing. How could I let myself get so out of control? Why did I keep rematching somebody who was outplaying me when I was on tilt on top of it? Why in the fuck did I basically GIVE AWAY 3 or 4 of those games?

I got burned badly that day and I learned alot from it. Not to say I've NEVER let my emotions take over since then, but I never let it get to the point where I'm dropping 8 or 9 buyins to the same person when I'm on foam from the mouth tilt. There have def been some close calls, but I always stop and take a break after losing 4 or 5 in succession. It's kinda ironic how I didn't want to admit to being the inferior player by quitting, when the fact that I kept playing when on my F-game was what made me the inferior player.

Now I hardly ever let my ego get in the way. An ego in poker can be a good thing, but too much of it can put your lights out. Now even if I lose one game to a breakeven or winning player I usually decline because I know that there are better spots and I don't let my ego get in the way. I've had players ask me "are you scared to play me" or some other bullshit. They apparently get off on the notion that "they are not scared to play anybody". Ummmmm......no I am not fucking scared to play you. What on earth would I be scared of??? It's a FUCKING CARD GAME, not a life or death war. Give me a break. I just don't give a shit about dick measuring contests. I give a shit about making $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. That's all I have to say about that, kinda rambled a bit :)

OMG, OMG OMG.........The Twins/Tigers one game tiebreaker was the most exciting, gut-wrenching, nerve racking game I've ever seen. If you're a baseball fan and missed that game I feel sorry for you, just a wonderful game that the Twins came out on top in!!! The Yankees awaited the Twins and pounded us 3-0 for the sweep. Game 2 was absolutely devastating being that the Twins had a 2 run lead in the 9th only to watch Nathan blow it......sigh. Twins went 0-10 vs Yankees combined reg and post season this year. I guess it's safe to say they own us.

Vikings over Rams 38-10.......5-0 baby!!!!!! Bring on the Ravens!!!!

bartchalker

+101k, yearly goal realized+huge MN sports games

2009-10-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

I surpassed my 100k goal for 2009!! Chilling at about 101k right now and it feels awesome to not only make my goal I set at the beginning of the yr, but to do it with just under 3 months left in 2009. It's looking like I should end up in the 130-150k range, assuming I don't jinx the shit outta myself by typing something like that. When I set that goal at the start of 09 I remember saying I might have been being a bit optimistic, but it turns out I didn't give myself enough credit. However I was still playing the 115 as my main game then and didn't make the permanent move up to 230+ until a few months into the year. It feels awesome to hit this goal so early in the year though, I'm pumped!!

I was just watching Livb playing on uber fucking monkey tilt. Holy fucking shit, how can someone who is so good revert to being such a tilting ass donk??? He musta lost like 10 straight but towards the end I was seeing him 3bet at 15/30 with 62 then call a shove, then he was freaking out and shoving like every hand preflop, just wild stuff. I saw he won the borgata poker open for like 900k a week or 2 ago. Just a sick all around player minus his tilt sessions.

Well the Vikings got the Packers tonight on MNF. Favre has a shot to beat his old team and I think the Vikes are gonna do it. 27-13 will be the score!! I've been looking forward to this matchup for a while. Can't wait.

Then we have the Twins who I had given up on long ago. However with 7 games left in the season we were 2 games back of Detroit with 4 to play against Detroit and 3 vs Kansas city. Naturally I figured if we wanted a shot at the division we'd have to beat Detroit 3/4 to tie us up with 3 games to go. However we split with them leaving us 2 games back with 3 to play meaning if we wanted a shot at forcing a one game playoff we'd either have to sweep Kansas City with them losing 2 of 3 to the dirty chisox, or we'd have to take 2 of 3 from K.C. and have them get swept by the dirty chisox. Or we could obviously win if we swept and they got swept. Boom!! We sweep K.C.'s absoulutely pathetic excuse for a professional sports franchise and the Tigers choke it away at home against a team that had nothing to play for.

What this means is a one game playoff against Detroit to see who goes to the playoffs. I like the Twins' shot, especially since it's at the Metrodome where we've won 7 of 9 vs them this year. Thank fucking God they fixed the rule and the Twins got homefield in this game. Last year amazingly enough we had a tie at the end of yr with the dirty chisox and even though the Twins had won the season series the white sox got homefield in the game based on the flip of a fucking coin. Twins lost that game 1-0. I still think we could have won at the Dome where it should have been.

The winner of this game will have the opportunity of playing the Yankees in the first round. If there is a team I hate worse then the dirty chisox it is the skanky fucking yankees and their bloated ass 974903174 billion dollar payroll, and I swear if Joe Mauer ends up with the Yankees at any point in his career I am never watching baseball again. The yankees are evil people, every time they open their checkbook and sign away a star from a small market team they are laughing......A-roid wipes his ass with $100 dollar bills......in front of starving children......he is evil. The Twins will beat Detroit and one time, just one time we are gonna punish New York. Be prepared.

GO TWINS!!!!!

Oct Profit - 3k or so

bartchalker

Poker month Sept wrap up

2009-09-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

My poker month for Sept was a success in terms of profit, however in terms of volume was kinda a failure. My goal for this month was to play 500 games at the bare minimum, however I only managed to play 446 HU games. There were 6 days this month that I took off completely from poker, and another 3 days where I played less then an hour. That's 9 total days of playing 0-1 hours which is quite rare for me. I guess I just didn't feel like playing as much as I normally do. I don't feel I played my A-game this month either for the most part. I think made quite a few questionable/tilty plays.

I finished up about 9.3k in the heads up arena, and made about 3.2k of FPP rakeback(2k was a milestone bonus). I also made a smallish $100 or so in other random SNG's. My overall Sept profit wound up at right around 12.6k which I am happy with. I will be 100% happy if I can keep booking 12k months the rest of the year.

Here is my HU breakdown for Sept

$115: 10-11
$230: 156-128
$345: 84-55
$570: 0-2

All of that combines for about a 56% win rate. If I had avoided the dumbass plays it prob could have been 57% and would have made me an extra couple grand in profit. I'm sure almost everyone can look back and say that at the end of the month though.....

Here are my Sept heads up graphs......first one is Full Tilt, 2nd one PokerStars. They are about $800 too low because I lost most of my chops this month.

I pretty much split my time pretty evenly between the two sites this month and that will probably continue the rest of the year as it has been working out quite well. My numbers in HU were actually a little better at FT this month then Stars. It makes it so much easier to spread my playing across 2 sites instead of forcing myself to play all the time on Stars. I'm even semi thinking about adding a 3rd site, maybe Cake or Cereus?? Does anybody out there have any experience with those 2 sites?? What's the traffic like at the $100-$500 HU games? Are the games soft?

The only problem with doing this is I'm not going to reach my 300k VPP milestone bonus of 3k on stars like I was on pace too. However I think the extra games I get in by being more flexible with where I'm playing will make it worth it. I also get 27% rakeback on FT, while I'm making over 31% on Stars. The games are faster on FT too, which is prob what results in my $/game being less there. All of this added together is going to start making me count each game on FT as just .7 games which will force me to play a few more games.

I'm looking forward to another solid month in Oct.

Good Luck

bartchalker

What up?!

2009-09-24T03:53:00.000-07:00

What's up everyone? In the 6 days since my last post things have been going decent. I've banked another 3.6k in profit, however 2k of that was my 200k VPP milestone bonus that I hit a couple days ago. That means 1.6k from SNG's which is nothing to throw a party over, but at the same time is nothing to really bitch about either.

Both Aug and Sept have been a bit crazy in the fact that I've ran super hot in the 345 but have done quite mediocre in the 230. In Aug I made about $5/game in the 230, and in sept it's an even worse $1.38. The 345 has been quite awesome though with $74/game last month and $68/game so far this month. Can you say $345 HU luckbox for the last 2 months? This coming after losing 7k in that game in May/June. It's kinda a strange feeling to basically breakeven in the 230 then make great $$$ in the 345 because alot of times it feels like I shouldn't make as much as I am because I'll have 50% win percentage days and finish up money, when the exact opposite seemed to be true in May/June. It was particularly true in May(worst month this yr) when I killed the 230 for $32/game and make 10k, but got demolished in the 345 losing $91/game for 6k. I'm always amazed at all the different random swingy shit that can happen in this game. It can be so sick sometimes.

However, regardless of how I'm doing in each specific game the only thing that matters is overall profit and I'm doing good in that dept at +10.1k.

I've also taken two 570 shots this month......0-2.

Heading out to Kansas City tomorrow with a buddy to go to Kauffman stadium and watch the Twins hopefully beat up on the royals Fri & Sat night. Should be a good time. Twins trailing Detroit by 2.5 games. We got 6 against royals and 4 against detroit before end of yr....it's been a sick comeback for the Twins who have won 9 of 10 games. I'm not sure where this fire was the rest of the year.

At the beginning of the year I bet $150 on the twins to go over 83 wins. A week ago I thought I was kinda screwed but now it looks like it could easily happen. Twins have 79 wins with 10 to play so they just gotta go 5-5 the rest of the way for me to win, which means they would have to go 3-7 for me to lose since if they go 4-6 I'll push. Go Twinkies!!!!!!

I also made a $50 bet on Francisco Liriano to go over 12.5 wins, which didn't come close to happening.

Later,

bartchalker

2 day mini losing streak snapped

2009-09-17T21:53:00.001-07:00

Yippee, stopped my losing streak before it could actually turn into something shitty. Went 8-5 in the 230 and 3-0 in the 345 today and finished up around 1.4k. I wanted to get a little more volume in then that but whatever.

Something I've noticed is when I play someone in a 230 or whatever and they are a pretty decent winner in the lower stakes they still suck ass. They usually have an avg buyin of say $20 and an roi of like 10%, but oh my god they play like such fucking shit. I wonder how horrible the competition has to be down there for these people to turn such a profit playing the way they do. I suppose they are probably on tilt or something since they are playing 10x their normal buyin so that could have a lot to do with it. It's just kinda shocking to me how many of them seem to have no clue. This is not a bad thing though.......little fuckers.

Here's a sweet little hand that happened today. Nice to have a setup in my favor after the last 2 days. It could be one of the worst coolers I've ever seen.

PokerStars Game #32955261912: Tournament #196238031, $220+$10 USD Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2009/09/17 13:16:49 CT [2009/09/17 14:16:49 ET]
Table '196238031 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: villain (1540 in chips)
Seat 2: bartchalker (1460 in chips)
bartchalker: posts small blind 10
villain: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [7d 7s]
bartchalker: raises 40 to 60
villain: calls 40
*** FLOP *** [Js 7h 7c]
villain: checks
bartchalker: bets 60
villain: calls 60
*** TURN *** [Js 7h 7c] [6h]
villain: checks
bartchalker: checks
*** RIVER *** [Js 7h 7c 6h] [6d]
villain: bets 520
bartchalker: raises 820 to 1340 and is all-in
villain: calls 820
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bartchalker: shows [7d 7s] (four of a kind, Sevens)
villain: shows [6s 6c] (four of a kind, Sixes)
bartchalker collected 2920 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2920 | Rake 0
Board [Js 7h 7c 6h 6d]
Seat 1: villain (big blind) showed [6s 6c] and lost with four of a kind, Sixes
Seat 2: bartchalker (button) (small blind) showed [7d 7s] and won (2920) with four of a kind, Sevens

This guy was down to 80 chips and actually came back and even took the chip lead I think. I still managed to fend him off in the end though.

Sept Profit - 6.4k

bartchalker

9/16=big volume, not so big results

2009-09-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

What a day. I grinded pretty hard and put in 35 HU games which is pretty decent volume for me. I ended up going 18-17 overall in a combo of 230/345 and finished ahead $105. Kinda depressing to put in that time and not see much for profit, but I still finished in the black which is always something to be thankful for. In 4 separate games I got my overpair cracked by an underpair for huge pots. Basically game deciding. I'm not sure if I've had that happen before. They were all pretty close together too. No broken mouse surprisingly :). I felt him sweating knowing he could be demolished but for some reason it didn't put me in a destructive mood. He'll get his medicine next time.

I played a ton of my games on Full Tilt today. Gonna try to grind a little more on stars in the coming days. I'm oh so close to the 2k cash credit. That'll be a nice little boost to the month.

Hopefully I'll fuck shit up and actually win a little $$$$ tomorrow. We will see.

Sept profit - a little over 5k.......hoping for another 10k month. 2k bonus should make it attainable.

bartchalker

Gross Day

2009-09-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

I finished down close to 1k today....eeewwwwww. I started out bad and was in a 1k hole, worked my way back to even, then lost 5 of 6 to some pot betting, spewy, lagtard fish who was potting the flop every other hand and the turn half the time also. I usually love playing against those players, but got fucked up today. I guess that happens sometimes......still up 5k on month. I'll rebound tomorrow.

bartchalker

Back in the game

2009-09-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

Got back to playing today after taking basically 4 straight days off. It put me in the mood to grind, so that's what I did.....sort of. I played 16 HU games and was able to bank about 1k in my return to the tables. I only went 8-8 but was 5-1 in the 345 + made about $300 in a couple 6 & 9 mans. Despite going 8-8 I feel I played quite well which is all I can ask for......along with my losses being in the 115 and wins being in the 345 :)

VIKINGS 1-0........BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS CLEVELAND

Next the Lions get their medicine.

Time to watch some Monday Night Football suckas!

Here's a hand....I haven't posted one in like forever so here ya go!!

Some say calling station, some say genius........:)

Full Tilt Poker Game #14696435637: $330 + $15 Heads Up Sit & Go (107940244), Table 1 - 15/30 - No Limit Hold'em - 16:02:29 ET - 2009/09/14
Seat 1: bartchalker (1,470)
Seat 2: villain (1,530)
bartchalker posts the small blind of 15
villain posts the big blind of 30
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [Kd 3c]
bartchalker calls 15
villain has 15 seconds left to act
villain checks
*** FLOP *** [2s 7s Kc]
villain checks
bartchalker bets 30
villain calls 30
*** TURN *** [2s 7s Kc] [Ks]
villain checks
bartchalker bets 60
villain raises to 180
bartchalker calls 120
*** RIVER *** [2s 7s Kc Ks] [Qs]
villain bets 300
bartchalker has 15 seconds left to act
bartchalker calls 300
*** SHOW DOWN ***
villain shows [4c 9c] a pair of Kings
bartchalker shows [Kd 3c] three of a kind, Kings
bartchalker wins the pot (1,080) with three of a kind, Kings
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1,080 | Rake 0
Board: [2s 7s Kc Ks Qs]
Seat 1: bartchalker (small blind) showed [Kd 3c] and won (1,080) with three of a kind, Kings
Seat 2: villain (big blind) showed [4c 9c] and lost with a pair of Kings

Sept Profit - about 5.8k

Happy with Sept thus far.....

2009-09-13T07:48:00.001-07:00

I'm quite happy with the way Sept is going. After breaking even the first few days I've put together some solid profit and have eased any frustrations before they can start. The day after my last post I had a absolutely horrendous start to the day losing my first 7 games I played and was quickly stuck $1,700. The most discouraging part was that 6 of the losses were to the same 2 people. I was feeling kinda tilty, but after taking a break i hit the tables hard the rest of the day and managed to finish ahead $400 which definitely felt like a major victory.

I have not played much poker laterly. The last time I played was Thursday morning. I only played 5 games before visiting my mom for her B-day and didn't feel much like playing after that. On Fri I woke up and sat down on my computer, opened up my poker stuff, and just kinda stared at the screen and wasn't really feeling it. When I feel like that it's better to just not play so I didn't. Yesterday I went fishing and although it seems like such a lazy activity it always zaps my energy, thus I didn't feel like putting in the effort to play cards. Today I'm heading out to watch Vikes at bud's house, and will prob put in some solid football watching the whole day. Poker may or may not happen. Monday I will 100% play some more. I will be ready to grind. I love grinding.

My prediction is a 24-20 Vikings victory.

Sept Profit - about 4.6k

good luck

bartchalker

End of Aug/Beg of Sept

2009-09-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in a while, just kinda lazy with it. As I stated in my last post, I completely turned Aug around after a frustrating start and some very unfortunate luck and managed to bank about 12.4k which I was not expecting at all. I did pretty bad overall in the $230 almost the whole month, but got hot at the end to at least finish in the black, going 204-178 which ended up being good for about $5/game. Thankfully I did quite well in the $345 which kinda saved my month. I went 66-38 in the $345 which is about a 63.5% winrate and good for about $74/game. I obv did not run bad in those games :) I didn't take a single shot in the $570 in Aug. I just didn't feel it, maybe I'll get a few in this month.

Sept started off a bit slow and I was breaking even up till yesterday when I scored a 2.4k day, so hopefully I bust out for a few more of those suckers and have another solid month.

I feel like I had more to type, but can't really think of it right now.

I was semi thinking of playing the $530 heads up event in the WCOOP, but it's probably not likely. Those things just run out too long for me. Deep stacks and long levels are great, but I think I might end up getting a bit impatient. We'll see, I may still play in it. I'll give it a 20% chance.

Also, I have $215 W$ if anyone wants to play in a WCOOP event or something. I'll sell it for $200 so let me know if you are interested.

That's it for now peeps.....

bartchalker

Turned Aug around

2009-08-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

After a subpar beginning to the month I have completely turned Aug around. I had a big +2.4k day yesterday and the days leading up to that I was scoring consistent profit. This puts me ahead 10k for Aug which is more then I really expected after the first week and half.

It had been kinda cool seeing my name in the top half of some of the leadboards on sharkscope, but I'm starting to see that it really will be quite tough to keep my name up there while playing across 2 sites. This month, half my profit has come on Full Tilt. Like I've said previously, I don't really care but I noticed I shot down quite a few spots despite making 10k this month.

I try to play as much on pokerstars as I can since my rakeback works out to be a little higher there, and on top of that I'd like to make 300k VPP's to score the 3k bonus. However I seem to have been doing quite well on Full Tilt since I started playing there again. Sharkscope shows me at about $24/game on a $222 avg stake, however after one of FTP's updates they missed tracking for about 2-3 days straight which happened to be during my biggest run on there, so it should be even higher. The last 2 days have been especially good. On top of that sometimes the lobbies on Stars get so fucking jam packed with regs that it's just too hard/annoying to get a game. I'll wait for like 10 min just for the lobby to open up, and then BAM!! me and another reg snap join each other. That's really not as much of a problem on FTP so when the lobbies are packed with regs on Stars I've just been saying fuck it and playing there instead. It's been working out good though, so no complaints.

On a side note the Vikings are going to win the Superbowl.

bartchalker

Quick little update

2009-08-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've been a little lazy with the updates, looks like it's been over a week since my last one. I didn't want to make another running bad post, thus I didn't post anything. My month has been gradually taking a turn for the better over the last few days however. In the past 4 days I've had 2 days of winning over 1k. Over my stretch of running horrific the first 2 weeks of the month one thing did go my way........I have been winning about 60% of my $345's, so it would have been way worse had I ran as bad in them as the $230's.

I seem to have turned my month around a bit, so hopefully I start to get some good variance and not so much of the bullshit. I'm + $3,400 on the month or so now with about 10 days to play so I still have a decent shot at a nice month. I'm hoping for something in the 7-8k range. Nothing is guaranteed though, I could start running like shit again and my last 10 days could be a repeat of my first 10 days of Aug. Let's hope not though :) Wish me luck!!!!

bartchalker

Still running bad

2009-08-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

I have not had a day this month where I have ran good. I've had days where I haven't run that bad, but that's about it. It is beginning to test my sanity a bit. The last 2 days have been a bit better with days of +$640 and $530. The problem is I've still gotten so unlucky in so many games that I could have made 2k each day. Just one of those things. One day I lost 4 basically game deciding all in pots in 4 straight games being a favorite of 80%, 80%, 65%, and 70% in each hand. Talk about something that will make your head explode. It's so sick how it almost seems Pokerstars and FTP are fucking with me, haha. For example, so many times also if I'm all in preflop with say QJ vs A3 the flop comes JQ4 and I do a little premature fist pump. The turn comes K and I yell "Don't you fucking do that!", and like a slap in the damn face the 10 falls on the river. I then stare blankly at the screen for a few secs debating if my mouse deserves to live for being such a traitor. No, it does not deserve life, it is destroyed. Fuck you mouse.

But yeah, despite my subpar month thus far I obviously still have all the confidence of the world in my game. That is rarely shaken. I've just been frustrated, and prob need to stay more positive when running bad, but it is soooooooo hard when it's been soooooooooo brutal. Hopefully the last 2 days are a precursor of things to come and I'll start ripping off some big days. I am at least in the black for August so, as always, it could be worse.

Time to fuck shit up!

August Profit - $726.90

Running bad

2009-08-06T03:47:00.000-07:00

I've kinda been running bad this month. Yesterday if I had ran good I prob woulda made 2500, and if I had ran normal prob 1500. Instead I ran like trash but still managed to finish up 500, so I guess things could have been worse. It was probably the most frustrating +500 day I've ever had. Just getting donked. The typical game would do down with me wearing them down to 600-900 chips, getting it in as a slight fav/slight dog/coin flip and losing. I would then repeat that step one more time, then blinds would rise to 50/100 and I'd look down at a never ending barrage of 72, 59, 64, 82, J5, 104. Gut wrenching. I feel my surge coming though.....bring it on.

Things that make me LOL in online poker.......

People who type in GL at the start of the match, but go ballistic when I actually have some good luck

People who type in GG every time they win a match, but nothing when they lose. I think this is some sort of attempt at a needle. I'm probably guilty of this one every once in a while, but not every time.

People who type LOL every time they get the slightest bit unlucky. For example they limp with KJ, I check K4 flop 937 checked, turn Q checked, river 4 checked. "LOL"

First hand of a HU game, I fold my button they show me 72, or some other junk hand.

10/20 blinds i check J3 from BB flop 47Q i check they bet 20 i fold they show me the well timed mega bluff with 82 for the 40 chip pot.

I raise 67 from button flop 458 and I win a sizeable pot. Opponent: "OMFG you made a raise with 7 high? You are fucking awful."

blinds 75/150, effec stax <10 bb's. I am pretty consistently shoving my button. Opponent: "All you donkeys want to do is play all in preflop poker. Are you scared to play postflop?" Opponent is obv folding to all my shoves and limp folds his button off a 5 bb stack.

Feel free to share something that makes you LOL or maybe slightly annoys you. I'm sure I missed a few. Good times.

Aug Profit - ($194)

July Recap/Aug Goals

2009-08-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

I am incredibly happy with my July #'s and it ended up being my 2nd best month ever. It started out decent but got a little shaky on the 5th & 6th with losing days of $1500 and $1100 respectively, leaving me about breakeven after the first week. I rebounded immediately with 3 big days of +1800, +1900, and +1200. I never looked back after that. Here are my final July #'s....

Heads Up - $14,793.60
Other SNG's - ($983.16)
FPP's/Rakeback/Bonus - $2,223.09

Total July Profit - $16,033.53

I obviously will not be complaining during this post. Super happy with my July Profit. I didn't have much luck in the other random SNG's I played, but it hardly matters.

I just missed my 600 game HU goal by playing 583. Close enough I guess, I probably could have made it but I packed it in kinda early the last 3 days of July when I could have played more.

Here's my HU breakdown for July:

$115 - 32-25
$230 - 248-187
$345 - 48-36
$570 - 6-1

I've also managed to get a 2,000 game sample in the 230 on Pokerstars now, and it's promising that my #'s are looking just as good as after the 1,000 game sample. Here's the graph/#'s.

Games Played - 2,149
Avg ROI - 10%
Avg Profit - $23.27
Total Profit $50,010

I think i should have made the jump into the 230 sooner then I did. I may have fucked around in the 115 a bit too long, but at least I was more than ready to make the jump.

I am pretty happy right now with playing the random assortment of HU 115/230/345/570 that I am right now. I will probably keep this up for a while with my main game continuing to be the 230. It seems to be working out pretty good right now, not much need to change anything.

I'm gonna set my Aug goal at 600 games again. That is what I will shoot for but I will settle for 500. 500 will be the bare minimum I want to put in, but I will try my best to get the 600 in. I feel I played A game poker almost the whole month of July so I'd like to keep that little streak going also.

I have gotten some games in already this month and have a few hundred $$$ in profit. I just lost 5 of 6 to some super laggy dude who was luckboxing it hard against me. I had to quit him after the 6th game cause I could feel the tilt setting in. It's been an hour so I'm probably ready to get back in the ring now.

Have a good August everyone

bartchalker

Poker going good+up yours Chisox

2009-07-30T02:20:00.000-07:00

HAHA, Twins finished off a 3 game sweep of the dirty chisox last night and are now creeping up on 1st place in the central. I have to say that Buehrle was quite impressive in the fact that the start after throwing a perfect game he went out on Tue and brought a perfect game into the 6th inning before the Twins broke it up. He set a new record with 45 straight batters retired or something. I can respect that I suppose. I wonder if the Tigers can feel the Twins breathing down their necks yet?

So, I am on a zany lil sleep schedule the last 2 days so I'm up right now at like 4:00 AM and kinda feeling like doing some grinding and I see that both Pokerstars and Full Tilt have maintenance at the same time. Come on. Now what am I gonna do, maybe find a fucking slap chop infomercial and watch it? Stop having a boring life, stop having a boring tuna.........ship it.

The last 2 days have been a little annoying pokerwise. I've still managed to scrape together about $500 in profit, but I've had very nice starts each day only to see it come crashing down a bit towards the end. If that's the most I have to complain about I'm doing pretty good though. I definitely can't complain about profit. It is looking like this will end up being my 2nd best month ever so I am very happy about that. I also noticed that i'm only a couple grand away from matching my profit from 2008 and I still have 5 months left in 2009. I smashed my 40k goal in 08 by making 74k, so hopefully I can smash my 100k 2009 goal also, although I highly doubt I will "smash" that goal it is looking highly likely that I will beat it by a decent amount. It has been a pretty successful 2009 thus far.

I will update at the end of the month with my final July #'s.

This is bartchalker, signing off.........bitches.

July Profit - about 15k, give or take a few $$$$

Update

2009-07-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

I had another pretty big day on Wed finishing + 2.4k. Yesterday was a bit of a struggle as I went back and forth the whole day before ending it with a string of losses on Full Tilt against a pretty bad player. I think he beat my like 5 of 6 or something. He had an ROI of like -2% and I really do not understand how it wasn't much much worse than that. I kinda berated him a bit in the chatbox towards the later matches which I hardly ever do, but got kinda frustrated. I think it was actually making him play even worse though, so maybe it wasn't that bad of an idea. Is there anything wrong with berating somebody if you know it'll make them play worse? I guess it would kinda be an asshole move, but there is nothing really illegal about it. I know when I watch adonis/livb play he seems to always be berating/talking shit to players and I wonder if it doesn't make them play just a bit worse against him. Not that I'm gonna start doing it or anything, just got me thinking.

I'm kinda getting to the point now where I'm used to losing 1k+ on a bad day. I don't think the swings of the 230/345 really bother me much anymore unless I drop like 2.5k in a day or something. The only thing that really bothers me is the actual losing of the matches. Losing sucks. I probably don't get much more angry about losing 4 straight 345's as I do from losing 4 straight 115's. It's just the losing that kinda irks me. However it's easier to deal with losing 1k when you're already up 14k on the month.....it's hard to get to pissed.

I sat a 570 the other day and caught a fish. He wore me down to 800 pretty quickly but I rebounded to 1200 the doubled up when I limp called a minraise at 15/30 with J6 and hit a J69 flop. He had 10 7 and did the ole bet/call my raise, then bet turn/call my shove and I doubled. It's nice when they make it so easy! I'm now 6-1 in the 570 which is pretty fucking awesome.

I'm hoping today to get out of my my 2 day losing funk(lost the grand yesterday and about $200 the day before) if I decide to play. I'll try not to slack on my play the last week of this month. We'll see what happens!

July Profit - + $13,071

Wrecking July+new daily profit record

2009-07-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I completely destroyed peeps, going 21-5 in HU which was good for +$3,226 besting my previous best day of $3,036. I was outplaying my opponents rather consistently and also won a few games I had no business winning by being a complete luckbox. Not gonna apologize for it though. It was my time to shine I guess. I also managed to rip off a 13 match winning steak which is an amazing feeling. I think my best is 15 so I had a shot but couldn't come through. It's like a drug to run that good, you just want more.

I've continued my hot run into today with an 11-5 record so far. Not gonna slow down fuckers.

I noticed my star on sharkscope turned into a gold star. I came shortly thereafter. ......OK not really but it was kinda cool to see. I got up to #5 in the $101-$300 HU leaderboard. Now that I am mixing in some games on Full Tilt not sure if I'll be able to keep it up there....prob not. Not a big deal though. I'm not a glory hound.

I made an entry awhile back about MN trying to block the ISP's to gaming sites.....in case you didn't know they dropped that retarded thing about a month back. Jesus, mind your own business gov't. At least they realized they weren't going to get anything done and stopped. Fucking nazi dicks.

I find it absolutely amazing that Phil Ivey was able to not only win 2 bracelets at the WSOP but also FT the 10K ME. I think he's a bot. I hope he wins it. I wish I had the stomach to play tournies but I just hate the variance of them. I bet taking down a big MTT is one of the best feelings in poker, even if it's not for hundreds of thousands.

I am playing some above the rim poker right now so my goal for the rest of the month is to try to keep it going as long as possible. I'll also keep my fingers crossed that I don't run into some crappy bad variance.

July Profit - +$12,152

LOL

2009-07-16T10:54:00.001-07:00

I was getting a little frustrated with HU today, down only $200 though, but decided to switch it up for a bit and 6 table some other random SNG's. I played 3 single table SNG's and 3 18 person sng's and went 0 for 6 in cashing. Ran QQ into AA, ran QQ into KK, lost JJ to A10 pre, lost AQ to AJ on A48 board, couldn't win a flip.......ARGHHHHHHHH I'M GONNA SNAP.

No more of that shit, how the fuck do people play 16 of those SNG's at once?? I thought my fucking head was gonna explode just doing 6 of them. So much for my mini foray into 6 tabling SNG's. How do you go 0 for 6??? It was only like $300 in buy ins, but oh my god it kinda tilted me.

Down about 500 today, but still up about 6500 for month, so still in pretty good shape. I'm feeling kinda tired/frustrated, prob gonna take the rest of the day off. I will def be in bed by 8 tonight. I will come back strong next time I play.

PPA poker petition

2009-07-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

Anyone who plays poker or who just wants the gov't to stay out of your business should sign this. If you play poker with any degree of seriousness put your signature on it, there is no excuse not to do so. It's basically all done for you, so don't be lazy. I'm sure many of you have already signed it. It's up to over 300,000 signatures and will be presented to President Obama on July 22.

http://www.pokerpetition.com/

For more info on what this is exactly read here:

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/poker-petition-breaks-300000-signatures-3342/

Update

2009-07-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

It's pretty much the halfway point of the month and I am happy with my results thus far. The 12th was a big day for me at +2300, but other than that it's been about breakeven for me since my last post. Today was a bit frustrating as I put in a pretty good chunk of volume but still ended up down about $500. I lost like 1800 on stars but ran hot on Full Tilt going 8-1 in the 230 there. Early this morning I totally crushed this dude in 5 straight games. Fucking owned.....it's amazing watching someone transform from a weak tight fish into an uber aggressive SOB as the games go on. Apparently Full Tilt tracking on sharkscope is not back to 100% coverage like they said. They missed 4 of my games today. All wins obviously. I played badly in one or two games towards the end of my day. Kinda dissapointing. I got a little burnt out I think. One was in a 9 person SNG where I went broke with QQ on a AKx flop......ugh, don't even ask. Not my most glorious moment. Then some -20% -$12,000 fish mocks me and the fact that I'm a supernova, lol. I obv must lose alot of money. Fuck off POS donk. Just kidding. Just please keep playing poker.

I also played 2 games in the $570 since the other lobbies were jammed I figured why not? Some mega bad player sat me.....he beat me the first game. In the 2nd game I beat him but needed 66 to beat 77 all in pre at 50/100 to do it. Phew. He declined after that. I woulda played him all night if I had the chance, or until i dropped 4 or 5 buy ins because being down 2500 may tilt me. Woulda been tough to do that against that guy though. 5-1 in the 570 this month.

In the 2nd half of the month I'm looking to just keep playing good poker and hopefully play another 300 games or so to reach my 600 goal. Hopefully the profits come along with that.

July Profit - +$7,017

on track for a strong month

2009-07-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

I ended up not playing any poker on Friday at all.....took the day off and went to the Twins game and watched them beat the Chixox 6-4. Danks walked the first 4 batters he faced in the game. Twins ended up scoring 4 in the 1st. I don't think I've ever seen a pitcher walk the first 4 batters he faced.

I am playing some really good poker right now. The last 3 days I played were all 1k+ days. It's an amazing cure for poker frustration. Early into my playing on Thu I even flipped for stacks 3 straight games and won each time.....holy shit, call security, something is wrong here. That doesn't happen!!!! But even when I'm not just getting it in preflop and winning flips I truly am playing pretty damn good. Keep it up!

I've played 183 HU games this month so I think that puts me a little off pace for my 600 goal, but still time to make up for it. I'm 21-17 in the 345 this month which is great after dropping 6k in that game last month. I've also taken 3 shots in the 570 and am 3-0.....take shots and run good, that's how I roll.

My goal the rest of the month is to still get 600 HU games in but only if I'm sure I'll be playing my A game or at least somewhere close to it.

July Profit - $4,816

Swingy

2009-07-08T01:13:00.000-07:00

I was off to such a sweet start by the 4th but in the 2 days to follow the 4th i dropped the 2600 i was ahead and it was ridiculous, prob wasn't playing all that great but oh man the beats! I coulda had nightmares, nothing I did those 2 days worked, absolutely nothing.

However it appears the poker gods decided to stop torturing me after that and I'm back in the winning column and +2.8k so I'll take that but I could do without these fucking swings, it's gonna give me a stroke or something. Frustrating.

I'm getting in some pretty decent volume so far this month and I'll try to keep that up and hopefully the profits will just take care of themselves. They always do I guess.

Nothing else to say.

bartchalker

Fast start to July

2009-07-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

July has started with a nice bang for me. I lost $575 on the 1st but since then it's been nothing but goodness. Yummy goodness. Yesterday was a big +1900 day and today I put in a little mini session of 5 games and went 4-1. Now it's time to get my 4th of July on.

The last few days of June as well as these first 4 days of July I've been playing my A game again. I haven't been running like shit and I'm back to making good decisions. I think I got a little off my game for a week or 2 in June. I was just getting too frustrated with the game and how nothing was working. I guess over the course of a year you'll have a few weeks like that though, no biggie I guess.

Looking for a big month...........

Everybody have a good Independence Day. Later!

July Profit - $2,640.00

New month, halfway through 2009

2009-07-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

It feels good to put June behind me, I don't think I've ever got so stressed out during a month of poker. It started off badly and I was quickly down a few grand, but I went on a nice run before my 5 day vacation to Vegas to get back to even. After coming back from Vegas it was so back and forth for about 10 days. If I won 1500 one day, I'd lose 1300 the next day. I was running badly, and even worse I was playing nowhere near my A game and it hurt me in some spots. However, during the last week of the month I felt like I was back on my game. 3 of the last 4 days have been 1k+ and I am happy with where I ended up after a bad first 3 weeks. Below are my June #'s.....

Heads Up - $3,975.50
Other SNG - $114.50
Rakeback/Bonuses - $1,175.00

Total June Profit - $5,265.00

It's my worst month this year but I am 100% happy with it considering my shit start and the 8 total days this month I did not play at all.

I played 460 HU games this month just 15 short of the 475 goal I set before the month started.
I went 199-135 in the $230 good for 10.7k, however in the $345 nothing would go right and I went 25-40, good for a 6k loss. It was so frustrating that it seemed every time I played a 345 I would lose. If I could have just broken even in those games I would have finished +10k. I broke about even in the 115 with a 28-26 record, and I also took 7 shots in the 570 going 3-4.

I also played 36 games on Full Tilt this month, even though I didn't think I'd really ever be playing there again. They gave me a $100 bonus and I figured working it off would be equivalent to 41% rakeback, so it got me playing there again......crafty bastards. I had good success those games I played though making about 1.4k. I think I may begin playing on Full Tilt again now. When the games get packed on stars I can just move over to Full Tilt and find a game. Also when running bad on one site, it's kinda nice to just look at a little different layout for a little while. I'll still be playing the vast majority of my games on stars, just not all of them. I like pokerstars players club way better then Full Tilt, but whether I play a few games on FT or not I'm going to end up with about 300k-375k VPP's on Stars regardless, which will still be good for the 2k & 3k VPP bonuses anyway......+ I still get 27% rakeback on FT, so it's prob worth playing some there instead of staring at my computer screen waiting for a lobby to open up on stars.

It's also the halfway point of the year........and I'm happy to see I am on pace to make my 100k goal I set at the beginning of the year. +57.7K, so on pace for about 115k......I'd love to see it happen.

I'm going to try to get in 600 HU games this month and hopefully end with 10k profits.

Below are my Pokerstars & Full Tilt graphs for June(Stars is off a few hundred)

Also here is a my graph for lifetime 345 which made me feel kinda sick when I looked.....ouch.

Good luck grinders.....

Update

2009-06-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm having such a swingy month it's making me wanna puke. The day after my last post I had a great +2.2k day. I obviously followed that up the next day with a 1.2k loss. Today's been very swingy as well, but I've managed to bank about 550. I just want to stop getting fucked by the cards in every single game I play. I have tilted some also. Whenever the shit starts to pile on like this I get frustrated which inevitibly leads to me tilting. But I swear if I run a hand like AQ or AK into AA another time.......or if I have another AA, KK, QQ cracked by some shitty pocket pair after getting it in preflop I'm gonna have a fucking breakdown. Just annoying.

I still have a ton of confidence in my play, I just need to catch my next upswing. April & May were huge months for me, so I'll just have to take this subpar June in stride I guess. I'm up about 1.5k on the month. Hopefully no downswing these last 6 days.....I've never had a losing month before would hate to start now.

Gonna go catch the Twins and have some beer/wings :)

bartchalker

.........and back in red, grrrr

2009-06-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

I dropped around 2k yesterday bringing me back in the red for June. I'm down like $40, basically even. It's been a frustrating month as far as poker goes. It seems to be one giant mess of bad luck/bad play and this is what happens when shit goes down like that. Sometimes when I'm running bad I also think I'm playing bad when it's really not the case. It just feels like I'm getting outplayed sometimes when I just have to accept that some games just don't go your way and not much could have been done about it. There have been a handful of games however where I have tried to push to hard early in the match and gotten myself in trouble when there was no need for it. I've also made a few calls I kinda regret where I thought villain was bluffing.....but it's always easy to think it was a bad play after the cards are turned face up.

However looking at it optimistically, it's good to see I can run so shitty in June and still be even.....it's not like I'm down 5k or anything.

I'm going to the Twins/Astros game tonight and not sure if I'm even going to play any poker at all today. It might been time to take a mental break. If I play I'll prob stop myself after 10 or 15 games.

bartchalker

back in black for June :)

2009-06-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

I feel like this is the first time I've been in the black this month. The day after my last post I went ahead and dropped 1.1k, but today I'm up about $2,350, so you could say it's been a good day. It seems whenever I drink caribou coffee during a session I have a good session like 90% of the time.....coincidence or does coffee turn me into a poker machine? It prob helps improve alertness/attention. Maybe I should just start drinking caribou during every session, don't think I wanna get into that habit though.

I drove over to Caribou to get my iced mocha and after I ordered it I realized I forgot my wallet at home(bad beat). I was going to drive back home to retrieve it but was able to gather up $5 worth of change in my car(ship it!). I'm just an all around luckbox today I guess.

I started today by winning 10 of my first 11 games, and in my first session of 16 games when 13-3....I think that's good enough for the division and prob a 1st round bye.........football.

Why do some people type "sorry" after handing down a bad beat?? I mean what the fuck, are you really sorry? It's part of the game, don't type sorry. If you're really sorry send me my goddamn buy in back. I know I don't feel sorry in the least when I draw out on someone.

I bet $1 on Vanesso Rousso to win the WSOP ME so GO GO GO. If she miraculously wins ship the 1,000 to 1 payout for 1k. Jennifer Tilly was the biggest longshot of any player they were actually offering odds on.....1500/1......I think I like rousso a little better at 1000/1.

In the past I wouldn't have even been able to fathom the thought of Brett Favre in a Vikings uniform, but it looks oh so close to coming true and I have to tell ya, I'm pretty excited about it. The Vikes have a great all around team, but they are missing a quarterback. Sorry Tarvaris Jackson, Sage Rosenfels, and John David Booty. I like winners, and as much as I've hated Favre in the past, and despite the massive amount of interceptions he is prone to throwing at times, the guy is a winner. I'll take our chances for 1 year with Favre, I just hope that old arm of his can hold up for a whole season. The fact that he would be handing the ball off a ton to Adrian Peterson would take some of the pressure off though. Superbowl please.

June Profit - $1,881

bartchalker

Back from Vegas, back to work

2009-06-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

Well, we got back from Las Vegas Sat. evening and as fun as Vegas is it still feels good to get back home. I did alot of gambling in Vegas, however not much of it was poker. I spent a bit too much time at the blackjack tables and roulette wheels. I get destroyed playing roulette every time I sat down. I actually only sat down at a poker table twice. They were both 1/2 NL. My brother was sitting at my table the first time I played and I ran KK into his AA to lose $200. I rebought for 200 and was able to win 100 back in about 1.5 hrs. Then the next day there were 9 people on the waiting list so they started a brand new table and on the very first hand i get dealt 33. My brother is directly to my right and is UTG and opens for $7 i call it folds to the button who 3bets to $27. It folds back to my brother who calls and I call and we see a flop of 3KQhh. Turned out my brother has QQ and the other guy has AKhh for TPTK with nut draw. All 3 of our chuips obv go in on flop, Such a sick flop, my brother holds and drags it. I rebuy for 200 and am down to about 125 of that when I open KK UTG to 12 and get a calller on the button. Flop comes J68dd i bet 20 he calls turn another J i check he bets 25 i check raise all in for my remaining 90 or whatever and he calls with AJ. He obv tanks for a full minute before making this absurdly easy call. I will say that a 1/2 game in vegas seems to play alot like a 0.10/0.25 game online. Players are just fucking horrible overall. Should have played more poker and less roulette I think....

My GF and I also saw 3 shows. We saw the 2 cirque du soleil shows, "Mystere" and "O". We also saw the burlesque show at the flamingo. All 3 were good. I strongly suggest that anyone who wants to see an awesome show, go see Mystere. That is the most incredible thing I've ever seen. It's totally worth the $80 or $100 or whatever you end up paying. A++++++ show. "O" was also good but not as good as mystere in my opinion, plus it's more expensive. 2 tickets to "O" were $340. I would also reccomend the burlesque show, those girls put on a pretty good show, plus they dance to some pretty awesome music. The tickets were $50 but when we went in the guy bringing us to our seats said that we had general seating and asked if we'd like to improve our seating. I being a bit oblivious asked if that was free to which he replied, "well if you take care of me I'll take care of you." So I slipped him a $10 bill and he brought us to the very front. It was pretty cool.

We were there for 5 nights and stayed at the Flamingo. The last time my GF and I went was on New years 5 yrs back and it was alot more toned down from that time. New Years in Vegas was pretty wild....I kinda like it a bit more quiet, lol.

It's time to get back to grinding now...I've played about 30 games or so since i've been back and it's been very swingy. Overall on the month now I'm down around 100. Time to get back in the groove!

bartchalker

Big day.....

2009-06-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

I had a nice recovery today. I decided to stick to the 230's today and not venture into the 345's. I played 27 games at the 230 going a combined 19-8, and also played some other random sng's with good success. It all added up to a +2.7k day which I'm incredibly happy with after the last 2 days went so crappy. I actually had a shot at my daily record which is just a little over 3k but lost my last match when I ran A10 into KK at 25/50......one suckout away. No complaints though. I also lost a DON right before this because I wasn't paying good enough attention. 6 handed(bubble) i'm in BB for 200 it folds to button he shoves for 500, SB calls and I'm playing a big hand in my HU game at this time and think it's just a raise to 500 not a shove so I fold my 94 when I should have called. My 94 would have won and ended the sng, but instead the button doubles and I'm the bubble boy 5 hands later when my QQ can't beat KJ. Fuck me. I hate it when I do shit like that.

I'm now down just 1.1k for June. I'm gonna end up owning the shit out of the last 2 weeks of this month......I can feel it.

bartchalker

Another bad start to month

2009-06-06T05:10:00.000-07:00

This is annoying. It's the 2nd month in a row now that I've gotten off to a shit start. I was about even after the 3rd, but the 4th and 5th have been especially brutal days. I lost 1.4K on the 4th and 2.5k on the 5th. Overall I'm down a little over 3800 for June.....sigh. On the 4th I had a 8 match losing streak, then on the 5th I had a ridiculous 10 match losing streak. I'm not sure if I've even ever done that before, def not since I've been playing $100+ stakes. Oh well, I guess that's what a bankroll is for, huh? I'm fully capable of admitting I have not played my best poker the last 2 days, but the VAST majority of the losses have come from drawouts and coolers. I swear I have literally been on the wrong side of every cooler....drives me nuts. Then I have hands where villain sticks in 65 bb's pf with a hand like 34 and shits on my AK. He can't do that when I have KK or AA obv.

There are a handful of players who are avg at best as far as roi/profit go who I just can't seem to beat, and I swear they always show up when I'm already having a shitty session. They are not that good of players but I post lifetime records of 2-7, or 3-11. I always feel like I get outplayed everytime I play them, but maybe they just have happened to run good against me each time, who knows. There are always a few nemesis' out there for each player I guess....

I'm not really sure what to expect for profits this month now. I leave for Vegas on Monday morning and won't be back till the night of the 13th. Maybe in the next 2 days I can win a little back, then go on a tear when I come back. I will def take a 5k month this month and be very happy. Maybe I'll just have to strike it rich in Vegas.

The good thing is my yearly profit is at 48.5k which means I am on pace for my 100k goal. I actually feel like I may have a decent shot at hitting 125k. Time will tell I guess.....

I am also still on 3 sharkscope leadboards, but the only one I really care about is the total profit on pokerstars leaderboard, where I'm #18. Kinda cool to be the 18th most profitable player on stars.

Viva Las Vegas!!!

bartchalker

Buh Bye May

2009-05-31T22:17:00.000-07:00

"A 10k month is still possible but prob won't happen. I'm gonna shoot for a 5k month right now."

Above is a quote from my blog entry on May 8th when I was down about 3k on the month. Below are my final #'s

Heads Up - $9,992.80
Other sng's - ($181.44)
FPP rakeback - $1,935.00

Total May Profit - $11,746.36

On the 8th I would have been happy making 8k to finish up 5k on the month. Plus I had been running pretty bad for over a week, so at the time even making 8k just sounds impossible. I sometimes forget how badly I can tear it up when I'm playing good and running good at the same time, and that's pretty much what happened the last 2/3 of the month. I hit a little rough patch on the 26th & 27th losing about 1.6 between the two days, then breaking even on the 28th. Sadly I prob dumped 2 or 3 buy ins because of tilting which was bad. I took the 29th off and came into the 30th up about 7.5k on the month, but ripped it up for a 2.7k day(2nd best day ever), then I followed that up with a 1.5k day today. Talk about a clutch end to the month. I'm hoping that 10k+ months will start becoming the norm for me.

I didn't make my 625 HU game goal as I played 566 games. I can live with that. There were a few days I quit playing early, or just took off completely. If not for those days I would have made it but I also may have just gotten burned out and tilted off some $$. Trying to push volume to reach goals is kinda stupid sometimes.

I played just 71 games at the $115 this month, 387 games at $230, and 106 games at $345. I pretty much feel 100% comfortable with both the competition and the swings of the $230 now, and only dip back into the $115 when I want to get some quick games in and the $230 lobby is jammed up with regs. I feel pretty comfortable at the $345 as well. The competition I'm facing does not concern me, but sometimes the swings of that level can get to me. If I drop 8 of 10 games at that level it really tilts me a bit.

I'm leaving for Las Vegas on the 8th and not coming back till the 13th so I'm going to drop my volume goal to 475 games, as I won't be playing any online poker during that time. I'm not playing any WSOP events, just a coincidence I'm going there at that time. Should be a fun time and I'm looking forward to it.

Bring on June!

bartchalker

Solid month shaping up

2009-05-22T20:49:00.000-07:00

I won't be having a repeat of my 19k April(not that I expected it), but it will be a great month nonetheless. I should be able to pull off my 2nd best month ever which I will def take. I've ripped off 7 or 8 winning days in a row now and am feeling good, even though today and yesterday I really ran bad in some crucial spots in some of my matches. I went on a 6 match losing steak yesterday which hasn't happened in what feels like forever(and it still pained me, lol). I hate the rematch feature when I'm playing some fish and it goes down like this.....Lose game one, rematch. Lose game 2, rematch. Lose game 3, rematch. Win game 4, fish declines rematch....WTF....keep playing me MF!!! Goddamnit, I want my fucking money back, ugh. I think overall the rematch feature has been working good for me, I'm not obsessively rematching players when tilted, and I've actually had quite a few shit players get tilted and keep rematching me which is nice. I haven't destroyed them, because they have gotten uber lucky on me after spazzing out, but it's still nice to see.

I'm not sure if I will play tomorrow or not. The last day I played absolutely no poker was on the 1st of this month, so maybe it's time to just take a day off. I'm getting up early to meet up with my Dad and Brother to do some Memorial weekend fishing. I have to get up at 5:30 to make it to my Dad's my 7:00. I had it planned out that I was gonna get up early today so I would be tired tonight and not end up staying up till like 3:00AM, but I obv slept till past 11AM this morning so I may be fucked trying to get to sleep early. Blah.

Nice to see the Twins rebound from the 6 game losing streak with 2 big wins, 20-1 over the Chisox and 11-3 today over the Brewers. Cuddyer hit for the cycle too.....huh. I saw the last couple min of game 2 of the Cleveland/Orlando series....WOW.

That's it for now.

May Profit - $8,402.20

Update!

2009-05-20T03:59:00.000-07:00

Well first things first.....the Yankees officially OWN the Twins. Every single fucking time the Twins go to New York they just get stomped. I guess it doesn't matter that it's a new Yankee Stadium, still the same old story for the sorry Twins. The first 3 games were all walk offs for the Yankees, then the 4th game is another 1 run game!!! Come on!! I even had to watch A-roid jack one out in extras in one of the games. I was hoping we could put it behind us and get better in Chicago but those dirty Chisox already pounded us the first game yesterday......whores.

Poker is good. I like poker better than the Twins right now. I've been pretty consistently racking up winning days since my initial poor start to the month. I am still having my way with the 230, not much has changed there since last month as I'm up over 10k in the game this month.....the 345 has been a bit of a different story as I'm down about 5k in that game this month. I'm 100% sure it's just from running like dirt. I don't know what it is with the 230 both this month and last month, I am just playing so good and have beaten the game at close to a 62% clip the last 2 months. I think I have been running pretty well at the 50/100 levels and up during this period, probably winning a few more flips than I should be and also consistently being the one with the bigger A/pp preflop when effective stacks are <10 bb's. There is nothing more frustrating than dropping a series of matches at 50/100 and up, so it's obv a great feeling to consistently beat up my opponents at this level. It won't last forever though, so enjoy it while I can!

I bought Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo off of Ebay....what a great game! One of the best games off all time for sure. I still got it too, I got through all the cups on almost my first try. The 150cc special cup I could only get the silver on though because Donkey Kong's fatass knocked me off the rainbow road....what a cocksucker that monkey is sometimes, he can just be so mean. Such an aggro donk. In my opinion all those fancy games they have now for the ps3 and whatever all those new consoles are, can't hold a light to the classics like super mario, duck hunt, contra, all those older games for the NES and SNES are just better. You could pick up a game you had never played before and without even glancing at the insruction manual could have a good grasp on the game within 1/2 hour. Those games now it takes 1/2 hour to learn how to make your fucking character take a step. The games now are way more realistic and in depth but fuck it, give me Super Mario Bros 3 over Gears of War anyday.

I'm looking to keep getting in some consistent volume the rest of the month and hopefully pull of a 10k month.

May Profit - about 7k

I'm back, don't you know you can't kill me?

2009-05-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

Things have been going pretty good the last week for me. I got myself outta the red and outta my little mini funk I was in. The 11th, 12th, and 13th were pretty big days for me with profits of 1.8k, 1.6k, and 2.5k respectively. When bad runs start stretching into the 7 day and longer period I start to get a little irritable with poker, so this good run came along at the right time. Sadly my mouse did not survive the bad 9 day stretch and was viciously beaten to death by me. Now I'm using my backup mouse which had a near death experience during one of my bad stretches a while back. I'd say it's in serious, maybe critical condition. The scroll things don't work and the pointer is kinda jumpy on the screen. Time to invest in a new mouse or two. I think in 08 I went through like 6 or 7 mouses. It seems kinda crazy but it always helps me calm down just to take my frustrations out on the mouse. They are so wimpy too, like one slam to the desk and they are all fucked up. Meh, I guess they aren't made to take that kinda abuse.

I don't think(or at least hope) I have much to worry about with the MN DPS(Dept of Public Safety) ordering the internet providers to block access to gambling websites. I saw that IMEGA(Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association) has filed a lawsuit against the MN DPS and has also said that if any of the internet providers actually go through with the blockage(which I highly doubt will happen) they will file a lawsuit against them too. Thank goodness for IMEGA and the PPA. If something like this goes through in one state I feel it could lead to a domino effect. Obv the players who really want to play could prob find a way around it but it would just hurt the population of recreational players even moreso than the UIGEA already has. Keeping those fingers crossed......

Man can they really make the opening to Poker After Dark any more corny??? Jesus.

Not sure if I'm gonna make my 625 game goal or not this month. I've just been kinda playing when I feel like it and not forcing volume as much. Sometimes it just works better not to push volume.

Anybody ever watch Tom & Jerry?? That was one of my favorite cartoons growing up(I still watch it if I see it's on). Anyways check out this clip from one of the first Episodes ever made. I believe just the 2nd episode...but let me know if anyone thinks this looks as dirty as I thought it did.....part in question starts at about 4:25....I felt this needed to be shared, haha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGSmVlHAPSY

May Profit - about 3.7k

Tough first week of May

2009-05-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

May has been a struggle so far. The first 6 days was kinda a back and forth thing just kinda treading water. I came into yesterday down about $500 on the month. Then yesterday I had my worst day ever profit wise, finishing down 2.4k. Ouch. I went 2-2 in the 115, 7-12 in the 230, and 1-4 in the 345. Just an all around brutal day where nothing would go right.

Even after finishing up 19k last month, stretches like these still hurt. Crazy game. A week ago I have my best ever day finishing up 3k, then yesterday BOOM! I lose 2.4k. It reminded yet again that in poker a shitty day always feels much worse than an awesome day feels good. It's so shitty how that works.

This whole week I've been unbelievably card dead which has led to me trying to force plays in bad spots, trying to bluff my way out of goofy spots I get myself into and shit like that. I've bluffed off my stack in too many bad spots and to players who do not know how to fold, so I should know better. Too many players making hero/spite calls against me.

A 10k month is still possible but prob won't happen. I'm gonna shoot for a 5k month right now.

I think instead of saying I'm down 2.9k in May I'm just gonna say I'm up 16k in April & May. It makes me feel better :)

Time to turn it around!!!!

May losses ($2,904.44)

JEEZ

2009-05-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

I just added up my final tally for the day in HU and it's kinda sick, haha. 30 total HU games with a total record of 16-14. Only problem is that I went 3-0 in 115's(Nice!), 11-6 in 230's(Super!!), and 2-8 in 345's(WTF!?!?, PUKE). That's kinda the shitty part about playing at 3 different levels is that it feels like I should be about even in HU but instead I'm down almost $900 even with a 16-14 record. I managed to offset these losses a tad in some other random SNG's/FPP rakeback at least.

Maybe I'll take a little break from the 345 for a couple days.......I'm confident I will get this turned around and be outta the red for the month in the next day or three.

Gonna enjoy a Monster and watch the twins go for 2 straight over Detroit!! 13-13 on the year, let's get back over .500!!!

Happy grinding

bartchalker

Slow start to May

2009-05-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

I was hoping my hot streak would continue right into May, but it didn't. I have not been able to get much going at all these first 5 days of the month. I've been running very bad in almost every 345 I play so that's a big reason. However, after last month I don't think I can really complain about variance much.

I noticed today that Pokerstars added the rematch option to their heads up games which I'm hoping will be a good thing. It should be as long as I'm smart enough to stop playing somebody when I'm tilted. We'll see I guess.

Although this month has started off slow I'm still hoping for a 10k month. Time to turn it around.

later

bartchalker

May Losses ($573)

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

2009-04-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-21T02:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-13T22:02:00.000-07:00

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.......

2009-04-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-07T22:56:00.001-07:00

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!!!!!

2009-04-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

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.....

2009-04-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

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

Poker month March=over

2009-03-31T16:47:00.000-07:00

I'm done playing for March. I'm still steaming a bit right now because of the way my day ended today. So shitty, for real. I started out so hot by going 8-2 in my first 10 matches(all of which were 230's BTW). I went 3-2 in my next five games after that. Then it all ended in a pathetic, kick me in the balls, whimper. In my last 14 games I went a wretched 2-12 in a combo of 115/230. JEEEEEEEZ. Finished the day down $374 after being up around 1.4k. I just love these cocky ass pricks who draw out after making some retard play for god knows what reason then talk shit. They talk shit like their fucking degen ass isn't going to give that $ back + some anyways. I swear some of these morons get off on typing stupid shit after they win, lol. I feel like they go into the hand replayer and fucking jerk it while watching the replay of their suckout over and over. Meh whatever makes them feel good I guess. Who am I to judge. In my first few matches I did lay 2 pretty good beats down on the same opponent in 2 seperate matches, so I have to remember those also, not just the bad ones, haha. Holy fuck though I feel like those 12 losses I took in my last 14 I didn't win more than 15 hands combined. So sick. So so sick.

Ok enough crying, the month turned out to be a hell of a success considering I was up only $800 on the 16th. Here are my final March #'s

Heads Up SNG - $5,946.75
Misc SNG - $286.10
MTT's - ($109.00)
FPP Rakeback - $860.00

Total March Profit - $6,983.85

Below are 2 charts. The first chart is my chart for today(3/31), the 2nd is my March chart(which is about $600 to low from some chops and playing 3 games on FT going 2-1)

I finished up about 6.2k in 2nd half of March which is quite awesome considering I told myself I'd be happy with a 4k month and ended up about 3k above that.

I'm really hoping that in April I can bust out for a 10k month. It would be nice. My volume goal each month for HU is usually 625 of $100 and up. In April & May I'm hoping to get 750 each month because I will be in Vegas for a 5 night vacation in June so prob will not play for about a week in June. I would like to make up for it in advance by playing some extra games. It's gonna be my GF, my Mom, my Bro, and myself going on the trip. It will be my Mom's first time in Las Vegas, so I think she's excited to see it for the first time. I'm looking forward to just taking it easy, watching some shows, pigging out at a few buffets, and doing some gambling. Will probably play some $1/$2 NL, maybe try some $2/$4. I prob won't be taking it 100% serious and will def be enjoying some free drinks, so I'm not expecting to win huge or anything. I'll also obv have to play some -EV games like blackjack, roulette, whatever looks like fun. I think I almost have to drink to deal with the avg know it all player in a $1/$2 game who actually has no fucking clue what he is doing. Same with blackjack, I absolutely cannot stand people who sit and play blackjack and piss and moan about losing like they expect anything different. BLACKJACK IS A -EV GAME UNLESS YOU COUNT CARDS MORON. Even if using 100% perfect basic strategy and playing with the best rules for the player the house will still have a .5% edge longterm. And most of these whining fools play nowhere near perfect basic strategy. They are usually the people who get mad when someone takes the dealers bust card by hitting a hand they shoudn't have. As if that person doesn't have just a good shot taking the card that woulda made the dealer 21, it's so stupid. And even if it does take the dealers bust card, are you going to thank that player for the blackjack you get dealt 9 hands later?? After all it wouldn't have happened if that idiot hadn't taken the dealers bust card 9 hands earlier, lol. Ok, that's it for that rant, I could go on forever about that shit. I'll get into it in deeper detail in a later post maybe, haha.

Playing 750 games for each of those 2 months is prob gonna be tougher than I think, especially with the distraction of the Twins playing almost every night starting Apr 6. We'll see what happens though, hopefully I can at least come close.

So long March, let's see a successful April please!!!

bartchalker

Month winding down

2009-03-28T13:56:00.001-07:00

This month is quickly coming to an end and things are going pretty good on the poker front. I was actually pretty lazy with my poker playing on Wed, Thurs, Fri and only got a total of about 30 games in combined those 3 days and lost somewhere around 1.2k altogether. Shitty. Today I have grinded pretty hard and have put together a 25-13 record in the 115/230. I was also able to make $215 in FPP rakeback(what!!) which helped boost my profit for the day over 1.8k. So I guess you could say it was a good day. I was trying to get it to 2k but had to stop myself cause I played like trash my last 3 games. GG. I'm done for the day. I'm tired and will prob be in bed before 10 tonight. Exciting Sat night I know. My sleeping pattern is fucked once again. GRRRRRRR.

I am so damn ready for the MLB season to start.......no football or baseball makes me an angry bartchalker!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can anyone out there explain to me how Jennifer Tilly is 50 yrs old?? I saw here on Poker after Dark the other night and was just reminded of this fact. Does she not look like she's fucking 28??

I'm too tired to type anything more.

March Profit - $6,402.85

2009-03-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

update

2009-03-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

The last week or so has been an incredible poker week. I think it's turned out to be a 4k week or so. Yesterday I played some decent volume and went 16-10 overall for a $800 profit or so. Today I'm down $290 so I'm in slight danger of finishing the day in the red. I took a shot in a $570 today for the first time in some months. It was against some guy with a -8% roi and pretty bad. I obv was cardead as shit and the dude could not be bluffed. So I obv bluff off my stack at 50/100 on the river. Ugh. That's why it's called taking a shot though. It doesn't bother me though as I know I was +EV in the match. I am def not going to make a habit of playing that level obv, but if I see some good opportunities I def have the bankroll to play a few.

I will say that I am no longer feeling any nervousness whatsoever about playing the $230's like I was a couple months ago. Still, I never thought the higher buyin ever made me play any worse through being scared/nervous, but now I know 100% it's not. This month I have played 36% of my total HU games at the $230/$345. The vast majority of that 36% being the 230, only about 7 or so games in the 345. There have even been a few times 10 min into the match where I'm suddenly like "is this a 100 or 200?", which basically shows the higher buyin is having no effect on me mentally. Most of the time I just join whichever game has the open lobby and don't pay much attention I guess.

My FPP rakeback is not doing much for me this month so far as I'm just 2/11 in the 10 man qualifiers for Sunday Mil. Annoying is a word that sums that part of my poker month up nicely.

Somebody told me I have a shitty blog after I beat him. He obv pisses and moans when his A10 loses a preflop all in to my KQ at 50/100 like he was some kinda lock in that hand or something. What is it like 55%? Simmer dude, some days the poker gods love you, the next day they will stick their balls in your cereal.

That seems an appropriate way to end this entry. Adios!!!!

March profit - $4,941.85

boogie woogie woo BOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-03-21T03:43:00.000-07:00

Time to get this bitch turned around huh??!! I am recovering from my wicked 30 hr 4k downswing from 5 or 6 days ago pretty nicely people. The last 4 days have been pretty decent and I've made 1.4k. I have really been playing my A+++ game in about 95% of my matches. The other 5%? Maybe just my A game. It seems that sometimes downswings can be a good thing for me. Not financially obv, but for my play afterwards. Especially downswings where I tilt off a few buyins. It kind of just makes me realize that no matter how good you've been doing as of late not to get cocky or think it's easy. Your A game must be played at all times to compensate for the times when you run bad. You must maximize your win rate when you are running good in a match, and when you are running bad you must salvage as many matches as you can of those. The edge is to small to be cocky. I will say that it seems like it has been a few weeks since I've been playing this good. I just really like it. I swear the last 5 days I've been beating donks at a 90% rate, I love it.

OK, so March is about 2/3 of the way through and I am about +4.1k right now. This is awesome considering on the 15th I said I would be more than happy with a 4k month at that point. Obviously now I would not be as happy with a 4k month. I will take 6k, please. Thank you.

On a sidenote wanna know something that just kinda annoys me? When people so cleverly call pokerstars "jokerstars" after taking a bad beat/cooler/whatever. It's such a lame joke, jesus christ. Then they go on some "online poker is rigged" rant. I had a guy tell me a while back that online poker was rigged against players from Europe. Seriously?? Someone also told me once that whoever gets all in first preflop will win 90% of the time regardless of the cards. Which obviously made me question why they called my all in with their AK. The funniest part is the people who ramble off this nonsense play so badly all the time!!! It's just kind of hilarious to me how poker just seems to be one of those things people can't admit they are not good at. They come up with the craziest things.
OOKKKAAAYYYYYYY, I'm out. Have a good weekend everybody.

bartchalker

Hell of a day, +1.7k

2009-03-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

Well, today was a great poker day. I was up around 7 AM and around 9 decided to do something I've been slacking off on this year. Exercise. I got 30 min in on the ole step machine then ran a mile on the treadmill. I really should start doing that more often, besides it just being a healthy thing to do, it really helps me play better poker. It just seems it helps me think more clearly, and also be able to play longer without getting burnt out. It also seems to help me not blow up so quickly about bad luck. I mean, what's 40 min/day?

Of course it's easy not to blow up on days like today. My first match I got in all in preflop on one of the first few hands with 10 10 smack into my oppenents KK, but went on to spike a 10 on the river to cripple my opponent. That dose of good fortune set the tone as I played well and ran well the whole day. I played a mixture of 115's and 230's and had a smoking 22-8 record. I also played in the HU shootout tonight and was felted in the first round. Fucking tourneys. However, that didn't matter much as I finish the day up a super solid $1,766. Ship ship ship. I really was in need to have a day like this, and hopefully I can destroy the rest of the month and salvage it, or better yet turn it into a decent month.

Heading to a Hollywood Undead concert on Wed, seems to have been forever since a concert hit this area that I've been interested to see. Should be pretty awesome. Also have a (hed) pe concert coming later this month and am pumped for that as they always put on a sweeeeeet show. Then Soil is playing with Dope in a month or so. Weeeeeeeee. Rock concerts are the nuts. Real rock, no pussy rock allowed.

Later g8rs

Mid month update, frustrations

2009-03-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Above is my sharkscope graph for the first half of March. It has been pretty frustrating the last week or so to say the least, as you can see above. The plummet from +4.2k to actually being in the red slightly was fast and furious. I had back to back day of losing more than a grand. Arghhh. I'm kinda mad at myself for playing badly in a few games. I guess it was a typical downsing though, with both bad luck and bad play.

Today seemed to be going promising at the start but soon fell apart. I was playing a mixture of 115 & 230's mainly. I went 11-11 in the 115's and 6-6 in the 230's. Can you say mediocre? I also played 3 $345's however going 2-1 which made up for the rake lost and a little extra as I finished the day up a whopping $55.

I feel like I had more to type but I am pretty damn tired right now. I went ahead and fucked up my sleeping pattern again by sleeping deep into the afternoon yesterday which caused me to not sleep last night. Now I'll have to battle to stay up until at least 8 or so to get back on a decent schedule. I don't know what it is, I'm fine with 6 or 7 hrs of sleep, and won't feel tired at all during the day if I get that much, but if I don't set an alarm I'll just sleep for like 10 or 12 hrs sometimes. It's ridiculous, haha.

Anyways I am confident I will get this month turned around in the second half. Right now I am up $800 for March. I will be more than happy with a 4k month at this point, hopefully I can bust out for another one of them 5k weeks though.

That is all.

100% owned/pwned/sucked it up

2009-03-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

I must have jinxed the shit out of myself with my last post typing about my 14 straight winning days and shit. I got smoked today for -$1,400. Ouch. The worst part about it is I started the day out hot by winning 4 straight 220s. Then after that I played this complete retard 3 times!! He obv beat me all 3 and that was the beginning of the shittiness. I went from +$840 to -$1,400. That's like a 2.2k downswing in 30 games. No need to panic though, the month is only 1/3 of the way complete and I am still up 2k. I wish my first losing day of the month didn't have to be such a whopper of a bitch though, jesus. I'm pretty sure in my last 10 or so games I was slightly tilted and prob played a few hands like a donkey. Sigh. Time to get it going in the right direction again, starting tomorrow. Goot luck bartchalker. Bad luck villains. Fuck off negative variance.

Update

2009-03-09T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm on my longest ever streak of winning days right now. Monday was my 14th winning day in a row. I have to say the consistency is kind of nice, at the same time a bit wierd not to have a losing day mixed in there. The last 3 of my last 4 days have been very slight winning days with days of +35, +55, and +238. I'll take them though. I think the +35 day I started out on a losing streak and was down a grand after like 40 min, lol. I've been playing mostly 110s the last 2 or so days. It seems everytime I go look in the 220 lobby a reg is already sitting. I'm so damn impatient with it to, I don't wait for it to open up I just go right down to a 110. Plus if i'm sitting in the 220 lobby and it takes more then 3 or 4 min to get action I get impatient and go play a 110, haha. I gotta work on that.

I noticed today that stars is starting to run a $109 HU shootout which is cool. I may have to give that a shot in the future. I try not to play tourneys too much because they are too crushing for me when I get deep and bust. Jeez, I remember back in the day when I was grinding the low stakes I'd randomly play a few tourneys with the hope of a big payday but would be so disapointed when I'd get deep and bust. I still remember the hand that pretty much made it clear that tourneys weren't for me. It musta been like 2 yrs ago or so(before I was playing full time). It was I believe a $24 touney on FT with maybe like 1500 players and I was down to the final 80 or so and picked up KK and 3bet the UTG raiser who had me covered and jammed 10 10. They spiked a 10 and busted me, I would have been chip leader. It was just devestating, I don't know if I've ever played a tourney again after that(with the exception of a few HU tourneys). I remember once I took down a $5 rebuy for like $500 and was elated, I don't think there is quite as good a feeling in poker as taking down a tourney, no matter the stakes. However, I really don't know how the tourney pros do it. I believe an roi of 100% is attainable in these things, but I would think the day to day frustration and the swings have got to fuck with your mind a bit. Especially the live tourney pros who might travel across the country(or to a different country) only to get busted in the first hour, ouch. Or to play for 3 or 4 days for 10 hrs a day(maybe more) only to bust out just short of the money. It's gotta take heart.

I ended up getting the opening day twins tickets(upper level cheap seats though, don't care that much) and am pumped for that. I think they have a shot to be something special this yr. I really wish they still had Santana though. Have Santana and Liriano as a 1-2 punch in a best of 5 or 7 playoff series would be hard for other teams to overcome. I also wish we still had Hunter roaming center field. Gomez was a good replacement last yr defensively but can't do what Hunter was able to do with the bat. He's got definite potential though.

All right, hoping to extend my consecutive winning days streak to 15!!! GL me.

March profit - 3.4k

Later pimps

Nice start to month

2009-03-07T10:32:00.000-08:00

Feb ended with a bang in the last week, and the first week of March has started off with a bang also. Not quite to the extent of last month but good nonetheless. A +1k day on the 1st got me started off on the right track and I'm up about 2.6k on the month right now. I def cannot say I haven't run well, because I have. In all honesty I've prob ran better then I've played, but you'll have stretches like that.

I've only played one game today, and right now I am in the Minnesota Twins virtual waiting room trying to get tickets to the season opener. I've been waiting for 50 min now and I'm starting to get worried the seats we want won't be available. Tickets went on sale at noon and I was there about 10 secs after noon, so WTF.

Yesterday, for the first time in quite a while it seems, a player got disconnected against me. I did what I'm guessing 99% of people do. I blinded them out. It just got me thinking to times in the past when this has happened and my opponent reconnects with like 300 chips left and types a bunch of shit about being ethical, or calling me a variety of other names. That scenario has prob played out at least 15 times in the past. I understand that the other person is prob just frustrated and maybe thinks there is a chance I will give them their money back(which there is not). Is there really anyone out there who waits for their opponent to get back when they've disconnected? Fuck, especially on Stars where it takes for fucking ever to blind someone out. I mean honestly, you get a 60 sec timebank, then they add another 60 secs when you disconnect, then every hand they get like 15 secs, r u kidding me? It's the polar opposite of Full Tilt though, shit I remember playing on their and if u get disconnected for like 3 min in the 1st level a 3rd of your stack is gone. I think you have to blind people out when givin the chance to make up for the times when you yourself are blinded out. I've been disconnected a fair amount of times also, and lost many a buyin because of it, and have NEVER had an opponent wait for me. I may get angry, but not angry at the person who blinded me out, just angry at my damn internet connection, haha. I think it's just absurd to call somebody "cheap", "thief", or to type "wow, you are classy" sarcastically when they have blinded you out. Besides if I'm playing somebody(especially if I have a significant advantage/disadvantage) why would I wait for them to get back and start play at 50/100 and turn my significant edge into a small edge, or from the other end, turn my shot to win a free match against a more skilled player, into a slight disadvantage? I think most people, even the one's who type that it is wrong to blind someone out, will steal those chips as quickly as they possibly can whn given the opportunity. I know I do. It kind of sucks but it just comes with the territory when you play poker on the internet, you can disconnected, you can lose your buyin, deal wit it dawg!!

That was kinda a rant huh?

Now I've been waiting for over an hour for the tickets, sigh. Losing hope for lower level seating...........

Went and saw the watchmen movie last night. I thought it would have potential to bust into my top 5 movies of all time list, or at least top 10 but didn't even come close. It was a good movie, but not great in my opinion. I give it a B-. I think maybe people who were a fan of the comic book would prob get more enjoyment out of it. It's still worth seeing though. The naked blue guy prancing around with his junk hanging all over the place was a tad strange........

Gonna get some poker in today then catch the UFC fights. Holla Holla Holla

Feb recap, sick end to month, +8.7k

2009-02-28T21:47:00.000-08:00

Wow, that is all I can say. This is such a crazy ass game sometimes. After not being able to do shit the first week of the month, then slowly making some profit the next 2 weeks, I pretty much exploded this last week. I finished today up 1.6k giving me a weekly profit of 5.1k and pushing my Feb profit to 8.7k. These last few days I can't seem to lose, and it is def nice. Today I even went on a 11 match winning streak(mainly 110s, a couple 220s and a 330 mixed in). Here are my Feb #'s:

Heads up - $7,820
Other SNG's - ($722)
MTT's - ($270)
Cash Games - $94.25
FPP Rakeback - $1,505
Bonus - $250

Total Profit - $8,677.25

My other sng's besides heads up did not go very well as I lost over $700 in that category which was frustrating. However I only played 32 other sng's besides heads up so I'm pretty sure it was mostly all bad luck. I am a long term winner in about every kind of sng(with the exception of the double or nothings) and they are fun to play to switch it up from HU every once in a while. I took a shot at the $215 Sunday HU tourney and a $55 turbo MTT which accounts for my MTT losses. I think it was towards the middle of the month pokerstars was about to deal it's whatever billionth hand so I sat down at a few cash game tables to see if I could somehow be sitting at the table it got dealt on. No luck there but did make the $94. The 5400 pt qualifiers went extremely well this month as I cashed in 7/11 of them including my last 6 in a row.

Overall I am incredibly happy with my final #'s this month. I am proud that I was able to keep my head on straight for the most part and recover from the beginning of the month. Feb is gone, time to do it again in March. Gonna push for a 10k month, hold!!!

Low volume last 2 days

2009-02-25T22:47:00.000-08:00

I think it's safe to say I've been a little on the lazy side with my poker playing the last few days. Tue and Wed I only played 30 heads up games total which wouldn't be quite so bad if I hadn't taken Fri and Sat off. I have a very good chance of missing my monthly heads up volume goal this month(625 HU games $100 and up). I'm at 498 right now. I've also played 15 $55's(14-1!!!) but I don't count those towards my volume goal. Now that I type that I'm positive I won't be playing 127 games the next 3 days. This month needs a few extra days in it. That's all right though, I went a little over last month and I'll try to play a few extra next month.

Although I just played 30 games the last 2 days I had some good success. I had a killer 20-5 record in the 110's, went 1-3 in the 220's, and 1-0 in a 330. I've never waited so long in my life to play a game as that 330. I must have sat for 15 goddamn minutes before someone played me. I almost unregistered to play a 220 or 110 just cuz i felt like actually playing, haha. I was on at a goofy time, not peak hrs or anything.

Well, it looks like this is shaping up to be a solid month considering the first week shittiness I endured. Feb profit=5.3k

Here's an article I can't believe I missed or didn't discover sooner. This dude won the spadeclub player of the year. Spadeclub is where you pay like $19.99/month to play in free rolls with like $500 prize pools and shit. I think I read somewhere he made like $1200 that yr. This dude sounds like a complete tool/dumbass. Please somebody tell me if this was found out to be a joke. I hope it's a fucking joke, lol.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/article/5996/spadeclub-pokers-2008-player-of-the-year

Magnifico!

2009-02-23T21:17:00.000-08:00

I put in a solid 5 hrs today and had a pretty solid day, finishing ahead 1.1k. I'd like to see a couple more days like this before the month comes to an end. In back to back 220's i flopped top 2 against a straight and got all in and turned full houses in both matches which set the tone for a good day.

I have to stop typing stuff to people in the chat box. I've always said it's retarded to berate the bad play of others, but over the last few weeks I've caught myself doing it a few times. It's so stupid to belittle a player who is making mistakes. It's good that they make stupid plays, I certainly wouldn't want them to stop making them, I just get a bit frustrated sometimes I guess. I also have to quit responding to retards who talk shit because it can only hurt things. It's best just to concentrate on the game and not worry about what kind of stupid shit my opponent is typing. People are so funny, like in this game earlier today with blinds at 25/50 and my opponent at 1300 i jam over the top of his 3x button raise of 150 with 88 and he calls me with the 1010 and doubles up, so I'm down to 400. I come back and win 2 preflop all ins to even the stacks up. I can't remember what the hands were but I think one was a flip and the other one i was a 2:1 underdog. He types in that I'm so lucky or something. This is where I should just ignore it but I type back that he was lucky to pick up 1010 vs 88 with short stacks. He says "r u saying 1010 is not a better hand than 88". I tried explaining that it was lucky of him to pick up an overpair to my pair with such short stacks but I don't think he could wrap his little mind around that simple concept. All he knew was that he got it in with the best hand, even though if the cards had been reversed I would have won the match, unless of course he's mucking 88 when only 24 BB's deep, doubt it. People are funny like that though, for example if effective stacks are 1,000 with the bb at 100 and someone gets it in with AK vs AJ and their opponent spikes a J to take the pot they will think of themselves as getting unlucky. However if the AK holds they don't consider themselves lucky, after all they got it in with the best hand. Even though picking up AK against AJ with effective stacks of 10 bb's is very fortunate because neither player is getting away from their hand. Just like it always kind of annoys me when a complete fish with a -20% roi and losses over 40k type a bunch of shit about what a donk I am. I'm not sure why it annoys me, I think I'm just easily annoyed by ignorant people. So yeah, basically I'm saying I'm done typing back to people like that and I'm done belittling opponents play.

Tough day

2009-02-22T22:22:00.000-08:00

I dropped about a grand today, so that's no fun. However, a good portion of my games were 220's, so I'll have to get used to my bad days being a loss of more than a grand if I plan on playing those on a consistent basis. Kind of dissapointing though. I have def gotten over my discomfort of playing the 220s however, which is a very good thing. Losing a grand didn't really bother me much at all, obv I'd rather be winning but I wasn't pissed off or anything. I took Fri and Sat off so this loss wasn't offset by any wins those days or anything either.

On Fri night I went and played a home game with a few people which was kind of fun. I didn't know anyone in the game except my cousin. Just playing some small stakes and drinking some beers. It was a .25/.50 cash game. I bought in for $30(I was gonna buy in for $50 but felt kinda silly when the biggest buyin was $20) and left with $152 after about 8 hrs of playing which was a nice little bonus. One guy was kinda funny, he would buy in for like $5(10 bb's) and lose that then buy in for another $5. He must have done that until he was down like $75, lol. He would cold call opening raises of $3 then fold on the flop and complain that he could never catch a pair. One time I got in with him preflop for maybe $7 with KK and ran into his AA the board came out 58967 for a chop. He told me that he was "pretty sure" that he had me pre flop. There was the hand where the pot was about $20 on the turn and I bet this lady all in for her last $15 with an overpair to the board and they snap called me with just a flush draw and missed. She then looked saddened and said she even "felt" the flush coming, and usually she wasn't wrong when she got that feeling. As is standard with any kind of poker game one or two of these people think they are very good, (my cousin especially, lol) but are actually quite bad and have to be long term losers in the game. It's funny how poker does that to people, especially live poker when people can so easily lie to themselves about how much they are losing(unlike online where you only have to compare you deposits/cashouts to see the truth). Big losers think they are small losers, small losers think they are breakeven or even winners. Most of the players were just playing for fun though. It was kinda nice to play some poker and not have to take it seriously, might have to do it again sometime.

My profit for the month is about 3.3k right now, which is not where I would like it to be, but what can you do? This whole year has been a little dissapointing for me so far. My $/game are down from their avg. I'm avg $6/game in the 110's and $7.30/game in the 220's this year when my lifetime stats in those games are $11/game & $16/game respectively. I think it's due to just running below expectation, but if I don't show improvement in the next month or so I may have to look at my game a little closer and try to plug any leaks I may have developed.

My FPP rakeback games have kinda been saving me a little bit this month as I am 6/10 in them which is good for about 1.3k of my profits.

Bye!

Rolling along

2009-02-18T22:11:00.000-08:00

The month is rolling along pretty decent right now, finished today up about $450 and since my last post I think I'm up like $300 overall. Feb profit sitting at 4.2k. It's looking like it could be a pretty solid month if things keep going decent. I won another $345 shot today, I've played 5 of them this month and am 4-1, can't complain about that at all.

Went and got my taxes taken care of the other day, and ended up owing another 4.7k :( It's nothing I wasn't expecting though, I actually thought it might be a little higher. Stupid taxes.

My computer broke down 2 days ago and was shot. The thing was like 5 yrs old and pretty outdated so it was time for a new one anyway. The one I bought is def an upgrade, plus I got a 22" monitor which is really awesome. Same bartchalker, just a little more baller now, ha. I'm not sure what my other one was, prob like 15 or 16" so I can really tell the difference and it makes playing poker much easier. I can especially tell the difference when I 2 table. Unbelievable how much easier it is when both tables are a decent size, instead of having to lean forward with my face 3 inches from the monitor to see what's going on in both the games. Not sure how much 2 tabling I'll do, but I'll def be more effective at it now.

I guess that's all I got for now, will update again in a day or 3. See ya.

Halfway through Feb

2009-02-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

I've been doing pretty well since my last post and I've recovered rather nicely from my breakeven/losing streak from the first 8 or 9 days of Feb. Since my last post I've only had 1 losing day of $650, the rest were winning days with a couple of them being 1k+. My Feb profit is at about 3.9k. I kinda got myself worked up over nothing with the slow start to the month. I always do that shit for some reason. If I lose or breakeven for a couple days I'm fine but once it stretches into a week or so I kinda get stupid. Just the way I am though I think, next time it happens I'll prob be the same way.

I played the $215 HU tourney today for the 4th time in my life and am now 0/4 as far as cashing in it goes. I was lucky enough to get a 1st round bye into the round of 256. I won my first match mainly because of a tough all in I called to pick off a bluff. Then in my 2nd match I was lucky enough to be paired with a player who wasn't very good. I worked them down to about 900 before getting it in preflop with JJ vs 55 and thought I was on my way to my first ever cash in the tourney, but a 5 on the turn dashed those hopes. I was down to 800 after a check raise bluff went wrong and got it in with A9 vs 77 and watched him hit another 7 on the flop to end me. Ugh.

Other than that tourney everything else today went very well and i finished up about 1.1k. The biggest reason was 2 shots I took in the $345. I was able to win them both. The 2nd game I even got crippled to 120 at 50/100, but came back to win it. It always feels nice when you kinda write a game off as a loss mentally then end up winning it. It's been awhile since I've done that to somebody, seems I've been on the receiving end of those the last few times.

Saw the Friday the 13th remake the night it opened. I think they did a pretty decent job of remaking it. Nothing incredibly special, but I would recommend it to anyone who likes horror movies. I watched Casino today and that movie just gets better every time I watch it. A classic. It's amazing how many F bombs can get dropped in 180 min too, haha.

Below is my graph for the month so far(off by $200)

Big day......finally

2009-02-11T05:04:00.000-08:00

I said I was going to take monday off and I kinda did.....I played for like an hour and lost $100 or something. Tuesday I busted out for a big day of +$1,506 which was just what the doctor ordered. Maybe that day off did my mind some good? I felt I was playing very sharply and my reads were good. I bluffed off my stack in about 3 matches, which always kind of makes me feel like a moron, but I think they were good plays(for the most part) and at the time had reason to believe they would work. It sure was nice in some of my games when I have them down to 750 or so at 25/50 and get it in with 33 vs A8 or a simalar situation and acutally win to end the match and not have to start over with even stacks. Very nice. Let's get some positive variance up in this bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!

+$500, back to even for Feb

2009-02-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

I ended up finishing ahead exactly $500 yesterday making me down a whopping $9.90 for Feb. Basically even. It feels really good to be back to even and hopefully my stats start going in the right direction. UP! I finished with 3 straight W's in the 230's to pull me out of the hole. Earlier in the day I took a crack at a $345 and won that as well which was helpful. Towards the end of my session, I had a brutal misclick in a 9 man $60 where I 3bet to 900 preflop with 7 10 after villain 3x to 450 from MP. Villain smooth called and I jammed my last 400 on Jxx flop and villain had JQ, lol. I run so bad with misclicks. I remember one a while back in a 9 handed game where I limp AA UTG off a 15 BB stack or so, another guy limps behind and button shoves all in, folds to me so obv I fold. HA.

I decided to take today off of playing. I've been putting in quite a few hours playing the last few days and I can feel the burnout coming. I'll get back into the swing tomorrow being even on the month and be ready to grind. It's time for a little break anyways, I've had such horrible luck this last week that it's getting to the point where every little thing that goes wrong in each game just pisses me off too much. It's hard to play good poker when you are pissed off like that. It seemed like yesterday I'd even get mad if I checked down K high and lost to A high in an unraised pot. Ridiculous. Usually just taking a single day off can make a world of difference for my attitude, maybe I should have done this a little sooner.

I feel I've been putting too much pressure on myself to make money since 09 started. I think the reason for this is that 100k goal I made. I am putting way too much emphasis on this monetary target. There is still a good chance I can reach that goal, it's so early in the year but if I don't get there I don't care. I'll be more than happy with another 75k year. Even if I make less than that, that's all right. The 100k is def still my goal, but I'm not going to put so much pressure on myself to get there that it makes it no fun to play. The reason I originally started doing this for a living is because I could make more money than my other job, but also because I really love playing and enjoy the freedom it gives me. This is the best job I've ever had and I love everything about it. The competition, the rush, the mental stimulation, hell even the occasional chatbox smack talk. There is no telling if poker will be nearly as profitable an occupation in 5 yrs so I might as well enjoy it, and not get so obsessed with how much money I am making/not making. The truth is that even if I was offered a "normal" job that would pay me 200k/yr in 09 I would not take it because I like what I do now too much.

That's that, no more pressure on myself to make x amount of dollars/month. Just play my A game at all times and enjoy the game, the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of it.

up and down day

2009-02-08T06:11:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was kind of a nutty day. I ended up putting in about 7 hrs of playing, which is quite a bit for me in a single day. I'm just trying to get out of this funk. I was up as much as $500 for the day and down as much as $700 at one point but ended the day with a profit of about $50, so pretty much breaking even. I'll say I played OK, started off playing my A game but overall probably about a B game. Played pretty badly in one or two for sure. I hate to keep preaching about these bad beats I'm taking, but it's getting ridiculous. I've had streaks of breaking even/losing money like this obv but not with the amount of just crazy beats. I lost one yesterday where I had 33 on a 853 rainbow board against villains 89. Turn 8 river 5. I've never lost so many hands in such a short period of time where I am a 80% or higher favorite when the chips go in. Also, quite a few where I'm like 90% and up, just crazy.

However I know streaks like this will be offset by streaks where I run very well.....hopefully one of those streaks will come along soon.

Happy grinding peeps

Brownies are great

2009-02-07T10:08:00.000-08:00

No, for real though. They are awesome.

Trying to grind back to even

2009-02-06T16:05:00.000-08:00

Well since my last post i'm up about 1k making me -$500 for Feb, so getting close to even. I've def had streaks like this before but I think it being at the beg of the month has made it more bothersome to me, and it shouldn't matter. It's just another 5 day period, it just so happens the downswing is hitting in the beginning of the month. Today I experienced some more brutal beats, the following being the funniest:

PokerStars Game #24658434706: Tournament #138979782, $220+$10 Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2009/02/06 14:26:32 ET
Table '138979782 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: bartchalker (1190 in chips)
Seat 2: villain (1810 in chips)
villain: posts small blind 10
bartchalker: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [Th Td]
villain: calls 10
bartchalker: raises 80 to 100
villain: calls 80
*** FLOP *** [6s 2s 4c]
bartchalker: bets 200
villain: calls 200
*** TURN *** [6s 2s 4c] [6h]
bartchalker: bets 500
villain: raises 1010 to 1510 and is all-in
bartchalker: calls 390 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (620) returned to fonda1
*** RIVER *** [6s 2s 4c 6h] [Ad]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bartchalker: shows [Th Td] (two pair, Tens and Sixes)
villain: shows [Tc As] (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
villain collected 2380 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2380 | Rake 0
Board [6s 2s 4c 6h Ad]
Seat 1: bartchalker (big blind) showed [Th Td] and lost with two pair, Tens and Sixes
Seat 2: villain (button) (small blind) showed [Tc As] and won (2380) with two pair, Aces and Sixes

Villain was a massive massive calling station so i raised big and bet for value the whole way and it worked, result was def not what I was looking for though. Seems alot of the $200's have been like that for me this month, crushing beats. This next one is quite funny also from a 100 double or nothing:

PokerStars Game #24661120476: Tournament #138986906, $100+$4 Hold'em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2009/02/06 15:55:36 ET
Table '138986906 1' 10-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: aaja99 (1500 in chips)
Seat 2: bigwagner (1490 in chips)
Seat 3: PMK2MJD (1470 in chips)
Seat 4: pokerprolabs (1500 in chips)
Seat 5: Fordy1979 (1510 in chips)
Seat 6: bartchalker (1500 in chips)
Seat 7: grosjeangros (1500 in chips)
Seat 8: SirSpewsALot (1500 in chips)
Seat 9: PowellJam (1500 in chips)
Seat 10: dgray75 (1530 in chips)
Fordy1979: posts small blind 10
bartchalker: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [Ad As]
grosjeangros: calls 20
SirSpewsALot: folds
PowellJam: folds
dgray75: calls 20
aaja99: folds
bigwagner: folds
PMK2MJD: folds
pokerprolabs: calls 20
Fordy1979: folds
bartchalker: raises 140 to 160
grosjeangros: calls 140
dgray75: calls 140
pokerprolabs: folds
*** FLOP *** [Kh 8h Ts]
bartchalker: bets 550
grosjeangros: calls 550
dgray75: folds
*** TURN *** [Kh 8h Ts] [5d]
bartchalker: bets 790 and is all-in
grosjeangros: calls 790 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [Kh 8h Ts 5d] [Tc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bartchalker: shows [Ad As] (two pair, Aces and Tens)
grosjeangros: shows [9d Th] (three of a kind, Tens)
grosjeangros collected 3190 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 3190 | Rake 0
Board [Kh 8h Ts 5d Tc]
Seat 1: aaja99 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: bigwagner folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: PMK2MJD folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: pokerprolabs (button) folded before Flop
Seat 5: Fordy1979 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: bartchalker (big blind) showed [Ad As] and lost with two pair, Aces and Tens
Seat 7: grosjeangros showed [9d Th] and won (3190) with three of a kind, Tens
Seat 8: SirSpewsALot folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: PowellJam folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 10: dgray75 folded on the Flop

Once again, morons at the table so I raise big for value and to discourage set miners, shitty river, lol. But today was different in that I experienced a few "good" beats also. I don't wanna go looking for the HH but the ones that come to mind are JJ beating QQ all in pre, 66 on a 336Jx baord against J3, 64 of spades flopping a flush on a Q7x board against Q7......and holding!!! Nice!!! So hopefully the tide is starting to turn and maybe in the next day or two I can be back in the black baby.

I had some dude who was a very slight winner try to lecture me about how badly I play small pairs or some shit after I spanked him. Spanked that fucker right on his ass I did. Beat it buddy or I'll come spank your whole goddamn family. HA. I love it when people with a 3% ROI feel the need to lecture me on how badly I play, it's even better though when it comes from a total fishbowl, that always cracks me up. I like to ask them how much they charge for lessons, and if they can teach me to play as well as them.

Annnnyyyyywaaaayyyssss, I'm out this biatch.

Mr Baller bartchalker

sigh, just won't stop

2009-02-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

Blah, down about 1.5k in Feb

PokerStars Game #24616868439: Tournament #138714443, $220+$10 Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level III (25/50) - 2009/02/05 9:59:22 ET
Table '138714443 1' 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: bartchalker (1355 in chips)
Seat 2: villain (1645 in chips)
bartchalker: posts small blind 25
villain: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [As Jd]
bartchalker: raises 100 to 150
villain: calls 100
*** FLOP *** [Jh 9s 9d]
villain: checks
bartchalker: bets 200
villain: calls 200
*** TURN *** [Jh 9s 9d] [Th]
villain: checks
bartchalker: bets 1005 and is all-in
villain: calls 1005
*** RIVER *** [Jh 9s 9d Th] [4c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
villain: shows [4d 4s] (a full house, Fours full of Nines)
bartchalker: shows [As Jd] (two pair, Jacks and Nines)
villain collected 2710 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2710 | Rake 0
Board [Jh 9s 9d Th 4c]
Seat 1: bartchalker (button) (small blind) showed [As Jd] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Nines
Seat 2: villain (big blind) showed [4d 4s] and won (2710) with a full house, Fours full of Nines

PokerStars Game #24617335382: Tournament #138719507, $220+$10 Hold'em No Limit - Match Round I, Level I (10/20) - 2009/02/05 10:19:18 ET
Table '138719507 1' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: villain (1420 in chips)
Seat 2: bartchalker (1580 in chips)
bartchalker: posts small blind 10
villain: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bartchalker [As 9d]
bartchalker: raises 40 to 60
villain: raises 40 to 100
bartchalker: calls 40
*** FLOP *** [2c 9c 3h]
villain: bets 100
bartchalker: raises 260 to 360
villain: calls 260
*** TURN *** [2c 9c 3h] [5h]
villain: checks
bartchalker: bets 560
villain: calls 560
*** RIVER *** [2c 9c 3h 5h] [Ah]
villain: checks
bartchalker: bets 560 and is all-in
villain: calls 400 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (160) returned to bartchalker
*** SHOW DOWN ***
bartchalker: shows [As 9d] (two pair, Aces and Nines)
villain: shows [9h Kh] (a flush, Ace high)
villain collected 2840 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2840 | Rake 0
Board [2c 9c 3h 5h Ah]
Seat 1: villain (big blind) showed [9h Kh] and won (2840) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 2: bartchalker (button) (small blind) showed [As 9d] and lost with two pair, Aces and Nines

Slow start to Feb

2009-02-05T03:03:00.000-08:00

Feb has started out pretty slow. I worked my way into a 1k hole within the first few days, then worked out of it to close to even, then fell back down. As of right now I am about $800 down for month. I just can't seem to stop running below expectation, I just seem to keep getting drawn out on at a higher frequency then the odds dictate for the last month or so. Shit, it's pissing me off. My last 3 games I played before posting this(all $230's too) go like this:

First one I call raise with KQ flop K79, w/2 spades, villain has 79. I get stacked. I check raised flop and got jammed on, hard to get away even at 10/20 level, + villain was a total idiot

2nd game(against same guy) I raise AQ 4x to 80 pre he overbet jams all in for 1300 I call, villain shows A2 and spikes a 2 on river.

3rd game(different player) 15/30 level they min raise to 60 i 3bet to 180 with AA flop 45Q i bet 225 they call turn 6 i bet like 600 they move in for 700 or so total and show 66 for a turned set. I still have 400 left make a comeback, then at 50/100 i get it in for my 1200 stack with 1010 against 55 and they spike a 5 on the flop.

I mean just standard beats/coolers, everyone has a million of these they could share but this shit has been hammering me for a while now. It always seems also that when i get coolered it's against the shittiest players. Come on, cooler me against the better players, but let me have a shot against the shit ones!!! I just seem to be in that stage where when you're in with say JJ against 99 you don't feel like you're 80/20, you feel it's more 50/50, and when its JJ against AK you don't feel 50/50, you feel 20/80. Everyone has been there.

The good thing is I have kept my cool for the most part(kind of, it hasn't affected my playing much anyways, maybe just a little in a few games) and it's early in the month. $800 is nothing, I'll comeback and hopefully have another solid month.

RUN BETTER BARTCHALKER