I’ll make this a very quick update but I’m currently really having sort of a poker break. I’ve played a lot during the first two weeks of May and did okay. Till the 16th I was up for the month and was heading for an okay result. Since my girlfriend was coming back on the 20th I didn’t expect to play a lot during the rest of the month. Unfortunately I lost about $1.650 in my last 3 sessions and ended $1.140 down for the month. Not happy again, but with my girlfriend returning and my vacation starting coming Friday I felt it was better to leave it that way, then to play 1/2 sessions more f.e. tonight.

I’ve been relaxing since the 20th and I feel the urge to play poker again. That’s at least something I was trying to accomplish and I think a month break will do me good. I’m currently at 450.000 VPPs and planning to finish at 500.000 VPP’s on the 1st of July. That would leave me exactly on pace which is fine. I’m curious how much VPP’s I will crunch out in July/Augusts but that probably depends a lot on the weather as well. In September I will hit the cashgames and party’s in Las Vegas again and I will have to crunch out the remainder off the VPP’s during those last 3,5 months. I feel pretty okay about my current status and as mentioned before, I expected results to be different but I still don’t think I’m doing really bad. At the end of the year the total sum of money is what matters and if I would have aimed lower (VPP wise) I would probably lost about as much on the tables(bb/100 wise) but with a lower rakeback % at the end.

I’m currently really looking forward to my vacation. I’ll be leaving for Alpe D’Huez on Friday planning to cycle up the big mountain on Sunday morning. I’m anxious, excited, slightly worried and most of all very happy I’m finally doing it. It might be something a lot of people can do without much problems but 3 years ago I was in a completely different situation and to actually go to Alpe D’Huez is something that is worth a lot to me! I’ve haven’t trained a lot since I cycled the Amstel Gold Race about 5 weeks ago. I did good the first week but had some physical issues the 2nd week and didn’t feel really good the 3th and 4th week. So much for a good preparation!

Last weekend I did had a nice training planned with 4 colleagues. I still didn’t feel really well but didn’t want to miss it as it was both a good test and a really nice day out. I cycled about 80km in the hills of Limburg (same area as the Amstel Gold Race) and did better then expected. For those who are familair in the area: I cycled the daalhemmerweg, Camerig, Vaalserberg, Kruisberg(Botterweck), Eyserbosweg and Gulperberg. I was doing okay on the daalhemmerweg, Camerig & Vaalserberg which are all three not very steep, but long (for Dutchies) hills.

The Kruisberg(Botterweck) was doable but the Eyserbosweg was really pushing it. I made it, but those steep parts (16%) are really killing me. Then the final hill was the Gulperberg and after 80km cycling there was no way I could do a 19% part.

It was the first time I had to get off my bike ever but I was really happy with the result of the training. I wasn’t feeling really fit and doing the steepest part at the end might not have been the smartest idea, but that wasn’t my idea. As far as I know Alpe D’Huez doesn’t have really steep parts and it will be more about endurance.

I can’t compare the Camerig or Vaalserberg with the Alpe D’Huez but it will probably come closer to Alpe D’Huez then the last 3 hills shown. I’ll probably sent a twitter update as soon as I’m at the top and will be relaxing (with some alcohol) after! I’m back on the 14th, ready for the first match of The Netherlands in the World Championship Football. The further we get, the less poker I play so in case you don’t see me blogging it’s probably because there is a lot of football to watch

The update is longer then expected and I’ll wrap up with a May Recap and a Year-To-Date Recap. Since I’m not playing poker at the moment I’m not really into it so not a lot of poker this time but I’m sure there will be plenty of poker to talk about during the rest of the year

— May Recap—
May VPPs: 58.729
May Ahead of Pace: -26.202
May $ @ Tables: -$1.140,00
May $ FPP’s/Milestone: $6.288,82
$May $: $5.148,82
May # hands: 97.602
May # Hours: 73,83
May $/Hour @ Tables: -$15,44
May $/Hour: $69,74
May Hands/Hour: 1.322
May VPPs/Hour: 795

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 449.992
Ahead of Pace: 36.293
Total $ @ Tables: -$20.044,50
Total $ FPP’s/Milestone: $34.799,55
Total $: $14.755,05
Total # hands: 613.463
Total # Hours: 484,28
Hands/Hour: 1.267
VPPs/Hour: 929
$/Hour @ Tables: -$41,39
$/Hour: $30,47

And it’s already May! A special month for me as after 6 months my girlfriend is returning from a trip down under. She isn’t sure yet when she is coming back, the original date was the 29th but I expect her a week earlier. That means that I can better work my ass of before she comes back, as we need some time to catch up

That plan started pretty bad as yesterday I didn’t get any real hands in but did lose $468,60 in that small sample. My PokerTracker needed it’s HUD cache to be rebuild, I forgot to do that during the day and when I started my session my PC died on me twice. That obviously cost money, from both losing hands and time so I had 2 options: 1) play without a HUD 2) Wait for PokerTracker housekeeping to be done. I picked option #2 because it normally takes a little over 3 hours but after waiting for 5 hours I went to bed at 03:00 without playing any more hands. 45minutes later the housekeeping was done, grrr. Nobody else to blame but me and luckily I don’t have to work Wednesday so I can catch up, but I had preferred to consider that day as a bonus for this month.

So what happened in April? I had a bet going for which I had to reach 80.000VPP. Not a huge amount for somebody who wants to reach SNE and actually not even enough to stay on pace but I had a lot of distractions in April as well. The first session of the month was good (+$613,50) but the following session were all pretty bad. On the 12th of the month I was down $3.500 which I’ve also blogged about in my previous blog. From there on I played 6 winning sessions in a row and almost hit the break even line a couple of times.

I was very keen on getting break-even for the month. In the last session of the month I was up in the first bit and was really hoping to end the month strong. I didn’t get there and even lost $598,50 in that session finishing the month at -$1.377,50. I was swinging a lot between the -$1.000 and 0 for the last part of the month and to end the month below the -$1.000 was very disappointing. -$400 really don’t even sounds like a loss to me but $1.377,50 does. From the 4 months I’ve played so far, I’ve lost money in 3 of them, that’s not something I planned for. I did make it to 80.000VPPs so didn’t lose the bet but because Rock City King also got his 50.000VPPs I didn’t win any money. I think we both really profited from this bet anyway, so I’ll be happy to do it again!

April had other difficulties. The amount of tables available isn’t the same as in Jan/Feb. When I start my play around 19:00/20:00 CEST there are not enough $3/$6 & $5/$10 tables to 20-table. I don’t need 24 tables, everything between 20-24 tables is enough, but 16 just doesn’t do it. Sometimes it gets better during the evening, but not always so fFor the 2nd part of the month I’ve been adding $2/$4 games to my games. I was a small loser for the month at $2/$4 (-$149) over a very small sample (6.957 hands), which doesn’t worry me as I’m confident I’m beating the $2/$4 games. The issue is more that it does give me some headaches as the game plays different. It was easier to play a mix between $3/$6 and $15/$30 then to add $2/$4 again. I’ve used to do this a lot last year and I will just have to adjust but due the the different sb/bb ratio and a lot more multiway pots it just requires some more attention.

In March the $5/$10 was really working for me and the $3/$6 wasn’t, this month it was vice versa. I’ve played 37.935 hands at $5/$10, lost $2.645 which is 0,7BB/100. Not a very good score but I did improve a lot during the 2nd part of the month. The $3/$6 was okay, playing 81.895 hands and winning $1.416,50 which is 0,29BB/100. Also this should be better so there is nothing else to do then to play better during May. Below the full recap:

— April Recap—
April VPPs: 80.059
April Ahead of Pace: -2.133
April $ @ Tables: -$1.377,50
April $ FPP’s/Milestone: $4.483,30
April $: $3.105,80
April # hands: 126.787
April # Hours: 103,48
April $/Hour @ Tables: -$13,31
April $/Hour: $30,01
April Hands/Hour: 1.225
April VPPs/Hour: 774

Comparing these stats to March there are some notable differences. I had to play 12 hours more to get the same 80.000 VPPs. This was because I played about 50 hands less an hour and together with the fact I had to play $2/$4 my VPPs/hour was lowered from 873 to 774. These things don’t look promising but no other way to counter them then just work more! The FPPs/Milestone total is on the low side because I didn’t hit a milestone this month. Since I will be reaching the 400.000 VPP milestone tonight, I have sort of a headstart in May. 

For May I don’t have a VPP goal. I would love to get 80.000 VPP again, but with the bad start and my girlfriend coming back I don’t expect to hit it. 60.000 should be a minimum leaving me at 450.000VPPs for the end of May. This is 50.000 VPPs below my target I had set myself at the beginning of the year. My new goal is to finish at 500.000VPPs at the end of June which would set me right on pace! Now that will be hard as well as I’m going to cycle Alpe D’Huez at the 6th of June. After doing that I will be going on a nice trip to Southern France. The plan is to visit San Remo, Monaco, Nice, Juan les Pins, Cannes & St Tropez! I’ll be back at the 14th of June, which is the day when the Netherlands is playing its first match of the World Cup Soccer! With all the holiday and soccer matches going on it will be hard to put in enough hands to get to 500.000 VPPs at the end of the month. It’s going to be a very tough two months but I’m confident I’ll still make it to SNE!

I’m actually less confident if I’ll survive Alpe D’Huez I haven’t trained this week so far as I was busy on Saturday and had to play a handball competition match on Sunday. A buddy of mine plays competition handball and they lacked a keeper for their match. I was a keeper for 5 years and joked that I would go. Before I knew it I had to actually play. Sure, I did do it for 5 years, but that was 14th years ago when I was still a kid. The idea was to train with the guys at Thursday and to play on Sunday but the training on Thursday was canceled. I ended up in the goal and I even stopped the first two penalties. We were able to keep up with the other team the first half, but the 2nd half they really beat us on stamina. Often it ended up them having 3 vs 1 players when throwing a quick offense and sure I’m not really good, but there isn’t a lot you can do as keeper against that sort of offensives. We lost 16-32! I did had fun though. Since today (like yesterday) it rains all day long I’m not playing to cycle and I doubt it’s getting any better tomorrow, Wednesday should be okay. I also got some troubles with my back, so I skip the gym tonight and hit the pokertables early!

Getting back to the softplaying regs from my previous blog. Furbean has posted an update on his blog. It somewhat explains things, on the other side when you read the whole story (including PokerStars responses) you understand how bad it actually is. It might not have been a beneficial tactic for Furbean/Fua999 but it did create a lot of situations which would normally not have been there. I could explain a couple of these but if you are interested it might be better to read the whole thing yourself. The most weird part was the part where a phone call was made in specific situations when holding KK (Emails Part #4), I just don’t see that happening. First of all it’s actually hard to make a phone call when 20-24 tabling. Sure you can make it, but not in time without having issues with timebanks etc. 2nd, don’t we have things like skype/teamspeak/ventrillo? Or even MSN/AIM/ICQ/GoogleTalk? The whole phone call thing really sounds very weird to me and it put doubts in my mind if this is the full story. I liked Furbean as far as you can like a fellow online grinder but as mentioned in my previous blog, PokerStars did the only right thing.

So the PokerStars SCOOP has started again. Since I’m not really a tournament player these tournaments aren’t very exciting for me. What is exciting is that often people deposit money on PokerStars (there is also a SCOOP reload bonus) and some of that money will also flow into the cashgames. Yesterday I saw very juicy cashgame tables already (which made it even more painful I couldn’t play) and I think this will last for the coming 2/3 weeks. Normally I do like to play the FR LHE tournament but I’m really disappointed there. It’s a $22/$215/$2.100 Turbo tournament with 5min blind levels. There are hardly any proper limit tournaments and I expect during SCOOP that everybody would love to play deepstack or at least “normal” poker. Sure in the NL segment there should be turbo tournaments offered but I really don’t see any reason why a LHE tournament should be a turbo. With this setup after 1 hour of play every hand you play you will have to win, which makes a LHE tournament a sort of push/fold NL tournament. LHE is fun because you get to play flop/turn/river a lot more then in NL, but with making this tournament a turbo you could better make it a NL tournament as I see no reason at all to play it. I might give the 6-max tournament(s) a try, but I normally don’t like to play on a Friday. On twitter I got the message that jorj95 was selling shares for his SCOOP adventure and because I like to have a little bit more excitement in the morning to check who is at the final table of the SCOOP tournaments I bought 0,25% ($300). You can check the topic here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/163/staking-selling-shares/scoop-high-level-package-selling-shares-773430/

I did play some tournaments last Saturday as the quarterly $1.000.000 Supernova Freeroll was held again. With only 3322 players the value was pretty sweet but I was the first to leave the tournament! In the 5th hand I flopped bottom set on 358 board and got all the money in at the turn against 88. Maybe this wasn’t a very good play 200BB deep but I have issues with folding a set (especially as a limit player) if there are no flush/straights out there. I played some other $11-$22 tournaments which weren’t succesful and also participated in the PokerNews Freeroll where I did get to the Final table, finishing 4th for a booming $150!

I hope to do better in May as I did in April. A month like March would be pretty sweet and since I’ve slept a little more then normal (due to not playing yesterday) I hope to be fresh and ready to beat the games like I know I can. The wrap up this blog my current status:

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 391.263
Ahead of Pace: 57.016
Total $ @ Tables: -$19.363,00
Total $ FPP’s/Milestone: $28.510,73
Total $: $9.147,73
Total # hands: 517.535
Total # Hours: 412,13
Hands/Hour: 1.255
VPPs/Hour: 949
$/Hour @ Tables: -$46,98
$/Hour: $22,20

It’s hard to find a good moment to write my blog. During the evening I prefer to play poker and during the day I’m watching TV-Series and work out on my bike. I really want to update this more often, but I think I’ve started the last couple of blogs with a same sort of line. There is plenty to tell! Last weekend I cycled the Amstel Gold Race, I’m still playing poker and a couple of regulars in my main game were caught softplaying.

This time I’ll start with the non-poker stuff, as I am a happy man. Last Friday I traveled with a friend to Valkenburg to cycle the 100km Amstel Gold Race. I didn’t train as much as last year when I cycled the 160km, but I did had the feeling it wasn’t going to be a real problem. As I cycled more km last year I was sure I could handle the distance, the difficulty were the 8 hills I had to climb during those 100km, something I can’t really train for as where I live there are no real hills.

On Friday we arrived in the hotel and we caught up with 8 others from my home town to have a drink before the race on Saturday. I was planning not to drink any alcohol on Friday but after seeing the party that was going on in the bars & disco’s I did had a couple of beers(group pressure?). When I woke up on Saturday I was fresh and ready. We were planning to start at 10:00 and around 08:30 I made sure I ate enough food to start the long journey. At 10:23:46 I passed the Start line and the fun could begin. We cycled with a group of 4 guys and two of them were really hung over from the night before. The pace was slow and the first hill was really easy. The weather was beautiful so we could really enjoy cycling and I was smiling on my bike.

A long flat period followed and the Maasberg was the next hill to climb. This one was a bit more difficult mainly since it was a brick road and also because it was really crowded so you had to pass people while you were shaking all over the places on your bike.

The road continued to the Adsteeg which was easy as well and we finished the first half after the Lange Raarberg, again I had no problem getting up there and was even making jokes on the bike. Then after 50km there was an area created to refill your drinks, to eat something and take a piss before cycling the next 50km. My idea was that if the 2nd 50km was like the first, it wasn’t going to be any problem to finish the race but oh boy, what was I wrong.

From the moment we got on our bikes again, it started going uphill. There where 4 small hills and every time I was down one, the next one started again. I just couldn’t get any rhythm going and I when asking around how these hill were called, people said these hills weren’t part of the 8 hills I was counting on… Jikes! I cycled another not named hill and when I was at the top I really wondered how much longer I could continue. I could still cycle a good pace, but as soon as it went uphill I really was out of breath.

The Wachelderberg followed which was for me the biggest killer of the day. With a max percentage of 14% and people falling of their bike in front of me I could barely get to the top. With a little help from one of my buddy’s I did manage, but wow! I could only hope this climb was the worst at that moment, because I knew for sure I couldn’t handle any worse then that.

When cycling down I already saw the next hill which looked really high and I was still completely out of breath when starting the climb. It was a long one (fromberg) but not that steep and I was able to manage it myself, still completely out of breath however.

I knew there where only 2 more hills to go and since I really couldn’t follow anybody’s pace no more I told the other 3 to continue without me. I could catch my breath a little (I was still cycling) preparing myself for the last 2 climbs and since it was only 10km more to go, I motivated myself to really finish this without getting off my bike. The Sibbegrubbe followed which was the longest climb of the day (2.100m) but somehow I didn’t really had any issues with the climb. As long as it doesn’t get to steep it seems I’m okay and this climb was long, but was pretty constant and I was surprised about myself I managed so well. Now I knew there was only the Cauberg left and for sure this wasn’t going to be easy.

I cycled down the sibbegrubbe and road into the village of Valkenburg again. I saw loads of people left and right and when I turned around the corner there where only 900m left to go! The beginning was doable but when I looked up I was shocked! I could really see the steep parts in front of me and knowing that they “only” lasted 200m I really didn’t want to get off my bike. I saw loads of people who stopped at the steepest point and walked and just as I wanted to do that myself I could see the “easier” part ahead of me. With a last sprint I managed to make it and when cycling over the finish line I couldn’t be happier!

Cycling 50km in pain, I managed to reach the final after a total of 4 hours and 17minutes, only 2 minutes later then my buddies. There where 12.000 others who did so as well, some only 65km, some 250km but all people gained my respect when doing the 100km myself! At the top it was a big party and with the beautiful weather still out there I had a well deserved cold beer!

The steep parts really killed me and I really wonder how I can ever manage to get on top of Alpe D’Huez. I think it helps a lot that it’s easier to get into a rhythm as the climb is more constant and that’s something I seem to handle pretty well. Still it’s 13,8km uphill with parts that go up till 11%, I don’t even want to think about it at the moment! I already started my training for Alpe D’Huez yesterday again as I do realise I will have to train a lot the coming 4 weeks if I really want to get to the top in one go. It would also be good if I can drop a couple of kilo’s in weight, but when working out a lot I do have to keep eating so I have to find a good balance the coming 4/5 weeks! The rest of the weekend was really fun as well, going out on Saturday and sitting in the sun on Sunday were a nice treat and I will definitely be back next year!

So I started writing this blog on Tuesday but since I also wanted to play some poker I’m now (Wednesday) going to hopefully finish the poker part. Why can’t I never keep things short?

April so far is not that good. I was very happy about my March results and was really looking forward to grinding in April. The sidebet would make sure I would play enough so I was prepared for another $10K month (Incl FPPs and Milestone Bonus). The month started good with a $613,50 session but soon I had 3 big losing days (-$1.474,- / -1.088,- / -1.667,-). Down -3.5K isn’t fun but I really believe this was mainly due to a small downswing. I couldn’t hit a single AK/AQ and was playing against a lot of aggressive players. I wasn’t hitting anything and when trying to call down with Ace high, I was off almost every time. I was only losing at $5/$10 and still winning money at $3/$6 which was the exact opposite of last month, which I prefer

From the 13th on, I had five small winning sessions in a row winning back almost $1.100 . The best day was a Thursday when I was really relaxed playing a little over 3 hours while watching TV and winning $712,-. I shouldn’t watch TV while playing but I do have to grind a lot more in the evenings during the week now and I can’t always play my A-game. That’s okay as far as I’m concerned during the week, on my real poker days (Sun/Mon) I should always play my A-Game and that’s normally no problem.

Because I came back late from the Amstel Gold Race weekend I didn’t want to play Sunday night. I was fit, not that tired but I had the feeling that I would get tired half way the night. When I start playing I don’t want to stop and if I lose money I will beat myself up for playing while I knew I wasn’t prepared enough for it. A good reason not to play but it did put me a little extra behind pace for the month and also for the bet! (have to get 80.000VPP this month) Now I did plan to catch up on Friday or Saturday but now I’m also have something planning for coming Sunday evening. I’m going to watch the first match of the Dutch Soccer Cup Final, Ajax – Feyenoord! Only Ajax supporters are allowed and I’m a Feyenoord supporter I’m going with loads of Ajax supporters and I’m not a real die-hard or anything but it will be hard not the cheer when Feyenoord scores. I’m sitting in a stadium with probably 50.000 Ajax Supporters so I better not

Getting to 80.000 should be still doable, I’ll just have to grind whenever I can! Below my month so far:

Something I can’t leave unmentioned is the fact that 4 FR LHE regs where banned from PokerStars caught softplaying and/or cheating. This has created a lot of fuzz for a couple of days in the Supernova Elite Thread on 2+2. It started with a post from Mcbrag here. There were two cases 1) Diamond789 & Qwer234 2) Furbean & Fua999. The first case wasn’t discussed in to much detail but I did play a lot with diamond789, I’m not sure if he was a SNE but at least he grinded as much as I did last year. I wasn’t really familiar with Qwer234, but I did play a couple of thousand hands with him. With Furbean and Fua999 however I did almost play every day. I even had a bit of contact with Furbean every now and then and was reading his blog every day. When he suddenly quit his blog and stopped playing beginning of March I wondered what happened but because he said he would be back in April I thought it was something related to his private life.

In the 2+2 thread it was disclosed that Furbean and Fua999 had been softplaying eachother since late 2008! To be honest I was very shocked! I’m not stupid enough to believe nobody tries to cheat/softplay on PokerStars, when it comes to money (or even without) people will always try to cheat to win, but I was surprised that people who play so much would even consider doing this! Since you are talking about your own job/life support I would really think people would never take this risk. If there are millions to win, sure I understand why people try (not that I support it in anyway) but when you “only” softplay each other there isn’t that much to gain and so much more to lose! It seems that Furbean/Fua999 really only softplayed each other which comes down to not defending or stealing each others blinds and when HU not call/raise any bets with weak hands.

So I was shocked about Furbean/Fua999 doing this but I was also really shocked that PokerStars never detected this! Maybe the did somewhere in February or they did get a tip but if you spent 5min looking at the hand history both players have with each other it’s so obvious I couldn’t even think of a single point to defend Furbean when he was still only accused (he came forward himself a little later in the 2+2 thread). If two people who play so often together never go to showdown HU (in over 2million hands I believe) I wonder why this was never detected. Both players are SNE and I really thought PokerStars would better look into high volume players like that!

I can’t be that pissed about the whole softplaying to be honest. In one way yes, sure I was fooled and cheated. Less VPPs were gained on the tables and stats were “fooled” because Furbean/Fua999 softplayed each other. On the other side I do believe they never “teamplayed” and we all did get more hands in per table to make up for the lost VPPs. Yeah it’s wrong to do it, but to me there is a big difference between softplaying and teamplaying, although there could be a grey area in between which makes it hard to really split these two things. I would never do it myself and my best buddy and I even never play at the same table together but I can understand the why. I just would never be that “stupid” (sorry furbean) to do it risking my income and also bankroll! 

For me personally there is also an extra added downside to these people getting caught. Furbean, Fua999 and Diamond789 where all 3 in my top4 people I won the most money from! This means that I had a good edge on these people and since I played almost daily with them they did make out a good portion of my winrate. Often on almost every table I played, all 3 people sat down. Also these players together added 5/6 tables extra to the $3/$6 and $5/$10 FR LHE tables and since March the amount of tables have dropped sometimes not even getting above 16 on a regular evening.

So in one way I’m very unhappy about these people getting caught, but on the other side how unhappy can you be about “cheaters” getting caught? I think it’s always a good thing! I did sent a mail to PokerStars stressing the fact I really wondered how this could have lasted so long and for the first time I haven’t got a reply after five days! Time to sent a reminder.

Of course there is other stuff as well The season finale of Spartacus was just WoW! If you haven’t watched it yet, please give it a try. Even people who don’t like the “cartoonish” (how can you not?) graphics, love the story! It’s not just Sex & Blood, the story really has some unexpected twists and even most good series out there, hardly ever surprise me. Flash Forward is also still cool, I’ve also finished the first season of True Blood which I liked as well and with Lost, The Pacific and Fringe still airing there is still plenty to watch!

I mentioned I had a tough decision to make at my job and I’ve chosen to follow the ambitious route! Within the coming 3/4 months my boss will need to find a replacement so I can start doing more IT-Architecture work. My new boss is really looking forward to utilise me as soon as possible and I’m really looking forward to it as well. It is going to be tough but I haven’t doubted since I’ve made my decision, which is a good thing!

I got plenty of other stuff (poker and non-poker) but I’ll leave it for now. It’s already late and I still have to re-read the whole thing so I’ll wrap up with a short Year-To-Date overview.

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 360.063
Ahead of Pace: 58.693
Total # hands: 467.206
Total # Hours: 373,37
Hands/Hour: 1.261
VPPs/Hour: 964

Just like Jan/Feb I’ll do a recap of the month. This time finally with some good results which means dropping down in stakes worked out. I would love to get back to playing $10/$20 and $15/$30 but I’m 100% sure this is not going to happen anytime soon. I’ll start out with my month graph and the “basic” results followed by plenty of other things. 

— March Recap—
March VPPs: 80.022
March Ahead of Pace: -4.909
March $ @ Tables: $2.890,00
March $ FPP’s/Milestone: $7.281,23
March $: $10.171,23
March # hands: 116.668
March # Hours: 91,62
March $/Hour @ Tables: $31,54
March $/Hour: $111,02
March Hands/Hour: 1.273
March VPPs/Hour: 873 

These numbers make me happy! I did not only stop losing money, I actually won money at the tables. Also as the graph shows my game improved during the month which gives me something to look forward to in April. Including my FPP’s and 300K Milestone Bonus I’ve earned more then $10.000, not bad for a months worth. Also an hourly rate of $111 is something I would love to keep the coming months. There are 3 things which I’m not so happy with. 1) My VPPs/Hour is down from 1.084 in January to 873 in March. This is of course due to dropping in limits but the difference is huge! I play a little more Hands/Hour but still it’s more then 200 VPPs/Hour less. This somehow hurts my motivation a lot. I used to think: “I play one more hour and got another 1.000 VPPs”, now I’ve complete lost that feeling but I should just shut up and play. 2) The # of hours I’ve put in is also a bit disappointing, it’s still 6 hours more then in February but it’s not enough. February also had 3 days less then March! This has of course something to do with the fact that I lost a bit of motivation but the number should be at least above 100. 3) The amount of VPPs in March. Now this has everything to do with 1 and 2 but I didn’t even make enough VPPs to stay “on pace” in March. Sure I was plenty ahead in Jan/Feb but my whole plan was to get ahead enough during the first five months of the year so I could take it easy during summer. 

Well, that’s not likely to happen anymore! I wanted to finish at at least 500.000 VPPs at the 1st of June but that means I have to get 190.000 VPPs during the next two months. It’s doable but I doubt I’ll do it. I’ve given myself an absolute minimum of 80.000 VPP a month for April/May and to push myself a bit I’ve agreed to a sidebet with fellow Pokernews NL forum member Rock City King. He wanted a sidebet to grind at least 50.000 VPP this month, I want to grind at least 80.000. If any of us doesn’t make it, he pays the other $500. The idea is that we both make it and it’s for both not something which is unlikely to happen but losing a bet is just not an option. Those $500 at stake still count as money but those can be missed, I’m just not going to lose a bet! Now 80.000 sounds easy since my low for this year was 80.000. For the 1st week of April I’m playing a live tournament tomorrow evening, Friday evening I go to Awakenings and Saturday during the day I will be at the Pokernews PALOOZA and during the weekend of 16-18 April I will be cycling the Amstel Gold Race with lot’s of beer. I had my doubts about the coming month, the sidebet should cover those doubts so I’m confident that I’ll get another 80.000 VPPs. 

Last blog I said that I was winning again and I didn’t change my game at all. Well, I think this is not true. I noticed myself playing last week and I did notice a difference. I’m playing the exact same basics and I doubt I play any different preflop. My postflop play is changed a bit. I seem to be more relaxed and consider lines I normally didn’t take. This doesn’t mean I’m now calling down in stead of folding, it could even mean I’m raising where I normally strongly considered a fold. I have a better “feel” for these plays were normally when I tried this I would run into a set or two pair all the time. At least, that’s how it felt. I hope I can continue to play like this because I would love to grind back all the money I’ve lost in Jan/Feb! I’m still down $17.527,- but that’s a lot better then $22.000. It’s okay if that takes all year but my goal for this year was to at least play break-even and I would really like to achieve that goal. 

Now to complicate things my new boss, I changed department 1-1-2010, has really great plans for me. He wants to put me in a position as solution architect working for all group services domains. This could be a big step up in my career as I’m currently working in the HR domain only and this will give me the ability to spread out my wings and to become an expert in many other domains like Finance, Risk & Procurement. This will give me a great opportunity to extend my knowledge and to meet a lot of people to whom I could prove myself to. Since these people are often higher up in the organisation this could really be beneficial to my career. There is no extra money involved directly in taking this job but when I do things right it will definitely lead to a better position, thus more money in the future. So what am I complaining? Well, I doubt I can take this opportunity when working part-time. Switching back to full-time would mean I’m not only keeping the same income, my income would even drop since I earn more with playing poker then at my current job. I can’t finish my current SNE plans or really need to work my ass (60+ hours a week) off till the end of the year and it’s also a really different approach to life compared with what I’m doing now. I’m currently working 24 hours a week, I work hard but I’m not that challenged at work. I get my challenge out of my poker career and cycling goals. I’m really happy with how things are going and also I’ve never been so happy at work. If I get my “real” career going again my work will become a big challenge (which I like). I will have to leave my comfort zone since I will be doing work I’ve never done for people I’ve never met. 

Back to less serious things. As you’ve all read before I’m watching a lot of TV-Series but I’ve found another good one. I have plenty of others to watch but I was hooked after 2 episodes. I doubt I can explain things better then the Trailer but before you watch it you should look at the list of movies the creator/writer of Flash Forward has worked on http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0333060/:

• Blade (1998) (written by)
• Batman Begins (2005) (screenplay) (story)
• The Dark Knight (2008) (story)

And movies to come:

• Untitled Batman Project (2011) (pre-production) (screenplay)
• Superman: Man of Steel (2011) (announced) (screenplay) (story)
• X-Men Origins: Magneto (2012) (announced) (screenplay)

I watched all episodes which are out (13 so far) in 3 days and ‘V’ resumed yesterday as well so I have a tight schedule (Caprica/Lost/Spartacus/V/Flash Forward)  

I’ve been a bit sick over the weekend and I didn’t go to the gym or cycling for a couple of days. I did go to the gym again today and hopefully I can work a bit on the bike on Sunday/Tuesday because I only have 2,5 weeks to go until I have to ride the Amstel Gold Race. Looking forward to it and I think I can already handle it but a little training can do no harm! 

I’ll wrap up with my year to date results:
 

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 310.046
Ahead of Pace: 66.210
Total $ @ Tables: -$17.527,00
Total $ FPP’s/Milestone: $23.962,57
Total $: $6.435,57
Total # hands: 389.074
Total # Hours: 306,97
Hands/Hour: 1.267
VPPs/Hour: 1.010
$/Hour @ Tables: -$57,10
$/Hour: $20,96

It’s been 3 weeks since I’ve last blogged and there is enough to tell! Let’s just kick start this with saying that I’m happy with how things are going at the moment. There is plenty of room for improvement but I’m still human, unlike some of those grinders out there

A quick catch-up first with a graph of my play from the 1st of March onwards:

Before yesterdays session (-$681,50) I was extremely happy with my graph so far. Now I need to at least win back yesterdays losses before the end of the month before I’m happy. Being up $2/3K for a month plus bonuses means steady income and a good profit. Especially if you compare it with what happened in Jan/Feb. My low for this year was -$22.000, I’m now down $19.000 so at least I’m already $3.000 up again but I’ve also gained a lot of VPP’s so I’m finally in the plus again for this year!

I’m only playing $3/$6 and $5/$10 and moving down made things really “official”. You still hope it’s sort of a downswing or money you will win back as long as you are playing the same limits. Now since I’ve dropped down I’m not thinking anymore about regaining my losses at $10/$20 and $15/$30. If I do well the rest of the year I can win back those $19.000 at $3/$6 and $5/$10 and be happy with a break-even year and SNE. Assuming I would break-even till the end of the year, then I’m still happy with what I’ve earned for this year, I did hope things would work out different of course but that’s poker. Now I could also run as god and come back to $10/$20 and $15/$30 but at the moment I’m not looking up, I first need to get a stable winrate at $3/$6 and $5/$10.

Strange enough I’m doing really good at $5/$10 and at $3/$6 I’m still slightly losing . It’s a lot better then it was in Jan/Feb and if you would ask me, I haven’t changed my game! I now have a winrate for March at $5/$10 of 0.73 while in Jan/Feb my winrate was -0.81. I really can’t explain that huge difference, I don’t even have the slightest idea! That’s a bit worrying but I’ve seen other regulars at the tables having the exact same thing in Jan/Feb.

If you just look at the graph above, It’s scary! JaneTheHot, one of the best players at my stakes, got the exact same graph as I have. The first week of 2010 everything was fine (just like me) and then a huge downswing hit. These are only the stats from my own PokerTracker (so not all Jane’s hands), but PTR shows about the same. JaneTheHot sustained a much better winrate then I did in 2009 but it’s really scary that our graphs look so similar! Jane stopped winning at the exact same moment as I did and picked things up again at the exact same moment. The only difference is that I played a lot more, so I’m a bit further down still

I can’t really explain these things. I don’t believe that pokersites are rigged. If I would do that, why bother even playing? Most of it will probably be up & downswings but I believe some of it is the flow that’s going on at the tables which changes month by month. Some months people try to call down a lot, the other month people start raising all kind of things on the turn and the next they only play fit & fold. Now one of these matches my play style the best and others suck for my play style and while most regulars will continue to play the same game, the fish out there make up the most of our winrate. Me and my buddy have the complete opposite play style but often in months he is doing really well, I’m not and vice versa. Pretty hard to try and explain these things on paper without any solid proof, so considering it as just some rambling.

Besides the fact that moving down made my losses sort of “official”, grinding VPP’s has become a lot tougher. I was almost up till 1.100 VPP/hour and currently it’s about 900 VPP/Hour. This didn’t really boost my motivation while I should work harder! I’m at 282.000 VPP and my end-goal for the month is to have at least 310.000 VPP. That means a little over 100.000 VPP a month, but in January I made 140.000 VPP and in March I expect only to get 80.000. Now I’m actually not that worried if I’m going to make SNE or not. I must say, I was first when I moved down but when I do a simple calculation. 80.000 a month for the next 9 months means 720.000 VPP. I only need 690.000 if I get to 310.000 at the end of this month and getting 80.000 VPP a month isn’t really hard work. I wanted to get a lot more VPP during the first 5 months this year so I could get time off during summer but even if I don’t do that, SNE is still doable.

Knowing this (the fact that I’ll make it) is the worst thing for my motivation! Since I have the idea that I make it anyway I put in even less hours. Distractions are on the lure almost everyday so that’s really the thing I should watch out for! Getting a Starcraft II Beta Key was probably the worst that could have happened to me. I have a very simple gaming career: Command & Conquer (1995), Warcraft II (1996), Red Alert (1996), Duke Nukem 3D (1996), Diablo (1996), Starcraft (1998), Diablo 2 (2000), Planetarion (2001),  Counter Strike (2002), World of Wacraft (2005).

Sure I’ve played different games, but these are all games I’ve played so much that you could call it sort of an addiction. I had a struggle of almost a year to leave World of Warcraft and start playing more poker. I can only imagine what could have happened if I would have started playing online poker in 2005 or 2006, but I must say being guidleader of a WoW guild for 2yrs was a blast as well. I played WoW for about 3years and this month my WoW guild has it’s 5year anniversary, something I’m very proud of as well!

Now Starcraft II Beta is there and the game is just the same. Now you could say that’s pretty bad, but the game always rocked so I don’t really care. I got an “invite a friend” key and I’ve been playing this game over and over both 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2. I play my poker sessions on Sun/Mon evening/night but else I try to play as much Starcraft II as possible. I’ve never been really l33t in this game like Elky or RaSZi, but I was proud to be #1 in the copper ladder last week!

What I didn’t tell is that the ladder system works like this: Platinum > Gold > Silver > Bronze > Copper and each ladder has only 100 people on it, which means I was #1 of the worst ladder out there and only out of 100 people but still it made me happy I’m now playing in the Bronze ladder and I’m somewhere top15. Since my buddy now also got a Beta Key we’ve been playing 2 vs 2 and we are actually in the gold league and not doing that bad. I’m happy as long as my win/loss ratio is positive and it’s for both!

Besides Starcraft II I almost got back into Planetarion last week. It’s a text based strategy game which used to have ten thousands of players. It’s a tick based game (you only have to do things once every hour) but because of that the best thing is to really be there at least once every hour. I played the game to the extend that my sleep pattern looked like the following:
01:05 - Bed, so I was around after the 01:00 “tick”
02:55 - Alarm so I could do things in the 02:00 “Tick”
03:05 – Bed again so I could do things in the 03:00 “Tick”
05:55 – Alarm so I could do things in the 05:00 “Tick”

I then did this for the full 3 months of a round (and I did play multiple rounds), being top10 almost all ’round’ but I actually never ended really high myself. That means a max of 5 hours sleep and I would be awake for about 10 minutes during those 5 hours. When you had incoming, you would stay up all night to cover yourself and your friends. Well, I’m a geek but that game was both killing and extremely fun! I had a full-time job and didn’t look to healthy but a WoW addiction is nothing compared to this

I said sort of yes to an old friend who still plays the game. I would really love to play the game but when I spend last Wednesday evening on IRC (that’s what you use for the community chit-chat) I knew I couldn’t just play the game a bit for fun. Luckily I bailed out in time! I’m always looking for distractions but I just shouldn’t!

Besides having a good time playing games there is so much more out there. I try not to drink as you might have read but two weeks ago I had one of my “pre-selected” off days. A pubquiz in my local pub and every team had to dress up, see result below:

It was a really fun evening and I ended the night completely wasted but didn’t even had a real bad hangover the next morning! I really can’t wait until it’s summer again and I can have my weekly beer!

The sun has been out every now and then the last weeks and that also means I can finally cycle outside. Last week I had a nice run but yesterday I really outperformed myself. I solo cycled 80km in less then 3hours and when I was home I was really exhausted! I have to do 100km on the 17th of April (Amstel Gold Race) but that includes loads of hills so I’m not there yet. Since I’ll be cycling with a group I can probably hide from the wind a bit more so I feel confident that it’s not going to be a problem.

On the 22nd of May I scheduled another trip of 100km together with 4 colleagues. We will visit some of the famous dutch hills in the south Probably the same as I will be cycling in the Amstel Gold Race, but that’s fine. Then on the 5th of June it will be probably my big day! Cycling the Alpe D’Huez! I can’t wait, I really can’t! The cycling season started again a couple of weeks ago and seeing the pro’s going up a mountain complete wasted just gets me even more excited!

Next to all the gaming and cycling I’m still watching Spartacus, Caprica and Lost. I’ve also finished the last 7 episodes of Heroes S4 which I still had to watch. I think I’ll start to watch Entourage S6 but there is still so much more out there I’m sure I don’t have to feel bored for the coming years!

I also live next to Bloemendaal which is the party beach in the Netherlands. The grand opening was yesterday, I did miss that party but I’m sure I’ll spent some time partying on the beach again. On the 2nd of April I go to Awakenings Indoor which always is a really good techno party. I already bough tickets for Awakenings Outdoor (26th of June) and Loveland (14th of August) and will definitely go to Mysteryland as well. Defqon1 and Welcome to the Future are also both festivals I want to attend so I’m really up for another year of outdoor (dance) festivals!

When all the festivals are over the biggest party still has to come. On the 3th of September I will be leaving for San Francisco, spending 2 days downtown before driving to Los Angeles. I’ve already visit Los Angeles for a long weekend so we will not be doing a lot over there, but we are visiting LA only for Six Flags Magic Mountain About 10 extreme roller coasters should get our blood pumping before we go to Las Vegas for 8 days of party. My birthday is the 14th of September which will probably be a party which we will never forget!

Poker, Gaming, Parties, Cycling, TV-Series, Festivals and Holiday. I think a nice break-down of my life in just one blog! Unfortunately since all these things take their time it’s hard to put in the weekly hours to blog! Hopefully I do better in the coming three weeks. Thank you for your patience!

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 282.019
Ahead of Pace: 62.841
Total # hands: 348.757
Total # Hours: 274,10
Hands/Hour: 1.272
VPPs/Hour: 1.029

Yesterday I’ve played the last session of February. After a horrible January I had the idea the worst was behind me. I couldn’t have been more wrong! I’ll start with the numbers and explain from there:

— February Recap—
Feb VPPs: 89.716
Feb Ahead of Pace: 12.996
Feb $ @ Tables: -$12.411,50
Feb $ FPP’s/Milestone: $7.624,10
Feb $: -$4.787,40
Feb # hands: 108.203
Feb # Hours: 85,97
Feb $/Hour @ Tables: -$144,37
Feb $/Hour: -$55,69
Feb Hands/Hour: 1.258
Feb VPPs/Hour: 1.043

As you can see even if I add all the FPP/Milestone money I’m still down $4.787,40. That means that it’s just impossible to continue at the stakes I started out with this year. Last week on Sunday I made the decision to drop down in stakes. I had given myself the time until the end of this month, but it just had to stop right there. I was playing my session and I can’t even tell what happened. I play my normal game, I won my pots but somehow I don’t win enough of them. The end result is one steady line that goes down and there is not one moment were I had a nice flow going. I think you could compare it the best with what would happen if you would fold every hand, so you only play the blinds every round. The real reason why I decided at that moment to drop down is that I just didn’t care anymore.  I was down -$3.500 and I felt num. I refreshed PokerTracker and was like: “Oh, -$3.500 well that’s nothing new”. It just isn’t the state of mind you should be in. Sure you have your swings in the game but there should always be a positive spirit to grind that money back as soon as possible. I completely lost the spirit as I had the idea I couldn’t have done things any other way.

Now there will be plenty of players who know what my flaws are (feel free to comment/mail them) but the only wise thing I can do is dropping down to stakes I’m comfortable with. I will have to win some money again and most important, build up my confidence. I’ve dropped down to $3/$6 and since there are no 24 tables of $3/$6 running I play some $5/$10 along with them. I considered playing $2/$4 to get to 24 tables, but the VPP rate is really low there and I don’t even think I could play enough hours to get to SNE if I have to play to much $2/$4. Below a graph of what happened so far after I’ve dropped down in stakes:

It feels a lot better. In stead of losing money, which lately often were sums in the range of $1.500 – $4.000, I’ve actually won money! Sure it’s only 22.000 hands and only two days of playing but it feels good. I’m up 1.21 BB/100 at $3/$6 which I think is really good and I’m down a small bit at $5/$10, -0,28BB/100.

I don’t get why I do better now at the $3/$6 & $5/$10 as I was playing them as well when I was playing the $10/$20 & $15/$30. It could be because I focus more on the higher stake tables but if you would ask me I’m doing the exact same thing now. I’ll just have to drop the “why?” questions for the moment and focus on winning. If I look at my $3/$6 graph for 2010 I see hope!

I’ll grind back those $414 I’m still down and I hope to do the same with my $5/$10 graph but that will be a lot harder.

When both graphs show a good result I might consider going back to $10/$20 but I should forget about that for now and just have to face the fact I’ll have to play more hours to reach my goal.

I didn’t reach my VPP Goal for February, which was 100.000 VPP. I must say that the Olympics didn’t help at all. If I would run good I would have probably played poker and turned on my TV to watch all the Speed-Skating but since I didn’t want to risk losing even more money, most of the days I just watched the Speed-Skating and didn’t play any poker. I was easily distracted the 2nd half of this month, because I had lost most fun in playing poker and there were plenty of fun things to do. I hope to do better in March, the positive last two days should help with that and I’m planning to get at least 100.000 VPP in March, putting me again a good amount above pace.

This week starts pretty bad since I switched my work schedule a bit to have a bit of fun on Thursday evening. That means that this week I have one night less to play poker, so I will have to catch up in the evenings. I will actually drink alcohol again on Thursday, the first time after New Years Eve, so I expect to have a huge headache on Friday

Not only poker was really bad the last two weeks, also sport didn’t got its needed attention. Last week I hurt my back doing some biceps exercises and I couldn’t do anything for a couple of days. It seems to be over now, so I’m back in the gym tonight. Only 7 weeks until I have to cycle 100km and today is actually the first day it’s really good weather to cycle outside. To bad I have to work tomorrow and since I really wanted to type a new blog I’ll cycle in the gym tonight, hopefully for the last time.

Part of my normal distraction are TV-Series and I’ve actually started watching a new TV Serie which I really like.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand – Official Trailer

I watched all 6 episodes yesterday. It’s a mix between 300 and Gladiator and I’m a big fan of both! Check it out. Besides watching Spartacus I watched the new Episode of Caprica, which isn’t that good but I’m just still in love with Battlestar Galactica! Also I’m keeping up with Lost, but I don’t really like where it’s going. I’ll finish it since it’s the last season but I think the writers are really trying to put in as many weird things as possible and write a story around those things, in stead of focusing on writing a good story. I noticed that a lot of people still like Lost a lot, so maybe it’s just me.

February was my worst month ever, I dropped down in stakes and I’m actually down in money for the year. On the other side the Olympics were really good to watch and after dropping down stakes my last two sessions were hopeful so I can start March with a positive attitude. I’ll be back!

 My year to date results below:

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 230.023
Ahead of Pace: 68.379
Total $ @ Tables: -$20.417,00
Total $ FPP’s/Milestone: $16.681,29
Total $: -$3.735,71
Total # hands: 272.406
Total # Hours: 215,35
Hands/Hour: 1.265
VPPs/Hour: 1.068
$/Hour @ Tables: -$94,80
$/Hour: -$17,35

What can I say? I’ll just start typing and see how far I get. I’m downloading Lost at the moment and don’t feel like playing poker tonight. I haven’t blogged in a while. I planned to blog at least every week, but things are very tough at the moment. When I was thinking about blogging or not back in December, I was doing very good at the tables and was looking forward to a great year of poker where SNE would be my ultimate goal. As things stand today, I’m at my all time low and it just isn’t fun to write a blog about how bad things are going. I don’t mind to blog about the bad stuff that happens along the road but so far, except the first week, I only have negative stuff to blog about.

I just don’t want this blog to turn into one big moan, so that’s for sure not what I’m going to do. I’m not going to blog session by session as I’m normally doing, it would take me to much time and it would only be a lot of bitching. I’ll first show my February results and I’ll go from there.

So far I’ve played 74.958 hands and lost $9.834.50 running at -0.71 BB/100. That makes this month even worse then January and at the end of January I thought I had the worst part behind me. From a solid winner in 2008/2009 playing over 1.000.000 hands, I turned into a big loser in 2010, after playing 240.000 hands. Being a small loser would be bad, but I think I could life with that, losing -0.64 BB/100 isn’t small anymore, I turned into a train wreck.

It hurts, it actually hurts a lot but if I feel pitty for myself I doubt anyone will let me win. I’ll have to turn this myself and there is only one way to turn it and that is to become better in playing poker. I’m actually not in a bad mood at all and this is mainly because of the time I spent in the gym. I work-out 3 times a week and I cycle 2 times a week and I feel great. I just cycled 2 hours in the gym and I feel very healthy and can’t wait to cycle the Amstel Gold Race in exactly 2 months. I doubt I would still be motivated to play without me being this fit, I really think it’s currently the thing that keeps me going.

I’ve also passed the 200.000 mark, that means 20% of the SNE chase is done. That feels like a good accomplishment as well! I’m way ahead of pace, so if needed I could take it slow.

Currently I’m planning to finish this month doing the same I’ve always done (Including last year), which is playing 20-24 tables $15/$30 till $3/$6. If things remain as bad as they are I’m going to drop down to $3/$6 the 1st of March and grind my way back limit by limit. This means that I’ll play up to 20 tables of $3/$6, I fill it up till 20 if needed with $5/$10 tables. I then will move up as soon as I proved myself to be a solid winner at that stake. The next level will be $5/$10 filled up to 20 with $3/$6 tables until I’m back where I am now.

Last weekend I’ve played a session with my best mate, who also plays LHE on PokerStars. He plays the same stakes so he knows exactly how the game works. He plays a completely opposite style of what I do which makes it hard to try and copy things from each other. What does help is to talk about the game and to understand what his thought processes are when he plays hands in a certain way. This makes it easier for me to understand some of my opponents, as I sometimes really don’t get how solid winners can even win playing hands in some ways. I played a session were he was watching me and it really was useful for me to adjust my play in some spots.

Other positive things are the fact that I’m actual winning money against most of the regulars. If I take a look at the top20 people I played most hands with this year I’m a winner against 12 of them. I’m also up in money against the top20 which means I’m not doing bad against the FR LHE regulars. It does make explaining my losses even harder. When I look at the tables I often see a table full of bad players and maybe 1/2 good people. I see bad plays, bad players and I see no reason at all why I should leave the table, but I don’t turn out to be a winner at the end. It seems I lose money against the “average joe”, so that’s where I should probably focus to improve my game.

I’m currently losing 0.64 BB/100, which is a lot, but I’m paying 0.98 BB/100 in rake. So I’m actually up against the players on the tables, I’m just not beating the rake. I won’t say that this makes me a good player, but at least I’m not a complete loser

I’m now going to catch up with Lost Season 6. I’ve also got Entourage, True Blood, Carprica, Fringe, Heroes and 4 Seasons of the Wire to watch! I actually really liked The Wire S1 after all! It’s not really the same as any other series I’ve watched before but I’m now really into the story and I want to watch Season 2 asap. I just need to get a hold off it first

I’m also a big fan of the Olympics, watching almost any sport. I didn’t miss a single speed skate race and I really loved the Snowboarding which aired yesterday. I already thought it was a really good addition to the Olympics 4 years ago but I think this year a lot more people watched it and I only heard positive comments about how cool it looked on TV! I can’t wait to see the rest of the Olympics and I really have to find out where I can watch the Ice Hockey matches because that is the only thing I’ve missed so far. Go Dutchies!

If I blog a bit less you will have to excuse me. If I drop down in limits I have to play even more hours to reach my goals. Also as said at the beginning of this post, It’s not fun to only write down negative things. I need to keep my spirit up and it helps me more to watch a TV-Series when things go bad then to spent two hours blogging about how bad things actually are.

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 207.382
Ahead of Pace: 81.355
Total # hands: 239.161
Total # Hours: 189.57
Hands/Hour: 1.261
VPPs/Hour: 1.094

After my last blog there was only one more session to play in January. I started around 18:45, but already after 30minutes I had to quit, because PokerStars was bugged again. Players couldn’t join any tables so there was no reason for me to play. 45minutes later I pick up the play again and I’m ready for a long night. After 3 hours of play I’m down, but I’m not doing that bad and being down $1.200 should be nothing to worry about. An hour later I’m up again and extremely happy with my play. Since I was doing good at the tables I didn’t want to take a long break, after a small break I get back and lose $1.600 again. Wow, 30 minutes ago I was still up but well, swings! I keep playing and I’m motivated to finish the month strong. I go up, down again and then it takes me about 3 hours to get to almost break-even.

It’s 05:45, I’m almost up and I see most regulars leaving the tables. Most bad players are still sitting and I’m extremely awake, mainly because I’m fitter then ever. I decide to keep playing, because I had the feeling I could even end the day with some winnings, not just break-even. 06:30, doomswitch kicks in and I’m down almost $1.500 and really disappointed! I try to fight, I’m still playing decent poker and I still see a good opportunity to win money at the tables. Then I get AA, KK, JJ, AA and lose all 4 within 5 minutes at the $10/$20 or $15/$30. My positive spirit (even when I was down) completely broke…. Being down is fine, fighting back is good, being down again when I was almost break-even again feels shit, but not getting any “luck” to win money at the tables ends my motivation completely at 07:30. I’m used to beats, but sometimes it can still hurt your motivation. I played 15.875 hands and lost $2.185.

I don’t think I’ll have to do a recap of how my month went. I expected a though month, I aimed for 100.000 VPP, but hoped 125.000 VPP. I would have been satisfied with a break-even month on the tables, expected more because of my results the last quarter of 2009, but knew January was going to be though. You can read everything else in my previous blogs, so I’ll just stick to the numbers in this recap.

— January Recap—
Total VPPs: 140.307,29
Ahead of Pace: 55.367,29
Total $ @ Tables: -$8.005,50
Total $ FPP’s/Milestone: $9.057,20
Total $: 1.051,70
Total # hands: 164.203
Total # Hours: 129,38
$/Hour @ Tables: -$61,87
$/Hour: $8,12
Hands/Hour: 1.269
VPPs/Hour: 1.084

Let this be the worst month at the tables this year and I’m okay with it. I’m ahead of SNE pace, I’m ahead of my own SNE schedule. I had not much problems to play 130 hours in one month, next to working part-time and doing sports 4/5 times a week, while still having an active social life. In January I’ve proved myself I can make it to SNE. I do have to start winning money, this could be due to playing better myself or having more short term luck, but in February the tide will have to turn.

I’ll blog about my first sessions of February the next time. Tonight I will play the $1.000.000 VIP Freeroll with some friends who will come over here and play as well. I’ll play poker for pleasure tonight and I’m motivated to play tomorrow again and start the upswing to get break-even for the year!

Finally a good moment to write my blog, I’ll explain along the way why I didn’t write it any sooner. Tonight I’ll play the $100.000 VIP freeroll, then I’ll go to Utrecht and will dance till dawn! Ben Sims is in the house and he is one of my favorite DJ’s. Last year, Ben Sims in the Puma was my best night out in 2009, so the expectations are very high! It better be good

After my last blogged session on Tuesday I played a session on Thursday. It started out as a pretty normal session, but in the end I got my ass burned again. 6.883 hands and losing $2.698,50, how the hell did that happen? After 2.400 hands I was about to quit as it was Thursday and I had to work the next day. I wanted to quit as soon as I was even for the day and suddenly I get a real bad streak going and I’m stuck $1.600. Next thing I know I don’t want to go to bed, especially since I’m winning a bit back again. Then the real shit happens and I’m down $3.000 without even knowing why. Well, I remember I was really running awful at 10/20, I saw a player doing the most stupid bluffs and he was winning again and again. It’s 02:30 I’m not happy, especially since I have to work the next day, but when I wake up I remember it’s just a normal day at the poker tables.

After a good Friday night out in Amsterdam I consider playing poker on Saturday. I decide not to and call a friend to just hang out at his place. We decide to try a custom game of Warcraft III. I never really played Warcraft III and I haven’t played a lot of video games at all since 2007. I had a Diablo II revival back in September after reading some Diablo III previews, but that’s about it. We play Warcraft III Risk Next Gen and I’m insta hooked. I always liked Warcraft, Warcraft II was the first game which I played over a LAN for ever and ever with 7 friends. I really like Risk as well and this combination is really good. I’m happy I don’t have a Warcraft III copy myself and at 05:00 I go home to get a good night sleep before my next poker session on Sunday.

I was eager to do good after my loss on Thursday. I start at 18:30 play about 4.500 hands and PokerStars gets bugged. I’m still up a small bit and have to take a forced break. I can start my session again about an hour later and for the next 5 hours I go up and down but never really get a good streak of cards but I was happy with my play. I don’t want to quit yet and after a 30min break I log another 2.o00 hands but since I really wasn’t able to get anything going I decided to quit at 06:00. 12.178 hands, +$328 and take a look at the graph It looks really swingy but if you check the numbers on the left, then you see that the actual money swings where not that bad.

I skip the gym on Monday and I’m happy to start another session. I’m down about $1.500 for a long time, manage to get almost back to break-even and then I get a streak of good hands but awful beats. It feels like this has happened to me a lot of times this year, after winning with an average distribution of cards I lose big time when I get a streak of premiums. It feels really fucked since those streaks normally get you a big boost in your graph, I take a break at 01:41 and I’m down $822. I hit the couch and watch another episode of The Wire S1, I’m still not sure if I like it that much, I need a bit more action, especially in the middle of the night.

The 2nd session of the day is a lot better. A good start but just like Sunday I don’t get to win a lot of money in the end. It’s 06:00, I’ve played 10.522 and lost $1. I’m okay with my results since I did win after all, but I would have loved to win some money back which I lost on Thursday.

Tuesday I hit the gym and cycle for 2 hours. I feel really fit already, not drinking and working out helps a ton. I want to hit 125.000 VPP and I only need about 1.700 VPP. The plan is to get those and write my weekly blog. That was the plan…. I hit my target and I’m only down a bit and I’m on the way up, I tell myself to stop as soon as I’m even (didn’t I want to same thing on Thursday?). I was playing really good, but saw a lot of 2/4 outers where people just played awful. Also every straight/flush draw completed when somebody was chasing it, people didn’t play bad in most spots and that’s just variance. I was better then my opponents and had a good feeling about my play, so there was no reason to stop other then that I couldn’t write this blog.

I refresh my Pokertracker every now and then, but I miss the 5 hands I’m up. What happens next is best compared with getting a dart thrown in your eye. 4.998 hands, -$2.030. 38% W$SD (Won $ at Showdown) at the $15/$30 with a WTSD off 43%. Translated: Lot’s of good hands/flops, but none of them won at the river. During my normal workdays (Sun/Mon) I do fine, but on my “extra” days I seem to always lose. This feels really bad, since when I play on those days I feel like I’m doing that bit extra which should get me to SNE. I know I shouldn’t think like that, but when you are not winning, loads of strange things creep into your mind.

I’ve played 150.000 hands and I’m down about $6.000. I was up almost $3.000 in the first week so I lost $9.000 in about 3 weeks. That’s serious money! Do I feel going for SNE has anything to do with it? Not at all! I would have played exactly the same stakes and exactly the same amount of tables if I would not go for SNE. I would have played less hours but I’m far from burned out. I’m super motivated and in general well rested. I’m above SNE pace, but even more important I’m ahead of my own goals for January, VPP wise.

I decide what’s always best when things don’t go your way: I take a break until Sunday. On Wednesday I play Risk on Facebook for 3 hours after hitting the gym, on Thursday I attend a farewell drink at work and on Friday evening I chill with some friends and play some more risk (I’m a little addicted after playing Warcraft III Risk Next Gen) and as already said, tonight I’ll dance till dawn on some heavy techno.

I’ll hit the tables again tomorrow to finish this month. January was a bad month in 2009, it’s even worse in 2010, but a year has 12 months so there is plenty of time to catch up!

— Current Status —
2010 VPPs: 127.602
Ahead of Pace: 48.150
Total # hands: 148.418
Total # Hours: 117,38
Hands/Hour: 1.264
VPPs/Hour: 1.087

I wanted to blog about some random things but since my previous blogs already contained so much text I decided to do it in a separate blog. I’ll start with a couple of questions I’ve received:

Tell something more about yourself?
Well I think most stuff is written on my Biography Page and what I’ve planned for this year you can read in the 2010 Poker Goals & 2010 Cycling Goals pages.

Do you like to become a poker pro?
That’s a question I haven’t answered and it’s a tough one. I think the answer is no, but it’s not that simple. I’m already employed for over 10 years with my current company and can’t complain about my salary. If I would be younger I would play poker full-time and start a career later, if I wouldn’t have real career options I would probably also play full-time poker and see what happens. Since I have a good career going I don’t want to leave the job-market for a couple of years as I think it will be very hard to roll back into it on the same level. I think poker will be there in <5 years but I’m not sure about the long term. Also if regulations change in the Netherlands I wouldn’t be willing to move, which is to me a really important factor. If you don’t mind living somewhere else, there will always be a country where you could play poker, but I’m not 100% sure how things will work out in the Netherlands. Not that I worry about this a lot, but it’s something to consider.

There are a lot of others things to consider. There is no such thing as a disability insurance for poker players. Poker earnings are treated as gambling revenue in the Netherlands, not income. My right arm is currently worth a lot of money! Sure, what are the odds? But I do have a history with different kinds of physical problems, so my chances are a bit higher then average. Also I have a mortgage and not having a job makes it hard to switch/change that mortgage.

Also since I started playing part-time I really enjoy work so much more. I don’t drag myself to work 5 days a week, I really enjoy doing it for 3 days. I really like to play poker 2 days a week I probably could do it for 5 days, but it’s also good to have some interaction with people and poker is nothing else then sitting solo behind your screen for hours doing the same thing every second. I love it, don’t get me wrong but I think if you would do it 5 days a week it could drive you really crazy, especially if things don’t go your way for a longer period.

When I started working part-time last year I saw it as the first step to become a full-time pro. My idea was that if things would work out in 2009, I would go full-time pro in 2010. Already half way I decided this duo job is really perfect. I can play enough poker without getting fed up with it and I’m still on the job market so whenever I want to boost my career again I don’t have to explain a gap in my résumé.

This would all change if I suddenly become a nosebleed regular and could earn $1.000.000 in a year.

What’s your edge in limit?
Another though one. Just looking at the numbers 0.2BB/100. Most NL players will laugh their ass of right now but I don’t think it’s that bad. A real good winrate is 1BB/100 in FR Limit. There are maybe 4/5 people with a decent sample in my database that have more then 1BB/100. People I consider really good in FR Limit have a little over 0.5BB/100. Other people who play 20-24 tables like myself have about the same winrate and a lot of people loose a bit (but still profit due to rakeback/VIP program). 

What a lot of people forget is that if you break-even, you are already beating the game by a nice chunk. Especially since you pay a lot of rake in limit games. I didn’t calculate this, so shoot me if I’m totally wrong here but looking at PokerTracker I see that you roughly pay 0.7 – 1.0 BB/100 in rake alone. I would be happy to break-even and still make all the money the VIP program offers. To me poker is about money ($/hour) not about my winrate, although a higher winrate of course would get me more money.

If I just think about my skill, well I could beat any limit game but it just depends on the players of course. In general I can beat the $2/$4 and $3/$6 games without any trouble. The $5/$10 game can be really tough and the $10/$20 and $15/$30 can go both ways. Sometimes there are really crazy people sitting there and sometimes it’s full of tough regs and I shouldn’t even be sitting there. I haven’t tried $30/$60 or $50/100 but I do see those same crazy people there, but also a lot more tough regs. Currently I say I have to stick where I am and since I’m down in 2010 so far, I should get better in beating the current stakes I’m playing and not even think about moving up.

Current skill level of the games in 2010?
It depends on the month. January is a tough one as people get in fresh with lots of new aspirations. November & December are clearly the best months to play poker as most people are playing over their head in stakes and number of tables to get SNE or a milestone. So far the games in 2010 are tough, but I did expect that. There are some direct opponents who did improve in 2009, but I don’t notice a too big difference, I do hope I did evolve myself as well. I saw some new players in 2010 having a really good start, but I see that so often. A new player moves up, he wins the first 2/3 weeks and then his graph will become a trainwreck. Some player moved up in stakes and started playing 20 tables at the same time. They are good players and play a real good game for the first couple of weeks. After that it becomes really hard to play 20 tables and still hold on to the level they used to play. Also regulars will pick-up there style and are able to counter it since they are more experienced. This happens all year long, but I saw a lot of new players in 2010 and to some this has already happened. Others are there to stay and any new winning regular at my tables is one to many of course, but besides new good players there are also plenty of new bad players.

There is a lot of stuff about limit to learn on the internet but there is so much more about no-limit. I think a lot of bad limit players are not learning players. They just like to play limit. There are also more games now then in 2008/2009. Just look alone at the number of players on PokerStars, where last year at the start 200.000 people was a lot, at the end 300.000 seems huge and now we go up to 350.000 every Sunday. Poker is far from dead and Limit games seem to stick around. I was afraid limit games would dry up when looking at the number of games during the summer of 2009, but the current state of the number of games is better then ever.

Why SNE? Why not move up? Change to NL?
I need to work towards a goal to get the most out of myself. Last year my goal was to get 600.000 VPP and I made it while playing 16 hours of poker every week. Since I’m working 24 hours a week it all adds up to a normal full-time job. Since my girlfriend is away the first 5 months of this year on a backpack trip in New Zealand and Australia I had the idea to play a lot more during the first part of the year. Also last year I was lazy for a lot of periods because I had no intention to go above the 600.000 VPP (ending up at 650.000 isn’t that appealing) and I was on pace. I had the feeling I could do more and SNE is appealing looking at the rakeback % jump, it jumps from 50% at 600.000 to 69% for SNE.

So why do I not play less tables and move up? There are a lot of reasons for this. The most important is that I don’t see myself as a talented poker player. I don’t think I’m ever good enough to play nosebleeds. I think I’m good at poker not because I’m good at the game itself but because all the other factors you need to be a complete poker player. I have a good discipline, I can focus for long periods of time, I hardly tilt, I don’t get emotional over losing money, I don’t play above my bankroll, I never play drunk and I’m good in playing a lot of tables at the same time. All these skills have a factor of how they add up to your total profit. The higher stakes you play, the higher the factor “real pokerskill” becomes and the lower some of the other factors should be rated. They are still needed, don’t get me wrong!

Also there are not so many higher stake games running and they are filled with good people. I think it’s easier for me (looking at what I just stated above) to increase my $/hour multitabling $3/$6 till $15/$30 then to move up. $15/30 is already on the high side, but if I beat the game why not add it to the tables I’m already playing? I doubt I’ll move to $30/$60 any time soon.

I’ve considered many times to switch to no-limit but there are a couple of reasons for me to stick to limit. One is that I can earn good money in it and I like the game. I like to play flop/turn/river and push small edges. Where most no-limit people think that it doesn’t matter that much if you miss a river bet or make any other mistake which only cost you 1 bet, they don’t realise that you only win 1BB/100. So every mistake of 1 BB has a huge impact on your winrate. 1 bet doesn’t seem much in a NL game but it’s all that counts when playing limit. It would costs me several months to learn NL and move up to a level where I earn the same as I currently do and I don’t even think I like the game, so that just leaves me with playing limit.

The only thing I do consider for 2011 is playing 6Max. I think this would improve my overall limit game, I would like to play HU as well as you can get a much higher winrate in 6Max and HU games. 2010 I’m planning to go for SNE and even when I get 5*FPP for 2011 I don’t think I’m going to do it for 2 years in a row.

Why don’t you give an overall $ status at the end of your blog?
Yeah, another valid question. When considering to write this blog, one of many considerations was that I don’t need everybody to know exactly what I earn. On the other hand when I’m reading a blog myself I do like to read about $, because in the end that’s what this game is all about. If I’m SNE at the end of the year, everybody can check what that’s worth. You can check PTR to see how I’m doing although it’s not 100% accurate. When writing my first blog I was thinking to post my graphs in BB’s but I think most people rather see $ so I sticked with it. I might add overall $ in the future but for now I’ll leave it like this because I feel I’m already really open enough about my financial situation. Nothing bad with being curious though

I hope I did answer your questions, feel free to ask any other!

Some more random things now:

When I play poker I always listen to music. Without my headphones on I think I can play for 30minutes max. I also need the PokerStars bleeps, if I turn them off I miss all the action. It’s like a bleep tells my head to starts thinking, I click and the next bleep sets my brain in motion again. I listen to all kinds of music, it’s either a mix of Pop and R&B (Michael Jackson, Alicia Keys, Kayne West, Rihanna, Jamiroquai, Lilly Allen, Joss Stone, John Legend, Micheal Bublé, George Micheal and many others) or I listen to Trance Music. The dance scene in the Netherlands is huge and we have a lot of different styles. When I go out I prefer Techno and I hardly go to festivals or clubs where the DJ’s play Trance but for playing poker it’s my #1. I listen to Trance/Goa mixes of Paul Oakenfold and the In Search of Sunrise or Magik Mixes compilated by DJ Tiësto. That music can really put me into the zone. Since it’s one big flow I really get into some sort of trance and combined with being fit and playing good I sometimes don’t notice that hours tick away and when looking at the clock it’s suddenly 3/4 hours later. Now the really weird thing I noticed last week is that at work, I miss the music. When I’m answering e-mails or in a meeting I don’t, but when I need to concentrate because I have to finish a memo or project documentation I need music to concentrate. Without it, I really miss something. It’s almost that I can’t concentrate anymore without music. I don’t know what to think about it, but I hope it doesn’t affect me in doing anything else in the future.

I’ve also been planning my next Las Vegas Trip. We are planning to go early September for 8-12 days. I would love to go 12 days but some guys don’t even like to gamble or play poker. Maybe I stay around a little longer with 1/2 people but the intention is to party. In 2008 I booked two trips to Las Vegas, one to play poker and one to party and the party trip was out of proportions. My birthday is also in September and I guess it will be my biggest birthday bash ever We are with 5 or 6 other guys and are planning to hit the clubs as much as we can and I’ll combine it with some poker during the day, if I don’t feel too bad. I’m already looking forward to it, Las Vegas is really my town!

I also have a 2010 Cycling Goal Page and although most readers are interested in just Poker I will keep you guys a bit up to date with the progress. I signed up for the Amstel Gold Race and because all the other guys wanted to go for the 100Km I’ve also signed up for that distance. I wanted to go for 125Km or even 150Km but I don’t like to do it alone as I’m a really inexperienced cycler. I didn’t cycle outside yet but I think I can start doing then from next week on, depending on the weather of course. I did cycle in the gym on Sunday & Tuesday each for about 90 minutes. It’s really boring to do in the gym but at least I get some training. On Monday/Wednesday/Friday I also work-out in the gym and that’s going pretty good as well.

I’m still not drinking any alcohol and trying to eat less and already lost some pounds. Not drinking benefits in more ways as I feel a lot more fit after the weekend, which helps when playing poker. When going out I do miss it and I can’t wait for June I do have to sleep a little more, since last week was really crap. I was tired all week and that didn’t help my game at all. Being well rested is really important for both my poker and sport goals so I have to really force myself going to bed. Often it’s not even that I’m doing something useful, I just can’t drag my ass to bed since I’m used to staying up late (06:00-07:00 when playing poker). Definitely something I need to work on!

It’s Saturday and I had a good night out in Amsterdam yesterday so I’m thinking what to do tonight. I was planning not to play any poker, but I’m not sure now. Tuesday another blog with the results of this week sessions. Thanks for the positive comments and I hope you liked the read again!