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Can a chicken go pro?
chicknMelt
Member Posts: 1,159
Hi All,
thought I would jump on the band wagon and do a diary of my own. My main goal from the diary is to set some targets and focus on them instead of floating through my poker life.
Background:
-I'm a 27 yr old **Edit** just realised I'm 28...lol ** IT professional, and I've been pretty much obsessed with poker for the last 3 yrs or so. It started off with the occasional home game,then I fluttered with online play for a bit, and did rubbish. I was rubbish, so i guess thats to be expected. I started to read the odd book or 2 but I was mostly an occasional, recreational player happy to donate my £50-£200 a month. Since then I started going to a pub poker league, and I caught the bug. I wanted to beat everyone else there so I read up alot more, joined poker tutorial sites and really started to work on my game. I also started to play online alot more. Mostly on another site to start with
Close but No Cigar:
around a yr and a half ago now, my game was coming along nicely, and I was playing pretty good poker. I had managed to build up a bankroll of around $500 from $50 or so mostly playing .10/.25 cash and the occasional MTT SNG during a week off work. I decided I was going to take a shot at the Sunday Million. my first ever, and certainly the biggest online tourney I had ever played. Lets just say I played the nuts, and ran like god, especially at the start of the tourney. (one of the first hands I played was 96s, vs 77 and 88... flop was 5,7,8!!). Anyway, I ended busting in 60th (out of 7000+) or something like that. gutting, but still a $2k score!
Its fair to say I had no BRM concerns at that time... my average buy in was probably around $100 after that, and for a while it worked. the very next day I final tabled a $109 tourney for another $1k, + couple of days later I won $3k in a $55 tourney. I won nothing for a further week but then the next weekend I had my best and worst online day ever. I final tabled the big 162 and the hot 44 in the same night for a total haul of around $6k! ...thats the good bit 
...the bad bit...my last hand in the big 162 was brutal. With either 5 or 6 left ( i cant remember which), as 2nd in chips, i flopped a FH with 66 on a 363 board. got it all in on the flop vs the chip leader, who turned over AA. needless to say they hit their A on the river. out. ....95% fav to be a massive chip leader with $20k up top. Why now?!! Gutting, but still a good night.
I withdrew a bit of my winnings for some "treats" and left the rest in my account... Anyway, from this point on I obviously thought I was unstoppable and proceeded to lose my entire ~ $6k bankroll playing mostly $100- $215 tourneys.. I thought I was better than I was, and I used no BR management... not a recipe for success! Let me tell you too, the $215 tourneys over there are TOUGH. All tourneys are tougher in fact. and the fields are much bigger, so you can go looong streaks without a decent win, even if you are a top player.
New beginnings:
I had started to play a bit on SKY after a friend convinced me the tournaments were good. for a while, I played a bit of both sites but nothing like the volume I was doing before. When playing one night on sky I noticed there was an SPT in Luton. £110 entry. I decided at the last minute to come along and buy in direct if I could. Luckily we were early cos I think I got seat 199 and there was a 200 player cap! I won said SPT for £5600. BOOM! my biggest win ever at the time and it was enough to reignite the poker fire in my belly.
I started to grind online again tourneys again more heavily, but still wasnt having the success I was looking for. I decided my BRM was terrible, every time I built up a decent roll i'd get tempted by the bigger buy in tourneys and huuge prise pools and played too big. So I decided to change my main site to SKY, as the tourneys are smaller, the max buy in is generally £100 (and not that often). Less varience, less temptation and softer tournies. In the mean time, I'd also binked another Live Tourney for £7k at DTD in February, so I deposited a chunk of that into SKY and started grinding there. this was in March/April this year. Anyway, a very nice website has kindly kept track of my results since April...
profit | number of games | |
April | 4119.95 | 188 |
May | -520.04 | 77 |
June | 1974.37 | 114 |
July | 151.02 | 231 |
August | 7370.78 | 431 |
September | 2353.69 | 217 |
October | 971.83 | 184 |
November | 36.54 | 121 |
I couldn't possibly remember all the good and bad that happened during this time, but my highlights are definately winning the PRIMO and final tabling 2 UKOPS main events 2 nights in a row (last UKOPS). the worst parts were the inevitable downswings. I've had 2 fairly major ones during my time on sky both lasting around 150 games and dropping 80-100buy ins. I know exactly how Lambert180 felt last month!
November so far:
Didnt get off to the best of starts with a £500/600 mini downswing. nothing in particular i can think of that stands out, but I just wasnt running well at the right times I guess. That has since changed in the last couple of days because I've won 4 tourneys and final tabled another 2. all unfortunately in the smaller tourneys - the main and big BH's (£55) havent been kind to me in November so far. The 4 I won were a £20BH and £10 400Gtd BH on Tuesday, then the £20 deepstack and the £11 turbo on Wednesday.
GOALS
- Volume: get priority membership/ play 500 tourneys a month.
- playing every timed tourney between 7pm and 11:15pm
- playing every tourney between 7pm and 10:30pm with a £10+ buy in
- play some satelites (semi finals for £55+ buy in tourneys mostly)
- Im not sure if this is even possible with the number of tourneys available. I refuse to play the £5 BHs while the rake is 15%
- Profit: Earn enough (on average) to pay myself £1500 a month - so £3k in profit by the new yr.
- Learning: identify weaknesses in my game and remove them
- Live: qualify for the UKPC
- Leaderboard: improve on my current rank of 5th on sharkscope. beat stayorgo (currently 4th i believe. I know stayorgo, he is a friend of mine).
As well as meeting those goals for sky, I will be trying to build up a BR on another site by playing $3.50 6Max SNG's to start with. My goal by the new year is to be $500 in profit on that site.
---BTW - this extra rake could be yours SKY if you reduce the rake on your £5 BHs to 10%
I have a very limited BR on the other site - I will be starting with just $7 and a few points - I'm stubborn and don't want to deposit. again. So if the first couple of SNG's dont go well, I'll have to resort to points. Because of this, I will play 6max regular speed STT's to reduce variance a little and maximise my edge (if I have one).
I'll try to update regularly, if I dont, its probably because its not going well!
Comments
ok... so my first nights play (was written last night)
other site:
in the 6max SNG's i managed to cash 1 of my first 2 luckily, a 2nd place, on my 3rd I got a 1st place, which gave me a bit of breathing room! I'd now have to go on a massive 5.5 buy in downswing to go broke. never gonna happen. lol.
Great read - Thanks! first time I have tried a blog type thing...so feedback is welcome!
I've noticed your name cropping up very regularly when posting the tournament results, I'd say you have a great chance of making your target profit if you can maintain the volume. Good luck
If the chicken is doing ok as a rec player, why cross the road. GL
regards Alan
Paul