Delighted to see you are playing PLO8, it's such a lovely game. Wait until you discover Big O (5 card PLO8), oh boy, best game ever.
@Tikay10 - Have yet to come across Big O/5 card PLO8. It's a minor miracle that I've successfully taught myself to play regular PLO8 and got used to having 4 hole cards. 5 cards would be really pushing the boat out! Who knows, maybe one day. ------
Current Bankroll: £1,343.01
Haven't played a great deal since the last update, but the bankroll is heading back in the wrong direction again. We've spent the past few weeks hovering between the 1.3k and 1.4k mark. Given that I've not been running as well recently I suppose that isn't a bad thing, but the challenge has certainly stalled somewhat.
Two sessions since the last update - Saturday's didn't go well, and Monday's went even worse. Just can't seem to reach the latter stages of tournaments at the moment and key hands simply aren't going our way.
There were two noteworthy results from Saturday - we finished 7th in the 7:15pm deep stack after being down to 2 big blinds as one point, and we also cashed the only £11 BH that I entered and took a few head prizes. Those two results ensured the session wasn't a total loss. No joy on Monday, though, as we blanked all 11 tournaments that I entered. Took a decent number of head prizes across the board, but again we didn't get the luck we needed to make deep runs.
I've also played a bit of 2/4 cash over the past couple of days, whilst we have a mini break from tournaments. Aside from getting top set in vs bottom set and getting 1-outered, it's been fairly chilled and I've made few quid from it. Might get back to playing the 5/10 tables at some point this week.
The one positive from last week was that despite a poor few sessions, we somehow finished 1st in the MML Forum competition. Therefore, we won a £33 main event ticket, which I will be using tonight to play the Hitman Main. Think my chances of success are approximately 0%, but it's not often I get to play a £33 main so we will enjoy it regardless and just try to play as well as we can. Probably won't play much alongside it, perhaps the mini and a couple of cash tables.
Will be playing my usual tournament session tomorrow, and depending on how that goes will decide whether I predominantly play cash or tournaments over the weekend.
Not much change to the bankroll since the previous update, although we did briefly dip below the £1300 mark.
Our free entry to Thursday's Hitman main failed to yield any profit. We hit a few nice flops early on but weren't able to get paid and struggled to increase our stack significantly. It was still going okay until I made, in hindsight, a really poor call with top pair on a draw-heavy board when the villain pot bet the river after the turn had gone check check. I then departed a few hands later. Still enjoyed playing despite not getting any return from the freebie.
The rest of the week's tournaments didn't go well and we were only able to min-cash a few of them. We did win the 5:30pm Omaha freeroll for a whopping £5.20, but that's not being classed as a win. On Sunday, we bubbled the 6pm Sunday Major seat freeroll, which was a fitting end to a forgettable week at the tables. A very frustrating 7 days, and it got to me a little at times. Just need to make sure I keep composed and avoid altercations in the chat, and just focus on making the right decisions myself.
Last night went a bit better and we got our fair share of run-good, which we lacked over the previous week. The early tournaments didn't go well, but we enjoyed a deep run in the mini. After making it through the bubble as one of the short-stacks, we rallied and moved into contention. Unfortunately, we then lost AK to 10 10 AIP which would've resulted in me being one of the chip leaders. Instead, we exited in 10th place.
For the first time in a while, the Takedown tourneys went well for me last night. We got 3rd place in TD 3 - after losing QQ to A9, we ended up being 11/11 with 2 BBs on the bubble, but managed to turn it around with a series of won flips. With 3 left, we were chip-leading but then made a couple of questionable all-ins that resulted in me failing to make heads up. We also managed 7th in TD1. Would've been nice to make another final table, but we lost a flip to QQ with... you guessed it... AK. If I had won my fair share of flips with AK in recent months, I'd have had a few more decent scores, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Just hope my fortunes change with this particular hand, otherwise it may well turn into a big mental leak in my game where I play AK too passively due to it being the source of many recent tournament exits. So a score of 10 for last night's Takedown games. It may well be enough to win this week's takedown competition, and if so, we'll have £25 of tourney tokens to utilise next week. Most importantly though, we had a profitable session which has given me some much-needed confidence.
Don't know what the plan is for the week. Would like to start playing some more cash sessions, especially with me going through a mini downswing in tournaments. That said, I think I'll still throw in at least a couple more tournament sessions.
Quite simply, nothing is going right at the moment. Turns out that when you're only winning 20% of your flips and getting outdrawn constantly, it's impossible to run deep in tournaments. I'm usually the first to admit when I don't play well, but honestly feel for the most part that I've played fine over the past week or two and have just had wretched luck. That's tournament variance for you, but when you see players that you consider to be of similar ability constantly winning things, it does make you feel as if the way you are playing is the problem, which probably isn't the right way to look at it. There are leaks in my game, but I feel I do more things right than wrong. Looks like I'll need to do a lot more studying going forward, and perhaps even consider getting some coaching for tournaments if I want to progress.
We had a break-even Wednesday session and a small profit on Thursday's session but last night was back to normality. On the back of a small win and a 2nd place in a BH, I thought we may have turned a corner, but we had a torrid time yesterday. We made the FT of the 5:30pm BH which was the first tournament of the session, but a harsh beat there set the tone for the evening. We failed to cash anything else, and after making rare (and unsuccessful) appearances in the Avenger Mini and 9:30pm Reload, it turned out to be a fairly expensive session.
Think the main problem at the moment is that anything that I play with a buy-in of more than £5.50 I seem to run terrible in. Tourneys like the 7 at 7 never seem to end well for me regardless of what approach I take to it, and my exits from the Reload and Mini last night were borderline farcical. I did river a 2 outer early on to stay in the £11 BH that I entered after making a rash all-in, but couldn't make the most of it thereafter. Looks like I'll have to stick to buy-ins of £5.50 or less for the time being until I regain confidence.
This will likely be the last update for a few weeks - with things not going well and the challenge petering out, there's not a lot of point in me just posting how poorly things are going constantly and sounding like a broken record. There are much more interesting forum poker challenges/diaries ongoing at the moment anyway, so think I'll step out of the limelight for a bit and refocus.
Cash games don't really interest me at the present time, so we'll plod on with the tournaments and hope we can somehow string a few decent results together, but at the moment it's looking rather hopeless and the only direction the bankroll is heading is down.
Been a while since I've posted here, so ought to get back to updating this regularly. I was reading back over a few of my previous diary entries and I don't like the way I was coming across. Just seemed unnecessarily negative and petty, especially given how far I've come since I started the challenge. On top of that, I was going through a spell where I was becoming ill-disciplined with my poker and getting easily agitated at the tables. It was partly fueled by events away from poker, but that's no excuse. If I've irked anyone, then I can only apologise. Certainly don't want to be known for being a prat on here, so it's something I must improve upon. In hindsight, I should've taken a break for a few weeks during that time.
Current Bankroll: £1,639.23
After a spell of no progress, there has been a bit of a resurgence and I'm back heading in the right direction again. It was mainly thanks to the last week of July, where unlike in previous weeks, I actually bothered to play some half-decent poker. Combined with running extremely well, the bankroll has increased by over £300 since the last update. The best results included winning the 8pm £500 BH, which involved me making it through the bubble in last place and then charging through the field to win after taking all the bounties on the final table, and also a 2nd place in an £11 1K BH for £130, which I entered using tokens won from the Monday Takedown competition. There were also a few smaller wins and multiple final tables during that particular week - if I had been a bit more clinical then the bankroll could've increased even further, however I fluffed my lines on a few occasions. I also won the MML for the second time and got a £33 main event shot from that. Despite busting 30 minutes earlier than the previous attempt, we did at least take a bounty for an £11.25 return. Never really built a stack up in the limited number of times I've played the £33 mains, so I probably don't have enough experience of playing them.
Have just been away for a week but am back, refreshed and ready to hit the tables again. Just going to enjoy playing and embrace whatever comes my way, good or bad. The plan is still to stick to tournaments, as I don't really have the motivation to play cash games right now. Will be mainly £5.50s and lower still, with the odd shot at an £11. I do want to be in a position going forward to play one £33 main event per week, but I don't think the bankroll is big enough to do that yet. Have also got one eye on the next UKOPS (presumably in October) and would like to build up a "budget" to allow me to play some of those tournaments when they come around. Some extra motivation for me, hopefully.
A fairly uninspiring few sessions at the tables since the last update. Not played particularly well, but no real damage to the bankroll for now.
Only played a few tournaments on Saturday, but didn't run particularly great and failed to cash anything. Sunday was a similar story with the only cash coming in the 7:15 deepstack, but I then ran into AA immediately after the bubble had gone.
Monday saw me run quite well and get into some decent positions with big stacks. Unfortunately, I pressed the self-destruct button in a few tournaments, otherwise there could've been a couple of wins that night. With me being 1/6 in the 5:15pm Rebuy and 1/7 in Takedown Tourney 1, I somehow collapsed to finish 5th and 7th respectively. Some of it was due to lost flips and standard spots, but I made some poor shoves/calls too. I also butchered a decent stack towards the latter stages of the mini - I failed to fold my pocket kings to a river check-shove from the villain who had quad 2s, which resulted in elimination just before the bubble. Definitely a loose one from me in hindsight. However, I did finish 2nd in the 6:05pm £200BH which was entered using the weekly £2.30 token, so there was a decent return from that. Somewhat annoyed with the way I played that evening though.
Yesterday's Holdem games didn't go well, with me blanking all tournaments aside from a £2.20 BH which I min-cashed. However, I won my first PLO8 game (£50 GTD Bounty Hunter). I spent most of the tournament low-stacked and finding spots to double up so I only claimed 3 head prizes, but was pretty happy with my maiden PLO8 victory. The 1st place was only worth £20 or so, but a win is a win. Certainly enjoying playing the PLO8 tournaments. Have only really played the 5:30pm one so far, but it's a good "warm up" to start the session and gets me focussed for the rest of the evening.
Hoping to do a bit better over the rest of the week, particularly in the £5.50 BHs which I seem to be blanking at an alarming rate currently. I just don't seem to be able to get a good stack in these games at the moment - part of me wants to put it down to not getting the cards to allow me to build a stack, but the other part of me thinks I'm being too tentative in certain spots. Might be time to try a different approach.
The PLO8 bh games are a proper Donkfest.The £3.30 standard games run much better.
Yeah, I can imagine that's true. Given that there are bounties available for busting people, it is always going to result in some people playing almost any 4 cards they are dealt. I seem to fold a lot more hands pre-flop than others, which may or may not be a good thing...
I've not tried the £3.30 games yet but certainly plan to do so in the near future. I've only tried the games that form part of the PLO8 league that @coo1-um kindly runs, and all 3 are bounty hunters. One good thing about them is having the "luxury" of 3000 chips in a bounty hunter, unlike most of the NLH ones where you only get 2000.
Definitely not my finest week at the tables. Bad play, poor run of the cards, and even dodgy internet that lead to me abandoning my Saturday session (although it probably saved me some money!).
Despite a few small cashes, it was quite a significant overall loss for the week. I didn't play well at all at times and found myself turning into a calling station on occasions, hence throwing away chips unnecessarily. I've always been good at not paying off bets when behind, but for some reason this has gone out of the window recently. Trying to work out if 6-tabling at once is responsible for some of my poor play, but I think it's simply down to tiredness/lapses in concentration and not being able to find the fold button when I should be. Having said that, I didn't run at all well in key spots this week - bubbling the 5:30pm BH on consecutive days was one of many disappointments I encountered. Think I could've played 1000 NLH tournaments this week and I wouldn't have won one. Was certainly 'one of those' weeks.
Last night's session was probably the best I played all week, and that was only a break-even one. I managed 4th, 6th and 7th placed finishes in a few of the £2.20 games, with key flips not going our way when it mattered. There was nearly a remarkable comeback in the 6:30pm BH, where after a bad beat I was left with 20 chips (0.5 big blinds). I somehow managed to get my stack back up to 4000 chips, which by that point was average stack, but unfortunately couldn't make any further progress thereafter. Lastly, it looked for a while that I would run deep in the mini, however I made a questionable call with AJ to an all-in which resulted in me losing half my stack. It didn't matter in the end though, as I lost KK to AK vs the chip leader for the other half of my stack soon after. So I was destined to bust in that particular hand regardless of how many chips I had. Ended up busting 8 spots away from the money.
£90 down over the past 7 days is quite concerning, especially as my average buy-in is less than £3. Everyone has bad weeks though so I won't be deterred just yet, and will continue putting the volume into the £5.50 and lower games this week and trying to avoid making silly mistakes. Won't be playing the 7 at 7 or any £11 games for now, aside from the Sunday mini. Hopefully the ship can be steadied this week, otherwise I may have to have a rethink.
I was getting ready to report on another losing week, but it turns out I'm £15 up since the last update. Genuinely not sure how that's happened after what's felt like another bad week at the tables, but I'll take it at the moment. Has been a rather low-volume week, mainly due to a lack of motivation on some evenings, and also becoming a bit frustrated at my own play and the overall run of the cards that I'm getting currently.
I did at least win one of the takedown tournaments on Monday for £50 and change, which whilst only a small win, was a least a step in the right direction after a poor few weeks. Unfortunately, I was unable to build on that for the rest of the week, where a mixture of poor play and misfortune resulted in no decent cashes. I made it to the last 7 of a £5.50 BH yesterday evening, but ended up bubbling the FT after a couple of key flips were lost. All standard spots but it's just not happening for me at key times at the moment. Meanwhile, I only lasted 25 minutes in the mini major after unnecessarily bluffing off with ace high. Still no idea why I did it but it epitomizes some of my play currently.
I have also made a few brief appearances on the cash tables again over the week - with the Sky Poker Premiership promotion coming to an end, the tables may improve a bit now so there's a chance I move back to playing some more cash sessions in the coming month. I would prefer to still predominantly play tournaments, but given how it's currently going a change of scenery may not be the worst thing.
Haven't been happy with my game at all recently - possibly feeling like that due to the fact I'm not picking up many decent scores at the moment, but I also don't feel like I've been able to build a decent stack in most of the tournaments I've played recently. Having discussed it with a few members of the Sky Community in the Discord group a few mental leaks have been identified, most notably a frequent reluctance to get all my chips in early on in tournaments which is likely holding me back. Hopefully I will have the confidence now to kick on and get back to how I was playing a few months back, and combined with a more luck and focus, maybe we can go on a bit of a heater in September.
A bitter sweet week really. The positive is that I finished in profit for the week, albeit only by a small amount, and put a lot of volume in. The disappointment was that it felt as if it could've been a much more profitable one.
Made a lot of deep runs in tournaments, and think I finished in every spot in the top 10 at some point this week... apart from 1st place. Just can't seem to get over the line at the moment. I seemed to run decently well in the early stages of tourneys, but then ran poorly towards the end when it mattered. With a bit more luck and better timing, a few 1st place finishes could have been achieved, but it wasn't to be.
The most important thing this week is that I felt I played as well as I have done for a while, which sometimes is all you can do. Confidence is a bit low at the moment and a bit of frustration is creeping in, so just got to be patient and keep trying to do the right things. Overall though, I'm still enjoying playing. Could really do with a few wins over the coming week just to put a spring in my step once again. Moving back to playing more cash games instead of tournaments remains a possibility in the near future, but not just yet.
I'm also going to try and find away of listing my session results for the next update like some of the other forum diaryers (is that a word?) do, instead of rambling on for several paragraphs like I normally do. Not having Excel on my laptop is a bit inconvenient, but I'm sure there'll be a way of doing it.
Thanks @waller02 & @coo1-um - I have used Google Sheets once or twice before, so if I do choose to report on all my results then that's probably my best bet. Daft question, but would I have to post a screenshot to get the spreadsheet to post on here? Or is there a better way of doing it? Bit of a technophobe myself.
Comments
@Tikay10 - Have yet to come across Big O/5 card PLO8. It's a minor miracle that I've successfully taught myself to play regular PLO8 and got used to having 4 hole cards. 5 cards would be really pushing the boat out! Who knows, maybe one day.
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Current Bankroll: £1,343.01
Haven't played a great deal since the last update, but the bankroll is heading back in the wrong direction again. We've spent the past few weeks hovering between the 1.3k and 1.4k mark. Given that I've not been running as well recently I suppose that isn't a bad thing, but the challenge has certainly stalled somewhat.
Two sessions since the last update - Saturday's didn't go well, and Monday's went even worse. Just can't seem to reach the latter stages of tournaments at the moment and key hands simply aren't going our way.
There were two noteworthy results from Saturday - we finished 7th in the 7:15pm deep stack after being down to 2 big blinds as one point, and we also cashed the only £11 BH that I entered and took a few head prizes. Those two results ensured the session wasn't a total loss.
No joy on Monday, though, as we blanked all 11 tournaments that I entered. Took a decent number of head prizes across the board, but again we didn't get the luck we needed to make deep runs.
I've also played a bit of 2/4 cash over the past couple of days, whilst we have a mini break from tournaments. Aside from getting top set in vs bottom set and getting 1-outered, it's been fairly chilled and I've made few quid from it. Might get back to playing the 5/10 tables at some point this week.
The one positive from last week was that despite a poor few sessions, we somehow finished 1st in the MML Forum competition. Therefore, we won a £33 main event ticket, which I will be using tonight to play the Hitman Main. Think my chances of success are approximately 0%, but it's not often I get to play a £33 main so we will enjoy it regardless and just try to play as well as we can. Probably won't play much alongside it, perhaps the mini and a couple of cash tables.
Will be playing my usual tournament session tomorrow, and depending on how that goes will decide whether I predominantly play cash or tournaments over the weekend.
Not much change to the bankroll since the previous update, although we did briefly dip below the £1300 mark.
Our free entry to Thursday's Hitman main failed to yield any profit. We hit a few nice flops early on but weren't able to get paid and struggled to increase our stack significantly. It was still going okay until I made, in hindsight, a really poor call with top pair on a draw-heavy board when the villain pot bet the river after the turn had gone check check. I then departed a few hands later. Still enjoyed playing despite not getting any return from the freebie.
The rest of the week's tournaments didn't go well and we were only able to min-cash a few of them. We did win the 5:30pm Omaha freeroll for a whopping £5.20, but that's not being classed as a win. On Sunday, we bubbled the 6pm Sunday Major seat freeroll, which was a fitting end to a forgettable week at the tables. A very frustrating 7 days, and it got to me a little at times. Just need to make sure I keep composed and avoid altercations in the chat, and just focus on making the right decisions myself.
Last night went a bit better and we got our fair share of run-good, which we lacked over the previous week. The early tournaments didn't go well, but we enjoyed a deep run in the mini. After making it through the bubble as one of the short-stacks, we rallied and moved into contention. Unfortunately, we then lost AK to 10 10 AIP which would've resulted in me being one of the chip leaders. Instead, we exited in 10th place.
For the first time in a while, the Takedown tourneys went well for me last night. We got 3rd place in TD 3 - after losing QQ to A9, we ended up being 11/11 with 2 BBs on the bubble, but managed to turn it around with a series of won flips. With 3 left, we were chip-leading but then made a couple of questionable all-ins that resulted in me failing to make heads up.
We also managed 7th in TD1. Would've been nice to make another final table, but we lost a flip to QQ with... you guessed it... AK. If I had won my fair share of flips with AK in recent months, I'd have had a few more decent scores, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Just hope my fortunes change with this particular hand, otherwise it may well turn into a big mental leak in my game where I play AK too passively due to it being the source of many recent tournament exits.
So a score of 10 for last night's Takedown games. It may well be enough to win this week's takedown competition, and if so, we'll have £25 of tourney tokens to utilise next week. Most importantly though, we had a profitable session which has given me some much-needed confidence.
Don't know what the plan is for the week. Would like to start playing some more cash sessions, especially with me going through a mini downswing in tournaments. That said, I think I'll still throw in at least a couple more tournament sessions.
Quite simply, nothing is going right at the moment. Turns out that when you're only winning 20% of your flips and getting outdrawn constantly, it's impossible to run deep in tournaments. I'm usually the first to admit when I don't play well, but honestly feel for the most part that I've played fine over the past week or two and have just had wretched luck. That's tournament variance for you, but when you see players that you consider to be of similar ability constantly winning things, it does make you feel as if the way you are playing is the problem, which probably isn't the right way to look at it. There are leaks in my game, but I feel I do more things right than wrong. Looks like I'll need to do a lot more studying going forward, and perhaps even consider getting some coaching for tournaments if I want to progress.
We had a break-even Wednesday session and a small profit on Thursday's session but last night was back to normality. On the back of a small win and a 2nd place in a BH, I thought we may have turned a corner, but we had a torrid time yesterday. We made the FT of the 5:30pm BH which was the first tournament of the session, but a harsh beat there set the tone for the evening. We failed to cash anything else, and after making rare (and unsuccessful) appearances in the Avenger Mini and 9:30pm Reload, it turned out to be a fairly expensive session.
Think the main problem at the moment is that anything that I play with a buy-in of more than £5.50 I seem to run terrible in. Tourneys like the 7 at 7 never seem to end well for me regardless of what approach I take to it, and my exits from the Reload and Mini last night were borderline farcical. I did river a 2 outer early on to stay in the £11 BH that I entered after making a rash all-in, but couldn't make the most of it thereafter. Looks like I'll have to stick to buy-ins of £5.50 or less for the time being until I regain confidence.
This will likely be the last update for a few weeks - with things not going well and the challenge petering out, there's not a lot of point in me just posting how poorly things are going constantly and sounding like a broken record. There are much more interesting forum poker challenges/diaries ongoing at the moment anyway, so think I'll step out of the limelight for a bit and refocus.
Cash games don't really interest me at the present time, so we'll plod on with the tournaments and hope we can somehow string a few decent results together, but at the moment it's looking rather hopeless and the only direction the bankroll is heading is down.
Current Bankroll: £1,639.23
After a spell of no progress, there has been a bit of a resurgence and I'm back heading in the right direction again. It was mainly thanks to the last week of July, where unlike in previous weeks, I actually bothered to play some half-decent poker. Combined with running extremely well, the bankroll has increased by over £300 since the last update. The best results included winning the 8pm £500 BH, which involved me making it through the bubble in last place and then charging through the field to win after taking all the bounties on the final table, and also a 2nd place in an £11 1K BH for £130, which I entered using tokens won from the Monday Takedown competition. There were also a few smaller wins and multiple final tables during that particular week - if I had been a bit more clinical then the bankroll could've increased even further, however I fluffed my lines on a few occasions.
I also won the MML for the second time and got a £33 main event shot from that. Despite busting 30 minutes earlier than the previous attempt, we did at least take a bounty for an £11.25 return. Never really built a stack up in the limited number of times I've played the £33 mains, so I probably don't have enough experience of playing them.
Have just been away for a week but am back, refreshed and ready to hit the tables again. Just going to enjoy playing and embrace whatever comes my way, good or bad. The plan is still to stick to tournaments, as I don't really have the motivation to play cash games right now. Will be mainly £5.50s and lower still, with the odd shot at an £11. I do want to be in a position going forward to play one £33 main event per week, but I don't think the bankroll is big enough to do that yet. Have also got one eye on the next UKOPS (presumably in October) and would like to build up a "budget" to allow me to play some of those tournaments when they come around. Some extra motivation for me, hopefully.
A fairly uninspiring few sessions at the tables since the last update. Not played particularly well, but no real damage to the bankroll for now.
Only played a few tournaments on Saturday, but didn't run particularly great and failed to cash anything. Sunday was a similar story with the only cash coming in the 7:15 deepstack, but I then ran into AA immediately after the bubble had gone.
Monday saw me run quite well and get into some decent positions with big stacks. Unfortunately, I pressed the self-destruct button in a few tournaments, otherwise there could've been a couple of wins that night. With me being 1/6 in the 5:15pm Rebuy and 1/7 in Takedown Tourney 1, I somehow collapsed to finish 5th and 7th respectively. Some of it was due to lost flips and standard spots, but I made some poor shoves/calls too. I also butchered a decent stack towards the latter stages of the mini - I failed to fold my pocket kings to a river check-shove from the villain who had quad 2s, which resulted in elimination just before the bubble. Definitely a loose one from me in hindsight. However, I did finish 2nd in the 6:05pm £200BH which was entered using the weekly £2.30 token, so there was a decent return from that. Somewhat annoyed with the way I played that evening though.
Yesterday's Holdem games didn't go well, with me blanking all tournaments aside from a £2.20 BH which I min-cashed. However, I won my first PLO8 game (£50 GTD Bounty Hunter). I spent most of the tournament low-stacked and finding spots to double up so I only claimed 3 head prizes, but was pretty happy with my maiden PLO8 victory. The 1st place was only worth £20 or so, but a win is a win. Certainly enjoying playing the PLO8 tournaments. Have only really played the 5:30pm one so far, but it's a good "warm up" to start the session and gets me focussed for the rest of the evening.
Hoping to do a bit better over the rest of the week, particularly in the £5.50 BHs which I seem to be blanking at an alarming rate currently. I just don't seem to be able to get a good stack in these games at the moment - part of me wants to put it down to not getting the cards to allow me to build a stack, but the other part of me thinks I'm being too tentative in certain spots. Might be time to try a different approach.
I've not tried the £3.30 games yet but certainly plan to do so in the near future. I've only tried the games that form part of the PLO8 league that @coo1-um kindly runs, and all 3 are bounty hunters. One good thing about them is having the "luxury" of 3000 chips in a bounty hunter, unlike most of the NLH ones where you only get 2000.
Definitely not my finest week at the tables. Bad play, poor run of the cards, and even dodgy internet that lead to me abandoning my Saturday session (although it probably saved me some money!).
Despite a few small cashes, it was quite a significant overall loss for the week. I didn't play well at all at times and found myself turning into a calling station on occasions, hence throwing away chips unnecessarily. I've always been good at not paying off bets when behind, but for some reason this has gone out of the window recently. Trying to work out if 6-tabling at once is responsible for some of my poor play, but I think it's simply down to tiredness/lapses in concentration and not being able to find the fold button when I should be. Having said that, I didn't run at all well in key spots this week - bubbling the 5:30pm BH on consecutive days was one of many disappointments I encountered. Think I could've played 1000 NLH tournaments this week and I wouldn't have won one. Was certainly 'one of those' weeks.
Last night's session was probably the best I played all week, and that was only a break-even one. I managed 4th, 6th and 7th placed finishes in a few of the £2.20 games, with key flips not going our way when it mattered. There was nearly a remarkable comeback in the 6:30pm BH, where after a bad beat I was left with 20 chips (0.5 big blinds). I somehow managed to get my stack back up to 4000 chips, which by that point was average stack, but unfortunately couldn't make any further progress thereafter.
Lastly, it looked for a while that I would run deep in the mini, however I made a questionable call with AJ to an all-in which resulted in me losing half my stack. It didn't matter in the end though, as I lost KK to AK vs the chip leader for the other half of my stack soon after. So I was destined to bust in that particular hand regardless of how many chips I had. Ended up busting 8 spots away from the money.
£90 down over the past 7 days is quite concerning, especially as my average buy-in is less than £3. Everyone has bad weeks though so I won't be deterred just yet, and will continue putting the volume into the £5.50 and lower games this week and trying to avoid making silly mistakes. Won't be playing the 7 at 7 or any £11 games for now, aside from the Sunday mini. Hopefully the ship can be steadied this week, otherwise I may have to have a rethink.
I was getting ready to report on another losing week, but it turns out I'm £15 up since the last update. Genuinely not sure how that's happened after what's felt like another bad week at the tables, but I'll take it at the moment. Has been a rather low-volume week, mainly due to a lack of motivation on some evenings, and also becoming a bit frustrated at my own play and the overall run of the cards that I'm getting currently.
I did at least win one of the takedown tournaments on Monday for £50 and change, which whilst only a small win, was a least a step in the right direction after a poor few weeks. Unfortunately, I was unable to build on that for the rest of the week, where a mixture of poor play and misfortune resulted in no decent cashes.
I made it to the last 7 of a £5.50 BH yesterday evening, but ended up bubbling the FT after a couple of key flips were lost. All standard spots but it's just not happening for me at key times at the moment. Meanwhile, I only lasted 25 minutes in the mini major after unnecessarily bluffing off with ace high. Still no idea why I did it but it epitomizes some of my play currently.
I have also made a few brief appearances on the cash tables again over the week - with the Sky Poker Premiership promotion coming to an end, the tables may improve a bit now so there's a chance I move back to playing some more cash sessions in the coming month. I would prefer to still predominantly play tournaments, but given how it's currently going a change of scenery may not be the worst thing.
Haven't been happy with my game at all recently - possibly feeling like that due to the fact I'm not picking up many decent scores at the moment, but I also don't feel like I've been able to build a decent stack in most of the tournaments I've played recently. Having discussed it with a few members of the Sky Community in the Discord group a few mental leaks have been identified, most notably a frequent reluctance to get all my chips in early on in tournaments which is likely holding me back. Hopefully I will have the confidence now to kick on and get back to how I was playing a few months back, and combined with a more luck and focus, maybe we can go on a bit of a heater in September.
Stick at it. I'm looking forward to you breaking that £2k milestone. It's not far away now, and testament to how far you have progressed.
Good luck at the tables
Current Bankroll: £1579.32
A bitter sweet week really. The positive is that I finished in profit for the week, albeit only by a small amount, and put a lot of volume in. The disappointment was that it felt as if it could've been a much more profitable one.
Made a lot of deep runs in tournaments, and think I finished in every spot in the top 10 at some point this week... apart from 1st place. Just can't seem to get over the line at the moment. I seemed to run decently well in the early stages of tourneys, but then ran poorly towards the end when it mattered. With a bit more luck and better timing, a few 1st place finishes could have been achieved, but it wasn't to be.
The most important thing this week is that I felt I played as well as I have done for a while, which sometimes is all you can do. Confidence is a bit low at the moment and a bit of frustration is creeping in, so just got to be patient and keep trying to do the right things. Overall though, I'm still enjoying playing. Could really do with a few wins over the coming week just to put a spring in my step once again. Moving back to playing more cash games instead of tournaments remains a possibility in the near future, but not just yet.
I'm also going to try and find away of listing my session results for the next update like some of the other forum diaryers (is that a word?) do, instead of rambling on for several paragraphs like I normally do. Not having Excel on my laptop is a bit inconvenient, but I'm sure there'll be a way of doing it.
Have a good week!
Reporting can be a bit of a grind especially if you play a decent session if you do it probably best just sticking with the basics.
It seems like it hit and miss if games are shown on the your account page too.
At least it’s moving in the right direction.
Oh really?
The hands were reversed to ours