Finnished college early today with no longer needing to do maths invested that time into poker. Meh session, never seen people flop so many sets/houses, specially when im connecting large too.
In the last 3 sessions you've "never been flush over flushed so often" and "never seen people flop so many sets/houses" against you You're up 4.5 buyins over that sample. Hope I get a downswing like yours sometime soon. Posted by DOHHHHHHH
Never said this was a downswing, balanced. Putting words in my mouth
A downswing is when you lose money isn't it? When I posted your last session was -£1.86. Since then you've won so the downswing is over again. If I'm wrong can you educate me plz I don't know what your rules are Posted by DOHHHHHHH
no a down swing is when u run below ev.
A new day
So had some time before college need to leave around around 11.30 so decided to do an hour on unibet. Spun up a free token i got there on signup to €81 or so and keep meaning to withdraw, but the bonus is sessions where i might end early or weeman is running around offers me a site that I can take slightly less serious. So loaded up 4 tables. Was going very well early doors then had a hand, was a beat nothing serious was sending it to a friend. Accidently hit CM4 instead of paint on my hot keys and well unibet software didn't like that. Got at out on all tables trying to get cm to shut and wouldn't let me come out of global sit out. As a result i had to end the session early.
Thursdays is my day off now, at least till semester 2. Mels mum usually pops over and has the weeman she couldn't do this week so full day just me and weeman. Went to visit Dad aswell proactive day.
Had a nap when Mel got home, had a horrible sleep through the night, and Mel was doing the nursery parents evening duties leaving me to look after weeman so nap was essential. She woke me up for tea. A lovely bit of salmon and some veg.
Anyways got weeman to bed and decided to play some FM then grind. Grind started in sick fashion, guy limps we check BB with J3o Jx3r flop lead he calls, 3 turn lead he raises we flat and lead shove river he has Jacks. Session was like that alot, heatering monsters and not winning.
One very interesting hand at the end of the session, don't usually post strat in here but think this is a very worthy discussion hand. Villian is a seasoned regular who I have a vast amount of respect for, rarely gets out of line.
So this is a sort of dual day update, Start with yesterday. College was good had another essay feedback meeting, went well, very good feedback on how I debated my points just a couple of little errors, just need to explain the facts behind my opinion better although the tutor did say the facts where there to be seen. So positives to take from it.
Poker i deposited for main and mini packages having sold 50% of the main £38.50 deposit to cover both mtts. Some will look and think crude words but was money i knew I was willing to risk so its fine. Main went meh started well got upto around 6k before i flopped TPGK in a spot where sets and two pairs where unlikely by the turn I'd peeled BB with AJ, AQT flop, checked round on flop SB lead pot on turn and river with QJ BTN who opened had 44 called down, 4 was the turn card. From there i was back at 4.5k or so. Opened K3 on button BB flatted KT3 flop he had KT. V some opponents I could have folded turn but this guy was pretty aggro spewy so felt my two pair was gonna be good more than enough of the time. Cash alongside was going meh, -2 buy ins finnish there. The mini was the saving grace small cash +£11 in heads, for around about £18 total cash. Made a mistake on the bubble which left me with the shorties and going spot dead had to just go with equity in the end. I was debating withdrawing the mini cash as not to effect results showing but would just go into my driving fund anyways so kept it in.
Onto today morning driving lesson went very well, still a couple of things to iron out but instructor very happy with how I'm adjusting to situations and developing my driving ability. She reckons one more lesson on junctions before moving on, looking at tighter junctions next time.
So today was the day, grand prix, some fm, some pokers and an essay to write that ive been putting off for ages. Actually mixed with getting to spend quality time with the weeman been a pretty complete day.
Starting with the essay, was very worried it was gonna write unbalanced, struggle to get the word count right etc. Anyways once i got started it came together very nicely. Really pleased with how it came out, hope the tutor agrees imo the best essay i've written since returning to education. Although part of that was from feedback from last tutor in a diff subject giving me some good pointers about construction of the essay.
FM i wont go into too much detail, just left January of season 6, now trying to revive Blackpool doing well so far.
Grand Prix was meh.
Weeman time is always brilliant sat and watched night at the museum with him until he started falling asleep.
Poker, invested 2 hours tonight would have gone longer but need a bath and up at 6 so cant take the full benefit of the points boost, was also very hit and miss to if i could make the 500 points to get to the next rakeback jump anyways, was 189 short at standing there and that means it would be very very tight. Anyways session was good to start, awful middle and a strong end. Played some of the best poker I have in a long time and please with it, couple of spots i want to review but ill do that another time.
Today also marks the first week since starting the challenge ive made my hours target. 10 hours 15 mins by my working out on Sky with a further 30 mins on Unibet. Its also assisted in dragging me into a profitable month. Profits do need to increase slightly if im to reach the target i need, have 14 weeks to reach the £210 goal for next set of lessons (have 10 already in the isa) which means continueing this kind of volume.
Ok so felt it was about time i gave an update here. Please excuse the lack of updates but I feel completely out of love with poker and was no longer enjoying the game, as a result I've sort of kept my distance. I will play again, i won't denie i do miss it, but any further poker playing will be on my terms and not trying to grind out like the big boys. Respect to them, but I just can't do that stuff.
Anyways more positive news, I'll start by saying wee had a new baby at the start of February, baby Leia is healthy and full of life. Weeman is being a terror but given his age and the new baby being in the house i guess thats expected.
College has been abit hit and miss been pretty ill last few months so missed alot of classes, currently on Easter break so trying my hardest to catch up while doing assignments, not that id pass those assignments anyways without catching up. Overall though its going very well, college has been understanding of whatever illness this is (just cant drag myself to the doctors to find out, i know its for the best but typical thinking the worst bs).
From college I applied for 3 universities to study politics just before my exam leave, application was handed in on closing date due to some modifications i needed to make to the personal statement. Out of the 3 i applied for i managed to bag a 100% offer rate, all were conditionals but i expected nothing more. I've accepted Edinburgh as my firm offer were i need ABB and ive accepted Stirling as my insurance choice requireing BBB. Dundee was the third choice but wasn't even sure I would have accepted that if it was the only offer due to travel time, and requirements were the same as Edinburgh.
I'd like to thank those here, and elsewhere but read here that have supported me and encouraged me to keep going, even through this illness the consearn of a couple of people has helped me get in and make days were I really haven't felt upto it, but thats meaning im not as far behind as i could have been.
Well it feels weird posting here after soo long. I had a quick read back to see where I was going from.
The good news is looking back I passed college, but due to family reasons ended up having to turn down my offer at university and because of the nature of the course those qualifications no longer count in an education sense (think I had 2 years to enter uni) but I can still pop it down on a cv. In December of 2016 (date of my last update) I started youtube. Mostly doing Football Manager content but dabbled in some other games including my fav passtime these days in Paradox Grand Strategy. More recently rebranded my old twitch account that many of you used to watch me on to account for this and have both platforms working in tandem (still learning that side of it haha)
Not long after that my relationship at the time broke down and after a while started a new relationship with someone else. She had a kid of her own and I have a strong relationship with her, maintaining my relationship even after us breaking up at the end of last year. Sadly pandemic just flared every issue we already had and were working through. We had another kid together too taking the total of children I look after to 4, now being a single Dad. I'm lucky that I have equal custody of Donald and Leia, and Walter the youngest is another 2 nights a week at the moment.
The break from poker,
This was an interesting one, and especially splitting with Mel my situation money wise changed, I looked back on my life and remember how much playing poker when things weren't great for me money wise effected me, the fear to quote myself "losing a buy in was a pint of milk" I knew that wasn't healthy and I had a decent amount sitting over the shop, so all sites I withdrew from, except from one. I'd signed up to Unibet i think it was when they did a free 4 euro token and it became real money after 500 flops. By the time i was withdrawing all this money that was real money, but I decided for when im ready to play poker, the token id spun up (was at 110 euros by this stage) was the perfect money to leave sitting as a ready made roll that wouldn't effect anything IRL.
Eventually I decided I wanted to dabble again nothing serious a couple of years ago, at the time my partner was pregnant with Walter and when I spoke about it we were deciding on should I play n Unibet which I'd you know dabbled a few times but I wasn't keen on the euros side, or moving the money over to sky, we decided to move the roll over to Sky and I had some dabbling. Early on that we were headed to Glasgow for a gig, and with my Anxiety I suck around people so I loaded up the app, flicked in a bh and the decision to take the train instead of driving became very profitable, 1 tabling a £5 bh isn't something I'm overly fond of even dabbling I'd usually always multitable, but by dinner time I was heads up and eventually took it down. It wasn't what I'd call a stellar performance by any means, there was a clear amount of ring rust but for the first time my partner seen me play poker, and well the money was nice too. At that point we were in okay shape but with a new baby on the way decided to grind out a little and just see how it went. This also happened to be at the same time as there was one of those race promotion things. Sticking to my old 2/4p hunting ground I cant remember where I finished but I know we finished that month withdrawing about £400. Another discussion was to be had, for her, she felt £400 wasn't enough to justify taking on all childcare duties while I played, and being honest I knew that was a very decent return for the hours I'd put in that month, but I was also aware I wasn't enjoying the grind. We decided to take poker back to dabbling, and over the next few months Id play a little and withdraw back down to the £115 that i started with. After that I decided to stop withdrawing, see where it went with the dabbles and when i loaded a few months ago it was around £210, odd session here and there and was £230ish when i loaded up the other day.
I'm going to go more into my mental health in a little bit, but this session for me that really showed how far I'd came since leaving poker. I was playing 5p/10p given that I'm not struggling IRL for money (altho not well off either) and the money I'm using is well there, but more so that I'm able to detach myself from it this has been where my dabbling has been of late. But I'm sure over the 32 pages of this thread we can find plenty of examples of why historically me touching NL10 has not been a good idea. This session started slow, before 3 coolers in quick succession, and then a mistake worth a buy in itself, and I know it was a mistake I knew it straight away, messed up flop, which then made me level myself later in the hand, what was a routine fold I convinced myself I had to call because i look weak, the opponent who seemed very competent obviously showed up with the stone cold nuts. This is where if we look back through this thread I'd have thrown toys out the pram, probably spewed off a few more buy ins, Gave dohhhhh a ffs complex and ended back up and nl4 annoyed at the world because NL10 is rigged, or some words to those effects. I didn't do that, I focused on the positives, I got people to put 3 buy ins in, in bad shape in 2 incidents and the set over set well I was going broke regardless, I accepted I made a mistake in the other hand, accepted why it happened and broke it back down. I took a few deep breathes got on with it and ended up finishing the session about 2-3 buy ins up. I did another session yesterday and while no major downs again a solid similar level profit.
No future plans in terms of poker, but to continue just dabbling when I feel able.
Mental Health,
We know my anxiety has always been an issue, ontop of that I'm now told because of my autism that works slightly different for me and its given me more techniques in terms of how to deal with it. In more recent times I've also suffered with some depression but again been able to get techniques to manage it. In truth I've been very lucky in this regard over the last 18 months, through my Football Manager youtube I was invited to a group of like minded creators, and not long after one of them branched off and left, but they came back and with it opened up a "mental health section" there was a new member a lad called Leemo. Turns out these two people had met and Leemo was a mental Health nurse and has a mental health CIC in Liverpool. Eventually plucking up the courage, I'd had some help locally but nothing that ever worked long term for me, I reached out, he replied and eventually Invited me to his group. His group while some are there for his content, many are there because they have various issues in their lives and its really one big support network all helping eachother out. I made new friends, but I think most importantly for me was seeing I wasn't alone. While his group supports on a day to day with eachother, none of us are experts and he helps out when we need the help. Done some of his sessions and well just developed from there, even managing to get to the core of some issues I'd never been able to look at and manage them. I'm not going to say my mental health is better, or that it will ever be great, but by having a proper support network, and support and techniques I've learnt to manage that soo much better.
Anyways this is seriously long so ill leave this here, but I really just wanted to pop in say hi and that i miss you all, and hopefully see some of you at the tables over the course.
Great to hear from you Don, sounds like life has been a bit uphill at times. I wish you well mate, & never forget, you have a ton of friends here, always have, always will.
It's certainly been an interesting couple of weeks at the tables. As I wasn't really playing to make money, although ideally not lose either when I was dabbling unless I was grinding that period I'd play NL10 other than tournaments during traveling and obv that restricts you to one tabling anyways.
But the last time I hadn't withdraw and while my roll wasn't huge for NL10 I felt it was a level that was worth a shot, after 4 or 5 sessions I'd almost doubled that roll, and in truth I hadn't had a losing session yet, so as much as I was playing decent with some ring rust, I was clearly running well too, so we all know that one day will come to an end and that's where the grind comes. But boy did it hit hard when it came. I could go into a bad beat screw this line here, but essentially a couple of days where every cooler that happened I'd be on the wrong end of, if I had the nuts they'd fill up, if I got them to put 150bb in with 65o and a straight draw in on the turn type thing you could be sure it was coming, if by some miracle I was on the right end of set over set the one outer for quads would come. We've all had these type of sessions, and one of the more interesting things that's came from it is I've looked back at a few hands between all this and gone okay I can save maybe 2/3 buy ins, but not a lot more, and maybe in another 2 if i turn my hand into a bluff and he finds the fold. I've spoke to a few others about that and still on the fence. Within 2 sessions of that most of those profits were gone, I sat and reflected, that while NL10 is a valid option, it feels alot less reg heavy than it did in previous runs at the level, I realized that the level of losses would set me back if I continued at nl10. Not because of the hands, but the amount of money while not significant in poker terms, and certainly not significant in terms of a downswing, it was that amount of money that made me feel like wow, thats alot of money.
That's clearly something I need to get over and the more I adapt and adjust to NL10 the easier that will be down the line, If this makes any sort of sense. I'm not giving up with the level, but at that point I thought, the logical thing to do here is drop to NL4, a level historically my win rate has been very good at, and while I also accept playing that level for as long as I have has developed me some leaks I will need to plug if I'm to even take NL10 with any sort of seriousness, this was a decision I'd have to make. The reason being, I could weather the storm, back my ability to ride a downswing at this level and lose the minimum as long as I kept my head, and possibly still run small profit/break even sessions.
It could be just bad luck with timing but I haven't had a losing session since, close to recovering 10 buy ins, although far less value that the buy ins id lost previous I think it's important for me to start looking at profits and losses in terms of buy ins rather than the monetary amount of said situation. Obviously some of that run bad has eased abit so that side of things defo is a factor, but we're still having some sick spots like that as you'd expect. I was planning to withdraw some at the end of the month anyways so thats tomorrow, So I might withdraw a little less with intention of padding the account abit to move up nicely in future.
In other news, I know theres that double point promo on just now so this might not sound like any level of achievement but last week I broke my record for most poker points I'd ever achieved in a week, This week so far I've already breezed past that number. I'm hoping to get to the next level, I think if id stuck at Nl10 id already be there and chasing down the following level aswell, but rakeback isn't worth the same as the losses when u losing 4-10 buy ins a session, so I cant factor that in haha. But overall despite this mini horror downswing, I can take alot of positives from these sessions, and I know I have some leaks that previously I'd have passed up to look at.
I guess its time for a little update, seeing others are, and tbh I havent felt the need to.
Last update was during my little week long downswing, that was well puke. I was at Nl10 at the start of that and quickly moved back down to the safety of NL4. I had stuck at nl10 probably about as long as i could, but i was in profit at time of dropping down so more roll than i started with. I did a little withdrawl at the end of July aswell, which basically confirmed that I had to move down. My plan for poker is to withdraw a little every month while hopefully building and spreading roll over multiple sites. for liquidy and game selection down the line.
After this withdrawl I had a week of probably one of my roughest downswings, early August was not kind to Don. But my old demons didn't really come back and I spoke with a few well versed in the pokers thing, and they gave me some solid advice, looked over some hands and while saying I wont learn much from these hands, still gave some good advice. This weeks losses at nl4 were substantial but were offset by a £5 bh win - my scope on these makes some reading by far my strongest game over the years, but the tournaments ive entered since have yielded very little to no reward. That said the one win I did get through that tournament i ran golden, had a 10-1 chip lead at one point which is just insane. And meant i could take bumps if my A5 didnt get there v the 8bb stack with AK. It usually got there tho.
Instead i kept grafting it out on the nl4 tables. And when the run ended i was 30 buy ins down at nl4 - that tournament, my rake back and £15 from the promo covered most of this, resulting in just a -£11 week for that week.
Last week started with covid vaccine number 2, great it kind of killed the volume was just so tired but then id accidently nap and be unable to sleep at night - so i put some funds onto a second site, stars in this instance which allowed me to recover my hud, and start building my first second roll. Stars will mostly be a side mtt site, but cash will always run there which will allow me to play at any time day or night. Its wierd tho, im not used to playing with my own money with my entire roll coming from that 4 euro token on unibet. However the July withdrawl covers more than this deposit, and im fairly confident of spinning up, my hud wasnt working at first and im having some tech issues but my hud is currently giving me a winrate of 29.10/100 over there over admittedly a small sample, but thats one unreal set of numbers, sadly ive entered a few mtts and well i havent had much in the way of rewards for this so find myself currently about $5 down there but nothing to be concerned with.
Sky has turned around, ive doubled my roll since that downswing, altho didnt get any promo money for last week I tried to get back up - moving up a league was likely a mistake but one i thought was worth the risk but the early week grind hit meant i was never able to recover the points, this week hasnt been much bettter in that regard. Monday was busy, got 18 points tho, yesterday i missed a session id normally have got as had to go out with the little one, for a total of 1 league point for my night time efforts where my points per table per hour was drastically lower than normal. And today I did a successful lunchtime session but again not really a huge amount of points to show for it.
That leaves me struggling league point wise, tonight ive got a FM draft, i got invited to "the beech bash" which is a qualifier tournament for the "summer cup" on saturday - with the main on sunday, FM drafts. Itll be my first properly competitive FM draft ive been in, and hopefully will be a good boost for both my youtubes and twitch (now covering some poker there again if theres interest lemmie know) but it means no time to grind tonight, and the roll is at a stage where I feel i could be considering a shot at NL10 again. This might be a bizzare one with plan to withdraw every month i could yo-yo between the levels abit, but it also means I want to go back and review some of my sessions to spot some leaks before moving up again. One of the benefits to doing twitch and youtube is i have all the software in play already to record my sessions which make for some great studying, for myself or others.
Again I may post this up on youtube sometime with a post com of my thoughts and mistakes, while covering names of opponents just to give some annominity and protect notes etc, i havent decided for certain but if people are interested in this again let me know.
Anyways really enjoying being back at the tables, and ill leave this here for now.
Thanks Tikay, trying to show the new me in the best light.
Small update.
Ive decided I was to take some more mtt shots aswell as the usual cash grind, binking one mtt historically can change an entire weeks profit so especially in games in profitable in such as the 5.50 bhs, but sat strat is also something I'm fairly well versed in. So trying some sats to take a crack at mains seems a solid idea too. The issue is theres not many nights im free at both 6pm and 8pm for the semi and main. Usually thats over the kids bedtime, or I have other commitments, however on the days I can I think this is a good shot to take. Last night was one such shot.
This probably wasn't great timing I was taking an NL10 shot as planned last night, while doing main, mini and a stars tournament. I also done 2 5.50 bhs during the day, of those we came 11th in one for £9 in heads back, salty exit, we were 4/11 with 9 cashing, and 4/5 on our table, puke right, even more puke was the KK v AA exit, standard stuff and we move on, but that will come to play later in the night. And don't take this as a moan, its me spotting a leak in my mental game.
Before we cover the main and mini and stars mtt lets discuss the NL10 shot, i tried to table select best i could based on knowledge of players up there that i knew previous or from nl4, handy when a few of the regs varie their level, and so do some of the recs, I feel i table selected fairly well, met some new regs and really I feel i played okay till i just had too much going on. At this point we lost a buy in with 44. I never ever lose this buy in when im not struggling and i realized it and got off the cash tables straight after it and focused on the mtts, the hand was 44 on a board of 88224 - i read the board as 88234 for some reason, thus i overbet snapped the shove on the river loving life, seeing the pot going to K8 i realized my mistake and we accept it, realize why the mistake happened. That pot resulted in us being a buy in down, so we still lose some money here but nothing to be worried about. More on Nl10 later.
Starting with the mini, well, it went okay, poor start not unusual in tournaments where we have opponents who like to call alot, that when we dont make our hand we lose some chips, but then we trebled before giving all our chips over 2 hands to one of those players who likes to call alot. Overall for the mini im very happy with how i played and same situation again, i play the exact same way in all bar one hand, which we lose and i just get more aggressive with the third party in the hand in the hope we can win some of those lost chips back - but thats with hindsight and notes i didn't have at the time, thus in a vaccum I dont think i did much wrong.
The main event, This is one where we started awful - from the 5k starting down to about 1200 very quick - I dont think i did much wrong we had AQss on Axxx with 2 spades against AK and didnt improve. I dont think i can fold either even when hes screaming to me I have AK but hes giving me 3/1 on a call plus head equity meaning i feel this is probably a break even call we just have to sigh make. The good news is we recovered, taking a treble, then a double then a head, table move wasn't kind however. Stuck on a table with Arrogant who's a veteran of these mtts, loosecamel who i have huge respect for, Nostri and a few others. Eventually this table would see us 4th in chips in the tournament again, directly out of position to chip leader and 3rd in chips. Lovely. To add Haysie arrived at this point he had us covered, followed by Scotty77 who had a similar stack - i think something like 25% of chips in the whole tournament were on this one table with 70 people left. not fun at all. And nobody is daft enough to get this stack in, in a bad spot for a head prize either. So casual low varience poker small pots was the way stacking the short stack who'd join us and repeat. This is where my mental leak came in and when i was the aggressor in the hand I feel i played some really good poker, its when i wasn't that was the issue. Theres 4 or 5 hands that I look back on last night where i think - i can fold here and over all those folds i account for 50k chips, in the end we burst in 22nd with 20k, so over double what we had was lost in spots we didnt need to. With those in our hand we probably lose having one of our 3/3 won flips, while still having the other 2 because i dont think me or haysie would have got 77 v AJ in with larger stacks, and the other two being bog standard QQ v AK - altho those would have been for larger pots, well one would have anyways. The other got me a head so probably no change. The exit itself im annoyed at because I just dont have to go broke, im happy with my shove, the call isnt my decision to make, but im never behind the specific hand, but hey still has equity so hey ho. But with the chips i didnt need to lose even just one street less lost in one of those earlier pots, it would have been his/her tournament not mine, thus i have to look at this objectively and say my mistakes lead to this happening.
The stars mtt was a $3.30 bounty builder its becoming a regular feature on my nightly routine, its abit of fun and tbh a field i feel i have a strong edge on, and bhs i believe are by far my strongest mtt games, and outwith players on sky, theres alot of people not very experienced in them, meaning they make imo strategy mistakes. Last night was my deepest run in it and first proper cash - altho oddly my lowest head count with just 2. Stars is a funny one, even when we have an edge we have to run a little golden to go deep, and tbf we did much like the main when i needed to win a flip I did usually, the exception to that rule was 88 v AQ v AT for two heads, AT being the bigger of the two calling off his tournament for the pleasure. Alas he hit his 10 for what was the worst possible result in the hand. 88 hasnt been the kindest to me in that tournament in fairness according to my hud its not even close to being my biggest losing hand. But thats the one flip that wasn't for our tournament, the rest we won - fair to say i ran golden. Then there was the whoopsie moment, we peeled QJhh out of the BB to a min raise from the HJ. HJ was a fairly reggy player, which was the exception on the table, thus I can probably fold here pre, but QJs is pretty and we have great pot odds to see a flop, which comes K43hh. I opt to c/c the half pot bet here, the turn is the 9d giving us even more outs, and my plan was always to c/r turn, which we do beautifully, it leaves our opponent was a pot bet behind if they call (which they do) for us on the river, meaning its easy for us to put max pressure on when we miss, and get full value when we hit. alas the river is a brick 4 pairing the board, and tbh if i see his exact hand I give up at this point, when we c/r turn we're repping set 3s 4s and 9s aswell as two pairs like K9 - infact K9 is probably the only 2 pair we can have here. We go for the max pressure, especially when turn c/r are seen as so strong, I dont think he'd put me on the hand i have its all strong stuff, the problem is he has AA so probably has to sigh call anyways, and im never getting him to fold on any river because people dont fold overpairs haha. That left us with 15bb and a dream it didnt happen i think we opened a pot bricked flop 6 way and gave up and blinds went up leaving us with 9bb. We got it in bad didnt improve and thats all she wrote.
Comments
The good news is looking back I passed college, but due to family reasons ended up having to turn down my offer at university and because of the nature of the course those qualifications no longer count in an education sense (think I had 2 years to enter uni) but I can still pop it down on a cv. In December of 2016 (date of my last update) I started youtube. Mostly doing Football Manager content but dabbled in some other games including my fav passtime these days in Paradox Grand Strategy. More recently rebranded my old twitch account that many of you used to watch me on to account for this and have both platforms working in tandem (still learning that side of it haha)
Not long after that my relationship at the time broke down and after a while started a new relationship with someone else. She had a kid of her own and I have a strong relationship with her, maintaining my relationship even after us breaking up at the end of last year. Sadly pandemic just flared every issue we already had and were working through. We had another kid together too taking the total of children I look after to 4, now being a single Dad. I'm lucky that I have equal custody of Donald and Leia, and Walter the youngest is another 2 nights a week at the moment.
The break from poker,
This was an interesting one, and especially splitting with Mel my situation money wise changed, I looked back on my life and remember how much playing poker when things weren't great for me money wise effected me, the fear to quote myself "losing a buy in was a pint of milk" I knew that wasn't healthy and I had a decent amount sitting over the shop, so all sites I withdrew from, except from one. I'd signed up to Unibet i think it was when they did a free 4 euro token and it became real money after 500 flops. By the time i was withdrawing all this money that was real money, but I decided for when im ready to play poker, the token id spun up (was at 110 euros by this stage) was the perfect money to leave sitting as a ready made roll that wouldn't effect anything IRL.
Eventually I decided I wanted to dabble again nothing serious a couple of years ago, at the time my partner was pregnant with Walter and when I spoke about it we were deciding on should I play n Unibet which I'd you know dabbled a few times but I wasn't keen on the euros side, or moving the money over to sky, we decided to move the roll over to Sky and I had some dabbling. Early on that we were headed to Glasgow for a gig, and with my Anxiety I suck around people so I loaded up the app, flicked in a bh and the decision to take the train instead of driving became very profitable, 1 tabling a £5 bh isn't something I'm overly fond of even dabbling I'd usually always multitable, but by dinner time I was heads up and eventually took it down. It wasn't what I'd call a stellar performance by any means, there was a clear amount of ring rust but for the first time my partner seen me play poker, and well the money was nice too. At that point we were in okay shape but with a new baby on the way decided to grind out a little and just see how it went. This also happened to be at the same time as there was one of those race promotion things. Sticking to my old 2/4p hunting ground I cant remember where I finished but I know we finished that month withdrawing about £400. Another discussion was to be had, for her, she felt £400 wasn't enough to justify taking on all childcare duties while I played, and being honest I knew that was a very decent return for the hours I'd put in that month, but I was also aware I wasn't enjoying the grind. We decided to take poker back to dabbling, and over the next few months Id play a little and withdraw back down to the £115 that i started with. After that I decided to stop withdrawing, see where it went with the dabbles and when i loaded a few months ago it was around £210, odd session here and there and was £230ish when i loaded up the other day.
I'm going to go more into my mental health in a little bit, but this session for me that really showed how far I'd came since leaving poker. I was playing 5p/10p given that I'm not struggling IRL for money (altho not well off either) and the money I'm using is well there, but more so that I'm able to detach myself from it this has been where my dabbling has been of late. But I'm sure over the 32 pages of this thread we can find plenty of examples of why historically me touching NL10 has not been a good idea. This session started slow, before 3 coolers in quick succession, and then a mistake worth a buy in itself, and I know it was a mistake I knew it straight away, messed up flop, which then made me level myself later in the hand, what was a routine fold I convinced myself I had to call because i look weak, the opponent who seemed very competent obviously showed up with the stone cold nuts. This is where if we look back through this thread I'd have thrown toys out the pram, probably spewed off a few more buy ins, Gave dohhhhh a ffs complex and ended back up and nl4 annoyed at the world because NL10 is rigged, or some words to those effects. I didn't do that, I focused on the positives, I got people to put 3 buy ins in, in bad shape in 2 incidents and the set over set well I was going broke regardless, I accepted I made a mistake in the other hand, accepted why it happened and broke it back down. I took a few deep breathes got on with it and ended up finishing the session about 2-3 buy ins up. I did another session yesterday and while no major downs again a solid similar level profit.
No future plans in terms of poker, but to continue just dabbling when I feel able.
Mental Health,
We know my anxiety has always been an issue, ontop of that I'm now told because of my autism that works slightly different for me and its given me more techniques in terms of how to deal with it. In more recent times I've also suffered with some depression but again been able to get techniques to manage it. In truth I've been very lucky in this regard over the last 18 months, through my Football Manager youtube I was invited to a group of like minded creators, and not long after one of them branched off and left, but they came back and with it opened up a "mental health section" there was a new member a lad called Leemo. Turns out these two people had met and Leemo was a mental Health nurse and has a mental health CIC in Liverpool. Eventually plucking up the courage, I'd had some help locally but nothing that ever worked long term for me, I reached out, he replied and eventually Invited me to his group. His group while some are there for his content, many are there because they have various issues in their lives and its really one big support network all helping eachother out. I made new friends, but I think most importantly for me was seeing I wasn't alone. While his group supports on a day to day with eachother, none of us are experts and he helps out when we need the help. Done some of his sessions and well just developed from there, even managing to get to the core of some issues I'd never been able to look at and manage them. I'm not going to say my mental health is better, or that it will ever be great, but by having a proper support network, and support and techniques I've learnt to manage that soo much better.
Anyways this is seriously long so ill leave this here, but I really just wanted to pop in say hi and that i miss you all, and hopefully see some of you at the tables over the course.
Great to hear from you Don, sounds like life has been a bit uphill at times. I wish you well mate, & never forget, you have a ton of friends here, always have, always will.
Was great rereading some of the banter use used to have on the thread.
All the best.
Best of luck with everything that you do
It's certainly been an interesting couple of weeks at the tables. As I wasn't really playing to make money, although ideally not lose either when I was dabbling unless I was grinding that period I'd play NL10 other than tournaments during traveling and obv that restricts you to one tabling anyways.
But the last time I hadn't withdraw and while my roll wasn't huge for NL10 I felt it was a level that was worth a shot, after 4 or 5 sessions I'd almost doubled that roll, and in truth I hadn't had a losing session yet, so as much as I was playing decent with some ring rust, I was clearly running well too, so we all know that one day will come to an end and that's where the grind comes. But boy did it hit hard when it came. I could go into a bad beat screw this line here, but essentially a couple of days where every cooler that happened I'd be on the wrong end of, if I had the nuts they'd fill up, if I got them to put 150bb in with 65o and a straight draw in on the turn type thing you could be sure it was coming, if by some miracle I was on the right end of set over set the one outer for quads would come. We've all had these type of sessions, and one of the more interesting things that's came from it is I've looked back at a few hands between all this and gone okay I can save maybe 2/3 buy ins, but not a lot more, and maybe in another 2 if i turn my hand into a bluff and he finds the fold. I've spoke to a few others about that and still on the fence. Within 2 sessions of that most of those profits were gone, I sat and reflected, that while NL10 is a valid option, it feels alot less reg heavy than it did in previous runs at the level, I realized that the level of losses would set me back if I continued at nl10. Not because of the hands, but the amount of money while not significant in poker terms, and certainly not significant in terms of a downswing, it was that amount of money that made me feel like wow, thats alot of money.
That's clearly something I need to get over and the more I adapt and adjust to NL10 the easier that will be down the line, If this makes any sort of sense. I'm not giving up with the level, but at that point I thought, the logical thing to do here is drop to NL4, a level historically my win rate has been very good at, and while I also accept playing that level for as long as I have has developed me some leaks I will need to plug if I'm to even take NL10 with any sort of seriousness, this was a decision I'd have to make. The reason being, I could weather the storm, back my ability to ride a downswing at this level and lose the minimum as long as I kept my head, and possibly still run small profit/break even sessions.
It could be just bad luck with timing but I haven't had a losing session since, close to recovering 10 buy ins, although far less value that the buy ins id lost previous I think it's important for me to start looking at profits and losses in terms of buy ins rather than the monetary amount of said situation. Obviously some of that run bad has eased abit so that side of things defo is a factor, but we're still having some sick spots like that as you'd expect. I was planning to withdraw some at the end of the month anyways so thats tomorrow, So I might withdraw a little less with intention of padding the account abit to move up nicely in future.
In other news, I know theres that double point promo on just now so this might not sound like any level of achievement but last week I broke my record for most poker points I'd ever achieved in a week, This week so far I've already breezed past that number. I'm hoping to get to the next level, I think if id stuck at Nl10 id already be there and chasing down the following level aswell, but rakeback isn't worth the same as the losses when u losing 4-10 buy ins a session, so I cant factor that in haha. But overall despite this mini horror downswing, I can take alot of positives from these sessions, and I know I have some leaks that previously I'd have passed up to look at.
Last update was during my little week long downswing, that was well puke. I was at Nl10 at the start of that and quickly moved back down to the safety of NL4. I had stuck at nl10 probably about as long as i could, but i was in profit at time of dropping down so more roll than i started with. I did a little withdrawl at the end of July aswell, which basically confirmed that I had to move down. My plan for poker is to withdraw a little every month while hopefully building and spreading roll over multiple sites. for liquidy and game selection down the line.
After this withdrawl I had a week of probably one of my roughest downswings, early August was not kind to Don. But my old demons didn't really come back and I spoke with a few well versed in the pokers thing, and they gave me some solid advice, looked over some hands and while saying I wont learn much from these hands, still gave some good advice. This weeks losses at nl4 were substantial but were offset by a £5 bh win - my scope on these makes some reading by far my strongest game over the years, but the tournaments ive entered since have yielded very little to no reward. That said the one win I did get through that tournament i ran golden, had a 10-1 chip lead at one point which is just insane. And meant i could take bumps if my A5 didnt get there v the 8bb stack with AK. It usually got there tho.
Instead i kept grafting it out on the nl4 tables. And when the run ended i was 30 buy ins down at nl4 - that tournament, my rake back and £15 from the promo covered most of this, resulting in just a -£11 week for that week.
Last week started with covid vaccine number 2, great it kind of killed the volume was just so tired but then id accidently nap and be unable to sleep at night - so i put some funds onto a second site, stars in this instance which allowed me to recover my hud, and start building my first second roll. Stars will mostly be a side mtt site, but cash will always run there which will allow me to play at any time day or night. Its wierd tho, im not used to playing with my own money with my entire roll coming from that 4 euro token on unibet. However the July withdrawl covers more than this deposit, and im fairly confident of spinning up, my hud wasnt working at first and im having some tech issues but my hud is currently giving me a winrate of 29.10/100 over there over admittedly a small sample, but thats one unreal set of numbers, sadly ive entered a few mtts and well i havent had much in the way of rewards for this so find myself currently about $5 down there but nothing to be concerned with.
Sky has turned around, ive doubled my roll since that downswing, altho didnt get any promo money for last week I tried to get back up - moving up a league was likely a mistake but one i thought was worth the risk but the early week grind hit meant i was never able to recover the points, this week hasnt been much bettter in that regard. Monday was busy, got 18 points tho, yesterday i missed a session id normally have got as had to go out with the little one, for a total of 1 league point for my night time efforts where my points per table per hour was drastically lower than normal. And today I did a successful lunchtime session but again not really a huge amount of points to show for it.
That leaves me struggling league point wise, tonight ive got a FM draft, i got invited to "the beech bash" which is a qualifier tournament for the "summer cup" on saturday - with the main on sunday, FM drafts. Itll be my first properly competitive FM draft ive been in, and hopefully will be a good boost for both my youtubes and twitch (now covering some poker there again if theres interest lemmie know) but it means no time to grind tonight, and the roll is at a stage where I feel i could be considering a shot at NL10 again. This might be a bizzare one with plan to withdraw every month i could yo-yo between the levels abit, but it also means I want to go back and review some of my sessions to spot some leaks before moving up again. One of the benefits to doing twitch and youtube is i have all the software in play already to record my sessions which make for some great studying, for myself or others.
Again I may post this up on youtube sometime with a post com of my thoughts and mistakes, while covering names of opponents just to give some annominity and protect notes etc, i havent decided for certain but if people are interested in this again let me know.
Anyways really enjoying being back at the tables, and ill leave this here for now.
Solid update there Don, keep them coming, it helps to be accountable.
PS - Not a single bad beat story there. Take a bow.
Small update.
Ive decided I was to take some more mtt shots aswell as the usual cash grind, binking one mtt historically can change an entire weeks profit so especially in games in profitable in such as the 5.50 bhs, but sat strat is also something I'm fairly well versed in. So trying some sats to take a crack at mains seems a solid idea too. The issue is theres not many nights im free at both 6pm and 8pm for the semi and main. Usually thats over the kids bedtime, or I have other commitments, however on the days I can I think this is a good shot to take. Last night was one such shot.
This probably wasn't great timing I was taking an NL10 shot as planned last night, while doing main, mini and a stars tournament. I also done 2 5.50 bhs during the day, of those we came 11th in one for £9 in heads back, salty exit, we were 4/11 with 9 cashing, and 4/5 on our table, puke right, even more puke was the KK v AA exit, standard stuff and we move on, but that will come to play later in the night. And don't take this as a moan, its me spotting a leak in my mental game.
Before we cover the main and mini and stars mtt lets discuss the NL10 shot, i tried to table select best i could based on knowledge of players up there that i knew previous or from nl4, handy when a few of the regs varie their level, and so do some of the recs, I feel i table selected fairly well, met some new regs and really I feel i played okay till i just had too much going on. At this point we lost a buy in with 44. I never ever lose this buy in when im not struggling and i realized it and got off the cash tables straight after it and focused on the mtts, the hand was 44 on a board of 88224 - i read the board as 88234 for some reason, thus i overbet snapped the shove on the river loving life, seeing the pot going to K8 i realized my mistake and we accept it, realize why the mistake happened. That pot resulted in us being a buy in down, so we still lose some money here but nothing to be worried about. More on Nl10 later.
Starting with the mini, well, it went okay, poor start not unusual in tournaments where we have opponents who like to call alot, that when we dont make our hand we lose some chips, but then we trebled before giving all our chips over 2 hands to one of those players who likes to call alot. Overall for the mini im very happy with how i played and same situation again, i play the exact same way in all bar one hand, which we lose and i just get more aggressive with the third party in the hand in the hope we can win some of those lost chips back - but thats with hindsight and notes i didn't have at the time, thus in a vaccum I dont think i did much wrong.
The main event, This is one where we started awful - from the 5k starting down to about 1200 very quick - I dont think i did much wrong we had AQss on Axxx with 2 spades against AK and didnt improve. I dont think i can fold either even when hes screaming to me I have AK but hes giving me 3/1 on a call plus head equity meaning i feel this is probably a break even call we just have to sigh make. The good news is we recovered, taking a treble, then a double then a head, table move wasn't kind however. Stuck on a table with Arrogant who's a veteran of these mtts, loosecamel who i have huge respect for, Nostri and a few others. Eventually this table would see us 4th in chips in the tournament again, directly out of position to chip leader and 3rd in chips. Lovely. To add Haysie arrived at this point he had us covered, followed by Scotty77 who had a similar stack - i think something like 25% of chips in the whole tournament were on this one table with 70 people left. not fun at all. And nobody is daft enough to get this stack in, in a bad spot for a head prize either. So casual low varience poker small pots was the way stacking the short stack who'd join us and repeat. This is where my mental leak came in and when i was the aggressor in the hand I feel i played some really good poker, its when i wasn't that was the issue. Theres 4 or 5 hands that I look back on last night where i think - i can fold here and over all those folds i account for 50k chips, in the end we burst in 22nd with 20k, so over double what we had was lost in spots we didnt need to. With those in our hand we probably lose having one of our 3/3 won flips, while still having the other 2 because i dont think me or haysie would have got 77 v AJ in with larger stacks, and the other two being bog standard QQ v AK - altho those would have been for larger pots, well one would have anyways. The other got me a head so probably no change. The exit itself im annoyed at because I just dont have to go broke, im happy with my shove, the call isnt my decision to make, but im never behind the specific hand, but hey still has equity so hey ho. But with the chips i didnt need to lose even just one street less lost in one of those earlier pots, it would have been his/her tournament not mine, thus i have to look at this objectively and say my mistakes lead to this happening.
The stars mtt was a $3.30 bounty builder its becoming a regular feature on my nightly routine, its abit of fun and tbh a field i feel i have a strong edge on, and bhs i believe are by far my strongest mtt games, and outwith players on sky, theres alot of people not very experienced in them, meaning they make imo strategy mistakes. Last night was my deepest run in it and first proper cash - altho oddly my lowest head count with just 2. Stars is a funny one, even when we have an edge we have to run a little golden to go deep, and tbf we did much like the main when i needed to win a flip I did usually, the exception to that rule was 88 v AQ v AT for two heads, AT being the bigger of the two calling off his tournament for the pleasure. Alas he hit his 10 for what was the worst possible result in the hand. 88 hasnt been the kindest to me in that tournament in fairness according to my hud its not even close to being my biggest losing hand. But thats the one flip that wasn't for our tournament, the rest we won - fair to say i ran golden. Then there was the whoopsie moment, we peeled QJhh out of the BB to a min raise from the HJ. HJ was a fairly reggy player, which was the exception on the table, thus I can probably fold here pre, but QJs is pretty and we have great pot odds to see a flop, which comes K43hh. I opt to c/c the half pot bet here, the turn is the 9d giving us even more outs, and my plan was always to c/r turn, which we do beautifully, it leaves our opponent was a pot bet behind if they call (which they do) for us on the river, meaning its easy for us to put max pressure on when we miss, and get full value when we hit. alas the river is a brick 4 pairing the board, and tbh if i see his exact hand I give up at this point, when we c/r turn we're repping set 3s 4s and 9s aswell as two pairs like K9 - infact K9 is probably the only 2 pair we can have here. We go for the max pressure, especially when turn c/r are seen as so strong, I dont think he'd put me on the hand i have its all strong stuff, the problem is he has AA so probably has to sigh call anyways, and im never getting him to fold on any river because people dont fold overpairs haha. That left us with 15bb and a dream it didnt happen i think we opened a pot bricked flop 6 way and gave up and blinds went up leaving us with 9bb. We got it in bad didnt improve and thats all she wrote.