You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.

You might need to refresh your page afterwards.

craigcu12 diary.

18384858688

Comments

  • PKRParPKRPar Member Posts: 2,233
    just in case it makes any difference, your scopes for other sites are from jan last year, not this year.

    good luck on the tables craig :)
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    PKRPar said:

    just in case it makes any difference, your scopes for other sites are from jan last year, not this year.

    good luck on the tables craig :)

    didn't know that but this could only prove my point more because I've checked Sharkscope on my phone and it was -786 at the beginning of the year on GG and was -798 down for I poker.

    I will edit the post and change it to the start of this year when I get more searches. As Thanks for the good luck I'll continue updating this and post any good results
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    This full ring game play is certainly going really well at the minute. It's not often I'll say this but PokerStars was the site which had the most success last week having final tabled their $11 big MTT in twice in a row as far as FT performance goes I am a little more disappointed with this having finished 8th on both occasions. Given how much money is at stake on these final tables I most certainly need to do more work on final table ICM play because at this minute in time I am far too passive on these final tables myself.
    Don't get me wrong if people were to call wider than theory would and didn't shove as widely as theory would then we ourselves should be a little more tighter but their is absolutely no way I should be getting as tightly as I am because all that really does is cause me to drain my chips down.

    I did have a decent run in one final table and that was an I poker final table where I finished 2nd but no word of a lie when I was looking back at it I did deem myself quite weak again giving up far too easily post flop the helping on this final table was getting lucky with the all ins.

    As far as study work goes I may have been getting myself in too big a mess recently and on Saturday I created my own discord channel a channel I use to post hands and define them based on what I feel was good play what I feel was blunders and what I feel was poor bet sizing. I also type why I think these were wrong and how I could have played them better. This should make reviewing my post flop leaks far more easier.

    This is how I've performed over the whole week on the antes sites. I did also cash in the sunday major on sk.

  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960

    This month is over and it appears to have been a break even month. The takeaway from this month is I have got to start taking more risks at the late stages of these MTTs. I am making deep runs in these MTTS more and more often but running super deep in the tournaments is not enough to make you the cash because most of the cash is obtained in the top 3 spots and at this minute in time I'm rarely getting anywhere near the top 3.

    I managed to make the FT 14 times this month but not once did I take it down, alot of the time I was exiting on the FT quite early and this is all down to me not taking enough risks. When I say takine more risks I don't mean start going crazy, what I mean is start shoving more widely when I'm in the blind and face a raise steal more widely when it's folded round to me on the btn and cbet more widely in position when I've open raised pre and HU against the big blind.

    At this minute in time I hardly do any of this and what's normally happening is I see my chip stack go down non stop and when I do go all in I'm in more high varience spots or dominated as players don't defend so wide given my nit image.



    I am going to coventry goliath for the week and was hoping to play the main event unfortunately I must arrive back home the following sunday so I'm gonna just play side events
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    Yesterday was my first day back on sky in a long time and it may come as a shock to some but it brings across what I was saying about sky being the site I'll use when on bad spells. I had a stream on Wednesday and I certainly appeared more negative than usual. The last couple of days have been really poor lost quite a bit on these other sites and having already opened the lobby to try and win another seat I decided to also have a go at some sky poker MTTs.


    I haven't actually did that badly on these other sites the problem over the last week has came from the goliath and after maths. That event was terribly organized, the hotel itself was 4.5 mile away from casino and I wouldn't actually be able to play the main event because I was forced to return home before day 2. I only stayed for 1 day before coming back and was planning to do that even before my wallet got stolen having already spent over £200 from just day 1. The person who did steal my wallet didn't take that much but the aftermaths of it cost me more, I had to spend an extra £304 on a replacement train ticket home and for a lock smith to open up my house because my original train ticket was in the wallet itself and the key to my house was also attached to wallet.

    The sky poker tour is on this weekend, I certainly should enjoy that and the big hope is this will help put this chaos into the past and help get me back into buissness.
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    Apologies for late reply.
    Another week has pasted and I'm back on the online grind again. Given how much joy I had from the last SPT I am quite suprised with the number of times I was showing negative emotion with myself during the online grinds. When I look back at my overall game play in general I nearly always started off like someone who was crushing my opponents and as the tournament went on I would become more and more emotional. I was getting too results orientated with spots where I made a fold and saw a great flop, When I had the chance to bluff but didn't and saw a hand which would fold again I was getting results orientated and I was giving too much critism when I raised as a shallow stack and faced a non all in 3bet.

    The big takeaway from last week is to do more work with shallow stacks and get my shallow stack play more well constructed. At this minute in time I'm doing zero equity bluffs non stop deep stacked and happy to commit my stacks all in by river, I'm over betting and raising very aggressively as a deep stack. At a shallow stack I don't do much of this at all. I am generally all over the place in shallow stacked spots aka I do too much button clicking.

    I know for a fact variance is to be expected in shallow stack play far more than it is in deep stacked poker but knowing my short stack game play will help define how much of my play is down to bad play as a shallow stack and how much of it is down to varience.

  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    edited October 2022
    This month has been a story of two halfs. The live part of poker has been my best time ever having managed to take down the sky poker tour itself. Their is some debate I was 3rd at the time of deal but I don't care the fact was I took it down.

    Online poker however has been awful, I haven't did that badly on I poker with a number of deep runs but over on GG stars and sky I have lost alot and as a result I'm down over 1K in total.

    Last week was a terrible one and last sunday I had one of the biggest tilts in a long time when I was repeatedly losing all ins, failing to get my bluffs through and not getting max value with my premium value.

    The big takeaway from this month is to stop being so tight at the later stages of MTTs and start taking more risks. I have just purchased GTO wizard which I believe is a much better solver than odin. it's range builder will allow me to input what I think is the opening ranges for each position and also input my hand history to see where I'm making the mistakes. Also I have preflop academy which is a great tool for allowing me to practice and study so many preflop spots and I aim to use that as much as I can.


    I am looking into a new bankroll challenge, the idea is I believe this will help build up my stream. I did try a bankroll challenge at the end of last year but my overall game play on these other sites wasn't good at all I couldn't even play micro stakes but now I am starting to get good runs in on these sites more often and just under perform towards the end. Another different now is I play far more small field MTTS whereas I use to just play big field MTTs and was getting too annoyed with cosistent poor runs.

    The goal is to go from £/$8.1K to $30K and I'm giving myself a full year to reach it.

    edited: starting at 8.1K
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    Just over a week after starting the bankroll challenge I've been left with no choice but to take a break from poker. Anyone who say the end of my stream yesterday or the clip posted on sky discord will have seen just how angry I was and today I released even more rage and lucky not to have damaged anything. You might think poker has been a serious problem for me given how angry I got from that bad beat yesterday but when you look at my overall results from recent months you'll see poker hasn't been all that bad at all


    The main problem in recent months has been family related and the sheer amount of stress it's give me. Getting too concerned about the difficulties gambling regulations could with having a down swings and a poor run at the tables in recent times, it just reached the point where a really minor negative issue caused me to explode. I had another explosion this morning following a chat with my aunty and following a chat with my support worker we have both concluded now is not a good time to play poker so I am gonna take a break from the poker tables whilst I get my life sorted out personally.

    Me and my support worker plan to get my house sorted out, get myself back into the routine I was doing and bring back the craigcu12 which everyone knows and loves.
  • Tikay10Tikay10 Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 158,809

    @craigcu12


    Congrats Craig, I think that's exactly the right decision.

    Relax, chill, & hopefully we'll see you back enjoying poker again soon.
  • daggers747daggers747 Member Posts: 186
    Craig you just won 8k on sky poker tour. 98 per cent of players on sky will never win that much.
    Be very proud.
    The sky community are behind you.
    Come back strong with a smile on your face.
    Good luck
    Daggers
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    As some of you will know I've had a bad time recently. on the personal front things have calmed down, I do my absolute best to just stay away from the family issues given how bad that been over time.

    As for the poker side of things some of you will notice I've been on alot of sky tables in recent days and that is all down to me taking a step down towards more micro stakes. I see sky poker as the best site for helping out during these down swings with small weak fields, non antes, tight game and 6 max tables mean variance is at it's lowest which is what you need when you've had a down swing. I am gonna continue with this the whole of this week.

    As far as UKOPS goes I haven't had very much success in the UKOPS, I did FT bubble on day 1 of UKOPS hyper bounty and made a few good runs in them yesterday but overall I'm down big in UKOPS


    My game as a whole is still in profit and no matter how small the profit is, I'm just glad to be getting myself out of this downswing.
    https://gyazo.com/3b9d9986938f2f384e5439d18a996265


    I am gonna continue with purely sky poker the whole of this week until the UKOPS is over and will then start bringing back my usual schedule. I most certainly won't ever be binning sky poker full stop, I see sky poker as the best site for helping me during these down swings
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    The UKOPS is over now and overall it hasn't been a very good week but that doesn't matter too much because I could see from the last two days of UKOPS my game is starting to get back into shape again.

    My last two weeks on sky haven't been very good overall but one thing I did like is that I believe my overall poker routine and poker game are starting to come back again and that was proved very well in the last two days of UKOPS when 1costly blunder may have cost me the opportunity to FT in saturday's £22 UKOPS rebuy bounty hunter and was unfortunate in sunday's UKOPS super highroller.

    When I look back at my overall performance it started off in a real mess where I was debating whether to hero call or fold, bluff or give up, shove or wait for better spots, defend the BB or over fold, call a 3bet or over fold.

    However when it got down to the final two days of UKOPS my game was becoming way more well organized again and what I liked best about the last two days of UKOPS was I'd been playing in far more open raised pots and HU pots and found it much easier to defend the weaker parts of my overall range.

    My biggest takeaways from this series is to pay far more attention to the payouts when I've passed the bubble, I saw from saturday's UKOPS £22 rebuy bounty hunter the pay jump between 30th and 11th was nothing more than 2 buy ins and I willing to take risks easy.

    Another takeaway and a big one is to even give recs a range even if it something as narrow as a couple of combos and just think what the equity of those combos are vs my hand.

    This was my big blunder in that UKOPS rebuy bounty hunter. The big blunder was snap calling that river based on the idea I'll let him go crazy when he donked the flop.


    Playing like this is only really a good thing if I have something as nutted as top two pair+ or I know for a fact my opponent is gonna go this crazy with something that has less than 10% equity. 7x 3x and gutshots most certainly don't count.

    When I looked at this I noticed 76 65 54 and 43 have all got over 20% equity vs my AQ on this flop and their are also other sick runouts which can happen like 65 64 54 42 pairing board or a backdoor flush.
    What I'm saying is my hand is far more vunerable than I thought.

    The plan now is to have a few days rest to catch up with my sleep and then I will be returning to my usual schedule of mostly antes MTTS. Will give up sky? No I was thinking of making Sunday become mostly sky poker because that is the day when antes MTT fields are at the highest and the sky MTT schedule isn't so bad.
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    This week was looking messy to start with but things changed at the end of the week when I took down a €20 bounty hunter on I poker winning roughly £1.6K. I'm yet to look back at my hand history but I get the feeling I was running hot as far as premium hands are concerned but it did also have some loose play including me going a step too far and 4bet shoving A9o on FT.

    People might know me for chopping and changing all the time well it's happened again this week but for a reason as I have dropped the daily bigs and daily deepstacks from my schedule and replaced then with more bigger field MTTS. Is this big change? No All I've done is made GG join my stars schedule where I play the bigger field MTTs which are more softer whilst most my small field MTTs are over on I poker and 888 poker.

    I did a stream yesterday but It only lasted a few hours before I quit and the reason for quitting was because I couldn't take it. When streaming I go into far too much detail, say the wrong things and get myself all the more confused, when it comes to attracting viewers this isn't good and it also messes up my own game costing more EV in the long run. I am now taking a break from streaming poker and if I feel like doing it again I will.


  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    This November started off in terrible shape with me questioning where to grind, whether or not to stream, what to do about my family, who to get coaching from as well as other minor issues. The end of November however has been a terrific one with quite a few deep runs, a number of FTs taking an MTT down twice and some great fun personally.

    It all kicked off with the sky poker tour in the middle of the month, this was more or less the first time I could get out of the house and meet up with all my friends. The poker game itself didn't go so well having fired 3 bullets at the MTT and failing to make day 2 but it was still a brilliant weekend spent having some fun with all my friends.

    When I returned back home I had a few days off before getting back onto the online grind and my online grind has a been an excellent one overall. I started off by no longer doing any streaming, I also binned the daily bigs on GG, large field micro stakes MTTs were played in their place but the main priorities were playing all the I poker MTTs I normally play. As we got towards the end of the month the bigs (name of MTT) on Pokerstars were starting to take their place, what I then thought is why not replace these with bigs (name of MTT) from Pokerstars because I've always said I enjoyed them. My overall schedule now looks more well organized than it's ever been with various MTTs I like alot and so much volume.

    AS far as results go I have had a number of decent results having managed to take down an MTT twice, coming 3rd place twice making a 5th FT and also had multiple deep runs in the other MTTs I play.

    I could talk on and on about my results for this month but what I really liked about this month was getting out to meet some friends again. I believe going out with my friends on the sky poker tour was what helped me the most, doing this finally brought brought back that happy face. All i've been doing in recent months in sitting in the house but that sky poker tour helped me get out the house and put the down swing to one side and when I came back I started grinding like it was a new one.

    I said at the last SPT I might not go to brighton given how bad my down swing has been but I now know for a fact I'm certainly gonna do brighton and I must get myself out the house more often in some way because this is great for the poker mind mentally. For starters I am finally putting my poker winnings to good use, secondly I am out with various people chatting and enjoying myself rather than being stuck in the house all day where I'm either bored or questioning what to do outside of poker and finally It bring so much positivity to my life.


  • waller02waller02 Member Posts: 9,012
    Nice one Craig, well played mate.
  • Asho28Asho28 Member Posts: 763
    Great stuff Craig, nice to read that you've had a good month and are feeling positive again.
  • craigcu12craigcu12 Member Posts: 3,960
    Taking down the sky poker tour you'd think this was a year to be proud of sadly it's been a terrible one due to so many other issues.
    I had a great start to the year coming HU in $33 big, taking down Sunday major and $25 GG masters classic but even since that day things have went down hill.
    Firstly I went over board by jumping up to a bigger stakes too quickly and was burning my winnings on GG. I was doing lots of exercise at the beginning of the year but a shoulder cramp stopped me doing that and for some reason I'm yet to get back into exercising. I was volunteering twice per week at the start of the year but at the minute I do non because my neighbor who let's Betsy out the house had a knee operation and I haven't been volunteering since. I went over board with streaming and didn't think of the consequences and difficulty with streaming daily, I become more and more stressed. Worse of all my mum had a really bad accident this year and hasn't been the same since that moment so I'm worried about her and trying to figure out how to keep her most safe.
    I also got too wound up and worried about minor issues like cost of living and gambling regulations which TBH are no where near as much of an issue for me as I made them to be.

    Don't get me wrong taking down the sky poker tour was one of my proudest moments in poker and will always be remembered well, it's just a real shame that has came the same year as I've had so much chaos.

    Now is a good time to put an end to 2022 and get myself ready for 2023 because my mum is in bad health ATM and my favourite sporting event is on TV.

    I was really proud of how I started 2022 and also really proud of taking down the sky poker tour in Manchester, the goals for 2023 are to make that year more consistent and not let obstacles get in my way.

    1. Get out volunteering on Wednesdays. These are great friends of mine and I enjoy this a lot.
    2. Do exercise daily, It doesn’t have to be much the important thing is to get some exercise in to help get rid of any energy
    3. Stick to streaming poker just a little bit, there are plenty of other poker streamers for people to watch and you know yourself streaming+ grinding can get really stressful which is not good for a person like me.
    4. Stop trying to play my range perfectly correct and get back to thinking how the board interacts with ranges, the nut equity, protection and equity swings on later streets. Nobody is anywhere near GTO so why should I be close to GTO?
    5. Keep on building a friendship with the poker community and meet up with people from the crusher group.
  • waller02waller02 Member Posts: 9,012
    What a great post mate, certainly been an up and down year for you.

    Hope you have a great Christmas and that your Mum's health improves. Best of luck with all your 2023 goals.

    Come on then, who is winning the darts?
  • Asho28Asho28 Member Posts: 763
    edited December 2022
    A shame that 2022 hasn't been a great year overall for you Craig. Definitely some positives in there though on the poker front - was delighted for you when you won SPT Manchester a few months back and I know how much it meant to you.

    Think you've set yourselves some great goals for 2023 mate, and I'm sure they will benefit you massively and make you feel a lot more positive inside.

    Really sorry to hear about your mum - hope her health improves in the weeks and months ahead.

    Wishing you and your family a happy Christmas and new year, and hope you enjoy watching the World Championship Darts - Michael Smith is my prediction to win it this year.
Sign In or Register to comment.