Moving Up

After spending a lot of time in the Grind House this summer I realized one thing about my poker game, I was settling. I had become too comfortable and too accustomed to the winnings that I was making at $50nl. Sure I was never setting the house on fire but I was also pretty much guaranteed a winning month at an amount that I deemed acceptable. Well, after seeing the guys in the house and the drive that some of them have I have decided to move up to $100nl and from there, if my game permits, as high as I can.

As many of you are aware, I'm something of a bankroll nit and I've used it as an excuse for not moving up in the past. An excuse is exactly what it was, possibly a deep down fear stashed away that maybe I wasn't good enough for the step up. Well we are about to see whether or not I am good enough. I decided to approach a very well known FR guy who was offering stakes to gauge his interest in a possible deal. Whilst he was keen to work with me, he was looking for people at the $400nl level and didn't want to get involved with people playing smaller games. I respect his decision and am happy that he took the time to review my application.

From there, I was approached by a different staking stable and after coming to terms on a deal that I felt was fair to someone with my track record the deal was sealed. In respecting my staker I wont be naming him or outlining the deal we agreed but I feel that it could be beneficial for both parties. He is new to the staking game and eager to take on new players, so if you are looking for a stake and have a decent track record hit me up and I can introduce you to him.

So what the future holds I dont know but I know I am stepping up to the games eager to show to myself, most importantly, that I am good enough to sit in the game and compete.

Vegas Review and a Promise

Well the blogging in Vegas was a huge failure. It wasn't that I didn't want to update the blog with my progress but finding the time to do it provide difficult. You get on such a strange schedule that the days seem to blend into one and it feels like your on a constant conveyor belt that just merges your days together leaving you no time to do anything constructive. Now that I'm back at home I am going to aim to update regularly again. I really enjoyed blogging and am excited to get back to it.

First off, I had an amazing time in Vegas, I met a bunch of people that I had only previously played with online and now I'm happy to call them my friends. We did a bunch of fun things and generally just had a good time. I played a lot of golf and realized how much I really do love the game. If only my on course game was as impressive as my desire to get better. I'm putting it on the to-do list for the upcoming year for sure.

My tournament results ended up being three cashes in ten events. I played four WSOP events ( 1 $1000, 2 $1500's and a $2500), a Golden Nugget Grand Series event, a RIO Deep Stack and four Venetians. My best finish was 29th for $11,870 in the $1k WSOP event. The event has already been blogged about so I won't go into detail about it but it was an amazing experience and one that I hope to be able to experience again in the future.

Cash games for the second straight summer were a disappointment. I did run bad for some of it and I certainly could see the improvement over previous summers but I still find myself not being able to adjust to the slower pace of live poker. I need to realize that I cant call every $7, $10 or $12 raise with 97s and expect to be profitable in the games. Boredom has a huge impact on my live game and hopefully in the coming months I will be able to figure out a plan to overcome this, as I'm not ready to give up on being a live cash game player just yet. I've started to think that the best option may well be to play 2/5 so that I'm forced to concentrate more and so the money means more to me. Its going to be a work in progress and I guess only time will tell.

Lastly, my online results for my time out there were average. I won some, lost some and pretty much broke even while I was there. I didn't put in much volume so I'm not really concerned with the results at all. I tried an experiment playing the $100nl shallow tables. Whilst I think that with some work, I could beat them for a decent winrate, the swings were just too big to be able to deal with so that is on the back burner again. I did get some invaluable advice from Ach Ja and Zachvac that I hope I am able to implement into my own game. Results so far are mixed as I'm in something of a transitional stage but in the future I think I will see some marked improvement.

Im going to close for now but I'd like to thank all of you guys again for your messages of support during my run in the WSOP. I have locked up a seat in the $2100 River event at Winstar Casino with a guaranteed $3 million prize pool so hopefully I will have some more live success in the near future.