Likey's Blog

My motivation and passion for the game is back which is great however I seem to be coming to a crossroads lately with what to do.

On one hand I have a burning desire to improve in cash games mainly because I see it as a consistent way to make money and even more when moving up the levels (hopefully), I would be very content to be beating the top end of SSNL and if I could beat the game at even the bottom end of MSNL for a decent winrate of ~2BB/100 over a large sample each year I’d be a very happy man! I’m a long way from that so I won’t worry too much about that for now.

On the other hand I would like to get back into the tournament scene again, it was how I’ve grown my bankroll and it seems to be where the value is at the moment since the cash games have dried up somewhat. Don’t get me wrong, there is still money to be made in cash games but it takes a lot more work than tournaments I think. I sort of regret not pursuing the tournament path when it was all going well for me in 2009 but I did learn a lot from going down the ring game path too, which I am grateful for despite not winning from it.

For the foreseeable future I have decided to ban myself from watching TV shows, it may seem extreme but so is watching an entire season over a weekend! So enough of the TV show binge, it’s time to use that time for more productive activities like grinding, studying and regular visits to the gym. As a treat, I could watch a movie or two but definitely won’t be watching TV shows for a while.

My router at home seem to have fried recently so whilst waiting for a replacement router I think I’ll be spending more time doing some studies this weekend, I’m out most of Saturday but will try cram some study time when I get home in the evening. What I will also do is just not go on the Internet on certain days or have blocks of time in the evening where I will remain off-line to study so I don’t have distractions. Time seems to go really quickly when I have my Internet browser open and it’s worrying as I don’t feel I’ve done anything productive!

Another thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I don’t take downswings very well, in fact it’s so bad that it completely stops me from wanting to play hence why I stopped for over half a year! I need to work out how to combat this and push on – at the end of the day Time is Money and I need to stop wasting it!

Big oops for 2010 – I planned a big productive year and had high hopes but that didn’t go according to plan. In essence this is what happened…

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, each year I played poker I made more than the previous year in winnings so was hoping that would be the case again for 2010. One of my biggest aims was to grind 300,000 VPPs on Stars starting from May and if it went well do like 600,000 VPPs in 2011 and go for SNE in 2012 (very ambitious I know!). I created a spreadsheet to see how I would do depending on my winrate and was expecting to play at least a million hands this year, even at a modest winrate it was worthwhile.

To help me with this I was debating whether or not to hire a life coach. I was speaking with Wazz about life coaches and he recommended a good one to me so I got in contact and met the guy, the chat went really well but I hadn’t made a decision yet (bankroll nit alert) and said I’d get back to him after my honeymoon. The reason for the life coach was to help with motivation and to keep me on track throughout the year, I’ve always had problems with completing projects that I start so figured this would be a great investment. If I could be cured of this then surely I’d be successful in anything I wanted to pursue providing I put in the hard work and followed it through. He asked me what 3 mini goals I’d like to have for the year and I mentioned poker, keeping fit and studying for IT exams which I think is a good balance as the goals themselves complement each other well.

At the time, I maintained Supernova status but lost that whilst on my honeymoon in the Maldives back in April. I ran good due to the volcanic ash cloud in Iceland as all flights were grounded which meant I got an extra week’s holiday all paid for by British Airways. However, it also meant I lost Supernova so I emailed SteveD whilst I was out there and negotiated a deal to get me back on track for when I got back in the UK. I tried but couldn’t meet the target he proposed so ended up giving up on the mega grind, mainly because I lost Supernova but also because I wasn’t even winning at the tables so felt like I was just being a rakeback pro for the year. So in short – I gave up before I even started.

I took a massive long break of around 7 months where I didn’t play cash, in-between that time I decided to play a few live tournaments at International Club and just chilled, watched loads of TV shows/movies , browsed websites or caught up with friends. Getting away from the Supernova grind definitely felt good as it was like a big weight lifted from my shoulders, the same sort of feeling when you’ve passed all your exams and it’s the end of the semester or something. So for now, I’M A FREE BITCH, BABY!

In hindsight, I should walk before I run because I feel all this grinding has ruined my learning curve as I was essentially being impatient by playing more tables and moving up to stakes that I couldn’t handle. Recently I got the motivation to start playing again and this time I’m looking to work a lot harder on my game than before. You can check out my new journey on EMS forum: Likey 2.0

To conclude, I want to mention that BlackShuck has successfully reached Supernova Elite status for 2010 and this has been an amazing achievement and shows what hard work can do for you. He is a big inspiration to me and his fellow EMSers, hopefully he’ll continue to guide us to where we want to be because he is our biggest hero!

Happy New Year everyone! All the best to all you people who have set goals and challenges for yourselves.

First off, I got engaged near the beginning of 2009 and had our Chinese wedding a few months later. The official wedding is scheduled for around Easter in 2010. Apart from that there wasn’t anything special happening for the first 5 months, all except running bad in tournaments – it was very common for me to reach the last two tables cashing in peanuts for all the hard work.

Since then I had far better results, took down the $20 cubed again in May so I was one away from getting a hat-trick in that tournament. August and September were very successful months for me, as mentioned in my August blog entry I won several seats to play the WCOOP events. I went super deep in the $1050 WCOOP 2-day event finishing 10/3268 which was extremely gutting but winning shy of $20K helped cushion the blow. One of my goals of 2009 was to cash 5 figures in a tournament so I got that one locked.

Here’s a screenshot of my OPR results for August and September 2009:

After that I had to take a really long break from the game to get over it and mid-October I got back to playing cash games again. I made just over $1K profit at the end of the month playing mainly $50NL which was a good start, I calculated that I could reach Supernova star status if I kept pace playing most days so that’s exactly what I did.

In November, I decided to use some of my winnings to have a home office setup, this includes two desks joined together along with two ergonomic chairs for me and Laura. I also built a new PC and got two 24″ Dell monitors to go with it – the whole project wasn’t cheap that’s for sure! Before that I was playing on the coffee table with my laptop whilst sitting on the floor with a cushion – very balla indeed!

There were some rough times ahead but it made me stronger and I have learnt from the experience. I think I’m starting to come out of the dark tunnel now but no doubt another bad run will be inevitable, I just have to ride it out when it comes. Looking back, I was running very bad and not realise I was playing in auto-pilot mode on 8+ tables to get VPPs thus playing bad too.

The good news was that I managed to reach Supernova on New Years Eve but the bad news was that I was down about $750 in December and my game suffered a lot trying to get there.

2009 was a very successful year overall for me, with each year winning more than the last. I can only hope that 2010 will be an even better year – hope it turns out well for you too!

Links:
Likey’s Cash Blog Latest update: 17th Jan 2010.
Likey is in the Well
WCOOP 28: $1050 Day 1
WCOOP 28: $1050 Day 2
WCOOP 28: $1050 Final Table Report by PokerStars Blog
Good luck to a forumite Gutshot Forum – WCOOP $1050 sweat thread.
They even put my table up on the plasma TV for everyone at the club to view that night.

Today marks the anniversary of the 7/7 bombing in London from 4 years ago, a memorial in Hyde Park which consists of 52 stainless steel pillars has been created – not to symbolise the 52 weeks of the year or the 52 playing cards in a deck but in honour for the victims who died that day.

This brings back memories of my journey to work that day towards Liverpool Street. It was interesting as I was chatting to my friend the day before about conspiracy theories, so when I was on my way to work an announcement was made for everyone to get off the tube and go up onto the streets I knew this could potentially be something BAD! I got off at Westminster station and could hear sirens and see loads of people trying to get on buses to make their way to work.

It didn’t feel right, I knew it couldn’t have been a regular tube problem and felt that an attack on London was very possible. I rang my friend who said “I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU!”, I reacted by saying if this is true we need to get out of London as soon as possible! Unfortunately I didn’t have my hands-free kit with me so was unable to listen to the radio on my phone to hear what was going on. I rang my now ex-girlfriend to check the news but no one knew that it was an attack yet, I might have scared a few people in the cafe because I said out loud my speculation that the bridges could be blown and that I had to get out of Central London as soon as possible otherwise I could be stuck here or worse!

When I finally got through to my boss I explained that I’d be late and he simply said to turn around and go home if I could so that’s exactly what I did. Shortly after that the mobile network went dead – no one were able to make calls for hours. I managed to get on a bus heading out of Central London, as soon as I was over the bridge I felt safe. I made it home for around 10:30am and immediately turned on the news to find out what was going on, the first images I saw were the blown up bus! I wasn’t surprised to find out that bombs went off but was shocked that I was so close to it all, especially as I was heading towards Liverpool Street. On the Derren Brown Forum there were pages and pages in a thread where everyone were worried sick about me and those who lived and worked in London, they were glad that none of us were hurt.

Speaking of Derren, he has been busy touring for his new theatre show ENIGMA and he’s currently at the last hurdle which is in the West-End here in London. I have front row tickets for this Saturday and looking forward to it, it has been extended for a further 3 days (23rd-25th July) so if you can get here then I advise you to get tickets if you’re interested.