One Final Cheer For The Year!

Pokerstars were running a Festive Bounty Takedown for the last two weeks of the year, with a £2,000 prizepool and a £250 bounty on the Pokerstars Pro Julian Thew. In order to qualify for the Festive Bounty Takedown you had to earn a ticket in freerolls or £1 rebuy tournaments with the top 36 players earning a seat. I was drawn to the £1 rebuy tournaments because Pokerstars were adding £500 to the prizepool. With an average of 300 runners each night,that £500 adds a little extra juice!


The night I played there were 244 runners and I had to rebuy twice within the fist ten minutes,both times getting it in good. I then went on a really good run of cards that easily brought me into the money. From then on I only had eyes for the £226 first place. With 16 left I got extremely lucky with me holding 6 7 on a board of 2 2 6 all in versus kk and k2. I spiked the 6 on the turn and this then made me chipleader going into the final table. In the end I took third place for £123.58. A hefty increase to my bankroll indeed! Here is the screenshot to prove it!

I finished up 64th in the final for £6.40 but unfortunately no bounty win off Mr.Thew. The cash tables have been ticking along nicely for me at the moment. Obviously I have been cutting back with exams but when I do play I seem to be winning the maximum amount. I have also started to dip my toe into the 2c/5c cash games. So far so good, but it is very early days. Still haven't had time to think of some goals for 2011. I'll save that for a post after the exams. Until then, good luck at the tables and good luck in the new year!

End Of Year And Exams

The final part of the PSO bonus has now been cleared and I have just been plodding along on the cash tables. No real big gains/losses to report at the micro tables but I have cashed in all three of the exclusive Irish €1,000 freerolls on Pokerstars for a combined total of €23. There is really good value in these freerolls, as the fields are relatively low and the play is quite poor. There is two more weeks of the promotion so hopefully there's a final table in it for me! It's only when you start converting from euro to dollar in the Pokerstars cashier do you realise how weak the euro has actually gotten. Too bad Pokerstars prohibits currency speculation!


I had the pleasure of playing with the mighty Pokerstars Online Pro (lol), chiren80. For some reason he is multi-tabling the 2c 6max cash games at the moment. He must really be pushing hard for supernova elite this December ! I have important exams coming up after Christmas, so it's time to knuckle down a bit. I must achieve a 65% grade in each of my four exams to get the actuarial exemptions that are available to me. This means I have to bury myself in the books for a while.


I will be back with a vengeance in the new year, hopefully with a few goals written down! Until then,happy Christmas and a happy new year!

Finally I Am A Break-Even Player!

So I am finally break even! It wasn't too difficult, just had to keep up the form that I had been keeping on the 2c tables. The $45 balance had disappeared in no time! Here is the interesting graph to prove it! Just look at that horrible crash! What was I thinking? That downswing was purely due to poor play and playing the wrong stakes. I now feel I have a spring board to give a good go at moving up the stakes. I have always had my losses hanging over me and now this feels like turning over a brand new leaf.

I noticed Pokerstars are running an exclusive Irish €1,000 freeroll every Sunday for the month of December. I registered late for it on Sunday and had to get a bit aggressive...... and lucky! I also had to get a lift up to Dublin so I was purely building a stack that would hopefully carry me into the money when I was sitting out! I was chip leader with 100 left and the top 63 being paid. Then I had to get my lift. When I plugged in the internet up in college I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had finished 18th for €8. I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't play the whole tournament because the money was very good for a freeroll and the field was small, but I am content with my payday. Every little counts!

I also played in an Irish Student Masters freeroll on Paddy Power Poker this week. It was offering two seats to the €110 tournament. I got close to winning my very first live tournament satellite but no cigar. I finished 6th. This is a tournament I would like to qualify for but satellites run so seldom on PPP and it would kill me to pony up the full buy-in!

 

I am going to have to set myself some new goals so I can keep focused on improving. I still have $10 of the PSO bonus to clear but I only have like 56 fpp's to earn. After that I will have to put together some attainable short to medium term goals. Until then!

Search To Get Out Of The Red!!

Since I had hit my last goal of getting the stellar award I had to set myself a new one. I have been slowly climbing out of the losses I made before I went to the US. So my new goal is to be break even by New Years. I have been closely dissecting my stats on pokertableratings and I now realise where my big leak is when it comes to online poker. 6-MAX CASH GAMES!! I have lost a lot of money playing these games and I can't see myself playing these games again until I do a bit of study on the strategies for short handed games.


On the other hand I am very pleased with my full ring game stats. I am a profitable player at all the full ring games I play. I aim just to keep up the grind at the 1c/2c tables and this will hopefully get me out of the red by the end of the year. I was -$135 in cash games when I came back from America and now I am -$45. I have stopped playing the 5c/10c tables for the moment as I now realise (with a little help from my friends at pokerspace!) that my bankroll can't take the variance and swings at that level for a little while.


I am happy to drop down stakes. It would be different if I was playing poorly at the 5c/10c tables but I wasn't. It will put me in good stead when I have a larger bankroll. So here I go trying to get into the black!

Two Bonuses Now Cleared

I have finally done it! I have cleared my first bonus on a pokersite. These bonuses are just like buses, so when I cleared my first bonus I also cleared the second one! I have half of the PSO $20 bonus cleared and I have the  first stellar award cleared on Pokerstars. These were good enough to clear $20 into my account and I now have 340 fpp's. I don't really know what to do with the fpp's yet, if anyone has any ideas as to what is the best way to turn these into cash please let me know.


I also played in a first depositors freeroll open only to UK & Ireland players with  £10,000 added. I finished 217th for £9.50 but I was disappointed seeing as the field was soft and the payout was so good. Unfortunately I went card dead for the whole tournament and I had to survive on scraps. That equated to another $14.50 for the bankroll.


The 5c/10c cash games have been up and down to say the  least! One day I would be up $10 the next I am down the same amount. Overall since I started at this new limit I am up a good bit but I just really want to continue this pace. If you want to check my stats I have found this great site for looking up players stats at cash tables for free:

http://www.poker-edge.com/poker-player-stats/zwemnaar

My progress since I came home from the US is from 9,000 hands onwards. This site is my main motivation to improve as I really want to get out of the red and into the black. At the moment I have $168.02 so hopefully I can improve on this.

Big Boost To The Bankroll

Since I am trying to get this stellar reward before the end of the year, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get a 100% reload bonus off  PSO (pokerschool online). PSO are linked up with Pokerstars and If you complete the core quiz and sit'n'go quiz you are eligible for a 100% reload bonus up to $20. So I breezed through the quizzes (93% in both!) and then withdrew $20 from my account so I could re-deposit and get the bonus. I need to earn 250 fpp's for each $10 so this will run nicely with my earning of the stellar reward as I have around 250 fpp's left to earn this.


Also with all these fpp's flying in I decided to use some of them to earn a few tournament $'s on Pokerstars. I registered for a 70 fpp 10 man tournament with 1st place getting an $11 ticket to the Sunday 1/4 million. I ran well in this and took it down after a yo-yo heads up battle. Seeing as I already have a ticket for the Sunday 1/4 million I now had $11 tournament $'s. I proceeded to play two $2.20 HU S&G's and won both to put an extra $8 in my real money account.


So on Sunday with nothing else to do I decided to use my Sunday 1/4 million ticket. I registered 30mins late so I had to get busy. A few hands in, I bluffed big time in a battle of the blinds, it just felt that he was posturing. this nearly doubled my starting stack. Then I got very lucky with K-10 vs AK to double up again. I was now 1,000th out of 33,000 players. I went card dead for an eternity and just survived by picking off the blinds every once and a while. I made the cash ok and then I went into survival mode. I was extremely short stacked for the rest of the tourney but won a few crucial coin flips to end up finishing 616th for $93.10. Not a bad return on a free ticket! Thanks very much Pokerstars!


This has left my account looking very rosy and now there is no real chance of me going broke at the 5c/10c tables. It gives me a bit of breathing space and hopefully more chance to play mtt's and S&G's. Until next time, lectures call! 

Ups and Downs at a new Cash Game Limit!

A bit has happened since my last post. I had a big test coming up in college so I decided to withdraw all my funds from Pokerstars. That was a grand total of $51.05 with $10 of this going back into my moneybookers account,the rest back into my bank account. After the test (in which i did quite well in I hope!) I put the moneybookers money back on the site and continued the grind at the 1c/2c tables. Worked this up to $16 and then this is where the fun began!!


I have always had a fixation with the Pokerstars fpp's and my new goal is to gain the first stellar reward which mean I have to collect 750 fpp's over the year. If I get the fpp's I will the get a $10 reward. So,what better way to earn fpp's than to move up stakes!! I moved up to 5c/10c full ring games putting $8 at stake first. This quickly disappeared!! I just didn't realise the difference in playing at this level. The bluffing and calling off was crazy! Massive shoves pre flop with A-8 and 22. So I had to re-adjust and I did!! I put my whole bankroll on the line but it paid off as I came out of red and into black ending the day with $22 in the account and more importantly some fpp's in it as well!


It was then onwards and upwards from there. My account is now at $50 again and I now feel comfortable at the 5c/10c tables. Also I have earned 220 fpp's this month and 456 fpp's for the year. So I need 294 fpp's to gain my stellar award. I could also gain silverstar vip status but don't think I'll be able to keep up the pace I have already set. Anyway back to the grind!!

Free sit'n'go tickets come good!

All has been flying online. I have worked my bankroll up to $50 through grinding the 1c/2c tables and using some sit'n'go tickets I acquired to good use. I have been playing the £2,000 Daily Giveaway for UK & Irish players on Pokerstars. They reward you for the more tourneys you play:

Tiered Rewards
Level	Freeroll tourneys completed	Reward*
1	3	$1.20 S&G ticket
2	6	$2.20 cash credit
3	9	$3.40 S&G ticket
4	12	$5.50 cash credit
5	15	Sunday $1/4 Million ticket

So far I have played 13 tourneys and I have availed of the bonuses. I failed to cash with the $1.20 S&G ticket but I made amends for that by winning the 9 man $3.40 S&G for $13.50. It was a great return on a free ticket!


I also played in a few Sunday competitions that had some nice prizes going in them. I played in a RFU freeroll where there were some rugby tickets up for grabs, $1.20 S&G tickets and Pokerstars baseball caps. I finished 11th out of 399 players for a S&G ticket. I then went on to win the S&G for a further $4.50. I also played in the WBCOOP $5,000 Halloween freeroll but got nowhere in that. The reason why I have the Pokerstars banner across this page was to gain entry to the competition.


I haven't played live since my 2nd place finish in the D.C.U game but I might this week. There is a scalps tourney which is always good for a few euro! The poker society arn't doing their freeroll for some reason,which is a big loss as many players turn out for this and continue to go throughout the year. Anyway better get back to the grind. Laters.

Dcu Poker Society and Online Progress

I have been playing a good bit on-line since I have last posted. I was suprised to find I still had $7 in my Pokerstars account when I logged in. So I started playing on the 1c/2c tables. I would buy in to full ring games for $1.60. The standard at this level is extremely poor and I have been able to build my bankroll up to $24.70. I threw in a few 25c 90 man sit'n'goes, $2 heads up games and $1 double or nothing games to mix it up a bit too.



I joined D.C.U Poker Society this week and played the Monday night €10 freezeout. My god the play was atrocious! My starting table had two good players and the rest were fish. There were alot of Spanish and French and they were just so poor. My plan just just to sit back and wait for the goods. I got KK twice and by the first break I had doubled my starting stack to 6,000.


table then broke and we were at the final two tables. I had a massive dead stack to my immediate right which was like paradise! I got a few walks because of it! Cruised onto the final table where I once again had the privilege of having the dead stack sit beside me. Blinds were high now and I lost a big hand when i Had A3 clubs vs K5 clubs all in pre flop. That would have made me chip leader.


 But I recovered to make it to heads up,albeit with a severe chip disadvantage. I lost out a couple of hands later. I made €110 on the night plus a €10 bounty on a birthday boy (Conor O'Regan)! The society are having a freeroll on tomorrow with a prizepool of €700,so thats well worth playing! I'll keep you posted.

The First Of Many Posts

Hi,I might as well give a short introduction. I'm Conor a 20 yr old student. I am studying actuarial mathematics in DCU and I am going into my 3rd year. Now on to what this blog is going to be about.

My big passion is poker. As I do a mathematics based course I enjoy the maths behind it and the money is nice too! I have played poker for two years and I'm a member of the DCU poker society. I play online on Pokerstars and,as of yesterday,Walker poker. In nearly everything internet based I do zwemnaar is my username,so with poker this is no different. This blog will be about my trials and tribulations with regards to poker,both online and live.

 Now my reason for doing this blog. I have done blogs before but they were on poker communitys. I was away all summer in America and played no poker at all,so now I see this as a fresh start. I want to document my progress as I once again try to grind out a bankroll from nothing. So hop on and join The Chronicles Of Zwemnaar.