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!