FeARFaCTs Poker Blog

Made it back from Atlantic City a week or so ago. Overall the trip went alright, although I fell under my expectations for the trip. I ended up two buyins overall, but should have done much better. I general I wasn't playing well and semi tilted from taking a beating in the stock market that week. I did manage to write down 7 or 8 hands, so I'll try to get those posted sometime soon.

Other than that, really haven't played much since. It took me a bit to get my computer back up and going, and after wards I just felt like taking a small break and working on a few other things. Today was my first day on in a while and I managed to get a smallish session in. Overall it went pretty bad but I ran into a few billion awful spots. I should be getting back into the groove from here on out so I'll be posting more hands soon.

Just finished another guard drill this past weekend, so I wasn't able to get any poker in. This week should be good for poker though as I'll be leaving for Atlantic City this morning through the 14th. I'll be there for the Ceasers WSOP circuit event, although probably won't play any tournaments due to the timing of the trip vs. the scheduling of the tournaments. I do plan on playing a ton during the extend of my trip though. Last time I was able to make 6 buyins in 30 hours of play, so hopefully I can make 8+ buyins in under 50 hours of play this time. I am slightly strapped on cash as I've moved most of what I can into E*Trade, however I do plan on playing some 5/10nl if I do well the first day or two in Atlantic City.

In other news, my computer picked up another nasty virus which is requiring me to reinstall everything again. The virus is kind of like AIDS, but for computers only. Hopefully everything will be fixed up by next weekend as I'd like to get to posting more hands again.

So I got this portable sunlamp in the mail today. It basically imitates outdoor light which gives you way more energy and helps you relax/sleep better at night. I wasn't sure how it would work at first but since it had a 30 day risk free trial I said why not. All I can say is that this thing is incredible. I usually had it on for an hour at a time and then off for an 30mins to 1 hour. I would be so charged during the hour it was on and right after it shut off. As I felt myself falling into a hole I turned the light back on and quickly felt alert and energized again. I highly recommend this product for anyone who works indoors all day where performance is key (link posted below).

As for poker today, I decided to drop down to 50nl for the day and 20board. I've been getting frustrated at 100nl the last few days so I just wanted to mindlessly grind and get a lot of hands in like I did a few months ago. Playing 20 boards again felt great as I do enjoy the speed and pressure it puts on you. I also absolutely killed the game playing around 16/12 and winning 5BB/100. I was actually playing close to 18/14 at one point and this was probably the height of my alertness during the session. These statistics are very interesting to me since I always used to play between 11/8 and 12/9 when 20 boarding, never seeming to be able to profitably get my stats up. I think because my skill has improved so much between this past January and now that even though I was on a lot of boards I was still able to open up and take advantage of the weaker players (Thanks D_zoo!!!).

I may play another day or two of mass tabling 50nl until I can get my head back into 8 tabling higher stakes again. I don't think the variety is terrible as it can mix up and keep the game fresh for me. Won't be posting too many hands from this limit though since most of them are pretty standard.

Ended Feb with so so results, will post a wrap up sometime this week. However, my last 1600 hands or so have been a disaster with me being down 4 buyins. I think I'm just running into some very ridiculous situations. I also don't think my table selection was great during my session today, as I was sitting with mostly regs for a while. I find that my VPIP/PFR is much higher on a table full of regs as opposed to a table full of retards, however I think my winrate is much lower. I don't think I am good enough to fully capitalize on other regs yet when playing at a high VPIP/PFR.

I have a few hands posted, nothing major though. Definitely have a few terrible ones mixed in. I think I need to get my mind back on poker and focus harder as I've slacked off a bit this past week. Tried to get some better losing hands posted but there weren't any big losing hands from the session.

I do plan on playing some decent hours for the rest of this week, so hopefully I get some better results posted. My goal for March is going to be 30 hours of playing a week, or roughly 130 hours for the month. I am cutting down a bit to focus on higher quality play and to make sure I'm relaxing more. I think my consistent high levels of stress between Nov and Jan really destroyed both my physical and mental health and brought me down a bit in Feb.