Right I haven't blogged in good while so since I'm in work, I suppose I might as well update this page with tales of sorry performances as of late. I hope by blogging about it, I'll banish them to the month of November and start December afresh. It's nearing the end of the month so I'll give a quick summary of how it went.
Online has been really pathetic. I'm not even going to blame the amount of sick beats and bad play that I have had to endure. The truth behind my lame performances this month is because of the attitude I developed. I have literally become independent on poker tracker and my cash game has suffered as a result of playing like a robot. I've stopped taking notes. I don't try to make any improvement. I've become lazy and never get around to reading poker theory and 2+2. I've slacked off big time and my bankroll has taken a massive whopping because of that. Last weekend I happened to come across an article written by a player who posts on boards. Reading it, I found myself guilty of what he had warned against, relying on stats. Afterwards I decided to take a break from playing cash and hopefully it'll serve to refresh my attitude and make me focused when I get back to playing them cos right now, I'm only gonna bust my roll if I continue playing cash games within my current frame of mind.
My tournament game is okay I think, online. I've only played a very small handful, probably around 7 cos I can't be arsed to play tournaments most of the time. But whenever I'm in the rare humour to play an online tournament, I like the MTT SnG on stars because the seats fill up so fast and the tournaments start pretty much instantly. I've either cashed or won in 5 of them and got knocked out really early in the other two. Last night I was dicking about on GJP and won a ticket for the grand final satellite into the European Deepstack. But if I'm not in the mood to play when it comes around, I might as well not bother cos I'm not gonna do well if I'm not focused.
I haven't played that much live. Only played deaf tournaments so far this month. My form reads like this
Played 5, Won 1, Lost 4
Two of these tournaments were took place in Stockholm, which was a beautiful city. Our hostel was top class, it was pratically a hotel! Defintely worth the money we paid. The night-life was okay but I think that was because we went to the wrong areas where it was too posh for us.
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The first one was a €100+10 tournament in a private poker club on Friday night but in stereotypical fashion, us Irish visitors stood out like sore thumbs among our Scandinavian peers as we were already drunk when we got there. Rob lasted longest, coming 3rd out of 40-something players as we drunkenly railed him. The old guy with the tattoos was a great source of amusement on my starting table, he was so bad. Christer Markvelle went all in on a KQ74Q board and this guy made the call as if he had a monster hand and triumphantly tossed over absoulte shite J8 and duly gifted Christer the glut of his 10k starting stack. I couldn't hold it in, and had to stand up and turn away to laugh cos that's how funny it was.
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The second tournmanet was a €50+10 tournament in casino cosmopol the next day. It attracted 116 players, of whom the majority were just poor. When the field had narrowed to 30 players or so, I was the chip leader of the tournament and really fancied my chances of making serious cash. Until a short stack went all in against my pre flop raise with 5h6h to my AJo, and spiked a 5 on the river. I just went on tilt and cursed the poker gods, and from there on it was a slippery slope till I busted in 25th place or so. After playing in Gothenburg and Stockholm, there's three things I don't like about Cosmopol.
1- Their starting stack of 3k
2- Their steep blind structure
3-The 20% registration fee
While I think it's great that the Swedish poker societies can attract 100+ players to their tournaments, I don't think there's any value in Cosmopol's tournaments so in future I'm just gonna stick to playing poker in the Swedish Deaf clubs on Friday night cos it's better value for money. I'm still gonna go to Gothenburg in May but am only gonna play PTIG tournaments, not Cosmopol's.
All in all, if it isn't already obvious from the tone of this post, I'm feeling really fed up of poker. It's annoying the hell out of me that I cant take a proper break from the game altogether cos I invariably end up playing it when I'm bored at home in evenings and have nothing else to do. But what buggers me most of all, is unless I TRY to constantly improve, I'm not going to get out of this rut and I don't even know if I have the desire to do that.
Poker. What a sick game.
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