Krissyb24 Poker

January VPP update

2012-01-31T20:22:00.000-08:00

Ended January with only 56,300. Hoping to get to 100k before the end of February (I'll be on vacation until the 15th), and then it will be time to turn up the volume.

How's your SNE chase going so far? (or whatever VPP goal you might have)

My Trip to Alaska

2012-01-31T00:14:00.000-08:00

So as I'm getting ready to go on my highly anticipated, get me out of the miserable winter weather, cruise that I booked months ago, I wanted to make sure I packed my camera and I realized I never shared about the cruise I took to Alaska in September.

Alaska certainly wouldn't have been by first pick for a vacation, but my newly married sister and her husband picked a cruise through Alaska to celebrate their marriage and invited our family along, and so I gladly went. I do love to travel, so I'd travel almost anywhere, and I really didn't hear or read one bad review about it so I had no reason not to go. In a way this is where I think the problem lied for me. I would tell people about my upcoming trip and they would tell me about how amazing they heard/ or experienced an Alaska cruise to be. I would take a look at amazing pictures on the internet, and my expectations were huge. I thought we would be sailing through waters with jumping whales and dolphins and looking out at icebergs filled with families of seals and otters. I was expecting polar bears, the northern lights, and stunning scenery. Sure, I'm setting the trip up to be a disappointment, but I will tell you right now, it wasn't. It did teach me to never do too much research into a trip again. Don't look around at all the perfectly edited pictures. Let me correct myself. Do research about what to do, but don't look at too many pictures if you can help it. I think it's always more enjoyable to see things for the first time when your seeing it in real life without any preconceived notions.

Anyways, let me tell me about the trip:

We boarded a plane from Buffalo, NY, and hours later this is what I see:

Las Vegas!!! Too bad it was only a quick stopover. I was certainly tempted to escape the airport and hop in a cab to Naked Fish's for sushi. Seriously, I don't even really like sushi, but every trip to Vegas I end up eating there night after night. It was the first place I tried sushi and no where (except Tao) compares. Especially in Ottawa.

Anyway, on we go, to what actually ended up being my favourite stop on our trip. Seattle. We got in at about 9pm to stay overnight before we boarded the cruise ship the next day. We stayed at the W Seattle right down town and got up early in the morning to stroll around the city and visit Pike's Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium.

I was very impressed and fell in love with the market. I have never seen such beautiful flowers in my life. They had gorgeous bouquets with the most vivid colours. You could even get a lovely small bouquet for $5. $5 here in Ottawa, will pretty much get you 1 lily. There was tons of fresh produce, fresh fish, baked goods, jewellery, crafts, and more. I was just sad we had to leave so quickly.

I didn't have time to go in, but got to walk by the original Starbucks right in Pikes Place market. People were lined up outside to get in.

After a beautiful morning walking around Seattle, it was time to board our ship and set sail for Alaska.

We travelled on the Norwegian Pearl. (As seen here docked in Seattle).

I have to say, overall, I was extremely impressed with this cruise line, especially since it is on the lower end of the price ranges for cruises. If I had to rate some of the important stuff on the cruise ship: 1 being terrible, 10 being amazing:

Food: 8.5/10

Entertainment: 6.5/10

Rooms: 7.5/10

Cleanliness: 9/10

Overall: 8.5/10

I would totally recommended the cruise line itself, especially if your planning a trip on a tight budget!

Here is a map of our route:

So from Seattle, we went up to Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagway. Due to bad weather, we had to take a different route and sadly ended up missing out on our last stop, Victoria, B.C. Unfortunatley we ended up going during the final week of the cruise season, and ran bad in the weather department. As you will see from the pictures below, it was often very foggy, wet, rainy, snowy, and cold. Yes, it is Alaska, but I assure you they do have 'summers'! Or so I hear.

We were at sea for a couple days which we spent our time: eating, getting sea sick, playing some poker, eating, getting sea sick while in a poker tournament, eating, reading, keeping warm in our rooms, drinking, poker, eating, reading, eating, some exercising, eating.... you get the jist...

Our first stop- Juneau- Alaska's capital city.

There wasn't much too see. I couldn't believe all the jewellery stores at every port. I thought I was in for a scenic wildlife adventure, but apparently I was supposed to be jewellery shopping! I tried to find something nice to get as a souvenir, but never did. If the weather had been better, I think the best way to spend your time at ports is to research ahead of time the best thing to do at each port. When I got home, I found out apparently they have a good whale watching tour in Juneau.

We were on the hunt for some good Alaska crab legs. We found them at the Twisted Fish Co. It was a cute little spot. They had a bunch of adorable looking crab shacks, but it was freezing out and we needed some shelter.

My favourite thing we ordered were the coconut crusted salmon strips with a berry chutney.

While we were in Juneau, we decided to do a dog sledding tour. It was pretty neat. We got to do a little dog sledding trail, and we learned a lot about the history of dog sledding. My favorite part was getting to pet the dogs and we got to see a litter of little puppies.

These two dogs especially liked me. (OK probably just my back scratches). It was cold and wet and I got very dirty petting them. No one else would =/.

Adam made a friend, too.

Puppies!

The pack

Then it was back on the ship, and to our next stop- Skagway. We had heard the best thing to do was the White Pass railway ride so that's what we did.

Our final port was Ketchian, and although we wanted to do a tour, the weather wasn't cooperating so we ended up walking around the town, looking through all the shops.

One of the highlights of the cruises through Alaska is sailing through Glacier Bay.

Finally saw a seal or sea lion family!

We did a lot of eating, and relaxing and it was a great trip, despite the weather. The ship had great food with many restaurants with a ton variety including: Mexican, Italian, French, and Teppanyaki.

In a few days, I'll be off on another cruise, filled with sun and sand. I will try my best to take lots of pictures this time and blog about it too.

Quick SNE update

2012-01-21T02:18:00.000-08:00

45,000 vpps earned so far. Not going to be able to do 100k this month as I had planned :/.

Taking it 'easy' trying to play shorter sessions and work on my game. Never enough time in the day to do everything I'd like to. (trying to write up an interesting blog included).

2012 So Far

2012-01-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess I should get back to the grind. Just when I finally started to relax after playing almost 1 million hands over November and December, I find myself in a dreadful place to be in when chasing SuperNova Elite. Behind pace! I'm not behind by much, but needless to say, it's not how I want to start the year off. Especially since I'm going to be travelling for two weeks in February. If I could give one piece of advice for somebody who seriously wanted to grind SNE- it's get a good a head start and stay on or better yet get ahead of pace!

Anyway, I desperately need to make a plan to get on the right track with poker for January, so I thought I would share it:

VPP's accumulated: 16,300
January VPP goal: 100,000
Days alloted to play: 19
VPPs needed per day: 4,400

So, if I gave myself 19 days of playing this month, I would need to average about 4,400 a day in order to earn 83,700. On average, playing 200NL FR, I've been getting about 500vpps an hour. So it looks like on the days I need to play, I'm looking at about 9 hours which should be about 15,000 hands. It should be totally achievable, but I have to admit, I've lost my momentum and I'm having a problem getting it back. Hopefully a couple days with some decent volume will help...

How's your SNE chase going so far?

SNE 2011

2011-12-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

I did it again! I was able to earn Supernova Elite status on PokerStars, like I set out to do in January 2011. Overall it was a decent year, though the last couple months were tough to say the least. But as life goes, 2011 did not go exactly as planned...

(Because I always get asked what exactly SNE is- here is a link incase your wondering too: http://www.pokerstars.com/vip/supernova/elite/)

Poker
OK, where to start. I'm disappointed with myself this year as far as putting effort in my game away from actually playing. I spent way too many hours auto piloting and playing mindlessly. I also regret that I didn't push myself to play more 200NL, which is what I initially set out to grind all year but after a bad run I moved down to 100NL and just sort of got stuck there. If I had moved back up, I would have been able to play significantly less hours, and I most likely would have had a higher hourly rate too. Results aside, I actually feel like my cash game skills have improved and I do feel that my current 'A' game is much stronger than my 2010 'A' game, even though I have a long way to go to being the player I want to be. The real challenge is trying to consisitnely bring that 'A' game to the table every time I play. I feel that I know what to do, it's just a matter of actually doing it.

Plans for 2012
Up until a few days ago I knew my plan for 2012, but since PokerStars implemented their new rake system (I'll touch on this later on), I can't say anything for sure. My plan was to play 200NL and stay on (or preferbly ahead of) pace for a few months, and depending on how things were going, I wanted to shoot for either 1,000,000 or 1,250,000 VPPs. Now, I'm going to need a couple weeks to really figure out what my new average vpp per hand rate will be and re-evaluate from there, but I'm hoping that my goal of playing 200NL and hitting 1,000,000 will still be a reasonable option.

PokerStars 2012 Rake Changes
Previously to Jan.1 2012, PokerStars used the dealt method to reward vpps which means that each player who was dealt a hand would all recive an equal amount of vpps. Now, Stars is going to use the Weighted Contributed method which means you will only get a precent of vpps equal to what you have contributed to the pot. Therefore, in general- the tighter you play, the less vpps your going to collect compared to someone who plays much looser putting more money in the pot more frequently. This change has created quite an uproar in the poker world, and I've been following the situation as much as I can on these two threads on TwoPlusTwo:

1) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/mass-sitout-protest-pokerstars-2012-rake-changes-1145349/
2) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/official-2011-supernova-elite-pursuit-thread-related-chat-949372/index746.html

My biggest issues regarding this change are:
- PokerStars had said they would announce the VIP changes on Dec.17th, than on the 18th come back to say it would be a few more days. Than, as we are all anxiously awaiting the news, we don't hear a word about it again until the 28th when they finally announce the bad news. Like come on. It would be one thing not to be on time with the information, to give us good news, but to make us sweat it out for bad news just sucks. In my opinion, I feel like the players deserve much more time than 4 days to hear about the changes good or bad, but especially bad.
- Apparently people are projecting that these changes are going to make SNE about 20% harder to achieve. I'm not a super smart mathematician to figure this stuff out, so I'm going off of what the '2+2 nerds' are saying (and I say that endearingly). Therefore your going to be making 20% less than before. 20% is a huge drop! 5%, fine. It sucks, but since it is basically a monopoly now, I can accept that. But 20%?! People typically don't chase SNE for 1 year since much of the value of earning SNE is being able to play with SNE status the following year. It only seems fair that if they want to go ahead with the weighted contribution method that they increase the fpp mulitpler from what it is now (5) to 5.5 or 6, or increase milestones or something to add some of the lost SNE value.

I haven't been participating in the two plus two conversations about this but I am certainly thankful for all the passionate people on there that are determined to try and get PokerStars to tweak the new system to be more fair with similar player rewards to previous years.

PCA
I decided not to go to PCA this year for a few reasons. For one thing, I want to focus on online in 2012 as much as I can, and I realized while playing the WSOP M.E in the summer, that over the past year or two, I wasn't really enjoying playing live tournaments. Also, travelling for tournaments ends up being expensive, not only in travel costs, but I loose out on valuable SNE grinding time and earnings.

Since I started playing poker it seems like all my vacations revolve around poker tournaments. Don't get me wrong, I always have a great time, but usually what makes them so fun is seeing friends, and the things we do outside of poker. So, for 2012 I wanted to do a poker free vacation. Instead of PCA, I've booked a 11 day Caribbean cruise in Febuary. I can't wait!
PCA was honestly one of my favourite poker vacations. The Atlantis is beautiful, they have a good tournament line up, the cash games were good, and I was their with a great group of poker friends. I just wasn't feeling it this year being so poker'ed out.

Happy New Year!
Well this has ended up being much longer than I had anticipated, and I need to get some sleep to get going on my 2012 grind tomorrow. I want to say congratulations to all the other SNE grinders out there, and thanks to all my twitter and blog buddies out there for participating. It is really nice, and important, to be as involved with other poker players as you can be, and I've 'virtually' met so many intelligent and kind people over the past year or so since I have started blogging and using Twitter.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! There is something powerful about the new start that a new year can bring, so I hope everyone is feeling motivated an excited about the year ahead. I've decided not to do any new years resolutions (pretty sure all of mine failed from last year, lol)... but I will try to be healthier, happier and work harder (though I seriously never want to play as many hands as I played in November and Decemeber again! (500k in December if your wondering).

I will be blogging much more this year, so stay tuned and chime in!

December 2011

2011-12-23T09:51:00.001-08:00

I'm exhausted. 21k vpp to go!

The Final Stretch (2011)

2011-11-30T21:06:00.000-08:00

Thank god November is over. I have never been so happy to press the refresh button on holdem manager once 12:00 came around. (I have it filtered by month). A combination of playing bad, running bad, not tabling selecting, playing long sessions, and having zero life balance left me with an ugly profit for the month.

To look, or not to look?

The first couple weeks I was doing something that I would like to further discuss- I wasn't looking at my results at all. Not during or after my session. Finally I thought I better look because I had a hunch it was not going to be pretty, and I was right. Actually I have never gone on that big of a downswing in that short of a time.

It was relaxing and minimized stress about playing. Which can be great, especially when your a rakeback pro playing for vpps. But unfortunately, for me, I think I need that motivation to play well. If I check how I'm doing during a session and I'm losing, it doesn't effect me in a negative way in the way it might affect many others. It sort of motivates me to bring it back/ stop distracting myself with other stuff (which is a huge problem for me), and just bring my 'A' game. Where as when I wasn't looking at the results, I have no reminder of the consequence of what I'm doing and would get sloppy. The whole basis of not looking is to minimize the stress of variance so your always making the best decisions regardless of results. When putting in crazy hours this can be really hard to begin with so personally, I like the reminder that if I don't play well my results with suffer.

For conservative and 'timid' people, I think not looking at your results for a long period of time can really be useful, especially if it causes you to tilt even if you are down only a few buy ins. I can think of a few friends of mine that would really benefit from this. One person in particular: very solid player but the one thing that probably stops him from being very successful is his attitude about money. He would get discouraged, stressed, and tilted if he lost even a couple buy ins. He just couldn't detach him self from the money involved with poker. Instead of poker chips just being chips, they would always be money- bills, items etc.

Being careless with money, or tight with money both have advantages and disadvantages in poker, so it is important to learn where you stand and try to set up your lifestyle in a way that doesn't cause your natural propensity to become a handicap. Being on the far side of either spectrum is never a good thing.

Decemeber Plans

With Novemeber being so disatarous, and the stress of having to earn x amount of vpps in little time, I figured the best way to deal with the stress is to set out a clear plan of how I'm going to achieve SNE. I have no time to spare, so time management is important.

VPP's collected this year: 879,500
VPP's left to earn to achive SNE: 120,500

If a average about 5,000 VPPs a day, that would allow me to hit SNE with about 6 days to spare, so that is the goal. I'm going to need a day or two off before Christmas to shop and get ready to go visit my family for Christmas.

5,000VPPs a day= about 20-21k hands = about 12-13 hours. So here is 'ideal day'. (I plan for 5k hands an hour but sometimes it takes longer.)

8:45: wake up
9:00-12:00: 5k hands, sit out-
12:00-12:15: make breakfast
12:15-3:15: 5k hands
3:15-3:30: lunch
3:30-6:30: 5k hands
6:30-8:00: dinner
8:00- : play until I reach 5,000 vpps.
Shower, bed etc.

I don't have time on my side so it's extremely important that I stick to this schedule, and use every minute wisely. It's actually pretty amazing how productive you can be when you don't waste time.

61 Days...

2011-10-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

Well SNE grinders- we have 61 days left to earn those VPP's. I'm sitting at 755,000k. 245,000 and I'm done for the year!

October was quite the grind. I ended up getting in 430,000 hands,(possibly my monthly record). Towards the end of the month I decided to add in some 200NL tables, and since then I have actually been playing exclusively 200NL since the games seem to be OK, and I think I end up playing a lot better when I put in less hours. As long as things don't go disastrous, I will hopefully be able to finish off the year playing 200NL. My plan to finish off the year:

November: 145,000 vpps/ average of 12k hands a day at 200NL (30 days of playing)

December: 100,000 vpps/ average of 12k hands a day at 200NL (21 days of playing)

Things helping me through the grind:

Coffee: I did 'quit' caffeine for a while, but lately, it seems like I'm on a caffeine binge.

Netflix / streaming T.V shows: Currently on Beverley Hills 90210. An oldy but a goody. Lots of episodes too!

Studying my game: I've been trying to work on my game more, and I've noticed that when I do, I get excited to play and see my 'new strategies' at work.

What's your trick to putting in lots of hours and staying at the top of your game?

Ultimate Grinders

2011-10-31T22:35:00.002-07:00

So, I know a while back I mentioned that I was going to be a coach for Ultimate Grinders and the site is getting very close to the official launch, planned for December 1st. I have started up a blog on the site: My UltimateGrinders blog.

I'll keep posting here as well, but I wanted to let you guys know.

October 1st?!!!

2011-09-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

Where has the time gone?!

I am so far behind SNE pace (105k VPP), so all my time in the next few months will be dedicated to catching back up and achieving SNE while trying to sane and healthy.

Best of luck everybody!

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

2011-08-31T21:19:00.000-07:00

The only motivation I have to write this is because this is for the sake of the my monthly routine. This month has been beyond disappointing. Although I should (knock on wood), have my most successfull year in poker financially, I have to say it's been a long time since I have felt so down about poker. I'm probably feeling this way because this last week I've been on a huge downswing. I was up almost $3,000 at one point this month and ended up -$3,300. I was supposed to play 390,000 hands and earn 111,000 vpps from that, and I ended up playing 395,000 hands and only got 106,000. Vpp rates per hand have been much lower than they should be. I even thought it would be a good idea to add in some 6 max tables to help with this problem (higher vpp per hand & more hands per hour), but it definitively ended up costing me.

As you can see from my ugly graph, it has been quite a roller-coaster. Having to play so many hours and hands really doesn't help and I feel like it really affects my win rate, though I'm sure I have a million leaks that need to plugged. Speaking of which, I have been trying to find a coach (somewhat passively) for awhile. It's hard to find someone that fits the criteria I'm looking for. I don't want to say that there are alot of 'bad' coaches out there, but just because someone is a great player with amazing results doesn't qualify them to be a good coach in my opinion. I think what makes a good coach is someone who doesn't think- "I play this way,I win, I'm the best, so my way is the right way to play". I want someone who can work with me on my game and style, who knows the games I'm playing, and knows the game flow when 24 tabling 'rakeback pro' games. There are a bunch of guys out there, charging pretty high hourly rates, who really don't seem to even have much coaching experience and I don't want to spend my money to be their test bunnies.

Also, and I know it's completely moronic to be this way, but since I've never had a coach for the past 5 years, the thought of it is a bit scary to be honest. For one thing, I'm not very good at articulating my thought process's. Another silly thought around coaching is that it's a bit intimidating to have a super smart poker player analyze your game. I think I have a fear that I'm doing everything wrong and need to start from square one and it's going to be one embarrassing, ego crushing event. Anyways, if you happen to have a recommendation, I'd love to hear it. If I could move up to 200nl and actually win, I would be one happy camper!

So to sum up this month:

VPPs earned: 106,000
Poker winnings: -$3,300
VIP bonuses and cash rewards: $11,600

Hopefully I can have a good month poker wise in September, it's going to be a challenge to get enough hands in. I'm going on a cruise through Alaska for a week. I'm not much of a photographer, but I am going to try and take a lot of pictures and hopefully I can share some good ones here.

On the bright side, oddly enough with poker going so bad, I have been feeling really happy about life overall. Maybe it's all the vitamin d I've been getting. When you're behind a computer all day, and often all night, it's really easy to get isolated and sort of depressed, even if you might not notice it, which I didn't. I notice it now when suddenly I'm starting to feel more like 'myself'. I think the biggest things that I have changed are:

- sleeping habits (I've been in bed by 1am ish and up by 10am) consistently for over a month (haven't had a healthy routine for years!)

- been walking everyday, usually twice a day

- spending more time with friends/ talking to friends more

September goals:

[ ] 300,000 hands
[ ] 4k table winnings

Sorry for the lack of blog posts if you do follow my blog semi regularly. It seems like almost every blog I follow isn't as involved in the summer as they typically are either.

To sum things up: the good= life happy. the bad= poker unhappy. the ugly- my poker graphs.

500K VPP: Half Way There

2011-07-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I have actually wrote about my SNE chase this year. I really don't have a spare second to talk about the past but I will sum it up with some stats. The year so far:

Hands Played: 1,521,439
Table Winnings: -$4,244
Rakeback (bonus $) earned: $53,000

So I begin August with 500k VPP, and I need 500k more before Dec 31. Although I am quite a bit behind pace, I feel OK since I really just need to average 100k vpp per month. I'm going to plan things out assuming that I will just play 100nl for the rest of the year. I cannot explain how 'comfy' I am there. The only issue is the hours I need to play there.

This is just a rough plan for now, but this is what I am thinking the rest of the year is going to look like.

VPPs and hands per month (aprox.)

August: 111,000 VPPs (390,000 hands)
September: 85,000 VPPs (300,000 hands)
October: 111,000 VPPs (390,000 hands)
November: 111,000 VPPs (390,000 hands)
December: 82,000 VPPs (285,000 hands)

Yikes! The low volume in Sept is because I am going on an Alaskan cruise for a week, and then December I plan not to play too much because of Christmas and travelling. This is going to be quite the grind, but that's what SNE is all about.

This month, I'll need to average 12,500 hands per day (31 days!), aprox 8 hours a day. I will be taking some days off, and hopefully put in 20k hand days at least once a week to even it all out.

Stepping away from my computer now, I have lots of computer time ahead of me...

Goodluck at the tables,
Work hard, Play hard.

Twitter

2011-06-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

Finally in Vegas and just wanted to let everyone know that I will be posting some updates on my twitter page in case you want to check out how I'm doing:

My Twitter Page

I'll be playing my first tournament tomorrow at the Venetian.

I Need VPPs!

2011-06-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

So as I mentioned in my last post, I'm off to Vegas soon. I had initially planned to leave for Vegas with 500K vpps earned, but that is not happening! So, I've decided that it is essential to at least earn 50k vpps for the month to maintain SNE. You are allowed to miss it for a month, but with the smallest chance that I might end up playing the main event and go deep in it, I want to leave that leeway time open for July.

So right now this is the situation I'm in:
Needed- 15,500 VPP
Days to play- 3

The thing is I have so much other stuff to do before I go besides getting my hands in. I really won't have any time to play on Friday.

So, I think I'm just going to move up and play 200NL to earn my final VPPs. Yikes, 200NL my nemesis!

Here are some calculations that have lead me to this decision:

100NL = 55,000 hands, roughly 34 hours
200NL= 37,000 hands, roughly 23 hours

It's too bad there aren't more hours in the day. The 100NL 40-100BB full ring games have been GREAT. I have so many funny hand histories, but no time to search through them. So many fish just donating full buy ins to me this month.

Here are my results graphed:

Let's hope the final few days looks similar! Boy do I have some long days ahead of me when I get back...

Get me to Vegas!

2011-06-08T08:44:00.001-07:00

Since I've been of age to go to Vegas, I have gone during WSOP. In the past I have been there in late May/ early June, so I have never experienced what it was like not being there when all the action started up. The blog posts/ the twitter updates/ the articles... it's hard to watch without being there!

Not only have I been distracted by this amazing weather we are finally having, now I'm super anxious to get to Vegas and go back to grinding tournaments for a good couple weeks +. My head is totally not in the SNE grind right now! I need to get some decent volume in though, and fortunately, playing live for a couple weeks always makes me appreciate playing online a little more, and it's always a good change of pace. I always come home ready to grind online!

I'm pretty disappointed, I'm sure as PokerStars is too, that they aren't offering any player incentives for the main event this year. Last year if you signed the PokerStars player contract and wear their logos while you play, (plus agree that basically they own you if you do well for the next year without any extra $). You get 50k vpp in January, free SNE upgrades for hotel stay, a PCA package if you manage to cash, a million dollor bonus if you win, and a bag with PokerStars stuff.

The two things that really enticed me were the 50k VPP and the PCA package if you cash.

Because of everything that has happened in the U.S with PS, they recently just credited the SNE's who were choosing the ME as one of their packages with 10k, and then said that if we scanned a copy of our ME receipt, they would then credit us with another 3k for expenses.

I wasn't really sure what I was going to do, and it is always so much easier to play a 10k event when your just registered and don't have to physically buy in with the cash and a choice. When I was buying in last year I certainly had my doubts! Even though I busted on day two last year, I didn't regret it at all though.

So I've decided that I didn't really want to go down and just play the main event, and at the same time I don't really want my buy ins to be over 15k. I'm going to go down with that 10k and play the following tournaments, and then if it goes well, (well really if I have enough to play the ME with me then I'll for sure play it). Considering if I do register I would get 3k that I wouldn't get if I don't, it technically makes it only 7k for me to buy in since I'm going down and paying for travel expenses anyways. I'm sure if I need a few thousand I can find someone to either trade online or buy a piece of me, even though I'm not big on that. Since I have started playing poker, I was staked for only about 10 months, and I HATED it! What it comes down to, is that I just enjoy playing things on my own, getting all the profits and enduring the losses. I don't play tournaments much anymore and they are certainly more enjoyable when you have all your own action.

Anyways, this is what my tentative schedule looks like:

June 22- $340 Venetian
June 23- $1,070 Venetian
June 25- $1,500 WSOP Event #43
June 26- $340 Venetian
June 28- $1,500 WSOP Event #48
June 29- $340 Ladies Venetian or the $1,590 Venetian
July 1- $1,000 WSOP Event #53 (Ladies NL)
July 2- $1,000 WSOP Event #54A/ July 3- Event #54B
July 5- $1,500 WSOP Event #56
July 7,8,9, or 10- $10,000 WSOP Main Event

I'm just going to play what/when I feel like playing, and hopefully I will have some fun days off of golfing/shopping, and going to some nice restaurants.

Goodluck everyone. If you see me in Vegas make sure you say hi! It's always so fun to meet 'virtual' friends in real life.

Auto-Pilot Fail

2011-06-01T21:55:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone. I just have time for a quick little update. Well May... sucked. It felt like the longest month that I have experienced since I started grinding SNE in January 2010. As I posted in early May, it started off really rough and I was instantly down 25 buy ins at 200nl ($5k). I must have been on full blown tilt because when I moved down to 100NL I lost another 20 buy ins in within two days and pretty much just stayed at that point for the rest of the month. Sadly, it was my first substantial losing month at the tables and it really put a big ugly dent in my yearly graph. Luckily I have a good sense of humor and I can laugh about it. Yay for FPPs. To date I have earned over 40k with the fpp $4k bonus' and other vip rewards that PokerStars offers.

I would say the things that have changed the most since this big downswing began are:
- putting in much more volume
- starting to watch movies and t.v while playing (I seriously didn't do this at all until May)
both of which clearly lead to tons of little mistakes and going on 'autopilot'. My non showdown winnings were the worst they have been all year.

So anyways, I still end up profiting a bit over 3k on the month after rakeback, and I have managed to pull a bit ahead of pace. I currently have 425,000k VPP, and pace is 416,500k.

I'm heading to Vegas on the 20th (I'll post my schedule soon) and although I'm super excited, I am really going to have to put in a lot of hours before I go, and after to make up for lost time. I'm hoping to leave here in June with as close to 500k VPP as I can get. I won't be playing at all after the 17th, so I basically have to average about 16k hands a day until then. That probably won't happen, but I will try my hardest!

May Madness

2011-05-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

I needed to do a little reevaluating and I thought why not do it in a little blog. So this may be super boring...
Last month it seemed like I was instantly up over 20 buyins at 200NL. This month, I pretty much instantly lost over 20 buy ins. Moving down to 100NL is probably a good idea and what I'm going to do, at least for a week or so. I would instantly grind it out at 100NL for the whole year if I didn't have to play so much to earn SNE, but once you have the luxury of putting in less hours it makes it much harder to increase them.

So, re-evaluating my monthly plan:
Hands played so far- 51k
VPP count- 346,854

Monthly VPP ending goal- 420k VPP

Assuming I play only 100NL for the rest of the month I will need to play 260,000 hands, averaging about 11,500 per day.

So, I'll try keeping up with that volume until I feel like it might be a good idea to move up again.

Poker Memories

2011-05-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday someone slow rolled me, and it ended up leading me to remember the one time I slow rolled someone, and boy was it good. It was during a trip to Vegas with my friends Mona and Ange. Ange ended up writing about it on our Ottawa poker community forum, JackSeven.ca, and I wanted to share it... (she is a much more entertaining writer than I am!)

This was just too good not to share with everyone. So, Krissy, Mona and me decide to play the nightly tourney at Caesar's last night. Krissy and I were at the same table from the get go, which in itself was amusing. Krissy ended up getting a little bored (go figure) and decided to grab a copy of bluff magazine and read it inbetween plays. If I could have taken a picture I would have. Krissy three betting and having the word "bluff" in bold letters right below her as she did it.

Anyway, after about an hour. The resident poker "Pro" gets seated at our table. Well, he thought he was a pro because he supposively won 3/5 of these tourneys and apparently teaches poker every Thursday (which, trust me, is good for all of us). At this point he hasn't shut up since he got there. I even gave him a muscle relaxer hoping that it would affect his tongue and give us some quiet, but no luck. About an hour into his constant crap, he starts berating someone about a hand they played (the player min raised to isolate and pushed him out of a hand that he would have won if the player hadn't raised - or something like that). Our very own KrissyB steps in to basically tell him, he's wrong, an idiot and needs to learn poker. The debate got pretty heated and the dealer had to stop them.

Well, it stopped him, but didn't stop Krissy. Little Miss took every shot she could and needled him till I swear the guy was going to burst. And, the new dealer told him that if he didn't stop he was calling the Director. loooool

K so, Mr. Fullofhimselfpokerpro gets himself down to 1675 in chips and the blinds are 300/600. Our Heroine is in the BB. Mr. Pro announces himself all in and it folds to Krissy. Krissy hums and has and asks for a count. The dealer obliges and Mr. Pro is looking pretty happy with himself because he's thinking that he is going to double up from his nemisis. KRissy says "I guess I have to call" and Donkeypro flips over 99 (I guess he waited for his hand). Krissy sits there. And sits there. and sits there. Until the dealer says "Um Miss, you have to flip over your cards"

All sweet and innocent "Oh okay" - AA - was there any doubt?

The table literally roars, Mr. IguarunteeImgoingtowinthis storms out and the whole table thanks Krissy for the entertainment and getting rid of him.

And just in case, you think slow rolling is bad in any situation, even Karma agreed with Krissy. We all monied, but Krissy took it down completely.

Congrats Krissy!

Thanks to Ange for her post! Here is a link to the thread on JackSeven.ca :
http://www.jackseven.ca/forums/index.php?topic=19947.0

I have to add in, this is totally not typical behavior of me, but this guy was something else!

Bleh.

2011-05-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

What a month it's been, both in the poker world and the world in general. To be honest, I decided not to write anything about "Black Friday" for a couple reasons. One, I have nothing to say that hasn't been said, and two, I really haven't read too much about it. All I can say is that I am so thankful this hasn't directly affected me, and I feel awful for those Americans whose lives were turned upside down.

As for poker, this month has been very frustrating. Here's a shot of the ugly graph resembling the rocky mountains.

VPPs earned: about 100k
Poker winnings: -$529.40
Rakeback: $10,800

So, after rakeback it's still a good month, but because I've been concentrating more on winning, I'm unhappy. I've been having a very hard time focusing. Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and online shopping, are all very distracting...

May goals:

[ ] Play 250,000 hands
[ ] $5k table winnings

Making Some Progress...

2011-03-31T21:18:00.000-07:00

Phew. March was long and busy. So let's take a look at how I did with my goals for March:

[ ] Play at least 350,000 hands. I played 325,000.

[X] Juice every morning. Did it every morning I was at home. I went to Montreal for a couple days and one morning there I found a pretty nice raw food and juice bar. This will always be a goal but it has just became apart of my routine so I probably won't mention it again.

[X] Finish reading 'Check-Raising the Devil'.

[ ] Read '127 Hours'. Huge fail. I have read about 5 pages.

Poker went pretty well this month. For the first time in a long time I booked a winning month from the tables. This whole year I feel like the lessons I learned last year combined with making an effort to work on my game off the tables, is slowly starting to pay off. I deleted all my hands from 2010, but I can tell you that my graph was usually like the rocky mountains. Not at all like the graphs that other regs post that look like the most perfect 40 degree upward slope with hardly any downhill spots. Here is a look at my graph for 2011 so far:

OK, and because every poker player is entilted to a little whining, the same graph with the All-In EV line:

Nah, I'm not really whining, I just think it's weird. Since I'm just not one of those people who can explain things like this, I won't try, but I will just say, I honestly think- you play good- the closer you run with your all in ev line, the worse you play - the more below ev you will be. I only say this because the whole year last year, every month I was plenty of buy ins below. I don't at all think it was because I was unlucky. I think it was because I was playing bad. Plus- all the people who I consider to be amazing, never really seem to run far below.

Although I probably did run good this month, I don't feel like it was exceptionally different than other times, and as you could see I was pretty close to the EV line:

Obviously programs like HEM and PokerTracker are our best friends, but I know a lot of people for whom this all-in ev line seems like their worst enemy. I think it's best to take a look at the overall picture, and since I have only had HEM since January, some of the things that it has to offer that have helped me the most is being able to search a certain player and look at there trends a long with all of their hands according to pot size. I really feel like my slight improvement this year is alot to do with HEM. The other part is something that is continually growing, especially as I get a taste of actually having a profitable month without rakeback. I really had a dumb mindset last year. I always said to myself, and outloud, it's OK if I loose a little and get SNE, I'll still be making a good amount overall. Because I was constantly saying and thinking this, I think my focus became so much on playing a large amount of hands for rakeback that I totally put my poker game and actually trying to beat the games on the back burner. Early this year it started to be that I was forcing myself to work on my game off the tables, but now I really want to. If I play a session where I feel like one particular opponent was really owning me, it now makes me anxious to start studying there game and figure out what I can do differently vs them.

Over the past few months I have been flirting with the idea of getting a coach, but for now I have decided against it, although I'm always passively looking for someone who seems like they might be a good match. I am sure it wouldn't take too much to change my game, and I know an outsider perspective could really help find my leaks quicker than I could. The thing is, I would say that honestly, 30% of my playing time I am really trying. I also know that a coach is going to get me to reduce my table amount, so I'm already going to be playing better. I'm just going to give it a go on my own, as I have always done. Partly because I am lazy, and I am a pretty independent person, probably to fault.

April is going to be a pretty important month. As of tomorrow, I'm going to move up to 200NL. I was scoping out the tables today, and it didn't look very good, but I am pretty determined to give it a good shot this month and make it work. The hours needed at 200NL to maintain and achieve SNE are significantly lower and if I could maintain a decent win rate, my hourly rate would be much higher than it would be at 100NL. If I don't end up doing OK and the games are really dry, I'll probably move back down in May. I just want to have a big sample size first to figure it all out and give it my best shot.

Goals for April:

[ ] Play 225,000 hands

[ ] Read '127 Hours'

[ ] Make $5,000 without rakeback (for law of attraction sake- no more negative thoughts!)

PokerStars VIP Program

2011-03-24T17:28:00.001-07:00

I was reading the blog of fellow blogger, Neil Ross, http://rossi2005.blogspot.com/, and noticed he posted a new breakdown of the PokerStars VIP program.

Since I often get asked how much it is worth to attain SuperNova Elite status- I thought I would post it too. Thanks Rossi!

Pretty tempting to try and break even and earn $130,000k a year isn't it? Go a bit further and earn 1.25million vpps and add on another $30, (like I did last year), or be a sicko like Kevin Thurman, aka WizardofAhhs, and earn over 3 million VPPs and well, just watch the $ pile up.

Slacking/Grinding

2011-03-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

With only 7 full days of March left, and only 208,000 hands played (350,000 was the goal), I will be grinding hard for the rest of the month trying to get pretty close to my volume goal. I ended up taking a few more days off than I had planned to mid month. I went to Montreal for a Montreal Canadians game (awesome game,they won :) yea!!!), and actually got to check out a newish poker club- Playground Poker. We played there a couple times while in Montreal, and I really hope to get back there every once in a while, especially to get some live poker in before going to Vegas for WSOP.

Anyways, I have always been a bit reluctant of Twitter, but realized that there are times when I don't want to write a blog, but have something little I want to share, so I'm biting the bullet.

So you can follow me on Twitter now: http://twitter.com/krissyb24poker

Also, share your blog or twitter with me if I'm not following you and you think I'd appreciate doing so!

Back to the tables I go...

Book Review

2011-03-08T00:39:00.000-08:00

So, I finally finished reading Mike Matasow's book, 'Check-Raising the Devil'. I would absolutely recommend it. I don't want to get into details and ruin it for anyone who has yet to read it, but I can say that his story is quite fascinating. I was a little disappointed with the actual 'poker talk'. The way that he talks about hands seemed a bit basic, and even donkish at points. He does go through many tournaments and nonetheless, the journey through his poker career is certainly not boring. Really, nothing about Mike 'The Mouth' Matasow is boring, as we all know!

If your a poker player, I'm sure you'll enjoy reading this book.

Hello March

2011-03-01T23:55:00.000-08:00

This month, my main goal is going to be what many other of you SNE's can relate to. Volume!

Although February was a rather unproductive month for me with my sne grind, I had a nice time visiting family to celebrate my sisters wedding- Congratulations Erica and Tim! and Adam's 25th birthday- Happy Birthday Adam! But, now it's time to get back to the SNE grind. As I mentioned before, I am quite a bit behind pace. About 24k VPPs behind. Yuck. Exactly what you don't want to do, as I mentioned before in my tips for getting SNE. Hopefully, this month goes well, volume wise and results wise, and I can most likely move up to 200NL April 1st. I have been hesitating moving up because I haven't been able to get my PokerStars account to the amount I like to have to play 200NL. For me, that is $20,000. Once I move up to 200NL, I can think about getting back on pace, and even ahead of pace...not going to lie, in the back of my mind, I am still thinking about going for 1.25 mill VPPs again.

As far as the tables go, I have been pretty much break even the whole year. It is really starting to get frustrating, although when I take a good look at my graphs, I can clearly identify days where I got tilty or wasn't focused. Oh well, I know if I keep working on my game, I will get better. Speaking of which, I must say, the tables have been much better since Stars got rid of the 20-50bb tables. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but I have definitely been noticing alot more fish at various times of the day.

Goals for March

- Play at least 350,000 hands. If I plan to take 4 days off, then I need to average about 13,000 hands for the days that I do play.

- Juice every morning. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but in January I really committed to juicing, after my sister gave me a really nice juicer for Christmas. If you have no idea what I'm talking about- it's just a kitchen appliance that extracts juice from fruits and vegetables. In order to benefit from drinking fruit and vegetable juice it is crucial to drink it within 30 minutes of being juiced, therefore when you buy juice bottled, your really not getting many of the vitamins and minerals at all. There are so many benefits to doing this and the reason it really works is that our bodies absorb a much larger amount of nutrients than solid foods. In January, I took my coffee maker off my kitchen counter and replaced it with my juicer and just after a few days I felt incredibly better.

- Read: finish the book I'm reading now, by Mike Matasow, 'Check-Raising the Devil', and '127 Hours'.

Aside from poker, me and Adam joined an indoor soccer league with a few friends. I seriously haven't played soccer since grade 7 or something, and I just remember being on the bench alot, LOL. Soccer was never my sport of choice, but I pretty much love playing all sports, so it should be nice to be apart of a sports team again, nonetheless. Hopefully they don't kick me off because I score on our own net or something... :P

Me and Adam at my sisters wedding:

Blog List

2011-02-28T13:35:00.000-08:00

Anyone wanting to swap please let me know. I know I talked to someone at the tables about this, and hopefully you are reading this, I can't for the life of me remember who it was!

Just checking in...

2011-02-28T13:24:00.001-08:00

To all my fellow regs who have missed me, have no fear, I am back from some time away. My volume this month has been way way too low. I'll probably be ending February with about 137k vpp. Yikes! As I write this I am 25k VPP behind SNE pace.

Come to think of it, I'm going to get to the tables and blog later :).

Quick January Review

2011-02-01T22:09:00.000-08:00

Well, January has come and gone quite quickly. I ended up finishing January with 84k VPP, and will be making up for that in the future. February won't be a great month as volume goes either, because the last week of the month I'll be busy with my sisters wedding.

This month has been nice as far recovering from the total burnout that I experienced from December. My boyfriend and I have started the P90x workout program, and although it hurts (especially at first), my energy level has dramatically increased as my stress level decreases. I took it pretty easy with poker, playing 100NL and taking each Saturday off. I was doing pretty well at the tables until the last day of the month. I lost 10+ buy in's. OK, seriously, being on tilt is like being drunk. You think your fine to play, but you just aren't. After reviewing my hand histories, it is pretty clear that I do get spewy/tilty after loosing over 5 buy ins, so I have officially decided: when I get to the point where I have lost 7 buy ins on a session, I am taking at least an hour break.

Also, just wanted to mention it, I'm sure plenty of people have talked about this before. I have a serious issue with the whole all in EV thing. I was talking to some friends about this the other day, and I really feel like it does more harm then good. I seriously believe that when you play worse your going to be 'more below' (it sure seems like that from my experience). Also, say you do have a time frame where your plenty below your EV line, it acts as an excuse that will let you say, 'oh, I ran so bad', instead of really trying to improve your game.

So, there is a saying that 90% of New Year's Resolutions are broken from February 1. So far I am looking pretty good, but I didn't really set out any resolutions, just goals. Nonetheless, I have been sticking to them so far. I have read 1/2 of two books, so that equals a book right? lol, I have yet to find a book that I really want to keep reading. Anyone have any good recommendations?

There is yoga with the P90X program once a week, so I'm fulfilling that goal, though I have to say- yoga is hard!

As far as poker, I have been working the hardest I have in a couple years on my game, and plan to keep that up.

Back to poker:
February VPP Goal: 66k

I am going to stick with 100NL for Febuary, and then the plan right now is to move back up to 200NL March 1. Hopefully in March I get back on pace, and then ahead of pace in April.

Goodluck!

I'm on tilt- without playing a single hand!!!

2011-01-18T16:51:00.001-08:00

OK, since the New Year, I have spent so much time trying to get a good set up going for this year. (Table Ninja and Hold'em Manager). As I talked about before, I have a Mac, so first I downloaded Parallels, purchased Parallels,installed Windows, HEM, and Table Ninja (sounds easier than it is). Then, hours later, thinking everything is all ready to play, I open up some tables, and with even 3 or 4 up, it is unplayable. I then learn it is pretty much impossible to play on Parralels since it takes up a lot of cpu usage or whatever.

So, then I run BootCamp. I need to again install Windows, HEM, and Table Ninja. I go to purchase them all. For some reason it says for securty reasons, my payment has been flagged or something, and it won't let me buy them. Now I have to wait for HEM support to purchase it.

I just want to get back to,(start), the SNE grind! Grrrr.... and my free trials have run up, and I don't feel up to playing without stats, but maybe I will tonight if I don't hear back soon.

As far as my plans for now:
I've decided to go back to full ring, what I am *best* at. I'll probably play 100NL for a couple days at least to get back into the swing of things. I have hardly played online since December 23!

I really can't decide if I want to try and go for 1 mill VPPs, or 1.25 mill VPPs. I guess we'll see how it goes.

PCA

2011-01-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

It was my first time attending the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and I have to say, it was by far the best trip for poker that I have ever gone on. What made it so good? Beyond being with good friends and the resort itself, with the mile long lazy river and water slides, there was a general feeling that I haven't ever got from a poker room before. Maybe it was all the 'Bahama Mama's', or other alcoholic concoctions, being drunk, but the atmosphere, especially when I was playing cash games, was just nice. I had good conversation with many different people and I also got to meet many fellow SNE's which was fun. It's always neat to put a face behind that PokerStars screen name and avatar that you play with almost everyday. Usually every time we go away for poker, me or my boyfriend end up getting in a fight with somebody, but the tension that can often fill poker rooms, just wasn't there.

The Atlantis
OK, this place is a little tourist trappy, considering the prices for water, food and drink. But, it is pretty much what you get for going to a place like this. I stayed in The Cove, and the rooms were nice. Not great, certainly not bad. I have heard the regular rooms are pretty outdated, so I'm happy that I got the upgrade being SNE. The Lobby area is quite beautiful. The only downside is the 25min walk to the poker room, but as long as I wasn't running late for a poker tournament, I didn't really mind.

As far as the restaurants all go, there wasn't one place I loved, but the best one that I went to was Nobu. Room service is a total joke. Not only is it around $50 for pasta with some olives and tomatoes sauce, they screwed up what we ordered virtually every time, not giving us what the menu said we were ordering. They also weren't very apologetic and didn't do anything to compensate. I try to eat Veganly (is that a word?)- staying away from meat and dairy, so it is pretty hard for me to eat in standard restaurants anyways, but besides the prices, all the people I was with seemed to overall enjoy the food. It seems that they have meal plans you can purchase which is a bit of better deal, and I will probably do that next year.

The water slides and lazy river are awesome and even more fun when you have a bunch of friends to go with. I didn't get to do any side activities because I was afraid it would be too cold. I really wanted to do the dolphin and sea lion interaction stuff, but maybe next year.

The Main Event
Day 1 was just a pure grind. Although my overall table was decent, I had an extremely good, pretty lag player directly on my left, and I think it was his mission to own me. Which he did. I ended up getting really lucky towards the end of the day when I got all in with AQ vs. his AK and the board ran out k 10 ? turn J river ?. (I can only remember the relevant cards). I ended the day with 32,500, starting stack was 30k.

Day 2. The blinds were 500/1,000 100 ante to start so I had about 32 BBs. I was at a very aggressive table. I have honestly have never seen so much 4 and 5 betting. During the second level of the day, I doubled with QQ to JJ... then soon after ended up all in vs this maniac who suddenly woke up with QQ on the button, when I shoved A 10 into his raise from the SB. I had about 20 BBs at the time, and spiked an ace. Whoops. I soon got a decent table change, and things were going pretty well for a solid 2 levels. I had managed to chip up and at one point had built up to 120k or something around there. Then pretty much my only interesting hand of the tournament came up: I raise in 2nd position, and get 3 bet by a fairly new player to the table, who is clearly a solid good young player. I had made it 5600 with 10 10 and he three bet to 12 600 aprox. We were both about 100k deep. I decide to call. Flop 9 7 6 rainbow. I check he bets, 8k. I call. Turn 3. I check, he bets 15k, I call. River 5, I check, he thinks for a bit and bets 60k. I call. He shows 8 4. It is a really weird hand, and is a prime example why I hate being oop. After looking at the hand, and talking to friends about it, the only alternative way to playing the hand that I really like is 4 betting pre. Some people I talked to asked me why I didn't raise the turn or flop, but that would be pretty terrible, imo. I'd be turning my hand into a bluff, and it doesn't make sense. I felt like this guy was going to play agressive vs me, and I would be either getting it in with 6 outs, or loosing value for all the times he bluffs me. His bet sizing is obviously really weird, and on the turn after he bet 15k, I felt like he was trying to set up a big river bet. On the river, I don't think he is ever value betting an over pair, and I feel like he would have bet less if he was value betting a set or two pair. I don't love his river bet, because I think he did exactly what he would have did if he missed. It would have made more sense for him to bet less, if he thought I was a weak girl who wouldn't call three streets and virtually my tournament life with just one pair. But who knows, he did get me to call! It was a really stupid hand, and it really makes me laugh how often people three bet me with virtually any two because they assume I'm weak/tight, which (hopefully) I'm not. It certainly can sometimes make it difficult to play though. In this tournament, I felt like a lot of people were screwing around with me because of the being a girl aspect. But, when I think about the table, I guess I would be considered the biggest 'fish' anyways if you just went my stereotypes, which are often true. Anyways, I was left with about 2 bbs and ended up all in with 8 4 ss, vs 99. Flop 9 6 6 and I'm out. Sigh, I obviously ran really good during the tournament, and overall I feel like I played well. Obviously there are many more hands that I haven't mentioned... but this 10 10 hand will haunt me for a while. I busted about 100 away from the money.

The Ladies Event
A very welcomed change from the main event, was the ladies event. Although I don't have time or the energy right now to go through hands, I ended up finishing in 9th place (8 paid), and 1st place was 30k. Just wanted to mention this little side story. Once we got down to one table with 9 players, we had played one hand, then the second hand I look down at KK. I raise in 2nd position, and a girl in mp 3 bets. Then the other ladies, not in the hand, start talking about saving money for the person who finishes 9th place. Then someone running the tournament says, let's talk about it at the end of this hand. The SB shoves, and I also shove. The girl who 3 bet me instantly calls, with AA, obv, the SB has JJ, and has me covered, so I bust in 9th. I was about to leave, and PokerStars pro Victoria Coren, says, in her adorable London accent, "well that's not fair, we were all going to put money for 9th, and that shouldn't change". One lady disagreed (which I TOTALLY understand), and upset from running KK to AA on the bubble, I storm off to find Adam and whine a bit too him, (I am a girl, afterall). We decided to go eat, and he had to go back into the poker room to get his chips off a cash game table, and I figured I would go take a look at how the FT was going. Apparently they were all looking for me, because all the girls besides the lady who disagreed wanted to give a little to me for finishing 9th. Since the tournament was still going it was a little hectic, people were handing me $100 chips and bills, and the tournament director said we can't do that, etc. etc. Victoria then just whips out her own money and hands it to me, then assuming responsibility to collect the other people's $ and doing what she felt was right. I really don't think this would have happened in a regular open event, and this shows the typical niceness that is usually present in the ladies event. I honestly felt a little wrong for taking it, but I appreciated it, and so many of the ladies were so adamant to give it to me, the lady who had JJ on the hand saying it could have easily been her.

I don't regret playing the main event at all, but I got in a few spots where I didn't know what to do, and it was really clear how the level of play in poker has increased, and it is yet another reminder of how I need to work on my game. Live poker really is a whole different beast also. A beast I would really like to battle more with. I really do enjoy playing live, it is just hard to travel often since it is so time consuming and expensive, and I have decided over the last couple years that if I can help it, I never want to play poker being staked or backed. In my view it just doesn't make too much sense, and getting a deal where it is beneficial, is pretty much impossible these days. Hopefully I can try to get out to a tournament series before the WSOP though.

Anyways, I need to get back to doing laundry, making dinner and all that fun stuff...oh yeah- maybe earn some VPPS? Just have to say to all of you, go to PCA next year, it's an awesome time, and I'm definitely going to try my best to make it there again for 2012.

This will be me...

2011-01-05T13:47:00.000-08:00

In a few days, weather permitting.

I am leaving home tomorrow, then flying out on Friday, to go to the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, in the Bahamas. I am really excited to be playing the main event, but I am so hoping that the weather is nice enough to just swim in the ocean, get some sun and relax.

I may post some updates on my twitter, http://twitter.com/krissyb24poker.

Back at it...

2011-01-02T21:44:00.000-08:00

I cannot explain how huge of relief starting off the year with 50 000 vpp without even playing a single hand is. I got this for signing the players contract when I played the WSOP main event during the summer.

I would love to end January with 100k VPP, but I am not going to force it, since it will be a busy month with PCA taking up a big chunk of time.

I've spent the last couple days getting my house really cleaned and organized, and thanks to my wonderful boyfriend, finally got Paralells on my Mac, which is a really sweet program that allows you to run windows and windows programs on your mac operating system. He also downloaded HEM, because although I really loved the program I was usually last year, Poker Copilot, it just wasn't cutting it.

My dilemma right now is what to play this year...Today, I played 100NL 6 max the 40-100bb tables. The tables were definitely more reg filled than I would have liked. At one table there were 2 other people who were SNE, too. I really want to switch to 6 max, but it's so annoying, I feel like all the fish go to the 20-50bb tables. PLEASE POKERSTARS: GET RID OF THE 20-50BB TABLES!!!

I am going to continue with the 40-100bb tables for now, but might end up at the 20-50bb tables. I guess I will just see how it goes for now. Maybe I'll just end up back at the 40-100bb full ring tables like last year, who knows. I just want to take it easy this month as far as volume, and really work on my game, as well as figuring out what to play. My boyfriend and I, fishbones11, in case your wondering, have made a deal to spend an hour a day, either talking or reading about hands, or watching videos. We both feel like we need to work on our game alot, and have realized the importance on continually working on your game.

I think I want to try and earn a good 5k at 100nl before moving up to 1/2 again just to get my confidence back after the horrible finish to 2010. If I stick to playing 6 max, I'll need to play 137k hands aprox for the month to earn 50k vpp.

Goodluck at the tables!!! If you are going for SNE- can't stress enough how important it is to use January wisely and get a good 100k vpp or more. February is short... It may also be smart to aim to be done by Dec 1, if you usually have a busy Christmas time, and a couple weeks off is always nice during late December.

2011 Goals

2010-12-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

As cheesy as it can be, I really do love the whole new year, new goals, and fresh start concept. I think it's really important to set goals, although I don't have any huge goals, here's the one's I have come up with and that will keep me busy...

Goals for 2011:

1. Achieve SNE again and win at least 20k at the tables doing it - spend alot of time working on my game, not just playing

2. Read more- at least 10 books (sadly, that is much more)

3. Walk and move more

4. Get into Yoga (try to go at least once a week when I'm at home)

5. Relax more- going to try to take a day off, or at least half a day off every week, drink wine more often, spend more time with friends...

6. Be happier- hopefully all of the above will help!

Happy New Year !!!

1 250 000 VPP YEAAAAA!!!!!!!!

2010-12-23T09:49:00.000-08:00

I pretty much played for two days straights to finally be done with all my hands this year, and I cannot explain the sense of relief and the weight that has been lifted off my back. I am seriously THRILLED.

Despite the fact the last two months have been worse than I ever thought possible as far as my winnings at the tables go, and has taken a pretty big chunk of my potential earnings for the year, it hasn't got me down at all. To be honest, I couldn't be depressed about it if I tried. Poker wise, I have had my best year yet, and have set my self up to have an even better year in 2011. Life wise, I am just too blessed, (most people in North America are, too).

The past two months has been a huge slap in the face. You really can't be good at poker if you just play and play without continuously working on your game and thinking about hands thoroughly. Considering the first four months of the year were the only ones I made a profit with my table winnings, I see now why some people have said that earning SNE was the worst thing they ever did for their game. You can become really robotic, your playing in sub optimal conditions, and it all wears on you.

With that being said, I am just so glad to be done with 2010, and now adjust my plans for next year. I am not sure exactly what I am going to do, but I want to switch to playing 6 max for 2011 as far as cash goes. I'm going to start off 6-9 tabling 6 max for a while and see how it goes. It is going to be so nice to actually take notes on people, (I seriously never wrote more than a few this year), mark down hands that I need to discuss, and just spend time on my game. I'm really excited! It is all just a reminder of why we play poker. Your results, long term, are much in your control.

As far as next year goes, I am thinking of a schedule along these lines:
- 5 days a week, I focus on cash games.
- 1 day a week, day off!
- Sunday, donkaments!

2011 is going to be all about balance, and doing what I do well.

Anyways, I'll be posting quite a bit in the next couple weeks. I hope everyone enjoys the holidays!

Grind Grind Grind

2010-12-14T19:33:00.000-08:00

As I have noticed people saying in the chat box over the last week or so, this really is the worst part of the year as a grinder. Most people have some sort of milestone or bonus that they want to hit, and need to play a lot to get. In the back of my head, I am thinking why the hell did I decide to go for 1 mil 250 vpp. It really made sense to me, though. It ends up being worth 30k.

Not sure what I will do next year, I was thinking that I would only do 1 million for sure, but who knows. I will cross that bridge when it comes. Right now, I need 75k vpp, and my goal is to do that by the 23rd of the month, but that might not happen. Worst case, I will need to cut my Christmas travels short and come back home to grind out the last part, or take my computer and play wherever I am at.

In effort to get done, I am starting up right now (11 pm), and plan to play until tomorrow night around the same time. I'll get off to make all of my meals though, and maybe shower if I need to freshen up. Wish I had my beggining of the year motivation right now. I used to be on my high schools running team, and I always found I would always start off the race too fast, and could never sprint to the end like others. Just like my SNE chase!

The Final Stretch

2010-12-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

VPP earned this year= 1,137,315
VPPs left to earn= 112,685

Hoping to be done (or very close to done) by December 23rd. This will be mean logging lots of hours in the next couple weeks. Shouldn't be too hard since I have a lot to look forward to: Christmas with my family, Adam's family, PCA, and a little break from poker. The 1,250,000 $10,000 milestone bonus is going to be nice, too!

Just incase you haven't seen this, it's awesome:

When you fall off the horse, get back on...

2010-11-28T22:09:00.000-08:00

Even though there are two days left this month, I can officially say this is my worst month at poker. Ever.

The plan to short-stack and earn more vpps at higher limits then I usually play totally failed. Most of my losses were 'below ev', but I really don't give all-in equity too much importance. Anyways, I lost way more than I should have and I should have set stricter guidelines for myself, but lesson learned!

I just went back to full stacking full ring a few days ago, and it is certainly nice to go back to what I know, and I plan to stick there! I was in a total state of burn out, depressed, expecting to loose, etc. and I can honestly say that I totally cured it in a really simple way that I stupidly used to always refuse. As I said, I moved back to full stacking full ring, and I also moved down limits. Another thing that REALLY helped is setting out a number of hands for the day, (15k in my case), then doing 3 sets of 5k hands. For some reason when I was short stacking, things were just totally chaotic, always getting on and off tables and I was just sort of playing, not even paying attention to the amount of hands I was playing.

Although my profits won't be very pretty this month, I can honestly say, that by having such a 'fail month', it has caused me to really 'pull up my boot straps', and has really made me think about some changes I need to make and has hopefully made me a better player mentally. I really think being immature or slightly too laid back, or maybe even emotional about poker has really costed me. All of my biggest losing sessions this year have came from days when I was stuck a large amount and too stubborn to call it a day. I just wanted to try and 'grind it back'. Then I end up playing way too tired, pull an all nighter, and just end up down even more. I probably did that at least 6 times this year. Each time I say, OK never again. But, I get back in that same stupid mind frame, and do it yet again.

So, anyways, thinking about next year, (I might have to do some all nighter VPP grinds this year), I want to set out two major rules:

- Stick to a # of hands played. You hear this alot, and I remember hearing Daniel Negreanu always say, pick a time your stopping at and no matter WHAT, leave. I will start each day by setting a goal for number of hands, then break it down in sets.

- I am going to try setting a stop loss at 7 buy ins. I will log off and have at least a 30 min break before I get back on, and consider moving down limits more often when I am experiencing a downswing.

I think those two rules should really help me A LOT. As cheesy as it sounds, some words I need to remember: patience and focus. I really envy the people who can always play at a high level. I feel like when I am in the zone my game is pretty good, but when I am not, (usually because I am more interested in doing something else like shopping online), it is really bad, and I definitely have a tilt problem. Next year I am for sure going for just 1 million VPPS and hopefully play a little less per day to ensure I am able to play at a high level for all my hands. A day off every week would be nice, too :).

Anyways, I know some great poker players read this, and if you guys have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

Good luck at the tables,
Krissy

VPP Party!!!

2010-11-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of the month, I had 250,000 VPP to still earn for the year. I decided I would earn 150,000 this month, and then earn the remaining in December (I know how hard it is going to be to play in December with Christmas and everything).

So, I started off playing what I needed to everyday, then I fell a bit behind and have been feeling a bit burnt out. I was reading another 200nl reg's blog, and he was talking about how he was behind in VPPs and decided to play the 20-50BB tables of 400 and 600NL. I thought, hmmmm, I'll give that a try, to hopefully gain some breathing room for the month. So I join a bunch of tables, and I felt like literally EVERY regular I have ever played the regular 200NL FR tables with, was there. I was actually pretty shocked. To be honest, I felt like they were at a party that I hadn't been invited to.

Apparently, this party has an open bar, too...

PokerStars Game #52599825796: Hold'em No Limit ($3/$6 USD) - 2010/11/12 18:27:56 ET
Table 'Julietta V' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: C1awViper ($470.50 in chips)
Seat 2: tryan60 ($319.60 in chips)
Seat 3: Spooowi ($324.75 in chips)
Seat 4: snooshy80 ($264.40 in chips)
Seat 6: sirfreddy83 ($240 in chips)
Seat 7: DRUNK_FISH33 ($107.25 in chips)
Seat 8: bigd10125 ($493.90 in chips)
Seat 9: krissyb24 ($120 in chips)
tryan60: posts small blind $3
Spooowi: posts big blind $6
noobelf: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to krissyb24 [As Kc]
snooshy80: folds
sirfreddy83: raises $12 to $18
DRUNK_FISH33: folds
bigd10125: folds
krissyb24: raises $102 to $120 and is all-in
C1awViper: folds
tryan60: calls $117
Spooowi: folds
sirfreddy83: folds
*** FLOP *** [Js 9s 4c]
*** TURN *** [Js 9s 4c] [7s]
*** RIVER *** [Js 9s 4c 7s] [2c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
tryan60: shows [Qc Tc] (high card Queen)
krissyb24: shows [As Kc] (high card Ace)
krissyb24 collected $261 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $264 | Rake $3
Board [Js 9s 4c 7s 2c]
Seat 1: C1awViper (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: tryan60 (small blind) showed [Qc Tc] and lost with high card Queen
Seat 3: Spooowi (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: snooshy80 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: sirfreddy83 folded before Flop
Seat 7: DRUNK_FISH33 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: bigd10125 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: krissyb24 showed [As Kc] and won ($261) with high card Ace

PokerStars Game #52614173465: Hold'em No Limit ($3/$6 USD) - 2010/11/13 1:20:03 ET
Table 'Philia III' 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: mmooxx ($420 in chips)
Seat 2: jkir07 ($120 in chips)
Seat 3: MeleaB ($511.55 in chips)
Seat 4: sirfreddy83 ($241.05 in chips)
Seat 5: saveondaddy ($378.55 in chips)
Seat 6: krissyb24 ($126 in chips)
Seat 8: Marius2910 ($300 in chips)
saveondaddy: posts small blind $3
krissyb24: posts big blind $6
bhitsheted: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to krissyb24 [Ah Jh]
Marius2910: folds
mmooxx: folds
jkir07: raises $9 to $15
MeleaB: folds
sirfreddy83: folds
saveondaddy: calls $12
krissyb24: raises $111 to $126 and is all-in
jkir07: folds
saveondaddy: calls $111
*** FLOP *** [5h 9c 9s]
*** TURN *** [5h 9c 9s] [Qd]
*** RIVER *** [5h 9c 9s Qd] [Th]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
saveondaddy: shows [7d Tc] (two pair, Tens and Nines)
krissyb24: shows [Ah Jh] (a pair of Nines)
saveondaddy collected $264 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $267 | Rake $3
Board [5h 9c 9s Qd Th]
Seat 1: mmooxx folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: jkir07 folded before Flop
Seat 3: MeleaB folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: sirfreddy83 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: saveondaddy (small blind) showed [7d Tc] and won ($264) with two pair, Tens and Nines
Seat 6: krissyb24 (big blind) showed [Ah Jh] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 8: Marius2910 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

this guy was playing exceptionally well... (saminescu)

PokerStars Game #52613520752: Hold'em No Limit ($3/$6 USD) - 2010/11/13 0:49:38 ET
Table 'Signe' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: AlexanderPAB ($120 in chips)
Seat 2: sirfreddy83 ($240 in chips)
Seat 3: saminescu ($717.25 in chips)
Seat 4: krissyb24 ($477.45 in chips)
Seat 5: KrishnaRadha ($219 in chips)
Seat 6: mtpdc44 ($96 in chips)
Seat 7: Marius2910 ($300 in chips)
Seat 8: Klairic ($579 in chips)
Seat 9: Doogey67 ($588.40 in chips)
Marius2910: posts small blind $3
Klairic: posts big blind $6
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to krissyb24 [8c 6d]
Doogey67: calls $6
AlexanderPAB: raises $12 to $18
sirfreddy83: folds
saminescu: calls $18
krissyb24: folds
KrishnaRadha: folds
mtpdc44: folds
Marius2910: folds
Klairic: folds
Doogey67: raises $48 to $66
AlexanderPAB: raises $54 to $120 and is all-in
saminescu: calls $102
Doogey67: calls $54
*** FLOP *** [5d Jc 4c]
Doogey67: bets $90
saminescu: calls $90
*** TURN *** [5d Jc 4c] [Kc]
Doogey67: bets $378.40 and is all-in
saminescu: calls $378.40
*** RIVER *** [5d Jc 4c Kc] [9h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Doogey67: shows [Ks Qs] (a pair of Kings)
saminescu: shows [9s Qd] (a pair of Nines)
Doogey67 collected $936.80 from side pot
AlexanderPAB: shows [As Ad] (a pair of Aces)
AlexanderPAB collected $366 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $1305.80 Main pot $366. Side pot $936.80. | Rake $3
Board [5d Jc 4c Kc 9h]
Seat 1: AlexanderPAB showed [As Ad] and won ($366) with a pair of Aces
Seat 2: sirfreddy83 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: saminescu showed [9s Qd] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 4: krissyb24 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: KrishnaRadha folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: mtpdc44 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: Marius2910 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: Klairic (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: Doogey67 showed [Ks Qs] and won ($936.80) with a pair of Kings

Anyways, I have just seen TONS of hands like the first two ones. Something you don't see on the 40-100bb tables!
I Really don't know what I think about the short stacking. It reminds me a bit of tournament poker, and has really got me urging to play tournaments. Maybe I'll play some on Sunday...

Good luck at the tables!

You might like...

2010-11-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

I heard about the show, World of Jenks, during a radio program where Andrew Jenks was being interviewed, and the interview certainly did it's job at grabbing my interest, because I was dying to see it. The show is a documtary series where each episode Andrew moves in with a different stranger, such as a homeless person or rapper.

I have only seen a couple episodes of this show, but I am a fan, although I think the episodes need to be longer. Anyways, if you are reading this blog, you will probably like the episode with 'The Takeover'- Nick Shulman.

You can watch this episode here:
http://www.mtv.ca/tvshows/world-of-jenks/video_content.jhtml?id=1649776

Let me know what you think...

My tips for becoming SNE

2010-10-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

First off, I think you need to set up a general guideline for the year. I don't see a point wasting time being too specific because you really never know what will happen in two months. What I did was aimed for 100k VPP every month, and then planned to play an extra 50k VPP throughout October, November, and December.

As far as time of the day and setting up when you play, I think that's a personal thing. Since my boyfriend, Adam, a.k.a 'Fishbones11', is a regular tournament grinder, so getting up early and playing doesn't really work because he likes to play at night, and we like to stay on the same schedule.

Once you figure out the general basics...

1. Take things month by month:
Similar to how you feel 'regenerated' by the new year, I find that when you totally reset your goals month by month, it sort of gives the same effect. On the first of the month I: change my desktop background, filter my statistics for the month, and set a goal for VPP's and then figure out how many hands I need to average per day.

2. Get a head start!
I can't stress this enough. December is usually a busy time with the holidays, and you never know what might happen through the year, such as a vacation you couldn't pass up, getting sick etc. Also, you should be pretty motivated at the beginning, and if you get a nice head start, it will add to your confidence and keep you motivated.

3. Don't fall more than 4 or 5 days off your pace:
At one point I was about 2 weeks behind my pace, and the repercussions of that lasted for the next two months. This is when I started to feel bogged down by my poker schedule because I was never on track and always playing catch up. This is also when my results started to really suffer.

If you plan to take a few days off, make sure you are really up to making those days up, and do so, asap. Being behind pace is discouraging.

4. Getting through the rough days:
Sometimes you just don't want to play and can't get into it, or you are constantly checking the amount of hands you played to see if your done yet. Put on a good T.V show, but not something that is going to be distracting with a complicated story line. Something to help entertain you and pass the time. I watched every episode of The Office probably about 4 times throughout the year. I also found that getting out of the house, going for a walk, and making a pot of coffee would help, too. Caffeine can help make you more alert, you just make sure you don't over do it.

5. When you are in 'the zone', keep playing!
This was huge for me. Sometimes I have days where I feel like I could play forever, and it helps so much, because it allows for some future guilt free down time, or it helps you get caught back on pace. If my goal for the day was 10k hands, and I still kept like playing, then sometimes I would play 15k hands, and then the next day I only had to play 5, and could have time to do other things. Get ahead of pace as much as you can.

6. Stay healthy!
This is huge, and I cannot stress how important your diet is. Eat regularly, and when you eat, eat foods that nourish your body. Drinking soda's, eating sugar and processed food is only going to damper your focus, not to mention your overall immune system and health. Not only should you stay hydrated by drinking water, but you need to eat foods that are high in water like juicy fruits and vegetables. Add 'superfoods' like avocados, blueberries, nuts, and salmon to your diet. Every time you eat a meal, make sure you are eating something that's nutritious, your body need its!

I finally did it!

2010-10-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hitting the 1,000,000 VPP mark really came with a huge sigh of relief more than anything. When I set my sights on SNE, actually hitting SNE is just one step to what I really want to do. I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but I love it, and I feel like the fun work is what's to come. I am sure you are all curious so here are some of the final stats:

Hands played= 2,596,437
Table Winnings= -$10,082.46
Total Milestone and FPP Bonus$= $80,458
Tournament $= I will play at PCA, another event TBA, and maybe the wcoop main event, which value between $24-35k

I am slightly/extremely disappointed with my results at the tables, but I certainly wasn't expecting to be able to crush the games or anything with a really small amount of cash game experience and the hours I was putting in. So working on my win rate, is my next challenge. (On top of grinding out the final 250,000 vpp to reach the next milestone bonus of $10k, not including the $ earned from FPPS, which should be an added $20k).

At some point before the new year starts, I am going to try experimenting with a few things, alot of which depend on vpp calculations, though. I would love to be able to play less tables, as I am sure that's the #1 thing that is affecting my win rate. I also might try out playing six max, although from my past experience, my opinion is that 6 max really is where the best poker players are, and the games are much tougher, as well as the amount of tables you would be able to play. The one good thing about six max is your vpp per hand is higher.

Another thing that I really need to work on is discipline and structure. Although I am not really a person that needs a structured lifestyle, and in a way I don't like doing the same thing at the same time every day, there are a few things I need to work on for next year, the main one being exercise. I knew when I started this goal last year that it was really important to stay healthy. Overall, I would say I have done a pretty good job about eating well, and I really didn't get sick at all throughout the year, but I feel pretty weak, especially when it comes to my posture. In the past, I have been pretty dedicated to going to the gym and weight training, but upon my recent visit to the gym I realized, I hate going there! I would much rather be playing a sport, going for a walk or run outside, or just doing my weights or something on my own at home. All of those things are things I have really missed over the last year or so.

Anyways, I have to thank all my friends and family for being supportive and understanding throughout the year. I wasn't nearly as good as a friend, a girlfriend, or a doggie mother, that I should have been, (I promise to walk you more Riley!), and unfortunately couldn't spend as much time away from poker as I would have liked to.

Thanks for everyone who follow my blog and have been supportive, and I hope you all continue to!

Almost There!

2010-10-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

Only 27k vpp more until I reach supernova elite!

A Late Mid-Year Review

2010-08-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, I use an I mac, and although I tried to use boot-camp (a program that would allow me to run windows on my mac, so that I could use either Poker Tracker or Hold-em Manager), I just couldn't get used to going back to a windows operating system. Finally, the other day, after watching a poker training video, and realizing ALL of the stats I was missing out on, I did a little research and was thrilled to see that they have Poker Tracker 3 for mac. After waiting two full days for my hands to load, it is semi up and running, (I can't get my HUD to work).

I've been using a program, Poker Co-Pilot, which really is a great basic program. It runs very fast, and has the 'major stats'. Since there is not many, I will just list them all: number of hands played, bb/100, flops seen, vpip, pre-flop raise, post-flop aggression frequency, blind stealing attempts, check-raised, went to showdown, won at showdown, three bet pre-flop, called pre-flop raise, folded to big blind steal attempt, folded to three bet pre-flop, continuation bet, and folded to continuation bet.

Now, here are just some of the stats that I am particularly excited about having with PT3: 4 bet pre-flop, 3-bet pre flop and fold to 4 bet, raise flop c bet, and c bet turn, just to name a few. They seriously have every single stat you could possibly imagine. I cannot believe I have played almost 3 million hands where people have all these stats on me that I don't have on them. Talk about a disadvantage. Guess I am a huge 'hud' donk.

I really cannot believe that it is September 2010 tomorrow! This year has blown by, and although I planned for it to be a boring year of lots of monotonous online grinding, I would actually say its one of my most enjoyable years since I started playing poker. Some of the highlights:

- Playing my first world series of poker main event.

- Going to Monte Carlo for the ladies event. Ok, the event itself was disappointing, but it was a great experience.

- Finishing 3rd in a Venetian deep-stack for $21,281, my biggest live tournament score.

- Being well on my way to supernova elite. I currently have 770,000 VPP. After the first couple weeks of the year, I kind of forgot how awesome it is to get SNE. I have been in the top 100 of the SNE chase, and there are only x amount of people on pace. For various reasons, I have chose not to specify how much I have made/lost at the tables or in bonus's, but I can say that I am exactly where I want to be right now in terms of profit and hands played.

The best part about playing online cash games, is the freedom to pick what hours of the day I want to play. When you play tournaments it is almost impossible to make a nice dinner if you feel like it or just stop playing for a couple hours to take a break, etc. When you are playing as much as I do, rake-back becomes a paycheck, so it has been nice to not have to deal with the variance of tournaments.

Hope you are all enjoying the last bit of summer. I'm heading back to the felt (a.k.a- the PokerStars lobby on my computer screen).

Keep on truckin!

2010-08-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

So, here I am, sitting with about 730,000 VPPS. Many hands behind me, but still many more to go.

I am hoping to hit the 1 million VPP mark sometime in October, in order to end the year with 1 250 000.

The last couple months have been quite frustrating at the tables. The games (200NL full ring), are incredibly tough and dry right now. Although, and I don't want to jinx it but, I feel like recently there has been a SLIGHT increase in the number of fish at my tables. Maybe due to it being easier to get money online, I'm not sure. I read an article suggesting there might be another 'poker boom', as recently a bill was passed that will basically make online poker legal in the U.S. Like most law bills, it's a bit confusing to me, lol.

I am a little sad that I started off the year doing well at the tables, (without rake back), but the last 4 months I have been a 'rake back pro'. Meaning, I am still making good money, but all of it from my rake back. I kind of expected it to be like this, but of course I am always trying my hardest to make the most that I can, and become a better poker player. When you play so many hands, sometimes more than many poker pros play in a lifetime, all your little mistakes or -ev plays become extremely apparent. I really don't think there is a big difference between the regulars that I play with that win the most, and the regulars I play with that loose a little bit. It's all about those tiny little leaks.

Besides playing poker, the last week or so I have been working on remodelling my home office and other parts of the house. I am pretty excited about it because I basically live in my office so I think it should be a place I really want to go into. Once it is done, I will post some before and after pictures.

Home at last...

2010-07-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

I haven't stopped traveling since the end of May, and I can tell you one thing- living out of a suitcase is not easy or fun!

Nothing better then getting back to my best buddy, Riley...

If you know me, then you know Riley, but if not, he is my 3.5yr old Yorkshire Terrier. I can't imagine my life without him. He is the most loving little guy, and he is totally hilarious. One of the hardest parts about leaving for poker trips is that I always have to leave him, and it is just not the same waking up without his kisses and rambunctious morning cuddles.

He also plays poker...

As for the main event, I ended up making it to about an hour left in day 2. Ended up busting 99 to QQ, cutoff vs BB. Considering the table dynamics, there was no way I could have gotten away from it.

I didn't have too many interesting hands, but I was witness to many! It cracks me up watching people start day 1 playing super tight, only to end up spewing and making the worst bluffs later on that night. I caught 3 old men trying to bluff me, which was pretty awesome. I guess they never got the memo that I am a calling station! You would think that that would happen more often live, but it really doesn't. It could also be that my game has changed alot, and I used to be too aggressive, instead of letting people be aggressive vs. me. That is one adjustment I have started making when I play live.

I was considering sitting down at the table and talking about how I satellited in, and ask a bunch of questions about when we would make the money etc., but, I am not good at doing that sort of thing, and don't really enjoy it. When I play live, I often try to say things like, "this is my first tournament ever", "my boyfriend just taught me poker a few months ago", but I have a hard time 'playing the part' while keeping a straight face.

It was a really fun tournament to play, and I think that every poker player should at least play in it once. I hope to be able to play in it every year that I can! This year was great experience, and I will feel much more confident next year being much more familiar with the structure.

Now, I am about 2 weeks behind of my ideal SNE pace, so for the next couple weeks my main focus is to get back on track...

Back in Vegas!

2010-07-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hopefully a preview of whats to come...lol.
Well it's a long shot, but it never hurts to dream, right?

Anyways, I'm back in Vegas to play my first Main Event!

Going to post updates here, if you want to follow:
http://twitter.com/krissyb24poker

The last month has been crazy with travelling and trying to get back on my SNE pace. When I get back home, I hope to get back into posting regularly.

Quick update

2010-06-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

Been in Vegas for the past two weeks, playing some tournaments, a little live cash, and a bit of golf. The trip started off pretty well, I finished 3rd in the first Venetian deep-stack I played. I have to say, I thought I would get over it, but I am really upset with the way it all panned out 3 handed, and the reason I haven't blogged about it yet (I have tried for the past week), is, it's almost painful to talk about, and whenever I do, it just makes me so angry/sad.

Other than that, I haven't cashed in anything else, and have played a couple other Venetian deep-stacks, and 3 WSOP events.

So far for June, I am failing hard at getting any hands in online. So far have 20k hands in, probably about 14k of them were totally forced when I was exhausted from playing live, etc. I had planned to take a good two weeks off, so its OK, but it's time to start getting my volume in to ensure that I end the month with 600k vpp. I am sitting at 531k right now.

I also planned to start working out again when I got to Vegas, since the hotel has a nice gym where I am staying, but that hasn't happened either. I am really hoping to do that tomorrow. In the past, I was pretty dedicated to getting to the gym, and at least doing some weights, or a good cardio class or something, and I always liked it, but starting is seriously the hardest part. I know that once I go for a week, I will instantly feel better and will want to continue going, but after taking almost a year off, I don't know why, it is just so hard to fit it back into my daily schedule.

Anyways, need to get some sleep, just thought I would do a quick update. My next event is going to be the $1,500 on Wednesday, so I am just trying to rest up and feel fresh for that.

Also, congrats to my friend, Marco, for taking down a $340 Venetian. Another good poker friend of mine, Yves, is currently chip leader with 30 left of the WSOP event #24. He has had so many close calls in WSOP events, it's crazy. I hope this is the one, so best of luck to him! A bunch of my closest poker friends have had lots of deep runs the past couple of weeks, which obviosuly makes the trip here much more fun and interesting.

Oh, what a month!

2010-05-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

May has by far been the toughest month, emotionally. I started off the month on the biggest heater ever. I was up over 20 buy ins in the first 4 days. Then, it went totally downhill. I quickly lost all the profit I made in the month, and when I was extremely frustrated because I was down 10 buy ins, and thought it couldn't get any worse, it did. There was a period of time where I was running terribly and nothing was working. I have been playing poker long enough, and I am certainly not naive enough to blame my results on running bad. It is just not possible. To be honest, I don't really believe in ever blaming long term results on 'bad luck'. That's why we call poker a skill game. In tournaments, I think luck certainly plays a massive part on success, (especially short term), but cash games are different. Why else could you look at the best players and there profit graphs look like graphs I dream about. They are always playing optimally. Yes, they go on downswings and upswings, but if we were to look at the best players, the variance is quite controlled.

So, as they say, failure is a stepping stone to success. This May roller coaster has forced me to work on my game. I guess I haven't been so motivated to do so in the past because my results were fine. Nothing special, but I was making money in the games. Unfortunately, my attitude about poker for the last few years has always been that I was happy to make enough to live relatively nicely. Like I said before, I would be totally content with breaking even at the tables and pocketing $100k in rake-back. But, enough is enough. I am tired of having huge sessions where I am chasing losses. I am tired of the massive variance. I am tired of settling for mediocracy. So, I started watching some training videos, downloading all my hand histories onto holdem manager (I use a program, Poker Copilot for Mac- I'll get into this later). The biggest thing I think I need to work on is my non showdown winnings. I am actually quite happy, because since I have started focusing on my non showdown winnings, the downward slope that it consistently was, has leveled out and is actually a little positive. Maybe its not a big enough sample, but throughout the year, I don't even have a stretch where it wasn't a solid 30 degree angle so, it looks like I have made some good changes. Gotta plug those leaks.

As far as my self discipline goes, I have set a few rules I want to try and follow. If I am down 10 buy ins in a session, I need to take a break and do something for at least 30 minutes. Also, I am never going to play past 5 am. I have also been experimenting with playing less tables and I really like it. Maybe it's in my head, but sometimes I feel like the games are going quicker than usual, and often find myself a little flustered, or rushed. When I get that feeling, that I am not playing well because it is going too fast, then I will close a few tables.

For the last half of my challenge, my goal is to work on my game and winnings at the tables. I have gotten very comfortable with the massive amounts of volume. If I could go back, I wish I had decided to do this earlier last year, because I could have taken a good month or two to prepare. To be honest, I just started taking notes on people, I just learnt about all the stats that HEM has, etc. I have been slacking in a huge way when it comes to the technical aspect of the game.

So, I am currently down about 18 buy ins for the month, which is terrible, unacceptable, and I know that I am capable of so much more. Hopefully I can make a good comeback before the end of the month, so I can get to Vegas feeling positive about online. I will still make a good profit this month with the fpp cash bonus and milestone bonus, but I feel like I should 100% be beating the game on top of that.

I am over half way to supernova elite, and I should be ending the month with approximately 530k VPP. So, it looks like I am going to have some extra room to play less tables and smaller sessions in the upcoming months, which should help me improve on my win rate.

I have been getting requests to see my set up, and before the end of the week I am going to do a little video blog, so stay tuned!

How could I forget...

2010-05-20T00:49:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite recipes for a healthy, nutritious, and convenient breakfast. I used to hate oatmeal, and I would try forcing myself to eat it, but I still couldn't, but then I tried this recipe. It's delicious, and you can make enough at once for breakfast for 3 or 4 mornings. Today, I got the ingredients together, put it in the oven, jumped in the shower, and when I was done, my breakfast was too, and I have got a good 5 meals ready to be ate. I eyeball all the ingredients now, because it's such a forgiving dish. You can also come up with all sorts of different fruit/nut combos, and I like to add cinnamon.

Recipe adapted from, The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook, by Tosca Reno.

Ingredients:
2 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups milk (any kind)
tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup silvered almonds or other nut
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 large unpeeled apple, grated
4 tbsp maple syrup

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Combine ingredients into a large, 3 quart, casserole dish, and baked uncovered for 45 minutes.

Nobody ever warned me...

2010-05-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

You know, I never really thought that one of the hardest parts about being a competent adult would actually be something so simple as feeding myself (healthily). I am pretty sure lots of other poker players have this same problem, so I want to share a few of my go to quick healthy snacks/meals, and would LOVE IT if you guys shared too.

One thing, I have almost every day is a smoothie. I have about 3 combinations that I really like and rotate between. Sorry that I don't have measurements- it's not too hard to eyeball.

Pomegranate-Berry:
- POM juice
- frozen blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries
- any kind of yogurt or milk, I usually do soy milk
- ground flax seed

Banana, Chocolate, Peanut Butter:
- frozen Banana pieces (seriously they HAVE to be frozen because it gives the smoothie that thick texture, and makes it nice and cold) I just buy a bunch of bananas, then when they are perfectly ripe, I cut them up and freeze them in a ziploc.
- tablespoon or so of cocoa powder (if you can find raw cocoa powder it is SO good for you)
- milk of whatever kind
- tablespoon of peanut or almond butter
- ground flax seed

Pineapple-Coconut:
- frozen pineapple pieces
- frozen banana
- milk of any kind, and I like to throw in a little vanilla yogurt
- coconut oil, and, or dried coconut
- little bit of vanilla extract, or vanilla bean if you have it

Some other quick little snacks:

- apple with a cheesestring or whatever kind of cheese, or apple with nut butter
- toast or pita with scrambled eggs, I like to add in sautéed onion, pepper, spinach, and cheese
- greek salad- with pita bread and hummus

Another thing I do, is cut up carrots and celery, and you put them in a container filled with water, and then they are all ready to be eaten, and they are so good because they get really crunchy.

The Secret?

2010-05-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

OK- so I am a pretty big believer in the the whole law of attraction thing. I am always trying to think good thoughts, and attract things that I want into my life. I think it has worked against me. I totally jinxed myself.

Before I left for Monaco a couple weeks ago, I was reading a webpage about what I need to travel there or something like that. I scanned over some tips, and one was, bring a change of clothes with you in a carry on, especially if you have alot of connection flights (which I did), but I thought, hmmmmm... should I? Nah, my luggage never gets lost. That sort of thing doesn't happen to me. So in the airport, about to hand in my bag that I am checking in, this thought went through my head again. Again, I thought, that would be terrible if I didn't get my luggage. For some reason, I started to imagine the what if's. I was traveling alone, so my anxiety level was probably a bit higher then it would normally be. I have no control over it though, so I just had to hope.

16 hours later, I finally arrive in the Nice airport. From this point, I still have to take a helicopter over to Monaco. I am totally exhausted. I rush to baggage claim as fast as I can. I have this little baggage claim game I like to play. While waiting for my luggage to come down the carousel thing, I pick a number and say OK, my bag is going to be the [pick random number] one to come down. Well, this time, I didn't even get to play. Oh yeah, one time it actually guessed correctly! As soon as I am trying to figure out which carousel my bag should be on, I hear my name on the loud speaker, asking me to come to baggage services. I have been up for over 20 hours at this point, and was feeling like a genuine zombie. Apparently after my last connection flight, my luggage got sent to Germany instead of Nice and they were getting it asap. Funny enough, now that I think of it, I remember being on the last flight and getting this weird gut feeling like, uh oh, something is going to happen with my luggage. I guess I knew it wasn't with me! It wasn't that bad actually, I got to my hotel, took a nap, and woke up with my luggage being delivered right to my room.

Not only did that weird thing happen, but a week ago, at 4am, after finishing my session for the day, and I couldn't wait to go to bed, I forced myself downstairs to take all my vitamins. I congratulated myself for doing it, and thought, well hey, they must help, I haven't been sick for ages. Not a cold or anything. I actully thought I should write a blog post about how important it is to stay healthy, because how the heck are you going to deal with being sick when you have vpps to make. Sure enough, I got a cold. Luckily, its just an annoying cold. Not enough to stop me from doing anything.

These are just a couple examples of weird sort of psychicy things that have happened recently, but these sort of things freak me out. It's like when you haven't talked to someone in forever and then suddenly, an hour after you were thinking about them totally out of the blue, they contact you. Or, one of my favorite things- you have a favorite song, can't get it out of your head, and then you hear it on the radio.

Anyways, its been a pretty bleh month so far. The only good thing is that I am sitting at 460k vpp, which I am pretty happy about. I think what I am going to try and do is get to 520k vpp minium by the end of the month. It should be pretty easy, that requires that I play about 160 000 more hands this month. I am pretty sure I can and will play more, though. The goal is to end June with 600k vpp, so that way the most I would have to play in June is enough for 80k vpp(max), which is about 180 000 hands. I find it pretty easy to play 20k hand days, so I think what I will do is plan for 5 days where I play 20k hands each day, and then the other 80k hands will come from playing here and there. I am all booked to go to Vegas for 3 weeks in June. Going to play 3 of the smaller WSOP events, and various Venetian deep-stacks, so online volume is going to be an issue.

As far as my playing results go for the month, it has been a HUGE rollarcoaster. I was up 25 buy ins instantly, then managed to somehow go on a 30 buy in downswing, and now I am up about 8 buy ins for the month. The downswing was probably due to a number of things. Tilt, being sick, and running bad. Just a good reminder that I have to focus on playing a solid game and self discipline. With this challenge, I have to pretty much throw out all of the usual loosing poker remedies. Example- call it day if its going bad, your not feeling well, take a day or two, or the week off and get healthy. A friend of mine did suggest to me a couple weeks ago, that when I do loose x number of buy ins, that I should just take a half hour break, go to Starbucks, then come back to it. I did it one day, as much as I didn't want to actually, (if you don't know me well, or you play with me a lot, here it is: MY BIGGEST LEAK....I HATE booking big loosing sessions, and will just want to keep going to get even). This is seriously the worst mentality to have in poker. THE WORST. I am happy to call it a day when I have won a lot, but when it's been a bad day, I get desperate to turn it around. I am working so hard to train myself to play more when things are going good, and less when it's going bad, but it is really hard. I am starting to get pretty comfortable putting in so much volume, and recently been really trying to work on my game. 200nl full ring may just be the tightest games I have ever played in my life, and even the bad regs, aren't that bad. The good thing is, the good regs aren't very good, either. I do feel pretty good about my game lately. Just gotta work on not getting out of line so much...;)

this girl is a zombie...

2010-05-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

no time to post this week

LOL Ladies Events

2010-05-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

So, I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Monaco, because I won the ladies package for EPT Monte Carlo.

The tournament was a couple days ago, and it didn't go well at all. I busted in the 3rd level, and there all just standard stupid hands, not the least bit interesting.

I wanted to talk about my feelings towards women events. I am really unsure if I will ever play one again. The thing is, I have always felt that they're silly, but I would play them if I had the opportunity because obviously my edge is better in that field that any other tournament I could play. I have been against the concept of them since I have ever heard of them because it is so sexist. Could you imagine the uproar if they came out with men only events? When I have played in women only events, I have talked to other women who have said that they are too intimated to play with men. I don't get that, and have never experienced that feeling, but OK. In that sense, I guess it does get more women into poker. Do I really care if more women get into poker? No, not really. I do care that men and/or women continue to get into poker. Obviously, it would be great if poker continued to grow.

I don't even enjoy playing women events. I can't explain it, but it is the weirdest environment. I guess just very different then what I am used to, and therefore I don't feel very comfortable playing them. When I busted from the tournament the other day, a few hours later a open event started and right away, when the first hand was dealt, it was sort of like, ah, I'm at home. Maybe I am just used to the dynamic that surrounds being (typically) the only female at the table, I don't know.

I think one of the things that really makes me mad is every lady event I have played (about 4), there is this weird feeling of inferiority. In AC, we got one little screen for the poker clock (there were at least 10 other screens and only 2 other tournaments going on). The dealers were terrible, they used dealers that have never dealt tournaments before, or so I was told. I am not sure exactly how it happened, but we got back from break, the clock was running, and my table didn't get dealt a hand for 3 minutes, the dealer didn't know what the heck was going on. We lost that amount of time on the clock, and other tables got hands in. They didn't do anything about this. There is always awkward cheering and announcements too, and each event I have played in, we have got some sort of special gift. I am probably a negative nelly, but I find it offensive.

Now I have read many online forum threads which basically bottom line say, women suck at poker. We know that the female to male ratio is crazy. First off, think about how much harder it is for women to get into poker. The opportunity just isn't there since most poker players are men. Many, not all, male poker players I know, don't try and get their girl friends into poker. If anything, they don't want them to try playing. Not to mention, the poker community, although I think its comfortable now, wasn't so inviting to women in the past. I have heard of mens games that won't even allow women. Since there is not many women who play poker, it is less likely that she will have a friend to try and get her into it. The women I know that have got into poker have done so guided by fathers, brothers or husbands. On top of having a smaller chance of just being introduced to poker, I think women have so many more life distractions then men. Although there are many career women in the world, women do have a natural instinct to create a home and family and usually allot more life time to relationships, being intimate or friendly. Take a look at your facebook. How many more friends do you have that are women? I bet women are much more active on facebook than men in general. Insert stereotype- women love shows like The Bachleor, America's Next Top Model, 90210, men like, SportsCentre, sports, Sopranos, etc. I am not one of the women, I have to add. There is some truth to these stereotypes.

When I think of all my friends that are women, I don't think any of them when they were 18 (the age I was when I got into poker) would have preferred to be spending time in a casino rather than being in a club or at a party. I got into poker at the exact same time as my boyfriend, we learned together, and I am sure that helped so much. Obviously are personalities compliment each others very well to be able to do this. For the past 6 years we have spend pretty much all our time together. It may not work for alot of people, but it works for us. Clearly, my situation is already extremely rare. My female friends certainly would never spend there night reading poker forums, anaylizing hands, and working on there game. Heck, often I don't want to either. Why is that? It seems that the women I know who I have talked to about poker, who don't like the theory behind it, find it boring. They also find action movies, or movies where you really have to think boring, too. Maybe they are not competitive in nature. I don't know the answer.

When we were kids, there is always fewer girls in sports then boys. Lots of girls want to play house or dress up. Lots of boys find that boring. I think it is just rare for women to really enjoy poker as much as men seem to, in general. It's similar to the case of a man being interested in becoming a makeup artist or hairstylist. It is just rare.

If we simply compare me to my boyfriend, Adam, (aka fishbones11), we can see that interests and time spent away from poker are very different. It is so much easier as a man to play alot of poker than a women when you get down to the basics. Men and women have different needs and pressures.

Me- I don't like to eat a lot of take out, therefore, I spend a lot of time cooking, grocery shopping, searching for recipes.
Adam- he will eat whatever is there- but he does NOT want to cook or go to the grocery store- anything delivered works

Me- I take about 1 hour to shower, do my hair, get dressed, etc.
Adam- 5 mins

Me- I like to live in a clean environment. Therefore I spend tons of time cleaning, organizing, etc.
Adam- better than alot of men I have met, he'll get the basics done- but come on, we know most men don't really care about this kinda stuff

OK thats all I can think of for us, but I am a huge poker grinder. Imagine a women that has kids, or a career. Getting really into poker is pretty much out of the question. When I say getting in, I mean enough to be really good if they are a beginner. I don't know a single person who is a great player who doesn't spend time reading or discussing poker and putting in a ton of volume.

When I was younger, I used to race go karts. Racing is a mans sport, but I loved it. There are some professional female race car drivers, but again, its rare.

Basically I think the bottom line is: poker is a 'mans sport'. Like many other sports, it is easier for men to be consumed than for a women. I think it will always be like this, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the women who happen to love it too, can play. I can say, I find the poker world totally accepting of women, and if I have ever felt like I didn't' belong, or wasn't welcome at a poker table, it was from what I am assuming is an old fashioned, conservative, man.

Do I think women can be good at poker? Yes, I think they can be just as good if not better then a man, but poker is not something that you are just good at. So, what I think, is that it is very rare for a women to be willing or able to put in the amount of time and effort to work on there game. I think this is something I need to work on too. In a way, maybe I am not as competitive, so if I am doing well enough, then I am happy. I usually put in extra effort during a downswing.

I don't at all think everyone can be a great poker player. There is definitely something that you have or you don't. I know many men that no matter how much they try, just aren't great, and I don't think they ever will be. Surely, there are plenty of females and males like this. Thats why I think blanket statements like, women cant play poker are totally ridiculous and annoying. I won't deny that when a women sits down at my table, I can be pretty sure they are bad, and they probably are. I am also happy people think the same about me.

I could look more into personality traits, brain activity etc. but, I'd rather go play a session...

Oh, and I decided, I will be playing the WSOP ladies event.

I'm not a procrastinator

2010-05-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

I wanted to start this blog when I first started playing this year to try and get Supernova Elite. That was January 1. It is now May 1. I have been super busy. I will try and quickly sum up SNE. Here is a link to what it's worth: http://fpppro.com/supernova-elite-value.php

So, I need to get 1,000,000 VPP. Right now I am at :

Almost 41% of the way there, which is pretty solid.

January and Febuary were crazy because I started playing at 100nl. That means well over 320,000 hands a month because my goal is 100k vpp a month. In March I moved up to 1/2 and now it seems easy breezy to get my hands in per month since the amount of vpp per hand increases significantly.

So, the whole cash game grind is very new to me. I have been playing poker for the last 4 years or so, but really I haven't played cash seriously since I was first learning the game. From there I went to pretty much hu sng and mtts exclusively. The low- mid stake mtt grind is exhausting, and I was getting pretty bored and frustrated.
2009 was kinda of a weird year, I'll tell you guys more about it later, but basically I ended 2009 feeling like if I was going to continue to seriously play poker, I needed to REALLY play. For the most part, I would start up a session, start shopping online, watching T.V, and just playing half ass.

One day, in December, I was reading/ watching about Chiren80 and his supernova elite challenge. Making 100k + a year, playing tons of hands at low limit cash seemed enticing, so I started playing cash a bit to see what I thought. I started playing 6 max, and it didn't go so well. I was constantly levelling myself. Cash games on PS right now and since I started are pretty much the tightest cash games I have ever played, but its weird, because they are so tight for the most part, but when you are playing so much, you start getting in crazy 3 bet 4 bet battles with other regulars. I ended up switching to full ring, which I find much easier. Your are in a lot less decisions, and I can even 24 table fast tables getting up to 1700 hands per hour. Feeling pretty confident that I could do this and break even, in worst case loose a little at the tables,I decided I would try getting on pace in January and then assessing if I could go for it. Even loosing 10k or 20k at the tables throughout the year would still give me 80k+ in profit.

It is a tough balance playing 10k hands a day on average, and trying to learn as I do that, so I am doing my best, but since I started in January, I have been pretty much break even/ win a little bit. It is sort of the goal to just break even this year at the tables, but I would love to at least have a 0.50bb/100 win rate.. Since I moved up to 1/2 I have had more time to work on my game, because to be honest, in January and February, if I was at my computer I was playing. Slowly I am working on it, and because April was my worst month so far, I have since tried to set myself a couple rules, such as no playing past 5am and trying to my game. It is really weird how when you are tired and playing bad, it is sometimes hard to recognize. I would play crazy long sessions, and I would feel like I am playing fine, but after I had some sleep, I would remember hands I played, where a lot of the hands that relied on instinct I screwed up because my judgement was so off. It's kind of like that drinking and driving phenomenon. I'll talk more about this later though...

Anyways, I find this challenge extremely motivating, and I am not sure why, I actually enjoy it. For the first time in a while, I feel like I am really accomplishing something. Getting supernova elite is pretty epic, and if I do, I think I would be the 3rd girl to do it?!