I just withdrew the entire ~$900 CAD in my Neteller account, leaving ~$200 USD in Pokerstars, ~$100 USD in Titan, and another unclaimed ~$100 USD in Dream poker from the freeroll a while back that I haven’t cleared yet.

My reason for withdrawing was that basically, I went on a big losing streak, and although I’ve been doing fine lately, I needed a change.

First off, I’d like to apologize to the blog readers for my long absense and the lack of writing here. To be honest, I was trying to keep away from poker for a while, and for the life of me couldn’t think of anything to write about.

It’s 4:00 AM. A young 19 year-old poker fanatic is in his basement bedroom trying to deal with insomnia, and is doing his frustration push-ups in between the 7 tournaments he keeps getting bad beat out of.

Call me crazy (I won’t argue), but this has been my lifestyle as of late. I used to get random spurts of insomnia, and I’m currently going through another one. I think it’s the lack of work that’s put me into bad sleeping patterns.

Anyways enough of my personal life you probably don’t want to hear about; on to my poker progress.

After playing for quite a while on Titan, I’ve now moved all but $100 out of the site, and deposited a good chunk of my bankroll into PokerStars. My decision was based on a combination of both Titan’s lack of features, aswell as PokerStars’ wealth of them. Too many times I found myself with free time to play, and my desired SnG was just plain not filling up. I really never have that problem with stars, considering they are a much more massive site in terms of players and game availability.

I’ve thought alot about ways of turning my game around, and taking it in a new direction lately. I’ve turned more towards thinking theoretically about poker rather than looking at it as profits, which used to be my number one focus. Also reviewing my play and seeing what can be improved, taking way more notes on players and using them against them, and analyzing playing styles.

Well I’ve hardly played any SnGs since my last post, but the ones that I have played have been more valuable to me than the other 30 or so from my SnG challenge. I decided on tuesday that I would try a $30 6-seater, and ended up winning it. The competition was a little tougher than the $20s and had me a little worried, but just like any other tourney, there are still gamblers there just waiting to give you their chips.

Although I said to myself I should take a break from poker this weekend, I ended up actually playing in both of the events held by cardschat on sunday. One was supposed to be a NLHE tournament, but through a mixup turned out to be a LHE tourney instead. I hadn’t played limit poker in quite a while, and actually did very well by my standards. I took down almost every pot I entered by aggression, LHE’s key ingredient (right Mr. Paulsson?). I ended up busting out of both of the events (the other being the weekly $10 Sunday special) late in the tournament, and both on bad beats which at least means I went in as a favourite.

Well since my last blog post, my confidence for whatever reason has out the window, and it has resulted in some terrible sngs. I played a whole lot of games on thursday when I had a day off, and for the most part didn’t hit money. I also played fairly well in another MTT that, yet again, I bubbled out of in 16th place, with final 10 getting paid. One thing I’ve finally noticed from all my note-taking is that I don’t get aggressive enough late, and my stack dwindles away as I wait for a premium hand. I also tried to satellite my way into the 10K on friday, but found myself with the short end of the stick with just about every race I took in the numerous games I played.

As it turns out, Chris aka Dorkus Malorkus, has stolen my idea and decided to start a sit ‘n’ go challenge aswell
He started a thread, and a few cardschat members have agreed to tag along and try the 200 SnG challenge with him. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone’s results and comparing how well we did.

In that very same thread, another member, Beriac, and I began to debate turbo sit ‘n’ go tournaments.
My argument is that they are geared more towards gambling and getting lucky to win rather than outplaying your opponent due adjusting to the blind structure. His point was that he excels in “low-M” situations, which is why he profits well in turbos. The “M” value being the number of times your stack can withstand a round of blinds. For example with a 6000-chip stack, and blinds at 500/1000, you have an M of 4: 6000/(1000+500) = 4. I myself can’t seem to find a consistent profit in turbos, so I stick to the regular games.

As you may or may not have read in the forums, I have decided to start a Sit ‘n’ Go challenge. Not quite sure how many of them I will play, as I haven’t yet gauged how long it will take to finish, say 100 of them. I’ll be playing $20 as much as I can, but their availability isn’t great at Titan, so $10 will probably end up being the majority of my games played.