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Can a chicken go pro?
Great read, noticed you in a few tournaments when i have looked at whose been up top. Looking foward to keeping up to date with this, so have you quit your job? and what was the inspiration for the name lol? I play mainly HUsngs but in the future want to develop my mtt game, what would you reccomend? you said about tution and reading, what would you say was most important, any particular resources yout hink really stepped your game up did you use pay sites to improve your game, get specific coaching from players etc? hope you dont mind all the questions, good luck with it all.
Comments
Hi All,
thought I would jump on the band wagon and do a diary of my own. My main goal from the diary is to set some targets and focus on them instead of floating through my poker life.
Background:
-I'm a 27 yr old **Edit** just realised I'm 28...lol ** IT professional, and I've been pretty much obsessed with poker for the last 3 yrs or so. It started off with the occasional home game,then I fluttered with online play for a bit, and did rubbish. I was rubbish, so i guess thats to be expected. I started to read the odd book or 2 but I was mostly an occasional, recreational player happy to donate my £50-£200 a month. Since then I started going to a pub poker league, and I caught the bug. I wanted to beat everyone else there so I read up alot more, joined poker tutorial sites and really started to work on my game. I also started to play online alot more. Mostly on another site to start with
Close but No Cigar:
around a yr and a half ago now, my game was coming along nicely, and I was playing pretty good poker. I had managed to build up a bankroll of around $500 from $50 or so mostly playing .10/.25 cash and the occasional MTT SNG during a week off work. I decided I was going to take a shot at the Sunday Million. my first ever, and certainly the biggest online tourney I had ever played. Lets just say I played the nuts, and ran like god, especially at the start of the tourney. (one of the first hands I played was 96s, vs 77 and 88... flop was 5,7,8!!). Anyway, I ended busting in 60th (out of 7000+) or something like that. gutting, but still a $2k score!
Its fair to say I had no BRM concerns at that time... my average buy in was probably around $100 after that, and for a while it worked. the very next day I final tabled a $109 tourney for another $1k, + couple of days later I won $3k in a $55 tourney. I won nothing for a further week but then the next weekend I had my best and worst online day ever. I final tabled the big 162 and the hot 44 in the same night for a total haul of around $6k! ...thats the good bit
...the bad bit...my last hand in the big 162 was brutal. With either 5 or 6 left ( i cant remember which), as 2nd in chips, i flopped a FH with 66 on a 363 board. got it all in on the flop vs the chip leader, who turned over AA. needless to say they hit their A on the river. out. ....95% fav to be a massive chip leader with $20k up top. Why now?!! Gutting, but still a good night.
I withdrew a bit of my winnings for some "treats" and left the rest in my account... Anyway, from this point on I obviously thought I was unstoppable and proceeded to lose my entire ~ $6k bankroll playing mostly $100- $215 tourneys.. I thought I was better than I was, and I used no BR management... not a recipe for success! Let me tell you too, the $215 tourneys over there are TOUGH. All tourneys are tougher in fact. and the fields are much bigger, so you can go looong streaks without a decent win, even if you are a top player.
New beginnings:
I had started to play a bit on SKY after a friend convinced me the tournaments were good. for a while, I played a bit of both sites but nothing like the volume I was doing before. When playing one night on sky I noticed there was an SPT in Luton. £110 entry. I decided at the last minute to come along and buy in direct if I could. Luckily we were early cos I think I got seat 199 and there was a 200 player cap! I won said SPT for £5600. BOOM! my biggest win ever at the time and it was enough to reignite the poker fire in my belly.
I started to grind online again tourneys again more heavily, but still wasnt having the success I was looking for. I decided my BRM was terrible, every time I built up a decent roll i'd get tempted by the bigger buy in tourneys and huuge prise pools and played too big. So I decided to change my main site to SKY, as the tourneys are smaller, the max buy in is generally £100 (and not that often). Less varience, less temptation and softer tournies. In the mean time, I'd also binked another Live Tourney for £7k at DTD in February, so I deposited a chunk of that into SKY and started grinding there. this was in March/April this year. Anyway, a very nice website has kindly kept track of my results since April...
profit
number of games
April
4119.95
188
May
-520.04
77
June
1974.37
114
July
151.02
231
August
7370.78
431
September
2353.69
217
October
971.83
184
November
36.54
121
I couldn't possibly remember all the good and bad that happened during this time, but my highlights are definately winning the PRIMO and final tabling 2 UKOPS main events 2 nights in a row (last UKOPS). the worst parts were the inevitable downswings. I've had 2 fairly major ones during my time on sky both lasting around 150 games and dropping 80-100buy ins. I know exactly how Lambert180 felt last month!
November so far:
Didnt get off to the best of starts with a £500/600 mini downswing. nothing in particular i can think of that stands out, but I just wasnt running well at the right times I guess. That has since changed in the last couple of days because I've won 4 tourneys and final tabled another 2. all unfortunately in the smaller tourneys - the main and big BH's (£55) havent been kind to me in November so far. The 4 I won were a £20BH and £10 400Gtd BH on Tuesday, then the £20 deepstack and the £11 turbo on Wednesday.
GOALS
- Volume: get priority membership/ play 500 tourneys a month.
I plan to do this by:- playing every timed tourney between 7pm and 11:15pm
- playing every tourney between 7pm and 10:30pm with a £10+ buy in
- play some satelites (semi finals for £55+ buy in tourneys mostly)
- Im not sure if this is even possible with the number of tourneys available. I refuse to play the £5 BHs while the rake is 15%
As well as meeting those goals for sky, I will be trying to build up a BR on another site by playing $3.50 6Max SNG's to start with. My goal by the new year is to be $500 in profit on that site.
---BTW - this extra rake could be yours SKY if you reduce the rake on your £5 BHs to 10%
I have a very limited BR on the other site - I will be starting with just $7 and a few points - I'm stubborn and don't want to deposit. again. So if the first couple of SNG's dont go well, I'll have to resort to points. Because of this, I will play 6max regular speed STT's to reduce variance a little and maximise my edge (if I have one).
I'll try to update regularly, if I dont, its probably because its not going well!
ok... so my first nights play (was written last night)
other site:
in the 6max SNG's i managed to cash 1 of my first 2 luckily, a 2nd place, on my 3rd I got a 1st place, which gave me a bit of breathing room! I'd now have to go on a massive 5.5 buy in downswing to go broke. never gonna happen. lol.
Great read - Thanks! first time I have tried a blog type thing...so feedback is welcome!
I've noticed your name cropping up very regularly when posting the tournament results, I'd say you have a great chance of making your target profit if you can maintain the volume. Good luck
If the chicken is doing ok as a rec player, why cross the road. GL
regards Alan
Paul
Very good diary by the way and I'm sure you'll bink a seat for the UKPC very soon.