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Slyklling Weakly - Back to Life, Back to Reality
Hi Simon good to see you back and thats a pretty ambitous list for a recreational player. Notice your weights up so what happened to the marathon training?
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New Year, new focus…….
Having failed miserably last year when I set myself a number of challenges on the forum, I’ve decided not to set any poker related targets at all this year relating to generation of money but instead to keep a diary of my play over the course of the year and just see where it takes me.
Life has changed quite considerably for me over the last 12 months and has forced me to re-evaluate a few things, one of them being why I play poker. This time last year, I was out of work and without going into too much detail, pretty unwell and without any real prospect of getting back into employment in the short term. At that time, poker was a lot of things to me but on reflection was probably more than anything else an escape from real life and a distant hope / dream that it might become a viable source of at least some additional income. In part this was a success in that a). I played way too much so it was a great distraction from reality and b). I managed to win more than I lost so although I never came close to making enough to live off, I at least managed to contribute something towards holidays etc. when I had decent wins.
Since then I’ve managed to get my health back into some kind of order and get myself back into full time employment as of last August, for a company that I really enjoy working for and that are prepared to pay me relatively well for my efforts. This in itself is great news and life has been pretty good since then, but…… from a poker point of view I’ve found it quite a difficult adaption to make, the money stopped being so important and my focus on my game slipped, I wasn’t really playing to win so much as just playing because that’s what I did of an evening and because I now had some money when I lost I wasn’t addressing the leaks and fixing my game, I would just throw money at the problem and reload, thankfully I haven’t lost a huge amount but I have certainly limited the amount I could have won and more importantly realised I wasn’t really enjoying the game and was just playing for the sake of it.
Having taken some really good advice prior to Christmas (thanks to those that contributed and a special mention to TommyD for his input, which really resonated with me) I took a little time off from Sky Poker and did some thinking about why I play poker and what I want to get out of it. The big thing to come out of it for me is the acceptance that I am and always will be a recreational player and to that end the most important thing to me should be to ENJOY the game. So… I’ve decided to do exactly that, I put £100.00 into my account yesterday and I’m going to play the games that I want to play and enjoy playing, I’m not going to worry about BRM particularly but equally I am not going to play masses of volume if I need to re-load and can afford to re-load, I will, if I have a big win I’ll withdraw most of it and treat myself or my wife. If I win, great, if I lose so be it, as long as I enjoy it and I’ll see where it takes me in 2014 J
Through my involvement with Team HitSquad I’ve been forced to consider some goals for 2014 which I’d like to share on here and chart my progress towards them during the year and these are:
Play no more than 5 MTT's in a single session online
Play NO HU sng's above my current bankroll
NEVER drink alcohol whilst playing online
Play more Main Events on Sky
Win a Sky 8pm Main Event
Play more live poker
Play as many SPT's as possible
In an ideal world…….
Play either a UKIPT or EPT event
Hopefully play at least one poker festival outside of the UK
I’ve also set a couple of personal goals which I’m more determined than ever to achieve this year so I’ll also share those and try to update my progress towards them too:
Lose at least 2 Stone in weight
Ride at least one Track League event in 2014 (this is a cycling thing which I have convinced myself I am no longer able to do for the last 6 years)
Thanks for reading if you made it this far and all the best for 2014
Starting Bankroll - £100.00
Starting Weight – 15st13 (my heaviest weight ever!)
Starting Fitness Level – Pretty much ZERO
Just one question; you've been 'forced' to consider some goals? That sounds sinister lol, I hope you're not doing this under duress!
"Through my involvement with Team HitSquad I’ve been forced to consider some goals for 2014 which I’d like to share on here"
I managed 3 head prizes in the mini but bust out just before the bubble and made a tiny profit of 60p
The ME was a bit of a rollercoaster all the way through but I managed to ride it out (and get a little fortunate more than once) to finish 37th but with no head prizes so another small profit of £6.82
I then sat on an NL20 Mastercash table to pass some time whilst watching the show on 861 and railing a team mate in the Mini and managed yet another tiny profit of 87p
So total profit for the night was - £8.29, better than a loss and all good fun
The best of luck, i hope you go onwards and upwards.
All the best
Rainman397
4 Days in and so far so good.........
Pokerwise really not a huge amount to report other than the few game I played last Thursday and a single £2.50 Omaha Hi-Lo DYM on Saturday morning just to test out the new iPad functionality which I may need to call on later today. I deservedly bombed the DYM in 5th after doing way too much of my stack calling off with a flopped set of 4's on a really connected board when the river also gave me an 8-low which I more hoped might rather than expected to be good.
So current balance is £106.04, a steady start but happy that I've not broken any of my rules already and looking forward to playing next week. Really looking forward to playing my first forum DTD for a while tomorrow and would really like to put in a good performance in that.
I have a bit of a dilemma this afternoon as I want to go over to Sheffield and play the £20.00 re-buy with 10 GPS seats added, but I'm also registered for the Cash Giveaway freeroll on Sky and would love a free shot at a seat for the UKPC, decisions, decisions. Considering taking the iPad to Sheffield and playing the Freeroll on that but not sure if that makes me look like an utter t**t?
Weightloss wise........ Got off to a great start, I haven't touched a single drop of alcohol yet and don't intend to until a Centre Parcs trip in 2 weeks time, have eaten very sensibly and although tempted haven't given in to any pizza related cravings as yet. I've also managed to exercise everyday so far with a 1mile run on Thursday, a 45minute session on my home trainer (will post photos at some point) Friday and Saturday and a 45minute ride on my Mountain bike this morning. All this has resulted in a total weight loss of 4lbs in 4 days which I'm very happy with. If people are interested I might talk in more detail about this later on.
Current weight - 15st 9
Fitness - There is an awfully long way to go, I have felt genuinely dreadful every time I have engaged in exercise so far. It's important to realise that I have historically trained and competed at quite a high level in the sport of cycle racing so I know my body and how it reacts to training pretty well and what tends to work best for me. I am concentrating purely on trying to build a base level of fitness and working very much within a moderate training zone concentrating purely on anaerobic work (unless the road slopes upwards in which case I generally go into oxygen debt!). It's no exaggeration that I have not tried to train properly now for around 6 years so I'm under no illusion that it's going to be easy but am hopeful that I can keep it up. The big thing that has struck me so far is just how little endurance fitness I have, even at really low intensity I'm struggling to exercise for more than half an hour, I'm hoping that after a couple of weeks I will start to see an improvement in this, fingers crossed!
All started pretty well, playing good solid poker, not getting out of line at all as one should in a satellite, I picked up a few pots early on and generally stayed out of trouble. The table was playing pretty loose as can happen in a re-buy format with people trying to chip up early and one kid particularly was in every hand and playing like a complete lunatic, he was on to buyin three within the first 15 mimutes. Anyway, I pick up QQ 3rd to act and make a standard raise and get 3 callers, flop comes 10 high with 2 hearts, I c-bet around 2/3pot, lunatic calls, next player shoves with A10, next player also shoves with with nut flush draw, I move allin over the top with my QQ and **** head figures his J 10 (no heart) must be ahead and moves allin aswell for his recently purchased double re-buy that had us all covered. Well, you know the rest....... 10 J turn and river and he has the gall to fist pump as both cards hit....... #FURIOUS! So I purchase a double addon which in hindsight was a mistake as I'd only allocated 3 buyins for the satellite so knew I would not be taking the addon at this point. Very next hand I pick up KJo which I'd usually fold in early position but as I was still tilting from the previous hand a little I opened for a standard raise, 3 callers again, 6 J 3 flop, c-bet, lunatic calls other 2 fold, turn 3, I bet again he calls, river A, I check he moves allin........ I'd seen him do this earlier bluffing an A on the river with and losing his full stack so I made the call, obvs he had the monster that is 6 3 off. I managed to keep my composure long enough to say good luck to everyone and swiftly exited the Casino.
Short version of the above..... I won't be playing the GPS this week!
The upside of this was that I got home just in time to play the Cash Giveaway freeroll and managed to scrape a free fiver, thankyou very much Sky. I also played the Team HitSquad PLO8 Donk-a-Fun which I managed to win from a HUGE field of 3, so that was another £9.00. Tried my luck at a couple of Allin Sats for the Roller and UKPC semi to no avail so regged for the mini-roller which I bombed out of in 102nd. This left me with a little less than my original £100 in my account, but as I was enjoying the show on 861 and railing a few people in the Roller, I decided to load up an nl20 Mastercash table which I sat at for the rest of the night, right up to the very end of the Roller an none-o-clock in the morning. Thankfully I played pretty well and ran better and managed to turn a £54.60 profit on the night which gave me a nice boost to my roll.
After a losing night of £11.00 last night, my current bankroll stands at £143.54 which I'm pretty pleased with 1 week in to the year.
Unlucky with the maniac in the satellite. 6 3 and flops two pair - really? Unreal this game is sometimes!
Having run badly early on, I managed to find some luck when I needed it, the key hand being 99 /> JJ AIPF and me running out to Quad 9's. After that I managed to move through the gears and chipped up nicely and went on to win the tournament and the seat so REALLY looking forward to that game.
If anyone is interested, it's a Charity Tournament being organised by Paul 'Action Jack' Jackson on behalf of The Ark Animal Welfare Trust and should be a lot of fun.
If you're on Facebook, there's some more information here: https://www.facebook.com/events/589417597779405/?ref_dashboard_filter=calendar if the link will work?
If not PM me and I'll be happy to pass on more details.
The only small consolation is that a friend and team-mate Danny, Moon_River on Sky eventually stacked the guy and booked his seat for the GPS so gogogo Danny!