I don’t want to write a blog, I want to play poker, poker, poker! Well actually I would like to watch the new Game of Thrones episode first and then play poker but since my last blog was 3 weeks ago I can’t really postpone it any longer.
I assume most of you have read how my career as high-stakes LHE pro ended at the beginning of March. I got offered being staked for 50% in those games but I decided to really start all over again. When I made the switch last year from FR to 6-max I grinded a lot of $2/$4 and $3/$6 to get used to the game. This was also during a PokerStars Promo in which you could win daily VPP Leaderboards and the combination of these two lead me to grinding 16+ tables of $2/$4 and $3/$6 6-max for 2 days straight with not so fantastic results. I got out of it what I wanted, my first real experience in 6-max poker and I made a really tiny profit after rakeback. Since those days I moved up to play $5/$10 and a lot less tables which worked fine until I got my ass whooped last month.
Now you should of course be able to beat the lower limits if you want to win at the High Stakes and I never really doubted I could beat these limits but my PokerTracker said otherwise. After a week of no poker this seemed like the perfect challenge to get back to the tables. The idea was pretty simple: I could only play $2/$4 6-max until the numbers turned from red to green, as soon as I was up lifetime I could move up and repeat it at $3/$6. Now this is how anybody should move up stakes normally, so why not me? The hardest part of this challenge was that normally I’m okay with breaking even on the tables since in limit poker you pay a lot of rake and thus make a lot in rakeback. To get in the green I actually had to win, just like a real pro! Now to win the best idea is to play less tables and table select really well but that limits the amount of tables you can play and makes the process a lot longer. At $2/$4 I fired up all the tables I could find and it actually worked out pretty good.
I only needed 20 hours and crushed the $2/$4 by winning 1.71BB/100, a pretty decent winrate. The next challenge was however a bigger one. The $3/$6 tables have a worse fish/pro ratio and there are less tables running. Also the amount of money I lost at $3/$6 was a lot more then at the $2/$4 especially in BB/100 (-2,50BB/100). If I could win at 1BB/100 it would still take me 100.000 hands to win back the $5.835 I’m down. It’s pretty simple, if it has to be this way, it will have to go this way. I’m currently in the middle of grinding back those $5.835 and I’m not doing that bad so far.
This challenge really motivates me as I want to get over with it as soon as possible. If I’m back at the $5/$10 tables I’m already grinding mid-stakes again and from there we will see how it goes. It also shows that I’m a structural winner at the low-stakes which gave me the confidence back which I lost at the beginning of March. I’m currently really confident about my game and playing really focused almost every session. The drive to win might even be bigger than when I was playing the High Stakes, it’s the need to proof to myself I’m good enough to be a winner in this game. 
I finally got a pretty graph again! As said it could take a while before I grinded those $5.835 back at the $3/$6 and my current aim is to do that before Diablo III comes out at the 15th of May. From the 15th of May till the 28th of May I can then allow myself to play Diablo III before taking off to Las Vegas!
Still I didn’t forget that March was my worst month ever. I’m happy that I found the motivation again to start over again at the $2/$4 but this is obviously a huge difference compared to grinding $100/$200. Looking at the results does give a bit of a bitter taste and I just hope that one day I can start a challenge to also convert these red numbers into green ones!
My March graphs also look really bizarre. Winning a decent 0,58 BB/100 but down almost $18k shows these big differences between my graph in BB/100 and $.
So what other things are happening in my world? Let’s stick a little longer to poker first. My PokerStars Team Online buddy Tyler (Frosty012) Frost had his Team Online video launched last week. I’m a bit jealous because I think the guys from 918Films have a really great vibe in their videos and I can only hope it’s going to be my turn one day!
I’m also really happy that he talks a lot more about girls in his latest blogs, he seems not really happy about the fact that he has to many one night stands…. I always thought that that was the goal when being single? He also did an interview on the 2+2 Podcast which are always great to listen to.
PokerStars Team Online finally got its first Australian member! Roy “GodlikeRoy” Bhasin made it to the team and I think he is a great addition. I’ve known him from his posts on 2+2 in the Supernova Elite Thread back in 2010 and have followed his blog since. His blog was already on my blogroll and I was happy to “one up” it to the Team Online blog section. There was already an announcement made earlier that George “Jorj95” Lind III is back in Team Online after moving to Canada (Vancouver) to get back into Online poker. Jorj95 is one of the legends of Online poker and I can’t wait to see him crunch during the SCOOP coming May.
In the non poker related section it’s pretty simple what I want to talk about, TV-Series! I haven’t been watching a lot of Series lately, I haven’t even finished the last season of Dexter which was always one of my favorite shows. However I did watch the finale episode of Spartacus! It was hard to get used to the new guy who played Spartacus (after Andy Whitfield tragic dead earlier) but the show was as strong as in its first season. Yesterday the 1st Episode of Game of Thrones Season 2 aired and currently I can’t wait to publish this blog so I can start watching it. I’ve already read what’s going to happen since I’m halfway the second book but that only makes me more excited! I’ve said it before but if you haven’t watched Season 1 yet, you really should clear your schedule and watch it now!
Another series I’m looking forward to is Season 5 of True Blood.
Now it’s time for Game of Thrones!