I love StarCraft… I mean Poker!

Okay guys, I admit: “I’m a little hooked to StarCraft”. I haven’t played the campaign that much yet but I’m just hooked to all those Tower Defense custom games. I’m actually not that addicted but time flies when you are playing those games, I just wish a day had a couple of more hours. I still feel like I have a constant full schedule but it’s not that bad lately. If I can play StarCraft a couple of hours a week it means I have plenty of free time. Let’s just hope Diablo III doesn’t come out till next year because I love that game even more!

Next to having some more free time I also finally got a nice gym schedule going. I’m still to heavy and haven’t lost any weight since the PCA and I was pretty pissed at myself when I noticed that. If I would let myself go for a couple of months I’m easily back in no time to 120/130kg and that’s just not going to happen. I used to always lose weight in the winter/spring and gain some in the summer/autumn but this year I only gained weight during the winter. I normally work out in the gym with a friend of mine and if he canceled I would to but I now have the determination again to just go as often as I can. 3 times a week just isn’t enough for me to lose some weight so I set the bar to 4 minimum. This week I’ll try to go every day and set a streak of 8 times in a row, I’m currently at 3 but will hit the gym after I’ve finished my blog.

On the poker front this have been going okay. I booked a $750 plus this week and if I add the VPPs & Bonuses I’m above $100/hr. Now that’s a lot more then last year and my winrate compared to last year is just so much better. Still I’m not satisfied by my results which is good but on the other side I should embrace the fact I’m winning again and just play more. I just try to come up with to many excuses to stop playing when I’m in a session. It’s really hard for me to keep playing when I’m up over lets say $1.000 (it isn’t really a fixed number) and the last two days I proved myself right which is even worse 🙁 Both days I was up a good amount 3/4 into the session but I told myself to keep playing. Obviously I lost most of my winnings at the end, going to bed with a bad taste in my mouth. The stupid thing is that if I would have been down all night and ended up winning the same amount I would be extremely happy. Sure that is what 99% of the people would feel but it’s the wrong mindset. The only reason to stop playing is when either you play bad or the line-up at the tables changed so the competition got better. The fact that during both sessions I’ve kept playing is a good sign, now I just need to keep winning at the end of my sessions and the problem solves itself 😉

I keep telling myself lately: “Whine less, play more” but now that there is no ultimate goal(SNE) that scares me, it ain’t that simple. I still play more then 20 hours a week, so it’s not that I hardly play but it would be smart to play a lot when you are doing good on the tables. It’s actually not funny when I look back at last year, why didn’t I do the things I did to improve my game earlier? With the volume I put in last year and the winrate of this year I could have earned crazy money. Still it’s not really that simple, I play less tables most of the time which is of course already a big help. I sometimes still play 24 tables but not all night long. I just fire up all $3/$6, $5/$10 & $10/$20 tables and I don’t really care how much tables I play in total. I haven’t played a single hand of $2/$4, not even when I was only playing 10-12 tables. When the amount of tables available drop, I just tell myself to try and learn as much as possible since I’m playing less tables in stead of adding $2/$4 to keep getting the most VPP/hr as possible. Last year that wouldn’t be possible due to my VPP goals and this year I still look at the VPPs but it’s not priority 1 anymore. In case I come short, I’ll play a Friday or Saturday to catch up. I’m currently 1.080 VPPs behind my original schedule which gets me to 800.000 VPPs so I ain’t doing that bad on the VPP front either. 800.000 is still so close to 1.000.000. It’s 250 hours more to earn $20.000, a $5.200 WCOOP Main Event ticket and roughly $11.000 in VPPs but I just don’t have those 250 hours left in my schedule. I also expect the games to dry up a little in the summer as always so for now my decision is set. In case I really need the money I could always try to get myself killed during the last 3 months of the year, just like any other SuperNova Elite chasers 😉

Another reason why I might do better this year and I couldn’t do different myself last year, is that the player pool has changed a little. There are some new people, who ain’t that good, putting in a lot of volume at the tables and some good people are playing different games this year. I’m of course not complaining and have to say I still really like to play Full Ring Fixed Limit, so I don’t have any plans to change to another game myself. Since I’m playing $10/$20 again I also got the “adrenaline rush” back sometimes. I don’t even notice anymore when I win a real big pot at $5/$10, it’s just another pot and when I played my best it’s all good. At $10/$20 I have that adrenaline pumping again when I flop a good hand in a multiway pot and I think that’s really good. It wouldn’t be good if that would affect your judgment of course so you should never play scared money (for to long), but I think you do need that adrenaline to motivate yourself to do good. You don’t want to play bad when you know you get the adrenaline pumping when you are butchering the tables. Now it’s not like I butcher the tables all the time but when I’m on a streak at the $10/$20 I feel damn good about it. Last year I was only playing pots which never really bothered me if I lost and it might be comfortable when you are actually losing all the time but I think you also should always try to look for that adrenaline rush. $15/$30 seems like a small step from $10/$20 but I’m not going to play those stakes for the time being. My focus is to get back in the green at $10/$20 lifetime and win some more before I move up again. Getting back even at $5/$10 seems really undo able but I’ll do my best 🙂

I might be talking like I’m a big winner but I’ll show my Year-to-date graph to show that things are still pretty swingy and could improve a lot.

On the other side, comparing the above with my last years, Year-to-date graph at 15/02:

I did play 150.000 hands more, that might have been worth a lot of money in VPPs & Bonuses but I think most people will agree that the first picture looks a lot prettier.
Now there is a small problem incoming, I’m running out of Podcast to listen to. I had downloaded 282 Radio 538: Dance Department Podcast and I only got 26 left. I got a couple of CLR Podcast that I haven’t listened to and some Pache NYC Podcast but I’m probably done within a month or so. I think Podcast are great because you hear new music all the time and for me hearing a good new song, or an old time favorite, can really bring some happiness when I’m playing. I could of course recycle them since I’ve probably not memorized them after only listening to them once but in case you do have an interesting (preferable dance music) Podcast to listen to, please let me know!

I have no plans for the coming week other then a birthday party at Saturday. I’ll try to hit the gym every day and stay away from alcohol and do some damage at the tables again. The week after I’ll be playing tourneys again on Saturday and Sunday and I’m already really looking forward to that! I got plenty of stuff to do now, but I might squish in a little game of StarCraft first 😉