Noikul's blog

I ended up losing 40k in august. I played way too much and lost nearly every big pot when I played bigger than NL1k. Now I started grinding diary in Coinflip.com Finnish site Pokerisivut.com and I try to keep track of my games there after every session. I played about 61k hand last month (witch is my record i think) and most of it were NL1k. I ended up winning a little there but managed to lose in NL2k NL5k PLO1k PLO2k and that made my month terrible. Now I started grinding NL600 to make my siteroll big enough for bigger games and I hope I'll make comeback to NL1k within 2 months. I decided to grind 40k out of NL600 before moving up so that can take a while depending on how badly I'll run.

NL600 regulars are way more passive than NL1k regulars and I feel like I have decend edge here against them. I just need to adjust a bit so that I won't push too much against slowplayed sets etc. I'm going to update my another blog daily so I don't think I'll be very active with this one. I'll be back after I'm back in NL1k games. Good luck at the tables and for fishes; welcome to my tables.  :)

Today I started to keep grinding diary for myself. Before every online session I will write a plan for it (how long I will play, what stakes etc.). After the session I will analyze it with few words and after every fifth session I will look through the biggest pots in HEM. I will also try not to look my results before the end of fifth session but I will propably fail because refreshing HEM is one of my bad habits.

After the last blog I've watched two videos and exercised every other morning. Last friday I went to Estonia for EPT and cashed in Main Event. I tried to collect a big stack in the bubble but failed to do it after my 4-bet shove with 66 got called by pocket Jacks. I was once allin after that in the bubble with A9 vs 63o but finally survived through bubble. After the bubble I shoved 8 big blinds with A7o from CO and got smooth called by chipleader with 28o. Flop was nice A25 but turn was a deuce and I was out.

I had a flu that day so I stayed in my hotel-casino and played slots and some table games for fun. I ended up winning 4k€ from one extremely addictive slot. Anyway, now I can honestly say that I'm up from my lifetime slot- and tablegames in casinos.

I try to keep my blog updated and post graphs every 20k hands. I have good rules for my game now and if I stick with them I believe that I can see changes in my results.

I haven't been writing for a while and there's not too many tables running at the moment so i decided to write a blog. After bad June I had a good July in poker. I played only 20k hands but won 40k$ so I can't really complain about that. This month I decided to grind more and I've been playing way too many bad sessions so I came here to write some goals for myself. I got some inspiration from Sune Berg Hansens blog and his motivation. I know I haven't been studying enough so I at least try to do something now.  I also try to update this blog more often and tell you if I succes with my goals

I have never been a big fan of watching poker videos even though I've been member of three big learning sites (DC, CR, Bluefire).  Now I try to change that a bit and see If I get something out from those. Here is my goals. I tend to fail in these but lets try.

-Watch two poker related videos every week and do that in the mornings during my morning coffee.

-Finish "Eightfold path to poker enlightment"-series

-Exercise every morning when I don't watch videos

-Start to tableselect. And learn to leave the table after it's not worth playing for.

-Stop using 3/4 bet -button

-Keep the blog updated every week

Im not sure yet if I'll go to play EPT Tallinn next week. If Im there I try to give some update about it. The week after there is Finnish Championchip of poker in Helsinki but I think I won't play there since I have weddings to attend that weekend.

Summer has been surprisingly hot here in Finland. +30c almost every day of this week and sleeping has been extremely hard because of the heat.  Last weekend was crazy in Ruisrock. First day I ended up losing my 3-day ticket to the festival-area and after that I remember pretty much nothing. The next day I woke up from my tent and had some flashbacks of me running few kilometers barefooted on asphalt with my shoes in my hands. I tried to take taxi to Helsinki which is 200km away from the place we were. I still have no idea why I wanted to go there but propably there was a very good reason for it.

The next day we started drinking again and I had to buy new ticket to the area. I watched maybe two bands before I decided to go to some nightclubs with my local friends. My friend called to his taxi driver-friend to pick us up and the driver remembered me from the last night. He told me that I asked every taxi driver to take me to Helsinki. I had said that it is 60% sure that the trip will be done and if not, I will pay 50€ anyway after visiting ATM. He said I looked too fucked up so he didn't give me a ride but finally somebody was crazy enough to do it. Anyway, we drank in nightclubs till dawn and I woke up from my friends couch and headed back to my city later that day.

I usually don't like to give up but now I will do it. There's just no point to stay away from NL2k games if the games are juicy enough. Running 27k under EV doesn't help continuing either.  Now on I'll play there again, but with better table selection than before. I have a good self-confidence with my A-game so all I have to do is to play it and work with my coinflipping skills like you can see from my graph.

I will try to grind next 4 days before going to Ruisrock, the oldest and the biggest rock-festival in Finland. After I came back to Finland two months ago I have drank only once so I'm happy to have a solid drinking weekend.  Playing online while there is +30c outside, which is very rare in finland, is just not too much fun. I will be happy if I play 5k+ hands.

In Finland we celebrate midsummer on a day called Juhannus by drinking like there's no tomorrow - at least most of us. I was staying in home alone grinding online with small flu and huge headache. That was propably the worst Juhannus I've ever had.  I didn't lose my bankroll but a break would've been good for me. Now im pretty much full of online poker like I've been pretty much all this month. I dont really care and I just play way too loose and get involved in way too many bad spots.

I've almost done first fift of my NL1k challenge which I talked about in my last blog. First 10k hands I played very well, but ran bad in allin situations. Now few last days I've been playing without table selection challengin good regulars in multitable heads-up matches and stupid stuff like that. I've been also playing my b- to c-game most of the time and now im down about 8.5k after running 15.5k under in AIEV.

Now I need to clear the table since I feel bad when im looking my graph so I end my first fift to 18.8k hands and the second fift will hopefully be 21.2k hands. Now I also start table selecting and stop playing when Im not interested. GL for me and I really hope this second fift will take two weeks to play. 

I've been playing extremely bad this month in NL2k and i decided that I challenge myself to grind in NL1k for 100k hand before im allowed to play bigger games, even if theres fishes playing.  This month has been bad for me mostly because I really haven't care about playing and i've been playing way too many NL2k sessions with good regulars. I will try to play those 100k hands of 1k before the end of August and I will post graphs about this project every 20k hands.

Another rule for the next 100k hands is that I am not allowed to change HEM graph filter and it will be set "after 20.6.2010  02:25". That's becouse it's idiotic to refresh daily results every 15 minutes while playing. This is not a disaster month anyway, its almost break-even, but i decided this today after 15k losing session in NL2k.

So now on I'll be updating my blog at least once every 20k hands and if I go play to NL2k I'll punish myself someway.  Here's also picture of this months swings.

PS. 1$/hand would be nice

I was in Helsinki from Monday to saturday and played two tournaments without cashing. I also played way too much cash games with no patience and managed to lose 10k+ mostly in 250bb deep NL1k. I hate myself for playing cash games when I know I dont feel too good about it. Being unable to fold hands isn't the best winning strategy either. Yesterday we had Coinflip parties in Helsinki and had a good time there. I was drinking first time in 6 weeks and now I try to stay sober for a while. But there's always so much to do in summer so im not so sure about it.

Now I came back to my city and now I'll start grinding again. This month has been horrible for me so far and now my month down is something like 10k. Even though I've had two horrible losing sessions Im not really worried about it.  I feel good with my game and I just try to stop playing when I dont care about it and I'll try to stay in NL1k and only go to 2k if there's some monster fish.

I had a 3-day break from online poker. In monday Im going to Helsinki for Midnight Sun poker tournament which i mentioned in my last blog already. Today I started playing again and had ok day. At first i got stuck 4k but managed to get up to +2k, with being lucky in 2k HU. I hope I'll get a good start to month because I think i wont play too much online next week so playing 40k hands this month wont be easy.

I've been trying to move my office to my balcony. Now its the place for me to relax. In the day I can't play there because of the sunlight, but in the evening its a place where tilting is impossible. So here is a picture of my office which I took today.

Even thought I played way too many NL2k sessions without table selection and runned under expected  Allin-EV I managed to get my personal record month. Last month was way easier for me because I played basically only in NL1000.  Its never easy to start killing the games in higher level and definetly not easy to handle the huge variance of NL2k+. I was lucky to not have bigger downswings than ~23k in this month, and maybe next month will be easier since I try to keep playing more NL1k and only play NL2k when the games are good enough. I just try to be patient this time and I wont let myself go broke, or almost broke, ever again.

Next month Im planning on playing two live tournament in Helsinki Midnigh Sun- tournament week. I bought tickets to 3k€ NLHE main event and 1k€ half/half PLO/PLHE already, but Im not so sure if I sell the tickets if I dont feel like playing. Overall, I just try to enjoy the finnish summer and grind 40k hands online. Maybe I'll go some rock festivals also, but Im not sure about them yet.

I try to be more active with blogging now on if I have something to share. This will hopefully improve my english also since I dont write that too much now except while chatting to my tilting opponents at the tables. Here is one funny chat with some tilting regular.

xxxx: run better dude
xxxx: all fkin night
hero: sry
hero: can i add you to my buddy list
hero: damn, theres no buddy list in ongame
xxxx: ill fkin kill you
xxxx: fa66oy

GL to June for everybody!