Sunday rungood

Really been putting in good hours over the last few days, getting into the routine of playing every day at about the same time so I can get into the right mindset that this is now my job. I'm really starting to enjoy it, even though sometimes the endless coolers and bad beats are momentarily frustrating, and usually act as the precursor to loud profanity. I think it's much better to let it out than to bottle it up (another reason I'd probably suck at live donkaments).

Missing the first half of the month due to my trip to Italy was totally expected, but I was pretty lazy for a few days when I got back too, so I won't get in as many games as I intended to for July. It's taken me until today just to get in enough games to earn the VPPs I needed to keep Silver status, which is a pretty poor effort on my part. I lost Gold at the end of June because it's so much harder to earn in 2/180s than in DoNs at the lowest buyin level. These can't be so easily multitabled and also the 40c rake on the $10 DoNs attracted twice the VPP of the 20c rake on these, so getting Gold is basically a 40hr/week effort throughout the month in these. I'm not going to be able to get there this month, but I definitely want to do it in August. The extra FPP from the better multiplier on Gold from September onwards will add up to a fair bit of value come the end of the year.

I currently have just under 13k FPP, but I havent yet decided how I'm going to convert them. I'll either grind the 280FPP hypers or just save them up and buy bonuses at the end of the year (by which time I'll hopefully be up at the 12/180s and getting Platinum every month, so I'd be getting a better exchange rate). I'll have to work out whether the extra I'd get by grinding the 280FPP satellites will be worth not spending that time playing MTTs.

Had some some pretty miserable runbad in my three sessions which preceded this weekend. It seemed like every time I had QQ or KK against Ax the villain would either luckbox the ace, or some ridiculous straight or flush, so over those three days I only had about $52 profit in about 22 hours. Sick hourly!

But happily today and yesterday saw an upswing in my fortunes and I had +$180 and +$155 days, which made me much happier. As far as I can remember, today was my first profitable Sunday, which is quite pathetic considering it's the day all the donks come out to play. And I still managed to blank all of my last 20 or so tournaments today, so I could have finished an hour earlier with more profit. LOL.

Anyway, two 1sts and a 2nd on each day was a pretty decent return, and marked a return to my early form of either making deep runs at final tables or not going anywhere. Let's hope I can keep that going next week, because it sure is a pleasant diversion from the preceding three sessions, where I had an endless string of mincashes supplemented by a whole bunch of 4th-9ths, a profile of results only good enough to breakeven on the session. It seemed then that every promising tournament would be brutally truncated by a sick cooler or a massive bad beat just as the big money was coming round. The really weird thing is that throughout that breakeven stretch of about 300 games I actually managed to increase my ITM by nearly 0.5%, which means heaps of virtually useless mincashes. Maybe around the bubble I was subconsciously trying to limp into the cash a bit too much instead of just going for it. Who knows?

It's about time I put up my numbers again, and this is what they look like at the moment.

Played---------2493
ITM-------------378
FTs---------------170
Wins-------------23
Profit---- $1,874.52
ROI-------------34%
ITM----------15.2%

So, just coming up on 2500 games, which is a decent sample size, and closing in on $2k profit overall in these. I guess I'm starting to get a vague idea of my expectation in the game, and the good news is it appears I'm +EV in the game :-)

Hopefully this means I can start taking a decent regular income from them. My own laziness will curtail my potential earnings for this month; I wanted to get in 1500 games but I'll be lucky to get to about 1200 now with the time I wasted around the middle of the month. I guess I still have to learn to ration my time better, and discipline myself better, but hey, it's all part of the learning curve. Next goal is to get up on the Sharkscope leaderboard for these. 20th spot at the moment is former DoN reg Dino4312396, who is now grinding SNG MTTs at an even more sick rate than me, 50-tabling and mixing in the 45mans. His marker for 20th spot currently sits at $3,753 profit. By the time I get there that mark will have moved up, so I guess that even if I can put in 3000 games in next month I won't get there by the end of August unlesss I either run hot, or make a great leap of understanding which boosts my ROI. But goals are important.

But enough about me. Just like the news, I'm going to finish on an "And finally"; this one's about someone else's pokering.

At least I didn't run as bad, or as tilted, as some guy on one of the $100/$200 Daniel's Room tables I was watching after I finished playing yesterday. He donked off over $100k in about an hour, most of it to Negreanu himself, and included this bizarre hand. Negreanu had his stars on show, and is only Silver on the VIP scheme, so there can't be much history between them, which makes spunking off over $50k in one hand when 250BB deep and out of position with just 4th pair totally unreal, as there was no way it can have been a read-based play......

PokerStars Game #47226064625: Hold'em No Limit ($100/$200 USD) - 2010/07/25 2:39:42 WET [2010/07/24 21:39:42 ET]
Table 'Daniel's Rm 200 IV' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: Odonkor1 ($51348 in chips)
Seat 2: kingsofcards ($48250 in chips)
Seat 3: molswi47 ($55294 in chips)
Seat 4: KidPoker ($127192 in chips)
Seat 5: Sussie Smith ($49498 in chips)
Seat 6: Mr Zahmat ($26095 in chips)
Mr Zahmat: posts small blind $100
Odonkor1: posts big blind $200
Odonkor1: posts the ante $50
kingsofcards: posts the ante $50
molswi47: posts the ante $50
KidPoker: posts the ante $50
Sussie Smith: posts the ante $50
Mr Zahmat: posts the ante $50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
kingsofcards: raises $400 to $600
molswi47: calls $600
KidPoker: calls $600
Sussie Smith: folds
Mr Zahmat: calls $500
Odonkor1: calls $400
*** FLOP *** [6c 4d As]
Mr Zahmat: checks
Odonkor1: checks
kingsofcards: bets $1800
molswi47: calls $1800
KidPoker: calls $1800
Mr Zahmat: folds
Odonkor1: raises $5600 to $7400
kingsofcards: folds
molswi47: folds
KidPoker: calls $5600
*** TURN *** [6c 4d As] [5d]
Odonkor1: bets $13200
KidPoker: calls $13200
*** RIVER *** [6c 4d As 5d] [Ts]
Odonkor1: bets $30098 and is all-in
KidPoker: calls $30098
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Odonkor1: shows [5h 3s] (a pair of Fives)
KidPoker: shows [4s 4c] (three of a kind, Fours)
KidPoker collected $108293 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $108296 | Rake $3
Board [6c 4d As 5d Ts]

LOL