UGH!

Title says it all. I started off this month with a bang and things have gone to the exact different since then. This past weekend was a terrible run for me which meant I went on a $179.80 down swing over just Friday-Saturday. I am on an even worse swing if you count for the past 5 days which has me on a down swing of $241.60. The wheels just seem to be spinning and going to wrong way. I am taking the day off and will be reviewing my past play to see if I am making mistakes, or just getting really unlucky. I have only cashed in 3 of my last 18 MTT tourneys, and those were for a min cash. 

It is time for me to get things going in the other direction and get these things back on track. Hopefully after reviewing my recent play and taking a day off from playing I will come back on Tuesday with a different attitude and new vigor to get things going in the right way. 

Other than that, I have just been plucking away with daily life and trying not to break too many things when the bad beast just seem to keep on coming.

Until next time.

Wow.

Well, I just started the new stake for my investors and we got off to a bang. I played the Early Doubles (I FT'd the B tourney just this past Friday). It was rather up and down for the first couple of hours, with me being down to under 1k in chips in both tourneys at one time. I got aggressive with my good hands and before I knew it we were down to the money bubble in both tourneys. At this point I was short in both and had a stack that was well below the average. But I didn't hold back and just chose decent hands to shove with until I got a healthy stack in both. Before too long I was wondering how I stood in the race for the best double finish, so I had some friends do some research. Around this time I crashed out of the A tourney in 43th place and was informed that there was 1 other player that was still in both. This other player shortly crashed out of the A tourney also in 38th place, so I knew that I had to best his finish in the B tourney by at least 5th to take the entire bonus. He busted out of the B tourney in 25th place so my next goal was to get to 19th at the least. Slowly but surely 5 players dropped and I looked poised to at the least get the double best finish bonus. I managed to shove with some sub-par hands and pick up the blinds and antes and managed to win a few key 40%/60% hands. Soon enough we were down to 10 and playing hand for hand to the FT. The FT bubble finally busted and I was sitting in 7th place. I just couldn't get much accomplished on the FT and ended up crashing out in 8th place. Was still a nice finish and was nice to get back to the FT in such a short amount of time. With the double cash/best double finish and winnings from any other tourney that I played for the day I managed to finish the BAP up $367.83 for the day. It's a great start to my 31 day run, and I hope to see this continue to go up.

On to other things, I have been reading at least a chapter a day of  The Theory of Poker, and one thing that I took away from what I read, is that I shouldn't be so results orientated, that I should be more focused on wether I made the right play. I took this into my play today, and I feel that even when I lost chips, I was making the right play.

GL to everyone on the tables,

Merch

Setting goals, big finish to end out last BAP.

Well I have decided to set some goals for myself for the rest of the year. Here are my goals.

OK, I didn't put one up at the beginning of the year because I just wasn't motivated to do so yet, so here goes. These are goals that I want to accomplish before the end of the year.

Get to, and maintain, a positive ROI across all sites that I play on (SNG & MTT)

Pokerstars:

• SNG -15% according to SS
  
• MTT -48% according to OPR
  

Full Tilt:

• SNG 15% ROI according to SS (accomplished & maintaining)
  
• MTT -13% according to OPR
  

Ultimate Bet:

• SNG - Haven't played any SNGs
  
• MTT 14.91% according to Poker DB (accomplished & maintaining)

Have a $500, $1000, $1500, $2000 single MTT score:

• $500
  
• $1000
  
• $1500
  
• $2000

Finish with a $500, $1000, $1500, $2000 profit for my BAP

• $500
  
• $1000
  
• $1500
  
• $2000
  

Work on my cash game (Online & Live):

Build a BR on Cake/AP/Bodog from $0.00:

• Cake
  
• AP
  
• Bodog
  

Become the top poker player according to P5s for the city of Cookeville TN monthly and for the year:

• Currently sitting 2 of 2 44.09 points behind first for the month of June.
  
• Currently sitting 3 of 5 1200+ points behind first for the year.
  

Move into the top 50, 40, then 30 according to P5s for the state of Tennessee.

• Currently sitting 60th 
  
• 76.70 points out of 50th 
  
• 206.99 points out of 40th 
  
• 483.58 out of 30th.
  

Finish reading the following books:

• The Theory of Poker
  
• The Tao of Poker
  

Reread the following books:

• All 3 parts of the Harrington on Hold'em Series
  
• Zen and the Art of Poker

Pickup and read the following book(s):

• The Poker Mindset
  
• Every Hand Revealed
  
• Super System I & II
  

Profit enough to pay for the following poker items:

• 6 month subscription to www.pokerpwnage.com ($149.94)
  
• Poker Tracker ($89.99)
  
• Parralles ($49.99)
  
• Windows XP system disc to load onto my Mac ($95.78)
  
• 2nd Monitor for my Mac
  
• 23" ($899)
  
• 30" ($1,799)
  

Start putting back some profits to pay for a possible trip to Vegas in 2009.

Update Personal Blog:

• Update weekly
  
• Update bi-weekly
  

I have also started working with a coach to improve my game and this showed with a deep finish in the Early Double on June 6th. 

Other than that, nothing much has been going on. Just working on improving the game as much as I can and looking for that next big score.

Until next time,

Merch