Last night I played 400NL with a BR of $150!

What? 3/8ths of 1 buy-in isn’t enough to take a shot you say?

The title may give you an idea where I’m at right now.

Fuck it! Might as well be honest.

Everything has been going downhill from the moment I decided to grind Double or Nothing SnGs. This was inspired by a professional Double or Nothing grinder I respected and thought I hadn’t paid enough attention to this format of game type. I also thought it would be the easiest and quickest way to re-build a bankroll to around 5K where I can play a little more freely.

Below is the graph of games played this year. Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it.



First few games played some $20s HU, smart move right.

From about games 50 – 1000 I was 16 tabling $5 DoNs. No help or coaching just using common sense.

Approx. game #1000 was an mtt score courtesy of time with BuffySlayer.

From games 1000 – 2500 joined Team Moshman. Hindsight, biggest mistake I’ve made this year. Not to say anything bad about them, nor say anything bad about getting coaching in general but I was on track and doing fine. I basically tried to re-invent the wheel. All I ended up doing was abandoning everything I was doing and went on an emotional downswing the whole time.

From about games 2500-2600, against my coaches advice and truthfully common sense I stopped playing the $5s & started playing the $10s. Playing the way I used to before I started coaching. Of course I had success doing that.

From about games 2600-3800, played a mix of $5s $ $10s under Team Moshman. Anywhere from 10-30tables per session.

From game 3800-5000, 30-40 tabled the $1s, yes the $1s. Why $1s? Well I’ve been drawing on the bankroll a few times this year, around 8 I think since January. $500 out here and $250 out there. For what its worth, prior to starting the $1s I had terminated the agreement with Team Moshman. I didn’t think they would see benefit in me playing 100s of these games per day, even at +10% ROI.

So why did I stop the $1s, aside from the obvious I mean. About 10 weeks ago I got a random email from PokerStars.

The email, which I have received in the past, was informing me that I’ve been a victim of collusion and they have refunded my buy-in for the tournament that this took place in. Thanks PokerStars.

What not only made me sick to my stomach and also confused the absolute fuck out of me is that this took place in a $1 Double or Nothing tournament! Really? Are you fucking serious? There are people in the world that need to conspire to beat other people out of ONE FUCKING DOLLAR. What the fuck is going on? I totally understand cheaters at high levels, screwing people over for tens of thousands of dollars, that makes sense, nothing I’d ever dream of doing but at least it makes sense. But seriously, there are people out there that are cheating in $1 games. It was after that email I was simply left scratching my head wondering what is happening in the world of online poker.

To add salt to the wound, these games, honestly, they’re not poker,

FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD FOLD
Shove 5 big blinds at 100/200 blind vs blind and hope opponent isn’t holding a 20% calling range.

It was only a year ago or so where I was playing the 9player $16s quite successfully, playing 4 tables and actually making good decisions.

I’ll admit it, DoNs poisoned my brain and have made me somewhat forget how to play poker. It is possibly one of my biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.

All this leads to my next point, what have I been doing the past 10 weeks. Well, this is my most degenerate story to date as far as a poker career is concerned. There is pretty much nothing I haven’t been doing. I have lost all sense of direction as far as what I am trying to do.

Primarily I’ve been short-stacking 25nl, and funnily enough, really successfully. For those of you that follow this blog you know I rarely play cash games. Below is the graph of recent results taken from PTR.



So I’m making some money yeah, but I’m really not enjoying it. Over the past 10 weeks I’ve been:
24 tabling 2nl
4 tabling 5nl
Single tabling 10nl – 200nl (and of course 400nl last night)
Single tabling plo 2 – plo 100
Playing any form of mtt low buyin of course.
But basically I have been playing anything and anytime and on any site.

I feel I’ve lost all sense of direction, no routine, no purpose, nothing.

So this begs the question, where to from here?

From here, I’m reviewing my blog, I’m going back to read over when I was not only successful but happy, because short-stacking 25nl and mass tabling DoNs is no fucking poker life for me, I’ll quit before I do that.

I apologise if this post has been full of rambles, but I suppose the content matches the current mood.

I am proud that through all this I still can say I’ve not gone broke nor done something ridiculously stupid, actually, playing 400nl last night was pretty dumb so I’ll re-phrase with I haven’t done anything really ridiculously stupid : )

Oh and for what is worth, I lost around $80 in 15 minutes, then shortstacked 200nl for 30 minutes and got like $45 back.

Comment people, talk to me.

Lastly from this point forward, anonymous comments without a name left will be deleted. If you don’t have a Google account and wish to comment then either
A ) get a Google account or
B ) leave your name when you comment.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to bringing some more uplifting posts shortly

Custo