Your Yearly Update!
Ah and when I last posted in August I thought I was going to update this regularly. Fool. There's a few reasons for that:
1) I joined twitter which is much quicker to update (http://www.twitter.com/thehempy)
2) Not long after that I moved back to Canterbury with my girlfriend. I guess in the moving, getting settled, playing lots of poker, making new friends I forgot about it.
3) I'm 25 now (shudder). I started this when I was 18 and most of it is pretty stupid/whiney/dumb/embarrassing.
So anyway poker has been going pretty well since I last updated. I'm now a fulltime MTT grinder, and I've had some decent scores, live and online. It's currently a pretty crazy time, as both the SCOOP (Pokerstars) and MiniFTOPS (Full Tilt Poker) series of tournaments are taking place at the same time. I've had 1 good result in that, finishing 9th out of 10000 in the heads up no limit holdem event. Along with a win recently on FTP, May has started pretty well. Got the feeling in the last couple weeks that I may be turning a corner, due to a combination of reasons:
1) Black Belt Live. This is a yearly tournament run by the folks at Black Belt Poker, and I came 19th in it this year for $1250. Apparently some people found this blog from that tournament, hi! Check twitter instead! Anyway I had a perfect day 1 in this tournament, and on day 2 played against some ridiculously talented players. 1 of them particularly stood out to me. That was Seth Webber, a young South African born player who recently made the final table of the Poker Million on Sky Sports. Being sat to his left for 4 hours was a painful experience, as he proceeded to play fantastic poker. But, I think it made a couple things click in my head.
2) Friends. I'm lucky now being back in Canterbury, as there's quite a few excellent poker players living here who I'm friends with. And sometimes they give me advice. And its worth listening too. Or sometimes, they don't give me advice and I just notice things they do that are successful, and work out why on my own, and begin to incorporate it into my game. Well that's what has happened recently, and it definitely contributed to 1 of my recent results being a win rather than just a final table.
3) Effective routine. It's hard sometimes to get into a good routine. Being mentally prepared for a long grind, being adequately fed/hydrated/awake. Having a quick, effective system of note taking that works for you. Avoiding tilt. Avoiding stress. Any one of these can make a great day a good day, or a good day a bad day. Certain parts of that list I've improved a lot recently, and I hope to continue improving.
Well didn't this turn into quite the essay! It's the SCOOP 2-7 Triple Draw event today, so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully I'll win some monster tournament so I'll just have to update this again. Ciao!
1) I joined twitter which is much quicker to update (http://www.twitter.com/thehempy)
2) Not long after that I moved back to Canterbury with my girlfriend. I guess in the moving, getting settled, playing lots of poker, making new friends I forgot about it.
3) I'm 25 now (shudder). I started this when I was 18 and most of it is pretty stupid/whiney/dumb/embarrassing.
So anyway poker has been going pretty well since I last updated. I'm now a fulltime MTT grinder, and I've had some decent scores, live and online. It's currently a pretty crazy time, as both the SCOOP (Pokerstars) and MiniFTOPS (Full Tilt Poker) series of tournaments are taking place at the same time. I've had 1 good result in that, finishing 9th out of 10000 in the heads up no limit holdem event. Along with a win recently on FTP, May has started pretty well. Got the feeling in the last couple weeks that I may be turning a corner, due to a combination of reasons:
1) Black Belt Live. This is a yearly tournament run by the folks at Black Belt Poker, and I came 19th in it this year for $1250. Apparently some people found this blog from that tournament, hi! Check twitter instead! Anyway I had a perfect day 1 in this tournament, and on day 2 played against some ridiculously talented players. 1 of them particularly stood out to me. That was Seth Webber, a young South African born player who recently made the final table of the Poker Million on Sky Sports. Being sat to his left for 4 hours was a painful experience, as he proceeded to play fantastic poker. But, I think it made a couple things click in my head.
2) Friends. I'm lucky now being back in Canterbury, as there's quite a few excellent poker players living here who I'm friends with. And sometimes they give me advice. And its worth listening too. Or sometimes, they don't give me advice and I just notice things they do that are successful, and work out why on my own, and begin to incorporate it into my game. Well that's what has happened recently, and it definitely contributed to 1 of my recent results being a win rather than just a final table.
3) Effective routine. It's hard sometimes to get into a good routine. Being mentally prepared for a long grind, being adequately fed/hydrated/awake. Having a quick, effective system of note taking that works for you. Avoiding tilt. Avoiding stress. Any one of these can make a great day a good day, or a good day a bad day. Certain parts of that list I've improved a lot recently, and I hope to continue improving.
Well didn't this turn into quite the essay! It's the SCOOP 2-7 Triple Draw event today, so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully I'll win some monster tournament so I'll just have to update this again. Ciao!