Overdue update

I know it's been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. When I left for Turning Stone I was running bad in MTTs, and it held throughout the trip, and a lot longer. In addition to that I got ripped for about $170 because of an awful ruling by the Floor in the poker room. I really don't feel like making this post that long so I'm not going deep into detail. The trip was not profitable at all. I went 0/4 in mtts. Although I do feel like I got decent grip for live poker, as there are many differences with live and online poker. Overall the trip was fun though, and I'm excited to go to vegas when I turn 21. I haven't booked it yet but will have it done by the end of this week hopefully.

Goals-
Unfortunately I missed all of my goals for the month of May. I have just been running absolutley horrid in MTT's, that I lowered my volume by a lot. To make it a little worse then ir originally was, about a week ago I bubbled a $50 mtt on FTP. I really feel like I am playing my A game as well, but this is just a downswing of variance and just must rough it out for now.

I will not be making any goals this month, besides playing the best that I can with minimal mistakes. This month I just won't be playing as much as usual for a few reasons. One is that I'm going to game 3 or 4 of the NBA finals. I've never been to a championship game in any sport, nor even a playoff game, so it should be a fun experience. GO LAKERS!!!. Another reason is vegas, will be spending 4-5 days there mid-month. The last is that me and my boys are getting our summer house on Friday. Therefore, parties, parties, and more parties, oh and did I mention parties? Should be a pretty fun time, I have some more MTT tables popping up now so I'm going to cut it off here. GL in June, and GL at WSOP everyone

-Pomp

Turning Stone

Going to make this as short as possible, as I am about to leave for Turning Stone for about 4 days to play in the Heartland Poker Tour. Gonna be playing ALOT of live poker this week. Looks like the tournaments I'll be playing in a $150, $300, $300 and $200. Along with a lot of cash games. Mainly using this as a warmup, and to sharpen my live play up for the WSOP. Not that I'm not in it to make money lol.
As for online poker, still running awful in MTTs, just always at wrong end of setup, 3 outers 2 outers non stop, im so due for a big cash, maybe it'll come live. I made a couple of semi-deep runs in low buy ins of scoop events, but couldn't do anything with them. That's it for now as I have to leave for turning stone.
good luck

-Pomp

April Recap/May Goals

Overall I believe April was a below par month for MTT's but it was pretty nice for heads ups, mainly the last 2 weeks in 220s, I did very well. Here's a graph to show how I did the last 14 days just in $220 2 mans....
http://i43.tinypic.com/34q6a1s.jpg

MTT's have been real rough lately, I’ve been consistently getting stacks in mainly the $50 70k, the Nightly 100k, and the Weds 1/4 mil this past Weds, and just running bad. Haven't played as many MTT's this month as March, but in May I plan on playing many more, shouldn't be too hard since school is almost over. Here is my April Goal Review:


+$5000(not including rakeback)

-Thanks to a late surge, I was able to make this goal and a little more. And in addition to that I hit the 90k VPP mark so I collected all $1000 of my stellar rewards, and cashed that out as well.

27,000 VPPS

-Ended the month with roughly 28,400 VPPs.

Talk less in the chat(mainly less "run better" or "Well played sir")

-I feel like I have improved in this area a bit, but not as much as I would have liked, going to try to lessen the talk even more this month.

Play more standard vs. fish, instead of making hero plays.

-Basically the same thing here with this goal, I have played a tad more standard, but there's room for improvement.

Note Taking

I believe I have achieved this goal, especially note taking vs. regular fish in the 110 and 220s.

One thing that I think has helped my heads ups, is the environment that I play in now. I used to play in my room, with my laptop, sitting on my bed, watching TV. Now I sit at the kitchen table, with no TV, and just some music playing. It's more relaxing, and comfortable.

The Heartland Poker Tour is going to be at Turning Stone for the next couple weeks, and I plan on going for at least 1 event as of now, not sure if it's going to be a $300 tournament, or the main event for $1500. I’m basically using Turning stone to improve my live game/warm-up for WSOP. Here are my goals for May:

+6,000(again, not including bonuses)

Discuss more hands played in MTTs, with other MTT regs.

Watch a couple of Bfizz11's videos

Make top 200 TLB for May

Make at least 1 Final Table in the $50 70k



That's it for now.

PS- I turn 21 in about 7 weeks!!!

-Pomp

FT $10 Rebuy, deep runs in Sunday Million

I've been semi lazy/busy lately with updating my blog, so I'm going to try to update more often. About 10 days ago I made the FT in the $10 rebuy, finished 6th for roughly $2400 if I remember correctly. Also, the passed 2 Sundays were very dry for me, besides the Sunday Million in both weeks. 2 Sundays ago I made a deep run and finished 230 something vs a fish who couldn't lay down A7. Then yesterday, I made a deep run again. Was playing real solid, and was a rock. I lost with AKsuit all in preflop vs Q10os, for a pot of about 1.5-6 mil, that would have put me at 3.8mil 30/60k blinds, and in top 5 with about 50 left. Not too much later heres how I go out...
PokerStars Game #43202501307: Tournament #307020010, $200+$15 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXIX (40000/80000) - 2010/04/26 0:35:11 ET
Table '307020010 622' 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: tmb_bulevar (1851584 in chips)
Seat 2: Zelwi87 (679514 in chips)
Seat 3: Domer (1944960 in chips)
Seat 4: PompYouUp (1567220 in chips)
Seat 5: cwalsh6 (1180324 in chips)
Seat 6: kaju85 (3057954 in chips)
Seat 7: bleu329 (1842880 in chips)
Seat 8: DrEskilstuna (1376891 in chips)
Seat 9: gremlinn (1675848 in chips)
tmb_bulevar: posts the ante 8000
Zelwi87: posts the ante 8000
Domer: posts the ante 8000
PompYouUp: posts the ante 8000
cwalsh6: posts the ante 8000
kaju85: posts the ante 8000
bleu329: posts the ante 8000
DrEskilstuna: posts the ante 8000
gremlinn: posts the ante 8000
cwalsh6: posts small blind 40000
kaju85: posts big blind 80000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to PompYouUp [Kd Qs]
bleu329: folds
DrEskilstuna: folds
gremlinn: folds
tmb_bulevar: folds
Zelwi87: folds
Domer: folds
PompYouUp: raises 94400 to 174400
cwalsh6: folds
kaju85: calls 94400
*** FLOP *** [2d Qh 6d]
kaju85: checks
PompYouUp: bets 205500
kaju85: calls 205500
*** TURN *** [2d Qh 6d] [7h]
kaju85: checks
PompYouUp: bets 341100
kaju85: raises 932400 to 1273500
PompYouUp: calls 838220 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (94180) returned to kaju85
*** RIVER *** [2d Qh 6d 7h] [5h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
kaju85: shows [5s 6s] (two pair, Sixes and Fives)
PompYouUp: shows [Kd Qs] (a pair of Queens)
kaju85 collected 3230440 from pot
beck_AA [observer] said, "good line 56"

really sucks to go out like that, but what can you do. Congratulations to 147_star for winning the milly and shipping 258K. And another congratulations to me being a big moron, and not doing a % swap with him, since we had similar stacks many times during the tournament. And lastly, 42nd was worth $3200. Thank you to everyone who was railing me, appreciate the support.

Other than that, it seems like March and April were opposites. March MTTs were good, and heads up were bad. Now in April, Mtts haven't been overall rough, and Heads ups have been pretty good. Hopefully in May both can be good!! I'm pretty excited for the SCOOP to start soon, I will be playing most of the Hold Em low and medium buy ins, with some Omaha mixed in. One thing that does suck, is that I'm not going to be able to play in the first couple Heads up events on the 4th because of a school final I have. I'm not going to dwell over it though, since there's nothing I can do about it.

One thing that I don't realize how I have forgot to mention, is that my parents finally gave in with work, and they let me quit. Last week I worked 2 last days and now I'm done there!!! I also loaded another $8,000 into my mutual funds, and they have been doing pretty well lately, making consistent money. That's it for now.

good luck

-pomp

Update, Goals for April

Lately I've been more on the heads up grind, and not the MTT grind. For 2-3 weeks, I ran into a large negative variance of heads ups. Which cause me not to be on my A game. Finally things turned around, and as of a few days ago, I've really been in the zone while playing heads ups. Finally starting to profit again in heads ups, and it feels good. It would be nice to maintain the pace I'm currently on.

Last month I finished 67th on the monthly TLB, which was good for a $100 bonus, which is pretty cool. Since then, I've sort of been MTT'ed out, and since then just been taking it slow. One thing that is frustrating, is that I have been running very bad in sunday majors for the last couple months. Just one setup hand after another, and one bad beat after another, hoping to snap out of that soon. For the yearly TLB im curently in 291st, and peaked at 230 something, but like I said before, I have been taking it slow so I've fallen behind a bit.

Last week I reached 250k fpps, so I bought the $4000 bonus asap, and am currently 3505/28000 vpps of the way there. I hop to unlock that sometime during the SCOOP. I have made a few goals for the month of April. I know it's already the 13th but I made these goals at the start of the month, and I have not updated this blog since March, so this is the first time you're seeing my goals. Some of them are fairly standard, but this is my first time making a list of monthly goals, so I will improve.

Goals for April

+$5000(not including rakeback)
-At the beggining of the month felt like this goal would easily be in reach, I'm at school so I dont have my excel spreadsheet, but I think I'm about half way there.

27,000 VPPS
-Trying to gain some ground on my yearly goal of 300K VPPS, and this will also get me my bonus quicker. currently at 11,209 on the month.

Talk less in the chat(mainly less "run better" or "Well played sir")
-It really doesn't do anything to say these things to them, as 95% of them don't even respond.

Play more standard vs. fish, instead of making hero plays.
-not saying I can't make a good read vs a fish here and there, but I think I tend to try to get very tricky vs fish sometimes, in my opinion, you can play so standard vs fish and still be very profitable.

Note Taking
-Take more notes, both in MTTs and HUs They don't necessarily have to be in depth notes on EXACTLY how they play. Even if it's just a hand history showing a unique way they played a certain hand, put it in their notes.

I will check back on these goals at the end ofthe month and see how I did.

Good luck

-Pomp

3rd in $30, 1st in $10 Hyper HU, 6th in $10

Since my last post I've been going deep in a quite a few mtts. Came in 3rd in a $30 mtt out of 850 people, for roughly 2500. Two nights ago, I won the $10 hyper turbo for about 1900. LOL. God, you need to run good to win that tournament, too bad you dont get TLB points for heads up tournaments. Also, 2 nights in a row I've made the final 2 tables of the $10 MTT that starts at 7PM est. The first night, with about 18 left I have about 850k, blinds 5/10k. 2nd to act makes it 30k(560 total stack), 1 caller(chip leader), and I have kings on the button. I think about 3 betting it here to like 100k or something, but I was moved to the table a few hands before this and didn't really have a read on anyone, so I jam for 850k. Guy who opened tanks for a little bit, and ends up calling his other 53bbs with AJ suit, yea LOL, and he hits a flush. A few hands later I'm out due to a race.
Last night I was in the same boat, with having a big stack for quite a bit, I was up to 840k when blinds were just 2/4k. Eventually I was at about 1.4 mil blinds 6/12k, and I called an all in for a total of about 750k with JJ, he had AK. And even though it was just a flip, the way it played out was just brutal. Flop came J 9 2. He doesn't have backdoor flush drawing, so only out is running Q 10, and what do you know it came. I fought back and was able to make the final table, but am upset with myself for the call I made to go out. Blinds 30/60k i have about 1.1 mil, and raise it first to act to roughly 2.5x. BB who has about 1.8 mil if I remember correctly, just jams. I think for a little bit, and he was re jamming shorthand ALOT earlier, so I call but he has AK, and I brick. Even though I have that read on him, I should have folded, because he was the only other solid player at the table, and I could have outplayed everyone. But 6th was good for a little under 1k.

Heads ups still have been a little rough lately, and I'm still trying to find a groove. I played last night after my MTT, and finally had a positive session, even though it was a short session, in a LONG time. As for mtts, my confidence is staying very high, making consistent final tables, and I have been climbing up both the yearly TLB, and monthly TLB for March. I've moved into 258th on the year and I'm only 1300 points back from being on the top 150 list, and I'm also 67th for the month of March. There's almost no way ill fall out of the top 100, so I'll be getting a $100 bonus, which is pretty cool, and I'm only 27k fpps away from starting my $4k bonus. Pretty excited for the NBA playoffs to start in a few weeks, go lakerssssss, and just as excited for baseball to start on sunday.
That's it for now, Good luck.

-pomp

Update

The last 9 days or so I've been really struggling to find a groove. Ever since my $10 mtt win, I've been running extremely awful, and I'm on a huge downswing, and tilt is only responsible for a small portion of it(a lot less than normal on my downswings). Since I don't have class today I'm going to take the day off in heads ups, and just play a bunch of mtts, including A LOT 180 mans, they can really help out with TLB points. Bfizz11 has this bootcamp thing, which is basically like poker school. He holds online classes, with replays available for download at $35, so I'm going to give that a try and see how it goes. He's #1 on Yearly TLB thus far, so who better to learn from, and improve my MTT game even more.

I read a friends blog, and we are kinda in the same boat/have the same thought process on our downswing. I'm trying to stay positive during this downswing. Like bpmst2 said, during a large downswing, confidence in most players drop, and negative thinking comes into play, which will lead you to not play your best game. It is extremely important to always stay in a positive frame of mind. I think the one thing I need to work on in my heads up game(mostly vs fish), is not trying to make so many hero calls, and maybe play more basic since they are so exploitable. For up and coming heads up players, trust me, try to stay positive, because if you don't it can and will lead to massive tilt, and the uneccesary loss of many buy-ins.

I'm currently in 461st on the yearly TLB. I really would love to get on the list that you see on the pokerstars client(top 150), and I don't think it is out of reach. But I'm going to need to do some griding, and have some nice results to get there. Also, I'm at 58k vpps on the year. It's closing in on 1/4 through the year, and to be on pace for 300k vpps, I would need 75k vpps, which I obviously wont be at 1/4 through the year. But you have to take into account that I missed 10 days in January since I was in the Bahamas, so I think I'm on pace, if not very close to on pace for 300k vpps. Also I have 204k fpps, so the 250k fpp bonus is in sight, and I can't wait to get started on that, as I will see it as sort of a bonus for the work I've put in so far in 2010. Also, the swelling in my leg has gone down dramatically. There's almost no black and blue on the front part of my leg, but still some on my calf, and a little on my foot, probably going to take another 4-5 days to completely heal. That's it for now.
good luck

-pomp