The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The only motivation I have to write this is because this is for the sake of the my monthly routine. This month has been beyond disappointing. Although I should (knock on wood), have my most successfull year in poker financially, I have to say it's been a long time since I have felt so down about poker. I'm probably feeling this way because this last week I've been on a huge downswing. I was up almost $3,000 at one point this month and ended up -$3,300. I was supposed to play 390,000 hands and earn 111,000 vpps from that, and I ended up playing 395,000 hands and only got 106,000. Vpp rates per hand have been much lower than they should be. I even thought it would be a good idea to add in some 6 max tables to help with this problem (higher vpp per hand & more hands per hour), but it definitively ended up costing me.



As you can see from my ugly graph, it has been quite a roller-coaster. Having to play so many hours and hands really doesn't help and I feel like it really affects my win rate, though I'm sure I have a million leaks that need to plugged. Speaking of which, I have been trying to find a coach (somewhat passively) for awhile. It's hard to find someone that fits the criteria I'm looking for. I don't want to say that there are alot of 'bad' coaches out there, but just because someone is a great player with amazing results doesn't qualify them to be a good coach in my opinion. I think what makes a good coach is someone who doesn't think- "I play this way,I win, I'm the best, so my way is the right way to play". I want someone who can work with me on my game and style, who knows the games I'm playing, and knows the game flow when 24 tabling 'rakeback pro' games. There are a bunch of guys out there, charging pretty high hourly rates, who really don't seem to even have much coaching experience and I don't want to spend my money to be their test bunnies.

Also, and I know it's completely moronic to be this way, but since I've never had a coach for the past 5 years, the thought of it is a bit scary to be honest. For one thing, I'm not very good at articulating my thought process's. Another silly thought around coaching is that it's a bit intimidating to have a super smart poker player analyze your game. I think I have a fear that I'm doing everything wrong and need to start from square one and it's going to be one embarrassing, ego crushing event. Anyways, if you happen to have a recommendation, I'd love to hear it. If I could move up to 200nl and actually win, I would be one happy camper!

So to sum up this month:

VPPs earned: 106,000
Poker winnings: -$3,300
VIP bonuses and cash rewards: $11,600

Hopefully I can have a good month poker wise in September, it's going to be a challenge to get enough hands in. I'm going on a cruise through Alaska for a week. I'm not much of a photographer, but I am going to try and take a lot of pictures and hopefully I can share some good ones here.

On the bright side, oddly enough with poker going so bad, I have been feeling really happy about life overall. Maybe it's all the vitamin d I've been getting. When you're behind a computer all day, and often all night, it's really easy to get isolated and sort of depressed, even if you might not notice it, which I didn't. I notice it now when suddenly I'm starting to feel more like 'myself'. I think the biggest things that I have changed are:

- sleeping habits (I've been in bed by 1am ish and up by 10am) consistently for over a month (haven't had a healthy routine for years!)

- been walking everyday, usually twice a day

- spending more time with friends/ talking to friends more

September goals:

[ ] 300,000 hands
[ ] 4k table winnings

Sorry for the lack of blog posts if you do follow my blog semi regularly. It seems like almost every blog I follow isn't as involved in the summer as they typically are either.

To sum things up: the good= life happy. the bad= poker unhappy. the ugly- my poker graphs.