Well kinda…

I only played 2 weekends but…

Dear Fumseck,

Congratulations! You have fully earned your Deposit Bonus. Your
PokerStars account has been credited in the amount of $250.00.

Thanks for participating in the PokerStars 25 Billion Bash 25% Reload Bonus, and we’ll see you at the tables.

The PokerStars Cashier
cashier@pokerstars.com

and

Dear Fumseck,

Congratulations! You have achieved GoldStar VIP status.
…snip…

I knew PokerStars had changed the rate at which we earn points, but wow… I have not checked thoroughly Holdem Manager to see how many hands I played but it seems I reached Goldstar quite faster than I used too.

NH PokerStars!

I have not been updating my blog lately… That’s because real life has intruded in poker life.

For the past two months I have been on a major project to change our ERP system. Working 60h+/week is something I sometimes do, but only for 1 or 2 weeks at a time and then things usually calm down for a few months and I work 40-45h/week. For the past 2 months I have been on a hectic work schedule (60-70h / week) to make sure this project would succeed with minimal impact to our customers.

Monday was our go live, we had to work all weekend and every night this week (except for today). Everything is not perfect and we still need to iron out some issues, but I am very proud of what my team and I have accomplished.

I hope I can start playing some poker during next week… I will be a little bit rusty.

I haven’t posted on my blog for a while but I’m not dead .

I have had a few very very good months. I can’t post the charts right now, but in terms of buy-ins, I think I never ran so hot.

But I barely played any poker in the past 4 weeks. Why? Because of this absolutely fantastic game: World of Warcraft.

Damn I should have never bought it… I am “waisting” way to much time on it. It is very addictive.

I’ll post some graphs tomorow and I’ll try to write my poker goals for 2009 and recap 2008 at the same time…

Anyone thinking of switching to Holdem Manager (HM) should do it. I have been using Poker Tracker since the beginning. I was using PT3 up till yesterday. Stoxpoker and Card has a promo and HM only costs 45$.

Here is a quick glance of the features I liked the most:

The HUD is a charm to configure. The default popup is absolutely fantastic. When you mouse over to one of the stats, you get a popup that displays stats for every streets and/or position.

You can take notes directly on the HUD and you can chose the color of the small note icon (not useful for Full Tilt Poker, but very nice for PokerStars).

The replayer displays the HUD for the players and the % equity on each street. You can chose that the HUD only uses the stats up to that hand or you can use all available stats from the player. That is an absolute must when you want to analyze your play. Calling an all-in with AQo against a 15/12 does not make sense, but it does against a 50/35…

The hands review section is awesome. You have a chart à la Poker Stove. The darker the cards, the most you have played them. You can filter numerous way (Raise PF, 3Bet, call 3 bet etc…). From there, you can click on the cards and you will view all the hands you played. Double click on the hand and the replayer will popup.

It is really a step up from Poker Tracker. I highly recommend it.

Note that I did not uninstall Poker Tracker, the author is hard at work on the software and maybe some day, Poker Tracker will surpass Holdem Manager…

Strange how things can change in a short period of time… In November I was having the worst month ever in terms of buy-ins drop. In December i am running hot. I did get lucky in some pots, but overall I think I am playing pretty good.

The month is not finished, but I have pretty good expectations.

Not bad at all.

I am playing good poker right now, not tilting when I drop.

The start of the month was very frustrating. One of the big mistakes I was doing was going all-in preflop too light. I was too often behind. After watching a series of videos by Jason Ho from Stoxpoker, I adjusted my preflop all-in range (calling and push) and it helped a lot.

I have set aside some time to really analyze the big hands I played and where I lost a big pot. A lot of them have to do with opponents calling my raise preflop, calling the flop and raising/pushing the turn. I end up calling too often, drawing dead to a set…

In any case, I think I have adjusted correctly since my downsing, but I still have a long way to go…

I just created some waffle cards for the HUD in PT3. If anyone is interested you just have to replace cards-4.png located in C:\Program Files\PokerTracker 3\Data\Images\Hud by this image:

For the replayer:
You replace the cards located in C:\Program Files\PokerTracker 3\Data\Images\replayer

cards-2.png

cards-4.png

I continued to watch some Stoxpoker videos.

I mainly watched Jason Ho’s video on Small Stakes Foundation. Jason has a real good game and I found a couple of leaks in my game after watching Jason’s video.

One of the major one (and I confirmed it in my Poker Tracker database) is misplaying AK preflop. I push or call 4-bets with it and I am often against AA, KK, QQ or AK and my equity is not that great. I have also been known to call all-ins with AQ.

Calling preflop all-ins with AK or AQ must be done only against select opponents. At the limits I play, most pushes are made with AA, KK or QQ, so I have to tighten my calling range.

I have done very good in the last week. I play with a much calmer attitude. When I am calm, I play my best poker as soon as I start tilting (even just a little bit) I play too aggressively and in the wrong spots.

The plan for next week is to keep watching Stoxpoker videos, reviewing hands in Poker Tracker and to play poker.

I watched a few Stoxpoker video. I reviewed some hands in PT. I did run bad, but I did stack off too lightly in some places. I actually went all-in twice against the nuts without even having TPTK.

I have posted some hands on the ITH Forums and I’ll wait for the comments. If I don’t get any, I’ll post them on Stoxpoker.

I did not play any poker today. I think if I play, I will try to do catchup and that is bad…