Been quite a while since ive posted but after a gentle push(constant harassment) from JB I’ve took 5 minutes out of my hectic schedule to report on some on-goings.

Yeah so last time I posted I was on a downswing which was testing times as the year started very well. I ended up about $13k down before i started to turn things around but many many many low variance sessions later I found myself back above the water! Only for SCOOP.com to start and things to start going pearshaped again haha.

At the tables I chopped the big 27.50, finaled a SCOOP on pokerstars.fr and won a few 108s on ongame. Thats about the height of my poker achievements since my last post.

What have I been playing? Well when i was downswinging i seeked advice from others on where to go from here. This was to start playing low varience sessions. Avoiding tourneys like Big 109, Big 55 and Big 162. Instead I played alot of day 2-5pm sessions or night 11pm-2am sessions. My outlay was significantly decreased and the field sizes were alot smaller. Along with some live coaching from jambeyang during his visit to Ireland this helped me turn it around.

Since then I’ve been playing alot of high variance sessions which I probably shouldn’t be doing. This being the 6-9pm session which is around a $1k outlay for me. This is probably the main factor which contributes to me losing money at poker. According to sharkscope im losing around $8k on $109+ tourneys on pokerstars.com but winning at this level on all other sites. Although the sample size isn’t huge this is varience that could be avoided.

I’ve also tested the water by playing the SCOOP.fr 1000euro main event and just recently a SCOOP.com $1050 event. These are obviously massive fun to play in as I love a challenge. Both tourneys did not go to plan haha. On .fr I lost 66 vs AA all-in on 6xx flop for a big pot and on .com i lost KK vs TT all-in on 9823 board for the chip lead quite early on. Hey-ho maybe next time eh?

How is being a ‘Pro’ going for me? Well my morale is quite low at the moment and although i’m playing some good poker at the minute i am not particularly enjoying it. I want to start planning some summer holidays with friends but I cant do that when I’m not winning. 2012 has been an extremely tough year so far and to date have been on the wrong side of variance. My volume has increased and I’m simply trying my best to grind through it (Y). With J10BLN and JuniorBomber returning to action within a fortnight I will have my compradres alongside to help boost morale!

Do you like it as a career? This is a question that the answer changes from minute to minute! The lifestyle is awesome as I pick and choose when I get to work. Obviously it’d be much easier if I won more tournaments!

Finally, I’d like to welcome two new baby wolves…DanOlly and DanShreddies. Both of whom are showing great potential already and if they knuckle down they will be crushing the mid-stakes soon!

Thanks for reading.

Andy

Peace x

Well, I came here to see if anyone else had made a new post…. they hadn’t so here goes…

Just a few words on tilting:
Been pretty ill last week or so with a clear case of ‘man-flu’, and I’m slightly concerned that blood in snot = inevitable death! Hopefully it doesn’t, but one thing it does mean is that I’ve had to reduce the volume of games I was playing, this has bought a run of interesting results including 3 wins and a handful of top 3 finishes.
last week:

Now I’d like to think this is due to my own sickness (no pun intended) but I know that It’s largely due to run good and perhaps to some extent the extra attention you can give fewer games.

I hear people tilt regularly about running bad but I think people often forget when they run good. Now, my HEM is spazzing so I can’t tell you if I’m running above EV in terms of bb win rate or not (sneaking suspicion that I am) but i’m deffo running well in key flips and that makes a huge difference. I think the best way to deal with tilt is to remember when you were on the right side of variance as people often don’t think twice when they win.  certainly better than hammering your ‘n’ key, which is probably why it isn’t working properly!

Peace out Dannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

I’ve never written a blog before – bizarre considering I enjoy writing and have and English degree (no brag) – but after mild peer pressure from the JW team and the fact that there’s a wolf documentary on tv, I figured I’d throw together a few werewolf words.

Sitting here with a cup of tea I’ve had a quick reflection on my time in JW. I’m about 2 weeks in and after a slow start I have just took down my 2nd tournament in 2 days for about $3,100 combied (there’s the brag)

As I’ve not had chance to get many of my own hh reviewed, given my short spell in the team, I’ve read several of the coaches hh in an attempt to fix some of my leaks. I know that recently I’d been playing too passive during the late stages of a tournament and reviewing hh that show and aggressive late game, has enabled me to identify and take spots that i was missing. Now I will work on my 3-bet bluffing spots as I know I have lots to work on there. Socially being in the team is great. There’s always a de-gen on-line to chat to and a good sense of comeradary  with the group. I’ve also blown the cobwebs off Black Opps and and have been sporting a negative KDR with a few of the guys (I’d write about Carlin’s freakishly good COD reflexes here, but I feel his ego couldn’t handle it…).  I’ll post another blog at some point (probably) and look forward to posting about another shipment tomorrow.

Dan

I didn’t miss poker at all in February and March as an ugly January had really put me off it. JambeWright were struggling as everyone suffered a downswing but also morale and commitment to “Werewolfism” were low as we saw DapperDan, Farmer Dave and Buzz leave the stable. However, the raincloud of doom has passed and the sun is shining once again on Team JambeWright. There is a buzz around the stable again and “Werewolfism” is high and all I want to do is get involved and play.

The rising success of Dan Olly has played a major role in the new energy around the stable. A new addition to the side he came in at the micro stakes and has got off to a flyer. Papiss Cisse of Online Poker.

There is a long running saga with Dan in that when he is very drunk he will tell you repeatedly that he will win an EPT one day. He has been slated for it and been the brunt of the joke many a time but to be fair before JambeWright, he wasn’t backed by anyone, was grinding $1 games and hadn’t won anything substantial online for nearly a year. However, under the careful guidance of IrishAndy and the Coaches, Dan has really worked hard and if he can keep that up as well as his impenetrable drive to be “the best” then why not? Why can’t he win an EPT one day. I very much doubt he will as only a select few even get to play EPTs never mind win them but I hope he proves me wrong.

But, enough about Dan. Jambewright has a full squad again. Buzz Harvey couldn’t bare to see his housemate Avkid86 continue to win all the monies and he has returned and got a nice little bankroll boost within his first couple days of ~$900. Naturally gifted player and if he can find some run good should end the year in 5 figure profit.

However, the “new kid” on the block is Dan O’Callaghan. Now, I know nothing about Dan but apparently he crushes PKR and writes poker articles. From initial conversations he seems to know his stuff and I am sure he will be a roaring success in the team.

I really do try my best to get the other lads to blog but they aren’t enthusiastic about it. Which is a shame as I know people love reading this blog. Anyways, that’s me done for 6 weeks. I cannot wait to be done with uni and can then fit my poker around writing my thesis. I know I am going to have a great summer poker-wise this year and I am just excited to get started. I will be back.

Thanks for reading,

DanOlly.

I’ll start by summing up the start of 2012, in truth its been shite. Started the year losing around $700 on stars through MTTs and SNGs which was not expected due to he stables roaring success towards the end of 2011. So losing that money put me in make up of around $800 which left me a bit depressed and I had no motivation to play fearing if I have another couple of losing sessions id be a lot worse off. So from mid January till the beginning of March I hadn’t played a single hand online, with my housemates Dave and Buzz having already left the stable, I had no desire to play.

So the beginning of March came, and after seeing Carlin and Wrighty enjoying themselves on pokerstars.fr, I finally got round to verifying my account so I transferred the majority of my roll onto there to try something new. It started well with me final tabling the daily PLO tourny but with a disappointing 6th place left me with a slight profit and having pretty much bubbled a few other games left me pretty frustrated.

At the end of 2011 you may remember Carlin suffering a knee injury which left him home bound, well he did pretty well hitting a few final tables including a nice score in the Big22 on stars. Well Tuesday gone, whilst playing football I managed to totally fuck my ankle. It was so innocuous as I was taking the 1st stint in goal, someone took a shot, it was going way over and to take the piss I jumped up to see it over the bar, however upon landing and hearing a snap I found myself in an abundance of pain on the floor crawling out of the way of the goal. Having experienced similar injuries during my youth I was pretty sure it was the ligaments.

I eventually got home after missing the last 3/4 of the game, and decided that I knew what was wrong, couldn’t do anything about, so fired up some games on both Stars sites, however 2hrs in and looking at my ankle which had grown to 3x the size of my other one I phone my mother to tell her what had happened, she immediately told me to go to hospital which left me with a dilemma having a few MTTs on the go. I eventually talked my house mate Milo aka Snort4eva aka Omahaha into taking over my games whilst Dave took me to hospital.

The usual 2hrs to get seen and x-rayed in the hospital, then another 2hr wait to have to remind someone that I was still there with no diagnoses prompted a nurse to tell me it wasn’t broken  and then received sum crutches. To my delight when I get home Milo has only gone and won one of the games I left him in charge of which he may receive a Nandos or 2 as a gesture.

So back to when I was talking about Carlins injury, bored at home with nothing to do as unable to work, it has forced me to put in some volume which I haven’t done for a while. With a few deep runs and few hand history reviews with the other lads, its given me new faith, confidence and motivation to play more and get better which resulted in a nice result on Friday night on stars.com with a 3 way chop in $11 turbo for just over $1.5k to clear me out of make up and set me up for my next profit chop.

In other news some of you may know this already, but for those that don’t, myself, Buzz, Farmer Dave, Sensh, Gaz Walker and Andrizu are off to Glasgow on Monday to film our debut on BBCs quiz show, Eggheads. Having done no preparation except for watching the odd quiz show I am sure we will perform magnificently and not embarrass ourselves too much.

Id like to end this post with a welcome to team JambeWright for DanOlly who joined last month. He’s keen to learn and already made loads of progress with his game so big things to come from him in the future.

Also as one of my heroes has been banging them in recently at the ripe old age of 38 ill leave you with this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beuqgyfDYI4

“peace be the journey”

Adam meet alcohol. I have been going out far too much recently which results in hangover days of delicious, fatty foods and missed gym sessions. These go on for 2 days now that I’m past my peak at 22 years old and after that it is hard to get back into routine.

Some people cant get through the day without coffee. Without they are sluggish and lose all energy. I have the same problem when I am not training and eating cleanly. This has resulted in me not working my bollocks off at uni like I was at the back end of 2011 nor do I have the energy to play poker.

I have played a total of 1 session online in the whole of February, which is simply not acceptable for me or my backers. I have spent a fortune on alcohol and food and without any money coming in from poker, it is time to get back on the GRIIIIND.

Since Monday I’ve turned things around with 3 days of very good exercise and organising of my uni life and already just 2 days into my newly motivated-hibernation mode I feel much better. I called it hibernation because I have said that in March I am not going out on the drink. I am going to hammer my uni work so I can enjoy my Easter holidays a little better. It’s also #moneymakingmarch so that means not blowing chunks on alcohol and instead grinding my way out of make up and into profit. My hard work this month in the gym, at uni and at the virtual felt is going to be reward by a 4 day “holiday” to my old stomping ground Leeds where I will be unleashed on the Yorkshire females and after a month out of the game, I’ll be on a “major creep hype”.

So tonight I’m back on the grind. Let’s hope my next update is a positive one. Good luck,

I haven’t updated in a while as there hasn’t been much going on, so I thought I’d share some of the tediousness anyway.

Life is pretty enjoyable for me at the moment, it’s my final year of uni and there is ridiculous amounts of work to be done and sadly that has taken priority over poker. My social life is good and having fun everyday.

I have managed to keep up a healthy lifestyle with plenty exercise which is one achievement I can be proud of for 2012

However poker has been quiet, I haven’t had any results yet and I’m currently on a downswing.

This hasn’t got me down too much though because I have been playing alot of PLO cash games and made astounding progress with the help of Jerry, Wrighty and Milo (snort4eva).

The PLO winnings have cushioned my MTT downswing somewhat and kept me positive going in to MTT sessions.

In my last post I suggested the possibility of attaining supernova. This will be put on hold because I never play more than 6 tables of PLO and the highest stakes I play is 25c/50c.

I am either a god at PLO or running golden (probably the latter) because running 23bb/100 is unlikely to be sustainable.

For MTTs I will be leaving stars for a while to recoup the losses from lower variance MTTs.

The sites I will be playing on are Stars.fr, 888.com, party, PKR, Carbon and iPoker.

This may cause complications regarding keeping track of my bankroll so I will have to keep accurate records throughout.

Hopefully I will get plenty of results on the easier sites at the expense of the possible glory of winning a monstrous Stars.com tourney.

Sorry it wasn’t a very fun post but hopefully it will be a mere introduction to my next post which will report how I fared at the smaller euro sites.

GL all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KISf2eNYOHM

Appropriate motivation song

Alex

So we had a few comments about us only singing when we are winning. I guess that has been somewhat true. But, as im sure many of you know, its alot more difficult to motivate yourself to play when you are losing at the tables…nevermind blog! Spare time is simply used to get away from the tables and get poker out of your head. This has definately been the case for me. I’d much rather go to the cinema, play pool or go to nandos than spend an hour talking about losing.

Anyway.

I started 2012 really well and was up $8k within the first few weeks. Since then though im back to square one with 2012…breakeven. I find myself in the guts of 8k makeup which i personally don’t believe i deserve to be in but the ‘Poker Gods’ don’t have a complaints department to appeal too!

As Jambeyang pointed out to me, one of the most difficult things to do in poker is play good when you are running bad. I am playing almost exactly the same as I was when i started the year. Im going into every session motivated and excited about the prospect of making final tables but im just experiencing variance. Something that hasn’t hit me until now. The most makeup I’ve been in previous to this was $4k which I won back fairly quickly.

I’ve had something like 10 top 18 finishes this week and only three final tables. Losing very crucial hands in the final two tables is a large part of the reason I’m in this downswing. There’s a fairly big difference in this downswing than my previous $4k one. I was playing really really bad the first time and this was quickly resolved with a few hand history sessions with Jambe and Wrighty. This time however its just a bad run of the mill

Im really happy with how im playing. My instinct is pretty good(not at its best but not far away).  So all I can do is get my head down and grind my way out of it

I’ve moved up to $320s now so my session outlays are anywhere between $400-$1200 depending on the time and day. Ive been playing a max of $109 in my past couple of sessions to lighten the blow a bit during this bad run.

I visited Newcastle for the team game in January and it was great to see all the people from the NPF. Im going to try and come play the next team game(if selected of-course) because its always a brilliant weekend.

Congrats to Mulhuzz on getting his job in London! Cheeky Duck was definitely the preparation you needed for the interview!

Anyway I’m off to nandos then playing the late sesh if im not too tired.

If anyone has any questions leave me a comment or get in touch on skype: andy_carlin

Thanks for reading

Click here

Andy

x

Poker is easy as Connect 2

I’ve been pretty fortunate in that I’ve never had a heavy losing month but 2012 has been brutal thus far. I had forgotten how easy it is to lose and I’m now in the most make up I’ve ever been in.
That isn’t what annoys me though. What is annoying is that I have let it get to me. I never tilt but after losing another chipleader pot the other day, I was out the next hand by just tilting my chips away. When I woke up the next morning, that hand was the first thing I thought of.
Now honestly, is it worth it? How dare I let losing for 1 month get to me when I sat at a computer, clicked some buttons and paid off £7k of debt with plenty of change to spare in 2months. I’m a 22 year old postgraduate student who still lives at home and would have to work 600 hours as a waiter at pizza hut before that debt was clear. I am never going to play poker as a career and therefore any money I make from it is a bonus and that is how I should see it.
It makes you question the affect playing poker has had on me and whether if I could go back in time, whether I would ever want to discover the game in the first place. I asked this to a good friend of mine who has won a very considerable amount of money who said he would make sure he never discovered poker. I was shocked at this answer because it is such an easy way to make money but then when I think about it I can see his point. If I had never discovered poker, I might not have been as well off financially but I would no doubt have more respect for money and possibly be fitter, have got a better grade at uni and still playing football.
However, poker can give you so much other than just money, pain and frustration. The same friend in the same conversation as above said that he now handled difficult news or situations better. Poker had trained him to deal with his emotions better. I hadn’t really thought about these sort of benefits from poker before but all I know is that is that the girls at the bar love it when you are so balling out of control that you can roll a £2 coin through your knuckles whilst slicking your hair back.
Without poker I wouldn’t have so many great friends. I talk nearly every day with all the lads and unless it’s with JambeWright we very rarely talk about poker. We even play football once a week together and that’s the whole reason that Buzz is looking so ‘reem’ these days. Also, it is pretty uncommon for a 22 year old to be mates with really old people like Mr and Mrs Stumpy but they love me like the tall son they never had. Seeing them and other NPFers is the reason I have ventured out to the local live tournaments recently and I had the most fun I have had playing poker in a long time on Friday night at Circus. Getting drunk on Japanese beer called ItchyFanny with Scoop, SamJ and Stumpy (until he decided to be gay and stop so he could concentrate on winning…which he did). Also, I learnt the art of “Scooping” which is to have 3 beers with you at all times.

A "scoop" of a random beer

For example SamJ will tell you every round its your round and tell me to just get a “scoop” of ItchyFanny in.
I even turned down a scoop of hopefullynotItchyFanny just so I could play poker, a decision which did not go down well with all the lads. But I came 4th for £700 and she picked me up from the Casino anyways.
My return to live poker has had a positive impact on my online game for sure. With 2 nice scores back to back, I felt more confident about my game and more optimistic and I think I played very well today but unfortunately my run good online hasn’t kicked in for 2012 yet.
So is playing poker worth it…. 100%