This is how I stand for 2010 in regards to SNGs. I haven't played much at all, but at least its a positive start.

lfunk11 100 $2 $7 43% $189 PokerStars Year 2010
lfunk11 38 -$1 $8 -5% -$28 FullTilt Year 2010

Here are my stats in the game I will be focusing on

lfunk11 72 $6 $6 85% $396 PokerStars Year 2010 E45-45 S5-10

Well, its been a long time since I posted here. My poker career has had its highs and lows, but I think I am finally at a point in my life to really start to get serious about it. Too many time I won money in a tournament and then donked a chunk of it of playing cash games or stupid stakes for people. I have a simple plan going forward and the biggest challenge will be sticking to it. My personal goal is an overall profit of $25K for 2010 from poker. This is net profit after paying out splits from stakes and makeup owed. If I win $ through tourneys I am not really going to see much of it to start until I start to get even on some of the makeup I owe. Some people have chosen not to invest in me again and that will save some money initially, but I imagine they might start investing again if I turn things around.

My torunament play will be mostly backed through parttimepoker.com and I think I am going to try and stay on my own for SNGs.

My path forward.

MTTs - I am going to try and stick to a lower ABI, nothing really to do with the level of competition, but I can play more tables for less money and I hope to increase my overall ROI doing so. I will still play some higher buy-ins, but I want to approach this with volume at mid levels where know I can win consistently. So i am going to do my best to stay away from playing a bunch of $100+ tourneys. I will play them, but only 1-2 a night at most.

SNGs - I have been working on my 45 turbo game at the $6.50 level on Stars. I have been profitable at the $27s in the past, but things went sour last year. I am relearning the game and will stay at this level for now. I need to get much more volume in though

Cash games - I just tilt too easily playing cash games so I will do my best to stay away from them. Playing live cash games has never been issue for me so I will be playing some live ever now and then. Pennsylvania will be getting table games this summer so I will be heading up to Washington, PA once they get them

Thats all for now - I do not plan on advertising this blog anywhere so I doubt anyone will be reading it, but if someone shows up here by chance don't hesitate to say high.

So Busy!!!

Well I have been playing as much as usual, but life has gotten in the way of me keeping this updated. My wife is still struggling with morning sickness and this has caused me to be busy helping her and doing more with my son so she can relax. I recently had an article of mine posted on pocketfives and it has been generally well received. It is about getting more aggressive when you play. I have been working on my game and I feel that with this new added weapon of aggression I have positioned myself to win way more tournaments than before.

OK - the updates! I won a $20 rebuy on Poker Stars back in November for $16025! This isn't my biggest cash, but by far the best tournament I have ever played. I truly feel that I dominated this tournament from about 30 people to 1.

A few days after this I finished 8th in the $55K guaranteed $11R on Poker Stars.

Since then on Poker Stars I have gotten close many times with a 11th and 13th place finish in the $20R. I have been playing the $150 Nightly on Poker Stars of late as well, but I just can not get anything going in this tourney. I either get zero cards and have to start stealing way to early or like last night I run into a set with AA and lose the majority of my chips. I think I have become too much of a rebuy specialist over the last month. I need to get my freezeout game back!

I have also started playing more on Ultimate bet. Mostly the $30R at 9pm. I am cashing in this tournament at an insane rate and I have had two 4th and one 5th place finishes already this month in this tournament. It has an awesome structure and with the double add-on I am almost assured to have a top 20% stack after the add-on. So many people leave in the rebuy period and a decent number of them do only one add-on. It is a buy-your-way to a nice finish tournament for sure! I also had the unpleasant experience of finishing 2nd in a $30 WSOP package tournament. 1st paid a $12,000 WSOP ME package. 2nd got nothing - so hard to take!

I am basically happy with my play but I need to fix a few leaks in my game. I tend to make calls of short stacks with marginal hands always thinking they are just pushing with junk. I also use a continuation bet way too much and if a flop doesn't hit me I tend to go after it too hard sometimes losing chips. Late in tourneys I have gotten way too aggressive and I have wasted some opportunities, but these are all things I can work on and overall I am playing much better. I just need to win more consistently for my liking.

With my results of late and my pocket fives article I have had at least 40 people contact me about helping them or going over their hand histories. I would love to help everyone, but with work and a family I just don't have the time. I started looking for someone that I could help out while getting a little something in return. I found someone through pokerXfactor and I have gotten through half of his hand history that he sent me. I think he liked what I sent him and I plan on getting the other half done before I leave for the holidays. If this works out I plan on pursuing this a bit more to supplement my poker with a small steady income from my writing and mentoring. I feel I can really spot things for people to work on, but it takes nearly two hours to properly go through a hand history and write it up, so I doubt I will do to many of them unless people are willing to make it worth it.

Well that is enough for now. I plan on keeping this more updated in the future! :)

Long Time Since Last Post

So I haven't posted in some time for so many reasons. First I have not had a good run over the last month. I was down about $3-4,000 from my MTT play and was getting beat with AA and KK consistently. It almost seemed as though I could not win a hand. I also experimented with several other styles and techniques. Some worked and some didn't.

Another factor for me not posting is the idiotic legistlation the the US government that shut down my favorite site - Party Poker. I am now almost 95% on Poker Stars under lfunk11.

Another factor is my wife and I are now expecting our second child and she has had a rough case of morning sickness that lasts all day. She was hospitalized with our son twice for dehydration so lets hope it doesn't get to that point. I have still been playing, but when I am not working my son takes up all my time since she has been so sick of late.

So recently the cards have begun to turn in my favor a bit and I placed 5th in the Saturday $150 NLHE event at Stars. It was a funny FT since I belong to pokerXfactor and Johnny Bax is one of the "instructors" there and he was at the FT as well. I played well enough, but when I got KK and QQ my hands were not called. So I cashed for $3646 and basically wiped out my negative run.



I placed 28th out of 699 players last night in the $22 rebuy on Stars. I only had 7500 chips after the add-on and only spent $62 on the initial rebuy and the add-on. I moved up to 8th in chips with about 100 people left, but got chipped down and busted out with A9 vs KQ.

Over 322 hands I never had AA, KC, QQ, JJ, 1010, 99, 88. I had 77 and 66 once and I had AK twice and AQ 4 times. So with no cards I managed to get pretty far.

So look for me nightly in the $150 NLHE on Stars at 9:10pm EST and I will be playing some $1/$2NL cash games to supply my buy-ins as well.

Trying some new things.

So I joined pokerxfactor.com about a month ago and it hasn't exactly changed my game too much, but I had a chance to watch a video that sheets made. He has done very well online and I liked his video. So getting through 50% of the MTT field is no problem for me even when I get a bad beat I can usually build my stack back up. My issue is later in a tourney. I am trapped between two styles. The first style is what I used to get the big cashes that I have posted here. I basically play very tight, make smart reads, and wait for my spots. This style gets me into trouble by getting very shortstacked and if I can't get any decent hands then I get blinded down. I will go all the way down to 3XBB. The other style that is played by most good MTT players is to start pushing with mostly any two cards when you are less than say 15XBB. I have played like this recently and I see one advantage. You can build a nice stack and I got pretty high in chips on several tourneys. The problem is that you can get knocked out sooner and you need more luck since if you are called you are rarely more then 50:50 to win. So on one side you need to win some races and get some luck and the other style you need to get the luck in getting decen hole cards that you feel comfortable moving all in with. When I play the tight style it works great when you get decent cards since so many people are pushers. I love raising or calling them with AA or KK.

I think from now on I will mix it up a bit and play the pushing game if I am at the cash bubble and short stacked, but I will play my tight style when there are less than 20 people left.

I got pretty far in the $55K g. $11R on Stars and I was 3rd or 4th in chips with less than 60 people left. I busted at 30 something with AQ vs 99. The pushing style didn't work, but if I won that race I would have been near the chip leader again.

I got 12th in a $30 rebuy on Party.

So I figured out how to play the rebuys and I have done well in Limit tourneys so I need a nice win soon to get my cash reserves built up again. I still have $45K cashed out so I am doing well!

In two weeks my wife and son are going out of town so I plan on using my Party Monster $100K ticket and to play the Stars and Part million tourneys. That weekend will be an insane poker weekend. I plan on playing basically all day and night!

I Guess I Can't Retire!

So I played the $530 WCOOP NLHE on Poker Stars and I couldn't get much going. I eventually lost with AK and an Ace high flop. The other person riased and I went all in. They beat me with two pair AA99X. Pathetic play on my part, but I wanted to build chips since it is easy to get short stacked in these tourneys.

I also played the Party million. I lost with KK vs QQ - more crap luck for me!

A few things...

So I am playing the $530 NLHE WCOOP event this Sunday on Poker Stars. I am trying to sat into it, but if I don't I am playing no matter what. I will also play the Part Poker Million at the same time. I am lfunk11 on Poker Stars

I was really tired last night and I still played. I cashed in the $33 NLHE on Party for a small amount. I went out on the first hand of the Super Thursday with JJ. One caller to my raise. I had a feeling he had a bigger PP, but the flop was 994 and he called my bet. Then a 4 and I thought he might have AK and he went all in. We started with 5000 chips and we each had about 4000 left. It was a complete overbet and even though I thought he had a higher PP pre-flop the overbet seemed funny. Why go all in there? Anyways I called and he flipped QQ. I lost and I normally don't overplay JJ like that, but I hit the same situation the other night but I had KK with a similar two pair board and the guy went all in - I called and he flipped AK. Oh well I was tired and it was stupid.

I played the $10K rebuy on AP and there were about 110 people to start. With about 50 left I was 9th in chips with about 16000. I then went all the way down to 4500 getting blinded down and calling a small bet here and there with suited connectors in the SB or BB. I had nothing to work with and eventually pushed with KJ and AQ beat me with about 27 left. I noticed that I do not get great cards on AP and Stars - now I just might play so much on Party that I forget the MTTs that I am card dead.

Tonight should be better - I got 5 hours of sleep last night (good for me) so I will be trying to sat into the Party Million playing $11 turbo sng (I am 2 for 2 in these in the past) and the $12 double shootous on Stars for the WCOOP.

Another Great Finish!

I messed up the heads up action mainly since it took 117 hands of heads up!!!!! I was so tired and he caught a few hands on me. After a point my hand hurt so bad and I just loss concentration. I am still mad about not getting first!

Oh well this was a limit tourney and I am doing very well in these recently.