Hlynkinn Pöker Blög (Back like I never left)

Hey all...

Been a while...

So for the last 3 weeks or so I've been grinding again. I've began to really regret my decision to try to quit poker to concentrate on school. At least for the last 2 semesters I've had way more than enough free time to put in a decent volume for a nice little side income. But I spent all that free time procrastinating and doing nothing productive... But it's all cool...

Gonna give poker another shot now along with my summer job. Plan is to play 15 days a month playing for around 60 hours a month. When next semester begins I'm just going to see if I can't somehow balance poker with law school along with trying to maintain a healthy relationship with my girlfriend.

I've been pondering about whether to start a new blog or continue with this one. I decided to continue with this one. At least for the time being.
It has been over 2 years since I last posted here and I've grown quite a bit... and my English has gotten a lot better

Don't feel like writing a lot at the moment.. Just felt like letting the community know I was back... Giving this poker thingy another shot...

At the moment clearing $500 top up (or whatever it's called) bonus on Full Tilt.. Playing the $10-60's 9 man stt's.. Obviously mainly playing the $10's due to terribad traffic...

Thats all for now...

ps.

Sun is shining here and I'm going to a bbq party tonight... hell yes

Welcome back!

Great decision on keeping the current blog, cause I had it in favorites ♠_biggrin: Gonna be following again

yay ♦ welcome back

Thanks guys.. Good to know that someone will be following here again.

So weekend was good. Got drunk Friday night. Too hungover on saturday to play. Also had to skip the party I was invited to on saturday night evening. Because I felt like never drinking again...

Played some mtt's on sunday ($27 nlhe scoop) Dropped around $150.

Also managed to put in some volume of stt's...

Today I've been grinding all day. Good volume. Bad run of cards.

I've only cleared $150 of my top up bonus. So it looks like I won't clear the whole $500. But I wasn't really expecting to clear all of it. Still disappointed that I haven't cleared a bit more.

Also was invited to a home game on Sunday evening. Up $110. It's like the 30th time in a row I've been up in my live games. Sick run...

Tables are surprisingly soft on full tilt these days. But volume of games is not sufficient. I'm playing every "non reg infested" $20-$60 9 man turbo stt that opens up during the day.. and still $10's are 80% of my volume... It's bad...

what do you think about the games after this pause?do they seem harder?

Originally posted by alxpoker91
what do you think about the games after this pause?do they seem harder?

I can only really talk about Turbo speed 9man sng's since those are the only ones I have experienced since starting again. I'm aware that a lot of traffic has moved to both 6man sng's and super turbo sng's (and even 6man super turbo sng's).

There has been a lot of change in the games at full tilt since I quit. Big part of the reason I quit was the black friday fiasco. Obviously Full Tilt has lost a ton of traffic since then.

Traffic being lower affects the mid and high stakes the most. That results in most of the regulars aiming for the highest stakes have moved away to stars.

With that said I was grinding the 33's the 65's and 115's when I quit. Obviously when moving down to playing mostly 10's the competition naturally feels softer.

But of course it's just my perception. I do a fair bit of table selection which obviously results me in finding as easy games as possible. Furthermore Holdem Manager has been having troubles with full tilt updates lately and is AFAIK still not working for tournaments. I do believe that is affecting the mass multitablers a lot. I've also reduced the tables I'm playing from 12 tables down to 8, which means I'm noticing players do more mistakes than I would playing 12 tables.

I do suspect that the games are always getting slightly tougher. But like some wise men have said "fish will always be fish".

To sum it up; the 10's might be tougher than the 11's were... but they are still a lot softer than the 33's used to be. Due to lack of traffic the 20's 30's and 60's might be softer than they used to be. But they run to infrequently to take any real advantage from it. I still haven't seen a $115 starting.. but I would expect it to be the same players as play the 30's and 60's

ps.
I do find it quite interesting how the fish still have the tendencies to do the same things... the same plays... Two years later and fishes are still clickback bluffing and 2x potting with an hit gutshot on the river...

Fish is the fish, indeed

GL m8, I remember u well from the preBlackFriday times on FullTilt, u sure will beat this game even after such long break. If u decide to stay on FullTilt, good for me on PS ♦

Originally posted by MilanBurdych
Fish is the fish, indeed

GL m8, I remember u well from the preBlackFriday times on FullTilt, u sure will beat this game even after such long break. If u decide to stay on FullTilt, good for me on PS ♦

Yea I'm also feeling confident I'll beat the games... Being on a nice little heater tends to up your spirits a bit ♦

I do think my skill has decreased since I stopped. But not drastically. I've forgot a bunch. But re-learning stuff tends to be way faster than learning something for the first time.

I've been watching some coaching videos lately. Mostly "live videos" (or session videos whatever you want to call hem). Those are my preferred ones at the moment. I feel like those are the most "valuable" videos so to speak. Obviously most of the hands will be quite standard and some might say "boring". But I think that's also the good thing about them. Most of the spots you'll be witnessing are the type of spots you'll be seeing multiple times a week in your sessions. So if you're making any mistakes in those "frequent hands" it's costing you a lot of money. So making sure you're playing pretty identical to the coaches in these "live videos" is making you much more money than a video explaining some complex situation like the gigabet dilemma would.

If you plug a leak in your "frequent hands" plays.. It's going to skyrocket your ROI for sure. Understanding the gigabet dilemma or any other really complex theory will probably only increase your roi by 0,001% or whatever. Due to those spots being so infrequent.

But of course it's going to be important to learn the complex things as well to get to the next level of thinking. Learning something new can never... or at least rarely.. be bad. The more you learn the easier it becomes to learn more. If you learn first how to sum. It will be easier to understand how to subtract.

It also just applies to anything in life in general. The more you know the easier it will be to learn new stuff.

Take two guys. Guy 1 knows 15 languages. Guy 2 knows 1 language.
Which one is likely to be quicker to learn Russian?

It's always good to learn and study something new, and always trying to learn the more complex things. But as poker players we must remember that knowing the basics perfectly is whats going to make us the most money.

Just finished 3rd in some $3 rush rebuy tournament...

And well got 11th as well...

Nice $637 pay day.

Was trapped 3 times on the final table. Ran pretty bad. But I think I can be quite happy. Always feels good to go so far in a big field.

It's kinda ironic that this month is looking like it might be the best month of my poker career...

Welcome back.followed you years back was a good blog happy that I didn't delete from my favourites.Good luck finding your poker life balance.

Originally posted by rankler88
Welcome back.followed you years back was a good blog happy that I didn't delete from my favourites.Good luck finding your poker life balance.

Thanks! Great to see how many readers I still got after this long absence.
And yea I'm expecting this blog to turn out to be more of a "How can I balance playing poker, to get a little side income, and having a social life along with law school(during semesters) and a job (during summers)" rather than "How can I move up the stakes as fast as possible and be great at poker" Doesn't sound as exciting as the chase to millions and stardom... But I'm sure I'll have a fun time writing here again. Hopefully I'll also be able to entertain you, the readers, a bit.

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So first day at the summer job is tomorrow. Working at a car rental near the international airport. So if any of you guys are going to visit Iceland this summer let me know and most likely I can welcome you at the airport... Yay...

I need to drive for around 45 minutes to job on workdays (Obviously not driving to work on off days ). So I'm gonna use the time wisely and listen to some audio books while I drive. First one is going to be Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus. I don't really know much about the book. It's supposed to be entertaining as well as informing. Listened to the first chapter last night and it was mostly embracing Barrack Obama's poker skills and claiming that being a part of a weekly home-game with senators and other important political figures helped Obama's political career a lot. The members of this "poker club" described Barrack's game as cautious while he was still playing the odds. One said he never bluffed and one said he never bluffed but he sometimes "Semi-bluffed". Wording it “He bluffed, with the cards. He wasn’t going to bluff with a total longshot.” Obviously everybody in that game were huge fishes by today's standard due to the games happening between 1997 and 2004.

I think it starts okay. Only a bit worried that I might fall a sleep... The drive is, like I mentioned before, 45 minutes. Often very early in the morning or very late in the night, on a very straight road. So the danger of falling a sleep is something I have to be aware of. If I feel like listening to an audio book is making me more sleepy than listening to bad songs and gossip about celebrities on the radio, I'll have to stop it.

I'm also looking at other audio books. If you guys know of any worth reading let me know. I'm mostly looking for poker or gambling biographies or something like that. Not really looking for strategy books. I've already read Stu Ungar biography and that has to be one of the greatest books I've read... Man that guy had a crazy life. and a crazy lifestyle.. Would recommend reading that one to everyone.

It's interesting how every update becomes a huge wall of text.

Congrats on the mtt score

Bios are always entertaining but i never read a poker one tbh. I prefer so far sports bios

Ah, nice to see you are back!

Victoria Corens biography is an easy read.

Originally posted by belthazorrrr
Congrats on the mtt score

Bios are always entertaining but i never read a poker one tbh. I prefer so far sports bios

You should read the Stu Ungar bio!!! It's called "One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey ',The Kid', Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player" by Nolan Dalla. The highs and lows are just amazing. And his personality is just something you can't make up. It should also motivate you to play poker.

some quotes from Mike Saxton's forewords from the book to get you excited:

READ IT. It's such an amazing story. Really made me look at life from a different perspective... and that's something I wasn't expecting when I opened a book about some poker player.

As for sport bios. They aren't really for me. I don't find the lifestyle exciting enough. But Zlatan's biography has been on my "to-read list" for a while now. I should probably pick it up soon.

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Originally posted by Demonic226
Ah, nice to see you are back!

I was waiting for you to get in here!!!
Haha thanks mate. Feels good to be back. I've missed you guys.

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Originally posted by rankler88
Victoria Corens biography is an easy read.

Yea saw it while google-ing for books. Didn't find the audio book anywhere. Guess I might just get the e-book or paperback version. So was it any good?

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So nothing to blog about really. Just been a weekend of working 12-14 hour shifts.
Haven't managed to listen at all to my audio book "Cowboys Full" because of my old 2nd generation nano being really boring when trying to fast forward on 5 hour audio file. Girlfriend is gonna lend me her ipod touch so that should make it easier. Might also just put it on my phone but some of the cars I'm driving to and from work don't have an AUX plug so sometimes that wouldn't work.... yea whatever I'll figure something out.

Next 2 days I'm going to study for my last exam of the semester. Should be two terrible days with no grinding.

so yea I really meant it when I said I had nothing to blog about.

updateeeeeessss?