UnknownProdigy

Hi Everyone!
Just a quick intro!

I have recently lost the love of playing Poker!

My lifestyle has become more healthy and so called friends who cheated in home games have been cut out of my life. I used to love the game of poker, the joy of hitting a 2 outer on the river and outrage when that happened to me.
I thought this would be the best place to start out on returning the game I loved!

I really dislike playing online, I get bored/get distracted by other things and end up just losing money whereas when I'm at the table I'm focused, engaging in table talk and enjoying myself. I feel as though if someone could help me become more focused it may be an option for me to resume playing online as I know they are much softer and have less of an impact on my bankroll

When I first started playing a few years ago I began playing a local casino tournament but quickly learnt there is much more money to be made consistently at the cash game table but after about a year I drifted back towards playing tournaments again just simply due to the joy and excitement gotten from winning a tournament; stopping up until 4am felt better when reaching a final table and finishing 2nd for £350 in a £30 that sat grinding for 7 hours earning £200 profit.

So yeah thats my poker life in a few paragraphs!
I live in the midlands and prefer to play live poker like I said so anyone wanting to go to events and split petrol costs etc more than welcome to message!

I feel as though I am relatively good poker player but obviously everyone has flaws in their game that can be rectified. I recently played the 25/50 at the Ricoh and bust in terrible fashion getting it in as a 85% with only 20 minutes to play before the end of the day and lost so that was a bit demoralising but Hey thats poker!

I'm hoping when the WSOP returns to ESPN (anyone know when exactly that is?) I will regain so of the spirit that first got me into the game to begin with!

Last Post 7 years ago by

Jon-PokerVIP

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Love it and will be following with interest!

So today I have came up with a schedule, some events I will not be able to attend due to working in retail part time around university it will not also be an option to play in some events as I won't be able to get the time off work.
So below is my schedule:

I normally have 2/3 nights off a week so I aim to play at least 1 tournament a week; living in the west midlands gives me all sorts of options with 3/4 local casinos within 30 minutes drive and DTD only around an hour away now they've reopened the main motorway leading to it.
This Friday I'm hoping to head down to DTD for the £50 tourney with £15k Gtd. I've attempted to track live stats just simply ones like Profit/Loss and hourly return in a variety of ways (app's, spreadsheets mainly) but have struggled to keep on top of it and instead just ending up keeping a jar in my bedroom labelled poker and a slip of paper stating my deposits into the pot (Winnings from poker and also deposits when it needed topping up from my wage) amd withdrawals when I just simply had the urge to go out and buy something.

Anyone around the midlands area recommend any other cardrooms?
So far I've been to:
- All Birmingham based casinos
- The Ricoh
- DTD several times
- Manchester based casinos (Although would prefer not to travel that far as my main poker buddy who I went to these events is busto)
- London casinos for selected events

Also if anyone could recommend a better way to keep track of my poker earnings? I feel as though my jar method is not really GTO haha

I don't know why you would need any more rooms lol....you literally live in cash gave poker paradise unlike us up north!

Welcome to the forum, I'm in the midlands too, although I just play online and every Thursday at my local sports bar. Although, I did venture to the Ricoh this month for my first casino poker experience to play in the Goliath, obviously slim chance of winning, but was great fun, I didn't even cash but was great. I intend to still work hard on my game this year then start playing at more casinos in January.

I'm also like you, enjoy tournaments and like to play cash and tournaments to mix it up, as everyone loves a tournament just to try and hit that big score.

Look forward to following your blog

Jon-PokerVIP: I don't know why you would need any more rooms lol....you literally live in cash gave poker paradise unlike us up north!

Haha yeah it is ideal to be honest living here, especially now resorts world is starting to gather pace it seems like the choices are endless!

lankyross: Welcome to the forum, I'm in the midlands too, although I just play online and every Thursday at my local sports bar. Although, I did venture to the Ricoh this month for my first casino poker experience to play in the Goliath, obviously slim chance of winning, but was great fun, I didn't even cash but was great. I intend to still work hard on my game this year then start playing at more casinos in January.

I'm also like you, enjoy tournaments and like to play cash and tournaments to mix it up, as everyone loves a tournament just to try and hit that big score.

Look forward to following your blog

Thanks Ross, yeah the goliath was a lot more organised than previous years! How come you chose that as your first casino poker experience? If I were you Hill St is a good play to start! It has a variety of tourneys across the week and all with okay guarantees for mid week tournaments!

Cheers mate. I am not so sure, I was looking around the Internet at places like dusk till dawn and when I should perhaps go and play, and then I spotted the Goliath with its huge field and thought why not, il treat myself and jump in and go for something crazy and experience a huge field, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Now it's back to online and play regular smaller tournies next year

After a while I have now got a solid spreadsheet ready to track results on, I decided its easier to track my earnings through that rather than my trustee jar of money!

I have also got some goals I wish to aim for being Christmas:

- Earn over £300 per month playing live poker. This will be solely tournament wise, if successful I will be doubling my part time wages each month!
- Lose 2 stone before the new year! I have recently joined the gym again and I'm beginning to get a routine, this along with keeping my diet relatively healthy
should be easily obtainable.
- Maintain a high 2.1/1st at University. Being in my last year and knowing the importance should really help me stay motivated!

Come the 19th of September I will be juggling University, work and poker although poker will have to take a step back for obvious reasons.

Christmas is a really good goal to have in site. It means you finish off a year, can hit some targets and then also spend the winnings on something really good.

So the last few days I have played some tourneys first a local one in Walsall £110 buy in that is a part of grosvenors summer sizzler, unfortunately I didn't make it to day 2.
Yesterday me and a friend went to DTD for the super 50 comp where the buy in is £60 total and £15k Gtd so better that all local casinos again I did not cash although I played cash after and turned £100 into £360 in the hour and half it took my friend to bust so overall we're £80 up for the weekend! So overall a good start to the £300 a month!

What are peoples opinions when leaving a cash game. I said when I first sat down I'm playing until my friend gets knocked out the tournament and when he comes over I will play one more orbit and whether I'm up or down I'm leaving. Turns out I win a big pot during my last orbit by this time I've been playing for 1.5 hours and its 2:30/3am and still have to drive home and when I start putting my chips in the rack someone asks me "if I am really leaving after taking someones money?" I responded with "I told you all the deal when I sat down"

Would you consider this bad etiquette or am I in the right?

Haven't posted in a while after not playing for a few months to allow myself to get out of my Degen lifestyle!

I am returning to online poker! I am only using this to create a live bankroll!
When I get paid the end of the month I will be depositing online but I only enjoy tournaments and if I play cash I like to play as high as possible and not care about bankroll management so I'm going to try and avoid that! What are the best sites for tournaments? I'm edging more towards PartyPoker as I can try and satellite into live events at DTD but any other options would be appreciated!

Few positives:
- Sleeping pattern is way better!
- Starting to have a regular routine of gym and university
- Got rid of the negative people in my life

Few negatives:
- Poker has taken a back seat and after watching the WSOP episodes I've got the fire back to start playing!
- Dieting is hard! Anyone wanting a prop bet on weight loss is more than welcome to message me 😂
- Startegy needs to be read and implemented into my game when I can return to online!

So my self exclusion is up on Party (too many roulette spins previously but we'll skip past that degenerate stage of my life) and safe to say it's going pretty well.
I should be playing more of HUSNG any stakes I can find myself in because the players are that bad!
So far I'm up $300 in 2 days, I had the idea of winning £30-£50 a day and playing live poker with the money as it's essentially a free roll and I much prefer playing live to online!
I definitely have no bankroll management whatsoever though unfortunately as the HUSNG I were playing ranged from $22-the "just the one" $109 so obviously I need to sort that out.

Great to know the HUSNG players on party are bad!

Careful with your bankroll though

swings of 10 buy ins happen in less than an hour.

What sng speed are you playing? I created an account on party before but because of their 10% rake and bad rakeback I didn't even bother getting money on there.

I was playing hyper sit n go's but unfortunately the rest of the month seems like it's going to poker free due to having to buy a new car today 😅

Hopefully student finance is finally resolved and my bankroll gets a rebate haha

Yeah not going to lie the rake is pretty bad but the players make up for it! They fold to any C bet and if they have a hand they just shove even at $55 SNG which is just horrendous

UnknownProdigy:
What are peoples opinions when leaving a cash game. I said when I first sat down I'm playing until my friend gets knocked out the tournament and when he comes over I will play one more orbit and whether I'm up or down I'm leaving. Turns out I win a big pot during my last orbit by this time I've been playing for 1.5 hours and its 2:30/3am and still have to drive home and when I start putting my chips in the rack someone asks me "if I am really leaving after taking someones money?" I responded with "I told you all the deal when I sat down"

Would you consider this bad etiquette or am I in the right?

Completely fine.

They don't moan when you leave after LOSING all your chips. Ignore them and do what you like, you don't have a contract to be sat there for a certain amount of time.

[/quote]

Completely fine.

They don't moan when you leave after LOSING all your chips. Ignore them and do what you like, you don't have a contract to be sat there for a certain amount of time. [/quote]

Glad to see to was in the right regarding this,. just thought it would be best to get someone elses opinion on the matter.

@Ovi8fan after researching what you said the rake is extremely high on party poker especially in the HUSNG! I like using poker tracker though so Unibet isn't an option unfortunately unless you are now able to use the software on their site? Any other recommendations for sites would be appreciated

There are a few options depending on the stakes and speed of SNG that you play. MPN is alright, the rake is somewhat high but you get 30% rakeback. On MPN I'd recommend playing the regular speed ones. The rake is high at 8% but you start 100bb deep and the blinds are slow. Otherwise it's a decent network. I haven't played other speeds there but I would assume the number of regs to be fairly low. The first ones I encountered where at the 5 euro stake but they had a few big leaks. I would not play on 888 as their rake is high and they don't really offer good rakeback.

Pokerstars is good when it comes to rake but there are lots of regs. The cartels start at 30$ for hypers and even at the 15$ stake there are lots of very good regs. Also I haven't played on Pokerstars in years but they seem to try very hard to send recreational players toward variants that are hard to beat with lots of variance or pretty much unbeatable (spins and the new Beat the clock SNG). Seems that lots of the fishier traffic that used to go to hypers is now going to spins. Decent options if you want to play hypers and use a HUD would be Ipoker and WPN I'd say.

They both offer rakeback and fairly low rake compared to other networks. I'd probably go for an Ipoker skin of your choice as they have good traffic and probably less bot than WPN. Also, I'd feel safer having my money on a network that isn't US facing, but that's personal preference.

Best of luck!

@Ovi8fan wasnt expecting that much of a detailed answer! But really appreciate it!
Hopefully I'll be running into you at some point along our journeys haha

So a week later and a whole new set of goals coming up to Christmas! I've been running pretty well in sports betting but I've got that bank roll separate to my Poker one.

Goals leading up to Christmas:
- Get both bankrolls up to £1,000! (Sports currently on £300, Poker on £250)
- Win 5 online tournaments
- Win 3 live tournaments

Things that will stop me from achieving this:
- If McGregor loses this weekend it will likely impact my sports bankroll quite dramatically
- University assignments (Most due in on the 13th of December)
- Not playing many live tournaments; Unlike online poker, live poker is a lot more time consuming but I do prefer it and an old friend is returning who I used to grind with so hopefully with him returning and if all my assignments are completed by the end of this month that leaves plenty of time to enter enough live tourneys that this is achievable.

I'm currently on the search for a new laptop but I keep edging more and more towards a macbook air just because I find them very easy to use and I have a desktop computer to use when I'm playing on a site that isn't compatible with Mac software. Any advise would be much appreciated

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