Back in Love!
What's up everybody.. I'm back!
As many of you probably noticed I haven't written a blog in quite some time now so I guess I have some explaining to do. I think the last time I wrote a blog was near the end of my Las Vegas trip to the World Series of Poker. After the World Series I went on a family vacation for my uncle Gino's wedding in the Dominican. Had an absolutely awesome time down there, spent two weeks just relaxing with family and friends and took a well needed time off from poker. After Vegas my brain was pretty much zapped from poker. Its not that I was starting to hate the game or anything, I was just mentally exhausted from it. I compare to when I was growing up and the end of a hockey season would roll around, one side of you hated it because you just want to play all the time, but the other side of you is kind of glad its summer and you can take some time off from the rink. So that's pretty much the state I was in.
When I got back from my trip I jumped right back into playing multi-table tournaments (MTT's) all day and back to the grind. Most of you know that much of my poker success has come from pretty much just tournaments. In 2006 I undoubtebly had the best year of my career, where in one month I cashed for nearly $40,000(my record to date). But when I came back from the Dominican and starting playing again I really wasn't feeling it. The swings in MTT's are absolutely huge, way bigger then most people think. You can go through stretches at a time where even making it into the money seems impossible. Playing tournament after tournament and not winning can become very mind draining and extremely stressful. Throughout my poker career I've been pretty good at maintaining good bankroll management skills. I can't even tell you how many poker players go broke for this very reason, not being able to manage your money. It sounds dumb, but I put it at the top of the list for attributes a good poker player needs. And this is where I went through a bit of a slump during the last few months.. not only was I losing, my bankroll management skills were severely lacking. It's not that I jumped into big games and started dumping money or anything, but I really should of slowed down my pace when I hit a down slope. A very very tough thing for a poker player to do is to play lower stakes when you're losing. It feels like a shot to your ego, it really does. But EVERY poker player has to do it at one point or another, its inevitable to go through losing streaks and it's the good players who check their egos at the door and play lower stakes who get through it. So those few months I was losing there I look back and was definitely a little disappointed in myself by not slowing down instead of speeding up. So I had to learn from my mistakes and moved on.
On top of me running pretty poorly playing online, many of you probably heard about the poker raid that went on in Ontario and basically closed all the underground clubs in Toronto. Without getting into too many details about the matter because I'll get pretty heated, with the clubs being closed I ended up having way more free time on my hands.
******************************************************************************************
After the clubs getting shut down and me running pretty poorly in the MTT's, I really had to sit down and decide what I wanted to do. I love the game of poker, I don't want to leave it but thinking of the stress of the tournament schedule really didn't sounds appealing for me at the time. So I decided to start playing some cash games online. For those who don't know when I started playing poker I was primarily a cash game player, I rarely played tournaments. I would grind playing 1/2 No Limit at local clubs in Toronto and really did well for myself. Playing poker tournaments and playing live poker cash games are completely different. It's kind of hard to give an example but the two are very different when it comes to playing and strategy. So I decided to go back to my roots and start playing cash games online. Out of all the aspects of poker, cash games online is definitely my area of least experience. 95%+ of my time playing online was focused on playing tournaments. Playing cash games now is kind of a new game to learn from the bottom and work my way up. Although I feel I'm skilled enough to jump right into some higher stakes games, I decided I'm going to be smart about it and play micro stakes (very small, $50 buy-in or less) till I feel really comfortable. I've also been watching a lot poker videos on cardrunners.com, where basically the best online cash game players in the world record their cash game sessions with commentary explaining what they do and why. These videos have helped my game big time! I've really learned a lot from some of these top pros and I will continue to be a sponge and learn as much as I can. I'm sure many of you are thinking, how the hell you can go from playing $1000 worth of tournament buy-ins a day to playing for only $50.. because honestly I feel it's the best thing for me right now.. in the title of this blog I wrote "Back in Love", Is because I truly fell back in love with poker more then I ever have. I'm enjoying the game so much right now. I don't have the stress of playing high stakes at the moment and I can really sit back and have fun. I know I have too much of a competitive nature to stick playing low stakes for long, so I'm going to move up in stakes slowly and smartly.
There are still so many more things I planned on writing about but I'm going to spread it out in a few blogs. The month of December is pretty busy for me and most likely all of you so I'm going to try and write a couple blogs here and there and when January rolls around I'm going to get right back into blogging regularly with all my progress and results.
Thanks to all you guys who continue to check up on my blog and I apologize for taking all that time off, my head just really wasn't in it. But I'm back! And expect big things, because every time I sit down and play I have that million dollar goal in my mind!
Till next time...
As many of you probably noticed I haven't written a blog in quite some time now so I guess I have some explaining to do. I think the last time I wrote a blog was near the end of my Las Vegas trip to the World Series of Poker. After the World Series I went on a family vacation for my uncle Gino's wedding in the Dominican. Had an absolutely awesome time down there, spent two weeks just relaxing with family and friends and took a well needed time off from poker. After Vegas my brain was pretty much zapped from poker. Its not that I was starting to hate the game or anything, I was just mentally exhausted from it. I compare to when I was growing up and the end of a hockey season would roll around, one side of you hated it because you just want to play all the time, but the other side of you is kind of glad its summer and you can take some time off from the rink. So that's pretty much the state I was in.
When I got back from my trip I jumped right back into playing multi-table tournaments (MTT's) all day and back to the grind. Most of you know that much of my poker success has come from pretty much just tournaments. In 2006 I undoubtebly had the best year of my career, where in one month I cashed for nearly $40,000(my record to date). But when I came back from the Dominican and starting playing again I really wasn't feeling it. The swings in MTT's are absolutely huge, way bigger then most people think. You can go through stretches at a time where even making it into the money seems impossible. Playing tournament after tournament and not winning can become very mind draining and extremely stressful. Throughout my poker career I've been pretty good at maintaining good bankroll management skills. I can't even tell you how many poker players go broke for this very reason, not being able to manage your money. It sounds dumb, but I put it at the top of the list for attributes a good poker player needs. And this is where I went through a bit of a slump during the last few months.. not only was I losing, my bankroll management skills were severely lacking. It's not that I jumped into big games and started dumping money or anything, but I really should of slowed down my pace when I hit a down slope. A very very tough thing for a poker player to do is to play lower stakes when you're losing. It feels like a shot to your ego, it really does. But EVERY poker player has to do it at one point or another, its inevitable to go through losing streaks and it's the good players who check their egos at the door and play lower stakes who get through it. So those few months I was losing there I look back and was definitely a little disappointed in myself by not slowing down instead of speeding up. So I had to learn from my mistakes and moved on.
On top of me running pretty poorly playing online, many of you probably heard about the poker raid that went on in Ontario and basically closed all the underground clubs in Toronto. Without getting into too many details about the matter because I'll get pretty heated, with the clubs being closed I ended up having way more free time on my hands.
******************************************************************************************
After the clubs getting shut down and me running pretty poorly in the MTT's, I really had to sit down and decide what I wanted to do. I love the game of poker, I don't want to leave it but thinking of the stress of the tournament schedule really didn't sounds appealing for me at the time. So I decided to start playing some cash games online. For those who don't know when I started playing poker I was primarily a cash game player, I rarely played tournaments. I would grind playing 1/2 No Limit at local clubs in Toronto and really did well for myself. Playing poker tournaments and playing live poker cash games are completely different. It's kind of hard to give an example but the two are very different when it comes to playing and strategy. So I decided to go back to my roots and start playing cash games online. Out of all the aspects of poker, cash games online is definitely my area of least experience. 95%+ of my time playing online was focused on playing tournaments. Playing cash games now is kind of a new game to learn from the bottom and work my way up. Although I feel I'm skilled enough to jump right into some higher stakes games, I decided I'm going to be smart about it and play micro stakes (very small, $50 buy-in or less) till I feel really comfortable. I've also been watching a lot poker videos on cardrunners.com, where basically the best online cash game players in the world record their cash game sessions with commentary explaining what they do and why. These videos have helped my game big time! I've really learned a lot from some of these top pros and I will continue to be a sponge and learn as much as I can. I'm sure many of you are thinking, how the hell you can go from playing $1000 worth of tournament buy-ins a day to playing for only $50.. because honestly I feel it's the best thing for me right now.. in the title of this blog I wrote "Back in Love", Is because I truly fell back in love with poker more then I ever have. I'm enjoying the game so much right now. I don't have the stress of playing high stakes at the moment and I can really sit back and have fun. I know I have too much of a competitive nature to stick playing low stakes for long, so I'm going to move up in stakes slowly and smartly.
There are still so many more things I planned on writing about but I'm going to spread it out in a few blogs. The month of December is pretty busy for me and most likely all of you so I'm going to try and write a couple blogs here and there and when January rolls around I'm going to get right back into blogging regularly with all my progress and results.
Thanks to all you guys who continue to check up on my blog and I apologize for taking all that time off, my head just really wasn't in it. But I'm back! And expect big things, because every time I sit down and play I have that million dollar goal in my mind!
Till next time...
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