Yorky Pud

One of the aspects of poker that used to hold back my progress was my seemingly inability to log any sort of volume. Those who I talk about the game to have always tried to get me to play more but for one reason or another their pleas have always fallen on deaf ears. That is until now.

Whilst I am still not putting in the volume of some players I have managed to play another 2,012 hands since I last updated this little piece of the internet, taking my total hands played for the month to 5,496 and putting me well on course for playing 20,000 hands this month, which would be a massive achievement for me and I would be as chuffed as a dog with two d**ks if I could reach that total.

After my mini-brag about running amazingly well for the first part of the month it was inevitable that the Poker Gods (amen) would eventually removed the golden horseshoe from my ass and make me actually play poker instead of just hoovering up $10 buy-ins like they were going out of fashion. The first session I played after writing Monday's blog post saw me lost $13.94 from 429 hands and although I ran slightly under expectation I deserved to lose as I didn't play well at all. The following day I played 643 hands and won $61.14, which was nice, then the day after the winning continued with $24.97 added to the coffers from 425 hands played.

But last night there was a minor blip on an otherwise picturesque landscape as I had my heaviest losing session of the month so far, leaving $34.41 at the virtual felt from 515 hands played. Despite dropping 3.5 buy-ins I actually have no complaints at all, in fact I am actually really pleased with how I played and how I reacted the beats that were being tossed my way by some of the by those in charge of dishing out the variance. The playing style that I have adopted this month is quite high variance and I'm more than happy to get my money in with just the slightest of advantages, which is fantastic when it goes your way but can become quite expensive when you start to miss draws.

I felt a bit like Hellmuth last night with the amount of draws I missed. I should really have gotten this hand in on the flop I reckon (http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3485681) and the same probably goes for this one too (http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3485682). Some will say getting it in pre with tens (http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3485683) is lolbad but villain in this hand is playing 93/21/5 with a three-bet of 35% so I'd probably get it in with hands much worse than tens to be honest. Oh and this sucked balls too (http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3485684). What impressed me the most about yesterday's losing session was the fact that I didn't even come close to tilting, OK I was a tiny bit narked with the AK vs KJ hand but I just swept it aside and carried on. I really feel like I have turned a corner in my mental game and that can only be a good thing for my actual playing, surely?

You may have noticed that I am playing NL10, which is hardly exciting to read about when you can find other bloggers bragging about taking down $50,000 pots but for the first time in a long long time, possibly ever in my poker “career” I feel like I am living up to the title of my blog, “Pud's Poker Progress.” I could deposit and play NL100 from the off but I'm in a really good place pokerwise at the moment and I want to progress through the various stakes on Betfair Poker and crush each and every one of them on the way up. You've heard it all before I know that, and I know many will say that I only feel like this because I have been winning but it is up to me to prove you all wrong and trust me, I will do just that.

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!