Well I'm sad to say that I'm just completely fed up with poker. I have barely played for the last couple of weeks after hitting a run of games where I just got screwed over game after game, day after day, with me down thousands of dollars compared to all-in ev. The games have become almost unplayable 80% of the time now as much fewer of the higher stakes DoNs are running and nobody is using game selection. It's not unusual for there to be less than 12 $104s running and the same 6-7 nits playing every game going to BB800 before the bubble bursts.
I looked up stats for the players that I know are the other best players and all of them are having a horrible time since about a couple of weeks ago. It's like something happened 2 weeks ago, someone at stars flicked some switch that made the fish dissapear and the good regs lose all their races.
this is my april so far, the last 2 weeks have been like 400 games and -$1000
Since this time last month I've had 5 people ask me for coaching and 2 training sites ask me to make videos for them. I turned all of them down basically because it's not worth the money I'd make from doing the coaching/videos if it just means more grinders are going to play the games and make the games tougher than they already are.
Since the DoNs are beggining to look so awful I've started to look at other forms of poker. I had an idea where I could grind the WSOP steps for the next couple of months and I'd probably kill them, so I put together a proposal to get staked for them, which is a bit nitty of me but since you have to play them all the way through to Step 6, which are $2100 SNGs, to get money from them, I know for sure I couldn't handle running bad and losing a bunch of 70/30s in a row in Step 6s. However stars decided to change the steps this year to a 6max SNG with $12K/0/0/0/0/0 payout and a 12man SNG with a $12K/$12K/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0/0 payout, where as last year it was a 9man SNG with a $12.5K/$1.5K/$1.5K/$1K/$1K/$0.5K/0/0/0 payout. The new structure just increases variance so much that I would need a crazy amount of money behind me to grind them without a high risk-of-ruin. With a 1 in 6 payout the best player in the world could easily go on a run of games into the double figures without cashing.
I've also been playing a few HUSNGs on stars, breaking even, and some HU NL cash in party poker, breaking even. I want to get better at these because they are actually fun to play, amazing how interesting poker can be when you get to play some flops......
Anyway, as far as poker goes I'm feeling as low as I ever have been. The future doesn't look too bright and the present is hardly a lot of fun. I'm really not sure where I go from here, hopefully I figure something out.
Onto some good news..........
In february I applied for tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2010 that will be heald in South Africa. When you apply for tickets your name goes into a lottery/ballot since every match is always oversubscribed, especially the opening ceremony match and the final. You can apply for a maximum of 7 matches so I applied for the opening match, the 2 quarter finals and round of 16 match that are in Jo-burg, the 2 semi finals and the final. This is the same thing I do every 2 years when there is a european championship or world cup, and since 2004 I've always gotten tickets but never for anything better than the quarter final.
Just got an email from FIFA with the results of the ballot.
This is so sick, I got every single match I applied for except for the final. There are probably way more than 100 applications for the final for every seat on sale so that was a long shot, but getting the opening game and both the semi finals is very very lucky.
the €2,450 euro price tag is a bit steep for something I'm not going to be able to use for another 14 months but I guess it's worth it since it really gives me something to look forward to which is something that my life was lacking.
Also I got 4 tickets for one of the Michael Jackson concerts in london this July so that is gonna be sick eeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeee