Heads Up Zoom YAAAY!

Pokerstars have introduced Heads up Zoom tables which I'm really pleased about. I used to play a fair bit of heads up but didn't enjoy the bum hunting element to it. Thankfully Zoom solves this problem as you can just jump into the action without having to sit and wait for a non reg to sit you.

They also have CAP heads up tables which I also dabbled in. They should probably be called crack tables because they are highly addictive. I don't really know what I'm doing at these CAP games to be honest as I'm not sure about my shove/ fold ranges. But ignorance is bliss and it actually makes it more fun when you don't know what your doing.

I will keep playing the 50nl normal heads up tables for a while and see what my results look like after a meaningful sample.  

Nice 200bb cooler :)

The rake seems pretty reasonable to. The rake is capped at Only $0.5 in this $180 pot. Which is 0.3% WOW :0 Even in a standard 200bb pot the 50 cent rake only works out at 0.5% AWSOME!!

Here's a cool YouTube vid I came across about the Legend of Isildur1:

  

GL everyone :)

Back to the online grind!

It been over a month since I have updated the blog. The truth is I have not been playing Zoom or online poker at all during the last month or so. I have been playing exclusively live poker and travelling around England. I have been playing mainly in the Midlands area but had a week grinding in London and also a weekend in Manchester.

It's really hard to get motivated to play 25NL when you have been playing games ten times as a big and ten times as soft. Obviously no HEM graph to show but I recorded my sessions in my phone. I played 15 sessions in Sept/Oct and had 13 wins 2 losses :)

It's absolutely crazy how soft playing £1/£1 or £1/£2 is when your used to grinding out small edges at 25NL and 50NL online. Here is a notable hand I can remember from my live HUD.

I pick up AA UTG in a fairly active 10 handed £1/2 game, I opt for the limp raise, I know classic live play lol. Guy to my left makes it £10 and there proceeds to be 5 more callers after him. So the pots £60 I have AA with a £200 stack. Original raiser has me covered and every one else in the pot has roughly £100-£200. The way the table was playing I didn't want to make it £50 here because there's no doubt in my mind I'm getting 6 callers and then I'm just going to be screwed on the flop. So after weighting up my options I decided to move all in for £200. Some what to make my hand look weaker but also because I thought I would probably get at least 1 caller and also there was £60 in the pot so worst case scenario I take that down. Original raiser folds, next guy moves all in for £150 folds round to last guy to act and he announces "I have the value now" He moves all in for £200 creating a £600 pot ($1000) every one turns there hand over and I'm in dream land AA vs ATcc vs ATdd LOLOLOLOL.

As they say, there's always a sweat and the board runs out scary for me T33 on the flop and then the turn brings another 3, so on the river they have one ten to win the pot and one 3 for a three way chop but thankfully we brick and win a decent pot. These kinds of players are not one offs. Working class people In the UK dont seem to have any value for money and they literally just give it away at the poker table. I spend most of the time nitting it up. I can fold for 5 orbits, pick a premium hand and make it 5x and my main concern is hoping that just 2 people call rather than the entire table.

So with all that said I've had a fun time playing live and made a healthy profit but that doesn't account for all the expenses such as travel and eating out every night. Thankfully my Girlfriend works away Mon-Fri in London so I can freeroll £1000 worth of her hotel in the week. Obviously living the hotel lifestyle in London just wouldn't be feasible grinding £1/2 with out that. Also the games are significantly slower and are so boring when your card dead. So although the games are massively softer and there's definitely more money to be made playing live I think I'm going to get back into the online zoom grind for the next two months. I love the comfort of my own home and my nice grind station so happy to sacrifice some EV for that convenience. Also the games on Stars are normally pretty good at the end of the year when many of the regs are going for supernova and chasing bonuses. 

GL and see you at the tables :)

6 Day Grind

I've got 6 straight days off work so going to try and play a bunch over this weekend through to Wednesday. Ive played 10k hands today and yesterday and I have been running awfully, at one point I was $200 below EV at 25nl. At my low point I was so tilted I decided to go and play live for a bit and managed to turn my £100 into £300 in a soft £0.5/£1 game. So this de-tilted me and I guess I run well where it mattered lol. I came home and clawed back a break even day online as well so it didn't end to badly at all :) 

Due bit of run good at the end of the session

Going to play some golfs midday tomorrow and after that should be all crush for the next 4 days.

August Review

It's been a pretty bad month volume wise, I thought starting a blog would motivate me to work harder but it seems to have had the opposite effect. I attribute this to partying to much and going out for some amazing meals. I must have spent over $1k in August on eating out and going for drinks etc. Its a massive leak in my life but even a Micro baller has to have a little fun every so often :) 

Hands: 54,557

Profit: $447.83

Stella: $50

FPP Value: $125

Deposit Bonus Cleared: $80

Total = $702.83

LOL hand of the day...

Top set, no draw and villan makes the 2x pot bet on the flop MERRY CHRISTMAS :)

Money all goes in on the river and its the classic cooler of J4 suited running into my AA lolol

Hopefully I will party less in Sept and work harder at the tables and push for 100k hands. GL to all the grinders out there who are now following me and I hope you are enjoying my blog. 

Solid finish to the month!

Having not played online for a week now it's time to get back to crushing and finish the month solidly. I absolutely smashed V Fest last weekend and was well worth the time away from the tables. I spent all weekend drinking beer and champagne and loved every drunken minute of it.

The weather was decent for both days and not a patch of mud in sight. I went with my girlfriend, sister and her boyfriend. The boose and food was pretty expensive but the food was good quality and the beer was ice cold so no complaints! My girlfriend wasn't prepared to camp so we stayed in a hotel lol! Not quite the full festival experience.

We managed to see loads of amazing acts but the two hi-lights had to be Kings of Leon and Rudimental. Rudimental was absolutely insane, with 50,000 people all raving in the sun. I have never experienced anything like it. They tweeted after to say it was their best ever gig so that was cool.

My grind days this week and next week are Thurs-Sun which is optimal for timing for me to cash in on the lucrative weekend player pools. This gives me 7 playing days left to finish the month well and release a couple of bonuses too. Hopefully I can put in some good volume and come out the other side with a nice profit.

Also the Gukpt Goliath festival has just started 30 mins from where I live, so I might end up playing that this week. It looks like such great value. £120 buy in, 25k stack and 40 min levels with a 200k guarantee. I'm sure the cash games will be really juicy to so it would be a crime to not commit at least 1 day to this. It is being played in the beautiful G casino at the Richo Arena which is an awesome casino.

Thats all for now, will be back soon to update on the week whether its online or livaments! GLGLGLGLGLGL

Festival/ No Volume

I have managed to get hold of 2 VIP weekend Tickets to V festival this weekend which is AWSOME! My girlfriend and I will be raving it up in our wellies to Beyonce and Kings of Leon so I'm super excited for that. Obviously this means no poker on top of what has already been a poor week volume wise. I have had to work the last 2 days so I could get the weekend off so I'm going to have to work really hard next week if I'm to make platinum star this month. 

Working Mon-Weds next week, so got the optimal grinding days of Thurs-Sunday to put in some big volume and get the month back on track. GL to everyone grinding over the weekend. I will try and get some pics with celebs in the VIP tent YOLO  :0 

Disaster Tuesday

Unfortunately things didn't go to plan at all yesterday. My body clock is all over the place because I work nights 3 days a week. I attempted to start playing at 6pm but was so tired I decided to have a power nap at about 8pm and ended up waking up at 3am FML. So it was 4am Wednesday before I started playing properly.

I had missed the best of the grinding hours completely. But never the less I decided to load up four 25NL tables in a pretty reg infested pool and proceeded to get absolutely brutalised dropping 5 buy ins in about 60 mins, sigh.

I was playing very LAGY and admittedly a bit tilted but the run outs I received were just pure LOL. I had two set over sets, one set that couldn't hold v flush draw on river, and then had two identical spots where I 4 bet with AK suited and the board runs out dry A7x and both times they find a set of 7's.

Thank god I'm playing micros because I cant imagine running that bad for more meaningful stakes. I'm going to tilt off a few more buy ins on the golf course now! At least my friends can be the beneficences of my cash and not some Russian Nits!

I will probably play later tonight if I'm not to tired since I will have been awake since 2am lol. I have to work 6 of the following 7 days which is pretty sigh, so my next day of grinding will be Sunday unless I can fit some hours in before work.    

Mondays Session

I jumped into the zoom pool later than planned yesterday at about 8pm UK time. Since it was Monday and I had a bit of weekend rust I decided to take it easy and just play a mix of 25NL & 10NL. I was planning to play at least 8k hands but unfortunately it developed into a bit of a lacklustre session volume wise.

After about 1k hands I was running pretty poorly, especially at my 25NL tables and was down about $50. I had built stacks on my two 10NL tables so decided to sacrifice some volume and  drop my 25NL tables and just 3 table 10NL for the remainder of the evening. It was worth dropping tables and lowering stakes as by the end of the session I managed 5k hands and $110 profit which is reasonable hourly rate at these stakes.

So although I only managed 5k hands it turned out to be a reasonable session. I was still about $26 below EV but I cant complain to much as my situational luck was pretty good. Here are a few of the fun hands i played during the session.

Cold deck in a 4 bet pot...

The classic AA v K6 vs massive whale in 500bb pot.

I guess he was bluffing...

Nut flush no good mate!

About to start my Tuesday session. Hopefully can improve on volume and run better at 25NL tonight. Time to CRUSH!!

Grind Time

I've managed to gain some twitter followers and a few other bloggers have kindly included me to their blog lists so I'm at least on a few peoples radars now. Its nice to know I'm not talking to myself :/

So my grind days this week are Monday to Thursday. I plan to play between approx 5PM and 1-2AM Western European Time whilst the zoom pools are at there busiest and most soft. I'm going to set myself a modest target of 30k hands for the 4 days which I should make comfortably 4 tabling  for 4 x 8 hour sessions.

Just got back from having a really nice full body Swedish massage so I'm feeling great and in the zone. I've got a few essentials lined up at my grind station to keep me focused through out the session.

I will report back soon with how I'm getting on. Also if anyone has any questions to ask me feel free to ask in the comments below.

Introductory Blog

Hello and welcome. I've been awake all night designing this blog so I'm going to make a swift opening post to explain a little about me and what I plan to do with this blog. In case it wasn't already obvious, I'm a Zoom grinder @Pokerstars. I've been playing online poker for a few years now with solid results up to this point. I'm a 23 year old male from the UK and I play small stakes Zoom six max approx 40 hours per week.

I would describe myself as a semi-pro as I play 4 days per week and work part time during the other 3 days. In 2013, 50% of my income has been made playing poker but my long term goal is to turn it into a full time gig. 

Up until now I've always been a lurker, never posting on forums and communicating with any other cash regs and bloggers. So I decided to make an effort and create this space to reach out and be more interactive with other regs and bloggers. I <3 reading all the other poker blogs out there and I have listed all my favourites down the right hand side. 

The page will be similar to other poker blogs, I will be posting intersting spots, monthly reviews etc etc... and any other cool life stuff really. At least for now I would like to keep my anonymity so I'm not going to divulge my screen name or my real name. I have also created a new Twitter account, which hopefully I can use to connect with as many English speaking regs as possible.

I will describe more about myself and my poker journy in my next post. As for now knowbody knows about this blog to, I guess I will spam some other bloggers on Twitter to try and get it out there. I hope I can make a success of the blog and meet some other grinders/ bloggers along the way :)

Thanks and GL, Zoompokerz :)