catch up

I began grinding again in the middle of July, only playing once or twice per week, and its now coming to the end of August. When i started i was given a $2000 bankroll, and was told i am allowed to play anything (within reason) under $25 buy-ins. When i started, i was playing a couple of MTT's alongside 180 man turbo's and 45 mans. But as the weeks have progressed, iv moved over more to concentrating on the $7 and $15 18 man turbo SNG's. I just feel a lot more comfortable playing these, and theoretically they should have less varience to cope with as of course they have a lot less players than the 180 mans. I also feel they are slightly less full of experienced grinders, and i also feel that the grinders who are 20 tabling, actualy play these pretty awful. Certainly around the bubble and when shorthanded i think they play far too tight, they dont shove wide enough, are more than happy to give people walks, and dont call nearly wide enough when im shoving pretty much any 2 BVB. Although not a great sample size as yet, i have played 160 of these games, and have made just under 400$ profit (plus a very small amount of rakeback through bonus'). Of course this win rate isnt maintainable, but id like to think i could consistantly make around $1.50 per game, and being able to play around 15 per hour, its a pretty nice income. I prefer playing these in sets, IE, i will register for 15 at once, and play them all out to a finish before registering for any more. Of course, this means volume will not be as high, however, i think it improves my win rate, because when coming down to the more important part of the final table when short handed, being able to concentrate better means making the correct decision, which of course is easier to do when you are not playing 15 games at once. Id like to think i can motivate myself to play somewhere between 10-12 sets per week, so this is what im looking to achieve over the coming weeks.

I have also played around 70 or 80 MTT's, with a small loss of around $120. When i first started playing again, i felt very rusty, and wasnt playing well at all. I really think the standard of play in online MTT's has drastically improved over the last couple of years, even at the micro stakes. Obviously at the start of an MTT, there are a few fish, but as soon as you reach the middle stages/later stages, everybody seems to play pretty decent. I actually found it pretty disheartening that my usuall style (which is pretty agro) wasnt really working as players have now found the ability to play back at me, and not just folding pre or check folding flops. I went pretty deep in the $5 2r 1a tourney, and was chip leader with 16 left but managed to bust 14th. It's ok, i didnt really want to win the $6k anyway. I sharkscoped every player with 16 left, and all bar 2 players were pretty much MTT grinders and had good profits over good samples sizes. No money in MTT's, everybody is solid!! Incidently it was one of the players i labled as a fish that ended up busting me :-)


Now moving slightly away from poker, im one of those people who needs to listen to music when i grind, mainly to help concetration to stop the complete boredom from creeping in. I have a pretty strange taste in music for a 21 year old, If somebody asks me what i like, i instantly say Rod Stewart, Elvis, The Eagles, David Bowie mixed in with some excellent 80's power ballads (and a soft spot for Robson and Jerome). None of that modern shite. Over the last week when iv been grinding/driving in my car, i have listened to nothing but The Beautiful South and Fleetwood Mac. I seem to have ran pretty good this week, so maybe id advise you all to do the same!!

Also, got a couple of nights out planned this week. It is Jamie Giles 20th tonight so we're all going out tonight for a classy night out [ ]. And a friend of mine who has been in Newcastle all summer goes home to Huddersfield at the weekend, so gonna go out to say bye to her. This will be a lot more classy than Jamie Giles night out [ ].

Thanks for reading.

Buzzzzz

Welcome to my Blog!

O.K my name is Neil Harvey but I’m mostly known as "buzz" due to a slight resemblance to the Toy Story character. I am 21 years old and from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Currently I work 3 nights a week in a casino which helps pays my rent, food (quite a large expense in my life) and beer. I learnt to play poker properly during my second year at college when I was 18 and I followed the same route as many people, a couple of local tourneys per week and got hooked. I then started to grind the live cash games around Newcastle, and somehow, without being very good at all I managed to make a decent amount of money, leading to me quitting my part time job at Morrison's and becoming a "professional" poker play if you like. I use that term very loosely, as for the 18 months that I was a "pro" nothing about me at all was professional. I jumped from game to game, MTT's to cash, live to online, without putting any serious volume in at all. Thanks to a couple of rather large binks (for an 18-19 year old) it didn’t matter as I had enough money to cover what I wanted to do in life - nothing. However, doing nothing is still bloody expensive, even when you’re still living at home with your parents, and my bankroll soon started to become pretty small, and I grew more and more frustrated with the game, which is the reason why I have hardly played over the last 6-9 months.

In this time, I decided to try and grow up a little bit by moving out of my family home for the first time and living with 3 very good friends of mine. Obviously I could not finance this with no income so I had to get a job, which I did at Circus Casino. The job itself is fairly easy and I get paid enough to comfortably cover rent/bills, and with only working 3 nights a week, I have plenty time left over to do what I want – nothing.

Anyway, to the point of this blog. I’m now beginning to feel like I want to start grinding again, and actually doing it properly this time. I have played a few sit and go/MTT sessions over the last couple of weeks, and I have actually quite enjoyed myself, and I also feel my temperament is a lot better than it used to be. So I feel as though I have a little bit of hunger inside me to play a decent amount of volume, and I’d like to use this blog to keep track of my progress, and also to hopefully motivate me to play more. I also hope I can keep this blog entertaining with a few stories from the flat and my life in general.

I have a very good staking deal with two absolutely superb Online MTT players “jambeyang” and “thawright” who are total sicko’s, and I feel are going to be a huge asset in improving my game further. I will mainly be playing multi table sit and goes, 18 mans and 45 mans, and also I’d like to play 1 full MTT schedule per week. I’m going to try and aim to play somewhere between 125-150 games per week. Now, this doesn’t seem like huge volume, but I will only be playing on my days off work, and all going well, it will serve as a second income to me. I will be playing on pokerstars under the very creative screen name of “neilharvey22”.

Thanks you for reading my first post, hopefully it won’t be so boring in the future!!

Buzz