Well so much for managing to update this blog regularly. With that said, this month has been pretty hectic for me. I spent eight days in Oklahoma helping my dad prepare for an upcoming child custody hearing and then another four days away from my pc with different commitments that only come around once or twice, weddings, funerals etc. All in all however the time that I did spend at the virtual felt went extremely well. I managed to win at 4.4 ptbb/100 over 70k hands, which is certainly a win rate that I would be overjoyed with if I could maintain it over the course of the year.

Link to results for the month: http://i46.tinypic.com/2itftiq.jpg

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Well I’m going to consider 2009 as a year of two halves. The beginning of 2009 was excellent and I think that for the first half of the year that I played my best poker and really thought my game was moving in the right direction. Then came the WSOP, I flew out to Vegas and had organized an apartment to live with one of my best friends in the online poker world, poker_dealer. Although we had an amazing time hanging out and living the live poker lifestyle, I really felt that playing live for 6 weeks really killed my game online.

Live and online are two different beasts and require a completely different style to beat each individual discipline. Online is the world of the 3bet and now more recently the 4bet whereas, live is the world of playing passively preflop and then maniacally aggressive postflop once you hit a hand. My live results for the trip were ok but I struggled once I returned back home to Texas to get anything going online.
After 4 months of struggling to regain my form I really feel in the last two weeks of December that I rediscovered how to play online poker. Hopefully as we move in to 2010 I can continue to move forward with my game and make the progress that I feel is necessary to stay competitive.

This year I have decided to outline my goals in my blog so that at the close of 2010 I can revisit this blog post and evaluate how close to my goals I came.

2010 Goals

1.4 million hands online
$65k in winnings including rakeback
Play in 3 WSOP events
1 WSOP cash
12 MTT final tables online
2 MTT wins

Gary Hurst has provided me with a simple chart to solve players having problems with bankroll management.

To download please right click on the graphic and press “save target as”. Any questions use our comments.

Now that we are back to regular updates, you get to hear about the immense amount of frustration that I am currently experiencing. I wanted to play 100k hands this month and I am well on the way to doing that. Through 14 days of December, I’ve grinded 62k hands which places me well ahead of pace to hit 100k hands for the month but also puts me ahead of pace to reach a career high for hands play in a month. I expect that I will slow off a little with Christmas approaching but would like to get in 110k minimum.

Sadly the results haven’t been what I am used to. I seem to be losing every flip with rat holing short stacks when I am a 60/40 favourite. Furthermore, people seem to be two outering me a lot more than they really should be. I’m all for people getting it in and wanting to play big pots when I am a 20-1 favourite but if the poker gods wouldn’t mind, can they not hit the 20-1 shot 4 times out of 5.

On a personal note I think that I am going to set a weight loss prop bet for 2010 as playing poker full time is really causing me to put on weight. Not sure how much I’m going to try to lose but I’m thinking that it will be 100lbs (7st). If anyone is interested in putting up some money against me then we can figure out the odds and a time frame to do it in as I certainly need the help with the motivation.

Hopefully, I’m going to end 2009 with a heater that I will be able to brag about next week.

Good luck at the tables.

Edit: I just managed to final table the Daily Double B on FT this afternoon. Despite having a big stack with 25 people left I went card dead and was one of the shorter stacks at the final table. I 3bet 75o blind vs blind making the small blind call 60% of his stack off preflop if he wanted to call. After tanking he types in the chat “gl 22″ and called me with ducks. Now while he was right to make the call if he knew I had 75o, 22 isnt a favourite against any two cards I hold so long as one of my cards isn’t a 2 and is likely to be a 4-1 dog against the hands im looking to 3bet and get in. As you can imagine he held and I ended up in 9th place. Not the big score I was hoping for but you cant be too sad about 9th out of 1421!

First of all let me apologise for not updating this blog in what seems like forever. To be honest, I feel terrible about it, although I’m not even sure I have any readers and if I have readers, that any of them care that they haven’t had an update from me.

Apologies out of the way, poker in November was really a non-starter for me. I played only about 24k hands, which for me is a super light month. I had my brother’s stag do and then wedding, which was amazing. How my brother ever got such an amazing girl to marry him is beyond me! Then I took an 18 day road trip with a friend from England across the Eastern US that was amazing. The trip began in Dallas and included New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Blacksburg, Washington DC, Cleveland, Chicago and New York. This blog would be about 10 pages long if I listed all the things that went on during the trip, so all I will say is that I spent a load of money on the trip and that I had the time of my life.

Now with today being December 1st, it’s back to the poker grind. I’m going to try to log 110k hands this month and I will also be updating this blog at least every Friday, hopefully more. If I happen to play any interesting hands I will make sure that they are included too.

Good luck at the tables!

Well i’m not sure there is a whole lot of good to tell you about the tournament. I arrived early on Thursday after an hour drive and managed to register and get my seat assignment long before the late rush of players arrived. The turnout for the tournament was a lot less this year than in previous years so it was obvious from the beginning that there would be a huge overlay on the tournament. It turns out that the overlay was about $700k, which is just so sick that you have to take advantage of it.

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Sorry for the lack of updates in the last week but I have been dealing with the most difficult thing to deal with in online poker… variance. It’s something that everyone that plays for a living must deal with from time to time but no matter how many times you experience it, or how prepared you think you are for it, it always seems to catch you by suprise.

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Normally I hate playing poker on Fridays, it’s just the day that I can never seem to get ahead on. I know most regs love to play at the weekend, as it’s the time that all the weekend warriors come out to play and start dumping money off left, right and centre. For me however, that is never the case, I repeatedly double up idiots all over the place. I decided to get up early on Friday though and face the donkeys head on, I managed to log about 3000+ hands and although the day started off badly, I finished the day + 3 buyins…. a minor miracle for me.

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This will be the first entry of many that will hopefully give you an insight into the world of a grinding poker pro. My name is Gary Hurst and i’m 28 and currently live in Grapevine, Texas having moved from Newcastle, England about 3 years ago. My start in poker came a lot like many of yours, a small game with friends on someone’s kitchen table surrounded by beers, take-aways and lots of laughter.

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