Sunday, July 27, 2008

Girl With A Watering Can

Things are going horrible lately. I feel like I'm just wasting my time and energy. I have played a tonne all night and have a huge headache, unfortunately the results were not there.

I thought a lot about it, and I decided to take a mature decision and stop it here. The way it's been going lately is driving me nuts and I know how easy it is to lose $2K-3K in a night and I don't want to jeopardize money already made for the project in such a small time frame, so every time I play I feel huge pressure and that's the last thing a poker player should feel when playing. It wouldn't be very smart and I just am
not feeling it at all.

On to the results for the month, it started ridiculously awesome but went to shit real fast. I've basically been breaking even for the past two weeks. I've been playing ridiculously good though and I honestly cannot blame myself for this because I am fully aware that it's just bad luck/variance.

Played a bunch of tournaments this month and came close to some big scores 2 times but it didn't happen.
I will be playing my last tournament for the month this Sunday on PokerStars (Sunday Million, biggest prizes for an online tournament) and this will be it for me, the project and July. I need a break.


End profits for the month: $12,000. So that's $6000 going to Toby. I did my best, now it's in your hands Toby.


I would like to thank every one who has supported me through this and all of you who read my blog. Feel free to drop me a comment here and/or on last.fm (username is Caliban51) they will be very appreciated.


Finally, here are two graphs about the month for those who might be interested.

This first one is basically number of hands/profits. The Green line is the one that counts (the profits). This graph is missing $5000 near the middle in profits that I made from other computers when I had my PC problems aforementioned.




This second graph is pretty important in determining if you are either playing bad or running bad (being unlucky). It shows how much money you've won when you went all-in and how much money you should have won mathematically if the luck factor was squeezed out. It shows that I made $4K in all-in winnings instead of $8K. I guess Lady Luck doesn't like maudlin of the Well all that much.



Gonna go make my donation now, Toby if you are going to credit me in any way, please use my name and not the one on paypal because I'll be using my mother's credit card because mine's limit isn't high enough for this transaction.


Have a nice summer everyone,


E

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

They Aren't All Beautiful

I'm choosing a somewhat fitting song title for this blog entry :P. People who don't play poker tend to think that we have nothing to worry about and have an easy life with the money we make at this game, as if the money was falling from the sky. How hard can it be to play cards and have the possibility to make more than a doctor if you are a successful player? They think it's easy. I can't tell you how wrong they are.

Sometimes this game can be such a mindfuck. I don't want to elaborate on this but it can get really really hard on your mental, especially if you don't have proper balance in your life to help get through it. And you need the right people around you as well. I am glad I have some people that I care about to get my mind off poker.

That said, I haven't updated my blog in a while because not much interesting has been happening. Since I've had PC problems I cannot post the graphs like I said I would unfortunately but don't worry I know exactly how much I made. I am up around $13,500 right now for the month, which is not too bad but at the same time if we consider I was up almost this much more than a week ago it's not very fun. But that's poker, and I mentioned it in the introduction post, there's nothing you can do about it except play your best. You can win a lot very fast just like you can have dry spells for a while or huge losing sessions even if you are making the right decisions.

Let's hope this last week goes well, I am craving for some new motW songs! Wish me luck guys.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Birth Pains Of Astral Projection

Tough night. Guess it was going too well to be true, can't win every single day. It wouldn't affect me all that much if it wasn't for this project. Oh well.

Picture won't show for some reason. I am down a total of $3000 tonight. Tough luck, hope I can recover in the next days, would become quite painful if it kept going down from now.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Geography

No progress lately. My PC crapped out on me and after I fixed it, it asked me to activate my copy of Windows Vista or it kicks me out. Lesson to you folks; buy your operating systems. Soooo I ordered one and am waiting for it to arrive.

During that time I cannot play much, I am using my moms laptop to play some tournaments here and there but so far I've had no luck at all in them.

Think i'm up around $11,500 so far for the month so at least there's that.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Sleep is a Curse

I've had this song in my head all day. My brother kept humming it.

Hey guys. Quick little update on how I'm doing so far. This week has been really good to me, but this game is incredibly sick. As I am typing this I am feeling quite frustrated with how my day went, tells you how hard it can be on your emotions sometimes. But whatever, even though it was an horrible day I've had an amazing week. Let's keep hoping I can pull it off, but so far it is looking REALLY good.

Also, I haven't been able to play as much as I wanted to. The weather is too nice here and my brother came and visit me for the whole week.

Friday, July 4, 2008

The Ferryman

Things are going great guys, I am still going strong. There is hope, lots of it.

I am playing a GREAT game. I'm not one to brag but it is absolutely ridiculous how bad people are at poker and the edge that I have in those games, let's hope it keeps going my way, I need it more than ever.

We're at the beginning of day 4 and I am already up $5000+ which is kind of ridiculous. This isn't sustainable on a large sample of hands though, unfortunately.

Thanks for the support everyone, as usual.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

A Curve That To An Angle Turn'd

Yeah my titles will be motW songs. How cool? Very.

Day 1 started folks, I'm feeling much better now. I'm tired though so I didn't play as much as I wanted to today, I will try to play 2500 hands at least every day though.

I also won't update daily because it is annoying and meaningless, but i'll update my results for tonight just because we're off to a decent start (which is still meaningless but whatever).



Monday, June 30, 2008

Meh.

Hey guys. I shouldn't be updating before the 1st but I need to get this off my chest because I'm feeling some unneeded pressure... Right now I am feeling HORRIBLE. I am feeling nauseous all the time, can't focus on anything and have to go the the bathroom all the time. Nice timing isn't it? I think it is a reaction to some of the sleeping medicine I have started taking, which I have stopped taking now. Anyways, if I'm doing this, I need 100% of my focus or else it could turn into a catastrophe, so I just wanted to say that if I still feel ill on the 1st, I will be postponing the start date of the project to when I feel good again and start the 31 days from there.

Thanks guys,


Etienne

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Introduction & Plan

Hello everyone. I am starting this blog today to inform Toby and every fan of the incredible band that once was motW (now Kayo Dot) of my goal to make the new album possible (see latest motW blog on MySpace if you haven't already) and how I plan to do it and to keep track of my progress. The small donations will unfortunately don't bring us the money to make the whole thing possible, and I want more than one or two (old) tracks and I know you guys want it too.

This is a once in a lifetime chance to be able to help my favorite composer and I feel the need to do this.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Etienne and I am a 20 years old French Canadian from Montreal. I have been playing poker professionally for 2 years now. Well, "professionally", not like those rich guys you see on TV, but yes it is my only source of income, thus making me a professional poker player. If I was a high stakes player, I wouldn't have to make this blog and would just donate the money to Toby, as ~$10 000 would be a relatively small portion of my bankroll. Unfortunately, I am not... yet.

But fortunately for all of us, I do not care about money very much. I am living very comfortably with very small expenses at home right now and have a decent amount of money saved up. What I am lacking though, is motivation. I am extremely bored with my life at the moment (and have been for a long time) and I am not playing as much poker as I should be, since it is my job. Most people I know will set goals to buy things like a car, a watch or to travel or have some kind of big plan with the money they are making off online poker. I do not need a car nor do I need a watch, or any other things. Things, things, things. I don't feel the need for any of it. And for personal reasons, I cannot travel right now. So yeah, where can I possibly get any sort of motivation...?

The only thing that was always there for me in my life is music. The most intimate moments I have had with people, are with people that don't even know it, through their music. They have always been there for me and will always be. I feel grateful for this, so grateful. If I manage to make this happen, neither Toby or any the fans owe me anything. I am grateful to just have the opportunity to do such a thing and am doing this out of passion and love and because there is no price tag for me to put on this album, it is my choice to spend my money how I want to and this is just so motivating knowing that the more I will make, the more songs I (we) will possibly hear.


So here is the plan,

From the 1st of July until the 31st of July, I will be playing poker online and donating 50% of my winnings to this project. I am a mid-stakes poker player, and a normal/good month of poker at my stakes would normally earn me around $7,000 to $10,000 (which is what I have made last month and this month). I usually play around 20,000 to 25,000 hands of poker a month, which isn't very much for a professional player, but like I said I am extremely unmotivated so it is in fact quite decent considering this.

I am confident though that with this new found motivation, I can play at least twice as much while conserving good focus and playing a very good game. Which could make it possible for me to make between $14,000 to $20,000. Which would be enough to finance Toby's project. I will also probably join a couple tournaments and if I score big at one, we're going to be in luck.

The only problem is that, this is poker. And even for the best of us, you cannot always win. One month isn't a very long period of time, and breakeven stretches do happen on the short-term and (although unlikely) it is also possible that I end up down money on the month. This is a game of patience that really pays out a lot in the long term, but a month is short.

Anyways, be it $200 or $20,000... 50% of what I'll be making will go to this project.

I will be updating the blog frequently with screenshots (we have a software to track multiple statistics and winnings) of how much winnings I have accumulated so far. Wish me luck and DONATE YOURSELF, every dollar is important.

Thank you very much for reading.