Motivational problems

There is no such thing as lazy; you are simply not motivated to work on your game. - Jared Tendler

I finally got my jrmontana08 blog back again but I feel like I lost something. I don't see goals ahead and I don't see achievements behind. Have I just been playing poker for the last 6 months without any particular aim?

I mean, I did have goals but they were very result oriented which is pretty bad.

Here are a few examples of goal problems:

• Only have results-oriented goals, such as money.
• High expectations.
• No short-term goals, only long-term goals or big dreams.
• Fail to set new ones after achieving goals.
• Too many goals.
• Underlying goals such as, looking good, avoiding mistakes, keeping up your win rate, protecting a win, and avoiding pain of losing.

from PokerStrategy.com » Strategy » Psychology » Improving Motivation

Also, there is a great thread that I highly recommend reading: The quick guide to skyrocketing your (poker) productivity

My motivational has always been having fun and making some money. I must decide and lay down specific goals (short term and long term as well).

1. I'll definetely want to learn more about HU and 6-Max hyper-turbo/super turbo SNGs. I enjoy playing them and they're very profitable if you're playing right. 
2. Play more satellite SNGs/tournaments, good opportunity to take down bigger tourneys 

I don't think that I need/want more poker goals right now. Maybe later I'll hire a coach or something.

I have many non-poker related goals: improve the quality of my life, relationships, getting a job, etc. Sport is so important.. even for poker player. It increases your stamina, energy level. Makes you feel better overall.

That was it, a short post about my productivity and motivational problems. More posts coming up, must record mistakes/downswings too :)

Good Luck at the tables!

Almost there...

What's up everyone? I managed to accumulate a small bankroll on High Pulse Poker. Since their real money launch my bankroll went up from €78 to €220. I've been playing Pot Limit Omaha and some No Limit Holdem cash games. But I wasn't as successful in MTTs as I expected.

First of all, I played a €5000 GTD (buy-in: €22) tournament. I got busted out relatively quickly. But luckily they had some issues with the tournament and High Pulse Poker refunded the buy-in and they sent me €10 for the inconveniences. :) soooooooo...

.... I got a "free" buy-in for the €12,000 GTD tournament (buy-in: €33). This tournament runs only on Sundays (20:00 CET). Almost 300 players registered and most of them were epic fishes. What can I expect when the whole player pool of High Pulse Poker got their bankroll from playing freerolls? :) Of course, there were good players too but they're rather a minority there. lol

I played great, didn't do much. The table was weird, in the first hour I didn't see any 3bets! Well, the stacks were deep: 10k starting chips with 10/20 blinds. The blinds increased in every 10 minutes. I built up a healthy stack, mostly played with 100BBs. But I did a few stupid things as usual like 3bet bluffs in the wrong time. The blinds went up and my stack decreased and this hand came up:

Stack sizes almost equal, 30-50BBs. (Blinds: 500/1000)

JJ in late position
1 limp in early position
1 limp in middle position

When it was my turn I raised to 3600. Weird amount (because I did not add +1BB/limper) but I felt that was enough to fold to a 3bet preflop (I expected that from the player in EP) and still have enough chips to play with. So I raised, they called. Flop: K J 10
EP checks, MP bets 3BB, I raised to 14BB, EP re-raised to 30BB, MP all-in, I'm all-in, EP all-in.
Nice. Awesome chance to be the chipleader of the tournament. I didn't think that EP don't have AQ in his range but his loose donkish play got me thinking that he could have like KJ, J10, JQ, etc. He was playing straight draws aggressively. 
I didn't really think about the player in the MP because he could make that play with 99 for some reason for sure! Other hands in his weak range mostly the same as EP 10Q, JQ, etc.

Showdown:
EP: Q9c
MP: J10
Me: JJ

The board runs out and my hand didn't improve.

It was quite a nice freeroll but felt a little disappointed after that hand. I simply couldn't fold since I committed most of my money after raising the MP's 3BB bet to 14BB. Who doesn't feel bad after he/she get busted from a tournament he/she wanted to win. :)

High Pulse Poker is not a US friendly poker room. They recently launched real money tables. Freerolls are still running continuously but real money tournaments can be found as well with guaranteed prizepools! Since they're new and need more players, High Pulse Poker offers 50% rakeback in the first month!
The cash tables are very good, many bad players - mostly at the Omaha tables with 200BB+ stacks.

Here is the biggest pot I've won at a Pot Limit Omaha table - blinds were €0.01/€0.02:

2192 BB pot!

I'm still looking forward my biggest cash in 2011. It might come in the €10,000 Christmas tournament arranged by High Pulse Poker, who knows? ;)

Best of luck at the tables!

Jr

New ideas

wow a new blog post starting with a cute cat! Original, isn't it?

I've been reaaaaaaally busy recently and I think I won't post much personal stuff but more strategies and concepts about poker. I haven't wrote much about the previously mentioned topics in this blogs but I'm going to focus on them more.

Short blog post is ending with this epic FTP song:

NEW tournaments and promotions on Carbon Poker

Fat Stack / Slim Stack tournaments
Carbon Poker introduced 2 epic rake-free tournaments. They're running on Fridays and the buy-in is $2 and $5. The first tournament will be held on 4th November.

	Fat Stack	Slim Stack
Starting stack	1,000,000	10
Blinds	25,000/50,000	0.5/1

$2 Fat Stack Buy-in: $2.00 + $0.00 (Rake-free!) Starting Stack: 1,000,000 Chips Date/Time: Fridays @ 20:00 PM Carbon Server Time Location: Scheduled / Regular and SitNGo / Regular

$5 Fat Stack Buy-in: $5.00 + $0.00 (Rake-free!) Starting Stack: 1,000,000 Chips Date/Time: Fridays @ 22:00 PM Carbon Server Time Location: Scheduled / Regular and SitNGo / Regular

$2 Slim Stack Buy-in: $2.00 + $0.00 (Rake-free!) Starting Stack: 10 Chips Date/Time: Fridays @ 21:00 PM Carbon Server Time Location: Scheduled / Regular and SitNGo / Regular

$5 Slim Stack Buy-in: $5.00 + $0.00 (Rake-free!) Starting Stack: 10 Chips Date/Time: Fridays @ 23:00 PM Carbon Server Time Location: Scheduled / Regular and SitNGo / Regular

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Chip King November promotion



Carbon Poker announced a $10,000 Chip King promotion! There will be a freeroll every weekend starting 6th November (Saturday). Make sure to opt in and earn at least 50 VIP points!







How to qualify 
Earn at least 50 VIP point and you're in. The more points you earn, the more chips you'll get to start with in the freerolls.

Points Earned During Qualification Period	Starting Stack for Chip King Freerolls
50 - 99.9 VIP Points	250 Chips
100 - 249.9 VIP Points	500 Chips
250 - 499.9 VIP Points	750 Chips
500 - 999.9 VIP Points	1000 Chips
1,000+ VIP Points	Unique stack based on VIP Points earned

$5000 for the Top 50 Chip King Final 
"To monitor where you stand amongst the other Chip King participants, check back to the Chip King Leaderboard below to see the Top 100. If you're in the Top 100, that means you're a solid session away from making the huge-value $5,000 final."

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CARBON POKER RELOAD BONUS FOR NOVEMBER

NOV375 awards 75% up to $375.00.
»Bonus valid for CarbonPoker, PDC Poker, and Aced Poker.
»Enter the code “NOV375″ in the cashier with any reload deposit.
»This bonus is claimable until 12:01 AM server time on Thursday December 1, 2011.
»Bonus requires minimum deposit of $10.
»Bonus awarded in $5 increments and completed after earning 100 VIP points for each dollar of the bonus amount.

NOV30 awards 10% up to $30.00.
»Bonus valid for CarbonPoker, PDC Poker, and Aced Poker.
»Enter the code “NOV30″ in the cashier with any reload deposit.
»This bonus is claimable until 12:01 AM server time on Thursday December 1, 2011.
»Player must earn 30 VIP points for each dollar of the bonus amount, the bonus is expired if a withdrawal is made before the playthrough is complete.
»Bonus requires a minimum deposit of $50.

Merge Gaming Network welcomes US players

Good news for US players:

As of Wednesday, October 13th at 12:01AM Server Time CarbonPoker and PDC Poker will be accepting new players worldwide.

Create an account on ACED Poker: 150% first deposit bonus up to $750. + get 35% cash back every day! Visit aced.com here »

Note: does not accept players from the following countries and states: Australia, France, New York, Kentucky, Washington DC, Maryland, Washington, Missouri and Louisiana.

Links:

• visit carbonpoker.com
• visit pdcpoker.com
• visit aced.com 

US friendly online poker room, US friendly online poker rooms, US friendly online poker, accepting poker player from the US, accepting US poker players, accepting poker players from the USA,

One month long break - it's over!

Only a few of you know that I was in hospital in September for 2 weeks. My life became a bit more complicated. I'm going to go back to the university soon. I feel very motivated. I'd like to do something useful in this world.

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me." - Steve Jobs

I also read an interesting article from Olivier Busquet: The Value of a Collage Education. Don't get me wrong, not a thoughtful quote and a well written article made me return to study. I was about to start my 2nd semester in my university when the unexpected happening happened.

I have a lot to catch up with... I'll do my best!

Poker: Even though I'll be very busy in the upcoming weeks or months, I don't want to stop playing poker or give up my PokerSpace Ambassador role at PokerSpace. I love helping people, give advice and talk about poker.

Click on the picture for better resolution

In that picture you can see, I recently won a $33 coupon in a crazy rebuy tournament. It's a crazy tourney because people are doing insane things there. There are not donking, their range is just very wide from every position. :D
New tournaments coming up on Carbon Poker. It's really cool that they're working hard to provide better online poker experience. They have a sub-forum on 2+2: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/201/carbon-poker/ please feel free to chime in :)


Today I'm playing a long session. I don't plan to do such things in the future (except SCOOP, WCOOP, etc.). I try to be healthy and I don't want to make a mistake to fuck up my sleep cycle. I'd appreciate it, if anyone could help me/has any tip how to eat healthier.

Thanks for reading, see you at the tables!

JrMontana08 is back online!

3 months ago my blog was marked as spam by a GoogleBot. I asked for help in the forums and now I'm back online. It was a mistake of the GoogleBot in question and hopefully it'll never happen again.

Many things happened in this summer that I couldn't share. In the last 3 months I focused on Heads Up SnGs. Honestly, I don't feel that I done well in those things. I got a few aha moments but I'm still confused in a few situations. Hopefully I'll be able to fix those leaks until 7th September 2011. I'm going to play in the WCOOP Event 7 -- $215 buy-in -- NLH HU tournament.

Let's talk about something else.. I got a new laptop! More creativity coming your way (if you're reading this blog and/or you're on PokerSpace) because now I'm a MacBook Pro owner. The Mac OS X was weird at first but I got used to it. It's a powerful machine, I'm quite satisfied with it.

I'm surprised that many sites don't have Mac friendly software. Example: Party Poker, iPoker Network... Yes, they have web based version of their client but PokerStars is way ahead of them with their software and their thinking is a lot more advanced as well.

iPhone owners! The official PokerStars Poker Clock is here. Click on the link and it will take you to Apple's website -> iTunes section -> PokerStars Clock (Global Edition)

The summer holiday was fun, I had a lot of time to relax. Good to be back online and see you reading this blog post.

It's 2 a.m. here, these thoughts came to my mind. Follow me on Twitter: @JrMontana08

Best of luck at the tables!