yardle’s poker blog

today, for the first time ever, i blocked my sharkscope stats, and not for the reasons most players do.

i was talking to fellow poker player on skype a few minutes ago and he told me that he had just blocked his username on sharkscope. i’ve known other players to do this and i’ve never understood why. some care about other people knowing how much they’ve made, and some are embarrassed by their results and don’t want others to think they are bad players. but that wasn’t why this guy blocked his.

he told me that he was tired of being consumed by looking at it.

this actually made a lot of sense to me.

i’ve definitely been having a lot of confidence issues with my game recently and looking at my horrendous graph can’t be doing me much good. if anything it probably hurts my confidence. i know i’m a winning player so why would i want to look at some stupid stats that tell me otherwise?

so there you have it. me and sharkscope are done. thanks for the memories. it’s not me, it’s you. etcetera, etcetera.

the title pretty much says it all. i don’t think i’ve ever immersed myself this much in the game before, and i have kind of mixed feelings about it.

on one hand, i’m really proud of myself for working hard and not giving up. the truth is that i have essentially been break even (no profit) over my last 3,000 games and i was becoming incredibly discouraged. after the first 1,000 i really started to buckle down and focus on getting better. then, things just got worse, and i became so frustrated i could barely manage a logical thought. i was working hard, and still losing. after about 2,000 games i broke down and paid for some coaching. i fixed a few things and ran hot initially, then it was back downhill again. the coaching thing wasn’t working for me for a number of reasons, so i started seeking some help from some other people. some of the things they noticed about my play have really stuck with me and i finally feel like i’m playing very well again. the first 500 games have been great and to be honest, i think i’m going to be crushing again very soon.

now, on the other hand, all i wanna do is take a break. i’ve played more poker this month than i have in any other month and haven’t had a day off in like 3 weeks. it’s been incredibly draining. the problem, however, is that i’m incredibly broke (see part about breakeven over 3k games above) and i need to keep chuggin’ along. pokerstars is going to be offering a discount on a cash bonus on jan 31st and in order for me to have enough points to purchase it, i need to complete exactly 364 games within the next 65 hours. i’ve been averaging 100 games a day for the last 2 weeks, so this is not going to be easy for me. i simply cannot afford to pass this up, however, so it’s gonna get done. mark my words. after it is, i plan on taking at least one day off, maybe two.

i really don’t like setting profit goals, but i want to make $10k in february. i think my best month was ~$3k in october, so this is a pretty lofty goal for me. it’s going to take a lot of games, and an increase in limits, but i’m putting it out there. it’s time yardle does some damage in other areas of his life and $10k would be a huge help in so many ways.

i guess i’ll leave you with that for now. coming up, i’m going to start posting some links to different sites, articles, and threads i’ve been reading. some are poker related and some are not. i’ve also been considering making a video of me playing, just to give my non-poker playing readers a glimpse of what all this rambling has been about. if you think that might be something interesting/entertaining to watch, let me know, and i’ll get to it sooner rather than later.

and oh yeah, happy new year.

i just spent the better half of the day trying to remove a virus/malware/trojan/worm/terrorist from my computer and after many attempts, i’m finally declaring victory.

i woke up this morning, opened up my computer, and immediately found a live stream of the vikings/cowboys game. after trying a couple different ones, i found one that was good and watched the game. after the game was over i noticed an icon in the bottom right system tray that said ‘antivirus live’ with a pop up that notified me of a ’security alert.’ i was immediately concerned because i knew i didn’t have any kind of antivirus software on my computer. after trying to close it, another window popped up that showed it was ’scanning my computer’ for viruses. shit! after making multiple attempts to stop it, another notification popped up that said it had found about a million infections on my computer and asked me if i wished to remove them or ‘continue unprotected.’ i clicked nothing and then it said something about ‘revaluting’ my computer. that’s right. hackers can’t spell. at this point i pressed the power button on my lappy and booted up the mac os to get on google and find out exactly what was going on.

i found a plethora of information about this malware and found multiple different methods to remove it. i tried many until i found one that finally worked. how frustrating.

i really wish all of the poker software companies like holdem manager and table ninja would get it together and develop mac versions of their software so i could be done with windows once and for all. crap like this is just one of many reasons why windows just shouldn’t exist. this is only the second time i’ve had a virus on my computer and the previous time i caught it immediately as well. it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to avoid this stuff because, in general, the people that develop these things are so stupid they probably struggle just to tie their own shoes.

/frustrated rant

pokerwise, 2010 is off to a mediocre start. i’ve already endured one 53 buy-in downswing in the 459 games i’ve played so far, which was no fun at all. after recovering from that i’m up just a small amount of profit on the month.

the last 3 days i’ve managed to play 100+ games a day and i feel good about being able to continue that for the rest of the month. i have some good incentive to keep me going all the way through the middle of february so we’ll see how it goes. i have some lofty poker goals for 2010 so i hope things ramp up soon.

i hope you’re all off to a good start for 2010!

this might get lengthy, so get comfortable…

i’m sitting here in my living room, dog at my feet, fire in the fireplace, and snow falling outside, realizing how great it has been to be home for christmas. i’ve been out the last 3 nights visiting with long lost friends who are also in town for the holidays and i wouldn’t trade that time for anything in the world. i had forgotten how good i had it in the friend department back in high school and this trip has provided a great reminder.

i got my wish for christmas in the form 2+ feet of snow. it was awesome. here are some pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2217755&id=59500796&l=37f2ef9d21

(i’ve realized this blog doesn’t post pics all that well so the link will have to do for now)

dad and i plowed ours and the neighbor’s driveway 3 different times throughout the storm. it was one of those times when if you didn’t have a solid 4wheel drive vehicle, you just weren’t going anywhere. luckily, dad has a nice f250 that can’t be stopped so we got to go out and play

tomorrow i’ll be traveling down to eau claire, wisconsin, home of my alma mater, to spend new years with some more long lost friends. i can’t wait to see everyone. some of them i haven’t seen since i left eau claire in 2006 so it should be a good time catching up with them all. i’m looking forward to eating at a couple of my favorite spots (el patio!) while i’m there as well.

on new years day i’ll be flying to vegas for the beer pong main event tournament. i won’t be playing, rather, just helping out where i can. my friend from indiana (some reading this blog may know him as L0bstaM0bsta) works for bpong.com so i’m just going to hang out and do whatever needs to be done for him. it should be a good time so i’m looking forward to it. i’m hoping this trip will involve slightly less poker playing than last time.

after vegas it’s back to los angeles and back to the grind. i’m actually kind of looking forward to getting my volume back up and puttin’ in some time at the tables. i feel like my game is in pretty good shape right now and 2010 is going to be a good year financially speaking. one thing that will be different is that i plan to have regular coaching from many different people throughout the year to keep myself sharp and to keep the improvement train choo chooing along. i’ve been on this train for almost a month now and so far, it’s been really good for me. it was a tough pill to swallow after being a winning player for so long, but i’m glad i did it.

this may be my last post until the middle of january or so so i wish all of you a happy new year. have fun, be safe, and i’ll see ya in 2010.