Poker: 31 July

Had a few poker hands this afternoon. Trading was slow. Will blog on the Oanda platform training we went some time next week.

Ups & down in the session. I had two tables at once. Both NL Hold'em 9 players normal ring games. It went well earlier on. I noted down some bad beats (not pretty bad) though but some mistakes which I think I have to train on and watch out for in future.

Firstly, i was pretty silly. I had a pair of Js in hole. I raise on pre-flop. Only one person followed. Flop turn out to be K K 9. Opponent checks. Thats where I got it. I all-in (left about sixty cents there) thinking K has got nothing to do with him. He calls. Thats it.

Second mistake was, I had a pocket A J. I hit ace pair on flop. I didnt raise that much, I raised slowly, slowly than should be. J came out at the turn. I still raise but not very much. Opponent calls and hit a straight on river. I should have nailed him out earlier.

Some players play pretty tight in REAL money. But some play very loose. I encountered a player who buy-in double my from what I had, and finishes much earlier than me. He seems to call on every round, to the point that as though he does not have a 'Fold' button installed.

I only remembered one big win from the session. I had suited K 8 (hearts). I hit flush on flop. I raise. One of them (left) called. The turn, turn out to have another Heart. He raised. I hesitated and re-raised him. The only card he could win me is if he had an Aces heart. He calls and I grabbed the pot.

(Flushed, not royal nor straight though)

I lost overall (win in first table but lost in the second table - that all in thing). But I found myself improving, not being intimidated that much by real money, although it is micro. By the way, I was looking for a Poker Tracker (track your statistics) over the net but couldn't find any. Some are way too expensive. Blackberry mobile does not have it either. (BB Poker Life Lite doesn't track micro lots) Wonder if anyone who has any sort of tracker to recommend?

Result: -$1.12

Black.

Our Twitter and Currensee

Bottle asked me whether I'm free to go to this fair INVEST Fair 2010, held in Singapore on 21-22 August 2010. I hope to get the time to go there and have a look.

Anyway, my night classes has started this week, so expect less posts, trading and poker. We will do short miscellaneous updates via our twitter (BlacknBottle), please follow us for more short updates. I will tweet mini updates, besides, my FXDD trade results (individual trade) are also posted there live automatically whenever I trade. Thanks to Currensee.

Currensee is expanding and building up more and more features. They have also added a few new supported brokers. You need a live account to join. You can form a team and know their position. Or you can earn "credit" and attend Live webinar, quite an interactive social networking site. It's like a facebook for currency traders.

Sign up Currensee via my link and remember to send me your account name so that I can add you as a friend. It's free.

Night peeps. May the pips be with you.

Black.

We have Oanda platform training tomorrow :)

Daniel Negreanu

I watched a few of his videos over the weekend, interesting the way he analyse people's card based on people's action. Amazing.

Here is one of them.

Anyway, this video has 1.4 million views. I'm not surprise you are already one of 'em.

Just Words

Thanks Jules for the comment on my recent tilt. Reply comments thru' post, something I learned from you. And I welcome you and "Scooby" on your first comments in my blog, thank you guys for the encouragement. Ironically, I wrote tons of trading posts and only got L&W his first comment here in this blog with a poker post.

I watched the movie Rounders (1998) on Texas Hold'em recently, after gettin' quite interested into poker. Very nice show with a lot of quotes. One of them he mentioned I find it quite true. He experienced a bad beat at the start of the show (lost his $30,000 bankroll with a full house of nines over aces to Teddy KGB's hidden aces over nines), and had never touch poker for the next nine months.

Before he sat down in his first poker table after such long break he said to himself (narrative): " In Confessions of a Winning Poker Player, Jack King said, "Few players recall big pots they have won -- strange as it seems -- but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career." Seems true to me, 'cause walking in here I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I can't stop thinking how I lost it."

How true that is, even in trading sense, as it's exactly how I felt about myself. Thanks for sharing with me your experiences too Jules. Learning poker/trading rules are definitely easy, but mastering ourselves is another story. But that is what I want to do, I hope to see myself succeed some day.

I had LIVE poker for the first time with my family over last weekend for fun, and we really enjoyed ourselves. My brother-in-law went fanatic and went to buy a set of poker chips the next day and we're looking forward to another round of battle this weekend.

Taking it easy tonight. I'm playing fake money poker online for some leisure time.

+$1 million (well, fake money)

Black.

21 July, Eur/Usd, Aud/Usd - Hold Your Ground

I am back. Well, I wasn't gone anyway. How I wish I have summer vacation like everyone else. Worst still, my new semester of night classes are resuming next week.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement after the "tilt" night last week, like what FX called it. You want a better overview of my tilt night, other than going back to my previous post, you can read an insight here on what kind of behavior I was experiencing in the process of a losing night, for traders.

As always, after such night, the next trading day will be taken slowly. I had 20 minutes trades (about there) tonight, no tens of time in between this time. :) I took 2 trades, one in Eur/Usd, one in Aud/Usd. It went against me at start. Good thing was, I didn't went against myself. I held. Price went towards my take-profit and I was out peacefully.

Below is a shot of Eur/Usd in 1M chart. I traded 15M chart for both btw, for screen-shot sake. More significant downtrend off Eur/Usd. Bounces off 20SMA beautifully.


Aud/Usd in 15M. Short after reversal. Take profit at previous support.


+22 pips. Long way home.

Black.

16 Jul, Eur/Usd, Aud/Usd - Trading Vs Buy/Sell

I think I have forgotten what is trading. I only remember what is buy and sell, but not trading. Please wake up Black. Like what Harvey call it, Max-Loss-Day. This is something I never experience in my earlier days big loss, although the loss are not as much as lastime, but I felt like tonight I simply went out of control.

Just take a peak at the number of trades I took. Anyone will call me crazy. Any pro-trader watching me trade will smack me in the back of the head and say "Go home and sleep Black! You are not fit to trade!". Now I start to have doubt in myself on this journey of trading.

Summing up the night, basically my winning (or rather losing) went like this:
+5
-8
+2
+4 (struggling)
-10
+3
+7
+5
-20
+4
+5
+3 (struggling again)
-19
..
..

..and the list goes on.

The more I want it back, the lower my bankroll became. hmm.. emotionally unstable right now. I should learn from Jules not to dwell into losses, its a hard process though especially when it just happened. Sorry L&W, seems like my kit kat break is inevitable. :)

Obviously, under this kind of transition (big loss), I myself is to blame, although another part of me feels like gunning down the chart. Seems like the more you want to win, the harder it gets. The market is simply a formless figure everyone is trying to grasp. Like the sand in the palm the more you want it the faster it slip out of your hand, well maybe it only applies to me.

I'ma go get a drink. Criticism are welcomed, else I will take it as you have given up on me.. getting pessimistic here.. :D

Please. Don't try this at home.

Eurusd


Audusd
How I stopped out just on the point when market reverse.

-80 pips

Black.

Rest Night

No trades, no poker tonight. Only yogurt, granola, boxer and the couch.. yes and the tv.


Black.

Poker: 14 July

Same tourneys today. I wanted to play ring games but I think I need more seat-down time if I want to play them, but I don't. Quite consistent for both rounds. At the edge of losing but good card gave me the chance to fight back.

I feel that in tourney, when ur stakes are running low, you have to push forward as long as you have great cards eg. AA, AK, KK, KQ, or suites pictures - at least for me. Otherwise, the blinds will eat you up alive.

Result: +$1.80

13 Jul, Eur/Usd + Poker - Put'em Back Down.

Trade went badly. I am in going thru an awful process. At those times I don't know is it my stop/loss are too tight or something. Eur/Usd keep rising and rising. I had many scalps in between. I had a full size lot barely touching my take-profit and it reverse all the way to my stop/loss, check out the printscreen below.


One of those days. Traded and traded again.

I had poker in the night too, before this awful trades. I played two tourney tables, Hold'em Turbo Double or Nothing again. I dominated the first table and lost the other at 6th place, damn. Although the river came an Ace that paired with my A+Q, the turn had already spell out the game when his third 9 came out. I had to give it a shot as my capital is running out and the Blinds are very very high.

Very very bad night again.

FX: -50 pips.
Poker: -$0.20

Black.

12 Jul, Eur/Usd - Pick It Up

Back trading my FXDD account above with my MT4. Well, I felt a lot calmer trading with this. I know it is more "expensive" due to the spread cost. But I don't find myself jumping in all the time. Important thing tonight is to pick myself back first.

Sold the Eur/Usd pair on after a little pullback on the generally downtrend. Picked up my first position with +5 pips on full size. I still have running trades with smaller size position and tight stop-loss. I find that once it break 38.2 fibo level I should be out of it, else I should let it run.

Congratulations to Spain on World Cup 2010! Watching the match (2:30am in a Monday morning) makes me a zombie at work today. :)

Gonna get some rest.

Black.

PS: Closed all @ +21pips.

Time For Kit Kat

I did badly since July. I think I need to take a break and do some self-study and re-focus. I did bad because of noob reasons. In my last post, my aussie trades failed me, or rather I have failed myself. The pair I longed, moved all the way down 80+ pips after barely touching my take-profit 10 pips away. I got stopped out.

Firstly, I forgot the fact that take-profit should be targeted at price R/S level, not where I want. I put my take-profit at 0.8800 typical double-zero level and stubbornly holding it even when price was about 0.8780 area. I should know better that it's not everyday Sunday kinda thing.

Secondly, I should only be trading at my usual time. New York session and when I'm most comfortable, not anywhere when I can log-in and do it. I need some serious cut down.

I may post some poker results if I do play but I will take things easy. Time for theory lessons (my ordered books are here :)) and I'm halfway through in Zen And The Art of Poker. 

Good luck guys!

8 July, Eur,Gbp,Aud/Usd - Long Day

Traded most of my day. Scalp a lot. This and that. Basically, I think I need to cut down the number of trades and take each position more seriously. Less words more screens today.

Scalp couple of trades in Eur/Usd.

Got killed by the cable bad data release on Halifax & Manufacturing Production.

My only hope now lies with Aussie. Take-profit @ 0.8800. But it seems awful. It went up to 0.8790 and now back at 0.8758. :(

Black.

Strange Encounter & One of Those Days

I have recently switched all my bookmarks/google-following into simply a firefox add-on call feedly. Quite cool for a feed reader. At least now I gathered all my sites which I frequently visit into a single location and then only turn on the feedly and read, instead of visiting each sites. On top of that, it synchronizes with Google Reader.

Well, here's a strange encounter I had with Oanda customer service. Oanda Asia Pacific here in Singapore conduct a bi-weekly platform training in their head-office. So I receive an email and decide to ask Bottle along. I send an email to them to register for two seats this month-end. It shd be useful. Here was the email correspondences:

Me: Hi, I'm registering for 2 seats for your 30th July session, Black and Bottle, looking forward to your confirmation.
Oanda: Dear Alan, Thank you for your interest in OANDA Asia Pacific (OAP). We are pleased to confirm your attendance for our platform training on 30th July. Looking forward to see you.

Me: Hi, This is Black, not Alan. I have registered for two seats in my previous email. Please confirm, thanks.
Oanda: Dear Black, My apologies on that. Yes, we have confirmed your attendance for tomorrow. Thank you.

Me: In my previous email, it was 3 attendance, for 30th July, not tomorrow!!!! (exclamation mark added in this post)

That officer called me the next morning and apologize to sort things out. Well, I wasn't angry, just find it interesting. I wouldn't say the same if it's talking about funding/withdrawing my money lol.

Anyway, today I mobile traded again and got punched in the face. It seems that the market was trying to tell me to take him seriously. It's not something I can simply buy/sell while sitting in the office. I longed the cable and it went 4 pips before my take-profit and went back all the way down into the drain. I came home to recover a little bit back. But was out too early, due to fear brought in from the day.

-50 pips.



Black.

2 July, Eur/Usd - Non-Farm Payroll

Time of the month again. I fired up both my Oanda & FXDD, thinking that I would be trading with FXDD tonight, due to pip that spread as much as 3.5 (Eur/Usd) for Oanda. But NO. I didn't touch FXDD at all, not that I didnt touch, but it wouldnt allow me. As soon as the data release, I longed. FXDD MetaTrader4 replied me "No Connection". Wth? Otherwise it would be a "slippage" occurred, most of the time.

Forget it, I thought. I threw it aside and popped back to Oanda and started buying. I was up a lot. And then greed got me and I bought at 1.2610 resistance level. Dead meat. Based on the volatility, I was switching side all the time (between buying & selling). I switched very fast, taking bit by bit. Seriously, I couldnt count the amount of transaction I took tonight, let alone the pips.

After initial losses, I admit the revenge monster did appeared. But not towards the pips size luckily, but still diving back into the chart, dangerously. I don't know how to count the pips I took, if I try I would have post this next morning by the time I finish calculating the winning & losing pips.

I don't know why but I have the tendency to go in a lot of trades with Oanda. When I flipped back to MT4, I juz don't feel like doing anything. Exhausting, time to take a rest. Happy weekend everyone!

+0.6%


Black.