Stuff & Things

Boom or bust

2011-11-24T16:10:00.001Z

Yes I know the posts are getting less frequent. Yes I know any regular readers have probably deleted the link. I have excuses though! Welcome back to the not-so-wacky world of Doggystylepoker.

Has there been any poker then? No, not much. I recently swapped ipoker skins to a slightly better deal . Obviously I have a new user name and all the noob run-good associated with it. Plus there’s the added bonus of pillaging those ‘beginner’ tables reserved for recent sign-ups. I really want to up the volume but just haven’t had the time. This has to be my lowest volume year since I started. And so to the excuses…

Well the bottom has fallen out of my industry. From what I can see there is a so-called double dip recession coming and its going to be brutal. Companies are struggling like mad out there. Just yesterday in the news we heard that Thomas Cook Holidays went cap in hand to their bank to rejig loans they took out just weeks prior. That is exactly where we are at my place. A 3rd and final round of redundancies in couple of days will see us with a greatly reduced workforce ahead of our busiest time of the year. I say final round – I don’t think we could possibly cut anymore jobs. Maybe they could get me to do everything… oh wait, I already do. We are literally closing our eyes, pressing “All-in” and hoping to bink when sending the monthly wages transmission to the bank. Its that bad. Needless to say with me working in the finance area I’m putting in some serious shifts and getting endless stick on the phone each day from people wanting some dosh. That alone makes it hard to go home and wind down enough to want to load up some tables. We are busting our balls to stay afloat and I’m not sure if everyone here appreciates the game of brinksmanship we are playing with some of the big boys (Revenue and Customs). Default on them dudes and it’s the dole queue. Or ironically I would likely be playing poker for a living for a while!

But its not all bad. I do still get to relax. Local league pool season is in full swing – going ok – we’re near the top as usual. I won 14 out of 16 for the county side, but we failed to qualify for the national finals. Not sure if I will return to that full-time though. Snooker is also going ok. We’re now in the 2nd tier and facing some handy sticks. My home form is awesome but away form patchy. The team sit in 3rd place early doors and I think it will be an incredibly tight battle for the two promotion places.

The youngests football season is also well underway. The game at his age is refreshingly honest. No cynical fouls, no bad language, no spitting, just lots of little ‘uns swarming round the ball until it ends up in the net. Normally our net. They get battered every week but still enjoy it. My lad is current top scorer – one goal ahead of our next best marksman “Own Goals”. He improves every week and is mad for the game – probably because of the extortionate goal bonus he negotiated with me. I swear he hadn’t looked like scoring until we struck the deal. 5 shots, 5 goals and an empty pocket later… Hustled.

Keep on keeping on

Weekend Warrior

2011-09-13T14:59:00.001+01:00

Here we go again! Another post you lucky people. The distinct lack of postings on this here poker blog is because of the distinct lack of poker being played. Summer time and a busy old schedule have made me something of a weekend warrior on the felt. That will all change as the nights draw in and the recreational players return for the winter. The few sessions I’ve put in over recent weeks have all been “ok” but I’m a little rusty.

So what’s been keeping me from the tables? Well kids stuff has taken up some time. Youngest is mad for his football so that accounts for a good chunk of time (training, matches and the inevitable “Daddy lets go to the park” kick-abouts). The second youngest starts her clubs and stuff this week too. I’ve also been kicking on with the study towards my qualification. Aced the last exam. Go me. The snooker and pool seasons are about to start again next week and I’ve kept my arm in by playing a couple of county games for Buckinghamshire. Just in their ‘b’ team, but that’s been kind of fun (I was an 'a' team regular until I stopped playing 5 years ago). I said I’d play the remaining fixtures and with a couple of wins the team will qualify for the nationals. I won't have played enough to go to that though unless we apply for dispensation. Got to get there first though...

That, folks, is about that. Watch this space for reports of my poker volume going back up and that first million rolling in.

* Insert witty title *

2011-07-19T16:33:00.000+01:00

OMG, dead blog alert. Here’s your overdue update in number form:

29. The number of days off poker I had recently. Most refreshing. Took all my money off of all but one site and spent liberally. I’ve just stuck some back on an ipoker skin because for all its faults I ‘have its number’ so to speak.
12. That’ll be the number of tables I’ve started playing to get back in the swing. I’m clearing a bonus so volume is key. Will re-evaluate if its +EV when I’ve played enough hands.
0. That’ll be the money I had in Full Tilt when it all went ‘West Ham’. Phew.
3. The number of hours per week that I’ve lost by agreeing to get the youngest into a local football team. Two days a week sat in some grotty pavilion. Great. I can see why parents get into coaching – it’s the lesser of two evils.
2. The number of games remaining in our pool league and also the number of consecutive titles we’ve won. The competition all faded away and we kept winning without drama.
15. The number of minutes it takes to walk to our new home venue in the snooker league. We’ve moved to an old social club which used to cost a bomb to get into but has now done away with membership and gone down the ‘let any old idiot in’ route. So now they’ve got some idiots! Top restaurant attached too. Oh and they sell my favourite beer too. Get in there! For any snooker fans reading at our presentation night we had it confirmed from a top 16 pro that everyone on the tour KNOWS John Higgins was guilty as hell and has got away as light as a Doggy cold 4-bet.

That’s all your getting. I’m off on my hols next week (not that any further postings were due). If any burglars read this – there’s nothing worth taking – the only shit I bought with my withdrawals was fine wine and food.

Woof

I want to meet Howard Marks if i can but they say that i can't

2011-06-13T13:26:00.000+01:00

S’up blogosphere.

In a fit of peak just after my last post I withdrew all my iPoker monies. The old dog of a PC had restarted 3 times during a session (only happens with iPoker clients – taking up too much CPU???), plus I’d dropped a few buy-ins to nittier dudes than me and I hadn’t seen a fish in like 2 years. And so the search for a new home began. I listed some options in the previous post and went for none of them. I am now one of the 5 regs on Everleaf. Traffic is poor but you’re never going to be without a huge fish on your table as Italians are allowed on this network (or perhaps just on my particular skin, im not sure). Having said all that I’ve played poorly there so far and I’m down a few BI’s. I did start off trying to obliterate people with some laggy game and have now settled down to a 23/20 comfortable style which is proving profitable. Looks like a decent enough ‘home’ for the time being.

Easy money Retro-time – last month I stuck a few K into Betfair for the sole reason of playing the Eurovision Song contest in-running market. Started by laying Ireland for the max (Couldn’t be having Jedward) and traded some of other runners. I missed out on the Azerbaijan money train but scored a nice little profit overall. Just like the old times.

Work update. Redundancy stuff is ongoing and morale is a bit bleak. Although no specific people have been identified, its clear who will get the axe in my office. So unless someone unexpectedly chips in for voluntary redundancy the little old lady we hired in January is probably the one to go. When we hired her she was doing a job finders scheme for the long term unemployed. To say she was over-the-moon to get the gig would be an understatement. She does a good job but just doesn’t have the skills/experience of my other ladies yet. Whilst some air-head blonde from our control centres will waltz into another job, this lady will struggle due to her age. It’s a sh!t old world sometimes.

Best get back to it… paperwork doesn’t shuffle itself you know.

(My) Black Friday

2011-05-20T11:09:00.001+01:00

At just before close of play today our MD is sending out letters and emails to our entire workforce to give them the news we are making a third of them redundant. Happy weekend everyone.

I will be fine. Hey, I’m only doing the work of 3 people so I’m sure I can pick up the slack when we chop a few heads in my department. On the flip side we have grown a pair and are telling two huge customers to go do one. Culling this work and cutting costs should see us start turning profits again – one day! In the meantime I guess I’m going to have to learn to make my own coffee or work out a complicated EV calculation of taking voluntary redundancy.

On the poker front I’ve been flitting here and there. I cleared my bonus at Full Tilt by donking around at Rush. Turned a nice profit too. And received my cash out the same day. Run good or what?

I’ve also played a bit back on ipoker, a bit more on Stars, cleared my entraction account and opened an account on Merge. It’s mostly going well. I have somehow turned into a 28/24 agro monkey preflop (sometimes worse than that too). It’s something I’ll have to tone down a bit. Most importantly I need to find a settled home for a while with a decent 200nl player pool.

In other news our second snooker season has finished. We won our division by a country mile. I think we’re going to have one more crack at it next year in slightly better company. I might even have to practice a bit.

The more important game involving potting balls – pool – is also going swimmingly. Despite a couple of hiccups we’re top of the league again and its in our hands. I’m just coming into form (I hope) and knocked in the perfect set last week – one break and dish and two clearances off their break. I was out of position once so will have to rectify that tardiness!

Back to it. The company wont run itself you know.

Cashing out my Carrot Cake and rubbing it on my...

2011-04-27T14:42:00.002+01:00

...see the vid below for answers.

Bucking the one post per month trend, Doggy is back with a second April offering.

I guess you think I’m going to prattle on about Black Friday don’t you? Well I better give a passing nod to it I suppose. From a selfish perspective (what other perspective is there when you’re an online poker player?) it hasn’t made much difference to my games. There were no Americans on ipoker, entraction or Eurodonk network anyway. So its business as usual for me. With the British Isles basking in sunshine and enjoying a gazillion bank holidays at the same time, it seems its back to reg-fests at my tables. My fault really – the winter traffic picked up nicely and I didn’t play enough during those months to really benefit. I’m nearing the end of my first month on Entraction and have released a paltry sum of bonus despite putting in decent volume. I started the month by having a little fight with the EV monster which I lost. I kept grinding though and somehow I’m in the green, so I cant really grumble. I have no idea where I’ll be playing next month. Don’t fancy sticking around at Entraction. Ipoker is just a bit ‘meh’. All the other good offers around at the moment are on sites/networks with lower traffic. There is one possibility…

Full Tilt. Last week I remembered a local online comp being held on FT. I had previously taken my roll off there as all I did was sit and play RUSH 24 hours a day – not advisable for your health peoples (edit: not bad for your rakeback mind you). Upon signing in I saw the reload options and before you know it I’m sticking in a bit more than the planned $33. Less said about the tournament the better (Squeezed big early doors, flop top two, pub player has called oop with 52s and before you can say flusharama…). The money was soon back in the cashier when I solved the following equation:

RUSH – Americans = Euro’s + Canadians = Plays like the games I win in.

Looks like some value to be had there for a while. Its probably the same on Stars too. I’ve never actually deposited there (so cannot withdraw at present) so it might be time to stick something on and play the Russians!

Choices choices choices. Unless you live in the land of the free.

----------

Best record that we only went and won the next division in the snooker league. With 2 games to spare. We had some After Eights to celebrate. And Beer. And Scampi Fries. A winning combination in anyone’s world you’d have to agree. Until I stumbled accross this recommendation for Titties and Carrot Cake…

Life could be so easy, why you gotta make it so hard?

2011-04-03T19:03:00.003+01:00

I guess it’s update time again for all my deprived readers.

I’ve put in some mega low volume poker wise since the last update. A small winning month on ipoker and some mad donking around elsewhere. Work has been incredibly busy still with me doing the work of at least 2 people. Its settling down a little but some nights I’m just too tired to spell “A-Game” let alone play it.

It’s all going to change in April. I’ve moved a wedge to Entraction (VC to be precise) and plan on releasing as much of the E3500 bonus they offer. I’d have to turn zombie to attempt to get the lot but I’m going to put in as much volume as I can. The regs over there are a weird bunch and its taken a couple of days to get used to them. Plus its taken me a little while to get back in the swing of grinding. Talking of swings, one of my first sessions there was a horrific red session. I cant help think the spewy image (somehow turned into a 44/40 maniac!) I’ve set up with my new reg buddies has helped in subsequent sessions as I’ve won the lot back with some light call downs against me. In the interest of generating as many VIP points as possible I’ve also played plenty of PLO. Theres one PLO reg that always seems to be sat on multiple buy-ins across 8 tables and he’s effin AWFUL. He alone has contributed about 4 buy-ins to the “Doggys first Mirrion” fund with his overvaluing baby flushes. I dont have a tracker for PLO so i've never really bothered too much with it, but I'm sure going to have a little tickle on VC if its as soft as first impressions seem.

Right that’s it for now. Here’s a video by a dude that knows how to write songs. Unfortunately he’s doing some weird disco shit at the moment, but this is one of his earlier ones. Life could be so easy, why you got to make it so hard. Indeed.

10/20 and other stories

2011-02-15T12:21:00.001Z

S’up fishes of fishworld.

Time for some mid month ramblings from your old mucker doggy. Top of the agenda (as always) is poker. They say all good things come to an end and my foray into murky waters of ‘tiny little fishy Euro site’ is over. I was told that they didn’t like consistent winners and I might only get 3 green months before being restricted. Well after a few 4 figure sessions (brag) including a little winning adventure at 2knl (brag) I have been asked to ‘trim my volume’ – ie stop playing or start losing. My affiliate dude says the poker room manager was straight on to him as my account stuck out like a sore thumb (brag) amongst all his other accounts as mine was winning more than the lot put together (brag). Ooops. Oh well its only one skin and he’s had enough of them himself so he’s looking for skins that are a bit more winner friendly.

It was quite refreshing to play HUDless for a long period. The reads & notes became so much more important. I’m back on ipoker now and sadly I’ve got to use the HUD as all my notes are in HEM. Boo. Really getting back into it now and have added a good few % onto my VPIP and PFR. Too many Grindcore vids obv. Results are going well too.

Work is still hectic but I’ve got a grind on and with the help of a temp employee we’ve just about got everything up-to-date. My boss is telling me to take some time off when we’re back on track so I’m looking forward to that! Best get back to it… lots to do before the mighty Spurs f**k it up in Milan tonight with half a team missing.

The Light At The End of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)

2011-01-28T13:07:00.002Z

^^ Ahhh, the sound of the early 90’s in brand spanking new 2011 form. That lot have just released their debut Ellll Peeee and right good it is too.

I know, I know, I can’t come swaggering back onto the blogosphere without an explanation of blog inactivity. Where do I start?

Poker.
The year finished with a healthy 5 figure profit. Sadly the last few months have been pretty much flat line breakeven and also looooow volume (reasons coming up). I’m getting back in the swing of playing recently with some sessions on the previously posted ‘fish heaven’ site I’ve found. This HUD-less site seems to be doing good things to my game as I’m making a lot more read-based & note-based decisions rather than HUD stat based.

Health.
Been unwell for a fair while. Not good. Unfortunately not been able to sit in bed being waited on because of…

Work.
The industry I work in went mental with the recent cold snap. Job numbers were higher than ever before because of it. On top of this we bought out the contracts of a ‘rival’ company in November. The deal was incredibly good as it instantly landed us huge extra turnover for the price of employing a few of their staff. The downside? A tonne of extra work for myself and my colleagues. We coped until the lady I work with basically buckled under the pressure and is currently off as a result. Long term perhaps. So I have been doing the work of a minimum 2 people for sometime now. Remembering I’ve not been well myself its resulted in me running on virtual empty. We are recruiting to help the situation, but it’s going to be a while before it all settles down.

Briefly I looked at the job market before Christmas. I have a load of experience and thought it would be simple to find a better paid (less stressful) job. I spotted a near-perfect job, but upon getting the job specification saw that they listed a professional qualification as essential. Looking into other decently paid jobs brought up the same stumbling block. Only one thing for it…

College.
I’m now well into a home learning course to get a professional qualification. My company are paying for it too (we’re big on training here). I have that much experience I was exempted from the first levels of the course and the starting point I’m at is p!ss easy. Looking ahead at some of the course material there is some stuff that I’ve never really done much on so it will be worthwhile in the end.

And Finally.
Pool. We won our league for the first time ever. We sat on P14 W13 with two games left and just needed to beat the 2nd placed team (who were on P14 W12) to win the league. Losing would have us on the same record but heavily inferior ‘goal difference’. We lost. This meant we had to rely on them losing a re-arranged fixture against the 3rd placed team in the league – a team they seldom lose to – and we had to beat the same team in our final game. Well the miracle set of results happened and it was I who won the ‘glory’ frame. I know it's hard to believe, but much ale was consumed. We’ve already begun our new season with a solid win over last seasons runners-up (nice opening day match-up there from the fixtures computer).

Snooker. Is gay.

Rinse Repeat

2010-11-19T11:11:00.002Z

Breakeven.

Win a stack with a set

Lose one on the next table with KK / bricked super draw / underset blah blah

Rinse

Repeat

Now that would be a shite update wouldn’t it? But that’s the general gist of recent poker activity. Exciting huh?

That fishy site from the last post is just that – real fishy. Its like a throw back to the days when I first started playing cash at 20nl. Limp fold limp limp complete check, 5 people see flop, Small Blinds 82o stacks Cut-Offs over limped KK. The play at 200nl is shocking. Seriously. My colour coding notes system had to be revised. I have only one ‘positive’ colour now – red is assigned to ‘competent’ and even then some of those tagged with that open limp with alarming regularity. Major downside to this apparent gold-min is the lack of hand history – villain calls and mucks and I have no idea if he’s just called me down with TP or 5th pair. I’ve requested HH’s by email but they haven’t been sent. Also the min buy-in is just 10bb’s. There are only a few rat-holing SS’ers but loads of recreational 10bb guys who do random stuff. I’m awaiting results of withdrawal and promptness of rakeback payment before recommending to anyone.

It’s almost a relief to play on Ipoker after that. My affiliate has set up a deal with Deuces Cracked for free membership for raking a certain amount on my skin. Obviously to get his low-rakers to put some more hands in. Well I’m well above the required amount even in my quietest months, so yay free stuff. I think I’ve previously watched all the best NLHE stuff there on their ‘free’ weeks. Any recommendations warmly received.

Busy week of drinking, pool, football and snooker coming up. That difficult first million will have to wait a bit.

Big fish in a small pond

2010-11-06T21:42:00.002Z

Signed up for a new site. Just as a back-up one really so that if my main site goes down I can log in somewhere else. Check out the lobby screenshot. The figures DO NOT LIE!

Obviously software sucks, no HEM support and you have to email them for hand histories. Other than that, I'm in heaven.

Back to it, I got fish to fry
PS No you haven't missed the sites name - I haven't mentioned it :P

The 2nd most human eyes I've ever seen on a dog

2010-11-02T12:45:00.003Z

It’s that time again. Another month gone and time to update this old blog. The detailed daily planning of October went well. Unfortunately I had a lot of life shit to sort late in the month so poker came a distant last in my priorities for a period. I’ve played a few ‘meh’ sessions in the last few days to get back into it – all at 100nl where I can loosen up a bit.

In the end, October was another month of small profit. My November plan is laid out and I expect volume to be slightly higher this month - partly as a result of good planning and partly because I have been comfortable adding extra tables. I’m pretty happy playing up to 9 when at peak concentration. Probably could do 12 but my PC might not like that too much.

This months caveat is Football Manager 2011. Must…. Resist…. (at least until I’ve got out of the Swedish 4th tier with Hogaborg on FM10).

A quick stuff & things update:
Snooker. Is a shit game. Top of the league but hating every moment.

Pool. Is the schnizzles. We’re joint top with 4 games left. Our lead at the top of the drinking league is unassailable.

Rock and fkin Roll. The kids played their first gig the other night and it went really well. They opened on a bill of 5 local bands and played 4 songs. They were the only band to get into the Halloween theme – the boy being a zombie gangster and the girl a slightly more glamorous spider bride. They also played all their own material. The only downside is that it was a pretty low turn-out. Made the mosh-pit quite entertaining (and no, I didn’t… but was tempted).

Work. As of yesterday we’ve employed 18 new under-trained monkeys. GG us.

Football. Come on you Spurs.

Goooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaal

2010-10-15T13:40:00.003+01:00

Rather than post some great goals, here's some great goal celebrations

First up a small update from Doggy towers today. My daily goals thingy is working well and volume has been good. Results aside, getting 3 figures a week in rakeback is very handy. But talking of results they’ve not been too bad. A friend came over last Sunday and I got in an extra session due to our pool match being postponed. I should be a coach as I demonstrated to him my table selection methods, talked through my thought processes and proceeded to barrel two pair into flopped sets all night. I even took a break and let him click some buttons (shhhhh don’t tell anyone!). Naturally he barrelled two pair into a flopped set for a stack too. Snooker and sickness prevented me from playing for a few days and last night I experienced the happy side of variance. Nobody was around to see that though!

So I’ve talked about daily/monthly goals. Now for the long term poker goals. Well the ultimate life aim is to accumulate enough to emigrate. Many of the missus’ family are abroad in places like Singapore and Botswana. If it takes half a lifetime then it takes that long, but we want to do ‘stuff and things’ before we get too old. To achieve this we’ve agreed poker will be involved. Basically you get to a point where working 9-5 is –EV and full time poker is likely to be +EV. I’ve been around this mark for a while. My tipping point is a lot higher than most people due to a mortgage and kids. The next consideration is accumulating enough savings to cover living costs for a good period of time. The bank account I have set aside for this is filling up nicely and not far away from my target. I’ve gone over a tonne of other considerations with different people too. One friend is a football coach and constantly on the go. He’s offered fitness and dietary advice aimed at keeping yourself in peak condition for the daily grind. Another friend has offered bits of contract work doing programming providing I’m willing to learn from him first. Not sure on that one to be honest as my brother often employs ad-hoc people to do manual work which would take a bit less brain power. Most importantly, the wife is on board with it all. I will have to relocate the PC to create a work space for myself and allow her to watch Jeremy Kyle in peace.

There is a big caveat in all this. My company is currently buying out another one which could mean instant growth… possibly in the wage packet? More interestingly we are installing some new software which will allow users to work remotely. Now if I could find some role to fulfil working from home I can see huge possibilities. Also, I’m fully aware that poker is not an “until I retire” option (well, for most) and that the rug could be pulled at any time with legislation, introduction of taxes, ridiculous downswing etc. It is however a viable medium term way of living that could help me achieve a long term goal.

First things first – keep the monies coming in and reassess once all the boxes have been ticked. Watch this space.

Grind Time

2010-10-07T14:22:00.001+01:00

So this entry was going to be all about poker goals & stuff and then I saw I had been beaten to the punch by Bazclef with a cool post on said topic: Clicky

Bugger.

With the end of summer I’m knuckling down to some grinding. August and September were below-par volume wise and on reflection I have realised that I let my routine slip a bit. A little checklist of stuff that I got wrong:

• Despite the low volume I missed reviewing some sessions.
• Some regs in my games have 400 or so hands in my DB but not a single note – not good enough!
• I didn’t always run the table selection software before sitting
• A couple of videos that I intended to watch remain unwatched and a few more strat posts could have been read on poker forums

To fix all this and kick myself back into gear, I’ve knocked up a daily ‘grind’ schedule for October. It’s nothing too overexerting – all reasonable daily hands totals and plenty of days off pencilled in which I can move around if stuff crops up – but it will fix the above list. I’m not allowing myself to even start a new session before the previous one has been reviewed (and notes taken) and the first piece of software open is the table scanner. I have a few regs pencilled in for a full doggystyle review of their play and those videos will get a viewing shortly.

So far it’s worked a treat. I’m well ahead of volume and have a booked a few greenies as a bonus. I’ve even dipped my big toe into the murky unspoken world of Full Ring. I followed a couple of droolers there and found the shortstacker situation to be better than I remembered (It used to be 6 or 7 20bb’ers and a few full stacks). Could be worth checking out every now and again, especially now that a few FR buddies have been made.

I might blog something about longer term poker goals in the near future. I wasn’t going to, but that link in the first paragraph has made me think maybe I should jot it down. Join me next time for dreams of hookers and blow.

Garlic Football. Its the Future!

2010-09-30T16:26:00.000+01:00

Time to update this old blog thingy. Poker first I guess…

Despite my best intentions, I have not played a great deal recently. I have got a beautifully redecorated and retiled bathroom though (brag). It needed doing more than grinding an extra few hands to reach a target. It’s going to be a winning month, albeit small. I did endure a couple of awful sessions a few days back. You know the kind – every time you barrel with air you’re raised/floated/whatever, every time you barrel with a hand they fold. Throw in a set-over-set and suddenly you just have to quit despite position on a couple of whales. In better news though, it looks like ipoker’s numbers are rising again slightly as autumn comes around which hopefully means more recreational players. I’ve played waaaaay too much 100nl recently looking for the fishies and far too little 200nl. Mind you, I have played a fair few daytime sessions (days off work) when it’s pretty much reg-central.

In other news:
Pool – we continued our great run with a win on Sunday. It wasn’t vintage but was messy as anything due to being one of the players birthdays. We’re top of the league at drinking at least!

Snooker – is a shit game. We lost on Monday with a roped in new player and some poor play all round. A few quibbles from the opposition about the noise levels are making me think I should stick to the small table game. 3 hours of silence? Not for me on a night out thanks.

Other stuff 1 – Got dragged to the cinema t’other day. Saw ‘The Other Guys’ which was surprisingly quite funny. I don’t do films, but the wife has some kind of season ticket to the awesome local cinema and takes in a movie or two a week at off-peak times when you can have the whole place to yourself at times. Following that movie, I, errrrrr, “obtained” a copy of another one she highly recommended – “Dinner for Schmucks”. It was average and predictable and reminded me why I don’t waste my time with movies.

Other stuff 2 – Have you seen the price of replica football shirts for diddy children? Yeah, I know they charge adults a bomb but I foolishly thought kids shirts may be a little cheaper. The youngest (6) wants a shirt for his after school football club – All the other kids have United/Arsenal/Chelsea replicas and he feels left out with his Gaelic football top. I recommended he tried to use some of the GAA skills on the Arsenal fans :)

Other stuff 3 – briefly saw my grand-daughter yesterday which was awesome. She now does a whole host of words and general cuteness.

Time to depart – that difficult first mirrion won’t be made whilst I sit here typing rubbish.

Don't telegraph your passes...

2010-09-13T15:20:00.002+01:00

...You'll end up with molasses

Did anyone ever answer Sir Bob when he asked “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays?”. If anyone has his email address I’ll give him the low-down. It’s probably too late though, I hear he’s moved onto more pressing matters.

My pressing matters this fine Monday afternoon are, in no particular order:-
• Get rid of hangover
• Shuffle some papers until the clock strikes 5pm

I played in my first pool match for 5 weeks last night. We currently sit second on frame difference and we were up against the only team to beat us so far this season (albeit we had a weakened team out that night). It wasn’t pretty but we cruised to a 9-2 win. We have some tough away games coming up but if we can keep up the momentum there’s an exciting last game of the season title decider in the pipeline against the mob that are currently top. I’m sure we can muck it before then though.

Snooker starts next week and I’ll be sure to update this here blog with news of grown men crying because they have to face a century maker in the 3rd tier of a pretty mediocre league! Signing such a player is good news for me as I will no longer have the pressure of being the teams top player. Aside from us two, our new captain (who finished 2nd in the divisional rankings last season) is in good nick having won a summer singles league. Our fourth player is young Gee (see abandoned blog link on the left) who hasn’t practiced at all in the close season but was also too good for the division last term. I don’t know if our first reserve has played snooker league before, but he’s a solid pool player whose had England trials before. All in all, a pretty promising line-up that should see us at the right end of the table.

Played some of that poker stuff over the weekend. I put in a decent bit of volume again and comfortably surpassed my daily goals (tagged on extra hands to compensate for future nights out). I even made some moniezzzz and played looser than normal. This resulted in 3 swingy sessions (Fri, Sat & Sun) where I almost gave back the 4 figures I made in the first two on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I have an awesome hand that I’m going to post if I remember where this fella I had been battling with bet/3bet all-in on an AKJ two tone flop in a 3bet pot. I snap with my TP and nut flush draw and he shows 64s – no pair, no flush draw, no backdoors, pure airball. I have no recollection of ever check raise then folding in a 3bet pot on such a high wet board, so he couldn’t possibly have some sick note on me. Spazz-out of the century imo.

Sick scenes going down at work as I type…. Girl who is on maternity leave has just come in to reveal she is preggers again. This means (if my brain computes correctly) that there will be no juggling of jobs and I keep all the meaningless shit that should take a couple of hours a day but which I really stretch out to like weeks on end. Yes, this works for me. Must dash, got some paperwork to shuffle.

What should I call my 81st post on this blog?

2010-09-07T15:15:00.001+01:00

Who cares.

That last update was just what the doctor ordered. By simply putting in writing that I would increase my volume, I have stuck to the task and done so. A minimum 600 hands per session is the goal. I’ve failed just once when my play was interrupted by a “huge massive spider” incident. Apparently I’m the only human in the house who can remove such creatures. If I’m not on the shortlist for “Dad of the year” there’ll be questions. I tagged on the missing hands to the next session and I’m well ahead of the game at the moment despite having an unplanned night off to play snooker*.

On the monetary front I’ve logged loads of green sessions. I’ve been joining equal amounts of 200nl and 100nl tables due to the relative crapness of 200nl. One thing I’ve enjoyed this past week is trying out some goofy stuff with the regs. Primarily at 100nl (as its cheaper and I have more notes on dudes there) and primarily aimed at making them spaz out. I won’t list said methods here for obvious reasons but there are at least 3 guys who wont ever fold to me ever again as a result. Winning with top boat against Queen high is so much more satisfying than against a lower full house imo. That reminds me, one thing I must eliminate from my own game is flopping undersets. Bloody expensive they are.

* Snooker starts again in two weeks. I got bashed up last night by our new signing – a guy with a 120 top break in competition. Neither of us played our best games and he accounted for me 5-2. I did miss a tough black to win one frame but the two I won were pretty much ‘nicked’ with clearances on the colours. The other teams in our division are shitting it that we’ve picked up someone of this quality. Regular reports of our debauchery will appear here shortly.

Take care fishies
Dog – Underbetting since 2010

Wanna join my pop band, I hear noise pop is in?

2010-09-02T15:08:00.002+01:00

A quick update to round up last months slackness. Since my solitary August post I squeezed in a few sessions and rallied towards the end of the month. I even logged a 1800+ hand session, which for me is pretty good going. In the end I only totalled a shocking 7000 hands. Volume will improve this month I swear. I’ve set a little goal of completing at least 600 hands every time I log on. Too many times I play 200 to 400 and sign off when the tables break. This month I’m going to look for new tables and keep going a little longer ~ its not like I’m losing focus at 400 hands or anything, its pure laziness. One caveat is that if I’m running like shit I’ll quit and trudge off down the off-licence.

In “Stuff & Things” news:-

• I played snooker for the first time in nearly 2 months the other night. Knocked in a 66 missing a tough brown to beat my pb of 69.

• My brother has reached the regional finals of some pub poker thingy. Its being held this Sunday in Northampton but a glance at the casino website shows they don’t run cash games on a Sunday, so I’ll be letting the little fishy go on his own.

• Child 3 has persuaded Child 4 to join his band. This has lead to me having to fork out for her to have her own bass guitar. Could it be a good investment? Check out their first demo on their myspace page: Link. Child 3 is lead guitarist btw.

• Child 6 (aged 6) feels left out and has formed his own band. Actually, its just a duo – Me and him. We rock. He plays his home made elastic band guitar and I drown him out. We’re too cool to have a myspace page though.

• One of my most visited websites Another Link launched its ‘new site’ this week after 18 months of development. It’s a crock of shite. Myself and the guys over at iCueSport - yep anther link thought about bringing out a rival to them a year or so ago. The demo site I quickly knocked up back then beats this new one hands down. It makes me cry to think there are people out there charging good money to knock up websites that a 5 year old could make. If any readers want a decent site building, hosting and maintaining for reasonable rates, give me a shout.

Finally, a belated 1st happy birthday to my blog. Over a year of posting shit ~ that’s some achievement!

Rich...

2010-08-19T15:39:00.002+01:00

…rhymes with Titch. And I’m neither.

Its update time at last. The lack of posts has been due to the lack of poker being played. I have mitigation though:

The football season has started. Watching dodgy internet streams has got to come in front of poker yeah?

I’ve been on holiday. Taking a laptop on holiday would lead to divorce, so I mark this down as a good reason.

I’ve been pished. Work has been sh!te so have ‘wasted’ a few evenings just chilling with a glass of vino. In addition, with the pool season in full flow every Sunday night is a wash-out now as me and the boys attempt to outdrink and outplay every other team (we’re top of the league at the moment losing just one match which I couldn’t attend).

I’ve stopped running like god. The few thousand hands of 200nl I’ve played have been pretty brutal ~ you know the score: KK into Aces, AK doesn’t win a flip, QQ see’s an AKx flop everytime, blah blah blah. This has made for a pretty sucky month so far as I’ve nitted up to ride it out and played bad as a result. It’s so annoying to see spew all around you and not be on the receiving end of such donations (actually big shout to the ‘reg’ who 3 barrelled his K high into my nuts on a Q2447 board for the brightest moment of my month, mucho gracios).

As I write this post I’m finishing a third successive day at work. What’s so unusual about that? Well I actually had this week booked off FML. So I’ve been busting my balls doing 2, sometimes 3, occasionally 4 peoples work. Today I even googled “Statutory Redundancy Calculator”. We downsized last year and it was offered to all. Sadly the job market was a bit “meh” at the time. It isn’t anymore and I’ve got more experience than you can wave a stick at. On the plus side, I have accrued a serious amount of holiday. I've got a possible use for some of it... a 10 day Vipissana meditation course that a guy in my chess team (yes, chess team - don't snigger) has recently completed and recommends as a must. Not sure how I can disappear for 10 days with my current schedule but its something that is very very interesting so watch this space.

Anyways, I’m off to Sandown tomorrow to spunk my cash on the gee-gee’s. Doubt anyone will do my job whilst I’m off though.

Not posted a video for a while so here’s a random mob doing stuff which is pretty cool:-

Busto...

2010-07-30T13:37:00.004+01:00

...rhymes with 'gusto'. Oh and its also a very naughty and misleading blog title designed to get people reading :D

Friday updates seem to be ‘the thing’ this month, so here’s this weeks exciting instalment.

July is coming to a close and it’s another good one. Yet again I’ve won more than I take home in a month at work. By a good margin too. Therefore, I’ve made a conscious decision not to post results anymore. This appears to be a common trait amongst bloggers once they hit a certain point in their poker careers. Friends read this blog and it’s starting to feel uncomfortable posting up £X,000 wins. Plus it’s hard to plead poverty down the pub to avoid getting a round in.

Despite the profits, my game hasn’t been anywhere near ‘A’ game standard recently. A few things have concerned me. I can’t put my finger on them all but I’ve made some disappointing calls versus weaker players and played a bit too passive against some of the regs. I did go through every hand on two regs that were giving me trouble and did a bit of profiling. One was a very tight player and my conclusion from studying all his VPIP hands and future play with him is that he probably had it every time he made me sigh-fold. The other reg has given me no problems since either. I think this highlights a good point with regard to emotional control – don’t get carried away thinking someone is gunning for you and trying to own you – it’s often not the case and some study of their tendencies in HEM will prove/disprove.

Volume has been a bit disappointing due to obvious seasonal factors (wahey the sun has come out!). Also, the 200nl traffic has been a bit low all month despite Pokerscout showing a mini-upswing since the World Cup ended. The upturn must be at micros or something as I’ve had to add in some full ring and 8-seat stuff on occasion to make up my 200nl quota. My other hobbies include watching paint dry…

What else is occurring in the [x] stuff and things department? Well as predicted in my last post, my mates kick-boxing debut ended in defeat. He lost on points to a big Polish dude who’d had numerous previous bouts to his name already. It was a good evening with boxing and full contact bouts to keep us entertained. All my mates club team-mates were also having their first proper fights (and all against experienced fighters) and all lost – bar one fella who drew when to all our untrained eyes it appeared he won easily. Home refereeing eh!

Finally, the football season is rapidly approaching and Man City are about to pull of a coup by signing this guy:-

We're off to the drugstore to whistle at girls

2010-07-23T16:11:00.004+01:00

Actually I'm off to some place in Bedfordshire tomorrow to watch my mates first proper kick-boxing bout. I think it's kick-boxing. It might be some other form of martial arts. I'm not really into all this MMA stuff but can't miss the opportunity to see the big poof prance around in pink shorts and get beaten up by his rather mean looking Polish opponent. Actually the lad has done well getting to where he is. We spoke about 9 months ago about his aims and he's put in some serious dedication and training to achieve them. I told him at the time I'd quite like to be crushing some 200nl online by now. Guess what? :D

Just a short post as I'm knackered after staying up to stupid o'clock watching Spurs beat New York Red Bulls in a meaningless friendly. We played a back four that included four, yes four, Right Backs. Only we could take 6 right backs on a pre-season tour and still be linked with Micah Richards. I guess you can never have enough Right Backs.

Ooooh one last thing - some kindly reg from my games has posted a MILLION hands on a well known poker hand forum. And left all the regulars names in. And left them viewable to the general public. Schooooooolboy error. I will know his game inside out by my next session.

Proper Tilt

2010-07-16T09:44:00.003+01:00

Awesome cross-post from PokerMK about the Xbox game Red Dead Redemption (thanks to MeanMint for allowing me to share):

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not many gamers in this forum, but I thought I would share a fun element to this highly addictive video game.

You play a cowboy out for revenage against a former gang leader and have to complete many tasks along the way.

In the game you can also take part in many side games, one of which is Texas Holdem.

Last night I sat down, in a local bar and played against 4 mean looking chaps, and threw in my $25 and collected my chips. Doing pretty well, until I was dealt 6c 6h

I raised and was called twice. Flop was 9s 6s Kh, I bet out to get rid of the flush. I was raised. I reraised. Raised again. I re-raise. In the end we are all in.

Turn brings Jc and the river 9h.

I turn over my fullhouse, only see that the guy had Kd 9d.

I was out, and a bit peeved by the beat. The beauty of this game, as with all open ended games like this, you can do whatever you want.

So I pulled my Winchester rifle out and blew the C***'s head off. Perhaps not the right thing to do, but it's make believe, and I'm pretty sure that this computer generated character felt nothing.

Wow did I feel better. Sadly though the local law enforcement officers were non too pleased with this and I had to spend the next 30 Minutes in spralling gunfight accross the plains.

I managed to evade the law and get my WANTED bar down to so I could carry on about my business.

NB: I would never condone this in real life.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that tops the odd bit of mouse abuse that I used to do in the past.

What's that coming over the hill?

2010-07-14T10:25:00.002+01:00

Morning blogosphere. The big bad world of Ipoker is back up and running and not before time. As at Monday I had played the grand total of 4000 hands for the month. I won’t be making my first mirrion (sorry, difficult first mirrion) with that kind of volume. So getting on the grind, I put in a decent session on Monday night dropping like $590ish and playing pretty bad. Apparently I run below EV for the session. At first I thought this was a mistake. I mean, I NEVER run below EV. In fact I’m the only poker player on the planet that runs above EV. How? I summon up my pal “The Above EV monster”. So I gave him a call and he popped round for my Tuesday session to restore the equilibrium:

Yeah so I played pretty bad Tuesday too. Luckily one read at 400nl (yeah I know, but there was a buddied drooler sitting) won me a half stack early doors (against the buddied drooler btw - vindication!). The odd pot here and there kept me going until I found myself sat in position with an aggro monkey @ 200nl. He flats a 3bet out of position and insta (over)jams a Ten high flop. He’d just pulled this same stunt on someone else, so I’m like meh I call with the absolute nuts (well AK, but it looks pretty). Needless to say he had toppest of top pairs and I backdoor a flush instead of hitting my regulation 6 outs. Same villain kindly donates a stack soon after when he foolishly gets all-in with a set against my bullet-proof TPTK. How very silly of him – discounting my propensity to backdoor another flush. Cheers Monster.

So the volume problem has been partially banished and I’m hoping to get a lot of hands in this week. I’ve got my hand history review routine nailed down now. With the wife at work until 7.30, I get in from work just after 5.15 and sort dinner. Washing up and other housework follow generally leaving me at least 45 mins to settle down and go through the previous days hands. Firstly I take a look at the big winning and losing hands. Next up I filter for all decent sized pots that get to showdown (this can take a while if you’ve been sat with calling stations). Periodically I filter for specific scenarios: Missed double-barrel opportunities, spots where I’ve peeled flop and folded turn etc. What I really need to do is work on profiling some regulars. I was playing the other week and being sweated by Steve (blog link added to left) and a reg sat down to my right. Before his stats popped up I remember saying something like “He’s good. I think he’s quite aggro”. Then the stats appeared and he was 18/14 with a 1.0 aggression factor. But I have endless troubles against him. So that’s my task for the week – HEM review of troublesome regs.

I’ll leave you with the PTR profile of one of the less troublesome regs I keep sitting with. He has a pretty strange style (something like 32/20) and is rumoured to be a pretty famous snooker player. Interesting.
Clicky linky thingy

Was it like this "Back in the day"?

2010-07-09T23:23:00.002+01:00

Ipoker restricted to 1 cash table per player atm. Obviously very few running, so jumped on a E2/E4 table and found the fishiessssssssss.

We're going down the pub...

2010-07-09T10:44:00.001+01:00

...Cos' we can't play online

GG Ipoker

The whole network has been lagging / having epileptic fits / disconnecting / doing weird shit with balances etc for the last DAY AND A HALF (and counting). It’s totally unplayable and it will further help to relegate the network to a distant 4th in the rankings. Such a shame as obviously there are some sweet deals on some of the skins and I genuinely like playing there. The play is different to the sites with US traffic and I’ve become used to our own brand of Ipoker fish. So faced with an evening watching Corrie or re-arranging my sock draw, I decided to see what pennies were in my other poker accounts:
Full Tilt. Nope, cashed all this out to pay for Christmas (and to stop me playing Rush every time I had 2 seconds free)
Betfair. Emptied this account years ago but have some pennies in there for some settled bet or other. Remembered their software sucks.
Cake. Cashed out the second I cleared the deposit bonus due to disconnecting every 3rd hand.
Betdaq. Got some money on this exchange but it looked a bit of a hassle to set up the poker just to play with it.
Stars. Good old stars. Never deposited there and ran $5 free monies to $1600 for a ‘laugh’. Stars transfers are great for paying for stuff so I’ve spent most of it but have enough to play a few micro tables. Woohoo.

Conclusion: Need to keep some back-up monies in Neteller or on a back-up site. Well hello Ongame !

Viva La France!

2010-07-06T10:20:00.002+01:00

Never thought I’d say this, but big respect to our gallic cousins for their recent strike action on Pokerstars.fr. Insane rake FTL. If the same kind of thing ever happened to the British poker market, we’d probably all just have a bit of a whinge followed by a nice cuppa to get over it. Of course, the French have always liked a bit of a strike so I’m sure this one didn’t take much organising.

Over on ipoker it looks like all the fish are on strike too. Where are they? Outside enjoying the summer perhaps? July has started well for me but the tables are so dry. I’ve played a couple of decent sessions (volume wise) but the rest have been short little “I cant see where my money is coming from on this table” affairs. My crappy PC hasn’t helped matters either. Last night I was ready for a decent session and it restarted 5 minutes into my first attempt and 0.00001 seconds into my second (just posted a BB). Mind you I won $97 in those 5 mins, so ship the green one!

In between playing I’ve been helping out my buddy Gee (see redundant blog link on the left). After a long period out of poker, he now has a bit of time on his hands and we’re working on his micro game. I’ve been over a load of his sessions and even played a couple of 20nl sessions on my old account where he sweated me. One table amused me greatly. Some idiot reg was giving chat abuse to the table fish and, well, everyone apart from me. He was quoting PTR figures left right and centre. I can only guess he must have been a slight winner or something and thought he was king. Funnily he didn’t mention my PTR stats. Seeing as we were 3BI up and the fish kept reloading, I started sticking up for him in chat. Cheering him on every time his illogical K7s shove held and generally tilting the idiot reg. Just like the pigeon feeding fella in Blur’s Parklife, it gave me a sense of enormous well-being. BTW, the top winners at that level are all like 17/14, 16/4 (seriously) and 14/10. It’s like another world. Here's hoping I can get him crushing there soon.

Our pool season is 4 matches old now and we’re 3 and 1. Sadly I missed the only defeat. All of our wins have been 6-5 and in the two that went to deciders – yours truly did the business. It’s a great feeling knocking in the win down our place as we have a great support from the locals. All the regulars, all the darts players, hell – even the Sunday night bingo players – can be seen cheering us on in tight matches. Our team has been bolstered by a new signing I recommended to the skip. He lives just around the corner from my brother (a mercurial talent but unwilling driver), so we have two players for the price of one. Bargain.

Our Snooker league is still a couple of months from restarting but we’ve only gone a pulled off a transfer coup there too. Last years skipper has called it a day so we’ve signed a guy who is one of the best players in the city. Since taking up pool, his interest in snooker has diminished, but he has a 120 break to his name and is forgoing a season in the top flight to play in the 4th tier (lol). There is a downside though… he’s Scottish so there’s nae chance he gets a round in :P

Free Giraffe For All Readers

2010-07-01T10:07:00.003+01:00

It is bargain bonanza ‘twice as much for your money Thursday’ on Doggystylebragging today. Not only do you get the standard monthly review, but you also get a half-yearly review too. And on top of that, I give you a free giraffe. What other blog gives you value like that? Cutting my own throat with this I am…

June
Made $3.2k before bonuses
Played the majority at 200nl
Table selected fairly well considering the new pool of regs to decipher and the frequent dryness of the tables due to the World Cup
Didn’t really tap into my ‘A’ game much. On the flip side, I didn’t plumb the depths of ‘C’ game often either. Something to address for July I feel
Read some books
Reviewed all my sessions and did the old note taking thing

The first 6 months of 2010
GraphyGiraffey above, includes all my accounts for the year
Winnings = $12k before bonuses, in nearly 80000 hands.

Erm, yeah, a lot of stuff has clicked and fallen into place. Got me a good little framework of a game to work with and build on. 2009’s final post stated my aim to continue the momentum that was building back then and I feel I have.

For the rest of the year I’m looking to replicate the first 6 months success. I aim to get a significant amount of 200nl hands under my belt to see whether I am winner or just a lucky donk. I want the bankroll to be solid enough to be able to chase them buddy listed fish up the levels (400nl, 500nl, 600nl – god I hate it when I see them and their free money sat higher up). I also need to build the bankroll so its able to withstand regular withdrawals (could do with installing some new windows – if any double glazing salesmen read this then don’t call me, I’ll call you).

So in checklist form:-
• Repeat Jan-June success
• Some 200nl volume to establish whether a winner or not
• Be able to take shots at higher games
• Be comfortable withdrawing
• Keep improving, keep learning, more ‘A’ game, first million

Public Health Warning:

2010-06-25T10:21:00.001+01:00

This post is full of win. So full of win you might overdose on win. We recommend you limit your daily win intake.

Win 1. So the mighty England progress to the Last 16 with a bit of help from our little yiddo Defoe.

Win 2. This means I can finally get down the pub and watch a game with the lads. Get in there!

Win 3. Which lucky pool team have got a bye on Sunday? Yep, that’s right, us!

Win 4. Oh and the French are out. LOL. And the Italians. Double LOL.

Win 5. And the sun is shining. During Wimbledon fortnight. Am I dreaming?

Win 6. Still plodding along making the odd bit of money at 200nl. Pretty low volume this week so far as the tables seem to be drier (due to the world cup perhaps?). I have grind on the mind for Friday night, with a little Saturday afternoon session pencilled in before its Beer O’Clock.

Win 7. Having a half day at work today. Just decided. So that 3 more hours of mind-numbing nothingness. Not that I’m counting.

Win 8. I leave you with the most winningest song of the 90’s or perhaps ever. So packed full of win they even called it WINona:

Have I gone deaf or have the vuvuzelas stopped?

2010-06-17T13:10:00.002+01:00

No, my mistake, forgot to turn the volume up.

The world cup is still to really kick into gear and having watched most of the first ten games or so I’m now at the “Meh” stage when faced with Honduras v Chile or suchlike. England take on Algeria tomorrow and failure to pick up full points from that is unthinkable. I’m stuck at home in front of the TV for this one unfortunately as my wife doesn’t finish work in time for me to get to my preferred drinking hole. This means I will have to fend off questions from my youngest whose interest in football has suddenly been perked by the wall-to-wall coverage and the football trading cards that him and all his mates are collecting. Trying to explain why “International Legend” Bryan Robson no longer plays whilst trying to concentrate on a match is tough. And if he asks me one more time why I don’t play for England…. ARGH!!!!

Anyways, here’s hoping we win 10-0 tomorrow just so there’s lots of pissed people signing on to play poker when they get home from the pub. I guess a 10-0 loss would have the same effect. Life on the virtual felt has been kind to us recently. I’ve played nearly 10k hands for the month of which 7.5k has been 200nl. I’ve been winning but more importantly learning. I can certainly beat this level too. Beat it well? I reckon I can. “Developing a robust strategy” is one of the aims of that Miller/Flynn/Mehta book which is aimed at $1/$2. That’s what I’m shooting for – a tough all round game. A decent pool pro once said of my pool game “He might not do all the flair stuff, but he’s bloody hard to beat”. I hope one day to have the same levelled at me in poker. On top of revisiting some of the best poker texts, I’ve been consciously working on the mental game too. In fact, June has been a good test in that department as a number of my sessions have started with a stacking (or at least being stuck a fair bit). I’m pleased to say these bad starts have been shrugged off and I’ve remained focused enough to complete my intended session duration – often posting green ones at the end. Big self pat on the back.

Anyways, things going well and I’ve only flopped about one set all month. Once I get that little bit of running like god back into my game then 200nl better watch out.

200NL = 20NL with a zero on the end imo

2010-06-13T13:09:00.003+01:00

[ ] No money in NLHE, everyone is solid
[x] Everyone is a calling station

Worried for a millisecond about the few combos of 44 and the one combo of 99 but these dudes were making snap decisions so gg them if either had it. I would wager that the 5 of diamonds on the river would have gotten me SB's stack too. Oh yeah, this is in ££££'s so ship it.

IPoker Network $200.00 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players -

CO: $200.00

BTN: $259.80

SB: $209.34

BB: $37.05

Hero (UTG): $422.90

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is UTG with 2 2

Hero raises to $6, CO calls $6, BTN calls $6, SB calls $5, BB calls $4

Flop: ($30.00) 9 2 4 (5 players)

SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $30.00, CO folds, BTN calls $30, SB calls $30, BB folds

Turn: ($120.00) 9 (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $60.00, BTN calls $60, SB calls $60

River: ($300.00) 5 (3 players)

SB checks, Hero bets $326.90, BTN calls $163.80 all in, SB folds

Final Pot: $627.60

BTN shows K 9

Hero wins $624.60

(Rake: $3.00)

If that isn't awesome enough hows about some jangly indie video spoofing The Breakfast Club? This lot are almost as good as Belle and Sebastian (Of course its impossible to be _as_ good) and release their debut album this week. The second video is an even better song.

Testing Testing 1 2

2010-06-10T12:32:00.001+01:00

Update time. So far in June around ¾ of my play has been at 200nl (£,E and $). The brief “ZOMG I got thousands on the table” thoughts have already gone and the mind has mentally adjusted to the new bet sizing (double it Doggy you moron!). After a good start to the month, I’m now just a few bucks ahead of breakeven. There’s been the odd cooler (Top boat v quads with a massive whale in the pot too), the standard AK all-in’s bricking (I swear I should win every one of these – I did at 100nl) and of course, a lot of ‘B’ & ‘C’ game. I shall be re-addressing that this coming weekend with some ‘A’ game crushing. The wife is away so once I’ve mowed the lawn, trimmed the weeds and done some housework I have a high volume scheduled planned. One thing that’s really become evident after barely a week at 200nl is the insane dosh all the breakeven regs must make in rakeback. Someone putting in like 10k per week on the same deal I have need not win a penny on the table to ‘do alright’. Mind you, I guess life would suck a bit being breakeven.

The World Cup kicks off tomorrow and due to the wife’s working times, I shall be watching all Englands group games at home. FML. I can definitely get out down the boozer for the KO stages, but of course we’ve got to get there first. Come on England – good draw, great manager, OK squad – one time!

TFIF

2010-06-04T16:33:00.001+01:00

As I’m bored and as this is a blog, why not do some bored bloggage? Good idea.

This week I’ve got stuck into mainly playing 200nl. Some random thoughts and observations to clutter the interwebs forever:

* Firstly, I’d say it has started pretty well. Up a few buyins which is nice.

* There has been a noticeable drop in the number of fish – perhaps because I have been playing weekday evenings. I’ll only be playing Friday night this week so hopefully weekends are more drooler-ful.

* I’m not paying for datamined hands (I’d like to get my reads from actual hands played together, oh and I’m tight!) so I have been sitting with anybody and everybody. This has meant playing five regs a lot, but whatever. With a fresh clean image I’ve been able to pull a few moves here and there whilst I can. You know – the cold 4bet bluff over the two dick-waving regs to your right. Once they suss that I kack myself facing 5bet shoves then that source of profit is gone :D

* The very first June sesh was fun. Got on the waiting list for a few OK looking tables and ended up deciding to 6 table for a while (new monitor FTW). Man it was aggro. The 3betting/squeezing on one of the tables that I reviewed in full was 18%. Booked a nice quick win and quit when I started getting deep on a few tables.

* Must not think about the value of the chips on the table. I haven’t before, but its hard not to think to yourself “Oh look, I have one months wages sat on these 6 tables” or “Hey thanks man, you just paid for my new monitor”. I’m sure it’s a temporary thing.

Going to crush it tonight, so stay out my way!

Oh and further to my sign-off on my last entry, it looks like Mr Dawson is on his way to the World Cup after all. Looks like my prophecy came good after all.

Played some $25/$50...

2010-06-01T11:15:00.002+01:00

...then woke up from that dream and realised it was time to do my May review.

My ‘stuff and things’ checklist for the month was simple:
Play 18-20K hands – yep, managed 19,500. Just run out of time for the big 20.
Not play any 50NL at all – errr, did stick a few hands in when I couldn’t find enough good 100 games.
Check new deal > old deal – Indeed it is
Empty old account and place in new account so I can play 200NL – I haven’t got around to this because I have built up my initial deposit to the roll required for 200NL anyway.

May winnings were just over $4k. Add in bonus/rake back and it’s a best ever month again. Needless to say it’s more than I earn in the day job.

Right then, time for 200NL.

I played a bit in May (and a bit here and there in the past). The May stuff went OK. I was helped greatly by back-to-back pocket rockets hands netting a multiway E490+ pot and a E400 pot (seriously, they weren’t even set-ups – the reg definitely levelled himself). In general i’m happy with much of my play at the level so far. I might have to tone down the thin river value betting as even a nittier reg picked up on it and pulled a big river check raise on my arse (meh he probably had the schnizzles just kicked myself for not seeing a showdown). I’m pretty happy that I’ve not nitted up and played like a rock. I’m not overly sure how my fold-to-3bet compares in the grand scheme of things. I think its in the high 60’s which is probably OK for the amount of garbage I open on the button!

Here’s what’s going down in June:
* Play a significant amount of 200NL. Aim is to play it exclusively on weekends. I will allow myself 100NL during nitty evenings, daytime slots and to boost my table count.
* Allow a ‘shot limit’ of like $2k. I don’t expect to need to utilize this as I intend to CRUSH it.
* Review folded hands. My post-session reviewing and note taking has been tight. I have reviewed EVERY 45bb+ 100NL & 200NL hand that went to showdown that I have ever played or been dealt in to, just need to look at more where I’ve folded before showdown.

That’s all for the poker. The pool season starts again on Sunday. We have our most successful captain back at the helm but I’m not sure of our personnel. Our starting games are all winnable (but against teams that nicked a win against us last term) so hoping to get off to a good start.

As I type the final words of this post, Mr Capello is set announce his 23 man England squad. Looks like he wont be taking my man Dawson. I hope he had an eye on who rescued England U19’s arse from the fire in their final qualifying game yesterday… that’s right, two young Spurs. Do it Fabio – the lilywhites will win you a world cup.

Bought a new widescreen monitor....

2010-05-28T15:27:00.003+01:00

...and paid for it in a few hundred hands.

Seat 5 is the button
Seat 1: Some Tag ( $100.00 USD )
Seat 3: Some Nit ( $121.35 USD )
Seat 5: Another Nit ( $100.00 USD )
Seat 6: Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ( $259.90 USD )
Seat 8: Enormous Fish and Calling Station ( $160.82 USD )
Seat 10: Frustrated Reg Whom I Own ( $100.00 USD )
Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
Enormous Fish and Calling Station posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee [ Tc Th ]
Frustrated Reg Whom I Own folds
Some Tag folds
Some Nit folds
Another Nit folds
Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee raises [$3.50 USD]
Enormous Fish and Calling Station calls [$3.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 9c, 3d, Td ] (editors note: BINGO!)

Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bets [$8.00 USD] (editors note: He doesn't fold to anything)
Enormous Fish and Calling Station calls [$8.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 3s ]
Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bets [$24.00 USD] (ediors note: See previous note!)
Enormous Fish and Calling Station calls [$24.00 USD]

** Dealing River ** [ Kc ]
Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bets [$72.00 USD] (editors note: Meh stack sizes)
Enormous Fish and Calling Station raises [$124.82 USD] (editors note: Weeeeeeeeee)
Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee calls [$52.82 USD]
Only Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee wins $318.64 USD from main pot

Enormous Fish and Calling Station shows [2c, 3h ] < ------- Nice call pre bro

Just seen the BEST THING EVA

2010-05-27T14:47:00.001+01:00

I was in the car and in the distance I spot a kid bombing it down the pavement on his bike. I get closer and realise this kid is tiny. Like half the size of my youngest. He’s also on the smallest bike I’ve ever seen and has no stabilizers (see previous blog post for stabilizer fuelled fun). He stops to cross the road just as I drive past him. It is at this point our eyes meet and he gets the full change in my expression from “Look at that small kid on his small bike” to “OMG LOOK A DWARF ON DWARF BIKE!!!”

Just remember kids – Retarded Midgets, they’re not big and they’re not clever.

Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right...

2010-05-24T14:59:00.002+01:00

...Here I am thinking "Yeah, good seat selection but could be better".

It’s a weekend. The sun is shining. The hottest days of the year so far, in bleeding MAY. So what to do? Yep, that’s right, stay inside and play 3000 hands of poker. To be fair, my pale skin did grace the daylight just about enough. I spent a gazillion hours teaching the youngest how to ride a bike without stabilizers. I don’t recall the job being so hard with the others. The poor boy has no balance whatsoever. This became evident whilst teaching him some football skills on Saturday when he would fall on his arse after every wild swing. I think he went further than the ball sometimes. So with the dawning realisation that none of the kids will ever make the family rich with their sporting prowess, yours truly is committed to the grind...

The grind is definitely on. It looks like I will eclipse my best monthly volume. I'm at 13k for the month to date which aint bad for an ultra picky table selector like me. The profits are coming too. Had a nice four figure weekend which is a nice motivator for the week ahead. And what of the following weeks? Well its time to give 200nl a serious bash. I don’t want to use the word 'crushed' but I've pretty much got 100NL's number. Since about November '09 time I'm up about $10k + bonuses with the majority coming from 100NL. So yeah, June will about moving on up.

Just no more life expenses & withdrawals please.

Laters fishies

Living Next Door To... Fred West?

2010-05-18T16:03:00.003+01:00

What’s up Internet land? Time for an update as I have a few moments to spare. To stop me from rambling (me? never!) I’ll go all bullet-point on you.

• My Pavement trip rocked. London rocks – apart from all the suits trying to get everywhere at a million miles an hour. We did a fair few hours at the British Museum, lunch at a cool place off Tottenham Court Road, a pre-gig pint at The Rest is Noise (which would probably somewhere I would frequent A LOT if I were unfortunate enough to get rehomed in Brixton), a fantastic meal in this Colombian restaurant whose name escapes me (but is another place I would be a regular in due to the brilliant combo of fine food AND a 9-ball table) and finally caught 2 hours of lo-fi genius.
• Picked up my cue the other night for the first time in weeks. Had a session of snooker to keep the arm in and knocked in a 42 to clear up in one of the early frames. Sadly the beer against good cueing ratio was slightly tilted towards beer and no further breaks were forthcoming.
• Looks like I might have to sell my pool table. Its currently at my Dad’s house as I have no room for it and he’s thinking of moving somewhere smaller. Anyone want a decent Supreme domestic that just needs a new cloth?
• Donkey Poker. Big shouts out to all you lucky tourney donks luckboxing your lucky donkey way to lucky donkish scores. Not that I’m bitter that I can’t play this inane form of poker. No sir. OK, I’ll name names – First up my brother. He’s the occasional live player who looks like he’s in a drink induced coma (because he normally is) and is most likely to call that river overshove and declare “I have a straight… 4…5…6…8…9… oh shit”. He’s won some pub thingy that leads to a regional thingy then a national thingy. He wants me to help with strategy – I think I’ll leave him to keep on doing what he’s doing. Weighing in with a slightly bigger score is regular reader (well he probably isn’t, but will be when I send him the link to this) JammyJim who has ditched his cash table scales and gils to bring in thousands of $green ones$ by final tabling ipoker MTT’s these past few weeks. I’ve tried to play MTT’s, I really have, but the urge to slit my wrists is too great
• Proper poker. Who needs a gazillion% ROI when you can sit quietly getting it at 6bb/100 at the cash tables? (Thinly veiled brag in there somewhere). I’m nearing the end of my first 10k hands on the new user name and playing well. The stats have got a touch nittier (like 1% off each) but sometimes you just can’t steal 100%... you have to go for 99% instead!
• The missus has got herself a small part-time job. This means I have to attempt to cook food every other day. On the upside, she now has money and my wallet will be raided less often. Oh and if I really push the housework when I get in there’s an hour extra poker time.
• I’ve done my back in. Could have been the snooker, could have been the gardening – I know which is getting the blame. It suddenly went shortly after I promised child 4 that we’d do some serious bike rides now the summer is nearly here and a day after I promised my elderly neighbour that I’d help take his rubbish to the collection point each week. I saw him struggling with a bin bag and his walking stick and made the kind offer… turns out the old coot produces twice as much rubbish as our household do. Seriously, how does one old couple have 4 bin bags a week?. Hmmmmm…thinking about it I haven’t seen his wife for a while, I best check for erroneous limbs next bin day.

Finally, first hand at this table versus known moron. Games are dead! (I keep promising that I’ll post more lol-hands but to be honest I cba):-

$0.50/$1 No Limit Holdem • 4 Players • iPoker

Generated by weaktight.com.

CO	$45.87
BTN	$100
SB	$108
Hero	$100

Pre-Flop ($1.50, 4 players)Hero is BB

2 folds, SB raises to $2, Hero raises to $8, SB raises to $14, Hero raises to $40, SB raises to $80, Hero goes all-in $100, SB calls $20

Flop ($200, 2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn ($200, 2 players, 1 all-in)

River ($200, 2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $200

SB shows

Hero wins $198 (net +$98)
SB lost $100

I've got style, miles and miles

2010-05-10T16:46:00.001+01:00

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday tooooo meeeeee and also the wife. Yep, by some quirk of fate, me and the missus have the same birthday. Obvious plus points include me not being able to forget hers and the kids being unable to forget either of ours.

I actually bought my own present this year (as at the end of the day, it’s the same money doing the purchasing whether it comes directly from me or via her bank). We’re off to London to see Pavement as previously reported some months back in this blog. Reviews and youtube footage of the start of the tour look promising, but really, how could Pavement disappoint a Pavement fan? Forget the words? Play the wrong song? Look disinterested? That’s what we expect anyway so I’m sure they wont let us down. I will also be trying to sample the finest cuisine London has to offer and take in a few sightseeing jaunts to please the other half. Well, it is her birthday too.

I’d write something about the pokerz but its not very interesting. I’m making a lot of rakeback and have found a pet whale. He’s been on every night for a week, plays 95vpip, calls off stacks with ace high religiously and bluffs virtually everytime he’s checked to. Oh and he’s pretty good at cracking my premiums, sets and trips.

Hmmm, let me see, what music can I leave you with?

Audere Est Facere

2010-05-06T15:28:00.002+01:00

Or “To dare is to do” in English. “Got my mantra for life” as the irrepressible Luke Haines warbles in today’s random youtooooob video below. Audere est facere is also the motto of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. How very apt after we stormed the top-table playing 4-4-2 and playing quality, attacking football along the way. My hangover is only just starting to go away. Wow, what a night. Not wanting to watch the match in a pub, I loaded up some of the most reliable streams I could find on the interwebs and hopped around them as they inevitably failed / dropped / froze. “One Time” was the repeated call and the boys obliged. Champions League football is on the way, but sadly it looks like being under a Tory government. Don’t get me started on politics.

Just got an email through from my poker peeps with my first weekly rake payment. I don’t have my HEM figures to hand but the figure seems at first glace to be correct and thus means this deal is better than the previous. Yay. One tiny problem however – the skin updated its software the other day and I cant mod it anymore. I’m not sure I will be putting in any 1000 hand sessions on the unmodified atrocity. My eyesight is valuable to me. I’m hoping for a quick fix but the software author has gone awol. On the hideous tables I had a decent weekend of profit, good hand reading and run gooood. “Bank holiday comes with six pack of beer” sang those cockney wannabes Blur once. All these years later its still the case as BEERGUT68 donks off buy-in after buy-in playing a style conducive of being slightly inebriated. I love Bank Holidays. A quick look on the interweb reveals Ireland has 11 of them. I think I’m going to move to the Emerald Isle – the Tories cant get me there can they?

Coming soon - 200nl again. Audere Est Facere.

Enough of that, here’s part 2 of the infrequent series I’ve named “WTF Mr Blobby had a number 1 hit and this lot never did…”:

April Review

2010-05-01T11:27:00.001+01:00

A quick April round up. Before rakeback, bonuses and appearance fees (ok I lie about the appearance fees) I made a whopping $532. Ship it. Before analysing where it went wrong I guessed my little foray into 200nl was the cause. It turns out it wasn’t the case – I lost just $90 at the level. Seeing that I made $1.4k at 100nl the culprit turned out to be the £50 & E50 tables. LOL as they say. During the month I was filling up dead time with the games whilst waiting on good 100 or 200 games. Needless to say a combination of being a bit laggier than optimal and a lot of sets+ getting busted resulted in dropping quite a few $. Only like 10bi down but converted to $ that made it look worse.

My May plan is to try and get in 18k-20k hands. This will allow me to maximise the dosh coming from my affiliate and force me to play more than the 15k I did this month. I’m also dropping £50nl from the rota, I’m insanely profitable at all 100nl games now so I will stick with that (over 16bb/100 for the database which started in January). Once I have crunched the numbers with this current deal to verify its better than my old one, I will empty the old account and have the roll again to play some 200nl. Whilst doing all the transfer stuff the other day I nabbed a grand for my wallet as I have an expensive birthday jaunt planned in London Town. I’m off to finish off the last hundred or so hands from April that still need notes doing for them and to watch a bit of snooker.

Laters fishies.

Saving really good blog titles for really good blog entries

2010-04-29T14:43:00.001+01:00

So I finally I’m up and running on my new account. Why is it that when you are creating an account you cant think of a good username but the second you’ve chosen something bland you kick yourself for forgetting that awesome name you were intending to use one day. Meh. Took me ages to mod the new skin as I wanted and still the layout isn’t as I’d like. Its playable though. I’ve played two small winnings sessions to begin with over the first 1000 hands. PTR has managed to pick up only about 120 of these hands so bravo to them! I’ve already found it much easier to start tables with the new name (not that anyone was scared of playing my old name, but people just don’t bother starting tables with other regs). I was intending to log a mammoth session last night but the bleeding network was kicking people left and right for ‘maintenance’. Well played ipoker.

Instead I got to see the end of the O’Sullivan v Selby quarter final in the World Snooker. At the time of writing Mark looks like a probable champion and is bookies favourite. Not bad for a pool player! Steve Davis and the commentary box ignoramuses can feck off with their contempt of the small table game. Yeah we hear you every year dissing it and making laughable comments like “He plays a bit of pool so he’ll be good at his angles and doubles”. Nobs. If its been good enough for Selby to play seriously for the duration of most of his snooker career then maybe, just maybe, it deserves a bit more credit. Tom Ford, Martin Gould, Mark Allen, Neil Robertson and Graeme Dott are a few more pro’s off the top of my head that play (or have played) both to some extent. 3 of the last 4 in the worlds – hmmmm. Feck me, even Doug Mountjoy still turns out for his local pool team and competes in senior tournaments. Maybe Davis and the old boys need to pipe down or come down my local and give me a game. Only one winner. Erm /rant

Staying with sport, there’s two weeks and 3 games left in the Premier League for Spurs. A home win this weekend against Bolton (by no means a gimme) will set up a mahooooosive game next Wednesday away at Man City. A true winner takes all affair in the race for the Champions League and its gazillions. Weekend slip ups could let Liverpool and Villa back into the equation but in reality its either ours or Cities to lose. Regardless of finishing position, its easily Spurs best season in decades. They will have won more points, won more games and played with more style than in any previous premiership season. In addition there’s a balanced, solid squad that will only need a bit of tweaking in the summer and a good infrastructure in place. Obviously a CL campaign next year would be the icing on the cake, but if it doesn’t happen at least we’re in good shape. Its not like we have over-reached ourselves to get where we are. We don’t pay huge wages, have unsustainable debt or have some sugar daddy propping us up. COYS one time!

Finally, I tipped up Topolov to win the world chess championship recently. He was 1-0 up at the time but already looks a broken man at 2.5-1.5 down. I hereby declare that I will never ever champion a moody Bulgarian ever again (Yes господин Berbatov, this includes you)

I’m off to eat some chocolate cake as its my youngests birthday today. Six years have whizzed by. Wow.

Arghhhhhhhhh

2010-04-26T13:09:00.001+01:00

Why is it when you don’t particularly care how long it takes your money transfers to complete they get there in about a millisecond. But when you have some plans for the money, it takes like a year. Ghjfdhfdjsabfgsasd.

So I’m all ready to get started on my new account but my dosh is in hyperspace. I want to get cracking on the first deposit bonus. I want to get stuck into all those regs who I have notes on. I want to own their souls. Hurry up money!

In the meantime I’ve been doing what any self respecting player would do when about to ditch a screen name – trashing my image! Well, if now isn’t the time to flip over that 9 high when you’ve just cold 4bet a reg, I don’t know when is :) Other gems include a wonderful check call, check call, check shove on a river that both paired and three flushed – I know the dude had AA/KK and he knows I had a boat (except I had dog shit). Not so wonderful would be a river jam with 3rd pair against a guy who I kinda suspect gives me no credit. Guess what – he gave me no credit and time bank heroed it. Hmmm “heroed” doesn’t appear to be a word according to MS Word. Then again it doesn’t like “dosh” so what does it know?

All in all it was an OK weekend on the felt. Made a few quid each day. Didn’t run as bad as last week or as good as, errr, like the last 6 months, but cant complain. My volume needs addressing this week but plenty of available time so it shouldn’t be a problem to log a satisfactory number. A comprehensive April update to follow (you lucky people)…

Four Figure Session

2010-04-22T16:23:00.002+01:00

…I nearly did it. In negative profit :(

I have recently been pleased with my ability to not to look at my running totals in play. The upside of not hovering over the HEM table manager icon and seeing how much you’re down is that it shouldn’t impact on your play right?. The downside is that it’s hard to operate a stop loss! Given I have been mixing in 200nl with 100nl, what is a good stop loss anyway? I’ve been thinking about this and I guess I’m going to go with the “don’t look” option unless I feel I’m getting obliterated.

Talking of 200nl, it hasn’t really happened like I’d hoped. I still have a couple of hundred hands to review but in general I believe I played the same as my (winning) 100nl style and just run a little colder than normal. I have a decent little new deal on ipoker that I’m going to give a whirl from next week so I may drop 200nl for a few weeks owing to splitting the roll for a short period to see if the deal works out better than my current one. I really can’t be arsed moving funds around every two minutes and I don’t like moving the lot as it’s a pain waiting for it to clear into Neteller. Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting all that lovely first deposit bonus money and shafting the tables reserved for ‘beginners’ (assuming my deal lets me play them – they were goooooood at the start on previous skins).

Some ‘Win’ for you:
Snooker season is now finished and I won 22/23 singles (plus 3/3 in the cup) and 16/17 doubles (plus 2/3 in the cup). Finished top of my divisional rankings by a mile and in the top 10 of the league, even with our hefty divisional points adjustment. Top break in my division too. Easy game.

Pool season is also now finished. We finished 5th which is poor for us. However, I won 75% which no-one who played any significant amount bettered. I also drank more than everyone else put together. Probably.

Football. The mighty Spurs are ramming it up all the ’Sky Four’ at the moment. I’m sure whoever gets the refereeing gig at Old Trafford this weekend will readdress the balance (Mr Webb anyone?). Since my post a few weeks back where I urged Michael Dawson to return from injury and Mr Capello to bloody well pick him, he’s only gone and shown exactly why he should be going to the World Cup with a couple of imperious performances in front of the cameras. Now various journo’s are getting on the bandwagon too, could it happen? You heard the call here first remember!!

The Sun. Its out and a welcome addition to the sky it is too. I’m hoping to get the bike out this week and enjoy it while it lasts. That white thing that sits in the corner of my living room (edit: its called a Wii fit board apparently) tells me I’ve lost 7 pounds since I last stepped on it. I cant even comprehend how, but I’ve min raised it 7 pounds and think that bluff has made me pot committed.

One little bit of fail to finish... They’ve cut part of my local bus route so it no longer stops outside the snooker club. This means i’ll have to start driving and ditch the beer. That 7 pounds might just be possible.

Four Figure Day

2010-04-12T11:01:00.002+01:00

I was just fiddling around with HEM yesterday and changed my sessions filter to show it by day. Well wouldn’t you know it, I only went and missed my first ever 4 figure day. No fanfare. No blog bragging. Nothing. Until now of course! Yep, somehow last week the few hands I played after midnight added to an afternoon and evening session came to $1,000 and something. Go me. Next up I guess is a four figure single session, then that difficult first million, sorry, mirrion.

Another thing I almost missed was last weeks free video thingy on DC. I spotted it in the nick of time and got around to watching the Thin Red Line series. My red line is a little bit ‘meh’ at the moment – slopping off bottom right kind of direction. Now you’re all probably thinking “Great, Doggys going to become one of these non-folding bluff machines to improve his red line”. Fear not, that’s not happening just yet. What I conclude from the videos though is solid hand reading = solid red line. Oh and Sick hand reading = solid profit. A must watch series imo just to see someone nail the villains range over and over in real time.

As for my play, I managed to get a couple of small sessions in over the weekend. Played well, run well, made monies. The biggest downer was the lack of decent 200nl tables going when I was logged on. There were very few 50bb tables and the normal ones had the 20bb dudes on their last hurrah. ipoker changes to 30bb min today so here’s hoping that a whole new batch of tables become playable. I shall be pounding the felt on Tuesday, Thursday and next weekend to celebrate the death of short stacker.

As for tonight, its our last snooker match of the season. The league is won and all bar one of my goals has been met. The only thing I haven’t done is knock in a competitive 50 break. I’ve had a couple in practice but not in a league match yet. One more chance (well two if I play doubles) – one time please! There’s a real long break between snooker seasons so its either back to Nitty Ipoker Mondays or seek out some summer comps.

T’was our final home match at pool last night. We fielded a load of ressies and won 8-3 comfortably. I think we have one away game left that’s of no importance to anything other than my liver. I’m thinking – as I sit here typing with a stonking hangover – that I should make close season a detox & get fit period. Just like Christmas – it’s the thought that counts ;)

In this post we (almost) talk poker strategy

2010-04-08T11:21:00.002+01:00

For the sharp eyed regular readers out in internetland you will notice I’ve had a spring clean on the old blog. Gone is the dark dank black style, in comes a bright orange spring summer feel. One day I will get around to tinkering with all the little gadgets that blogspot has to offer. I may even get around the whoring around for some link exchanges. Don’t hold your breath on that though.

As there’s not enough strat on this blog (errrrr, is there any?), here’s a bit of a gem hidden in a recent 2+2 thread. Titled “What's the biggest leaks at 100NL & 200NL?”, some Russian poster chimes in with the following list. Dunno who he is, but there’s some gold there in amongst the underlying “I rule and you all suck” theme. He adds some further stuff in the thread too.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/39/small-stakes-pl-nl/whats-biggest-leaks-100nl-200nl-734035

• are 3bet 100% value in the blinds vs UTG/MP and calling 100% AQ and PPs in the blinds vs UTG/MP.
• 3betting more from the blinds vs. button than from the button vs. the table.
• Clicking auto/fold and letting other regulars use the SB as stealing position when they should be 3betting and calling a huge range.
• People defending their SB raises with 4bets when it's so obvious they're full of **** and should just fold more.
• Defending their blind steals with 4bets when it's not even mathematically profitable vs. the opponent's range or before they bother to adjust their open raise size, tighten their raising range and loosen their calling range.
• Saying suited connectors implied odds hands and then calling them vs. tighter ranges instead of wider ranges where they have fold equity.
• 3betting suited aces when the opponent's range is tight enough for the ace to be a clean out vs. most of their range or 3betting suited aces when the CO is raising a ton of suited connectors or when the button is raising any 2 suited cards.
• 3betting hands that are clearly profitable to call with. 3betting hands with middling value vs. people who are going to 4bet them right off of it with the range they dominated.
• Raising the turn 100% of the time for value. Betting the turn 100% of the time with float catchers.
• Raising flush/straight draws on low boards where they can't call shoves from over pairs.
• Not polarizing they're raise cbet range in position. Playing too passively in single raised pots vs the button.
• Only every check-raising for value vs any one who isn't the button.
• Not betting busted draws enough on the river.
• Not letting the opponent bluff enough on the river by auto-betting.
• Not over betting enough and not under betting enough.
• Not raising or check-raising the nut flush on the flop.
• Not realizing the back door flush is like one of the most important considerations behind floating, cbetting or barreling in general.
• Not playing aggressively enough in limped pots. Not isolating the fish wide enough IP or OOP.
• Not iso re-raising other regs when they isolate fish enough.
• 5betting way too damn much based on a 4bet stat that never converges like ever.
• Not knowing which boards to donk or turns to lead or rivers to check/raise OOP as the PFC.
• Raising too many suited connectors too far out of position because it's cool.
• Not manipulating their perceived range for folding equity enough.
• Not rebluffing opponent's scare cards enough.
• Bluffing on boards where they can't represent anything logical.
• Calling way too much just because they are deep.
• 4betting AQ ever. 3betting AK way too much.
• 4betting AK way too much when flatting is more profitable vs light 3bettors ranges.
• Not floating AK/AQ enough. double barreling 3 to the wheel IP with A high and then tripple barreling the river when your hand is so obviously a bluff.
• Checking flops IP and never raising a turn bet like ever with anything.
• Not taking advantage of obvious pot-control lines by over betting or check/raising the turn and then open shoving the river.
• Cbetting way too much with a PP or A high when IP and checking back too much with middle pairs when your opponent never check-raises.
• betting too much with bad draws when you know you're going to be check-raised off of them.
• Think you can't turn made hands into a bluff ever.
• Peeling way too many pocket pairs on the flop and then eating double barrels.
• Floating OOP and then auto-folding turn to anything.
• Never varying their lines vs. any one.
• Cbetting/barreling too many Aces when villains are playing and floating with any Ace.
• Checking back way too many damn turns for "pot control."
• Not betting thinly enough on the river. Bluff catching too much.

Dusty Shit

2010-04-07T16:17:00.002+01:00

Greetings. I have opened up blogger without any specific topic to talk about, because I’m bored. This is due to being at work and being bang on top of everything. Job satisfaction? I wish. Whilst in the car yesterday I committed myself to writing a post today – even if was about the next interesting thing I saw. The next thing that caught my eye was actually a multi-coloured feather duster in the middle of the road. The Ken Dodd type. My mind conjured up images of a horrific road traffic incident involving maybe a truck and a little old lady cleaner who was too slow to cross. There were no skid marks. Or blood. So the duster was probably not the final reminder of Mrs Mops last journey. Maybe it was intentionally discarded. Its owner – an overworked under-appreciated cleaner – chucking it joyfully from their car at the end of their last day of work. Perhaps they had just retired or maybe they had just jacked their dirty, dusty employment. Yeah I like the latter scenario. I can sometimes be seen to give a fist-pump as I pull away from work at 5pm.

In an effort to think of something to write about I just skimmed back over this blog for inspiration. Its April so I cant really do the whole “hows the year going at poker” thing. The ambiguous 2010 goals were/are to keep up 2009’s momentum (check), keep improving (check, I think), discipline myself to get better volume in (check) and eventually have poker provide a sturdy second income that rivals my main one (check, so far). Clearly everything is going well. I feel very positive about my game – as you would expect of someone who hasn’t had a big downswing for a while. I’ve recently been adding in some $1/$2 through to £1/£2 games. I’m going to keep looking for the softest games going at the level (you know the ones with a couple of just under full stacked Italians) and maybe devote some weekend sessions solely to the 200nl grind. If I’m crushing I might as well crush higher right? I better leave the subject of poker there else this blog will become known as one long brag.

Finally I’ll leave you with my all-time list of favourite Argentinians:-
1. O Ardiles (non-mover)
2. R Villa (non-mover)
3. L Messi (new entry gawd bless ya)

7 things you should know

2010-04-03T20:27:00.001+01:00

Some stuff and things for you.

1. Solved the rubiks cube for the first time ever today. The internet did help though.

2. Doggy tip of the day: When ordering kiwi fruit for home delivery from Tesco DO NOT order a punnet but request them loose. Don't ask me why, but you get them free if you do this (info courtesy of a delivery driver a few weeks back and verified with an order this week).

3. Doggy tip of the weekend: For anyone registered with Quidco you can get 12 months AA breakdown cover for £7 this Easter weekend. You have to be retarded not to take this up.

4. Doggy tip of the year: For anyone who works for a breakdown recovery firm do not take up Quidco & the AA's brilliant £7 breakdown cover as its £7 too much. FML it was just too much of a bargain.

5. My grand daughter is visiting on Monday. Yay. No pokerz but cute little babies instead - What a softie.

6. Get fit soon Michael Dawson. Oh and Mr Capello - its not too late to take him to Sarf Afreeka you know. Its just a shame he's not already had a years worth of caps already as your captain conundrum would have been sorted - A man of honour or a choice between drug test forgetting, nightclub brawling, prostitute shagging, wife cheating, drink driving, greedy bastards?

7. I've just decided I'm starting a series on this blog. I think I'm going to call it "WTF Mr Blobby had a number 1 hit and this lot never did...". Yeah, sounds good, might just start it now:

Steady Eddie

2010-04-02T14:31:00.003+01:00

That is all

On yer bike

2010-03-31T15:52:00.001+01:00

Its time for the month end review you devoted bunch of Doggy followers. If I was doing it properly I’d wait until I had actually finished the month and was in front of my home PC before writing this. Sadly I fear that I wont get time to write this post tonight as I’ll either be grinding a session or laughing at Messi humiliating some gooners. Anyway, poker – another good month. I think I won like three point something thousand green ones, which equates to lots of £££. I got a decent volume of hands in too which will also reward me when I get my rakeback, I _think_ I can get by another month or so without having to withdraw anything so the roll will be able to stand a few more $1/2 sessions in April. Goals for the level: Get dealt good shit and hit the ground running. Oh and find the fishies first. Ipoker is changing its min buy-in next month to 30bb so hopefully this will open up more tables for me to play. The short stack push bots will have to adjust their game or bugger off somewhere else. The change to 35bb on Full Tilt has been a success apparently so here’s hoping it does the same here.

In other brags, I mean news, we confirmed the snooker title on Monday with a comfortable whitewash in our penultimate game. My league stats stand at 21 singles wins from 22 and 15 doubles wins from 16, so whatever happens in the last match the 90% target I set has been reached. It looks like we’ll be back again in September for a crack at a higher division. On the smaller table our pool season limps to a close soon. We’ve not done ourselves justice and turned out with weak teams too often to challenge. I don’t know whether our missing stars are back next season but if not things look bleak. I guess we’ll have to get drunk instead!

Out in the big wide world its now British Summer Time. If the rain holds off I may get out on my bike sometime in the coming week. With fuel at £1.16 per litre I may have to!

Dumpster Fresh Diets

2010-03-26T13:01:00.001Z

Whoa there Lesley, down Shep. It has been 8 days since an update, poor form from me. In mitigation its been a downer of a week again. The mother-in-law is back in hospital but will hopefully be fit enough to go home today. I’m praying she’s well enough that she doesn’t need my wife to go look after her as I can’t afford more days off work. I’ve got a girl in my department go sick with stress which means I’m doing the work of two people atm. My hand is playing up chronic with all the shitty data inputting stuff I’ve had to do for her and to top it off I’ve not been feeling 100% myself.

But its not all doom and gloom, I’ve still managed a few beers this week!. On Sunday I entered a snooker comp and performed fairly well. I beat one of the better players in the league 3-2 (albeit with a handicap start) and really should have beaten the other top player in the event (lost 3-2). Despite winning three of my other four games I finished the group stage with the same win/loss record as two others and missed out on progressing by a frame or so. I was absolutely knackered after all that I can tell you. On Monday we edged closer to the snooker league title with a 10-0 win. On Tuesday I was sick as a dog and on Wednesday the mighty Spurs were on TV (COYS!).

Last night as I hit the tables again I had to get my hand ranking chart out such was the length of my lay-off. I eased myself back in with a few hundred hands of E100nl and found new fishy friends everywhere. The Euro and £ 100nl games have been my best this month with +16bi here alone. All the $ tables have been meh and I’m like a couple of bi down in the various 1/2 games. The plan going forward is more more more hands (especially this weekend). Also I need to start more tables instead of thinking “all the 100nl waiting lists are too long, I’ll just join this £50nl game instead”, seek out soft 200nl stuff to get me going at that level, and errrr, play good.

Here’s some noise to make up for the disappointing post above:-

One is not amused

2010-03-18T16:10:00.000Z

So what’s new with teh pokerz? Well apparently the whole of HSNL is populated by rat-holing, multi-accounting, colluding cheaters. Quel surprise (that’s French that is). Down in the cesspit that is SSNL I expect you’re awaiting my “Just passed the mirrion pound mark” post? Alas, its been a bit of a dry time on the virtual felt. I played plenty over the weekend and had a lean old time. I was pretty card dead and for once ran under –EV. Somehow I come out of it with minimal losses (got to be pleased with that). My first session of the new week saw me donate a couple of buy-ins to the $1/2 community (well actually to dribbling droolers who no doubt relayed the money onto the regs after I departed) but my second session was a 7-tabling extravaganza of blind stealing. I have a couple of quiet evenings coming up when I can really rack up the hands and get back to being the luckbox I am. Unfortunately, despite a previous post to the contrary, I’ve had to withdraw monies again. In better news, I’ve had it confirmed that I have a payrise in April. Not only that it’s double what everyone else is getting. Don’t ask me how or why!

With the wife back at home I managed to get out for our pool match on Sunday night. Despite the now regular occurrence of missing some of out best players, we beat the league leaders. Much ale was consumed in celebration. Still hungover the next evening, I rocked up at snooker to find myself playing the last frame. Deep joy. We had already won the match 3-1 and I’d already sunk a few jars before I got my cue out. The 88-1 drubbing I gave out wasn’t what I was expecting with zero practice and a skinful of beer in me. We now have a straightforward canter to the line with the bottom four teams left to play. We’re top with a decent points cushion over second and the toughest team (on paper) we have left is next week, but they’re bottlers who haven’t won a frame in 15 against us!

I leave you with the random question of the week from my youngest bratski (aged 5):-
“Daddy, were you alive in the Victorian age?”

And more things you lucky people

2010-03-12T12:39:00.001Z

Woohoo. Mother-in-law is out of hospital and we’ve sourced her an old biddy to keep her company for a few weeks. That means I get my wife back today. No more cooking (good job, there’s no more food in the house), no more school runs and no more dealing with ‘Matron’ who wants to send a kid home for sneezing twice. I’m going to miss knocking off early though. Those minutes after picking the kids up from school and making dinner have been very useful for plonking myself in front of HEM with a cuppa and reviewing hands.

Generally things have been going well at poker since the last update. I’m still getting a fair few hands in, still playing pretty well (bar the odd hand where I won’t be repeating my mistakes) and results have been positive. Looking back to where I was 6 months or a year ago, I’m extremely happy with my improvement in all areas. The mental side is something I had barely thought about a year back. Now the world and his dog (and me) recognise its importance. Just the other day I saw a stack disappear to the newly sat fish on my right who limp called Q4. That would have sent the cat running for cover a while back, but I simply opened the guys notes, wrote something intelligible and proceeded to stack him twice over in the next 100 hands.

Something got me indirectly thinking about my development recently as I was tidying up round the house. I spotted an old cardboard box which I opened to check what was in it. It was a load of old cassettes of mine. Digging through the top layer of them I found my old 4-track recorder underneath. I listened to a few old tracks I’d layed down years ago. Most were two guitar parts, 1 bass part and guide vocals (bad bad bad vocals, that’s why they were guide – in the hope I’d find someone who could sing one day to do the songs justice!). Some of these tracks were pretty tight and wouldn’t sound out of place on some old Ride album or whatever. I took up the guitar in my teens and was self-taught. I still play a bit today but have never had any lessons. I know I lack a lot of the technical skills but I’m happy to strum the odd bastardized cover version out to get the kids rocking. I wonder how far I could have taken my playing with some tuition and solid practice.

I kind of had less time for the guitar when firstly women came along and then spending a lot of free time playing pool. I practiced the game a decent amount for years eventually becoming county player of the year 5 times, having 3 England trials, winning some opens and generally being regarded as a decent stick. I played on the International Tour but was perhaps a bit young at the time (definitely peaked after I left it) and didn’t do myself justice. During my time on tour I saw the dedication of the top players. A couple were full time pro’s and practiced hours every day. They’d be the ones drinking coke and eating bananas whilst I was having the odd pint (of Baileys) and a kebab. They were also mentally tough. Now I’m a pretty reliable player if you want someone to win a deciding frame but these guys produced under the greatest pressure. Whilst I had the odd win here and there over good pro’s and even some of the best (Brewer, Potts), there was a definite talent gap that would be insurmountable without extreme dedication.

Where’s all this going? I guess there’s things to take from both these pursuits and relate to my poker path. I could of taken both a bit further. Maybe I could have been a semi competent guitarist in a crappy indie band – could have fluked a record deal or fluked a hit. Maybe I could have stayed on tour and become a pro with a lot more practice. Wouldn’t have earned any money at it, but would have been something for the CV. The beauty of poker is that being slightly ‘above average’ makes you a bit of money (not sure what the % split is with online winners/losers, so guess that above average would be around the breakeven mark?). Elevating yourself a lot above the average makes you even more. Furthermore, the information you need to succeed is all out there. The training required is around if you want it. The time to practice is available 24/7. Whilst there were ceilings in my two examples, and reasons for not trying to push those ceilings higher, in poker the ceiling for an intelligent person is way off and hard work can get you there. Of course, if you’re profitable you don’t even need to shoot higher (not good thinking imo, but a common trait I guess). Having got this far I don’t want to be just ‘above average’ at poker.

Fridays Stuff & Things

2010-03-12T12:37:00.001Z

Stumbling around the interweb today I read:-

Pure class (the whole blog, not just this post)

50 ways to leave your lover

2+2’s original archives. This is the first incarnation of Internet Poker. It was new and people thought it was rigged. How times have changed… oh wait!

Clicky

:)

2010-03-07T23:20:00.001Z

Things are a bit better life wise down Doggy way. The mother-in-law is stable and on a normal ward. Hopefully she’ll be out this week and I can get my wife back. Meanwhile it turns out I’m a dab hand at this housework lark – I have the ‘fairy’ soft hands to prove it.

I’ve managed to get a lot of poker in this past week. Well when I say ‘a lot’, I mean a lot for a 4-tabler like me on slow old ipoker. 6000 hands in 7 days is a good return for me. I’m afraid I just can’t help myself… I’m going to brag again… I’ve just surpassed the amount I take home from work in a normal month (don’t bother trying to work out my pay packet using PTR as its thousands out due to the currency thing and missed hands). Aside from running hot and above EV (does anyone ever admit to that?), I’ve been pleased a few things:

Firstly, work ethic. I’ve forced myself to remain focused and hit a hand target or time target. Haven’t found myself autopiloting once. It helps when the games are good though. Secondly table selection. Theres plenty of regs who specialise in the Euro and £ games but I’ve been avoiding the reg infested tables. I’ve been starting my own or joining good ones (in good seats). No shame in bumhunting – 37bb/100 says so. Another thing I’ve been pleased with is the incorporation of varied lines. I’d never used much donking but find it has its place against certain opponents. Check call and lead the turn is another that annoys and puzzles me so I occasionally trot that out against other regs. I mean, these are nothing new but I’m starting to pick out the right option more frequently. That’s to say an option that I can justifiably argue to be a good one – and I can argue it because I actually thought it out at the time rather than clicked some buttons as may have been the case in the past.

So I hope to keep the good work ethic up this coming week. Theres no Snooker match tomorrow so that’s another day to play – yay for Nitty Mondays. I keep looking in on the 200nl games and occasionally sit when there’s a <100bb guy with an open seat to their left. I really must get my arse in gear and play more at this level but its hard to drag myself away from what is a veritable cash giveaway at E50, £50, $100, E100 an £100. Daft really as £100nl is like $160ish. Maybe I’m subconsciously dodging it because of the over agro 3betting that exists at $200. I’m still pretty shit in 3bet pots.

Nuff of that ramble. If you clicked on the youtube link above I apologise. I once saw that lot live, but if memory serves I only got the ticket for one or two of the local support acts. Love your money people, I’m loving mine (and the fishes).

:(

2010-03-04T12:23:00.002Z

Shit times at Doggy towers life-wise. The mother-in-law has had a heart attack just weeks after her brother died (for whom she was caring for the last years of his life). She’s currently stable but my wife has had to go to Cardiff indefinitely to look after things. This means I’m in charge of Kids and housework type things. I’m turning into a proper househusband. Yesterday I had Child 6 off school ill so didn’t go into work. My day went something like this:-
6.45am. Get up sort out breakfasts, packed lunches etc.
7.00am. Presents and stuff for Child 4 whose birthday it was.
9.30am. Finished all the washing up and essential housework. Cuppa, food and hand history review of previous days sessions (you didn’t think I was a REAL househusband did ya?)
10.00am. Grind. Tables are shocking at this time. Make some monies nonetheless.
12.30pm. Lunch. Heat up some soupy-looking concoction that’s been left on the stove. Chicken and sweetcorn are identifiable. I’m told its diet food so feel rather smug as I devour the second of my 5 a day (demolished an apple earlier, god I’m healthy)
1pm. More grind. Make more monies. Easy game imo.
3pm. Begin knocking up a birthday party for the brats. Sandwiches, crisps, pizza, strange fish finger shaped vegetable thingys, chocolate bars, Pringles.
3.01pm. Hide 1 tube of Pringles for myself. wp Doggy.
5.30pm. Party finished. Mess everywhere. Realise they’ve found and eaten my spare tube of Pringles. Bastards.
6.30pm. Off to Child 5’s parents evening. Deep joy – every teacher is running late.
6.45pm. Spot that Child 5 has chocolate birthday cake under every finger nail.
7.45pm. Get home in time for football.
8.01pm. Remember how shit England are and decide to grind instead. Make about $1. Aren’t the games better in the evenings?
9.30pm. Get rid of last child to bed. Phone wife.
10.30pm. Feeling a bit tired (Who gets up at 6.45am I ask you?). The words of leatherass (for I have been reading his book) and the recent blog comment of leatherbaz (lol) reverberate around my head. VOLUME DOGGY, VOLUME! Snap myself out of it, scoff a couple of left-over sarnies and grind a bit more. Make monies obv as I’m killing every game I’m playing.
11.30pm. Go to bed as Betfred’s software is killing my eyes and minimaxmod isn’t modifying since yesterdays update.

Sadly I’m at work today. As you can see by this and recent posts things are going great on the tables so I wouldn’t have baulked at a couple more days off!. The roll has grown back to where it was before recent chunky withdrawals. Hopefully I wont have to touch it much soon – I have a payrise imminent and have made some domestic savings like switching energy providers (visit quidco for cashback when doing this) and cancelled most of the Sky package I had (last film I watched was Rocky IV). This time next year Rodders…

On a diet of fish and more fish

2010-02-28T19:34:00.012Z

So there endeth another month of stuff and things. A quick warning: This might look like a brag post but errr, ok it is. It was a decent month on the tables +$1.5k. Results are below (might stick another session in later but you'll get the jist). In amongst all that win, I actually played quite a few horrible, reallllllly horrific hands. If I had to rate my own play I would give it like 6.5/10. I've been over every session I've played and replayed all the big hands - wins & horrors. I hope I'm learning from my mistakes. The pleasing aspect is I just don't do "tilt monkey". I tend to just quit if I've done something really retarded.

A quick peak at the stats show I'm running at 24/20. I used to run more like 19/16 when I was a marginal winner, so there have been improvements. I have a few aspects of my pre-flop game I'd like to pay more attention to - basically a little less overcalling and bit more squeezing/3betting. There's still a little too much inner nit at times!

As you can see my main profit has been away from the $ tables. The £ tables as previously stated in this blog are soft. I swear the other day I started a table and got 1 nit and four humungous fish all over 50vpip. They've recently introduced 50bb tables on the alternate currencies so I shall be playing more £100nl (previously it was overrun by 20bb dudes whereas £50nl was a little less infested).

I leave you with a fun little hand versus a guy (small blind) who had played 38 out of 39 hands, and played them hard. The other guy was pretty aggressive too and whilst he could have the two oversets, he would easily be raising the turn lead with TP against this particular guy. Oh yeah, and this is in ££££££ not dollars.

$0.50/$1 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • iPoker

Generated by weaktight.com.

UTG	$100
UTG+1	$134.55
CO	$64.35
Hero	$140.50
SB	$162.75
BB	$320.30

Pre-Flop ($1.50, 6 players)Hero is BTN

1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $4, 1 fold, Hero calls $4, SB calls $3.50, 1 fold

Flop ($13, 3 players)

SB checks, UTG+1 bets $9, Hero calls $9, SB calls $9

Turn ($40, 3 players)

SB bets $11, UTG+1 raises to $51, Hero goes all-in $127.50, SB calls $116.50, UTG+1 calls $70.55

River ($416.55, 3 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $416.55

UTG+1 shows

SB shows

Hero wins $413.55 (net +$273.05)
UTG+1 lost $134.55
SB lost $140.50

BBV

2010-02-25T22:23:00.001Z

Brag: Hero Call a river overbet with Ace high
Beat: Small pot as accidentally checked one street (timed out)
Variance: Couldn't think of a better comeback

Its Here

2010-02-22T12:58:00.002Z

HEM multi-currency support is here and I can finally see how the month has been going. And the answer is very well. The £ tables are soooo soft. I’m up $1k in around 7k hands but have played too much £50nl and not enough higher stuff. Meh, who cares, its all about the benjamins. That and recouping the money I’ve had to withdraw so I can bash up $200NL in the very near future.

I feel like I’ve been playing well for the most part (hence the results I guess) and making very few mistakes. The odd stack that’s disappeared in the wrong direction has been due to the ipoker speciality of people showing up with mid pp’s in 3bet or 4bet pots (and flopping sets of course). I had two such hands at the start of a session yesterday immediately putting me around 3bi down. In the past I may have had small tilt issues after that, but I brushed it off and finished 3bi up. GG dogster. I’m also giving myself the proverbial pat on the back for having gone through every showndown, +40bb pot this month and made notes. Now if I could only locate the droolers again…

The only problem I have is lack of volume. I don’t really want to go above 4 tables as I’ve been there, done it and don’t think its optimal for me. Maybe I will try to add in a 5th and 6th in a session this week just to see if I can increase the hourly a bit more. Another thing that hinders me is that if I feel tired, I don’t play. Perhaps I need to slap myself round the chops, wake up and find some energy from somewhere. I guess its easy to feel lethargic in this shitty winter weather.

Talking of weather, its snowing again. This is good for business and almost certainly will lead to a pay-rise come April. That’s about the most positive thing I can say about work atm. Is it a justifiable to state that reason for leaving was due to “removal of my 2+2 forum access”?

Snooker tonight and our team look to continue our good league run which has seen us win 4-1 or 5-0 every week since about October. We’re up against a team that shocked us last time at their place and where I lost my only singles frame of the season. I’ve played on their table a few times since and really quite like it now so I’m looking for my first decent break for a while. Unless I get ratted, which after how today has gone so far is a distinct possibility.

Back to it I guess.

Kids in remedial English sure are slow

2010-02-09T16:26:00.001Z

As I haven’t posted a random mooosic vid for a while, I’ve found all you devoted readers a decent little ditty to enjoy whilst you read my shit.

I’ve got you a bog standard update today. Full of the usual. I’ve managed to play a fair few hands recently. No more than 4 tabling, lots of note taking yaddah yaddah. I’ve been strangely drawn to the £ and Euro games as they are softer than a really soft thing. I doubt my broadcasting of this fact will have much impact! Anyway, I’ve played a fair old bit of £50nl which is like £80nl, £100nl ($160nl) and E100 which is like $hundredandsomethingnl. Its all good – droolers everywhere – PTR’ing everyone I played on Sunday I found ONE reg with winnings of $1k+ (and he looked like a 2/4 dude mucking around). I’ve even managed to surpass 1k hands with one reg in just a few days with whom I’ve developed a pretty profitable read.

I hope to get plenty of play in this week as I have a reload bonus to clear and have cleared out the FTP account to take advantage. This means I cant play Rush for a while, but that was probably the cause of my CTS hand problems! Or maybe it was work. Either way, I’m wearing a funky wrist support thingy as a result.

Nothing to report on the Snooker front. We’re bashing up teams 5-0 every week now and not even playing that well. I’m well on course to finish the season on over 90%. Easy game.

Finally, to prove I run well, this morning at work our tyre fitter strolls in my office and nabs my car keys. A while later he comes back with them… apparently he spotted I had a flat tyre (nail in the bugger) and as he wasn’t busy, just sorted it. Nice! Running bad I would have spotted that at 5pm in the driving rain, got drenched fitting the spare and had to muck around getting it sorted the next day. The proof of my running well will be if I can persuade the missus that Valentines Day is stupid and she should let me go down the pub all day to watch Bolton v Spurs. Stay tuned.

The Truth About Man Flu and other short stories

2010-02-01T12:54:00.001Z

So January has come and gone. What a non-event that was poker wise what with the PC being busto, a few sessions lost to donking around at rush and hours/days lost to re-setting up HUD’s & mods with the new ipoker. Still awaiting multi-currency support with HEM so cannot even assess accurate results.

Finished the month with a few good sessions. Although I suck badly at heads-up I’ve been starting more tables for first dibs at the fish and it seems to be working. I’m amazed how many regs wont play me just because I have a slightly positive PTR profit – I feel for anyone trying to play HU seriously. With a new database I’ve had to start retaking notes on the regs again. Its not a biggy as many have moved up or down, changed skins or changed their games. Plus I’m now sitting at tables full of fishies that I’ve started obv.

Talking of PTR, it gave me a heart attack the other day. I checked my results and had a whopping session loss recorded. I knew I had a small losing session and that one of my winning tables was a Euro one so wouldn’t be included. Upon quick investigation, one of two things happened - whoever took my seat on a table I left was logged as me or the seat numbers became offset. I watched a funny hand where a fish stacked ‘me’ with 69s v JJ. As my DB only had me winning blinds on the 4 occasions I got Jacks (fml) and the fish in question was a 69/4, I’m inclined to think the later might be the case. I’ve seen similar on there before. Once I looked a 3 hand session I played where I spazzed every hand. The time was logged as the middle of the night and I briefly had nightmares that my (very) occasional sleep walking might have taken on a new twist. But when I couldn’t find the hands in my DB and my account balance was unchanged, I figured it was their error.

So what’s in store for February. Mr Barclaycard wanted some money so I’ve nearly emptied my FT account (left some in for either donking around at Rush or maybe PLO or something) and I’ve taken around a quarter of my Ipoker roll. So where I was rolled for 200nl, I’m now not so won’t be partaking for a while. So February will be a grind at $100nl and quite probably the slightly higher but much softer E100 and £100. I’ve got as many as 20 available nights this month to play so hope to get a good volume in and build back towards the level up. Well, that’s the plan anyway.

My CTS is back. It’s mild and in my left hand so doesn’t impede too much, but if it gets worse it does muck up any PC work I do (include poker). In other health news, I had a mild bout of man flu last week. The missus has the same thing and is a million times worse than I was. Man flu gets such bad press whereas woman flu – well them women think they’ve won the propaganda war, but we know don’t we. We’ve totally levelled them on this one.

Men – 5 bet bluff shove to rep the worst Man flu going, get credit from woman and get pampered in bed for a few days.
Women – Fold pre-flop with Woman flu and soldier on as they don’t want to ruin the image they’ve given themselves.

Right back to it. It’s transfer deadline day and I don’t want to miss Spurs buying or selling Chimbonda.

3... 2... 1...

2010-01-26T11:11:00.001Z

Long time no update hey! Where to start…

Poker I guess. Finally got my PC fixed after like 12 days or so. Played some 200nl at all 3 currencies over on ipoker. Can’t say if I’m up or down as HEM still doesn’t support multi-currency yet (so stacking someone in a £400 pot and getting stacked in a $400 pot reads the same at the mo). Only got like 1.5k hands in which were kind of breakeven. Meh. Had a session with Baz recently too. Due to his travels its been a while and we had a decent little 100nl jaunt over on Full Tilt. Unfortunately loading up said site coincided with the release of Rush Poker. So I’ve put in like 3 trillion hands of that to see what its like. I love the constantly changing dynamic and have been testing out different ideas. Must get back to normal stuff soon though (and remember that I cant check raise every flop or open 94.1% of buttons).

The Wife is in hospital at the mo but I don’t want to go into that on here. That means I’ve got a few days off work to look after the kids and do the housework. You know, I may even convince myself to grind as well. So far today I’ve managed the washing up and listened to a couple of albums I downloaded from a band called Tin Tree Factory. Good shit for doing the dishes to imo. Free d/l’s on their site. I need to introduce myself to the vacuum cleaner at some point soon but I just know I wont be able to resist a quick Rush session beforehand.

Snooker is going well. We smashed up our title rivals 5-0 a few weeks back. I had the pleasure of wrapping up the whitewash against the lowest handicapped player in the division. We then ducked out the cup in the Quarters to a team 3 divisions higher but put up a good fight and last night secured a fortunate 4-1 league win. I ran like god in my frame which is standard. If you cant be good, be lucky.

Right then, back to it. 3… 2… 1…

FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU Technology

2010-01-03T13:02:00.001Z

Happy New Year peoples

January 1st. Games are gooooood. Make a couple of hundred across a three sites. Easy. Going to be a good year!
January 2nd. Hard drive fails. Deado. Should have just bought a new system when it died last time.

See you in "2-5 working days"

See ya laters Noughties

2009-12-31T13:02:00.001Z

So there goes another year. In true blogger fashion, here’s that 2009 review / 2010 look ahead type post.

I had a brief glance at HEM last night to see what the damage for the year was. Over all the different accounts I have and before bonuses, I won $5k. There’s a few hands missing, but (assuming I won at the same rate in them) they net off against any miscellaneous MTT’s I may have indulged in when bored. During the year I played EVERY level up to 400nl (Stars sent $5 to my unused account which I run into 4 figures), worked with a coach, opened up my game to a 23/19 style, had a bad downswing, enjoyed a heater, plugged some leaks and learned a ton.

In 2010 I just want to keep up the momentum of the last few months. Obviously I want to keep improving all aspects of my game. I also want to discipline myself to getting some volume in too – December has seen a pitiful number of sessions & hands. Eventually I want poker to provide a sturdy second income, maybe even equally my job. The long-term life aim (whether poker has any part in it, I don’t know) is to move somewhere warmer. I’d love the kids to experience different cultures as they grow up. The only downside is there aren’t many places in the world that provide free healthcare and education like we do here. Anyway, ‘plans’ have been on hold since the recession started devaluing my main asset every day. But I digress…

Tonight is new years eve so I’ll be trying to nick drunk peoples money. Happy new year to anyone reading this.

My new year has been ruined already… just found out that the snooker league have shaved a whole 4 points off my handicap. I knew a cut was coming, but was expecting something more substantial! Oh well, all good things must come to an end. Like this post.

Snow = Profit

2009-12-24T10:51:00.000Z

For some of us at least. Been working hard the last week hence no updates. Cant remember the last time I even loaded up the pokerz, been so tired (and getting in the Christmas spirit). Plenty of play to come over the next few days though as I have a whopping 5 days off. Get in there!

One last brag before Santa comes – knocked in a 69 break at snooker the other week. Sadly it was in practice and even more regrettable I missed a black trying to get up table for the colours, so 34 points went begging (a magical ton was on). We bashed up a team who are 3 divisions higher in the cup on Monday. I’m not sure how much longer I can remain under the radar with my bandit handicap.

Merry Christmas to everyone in internetland. I leave you with some Santa win.

Long Boring Post (The Intro That Should Have Been)

2009-12-14T14:02:00.002Z

I was doing some PC housekeeping last week and came across a few old files I had forgotten about. One was particularly interesting – it was my Betfair ‘accounts’. Let’s rewind and do a better job of an ‘intro’ post than I originally did when I started this blog.

I was always vaguely interested in gambling. I remember running random books on horse races at school. When I was 13 I took a flyer and tried to place a bet down the local greyhound stadium. I chose the oldest, blindest looking cashier and she took the bet. One thing I was never really bothered about was betting shops (and I’m still not). You may get ‘characters’ in them but they just have ‘LOSER’ written across them in my opinion. It was when I got my current job that I got into sports betting. My boss is a bit of a shrewdie and I was immediately helping him with his betting records as he wasn’t good on Excel. He can use it now, but somehow I still find myself entering his P&L figures every Monday! Anyway we’d dissect the weekends football from like Wednesday onwards and he’d tap into my knowledge of lower league hoof-ball (Couldn’t afford to go to Spurs much so watched Northampton Town a fair bit). Around this time I wanted to get a bet on an obscure snooker match. The only bookie that was offering prices was like 10 miles away. Sod that. An internet search found a better price on…. Betfair.

I remember I lost that first bet (fixed snooker matches FTL), but the concept of backing and laying was intriguing to me. And I didn’t have to move from my PC! Soon my boss was on there too. I did a bit of ‘trading’ in 2003. Getting ‘green’ on all outcomes was brilliant. I watched how the odds changed in in-running events and started grinding out small profits. It took a while for the missus to understand what I was doing. Her granddad had managed to ruin her family years before with gambling. From the start of 2004 I kept detailed records of my daily transactions to prove to her I wasn’t a degenerate gambler.

January 2004 I made £300. I have a plus or minus logged for every day bar two that month. I recall putting in a hour or two here and there just nicking small change. Football was fairly good to me. The in-running prices made for OK trading but I’d have to hog the TV all night and watch some dross. My staple diet though was the morning BAGS greyhounds meetings. These would start at like 11.20 each day. I’d get into work, have a cuppa and study the races ahead. I wouldn’t be picking winners, I’d just be getting a feel for what may or may not be fancied. There were some tracks where the Racing Post tipster was obviously bent and ‘ramping’ dogs that had no chance (probably to ensure a price on ones him and his mates fancied). After a little studying I’d get down to work and by 11am find some job which involved a lot of keyboard and mouse work. No-one could see my screen, I had an awesome ALT + TAB motion and if my boss ever saw my screen he couldn’t say much as he was often surfing the same site.

BAGS betting was a flurry of activity. There’d be a few tentative prices up and a few trades would be made 5-10 minutes before. Around 5 minutes before the off, bookmakers prices would go up at the tracks and on their sites. One way to make money would be to batter any ‘wrong’ price on betfair. If someone was asking for £100 at 2/1 for the likely favourite and it opened at 5/1, then I’d lay it for everything I could then back it back for a profit on everything. Of course I’d be competing with many others to match the price and there’d be other considerations. One would be that sometimes the bookies prices were just plain wrong (intentionally to manipulate Betfair). You had to know your track and its tendencies. On the more predictable tracks – where dogs didn’t go from 9/1 rags to 6/4 favourites – you could make a book on all 6 dogs and attempt to lay them all. I often made small daily profits and sometimes made a big one when I pounced on wrong prices or weighted a book in favour of a likely winner.

2004 looked like this:-
Jan 301.85
Feb 129.03
Mar 691.44
Apr 846.96
May 805.94
Jun 710.57
Jul 1066.97
Aug 618.69
Sep -476.82
Oct 223.64
Nov 358.07
Dec 337.75

A win of £5.6k. July was interesting as I dabbled in the World 9 Ball Pool championships. I made a smallish book on the event and as few bookies were doing prices, got to lay some absurdly low prices. In running was also lucrative as people over-reacted to one ball being potted. The same with snooker. Ronnie O’Sullivan could be 4/9 favourite for a frame, knock in a long red and go 1/7 favourite. Laying both sides in a two horse race at long odds-on is just the best feeling in the world!

2005 was even better. I could trade a load more sports well. Tennis was a banker but restricted myself to just Wimbledon. I had a bigger bankroll and could stand more exposure. The pool was brilliant again. I lucked out on getting the LOT. The event was played in Taiwan and I reasoned that no Yank would travel well and win it there and most Europeans would struggle too. I kept all the big hitting Asians on-side. I had to lay a number of the Asians too to balance the book and took a few quid against eventual winner CC Wu. IIRC I had two huge winners in the last four, one reasonable and Wu. But I made £2k on the event. Highlight was Wu playing a qualifier in one of the KO rounds. The qualifier had made a good run but wasn’t in the same class as Wu (wasn’t even on the main asian tour). He went 2-0 up and I layed a lumpy 4 figure bet on him at odds-on. Wu came through and I’d greened up to the tune of £800 both sides. Obviously I could have wiped my weeks work if that had gone wrong. I just went with my instincts and it paid off. During 2005 I made £6.9k on the exchanges. Wow. Until finding this old file I had forgotten how good it was.

By the looks of it 2005 was when I got into poker. I downloaded Betfair poker (obv) and played sit n’ gos. I have detailed records of this too. I didn’t dabble much but made £429. I have a few cash sessions ‘logged’ at this time. Most seem to be winners (was probably a bankroll nit at the time!). I recall using Gametime+ as a HUD and bloody good it was too.

2006 saw the end of my exchange days. There were numerous reasons. Firstly we moved office at work and whilst I positioned my monitor so no-one could see it, more people were liable to walk past. I cannot tell you how stressful it is when you need to close out a book which has a huge liability on the hot favourite and someone is using the fax machine behind you. The second reason was Betfair become harder. More and more people used it and there just weren’t the edges available. Greyhound books became more spot on. People had laptops at the snooker to nick the best in-running prices (and Willie Thorne still got owned!). The World Pool didn’t have in-running betting and the market was poor. I didn’t run a book on it as I’d withdrawn thousands for a car and my wedding. The final reason was I’d found a new edge. A new way to make money. Poker. Idiots just gave it away at this game. I logged some small amounts in the early part of 2006 and then stopped using my spreadsheet. I guess I had graduated to Poker Tracker. I found a 2007 screenshot of my PT stats yesterday too. It had a four figure dollar win. Not quite Betfair days, but a steady little income. 2008 up to the start of this blog has also been steady. And the rest you know. So that’s how I got here.

Short Boring Post

2009-12-14T14:01:00.000Z

So I was going to a standard update but realised I have very little to post. I’ll do one anyway but I’m sure the post above will be more interesting.

Poker. Hardly got any hands in at all this month due to spending evenings retiling the kitchen and stuff. Four evenings lost to watching the Mosconi Cup too, plus snooker was on all week, plus my PC has been an arse and has been randomly restarting (usually like 2 minutes into a session). I’ve got maybe 6k hands logged at 200nl, 100nl and 50nl over a couple of site and show a small profit. Going to investigate these £ and Euro games that are going on once HEM bring out multicurrency support.

Snooker. Enjoying myself at this game at the moment. Winning streak continues and I even had a practice last week. Decided to enter a one day tournament whilst my handicap was ridiculously high, but crashed out in a 10.30am Sunday morning hungover manner. Lost on the pink in the deciding frame to a player who plays 4 divisions higher and I had at least a dozen chances to win the frame. Played so bad. I wasn’t even at 50% of my normal game and I scared the shit out of him.

Nothing in this life is ever fair, Especially when the Judge is running for Mayor

2009-12-03T11:54:00.002Z

Soooo, the washing machine repair man comes out last night and condemns old 'washy'. Great. Order a new one for collection today. Whilst he was giving us the bad news, he pipes up with "Can I smell gas?".

Fast forward to today and British Gas have confirmed a leak somewhere and a bloke who owns Corgis has just condemned the cooker.

On the upside though, I don't have to eat the wife's cooking for a while!!!!!

Anyone know someone who stakes SSNL cash players who have had to withdraw their entire roll? :(

Oooh look, its December

2009-12-01T15:53:00.003Z

And there goes another month. To recap: I won lots of money, played fairly well for the most part and run like God/Dog. I guess December will involve keeping up the good work and showing I’ve learnt a thing or two. There’s going to be withdrawals unfortunately (Christmas and all that malarky), but all things being well I should really be thinking of adding some higher limits at some point soon. I probably should float that idea past Baz first.

December goals/targets/whatever:- Keep up the good standards I’ve set myself with regard to table selection, quitting, patience. Don’t get too lazy during Christmas – the games can often be juicy.

So what’s been occurring since the last update? Not a lot poker wise. Got a few hands in before the end of the month, but not many. Had my brother pay for the meal I went out on Friday for (which is quite a big thing I can tell you). Took Child 2 to the pub to witness Spurs dominate Villa and only get a draw. The moron forgot his ID so had to traipse half-a-mile home to get it. Spent all Sunday with a monster hangover so played a monster session on Football Manager 2010 instead of doing anything useful. Well, instead of doing anything actually.

Snooker. Ah yes. Its like poker you know. When you’re feeling good, the breaks start flowing. Start doubting yourself and you miss. Hot on the heels of last weeks 35 clearance, my first practice frame yielded a 43 break (missed final black for a 50 fml). Into my singles frame and I’ve knocked in a 44 which is the highest break in our lol-division this season. In fact no-one has had a break bigger than 45 in the 5th tier since the league’s web site began in 2001/2. So the next target is to beat that 45, knock in a 50+, then I guess aim for the most over 30 breaks in one season for the division (record = 6). After that I’d like to beat my long standing high break of 61 from back when I used to play once a week with some mates from uni. I was shocking back then so I must be able to get close nowadays. Oh yeah, we whitewashed the old fogies we played last night and have an even worse bunch next week.

I leave you with a bunch of win:-

Stuff and Thingaments

2009-11-27T12:18:00.003Z

About time for an update me thinks.

Things still going good, although not the 45% upward type graph I would like (I’d actually like a 90% upward graph and a weekend with some of the Sky Sport News girls but you can’t have everything). With a few days off work this week, I’ve been able to grind whenever I felt like it. Daytime poker though is soooo frustrating. So few tables, so many shorties. I ended up adding in a lot of 50nl tables to supplement the lack of 100nl. I think I did better in the former, but overall had a solid few days. I could certainly handle the full time lifestyle… might help to get a million times better first. If I stopped playing for the month right now, I’d book a bigger win than my monthly take home at work. Lets hope I can build on that and replicate it for a long time to come. I’m not stupid enough to think I’ve cracked it after one good month. I mean, I’ve only recently gone into lifetime profit for 100nl (brag: I’m now in profit for every level I’ve ever played up to 400nl) so there’s plenty of work still to be done. But I’m prepared to put that work in if there’s a chance of making some good dosh at this game.

I have a few more sessions left in me this month and I’d like to get to around $2500 before bonus payments. I’m going out for a meal tonight as it was my dads birthday yesterday so may get some late night Friday madness in later and I’m taking Child 2 out tomorrow for a beer as he is now 18, so no play on Saturday. Sunday looks like a grind day providing I don’t have a hangover – and as we’re planning on watching the mighty Spurs in the evening game it’s a distinct possibility given how we usually play up at Aston Villa (badly in case you didn’t know).

Having had a few days off work, I’ve got a load to do, so will leave you with some random stuff and things:
* Had a 35 at snooker on Monday (last red, black and all the colours). Hopefully that first league 50+ is around the corner.
* Kind of broke up a road-rage fight the other morning. As I was approaching my youngests’ school (on foot) I could see two cars stopped haphazardly on the junction outside and both drivers out exchanging views on the others driving. I got a bit closer and saw the younger driver, around 30ish and medium build, grabbing the older driver, 50ish and shortish, round the throat and calling him a few choice names. I shouted a few times until he let go and turned around. I could see there hadn’t even been a prang, so it was probably just a cut-up incident. I stared the bloke out and told him to get in his car and **** off. He duly obliged!! Phew. Luckily his read must have been “I’ve threatened this short old guy but have been cold 4-bet by a 6’ 3” dude, I fold”. I obviously had total air. Funnily enough, that afternoon at the school, some plastic bobbies were loitering deterring the illegal parking which probably contributed to the above. My son thinks there were there because “That man was saying bad words this morning”.
* Took Child 4 to the opticians the other day and didn't have a lot of change for the parking meter so fed it 40mins worth of monies. Appointment took 1hr... but I swerved a ticket! New phrase: "Running like Dog"
* And finally, the former bass player from 90’s indie popsters Marion came round for a cuppa last week. I was out.

Gangsters treat their ladies right and Pranksters curse their chickless plight

2009-11-19T12:30:00.002Z

All rise. Defendant, please state your full name.

“Small Stakes No Limit Hold ‘Em Player”

Mr Player, you are charged with the offence of being bad at poker. How do you plead?

“Guilty as charged your honour. But I do have some mitigation…

1. I limit myself to 4 tables
2. I try to assign people ranges
3. I have strict bankroll management
4. I use a table scanner before I sit and pick out the best seats and table available
5. I play ultra tight from the blinds, particularly the small blind
6. I leave tables full of regs and leave tables if them shortstackers invade
7. I take notes
8. I use a HUD and have only relevant stats showing
9. I review my sessions and look into the games of the regs
10. I use PTR to check out others games
11. I post trouble hands and get feedback from my coach
12. I read and re-read some of the better poker literature out there
13. I watch training videos and don’t just copy the plays, but think about why they are making them
14. I don’t tilt like a monkey. Much.
15. I have a stop loss and know what my C game looks like
16. I steal like its going out of fashion
17. I have a few cunning moves in my armoury but don’t overuse them
18. I don’t berate the fish and;
19. I don’t play long sessions, whilst tired or whilst drinking”

Hmmm, that’s a lot of mitigation Mr Player. Anything else to add?

“Yeah, I run like fucking GOD”

In that case, I hereby sentence you to a mirrion hours hard grinding

-------------------------------------

^ That could have been so much more profound had I the time to think about it. So things are going along swimmingly. That giraffe didn’t activate any doomswitch and although I’ve only got a couple of sessions in since then, they’ve all been winning ones. I have a few days off work next week when I may be able to tango with the daytime nits and get some serious hands in while I’m running good, but I also have stuff to do so we shall see. It’d be cool (for the ego) to move up the PTR list of monthly winners for my site/stake. PTR doesn’t seem to have 100% coverage and the hands they’re missing this month are winning ones for me (last month they missed a buy-in in either direction off my sessions). It’s a shame they don’t separate out the HU players from the 6 max too. Anyway, enough with the PTR obsession. I’m having a better month than Durrrr.

Snippets of stuff as I’m hungry and want some grub:
Pool. Won on Sunday. Got very drunk. Standard
Snooker. Won on Monday. Played shocking but picked it up enough to knock in a 29 in the last frame, missing the easiest red of all time and the chance of a fairly big break.
T Henry. No comment. Unlucky Ireland.

Having a giraffe...

2009-11-15T17:00:00.005Z

Probably shouldn't do this, but whatever. Graph for the last 3 weeks since I changed 1 tiny little thing in my game:-

edit: I fail at posting giraffes. It basically says +$2K in 7600 hands.

BBV

2009-11-14T22:18:00.003Z

Brag: Currently sitting in position with a 86/37 monkey
Beat: Only 50nl and only 1 table (cleared him out at deep table)
Variance: Had to sit out for 4 or 5 orbits to eat my chicken madras

BTW, shipping a 4 figure month at the mo

All those people who you romantically like to still believe are alive, are dead

2009-11-12T13:00:00.001Z

And all those people who I once thought were ‘fairly solid regs’ are not. (source: PTR)

That is all.

That Euromillions unclaimed ticket...

2009-11-09T12:23:00.002Z

...wasn't mine. Back to the grind I guess.

What was all the bull about in my last post? Did I write that? Sheesh. That was HUGE invitation to the poker gods to activate the doomswitch. Good job I’m an atheist hey?

November has begun as October ended. Playing well and running decent (like 20+ BB/100). I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of bad plays I’ve made (in my opinion of course). Everything seems soooo easy all of a sudden. Here’s where I’m at now, compared to 6 months ago. I’m now playing 24/20 instead of something like 18/14 or 19/15. The best thing about that increase? Of that 4% extra, it has nearly all been added onto my button range. So yeah, everyone with a HUD knows this eejit is stealing like crazy, but what they going to do about it? Not a lot. I might get 3bet a bit more. Big deal, I was folding that J3o anyway and when I have AA you kindly pay me off because “he was playing 43/43 with a 100% attempt to steal”. I might also get flatted more. Big deal, I has POSITION BABY. My hand reading has improved, thanks to a few things: Having to play some absolute junk on the button, some good reading from good authors (and I don’t mean reading effin 2+2!!), more thought on villains hand ranges than before and not playing too many tables. I’m now using a table selection tool that’s pretty useful and saves me a lot of time manually looking all the tables. I now look for buddies 1st, then other fish and high VPIP’ers 2nd. Then its onto looking for tables without shorties and also for any full stacked single tablers that I don’t recognise. The rest of you mugs can just sit with the same regs on the same 12 tables and see who can 3bet who the most. Meanwhile, I’m off getting that extra few BB per 100 by finding French and Italians to sit to the left of. Lastly, no online wannabe should have an excuse for not having watched, listened to or read Tommy Angelo.

The best bit of it all? I still suck and can only get better.

Well, now I’ve told you how great I am, I better tone down the self congratulation and not mention the comprehensive snooker singles win last week (gloss over the doubles imo) and the impressive 2/2 at pool last night. Heading out for a snooker practice tonight as we have no game. Going to bash up a guy from my pool team. He’s going to be picking colours out the pockets for hours. The rest of the week will see some grinding. This time next year Rodders, we’ll be millionaires.

Find me a word that rhymes with pavement...

2009-11-02T12:46:00.002Z

...and I will kill your parents. OK, I won't, but the threat is there.

October results time… The winner of the interwebz is me! Well, not quite, but I did cobble together a 6BI month over a tiny little sample. That might seem a bit trivial but I am ultra pleased with the end of the month. Following one bad Sunday afternoon session I had two days where I couldn’t play due to other commitments. This gave me time to reflect on my game a little and when I came back I had one coaching session where I sat watched my coach’s style. From the session notes he compiles there was one golden nugget. Just a little something that I was missing – the cogs were in place but needed the oil. It’s all well and good trying to turn an 18/15 into a 24/22 overnight with a bit of coaching, but you’ve got to feel comfortable in that role and in the situations you end up in. I’ve now found my niche – my place in this whole thing. A tougher TAG than before. Quite often a TAG in LAG’s clothing. You villains are welcome to call me down light if you like, but I have the goods every single time now. You think I’m looser than I am. You think I’m F.O.S. You 5bet shove over my AA because I have stolen your big blind ten times in a row. I own you.

Since that aforementioned black Sunday (it wasn’t that bad actually, I run into overpairs a few times and hit my stop loss so went down the pub) I’ve nailed +7BI. Already up a couple for November and plan on getting the LOT. Setting a monetary target might be a folly as it all depends on the number of hands I can get in. I have a load of holiday to take from work so might take some random days here and there and grind. If I can get anywhere near 20,000 then 6bb per 100 (last months rate before bonus) would be a $1200 win. Bugger that, 10bb/100 (or 5ptbb in ye olde money) is $2000 and would pay for Christmas nicely. Other poker goals include the usual – more ‘A’ game, less ‘C’ game. Plus finish off reading a few written tomes and re-read some too. Let there be range indeed.

Away from silly games involving playing cards, our pool team suffered a bad beat (see what I did there?) last night. Missing three players including two internationals past & present, we got pumped 7-4 on our home table. We’ve only lost once previously on it and that was following this years Carling Cup final when half our team was bladdered before we started. Anyhow, my play consisted of a couple of one visit dishes in practice, a sickkkkk first visit dish to put our team 1-0 up and a should-have-been break and dish in my 2nd where I missed my last red to the middle needing to get a bit ambitious with position. Somehow their best player contrived to let me have another chance which I dutifully accepted. That was as good is got as only one other player won (a fellow yid) and last weeks hero (gooner) lost his frames. Unfortunately we didn’t have the strength in depth to compete at the business end and it was a relative rookie who had to try and save the game at 4-5. I was primed for the decider but our guy didn’t have the experience to close out the frame. I proceeded to not miss a ball whilst having some consolation ale and playing scotch doubles after the match. Fml.

Snooker tonight and it’s a top of the table shoot-out. After a quarter of the season it looks like we’re the best two teams in the league. It’s a good old British Legion club we’re playing at and although I’ve never been to this place, I hear it’s got some atmosphere which has got to be better than the libraryesque (is that a word? It is now) conditions we have played in recently. I’m driving so that my regular chauffeur can have a drink. This also means I’m likely to play last (sobriety ftw) and will have the chance to take on their best stick. Let’s hope we’re 4-0 up by that point going by last weeks Mr Magoo performance.

Toodlepip. And remember – I own you all.

Fair to Middling

2009-10-29T11:14:00.003Z

Just a small update to keep the old blog ticking over. Still pretty low volume for the month due to being out and about on various nights, driving to Newport & Cardiff (and back) on a prime playing day and being too tired to play. The last two sessions have been polar opposites in terms of running. Had a Sunday afternoon session that started by losing 2 flips versus the 20bb’ers, then an 80bb wedge to Mr Turn-a-goofy-2pr and finished with the usual races with AK, JJ etc not going my way. Then last night, the exact opposite – stack the shorties, sets hold up against the fish, regs don’t have the better overpair etc. In between those sessions I had a good session sweating Baz whilst he battled the regs. Now I love seeking out the fishies but sometimes they just aren’t accessible (20+ waiting lists ftl) or they’re sitting with the shorties. So it’s becoming more important to pinpoint the worst regs and find their leaks. I feel like I controlled a number of reg-fest tables last night pretty well and applied a decent amount of pressure. Just a shame I didn’t get that many big hands as I set up a loose image. I have a couple more free evenings to complete Octobers play and hopefully can book some more winning sessions as the month has been a bit ‘fair to middling’.

I also best ‘fess up about my first snooker loss. Yep, I lost a black ball game against an old pool playing mate. I seem to be getting worse at the game. Even though I picked up a doubles win, it was my partner who did the damage. My excuse was that I was rather hungover from Sunday night’s pool. We pipped last years runners-up 6-5 in a match we should have won much easier and earlier than the final frame drama we endured. In our defence we did have one of our better players missing (England U21 international). It did end up rather messy. One of the guys who shared my cab afterwards couldn’t actually talk by the time we bundled him out. I have declined an invite to the club on Saturday lunchtime for the North London Derby. A 12 hour session with these dudes would probably equal divorce. Plus it looks like we’re bereft of any pace without Lennon & Defoe so it could be a tough one. Unless our fans all turn up with Martin Taylor masks…

50 Things To Do Before You Die

2009-10-22T11:13:00.002+01:00

I don’t have one of these lists. But if I did, somewhere near the very top would have been to see lo-fi indie icons Pavement live at least once. That could have been put in the ‘never going to happen’ file in 1999 when they split up. But wait… they’ve only gone and reformed for some one-off gigs. So in May 2010, the day after my birthday (and the day after my wife’s birthday too – uncanny huh?) we’re off to Brixton to see them perform at the place where they played their last gig in 99. As an O2 customer I snaffled up pre-sale tickets yesterday. I’d hate to be one of the plebs trying to get general sale tickets tomorrow morning – there ain’t gonna be any left!

God this post is so full of win. Haven’t played any poker since the weekend. If memory serves, it was a breakeven-ish few days. Doing OK for the month and planning to finish with a flourish. I haven’t played due to feeling too tired on a couple of my normal playing nights, so that’s a victory for self control. Spent one night reading a number of poker ebooks I’ve managed to, errrr, procure. My eyes are now square.

What other win is there to report?

On Sunday our pool match was away but at a pub within walking distance. So I plugged in the mp3 and plodded a mile down the road. Lots of ale, 2 decent frames (wins obv) from me, an 8-3 win and a Sunday roast for the food offering. If that’s not a win, I don’t know what is!

The stick came out again on Monday for snooker. Getting a bit over-enthusiastic about this exercise lark, I walked to the snooker club which is probably a mile and a half. The team we played were easily the worst we’ve encountered so far. Truly horrific. Needless to say we battered them 5-0 and I moved on to 8 wins from 8 (5 singles, 3 doubles). Win.

Final snippets of win:
* Child 5’s parents evening on Tuesday and her teacher loves her so much she wants to keep her. I insisted on keeping our only clever child – just for the novelty factor.
* Seeing grand-daughter at weekend and dropping off Child 4 to stay with (no longer a) Child 1 for the week. Only fail there is I’ve got to drive to Wales and back twice in a week.
* Got a haircut

Just across from the sign that says 'Pros Only'

2009-10-13T11:50:00.002+01:00

It’s Tuesday. It’s the night after a snooker match. Work is on the back burner in favour of hangoveraments and blogaments. Let’s gooooo…..

If you sifted through the attempt at humour that was my last post you may have gathered the wife was away for the weekend. So with a squillion days holiday left at work I took Friday and Monday off which can only mean one thing. Yep, 4 days of housework. Obviously I condensed that work into the half an hour before the missus got home and spent the rest of the time clicking buttons.

I actually used my time quite well. Caught up on a load of videos on CR and checked out a couple of DC ones which I, errrr, discovered on the interweb (insert whistling smiley here). I also went through the database and re-added notes on some of the regs and did a hand history review with Bazclef. Managed to log a load of shortish sessions over the 4 days and was quite a few quid up. Out of all the sessions there was just one where I felt old Mr ‘C’ game was showing up. Well, he didn’t just show up, he stormed the building firing chips all over the place until I curtailed that behaviour. The rest of my play was, in my opinion, pretty good. Highlights include:

• Sitting with a 95/90 type who was determined to give away as much money as possible using the only button on his GUI – “Pot’.
• Getting one of the winningest regs to spaz out by taking a suspicious line oop with JJ.
• Stacking the same 20bb scummer three times in about 10 hands. I wish bots could feel pain.
• Getting called a lucky nit by someone playing like 10/7 when I stacked his turned trips with my turned boat.
• Hitting a set like everytime I had a pocket pair (so that’s what it feels like)

Simple this full-time poker playing lark! It took a while but I even found decent tables during the daytime. Even the daytime 60k hands per month regs that I encountered are generally losers according to PTR. Looking forward to the rest of the month as this could possibly be my best ever with normal running.

In other news I missed the start of the pool season as no babysitter was available. Apparently we got spanked badly so even my presence wouldn’t have helped a great deal. I carried on my 100% win rate in the snooker league last night as we won 4-1 to go top of the table. It was our first away game which meant we didn’t have to ref and could therefore drink more beer than usual. We did get a bit loud but I think our opponents (average age 75) took in good humour. Without any practice time I struggled to get going on an unfamiliar table. My opponent stuck with me until the colours but I banged in few good ‘uns and won by about 25. I’ll need to play a lot better than that to maintain my 100% as there are a few guys that will run me close, especially on their own tables. Highlight of the evening was Gee playing this guy that needed a stick to walk and clung to the table whilst playing. He inched around the table taking a minute to get to his shot, then banged in 12 foot pots after lining up for half a second. Gee had actually turned up early and had a practice frame with this same guy before being drawn against him in the match proper. Anyway halfway through the frame, this pensioner is knocking them in left right and centre. You could see Gee getting more incredulous, especially when he informed us that the old bastard was missing by 2 foot in practice and nearly fell over twice. It would have been a cracking story if the old boy really had hustled him, but we won the frame and then had the pleasure of seeing the old guy struggle to respot balls when reffing the next.

It’s a home game next week against what looks like the weakest team in the league. Perennially in the bottom couple of the bottom division and from a discussion with their skipper, I think they’re proud of that achievement. The only two frames the team has won this season are against the coffin dodgers we played last night. If that’s not a chance to shatter my high break, I don’t know what is!

Laters

You just called me Kremit

2009-10-10T16:14:00.001+01:00

So it was like wow man look at the colours and yeah I've got like two cards and they're the same. Freaky huh? So I like click the buttons and all these funky coloured chips go in the middle dude and wow look he has two cards the same too and then all these other cards just like come from nowhere. Then like wow all them funky chips come my way and the other dude's like all “wtf” and stuff in the chatbox and obviously not down with my peace and love. So I call for the wife to bring me some food cos' all this poker jive is giving me the munchies. But she doesn't come and i'm like “oh yeah man, she's gone away for the weekend with her crew”. So like whatever and i'm off to the kitchen to get me some grub but theres like nothing there. Uh-oh. Then I remember I was going to like go to the shop or something but thought i'd have one of the awesome roll-ups the missus left me. So like i'm gonna have another one and get me some more funky coloured chips and phone Dominos. So like keep it chilled guys. Peace and love to ya.

Normal bloggage will be resumed soon

I laugh in the face of blog posts

2009-10-06T12:07:00.003+01:00

Just a wee update so you don’t think I’ve left you all high and dry. That video above is a cobbled together affair from Irish fivesome Talulah Does The Hula. Token bloke in the band ‘Michael’ is listed on the bands myspace site as performing “Drums / Sex”. I’m contemplating knocking him off and applying for the gig myself. There are a few flaws to the plan such as the state frowning on murder and of course my ineptness on the drums, but I laugh in the face of technicalities.

I also laugh in the face of snooker players. We had a 5-0 win last night against the early league pacemakers (see what I did there?). Due to an agreed change of order, I first picked up my cue in the doubles when we were already 3-0 up. Knocked in a tidy 30, missing when there were another 30 there fml, and had a million chances to beat that break in my singles. The guy was pretty hopeless and I simply went for everything, knocking in some cracking pots in the process. I wont mention our woeful pool weekend. The only noteworthy bit was playing some cards with a real life Italian agro-fish. I was sat to his left so I got to see first hand the crap these 80/40 types play (he loved to show every hand or tell me what he’d folded). A big shout out to Tommy Angelo at this point as without him and his mindfulness stuff I might have entered into a conversation/argument about online riggedness (“That online stuff its all shit init”) or simply let him tilt me with his calling 3bets with 83o. Following some standard sit n’ go affairs we played some cash until the wee hours. Unfortunately I only managed to nab a couple of buy-ins before turning in at around 4. Agrofishy apparently went on a streak after that and was like 7 BI up before they all quit lol.

As for real poker – that stuff on your computer screen – I have managed two small sessions this month so far and stand at something like 4 BI up at 100nl. Having not set out any goals yet, I’ll firstly shoot for that old 4 figure month that I haven’t managed since starting this blog. First page on the PTR top winners list would also be good – little ‘ol me with my 15k hands against the uber-grinders lol. Whilst I’d like to take forward the idea that I’ll be aiming to play my ‘A’ game more often, I think a better aim is to kick out all the ‘C’ game stuff. I will work on a list of those ‘C’ game aspects and stick in on my monitor. Another thing I’d like to do this month is go through my database add notes on the regs. I lost all my notes with the recent PC failure which was a pig as I had loads on some players. Luckily I salvaged all the hands. Does anyone know a way of filtering HEM to show only showdown hands? I know I can filter to see hands where I’ve been involved in show downs, but when I had a quick glance the other day I couldn’t see a way of finding those involving any 2 (or more) other players. I’m probably being thick. Feel free to tell me in the comments! The wife is away from Friday to Monday so I have a couple of days off and plenty of time to do the note taking. I also aim to get a load of daytime hands in against the nits. That’s another note I need on the monitor: “Remember to feed the kids”. Any suggestions on what I can cook them are welcome too. My current ability level is baked beans on toast or super noodles.

Laters fishies

Insert amusing title here

2009-09-30T20:21:00.002+01:00

Just a quick update as September comes to a close.

Where to start... Goals I guess. Due to the PC being in bits for a third of the month, I've not hit the hands target. But i'm just about there pro-rata, so I'll chalk that up! Nearly managed the 4 figure month, only in the wrong direction. Roughly 8 buy-ins down which isn't a great deal in the grand scheme of things but does include my worst ever downswing stretch. I guess you've got to experience that kind of shit before you can deal with it. The good thing is it came at a time when I was reading/studying the mental side of the game so I've been able to practice my anti-tilt techniques (where's that cat?). The goal of playing my 'A' game as much as possible is unquantifiable. I suppose I did in a couple of sessions, but definitely didn't on the whole. The other thing I stated at the start of the month was that I'd look at other networks to play on. I did, and I think I'm not bad off where I am. Get a good RB deal so will stick around for a while. Plus I had to withdraw a big chunk of wonga mid month for bills and stuff (for the conspiracy theorists, yes it did happen to signal the start of the downswing) so my idea of splitting my roll over a few sites isn't really feasible without spreading too thin.

I'm off for a long weekend away playing some pool, so will do the October goals and stuff when I return. In other cue sport news, I won my 2nd snooker league match on Monday totally outclassing my opponent. Disappointed that I didn't knock in a big break as I got in amongst the balls a few times. Could have really racked up the points late in the frame when I was twice left a fairly easy starter, but missed due to taking the pot for granted. Unfortunately, the rest of my team contrived to lose from winning positions and we lost 3-2. Last feckers out the club AGAIN.

Right, thats all you're getting, I'm not wasting my time typing rubbish for you lot when there's fishies out there calling me.

Excited for the future...

2009-09-24T11:31:00.003+01:00

...is the 2nd track on the recent “No Worries” EP by Mesita. And bloody good it is too. According to his bio “Everything is played and recorded by him because he has no friends”. I like the cut of his jib. Anyway, clicky on that link and have a listen. But not before you’ve read the rest of my rubbish.

Now “Excited for the future” may be a slightly puzzling blog entry title if you knew the downswing I’ve experienced on the tables this past week. How can you have an upbeat title when things are going horribly? Well, with a bit of time on my hands recently, I’ve been doing a good bit of reading about the mental side of da pokerz. There’s great stuff out there in internetland about developing a stable mental state whilst playing. I’m not going to attempt to relay my thoughts here as 1) im too lazy and 2) there’s a million bloggers that have written on the subject better than I ever could. What I have read and put into practice so far has been especially helpful in reducing tilt. God knows where I’d be if I had tilted during some my recent bad sessions! Anyways, the past has happened, I’ve made my notes and what matters is the current hand I’m playing, not how much I _should_ be up if that 65/53 tard on the other table hadn’t have turned this gutshot straight. God that’s a shocking summary but whatever. I’m excited for the future.

Lets do the rest of the post in ‘good shit that’s going on’ style.

Went to Birmingham at the weekend to my cousins’ kids christening. I don’t get to see nearly enough of my extended family since my mum died. Will have to make more of an effort. Anyways, took 4 of the kids and they behaved brilliantly considering they had to sit through a 1 ½ hour church service before the kids party after. So I’m well happy that everytime I take them out I get complimented on how well behaved and polite they are. If only I could curb the “But I want to play on the wii” tantrums at home. Is it really that hard to bring up good children? My wifes friend put the feelers out last night to see if I’d look after her two boys for the evening. I’ve only met them once and they were the most horrific, spoilt, rude brats imaginable (well, apart from my nephew). I declined the gig, due to Spurs playing and a planned grind session, and hear they were little gits for someone else instead.

We had a bye in the snooker league this week, so went for a practice instead. First frame I’ve knocked in a 50+ break so very happy with that obv. I scored well throughout the 8 frames I played and was really finding my range by the end of the night. I’m going to rip up this league. Actually, some dude has already set a target for the 5th divisions top break with a 40 in week 1. That shocked me as I was led to believe the bottom division was all full of pensioners who couldn’t hold a cue. We play his team next week so it could be an early threat to my new, revised, “going through the season unbeaten” goal.

I have 4 days off over the next few weeks so that’s going in the ‘good shit’ section.

I have a coaching session tonight so that is 100% guaranteed ‘good shit’. Having not flopped a set for like a month I’m having the lot tonight.

Final one for the good shit section, I have a 30th birthday piss-up to attend on Saturday (well two actually, but I chose my mates one over a work colleague). Its going to be messy. I get a bit of a thirst on when out with this bunch of mates!

That will be that then. Thanks for reading, leave some comments if you like and I’ll reply with something witty if you’re lucky. If I don’t post again after Saturday, you know why. That’ll be bad shit.

Busted by CTS

2009-09-21T11:39:00.002+01:00

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome that is ;)

I had a bit of trouble with my left hand a while back. My quack referred me to a specialist but I cancelled the appointment as it took so long to come through the problem went away. Well now it’s back again. My doctor didn’t actually think it was CTS, just a compressed nerve or something, but it’s bloody annoying when at its worst. The good news is that I’m a right hander so it doesn’t impact on writing, punching the cat* or clicking mouse buttons. It does hinder my pool playing abilities somewhat as it’s in my bridge hand, but I’ve discovered a good remedy. Beer.

Talking of beer, I’m a bit hungover owing to a few too many at our pool cup final last night. I was the lucky man to get the glory frame in a 6-2 victory. Didn’t miss a ball in either of my frames. Great time to come back into form when the season has finished! Next pool action is the Interleague finals in October but I don’t think we’re taking much of a team. Best get on the ale then!

As for poker goings on, there’s little to report. It’s been a low volume month what with the PC being repaired. Not been running too well at 100nl where according to HEM I’m down playing AA, QQ, AKs and just got my head above water with AKo and KK. Nice. Got a fantastic red line thing going on though. Small sample size so just ignore all the above.

In an effort to bring you more things and stuff, check out this track by American ensemble Fool’s Gold. You probably won’t click on it if I tell you it’s an African infused number sung in Hebrew. So I won’t.

* For any animal rights people reading this, I was joking about punching the cat. How stupid would that be? I kick the fecker like every other normal person.

Foul and a Miss

2009-09-15T11:09:00.003+01:00

For all you Cardrunners subscribers there’s a interesting series on the go at the mo called “Playing your ‘A’ game”. It’s a series of psychology vids by ‘psych master’ Jared Tendler. As one of my goals is to play my ‘A’ game as much as possible this series comes at the right time. The first of the series alone nails what I personally need to concentrate more on. 2 of the key points I took from it:-
1. Make my current ‘A’ game my ‘B’ game and develop a new, better ‘A’ game. This I hope is happening with coaching, study etc.
2. Eliminate my ‘C’ game altogether. Get rid of the weaknesses, the tilt and all the bad points. If they’re not there then your whole game has moved along the poker development road.
Probably not explained that too well, so go and watch for yourself.

What I have done the last few sessions is everytime I’ve caught myself losing focus, I’ve taken a deep breath and gone through my ‘goal’ in my head. That alone has helped me to refocus and start afresh.

Of course, I’m still a bit shit. I got a fair few hands in over the weekend but not as many I’d like to. I was constantly battling to find good tables. Shorties were everywhere, there were few weak spots on the full stack tables and when I did find the fish, I’d be out of position to them. FML! It was an up and down kind of weekend. Dropped buy-ins to set-over-set, NFD & Overs not hitting and; representing what the villain had. Didn’t win any huge pots as I hardly saw a set at all and my big pairs won little. But I did chip away nicely in a few of the sessions and as a result I have the most awesome red line. Played a bit of 300bb stacked 50nl which was fun for a few minutes. Had an 80/60 nutter sat to my left, but as we were 3 handed it mattered little. He donked EVERY flop and didn’t back down to pressure. So it was just a case of making hands and getting paid. Took 150bbs flatting an OESD and shovelling a load of money in on the turn and river (having turned the straight) and took a bit more with random TP hands, although ran one into AA but luckily didn’t overplay it.

Thought my weekend was going to be complete when at the end of my final session I found a 63/17 sat to my right at 100nl. I isolated him a ton but could I hit anything against him? No. The few times he folded pre were when I had premiums too. It probably is time to change network. When I search my buddy list they’re all now at the play-chip tables or playing $30/$60 limit (true story – some reg couldn’t believe his luck).

[x] Things & Stuff time. My first snooker match went well. The first hour was a good crack whilst practicing and then taking the piss out of Gee playing first. Somehow he contrived to lose on a respotted black having been a million points up! I played next and won fairly comfortably (73-48). I struggled getting over the line and the bloke I played, although pretty awful, laid a few tight snookers to drag out the frame. I then knocked in a tidy 21 in the doubles which gave us a decent cushion to win that frame. The guy I played with went back on and won the match in a loooooong controversial frame and our skipper didn’t bother about safety as he tried to finish the last frame before midnight (he lost to their only competent stick). So a 3-2 win and a good start I guess. Their best player has the lowest handicap of anyone in the division and I’m about a zillion times better than him. I’ll be disappointed not to win 90%+. Whilst it was a good laugh at first, the night did drag on and I’m going to have to have a think about drinking copious amounts of ale. With frames lasting nearly an hour I might have to get a bag fitted while refereeing!

Best get back to it, I have a hangover that needs attending to.

A Dodgy Transformer (cost £3.10)*

2009-09-11T12:19:00.005+01:00

* Apologies for two HMHB references in a row as post titles. I'll make up my own rubbish when my creative juices return.

Finally got my PC back. The good news is that it now flies. The bad news is that we couldn’t get it to boot from my hard drive (which is now installed as slave). So I’ve spent hours reloading stuff on there and getting new serial numbers. Luckily I’ve not lost my HEM database as I first thought when I couldn’t find my ’09 hands. Having lost a couple of databases to corruption before, I was about to kick the cat. Just need to set up my HUD tonight and it’s a good old Friday Fish session. Thinking of going ‘minimal’ with the HUD stats – Possibly just VPIP, PFR, Attempt to Steal, 3bet and No of Hands with all the rest on pop-ups rather than cluttering my screen. Having lost 10 days playing time, I may have to revise my monthly goals. Well maybe not the monetary one just yet! Tell me your HUD set-up and recommendations in the comments bit. Go on, i'm bored.

Its now just 3 days until my snooker league debut and I finally got off my arse and had a knock last night. Knocked in a few small breaks but more encouragingly the potting was OK from all ranges and the safety up to scratch. Just need to adjust to the speed of the tables and cushions. Oh and remember I don’t have the cueing action of Jimmy White and I cant knock in a 10 foot pot AND screw back the length of the table. I’m just clarifying whether its bad etiquette to smash the pack from behind on the break :)

Work is ultra quiet at the moment which is worrying. So far today I have shuffled some papers, entered a couple of things on a spreadsheet, got up to date with all my chess games (chessatwork.com ftw), read at least 50 ssnl threads across various sites, lol’ed at something in BB4L, posted some shit on some forums, bought a new graphics card online, compared some meerkats, revamped stuff on my igoogle page, refused to drive to the bakers for some doughnuts (2 mile drive for something only the pregnant woman in the office really wants – I think not!) and answered some retard phone calls. With 5 hours left today my plans are to: drink some coffee (only 3 cups so far), have some lunch, read some blogs and errrr, that’s about it. Tough life.

Better get started on that tough schedule. Tune in next week for some poker chit chat, snooker fail and quite possibly some stuff and things.

Brian Moore's Head Looks Uncannily Like London Planetarium

2009-09-08T10:53:00.003+01:00

My computer fail continues. I’ve had my machine in pieces a million times. I’ve taken out every removable component. I’ve stared aimlessly at stuff and things I’ve got no idea about. I’ve put the thing back together and still no joy. Yesterday I was one click away from ordering a new beast, but luckily a mate has come through and is today doing techy stuff to it involving a new motherboard. Having already spent a couple of hours trying out stuff with it, I’m owing him a serious debt of gratitude. If it turns out to be a motherboard fault he not only replacing it, but upgrading as much other stuff as he can too. If its not a mb fault then he’s sticking the new board into one of his machines and giving me that. As I say – serious debt of gratitude!

So I’ve been away from the virtual felt for over a week. Actually I did download stars onto the kids wind-up steam PC and have a couple of sessions of HUD-less fun. Crushed the fish obviously because I laugh in the face of stats. I’m now itching to get back into my normal games.

My snooker league debut is less than 1 week away and I have tentatively pencilled in a practice session a day before hand. Just call me Mr Preperation. If anyone is vaguely interested in snooker, check out our leagues website: www.mkcsl.co.uk. You need to register to see all the info, but it is without doubt the best local league snooker site in the world. Bar none. The webmaster has built a league management programme which is just a statistics monster. It kicks the arse of every bit of commercial software you can buy. A year ago we ported it into PHP fusion and it now looks even better. It’s a real shame he doesn’t want to sell it, but he doesn’t fancy having to give after sales support on it which is fair enough I guess. If you do happen to register on there, our team are called “Foul 2 Visits” (being as we are all pool players) and are in the bottom division for some drunken fun. Well, that’s my plan anyway – hopefully my captain is aware of my motives for agreeing to play. I think we have our pool cup final next Sunday too, so looking like a hungover start to next week.

Back to it I guess. I’ll leave you with my last HEM graph update before the PC died:-

All Hail to the Fail

2009-09-03T11:28:00.005+01:00

Howdy fellow tards. A big dollop of fail for you in today’s episode. What a couple of days I’ve had…

Retard Cat Fail. It has taken to using the same litter tray as mentioned in one of my previous posts. Disgusting little moggy. I wanted a dog.

PC Fail. The power supply has gone. Well, I think it’s the reason why it keeps restarting as I’ve seen similar behaviour previously. Replacement one about to be ordered – just making 100% sure the seller will send 1st class today. Edit - On its way!

Recommendation Fail. Put forward a car valet to come in and do all the staff cars. Our previous guy packed in the job after his equipment kept getting nicked from his van (lived in Fishermead for the MK readers!). So I big up the gig to a guy I know – “You’ll have a days work easy… with the old guy I sometimes used to be 12th in the queue and miss out”. He was all set to come today and our company’s total interest…. 2 people. Cancelled.

Work Fail. In charge this week whilst my director is away and as per usual I’m doing 3 peoples jobs. Within the first 2 hours of Tuesday morning I had a dozen queries and problems that ordinarily would have been the bosses job to sort. There’s some stuff I can’t even do until I can speak to him first. Maybe I should take up car cleaning, lots of days off in that job I hear.

Managed to get a few hands of poker in before the PC went kaput. No fail to report here. A small, winning start to the month and that was in the absence of being dealt any decent hands at all, so must have played well.

Last potential fail/win situation is on Sunday when our pool team play the last match of the season. Still in with a chance of winning the league, but it’s not in our hands. There are teams with games in hand who will know what they have to do to beat us, so we have to win big and sit tight. Still, its been a good season as I’ve been absolutely bladdered for all but one league game and all but one cup game. Cup final to come sometime soon too!

Erm that’ll be all. In the next update: Win, Win and Win.

Call, Call or Call? Hmmm, I Call.

2009-09-01T10:34:00.003+01:00

The summer, according to the biggest band to ever come out of Ireland*, gets shorter. Indeed. It is now September and we’re in the last throws of the British summer. Seeing as it’s a new month, its results and new goals time. Boooo.

I’m not in front of my database at the moment, but I can tell you it reads approx +1 Buy In. “But you were so close in the last update, what happened” I hear you shout. Meh, one bad session hitting my stop loss didn’t help. Made some calls which were OK given odds and reads but what can you do when your opponents have the top of their ranges. Lots of standard stuff like being unable to get paid off with KK v QQ/JJ whatever because a the flop comes ace high, or Mr 100% cbet man not cbetting and just giving up when I hit a set on them. Have a decent amount of rake back to come. Yay for breakeven Rakeback grinders! I hit the number of hands I targeted so that’s one goal reached.

September goals time:
Same again!

* 4 figure month, if reached then shoot for the front page of the top monthly winners for 100nl on PTR. That’d be quite impressive due to the number of hands I play!

* 15,000 hands.

* Find that ‘A’ game a bit more often.

* Look into more +EV sites to play on. Need to sort stuff with Neteller before transferring money here there and everywhere though.

Moving away from poker slightly, my step-daughter has ‘South Parked’ me:

Unfortunately I suck at Omaha, but whatever. She’s also done virtually the entire family and a few of my mates too. Some of them are uncanny and quite a few are now being utilized as facebook profile avatars. Here’s hoping for at least one of the kids to turn out talented.

And moving totally away from the virtual felt, life on the green baize begins in a couple of weeks. My first ever season in the snooker league. We have wangled our way into the bottom division as we only have one experienced snooker player in the team (not me btw). However, I’ve played pool for years to a decent standard (3 England trials, International Tour, Won a few things) and the rest of the team have also played pool to County ‘A’ team standard so we should romp it. Mind you, I haven’t even ventured onto a snooker table for years and with the season approaching haven’t scheduled in a practice. I can see my first knock being half an hour before our league opener!

* Finally, in keeping with the style of the last video posted, here’s the biggest band to come out of Ireland. Apart from U2. And some others.

I'll have 10 kitkats and a motoring atlas

2009-08-26T14:58:00.001+01:00

Goals update:

* Only half-way to the monetary amount I’m aiming at, but still a few days to go, including a Bank Holiday weekend. Goal still achievable.

* Will easily hit 15,000 hands, but that includes a load of 50nl hands where I was experimenting with my game (as it was cheaper!). Will shoot for 20k.

* Have been incorporating all the changes to my game as a result of coaching.

Will have to think of some better goals for next month. Like “Wire up some electrodes that give out 1,000v every time I shove without thinking of their range”. Suggestions welcome!

More coaching last night (live sweat session) and, of course, we run good. 2 mins before we start I get my Kings stacked, but as soon as we’re live I can’t fail to hit top pair or better. We also found quite a few monkeys. Easy game. Lots of good stuff covered, inc a few lines that were different to my norm which I shall be looking back over later. I’m tasked with finding some difficult hands for a HH review next time out. Best get playing!

Off to visit the mother-in-law tomorrow in Wales. She’s not Welsh, but somehow has got her picture on their flag (if the wife reads this – that is a joke dear). Also will be seeing my lil’ Grand-daughter again, just a week after they visited. Not looking forward to the driving but I guess it is a day off work and I am missing a managers meeting because of it. I hate managers meetings. I have nothing to say in them as my staff are not incompetent droolers hence my department runs very well. It runs so well I have time to write my blog.

And finally, I must remember to fill the motor up before tomorrow:-

Muzzy... Is It?

2009-08-25T14:30:00.003+01:00

When you're younger you can eat what you like, drink what you like and still climb into your 26 inch waist trousers and zip them closed. Then you reach that age -- 24, 25 -- your muscles give up they wave a little white flag and then without any warning at all, you're suddenly a fat bastard.

A Scooby snack for the origin of that line and a bonus for which Carter USM song it was sampled on.

Back from my hols where I ate what I liked and drank what I liked. The 26 inch waist trousers are long gone, but then again I’m 35! The kids had a great time. On the beach two days, down the fun fair/arcades every day and endless games of football with willing (and unwilling) adults. I think I’ve managed to sell most of them off to the other couples there, such was their good behaviour and cuteness.

I’m now a tanned Adonis (stop laughing wifey) after a marathon beach cricket session with the blokes (and random kids/women who always seemed to be fielding in the correct spot for me to launch a ball at them for the easiest catch ever. FML). In other, less important, cricket news England splattered Australia all over the Oval with a day to spare to win back the ashes.

Perhaps the best bit of sport over the weekend though was the West Ham v Spurs game. After realising I was never going to get the kids to sit still in a pub whilst I watched it, I opted to catch the highlights on MOTD2 instead. No comment from Gee on ‘their cup final’ yet, although I'm expecting some abuse. Nice solid start to the season from my mob. Stability has been the key this year – no major revamp of playing staff like most years. Also the thinking beyond the first team seems to be improved. They’ve pulled out of the reserve league in favour of playing hand-picked friendlies. This stops the ludicrous situation like last year when there was no reserve game for 2 months and then 6 games in a short period at the end. Half the first team squad had to play due to loans, injuries, youth commitments etc. We’re also using the loan system a lot better. Our 19/20 year old pro’s are going out on loan to championship sides and our 17/18 year old pro’s & academy prospects are at League 1 and 2 teams. I’ll be taking particular interest in Yeovil Town’s progress as they’ve got Caulker (young CB who outshone his older CB partners in the youth team last year), Obika (Strong striker, should become a good League 1 goal scorer at the very minimum) and Mason (Future Prem star! Plays as second striker or in midfield. Just needs to baulk up a bit). Anyway, enough of the top-of-the-table chatter…

Poker. Got a small winning session in on Thursday and then obv didn’t get to play again until last night when I played a few hands and won a few quid. Table selection was a nightmare so called it a night. Had one table where I’d discovered a ‘new’ (according to PTR he was new to the network) fish. Trouble was he was sat to my direct left and playing an erratic 68/50 style. Was planning on leaving and rejoining the waiting list, but as soon as that thought crossed my mind he spunked off his 200bbs in 2 or 3 hands and left. Marvellous! He came out with some random insult after losing the last pot “cornudo” which Google translate only detects as meaning “cuckold” in Spanish. I love Google Translate. Men ikke så mye som jeg elsker fisk. PTR tells me he did four times that amount some point later in the night at $1/$2.

Talking of languages, one (or was it more?) of the kids want to get the language course “Muzzy”. The brief research I’ve done shows it to be too expensive and a lot of people say it doesn’t hold the childs attention. Anyone with any experience of this or other language learning tools I’d like to hear from you! I could do with a 2nd language too for when my poker riches lead me to retire somewhere warm. Thinking about it, a new langauage would be my 3rd as I already speak English and Gibberish.

Finally, I’m doing a sweat session tonight so I refer you honourable fish to my advice in one of my previous posts: “You’re best off sitting out”. Actually if you could sit in and fold instead that would be better. I almost hope there are a few guys who play back at me tonight as they didn’t in the last live session and naturally they have every session since!

Trying to think of something to save this dull entry, but I can’t so this will have to do. 43 Scooby snacks if you can tell me the scorer and the match result:-

Look - They Got Donkeys!

2009-08-19T08:50:00.006+01:00

An update so soon Doggy? You spoil us. Indeed I do. But once you become a blogger you go about your day thinking “I’ll have to jot that down for the 5 people who read my blog”.

Firstly a shout to my buddy Gee who has just started a blog: Clicky. Promises to be an entertaining and humorous read as once his creative juices are flowing he can’t stop typing. I’ve been helping the fish (joking!) kick start his micro stakes career and see no reason why he can’t make some dosh at the game.

So you’re probably wondering what the piccy is about? I’m off on my hols. Just a few days away with about with the wife, some of the kids and around 8 mates. Looking forward to beach cricket, barbeques and maybe a wee bit of drinking. Obviously its now going to rain non-stop! Just a quick note to burglars who notice I’m away: If you rob me, could you leave a list of what you take as the house is such a tip it’ll speed things up with the insurance company. Oh and take the cat if you have space in your swag bag. Which brings me on to…

My cat. Such a retard. We spent the whole weekend trying to pin-point an obnoxious smell in our bathroom. We cleaned it multiple times, used more chemicals than Oasis and still the smell persisted. Until the discovery that retard cat had shat in a bucket which holds the kids bath toys. Still, at least we now have a sparkling clean bathroom. Oh and when I use the word ‘we’ I obviously mean the wife. More cat tales to follow in later postings – the time it jumped on my keyboard and overshoved 200bbs in a limped pot needs some love. Which brings me on to…

Poker. Shipped 3.5 bi win in a short session last night. A fair few mistakes but generally solid play and my turn to win with premiums. Easy game when regs want to 5-bet shove into you with mid pocket pairs! Now showing GREEN for every level this month. With potential playing days limited the $1000 monthly goal looks a little way off, but still achievable if weeknight tables continue to be so soft.

Right, I’m off to dig out my bucket and spade.
PS Am I allowed to berate the donkeys on the beach?

Peter Crouch Ate My Hamster

2009-08-18T10:41:00.003+01:00

Alright Chimps. Time for an update. Somehow managed to get a lot of hands in over the weekend despite having visitors. Things did not go well @100nl, so my next coaching session will have to be on how to run good. All real standard stuff putting me -2.5 bi for the month. Nothing to really whine about (don’t do whining anyway). Just big pairs v big pairs for the most part and hands where you have to smile to yourself and think “Keep on defending your blinds with that junk sir”. You know your session is going to be fun when you see this within an orbit or two of sitting down:-

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($53.00)
UTG+1		($98.50)
CO		($125.10)
BTN		($174.60)
SB		($44.30)
Hero (BB)		($104.15)

Pre-flop: ($1.50, 6 players) Hero is BB

3 folds, BTN raises to $2.60, SB calls $2.10, Hero raises to $11, BTN folds, SB calls $8.40

Flop: ($24.60, 2 players)
SB bets $10, Hero raises to $37, SB calls $23.30

Turn: ($94.90, 2 players)

River: ($94.90, 2 players)

Final Pot: $94.90
SB shows:

Hero wins $3.70 ( lost -$44.30 )
SB wins $88.20 ( won +$43.90 )
BTN lost -$2.60

Played a few thousand hands of 50nl as well where I tried to incorporate all the salient points of my coaching so far. Booked some green sessions there which cancelled out a couple of red ‘uns from much earlier this month where I found a 60/3 at the top of his range over and over and over again.

Somehow, in amongst all the playing and family stuff, I also managed to have a good gander at my HEM database. Did the usual session reviews and updated notes on some regs – very prudent to do this every now and again, just replay all their hands that get to showdown and gain some valuable info you may have missed in real time. I also applied some filters and reviewed 3bet pots, Flop Bet Turn Check pots (to see if I missed any good double barrel spots), Flop Bet Turn Bet pots (to check my double barrel spots were good) and various other areas I suspected I might have leaks. I’ve also taken time to look at some of the other regs stats on Poker Table Ratings. My flabber was well and truly ghasted at the results. Everyone I’ve stacked this month has a 45 degree upward slant (apart from a small blip of course) and everyone who has stacked me is a -$2k losing degen. I feel like Robin Hood.

Even with all that stuff above, I still found time to watch the football and educate my 6-month-old grand-daughter about the mighty Spurs squad (Need to get in early as her mothers side of the family swing the wrong way, bloody gooners). She listened intently to tales of Croatian wizards, Cameroonian Afro’s and Drunk Driving Wingers. But she didn’t half cry at the sight of Peter Crouch. Tri’fic.

And finally, one for the [x] things file. A pleasing double muzio gambit I played a while back. The poker equivalent is probably a three barrel bluff with 72o in a 400bb pot. Or something.

[x] Stuff [x] Things

2009-08-14T10:47:00.003+01:00

First up, I’ve started to add some clicky things over on the right. Click on them to take you to better blogs and websites than this one. Leave a comment if you’d like linking up.

Second up, I’ve got a monster hangover. Finished ‘da pokerz’ (down with the kids me) last night and partook in a few cheeky glasses of Chilean white. Then a few more. Then there was a good pool match to watch live on the quite fantastic Bucks8Ball.com. Then it was silly o’clock. Whoops. Luckily I’m in charge at work today and one of my wonderful staff has some paracetamol.

Third up, I hate Thursday night poker. Reg infected tables everywhere. Dropped a couple of buy-ins early with the standard AK v JJ affairs. Then this hand v a reg. If the fish hadn’t called I’m probably getting 3bet here (happy days) or if the caller was another reg he squeezes. Thanks fishy.

$0.5/$1 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($60.35)
UTG+1		($123.15)
Hero (CO)		($107.30)
BTN		($44.53)
SB		($99.00)
BB		($145.99)

Pre-flop: ($1.50, 6 players) Hero is CO

2 folds, Hero raises to $3.50, BTN calls $3.50, 1 fold, BB calls $2.50

Flop: ($11, 3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $8, BTN folds, BB calls $8

Turn: ($27, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $19, BB calls $19

River: ($65, 2 players)
BB bets $32, Hero calls $32

Final Pot: $129
BB shows:

BB wins $126 ( won +$63.50 )
Hero lost -$62.50
BTN lost -$3.50

Fourth up, I actually finished up in the end. Good ‘ol Aces. Standard stuff in the main.

Fifth up, I was looking forward to a Friday night session, but my eldest step-son is coming ‘for a few days’ with my lovely little grand-daughter. Being a man, I can’t multi-task well, so its either ‘hold the baby’ or ‘crush 100nl’. I do remember one mate saying he quite enjoyed the middle-of-the-night feeds for his newborn as he would get a quick session on Stars at prime yank-fish time. Baby in one arm, bottle in mouth, other arm free to click. Very cunning. Mind you, not as cunning as pretending to be fast asleep and letting the missus feed the bairn.

Sixth up, that’s all really just wanted to get to:

Seven up:

Secrets of NLHE revealed here...

2009-08-13T15:28:00.003+01:00

...soon!

So last night I had my 2nd coaching session with the Phil Hellmuth slaying legend that is Bazclef. I can already tell he’s going to be a top coach and I’m already thinking much harder about my game. In the same way that Paul Daniels can’t tell you how he does his tricks, I can’t divulge the secrets of the inner circle of LAGballercrushers. If I do I risk the wrath of Durrrr rolling his eyes at me or something. What I can reveal though is:-

• If you play me and you already have the tendency to fold a lot, then you’ll be folding a whole lot more.
• Don’t 3bet me ever. You’ll regret it.
• If I’m having a sweat session then you’re best off just sitting out. I’m a set magnet. If I don’t flop one, I’ll spike my card on a later street.

But seriously, loads of good stuff to work on with regards to putting pressure on opponents. Utilizing my HUD stats better is a start. I was previously of the opinion “Well, it’s a small sample, I’ll let this go”. Now I’m thinking more like “He’s folding to 3bets 100% of the time, it may be only 2 occasions, but until he does otherwise I’m going to keep beating on him”

I posted a good session to bring me ahead for the month. A $1,000 month is the modest (?) goal. I have a good couple of weeks play left in August yet with a weekend away booked but few nights out planned. Got to fit in a snooker practice session ahead of my snooker league debut in September. Haven’t played in 6 years or so and have never played in a league!!! Snooker goals: Win 90% of my singles games, Knock in a 50+ league break, Get steaming drunk every Monday night. At least one of those is going to happen :)

Erm yeah, thats it. Sorry for posting a Pavement video in the last post. No-one reading this will ever have heard of them. You won't have heard of this lot either but they're new(ish) and going to be HUGE. New album "Hospice" out now.

You gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent

2009-08-11T15:10:00.005+01:00

You can file this under Stuff & Things ;)

As for the poker, its been a boring week. Break-even. I've neither run good or bad, just traded money with regs and fish alike. I've consciously taken in and tweaked a few aspects of my game following my first coaching session. I've also found the time to watch a few Cardrunners vids that I missed first time around aswell as getting in some poker reading with the new Ed Miller ebook. Its a million times better than its paperback predecessor (which now resides in the downstairs toilet as emergency reading material in case Buckinghamshire Countryside magazine isn't to hand). I will hopefully get a few sessions in this week to catapault me to riches.

May post some hands in the next entry if I actually play a hand interesting enough. I might be forced to post my 650bb quads brag hand!

[x] Dull Intro Post

2009-08-07T12:23:00.003+01:00

Oh no another poker blog. You’re probably expecting a dull long winded intro first post. Sorry to disappoint.

Me: 6max NLHE player. Grinded for ages in a half-decent weak-tight manner. Made some monies. Decided to kick it on a bit and move through the levels with some coaching and generally put more work into my game. Hence the blog to track my goals, progress and keep me motivated.

I also promise stuff & things.

Let’s have my goals then:-

* A four figure month. That’s just 10 buy-ins at 100nl.
* 15k hands – so that if I don’t achieve the above goal, the rakeback will help
* Work on specific points from my coaching sessions

Stuff & things to follow