pgchips

60hr Challenge avec Skolsuper

2010-07-22T10:41:00.001+01:00

Coming soon...

Lots of days out of 61/ Lots of dollars away from ten k. Playing a WCOOP tonight though so all's good. Haven't played a hand this month but still on..

2009-09-16T05:00:00.002+01:00

..track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNVhANE3iPE

yw pteve.

19/61, $2249.20

2009-08-20T08:52:00.006+01:00

Still no Omaha to report, just been playing the odd holdem tournament.

I seem to be going deep in a lot of my tourns at the moment, so I shouldn't be too grumpy, but... I keep making big mistakes late on. And, with the top heavy payouts, it can't be done.

Keysie was nice about one I made deep in a $5r last night but it was a fucking embarrassing stacking tbh. I needlessly came 11th/2500 for $260 ($5.4k ftw). Pisssssed off about that one.

Tonight, with 10 left in an $11 freeze, I made this call:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4604746

...ffs.

I was raising a lot and running into very little resistance so I'm not sure how light he's shoving here... Maybe the call is okay and I caught the top of his range, who the fuck knows?

I happened to get lucky to finish 7th/1700 for $501 after that with $2.8k ftw. Sigh.

It's now looking a lot like I'll be playing Holdem WCOOOOOPs with my tickets in September.

15/61, $1569.33

2009-08-16T02:59:00.006+01:00

Played zero hands of O8 again. Sorry to let you down Hannes, in courage I am lacking at the moment.

Played some holdem tournaments though. I’ve had three devastating top 100 finishes in 3000+ player multis in the last two days, the latest of which was a 22nd out of three and a half million players in one of the freerolls today for a profit of about three and a half millionth of a cent.

25th in an $8.80 freezeout, 85th in a $5 rebuy and 22nd in the 100FPP freeroll, where it was $3.4k, $7.5k and $3.2k ftw in each. I completely fucked up the $5r but lost big races in both of the others.... Boooooooooooooooooring, I know, sorry, but what else am I going to write about?

My profit since the last update comes mainly from the $109 WCOOP seat I sh1pped today in another AMAZZZZING $7.50 sat.

So that’s a second WCOOOOOP event to dread in September.

Boooooooooooooooooring blogging from me atm, soz bout dat.

pgggggg

13/61, $1436.72

2009-08-14T05:32:00.003+01:00

Hannes, thanks for the kind and gently put words of support man. I love it!

Cash is still not going well (I'm not even sure if I'm playing profitably at the moment), but I ran good enough today to sh1p a $320 WCOOP ticket in one of the incredible satellites that Stars are running at the moment.

It's a non-transferable ticket, which means I'll have to play one of the WCOOP events in September. I've got ages to decide which event to play and I'll probably just go with whichever variation of this horrendous fucking game that I'm hating least come September.

And, the way things are going, the best day to be on the look out for me is probably:

8-Sep,
Event 15 - $320

FL Badugi

12/61, $1086.90

2009-08-13T16:59:00.004+01:00

Hello pgchips, We have transferred USD 100.00 from your account to 'skolsuper' as per your request.

Well, that's the gym bet done and dusted. ggggwpwp. I've cancelled my gym membership too. Fuck exercise.

This week is looking like a write off. I've played, at most, 0.0000000147% as much as I did in the first week. Sometimes I can't seem to sit at a table for longer than a few minutes before getting annoyed by something and then tilting because of it. It's always completely standard things I get annoyed by too. High cards on the flop when I've raised a low hand, and vice versa, is often all it takes to piss me off and get me wall-punching. This, obviously, happens a normal amount of the time every day if I play enough, but some days it bothers me more than others. And on those days I either start to play shit or pack in a session early.

Yesterday, I quit a session one hand in. I was sat waiting for the big blind to reach me on 12 tables when I got dealt A2ccxx in the bb on my first table. Flop came down K84cc and the pot got big, turn brought an ace and I check folded to a shove. I sat out and closed Pokerstars, absolutely fuming because of one ugly turn card.

I watched The Incredibles and Night at the Museum instead of playing, good stuff.

When I feel like this, I don't normally play at all, but with the pressure of the $10k to make, I thought I could push through. Clearly I can't, so from now on, if I'm not in the mood to play, I just won't bother. I don't know when I'll be happy playing again but when I do, I'll be hitting it very hard in an attempt to make up for my childishness. And I'll play loads until I burn out and go all depressed again.

I'll let you know when I'm back playing. So, until freeroll day...

8/61, $1070.27

2009-08-09T03:43:00.007+01:00

Hello pgchips, We have transferred USD 200.00 to your account as requested by 'skolsuper'.

Keysie, the lazy fucker, didn't even last a week! That's the gym bet. I agreed that if I don't continue with my thrice weekly gym visits that I'll ship him $100 back. And the $100 booze bet is still live, obviously.

I've added it to my profit for the month purely to make my stats look a little better. I'm absolutely certain that I'll be shipping it all back too him before August is over, so hopefully he won't mind me considering his money 'profit' for the time being!

If it wasn't for the VIP freerolls it would have been a whole day off for me today. A fun day playing snooker and chilling round my 'Penthouse Friend' Ben's apartment was rudely interrupted by two HOLDEM freerolls, which I had to play. Small cashed them both for about $100 total before getting back to the pizza eating and in front of TV sitting.

So, my day off has turned into the most profitable day of the challenge so far.

Easy life.

7/61, $772.62

2009-08-08T06:07:00.002+01:00

Seriously fucking bad day. A wall got punched.

6/61, $752.38

2009-08-07T05:48:00.003+01:00

Jason just will not stop saying 'Hi pgchips' to me now, he absolutely loves it. It's getting a bit annoying to be honest, and I'm a little worried that people think there's something going on between us. I'll have to ship him a few dollars in the morning and ask him to stop.

Hardly played at all today, I'm showing an horrendous lack of commitment to this so far. Need a good day tomorrow to pull this week out of the bag.

5/61, $615.33

2009-08-06T05:58:00.004+01:00

Nothing interesting to report today really... Jason said 'hi' to me again, which was nice. Completely free of charge too. Sh1p it!

Took my second trip to the gym earlier and it was only marginally less painful than the first. I may actually, very, very slowly, be getting fit here. Though it'll only last until October I suppose, when I'll probably never go to the gym again. Something to look forward to.

Still behind Penthouse pace but I've pulled it back slightly. Want to reach $1k before the end of the week ideally.

Haven't punched a wall since Monday.

Goodnight.

4/61, $360.37

2009-08-05T05:51:00.006+01:00

Not putting in anywhere near as many hours as I need to be at the moment and, despite an okay day today, I'm still way behind penthouse pace:

(10000/61) x 4 = $655.74

The best part about today was hearing one of the regs talk for the first time. I've played thousands of hands with a guy called Jason_Lebt and he's never said a word to anyone. But, today, he spoke...

'hi pgchips'

My heart stopped. I couldn't stop the tears of happiness welling up. Such a touching moment...

... And a fucking expensive one too, as I sent the $3 that I promised to ship him if he said it. You're nothing more than a prostitue, Jason, and now the world knows it.

Absolute bargain, mind you, give him a try!

3/61, $167.69

2009-08-04T06:51:00.004+01:00

I dragged myself out of bed to get down Edgbaston for the last day of the third ashes test today/yesterday (Monday) and I was rewarded with eight hours of Australian stump-blocking! They did it well to be fair to them, I enjoyed it.

Got tanned to fuck in the two hours of sunsine we had too. Imagine the tan I’d have if the sun had come out at all when I had a spare week in Evesham ffs.

In other news, I’ve picked an embarrassing time to run cold poker-wise… this challenge is looking like a joke. These fun hands from Sunday and Monday means I’ve only shown the smallest of profits since Saturday:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544456
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544419
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544442
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544438
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544436
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544434
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544430
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4544427

Bit out of order, Stars.

It's nice to get the action though because, if I didn't, I'd be forced to play aces properly. And that is far too much hassle. I don’t give a fuck who I annoy by posting those hands, by the way, I feel better.

I’ve punched various walls in my house repeatedly over the last couple of days, and if this run continues, with me getting stronger going to the gym three times a week, I’m seriously worried about the future of my knuckles. And walls.

Well, let’s just hope it turns around.

2/61, $137.75

2009-08-03T00:47:00.002+01:00

One of the worst days of poker of my life. Certainly of this week anyway.

Day: 1/61. Profit: $161.91

2009-08-02T03:22:00.002+01:00

Ran horrendously slow today... but that's enough about my exploits on the treadmill!

I didn't cash in either of the freerolls for the third week in a row. That's fucked up. Ran a bit slow at cash too, but played a lot of hands, which is a good sign.

I just went for a run on the treadmill today and I did not enjoy it one bit. I'll try and keep it going but I'm thinking about shipping Keys $100 earlier rather than later - 3 days a week could kill me.

Sleep and back on it tomorrow.

Day: 0/61. Profit: $0

2009-07-31T23:23:00.007+01:00

It all kicks off in a few minutes then...

Here are my first-day plans:

Saturday 1st August

1. Sleep for a number of hours.

2. Get up bright and early (midday at the earliest) for a trip to the gym.

3. Sleep for four or five hours.

4. Win the Supernova freeroll, cashout $10,000 of the prize money and book a two month long holiday to PORTUGAL without my Dad.

5. Sleep.

I'll let you know how it pans out.

Ps. Hannes, I'll happily teach you O8. My lessons are free of charge due to the fact that I may or may not know what I'm talking about.

PPs. Stodgy, I'll answer your questions soon, mate.

A $4 Bathmat, $200s worth of Prop Bets and an impossible $10,000 Penthouse Challenge

2009-07-30T02:14:00.007+01:00

Yesssssss, another blog post title without a swear word in it! FUCK ME, I'M CLASSY. Well, that’s what I’m posting to talk about, so I guess I’ll just tick them off in order.

Mitchell Street Masters, which was held this year at Dickie’s house in Norwich, turned out to be well worth the trip. I lost a bit of dosh in the two events I played, and made some dosh at cash, but the big winner of the weekend was the banter. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much as I did this weekend (especially at Sunday’s cash game). I had a fucking great time, cheers Dickie.

To explain the 'Bathmat' bit in my title, my pokering highlight from the weekend was the £2.99 bathmat I sh1pped for winning a pot with J2. It doesn’t matter that I risked £10 worth of chips to win it, it’s mine now, the nutter folded.

A couple of prop bets with Keysie:

1. Nothing fucks up my health on a day-to-day basis more than alcohol. So, when Keys expressed his wish to quit drinking for a while, it was always going to be prop-bet time. It’s a $100 bet that we can go without booze until the start of October. First one to crack ships the other $100. I fancy my chances of getting through this one and really hope I can.

2. Nothing fucks up my health on a day-to-day basis more than lack of exercise. So, when Keys expressed his wish to exercise more often, we both snapped up another prop bet. We must go to the gym at least three days a week for at least an hour a time until the start of October. Keys will be getting a personal trainer so he’s offered me 2:1 on the bet - $200:$100. Again, first to break the rules ships to the other. Seriously don’t fancy my chances here. WP Keys.

The Penthouse Challenge is certain to be my toughest and most time consuming challenge to date. It came from an alcoholly conversation I had with my mate Ben who was trying to convince me to move into the same block of apartments as him.

Ever since I spent a week on my own in Evesham earlier this month, all I’ve talked about is moving out of my shared house in Bearwood and into a place of my own. The house I’m at in Bearwood is filling up rapidly with only one of the seven bedrooms now unoccupied so this place is now far too crowded for my liking. Having never had a place of my own, that’s what I want to do next.

The only ‘must’ for my new home is for it to have a nice outside bit, either a garden or a massive balcony. We quickly decided that the only suitable apartments in his block are the penthouses on the top floor which have a big outside bit to waltz about in. Unfortunately, at £1150 pm, this 20hr a week 10c/25c grinder simply cannot afford it.

Not playing less than 20 hours a week anyway…

Earlier that day, I had been looking back over my year playing O8 and my lack of volume depressed me a bit. I had made notes at the start of the year, writing down how much I could make if I played 100k hands a month, or 125k hands per month running at so many ptbbs/100. Some of the regs I know find the time to play 100k a month so I was horrified when I looked back through my poker tracker to see that I haven’t managed to play a single 50k hand month yet this year.

Between April 1st and May 11th I played less than 7k hands, ffs!

I’ve managed to play over 40k hands in each of May, June and July, playing a lot better and feeling much happier than at any time in the year. But, the truth is, 40k hands a month is less than 20hrs a week. I can hardly claim to be working my bollocks off at the moment. And, obviously, my laziness is costing me a lot money.

So, with plans of a serious grind in mind, I decided to finish the conversation with:

“But if I make $5k in both of the next two months, I’ll live in one of those penthouses for six months.”

And the fucker’s holding me to it.

If I stick to playing 10c/25c for the next two months, this is going to take a hell of a lot of hard work. In fact, barring another result in a freeroll, it may be impossible, but I’m giving myself the option of moving up if I feel like it.

This could be my most embarrassing challenge failure of all time but, to summarise my plans:

If I make $10,000 profit by the end of September, I’ll piss it all up the wall living in a ridiculously expensive penthouse.

And everyone’s welcome to the massive pissup I’ll be holding on October 1st!

I hope to be blogging regularly over the next two months,

Sorted.

I’ve found my spiritual home - Evesham

2009-07-12T14:21:00.004+01:00

Okay, so I’ve got no idea what that means. And even if it does mean something like what I think it means it certainly isn’t true. I just thought it would make a change to have a nice title for one of my blog posts. Some of my past efforts, including ‘CUNT’, ‘Fuck me, I run like a cunt’, and ‘Tanni Grey-Thompson’, are just ugly, ugly, and ugly.

Not that I’m saying that I think Dame Tanni is ugly, you understand.

In fact, I’m sure I remember watching the Olympics or a marathon one time, when I was much younger, and feeling a little attracted to a young Tanni. Erm, actually, thinking about it, I was probably a bit too young to have fancied her but I definitely felt something.

Pity? Perhaps.

Or maybe I was just gagging for a go on her ‘little bicycle thing’. But, either way, I was far from repulsed by Tanni Grey-Thompson back in her hayday and, as far as female athletes go, if she could stand, she would definitely have been up there with them. Literally.

What the fuck am I on about? This is not what this post is supposed to be about at all. But, while I’m on the subject, I might as well tell you that, back in my marathon-watching days, I was also partial to a bit of Paula Radcliffe (only OBE btw?). When I was that age, the London marathon was just a 7hr porno as far as I was concerned. Ahh, to be eight again…

Zwei words for you Joanne Pavey, nein danke.

FML, who am I kidding? I love you Jo. And your socks.

After deciding that factor 50 sun block was, let’s say, a little too safe for my tanning needs, I made the trek into Evesham town centre in search of something less sensible. The only thing steeper than the price of the bus fares into town here, I’ve discovered, are the hills the bus has to climb to get there. So you get what you pay for, I suppose, fuck walking it.

£3.90 though? Come on, really?

I got into Evesham and the first thing I noticed was that the place was full of birds. Women, I mean, town was swarming with them… Brilliant.

And butterflies as well (actual butterflies), there were millions of them.

Yep.

I’d say that they were pretty much my only two noteworthy observations of Evesham town centre but, quite frankly, what more do you need to know? Nice women AND butterflies. In the Midlands. Who knew?

I snapped up some factor 25 on ‘buy one, get one free’ in boots, window-shopped an iphone and got the bus back home through the mountains. I added the newly acquired sun block to the already unnecessarily large collection I’d started two days earlier on the kitchen side and sat and waited for it to stop raining!

And waited. And waited. And waited.

Today is the last day of my little ‘holiday’ in the country and I’d say there’s been an average of one hour of sun a day. At an average time of 7.30pm on the night. All four bottles of sun block have remained untouched and I haven’t bothered to sit out in the garden at all. My skin is still as white as the snow that rests on the garden this morning. (Okay, okay, I’ve exaggerated there…it’s just frost.) Seriously, though, I’ve been so unlucky with the weather and it’s been by far the second most depressing thing about this ‘holiday’.

The most depressing thing about the ‘holiday’ (which, despite how I come across, I’ve really enjoyed by the way) was the book I decided to read on Friday while I sat and waited for the sun to come out. My dad and his lovely partner have an impressive collection of books here in the house and I had a lot of greats to choose from. There’s some Conan-Doyle up there, a bit of Tolkien. There’s even some Dickens I could have opted for. But what does this bright spark decide would make a suitable Friday afternoon holiday read?

The Diary of Anne Frank.

Great choice, son. I was pretty much in tears from about page four onwards. It really affected me. I read it all in one sitting and I was still not feeling myself come Saturday afternoon. It reminded me of watching Titanic years ago. Except Titanic wasn’t a book. And is completely different, but you know what I mean. Relentlessly fucking depressing.

Luckily, I found ‘How to lose a guy in 10 days’ on DVD late Saturday afternoon and I laughed my bollocks off watching that so I’m back to normal again now. But it was touch and go as to whether I would ever smile, or even enjoy anything, ever again for a while.

If you know someone that’s going on holiday any time soon and fancy playing a little practical joke on them to completely ruin their fun, buy them a copy of Annie F for the plane. IT WILL FUCK THEM UP. But you’ll probably all laugh about it in years to come.

It’s looking more and more like I’ve really got nothing to say in this post actually, this is just blogging for the sake of blogging so I’ll bring this weirdness to an end. But I might as well take the chance to wish Keysie good luck on day 5 and beyond in the main event in Vegas. He in the money and still has a stack to do some damage with.

So run good, mate.

Grass and fields and that.

2009-07-06T14:10:00.006+01:00

“Is factor 50 sun block good or bad?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the highest they do, mate, you’re not getting tanned with that shit.”

Well, I wish some fucker had told me this before I went out and bought two litres of the stuff. I’m going to end the day whiter than I started it walking around wearing this greasy layer of concrete all day.

So, I’m in the lovely Midland countryside this week, looking after my Dad’s house in Evesham while he’s away. Okay, it’s no Portugal, but I’m looking forward to having a nice house to myself for a week or so. And, provided the sun stays out (and I buy some sensibly factored sun block), the spaciousish (try saying that word out loud) garden should provide the perfect place for me to top up my tan. (Though by ‘top up my tan’ this reclusive grinder, of course, means ‘start a tan from scratch’).

This week has turned out to be great timing for me to get away because I’ve put myself in the nice position of not feeling under any pressure to play cards. A few of you know already that I had a nice run in the weekly Supernova $75k freeroll on Saturday night, scoring my biggest ever tournament win of $5,437.50 for a 4th place finish.

I was an ‘orrendous nit literally all the way through the tourn because that’s the only way I know how to play hold em nowadays but it did the trick. I was lucky enough to get it in good AND HOLD in almost all of my all ins.

It was an outdraw that got me going:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437421

But after that, I'm no expert, but it seemed like a fairly standard run to the final table:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437433
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437475
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437517
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437551
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437625

where everyone was guaranteed $1k.

This massive hold early on at the ft:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437756

sent me on my way to four handed second in chips. But then this flop, sadly, spelt the end of my tournament:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4437857

Obv.

I’ve played four of those tournaments since I was gifted Supernova status, and had two top 40 finishes. Easy game! So, with 52 of them a year (on top of the 12 $100k freerolls), I should be able to add a few hundred thousand $$ a year to what I grind out at cash.

A couple of people have asked me whether I’ll be moving up in stakes with this win, but the answer is no.

Firstly, I need most of that money offline for now so I’ve cashed out over $5k of it, leaving myself a comfortable $1k bankroll to continue playing $25 O8, completely worry-free.

And, secondly, I don’t actually want to move up yet. I’m still learning things about O8, and getting better, and learning more and earning quicker with every month I play. Until I feel completely happy that I know everything about every situation Vs every type of player, I’d rather carry on playing low stakes. See you at $2/$4 in the year 2147, folks.

I’m currently running at over 12ptBB/100 at 10c/25c, with over $700 coming in per month from Supernova bonuses. So, Dstar and Jeesus and co, you'll be happy to hear that I'll be sticking around until I’m winning at at least 20ptbbs!

I hate to be the kind of blogger that only posts a serious post when he’s running well… but that’s the way it is, I guess. Sorry.

Well, I’d better get going, I’ve got to go and look for the nearest shop that sells factor 0.0000005 sun block. And, by the look of the endless sea of grass surrounding me for miles in every direction, I could easily be traipsing around in the sun for days.

Luckily, I’ve got three or four pints of factor 50 to keep me safe.

See you later.

Could 'PG' stand for PortuGal?

2009-06-26T22:49:00.006+01:00

POKERSTARS GAME #29809812312: OMAHA HI/LO NO LIMIT ($0.10/$0.25) - 2009/06/26 20:56:19 WET [2009/06/26 15:56:19 ET]
Table 'Henyey V' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: vegas60 ($25.15 in chips)
Seat 2: djp94 ($13.50 in chips)
Seat 3: N@T@LI ($75.55 in chips)
Seat 4: rattus63 ($10.25 in chips)
Seat 5: pgchips ($25 in chips)
Seat 6: assis_poker ($9.85 in chips)
Seat 7: ctepashka ($20.75 in chips)
Seat 8: Jsleezey ($20.55 in chips)
vegas60: posts small blind $0.10
djp94: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [2c Ad Jd Ts]
N@T@LI: folds
tpatusa leaves the table
rattus63: folds
pgchips: raises $0.75 to $1
Dean Griffin joins the table at seat #9
assis_poker: folds
ctepashka: folds
Jsleezey: folds
vegas60: calls $0.90
djp94: folds
*** FLOP *** [Js Qc Kd]
vegas60: bets $1.50
pgchips: raises $22.50 to $24 and is all-in
vegas60: calls $22.50
*** TURN *** [Js Qc Kd] [Jc]
*** RIVER *** [Js Qc Kd Jc] [Td]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
vegas60: shows [Ac 5h Jh Kh] (HI: a full house, Jacks full of Kings)
pgchips: mucks hand
vegas60 collected $47.75 from pot
No low hand qualified
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $50.25 Rake $2.50
Board [Js Qc Kd Jc Td]
Seat 1: vegas60 (small blind) showed [Ac 5h Jh Kh] and won ($47.75) with HI: a full house, Jacks full of Kings
Seat 2: djp94 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: N@T@LI folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: rattus63 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: pgchips mucked [2c Ad Jd Ts]
Seat 6: assis_poker folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: ctepashka folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: Jsleezey (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)

POKERSTARS GAME #29523339364: OMAHA HI/LO NO LIMIT ($0.10/$0.25) - 2009/06/18 19:05:37 ET
Table 'Avior VI' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: PROF SURF ($24.50 in chips)
Seat 2: jarydjaybe ($10.45 in chips)
Seat 3: pgchips ($25 in chips)
Seat 4: chilnwiteboy ($23.75 in chips)
Seat 5: JohnC531 ($27.10 in chips)
Seat 6: Jason_Lebt ($36.55 in chips)
Seat 7: moneyisnice ($21.30 in chips)
Seat 8: Fla-Mt ($45.50 in chips)
Seat 9: Mrs. Rafael ($8.30 in chips)
jarydjaybe: posts small blind $0.10
pgchips: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Qs Qc 2s Js]
chilnwiteboy: folds
JohnC531: calls $0.25
Jason_Lebt: calls $0.25
moneyisnice: folds
Fla-Mt said, "lol...my first win of the day"
Fla-Mt: raises $0.75 to $1
Mrs. Rafael: folds
pgchips said, "well done"
PROF SURF: folds
jarydjaybe: folds
Fla-Mt said, "lucky catch....ty"
pgchips: calls $0.75
JohnC531: folds
Jason_Lebt: folds
*** FLOP *** [Tc Kd Ah]
pgchips: checks
Fla-Mt: bets $1
pgchips: raises $23 to $24 and is all-in
Fla-Mt: calls $23
*** TURN *** [Tc Kd Ah] [Kc]
*** RIVER *** [Tc Kd Ah Kc] [8d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Qs Qc 2s Js] (HI: a straight, Ten to Ace)
Fla-Mt: shows [Kh 4h 2d Ad] (HI: a full house, Kings full of Aces)
Fla-Mt collected $48.10 from pot
No low hand qualified
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $50.60 Rake $2.50
Board [Tc Kd Ah Kc 8d]
Seat 1: PROF SURF (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: jarydjaybe (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: pgchips (big blind) showed [Qs Qc 2s Js] and lost with HI: a straight, Ten to Ace
Seat 4: chilnwiteboy folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: JohnC531 folded before Flop
Seat 6: Jason_Lebt folded before Flop
Seat 7: moneyisnice folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: Fla-Mt showed [Kh 4h 2d Ad] and won ($48.10) with HI: a full house, Kings full of Aces
Seat 9: Mrs. Rafael folded before Flop (didn't bet)

POKERSTARS GAME #29523283783: OMAHA HI/LO NO LIMIT ($0.10/$0.25) - 2009/06/18 19:04:00 ET
Table 'Avior VI' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: PROF SURF ($24.85 in chips)
Seat 2: jarydjaybe ($10.70 in chips)
Seat 3: pgchips ($25.05 in chips)
Seat 4: chilnwiteboy ($23.75 in chips)
Seat 5: JohnC531 ($28.35 in chips)
Seat 6: Jason_Lebt ($35.05 in chips)
Seat 7: moneyisnice ($21.30 in chips)
Seat 8: Fla-Mt ($23.75 in chips)
Seat 9: Mrs. Rafael ($8.40 in chips)
Mrs. Rafael: posts small blind $0.10
PROF SURF: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Ks Ad Ts 2d]
jarydjaybe: folds
pgchips: raises $0.75 to $1
chilnwiteboy: folds
JohnC531: folds
Jason_Lebt: folds
moneyisnice: folds
Fla-Mt: calls $1
Mrs. Rafael: folds
PROF SURF: folds
*** FLOP *** [Qc Kh Jd]
pgchips: bets $1.75
Fla-Mt: raises $21 to $22.75 and is all-in
pgchips: calls $21
*** TURN *** [Qc Kh Jd] [3s]
*** RIVER *** [Qc Kh Jd 3s] [Js]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Ks Ad Ts 2d] (HI: a straight, Ten to Ace)
Fla-Mt: shows [3c As Kc Jc] (HI: a full house, Jacks full of Kings)
Fla-Mt collected $45.50 from pot
No low hand qualified
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $47.85 Rake $2.35
Board [Qc Kh Jd 3s Js]
Seat 1: PROF SURF (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: jarydjaybe folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: pgchips showed [Ks Ad Ts 2d] and lost with HI: a straight, Ten to Ace
Seat 4: chilnwiteboy folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: JohnC531 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Jason_Lebt folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: moneyisnice folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: Fla-Mt (button) showed [3c As Kc Jc] and won ($45.50) with HI: a full house, Jacks full of Kings
Seat 9: Mrs. Rafael (small blind) folded before Flop

I’ve had a great couple of months playing cards but these hands are a fair reflection of how I’ve been running over the last couple of weeks. Mildly amusing, I’m sure you’ll agree, if not particularly interesting.

But, fear not, this isn’t just a Gambon skin blog post.

I got a phone call earlier where it finally looked as though the pain of the last two weeks was all behind me…

I heard my phone ringing while I was still sleeping this morning. Usually I ignore it, but it was my dad, so I answered. And from very early on in the conversation I knew it was a phone call I’d never forget. : - )

“You alright Dad? Happy Father’s Day… from… ages ago, you get my card?”

I was guessing he hadn’t given that I didn’t post it until well after last collection on the Tuesday after Father’s Day.

“No.”

“Oh, there must have been a fuck up.”

There was, me.

“Anyway, listen, I’m thinking about going to Portugal for seven days, starting a week on Monday, and I was wondering whether you had any plans for that week?”

WTF, where did that come from? Usually when my Dad calls it’s just to check on me, to make sure I’m still alive or to make sure I’m getting regular blood tests so I stay alive for longer or to see that I’m keeping my eyes in good nick so I can see myself staying alive for longer. Or he’s calling to make me do something like check on my sister and my nephew or to make sure my brother hasn’t killed himself or been killed. Or some equally pointless and annoying reason like that.

But, no, not this time, thank God. A FUCKING HOLIDAY!! IN FUCKING PORTUGAL!! FUCKING SH1P 1T!!!

Karma certainly does work in fucked up ways. If all it takes is a couple of flopped broadways to be outdrawn for me to earn a holiday-offering phone call from my Dad, then I’ll be snapping them off and praying for the board to pair for years to come. Full house, yes please, it’s all yours, thank you very much.

Pair the board as much as you want Stars, you cunts, I’m off.

A couple of worries went through my mind: would I be able to get my passport sorted by then? I think it can be done in a week but it’s a bit of a fuck about if I’ve remembered Keys’ tales of woe correctly. My other worry was whether it would clash with the Mitchell Street Masters and/or The Ashes. They’re both just around the corner and I really wanted to have had Sky fitted in the house before then as well. That’ll no doubt take some organising and a holiday would leave me with very little time to get it all sorted…

But, as I haven’t had a holiday in such a long time, I finally had an answer for my Dad (who had presumably waited patiently on the other end of a silent phone for a few minutes while all of this went through my head):

“No plans, Dad.”

“Great, that’s a relief, because…”

And, with a sm1le, I waited for the offer.

“…I need someone to keep an eye on my business while I’m away.”

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I went against my instincts and told him that it wouldn’t be a problem:

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, see you later.”

What a fucking joke. I hung up the phone and sat, with my head in my hands, feeling sorry for myself. The phone rang again a couple of seconds later and I answered, almost in tears, obviously:

“Yes?... What?... Yeah… Yeah, mate, you can come and fit the Sky a week on Monday. I’m not going anywhere.”

Well played, Dad, you’ll be getting your Father’s Day card three weeks early next year. Will that put an end to the torture?

Oh, and I take it all back Stars, you’re not cunts and I’d very much like broadway to hold at some point this year.

Ptevey Cabrera

2009-04-17T06:45:00.006+01:00

Got nothing to write but Keysie says Ptevie wants something to read.

Been tilting massively of late and the latest bit has taken place on Full Tilt. I had $40 left on there from a bonus I failed to clear a while back and given that I can't cash out from Full Tilt and no one wants to swap with me, the only choice I had was to spin the fuck out of the roll until I lose it.

Well, I've tried my best...

I span it up to $109 somehow, hit and running all over the place and I sensibly gave 147_star $100.47 of it to keep safe for me until I want to lose some more. I then span the $8 I had left up to $41 hit and running again. I lost $21 of it spazzing it away at cash and so I was left with $20, which brings us to the start of tonight, where I decided to go on a tourny spin...

I one tabled a $1 buy in $10k guaranteed first of all, which only got 6500 runners. I had a top 10 stack at one point with a couple of hundred players left but I ran a pair into a higher pair twice going ftw ($1.6k) to finish out of the top 100. I've since tilted away on some knockout sngs, which have just finished (6.50am).

An interesting spot I want to talk about:

First hand of a 90-man knockout sng. I had KQhh on the button @ 15/30 with a 3k stack. Being the first hand, everyone limped and I made a fucking tremendous shove. IMO. Any thoughts on the hand in the comments please.

I figured that if I get called, I might get lucky to knock someone out and if I take the pot down then I'd have a stack to knock most people out with for a round or so instead of just falling short and leaving them with 30 chips or something and not getting a bounty. Anyway, one of the limpers snapped 88 and board ran out TJJhh 3s 2s to knock me out. No rewarding (truly) great play at Full Tilt tonight, apparently.

I tilted out of all of the other sngs except for one of the 90-player $3 knockouts. I final tabled it without knocking anyone out (obv, ffs). I then managed to get outdrawn (KQ aip vs Q9, battle of the blinds) in a chip lead pot 6 or 5 handed (can't remember exactly where I came) and went out to the same player very next hand WITHOUT KNOCKING OUT A SINGLE FUCKING PLAYER. I shoved the button with A7cc and he obv wakes up with 99 in the small, which holds despite a 568cc flop. So an eventful spinup night sees me left with $19 on Full Tilt (which I guess is what you get for 6th or 5th place in a 90 man $3 knockout), $1 less than what I started with.

Wasting my flipping time with this shit.

Only other thing I want to ask is, are we happy with this go-and-go at the ft of a $4 180-man tourn, or should it be a rr aip??
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4120855

$216 for 1st and $36 for 6th. Standard.

Anyone heard of 'Battle Of The Planets'?

2009-03-27T10:06:00.004Z

"yo, pg..."
"soz, 9-tabling, sup?"
"getting raped"
"ul"
"you seen the leaderboard?"
"what?"
"the leaderboard"
"sharkscope?"
"na, on stars"
"oh, didn't know they had one"
"yeah, take a look at the venus one"
"venus... wtf you on about?"

I've grown tired of O8 cash recently and haven't been able to get much volume in this month, especially the second half of the month (I had made 4k VPP by the end of the first week and I'm currently on just over 7k). So, to make a bit of dosh I converted my 18k FPPs into $396 using the old 210 FPP sats and then decided to experiment with a few holdem sngs to try and make few more $$ to maybe make Platinum again. I settled on the 6-man turbos and dived straight into 9-tabling the $3.25s. I played 80 of those running at around 35% ROI for a small profit before moving up to the $6.50s. For the past two days I've been 9-tabling these running at just over 20% ROI. I tried 12-tabling but ran too good and couldn't cope with playing 5 heads up and 3 bubbles at the same time ffs, talk about running bad. So I think 9-tabling is my 6-man turbo limit. There's one guy that one tables these tourns that I always seem to bump into when he's just been outdrawn... He talks to me every time I'm in one of his sngs, telling me about his latest bad beat. But last night he brought me some good news. The conversation went as above, and the leaderboard he told me to look at is some Stars promotion called 'Battle of the planets', which I wasn't aware of. Apparently I've ran well enough 9-tabling the 6-man $6.50s to top the Venus high-orbit weekly leaderboard. If I'm still top at midnight on Saturday I get $500 cash sh1pped into my account. An unexpected surprise, tyvm.

I may just be running ridiculously well but these tourns are a joke and appear to be incredibly profitable. I've played 225 of the $6.50s in two days, running at 21% ROI for an hourly rate of over $20. They're a small-stakes-multi-tabling-grinder's dream. I'm going to test the waters of the $13s and the $25s over the next few days, which should just about drag me over 7.5k VPP for Platinum, to see if they're not ruined by regs. I expect they are.

The O8 tables have dried up a lot. I was sitting at a 9-handed 10c/25c O8 cash table earlier this month with 8 Supernova regs, where the average pot size was $2. This really shouldn't be happening in a 4-card split-pot game but it's the way it seems to be heading. Grinding cash for hours on end knowing that most of my profit for the month will be made in FPP sats is just no fun any more, so next month I may be steering clear of O8 cash completely. If I can beat the $13 and $25 6-man turbos well, that may be where I'm heading next month to make my VPPs. If it turns out that they're too tough, then I may have a nice little prop bet involving me making Platinum star next month playing just $6.50 turbos... I'll let you know before the end of the month.

In the meantime, let's hope Venus holds. One time.

Game Over!

2009-03-21T17:52:00.003Z

It's finally over and I've worked out the damage:
I lost $30 on FT, mainly at 10c/25c holdem despite being over $50 up after about 50 hands.
And I lost $85 on Stars, mainly at 10c/25c O8, though only two cashes in 40+ sngs helped.

Every session except the first one was a losing session and I've no doubt that I would have lost a lot more than I have done if I'd continued to play at the stakes I started at. I was horribly tilty at times and I probably deserved to come out as a loser.

When we decided to do this challenge we talked about doing the same again before I leave Nottingham at the end of the month. Well, that's not going to happen, but be on the lookout for Keys' 24-hour solo challenge!

Good luck.

Trouble at 39hrs 30mins

2009-03-21T11:45:00.002Z

I slept for the whole of my last 3hr break, but I guess there is such a thing as too much sleep because I could barely see when I woke up. I jumped straight into a 24-tabling session of cash but I couldn't focus on my cards at all and tables just kept on popping up in my face forcing me to move my eyes and brain, so I dealt with this problem by falling asleep half an hour in. I guess you'd class that as a challenge failure but I needed to fucking sleep. Have been one tabling 1c/2c to Celine Dion obv since I woke back up. Time to pass onto Keys, nearly over now, thankfully. This challenge was such a fun idea on paper. Oh well.

5.42am

2009-03-21T05:33:00.003Z

Again, instead of going to sleep last break, I found a DVD to watch. The entire first series of The Office. I made it to the start of the fourth episode before falling asleep ffs. It's one of my favourite episodes of anything ever, which shows how bad I'm running I guess. My ungrateful body didn't seem to appreciate the hour's sleep I allowed it either as I woke up with a horrible headache. SNGed it for an hour and a half to start this session, then lost two stacks in 13 hands on my return to cash, which I won't be playing again until I've had some proper rest. Ran top pair + nut fd + nut low draw into top set and missed everything, then I lost A2K7ds all in pre vs A2KQds, which may have been a bit tilty on my part but still, wtf?! So now I'm one-tabling capped 1c/2c holdem on FT. What a great challenge this is. I think my body's telling me to sleep after this session so that's what I'll probably do. Unless MacDonald's is open, then it's breakfast/lunch/dinner time depending on what time of day my confused sleep-deprived body thinks it is.

30

2009-03-20T23:42:00.003Z

Beverly Hills Cop, the early Eddie Murphy film, was the film of choice for my last break. Good film but I probably should have slept. Still a long way to go in this challenge and I'm not coping very well. I couldn't face O8 cash once again and instead registered for every 180 man $2 sng running for the first hour. I'd busted them all by the end of the second hour. I must have played about 30 of them and only managed one cash, a 5th place, for an overall loss of some dollars. As I was explaining to Keys, the way I ran in the few hours of cash I have played during this challenge would probably have lead to a few days away from the laptop outside of this challenge and so I'm now finding it a bit tough. Well, back in 6hrs I guess after a film and some sngs probably.

23hrs 19mins ish

2009-03-20T16:41:00.004Z

Cheers for the comments lads, appreciate it. Managed to squeeze two films in during my last break, The Kite Runner, which I was a little disappointed by, and Three And Out with Mackenzie Crook in. I really enjoyed the film but, as with the Nicholas Cage film, Next, that I lapped up a few nights ago, I'm a bit worried that the only reason I liked it is because I fancied the lead actress. Both films are probably absolutely shit but don't tell my shallow brain that, it's lapping them all up a treat. I'm currently two-tabling 45-player $3.25 turbos on Stars because my tilt has pretty much taken over now. Make that one-tabling, ffs. Na, actually just gone out of both but I registered for a $3.40 flhe stt in time. See how quickly I can bust that. Listening to the Take That Greatest Hits, or one of them at least, I thought, might go some way to cheering me up. It hasn't. I'll stick with it though, A Million Love Songs - Track 12 ftw. The reason I'm one/two-tabling tiny stakes now is because I bettered Keys' two outer bad beat story when I got one-outer-quadded all in on the turn for $55 about an hour into my last session and haven't played any O8 since. I had to replace my 16 $25 and $50 O8 tables for 24 $2 NLHE tables so I could tilt cheaply. Did a few more $$ for the last two hours of my session and was grateful to pass the stick over to Keys. With 50 minutes of this session left I'm about $50 down for the challenge having only got about half as much cash grinding in as I'd have hoped : ( Playing tired poker has never suited me, I might have to go back to playing drunk instead. Or maybe I should just stop watching shit films during my breaks and get some kip. Na, I'm gonna get some wine in and watch Dude, Where's My Car?

12

2009-03-20T05:45:00.002Z

Celine Dion has let me down, and not for the first time. Got stacked very first hand of the session with top two and a fd vs a set and couldn't recover. I made the mistake of watching a film for the first two hours of my last break and could only manage 10 minutes of sleep afterwards. My alarm went off in my ear at 2.55am and I wasn't happy. It's the first time I've been forced to wake up for something for a long time, it actually reminded me of the days when I used to work in the Kerry Foods factory, where the day started at 6am, and the shifts were ironically 12 hours long. Anyway, good to see Keysie running well, I hope some hands start holding up for me in my next session, I'm off to sleep.

6hrs down

2009-03-19T23:45:00.003Z

Coming up to the end of my first 3hrs and barring three or four disasters (I'm currently 1-tabling 10c/25c) I should be showing a profit. Elton John has helped to keep me calm during a session in which I got a full stack all in pre twice with AALx and another in a $40 pot and came out a loser. It's nice to take a break after a run like that but that is something that this challenge obviously doesn't allow. Took some serious Elton classics to help me through that without tilting.

I think I averaged around 18-tables at a time, mixing in both $25 and $50. I played 2230 hands for a small profit.

Okay, passing the baton onto Keys now,
Inabit.

I'm such a lazy blogger

2009-03-19T16:20:00.006Z

Sorry about that, I'm still playing O8 and I promise to post a decent Supernova run update as soon as my new challenge is over!

I'm staying in Nottingham for a while in a quality flat with Keysie. My 'sleep' 'pattern' is all over the place and my lifestyle and diet have probably never been worse than they are at the moment, but I'd argue that good health and happiness are worth sacrificing for such a whales of a time.

We've (more specifically 'keys has') had a nightmare trying to sort out the wireless in the flat so, at the moment, we have to take it in turns with the T-Mobile internet stick. This, combined with our recent laziness when it comes to poker volume, has forced us to come up with
The 48-hour Challenge.

Starting at 6pm tonight we will be taking it in turns with the magic internet stick to play three-hour sessions of poker.. non-stop.. until 6pm on Saturday. 48 hours of solid poker between us! While one of us is playing, the other person can do whatever they like with their three hours. I can't speak for Keysie but I know I'll most probably be sleeping.

Reading that back, I realise I haven't explained the challenge as clearly as I could have. That probably has something to do with how much I had to drink trying to keep up with the T-total Keys last night. I'm going to pass the T-Mob twig over to him now so, hopefully, his pre-challenge post is a little clearer than mine. GL mate.

Keys is doing the first stint from 6-9pm and I think one of us will blog a general update every six hours until this ridiculous challenge is over.

So, until then, goodnight..

Supernova run

2009-02-02T18:42:00.003Z

Since my last post I haven’t felt like blogging here at all. Blogging over the last few months has come to feel like a bit of a chore and I’m sure that that’s come through in some of the writing (or lack of it). Even the challenge I set myself in December failed to keep me entertained for the whole month. Even to the point where I was too bored to finish the blogging month off properly, with a summary.

But December went well overall and I haven’t been back to ‘work’ since I quit at the end of November. If it wasn’t for a little blow up cash-wise at the end of December, which led to a dramatic drop (it was pretty much a halt, actually) in volume, I would have easily reached Platinum star status for the month playing $5, $25 and $50 nl and pl O8.

O8 is the form of poker I most enjoy and I do enjoy it a lot. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across it part way through last year and my success in the game over the year, and especially in December, finally proved to me that I can make a better living playing O8 cash than I can working. So I made the decision at the start of this year to stay off work and commit myself to a big push for Supernova VIP status playing O8 cash. I hope to be there by October, whilst making what I would consider to be a comfortable living at the same time.

So, as I’m playing more poker now than I ever have, I think it makes sense for me to bring the blog back and write a bit about my progress through the year. I’m bound to have problems along the way but I hope that keeping an honest account of my successes and failures, as well as how I’m coping with the challenges that a run for Supernova will bring, will be helpful to anyone planning a Supernova run of their own one day, as well as being something that anyone currently heading for Supernova can relate to.

It took me 62k hands of 10c/25c O8 cash to reach Platinum in January. I 12-tabled full ring for most of the month (which feels very comfortable now) until I started getting a little pushed for time towards the end of the month… I had some hilarious 6k hand sessions of 20-tabling. This was great fun, if a little tough to do on my laptop screen. I had some very good days and some horrible days over the month and did very well to keep my tilting to just a couple of days this month. A $200 loss was my worst session, which didn’t feel too bad at the time but, on reflection, an 8 buy-in losing session is quite horrific. The rest of the month was fairly smooth though. It seems that, as I have no actual work to fall back on at the moment, I am much more likely to stop playing after a bad session rather than carry on and play badly.

I have actually grown up a lot (as a poker player, at least) in the last couple of months and I feel like there’s no danger of a huge blow up similar to the one I had six months back when I lost half of my roll playing 10c/25c and won it all back playing 50c/$1! I really can’t see this happening at all at the moment and my head seems to be in the right place at the tables. Though if I did move up a couple of levels after each losing day I’d probably be Supernova by April. I’d just be a very, very poor one!

Looking back at how January went, one of my concerns about my plan to be putting in sick volume every month is not spending enough time with people. The hours of the day I play really don’t help matters here. A common complaint for British players playing on an American site must be the unsociablnessness of the peak times. And given that I played at least 22 days in January, it means that the few days I did have off I was usually too tired to do anything or was sleeping. So, my main aim in February is to manage my weeks a lot better so I have at least one full day a week of awakeness to spend time with people and do things. My sister and her young kid live very close to me and it’s wrong that I only saw them once in January.

Apart from that, I’d like to start earning a little bit quicker… 62k hands of 10c/25c and only $1.5k profit on the month (a chunk of which was made using the 20k fpps I earned). My game improved a lot over the last two weeks of the month and I hope that February will be a bit more financially rewarding as a result.

What I learned in January:

- Platinum star is reachable each month playing just 10c/25c cash.
- I can have an 8 buy-in loss one day and come back the next day playing properly.
- To play more than 12 tables at a time.
- Women can be an absolute nightmare.

So, my main aims for February:

- Plan my time away from the tables better so I feel awake enough to do things on my days off.
- See my sister and nephew more often.
- Maintain Platinum.
- Win more!

Will hopefully be back during the month to talk some more.
Later.

I am playing really really shit

2008-12-28T08:40:00.006Z

Fucking sick of cards at the minute because I'm playing bad and losing lots but, as I've still got two tickets left, I might as well play the $2.5m guaranteed Million and the $1m guaranteed Sunday Warm-Up later today.

Fuck Omaha.

I strongly advise you all against buying but $21.50 for 10% in either if any crazy fucker fancies a piece. peace

Run well, one time...

2008-12-21T18:51:00.005Z

I've been losing money at cash recently, which is something I'll worry a bit more about if I don't ship the $500k tonight. It kicks off in a few hours and I'm really looking forward to it. Before that is the Blogger Championship Final and I might as well play the $200k tonight as well as that was part of the package.

As my MSN personal message suggested briefly, my plan was to go to the gym for an hour or so to get my body and brain fit for tonight. I left for the gym fifteen minutes ago, and I've just got back. After about ten minutes I had to stop as I was suffering from stitch in just about every organ in my body that hasn't already been killed or desensitised by the abuse of the last few years.

One of my New Year's Resolutions will be to abuse my body soo much that my organs are left sufficiently feeling-free for me to be able to run, or at least move, for more than ten minutes relatively painlessly.

A couple of mistakes to learn from...

The first is, never sign up to over $500s worth of tournaments just before going to the gym for the first time in three months without leaving your account details with a close friend or a good player. There was about a 49% chance of a pgchips heart attack just now and that would have been a sad waste of a few hundred $$. I was literally racing for my tournament's life..

Arguably, the second mistake was going to the gym with an estimated 49% chance of a heart attack. But this is an O8 blog now, baby, you gots to be willing to take some slim edges.

Sorry, no cash in the O8 tourn last night, will be playing the same one next week though because imo there were some really bad things happening.

Well, blogger starts in 45mins, gl to all playing it.

Same shit, different day

2008-12-20T17:40:00.003Z

For those of you who are backing me, there isn't a PL tournament tomorrow but they're letting me play the one tonight instead. It starts at 7.45pm. PLO8 $215, 25k guaranteed.

I will be playing the $500k tomorrow night, as planned.

Cheers.

PLO8 $50

2008-12-20T04:59:00.006Z

Even though my BR is only slightly better off than it was this time last week, I finally made the move up to PL50 last night. Why didn't I just dive in last week ffs, before my downswing at $25? Anyway, it took me a while to settle into $50 and get used to the $100+ pots that were flying about. I'm not sure why but I played badly to start with, one really bad crying call on the river sticks in my mind. It was a turned one outer (sigh) but it's a snap fold I've been making at $25. My call annoyed me more than the outdraw, which is a positive thing imo.

I've not got anything interesting to say after today's session really so I might as well show you my biggest $50 hands to date. I've only played five pots of $100 or more so far and I've been on the wrong end of most of them.

One of the first hands I played at this level and it hurt a little bit:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3604063

These are more infuriating when the low doesn't go down at all and KK holds for the high but, again, could easily have scooped:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3606180

Opponent was bad, my worry on the flop was the solid Scarf left to act after me. Worked out okay though (interesting to see that his hand is favourite pre??):
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3605381

Favourite pre, on the flop and on the turn but scooped in a $140 pot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3610143

Two hands later he does me again:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3610160

Looks like I've ran fairly badly in the big pots so far but, in a way, this little gem from earlier makes up for all them:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3610073
; -)

I've played 2217 hands at $50 so far for a $36.65 loss. Considering how I've ran in my five biggest pots, this loss is nothing to worry about.

I had C4's '100 greatest tearjerkers' on in the background as I was playing tonight and a couple of the films that were up there are on my computer, so I'm off to fall asleep to River Phoenix and the lads in Stand By Me.

Night night, bright eyes. xx
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=a502RejLz8s&feature=related

‘…some shitty tournament’

2008-12-19T19:29:00.001Z

Firstly, an apology. To the few of you who don’t consider my posts a chore to read, sorry for not making as many of them recently as I did at the start of the month. It’s pretty bad form considering I bring so much attention onto myself with all these challenges. But, for those of you have been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that a week of non-posting = a week of losing money. I have a bad habit of not blogging the times when I’m either running badly or playing badly (the former usually leads to the latter). I have to stop doing this because it doesn’t look good for the blog to have gaps, sometimes weeks long, missing from every month!

I will try not to let losing money affect my blogging in future, and no matter how grumpy the post may be, I’m going to try to post something after every day’s play from now on. Happy now, Darkstar?! Always a pleasure to share a table with you btw, even though you probably stacked me about three times during my tilty phase this week!

From my last post:

‘…I’ve made $600 in five days at $25 so, with 19 days left of the challenge, I should cruise to the further $1700 I need to succeed…’

A lesson to all bloggers new and old, never post a sentence like this unless you’re willing to accept the ridiculous luck that poker karma has to throw at you as a result. A long, swingy week later my BR has only just recovered, and is finally back over the $1k mark. But it was a really tough week and, as you can see, I’ve done very little to further dent the required $$ needed to complete the December challenge.

Promisingly though, I had a +$150 session at the $50 tables last night so, with 13 days left of the challenge, I should cruise to the further $1700 I need to succeed.

Within two days of my ‘$1k bankroll’ update last week, I was knocked down to $780 after some really bad times at the NL $25 tables. AALx is rarely an underdog in O8 and a lot of the bad players tend to call all in pre quite light, so in NLO8 open shoving any AA hand seems to be the thing to do. I managed to get scooped in five of these in a row (three for full buyins) early on Saturday, the day after my last post. Luckily it was all before breakfast so I had very little to throw up.

The last stacking was my AA24 vs one of the regs who made a ridiculous snap of my sb shove, having raised the CO, with A45J. He must have known what a mare I was having at my other tables as well because he chose that moment to try and wind me up.. When the river fell, and he scooped (obv), I said, ‘nh’ in the chat. He responded with, ‘I am just learning this game, how am I doing pgchips?’ Coming from an experienced player, a player I’ve played a lot with, this was a ridiculous thing to say. I hope his comment made him feel a little bit better about his awful call though. By the way, if you happen to see Donrio35 on your travels any time soon, tell him pgchips said ‘nh’.

I went through a short spell after that, that I’m sure we’ve all been through, where it seemed that ALL my bluffs were getting snapped off, all my made hands were being folded to and I was playing badly and just steadily losing money. So, in typical pgchips style, I took a couple of days off.

Sunday, I drank, and then most of Monday was spent down the snooker hall. It was nice to take my mind off the cards for a bit, and I very nearly made, what would have been, only my third ever maximum break as well… I was dead straight on a black to middle with the few remaining reds pretty much over the holes. But, as I sent it heading straight at the heart of the pocket, I can only imagine the nap of the cloth took hold as I narrowly missed by a matter of feet. Still, a break of 25 is not to be sniffed at, my friends.

Tuesday, I came back to have another crack at the cards. Opening the cashier and seeing only $780 in there was a bit depressing and it made me feel like I didn’t want to open any O8 tables. It’s ridiculous really how such a small downswing can have such a big adverse affect on me. So, instead of O8 cash, I decided to put my 5k fpps to good use and played 24 of the 210 fpp sats to the Sunday $200k. I won 14 of them for a nice $154 return on 5040 fpps. I’ve said it before but, a $50 bonus costs 5k fpps at the lower VIP levels so, if anyone reading this was considering buying one of these bonuses, I would strongly recommend that you play these sats instead. The obvious downside is the time factor but, as they only take about half an hour each (if you win), if you can multi table them I’d say the extra $$ that can be made makes it worth the time spent.

I sold the $T and this time added the money to my roll. Is this cheating? Err, let’s call it rakeback…

From my last post:

‘…some shitty tournament’.

Wednesday night/ Thursday morning was the O8 leg of the blogger qualifiers, which I originally wasn’t going to play because it didn’t kick off until 3am our time. Luckily for me I did play it because come 8.30am I was scooping the final pot and shipped a load of tournament tickets. I learnt a lot about tournament O8 during the night and it was a lot of fun, especially with two tables left, to be playing with what I would consider to be some really good players. Heads up was a bit of a marathon but I’m glad I eventually got lucky and came through for the win.

The tournament tickets I won are:
3x $215
1x $530
1x $11 (??)

As this total of $1186 is more than my current BR stands at, I’m looking to sell some of my action. This Sunday I’ll be playing the $215 PLO8 and the $530 NLHE $500k. I’m hoping to sell 50% in both. A couple of people have already expressed interest (I still have 15% of the O8 and 20% of the $530 to sell) so if you fancy getting in on it, let me know. I’m selling at face value so if you can spare a few tens of $$ it might be worth investing. Just $21.50 for 10% of me in the O8 and $53 for 10% of me in the 500k. Might be worth a spin. Ship me on Stars or let me know here, whatever.

I’ll post about my move up to the $50 tables later, this is far too long already and I’m hungry.

ffs

2008-12-12T22:11:00.004Z

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This PokerStars tournament is a No Limit Texas Hold’em event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code:
document.write(paramCode)
005244

Bloggers can fuck off

2008-12-12T21:34:00.005Z

Who gives a fuck who’s playing the Blogger championship or whatever? I get all excited because people who haven’t posted in ages finally post and it’s just to tell me that they’re playing some shitty tournament. Lovely, don’t give a shit.

The problem, I’ve found, with not working is that money doesn’t just magically appear in your bank account. It was for this reason I was going to have to reluctantly withdraw some of my O8 BR. That was until I shipped a Million seat in some 500fpp Sat. Ptevey forced me to play. Cheers mate. He was nice enough to buy the T$ off me at face value as well so I’ve cashed that out to keep me going until the month is over instead of taking a step back in the challenge. I run good.

I started today’s session with a BR of just over $900 and decided that I wasn’t going to stop until I’d reached the magical $1k figure. That was the only aim for today. If it took half an hour, brilliant, I could call it a day and go back to sleep.

Did it take half an hour? What do you think?

Two thousand one hundred and sixty six hands (six and a half hours) later, my BR finally reached the $1k mark. So, relieved and exhausted, I said bye to my friends and sat out at all tables, before realising that the last hands I played on all tables dropped me slightly below the $1k. Sigh. I ran really well in the session, it has to be said, I think it’s the first session I’ve had at the $25 level where I feel happy about the way the cards fell.

Ran well, but played shit.

I tilted off $80 in back to back hands to the same player mid way through, and that was the main reason it took me so long to reach my target today. I’m so embarrassed about the hands, I’m not even going to show them. The $25 regulars’ll be lolling about them for weeks though, that's for sure. It really pissed me off but what pleased me was the fact that, straight afterwards, I was able to sit-out for ten minutes to calm down before starting the grind back up, instead of just carrying on and picking some other undeserving cunt to bankroll for life. Wish I’d done it after the first hand though… Fucking hell, such a knob.

Sitting out when I start feeling a bit tilty is something I need to start doing. It shouldn’t take a three buy-in downswing in two hands (at a rate of -8000ptbb/100) for me to realise I’m a twat and need a quick break. A little bit of tilt multiplied by 9 tables equals a potential disaster.

My $25 stats are getting less impressive by the session. It’s probably because I’m 9-tabling as standard now, but it’s a challenge I’m enjoying so fuck it. Also, knowingly tilting away at least four buy-ins in the last few days doesn’t help anyone’s numbers. Well, maybe theirs.

10c/25c full ring
11731 hands
34hrs 30mins
(340 hands ph)
$597.45 profit
10.7 ptbb/100
$17.32 ph

$600 profit from these tables is 24 buy-ins, I’d say that this evidence enough to show that I am a winner at the $25 level. Do we need a bigger sample to safely determine this, I don’t know? Probably, but unless I fuck up now, I was never destined to be at this level for long enough to put in a ‘significant’ sample anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.

O8 cash
21066 hands
72hrs 30mins
(291 hands ph)
$799.32 profit
$11.03 ph

BR: $999.32

So, the question is, now that I’m ‘rolled’, should I move up to $50?

In context of the challenge, I don’t think I necessarily need to move up. I’ve made $600 in five days at $25 so, with 19 days left of the challenge, I should cruise to the further $1700 I need to succeed. But I think this whole thing will be a lot prettier to look back on if I continue to work my way through the levels.

I do have a couple of reservations though.

The major worry I have with moving up is that the aggressive nature of my O8 game might cause a downswing that seriously fucks up the challenge. If, after a bad couple of sessions of $50, I had to move back down, I might not recover in time. I haven’t been completely comfortable with a couple of down swings I’ve had at $25, which, I expect, are fairly standard playing the way I do.

Hands like this, for example:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3575309
I occasionally get snapped and quartered but often take all of a pot that most people settle for half of (or none of). Plus EV or not, it’s what I’ve been doing. I think it’s good play (I might be wrong because literally no other fucker's doing it), but with aggression like this comes high variance and a worryingly up-and-down BR.

It's important that I feel happy enough to play my natural game at whatever stakes I'm at, so, to ensure this at the $50 level, I plan to go into it with a $250 ‘bluffer buffer’.

So, I’ll move up to the $50 level when/if (never fuck with fate) my BR reaches $1250. And the sooner that happens, the better, some of the whiney bad losers at $25 are really starting to annoy me.

Up and down like a Nun’s yo-yo

2008-12-10T12:38:00.002Z

There were a lot of full ring $25 tables running today for some reason so I decided I was going to try a bit of 9-tabling. It lasted one hand.

By the end of the first hand on each table I was stuck $30, just bluffing like a twat, not concentrating at all. So I closed three of the tables and decided to 6-table until I felt sensible again. It took a long time to get to break even again and as soon as I did, I suddenly found myself $60 up for the session. I sat down at three more tables, sat out, and made myself a congratulatory cup of tea. Tasted good.

Within ten minutes of the restart, I was $10 down for the session again.

The first two stackings were standard but here’s the third all in I lost. Complete tilt:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3564949
I’m glad I lost, I deserved to. Pillock.

I sat out after that and made myself another cup of tea. It didn’t taste anywhere near as nice as the last one. (And I’m not being metaphorical, tasted like shit.)

I felt good when I came back though and was able to keep a good enough eye on things to open up a few more tables. I 7/8/9-tabled for a good few hours after that second cup of tea and came through the session with a nice profit again.

The promising stat, imo, is that I played 2024 hands in just over 6hrs, which is an average of 325 hands per hour, 50 hands more than my current overall average, whilst still maintaining my ‘30% of hands played’ stat.

10c/25c full ring stats after last night’s session:
4686 hands
16hrs 45mins
(280 hands ph)
$350.39 profit
15 ptbb/100
$20.92 ph

The nice part about these figures, when compared to the same ones yesterday, is that my win rate has gone down while my hourly rate has gone up. This is exactly what playing more tables at a time (more hands per hour) is meant to achieve. But, I know now, only to play as many tables as I’m comfortable with. The way I play, nine tables is often going to be too many for me.

Overall O8 cash in December:

14,021 hands
54hrs 45mins
(256 hands ph)
$552.26 profit
$10.09 ph

I’ll finish this dull, statsy post with a pleasing hand I played vs one of the ‘regulars’. He played it badly and it’s an important lesson for anyone trying to learn O8:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3565429
It’s one of the main reasons why PLO8 is so hard. He’s getting freerolled ALL of the time when faced with that turn bet from me so he should have folded the nuts on the turn. IMO. And how good do I run, btw?!

BR is up to $752.26 now, so if I can avoid the massive downswing that I’m certainly capable of, I’ll move onto the $50 tables soon.

No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there's no limit!

2008-12-09T08:42:00.005Z

Literally the last hand of today's session:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3559858

Fucking no limit. Could have been an expensive misclick. I wasn't in awful shape as it happens (it's effectively my KQ vs his AT), though I was unlucky not to scoop imo! I said, 'ffs, ridiculous turn' as a joke in the chat afterwards but all I got was abuse. It was standard, lads, get over it.

It was another fairly smooth 1k hands or so at 10c/25c, added to yesterday's figures:

10c/25c full ring overall
2662 hands
10hrs 30mins
(254 hands ph)
$211.75 profit
16 ptbb/100
$20.17 ph

So, my December stats now read:

O8 cash
11997 hands
48hrs 30mins
(247 hands ph)
$413.62 profit
$8.53 ph

If I continue to 6-table, running at 16pt at 10c/25c, this $2.5k challenge will only take another 100hrs. 16 is probably unsustainable at this level though, so I might be moving up again soon.

So...

Cue the downswing.

EDIT: I'm actually favourite in the hand at the top of the post... 54/46 to me! (The odds shown on Pokerhand are for Ohi for some reason.) Well, I never. If he has any low card in his hand (8 or lower) to go with his aces, however, he's back to being favourite. So I will try not to make this misclick in future as this shove ALWAYS means acesxx. Peace.

Moving on up

2008-12-08T13:02:00.006Z

‘Bryan Duncan, singer, born in 1953, started his career in 1973 with the Jesus music band…’

Well, if I’d known that before I’d gone to the charity shop the other day, I wouldn’t have bought three of his fucking albums. I listened to one of them and just had to give them back. Let some other poor fucker make that mistake.

I also bought an S Club 7 album, which I was quite looking forward to bobbing my head along to until I opened the case to find a Blue album in there instead. Sigh. Still, could be worse… I could be that unfortunate Blue fan who’s just opened his case to find S Club 7 staring him straight in the mush. Unlucky, son!

The other disappointment was an ABBA greatest hits that is NOT performed by ABBA at all, but by some tribute band called Abbaration. It doesn’t even have Waterloo on it ffs. So, that’s another album I might have to give back. Or maybe I could give it to C man for Christmas…

Daft Punk, Discovery, is probably the only album I’ve bought this week that I’m at all happy with. It’s even still got the membership card in it that the early editions of the album had. It’s probably worth millions now, this antique. 50p. Value. Imo.

Poker.

I took a practice shot at 10c/25c last night. Bankroll-wise, it was a little bit earlier than I’d planned given that, at the start of play, I was only just over $400 but I feel like I’ve grown out of 2c/5c now and it’s just a boring grind (a break even grind at that atm). So I took a shot with the intention of coming back down should I fall below $350. I told myself not to bluff too much, just to take it easy and play some chilled out, low-risk stuff… but that’s just boring.

After this bluff got snapped off:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3555550

…I was lucky this one wasn’t looked up as well:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3555552

Lol, the hand plays itself imo. Way to take it easy, son. As I was telling 147 at the time, if that bet gets snapped by some AA4x, which I was worried about, or just any A2 that is also likely beating my ‘high’, I would have been forced to move back down. Too much in there not to bluff it though even if it was a matter of life and death. I got lucky and was able to stay at 10c/25c for the rest of the night. I was 6-tabling full ring for the most part, which felt comfortable.

10c/25c full ring
1510 hands
5hrs 30mins
$86.80 profit
11.5ptbb/100
$15.78 ph

Not a bad start. This leaves my overall figures for the first week looking like this:

O8 cash
10845 hands
43hrs 30mins
(249 hands ph)
$288.67 profit
$6.64 ph

Hopefully I won’t have to move down to 2c/5c again now (I’ve said it before but what a ridiculous jump between levels… $5 to $25), but I mustn’t get ahead of myself just yet because, as we all know, poker can be a right cunt sometimes.

Well, I’m off to listen to some Blue. All raise…

Vanessa's atomic modern love... Corrr!

2008-12-06T07:02:00.014Z

Yo.

Got a feeling that this is going to turn into a bit of a boring mathsy (sp?) post, a post full of maths, so let me apologise for that in advance.

Soz.

Well, I’m slowly getting there. While you were all out having fun last night, I had a cosy night in with my new friends at the 2c/5c tables. The tea was flowing and we had a Wales of a thymes. There are some characters at these tables to be fair, my favourite being a lad who says ‘thanks’ in the chat after every pot he wins. What a twat. He even said it when he split one heads up once?? Yeah, ship it, son. I’ve taken a few pots off him and said nothing but I might have to deliberately outdraw him one day just so the ‘thanks’ I give him feels that little bit sweeter and hopefully hurts him that little bit more.

Was nice to take a little break the other day. Can’t remember which day it was but I met up with Ptevey and C for a couple of hours before they headed off to Nottingham to do their bollocks. Thursday daytime, I think. Yeah, ate into my sleep time a treat, you unnocturnal weirdos. (Had a bit of a problem spelling ‘weirdos’ then…whatever happened to ‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’?).

I met them down the bowling place where we shooted some pool, and followed that with a couple of games of bowling. The standard between us was seriously Laugh Out Loud-able but I banged home a 151 in the second game of bowling, which I only mention because it happens to be exactly the same as my highest break in snooker. 147star? I’ve made bigger breaks… Full stop.

In more depressing news, I’m officially a losing player at 2c/5c 6-max PLO8:

6-max 2c/5c
1460 hands
$9.13 loss
2hrs 45mins
-6 ptbbs/100
-$3.32 ph

Yeah, I know…ouch!

I felt the need to tilt after an ‘orrendous runner runner at one of those tables so I took it out on the 1c/2c tables! 9-tabling 6-max 1c/2c, I somehow played 91% of hands. It was such a nightmare to follow but great fun as ever. Potting most hands and not giving a shit what happened really sorted out my tilt as well.

6-max 1c/2c
952 hands
$14.27 profit
2hrs 15mins
37 ptbbs/100
$6.34 ph

Yeah, eat that, 6-max.

Luckily, my full ring is okay.

Full ring 2c/5c
6082 hands
$200.15 profit
29hrs
33 ptbbs/100
$6.90 ph

Cheers for all your comments in my last post but I still can’t find anything that automatically tops up when you fall below a full buyin. I’m guessing there isn’t one. That kind of thing might actually be considered ‘irresponsible’ of Pokerstars, though, so maybe that’s why the option isn’t there. Or perhaps I’m the only person in the world who sees the need for it. So, until Pokerstars loses it’s conscience or gambling law relaxes, or some genius in one of their offices actually takes a moment to consider troubled topupperers like myself, I guess I’ll just have to live without.

I’m five days through my challenge (December) now and my O8 bankroll is up to $405.29

O8 cash overall in December
8494 hands
$205.29 profit
34hrs
$6.04 ph

Using the old ‘20 buyins per level’ rule I’m planning on moving up to 10c/25c when I reach $500. Hopefully, I can run good and be there by the end of Sunday’s session.

Well, I was going to give you some figures as to what I need to achieve when I move up but I think it’s probably better left ‘til my $500 is reached. Well, isn’t that something to look forward to?

Bought four new albums the other day, by the way. Three of them are to be avoided:

The Corrs - Forgiven, Not Forgotten
Vanessa Hudgens (who??)
Atomic Kitten - Ladies Night (Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING?)

The other album, though, is an absolute peach. Bill Withers - Lovely Day, is the first track. I snapped it up based on that alone, obviously, but, hilariously, it’s also got the original ‘If you don’t know me by now’ on it. I’ve listened to it a few times now and can’t help cracking up thinking of David Brent’s version. Fuck, I’m gonna Youtube that right now.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DN41XutK61Y
HAHA, Genius.

Also, couldn't help but watch this one for the first time in ages, amazing.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9JitDWQI9qc&feature=related

Modern Love Collection is the name of the album. (almost certainly) At a charity shop near you, if that’s your thang.

'thanks'

Before you roll those dice, baby think twice

2008-12-04T10:16:00.006Z

Celine and Enya really are doing the trick at the moment so I'm just off out to do some charity shop shopping with eyes only for them pair..

But a quick post before I go.

This challenge is only three days in and it is already brought up a couple of problems. The first worry is my posture. I have been sitting at my desk crouched over my laptop for 23 hours over the three days and it is not doing wonders for my back. My posture's so bad at the moment, I'm practically kneeing myself in the head when I walk. My desk is slightly too low for me. Maybe I should get a new chair. Ah, fuck, just as I was writing that I checked the chair and it wasn't all the way to the bottom. Retard. That's better. Let's just hope the damage caused in the last three days isn't permanent.

Okay, so problem one solved ffs. Only 23hrs too late.

The second thing that's starting to become a problem is I seem to have developed a bit of an OCD. I don't know if any of you other cash game players have this but at the moment I literally CAN NOT be sitting at a table with less than a full buy in. It's getting quite annoying to be honest as, especially at the start of a session, I obviously spend a lot of time with exactly a buy in. So when I play a hand that I don't win I have to top up again instantly. The first hand of the session earlier, I folded on all six tables and had to go round insta-topping up on all of them from $9.95 back up to $10. It's kind of distracting and someone even commented on it at one of my tables earlier. Arrggghhh. Please let me know if I'm not alone in this.

Anyways, enough of that.

Felt like I played really well today. 6-tabling and 4-tabling for the most part I banged in another lengthy, back-breaking session.

Overall stats after December 3rd session:
2c/5c
5551 hands
$141.50 profit
23hrs
25 ptbbs/100
$6.15 ph

I lost four of my five biggest pots today so the stats aren't too flattering again really, sigh. Hourly rate, wasting my life ffs... Three outdraws and a big cooler were the ones I lost, though the one I won was a really sick outdraw I put on someone when I was on tilt which calmed me down for the rest of the session.

A couple more days of this and I'm taking a shot at 10c/25c.

Babies, think twice

CUNT

2008-12-03T07:02:00.003Z

Yeah, so, I've been 12-tabling 6-max. Obviously.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite beat it as well as I'd have liked..

6-max 2c/5c

1188 hands
$0.85 profit
2hrs
0.72 ptbbs/100
$0.43 ph

Even the old 'rounding up the hourly rate' trick fails to make these stats look any prettier.

It was a tough session. I timed out a lot early on because (I didn't realise until it was too late) I still don't know how to play the fucking game very well. Every decision is so important post flop and I had an absolute mare thinking about a billion tables at the same time. Making the move from 4-tabling full ring to 12-tabling 6-max is just the kind of childish thing that pgchips should have grown out of by now. But still, live and learn. Hahaha, I wish.

As with ALL of my other 12-tabling exploits I feel like I was unlucky not to show a decent profit. Ran bad imo (but, as 12-tabling has never shown good results, I'm probably wrong and I must just play badly when I have too many tables going).

Might not be doing that again for a while.

Luckily, I calmed down after the annoyance of yet another 12-tabling disaster and banged in a nice, calm, bankroll-building, spell of 4-tabling full ring.

Not only is 4-tabling seemingly (I'll judge it when I finally have a 12-tabling session that isn't hundreds of $$ below expectation!) more profitable, I also enjoy myself a lot more than when I'm playing 8 or 12. It's nice to be able to actually think about a decision for more than a tenth of a second before another table pops up, and see patterns in people's play to adjust to, and, more importantly, I can talk to friends and/or watch the telly at the same time.

Overall full ring stats:

2c/5c
2483 hands
$90.31 profit
12hrs 30mins
36 ptbbs/100
$7.22 ph

So, including the 6-max, my overall December stats are:

2c/5c O8 (6-max and full ring)
3671 hands
$91.16 profit
14hrs 30mins
25 ptbbs/100
$6.29 ph

As I ran badly yesterday (imo), hopefully my win rates are set to improve. Though this obviously depends on whether I can control my greedy urge to 12-table.

Anyways, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow, relaxing with four tables open, and conversations going on MSN as I successfully follow some kind of visual media.

147's tar.

Suicidal in December?

2008-12-02T08:30:00.008Z

Not yet, but I will be if I put in anywhere near the volume required to succeed in my new challenge. I'll come onto that in a bit.

When I was reading through my blog the other morning I was reminded of how much I used to enjoy one particular form of poker.

PLO8.

I don't even know why I stopped playing it, I used to absolutely lap it up (33 posts in June/July is some volume!). I can't think of another form of the game that I'd be willing to play 10k hands of at 1c/2c in less than a week! Certainly not Holdem.

Holdem is for cunts, by the way, and I don't care how many readers that offends, you Holdem playing cunts.

Anyway, as I say, I started playing O8 cash with the start of that 10k hand experiment at 1c/2c at the end of May and, luckily enough, I failed it profitably enough to steadily build my roll to a point where I was pratting about 12-tabling the 6-max 10c/25c tables in June and July, lol. The last time I mentioned O8 cash, though, was in the depressing 'tannigreythompson' post on 7th August.

And that was it, O8 gone... what a prick I am sometimes.

The fact is, that spell of poker in June and July was probably the most enjoyable and profitable time I've had since starting this blog. And I think that showed in the amount I played and the volume of blogging I got through. 33 O8 posts in June and July was followed by a sorry 2-post August where I got in a right strop after running slightly badly (well, a $350 downswing at 10c/25c was pretty annoying to be fair), ending in me inexplicably knocking O8 on the head.

I've only posted 20 times in the four months I've spent away from O8, so, to save this blog, and hopefully to start enjoying poker again, I've decided to set myself another O8 cash challenge:

Starting with a bankroll of $200, my aim is to make $2500 profit playing O8 cash in the month of December.

Yeah, that should keep me busy playing and writing in December.

I realise this sounds like a lot to make from that small starting bankroll, but given that I'm not planning on working at all in December, I should be able to get some serious volume in.

It's been a long time since I played the game so I'm going to grind the rust away with some 2c/5c full ring to start with. My plan is, when I feel comfortable with the game again, to move to the 6-max 2c/5c.

To get anywhere near the targeted $2500 I'd imagine I'm going to have to move up at some point but as it seems that I'm capable of a 14 buyin downswing at 10c/25c, I'm going to grind 2c/5c until I feel happy. You never know, I may even beat 2c/5c well enough not to have to move up...!

Started last night with a lengthy 4-tabling session just to get my O8 game back. Was sitting at one of the 2c/5c tables with $68 at one point which was fun, though that table was the only reason I made profit last night.

So, figures so far:

Game... Full ring PLO8
Stakes... 2c/5c
Hands... 1616
Time... 7hrs 30mins (ffs, I'm wasting my life)
Profit... $49.21
@... 30ptbbs/100 and $6.56 ph

Went through a horrible stage of tilt in there on other tables and I don't think I'm anywhere near my best so, though my hr is soooooooo slow doing it, I'm going to carry on 4-tabling full ring for the time being. (How many times have I said that, by the way... No doubt my next post, entitled 'CUNT', will be talking about the break-even six hour 24-tabling session of 10c/25c I've just had!)

Not at all happy with my current hourly rate so hopefully by the time I post next I'll be happy enough with my game to make the move to 6-max, or at least to open up a few more tables.

Will post again later.

Hope you're happy... Frodo!

Khaled Hosseini

2008-11-28T10:17:00.004Z

I don't know much about novelists but, taking Catherine Cookson out of the equation, obviously, this guy is definitely my favourite at the moment. I read 'The Kite Runner' last summer when I spent a fun, if hugely unproductive, time living in Norwich with Dickie - good times - and I've spent the last two days reading the follow up, 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', which, in my opinion, is equally brilliant.

So choosing last night (and most of this morning) to reread my blog IN FULL was only going to end in tears... What a fucking awful read. It ended in tears.

Even my early 'Poker... it's just not cricket' post, which, pre-Hosseini, I felt was the most perfectly crafted literary thing to come from words since Kensie from Blazing Squad's spellbindingly unputdownable autobiography, failed to bring a sm1le to the mush.

And the blog has gone downhill from there.

Spent the other half of last night watching Lady Sovereign videos on Youtube. Very productive night. Keysie, seriously, Youtube her, 'Hoodie', '9 to 5', 'Those were the days', and 'Random' will no doubt be classics when she's shot dead on the streets in a couple of years. She's just like Dizzee Rascal mate, you'll love her. Except she's white. And female. Yeah, she's nothing like him but check out 'the Rascal' being grilled by 'the Paxman' here, haha. The cheeky sm1le stretching from 0:08 to 0:10 is hilarious, the big wally:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1XrVVVBAk

Ah, there was gonna be a point to this post but I really need some sleep. I think you get the message though, this blog's on it's way out.

I got 99 outs but the river ain't one

2008-11-06T03:36:00.004Z

Yep, I've been playing Omaha whilst listening to Jay-Z!

When registering for the $3k guaranteed NLHE multi at the last minute earlier tonight, I first accidentally registered for a $1 FL Omaha multi.

FFS.

Lost half my stack in the holdem calling an all in pre with Q7 because I thought I was good. I lost to Q8, which got a couple of 'lols'. I was nearly right, you cunts. I then went out in a big four-way all in with JTo. A fairly standard demise really. Don’t think my heart was quite in it somehow.

The Omaha was a 252 runner affair and it soon became clear that the $49.15 first prize wasn’t going to be reward enough to endure the tilt that playing FL Omaha with complete retards seemed to drive me to almost instantly. But, five incredibly stressful hours later, I was heads up Vs one of the nice guys so all was well:

*** RIVER *** [2c Kh Th Jh] [Ts]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
markhrm: shows [6d 4c Ac Kc] (two pair, Kings and Tens)
pgchips: shows [6h 2d 6c 3h] (a flush, King high)
markhrm: gg
Dealer: Game #21795333073: pgchips wins pot (50768) with a flush, King high
Dealer: markhrm finished the tournament in 2nd place
Dealer: pgchips wins the tournament - congratulations!
pgchips [observer]: very well played
pgchips [observer]: gg
markhrm [observer]: ty u 2
pgchips [observer]: ty
markhrm [observer]: gl
pgchips [observer]: gl, take care
markhrm [observer]: ty u 2
pgchips [observer]: ty, laters
markhrm [observer]: bye

Fucking hell, he didn't say a word through the whole 5hr 20min tournament and suddenly, come bedtime, he fancies a natter. What's up with that? I lied by the way, it wasn’t ‘very well played’. At all. By anyone.

Through the fire, to the limit, to the wall. Niggaz.

Barak, the builder, can we fix it? Barak, the builder, 'YES WE CAN'.

2008-11-05T09:58:00.003Z

Finally, a good result to report in this blog.
Peace.

Another bash...

2008-11-03T22:26:00.003Z

Hands in a blog can be very boring so I'd advise against reading on.

Got past 2c/5c easily this time, only taking 370 hands for a $20.92 profit (57 ptBBs/100) and set about crushing my previous stumbling level of 5c/10c.

Ran good and got up to $80+ of the $100 needed for 10c/25c when it all went wrong again...

Can't get the pokerhand site working but:

PokerStars Game #21734357606: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/11/03 17:00:51 ET
Table 'Waterman III' 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: LJ777 ($4.25 in chips)
Seat 2: vinbig ($5.75 in chips)
Seat 4: Luis Frigo ($10.05 in chips)
Seat 5: pgchips ($13.05 in chips)
Seat 6: bxP* ($17.80 in chips)
LJ777: posts small blind $0.05
vinbig: posts big blind $0.10
Puszek88: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Ac As]
Luis Frigo: raises $0.40 to $0.50
pgchips: raises $12.55 to $13.05 and is all-in
bxP*: calls $13.05
LJ777: folds
vinbig: folds
Luis Frigo: calls $9.55 and is all-in
vinbig leaves the table
*** FLOP *** [8d 2h 9c]
*** TURN *** [8d 2h 9c] [Kh]
*** RIVER *** [8d 2h 9c Kh] [9s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Ac As] (two pair, Aces and Nines)
bxP*: shows [Kc Kd] (a full house, Kings full of Nines)
bxP* collected $5.70 from side pot
Luis Frigo: mucks hand
Luis Frigo leaves the table
bxP* collected $28.80 from main pot
bxP* said, "sorry, bro."
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $36.30 Main pot $28.80. Side pot $5.70. | Rake $1.80
Board [8d 2h 9c Kh 9s]
Seat 1: LJ777 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: vinbig (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Luis Frigo mucked [Qh Qs]
Seat 5: pgchips showed [Ac As] and lost with two pair, Aces and Nines
Seat 6: bxP* (button) showed [Kc Kd] and won ($34.50) with a full house, Kings full of Nines

PokerStars Game #21732001892: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/11/03 15:38:36 ET
Table 'Niobe V' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: PedritoRico ($11.60 in chips)
Seat 2: SEB194 ($1.85 in chips)
Seat 3: pgchips ($22.35 in chips)
Seat 4: Maximoff ($9.10 in chips)
Seat 5: $m0kin' @ce$ ($6.30 in chips)
Seat 6: mareilein ($5.05 in chips)
SEB194: posts small blind $0.05
pgchips: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Jd Jc]
Maximoff: folds
$m0kin' @ce$: folds
mareilein: folds
PedritoRico: calls $0.10
SEB194: calls $0.05
pgchips: raises $0.30 to $0.40
PedritoRico: raises $0.30 to $0.70
SEB194: folds
pgchips: raises $11.30 to $12
PedritoRico: calls $10.90 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($0.40) returned to pgchips
*** FLOP *** [8h Qd 7c]
*** TURN *** [8h Qd 7c] [7d]
*** RIVER *** [8h Qd 7c 7d] [Kd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Jd Jc] (two pair, Jacks and Sevens)
PedritoRico: shows [Ah Ac] (two pair, Aces and Sevens)
PedritoRico collected $22.15 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $23.30 | Rake $1.15
Board [8h Qd 7c 7d Kd]
Seat 1: PedritoRico (button) showed [Ah Ac] and won ($22.15) with two pair, Aces and Sevens
Seat 2: SEB194 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: pgchips (big blind) showed [Jd Jc] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Sevens
Seat 4: Maximoff folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: $m0kin' @ce$ folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: mareilein folded before Flop (didn't bet)

PokerStars Game #21733840532: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/11/03 16:42:28 ET
Table 'Tomita II' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: Anjun4 ($10.55 in chips)
Seat 2: allergieker ($13.70 in chips)
Seat 3: pgchips ($9.60 in chips)
Seat 4: Swiss777 ($19.15 in chips)
Seat 5: z_raver ($10.90 in chips)
Seat 6: JusteBelmont ($13.90 in chips)
JusteBelmont: posts small blind $0.05
Anjun4: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Jh Js]
allergieker: folds
pgchips: raises $0.20 to $0.30
Swiss777: folds
z_raver: folds
JusteBelmont: folds
Anjun4: raises $0.80 to $1.10
pgchips: raises $8.50 to $9.60 and is all-in
Anjun4: calls $8.50
*** FLOP *** [Qc 4h 8h]
*** TURN *** [Qc 4h 8h] [8d]
*** RIVER *** [Qc 4h 8h 8d] [3d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Anjun4: shows [Ac Ad] (two pair, Aces and Eights)
pgchips: mucks hand
Anjun4 collected $18.30 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $19.25 | Rake $0.95
Board [Qc 4h 8h 8d 3d]
Seat 1: Anjun4 (big blind) showed [Ac Ad] and won ($18.30) with two pair, Aces and Eights
Seat 2: allergieker folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: pgchips mucked [Jh Js]
Seat 4: Swiss777 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: z_raver (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: JusteBelmont (small blind) folded before Flop

Seat 1: rjfisher ($2.20 in chips)
Seat 2: Franciflo ($11.35 in chips)
Seat 3: frouf ($6.35 in chips)
Seat 4: pgchips ($7.95 in chips)
Seat 6: ocram72 ($4.80 in chips)
pgchips: posts small blind $0.05
ocram72: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Qd Qh]
rjfisher: raises $0.15 to $0.25
Franciflo: raises $0.15 to $0.40
frouf: folds
pgchips: raises $7.55 to $7.95 and is all-in
ocram72: folds
rjfisher: calls $1.95 and is all-in
Franciflo: calls $7.55
*** FLOP *** [4d 8c Td]
SeltoDurka joins the table at seat #5
*** TURN *** [4d 8c Td] [Ks]
*** RIVER *** [4d 8c Td Ks] [3c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Qd Qh] (a pair of Queens)
Franciflo: shows [Ac Ah] (a pair of Aces)
Franciflo collected $10.90 from side pot
rjfisher: mucks hand
Franciflo collected $6.40 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $18.20 Main pot $6.40. Side pot $10.90. | Rake $0.90
Board [4d 8c Td Ks 3c]
Seat 1: rjfisher mucked [Js Ad]
Seat 2: Franciflo showed [Ac Ah] and won ($17.30) with a pair of Aces
Seat 3: frouf (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: pgchips (small blind) showed [Qd Qh] and lost with a pair of Queens
Seat 6: ocram72 (big blind) folded before Flop

PokerStars Game #21733501430: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/11/03 16:30:22 ET
Table 'Sun IV' 6-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 2: Franciflo ($11.50 in chips)
Seat 3: frouf ($6.50 in chips)
Seat 4: pgchips ($16.40 in chips)
Seat 5: DuckMySick88 ($10.60 in chips)
Seat 6: ocram72 ($7.75 in chips)
DuckMySick88: posts small blind $0.05
ocram72: posts big blind $0.10
rjfisher: sits out
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Jh Ah]
Franciflo: folds
frouf: folds
pgchips: raises $0.20 to $0.30
DuckMySick88: folds
ocram72: calls $0.20
*** FLOP *** [4h Th 4c]
ocram72: checks
pgchips: bets $0.40
ocram72: calls $0.40
*** TURN *** [4h Th 4c] [3h]
ocram72: checks
pgchips: bets $0.60
ocram72: calls $0.60
*** RIVER *** [4h Th 4c 3h] [Kd]
ocram72: bets $2.30
pgchips: raises $4.70 to $7
ocram72: calls $4.15 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($0.55) returned to pgchips
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Jh Ah] (a flush, Ace high)
ocram72: shows [Td Ts] (a full house, Tens full of Fours)
ocram72 collected $14.80 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $15.55 | Rake $0.75
Board [4h Th 4c 3h Kd]
Seat 2: Franciflo folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: frouf folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: pgchips (button) showed [Jh Ah] and lost with a flush, Ace high
Seat 5: DuckMySick88 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: ocram72 (big blind) showed [Td Ts] and won ($14.80) with a full house, Tens full of Fours

And I realise that some of those shoves are proper tilty but I was getting fucked all over the place so no need to analyse.

All these took me down to $31 of the $40 I started the level with after 881 hands.

Speaking of tilt (just before the AA vs KK vs QQ hand):

PokerStars Game #21734284947: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/11/03 16:58:17 ET
Table 'Waterman III' 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: LJ777 ($4.15 in chips)
Seat 2: vinbig ($6 in chips)
Seat 3: langer79 ($18.80 in chips)
Seat 5: pgchips ($22.35 in chips)
Seat 6: bxP* ($9.30 in chips)
Luis Frigo will be allowed to play after the button
pgchips: posts small blind $0.05
bxP*: posts big blind $0.10
vinbig: posts small & big blinds $0.15
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [8d 8h]
LJ777: folds
vinbig: checks
langer79: folds
pgchips: raises $5.90 to $6
langer79 leaves the table
bxP*: raises $3.30 to $9.30 and is all-in
vinbig: folds
pgchips: calls $3.30
*** FLOP *** [4s 3d Ad]
Puszek88 joins the table at seat #3
*** TURN *** [4s 3d Ad] [Jh]
*** RIVER *** [4s 3d Ad Jh] [4c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [8d 8h] (two pair, Eights and Fours)
bxP*: shows [Ah Ac] (a full house, Aces full of Fours)
bxP* collected $17.85 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $18.75 | Rake $0.90
Board [4s 3d Ad Jh 4c]
Seat 1: LJ777 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: vinbig folded before Flop
Seat 3: langer79 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: pgchips (small blind) showed [8d 8h] and lost with two pair, Eights and Fours
Seat 6: bxP* (big blind) showed [Ah Ac] and won ($17.85) with a full house, Aces full of Fours

and

PokerStars Game #21732363121: Hold'em No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2008/11/03 15:51:07 ET
Table 'Zachia' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: DeAad ($12 in chips)
Seat 2: ESCROB@R ($3 in chips)
Seat 3: pgchips ($27.65 in chips)
Seat 4: Taqtiq$MJR ($3.65 in chips)
Seat 5: HokusPokusss ($4.05 in chips)
Seat 6: animalis ($12.45 in chips)
pgchips: posts small blind $0.05
Taqtiq$MJR: posts big blind $0.10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Th Ks]
HokusPokusss: folds
animalis: raises $0.30 to $0.40
DeAad: folds
ESCROB@R: folds
pgchips: raises $0.70 to $1.10
Taqtiq$MJR: folds
animalis: calls $0.70
*** FLOP *** [8s 8h 8c]
pgchips: bets $1.30
animalis: calls $1.30
*** TURN *** [8s 8h 8c] [Qh]
pgchips: bets $3.80
animalis: calls $3.80
*** RIVER *** [8s 8h 8c Qh] [Tc]
pgchips: bets $4
animalis: calls $4
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Th Ks] (a full house, Eights full of Tens)
animalis: shows [Qd Ad] (a full house, Eights full of Queens)
animalis collected $19.55 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $20.50 | Rake $0.95
Board [8s 8h 8c Qh Tc]
Seat 1: DeAad folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: ESCROB@R (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: pgchips (small blind) showed [Th Ks] and lost with a full house, Eights full of Tens
Seat 4: Taqtiq$MJR (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: HokusPokusss folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: animalis showed [Qd Ad] and won ($19.55) with a full house, Eights full of Queens

How's he got AQ there btw?

Soo bad from me.

Okay, will play on at 5c/10c with my $31 but if I drop below $20 for the second time, the challenge is over and I'm 16-tabling 2c/5c for life. Waste of fucking time.

Perfect, perfect.... but not in the good way!

2008-10-31T02:12:00.007Z

This hand led to many a 'lol' in the chat at one of my tables earlier:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3387553
and, as it was 2c/5c, I couldn't help but join in (even at 5c/10c I probably chip in with a few 'ffs's). Ain't no way either of us are getting away from that flop though... standard cooler imo.

Lizard2412 said, "even had the feeling ur on aces". Hilarious.

All started well for the challenge in that I made it past the first level... I got stacked twice early on, though, when QQ < KK in an $8 pot and folded to me otb TT < BB's AA in a $15 pot. Did I need to be all in pre for 150 BBs with tens? Possibly not...

This left me with chips on only two tables, which made progress feel ridiculously slow (and is actually another unforseen problem that this challenge has thrown up). But I kept plugging away and when I'd built a stack on one of the tables, three different people suggested I stand up and open more tables. I was sitting on $31.50 and $3.40 at the time and really felt like carrying on to sit with the full 800bbs on the one table. But time was dragging, and when I finally stood up and got four tables going again, I reached my $40 target within ten minutes.

It took a lot longer than I'd hoped though... 2hrs 40mins. Obviously due to the fact that I was only two tabling for most of it. Running like a twat never helps, mind.

648 hands
$21.61 profit
33ptBBs/100
$8.10 p/h

Erm, suppose it's okay, looking at it.

This was the hand that sealed my place at 5c/10c:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3386407
'Well, that's what happens when you call with jacks'. Gold.

So, onto 5c/10c...

It took me only 1hr 40 mins to lose my two buy in buffer.

$0 p/h, through 4hrs 20mins.

So I'm back down to 2c/5c.

KK < JJ aip ($17 pot) and A6dd < 44 ai on TJ4Qdd board in what felt like a good squeezing opportunity three handed on the turn for another (in terms of the challenge) massive pot. A two buy in downswing buffer isn't very much when you're an absolute maniac.

Will probably try again over the weekend. I'm not prepared to scrap the idea just yet.

Verybored

2008-10-29T22:36:00.001Z

Fucking hate Full Tilt. Took ten days to clear my $20 bonus, hate the software.

Managed to lose $25 in a mad rush to clear the final $2 of it 8-tabling on HUGE tilt (you know it’s bad when you get ‘lol’s at your play on three tables at the same time). Pg, you stupid fuck, just leave the $2 behind… Despite that, I cleared the bonus for a $346 profit, none of which I have left on FT.

Bit bored of poker at the moment so, to a new challenge…

Spoke to Keysie briefly last night (well, I spoke briefly, he nattered on in great length… standard) about short term swings playing cash poker and a bit about bankroll building so I have devised a mini-bankroll-build challenge for fun. Feel free to join in to see how far you can get.

The idea is to four table cash, starting with four buy-ins at the chosen level, and move up once four buy-ins at the next level is reached and drop back down should you drop under four buy-ins at the previous level.

My aim is to show that extreme bankroll nits are cunts.
My prediction is that I won’t.

For a winning player, this can only be a winner as you’re unlikely to lose four buy-ins at every level you’re forced to move down to, and the general move in stakes should be up.

And it can be applied to any starting bankroll. Obviously, you could start with $8 at $0.01/$0.02 and move up to $0.02/$0.05 when the mini-br reaches $20 (though this leaves nowhere to move down to should you fall at the first). Or start with $1600 at $2.00/$4.00 if you must, Ptevey, then up to $3.00/$6.00 with $2400… etc.

Perhaps, with only a two buy-in buffer and the swingy nature of cash, this form of bankroll building may involve too much moving down in stakes to make this +EV for the long term player. Take, for example, someone who is conventionally ‘rolled’ for $0.50/$1.00. If they decided to take this experiment on with a $1600 'mini-bankroll' at $2.00/$4.00, and started off with two drop downs (two buy-in downswings at $2.00/$4.00 and another two at $1.00/$2.00), which is very possible, it would see them back at their ‘rolled’ level with a serious dent to their ‘actual bankroll'. So, thinking about it, maybe my experiment would only be good for a quick bankroll ‘spin-up’ with some spare money (after an exceptionally profitable month, for example).

There must be something wrong with it because no one’s doing it. Except maybe Dickie.

To test the waters on something I could be horribly wrong about, I’m going to start at $0.02/$0.05 with $20 ($5 on each table) until the mini-bankroll reaches $40. Then, four table $0.05/$0.10 until $100 is reached… And so on… This is a slightly dangerous choice of starting stakes, I guess, as I only have one level to fall back on! The level is very, very weak though so it shouldn’t come to that.

I would be interested to hear any thoughts on this type of bankroll build from any ct grinders out there. Isaac, Gambon? Even Cheesio?

I have no work tomorrow (Thursday) and nothing to do so I’ll be starting the new experiment at 2pm our time on Stars, if anyone fancies joining, railing or sabotaging!

147, I've made bigger bets in the $3 rebuy

2008-10-18T02:07:00.003+01:00

Ptevey, quite amusingly, challenged me to include the numbers 1, 4 and 7 in every raise I made in the $3r on Stars the other night. Looking back, that is the only thing funny about this hand for about the chip lead:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3327966

I think Dthestudentj, Sm1le and 147_star were railing, which explains the turn card. This was to come 266/3276 for $36. Villain in the hand went on to come 4th for $2.1k. The night before, I had AKhh < KK late on in the same tourn to come 29/3537 for $76. Skolsuper was railing this, obviously. Villain in that hand also went on to come 4th for $2.1k. I played shit to come 29th to be fair but well imo in the one I came 266th in and ran well to get where I did in both. But I really need to stop running badly late on in that tourn. Seriously, I'd rather the cooler happened first hand of the freezeout for zero money than this close to some real money.

I haven't played on Full Tilt for ages, not since I was staked to play a bunch of tourns a while back when I was playing shit. Deposited $50 the other day to clear the $20 bonus playing omaha h/l cash. Lost $25 in the second hand with $0 of my bonus cleared. WP Tilt.

But I grobbled through it and my Full Tilt bankroll is now up to $425 after some good 5c/10c o8 and a couple of tournament wins. $10 of the bonus cleared.

Work seems to be getting in the way of poker at the moment. Only played 35 tourns this month and a bit of cash (albeit for a $600 profit) compared to over 500 tourns in August and September. It's a shame not to be playing much when I seem to be playing well.

It's very hard to turn down work when I'm offered it but I'm seriously thinking about taking a couple of weeks off to make some money!

We'll see.
Peace,
PG.

Putting in the hours

2008-10-14T12:59:00.006+01:00

At the fucking NEC...

The only good thing about working a 16 hour shift is that it makes the 12 hour ones seem short.

T’was a busy week, last week, for us agency staff as the NEC hosted the ‘Horse of the year’ show. Was booked for a deadly total of 84 hours from Monday to Sunday, which included a horribly illegal 29 hr spell over a 39 hour period on Tuesday/Wednesday. If there was ever a time to ‘accidentally’ fall and break my neck, or get ran over by an ‘orse, or get hurt by something in some way, 'illegal Wednesday' was the day. The NEC is sooo rich, I would have absolutely fleeced them. A bone-break of any kind would have absolutely slipped down, but, obviously I run bad, and the only things I broke that day was an expensive case of NEC crockery and the world record for most times caught sleeping at work without getting the sack. Some lovely big horses knocking about, there were.

FFS, the cunts. Bought a mug from some cheap shitty shop for a pound when I was on Bearwood high street about an hour ago, and the cunting handle’s just fallen off. Half a mug of coffee all over the laptop FFS. The cunts. I bet they did that deliberately the cunts. It’s still working, so all’s well. I should probably check all the letters though.

Have had two attempts at the $11 double shootouts to the million recently, failing in both. I’ve realised that I’m too immature to be playing shootouts atm. Losing heads up, as I have done in a couple, tilts me so bad. I challenge you to tell me of anything more annoying than losing heads up in a shootout. Not going to play one for a while now, may try again if I grow up ever.

Qwertyuiop[]
ASDFGHJKL;’#ZXCVBNM,./`1234567890-

Yep, running good.

Actually, maybe being the bubble boy in two multi table rebuy sats in a row was more annoying. Yeah, won’t be playing any of those for a while either.

Cheers to Fran for thinking about the AQ hand...more than I did at the time! It is a tough one pre with 15bbs or whatever. I think it's still a raise, just got to avoid getting all in on the flop drawing vvvvv slim in future...

I have another full week of work this week, including two days at Cheltenham race course on Friday and Saturday, which makes a nice change. Was supposed to be at the NEC at 8am this morning but given that I was still drinking Sambuca at 5, I figured that texting in sick was the +EV, though unprofitable, thing to do.

Not much to report on the poker front as I’ve been too tired/pissed after work to play. I have enjoyed railing for a couple of hours though before sleeping some nights. If it’s not 147_fish shipping some sat, it’s the $100r or the $50r I watch, or just whatever’s deep at the time. Reassuringly for the ‘poker isn’t all about luck’ crew, the same names are regularly cropping up late on in a lot of these.

Something wrong with my eyes I think, which is worrying me atm, probably should get that checked out. Then sue the NEC imo. Would love to see their faces if I did… though I suppose I probably couldn’t as that would mean I’m going fucking blind.

I might play something on Stars today and/or tonight as I have nothing to do. Bit bored of grinding the lower stakes but fuck it, I might as well. Wish I’d gone to work actually.

Well, this post has dwindled out as always… ah, saw a nice bit of vandalism earlier. If you can call it vandalism. Above the entrance to the foreign language centre in town is a big sign saying ‘Language Centre’, and some funny fucker’s nicked the ‘C’: ‘Language entre’. I do hope that this is the doing of a clever French vandal but, knowing Birmingham, it’s probably some chav looking to get started on graffitiing the word ‘Cunt’ elsewhere.

25k with ace high, nh

2008-10-06T04:53:00.008+01:00

PokerStars Game #20964631980: Tournament #110966654, $3.00+$0.30 Hold'em No Limit - Level XIV (800/1600) - 2008/10/05 23:42:32 ETTable '110966654 157' 9-max

Seat #2 is the button

Seat 1: DWyobuzz (7965 in chips)
Seat 2: M.FUERTES (8332 in chips)
Seat 3: Parck (2330 in chips)
Seat 4: colts2129 (43569 in chips)
Seat 5: Bürobursche (14633 in chips)
Seat 6: pgchips (25851 in chips)
Seat 7: tcryder (62471 in chips)
Seat 8: powerchoke (38105 in chips)
Seat 9: SikaTrx (53369 in chips)
DWyobuzz: posts the ante 150
M.FUERTES: posts the ante 150
Parck: posts the ante 150
colts2129: posts the ante 150
Bürobursche: posts the ante 150
pgchips: posts the ante 150
tcryder: posts the ante 150
powerchoke: posts the ante 150
SikaTrx: posts the ante 150

Parck: posts small blind 800
colts2129: posts big blind 1600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgchips [Ah Qd]
Bürobursche: folds
pgchips: raises 2475 to 4075
tcryder: calls 4075
powerchoke: folds
SikaTrx: folds
DWyobuzz: folds
M.FUERTES: folds
Parck: folds
colts2129: folds
*** FLOP *** [8d 4d 9s]
pgchips: checks
tcryder: bets 1600
pgchips: raises 20026 to 21626 and is all-in
tcryder: calls 20026
*** TURN *** [8d 4d 9s] [7s]
*** RIVER *** [8d 4d 9s 7s] [Ad]

***SHOW DOWN ***
pgchips: shows [Ah Qd] (a pair of Aces)
tcryder: shows [4h 4c] (three of a kind, Fours)

tcryder collected 55152 from pot

My embarrassing exit just in the money of the $3 rebuy above. Not sure what I should do with that flop having already put 20% of my stack in pre, figured a cr would be the only way to get any fold equity, don't know if I should just give up on the pot completely... betting the flop might give me a price to call... Looking back, I much prefer trying to get it in pre with some kind of fold equity from hands like 88/99. A limp pre seems a bit odd but I think a limp/shove pre might be the play as an open fold surely isn't an option and making it 4/5k to go leaves an awkward amount back. Limping pre may also invite AT/AJ to go mad. Or do I have to raise here? Opinions on every street welcome.

Either way, another annoying $3r to go with these recent ones (might as well get the negativity out in one post):
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3165048
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3145219

AA runs bad for me at the moment as this was another beauty from today approaching the bubble of the $30k gteed with average stack:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3283893

Okay, bad beats are boring in a blog so I promise there'll be no more for a while. Working later so I'd better sleep, just thought I'd post the hand while it was fresh. Feel free to rip me to shreds.

Gotta love Kenny Rogers

2008-10-03T17:10:00.002+01:00

Just stumbled across the lyrics for his song 'The Gambler':

On a warm summer's evenin' on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the gambler; we were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin' out the window at the darkness
'Til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak.

He said, "Son, I've made my life out of readin' people's faces,
And knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
So if you don't mind my sayin', I can see you're out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I'll give you some advice."

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

Ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
'Cause ev'ry hand's a winner and ev'ry hand's a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

When he'd finished speakin', he turned back towards the window,
Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=kn481KcjvMo

Tune imo.

Another FT failure

2008-10-02T05:35:00.005+01:00

I have won only one of my last twenty four final tables in multis and it's starting to get a bit annoying. 3rd in an $8 PLO8 tourn is my latest for $147 (loving that Paul...).

Standard race for my exit hand:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3267145
Think I'm a slight favourite actually but not by much. Fairly standard I think. Shame.

Also played a 4-handed shootout which threw up this hilarious hand:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3266271
Wonder what he put me on and why he called the turn? And folded the river?

I lost to him in the funniest heads up of all time.

My '100% flop' challenge continues to draw comments, some absolute knobheads sitting at the 1c/2c tables saying things like 'playing every hand, look at this fish, I'm gonna take his money'. It's 1c/2c, who gives a fuck who ends up with the money? And why you being such a cunt at these stakes anyway. It's making me quite sad actually being around these kinds of people. Not only at the poker table, at work and home too.

Hands: 1774
Profit: $20.69 @ 29ptBBs/100
Won without showdown: 496/1774 (28%)

Doing the work that I do, in the city I live, I happen to work with a lot of foreign people. The patience they have with and the understanding they show to some of the ignorant cunts that give them endless abuse wherever they go, no matter how hard they work is something to admire.

I sat during my dinner break today opposite a Polish guy and an Iranian girl, who I saw were forced to sit together as there were no other seats. Listening to two people from completely different backgrounds, meeting for the first time, talking happily and respectfully, in English, about England was not only inspiring but also something I found deeply moving. Especially after the shit they had to put up with during the shift. The UK has a lot to be proud of imo and the people (not just Brits) who try to ruin this, and the fuckers who look at me and smile, expecting me to smile back when they're dishing out their abusive jokes based on nothing but nationality, deserve a fucking good slap.

Shit, soz, dunno where that came from but some cunts just piss me off sometimes. I'm starting to sound like Travis in Taxi Driver ffs... if you know any young prostitutes I could help, just send 'em my way, I'll buy them some jam on toast or something.

By the way, steer clear of Spiceworld at all costs. It's real bad, man.

Peace, pimpshoota (my next poker name for sure).

EDIT: Very nearly deleted the second half of this post as it really isn't what this 'poker' blog is supposed to be about. It's what happens when you work an eleven hour shift with likable foreigners and English cunts. But, fuck it, I'll leave it there - might be funny to look back on some day.

Owned, and new rule

2008-09-30T23:26:00.006+01:00

Got walked all over at one of my four tables during a brief session last night. Three of the four tables were standard passive/rubbish but the other one I joined was mental - the standard raise was to 12c which I can handle when there's one player at a table doing it, but this table had three players making it 12c to go whenever they felt like it. Obviously, being the only one who had to call these bets made it quite tough for me to get the better of the table as a whole. I looked like a right loser to be honest and my preflop started getting comments. And the longer I continued to call them, the more comments I got and the more they raised and laughed, idiots... If I was an absolute Moorman about the stats of this challenge, I might have left the table after one round but I stuck with it and played 80 hands there for a $2.10 loss, which actually included a $2 KK vs AA aip sickener. [This also got laughed at despite me insta-typing 'nh' in the chat. Cunts.] A $2 loss looks good for a table like this but it's heavily varianced because of the unusually large size of the (often effectively blind) flop bets/raises which have to be made because of the... unusual preflop action. I could have stacked myself very quickly if some of my early bluffs didn't run good. I may seek more tables like this in future sessions because it's much more of a challenge and a lot less boring than the tighter tables. My new rule is simply that I can't leave a table because it's too hard, though, as I've just explained, hard is a quality I look for in a table now. So, rule one: Must call every raise to 29c or less and rule two: don't be a complete and utter Moorman twat about the stats and leave a table I'd be lucky not to lose on. Finally, a nh to Keysie who has just cashed in the WSOPE for the second year running for another £20k+ score. Well played mate. Quite where my paragraphing has gone, I'm not sure. Moorman, who I've just given a bit of stick to there, hilariously (because I don't know him and it got cheesy closer) lost a massive KK vs AA and busted shortly after to bring the bubble on, which burst the same hand... So sick at that stage in a tourn that big to run KK into another big stack's AA but I don't know him and I do know Keys, so fuck it, it's FUCKING HILARIOUS. imo. Soz, rambling...

Game: NLHE, 6-max, 1c/2c
Hands played: 1484
Pots won without a showdown: 418 (28% of hands)
Profit/loss: +$17.74

The 'pots won w/o sd', of the stats I have available to me, is the only one (except for profit) that really interests me now with this challenge. We all know the rules so 'flops seen' is irrelevant. 'Pots won at showdown' could actually have been interesting for a couple of reasons but I don't care to explain them and I've lost track of that stat already anyway. My 'pots won without a showdown' was 118 of 310 (38%) in my mini 4-tabling session last night which is totally ridiculous six handed. Though I recorded a loss. Peace.

Well, a Pgchips challenge wouldn't be a Pgchips challenge without some Pgchips challenge music

2008-09-29T16:44:00.003+01:00

Raided the charity shop again and I think I've found a couple of beauties:

Spice Girls - Spiceworld, their second album which is over ten years old now ffs. How old do I feel? Should be fucking horrific to listen to but I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully it won't tilt me too much when I'm playing. It was a bargain at 50p imo.

And,

Pure Global Chillout, which pretty much speaks for itself. Perfect untilting poker music I reckon. Unless it's shit. Double CD, 50p.

That's about three hours of music to play to. I hope it treats me well. I've played poker with Elvis' In the Ghetto on repeat in the past though so I should be able to cope with whatever shit these CDs throw up. Woman was supposed to be coming round tonight but isn't now, I don't feel like any more tourns at the moment, so I might as well continue the Pgchips 'let's-go-broke' challenge.

Preflop rule

2008-09-29T05:10:00.002+01:00

Okay, I've decided that any pre flop raise of 15 big blinds (to 30c) is too expensive. I must call a raise to 29c (unless one of yous decide to sit down and make it 29c to go every hand...) but can fold pre to any raise of 30c or more.

Just finished my first session which was fucking hilarious to be honest, there were people getting proper pissed off! Four tabled for a few hours:

Hands played: 1174
Flops seen: 1063 (lots of pots taken down pre and folds to bets that were too big...plus the odd accidental fold as with the similar Omaha challenge from a while back)
Pots won at showdown: 118 of 210
Pots won without a showdown: 300

That last stat is pretty sick to be fair, I won over a quarter of the hands at six handed tables without showing my cards. I suppose bluffing is where I made most of my profit...

Total profit: $20.70 (@44ptBBs/100)

As with the Omaha challenge, I think that this looks like a great little exercise to improve your post flop play, though the standard really is horrendous at these tables. Maybe I should try it at 10c/25c?...

New challenge!

2008-09-28T23:27:00.003+01:00

Just a quickie to let you know what my plans are at the moment. Have ran badly the last couple of days, including another really annoying outdraw in the $3 r, but whatever, not gonna keep complaining about bad beats, so I've decided to have a go at a new challenge I've been thinking about for the last couple of weeks. Probably my toughest yet...

My aim is to show a profit from seeing every flop at the 1c/2c 6-max NLHE tables.

I've spoken to a couple of people about it and they seem to think it's impossible. An obvious problem is having to call open shoves... bound to prove expensive. I will play for a bit and work out whether or not I need some kind of rule that means I don't have to call all in pre, we'll see.

Let's hope I run better than I did at my recent trip to the barber's...

Living next door to Jim

2008-09-24T18:21:00.005+01:00

I moved to my current address in early December of last year, an unfit twenty two year old slightly annoyed at the unfitness of his, once marginally less unfit, twenty two year old body. My house is literally a thirty second walk (twenty if, unlike me, you don't have to stop half way to catch your breath) from one of the 'biggest and best' gyms in Birmingham. So why, before today (almost ten months later), I hadn't even taken a look inside, sort of beggars belief.

Not only did I look inside, I joined. I didn't even mean to...

I left my house at about half five this evening in search of one thing, food. Unhealthy food. Pizza was the plan. I usually take the unpleasant short cut to the high street, which takes me past three dead and unused factories in just a two minute journey to the shops. But today, for some reason, I decided to take the slightly longer scenic route (scenic in that it only takes me past two small factories and a public toilet), which, along with it's many delights, leads me past a Fitness First gym. Completely unexpectedly, my brain led me in.

After all these months living next door to a gym, I can't help but wonder why I chose today as the day. I don't know... maybe it was the two and a half days of sleep I needed after my embarrassing one hour football session a few weeks ago that prompted my subconscious to lead my body gymwards. Or perhaps it was my worrying lack of shock at the heart pains I experienced on holes fourteen onwards during my second round in Bournemouth. Thinking about it, it's probably a combination of both.

Either way, it's over now, I've done the easy part by committing myself to forking out literally tens of pounds a month for the next twelve months, now 'all' I have to do is drag myself out of the house to use it. The opening hours are 6.30am - 10pm on school nights so, no matter what hours I'm working, it'll be hard to justify not finding time to go. Only laziness should keep me away and, given that I live so close, that would be pathetic.

Golfing trip was great fun, nh and ty to Paul for organising it all, I had an amazing time. But my golfing was shit. This also needs to be sorted imo. I need to start putting in some volume! Me and Ptevey (Ptevey and I?) live fairly close to each other and have talked about playing a round every couple of weeks or so. I would love for this to happen. I spent some decent dosh on golf clubs a few weeks ago so it really would be disappointing if I stayed this bad at a sport I enjoy and have spooned out some decent dosh buying equipment for. I refuse to let my clubs gather dust, rust and spiders.

As usual, I'm bored of writing this shit again so not gonna write even half of what I wanted to talk about, not even going to go back, reread it and correct it,

(anaverageof)threeputtbarrett.

Peace, Brothers.

Bubbles and other losses

2008-09-11T19:58:00.003+01:00

September has been a good pokering month for me so far. I have been playing almost entirely holdem multis, which I'm glad to say I've started enjoying again. I was +$1200 for the month before I started playing yesterday thanks to a couple of wins. But last night, I had my first real setback. Spazzed away a shitload.

It started badly with the O8 WCOOP where I played well in the first few levels and felt comfortable with an above average stack despite running pretty badly but made that awful river call (third hand of my last post), which I'm still a bit pissed of at myself about. 10k stack if his two outer misses but whatever, no excuse for me playing the river like a cunt, just got to forget about that now...

But what happened afterwards pissed me off even more. I decided to experiment with the $5 rebuy sats to the $55 80k gteed, so I quickly registered for four of them. The first one kicked off, I was in for $15 (started with double stack and an add on) and was looking good for a seat when the freezeout started. 45 paid, I unavoidably came 46th. Standard. $15 loss.

By this time the second one had started. Again, I looked good for a seat when the FO kicked off. I was in for $25 and came 26th with 25 seats up for grabs (I was forced in with QQ in the small and the BBs T6 held up). Pissed off at that one. Got $16 for another $10 loss or some shit. I also failed to cash in the other two. A fairly unsuccessful experiment, you could say...

Ran KK into JT on a 489 flop (he stop and goed for about a million big blinds and I was prepared to take the gamble) which couldn't hold for double average heading into crunch time in the 50k gteed $5 rebuy. That pissed me off too.

Built a stack in the $11 30k gteed after a nice set vs set but then AK couldn't hit vs KK in a massive pot so I had to hold out for a small cash.

What else? Oh yeah, splashed out on a $22 deep stack tourn where I limped 44 in the second level, few more limpers, BB checked and bet double the pot when the flop came 642... wtf? I flatted, everyone folded. Turn blank, pot, call. River blank, pot, call. I'm beating nothing really and losing to everything, he shows 66 and scoops it, nh. Lost most of my stack in the second level and I didn't fare much better after that.

Had a couple of small cashes last night but overall I lost $100, which is exactly what I missed out on in those shocking $5r sats... Oh well, ran really bad and could have broke even.

In other news, I'm really looking forward to the golf trip to Bournemouth that Paul (or 147_star to give his 'real' name) has arranged. Looks amazing, £75 for two nights bed and breakfast and as much golf as your body can handle (about seven holes, if my footballing is an accurate indication of my current fitness). Going with a great group of lads so it should be an amazing trip, and I'm really looking forward to spazzing my roll out to all the old Durham lads in the cash games too!

I really want to play as much golf as my body allows me to. I think the current plan is three rounds but I'm sure I could convince a couple of them (or maybe just Ptevey, the nutter) to play at least a couple more. I want to squeeze in at least five rounds on this trip, especially if I've got to buy my own set of glubs and other golfing-related shit.

I'm interested in getting in a practice round of golf before the trip so if anyone knows of any good cheap (doesn't actually have to be good) courses near them let me know, I'll try and get down there. Or if anyone fancies coming to lovely Birmingham for a few days for a couple of rounds, you're more than welcome to stop here. I know Paul, the cheating fucker, has been putting in practice rounds right left and centre so I must get in at least one round before this trip. So let me know in the comments or on MSN when I'm next on if anyone's interested in shipping some pre-trip holes and pints.

I have plans tonight and tomorrow so I don't think I'll be playing any poker and I think (though I can't actually remember) that I'm working most of next week so, unfortunately, I might not be putting in quite the volume of poker I have done so far this month before the golf. But then again, after last night, that may be a good thing...

Run well all,

Teadrinka. xxx

WCOOP PLO8 $320

2008-09-10T22:41:00.002+01:00

Here're a few of the more interesting hands I played in this:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3173535
Always annoying to miss a freeroll...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3173525
I felt I could have taken it on the flop if I had bet but I was hoping for a low card to fall to get a few people interested. It did but I missed. Sigh.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3173501
Don't mind me semi bluffing this flop, hate his call, betting the nut high on the turn is okay (though I could have kept the pot small by checking incase his low was freerolling me with two pair or the river paired the board as it did), hate his call. River is horrible but I shouldn't really have check called for that much. I much prefer bet, puke and fold.

Went out shortly after with some kind of A2xxs. Highly annoying as I was really looking forward to it.

Broke

2008-09-03T22:53:00.005+01:00

Don't worry, the bankroll's fine, it's my body I refer to!

A severe lack of most things even vaguely physically strenuous over the last best part of a decade really did come back and fuck me today. It felt like such a good idea as well as I finally got round to doing something I have wanted to do ever since I got back to Brum.... I signed up with a football team.

As I turned up at the park today for my first training session with the team I fully expected to pick up where I left off five years ago when I left my old Sunday league team to 'go to University'. But I was in for a big disappointment. Today I waved goodbye to the days where I could seemingly run forever without ever breaking sweat, muscles or bones and panted a big 'hello' to creaky bones, muscles and sweat. Seriously, I can't believe how unfit I have become. I once beat everyone in my year at the bleep test ffs, how quickly lungs forget...

Two minutes in, I was gone. I'd already rushed off twice for gulps of water, Lucozade and oxygen before I half-heartedly (the half that'd sensibly packed in at this point) went in for a 50/50 challenge with their fifteen stone striker. I lost fairly comprehensively and was down on my arse as my right knee felt the full force of Robbie Coltrane's size-12 Pumas. Yep, after just two minutes of the first half, I was off the pitch for the third time. The looks of disappointment from my team mates were perfectly just in my opinion, though I thought the sniggers that rippled around the park were a little unnecessary. If equally just.

When I finally came back on, I asked if I could go in goal for a bit to rest my knee. I let three past me in as many minutes and was swiftly replaced.

Truth be told, as the game went on, I did get better. I made one great goal line block early in the first half (mainly because I was sprawled across it gasping for air at the time) which got me a hard slap on the back and a whack in the arm from a couple of guys (at least one of them was congratulatory, I'm sure). But there's no doubt that I was by far the unfittest and most out of practice 'player' on the pitch. It was embarrassing at times. I have only ever once seen a football player cover less distance in a game than I did today*.

It was absolutely pissing it down in the second half so we decided to cut the game short with a 'next three goals wins'. A few of their players were a bit pissed off by this point and wanted to make it a next goal winner but first to three was the decision, much to their annoyance. It was no coincidence, I suppose, that we went two goals up veryquickly. It all looked over so our skipper sent me up front to finish them off. Needless to say, four golden chances, at least fifteen minutes and a good 3mm of rain later, it was still 2-0. So we called it a day. It's fair to say that I was not the most popular player on the pitch:

"Oi, Curly (an amazing bit of obs. com. referring to the current state of my hair. Why the fucker isn't wowing the crowds of Edinburgh at the moment, I don't know...), my dinner's going cold because of you."

"Yeah, soz, mate."

"Fucking Cornish pasty and chips, as well," he added as he turned to an equally peeved and genuinely sympathetic team mate. The team mate said nothing, but gave that unmistakable look that effectively said, "I know what you're saying mate, that curly-haired cunt right there is a right useless cunt." I'm pretty sure that was the jist of what he was thinking at that very moment. And he spoke for every rain-drenched fucker there. Including me.

It's about four hours later now and I currently feel that there is about a 50% chance of me surviving the night - a vast improvement on an earlier estimate. Worryingly though, I have won more than my fair share of races recently (ignoring the pre-game shuttles earlier) so I'm due a loss at some point... So, as tired as I am, I guess I'd better stay awake long enough for that 50% to become at least 80%. I haven't been losing many 80/20s to be fair...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3105322
... okay, let's try 90%.

* Emile Heskey - 13 yards, Birmingham vs Arsenal, Summer 2005. He was offside.

18/27/45/180/360-man SnGs

2008-08-08T22:36:00.004+01:00

I twenty tabled the 10c 360-player NLHE SnGs last night. (Well, I loaded up twenty of them but busted a few before a lot of the others started). But I played 20 of them in total for a 20c loss. Ran bad at the only ft I made (ran AK into JQ pre for the chip lead 8-handed). Came 8th. Only other nice run was 15th where I ran two overs and a fd into top pair and couldn't improve. Was surprisingly fun to be playing for such small amounts of money again. Though I wasn't taking it lightly, I even folded the best hand once just to make the money. Ship it.

Just tried something similar, but upping the stakes a little. I 18-tabled some $1.20 18/27/45-man tourns with a couple of 10c 360-man ones thrown in and an expensive 180 player $2.20 one for thrills. This last one was sick. Great tourn, $100+ first prize. Came 7th despite being comfortable chip leader 7-handed. This sick hand for a massive chip lead with 7 left did most of the damage and I tilted out soon after:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3017304

I minraised because my computer was being slow and it's all I had time for but, given how crapshooty it was by this stage, I'm not sure I mind the minraise much. Anyway, standard river.

About $20 profit in the 18 Sngs I played but should have been more obviously, can't remember anything much interesting happening (guess tables were always popping up over the top of the horrendous outdraws I was putting on people).

Really don't feel like playing any Omaha at the moment. Think I'm scared of losing. Will probably just 18-table these sit and goes until it gets boring.

Inabit.

tannigreythompson

2008-08-07T19:51:00.002+01:00

well i was bound to start playing shit after that last post wasnt i. been running shit too. anyone who shows that amount of hope/optimism/arrogance deserves to get cunted over imo. in the two days after the post i had an 8 buy in upswing followed by a 17 buy in downswing. then spent $65 in a NLO8 $5 rebuy where i didnt win a single hand during the rebuy period. ridiculous. things started to look up at the start of the freezeout when somehow split a pot with a moron but departed shortly after. winning zero hands in an hour and a half of a rebuy depressed me. my desire to play seems to completely disappear when things arent going well so being the bad loser that i am i havent played very much since. definitely a bad loser. $300 down since my last post. guess it happens. worked some long hours out in the sun at the cricket last week which was probably the saviour of my sanity and my roll. was good to be out of the house having fun with friends and other people instead of in the house losing money to enemies and other people. not sure what my plan is now to be honest as my omaha libido has gone through the floor. got about $500 in the roll just 18-tabled some small stakes multi-table sit and goes where i ran bad and broke even. it wasnt fun. downloaded loads of films recently may carry on just watching them instead of playing poker or maybe ill get out of the house a bit. tv is shit only things i watch now are the secret millionaire which makes me smile and mock the week which makes me laugh. millionaire is in ladywood near me next week which should be interesting. drive by shooting there the other day. money well spent. rented a couple of french films, the brilliant amelie which was nominated for five oscars in 2002 i think and a fucking hilarious film called le diner de cons. fucking hilarious. watch it if you can. loads of foreign films i want to watch some for the second time but have been struggling to download them with the correct subtitles if anyone knows a reliable way of downloading foreign films please tell me. though renting them from the library gets me away from the computer if nothing else. my total profit since the $15 deposit 72 days ago now stands at $1196.03 and is getting less impressive by the day.

Ambitious Ambitions

2008-07-28T08:18:00.001+01:00

Sup?

Well, I’m well past the 2c/5c level now, and I’ll probably never play there again. I moved up to the $25 level on Wednesday and I’ve been 9-tabling the 6-max PLO8 tables at this level ever since. It’s gone quite well overall and my game has come on a hell of a lot in that time.

But it didn’t start well.

In fact, it started terribly. I went $90 down within hundreds of hands and was probably lucky to break even over the first 6k. It wasn’t all bad beats, and I was certain that there was a leak or two in there somewhere, some nasty habit I’d brought with me from micro micro maybe, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Now, I am quite proud of the fact that I have taught myself how to play this game and have twice built a bankroll of hundreds of dollars from tens of dollars playing the micro micro stakes of the game. But, after 6k hands of break even 10c/25c I had to concede that there were some things I was doing very wrong and, what’s more, I had no idea what they were.

So I finally got over my stubbornness and read some literature. I started with the 2+2 forums. It felt like cheating a bit to be honest but I’m a bit of a prick for not doing it sooner. I spent a good six hours reading every page of the O8 section of the forum and it has helped an unbelievable amount. There’s a lot of crap on there, as I’m sure there is on every forum (except maybe Dur Pok Soc) and some terrible advice, but what was good was unbelievably helpful.

I didn’t realise how shit (well, at least how unoptimally) I was playing before. Even some of the hands I have proudly posted in my previous posts are embarrassing to look over now tbh. But anyway, it worked for the micro micro levels but not for $25. But, now I think my game is okay for the $25 level and have finally been winning a bit of money. It does help that I’ve been running sick good recently as well.

I have played 17 hours in total for a $510 profit over 11.5k hands. This is about $30 ph at 8.9ptBBs/100. Obviously if I ignored the first 6k hands these figures would be sick at like $60 an hour or something. But those first 6k hands happened, were important, and so are included.

So having played over 10k hands at this level now I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of where I stand at the tables and what I think I can achieve.

I believe that with a lot of discipline and a lack of tilt, a win rate of 10ptBBs/100 is possible. This will be my main aim from now on. Playing 9 tables at a time I get through about 600 hands per hour and if I was to achieve my targeted win rate this will bring in $30 per hour. I have a lot of debt to pay off and I desperately want a holiday (I hear Malta’s pretty cheap…) so I want to put in enough hours to make $1k per week at 10c/25c.

Hence, ‘Ambitious Ambitions’! Impossible? We’ll see. Anyone for a prop bet to incentive me on?

$1k, at my target rate of 10ptBBs/100, will take 20k hands, which, at a rate of 600 hands ph, will take about 33 hours. I will continue to work for the agency (unless there is a bit of prop betting going on) as I think it’s important for me to have something to force me out of the house every once in a while and also something other than poker to pay my rent. But for the next few weeks, possibly months, I will be trying my best to fit in a big number of hours of Omaha around work.

If I get anywhere near 20k hands a week, winning at anywhere near my target rate, I’ll be earning well and paying off debt quickly:

I hope to pay off $500 a week in debt and keep the rest of what I make in the roll. I don’t intend to move up from these stakes until all of my debt is paid off so there is no pressure there. And anything I make over $500 in any week will probably eventually go towards a holiday.

That’s all for now, sorry nothing even mildly amusing to report at the moment. I’ll probably be posting my progress or lack of it in this blog. Peace.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2941703

Facebook bowling is -EV

2008-07-19T15:54:00.003+01:00

Dickie, if you're reading this, thank you for introducing me to facebook bowling - you owe me a new mouse you houndrel.

My mouse has caused me a lot of trouble recently (I'm sure I've lost at least $50000 in 'mouse tilt') and I think it's been on its way out for a while. So, I guess it should have come as no surprise that my full-blooded attempt to bowl the fastest facebook bowl ever recorded finally finished it off. There was a loud crack and a fat chunk of plastic flew across the room. It was an explosive end to a troubled life.

Luckily it was the mouse I broke and not my computer or my arm but now the pointer thing doesn't point exactly where I want it to point every single time. With a 'fold' button and a 'call' button and a 'raise' button all in fairly close proximity, it's quite important that the mouse points the pointer to the button I want the pointer to point at. Otherwise, it's just pointless.

So I guess 6-tabling is out of the question until I buy a new one. I just tried to 4-table but I was far too slow between tables, sometimes it's important to make bluffs instantly or they don't get through so playing without a mouse would almost completely take away my bluff. Actually, this would probably be +EV thinking about it...

Anyways, had a nice couple of hit and runs since my last post:

17 hrs 15 mins
6336 hands (367 ph)
$92.38 profit
$5.36 ph
14.6 ptBBs/100

Will need a few more sessions like this in the next couple of days to bring me on target for $1k by August. Over $600 short at the moment with only 12 days to go. (It doesn't really matter when I reach $1k of course, but it would be nice to meet a target for once).

Bye.

Stress ball for sale!

2008-07-19T06:58:00.005+01:00

Plugged away at the tables for a good few hours last night. My play was very on and off and had mixed results as I went through several really bad spells in the six or so hours I played. The tables were full of action though and it was great fun, losing didn't even bother me.

Progress to date:

16hrs 30mins
6091 hands (369 hands per hour)
$68.88 profit
$4.20 per hour
11ptBBs/100

Few winning and losing hands here if they're of any interest to anyone:

Nuts and a redraw takes quarter:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2912350

Bad turn in $30 pot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2911656

Big flop:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2911586

Nut low and draw to high miles behind:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2913571

Love the turn:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2913471

Don't know about this one:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2913429

Jam it:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2913382

Missed wrap:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2913358

Hate his call on the turn but whatever:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2913347

River:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2912857

A set just isn't good on this kind of lowwy flushy drawwy flop (without the fd, that is) when faced with serious action but I'm sure he's happy:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2912610
My hand has 63% expectation vs a bare set on the flop. That's why this game is so tricky sometimes.

Everything misses in a $25 four way all in:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2912610

In the 2.5k hands I played today I earned enough FPPs to play another 210 FPP sat. I took one of the 6 seats without much trouble and unregistered from the tourn as usual and had to decide what to do with the $11. Last time, I played and won two heads up matches but they were really boring. So I decided to spread it out between a $6.50 9-player PLO8 SnG, a $3.40 10-player PLO8 SnG and a $1.20 10-player NLHE SnG. Was nice to chill out after all the poker and there was some good banter at the tables. Crashed out of the holdem one in an unnecessary way:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2914191

but won the two Omaha ones for a $42 return on my 210 FPP investment. This means that my 400 FPP stress ball is worth $80. Anyone want to buy it?

Dwain Chambers

2008-07-18T18:29:00.003+01:00

As I played so shit the other day I decided that dropping to just four tables would be a good idea last night. I played 482 hands in the 1hr 40min session for a $19.76 profit. Good stuff.

9hrs 40mins
3647 hands (377 hands ph)
$52.43 profit
$5.42 ph
14.4 ptBBs/100

Bankroll did take a hit though as I played two $22 PLO8 multis for no return. I got into three way all ins in both as a favourite (but not a big one) and lost. I need to play lots more today and tomorrow. Sticking to 2c/5c now.

Bob Monkhouse

2008-07-16T20:38:00.003+01:00

Playing like a right twat at the moment.

8hrs
3165 hands (396 hands per hour)
$32.67 profit
10ptBBs/100
$4.10 ph

Was all my fault today.

Got some films I've been meaning to watch for ages so gonna watch them instead of playing tonight. Starting with Howards End. May play more over the weekend but $1k by August is looking like a tough ask now.

400 FPP stress ball

2008-07-16T16:24:00.002+01:00

Played another 210 FPP 20 man SnG sat to the $100k after my poor session of cash. Somehow managed to qualify thanks to some appalling bubble play from some of them. This fold was important:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2901073

UTG just had to be incredibly strong there, I fold everything. The push by TT is worse than pushing AKs there in my opinion. Anyway, unregistered from the tournament obviously and inspired by Paul’s heads up form decided to use the $11 to try two $5.50 heads ups. I lost a big pot in the first one with a set vs flush draw leaving me with half a stack so I tilted and went on to win. Sweet, freerolling in a way now for the second one...

Which went on for ages. It was a ‘deep stack, blinds never go up’ heads up. 2k starting stacks, blinds stay at 5/10 throughout. Well, we were both too good for each other so after over an hour of play he had a massive chip lead of 2150 - 1850. He was playing better than me so I said ‘is there any way of chopping this and going to bed?’ He initially thought I was coming onto him with the ‘going to bed’ bit so set him straight and I was glad when he suggested that we just go all in. I said ‘cool’. Next hand he shoved, I snapped and my JT held up. We both lolled in the chat and when I finished him off a few hand later I ‘gg’ed but he didn’t reply. The bitter bastard. So another 210 FPP turned into $20 or so. This made it all the more annoying when my 400 FPP stress ball was delivered today. FFS I just spent a potential lot of $$$ on a fucking stress ball. Now I know why they are so called.

So, that’s made up slightly for my crap session last night. I plan to put in a few hours today and tonight probably. Hope to run a bit better than I did last night.

Waste of time

2008-07-16T04:25:00.002+01:00

Completely ruined my figures tonight, played 1153 hands and ran shockingly bad for about 1152 of them. I guess it was due to be fair. It was quite funny at times some of the stuff that was going on. Least fun you can have in this game is getting it in with the nut high draw and the nut low draw vs some idiot who thinks top two are good and missing both. Got stacked doing that a couple of times in quick succession and also had an unavoidable set vs set in the middle of it all - he flatted me on the flop and I still had the second nuts on the turn so I got them in thinking I was ahead. nh. Was down over $20 at one point but the tilt stayed away and I managed to pull it back.

I 6-tabled for 3hrs 20mins playing 1153 hands for a loss of $5.18. Not as bad as it was at one point but still a big disappointment. I played okay and learned nothing, waste of fucking time.

Time... 6hrs 30mins
Hands... 2523 (388 hands per hr)
Profit... $32.14
WR... 18ptBBs/100
HR... $5 ph

Looking weak now, those figures. Got the day off tomorrow as I say. Will have to put some hours in then.

Rolled by August

2008-07-15T20:17:00.007+01:00

I'm about 1.4k hands through my new 2c/5c challenge. At the same stage of my '1c/2c, 100% flop' challenge I was over $40 to the good.

2c/5c, PLO8, 6-max:

1370 hands
3hrs 10mins (433 hands an hour)
$37.32 profit
27ptBBs/100
$11.80ph

Making 1c/2c more profitable. The big difference, of course, is that I'm now multi-tabling while at 1c/2c I was, at most, three-tabling. This makes a big difference to both the win rate and the hourly rate. While my win rate at 1c/2c was about 100ptBBs/100, my hourly rate must have been about $2ph (though I didn't keep records of times during the challenge).

6-tabling does change my play a bit as making the 'right' decision every time becomes increasingly difficult. I find myself erring on the side of caution a little too much preflop and on flops and then my calling seems a little too loose post turn and on the river. Weird. This drop in standard of my play is shown by the big drop in the ptBB column. For me, it is a sacrifice worth making as my hourly rate has improved significantly. I'm not sure whether I've got the win rate/hourly rate ratio perfect yet but I'm happy enough with the way it has started to continue along these lines for now.

This 1.4k hand sample includes three successful 6-tabling sessions and a predictably losing 466-hand session of 12-tabling (ffs). The session of 12-tabling is the reason why my ptBBs is below my targeted 30ptBBs/100 while my hourly rate is above. (I got through hands quicker than expected). The 12-tabling session was a losing one and both my win rate and my hourly rate would be much higher if I hadn't done it. I'm just such a greedy twat ffs, DON'T DO IT! I don't always feel comfortable 6-tabling and to try anything above that is retarded imo. That's about the tenth time I've had to tell myself that.

I do think I have ran sickly good so far and the 30ptBBs I was hoping for whilst 6-tabling may have been a bit optimistic.

As far as the bankroll goes, it's up to around $240 now from the $20 fun money I left in. I said in my last post that I was going to work out 'the right' BR for me to have to make the relatively big jump up to the $25 level (and be at that BR by August). By 'the right BR' I mean 'a comfortable BR' really. I'm sure in the world of O8 there is a generally accepted 'correct' BR to have when moving up to $25 but, as temperemental as I can be at times when playing poker, the right BR for me may be completely different to your typical poker player's. So I haven't researched at all and have, instead, tried to work out what needs to be right for me to make the jump.

When I move up to $25 again I really don't want to be in the mindset where I'm liable to tilt. There are a few things that need to be right before I'm able to take that step up in an untiltable state of mind. The most significant one is that I need to have enough money not to be bothered about some sick cooler or bad beat. I cannot let sick hands allow my next (or any future) decision be anything but what I would consider to be the right one.

Basically, I don't want to get annoyed by poker again. Otherwise I'll end up cashing out and taking a break like I had to do around 'blow up' time. Doing that was a massive step back in the BR build I had planned, which, after a couple of weeks away, saw me back to 1c/2c for more 'fun'. This all happened because I wasn't prepared mentally for the small setback I faced at the time, which was then made doubly worse by tilt (http://www.pokerhand.org/?2769734).

I guess to sum up, I want to win lots of money whilst quickly rising through the stakes, and all completely stress-free. Is that too much to ask for?

If my mind is in the right place I genuinely think I can do it. I need to get the right balance between work (actual work, which I plan to continue throughout the summer) and poker. Work is still most important to me at the moment proven by the 70-hour week I have agreed to work at the end of the month.

Going into my step up financially ready will be an important thing to get right.

At the moment, I want $1k in my account before I move up to 10c/25c. This could be much less or much more than is recommended, I honestly have no idea...

I need to make another $760, which, at current rate (probably a bit higher than expectation), would take 64hrs. I said I wanted to be rolled for 10c/25c by August which is 16 days away. 4hrs of poker a day is not that many really. I have tomorrow off work so that's 20hrs out of the way already...

So,

I want my BR to be on or over $1000 by August, 6-tabling 2c/5c 6-max PLO8.

Only if It feels right to move up then will I move up. Then I'll have to work out how I want to go about beating the $25 level at a happy rate.

Ready to build a roll

2008-07-13T03:04:00.004+01:00

I'm bringing the '1c/2c 100% flop' challenge to an end. I think I've done what I set out to do (clearly 1c/2c is easily beatable when seeing 100% of flops) but it's just not moving my bankroll on fast enough. Especially as I've got no motivation to put in the volume at the moment.

My $20 'fun money' is now up over $190 so it would be a bit silly to stay at 1c/2c even if I wanted to. I don't think my bankroll is ready for 10c/25c yet either though so I'm going to have to stay at 2c/5c (the only level Stars provide between 1c/2c and 10c/25c) for the time being.

Had a spare couple of hours this evening so took the time to see how the PLO8 2c/5c 6-max tables compare to the 1c/2c ones I've been playing. As expected, they're almost exactly the same. Bit less money flying about but they're still weak.

I six-tabled for two hours and got in 660 hands for a $31 profit. It's a very very small sample and I think I did run a bit above expectation but I would hope to make $30 for every 1k hands I played at this 2c/5c level. Going on this information, 6-tabling, which felt pretty comfortable, it should take me about three hours to play 1k hands (for a $10 hourly rate). This seems like a pretty reasonable target to me.

I plan to play 6-max PLO8 2c/5c achieving an hourly rate of $10 and a win rate of 30ptBBs/100.

Hopefully I can do it by 6-tabling but if not I'll switch it around to see what my optimum number of tables is.

I'm working a lot over the next week so I might not get much chance to play but when I do, this is what I'll be doing to try and really get this bankroll going. My long-term goal is to be 'properly rolled' for 10c/25c by August. I'm not sure what kind of roll I'll need yet, that's something I'll think about and write about later. Any suggestions welcome by the way...

Yesterday's bit of FPP fun and today's good session of 2c/5c has brought my profits to $758.04 since the $15 deposit 47 days ago. I'll get to $1k eventually Fran!

I'd better get to sleep anyway, I've got work in a few hours ffs.

4200 FPPs = $100

2008-07-12T08:32:00.002+01:00

I used the $88 in tounament chips to play 26 NLHE $3.40 turbo STTs. I was keen to get it out of the way quickly so opened 14 tables for the first session. Always a mistake... I played poorly rushing all over the place and lost shit loads in that first session.

6-tabling after that was easy.

I made my money back and went on to show an overall profit of $10.20. Pretty shit return actually from 26 STTs (39c profit per $3.40 tourn - not great). Fuck it, serves me right for 14-tabling. Anyway, so all my $Ts are now converted and I've turned 4200 FPPs into $98.60.

Not sure whether that's good or not to be honest. I probably could have spent the same amount of FPPs on freeroll multis for a much larger profit but this was certainly quicker.

So, to conclude, I guess all I've found out is that the 210 FPP sats to the Sunday $100k are great value. Oh, and I also found out that I can't 14-table... again.

Splashing out

2008-07-12T04:59:00.003+01:00

Played a little bit of 1c/2c since my last post, not much. Lost a bit. Sat down at a table with Paul (147 star) who kept raising the pot, the fucker. Railed him in a few tourns the last couple of days. Very good to watch, lively player who always seems to stack up. I wish I knew how he did it.

1c/2c PLO8
1183 hands
$42.25 profit

'Splashing out'

Decided to play a couple of the 'guarantee' tourns on Stars as they've got the 2x promotion on. Played an $11 NLHE $40k gteed. Nearly cashed but ran tens into AT on the bubble. Hilarious.

Also played a PLO8 $10k gteed ($22 buy in).

Standard was poor as always. I cashed but had this sick quarter put on me towards the end:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2869822

and ended up shoving KKQ9 which sadly got called in two spots. I turned the nuts but the river put the low down and also hit some one's gutshot. All pretty boring really. Got some shit profit.

Was looking for something to do earlier and spotted that I had a spare 5k FPPs in my account. So I figured I may as well do something with them. I bought a stress ball for 400FPPs of course and thought about buying the $50 bonus for 5k FPPs as well. But I had a look around and found some nice satellites to spend them on instead. I must recommend them to everyone.

It's a 210 FPP buy in 20 player turbo SnG with top 6 players getting an $11 seat. That's 30% of players getting an $11 return on a 210 FPP investment. So, for an average player, one would expect a $79 return from a 5k FPP investment in these tourns. Clearly this is a better way of spending 5k FPPs than buying a $50 bonus.

I decided to play 20 of these sats spending 4200 FPPs, leaving some back to buy into VIP tourns etc. I didn't run particularly well but won 8 of the 20 for an $88 return. I now must decide what to do with this dosh. It's all locked away in $T so I may play a load of SnGs (hopefully for a profit) to convert it into a BR to play some more cash with. Or I could gamble it on a few more Omaha multis. We'll see.

Finding God a little hard to read

2008-07-08T20:55:00.003+01:00

I’ve been meaning to post for a while but just haven’t got round to it, so here’s a ‘quick’ update on things.

Omaha.

It’s all very mechanical now and a little bit boring. Can't really be arsed to play much.

1000 hands
$42.93 profit @ 107ptBBs/100

If I played at that win rate for 2k hands a day every day of every year I’d be on a $31.5k salary. Quite funny really. I wonder if 2c/5c would bring in $79k?

I do not intend to play 750,000 hands of micro stakes Omaha every year btw. But if it was a challenge on the other hand…

The players are terrible and I’ve actually started to feel bad about taking some of their money. It’s the moral equivalent of stealing a Game boy from a blind man. Obviously, it’s wasted in his hands, but am I right to take it off him? I don’t know. I suppose it depends on what games he’s got. Anyway, there’s nothing quite like scooping in a nice pot so I shall continue until guilt finally kills it I guess.

Omaha music.

I had a good look around for some more charity shop music the other day. I tried a new shop (there are a few now on Bearwood high street), Acorns, which is a Midlands-based charity that offers support to terminally ill children and their families. Okay, it’s a good cause, but £2.99 for a second hand album? Nein Danke. It’s a shame really as I did see a couple of albums I would have snapped up for 50p. They had a smashing bit of Celine Dion, an early ABBA album, and even a Bananarama greatest hits.

But I wouldn’t be seen dead walking out of an Acorns shop having donated £8.97 on three used albums. And sick irony aside, I do not see anything fun coming from that so I bode ‘good day’ to the brave till-woman and left in disappointment, shaking my head at what could have been.

I tried one other shop, equally worthy of my hard-earned money (well, blind Game boy man’s hard-earned money) but their music was similarly dear so I waltzed straight back out. I was getting a little bit impatient so resorted to Mind - ‘for better mental health’ (‘for music at crazy prices’).

I found the shelf where the 10p albums lie and, after the frustration of the previous two shops with the Bananarama near miss, I was in no mood to go riffling through the whole shelf of CDs all day. So, I took a gamble (makes a change) and picked up a handful of them at random and, without looking at them, handed them to the till-woman.

I was pretty happy with the decision until she picked up the first ‘music CD’. My face must have dropped when I saw the front cover: ‘Howards End’. For Fuck’s sake! And it’s not even the soundtrack either, it’s the full version of the 1992 ‘classic’ film adaptation of E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel of the same name. No turning back now though, I was at the till.

The second one, I could see from the back cover, was undeniably music. Thank you, God. But, if my face had already dropped from seeing the first front cover, it must have hit the counter when I saw this one: ‘The Best of Simon Cowell’. I nearly threw up. The whole thing makes me sick, it’s just horrible. It’s a News of the World promotion thing from back in the day, clearly designed for good friends Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell to help each other out and make each other richer. The greedy fuckers. It’s got a massive photo of Cowell on the front looking annoyingly smug just to add to the fucked-upness of it all.

All of this, along with the fact that 20% of the tracks are by Robson and Jerome, makes this, without doubt, the worst thing I have ever bought. Taking over the previous worst… ‘Howards End’.

The other six CDs are just your shit, run of the mill music compilations. Another 80p well spent.

Omaha 'music'

Howards End 10p
The best of Simon Cowell 10p
90's Brit 10p
The best of Paul Weller 10p
Sexual Feeling 10p
Divas 10p
RUN DMC 10p
Saturday night 5p
Sunday morning 5p
Music for summer Evenings 100p
Power of a Woman - Eternal 100p
White Ladder - David Gray 50p
Lifting me - The Corrs 50p
Memory Almost Full - Paul McCartney 10p
Word of Mouth 50p
Pop Icons 10p
1980's hits of the decades 10p
Hits of the 80's 10p
Sunday Magic 5p
3am Party 5p

Soz, getting a bit bored now so won’t have chance to explain the title of this post. Slightly lazy end but fuck it. Watched the amazing tennis final the other day, I particularly enjoyed some of the footage shown during the rain delays where the BBC somehow managed to make tennis look exciting. Was funny to see the two finalists take it in turns to recite the Kipling poem ‘If’. Nadal struggled but it was good stuff so I may as well end the post with that poem just in case you fancy a bit of a read.

Inabit.

‘If’ - Rudyard Kipling, 1895

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Just been informed that I’m now miles behind Fran in the race to $1k (I'm on $615.30 by the way, mate). I’d better not lose or I’ll kill the fucker.

Ermm... maybe I should read that poem one more time.

Happy earnings everyone.

0.75 ptBBs/hand = not enough at 1c/2c

2008-07-03T08:19:00.004+01:00

A quick calculation tells me that I'm making an average profit of over 5c every hand. Since when has stealing the blinds been -EV? I may never open for a raise again ffs.

Getting bored

2008-07-03T06:33:00.006+01:00

Of all the shit music, that is. The Omaha's great fun. Will be buying another couple of albums tomorrow I think before work because most of the stuff I've got now is pissing me off already. Got up at 7.30pm last night and I'm due into work at 11am. So I guess I'll be staying awake until I finish work... Gonna be fucked.

Anyway:

572 hands
567 flops
$29.42 profit
129ptBBs/100

Another two flops not seen:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2837041
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2837097

Sick.

Made an effort to record a load of hands from the session I've just played so I guess I might as well talk through a few of them.

I obviously have to play a lot of bad hands against short stacks and must resist the temptation to set them in on these kind of flops. A K92 flop would be okay but on this lowwy flop I'm just in terrible shape:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836395
Pretty tough to find a fold there though. If he has AAAA then it's a world class value push.

I've been lucky so far in that I haven't been in any uncomfortably expensive pots pre flop. This is probably the worst do far:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836398
Bad river call, btw. Certainly losing out to rake in the side pot, it's only a good call if there's a chance my low is good enough for the main pot. Four handed, I don't think it is... fold.

Dream scoop:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836603
Nutters, both DRAWING to the high with no low on a made low board. Was slightly worried about it being three way as all I (thought I) had was a very outdrawable high. Turns out I was good for the low as well. Verylucky.

Unnecessary bluff, shouldn't be surprised by the call at these stakes:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836702

Probably the most interesting hand:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836717
I had to think for a while before folding. Put simply, a set on a drawwy board with a made low down is very dangerous. I was almost certain my high was good (unless he had something sick like 7724) and was equally certain he had the low so figured he was on a decent freeroll for the scoop. As most rivers are scare cards, out of position, I think it's got to be a fold. It's not as if I can call to see a safe river as anything other than an offsuit K or Q or a 3 gives me a big problem calling a likely pot bet on the river. He said he had the low and "a hearts flush draw and a straight draw" (as you can see in the chat of the aces bluff above). Whatever, just something to think about. I could actually write loads about what to do with the nuts (high and low) on various boards but can't really be bothered. Not really sure how much anyone cares about h/l anyway.

Speaking of sets on made low boards, I think he has to fold the flop:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836678
Betting the low and a redraw for the high can go wrong here against two opponents (usually means you're heading for a quartering with another low vs either the high or a better draw for the high) so I was happy to get heads up on the turn. Sometimes the river will blank and you're frustrated when they quarter you with the same low and king high for the high but in this instance I thought I was freerolling for the scoop so happy blasting!

Is this a fold?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2836735
Weird to check/call the turn then blast a low river. Any sort of low, I call.

Only one more hand saved from the session, not very interesting but may as well include it:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2837000
Guess that's a fold...

Lots of tough decisions to make (especially now I'm playing every hand) in what I think is a very interesting game.

Bourne to run well

2008-07-01T17:40:00.018+01:00

Not going to play today, my brain feels proper tilty (potentially disarrsterous state of brain when seeing every flop). So gonna watch the Bourne trilogy instead.

Some stats from the challenge so far:

341 hands
338 flops
$22.70 profit
166ptBBs/100
Hands to reach a showdown - 89 (26% of all hands)
Hands won at a showdown - 63 (71% of hands to reach a showdown)
Pots won without a showdown - 25 (7% of all hands)
Total hands to show a return - 88 (26% of all hands)

What to make of them?

Firstly, 'hands won' is slightly misleading as a lot of pots are split heads up, sometimes at a loss to the rake. Similarly, a pot in which I'm quartered is presumably also considered a 'hand won' despite losing money in the hand. Still a bit surprising, I guess, to see that more than a quarter of hands are 'winners'. Seems high.

Other than that, only 71% of hands to reach a showdown are 'winners'?

Seems low...

Guess some 'nothing hands' are just checked down all the way to win or lose on the river, whatever. But playing every hand means I do have a lot of marginal decisions on every street, perhaps I need to sort my crying calling out.

Having said that, in what are usually multi way pots, it's not unusual to have the best hand on the turn and get rivered. I'll check these behind in position and sometimes the silly villains don't bet when they hit so I often make it to a showdown I know I've lost. Based on this, maybe 71% isn't as bad as it looks.

Suppose without pokertracker I may never know the 'crying call/checking down with nothing/knowing check' river-ratio (if this isn't one of the stats they provide it really should be).

Anyway, fuck all that rubbish, I've got a Bourne trilogy to watch. Should be an exciting six hours or so. Bye. xx

Best money I have ever spent

2008-06-30T22:50:00.002+01:00

The CDs are world class.

261 hands dealt
258 flops seen (two accidentally folded and one taken down pre!)
$17.15 profit
164ptBBs/100

One tabled again, sat down with $5, whittled down to $2.50 very quickly after having to fold two sick rivers. Built back up to $11.63 after hand 114 of the session. Made a tea and lost $5.50 in the twenty hands I played whilst drinking it. I then left the table before I tilted. And made another tea.

Especially impressed with the 3am compilation. Kool and the Gang, Buggles and Jackson 5 comprise the first three tracks. World class.

More Omaha music

2008-06-30T16:45:00.003+01:00

Just charity shopped my bollocks off for some more music to listen to whilst blowing my roll playing every hand of PLO8 I'm dealt.

Went to that Mind place ('for better mental health') again where the CDs were only 50p. This time when I got in I saw some CDs for 10p! Madness. I snapped up five of those bad boys but I'm instantly regretting it - they're all scratched to fuck. I haven't tried to play any of them yet but I'm guessing they're no good.

I also snapped up an 'expensive' 50p one as well. This one's called 'Word of mouth' and features 15 tracks by various artists including AMP FIDDLER, JUANA MOLINA, DOGS DIE IN HOT CARS, and SUFJAN STEVENS. Who the fuck are they? Oh well, could be good.

One of the 10p ones was a bit of a bargain, Paul McCartney's memory almost full. Sweet, hope that one works. The others look shit. Got some songs from the 80's on two CDs and something called 'Pop Icons' with Christina Aguilera, Five, Westlife, etc. Christ.

In one of the cases, called '70's Summer Hits' are two CDs, neither of which are called '70's Summer Hits'. There's one called 'Sunday Magic' with two half naked people on the front. Dread to think what's on that disc. And the other is called '3am Party'... dread to think what's on that disc.

My Omaha CD collection to date:

Music for summer Evenings - National Trust (1998, compilation) 100p
Power of a Woman - Eternal (1995, album) 100p
White Ladder - David Gray (1998, album) 50p
Lifting me - The Corrs (1999, single) 50p
Memory Almost Full - Paul McCartney (2007, album) 10p
Word of Mouth - Various 'Artists' (2004, compilation) 50p
Pop Icons - Various (2003, compilation) 10p
1980's hits of the decades - Various (80's compilation) 10p
Hits of the 80's - Various (1986 compilation) 10p
Sunday Magic - ? (2004, ?) 5p
3am Party - ? (2004, ?) 5p

Not pretty.

Good start, except one horrendous pre flop fold

2008-06-30T03:35:00.007+01:00

Just played a little one-tabling session whilst railing a good friend, Ptevey, in the million on Stars. I think he played really well to get as far as he did but just couldn't find a spot late on and eventually went out about 200th or something for a nice cash. WP sir.

That's a screenshot of my first session, 126 hands played, 125 flops seen for a $15.90 profit. This is 315ptBBs/100 which is sure to come down. I had a really nice table (not many pre flop raises) and only time will tell whether my strategy can handle a table of pre flop raisers.

Really disappointed about the one fold I made by the way, just a complete lack of concentration. I split a sick pot I should have scooped and insta-folded the next hand utg in disgust. Just forgot I had to limp! It's so unnatural playing some of the shit hands I have to but it seems to have worked so far. Maybe it is +EV to play every hand at this level of the game.

Small sample, I know, and hopefully no more folding from now on. Disgraceful behaviour. I wonder what the players at the table must have thought (if anything) when I folded. Must have put me on 9999 or something. Though this is always a limp utg in my book. Plenty of scoop outs.

Just thought I'd whack some of the few hands I've saved on the pokerhand site in the last couple of 'working weeks' just in case any one fancies a butchers through them. Most of them pretty pointless hands from a couple of gamble gamble sessions but feel free to rummage and berate:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2797571

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2797397

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2797186

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795379

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795339

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2795318

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2793145

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2792974

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2764956

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2764918

Some of those hands are proper tilty actually and maybe I should have kept them to myself. Couple of interesting ones though, especially the TJQK one I think it was with fd and sd on a paired board. Obviously very opponent-based action.

Future for me in poker?

2008-06-29T16:53:00.008+01:00

Cool.

Been doing loads of 'normal' 'work' for the last two weeks which has been a lot of fun. Spent most of my time at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, mainly on a team-leader's wage (though not doing a great deal of team-leading) working behind various bars around the ground and also spending a lot of time pissing about in the cellar, throwing a ball around and changing the occasional barrel. Again, on a team-leader's hourly rate(?).

Taking a step back from poker has given me a chance to have a serious clear-headed think about my future (or lack of it) in the game.

There have been many times over the last few years where I've gone through spells of playing poker for money instead of working. During these times I have hated the thought of giving it up to go back to work.

And, so, it never fails to confuse me that, when the time comes to go back to work, I always enjoy it and can't think of anything worse than giving it up to grind the poker.

Especially in the summer.

So, given that work has almost always earned me more money than any 'healthy' spell of pokering has, I'm not even sure why I have played (and sometimes continue to play) poker as a sole source of income. So I will probably not be doing so in the near future.

I say 'probably' because:

As it happens, having played what I would consider enough hands at the $25, $50 and even the $100 level of O8, I genuinely think I could beat the game quite well. I am not prepared to put in the volume of hands required to earn a living at the $25 or $50 level (as do-able as I think it is, I would rather be out of the house working this summer than grinding out 6/7hrs of poker a day for a similar return), but if I had the BR not to worry about the swings of $100 and $200 PLO8 it would probably be worth my while taking some time off work to earn some decent money!

So, as it's very unlikely that a spare couple of grand is going to come my way in the form of a BR, I'll 'probably' be working for the rest of this summer. I think this is the sensible decision and does not at all feel like the disappointing realisation that maybe it would have been a couple of years ago. Instead, it's actually something I'm quite looking forward to.

A word on Hold'Em:

I have obviously played a lot of Hold'Em in my days and I simply don't think I'm good enough to beat that game at any meaningful stakes consistently. I don't even enjoy playing endless hands of Hold'Em any more so, even if I am capable, I have no desire what so ever to sacrifice work to make a living playing Hold'Em poker.

So, with Hold'Em completely out of the equation and given that I have no wishes to grind away at the smallish stakes of Omaha I can afford, I have cashed out most of my BR (total cash out for the month of $495.09), and have left just $20 'fun-money' in my account.

I have a potentially disarrrsterous plan for my small BR which I'll come onto later.

I don't intend to cash out from Stars at all over the summer as I'm hoping that work will continue to support me well enough (and start paying off debt at the same time...). I hope to continue playing the odd hour on a night with the micro/small stakes.

If I have built up a big enough BR by late 2008/early 2009 and it still feels right, I will consider putting in some hours at the money-making stakes.

So, that's all the long-term poker shit I've been thinking about over the last couple of weeks, have I been playing much?

Hardly at all. Took a few pot shots at 25c/50c and maybe a bit of 50c/$1, not sure. I had one half-hour of fun when I decided to sacrifice $40 by sitting with $20 on two NLO8 $50 tables with the intention of really gambling it up and leaving if I lost the $20. Well, I quickly lost one of the buy-ins and was down to $4 on the other table before rallying back to eventually leave the table with $55 for a $15 profit! Good times. Wish I could show you some of the hands, winning and losing but the pokerhand site isn't working. Had some great banter at the table as well with a couple of the regulars who, having 'played the game for years', thought I was a right wally. It was actually quite amusing as I have been playing O8 for only a month and know for a fact that most of them are easily rapable (and the not-so-easily-rapable ones are at least easily playable).

Also played a couple more O8 tourns ($17 ish outlay for no return), but the most interesting thing I've experimented with poker-wise since my last post is the 6-max tables. The average pot sizes at most stake sizes of the game seem larger than at the full ring tables. This seems a little odd and at the 1c/2c tables the av. pots are massive, usually $1 but sometimes as big as $3.

This got me wondering whether it would pay to see 100% of flops at these tables.

So, as I don't think I'm mentally or financially ready to start playing poker seriously again yet, I am going to set myself another one of those 1c/2c challenges just for fun.

My goal is to prove that the 6-max PLO8 1c/2c tables are beatable when seeing a flop with 100% of hands.

My first instinct here is that the reraised pots in which I have to see a flop with terrible starting hands could prove a little too expensive for my monsters to make up for but hopefully I'm wrong. Even if once every 200 hands I'm forced all in pre with rags vs two monsters I'll be struggling to make even that loss back over the next 199 hands let alone show a profit. Anyway, we'll see.

Don't expect any great volume. Or profit. Inabit.

Blow Up

2008-06-17T15:48:00.005+01:00

I've let myself down slightly in the last couple of days.

On Sunday afternoon I really didn't feel like playing any poker, the first time that has happened for a few weeks. And if you don't feel like playing, don't play. Simple, yeah? No. Like the mug that I am, I played anyway.

I really should have just watched a film or something or gone out, asked someone if they fancied a drink or something. But no, I cracked open a few cash tables and plugged away.

It went okay but I was just really bored of it, nothing on TV either. Then I realised that I hadn't played an Omaha multi since I learned how to play the game so checked the tab and signed up for the next three tournaments going. This is how they went:

- $11 PLO8 rebuy

In for $81 to go out shortly after the freeze period started for no return. The villain in this hand stacked me twice in the rebuys and then this to finish me off. It was very ridiculous. I don't really have a very good h/l hand but I was just playing the player (idiot):
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2763467

I was nearly sick at the hand but spending $81 on a tourn with my BR was inexcusable. Bad beats should be pretty insignificant if you're thinking about the bigger picture.

- $11 FLO8 freezeout

Standard was really really bad. Got it in towards the end with a fd and nut low draw, both were live in 3-way all in but missed. Luckily no option to rebuy.

- $5.40 PLO8 freezeout

Cashed but ran into quads to come 20 something for a shit profit. The $400 for 1st looked achievable at one point but not to be.

That was a very bad night.

The next day (yesterday) I tried my best to stay away from the poker but I was bored again with my friends at work so I started playing again. Worst decision ever. Trust me, if you're anything like me and you don't feel like playing, don't play - you'll lose.

I got bored of the Omaha pretty quickly so sat at an empty NLHE $50 to gamble it up a bit. Two people sat down with me at exactly the same time which I was a little suspicious about. I posted the BB and:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2769734

I nearly ripped my hair out, and even with my hair as long as it is it wouldn't have hurt anywhere near as much as that hand did. I left the table immediately. Blatant bit of rigging, it's sick.

I played a bit of razz for fun, lost more than anyone should at that game so sat down at a play money NLO8 with my 1000 chips. Lost them in a sick 8-way all in, I was miles behind but I think I got just about the right price...

I then played five PLO8 STTs (two 9-handed $16 turbos and three 10-handed $3 turbos). I bubbled the two $16 ones which were soo sick and came third in all three of the $3 ones. I should have won all five! After that sickness I turned the laptop off and, pleasingly, it stayed off until this morning. What an awful two days.

So, that's it, I've decided, two days too late, I'm officially taking a break.

Yesterday, I got straight onto the phone to my temping agency for some work. I need to get out of the house and away from the computer. So I've taken some shifts off them and another agency so I'll be taking a 'break' and going to work for a change. Got 36 hours booked for the next few days which should be fun. I'm behind the main bar at Edgbaston Cricket Club all day tomorrow, then at the International Convention Centre on Thursday and I'll be spending most of Friday at the National Exhibition Centre. Anything to escape the tilt.

I'm left with $271.55 in my Stars account after cashing out $215. $471.55 profit is still okay but not as okay as it was before I touched it on Sunday afternoon.

May not post for a while now. GL all.

Days three and four - And who says 12-tabling isn't profitable?...

2008-06-15T15:11:00.007+01:00

... me.

I just couldn't handle it. I 12-tabled the $25 tables for three hours on Friday and got through about 1500 hands. The first two hours were fine bringing in a steady $37 profit. I then took a break to get a drink and first hand back suffered a horrendous beat bringing me back to about even and I just kept sliding for the next hour and finally gave up showing a loss of $20 over the three hours.

Luckily, earlier in the day I had done a deadly slow but profitable bit of 3-tabling so at the end of day three (Friday) my stats were:

Days... 3
Hands... 6501
Time... 18hrs 55mins
Profit... $189.65
WR... 5.8ptBBs/100
HR... $10.02 ph

After my eye test on the Friday I went on the search for another couple of albums (Eternal's time has already passed I think) so I found another little charity shop called Mind - for better mental health. The nutters were selling albums for 50p. Ship it.

The uncomfortable part of my eye examination involved have some drops put into my eyes designed to widen the pupils to make the back of my eyes more accessable. Clever stuff but it did make seeing incredibly difficult. Things were very blurry from close range and I even had trouble crossing the road, I must have looked like a right wally.

So, looking for an album on the shelves of this new charity shop proved very tough. I pulled out CD after CD but couldn't read who they were by so had to put them back. But then I saw a cover I recognised, and it just happens to be one of my favourites. David Gray - White Ladder. 50p, genius. Even though I own a copy somewhere, I had to have it. I also decided to take a 50p gamble on another random CD so I just picked one up, handed over my quid and felt my way home.

It turns out that the second 50p there is probably the worst money I have ever spent. The 'album' turned out to be a two track (well, one track and a re-mix of that track) promotional CD for Pepsi. It's called Lifting Me by The Corrs. It is fucking awful and I can't believe I actually spent 50p on it. Actually, thinking about it, Acorns sell singles for £1, perhaps I could sell it onto them for 80p. Every one's a winner!

Now that's some nice Entrepeneurism, playing the charity shops off against each other... And then maybe I could give the profits to charity. Quite a nice way of creating EV.

Anyway, this brings my Omaha CD collection to:

Music for summer Evenings - The National Trust (1998, album) £1
Power of a Woman - Eternal (1995, album) £1
White Ladder - David Gray (1998, album) £0.50
Lifting me - The Corrs (1999, single FFS) £0.50

I had people over all day yesterday so only managed to squeeze in 609 hands so I guess I'm a little behind schedule now having only played about 7k hands through four days:

Days... 4
Hands... 7110
Time... 21hrs 25mins
Profit... $210.35
WR... 5.9ptBBs/100
HR... $9.82 ph

I have been playing Omaha for 17 days now and my total profit has reached $640.94. A poor reflection on my opponents for sure, and I really didn't expect this kind of success when it all kicked off with the 1c/2c challenge.

A friend of mine, Fran, was given $10 by Betfair which has rapidly grown into a bankroll. I'm racing him to $1k now. So GL with that sir but I hope I'm still winning...

Day two summary. Must learn my lesson...

2008-06-12T23:53:00.005+01:00

... 9-tabling O8 just doesn't work.

Once I'd eaten and watched a bit of tennis I made the choice to give 9-tabling another go. It hasn't worked so far but I want to teach myself to do it.

I started 9-tabling at 3pm and played non-stop for 2100 hands to finish at about 7.30pm. Based on this sample, if I was to achieve my target of 10ptBBs/100, 9-tabling at this $25 level would give me an hourly rate of over $23. I am yet to profit from a 9-tabling session so far so for the sake of my current target of $700 per 14k hands per week I'm probably better off going back to the profitable 6-tabling but this is the HR I'd like to be achieving.

I played terribly of course and a late flurry allowed me to escape with just a $9 loss. I want to be able to 9-table though and even though it's detrimental to my current challenge I think training my brain up at this level could be financially beneficial in the long run. I'll sleep on it.

I don't have any hands from today as there always seemed to be a table popping up which became annoying but there were some beauties as usual. I made some woeful calls though, it's lucky I didn't keep records in a way.

I won a quick $20 6-tabling whilst talking to Fran on MSN tonight which helps today's figures slightly. Well done Fran, you earned me more in 50mins than Eternal did in 4hrs. Playing Eternal at full volume failed to make any difference during the 9-tabling madness by the way. In fact, I think all it has achieved is alienating me even further from my housemates and it almost certainly signals the end of their exhausting campaign to convert me into a 'Drum and Base' man. I'm sure they would now agree I'm a lost cause.

Summary after day two:

Days... 2
Hands... 4155
Profit... $132.55
WR... 6.4ptBBs/100 hands
Time... 12hrs 15mins
HR... $10.82

I believe that my WR and HR would both be higher if I had 6-tabled all the way through but I think that learning how to 9-table now will make for a healthier HR in the long run (while still perhaps sacrificing a couple of ptBBs/100). It may turn out that I am just incapable of 9-tabling of course but we'll see.

Sorry if this has been a bit of a ramble, I'm fucking knackered. More tomorrow I guess. Night.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Next Big Blind

2008-06-12T12:35:00.005+01:00

Day two has arrived.

It will be a late start today as I've had a busy morning. Went to the doctor's to sort out a free prescription - thank Fuck for the NHS (and all you healthy people who help to pay for it).

Being diabetic means I am supposed to get myself regular checks of my eyes (and feet for some reason) so I decided that today I would finally get off my arse and find an opticians. Forget the feet for now. I walked (carefully...) into Bearwood and stumbled across an opticians that advertised 'Free Diabetic Screening'. Perfect. Trust me to choose Thursday the 12th to book an eye appointment for the next day though. It's just one beat after another.

"Can you come in tomorrow morning?"
"Tomorrow...?"
"Yeah, Friday the 13th."
"Yep, brilliant!"

I'll be blind by Sunday, guaranteed. I'm glad I've finally got it sorted though, it's something I should have done weeks ago.

I then went into Somerfield to do some shopping feeling pretty happy with myself that I was finally giving the illness the respect it deserves and thinking vaguely responsibly towards it for the first time. But then I saw a monster 300g bar of Toblerone on offer for £3. Fucking snapped it up, great purchase.

Sitting in front of my laptop, as I have been doing for the last couple of weeks, there has been something really troubling me day after day - my music collection. Or lack of it. I have no CDs at the moment and the only music I have is on my laptop: Elvis Presley - 30 No. 1 Hits, Massive Attack - Mezzanine, and Dusty Springfield - Hits Collection. All absolutely world class, granted, but, I have to say, they have started to grate on my brain a bit over the last couple of days.

Trolling through Youtube would do the trick but it just isn't practical whilst 6/7-tabling the Omaha. But I really need something to listen to to keep me sane(ish) while I'm playing. So after the ill-fated Somerfield trip I suspected I'd have a lot more success in the relatively safe sugar-free zone of the Acorns Charity Shop.

And I wasn't disappointed... A handwritten sign on a dirty sheet of lined paper was music to my eyes, 'All CDs - £1'. Such a bargain. I plan to buy at least one album a day from there to keep me happy while playing, I'm fairly sure they'll pay for themselves even if they only succeed in keeping the tilt away for one track an album.

They had a fairly healthy collection but for some reason had the singles mixed in with the albums, all £1. Which nutter's going to buy a single? They should make the singles like 20p or something. I'd buy them. If I ran the place, that's what I'd do. In fact, once I've bought all their stuff I may have to open up my own one to get rid of it all again. So bare that in mind, if you ever need to buy a single come to me in a years time when I've bought out Acorns. 20p.

I bought two albums to keep me going. The first is Music for Summer Evenings - an exclusive compilation for BBC Homes and Antiques Magazine. And the second, Eternal - Power of a Woman, their difficult second album from 1995.

I look forward to trying them out after a bit of lunch (Toblerone on wholemeal toast). Due to the late start my aim is to play about 1k hands today and make it up over the week but I'll see how I'm playing.

Inabit.

Day One Summary

2008-06-11T22:20:00.005+01:00

Not playing any more today, it's over. Just had a horrible session to finish the day off. Before it started I was +$140 for the day (through 1365 hands) and was heading towards a $200 day for a bit of the final session but the last 100 hands killed me and I've ended up with the figures of:

Days played... 1
Hands... 1803
Total profit... $121.35
Win rate... 13.5ptBBs/100 hands
Time played... 7hrs 55 mins

This little bit of tilt finally forced me to leave all tables before my planned 2k hands were up:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2743408
Another one of those 'if my high's no good, my low draw's live' hands but I was fairly sure I was drawing to the low only so getting them in as 40/60 dog was silly tilt born out of frustration at the card-deadedness of the previous million hands.

As card dead as I was for large spells today (only played 21% of hands), the game always seems to throw up loads of interesting hands so I'll try and pick out my favourite few from today:

Put him on exactly the hand he had but wasn't sure of the best thing to do - see a blank turn then make him pay or plonk them in on the flop as I did?:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2742232
63% expectation apparently on the flop so it seems okay.

Sick cooler I think:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741819

My play is dodgy throughout but the river fold is an important one. He killed his action completely (I call a pot bet for sure) but every other player I have come across at this level calls the shove with my hand so I don't blame him at all:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741497

Top set, lowwy board:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741381

Wally rewarded:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741375

Wrap hits nicely:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741361

Button was an idiot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741312

I don't know:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2741152

Nice to have some hands hold up and even some hit draws in there.

Bit tired and the rain's depressing me so I'm going to sleep.

Or maybe I'll watch The Apprentice final on BBCiPlayer with a cup of tea, who knows.

Ruling

2008-06-11T09:55:00.005+01:00

Just a quick one, which makes a change I suppose.

Just felt the need to amend the rules of my new mission slightly. I think the 2k hands a day thing could prove a little awkward, what happens to days where I only have time to put in 500 hands? Have I failed? Do they count towards the record?

So, rather than 2k hands for each playing day, I've decided to make the target 14k hands per week. This means I can play as many or as few hands on any given day as I like and as long as I've played 14k by the end of the week I've succeeded.

So, overview of new mission:

Game... NL/PLO8
Stakes... 10c/25c
Target hands... 14k per week
Target win rate... 10ptBBs/100 hands
Target profit... $700 per week

I shall be starting shortly, not long got up. I've had my breakfast (five slices of wholemeal toast and a cup of tea) and a shower and I plan to play right through until about 2pm at which time I'll stop for lunch (beans on wholemeal toast presumably). With a cup of tea.

An extra 2p?? WTF?

2008-06-10T15:58:00.004+01:00

Just returned from my fortnightly 'big shop' at Iceland. I got the usual: two loaves of wholemeal (£1.60), a pack of four tins of beans (£1), a small bottle of milk (£0.40), and a packet of bananas (£1).

It should last me.

It usually comes to a tidy total of £4 dead so I stood there smiling in front of my regular cashier (till-woman?), my four quid at the ready, when she bluntly blurted out, "four pounds and two pence, please." What the... break it to me gently why don't you? After all we've been through.

It turns out that good old milk was the culprit here, 42p ffs. It's sick, an extra 2p for a small bottle of milk. Honestly, the amount I spend on butter, milk, eggs and cheese I'm seriously thinking about growing my own cow.

At one point yesterday I was stuck $160 from 10c/25c PLO8. I must constantly remind myself that this BR has come from that $15 deposit at the start of the '1c/2c challenge' on Wednesday. So, twelve days later, after starting the day on $413.96, going down to $255 was really disappointing and, though I was unlucky with cards, was ENTIRELY my own fault. Nobody forced me to play.

So I moved down... briefly.

I played two hands of PLO high $10 just for a change. I sat down with $10 and bluffed the fuck out of my first hand and got caught which prompted the comment 'lol, donk at the table' from one of my opponents. So I tried to catch someone out the very next hand. It didn't go well:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731966

NH, sir. I left the table.

I'll now put some links to a few of the hands I played during my tilty phase yesterday. Make of them what you will:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731844
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731879
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731884
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731929
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731950
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731984
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731895

Some horrible stuff in there from me. The queen-high flush one was sooo lucky and I really annoyed myself with the set of kings hand. The turn call is shit (drawing to half) and I have played enough to know that his bet on the river is screaming, 'I've scooped, mate. Inabit.' But I called anyway. Sooo bad but thought I'd share it with you.

My bankroll is now back to about where it was before the massive downswing, I clawed it back to $273 late last night (after a cashout of $115). Some of the following hands are the reasons why. Most of the poker-playing people who know me know that I have lost many a bankroll in the past by tilting and playing games well above my roll (and probably skill level) so those people won't like the stakes of this selection of hands but fuck it, it worked out (and I wasn't tilting when I played it).

His play is very questionable here if you ask me, I don't mind him flatting pre with the intention of moving me off a low flop but I'm going nowhere there. Of course I got verylucky to scoop:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2733331

Horrible play from my opponent gifts me $55 pot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2733547

Nuts hold for $86 pot:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2733564

Small pot but interesting decision on every street:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2733777

Sick battle of the blinds. Unlucky not to be ahead and then to miss given he'd flopped the nuts:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2733970

I played one table of PLO8 $100 and one table of NLO8 $50, focusing more on the $100 table. I profited from some nice flops and some bad play by my opponents but I think I also played well. I really thought about, and eventually tightened up, my preflop raising hand selection in the 500 hands I played at the $100 table.

At 1c/2c, 2c/5c, and often 10c/25c my preflop range included:

- Any pocket pair tens or above (if I hit it's often top set and opponents don't fold middle or bottom set or dodgy low draw for any price)
- Any suited ace (as 2nd nut flush doesn't fold at this level)

But I soon noticed that there were at least a couple of really solid players at the $100 table sitting with full stacks. The players sitting with much less than a buy-in were idiots. The good players fold middle set to my top set and the poor players aren't sitting on enough money to pay my top set enough to make up for the times I miss after raising pre. So pairs without a nice low draw were often folded (or just limped in pots that looked to be heading towards a cheap multi-way). [[Any decent pair at the lower levels, with or without a low draw, became a raise simply to make it more expensive for the numerous players willing to chase a low draw after the flop.]] The decent players at the $100 level wouldn't chase a low draw without a good high draw to back it up and so my top set on a lowwy flop didn't want to be in a big pot with the solid players anyway (especially given the size of my BR).

Also, taking the second hand above as an example, if I don't have the low draw to back up my suited ace, I am going to be frustrated fairly often when I flop my miracle and have to split the pot with a low as weak as that. By narrowing my suited ace range to include a fairly decent low card as well I will be scooping a lot more often. Thinking about it, this rule probably applies to every level after 2c/5c and is an adjustment I will think about when returning to the $25 level.

So what are my plans from now on?

My number one aim is not to go broke. For this to happen, it's important that I don't move up too quickly (no more PLO8 $100 for a start). I find it easier not to move up when there is something stopping me. I found it very easy to stay at 1c/2c for 10k hands whilst doing the challenge and so it seems reasonable to to think that setting myself some kind of challenge at the $25 level will keep me there until I'm ready to move up.

The '1c/2c challenge' involved me attempting to make a certain amount of money for every 100 hands I played. This target was 50ptBBs/100 hands (pokertracker Big Bets are two big blinds). I really enjoyed this challenge and am more than happy to try something along these lines for my new chosen level of 10c/25c.

I have rummaged through the '2+2 forums', which are very good by the way, and the consensus seems to be that there is no one on Stars at the 10c/25c level consistently grinding out a 10ptBB/100 hands profit. So even if it is unattainable, this has to be my target. But this is just half of my new challenge. My other target is to make every day a 2k-hand-day. Some days I'll be working obviously and there will be days where I have some other plans but I want every playing day to consist of a solid, worthwhile stint.

So the new mission for Pgchips on Pokerstars is:

Stakes... 10c/25c
Hands... 2k per day
Target win rate... 10ptBBs/100 hands
Target profit... $100 per day

Based on the information I have read I'll be lucky to reach my targeted win rate and also 2k hands is a lot for me in one day as I even find 6-tabling tough but as always I'll try to give you an honest (and maybe this time interesting) account of my progress, win or lose (though if I lose for too many days on the bounce I'll find myself back at the '1c/2c challenge'!).

Unlike the 1c/2c thing, I have no end-date in mind and neither is there a specific number of hands I'd like to troll through. I'll just plug away until either I have the advised bankroll for the next level (or a number I feel comfortable taking a shot with), or I get bored, or I got broke.

Cheers for reading if you still are.

Terrible downswing

2008-06-09T07:48:00.003+01:00

Woke up at about 2am today and naturally cracked open 9 tables of the old Omaha. Quite what I was thinking I don't know - this is clearly far too many. Rushing all over the place and couldn't concentrate at all and made sooo many mistakes, played shit. I did lose two full stacks with aces vs aces, the second of which was my AA33 vs AATJ aipf. I flopped a low draw but he runner jacked it to scoop. But that's just variance, the fact is I played shit and made some terrible crying calls on other tables. And some fucking shit bets as well. It took me only an hour to lose $87 in the space of 500 hands. Over half of that was the full stacked aces but with the other hands I was dealt I could have broken even if I really wanted to.

Looking back, as a player just learning the game having started properly just over a week ago, opening 9 tables of $25 Omaha 8 straight after waking up was a fucking awful idea. Without any breakfast as well, ravenously stupid.

So I immediately closed all the tables, I didn't even sit-out-next-blind them as it would have been -EV to do so, and went for some breakfast. What my housemates must have thought of me cooking a Spag Bol at half three in the morning on a school night I'm not sure but I needed some serious de-tilting grub so I don't give a fuck.

Got back and watched The Apprentice on BBC iPlayer with a cup of tea. I enjoyed the break and am glad I resisted the temptation of nicking some biscuits to dunk. I'm better off without. Though in the days to come, if my aces keep losing, I'm sure I'll be jumping at the chance of that tasty sugary suicide.

Straight after The Apprentice I banged open just 6 tables, much more manageable. I played a bit better but still couldn't seem to win any hands, especially against this one player. These two hands against him fucked me right off:

I should have set him in on the turn as he can fold any river that doesn't house him or give him his weak low and he obv calls all in on the turn. Think I should also set him in on the river as I have to call his all in having checked and he checks a worse flush behind which he has to call with. Obvious house anyway, bad river:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731581

This hand was another tough one to take. I was only in pre because that guy is such a twat. By his third raise it was obvious he had aces but there was half a chance my low was live and my fd was very likely to be good too so they had to go in. Loved the turn, not the river:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2731628
(With my fd and low draw live the hands have 50% expectation each so I think the hand plays itself even though it became clear he had flopped the nuts.)

He left after this hand and so I closed down all the tables I was on too. He absolutely raped me. Somehow managed to break even in this session of 780 hands so the total for the day is:

1280 hands for a loss of $87.37,
leaving my total $25 stats looking like this:

Hands... 4.3k
Profit... $116.54
Rate... 5.5ptBB/100

Not pretty.

2c/5c is for wimps, moving up to 10c/25c

2008-06-08T06:37:00.004+01:00

Just a quick update in case anyone is still vaguely interested in this Omaha lark. I've pretty much decided to bypass the 2c/5c level. As I have already said it's exactly the same as the 1c/2c level and so would certainly bring in a steady profit but I really want to get better at this game so I have jumped into NL and PL $25 permanently.

I worked Friday night and was too tired to play when I got back so I slept until Saturday night, watched a bit of telly, and then cracked open as many $25 tables as I could afford. I'm still playing full ring (9 handed) and both NL and PL until I can work out which one I prefer.

I got lucky in the 500 hands or so of 10c/25c I played on Thursday night and the only thing I learned really was that my 1c/2c game didn't fit into the game at all. So I knew starting again today I had to work out how I needed to improve pretty quickly (preferably before going broke).

The first 650 hands were very tough. I didn't feel good at the tables and was lucky only to be $10 in the black. I took a break to eat and think about the difference between the 1c/2c level and the 10c/25c.

The decisions are consistently just that little bit harder. For example, it's easy to check fold aces on a K45 flop at 1c/2c because with 60/70% of players seeing a flop aces are just no good. But when you see a flop two or three handed at 10c/25c there's a fine line between checking then giving the benefit of the doubt to a bettor or banging in some money blind hoping a low draw may pay. Basically the betting at 1c/2c was easy, it was almost always betting the fuck out of the best hands and making draws pay but at these slightly higher stakes a lot of dangerous information bets have to be made. For this reason I think the winrate at this level is going to be much more erratic than it was at the micro. We'll see.

Position became an important factor as well at this level I found. At the micro level position was completely irrelevant as you either had a hand you wanted to bet or you didn't. But the tough post-flop decisions that must now be made at 10c/25c are obviously a lot easier to make when you have seen what your opponents think of the flop first. Bluffing is even possible - brilliant!

So, after the cretinous first few hundred hands of the day I started booking my ideas up and I finally got a good feel for the tables. I ran well in places but missed a few very important freerolls so I think I ran about average overall which is nothing to complain about I guess.

Including the shit session earlier, I got through 2469 hands of both NL and PLO8 $25 for a total profit of just under $145 for the day. Overall, I have now played 2969 hands at the $25 level for a total profit of $204 @ 14ptBB (pokertracker big bets - two big blinds)/100 hands.

3k hands is a very small sample given how wrong this game can go at times but I would certainly settle for 14ptBBs/100 in the long run so hopefully the next 3k hands will show a similar profit. Fingers crossed.

As I have said, I don't have Pokertracker or the like so I have to try to keep records of hands I like manually (which is hard when you're seven tabling Omaha) and unfortunately I don't have records of most of the interesting hands but I'll put up the few I have here to show you. I would love anyone to point out any obvious mistakes as I'm keen to learn.

Massive call on the turn, didn't like the river when I saw it as I put him on A3xhh although A345 was in my mind too. Bad call looking back as the nuts may have been sitting behind me but still, very nice three quarter:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2726017

-----

One of my favourite semi-bluffs of sorts:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2725925

-----

Not thought much about this one but I don't think I like it (not the result anyway - a two would have slipped on the river!!!). Heads up I'm happy going with this as there's a good chance my low is live as well as my high but three handed my low is dead to a two, the best I can realistically hope for is the high and probably for only half the pot, I'll Cardplayer it actually because it must be close:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2725873

-----

Very dangerous spots these for a bare top set, if there's an A2xxcc knocking about I'm in bad shape but I didn't get away and got lucky:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2725772

-----

Another example of a dangerous top set call - if the push was for $30 I seriously have to consider folding but not for $10 into $2:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2725760

-----

One of the worst calls I have ever seen! About 16% expectation I reckon:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2725636

-----

Get away pre?:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2723615

-----

Terrible call from me in one of the early sessions. I knew he was lowwing on the flop and so it should have been obvious that my high was no good on the turn when he shoved, pretty embarrassing call:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2723304

-----

Sick missed flush:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2723219

-----

Cooler... except probably for bare kings:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2718427

-----

What goes around comes around:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2709336

Guess you'd have to be really bored to wade through all of that lot but any hand analysis appreciated as always... GL folks.

Let's try... 2c/5c PLO8!!

2008-06-06T06:26:00.008+01:00

Monster stakes, eh?

Since the 1c/2c thing went okay with a profit of about $140 I have decided to step up to 2c/5c to see if the standard is just as bad. It's a $10 max buy in which isn't quite as deep as the $5 at 1c/2c but is still pretty deep at 200 big blinds.

So what did I find out about full ring 2c/5c?

Well, it's much the same as 1c/2c really. Few familiar faces, some of the rocks of 1c/2c, but the tables seem to be filled with just as many idiots as 1c/2c (perhaps just an ever so slightly richer breed). Guess I shouldn't be surprised given how ridiculously small these stakes are, a lot of them are probably playing the game for the very first time. And I suppose the rest of them just don't give a shit win or lose.

So I banged in a decent sized sample session of about 1800 hands which brought in a profit of $56 at a rate of 62 big blinds per 100 hands (verysimilar to 1c/2c).

I can't help but think I must be running very very well at the moment because making money just shouldn't be this easy. I decided to test just how well I was running by taking a dip in the relatively deep waters of NL $25!! Pretty reckless but why the fuck Stars don't have a PL or NL level between 2c/5c and 10c/25c is beyond me. That is a long spell at 2c/5c before you're 'properly rolled' for the next level up. Anyway, fuck 'properly rolled', I took a spin.

Given my BR I decided to stay out of trouble preflop, try to get to rivers cheaply and just push a three quarter in my favour but it didn't turn out like that. One idiot at the table kept stacking people luckily and then every time he lost a pot he'd shove next hand. Well, he lost a pot and shoved next hand which forced me into this good but very scary call. Nearly folded but decided it was pointless me sitting at the table if I was going to fold an edge so I shipped them in.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2713553

His hand just does not deserve half of that pot! Cardplayer has me at 65% expectation pre vs his hand but not a very interesting stat given that he could have had anything (don't know how to find out how good my hand is vs a random hand - would be a very useful programme for NL). I left after that hand as there's just no point in gambling my BR away but fully rolled that game would be brilliant.

Well, that was all yesterday and today I started off with another 200 hands of 2c/5c but again I found the 10c/25c games far too tempting. I 'sit out next blind'-ed the 2c/5c tables and put myself on the waiting list for four PL $25 tables (none of this dangerous NL business for the time being).

I'm just a beginner at omaha hl and so I can't say for certain, but the standard at these tables felt okay. The average pot sizes are generally pretty low, as is the players per flop percentage.

There have been times over the last two days where the 2c/5c table I was playing had a larger average pot than some of the 10c/25c tables I was watching. This is partly because I was on them but it does also demonstrate how much tighter these $25 players are.

I played 500 hands of PL $25 and ran pretty well, I felt very comfortable at the tables though which will no doubt tempt me back.

So, a quick summary, in the last two days I have played about 2000 hands of 2c/5c and 500 hands of 10c/25c for a $115 profit (felt like I ran above expectation in both games though).

This brings my total Omaha high low profit to $254.33 for the last seven days. Let's hope it continues...

Next...

2008-06-04T06:03:00.003+01:00

I played 955 hands overnight which finally brings to an end this thoroughly pointless, I mean, enjoyable mission.

Session stats:
Hands... 955
Profit... $23.62
Rate... 124bb/100 hands

I ran pretty well with both cards and opponents tonight (some absolute cretins knocking about), it was hilarious.

So my overall stats:

TOTAL HANDS PLAYED... 10,000
OVERALL PROFIT... $139.05
WIN RATE... 70 BIG BLINDS/100 HANDS

Not bad I guess for a fun little challenge where I wasn't sure whether I'd even make a profit or not (now that would have been embarrassing). 10k hands took a lot longer than I thought though, I honestly thought I'd be done in a couple of days but even 8-tabling as I was at times it took nearly a week. Ridiculous use of time.

If you enjoy poker and have never tried Omaha h/l I really would recommend it. I don't think I've played a less stressful week of poker in my life. But I guess, as always, the stress comes at the higher levels.

Must stop getting 'Phoenixed'

2008-06-04T00:28:00.005+01:00

Downloaded the fuck out of Stand By Me (1986) the other night and watched it for the first ever time this morning. Really enjoyed it, despite having to wait until the end credits to hear the song! Was really impressed with one of the boy’s performance in particular and I privately tipped him to be a star of the future/present. I didn’t recognise him so I Wikipediaed the lad only to find that it was River Phoenix who died of an overdose five years later. Great tip, Nathan!

Was due in to work at the NEC at 5.30pm today but I waited for a bus for 45 minutes which then sat in the rush hour traffic for another 30 so, not atypically, I turned in late - got there some time after 6pm. By then they had someone else in to do the shift so the fuckers sent me packing.

It was only a four hour shift but it still pissed me off a little and I didn’t want the four-bus round trip to be a total waste of my time (unlike the 9k+ hands of 1c/2c Omaha I’ve played in the last four days!). So, with zero dosh in my pockets, I decided to use my charm and my agency ID card (preferably just the card) to find me some free fun at the NEC.

First stop, canteen. As I entered, the first thing that hit me was the noise. The place was full of the public, ‘Must be a concert on, I wonder which one...’ I looked around for clues. It was busy, full of smiley, laughy teenage girls most of whom were accompanied by, and were desperately trying the hide the embarrassment of, their doubly excited mothers. ‘… Ah, Westlife!’

As temporary staff working a full day at the NEC we sometimes get a hot meal for our troubles but we usually get pointed towards the huge pile of sandwiches labelled ‘dry’ which are lovingly tossed aside for us slaves. So for the short four hour shift I had been shipped in for today I wouldn’t have expected even a ten minute drinks break. So, literally five minutes after being effectively sacked before even starting a four hour shift, I naturally felt a little cheeky as I impatiently stood in line for a free public-worthy hot meal.

My conscience had its doubts as I stood in and amongst the honest, money-paying customers and considered backing out, but as I shuffled closer and closer to the food I could see it, I could smell it, I could almost taste it and then my brain finally understood what my stomach had been rumbling on about. The beauty of it was that I had no money on me and so there was zero danger of me crumbling to guilt at the tills and just handing out dosh to save any possible trouble. I literally had nothing to lose so marched on, tray in hand, towards what was quickly becoming dinner time.

I had fish and chips with peas, a side salad, two bread rolls with butter, a healthy (well, deadly…) slice of chocolate gateaux, a diet coke and a coffee. The animal rush of excitement that the sight of, and the smell of and the thought of eating this wonderfully overflowing tray of food had created, easily out powered the weak, human guilt and worriment of moments earlier. And so there was no holding back when it came to till-time and the much anticipated portrayal of a full-time hard-working NEC grafter taking a quick ‘fifteen minutes’ out of his long busy day to grobble down some grub before rushing back to the grind.

I finally reached a very miserable looking till-woman and decided to only show my agency card if I really needed to. My natural wit and charm will win her over, I thought. ‘So…, do you enjoy being a… till-woman here?’ Shit, I panicked. She looked up, bemused, ‘I’m a fucking cashier. And no.’ I quickly pulled out my card and she waved me along in silence. Always go for the card first for fuck’s sake. One must speak only as a last resort.

Finished the food which was amazing (usually is when it’s free - bargain). So, not a wasted trip after all, £11.50 worth of food for a £3 bus ticket. But then I got greedy...

People started heading towards the seating area. Clearly the show was about to start and now I wanted to see it. Well, the food was a piece of piss, how hard could it be to smuggle myself into a Westlife concert? I took a quick look and the security looked worryingly tight. And muscley. They were looking at everybody’s ticket on the way through but fuck it, I've got a magic agency card and not to mention my charm to fall back on…

I walked up to one of the giants guarding the entrance and proudly (and silently) whipped out my card. He looked at me and all I could nervously manage was ‘catering staff’. He laughed, ‘no mate!’, and went onto check the next ticket as I swiftly headed towards the bus station. And home.

So no Westlife for me then but I can’t really complain, I had a good run. And I’m back working there tomorrow as well so I'll have another go. Just hope that same ticket-checker isn’t there. Or the till-woman. Or Westlife.

So, to sum up, good day. No work but free grub. (Actually I could have just said that to start with and spared everyone the details, but oh well, if you've read it all, fair play).

Played another poor session last night which leaves me with the miserable figures of:

Hands… 9045
Profit… $115.43
WR… 64/100

Seem to have tailed off a bit in the last 5k hands but as always I have no idea what I’m doing differently. May actually plot a graph of my progress if I can remember how to use Excel (is that where graphs are made?). I know the general shape will be upwards but it’ll tail off miserably into the shape of a sideways frown towards the end instead of the planned and expected smile.

I need to win $84.57 in the remaining 955 hands at a rate of 9c per hand! It’s impossible but as a disappointed friend of mine told me on MSN, ‘impossibility is no excuse for failure’. He’s right and I’m ashamed.

I’ll do a rundown of every 100 hands from now until the end just in case I get anywhere near.

Not quite sure what to do once this experiment is over. Guess I should probably start living again at some point. Or maybe I could try the same thing with Hold’em and compare the profits made/losses lost and experiences had/hadn’t.

At current rate I’ll have made about $130 in a 10k hand week. Nothing to write home about (well, nothing to even blog about really) but if I could put in a couple of thousand hands a week every week just playing whenever I’ve got a spare minute it could soon add up at the end of the year. And if I did that every year until I’m eighty it could work out to be a nice little pension of a couple of hundred quid or so.

Anyway, can’t be arsed to write any more, I’ll let you know what happens (if anyone’s still reading).

I'm no better than them

2008-06-02T08:31:00.005+01:00

Got to episode 5 of Frasier before cutting the first session of the day short after just 465 hands. Played terribly and got stacked for the first time in over 5000 hands... and then for the second time. And then the third. One of them was a bit of a cooler, flopped house vs flopped quads. Knew he had me on the turn but by then I had a cheeky low draw so was forced to call for my 57 low! Was live but missed.

Made a nice fold a bit later on though which cheered me up a little. I had 77JJ in the bb, flop AA7, I bet and found a reraiser. A7xx is unlikely but possible and something like A24Q gives him a monster to be fair, so out of position I just let him have it. He showed A237 the sicko! Obviously no one at the table could understand my fold, and even after an explaination some of them still couldn't see the obvious precariousnessness of sevens full with no low draw there. (35% expectation against A24Q for example.) Never thought check-folding a flopped house might be the right thing to do...

Got stacked again with A234 on a dream 442 flop vs A4QQ. Turn blank, river Q gave him the scoop but, anyway, enough of the bad beats...

Lost over $6 in those 465 hands which was another big blow:

Total hands... 5986
Overall profit... $89.27
WR... 75/100
Flops seen... 39%

Had some food, potatoes and peas (it's all I had in the house) which was horrible and tried to watch Vicar of Dibley on BBC one. It was shit so decided to get back to the Omaha. With Blades Of Glory on repeat in Media Player I started my longest session to date.

I played pretty poorly again, couldn't seem to make a fold.

[Everyone can and does bet the pot with the nut high in this game and so the winners come from the group of people who make the right folds. The most important example of this is being able to fold the nut low in multi-way pots when you're dead for the high. Similarly, drawing to the low with no high draw in multi-way pots is not good.

There aren't a great many crying calls going on to be honest, not on the river anyway (it's usually pretty easy to spot the nut high) but players lose a lot of money because of their inability to fold the bare low at any stage of the hand and especially for a big bet on the river.]

For the reason above I have found myself folding the nut low a hell of a lot, sometimes even check folding the nut low on a flop if my hand has no high prospects. Basically, if there's a chance I'm getting three-quartered I'll get out. (most of) My opponents at this level do not get away when I'm three-quartering them which is what makes me the winner!

Unfortunately, today I couldn't seem to get away. I got three-quartered a number of times when I really should have been out on the flop. It's stupid really because theoretically I only break even if I make exactly the same calls as the others. (I actually think I make better checks and bets than them as well so I'll still win, just not as much!)

Played 1845 hands and made a relatively small profit for such a ridiculously long session of poker.

Total hands... 7831
Overall profit... $100.63
WR... 64/100
Flops seen... 41%

$200 profit after 10k hands is very unlikely after that session, guess I'll do well to make $150 now but never mind, there's always the next 10k hands!!

Notice the 41% there. Loosening up my range only made for some very difficult decisions post flop. Got excited by flopping some nut straights on lowwy and flushy flops which are just not that good. Will go back to playing as I was but hopefully, this time, with the addition of the 'fold' button.

Peace.

Setback

2008-06-01T08:34:00.002+01:00

Real hungry and proper tired after a long and painful 1k+ hand session. Was forced to fold a lot of rivers early doors and could only break even over the first 500 hands. This sent me stumbling over the halfway mark of 5k hands showing a profit of only $85, $15 short of target. The next 500 hands were a bit better but I still couldn't bring myself back on target. I didn't run particularly well this session and feel I was lucky to show any kind of profit at the end of it.

Total hands played... 5521
Overall profit... $95.33
Win rate... 86 bb/100

Still about $15 short but I'm sure I can pull it back with a good run. Interestingly (well, vaguely...), I saw exactly 37% of flops again. I have played twelve spells of poker in this experiment and in two thirds of them I have seen 37 or 38% of flops. I guess this is the magic number at full ring 1c/2c plo h/l, though I wonder how drastically different the profit would be were I playing 3% looser/tighter... Perhaps 37% is the peak of EV pre flop at these tables. Fuck knows.

Anyway, I think I'm doing okay despite not once hitting my 100/100 target. I'll stick with it and try and find a way to squeeze out that extra little bit of EV. Most of my opponents' post flop play is so poor I'd probably choose to widen my pre flop range before I tightened it. That's something I'll think about and probably gradually introduce.

Some kind of Omaha pokertracker software would be unbelievably helpful here as well. There are still some preflop hands I have questions about but there is a danger that knowing the answers would make the game a bit too mechanical and dull and, dare I say, easy (at this level anyway).

To be fair, in these games, common sense post flop is infinitely more important than pre flop hand selection. I'd say that any player with a bit of brains about them could show a profit playing 100% of hands. (Hello, next experiment sorted!)

Dangerous Minds was the background media for this session. I watched it three and a half times and loved every minute. It failed to produce the results though so I guess it'll have to take a seat on the bench next to Elvis and Inertia Creeps for the time being.

Tomorrow we'll see how Season six of Frasier fares.

Inertia Creeps me out

2008-05-31T22:21:00.004+01:00

Only managed a short 423 hand session where I had some of my worst beats to date. Couple of beauties in there actually. Still, made more progress and I think Massive Attack have put me back on track after the Elvis problems of the last 2k hands.

Total hands... 4010
Total profit... $76.69
Win rate... 96/100

Flop percentage was down to just 31% this session, and is dropping all the time. This is probably partly due to me tightening up my sb limping range. I don't have pokertracker or anything but I would imagine my sb hands have been a leak so far.

Annoyingly my mouse is all Omahaed out, completely fucked so six-tabling is proving very difficult. This, along with Inertia Creeps, started to tilt me in this session.

Taking a break now, partly because of the mouse-tilt but mainly because Coyote Ugly starts at 11.15. Bye.

Mass Atta Omah

2008-05-31T18:19:00.000+01:00

I opened one table pissed but (fortunately, me thinks) fell asleep during the first hand. My SSC was Have I Got News For You on BBC iplayer. Sadly, Clare Balding pissed me off pretty early on and had to turn off.

So with exception of my heavy breathing and the sound of my heart bashing against my ribs at a rate of 1.2k bpm I was left to play the first hand in silence. Instant sleep was an inevitable and not wholly disappointing result. I heard the buzzer reminder and tried to open my eyes to look at the hand but my eye lashes were harder to prize apart than Velcro so I gave up on it.

Total hands... 3587
Total profit... $66.80
Win rate... 93/100

I plan to put in some serious hours today having missed yesterday through no fault of my own. I was blinded by a bright Red Stripe. I'll post later where I hope to have 6k hands under my belt.

Album choice... Mezzanine Massive Attack.