Bubble Boy

I only played one game on Saturday night this week, busy pissing around with other nonsense. After my recent successes in live and online Multi Table Tournaments I feel my MTT play has improved quite a bit and I want to play a couple of $10-$20 MTTs each week to refine my strategies and hopefully boost my Bankroll.

I got myself mentally and physically prepared, kids in bed, cup of coffee at the ready etc.. and went off hunting to see if I could find any tourney's that I liked the look of. I quickly found something rather interesting on William Hill. Two £10 MTTs, both with £1,500 Guarenteed prize funds, starting at exactly the same time. It must have been a cock up by whoever scheduled the tournaments but I wasn't complaining as it looked like both would have a significant overhang. I signed up for one and it duly started with 91 players and a 50% prize fund overhang....great stuff, this tourney would usually run with around 150 player to cover the prize pool.

I played my usual tourney strategy and concentrated hard on all the other players to get a handle on their playing styles and betting patterns. Everything was going to plan, by the first break about half the players were gone and after the break they started falling even quicker as the blinds started to get pretty big. Sitting in 8th position with 14 players left (10 players would get paid) with about 7,500 chips (2 leaders had about 20,000) I was feeling pretty good, the leaders had big stacks but their play didn't leave me in awe. The blinds were big and I knew it wouldn't take too much to be up there challenging. I was on the BB and everybody folded around to the button who was on about 5,500 chips he made a standard late position raise making it 1,800, the small blind folded. So there I am with him out chipped, looking down at A-10s, and positive he is just trying to steal my blind. So what does a guy do???? SHOVE.... 7,500 chips in the middle, cmon buddy let's see you push me around. Well he goes and calls me with J-Qo and the rest is history, my chipstack is depleted and I'm out a few hands later. Doh!!!

I don't like bad beat stories, and to be honest this wasn't a bad beat. I was 63% to his 37% so I would make the same call again. But it does kinda bug you when it happens. Doh! 2 hours down the drain.

Why have I decided to scribble all this down. At the time I was a bit frustrated but that quickly passed. The main reason for blogging this is that I nearly made the money in a 100ish player MTT again. If I had made the money that would have been the 3rd this month. Things are definately moving the right way. Just keep studying boy... you're getting closer.

Soft Sit & Gos on Titan Poker

Titan Poker was one of the first poker sites that I strarted using when I started playing poker online back in April. Crikey, was it really only 9 months ago. I can't even remember what it was that attracted me to Titan. Was it an attractive sign up bonus, a special tournament or was it Joanna Krupa, yea it was probably the lovely Joanna.

Well anyway.... I spent the best part of a day tidying up my Poker Tracker database (manually importing a ton of missing tournament summaries, only just worked out how to..) and it reminded me that I had been doing pretty well in the $10 Sit & Gos on Titan a few months ago. But what happened, I haven't played there in months. I can't rememeber why I stopped playing there in favour of other sites so I thought it was about time I dropped in and tried their $10 S&G's again to see how they felt. I was expecting my results to be better than they were a few months ago because my game has definately improved and I wasn't disappointed.

I chose to play their $10 - 5 player Sit & Go well over a couple of days I've now played 5 of them.... and won 4. These have to be about the easiest Sit & Gos I've played. Reflecting on this I think the Titan $10 S&G's have a couple of good things going for them. You start with 1,500 chips and the blinds at 5 / 10 so the game isn't quite as fast as on other sites at the same level. This therefore shifts the balance away from luck towards skill a little bit and I think that maybe why I found this game so easy, relaxing and profitable.

I'm definately starting to feel that it's nearly time to try moving up to $20 Sit & Gos. I think Titan might be a good place to start. Got to work on my bankroll a bit more first though. I finished November $300 up on the month, December is currently $400 up, if I can finish December $600 up on the month then I think I'll start playing some $20's in January.

Poker Stars Sit & Go

I've not played much poker this week as I've been off work with an absess on my leg which was very painful. Once I had recovered enough to drag myself through to the computer and sit down without grimacing too much, I was itching for a few games.

I haven't played much on Poker Stars all though I love their software and their tournament structures. It's just a site I've never done very well on my account balance was more or less wiped out on it. I decided to put a few quid into my account and try a few games to see if the improvements in my play recently would lead to better results. I decided a $10 Sit & Go was in order and I rather fanceied the 18 player one. Well what do you know... I only went and won it. Yipee $72 dollars... kerching.. I think I'll have to come back and play some more on Stars.

BIshopton Bounty Night

Last Sunday was the inaugural Bishopton Bounty night downt 'local. A couple of the Poker regulars and I decided it would be fun to hold a deepstack bounty game as the games we always play are pretty short stacked. The three of us met up a couple of nights before to plan things, I was assigned the role of Banker, mainy I think so I'd be the one that got carted off if we got busted by the rozzers, lol!. So if I was the banker I guess that makes Andy the professor and Nori the suicide King.

The game was a £15 Buy in, with £5 of that counting as a bounty. Everybody playing received 5,000 starting chips and one special bounty chip which had to be surrendered to the player that bust you out. The word was put out about the big game, we were expecting about 25 plaeyrs.

Come the big day the three of us got down to the pub early to set up the tables and chips. It had been raining solid for about a week and the weather on the big day was even wetter than the preceding days, consequently we didn't get quite as good a turnout as expected.... and the players had to contend with an obstacle course of cunningly placed forklift truck pallets serving as stepping stones to gain entry to our exclusive event. Our surroundings weren't quite as plush as the Bellagio as our poker venue was in the midst of a refit but 15 players braved the weather and other obstacles to sit down to what turned out to be an excellent evening.

The finishing positions:

1st Kenny.M
2nd Laurie.M
3rd Cyril.S
4th Mr Moore Snr
5th Richie.S
6th Grant.L
7th James.G
8th Andy.M
9th Lesley
10th Nori
11th Callum
12th Mr.G
13th Graeme.A
14th Ian
15th Ian.P

All in all an excellent night...we shall have to do it again

A profitable afternoon

I sure am glad I wrapped up my last blog entry promptly and concentrated on my multi-tabling. I came 3rd in the $10 Sit & Go and won $20, and to be honest I should probably finished higher but I donked off a pile of chips while concentrating on the other table.

It's the other table that I'm proud of though. It was a £20 MTT with a Guarenteed prize fund of £1,500 on William Hill. There were 67 players and I ended up coming 3rd and walking away with a whopping £180. Woohoo. What's even more miraculous is that I was down to 565 chips with the blinds sitting at 50/100 and still over 40 players in the game, bit of a monumentous comeback.

What an unpresidented couple of days. Either my new Tournament stategy is good or I'm on a very lucky roll. My profit last month was just a shade over $300, with my game at the Gutshot accounting for the majority of that. But already on the 2nd December my profit for December so far is sitting at $448 with a 40% ITM & 515% ROI for MTTs. I just hope I don't spunk it all away before the end of the month.

Note to self.... Your not ready to go up a level yet, just keep following your strategy, just keep plugging away and don't get cocky, you're still a donkey at heart.

Well my heart is still pounding from the adrenalin of the last game. I'm off round the pub for a couple of pints to calm me down. Only a couple mind, as I want to try abnother £10 - £20 MTT tonight.

A Good Week

Firstly, let me apologise for all the typos and gramatical errors in my last monster posting, I was rushing out the house and getting hurried along by her that must be obeyed, so it was written in a bit of a rush and I never proofed it.

Since my last posting I've had a pretty good week. I started off by putting $30.00 into my Bet365 account. It got a bit decimated while playing pissed on a bad wireless connection in France a couple of months ago. I played two $10.00 10 player Sit & Gos and parlayed my $30 up $90 with a 1st and a 2nd place from two games.

I played a few games on PKR and ended up slightly ahead there in my Heads up games and took a first place in a $3.00 10 player Sit & Go

The result I am most pleased with though, and my best online MTT finish to date, was in a $10 Double Shootout on William Hill on Saturday night. Against a field of 100 players I took down 2nd place for a payout of $200. Wohoo. On a side note, the latest update to the William Hill Poker room is really nice, quite a few improvements to what was already quite a nice poker room.

Well must dash, I'm multitabling at the moment in a $10.00 S&G and £20 MTT. Things are starting to hot up in the S&G and I'm sitting in 2nd place......must focus....must concentrate....cya