Stanley Casino - Deep Stacked Sunday Poker Tournament

Gaffer sent me an unexpected and welcome text message on Saturday afternoon to let me know that the Stanley Mint Casino in Glasgow were running a £30 Deep Stack poker tournament on Sunday afternoon. I was in the midst of some DIY hell at the time and dreading the thought that it was probably going to take all weekend to complete. The thought of a good, deep stack tourney provided me with all the motivation I needed to beast into the DIY and by 11:55pm it was done.

We set off for the big smoke in glorious sunshine around lunch time and it wasn't long before we were supping a beer and watching the old firm game on TV whilst waiting for the tournament to start. The offer of 4 import beers for a tenner was too good to pass on and we would ultimately sink quite a few more before the afernoon was over.

This was the first week that the Stanley had run the deep stacked Sunday afternoon game and it coincided with an old firm match so the turnout was un-surprisingly a bit low with only 9 players registered.

The game commenced with 15,000 chips, 20 minute blind levels starting at 25/50, yum, delicious...

Within about 20 minutes we had the first drama of the afternoon when one player pushed all in on the river and the player on the button flipped over his cards to reveal a full house, thinking the shove was merely a call of his earlier bet. Drama ensued...

We settled back into play but there was quite an atmosphere at the table for a while after that. The play was good though, the deepstacks giving plenty of room for some fun and games. I setup a pretty tight image after donking off some chips with pocket queens on a straightening board. Just before the first break I picked up Kings and raised pre-flop. The flop brought an Ace and I made a big mistake not putting in a continuation bet to represent the Ace, at the time I thought a slow deliberated check might look more menacing, like I was trying to trap the other player who had position on me. He naturally raised and I went into the tank. My instinct told me he didn't have the Ace and his body language confirmed this but I just couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger and risk my tournament life this early. So I folded and he revealed pocket 10's, more chips donked off. At least my table image was now tighter than a tight thing and this would come in handy a few times later on.

The first hand back after the break I got a good opportunity to put in a nice big raise and pick up 3 or 4 sets of blinds pre flop, which made up for some of the chips lost with the Kings in the previous hand. Play continued and a few players dropped out. Gaffer had a narrow escape against another short stacked player sucking out runner runner Kings to make a set on the river and bust his opponent. However it wasn't to be Gaffer's day when he picked up pocket 10's and feeling the pressure of the escalating blinds shoved his stack into play only to run into me with pocket Kings again, sorry bud.

Three handed and things got interesting. I was about equal in chips with another player who had been playing good solid poker but the chip leader had a big advantage over us and had been playing super wild and aggressive, but we know how to take advantage of that don't we children. So I was reasonably confident that pressurising the solid player and trapping the maniac should get me into the money, and the plan was working, I gradually eased out a slight advantage on the solid player and the maniac was still at it. But then it all went horribly wrong. Perhaps I can blame the 6 continental beers I had quaffed by this point, perhaps not. Either way I made a complete arse of things. I didn't think things through and got punished for it. I picked up King 5 suited and called maniac boy's preflop raise, which by now meant absolutely nothing. The flop came down Ace, 5, 6 and when he put in his standard oversized continuation bet I shoved only to discover that this time our little friend didn't just have an Ace, he had the six as well. Ho Hum, bubbled. What a tosser, I had things under control, knew how to play both the players and was reasonably confident I could eat into the wild man's stack enough to get the better of him and take down the game.

So it was in a beer blurred state of frustration that I stepped back outside into the bright afternoon sunshine with Gaffer to mosey back home and persuade 'er indoors that she should actually be delighted that I was going straight back out to play some more poker in the pub. Well I did, and I won the first game of the night with some devastating heads up play, to come back against a chip leader with a monster stack, and more or less recover my buy-in from the afternoon event. A couple more beers and a curry on the way home, Deep Joy.

This Sunday afternoon poker is an excellent lark and I'd like to make it a regular occurence, all I've got to do is try get 'er indoors to see the light.

I am Iron Man

Last night I finally completed enough games to achieve Iron Man status on Full Tilt poker.

The challenge involved collecting at least 50 iron man points per day for at least 20 days during February. Each $10 Sit and Go that I played equated to 7 points so I effectively had to play 8 x $ 10 Sit & Goes each day.

So what do I get in return for this relentless grinding, well I get a nice little Iron Man icon next to my avatar when I sit down at the virtual felt and I can spend my Iron Man medals on tournament entries or exchange them for free stuff in the Iron Man store.

More importantly though the Iron Man challenge has driven me to play a higher volume of games than I would have normally, and this in turn has led to more profit.... muhahahhaaa.

As is always the case, when I blog about completing a challenge my results go into freefall and last night was no exception. The old bankroll took a bit of a knock and I'm back down to $517. I'm not mad about it though, I made the correct plays and was just the victim of some nasty bad beats. It must be someting like the dreaded cash-out curse that I'm experiencing, lets call it the bloggers curse.

With a bit of luck my new Iron Man status will result in the bullets just bouncing off me and my opponents folding in fear of my elevated status.

Full Tilt Poker - Bankroll Challenge 1 completed

It's been a while since I last posted but I haven't given up on my bankroll building challenge. Since my last post at the beginning of January I played a few more games on Party Poker with little success so my Party bankroll is currently sitting between $500 & $600.

I then discovered I had an unclaimed deposit bonus sitting on Poker Stars so I played a bunch of games over there with mixed results and cleared my bonus. account on Stars is now sitting at just over $100 so it's ripe for a bit of bankroll building in the future.

The good news is that during February I really skrewed the nut and got back to some serious bankroll building activities. I had been itching to get building on my Full Tilt account as my initial impressions of the site were good and the competition reasonably easy. So when I discovered at the begining of February that my initial deposit bonus was due to expire at the end of February I descided it was time to really start busting a gut on Full Tilt. Around this time I also found out about there Ironman challenge and it has proved another good incentive to make sure I play a reasonable number of games each day.

It's been a busy and successfull month. I have had a few ups and downs but have been running really hot recently as you'll see from the graph. At the start of the month I was playing mainly $5 games with the odd $10 mixed in but recently it has been all $10 SNG's with the odd $20 mixed in for good measure.




Running Total: Played 252 / ITM 41% / ROI 17% / Profit $413

That means I've managed to complete my Full Tilt challenge in 65 games less than it took me to achieve the same on Party, and I've done it much more quickly, less than a month this time.

The stats I've just quoted are slightly out because there is $80 of deposit bonuses in there, but there is also a loss of $55 from a player transfer to a friend that I was staking, so the bonuses and the stake almost cancel each other out.

I can thank the Ironman challenge for helping achieve my goal so much more quickly this time as it has forced me to play 8 x $10 SNG's each day. There have been a few missing days when I have had other commitments but I've never managed a month with more than 250 SNG's before. At the start of February I was multi tabling with two tables reasonably comfortably but things tended to take a nosedive when I increased beyond that. Now I am happily multi tabling three tables and the lovely steep section at the end of the graph was achieved running three tables.

What comes next is more work on Full Tilt. I still have one more day of playing to get under my belt before I get my February Iron man medal . My target for March is to go for Iron Man again but by the end of the month to be running $20 tables as the norm and dipping my toe into the odd £30. My bankroll target is to be up to $1,200 by then. And.... I'm going to try and get back into the habit of blogging a bit more regularly again.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year Poker Peeps.

Contrary to popular belief, I am still alive and playing online poker. The euphoria of completing phase one of my Bankroll Boosting challenge didn't result in me jetting off to Vegas, blowing my bankroll and getting a job as a rent boy just to survive, my hourly rate at that would probably be even less than at Poker! Nor did I drown in a lake of Tennants Lager over the Festive period despite giving it a pretty good shot. All the same, I do feel dirty, nasty and riddled with feelings of guilt and inadequacy for not posting in so long. So New Year, new resolutions and at last a new posting...

Since I last posted I have been pursuing my ongoing bankroll challenges and I'll fill you in on all the gory details in a moment. But first a shameless plug for the other activity that has been consuming a large proportion of my time, my new web design business Weblomania. I've been busy with my first comissions and have been really enjoying working for myself. I'm currently busy with a couple of new client sites and working hard marketing the business and trying to fill up the order book. Needless to say if you are looking for a good web designer / developer, give me a shout.

Apologies for the shameless plug, back to the poker...

Party Challenge 2:

Well it had to happen! As soon as I hit the $600 bankroll target things started going a bit Pete Tong. I managed to quickly build up to $655 then proceeded to gradually fritter my way back down to a lowly $438. Since then I've been plugging away at the $5's and $10's gradually working my way back up. So here I am, 87 games into phase 2 of the challenge and I've only actually played three $20's. The bankroll is currently sitting at $587 so I'm nearly back to where I was 5 weeks ago!

Full Tilt Challenge 1:

Slightly better news on the Full Tilt front. I haven't played an awful lot of games on there yet but my results have been very promisng. I've worked my bankroll on FT from $200 up to $298 playing mostly $5.00 games without any drama. That gives me an ITM of 49% and a very respectable ROI of 39%. I'm going to have to crank up the pace on Full Tilt though as I have a bonus to work off and I don't want it expiring on me.

Other Stuff:

I enjoy playing MTT's and have had a little success in them in the past, but hadn't played many recently due to my SNG focus.

During the holidays I spent some time treating myself to a few MTTs and cashed in 2 of the 3 ~850 player $10 tourneys I played and managed a 12th in a 146 man $50 MTT.

I really enjoyed the $50, it's the only MTT at that level that I've played online, I played it as a bit of a Xmas bonus to myself. I felt I played well, was feeling very comfortable going into the last 20 places with an average stack and a good read on quite a few of the players. But I made a bad judgement on a player I thought I had a really good read on and busted just before the final table. Ho Hum, it was fun and slightly profitable.

I've also been playing some short handed Sit and Gos on one of the other poker rooms. The blinds are quite fast and the starting stacks quite shallow so I've been really enjoying the fast, wild pace of them but I've not really won or lost anything on them, they've just been an amusing distraction.

So now it's the New Year and time to knuckle down to the challenge again, wish me luck...