Diary of a Poker addict

Stanley Casino - Deep Stacked Sunday Poker Tournament

2008-04-28T19:50:00.004+01:00

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

2008-02-26T16:40:00.002Z

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

2008-02-24T19:15:00.005Z

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

2008-01-08T20:39:00.000Z

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...

My hourly rate playing poker online sucks

2007-11-24T10:56:00.000Z

It's not exactly a huge surprise that my hourly rate playing poker online sucks, but at least I can measure it and try and improve it as I work through my next two challenges, and that's a start I guess.

In this post I'll start delving into some of the statistics relating to my 1st Bankroll Boosting challenge on Party Poker, watch out for a few more postings on stats coming in the next few days too.

The eagle eyed among you may spot some slight discrepancies in my stats, this is due to a difference of 5 games between my two information sources, poker tracker and my Excel bankroll spreadsheet. This has been caused by playing the odd game on my laptop and not capturing the hand historys results for poker traker. The difference equates to 5 games and a profit variation of just $10, so the stats are close enough for me not to worry about trying to correct them.

I've been using an excel spreadsheet to track my results more or less since I started playing poker online and I continue to use it even though I now use Poker Tracker to record everything and am reasonably comfortable finding my way around it. I log every game in my spreadsheet and it gives me a really nice snapshot of where I am at. I start a new page in the spreadsheet each month, or with each new challenge and have a summary page at the front that errr... summarises everything. If you don't alreaqdy use a spreadsheet or Poker Tracker to track your game, you should. Feel free to download a copy of my poker spreadsheet and use it yourself. I'll post a video tutorial on Poker Tracker sometime soon as it is a bit daunting at first, but the data it can give you is just awesome.

The challenge took approximately 2.6 months, during which I played for 163 hours. That equates to approximately 1 month's work in a 9-5 job. After all that effort my hourly rate equates to $2.48. To put that in perspective the national minimum wage in the UK, expressed in dollars is $11.38. To feel comfortable enough to become a professional poker player I would want to be earning £75,000 a year which would equate to an hourly rate of approximately $75. For my next two challenges I need to be looking to increase my hourly rate rather dramatically, lets set a target of say $4.00 per hour on my Full Tilt Challenge and $7.50 on phase 2 of my Party challenge. In short I need to play more hours, with more simultaneous tables, at higher levels and achieve better results. Should be easy then!!!!!

That's it for this quick post but I'll post some more statistics on phase 1 of my challenge soon, so we can drill into the profitability of different game types and start looking at hand ranges, positional play etc..

Till next time..

Poker Bankroll Building - New Challenge Commences

2007-11-23T18:27:00.000Z

Now that I have completed stage 1 of my bankroll building challenge and boosted my bankroll on Part Poker from $200 to $600 I am ready to progress to my next challenge. However for the next stage I am going to run two seperate challenges.

My initial challenge was inspired by Alex Martin's excellent "Bankroll Boosters" article in the September 2007 edition of Inside Poker magazine. The first half of my new challenges is to move onto the second phase of this and boost my Party Poker bankroll from $600 to $1,200. The second half of my challenge is to repeat phase one on another poker site.

The rules are as follows...

Full Tilt Challenge 1
I have deposited $200 on Full Tilt Poker and am going to work it up to $600 playing $5 and $10, 9 man Sit and Go tables. There are various reasons why I've decided to do this on Full Tilt including.

Great 100% deposit bonus (could be worth $200 to me as that's what I initially deposited)
Site is always busy
The software is really nice
The games I've tried so far seem reasonably good, the players are more preictable and passive than the loonies I keep encountering on Party
The blind structure is a bit slower than Party which will favour skillfull play more then luck

I have already started playing a few $5 games on Full Tilt and my bankroll is already up to about $240 with an ROI of around 40%, when I get it to $250 I'll start testing out the $10 tables.

My goal is to maintain a better ROI than my initial Party Challenge and reach my profit target in significantly fewer games than the 316 it took me on Party.

Party Challenge 2
My target on Party Poker is to boost my $600 bankroll there up to $1200 by playing $20, 10 man Sit and Go tables. The target timescale is 2 months and 300 games with an ROI of 10% (which will be tough if I'm running two challenges concurrently)

I will provide a little more detail on both challeges as I start posting about my progress in them. I will also be posting a review of Full Tilt and some detailed stats, analysis and strategy articles over the coming days and weeks.

In the meantime if you have any questions, suggestions, comments or abuse... just leave a comment below. If anyone wants to join me in my challenge and try it too I would be delighted to accept the challenge, although I won't be going for a Tank vs Dale mental endurance marathon. If you haven't tried Full Tilt or want to Join me click the Full Tilt banner at the top right of my Blog and claim your 100% deposit bonus.

Wish me luck, Here goes....

Poker Bankroll Building - Phase 1 Completed

2007-11-23T00:33:00.000Z

Woohoo...

I've just got time for a really quick posting before I head off to bed. As you can see from the title I've just completed phase 1 of my bankroll building challenge. I haven't had a chance to play online much over the last week but tonight I managed to squeeze in 6 x $6 SNG's and finished in the money in 4 of them with 2 x 1st and 2 x 2nd.

Running Total: Played 316 / ITM 41% / ROI 15% / Profit $415.40

That concludes phase 1 of my challenge, tomorrow I will start two new challenges.

Check back over the next few days for a flurry of postings containing statistics, analysis, strategy, advice and the low down on my next two poker challenges. If there is anything you particularly want me to post about leave me a comment.

Holla

High Stakes Poker - Sammy Farha vs Jamie Gold

2007-11-20T14:40:00.000Z

Oh my god, this show is just so awesome, each new episode sets a new standard in TV poker. This episode should be re-named the Sammy Farha show as we see lots of action between Sammy and 2006 World Series of Poker winner, Jamie Gold.

Both these players love to gamble and like to talk a lot during the hand to get reads on their opponents, well you'll see a mastercalass in this episode. Raisy Daisy...

If the video panel below doesn't show up properly use the links below to watch the videos on PokerTube.

High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 13 - Part 1/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 13 - Part 2/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 13 - Part 3/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 13 - Part 4/4

High Stakes Poker - Jamie Gold gets it All in

2007-11-15T23:48:00.000Z

The latest episode of High Stakes Poker certainly lives up to its name with an all in confrontation between WSOP (World Series of Poker) 2006 winner Jamie Gold and regular Big Game player Patrick Antonius.

The buy in for this series of High Stakes is $500,000 per player so these guys are playing with seriously life changing sums of money, yet Patrick looks as cool as cucumber as he casually calls Jamie's All In creating the largest pot in televised poker history.

This episode also sees the tensions rise as Sammy Farha starts to needle the other players a bit. One thing is for sure, this show is just going from strength to strength. I can't wait to see next week's episode. The sparks are surely going to fly...

High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 12 - Part 1/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 12 - Part 2/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 12 - Part 3/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 12 - Part 4/4

Pub Poker League - Weblomaniac takes it down

2007-11-15T10:50:00.000Z

No online poker yesterday as it was local pub tournament night. I was sitting in second place in the Bishopton Poker League, just one point behind the leader so I went into last night's game determined to play well and try as hard as I could to win the game and move up to the top spot in the leaderboard. I would have to play a good game against the current leader though as he's a good player.
We had 11 players last night, so both our beautiful home made tables were in use and the standard of play was great. It's been getting stronger every week to be honest and you can see changes in individual players games as they introduce new moves into their repetoir.

Early on I played tight and tried not to get into too many dangerous pots. I picked up pocket kings quite early on and upgraded them to a set when a third one came down on the flop so that boosted my stack a bit.

Gradually the players got whittled down and we merged onto one table. With a couple of players quite short stacked I was sitting slightly below average with 4,500 chips when the average stack was 5,500. I luckily picked up pocket kings again, raised it pre-flop, hit another king on the flop to make a set and bet it. I checked the turn hoping my opponent would read that as wekenss and bet in to me on the river, which he obligingly did, only for me to re-raise him. Bingo, I sent a player to the rail, took down a nice big pot and nearly doubled my stack. With a bit of monetum and some chips behind me I took down the next two pots with marginal hands that came good and was now sitting on a perfectly respectable stack, enough to take me deep into the final table.

The field thinned and I took out the bubble player and went into the heads up battle with a significant chip lead against a strong player with lots of casino and poker club experience. I was reasonably confident because my heads up play isn't usually too shabby and I had a great chip advantage. But my opponent played really well he seemed to always manage to get out of the way of my genuine raises or significantly re-raise my opportunistic raises. He made a great comeback, took the chip lead and had me starting to wonder if I had a tell that he had spotted. I then lucked out on him re-raising all in on a flop that he had bet at. I was pretty sure his bet no the flop was a bluff so it was sickening when he flipped over middle pair to my unpaired A-x. But like the donkey that I am, I rivered an Ace and inflicted a rather sickening bad beat on him.

A little while later I limped into a pot from the big blind with 7-4 off suit only for a 7 to come down on the flop, which I bet, then another 7 on the turn. I get some more chips in and am reluctantly called. I now have a massive chip lead and I know my opponent is going to be shoving at every opportunity so I need to be careful not to double him up, but the blinds are big enough that I can't let him steal the blinds with impunity either.

The final hand was a toughy, I can't remember the exact hands but the flop was something like 4-5-J. I had paired my 5 and was last to act. My opponent shoved and I went into the tank. I knew he could be shoving with pretty much anything but he had actually had the goods on some of the earlier shoves that I had stood up to. I finally decided there was a chance my 5 might be good, I had a King as well so I had a strong kicker and an overcard. If I win the hand I take down the game, If I lose the hand I double him up but still have the chip advantage. I call and he reveals his cards, he's paired the 4 and doesn't improve his hand on the turn or river.

I took first place in the game, moved up to first position in the league table and took home a few quid into the bargain, Happy Days...

I need to be careful next week though, only two more league games to play and my main opponent, The Silver Fox is within easy striking distance.

Party Poker - Bankroll Building Update

2007-11-13T22:08:00.000Z

It seems that everytime I post an update on my Party Poker bankroll building challenge the poker gods decide to pull the rug from under me. Last time I posted I had just worked my way back up from a bit of a bad run and no sooner had I posted than it happened again!

To be fair, it wasn't all luck or variance, I don't think I was playing my "A" game. So a bit of adjustment to my agression levels and a bit more grinding and I'm nearly back to where I was last time.

It feels like the challenge is taking forever, but I keep telling myself I'm nearly there. I can't wait to hit the $400 profit as I want to move onto stage 2 of the challenge and I also have a new challenge that I want to get started on. I'll reveal more about the new challenge once I get this one cracked.

Stay on target....nearly there.

Running Total: Played 300 / ITM 40% / ROI 12% / Profit $331.40

$500,000 Buy In on High Stakes Poker

2007-11-11T13:55:00.000Z

The stakes have risen to a staggering $500,000 buy in on my favourite Poker TV show, High Stakes Poker. This show has always been entertaining and exciting to watch because of the high stakes and the atmosphere at the table. The atmosphere and chat at the table is usually pretty friendly, often amusing and always insightful, some of the moments I enjoy the most are when Phil Hellmuth or MIke Matasou lose it at the table.

In this particular episode the buy in has been increased to $500,000 so we are promised pots in excess of $1 Million dollars getting contested by the familiar faces including Doyle Brunson, Barry Greenstein, Sammy Farha, Jamie Gold, Patrick Antonius, David Benyamine, Antonio Esfandiari and Guy La Lauberte founder of Cirque de Soliel.

Fascinating viewing, watch episode 11 from series 4 of High Stakes poker below. I'll post links to the next episode the minute it comes online as it alledgedly contains an all-in confrontation between Jamie Gold and an insta call from Patrick Antonius.

High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 11 - Part 1/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 11 - Part 2/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 11 - Part 3/4
High Stakes Poker Season 4 - Episode 11 - Part 4/4

Getting Closer

2007-11-04T19:09:00.000Z

It's about 3 weeks since I last posted and despite my silence I've still been grinding away at the $10 Sit & Go tables on Party Poker, it's just that I haven't really had anything terribly exciting to blog about.

When I last posted I was quite upbeat because I felt I had finally broken free of the $200 profit plateaux that I seemed to be stuck at. Well it turns out that my optimism was to be short lived as I slid back down to the $200 barrier and then went slightly through it in the games that followed my last post.

Since then it's been up and down a couple of times so I decided to just keep my head down. 75 games further on and I feel I better update the blog or it will look like I've given up!

The profits are now up to $356 so I think I've finally shaken off the curse of the $200 barrier and I'm getting tantalisingly close to my $400 profit target. If my next session or two go well I will hopefully be able to cruise up to and through the $400 mark and then I can start dipping my toe into the $20 SNGs

Most of my play over the last few weeks has been on two tables simultaneously and I now feel pretty cmofortable playing two at once. I've even tried running 4 x $5.00 tables at once to get a feel for that.

I have also opened up an account on Full Tilt and deposited $200 in there. I'll post a bit more info on my decision to open a Full Tilt account and a little review and comparisson with Party Poker in the coming days. Suffice to say though, my main reason for opening an account there was so I could start enjoying the benefits of a bit of rakeback. More on that next time though.

Running Total: Played 254 / ITM 41% / ROI 15% / Profit $356.90

Multi Table Novice

2007-10-12T15:25:00.000+01:00

Since my last posting I have been cautiously multi tabling. I had previously felt reasonably comfortable playing a couple of tables simultaneously but my results had not been good. Whether that was down to variance or because I wasn't able to focus on the other player's styles and betting patterns, I'm not sure.

When things are running smoothly at the $10 games I can cash in about 50% of the games I play so I set myself some rules, a stop loss if you will. I would play 2 tables at once and if I didn't cash in one of the games I would revert to single tabling until I had recovered the two lost buy ins. If I cashed in at least one of the games I would continue playing 2 tables.

I also mentioned last time that I seemed to be stuck on a plateau at around $200 profit and was going to try and be even more patient at the tables as I felt I had perhaps been a little impatient.

Well the batch of games I've played over the last few days have seen me consistently cashing whilst multi tabling and I've broken away from my £200 plateau, so I'm a happy boy. Of the 2 x 2 table sessions I played last night I picked up 2 x 1st out of the 4 games. So I'm delighted, that's another little mental hurdle cleared.

Running Total: Played 170 / ITM 45% / ROI 18% / Profit $287.40

Life is Good

2007-10-12T14:29:00.000+01:00

It's now 2 weeks since I left the grind of the rat race and I have to say I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Today is an excellent case in point. I had an excellent sleep last night, got up felling refreshed then walked my youngest daughter to nursery. I then sauntered at a leisurely pace towards the train station and hopped on the first available train into Glasgow.

Arriving in the city my first priority was to find a nice comfy couch at Starbucks and read some more of this month's particularly interesting Poker Pro Europe magazine, whilst enjoying a coffee and a muffin. Bliss, no dashing to an office or endless meetings for me today.

Then it was off to Borders where I picked up a my highly anticipated copy of Des Wilson's new book Ghosts at the Table and a few other interesting looking new poker titles. A few more errands and it was back home in time for lunch.

This week I have been working on a website for a wedding photographer, the site looks great and the effort I put into the Search Engine Optimisation is already starting to pay off with the site ranking 26th out of 1.3 million.

I have also found some time to work on my secret poker site this week and am gettign a good feeling of acomplishment and satisfaction as it starts coming together. I can't wait to share more info with you and start enrolling some beta testers.

Next week I have another website to build for a new client. It's quite a simple one and should only take a couple of days but it's going to look good, the design concept I've got is really sweet.

At the moment life is good and I'm really enjoying the freedom of being at home and in control of my own destiny. I guess the honeymoon period is nearly over though. I'm feeling reasonably chilled and refreshed and I need to start focusing building some revenue streams over the coming weeks.

$200 Barrier

2007-10-07T11:37:00.000+01:00

It's been all quiet on the blog for a few days but I've still been plodding away. As always not getting through as many games as I would like to. It's difficult to find the time with a family, young kids and the pre-occupation of trying to make a living.

I've played another 12 games since my last post and seem to have found myself stuck at around the $200 profit mark. I arrived at this point with great momentum and hoped to power through it onto $300 and beyond. But I seem to be stuck, one step forward, two steps back. From the last 12 games I've picked up 3 x 3rd, 1 x 1st, 1 x 2nd.

Running Total: Played 152 / ITM 42% / ROI 15% / Profit $205.40

I think a little lack of patience has crept into my game. I'm going to tighten up a bit over the next few games and see if that improves things again.

Humorous Disconnections

2007-10-03T11:41:00.000+01:00

I played 5 games on Tuesday and even had a bash at multi tabling again. The multitable experience was a bit frantic as I am currently focusing hard on making really good notes on all the players, capturing all cards that get shown along with level, position, hand result and how it was played. I guess a lot of better players can just watch the game and remember all these details for each player but I find the act of making the note and the fact I have all the players notes open simultaneously while I play helps me get a great read on my opponents. The multi-tabling was frantic because I was struggling to keep up to speed with my note taking. I managed a 3rd and a 5th playing two tables simultaneously so not bad.

The most notable thing about yesterdays games though was the last Sit and Go of the night. The first player to bust out did so on the second hand. I picked up a nice hand a few hands later and won a few chips boosting my stack to 2640 chips, about a 32% gain on my stack. Then my connection went down. This didn't worry me at first as we were only about half way through level one and I now had an above average stack. My connection has been going down intermittantly recently but usually for never more than a minute or two, but last night it went down and didn't show any signs of coming back. I settled back and started reading a magazine whilst waiting for it to come back.

After an hour my connection came back and I logged in to see what had happened, fully expecting to have been blinded away in 5th or 6th place. I requested a hand history email of the last 12 hands and started to read it. Wow four players left, but I only had 140 chips and am all in on the Small Blind for 140 chips the blinds were 200/400. So I was going to get blinded out in 4th, hang on, Dealing Hole Cards [6d,6c] and they held up, now up to 280 chips. The next interesting hand happened when the Big Blind got back to me, I'm all in for 280 chips and get 2 callers. Dealing Hole Cards [5d, 7d], Flop [3c, Jh, 5c], Turn [5s] River [2c] and I triple up to 840 with a set of 5's.

Compared with the other stacks (7400, 8260, 3500) I'm hideously short and the other players, particularly the guy with 3,500 chips, must surely have the sense to just wait until I get blinded out as the blinds are just about to go to 400/800, but no, a fight ensues, the 3,500 chip dude busts and I pick up 3rd in a game that I was only present in for the first 5 hands. You gotta laugh.

I was going to try and post a nice pretty hand history but none of the hand history viewers would do what I wanted them to and the format of the e-mail histories from Party aren't compatible with a lot of them, so you've had to put up with my narrative description. This has however got the cogs in the entrepreneurial corner of my brain twirling a bit and I've just gone and purchased 3 new domains that would be ideal for a rather special new kind of hand history viewer. I feel some rampant scribbling and thinking coming on :-)

Back to the challenge, Tuesday was OK but not great. Played 5 got 3 x 3rd.

Running Total: Played 140 / ITM 42% / ROI 16% / Profit 197.40

Longest Sit & Go yet

2007-10-02T10:33:00.000+01:00

I only played two games on Monday night and one of them turned into a bit of a marathon. The game went to 163 hands, that's the longest $10 Sit & Go I've played, I had to take a little break after it as it left me a bit frazzled. Unluckily I went card dead heads up and only managed to take second.

Running Total: Played 135 / ITM 41% / ROI 16% / Profit $192.40

September Challenge Results

2007-10-01T10:03:00.000+01:00

I've reached the end of September and it's not a huge surprise that I haven't managed to hit the targets I set myself for my challenge. It's been pretty obvious for the last week or so that I was struggling to get enough games in and the bad run early in the challenge certainly didn't help things. I did finsh on a high though, check out the nice upward direction on the graph below.

Final Results: Played 133 Games / ITM 41% / ROI 16% / Profit $184.40

I am not disheartened though, the challenge has been good for me. I feel my game is a lot more disciplined now and because I am sticking predominantly to one game type and level on just one site I have been able to get into a consistant playing style and therefore get more of a feel for my own style, strategy and that of my opponenets. Happy Days.

I have learnt that it's difficult to grind out a high volume of games if only single tabling and only playing after a day at work which means I can't get started until the kids are in bed, usually about 9:30pm. I'm rearing to try multi-tabling again and I'll definatley give it a tentative shot again in the next few days, but if I'm not achieving > 30% ITM & > 10% ROI I will revert to single tabling again.

I certainly finished the challenge with a great run at the $11 x 10 player games on Party Poker and go forward feeling really comfortable at this level. I achieved 62% ITM / 93% ROI / $164 Profit in that last run of 16 games and am delighted, it certainly makes up for the frustration earlier in the month.

At the start of my challenge I said I was going to get stuck into the books and training videos but in truth I've found myself only really doing that when things haven't been going so well. I think they help to restore my confidence when it takes a dent and re-affirm things I already know. When things are going well the pressure to get more games in means I fire up another SNG rather than taking some time to study. I am aware that there are books I still want to read, books I want to go back over and a ton of great videos I want to watch so I need to try and put aside a bit more time to study even when things are going well.

I mentioned in an earlier post that there could be an argument for playing on until the 6th October as I didn't start my challenge right at the beginning of September. I am going to freeze my results there in my bankroll spreadsheet for September and start a new page to record October to keep my records consistent with previous months, however I am going to take a copy of the sheet and continue to update it, so I guess the challenge isn't strictly over. My challenge was inspired by an article by Alex Martin in Inside Poker magazine which suggested two months to grow to $600 bankroll in $10 games, so I'm going to keep going and follow the goals in the magazine. To be honest I was pushing it a bit by trying to do the whole challenge in one month, but you know what they say, shoot for the stars and all that.

So, onwards an upwards. How long will it take me to reach $400 profit? Can I do it by the 6th?

Time's Running Out

2007-09-30T10:15:00.000+01:00

Today is the last day of September, the time to complete my challenge is running out.

I played 7 games on Friday and Saturday, cashed in 4 of them. One of them was just a $3 game on PokerStars though for light relief.

Running Total: Played 130 / ITM 41% / ROI 13% / Profit $147.40

Not Playing Enough!

2007-09-28T10:46:00.000+01:00

Wednesday was my last day at work and Bishopton Poker League night so I didn't play any online Poker. I placed third in the poker league game tonight, and should have finished higher but I made a bad call, knowing I was almost certainly behind to bust out in 3rd. I did win a cheeky little cash game after the league game though.

I had hoped to get a good number of games in on Thursday and Friday but there is some work I need to get through first. I spent most of Thursday working away inside Second Life and only managed to play one online game in the evening. I did win it though so that's helped the ROI a bit more.

Running Total : Played 123 / ITM 40% / ROI 10% / Profit $107.80

It's unlikely I will get any games in on Friday until the evening so my 200 game / 20% / $400 profit target is looking in grave jeoperdy. There are a couple of things that could help.

1) My strike rate in the $11 games since I started playing them again is excellent, if I can maintain that kind of rate I may reach my $400 target without needing to play 200 games. I've played 7 games since I started back at the $11's and have picked up 2 x 3rd, 1 x 2nd, 2x 1st. That's 5 out 7 cashes which is an ITM of 71% and an ROI of 120%. That's a pretty exceptional rate, but it is a tiny sample size and I don't expect it to continue. Maybe it's things just balancing out after the terrible run I had a few weeks ago.

2) When an entrepreneur is challenged they will usually look to ways to bend or re-write the rules to their advantage in order to succeed. Well, although I called my challenge my "September Challenge" I didn't technically start until the 6th September so it could be argued that I can keep running until midnight on the 5th October.

NH - GG - GL - GFY

2007-09-26T00:43:00.000+01:00

What a slacker, I only managed two games tonight but I'm really pleased with my play. Everything felt totally in control and I took first place in one of the games, so another positive step forward for my ROI.

Running Total: Played 122 / ITM 39% / ROI 7%
/ Profit $68.80

No update tomorrow as it's Bishopton Poker League night and my last day at work so I might have a light libation to celebrate. I should manage to get a more respectable number of games in on Thursday, the first day of my new life, even though I've got a few things I need to do.

Onwards and Upwards...

New Beginnings

2007-09-25T20:28:00.000+01:00

I've hinted a few times on my blog that there is something going on in my life that may change things a bit, well it's finally time to spill the beans.

Tomorrow is my last day in the corporate rat race. I decided back in January that I would make some pretty big changes in my life this year. I have been in the same job as Development Director for an Internet Entertainment company for the last twelve years and it's time to move on. In fact, more than move on, it's time for a whole new chapter in my life.

I have been offered a few jobs in London but to be honest I'm looking for a complete change, so three months ago I handed in my notice and started tentatively planning the my future.

Most normal people would make sure they had a new job all lined up before leaving a perfectly good, highly paid position. Well, I've never been one for doing things the conventional way so I don't have another job lined up and I don't have an absolutely concrete plan for what comes next. But somewhere between my dreams and my tentative plans lies my future. It's going to be fun seeing what it holds.

The dream...

Well I love the Internet/Technology and Poker. I'm very good at one of them and still a struggling student of the other, see if you can figure out which is which :-). If I could find a way to make a living on my own from one of these passions it would be great. If I could find something that combined both, then that would be the dream.

From now until Christmas I am going to chill out and let all the stress and hassle of my previous existence fade away whilst I try to figure out exactly what's next. If by Christmas I am getting signals that I can make my own way as an Internet Developer / Entrepreneur or start earning a reasonable amount from Poker (not necessarily just by playing) then I will be able to go into 2008 a happy man with some clear plans and targets. If on the other hand I can't, then I'll be starting to search for a new job in the New Year. Before anybody flames me, and before you ask, I am under no illusion that I could replace my previous salary with earnings from playing poker. I've a very long way to go before I could even consider that, and I suspect I may never be good enough.

With a family, kids and a pretty chunky motgage to support I know a lot of my friends have views of me that range from mild bemusment to thinking I'm being pretty irresponsible, but I have to do this. If I had continued as I was I would have gone completely round the bend sooner or later. If by Christmas I'm starting to pull in a the beginnings of an income from my own ventures then great, if not, I still have options, even if it means going back to the rat race again.

The Tentative Plan...

The logic behind the plan initially is to build up multiple revenue streams. In other words I'm going to try a few things that in isolation might not make a massive amount but combined could be enough. The broad areas I'll be covering are Internet Development / Second Life Development / Poker

As a developer I have some projects of my own that I will be pursuing but I will also be seeking to sell my services in order to pay the bills until I can get some of my own projects running.

The first of my personal projects is a very groovy new poker website that offers something pretty unique. It's already about half built and I will divulge more soon as I'll be needing some poker enthusiasts to give me feedback and help me shakeout any bugs. Watch this space.

I also plan to spend some time improving my poker game and learning more about the poker industry as I am sure there must be openings in this burgeoning industry that somebody with my business, technical and ahem.... playing skills could extract some +EV from.

The Reality...

It's been a while since I've really looked forward to something but I have to say I'm really looking forward to waking up on Thursday morning knowing it is the first day of my new life. Yes, it's scary. I have no job, no income and a family to support, but I've got everything covered for about 6 months so I can afford to spend the next 3 months experimenting and laying the foundations for the next chapter. I feel liberated...

Finally, it goes without saying, that if you need the assistance of a shit hot web developer and poker nut then gimme a yell. Or should that read a nutty web developer and shit poker player. I guess time will tell.

To be Continued...

Monday Night

2007-09-25T00:24:00.000+01:00

I only managed 4 games tonight but I was back at the $11 x 10 man SNGs and the results were pretty respectable. I picked up 3 cashes out of 4 games with 1 x 2nd and 2 x 3rd.

Running Total: Played 120 / ITM 39% / ROI 4% / Profit $40.80

I know I'm not getting through anywhere near enough games at the moment but my results have been more akin to normal over the last week so I'm reasonably happy to keep plodding away. I would like to crank up the number of games but my multi-tabling expereinces earlier in the challenge weren't good. At the time I didn't feel like I was giving away too much of an edge but the results would suggest different.

I know for a fact that my new note taking and player categorisation is working as I now have a far better feel for all the players at a table and can put them on tighter range of hands but that is taking a lot of concentration, and is leaving me a bit frazzled. I doubt I could focus that much multi-tabling. Pehaps after another few hundred games this level of focus on other player's habits will become more natural and will allow me to achieve the same results on multiple tables at once.

Table Construction

2007-09-24T15:57:00.000+01:00

No online poker on Sunday. I had a lazy Sunday morning, bliss! In the afternoon I got a text from poker buddy Andy and went round to help him finish off the first Bishopton Poker League poker table.

Andy had already cut out the pieces of wood but it only took us a couple of hours to finsh assembling the pieces and put on the foam, cloth and vinyl. We were following free plans from Home Poker Tourney and they worked a treat. We are delighted with the table which seats 6 very comfortably and should be fine for 8 too. It cost about £80 to build which is pretty reasonable and I can confirm that it's very plush and comfortable to play at as we christened it with a little home game on Sunday night.

Back in the Black

2007-09-23T11:40:00.000+01:00

I'm finally back in the black after playing 5 games on Saturday and finishing 1 x 1st and 2 x 2nd. It's taken a while and been frustrating at times but I'm relieved.

Running Total: Played 116 / ITM 38% / ROI 2% / Profit $14.80

Now let's just hope I can keep it in the black and start moving forward with larger wins, more acceptable rake percentage and and less completely mental play from my opponents. I'm so looking forward to getting back into the $10 games again, but the bummer is that I don't know how much of a chance I'm going to get to play online today! Family stuff during the day and a home game with my poker buddies tonight.

The long haul

2007-09-22T00:52:00.000+01:00

I managed 6 games today, all $6 x 10 player and picked up 1 x 1st and 2 x 2nd so it was another profitable day on my long slow slog back to positive ROI.

Running Total: Played 111 / ITM 37% / ROI -1% / Profit -$10.20

It is looking increasingly unlikely that I will be able to hit any of my targets by the end of the month:

200 games - Multi tabling was -EV for me the few times I tried it earlier in the challenge so I need to be careful there, lets see what happens in the next few days and I might give it another bash.
20% ROI - Err... yea, my bad run at the start of the challenge is going to make that tricky now, but not completely impossible!
$400 - That's going to be hard too. If I step back up to the $10 games tomorrow, and I manage to play about 90 and I manage an ROI of about 50% I can still do it, that's a lot of ifs.

Am I going to give up? ...Hell No, I keep going. I still have one secret card up my sleeve that I haven't revealed yet. I've almost blogged about it a few times now, I'll spill the beans in the next few days. It may help me in the last few days of the month.

A few more games

2007-09-21T11:01:00.000+01:00

It was after 10pm before I got the computer powered up last night, and I almost fell asleep during the first game. I had a couple of coffees and managed to get 4 x $6 10 player games in but the best I could manage was 2 x 3rd places.

Running Total: Played 105 / ITM 36% / ROI -3% / Profit -$29.20

Day off on Friday and I have the house to myself for a few hours so I should be able to get a more respectable number of games in and hopefully get myself back into positive ROI territory.

Satisfaction

2007-09-19T15:32:00.000+01:00

Tuesday night was the most satisfying night of poker I've had in a couple of weeks. I only played 3 games and felt mentally quite exhausted after them but the results were good. I cashed in all three, 2 x 1st and 1 x 3rd, all in $6 x 10 player games.

Running Total: Played 101 / ITM 36% / ROI -3% / Profit -$25.20

So, 101 games and many hours into my challenge and… I’m almost back where I started. My performance over the next 100 games is going to have to be pretty exceptional, but I'm feeling good.

Yesterday I referenced an article on Pocket Fives by Jennifear, well I re-read it last night and that lead me on to reading an excellent article on Standard Tight Aggressive play and another article on a slightly looser style. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about my game and what I have been experiencing recently, so these articles definitely helped.

I went into Tuesday night’s session with a renewed determination and a refined gameplan:

1) Loosen up slightly during level 1 & 2 playing suited connectors, semi connectors and suited aces, basically anything that can make a good flush or straight, with the view of hitting a monster cheaply.
2) I have been arriving at the bubble with a relatively short stack compared to the chip leaders too often, so I need to be stealing more during level 3 & 4. So when it gets down to 5-6 players or about halfway through level 3 start stealing with any Ace, Two court cards or Kx greater than K-6, but be very aware of position and the opponents current behaviour.

3) Keep stealing as the blinds get bigger and move into ICM bubble mode at 4 players but rather than shoving when the opportunity arises be more inclined to go for a 2.5 – 3 times the blind raise. This is because the players at this level seem to recognise the shove as a stealing tactic but are more likely to take a coin flip gamble and call. If I keep the ICM raises to a standard 2.5 – 3 (or sometimes a bit more) then I can still get away from them if donkey boy calls with his 7-2 offsuit and proceeds to flop the nuts.

4) Heads Up. Just be patient and play my usual aggressive heads up game, chip away at them, wear them down and then trap them when they finally get sick of it. Just remember, patience.

Well it seemed to work a treat. I don’t know if it was my refined gameplan, lucky table selection or something else as the sample size is entirely inconsequential, but something went right so I’m happy. Now all I’ve got to do is hold that moment, and try and continue playing in this style to see if holds over a longer run.

One other thing I did was to concentrate far more on the other players’ hands during the game using the Hand History window and Poker Tracker to note every hand shown down (or mucked at showdown). I did this before but not as diligently and last night I started noting them down in a slightly different way that turned out much easier to read in the player notes window. I felt I really got into a groove last night and my focus on the game and the players surpassed my normal level, I think that’s why I felt a bit mentally drained by the end of it but I’m sure it made a big difference when I was choosing my spots to make a steal from.

Finally after I was finished playing I spent half an hour in Poker Tracker and spotted a few interesting things.

The hands I lose with are when I have just a high card or a single pair, everything else is +EV and the position I lose from most often is the Big Blind. So there are a couple more pointers for me to follow as I tweak my game a little more.

One thing is for sure, playing so many games, at the same level, on the same site and opening myself up to public scrutiny is bringing me a focus and level of self analysis that I don’t think I have achieved before. Long my it continue and hopefully my results will improve accordingly.

Onwards and Upwards….

No report tomorrow, Wednesday night is Bishopton Poker League night.

The 7-2 Game on High Stakes Poker

2007-09-18T14:06:00.000+01:00

The best poker show on TV is back.

Series four of High Stakes Poker has just started airing again in the States and can be viewed on PokerTube. The first episode gets off to a bang with Antonio Esfandiari suggesting that a side bet should be placed on the game with each player agreeing to pay $500 each to the first player who wins a hand with 7-2 off suit.

Well it doesn't take long before the fireworks kick off between Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matasou in hand where one player has the all conquering 7-2 offsuit.

Check out the link, this is one of the funniest pieces of Poker TV you'll see.

I'm going to see if I can introduce a 7-2 sidebet into the one of the side games at the pub tomorrow night, as if that game really needs loosened up any more!

Frustration!

2007-09-18T13:35:00.000+01:00

Oh boy, sometimes poker can be such a frustrating game, one step forward and three steps back. So can you guess how I got on last night? Yup, you got it. The gradual rebuild back to profit suffered a set back last night and my ROI is down a few more %. ARSE!

I started off last night by playing 5 x $6 - 10 player and only managed 1 x 2nd and 1 x 3rd. Then I switched to $6 - 6 Max games and started multi tabling and didn't cash in any of the 5 of them that I played.

I did make a couple of bad plays on the 6 max games whilst multi-tabling, partially because I perhaps didn't have as good a read on my opponents as I would if single tabling and partially because I made a couple of decisions too quickly. Having said that I was on the receiveing end of some pretty sick behaviour.

I've been playing tight in the early stages of these SnG's only getting involved if I have a big hand, but have been finding I can cruise up to the bubble OK but am often relatively short stacked by the time I get there. Normally, that's OK. I'm more comfortable playing when it gets down to three or four players and big blinds as I can get a better read on my opponents, I can start bullying a bit and I can start bringing in some ICM bubble play, but in these $6 games they will call an all in a lot looser than at higher levels so I need to be more cautious and that dillutes any bubble play advantage I may have had.

I'm toying with the idea of playing a bit looser in the early levels, keeping the pot small pre-flop and playing more of a post flop game. These guys at the $6 level seem to call just about anything pre flop but will often laydown hands to a relatively small bet on the river. I'll maybe try loosening up and playing more of a post flop game tonight in a couple of games. There was an article on Pocket 5's by JenniFear that I must dig out and re-read as I seem to remember it advocating this style.

Running Total: Played 98 / ITM 34% / ROI -8% / Profit -$67.20

Revision on yesterday's weekly mini target:
1) Be careful multi tabling, don't make decisions too quickly, try to take the time to study the hand and opponent to help me make a better decision.
2) Profit is more important than number of games played, don't rush to Multi table if it's going to have a negative effect on my ROI. I would rather get to 150 games with 15% ROI than 200 games with -5% ROI.

nuff sed

Another small step

2007-09-17T14:35:00.000+01:00

I had quite a quiet Sunday, spending time with the family, so I only played 5 games today but managed a small profit for the day so musn't grumble.

Sun 16th Sep: Played 5 / 1 x 1st (10 handed) / 1 x 2nd (6 Max)

Running Total: Played 88 / ITM 35% / ROI -4% / Profit -$32.20

I'm slowly working my back to breakeven ROI for the month and the bankroll on Party is back up to $215 so I 'm nearly ready to step back up to the $10 games. If I have a good night on Monday and can get my bankroll back to $250 I should be able to move back up again on Tuesday.

I've still got a long way to go to get to 200 games and 20% ROI, but at least I'm in a better frame of mind than I was a week ago. If my first couple of games go well tonight I will start multi-tabling again. I really need to be playing more games but I also need to be really careful in case multi-tabling was the cause of some of the pain last week.

This week's mini targets:

1) Increase the number of games per day - Aim for 10 per day
2) Get back into the $10 games and maintain +ROI in them whilst multi-tabling

Little Baby Steps

2007-09-16T10:23:00.000+01:00

Saturday was a more enjoyable day, didn't play much due to the cinema outing but the results were good, played 5 cashed in 4. The Bourne Ultimatum was brilliant, and all the better for watching the Supremacy the previous night as the Ultimatum is a continuation of the storyline set up in the Bourne Supremacy.

Back to the poker...

Playing a lot of games at the same level on the same site is giving me a focus I don't think I've managed to achieve before. I now feel I know my game better and can see the effect of small changes much more easily. I used to skip around from site to site so it was never as clear how small changes effected things as all the other variable in the equation were changing too.

Sat 15th Sep: Played 5 / 1 x 1st / 3 x 2nd / EV +$27 (4 x 6-Max , 1 x 10 Player)

Need to spend a little time brushing up on my Heads Up play today, too many seconds yesterday.

Running Total: Played 83 / ITM 35% / ROI -5% / Profit $-37.20

Little baby steps, but at least they are in the right direction.

Double Update

2007-09-15T10:22:00.000+01:00

Saturday morning is double update morning.

On Thursay night I did indeed drop back down to the $6 level for bankroll preservation reasons as discussed in an earlier posting. I was dog tired when I started playing but managed 8 x 6-Max games before calling it a night.

Thu 13th Sep: Played 8 / 1 x 2nd / 1 x 1st

Only played three games on Friday night, watched the Bourne Supremacy on DVD in preparation for a trip to the cinema to see the Bourne Ultimatum tonight.

Fri 14th Sep: Played 3 / 1 x 1st / 1 x 2nd

Running Total: Played 78 / ITM 32% / ROI -9% / Profit -$64.20

A small step in the right direction, but I won't be able to play much today so it's going to be a long slog back to +EV

Bishopton Poker Leage - Final

2007-09-13T14:03:00.000+01:00

No update on my September challenge today as I was playing live last night in the final game of The Bishopton Poker League, a local league run by me and a few of my buddies. I went into the final in joint 3rd place in the league, needing a strong finish with lots of points and for the first and second positioned players to bust out early, oh, and I also needed a busy night so there would be lots of points for a strong finish.

Alas, it was a quiet night, probably due to the Scotland vs France match, and we only managed 9 players. Even though I won the game it didn’t yield enough points for me to leapfrog either of the two league leaders who finished 3rd and 4th positions. I played well though and am pleased with my 3rd place finish in the league. If I hadn’t missed one of the games due to work commitments it could have been a different story.

My win has boosted my confidence a bit and I’m looking forward to getting back to my challenge on Thursday night even though I’ll be dropping down to the $6 tables.

It can't rain all the time

2007-09-12T14:52:00.000+01:00

When I went to bed on Monday night I was sure that I had put my losing streak behind me, so when I sat down at about 9pm on Tuesday night I was looking forward to seeing my bankroll and ROI starting to climb again. Alas this wasn’t to be. Tuesday night was another horrible session.

I started playing 10 player SNGs and only cashed in one of them for 3rd place. I then moved back to the 6 Max tables and played 7 of them only managing to cash once in 2nd. This has to be the worst streak I’ve had in SNGs in well over a year, if not ever and I have to say it’s got me feeling pretty frustrated. I’m sure it’s just variance but I’ll be spending a little while in Poker Tracker reviewing some of my critical hands before I play any more of my challenge.

I also have a bankroll related decision to make before I play any more. The last 3 sessions have been sufficiently bad that my bankroll has taken a hit. I should probably have stepped down a level after Monday night but I was pretty sure that Tuesday’s session would reverse the trend, I was wrong. I still have $170 in my Party Account, I think I have 3 options:

1) Try and ride out the variance, continuing to play the $11’s. I’m tempted but logic tells me not to. I’ve always been quite good at bankroll management, just because this is a challenge doesn’t mean I need to throw my normal bankroll rules out the window.

2) I’m having a particularly bad run on Party but have decent funds on quite a few other sites, why not switch my challenge to another site. I could but it seems like a bit of a cop out. Normally if I was selecting an SNG or a cash table I will go where I feel I am most likely to win. Poker tracker shows me which sites / levels / structures I have historically done best at so I normally wouldn’t think twice about staying on a site where I was having a tough time. However, I have historically done well on Party and I don’t feel I have played badly or that my opponents have outplayed me, I certainly know the latter isn’t true, I’ve got the Hand Histories to prove it.

3) Manage my bankroll sensibly and step down to the $6 SNGs on Party. The number of Donktastic muppets I’m going to encounter will be frustrating but if I’m going to take heed of all the wise words I’ve read, then I need to choose this option.

I’m tending towards option 3, just knuckle down, ride it out and don’t let it get me down.

Having said that, I won’t be able to play online tonight because it’s the final in the local poker league that I run with a couple of my poker buddies. I will defer my bankroll decision until just before my Thursday session. Until then, here’s the sorry stats.

11th Sep : Played 10 / 8 x DNC / 1 x 3rd ($11 10 player) / 1 x 2nd ($11 6-Max)

Running Total: Played 67 / ITM 30% / ROI -10% / Profit -$70.20

I don't like Mondays

2007-09-11T12:44:00.000+01:00

Sunday was a bad day, perhaps the worst I’ve had. It left me frustrated and I spent the night and most of Monday contemplating my play but although my results on Sunday were definitely getting me down I was pretty convinced it was just bad luck / variance.

I wasn’t able to get started on Monday until 9:30 pm but I sat down at the screen with a renewed determination. “I won’t let these Donks get me down”. Trying to be sensible I decided, no multi-tabling until I get a few wins back under my belt, just incase that was having a detrimental effect, though I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I also decided to play 6 max tables rather then 10 max. Whilst my ROI to date on 10 player tables is positive, my ROI on 6 player games is higher, and I’ve played a shed load more of them.

Despite my best efforts, Monday was completely horrible too. I felt I was playing really well but it just wasn’t going my way. To say the Poker Gods were frowning on me is an understatement, they were standing in the heavens on their little clouds with their trousers round their ankles, pissing all over me. My nut full house gets cracked by Quads, I hit a set and get beaten by a higher set, and on and on it goes. What does a guy have to do? However I’m not going to let it get me down.

I played 7 games on Monday and finally cashed in my last game of the night. In fact I did better than cash, I completely decimated the game, took 1st place and was able to go to bed with a feeling of satisfaction rather than despair. Hopefully that’s the losing streak over and I can return to my winning ways tonight. If I don’t, I fear I may need to drop down a level if I have another bad night, and I really don’t want to have to do that. God knows what level of donktastic muppetry I'll encounter if I have to move down to the $6's, hell it's daft enough in the $11's.

10th Sep : Played 7 / 6 x DNC / 1 x 1st (all $11 6-Max)

Running Total: Played 57 / ITM 32% / ROI -1% / Profit -$4.20

Sunday Bloody Sunday

2007-09-10T00:00:00.000+01:00

Yeuch! I've had a pretty horrible Sunday.

I've played 13 games today, 10 online and 3 live games at a friendly local home game. I did OK at the home game but my results online have been dire. I know I busted out from one of the online games because I made a bad play but I think my plays were correct in the others. One thing is for sure, you need be very carefull with ICM bubble play at $10 on Party as you are far more likely to get called. Lesson learned, assimilated and ready for a better session tomorrow.

I'm working tomorrow so I probably won't be logging in until about 9pm so not sure how many games I'll get in.

9th Sep Online : Played 10 / 8 x DNC (did not Cash) / 1 x 3rd / 1x 2nd
9th Sep Live : Played 3 / 2 x DNC / 1 x 1st (winner takes all)

Running Total : Played 50 / ITM 34% / ROI 7% / Profit $36.80

1st Challenge Update

2007-09-09T10:08:00.000+01:00

I actually starterd playing towards my challenge a few days ago but only mentioned it on my blog yesterday, so technically this is the first update even though it's the 9th September.

Only played 5 games yesterday, a couple in the morning and three in the evening after I got the kids to bed...but before the coverage of qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix. By the time the qualifying finished it was after midnight and I was feeling pretty tired so I decided to get some sleep rather than play tired.

Running Total to 9th Sep : Played 37 / ITM 38% / ROI 20% / Profit $71.80

ROI on target but I need to step up the number of games I'm playing else I won't hit my 200 games until about the 40th of Sepetmeber!

September Challenge

2007-09-08T17:47:00.000+01:00

I mentioned in my posting last week that recently my discipline had deteriorated a bit. Well it's time to step up my level of studying and set myself a challenge for the month.

For the studying, I'm going to watch at least one training video per day from Poker X Factor. I always find my game improves imediately when I watch these videos, it just tends to drift again if I don't continue to watch them and play a sufficient amount to keep everything at the forefront of my mind.

I'm also going to devour some more books and spend time reading articles online. I've just started reading a new book from Two plus Two publishing called Sit'n'Go strategy by Colin Moshman. I've already read about one third of it and it seems pretty good. I'm also plannig to go back and skim through Harrington Vol2 again and spend some time working on my poker maths, Pot Odds and ICM theory.

What about the challenge. Well I'm going to try and play 200 $10 Sit and Gos on Party Poker by the end of September. The logic behind this is that I will be playing sufficiently frequently that it will help me get some consistency back into my game. With my renewed appetite for learing and a focus on my discipline I am hoping this should also help my bankroll too. I am striving for a 20% ROI. I will be multi-tabling, probably only two at a time but by the end of the month I want to be running 3 or 4 tables without getting overwhelmed. If all goes well this should give me the confidence and bankroll to start dipping my toe into the $20's next month.

It may not be the most extreme challenge, but at least it gives me a goal to work towards. I've already made a start on it in the last couple of days and I think I'm up to about 30 SNGs already.

I'll try and post a little mini update every day, wish me luck.

Live at the Stanley

2007-09-01T09:42:00.000+01:00

This week I got my first chance to visit the Stanley "Mint" casino in Glasgow and take part in one of their tournaments. I've wanted to go to the Stanley for simply ages, but never seemed to get around to it. That all changed this week when i tagged along with a few of my local poker buddies to the Thursday night £25 Freezeout.

A couple of the lads I was with play there reasonably regularly and are pretty good players. I wasn't sure how I would fair. I guess I was reasonably confident that I would hold my own and not look like a complete donk, but more than that... I wasn't sure.

I'm delighted to say the evening was a great successs with me taking down 4th place for £110 from a field of 43 players. I picked up a couple of small pots early on but concentrated on playing tight and trying to get a feel for the game and style of my opponents. For the first hour of the game I hardly saw a single face card. When I finally did, I lost a a chunk of chips in two different hands, just before the break. So I went into the break a little unsure if I would last until the next break.

The second session started and my chips continued to dwindle as the blinds increased. Every time I picked up a hand or was going to target a players blind it would be raised before me and I'd have to abandon the hand. I picked up Jacks in late position but there was a raise and a re-raise before it got to me, so into the muck they went. It turns out I was up against pocket Kings and Ace-Queen on a board showing a second Ace, sigh of relief. The blinds were now starting to catch me and it was time to start moving. Luckily I picked up a couple of hands, shoved, got called both times and won both races. So I was back out of the danger zone and back to average stack level.

Then the defining hand came along. I was sitting in the big blind and I picked up 9-5 offsuit. One player limped in from mid position and the Small Blind limped too. I was wathcing the Small Blind as the flop came down, he was a relatively new arrival at the table, had just lost a couple of pots, and was now a bit below average in chips. I knew he was getting ready to make a move and sure enough, shove. I turned to look at the flop and couldn't believe my luck when I spotted a 9-5-X. Could my opponent have trips? Hang on a moment... look at the flop more closely 9-5-9, I've flopped a full house, the high side of it no less. Rock'n'Roll. I pretend to deliberate for another moment then calmly call the Small Blinds 9,100 all-in fully expecting the reamining player to fold.

The reamining player takes another glance at his cards then looks at his below average chipstack, counts off his chips and sticks them in the middle too, leaving himself with just one $100 chip. The turn comes down, it's inconsequential. I hold a single $100 chip, smile at the boy and chuck it in, he smiles back and chucks in his $100 chip. Card on there backs and he has A-J suited and the small blind had a 5 in his hand and had made two pair on the flop. Both were drawing dead and I was now in possession of a very respectable ~30,000 chips. Happy Days.

I've got to rush out now, errands to do, so I need to try and wrap this up.. Suffice to say. I made the final table, lasted longer than my buddies. Made some awesome laydowns and dodged some potentially terminal encounters. Got reads on a couple of guys and managed to use one of them to take a lad out.

I took out a couple of folk at the final table and was marginal chip leader. But as we got short-handed I started playing like a pussy and didn't use my stack to take control the way I normally would in that position. My buddies had left and I would have to get a taxi home, so I REALLY didn't want to buuble. So I played like a complete woos and made it through the bubble. By that time the blinds were getting enormous and it was time to hussle. A guy I recognised from CinCin's, who it turns out posts ion Blonde as BobaFett was sitting to my right he made a pre flop raise on my blind. I was pretty sure he probably had a bit of something but decided to shove my A-5 anyway. He flipped over A-10 and proceeded to crush my already dominated hand by hitting a 10.

OK, I know I played like a pussy when we got short-handed, and it's my own fault, but none the less I am quite pleased with the result.

I've now played 5 proper live games, I don't count the pub league and home games as I treat them more socially, but more on that another time. Anyway, Played at the Gutshot, cashed. Visited CinCin's three times, cashed once. Visited the Stanley and cashed first time. I 'm shocked and stunned 3 out of 5 cashes is very respectable. Maybe there's hope for me yet :-)

Missing in Action

2007-09-01T09:25:00.000+01:00

I can't believe it's 3 months sicnce I last posted here! I've still been playing poker, and am just as passionate about it as ever. I guess I just lacked the drive and discipline to update my blog. Therefore, it's not entirely suprising that my poker has followed a similair pattern. I have still been doing pretty good most of the time but I haven't been playing with quite the same drive and discipline that I was at the end of 2006, beginning of 2007. My results haven't been as consistent and a few leaks have definately crept into my game.

Over the last couple of weeks I've had my head back in the poker books and have been playing better so it's time to get the discipline back on track, start posting here again and get on with working my poker up to the next level.

Quite a lot has been going on both in my poker life and my real life but I'll not swamp this post with everything. I'll break it up into bite sized chunks and post it over the coming days / weeks.

So here's to a new chapter,
Shuffle up and deal...

I BET YOU

2007-05-23T21:09:00.000+01:00

"The following is what happens when you give two degenerate gamblers their own TV Show"

Antionio Esfandiari & Phil Laak have a crazy new TV Show. Check it out and you'll see what happens when a cameraman follows the guys around LA while they challenge each other to a pile of crazy proposition bets.

Great TV..

RaiNKhAN Top Starcraft Broodwar Player Playing 26+ SNG at Pokerstars

2007-05-12T17:47:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I like to Multi Table but this is just mental.......

Poker pro and sit and go' master plays more than 26 sit and gos´ at once. Very entertaining.

Part 1 - Introduction
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4637718411371050080&q=pokerstars

Part 2 - MTT Insanity
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8902770502910175629&q=pokerstars

Am I ready to go Pro??

2007-03-19T23:53:00.000Z

My god, surely I'm not ready to turn Poker Pro yet, I've not even been playing for a year!!! but then again I have got a 50% ITM / 50% ROI in the $10 - 6 player turbo SNG's on iPoker network but the sample size is only 50 games!

So what makes me think I'm ready to go professional, well, I've just discovered a very interesting secret...

All the Pro's are rubbish, they are only paid huge sponsored deals, then featured in tourneys, magazines and TV shows to keep the whole poker gravy train rolling for the poker rooms and media companies. The Pros are in fact just ordinary people, and they are rubbish at poker.

Far fetched you might think, but whooaa, hold on there. I have proof. Infact more than proof, hard statistical evidence from a very credible source. Take a look at the image below, it's a readout from Sharkscope showing 10 players, nine of them are sponsored Pokerstars professionals and the other one is me!

OK so my ROI / Profit on stars isn't huge, but I am in profit, which is better than seven of the nine stars professionals listed.

It can only be a matter of time before Pokerstars realise the error in their ways and call to offer me a sponsorship deal.

Seriously though..... I was rather gobsmacked that some of the pros had negative ROI's. OK I understand that these are their public professional accounts and they are marked with a huge target when they play using them, so they probably have alternate private accounts that they use for making money, but none the less.... I was surprised.

What a Tosser!

2007-03-04T18:25:00.000Z

That's what I shouted at myself a couple of times this weekend.

Occurrence 1: Whilst playing in the Titan Poker $3,000 Gtd Freezeout Multi Table Tournament. 215 players had started the game, 26 were left, I was in 2nd place. Two hands later I busted out... what a tosser!

Occurrence 2: After a great run on Friday and Saturday I decided it was time to try a $20 SNG. In the heat of the moment though I didn't notice that I'd registered for a $20 Olmaha H/L SNG. I have purposely never looked at Olmaha or any other of the poker variants as I want to make sure I've got NL Hold'em cracked before I confuse myself with other variants. Therefore when the cards were dealt and everybody started betting I was at a distinct disadvantage. I didn't know if my hand was good or bad never mind working out the appropriate bets, hell, I didn't even know the rules... what a tosser!

I shall be trying hard not to have any more "What a Tosser!" moments this month.

February Results

2007-03-04T18:05:00.000Z

Another good month.

I managed to finish February in profit making it the fourth month in a row that I have been profitable and the fifth month in a row that I've been profitable in Sit & Gos.

My profit wasn't as high as I had been hoping, mainly I think because I played too many $3 & $5 SNGs and was only showing breakeven on them. However, on the 17th of the month I did some analysis of my results in Poker Tracker and it looked like I had been more profitable in $10 games. For the rest of the month I played in $10 games and my results suddenly improved.

February 2007
Profit for Month $121.80
116 Sit & Gos, ITM 36%, ROI 21%, Profit $140.50
8 MTTs, ITM 13%, ROI -54%, -$18.70

My profit was only $2 higher than January 2007 but I feel if I had played just $10 SNGs it would have been higher. The new bankroll management formula that I've discussed earlier seems to be working and I will be sticking to it for March but with my strarting level revised to $10.

As for my target last month...I didn't quite make it so that rolls over to this month.

March Target 150 x SNG's, $250 profit.

Sky Poker - 1st Impressions

2007-02-24T12:04:00.000Z

Sky Poker launched their new interactive poker show on sky channel 846 a couple of weeks ago so I decided to check it out as the nightly £2,500 game looked like pretty good value.

I've now played in the £2,500 Open once, a £1,000 freeroll once and three or four celebrity Sit & Gos and I'm pretty impressed. The poker software runs in your browser, so nothing to download. The poker software is pretty good and runnning in your browser doesn't really hamper things. If you have Sky TV then you can watch the coverage on channel 846 and even play on TV using your remote. Very groovy!

Where things get really groovy though are the TV coverage and your involvement in it. The TV show runs in a an amazing virtual studio with two presenters analysing the game as it unfolds and three celebrity girst players, each with a bounty on their heads.

The night I played in the open there were 317 players. The presenters are able to call up hands and re-run them on TV and analyse the way they are played as well as keeping you up to date on the progress of the tournament. It's quite exciting to watch the TV coverage of the tournament you are playing in. The presenters also periodically chat to the celebrity guests to see how they are getting on in the game. There are also segments where they stop to answer questions that the audience are texting or emailing in.

One night this week, Tikay from Blonde poker was presenting and Colchester Kev was one of the Clebrity guests, so I had to tune in and join in. The banter between Tikay, Kev and Helen was an absolute riot as they took the piss out of each other. There were plenty of Blondes playing in the tournament and Sit & Gos and even more of them railing the tables and firing witty motivational comment around in the chat box and mailing into the show. It was compulsive, hilarious viewing.

But it gets better... After Kev was knocked out of the open I decided to join one of the Celebrity Sit & Gos that Kev was playing in. I actually ended up playing in three of them and clocking up a 4th a 2nd and a 1st. The first game was tough and I never really got into my stride, but the second game was where the fun really began. I was playing pretty well and holding my own whilst the chatbox was getting saturated with chat from fellow blondes.

Eventually it got down to Heads up with Kev. When asked how he was doing by the presenters he said he had a good chip lead. We continued to slug it out for another ten minutes then presenters came across to ask how Kev was doing again and he said it was a good game and that we were about even. Tikay then asked if I had fought my way back to even out the chip stacks and Kev had to confess he had been lieing earlier :-). Anyway, when asked about the current hand Kev told everybody what cards were out on the board and then went on to tell Tikay, all the Sky viewers and worst of all me what he was holding, oooops. What else could I do but put in a massive overbet, much to the amusement of Tikay in the studio and all the Blondes railing us. Kev naturally folded and much hilarity ensued. I never did tell him that I had made my straight and knew I had him beat even before he revealed his hand.

We kept playing for another ten minutes or so before Tikay and Helen came back to interview Kev. As they chatted the flop cards came down and Kev moved all in. He had been shoving a bit in previous hands as the blinds were now big and the flop was a bit raggedy. I had made middle pair but had a King kicker. I suspected Kev had either made top pair or was on an out and out bluff. I thought for a moment and was pretty sure I was behind, but that kicker was good and wouldn't it be a laugh to make the call and see his reaction on live TV. If he was bluffing it would be a riot, if not I still had my King kicker and it would make good telly. It's for a good cause too as anything Kev won would go to charity. I called his all in.

Kev leapt out of his chair and all eyes were on his monitor. Sure enough he had top pair and he started begging the Poker gods not to show him a king on the turn or river. No King came and he won the pot with his top pair before letting out the triumphant battle cry of "Ship it to the fat lad from Colchester". I litterally had tears streaming down my cheeks, what a laugh.

I played one final celebrity Sit & Go but NTL dropped my connection right at the start of the game and it took me about 15 minutres to get back in, by which time there were only three of us left in the game. I had been blinded down to about 800 chips and the two other players had around 4,000 chips each, this was going to be tough. I went into Pushbot mode, picked my spots and I'm delighted to tell you I took down the game with a very satisfying 1st place.

All in all an excellent night of poker, not the most profitable but perhaps one of the most fun. Being part of a TV tournament is great but it's absolutely awesome when you get into a situation where you are playing against somebody who you are watching on live TV , the presenters are getting involved with the game and the chatbox is streaming with comments and abuse from the Blonde squad. A truly interactive, compelling and absolutely hilarious experience. You should try it.

Daniel Negreanu's Buddy Dexter

2007-02-17T10:26:00.000Z

Daniel interviews one of the unknown masters of poker in his latest video blog. Just when I feel I'm getting somewhere I realise I still have so much to learn. I think we can all learn a lot from Dexter.

Check out Daniel's interview with Dexter, it's hilarious.

A Good Evening

2007-02-17T00:32:00.000Z

A quick update on my earlier ramblings...

I spent a little time as I said I would logging some more hands in Poker Tracker and analysing my stats and sure enough I've been cashing more regularly in $10 games than the smaller ones. So off I went for an evening of $10 games.

I've only played 3 games tonight but the results have been excellent.

Titan - $10+$1 - 6 player - finished 1st
Titan - $10+$1 - 6 player - finished 2nd
Party - $11 - 10 player - finished 1st

Total Buyins - $33
Total Winnings - $110

Profit - $77 Kerchingggg

That's it sod these silly little $3 & $5 games, I'm going to try and stick to the $10's for the rest of the month. I find the players far more predictable.

I do find it frustrating that I have less ITM in the smaller games and I feel I should be able to beat them. But I think I'll stick to the $10's for now and come back and work out how to beat the smaller games some other time.

I've been playing about with screen capturing my games a bit in the last week or so, I just wish I'd captured some of these as I'm pretty proud of how I played them. Never mind, I'll try and do some capture again soon and post a video or two up here.

Instinct tells me I should keep playing when I'm winning, but it's late and I'm tired, so I've just cracked open an ice cold Guinness and I'm going to sit back with a poker mag for an hour before going to bed with smug satisfied smile on my face.

Pocker Tracker

2007-02-16T20:31:00.000Z

A few things have been happening recently that I want to put up on my blog but rather than making a flurry of postings tonight I'm going to try and pace myself and put up one a day.

My last post about bankroll management seemed emenantly sensible at the time but I have to say two weeks on it's frustrating the hell out of me. Don't get me wrong, I still think the logic of it is spot on and it should protect me from blowing my bankroll if I hit any rough patches.

The problem is that my accounts on some of the poker sites don't have much in them which means when I start playing on one of these sites at 1/20 of my roll on that site it means that I am playing in $2, $3 or $5 games. Whilst this is frustrating because the potential winnings and rate of growth are slow, the biggest killer is the fact that my ROI seems to be worse at these levels because the players I'm up against are less predictable.

I've been getting the feeling that I was more profitable at $10 than $5 and below and a quick look at my spreadsheet seems to confirm that. So the last couple of nights I've been playing on William Hill and Titan where my bankroll is a bit healthier and I can play at $10 and still be inside 1/20 of my account on that room.

I also fired up poker tracker last night and started updating some of my hands. I hadn't used it in a while so there are a lot of hands to import and the William Hill and Titan ones need a bit of manual help with the tournament summaries. A quick glance at my stats in poker tracker would seem to confirm that I'm more profitable at $10 so I'm going to stick to $10's on WH and Titan for the next few nights.

Itching for a game now but I'm going to spend another hour in poker tracker before i dive into the tables. More hand updating and analysis before I start ripping up the tables.

You have to go into these things with a positive mental attitude :-)

Bankroll Management

2007-02-04T19:15:00.000Z

Starting at the beginning of this month I'm going to use a new bankroll management formula to decide which games I play. There was a good article on bankroll management in a recent copy of Inside Edge magazine and this forms the basis of the formula I will use.

The rules I will be following are essentially:

At the start of a playing session I am only going to allow myself to play in Sit & Go's with <= 10 players, with a buy in of 5% or less of my account balance on that site. So in other words, if I start the night on Party Poker and have $100 in my account then I am only allowed to play $5 Sit & Go's with less than or equal to 10 players.
I am only allowed to move up to the next level of buy in an Sit & Go once I have a profit of 2 x the buy in. Therefore, I cannot play a $10 Sit & Go on party until I have a profit for the session of $20
If I lose the higher value Sit & Go I step back down to the previous level
The same rules apply for MTT but I need to have made 3 x the buy in before I play. In other words I need to be in profit by $30 for a session before I play a $10 MTT
I won't skip levels, I can only go up one level at a time.

This should reduce swings in my bankroll and ensure a steady, if somewhat slow growth. If I am having a losing say it should only be at the lowest levels. If I am playing well and having a good day I will progress up the levels. Essentially as I move up the levels or choose to play a multi table tournament I will have already made a profit for the day and the next game basically becomes a freeroll.

I've also noticed that some days it takes me a couple of games to really get into my stride, this technique should help me here as it minimises the losses.

January Results

2007-02-03T11:59:00.000Z

Great news, I managed to finish January in profit. Admittedly the profits weren't as good as December or January, but the main thing is it was a profit. That's three months in a row that I've shown a profit... Yipee

Jan 07: Profit $119
Dec 06: Profit $504
Nov 06: Profit $305

Why wasn't my profit as high as the previous two months? Well I think I have an answer. Variance! and I don't think my MTT game was quite as sharp as the previous months.

In Nov & Dec the bulk of my profit came from a few big multi table games whilst this month my profit is all from single table sit and go games. I am pleased with my Sit & Go's this month, I've played a lot of them and the results have been very consistent. I played 108 S&G's and my average buy in was $6.86, the resulting ITM was 46% with an ROI of 19%.

I played 38 Multi Table Games with an average buy in of $9.43, an ITM of 13% and an ROI of -6%. I did cash out in five games, but I need to be doing better than that. Whilst variance may have been a factor. on reflection, I don't think I was playing aggressive enough. I think my play in the previous two months had been a bit more confident and agressive.

MTT Results:
$5 MTT - William Hill - 149 players - Finished 4th - Won $55
$5 MTT - Poker Stars - 18 players - Finished 3rd - Won $18
£10 MTT - William Hill - 83 players - Finished 5th - Won $66
$6 MTT - Party Poker - 50 players - Finished 3rd - Won $42
(had to shut down laptop and get on a plane when 4 left, could have won!!)
$10 MTT - DTD - 128 players - Finished 4th - Won $85

Conclusion: I need to sharpen up my MTT game again. I will be implementing a new Bankroll management formula for February that should also help, I'll post about it later. I will also keep grinding away at the Sit & Go's, I want to exceed the 108 in January, I'll try and manage 150 this month. Oh... and I want to make February another profitable month, but that goes without saying!

Interesting Poker Name

2007-02-03T11:47:00.000Z

Spotted this interesting nickname on Titan recently.

What do you think was the last thing she saw before leaving the tournament?

That's right, I waved my Nuts in her face. Lol

Results Improving

2007-01-23T21:00:00.000Z

Time for a quick results update.

I've felt my game has been improving quite a bit over the last couple of months, I put this mainly down to a couple of the books I've read, predominantly The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder and Killer Poker Online 2 by John Vorhaus. I feel these two books have made the biggest differenvce to my game and the results I've been having would appear to be backing this up.

Nov 2006,
STT, played 132, Average position 2nd, Average Buy-In $5.58, ITM 47%, ROI 2%, Profit $13.39
MTT, played 8, Average Buy In $21, ITM 38%, ROI 170%, Profit $292.26
Total Profit for Month: $305.65

November was the best month I'd had to date but the results are very heavily skewed by the result I had in the £50 game at the Gutshot. The STT results are also heavily skewed because I was playing a lot of Heads Up games to gain Heads-Up experience. I was delighted with the result at the time but it wasn't exactly built on solid fundamentals and I wasn't all that confident that I could repeat it. But a definate step in the right direction.

Dec 2006,
STT, played 57, Average position 3rd, Average Buy-In $8.43m ITM 39%, ROI 13%, Profit $63.31
MTT, played 30 Average Buy In $13.75, ITM 23%, ROI 107%, Profit $441.23
Total Profit for Month: $504.54

December was a much better month my results were more consistent and not skewed by as much by just a few games. My STT results were a bit disapointing but at least I was in profit on them. It is my MTT results and there consistency that I was most pleased with as I proved to myself that I could get deep into the money with reasonable frequency. As well as boosting my bankroll nicely, the results in December did quite a bit for my confidence as it shows some consistency in my results and it's my 2nd month in a row in profit.

Jan 2007 so far,
I'm up $132 in STTs and about break even in MTTs. I'm in bankroll building mode at the moment so I'm sticking to the $5 & $10 games and rewarding myself with the odd $20 MTT when I have a good run, but I'm going to drop back down to $5 & $10 MTT's with fields less than 100 players for the rest of the month to see if I can get the MTT's into the black for the month. I don't feel that my MTT play has been bad, I'm just putting it down to variance. In the early part of the month my STT's weren't too hot so I went back to a couple of books and refreshed my memory going over a couple of chapters and now we are storming again. So the plan for the rest of the month is stick to the softer $5 games and play as many as possible. I doubt I'll get anywhere near December's profit for the month but just as long as I don't spunk my profit away and end up ahead for the month I'll be pleased. If I can show three profitable months in a row I'll be delighted as it will give me some more confidence that I can be consistant.

Wish me luck................

Where have I been

2007-01-23T20:49:00.000Z

Crikey, I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted. It's just too easy to forget to post and get out of the habit and I really want to try and maintain this blog so I can look back on it at a later date and see how my journey into poker has progressed.

The beauty of blogging my poker experiece is that I'll not have a record of my journey but I'll also be able to recall my mental attitude, the highs and lows that I encounter along the way.

So to make up for the barren spell on my blog, here comes a flurry of postigns to bring things back up to date.

Bubble Boy

2006-12-17T16:11:00.000Z

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

2006-12-17T15:52:00.000Z

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

2006-12-17T15:42:00.000Z

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

2006-12-17T09:54:00.000Z

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

2006-12-02T17:08:00.000Z

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

2006-12-02T14:23:00.000Z

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

Gutshot Hotshot

2006-11-26T12:09:00.000Z

I've only played two games of poker in the last four days, good god man... what's wrong with you. Whats more they have both been multi table tournaments, not my usual tipple. But if you've read my previous post you'll see that I have been swatting up on MTT's recently.

I was down in London for a couple of days this week and I wanted to get a live game in while I was in London, so I spent some time online trying to work out where to play. There was quite a lot of choice but I didn't want to play in a cash game and I didn't want to have to travel too far out from the city centre so it looked like the £50 Freezeout at the Gutshot was the best choice.

I arrived at the Gutshot and was immediately impressed by the scale, busyness and friendlyness. Excellent venue highyl recommended, make sure you give it a try and support this club.

Well I had been a bit aprehensive about the game and in all honesty I had been swithering all week about it. £50 is a bit rich for me and I thought I was probably just throwing my money away, but in the end I decided to go for it as it would be an experience and its not like I am going to be going back and playing at that level very often.

I spent a couple of hours researching the game (no players, starting chips, blind structure etc..) and planning my strategy. By the time I headed out for the Gutshot my nerves were tingling and my mind was racing.

I sat down to play along with 86 other players and just played to my strategy. I was a bit nervous at first and every time I tried to riffle my chips they just ended up in a pile all over the place. I gradually started to relax and get a bit more comfortable though and just kept plugging away. With 87 player in the field and me playing at a significantly higher level than usual I didn't have very high expectations, but I had a plan it seemed to be working.

I'm not going to give you a hand by hand break down but suffice to say that after about four hours of play I made it to the final table with a pretty respectable chip stack. The blinds were getting pretty big by this stage and I was delighted to get this far, but I wasn't going to tighten up and get blinded away, hell no... now that I was at least guarenteed my buy in back I was going for first place, whohaa!.

A few hands in I shoved from late position with A-Jo and got a caller, he had A-Qo but luckily a Jack arrived to save me and boost my stack as my horrified opponent left the table. I kept plugging away and stealing a few pots and gradually worked my way up to about 60,000 chips, there were about 215,000 in play. I think I was chip leader at this point, but not by very much.

The next significant hand was against a friendly big chap called Cal, we had been sitting next to each other at the previous table and he had been playing pretty tight the whole time. The blinds were 2,000 / 4,000 and I raised the blinds up to 10,000 with A-Ko I got a caller, Cal shoved all in for about another 30K. Did he really have something or was he just making a stand thinking that I was stealing the blinds, again.... Well he had been playing tight so he probably had something. A-K is a drawing hand, but it's a good one, at worst it would be alomst a coin flip. With the amount of chips I had I could have tightened up and got another couple of places higher, but if this coin flip came off I would be significant chip leader, and hell I was playing to win, and it was 1:00 am and I had meetings early the next morning and still had to get online and finish off my presentations for them... Hey Ho...let's gamble.

Cal flipped his cards over to reveal a pair of Ladies. He was 57% to my A-Ko 43%. The cards cam down and I didn't catch an Ace or King. That little encounter crippled me and I was all in a couple of hands later with K-Qo and heading home a few minutes after that.

I've been going over and over that play in mind since Thursday and I guess I shouldn't have played it knowing that Cal was tight and I still had a big stack even if I folded my A-K and 10K raise. But then again, that coin flip could have boosted my finish position from 6th up to 1st. I'm undecided, I still think it was a good strong play and would probably do it again.

I ended up finishing 6th and turning my £50 Buy in into £218 and far exceeding my expectations. I'll definately be back.

The only game I've played since then is a 50 player $5.00 MTT on Party Poker, finished 3rd.

So is MTT the way forward, well let's say I'll be studying my books, refining my strategy and playing a few more in the coming weeks. :-) wish me luck

Return of the Maniac

2006-11-26T11:47:00.000Z

I can't believe its 2 months since I last posted here but there you go, what a lazy sob. Must try harder, sounds like my poker philosophy.

A lot has happened in the last 2 months, things have been pretty hectic at work and I've been up and down to London quite a lot but I have still found the time for poker and have as usual been reading as much as I can to try and improve my play.

I've been reading:

The Professor, The Banker and the Suicide King its great read and gives an amazing insight into the lives and mentality of the top high stakes pros.

Killer Poker Online 2 by John Vorhaus. Easy to read and very good. The section on heads up play is brilliant and has improved my regular and heads up play greatly.

The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder. Oh my god... what a revalation. A lot of poker books are quite similair and give pretty much the same info regarding hand selection, pre and post flop play but many of them are written by pros who play bug live tournament, which tend to have deeper stacks and slower blinds than online tournaments. This book is specifically about playing in faster tournaments and the strategy you should adopt. Wow... it's very different and I can't recommmend it highly enough. Go buy it, but make sure you let me know which tournaments you will be playing in as I don't want to run into you in an MTT if you've read this. Check out my next post about my recent results and see if you think this book might be worth a read.

WPT Bootcamp

2006-09-24T20:15:00.000+01:00

In so many walks of life you are advised that you need to set yourself goals if you wish to achieve something. Well I think I've just found the ideal thing to set myself as a goal.

Goals need to be something of value to you, have a fixed time limit and a course of action to allow you to achieve them and they need to be difficult but achievable. It's the achievable part of this one that's going to be really difficult. OK, I'm probably living in cloud cuckoo land but you've got to set your sights on something big.

As you can probably guess from the image, my goal is to earn enough from online poker to pay my way to the World Poker Tour Bootcamp in the Caribbean in early December.

That means I'm going to need to win about $6,000 ($4K for the bootcamp + return flight to Florida + spending money) oh, and I'd better win some money for the lovely Lorna too so I can restore some of the brownie points that buggering off to the Caribbean on my own is going to cost, better make that $7,500 then.

A quick glance at the calendar and I see that I have 10 weeks to achieve this, so that means $750 profit per week, hmm...never done that before. So if I play five nights a week that's a consistant $150 profit per session. That means winning 4 x $10 Sit & Go per night. So I would need to play perhaps 8 of them each session.

When you break it down like that it almost sounds achievable, who am I kidding!!! Maybe I'll just have to settle for a weekend reading Dan Harrington books on a park bench at Rothsea.

Suckouts

2006-09-24T20:06:00.000+01:00

Having hardly played this week I was really looking forward to getting some games in this weekend but now all I feel is a sense of growing frustration, Arrrrghhhh.

I played a few $5.00 games on Saturday trying to qualify for the Party Poker Monster but alas never made it through, which is a bit of a nightmare because the quality of the other players was for the most part, awfull. Every time I ghot my chips in I was well ahead and then Boom...rivered.

Then on Sunday I played a few Ladder Sit & Gos on Party, it was like Deja Vu, more good hands getting rivered.

I think I'm going to have to try playing higher stakes games or just give up on Party Poker as I seem to keep getting rivered by numpties.

Poker Magazines

2006-09-24T19:21:00.000+01:00

This week I have discovered two new poker magazines, one of my work colleagues picked them up as freebies in the British Midland airport lounge at Heathrow. Nice one. I haven't read them both cover to cover yet but first impressions are very good.

The first magazine is Flush, it's nice and glossy and had a good variety of news and articles. This magazine isn't 100% dedicated to poker, there are some articles on other sports but I'd say about 80% of the magazine is about poker. It looks like the magazine has been running for around a year but I've never seen it in any shops, guess I'll have to subscribe to it if I ever want to see it again.

The second magazine is Poker Pro Europe, it's also nice and glossy but it has a rather more authorative feel to it then Flush and runs to a perfectly respectable 100 pages. The news coverage and articles in the magazine are very detailed and most have a British or European focus. There is a diary column by Des Wilson as advice from a variety of pros including "Devilfish" Dave Ulliot, Harry Demetriou and Juha Helppi. This is definately one I'll keeping an eye out for in future.

Ladbrokes Poker Ladders

2006-09-23T09:39:00.000+01:00

I fired up Ladbrokes poker last night for the first time in a while and I was pleased to be greeted with tons of new features. Along side all the poker games there is a new "Casino" tab that leads to a long list of casino games including blackjack, slots etc.. that you can launch from inside the poker client. Very good but I'll be keeping clear of them, you probably know I don't really like games of chance when the odds aren't in my favour.

What really caught my attention was some of the new poker game options. There were more big tournaments than last time I was on, but it was the new Ladders that caught my attention. I liked the look of their structure. In a normal satellite only about 10% of the field goes through to the next stage, e.g. 1 player in a 10 player tourney, maybe 3 in a 30 player one. The Ladders on Ladbrokes reward three out of the ten players with a ticket to the next level and on some levels the player in fourth place gets a ticket to replay the level they are on.

There are two different ladder events, one starting at $3.00 with four levels and a first place prize of $500, the other with a starting price of $9.00, five levels and a first prize of $3,000. I like the structure, it looks a little easier than the big guarenteed prize MTT's with huge numbers of players and crazy satellites.

I've played my first $3.00 level 1 event and won myself a ticket to level 2. I'll let you know how I get on.

Ladbrokes Casino Paddington

2006-09-22T20:19:00.000+01:00

It's been a really busy and exciting week but sadly not much time for poker, it wasn't for lack of trying though.

I was down in London for a few meetings midweek and the hotel I was staying at was just around the corner from the new Ladbrokes Casino at Paddington.

It's 10:00pm, my flight was late and I had been travelling for 6 hours despite the fact that the time in the air between Glasgow and London is only about hour. Air travel certainly aint glamerous, quite frankly it's a pain in the a$$ with all these new security restrictions.

SECURITY - "I'm sorry sir you can't take that cigarette lighter through security you'll need to put it in the bin",
ME - "but I can just go into the W.H.Smiths on the other side of security and buy another one",
SECURITY - "Yes sir, but you still need to put this one in the bin"

What a ludicrous farse. However I got my own back, my cabin baggage was at least a centimetre bigger than the regulation size and I had a blunt pencinl in my bag too. W@nkers.

Sorry, got a bit side tracked there.

We popped into the new Ladbrokes Casino for a drink and perhaps a little flutter and we were immediatley impressed by the service and decor, very friendly, professional and tasteful. We stuck our heads into the Spoorts bar for a quick look then decided to go downstairs to the main area.

The first thing you spot when you enter the main gaming floor is the plush decor and subtle lighting. There is a small well stocked bar and a comfortable seating area around the bar. Steps lead down to a lower level that with more seating, a restaurant and private dining booths.

We order ourselves a couple of drinks and wander through into the gaming area where there are a few roulette tables, four of five blackjack tables, one bacarat table and a 3 card stud table, beyond the room we are in there is another room with slots and the cahier's cage. Sadly no dedicated poker room running cash games, tournaments or Sit & Go but then agin I wasn't' really expecting there to be.

I'm not really one for the games of chance in casinos, I would far rather gamble on something where I feel there is some skill or I have a bit of an edge and the casino always has an edge in the games they offer. But now I was here it felt only right to have a litlle flutter, little being the operative word. First up we decided to have a little shot at the roulette table. So my colleague and I sat down at a table with a £2.00 minimum bet and did nothing to aid the image of the Scots being tight by buying a mere £10.00 of chips each. I tried to put £2.00 on Red only to be told that the minimum bet of £2.00 only applied to the numbers on the inside. Well you don't need to be Einstein to work out that with odds of 35/1 my £2.00 chips weren't going to have much chance of winning on the centre numbers. So what the heck I stuck the £10.00 on Red, one spin, caput, chips gone. My colleague chose to loose his chips more gradually on £2.00 centre bets, he lasted all of five minutes. What a pair of cheapskates. While we were at the table a couple of ladies next to us were dropping £4.00 chips all over the board. They took there winnings up to about £1000 and back down to about £400 in the 5 minutes we were at the table. Another chap turned up with a single, big square £1,000 chip and a handful of pink £100 chips, he lost half of that in the five minutes we were there. My god, complete lunacy throwing big lumps of money like that at roulette.

Time for another drink and a wee shot at the 3 card stud, again not a game that I approve of as it's complete luck but what the hell. We sat down at the table, £5.00 minimum bet or £10 if you play the dealer (£5.00 ante and £5.00 if you play your hand). I bought £30.00 of chips and sat down, couldn't really afford to lose them all but pretty much resigned to the fact that I probably would. Well we played a few hands, at first I was up, then my chips started going down, got to about £20.00 was just about to cash out and I started winning agin. I built my chips back up to £60 and decided to cash out. I'd doubled my money so I could go home with a spring in my step and some crispy new notes in my wallet.

Got back to the hotel and I was just about to settle down to read my book for an hour, "The Great Casino Heist", but decided to blip through the TV channels and found that the classic moview "The Sting" was just about to start.

OK so I haven't managed to play any Internet or Live poker for a few days but I've been to a casino, I'm reading a book about casinos and I've watched a movie about gambling. Do you think I'm getting addicted or is somebody trying to tell me something.

I'll finish this post with a useless fact. Whilst watching "The Sting" I spotted a sign above a door that made me sit up and take note. If you are ever talking to anybody about "The Wabash Club", a poker room in Glasgow, you can smugly inform them that the club takes it's name from the sign above a club in one of the establishing shots of "The Sting".

PS> If you're in London and fancy a relaxing drink or a little flutter in comfortable, cool surroundings then I can recommend the Ladbrokes Paddington Casino, it's really nice. Next time I find myself spending the night in London I'll have to try and locate the Gutshot or the Vic and take a look.

The Cincinnati Club - Second Visit

2006-09-17T20:03:00.000+01:00

I enjoyed my Saturday night Freezeout out at the Cincinnati Club in Glasgow so much last Saturday that I was really looking forward to going back again. I did alright last week finishing in about 15th out of 36 and was confident I could do better. I did still feel that I was one of the least experienced players though so wasn't expecting to make it into the money.

I think we were about the first to arrive at 7:30 and it definately wasn't as busy as the previous week. In the end only 21 players signed up for the game and it was suggested that we take the buy in up from £10 to £20 as it was so quiet, everybody agreed.

We were split across three tables to start and given 6,000 chips each. Play was nice and solid and sensible and we had nice deep stacks which were to make for a very enjoyable evening. We had three Norwegian guests in the tournament, livened up the banter at the table a bit, they were over visiting Strathclyde University. The Scandanavians are known for their aggressive poker style and the three young lads took a little bit of good natured banter about this. One of them went out within the first hour or so and I would eventually knock the second one out when he pushed his short stack into the middle and I called him with pocket Aces. The remaining Norwegian played a good game and despite finding himself short stacked a couple of times used his aggression and picked his spots nicely to build his chips back up.

Once a few players had been knocked out we were whittled down to two tables and my mate Andy ended up at the same table as me. I had position on him but he arrived with a pretty impressive stack of chips. I hoped we didn't run into each other too heavily at the table as the journey home might be a bit frosty if one of us knocked the other out. With that in mind, I guess it was almost inevitable that we would run head first into each other. I had been laying down junk hands for what seemed like an eternity and finally picked up a nice starting hand K-Q hearts in late position. Andy had been playing quite tight but he decided to bet the flop this time and raised the big blind three times, I called and down came the flop with two more hearts in it. Andy bet the flop and I raised him hoping he would jump out of the way, he called and the turn revealed another heart giving me a King high flush. I guess he could have had the Ace of hearts but I was pretty sure he didn't. Had it been anybody else at the table I would have tried to get all my chips in and bust somebody out but I showed restraint and checked the turn and river before scooping up the chips.

Play continued and more players dropped out until Andy and I found ourselves at the final table of nine players, we both had pretty reasonable stacks probably about the middle of the field. I continued to play tight, steal a few blinds and see what happened. I built my chips up a bit more, caught a few nice cards and increased my stack some more until we were down to five players. Then Andy and I ran into each other big style once again. Andy raised preflop and I looked down to see Pocket Aces, naturally I called. The flop came down, Andy checked and I raised hoping once again that he would jump out the way but he didn't. My Aces held up and I took a large lump of chips from him. Once again I could have been more agressive but held back a bit. None the less that hand left and seriously short stacked and there was no way back from there for him, he busted out in 5th.

My stack was now quite healthy, the chip leader had an enormous stack and there were two smaller stacks than me. Number 4 busts out and I know I'm in the money. The short stack at the table now is the remaining young Norwegian lad, we treated his pushes with some respect not wanting to let him double up and finally the chip leader wiped him out on one of his pushes. I'm now heads up and out chipped by about 5 to 1. We play a few hands relatively passively each player folding to the others raises and trading blinds. Then I'm raised in the small blind with Pocket fours and decide to re-raise in case my opponent was just trying to steal my blind. He calls and the flop comes down with lots of face cards, 2 Queens and maybe a Jack. He puts in a small bet and I see this as an opportunity to push hard and try and take down what is now a big pot. I raise, he calls and down comes another face card, a King this time. He checks and I put in a big raise which causes him to fold showing pocket 10's as he does so. Everybody at the table is putting me on trip Queens or a full house of Kings and Queens I just agree with them for now pleased that 4's didn't get called all the way :-). That hand helped a lot and I was sure I had some good reads on my opponent and could force him to fold good hands. I had just increased my stack nicely but I would need to do this a few more times to equal his stack, so be it. The very next hand I picked up A-6 offsuit, not a hand I would get behind on a big table but more than sufficient heads up. I raised it up 3xBB then he re-raised twice the pot, the pot is now huge. I thought a long time about my next move, I stared him down and picked up the tells I was looking for. I knew he had something but I also knew he was pissed that I was being aggressive and trying to eat into his stack. There's a lot in the pot, if I go for it and win I'll have matched his stack, if I lose I'm crippled, or worse. If I pair my Ace I'll probably take the pot, I'm in the money, got further than I expected, it's late, I'm tired, what the heck. I shove. I knew I probably shouldn't have, if I'd stuck to the patience and discipline that had got me this far I woud have layed it down, but my agression had been building and working and I had to try and command the table if I was to overturn his chip lead...here goes. We flip our cards over and he has pocket Kings. If I hit my Ace I'll take the pot and pull up even with his stack, if nothing improves I'm busted. Well no Aces came down har turned his pair of Kings into trips on the turn... Doh!

Never mind, that's the way it goes. In hindsight I should have got out of the hand when he re-raised me and played with a bit more patience, but heh...that's poker. I picked up my £120 winnings and went home with a huge smile on my face. I had done far better than I expected to and I didn't feel dominated or outplayed heads up...I feel I had a good chance but blew it. I am also rather chuffed because I would consider myself to be one of the least experienced players at CinCin's listening to the bater around the room. There's maybe hope for me yet.

I'll be back at CinCin's again soon, can't wait. I want to try and prove to myself that it wasn't just a fluke and see if I can make the Final Table and Cash out again. I might need to leave it a couple of weeks though. A slap up lunch at Ben & Jerry's with the family on Sunday paid for from my winnings should help win me a few brownie points though.

First Impressions - The Cincinnati Club

2006-09-10T11:06:00.000+01:00

I've been wanting to visit the Cincinnati club in Glasgow for a long time now and earlier this week I made my mind up that I would take the plunge this weekend.

Apart from the fact that I enjoy the odd game of live poker there were a few other reasons I wanted to get out to the CinCinnati club. Firstly the schedule changed a couple of weeks ago and there are now more Freezeouts on offer. I'm not very fond of Rebuys and the £10 Freezeout on a Saturday night looked promising for my fist excursion.

Secondly, due to the uncertainty over the future of some of the UK poker clubs because of the current gaming laws and the test case at the Gutshot, I wanted to make sure I at least got a chance to play at the Cincinnati. The club was raided back in June and it would be a crime if it were raided again or had to shut down and I certainly didn't want to miss the opportunity to play there at least once.

So my mind was made up, I was going to play in the £10 rebuy. I double checked the start time, parking and dress code online then texted a couple of mates to see if any of them wanted to come along too.

Arriving at the club we parked around the back and ventured inside to join and get our names on the list. Joining was a breeze, just bring along some photo ID and your fine. We put our names down on the list and paid our buy in then took a seat until the tournament started.

The tournament started at 8pm and there must have been approaching 40 players seated at four tables. The tournament structure was good with 4,000 chips to start and blinds increasing every 15 minutes. Play was quite sensible and conservative, no mad all in merchants throwing there chips around. Being new to the club I just kept my head down and played really tight at the start whilst trying to get a feel for the playing style of the people at my table. I won a few hands early on, one with A-J when an Ace and a Jack came out on the board giving me two pairs. I raised it up on the flop but didn't get any action. I also took down a pot with A-6 from the Big Blind, not a hand I would usually play early in a tournament but I was in the Big Blind and nobody raised it up before the flop so I limped in and paired my Ace. I then raised it up with a pot sized bet, and once again everybody folded. I continued to play tight for a while and didn't really build my stack or lose very much.

The next notable hand I played was a bit of a bummer, I played it badly and lost some chips. I was on the big blind again and I got A-5. Nobody raised the betting before the flop, I limped in and the board paired my Ace again. I bet out from my early position with a 2/3 of the pot bet and everybody folded except one lad in a lte position who called. The turn card came down and didn't help and I decided to check to see if the other lad would bet, he did. At this point I thought I should probably fold but against my better judgement I decided to call. The river card wasn't very inspiring and once again I checked and the other lad bet. I put him on an Ace with a better kicker than me or perhaps a mid pair or maybe even a stone cold bluff. I thought about it for a few moment and decided he probably had me beat with a pair of aces but with a better kicker. Even though I was pretty sure I was beaten the bet was only small and I decided to call just to see his cards, remember I'm still trying to get a feel for the people at the table and the range of hands they play. We flipped over our cards and sure enough he was holding A-J, he head me beat with his stronger kicker. Ok so I played the hand weakly and lost a few chips but it didn't make much of a dent in my stack, just took me back to around my 4,000 starting chips. A frustrating hand though, I should have played it better and just put it down when he bet into me on the turn.

The play continued until the break with players gradually dropping out and the tables getting shuffled about a bit. One big lad at the table in the middle could be heard above everybody else in the room. Sounded like he was giving a commentary on the play at his table. He had ammassed quite a huge stack of chips but I couldn't tell from where I was sitting if this was through luck or skill.

A few more players dropped out after the break but nothing much happened, the blinds were starting to creep up and it wasn't long before we reached 150/300 and my stack had dwindled to about 3000. It was time to ammass some chips before my chips atarted dwindling too much more. The hand that would knock me out is approaching. I picked up K-Q in mid position, no callers before me raised, I raised it up and a lad behind me went all in. I thought about it for a few moments, I've got a drawing hand, he could have a better drawing hand or a nice mid or high pair....but he has gone all in a couple of times recently and built back up from being seriously short stacked so it could be a bluff.....if i fold I'm down to 2,000 chips or less, if I call it's probably going to be a coin flip as to whether I bust out or double up. Do I want to potentially bust out at this stage, hmm, I shouldn't play it but what the hell. I call his all in and we flip our cards K-Q versus A-K...it's a coin flip and he ends up pairing his Ace and I'm out. Not to worry, it was a good game and it was my own fault I busted out, should probably have stayed tight and just folded to his all in, but that's poker. I think I busted out in around 15th position.

It was a thouroughly good evening. Great tournament structure, pleasant surroundings and a friendly bunch of players. The level of play was good and I had a great time. I'll definately be going back. If we want poker to flourish in Glasgow and have a choice of different places to play we have to try and support our local card clubs, so for that reason and the fact it was a great night and good value, I'll definately be back. Next time I'll know what to expect and will hopefully manage to go a bit deeper in the tournament.

New tactics

2006-09-06T23:51:00.000+01:00

I decided to modify my playing style a bit at the weekend as mentioned in my posdting here. I had considered myself pretty tight and agressive but I did seem to keep losing out by playing the odd bad hand. It seemed to be happening on or around the bubble or if I'd limped in on the big blind and hit something mediocre against fellow limpers.

With a little advice from a friend I decided it was time to try a few things. I know some of the poker books advise that you should change just one thing at a time so you can monitor the results more accurately, hmm, I guess I neglected to heed that piece of advice.

1) I should start playing even more tight/agressive. Therefore a narrower range of starting hands and getting even more aggressive when short stacked to steal blinds wherever possible.

2) My patience in tournaments is pretty good but my discipline seemed to be letting me down. I could play well for an hour and not make what I thought was a bad decision and then one moment of madness and I've blown it. So in my new regime I needed to try and be a lot more disciplined, we'll see how that works out.

3) There's something that had been bugging me for a while. I consider myself to be a reasonable player, certainly considering that I've not been playing very long, however many of my friends seemed to be doing rather better than me online. I've been consuming as many books as possible and am pretty comfortable with a lot of the theory but my results weren't as good as I thought they ought to be. I guess that's true of a lot of players but it was starting to bug me. I had wondered for a while if my I should try dipping my toe in the water at a higher level because I feared that perhaps my opponents at $2 & $5 Sit and Go tournaments weren't paying enough attention to the play to understand my moves. So I decided it was time to tentatively dip my toe in some $10.00 Sit & Go's

Only time will tell if these changes improve my ROI and ITM (In The Money) ratio but the early results are looking promising. The sample set is still tiny and it's way too early to make a call but the early signs are encouraging. I've now played five $10.00 Sit & Gos and finished in the money three times (2nd, 2nd, 3rd). Buyins $55, Winnings $80. That's an ITM of 60% and an ROI of 45%. I'll keep plugging away at these and record my results here.

Wish me luck...

Gus Hanson wis $575K Pot

2006-09-02T11:39:00.000+01:00

Wow, just spotted this over on Blonde Poker. Gus Hanson the "Great Dane" and Daniel Negreanu get into a pretty major hand against each other while playing on the High Stakes Poker TV show. You may think you've taken a bad beat and lost a few chips before but this is awesome. I can't believe how calmly Daniel takes it, he just keeps repeating "That's Sick" and even Gus has to agree. There's a video of the hand over on YouTube if you want to take a look.

The Circuit - Podcasts

2006-09-02T11:17:00.000+01:00

I was over at the excellent Betting for Value blog last week and I found a posting about The Circuit Podcasts on the Cardplayer website. I've now listened to a few and can't recomment them highly enough. As well as being informative they are great fun to listen to. It really sounds like the guys doing them are having fun. Make sure you get yourself over there and check them out, you won't be disappointed. They're great fun and there's plenty of interviews with top professional players.

Irregular Postings

2006-09-02T11:07:00.000+01:00

I started this blog with all the best intentions of trying to post something every day or two to serve as a diary or record of my poker playing so I could look back on it when I win my WSOP bracelet and remember how it all started. Removes tongue from cheek! I guess I'm going to have to get a bit more disciplined and try a bit harder, sounds a bit like my poker game :-)

Things have been a bit up and down in the last week or two, more down than up I'm sorry to say. I've been taking a look at my game and where I thought I was already pretty tight aggressive I've decided to modify my style a bit and get even tighter and more aggressive. Interesting to see how it pans out.

I've spotted a few things that I was going to blog in the last few days but just never got around to, so expect a flurry of posts today.

Back at the keyboard

2006-08-23T22:53:00.000+01:00

I'm now back at the keyboard after a couple of days of silence and busy playing a little S&G on Pacific Poker as I type this.

My report from the live game on Sunday night is nothing to write home about. Played two £5.00 games and came 5th out of 8 and 4th out of 9 in them. The cards were really cold for me all night and I know the players pretty well so bluffing wasn't much of an option as these guys will call with anything..Ho Hum, I'll get them next time :-). I musn't complain though, my hit rate in live games has been very good recently winning 3 out of 5 games the previous time out and 2 out of 3 the time before that.

My online play over the last few sessions hasn't been up to much though. I had been doing pretty nicely in the $5.00, 5 player S&G's on Titan Poker but my last couple of sessions have been pretty fruitless. I'm having a play at the $8.00, 20 player S&G's on Pacific tonight for a slight change of scenery, I had some success with them last month so we'll see how it goes. Went out on the bubble in 6th place in the first $8.00 game but sitting as chip leader in this one after busting 2 players in the 2nd hand of the game with trip 3's. Down to 14 players now so still a way to go.

Who is the PokerManiac

2006-08-20T19:05:00.000+01:00

So just who is the mysterious pokermaniac???

OK so that sounds a bit melodramatic and naff in a Hong Kong Fuey kind of a way. By day I'm a mild mannered geek working at a web design company, by night I'm a self confessed poker addict. I'm 41, married with two young children and live just outside Glasgow in Scotland.

Now that I'm in my 40's I'm a prime candidate for having a mid-life crisis and guess what... yep, I think I'm having one. I've been working in the same place for about 12 years and I feel I'm starting to go a bit stir crazy. I need a new challenge, I want to be my own boss and most of all I want to get away from the monotony of a 9 to 5, mornings never really were my thing.

Have I found a way out through poker? well stay tuned and we'll find out together. I know it's a longshot and probably little more than a dream but it's a nice dream, so don't shatter it for me just yet. It's the one thing that is making my mid life crisis a bit more bearable. In the meantime I'm going to keep buying the books, reading and watching stuff and grinding away online. Yup I'm geting better but I've still got such a long way to go, it should be fun documenting my journey though.

I'm writing this as I play a little $5.00 Sit & Go on Titan Poker but I'm going to have to sign off as I need to finish off the few remaining players and I'll need to concentrate. After that I'm away out to my local pub to see it there are any cash games going. I'll let you know how I get on in my next posting, that might even be later tonight Guinness permitting.

Strip Poker Tournament

2006-08-20T01:01:00.000+01:00

So what am I doing sitting here in Scotland when there was a strip poker contest going on in London. On second thoughts it's just as well I didn't go. I'd have been all in first hand and I don't think the female competitors would have appreciated that. Do you think the tournament director would have banned me for making a large raise, or would somebody have just come over the top of me.. it doesn't bear thinking about. Enough of the smutty thoughts...

I remember reading about this a couple of weeks ago, what a brilliant idea. The event arose out of an April Fools gag that Paddy Power came up with and they got so much feedback they decided what the heck and decided to hold the tournament anyway. BRILLIANT.

I've only played strip poker once and it's was a pretty drunken affair. The whole thing came about after a night in the pub when I guess I was about 19 or 20. To cut a long story short my best mate and I ended back at my folks house with two you female acquantences, not girlfriends but I think they both fancied us a bit. Anyway, me an my mate both ended up starkers and the two girls were sitting there in nothing but their panties. That's all there was to it really, pretty innocent and drunken and silly. Nothing happened..at least I don't think it did, but then it was a long time ago and we were all pretty pissed and I can only vaguely remember it. Still glad my dad didn't walk in on us though, god knows what he would have thought :-)

The Journey Begins

2006-08-20T00:06:00.000+01:00

So here it is, my first poker blog posting, cue the fanfare and crack open the bubbly. I’ve called my blog “The Diary of a Poker Addict” and that’s a pretty good description of what I’m planning to post here. I only started playing poker a few months ago, April 2006 to be precise, but already I’m well and truly addicted. When I’m supposed to be working, I’m thinking of poker. When I’m with friends I’m talking about poker. When I’m sleeping, I’m dreaming of poker and when I’m online… well you probably guessed… I’m playing poker. Sad huh! Well and truly hooked.

This may only be at the start of my poker journey but I feel I’ve come so far already, over the next few weeks I’ll try and put some stuff up about my first experiences. I’m devouring as many poker books as possible and I can feel my game improving rapidly. The more I learn the more I realise how little I still know and that merely drives me to by more books, read more websites and devour more info.

So where is this fascinating journey going to take me? Well that’s anybody’s guess? Will I ever be good enough to win regularly? Could I ever break free from the shackles of my real world job? Will I ever win a WSOP bracelet…will I ever even make it to Vegas? No matter where I end up I’m sure it’s going to be a blast. It will definitely have it’s high’s and low’s, I hope you enjoy the journey...