Super Try Again's Poker Blog

Good month!

2008-07-01T14:49:00.002Z

I was pleased with June in the end, finishing just under $14k+. Most of this was from 400hu. I had one my best weeks ever at the end of june which turned an ok/poor month into a good one.

I havent got great motivation to play at the moment although during the <1000 hands i've played today i ran super hot.

Goals for July :
1) Have a great holiday with the Mrs.
2) Have a positive win rate at 600nl hu over a decent sample size.
3) Perhaps play some 1000nl hu or 1000nl 6max, and play well.

I would say "put in the hours" but i know i wont, especially with going on holiday. So what I will say is

4) "make the hours i put in, quality hours!".

Peace out

Heads I win, Tails I win!

2008-06-25T16:13:00.002Z

Continued playing heads-up 400nl today. Yesterday i booked a nice win of $1.8k which i was pretty pleased with. It has just seemed like one day id be up $1k and the next day id be down $1k. So it was nice to make a little more and put me above breakeven for the past few days.

Anyway, today. Ran really hot, everything i touched turned to gold. Up just over $5k which is my 2nd best day ever. It was really nice to have a day like today because i really felt like everything had gone a bit stale, just grinding along just above breakeven. I feel like i've definitely improved my heads up over the past week and was able to capitalize on my good run of cards today.

Of course, I am now doomswitched and will lose all my moneys tomorrow. That's then, so i'm gonna be happy now.

All gravy

Inbetween games!

2008-06-20T09:56:00.002Z

I'm currently sitting at a couple of tables waiting for some heads up. I figured out that the fish come to you if you sit and wait. Obviously fish don't sit at tables on their own waiting for action, they just sit where there is already someone to play against. So, if you join a table with someone on it, they are usually a regular. This may seem obvious, but i only really thought about it recently.

I've made a little come back since my last post. Brought it made $2k or something like that. It's just nice to not follow one rough day with another. I've upped my aggression slightly and my 3-betting. I found i was playing a little weak and not putting enough pressure on my opponents. I start off my 3-betting with suited connectors, AQ+ and TT+. If they start calling light then i drop most of the connectors from my range and add in more broad ways and 88+. I found this to be an effective counter strategy to people who defend 3-bets too light, as they are often dominated.

Heads-up trauma

2008-06-18T17:07:00.002Z

Played some heads-up today because 6-max is boring the crap out of me and i'm not really paying attention. I'm finding the games at 600nl 6-max aren't great during the day so i really need to focus on how players are playing in any given session. I haven't been, nor can i be arsed to follow 5 other players at each table, so im gonna play some heads-up for a bit.

400nl HU : 1300 hands today, lost just over $3k. Sucked. Played one hand i wasn't happy with but it was deep so thats fecked! Ran like a 1 legged blind turtoise. I'm not used to much variance because i play quite snug in 6-max games and usually play a few tables so i get the hands in quite quickly. HU is very swingy and 8 buyins is nothing so hopefully it will go better tomorrow. I played 5.5hours today which is really good for me these days, so im pleased with that.

I'll update tomorrow i think to keep myself motivated. Later

Hey sportsfans!!

2008-06-16T11:04:00.002Z

This blog has nothing to do with sport. Maybe poker could be considered the fat mans sport. Is poker a sport? Nah

Anyway.

Feb: Best month ever at $12.5k. Played 17k hands at 200nl for $3.7k and 7k hands at 400nl for $8.8k. Obviously running like god and loving it up. End of feb i payed back chubbs $8k with another $4k that id made for him during the staking. Worked out well for both of us.

March : Best month ever at $15k. Played 41k hands at 200nl for $9k, 6k hands at 200hu for $1.8k, 9k hands at 100nl for $1.6k and 4k hands at 100hu for $2k. This month i started to play some heads up cos i was getting bored of 6max. Worked out pretty well and i boosted my bankroll back up to over $25k from $15k at start of month (obv with cashouts).

April : Best month ever at $18.5k. Played 47k hands at 400nl for $16k. Played a bit at 600nl and 200nl. Back to 6max for some good results. Bankroll $40k+

Ok, my pokertracker is messing up so i cant check may or june. Anyway, ill keep this blog short and boring just to keep you up to date. Illl post again soon with hopefully some funniness and graphs! Later

Long overdue update

2008-06-10T00:18:00.002Z

Last time i posted I was trying to pull out of being down $30k or so for the month in March and I kinda gave up posting after a bad day. I ended up closing the month at about -$8k after 42k hands which was an ok result.
April I only played about 19k hands so pretty lazy month, wasnt running well and didnt feel like playing, only made about $7k at 5/10 so was pretty much breakeven.
In May I ran really well at 5/10 and 10/20 over about 32,000 hands and made $50k which gave me my best month ever :-)
Anyway most ppl reading the blog will already know all this, but just a quick update, also I wanted to start posting again because I've been real lazy so far this month, 9 days complete and I basically havent played at all, about 1500 hands and down about $4k. I think I've already conceded that this month will suck because I'm going to Vegas on 23rd June for a month, but really I should get in some hands before then.
I'm finding it tough trying to move up to play just 10/20 (I dont really like playing multiple limits) because finding good games isnt easy. Also my 30" monitor is bust which doesnt help.
For the rest of the time before Vegas I think I'm going to refocus on keeping my MT ratio up and playing more 5/10 mixed in with good 10/20 games.
I might post again before Vegas but if not, will post again then when I play some tournies and live cash (aka wasting my time) out there.
Peace

Fuck variance!

2008-03-19T13:15:00.004Z

Ok, feb went well for me (i might post bout feb and march together soon). I just wanted to post about my 30k hands in 6 days challenge (at 200nl 6max). I've been running like god this year- at worst some break even stetches- but i've been slapped in the face by the cards repeatedly during this challenge.

I thought bout quiting the challenge because i have been 12 tabling and its easy to believe i am just playing well below par. However, reading jimmys posts have inspired me to say "FUCK VARIANCE, U MUGGY ****!" and i'm play through it. I think playin my B game, 12 tabling, and without major monkey tilt, i can still beat 200nl. Soooo, i'm gonna continue to play it til i do, so there could be an extension added to this challenge at the end of the week.

Negatives - First downswing of the year
Positives - I get bored with poker when im winning easily, so this has made me work harder

Cliffnotes - Fuck variance

Keep at the grind Jimmy!

Day 7

2008-03-13T12:56:00.001Z

Fuck u poker, -$13,249 in 1239 hands. $3226 of that at 10/20 in 130 hands when i sat in a super juicy game and got flush v flush, nut flush vs rivered boat and other random bullshit. I just cannot win a hand at that limit. Anyway, ran like absolute dogshit at 5/10 as well, came across the biggest fish I've ever seen on any site on Fulltilt. With about 95% frequency, when checked to, he would either bet full pot or overbet shove no matter how small the pot. Also he would call allins when shoved on with complete air if it was only a few hundred more. Lost 3.5k on that table - Kind of thin shove for the last $700 of 2 buyins, him hitting a flush allin on turn, retarded gayness hand.
Some interesting hands went down on Party, me trying to bluff mark but he has a set, slowrolled obv. Me turning top pair into a bluff cos I was 99% sure he had aces by his timing tells, damn his call. Running into aces. Margik running like god as always. Margik running like god again. Prob a bad call vs a 34/27.

Whatever, I hate this game

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Getting back to even: Day 6

2008-03-12T10:33:00.001Z

Today was a very good day, made $11,750 in 3186 hands for my best day at 5/10 so far. Only down 4 figures for the month now which is nice! Nothing like a good downswing to improve your work ethic i have to say - 22k hands in 11 days puts me on track for playing more hands this month than any other.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Getting back to even: Day 2,3,4,5

2008-03-11T10:02:00.002Z

Since my last post, I've played 10,157 hands. I was up 2.6k, after about 300 of those hands, then went on a 15 buyin downswing for the next 8000 hands and then a 13 buyin upswing in my last 2000 hands, so $1644 better off than i was and still a long way from even for the month. Not great for sure but very happy right now after a sick few days.

Blogged with Flock

Getting back to even: Day 1

2008-03-07T03:45:00.001Z

Was nice to be back at 5/10 today and actually hit some pairs! Played 3500 hands, was up $10,774 after 3000 hands and had stopped playing but I realised I was only 100bbs away from Chubb's STA record for the year of 1171bbs in a day so fired the tables back up and dropped nearly 5 buyins (obv) to end the day up $6150. Good start to the rebuild.

Blogged with Flock

Big downswing

2008-03-06T14:32:00.001Z

Normally when I make a post about my poker results it tends to be when I'm on a downswing because it helps me clarify things in my mind to write them down. This post is no exception. Moved up to $2000 and $3000 buyin games on March 1st and saw some variance like I can't remember ever seeing before. Day 1, best day ever, +$9000. Day 2, worst day ever (not by much), -$10,000. Day 3, worst day ever (by a long way), -$26,000 in 2800 hands running about $20,000 below allin expectation for the day according to PokerEV. Anyway, including tournaments I'm currently down $27635 for the month, and $37,166 since Monday, around 30% of my bankroll, which, both in monetary and net worth terms, feels pretty sick.
I'm currently down $41,169 this year at the higher stakes in 7750 hands. There are a few things I can take from this though.

1) 20+ buyin downswings are absolutely standard when you mostly get all the money with a very small edge. Long term with my game as it has been over those hands I'd expect to be at least a breakeven player. I could just as easily be up $40,000 over this amount of hands which is so sick that I could be anywhere in an $80,000 margin in like 20 hours of play.
2) As a "pro", I don't think I should be exposing myself to this sort of variance in my bankroll. My next shot at $2000 buyin games will be when/if I have a $200,000 bankroll, hopefully in a few months.

Anyway, I'm moving back down to $1000NL so it's gonna take a while to grind back the $27k im down for the month. I'm gonna try to play as many hands as I can for the rest of the month and right now I'll be very happy if I make anything at all this month. The sick thing about variance is that it has no memory and I'm just as likely to lose 20 buyins in my next 10,000 hands as I was in my last 10,000 hands! Hopefully I start running better tho and I'm going to try to put some results up for the rest of the month to give me a bit of motivation.

Blogged with Flock

2008- The year of the bean!!!!!

2008-02-25T18:41:00.005Z

Okay, so its not officially the year of the bean, but i'm gonna work hard to change that. Hopefully this post will be more coherent than my last because i'm not pissed at 4am. I came back from vegas end of december, and had another couple of weeks off poker over xmas and new year. Here are my results for december:

100nl- 387 hands, 27/25/5.6 running at 25ptbb/100 for $193 profit.

Obviously it was great month, running really hot. If ony i cud have put the hours in :)

I did't play much poker in vegas, few hours online and few hours live. Watched all the lads play a couple of sessions online though, which was cool. Pearson is probably the best player in the house. I love how he asks really obvious questions that he and everyone knows is standard. I think its genius, something to do with thinking on the same level as fish so we know how best to exploit them. Although we didn't have massive poker discussions, i think as poker players you talk about poker constantly in general conversation without realising it (i can speak for myself anyway). So i came away from vegas with some fresh ideas and some new concepts to introduc to my game.

January starts. I'm a massive fish all of a sudden, calling everyones 3-barrels with ace high and shit like that. I wonder why i'm playing like this and i think of those donkeys in the STA mansion. I could hear it in my head "DONT FOLD POOK, U'VE ALWAYS GOT ODDS!". This was one of those new concepts i'd introuced to my game. Suddenly i realised i'd taken it to the extreme (u'll see on the graph). I kept hearing something else running through my head "DONT RAISE LESS THAT 20VPIP YOU NITTY C**T". My stats went from 18/16/5.6 with attempt to steal of 31, to 23/21/4.8 ats 40.

The changes to my game made it a lot more fun to play. Playing more hands preflop and folding less postflop. Loved it. Took a little while to get used to, learning to manage my image at the table and choosing when the right time use aggression was vs taking a passive line. Jack staked my 8k at the start of January so i was able to move up to 200nl. It was quite funny, first day i had 1k downswing (big for what i was used to), but i didn't give a shit cos it mostly Chubbs money. Thing is, i was confident i would get it back, so i was worried about mugging him off, but if it was my own money it would have felt like a loss. Having the money from Jack made it seem more long term and gave me a much better mindset for the game. A great poker player once said "It's not one day, it's everyday". I can't remember who, i think it was Mark Larsen actually.

January results below:

200nl - 36.5k hands, 23/21/4.8 running at 5.8ptbb/100 for $8.5k profit. 3.8mtt ratio.

I ran pretty well by the end of the month. I was pleased with how i played and changed my game. My mtt ratio was down by 3 tables from the previous couple of months enabling me to concentrate a lot harder on the specific table dynamics.

I made 1.1k from rakeback and 80% of the profit in the graph above. Jack and i agreed he gets 20% of my playing profits. He hasn't seen any of it yet, because hes let me hang onto it so i can build my roll and move up stakes.

Goals for Feb

1) Continue to watch all the videos from leggo, deucescracked and CR (forget to mention in the post im a member of all three now)

2) Not cash out too much money from my roll (MRS 21st coming up)

3) Continue to beat 200nl and hopefully approach the move to 400nl by the end of february

Gotta go now. I'm playing in a 5aside league. We are the worst team in the league, have never won a game in over 20 matchs and our worst defeat was 30-1. I scored!!!!! Fucking ace i am.

Laters

December 07: Best Month Ever

2007-12-28T22:55:00.000Z

Also made another $5,000ish from staking.

Wasn't planning on playing too much this month with Jac/Pook coming to visit, Xmas and a few of my other friends coming in on the 29th but I managed to get in 21,000 hands. After a rough November of adjusting and improving I feel like its came together very well and I am playing the best I have ever played (+running sick sick hot).

Taking off now until mid Jan when I will hopefully start moving up to $5/$10. Bring on 08.

Not played much poker

2007-12-09T12:07:00.001Z

In vegas now. Had good couple of months before i came out.

120k hands, 100nl, 4.15 ptbb/100, 6.5 mt ratio, i think. I might post some stats and graph when i get home but who really cares??? Hoping to move up to 200nl soon (currently in talks for staking deal from guys here). I know i can beat it, cos im a god who plays the worst site at the worst hours and am deffinately better than Jimmy (jambon) who has made 10076 times more money than me at poker (must be in a harsh downswing).

Anyways, vegas. Been here since wednesday. Went out for meal on wed night, great service (US), good meal, and a random variety of cocktails - chubb wasnt happy, only guy with beer - that is my speciality. Must mention, much stronger than cocktails at home. Played some cards that night, swings everywhere, in which i was up til the last game (blind mans bluff) where i went all in with shite vs shite vs shite vs shite and......... ummm lost vs shite. Fun tho.

Thursday we went out for meal, back to the house for drinking games, limo (very sweet and cheap) to the strip, walked through a few casinos but no good clubs were open on thursday. Went into one shit place, talked to some brits bout the hatton fight before leavin swiftly. Got into a taxi, asked where was open and he took us to a strip club. I must admit, it was just like a normal clubb where the women dont where much and ask for money even for talking to you. I just chilled out for the night, while some of the lads got dances. One of which cudnt afford to pay, asked to borrow some money, cudnt get any, so left before getting chucked out (one guess who that was, small hands dont win prizes).

Friday we chilled all day, playing ps3 pro evo on huge 65" basement tv, went ouf for meal in the evening. We were all hitting downswings (hangover bumps) randomly after certain food courses, not fun. Went to bed late, 5am after times still being messed up and got up at 9am saturday morning as chubb woke me playin his tournament, which he still owes me an all you eat buffet for cos he won it.

Saturday continued, again played ps3 all day, well, until 4pm, showers, out for hatton fight. The atmosphere was amazing. In the mgm grand, where the fight was held. We were in the conference room watchin it on the big screens with 12ooo other fans. Really enjoyable and everyone was up for it, until the fight ended with a loss. I reckon at least 8000 fans for supporting hatton, prob 10000. Lots of fights kicked off afterwards, which i stayed away from (didnt wanna hurt anyone) and let the bouncers/met police take out the twats with big sticks and tazers. Dont start a fight at vegas casino, idiotic.

Went for a meal after the fight. I ordered chicken strips to start, came as chicken and chips. Fajitas for main, which was also huge. Massive stomach ache to follow as kad, mark and i went off to carry on the night (other lads went home to bed). It was such a funny night afterwards. Got in a taxi with a crazy oriental guy who was singing something crazy so we sang along. Then tried to get into pussy cat dolls lounge (PURE) in caesars palace (i think), but hanzfat had trainer shoes on (waitress words). We asked if there was a shop that sold shoes, walked around and realised it was a no go. Hanz spent 20 minutes trying to buy peoples shoes (hilarious).

Next we went into a shop, bought shoe polish to cover hanz white parts on his shoes. We all went into cubicle in the toilet, and began covering his shoes in this shit polish before realising it didnt do anyhing. We all carried our drinks on the New York New York, Coyote Ugly bar afterwards. Stayed for while, before heading home.

Here i am now. Hopefully this isnt too long to read and i will post again, maybe with some gambling in it. Take it easy, peace out

Not played much poker

2007-12-09T12:07:00.000Z

Caribbean Poker Classic

2007-11-22T18:22:00.000Z

I finally have something worth posting about but am pretty intimidated after the high standards Porno has been setting as of late.

On Monday I am off to St. Kitt's in the Caribbean for the Caribbean Poker Classic.

I won a Sit & Go for the top MPP earners on my beloved SunPoker.

$10,000 CPC Package

The prize package includes:

$6,300 buy-in to the Main Event
$1,200 7-night hotel stay at the St. Kitts Marriott
$2,500 cash for travel and meals

I was going to take STA The _Bean with me but he didn't think he would be able to handle the hot food in the Caribbean.

The main event doesn't start until Friday and before then it is mainly Satellites with a few smaller tournaments, some of which I might play but knowing me I'll probably just doss about in the pool/beach:

The day after I get back I fly out to Las Vegas with The_Bean to visit the STA Mansion.

Property Issues!

2007-11-04T13:28:00.001Z

The world seems to be going Crazy in Mugland over property. No one can afford to enter the property ladder, young or old yet everyone would much rather own than rent. One woman on a documentary stated her reason being that when you fill out any form for a bank or GP you have to state that you don’t own and people look down on you if you rent. I do understand the need for a man to be a King in his Castle...but it appears to be a sheer mentality block that people in England cannot simply rent but there are additional reasons why this may be so.
Given the legal standings as such the landlord can choose when to evacuate a monthly paying tenant with due notice of the relevant number of weeks. Extra powers of control mean that any desires to expand or improve the property can only be made by the landlord and given many are driven by the income of earning rent and many don’t tend to have the disposable income or the inclination to do mean renting families living in cramped conditions have to grin and bear it. This can be contrasted to Germany where the Krauts may have got one thing right for once apart from Durchsprungteknik design. Over in the former Reich, they give particular right to tenants and it is far more common for people to own Wohnungs – rental houses/flats than to own. A tenant is commonly permitted to live there for life and in fact it is law that if a landlord seeks to regain control of a house and evict tenants it is only permitted if that landlord can prove that they need to live in that space for their own use. Living in that Pretzel-eating driven, beer-celebrating, pornographic-loving former War ground has never been so good...... that is if you speak fucking German!

The main fault over here in the UK is that it is too small, especially given the slowdown in property development. This is mainly due to local disputes over the impact of housing in established Green areas. Muggy people have been tagged with the title of ‘NIMBY’s, and abbreviation for ‘Not In My Backyard’. Those objecting to housing claim that schooling, traffic and general development in the sticks are already at full capacity. Therefore, an offload of 800+ houses is surely ridiculous to their tiny minds. It has been predicted that 3 million houses will be required to be built to house everyone in 2020. Given the current muggy state of local planning permission and local government organisations it has been a real difficulty for developers to build in rural areas – one such company developer got initial permission in 1992 and still hasn’t been able to lay a brick due to the requisites of detail planning requisite, piping layout, water, gas and electricity planning and permission, etc, etc. Another factor holding back builders on the job at hand is that local governments also give natural concerns to welfare of animals and vegetation already existent on land. This has included necessitating the export and re-housing of specific newts and relocating certain type of plant rare to Hampshire on the designated land. One building company had to build a bat shelter on site before any work on main building for bats housed in the loft. This is all well, and due accord should be given to creatures already on the land but the time required to tell people to re-house these animals shouldn't need to be as long as it is, surely!

(A Bats gotta live!)

A main problem and easy solution ‘…in an ideal world’ is that many an older citizen and recently divorced but high earning parent own large houses which are clearly too large for their own needs. Young families squeezing five family members into three bedroom houses are all too common. Yet an obvious swap over is so hard to negotiate let alone to get people to learn to live with less that it is only for the very few with much who are willing move down to less that it not exactly ‘ideal’ (as are many idealistic suggestions). This has led inventive individuals to believe that buying affordable land and then placing a set-up house for 35 grand or so would be viable. But they are often shut down on planning pemission again by the council - maybe in 3 generations time they say! One estranged woman tried to live off her farm land of 4 acres with pigs and goats while converting 2 of her stables into a lounge/bedroom and kitchen. To no surprise both ideas are always contrary to planning orders not to mention what the locals think.

It appears in this mighty Mug that we live in that the one fine great quality of British-ness is to stick to tradition – that what was what was there before should always remain! Expansion and future technologies or new ideas or policies are always frowned upon by the older traditionalists that reside in this mighty Mug we live. They are ignorant of the evident fact that: life, by its very nature, is consistent of change and development – from a molecular to a global and political scale, this is true. This appears too much for certain citizens to comprehend. At the knowledge of the shed-housing farm lady living on her old land one older gent, on the local council, stated that it would lead to “chaos” if such housing of individuals continued to occur. I think it was the sheer extremism at which this gent went to in mentioning “chaos” that alarmed me. As though the fucking Nazis were going to invade at any moment should this event arise. The response was clearly disproportionate to the act in question (ironically very similar to the reclaiming of the Sudetenland itself) – people should be able to live on land they own. Alas local councils disagree and pig-farmer lady is now having to be re-housed by the government – a self-inflicted query of action that they now have to sort out.

(Note Max Hastings from the Telegraph's comment on the whole matter in pic above!)

I am a Poker player and very fortunately have the capacity to earn enough monies to buy a house outright or pay off a lot of the price if I so wish in a much shorter time period than most (as Mungo recently has done – nw!) This leads me to think how awful a state I’d be in, and many of my friends and others are in, given today’s climate of property prices. Sometimes I wonder how fucked I’d be if I was earning 18-20 grand a year in some shitty job with a fixed structure for promotion. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook the perks of knowing how to go online and make a few clips.

My overall conclusion on the matter is that it’s Warfare out there and I don’t think it’s going to subside in any near future given the supply to demand mismatch. I feel sorry for all those people hanging on waiting for the housing market to fall because I just don’t see it happening any time soon. Good motivation to get on the tables I guess ;o) !

TOURNEY TIMES!

2007-10-29T11:00:00.000Z

After the dissapointment of the WSOP event and realization that Tournies are actually mini-marathons and in the heat and heavy searvings of Vegas I prolly wasn't in the best of shape to take on a Week long event, plus live tilt was an impossiblilty to control! However, after reflection I feel I have adapted my Game and the Passion has reloaded! !

GUKPT LON VIC PART ONE :

BACKGROUND:

After seeing the high quality of the posting from my STA peers I thought I would share the trials and tribulations that I have experienced on the tourney scene and maybe share a few hands (cos it ain’t real Poker anyhow!).

So my predicament financially is that whilst being baller in the $’s I am near busto on the monies I’ve converted into £’s from last year and the currency climate being as it is I am reluctant to convert any more atm (well at least I have made it a goal which I hope I can keep). Therefore, where I am I to find good British money – get a real job? No! On the GUKPT Scene of course! On this note I decided I needed to enter the £1050 buy-in Freeze-out event at the London Victoria and try and turn the last of my monies into a mini-fortune that I could live and party off of. The Mungo was attending too so would be good to catch up with my old friend and Full-Ring Mentor – many a night Mungo used to watch over me play the 25/50NL Full Ring game and his cool discipline would wash over me. Ah how I wish he was around after I came back from Vegas on MAD Monkey-Tilt and maybe I would have avoided those 2 sub 50 k days this Summer. But measures in place I know that the nit-mentality is the only way to go on those bad boys even tho I just can’t help my lag-side coming out sometimes!

So I rallied enough courage to go out in the complete darkness on my bike with no lights the night before the Tourney day. As my accounts only let you withdraw £300/day and I needed the cash for the buy-in so thought I would halve the process over 2 days. Getting £600 out opposite the nightly pub and shoving it in a white envelope I felt a little uneasy that I local drunk may accost me for the monies I had, but thankfully no, I was away on my bike before any a muster was heard, let alone seen!

The girl behind the check-in desk was a little rude for my likings when I was enquiring still about the Tourney on the day of the event in the London Vic – obviously I was def going to play but I wanted to hold a little back. I was forced to throw out the wad of 20s and shut the bitch up from asking for the £1050 for a fourth time. She looked a little shocked but impressed also. Seriously, I think women are biologically programmed to worship money!

A little refresher of Coke-indulgence to wake myself up for the day’s actions was had at the bar as, to be frank, I really couldn’t sleep during the night hours – used to normally playing the tards online who “really shouldn’t be as having work the next day” etc and as a result I’m sure I didn’t really get a wink, but what the hay, I was excited to play in Tourney for a change. Hopeful and honest I must have been half asleep to be looking forward to be playing in Tourney but seeing Mungo propping up the bar as standard at high noon I was reminded of the Vegas trip all too well. I got to meet 2 of his friends who seemed like a real laugh and v keen on the Poker too – Dave, who seemed to be a real top–boy and is currently printing money on Betfair so it was enthralling to hear about the dynamics of that project! The other friend, Jerome, had just taken down an event at the Walsall Grosvenor so kudos to him (think he won 60or so English but additionally put £50 down on the bookies to back himself to win at 300 to 1 and then won it – ship the £15k extra !)

THE EVENT:

So all fired up I sat down with 342 or so other contestants and sought to play my heart out. I saw a few Poker names there but fortunately they weren’t on my table and as I sat down at my first table I began to lick my lips! To say the table was Tight was an underestimation – on picking up the BB some guy open-limped the BTN, SB checked and I followed suit trying to pick up a feel for the play on stake on the table as a whole. As luck would have it I flopped a two-pair with 85o and check-raising the BTN was so easy that I really felt I could’ve had air. On the back of this confidence exposure I proceeded in my laggy-ways and continued to double my stack in the first 2 blind levels without having to showdown a single hand unless I choice to give pity to the fools (which is hardly ever – fools pls keep note!). So after loving the first table I was moved over to some loud Asian who was conversing openly to an apparent name in the UK Poker Scene a Mr. Paul Parker who was sitting on my right – I didn’t really figure him for a name until last night I saw him on TV commentating with Vicky Coren on the GUKPT show. Additionally, talk that he had 3 properties from Poker monies was good to hear for us aspiring players! All-in all though I feel he was mad tight – limp-calling mutli-way with AK with an M of around12 was highly risky but he had the discipline to fold when not hitting but come on Paul out more of a game out there! I must give the man kudos for being a gentleman and the banter about the air-wine when the waitresses proceeded to come round with only glasses twice as some guy on the end didn’t drink kept the fatigue of being in the card room full of annoying older guys, in general, at bay. I didn’t really get any hands and wedged in-between the laggy Asain (chip-leader for our table and generally picking up hands for fun) I couldn’t really do much apart from pick on the weak-tighties in the blinds to the left of Paul but even they woke up with JJ at some point (fortunately I didn’t give them the credit for having the Kahoonies to make a Squeeze and the A9o was an easy muck). Fortunately for me, I had me Nit-Comb in toe so I could keep those retchid vermin off my back ;o)

One hand I think I could’ve played better was when I got the best hand on that table – an AQs –(pretty hearts): A laggy dim-wit who had previously made a ridic play multi-way with an under-st on the T, 4-betting with one still to act – but shucks he was free-rolling for the flush vs the guy who eventually called for the split-pot – think Paul muttered something about laying top-set with QQ when the PB on the R came but oh well! Anyhow this guy opened in the hijack, fold and the Asian called on the BTN – I thought about it and decided a squeeze for value might be good but given stack-size consideration now - possibly a flat is better and evaluation on the Flop in order. So I Re-Raise and this guy just grins and 4Bets it like nothing only it nearly all my chips. Now the Asian starts to pipe-up and saying that he was going to Sh my Raise (seriously is shit allowed!?!). He folds, I time a little but make an easy muck then this guy turns over the Aces and said he didn’t want o slow-play with the Asian in – fair enough I guess but I think Paul wouldda played it different! On inspection the Asian claims to have had QQ but we (Paul and myself) probed further after lunch and I don’t believe a word of it!

After an hour Paul was sent to the rail in an interesting little hand. He had an average size M the whole time and opens on the BTN then tight-y blinds decide to call and take a flop. The Board: A24 Flush draw-out, SB checks, BB leads and Paul raises. SB (an absolute nit) calls instantly and BB moans a bit and folds. Turn is a Q, SB checks and Paul licks his lips and bets, committing himself to the pot. SB shoves and Paul calls to flip top-2 but the SB has a set of 22’s. On reflection it may be possible to reason that the SB had something here and given live reads it’s a defo that that guy has got at least 2-pair on the flop cos the guy in BB obv had an Ace. When this was pointed out to Paul by some random Paul was defensive stating that they weren’t deep enough to get away, and tbh in the heat of the moment I think I would’ve played it the same but on reflection I do believe that the SB’s play is v blatent and sick lays should never be sought with such a small stack-size but when you just know it’s v v possible when you’re looking to play on the highest level!

(Paul looking a little worse for wear on the Hendom Mob Gallery! ! !)

So after this I probably have about 36 BB’s – good but gotta get moving as they split the table up and I head in search of Chip Fortune. I sit and look over to this 20-or-something guy who has a mass of chips, so many I reckon he musta been overall chip-leader and immediately my Fish-dar is alerted! This guy is a mammoth limp-call-station-min-raising luck box and unfortunately for the table no one is getting the goods to play back at him. I’ve played with many a giant Donk-Fish before and the secret is to take well tied stands so I intend to step up as David agains the Chip Goliath and do the entire table a favour – his slavish regime will not last during my Tourney gaming! The desperation of the table was exasperated well by this one American guy to my left who I recognise from my first table. He regails of how he “just cannot hit!” and how “this guy is incredible and will just call if he hits anything” – in truth his FC of the American’s flop C-Bet with bottom pair to turn 2-Pair with K3 was almost inspiring if it just wasn’t PDL (Pure Dumb Luck)! The American went mad ape when shown the hand I was just wondering if he’d rather be home with the kids. So I look to get the Giant’s attention and raise in the CO on his BB, I got a few chips and intend to test the waters I C-bet in a 3-way pot and he times for ages and obv just hasn’t caught anything else he’d call – I dunno how but everyone on the table felt I had nothing and tbh I had A high but I knew I was good and the Donk folded – ship the pot! The next hand came when I look down at AK UTG I raise and the GD (Giant Donk) calls me with position – all else fold. Board comes down low but with a flush draw I think and I C-Bet, Donk thinks then calls. Turn is again a blank so I fire again. Donk thinks and calls. So now there is like 25k in the middle and I have 14k behind when the River falls to complete the possible flush – I think the lead is obvious and want to see what DG has and so I check – he bets like 3.5k on the R and I just know he hasn’t got the River. I take about 12 secs and announce that I’m all-in! There’s a massive cheer from my table and I remember hearing one guy yelp! Donk is looking mad sick now like he wants to kill me and I’m there in my reflective aviators almost willing him on. He folds and leaves the table for a time-out whilst everyone claps and I make a nice collection of chips to put me well in command for my next table and day 2 all things going well!

Best Live Show Ever

2007-10-28T18:58:00.001Z

House Pics

2007-10-27T09:13:00.001Z

Sup guys, some pics of the STA Mansion for your viewing pleasure:

THE OFFICE:

Kad + Setup

Jimmy's Setup

Pumba Grinding

Hanzfat's Setup

Pumba, still grinding

BASEMENT

Basement theatre with 65" screen

Stairway to basement

Sofa in basement theatre

GARDEN (Early evening)

BBQ

Pool + 1 of 4 Big Daddies

RANDOM AREA WE NEVER USE

Half of the unused sitting area

The other half

Formal dining room, never used

KITCHEN

BAR

They left us all this liquor!

LIVING ROOM

In other notes:
Won credit card roulette again today vs Kad at the Cheesecake Factory, ship the $40. Also booked a $500 bet with Kad that Arsenal will finish > Man Utd in the Premiership this season.

Life at the STA Mansion

2007-10-25T10:45:00.001Z

What up,

Figured it was about time I put a blog post up! 25 days since we moved in to the Las Vegas STA mansion now, and I’m certainly not missing Mugland. I’ll try to remember some of what’s happened so far...

Hanzfat and KB managed to get themselves in trouble with the filth during a night out at New York New York on the first Saturday night. While running from the police, bobbing and weaving to avoid incoming gunshots, KB managed to get stuck while jumping some sharp railings, much to the amusement of all the cars passing by! His jeans pretty much got ripped in two as the police dragged him off the railings and cuffed him for interrogation. Thankfully the boys got off with only warnings.

The next Saturday, eager to surpass the antics of the previous week, we hit up the Strip again. I decided I’d rather play some $1000NL at the Bellagio instead of getting arrested, so missed the first couple of hours of the night while I made 1k. When I met back up with the boys, a pretty interesting incident occured which unfortunately I have had to remove from the blog.

Those nights were the main events of the last few weeks, and other than that, we’ve been pretty slack with the whole being a pro poker player thing, apart from Simon who has become a live grinder. KB has been getting raped, as have I but the last few days have been decent so I might make my goal of a $10k month. Hanzfat has been running pretty well so has made almost as much money from poker as he has from the rest of us paying him to cook us food.

There is a body fat % prop bet going on between Hanz, KB and Simon, so we are hitting up the gym fairly often. Tonight KB and Hanz laid odds of 100 to 1 that I couldn’t run 20mins on the treadmill at 8mph. Simon was 45mins through a 60min run at 8mph, so obviously I put up $10, and the $1000 run was on.

After 30 seconds, I almost twisted my ankle, and it wasn’t looking good. After 2 minutes, I realised I would never be able to go 20 mins so gave up then to save myself the pain of getting to 10 minutes and dying. Eager to win my money back I bet $20 with KB at evens that I could bench press 75lb+the bar, even though I had no idea what my max was. Well lets just say my max is lower than 75lb and I was another $20 lighter.

One more bet to see off the day, and KB laid 3 to 1 that I couldn’t beat him at boxing on the Playstation3 with Ricky Hatton (welterweight) vs some fat bastard (Heavyweight). $10 was booked and 6 rounds later the fat bastard was spark out on the mat, and I was even on the day for prop betting. Actually, KB lost credit card roulette at Applebees, so I did get a free meal lol.

In other notes, the following has been added to the Banned List: Pizza Hut (so dirty in the States), Oreos, Pumba (the evil drunk Simon), massive amounts of lamb, and playing less than 20%VPIP.

That was pretty long so I wouldn’t expect much else for a while, just remember,

50 told me go 'head switch the style up
And if they hate then let 'em hate
And watch the money pile up

Peace,

Jimmy

August summary

2007-09-01T00:50:00.000Z

Played about 2/3rd as much as I wanted this month, but took around 12 days off. Hard to have a good work ethic when grinding on your own so looking forward to getting back in a poker house in Vegas, hopefully I'll have a good September first tho :-)
Add to this prob somewhere between 0-1k in donkaments and about $800 in rakeback and bonuses. Also, ty poker for my new laptop.

Goals for September, play more hands than last month, and:

PROFIT!!

Lazy poster

2007-08-17T10:55:00.000Z

I've decided i'm shit at blogging coz i'm really lazy.

July-

Had a good first week playin 200nl on FT, up about 2k i think (roll 10k). Over the next week or so i continued to play a mixture of games, including heads up/6max 100nl, 200nl and some 400nl vs soft short stack opponents.

Had a bad couple of days, followed by my worst ever. I dropped 2.2k, including 6 buyins 200nl heads-up and 2 buyins 400nl 6-max (in 72 hands, 2 3-bet pots where my Aces/Queens ran into retard donkeys miracle sets).

After this (3k total downswing) my confidence and bankroll (7k) was knocked. Rather than quiting forever- which crossed my mind -i planned to play 10k hands at 25nl, 50nl and 100nl (30k total) before moving back up to 200nl. All went fine 8-12 tabling 25nl and 50nl. I hit a little break even streak over my first 10k 100 nl though.

Profit/loss - +$311

Bonuses - Got $1.4k from rakeback (played 60k hands), so that kept me a live.

Bankroll - 7k (after cashing out)

July graph-

Aug-

Now in august, still playing 100nl. Going ok. I've decided to continue playing 100nl and have made some targets below

Targets

- Play at least 100k hands at 100nl running above 5bb/100

- Cashout enough money to buy a car, holiday and fill bank account so i don't have to constantly cash out

- Play 3-8 tables depending on table selection. I've realised more than 8 doesnt work for me

- When pissed off, leave the tables even if i have a significant edge, its every easy to tilt off loads of cash to fish

- Don't check results regularly. I've realised that looking at my results too often is bad phycologically. I stopped looking at them during sessions, then stopped between sessions and now don't often look at the end of a day.

I easily become too results orientated, if i'm losing then i think i'm shit and if i'm winning then i get overconfident and start predicting how much money i should make over the next month. I now only check my results after a day when i'm happy i've been playing solid and won't get pissed off or over excited either way. I review more hands hands in bigger groups and try to decide myself how i should have played if before running off to 2+2 for help.

-Take regular breaks between sessions and do something non-poker related (don't review sessions, read two plus two or watch CR vid), usually watch something i've downloaded/beef it up at the gym.

Once above targets acheived

-Build roll to 10k, play 200nl again, hopefully more comfortably and able to take the swings.

August going ok, up 15 buyins at 100nl last time i checked and sticking with my targets.

Hopefully someone reads this and they weren't bored stupid. Helps me to write it though

another generally gay day

2007-08-11T03:25:00.001Z

today was pretty lame as well:

aces, kings, queens and AK are all so rigged.

F**k today

2007-08-10T04:05:00.000Z

Today was full of shit, -$2896 at 400nl and -$897 at 600nl in 2700 hands, for a total of -$3793. My worst ever day, straight after my best ever day, obviously. Lost 12 fullbuyin or more pots so to be expected really. I did get away from set over set tho which saved me a bit. Were a few other spots where I could have gotten away from cold decks as well probably. Whatever, the war will continue tomorrow.

Post-Vegas Update

2007-08-08T23:34:00.000Z

So I got knocked out of the WSOP main event in the first level, probably misplayed a flopped set vs flopped nut flush but I just gotta learn from it.
Since Vegas I've been grinding reasonably hard online, playing nearly every day, and I'm hoping to play between 50-60,000 hands this month at mid stakes. I've been running pretty hot too which is nice as my bankroll is now back at its highest point. Hopefully I can keep running/playing good! I expect a big downswing will come along at some point tho. Yesterday I had my biggest ever day at cash games, +5.5k which was about 11.5 buyins (7 buyins at 400nl, 4.5 buyins at 600nl).
The games have been really good the past couple of days which makes a change as it has been getting tougher to find 4 or more good tables to play on recently.
Here's a graph for July+August so far:

I am probably gonna keep playing 400 and 600nl for another couple of months as we are moving to Vegas at the beginning of October and I'm not sure if I wanna take a shot at 1000nl before then. I'll try to keep you guys updated and maybe post some hands if I update more often.
Peace
Jambon

Quick post

2007-07-09T12:43:00.001Z

Hey,
just a quick post to let people know im still alive and playing. Last month was ok, had a bit of a downswing towards the end of the month but up bout 3.4k.

I'm playing 200nl at FT as the moment, hoping to put in some serious hours. I've cut down the number of tables im playing (anywhere between 4-6 now- depend how im feeling/table selection). I've been slacking with the hours recently and obviously havent posted on here. I'm gonna start working hard and posting more regularly. Later

Chilling Before the Main Event

2007-07-06T07:23:00.000Z

First of all I’ll put up Nextgenneo’s trip report of his encounter with Michael Greco (happened on the 28^th):

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

“So after dinner today I thought I'd play some $2/$5 down at the Wynn. I sat down and to my right was none other than Michael Greco. I recognized him but didn't actually remember who he was. For those who may have forgotten here is a pic:

You may remember him from Eastenders and he supposedly shagged Jordan and Lindsay Lohan.

So anwyway, he asks me where I am from and I tell him. Ask him where he is from because I didn't realize who he was (thats how big of a celeb he is). Then a hand comes where I raise the CO with A2o and 2 barrel a JxxK board and he folds. I show my A2 because I show all my bluffs live to build my image. He says nothing.

Next hand a German TAG 2p2er opens the hijack, I 3b with AQo from the CO and Greco insta flats from the btn, 2p2er also calls. Flop Kxx, German checks, I check and Greco fires $250 overbet into like a $160 pot. At this point I figure he might be on tilt but he also might be repping tilt and play AK like this so I fold. He shows 42o for no pair no draw and says something like:

"If you show me a bluff I am gonna get pissed off and then I am going to end up taking all your money you little prick"

I tell him to not get upset about a bluff on 2/5 etc and the banter goes on for a while. He is clearly really really mad and starts tilting and saying I am the biggest prick in the card room, a little punk kid etc etc. At this point I ask for a floor person to come over and calm him down and eventually he shuts the fuck up and we get on with it. A little later Mark comes over to ask how the game is going and I say:

"Its pretty tight but there is this one massive cunt on the table, but I can't tell you who"

I say this loud and Greco obv heres. The exchanges go back and forth and an hour later I cash out. As I am by the cashiers desk he goes to cash out and starts calling me a fat prick and telling me if I ever call him a cunt he is going to have me etc. Starts pointing at his eyes and saying he knows who I am and is going to be waiting outside. I just keep saying "Okay Beppe" and I think I called him a twat which made him go even more mad and security actually had to semi hold him back. All in all it was a big scene at the cardroom and I was told he would be waiting outside. What a fucking grade F celebrity with an ego problem. Mongy was telling me that Parsy had trouble with him last year :-D

Anyways, he wasn't waiting outside and I was up about $100 off him so its all good. Later in the evening this guy from Alabama in Bally's started calling me, Mark and Jambon European faggots and went on huge huge monkey tilt. Long story short, viva Las Vegas!”

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

LOL beppe! Since then, we’ve mostly been chilling, not been playing much cards, drinking and going out. Neo’s friends Woody, Weber, Elliot, Theo, Eric and Norman all arrived on Sunday. On Sunday night we had a load of drinks down at the bar at Ballys then played a drunken cash game in the room! Eric was the big winner in the game, I think he was the least drunk! Monday we chilled by the pool and went to Bally’s steakhouse that night and then had a few more drinks at the bar.

Tuesday night we decided to really get on the sauce! Me and Neo’s drank almost a whole half bottle of 75% alcohol and Marky threw up in his glass before we even left after the hardcore game of circle and hi/lo!

We left the room at about 2am and as most clubs would be full or closing soon, we decided to hit up a strip club :-) Mongy is an authority on strip clubs, and he said we should go to Déjà Vu, so we did. This place was open until 6am and was a fully nude strip club mmm. Was $25 for entry and then we paid $100 for a booth with 2 bottles of non-alcoholic champagne (apparently there is no alcohol at any fully nude strip club). As soon as we sat down, 4 or 5 hot girls came over and started chatting with us and Neo bought Theo a private dance with 2 strippers as it was his last night. He came back with a big big grin on his face! Neo then went off for a dance and I went too with a girl called Alex who was blonde and pretty hot. Her private dance was pretty hot but nothing special. I got back to the booth and we waited for Neo for aaaages! He eventually returned saying how he got like 16 songs worth of dances with this girl MJ cos it was buy 1 get 1 free when he went in (normal prices were $30/song or $100/4 songs).

We then watched some of the pole dances and decided who we wanted next. Marky already had a double dance and said one of the girls (Cassidy) was really hot so I got her next for a 1-on-1 dance. OMG she was steaming hot and loved it rough so that was awesome. Neo had a happy ending with his slut of a last dancer too, and we decided we want to own a strip club at some point.

Last night we got drunk again and went to the club at the Hard Rock to see Ministry of Sound DJ Scotty Boy perform. The music was ridiculously good but it was a bit of a sausage fest :-(.

2day I played another main event satellite but busted allin pre with aces pretty early. Neo and Mark have bought in to the main event and are playing 2moro (Friday – day 1A) and Saturday (day 1B) respectively. I’m gonna head over to the Bellagio now and pick up some money, then gonna go to the Rio to buy in. I think I’m gonna request to play day 1D on Monday.

Until then, take it easy,

Jambon.

sick sick night

2007-06-27T06:16:00.000Z

We just got back from the Wynn, was a pretty sick night but I'll get onto that in a bit!
On Saturday we played the $1500 NLHE WSOP event, me and Kad busted in level 4 and Mong busted in level 3, so was pretty unsuccessful. I need a new luckbox right now :-)
On Sunday I had a good late night session at 5/10 at the Bellagio, made just over 1k, then last night I lost it all back at 5/10 at the Wynn.

Gonna leave off playing live for a while, the handrate / single tabling / full ring is all putting me on tilt. Kad is feeling the same about that! Marky has been doing pretty well live tho, raping the deepstack games at the Wynn.

We went to the steakhouse at the Bellagio last night (Prime) which was amazing. 12oz filet mignon never tasted so good. Me and Kad both went for medium-rare last night, but are thinking rare for our next one (probably at the Wynn or Venetian), and possibly blue after that if we like it!

After cruising around the strip with the Mong, it has to be said, he knows a LOT of people out here. He's got a reputation for sure. ;-) We think a cab driver is after him though cos me, Mark and Kad got the same cab driver three days in a row (2000 cabs in Vegas) at 3 different hotels - the odds are just ridiculous, so it cant be a coincidence - watch out Mong!

After chilling by the pool all day, we decided to head to the Wynn for a bit of gambling and some dinner. We ate at the Italian restaurant (ugh) and everyone loved it up, except me, I had to leave most of my $45 pasta haha. We are addicted to video poker, so put in a cheeky session after the meal. Its all about the free drinks you get while playing. Oh, and the cocktail waitresses at the Wynn are STEAMING!! I will try and get some pics next time I'm there. For now, you'll have to make do with a pretty bad quality pic of us playing video poker.

After the video poker session, we were all pretty hammered, especially Kad and Mark and they decided to play a bit of blackjack. As a rule, Mark doesnt gamble on table games because he's mental and goes on sick monkey tilt way too easily. This soon became obvious....

So they were Martingaling blackjack (for those who don't know, this is where everytime you lose, you double your bet so when you eventually win a hand you get back to even). So they were betting $100 a hand, so they went $100, $200, $400, $800 (ok, now starting to sweat it). $1600, $3200. Now this is fucked, they are down $6300. They are drunk as fuck tho and keep going. We had to get the table limit raised for the next bet - $6400. The dealer had a ten, Kad/Mark had 18. Dealer flips a black queen and we are pwned. Now they are down this much money, they are on sick tilt and use almost all the Wynn chips they had to place the $12800 bet. The dealer shows an 8 and Kad/Mark are dealt 14. They hit, and a 9 peels to bust them. They lost just over $25,000 in total.

We got comped a limo ride back to Ballys, but the boys are now almost busto, all their money in Vegas is gone and they barely have enough money left for food for the rest of the trip, let alone playing any poker or buying into the WSOP main event. So so fucked. The odds of losing 7 coinflips in a row are about 0.8%....

Doshi and Ravey Ru get out here tomorrow, hopefully Kad and Mark will have calmed down by then.
Until the next update, take it easy,
Jambon

First Vegas Update

2007-06-23T15:22:00.000Z

Hey guys, for those who dont know, me, Kad, Mark and Mongy are in Vegas right now for the WSOP!
Quick update on whats happened so far on the trip - first off, our flight got delayed 29 hours!!! While we were still in the terminal, with about 30mins to go until scheduled departure, Kad laid a line of 40mins late for the over/under on when we would leave, I put $50 on it, lost that one pretty badly lol. When we were on the plane I put another $50 that we would leave at some point that day... lost that too! We got put up in the worst Hilton hotel in the world in a place called Arundel overnight, then the travelling started all over again the next day.
It was worth the wait tho, because Vegas is amazing. The weather is great, around 40-50 degree heat every day, and it doesnt go below 30 degrees at night id say. Yet to see one cloud in the sky. Our hotel room is amazing, we have 3 linked rooms and currently im staying in the best one, with king size bed, jacuzzi, etc etc. The food has been the best ive ever eaten. The first night we went to the steakhouse in Ballys for a 12oz fillet, and after eating that, I dont know how places in England get away with selling the crap they do. Also the buffet breakfasts out here are ridiculously good, I think im gonna get fat.
Poker so far has been meh, I played about 3 hours of $2/$5 and made like $70 then yesterday put in a 9 hour day at $5/$10 and lost about $1.4k, which is standard variance but it felt like such a grind I remembered how much i hate playing live cash games. I may play a couple more days to see if the tide will turn.
Today me, Kad and Mongy are playing a $1500 no limit holdem WSOP event, so hopefully I can get my luckbox out and make it through day 1.
I think Kad put some of my pics on facebook so check them out. I'll take a few more today of the cardroom at the Rio and prob put them up on here later.
Peace
Jambon

I Hate Party!

2007-05-28T17:39:00.000Z

I Hate Party!
You can hear me in the streets.
I Hate Party!
Because it's Riggged!

Fuck You Party and all the 5,3,2 and 1 outers!
(Turned Quads not good enough??
Fuck You Party!)

I hate the min-betting Fish,
The ''Gut-shotting/all-in calling on the Turn Retards',
The 'All-in pre with A7o cos you know you're good against AK believers'
Why?
Cos Party rewards them, gives them their miracle Cards cos they are The Fish!

Ppl say: "Sorry man. Didn't realize" in the Chat.
I say: "F.O.A.D! And Give me my money Back!"
Party says: "Fuck you all!"

I Hate Party cos I play there
Trying not to spew after some cunt has decided to make a play
Get All-in as a Giant Dog and Party says there you go!

Party drives me Crazy with all the shit!
Party favours all the players who play like a nit!
Party Party Party
is Full of SHIT!

I hate Party
I hate the players who rate themselves cos they run good
I hate the Donkey Tards who run a big score on the Big Tables playing SHIT
Fuck you all!

I hate Party cos after a 50k-hand "swing 'like a mofo" month they finally made me TILT!!@#@!
1-0 to Party
It won't happen again... You know why?

Cos I fucking Hate you Party!
I am going to use that Hate to ensure you never win again!

Update April til now

2007-05-13T17:45:00.000Z

The targets of my last post were to play 60k hands at 100nl playing over 10 tables. The results of this are shown on the graph below just after the $1.6k drop at 200nl. I ran fine to start with gaining back $800 but then began to run even worse than i did at 200nl but continued to play solidly. During the 18 buyin downswing I had stages of playing very solid poker but admit tilting occasionally.

I began to lose my game, felting hands that i deffinitely shouldn't be (e.g. not folding top pair against a guy showing great strength just because there was a flush draw out). I started believing everyone was making plays at me all the time because they always seemed to be raising and betting into me. Around the -$2600 mark I pulled myself together, dropped back a couple of tables (already having cut back to 8 tables), played what i believed to be solid abc poker. This worked for a short while but I ran bad and dropped back down.

I was really starting to lose faith in myself at this point. I put a lot of pressure on myself because I don't have a job, nor am i at university. I have given myself a time period in which to take a shot at poker and unless I get to a decent level (mid stakes winner) within the next 6 months I know i will haveto get a job. Anyway, i dropped down to 25nl and 50nl playing 10-12 tables and just played really basic poker.

50nl: 10k hands, 7.7BB/100, +$780

25nl: 7.5k hands, 4BB/100, +$160 (i actually had a bad tilt session at this level, quite funny)

I really feel the time spent at this levels help me get back to fundermentals (stop making plays) and plugged a lot of leaks in my game.

Now, i've moved back up to 100nl and 200nl, and have moved back up to break even since the start of april. If you'd have told me this when i started i would have been gutted, but as it stands now i am pretty happy. I feel I am playing better, and have started using a table selector which is really useful for finding bad players.

100nl: 7.5k hands, 5BB/100, +$750

200nl: 2.5k hands, 5BB/100, +$500

Obviously this is a very small sample so we'll just have to wait and see if it can be maintained. Who knows, the next time i blog, my graph might be above that horizontal line that has been laughing at me for the last 6 weeks.

Targets:

1) Continue to play 100nl and 200nl solidly with good table selection

2) Try to log more hands at 200nl than 100nl but be happy to drop down at any point if running bad or the tables aren't good

3) Start taking shots at 400nl in July

4) Increase bankroll by 10% a week (this target is only so (3) is possible)

Hope i haven't bored anyone too much, later

Feb/March/April Update

2007-04-10T23:31:00.000Z

Yoyo, been a long time since i posted too (end of January). In Feb I put in a reasonable amount of hands at pretty much all 400nl = profit! Heres the graph and PT screenshot shizzle for that:

I actually profited from tournies as well in Feb, not by much but about $1500 or so. If I remember rightly I came pretty close to some big final tables in the Sunday majors but no dice.

Then in March I was a bit busier with uni work and getting on the sauce so didn't play too much. However when I did play, game selection and running good = profit :-) Heres the graph:

Had a bad tourney month in March though, lost about 3k, mainly due to WSOP satellites starting and me running exceptionally bad in them hehe. So far for WSOP I'm in for $4893 after 6 attempts at the weekly $650 on stars and one attempt at the $1050 on fulltilt. No big deal though as I've been doing well on cash. In the first satellite I had QQ vs AQ allin pre for enuf chips for a seat but wasn't to be. Kad and Marky qualified on the first attempt tho so well done to them. I'll qualify before we head off to Vegas no problem, if it costs me more than $10k, whatever, don't really care, I know I'm +EV in all of these sats.

Unfortunately my finals are in the last week of April so I'm not playing much this month, but I have had a good result coming 3rd in the $50 rebuy on stars for $5500. I'm prob gonna fail my exams tho because I haven't done anything all year and don't have many notes to revise from, whoops!

After exams I have all of May and nearly 3 weeks in June to concentrate on cards (well I do have my final year project to do hehe).
My goal for that time is to get my bankroll high enough to play 5/10 at the Bellagio when I go over to Vegas and maybe play some side events, and obviously the main event :-)
To do that I'm prob gonna play a lot of 2/4 and 3/6 and maybe some 5/10, basically game selecting the best tables I can find at msnl on party and fulltilt.

Some other stuff - High Stakes Poker finished yesterday, was a great season and there were some awesome hands, especially when the big names got on the tables towards the end. My favourite hand of the whole show was in the last episode where David Benyamine and Antonio Esfandiari played a sick pot, where Esfandiari tried to outplay Benyamine. Unfortunately it didnt work that time. For what its worth, I think Antonio is the best live NLHE player on high stakes poker. His reading of weakness is something I can only hope to learn.
Also, 24 season 6 is just getting better and better every week, my favourite season so far. If anybody hasn't watched every episode of every season yet, for gods sake get on with it!!!

(As a sidenote, I've been reading about the Marc Goodwin / Ram Vaswani / Phil Ivey golf fiasco today, and in my opinion, Marc and Ram are completely out or order not paying Ivey what he is owed. So what if Ivey hustled / angle shot them, they accepted the bets and wanted to keep gambling higher and higher to get their money back, so they owe what they lost. Whether they will gamble with Ivey again is their own decision.)

Right, time to close this one, I won't be posting again until after exams at the earliest, and I'll try to update a few times in May. It's my 21st on May 16 so come to Cov, will prob hit up lava/ignite as I'm too lazy to venture further away from the flat!

Quick run down

2007-04-10T23:19:00.000Z

Jan:

3.6k hands 50NL, 9.95BB/100, $362+
48k hands 100NL, 2BB/100, $1.98k+

I had good run at 100NL for the first couple of weeks but hit a bad run of cards and tilted for a while. I dropped to 9 tabling 50NL for confidence and moved back up just before feb.

Feb:

4.6k hands 50NL, 5.47BB/100, $257+
27.4k hands 100NL, 4.22BB/100, $2.3k+
13.9k hands 200NL, 0.9BB/100, $500+

I had a good week at 100NL, so I took a shot at 200NL. I had a 2k upswing, got cocky and proceeded to lose most of this the following week. Dropped back down to 100NL, and made some money back. I carried on the month alternating between 100NL and 200NL although never really feeling comfortable/making much headway at 200NL. I think the 50NL was random times, maybe at the start of the month and in evenings messing around.

March:

1 hand 25NL, 70BB/100 hands, $0.3+ - result!
53 hands 50NL, 153BB/100, $66+ - now I’m on fire
55k hands 100NL, 3.4BB/100, $3.8k+
7.2k hands 200NL, -1.87BB/100, -$545

Still can’t manage to break into 200NL. I was happy with my play this month at that level, but the cards weren’t with me. I think when on a bad run at 200NL I didn’t play a good game because I got scared. I’m also not very happy with how I’m running slash playing at 100NL. I get bored too easily now I’ve play 200NL and dropped back down.

April:

First week-

$1.6k loss at 200NL

Don’t the exact number of hands because its on my other comp. Getting bored of 200NL struggle now and my back roll has plummeted down to 5.5k after cash outs.

Targets for next 3 weeks (the rest of april)

Play 60k hands at 100NL
Play solidly over 10tables at all times

I feel I throw so much money at unknowns, rather than waiting to get a history with them before making more complex plays. So I plan to stop this, play solid and hopefully regain the love from the poker gods which I wasn’t feeling in April

update after ages

2007-04-10T23:05:00.000Z

So been a fun couple months. Been playing ~50 hours a month and doing fairly well. Here's my current status:

Bankroll: $30,000
World Series: Qualified for $10,000 seat + $1,000
Paid for: Flight to vegas, have $1,000 saved
Current Limit: $400NL w/ an 8bb/100 win rate over 35,000 hand sample

My final year exams are March 23rd - June 5th so no more serious poker until after that. That means two months off :(

Then its try to win ~10 buy ins online by June 19th so I can use that as spending money in Vegas. Vegas trip is June 19th - July 14th, followed by graduation. Come back in August, find somewhere to live and play 80,000 hands a month and live / eat / breath poker and try to become one of the best players online. Hopefully it will all work out. Next post will be when I amin Vegas. Gl everyone with exams, cards and life

Febuary and Leam cash game

2007-02-14T18:01:00.000Z

Hi all! So last month I didn’t play any more after my blog on the 25th, here is my month graph for January:

The peak is all at 2/4, then the rest is at 3/6 J Still, including tournaments I ended the month up around $2000 online and around £400 in live games. On the pokersoc trip to Dublin, which was pretty awesome, although Dublin is a bit of a shithole imo, I took about €600 from the 1/2NL game in about 3hrs play J Those players were sooooo awful J

After my incredibly slack January, I decided that I must play at least 30,000 hands online in Feb to make up for it. So far I’m on target, and probably going to move back up to 3/6 this weekend if I don’t drop any serious money in the rest of the week. I’m trying to stick to a 50 buyin bankroll for 3/6 and above now. Here is my graph and PT screenshot for Feb so far, notice how good I am at .5/1 J

Also this Sunday I came 15^th in the party 300k gtd for $2200, which was disappointing as getting that deep in a 1500 runner tournament, I obviously hope to get top 3 where the real money is. I know a few people think I am being greedy when I say this result doesn’t matter to me, and that I should be happy I won $2000 in the tournament, but, the truth is, if you check my pokerdb you will see that I am still a losing player in this tournament over the past year. These tournaments are all about the final tables. I’m not sure why I have such trouble getting ITM in these Sunday majors, by that I mean the party 215 and the stars million. My record in both is pretty shocking, but, what can you do? Also I came 4^th in a fulltilt $75 tourney (215 players) for $1.5k the other day. I was amongst the chip leaders from 3 tables down, but made a bad play on final table which prob cost me top2.

So, thats all the boring stuff done with! Now I can talk about the Leamington cash game from last night J

Here was the lineup:

Seat 1: Myself

Seat 2: Mongy

Seat 3: James Blackburn

Seat 4: Dru

Seat 5: Rob Jagger

Seat 6: Guv

Seat 7: Kader

Seat 8: Davey Lu

Seat 9: Flash

Seat 10: Nick

This was probably one of the strongest lineups so far for this game, but still pretty soft I think. Blinds were 50p/£1 with £150 max buyin. Most people bought in for the max. I started off the game playing pretty well, taking down a couple of small pots, then I played the following pot against Mongy:

Get dealt JJ UTG+1, folds to me I raise to 4

Mongy makes it 15, folds back to me. I rarely see Mongy 3bet preflop in middle position so I wasn’t particularly liking my spot. I flat call.

Flop J32. Bingo! I lead for 27 I think and Mongy almost instantly shoves, I call and his TT is dead to running tens. Mongy said he thought I had a hand like 88, which I would probably have played the same way, except folded to the shove. Imo if he thought I had a hand like 88 he should have flat called instead of shoving when hes either way ahead/way behind and always getting called if hes beat and never getting called if hes ahead.

So I double up pretty early, and feeling good, then this happens:

Straddled by mongy, Kader makes it 8 on the hijack, Dave Lu flat calls on the cutoff. Dave looked like he was getting bored as he hadn’t played any hands so far so I thought he was calling light in position against Kad who was opening a lot of hands. Also I know Kad won’t play in the squeeze without a big hand so I squeezed from the big blind with As3s, making it £35 total I think. Kad folded, and Dave called.

Flop comes T72 and effective stacks are £105 left with about £80 in the pot. I lead for £60 and Dave instantly shoves. My £60 bet was probably a bad bet on that board as I thought he had a pretty weak hand and this flop probably hits a lot of his range. I thought he’d probably caught a pair on the flop, in which case I am about 12% to win if my ace is live, and dead if he has AT, A7, so I laid it down as I didn’t have the odds to call. Dave turns up 98o so he is a 52% favourite, but my fold for £45 more obviously sucks considering I was 48% to win the pot.

So I played that hand pretty badly and proceed to play about 90% of pots for the next hour or so, tilting away. I ended up in for £350 sitting on £150 when I started to play properly again.

One funny hand was where Jags straddles, Kad minraises blind to 3, Dave goes 4 blind, Flash 5 blind, Nick 6 blind, me 7 blind, Mongy 8 blind, and James and Dru fold their blinds after looking. Kad calls the 8, as does Flash and Nick I think. I look down at AsKs!! NICE! I raise it £24 more, hoping Mongy thinks I’m stealing and shoves me. Everyone folds.

Another interesting hand came up against Nick. I had 86o on SB, James raised to 3 UTG and pretty much the whole table called so I called. I check in the dark and it comes 667 with 1 heart. It checks all the way round, turn comes Kh. I bet out £15, it folds to Nick who makes it £55 more. I welled up my options, fold/call/raise allin. Folding was an option as I haven’t seen Nick get out of line postflop and didn’t think he would raise here without a 6 to be honest. I didn’t feel like folding though, and ended up shoving. However I think a better play would have been to flat call and shove any river, maybe a heart would scare him off. He made a crying call, saying he had a six, but didn’t like his kicker. I said I didn’t like mine much either, and we both showed 86 for the chop! River was the 5h, so maybe calling/shoving river would have got him to fold.

So I’m up to around £250 stack and then get in a sick pot with Flash.

Folds to Flash on the hijack he makes it 4, I call on button with Qs8s. Flop is AhJs6s. He bets out £10, I raise to £35 and he makes it (I think) £100. I really thought he wasn’t that strong, and even if he had a hand like AQ, once I 4 bet him allin on the flop he might even lay that down. So I shove for £115 more I think. Flash goes into the tank, and eventually calls with.... J9o!!!! SICK call. Analysing the hand, I think it is a good call though at that point. What hand can he put me on that has him beat on that board? AK, AQ, AJ, AA, JJ, he knows I would probably 3 bet all those hands from the button, so he can pretty much discount them all. Ace-X I wouldn’t play that aggressively on the flop unless it was AsXs. So I think he can put my range as Ax with flush draw, A6 suited, 66, bare flush draw, or air. He only needs 30% equity in the hand for it to be a breakeven call, and if he thinks I’m much more likely to have the draw compared to the other hands, it’s definitely a great call. We end up only flipping for £100 of the pot as its pretty much a coinflip, and J9 holds up. I’m not sure he should be looking to play such a big pot with middle pair though.

Last interesting hand of the night was:

Dru calls UTG, Jags calls, Flash makes it 8 on HJ, I call on button with Ah8h, Dru calls, Jags calls.

Flop: 9h8c7h – NICE

Checks to Flash, he continuation bets £32 I think, and I made it £100 on the button, about £300 deep. Dru goes into the tank and eventually shoves for £195 total. Jagger calls for about £85, Flash folds, and I obviously call. Dru has 98, Jagger has KcTc. So side pot is about £230 between me and Dru, and main pot is about £320. I have about 42% equity in the main pot and about 47% equity in the side pot. Dru offers to take £100 each back from the side pot, which I accept.

Turn 4c, river Qc and Jagger gets very lucky. Not sure why he called only getting 3 to 1 on his £85 on the flop after a bet, raise, shove on that board. His draw is weak, he could be drawing dead, and there’s no way he has sufficient equity against our hand ranges to justify the call.

Ended up cashing out £190 so dropped about £160 on the night, which is no big deal. Kader made almost £700, running well and playing his hands well.

Comments on other players:

Mongy: He’s just having fun in the game, so can’t really comment on his play,

James: Plays too weak-tight preflop and postflop

Dru: In my opinion plays really really well postflop and is great at reading situations, hands and people. Preflop I think could be better.

Jagger: A lot less spewy than usual!

Guv: Plays so out of line!!!

Kad: Played awesome

Dave Lu: Played really tight but randomly made a big play against me. Prob the best reader of people at the table, but hasn’t got much experience at holdem cash games.

Flash: Played so much better than in the previous cash games!

Nick: Tight but plays his hands pretty solid.

Myself: I played really bad for the middle 1/3 of the game but OK for the rest.

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long blog! For another point of view of the game, check out Drus blog at: http://doshipoker.blogspot.com

Overdue update!

2007-01-25T06:49:00.000Z

Hey, so for some reason I've started going to bed at like midnight and waking up at 5am, and since theres bugger all to do at this time of day, thought I'd give u a quick update of how December went.
I aimed to play about 30,000 hands in december, but that didnt go to plan! I got back home for the xmas holiday, and started off playing loads, around 12000 hands in a 5 day period, making good money at 400nl, but then my desktop computer busted, and, due to being very lazy, I didnt put my pokertracker databases on my laptop so just ended up playing 18,000 hands total for the month. Here's the graph and pokertracker screenshot (my pokergrapher is bust, so im having to use poker patterns which doesnt look as good!) ::

So for the last couple of weeks of december, I just played a few random tournaments online, ended up around breakeven I think (although I actually cashed in the stars million at last, for 1.6k), and played a few live £10 and £20 rebuys, of which I chopped first in a £20 rebuy for about £800 just before xmas, which was nice :-) I also got $725 rakeback and prob about $300 in party bonuses for december.

Got back to uni in Jan, and sorted out my laptop so I could play cash games on it, but I've been ridiculously lazy and played only 4 days this whole month, the first two of which were at 400nl, where I made about 2.3k in 2500 hands, and then the next two I moved up to 600nl and got coolered, bad beat, and fucked up for about 5000 hands, dropping 3.4k.
However I also did a 3way chop for first in a pokerstars $109 freezeout with 266 players for $5000 so I've had an OK month for the amount I've played.
Going to dublin tomorrow with pokersoc for the weekend, should be good fun, maybe I'll blog again after that :-)

2006-12-08T15:12:00.000Z

This is the girl I PWNED heads-up on 5-10NL (played after I told her 2-4NL would be a waste of my time HU)! We only deciphered that it was her after the 'I'm JT' and 'you can find my breasts on the internet' comments made in banter on the 5-10NL Full-Ring game. Unfortunately, I banter pretty hard and may owe Jen an apology. Sorry Jen I love your moveis and "Bound" is a classic imo. Nice breasts btw!!

November update!

2006-12-05T06:28:00.000Z

Hey guys, month update:

November was my best ever month on cash games. I started off at 200nl, for about 10,000 hands, and ran gooood, boosting my roll by about 4k. Then moved up to 400nl and broke even for a bit, figured out what some of the regs were about and made just under 6k more. Didn’t get stacked as much with aces as I normally do, probably why I made so much money. Oh yeh, and I got well over $1000 rakeback :-). Heres my graph and pokertracker screenshot for the month, I’ve blacked out my stats incase any1 from 2+2 reads this blog :-)

Jerked off about 1.5k or so of these winnings at tournaments I reckon. I’m continuously getting lee jOWNED on stars, and have been all year, maybe I’m playing badly, I dunno, beginning to think I suck at tournaments. Played a £200 freezeout at Walsall this month, one of the Midlands Masters events, QQ ran into AA for about 1/3^rd my stack, blinds went up and flopped two pair ran into a set. No big deal, wasn’t playing my best anyway.

We had two cash games between the uni crowd this month, which were really good fun to play.

The first line up was a bit softer than the second one, with Flash, Dru, Tommo, Jagger, Alex Liang, Dave Pascoe, Mitesh and Guv. Was a few weeks ago so cant remember too much about this game… I remember winning about £150 (£1/£1 blinds), not losing too many hands, won a decent pot off rob with AA when I 3bet his button raise from the blinds, AA was definitely the upper end of my wide range J. Dru called off his chips, flash played ultra TAG, liang was unbluffable, tommo played well, tough to read, pascoe was a nit, mitesh didn’t pick up much I don’t think, and guv went broke pretty quick I think.

The second cash game was a slightly stronger lineup, and was more recent so I can remember what happened, so I’ll write a bit about that:

Seat 1: Guv, Seat 2: Dru, Seat 3: Mongy, Seat 4: Flash, Seat 5: Porno Mark, Seat 6: Newcomer Nick, Seat 7: Kader, Seat 8: Mitesh, Seat 9: Me, Seat 10: Jagger.

This was a 50p/£1 game, and I bought in for the max, £150. Got lucky real early when Guv raised it up early, looked like premium to me, kader called, mitesh called, and I called with Kh6h (slightly loose call but good odds, position). Flop comes 6x6x2h. Guv cbets £20, was very sure he had TT or better here, kader folds (what he told me later was TT, seems he had the same read) and minty calls. Was a bit worried about mintys call but figured he might have something like 99 and is calling one time hoping guv isn’t that strong. So I have a perfect squeeze spot, i.e. looks like a squeeze I could make with a lot of crap, but I have the goods this time! So I make it £55, and guv calls, SWEET! Hes being stubborn with the big pair. Then minty shoves, ah!! So now I know minty must have a six or 22, but im only losing to A6 and 22, I have a few outs against either, and its prob more likely he has 67 or 56, so I call for about 40 quid more I think and guv gets away from his QQ.

We flip the cards and Minty has A6. Minty wants to run it once, and the 4h on the turn is good for me. Still wants to run it once, and as I reach for my wallet, the K hits the river. OUCH, unlucky minty!

Minty moves out, I move round one seat, as does rob, and Richard mylles takes the 10 seat. Other highlights include Rob flopping two pair with 63 against my AA and taking 2/3 of a pot (we ran turn + river three times) and rob hitting a flush draw with one card to come vs my TPTK. Cant complain after the K6 hand tho. Also won a coinflip against mongy, all in preflop my AhKh vs his QQ (he had straddled, I raised LP and he came over the top on a <£100 stack, im not folding AK here!), we run it one time and I make the nut flush.

Rob was looking to be big winner at one point, but got unlucky with set over set against dru, KK vs AA against flash (I think KK could be folded here, flash was playing v. tight, and he limp 4 bet raised allin after porno raised and rob 3bet, I don’t see any other hand he could possibly have than AA here), and spewed the rest off onto kader.

Random views on the play/players in the game:

In general: lots of limping, and calling OOP, can be bad habits but easy to get into in a loose friendly game.

Guv: seemed to get a lot of drawing hands, which were called with too often (and kept missing), then got lucky when he made a move with no fold equity with QJ vs mongys AK.

Dru: played much better than before and was BIG winner, hitting a sweet nut flush in the last few hands vs guvs top set and kaders overpair. Didn’t call raises OOP as light as last time, and showed off his hand reading abilities.

Mongy: first time I’ve played live with mongy, and, well, didn’t tangle with him really! Made a couple of questionable calls but was well below his normal stakes. Got unlucky a few times, with QQ vs my AK and AK vs guvs QJ.

Flash: played ultra TAG again. Made one mistake with A3 on an XsYs3s flop when he called a bet from kader and a call from mongy, turn comes a 3, and he pays off kaders YY for a boat. Made no other mistakes that I could see. Understands POSITION!

Porno: started off with barry greensteins shortstack strategy, which didn’t work as the game wasn’t loose enuf in terms of raises and 3bets preflop, so he switched to deepstack and played pretty well but got pretty unlucky.

Nick: was v. impressed, played a solid tight game, got involved in good spots and didn’t make mistakes.

Kader: V. impressed, understands position and how to punish OOP weakness.

Rob: got lucky, got coolered, spewed a bit, all in one night J

Minty: Sorry bro!

Rich Mylles: got sick lucky in one hand against nick, and played way too much OOP.

Overall I made about £190, after tipping ollie about £15 in the end. Am looking forward to another game next term J

So onto December, and I want to play at least 30,000 hands this month which shouldn’t be too hard, hopefully I can stay at 400nl all month, but I had to cashout about $4000 of last months winnings which didn’t help my roll. The month has started off pretty badly, was down $3000 about 500 hands ago but now down only about $1500 after 4500 hands. If I can stay at 400nl all month I’ll be happy.

As I run so bad (possibly play so bad, I’m not sure), in Sunday tournaments, I’ve told myself I wont play them unless I satellite in. Satellited into 3 of them this week – fulltilt (aces cracked allin on turn vs bare gutshot), UB (aces cracked by AQ allin on JT9 flop) and stars (checkraised allin ten places from the money with 99 on a J-hi flop, guy makes a bad call with AK hi for a massive pot and hits) and made the money in none. Maybe next Sunday will be my lucky day, who knows?

One last mention to my buddy Ed whos turned $400 I staked him into $16000 in one term, that is sick, congrats!

2006-11-01T16:15:00.000Z

Porno's 1st Post

Alright guys?
Porno here, I just wanted to give a shout out to all the STA members who are all such Top Boys! It's a real pleasure to be in such a great Mob and hopefully we can start doing really well.

Ok, so November Goals:

VISION:
To earn decent amount this month and be proud of becoming a feared and well respected cash game player!

OBJECTIVE:
To make $10,000 at $600NL.

STRATEGIES:
1. Play 60, 000 hands on NL$600 minimum!
2. Stay focused and not play when tired.

TACTICS:
1. Find the Fish.
2. Note the sh*** out of the Fish.
3. Buddy list the Fish.

Will let you know how the month has gone!

Update

2006-11-01T01:26:00.000Z

Havent posted for a while, so heres my results for this month::

Dropped around $800 on $200nl then decided to move down to $100nl to regain confidence for a bit and dropped another 6 buyins on stars!! Then I realised its still all about party, went back, and won monies. Moved back up to 200nl. All hail dikshit!!

Next month, the goal is to play 40k hands and run at 5ptbb/100 or above!

October Results / November Goals

2006-11-01T00:51:00.000Z

Returned to cards middle of October, played $100NL . Here's the graph. Also won $8,000 in an MTT, coming 6th in the Party poker 200K Gt'd

November Goals

Move up to 200NL
Play 50K+ Hands
Run at 5bb/100+
FINALLY MOVE UP TO 400NL END OF THE MONTH!

Outplayed!

2006-09-13T02:46:00.000Z

Last night I played the £10 rebuy at Margate, 60 runners, made for a healthy £2780 prize pool, and £1000 first prize. Ended the rebuy period on just under 12k (was in for £60) and I always say that if I finish the rebuys on 10k or over I should make the final table. Last night was no exception, even though I was card dead all I needed to do was maintain that 12k stack until the number of tables decreases and we get short handed.
Final two tables short handed I made all my chips to take to the final, went on with 42k (average 30k). However blinds were huge, 3k/6k to start with, but I had good position on the table with two tight women on my left. All was setup for a big finish!
Unfortunately, the women were absolute card racks on the final, even though I never got a chance to steal their blinds as muppets kept limping off half their stacks making it impossible for me to do anything without hands.
7 handed one of the women limped UTG (so I was big blind) and it folded to me. Blinds 4k/8k, she has 30k total, I have just over 40k total. I look down at AJos and make a TERRIBLE move, pushed her allin. I just didn't think about it, saw my second biggest hand of the night and got excited :-( This is such a bad play because I know her range here, I've played with her so much in the past - she has AK/AQ or 88-JJ. The optimal play against these hands, if I want to win the pot, is check my option and shove the flop. But, I made a mistake, and it cost me the tournament, I ended up sticking around for another orbit in which 3 players got knocked out by the other woman (no clue at all, seriously, the sort of player who will never make another final table), she was a total card rack, picked up AK, AQ, JJ, QQ in a row. Sick! Came 4th for £250 when I shoved allin UTG blind, for 20k, blinds 4k/8k but I definitely had fold equity as the two players in the blinds were retarded. Big blind has AQ tho, and I have... Q6 ugh - why domination?!
Didnt play anything online when I got back cos I was a little steamed. Today I realised that the WCOOP starts on Sunday, and continues for the next two weeks. I want to play some of the events, so I need to play a load of satellites and grind out some W$. I bought W$530 off some random on pokerstars for $450, and played a load of $13 double shootouts, a $58 freeze, a $22 turbo rebuy (all into WCOOP event #2, $530 NLHE). Got nowhere in the double shoots, KK v AA in the freeze, and the $22 rebuy I busted in 18th (12 seats) when some mug called my push with KQ when he had no need to risk half his stack. Obv I had Q8. Also played a $25 standard rebuy into EPT dublin $475 satellite, got chips in the rebuy period, and never left the top 5 in chips until I had a seat. Deregistered and taken the W$. I plan on getting as many W$ as I can this week, then playing as many WCOOP events as I can. Ones which look tempting are Event #2 - $530 NLHE (1.5 mill gtd), Event #4 - $215 Headsup NLHE (300k gtd), Event #6 - $215 NLHE w/rebuys (1 mill gtd), and Event #10 - $1050 NLHE (1 mill gtd). The main event I couldn't play even if I satellited into it I don't think - the $2600 buyin is just too far out of my roll, I'd have to sell the W$ on. So, 796 W$ and counting.
Had a break for a couple hours, and then put in 1,228 hands of $200NL, for a magnificent $8 profit, lol. Seriously, wtf is going on?? I had AA v AA twice in one session! Also I got outplayed in the following pot. Prior to this hand we had played a few pots against each other which I had been on the better side of - including one hand where I called a reraise on the turn with 77 with a couple of overs out there when I knew he'd just caught a flush draw - unfortunately he didn't bet when he missed the end.

***** Hand History for Game 5158801814 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, September 12, 21:57:06 ET 2006
Table Monster #1293433 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: goshaap ( $356.49 )
Seat 2: Mockinbrd ( $239.07 )
Seat 3: Marjorie1947 ( $261.45 )
Seat 4: REDHOT65 ( $118.35 )
Seat 5: SmashingBlumpkins ( $194.20 )
Seat 6: BEDDS1919 ( $141.59 )
Marjorie1947 posts small blind [$1].
REDHOT65 posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Kd Ks ]
SmashingBlumpkins folds.
BEDDS1919 folds.
goshaap folds.
Mockinbrd raises [$7.77].
Marjorie1947 raises [$22.54].
REDHOT65 folds.
Mockinbrd calls [$15.77].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5c, Tc, 5s ]
Marjorie1947 bets [$20]. (Shud have bet more here, wanted him to come OTT of me)
Mockinbrd calls [$20].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Ah ]
Marjorie1947 bets [$20]. (So he called the flop bet, which could look like a missed AK as it was kinda weak. Also with his action - raising the button, calling a raise, theres no reason to put him on AK. So I followed up my flop bet, but again with a small bet, this could have been bigger)
Mockinbrd raises [$40]. (He minraises me. I put him on a weaker ace, something like AT, and I think he's called on the flop to take it away on the turn.)
Marjorie1947 raises [$40]. (At the time I planned on minraising him back again here then pushing river. I thought this play would make him fold his AJ, AT. If I thought I had the best hand here I could call/call river, but I thought he had me beat)
Mockinbrd raises [$60.50]. (He reraises me again, this time $40 more. Now I'm sure I've got my read wrong, and he either has AK/AQ or TT. So I give up the ghost)
Marjorie1947 folds.
Mockinbrd shows [ 7s, 7d ] two pairs, sevens and fives. (What a sickhead! He made a great read or a stupid play here, one of the two. After reraising him preflop OOP, I'm very likely to have AK/AQ/AA here, but he got it right this time, wp!)
The time at which hand ended:Sep 12 2006 21:58 ET
Mockinbrd wins $246.08 from the main pot with two pairs, sevens and fives.

Other fun hands from the session:::

***** Hand History for Game 5158436805 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, September 12, 21:08:50 ET 2006
Table Monster #1294163 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 3: sidut ( $77.64 )
Seat 4: Marjorie1947 ( $200 )
Seat 6: ajarn19 ( $168.08 )
Seat 5: silent7s ( $0 )
Marjorie1947 posts small blind [$1].
silent7s has joined the table.
ajarn19 posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Th Ks ]
sidut calls [$2].
Marjorie1947 calls [$1].
ajarn19 checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, Jh, Ah ] (Tidy)
OBIGDADDYO has joined the table.
Marjorie1947 bets [$4].
ajarn19 calls [$4].
sidut calls [$4].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 4c ]
Marjorie1947 checks.
ajarn19 bets [$17.10].
sidut is all-In.
MyLexusGS300 has joined the table.
Marjorie1947 calls [$71.64]. (I check, making it look like I just took a standard $4 stab on the flop, and ajarn bets and sidut pushes. Niceeee. I flat call his push, hoping ajarn calls as well.)
ajarn19 calls [$54.54].
** Dealing River ** [ Tc ]
Marjorie1947 is all-In.
ajarn19 folds.
Marjorie1947 shows [ Th, Ks ] a straight, ten to ace.
sidut shows [ Jd, Kc ] a straight, ten to ace. (Seriously, stop catching gutshots on me!!!! At least he only got half the pot this time, but jeeeez)
The time at which hand ended:Sep 12 2006 21:10 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $122.36 from side pot #1 with a straight, ten to ace.
sidut wins $115.96 from the main pot with a straight, ten to ace.
Marjorie1947 wins $115.96 from the main pot with a straight, ten to ace.

***** Hand History for Game 5158560833 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, September 12, 21:26:56 ET 2006
Table Monster #1290322 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 5: jeky1979 ( $84.28 )
Seat 6: Marjorie1947 ( $197.75 )
Seat 4: jkatnice ( $103.80 )
Seat 1: scuzzoo ( $330.92 )
Seat 3: GSS3423 ( $94.17 )
Seat 2: DGenR8 ( $70.46 )
GSS3423 posts small blind [$1].
jkatnice posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Qc Qd ]
jeky1979 calls [$2].
Marjorie1947 raises [$10].
scuzzoo calls [$10].
DGenR8 folds.
GSS3423 folds.
jkatnice calls [$8].
jeky1979 calls [$8].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, 9d, 8c ]
jkatnice checks.
jeky1979 checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$20].
scuzzoo calls [$20].
jkatnice folds.
jeky1979 is all-In.
Marjorie1947 calls [$54.28].
scuzzoo folds.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qh ]
** Dealing River ** [ 7h ]
Marjorie1947 shows [ Qc, Qd ] three of a kind, queens.
jeky1979 shows [ Kd, Tc ] a straight, nine to king.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 12 2006 21:28 ET
jeky1979 wins $206.06 from the main pot with a straight, nine to king. (Pffft, another $200 pot)

At least I stacked someone :D :::

***** Hand History for Game 5159075865 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, September 12, 22:29:04 ET 2006
Table Monster #1293378 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: dirdeestack ( $588.24 )
Seat 6: Marjorie1947 ( $202.55 )
Seat 5: GiVeMeTheCake ( $270.79 )
Seat 2: RoTaNiMoD_ ( $217.65 )
Seat 3: el_diablo03 ( $22.55 )
Seat 1: aftomson04 ( $200 )
Marjorie1947 posts small blind [$1].
aftomson04 posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ 5d 5c ]
RoTaNiMoD_ raises [$8.10].
el_diablo03 folds.
dirdeestack calls [$8.10].
GiVeMeTheCake calls [$8.10].
Marjorie1947 calls [$7.10].
aftomson04 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, 5h, 2d ]
Marjorie1947 checks. (Sometimes I will lead here, sometimes not, I try to vary this as much as I can. With all these callers I thought I'd wait this time to see what action happened in front of me.)
RoTaNiMoD_ bets [$22]. (Continuation bet, lets hope his got AK)
dirdeestack folds.
GiVeMeTheCake folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$50].
RoTaNiMoD_ calls [$28].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9c ]
Marjorie1947 bets [$75].
RoTaNiMoD_ is all-In.
Marjorie1947 is all-In.
** Dealing River ** [ 3c ]
Marjorie1947 shows [ 5d, 5c ] three of a kind, fives.
RoTaNiMoD_ shows [ Kh, Ah ] a pair of kings.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 12 2006 22:31 ET
RoTaNiMoD_ wins $15.10 from side pot #1 with a pair of kings.
Marjorie1947 wins $419.80 from the main pot with three of a kind, fives. (This setup can never happen often enough!!)

Was over $500 down at one point in the session, but finished it $8 up after the above hand. So over 10,500 hands this month I'm a buyin down. Oh well, I suck. At least I'm up after rakeback.

Can party poker please unflip my doom switch??

2006-09-11T03:37:00.000Z

Since my last post, I've put in another 4000 hands or so online, and I'm still running breakeven for the month! The following few hands are pretty standard examples of why im running breakeven lol:::

***** Hand History for Game 5145390403 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, September 10, 21:50:32 ET 2006
Table Monster #1289530 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: mbh58 ( $311.56 )
Seat 3: wiskyman1214 ( $729.56 )
Seat 5: snake_farm ( $248.60 )
Seat 6: DonRobertNL ( $367.90 )
Seat 4: Marjorie1947 ( $196 )
Seat 2: atcAce ( $200 )
snake_farm posts small blind [$1].
DonRobertNL posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Kh Ks ]
mbh58 folds.
atcAce folds.
wiskyman1214 folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$8].
snake_farm calls [$7].
DonRobertNL folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, Td, 9d ]
snake_farm checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$12].
snake_farm raises [$36].
Marjorie1947 calls [$24].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Ts ]
snake_farm is all-In. (Using up my time, I'm thinking why would he push if hes just tripped his ten? Hmmm, looks like the nut flush draw to me as played...)
nh (Then he says this in the chat as my time is expiring, and I instacall)
Marjorie1947 is all-In.
** Dealing River ** [ 8s ] (Thanks party!)
snake_farm shows [ As, 4s ] a flush, ace high.
Marjorie1947 doesn't show [ Kh, Ks ] two pairs, kings and tens.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 10 2006 21:51 ET
snake_farm wins $52.60 from side pot #1 with a flush, ace high.
snake_farm wins $390.50 from the main pot with a flush, ace high.

***** Hand History for Game 5145856681 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, September 10, 22:50:21 ET 2006
Table Monster #1287105 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: CheddahB ( $218.80 )
Seat 3: tarheel2727 ( $190 )
Seat 5: Marjorie1947 ( $196 )
Seat 6: seethesenuts ( $179.14 )
Seat 1: GiantInvstr ( $126.66 )
Seat 2: pyrin ( $219.85 )
GiantInvstr posts small blind [$1].
pyrin posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ 9c 9h ]
tarheel2727 folds.
CheddahB calls [$2].
Marjorie1947 raises [$10].
seethesenuts folds.
GiantInvstr folds.
pyrin folds.
CheddahB calls [$8].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 7d, 4d, 3c ]
CheddahB checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$14].
CheddahB raises [$35]. (I thought I was probably beat here (set) but I also thought there was a reasonable chance he was just putting me on a cbet and making a play, so I called with position)
Marjorie1947 calls [$21].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9s ] (bingo bango bongo, lets hope he wasnt making a play!)
CheddahB bets [$85].
Marjorie1947 is all-In.
CheddahB calls [$66].
** Dealing River ** [ Ah ]
CheddahB shows [ 6h, 5h ] a straight, three to seven. (Thanks for the turn card party! Ugly!)
Marjorie1947 doesn't show [ 9c, 9h ] three of a kind, nines.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 10 2006 22:51 ET
CheddahB wins $391.50 from the main pot with a straight, three to seven.
tarheel2727 has left the table.

***** Hand History for Game 5138771213 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, September 09, 23:04:23 ET 2006
Table Monster #1293286 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: THEbigSTUD1 ( $234.99 )
Seat 5: Mockinbrd ( $542.12 )
Seat 4: Marjorie1947 ( $229.90 )
Seat 3: HaroldJ42 ( $204.20 )
Seat 2: havik253 ( $199.25 )
Seat 6: TaeQuadDo ( $188.75 )
Mockinbrd posts small blind [$1].
TaeQuadDo posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ As Ac ]
THEbigSTUD1 folds.
havik253 raises [$6].
HaroldJ42 folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$18].
Mockinbrd calls [$17].
TaeQuadDo folds.
havik253 calls [$12].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6d, Js, 8s ]
Mockinbrd checks.
havik253 checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$30].
Mockinbrd folds.
havik253 raises [$70].
Marjorie1947 is all-In. (This guy was a 36/18 mentalist, I'm not folding aces to him on a drawy board like this)
havik253 is all-In.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kc ]
** Dealing River ** [ 7c ]
havik253 shows [ Th, 9h ] a straight, seven to jack. (lol)
Marjorie1947 shows [ As, Ac ] a pair of aces.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 09 2006 23:05 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $30.65 from side pot #1 with a pair of aces.
havik253 wins $415 from the main pot with a straight, seven to jack.

Played live on friday, £25 freezeout at Ramsgate. Don't normally play this tournament as they have max entries of only 45, and they pay 9 people ugh. Also the structure isn't amazing. Anyway, was on table with Ed from the start until we split 1st and 2nd. We played on for £50 (I had a 2 to 1 chip lead going headsup) and then we basically went allin every hand until he beat me :-) I got £310, not bad, never going to get the money in a £25 freezeout that you get in a £10 rebuy. I was very pleased with my play on the final table, got there on average stack, just stayed out of trouble, didnt pick up any hands, picked my spots to steal, and made it to headsup with very little risk. I wish I could start every tournament on the final table with average stack, perhaps I wouldn't hate them so much!!!
Played my one tournament of the week tonight, Bodog. JJ v 99 allin pre for a decent size pot after about 2hrs. 9 first card, standard.
Someone on my table linked me to this tho, he was pretty worried being sat next to me and head2782:: http://www.internettexasholdem.com/poty/index.php?show=viewoverall&site=9
2nd ranked player on bodog this year!!! Haha you wouldn't believe I was so busto if you looked at that :-)
I paid for Sixth Sense, 6 months cost me $144, pretty expensive but I think it pays for itself. Also my 200NL database is getting pretty extensive, I have thousands of hands on all the regulars now!
Gonna hit it hard this week, need to start making some $$$, this summer has sucked, I've earnt way too many sklansky dollars, and way too few real dollars!!!
Graph for the month so far:::::

Downswing? Meh!

2006-09-06T00:27:00.000Z

So the plan for september was 50,000 hands of online poker, which is a lot for me as I'm lazy as f**k! 50k hands in a month works out to around 1700 hands a day, so heres the month so far::

September 1st:: I started the month as I meant to go on, september 1st, I put in 1,563 hands (at which point I had to stop playing to avoid tilt!). Was a pretty bad session :-S Down $1,368.09 (or nearly 7 full buyins!!!) Take this as a lesson anyone who thinks they can sustain playing on a short bankroll. This was 6 tabling 6 handed, playing 20/17 which is pretty aggressive, so variance can bite you in the ass. Heres my stats from pokertracker for pocket pairs in this session:::

September 2nd: At least that day was followed by saturday!! And I'm never gonna have a losing saturday, FACT! ;-) Played 1,650 hands, and made back $543.83. Moved up to 9 tables of 6max because I wanted to play tighter as it was saturday so no need to create any sort of table image. Found it pretty easy when playing tight, 13% VPIP / 8% PFR. I didn't run that great really but on saturday you just get paid so hard on party with good game selection.

September 3rd: Played my one tourney of the week, the bodog. Was pretty lame, I've really gone off internet tournies this summer. Never got a stack, lasted 3 hours then got KK v AA. Done. Chilled out for a bit then put in just 695 hands as 1) I couldn't be bothered to play, and 2) my laptop started fucking up grrrr, i really need to buy a desktop! Again I was 9 tabling 6max, so this was a very short session, just over an hour. Made $111.04.

September 4th: Played live, £10 rebuy. Played very solid in the rebuy period which is very unusual for me, and was only because I got lucky early on when my A4 rivered two pair and i won a 3.5k pot. Played like a rock from then on and doubled up to 6k with about 10mins left in the rebuy period with AQ vs AT. 6k with 1k addon is plenty for me in this tourney, I expect to final table when I end the rebuys on over 7k now. Unfortunately, with about 3mins left in the rebuy period I picked up KhTh in 3rd position, and decided to limp after UTG and UTG+1 limped. 2 other limped behind and the blinds completed/checked, so 700 in the pot going to the flop. It comes 9hJhQs. Bingo bango bongo!!! I flop the nut straight with the 2nd nut flush draw. UTG checks, UTG+1 (this guy is a LUNATIC in the rebuy period) bets out 300, and its on me. As we are close to the end of the rebuy period, and theres a few players behind me who could stick their chips in on this board, and I have pretty much a lock hand anyway even if no1 raises, I elect to disguise my hand and flat call the 300. 4 others call! So we go to the turn with 2,500 in the pot. And the turn comes the Tc. YUCK!!! I'm not getting paid any more :-( But UTG+1 bets out 2000. WTF?! Probably a split pot at the moment I'm thinking, but I have the flush draw too, so I call and every1 else folds. Turn comes a blank and he puts me allin. I absolutely hate it, but have to make the call as I've never seen this guy limp with AK in the rebuy period and I've played with him a lot. He has AK, that'll teach me to slow play the nuts with the 2nd nut draw!
So I go allin blind the next hand, which is the last hand, and lose, so rebuy/addon to 2k.
3 hands into the freezeout i get KQ on the button, and two people limp, I'm sure they are weak and the big blind already has his cards ready to fold so I push allin to pickup the 700 in the middle. Small blind (absolute donk) calls me, and one of the limpers (who only has 2k also) calls off his last 1.8k. On our backs, my KQ vs the small blinds K9, and the other guys 67 soooted. Didnt look too bad until the flop brought 4 spades and the small blinds 9 of spades was good.
Went home, thinking how much I hate tournies and instead of putting some hands in, watched The Sentinel with Kiefer Sutherland. Wasn't too impressed, even Jack Bauer cudnt save the shaky plot :-(

September 5th: Tuesdays are normally pretty juicy on party, I have no idea why, but today didnt disappoint. 9 tabling, I played very tight, and my 2 hour session brought in 1,365 hands and $697.29, even though I had a couple of ~$100 pots - one hand where I got allin on the flop with KK (overpair) vs a bare gutshot and lost, and another hand where I got allin on a KJ6 rainbow board with AK vs K8 and he rivered his 8. Highlight of the session were these two hands:::

***** Hand History for Game 5108740063 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, September 05, 16:35:36 ET 2006
Table Table 109587 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Lawdogballs ( $164 )
Seat 2: LonChim ( $392.50 )
Seat 3: perennialloser ( $223.40 )
Seat 5: Wallstreet_24 ( $241 )
Seat 6: DrugsR4Kids ( $459.57 )
Seat 4: Marjorie1947 ( $332 )
LonChim posts small blind [$1].
perennialloser posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ 9c 9h ]
Marjorie1947 raises [$8].
Wallstreet_24 folds.
DrugsR4Kids folds.
Lawdogballs folds.
LonChim calls [$7].
perennialloser folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kh, 9d, Ah ]
LonChim checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$10].
LonChim raises [$35].
Marjorie1947 raises [$85].
LonChim raises [$186.20].
Marjorie1947 is all-In.
LonChim calls [$102.80].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 4s ]
LonChim shows [ Qd, As ] a pair of aces.
Marjorie1947 shows [ 9c, 9h ] three of a kind, nines.
Marjorie1947 wins $663 from the main pot with three of a kind, nines.

***** Hand History for Game 5110141153 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, September 05, 19:51:35 ET 2006
Table Monster #1292821 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 3: whipcord ( $309.43 )
Seat 4: BigDickMagei ( $257.06 )
Seat 5: Call_Me_Daddy ( $200.11 )
Seat 1: Marjorie1947 ( $196.25 )
Seat 2: kevyou ( $195.84 )
Marjorie1947 posts small blind [$1].
kevyou posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Kh Kd ]
moon98110 has joined the table.
whipcord folds.
BigDickMagei raises [$35]. (No limpers, and raises to 17.5x bb in middle position. For some reason this gives me the impression this guy is a bit of a mug)
Call_Me_Daddy folds.
moon98110 has left the table.
Marjorie1947 is all-In. (I'm up against a mug who 1) thinks his AK is amazing and will call off a full buyin preflop, or 2) has a pair like JJ/TT and will call off a full buyin preflop.)
kevyou folds.
BigDickMagei calls [$161.25].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6h, 6d, 8h ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2h ]
** Dealing River ** [ Js ]
BigDickMagei shows [ Ts, Tc ] two pairs, tens and sixes. (lol, thanks for the donation, why can't there be more players like this who play 1 table at a time and think TT is the nuts because its the best hand they've seen all night :-D He said afterwards, "i thought i was probably beat")
Marjorie1947 shows [ Kh, Kd ] two pairs, kings and sixes.
The time at which hand ended:Sep 05 2006 19:52 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $392 from the main pot with two pairs, kings and sixes.

So, in summary, the month so far I've played 5,281 hands (only on target for 30k hands for the month if I carry on at this rate) and I'm down $15.93 hehe. But, at least I'm back to a clean slate for the month now after that downswing. Here is the graph:::

Couple more things to add, I bought a program called Idleminer, which basically is a screensaver, which, when you leave your computer, opens up partypoker and pokertracker, and datamines 12 tables of whatever limit you want. For $35 its worth it as its easier than fiddling with FreePHG and iWitness. Also, as my database of hands for 200NL is getting bigger, I'm finding that Sixth Sense is working really well, allowing me to join softer than average tables. Unfortunately, they have now started charging for it, and my trial is about to expire, so I'm gonna have to decide if it's worth the $30 a month ugh!
Oh yeh, and I forgot to put this up in my last post, its my cash game graph for August::

This is mostly 200nl, then the last 5000 hands are at 400nl. The 50nl and 100nl was just a couple of donking sessions on Pokerstars with Flash or some 2+2 games.

GSOP

2006-08-31T01:34:00.000Z

Finally got round to writing something about this tourney! Leading up to the tourney I was feeling great about how I was playing, but I was on a cold run of cards live and online. Still, I strongly believed that I could go deep and win the tournament.
10k starting stacks, 2hr levels, plenty of time to play. I knew day 1 would depend a lot on my table, and if I was on the wrong sort of table, I would have to pick up some decent hands to gain a lot of chips as my plan was not to get involved with crap on day 1 unless the table was tight passive.
I get to the table, seat 6, and recognise 2 faces who Ive played at gutshot before, one is very aggressive but pretty bad, and the other was a nit. I soon become aware that the player in seat 1 has just returned from the WSOP with $500k, so I planned to stay out of his way until I worked his game out. So we are about to start, and we get another player join the table as a table has broken next door. None other than Dave Lu joins my table in seat 8 :-S
Things I soon picked up::: seat 7 was an absolute nit, played premiums only. Seat 1 (mr wsop) got mad lucky to win 500k and was easy to read. Seat 3 seemed like an online player venturing live for the first time, didnt seem too comfortable at the table. Cant remember much else about the table right now.
I would love to say I had a lot of interesting hands to post from day 1, but the fact is I had absolutely nothing! I could never get going on day1, while Dave was running over the table, my chip stack was slowly dwindling away. I made 2 pair 3 times on day1, and every time I ran into a bigger 2 pair. The biggest hand I won a pot with was one pair. I picked up AA once at 50/100 and took down the blinds. No AK, AQ, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, and no sets, for 7 hours. So, my stack dropped as low as 4k, when the only interesting hand of the day occurred:
Folds to me in late position, blinds 100/200 I find 77 (MONSTER!!!) and make it 700 to play. Folds to the big blind, seat 1 (mr wsop) who calls. I know he is calling to try to outplay me. Anyway, flop comes Tc8c4s (i think... details are sketchy). He checks, and, confident I have the best hand I check behind. Turn comes a 3c. He bets 1500, and I have about 3500 total left. I put it allin and he calls with Ac4h, and my hand holds up. Nothing else interesting happened and I ended the day on 7200. To be honest, I could have ended the day on 3000 chips and I wouldn't have cared, as long as I'm ahead of the structure the other stacks at the table don't bother me too much.
Props to Dave for playing really well on day1, he ended the day on about 20k but lost a pretty big pot with 77 v AK allin on a board of A74. Turn A, river K. Sick! Flash also ended day1 on a healthy 25k stack, and Dru busted at the end of the day. My mate from home Ed also played and he was an absolute card rack on day 1, picking up aces and kings 5 times each, queens a few times, etc etc. I think he ended the day close to 20k after his kings ran into aces near the end of the day.
So, after bagging up the chips, and getting home at about 5am, not much sleep was on cards due to the 3pm start on Saturday.
3pm came and everyone looked pretty tired already, with 12 hours of play ahead. My table draw was awesome for day 2. There were 4 big stacks on my right, and short stacks like me on my left. The big stacks came out fairly loosey goosey, especially the player on my immediate right. I picked up a couple of pots early, then got JJ, and smooth called a raise from the loosey goosey player on my right, hoping this would be my double up hand if he tried to bully me. Flop came Q-rag-rag, and he fired out and I called. Turn came a blank and he pushed me allin. Decision time! He could literally have anything here, but I decided I didnt want to bust out with 2 outs in the deck and an underpair so laid down probably the best hand. Soon after i picked up TT and smooth called another of his raises. The flop came T-rag-rag WOW! He checked, I checked behind. Turn came a blank, he checked, I bet fairly small and he folded, claiming AK :-( damn!!!
Then I picked up AK and won a very nice pot against the same guy which got me above 10k for the first time in the tournament, we were nearing the end of the 100/200/25 level and I was up to 13k without a showdown. Then I played my worst hand in the tournament. The player who was on my left (seat 7) on day 1, was on my table again on day 2, in seat 2, with me in seat 6 again. On day1 this guy had played like a total rock, and he opened UTG for 700, and he had me covered, around 15k. I look down at 77, mmm, and call for set value. Flop comes 843 and he bets 1000. For some reason I sensed weakness, and went against my original read and raised him 2400 more. He thought about it for a while and moved allin arghghghghggh and I instamuck :-( He told me afterwards he had QQ. Bah!!! GO WITH YOUR F**KING READS!!!
So I come back after the break with around 8500 chips at 150/300/25, so I still have plenty of chips, but most of the table has over 20k. I dropped to about 7500 when I was on the big blind with Ac6s. 4 limpers and we see a flop of Tc7c4c. I bet 1000, and it folded to a middle position limper who raised to 3000. I thought about it and tried to pick up how strong he was for around 2 minutes, and by the end of that time I knew he was weak. I figured my ace was live, and my nut flush draw was obviously live, I thought I had fold equity, plus, even if I'm behind and get called, if I win the hand and double up I have chips to play with and I think I can get the aggressive guys to dump a big stack on me so I moved allin. He thought about it for about 20 seconds and then said I know I'm behind but I'm committed I have to call URGHGHGHGH!!!! Don't think he was committed with jack-ten no clubs but I lose the coinflip for the 16k pot.
Oh well, thats poker. Dave, Ed and Flash all bust on day2, all late in the day. Dave and Ed bust with ~35 players left, and I must give a special mention to Ed who mangaged to lose 70,000 chips in one hand at 400/800 when he reraised a guy in postion with 52, the guy called and the flop came 3hAd7d. The guy bet out and Ed raised him, the guy thought about it and called. The turn came 7d and the guy checked. Ed checked behind (pot is 40k, Ed has 40k left), oops. River comes Qs and guy checks. Ed moves allin for 40,600, and the gutshot forum describes what happened as follows:
"James dwelled and eventually called.
The moment he called Ed instantly mucked, shook his hand and walked away without even waiting to see his cards.
James showed
After the hand James said it was “the toughest call I have made in my life”

Hehehe, sometimes Ed is too fearless for his own good :-)

Enough about gutshot. Sunday night instead of playing online, me, Ed and Dave went to pokernitez in wokingham for £100 freezeout. Pretty sweet place, only 18 runners tho. Ed chopped first, dave came 4th and I got cold decked :-) came 6th.
Tuesday I drove up to leam to move into my new flat. Played a few tournies online on tuesday night, and once again made the final two tables of the $10 rebuy, 35k gtd ($12,000 first prize) on stars, only for my AcKc to run into KK and I came 16th.

The roll is not looking healthy at the moment as I had to cashout $2500 to pay 3 months rent and security deposit, and another $1500 to pay for half of my new car. Doh! Back to grinding $200nl for the time being then. Plan is to get back to $400nl by the end of september at the latest.

Job done!

2006-08-23T10:53:00.000Z

Whu-hoo! After 20 days of some of the dryest poker ever finally won some decent money! Came 2nd (damn my heads up sucks) in a party $109 regular 299 runners. Took $4600, that puts me about $5,500 up for the month. Met the target and can now buy the car when I get back form the states so am very happy!

Was just one of those tournies where everything goes your way. Flopped a set in the first level after calling two min raises from TT and KK who were then both happy to bang it all in with overpairs. Who re-minraises with KK in 1st level? And who gets all their money in with TT in the 1st level - thinks hes Dave Lu (hehe)

Also cracked AA with AK for a massive pot. Was awesome! KK3 flop hahahahaahahhahaaha!

So here are a couple of hands that made me smile:

**********************************************************************************

In the heads up:

NL Texas Holdem Trny:27709530 Level:16 Blinds-Antes(6000/12000-200) - Tuesday, August 22, 20:10:21 ET 2006
Seat 10 is the button
Total number of players : 2
Seat 3: MadebyDAD ( $554370 )
Seat 10: hanzfat ( $342630 )

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to hanzfat [ Th 3c ]
hanzfat calls [6000].

MadebyDAD checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ac, Jh, 8c ]

MadebyDAD checks.
hanzfat checks.

** Dealing Turn ** [ Ah ]
MadebyDAD checks.
hanzfat checks.

** Dealing River ** [ Qh ]
MadebyDAD bets [12500].
hanzfat calls [12500].

MadebyDAD shows [ 7d, 3s ] a pair of aces.
hanzfat shows [ Th, 3c ] a pair of aces.

hanzfat wins 49400 chips from the main pot with a pair of aces with ten kicker.
***** Hand History for Game

***********************************************************************************

This hand was weird! Johnboy is a hero!

***** Hand History for Game 5004547571 *****
NL Texas Holdem Trny:27709530 Level:9 Blinds-Antes(600/1200-50) - Tuesday, August 22, 18:13:28 ET 2006
Table Regular(799034) Table #2 (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button

Total number of players : 8
Seat 1: tudorAA ( $39700 )
Seat 2: vladkos ( $14155 )
Seat 3: aldahan ( $26774 )
Seat 5: hanzfat ( $26891 )
Seat 6: Commerceplay ( $10870 )
Seat 9: countpipula ( $23988 )
Seat 7: johnboy15xx ( $79731 )
Seat 8: MrConceited ( $14129 )

Trny:27709530 Level:9
Blinds-Antes(600/1200-50)
tudorAA posts ante [50].
vladkos posts ante [50].
aldahan posts ante [50].
hanzfat posts ante [50].
Commerceplay posts ante [50].
johnboy15xx posts ante [50].
MrConceited posts ante [50].
countpipula posts ante [50].

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to hanzfat [ Ks 2h ]
Dealt to johnboy15xx [ Kh, 6h ]

vladkos folds.
aldahan folds.

hanzfat raises [2800].

Commerceplay folds.

johnboy15xx calls [2800]. No idea why he felt like calling here with 3 players still to act!

MrConceited folds.
countpipula folds.
tudorAA folds.

** Dealing Flop ** [ 3h, Qs, 9d ]
hanzfat bets [4000].
johnboy15xx calls [4000]. Haha 1 overcard and a backdoor!

** Dealing Turn ** [ Qh ]

hanzfat bets [7000]. Wouldn't normally fire the turn here but I just felt like johnboy was being fishy and thought another barrel would work.

johnboy15xx calls [7000]. Ok this is fair enough with a flush draw

** Dealing River ** [ 8d ]
hanzfat checks.
johnboy15xx checks. He should always put me in here, but oh well what a mug!

hanzfat shows [ Ks, 2h ] a pair of queens.
johnboy15xx shows [ Kh, 6h ] a pair of queens.

hanzfat wins 14900 chips from the main pot with a pair of queens.
johnboy15xx wins 14900 chips from the main pot with a pair of queens.
***** Hand History for Game

************************************************************************************

A bit of live, back to 400nl, and the ever-so-depressing Sunday majors

2006-08-21T05:42:00.000Z

Quick summary of the rest of this week:
Thursday: Played some more 6max $400NL. Just 375 hands, I was feeling particularly lazy! Made $488.95 in the session. Three of the four tables I was playing went pretty bad lol, but the other one i got up to four buyins in the end, including my biggest ever pot:::::

***** Hand History for Game 4968791339 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, August 17, 18:52:42 ET 2006
Table Monster #1281895 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 6: sendsomefat ( $171.14 )
Seat 4: Marjorie1947 ( $1190.14 )
Seat 5: raycombs ( $690.91 )
Seat 3: Doc_RIP ( $465.10 )
Seat 2: butt0npusher ( $346 )
raycombs posts small blind [$2].
sendsomefat posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Qc Kc ]
butt0npusher folds.
Doc_RIP folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$14].
raycombs calls [$12].
sendsomefat folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, Jc, Tc ]
raycombs checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$24].
raycombs raises [$83].
Marjorie1947 is all-In. (I had a very LAG image on this table, and this is the best time to stick it in, have no more decisions. If he folds I take a tidy little pot, if he calls I am very likely, especially considering my image, to be favourite for a massive pot)
raycombs is all-In.
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 9c ]
raycombs shows [ 5c, 4c ] a flush, jack high. (So he called me with bottom pair and 5-high flush draw, against which I am 65% favourite. Combination of my LAG image and him being a muppet I suppose. What does he think I play big pots/push here with? Aces? Hahaha)
Marjorie1947 shows [ Qc, Kc ] a straight flush, king high. (When am I gonna get a two-card royal?)
The time at which hand ended:Aug 17 2006 18:54 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $499.23 from side pot #1 with a straight flush, king high.
Marjorie1947 wins $1383.32 from the main pot with a straight flush, king high.

Friday: First day of the weekend, fun times ahead! Or not. It was about time I had a downswing, and a combination of an ice cold deck and a few bad beats led to me losing $672.10 in 6max in 1,055 hands, and $522.10 in 1,383 hands at full ring. In the 2,438 hands I played, I got dealt aces only 4 times, and only won 3 of those times. I got dealt kings 6 times, and made only $140 from 6 winning hands lol. So, what did i get to make up for getting a below average sample of aces and kings? My favourite hand, pocket queens, 14 times. Thanks for that, they won 42% of the time at 6max. Argh.
Most I won in a hand in 2,438 hands was 3/4 of a buyin. Second most I won was half a buyin. Pretty amazing that I didn't lose more on the night really!!!

Saturday: So I woke up about 7pm after the friday night session, showered, had breakfast and headed to the casino for £100 double chance, 8pm start. Only 13 runners this week, a lot of the faithful had gone to Brighton for the £500 double chance. Anyway, the structure in this tournament is pretty awesome, 7.5k chips for each half of the double chance, and i take the full 15k to start. I expect to win this tournament every time I play it. I've played it 3 times now, the first time I won it with about 30 runners, the second time I got bad beat just shy of final table in a huge pot, and the third time was tonight.
Wanted to play my A-game in this tournament as 1) i need some live poker funds, and 2) felt it was reasonable practice for next weeks GSOP. The first two levels (25-50, 50/100) I played tight. I would see cheap flops with suited connectors, pps, but really wasnt getting involved and barely raised a pot. When the 100/200 level hit, I started opening up. People were insisting on limping in, and whenever I had the button or cutoff, I popped it up and made them pay. Built my stack to around 20k, then my antics got me in trouble when I popped it up on the button (6 handed, 300/600) after some limpers with T6os. 2 callers, bb and UTG. Flop came 632, and it checked to me. As usual I fired out a cb, of around 3000. BB folds, UTG makes it 6k more. Considering I'd been doing this a lot, thought he might be playing back at me with nothing, but, hey, 15,000 chips is still plenty. Folded and he showed 33 for a set.
Then a few orbits later I played this pot with the same guy who showed the set before. 3 limpers, blinds 400/800, I am small blind with ~16,000. I have A8os, and fire it up to 3,500, as I know they are all weak and think they are all folding. This guy calls, he has me covered, but only just, about 18,000 total. Flop comes KA6 rainbow. I bet out 4,000, and he immediately moves allin. Normally this guy is a tight player, but everything about it told me he was weak. Physical tells were actually the most important factor in me calling here. He had A2, turn came a Q, river a 7, and my 8 kicker held up.
Moved to the final table, and I was third in chips on around 32k. Only top 3 get paid. Started off playing pretty solid, back to 9 handed I don't want to get too involved. Dropped to about 29k, then I picked up JJ in the small blind, blinds 500/1000. UTG folds, UTG+1, who I've played a lot with, and is a fairly good player (for the standard in this casino!!) makes it 3000 to play, with 16,000 total. Something about this seemed a bit off to me, He normally raises around 4x bb with his big hands. The old dear at the table (who is a TERRIBLE player, knows nothing about poker) had ALL the chips, about 45k, from the other table, after apparantly getting very very lucky. She will call a raise before the flop with anything that looks pretty, especially soooooted. Anyway, she calls, as per usual (mmm sweetens the pot even more). Folds to me. Now I knew that I had the raiser beat at that point. He might have AQ, AJ, or a smaller pair. Anyway, I decided I wanted to take the pot right there. I didn't to raise 6k more and let him think he could see a flop with AQ, AJ, and fold if he missed. So I made it 12k more, basically putting him allin. He thinks about it for aaaaaages and folds. Then, the old dear says "im going to call, and raise allin). I'm like WOWWWWW!!!!! WTF?!?!?! This I completely wasn't expecting. After putting half my stack in, I felt committed getting over 3 to 1 and made the call, she had AA and that was that, especially when 2 of the others at the table said they folded jacks :-S. The other guy folded TT. My buddy Ed came 2nd, so I got my money back plus £50 in our deal.

So I went home, and fired up Party. Surely I couldn't lose money on a saturday?!!? Nope, its impossible to lose money on a saturday. Played 1,728 hands on full ring, 12 tabling, and the donks were out in full force. One hand I had AA in the BB, folds to small blind, we both have full stacks. He raises to $10, I make it $26, he makes it $70, and I make it $200 (could I be more obvious???) He flat calls, flop comes K22, and he moves in. I think he must have KK, but call, turn and river blank off, and he shows TT. FWAAAAAAAAAATCHAAAAAAA!!! I won two other big pots, both with sets (obviously! this is full ring!). Ended up +$837 when I had set over set at the end of the session.

Sunday: Oh great, sundays. Time for donkaments :-S. 7pm, Bodog, no1 in the deal this week, I think they've all given up on Bodog because they know the consortium has had too much money off bodog this year and isn't going to give us another cent. I on the other hand, still have the belief I can take it down again, so I played. Doubled up early, and all was looking rosy. Then I lost KK vs AQ allin pre for a big pot, and then my JJ ran into KK. Done before 9pm.
Ate dinner, fired up the Pacific 100k gtd at 9.05, and, after a pretty uneventful tournament, busted in around 350th.
9.30 - party mill gtd. Hmm I'm beginning to think I suck REALLY BAD at tournaments. Must have played this tourney 10 times at least now, and I've cashed once. It pays like 15% of the field for gods sake! Was in a deal with hanzfat, jac and pook. Jac busted real early, I busted after about 2hrs, hanzfat busted when his KK ran into AA sometime in the third hour. But pook, in true STA spirit, in his first shot at the tourney, battled through to come around 300th for ~$600 when the STA stack could stand losing no more 80:20, 70:30 and 60:40 shots against short stacks. GG tho pook :-)

This week is going to suck. As I'm playing GSOP next weekend, I figure I should probably get away from my cash game, and concentrate on working on my tournament game. This will include watching every video on PokerXfactor, and playing as many deepstacks on stars as I can find (including the $10 one maybe.... arghghghgh). Will play loads of other tournies as well, and fully expect to be down around $1000 this week. Yes, I suck at tournaments. That is all.

Oh the swings!!

2006-08-16T00:56:00.000Z

Just played my first mini session at $400NL. Only played 431 hands, 4-tabling 6max, because the variance in the session was pretty sick, and thought I'd ease myself in gradually. Got some hardcore hands to post lol - the $1144 pot i got rivered for was pretty sicck, first big pot i played on 400nl. Ended up +$677 after a few nice hands went my way.

***** Hand History for Game 4956465343 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, August 15, 19:46:53 ET 2006
Table Monster #1277380 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: twoheys222 ( $321.23 )
Seat 2: OVERRUN_ ( $650.35 )
Seat 4: HuggerISten ( $610.58 )
Seat 5: johntranijr ( $572.80 )
Seat 6: DonRobertNL ( $413.90 )
Seat 3: Marjorie1947 ( $594.62 )
HuggerISten posts small blind [$2].
johntranijr posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ 3s As ]
DonRobertNL folds.
twoheys222 folds.
OVERRUN_ folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$16].
HuggerISten folds.
johntranijr calls [$12].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 7s, 4h, 5s ]
johntranijr bets [$47.87]. (Overbets the pot. Was a bit confused, thought he had a draw or some sort of weak hand that wanted me to go away, but, I had the nut flush draw and double belly buster, so f**k it, repop)
Marjorie1947 raises [$160].
johntranijr calls [$112.13].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6d ]
johntranijr is all-In. (Wow, moves in around the pot, and I've hit the bottom end of the straight. I didnt think he would be calling my reraise on the flop with a gutshot 8 tho, and if he had 86, decided to pay him off, and I still have the backup flush draw)
Marjorie1947 calls [$396.80].
** Dealing River ** [ 5c ]
johntranijr shows [ 6c, 6s ] a full house, Sixes full of fives.
Marjorie1947 shows [ 3s, As ] a straight, three to seven.
The time at which hand ended:Aug 15 2006 19:47 ET
johntranijr wins $1144.10 from the main pot with a full house, Sixes full of fives. (Ouch)

***** Hand History for Game 4956664305 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, August 15, 20:11:21 ET 2006
Table Monster #1277065 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 1: Iliketodream ( $657.26 )
Seat 5: headbug ( $722.50 )
Seat 3: Marjorie1947 ( $425.10 )
Seat 2: Kintanti007 ( $442.60 )
Seat 6: postulate ( $86 )
Iliketodream posts small blind [$2].
Kintanti007 posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ 9c Ac ]
Marjorie1947 raises [$16].
postulate folds.
Iliketodream folds.
Kintanti007 calls [$12].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6d, 4s, 4c ]
Kintanti007 checks.
Marjorie1947 bets [$20].
Kintanti007 raises [$40].
Marjorie1947 raises [$60]. (So i continuation bet, he minraises me, I think he's full of s**t so I repop him to $80, and i have the backdoor! he calls....)
Kintanti007 calls [$40].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Tc ]
waboarder has joined the table.
Kintanti007 bets [$96.45].
Marjorie1947 is all-In. (woo i picked up my backdoor draw! thought I had fold equity here, plus the nut flush draw as a backup. anyway, good metagame if it all goes wrong)
Kintanti007 calls [$232.65].
** Dealing River ** [ Ad ]
Kintanti007 shows [ 2c, 5c ] a pair of fours. (WTF!!!!! this guy is mental!!!!)
Marjorie1947 shows [ 9c, Ac ] two pairs, aces and fours.
The time at which hand ended:Aug 15 2006 20:12 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $849.70 from the main pot with two pairs, aces and fours.

***** Hand History for Game 4956819510 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, August 15, 20:31:13 ET 2006
Table Monster #1279137 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: CheckLaise ( $743.35 )
Seat 2: ogleman ( $318.49 )
Seat 3: OVERRUN_ ( $1158.40 )
Seat 4: Marjorie1947 ( $483.80 )
Seat 5: shyamr7 ( $205.61 )
Seat 6: Snapesniper ( $510.50 )
Marjorie1947 posts small blind [$2].
shyamr7 posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Ad Ah ]
Snapesniper folds.
CheckLaise folds.
ogleman raises [$15].
OVERRUN_ folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$38].
shyamr7 calls [$36].
ogleman raises [$60]. (THANKYOU)
Marjorie1947 calls [$35]. (Both guys werent very deep, and I wanted to stack them both, so I flat called)
shyamr7 calls [$35].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 2s, As, 8d ] (yum yum)
Marjorie1947 checks.
shyamr7 checks.
ogleman bets [$222]. (THANKYOU!!!!)
Marjorie1947 calls [$222].
shyamr7 is all-In.
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8c ] (THANKYOU!!!)
Marjorie1947 bets [$22].
ogleman is all-In.
** Dealing River ** [ 4s ]
Marjorie1947 shows [ Ad, Ah ] a full house, Aces full of eights.
shyamr7 doesn't show [ Ts, Qs ] a flush, ace high.
ogleman doesn't show [ Kh, Kc ] two pairs, kings and eights.
The time at which hand ended:Aug 15 2006 20:32 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $0.51 from side pot #2 with a full house, Aces full of eights.
Marjorie1947 wins $225.76 from side pot #1 with a full house, Aces full of eights.
Marjorie1947 wins $613.33 from the main pot with a full house, Aces full of eights.

***** Hand History for Game 4956821476 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, August 15, 20:31:28 ET 2006
Table Monster #1277065 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: Iliketodream ( $924.01 )
Seat 3: Marjorie1947 ( $609.20 )
Seat 2: MisterWar ( $533.10 )
Seat 6: patientplayer01 ( $148.30 )
Seat 4: Michelle_18 ( $455.30 )
Seat 5: max425 ( $200 )
Michelle_18 posts small blind [$2].
max425 posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Qd Qc ]
patientplayer01 folds.
Iliketodream folds.
MisterWar folds.
Marjorie1947 raises [$14].
Michelle_18 raises [$46]. (This guys stats were 30 VPIP, 18 PFR, so I was pretty sure his repopping range was bigger than aces or kings. I wanted to disguise my hand, give him some room to hang himself, so I just flat called)
max425 has been reconnected and has 10 seconds to act.
max425 folds.
Marjorie1947 calls [$34].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5d, 7c, 8d ]
Michelle_18 bets [$64].
Marjorie1947 calls [$64]. (Flop was pretty safe, but I thought I'd try to represent a chasing AK and let one more card peel off)
** Dealing Turn ** [ 2c ] (DEUCE!)
Michelle_18 bets [$112].
Marjorie1947 is all-In. (Went with my read, thought I was ahead, so jammed it in)
Michelle_18 folds.
Marjorie1947 does not show cards.
The time at which hand ended:Aug 15 2006 20:32 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $833.70

***** Hand History for Game 4956855251 *****
$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, August 15, 20:36:11 ET 2006
Table Monster #1277380 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: twoheys222 ( $460.62 )
Seat 2: OVERRUN_ ( $1039.64 )
Seat 3: Marjorie1947 ( $416.50 )
Seat 5: paatrick ( $155.56 )
Seat 6: kumequat ( $394 )
Seat 4: waboarder ( $299.90 )
twoheys222 posts small blind [$2].
OVERRUN_ posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Marjorie1947 [ Ac Kd ]
Marjorie1947 raises [$14].
waboarder folds.
paatrick calls [$14].
kumequat folds.
twoheys222 calls [$12].
OVERRUN_ raises [$66]. (This guy was playing hardcore cards. Repopping everything in sight, raising every button, cutoff, popping it up hard with any limpers etc. So, when I raised UTG and two people called, I KNEW he was going to repop it from the big blind. I literally put his range as any two cards, so, I told him to f**k off with his repopping)
Marjorie1947 raises [$236].
paatrick folds.
twoheys222 folds.
omgomggomogmogmog
OVERRUN_ folds.
Marjorie1947 does not show cards.
The time at which hand ended:Aug 15 2006 20:37 ET
Marjorie1947 wins $348

So, in these 430 hands, I learnt a bit about 400nl 6max. First of all, I learnt that the short term swings are sick, but I'll soon get used to it. Second, I learnt that people LOVE to repop raises at this level. The standard is certainly better than at 200nl. I played slightly tigher than normal because of this - was playing 20 VPIP / 15 PFR. Also, I learnt that OVERRUN_ was a sickhead, and I need to stay out of his way lol.
Anyway, until next time, take a look at my rather small graph for the session :-)

August Week 2

2006-08-14T03:27:00.000Z

So the graph is wrong by about $200 (should be up $200 more) but that is some Poker Tracker error. If i didn't play that random mini session at the end would have ended the week out over $4,000 total bankroll but oh well. As soon as I make $1k can take a shot at $200NL though which is gonna be sweet. Hopefully I will be able to do that by Friday. Not keeping on track for my daily hand requirements but with a bit of luck I could still squeeze it to $10,000 bankroll end of month.

In other news start work at the stock market thing Tuesday... should make me pretty rich. Got the apartment in Cov, just gotta make sure things with that are finalized this week. Life's going pretty well.

August so far

2006-08-14T02:56:00.000Z

This month, I have really come to the realisation that tournament poker SUCKS!!! Can't stand it anymore lol, from now on, I'm only playing tournaments on sundays and when I play live. I don't think theres an incredible amount of money to be made in tournies in general online. You might have a big cash, say 20k, once in a blue moon, but, a decent $400NL player should be averaging at least that every month, easily, and $400NL is pretty small stakes compared to what you can get up to online.
This month I've got a bit more involved in playing cash games. The past two saturdays I've been 12 tabling 10max $200NL on party, and made a decent amount doing that, but winrate isnt that high considering the number of hands you have to put in. I think I'm finally learning how to beat 6max for a decent winrate, but, I haven't put in a huge number of hands to be honest. On august 9th, i four tabled $200NL, played just over 1000 hands, and the winning formula of 25% VPIP / 20% pre flop raise gave me a sick winrate of 29ptbb/100 and $1200. Obviously I ran pretty sick in these 1000 hands, but, I'm confident I can average at least 5ptbb/100 on 6max now.
So far this month, ive played 13,500 hands of $200NL, unfortunately pokertracker combines my 6max and 10max stats, so all I can tell you is I've run at 5.16ptbb/100 and made $2.7k over these hands.
Tournaments on the other hand, have been going BAD, so I'm up about $1.5k for the month so far, roll is hovering on $12,000.
Subscribed to pokerXfactor this month, is pretty awesome, would recommend it highly for anyone who wants to get good at donkaments ;-) A lot of the concepts I've already heard of, but it really reinforces them in your mind.
Plans for the rest of the month:

PLAY MORE!! MOVE UP!! Aim is to put in at least 20,000 more hands this month, and I should be moving up to $400NL 6max very soon.
Play Gutshot Series of Poker (G.S.O.P.) £330 Main Event from August 25th-28th. WSOP main event structure, should be good fun. Anywhere that isn't 1st (or 2nd if it's to Flash!) and I'll be pretty annoyed with myself lol!
Move in to sick new apartment in Coventry on August 29th with Kads. Spend rakeback for the month on stuff for the apartment (think plasma TV, sky, etc.) :D

Next update will be when I have played a few thousand hands at $400NL. For now, check out my graph for the month so far!

Tough weekend so far

2006-08-13T08:41:00.000Z

Been swinging pretty hard, dropped over a grand and have made it all back since. Little up since the last post but not loads... Poker Tracker has been messing up importing hand's so the graph is a litte messed up but will try and get it fixed by tommorow's weekend review. Playing really hard Loose Aggressive game these days, here is a funny convo I had on the table after someone made a sick call with a counterfieted bottom 2-pair after I bluffed every street represnting a monster, if I pasted the hand you would realize it was an awful but great call, lol.

me: u had no idea
me: that u had 1 pair
me: did u
guy2: true was commited
me: lol
guy1 lol you are pro
me: sarcasm?
guy1: no
guy3: nice call
guy1: you got nuts too
guy1: you play your hand perfekt
me: haha tx
guy1: normaly proch dont call you
guy1: and you win the pot
me: yeah, was a great call
me: not sure he knows y tho
guy1: lol
guy3: true
guy1: with a pair of 8
guy2: oops
guy1: you play gus hanson style
guy1: i am afraid
me: haha
me: lol, tx bud
guy1: never know if you have monster or nothing
guy2: I call and hope he was bluffin*

*I went on to bust 2 out of the 3 guys in this conversation

August Mid Week 2

2006-08-11T04:19:00.000Z

So had to cash out $600 from the bankroll which hurt. Bills and such.... Finally learned how to beat .50-1, involves playing pretty mental, raising 25% of flops and being super aggressive. Just had a great session that ended really bad, all in the graph. Playing really well though and its weekend tommorow so hopefully can keep bringing it in :-)

Bankroll (reduced due to cash outs): $3,700

What do you do here?

2006-08-11T00:29:00.000Z

This is a hand that came up in the noble $30RB that I wasn't to sure on. Let me know what you think?

In the green- well kind of!

2006-08-08T10:45:00.000Z

Haven't written for the last couple of days cos variance was making me its bitch and I didn't want to be constantly moaning about it.

But finally last night I had a decent final table placing- came 4th in a 400 player $50 party regular for $1351. Was in a 50 5o deal with Stabec so only half of that can be added towards the target.

Also made a final in a $22 shootout but didn't make final 3 so profits from that were only a couple of hundred $.

Now I think I'm in the green! Not exactly sure as I didn't record my bankroll exactly but I'm pretty sure I had close to $10,000 and I now have $10,325. Although I did find a few hundred in bodog that I'd forgotten about :)

So, now have :

Bankroll: $10,325

Target: $14,000 (By august 31st)

Admittedly, its not goin great- but at least I'm not down! And I think its still a realistic target!

Below is a hand that I'd like some feedback on. I think it is a very marginal decision:

************************************************************************************

So its down to 4 in the $55 regular:

NL Texas Holdem Trny:27065412 Level:18 Blinds-Antes(10000/20000-500) - Monday, August 07, 21:42:57 ET 2006
Table Regular(787793) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 2: hanzfat ( $107030 )

Seat 6: Jamesmcc25 ( $515345 )- very tight no idea how to play his stack

Seat 3: friedtofu ( $453268 ) - same v tight- folded a lot when he had amazing odds to call

Seat 7: crainology04 ( $82357 ) - very aggressive has been hanging on for a while by pushing relentlessly
Trny:27065412 Level:18
Blinds-Antes(10000/20000-500)

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to hanzfat [ 3c 3s ]

crainology04 is all-In [81857] He is under the gun with blinds at 10k-20k- I am 90% he pushes here with any 2 cards

hanzfat is all-In [106530] Question is- was this the right play? I figure I am a slight favourite against his range . However even if he pushes with any 2 im extrememly likely to be racing at best. Things that make this decision hard are: I can push next hand and it is likely to fold so +ev from folding. But also if I win this hand I feel I can dick on the remaining two players who are obviously sweating the money which gives extra value to pushing (if I win). Another thing to think about is the remaining two players- they may find a hand and bust crain. However as I have more chips I will at least come 3rd if one of them finds a hand and busts us both

friedtofu folds.
Jamesmcc25 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8d, 9c, Kc ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8h ]
** Dealing River ** [ 4s ]
crainology04 shows [ Ad, Ks ] two pairs, kings and eights.
hanzfat shows [ 3c, 3s ] two pairs, eights and threes.
hanzfat wins 24673 chips from side pot #1 with two pairs, eights and threes.
crainology04 wins 195714 chips from the main pot with two pairs, kings and eights.

The outcome doesn't really matter just want to know what you think the right play is! Jambon I know you'd fold this in a second.

************************************************************************************

Anyways gonna play most nights this week! Hopefully will get closer to the $4k target!

Week 1 August Review

2006-08-07T03:47:00.000Z

So pretty good week. Just shy of $1,000. Didn't meet my hand quota and thats because of the 7k hand downswing in the start of the week. Always hard to play when you're not winning. Reason for that downswing was experimenting and learning a different style of playing (and running bad). Things in my new "style" that I have learned well this week include:

Being a position whore. Doing everything based on position
Using my table image stats to adjust my play
Changing my play based on the table
Stealing blinds with air
Playing Ax off
Playing Kx in certain situations
Playing mid strengt hands like J9s, J8s, T7s etc
Completely owning certain players
Can 8-table really easily
Going with my reads always and making sick calls and huge laydowns

So bankroll is up to $3,2020 which is pretty awesome. Gonna move up tommorow to 100NL except this time not play ridiculously stupid, like I did last time for some reason I don't know. My game has really expanded this week and I should be more than ready. Very confident.

Still in the red

2006-08-05T01:24:00.000Z

Had another shitty session. Made final in a $33, 160 ,but came 9th with A9 vs 1010, so only cashed $140. Not enough to cover buy-ins :(

Money made: -200
To make: $4200

Tomorrow will be better!

Yep in the red!

2006-08-04T19:01:00.000Z

Just finished the session and it sucked. Won't bore you with bad beat stories because nobody cares. Played about $200 of mtt buy-ins and didn't place. Lets just say I had some horrible beats at some horrible times. Luckily I made some back playing $22 speed sit n gos, so finished the session only $80 down :)

Current money made since start: -80
Need to make: $4080

Will play some more tonight and hopefully end up in the green! At the end of the day I only need 1 or 2 big mtt wins this month and I'm done!

Hanzfat joins blog!

2006-08-04T14:09:00.000Z

Aim

So...decided I want to buy a car. Need about £5000. Have £3000 saved. Therefore want to make £2000 asap.

Plan

Gonna play a shit load of mtts and try and win $4000 before I go to America (August 31st).
Am stayin with nextgenneo and porno for the next week to try n sort out my laziness. They will make me put in the hours!

Roll

Roll is currently around $10,000. I'll update from now how much I make. So current count is $0. Gonna play for a few hours and will update at end of day. Hopefully I'll end up in the green but knowing mtt variance could well end up down.

4-Tabling 50NL Video

2006-08-04T05:37:00.000Z

Okay so I suck at cards now I am experimenting, decided to make a video... here it is, 30 minute break even session (its encoded in xvid so dowload that here)

August will be >>>>>> July

2006-08-02T15:40:00.000Z

This weekend I went up to London again for the Gutshot £100 freezeout - wow was so card dead in this tourn! Didn't place, barely won a pot in fact! Davey Lu made final though - watched him lose AA to KK on the final then blowup :-P After following dave back to his flat in Stratford (London) (p.s. never try following dave if you can help it - hes a mentalist and continually loses you lol!) we played a bit online, just a couple of satellites. On sunday I played a bit on pokerstars cash cos I was trying to make up my FPPs for the end of the month. Think I had another one of my slightly losing sessions. Then it was what we wait all week for, the sunday tourns!

1) Bodog 100k - Went out after 25mins. Raise with AA in middle position, SB calls. Flop is AT5. SB bets out, I raise pot, he calls. Turn is K. He bets about half pot (I'm putting him on TT or 55 now) and I reraise allin. He calls - with QJ! DOH!
2) Party mill gtd - Lost half my stack early when my KK ran into AA (again lol). Lasted until around the second break but was always very shortstacked.
3) Noble $40 rebuy - I ran into a hand and got knocked out (In this tourn - you have to steal all day and never get caught because its such a crapshoot). Congrats to Jac for coming 2nd tho.

On Monday, I multi-tabled stars 9max on my laptop for FPPs. Had a winning session, shock horror! Was up about $350. Just about got my FPPs in time before we headed off to Big Slick. This is my new favourite place!! I love the fact that every comp is dealer dealt (even if some of them are a bit amateur lol) and that its non-smoking in there. Also the atmosphere is very friendly. Me, Flash, Dave and Dru played the comp - £10 rebuy and we all had over 10k at the end of rebuys (1k start, double rebuys allowed). We were all feeling optimistic. However, very quickly my optimism was diminished as I missed an up and down str8 + flush draw for 1/4 of my stack, then doubled up a short stack for another 1/4 of my stack. 6000 chips at 300/600 blinds didnt look too pretty, and I busted soon after. Dru made final AGAIN!! He absolutely owns Big Slick!!!
Afterwards we all played the cash game (£1/£2 blinds). I sat down for £100, and first hand I pulled off a funky play with 7 high no draws against a couple of weak players. Played pretty loose in general, and got paid off when the young table nit raised and I found AA behind him. King high flop matched his AK, and I felt pretty bad when I busted him and he sat there for 15mins looking like he'd lost his life savings! Last hand of the cash game I picked up AK on the button, middle position made it £10 to play (he was tilting BAD) and solid old guy calls. I made it £25 more trying to isolate against the tilter, but both called (pot around £110). Tilter goes allin in the dark for 50 quid, and flop comes Q-rag-rag. Old guy calls so I fold, turns over QQ! Oh well, cashed out for £135 in the end, couldve been £300 if that last flop comes ace high.
Drove back home yesterday afternoon, and got involved on some Pokerstars tournaments last night.

1) $25 rebuy satellite to $475 EPT London qualifier on Saturday - Managed to scrape a seat here, hopefully I'll take it down on Saturday. I'll have some competition - Tommo and Flash are both playing!
2) $11 turbo rebuy satellite to $215 mill gtd on Sunday - Easily qualified - I own this satellite lol.
3) $36 freezeout satellite to $215 headsup WCOOP event - AK got bitched by QJ after a AQx flop.
4) $50 rebuy. Can't remember much about this tourn, except I didn't do very well.
5) $50 / 90 man sit and go. Was in the top 5 in chips for most of this tourney - and was running over the table with 2 tables left. Then I got pretty unlucky against some short stacks and went to final on average stack. Early on I doubled a guy with half my stack up when i raised his bb with 66 and he found JJ. Was a struggle from there, but I got back into it and got back to average. Then got it allin against the chip leader with AQ vs KQ on a board of QT9 for the chip lead. I visualised the jack on the turn, and so it came. 6th place for $300 was a bit disappointing - thought I was gonna take this down.
6) The good old $35k gtd $10 rebuy. My first table was full of absolute nits lol, and this, along with getting pretty unlucky, caused me to be in for $200 and to have the minimum stack possible - 5000 at the end of rebuys. Still, I worked that up to 55000 (double average) pretty fast against my table of retards. Then this happened:

POKERSTARS GAME #5763206338: TOURNAMENT #28909894, $10+$1 HOLD'EM NO LIMIT - LEVEL XI (600/1200) - 2006/08/01 - 19:30:01 (ET)
Table '28909894 128' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: redwbase (15765 in chips)
Seat 2: jambonator (51553 in chips)
Seat 3: Klings74 (19483 in chips)
Seat 4: tedwyer (12825 in chips)
Seat 5: lordlucan (11480 in chips)
Seat 6: Blackthump (20715 in chips)
Seat 7: Rvrqueen1 (20520 in chips)
Seat 8: charpley (11908 in chips)
Seat 9: ProdiGal*S0N (68090 in chips)
redwbase: posts the ante 75
jambonator: posts the ante 75
Klings74: posts the ante 75
tedwyer: posts the ante 75
lordlucan: posts the ante 75
Blackthump: posts the ante 75
Rvrqueen1: posts the ante 75
charpley: posts the ante 75
ProdiGal*S0N: posts the ante 75
Klings74: posts small blind 600
tedwyer: posts big blind 1200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jambonator [Kh Kd]
lordlucan: folds
Blackthump: folds
Rvrqueen1: folds
charpley: folds
ProdiGal*S0N: raises 1200 to 2400
redwbase: folds
jambonator: raises 3600 to 6000
Klings74: folds
tedwyer: raises 6750 to 12750 and is all-in
ProdiGal*S0N: raises 7650 to 20400
jambonator: folds
*** FLOP *** [9c Ks 6c]
*** TURN *** [9c Ks 6c] [Jc]
*** RIVER *** [9c Ks 6c Jc] [2d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
tedwyer: shows [4s 4d] (a pair of Fours)
ProdiGal*S0N: shows [Ad Ac] (a pair of Aces)
ProdiGal*S0N collected 32775 from pot

So nextgenneo - I can't fold KK preflop huh? Gotta love the flop coming king high after I fold - would have taken a 110k pot lol. The very next hand I lost another 15k with JJ vs TT and was back below average. Undetered, I played really good, and kept building my stack up, only for it to get knocked back down time after time when I kept losing showdowns. Eventually I made final two tables (out of 1100 runners) and busted in 17th when my JJ was no good allin preflop against 99 :-( ONE TIME i might win a hand like this at this stage of this tournament and make the final table, where the prizes are sick, every1 gets at least $1000, up to $11k for first. Instead i got $400, doubled my money lol.
Today I might go to casino for the £10 rebuy or I might play online, not sure yet! Until next time....

Start Bankroll: $10,996.59
End Bankroll: $11,001.48

Star of August

2006-08-02T08:19:00.000Z

Sucky start, was down $300 playing 50NL but brought it back to -150 for day. Gonna put up weekly reviews Sunday / Monday-ish every week. Schedule:

Monday 1.5K Hands
Tuesday - Thursday 3.5K Hands daily
Friday - Saturday 5K Hands daily
Sunday 4K Hands

Should play 110K+ hands this month, will be 6-tabling whole time. Until next week then! And this is for you jambon who says you can't fold KK pre:

***** Hand History for Game 4855386505 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, August 01, 18:24:19 ET 2006
Table Table 109798 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: hellonewman4 ( $54.07 )
Seat 2: nicochip69 ( $32.63 )
Seat 5: jbirddog75 ( $55.70 )
Seat 6: BunnyWokkie ( $52.95 )
Seat 4: profEERNIE ( $59.55 )
Seat 3: JoZen1 ( $66.37 )
profEERNIE posts small blind [$0.25].
jbirddog75 posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to profEERNIE [ Ks Kc ]
BunnyWokkie folds.
hellonewman4 raises [$1].
nicochip69 folds.
JoZen1 raises [$2.50].
profEERNIE raises [$12.25].
jbirddog75 folds.
hellonewman4 folds..
JoZen1 is all-In [$63.87]
profEERNIE folds.
JoZen1 shows [ Ah, Ac ] a pair of aces.
JoZen1 wins $80.37 from the main pot with a pair of aces.

July Review

2006-07-31T05:20:00.000Z

* Apologize about the lack of an excel daily graph but being in the states til 21st messed that up. Gonna just use Poker Grapher from now on. Played 5k hands in the states, rest has been in this last 1 week.

Hands Played: 28K
Money Won : $1,680
Cashed Out : $700
Tourney Fees: $100
Bonuses : $250
Rakeback : $280

Start of Month Roll: $800
End of Month Roll : $2350

August Goals

Get to $10K total bankroll
Move up to $400NL
Play 100K hands
Become more aggressive, and more positionally aware
Read Harrington Volume's 1-3
Re-read Sklansky NLTP
Get to 250 posts on 2p2

August Approach

Play 4K hands a day with 1 day off a week (6-tabling)
Move up at $3K to $100NL
Move up at $4.5K to $200NL
Move up at $10K to $400NL

Pre moving up stat check

2006-07-30T19:00:00.000Z

So I followed this and did a stat check on the 27k hands I've played at small stakes no limit before I moved up. This is what I've found:

The bad

Not aggressive enough out of the big blind
Not using position well enough
Not stealing blinds
Can't play well when not preflop raiser (losing a lot of $ in HU pots like this)
Not cont betting / raising enough (30% instead of 40%+)
Not as aggressive (1.74factor, should be 2+)

The good

Plays pockets very well
Plays suited connectors very well
Good general preflop aggression
Plays multiway pots very well
Check-raising perfect amount
WINNING MONEY!

Almost perfect Saturday with mini downswing

2006-07-30T01:26:00.000Z

It was all going well until end of session. All in all though good day, can move up very soon! Cashed out $400 for August's rent so only really up $100 for the day.

Fold of the day

guy is 30/12.2/1.73 over 500 hands. Solid multitabler but nothing special. No specific reads, havnt played many pots with him.

***** Hand History for Game 4834637794 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, July 29, 19:37:32 ET 2006
Table Table 109790 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 1: tomibobi ( $62.38 )
Seat 5: vikas_tyagi9 ( $76.75 )
Seat 3: STA_WondrTwn( $53.60 )
Seat 6: arleicht ( $26.65 )
arleicht posts small blind [$0.25].
tomibobi posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ Ah Jh ]
STA_WondrTwn raises [$2].
vikas_tyagi9 folds.
arleicht calls [$1.75].
tomibobi calls [$1.50].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jc, Ad, Qs ]
arleicht bets [$3].
tomibobi calls [$3].
STA_WondrTwn raises [$10].
arleicht folds.
tomibobi is all-In [$57.38]
STA_WondrTwn folds.
tomibobi does not show cards.
tomibobi wins $77.93

What you think of the fold? My reasoning is he is solid so couldve called with QQ or AQ. Also he called 1st guys bet but then pushed over mine which acording to NLTP and Sklansky indicates lots of strength. KT is very possible too. Only hand I think I am ahead to is QJ and I dont think he'd play AK like this.

Back to the usual....

2006-07-29T05:09:00.000Z

Good day, started 6-tabling again instead of 4-tabling. Feeling pretty comfortable and good when playing, getting lots of hands in. Quality of players was pretty bad today (Friday), lots of bad beats as always but managed to minimize. Bring on tommorow and the saturday fish.

Fold of the day

***** Hand History for Game 4826656510 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, July 28, 17:58:03 ET 2006
Table Table 107937 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 4: I_can_see_ur_cards ( $67.20 )
Seat 3: STA_WondrTwn( $59.94 )
Seat 2: trackerman ( $38.70 )
Seat 1: Beef__Cake_ ( $64.85 )
Seat 5: siegfriedo ( $26.05 )
Beef__Cake_ posts small blind [$0.25].
trackerman posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ Ac As ]
>You have options at Table 108041 Table!.
STA_WondrTwn raises [$2].
I_can_see_ur_cards folds.
siegfriedo calls [$2].
Beef__Cake_ calls [$1.75].
trackerman folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8d, 4d, 7s ]
Beef__Cake_ checks.
STA_WondrTwn bets [$5].
siegfriedo calls [$5].
Beef__Cake_ raises [$16].
STA_WondrTwn folds.
siegfriedo is all-In [$19.05]
Beef__Cake_ calls [$8.05].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6d ]
** Dealing River ** [ Ah ]
Beef__Cake_ shows [ 5s, 6s ] a straight, four to eight.
siegfriedo doesn't show [ 3c, 3d ] a pair of threes.
Beef__Cake_ wins $57.60 from the main pot with a straight, four to eight.
>You have options at Table 108047 Table!.

Play of the day

***** Hand History for Game 4827335916 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, July 28, 19:32:29 ET 2006
Table Table 108041 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: fireincairo ( $94.74 )
Seat 3: STA_WondrTwn ( $56.18 )
Seat 5: parks155 ( $32.45 )
Seat 2: tjf110 ( $24.60 )
Seat 6: CaptDom ( $55.20 )
Seat 1: realmagic ( $34.60 )
parks155 posts small blind [$0.25].
CaptDom posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ 7s 8s ]
realmagic raises [$1].
tjf110 calls [$1].
STA_WondrTwn calls [$1].
fireincairo folds.
parks155 calls [$0.75].
CaptDom raises [$3.50].
realmagic folds.
tjf110 folds.
STA_WondrTwn calls [$3].
parks155 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Js, 4d, Td ]
CaptDom bets [$4].
STA_WondrTwn calls [$4].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6d ]
CaptDom bets [$6].
STA_WondrTwn raises [$18].
CaptDom calls [$12].
** Dealing River ** [ 8d ]
CaptDom checks.
STA_WondrTwn bets [$30].
CaptDom folds.
STA_WondrTwn does not show cards.
STA_WondrTwn wins $82.25

Alright party, I will go on a downswing

2006-07-28T03:21:00.000Z

Sucky day, some big outdraws (one in particular) sent me spiralling into some sort of tilt. Bluffed in call stations and played a little too hard, regroup tommorow.

July - nightmare month, getting better

2006-07-28T00:25:00.000Z

So, the last time I posted on the blog was June 7th, pretty much 3 weeks ago. Since then, I had a -$2000 losing week, from sunday 9th - sunday 16th, and a -$345 losing week from 16th-23rd. The week 9th-16th was -$2000 for two main reasons:
1) I dropped $600 on party (400 on cash, 200 on the mill gtd).
2) I played the Noble $1 million guaranteed tournament on the 9th, which was $1000+100 buyin. Obviously, this is horrible bankroll management, but I felt it was worth the gamble. Only around 568 people entered, so the overlay was massive, probably the biggest there will ever be in an online tourney - $375k including rake - equating to around +$660 of EV for each entrant. Also three of us entered - me, jac, and hanzfat, and we were in a deal, which reduces variance. However, it was a bit of a crapshoot, and none of us placed. I got deepest, but with around 100 left, had QQ vs TT vs AK for a treble up, which wudve put me pretty high on the leaderboard. both the K and the T came to knock me out.

For the rest of the week 9th-16th, I didn't play much online because I was on the poker tour with Dave, Flash and Dru. See http://davidlupoker.blogspot.com/ for a tour review. The highlight of the tour for me was splitting 1st out of 18 in a £20 rebuy at big slick, but we were all dealing equally for the whole tour, so that didnt go far. The tour ended up around breakeven, but was good fun! On the thursday, we ate at Chiqitos, where I stuffed myself with some sort of chicken burger and then a huge dessert. We headed to gutshot, and after I bombed out the tourney, I remember eating a double decker choc bar (made by cadburys). When I woke up on friday, I felt pretty rough, played a bit on party cash, was a winning session until this happened:

I had 9 tables (10max) of $200nl open on my laptop screen, so there was overlap on the tables. On my top left table, i was sitting in the seat bottom middle right. On my middle left table, i was sitting in the seat top middle right. In other words, on those two tables, my cards were right above/below each other. On the top left table, I had pocket 7s, missed my set and folded. On the middle left table, it appeared i had pocket 7s as well. However, I didnt actually have pocket 7s, i had 8d4d - there was some sort of display error, i have no idea how it happened but suffice to say - party poker software SUCKS! I was big blind, with what i thought was 77. One caller in mid pos, SB completes, I check. Flop comes J57. SB checks, i check, MP bets $5, SB folds, I call. Turn is another 7 (i now think i have quads). I check, MP checks. River is 9. No flush possibilities out there. I bet $10, MP raises to $30. I now think he has a boat, so i pushallin for $200 total. He instacalls, and I can't quite believe it when I see the pot moving over to him and his 7s5s!!!! Now thats what you call running bad!

Soon after this, I threw up at Flash' house. Decided I was gonna drive home, let the boys go to gutshot still that night. On the way back I threw up on the hard shoulder of the A249, and the M2 twice lol. Got home, threw up all night. Food poisoning symptoms continued for A WHOLE WEEK!!!! Not sure what caused it - maybe the chicken burger, maybe the cadburys choc bar!! So i was pretty fucked, dehydrated and shit, had to go to doctors. Didn't play any cards the whole time I was ill, except from bodog 100k and party mill on sunday 15th. Hence why sunday 16th-23rd was only -$345, not much of a swing either way cos I wasn't playing.

This week, again I've been running bad. Played quite a few tournaments, $10 rebuys and up, and $30 freezeouts and up. Came close a few times (16th in the stars $50 rebuy doh!) but nothing major. Played a very small sample of cash, which I ran bad/didn't play great in - dropped about $250 in a cash game I played with tommo - including me stacking off a full buyin to tommo when I tried to push him off AA with a pair + open-ended. Put him on a lower pocket pair than aces and thought he would lay it down - whoops! Also played a bit on fulltilt - lost $320 in a 1 hour four tabling session - players on full tilt are sick, and I couldn't hit a flop. Also dropped one buyin in an hour session on pacific when I had AK run into 66 on an AK6 flop :-(

So this week was going pretty bad until tonight, i was down just over $1000 for the week again, and feeling pretty down about poker in general. Tonight though, I caught my first break in a long time, won the $12 rebuy $5k gtd on VC for $1866. Ran it over final 3 tables, raising pretty much every hand - played very well, so I'm feeling a bit better right now. The bankroll stats are as follows, going from when I last posted to now:
Start Bankroll: $13,095.35
End Bankroll: $10,996.59

Pretty bad, but the recovery is underway, fingers crossed!

No party, I will NOT go on a down swing

2006-07-27T05:10:00.000Z

So today was party and poker trying to force me to jerk my money off, trying to make me go on tilt but no f-ing way. Had some sick hands where I should have lost all my money which I will post down below but wasn't gonna happen.

The plan then. Bank roll right now is on $2,050, I need to cash out $400 in a week for rent and $ for food in August. Rakeback right now should be getting atleast $200. After I cash out the $400 if the roll is above 2.4k I will move up to $100NL and possibly move to UB or Stars. This week gonna continue putting in minimum 3k hands a day, so hopefully by sunday if I keep running newhere near 10bb/100 which is very possible should be up another K. Time will tell.

The sick folds (didnt mention Poker Tracker stats here, but they helped):

***** Hand History for Game 4813717602 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, July 26, 19:32:35 ET 2006
Table Table 108048 (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: STA_WondrTwn( $87.38 )
Seat 1: DAIN_JEROUS ( $39.90 )
Seat 3: igotchokidz ( $47.80 )
Seat 5: jameslodge ( $14.92 )
Seat 2: P_Cox ( $48.50 )
Seat 6: Tiltmealott ( $52.30 )
DAIN_JEROUS posts small blind [$0.25].
P_Cox posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn[ Jc Jd ]
igotchokidz calls [$0.50].
STA_WondrTwn raises [$2].
jameslodge folds.
Tiltmealott folds.
DAIN_JEROUS raises [$3.25].
P_Cox folds.
igotchokidz calls [$3]. <- he calls 2 raises cold, he is fishing for a set
STA_WondrTwn calls [$1.50].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4d, 3h, 2h ]
DAIN_JEROUS bets [$5]. <- He would've raised a big pair more preflop, he has missed with this small bet
igotchokidz raises [$15]. <- He isnt raising with 55+ because he thinks DAIN_JEROUS has overpair, hence he only raises with set
STA_WondrTwn folds.
DAIN_JEROUS folds.
igotchokidz shows [ 3c, 3s ] three of a kind, threes.
igotchokidz wins $29.95 from the main pot with three of a kind, threes. <- SICK FOLD! ***** Hand History for Game 4814058758 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, July 26, 20:16:24 ET 2006
Table Table 108088 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: BAKALI ( $17.96 )
Seat 2: STA_WondrTwn ( $65.28 )
Seat 1: MrAaarts ( $69.84 )
Seat 3: novastation ( $11.95 )
Seat 6: play2paytckt ( $70.20 )
Seat 5: AlamoTrav ( $18.25 )
AlamoTrav posts small blind [$0.25].
play2paytckt posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ Kh Ks ]
MrAaarts folds.
STA_WondrTwn raises [$2].
novastation calls [$2].
BAKALI folds.
AlamoTrav folds.
play2paytckt calls [$1.50].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, Qd, Tc ]
play2paytckt checks.
STA_WondrTwn bets [$5.95].
novastation is all-In [$9.95]
play2paytckt raises [$20]. <- What hand I beat plays like this?
STA_WondrTwn folds.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Td ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8s ]
play2paytckt shows [ Th, Qh ] a full house, Tens full of queens. <- GREAT FOLD!
novastation doesn't show [ 6d, Qc ] two pairs, queens and tens.
play2paytckt wins $10.05 from side pot #1 with a full house, Tens full of queens.
play2paytckt wins $30.50 from the main pot with a full house, Tens full of queens.

***** Hand History for Game 4812516810 *****
$50 NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, July 26, 16:35:40 ET 2006
Table Table 109794 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: mhuntley25 ( $93.70 )
Seat 2: al3oholica ( $47.50 )
Seat 5: KING_LOE ( $58.68 )
Seat 6: pahr072 ( $80.71 )
Seat 4: STA_WondrTwn ( $54 )
Seat 3: richat20 ( $59.90 )
richat20 posts small blind [$0.25].
STA_WondrTwn posts big blind [$0.50].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ 4h 8h ]
KING_LOE calls [$0.50].
pahr072 calls [$0.50].
mhuntley25 folds.
al3oholica folds.
richat20 calls [$0.25].
STA_WondrTwn checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Tc, 4d, 8d ]
richat20 checks.
STA_WondrTwn bets [$1.50].
KING_LOE folds.
pahr072 folds.
richat20 calls [$1.50].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9s ]
STA_WondrTwn bets [$4].
richat20 raises [$10].
STA_WondrTwn folds.
richat20 shows [ Jd, 7s ] a straight, seven to jack.
richat20 wins $18.35 from the main pot with a straight, seven to jack. <- GREAT FOLD!

Best day so far :-D

2006-07-26T05:39:00.000Z

So best day so far. Owned the 50NL tables, played well, got good cards, and no really bad outdraws in big pots. Need to start playing more hands though when I am having a winning day instead of getting all protective over it and wanting to stop! Also played the $22 $40k guarantee'd but didn't place.

On a side note looks like I might have to move from Party because of their new "Monster Tables". Will be raking an extra .50c out of all raked pots 100NL and up and rumour has it this will soon apply to the 25 and 50NL tables, this will really slash my win rate! Sucks because I love party, have rakeback there and all my scripts set up... :(

50NL take 2

2006-07-25T03:53:00.000Z

After a boring break even session this morning had a nap and tried again. Things went well, played well and made some good hands. Only 4-tabled and didn't play nearly enough hands but gonna call it a night so I can end on a high. Got job interview tomm for some hedge fund thingy, then back on the cards! Will stay up at 50NL

Picked up a little

2006-07-24T05:10:00.000Z

Was bored so put in another 500 hands of just 4-tabling, some uber fish. Ended with QQ vs A8 getting outdrawn in big pot that would've meant I could move up tommorow! ( trying to get to 1.25k total roll to move up)...

Hand of the day against guy with vpip > 70 and call station so all about value:

***** Hand History for Game 4795943887 *****
$25 NL Texas Hold'em - Monday, July 24, 00:37:53 ET 2006
Table Table 108031 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 5: tamijo84 ( $40.04 )
Seat 4: profEERNIE ( $52.90 )
Seat 2: thejoe1989 ( $40.55 )
Seat 6: marshlamadan ( $25.70 )
Seat 3: letitride904 ( $37.43 )
Seat 1: AcesOverKsKc ( $26.35 )
letitride904 posts small blind [$0.10].
profEERNIE posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to profEERNIE [ Ah As ]
tamijo84 calls [$0.25].
marshlamadan folds.
AcesOverKsKc folds.
thejoe1989 folds.
letitride904 calls [$0.15].
profEERNIE raises [$1.15].
tamijo84 calls [$1.15].
letitride904 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5h, 5d, Td ]
profEERNIE bets [$2.90].
>You have options at Table 107964 Table!.
tamijo84 calls [$2.90].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qd ]
profEERNIE bets [$6.30].
tamijo84 calls [$6.30].
** Dealing River ** [ 4s ]
profEERNIE bets [$15.30].
tamijo84 calls [$15.30].
profEERNIE shows [ Ah, As ] two pairs, aces and fives.
tamijo84 doesn't show [ Jh, 6d ] a pair of fives. <- JACK HIGH
profEERNIE wins $49.45 from the main pot with two pairs, aces and fives.

Shit day

2006-07-24T01:27:00.000Z

Sundays never go well for me. Played 3k hands, sucked, loads of outdraws, maybe didn't play as well as I could've. Gonna call it a day and regroup tomm

The return to Leamington

2006-07-23T04:31:00.000Z

Alright got back to Leamington yesterday. Gonna stay on US time. Crazy first day of 11 hours on the table. Started with a shot at 50NL which went badly, some sick hands / bad beats. Then went back to bread and butter of 25NL and made loads back. Also played an $11 tourney which was dry and a $22 tourney which was looking good but lose 3 massive coin flips! Here is the awesome graph:

Crazy Sunday

2006-07-16T21:54:00.000Z

So calling it a week, all in played well, had a couple good runs and some deadly down swings. Today had a sick start to a session, flopping a couple straights and getting paid off. Then had AA cracked by a gutshot, set vs flushdraws twice (and didn't hold up) and some other nasty hands so dropped all the winnings and $10 more. Here is the graph for the week (ran at 9.5bb/100). Obv as I am in the States I am not putting in nearly as many hands as I want to, but that will change when I get back to the UK :

Can someone please help me figure these hands out? CBA to go find the PT stats on the players so assume no reads: Hands

Things picking up

2006-07-16T06:16:00.000Z

So been playing pretty well this week, put in a few K hands (4ish) running at 11bb/100 for a decent amount of money. Did a $150 empire bonus too. Roll is now looking healthy at $1.12K , I also have $150 set a side for some living expenses once I get back to the UK (cashed out of bankroll) and have another $70 that I should be adding to the roll once Bromley pays me back what I won off him in a live game a few weeks ago. Back in the UK Friday morning, so once i re-adjust and settle back in will be good. Probably have a laid back weekend and then starting Monday will begin a 60 hour week on 25NL, and if all goes to plan will be able to move up after that :-D Not gonna really post any numbers until end of month but will keep updating this bad boy

Also was reading some stuff earlier, very true words of wisdom:

Going pro isn’t about replacing a cushy 40 hour a week job. Going pro is about doing whatever it takes to be successful. If that means putting in 60 hours a week at the tables and another 20 a week studying, posting hand histories, and improving your game, that’s what you have to do. The only time you can really consider slowing down is when you start making so much money that putting in additional hours has no real impact on your lifestyle. When you’re making $100,000 a month and living on $5000 and have socked away enough to retire three times over, okay, maybe you cut back to playing 30 or 40 hours a week....

Going pro isn’t about playing poker all day with no boss. Going pro is about having a boss (you) who needs to push himself hard enough to keep the business growing.

Back to grinding

2006-07-11T05:29:00.000Z

Okay, after my tilt session played 4 hours 4 tabling today and really putting the effort in. Ran at 21bb/100 and made $150 in 1.4k hands, only 250 more raked hands til I get that party bonus :-D Tommorow = day off. Going to the beach with Theo and the Blue Monster, which should be awesome. Nothing like the Jersey shore. On page 90 of Sklansky's "No Limit Theory and Practice" right now, by tommorow night I will be finished.

Why I don't play tournaments...

2006-07-10T05:29:00.000Z

Apart from the regular arguments (takes ages, high variance, cant leave in the middle of one, play for hours and might not make loads, etc etc), I have a new reason. They put you on massive tilt!!!

Since my $10-20 days havn't really been going on tilt because I realize that I choose to make $$$ in a game that short term results are heavily dependent on luck. Taking massive beats in $5,000 pots definately levels you and makes you understand the nature of this game but getting really deep in a tourney only to lose a massive pot that'd make you chip leader and put you in good sted to win $4,000 (in an $11 buy in event) is a different story!!!

Not gonna bore you with the bad beat story but b4 it I was avoiding playing cards all day today (had a bad feeling), decided to play $20k guaranteed $11 buy in, lost, went on tilt, jerked off $60 playing .10-.25 like a mad man trying to get my $11 back (to be fair I was just playing really hard and not awfully and the other players are donks, who call $8 reraises pre with 22 when they dont have the implied odds to catch their sets :-{ ). Then I went and bought Poker Tracker for $55 so not the greatest day on the bankroll!!

Regroup tommorow, hopefully put in a few k hands and do the party bonus. One thing that I still need to work on is when I am playing to ignore what my bankroll is, and really trying to have + days. Also, not to play tourney's til I both a) read Harrington 1-3 for the first time b) have a nicer roll.

Good day back

2006-07-09T15:15:00.000Z

So played about 2k hands yesterday, didn't clear the bonus (havn't deposited for it yet). I made about $90 in cash games and played 2 tourneys for $20 so it was a +$70 day. Ran pretty gd for the morning then some silly badbeats made me hover around even for the rest of the day. Here are two hands that have been interesting me. Please either post here or read the nicer format version on twoplustwo

***** Hand History for Game 4683777255 *****
$25 NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, July 08, 15:41:05 ET 2006
Table Table 108178 (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 2: squatchya ( $12.96 )
Seat 6: alfredo52281 ( $36.65 )
Seat 5: STA_WondrTwn ( $32.35 )
Seat 3: run409 ( $31.68 )
Seat 4: cheergwiz ( $18 )
Seat 1: tntrybula ( $14.86 )
cheergwiz posts small blind [$0.10].
STA_WondrTwn posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ Qc Ks ]
alfredo52281 calls [$0.25].
tntrybula folds.
squatchya folds.
cheergwiz folds.
STA_WondrTwn checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Kd, Qh, 9s ]
STA_WondrTwn checks.
alfredo52281 bets [$0.50].
>You have options at Table 107923 Table!.
STA_WondrTwn raises [$1.25].
alfredo52281 calls [$0.75].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8d ]
STA_WondrTwn bets [$2].
alfredo52281 is all-In [$35.15]
STA_WondrTwn folds.
alfredo52281 does not show cards.
alfredo52281 wins $39.90

***** Hand History for Game 4684006858 *****
$25 NL Texas Hold'em - Saturday, July 08, 16:21:29 ET 2006
Table Table 107995 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 6 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 2: Ragnarok4th ( $77.93 )
Seat 3: juilliard ( $31.41 )
Seat 1: STA_WondrTwn ( $46.55 )
Seat 4: mattman_ ( $24.40 )
Seat 6: TheFirm7 ( $11.65 )
Seat 5: thejoe1989 ( $24.65 )
STA_WondrTwn posts small blind [$0.10].
Ragnarok4th posts big blind [$0.25].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ Qd Qc ]
juilliard calls [$0.25].
mattman_ folds.
thejoe1989 folds.
TheFirm7 raises [$0.75].
STA_WondrTwn calls [$0.65].
Ragnarok4th folds.
juilliard calls [$0.50].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Th, Js, 5s ]
STA_WondrTwn checks.
juilliard bets [$3].
TheFirm7 folds.
STA_WondrTwn raises [$7].
juilliard is all-In [$27.66]
juilliard: fool
STA_WondrTwn folds.
juilliard does not show cards.
juilliard wins $39.36

On both hands I didn't reraise enough on the flop, and 2nd hand I decided to play a little out of line pre but ended up not knowing where I was. What you think? Comments welcome

The Return to Cards

2006-07-07T23:39:00.000Z

So bought Sklansky and Harrington and a couple of motivational books. Gonna give up TV when I get back to England. Was doing some math and my roll should be on about $860 in actual cash and add another $60 when I get paid back by Sam (hopefully when I get back).

Did some calculations on my expenses when I get back (in pounds):
August Rent : 145
Sept Rent : 270 (on campus)
Bills July/Aug: 50 (estimate, should be less)
Food/Living : 25 a week * 10 weeks = 250
Total : 715 = $1350 (act a little less)

So that is how much I will need to cash out of the bankroll over summer. Really annoying but has to be done. There is a $150 empire bonus and a $100 party reload bonus that I will do as soon as my neteller gets fixed (something about me logging in from the States) so hopefully that + the play I will do should let my bankroll hit 1.2k but whatever happens I am gonna start playing again tommorow. Will be putting in as many hours as I can whilst still in the States on the .10-.25 table and try to build it up as high as possible. Moment the roll is $1.5K i am gonna move up limits and if by Aug 1st it is $1.2k I will stay up (after cashing out some expenses). Pretty scary how much I have to use to live off but playing 40 hours a week when I get back and putting in 40-80 hours over the next couple weeks (b4 I go back on the 20th) should hopefully allow me to move up soon. Now to fix that neteller!!

Donkaments

2006-07-07T16:18:00.000Z

Well, I haven't posted since the weekend, so heres an update.
Early this week, I found out that my car is fucked, a lot worse than I thought, so basically I need to buy a new car. Nightmare, I need to win a donkament! So, this week, basically I've played few cash games, but have been winning - and the profits have been ploughed into donkament entry fees.
Start Bankroll: $12969.32
End Bankroll: $13095.35
Pretty much tells you I haven't had a big score lol! However, it is sick what my BR could be on right now - donkament varience is a nightmare!
On weds night, in the paradise $30 rebuy $40k guaranteed, I came 40th, getting like $137. But, I was cruising at the time, 7th in chips, and I picked up KK on the big blind. Blinds were 2k/4k and I had 87k total. Playing 8 handed I think, UTG+2 (130k big stack) limps. Middle position (80k total) makes it 14k to play. Folds to small blind, who shoves for 30k total, and it's on me. I'm still not sure what I should have done here. If I fold, I think I can still make final table fairly easily by blind stealing my way through. However, if I play the pot and middle position has QQ/AK, I'm in great shape, chip leader. I shoved my chips in, and middle position called with aces. The small blind had AK, and, well, that was that.
Last night (thursday), I played a few tournies, the most notable was the $10 rebuy 35k gtd on pokerstars. Wow this one hurt. I ended the rebuy period on 6k (which is like no chips) after spending $80 on buyins. I dropped to 4k, then managed to steal a couple of pots, double up, steal a few more pots, and I was average stack. Then I played probably the best poker I've played for a while, had no showdowns, stole a ridiculous amount of pots, and by the time we entered the money I was cruising in the top 10 in chips. I continued to run over my table until there was 41 out of 980 players left, where I was on 320k, and average was around 200k. Then this hand happened:

PokerStars Game #5476631163: Tournament #27318272, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level XVIII (6000/12000) - 2006/07/06 - 21:37:12 (ET)
Table '27318272 16' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Hovanky (354740 in chips)
Seat 2: jcire1 (331441 in chips)
Seat 3: PBaek (70704 in chips)
Seat 4: jambonator (319175 in chips)
Seat 6: ricestud (221509 in chips)
Seat 7: myggan (259731 in chips)
Seat 8: kubrick (274262 in chips)
Seat 9: Teobaldo (200896 in chips)
Hovanky: posts the ante 600
jcire1: posts the ante 600
PBaek: posts the ante 600
jambonator: posts the ante 600
ricestud: posts the ante 600
myggan: posts the ante 600
kubrick: posts the ante 600
Teobaldo: posts the ante 600
myggan: posts small blind 6000
kubrick: posts big blind 12000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jambonator [Qd Qs]
Teobaldo: folds
Hovanky: folds
jcire1: raises 24000 to 36000
PBaek: folds
jambonator: raises 60000 to 96000
ricestud: folds
myggan: folds
kubrick: folds
jcire1: calls 60000
*** FLOP *** [7c 3h 5s]
jcire1: bets 234841 and is all-in
jambonator: calls 222575 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [7c 3h 5s] [Kc]
*** RIVER *** [7c 3h 5s Kc] [Ts]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jcire1: shows [Ad Kh] (a pair of Kings)
jambonator: shows [Qd Qs] (a pair of Queens)
jambonator said, "one time"
jcire1 collected 659950 from pot

OUCH! This pot puts me chip leader, I'm feeling great, final table is about 45mins away. Instead, I got well and truely donked. It's pretty ridiculous how badly this guy played this hand. Stop and go does not work when you've been reraised and you have AK and you miss the flop. The range of hands that I'm folding after this flop to a stop and go are pretty small after I've reraised preflop. If the guy feels he can't get away from his AK, he should shove preflop after I reraise, so he gets to see 5 cards, and, the sick thing is, I would have folded my QQ preflop if he'd done that. Showdowns are to be avoided at all costs when you can't win a pot like me!
So, I got $166.60, double my money back. First prize was 10.5k, and every place on the final table got at least 1k. That's donkament varience for you!

u push with queen 6?!!!

2006-07-07T02:42:00.000Z

This is a hand from the Noble $100k tourney last Sunday:

Your cards 6s Qh
RomaniaJew folds
stabec raises 3,518 All-in
nicknase folds
AAAkkkAAA goes All-in 5,300
Kisfoka folds
cresus13 folds
lildones folds
Kimthor folds
tedesplomo2 folds
Dealing Flop 3c 3s 6d
Dealing Turn 3c 3s 6d 5h
Dealing River 3c 3s 6d 5h Kd
stabec shows Two Pair 6s Qh
AAAkkkAAA shows One Pair Qd Ac
1,782 returned to AAAkkkAAA
Winner is stabec with Two Pair 3s 3c 6d 6s Kd 8,536

So basically I pushed with Q6 on an eight handed table when I was UTG+1 with an m less than 2.5.
AAAkkkAAA: its a 200 dolar5 buy in and u push with queen 6?
AAAkkkAAA: what an idiot
AAAkkkAAA: do u ever win?
AAAkkkAAA: u werent even big blind next hand. idiot

etc... (went on for about 5 minutes, even after he got knocked out)

It made me think - how often is it that I think someone is playing poorly, but it is just that I don't understand? I'm sure it happened a lot when I first started playing poker.

It's definitely a reason for not berating other peoples play (as well as the fact it is rude and do you really want them to improve as a player?)

June 06 Review

2006-07-03T16:56:00.000Z

Havn't played since being back in the States. Just been chilling. Got my RB for last month which was about $60... Here is a graph for June 06, not very exciting because only played 1 week and 8k hands but will put up a graph every month.

Bit of a rest, then the big sunday tourney bad beats :-)

2006-07-03T00:34:00.000Z

The past few days I haven't played a lot of cards. After my lost post, I played an $11 double shootout on pokerstars for the $215 sunday million, and won that. However I unregistered from the tourney bcoz this week it was a buyin+rebuy+addon (triple chance) event, and I didn't fancy a $615 event atm. Friday I played £50 freezeout at local casino, went busto on a 15 outer. Then yesterday I didn't play at all.
Today (Sunday), as always, was the big tournament day. Today could have been a big cash day lol! Played 5 tournaments tonight:

1) Landora $100k gtd, $130 buyin. What a crapshoot! Busted about halfway thru, never had any cards or a stack.
2) Bodog $100k gtd, $109 buyin. Came 41st for $350 ($168 of this went in deals with hanzfat, jac and davey lu). Had a huuuuuuuge pot allin pre with 45 left - AdKd vs A7os. Flop came 568 two diamonds..... kinda urgh. Black 7 on the turn sucked hard, wudve had a really good shot at making final table again if it had held.
3) Noble $4000 gtd, $40 rebuy ($160 in buyins). 2nd for $1200. Headsup I got him allin with J3 on the turn on a board of J963, he had Q9. Q on the river cost me the $2000 first prize. ($518 of this went to jac and hanzfat in deals).
4) Noble $100k gtd, $215 buyin. What can I say. AA vs QT. Nightmare.
5) Party $1 million gtd, $215 buyin (I satellited in, at a profit I think, on the $66 6 handed satellites - I got a few seconds for $145). Average was 10k, i got it allin preflop for 25k pot, wudve put me on 28k, with KK vs AK. Ace on the river. Nightmare.
Oh well, wasn't meant to be! This week, going to try to play at least 15k hands of 6max, but I might be going on a poker tour with davey lu, dru and flash, so we'll see!

Start Bankroll: $12481.33
End Bankroll: $12969.32

back to normal - my worst day ever

2006-06-30T00:28:00.000Z

wow, today was sickening, my worst day ever. Put in 4 hours / 1823 hands today, in four seperate sessions, two on party, two on stars. My first two sessions were on stars, and i dropped $441.70. Literally, I got cooler after cooler after cooler in these sessions, e.g. cutoff raises, i reraise on the button with AJs, he calls, flop AJT, he has KQ. Minimised very well on that hand. Another big cooler included:

POKERSTARS GAME #5402578053: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($1/$2) - 2006/06/29 - 15:07:54 (ET)
Table 'Aegle' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: tst40 ($37 in chips)
Seat 2: CJH25 ($206.40 in chips)
Seat 3: jambonator ($248.20 in chips)
Seat 4: melikman ($119.05 in chips)
Seat 5: pokrshorty78 ($82.60 in chips)
Seat 6: smittydog3 ($46.55 in chips)
smittydog3: posts small blind $1
pokrshorty78 said, "way to double up"
tst40: posts big blind $2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jambonator [Kh Qh]
CJH25: folds
jambonator: raises $4 to $6
melikman: folds
pokrshorty78: calls $6
smittydog3: calls $5
tst40: calls $4
*** FLOP *** [Kc Ad Ks]
smittydog3: checks
tst40: checks
jambonator: checks
pokrshorty78: bets $10
smittydog3: calls $10
tst40: folds
jambonator: raises $10 to $20
pokrshorty78: calls $10
smittydog3: raises $20.55 to $40.55 and is all-in
smittydog3 said, "triple up?"
smittydog3 said, "do it"
smittydog3 said, "do it"
jambonator: calls $20.55
smittydog3 said, "ty"
pokrshorty78: calls $20.55
*** TURN *** [Kc Ad Ks] [Jc]
smittydog3 said, "kj"
jambonator: checks
pokrshorty78: checks
*** RIVER *** [Kc Ad Ks Jc] [8c]
jambonator: bets $20
pokrshorty78: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
jambonator: shows [Kh Qh] (three of a kind, Kings)
pokrshorty78: mucks hand
jambonator collected $40 from side pot
smittydog3: shows [Js Kd] (a full house, Kings full of Jacks)
smittydog3 collected $142.65 from main pot
jambonator said, "ffs"
smittydog3 said, "ty"
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $185.65 Main pot $142.65. Side pot $40. Rake $3
Board [Kc Ad Ks Jc 8c]
Seat 1: tst40 (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 2: CJH25 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: jambonator showed [Kh Qh] and won ($40) with three of a kind, Kings
Seat 4: melikman folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: pokrshorty78 (button) mucked [9h Ah]
Seat 6: smittydog3 (small blind) showed [Js Kd] and won ($142.65) with a full house, Kings full of Jacks

So, I was done with stars for the day. Maybe party would treat me better. Obviously not. Dropped $236.43 on party today. The following two hands sum it up really:

***** Hand History for Game 4620559947 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, June 29, 20:10:44 ET 2006
Table Table 107439 (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 4: sportsfen ( $156.81 )
Seat 6: DEVIL_FR0G ( $185.10 )
Seat 5: eljambon ( $187.55 )
Seat 3: Haloth ( $200.70 )
Seat 2: goddadyII ( $149.88 )
Seat 1: Greed1000 ( $196.80 )
DEVIL_FR0G posts small blind [$1].
Greed1000 posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to eljambon [ Ad Kd ]
goddadyII folds.
Haloth raises [$7].
sportsfen folds.
eljambon raises [$21].
DEVIL_FR0G folds.
Greed1000 folds.
Haloth calls [$14].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, Td, 2d ]
Haloth checks.
eljambon bets [$15].
Haloth is all-In.
eljambon is all-In.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Th ]
** Dealing River ** [ 5h ]
eljambon shows [ Ad, Kd ] a flush, ace high.
Haloth shows [ Jc, Js ] a full house, Jacks full of tens.
Haloth wins $13.15 from side pot #1 with a full house, Jacks full of tens.
Haloth wins $375.10 from the main pot with a full house, Jacks full of tens.

***** Hand History for Game 4620574433 *****
$200 NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, June 29, 20:12:31 ET 2006
Table Table 109625 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 2: fiona_apple ( $211.85 )
Seat 3: hobo415 ( $107.21 )
Seat 4: roybo680 ( $225.19 )
Seat 5: petbe954 ( $170.70 )
Seat 6: ReefinOne ( $172.95 )
Seat 1: eljambon ( $211.85 )
fiona_apple posts small blind [$1].
hobo415 posts big blind [$2].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to eljambon [ Ah Qc ]
roybo680 folds.
petbe954 raises [$6].
ReefinOne folds.
eljambon raises [$18].
fiona_apple folds.
hobo415 folds.
petbe954 calls [$12].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ac, Ks, Jd ]
petbe954 checks.
eljambon bets [$20].
petbe954 raises [$40].
eljambon calls [$20].
** Dealing Turn ** [ Td ]
petbe954 bets [$20].
eljambon raises [$60].
petbe954 calls [$40].
** Dealing River ** [ Kh ]
petbe954 is all-In.
dont believe this
eljambon calls [$52.70].
petbe954 shows [ As, Ad ] a full house, Aces full of kings.
eljambon shows [ Ah, Qc ] a straight, ten to ace.
petbe954 wins $341.40 from the main pot with a full house, Aces full of kings.

So, the pokergods still hate me. In total I dropped $676.13 today, taking my total loss for since I started the blog into four figures. Maybe I'm just not good enough to beat $200NL, who knows. Thankfully I'm playing well within my bankroll, so I don't have to think about dropping down limits after losing a few buyins. I'm due one hell of a good run of cards thats for sure.

Start bankroll: $13157.46
End bankroll: $12481.33

Finally a day in the black

2006-06-29T02:27:00.000Z

Today, I found out why the pokergods have been hating me so hard the past week! Yes, today I hit my very first ever royal flush!!!
I went to the £10 rebuy at the local casino, blinds were 300/600 and i had 8k stack. I made it 1800 to play from the cutoff with QcJd, and the big blind (a bigstack on about 20k) called.
Flop came AdKdTd! Not bad not bad! He checked, i checked for diamonds, representing the flush draw... bet 1800 and he put me allin with As8c. Ooo yeh.
Then, out of nowhere the Qd comes on the turn. Yum yum. I ended up bubbling when I made a bad call with top pair in battle of the blinds... didnt believe him, but he had pocket 2s, with 2 on board for a set.
Elsewhere today, I played two sessions of $200NL online. This afternoon, played 545 hands on party 6max (a one hour session) and made $287.83, running at 26.41 BB/100, nice.
Then, after casino I came back and played 278 hands (40mins) on stars 6max and made $396.95, running at 71.39 BB/100. Oooooo yeh! Hadn't hit a set in cash for quite a while, and hit like 5 sets in 10mins in that session tonight. Would be nice if I could run like that all the time hehe
So, bankroll changes for today (my first winning day since starting the blog lol!):

Start bankroll: $12472.68
End bankroll: $13157.46

yesterday - a day of mad tilt

2006-06-29T02:24:00.000Z

Ok, so yesterday I ignored my own advice of not playing any tournies, and played a few more, with no cashes obviously - played the $109 40k gtd on party, two $3 rebuys (had a billion rebuys in both) and a $5 rebuy on stars, and a few more random tournies i can't remember. I played a couple hundred hands of cash, but cant remember much, except I saved a hand which I thought I'd post:

PokerStars Game #5375060092: Hold'em No Limit ($1/$2) - 2006/06/26 - 19:32:09 (ET)
Table 'Tamara III' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: KKpro ($208.80 in chips)
Seat 2: DrHool ($66.10 in chips)
Seat 3: StevieJT ($222.65 in chips)
Seat 4: jambonator ($293.50 in chips)
Seat 5: larryab ($181.10 in chips)
Seat 6: bovenzifarha ($222.10 in chips)
StevieJT: posts small blind $1
jambonator: posts big blind $2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to jambonator [6c 9c]
larryab: calls $2
bovenzifarha: folds
KKpro: folds
DrHool: calls $2
StevieJT: calls $1
jambonator: checks
*** FLOP *** [2c 8c 7d]
StevieJT: bets $3
jambonator: raises $6 to $9
larryab: folds
DrHool: calls $9
StevieJT: calls $6
*** TURN *** [2c 8c 7d] [Ac]
StevieJT: checks
jambonator: bets $15
DrHool: raises $40.10 to $55.10 and is all-in
StevieJT: calls $55.10
jambonator: calls $40.10
*** RIVER *** [2c 8c 7d Ac] [5d]
StevieJT: bets $50
jambonator: folds
*** SHOW DOWN ***
StevieJT: shows [Tc Qc] (a flush, Ace high)
DrHool: mucks hand
StevieJT collected $197.30 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $200.30 Rake $3
Board [2c 8c 7d Ac 5d]
Seat 1: KKpro folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: DrHool (button) mucked [8d Ah]
Seat 3: StevieJT (small blind) showed [Tc Qc] and won ($197.30) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 4: jambonator (big blind) folded on the River
Seat 5: larryab folded on the Flop
Seat 6: bovenzifarha folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Was so close to folding on the turn, not sure if I should have got away from it here, just thought there was a chance StevieJT might have A8. Turned out DrHool had A8 :-)

Anyway, bankroll changes for yesterday were:
Start bankroll: $12809.63
End bankroll: $12472.68

poker is full of s**t

2006-06-27T14:11:00.000Z

This is my entry for yesterday. Yet another horrible day of cards - I'm running so bad its silly!!
Played a few tournies, the best has to be the $3 rebuy on stars, where i spent $66 on buyins and only got some chips right at the end. The highlight of the rebuy period was losing AA vs AQ vs Q7 allin preflop for 15k and the board comes QxxQx! Then in the freezeout, i get it allin on a Qxx flop with AA vs AQ and the Q comes on the river. Nice.
Other tournies carried on in much the same vein - either I would get it allin pre with KK v AA to get knocked out, or i would get it allin miles ahead and get 2 / 3 outered.
Gonna have a break from tournies for a bit, they are too much of a headfuck!
Elsewhere yesterday I played 303 hands 6 tabling 6max $200NL on party, dropping $169.70. Had KK v AA twice, and my AA ran into a set. Not a bad loss considering.
Also played 416 hands 6 tabling 6max $200NL on stars, and was +$154.45. Beginning to think stars players suit my 6max game better than party players, so aim to put in at least 2000 hands on stars today.

Start bankroll: $13097.18
End bankroll: $12809.63

Week 1 Review

2006-06-26T09:35:00.000Z

Well week one is over. Started really poorly, but have come along a ridiculous amount in a single week. Been working so hard to improve on all aspects of my game, trying to concentrate more on the tables and generally make better and more winning decisions. Started on Tuesday so not a full week, internet went down today after I put in 445 hands so didn’t get to play nearly as much as I’d like. End of every session reviewing big winning and losing hands, seeing how I could’ve made more money from them, or limited the damage. The thing about this game that I love is how I’ve always thought I’ve been awesome at it but realized now that I am actually pretty crap and there is just so much to learn. It is love / hate and that’s why it keeps me coming back for more. Just when you think you understand it you uncover another leak and aspect to the game that you don’t truly understand. It’s the hardest way to make an easy living. Hopefully with continued motivation and dedication I should crack it.

Someone asked me what the point of this blog was and to answer that, it is a few things. First of all I want to track my play and put some of it in writing to clear my thoughts and keep myself disciplined, and if anyone is remotely interested in my progress through online cash games then that is a bonus. What are my goals by playing poker? Of course the money is a major factor. But my vision is to become a well respected and successful winning NL cash game player and my objective is to become properly rolled for $10-$20 within a year ($100k). Gonna move up a level every time I hit 35 buyins so once the total roll gets to $1.5k will move to $50 NL and so on.

So looking back through the week… played 8,170 hands (12,000 hands of the target) of $25 buy in poker only 4-tabling 6-max making $255 in 21 hours (19 hours off the target) which would’ve been loads more if it wasn’t for my really bad start and continued stubbornness to not make big lay downs but getting a lot better. Generally my reads are spot on so should start trusting them 100%! I started the comeback to cards by playing too hard and too fast, which wasn’t working at these levels (if it works at any level) so re-evaluated and according to poker office I am now a red flag, tight aggressive pre – neutral post. Think that’s the best way to play this level. I’m not cut out for being loose aggressive yet, and playing flops accordingly instead of blind aggression is the way forward because a lot of people will pay for their draws with wrong odds and look at top pair like the nuts. 3-barrelling when someone wont and cant fold and you have nothing isn’t the best idea!

Start of Week: $555
End of Week: $810

Major lesson of the week is taking notes is amazing. Knowing your players is what it is all about. The amount of times good notes have helped me make some very marginal decisions is crazy. Also really starting to use the poker office stats and adjusting my game by them. Feeling very confident, “like I can take on the world” (Rounders). Watched Jerry Maguire on Saturday for the first time which was very motivational and something I will try and incorporate into my daily life is this line:

I love getting up in the morning. I clap my hands and say, “this is gonna be a great day”.

Apart from that it reminded me that life is all about heart, if your heart isn’t in the right place then your head won’t be.

Anyway, off to the states on Wed, not going to play much cards in the run up to going home and won’t play over there until I settle down. Whatever happens will hardly be putting in any hours until I get back to Leamington in late July and can play a solid 40 hours a week.

Finally, here is a hand that’s been really pissing me off. Played it today. Asdf9987 is tight aggressive according to PO, 12% preflop raise and VPIP of 20.6 so a real nit. No major reads, only three hands of his went to show down and were out of the blinds:

***** Hand History for Game 4589438837 *****

$25 NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, June 25, 10:25:18 ET 2006

Table Table 107986 (Real Money)

Seat 1 is the button

Total number of players : 5

Seat 2: wesley239 ( $32.54 )

Seat 3: asdf9987 ( $37.90 )

Seat 1: STA_WondrTwn ( $31.30 )

Seat 6: steffemannen ( $10.37 )

Seat 4: rodrigue777 ( $13.09 )

wesley239 posts small blind [$0.10].

asdf9987 posts big blind [$0.25].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ Kd Kc ]

rodrigue777 folds.

steffemannen folds.

STA_WondrTwn raises [$1.50].

wesley239 calls [$1.40].

asdf9987 raises [$5.75].

WalkerAKs has joined the table.

STA_WondrTwn calls [$4.50].

wesley239 folds.

** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, 6c, 5h ]

asdf9987 bets [$7].

STA_WondrTwn calls [$7].

** Dealing Turn ** [ 4d ]

asdf9987 is all-In [$24.90]

STA_WondrTwn folds

asdf9987 does not show cards.

asdf9987 wins $51.05

Okay, so I played it awfully. Would usually just bang it all in on the flop or preflop but the path to improving probably means playing worst for a while. Do you really need to loose over 100bb every time its AA vs KK? My thoughts at the time were I hate that flop because the one hand I was ahead of was QQ and now has made a set. However would he play a missed AK this hard??? How about TT-JJ and AQ??? AA? Way it was played I should have called because I think I win the hand more than 50% of the time… and he could be squeeze playing out of the blinds because my raise looks like a steal? Absolute nightmare, will post it on 2p2. Until then please comment here. Thanks.

And one more thing, reason I love cards is people just want to give you there money. This is an example of awful awful play, both playing top pair like the absolute nuts! Unlucky I lost the hand but made me laugh:

***** Hand History for Game 4589384711 *****

$25 NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, June 25, 10:10:38 ET 2006

Table Table 108028 (Real Money)

Seat 6 is the button

Total number of players : 6

Seat 2: p20inchdubs ( $13.40 )

Seat 5: Taby53 ( $14.90 )

Seat 6: STA_WondrTwn ( $25.35 )

Seat 3: WatUpStanky ( $48.80 )

Seat 4: dukesuper ( $28.75 )

Seat 1: NoFoolMe76 ( $14.75 )

NoFoolMe76 posts small blind [$0.10].

p20inchdubs posts big blind [$0.25].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to STA_WondrTwn [ 4h 4d ]

WatUpStanky folds.

dukesuper folds.

Taby53 calls [$0.25].

STA_WondrTwn calls [$0.25].

NoFoolMe76 calls [$0.15].

p20inchdubs checks.

** Dealing Flop ** [ 4c, Th, 9d ]

NoFoolMe76 checks.

WatUpStanky: you're doing well 1 inch

WatUpStanky: keep up the good work

p20inchdubs bets [$0.35].

Taby53 calls [$0.35].

STA_WondrTwn raises [$0.70].

NoFoolMe76 folds.

p20inchdubs: gettin rivered

p20inchdubs raises [$2.24].

Taby53 calls [$2.24].

STA_WondrTwn raises [$5.30].

p20inchdubs is all-In [$10.56]

Taby53 is all-In [$12.06]

STA_WondrTwn calls [$8.65].

** Dealing Turn ** [ 6c ]

** Dealing River ** [ 5c ]

STA_WondrTwn shows [ 4h, 4d ] three of a kind, fours.

p20inchdubs shows [ Tc, 7c ] a flush, ten high.

Taby53 doesn't show [ Js, Td ] a pair of tens.

STA_WondrTwn wins $2.85 from side pot #1 with three of a kind, fours.

p20inchdubs wins $38.45 from the mainpot with a flush, ten high.

nightmare sunday

2006-06-25T22:59:00.000Z

so, tonight was the big tourney night. had the $1050 on stars to play, and also played the bodog 100k gtd.
bodog: started off well, was double average for a long time up to final 350 or so. then i lost a massive pot with KQ when i called a raise from the big blind, flopped QJx, checked, knowing the guy is going to commit himself, the guy continuation bets half his stack, i put him in (i knew he was weak preflop from the size of his raise) he called wiv AJ. turn K, river T.
then lost AK vs Q9 when the small blind moved in on my big blind, and i was in trouble.
then i was forced to play super aggressive to stay ahead of the blinds (~10k stack, M=3) , and managed to steal my way back to contention, and made a few good calls against short stacks to build my stack to 50k with 80 players left (average 25k). however, blinds were still huge, with the blinds and antes totalling 5k per round it was well worth blind stealing.
a short stack moved in utg for 9k, and with 2k invested on the big blind and 14k in the pot, so 7k to call, i decided KcTc wasn't in bad shape against his range so called with 2:1 odds. he had AT so that hurt.
then i ran into aces in the big blind when i was stealing from the button with Ac7c, which hurt again. then i raised with A2 in late pos and the button called. my stack before the hand was 20k (M=4) 5k was in the blinds, 5k was my preflop raise, and the guy called for 5k on the button. flop 8s7s2d looked good to shove for 15k, and the guy found a call wth 5s5c. turn As!! river Ts =(
i came 65th, 63 paid. good lesson of how to donk off 50k in chips in a few orbits argh.

stars million: my god what a disaster. on level 1 i called a small raise out of the big blind with 8h6h. flop came 5h7cTh, giving me an open ended str8 draw and flush draw. i checkraised the flop, and the pre flop raiser called. turn came a blank (a deuce or 3 i think) and i bet 3/4 pot. guy calls again. i miss the river also, but think i represented a set pretty well the whole way, so bet close to pot again and he called with pocket kings. that was half my 3k stack gone. so im on 1.5k early.
in the next 20mins i picked up a few small pocket pairs, tried to hit some flops, missed everything. down to 1.3k, blinds are 15/30.i then get AhKh in the big blind. there is a minraise from midpos, and 3 callers. i raise to 300, leaving 1k back. everyone calls, and the flop comes 8s7h4s (pot is 1500). really not an amazing flop against 4 hands, but i figure someone needs to have hit two-pair minimum to call my push representing a big pair. so i pushed and was called by 56 for the nut str8. my backdoor flush didnt come, and i was out after 25mins.

i think i played too aggressive tonight. i should have played a much smaller pot with my str8/flush draw on stars, and really i shouldnt have dropped a 50k stack on bodog once i had it, even though the blinds and antes were so large. im pretty disappointed right now, but ill survive.
bankroll changes for the past few days are as follows:

Start bankroll: $13131.10
End bankroll: $13097.18

What a grind...

2006-06-25T00:52:00.000Z

Another 4.5 hours today, 1.7k hands, ran at 6.4bb/100 making $53.47. Still being a little bit stubborn and not folding hands that I should be post flop... but should cut that out soon and will bump me to 10bb/100. Not playing nearly enough, have to intensify it soon. Going to the States on Wed til July 20th so won't play too much until I get back. Then need to get atleast 20k hands a week!

Start of Day: $710
End of Day: $763

last few days

2006-06-25T00:01:00.000Z

so, days 3-4 were pretty non-eventful - i played no poker, sorted out some problems and have now left uni for the summer.
on the way back down home, stopped off in london for Student Poker Open tourney at Imperial College, was £34 buyin, with two $1000 seats avaliable. played pretty well, the average student was awful, and managed to keep going with fairly little risk. however, people who moved to my table didnt bring any chips with them and the table got shortstacked. i lost a 30:70 and a coinflip and that was that.
then went to the gutshot for £100 freezeout, doubled up on level 2 with nut flush vs straight. then just before the break lost 3/4 of my stack when UTG limped with AA for 200, mid pos pushed for 700, and i found KK in late. i made it 1700, and AA pushed. the short stack had KJ, and sum1 else folded the other king. nightmare!
so, am downstairs in gutshot now writing this from the comps. have just had a session on pokerstars, made ~$130 (exact numbers when i import hands to pokertracker when i get home) in about 10mins two-tabling $200NL, then stopped playing. also played $30 deepstack, bust after 1hr with overpair vs bare flush draw.
then played a $25+2 double shootout for the sunday $1050 million guaranteed on stars. played it perfectly and won it, so tomorrow is a big day!

Bad end to the day

2006-06-23T22:51:00.000Z

Put in a solid 5 hours today. Playing 1.6k hands at 8.7bb/100. Was up good $130 until my last hour where I had a few bad beats, missed lots of draws and had all my bluffs called. Cashed out $65 of RB from last month though and added that to the roll so things still looking good. Made $70.84 on the tables in total today. Gonna watch some family guy, get some bed and regroup tommorow. The weekend = marathon poker sessions.

Start of day: $575
End of day: $710 (including added $65)

2hour afternoon session

2006-06-23T18:14:00.000Z

Following up on yesterdays success put in 2 hours of very focussed cards. Things still going my way, got off to a bad start and dropped a little over a buy-in playing too aggressive for this level. But managed to get some momentum going back my way. Made $96.20 in 716 hands.

Start of day: $575
Day so far: $671

Here is a hand from yesterday that I've been thinking about how to play. Please comment if you have any ideas. Think I should have block bet $8 turn and then hope for a check / check on the river. Link

Variance swings my way

2006-06-22T23:35:00.000Z

Only put in 1.5 hours today, 400 hands running pretty well and making $60. Was going to play tonight but feeling pretty tired and sick so will regroup tommorow. Felt I was playing much better today though, really taking notice of other players, taking good notes and really thinking hands through. Felt I was hitting hands but also made some excellent calls and laydowns. Good to get a bit of confidence back, bring on tommorow.

Start of day: $515
End of day: $575

Jambon's day 1+2

2006-06-22T01:13:00.000Z

Hi, so this is jambon, and my first day of going pro for the summer was yesterday. Thankfully my roll as of the start of yesterday was $13.5k, i dont envy STA_Wndrtwn having to grind out the $25NL, those days are behind me.

My first day of being pro started off nicely, 6-tabling $200NL 6-max i made around $300 in a quick 400 hand 45min session, where i played pretty good and ran reasonably.

Unfortunately, I then changed location, heading over to STA_WndrTwn's for a session, and dropped ~$350 in another 400 hand session. In this session I got unlucky and also played badly. Lost a $250 pot allin on the turn with TPTK vs bare flush draw and it hit. However, also lost a full stack with QQ vs KK on a 3-flush low board with the Q-high flush draw vs the K-high flush draw which I played very badly.
So, for the day on cash games i was down $45.02.

Then went back to my house in leamington and decided to have a tournament session. Ended up playing 3x party $33 MTTs, the party $109 40k gtd, the stars $10 rebuy 35k gtd (had 7 buyins) and a $27 double shootout satellite to attempt to qualify for the $1050 1mill gtd on stars this weekend.
I ran horribly in every tourney, played average and busted in everything without a cash. Total loss = -$317

So, not a good first day, ended up down $362.02 overall.

However, I'm on life tilt right now, and I think that's affecting my play. Once I get my personal issues sorted, hopefully my poker should improve.Today I took a day off to cool down but still not feeling great. Played one tourney, $5 quadruple shootout on stars and busted pretty quick.

Tommorrow i should get back on the cash games and hopefully concentrate a bit better.

Starting BR: $13499.62
End of day (1+2) BR: $13132.10

First almost full day

2006-06-22T00:40:00.000Z

Day 2 was a bit of a nightmare. Put in 6.5 hours and 3k hands running pretty badly. Started off this morning playing poorly (I think), just a little too aggressive and too many moves that would work on >>>> limits but not on .10-.25. In my late session I managed to bring it back but lost a 300big blind ($75) pot when my A8 ran into 82 on a board of 8894 (no flush draw) all the $$ goes in... :( Down $70 for the day

Start BR: $585
End BR: $515

Welcome

2006-06-21T00:01:00.000Z

Hey and welcome to the blog. This will keep you updated with my progress of playing "pro" poker of summer vaccation. Been playing for over three years now and have had a lot of success but lacking bankroll management skills so mega swings. The new approach is playing 100,000 hands a month whilst school isn't on well within my bankroll.

So first day of playing Poker today. Put in 2.5 hours (a light start) 6-tabling 6-max $.10-$.25 NL.
Total starting bankroll $555, lets see how high it can get this summer.

Start of day: $555
End of day: $585