What the hell happened?

For some reason none of my blogs since January 1st have shown up on this site....

Would probably have helped if I'd written any in that time! It's been so long I've almost forgotten how to!

I probably didn't blog for a while as I didn't play poker for a long time, but recently I've got back into it big time. Since mid-August I've pretty much played everyday, solely on Full Tilt. I think the reason that I started playing again was because Full Tilt were running their "Biggest Ever Bonus"...and as bonuses on Full Tilt are like gold dust I thought I'd take advantage.

My bonus was $100, and I cleared the whole of that whilst pretty much just breaking even on the tables. In the last month or so I've also cleared about $75 in rakeback and $25 from another of their promotions "Take 2" simply for playing 2 tables or more at once...simples...especially when that's what I do anyway.

I also started playing winning poker! And have probably made around $200-$250 since I restarted and my Full Tilt account balance is resting at a fairly healthy $1550 mark at the moment. I was playing mainly 9 people tables at $0.10/$0.25 and $0.25/$0.50 tables until I found this gem of a site:

www.pokertableratings.com

Wow, what a useful tool that is. You can search any player and see their winrates, details of every hand they've played, how loose/aggressive/tilty they are...

So basically what I've done is searched the biggest losers at $0.25/$0.50 for the month, added them to my buddy list and then whenever I've seen they're online I've tried to get on their table, whatever game they're playing, whether it be 6-max, Full Ring and from stakes varying from $0.10/$0.25 to a brief (unsuccessful) fish-hunt at $0.50/$1.

This really changed around my fortunes and it's a great confidence boost knowing that these players lose money so rapidly you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Another feature of the site is that you can see the top 10 "friends" (i.e. players you've won money against) and the top 3 on my list are players that I've picked out using this method and sat at their table whenever possible!



I think the guy at the top has figured out what I'm doing because whenever I now sit at one of his tables he seems to sit out. Might have to search for some new buddies soon.

Talking of future plans the annual trip to Okehampton is on Friday! I've been looking forward to this since January, 9 of us going away for a long weekend to play 81 holes of golf. I won the competition last year but have a much stiffer task this year with my handicap being cut. Despite that I still think I'll be in with a shout and step up to the plate when required. I don't do losing.

My tip for the title (apart from myself) is CashyP, who I also think will win the "Best Dressed Award". Wooden Spoon winner will be the Cannon.

Speaking of the Cannon, check out his blog, which is still going strong here:

http://wendyx25.blogspot.com/

He doesn't play under that name anymore. He's now "DRC0CKnBA11S" on Party Poker and as you can see if you follow the link below, the new name has instigated an upswing for him (at time of writing +$5k in under 3,000 hands) - long may it continue.

http://www.pokertableratings.com/party-player-search/DRC0CKnBA11S

Happy New Year

Just looked back at my posts from last year. On the 3rd January 2008 I had these figures for my poker accounts:

Party: £310
Noble: £225
Sun: $715

I withdrew the $700 from Sun and deposited $400 in Full Tilt and my latest figures look like this:

Party: £520
Noble: £200
Full Tilt: $1,150

So I currently have about $2,250 in my poker accounts which is pleasing to the eye. $300 of that I have made on Full Tilt in the last few days where I have literally run hotter than the sun. I've been smashing up the Matrix tournaments on there. Here's my graph from sharkscope, pretty impressive upswing at the end you will agree:




This included my best ever performance on one of the Matrix tournaments, I can't see myself getting anywhere near to 58 points again to be honest. It's just a shame that it came in a $22 tourney as I've been playing quite a lot of $33 ones as well and the $55 when they run, would have been nice to get the result at those stakes:




I'm not going to make any goals for the year about improving my game or playing higher stakes because at the moment I just don't have the time to take poker too seriously. So it will stay as just a nice little hobby that I have that now and then earns me an extra bit of money.

I hope 2009 will be as good as the past few years. I'm very lucky to have such a great family and friends combination as well as a gorgeous girlfriend and a wonderful flat to live in and I hope that all of these things continue for many years.

Happy New Year...

Run bad, minimize loses. Run good, make profit...

Had a bit of a mixed weekend, both on and off the poker tables.

Jo was/is really ill so pretty much spent the whole weekend looking after her (BAD) and getting very little sleep (BAD), football was called off due to a waterlogged pitch (BAD), however this did mean that I got to watch the Spurs match (GOOD) and we managed to get a draw against United (GOOD). Also I watched the latest Batman movie (GOOD) and started to get in to House (GOOD).

The poker was equally mixed but ended up in profit for the weekend. On Full Tilt I started the weekend on $760, was down to $680 at one stage, then back up to $770 before dropping to $700 and then ending up at about $830. I stuck mainly to the $22 and $33 Matrix tournaments.

The $33 one's represented my swings well:

1st Matrix: 1st, 1st, 3rd, 7th, 1st Overall. = $64 profit.

2nd Matrix: 7th, 8th, 9th, 9th, 9th Overall. = $36 loss.

3rd Matrix: 1st, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 1st Overall. = $70 profit.

4th Matrix: 2nd, 6th, 6th, 8th, 7th Overall. = $18 loss.

On Party I managed to run my £410 bankroll down to £375 and then back up to £460 over the weekend.

Included in this weekend's games was my best ever set of sit and go's, which came on Sunday evening. I played a $33 Matrix on full Tilt (the 3rd one from above) and also played 2 $11 tables on Party to bring my table numbers up to 6. My results in these 6 sit and go's were:

1st, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd and 4th (as well as a 1st in the overall matrix) so I was very happy with that return.

Probably won't be playing much over the next week or so, I'm playing football tonight so won't be in until late and then on Thursday I have my Christmas meal at work and on Friday Jo's work Christmas do. Saturday I will hopefully be playing football and then might be doing something with Marc, so a pretty packed schedule in the build-up to Christmas!

Fun/Painful weekend...

Have had a couple of pretty busy weekends recently. Last weekend spent Friday night up at the lads flat in London playing a bit of poker, ended up about £20 down in the 10p/20p shenanigans but had a pretty good time. Picked up aces once but apart from that was pretty card dead and action dead.

I play so differently in the live game to what I do online, maybe because of the players, I hardly played any hands and sat tight waiting to hit something knowing the aggressive nature of the game should allow me to get paid off but ended up making an uncharacteristic move to get it all in for £40 with an up and down straight draw, unfortunately against a set, and didn't hit either of the two times we ran it.

I bled a bit more then one a couple of nice pots, firstly when I turned a boat with A9 vs Alec's A7 on an 779 board (turn 9), he was steaming at this point and called my small shove knowing he was behind I think. Then I called the Cannon down with Ace high to win a nice little pot but apart from that pretty much got run over. Big Tone was the big winner of the night, I think he had about £350 on the table by the end of the night.

The rest of the weekend was spent doing shopping and decorating the flat for Christmas. We got our new sofa on Thursday which meant the living room sofa/armchair got put up in the games room which is a sweet upgrade.

The Friday rolled around and the work Christmas do. This is where the fun/pain starts...

Had a good laugh and a few drinks, was expecting to have to pay for the drinks/food at the end of the night but the company picked up the bill which was awesome, saved a good £25-£30 there I think.

Got home at about 1am feeling a bit ill so rather than go to bed thought I'd play a quick game of poker...loaded up a $22 matrix tournament and it was only when the first hand was dealt that I realised it was an Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo matrix game!!! Was quite drunk still and so it was tough...but somehow managed to luckbox my way to a win, a second and a second overall in the matrix to return $44! The highlight was waking up to the sound of my laptop beeping and being very confused before realising that I must have fallen asleep mid-game. By this time it was heads-up and I had just over 1 big blind left and I just called/shoved at every opportunity and managed to luckbox my way to the win! I then got up and went to the toilet and threw up and went to sleep.

Saturday morning I got up and forced myself to eat something, I was not a pretty sight, feeling very fragile, but needed to get something down me as I was playing football in the afternoon. Drove the 45 minutes to get there not feeling very good at all but once I got there and got outside into the fresh air I felt a bit better.

And so onto the game...now this was the first time I had done any sort of exercise for over 3 months, I was playing in the 3rd team as centre mid and looking at the fat old men in the opposition was pretty confident I could dominate. I was even more confident when in the first couple of minutes I received a throw-in, turned my man on the edge of the box and fired a shot narrowly wide...a few minutes later and I was shattered!

It didn't help that the "pitch" was pretty much a swamp and I had inappropriately short studs on which meant I was sliding all over the place but my fitness was just awful. We went one down pretty shockingly, the ball got played over the top into the corner and it looked like it would fly off for a goal kick but it just stuck in the mud and whilst all our defenders had just stopped, their attackers chased it , one picked it up and crossed for the other to tap in. We then had 4 one-on-ones with the keeper and only converted one of them to go in 1-1 at half-time.

The second half pretty much passed me by. We conceded from a corner fairly early on and then with about 20 minutes to go I got cramp in my left calf...then a few minutes later I jumped for a header and got cramp in my right calf...and as I landed the cramp came back in my left calf...so the last 20 minutes I literally just walked about pretty aimlessly as wave after wave of fat old men ran past me! It didn't help that with 25 minutes to go we had made our last sub, who got injured 2 minutes later meaning we had to play with 10 men! We conceded a silly penalty and they scored another scrappy one to make it 4-1 and although we got a late consolation we didn't deserve anything from the game.

So the rest of Saturday, Sunday and still today my whole body has been aching and I've got so many cuts and bruises all over my body. The worst is my right hand which got stood on after I had slipped over for the umpteenth time, my index and middle fingers were swollen to twice their size and you couldn't even see my knuckles and whilst the swelling has gone down a bit now it's still pretty painful.

Hopefully I can recover in time for next week though, I don't know if I'll get promoted to the 2nds as they won 7-1 this week but in time I fully expect to and hopefully once I've got my fitness up I can get back into the first team.

Played a bit of poker yesterday, lost a buyin on Full Tilt so played with $15 on Party's Omaha Hi-Lo, and got stacked when the turn and river counterfeited my low hand and made his high hand...so played a $3 turbo sit and go planning to shove every hand to let off some steam but found Queens first up and shoved UTG to get called by AK and A5. My queens held and so I played properly and must have won about 80% of pots to take it down, I was hitting everything. The highlight was when the blinds were 50/100 I was in the Big Blind and UTG went all-in for 130 chips, it got called in 4 places and I shoved with J4 having everyone covered, 2 people called one with AJ the other with 88 and the UTG had QQ. The board came A84...4...4...so sick.

I haven't got much planned for the next week or so, hopefully recover in time to put in a better effort at football on Saturday...

The benefit of having a blog is...

That I can play in the Pokerstars online blogging Championship for free!!!

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

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

Registration code: 834659

Not sure how many of the events I'll be able to actually play, but it's free so it doesn't matter! Haven't played on Pokerstars for a while and haven't played MTT's either for a while so will be a nice little change.

Wishing I could play more...

That's my general feeling at the moment. Going through a bit of a good streak where I'm very happy with the way that I am playing, both at Sit and Go's AND cash games!!!

My Full Tilt balance is over $800 for the first time. Although looking back around $300 of it is from rakeback/bonuses so I'm actually only $100 in profit through playing from my original deposit. Saying that though with the value of the dollar increasing against the pound I've probably made a few quid just by having that money sitting there!

I downloaded the new PokerTracker on Friday just to see what was different. Seems a bit more user friendly and the HUD seems to work well despite all the horror stories I've heard about it. You get a 2 month free trial so I'm using that at the moment. I'm picking my tables with the aid of www.tableratings.com as well. Literally using that to pick the juiciest tables. Seems to be working well, I've made $180 since I bought it which is nice, would have been more had my aces not been cracked by QJ on a Q93 board in a $60 pot the other night, apart from that the bad beats have been fairly limited on the cash tables.

On the sit and go front my volume has dropped off somewhat although when I have played them in the last couple of weeks I've done pretty well:



A nice $100+ profit from my last 30 or so sit and go's.

Here's a graph of them as well:



So things are looking promising on all fronts it would seem. On the horizon for me is a decent session tonight after watching the Spurs game and then I'm going to the lads flat tomorrow night for a cheeky 10p/20p game which should be a laugh as it's been a while. I can see that being a late one so Saturday will probably be spent recovering and then Sunday Jo and I are putting our Christmas tree up! Exciting times...

Hitting the peak...

Full Tilt sit and go graph:



Big upswing, included playing my first matrix tournament for a while, a turbo $33 one which I managed to cash in ALL 4!!! I came 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, yet somehow still managed to only come second in matrix element after one guy managed to win 2 of them and come 5th and 7th in the other 2.

Apart from that I've been playing quite a bit of $0.10/$0.25 recently on Full Tilt, just to try and lock up some of my bonus before it expires in early December. Was going pretty well until I dropped about 3 buyins yesterday. Stupid really the fact that I lost 2 buyins in almost EXACTLY the same manor when flopping top pair top kicker vs a set. Damn Ace King, although to be fair I shouldn't have got stacked on either occasion.

The other hand of note was a lot more tilt-inducing. I managed to get it all-in 3-way on a 8s 8h 7h flop versus Jacks and 9h 6h...I had Kings... the amazing thing about it was that there had been a raise, and then a reraise (from me on the button) yet the BB still put in 13 more Big Blinds with 96suited... He could have just folded and given up his 25 cents but no, he smashes the flop and hits a 5 on the river to scoop an $80 pot which should have been mine! I'll try and dig out the hand history when I'm at home.

I felt before last night that I was playing very solid poker and was only getting involved in big pots when I had big hands, last night was a bit different. It seemed that every decision I was making was a hard/marginal one which was my fault for putting myself in bad situations. Hopefully next time I play I'll make it easier for myself...

Also you're reading the blog of the now 2 time Reading Sports Day champion I hosted it this year, took a 3 point lead into the golf having demolished everyone at table tennis and then held my own at Tiger Woods and Pool. That 3 point lead over the Dog turned into a 3 point deficit after the golf, in which I putted terribly, and after the first game of bowling I found myself 5 points adrift. Dog then lost his action and I powered through to win the 2nd game and come second in the final game to take the title by 1 point having bowled a 147 average!

Was a quality weekend and was over the moon to retain my title but more importantly had a great time doing it. There's nothing like a good bit of competition in my opinion...

At last...

That's right, at last Darren Bent has finally done something useful...scored a hat-trick in the UEFA cup last night...

Oh, and I finally won a sit and go as well!!! Played last night and managed to not win any of the first 9 I played (only cashed in 2 as well!) but number 10 resulted in a victory, bringing the run of 32 without to an end. I then managed to win 2 of the next 10 I played and cashed in 3 more, making it a total of 8 out of 20 cashes for the night for a profit of a whopping $8...

I checked out my stats for Full Tilt sit and go's and I have managed to notch up an impressive 40 cashes out of 87 games (46%). The problem comes with the distribution:

1st: 10
2nd: 11
3rd: 19

That's pretty worrying, even more so when I take out my last 19 cashes:

1st: 7
2nd: 8
3rd: 6

So 13 of my last 19 cashes have been for 3rd place which is pretty ridiculous, however, I then looked at my 4th place finishes for the same period (43 games) and I have only finished 4th 3 times in that period. This suggests that I am very good at limping in to the money but then go out quickly when I reach it. I wonder whether this is the best way to go about things however, or whether playing more aggressively on the bubble would lead to more wins/2nds but also more 4ths and whether that style would be more profitable?

23 and counting...

I'm not just talking about my age, I played another 6 sit and go's last night ($12 turbos) and failed to win any of them despite cashing in 4 of them (3 x 3rds and 1 x 2nd) so the run goes on to 23. Came very close to breaking it though when I was all-in with A6 vs KT for all the tea in China, the board bricked until the river King to hand him the pot and leave me all-in on the blind.

2 of the 3rd places I got knocked out getting it in good versus slightly bigger stacks and getting outdrawn and in all the games I played I didn't outdraw anyone once, I won a few coinflips but got drawn out on a few times. Oh well though, I still feel like I'm playing pretty well, just missing the luck at key times at the moment.

It's been a while since I posted a graph so here are my Full Tilt sit and go results:

Not so good...

...but hanging in there.

My results recently have been pretty disappointing. I have failed to win a sit and go in my last 17 attempts which is by far the longest run I've had since I started playing them again. I have however managed to cash in 7 of those 17 games (41%) so that's why I'm "hanging in there", however 6 of the cashes were for 3rd place which is pretty disappointing. So I've lost about $50 recently which isn't too bad seeing as I have been on a fairly miserable run of luck.

It's not the 50/50's that I'm running bad in, I'm probably about even for them, it's the one's where I'm 60/40+ where I have A6 and get called by KT or something similar I seem to keep losing them and when it's reversed I never seem to outdraw anyone!

Anyway, I'm not too disheartened, I'm sure things will even themselves out eventually, I'm pretty lucky in life with the things that I have had and do have now so I can't really complain about losing a few dollars here and there at poker.

Here's a link to the Okehampton Golf Trip video that I made for those of you who can access it on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=539235049323