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