Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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

Thursday, January 01, 2009

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...