Grinding away

The last few sessions I have played have been fairly encouraging. Moving on from the last post I've ground out a small profit in a couple of hour-or-so sessions.

In other gambling news I used my £50 free bet on Betfred to back Tiger Woods in the US Open on Saturday at 9/4. 2 days later and I was happy with my £112.50 return after 19 play-off holes!

Had a few quid on Royal Ascot as well. Ended up -£5 on Tuesday and -£1 today. I'll be happy with -£30 for the whole meet considering that there are 5 days to get through, seems to be more about minimizing losses than making a profit for me!

I've also done pretty well with my Euro 2008 bets so far. Had £10 on Portugal at the start of the tournament at 8/1 and laid that at 5/1 after their first two matches so basically sand to win £30 if they win with no risk. Also laid Germany at the start of the tournament for £10 at 4/1 then bet on them at 6/1 after they lost to Croatia so I again have no risk. I also had a £5 bet on Russia at 33/1 before the tourney started and having now qualified for the Quarters they've come in to 14/1 so I'll be laying them off tomorrow as they have the Dutch in the next round.

Of course, in line with my recent posts, this post wouldn't be complete with out the latest graph. Back over the $100 profit mark. Should be over $400 but for the blow-up...

Back in the black...

After my nightmare the other day I bravely went back to the tables today and ground out a $50 profit to push myself back above zero. Of course I have the graph to show you:




Nothing spectacular really. Just grinding away, had my usual dip when I started and thought my bad run may continue but managed to pull it together and make a few hands which was nice.

I'm currently watching the US Open, got a few quid on it as well, I've been betting and laying for the last couple of days and the upshot of it is that if Westwood wins I win £20 profit, Mediate wins I get £40 profit and I had a free £50 which I stuck on Woods yesterday at 9/4 when he was 5 shots behind the leader with 6 holes to play, when I got up this morning he was 8/15on and 1 shot in front! So was loving that, but wish I'd laid a bit of that bet because he's not looking too good today so far.


I'm also watching Ed "The Cannon" Roger (Wendyx25) in action in the $300k on Party, currently 50 left and he's got ~200k chips with the average about 150k. First prize is $60,000 so I am hoping and praying that he takes it down, will be so good for him and it's only a matter of time before he gets a big score like he might do tonight. Hopefully when he does he won't get too big headed and still play the 10p/20p home games...

What the hell am I doing?

Just did something uncheeselike. Lost $320 in about 15 minutes playing $0.50/$1. Was up around $40 at one stage and was going to quit then but then this happened:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2752036

So decided to carry on, then:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2752048

Tilted so pushed a flush draw:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2752061

And finally got stacked when I would usually have folded the flop with no problems at all:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2752066

Obviously this had a catastrophic effect on the graph:



Oops...

That's annoying...

My "new thing" when playing poker is to play like a tw*t for a while to build up a loose, rubbish image in the hope that my good hands get paid off. So it's very annoying when this happens:

***** Hand History for Game 7131835777 *****
$50 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Tuesday, June 10, 16:40:50 ET 2008
Table Table 152116 (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: PokerKater80 ( $84.73 USD )
Seat 4: chen1222 ( $17.38 USD )
Seat 5: marbar112 ( $26.43 USD )
Seat 6: David210982 ( $56 USD )
Seat 2: m_bertelsen ( $54.94 USD )
Seat 3: ben_w_2004 ( $51.81 USD )
chen1222 posts small blind [$0.25 USD].
marbar112 posts big blind [$0.50 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ Ah Ad ]
David210982 raises [$2 USD]
PokerKater80 folds.
m_bertelsen folds.
ben_w_2004 raises [$7 USD]
chen1222 is all-In. ($17!)
marbar112 folds.
David210982 is all-In. ($56!!!)
ben_w_2004 is all-In.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 7h, Jd, 9d ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8h ]
ben_w_2004 shows [ Ah, Ad ]a pair of Aces.
chen1222 shows [ 7d, 7c ]three of a kind, Sevens.
David210982 shows [ Js, Jc ]three of a kind, Jacks.
David210982 wins $4.19 USD from the side pot 2 with three of a kind, Jacks.
David210982 wins $68.49 USD from the side pot 1 with three of a kind, Jacks.
David210982 wins $50.01 USD from the main pot with three of a kind, Jacks.

Obviously this is what I want, someone to put in just over 100 big blinds with Jacks pre-flop. What I don't then want to see is a Jack pop up on the flop. Note that I also would have lost to the short stack who managed to hit a set of 7's.

I know what you're all thinking..."what has this done to the graph Ben?" Well I'll show you:



This is the graph for the 4.5k hands I've played since May when I started "afresh". I think if I'd won that pot with aces I would have reached a new peak in the graph. Oh well there's always tomorrow...

I needed cheering up so I thought I'd check out Cashy's graph and boy did it make me chuckle. I've only got about 300 hands on him from a couple of recent cash sessions but you will probably notice a general trend...



So that just shows me, things could be worse...

3 Month Update

I literally have not played poker since the Reading Series of Poker back in February, until just recently.

Went up to London on Friday night for a cheeky 10p/20p cash game at Liam/Ed/Ant/Alpy's flat. Arrived and was straight into a game of snooker against the Cannon, easiest tenner I've ever made... to the cash game then and I bought in for £40, average stack was probably about £60 between the 6 of us. Not much to write home about cards wise for the night, we played for about 7 hours and in that time I saw AK once, Kings once, AQ a few times and that was pretty much it.

The AK hand I flat called an early raise atempting to mix things up. Unfortunately so did everyone else and we went to the flop 6-way! Flop comes a beautiful AAx and I check call a CashyP bet. Can't remember exactly what happened next but I think we got it all in on the turn with him pretty much sure he was behind, I think his words were "well if I'm beat, I'm beat" or something to that effect. I didn't win very many hands all night and stayed around the £70 mark for a long while before leaking money in the last couple of hours and ending up at about £50. Oh...almost forgot...I folded Kings pre-flop for the first time in my life. Standard. Of course Big Tone had aces for about the millionth time in the night, he's such a card rack.

Had a brief look at my pokertracker stats and managed to peel off a couple of graphs. The first is evidence of my lack of cash game prowess:



This is for about the last year I think as that is when I got pokertracker. So up about $150, would have been $200 if I hadnt just recieved a sick outdraw just now. Holding 22 on a 266A board I got it all in vs 69 on the turn, of course the 9 hit the river.

Here is my graph of Sit and Go's, I think just on Party and there's only 95 in the last year and I'm fairly certain I've played more than this considering I've played 20 in the last 2 days!



Big upswing near the end I cashed in 8 consecutive sng's, 3rd 3 times, 2nd 3 times and 1st twice, I ran like God in some of those. Big downswing at the end was last night where I cashed in just 1 out of 8 sng's, I ran like Cheese for them...

All Change...

You may have noticed a little colour change to the blog...and if you haven't you must be a bit of an idiot (Cashy).

The reason for the change is that it looks less obvious when I'm looking at it at work. In fact I think there should be an option where you can make every page you look at on the whole internet simple black and white text and background so people wouldn't notice what you're looking at because your screen's all black etc...

Anyway, haven't posted in a while and as I finally have something worth posting about thought I'd better keep my reader (there is no s on the end of that for a reason) happy and write aboout my experiences of my first visit back to Reading for the annual Reading Series of Poker.

There's quite alot to write about so I'll split it over a few posts as I haven't got the time to write it all out at once. In fact a good method would be 3 posts, one for Thursday (Omaha tourney + Club Risa), one for Friday (Golf + IHO tourney + Random games at hotel) and one for the weekend (Main Event + Union)...bet you're all wetting yourself with excitement...

Ouch...

Sat down with $30 at $0.25/0.50 and $15 at $0.10/0.25, wait for big blind in bigger game, am in the BB immediately in smaller game. Third hand in I pick up 88 on the button, folded round so I pop it up and as I do it I think "I can't remember the last time I flopped a set". Then boom... flop comes QT8...

PokerStars Game #15238519718: Hold'em No Limit ($0.10/$0.25) - 2008/02/12 - 14:40:49 (ET)
Table 'Fogelin IV' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Benw2004 ($14.60 in chips)
Seat 2: ilovegyoza ($20 in chips)
Seat 3: wateendag ($14.45 in chips)
Seat 4: camojy ($24.30 in chips)
Seat 5: Fupeg ($8.90 in chips)
ilovegyoza: posts small blind $0.10
wateendag: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Benw2004 [8c 8d]
camojy: folds
Fupeg: folds
Benw2004: raises $0.50 to $0.75
ilovegyoza: folds
wateendag: calls $0.50
*** FLOP *** [Th 8h Qc]
wateendag: checks
Benw2004: bets $1.50
wateendag: calls $1.50
*** TURN *** [Th 8h Qc] [6c]
wateendag: checks
Benw2004: bets $4
wateendag: raises $5 to $9
Benw2004: raises $3.35 to $12.35 and is all-in
wateendag: calls $3.20 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [Th 8h Qc 6c] [2d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
wateendag: shows [9d Jc] (a straight, Eight to Queen)
Benw2004: shows [8c 8d] (three of a kind, Eights)
wateendag collected $27.60 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $29 | Rake $1.40
Board [Th 8h Qc 6c 2d]
Seat 1: Benw2004 (button) showed [8c 8d] and lost with three of a kind, Eights
Seat 2: ilovegyoza (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: wateendag (big blind) showed [9d Jc] and won ($27.60) with a straight, Eight to Queen
Seat 4: camojy folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Fupeg folded before Flop (didn't bet)


Of course he flops the nuts...

So I stand up from both tables and walk away...a good 2 minutes poker and I'm steaming already.

Little Poker...

Have played for a grand total of 30 minutes since last Wednesday, sat down with my whole Stars bankroll ($33) for a quick 30 minute session last night whilst watching the Arsenal game and managed to grind my way to $51 in that time. I'm not planning on playing too much before the RSOP next week which I've taken the Thursday and Friday off work for it.

Plan as it stands at the moment is to meet at the Cannon's pad in London Thursday morning, travel down to Reading in some sort of convoy and then play golf during the day if we have time before the £20 PL Omaha on Thursday night at the Cotton Club. Friday is either golf if we didn't play Thursday or maybe a trip down Riley's to lose plenty of money to the N-Dog. Hopefully the Reading Poker Committee will manage to organise the IHO (Irish/Hold'em/Omaha) tournament for Friday night as was a good laugh last year but failing that I'm sure we'll find some other way to amuse ourselves. Then the main event on Saturday, £55 freezeout with 10k stacks and then a night at the union with the other players (or ballas as they like to be called) as well as my missus and her little brother who are coming down. Sunday fingers crossed will still be in the main event but if not will just find somewhere to watch the Carling Cup final, c'mon you Spurs...

As for the rest of this week, I'm going to see Strictly Come Dancing at the O2 Wednesday night (was forced into it) and then embarking on a long romantic weekend with the missus down to...Dover...well near there anyway....looking forward to it. Seriously.

No Point anymore...

That's right, there is no way I am playing online with the Cashpoint anymore. I log on to my Stars account yesterday night and see a $0.50/$1 table with a few short stacks on it and think I'll take a little shot at it so stick in $60 of my $135 bankroll. I soundly grind away, nothing too spectacular and get up to about $95 when I see in the chat box:

CashyP: This is more like it Cheese

Now that is the point where I should have taken my money from the table and called it a night...but no. For some reason when I play with people I know I feel the need to play like a complete tw*t. And so that's what I did, donking off chips with plays that I would never make if Cashy hadn't turned up. I was down to about $35 when I made a bad tilt call with a rivered pair of 5's on a four-to-a-straight board versus an opponent that had bet the whole way (I was for some reason drawing to the low straight), fortunately he only had a pair of 4's and I picked up a pot which took my stack back up to $55.

Again this was another point where I should have just left the table...and I did a few hands later...having been stacked by the Point. Now he had just reloaded back to $100 having lost a couple of big hands and about $65 on the table as well as an $800 pot on the $2/$4 table I was railing so he seemed pretty tilty and I pick up 85 SOOTED and call his raise along another fish and the flop is a pleasant 776. I check-call the flop thinking with Cashy in this state he may donk off his whole stack if I hit my open-ended draw. The turn is a 5 and I check call $10 into a pot of about $12 (what was I doing) the river is then a 3 and my check is met with a bet for the size of my stack (about $38) and I really did not believe him, but then again I never do. So I call and he shows 67 for the flopped boat. Had it been anyone else on the table or even in the universe maybe I probably would have done one of the following things:

1. Fold Pre-Flop
2. Fold on the Flop
3. Fold on the Turn
4. Fold on the River

Instead I chose option 5:

5. Check-call the whole way like a complete and utter d*ckhead.

Ah well, you live and learn, or in my case just live...

So I've now got about $70 in my Stars account so might just stick that on a couple of $0.25/$0.50 table tonight and try and run it up a bit. I've managed to accumulate about 325 FPP's and will get $75 free if I can get that up to 500 before busting so that will be my aim I think.

And let me tell you now Cashpoint, if you sit at my table I will sit out like a big pansy :-)

A little shot...

Had a little crack at $0.50/$1 yesterday on Party. Sat down with $70 and very first hand lost $18 of it:

***** Hand History for Game 6750218131 *****
$100 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, February 03, 14:01:20 ET 2008
Table Table 127359 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: ArtiArena ( $100.86 USD )
Seat 2: drunkmonk999 ( $25.93 USD )
Seat 3: yeyeyee ( $71 USD )
Seat 5: joy0505 ( $101.50 USD )
Seat 6: Cidertoppler ( $17.88 USD )
Seat 4: ben_w_2004 ( $70 USD )
drunkmonk999 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
yeyeyee is sitting out
yeyeyee has left the table.
ben_w_2004 posts big blind [$1 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ As Qc ]
joy0505 folds.
Cidertoppler calls [$1 USD]
ArtiArena calls [$1 USD]
drunkmonk999 calls [$0.50 USD]
ben_w_2004 raises [$4.50 USD]
Cidertoppler calls [$4.50 USD]
ArtiArena folds.
drunkmonk999 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, 7c, 5d ]
ben_w_2004 bets [$12.38 USD]
Cidertoppler is all-In.
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6s ]
** Dealing River ** [ Ks ]
ben_w_2004 shows [ As, Qc ]a pair of Fives.
Cidertoppler shows [ 3h, 7h ]two pairs, Sevens and Fives.
Cidertoppler wins $35.88 USD from the main pot with two pairs, Sevens and Fives.

Oops...

A few hands later won most of it back with a nicely timed semi-bluff on the turn:

***** Hand History for Game 6750233373 *****
$100 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, February 03, 14:05:52 ET 2008
Table Table 127359 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: ArtiArena ( $117.72 USD )
Seat 2: drunkmonk999 ( $0 USD )
Seat 5: joy0505 ( $100 USD )
Seat 6: Cidertoppler ( $42.18 USD )
Seat 4: ben_w_2004 ( $53.12 USD )
Seat 3: tieftaucher3 ( $97 USD )
tieftaucher3 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
ben_w_2004 posts big blind [$1 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ Ts Qs ]
drunkmonk999: nh
joy0505 folds.
Cidertoppler folds.
drunkmonk999 has left the table.
ArtiArena: thanks
ArtiArena calls [$1 USD]
tieftaucher3 calls [$0.50 USD]
ExtremeFuse has joined the table.
ben_w_2004 checks.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 2c, 4d, Js ]
tieftaucher3 checks.
ben_w_2004 bets [$2 USD]
ArtiArena calls [$2 USD]
tieftaucher3 calls [$2 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kc ]
tieftaucher3 checks.
ben_w_2004 checks.
ArtiArena bets [$5 USD]
tieftaucher3 calls [$5 USD]
ben_w_2004 raises [$21 USD]
ArtiArena folds.
tieftaucher3 folds.
ben_w_2004 does not show cards.
ben_w_2004 wins $38.80 USD

Like I say, nicely timed... Then made a fairly simple laydown on a pretty scary board for top pair top kicker:

***** Hand History for Game 6750265240 *****
$100 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, February 03, 14:15:13 ET 2008
Table Table 127359 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: ArtiArena ( $48.05 USD )
Seat 5: joy0505 ( $99 USD )
Seat 6: Cidertoppler ( $73.21 USD )
Seat 4: ben_w_2004 ( $61.42 USD )
Seat 3: tieftaucher3 ( $125.12 USD )
Seat 2: ExtremeFuse ( $97.50 USD )
ExtremeFuse posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
tieftaucher3 posts big blind [$1 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ Ah Kd ]
ben_w_2004 raises [$3.50 USD]
Cidertoppler folds.
ArtiArena calls [$3.50 USD]
ExtremeFuse folds.
tieftaucher3 folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9h, 6h, Qs ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
ArtiArena checks.
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kh ]
ben_w_2004 bets [$6.50 USD]
ArtiArena calls [$6.50 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ Jc ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
ArtiArena is all-In.
ben_w_2004 folds.
ArtiArena does not show cards.
ArtiArena wins $58.48 USD

I just didn't know what I beat to justify a call even though from what I'd seen in 25 or so hands this guy didn't seem to play that great. I then ground away for a bit, doubled up with 8's vs K's allin after I pushed an Ace high flop, I don't know where he got the call from.

Then this beauty happened:

***** Hand History for Game 6750505116 *****
$100 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Sunday, February 03, 15:23:43 ET 2008
Table Table 127359 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 6: Cidertoppler ( $84.59 USD )
Seat 4: ben_w_2004 ( $93.49 USD )
Seat 1: x25rus ( $105.36 USD )
Seat 2: Timdan333 ( $157.79 USD )
Seat 3: Mojo652 ( $130.55 USD )
Seat 5: kryptonian_ ( $104.08 USD )
ben_w_2004 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
kryptonian_ posts big blind [$1 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ben_w_2004 [ Td Kc ]
Cidertoppler folds.
x25rus folds.
Timdan333 folds.
Mojo652 folds.
ben_w_2004 calls [$0.50 USD]
kryptonian_ raises [$3 USD]
ben_w_2004 raises [$14 USD]
kryptonian_ raises [$22 USD]
ben_w_2004 calls [$11 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5d, 5c, 6d ]
ben_w_2004 checks.
kryptonian_ bets [$28 USD]
ben_w_2004 is all-In.
kryptonian_ folds.
ben_w_2004 shows [ Td, Kc ]a pair of Fives.
ben_w_2004 wins $144.49 USD from the main pot with a pair of Fives.

This guy had been raising one in three hands and I knew what line I was going to take as soon as it got folded to me. I flat called, he duly popped it up so I repopped hoping to take it down there. He then min-reraises me and I do the classic "what would I do if I had aces here" and make the flat call (even though with aces I probably shove). I then check a low flop and he bets about half the pot. I insta-shove for about $40 more and he lays down his hand, I then show the king ten offsuit and he proceeds to tilt off the rest of his stack within 10 hands, unfortunately not to me. I call it a day a little bit later and end up with $55 profit for my 90 minutes play. Although I got pretty lucky with the 8's vs Kings, I feel I've got what it takes at this level and I hardly had any cards when I played and my main money came from well timed bluffs. But on another day I'm sure the guy calls the $40 with his Jacks or AK or whatever he had and I leave with nothing...

But for now...BOOOOOOM!!!