Lemmings!

Hello people.

Well the sun is out, I have sever sunburn for the first time since I was a kid, and am back to work after a week off doing very little but playing poker and Grand Theft Auto (yes I know, it automatically makes me one of those pathetic blokes, but then at least I have found a woman who pities me through all of it!).

So in the last blog I was explaining my intention to play to certain styles, and for the last few weeks thats what I have done, with both great success and the most lemming like catastrophe.

The Howard Lederer Style

My opening style can only be described as ultra conservative. I had listened to a podcast by Howard Lederer on the way to play Sit n Go games, and although I had based my game around most of what he had said from the beginning of playing the game I had not followed it through to his logical conclusion.

When you listen to most players comment on the way they play, the aim is to play conservative to begin with until half of the field is lost and as the blinds go up start playing a looser game with the aim of being near to table leader (ie having the most chips) by the time you are coming to near the money places (ie either 4 or 5 players are remaining). Although Howard agreed with this theory for multi-table tournaments he did not for Sit N Gos. His view was that due to the nature of the pay outs reaching third place (the first place that pays out on a normal SNG) it was imperative to hold out as long as possible even if that meant scraping in to the 3rd place, and then becoming for more loose in your play once you reach the money places, and which point just stealing blinds at this artificial level could double up your chips.

With this in mind I decided to tackle the $10 SNG ten player tables with this in mind (the Howard Lederer Style). It was a great success.

With a starting chip count of $1200 in the opening types of hands (blinds at 10/20 or 15/30) I would play suited connectors at any level by calling to see a flop. I would play suited aces in the same way, never raising a pot until I was looking at a flush. I would also limp in to pots with small pairs, hoping to flop a set. At no point would I bluff a pot. Once blinds went up to 25/50 I stopped playing low suited connectors, but would continue to play the flush pots and low pairs as calling hands. It would normally be at the 50/100 blinds that people would start going out more often. At this point I was no longer playing suited aces, but playing primarily only pairs, and now raising with pairs of whatever size. Again there would be no bluffing. Above these blinds I then began taking into account position far more, and playing two face cards (taking on the Gus Hansen theory of playing any hand worth over 20 points)

This strategy is, of course, very dependent on getting good starting hands, and for the first few tournaments I did - I would always end up, at some point, with a good pair (JJ, QQ, KK, AA) at the high blind levels and usually double up. I would then hold out with whatever it takes to stay in that position - throwing away good starting hands if I could see myself up against someone with a bigger chip stack than me. This usually led to me limping into the money in the third spot. However, I sort of pride myself that once I am in the money places I can usually play myself into first place - not by what cards I have, but by playing certain players in certain ways, and becoming far more aggressive.

This led to a perfect start. In my first two games I won both, pocketing $100 and raising my pot to the most it had been since I was playing. I was a happy bunny.

Inevitably then came the fall - quicker than lemmings jumping off a cliff.

As I say this style of play relies on finding a good hand, and I then proceeded not to find those hands. In one game I never saw any card above a 10. I went out in 6th place when I was almost blinded out.

I was getting mid pairs, but had unfavourable flops, and based on the ruling of not bluffing my play, if I was played in to aggressively after the flop I folded the hand.

Just to digress one moment. I had one game completely in reverse of this trend. In one game I was dealt AA three times! I went out in 5th place! I am also proud of this. Let me explain. All the top pros explain that to make a good player you need to be able to predict your opponents cards - I have tried this consistently and although I can usually be in the ball park I have never nailed it exactly. So imagine this scene. I get dealt AA in early position. I made a standard three times raise, to find two other players drop out but the big blind doubles the bet. I call. Flop comes down J, 6, 2 rainbow. He bets out for the size of the pot. At this point I put him on QQ, KK or AK. The flop I don`t think has helped him as he would have checked if he had trips. So I call his raise - I don`t raise as I think whatever cards he has he is going to be with me all the way, so I decided to let him lead the pot and bury himseld in it. Next card is K. He checks. At this point I put him on KK - don`t ask me why, call it intuition, but it didn`t feel like AK, and I think, on the way he was playing, he would have bet again with QQ with him believing I was on a lower pair. Now having narrowed it down to this, I bizarrely, pushed all in. I had very few chips left and had already become pot committed, so I was hoping my intuition was wrong. It wasn`t, he turned over KK. The proudest moment I have had in poker, whilst loosing $10. he he.


The Tournament Style

Anyway back to the games. The loosing streak continued, so I decided to change my style of play again. Here I would take the tournament route. So I played the same style of game as explained above until I got to the 50/100 blinds. At this point, normally with 5 or 6 players remaining, I would start to play more positionally. I started stealing blinds on a regular basis, played A rag when I felt the position suited. This was similar to the style I was playing previous to this experiment - the style I had been playing for the last two years. I never made it to the final three.

In the end I hit a loosing streak of 9 games. In the whole time of playing poker online I have never had a loosing streak of more than 4 games. This was harsh. My pot dropped below the magic $500 mark, so, to try and run through the bad patch I dropped down to the $5 SNG 10 player tables. I continued to play this "tournament style " for another three games, and still nothing. 12 game loosing streak and well over a $100 hit to my account. Dropping me below the $475 mark for the first time in quite a while.

So as of the weekend I played a $5 SNG and returned to the Howard Lederer style of play. The cards returned, and I won the game. Just pushing the account back near the $500 mark.

So there were the first two experiments. Why do I think the tournament style didn`t work. I think its to do with the level you are playing at. At $5 and $10 people are still willing to risk going against you in pots - and as such I just don`t think bluffing really succeeds. To go into a pot you need to be holding top pair in your hand or from the board, at a push second pair, anything else and you are asking for a fall. Table image doesn`t seem to matter at these levels. You will usually find someone prepared to go against you.

So whats next. Well I am going to mix in two styles of play in the next month. I will continue to play some $5 and $10 SNGs using the Lederer approach. However I am going to mix this with a more aggressive style (whose name I haven`t thought of yet - answers on a postcard) and some of the lower SNG rates (because I am not chucking too much money away... he he).

Right I think thats quite enough for me, all this has made me sound like some sort of semi serious blogger, which just can`t be right.

Ta ra for now.


Pot Total: $498.54

A Not So Lucky Monkey

Luck.

Well lets face it, most people would prefer to be lucky than good at poker (mainly because it takes less effort and reading to be lucky), and in poker no matter what anyone says, luck features heavily - whether good or bad.

Probabilities.

Lets face it, most people are not going to be able to play poker unless they either have a lot of the luck mentioned above, or they have a good enough grasp of maths to be able to calculate probabilities.

So my question is, can you calculate the probability of good or bad luck? Why am I asking such a weird question. Well to be fair, dear readers, its because I have had a pretty weird couple of weeks on the luck front.

Last week I was working from home one day. During my lunch break, I decided to mow my front lawn. Happily mowing away a piece of gravel got caught in my lawn mower, flew out of the lawn mower and hit the dead centre of my neighbours double glazed lounge window - shattering it completely. So what are the odds of being able to send a piece of gravel in so specific an area of toughened glass that it shatters? Lets be honest, it has to be very high odds of bad luck.

How much higher is the likelihood that on exactly the same day, exactly the same thing happens when a guy is mowing his lawn in a neigbouring road to my house. Those odds go even higher... but apparently, in the road next to mine, on the same day, the same thing had happened!

I just wished that there had been a derby winner named "Breaking Glass" running on the following Saturday.

So besides the £350 hit to my wallet and a neigbours house now boarded up and looking like it will be occupied by squaters, what on earth does any of this have to do with poker.

Well since my last post, I have played a lot more SNGs than I have recently. I would estimate around 25 games in the last three weeks.

So if I have played 25 SNGs, what would be the odds of going out of a game being beaten by a straight? If it happened once, the odds aren`t going to be that high?

How about going out beaten by a straight 5 times of the 25 - okay lets face it those odds are going to be higher.

What if I told you that of the 25 SNGs I played in 22 I went out on being beaten by a straight!

Anyone who has the time and inclination please feel free to tell me which of the two had the lower bad luck odds.

Anyway I tell this more as an anecdote. On with the more serious stuff....

I have realised re reading some of these blog posts that although there is a fair amount of waffle, and a fair amount of talk about money management, there is very little being said about actual poker tactics or hands - so I will attempt to make more of this in coming blogs

I am finding that the style of poker I have been playing up until now is not as affective as it was 6 months ago. Lets face it, poker moves on. My money has floated around the $500 mark for a couple of months now, and no real impression is being made on my mortgage because of it!

So from today I am going to start experimenting with differing styles of play and will report on how these fair, whether different styles are more favourable at different money levels, and different amounts of players. I shall report on how terribly or well these go.

Bye for now people.

Pot Total: $509.23 ($5.75 down from last month)

Yeah Yeah Yeah Clown Boy

Hi people,

Well I am back from my jaunts, and have managed not to sell myself into slavery in return for camels. So bonus. On the plus side I can say "Carter Beats the Devil" is a perfect holiday book, and never try to get to a coral reef before a Russian - they always make sure they get there first by fair means or foul!

Well between holidays, relationship stuff (in a good not a bad way) and house stuff (yeah remember that, moving and all that jazz) I have managed to play a bit of poker but not as much as I would have liked to. However I seem to have been going on a streak of finishing in 3rd place recently so the pot doesn`t look at healthy as the amount of games I have been playing.

Now I need to preface this with a slight diversion. As you will all be aware I am in perpetual mourning for the ending of PNL. However whilst sneaking through the lower spectrum of satellite channels (and of course not at all looking for any late night dodgy entertainment) I came accross what seems to be a weird arts/poker hybrid TV channel. At around 10 p.m. it has started showing sit n go`s and last table tournaments from PKR with commentary attached. I have to say it isn`t bad.

Now at no point has it, as yet, ever come close to the sarcasm levels of The Thing vs Dracula on PNL but it still has just enough levels of sarcasm to get me through an evening (or my ironing at least). The commentary, from three experts of slightly different styles is a nice variation and offer a few alternatives to mix your game up. I have even used some of the suggestions to good use in a few SNGs.

I have never played on PKR but its a 3D version where you can create your own avatar and emote throughout a game. Funny that every male avatar on there looks like a cool Scandanavian twentysomething with a beret. Call me stupid but wouldn`t there be just a little tilt value in having your avatar as a giant clown, or an old woman of 80? Though to be honest I think there is huge tilt value just on wanting to get out of a game where everyone keeps saying "YEAH YEAH YEAH" and "READ EM AND WEEP" every five minutes!

I digress. What has surprised me is that I think the whole of 888.com has started watching this program the same time I have. I have been playing $5 S&Gs since getting back from holiday, simply because I wanted quick games and a little more auto pilot. However the style of game is clearly changing on there. Calling stations are getting less, hammer moves and three barrel firing is being implemented, and the quality of the game is definately improving - just playing super tight aggressive isn`t enough to get into the money now, you are having to make a lot more moves. The surprise has been that these plays are coming from the UK players, rather than european players. Does this mean that whilst I was in Egypt there was a huge poker tutorial on TV that I missed out? If so did Graham Norton host it?

If it all carries on like this I may have to dig out my Harrington books again! Sacrilege!

With work completely done on my house now, I am taking a couple of weeks break before getting the estate agents in (oh joy!). That, along with a bank holiday coming up, I am hoping to get some more games in. These will either be at the $10, 10 player SNG level, or may add a bit of vareity and try a 30 player $5 SNG. Will keep you updated on the next one of these.

Until then, ta ra for now.

Pot total: $514.98 (rise of $9.50 since last blog)

Holy Craps

Blimey,

Having posted a blog entry after such a long time I have noticed that I actually have comments on my blog. From people I don`t even know! People are reading me! J K Rowling eat your heart out!

Right, thats a definite then. More blogs will be forthcoming! Even if its just me commenting on Kara Scott!

Rise in tables, drops in houses

Hello all,

So its only April and I am doing my second blog entry of the year. Certainly on the ball aren`t I!

I do have a legitimate excuse though. No my fish have not eaten my homework or anything like that, its been because of the house. My usual time for playing poker is in the evenings or late at the weekends. However since the new year I had set a specific date to get all the work on my house finished in readiness to sell - that date is in two weeks time. Last weekend the last coat of paint finally went on to the last piece of wood in the house. It is, after ten years, finally finished.

Of course this all coincides with a massive plummeting of house prices. For first time buyers this is a good thing, for me, looking to buy something bigger, this is hopefully a good thing. Also, the way its going you never know, in six months time "Can Poker Pay My Mortgage" may be renamed "Poker Paid My Mortgage with just a packet of Haribo".

With all this Northern Rockiness, I would be surprised to see my house sell particularly quickly. Therefore what the hell am I going to do with my time. Of course the answer should be, "spend more time with your friends", "spend more time with your family". Of course that won`t be what will happen. The Xbox 260 is already bought. The High Definition TV has been installed. Couch Potatoism is luring me already.

The good news, however, is that I can no longer blame my lack of playing online on the need to put a second coat of knotting on the doors (its DIY technical stuff, don`t worry about it). So hopefully this will be updated a little more often than it has been. (Assuming that the lure of mowing zombies over with a lawnmower in Dead Rising doesn`t get to me first).

I do have poker related news however (shock horror). After much delay I did rise in table levels, and so am now playing $10 ten player S&Gs. The play has changed more than I expected but not in a way I expected.

In the $5 S&Gs I was always finding you had at least 5 muppets went out of the game in the first few rounds, that led to one player taking a chip lead. I quickly learnt there was no need to try and gain an early chip lead, but to just bide your time, wait for big hands, and go for the all in Kill Phil approach rather than small bore play. I knew if I could get in the final three players most of the time I could win the game even if I was short stacked.

$10 has been different. There are far less muppets. This doesn`t mean that the quality of the game has improved. Players still don`t raise, they play as calling stations, and they take no account of the rise in blinds, so you often find that you are playing with 8 players still in when the blinds are at such a height no one at the table has more than 8 times the BB. This has led to me taking a more aggressive playing style, which is having far more mixed results than previously.

I had a phenominal run when I first went up to the $10 tables, cashing in the first 5 games I played and taking my fund up to $580. I then went on a heavy slump where I was finding I was finishing in fourth spot (out of the money) on a regular basis. Again this came down to having to bet all your pot on a middle pair just due to the size of the blinds. To stop the rot I have recently played a mix of $5 and $10 S&Gs and am settling into a more regular winning pattern now, so intend to stay permanently at $10 S&G until I can refine my playing strategy at that level.

As I have mentioned before I only tend to go up levels when I have 50 times the game rate in my account, so this means, with the next level playing at $20, I will need to wait until $1,000 before moving up a level.

On better poker news, its good to see Nick 'Bow down before him' Wealthall and Kara Scott are now producing more regular On the Rails poker podcasts. Its no PNL but I`ll happily settle with it for now. For those of you who haven`t had a chance to witness the greatness have a look:

http://www.totalgambler.com/pokerlife/pokerplayerpodcast/

So thats it from me for now. The next time you hear from me I will have come back from a holiday in Egypt. Maybe I can report on Camel betting??

Bysey Bye.

Pot total: $505.48 (rise of $77.50 since last blog)

How do you get to Monty Hall

I was in Budapest recently for a short break. Whilst there I had the joy of seeing those four mexican pan pipe players that I seem to see every place I ever travel to. When I got to Venice the first people I saw getting out of the train station was four banditos playing pan pipes, same in San Francisco, and Barcelona. I have come to the conclusion its the same four blokes following me around in some CIA operation. How else could they also turn up at my local shopping centre!
Well not only are the four banditos following me around, but apparrently so is Deal or No Deal. Having enjoyed a goulash based dinner I returned to my hotel and flicked on the TV. Having got quite bored of BBC World (which has no point at all.... and I thought BBC4 was bad), and Eurosport (when you find yourself riveted to Sumo Wrestling you know something isn`t right with the world) I started flicking through the remaining foreign channels (hey its was post 10 p.m. there was always the chance of softcore porn!).

What I did come to however was the Italian version of Deal or No Deal. I`m afraid the presenter was a little more suave than Noel TidyBeard, and his shirts weren`t as loud, but the woman playing the game made up for the loudness. I came in right at the end and she had just two boxes left, 250,000 euros and 250 euros. The bankers offer was 80,000 euros. I don`t speak Italian but all I can tell you is she went on a 14 minute monologue - there was crying, there was wailing, family members sobbed (I am guessing at one stage she had offered to give her brother a kidney or something). Even the woman`s boyfriend was trying to get her to actually pick a box and get the hell on with it. What makes me laugh with these things is that rather than actually understanding they are leaving with more money than they came with regardless, to them these choices seem to be the equivalent of a scene from Rosemary`s Baby.

She decides to decline the offer of 80,000 and is going to pick one of the boxes. She is then given the option to swap the box. Its at this point I start shouting at the screen. "Swap the box, swap the box. Monty Hall means you have to swap the box!"

So for any of you who ever find yourselves on Deal or No Deal, I am going to tell you all about the Monty Hall problem and why, if you are ever offered to swap the box, you have to swap the box.

In the 60`s there was an American tv game show. Finalists were invited up onto the stage, where there were three closed doors. The host, Monty Hall, explains that behind one of the doors is the star prize - a car. Behind each of the other two doors is a goat. Obviously the contestant wants to win the car, but does not know which door conceals the car.

The host invites the contestant to choose one of the three doors. Let us suppose that the contestant chooses door number 3. Now, Monty Hall does not initially open the door chosen by the contestant. Instead he opens one of the other doors - let us say it is door number 1. The door that the host opens will always reveal a goat. Remember Monty knows what is behind every door!

The contestant was then asked if they want to stick with their original choice, or if they wanted to change their mind, and choose the other remaining door that has not yet been opened. In this case number 2. The studio audience shout suggestions. What is the best strategy for the contestant? Does it make any difference whether they change their mind or stick with the original choice?

This is not an example of simple probability (suppose there are two doors, therefore there is a 1 in 2 chance of the car being behind either of the doors). This is an example of conditional probability: what is the chance of something happening, given that something else already has.

Their chance of being right initially is still only 1 in 3. But now the host opens a door revealing a goat, and the contestant changes their mind - and 2 times out of 3 they will be right. So, if the contestant sticks with their original choice, they will win the car 1 time in 3, and if they switch doors, they will win the car 2 times in 3. Though this may sound rubbish this is a well known probability problem that has been known to maths men and women for over a hundred years. I guarantee if you try the game yourself you`ll find you win the car more often by swapping the door. Still don`t believe me, check out this blokes whizzy simulator:

http://www.grand-illusions.com/simulator/montysim.htm

So now look at this in the context of Deal or No Deal. You have 22 boxes. If you get down to the last two then your chances of having the jackpot in your first chosen box is 1 in 22, whereas, using the Monty Hall theory, the chances of it being in the other box is 21 in 22. So you have to swap the box.

So we go back to that poor Italian woman, screaming her head off. She has turned down the offer. She also decides NOT to swap the box, which means she now only has a 1 in 22 chance of winning the jackpot......

Her box is opened......

It has 250,000 euros in it!

Well there was always a 1 in 22 chance that she got the right box, and this time she did. Lucky cow! See, its these type of people, those who only have a one in 22 change of beating you, and then frequently go on and do, that makes poker so infuriating sometimes (see you knew I couldn`t get to the end without mentioning poker!)

My major question about all of this is nothing to do with the counter intuitive probability, but whether, if you chose the goat rather than the car, you actually got to take the goat home?




Pot total: $430.23 ($52.23 increase from last blog)

Robbing the Bank

Now now children, sit down, its time to start the lesson. Jones, I told you to take that crayon out of your nose, it won`t help dislodge the action man hand you stuck up their yesterday, just leave it alone!

Okay, so its that time for a lesson. And that lesson is Bankroll management. Yes you can all stop yawning and moaning, I know its boring, but it has to be talked about.

Well that was the plan 2 weeks ago anyway. Two weeks ago my pot stood at a healthy $440, however during a most ridiculous run of bad luck (straights from no where beating aces, and more annoyingly being beaten by a bloke three times with Jacks each time). So now my pot stands, ridiculously at the exact same it did this time last month $378. However to loose that much in a run in two weeks has been gutting.

I will however mention bankroll management. Proper poker money management suggests that, so as not to go bankrupt, but at the same time not to take years to earn some money, that you should always work on the principal of playing at a level that equates to 30 times your buy in. So for example if you were to play in a 10 player $10 sit and go, you would need to have $300 in your pot to make sure you are able to deal with the ups and downs and show a good profit with good poker.

Now any of you paying special attention (or even reading any of this diatribe) will realise that my pot is currently $378 but I am playing at $5 sit and go level. Clearly way under the level I should be playing at. Well what can I say I am a cautious soul... and if you met my parents where risk is having a chinese rather than indian takeaway on a Friday night, you`d understand why.

Originally I had been hoping to be at around the $500 mark when writing this, and as such suggest that I work on the principal of playing at 50 times the buy in. However what has been concerning me is the quality of players I have been playing recently. Namely they are bad and lucky. I don`t mean this as a sob story, but its beginning to take the piss. So, dear reader, the decision has been to take an even between the two. I will start playing at 40 times the buy in. Which means, if I reach $400 by my next blog post, I will be playing in the $10 buy in. Holy crap! Admittedly with the exchange rate as it is that probably works out at 30p, but thats beside the point.

Wish me luck people - if there are any of you out there!

Oh and feel free to write a comment on any of this drivel. Otherwise I wonder if I am just talking to myself. My therapist doesn`t think thats a good thing. Neither do the other three voices in my head.

Byeeeeeee.


Pot total: $378 (0 increase from last blog)

Its Alive........ Game

So it took me until I bumped into an old friend of mine on the street yesterday to realise I really should pull my finger out and update this.

We could be in to this for the long term (on the basis of the results in the poker anyway) so I suspect updates may well be once a month unless someone wants to pay me millions to produce this as some fascinating documentary for Skys awful poker channel, in which case I will happily update this with any random made up rubbish more frequently :-)

Something else I have noticed recently is that being single I now seem to play less poker than I did when I was seeing A. I`d like to say its because of my wonderously busy social life, but I blame it on decorating and Bioshock.

Well having played for over a year online I have finally ventured into the real game. With actual people.... looking at me..... and spotting the obvious tell of me rolling my eyes when I don`t get the cards I want. I`d like to say my cherry was taken by a casino room in the Bellagio or something like that. No it was taken by a rough looking pub in Moorgate. Sounds much like my virginity, but hey that a different story.

Due to the restrictions on gambling this is an interesting little set up. You pay a miserly £5 to help run the club and for that you then get to play in a tournament, the winner of which takes home a rather classy 4 inch tall trophy. Whether you get to keep it, or have to give it back for the week after I don`t know (which sort of blows the tension out on whether I won I will admit).

So I decide to use underhand tactics and decide to bring my friend M along. Now M has never played poker before in her life, but she is tall, pretty, intelligent and loud, so I was hoping she would dazzle all the other guys whilst I nicked all their chips.

The first hour M and I sat aside and I gave her a crash course on playing Texas Hold 'Em, and I have to say she picked up in an hour things it had taken me 6 months to learn. Was this because of my amazing teaching styles (meaning I should quit my job and earn millions off of online tutorials) or whether she is just quicker on the uptake than I am I just couldn`t say.

The tourney (thats poker speak for tournament by the way :-) ) kicked off with a draw for tables. We have around 18 people playing, varying from an old woman who i swear was knitting whilst she was playing, through to a guy who clearly had no social interaction with anyone any other time of the week so had to tell someone all of the information he had been thinking about that week in the space of half an hour. It wasn`t until we sat and played that you got to see some pretty surprising game play.

The draw led to a good table. For one M was drawn on my table, and she managed to draw a seat sitting opposite the guy I was convinced was going to be the best player at the table. M hadn`t worn the low cut top I had pleaded with her to, so I`d just have to hope her feminine ways would work instead.

A beginner is always told that when you start playing a tourney you play very tight in the beginning (and no this doesn`t have some sexual reference, but that you only play very premium hands AA, KK, QQ, AK etc) and then as the game goes on you loosen up a bit as more people are knocked out. Well thats the theory anyway. Unless you have been watching too much poker on TV which seemed to be the case for one young guy on our table who just decided to chuck his chips in with any set of cards.

Now funnily enough, £5 for a nights entertainment doesn`t pay for three dealers for the night so shuffling and dealing had to be done by each of us in turn. I was more nervous about this that the hands I was playing, and duly managed to drop cards, miscut the pack, and all sorts of other misdemeanours, but the other players were generous in their patience and let me get on with it. Now if only someone could make a buzzer sound when it was my turn to put a small or big blind into the pot I would have felt a lot more at home!

I`ll be honest and say I didn`t play particularly well, getting through without looking like an idiot was more important to me, but there were three hands that were of revelance to the night. Now I won`t bore you with the details, but the funny thing for me is that in all the time I have played online I could never understand people who could remember specific hands how they dealt and bet. I can barely remember a hand I played 2 minutes ago, but then thats ADHD for you :-)

In the first major hand I actually went up against M. After a couple of rounds of betting I put her on a far better hand than me (mine was only marginal anyway), and I folded, with her taking my chips. She later told me it was a bluff. Bugger! Is there not respect for your elders nowadays!

The second was when we had gone down to only two tables left. I had had such bad cards and was running out of chips that I put all my remaining chips in with 9 and 8 of diamonds. With three people calling me I really had no chance. Then, two more 9`s and another 8 came on the board. Wahey! Sod skill I`ll take pure luck every time.

It was enough to get me to the final 5 players. I had not had a proper hand all night, and was just holding on. It got to the point of playing kamikazee - throwing my money in with educated but not great hands, and I did manage to claw my way back up again.

What was to cripple me was a hand where I matched an early raise with K 10 and saw a flop. 6, 10 Q came out on the flop, giving me a pair of tens. My opponent raised hard again, and stupidly I called the raise again. A nothing card came out next and my opponent pushed in for all his chips. I was so short stacked I should have put all the rest of my chips in and called it a night.... thats what poker theory says you do. Instead I folded. He turned over a pair of 7`s. I was gutted. Now normally water off a ducks back when I play online, but that hand annoyed me for the following two days. Its not a play I would do again. I went out in 5th place but thoroughly enjoyed the evening and both I and M will be returning.

Mental note to myself though. Either go out in around 6th place, or hang around until about 3rd place. It means you don`t narrowly miss your train and have to wait another hour for the next one.

Thats me done for now.


Pot total: $378 (yes it has gone down over the month, if you don`t tell anyone I won`t either)

Returning from my brush with death

Okay some of you may have spotted the vast amount of posts today. No I am not that bored at work (well...........) but in fact have cheated and shifted over my original blog entries from Myspace to a place someone might actually read them.

So this is in fact the first new one in a few weeks. Ironically as my first blog said, its been because I have been in bed. Though this time it wasn`t the old school lie, but a dose of weird cold/flu. Obviously being a man this means I was touching death at points, but I seemed to have recovered enough so am back to work. Yay!

Well since my last posting (which was actually three weeks ago) several things have changed. On the house move Kempston is not now front runner.... because someone has suddenly decided to build a giant aquarium in it. Now as you may well learn over the next few months, I am a fish fan (prepare the Simpsons sleeps with fishes joke), but I am not that much of a fish fan. So the hunt for the area moves on.

Anyway what I wanted to explain about today was this whole poker thang. As there are so many versions of the game then I thought I better explain the rules of my game.

So the plan is to try and raise enough money that would cover my full mortgage at some point in the future. Now you could argue, "well if he is that good then it only takes a couple of high stakes games and your laughing". Well trust me I am not that good. In fact I am starting here from rock bottom. I have been playing online poker now for around a year, and I started off with a pot of $50, and playing at the lowest level tables you can find. Having only gone broke once (So had to put another $50 in) thats been my starting point.

As for the type of game, well I have tried cash games, and failed dismally. By my reckoning I couldn`t have burnt money any quicker than I lost it in the cash games. Not so much from bad play as bad results with too much money riding on them. So I have adopted Sit 'n' Go`s (SNG) as my profit of choice - which many who play the game think a bit of an odd choice as the profit margins aren`t good.

So how does a Sit 'n' Go (SNG) work. Well in the ones I play 10 players pay a set amount of money to play the game. They play against each other in a "mini" tournament, and the last three win money. 3rd gets 20% of the winning, 2nd gets 30% and 1st gets 50%. Simple as that. When I first started playing I was playing in games where the initial payment in was $1 meaning that the most you could win was $3. As you can tell - not a lot. Well over a year, and going through levels I am now playing $5 SNGs. My current intention is to stick with SNGs throughout this plan and just raise the level I play at when I feel my game and my bank balance can withstand it.

With illness having struck there was plenty of time to use a laptop in bed. Now, I made the novel decision that rather than surf the net for porn, I would instead play a few games, and the bad streak has turned around a bit. So with this blog entry coming to an end, I can tell you the pot now stands at:

$404.00

I thank you!

Oh, and I promise, this blog won`t just be about poker. If only because I have a very short attention span and am bound to ramble on about something or other.

Aggression Factor Flop 4

Okay, how impressive is this, two entries in one day. You all know it won`t last :-)

I have a feeling there may be two themes running through a lot of my blog posts, which may well culminate in them meeting together (oooh see how exciting this can all be). For the time being its time to talk about Agression Factor Flop 4, or, put it another way, can poker pay my mortgage!

I should explain that AFF4 was a phrase that has become synonimous (spelling was never my forte) with a program called Poker Night Live. Never seen it - shame on you, it was clearly your fault it got cancelled! :-) Basically a three hour nightly program of people commentating on poker hands.... seemingly the most boring thing in the world! Well the thing is you can`t comment on poker for three hours a night, so some pretty random subjects came up in discussion. Apparently only Dracula can beat The Thing in Top Trumps. See did you know that, no neither did I !

Anyway watching the program led me to dabbling in a bit of online poker myself. Now for those of you who know me I am no gambler, and started playing it at 25p tables I suspect I`ll never be retiring on the proceeds, though I have noticed in the few months that I have been playing that my initial $50 bankroll is now up to $300.

This morning I also got a white envelope through the post telling me the yealy misery that is my endowment policy growth. (Bear with me this will get interesting in a minute). I realised that I had earnt more from my poker than I had from my endowment policy. So the question is can I make more money from my poker playing than I can from my investment. Will poker pay for my house! I have fifteen years left, so this could be a really long blog. he he

Anyway thats enough for today. All we have left to say is WE LOVE YOU NICK AND MATT!