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!
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
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)
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)
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
How far will you go for a pair of ten pound Next cufflinks
Hello all, a merry Christmas, Happy New Year, happy Hanukkah etc etc.
So yes it is an obscenely long time since I last wrote a blog entry.
To be honest I haven`t been playing anywhere near as much poker as I had been previously, and ashamed though I am to admit, I never jumped up the table rates as much either. This is mainly because I have enforced the poker equivalent of abstenence on myself for the past few weeks.
No one likes a whiner, but I am going to do it anyway. I have been hit by the worst run of bad luck in games I have had since I have been playing. About a month before Christmas I was around the $500 mark, playing some good S n G games and cashing in most. Then I started noticing I was going out at the bubble. Playing against people who had called raises with 6,4 offsuit and then finding a straight on the river. Much swearing was used. Laptops were thrown. In the words of The Hulk "you won`t like me when I am angry" - mainly because I go in a strop in the corner of the room and don`t talk to anyone. lol.
Poker theory says not to worry about these flukes because in the end its those type of people who pay you out in the long run. Maybe so, but for the following three weeks I found this happening every game. Miracle cards on the flop. I was beginning to be knocked out of games in 5th place, then 6th. God forbid at one point 9th - a position I haven`t been knocked out in in years.
It hit its lowest point between Xmas and new year. I had decided to drop out of S n G tournies for a bit and have a go at cash tables, just to control my run a little more. I played exceptionally well (or so I thought anyway) but had very little profit to show for it. Finally a big hand came. On the flop I had a full house. One guy, very aggressive player, stuck with me. I played him in a way that suggested I was chasing a flush, and he kept betting into me. I had the nuts and so, managed, on the turn, to get all my money in. He flipped over his cards. He has highest two pair. My middle full house was well in the lead. All the money would be mine. Unless of course the only remaining relevant 9 in the pack came out. A 1 in 52 chance. Yeah you can guess the rest. By that night I think I had invented swear words!
By the end of that run I had lost $100 of my account, the most I had ever dropped by. However that game did seem to be the turning point. From there I seem to have resumed the same flow I was on before, and gradually building my pot back up. So I am still playing the $5 and probably will until I can get back to the $500 mark. Ironically, with that run of bad luck, if I had changed up tables I dread to think what I would have lost.
Christmas also featured my second live game. This wasn`t in a pub, or high class casino, but at a friends house - the first home game I had ever done. Now to be fair this is in a house in Bedford where the guy clearly has too much money. A ten player game started in a kitchen that had features in Home and Gardens, and finished in a wood lined smoking room, where the losing players had the chance to enjoy a losing sauna.
This is a yearly gathering. A blokes day basically. A morning starting off with clay pigeon shooting (something I have never done before and after all the bruises may never do again) being trained by a bloke who trains members of the navy. So you can guess who won that (and the accompanying prize of a cartridge pen knife). Then on to the poker.
The prize on offer was a pair of cufflinks in the shape of playing cards. As you can understand this was a classy prize. I took the same game play I use on the net into the game.
The first two hours I played one hand. At one point I was threatened with violence for taking it too seriously. (Mental note - don`t handle cards properly when playing with amateurs, they suddenly think you know what you are doing). I was lowest in chips for the whole of the time we were playing. And my word there were odd plays (Second mental note - cufflinks aren`t worth that much - that means peoples money is not on the line. Bluffing does not work).
The guy in the lead all the way through was the guy who was playing the 9, 6 offsuits. I even asked him if he has played me online a month previously. lol. But somehow I got to past midnight and we were down to five and in the smoking room. Then all of a suddent the poker gods decided they would give me cards with actual pictures on them for a change, and a lot of them. I had a phenominal run of cards AQ followed by AA followed by AK. I went in with all my chips almost every hand, and people were folding to me. Holy crap, the theory actually seems to be working.
I got down to the last two and heads up play. Except it was now 3 a.m. We had been playing for 6 hours. I like cufflinks, but not that much. I started pushing with any old hand - either trying to bluff him off his hand, or just leaving it to the Gods. At one point I had a 10 to 1 chiplead over him. At this point the Gods clearly decided I was taking the piss and swapped the luck around. I pushed all in with Ace 6, to go up against Ace 10 suited spades. Three more spades came up and I was out. They were in my grasp...... mere inches from my cuffs (which had buttons so may have been an issue), but they were not to be. I shall chase them next year!
However its true what they say. I may have lost, and no money was on offer, but that was the most enjoyable evening of poker I have ever had. People were laughing, way too much drink was had, people were helping with each others hands, half naked men leaving saunas were wandering around, the poker seemed distant on the list. Thats how it should be played. Even at small stakes I had been taking it too seriously online. Chasing losses. Now I am not, I am back to playing how I did six months ago. I am also back to winning again.
Also, as I left that evening, driving bleary eyed back home at 4 in the morning, one of the guys turned around and said. "You were, by far, the best player here." Ah the warm glow of semi recognition. Phil Helmuth eat your heart out.
Pot total: $427.98
So yes it is an obscenely long time since I last wrote a blog entry.
To be honest I haven`t been playing anywhere near as much poker as I had been previously, and ashamed though I am to admit, I never jumped up the table rates as much either. This is mainly because I have enforced the poker equivalent of abstenence on myself for the past few weeks.
No one likes a whiner, but I am going to do it anyway. I have been hit by the worst run of bad luck in games I have had since I have been playing. About a month before Christmas I was around the $500 mark, playing some good S n G games and cashing in most. Then I started noticing I was going out at the bubble. Playing against people who had called raises with 6,4 offsuit and then finding a straight on the river. Much swearing was used. Laptops were thrown. In the words of The Hulk "you won`t like me when I am angry" - mainly because I go in a strop in the corner of the room and don`t talk to anyone. lol.
Poker theory says not to worry about these flukes because in the end its those type of people who pay you out in the long run. Maybe so, but for the following three weeks I found this happening every game. Miracle cards on the flop. I was beginning to be knocked out of games in 5th place, then 6th. God forbid at one point 9th - a position I haven`t been knocked out in in years.
It hit its lowest point between Xmas and new year. I had decided to drop out of S n G tournies for a bit and have a go at cash tables, just to control my run a little more. I played exceptionally well (or so I thought anyway) but had very little profit to show for it. Finally a big hand came. On the flop I had a full house. One guy, very aggressive player, stuck with me. I played him in a way that suggested I was chasing a flush, and he kept betting into me. I had the nuts and so, managed, on the turn, to get all my money in. He flipped over his cards. He has highest two pair. My middle full house was well in the lead. All the money would be mine. Unless of course the only remaining relevant 9 in the pack came out. A 1 in 52 chance. Yeah you can guess the rest. By that night I think I had invented swear words!
By the end of that run I had lost $100 of my account, the most I had ever dropped by. However that game did seem to be the turning point. From there I seem to have resumed the same flow I was on before, and gradually building my pot back up. So I am still playing the $5 and probably will until I can get back to the $500 mark. Ironically, with that run of bad luck, if I had changed up tables I dread to think what I would have lost.
Christmas also featured my second live game. This wasn`t in a pub, or high class casino, but at a friends house - the first home game I had ever done. Now to be fair this is in a house in Bedford where the guy clearly has too much money. A ten player game started in a kitchen that had features in Home and Gardens, and finished in a wood lined smoking room, where the losing players had the chance to enjoy a losing sauna.
This is a yearly gathering. A blokes day basically. A morning starting off with clay pigeon shooting (something I have never done before and after all the bruises may never do again) being trained by a bloke who trains members of the navy. So you can guess who won that (and the accompanying prize of a cartridge pen knife). Then on to the poker.
The prize on offer was a pair of cufflinks in the shape of playing cards. As you can understand this was a classy prize. I took the same game play I use on the net into the game.
The first two hours I played one hand. At one point I was threatened with violence for taking it too seriously. (Mental note - don`t handle cards properly when playing with amateurs, they suddenly think you know what you are doing). I was lowest in chips for the whole of the time we were playing. And my word there were odd plays (Second mental note - cufflinks aren`t worth that much - that means peoples money is not on the line. Bluffing does not work).
The guy in the lead all the way through was the guy who was playing the 9, 6 offsuits. I even asked him if he has played me online a month previously. lol. But somehow I got to past midnight and we were down to five and in the smoking room. Then all of a suddent the poker gods decided they would give me cards with actual pictures on them for a change, and a lot of them. I had a phenominal run of cards AQ followed by AA followed by AK. I went in with all my chips almost every hand, and people were folding to me. Holy crap, the theory actually seems to be working.
I got down to the last two and heads up play. Except it was now 3 a.m. We had been playing for 6 hours. I like cufflinks, but not that much. I started pushing with any old hand - either trying to bluff him off his hand, or just leaving it to the Gods. At one point I had a 10 to 1 chiplead over him. At this point the Gods clearly decided I was taking the piss and swapped the luck around. I pushed all in with Ace 6, to go up against Ace 10 suited spades. Three more spades came up and I was out. They were in my grasp...... mere inches from my cuffs (which had buttons so may have been an issue), but they were not to be. I shall chase them next year!
However its true what they say. I may have lost, and no money was on offer, but that was the most enjoyable evening of poker I have ever had. People were laughing, way too much drink was had, people were helping with each others hands, half naked men leaving saunas were wandering around, the poker seemed distant on the list. Thats how it should be played. Even at small stakes I had been taking it too seriously online. Chasing losses. Now I am not, I am back to playing how I did six months ago. I am also back to winning again.
Also, as I left that evening, driving bleary eyed back home at 4 in the morning, one of the guys turned around and said. "You were, by far, the best player here." Ah the warm glow of semi recognition. Phil Helmuth eat your heart out.
Pot total: $427.98
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
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)
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)
Friday, 5 October 2007
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)
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)
Friday, 7 September 2007
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)
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)
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
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.
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.
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