March - Sooo different to last year

March has turned out to be a very good month, in fact, at the cash tables its been my best month ever. Played just under 16k hands at 50NL and have ran at 3.42ptbb/100. This believe it or not is bar far my best winrate over a semi decent sample. It also should of been a lot better. As you can see by the months graph, it was a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the first 11k hands, as I was up and down like a crack whores scutty red G string. I made way to many river hero calls and stacked off light too many times. Sometimes you need to be burnt a few times before you stop putting your hand in the flame. I think I am starting to learn when I am beat and have started keeping away from marginal situations, where I am pretty sure I am beat, but would always call out of curiosity. I think I have mentioned this on my blog before, but sometimes you really have gotta go with your gut instinct, your not always gonna be right, but in the long run, making those big laydowns are probably gonna save you more money than you are going to make.

The last 5k hands it looks like I have ran hot, but I don't think I did, one thing I did change is table selection, before I would just look for a table with 3-4 full stacks and 1-2 60bb stacks. I still do this, but I now re-evaluate the play on the table as to whether or not its gonna be profitable to stay or not. If I don't think theres gonna be money flowing, or theres no fish, I get up and leave, there are plenty of other tables out there and better opportunities.

I know the winrate on my last 5k hands is unsustainable as I ran at nearly 10ptbb/100, but I can definitely see an improvement in my game, something I was beginning to wonder if was ever going to come.

I still have a problem value betting the river when big danger cards hit. This hand is a classic example. When the river hits, my mind automatically thinks he is calling with his set and has just boated up, or even worse has been slo playing his str8 flush, monsters under the bed as its called I think and I then check behind for safety. The crazy thing, if he had shoved, I would still probably have called, so why the fck don't I value bet it !!!

Still $900 profit for the month, I guess playing 50NL in euros helps, as the its sort of playing at 70NL really in terms of $$. I slight shift up I guess, i'm such a nit ;-))

I guess I still have a lot to learn and have to control my fears more and take the fish to value town........Until the next post, GL at the tables and don't be fooled in the morning.

Poker = Easy Money

Well the headline of this post may shock you, but it must be true I now have overwhelming proof.

One of my bestest buds Ian (tipster), who was me best man when I got married in Vegas plays a bit of cards himself. In fact he does know a fair bit about texas holdem poker, however as I've know him for 20+ years now, he is, and always will be a big floppy fish to me.

To be fair, the guy is quite an intelligent little muppet and the aging process has been fairly kind to him over the years, he even has a few marbles left in his bag at the age of 50, although he does have a remarkable resemblance to Mr Bean, which his kids remind him on a daily basis.

So, back to the reason why poker is easy. Tipster has recently being dipping his big fishy gills in a proper ocean, namely the poker one that is called Pacific. He has been mainly playing sngs after he managed to con a free copy of sharkscope of some dodgy affiliate probably. Even more suprisingly, he has been doing quite well. In fact so well he has started playing way above his station and entering the 50$ 20k guaranteed. After a few near misses, the big fat tench made a final table and cashed for about $1.1k, which is bigger than any tourney win I have had so far, I couldn't believe it, he must of dished out some serious muff on the way. However the man did not stop there, a few days later, the whale did it again, this time he came 3rd pulling in an even nicer $2.4k. To say I was stunned is an understatement, but I was really chuffed for the little fella.

So you may think it stops there, but no. I was grinding away at me normal 50NL 6 max on Friday night when shortly after midnight I had had enough and decided to hit the sack early for a change. I always take me mobile to bed as I am on call for work, but I was soon spark out asleep. At about 01:45, my phone started buzzing and I was relieved it was just a text, which at least it meant it was not a call off work. But intrigued to know who the fck was texting me at that time in the morning I checked it out and almost passed out with the shock. The text was from Ian and simply said "Ooh, Just WON 20k G, 5.4k - I am legend"

Well what can you say, I was speechless, the fish had grown up into a shark. It can't just be luck to make the FT of that tourney 3 times in 10 days, I really have to bow down to the man and smile with extreme happiness and and green with envy.

The only thing the mupp did wrong was to tell the wife, which has now cost him a trip to Barcelona and a kitchen refurb, when will he ever learn.

So, I guess this little tale should be inspiration to everyone who plays poker. You def don't need to be the best online poker player in the world to bring home some decent bacon, just a little effort in learning the game properly is required, along with a few prayers to the poker gods that dish out the muffs and we can all be running around our lounges at 1:45am in the morning in our underpants screaming "WHOSE THE DADDY" !!!!

Time to get me canoe out on that ocean I think. Its Poker Time for me.......

So todays song is dedicated to you dude, you are truly a god amongst men and when I grow up, I wanna be just like you.........you are my hero

Milestone Reached

I know this milestone is not much for some people, but for a small stakes player like myself its quite a psychological boost.

I have always kept very accurate records of my profits and loss since I first started playing in December 2003 and as of last night, I officially went through the $20,000 profit margin since I first started. I am really pleased, as I have been hovering just under it for quite a while now, but never going above it, but 5 winning days on the trot on the cash tables got me head above it, and hopefully will stay there.

I guess the next milestone is $50,000 profit. Lets hope that can come before the end of 2010 !!!

One can but dream and reach for the stars.

Cocteau Twins - Heaven or Las Vegas

Been Busy

Yep, actually been playing some poker for a change. So far this month I have played over 11k hands on NOIQ and I am running at just over 1ptbb/100. Which although not outstanding, is at least in profit. Been a tough grind though. I have been muffed, given out some muff and made some muff calls. So, you could say its been a bit of a muffy month !!!!!!!!

Managed to win me biggest pot so far, all in 3 way for stacks post flop and of course, numpty here, has to get it in with the worst of it, pretty positive I was behind, but with an almost certainty that all 3 were going in, I thought it was worth a punt.

Heres the hand

Also managed to get it all in pre tonight with JJ against a loose muff who I thought was at it, only to find he actually did have AA. But the poker gods were with me and a flop of J44 bought a big grin to me face, especially as I didn't even see it as i had the reload window up and only realised I had won the hand when I got the transaction failed message on me reload as I was above the max, always a pleasant surprise that one.

If you looked at my graph over the 11k hands, it looks like one of those blippy things on a life support machine, so up and down its untrue. I am still making some horrific calls, especially when I get raised on the river. I totted it up over the month and I have donked off over 4 buyins with shitty river calls when if I actually sat back and thought about the way the hand had played out it was an obvious fold.

Overall enjoying it on NOIQ, there seems to be a lot of regs, and as I can't datamine, I end up having to play with them to build up some stats to find out which ones are just nitty rake racers as opposed to the ones that can actually play.

Getting the bonuses isn't as easy as I thought it was gonna be, prob only gonna get about 100e max + $100 from my affiliate, not like the good old days of sun when they were on crypto, getting $200 bonus easy and then your 40% rakeback on top !!! Although to be fair, the bonuses on NOIQ do look good better value the more VIPs you get, but you realistically gotta be playing at least 100NL, or be 6 tabling 50NL for 60 hours a week to get summat decent. Maybe one day......

Still, will keep on grinding on. Ta Ta for now and keep on muffing.

Dexys - There There My Dear

Bad end and a good start

Feb ended with big slump, was up on the month going into saturday night when I started having disco problems on Sun Poker, I spent half an hour trying to sort it to no avail, so decided to call it a day for the month so mooched around on the forums for a bit, it was to be my last day on there for a while, so wasn't that bothered, being up on the month was happy too. While mooching the forums, found a couple of people having the same issues as me, so I thought I would try a couple of the resolutions. At first they didn't seem to work, but lo and behold after 30 mins, it seemed stable enough to play. Well, I think you can guess what happened next, yep, I played like a complete and utter cock and managed to donk off almost 3 buyins and ended up the month $84 down overall, was sooooo mad at meself. I still seem to play solid poker for 90% of the time, then have 1 or 2 days when I have a rush of blood and lose 2+ buyins in short succession through bad play. So following this, I did what any normal person does and withdrew my whole roll from sun, that will teach them to fck around with me !!!

So, 1st of a new month, new hope and a new site, well, not new, but back to NOIQ now on the enteraction network. I had played a few hands on there last month, just to test out holdem manager and get some sort of hud set up. I wasn't to be disappointed, the players on there seemed awful and for once my hands held. For the first time since I have being playing 50NL cash, I actually finished the day over $200 up after conversion (Was approx 160euros)

Was looking forward to getting some more hours in on there tonight, but it looks like the site is fcked at the moment, with waiting lists 18 deep on my tables and constant hangs on my PC, so might have to have a little dabble on laddies cash, see how it goes.

Full of hope and optimism at the moment, poker is such a wonderful game when your hands hold up, lets hope i don't lose the plot and try to avoid the temptation to try to outplay my opponents who have no fold button on there little scandi screens.

New Order - Temptation