Big One Came !!!

I don't know why, but a couple of weeks ago I noticed a post on a forum mentioning an instant deposit bonus on 888 Poker, so I decided to put in £80, which gave me a instant $24 bonus, not a lot I know, but free money is free money. I decided to play the Friday night challenge, which is a $32+3 $20K guaranteed. Its a lot more than I would usually buy in, but I thought technically I'm getting it for $9. Its about 800 runners and a good structure. I was card dead most of the tourney and eventually went out about 273rd, but I must admit I enjoyed it. I think it was the first tournie I had played this year and made a change to the cash grind.

So, you may be thinking what the fook was all that boring shit about.....Well, this Friday, I decided I was going to play it again. Things went a tadge better this time, I managed to hold out rather nittily into the money and was quite happy with my $100ish score, desperately keeping an eye on the payouts I nitted up trying to reach the next payout level. I got really lucky with about 80 left and I shoved my final 8-10 bbs from the cut off with Ax and was snap called by the button with QQ, I spike the ace and doubled up. I managed to cling on for a few more places up the money tree, stealing pots where I could. Eventually I was down again to about 8-10bbs and shoved with AJ sooooted it, I was again snap called by QQ, this time I muffed the flush and doubled up again. I began to think, may this is my day. I was dealt a few hands then, hit a few flops, took a few steals uncontested and next thing I knew we were down from 809 runners to the final table.

I was nearly always the short stack and my plan was to try and hold on and move up to a $1k+ payout. I was fortunate when there was a 3 way all in, The big stack had AK, the other two hands had AJ and AQ. The flop came down xQJ and I was gutted, but the river hit the 10 and two players went packing in the one hand. Kerching, I was moving up the money tree. Once we were down to the last 6 I was happy with my payout and I knew the players left were good players and would of noticed my passive nittiness so I opened up a bit, 3 betting light and overshoving a few hands and getting them to fold. Eventually down to 4 handed I had about 300k chips with the other 3 players had over a million, but I managed to hold my nerve and again stole quite a bit and next thing I knew I was the chip leader with 3 left. I well timed KK with the sb shoving into me meant we were heads up and I had a 3:1 chip lead. I managed to get him down to his last 500k chips and we were all in pre, me AQ and him K7s. He hit the King and doubled back up. I was starting to think my luck was gonna run out and I was destined for 2nd. But chipped back at him, getting him back down to about 400k and again we were all in pre, me A9s and him K5, this time no one improved and I had just binked my biggest tournie win ever by more than double. It was 4:45am and we had been playing for over 8 hours and I was buzzing, so much so, as I couldn't scream out cos of the time of the morning, I have hurt my right shoulder from all the silent fist pumping !!!!!

After that, I just couldn't sleep, I think a managed about an hour, before it was time for a celebratory beer or ten, so the remainder of Saturday was a bit of a blur as I was rather pissed when I got back home at 21:00 from my lunchtime swifty.

I have decided to leave $1000 on 888 as a separate tournie bankroll. Put £700 into my Poker Bankroll in my savings account and use the rest to buy some stuff and pay a bit off the mortgage. I am still gonna stick to the cash grind, but will def play a few tournies a month in the hope that I can muff my way to another nice payday.

Start of Heads up as Chippie.....

The sweetest of leader boards :-)

Oh and I didn't get to play much cash last week, but the small amount I did play I won, didn't have a single losing session and I am about 25 buyins up for the month, even played a small amount of 25NL which I hope to play more of next week and hopefully start to get some serious exercise in as although I managed some this week, its no where near enough to start getting mega healthy again, I think I need another cunning plan.

Goth

A Good Lazy Week

With the goals for this month set, I have to say this week has been very lazy but very productive.

Volume - Fail. Only managed to play about 11.5k hands last week.
Exercise - Fail. didn't do one sniff of anything vaguely sweat inducing apart from a couple of stubborn dumps.

However,

Profit - Pass. Up about 17 buyins over the 11.5k sample running at 14.84bb/100
Weight - Pass. Managed to somehow lose 3lbs despite a night on the piss, a bottle of wine on two other nights and a chinese.

Bankroll now above £2000, so will also be able to take some shots at 25NL. So overall not a bad week !!!

My only worry I have now is the dreaded withdrawal doom switch. I try not to keep too much money online since the Full Tilt fiasco so at the moment, I take £300 out when my balance reaches £1000, the next withdrawal will be when I get it back up to £1100, take £300 out, then next at £1200. You get the drift, this should give me a decent amount of overall protection relative to the size of my bankroll and the stakes I am playing. I don't plan to ever keep more than £3000 online, as to be honest, I do not expect to ever play higher than 200NL.

Thats the poker news out of the way, I forgot to update my health situation on my last blog, so here goes.

Basically things are starting to pick up. I have been signed off by my respiratory consultant as everything is all clear in that area. I had my first appt. with my Cardiologist recently and had another Echocardiogram, which showed that all is functioning fine and also, not only have my pleural effusions cleared up off my lungs, but the scan showed that the pericardial effusion that I had round my heart has now also cleared up. The downside is that I also has a 2nd E.C.G and this is still showing some sort of anomaly.  This might not be too worrying though, my consultant suspects that when I was ill for a month, it was actually a rather nasty virus that has possibly left some scarring on my heart. I am being sent for a cardiac MRI at some point to confirm if this is the case, if it is, I don't think they will taking any action and I will just live with it.

I have also seen a vascular consultant, I was referred to them as I am still getting a build of fluid (oedema) in my legs so I had a doppler ultrasound scan to ensure that there were no issues with my veins, which in the event of no heart failure, is the most common cause. The good news is that the scan showed no issues and that all was functioning fine, with no signs any problems at all. I guess the only downside of this good news, is that we still don't know whats causing the buildup of fluid in my legs, although knowing my luck, its prob just being a fat bastard sat at a desk all day, no exercise and sitting at a PC all evening/weekends playing poker and writing dumb blogs that no one reads........cough.

So the plan for this week is to start exercising, drink less, more volume and also play some 25NL, this if the withdrawal doom switch is not firmly in the "On" state.

Goth.

[x] Volume [ ] Nice profit - June Review

Unfortunately the last week of June was the opposite of the rest of month, I knew I shoudn't of opened my big gob on the last blog about running hot !!!

It was partly my own fault, after my last post I tried a change of style and tested out some different lines of play, which, if I had thought about it, they may of worked at 100NL, but they def ain't gonna work at 10NL where no fcker is folding top pair shit kicker. This had the added effect of tilting me a bit in a couple of sessions and caused quite a big downswing.

I did however manage to double my volume of the first 3 weeks of the month and was only really 1 buyin down on my 28 buyins that I was up on my last post (although I did manage to get to 31 up at one stage in the month.

Overall, I cant really complain too much, ran at 4.44bb/100 over the 60k hands on the month. To be honest I would take that every month if I could. Had two Stellar Bonuses at 3k+4k so that was an extra $20 in the kitty to give a total profit of $289.50 without taking into account any fpps. I currently have about 4.8k fpps, but I am going to save them for later in the year when I hope to be at gold or platinum to get better value.

Not much else to say really, graph of the month is posted below, will still be play 10NL Zoom this month as my bankroll is currently about £1910 still, but hopefully will move up sometime this month for a few shots at 25NL again.

Goals for this month are:-

[ ] 100K hands
[ ] Lose 10lb in weight, currently 15st 3
[ ] Playing at 25NL by end of the month

So not much to strive for, the 100K hands will be a first me, hoping that this will get me to Gold level and the first step towards getting the roll ready for the supernova challenge next year.

I def think with a bit more discipline and study I can make some decent money over the next couple of years as long as the gov don't decide to fck it all up with new gambling tax laws which is always a possibility !!!

Goth.....