The woes of cash

Been very lazy lately, a lot has happened in my poker life in the last 2 weeks since I posted. Firstly we had Dream Team II at the poker bunker in canary wharf. A great weekend was had, I would love to tell you all about it in great detail, but the beer has clouded quite a bit of my memory, was great to meet up with all of the crushed nutz lads/lasses (we were far the best turned out by the way, in our team uniforms) also good to meet some new faces, a big up to Steve (plum11/plum12) for organizing the mini bus to the big slick on the Friday night, where I managed to go out about 15th in the rebuy tourney there, when my 77 failed to hold up against the chippies AT. Kaz has put a bit more of the story of the weekend on her page (link on side of blog) as she can recall more than I can ;-) Apologies to Virgin Trains for me puking up in the bog on the trip back to Brum, but I did got most of it in the pan (or very close)

June also saw the start of me being a trainee trader for bad-beat, which I have found a real challenge. Cash, has never been a real strong point of mine, but I have always held my own and made a small profit from it over the years, this was meant to be my chance to improve my game and learn from those far superior that me (not that difficult I know !!) I decided to build slowly and try and build up a $100 profit at 10c/20c then move up, I did not envisage encountering the amazing muppetry that is around on USA poker at that level. So after 4000+ hand and 60 table hours for about $30 profit, I decided to move up anyway to 25c/50c. I don't know why I am shocked but the play is just as bad at that level. I feel like I am being robbed at the moment, I def feel like I am playing some semi decent poker, although I am grinding out hands rather than winning the pots with constant aggression, but steadily moving up to about $50 profit after the 1st day at the level. Then yesterday came along and smacked me truly in the face. I was playing two tables, and within 4 hands, I lost my stack on both. Table 1 went as follows.

I get QQ in early position, raise to $2, get rr by small blind to about $4 (hes just landed on table) I flat call. flop comes KQ2 rainbow, happy days I think (if he has KK, so be it) I check. He bets about $7, I decide to go all in over the top, he thinks for about 5 seconds, then calls. To save you the suspense, he has called me with A5......Ace Fcking 5 !! The turn brings a 3 and the river the more than obvious 4, to give him the 5 high straight and all my chips. I don't often jump in shock, cos I have seen most things in poker, but that was just unreal. I was speechless, the other players on the table did the abuse for me amazingly enough. He then proceded to lose all the $100, reload another $50 and lose that in the next 10 mins !!!!

Meanwhile on the other table, I call a $2 raise with 88 and the flop comes 8 high. I end up all in against TT (not the worse call to be fair) but the river brings the T for me to lose my stack again.

Finally after reloading I call a raise with JT sooooooted and flop comes xTT, happy days, I check he bets $2.50, I raise, he calls. turn comes rag. I bet $5 he calls. River brings a king. I think, I bet the software has fcked me and he has KK, I then think no, it couldn't be that cruel, so go all in, he calls instantly and shows KK Aaaaaaaaaaagggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh. I am not one to think online poker is rigged, but todays session is unreal.

I am now down to about $30 of my $200 daily allowance and think fck it, I don't care if I lose the lot today. I go all in with an open ended and hit to double up, then after flat calling bets chasing two open ended str8 draws and missing, I win both bit pots by rr them all in on bluffs both times and getting them to fold. I finish the session with $120 and only $80 down, but annoyingly down overall for the month.

It is interesting that it was only my tilting that led me to be ultra agressive with massive bluffs on the river, but it has given me a bit more of an insight in what you can do in cash games if your balls are big enough.

Not had a chance to speak to my mentor yet as he has been away playing live, looking forward to but I am not sure how my sanity, or my marriage can hold up if I have many more days like this playing cash. Guess I have a lot to learn.

Watch this space for more regular updates on my quest for cash glory, hopefully this blog won't turn into a bad beat whingers corner.

Goth

For Better or Worse

Well, I thought it was getting better.....but its just got a lot worse.

The bad run on stars went to 11, then pulled it all back, then another bad run, along with a few satellite entries, small lossed on cash, has taken me to about $250 down on the month. I must admin I am finding it very difficult to handle the swings. The only good thing, is that I know I am playing well, the outdraws have been, well, fcking unreal, which if I sit back and look at it realistically, means I must be doing something right, but looking at my graphs, it just don't look like it, but I will play through it.

Next month sees a big change in what I will be doing, I will be playing almost solely cash and with the help of bad beat as a trainee trader, I really hope I can learn a lot and move up to the next level. Its a bit annoying that I am doing this on the back of my first losing month this year, but I still think I am doing things right on the sng front. I still am unsure how my game will transfer into a cash arena, as I always think I am being bullied more in cash games than tourneys and tend to make some poor calls, playing more cash, should hopefully eradicate this problem and hopefully make me a more profitable player and move up the levels.

I will not be publishing my stats for a while, as I have decided to drop my yearly goal and concentrate solely on becoming a better more agressive player, should this prove succesfull the profits should be on at least the same level I make now, hopefully a lot more.

We have been discussing a few things on kaz's forum of late and I think we haev all realised that we want to learn more and take the game a bit more seriously, hopefully if we can all chip, we can all become better players.

On a more fun note, we are all off to Canary Wharf the weekend for Dream Team II, hopefully we will have as much fun this year as we did last, we are going down on the Friday this time and will be playing a live tourney at the bigslick on the friday night for a bit of practice and hopefully take home a few ££££

Will update you the outcome if I can remember any of it.

See you all at the bunker if you are going, i'll be the fat long haired one stopping the bar from falling into the room ;-)

Goth

A real struggle

May has been a nightmare, my bad run on the stars sngs eventually went to 12 in a row, out of the money, 6 of which were 4ths, was sooo tempted to take all of me dosh out of stars, but then thought whats the point, all sites are the same, its just our perception thats different. At this stage I was about $240 down for the month overall, after not having too much success on the cash tables either. I decided the only way to get out of this, was to play my way out, I know in the long run, I win on the stars $10 sngs, so I have just started to play them even more. Its good to say the luck has turned around slightly and I have pulled back over half my monthly losses so far, the ai'm now is to grind them out and try and get back into the black for the month. Its a good time to do it at the moment as stars are giving double fpp points, every little helps.

I won't be playing much poker today as it is one of my fave days of the year, its FA cup final day. Which basically means a day in the pub watching footy, talking bollocks and getting rat arsed. So if you do see me playing on the tables later on today, I apologise in advance for any drunken muffings I give out ;-)

I have also applied to be a trainee trader at bad beat, I really want to improve my cash game and bad beat has some excellent cash game players, who hopefully will be able to show me where I am going wrong. If it doesn't work out, so be it, but hopefully I will be given the chance to try.

Anyway, bacon buttie has now firmly in me belly, lets just hope I don't get to see it again later. Off to the pub it is, cya later.

Goth

For Fourths Sake !!

May so far has been a real rocky ride, I started off well, going about $100 up quite quickly in a few days, then a bad run on mansion playing cash, turned this into an almost $100 loss for the month, picked this back up to $50 profit again grinding it out. Then yesterday was a complete nightmare. Pokerstars are doing a great promotion on their 10 Billion hand. So this lead for me to put in $400, as if I am going to play there, I might as well get some bonus back. This with the next 10 days getting double FPP's seemed the perfect chance to build up some decent points. However, Stars seemed to want to get its bonus back off me in the first few days, I started off well getting a 2nd in my first STT, then 6 on the trot not making the money, this was made even worse with the last 4 all being 4ths !!!! all being muffed, by idiots calling all in ins with J8 soooooted and the like. What is a man to do.

Played a couple of sats as well and got no where, so I am now back to $100 down for the month. Got a lot of grinding out to do.

I am still toying with the idea of playing more cash and feel I am starting to get slightly better, I have a couple of cash players giving me some advice, but I am sticking firmly at the 25c/50c level at the moment, although playing on mansion you come up against the same players quite a lot and the bad beat traders are easy enough to spot, courtesy of meds passion for star trek, so I try and keep away from some of them.

Last day of the footy season today and I am hoping that west ham get there just deserts and get relegated, they cheated end of story and should of been docked points. Anyway, there is only room in prem for one Claret and Blue Army.....Up The Villa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Goth

April Stats

Not a bad month considering I lost 10 days play due to travelling to vegas etc. Helped by eventually obtaining the Stars bonus, which helped put me on track for my yearly target. So here is my stats from April

Total Profit = $401.77
MTTs Played = 8
MTT Final Tables made = 1 (12.25%)
MTT in the Money = 1 (12.25%) - NB Includes FT's
MTT Total $ won = $ 150.00
MTT Profit = $97.60
SNG Played = 52
SNG Profit = $140.85
SNG ITM = 48.08%
Cash Profit/loss = $1.82
Syndi Profit/Loss -$22.00
Bonus Earned = $200

Started well this month on the STT's, but cash has been a disaster so far, so only slightly up on month at the moment. Gonna play the Stars 25k $5 rebuy muff fest at 23:00 tonight, will play as a $15 f/o (rebuy at start and addon) and try and dodge the muffs, then hope to pick up a few hands after the first break. I have only played it 3 times, but made the money once, but you really have to be prepared to spend $50 or get very lucky, but its a fun event.

Starting to have a change of heart about publishing my profit stats, as I think it is making me be too careful. I think I am also going to play a few more sats, which at the moment I don't do, so will publish these if I carry on as well, my biggest MTT win this year so far has been $150, so I need to get into the bigger events, so I can get the one or two big payouts you need in a year to move your roll to the next level.

Also thinking about moving back up to the $20 STT on stars again, or 4 tabling the $10, either way, I would like to get up the next VIP level and see what I can do with the points for a bit of extra profit.

Got a lot of ideas what I want to concentrate on over the coming months, but not sure what I will decide. Will let you all know once I do.

Almost up to 300 STT for this year on Stars, will publish my full stats on there once I have, makes some strange reading, well I think so.......

Goth

Viva Las Vegas

What can I say, if you haven't been to vegas, make sure it is on your next holiday destination. What a great place and if you can, stay at the Bellagio, I have never been in a hotel like it. The customer service there was incredible, I can't recommend them highly enough, although looking at the people I bumped into, I would not like to play poker there, it was packed full of stars, the highlight being seeing Barney Boatman, 15th in the Q in the shop trying desperately to buy a can of red bull and a bag of nuts in one of the big tourney breaks.


Our wedding went better than to be expected, the staff in the chapel at the Bellagio were fantastic and everything went smooth and Amanda looked stunning in her red wedding dress, which was a major shock to me as I thought it was going to be ivory.

We had quite a few friends over from the UK and had a wonderful buffet in our penthouse suite on the evening, the rooms even had their own bar and came with our very own barman called jimmy, which was a bonus as we had to send him out 3 times to restock it due to over consumption.

The other reason for going to vegas was to play poker, as we were only out there for a week and spent a fair bit of time sorting the wedding out etc, I agreed to play just the one tournie. Tipster was staying at the MGM grand and had already made the FT of one of their $65 morning tournies, but came 7th with top 5 paid. So we both entered the $125 evening one there. The standard of the players was truly apalling. I just sat there waiting for hands and betting big when I hit and always got paid off. I won a couple of races and before I knew it, both tipster and I were both on the final table. 57 entrants, top 5 paid. tipster was on my button, so we agreed early on to keep out of pots unless we had big hands. Unfortunately, 3 hands into the FT, I looked down and found AQ sooted on tipsters BB, the blinds were quite big with large antes, so I couldn't hang around, I had about 12k in chips, blinds were 800/1600 with 200 antes, so I raised to 5000, got 1 caller on the button. The flop came down AJ2, with the J and 2 off my soot. Perfect I thought, with 12k in the pot I only had 7k left, so I pushed, he called instantly and showed JJ and had flopped a set. No flush to save me and I was out 10th. I was gutted, but still happy to have made an Final Table in Vegas. The good news is, tipster went on to finish 4th to get $570, we had agreed a 75/25 cut, so I got my buyin back so all was happy.

I will def be trying for the wsop next year, will give this year a miss to give others a chance ;-)

Still feeling the effects of jet lag which helped my stats for April, as I ended up playing the Laddies Graveyard for the first time as I could not sleep and ended up on the FT going out 7th after getting my 99 muffed by A4 sooted.

Going to vegas has altered my feelings about poker, instead of just doing it as a hobby and making a few extra grand a year, I really want to learn more about the game. I had an offer off Bad Beat at the beginning of April to be a trainee trader, but couldn't take it up because of the wedding, I am waiting to hear back from them to see if I can try again in future months, cash is not a strong point of mine, but I think with a bit of help I could turn a steady profit.

Won't be able to play as much this week as I would like as there is lots of footy on and I am still off work, so the pub beckons, but I hope to fit a few mtts and stts and a bit of cash in during the sobre periods.

I have done my stats for April, but will publish them in a few days, will also try to keep my blog updated more often as I am getting lazy. I hope to try to improve all aspects of my life now that I am married, hopefully starting financially, but hey, don't we all dream of that.

GL at the tables.

Goth

Off to Vegas to get Married !!!!!

Sorry girls but, but you all had your chance ;-) but I will flying out to Vegas tomorrow morning with my beautiful girlfriend of 10 years Amanda to get wed. We will be tying the knot on wednesday afternoon, in the south chapel at the Bellagio Hotel. Then its back up to the suite with our friends and family for a buffet and a few bottles of bubbly and even more bottles of red wine and god knows what else we can shove down our throats.

I am really looking forward to it and I even have permission off the wife (to be) to play a poker tournie while we are over there. My best man Ian, who plays under the nick tipster69 on laddies and the_tench on crypto will be with me by my side as we intend to "try" and stay sobre enough that we can see the cards that we are being dealt (see previous post about playing live together !!) We believe there is a regular $130 buy in at the MGM which has a restricted entry so the fields don't get to big, so this is prob the event we intend to muff it up in. In fact I think I need to win the tourney in order that I can check out of the Bellagio without having to do a weeks washing up to pay the bill !!!

Hope to take plenty of photos and will put them up on www.pokergoth.com on my return for you all to laugh at.

On the home poker front, I have not been playing as much as I would have liked as I have had a lot of things to sort out, but I have at last managed to get the $150 bonus on stars, so I can go back to MTT's for a while to break the monotony of playing sngs, although I am seriously considering hitting the sngs real hard on my return and 4 tabling them every chance I got, stars would seem to be the best place to do this, I'll see how I feel on my return from Vegas, if I do well, I might even try and start playing live more regularly (without the influence of beer) just to see if it can help my overall game.

I've got all 3 harrington books to read on the plane on the way over, so as long as I don't get off the other end pissed as a fart, hopefull i'll learn summat on the way over.

So, I will see you all soon. Good luck at the tables, and may all your rivers dish out a good muffing.

Goth.

March Stats

Well March was a very strange month indeed. As I mentioned earlier got off to a flying start, then hit a real bad run on the stars sngs to be down for the month, picked up again to get back to level, then with the help of a couple of bonuses from new sites I have joined and a 2nd in the laddies midday high stack the month turned out reasonably well. If I had had just an average month on the sngs it would have been a very good month, but hopefully the worst of it is behind me for a while. The good news is that I should finish the stars bonus in the next couple of weeks, then will probably move on to Mansion as I have $400 worth of bonuses to collect there.

Anyway here are my stats for March:-

Total Profit = $326.38
MTTs Played = 9
MTT Final Tables made = 2 (22.22%)
MTT in the Money = 7 (77.77%) - NB Includes FT's
MTT Total $ won = $ 142.61
MTT Profit = $54.09
SNG Played = 87
SNG Profit = $25
SNG ITM = 40.91%
Cash Profit/loss = $89.30
Syndi Profit/Loss $7.99
Bonus Earned:- $150

Overall profit for year is $1173.51, which actually puts me slightly behind the schedule I had set myself, but well up on this stage last year, so can't moan at the moment.

Looking at the MTT results, maybe I should be playing more of them again, but I have vowed to cut them down until I have finished my goal on stars. Will then see what happens then.

Goth

Late Live Results

Haven't updated for a while, which is a shame, cos I know you are all dying to know how I got on, I did actual post what happened on the pokerkaz forum and I am too lazy to write it again so i'm just gonna cut and paste and edit it a bit.

We started drinking straight after work, which in hindsight was not a good idea. The beer really started to kick in after the break and the end of the rebuy period, which I managed to no have to rebuy. However, I had a small row with the mgmt as I was convinced I had 4300 chips before the add on and when I returned I still had 4300 acusing them of stealing 1k of chips. Waking up the followiung morning, i remember clearly thinking the add was after the break so I hadn't done one, which is a bit embarassing. Then, not having cards for while, it all folds around to me on small blind I raise massive with QT sooted, only to find that utg was all in, my raise stands so had to go all in myself, the BB then goes all in and I think I am walking. We all flip over, UTG has A6, BB has JJ, Q on flop, thankyou very much, gg u2

I then played my normal game picking up the odd pot now and then and got down to last 20, getting short stacked, middle pos get dealt 96os, early raiser, so i'm def folding. I go to push my cards in, but little miss winona plays the sneaky hand switch trick and i accidently push me fcking chips in instead of me cards, I only notice this when the dealer says all in !!!!!!!!!!!!AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The BB also calls. 9 on flop, they check it down and Goth takes the pot looool

I then get completely card dead then for next half hour, eventually pushed with AJsoooted and was all in vs KJ and in true laddies style, the king drops on the flop and I go out 13th, with top 10 only paid. Tipster was vul, he played great solid poker and could of folded into the final table, but made one move at the wrong time and went out 15th, needless to say he was gutted, but he has the bug, we are def going to do this once a quarter now, so will let you know when we next go.

So it has been back to the online poker for the last 10 days and for the first 7, I had one of my worst runs on stars ever with a run of beats that would normally require at least a couple of new laptops and a trip to the vets. But I have perservered and I have managed to get back to $200 up for the month so far, when I had actually gone into negative figures at one stage, which was very soul destroying.

Only about another 60 $10 sngs on stars to get the $150 bonus and Amanda is away on her hen weekend in Dublin, which means its beer and poker all weekend woohoo !!

So see you all at the tables.
Goth

Off to play some live poker

Tonight I am off to play some live poker at the Broadway Casino in Birmingham, they have a £20 rebuy tourney that starts at approx 9pm. This late start creates a slight problem in that, I finish work at 5pm, I can't be arsed to go all the way home to come back again, so there is the dilemma. What do you do for 4 hours before the tournie starts, take a gentle walk, pop to the library, phone relatives and friends.....No fcking chance.....its the pub, its beer and its gonna be plenty of it. Even at a conservative pace, its gonna be 5 winonas before we land in the casino, then it will be registration and back to the bar. I have no self discipline, my thinking behind this is if I have a shit tournie, at least i'll be pissed and had a good time. The thought of being sobre and losing £120 in muffy rebuys to some twat calling all ins with 63 off suit and flopping quads to crack your aces does not bear thinking about. So beer it will be.

Hopefully this will be good practice for when I go off to Vegas next month to get married, tipster69 (AKA the_tench on some sites) my best man is coming with me, he likes the odd tot too so it could be a long session, lets just hope if I make the final table I don't throw up on it.

I'll let you know how I get on.
Goth

There Here !!!

The poker gods that is, and as strummer quiet often says, when they land, they land with a big slap around the chops and a squeeze of the the old bollocks.....

Started off the month ok, got to about $180 up, then it all started going wrong, trips into higher trips, trips into made straights, you know the story. My stars sng rate has dropped to below $2.50, if it wasn't for the bonus, a measly $150, i'd leave the site for a while and move on for a bit. I know these runs happen and I am just going to have to play though it, but it really does get to you after a bit.

Just will have to keep plugging on, at least the small amount of cash I am playing is covering the sng losses at the moment, but at this rate I think I will do well to be in profit at the end of this month.

Hope you are all having better luck than me.

Feb Stats

Bit of an up and down sort of month. Just grinding out the stars sngs to get the bonus still. Just could not hit the firsts often enough to pull in a good month, seemed to keep getting muffed into 3rd place, but still a profitable month so can't complain. No big wins as I only played 13 MTTS. Would like to have won more over the month, but it could of been a lot worse.

Total Profit = $278.27
MTTs Played = 13
MTT Final Tables made = 2 (15.38%)
MTT in the Money = 5 (38.46%) - NB Includes FT's
MTT Total $ won = $ 94.61
MTT Profit = $19.21
SNG Played = 83
SNG Profit = $203.71
SNG ITM = 53.01%
Cash Profit/loss = $50.95
Syndi Profit/Loss -$20.60 ($19 still to come back)
Bonus Earned:- $25

Hope to do better this month, but still gonna push the sngs if I get the time.

GL at the tables
Goth

Answered my own question + New Forum

Well, it didn't take long to solve the Cash vs SNG question, 4 short sessions on laddies and a $120 loss over them, has made me think maybe it was just a good run of cards that put me $200 up and not my own play. It is amazing at one moment, you are hitting the nut hand everytime and someone is all in with you with the 2nd nut hand. A week later and its the other way round. My big hands are walking into bigger hands or I am getting nothing at all. I shall still persevere playing a little cash, but I think I am still going to concentrate on the sngs for now. Saying that, I have played 6 on stars this am and I have only got 1 3rd, but I think this is due to serious lack of concentration watching soccer am and the Man U/Fulham game while playing, as well as updating this blog and making the odd change on www.pokergoth.com.

On the subject of my website, I have decided to add a new forum to the site, hopefully to get some serious poker chat going instead of the abuse that goes on via the ladbrokes forum, which to be honest, I think I am gonna stop reading it as it is starting to get on my nerves. Follow the link to forums off the pokergoth home page and please feel free to join the forum and put your poker views across.

More good news for the site, I am hoping to shortly offer 30% rakeback to anyone who joins Mansion Poker via my links. I have been very impressed with Mansion so far, all the dealings I have had with them have been very positive, I just hope they start getting the numbers that they deserve. This is the total opposite to DTD poker, who have stated that they do the affiliate side manually !!!! ffs, I know for a fact that at least 4 poeple have joined via my links, yet they have a record of only 1, which is someone I have never heard of. They also constantly ignore my emails, I am more than a little disappointed with the site so far as I thought with the people involved the site would have been a lot more professional than they are. Lets see if they can redeem themselves in the future.

Will be down the pub later on to watch the rugby, hopefully we can turn the irish over and bring some pride back to our shores.

Also good luck to James tonight in DTD 12k G, £50, he is playing for our mini syndi, sot get in there and bring home the bacon.

Goth

SNGS Vs Cash + Quality Muffing

Most of my poker career so far has been carried out on the sng tables of various sites, starting on our spiritual home Ladbrokes, migrating on to Full Tilt and then onto my current sng home Stars, two years ago I was playing $20 on ladbrokes regularly and ticking over a small profit, this was until I had a dreaded 13 in a row not placing in the cash. In those days I used to take my winnings out on a frequent basis and spending it as and when, so I was actually playing above what my bankroll should be. Since then I have dropped down to the $10 level and with the help of the odd MTT win built my roll up to the level where I should now move back to the $20 level and not move down again. During this period of timeI did not touch the cash tables as I always felt my main style of play was a little too conservative to give long term profit like it does on the sngs. However, just lately, I have been playing more and more cash games and enjoying what I am seeing. I have been mainly playing the laddies .15 / .30 cash tables between the hours of 23:00 and 1.00 on the 10 seater tables and I have been pleasantly surprised on how successful I have been. My hourly rate at this level at the moment is almost double that of my sngs. So, I have a dilemma, what do I concentrate more on, cash or sngs with the odd MTT or drop the sngs for a while and play more cash and MTT's. Any advice would be appreciated as I am in a bit of a dilemma at the moment.

On another note we have set up a little syndi via the pokerkaz forum, where 10 of us play a $10 sng, winner takes all and agrees to play in $100 worth of tournies (min entry $25, so no 100 x $1 turbos lenny hehe) and then share out the winnings amongst the players. Last week Lexus2 won the syndi (was only a $50 one test the water) and made the final table on the Vegas $50 to give us a small profit on our first week. This week, I managed to leave my rock hat at home and jumped on the muff bandwagon, betting with shit and calling all ins with anything that added up to nine or was sooted. So when heads up with James and with a slight chip lead, when he re-raised me all in with his AJ and I looked down and saw 6 3 sooted, I just had to call. A bunch of low cards on the flop gave me the open ended str8, and everyone knew the laddies river would reward the muff. I duly took home the $100 1st prize. I could feel a tear in lennys eye as his proud padwar had turned jedi under his watchful tutorage..........Long live the muff.

I have not decided which tourney to play yet, but the $100 100K guaranteed on Mansion looks favourite at the moment, probably on Saturday night. I just hope I can do the boys proud and bring home some more beer vouchers.

You know where to download it if you haven't already ;-)

Goth.

Bad Beat or Bad Sports ??

Had a bit of a shock this week. I had noticed recently that the Bad Beat website had taken its Blogs section off, which was a shame, cos I used to use it as a link to other peoples blogs to have a nose, but I thought nothing of it. Then at the start of the week ShaneMcg put a post on the forum asking why they had gone. In true ladbrokes style, nobody from the Bad Beat site could be bothered to respond. I therefore put a post on responding to Shane stating that now the Blogs link had gone, if he sent me a list of the blogs he regularly looked at, I would stick them all up on my new iccle site so he could have a central point to link to them all, which I thought was a nice gesture on my part. But low and behold, Bad Beat decided that I must be a massive threat to their $5 million corporation and almost immediately removed my post.....WTF....are they scared of. It seems to me that the so called site for poker players is no more than a large corporate whore and all that counts to them is the $$$ fuck the players, show them the $$$, all I was trying to do was help a fellow player with a few links.....I have lost a lot of respect for Bad Beat after that. I may understand why they took it off, but some common courtesy from them to me would be all it would have took in the form of an email or comment on the forum. Small things like that make all the difference, but that seems to be beyond them.

Poker been going good, was about $200 up until this am when I got muffed for $45 on stars cash when I pushed all in on an AKx flop with AK and got instacall from QT, the J on the turn gave him what I knew was coming.

Bit depressed today as a lot of the nutz crew are all meeting up in liverpool for a days drinking, gambling and then to the casino on the night. I am getting married in april, so not doing anything big till after this. I will post more on this in the next couple of weeks.

Prob go down the pub to watch the villa vs reading lunchtime, our new signings look like they really could turn the club around. Hopefully will not get too pissed, so I can play poker later.....

Goth

www.pokergoth.com and January Stats

Well my website is up and running, please pay it a visit and let me know what you think, still got to adjust the colours and add a lot of links, but i'm a lazy git and fit it in while I am playing sit and goes, prob not a good idea as i've played 6 tonight and only got 1 2nd so far. On a little bad run on stars at the moment, i'm sure its down to lack of concentration, must work harder on this.

Still January turned out to be a good month and was over $650 up at one stage before finally settling on the stats below:-

Total Profit = $590.36
MTTs Played = 29
MTT Final Tables made = 6 (20.69%)
MTT in the Money = 10 (29%) - NB Includes FT's
MTT Total $ won = $418.38
MTT Profit = $256.48
SNG Played = 67
SNG Profit = $214.50
SNG ITM = 50.75%
Cash Profit/loss = $123.78

Happy with month overall, will settle for all this year being like that ;-)

Goth

Cash Crash

I played in the 500pp freeroll on laddies fully expecting to make it through to the monthly 50k final as the last time I played in it, the play was so so poor, I just must get through. However I did not count on finding QQ in my bb, with about 4 limpers, I put a very large raise in hoping to take the pot down there and then, they all folded except for 1, who rr me all in. I decided he had a mid pair and was gambling or hoping I was just defending my blind. I called immediately and was happy when he turned over JJ, but the J on the turn prempted a bit of laptop slapping and a couple of keys flying across the lounge........grrrrrrrrrr.

So it was back to the cash tables, with only a 2 day period to get another 500 pp, this was going to be tricky playing .15c / .30c 1 table at a time. But I perservered and I am currently up to about 300, hoping to get the rest tonight. The honeymoon period is def over after not having a losing cash session all month, 3 out of the 4 sessions I played yesterday were losing ones and having to reload twice, this could turn out to be an expensive freeoll. Highlight was having my AA cracked by 55 on a JJ5 flop, I guess it was my own fault as I saw the flop, bet big and could not lay down my AA when RR, I even put him on 55 and not a Jack and still called, what a numpty. Eventually finished the day about $55 down, my biggest losing day this month.

Hopefully tonights session will get me to the 500 points needed without too much damage to my meagre cash roll.

Goth.

Plodding Along

2007 has started very well on the old poker front. Assteady profit on the MTTs, sngs, and even cash...yes, Gothman the rock, is winning on cash....AND on Ladbrokes, wtf is going on. While other poker colleagues seem to be taking an absolute hammering by the famous laddies river, I seem to be dodging all, I guess if someones winning, others are losing. As long as I am the winning one...who cares :-)

Currently just over $600 up for the month, with the best result being a 2nd in the one of the laddies $3 high stack tournies. This turned out to be the most frustrating heads up battles I have ever had. We were about equal stacks heads up, when the player (can't remember his name) decided that even with playable blinds was gonna be "all in or fold" He added to this, a lot of word play, ie "ooh, I have 5 2, I can't lose" then went all in. How do you play against this, every raise I did with hands like QJ KT etc, he would just go all in. The only way I could beat him was to trap. I then found KK in the SB, and duly flat called and waited. He being the muppet he was, went all in. My KK stood up and I was now 850K chips to his 50K, with blinds at 6K/12k. Easy...job done. But no. 5 mins later after he went all in every hand, I had finished 2nd..........He obv could not play heads up poker so decided to gamble and it payed off, maybe his tactic was not so bad after all, but i can't say I was amused.

So no MTT wins, but 6 Final tables and 4 other cash finishes in only 23 tournies, I can't really complain.

The 300 $10 sngs to get my $150 deposit bonus on Poker Stars has slowed down. Not had a win for while, plenty of 2nds and 3rd, but the wins have dried up. Now only about $200 up on them in approx 50+ games, not really looking forward to grinding out another 250 just to get the bonus, but I probably will do it over the 6 months instead of the 3 that I had planned.

On another note, I have decided to set up my own website, it is still very much in its infancy, but I plan to try and develop it over the next few months, it is very basic as I know fck all about html at the moment, but if it takes off I might develop the site more.

If you want to have a quick peak at the initial stages it can be found at :-

www.pokergoth.com

Feel free to email any comments or requests either on here or email the address on the site itself, only had a play for a couple of hours so far, so please don't be to harsh.

I have applied for a couple of websites affiliates, hopefully these will get approved, then I will be banging on all your doors to get you too sign up via my links or ELSE ;-)

Goth

A decent start

Well the new year as ever brings new hope, new goals, dreams of a better life and more success. So far, all is well. The $10 sngs on stars are going well with an ITM of 52.8% at the moment, along with an hourly rate of $6.77. Only played 36 so far as I seem to still be getting distracted by "other" stuff.

MTTs have not been too bad, played about 18, with 3 final tables, the best finish being a 3rd in the laddies $4 19:45 high stack, with 3 other cash finishes giving me a small profit on them so far.

Also been dabbling on the low level cash tables to get the player points to get in the monthly 50k freeroll on laddies. Had 8 sessions so far and left the table in profit in all of them, never having to reload once........but I am sure this will come to an end.

Currently about $360 up for the month, so hopefully if I can keep going as consistantly as I am it could be a very good start to the year. Was only $106 up in Jan last year, so I am going to try and track my progress against this for my target.

I have changed my playing style slightly and loosened up a bit, which seems to be paying off at the moment, but I doubt I will ever be able to lose my basic "rock" style of play, but a few more moves here and there seem to be working.

Good Luck to all and may the river be kind to all this year.
Goth

Out with a whimper + Yearly Stats

Well, I failed to hit the goal, too much chasing it ended in some poor decisions being made and 3 times during month I was over $100 down, at one stage was over $180. In fact if it wasn't for a few good hands on cash tables I could have had a really bad month. As it was, I ended the month $11 down, only the 2nd time in the year I had a negative month. Overall I can't complain, I made more profit this year than last. Considering I only had one big mtt win (had 3 in 2006) it shows I must have been a lot more consistant, especially in MTTs.

Anyway, here are my stats for 2006

Overall Profit = $3602.52
MTT Played = 605
MTT Total Winnings = $6100.52
MTT Total Profit = $2091.07
MTT Final Tables = 69 (11.45%)
SNG Profit = $1310.40
Cash Profit = $186.32

Better than a kick in teeth, but not the 4k I had set my target for, i'm more pleased with making Final Tables 11.45% of the time. I haven't broke down the placings yet, but I think I do have problems getting there with a big stack, so I guess I have a lot of 6th-10th places rather than top 5 finishes, I will break them down later this week and whack um up on here.

Not sure what I am going to concentrate on this year, enjoyed playing the cash tables in december, but only cos I was winning on them, I know how easy it is too lose big pots against poor players and then go on tilt.

Have set my target for this year at $4.5k profit. Gonna hit the $10 sngs really hard in Jan on stars as I have put $600 back in to get there 25% deposit promotion, need to play 300 $10 sngs to get $150 lol, but hopefully make some profit on the way. Started off well, played 3, won two and 1 3rd. Also played 4 MTTs on laddies so far, with 1 Final table and one other cash finish, so the month has got off to a good start. Long may it continue.

It also seems that leaguenutz is no more, as no one has heard anything since the site went down before xmas. We have lost our forum on there, but Wildrick and pokerkaz have set a new one up for us to chat and talk bollocks on. I have put a link on the side of my blog, please feel free to join the site and have some fun and maybe even learn a thing or too about poker....

So Happy New to you all and good luck at the tables, except when i'm on them witih you.
Goth