If Carlsberg did dull poker blogs, they'd do this one

[Santino67]

How was your weekend Simon, saw you had a healthy stack at one point but not sure how you faired later on? Hoped I"d get to bump into you at some point but after spending the first few hours outside on table 16, then got moved to the feature table and stayed there. Unfortunately i bubbled main event in 16th but played 3 of the casino tourneys, won 1 and was 5th in another on the Sunday after that, so made up a bit for my disappointment. Hope all"s well mate

[monkeyman]

How was your weekend Simon, saw you had a healthy stack at one point but not sure how you faired later on? Hoped I"d get to bump into you at some point but after spending the first few hours outside on table 16, then got moved to the feature table and stayed there. Unfortunately i bubbled main event in 16th but played 3 of the casino tourneys, won 1 and was 5th in another on the Sunday after that, so made up a bit for my disappointment. Hope all"s well mate

Sorry for not replying sooner Grant.  This was one of my better efforts but I still didn"t manage to get into day 2. I was going to post something the day after the event, but I"ve been doing a lot of thinking about my game since then and never really got round to it.
  All things considered, this was easily my most enjoyable APAT national to date. It was played in the nicest casino I"ve been to in this country, transport-wise it was within easy reach and for once, I had a steady stream of decent cards. At one point I got lucky by getting my chips in blind on blind with AJ, being called by KK and hitting an ace on the flop. However, shortly afterwards I moved tables and lost most of my ill gotten gains by running queens into aces. I survived until 10 minutes before midnight, where with the blinds at 1000/2000 and holding about 16.5K, I was dealt pocket fives. I was about three hands from being big blind, so I shoved and got called by A 9. There was an ace on the flop and despite there being 3 hearts on the table with me holding one whilst my opponent didn"t, it was game over. For once I can"t complain about my cards as I had aces once, Kings twice, queens four times and had one major stroke of luck.
 What this tournament made me think was that I wasn"t anywhere near as good a player as I"d been kidding myself. After all, eight nationals with no day twos including one where I had as many cards as I could have asked for, the stats don"t lie. There must be something about the way I play that suits playing online, as I"d more than happily take on anyone who has ever appeared in an APAT event on the virtual tables, but I just don"t seem to cut it live. This year I"ve concentrated on playing online cash games and very nicely it has gone too, but I could either carry on plodding away as I am, knowing that over the course of a year i will be a few quid to the good, or try something to improve my game. The most obvious thing that needs to be done is to actually start using some tracking software. I"ve been making comfortable money without it, but I must be about the only person doing so, so its time to take that step and add that to my repertoire. Unfortunately, my current PC only has windows 2000, so I"ve bought one off Ebay with XP, so when that"s up and running I will download Hold Em Manager. The other thing I"m looking to do is to get back into using one of the training sites and the most likely candidate is Drag The Bar. I used to use Stox Poker and although they have now disappeared in a cloud of controversial smoke, my bottom line improved enormously by using their material, so as one or two of their instructors have switched to DTB, it seems like a logical move. What I suspect is that although I normally like to throw a few tricks into the mix, I play way too conservatively. Online this is probably Ok due to the number of hands played, but I think I"m going to have to loosen up a bit before my next live venture.
  As for next year, it looks like being mainly one of online cash grinding with the odd bit of tilting at windmills thrown in for entertainment. I may well not play any nationals, but if there are events in Coventry,Luton and The Vic, I"d be amazed if temptation didn"t get the better of me at least once.            

[monkeyman]

Here"s a fun game that anyone can play.............Over the last couple of days, I"ve been going well on Betfair"s cash tables. My usual modus operandi is to play 2 full ring tables for between 2 and 3 hours a session, with a bit of chopping and changing if my table gets tougher whilst there are softer ones at the same level. Betfair currently have a promotion where there are prizes awarded for whoever plays most raked hands in a set period. For a hand to qualify, you have to be in it when the flop is dealt. Normally I like to enter a pot with a raise or reraise, but I"m experimenting with something a bit different. I"ve dropped myself to the very lowest of the low, the /4c tables, playing 5 handed and the important part of this game is I"m calling almost everything preflop (to enable the hand to count towards the promotion). As there isn"t much in the way of 3-betting preflop at this level,I allow myself a fold if this happens or if there is a preflop shove. Otherwise whether holding 72o in the small blind or aces on the button, everything is a call.  I"m certainly not advocating this as optimal poker strategy as, some of my eloquent opponents who have witnessed me doing this have already rightly pointed out, to do so would be to become a fish,retard or clueless c***, but it is huge fun. You could even try taking it a stage further and do Annette Obrestad"s trick of covering your cards with a post-it and base your play on entirely what"s on the board,what you think your opponents have/what you"d like your opponents to think you"ve got. Go on, give it a try.    

[monkeyman]

Here"s a fun game that anyone can play.............Over the last couple of days, I"ve been going well on Betfair"s cash tables. My usual modus operandi is to play 2 full ring tables for between 2 and 3 hours a session, with a bit of chopping and changing if my table gets tougher whilst there are softer ones at the same level. Betfair currently have a promotion where there are prizes awarded for whoever plays most raked hands in a set period. For a hand to qualify, you have to be in it when the flop is dealt. Normally I like to enter a pot with a raise or reraise, but I"m experimenting with something a bit different. I"ve dropped myself to the very lowest of the low, the /4c tables, playing 5 handed and the important part of this game is I"m calling almost everything preflop (to enable the hand to count towards the promotion). As there isn"t much in the way of 3-betting preflop at this level,I allow myself a fold if this happens or if there is a preflop shove. Otherwise whether holding 72o in the small blind or aces on the button, everything is a call.  I"m certainly not advocating this as optimal poker strategy as, some of my eloquent opponents who have witnessed me doing this have already rightly pointed out, to do so would be to become a fish,retard or clueless c***, but it is huge fun. You could even try taking it a stage further and do Annette Obrestad"s trick of covering your cards with a post-it and base your play on entirely what"s on the board,what you think your opponents have/what you"d like your opponents to think you"ve got. Go on, give it a try.    

Of course the potential downside to doing this is that when you return to playing a "serious" cash session, you may still be playing like a ****end and blow most of the profits from the previous 48 hours hard work. Not that I"d do that of course. Oh no, not me.  

[Santino67]

lol, I gave this a bash 2 nights ago with 2 tables on Betfair for about 1 hour and was in profit on both tables when i quit. Was good fun but i agree that it could easily transcend into sheer stupidity when you play in tournament format, you could very well end up with a humiliating sharp exit  

[monkeyman]

Right, no more messing around, I"m now going to be taking this poker lark seriously, oh yes i am. After spending the majority of last year playing cash games of various sorts, I felt it was time to do one of my periodic reviews of what I want from the game. I made a reasonable profit last year, but I feel my bottom line was affected by a lack of discipline and a tendency to move from one game variant to another whenever I hit a bad patch. Amazingly enough, I made money without the use of any tracking software, but when Holdem manager was demonstrated to me a few weeks ago, a sunbeam poked through the clouds and light shone into the darkest recesses of my "Why do you bother playing the game" side. If 2010 was the year I played the field,2011 started with me deciding that the one I want to settle down and spend my time with is a friend I"ve known for ages. This year i will play nothing but no limit holdem.
   I suppose you could describe me as a slow learner. In June/July this year, I will have been playing poker for 6 years. I"m not Tom Dwan, I"m not a fresh-faced maths graduate who has found his knowledge has useful applications in the field of gambling, I"m a forty-something bloke with a crap job in a call-centre who would quite like to supplement his income with something he can do reasonably well and enjoys. Some of the things I"ve seen on Holdem manager in the few short weeks since I started using it have given me the tiniest glimmer of a possibility that one day I may not have to spend 37 hours a week being told I"m an idiot because a pothole reported to the council a couple of hours ago hasn"t yet been repaired or (as happened last week) telling someone in their late 80s with lung cancer that their blue badge application had been turned down.
  I"ve got a few things to post about how my game has changed recently because of the way I"m analysing things and how I"m already begiining to lean towards one site in particular as my best source of (potential) income. I"ll save that for other days; must go, I want to get at least one more 2 hour,3 table session in tonight.        

[monkeyman]

Not sure how much of a good idea this is, but I"m going to post some of my results on here. I"ve settled into a pattern of playing 3 tables at a time for sessions of around 2 hours. Profits or losses will be expressed in multiples of the big blind (bb).

Today - 5.97 Hours
           1044 hands
            Profit 2.8 x bb

[monkeyman]

I"ve settled into playing almost all of my poker on one particular site, so I thought I"d explain why I"m playing where I am.
   The first two factors I used to knock out some potential tables were (a) how easy it is to get money on and off the site and (b)standard of the opposition. In practise, these both mean than I can instantly rule out any sites which allow american players, as any provider who limits who can play there in theory cuts out a certain percentage of the better players in the world and I"m looking to make my life as easy as possible. I also like the convenience of being able to move my money on and off sites from my debit card and will not under any circumstances fax a copy of the front and back of my card to a foreign country as is sometimes requested. In addition, Party Poker can take a very long run off a very short pier, as any company who levies a service charge on every withdrawal and also takes money from inactive accounts is simply not worthy of my custom. 
  That leaves me with European focussed sites only and the next two off my list are Sky and PKR. The former is because there is almost no traffic on the full-ring tables I like to play and is way too slow compared to other sites. The speed commment also applies to the latter; whilst it may be funny to watch someone making chicken noises and giving the finger to opponents, but it holds play up and I"m looking to rattle through as many hands as possible.
  The Boss nextwork is next to be discarded. Yes, its easy to move money around, there is plenty of traffic and a high percentage of fish, but dear god is it slow moving compared to some of the competition. As I have an account with Victor Chandler from their days on Ipoker, I tried their new home on Entraction briefly and didn"t like it. I didn"t like the feel of the site and there seemed to be very few players present.
  This means that I have three networks remaining and discarded in third place is 888. The tables seem to move quicker than any other site, its easy to get funds on and off and I think it has more total fish than any other site I"ve seen. This is going to sound like a very strange thing to say, but if anything this site is just too soft at the lower levels and I can"t bring myself to sit for hours on end waiting for a hand big enough to call one of the almost-one-a-circuit   shoves with.
  The runners up spot goes to Ipoker; easy to move money around,plenty of traffic and it runs at a decent speed. The skin I currently use is Winner Poker and I would have no problem making this my long term home. However, there are reasons why this isn"t so.........
  This leaves me with Ongame and yes, the skin I"m spending my time on at the moment is Betfair. On the sites independent home I used to do OK for myself in their tournaments and SNGs, but cash play was not a possibility as there seemed to be a tiny pool of players. All the same reasons about why I like Ipoker also apply to Ongame, but the deciding factor is that I have a 40% rakeback deal with Betfair. By my calculations this is the equivalent of a  3bb per 100 hands profit headstart on any other site, so I"d need a pretty convincing argument to play elsewhere.

So, onto tonights results and it doesn"t make pretty reading. I played badly, ran good hands into slightly better hands and if it could go wrong it did. Ho hum, I knew trying to reteach myself how to play the game wasn"t going to be easy and I"ll admit, I"m a losing player at the moment. However, I am learning loads with every session and that is very important to me.

Minutes played  - 182.8
Hands              - 551
Loss                -  191 x bb              

           

[monkeyman]

After a full day"s work, a union branch executive meeting and a trip to the gym, here I am again ready for more punishment.
   Anyone care to hazard a guess at, until close of play last night,  what my 2 biggest loss making hands were? Results later

[Santino67]

9/J hit a straight and beaten by a bigger straight and 2 pair of and beaten by a set of 2"s??? Random as hell but thought I"d give it a bash Simon

[monkeyman]

9/J hit a straight and beaten by a bigger straight and 2 pair of and beaten by a set of 2"s??? Random as hell but thought I"d give it a bash Simon

I probably didn"t word my question very well. What I meant was which 2 combination (s) of starting cards (e.g 72o,pocket aces etc) has proved most expensive? To add insult to injury, the top of my losers list lost me another buy-in 10 minutes into tonight"s session.

[Santino67]

9/J hit a straight and beaten by a bigger straight and 2 pair of and beaten by a set of 2"s??? Random as hell but thought I"d give it a bash Simon

I probably didn"t word my question very well. What I meant was which 2 combination (s) of starting cards (e.g 72o,pocket aces etc) has proved most expensive? To add insult to injury, the top of my losers list lost me another buy-in 10 minutes into tonight"s session.

right then.........gonna go for definitely JJ   Hate them lol and AQ

[monkeyman]

And the answer is....................   In first place before starting tonight was AK offsuit. In second place was AK suited.
   10 minutes into tonight"s session I lost a buy-in with AKo v KJo,repeated the exact same trick an hour later, then a few minutes before I wrapped the session I had aces cracked by, you"ve guessed it, KJo. FML. At least I played well tonight and can"t think of any serious mistakes. If only Betfair"s dealers weren"t such a bunch of w*****s.

Results tonight

186.8 minutes played
477 hands
loss - 182xbb  

Its a good job I don"t own a cat as it would get a damn good kicking if I complete the hat-trick of rank bad sessions tomorrow. Betfair, if you are listening, I"ve said nice things about you and I think you owe me. Do you really want me to go back to Ipoker? You know what you"ve got to do.    

[monkeyman]

Deep breath, count to ten............  I suppose if I really am going to take my cash play seriously I going to have to learn to live with spells like this. Another night, another session of car crash poker. Buy-in number one vansihed when I ran Queens into Kings (all-in preflop),although to be perfectly honest I shoud have got away from that one. Buy in numbers two and three went with these little gems, which I"ve had to watch again on Holdem Manager"s hand replayer just to prove to myself the sheer lucky muppetry of my opponents.

1) I"m in the big blind with pocket queens. UTG+1 limps as does someone in midtable and the cut-off. The small blind makes up, so I raise 6 x bb. UTG+1 calls, as does mid table and cutoff. The flop is   :: tc. I make a pot-sized bet, get called by UTG+1 whilst the others fold. The turn is  . I guess that there is a chance my opponent is slow playing a monster, but there"s also quite a big chance he"s chasing some weak draw or other, so i put him all in. He calls and flips  :: to give him straight and flush draws and needless to say, the river is ac to complete his straight. Anyone else out there regularly play  :: from UTG+1?
2) I"m in seat 6 with Aces. The player to my right limps, I raise 3xbb, the cut-off calls as does the limper. The flop is  ks  qs . The limper checks, I bet three quarters of the pot,cut off calls and limper folds. The turn is  ::, so as I believe that won"t have changed anything, i put in another three-quarter pot size bet,my opponent effectively raises although he"s all in and I don"t need much at all to call him which i do. He flips ts js and the river is   for the straight. I spontaneously develop Tourettes and type a somewhat less than complimentary message in the chat box

Glutton for punishment that I am, I"ll probably be back for more punishment tomorrow (If you"re on Betfair, come looking for Simonkey40, wait until I raise, shove all in with your 7 2o and I will call but you will outdraw me). It won"t take much to send me scurrying back to Ipoker for a while.

For what its worth, tonights results are:
451 hands
loss 309 x bb

Betfair, why me? I"ve been so nice to you recently.

[monkeyman]

Think I"ll have a slight change of plan tonight. I have been tempted to throw my toys out of the pram,stick two fingers up at Betfair and try Ipoker again, but I"ll give our sponsors another. They can"t be mean to me again can they? What I have noticed is that when things have gone badly over the last few days, I"ve been player even tighter than my usual tight self, so I"m going to restrict myself to playing 2 tables tonight. Hopefully, this will mean I think about each table more and as a result will be more actively looking for spots to raise. Maybe its just a sign of desparation. We"ll see.