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

[monkeyman]

Time for a little experiment. I normally restrict myself to deepstacks as far as possible and normally avoid crapshoots like the plague. However, when I played the freeroll on Pokerstars (note to sponsors - see, another mention) i decided upon a policy of playing substantially quicker than normal and it went pretty well. So, I"ll give it another go. Starting small, I"ve enrolled in a tournament (on Eurobet) which I normally wouldn"t give a second thought to as it only has 1500 chips/10 minute blinds. The idea is to see how I get on by playing a devil-may-care, all guns blazing style. Report to follow.      

What a complete waste of time that was. I moved tables 7 times in the first three levels and that was that.
   
Immediately after getting knocked out, i enrolled in a deepstack on Sky and who should I find to my right but TK. We"re not worthy!

[monkeyman]

Not that I"m boasting or anything but in reaching the final table I outlasted our chairman. I am also not going to mention that I was knocked out on a 3-way all in when I held the best hand before the chips flew to the middle. Oh no.

[monkeyman]

If only every week was as consistent as this one. My last three tournaments have seen me finish 5th of 36 in a Sky deepstack, 4th of 60ish in another Sky deepstack then 2nd of 91 in a Ladbrokes highstack (5000 chips/20 minute blinds). With just two Pokerstars freerolls left to play before we reach February, my profit for January has reached 70-80 times my average buy in. I think that strongly vindicates my decision to concentrate solely on tournament play and also gives me a nice cushion to allow me a few shots a bit higher than my current buy-in. I may yet take a pop at the $55 GSOP stud event on Eurobet on 6th February, some of the better events on Sky are definite candidates and I will  probably investigate the $20 and $30 deepstacks on Rileys/Pacific/Littlewoods. Any other deepstack suggestions welcome.
   

[monkeyman]

I"ve just bust out of tonight"s Pokerstars freeroll and what a strange little tournament it was. For the first five minutes I was the only active player at my table, so I raised every hand. When a player did appear, I kept raising every hand, he stayed long enough to insult me then I knocked in out. A third player then appeared to my righ and to cut a long story short, after a bit of back and forth between us, I was knocked out when my A4 shove was called by JJ. I may have to find a real tournament to play in now.  

[monkeyman]

I really will have to stop posting on here when I"m doing well, because something stupid inevitably happens soon after. I entered a $22 tourney on Betfair which had a guarantee of $330 but only attracted 13 entrants and paid to 3rd place. With 4 players left, I was 2nd, a long way ahead of 3rd and flopped an ace high straight. Needless to say, the chip leader, who had been dealt QJ, found runner/runner Jacks to give him four of a kind. F***.

[monkeyman]

In a last minute change of plan I decided to have another sunday night at Rileys rather than play a further "Stars freeroll. Only 8 runners tonight as some of the regulars were at Dusk Til Dawn and I managed 2nd place. I think I"m getting used to this live poker malarkey.

[monkeyman]

So the first month of the year is out of the way and its time for reflection. January was a good month for me. My decision to concentrate on playing nothing but tournaments and to give up Omaha seems to have paid dividends. It wasn"t so much that the profit made was substantially higher than I"d anticipated, but this appears to have come about because a leek has been eliminated. No longer do I simply join a tournament simply because I"m bored and it fills a few  minutes when I can"t be bothered to find something else to do . This means (a) I"m not wasting money on tournaments I have no interest in and (b) because I"m concentrating more when I"m playing, my results have been more consistant than before.
   I"ve started playing at my local Rileys on a sunday night and that is also going well, with a 2nd and 3rd place from three attempts. I"m not daft enough to think this means I"ve suddenly become an ace live player, the number and overall quality of opposition isn"t in the same parish as an APAT national, but the main object of the exercise is to gain experience and try and work out if there are any obvious weaknesses I can eliminate. I"ve already found that there was an almighty tell I was giving off about the strength of my hand after I"ve taken a look at my cards and as a result, I think this has been eliminated. I"m sure there are plenty more creases to be ironed out in the weeks to come.
  Looking further ahead and I"m definitely going to have a go at one or two slightly higher buy-in events. The £200 GUKPT "Club" tournaments are definitely on my radar, particularly as there is one at Great Yarmouth meaning I won"t have to worry about booking a hotel or the cost of petrol. I"ve got no intention of going to Vegas this year, I don"t do satellites and unless I have a few really big results, £1000 for a GUKPT main event seat will remain beyond my reach for quite some time. However, there are a couple of events in the GUKPT summer series (Luton and Thanet) which could potentially lure me in if things continue on an upwards curve. The UKIPT events at Coventry and Nottingham also find their way onto the wishlist in the event of things going really well.
 This is going to be a good year.        

[monkeyman]

Doesn"t look like I"ll be playing that stud event on Eurobet at the weekend after all as I"ve not had a good start to the month. Tonight I got knocked out of the regular event on VCbet by getting all my chips in preflop with aces and losing, then I went on to bubble a £5.50 deepstack on sky. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  

[monkeyman]

Hurrah and Huzzah! My first cash of the month, at the fifth attempt, and I"m back in profit. Onwards, ever onwards.

[monkeyman]

I try not to use sweeping generalisations, but poker players tend to be much better at boasting about their successes than giving a balanced view of their results. As a result, a significant number of poker-related blogs seem to be little more than a procession of boasts about good results mixed in with a heck of a lot of whinging about bad beats. How many blogs contain descriptions of occasions when the writers have played like idiots? I"m as guilty as anyone of falling prey to boast-about-the-good-times-blame-someone/something-else-for-the-bad-times syndrome, so I think I should tell you that today I f***ed-up.
 Not content with getting knocked out of 2 fish-level hold"em tournaments by chasing draws and playing iffy cards out of position with no clear purpose behind my "moves", I decided to take a look at the $54 GSOP stud event on Eurobet. I"ve mentioned this tournament before as being a possible target, but posted a few days ago that, as I was in a downswing, the sensible thing to do was to avoid it so I didn"t undo my recent good work. With two minutes to go before the event started, I noticed that as there was a $25000 guarantee and about 200 players, there was a huge overlay. My sensible head was in for repair, so I hurriedly deposited the necessary funds in my account and signed-up. I eventually finished 142nd of 232 players. I could mention that I had very few playable hands, but that is only part of the tale. All I can say is that if anyone was able to list all the things that could be done badly in a stud tournament, I committed all those crimes. I don"t think I"ve ever played the game worse.
 Thankfully, as I"ve mentioned previously, January was a very, very good month and the profit I made covers tonight"s aberation several times over. However, I am annoyed with myself that on a day when I"d played my favourite poker variant extremely badly, I committed an inadvisably-high proportion of my bankroll to a tournament of a variant I hadn"t played in months. Chris Ferguson I aint.
 There you are then, warts and all, a blog entry about a f***-up. I hope I don"t have to write that a second time.

[monkeyman]

Record so far this month = 10 tournaments played, 2 final tables/cashes. If I"d have stuck to playing within my current buy-in range I"d have been in profit but I am not.

[monkeyman]

Normal service resumed as I"m back in profit for the month courtesy of a 3rd place finish in a 68 runner stud event on "Stars.
  Yesterday I checked my "Stars tournament record for the year and it made interesting reading. So far this year, I"ve played 6 full-table NLH competitions on that site with fields of between 1000 and 5205. My best result is 67th and the worst 246th. Clearly I"m doing something right as I"m going deep on most occasions, but my bottom line isn"t as good as it should be as the real profits come from getting to the final couple of tables. The odd thing is that most of these tournaments have seen my pick up loads of pots in the early stages to put me up with the leaders, slow down a big, then pick the pace up again as the bubble approaches. I have discovered a big fault in my game which needs to be rectified if I"m to win big tournaments even at this lowly level. In short, I have a tendency to get a bit cocky. In all the 6 games under examination, after the bubble has burst I"ve won a decent pot with a good play, put myself in a strong position on my table only to blow a significant proportion of my stack on the very next hand by playing a marginal hand out of position assuming my opponents will let me get away with anything because of the scary size of my chipstack. Things don"t pan out like that and I just chuck away a lot of the good work I"ve spent several hours building up. Hopefully, now that I"ve identified that particular fault (oh boy, have I found a lot of flaws in my game so far this year) the next time I"m in the same position, I"ll take one of games down and my bankroll will instantly be able to sustain a few attempts at higher buy-in levels.

[monkeyman]

February continues to be a trial of strength. Its not just that I"m not winning my races but I"m receiving bad beats galore. Yesterday on Full Tilt I was 2nd in a 500ish runner field without too many eliminations to go before the bubble burst, then twice in the space of a circuit got my chips in ahead, only to see my opponents hit runner/runner straights. Thank you and goodbye. Tonight I played in Sky"s £16.50 deepstack and saw my stack decimated when my AA was cracked by AK. Grrrrrrr.Hopefully the poker gods will realise what tossers they"ve been in the last few weeks and will finally give me a break.
  Changing tack completely, I"ve just registered for the ballot to get a ticket for the free Rage Against The Machine gig at Finsbury Park. As part of the registration process I had to upload a photo of myself. Photos of me are a rarity and I could only find one picture stored on my computer. Why is that relavent ot this blog? Well, that solitary picture was of me playing Stud at The Vic. I"m sure that says something significant.    

[monkeyman]

  Changing tack completely, I"ve just registered for the ballot to get a ticket for the free Rage Against The Machine gig at Finsbury Park. As part of the registration process I had to upload a photo of myself. Photos of me are a rarity and I could only find one picture stored on my computer. Why is that relavent ot this blog? Well, that solitary picture was of me playing Stud at The Vic. I"m sure that says something significant.    

The miserable sods rejected that one. Something to do with my hands partly obscuring my face apparently. Thought that would have been a bonus. Attempt number 2 is a shot of me at the Scottish Open in season 2. If that gets rejected, I"ll have to start searching through some of my drunken friday night out pictures on Facebook. Please no.  

[monkeyman]

Jeeze, this goes from bad to worse. There"s precious little point in giving a breakdown of my play in the last couple of days, suffice to say that if you can think of a ridiculous bad beat, I"ve been on the receiving end of it. Thankfully, this being a sunday, I"ve got the prospect of a visit to Rileys tonight to break things up. I also think I need to take a break from hold"em tournaments for a bit, as if my current run continues there is every chance that my neighbours will call the police because I"ve screamed "FFS" at the top of my voice before launching my monitor through the window.
 My diversion of choice is to play some cash stud. Both last night and already this morning I"ve been playing $1/$2 stud hi/lo on Pokerstars. Most non stud players assume that as the pot is split in hi/lo that it is (a) easier to play and (b) there is less variance than the high only version. Nothing could be further from the truth. In my opinion hi/lo is a much more complex game which beginners struggle for longer to come to terms with and gives more opportunity to bluff players off pots. Crucially, there are more players floating around on the cash tables who play the game badly (I"m often one of them) so the bottom line is there is more money to be made in hi/lo than hi only. Thankfully, I"m ahead on my cash play so far, so maybe I can hold onto what little there is of my sanity for a little longer.
  Incidently, if anyone reading this is unfortunate enough to be acquainted with any of the former directors/partners of Wolstenholmes Solicitors who had offices in Birmingham and Manchester, please feel free to tell them "I hate your guts you snivelling piece of worthless s***" from me. This firm, who just before christmas were struck-off by the law society, are the reason why the sale of my flat, which was agreed at the end of October/beginning of November has yet to be completed. I hope that one day they too will have to spend several months dealing with stress levels which are high enough to floor an elephant. B******s.