“I raise”

The world is all correct again.

Short session lastnight and slightly longer session tonight and things are back how they should be.

$220 profit Weds, and $188 tonight.

As a side note, Pokerstars have just introduced HORSE* single table tournaments. If any of you are proficient at multiple varients of poker, specifically stud varients, then these are currently easy money. All the fish are "having a go" because they are new. I’ve played three, finishing 1st 2nd 1st, accounting for at least $200 of the last 2 days winnings.

*HORSE - Round of each… Hold em, Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, Stud, Stud 8/b

Ouch, stop it. Please, the fish are eating me raw and kicking.

This felt like my worst weekend ever of poker. I couldn’t win a thing. I ran at about -30% ROI in the STT’s (finishing 2/1/0/13 !!! ) and played a ton of MTT’s failing to cash in a single game, despite bubbling in a 20/180 when I was in the top 3 stacks (don’t ask!), and finishing 20 spots within the money in two 700+ player fields. Puke. I couldn’t win a coinflip if my life depended on it. I was also taking beat after beat after beat, literally. In the same minute I lost with QQ v JJ after we got it all in on an 8 high flop, turn J, and with AA v KK after we got it all in on a Q high flop, turn K. A few minutes later I went out of an MTT on the 4th hand, with KK v 99, all in pre-flop. Yikes, gimme a break!

My notes from Sunday are hilarious, they gradually get more and more obscene finally saying "TILT!!! ALL THESE GAY COCK MONKEYS CAN FOAD!" Ahem, I’m not normally so foul mouthed.

Anyways, I’m at work now, so don’t have the exact figures, however it was approx…

Out $900 / In $400

In reality it’s genuinely not much of a loss, I made a similar defecit last weekend, however it didn’t really affect me as it was all so quick and in NL Cash, where I was half expecting it. However this weekend, I was playing MY game, I was playing it well, and I was playing a LOT. I just don’t expect to lose so badly. Oh well, variance happens, bite me. I feel like saying to the fish, Teddy KGB stylee *dodgy russian accent* "It was all your money anyway, from last time I stick it in you" */dodgy russian accent*

So where to from here? Well I need to get back into winning ways this week, so basically play the same as before and let the maths do the rest. People (family/friends) still seem to struggle with the skill concept and the basic maths of poker. I’m not flipping coins for cash, you never hear of pro-coin flippers! If someone offered to flip coins, yet one side of the coin had an 80% advantage… well now you’re talking, I’ll have that side please. Which is all well and good, but obviously the other side of the coin wins sometimes, and rarer still it will win consecutively, now if you’re being particularly unlucky, you could have a succession of losing scenarios, especially when you have to win maybe 2 or 3 of these "coinflips" per game to make the money. So, there you are, that’s why I lost this weekend. Touch wood ( fnirk!), the maths and my hands will hold up for the rest of this week.

The Bad

Well I decided to give 200NL 6 max cash games a try. It is such a different game to tournament poker it really made my head hurt. It also cost me $450 to discover I suck disgustingly at "real" poker, i.e. deep stack, post flop, hand reading poker. Sooo, much to the dismay of all the sharks at 200NL, I’m going back to donkaments for the time being. I know, cash games are where the serious money is at, but I’m just far too busy at the moment to be able to start seriously studying a new format of poker and to take  a couple of months of losing or breakeven poker.

The Ugly

My sick heater at tournaments, both MTT’s and STT’s, seems to have gone cold over the last couple of days. Sunday on my return to Donkaments I started well, then proceeded a losing streak which saw me break even. Tonight, same thing again, except I managed to turn a $200 profit into a $200 loss. Bah. I also played the Stars $215, million gtd on Sunday and managed to bubble, losing a 20k pot to a rivered 3 outer. Puke. On the plus side I did win the $50 lastlonger sidebet with Brass.

The Good

Ok, despite my moaning it isn’t all doom and gloom. Last month was a personal record $6k profit, and this month, despite my disgusting weekend, I’m still $4k in the black. So all is good. I made a big chunk withdrawal from my poker account today and will be buying a new car at the weekend. I’ll be posting a photo on the blog, probably something cheesy like me sat on the bonnet with a pack of cards saying thank you to all the fish. heh.

Got back from my 2nd interview an hour ago, and have just had a phonecall offering me the job! I start in 4 weeks. Hurrah.

In other news, congrats to the man with the plan from the Phillipines, Gensui, who just took down the $10 re-buy for a massive $14k!

Wow, big score lastnight. I took 2nd place in the $55 NL MTT for $3,275!

420+ runners, after being dangerously short stacked on the bubble, I managed to double up and then ran up a huge stack going into the final table with a massive chip lead. Managed to avoid trouble on the final table but ended up going into heads up with 200k v 450k, I got seriously owned heads up, I played really aggressive and the guy just kept shoving his chips in. I played pretty poorly and should have put the breaks on and picked a spot to double, but I stupidly kept hammering away. But hohum. I can’t complain at the money for 2nd at all.

I also qualified for the Sunday Million $ tournament again, on my first attempt, despite me saying I wouldn’t be playing the double shootouts anymore.

Results for the night…

OUT $187 / IN $3365 (Plus a $215 seat in the Sunday tourney)

For those of you who are interested in viewing any of the hands from this tournament I’ve added the interesting / key hands on a seperate page which can be found on this link… http://andiell.blogsome.com/key-interesting-hands-from-the-55-nl-mtt-2nd-place/

Quick update. Last night was very strange. I played a set of 4 x $33’s and busted in sick fashion on all of them, I also played a $39 satt, which top 10 qualified, I busted 14th. Some what pissed off I was going to call it a night, however I decided to join a friend playing the $22 PL MTT, and guess what, I won it! $702 thankyou.

So last night I went from a $171 loss, to a $509 profit.

In other news, I’ve been asked back for a 2nd interview for that job!

Well not quite.

Last week I played hardly any poker, I’m almost proud of myself. I played a handfull of EPT (European Poker Tour) qualifiers and failed miserably, and then decided to qualify for the Stars Sunday Million $ tournament, which went a little better, qualified on 1st attempt. I then found out I couldn’t play the tourney due to an early Monday start at work (the tourney starts at 9pm and doesn’t finish till about 5/6am, optomistic I know  ).

Sooo… this weekend I was staying in, getting drunk, eating junk food and playing poker.

I ran…. "ok"… my STT’s are still very strong, but I’m literally dumping money in the multi table tourneys. I played 5 MTT’s at the weekend and didn’t make it past the first break in one, hah. In the $55 PL tourney on Friday I managed to be tourney chip leader, virtually tripling up, and go bust within level 1, that’s 10 min’s to earn 4500 chips and lose 4500 chips with the blinds at 10/20 in a pot limit game! Yes I was impressed too. I reckon I probably need to re-asses my early game strategy in big tourneys.

Well the figures from this weekend are pretty un-impressive…

Out $1056 / In $1359

However I did run 4/6/4/13 in the stt’s, which is pretty damn good. If I take away the MTT buy-ins I probably ran at about a 40% roi. (Yeah I have all this data recorded but it means opening spreadsheets etc..). On the plus side, $215 of the entries were T$’s from the Sunday tourney I couldn’t play in, effectively making my cashbalance profit $518 for the weekend.

Anyways, I’m trying to think of something interesting to say, but my weekend wasn’t that interesting at all, I was grinding it out and the figures reflect it.

It has been requested that I post up some hand histories, explaining my plays, so I’ll look for a couple of interesting hands tonight and post them up with my thought process tomorrow.

Wow, crazyness at the weekend, Friday night latenight home game poker session. Very very drunk, played two tournaments with some buddies, I finished 2nd in both, I won’t bore anyone with the badbeats fom the heads up games .

Saturday we went to Unity day in Hyde Park, as per usual we started saying we’ll have a chilled out day, then ended up going on a mad bender, we left Unity day at about 2am and ended up going to see 808 State at the West Indian Centre, mucho techno fun, mucho messy. Left there at 8am somewhat worse for wear, fell asleep on my sofa for a whole hour, and then went off to meet some friends at Headingly to watch England v Pakistan in the test match. It would be fair to say that I’m not the worlds biggest cricket fan, and given my lack of sleep and mental state of mind it was a tough day, but sunshine and a day’s drinking probably did me some good.

Monday, I sleep. And play a little poker. Today I sleep some more, and play a bit more poker. The good news is I’m runnning stupidly hot in the stt’s. I was going to post up my notes from todays game but they’re pretty lengthy and fairly dull, the main info is….

Out $561 / in $1010

I really feel I’m playing my A game at the moment and am really proud of some of the plays I made today, I’m categorising my opponents much more speedily and choosing the right people and the right spots to make moves etc.

In other news, I have a job interview on Thursday for an account management position with a chemicals company in Leeds, wish me luck!

I was getting a bit concerned at the weekend that the variance monster was ready to pounce, Friday I played a ton of STT’s and made a small profit of $180, the money is fine, but it was only rescued by a late run of 1st’s and I felt I was playing and running badly. Sunday was essentially the same thing, except I played fewer games and registered a $200 loss, my first 3 figure+ loss in over 3 weeks, it was pretty sick, I was getting 2 outered and 3 outered every other hand.

Anyways, Monday, I felt fresh and confident so sat down for what I planned as a heavy session of beers and grinding in the STT’s. My first set of 3 x $33’s went: 4th, 5th, 2nd, acceptable. As these were running I joined the $55 PL MTT and the $3 re-buy donkament, by the time the STT’s had fininshed I was running v.good in both the MTT’s so figured I would just focus on them. Good plan!

I creamed the $55 MTT after building a big stack early as a direct result of being hit in the face by the deck, I then abused the bubble to the point of ridiculousness. The final table was actually hard work and I nearly busted at one point but caught a lucky river card to stay in, after that I got heads up with a guy I hadn’t even noticed at the final table he had been so quiet. Anyways, 1st hand….

Andiell: "you wanna do a chop?"

MrQuiet "what are the figures, how long it take?"

Andiell: "50/50 we keep $100 on the table to play for, takes 5 mins"

MrQuiet: "nah lets play"

Now had the stacks been deeper, I wouldn’t have offered the split, this guy had been completely anonymous at the final table and sneaked his way here, I was confident my aggression would win, but with the stacks at 70k (me) v 60k, and blinds 2/4k I felt that locking up the extra money was more important, one unlucky pot and I was done.

5 mins later, the stacks were, approx 110k me v 20k, I had won every hand unshown.

Andiell "No offense but you should have taken that split"

MrQuiet "Yeah I know"

Final result… 1st place for $1575

The re-buy donkament was less successfull, I ran really deep in a huge field, with a stack of over 300k at one point, but ended up busting in about 40th place with KK v AA. I made a small profit on this tourney after I subtracted my 16 (!!) re-buys.

So what do I do with my sinful winnings? Well yesterday I went to Ikea…. word to the wise, Ikea during the school holidays is just a bad idea! At Ikea I bought some Swedish cheese, and Swedish Dill chips, as you do (oh and some bookcases too). Rock n roll lifestyle folks, today I’ll be trashing a room, no literally, as I have to assemble the damn things!

P.S. If anyone actually reads this, please do leave a comment, I’m not sure if I’m talking to myself at the moment.

P.P.S Does anyone know how I can change the image at the top of this page?!?!