“I raise”

… to admit I played in a Stars $10 180 man tourney tonight.

In my defense Im drunk and didn’t want to play anything serious, just some cheapo mtt’s.

Anyways, I obviously won it. Ship those fishes money in my direction, $540 thankyou.

Yep I’m still here.

I’ve spent/lost/won a fair bit of money in the last month, ermm, but I’ve played sooo little poker!

I’ve realised recently I don’t actually enjoy the game that much and I only play for money. Which is terrible!

Anyways, in my heart of hearts I know I still love poker, so I will start playing seriously soon, I just need a kick up the arse (like needing money ). Was chatting to a work colleague and explaining about me and poker, and my basic assumption was, "if you need money, I can show you an easy way of earning other peoples"

I’m actually quite inspired recently by an online poker forum friend Gregor (yes he has a blog). I remember discussing poker hands with him a few months back, and now he’s playing the highest stakes NL cash available and I’m almost scared to give my suggestions… serious… read his blog, the guy is a cut above your average player in poker terms.

However… and I hope he doesn’t mind me talking about this… well I guess if he does you’ll never know because it will be deleted…. What is he going to do with his life? In terms of internet poker he has reached the pinicle we all aspire to, he is succesfully playing the $25/50 game and making in excess of $20k per month… however he is 21 y/o, and has never worked for a living. I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to point out the shortfallings in this existence. Hmm, Gregor…. I’m exeptionally jealous, but in the same sense I’m not jealous of the very difficult life decisions you’re going to have to make in the next few months.

Hands up who wants to go pro? (raises a hand in trepadation….)

Including the cash on Friday I’m up over $1k for the last 4 days, and have hardly played at all. Yey, Andiell 1 Variance/drunken poker 0 (well probably a score draw).

I’m actually playing pretty well at the moment and enjoying my poker again, I would actually attribute this to cutting down my tables. I’ve been 6 tabling a lot recently and I was missing a lot my edges. Guess I’ll have to mess about and see how many tables I feel are optimal.

Stupid poker email of the week…..

 From: andiell@gmail.com
Sent: 2006/11/07 14:30:56
To: support@pokerstars.com
Subject: Chat

>Hi Guys,
>
>I have this really weird thing where I can’t see my own chat, it’s all
>starred like ****, yet other people can read what I say. Ermm any idea
why?
>
>Thanks
>
>Andiell

 

On 11/7/06, PokerStars Support <support@pokerstars.com > wrote:

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your email.

It appears that you inadvertently blocked your own chat. To un-block
your chat, right click on your image while sitting at one of our
tables and click on "Block Chat" (it should have a check mark if it is
activated).

If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

Regards,

Dimitri
PokerStars Support Team

 

Haha thanks Dimiti.

*note to self: don’t click around when drinking*

Took 12th place in the $10 re-buy on Friday night for $528. Slightly frustrating, 1st place was $16,000 and I was chip leader when we went down to 2 tables, then I went stupidly card dead for about 30mins (which is an absolute age in online poker) then imploded making a couple of suicidal moves through tiredness (it was 4am and we’d been playing for 6 hours).

Anyways, I can’t grumble. It’s nice to have made a significant cash and to run deep in a huge tournament and has improved my confidence again. So fingers crossed I’m back on track now.

Yeah I’m in like a $2k downswing and it’s really not nice, I’m pretty much break even over the last couple of weeks which is almost more frustrating than losing. On top of this while changing jobs I went like 6/7 weeks without a pay packet, so basically cained it on my bankroll and blew like $3k or $4k on living like a lord with a bottomless wallet and an endless requirement for getting wasted. (So much for my new healthy lifestyle with the new job!). So I’m now sat here trying to work out how I won all that money playing cards, and how I can do it all again. Bugger. Between August and October my withdrawals from my Pokerstars account equal just over $9k…. !!!! WTF! What. Have. I. Been. Doing. ?!?! Ermm probably best if I don’t answer that.

So now what? Well I dropped down levels and started paying attention, I’ve stopped "craving" the big score, because it doesn’t work, I win big when I play comfortable, and I’m gonna relax with my game. I’ve reviewed some of my games and I’ve basically been pushing the big red "implode" button way too hard in my games, if I spot a 0.05% edge I’m all-in… yeah the maths work, but it’s a grim way to play.

Ermm anyways.. not really sure what this post is about, just wanted to update folks on where I am. I’m still here, my bankroll got raped by…. me. And I’m gonna start playing properly again soon.