Following the disappointment of missing out on the Philippines package recently, there have been a couple more setbacks in my plans to play more live poker this year. Firstly, WongaMan found this promotion on this random euro site that involved getting together a team of four players to play series of online tournaments, where points would be awarded based on your position in them, and the eventual winning team would get a $60k package to the WSOP. This seemed like a great opportunity because the players on this site were apparently terrible (stakes rarely ran above 1/2), the competition was barely promoted anywhere (I couldn't even find information about it on the internet, you had to download the client and find out through there, but this was also a challenge), and the player pool on the site seemed so small that there would be a big overlay. As well as this our team was going to be WongaMan, BrotherMuzone, MrNicess and myself, which is a team that could only be challenged by perhaps Durrrr, Ivey, Antonius and Galfond.
As it turned out, the promotion was a bit too good to be true because they first changed some of the rules and postponed it for a week, and then postponed it again with no clues as to when or if it will start. I'm assuming they realised not enough people entered to make it profitable so pulled the plug completely. A similar situation has happened with the Victory Poker contest that I mentioned in a previous blog. Mark and the other contestants were told they would be flying out sometime in February and I was starting to get skeptical about it as the month was getting closer and closer with no definite dates put in place. Apparently there was trouble finding a week or whatever that everyone was free for. Oh wow what shocker, 30 odd people weren't free at the same time. Remember most of these people are not going to be professional poker players, they are people with jobs that can't just go anywhere at the drop of a hat and and will need notice. So they have now delayed the competition, also not giving the contestants any solid clues as to when it may happen. It wouldn't surprise me if it just gets cancelled altogether....obviously after the site has changed the plans another five times and made a load more promises that they can't fulfill. Oops, got a bit ranty there.
Not sure if it is just coincidental that I have been affected by very poor management by poker companies within a short space of time of whether it's a sign that a lot of them are badly run, or simply struggling at the moment. Maybe I'm overreacting a bit and expect too much from these companies whom you entrust with handling large sums of money. Though I remember recently when PKR forgot to put a password on Facebook for a freeroll and all the freeroll regs were absolutely furious that they couldn't have this particular opportunity to win free money at no risk. This resulted in a very long thread where some of the pkr staff apologised and promised to try to not let it happen again. I think this is a tad more forgivable than the cases I have described.
Poker has been frustrating this week. Not for running bad reasons, but because my internet connection has been shoddy all week (well, all year so far really). I haven't even tried phoning Virgin yet because a forum thread on the Virgin Media website warns you that you just get put through to a foreign call centre (uh oh racist/xenophobe alert) where they have a script about restarting your computer/modem/wireless router which they struggle to deviate from despite your insistence you have done these things and other people in your area are having the same problem. I went into the Virgin Media shop down the road and obviously the assistant knew nothing of a problem with internet speeds locally. I intended to get two internet connections a while ago to hopefully eliminate costly disconnections but never got round to it so I may just end up signing up with another ISP. Even if this costs me say £200 a year, I'm sure it costs me more than this every year from pots I lose when I disconnect. I'm not sure if it's difficult to set up two connections where the secondary one automatically kicks in when the primary one goes down, I can't imagine it's that hard.
Off to Manchester to play GUKPT this week for a £500 freezeout on Tuesday and then the £1000 main event at the weekend. Actually looking forward to playing live poker for once, (maybe because I know I can't disconnect in the middle of a hand) so hopefully this leads to some live run good!
Sunday 23 January 2011
Tuesday 18 January 2011
PKR has a sense of humour
I forgot to mention when I lost out on the $5k APT package I did get $200 for coming 2nd. Yepee. PKR sent me an email to remind me of this.
Monday 17 January 2011
Tilt Blog
Had a rubbish day at cash tables today which was compounded by some very tilting tournament results. Did a $162 tournament on PKR where I came 6th (top 5 paid) and then came 2nd in a $215 satellite to APT Philippines (obviously only first got the $5k package). I went into hu with a 3:1 chip disadvantage and after a few hands with my opponent I realised I simply needed to not get unlucky to win. The guy didn't even know how to bet. He either min-bet, which was draws, or overbet, which was value hands and missed draws. He was also open shoving frequently from the button where we were up to 40bbs deep. Irritatingly, this strategy was actually decent on his part vs me because it didn't allow me to keep pots small with marginal hands and because I never actually had a nutted hand I had to make really difficult hero calls. I also didn't want to flip or really take 60/40s for $5k with such a bad player.
I managed to get to even stacks at one point before I made what I think is a decent call to one of his overbets and he rivered the trips this time (2 outer obv). From then on he just shoved over most of my button opens and then the final hand I shoved 11bbs from the button with J7s, he snapped with K4s and I lost. I had hoped 2011 might be the year where I could do something in tournaments but the signs arn't very promising.
Gonna go and cry like Huerelio Gomes now...
I managed to get to even stacks at one point before I made what I think is a decent call to one of his overbets and he rivered the trips this time (2 outer obv). From then on he just shoved over most of my button opens and then the final hand I shoved 11bbs from the button with J7s, he snapped with K4s and I lost. I had hoped 2011 might be the year where I could do something in tournaments but the signs arn't very promising.
Gonna go and cry like Huerelio Gomes now...
Sunday 16 January 2011
Slightly better
Following a pretty disasterous Monday, I managed to put together a few decent days to end up a small amount in the green for the year. I'm still pretty happy with my level of play and the games have been good for the most part.
I recently finished Vicky Coren's book which was a very good read. It's an auto-biography within a poker framework and is very honest and funny. She talks about the 'old' days of poker before it was popularised by television where you had the dingy unlicensed clubs to now where you have poker celebrities and multi million dollar contracts for players. She's an interesting character in poker because you wouldn't think her background and education would lend itself to her becoming so heavily invested in such a game. She certainly makes the game more respectable to people like my parents, being a Guardian columnist and all, so I'm grateful to her for that. On the negative side I found some of her hand analyses rather tilting and she generally seems to look badly upon the internet generation of players that came into poker post-Moneymaker. This includes making comments along the lines of, "these scandis, drinking their water, moving all-in with ace king which isn't even a pair, when will they learn?". Sigh...
I've watched most of the movies I put down in a previous blog. Here's some mini reviews:
I recently finished Vicky Coren's book which was a very good read. It's an auto-biography within a poker framework and is very honest and funny. She talks about the 'old' days of poker before it was popularised by television where you had the dingy unlicensed clubs to now where you have poker celebrities and multi million dollar contracts for players. She's an interesting character in poker because you wouldn't think her background and education would lend itself to her becoming so heavily invested in such a game. She certainly makes the game more respectable to people like my parents, being a Guardian columnist and all, so I'm grateful to her for that. On the negative side I found some of her hand analyses rather tilting and she generally seems to look badly upon the internet generation of players that came into poker post-Moneymaker. This includes making comments along the lines of, "these scandis, drinking their water, moving all-in with ace king which isn't even a pair, when will they learn?". Sigh...
I've watched most of the movies I put down in a previous blog. Here's some mini reviews:
- Toy Story 3 - Fantastic animation as usual and a very good story. Some gut-wrenching scenes at the end too which will make the most cold-hearted person well up. 8/10
- Disappearance of Alice Creed - Great performances (only three people in the film) and very engaging. Got a bit silly as the story developed though. 7/10
- Greenberg - Very original style of film and interesting role for Ben Stiller. Maybe it tries to hard to be different though and there's actually not really a plot. Not fully decided on this one yet but for now...6/10
- Winter's Bone - Boooooooring. Maybe it's just one of those films I don't 'get'. 3/10.
Thursday 13 January 2011
Saturday 8 January 2011
This year so far...
...isn't going great. I am about breakeven so far this year despite playing pretty well. The main reason for this has been because of just not winning allins in big pots at 5/10 which ulitimately is always going to hurt your bottom line. The negatives of running bad in allin ev terms is that you tend to feel sorry for yourself and moan more than usual because you feel you are doing everything right but the poker gods arn't complying with you. On the other hand, at least you do know that are probably doing something right and the figures in HEM tell you that you are playing well enough to win so your confidence isn't knocked too much. With cooler type situations you can often have doubts creep into your mind that you could have played the hand differently. These doubts can be beneficial as they stop you from being complacent and thinking things like, 'well i had trips, how could I fold' but equally you will go mad if you try to think of ways you could fold massive hands all the time. Anyway, I'm happy with the volume I've put in so far and rarely played below my B game so I'm sure I'll be posting good profits soon enough.
When there haven't been many tables running on PKR I have been playing some Rush Poker on Full Tilt. My results in this have also been pretty rubbish though I have found it quite enjoyable and interesting to play. The fields at $1/2 are reasonably soft from my small amount of experience with typically two fish at every table you appear at. I am probably at a slight disadvantage to the full-time regs on there at the moment because it takes some time to figure out how the games run and the nuances of it compared to 'normal' poker. I have run into some quite hilarious situations so far including being one-outed in a 400bb pot by a straight flush to my turned boat. One interesting thing about the games is that you can get really deep with other regs because of how quickly you can get hands in, so being 500bb+ deep isn't uncommon.
Apart from poker I haven't been up to very much recently. I have been to the cinema a couple of times to see Meet the Little Fockers and The Way Back. Little Fockers is EXACTLY as you expect it to be with the usual jokes being retold within a pointless story. I laughed out loud (lol'd) a few times, like when the kid pukes in Ben Stiller's face (how can you not?) but I'm sure Stiller could think up better comedy than that if he tried. Let's hope this is the last movie in this franchise. The Way Back was a much more fulfilling cinema experience. It's a WWII film based on this group that escape from a siberian prison and ends up walking 4000km to freedom in India with a lot of challenges on the way. I enjoyed this film, though expect a look of montages of people walking. I have a list of films I want to see based on various recommendations which incudes:
When there haven't been many tables running on PKR I have been playing some Rush Poker on Full Tilt. My results in this have also been pretty rubbish though I have found it quite enjoyable and interesting to play. The fields at $1/2 are reasonably soft from my small amount of experience with typically two fish at every table you appear at. I am probably at a slight disadvantage to the full-time regs on there at the moment because it takes some time to figure out how the games run and the nuances of it compared to 'normal' poker. I have run into some quite hilarious situations so far including being one-outed in a 400bb pot by a straight flush to my turned boat. One interesting thing about the games is that you can get really deep with other regs because of how quickly you can get hands in, so being 500bb+ deep isn't uncommon.
Apart from poker I haven't been up to very much recently. I have been to the cinema a couple of times to see Meet the Little Fockers and The Way Back. Little Fockers is EXACTLY as you expect it to be with the usual jokes being retold within a pointless story. I laughed out loud (lol'd) a few times, like when the kid pukes in Ben Stiller's face (how can you not?) but I'm sure Stiller could think up better comedy than that if he tried. Let's hope this is the last movie in this franchise. The Way Back was a much more fulfilling cinema experience. It's a WWII film based on this group that escape from a siberian prison and ends up walking 4000km to freedom in India with a lot of challenges on the way. I enjoyed this film, though expect a look of montages of people walking. I have a list of films I want to see based on various recommendations which incudes:
- The Disappearance of Alice Creed
- Catfish
- Greenberg
- Winter's Bone
- Toy Story 3
- Buried
- Others I can't think of.
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