Sunday 26 June 2011
Tuesday 21 June 2011
LOLMAHA
easy game innit....
Though I am still new to this game I feel I am improving pretty fast and the general level of competition is still far below that of nl. Last night I sat with a reg on ftp and he seemed to have a default game which he didn't change throughout the match. This strategy basically involved him just playing good starting plo hands and putting more money into the pot when he flopped/turned/rivered well and folding if he didn't. No doubt this strategy works okay against complete donks but not versus someone that has a brain. I could barrel in spots where he would not expect me too without the nuts and also click it back in 3-bet pots knowing he would always play his hand face-up.
Anyway, during this session (and throughout the month) I have run really hot in all-ins, either getting there with my combo draw vs sets or holding in the opposite scenario. E.g....
I quit after this hand as didn't fancy playing this deep and the villain had de-tilted having won some money back so it seemed like good timing. I am avoiding the inevitable plo downswing by withdrawing from FTP whenever I am able to, which depends on when Full Tilt randomly lets me.
Vegas in a week, boom!
p.s. I am not running at all like this in other forms of poker.
Though I am still new to this game I feel I am improving pretty fast and the general level of competition is still far below that of nl. Last night I sat with a reg on ftp and he seemed to have a default game which he didn't change throughout the match. This strategy basically involved him just playing good starting plo hands and putting more money into the pot when he flopped/turned/rivered well and folding if he didn't. No doubt this strategy works okay against complete donks but not versus someone that has a brain. I could barrel in spots where he would not expect me too without the nuts and also click it back in 3-bet pots knowing he would always play his hand face-up.
Anyway, during this session (and throughout the month) I have run really hot in all-ins, either getting there with my combo draw vs sets or holding in the opposite scenario. E.g....
Hand info:
Table info:Dealt to BB     Flop: (Pot: $180)   BET BB, $110 RAISE Button, to $280 RAISE BB, to $910 RAISE Button, to $1,913.50 CALL BB, $1,173.50 River: (Pot: $4,457)   Showdown:SHOWS Button    SHOWS BB BB wins the pot of $4,566.50 | |||||||||||
| Unfortunately towards the end of the session I ran into a couple of coolers. Saying that, based on how the villain had been playing I think the river is a pretty easy fold in this hand... | |||||||||||
Hand info:
Table info:Dealt to Button     River: (Pot: $1,020)     BET BB, $1,020 CALL Button, $1,020 Showdown:SHOWS BB   SHOWS Button BB wins the pot of $3,059.50 |
I quit after this hand as didn't fancy playing this deep and the villain had de-tilted having won some money back so it seemed like good timing. I am avoiding the inevitable plo downswing by withdrawing from FTP whenever I am able to, which depends on when Full Tilt randomly lets me.
Vegas in a week, boom!
p.s. I am not running at all like this in other forms of poker.
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Some thoughts on Spurs
Overall I think we had a very good season despite the disappointing end and failure to qualify for the Champions League again. We had some great games and performances such as the Inter Milan and AC Milan wins and some very memorable Premier League games such as the 2-3 win at Arsenal. As was expected by many, we suffered from our Champions League exploits in the midweek games and were then too physically and mentally drained to perform well in the weekend Premier League games. Though it's become a bit of a cliche, there really are no easy games in the Premier League so the team needs to be on their A-game to beat Stoke at home for example. You can't blame the management or the team though really, as the ability to juggle both compeitions is something that has taken Man Utd and alike several years to master.
This close season is very important to the club and will be interesting. As usual, we are being linked with every man and his dog but the players we bring in and potentially lose could be vital to our success or failure next season. I will give some of my thoughts on the in's and out's I would like to see (because let's be honest, my opinion means a lot and I'm pretty sure Daniel Levy reads my blog).
Let's start with the goalkeeper. As much as I love him as a character, as well as his occasional world class saves, Huereleo Gomes doesn't quite cut it as a top level Premier League keeper and I think it's time we said 'tchau' to the big man. These mistakes he's making, often at crucial moments in crucial games just cost the team too much. I'm a little confused by the signing of Brad Friedel as I would have assumed he would have been brought as a back-up keeper as he is 40 years old, however we had already offered Carlo Cudicini (our current number two) a one year contract extension. If Man City would sell him to us, I would have thought Shay Given would have been an excellent signing with plenty on years left to play and has over the years proven to be one of the best keepers in the league. Brad Friedel still looked fit and on good form last season so as it stands I would have him as next season's number one.
The defence is an interesting area for Spurs where on the face of it we have a lot of depth of solid players but constant injuries means we were down to bare bones last season, often forcing people to play out of position. William Gallas (great signing on a free as it turned out) was brought as a back-up but ended up playing an invaluable role as a starter for the majority of last season. Ledley obviously has his chronic knee injury, Woodgate is always out, and a number of the other defenders seem injury prone meaning we rarely have many of them left to choose from. I would like to see us buy a new centre back that is brought to be a starter. I would go for Hangeland from Fulham from what I have seen of him he looks quality. I would like to see Kyle Walker given a chance at right back as he looked handy while on loan at Villa last season. I don't think Bassong quite cuts it at the higher Premier League level so wouldn't mind him sold, and though good in an attacking role, Alan Hutton is accident-prone and not the best from a defensive point of view so these two can both be shipped out. Ledley King still performs ridiculously well in the odd games he plays so I would like to see this Rolls Royce of a defender keep his career going, maybe on a pay-as-you-play basis.
Midfield. We have waaaay too many midfielders in our squad at the moment (this obviously doesn't stop us being linked to ten or more every day in the papers) so this is an area we can trim the overall size of the squad. Out the door needs to go O'Hara (already more-or-less signed for Wolves apparently), Jenas (consistently inconsistent), Bentley (never recreated Blackburn form), Kranjcar (really like him but apparently Harry doesn't) and Palacious (not as good as Sandro). It looks like Parker is a shoe-in to join us which I have mixed feelings about. Although he was great for West Ham last season he might not fit in as well into our team and he is getting on a bit so will probably be overpriced. Keeping Van Der Vaart, Bale and particularly Modric is essential. Any players brought in need to be quality players that we are buying to start in my opinion if we are going to push for the Champions League again. I quite like Marin from Werder Bremen but he will probably cost a lot.
A lack of goals from our forwards is the main reason we failed to make the top four last season. None of Defoe, Pavlyuchenko, Keane or Crouch performed well enough and scored enough goals. I think we should ship out Keane as he has never been the same since we sold him to Liverpool and eventually brought him back. Pavlychenko shows signs of real quality at times but these are fleeting and I don't think he is consistently effective enough for us. I would like to keep Defoe as I think he has just had a poor season that was largely blighted with injury and can come back and bang in a load of goals. Crouch has his uses in certain types of games as a starter or a sub so I don't mind keeping him. Also he looks funny. That means we probably need two additions if we lose Keane and Pav and I reckon a mix of experience and youth in these two would be ideal. An experienced striker who has a winning mentality and the quality to still do some damage would be great. Drogba obv. We have been heaviliy linked to a young Brazilian named Leandro Damiao who I know nothing about but comes from the same club we brought Sandro from (Internacional - we have some sort of agreement where we get first dibs on their good players) and is rated at £16mill so you would hope he is pretty handy. At just 21, he fulfils the youthful side of out attack I mentioned.
The key thing for Spurs is to keep all our best players but this is going to be very difficult as we don't have Champions League football anymore and we can't offer the high wages other clubs can. It seems Modric has already had his head turned as he had made some very non-committal statements in the press about his intentions and every big club seems to be linked with him. As I was writing this blog post, I read a story about us rejecting a £22 million bid from Chelsea. Frankly, if Jordan Henderson is worth £20 million then Modric is worth at least £40 mill. Levy knows this though so if he end up 'having' to sell him it will be for A LOT of wonga. If we do manage to keep our best players and get a few nice additions in, as well as getting rid of the dead wood I'm really optomistic for next season.
Starting team next season:
Given (GK)
Walker (RB) Hangeland (CB) Dawson (CB) A.Ekotto (LB)
Sandro (DM)
Lennon (RM) Modric (CM) Bale (LM)
Drogba (CF) Defoe (CF)
Poker
Have been playing a decent amount of poker since my last blog post and I'm doing okay. For a while I was in that great zone where I had forgotten how to lose but my last few sessions have been more bumpy and resulted in losses. At the moment my expectation drops quite dramatically every time Japete or TimJeff joins my table as they are owning me pretty hard right now. This usually results in me telling them how lucky they are or that they play bad which I must stop because it's dumb and rude. I guess I just don't like losing. Today I 5-bet jammed 68s and KJo and ran into AA and QQ vs the same player. I'm not sure why I levelled myself into these two jams except that they seemed like good spots to me for the player to 4-bet. Saying that, I don't think I know enough about the guy to know what level he is on and therefore have enough reasoning to shove in $1k in those spots.
With the staking that my friend and I have been doing I have a fair amount of money on Full Tilt and some on UB which is a tad worrying at the moment. On Full Tilt I have been able to withdraw small amounts to my Visa card but not to Neteller (I have had $5k pending for nearly two weeks now). The people I am staking are unable to withdraw to Neteller as well. I think it's just a case of keeping the bare minimum on these sites at the moment until we know exactly what is happening with the site. It seems every time there is news relating to the poker economy it is bad news which makes me worry for the longer term future of the game. Whatever, it's Vegas time soon so I'll at least enjoy it while I can!
This close season is very important to the club and will be interesting. As usual, we are being linked with every man and his dog but the players we bring in and potentially lose could be vital to our success or failure next season. I will give some of my thoughts on the in's and out's I would like to see (because let's be honest, my opinion means a lot and I'm pretty sure Daniel Levy reads my blog).
Let's start with the goalkeeper. As much as I love him as a character, as well as his occasional world class saves, Huereleo Gomes doesn't quite cut it as a top level Premier League keeper and I think it's time we said 'tchau' to the big man. These mistakes he's making, often at crucial moments in crucial games just cost the team too much. I'm a little confused by the signing of Brad Friedel as I would have assumed he would have been brought as a back-up keeper as he is 40 years old, however we had already offered Carlo Cudicini (our current number two) a one year contract extension. If Man City would sell him to us, I would have thought Shay Given would have been an excellent signing with plenty on years left to play and has over the years proven to be one of the best keepers in the league. Brad Friedel still looked fit and on good form last season so as it stands I would have him as next season's number one.
The defence is an interesting area for Spurs where on the face of it we have a lot of depth of solid players but constant injuries means we were down to bare bones last season, often forcing people to play out of position. William Gallas (great signing on a free as it turned out) was brought as a back-up but ended up playing an invaluable role as a starter for the majority of last season. Ledley obviously has his chronic knee injury, Woodgate is always out, and a number of the other defenders seem injury prone meaning we rarely have many of them left to choose from. I would like to see us buy a new centre back that is brought to be a starter. I would go for Hangeland from Fulham from what I have seen of him he looks quality. I would like to see Kyle Walker given a chance at right back as he looked handy while on loan at Villa last season. I don't think Bassong quite cuts it at the higher Premier League level so wouldn't mind him sold, and though good in an attacking role, Alan Hutton is accident-prone and not the best from a defensive point of view so these two can both be shipped out. Ledley King still performs ridiculously well in the odd games he plays so I would like to see this Rolls Royce of a defender keep his career going, maybe on a pay-as-you-play basis.
Midfield. We have waaaay too many midfielders in our squad at the moment (this obviously doesn't stop us being linked to ten or more every day in the papers) so this is an area we can trim the overall size of the squad. Out the door needs to go O'Hara (already more-or-less signed for Wolves apparently), Jenas (consistently inconsistent), Bentley (never recreated Blackburn form), Kranjcar (really like him but apparently Harry doesn't) and Palacious (not as good as Sandro). It looks like Parker is a shoe-in to join us which I have mixed feelings about. Although he was great for West Ham last season he might not fit in as well into our team and he is getting on a bit so will probably be overpriced. Keeping Van Der Vaart, Bale and particularly Modric is essential. Any players brought in need to be quality players that we are buying to start in my opinion if we are going to push for the Champions League again. I quite like Marin from Werder Bremen but he will probably cost a lot.
A lack of goals from our forwards is the main reason we failed to make the top four last season. None of Defoe, Pavlyuchenko, Keane or Crouch performed well enough and scored enough goals. I think we should ship out Keane as he has never been the same since we sold him to Liverpool and eventually brought him back. Pavlychenko shows signs of real quality at times but these are fleeting and I don't think he is consistently effective enough for us. I would like to keep Defoe as I think he has just had a poor season that was largely blighted with injury and can come back and bang in a load of goals. Crouch has his uses in certain types of games as a starter or a sub so I don't mind keeping him. Also he looks funny. That means we probably need two additions if we lose Keane and Pav and I reckon a mix of experience and youth in these two would be ideal. An experienced striker who has a winning mentality and the quality to still do some damage would be great. Drogba obv. We have been heaviliy linked to a young Brazilian named Leandro Damiao who I know nothing about but comes from the same club we brought Sandro from (Internacional - we have some sort of agreement where we get first dibs on their good players) and is rated at £16mill so you would hope he is pretty handy. At just 21, he fulfils the youthful side of out attack I mentioned.
The key thing for Spurs is to keep all our best players but this is going to be very difficult as we don't have Champions League football anymore and we can't offer the high wages other clubs can. It seems Modric has already had his head turned as he had made some very non-committal statements in the press about his intentions and every big club seems to be linked with him. As I was writing this blog post, I read a story about us rejecting a £22 million bid from Chelsea. Frankly, if Jordan Henderson is worth £20 million then Modric is worth at least £40 mill. Levy knows this though so if he end up 'having' to sell him it will be for A LOT of wonga. If we do manage to keep our best players and get a few nice additions in, as well as getting rid of the dead wood I'm really optomistic for next season.
Starting team next season:
Given (GK)
Walker (RB) Hangeland (CB) Dawson (CB) A.Ekotto (LB)
Sandro (DM)
Lennon (RM) Modric (CM) Bale (LM)
Drogba (CF) Defoe (CF)
Poker
Have been playing a decent amount of poker since my last blog post and I'm doing okay. For a while I was in that great zone where I had forgotten how to lose but my last few sessions have been more bumpy and resulted in losses. At the moment my expectation drops quite dramatically every time Japete or TimJeff joins my table as they are owning me pretty hard right now. This usually results in me telling them how lucky they are or that they play bad which I must stop because it's dumb and rude. I guess I just don't like losing. Today I 5-bet jammed 68s and KJo and ran into AA and QQ vs the same player. I'm not sure why I levelled myself into these two jams except that they seemed like good spots to me for the player to 4-bet. Saying that, I don't think I know enough about the guy to know what level he is on and therefore have enough reasoning to shove in $1k in those spots.
With the staking that my friend and I have been doing I have a fair amount of money on Full Tilt and some on UB which is a tad worrying at the moment. On Full Tilt I have been able to withdraw small amounts to my Visa card but not to Neteller (I have had $5k pending for nearly two weeks now). The people I am staking are unable to withdraw to Neteller as well. I think it's just a case of keeping the bare minimum on these sites at the moment until we know exactly what is happening with the site. It seems every time there is news relating to the poker economy it is bad news which makes me worry for the longer term future of the game. Whatever, it's Vegas time soon so I'll at least enjoy it while I can!
Wednesday 8 June 2011
Human Centipede II
Not sure if any of my loyal blog readers are aware of the Human Centipede film but here's the trailer in case you haven't. It explains the main themes behind the film...
Anyway, it's a pretty bad film but the rather fucked up premise behind it is enough to at least get you to start watching. It obviously did well enough for a sequel to be developed and the director Tom Six said that the second film would make the first one seem like My Little Pony.
However, it seems he's gone too far as the British Board of Film Classification has banned it from release. The reasoning they gave was because it was too horrific and no amount of cuts could mean it could be classified. It's hard to argue with the BBFC when they describe things like one scene which involves him wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the end of the centipede, having become aroused by the sight of his victims being forced to defecate into each others' mouths. Nice.
I guess this ban might end up being positive if the film is ever able to be released as it makes people curious. A few articles about it have appeared on the Guardian website and they have a lot of views and comments.
Poker
I'm back in the cash games this month and it's going well so far. The games at 2/4 and 5/10 have been great, with a lot of action and dead money. I actually can't beat 2/4 this year (down a bit over 60k hands), but am making up for this and more with some 5/10 run good. Obviously this is the way round you want it.
I also booked Vegas the other day. My plan is to fly out 27th June and stay at the Rio until the 1st July. I'm going to try and grind hard over this time and do the $1.5k WSOP event that falls in this period. I'll probably take about $10k out with me and play some $2/5nl to start out with, possibly moving up if I run hot and win. Then on the 1st I'm moving to the Cosmopolitan with PKR until the 7th and will play less poker during this time, except for the $1k WSOP event. Should be fun, though I think after ten days of Vegas I will be desperate to go home!
Anyway, it's a pretty bad film but the rather fucked up premise behind it is enough to at least get you to start watching. It obviously did well enough for a sequel to be developed and the director Tom Six said that the second film would make the first one seem like My Little Pony.
However, it seems he's gone too far as the British Board of Film Classification has banned it from release. The reasoning they gave was because it was too horrific and no amount of cuts could mean it could be classified. It's hard to argue with the BBFC when they describe things like one scene which involves him wrapping barbed wire around his penis and raping the woman at the end of the centipede, having become aroused by the sight of his victims being forced to defecate into each others' mouths. Nice.
I guess this ban might end up being positive if the film is ever able to be released as it makes people curious. A few articles about it have appeared on the Guardian website and they have a lot of views and comments.
Poker
I'm back in the cash games this month and it's going well so far. The games at 2/4 and 5/10 have been great, with a lot of action and dead money. I actually can't beat 2/4 this year (down a bit over 60k hands), but am making up for this and more with some 5/10 run good. Obviously this is the way round you want it.
I also booked Vegas the other day. My plan is to fly out 27th June and stay at the Rio until the 1st July. I'm going to try and grind hard over this time and do the $1.5k WSOP event that falls in this period. I'll probably take about $10k out with me and play some $2/5nl to start out with, possibly moving up if I run hot and win. Then on the 1st I'm moving to the Cosmopolitan with PKR until the 7th and will play less poker during this time, except for the $1k WSOP event. Should be fun, though I think after ten days of Vegas I will be desperate to go home!
Thursday 2 June 2011
Tourney Month Review
Played my last session of tournaments on Sunday and managed to finish with a nice 2nd place in the PKR High Roller special ($530 buyin). The 2nd place prize was $10.4k and so makes my 2nd five figure score of the year. PKR tournaments are just the nuts. The structures are usually very good and typically have smaller fields (relative to some of the massive ones you can get in FTP and Stars tournaments) so you go into every tournament feeling you have a very realistic chance of winning. Smaller fields also reduce variance which is a useful thing in the life of donkaments. Let's not forget PKR tournaments are also rather soft and this one wasn't any different. One player was open shoving 40+bbs with about 20 players left, mixed in with some 4xing and the occasional post flop overbet shove. After doing this for a while, he decided to sit out and not come back until he had blinded out about an hour and a half later (somehow this was on the final table lol).
I've had a few different thoughts on tournaments throughout the month, but will just write down what comes to mind now. Firstly, I think a skill that is essential for a tourney grinder is the ability to grind a lot of tables (I'm talking 16+) for long periods of time. This is a skill I do not possess, and one that will be very difficult, if not impossible to learn (not that I want to anyway). I've never been too adept at playing a lot of tables in cash, and rarely play more than six at a time. I also will usually play for a maximum of three hours per session. I had intended to play about 300 tournaments this month but ended up doing a paltry 140. This was because I would lose interest after a few hours of playing and stop registering.
I came across this blog of a well known tourney grinder and he describes a schedule he had been keeping to in order to try to win a player of the year race. It went as follows:
4-6pm: get up, run errands and figure out some dinner arrangement
6pm-9am: play poker 20-30 tabling throughout almost the entire sesison.
9am-4pm: sleep
Although obviously this is by no means a 'normal' schedule for a tournament grinder, it gives you can idea of the kind of dedication you would need to be up there with the best and more successful players. This guy was playing 120 tournaments a day, and I did 140 in a month lol.
I really don't understand how people can do tournaments for a living unless they are happy to put in ridiculous volume, or have loads of money behind them so they are not under pressure to make money over the course of say, a year. With the variance being so massive, you just don't get rewarded regularly enough for playing well, like you do in cash games. I can see how the casual player likes a tournament because they see the potential for the massive payoff (and they have a chance if they have some vague idea of what they are doing), a bit like how a slot machine has a jackpot. I think tournaments also appeal to the competitive poker player who wants to actually 'win' and tournaments are the best way of becoming recognised as being superior to your peers.
This blog post is becoming rambly and rather unorganised so I'll bring it to and end. Overall I paid around $15k in entries to tournaments in the month with prizes of approximately $20k, leaving me with a profit of $5k. I'm pretty happy with this, as this is probably around what my expectation is over this sample.
I was looking forward to getting back in the cash games this month, but such is life and poker, in my first session back I got absolutely crushed!
I've had a few different thoughts on tournaments throughout the month, but will just write down what comes to mind now. Firstly, I think a skill that is essential for a tourney grinder is the ability to grind a lot of tables (I'm talking 16+) for long periods of time. This is a skill I do not possess, and one that will be very difficult, if not impossible to learn (not that I want to anyway). I've never been too adept at playing a lot of tables in cash, and rarely play more than six at a time. I also will usually play for a maximum of three hours per session. I had intended to play about 300 tournaments this month but ended up doing a paltry 140. This was because I would lose interest after a few hours of playing and stop registering.
I came across this blog of a well known tourney grinder and he describes a schedule he had been keeping to in order to try to win a player of the year race. It went as follows:
4-6pm: get up, run errands and figure out some dinner arrangement
6pm-9am: play poker 20-30 tabling throughout almost the entire sesison.
9am-4pm: sleep
Although obviously this is by no means a 'normal' schedule for a tournament grinder, it gives you can idea of the kind of dedication you would need to be up there with the best and more successful players. This guy was playing 120 tournaments a day, and I did 140 in a month lol.
I really don't understand how people can do tournaments for a living unless they are happy to put in ridiculous volume, or have loads of money behind them so they are not under pressure to make money over the course of say, a year. With the variance being so massive, you just don't get rewarded regularly enough for playing well, like you do in cash games. I can see how the casual player likes a tournament because they see the potential for the massive payoff (and they have a chance if they have some vague idea of what they are doing), a bit like how a slot machine has a jackpot. I think tournaments also appeal to the competitive poker player who wants to actually 'win' and tournaments are the best way of becoming recognised as being superior to your peers.
This blog post is becoming rambly and rather unorganised so I'll bring it to and end. Overall I paid around $15k in entries to tournaments in the month with prizes of approximately $20k, leaving me with a profit of $5k. I'm pretty happy with this, as this is probably around what my expectation is over this sample.
I was looking forward to getting back in the cash games this month, but such is life and poker, in my first session back I got absolutely crushed!
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