I keep intending to write a blog but have nothing particularly insightful to say so it's gonna be a standard 'update and upcoming plans blog'. Readers must be excited.
After my 3rd place score in London I have struggled with motivation to play online but grinded out 20k odd hands and made a small profit. No particularly exciting sessions or hands spring to mind. It was mostly grinding 2/4 with some 5/10 mixed in. Again, the games seemed good when they ran though it's annoying to see 'action tables' running at 2/4 and people playing there instead of the regular tables. I didn't play many online tournaments either. I continually try the WPT Dublin satellite on Monday nights and never manage to accumulate a stack (except for the time I bubbled it I suppose) so just seem to slowly bleed chips then shove my short stack in a standard spot and lose. The same can't be said for the monthly PKR 500 where I can't seem to not at least final table it. I came 5th this month for 3k or so.
In non-poker news I went to Amsterdam last weekend with a few people who don't play poker for a living which was a lot of fun. The weekend mostly involved eating, drinking and some smoking, with a few touristy activities mixed in. Amsterdam is a really interesting place, definitely worth visiting. One negative of the trip was the hotel. It's hard to describe it without including the words 'shit' and 'hole'. I was responsible for booking the hotel and chose this one because the location was great and it wasn't very expensive (80 euro a night is pretty cheap in central Amsterdam). I probably should have paid more attention to the Trip Advisor reviews which mentioned the various things wrong with the hotel. I'm probably just a bit spoiled from being forunate enough to be able to afford to stay in nicer places (by nicer I mean Travelodge which is a palace compared to this joint) on poker trips and alike. I don't know why I'm moaning this much about the hotel as it made little or no difference to the enjoyment of the trip as we spent hardly any time there.
Some stuff coming up is: PKR party this Thursday as a welcome type thing for their new pro, Jake Cody. This involves a free bar but unfortunately I probably shouldn't take full advantage of it as I have to get the train home the same night and be up for a 9am Journalism class on the Friday. Then on Saturday going to see Spurs v Bolton at White Hart Lane. We're on a ridiculous run at the moment of nine wins and a draw in last ten Premier League games so hopefully we can keep that going. Might stay out in London after that as well as it's JJBird's birthday. Also in a couple of weeks time going to play the £1k event at Dusk till Dawn in Nottingham. Winning that would be a nice end to the year.
One other thing I want to achieve early in December is doing another 12k hands so that I have a million hands in my HEM database to make a good sample for a long term graph. So I think when I've achieved that I'll post the graph and add some thoughts about whats happened over that time-span.
Here's a funny video with segments from a DVD commentary by Arnie on Total Recall. He gives some deep insights into the film. You got to love Arnie!
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Saturday 12 November 2011
Update and some live donkament success
Since my last entry I took a week long break from poker which always seems to do wonders for your overall mental state and consequently your results when you return to the game. Though I haven't been doing spectacularly, I have been grinding out some small wins online. I'm confident my results will improve back to somewhere nearer expectation soon if I keep playing the way I am at the moment.
I decided to do the Fox Poker Club main event in london last weekend which turned out to be a great decision as I ended up coming 3rd for £7200! I actually don't think I played great on both days (probably B-C game most of the time) but the donkament gods decided it was my turn to do well. My main leaks with live play is based around not pulling the trigger in spots where I really should, generally playing too passive and sometimes overthinking situations and ulitimately levelling myself. One classic example is where I made a terrible call down to a river shove for most of my chips largely because I felt my opponent looked too relaxed. So relaxed in fact I convinced myself that he must be trying to look relaxed and therefore is bluffing. I mean, this type of thinking versus an opponent I know very little about is borderline retarded. And my call got me what I deserved. Obviously a lot of other factors caused me to call and I may be being to harsh on myself but these are things that I need to stop doing.
Anyway, I went into day 2 with 20bb but managed to double very early with QQ vs JJ and from there always had a decent stack up until the final table bubble where I hit a couple of big hands and went into the final as slight chip leader. The final table was a pretty passive affair overall mainly because most of the players were either passive anyway or the money meant a lot to them. I really should have tried to run over the table a bit more than I did but I had one player two to my left who also had a lot of chips that didn't like folding. Incidentally, he also liked hitting the nuts a lot.
I mostly watched the others exchange stacks until we were six handed and this situation took ages, so the blinds got very shallow with an average of 30-35bb. At the break when five handed we talked about a deal for about half an hour but couldn't agree on anything. I was certainly open to a deal considering four of the five players were decent and the skill edge was so minimal with shallow stacks. As well as this the pay structure was very steep. We couldn't agree on one mainly because the worst player at the table who was chip leader wanted a deal where he would lock himself up £12k. Don't think so mate. What was funny is that he mentioned the 'good structure' a few times presumably implying that his chip lead meant he was a clear favourite to take it down. After the break someone was allin for the first three hands so this player was then asked if he still liked the structure. He didn't answer.
Eventually we were three handed and I was short with 15bb and called a button 10bb shove from the BB with KQ and loved seeing his JQ. Didn't love the 99T8Q board though. Then next hand I shoved my mini stack with T2o and got called by AQ and lost. Pretty sure this score puts me at least breakeven for the year in live tournaments so that's nice.
As I mentioned before online was been pretty 'meh' The games seem very good though. I had one of my stakees over the other day and while I was playing a 2/4 game he asked who the fish and regs were. I said "fish, fish, fish, fish, bad reg". They don't run all the time but when they do they seem great so there's definitely loads of money out there to win.
Been loving watching An Idiot Abroad recently and the season finale was last night. Here's one of my favourite clips from the series...
I decided to do the Fox Poker Club main event in london last weekend which turned out to be a great decision as I ended up coming 3rd for £7200! I actually don't think I played great on both days (probably B-C game most of the time) but the donkament gods decided it was my turn to do well. My main leaks with live play is based around not pulling the trigger in spots where I really should, generally playing too passive and sometimes overthinking situations and ulitimately levelling myself. One classic example is where I made a terrible call down to a river shove for most of my chips largely because I felt my opponent looked too relaxed. So relaxed in fact I convinced myself that he must be trying to look relaxed and therefore is bluffing. I mean, this type of thinking versus an opponent I know very little about is borderline retarded. And my call got me what I deserved. Obviously a lot of other factors caused me to call and I may be being to harsh on myself but these are things that I need to stop doing.
Anyway, I went into day 2 with 20bb but managed to double very early with QQ vs JJ and from there always had a decent stack up until the final table bubble where I hit a couple of big hands and went into the final as slight chip leader. The final table was a pretty passive affair overall mainly because most of the players were either passive anyway or the money meant a lot to them. I really should have tried to run over the table a bit more than I did but I had one player two to my left who also had a lot of chips that didn't like folding. Incidentally, he also liked hitting the nuts a lot.
I mostly watched the others exchange stacks until we were six handed and this situation took ages, so the blinds got very shallow with an average of 30-35bb. At the break when five handed we talked about a deal for about half an hour but couldn't agree on anything. I was certainly open to a deal considering four of the five players were decent and the skill edge was so minimal with shallow stacks. As well as this the pay structure was very steep. We couldn't agree on one mainly because the worst player at the table who was chip leader wanted a deal where he would lock himself up £12k. Don't think so mate. What was funny is that he mentioned the 'good structure' a few times presumably implying that his chip lead meant he was a clear favourite to take it down. After the break someone was allin for the first three hands so this player was then asked if he still liked the structure. He didn't answer.
Eventually we were three handed and I was short with 15bb and called a button 10bb shove from the BB with KQ and loved seeing his JQ. Didn't love the 99T8Q board though. Then next hand I shoved my mini stack with T2o and got called by AQ and lost. Pretty sure this score puts me at least breakeven for the year in live tournaments so that's nice.
As I mentioned before online was been pretty 'meh' The games seem very good though. I had one of my stakees over the other day and while I was playing a 2/4 game he asked who the fish and regs were. I said "fish, fish, fish, fish, bad reg". They don't run all the time but when they do they seem great so there's definitely loads of money out there to win.
Been loving watching An Idiot Abroad recently and the season finale was last night. Here's one of my favourite clips from the series...
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