August

Haven't updated in a while mainly because I have become additcted to twitter and have preferred to update in 140 character form. August ended up being a great month in poker for me as I managed to ship my biggest ever month in cash games.  I ran insanely hot in the first two weeks of the month and then more steadily won more from then, except for one poor decision to play $25/50 plo against players who are better than me. I was gonna post results but they're on another computer which is out of use at the moment while I am getting some building work done.  It might not be a good idea anyway as I've heard posting graphs (especially brag ones) is a trigger for some ridonkulous run bad.

Did another live tournament last weekend. Live tournaments are becoming a very expensive hobby for me so far this year.  A hobby I'm not even sure I enjoy.  I'm 0/12 so far in 2011 but I will keep plugging away.  Last weekend was the Unibet Open in Dublin which was a decent tournament and good structure (although starting with 400bbs is a bit dumb).  The hotel where the tournament was held was a little disappointing.  It was a bit outdated and the food there was only just about edible. I'm not too fussy about food so this isn't a massive issue for me.  The hotel was also a 30 minute taxi tourney from the city centre so a trip into Dublin always felt like a big deal that had to be planned out.  However, Dublin itself was really cool, with loads of the more traditional bars that I like and the locals seemed very friendly.  I'm looking forward to going back in January for the WPT event sponsored by PKR, just hope they put the qualifiers in a different hotel.

Onto how the tournament went down. I had a good day one, stacking a guy early on with 33 vs ATdd on A93dd (he misplayed his hand considering how deep we were).  Then I muddled through the rest of the day folding a lot until I was put on the feature table and versus a very passive table managed to chip up to well over average by winning a load of small pots. On day two I had a much more loose and splashy table so hoped I could get some hands. I managed to pair mine (will talk more about pair mining later) with KQo vs a loose old guy with a load of chips and manged to get it in on the turn on  K high board vs K9 to put me onto 150k with average 90k or so.  I was then put onto the feature table and first hand got into a difficult spot where I felt I had to get in AQs for over half my stack and was vs KK. Board ran out AxxKA which makes it a bit more painful.  Suddenly I'm short and lose another small pot where I raise A3s from ep (might be bad) and got one caller and bet turn and river on an A high board and got called by AQ.  Now down to 12bbs I shoved 99 from ep and got called by AJ and AK and didn't win. Having had a decent stack, I got unlucky (or failed to get lucky) twice in a row and suddenly the dream is over.  The rest of the weekend was spent eating, drinking, watching Spurs get absolute pummelled by Man city and going to the most essential tourist spot in Dublin, a Leprecaun museum.  Good times.

On to 'pair mining'.  Not sure if such a term has been coined before but if not I want to be the one to do it.  Basically pair mining involves playing a hand that has very good top pair value (eg. like KQo example above) with the intention of flopping top pair and not folding it.  Another example could be when you're playing heads up and decide to call a 3-bet with JQo vs an aggressive opponent with the intention of playing a top pair you might flop like the nuts.  It's obviously something people do all the time but as far as I know there wasn't a term for it.

Thanks for reading. Check out this video which I think is the best of those 'turn soundbites into songs' type videos that are are all over YouTube. The tune is really addictive!