Grinding it out, one day at a time

Well it will be my new home for around the next month I should imagine as I am currently working off a free $100 for signing up there. After I completed my Party Instant Bankroll promotion I needed somewhere to play but wasn’t sure where. With the start of 2007 rapidly approaching I didn’t want to be starting a long bonus chase etc because I want to erase all my data etc and start 2007 on an even keel and really start to make the poker beast pay. I needed a smallish bonus that would clear at an ok rate for 6-max NL25 and was on a medium to large network. This is where Bowmans comes in.Bowmans is on the Tribecca network which also houses VC poker and Doyles Room amongst others. I saw a bonus code on Bonus Whores and decided to sign up. As I am waiting for Poker Source Online to credit my Party account with a further $125 I have to leave that money in my party account until it reaches me, just incase Party get arsey apparently So I only had $108.10 in my Neteller account so the “Deposit $15 receive $100″ offered by Bowmans seemed a decent offer. According to Bonus Whores the bonus clears at around $1.06 per hour so if I multitable I should have it cleared and the readies in my account for the end of the year.I’d only briefly played on a Tribecca skin before and didn’t like it. The traffic was low (I was playing micro FLHE) and something just didn’t feel right about it. But I’ve heard a lot of good things about the amount of fish there from our friendly neighbourhood Cadmunkey, so I thought I’d give it a try. Things didn’t get off to a good start when I couldn’t actually deposit through Neteller but this turned out to be because Neteller was undergoing a network upgrade or something according to the Neteller customer service rep. When I eventually created my account, deposited and configured my Poker Tracker and PAHUD I went in search of some 6-max NL25 tables but found precisely none. Nada, zilch, diddly squat. Why’s that I hear you ask, because they don’t do it! WTF! Instead they have 6-max tables with blinds of $0.10/$0.20 (so NL20) but you can actually buyin for a minimum of $5 up to a maximum of $40, 200BB stacks, marvellous! I sat and watched a few tables and a lot of players were buying in short and didn’t seem to realise they weren’t playing for play money and were throwing their chips around and chasing two outers!

Now and again I like to share with you the silly referrals to my blog from search engines. I can only imagine the bitter disappointment some of them will have endured!

• Small boobs
• She kicked me in the bollocks
• Advantage grinding mixture
• Fat women
• I have to change my spending habit
• Lady kicks nuts
• I like anyone to kick me in the nuts
• Yorkshire MILF
• Fat woman jumps on small man

Obviously there’s a market out there for fat women and for people getting kicked in the nuts. If my poker doesn’t take off I may open a brothel specialising in fat women who kick people in the nuts. I’m such a fucking genius sometimes it hurts

I know I said I sometimes felt uncomfortable about the actual gambling nature of some of my 6-max opponents and that I was going to revert back to playing full ring cash games but that has all changed! I know I change my mind more often than most people change their underwear but I honestly can’t see myself playing full ring cash for the foreseeable future.

Money has always cheered me up, that may make me a shallow person but so be it. I’ve been feeling a little bit down lately so what better way to cheer myself up than earning some beer tokens?! I signed up to Party Poker through Poker Source Online and opted for their instant bankroll builder. Basically, you deposit at least $100 onto Party and then play 1000 raked hands, at any stakes. Once you’ve played through the requirements you received $25 then a further $125 is deposited into your Party account withing 2-10 business days. Viola, instant bankroll!

So with the lure of free cash I was there like a shot. I stuck my roll of $250 into Party and decided to 4 table the 6-max NL25 games there as slightly over half the hands there are raked and the standard of competition isn’t exactly brilliant either! I said I wasn’t going to play NL but the last few days of playing LHE made me realise how restricted you are in comparison to NL. I also said that 6-max wasn’t for me after my poor run over at Sun Poker but I thought I’d give it one more shot at Party.

The pace of the action was around 310 hands per hour, over the 4 tables, which meant that the 1k raked hands should only take a few hours to complete and low and behold I managed to clear them in 5.87 hours and 1821 hands. I never once felt out of my depth, which I have on previous 6max attempts, but I still didn’t feel overly comfortable with the gambling it up of some of my opponents in certain situations. I opted to play a pretty standard ABC TAG game and finished by running at 19/9/1.9 although until the last 350hands I was running at 20/10/2.5 but was so card dead and on some very aggro tables that I clammed up a little. On aspect I didn’toverly utilise was stealing blinds and only attempted to steal 19.4% when I had the chance. I will attempt to steal with a huge range of hands in LP but having loose callers in the blinds more often than not meant that I tightened up here also.

I got married to TPTK on a couple of occasions and also feared the flush more often than I should have done but overall I’mhappy to have finished the bonus in front, despite it only being $26.40 or 2.9/PTBB/100. That win rate is very low and I fully expected to hit 7-9PTBB/100 if I am honest but I was stuck $35 very early on and suffered some horrible boards and a few beats to deplete my stacks! I also paid off a villain when I was obviously beat on more than one occasion. Profit is profit though at the end of the day and I’ll take a $0.01 profit over breaking even anyday. I still do not think 6-max is for me as I try to learn the intricacis of NL cash games so will probably revert back to full ring now the bonus is done and dusted. I lost count of the amount of times where I raised with 99-JJ to be faced with 2 callers and boards full of Aces and Kings or three flushed and connected boards but it’s a tiny sample size and that’s poker I guess, frustrating though!

Here are a few hands I was involved in:

Calling an all-in preflop with TT = I’d pushed villain around for a few hands and stolen pots off him so I knew his all-in raise was very OTT. Against his range here of any pair, any Ace and any Broadway I’m a 65/35 favourite. The board is bullshit

Fear the mighty 98s = I elect to call this pitiful raise and flop an OESD. I make a loose call on the flop getting around 2.9/1 but I know if I hit here villain will donate his full stack holding a decent Ace. Turn completes my straight and I know that he is not getting away from his hand now.

Losing with Quad Tens! = I pushed here preflop as villain was pissing me off with his pathetic little raises. I’d have definitely pushed on the flop of TTT anyway so it is a trivial matter really. You can imagine how pissed I was when his Ace kicker from his AJo wins it after the river makes the board quad Tens. WTF

Set of 7’s = Villain berated me for this play here. I raise preflop with 77 which is obviously standard in 6 max. he does some gay half min raise thing which I am of course calling. he then bets $1 into a pot of almost $4 and I am thinking that either the 7’s might actually be good here or he has AA, AK and is trapping. Turn is perfecto, and I decide to see if he has anything here. He calls my raise and I know now he has AA or AK. If he has KK here so be it. I put him all-in and he calls. Ship it!

So what now? I am not sure to be honest. I want to start 2007 with a totally clean slate, ready and raring to go so don’t want to start on some crazy bonus whoring mission as that’s the plan for 2007, which is scarily only 4 weeks away! I’m considering playing at Battlefield Poker, which is a Prima Network skin, because I have been offered 35-40% rakeback which I can withdraw whenever I see fit and also because they have a mini-view option that works with PAHUD meaning I can multitable without overlap. Time will tell.

Bankroll stands at $497.86

Thanks for checking in, now get back to those tables

I’ve not played a single hand of online poker since last Wednesday and done nothing else poker related since the home game. I’ve just had no inclination to play or in fact do anything, I’m slap bang in the middle of a life downswing! I absolutely hate this time of year, I hate it with a passion. I get up and it’s dark, cold and generally miserable and then when I am on my way home it’s dark again. I feel like a fucking badger or something! I also can’t stand the Christmas period full stop. Having to be nice and pretend you like people you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire does my head in. I get quite emotional around New Year too due to the people I miss and the people I’ve lost and I feel guilty about not visiting relatives and firends and always set resolutions to correct this but I always let them drop after less than a month! Bah Humbug indeed!

I just thought I’d give this site a bit of a shout out as it has some good resources for arranging your home games. The two sections that Cadmunkey and I found most helpful were the blinds and starting chips section.In the blinds section there’s an article on how to make the perfect blind structure as in what the starting BB should be and how to structure the thing so it ends when you want it to and not at some unholy hour! There are also links to the big poker sites so you can copy their structure if you like and they also have the official structures from various events at Foxwoods and the WSOP so you can play those too. You can then print them out on some snazzy little card so everyone always knows what the blinds are!

Last night’s home game proved that there is a ton of luck involved in poker, especially tournament poker. We only managed to get six players, including me, but we had a good mixture of talent. We’ll call the host Rock because that’s what he is but now and again makes mad calls (he knocked me out in 3rd at the casino a few months ago when he called my all-in, and put his tournament on the line, with Q6o because “I had been bullying”). We had a guy who didn’t really know what he was doing and we printed the hand rankings off for him but he took to it quite well, a guy we’ll call The Italian who seems to have some sort of game going on but the other time I played with he seemed to catch no luck at all! We had a bloke who apparently plays NL£500 online who seems pretty LAG, and Cadmunkey.We picked seats from a hat and shuffled up and dealt! It was a £20 buyin so we had a £120 price pool and agreed to split it £80 for 1st and £40 for 2nd. We started with 1500 chips and the blinds started at 10/20 and lasted 20 minutes. I decided from the off I was going to try and see a few cheap flops and see if I hit anything. I limped with 97s, QTs and raised with J9s early on and hit nothing and had the pots taken away from me by NL500 guy. I tightened up a little and didn’t overly get involved in anything for a few orbits. Then I decided to donk off the vast majority of my stack with AsTs. I raised and was flat called by the Italian. Flop was King high and I c-bet about half the pot which he called pretty quickly which told me he had a King at least. Turn was a brick and I decided, for some reason, to bet again, this time around two thirds and he thought for about 20 seconds and hastily called. I knew he had a King for sure but probably had a weakish kicker but another bet on the river would put me all-in so I checked the brick that fell and so did he. I told him “Kings are good” and he showed KJ and I mucked and told them I had AQs! That put me at around 450 chips with the blinds 25/50 and giving me an M of 6. A couple of hands before the break I was dealt Ad6d and I said I was all-in. Maybe a tad risky and silly but if I raised a standard 3-4xBB and then folded I’d face coming back with 300 chips with 50/100 blinds. As expected I took the blinds although Cadmunkey also had A6s, live poker is rigged

After deciding I wasn’t going to play the $0.25/$0.50 games I moved up and datamined all the open tables of $0.50/$1 for 10-15 minutes whilst I surfed the net looking for some decent autorules for Poker Tracker for limit games. I didn’t find any by the way so if any of you readers have any you recommend please let me know as the standard ones I’m using at the minute are a little bit spew to be honest. I sat at three tables and played quite ABC TAG poker and it paid off. I stole the blinds quite liberally and took a couple of pots without resistance until I got some internet problems which disconnected me for 10 mins so I called it a night. However, here are 3 hands where I lost with my bogey hand QQ. I should be grateful that I was dealt this “premium” hand 3 times but I am going to start folding it preflop from now on I think Please leave some comments as I could do with an extra pair of eyes!

QQ hand No 1 - Villain is running at 15/9/1.1 over 184 hands and hasn’t really stepped out of line so I’m assuming he’s pretty solid. I’ve seen him attempt to steal in LP and raise limpers with mid to big PP and big Aces. I 3-bet on the button for 2 reasons, one for possible value as I’m ahead of so much of his range and also to get the hand HU and force the limper to fold. Him flat calling leads me to think 88-JJ and ATs-AKs from previous actions. Flop isn’t too awful but if he’s called with 88 I am in serious trouble! I think I have to bet out here and continue the aggression especially as he could have easily have called with a big suited Ace or an overpair to the board. The turn gives him another hand that is beating me and possible adds some outs if he was on a big heart draw. When he check-raises me I am sure I’m beaten but think he’s tricky enough to also bluff-raise a flush draw to get a possible free card as he must know I’m not too much of a donkey. The river brings another winning card to his potential holding but do I have to call here getting 9.5/1 on my bet, plus is it worth the extra 1BB to see what he’s been playing with, for info?

QQ hand No 2 - Villain here is a calling station in every sense of the word and has been running at 44/2/0.8 for the past 95 hands. I obviously raise 1st in with my ladies and only the BB calls. His calling range is huge from what I’ve seen. I’m talking any PP, any Ace the vast majority of any two suited cards so this flop is more dangerous than it looks. With hindsight, should I check behind here as betting just builds a pot he’ll stick around for or does the extra SB in the pot not really matter here? Villain now bets the turn of a 4 which brings a diamond flush draw into the fray. When someone as passive bets here I’m fearing a small set but he could easily have caught part of the board and thinks he’s good against an unimproved Ax. The river completes a spade flush and again he bets out and I know he’s definitely hit now but make a crying call anyway. I think I should have raised the turn but even then I think he’d have stayed around.

QQ hand No 3 - This hand is very messy I think. Villain who caps is a solid TAG running at 15/12/2.8 for 200 hands but the other villain is LAP as he seems to be a check/caller postflop. Am I right to 3-bet here? Villain’s raising here with TT-AA, AJ-AKs, quite a tight range. LAP calls after a raise and a 3-bet then villain caps. I’ve now pinned him on AA-KK or AK so I might be in bad shape. LAP could have anything plus he’ll not bet into me on the flop anyway as he’s too passive! After all that action preflop I decide to raise the two bettors to see if they play back at me. Is this bad? When the LAP raises me I should be done with the hand, especially when the TAG villain calls also. I call the turn bet and call as I think I have a possible 4 outs (2×4’s and 2xQ’s) and I’m offered 13/1 odds although the 2 fours are doubts. There’s no point wasting any more cash on the river so I check behind and see that I am indeed beaten by both players. Despite these losses I managed to finish the session 11.5BB to the good which is always nice in anyone’s book! I doubt I’ll get much play tonight as I have my bar shift from 1900-2300 and even though I can’t really afford any beers (payday Friday thank God) I’m felling a bit tired with the recent early morning/late night combos so will probably hit the hay as soon as I’m finished.

It’s always nice to get off to a decent start and that is exactly what I did do, finishing my 14.5BB to the good. I mentioned before that I had spoken to the Munkey of the Cad variety on MSN and email and had made the decision to ditch NL cash, for now, and concentrate on what I have always been a winner at which is LHE. I checked my Neteller account and saw I had $213.68 sat there begging to be put into Full Tilt’s coffers so I redeposited. I also mentioned yesterday that I like to play with the industry standard 300BB bankroll so with this in mind I sat at two tables of $0.25/$0.50 tables and waited for the BB to hit me.

The title sounds obvious doesn’t it, so why do so many of us actually do the opposite? When I used to play LHE I was pretty good for the stakes I were playing, mainly $0.50/$1 and a bit of $1/$2. I even managed to turn $500 into $1400 and then $300 into $900 but then I became over-confident and a tad greedy and things went a little downhill. Towards the end of my LHE days I discovered a few forums and blogs etc and started reading stories of fellow players reaping in hundreds of dollars a week playing the crazy game that is NLHE so I jumped on the bandwagon and tried to milk this cash cow too!That is where things started to go wrong. I’ve read book after book, post after post but I am just not getting something. I can’t put my finger on what is wrong but my game hasn’t progressed over the past 3-4 months as much as I had hoped and I’ve started to log less and less hands. Overall I am a far better player than I was this time last year, I’d even say I’m up to 5x better but I am stuck in a rut. I spoke over MSN to Cadmunkey last night and we both agreed that we’re both impatient and also get focussed on short-term results and this is hindering my game. Short term is a phrase often misunderstood. Some will say short term is logging results daily or weekly when in reality even 10-15k hands of poker is short term, some would argue 50k hands is still the short term as there are so many variables to take into account. I’ve become obsessed with the potential money I could earn rather than focussing on making +EV moves and minimising the number of -EV plays.So once again Yorkshire Pudding changes his tactics! I change my mind more often than I change my undies lately I’m still going to aim for the $50k by 2010 but I’ll be initially be playing LHE and solely LHE, well I might through the odd MTT into the fray if I have a particularly good day at the tables. Andy commented a while ago on my old blog that I really need to knuckle down and focus on one discipline and make it my “bread and butter” so that is what I am going to do. I have 340 Big Blinds for the dizzy heights of $0.25/$0.50 so that is where I will start. I’ll be playing at Full Tilt as I get rakeback there and it is going to be so important to helping me build a roll so I can play at a given level sooner if I feel comfortable. I always adopt a 300BB ruling so I will not be moving up to $0.50/$1 until I have a bankroll of $300 minimum. I am also considering playing a minimum of 10k hands at any given level before I make the move up, rolled for it or not. I think I’ll start by playing a singular table then adding a second when I get back into the swing of things. I’m a little worried I’ll be too aggro and chase draws etc without correct implied odds but I have dug out my Small Stakes Hold’em by Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth and have been flicking through it on the way to work today and have been surfing 2+2 for ideas and tactics. At these stake ABC TAG poker is in order and is always profitable.In other news me and Mrs Pudding are 100% no more. We’ve been exchanging nasty texts to each other so I doubt we’ll even be talking again never mind anything else, a little -EV there. Mustn’t grumble though, things could be worse I guess, at least there are no kids involved this time! It’s a shame it’s done and dusted because we were a good couple but we now both have different agendas and there is too much distrust there, for some reason she thinks I can’t keep my dick in my pants even though I’ve never even as much as kissed another girl whilst I was with her or whilst we’d split for a couple of months. Hopefully things will calm down soon and we’ll start to get on again as some sort of firends otherwise it’s going to be awkward when we bump into each other which is inevitable where we live and the circle of friends and family we have. Maybe it’s time to have a break from being nice and having relationships with ladies and start to be a bit of a bastard as they seem to like that don’t they?! [/rant]