Exercise Pokerstars demons (or bust trying)

So, ever since I can remember, I have been a loser in stars cash games. Im talking about every level as well, from $0.5/1 right the way through to 10/20 I never seem to win on pokerstars. Since i started playing the higher stakes, i come across a lot of the same players on stars and full tilt, win big on full tilt and lose big on stars, I just dont get it.

Stars is probably the bigest site, has great curtomer service, good games and the list goes on. So I have $15k in my stars account at the moment, I will start playing 3/6nl, if i get to $20k, ill move up to 5/10, $30k up to 10/20nl try and reach $50k. Until I have gone bust on stars or reached my target I wont be playing casg anywhere else. Just in case anyone wants to take a pop at my BR management, this is not my entire bankroll, just to be clear, lol.

I have no idea how long this will take, especially since I not playing a whole lot at the moment. Does anyone else have a mental block with pokerstars cash games?

I decided to do this after another losing session at 5/10 and 10/20 on stars, putting me down again for the month, great timing after the slight euphoria of my last post. If i go bust on stars ill never play their cash games again, and write it off as a mystery and hopefully keep winning elsewhere, :-)

August gets going (eventually)

Up until this morning, I was still 3.5k down for the month, not a lot when primarily playing 10/20, but couldn't seem to move more than like $300 in either direction at the end of each session, which was very odd. I was having regular swings during the sessions, $4-6k, but always seemed to return to this point by the end, lol.

My timing/luck was pretty bad during some of these sessions as well, sometimes inducing tilt, but I'm only human. I was playing a few tables of 10/20nl on F.tilt and witnessed this player play the following hands in a short space of time.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1368832
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1368833
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1368836

Shortly after I picked up the following 2 hands against the same player and In my opinion had to go broke both times, considering what I had already witnessed. Its marginal/horrible in the vast majority of circumstances but these were extra-ordinary. See what you think;

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1368847
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1368853

This was one of the many sessions I was up 3-4 buy ins before finishing roughly even, just bad timing IMO.

This morning I set my alarm for the ungodly hour of 6am to play a few online tournaments, the showcase being the 1k 6 max event on full tilt. Getting up wasn't as hard as usual since i cant drink at the moment, on anti-biotics at the moment, after falling over drunk and cutting up my face pretty bad, see facebook for a picture. Played 6 tournaments in all, Stars - 100r, 100 f/o, 162 f/o, Tilt, 69 f/o, 150 f/o and 1k 6 max.

The 1k 6 max was going well in the early levels, i was chipping up nicely with no showdowns, winning small and medium pots, then once the blinds started getting up I found no reasonable hands or situations and ended up in push fold mode as soon as the antes kicked in, not ideal. I button push with with 89 suited, called by AT was the end of me, pretty standard stuff. Got a stack going in the stars 100r, but eventually busted with TT vs A9 in preflop out of the money. Early exits in the 100f/o and the 150 on tilt, left just the smallest buy in comp as my only chance for a cash, sods law. Made the money, last 54, with average stacked, and stayed that way until about 2 tables out. Picked up some nice hands, applied pressure at the right times, and found myself 1 of 12 with $9k for the win. 2.5k/5k blinds, i open for 15k with JJ when we are 5 handed, other big stack with about 200k, makes it 45k. I have about 245k at start of hand and elect to flat call OOP, and check fold on a K high flop, weak play by me. JJ is too strong 5 handed and coupled with the fact we are on the final table bubble, I think I have to jam this hand preflop. following up this mistake, I re shove on a medium stack with A8 to see him flip AK and I enter the final in about 6th place, ugh.

Survived for a while, then got a priceless double up with AK vs A7 and was back in contention. I finally exited in around 5th place i think with the following hand. I oped for 32k with KT spades, (6k/12k) and the button flat calls. The flop is 8 high with 2 spades, pot is around 85k, and i have about 150k behind. Thought about check raising but wasn't sure enough that my opponent would bet, and ensure the money went in on the flop. I bet 70k and he shoved on me fairly quickly, and easy call and I'm up against 99, i lose the race for 430k pot and chip lead 4 handed and that's all she wrote, picked up about $2.3k for my efforts. A small profit for the donkaments.

Returned back to cash this evening, and things finally clicked into place. Played 4 tables of 10/20 for just under 1 hour and won about $8k total, most of it on full tilt, and took augusts figures to almost +$5k for cash. This post seems a little long now so will wrap it up, may make another couple of early morning appearances in the full tilt tournaments I like, but majority of my play will be cash games, hope to build on this last session.

Not a lot going on

I suppose blogs are more intersting when talking about tournaments, or nose bleed stakes cash games, but as im playing neither of those I dont have a great deal to write about. I dont want to get out of the habit of blogging though as I am sure that some time in the future ill be playing tournaments again, probably when im in a more accomodating time zone.

Been playing a fair amount online, 5/10 and 10/20nl cash, but cant seem to put a consistent run together. Win a few buy ins one day, lose them the next time i play etc... played a little 25/50 the other day, as i spotted a weak table on DTD (crypto) Managed to win just over $4k without playing any real big pots so that was cool. But as far as august goes, only 5 days in i know, but im $3.5k down.

A good poker friend of mine, chris moorman, plays on all sites as moorman1, has just started what should materialise into a very into a very intersting blog. He is taking part in a prop bet, organised on pocketfives, for mtt's in august. Its a pretty big prop bet, and has a lot of teams with some of the top tournament players around competing. The bet is explained in more depth at the start of his blog. Its crazy the amount of volume some of these guys play, and can only take my hat off to what they do.

Check out chris' blog at : http://moorman1.blogspot.com/

This week sees the start of the full tilt online festival so i may set my alarm clock for some ungodly hours and play a few tournaments.

Moving on

So, after a few days in LA, finally left america and vegas behind to seek a more relaxing atmosphere. Arrived in bangkok today, but its just a brief stop while i orgainse a trip to vietnam. When i went travelling in 2005 i wanted to go to vietnam but didnt have time as I had to go to the Stars WPT event in bahamas, hard life i know, :-). Have pencilled in the aisan poker tour in manilla for my next live outing but that is subject to change and seems a relatively small event with a cap on the entrants. After that im heading to phuket for about 2 weeks scuba diving around the similan islands which are just breathtaking. Mid September sees me heading to australia to meet up with a few of my very good friends from home, one of which i havent seen since new year so that will be cool.

Our general outline for australia is to spend about 3 months travelling from cairns to sydney, arriving mid December just in to play the 5k Aisa poker tour event in sydney. Christmas and new year in sydney then down to melbourne to play the superbly run and structured aussie millions tournament that i was lucky enough to cash in this year.

As far as online goes ive been doing a lot better since my last post and am almost out of my $15k downswing immediatley following vegas. Mainly on Party $5/10 and Full tilt $10/20. I am having issues with poker tracker though on my new laptop. For some reason it doesnt find the full tilt hand histories after ive finished a session on there, and therefore my pokertracker doesnt give a true reflection of my play near enough rendering it useless. I have checked and double checked all the settings in full tilt and in poker tracker and cannot for the life of me discover whats wrong, not sure if its something to do with windows vista or not.

Thats about if for now, I will have my laptop with me everywhere i go so will be playing online still when i have noting better to do. A quick shout out to my mate Rick trigg (The Claimer) for his impressive finish in the Newcastle GUKPT event taking home 24k sterling, happy days.

Quick Summary

OK, been very busy and alwasy seemed to be putting off updating the blog, but here goes with a quick recap of whats being going on. My main event had a very good start with me reaching about 34k at the dinner break, without hardly showing a hand and was in confident mood. I was gettin maximum value for my hands, making good reads and had a good feel about what my opponents held most of the time. Then after the dinner break I had another meltdown sort of, similar to the venetian tournament a few weeks ago, but in my opinion i didnt play like a donkey as i did that day.

After a few orbits without playing a hand, then having a few raises snapped off by re-raises where i had to lay down my exit hand occurred. Playing about a 28k stack at 200/400, i open for 1200 in EP with 89 clubs and am called in the cut-off, no one else enters the pot. The flop is T J 2, with 1 club and i continuation bet about 1800 i think, and he calls. The turn is a 3 of clubs, and i check and he instantly bets 5k, around the size of the pot. Earlier this same guy had tried to float me out of position with AJ on a K 4 4 flop, but i had AK, so i knew he was definately capable of such a play. His bet looked to me as though he wanted to take the down right there, maybe with an AT type hand. My play looks as though i bet the flop because i raised preflop and was now giving up because he called me on the flop, so he could be trying to take it away from me. If i just call, I am out of position when the river comes, and think I will struggle to get paid off even if i hit my hand as i dont figure him to be that strong. Considering all the above factors I jam for 25k total with my up n down str8 draw and flush draw, he had me covered by around 6k. My line was that he would need TJ minimum to make this call, however he beat me in the pot with TT and i bricked out, gg.

No regrets, maybe overagressive, who knows but its how i play tournaments, always next year......... My vegas trip was in profit mainly because of online though withe the 2 nice scores i had mentioned in earlier posts.

August and September are 2 massive months in online tournament poker with the full tilt series of poker, and the pokerstars WCOOP festival. Some bankrolls will take a serious hammering during these two months im sure, just log on to the respective sites to look at the big buy in extravaganza. Im going to be in australia so will hardly be playing any of the events, but may set the alarm clock for 4am to play a couple of the ones I really fancy. One of the full tilt events is a $2.5k buy in and a 2 day event, with an awesome structure.

Since leaving vegas my cash games have gone pretty bad online, about $15k down. Some pretty sick hands on crypto in particular.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1272112

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1272115

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1272120

Someone requested that i animated the handhistory for my 100 rebuy win on stars a few weeks back but it kept slipping my mind, but here it is

http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HH71215/594_20070717_092857

Main Event

After some persuasion, I have decided to stay in Vegas and play the main event, time will tell as to if this is a wise decision. I play on day 1 d, and if i bust i will be arranging transport out of Vegas asap. The other day i lost my phone which is very annoying, coupled with the fact that i wasn't even drunk, just fell out of my jeans in a taxi. Moorman had his revenge vs me at bowling, beating me 3-2, although i was 3-0 down at one point, but managed to save face a little. Vegas is crazy hot, and this is what apparently provoked a man to open fire in new york new york the other day. He was taken down by 4 members of the public eventually, and to my knowledge no one was killed thankfully. Was weird as I had gone for steak with a few friends just 2 days before in new york new york.

Had another touch online today, finishing 6th in the warm up on stars for over $14k, putting my Vegas trip well in profit, even after shelling out for the main event, happy days. My main event last year was a pretty bleak affair, so will looking to improve on that showing.

vegas update

So, after my premature exit from the 5k short handed event I haven't got round to playing any more live tournaments. This is mainly due to excessive alcohol consumption leaving me feeling very rough the next day and not being fit to do anything until around 6pm. Have played a little cash online while i have been here and I'm $8k up.

The other night after a pretty heavy drinking session, me, moorman and noflopshomer visited the Orleans bowling alley at 7am, for some comical bowling. Moorman beat me 2-1 but i felt the copious amounts of white Russians were to blame and duly challenged him to a rematch when sober. The sober game resulted in a 4-0 whitewash in my favour from 5 games, and a cheeky 169 game to finish it off, OWNED!

Today is 4th of July so planning on going for a nice steak somewhere, then to sample the rides on top of the stratosphere followed by Independence day drinking somewhere along the strip. Poker stars have recently added new levels to the blind structure of its tournaments, making the re buys fantastic structures with lots of play, even on the final table. I was lucky enough to take advantage of the new structure yesterday and take down the 100 re buy. :-)