Tournaments

Last Wednesday I played a few tournaments before starting to travel round Australia again. I bust all my tournaments and was just about to log off and go for a beer when moorman sent me a msg on instant messenger. Chris was having trouble with the Internet in his new house and couldn't access certain poker sites for some reason, but had been playing in the $1k entry tournament on Absolute poker. I agreed to take over but was still a while away from the money places. I play on short-stacked, then get a lucky double up, then start to abuse the upcoming bubble situation and find myself with decent chips 2 spot from the money. Chris still cant get on so we strike a deal for me to play it out, with me getting 50% of prize money if i placed 6th or above. Anyway I ended up taking the whole thing down for a cool $30k and netted myself $15k from a freeroll. Coupled with the $15k I took down from the DTD tournament last Sunday, a pretty good week, :-)

The last few days I have been travelling around, scuba diving and drinking, not having anytime for poker which is fine by me. We arrived in a town yesterday called mission beach and tried to book a white water rafting trip for today but it was full, so i had a free day. I sit here now wishing i didn't have a free day, lol. I lost about 3k playing cash on full tilt, and played in one of the sickest hands for me personally.

The ultimate cooler: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1516981

I was playing in the full tilt 1k Monday tournament at the same time and had built a nice stack of 9k with the blinds at 100/200. Then my full tilt tournament curse kicked in and I was out in 2 hands. The first i flat called a raise on the button with KK and called 2 bets from original raiser on J J 4 2 board, then it went check check when a Q rivered completing a flush draw and his J9 off was good. Then the very next hand I get this little gem

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1517120

Any1 who uses pokerdb or any of the other similar sites can amuse themselves by checking my full tilt tournament stats, they are pretty abysmal and its a mystery to me. My poker stars tournament stats are very good I'm told and have no idea why they don't translate across the board.

Poker taking a back seat again after today, since we are heading to magnetic island for a full moon party. Then have a cool diving trip lined up to a a ship wreck called the SS yongala. After that its sailing around the Whitsunday islands with a bit of scuba diving thrown in for good measure. Still made a lot of money this month and am enjoying the time off. Should be some cool crocodile pics going on my facebook pretty soon, as soon as i find a wireless hot spot to upload them from my laptop. That's all for now,

Edit, PLayed 10/20 later in the day for about 3 hours and was up around $9k, making a $4k profit for the day

Pab

Running good

Since my last post, I have played a fair bit, mainly cash games, and have been running and playing well. I have been taking it easy on the PLO front though, still almost $4k up i that for the month. Since leaving thailand, I can now play on party poker again, and this proved useful with me booking a $10k win during my first session of 10/20. I witnessed some shocking play, the cream of the crop being some guy raising QQ to 70, the button re-raising to 300, I make it 920 with AA from SB, and the OR flat calls, lol. I push my remaining $1700 in on a low, all heart flop, he has me covered and snap calls with his QQ no heart, wp sir. I even recorded a win on stars 10/20 the next day winning 3 buy ins. Overall for the month I'm about $30k up on cash, so am very happy after last month turned out to be very ordinary.

On Sunday I played almost every tournament going, including a few super satellites to live events. My biggest cash would come in one of the first tournaments i started playing that day, the $1k buy in main event of the DTD online festival. I ended up taking 5th for $15k after losing AJ vs 22 all in pre-flop, I turned the A, but he rivered a 2, ugh. The structure of this event was excellent throughout and allowed for a lot of play, this was however until the final table. When we were 5 handed, only 2 of the players an M above 10 which is pretty ridiculous seeing as now is when the big jumps in money take place, 1st taking home $70k. This is disappointing to see in such a prestigious tournament, and tarnished a otherwise superb event. I think the main reason that it become like this was the numerous missing blind levels including, 500/1k, 1k/2k, 5k/10k, 10k/20k, as well as oversized antes IMO.

I have just finished playing a few tournaments today, cashing in the 100r on stars, and the nightly 100k. The main reason I was playing tournaments though was because of the 1k buy in on full tilt, which was going very well until the following hands took place.

The first hand was a strange one, I almost never make this call as it is usually spewing chips. On this occasion, I had been on this table with the player for a long time, and we had not tangled in any way, had not had any battles in the blinds. Then he makes this move which was just so random and out of the blue, that I couldn't see how he was strong, I trusted my instincts but it didnt work out for me

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1493497

This was the very next hand, and it was time to go, lol

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1493501


I plan on playing quite a lot over the next few days while i wait for 2 friends of mine to finish a diving trip then we start heading down the coast to sydney so my free time for playing will be pretty limited I imagine. Hoping to make 50k profit in cash for the month, which would be my best ever month since deciding to play predominately cash games instead of tournaments. A quick congratulations to Julian Thew who won the Plymouth GUKPT recently, a great result for a really nice guy, he also thinks i play really tight, lol,

August review, Promising september & PLO

August turned out pretty badly to be honest, I showed a whopping profit of $2k from playing cash games, but did enter a tournament on full tilt for $2.5k so no way I was in overall profit for the month but hey ho. I lost most money on stars 10/20nl about $12k, 6 buy ins, nothing catastrophic, but not what im hoping for. There were definately periods of the month when I was playing tilted, and lost more than I should have in particular sessions but thats the way it goes. I didnt put in a whole lot of hours until the last week, where I made a recovery to m stars account playing some 3/6nl and a little 5/10. The stars cash challenge I detailed in an earlier post is having to take a backburner atm due to the time zone im in. There are just no good games running when im available to play, so ill have to put that on hold until im in a time zone that allows me to play at busier times on stars.

September, all of 5 days old, has started well with me showing 5 figure profit, $9.9k from NLH, and about $3.5k from PLO. The PLO figure is only a guess as im currently downloading omaha PT to check the numbers. Learning PLO seems to be the fashionable thing to do now for a lot of the higher stakes players I talk to or read about. I dont aspire to play high stakes PLO, or make it my full time game as the swings can be brutal. However I would like to become more competent at the game, purely to add another string to my bow and give me wider game selection. This will help if either there are no good hold em games going, or if I simply fancy a change. Im watching some PLO videos from cardrunners and have been playing some 3/6 and 5/10 shorthanded. Some people may think that im starting at pretty high stakes for a PLO novice, but If the money doesnt really mean anything then I wont learn, just how I am.

The new series of High stakes poker has just started, and its a program I really enjoy watching. Anyone who hasnt seen it and fancy's watching cash game poker instead of the edited all in fests of the WPT broadcasts, I suggest you check it out on poker tube, or downlaod via a torrent site. Some of the banter is priceless, and some of the play form the rich amatuers is laughable, making for a thoroughly enjoyable show.

Should be gettin a new 17" macbook pro tomorrow so will have about a week to get that all set up with windows, poker tracker and Itunes before leaving for Australia on 13th September. Thats about all for now, should be putting in quite a few hours this week as my time spent playing will be scarce once I get to OZ, gl at the tables everyone,

Pab

Stars cash update

OK since i set my challenge to win at stars cash, I've played 5600 hands of 3/6nl on stars and am up $7595. I have only just got to $20k in my account because i played several tournaments last weekend and the 100r yesterday. Ive seen some really bad play in the 3/6nl games and is comforting to know that I can still make money very easily at this level if I were to fall on hard times in the future. I just about stuck to what i said about not playing cash anywhere else, but if my session is less than 1hr, I have been playing at my normal stakes, trying to find HU or 3 handed games to play. I have played about 1000 hands of 5/10 on UB and won around $4k so that was cool. Found some money in my blue square account and had a nice HU game at 10/20, taking almost 2 buy ins off my opponent.

I am $6k up from cash for the month, not bad considering the part time hours I'm playing, and the fact i was in a pretty big hole earlier in the month. Overall after playing some tournaments including the $2.5k event on full tilt my profit is probably closer to $3k. Will start playing 5/10 on stars now, and hope to keep moving forward, hit 30k and start some 10/20. If i drop down to 15k, ill go back to 3/6 and build back to 20k. If I'm only on for short sessions though, ill probably find a short handed higher stakes game somewhere.

Am considering buying a macbook pro atm and using some software called parallels in order to run Windows for my poker software. I have heard good reviews about macs, a few of my non poker playing friends have them and are well impressed. I have a sony viao atm with a 15" screen and the piece of shit is always freezing and just generally being crap. I would like a dell, but as I'm in Thailand that's a no go, needs to be store bought. Should be putting in quite a few hours on the cash tables but nothing excessive, but will die off mid September as I'm meeting up with friends in Australia to travel the coast.

Peace

Tournaments tonight

Stars mission going ok so far, about 3.5k up on 3/6nl over the past few days, gonna be playing a few tournaments tonight though, so likely to take a hit. The main reason im on playing tournaments tonight though is the $2.5k buy in on full tilt with an insane structure. This is a 2 day event, which is pretty crazy for online, and ive managed to swap 10% with moorman so hopeful of a decent score even if its just chris pulling a nice result out of the bag, :-)

update, bombed out of everythin, hope to wake up and see moorman won me $40k from my % in the tilt comp

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.