Friday, 30 January 2009
Virgin Festival Seat
Won a seat to the Virgin Poker Festival held at Aspers in April last night! (https://www.virgingames.com/poker/pokerfest.aspx?festival=newcastle2009). The poker gods were looking down on me as I shoved all in with T9s from ealy position on the final table only to see the BB call with AA... Strangely I fancied my chances of a suckout tho and sure enough two pair hit on the flop. Weeeeeeeeeeeee!!! In my defence (I was called a donk for this move) I had an M of 3.5 and the blinds were about to hit me so I thought it was time to move. Also people were tightening up as we neared the bubble, about 8 left at this point, so I reckoned a shove from UTG+1 was unllikely to be called. Very pleased to get a seat as this was my last attempt! :D
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Got a Plan
Thanx to my m8 Chica who's a pro and has a WSOP cash to his name I have a plan :) :
- deposit £100 on titan
- build this up to $500 playing primarily $5/$10 SNG's
- play the odd $2-5 tourney to keep me sane
- when up to $500 swich to playing $5 MTT's solely
- play live tourney's (primarily Aspers and Grovesner) out of pocket money when can afford
I will keep the blog up to date with my progress!
- deposit £100 on titan
- build this up to $500 playing primarily $5/$10 SNG's
- play the odd $2-5 tourney to keep me sane
- when up to $500 swich to playing $5 MTT's solely
- play live tourney's (primarily Aspers and Grovesner) out of pocket money when can afford
I will keep the blog up to date with my progress!
Pub/Home Games
Without a doubt my least sucessfull arena of play has been small live games. Why? I don't know but I thought I'd elxplore this in today's post. Possible reasons:
- I'm a bad live player (casino results seem to dispute this)
- I'm easy to read once you get to know me
- I'm too predictable once you get to know me
- The play is too slow therefore I get bored and make bad decisions
- It's just my perception
- The sample of games is too small and dates back to when I was just beginning anyways
As you can see from the above reaasons it has been on my mind for some time! So why do I bother going:
- These games appear to represent very good value compared to online games for same price i.e. softer competition
- They're a good night out and pretty cheap too! I especially like the 'commarderie' (spelling :s)
- They keep my live game from getting too rusty
So it's a constant dilema. What's the big deal? you might ask it's only £10 and it's a night out! Well it's £20 after drinks and taxis and I'm a student. Ultimately though it comes down to one thing - ego. I take poker very seriously when compared to the players I play aginst at home/pub which makes it sting all the more when I get beaten. And as we all know ego is a central part of a poker player, every time it get's knocked down it needs to be rebuilt, in my case that's usually weekly!
- I'm a bad live player (casino results seem to dispute this)
- I'm easy to read once you get to know me
- I'm too predictable once you get to know me
- The play is too slow therefore I get bored and make bad decisions
- It's just my perception
- The sample of games is too small and dates back to when I was just beginning anyways
As you can see from the above reaasons it has been on my mind for some time! So why do I bother going:
- These games appear to represent very good value compared to online games for same price i.e. softer competition
- They're a good night out and pretty cheap too! I especially like the 'commarderie' (spelling :s)
- They keep my live game from getting too rusty
So it's a constant dilema. What's the big deal? you might ask it's only £10 and it's a night out! Well it's £20 after drinks and taxis and I'm a student. Ultimately though it comes down to one thing - ego. I take poker very seriously when compared to the players I play aginst at home/pub which makes it sting all the more when I get beaten. And as we all know ego is a central part of a poker player, every time it get's knocked down it needs to be rebuilt, in my case that's usually weekly!
Monday, 26 January 2009
Numbers
I don't know why but I'm having trouble relating "real life" money and the money in my poker balance. Of course this is a big problem! Related to this has been my recent increase in online play. This saw me losing £170 one day and making £300 the next wilst on holiday. As a student this is a lot of money to me and although I was on holiday at the time this is becoming a more common theme.
My biggest difficuly is I get bored very quickly when grinding either cash games or SNG's. This inevitabely sees me chasing MTT's of varying sizes and buy-ins as the potential immeadiate results are far more appealing. This tends to have the effect of decimating my hard earned cash through SNG's or cash tables.
What am I trying to say? Well... It's a New Year and I have just got out of debt thanx to some poker success :D This calls for a new plan and unfortuneately a new bankroll as I needed the last one to pay off the debt. I hven't made this plan yet but I know it's gunna have to be somehow diciplined and at the same time keep things relatively interesting for me. Any suggestion are welcome!!! My roll is £100.
My biggest difficuly is I get bored very quickly when grinding either cash games or SNG's. This inevitabely sees me chasing MTT's of varying sizes and buy-ins as the potential immeadiate results are far more appealing. This tends to have the effect of decimating my hard earned cash through SNG's or cash tables.
What am I trying to say? Well... It's a New Year and I have just got out of debt thanx to some poker success :D This calls for a new plan and unfortuneately a new bankroll as I needed the last one to pay off the debt. I hven't made this plan yet but I know it's gunna have to be somehow diciplined and at the same time keep things relatively interesting for me. Any suggestion are welcome!!! My roll is £100.
Friday, 23 January 2009
Last night was my first attempt at qualifying for the Virgin Poker Festival. Unfortuneately 7th was the best I could manage and 5 places out of 47 were awarded a seat, gutted!!!
TBH I was pretty lucky to reach seventh as I hit a cupl of 3 outers on the river to survive. However it wasn't to be as I attempted an ill fated steal of the blinds by shoving on the shortstack, woops! My reasoning behind it was that we were on the bubble and I was second last in chips, therefore I thought that he might fold and that I needed the chips which equated to 1/3 of my stack. Unfortuneately I had been pretty aggressive in that position and so he felt committed with his J-10 offsuit to a call. I had J-6s and no help came leaving me severely crippled.
Why am I writing about this hand in such detail? To help me reflect upon the decision to push... Part of the influence for this was that I had been watching an Annette_15 training video earlier that day (http://promo.betfair.com/gmd/landing/2008/player/). For those that don't know, her style is ultra aggressive and in this spot she would shove any two cards... BUT perhaps not against a desperate short stack when so close to a qualifying position!
Anyways for those of you don't know the prize for this tournament was a seat in the Virgin Poker Festival in April worth £150. I will have two more attempts!
TBH I was pretty lucky to reach seventh as I hit a cupl of 3 outers on the river to survive. However it wasn't to be as I attempted an ill fated steal of the blinds by shoving on the shortstack, woops! My reasoning behind it was that we were on the bubble and I was second last in chips, therefore I thought that he might fold and that I needed the chips which equated to 1/3 of my stack. Unfortuneately I had been pretty aggressive in that position and so he felt committed with his J-10 offsuit to a call. I had J-6s and no help came leaving me severely crippled.
Why am I writing about this hand in such detail? To help me reflect upon the decision to push... Part of the influence for this was that I had been watching an Annette_15 training video earlier that day (http://promo.betfair.com/gmd/landing/2008/player/). For those that don't know, her style is ultra aggressive and in this spot she would shove any two cards... BUT perhaps not against a desperate short stack when so close to a qualifying position!
Anyways for those of you don't know the prize for this tournament was a seat in the Virgin Poker Festival in April worth £150. I will have two more attempts!
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Background
Just to get the ball rolling I thought I'd give a bit of history about me and my short poker career. I'm 24 years old and currently studying Electrical/Electronic Engineering at Northumbria university, so basically I'm a soap professional dodger.
I started playing poker a couple of years ago when friends decided to have a few home games for £5 or so. This got me hooked and as a result I later opened an account on Pokerstars. Part of my inspiration to do this was that a friend of mine, who was already a pro at this point, seemed to be making a good living form online poker. Right from the beginning he gave me the most crucial piece of advice a beginner can have: "Start small and don't move up til you've built a bankroll that allows it". Standard advice I know but he really impressed this upon me and until recently I have been religous aabout this.
So I started with $1 and $2 SNG's of varying size and was a losing player for a long time, obviously this didnt matter at thesse limits tho. However, gradually I began to level this out until I became break even and eventually started turning a small profit :) At this point I got more interested in poker and started reading about it online and in books. Unfortuneately to date I've only read 3 books (Harrington Vol 1, SNG strategy and a limit poker book) but I plan to change this.
To cut an already long story short I then moved up to $5 nad $10 SNG's on Full Tilt. At last check on the OPR website my ROI was 20% over 500 games :)
My biggest successes to date though are at Aspers casino where I have played about 10 times and reached 4 final tables. On two these I came first although on one of those we split the money four ways. I am very proud of both of these wins as I never considered myself much of a live player before however I will now play live much more often!
I started playing poker a couple of years ago when friends decided to have a few home games for £5 or so. This got me hooked and as a result I later opened an account on Pokerstars. Part of my inspiration to do this was that a friend of mine, who was already a pro at this point, seemed to be making a good living form online poker. Right from the beginning he gave me the most crucial piece of advice a beginner can have: "Start small and don't move up til you've built a bankroll that allows it". Standard advice I know but he really impressed this upon me and until recently I have been religous aabout this.
So I started with $1 and $2 SNG's of varying size and was a losing player for a long time, obviously this didnt matter at thesse limits tho. However, gradually I began to level this out until I became break even and eventually started turning a small profit :) At this point I got more interested in poker and started reading about it online and in books. Unfortuneately to date I've only read 3 books (Harrington Vol 1, SNG strategy and a limit poker book) but I plan to change this.
To cut an already long story short I then moved up to $5 nad $10 SNG's on Full Tilt. At last check on the OPR website my ROI was 20% over 500 games :)
My biggest successes to date though are at Aspers casino where I have played about 10 times and reached 4 final tables. On two these I came first although on one of those we split the money four ways. I am very proud of both of these wins as I never considered myself much of a live player before however I will now play live much more often!
Why a blog?
Why start a bog? Rather than boring all my (very patient) friends with my poker stories I thought I'd create a space where I can write about them all and get it off my chest. This way anyone who's acctually interested can come and read about my poker experiences and probably other life ones too!
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