Managed to track down the allusive bonuses as I was getting the raked hands and £5/per hour sites all mixed up so thanks again to piersmajestyk for the advice.

I suppose I can count last night as a winning session as the monthly Bonus received outweighed the reasonable loss for the evening which was inevitable after my lost to when a third hit on the turn.

also lost to a flopped full house and a few nut flushes draws ended up as a load of rubbish when they missed .

Monthly return is still looking very good and the Poker Tracker stats are now becoming a little more meaningful as the number of hands played increases but it is still far to early to draw definite conclusions though.

Ouch Ouch and Ouch

A really bad night and just couldn't win a hand anywhere and lost to everything imaginable either being outkicked or lost to trips or rivered or lost to flopped fullhouses and made flushes.

The lowlight was raising with then flopping and losing to in the big blind when he made a straight.

To make matters worse I had plenty of hands but just seemed to have the second best hand to many times though I can't think of many times I carried on when I knew I was beat but I'm sure there were a few.

All in all awful and a real dent in this months stats. and while I knew a day like this was pending after such a good few weeks it still is a real pain.

Thanks for the support, much appreciated and now to make matters worse I've got a computer virus so will not be playing for the next couple of days.

Now if only the virus had arrived two days ago then 'Black Tuesday' may have been avoided.

Have not yet managed to get back on line yet though hopefully as the problem is now diagnosed then it should be easy to fix.

Famous last words as I am off to the deepest Ukraine on Wednesday for a few days to watch the UEFA cup tie between Dniprovotobsk and Hibernian then it looks like this months curtailed session is nearing it's mostly profitable end.
Nothwithstanding the complete disaster of last Tuesday.

It's good to be back

Having been hit by a computer virus and having a holiday in the quite surreal world of deepest Eastern Europe (The Ukraine) I returned to Scotland to face the prospet of a very heavy workload once I returned to my job.

This turned out to be a very demanding and I'm afraid quite stressful project which left me to drained to play poker and I decided to take a month off from playing as I wasn't in the right frame of mind and nor did I have a PC which was of course another major factor

When you have problems with either work, money, women (or maybe all three) or even if your cat has just died then the number one rule is DON'T PLAY.

However I'm back playing again though only at the very low limits as I don't really feel I'm playing very well, my reads are wrong, I fold when I should bet and I bet when I should fold and I don't feel that confident when playing and consequently am not aggressive enough.

Having played constantly for 18 successful months this 5 week lay off seems to have affected my game and I plan to take it very easy until the end of the month and ease myself gradually back into the poker mindset though last night went very well on a $1/$2 table so I feel myself getting my game back together.

Have enjoyed reading everyone's journals and other threads though and catching up on the poker world.

Last night I lost around $20 over a 2 hour period and felt absolutely wonderful about it

The reason being I really felt my game was coming back together as my reads were spot on and my bluffs timed perfectly and my raises were made at exactly the right time

So what if I lost money as there was an inevitability about it given the following hands:

My was run over by and was destroyed by a flopped full house of and and my own full boat of and lost to quad .

These were huge losing hands and to end the night only slightly down (possibly even break even when you take into account bonuses) was a real moral victory.

I feel after my 6 weeks enforced layoff off my Poker Head is back on and next week I will return to my usual $2/$4 limits with a little dabbling in $3/£6 and hopefully can recreate the months of July and August.

First session of the month and lots and lots of great hands 3 times and twice and the scary three times and won with every hand.

It was hard not to end on a winning session and when the flush hit as well then the fireworks went off and the champagne popped.

I really didn't think I was playing particularly well or even particularly badly I just kept getting good cards and hitting flops and if you hit flops you win more often than not.

The targets for this month is to play consistently and clear all the Bonuses on all the various sites and maintain my VP$IP% at around 16% -17% with an Aggression Factor of >2 and an Aggression frequency of > 45%. This won't make me a winning player but it should give me a better than even chance and in a game of such slight edges then this is all you can hope for.

There is nothing better than a complete maniac arriving at the table. .

Suddenly the whole dynamics of the table changes and everyone focuses far more intently as the pot sizes just grow and grow.

Last nights maniac was the best kind ie he hadn't a clue.

If you re-raise the manicac then it should tell him that you might not have a great hand but it does mean you have something yet time and time again he would cap the pot with or and no outs expecting to bluff a victory.

He must have dropped £100 in 30 minutes which is a very good trick if you can manage it.


The complete tragedy was that he only won one hand with and that was against me and it was the only time I managed to have a hand to play against him so it was mighty frustrating to see all his money draining away and not being able to get a piece of the action

A very strange session as I two tabled down at the £1/£2 cryptosites whereby my usual VP$IP% of 16% to 17% was blown out of the water by an incredible run of high cards whereby my VP$IP% ended up at 27% on both tables over a 500 hand average.

On-line poker is definetly rigged and that's the truth

Alas despite the great hands I didn't seem to win that many pots and while of course I ended up in a profitable situation it was by no means as much as you would expect given I hit four times and won every time

Poker Tracker stats are looking interesting and it's just a pity I lost so much earlier data when I had the virus though I am now saving the data offsite as I should have been doing in the first place.

Another strange evening with more great cards with and far more times than is normal yet seemed to lose far more than usual to flushes and straights so confirming my theory that on line poker is definetly rigged.

The theory is very simple.....If you win it's thoughtfull and sklilful play and if you lose then there is an on line conspiracy working against you

That's the halfway point in the the month and sitting on a decent return of 1.5BB/100 hands excluding all the bonus which if included bring the monthly return to a more than healthy £269.
VP$IP % is a little higher than I would want at 17.9 % but I put that down to the one 500 hand session where every second hand was a or a variation thereof.

Also I've cut down the hours I am playing this month and while it doesn't seem to have made much difference to my win rate (if anything it's fallen) it does mean I am looking forward to playing more and not getting burnt out by constant playing so overall it's been a satisfying few weeks since my return from exile.

These are the sort of evenings I don't enjoy at all

Card dead for 100 hands where all I played was a few times in the small blind and a which lost to and then an incredible rush of cards with high pocket pairs falling over themselves then back to card dead again for another 100 cards but sadly just at the same time as all the maniacs arrived at the table

It was all so frustrating and the swings varied beween +$60 to -$75 and I ended up the evening at around break even with many emotional highs and lows in between as well as long streches of utter boredom as the flop button was hit for the umpteenth time.

As a change I think I'll try out the crypto lightning games in my next session as these seem quite a novelty though concentration will be the key as the time scale is so limited

Another couple of poor evenings when hand after hand seemed to just drift away as top pair faces trips or a straight was beaten by a flush and then a complete disaster when my full house of and was beaten by someone who had flopped

After that all I could do was stumble to the fridge for a beer

That's the second time this month this has happenned and at times like these the only consolation is that I am playing limit rather than no limit.

I admire no limit players who have to deal with these sort of losses as you must surely lose your whole stack on a hand like that which must be hard to recover from.

I think this weekend I'll table downward and try to recoup some of the losses and clear the remaining bonuses while regaining I hope some momentum in my play as the last few nights have dented the confidence.

An amusing evening when I decided to play Interpoker for the first time in ages thinking if I double tabled for 3 hours then I should break the back of the monthly Bonus currently on offer

Not even remotely close I had forgotten how many hands you actually have to play to clear this Bonus especially at £1/£2 or $1/$2 levels.

Even at the $2/$4 level you are talking around a 12 to 14 hours slogathon though it's quite a decent marketing ploy at first glance

Give me the cyrpto's sites who pay £5 per hour any time.

Despite only clearing 25% of the Bonus, I ended up with a small gain on the evening coming back from a large early loss where for the 3rd time this month my full boat of and lost to though it wasn't as bad as previous losses as an landed on the River and this time I didn't allow the pot to be capped as the opposing player may well have had instead of the quad eights.

I'm certainly due for a bit of luck next month on these hands.