Managed to fit in a session last night, so a quick recap is probably in order. Basically, being Friday night, the tables were pretty jumpy and replete with dreadful players, yet I somehow managed, through a combination of one goober play, one ludicrous mis-click, and TWO one-outers (never had that in one session before, though the second cost me next to nothing) I managed to contrive to only be up $80 when the smoke cleared, despite the fact it seemed literally impossible to win less than about 4 times that during the session....

One of the very first hands I played, I managed to stack myself in a pretty ugly manner. Part of my method when the tables get a bit lairy is to open up and gamble a bit, try to encourage general looseness and action, and hopefully clean up as a result. It doesn't always work, and to be honest in this hand it all went a bit wrong. I get the best non-AA hand in the game, and decide to re-raise for a bit of deception (as I'm RRing AA a bit more often these days, it seems to make sense to try it with some of the other real premium hands when I have position on the raiser). Probably should just've called on this loose table. Then I flop top pair with a flush draw out, and decide there's maybe value in a semi-bluff (sets seem unlikely but there's a good chance someone with a draw of some sort AND a better made hand, i.e. a high pocket pair, will call, and my chances of both loose players laying down are kinda slim), this was my big mistake and where I should just've check-folded, but, well, that's a big pot if I can pinch it and I might have decent equity if a flush draw calls. As it happened, I had a good piece of the equity when it gets all in because there's no flush draw out, but I lost to the moron with AA anyway.

Game #1174192423: Omaha PL ($1/$2) - 2005/10/28 - 17:30:03 (ET)
Table "Hill_Gail" Seat 5 is the button.
Seat 1: zudo ($118 in chips)
Seat 2: The House ($270.25 in chips)
Seat 3: Luckyroy ($196 in chips)
Seat 4: ME ($200 in chips)
Seat 5: micro ($513.75 in chips)
Seat 6: WinCash2 ($414.11 in chips)
Seat 7: pjc2004 ($289.71 in chips)
Seat 8: BigAl49 ($75 in chips)
Seat 9: JAMMYBSTD ($309.50 in chips)
Seat 10: sarchar ($318.61 in chips)
WinCash2: posts small blind $1
pjc2004: posts big blind $2
ME: posts big blind $2
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to ME [Qh 9s Js Th]
BigAl49: folds
JAMMYBSTD: folds
sarchar: calls $2
zudo: raises to $11
The House: folds
Luckyroy: folds
ME: raises to $38
micro: calls $38
WinCash2: folds
pjc2004: folds
sarchar: folds
zudo: calls $27
----- FLOP ----- [7c 3h Tc]
zudo: checks
ME: bets $119
micro: raises to $238
zudo: is all-in $80
ME: is all-in $43
Returned uncalled bets $76 to micro
----- TURN ----- [7c 3h Tc][6d]
----- RIVER ----- [7c 3h Tc 6d][4s]
----- SHOW DOWN -----
micro: shows [Ac 9h Ad Jh] (A Pair of Aces, Ten high)
zudo: shows [8s 7s 6c Td] (Two Pairs, Tens and Sevens, Six high)
ME: shows [Qh 9s Js Th] (A Pair of Tens, Queen high)

Next general f*ck-up came as I made a misread/misclick-type error and got stacked again. In the interim i'd successfully chased a nut flush/gutshot against one opponent, hit the gutter on the river and to my delight the dude with the set decided he'd pot it all in, at the time I thought it was a dumb move but in retrospect I guess there was a chance I might have caught two pair or something and he might get paid, whilst the chances of me hitting the straight were low. Anyhow, onto the f*ck up - as you might know, i'm living with my parents for a while whilst I get my new apartment up to living standard, and as a resuly my dumbass of a mother decided to come in and bother me about some BS right in the middle of this hand. As a result, the action came back quiclkly to me whilst I thought it was still preflop and the preflop raise guy (a very poor, loose player) had re-raised it.... I didn't realise the flop had come and thus I pushed with basically a dead hand.

Game #1174629643: Omaha PL ($1/$2) - 2005/10/28 - 18:03:54 (ET)
Table "Dark_Star" Seat 6 is the button.
Seat 1: Shadowv ($126.13 in chips)
Seat 2: Thetaker ($215.75 in chips)
Seat 3: *monkeyb* ($406.75 in chips)
Seat 4: WinCash2 ($187.75 in chips)
Seat 5: ME ($320.69 in chips)
Seat 6: DUB1 ($257.50 in chips)
Seat 7: JAMMYBSTD ($360 in chips)
Seat 8: The House ($187 in chips)
Seat 9: C_3_p_o ($148 in chips)
Seat 10: Cervicale ($40 in chips)
JAMMYBSTD: posts small blind $1
The House: posts big blind $2
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to ME [Ah Ac 6d 2d]
C_3_p_o: folds
Shadowv: raises to $7
Thetaker: calls $7
*monkeyb*: folds
WinCash2: folds
ME: raises to $12
DUB1: folds
JAMMYBSTD: folds
The House: folds
Shadowv: calls $5
Thetaker: calls $5
----- FLOP ----- [4h 3h 7c]
Shadowv: bets $39
Thetaker: calls $39
ME: raises to $195
Shadowv: is all-in $75.13
Thetaker: calls $156
----- TURN ----- [4h 3h 7c][8c]
Thetaker: checks
ME: bets $9
Thetaker: is all-in $8.75
Returned uncalled bets $0.25 to ME
----- RIVER ----- [4h 3h 7c 8c][Kh]
----- SHOW DOWN -----
ME: shows [Ah Ac 6d 2d] (A Pair of Aces, King high)
Shadowv: shows [As 6s 8d 5d] (A Straight, Eight high)
Thetaker: shows [2h Jh Jc 5h] (A Flush, King high)
Thetaker collected $179.24 from Side pot #1
Thetaker collected $378.39 from Main pot


At the time I thought it wasn't the worst thing that could've happened as I correctly put Thetaker (another pretty loose player) on a flush draw, and so I was in fact going to win most of my money back if the river didn't find a heart, J, 6 or A. Anyways, annoying once more. had I not cocked up these two hands I'd have ended up with about $350 more. Incidentally, my gimp re-raise preflop was done on the off chance the raiser wanted to re-raise an open pot.

Anyhow, I fought back fairly well as yet another loose goose decided to push all in with some sort of KK hand whilst I held aces and I won a huge E500 (about $650) pot, which put me back well up, and produced some really nice poker with my strong hands at 100PLO8 at Stans to get up to about 250 there.

Unfortunately, I then got knocked back into place by a couple of harsh beats in quick succession.

First up, I held AA57ds and raised big PF in the PLO8 game. Flop brought A3J, one poor player bet weakly into me, so I raise the max. Turn another 3, he bets out weakly again, once more I raise and he's all in. He flips up A33Q for the ONE OUTER to stack me. Not only that, but on the flop he has one out AND I will take low if any low card hits. So to scoop he needs to find his one out AND a high card. Just horrible. And he played it like **** too. Ashamed to say I did have a bit of a pop at him in the chat afterwards.

My mood didn't improve as concurrently on the 50PLO8 table (i'd fired it up because two of the E200 tables at crypto had gone very quiet so I took a break from then and wanted somewhere else to play) I got a similarly harsh buggering. I had ATxx (don't really remember the situation) and found ATT on the flop. I bet it, and got one caller. Turn J, I decide i'm probably ahead of a weaker T here so I want to let him catch a boat if possible, check it. River Q, I bet, he raises, I call. He shows QQ88, calling the flop with a 2-outer that could very well have been dead. Ugh. More chat flaming ensued, then I wisely calmed down.

The second one outer came in the 200PLO game, as I had AA, got into a little SB vs BB pot, flopped ATT. Turn nothing, river T and the guy had the quad but as I'd been trying to milk and keep the pot small, and he bet only a couple of bucks on the river, I only lost 15 bucks or something.

Anyhow, thankfully my luck turned towards the end of my session and I caught some favourable drawson a 200PLO table to get back up. Firstly, I held AKJ9 on a rainbow QT7 flop in the SB. I checked by accident, timing out, and the aggressive BB bet out. I decided I might try to force him out (or buy cheap cards later) by check-raising in the two-way pot (he wouldn't need a hand to bet there, as after I checked to him). Unfortunately, he re-raised me, but all wasn't lost as he made it cheap (only $40 more into a $60 pot or so) so I decided to call. Turn brought me a jack-high flush draw as well, so when he pushed in my last $100 or so I had to call, and hit a straight on the river. I then won another $350-odd pot as somebody was unlucky enough to find a set when I had a strong draw, and I caught by the river and managed to get paid.

So, an $80 win. Nothing much, but I guess it could've been worse if I missed those late draws. Can't help but feel that it could've been much much better, though.

I also wrote a long blog post at work (ssshhh!) which i'll finalise and add to this later on today. Right, off to play some saturday afternoon poker. Still waiting to clear this damn $100 Stans bonus, and hopefully get over 2k for the month. Later!

Hours: 37
Winnings: $1600
Winrate: $43/hr

Well, I didn't get to the house to do any painting today, so instead I got my hair cut and settled down for a two hour session. Ended up being an annoying waste of time, although I only lost $210 (thanks to finaly clearing that $100 Stans bonus), basically ran into a load of BS again and had a generally annoying session. I also found myself playing like garbage again, not for the first time this month. Way I figure it, misclicks, dumb plays and general stupidity has probably cost me well 600, maybe 800 bucks for the month. Pretty pathetic really.

Anyhow, today I got off to a decent start then ran into some general nonsense. One thing that i've noticed really frustrates me is some of the bad players online. Of course, we all love a table full of idiots but sometimes some people seem so willfully, intentionally, stubbornly bad, they almost seem to just do things to put your nose out of joint and generally to get a kick out of winning as an underdog. Not sure I get that attitude really. Good example - today on the NLO at Stans (6-handed) I'm up against a guy in EP who makes a $7 raise (a slight overbet). Now, in the SB with AAK8ss I push al in (this is actually the best play out of position in NLO and one of the only occasions i can think of in poker when a large overbet is best). He calls, flips 5678 and flops 557. Now, this doesn't bother me much but this guy was a fairly articulate player and clearly not completely dumb, given his other play and chat. So he pushed his whole stack to a big overbet, no implied odds, against a good player preflop with a hand that is behind. 100% of the time. Like I said, almost willfully bad. Of course it's good that people do such stupid things in the long run, but it does get under my skin sometimes. I have little but contempt for that sort of attitude really, i think it's quite small-minded, albeit profitable for the rest of us. Anyone who comes onto a table and gambles I don't mind, but there seems to be a proliferation of these players who play fine for a while, as if they're trying to do well, and then just do something totally braindead. For some reason that puts my nose out of joint far more than the general clueless fish, or the gambling action-cases. Anyway, I digress.

I then managed to get stacked in the 100PLO8 at stans after flopping 572 with A553. Yep, 2nd nut high, nut low, I made a maximum flop re-raise into a big pot then the turn hit the single worst card in the deck, the 3h which put out a flush. I made a really stupid call when I misread the board and was a bit flustered by action on other tables (I think I thought I had a boat or something) and called off my last $70 or something into the $400 pot, when it was probably slightly -EV to do so (10 outs to win high gives me something like 40-50 bucks equity on the high end of the pot, though I might scrape through for low which might make the call less poor).

I also made a long-awaited return to party after a lengthy break, now the skins have been taken off. Alas, I can't seem to work out a way to get a rebate there (I tried a new account but they rumbled me) so it seems to be a no-rebate deal at present, unless I can transfer my empire account across somehow (I believe there's something possible of that sort, though i haven't really been keeping my finger on that particular pulse). And guess what? My big hands still get drawn out on and my draws still miss lol. Just can't win at this site and I started my new party career with a solid 250 loss in an hour and a half. Mostly it was just semi-decent hands chased on the PLO8 tables; the biggest loss I had came when I had the nut low plus the nut flush draw on the turn in PLO8, it got all in three ways and (as I predicted to myself when the money went in!) of course the low counterfeited and the flush missed.

It strikes me that I'm now pretty much break even for the month on the tables in nearly 40 hours of play. The 800 bad beat bonus I won at Inter, plus about 600-700 bucks of monthly crypto bonuses, empire bonus and stans bonus, plus nearly 100 bucks rebate, comprises my entire winnings for the month. Somewhat amazingly, given my horrible table performance, I'm still not massively under 40/hr for the month. Like I say, if I was playing less sloppily I'd maybe be 500-800 up. Maybe it'l do me good to take a break for a day or two, try to get my spreadsheet back up, and get my finger out and play better poker. mind you, some of the beats i've taken haven't helped. The true meaning of "omaha, the action game" is making itself clear this October!

No biggie really, I'll go out and have a drink tonight, a friend who's recently moved to london is back up for the weekend so it'll be nice to see her.

Hours: 39
Winnings: $1390
Winrate: $36/hr

RIGHT! To cheer myself up I decided it was time for a payday. $4,000 duly whipped out of my accounts. NIHAN!

Now i'm going to eat my yummy steak, have a beer and go out drinking. Later!

Hey folks. I decided it might be smart to finish at least 40 hours for the month so I forced myself to sit down to a session tonight, little under 2 hours.

If you were to shrink-wrap, freeze and bury a poker session for future generations to unearth in 200 years to give a flavour of a typical 2 hours of felonius monk online poker, this would be the one. I played generally reasonably (no major mistakes really), stacked one guy in the 200PLO game, picked up a few smaller pots here and there, and got quartered twice at Party for a loss. Upshot - winnings at Cryptologic getting my money in with the best of it, break even at Prima getting my money in with the best of it, losses at Party getting my money in with the best of it. Pretty much sums up my poker life!

No particularly exciting hands to mention - the PLO200 winner shows the advantages of raising preflop in good position - I had KKQT, raised on the button, got two calls. Flop came J98 with two diamonds. Two checks to me, I bet, EP player (who I read as being solid) raised, I suspect he probably has the same straight plus a redraw, but I'm fairly committed, have a small redraw myself and may just be ahead so I went to the felt, and he turned over the lower straight plus the flush draw (presumably check-raising considering I might've had AA or something and would automatically bet when checked to, not a bad idea I think). Anyhow, the straight held and I won a $380 pot.

At Party my most memorable quartering (not really a bad beat, but a typical example of how my strong hands never seem to hold at this site) came as I held A22Kds in the SB. A poor short stack minimum raised, and another player who had me covered re-raised to 10. I called with my strong hand. Flop brought two low cards (4 and 5) and a king high flush draw for me in hearts. The short stack pushed all in for his last 20 or so, other guy called, and so did I. Turn brought a 3[h], giving me the nut low and 2nd nut high. Nice. I decide to check as I think the other guy will probably bet this for me, he doesn't disappoint, I get all in. River finds a 2. He flips up the nut flush plus A4 for low, meaning the 2 on the river quarters me, despite the fact I was pretty sure I was scooping on the turn (though it turned out he had the nut high).

The other one came when I decided (perhaps a little rashly) to raise a bet on the flop when I had a 9 high flush draw, pair and nut low draw (partly to clear up my draw). The turn gave me a low wrap (I believe I had A24 with a 3 and a 5 showing on board) plus the nut low, my opponent pushed, I called and got sliced up when he showed nothing but the low plus a pair of jacks for high. Of course, he's ahead all the way but has to drop when I raise the flop. Some people seem to find a mighty pair of jacks tough to drop. Bah!

Anyhow, no great shakes, and at least I made 40 hours for the month. Monetarily my worst of the year so far (indeed, the last 4 months have contained my 3 least profitable for the year so far, which kind of sucks) but i'm not really playing loads at the moment, and so it's not bothering me too much at present. When I start making some hands and winning some big pots I guess I'll be a bit more energised to play. As it is, I've barely made much more than a big fat zero at the tables this month (coupla hundred I think) over 40 hours, which is a pretty awesomely bad run really, but it doesn't feel like I've been particularly unlucky, probably because I picked up that $800-odd bad beat bonus which has sweetened the figures rather a lot!

FINAL OCTOBER FIGURES:

Hours: 41

Winnings: $1540

Winrate: $38/hr

On the plus side, my apartment renovations are coming on great! Although the electrician managed to cleverly render every socket in the house unusable yesterday by installing a circuit breaker in the consumer unit that tripped every time an unearthed socket was used, he's come in tonight and hopefully fixed the problem, as well as sorting out several other "issues" with my 1960s electrics which threaten to fuse me with 500 volts when i try to make some toast if not properly dealt with. Tomorrow i'm getting a load of new doors fitted all over the house, which are going to set me back about £560, so they'd better be good! Getting some cool real pine doors with chrome handles, i'm hoping they're going to look real good.

Anyhow, take care,

Monk
xxxxx

Yep, I know you relatively well I believe. You'll be pleased to hear your on my "better players at Crypto" list .

The chances are you'll only know me in my most obvious guise - I have 8 different crypto aliases and, for the moment, 7 of them are pretty secret and (hopefully) staying that way .

Welcome to the forum anyhow! You only play the 100 games? I dunno if i've seen you in the 200s.

Well, November has (pleasingly) started on a fairly positive note, booking a solid win last night in an hour and a half before one of my friends unexpectedly phoned to say he was in the village and we went for a pint to catch up on what we've been up to.

I'm hoping I can switch my Stan's poker account over to one of the other Prima skins, bet365, who have an excellent $100 for 500 raked hands offer running this month, if only I could remember my username and password, eh, it's been about 18 months since I last played there! I'm also trying desperately to get a rake rebate party account, following the party skins change. My main problem is that i've already used my bank card, credit card and neteller account in conjunction with my previous account so they won't accept any deposits; I think the easiest thing to do will be to open a firepay account and try it that way. Might take me a while to get organised, mind you.

Anyhow, last night I was therefore a bit restricted in where I could play, but thankfully Stans had a decent 100PLO and an OK 100PLO8 table running, and I was able to find enough action at Crypto (THREE PLO8 games, oddly, 2 reasonable 100PLO and one decent E200PLO) to keep me going. Caribbean Sun and UKBetting are the first two crypto's I'm getting the bonus for this month.

Nothing terribly exciting to report, I made what I'd consider a pretty stupid start which I was annoyed with (tables seem quite quiet these days so any hand where you throw away a third of a stack or whatever on a sub-optimal play is comparatively more costly). I picked up AA57ss (or something of that ilk) at Crypto in the 100PLO8 game, raised it up preflop out of position. Two callers (both good players with big stacks), and the flop came something like J85 with two of a suit I didn't have. Now, I decided to bet out here on the off chance both wanted to fold (and with significant equity for high). Really, though, this is a big action flop in PLO8 and I'm not going to get two folds on a reasonably loose table doing this. If I do get called it's highly unlikely the turn will help me much, i'm out of position and I can't stand any heat. Anyways, I did get called in one spot, then compounded my error by betting the turn 10 bucks or so. River completed a ton of straights plus a low and I had to check-fold. So I'd thrown about 30 bucks into a hand where I didn't really have any control; the fact I'm probably winning high on the flop is beside the point, I think out of position I need to be check-folding such marginal situations where I'm up against players who can easily take me off a hand and who aren't likely to fold.

I did make one ultimately sensible decision in the E200PLO, however, as I found AT87ds in the blinds and called a small raise. Flop brought T75 with a nut heart draw for me; I decided I'd check and see what the preflop raiser (a fairly loose player) did, thinking about maybe check-raising. I figured a set was not especially likely and I was happy to play for my stack when the PFR bet out, received two calls, and it came back to me. The check-raise put about 3/4 of my stack in the middle, and the PFR thankfully folded, meaning I was (most likely) up against two draws of some sort. Caller one was all in, caller 2 still had 50 bucks or something left on the turn, which was an offsuit king (not an ideal card, but more likely than not I assumed I'm still ahead if I was on the flop, a set seems highly unlikely given the opponent's passivity and although she might've caught a higher 2 pair with the king, the chances are that she probably didn't). Anyhow, I pushed the dregs in, got called, and the river T gave me a winning boat for a 480 pot. Normally I'd lead out on that flop, but in this case it seemed likely it would be bet and I'm in especially good shape when 2 players call - if I push and it gets all in and i'm up against a set somewhere, I'm almost certain to have more than 25% equity so I'm making money on the play if it's called 4 ways, with flush, backdoor straight and (possibly, if the set is 55 or 77) some boat outs too. However, if no-one has a made hand I'm putting a lot of money in the pot with the best of it, plus the nut flush draw, and probably catching some dead money in there along the way, which is manna from heaven for an omaha player.

The only other hand I remember, mainly due to the aftermath, was a 100PLO8 hand at Stans. I held AA2x UTG, raised first in. One MP guy made a small-ish re-raise and I was able to make it something like 15 when it came back to me (the guy had about $80 or so, I was covering with about 120). Now, he was an interesting character who'd been chatting and trash talking a little bit, and who I must've played before because my notes for him read something like "LAG moron, re-raised preflop with 345J and made some horrible flop plays". I'd also noticed he had been raising a lot preflop and showing down some less than ideal O8 hands in this game.

Anyhow, flop brought 66J with two diamonds (which I didn't have). Now, normally I'd either check and make a raise (against a tricky player who is likely to try to take me off this uncoordinated flop, I am representing AA6x or something here) or bet out some portion of the pot and hope it's missed him (likely) and I win a small one. Anytime I get raised here I'm obviously folding as my AA and backdoor low draw is pretty sure to be behind to a 6.

Anyhow, I decided to bet out for the full pot, just getting the "feeling" he wouldn't be able to let go of a crap hand, and wanting to charge him the max on a flush draw, which again I had the "feeling" he might chase. Maybe not the best play but it fel OK at the time. Annoyingly, he raised all in, his last $35 or something. Normally my hand would be flying towards the muck on a raise, but here my notes on this guy, the fact I probably have $15-20 equity in the likely 160-odd pot even if he DOES have a 6 (due to my 2 outer for high and backdoor low draw) made me call him down. Smart move, because he showed some garbage which contained a jack and a queen-high flush draw. Flush came on the turn but a 6 on the river gave me AA666 and the whole pot.

The odd thing was, this guy then went apeshit, calling me a fish, saying I play horribly and he's watched me from previous games and that I always suck out, or play like a fish bla bla bla. Normally I'm happy for someone to get on tilt, but I couldn't resist pointing out that he had, in fact, stacked himself on a horrible hand and put his stack in with one that couldn't possibly be ahead. The wierd thing was the guy's logic - he said he "knew I had AA", as if it was some excuse suggesting he'd made a great play, so I tried to point out that if I had AA I was crushing his hand. His most bizarre rant was that it was "unbelievable" or something after the hand, and saying "nice suckout" etc, as if i'd caught some remarkable draw on him, when, in fact, the money had gone in with me as a considerable favourite and he'd played it pretty horribly on every single decision he made. He couldn't seem to figure out that the fact he made a flush on the turn didn't matter because the money went in on the flop. Still, in his eyes, it seems, I was a horrible fish and a suckout merchant, so I let him bask in that assumption for a while and merely asked that he stay on the table and try to win his money back. Seriously, this guy was a wierdo, horrible player (he continued to show down crap hands no-one should be playing in a O8 game for the remainder of the session, actually winning some) and a complete a**hole (for the remainder of the session he took great pleasure whenever I lost a hand). To be honest it pissed me off a bit (though eventually I just ignored the ranting and concentrated on winning elsewhere), I don't mind people going ape if they get sucked out on, or if they're having a bad run, just human nature to some people I guess, but to be so clearly a horrible player, and then tilt off your stack and blame someone else is just completely classless IMO, if you don't have the nous or ability to learn to actually play the game, walk around with the attitude that you're God's gift to poker even though you absolutely stink, and then blast other players for beating you in hands, you really need to get a clue. That said, come and sit at my table any time .... I have nothing but contempt for guys like that, and I really hope he sticks around on prima for a while because I could do with the money, and probably also the chat entertainment...

Anyhow, a solid start to November. I might not be able to play much this weekend because my sister's visiting for a while, and it's bonfire night (english tradition) on saturday, so i'll be out for that. HOWEVER, I have heard from Philsafc (poster on here and player at Crypto) that the Gala casino in leeds have now FINALLY bucked the trend of the dreadful live game culture that seems to exist in the city and actually (shock horror) booked a tourney that's worth playing. There's a £50 buyin (just under $100) tonight, I don't know the details and I might not be able to make it (I'm hoping it's a freezeout, i'm not a big fan of rebuy tourneys except for omaha where it's kind of a necessity) but I'm hopeful of getting down. Round here, 5 to 10 tables is usually the norm so we're probably looking at somewhere in the region of £2500-5000 prizes which is worth the bother of turning up, and I'm guessing (having played some of the woefully bad £10 buyin games in the past) the play will be pretty ugly. Plus, I need to get in some live game experience - I haven't played in the casino for about 18 months and if I'm vegas bound in the new year (still a possibility) I need to get used to playing live again.

NOVEMBER:

Winnings: $375
Hours: 1.5
Winrate: $250/hr

Current mood: Content.

Probably about time I updated this here blog, eh?

Well, had a busy old weekend (as you can imagine, due to lack of activity here). Friday night i had planned to catch the £50 NLHE tournament at the Gala casino in Leeds, from the sounds of it the action was very good and the 70-odd field contained plenty of dead money, so i'll definitely be going down next time. Thanks to Phil for the heads up on that one, and congrats for making the final table. By the time i got home from work, though, it was getting late and my sister was down from scotland, so instead I grabbed some food and had a nice lazy evening at home catching up with her and doing family stuff. About 2am I was still awake (following a bit too much beer and wine, mind you) and decided I was well, PROBABLY sober enough to put in a poker session to make up for my inactivity.

Luckily, it all worked out ok and I played very well (considering how much I'd had to drink - though it was over a lengthy period of time so hadn't really got to my head much). I bagged one big hand in the E200 PLO game which I felt I played pretty nicely - had AAxx in EP, just limping with it. Flop brought A83 rainbow, I decided to check and call a preflop raise due to my position. It was checked round, and the turn threw out a K. Now, I don't really want to give a free card at this point but I felt there were one or two loose-aggressive types who might take a punt at this pot, sure enough one likely candidate (with a huge 1,150 stack, although this guy is a player I've considered to be poor in the past) did fire in LP, I check-raised it up, he called. River brought a 4 and although 2-5 was beating me I reckon it's an easy river to fire in my last 80-odd chips, and gratifyingly I got called down by AK. Usualy when I check with the intention of slow-playing a set on a really uncoordinated board in PLO, it throws out the one card I don't want to see, but in this case it worked out nicely for me. Other than that, the session was unremarkable, I had to play some E50PLO at crypto due to lack of late-night tables, and continue to hover round the same figure at Stans. All in all the 2 hours or so grossed me $340.

Saturday I had a real late morning (didn't hit the sack until gone 5, so I was up around noon) and a fairly abortive day really. My sis hadn't seen my new apartment yet, so we drove over to take a look around, but by then it was getting late so had to shoot back pretty quick.

Saturday was the 5th of november which is a traditional celebration in Britain - bonfire night. Back in the middle ages, a group of anarchists lead by a fella called Guy Fawkes plotted to destroy the houses of parliament (british government) and the king by planting a huge amount of gunpowder under the house, and nearly succeeded until they were caught at the last minute. For some reason unbeknownst to me we traditionally celebrate this by congregating outside in November to stand round big bonfires in the pouring rain, eating largely unpleasant food and watching firewrok displays. I'm sure it's a terribly exciting cultural thing for some people but I could take it or leave it to be honest. I think i'm past the age for getting excited about the sort of crappy little legal fireworks people generally use (though the dangerous and badly made chinese imports which can blow your arm clean off when you light them engender it with a certain frisson of danger that livens the event up a bit), and if I wanted to see a big fire I just need to walk along one of the streets not far from where I work and take a few camcorder angles of a recently stolen Ford Escort. Anyhow, I wasn't feeling too well by saturday night, was tired, hungry (the shitty burger and chips at the bonfire party we'd paid for the privelige of going to were, unfortunately, unfit even for maggot consumption, though I threw most of it down anyway in a vague effort to warm myself up) though at least the firework display was pretty decent and mercifully short. One big-ass plate of garlic mussels (saturday dinner, god knows why) and a good night's sleep later and I was feeling much better. Even managed to get down to volleyball on sunday, which was a good laugh, first match next week which no doubt will be painfully rusty, even with the 3 hours of training this week.

Anyhoo, all of that brings us to tonight, where I sat down to another session, and managed to get in just over 2 hours before the annoyance of my computer randomly freezing when I held top set at PLO8 on a no-low board and my general tiredness prompted me to call it a night. Managed to free up a few nice crypto bonuses tonight, which boosted my winnings over $430 for the session. Solid start to the month really, given my limited play. Nothing hugely exciting today, I did make a double through early on in the E200 PLO game which gradually whittled down to break even over 2 hours of cold cards (and one brave but annoying call-down in my second last hand - the combination of some goober raising pointlessly out of th blinds preflop and me catching just enough to call a possible bluff on the river against an opponent who had the near nuts inducing me to lose more than E100 on a load of garbage).

The real action seemed to be swinging on the 100PLO8 tables at crypto - I don't remember EVER seeing them so good. So many horrible players putting their money in on no hand, overplaying things, or failing to bluff or bet horribly, just general dreadful play and very few good, aggressive players in the other seats. All this meant I was disappointed to have only made 200 or so in the time I was sat down, though a late loss when I got all in with nut low and 2-pair against a garbage hand and a flush draw, when I got fushed and then counterfeited, didn't help matters. My favourite hand was against one of the weaker players I saw today (and also a borderline LAG) - I held A4JJ in MP, flopped KJ3. LAG bet out (he had my 100 stack covered), I raised maximum. Quite happy to felt it here if need be. One other loose player came along, turn brought a 3 and both checked. I decide I'm unlikely to get much more out of this but if he does have a draw he's not the sort to fold it for a little bet so I bet 5 or 10 bucks or so to get a little more in the pot. He pushed over the top, other guy folded. It's a no-brainer call but the wierd way this guy was playing I could've easily believed he held KK and slow played it on the flop - I was in luck because he had K3xx and I'd found my perfect turn to pick up a $230 pot.

Anyhow, better go, having my carpets fitted tomorrow! Then we're nearrrrrly ready to move in! Hurrah! I better get my arse in gear and sort out some internet, too, because otherwise I'll be poker-less for a while and, given my lack of activity of late, that could be kind of costly.

NOVEMER FIGURES:

Winnings: $1145

Hours: 5.5

Winrate: $208/hr

Current mood: Knackered!
Current pet hate: Gimps making pointless raises out of the blinds in PLO. Achieves nothing, builds a pot out of position, and often costs me money when I've just limped on the button with a crap hand assuming nobody is going to be dumb enough to think their KK47 is a real monster from the small blind. Of course, you can never overestimate the stupidity of the average PLO goon. I hate it when other people's bad play can put you in -EV situations, grrrrrr! Seems to be a plague at the moment at crypto especially.

Well, my work ethic continues to be pretty abysmal, as I put in my first session since the last blog entry tonight. On the plus side, however, I'm absolutely tearing up the tables this month and enjoyed a big win tonight as the deck smacked me squarely in the mush for 2 and a half hours, and I played (I believe) some pretty shrewd omaha.

It was always shaping up to be a decent session after one big hand early on, I found AA66ss in EP on the E200 table, a loose short stack made a large raise in LP, I decided that for once I'd make a re-raise with the AA hand from EP (I felt it was likely I'd see off the other limpers and get heads up against the loose player, who would either go all in or call off half his stack). Anyhow, one limper who had my E300-odd stack covered called, and the short stack pushed. I was then able to make a collosal E250-odd raise, and it resolved into a three way all in pot. I didn't see what the short stack held, but unbelievably the guy who had E300+ put it all in with 99TK (it might have been double suited), he flopped an open ender so it was a nervous turn and river, but thankfully my hand held up and the big E700+ (close on $1000) pot slid my way.

From then on I won solidly at 100PLO and 100PLO8 at crypto, although the 200 tables seemed to tighten up rapidly and became fairly unprofitable.

I did have one moment of extreme annoyance thanks to the dreadful software at Prima - Stans poker (which I'm playing until i get my bet365 account sorted to pick up the monthly bonus) dealt me AAds in PLO but because I was busy on another table at crypto winning a pot and because I was on one of their STUPID NLO tables (whereby to make some sort of preflop raise you have to fanny about with their impossibly fiddly raising thing, rather than just shoving the slider to the end like you can on a pot limit table), I timed out just as I was clicking the raise button (also the fact that you have a ridiculously short time to make decisions and the tables don't pop up when its your turn to act). Anyhow, to cut a long story short, an ace flopped, some other guy had a set of tens which became a boat by the river, and I would've won a $200-odd pot.

I also made one pretty poor turn lead bet on a E200 table when I hit a massive draw and sensed some weakness in my opponent, so went for a semi-bluff, which was basically never going to work against a loose player and a couple of other limpers.

Anyhow, can't complain too much as I went on a bit of a winning spree everywhere else and cashed in $1105 to the good. I even enjoyed a nice moment where I got all in with the best hand, won, and was called "lucky". Heh! He even rebought and tilted off another 150-odd with horrible play, though unfortunately none of it went to me...

Here's that nice fat hand in full...

Game #1297448953: Omaha PL (€1/€2) - 2005/11/11 - 22:18:02 (UK)
Table "Sage" Seat 1 is the button.
Seat 1: Beneboy24 (€92 in chips)
Seat 2: bareket6i (€502 in chips)
Seat 3: DURBAN (€333 in chips)
Seat 4: Hildus (€83.75 in chips)
Seat 5: ME (€330.25 in chips)
Seat 6: MaxSteam (€107.79 in chips)
Seat 7: imafairy (€130 in chips)
Seat 8: DODSTER (€309.77 in chips)
Seat 9: EXORCIST1 (€961 in chips)
Seat 10: Mr.Flop (€123.88 in chips)
DURBAN: posts small blind €1
Hildus: posts big blind €2
----- HOLE CARDS -----
dealt to ME [9d Qs Ad As]
ME: calls €2
MaxSteam: folds
imafairy: folds
DODSTER: calls €2
EXORCIST1: folds
Mr.Flop: calls €2
bareket6i sits out
Beneboy24: raises to €13
DURBAN: folds
Hildus: folds
ME: raises to €46
DODSTER: calls €44
Mr.Flop: folds
Beneboy24: raises to €92 and is all-in
ME: raises to €327
DODSTER: is all-in €263.77
Returned uncalled bets €17.23 to ME
----- FLOP ----- [3s 6d 7c]
----- TURN ----- [3s 6d 7c][7s]
----- RIVER ----- [3s 6d 7c 7s][7h]
----- SHOW DOWN -----
ME: shows [9d Qs Ad As] (A Full House, Sevens full of Aces)
DODSTER: shows [8h Ks 9s 9h] (A Full House, Sevens full of Nines)
Beneboy24: shows [Js Qc Jc Kh] (A Full House, Sevens full of Jacks)
ME collected €435.54 from Side pot #1
ME collected €278 from Main pot

Anyways, off to the house tomorrow to varnish some doors (moving in on thursday, hurray!), and I'll be up as bright and early as possible in the morning to catch some of England's cricket team playing a tough match in Pakistan. Although England are as good a team as there is in the world right now, two of our best players (including our captain) are out through injury, and it's a really tough place to play, which makes the home team favourites. Should be a fascinating contest anyhow.

I also need to find time to get some more hours in on the tables - 40 for the month seems very optimistic now (which is kind of my minimum cut-off point), so I'll have to see what I can manage. At least I've made a ton of money already, so I guess I'll just make sure I get all the $300-odd of remaining bonuses (bet365, interpoker, william hill, pokerplex, plus the 25% rakeback deal at Stans when that comes through) and just see how much time I can manage.

NOVEMBER SO FAR:

Winnings: $2250

Hours played: 8

Winrate: $281/hr

Slightly absurd winrate. I think it's probably the shortest time in terms of table hours it's taken me to break $2k in a month. Pretty good starts after having such a sucky October.

CURRENT MOOD: Quite jubilant, and bloody tired after a long week of work/house stuff!

Monk
xxxxx

Well, it's been a long, tiring and interesting week or so whilst i've moved into my new house - it's feeling much more like a home now, I have the sitting room laid out pretty nicely with my new 32" LCD TV (which I went a bit nuts and spent about 2/3 of my monthly wages on the other day...) and all the furniture in and looking good. So on th whole it's going well, although I haven't had that much time to enjoy it so far, as i've been back at work today and basically "lost" saturday night and all of sunday by getting painfully drunk, walking home (which took about 5 hours as I got lost somewhere in leeds) in freezing temperatures and spending all of sunday in bed. Oh well.

Anyways, rather than doing important things like phoning the electrician to sort out the dodgy washing machine point, sorting out my home contents insurance or getting the gas people out to look at the boiler, I decided i'd grab another quick run on the tables tonight before bed. Must say it's nice to be able to play again, though it was a bit of a drab session, tables tight-ish. I have the party bonus, interpoker bonus and bet365 bonus to grab before the end of the month and i'm going down to sheffield at the weekend to see a mate of mine (and one of my favourite bands) so i'll have to do it in the evenings when i get chance. As you can imagine, i might not have much time so i'm going to concentrate on grabbing the bonuses and not worry too much about trying to hit a certain number of hours for november.

Tonight I played at crypto and party, mostly I felt I played reasonably well (though I do worry about the lack of reads I get at party, not knowing many of the players and often playing 7 tables). I got nicely up at crypto on a 100PLO8 table before losing a cointoss I had marginally the better of (I got it all in with top set, opponent was rather rashly raising and re-raising with nut low plus nut flush draw, and caught a runner runner straight) for about $240. Other than that, it was mostly small pots. I made one or two really nice plays and snapped off a couple of bluffs, and generally played good small-pot poker, controlling betting well and making some reasonable semi-bluffs. I lost a couple of hands to rather idiotic chasers at party (hey, what's new) but still finished the session up $80, plus the last £10 of my William Hil bonus which leaves me up around about a solid $100, which wasn't bad given that I didn't realy make a hand in an hour and a half.

I doubt i'll be on tomorrow as i'm playing volleyball in another city, but might check back in on thursday. Apologies for not posting much on the forum, will try to catch up ASAP!

November stats:

Hours: 11.5

Winnings: $2210

Winrate: $192/hr

Monk
xxxxx