More of the same

Variety is the spice of life, so they say. So today I decided to leave NLHE alone and play some Omaha. $1/$2 PLO High to be exact.

Had a terrible start and things were looking like a -$200 day. I regrouped and got ahead after about 45 mins, then flopped two pair against a real loose cannon. He pot bet (again) and I figured him for Aces and raised him all-in. He called and to my horror he had the nut straight. The Gods, clearly in the jovial mood, turned the full house for me. Queens full of Nines. Woohoo... felt sorry for the other guy, although, that's Omaha!

So, I ran after that... $140 up and pretty pleased to be ahead (you can't beat luck can you?) but still wanting that last $60 or so to complete the $200.

Just now I finished a $50 H/U. I joined the game, was very nice and said hello, how are you, good luck, etc. To be met with silence. Maybe he was chat banned or something, but if not, a simply 'Hi' is polite enough, isn't it? Anyway, he was far too aggressive and I cut him in half on level one. On Level 2 he caught AK vrs my 88 and it was all over. Just $10 short of the $200 for today. Yeah, I know H/U STT isn't cash!!

I'm not going to hunt it though, I've been on a good roll recently and I'll put the brakes on for today right here.

That makes 3 in a row since I started here on the blog, previously to that I was doing quite well too. The bad run is sure to bite at some point!

I love the grind

I've had a hectic, non-poker playing week, apart from the odd session here and there and a trip to Broadway Casino on Sunday.

I played the Blonde Poker Heads-up event last Thursday. Drew a player I'd seen posting in their forum and was comfortable but, sadly also a little bored. I suppose the quality of the opposition was apparent if comparing the time it took for most matches to complete vrs standard H/U games elsewhere. I pushed in when ahead with 6,7s vrs A,Qo - I missed everything and fell behind, then pushed again with AK and ran into his AA. Before the 6,7 I don't recall being behind, although I would of lost a big chunk with AK vrs AA.

We launched Freerolling this week. First tournament is $1,000 guaranteed, only 7 players so far so plenty of value and a max. of 50 runners. Come over and join up!

Back to the grind today on the '$200 per day challenge' - I had $500 in Pokerstars and thought I would chance my luck at $2/$4 NLHE. This game is really too big for the $200 a day thing but if you can stay tight enough and pick off the crap players you can make $200 pretty quickly. I was in for an hour and within 10 mins was up $120, no real hands of note just taking down raised pots on the flop. I then gave most of that back but there were two real idiots on the table with small stacks - obviously trying for a quick hit n run!

The first idiot was to my immediate right, he would not lay down a blind unless you were raising x8 the BB or more, with this in mind I didn't try anything clever when the big stuff arrived. QQ, KK, just raised into him twice in a row quite heavily and got paid. Then straight after, we had a 6 handed pot. It was raised to $12 from UTG, everyone called, I held 7,7. I felt if I hit my set it could be a pretty big pay day. Flop was a dangerous looking 7,8,J with two diamonds. I checked and it was made $8 to play by idiot #2 (to my left) everyone called. I couldn't afford to keep 5 players in here, the turn could be really painful. I made it $64 to play to clear out the drawing crap and over carders. Idiot #2 called for the rest of his chips and everyone else folded. He had J,Ko and didn't improve.

This put me $326 ahead for the session and I left 5 mins later. So the $200 a day grind goes well still, pleasing to finish ahead of target rather than under.

Lots of work to do today whilst I await the arrival of a boiler service co. (no time specified, just today!) and our cleaner.

They all ran away!

Today I was awake pretty early. Nothing stirs you in the morning better than the delightful rants of a 2 year old at 6.15am.

Checked the forums today for anything interesting. Nothing worth reading apart from complaints about 11 seater tables at €4000 EPT events. I've twice had the pleasure of being squashed on an 11 seater, once in Napoleons in Sheffield, which was so smokey you could cut chunks out of the air. The other time in the much nicer venue of Broadway in Birmingham. I'm inclined to forgive Broadway this as they are still new and on the £20 rebuy nights it is a 10 seater tournament.

Tables should be limited to a maximum of 10 players, even then things can be a bit cramped if Jabba the hutt is occupying enough space to fill Wales. In Brighton we were treated to a 9 seater, this was luxury, non-smoking too. Room to move and oxygen to breathe, what spoilt brats we are demanding such things!

I started the $200 a day challenge earlier and was sailing along nicely, up $130 and just needing a few more medium pots to walk away, then the table departed one by one, I lost $20 and then it went to heads-up and even he left! Now I have far too much to do to continue today, to settle into a new table and find the pace, etc, so I'll put the brakes on here at $110 which is a really ugly amount to add to the two previous days (which also fell short of $200). A profit is a profit though and $110 added on is better than $200 taken off.

Wednesday is a non-poker night for me. Yes, I watch LOST, but to be honest, it's all gone a bit slow since the opening episodes and there seems to be incredibly long and frequent ad' breaks. I've started watching it now so I'll have to continue! Trapped on the river with too much in the pot to fold to the raise all-in, d'oh!

Thursday is the Blonde Poker Heads-up tournament on Stars, most of these guys can play and I'm looking forward to testing my H/U play against them.

In the beginning...

I find myself wittering on, on poker forums and the like, about general crap that really nobody can find very interesting. I thought, in an obvious moment of inspiration (or madness) to start a blog (like every other poker player) to keep on my witterings and moans collected in one handy website!

So, a little about my favourite subject first. Me:

I'm married with one son. I live in Leicestershire in the UK. I spend my days playing poker, writing about poker or working on websites about poker. You could say poker dominates my life to an extent. Rarely a day goes by without poker influencing it.

I'm part of The Sterling Cartel - basically, three guys trying their luck at B&M poker. We've had some good results recently and are currently negotiating a new sponsorship package for the next 6 months or so, after London Poker Club kindly supported us for the last couple of events.... stay tuned!

I've been playing online since around 2002, B&M since Easter 2005. Amazingly, I've remained profitable for the duration of this time (must be some world record length fluke, surely?) and have stepped up the limits gradually.

So, right now I'm playing a little game called "Make $200 a day" The rules are simple. You start with $200 and try to turn it into $400. Lose $200 and that's game over for the day, hit $400 (or as near to as possible) and that's game over for the day. I only play in cash games and do not count tournaments wins or losses towards the days figure. As the blog is new, I'll start the game from scratch (despite playing it for a few weeks now) and we'll see how it goes.