A two day yo-yo

I finally made a loss! Woohoo!!.... wait a minute, I mean "D'oh!!"

Take a look at that lovely big spike on session 58 - 64. Then the horrible dip that followed! That was a handful of sessions on Poker Stars. Why I continued there after such a great profit I do not know. I know Poker Stars has the toughest games around in general. Maybe it was an ego thing? That I thought I could beat them up for $5k instead of $2k? Whatever it was, it's not happening again. Everybody bangs on about Stars and how great they are. It's true, they have some nice tournaments, but this attracts the best players. I don't want to play the best players, I want to play crap players who like to give money away! My sessions on Stars resulted in a positive of around $1,000. I'm still angry with myself though.

So, I return to Poker Heaven with a $500 starting stack. Home sweet home. Today that's just shy of $1,500 after almost exactly 24hours. One guy paid me off when I held a set of 7's which turned into quad 7 on the river. He had top and bottom pair but was happy to push his $250 stack into the middle. That might sound like I'm slagging him off.... and I suppose to some extent I am, however, I think I played the hand beautifully as I slow played my set (somewhat dangerously) into a flushy looking board. My calls probably looked like a flush chase to my opponent and to his credit he tried to make it expensive for me. Little did he know *I* was the one with the made hand. The river just rubbed a little salt in for him.

That's exactly two months since I began my Poker Chart. A nice round 70 sessions have produced almost $13,000 from the cash tables. I am negative for tournaments, though. I haven't kept tournament records, but I know that despite a few cashes and some nice STT wins, I'm down for tournament play online, somewhere between $700 and $1200 from the last two months. This is worrying. I used to be a good solid tourney player, I still am in STT to some extent, but MTTs are killing me, especially re-buys. I'm going to plug this gap though. In the next two months I am determined to pick up some B&M results and win an MTT online or B&M. God knows if it kills me trying, I WILL do that.

I hope you all had a good February. If my cash game stays strong I could be nudging $20k by the time we reach April.

No losses for a month

I'm having trouble uploading the poker charts screenshot. However, I'm showing a 24 session winning streak over 30 days right now. Alright, I haven't played a lot for the last week or so but even so it's been a hell of a run.

I'm allowed to play 20% of my games away from Poker Heaven, so I've been playing a little on Betfair and, today at least, on the newly launched ADVFN Poker. There are a couple of financial sites that are jumping on the bandwagon. In my opinion they will never take off unless they devote a large amount of money to advertising. I'm sure they will tick over for a nice profit but the poker ship has already sailed and, sorry boys, a 50 quid bonus doesn't cut it today.

ADVFN Poker had a whole 130 players on today, eventually I found a game at $3/$6 NLHE. Dario Aiolito (spelling!) who finished 7th at the Barcelona EPT was in the game. As was some other crazy guy who was raising too much. Dario is a good player, for an Italian ;-) His friend, was very aggressive but easy to trap. Others came and went but we were the main three for 2 hrs and 30 mins.

I turned the $600 sit down into $1760 and left. A little confidence booster to take a few hundred from an EPT finalist, but most of the gain came from the other guy.

Brighton was terrible for me. I was sick for two days prior to the event and almost never went.

Read more about it on: http://www.paulsandellspoker.com
You can also get rake back at Poker Heaven on there and read my official Poker Heaven blog.

Cardiff

It's been a typical few days really. I went to Cardiff, thought I was running well, played good patient poker for 4 hours and crashed out. No big deal, the field was very tough and I can't expect to cash in every tournament. I think if I can cash once in every four or five then I'll be quite pleased. I'd like to win at least one tournament from my Poker Heaven schedule in this quarter.

Cardiff was ok, nothing special really. An open plan casino, handful of machines and tables, couple of bars, etc.

What is typical about the last few days is my online form post-festival. If you read through my blog you'll see after an offline tournament I nearly always beat up the online tables. Yesterday was no different. I had three sessions over 1hr 45mins... hardly tasking, but I came out well ahead. I'm now certain that offline tournaments sharpen my game, that I focus more when I return and that there is very little to fear from bleedawaymychipsopolus after playing the toughest in Britain and Europe.

So, my poker chart is up to $8,300. 20% of the target is now in sight. It's been a great start to the year for me.

I've got rake back to give away at Poker Heaven still. I just don't understand why players insist on staying in cash games on very tough sites. Why play cash games on Stars, Crypto and Paradise and get 0% rake back vrs tough opponents?

Boss media, where Poker Heaven have their tables, is swimming with the good stuff, yet players get all snobby about layouts and stats and colours and all that crap. Who cares!? Play for money, not cosmetics!

Join Poker Heaven from my main site below:
http://www.paulsandellspoker.com
Then email me for a rake back deal.

Alternatively give all your rake to the toughest poker rooms on the net.