"If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him" - Sun-Tzu

Played the 1200 entrant $3 rebuy on Stars, lasted 3 hours 20 minutes... then, 20 off the money, i made a silly mistake -

Seat 1: TanOrpheus (37558 in chips) - Thats me, just above average stack of the players remaining
Seat 2: NoOl3Ru (16355 in chips)
Seat 3: edw_fje (24805 in chips)
Seat 4: Stainley88 (11791 in chips)
Seat 5: 420nutznbolz (62081 in chips)
Seat 6: Grinder77 (87005 in chips)
Seat 7: Camille (16428 in chips)
Seat 8: pjt124 (10145 in chips)
Seat 9: alexhughjazz (16795 in chips)
TanOrpheus: posts the ante 75
NoOl3Ru: posts the ante 75
edw_fje: posts the ante 75
Stainley88: posts the ante 75
420nutznbolz: posts the ante 75
Grinder77: posts the ante 75
Camille: posts the ante 75
pjt124: posts the ante 75
alexhughjazz: posts the ante 75
420nutznbolz: posts small blind 800
Grinder77: posts big blind 1600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to TanOrpheus [Qs Qh]
Camille: folds
pjt124: folds
alexhughjazz: folds
TanOrpheus: raises 3200 to 4800
NoOl3Ru: folds
edw_fje: folds
Stainley88: folds
420nutznbolz: folds
Grinder77: raises 9600 to 14400
TanOrpheus: raises 23083 to 37483 and is all-in - URGH
Grinder77: calls 23083
*** FLOP *** [5h 6s 3c]
TanOrpheus said, "ah nh"
*** TURN *** [5h 6s 3c] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [5h 6s 3c 4c] [5c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Grinder77: shows [Ad Ac] (two pair, Aces and Fives)
TanOrpheus: shows [Qs Qh] (two pair, Queens and Fives)
Grinder77 collected 76441 from pot

dammit, i knew i wanted to fold it, my logical head is screaming AK at worst and this is not the place where I need even a coinflip. Just completely lost my head for a second and screwed up. Lesson 185 learned. I'll suss this game out one day :o)

Last Night...

Got home fairly early last night, and thanks to the clocks going forward a week earlier here, that gave a chance to sign up for the $5 rebuy on Stars. It turned out to be a minimum investment rebuy, $15.50, after my initial rebuy at the start and then the add-on. Depending on your outlook I was either fortunate or unfortunate to be sat at a reasonably tight table, so no chance of gaining a monster stack, but I wasn't in the mood for crazy suckouts anyway. I busted after about 4 hours just short of the money, the annoying thing is I was playing really well, and when I finally called for all my chips it was more about justifying my read than thinking I was ahead. Silly thing to do if you want to win, but at least I can still take a positive away from it. Trust Your Reads! It's all good.

Dan came round for a while too as it's the last day before he goes skiing in Breckenridge for 3 weeks, I've never been skiing but he loves it and goes across once a year if possible. Have a good time mate, I'll win a tourney while your gone !

P.S. If anyone's gonna be in Vegas in June, leave me a comment or drop me a line, it would be superb to hook up with you real bloggers while I'm out there.

Weekend Update - HUC & $1M gtd

Went round to Hooks' place on Saturday night, I played a few MTT's on my laptop while he improved his MTT game in the $4.40, 180's that are now running. When I arrived I announced that I was going to win my seat in the Qtrly $1m GTD that was going to run on stars the following night. 5 hours and 6 rebuys later I had, being 1st in chips in the 329 player MTT I entered when we got down to the final 9, who all got a seat. Excellent, mission accomplished. $1,000 ticket won.

Sunday came and Veneno sent me an IM, did I want to play in the HUC running tonight ? Yup, of course I did. The HUC was due to start 30 mins before the $1 mill, so it was a nice warm up. I was drawn against Surflexus and we had a really good match, I took a small early lead and held onto it until about half way through, then Surflexus took the lead and was relentless in his raising on the button, to be fair I must have looked weak folding so many hands, but he showed some very good hands down too when I was folding. It then came down to my pocket tens vs his A8, Surflexus had a 2-1 chip lead and I was allin, he thought for a minute then called and turned an ace to finish me off, the game lasted about 25 mins, which was about 10x longer than the other match in our group ! I really enjoyed the challenge and was well up for the $1m.

There were around 1500 entrants in the $1m, second hand I get J 10 sooted in the cutoff and raise it 3x, everyone behind me calls (since they have 3000 chips to start) the flop is 10-6-4 rainbow, I bet the pot and the button calls. Turn is the 8 of clubs, putting 2 clubs out there, I bet the pot again, the button calls again, river is the 5 of diamonds, I bet 2/3rd pot. Button calls and shows 6-5 off suit for two pair. Ok I was aggressive with a marginal hand, but I was ahead till the river. Annoying but I still have 2k chips left. 28 minutes in and I get dealt QQ in middle position, it's folded to me and I raise 4x BB, the big blind just calls. Flop is 9xx and I bet out, he min raises me I think and reraise allin, he calls and has KK and knocks me out. Dunno if I can get away from that. Maybe the mistake was not giving him enough credit for a min reraise, but so often that's some doofus with 1010 or JJ that I fancied it. Oh well, another bust out, maybe i should have taken the $850 cash instead !

That's all for now, work is going to continue to be mad busy this week so dunno how much poker I'll get to play but hopefully a little more than none at all.

Good luck.

Vegas !

It was a Saturday night and 6 of us were deep into the home game rebuy tourney. Blinds were getting big and everyone was starting to take things as seriously as they could after several shots. UTG, Guy folded then asked no one In particular "Is it a bit sad to go to vegas on your own?", the responses followed the action around the table "No", "NO", "no", "No", "No way" All of us agreed that if you have the opportunity to visit vegas you should grab it.

A week later and 3 of us have booked a week in vegas from the 9 - 16 June ! Incredible. I shouldn't be spending a grand on a week trip. I shouldn't be going on two holidays in the space of three weeks. But I also shouldn't be spending 3 hours a day looking at boobies on the internets and 14 hours a week playing poker and hell, that hasn't hurt me. We're on our way back at last :o)

Just like last time we decided to go away the more sensible crew members say they should be saving rather than frivolously spending on this trip. So, just as before now would be an extremely opportune moment for the poker sites to do me a favour and throw a tourney win my way so I can force them to come on a freebie, I think situations like this are what focus me, give me goals I can't ignore, make me sit up and work for it. I hope I get an opportunity to shine over the next couple of weeks.

Back to reality

Hi folks, thanks for the support after my last post. I woke up Sunday morning feeling like Saturday night was just a bad dream, i felt fine about it after a good sleep. I remembered that moments like this prepare us better for the future and remind us about good bankroll management and why we must not take that one shot at the big game (whatever 'big' is for you) with all your bankroll. I'm lucky I learnt that the hard way when I only had $50 to lose. Now I still have $1300 left and while it's a pain to step back for a few weeks, I'm happy to do it. It's the right thing to do, and in poker, we're always happy when we do the right thing, right ?!

So I'm moving back 2 levels from 4-tabling $200 buyin to 4-tabling $50 buyin. While I played on Sunday and was reminded how funny the $50 game can be I checked the hands from Saturday night in PokerTracker. They were bad beats, so I wont bore you with details, but I think it's worth mentioning that normally I wouldn't be so emotional about losing. The difference this weekend is that now with PT, I can see that my opponent is a whale with a brain the size of a pea when it comes to poker. So rather that thinking, hmm I better be careful here since I don't know him too well and he could have me beat, I'm thinking.. finally here's the hand, I'm gonna crush him at last, there's only a 6% chance I'm behind on the turn and only 3 outs that help him on the river, this is it ! Then the river hits him in the face and I feel cheated. I shouldn't, I know. But I do. I hate seeing stupidity rewarded, it happens all the time in work environments. People get promoted just so that others don't have to deal with them anymore, it's easier than firing someone you see, makes them someone elses problem. I think that's why I got annoyed, felt so lock-stock about it, like I was gonna throw up it felt so bad.

So I'm gonna get used to it, I'm going to allow PT to show me over time that this is a good thing. I'm also going to up my limits for stepping up a level to 20x the buyin rather than 15x, it's a safer cushion and should mean any losses have a less tilty effect on me.

That means that this week I shall be mostly grinding it out 4-tabling $50 games on Stars, trying to get my roll back up to $2,000 for a step back up. The Acorn had a tough weekend at the tables too, but puts it so well when he says "I accept that poker is a game of swings and so long as things are swinging my way over the long term I should stick to my gameplan."
He's right of course. Gutshots will hit, flushes will come, full houses will be rivered by better full houses, pot sized bets will be called and fish will win, but in the end probability will come good and we'll all be better off for it. I see now that even losing hands in poker are an investment in a profitable future. Sometimes the knocks are hard to take, but you've got to just cowboy up and get on with the job.

Good luck at the tables all.

Lost

I'm at a complete loss for words. I've lost half my bankroll in a day. I feel sick to my stomach. Only in 1 of the 9 or 10 hands that hands that have killed me did I get money in when I was in a bad spot. It's an unbelievable run of sh*t. I really don't know where this, or I am going now. Right this second I feel like taking what I have left and dropping poker forever. It's the worst downswing I've ever had, and it feels absolutely bloody terrible. Obviously come the morning I won't feel like killing morons anymore, and will be thankful that there's more of them and the lower limits that I now have to drop back to. But for now, f*ck f*ck .... f*ck.
Be back when I'm over this.

Brain fart

Yeah, its been about a week, so shoot me. It's really hard keeping this up right now, poker is taking up all of my "spare" time, and work is really busy. So the little breaks at work that used to allow me to empty my cluttered mind are now few and far between. I'm writing this one at lunchtime. Whilst that gives me a chance to waffle for a bit, it doesn't let me get to useful stuff like my results for the last few tournaments. General idea for you all though - I've been playing cash NL, think I have a fairly tight winning strategy for them, but could possibly die from boredom whilst playing them. Therefore I've bought a 22" monitor that can easily fit 4 very clear tables on it at the same time, 2 cash, 2 tourneys. So far (for the 4 days I've done it) I haven't cashed in the tourneys and the cash games are covering my entry fees. My results graph trickles down to the right each evening and then has a little jump up at the end of each day to restore the balance. Though I haven't cashed in the tournaments I'm happy with the way I've been playing, satelliting into the last 3 $1mill guaranteed's on Stars and hitting 3 bubbles in the 180 MTT's. If I carry on like that its only a matter of time before cards fall my way at the right time.... watch this space.