This week.. (boring title, better post)

It's not been a very busy week poker-wise, it's important to have breaks every now and then, even when you're running good. This wasn't a break for the sake of it though, I had more important things to keep me busy. Any of you who were kind enough to read this blog a year ago may remember this post from the battle of flowers event last year. It's our local 'carnival' and everyone has to enter a float which must be entirely covered in flowers. Last year we finished second, losing by 6 points. This time round, thanks to a lot of hard work by helpers who all volunteered their time for free, we took the the top prize and won by 9 points ! The celebrations were legendary :o) We're back on top and already thinking about defending our title next year. You can see some images of our parade winning float here thanks to the BBC. Yet again we didn't finish flowering until 6am, and I went another night with no sleep. I don’t know how poker players do it for like 3 or 4 days running. I felt dizzy all day and ended up falling asleep in the sun in one of the garden's which line the parade route.

All that good community stuff meant I didn't get to play poker again until Saturday, but I was feeling fresh, I dropped round to Hooks' place as I hadn't seen anyone all week and got cracking in a $10 rebuy tournament with 492 players. I rebought once, didn't take the addon as I had 19k chips at the break and ended up finishing 18th when my AJ ran into AK. $227.15 return for $21 buyin. Not bad, but for all the effort I would have liked to have made the final table and got a little more reward. Still it was nice to go deep, giving me back any confidence that may have ebbed away during the week off. Sunday I worked off the rest of my bonus which boosted the bankroll by another $100, and for once I resisted the temptation to play in the $1M, by 7pm I was getting bored of playing and decided it wasn't a good way to spend $215. Instead I quit early, got some rest and had an early night.

Just a quick observation about cash tables - it's amazing the difference one can find on different tables at the same limits, last night at Stars for instance I had one table that was a benchmark standard game, 3 fish, 3 winning players and 3 tight-passives. One table that was 8 winning players and 1 seat that kept rotating between fish. And one table that was as loose as a goose. That's all at Stars and shows how important game selection is. I played all 3 tables for 2 hours and made half a buyin on the benchmark and rock tables and one and half buyins on the loosey-goosey one. Though the loosey one had potential for a much higher degree of swing, which I didn't like one bit until I adjusted and realise I was always getting called to the river there, whereas I was rarely getting to the turn on the other tables. Site selection is important too, on doyles I can regularly find softer games than at stars, and so my bankroll grows about 15% quicker there, but I don't like the software too much so I spend less time on it. My Stars & Doyles rolls are neck-and-neck now, and it's really about time I used my profit tracking spreadsheet again… the only problem with that - last time I used it I went on tilt from watching how big the swings were. That was 6 months ago though and I've improved as a player and emotionally so hopefully I should be able to overcome it.

In other news from our band of players, congrats to Twister who's moved into the £30+3 SNG range at Inter as has found them to be almost as soft as the £20+2's. He was stonking them on Saturday with a 1-2-2-1-4-2 record while I was round there and a 6th place finish in a £5, 250+ player MTT. Nice one mate, see this game's easy !