OCTOBER 2008

I have been trying to recover my old blog posts from my other blog as not to lose them.

******(running from latest to first)*****

Oct 29, 2008 10:52 PM
Pump up the volume baby!

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Thats exactly what I have done. I have been absolutely nailing the 16 player $6.50 SnG’s on stars. Well, probably not nailing them in the sense of some of you heavy grinders, but for me its a lot. I have played 107 Sng’s since 26th Oct. I have also been having to squeeze them in here there and everywhere whenever I could. I ran pretty horribly through out the mid to later stages, but my hands started to hold again towards the end. Its amazing actually how you see how your luck fluctuates throughout the games. I definately run in patches, so-to-speak, of luck. When I run bad nothing holds and I mean nothing, but when i run good, I start winning when dominated and stuff, so it works both ways, although as human nature is we only tend to remember the bad rather than the good!
I didn;t do too badly, but wanted more TBH. I finished up $114 to the good after all those games, which is neither good nor bad, but like I say, i know I had a VERY dry patch from around the 30-75 game range and at one point almost quit as it was starting to get to me. Fortunately I persevered and got it back, but in all honesty I am a tilt monster and I get mighty pissed off when I start losing every showdown, but I realise there is nothing I can do. Its simply nasty variance.
I completed my 100 for the PokerStars Battle Of the Planets promotion. Like I said, towards the end, my hands were holding and it was all coming together nicely. I figured I must have been on for a good score in my next block of 20. When the session was over I went to the stars homepage and read all the ins and outs for the BOP’s promotion and saw that only your fist 5 blocks count… WTF? Thats pretty shit IMHO. Just my fkin luck that when It all finally slots into place, I am outside the qualifying boundary! grrrrrr
So, now I have lost motivation to continue until next Sunday, when the promotion resets and starts over again, as it runs weekly. I can;t see the point of lashing in the volume, hoping to get a good block in to make a top ten spot, if I can;t qualify! lol. I know I won;t have time to crank out another 100, so whats the point?
I am now considering what and where to grind for the rest of the week. I am toying with Full Tilt, but without rakeback and with their points system being just so shitty, I am struggling tojustify playing there. Party is out of the question for a number of reasons, the new software is not nice at all and the main reason is that charging $1 rake on $5 buy in game is simply taking the piss and I am not prepared to pay 20% rake per game, that would just destroy my bottom line. I thought about Cardoza again, but i am too pissed off with them for my own personal reasons to want to give them another single fucking dollar of my money, so the question is where too?? Where has decent traffic and a good bonus incentive? I was thinking about maybe Littlewoods, now they have moved to the Pacific Platform, but tthere is a drawback with that too… all my other poker accounts are in USD, but my Littlewoods account is in GBP, which means Neteller would double fuck me when transferring in and out. As they charge 2.5% ontop of the exchange rate and then they also charge for the transaction and they would do the same for any money I want to put back into my account… sigh.
I can;t find anywhere. I need to have a think.
ok, enough of my ramblings.
GL at the felt.
BM
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Oct 24, 2008 1:48 AM
cream crackered.

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Well the wife has been having some troublesome nights with the littleman, so in my wisdom I told her I would stay up after work and stayt with him until around lunch time so she could catch up with a little sleep…
Well, with only catchin 6 hours myself the day before and getting up at 2.30pm I should have realised I wouldn;t be in the best of states..haha. I did get him at about 6.30am and took the little man downstairs and stayed with him, doing all the usual crap, until 1.30pm and then snuck off to bed for 5 and a half hours.. arghh. Now I am absolutely Cream Krackered! eleven and a half hours sleep in over 60 hours is just not gonna cut the mustard! haha. I am sat here at work, typing this and I just feel like getting my head down and sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeping.
I am so looking forward to hitting that bed in the morning, I really am!
So, with all that as you can imagine, no poker. None at all. Not even had time to think about it really!
Hopefully, my little man will be a good lad for his daddy this weekend and let him get some poker played. Fingers crossed.

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Oct 23, 2008 4:44 AM
BurnleyMik? FK YOU!

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
That’s what the Pokerstars’ “Random” Number Generator thought of my today when I started playing! LOL. I decided to step up to the $16 games today. I used to play them, but only ever 2-4 at once, but after my recent multi-tabling skilzzzzzzz have come into play I was gonna do the same. I actually decided to take it slowly and just start with 8 tables for a little while and then step up. Well I got right royal reamed in 7 of the games. I kept getting TT in the push fold stages and kept running it smack into over pairs! LOL. so from now on, TT can just fak off! hahaha. The other game i won and I won it being a right spawny bastard too. I play well down to 3-handed and then tilting from the other games I played like a pillock and I ended up winning. Final hand was me blasting A5 into the other guys AQ and turneing a straight. Sick! 3-handed I moved over a guys raise on a shitty 445 flop, holding A8, only to nearly spew when he insta calls with his JJ and unfortunately I thought he was mega weak..arrgh, but the turn brought me a saving Ace.
Its weird as hell really. The games I played well in and deserved to do a lot better, I had to take a dry one from behind and the game I deserved to lose, for getting it in bad, I win??? How the fuck does that work?? Sometimes the Stars RNG baffles me, it really does. I can play brilliant and not put a foot wrong and have a completely shit session, but other times I can play like Louie Walsh takes criticism and win…. Oh i don;t know. Volume. Thats the Key. Even out all that BS!
Had some good news on the work front. I am moving onto 3-day rota shofts… ahhhhh bliss! 3 12hour days per week and thats me lot! Its a cool shift, but if you want routine then this is not the shift for you! It works like this:
Wed, thurs friday - days - 7.15am to 7.30pm (for four weeks)
then swap to:
Sun, Mon, Tues - days - same hrs as above (for four weeks)
then a week off
Then onto nights:
Wed, thurs, Fri - nights- 7.15pm -7.30am (for four weeks)
then onto
Sun, Mon, Tues - Nights same hrs as above (for four weeks)
rinse, repeat!
So, every eight weeks I get a week off and only have to work 3 days per week. Haha! I could land in a barrel of shit and come out smelling of roses sometimes!
Means more time with the wife and baby, which is brilliant for us.
Life is so sweet right now
I hope things are going as well for you guys.
ATB
BM

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Oct 21, 2008 9:29 PM
Interesting stuff…

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
I still haven;t had time to really sit down and play, but the last few days have opened my eyes a bit to a few excellent tools out there to help aid my play.
Firstly, with multi-tabling it can be very difficult to do certain things when playing.. i.e. You have 12 tables going and bust out of a game, its then very hard to get back to the pokerstars lobby, find another registering game, open that lobby, register and confirm registration all before your next table pops up! Believe me its bloody hard work. I have known about AHK Scripts (Auto Hot Key) for some time, but I was never really pushing myself hard enough to need them. I could quite easily cope with 6 tables without any help, but now I decided to start looking into them and was actually suprised at just how much they can do!
For example:
StarsSnG Opener - This one asolves the problem I described above.
There are also ones to make your mouse go to the most urgent table and it activates the time bank for you automatically so you never time out. There is a StakesGuard script that makes sure you stay within your bankroll for Pokerstars and the list goes opn and on. Even just simple stuff like you can press a certain key to bet the pot another for 2/3 pot etc etc.
I would advise anyone who plays to take a look, you don;t know what you are missing!
Also came across a peice of software I have heard of previously but never seen in action. Its called Tournament Shark and basically its like Sharkscope and OfficialPokerRankings all rolled into one and it attachs to the bottom of each of your tables, so you can see which players are the decent players, who you can make moves on and who are the donkeys not to be bluffed and all at a glance. Seems pretty good to me. Only downside is that one of the forum guys thinks it won;t be too far into the future before stars starts clamping down on “pooled” resources like Sharkscope and similar.
Some good discussion going on over at the forum too. I posted some HH’s recently too which I thought I was make good +EV folds at bubble time during SnG’s, but after some good discussion and thoughts I have rtealised my calling range on and around the bubble is simply way too tight, especially vs decent players who know how and when to make the moves. This is something I am going to work on and TBH, something i would have probably not realised had it not been for poosting HH’s and discussing them. So I advise you guys to do the same. Join a forum, post hand histories and look for leaks in your game. We only learn from our mistakes!
Right thats all for now.
GL at the felt
BM

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Oct 20, 2008 11:42 PM
Still on SnG’s

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
Yep, still at em at the moment, but not getting the time to get my volume in. The little-un has started playing up a bit and has somehow managed to get himself into shorter feeds and sleeps! arrghhh!!! I am sure we’ll get through the other side, but the nights feel long and you feel like you have hardly had a wink of sleep.
All this weekend I have managed only to squeeze in one set of 12 SnG’s today. I ran pretty badly, but I sort of expected it after running well towards the end of my last session. I tend to find (or maybe its a mindset) that I run in short patches on stars, where sometimes my good hands will hold like 90% of the time and I do well, but on the opposite side of that comes the sessions where like only 10% of my hands that are ahead stay that way.
Today A9 was beaten by A8 on the river, JJ beaten by 66 and AK by AQ, all three for tourney lives. The other times I ran into monsters. meh it happens. I did expect it, not that, that makes it any less annoying. Yes it pisses my off, but with the volume I am hoping that I can make the luck even itself out.
So far, for October and remember I am only doing this in the bits of spare time I get, I have managed about 270 games and almost exactly $500 profit. Thats pretty pleasing for me TBH considering I lost my way a bit after the cash game disaster I had.
I am still into MTT’s, but I reckon its gonna be a while before I can sit down and play a long 4hr+ plus session.
Friday night I got permission (as you have to when you have kids..lol) to shoot off to Manchester with a few of the boys to play a £10 buy-in with £5 rebuys. When we actually got there we found it was actually a £10 buy in, with only ONE rebuy…LOL. Shit, I was hoping for a juicy prize pool TBH.
The structure, suprisingly for Grosvenor, was pretty decent. 4k Starting chips, 25/50 starting blinds and a 35 minute clock. Only thing that did piss me off was that each player had to pay £3.50 rake on top of your £10 entry and the fkin thing was self deal… ?? WTF? the greedy bastards. So basically they were charging £3.50 pp for the place to play and a clock on the wall.
According to one of the regulars, Grosvenor have a new rule that no tourneys under £30 buy in, are to be dealer dealt. All their scheduled tourneys used to be dealer dealt, i think as usual greed has out-weighed player requirements.
The thing that annoys me most is that poker has to still be in casinos in the UK (well raked games i.e. tourneys with a rake) because of the old gambling act and the casino bosses are keeping pressure on the government to keep it that way because poker brings in decent revenue to casino’s, bringing players in who gamble during the poker breaks and this is what pisses me off. They want everything, their cake and eat it. They want to be able to control where poker is played, treat us like shit, and force us to attend them if we want to play tourneys with a number of players in. grrrr. Greedy bastards IMO.
Anyways, I digress..lol. Back to the Friday night. 5 of us made the trip, 4 regular players and one guy who had only ever played once before. Guess who got the deepest? LOLOLOL.
I personally got nothing at all in terms of cards. From 9pm to 1.30am when i eventually busted the best pair I saw was 77 and strongest Ae I was dealt was A9. Strongest king I got was KQ and that was my exit hand..lolol. Mega dry cards wise. I made moves to survive. Eventually the blinds were 600/1.2k, a short stack with 4k moved all in UTG and I knew he had a huge range and it folded to me in the CO. I looked down at KQo and decided to go for the isolation raise, thinking KQ was almost certainly as good as the random two the shorty would push.I had 11.8k, so almost 10 BB’s and figured this was as good spot as any. Unfortunately and in line with my luck for the night the BB woke up with AA..lol. Oh well.
Chuddy, the lad new to the game went onto to hit the final table and take down 7th spot! haha, good lad! He was seriosuly pissed as well. The guys on the table were fed up to hell of him because he was so unpredicatable. He never ever raised pre flop. Just call, call, call…lol. Well it got him there in the end and he finally busted with 55 vs AQ, so no shame there.
Finally landed home about 4.50am. Nothing worse than waiting round in a casino, with all those temptations, waiting for one of the other lads to bust! We all went in the same car, so we had no choice.
Was a good night though and enjoyed it.
Thats all for now.
GL
BM

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Oct 16, 2008 3:51 AM
Brag!

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik
I guess I have a decent cause to brag! Life is good and so is poker.
My time off work has just finished and I returned Monday after my two weeks off. I am genuinely glad I took that time off to help the mrs, as babies are very demanding! Struggling right now to get him into a good feeding routine, but we are still learning and we are getting there gradually. He loves waking up every three hours, sometimes less and wailing until that bottle of milk hits his lips! LOL. The wife is doing a cracking job and starting to get him used to the difference between night and day and he starting to wake for a feed and go immediately back to sleep during the nighttime hours. All we need now is for him to sleep through!!
Anyways whilst I was off and whenever he went down for a kip I decidedto hit the tables. I have a renewed vigour and decided to put some SnG volume in and so far (touch wood) with fairly impressive results.
I am 12 tabling the $6, 18 player games on Stars at the moment, which makes for a very strict style of TAG play. At these levels, there are very few good players, so a simple ABC style works well.
The results of my first 250 games has been pretty decent.
I am running at 32% ROI, with a total of $535 profit. I have won 22, 2nd 21 times, but have bubbled 24 times..lol. Thats probably due to my aggressive bubble play. If that trend continues I may look at adjusting my bubble play TBH because its wasted on the maniacs at these levels who have no clue about ICM, bubble play or calling ranges when there are shorter stacks left behind!
I don;t really know if I am running good so far and this could all change, but I think the mass multi-tabling helps me stay detached emotionally from each game, so I am less likely to tilt or get annoyed at certain individual idiots who i just doubled when their A5 beats my AK AIPF! I was thinking, based on STT statistics, that a reasonable ROI for these might be at around 20%, so once I have played more, I guess I will see. Up to press though, so far, so good.
Also today i noticed some new types of SnG;s on Full Tilt, the “matrix” games. I was looking at the format and although i doubt they are goin to be great in terms of bankroll building, they do look like a lot of fun. I started a thread about them HERE, that you can check out. I like the fact you are sat at all four tables with the same four players. You tend to find any decent player will pick up on tells quite quickly and could be useful for helping improve reading abilities. I managed to squeeze a quick $22 one in today and got something daft like $84 back, when i finished second in two of the individual SnG’s and 4th overall. Personally I think you obtain most points with knockouts, so its worth taking the risk. I;ll probably ttry and play a few more over the weekend. I also noticed that say you normally play $10 sng’s, then you should be entering a $40 Matrix game because its effectively the same, 4 SnG’s. Anyway, I’d like top hear any thoughts anyone else has on these.
Before I finish i just want to give a few shoutouts..
Dremeber - He has also only jsut had a baby boy and is going through all the same rigours that I am. Thanks for keep popping by mate and congrats and good luck!
Also, Gavin, the author of this blog. I forgot to link him up a short while ago. He hasn;t been blogging long, so pop over, say hi and give him some support on reaching his bankroll goals!
Amatay - He just recently appeared on Sky Poker and is now “Famoooooose”! LOL. He came accross pretty well to be fair but has taken a bit of good light-hearted piss taking on the forum.. check out the pick in this thread! lol.
A big shoutout to Smoothplease, a scumbag of a Chelsea fan, but a good lad and managed to win the 4th series of the RTR premier league! Top work mate.
Finally, a big thankyou to all of you from the forum, who chipped into the collection, organised by Pud for my little one! We are putting the money to good use and you really didn;t need to, but thankyou all.
Right, thats all for now.
Good Luck at the felt.
BM


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mega quickie

from Donkey Thrasher by BurnleyMik

well my boy arrived! All 8lb 2oz of him! A mini BurnleyMik, just need him to get hold of those poker cards and we are on our way! LOL.
Actually it’s life changing. The greatest feeling ever. All you parents out there will know exactly what I mean. No feeling in the world can describe it!
Thats said can someone please describe what sleep is for me? LOOLOL. Man, he has a cracking pair of lungs and lets us know whenever he ain’t happy. I wouldn;t change him for the world.
Just back to playing some poker today. Was messing about on stars and managed to get upto playing 16 tables at once!! It sounds harder than it actually is, thanks to stars awesome software. Real shame they have’nt got anything in place to reward the small stakes players. The FPP’s just are not any good for small stakes grinders.
So today any time I had an hour spare i crashed out some games. I can play 16 tables, but find 12 tables more comfortable, especially when you get to the latter stages and its on you a lot more.
I am currently running at 43% ROI! haha. I doubt that will last long and believe me I have taken some rough beats along the way. The beauty is you don;t have time to let them affect you. I played about 50 of the $6 18 player games and did fairly well. Its very intense at times, but well worth it when you run good!
right, thats all for now.

laters

BM