Donkey Thrasher

Been a while...

2011-11-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

So, where am I at?

I haven't played a single hand of poker now in two weeks and I am not missing it, which I feel is a shame, I secretly hoped I would.

I have 3 new hobbies:

1. Family - obv. Kids are growing up so fast and the new stuff they learn and do each day truly blows me away. They are awesome. Xmas is going to be the dogs bollocks.

2. Matched betting - really getting my teeth back into this. So much left to go at yet. Should be plenty of money to be made and to be fair Jon's recent results are inspiring as hell (made £10k+ in about 6 months).

3. Modern Warfare 3 - I lavvvvvvvvvv it. ATM my favourite is the Survival Mode in Spec Ops. Hard as fuck and very challenging, but great fun. Also it's pretty tactical because after the early waves of bad guys, you then need to work outa strategy to survice as long as possible. Right up my street.

So thats where I am at right now, how are you all doing?

Glad to see a lot of the old faces still blogging away merrily. If you haven;t checked them out yet then I recommend: (all links on right --------->)

Littleacornman
Rossi
Amatay
Rubbish
NoCash
Soap

Lots of the other good ones seemed to have wained off. I guess it's like poker, once most have the fish and the soft games have gone, then so have lots of the old faces.

Still got my fingers crossed that at some point Poker has another boom. Thanks for reading.

BM

Bored...

2011-10-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

What else can I say, I don't have the motivation to play at all. My roll is smashed to shit due to real life stuff and I just CANNOT push myself to play the micro's again ATM.

I am bored with it all right now again, hence the lack of updates.

BORED

BORED

BORED

BORED

I have considered staking so I can play at decent stakes again, but most of the staking company's I have looked at want too much commitment time-wise.

Where from here?? Fuck knows....

Laters

NL50 6-max cash vids

2011-10-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

I forgot I had done these!

Ignore the lovebirds cheeping oin the background! :)

live donkament report pt 1

2011-10-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Finally got to a live game, weeeeee.

I played the £110 mega-stack tourney in Blackpool. I got there late thanks to the illumination traffic, which insta-tilted me. Took ~45 mins to travel less than 2 miles.

I finally get in, get registered and take my seat. First two hands in I pick up 77 and 33. Take a flop with both and whiff both flops so just get out of dodge.

We lose a player in the first hour when he gets 200bb's in with 1 pair [ ] wp donko.

I then tighten up for a while, before I open 99 UTG 7 handed. I get one caller on the button.

Flop comes 9TA. Perfect flop for me to lead at so I do. He thinks and flats. Turn is a brick. I fire again, he again flats. River comes K, bit shitty because the way this guy has played so far JQ is definately part of his range, but so is two pair type hands. I make a smallish value bet, which he snaps off and proudly tables AQo. I show my set and he shrinks a little. I had to lol to myself because virtually the only hand in my range he beats there is AJ.

I then sit tight for a short while, just watching the other players. I remember one big pot, where the board was Jack high and a low straight possible and the two players were geting frisky. I genuinely thought Set vs straight on the river, instead the both table J9 for top pair and split the pot. Haahaha WTF? Unfortunately it would be one of the guys in this hand the lead to my demise.

So with my nice tight image it folds to me in CO and I had 43s (dd), so I open for 2.5xBB. SB decides to call.

Flop comes Jc 9c 4s

He donks leads into it for just over half pot, given my image I reckon I can potray a very big hand here, so I re-raise him as a bluff. He doesn;t like it immediately, but finally makes the call.

Turn is 6h

He checks, I lead out for half pot. Again he doesn;t like it, he is clearly drawing in my mind and I think I can get him off it with my turn bet. He thinks for a while and once again calls.

River 6s

I have now decided to give it up. I am thinking it must be something like AJ that he hates folding because I think the draw gives up on that turn bet.

He checks, I check. I am reluctant to turn my hand over immediately and he says "you got it, I missed, what you have KK?". Then proceeds to show me TcQc, for the OESD on the flop! wow. My lowly pair of fours scoops the pot and I can see the whole table thinking WTF is going on here! lolol. Getting frisky FTW.

Must have been a very tough spot for him on the flop when I re-raised.

part 2 to follow

WP Jared Tendler

2011-09-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks to YorkyPuds and Busterlavista we have managed to get the top Poker Physcologoy Coach, Jared Tendler to nip onto the forum and answer some quetions for us.

Today he has been on and answered numerous questions and has said he'll swing by tomorrow to answer more! So if you have issues with tilt, degenning, over cautiousness etc etc, get yourself over and ask whilst you can.

Here is the thread for your questions: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13384

booooyakkashaaaa

It was inevitable

2011-09-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

tonight variance came and gave me a good dry humping from behind, yes dry. Brutal brutal brutal, thats all I can say. Everytime I got it in, i'd wait for the inevitable river to come and fuck me out of yet another pot. lol. Thats the nature of the game, but a fucking joke all the same. Tonight because it supports me downswong, you wilol have to suffer my all in EV graph, muhahahahahaha oh and FUCK YOU STARS RNG.. lol at the Random bit :)

Stats:

ALL IN EV

Lick my salty balls Stars. I did warn you this was coming though, three winning sessions in a row meant I was due a good fucking over.

ok finances:

Challenge Bankroll: $439.32 (+$19.32)

Total SnG's Played 149

Better turn around tomorrow or I might send them a special email!

Tuesday Night results

2011-09-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

No poin with all the graphs. Went ok, made profit, which is the main thing.

Challenge Bankroll: $561.39 (+$141.39)

Total SnG's @ $7 level = 110

Getting my grind on

2011-09-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

Well ok partially lol!!

Played 38 SnG's tonight and unbelievably managed to grind out a profit of $59.08, which is incred considering I was taking it dry in the ass for quite a while early doors. Including two horrible coolers, but I came out on top, so no bad beats ;)

Tonight was the first night I managed to grind SnG's. Last couple of nights I have played some MTT's and I have to say that I run worse on 888poker than I think I have ever ran anywhere. My short term EV there is incredibly bad. I just could not win a showdown, but fuck it, I decided to take out what I had left there and blow it right off. Can;t see me playing there again tbh. I only deposited for APAT and for some reason they seem to hold everything on DTD these days, despite supposedly having a deal with 888??

Anyways, to the stats:

Graph for tonight

Stats

Bankroll = $518.53 (+$98.53)

Total SnG's : 73 @ $7 level

I am waiting the inevitable crushing downswing, usual case, eat like a bird and shit like an elephant.

Laters

Happy Birthday

2011-09-15T00:59:00.000-07:00

31 years young today.

Nice day out and Dinner with family and tonight some poker and bikage!

1 month plan

2011-09-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

I have had such a lack of direction for so long that I have jumped all over the place. This week I have played HU cash, HU SnG's. HU PLO SnG's (rotfl I am a knob). I played a few MTT's and some SnG's, which overall is pretty ridic. I am looking to start building my roll again, but tbh I am not that confident in any game right now, as I feel I am pretty damned ring rusty.

After reading Acornman's blog and his comment I am going back to SnG's, but to get my game back and get used to grinding and multi-tabling heavily I am just going to start at the $7 STT's (turbo) and take it from there. Once I am feeling it again,I'll move back to the $15's and possibly into the $30's BR permitting. I am probably going to adapt something like a 60 Buy-in strategy for my BR management. So, I am gonna start with a starting balance $420 for the $7's, if I can make that upto $600 playing just those, I will top up my roll to $900 and hit the $15's, but if my roll drops to $210 I will either move down to the $3.50's or just give it up as a bad habit!

I think for me that sounds sensible and it's nice to actually have a set plan and direction.

So far I am just 12 tabling as I find that quite comfortable and I have started my little challenge:

and it wouldn;t be my blog if I didn;t moan like fuck about something, so just to show I am still running well below EV on my all in situations:

Current Challenge BR = $459.45 (+$39.45)

It will tail off now as I am at work next 3 nights so I doubt I'll find any time to play.

ok Laters

Sighhhhhhhhhhh

2011-09-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

FFS. I have absolutely fuck-all direction at this moment in time. I don;t know what I want to play, where I want to play or what I want to focus on. I am getting like Yorky Pud and really starting to piss myself off.

MTT's - I simply don;t have time to grind these properly to eeek out a bigger bankroll, they just take too fucking long and you really have to luckbox a bink to make it worthwhile, pretty much impossible in Stars 120394871239857389457839457 runner fields.

SnG's - I really thought I was gonna grind these after my last post, then hit a stinking downswing (something like $35k chips below EV) getting slaughtered by the RNG and it put me right off and add to that, the last stars update fucked up Table Ninja, so No SnG Sensei. Immediately I lost motivation.

Cash- To be precise 6-max cash. I am really really toying with the idea of going back to this, but fuck knows if I actually will. Had a convo with Snake Eyes on the phone and he reckons I should head back in that direction and he could be right.

I simply do not know as of this moment, fuck knows what I want to do.#

Suggestions? (and don;t bother with quit poker!!)

On a seperate note, I like those new table themes Stars have added, the Nova ones, especially the black, if TableNinja worked with those, they would be my defaults.

Righty, off to try and make up my mind.

Laters

p.s. Kronsdat - I still think they are pretty soft mate, I saw tons and tons of people playing post flop poker throughout the early levels, so absolutely horrific. At one point I got it all in pre with KK vs TJo for 40BB's and I was an uber nit. Obv he got there. lolz. There is money in them for sure.

Old Stomping Ground

2011-08-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

At the end of last week I played some SnG's that I hadn't player for a long while, the $15 18 man games on Stars. On first impression it looks quite soft. My BR is ~100 Buy-ins so I will probably give these a shot and see how they go.

I'll play 100 first and see where I am at and whether I think they will be profitable. This is the plan:

Number of Tables: 12-14
Stop Loss - 30 buy ins ($450) - If I lose this much i stop playing.
Software: TableNinja and Poker Tracker

I have no idea if they have gotten softer because of Black Friday or not, but I will find out. I will mainly be grinding from 7pm UK time to coincide with when most casual eurodonks are online, as I feel that has to be the most profitable time.

Only time will tell. Fingers crossed I can keep the tilt monkey at bay.

On a seperate note, well done to NoCash for luckboxing two fucking huge scores Live in August, raggy bastard!! wp sir.

Righty Laters.

Playing and railing...

2011-08-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

As you saw in the last post I played a small MTT session Saturday and made a profit, but nothing really noteworthy. Sunday we went over the the in-laws for the day and got back a little late to play a session so I ground out some SnG's, 40 x $7 Turbo STT's and again managed a profit, so no complaints.

Monday I saw a deal on hotukdeals for an X11 Turtle Beach Headset for the Xbox360, which I though would be ideal as I could use them for both the PC and the Xbox, but mainly so the Xbox sound comes through them and not the TV, which for anyone who plays Call Of Duty, will realise having good sound quality/volume does give you an advantage, you'd be amazed how much more perceptive you are! So I ordered myself some to be picked up Tuesday.

Monday night I decided to play another MTT session, but before I started I saw our resident MTT Pro had started a thread over on RTR starting his session. I started and my session just went to absolute ratshit. I played fucking awful, no excuses, making moves on people and them just having the goods everytime. So dumb really. Anyways my session ended early so I was railing kenn and chatting with him at the same time. His insight is pretty incredible, situations I thought were close were so black and white to him, I remember one hand on the bubble of a tourney where he opens in EP and the BTN ships on him and has him slightly covered. Kenn has TT and the villain had A9. I thought it was a fkin terribad shove vs an early opener who had about 20 BB's, but kenn told me it was a super standard spot... I have a lot to learn about higher buy-in MTT bubble play :)

Back to the story, anyways he only goes and binks the $55 1r 1A for over $4.5k, just like that! I have never seen a final table domination like that it was fantastic, check out the thread and see for yourself. Final hand was incredible, 3 handed it all goes in AA (kenn) vs KK vs KJhh, flop comes two hearts, but somehow kenn still holds and takes it down weeeeeeeee.

I think I am his lucky charm, last time I railed him properly like that he binked the major on Party for about $40k. lol mbsfn! The best thing though is he is so open to sharing thoughts and advice, something I really should take more advantage of, but I know he plays for a living, so I understand how precious his time must be, especially with such a young family. Keep up the good work kenn.

Tuesday night I just wasn't in the mood for poker, so I picked up my new X11's and decided to crush some Black Ops instead :) (beats watching that big brother shit) I railed Kenn a bit too, he chopped a $22 big antes, but ran pretty bad when deep all over the place.

That was bascially my weekend poker-wise.

In other news have you seen this shit Microgaming are introducing? LINK HERE you have to be fucking joking right? Seriously this is basically a bot that can play the early stages of an MTT/SnG for you. It will only raise the range of hands you tell it to and will fold for you. It even comes pre set for you! wtf, fucking idiots. It's obvious why they have done it, it's so more people can play more tables and create more rake, but what it also does is remove the human element from the game. It removes the tilt, the frustration, the inquisitive nature that comes along with poker.

Not only that it means the donks and fish can now play a pretty much un-exploitable game because they won't be entering pots with all sorts of shit they normally do. It's an absolute killer for me and whover thought this would be a good idea at Microgaming needs sacking immediately, this will kill their games as who wants to play against a huge set of bots?

If you look at that image you can even set it to make the folding times random, so it's not obvious who is using it and who isn't. Wankers. This is basically a poker bot and thats it. Unbeliveably stupid on Micro's part.

/rant

:)

Righty thanks for reading.

oh and if you want a good laugh check out a thread one of the poker lads on RTR started over at 2+2, rubbish, you are a genius!

Satuday Nightaments

2011-08-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Going to try and update thoughout the night as I play. No idea how it will go though :)

All MTT's on stars tonight (Because I can use tableninja for ease)

18.50 - $11 turbo sat to the Big $55 won seat +$44
19.00 - $1.10 World Cup Of Poker Thingy 94/791 +$0.64
19.00 - $11 $50k GTD 639/8673 +$6.34
19.30 - 100FPP VIP Platiunum Freeroll $30k GTD 812/15525 +$3.00
19.30 - $4 Turbo $10k GTD 748/3531 -$4
19.40 -$16.50 Double Shootout lost HU first round.
19.45 -$3 rebuy 2x Turbo $10k GTD - 459/1062 -$12
19.45 - $4 2R1A 22/299 +$11.91
20.00 - $22 Big Antes 360 Cap $5k GTD 13/360 +$75.70
20.00 -$5 turbo $20k gtd 1678/4668 -$5
20.00 -$55 Big Game 260/2539 +$46.46
20.15 -$5 Turbo Knockout $6k GTD 1355/3258 -$5.40
20.30 $11 $20k GTD 938/2729 -$11

OVERALL +$134.25

Some sats in there and other bits and bobs.

Lets gogogogogogogogogo

edit 18.55 - trebled up straight away in the 55 sat with AA vs QQ vs TT. weeeeee

19.55 - got seat into 55. Nothing else of note. Curry due in ten mins weeeee

20.25, lost HU in fist shootout AT no good vs Q6, going ok in est

23.39, sorry been very busy! all oiver shop earlier, down to last two now.. $4 2R1A, sat 8/34 and 22 big antes 9/24. cashed in big 55, 50k gtd, VIP thingy and 1 othe I think. will update after

00.01 it's all gone pete tong. Got into a raising war BVB in the big antes with a guy who has a 3 bet of 21% over 111 hands from blinds (I was SB to hhis BB) I raise 88, he 3-bets which I fully expected, so I 4-bet shoved, he had QQ. FML! less than 10 BB's in that

in the $42R1A it was pretty weird and maniac hit the table playing over 70% of his hands and raising like 55% of those, he was nuts. I open 55 from MP, get flatted in LP and maniac shoves. I decided before the hand if he did I was calling, so I did. He had K2 soooooooooted. Flopped a 2 and rivered a K. gtfo. Guy was a total fkin drooler, but mbn to run that hot.

00.11 and out, shove J9s into AQ and suckout for a double, then shove KQ from button and BB calls with A6 (the BVB twat from earlier) and binks an ace. gg me.

Decent night overall and in profit so can;t really complain, just a shame a little more luck could have meant at least two decent scores. oh well.

also cheers for the railage from gorvacofin and bullmeister.

Platinum VIP :)

2011-08-18T19:59:00.000-07:00

Poker is going ok ATM, I can;t really seem to get anything going though. I have just been pissin around grinding some $7 Turbo STT's. No idea how many I have played right now as I don;t have Poker Tracker to hand, but I know that I am a mighty $9 in profit, plus two stellar rewards of $10 each. Obv I can almost retire on that mightily impressive performance!

Just a change of scenery really and to get the Platinum Star and try and accrue some FPP's whilst I have the decent multiplier. I have been fairly comfortably multi-tabling 16 tables, although I am going to have to drag out my second monitor in future I think as when it tries to auto-reg for the next games it seriously pisses me off keep popping up over my tables, much easier if I hold the lobby on the 2nd monitor.

Got one more night at work and then finally a few days off, in which I hopefully want to grind some MTT's as well, whether I actually will is anotehr matter.

Been working hard on the forum and trying to code new stuff in, mainly SEO stuff to try and help the search engine rankings for the site, but it's a slow process ATM, some of the stuff I am struggling to get my head around, like Apache for the re-writing of URL's, bleh. Managed to sort a few things out, but will keep trying in the short times I have to get stuff done.

Another thing I have been doing is listening to quadjacks radio and a lot of their podcasts and I have to say it's my new favourite poker podcast over 2+2's. Here are some links to the better stuff..

Devilfish Interview

Gotta say the Devilfish really cracks me up. Some of his one like are fkin brilliant, but the Canadian and Yank hosts just don;t get it at all, mainly due to the speed in which he fires them off. Wp Devilfish, great interview.

Mike the Mouth, Negreanu and Matt Savage including lots of talk about Full Tilt.

This one starts off with the no talking rule in a hand with Savage and Negreabu, but then The Mouth comes on and they get him talking about Full Tilt and it's very interesting.

Righty offski now

Enjoy

BM

Contemplating

2011-08-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Bored at work (I have grafted like a bastard for the first 10 hours), I am sitting here wondering what is going to happen with online poker in the next year or so, there are so many directions is could take that it's pretty hard to fathom, so although these could be way off the mark and complete bollocks, these are my thoughts...

1. Good Scenarios - Europe: Recently there has been some movement in all the ring-fencing that was going on i.e. France, Italy etc and Pokerstars has helped convince these two governements that they cannot run a viable business with the tax rates they are charging and their licensing and as such there are talks of them merging into one, which may pave the way for slowly but surely allow them to start opening up to the rest of the Euro zone, which is fantastic for us because we all know how spewtastic both the French and Italians were when playing.

USA: They get online poker regulated and there are not ringfenced off to the ROW. Meaning we get thousands and thousands of casual donks once again hitting the virtual felt with us and giving us a licence to print money.

Obviously thats a very optomistic view, but with the Epic poker league stuff recently and such it really does look more and more likely the US are going to get their regulation sorted and get back online. Some even predict it could happen in 2011!!

There are various thoughts as to who would be the major online players, but I genuinely think Party will be there or there-abouts and almost definately a could of the big land based Vegas casino's. I think they will force pokerstars out of the market for X number of months to give the competition time to get on their feet. Just my opinion there.

2. Pessemistic view: Europe: We have recently heard of the government thinking about stepping into look at online poker and the licencing and the way it was explained (or how I read it), that we too could go down the route of France and Italy and be ring-fenced off and they would use the excuse as to protect their citizens from situations like Full Tilt, because the Sites would have to have a specific UK Licence and be based in the UK (which is pretty tough given our tax rates).

I worry that they will just see pound signs, especially in times of economic hardship and whether it's in our interest or not, screw us over. IMO that has a very real chance of happening under this government, but I really hope it doesn't.

As for Europe, I think more and more countries could follow the lead of France and Italy because they are so concerned with money leaving their economies at this time and make sure that the money and taxes all stay sort of 'in-house', which will obviously shrink the overall player pools even more!

In regards to the US, IMO they are so fucking corrupt, that it will be basically about who has the most money and political influence as to what happens, nothing to do with their citizens. It could very well head down the route of inter-state poker, where players could only play online vs other players from their state, which would suck balls for everyone else. It could also be just US only, it's so vague.

I hear that it has sort of been agreed poker can come back online as long as it's regulated, but there ais lots of in-fighting in regards to the actual wording of these regulations and basically all because of the financial impacts to the bigger corporations, obviously everyone wants their slice of the pie...

It's a serious transitional period for online poker right now and if it goes the right way for the players it could be incredible for us.

Fingers crossed eh?!

Work and play..

2011-08-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

Not posted for a while, but poker wise there isn;t an awful lot to say. I have definately been playing, but nothing consistent, I have ranged from MTT's, to cash and to Hyper Turbo Heads up SnG's!

I have probably only managed one or two nights of playing MTT's since my last post, mainly due to just not having the time to sit down for a very long session, so instead I have been doing other bits and bats, to try and get this Platinum Stars status with Pokerstars' VIP special for August.

I started playing some NL25 6-max Cash, did ok, but down overall, mainly due to some ridiculous aggression on my part, but only lost about 2.5 buy-ins over ~3.5k hands, so nothing major.

I then played a few SnG's for fun, $15 Heads-Up Hyper turbo's and tbh they are just variance fests, whoever runs best makes most money. I started off well and then went on a pretty shitty run where I just couldn;t get a hand to hold for love nor money. I then set up a challenge on the forums, basically, starting at the $3.50 HU Hypers, see how far up you could go winning games in a row, once you lose you go back to level one. I managed to get as high as as the $60 and then lost when I basically got owned on a low flop by a set of 6's..lol. I played quite a few doing this until I started getting tilty and fucked it off.

I next moved onto the $7 STT turbo games and had to work out how to use the SnG opener on Table Ninja (I used to used StarsFSO in Hotkeys) and managed to play 14 tables fairly comfortably tbh.

All in all for all the tourneys this month so far, ~170 I think, I am a massive $5 up! rotfl. FML.

I am considering a lot of live events that look really good this month,. but no decisions yet.

So that in a nutshell has been my poker for the month so far.. yawn, boring.

On a none poker front I got a lump on my scalp, which over the course of a few days got more and more painfull and felt like it was full of liquid, so I tried numerous times to pop the fucker with needles, but without any success, all I ever pretty much got was blood. Eventually, after a week I resigned myself with a visit to the doctors to be informed I had a Sabateuos Cyst that was infected, no wonder I trouble sleeping because of it. She gave me antibiotics to treat the infection and then hopefully I could have it lanced at hospital in a few days . Anyways I managed to burst the bad boy today and you should have seen all the shyte come out of it...eurghhhh, my little lad was fascinated!!. Actually feels a shitload less painfull now, but has left a small bald patch on the back of my head. Bastard. I'll bet your glad I told you that eh? lol.

Been extremely busy at work because of all the holidays and covering off extra shifts. Been pretty much working Mon, Tuesday days all day and then Weds, thurs fri night, as nights, rinse repeat. Not too bad though because the weather has turned to rat shit, so not an awful lot to do anyways. Looking forward to my September pay packet :)

Onto these riots... wtf is going wrong? Society is so messed up right now and so many scumbag opportunists got out onto the streets to loot and vandalise anything they could, it was so demoralising to watch and see developing. Imagine those small business owners...

I did see one thing that left tears in my eyes, in London these morons looted...wait for it... POUNDLAND! loooooooool. There is a picture of a black lady running from, the stare with what must be a fiver's worth of crisps in her arms! lolololol. Seriously, if you robbed the whole fucking stock you would have about £200 worth of gear. Let me try and find the pic...

At least loot a shop worth looting ffs! Daft cow.

Seems to have all calmed down tonight and rightly so, I hope the coppers nail some of these idiots to the wall, but most likely as usual their human rights would be infringed in some minor way and the PC brigade, with nothing better to do, would jump up and down and defend them in every possible way.

offski now, if yopu read all that shit, thankyou!

good month's FTW

2011-07-29T22:43:00.000-07:00

With having a little time off work I managed to actually play some poker this month, namely MTT's. Had quite a few decent close calls, but the payout structures of the lower buy-in tourneys often meant a tonne of hardwork and time rewarded with like 3 or 4 times your buy-in, which is soul destroying, but on the flip side the times when you do make it to the top 3 it becomes extremely profitable and one of those runs is the reason for such a good month.

As you will have seen a few posts back I got second in the Stars $20k, picking up $2.8k and giving me a nice score.

I did a tiny bit of grinding today and yesterday in the $18.77, 6-max Hyper games to the red spade tourney, which I found that it was a nice way to accumulate some T$ and also qualify for the big tourney on Sunday night.

anyways, brag alert..... Stars Tourney stats for July:

EZ Game Obv!

At a wedding all day Saturday, so will be gearing up for a big grind Sunday, will try playing some Sats to the bigger games and see if I can bink more decent scores.

Back to work on Wednesday, but it's nights, so I expect to be able to still grind a couple of nights per week.

Also really getting into this Twitter malaraky...Follow me bitches!!!

http://twitter.com/#!/big_mikky

laters

Bridesmaid

2011-07-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

Played a small MTT schedule last night, for a change and things ended up going pretty well. Ended up playing 9 tourneys in all, min cashed in 3 and had a deep run in the $20k on stars.

Played really well throughout the tourney, including eliminating most of the players on the final table, but then tilted HU when my oppening hit a gutterball on the river when I had him all in for the tourney. Either way I didn;t play well HU and a combination of constantly whiffing and my opponent never folding when i was making moves, meant I started to become frustrated, eventually pushing it in with A9o when I knew he had a big hand and he did he had AQ, but I didn;t manage to get there.

Had some awesome railage from Amatay and from Marky147, so cheers fellas, although Amatay did vanish when Marky put him onto a new pornstar... loilololol. Probably wanked himself to a frazzle by now :)

Anyways, $2.8k is not to be sniffed at, but couldn;t get in the binkage thread.

Vote Of No Confidence

2011-07-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

***WARNING POLITICAL POST****

Are you, like me, completely dismayed with how the ConDems are destroying and privatising the country?

I am not gonna rant on about the specifics I am sure we all have our own thoughts/ideas, but get yourself over here and add your vote. Not sure what good it will actually do, but it;s better than doing sweet fuck all.

Get these tossers out. The rich are getting richer, the poor are affected quite a bit, but the folks in the middle are getting crushed to shit.

decisions...

2011-07-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

Dilemma 1:

APAT Worlds

or

GUKPT Goliath?

(I can't play both because of work, would only get enough time off for one or the other.)

Dilemma 2:

Grind Tonight

or

FM2011?

Dilemma 3:

Brunettes

Blondes

Decisions, decisions, decisions....

lol donkaments

2011-07-10T04:21:00.000-07:00

With the last 4 days off work I was looking forward to grinding MTT's for the next few nights, unfortunately things didn;t quite go as planned....

The first night I was too fucked after the back-to-back at work and then the stag do, I could probably count on my fingers and toes the total amount of hours sleep I had over the last week and it all caught up with me. I basically got in, had a brew watched a bit of shitty TV, shower and bed, so bang one night gone.

Second night I registered for a few MTT's across Laddies, 888poker and some Sats on Genting (also bumping into AwesomeHutch the fish!!), I think it was only about 6 total, unfortunately it all went to rat shit and I basically couldn't get a hand to hold. So frustrating when the first time you put your entire stack on the line after 5 hours of an MTT your AK loses to AQ when you get it all in pre. Fucking donkaments. Basically nothing went my way and frustration got the better of me and I think I ended up with 2 shitty min cashes.

Third night, I really couldn't be arsed, I registered with good intentions, then unregged again and just played a super turbo satellite to Megastack event in either Blackpool or Manchester, obv I run like a dogs dick again the satty and no way my AK can beat KQ and then 77 to beat A5s at the vital part. Didn;t even rebuy for 3k when the blinds were 200/400. Ended up dragging the Strongbow out and getting Football Manager 2011 on the go, whilst watching season 2 of Rescue Me.

Last night - Chilled, played a little more FM2011, knocked the back out of the wife and slept like a log, until that bastard alarm went off at 6am for work.

back at work for the next three days, so definately not enough time to play any MTT's, although I do play to play the Poker Player Magazine Grand Prix thingy and prolly a few small satty's and finally bink a seat, because none of those take too long or take that much concentration.

Finally anyone not a member of Raisetheriver, then get your ass over and join, the non poker chat alone is worth it.

Spunkmoneys

2011-07-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

With working my back-to-back this weekend, I am not getting much time in the evenings to play poker, but I needed my fix, so I decided to grind some SnG's on 888poker. I haven;t played SnG's for ages, but I still remember a huge amount about push/fold spots and ranges to shove and calling ranges etc, so i felt fairly confident.

I decided to just straight into the fire and play some $20 games, mainly the 6-max turbo games and a few 20-man Nitro's thrown in for good measure.

I was blown away! I have never seemn anything as bad as these fucking morons I will just list a few of the things I saw:

1. Limping in with 3 BB's
2. Calling off with any ace on the bubble of a game.
3. Limping with less than 10 BB's on the bubble and folding to a push.
4. Limp calling any raise size
5. Chasing gutters all the way to the river
6. As above but with flush draws and for large protions of their stack.
7. I 4-bet shoved one guy and he insta snapped me off with A7o vs my KK and we were the top two stacks in a nitro at that point.(obv flopped an ace)

It was absolutely mucking fental! TBH I didn't adapt well at all, I was still shoving what should be normal ranges, but it doesn;t work when these mugs are calling so wide and I didn;t tighten up approriately.

I ended up 7 buy-ins down and steam pouring out of my ears. In reality though I think it has to be a goldmine, yes it will be high in variance given the standard of play, but surely very exploiutable if you can adapt better than me. I also didn;t notice many regs, in all the games I have played I can only think of one guy I came across a few times.

I am going back for more punishment tonight and just gonna make the neccessary changes. Fingers crossed, mixed in with a little run good I can smash it up.

On a none poker front, I am on a stag do tomorrow. Haydock Park in the day and then Chester for the night out, I can see it being carnage already. 8.30a,m meet for breakfast.... I'll be lucky to see Sunday!

laters

Wp Bullyfish

2011-06-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

you lucky bastard!

2nd in the APAT Team championships Individual event, picking up a few quid and a silver medal for that and a gold medal for his team winning the team event itself!!!

Always good to see a mate doing well. Followed his progress from Day 1, where he got into one of the top 5 in chips and pretty much stayed there for the rest of the tourney. Definately his best live score to date and I am pretty sure it will have given him the poker bug back. n1 mate.

here is the jizzmeister in action:

Obviously this has now given me a taste to play some live poker, something I rarely get to do with my daft work shifts and the young family, so I have been looking around for events.

Definately gonna try and play the APAT Main Event at DTD in August, also looking at the Gala casino one over in Leeds in July and might have a gander around for a few more. I fancy UKIPT TBH, but with it being in Brighton next it's a bit unfair to fuck off for a full weekend and leave the Mrs with the liitle ones.

Gonna have to venture to either Manchester or Blackpool for a few local games, probably the week after next as it's a stag do this weekend, which will definately get messy.

reet oh, congrats to Bully and Kronsdat (he was team captain)!

laters

Bubble Boy

2011-06-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

I did manage to play some more MTT's on Tuesday night, but tbh it was a washout, including being the bubble boy in the 3k GTD I had won the night before when my AJ was no match for K6 AIPF :)

I also played a few on 888poker and was the bubble boy again in another of those. I think I only managed one min cash out of the 7 tourneys I played, which I felt was poor, but tbh I wasn;t playing very well.

This was the first time I had played on 888poker and it took a lot of getting used to. I am still undecided if I like the software or not, it feels very 'clunky' on first impressions and I timed out numerous times, which pissed me off, especially as one time I had Aces fairly deep into one oif the rebuy tourneys.

The schedule looks ok, much better than Microgaming if I am honest, a few games ranging from $5-$50, which is what I am looking at in NLHE and starting betweeen 7pm-9pm, which is usualluy the time I register for the games so that none of them finish too late into the morning.

In work today on overtime, so hopefully should be able to play a few tonight and see how I get on.

On the downside I ended up having a go on their live casino and blew ~$300 through chasing my early losses, sigh, I really piss myself off sometimes.

Right, better get some work done.

Ship It!

2011-06-21T03:25:00.000-07:00

Decent Night last night, my second night into the MTT's!

Shipped the €3k GTD on Micro:

Took it down for €900 ($1289)!

Also had a deep run in the €16.50 rebuy, finishing 25th of 481 for just over €100. Came 42/209 in the €10 bounty and 12/44 in some €5 donkament. Also, I played a €16.50 carnage satellite for the €10k GTD €100 buy-in and just missed out on a seat, but got 2nd for €88. So overall a good €1000+ for the night! weeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Obviously poker is great when you are winning as we all know, so I'll take the good times when I get them.

Tonight will be the last night I can play again until Saturday because of work, but I'll have another go and see if I can retain my crown :)

Ok, Brag over, time to assemble the table and chairs the Mrs persuaded me to buy, sigh gg this afternoon!

Hopefully I am back!

2011-06-20T02:34:00.000-07:00

I have decided to pretty much move all my cash back to poker for now (until the US Sportsbook's are in a much better place). I have done lots and probably most of the UK/Euro sign-ups and was getting very bored with it tbh as there was hardly anything new popping up, so I ended up having punts on the nags at Ascot all week and it's been a bloodbath! I have dropped quite a bit of dosh and I am very pissed off at myself for the lack of discipline. So I figured the best thing is to get all my cash of Betfair and move it to an ewallet for now until I decide which poker sites I am going to frequent.

I did move some money to Ladbrokes to be able to play the Microgaming MTT's and I would ideally have liked to have put some on Full Tilt as I like their schedule and not huge fields, but I don;t feel they are trustworthy enough ATM with all the shit being flung in their direction.

I have been toying with the idea of 888 (mainly because they are associated with APAT and I want to play more APAT events this year) and I might take another look at Betfair.

I still like Pokerstars, but still despise their enormously huge fields for most tourneys upto $50 buy-ins, which will be my main staple.

I am going to see what deals are out there and read some reviews before deciding.

I decided to play some games last night, including a turbo feeder to the Sunday Million on Stars, which I got a seat from 1st attempt, but then managed to play like a fucking moron in the actual Sunday Million and bust out within the first two hours.

I also played some games on Laddies, including a €20 rebuy 6-max, which I final Tabled and lost a big flip my AQ vs TT for the world. Ended up with €233 instead of the €2.4k up top. The standard in that was truly awful, so many people open limping and then calling a raise. I just kept chipping away at them whilst they were giving away the free chips, so thankyou to them :)

Going to get back to the tables tonight.

Right, off out now to take the little lad to a big play facility in Preston.

Laters.

MTT + Some good TV

2011-05-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

Decided to play some MTT's, both Thurs and Friday night, but without any success. IU have decided I absolutely fucking suck at winning flips for big stacks, including one where I think I could have done especially well on full tilt in the 6k GTD, when approaching the final 40ish I got it all in with a super Italian donko (fuck knows how he was playing main full tilt site??) with TT vs his 99 and guess the river. Sigh. I was pwning that one too. W/e, only problem was that I didn;t enjoy these sessions, I just got super bored and fed-up after the first couple of hours.

My mindset that whenever I got it all in I couldn;t win prolly didn;t help a thing, but it just didn't do it for me this time.

I did however have a little fart about with some 6-max RUSH, just NL25 and did pretty well, winning over 6 buy-ins in just a few hands. Helps too that I hit almost one mirrion sets! Thats really all the poker I have done.

I finally managed to bust out of 10bet in my matched betting adventures, it felt like I had been in there forever and I just kept winning and almost had to turn over the full wager requirements, which were pretty fucking huge. I finally got out on a basketball game between Dallas and Oklahoma. Not sure where to next tbh, gonna have a look at a few deals, maybe even take a look at the spread-betting offers Snakey has done.

Away from the computer I have been watching a series called Burn Notice, which I am really enjoying ATM. First episode, the main character really got on my tits, he seemed a real smarmy annoying twat, but the character really does grow on you, I am now into the 4th season and tbh I sort of don;t want it to end, much like you feel when all the good ones are coming to an end.

Here is a list of some of the better series I recommend:

Burn Notice
Sopranos
Sons Of Anarchy
The Wire
Breaking Bad - AWESOME
Dexter - AWESOME
The Shield
Southlands
Deadwood
Entourage
Band Of Brothers

I have also seen:

Mad Men - just couldn;t get into this.
Lost - It lost me after 1st season..
Boardwalk Boulevard - Didn;t do it for me tbh
Californication - Started it, but not finished it. Like Hank Moody a lot tho
Pacific - good, but no Band Of Brothers

LOl, Thats all I can think of right now. Definately worth checking some of these out, they piss all over films, they are so much more!

Oh and finally Ryan Giggs is a knob. Why all this super-injunction bullshit? If he was happy enough to go fucking around behind his wife's back, knowing what it will do to his reputation etc, then he should take it on the chin. All he has done with all this bollocks is make it even bigger news, what a complete tosser.

MTT Sesh

2011-05-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (Saturday) I felt like playing a qualifier for a SCOOP event, with the intention of playing the big one, so I navigated my way around the pokerstars lobby, (does anyone else have trouble finding which scoop event is starting that day?), Anyways, I managed to almost register for a few sats for the Sunday night SCOOP, but realised and unregistered and found two stats to one event yesterday. First sat was a hyper turbo that went to shit and then there was a $11 double shootout, with one seat and $191 for second, which I happily binked.

I was auto registered for the SCOOP event, then noticed the start time... 4pm, lol not a fucking China Mans chance I could make that. With the kids bathtime and storytime etc I would end up having to sit out for at least an hour around 7pm, which I knew was no good, so I unregged and took the toruney dollarios.

I then registerd for quite a few smaller stakes MTT's. I think 8/9 in total.

started off ok and steady and was still in everything at the first break time. Was just doing what I always do in MTT's, stay active and fairly loose early to try and pick up the chips of the droolers who happily put all their stack in with gutshots and top pairs. I know lots of people play tight early, but that just doesn;t work for me, I am still fairly comfortable post flop so I am happy to get involved. My problem is I don;t stay loose enough when the blinds get big, I have a tendancy to tighten up rather than change around with my gears, it is something I need to work on. Anyways, like I said it was going well at first and then my monsters started getting smashed and the red mist started to descend, in fact I started this thread at RTR: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=12883

lol, I am such a fucking tilt monkey.

EvertonYorkie popped into the chat and saw me on tilt and put a few sensible words of encouragement into the chat, which helped me see sense when I was in a "fuck it" mood. Cheers for that EY.

I managed to chip up well in two events ( I think I tilted out of at least 2 :) ). One was the daily $50k , $11 buy in and the other was the $4 rebuy. I was playing well and doing ok, until I made a pretty bad error in the $50k, mis-read ma hand and tried to make a hero call, basically it went like this:

I min raise in LP to $10k with A6s
BB calls.
Flop comes K45.
He checks, I C-bet half pot, he calls.
Turn comes 8, but now putting two of a suit out there.
He checks again, I thought about stabbing, but opt to see the river.
River is a blank and he makes a half pot bet.
I sat for a while and didn;t know

It just didn;t make much sense at the time. He was fairly active, so figured a bluff was in his range. Didn;t think a set or strong pair because of his turn check, and surely a hand like 2nd/3rd pair or a pocket pair just check behind because they have showdown value, so I hero called with ace high, doh.

He had KJ, never expected that, but w/e. That cost me half my chips. Little later on I push AQ from BTN and BB wakes up with AK and it's curtains in about 70th from just over 5k entrants. Sigh.

In the other all was going good guns, with just twelve left, when BVB, SB raised into me and I looked down at AK...weeeeeeeeeeee. Obv I think a while (Hollywood baby) then ship and he thinks before snapping me off with AQ. For a top 4 stack at a crucial point, he binks his 3 outer on the turn and I go to the rail after 4 and a half hours of good poker. Sigh. Fuck you Pokerstars, scummy bastarding twat-faced cock-suckers. ahhh feel better now :)

Overall though I made a nice profit on the night and actually enjoyed the experience in a sadistic kind of way. I'll probably have another sesh next Saturday.

IRL things are ok. Little one is still not getting the hang of this thing called sleeping at night. We have tried allsorts, Collief, Dentinox, Gripe Water, Gaviscon, hungry baby milk, doctors etc etc and it's just one of those things. She just cannot settle for long periods of time and it's brutal, especially on the wife when I am working nights. I feel awful and try and do what I can, but it's tough ATM. I am praying she settles down soon and gets over whatever this is as it seriously takes it out of you.

Matched betting - I have really slowed down, stupidly, as I just don;t seem to be able to sit down and start trolling through the deals I need to do. No idea what it is, instead I have been doing lots of mug punting, which was going ok until today when it backfired on me, costing me probably the best part of £250. An expensive lesson learned. Need to go back to MB'ing with the safe easy money ASAP.

Right this post is getting ridonkulously long.

laters.

BM

I played, I Played!! Wooooooooo

2011-05-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

Haha, I finally hit the tables today, albeit very briefly because I had read elsewhere that Stars had introduced Hyper Turbo SnG's and this fast paced insanity sounded fun to me, so I had a game or two.

Played a Heads up one, which I won when i shoved my open ender abotu 3rd hand in and managed to suckout :) Played a 6-handed one, which again I crushed, lol. I couldn't miss. I doubled up early when someone shoved their JJ into my AA and then I just shoved my stack around and proceeded to knock out pretty much every other player when I smashed the shit out of every flop. lol.

Maybe thats the key? stay away for ages, then just play some big stakes stuff and keep blasting? ;-)

Finally I played a 9-manner too and guess what............. I crushed. Lol poker is a peice of piss when you cannot miss. All over in about 15 mins, which suits my schedule at the minute as I hardly get fuckall spare time!

I then went to sleep for a few hours before work tonight. When I woke up I had a brew and played a few more turbo's, 6 total I think, with two more 1sts and the rest nowhere. EZ game.

Just fancied something quick and easy. In reality I haven;t got a scooby doo about Hyper Turbo Strat, I just played it like a standard SnG, continuosly sticking my stack in everyone's eye.

Maybe I'll play some more of these and possibly even grind them....hmmmm decisions decisions.

On a none poker front, I have been running a hthread over at RTR looking for good value footy bets and so far, so good.

5/6 wins for a £44.80 profit. Only small stakes stuff obviously, but I'd like to see what I can get it too., or stop if I hit zero.

You can follow that here: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12848

Also been playing lots of Black Ops on teh Xbox360, when all the ki8ds are finally asleep and the Mrs lets me have the TV! Just started Prestige Level 2 in the multiplayer mode. Man I am getting quick at that running around like a chicken and stabbing everybody!

Also, I don;t know why, but ATM my favourite weapon is the bog-standard M16, with a supressor and extended mag. Anyone fancy a game, then hit me up on Xbox, my username is, as always, Burnleymik.

Right, offski now

laters

Still toying

2011-05-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

..With the idea of coming back to the tables, just haven;t made the jump yet. I keep getting inspired by Kenn and co posting up their MTT Successes on the forum, but then when I come to actually play something either crops up or I haven't got the motivation to fire up a load of tables and plough on.

The matched betting has slowed down as the number of UK/Euro sites I have left to do the sing-ups for reduces. Instead I spend more and more time trading on Betfair on Tennis, Basketball and football mainly and to be honest as of this last week my results have been mixed. I started off well and then a few things went against me including one tennis match where I lumped on the favourite, with the intention of trading out when his price moved in, but it went completely pear-shaped and he got beat by a fucking nobody. That cost me quite a bit.

TBH I don;t fully know what I am doing, I am just pissing about following my instincts. One of my favourites is to look for games that are a draw with about 60 mins gone. Back the draw and at that point the price usually starts moving in pretty quickly, so hold your nerve for 10 mins or so and then trade back out for a small profit and thats the one where I ahve made most of my coin so far. Obviously sometimes one team scores and it fucks you up a bit, but you still have the ability to trade out for a small loss.

Think I am gonna focus on finding new sign-up bonuses again this weekend as they are guaranteed easy money. I know Eurosportbet.fr are doing an €80 one and I might have a look at a couple others.

Right oh off now

laters

BM

Life after poker

2011-04-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

Hope you are all well!

So what an incredible couple of weeks it has been for online poker. I have been truly amazed at what has been going on. The way the American authorities has gone after the big poker sites is incredible. The big sites have obviously shit in their pants and immediately banned all US players playing for real money, which is a huge backward step considering how adamant they were the the UIGEA didn;t apply to online poker.

Good old American shock and awe!

I feel very sorry for the American players tbh, I have met quite a few being involved in online poker for so long and they way their government is treating them is a fucking joke in my eyes. It's their money, their time and they are harming no one else doing it, so just fuck off and leave them alone, you greedy bottom feeding bastards. Obviosuly they are mad as hell because they can't get their share of the money and IMO thats what it all boils down to.

That said it has definately turned the online poker world upside down and it's going to be extremely interesting to see how this plays out. If this means some legislation and getting the casual US players back online then it would be awesome, as long as they didn;t get ring-fenced off like the Italians and French. I remember just how juicy the games were back when all the Yanks were casually depositng a few hundred dollars here and there and donking it off. It would definately draw me straight back to the tables to get me some action.

I have also heard from numerous people that the games are softer now, can that really be the case? If so there are quite a few reload bonuses around at the moment for none US players, thanks to the Black Friday incidents, which might be worth taking advantage of.....hmmm I will ponder making my return for some bonus whoring????? You never know, watch this space :)

On a none poker front, life is very busy and very hectic.The new arrival is being a nightmare at the moment, she is a bit of a screamer and it gets extremely draining after a while. You cannot do anything to sooth her really once she goes beyond the point of no return. Hopefully that will settle down in time.The little lad in contrast has been incredibly good, he's taken to her really really well and loves being involved in everything. Here is a picture of my two little ones, luckily they have their mums looks :)

Also been really enjoying this lovely weather, can;t get enough of it.

On the Matched Betting game... well I am doing really well ATM and have introduced a little bit of my version of Betfair trading and so far I am about £2k up, which is awesome and I haven;t had to put in anything like the time I would have had to playing poker. Winner!

Hope you guys are all well and hope you are smashing feeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

No Poker at all!

2011-03-12T04:59:00.000-08:00

I have hardly played a hand now for weeks and the truth of it is that I am not missing it! I have withdrawn the remainder of my poker bankroll and used it to help with my float for matched betting. I don't miss the variance and I certainly don;t miss the grinding like an idiot to break even and make money from rakeback. It was boring, time consuming and if I am totally honest, not much fun.

This matched betting is fun, a lot less variance and a more regular income. I think it was miles easier to get into having come from a poker background, so for that I am grateful.

I do plan to play the odd poker game recreationally and even take it more seriously again if they ever bring back the Yanks, French and or Italians. All these governments have basically ruined poker IMO. Everywhere the tables are pretty much rock gardens full of regs grinding their asses off to break even. Fuck that.

I hope you are all well and thanks for reading.

BM

Life tilt!!!!

2011-02-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

It just gets worse and wrose..mutther fukker!

Sunday teh TV blows up and tonight I jump in thye car to set off to work and something really doesn;t feel right. I jump out and have a flat tyre near-side rear. The only problem with that is... offside front tyre is getting low so needed changing, offside rear has a really slow puncture, so I was going to change those two, but instead one of the good two goes and gets fucked! arghhhhhhhhhhhhh

So thats £180 for two new tyres fitted and £500 for a new TV. GG bankroll.

FMFL.

Trying something new

2011-02-06T20:59:00.000-08:00

After hearing about this quite a few times, I have decided to have a go at Matched betting in an attempt to build my roll back up. It doesn;t help that I have just had to make a sizeable withdrawal to help pay for a new TV as the old one went kaput. FML.

So with some great help and advice from Jon (Snake Eyes) I have proceeded to have a go at it and it looks like if you get it right you can make a few quid, depending on the bookie offers.

I have started a thread on the forum to track my progress. Would be interested to hear if anyone has done/is doing it:

http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=12511

The hardest bit of it all seems to be keeping up with the T+C's of the bets themselves, but I think this will get easier and more familiar with time.

Fingers crossed it goes well!

BM

Jan Round Up

2011-02-03T04:02:00.000-08:00

A little late but here goes:

Jan was pretty much a washout. I played plenty of hands, but sort of feels like I was pissing in the wind as I never really got very far.

CASH GAMES:

Pokerstars.fr: 6,584 hands for a $137.54 loss, but Bonus earned: $70 = -$67.54

Ran like shit, paid an excruciating amount of rake so just fucked it off and wiothdrew most of what I had made in profits and bonus.

Full Tilt RUSH (NL25): 26,415 for a $167.04 profit + $117.44 = + $287.48

Obligitaroy graph:

My BB/100 (1.27/100) was a sack of shit, but tbh RUSH is so variance ridden that I don;t think my results are that far from the norm for an ok player.

Total = + $216.94

Tourneys:

Didn;t play a single one! Something I plan to change this month tbh.

Summary:

Small RUSH profit, which is a first because before this month I just basically spewed cash in RUSH, I simply could never beat it over a decent sample. Luckily I have added a lot more discipline into my game this month and thankfully it is paying off a bit. Will it continue?, I just don;t know, what I do know is that bigger downswings occur a lot in rush, so I simply now never count my chickens, I just take each session at a time and try to play as optimally as I can.

I also re-joined Dueces Cracked and plan on watching quite a few different series to try and keep building on my game and adding new plays to my arsenal.

Ok, lets hope February is profitable for us all.

BM

Live Poker...LOL

2011-01-30T15:16:00.000-08:00

This weekend was the APAT Team Event, being held at the G-Casino, Manchester. Our poker forum had a team over there, but it was pretty touch and go!

A few months ago we asked people to register interest for the tourney, which was a £50 buy in as part of an 8 man team. We had ~14-18 peeps interested. As such we ran a playoff for the spots in the team. Luckily I had an automatic seat, as that is the advantage of being admin, weeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Anyway as time got nearer it was pretty obvious there were some guys who were really keen to play and when I got offered overtime at work to work the Friday and Sunday night the same weekend I agreed thinking we had plenty of reserves and it would allow one of the others a chance to play and be part of these great weekends. (plus I can;t really afford to turn the overtime down right now, so it;s a win win)

My plan was to go over on the Saturday to rail the guys and play a little live cash.

Anyways by the time the event actually came around we had 6 dropouts and 2 in the last two days before the event FFS!!! It was an absolute fkin nightmare to try and get the team sorted in time, I ended up getting up at 11am on Saturday after only getting in from work at 5am trying to sort out replacements. Let's just say I wasn;t fucking best pleased. Fortuantely we managed to get it sorted and had a team to play the event.

So saturday evening myself and Bullmeister went to Bolton and met up with the guys and unfortunately the tourney wasn't going well. Amatay had donked off most his stack, we already had 2 busted and the rest were not in great shape.

I decided to play some live cash, but only table with a decent waiting list was a 0.25, 0.25/0.5, which I though was 0.25/0.50 NL with a 0.25 ante. It actually was just 0.25/0.25 and max buy-in was £30. sigh. It was interesting though to see how lolbad the live donks are. Seriously we had one guy who for like 5 or 6 hands was raising to £20 pre flop, blind! lol. The standard opening raise was £2 and that normally got between 3-7 callers each time. These guys HAD to see a flop, it was almost like the law!

After a while the table broke up a bit and it ended up infested with nittier fish. Who loved to see a flop, but just folded when they missed.I ended up with about £70 from my original £25 so all was'nt lost. It was incredible though to see how bad they all were!

As for the team event.... well I think we were 16th/25. Obviously the reason we were so shit was because I wasn;t there as team captain to drive us forward and motivate! Our best players were Ant66, Dream Of Vegas and Krosdat, who managed to go deepish, so well done to those three for helping us save a little face!

Bit of luck Newcastle Poker Forum will hold another event at some point this year and I'll go and play that one and obv crush! :)

Right, that turned into a much longer post than I anticipated.

cheers for reading

BM

Wrestling

2011-01-24T20:31:00.000-08:00

This Rush is some super sick shit. It's definately like the cocaine of poker IMO. The variance is at best, brutal. The nature of the game means there are gonna be a tonne of big hands clashing and thats where you are gonna make or break your profits.

I ran good, then bad, then good, then bad and now ok and thats just in the last 20 days! My graph is like the fucking Himalayas!

I just tend to play straightforward. I do mix it up a bit against the regs, but against the guys whom I have no stats or few hands on I just play pathetically straightforward and so far (touch wood) it is working ok.

I am on target to make Gold level in the Iron Man, although tbh I am not sure what value that has in itself because I've never looked into it.

on a none poker front:

Just had to spend another small fortune on a new pram, moses basket, baby bath and extras and a few more bits in anticipation of the new arrival. Fuck me life is expensive these days. I am looking forward to it and not all at the same time. It's a strange feeling tbh. You want it over with, but you know for six months full nights sleep are none existent!

Went over to a mates Saturday night. Not seen two of them for a while and as usual when we get together it gets messy, fucking rapido. Got there at about 8 and we started heavy on the stellas. By about 1am we started having arm wrestles...lol, but it got worse. My mate has been training for a while in MMA and starts wanting to go out in garden and have a "wrestling tournament". Objective was, on the word go, you had to get your opponent onto the floor and pin both shoulders down. No punching or kicking allowed. Only thing for these guys is I am a lot fucking bigger than them weight wise. Obv though we had been on Stella and stella makes you invicincible.

So sure enough we go out. It's probably minus 2 out there, but none of us can feel the cold. It's adrenalin and beer mixed up. Fucking numpties I tell you!

10 mins later, I am victorious. My weight and height advantage was a bit too much to be fair, but one lad Rob has a fucked leg and the other, Ted has fucked his hand up. hahaha.

Seriously for 30+ year old blokes we are still fucking idiots after beer. sigh.

Found out that Rob was in AE most of Sunday. He had torn a muscle in his thigh vs me and there was some internal bleeding. Brutal. Poor bastard is a window cleaner too!

Moral of the story...know when to stop drinking and don;t wrestle in the garden when pissed!

right, thats enough from me.

laters

Stone Cold Big Miky!

RUSH'ing again.. sigh

2011-01-18T18:42:00.000-08:00

So after playing ~7k hands on pokerstars.fr I have quickly come to the conclusion that the rake is fucking scandalous. I have paid ~$320 in rake @ NL25 in that many hands. I mean I have also been playing RUSH poker and in around 11k hands so far I have only paid ~$170 in rake, which shows you just how much it is. It makes the games too expensve to play IMO.

I mean I could have gone and tried to get gold VIP status each month, but in monetary terms that is virtually worth fuckall to me compared to what I would be paying out. Also I was looking back at 2010 and saw how much the 55% rakeback deal really boosted my earnings and bankroll.

Basically, although the games are pretty damned soft, pokerstars have priced themselves out of the market to play cash their.

Most of my recent play has been on Full Tilt's RUSH poker. Once again I don;t wanna jinx myself, but I am doing ok, plus the fact of the rakeback and the ironman I am currently trying to hit.

My plan is to look for a new site to grind alongside Full Tilt, that gives me decent rakeback and leave a bit on stars.fr to play MTT's.

Enjoying poker ATM, but not really putting in any serious time or effort tbh. Just got myself this little gadget

means I can watch all my .avi files of Dexter, Entourage, Dueces cracked vids etc etc, via HD on my TV. weeeeeeeee

On a none poker front I just spent the last week or so doing up the spare room to change it into the little lads' new room. Jesus it gets expensive quickly. He is thomas tank engine mad, so it's curtains, bed, border, bin lightshade, toybox etc etc. Looks good though now and that means the nursery is now free, ready for the new arrival.

oh man all those sleepless nights and waking for the 3 hourly feeeds.... good times!! lol.

right oh, better get back to the grind of work.

laters

BM

Play-On

2011-01-09T04:17:00.000-08:00

Footy:

Well I am slightly dissapointed Roy Hosgson has left Liverpool. It was awesome seeing the red shite falling to peices!!! Will King Kenny do any better? I hope not!

Everton got a very very good win over Tottenham this week, beating them 2-1 in what looked a really really good game from the highlights. Burnley still have no manager, but I think Malky Mackay is front runner according to the local press. Not sure he has enough experience tbh though, although anyone is better than that wanker Brian Laws.

Poker:

Struggling ATM. The pokerstars RNG is tanning my arse and to be fair there is nothing I can do about that, but I am also really really spewy in certain spots, especially when making calls where I know I am likely beaten. This is something I seriously have to work on as it's meant the difference between a couple of winning or losing sessions.

Rush poker is going ok , but I am still very very wary because I know how fucking variance ridden it is. So not gonna jinx myself until I have put the full month in.

Watched a few training vids, but not sure I am comfortable 3/4-betting as much as they insist you should just yet because of the levels I am playing and the types of players that you run into.

Anyways I am just gonna play on for now and see where it takes me.

Cheers for reading

BM

Love it

2011-01-05T05:09:00.001-08:00

we've all felt this way. Found it and loved it!

Up your arris!

2011-01-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

god damn it. I fucking jinxed myself on that post just before New Year about wafllecrushing, as I am now experiencing the arse end of some shitty variance. It doesn;t help that it's sending me on super-mega-gofuckyourself-tilt. I just HATE giving the worst players fucking credit for having a hand and I am STILL overplaying that peice of shit that is AK (because it NEVER EVER FUCKING HITS FOR ME!). Think I have shipped it in with AK about 3 times and I always seem to be against QQ and they always seem to hit their Q. lol. They hit one of their two oust, but I cannot hit one of my six! FUFUFUFUFUFU.

I am getting into some really horrible tough spots. i.e. getting two pair on a 3 flushing board and facing aggro. Getting sets and then the board 4 flushing or 4 straighting on my ass. The fish are also floating the shit out of me I think the bad players now call my C-bets close to 100% and I think it;s just too spewy to fire 3-barrells against a donko that won;t fold top pair for love nor money.

I am just gonna stick at it and keep playing. I am now 6 buy-ins down this month, some of it has been spew for sure, but also had some bad luck with set over sets (btw I am not good enough to fold a set despite the river overbets by villain!). :)

/rant

I joined back up to DeucesCracked yesterday and planning on trying to watch at least one vid a day and plan to properly review my HH's and also look through my oppo's (regs) HH's and see if I can pick out patterns in their play.

Just got to plug on for now. Some of the players are horrific. Just gotta keep remembering that and getting their dosh.

2010 Review + 2011 Goals

2011-01-01T03:49:00.000-08:00

Just going to keep it brief:

2010:

Jan = +$1637.19
Feb = +$340.43
Mar = +$841.57
April = +$442.70
May = +$2890.99
June = -$394.58
July = -$483.42
Aug = +$2778.62
Sep = -$140.43
Oct = -$152.68
Nov = -$149.31
Dec = +$485.19

Yearly Total = +$8096.27

I played a total of 147,640 hands in 2010 on the cash tables, but my biggest financial successes came in MTT's with a few decent binks boosting the BR.

2010 started out a decent year for me poker wise. I had a bit of discipline and was playing regularly. This continued for a couple of months until I did the normal and lost focus for a while. I dabbled in bits and bobs, but struggled to really get back into it. I ended up withdrawing a majority of my roll to pay for RL stuff and at the time I didn;t regret it. I have managed to build it back up slowly and hopefully will kick on into 2011!

2011

First and foremost we are due to have our second child in early March and as such this is going to take up a lot of my poker playing time for the following few months, so I am not going to get unrealistic with my goals as I know playing time is going to be fairly limited.

I am going to stick at playing cash at my current site for now and see where that takes me, with the odd MTT sessions and probably some Rush poker too here and there to mix it up.

GOALS:

1. Play at least 120k hands of cash.
2. Spend more time watching training vids and maybe reading a few mindset type books to try and help control the tilt.
3. Start reviewing sessions and having sweat sessions again with Snake. I still felt my game progressed most when we were continuosly talking through hands and strategies. It got me thinking much more in depth about my game and my weaknesses.
4. I am not a big fan of monetary goals, so I'll just try and beat what I made last year.
5. Keep building the forum.
6. Play more live events!

I'll do my best with all of those. Fingers crossed!

I hope all the readers of this blog have a cracking 2011 and I hope it's good and prosperous for each and everyone of you.

ATB

BM

CRUSHING SOULZ!

2010-12-30T04:45:00.000-08:00

Oui Oui!

Man I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE these fish.

Plz remember this is actually Euro's not USD, which makes it all the sweeter.

forgot to add the €80 in bonuses cleared so far.

I finally start playing!

2010-12-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

So recently been mixing it up between RUSH poker and 6-max on pokerstars.fr (French verson of Pokerstars) and it's going pretty good touch wood. The French fish are incredibly fucking bad and tbh I am loving it. The rake it pretty high, but ATM it's working ok because my win rate is fairly good.

I am up on the French site ~ €300 in a week just playing 6-max NL25. Think I have played ~3k hands. Not gonna say too much for obv reasons.

In the RUSH I have had to alter my game to basically being super patient. Forget bluffing and barrelling too often. Just play ABC, super solid and right now it seems to work. The key seems to be for you not to make errors in your own play at all.

Thanks for the Xmas wishes on the last post. Xmas was great Little lad loved getting all his pressies and he got a ridiculous amount,but it was definately worth it. All the family stuff is done now and out of the way, so a couple of days chilling before the New Year cellebrations begin.

Hope you all had a good xmas too. Not long before 2011 is upon us.

TC

BM

Merry Xmas

2010-12-24T08:07:00.001-08:00

Donkin aboooot.

2010-12-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

Been playin a little bit of poker, bot much, but the odd table of 6-max here and there and some Rush. None of it seriously, just donking about.

In the rush I started off trying for a DOV styleee spin up, win 4 buy-ins for the next level and step up, drop to 4 buy-ins for the below level and drop back down.. rinse repeat.

I started at the end of last month and did pretty well. I started at NL10, did welland moved to NL25 and once again crushed, so moved to NL50, but then the Cooler King came and I lost a stack with AK vs QQ, when I really fucked up by just flatting the BTN and then anotehr half stack with Aks vs QQ (how the fuck do you win flips btw?), I then spew-bluffed a bit in what I thought looked a great spot, but villain obv knew it was a great spot and snapped my bollocks off with his top pair. fml. So, it's back to NL25 Rush..lol. I think they should have called it "Rake Machine Swings".

Also been doing a little donking on pokerstars.fr. The standard is truely fucking horrific and the shit these monkeys are showing up with sometimes just fucking blows me away. So far in 3-bet pots I have seen Q4o, 38o and A2o. I mean lol wtf. Anyways, the RNG is teaching me a bit of a lesson there ATM, apart from last night when I managed 1 fish at NL50 to put his full 100BB's in with TT vs my AA. The only thing that is hoding me back ATM is the 7% rake. Although Rossi did some great calcs on his blog that got me thinking. Check them out. My problem with these is that I am not adjusting my aggression to them properly. If people miss they DO NOT FOLD and so I must adjust my opening ranges/3 betting ranges etc.

Overall I am pretty much breakeven on both this month

Here are the gay December graphs so far from my single tabling adventures! lol

I am probably just gonna play a ghey little MTT sesh tonight, hopefully and some $$ to the BR.

Until the next time...keep donking!

twitter tester

2010-12-19T01:32:00.001-08:00

RTR/Bloggerment Game Sunday

2010-12-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

OPEN FOR REG NOW. Cya There.

iPhone/iPad Users real money poker

2010-12-14T01:39:00.000-08:00

You can now play real money poker on your iPhone/iPad. It plays through your browser and looks pretty good tbh.

I know you can use it on android phones and tablets too, but they have also had the Full Tilt app available.

Anyways some details here: http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=11984

alternatively you can go direct and check it out:

Switch Poker

Nothing finer than sitting in a boring meeting and playing poker :)

Working on the Forum

2010-12-09T03:07:00.000-08:00

I recently spent quite a bit of time trying to learn and properly understand phpbb, HTML and bits of PHP coding so that I could maintain and run the forum better than I was, as basically I knew fak all. That said, I am now well on my way. I have made quite a lot of subtle changes as well as some obvious ones and hopefully it's starting to come together. fingers crossed. I am actually pretty pleased with myself as it's pretty complex stuff to get into.

If you aren't a member, get over there and make yourself one!!

http://www.raisetheriver.com/discuss/index.php

I actually managed to sign upto Pokerstars.fr and lets just say...... That tank is gonna take a LOT of tapping!!

For anyone interested, drop over to the forum, there is a thread about it and getting yourself validated to play. Also some of the usernames so of the other guys have come up with are awesome. Gutted I never put much thought into it now.

The main good points for me is they have a lot f €5-€50 buy-in MTT's with great guarantees and fields of runners between like 200-1000 players, meaning that you get to play the Stars software (table ninja works on it too) and doin't have to wade through ridiculously large fields.

The cash tables are also very soft from what I have seen so far. Playing on tables with 3-4 fish is just awesome. Almost printing money? :)

I'll not say too much more for obv reasons.

With xmas round the corner and my last shifts to do at work next week I will hopefully be able to put some table hours in!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

cheers for reading.

BM

test

2010-12-07T13:18:00.001-08:00

brrrrrrrrrrrr

2010-12-03T04:06:00.000-08:00

Warning none poker post!

Nowt to say about poker really atm, except I have signed upto Pokerstars.fr. See how it goes.

The snow virtually brought the UK to a standstill earlier this week and with more forecast for the weekend will the local councils manage to finally get on top of it with all this "extra" grit they have supposedly got?

Have to admit I do love driving in the stuff when the road is clear, sliding all over the shop in rear-wheel drive cars is awesome.

Here in Sunny Burnley we got probably about 10-12" of the stuff (don't ask how I measured that!). I took the little lad out to play in it for a while, fully expecting him to be cold and miserable in the first ten mins, but no he loved it! Particuarly jumping from the steps into the deeper snow and rolling the snow for a snowman. Can't wait until he is old enough for snowball fights :)

I took a photo for the forum:

I think we were fairly lucky actually as I know Yorkshire and Scotland got batterred with the stuff. I did have to luagh at the news last night though when there was talk of food shortages due to the weather! hahahah GTFO, I mean seriously.... People were actually panic buying. LOL wankers, some people panic about everything and usually end up making it a nightmare for everyone else.

I wonder how countries with simlar climates to us manage?

On a seperate note I see we got screwed out of the World Cup 2018 + 2022 by the completely corrupt orgnaisation that is FIFA. I mean I don't see how anyone really ever got their hopes up because Sepp Blatter fucking hates England with a passion and he has shown that so often in the past. He's bound to have a lot of influence over the de;gates, so we were fucked from the word go IMO.

I don;t think it's ever been in doubt that we were probably the best candidate for the event, but we obviously don;t give the best bribes and we all know Russia is renowned for it's corruptness throughout it's hierarchy.

What did suprise me though Qatar winning the 2022 world cup! WTF lol. Manchester has a larger population, their football team is shit and the country is a strict Muslim country. Lot of fun thats going to be! No beer, No women etc etc. Not really what your average footy fan is looking for.

One thing is for sure, it's about time the FIFA organisation was torn down and rebuilt upon more honest foundations because Blatter and his cronies are a fucking disgrace to football.

Right off to pwn some French fish...

No money, everyone's solid.

2010-12-01T04:48:00.000-08:00

Still struggling to actually find the motivation to sit down and play poker. I have now gone back to the Xbox360 and playing the online games in the evenings rather than poker.

I am just finding poker is just way too much of a grind these days. You are continually being forced to sit in games with a minimum of 75% regs at every cash table and the fish really few and far between. Slowly but surely all these greedy governments have really fucked up online poker. No Americans, no Fench, no Italians etc etc etc. The player pools of casual/fishy players has just gone down down down and it makes for shit poker when you are continuosly just breaking even or making a small profits. SnG's are stacked to fuck with mass multi-tabling nits that just play a pretty much unexploitable push-fold style and for me I personally just don;t have the time to regularly sit down for long MTT sessions.

I have thought about PLO, but it has more swings than NLHE and I struggle with those!

So for now, I am probably just gonna play causally here and there whenever I feel like it. I am loving the RTR HU North vs South event, but apart from that it's all shit. I play the odd game of rush on my mobile, but we all know thats just a run-good fest.

I have now moved and drawn a majority of my BR. Just leaving in a few hundred dollars to play casually. All the rest I have drawn can help pay for xmas.

I will do a monthly round-up when I can be arsed, but for now I hope life is treating you good and that this snow will soon fuck off!

Love technology!

2010-11-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

I read yesterday that Full Tilt had released an app for the android operating system on mobile phones. My HTC Desire runs on android so I thought I'd look into it.

Initially it was supposedly in the App store, but I couldn't find it for love nor money. Eventually I twigged it was because of two things:

1. I hadn;t updated to Androird version 2.2
2. I had to install Flashplayer version 10.1 (you need number one to acheive number two)

So finally got it sorted and installed it.

Played a few hands last night just al NL10 fkin about and of course I run so hot I have the nut flush with AJhh vs 45hh on a 2h3h8s 6h Ac board. Yes a straight flush and even worse the guy fully timebanked down before calling with the stone cold nuts. Twat. Hate slowrollers!

It was good fun though and I was amazed to see how smooth it was and how much like the desktop software it was.

great work full tilt IMO.

Saying that I just crashed a few hands off here at work and made $20 for my ten mins. Good times. lol

this is how it looks

Looking forward to Stars following suit.

Also found a few new apps for the phone. Fucking incredible really when I think back to when I was at school and the technology we had then, i.e. Spectrum ZX's and Amstrads!

right off to play some pokes on the bog whilst getting paid! winner!!!!!!!!!!!

Team South

2010-11-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are not aware a little bit of rivalry has begun on RTR in regards to Northerners and Southerners. This has culminated in a HU grudge match being organised between Team North and Team South.

Obviously any Northerner knows that Southerners are almost all limp-wristed, Shandy-Drinking Homosexuals, who get a huge nosebleed if they travel up any higher than the Watford Gap!

As it happens I googled Amatay+ Cogsgoigne+Hoopie1+Buster+Everton Yorkie and found a picture of them partying on the '12 Inch Miracle'.

Now we just have to beat them at poker and they will have zero dignity.

Bring it onnnnnnnnnn!

As time goes by...

2010-11-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

Firstly I want to respond to the anonymous comment left on my last post... firstly very good comment whoever you are (if you haven;t read it, it's here:

Anonymous said...
Why do you think its great that the bookmakers are backing this. dont get me wrong, i will miss the french and italians playing poker as they practically gave me money for nothing.

they really shouldnt try and disguise their motives as it just makes them look even greedier IMO. It would be a bit like tobacco companies saying 'hey everyone, its your right 2 smoke, lets overturn those anti-smoking laws'
Have you forgotten the gamblings companies are some of the biggest crooks out there, the cunts wont even bother making any legitimate effort to regulate their software and as they are based in gibraltar i doubt they contribute any tax to european countries. now they tell us to support them worming their way back in. fuck em, i say. greedy cunts have got a nerve if you ask me!

Yes of course it's for their own motives, but it suits our purspose as well, not to mention the monetary and political pressure they can also add and apply to the cause, something which can only ever help the cause.

As a poker player we can see the ever damaging effects of the player base getting smaller and smaller and more and more countries are cut off from the rest of the world. The EU is a Peice of Shit IMO, but they set a freetrade law and seeing as though all these fuckers are so keen on holding the UK to it's obligations financially, then we should be able to do the same when they choose to ignore the rules as they please.

Get the US back online (not looking great ATM, granted) and then force these fuckers to stop being a law unto themselves and try and throw some life back into the online Poker Sites.

As a player who has continually made money from this game for the last 7+ years, I am seeing the detrimental effects and surely you must too.

My Poker:

SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. I just can NOT for the life in me get my mojo back to sit and fire up a grind session. I fire up the site, check out the tables, see it's full of regs and nits, think "fuck it" and fire up Football Manger 2010 instead. Sigh.

I did play a few MTT's the other night (sunday) just for a bit of a change of scenery and tbh it was laughable. I bust all 6 getting it in good/dominating and never winning an all in showdown. WTF can you do about that?. Started playing at 7.30pm and by 10pm was gone from all six. GTFO.

No idea where to go from here tbh. I know snake is havinga challenge to play full time for a month in January. I'll prolly follow that with interest and hopefully it might breathe a bit of life/enthusiasm back into me and my game. Right now playing poker is a long way down my list of things I actually enjoy.

Hope you all run good.

BM

right2bet

2010-11-09T11:15:00.000-08:00

ABout time countries like France and Italy stopped making the laws to suit them. We all know the French and Italians were generally free money! :)

In all seriousness though, this is deffo worth a sign. It's great to see all the top UK bookmakers, including Betfair, Ladbrokes etc fighting all this.

Support the cause IMO

Actually playing!

2010-11-03T00:53:00.001-07:00

Atm I am mixing it up a little bit. I have been grinding 6_max cash for an hour and then grinding some $6 18 and 27 man sngs.

It's giving me a change of scenery, which is good.

The casu started well and my roll was in an ok place to try nl50 again, unfortunately, as per usual I ran like death getting stacked with the best hand twice. Lol. Gtfo. I am currently about $10 up so far.

Sngs - played just two sets of 12. Broke even in 1st set and managed a 50 profit in the second set.

Will o still at this? Fuck knows

Ok flogging from phone sucks balls and predictive text can Fuck off too!

Posted via Blogaway

October Summary

2010-11-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

lol good fucking riddance to October. My motivation levels after a poor start fell to about minus 50. I really just never was in the mood to fire up the tables and grind.

The month started ok with me doing quite well, but then some heavy variance kicked in (for a change eh? lol) and I got smashed to fuck. You'll see from my graph how bad I ran in just All in EV. This happened around mid month and that just caused me to lose motivation because I knew I would need to drop to NL20.

I finished up the month with a Sunday night MTT grind (or MMT if you are Jakattack!). I don;t think i could have run worse if I tried. I can remember at least 3 tourneys where |I busted with an over pair vs an underpair AIPF and they always managed to set up and also QQ loses to AK twice, ofc. meh whatever,suffice to say I couldn;t do much else and didn;t even get a min cash anywhere (how could I when I couldn;t win a single showdown?).

ok now to the bullshit and stats:

Cash Games:

Purple Lounge: 8,886 hands for $210.67 loss, plus $189.65 rakeback = -$21.02
Stars: 1,982 for $22.46 loss.

Here is my PL graph to illustrate my run good..lol

Total cash loss = $43.48

Tourneys:

Pokerstars: 7 tourneys played for a $53.10 loss
Full Tilt: 8 tourneys for a $56.10 loss.

total: -$109.20

Total = -$152.68

shit month. As you can see from my previous months it was pretty much a washout.

Such Bollocks

2010-10-18T16:06:00.000-07:00

FML. So my shit run only went and fucking continued. In the last 3k hands of my play I have dropped 12 buy-ins below my all in EV. I mean 12 buy-ins in 3k hands. FUCK OFF. It's been truly brutal. I am still making fucking stupid spewy calls too, when I know I am probably beaten by some fucking moron wh decided to float my c-bet, picked up a flush draw on the turn and got there on the river vs my top two.

blah blah blah, what a load of bollocks. I fucking love moaning about how I run at poker... muhahahahahahaha!!! It's a real bitch of a game sometimes, but still I come back with my gimp suit on and the choker in my mouth asking it to screw me just a little bit more because secretly I must enjoy it!

So because my roll took a bit of a hit, I have forced myself down to NL20. I have no fkin idea how I am gonna get myself motivated for that, I really don't, but I have to be realistic and stick at it.

On a side note I had a little session with a very good coach the other night, mainly just a chat and a talk through a few things and the main thing I took away was how much I DON'T use my HUD correctly. Yes, I understand the basics, but I am nowhere near utilising it like I should be. He gave me a few good pointers and I took notes and was really pleased with it actually. He also did it as a freebie just to help me out a bit, which is really very kind, in fact so kind I'll plug the Bankrolling site he works for as a little thankyou:

http://www.bankrollsupply.com/

We have discussed him spending a little time looking over my play at the end of this week, which would be great. Fingers crossed.

Right thats all my moaning and whining done for the day. Thanks for reading and fuck you all! (affectionately of course).

Assume the Position

2010-10-16T05:23:00.000-07:00

.... and prepare to recieve one!

Oh yes I did last night. It must be a Friday night thing. Once again through the week I steadily built up the roll and all was going well and then last night.... POW I get forcibly taken from behind and proceed to take a right royal fucking over without much I could do about it.

Ok at the end I had a little meeting with mr tilt monster and threw away close to two buy-ins before I stopped, but in just over 1500 hands I ran 7 buy-ins below all in EV. Incredible. Including a big 3-way all in with my KK against JJ and QQ pre flop, only for a Jack to hit the board. GTFO. It was close to a €180 pot too. Sigh (NL50).

Take a look at this bad boy....

Obv light green is line is what I should have won had I held when ahead and the dark green is what I actually won. lol. Sickness for such a short session.

So that means I am now in the red for the month again, down $70. My only saving grace is that I have ~$200 to come in rakeback so far. Man I love this high rakeback, it really can be a saver when the variance crushes your head in a vice.

Ok, so at least when I play tonight it owes me some serious fucking run good and hopefully with it being Saturday night and full of pissed up maniacs I can actually crush for a change!

Hope you are running good.

BM

Yawn

2010-10-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

FUCKING RUBBISH.

Oct so far

2010-10-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

I still am not putting the volume in. Instead I am a little bit hooked on Football manager 2010.lol. It's really difficult and as such I hate being no good at something and so I started trying to figure out the best tactics, players etc etc. I am getting there, but a long way to go me thinks.

As for poker, well I have played about 3.5k hands of NL50. I started off bad going down a bit, but then a had numerous winning sessions and ended up just over 4-buy-ins up. That was until Friday night came of course! I played very well, made a few poor calls I regretted, but all in all just about gave everyone on my right hell!! I even had regs spazzing out on me because of my aggression including one that shoved his ATs into my KK , but ofc flop was ATx, lol and then another that blasted about 120 BB's all in pre with AK vs my KK and again river was an ace. A set over set didn't help things etc etc. Usual stuff, just a tough night, which saw me lose all but $19 of my profit for the month. Sigh.

I wanted to play last night, but I was amazed to not see one loose table all night. Not a single table I saw over 48% PF, which is incredible on a SAturday night, so I talked myself out of playing and played FM2010 instead. Cock, I should have still played really. I am regretting it now.

I did however managed a few hundred hands this afternoon and managed a steady buy in and a half, which was nice and never got it in pre once. Just people paying me off when I hit. Weee.

Back to work tonight. FML. I was dying to win that £113 MILLION on the Euro Millions Friday.

No one has claimed it yet som make sure you check your tickets....

September Round-Up

2010-10-02T18:16:00.000-07:00

Not a good month. Really struggled with motivation towards the end and Rush poker kicked the living shit out of me early doors.

Anyways, to the figures....

TOURNEYS:

Stars: 54 tourneys for $152.80 profit.
Dull Tilt: 26 tourneys for $157.49 loss

Total = - $4.69

CASH

Had some real trouble with PT3 and Microgaming tracking, so I am making my best estimate according to my balance. I even played a bit on Stars for the 50 billionth hand thingy.

Pokerstars: 3047 hands for a $70.77 loss
Full Tilt: 19,609 hands for a $434.63 loss + $128.36 rakeback
Purple Lounge: ~6,500 hands for $143 profit + $98.30 rakeback

total =- $135.74

September Total = -$140.43

Meh tough month. I actually put the volume in early on, but then really lost motivation. Hope I can find it again for October.

Playing bad

2010-09-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

Right now I am playing the worst poker I have for a long time. Just amazingly spew-tastic and impatient. I am really pissing myself off.

I tried a change of scenery last night and tried grinding some MTT's. but early doors things didn;t go my way and I move into spew-tilt mode, which is especially bad when you have about ZERO chance of every sucking out when you get it in behind. Sigh.

Gonna take a few nights break now. next time I play will prolly be weekend. Going to watch a few training vids and sort out my mindset.

Hope you are running good and stickin it to the feesh.

progress...

2010-09-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

..or lack of!

So since my last post with all my BS about grinding NL20, I ended up sodding that off and looking for the juicy NL100 and NL50 tables... hahaha. WTF is wrong with me?

Anways, I am up on Purple Lounge at the minute. I think around $400 ish, but my volume is only ~3k hands, which is pish poor. I am once again failing to get motivated for a grind. sigh. I need to work this out.

I did however put some time in on stars the last couple of days trying to hit one of these milestone bonuses. Did I mange? Did I fuck!. I don;t even think I came close. I was 7 tabling 6-max NL25. I even finished down about $25 after ~2.5k hands, which sucks. Didn;t do too much wrong, just missed a few big draws that failed to get there for me and a couple of mis-placed aggression hands.

Sunday night I spent a little time grinding some MTT's. Got deep in afew, but only one culminated in a final table and that was the $4 2r 1a on stars. I played the final table like a fucking nit and horrible tbh. I really should have opened up a bit, but my cards were so horrible and the guy on my left kept 3-bet shoving on me earlier on and basically this shut me down a bit.

I eventually lost a big flip when I shoved QK and got a caller in TT, which held. Then shoved super short with 46s and won vs T5 when I rivered the flush. Finally lost when I pushed from the BTN with TJ got a caller in A9, I flop the Jack, but obv one of the 84million Aces in the stars deck hit the river.

Out in 7th for $189, which covered all my buy-ins for the night, so not all bad.

Anyways, back to cash games and I am really hoping I can pull my finger out of my ass and get the grind on again. Thats how I am gonna make money, mostly from rakeback, granted, but these Micro tables are so much juicier than stars or FT.

Not really in the mood to write anymore.

Laters

BM

No jinxing plz

2010-09-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

I am prolly jinxing this, but I am doing good on PL!

I am even running ABOVE ev when I got it in with AA on a 234 board (two clubs) vs a guy who had 44 and BINKKKKKKKKKKKKKK I hit a 5 for the suckout. WTF!!!!!!!! I suckout..weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Like I say Poker tracker missed some of my early hands, but I have sorted it now. I have actually played nearer 1800 hands and so far the profit is just over ten buy-ins (+$208).

Man it's nice to finally get a brag after my RUSH exploits.

For all of you who said....

2010-09-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

"I told you so"............ Smart-arses, you were right. :)

RUSH poker is just one giant cooler fest. Unfortunately I was on the wrong of of my coollers pretty much all the time, but such is.

I finally finished on Full Tilt down about $433, which sucks royal balls. My only consolation was that I get about $110 back in rakeback. So, in a moment of anger and frustration I drew most of my dosh and put $1k into Purple Lounge again to start grinding some NL20 6-max.

I am not too worried about the stakes, I am more keen on being a bankroll nit for now until I learn to handle the tilt issues better.

So I begun and it's started off pretty well. I am around 8 buy-ins up after just over 1500 hands. Unfortunately I am having PT3 problems at the moment. It imports about 50 hands and then just stops importing, meaning I have to keep clearing the microgaming database before I can restart it and it's missed about 1/3 of the hands I have played. I think I might have found the problem though now, so fingers crossed.

I played a couple of MTT's on Micro last night and it was standard bullshit that bust me out of two and one interesting hand I think I played right. I'll post it on the forum for some feedback.

Right better get back to work

Hope you all run super hot!

BM

Mission Impossible?

2010-09-12T02:41:00.000-07:00

I am finally done with RUSH. It's just been cooler after cooler. I have had peeps looking over my hand histories and they pretty much concur that a majority of it is just unavoidable and there isn;t much I can do, it's just how I am running ATM.

The last 2k hands have been 9 tabling standard 6-max on FT and it doesn;t feel half as bad.

My mission for the rest of the month is to try and get back to even. I am doubting it;s possible as you will see from my graph I have a long way to go. It's been a truly brutal month so far.

I really hope I can turn this around, but if I am honest with myself thats gonna be tough. So one timeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee please just let me get some run good!

I know, I know

2010-09-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

I read my last posts on here and the bad beat posts I made over at RTR and realised what a monotonous whiny bastard I must come accross as.

Having spoken to Snake_eyes about it on the phone and thinking about what he was saying I am really just gonna have to knock this whinging and moaning like a tit, on the head. All I am doing is prolonging the frustration and annoyance longer than I have to.

I have decided to just get on with it and stop the griping., it's doing me no good and turning my blog into a boring peice of shit.

I have also done the unthinkable and moved pretty much all my roll onto Full Tilt to play rush properly rolled. I'll have 70 buy-ins for NL25 and I am really gonna try and stick at it for a while.

I need to work harder on my game: FACT.

I need to control the tilt: FACT

I need to just accept shit happens.

Always easy saying it, but can I actually do it? Fuck knows but I am gonna try.

ATB

BM

Bye rush

2010-09-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

I can't beat and I am so fed up with all the fkin coolers.

Yeah I am running below EV, but not too much, but the cooler after cooler situation I am experiencing is a fucking joke. I guess thats the nature of this game and not one I am prepared to keep putting myself through.

I really really thought I had it cracked a few days ago, but now I keep running set over set, overpairs into sets and two pair into sets and it's too much.

Bye Rush poker and

FUCK UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUu

***************EDIT*****************

LOL. I suck so badly. Tilt just consumes me. I immediately drew most of my roll to neteller. I am so short sighted with poker that its daft.

I am trying to get my hands on a copy of "The Poker Mindset" if anyone knows anyone who has one, it would be appreciated.

I really need to get over this shit now ffs.

Should I stick to RUSH?

2010-09-08T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am so consumed by short term variance that it's funny really. I had a terrible session last night, then this afternoon I started off like a train, stopping at my frst break about 30 mins in ~5 buy-ins up!!!! Unfortunately when I returned a mixture of bad play and bad luck (FUCK Ace King) saw me down for the session by $10 after only another ten mins of play.

I immediately sat out as it was pretty clear I was on tilt.

One step forward 88 steps back.

Down 4 buy-ins for the month now, sigh.

Everyone keeps questioning why I play RUSH and tbh I am starting to come around to their way of thinking, it's such a variance ridden game and basically for one reason that Gorvacofin pointed out "At rush even the bad players can fold the junk hands and get another hand instantly", which is a great point. At standard tables the fish get bored and as such play a MUCH wider range of hands and are so much easier to play against.

You can see I am talking my way out of this rush malarky can't you. lol.

I might try and stick it out to the end of the month and see if I can win/breakeven and then round up all my BR and go back to Microgaming with my 55% RB deal.

Does anyone know any RUSH poker threads where people talk about win rates and stats etc??? I'd love to be pointd in the right direction please.

Cheers

BM

YAWN

2010-09-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

What can you do? I am 8 buy-ins down tonight and have hit my stop-loss. I have aces 5 times in 835 hands and it got cracked for stacks 4 times. Yep 4/5 and I won a piddly pot with the other one. It's a fkin disgrace. One hand I got it in on a K high board vs KQ and turn Q. Got it in on a 37J board vs a guy I had history with and he shoved with 89. I snapped and the turn was a ten. I got it in on a t34 two heart board and ran into 33 for a set. blah blah fucking blah.

I really felt I was playing well until tonight. Now I have just tilted two extra buy-ins off in pure frustration. Man I am a twat sometimes, but I hate it when shit like this happens.

Back into loss for the month. FUK OFF.

So incredibly frustrating after doing so well for so long.

GRINDDDDDDDDDDD

2010-09-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

So I think I am getting on top of rush as a whole. I have been working hard mixing up my game and thinking of ways to try and combat the ultra aggressiveness, which for quite a lot of the players borders on spewtastic. People are so focussed on 3-betting they don't even know why they are doing it, so you have to take that into account and beat them post flop.

Like I say it's early days yet. I am having a hard time with my big hands though. AK is a HUGE loser for me ATM. Not only does it miss every flop, but it also misses when I get it in with flip type situations. I am really gonna have to slow it down with AK from now on. Now I just have to stop running set over set and getting my AA cracked!

Anyways, here is my boring graph:

I am gonna keep working hard. over 7k hands so far but back at work Wednesday night so my volume will slow down.

Mixing it a bit

2010-09-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

Friday night I had a pretty big MTT session. I got very deep in quite a few:

Stars $3r - 571st/6396
Stars $22 Big Antes - 14th/298
Stars $10 20k GTD - 20th/2610 (gutted about this one)
Full Tilt 10k GTD - 44th/1295
Full Tilt Early Doouble B - 30th/1498

So many close calls with the big flips just not going my way at the crucial times, otherwise I would have hoped to convert at least 2 of those into final tables. Still I finished in decent profit for the session, so no complaints.

Tonight I went back to the mighty Rush and although I had some monster coolers and a more bad luck, I am still in profit for this month so far. Here are the latest graphs....

Still very early doors, but I am hoping to try and keep this one going. I can't keep getting coolered and running bad for stacks forever.

oh and fuck set over sets and KK into AA. That will be all :)

(If I didn't get a moan in, then it wouldn't be my blog!)

BM

September - Glutten for punishment?

2010-09-02T02:58:00.000-07:00

Despite getting pretty much crushed last time I payed RUSH, I am determined to beat it. I think there has to be a decent strategy to use that can make you a lot of money. I know I didn't play that great last time, but I was on the end of negative variance. I am hoping this time I can just run a little better, although the start does particularly look that way with an immediate set over set and a fish spazzing out and hitting with his JQ vs AJ on a J high flop.

That said I did manage to turn it round into a positive session, so I can;t complain (Lol yeah right, I am sure moaning is the norm on this blog, eh Ant? :))

I just wanna run on EV this time, thats all I ask, I wanna be beating rush and not getting a beating from it!

Monthly round up for July and August

2010-08-31T15:43:00.000-07:00

I forgot to do July's so I'll jsut add it here.

July was fkin dire:

Tournaments:

Full Tilt: 26 tourneys played for a profit of $44.68
Stars: 20 tourneys played for a loss of $7
iPoker: 2 tourneys for a profit of $4.40

Cash

Full Tilt: 18,512 hands for a loss of $633.90 + rakeback of $108.55 = -$524.25

Overall = Total Loss of $483.42

August is MUCH better :)

Tourneys

Full Tilt: 104 tourneys played for $89.93 loss, + rakeback of $17 = -$72.93
Stars: 241 tourneys played for a profit of $2,629.65

Cash

Full Tilt: 2011 hands for a loss of $105.81 + rakebeack of $8.21 = -$97.60

Staking:

+$319.50

Overall = +$2778.62

So The RUSH games have just crushed me and I haven't been able to turn it round. My AA has a win rate of a mighty 60%. lol. think that says enough. The one binkage has basically saved my last two months.

At least now I have some options!

Weeeeeeeee

2010-08-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

Played a session of MTT's tonight on Stars and Tilt. All small stakes stuff and managed to take one down for $2.5k

Thats a very very welcome addition to the Bankroll and I am getting back to the sort of roll I had in before I had to make all my withdrawals.

It's going to be nice to actually have some choice in what I play again.

A big thanks to:

Snake eyes

Joppa

Amatay

Bullmeist

for the railage at the end.

DTD didn;t go too well, had a tough decision and went the wrong way with it and it was GG me.

That said, Snake has made day 2 of the Main Event, Ant just finished 6th in the 6-max finals and Hutch managed a 16th in the PLO event. So it's good for the guys down there at the min. Hoping Snakey takes it down and becomes World Champ!

ok, cheers for reading.

Day 3 of the 180's.

2010-08-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

Managed anohter decent set last night. Found a bit of a better way to concentrate. Whenever I get in a tourney where I am in the top 27 or have over a 10k stack, i shift it to the left hand screen to concentrate on it a little harder. That way I can stop myself missing too many +EV shoves.

I moved back into a tiny profit.

Will try and play a few more tonight.

I've got the APAT Main Event at Dusk Till Dawn this weekend, so I doubt I'll get any more games in after tonight. Really looking forward to it and hopefully I can run good one time!

ATB

The story so far..

2010-08-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

Not good.

I found 20 tabling is a just a bit too much. I am making too many rush and poor decisions, I am giving up too much quality in return for quantity and it's having a definate negative effect.

Then add to that ll my miss clicks..lol. That sucked ass, but I am hoping the shortcuts will get easier as I get used to them again.

So I am gonna cut dow to between 14-16 tables. I think I can manage that.

So here is the latest results:

Will fire away again tonight.

2 180s

2010-08-25T17:20:00.001-07:00

Been playing these with super nitty brm. they really are lol at times but what do u expect in 2 dollar games. Tryin to 20 table atm but I had so many missclicks today when I tried to use just a numpad and hotkeys that it was pizz poor.

I had 2 final tables in 53 games Lol.

Gonna keep grinding them though for now.

Had a couple of bankroll boosts. Firstly when I bought a piece of Mairs action in the ukipt and she binked 8th for a 300 dollar plus return and secondly when o ran good on an rtr challenge on stars, which hopefully I Might win too! Weeee.

Fuck me its hard work logging from your phone.

Later.

Posted via Blogaway

Tester

2010-08-23T08:41:00.001-07:00

Just tryin a new app for my HTC desire. See if I can mobile blog easily.

Posted via Blogaway

Dealing with my tilt issues

2010-08-22T02:22:00.000-07:00

So as you will be aware from my posts here and at the forum I have got some tilt issues!

I thought I had it under control and don;t get me wrong, I can leave it on the tables and I don;t let it really affect my mood away from the tables, but if it happens when I am playing then it's pretty much curtains for my A,B, C or even D game.

My recent volume has been, for want of a better word, shit. I really haven;t been settled or played anything and with my BR being low the beats are starting to feel much worse.

I have been so bored with poker recently I started having bets on the nags and on the Footy, all with my poker bankroll money and that hasn;t gone well. I'm probably $350 down at least, which is really dissapointing and as such has made me realise I NEED to do something about my poker game to get me away from the other pure gambling forms.

My current BR is about $800 total. So it's not enough to play even NL25 and I couldn't motivate myself to play lower than that. I donked around in a few 18/27 player SnG's for a while, but when I went on a bad run and the BR started dropping, mainly due to ridonkulous beats, thats when the major tilt was beginning to kick in.

I made a post on the forum and got some good advice, but at first I sort of refused to take it onboard. I mean I know all about variance, I understand that volume will even it all out over time and that all you can do is get it in good, but thats not where my problem was.

It finally dawned on me that i HAVE to be a bankroll nit because thats where almost all of my tilt issues stem from. When things were not as tight IRL it wasn;t an issue, but now I know I don;t wanna go busto because we haven;t got the spare cash ATM for me to replenish my roll if I lose it and I think this is all part of my problem.

So, thankyou to all who gave me that advice and the things to think about because I think you might have helped me to turn a corner here.

Last night I decided that using a 300 Buy-in rule I was gonna grind SnG's. I decided following some thought and advice that I would go for the $2 180's on Stars like a few of the other lads. I have to be honest this feels like a pretty big step backwards to me as a player because I have never played this low before, but it's time to swallow my pride and start working on my roll again. (Unless someone wants to stake me ofc :) )

So, I 20 tabled the games last night and I have to admit, although loads of the bust outs were ridiculous, I didn;t feel the tilt creeping in. In fact I was laughing at some of the stuff I was seeing and that felt good. I also felt like I was putting the volume in again. Thats two pretty big steps forward that I am really happy with.

I finished up with a 2nd and a 3rd and a few minor places meaning a small profit for the session and the whole session of 45 games only took me 2 and a half hours, which was promising.

The next level up is the $4 180's and I'll play that if the roll hits $1200.

Time will tell here I guess.

Cheers for reading my shit.

BM

SnG's and MTT's

2010-08-15T05:54:00.000-07:00

Thats what I am playing at the moment and pretty much all on Full Tilt.

Doing ok in the MTT's, Final Tabling two $8 MTT's the other night when I played and getting very deep again in the $10k GTD Early Antes.

I find though if I am gonna sit down for an MTT sesh I really really have to be in the mood or about 2 hours in I am pissed off and bored, whihc obviously is no good to man nor beast.

When I am not working the next day MTT's tend to be my selection and SnG's when I am working.

I am getting creamed in the SnG's at the min though. The usual bad beat shit, I can't even remember how many times my over pair has been done by a smaller pair all in pre flop and how many times my dominating ace has been crushed by Ace rag. I haven;t put any significant volume it just yet, but it was starting to feel a little bit like deja vu.

I might try messing with my SnG strat a little because everyone is pretty much playing the robotic style of fold everything until into push fold mode and I am sure some of them are missing the dead money of the donkeys early on.

I am toying with willing to gamble 1/3 my stack early on (normally 1500 chips to start) and then move into push fold mode from 10 BB's or less and never let myself get lower than 6 BB's (unless bubble strategy calls for it).

Just trying to think a little outside the box. There are too many 16+ tabling nitbots who are missing the +EV spots against the fish, so I think I might be able to gain a small adge by trying to take advantage of this.

We'll see.

Good to have the Premiership back, just can;t believe Everton lost their first game to the shit that is Blackburn Rovers. Piss Poor, but I have to laugh at the local radio who are already talking about Blackburn's "good" chance of Europe this season and Blackpool's "safety"... after one game hahahahaha. Fuckin nuggets.

I've had a crap start to the fantasy league, I hope I have a good day today cos it's tough to prop everyone up when you are right in the shit at the bottom!!

Finally, FUCK THIS WEATHER!!! Rained nearly every day for the last 6 weeks. Global warming? MY ARSE.

Ok, ramble over.

Good Luck at the tables folks.

BM

Working

2010-08-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

Been way too busy at work to really put any time in at the tables. Busy covering off shifts on the holiday season and although it's hard work now, I'll be happy when those wage slips land :)

I played a few MTT's Friday night and managed to final table 2 out of the 6 games. Unfortunately though I came 7th in both, which pissed me off, especially as it was the worst player at the table by a mile who got me when I shoved my A6s in his eye and he snapped me off with A4s... of course the 4 rewards his dumb fkin ass. In the other I shoved AK into 77. I flopped an ace, but he hit a set. Sigh. No joy when at the business end.

I actually enjoyed the games and played fairly well.

I've also been playing some STT's with some guys off KrackedKings. Some really good players actually and thats been fun.

Basically just chillin whilst playing rather than seriously getting the grind on and I think thats the reason I enjoy it more.

Busy as fuck all week at work again so prolly won;t play much. After these shifts are all done though I think I want to sit down to a few nights of serious grinding to recoop my BR. I have manged to make about $250 ish this week, but then went and blew $100 on the nags.

Reet, enough of my boring shit.

Hope you run good and crush souls.

BM

Neither here nor there

2010-08-01T03:37:00.000-07:00

I did'nt play last night, but I played Friday night in some MTT's (just 5) and didn't do particularly well. Got deep in the 10k GTD on Full Tilt and an $8 scheduled game, but lost a flip in the $8 and made a bad timed move in the 10k, when I could of folded.

I finished for a slight profit, but nothing to write home about.

Thursday night I decided to grind some SnG's on Full Tilt. I played a few $11 18's and an $11 27 and some $6 18's and 27's. Apart from taking a fucking age to fill up, I did ok. I finished 2 x 1st's, 1x 2nd and 1 x 3rd out of 8 total, for just over $100 profit.

Still haven;t decided what to play, but thanks to all for their comments and suggestions.

I know I made a decent loss this month, but I am working solid for the next two weeks so might struggle to get all the figures off my lappy.

My goal for August is to maybe mix up SnG's and MTT's and just see how I end up.

Cheers for reading.

BM

Defeat admitted

2010-07-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

Rush poker - can fuck off. I had a few days off, came back, immediatel ran cold at NL25 so I did what any self respecting gambler would do and moved upto NL50 and proceeded to run bad and spew even more off. I am now ~$600 down for the month and thats a hit my roll at the moment can;t really take. I am proper pissed off at myself for the lack of discipline, but I am truly gutted at how I ran at rush and thats not just talk of bad beats, but the number of coolers like set over set etc that I sufferred just never really ever gave me a chance to get going.

According to Poker Tracker I am $450 below EV. Meaning if my hands had held when i got it in ahead I would be $900 better off ($450 I wouldn;t have lost and instead $450 I would have won), add the coolers to that and it's easy to see how shit I actually ran.

If you get rakeback on Full Tilt prepare for your doomswitch to be hit!

Oh well back to rebuilding. I am also regretting drawing nearly all of my roll to pay for life stuff as it's left me really short now when I am needing it. Sigh.

I haven't got a fackin clue what I am going to play now...

lol really?

2010-07-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

I know I am normally a tilt monster, but tonight I am perfectly calm. I have lost over 3 buy-ins and it's pretty much incredible stuff. I didn;t make any mistakes and got trashed. This is why I can;t beat Rush at the moment.....

hand 1:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
saw flop | saw showdown
BB ($34.95)
UTG ($26.79)
MP ($15.86)
CO ($30.01)
Button ($27.89)
Hero (SB) ($25)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Q, Q

3 folds, Button bets $0.85, Hero raises to $2.75, BB raises to $7.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $25 (All-In), BB calls $17.50

Flop: ($50.85) 6, J, 10 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($50.85) J (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($50.85) A (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $50.85 | Rake: $2.54
Results:

Hero had Q, Q (two pair, Queens and Jacks).
BB had J, Q (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: BB won $48.31

So this guy 4-bets me and then without bing committed he calls my shove with JQs. The thing too is that his stats were not showing his as a donk. He was 24/21/4.5 over 165 hands.

So the same guy a few hands earlier:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
saw flop | saw showdown
BB ($25.25)
UTG ($24.55)
MP ($28.10)
CO ($27.78)
Button ($94.28)
Hero (SB) ($25)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, K

4 folds, Hero bets $1, BB raises to $3.50, Hero raises to $9.50, BB calls $6

Flop: ($19) 5, 8, 6 (2 players)

Hero bets $15.50 (All-In), BB calls $15.50

Turn: ($50) 10 (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($50) 7 (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $50 | Rake: $2.50

Results:
Hero had A, K (high card, Ace).
BB had 4, 3 (straight, eight high).
Outcome: BB won $47.50

WTF??? He flats a 4-bet with 34s and obv then makes a str8 after calling my shove. Is this some kind of sick joke?

I then lose some when I make a flush on a 4x 9c 4c 2c board and a villain has 99 and finally I get into a pot when a guys calls out of position my raise. flop is JJJ and I have KK. We get it in on turn and he has the case jack for quads and had called with AJo.

I mean seriously, it's just lol. It's so far fetched I don;t really know what else to say.

33 mins of play, over 3 buy-ins down and I haven;t put a foot wrong. There is not much I can do than that. It's just pathetic if I am honest.

Refuse to give up

2010-07-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

As you might be able to tell, I still have a couple of tilt issues....lol.

I laugh myself when I read them back, but at the time of writing I was steaming mad and writing it helped me vent it off my chest.

Despite running like dog-shit I am sticking at Rush for now. I am messing about all the time trying to find a good strategy and it's not easy. The 3-bet monkeys are getting the better of me right now, but I am working out how to deal with that. I mean pretty much any hand you open from MP-BTN is 3-bet by someone behind you and it's almost everytime. Against the monkeys that do it out of position I have no problems, I just call with all my value hands and float the shit out of their c-bets. Against the guys doing in position, well thats a different prospect. Following tons of discussion with Snake Eyes in the past we realised when it comes to being OOP vs a 3-bettor then you have to 4-bet or fold (unless you are setting a tarp with a monster) because it becomes so much harder to play post flop if you flat a 3-bet OOP.

The thing that makes me laugh though, is just by watching a majority of these guys they have absolutely no fucking idea why they are three betting. They aren't doing it for value or a bluff because of the opponents they are doing it against, they are probably just doing it because they have seen it on some training vid. Some of them are horribly bad, so there is money to be made, I just need to run better.

Last night I lost a big pot quite early with set over set, when I check raised the guy on a K89 two suited board and I had 99 and he flatted with TT...lol wut? Anyways of course the turn was a ten and all the money goes in. Not long after I had anotehr set over set, with 7's vs A's. Sigh. Meant I was ~3 buy-ins down and had done nothign wrong.

I was starting to tilt again, so I just sat out, took 5 mins, got a brew and posted on the forum. I then fired the tables back up, adjusted my strategy a little bit and went back at it. I finally finished up $9. Yep thats a shitty amount, but at least it wasn;t a losing session.

So far this month I am around 10 buy-ins down (~$250), which is a shitty feeling, but I am not prepared to quit just yet. I might find I can;t beat the game, I don;t know, but what I do know is that I will take another look at around 40k hands and see how I am doing. If it's still bad then I'll knock it on the head.

Oh and if anyone knows any good Rush training vids or are beating the games well and would like to give me a little help then feel free to drop me an email to mik@raisetheriver.com or add me on MSN
RTR-Mik@live.co.uk

Cheers

Ugh

2010-07-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

I am on super monkey mega tillt. I played two sessions today for a total of about 2k hands. 1st session I dropped just over 3 buy-ins and on the second I lost nearly 5 buy-ins. Just simply complete wankers getting there on me all the fucking time regadless of what odds they are getting. AA--pfft. i am folding that fucker from now on as it gets smashed to bollocks every single time I get dealt it, unless I raise and they all fold.

I played like a twat towards the end because my head had gone. I have been absolutely reamed and I mean reamed. I won;t even drag all the shit hands out for you as I'm sure you are sick of heaaring it, but it was fucking brutal. Almost felt like I was in a horror movie.

I am already 9 buy-ins below EV over this first 15k hands. I mean come on, give me a fucking chance to get started at least you tight bastard RNG. Lets not forget the number of fucking coolers I am encountering. Set over set.... meh blah blah fucking blah.

Shove it up your arse poker you mudder fukking scumbag POS. arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Days 5 + 6

2010-07-18T02:18:00.000-07:00

Day 5 - Was doing ok and was well in profit, but at the end it all went a little pear-shaped, when I had KK into AA twice, one of them for a $120 pot and then lost a flip with AKs vs QQ, all this meant I finished the session down $26 rather than up, but no complaints as thats pretty standard stuff. Once again I hit my points totals for the day and knocked out around 1100 hands.

Day 6 - Just a day on MONSTER coolers. Got a set of 6's into a set of Q's on a Q 6 2 flop. Had AA cracked by AKs, which runner runner flushed. Got top set, 10's, into a 1 card straight. I also got it in on a JJ52 board with KJ and ofc opponent has 55. lol. I also got AA busted again on a ten high two club flop, when he had TT. Sigh FML. That type of session just destroys your hard work and in reality there isn;t a fucking thing in this world that you can do about it. I ended up finishing the session down $88, which means so far for this month I am now down ~6 buy-ins. My all in EV graph tells the story to be fair. I've been brutalised!!!

I hope my fortunes change a little as tbh I am playing ok and there is still plenty of time to turn it around.

Rush - Day 4

2010-07-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I changed my approach a little. I was 4 tabling the Rush games instead of 3 tabling and tbh found it easier. I can;t explain why, but I just felt more comfortable.

I started out badly, playing a hand shit when I missed with AK on a flush drawing board and set up a turn shove. Board was Ts 3s 8d 6d and I had AKo. I shoved turn and he tanked for a while and then called with JJ (in a 3-bet pot). Still, badly played vs someone I had no stats on.

Thankfully thats where the shit play stopped and I got a grip of myself. 1.1k hands later I was ~ $68 to the good for the session, so I recovered that silly start and finished in profit.

I also hit the first part of the bonus, clearing the first $25 for getting over 100 points on 4 consecutive days. Pretty easily acheivable too and whilst I am still adapting to Rush it's a welcome helper.

I need to squeeze it in again tonight before playing the RTR team game, which after all the banter and bullshitting each other I had better put a fkin good performance in! lolololol. I'd look a right twat if after oining Nightmare Nick I played like a tit and bust early!!!! Hopefully the reverse will be true and I'll nail that ginger fish to the wall :)

ok gotta run, hopes you runs goot.

BM

Rush Swings

2010-07-14T23:54:00.000-07:00

So after my first three days of Rush it's already a rollercoaster.

Day 1 - Played aggro, but not really getting anywhere fast. Win a buy-in, lose a buy-in, sort of like that all session. Think I finished about $6 to the good after 1k hands. I did generate 148 points for the promotion though hitting silver for the day, which was the plan to maintain to get the free $50 after 7 days.

Day 2 - Good day, played hard got a few monster hands including quad 2's, which I got a stack with vs AA and then got Quad tens, but no action. Overall it went pretty well and I finished ~$84 up, so 3-buy-ins ish. Once again playing about 1.2k hands and generating enough for silver rush bonus on day 2. I was feeling pretty buoyed up now as things were going well.

Day 3 - The shit hit the fan. I was still playing my super aggro style, but was missing everything and I eventually got mega frustrated and dumped pretty much 3 stacks by 5-bet shoving when I lost my rag vs 4-bettors. Sigh. I ran into KK with AK, JKs I 5 bet shoved and was called by 99 which held, depsite me picking up a FD on flop. Then I Shoved AJs vs AK and lost, which was deserved. I lost another stck BVB aggainst a guy who was pretty much a maniac, he raises from SB, I 3-bet with JJ, he 4-bets, so I shove. Obv he has Q's. FML, I really thought I was way ahead of his range there. I was also Check-raised a fkin million times on my c-bets, which was adding to my frustrations. Overall though there are no excuses, I played like a twat and got what I deserved. I would have stopped ealier, but I needed to make my points and in the end I dropped ~$170. Fkin terribad. I seriously need stop losses because when I hit monkey tilt in such a fast game, I spew quickly and heavily.

Today is day 4 and I'll be playing tonight and hopefully playing much better.

ONE TIME!

Rushing Around

2010-07-13T01:52:00.000-07:00

Firslty, a big thankyou to all who stopped by and left comments on my previous post. Is great news!

I finally got rakeback on my existing Full Tilt account! weeeeeeeeeeee. So, I moved 1k over there and am starting to grind some NL25 6-max. Just firing up 3 tables and away I go. It's pretty itense and it takes a lot of concentration to make a lot of good, very very quick decisions, but so far I am enjoying it.

I was toying with the idea of going back to microgaming tbh, but I can play the same volume on three tables of rush, as I can with like 7 tables on Micro, so it means I don't have to drag out the second monitor and spend too much time table selecting.

The plan is to try and play 1k hands per day aiming for roughly ~15k hands this month as it's a late start. I'll also be involved in their Rush bonus thingy this week, with the plan of getting a free $50 just for playing as I normally would, so that's a bonus to the start.

Strategy wise, well I am just playing pretty aggro ATM and it's working well, but I am not bothering firing 2 barrells too often as people at these levels tell you whether they have a hand or not, so it's best to get the goods and then take them to value town. My 3-bet on the button is extremely high as so few people have reads on your play, so often have to take it at face value.

The only big problem is that now the French have been ring-fenced away from the main player pool b y their greedy fkin government and we all know the majority of Fench players were terrible. So now even fewer fish swimming around the ponds.

Anyways I'll stick at it and hope you are all running goooot!

BM

Who's the daddy!

2010-07-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

Me!!!!!

recently found out I am going to be a daddy for the second time and I'm absolutely made up! There will be around a 2 and a half year gap between the little ones, which is what we were sort of looking ofr, so it's all perfect.

Proper happy about it!

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

On the poker front, I am just experimenting on the Rush Poker. Just crashing about at NL10 (I have ~40 buy-ins on tilt for it). I can get volume in and not have to play a million tables.

I have bought myself into the APAT Worlds Main Event at DTD in August, so lookng forward to that.

June Round-up

2010-07-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

Well June was extremely poor for me. I had no focus. I didn't grind and I went on holiday. Poker just basically took a back-seat. I also think my lack of focus was a real problem, never knowing what I felt like playing and what i wanted to concentrate on had a pretty big effect on my mood to play.

I genuinely have to make a decision what I am gonna do for July and stick to it.

Anyways Round-Up:

Tourneys:

PokerStars: 32 tourneys for a $318.80 loss
Full Tilt: 37 tourneys for $11.37 profit.
Cereus: 11 tourneys played for a $87.15 loss

Didn't play any hands of cash.

Overall = $394.58 loss

First losing month of the year.

WSOP 2011 - Wanna go?

2010-06-24T20:26:00.001-07:00

We are setting it up to make it possible!!!!

See all the details by cicking this link to the forum

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Holidays

2010-06-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

Off in the morning for a week in the sun.

Hope it pisses it down on you lot all week! hahhahaha, such a bitter sod ain't I!! lololol.

Sunday England play Germany and no doubt there will be Germans in the hotel so that should be fun! 5-1 again plz.

reet off to pack my cases. Laters.

One for the England Players:

2010-06-22T21:24:00.000-07:00

"You are never a loser until you quit trying." - Mike Ditka

So for this one time go out there and give it everything you have for your homeland and your loyal supporters. Leave it all out there on the pitch. Make us proud to be English men and women.

COME ON ENGLAND, YOU CAN DO IT!!