Life after poker

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!

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!!!!

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

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

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

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

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!