The doom switch

There is a lot of rubbish talked about on poker forums etc about the doom switch.

What players are talking about is a belief that when you withdraw money from a poker website someone at the cardroom flicks a switch that means that the player will suddenly start losing and therefore have to re-deposit money which in turn means that the poker site will make more money.

Well I don't believe all that crap but the last couple of days since I withdrew my money from PaddyPower and moved some of it to Big Slick Poker have certainly felt like it.

I played 10 tournaments last night and lost 8 of them.

Total loss was $1000 and this was by far my biggest losing day since I started on this trail.

If it wasn't for the fact that I am playing on the same network (ipoker) against a lot of the same names I would have started wondering whether I was being scammed.

For example I came third in a race with AA against JJ and A4 when the flop came down J44, Aces were bust by smaller pairs, Kings by 83 etc and time after time if runner runner was needed on the flop then sure enough the turn provided the first card and I didn't even have to wait for the river.

It even came to one point where I had 5100 out of the possible 9000 chips with 4 left and I still felt like I wouldn't cash.

Anyway, I know that this is all variance and I keep reminding myself that when I have the $600, $700, $800 winning days that it is only contributing to days like yesterday.

Sure is frustrating though and I can understand why days like this have been the death knell for many a laptop!

The reason I switched to Big Slick is that their loyalty program is probably the best available on the ipoker network with the added potential of some staking for GUKPT events if the relationship works out.

Anyone who is interested in moving to the ipoker network or switching from their current ipoker skin can leave me a comment and I can put you in touch with someone who can sort you out with the best deal available.

I also played in the GUKPT $100 rebuy in Blackpool on Saturday.

The structures in these tournaments are much better than your normal casino crapshoot.

We started with 130 odd players and my starting table had Ali Mallu sat immediately to my left which could have been expensive for me but I managed to reach the end of the re-buys with re-buying and about 11,000 chips from a starting stack of 3000 and so didn't bother with he add on either.

Ali did get away with it in one hand holding the second nut flush draw to my nut flush draw which could have cost him his entire stack had the third club arrived.

Anyway, we played down to the last 40 at 4am on Sunday morning. This was a little bit of a drag since it meant coming back on Sunday with no guarantee of a payout but a double up late on Saturday night at least brought me back with average chips of about 28,000 and the blinds and antes at 500/1000/100.

Unfortunately Sunday didn't work out when my pocket tens were reraised by a player who was looking super strong leaving me with 12000 chips and the blinds at 600/1200/100 meaning that stealing the blinds would increase my stack by 25% so when the small blind had his cards taken from him because he was on the phone I decided that any two would do and went all in holding 52 with 3 behind me. Unfortunately the player on my left made a reluctant call with his pocket queens.

The flop of AJ5 brought some hope and the turn 2 took me into the lead but a rivered Ace counterfeited my 2 pair and I was gone in 26th place with 13th paying £350 and 1st prize being £11k.

I won't be playing during the week as they are all 2 day events apart from Thursday when Julie is working and Friday when I have a sportsman's dinner to raise money for Andrew's football team.

So it's back to the cyber tables for me to see if this doom switch has been switched back off!