Profit at last!

Went back to Leos tonight for the £30 double chance.
Took my extra chips straight away after seeing a few hands so that when involved I would be able to extract maximum profit.

There were 3 really notable hands that stood out.

The first was at the 50/100 level with about 6000 chips and the villain had 2400.

Villain has been involved in 60% of hands usually limping and calling raises if one comes.

Villain limps and I raised to 400 from the small blind with KQ - not normally a great hand but a monster on this table.

Villain calls.

Flop comes 933 I check and villain bets 800 I ask him if he hits get the response I need and put him all in for the extra 1000 and he snap calls with QT turn Q river ten. - The river doesn't like me at the moment in liver tournaments!

A little while later after I've lost a couple of thousand when the river paired middle pair to give the other player trips, I've got 2400 and the blinds are 200/400. Cut off goes all in for 2200 and immediately stands up. I call with 66 and he shows A2. Flop comes down QQ6 he starts walking away whilst the turn card Q is being dealt. I tell him to stop because it's not over yet half expecting the other queen to give him the pot but instead an ace comes giving him a bigger boat and leaving me with 200 chips!

I don't want this to sound like a bad beat story because it's not meant to be one and I never get upset when I get out drawn as it's got to happen and so I just accept it as part of poker. I did feel really good though and the two reads I made were both correct which is the main point.

Last hand I've quintupled up to 1000 chips and I'm in the big blind of 600 and after 2 limpers I raise to 1000 with AKo and the flop comes 89T to give Mr JQ UTG limper a flopped straight and I'm on my way home early.

I did manage to play a couple of hours though when I got home and I'm finally in profit on Big Slick to the tune of a mighty £40!

I have, however, earned about $800 of loyalty payments (rakeback equivalent) already this month so at least that is going in the right direction again.

On the work front we are expecting letters to be issued tomorrow offering voluntary severance. There is a very high likelihood that I could be made redundant by the end of March.

However, it's not that bad because I should be due a good payment plus notice pay which should tide things over and then I have the options of getting another job, working for an agency as either an accountant or a teacher with the back up that I am earning more money per hour playing poker than I could earn working at the moment.

I'm not sure if I would want to play for a living but I am currently getting a 6% ROI yet I only need to break even in poker to maintain my current income through rakeback alone. If I were to maintain a 6% return I could multiply my current salary by 5 or more.

Having kids and a mortgage means I would never leave my job to try this but if it were forced on me and I had the backup of 6 months pay sitting in the bank it is very tempting to try it on a month by month basis with the backup of going back to work if I ever drop behind by months salary. Lots for me to think about....

I'm not sure if there is a tax implication if I were to play poker for a living, obviously it is not taxed as it stands but I am hoping to speak to a couple of people about this when I next run into them.

Anyway, that's it for now...

Bed time, I've got to be in work by 9!

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!

Wow

How about this for a hand...

KK v JQ

On the bubble of a $200 double up

All in pre flop


Flop comes down KJJ

I'm playing 4 tables and first think crap, then realise Oh I've won that one then the Jack comes lol

I laughed most at my thinking in the hand.

Oh well, back to the tables...

Grand Prix Crash

Well, a staggering 59 players yesterday in the Grand Prix playing for a prize pool of £79k of which Blue Sq added £25k. Can't see them putting this one on again although I hope they do having finished 12th last year and 17th yesterday.

We started out at 3pm with 59 players and a ridiculous 45 getting paid. - What's the point? Pay everyone or pay out as normal.

After about 3 1/2 hours we were on the bubble with 5 tables and hand for hand. So the last 20 minutes of the level involved about 7 hands being played!

Luckily the bubble burst 2 hands after the break and everyone was guaranteed £188.

I lost a few thousand early on when I flopped a set of 5s and didn't believe Ash Hussain when he bet the pot on the 3rd diamond arriving.

I then last another couple of thousand when I had aces and got 1 called who flat called my continuation bet on a J high board. He raised me on the turn Q which I called but when the river queen arrived and he bet the pot I had to lay them down.

I then played few hands until I was moved tables onto a table with the mad Turk who plays any two cards and duly doubled up with a flopped 2 pair with Q7 in the blinds against him.

Another double up later on with TT against AJ had me at average chips and then I played another flopped 2 pair eith TJ badly to allow him to catch up on the river when a king visibly made his hand giving him either a straight or higher 2 pair.

My exit hand was interesting. I raised in early position from 1200 to 3500 and a late postion player the other side of the dealer didnt see so when it came to him he announced raise only to be told that there had already been a raise. A ruling was called for when he didn't want to reraise and so when he was told that he had to raise at least the minimum, I put my remaining chips in for a total of 13,000 which he can't really fold to and he shows AQ.

The flop was JJQ and of course the turn was a Q leaving me only the case A to win on the river which obviously didn't arrive and I leave in 17th with £560 to show.

Oh well, that's poker!

I enjoyed my first GUKPT event of the year and I'm planning on playing Blackpool if I qualify or do well enough in the double ups over the next couple of weeks.

Let's hope Lewis Hamilton has better luck than me and wins the title today.

Target 1 achieved

Well, I've just reached my first target in this new double up schedule by reaching the $4000 mark and so, as promised we've got a nice new 42" Plasma and home cinema system coming next Wednesday. I'm really looking forward to that and it's nice to have something to show for it. I've still got $1000 + rakeback due at the end of the month so I'm pretty pleased at the moment and I'm just hoping this doesn't tail off.

It's funny how things work out. Up until this year live poker has always been most successful for me with my online poker providing a lot of satellite entries and a couple of direct buy ins to festival events and the cruise tournament buy ins but no regular withdrawals.

However, this year the live poker, whilst less regular due mainly to the bankroll issues with a large chunk of my live poker winnings having been put into the extension and overdraft, has resulted in a loss - again due to the cruise entries.

I'm just keeping everything crossed that I can maintain this current return from the double up tournaments and take it from there.

Anyway, with the first goal achieved it's time for a relatively early night to keep me fresh for tomorrow.

Not sure how many have qualified so far as the website is out of date showing 41 qualifiers and £52k prize pool but I'm not on the list so I am guessing that when Bluesq ut in a few players to try to recoup some of the £25k they are adding then could will be up to 100 runners.

Ok, so bed now.

Here's my double up bankroll graph from my spreadsheet:

Grand Prix

While Lewis Hamilton is hopefully winning the final grand prix of the season and the World Championship on Saturday week, I will be trying to take down the Grosvenor Grand Prix in Walsall.

I cashed in this event last year finishing 12th for £3000 and I will be hoping to improve this year.

It all happened tonight when the final table of the Grand Prix satellite was taken over by people from the Northwest with me, Jimmy Morgan, Charlie Denton, Terry Owens and Mick Fletcher plus also maybe Rob Sherwood (I'm not certain on him as he was getting called Rob and I think he was from Manchester) joining Mick McCool and a couple others. There were two seats to be won and luckily enough Charlie and I got them.

I did survive a couple of spots near the end and on one occasion when I semi bluffed into a set of five but the flush draw arrived to save me but that only made up for a couple of spots early when I had two big outdraws that made me need a couple of rebuys.

Anyway, elsewhere I have been off for a couple of days and decided to have a couple of hours on the tables during the daytime to see what the competition is like.

In all I played 29 double up tournaments this afternoon and tonight, winning 21 out of 28 for a profit of $1,043 so I was really happy with that and the new TV I promised my wife if I could make £500 whilst off looks like it's going to become a reality.

Off to bed for now....

Reality Check

I've had a bit of a reality check over the last couple of days.

As you can see from the table below I was up to $2958 last week but a couple of bad days has seen that drop drastically.

Date ROI Bankroll
16/09/2008 182% 27
22/09/2008 182% 72
25/09/2008 182% 180
26/09/2008 6% 19.5
28/09/2008 144% 251.5
29/09/2008 117% 382.5
30/09/2008 133% 579.5
01/10/2008 107% 737.5
02/10/2008 143% 1280.5
04/10/2008 86% 1056.5
06/10/2008 127% 1329.5
08/10/2008 108% 1454.5
09/10/2008 107% 1702.5
10/10/2008 122% 1738.5
13/10/2008 101% 1747.5
15/10/2008 97% 1578.5
16/10/2008 113% 2099.5
17/10/2008 144% 2958.5
18/10/2008 76% 2248.5
19/10/2008 85% 1654.5
20/10/2008 106% 1866.5


The reason for this, I think is that with my new found confidence I've been playing $100 and $200 tourneys and my ROI has dropped into the 5% range over all tournaments as you can see below.

6 Seat 10 seat All tables No of tournaments
$30 182% 182% 182% 6
$50 117% 112% 115% 68
$100 109% 112% 110% 120
$200 97% 109% 99% 92
Total 102% 112% 105% 286

I don't know whether it is a blip that was caused by me losing quite a few $200 tournaments in a row yesterday when either people were getting lucky at the right time or I was getting KK beaten by A rag or I was getting AK when someone else had AA at the bubble end of the tournaments.

Anyway, I decided to listen to the numbers yesterday and the last 11 tournaments I played were all $100 affairs and I won 8 so I'm going to stick to the $100 tournaments until my bankroll is over $4000 (assuming it gets there!)

I'm not maybe some of the regulars at the $200 level have sussed out what I'm up to or not but we'll see hopefully.

The good news is I've now reached General status on Paddy Power which gives me $500 bonus at the end of the month and if I can keep that up each month by the middle of the month I might even look at trying to get 2 ipoker skins up to the same level so that I can get two of these bonuses a month rather than having to cash in the points to get the extra few $100 worth of loyalty bonuses.

Anyway, I'm going to try to keep recording my progress here so that I can see in future months where I have been going.

Going to Leos tonight for a change since I'm off for the rest of the week whilst the kids are off.

I haven't been for a while and judging by Cashbiatch's post about a cash game, it hasn't changed much.