Two weeks ago I found myself unexpectedly at the Reading Grosvenor. A friend had given me a last minute text that he was changing trains in Reading and wondered if I could meet up. At the time I was playing the PKR Open and about to fire up a load more tournaments but decided to abandon that idea. I got the chips in at the Open table fast, a number of times, looking to chip up to a stack that might make it to the cash or otherwise be smashed out. Usually this strategy leads to donking yourself out. Somehow I kept getting it in with trash and winning. Out of a 450 runner tournament I found myself abandoning it as Chip Leader with 153 left. I had made the money when I checked the next day but it was painful that the first time all month I find myself with a workable stack I then sat out and min cashed with it.
Anyway, after a couple of drinks my friend got his next train and I found myself heading to the casino. As I hadn't played live since before Christmas it would be a nice warm up for Leeds. Sometimes evenings at a poker table just go weird. You find yourself sat with odd people who you wonder how they can possibly function as human beings on a dayto day basis. Both tables were full when I got there so I didn't get on a table until 11pm. There were a few useful regs I had seen before. There were a couple of standard fish and then there was a very drunk Scotsman. Most Scottish accents are clear and easy to follow. The odd one is quiet, fast and full of words that don't make a lot of sense south of the border. He was talking constantly but only every fourth word or so made any sense. Every time the action was on him we had to wait 15 seconds of Hollywooding before he asked 'Cann'a fold?' before folding, or putting chips into the pot for the next spectacular piece of donking he was about to perform. He was winding people up long before the first explosive moment of the evening.
He was sat next to an okay reg known as 'Pedro'. Pedro is a youngish black local, currently on crutches after breaking his foot. After raking in a decent pot The Scotsman had missed a £1 chip. It was in front of Pedro who flicked it back over towards him. Pedro was wearing a very expensive watch as many casino gamblers have a tendency to own. The Scotsman picked up the chip and proceeded to rub the flat side of it over the face of Pedro's watch. Pedro went for him in a flash with much shoving and swearing following. Security was there about ten seconds later dragging away the man on crutches as he seemed to be the aggressor. After ten minutes reviewing the video he was returned and our drunk friend was ejected. Gutting as one of the two value players was now gone.
It was okay though as about thirty minutes prior to that an older guy with short, spiky and gelled, grey hair and a diamond stud earring had sat down at the table. To buy in he brought out a giant wodge of £50 notes and threw a couple of the table. He was drinking from the biggest glass of baileys I have ever seen in my life. He then bluffed every other pot all in by the time it got to the river. The dealer changed just before the previous incident happened and the new one clearly knew several of the regs very well. You really have to watch out in small regional cash tables as there is often a lot of behaviour that would not be tolerated in any decent cardroom. The dealer was talking to the reg in the 9 seat and commenting about the hands after they had finished, or on several occasions when the hand was still in progress at the other end of the table. This is pretty unwelcome at the best of times though wasn't impacting on any of the play.
The new fish had bluffed off about £300 when he decided to ship King high into the second nut flush on a paired board. The dealer had made a comment to the other player before he called, it sounded something like 'Your go.' After the other guy called the bluff (which no one was ever folding against this guy) Baileys Man decided the dealer had told him what to do and worked himself up into a bizarre state. He got what I can only describe as passive aggressive with the dealer before standing up and demanding to see the Floorman. He kept wandering back over telling the dealer that he 'was done'. The guy was clearly an idiot but the dealer had very much blurred the lines of acceptability already already and whilst there was no cheating or collusion the lines of good practise had very much been blurred. The dealer's actions likely cost the table a lot of free money and left the Floor Manager probably wondering who he had upset in a previous life to be stuck dealing with this nonsense. As the cameras didn't have good sound pick up the Floor Manager could do nothing and Baileys Man huffed off convinced he had been cheated.
I had got about £120 up then drifted back to about even by the time Baileys Man had properly left, abandoning about £60 on the table with no intention of coming back. Weird incidents had left the table short of both the value players. It was quite early for me to consider finishing a session at 2 a.m. but I hadn't won a pot in over an hour, neither of the fish had spewed my way and the table was turning into a solid nit-fest. I quit it £1.50 to the good. Not a good nights work but easily the most entertaining £1.50 I had earned in a long time.
Showing posts with label Cash Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cash Games. Show all posts
Friday, 24 February 2012
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
January Review
Things almost started well. I got into the cash in the PKR Masters but exited about 50th after running flopped two pair into an on fire KarlTheKiller's overpair that got there on the turn. In typical fashion he managed to go from having 5 times the average chip stack with 50 players left, with double what the second place guy had, to out in 28th. If he could just fractionally moderate the aggression in his game I 'm sure he'd bink everything going. Beyond that I managed to bubble two PKR Primetimes, and several other tournaments, and do an awful lot of crashing out after losing monster pots .
There are two reasons cash was a particular downer this month. Firstly I am not sure how is it even possible to run 25 buy ins under EV at $0.25/0.50????? Answers on a postcard please. Secondly I put in what is, by my standards, a huge amount of volume at 85,000 hands. As we all know the more volume a good player can put in the more it should help to reduce variance. What this month neatly shows is that a) If anyone tells you that 20 buy ins is enough to play any cash level you should just laugh in their faces and b) 100,000 hands is not big enough to draw any conclusions about accurate win rates from. I also failed in my New Years Resolution to run better at $1/2.
This was probably my worst month for online tournaments since 'I did my bollox', as Neil Channing would say, during SCOOP last year. The only saving grace this month was that I used up a lot of points on different places for tickets so it wasn't quite as bad as it looks.
Monday, 30 January 2012
The Previously Unseen Joy of Cascading Tables
January has sucked. Cash has sucked. Tournaments have sucked. I will save the real whinging for the monthly review. After three weeks of epic run bad I decided it was time to change tact and to do something I haven't done in a long while... that is to go bonus whoring. There are some good offers out there right now with people still trying to capitalise on the fall of Full Tilt. It is also January, the traditional month of poker sites trying to reactivate old accounts and gain new custom. So to that end I have a shiny new poker account that offered me a 400% match bonus up to a maximum bonus of $2,000. The rake requirements seem a little steep but once you factor in the VIP system of the site you can quickly envisage it as the equivalent of 35% - 50% rake back for the period of the bonus. Which is tasty.
Now I didn't deposit more than I needed to so I will have to spin up a roll to get the most out of it. To this aim I have been wanting to play a lot of tables at low stakes to get me started. Now traditionally I have always been a fan of tiling when multi-tabling, probably because I spend so much time on PKR. Even if playing 12 tournaments on Stars I prefer to have the tables tiled across my two screens. Except on some networks the software is just hideous for trying to play this way. When a table doesn't start flashing or beeping madly when your clock hits 5 seconds, and you have no time bank, you are going to end up folding a lot of hands without realising it. A lot of hands. So for the first time ever I have really got my teeth into cascading the tables. The Ipoker software is clearly better built for this. Basically all your tables overlap slightly and it brings up tables to the foreground in order of the decisions you need to make. I'm now wondering why I never really did this before because I am finding a whole new world of benefits to this process. I have been 16 tabling, the maximum you can open, and I have been playing it comfortably.
Clearly this is always going to be a slightly mechanical process. You cannot spend more than one second on a general decision or more than one second glancing at HUD stats. Clearly this would leave you open to being exploited at mid to high stakes unless you had 'mad skills'. You are not going to be aware of the general trends of what a fish at the table is doing unless the HUD makes it obvious. Beyond this though the benefits are huge. Firstly the sheer number of hands you are seeing instantly tightens your pre-flop range up. It stops you getting bored and playing 10 5 suited in a spot you know you really shouldn't be. It doesn't stop you bluffing but it does make you have a set of rules in your head for finding spots to attempt this. I have been getting in 1,000 hands an hour with ease, this allows for some monster monthly volume figures should you wish to generate them.
The best benefits for me are the following two. The speed allows for a real zone of zen poker. The first reason for this is that you rarely ever see the outcome of a hand during the session unless you specifically pull it up on HEM. Think about this. The number one fault most poker players have is that they are too results orientated. They get bothered about losing a hand and it upsets their concentration. If you cannot see the outcome all the time suddenly you are being focused on what you should be focused on... the decision making process. Playing like this you are merely making decision after decision after decision and you are doing it in an emotionally neutral fashion. There is also the added benefit of this process forcing you to spend more time reviewing your session afterwards. Once you have finished the playing you can then review your decisions without the emotional attachment of the moment. It makes it easier to be objective and easier to learn from your mistakes. This has been a very liberating experience. I will be focused on clearing the bonus for at least the next month, it will be interesting if my feelings about playing cash games on different sites have been permanently altered by the end of this experience.
Now I didn't deposit more than I needed to so I will have to spin up a roll to get the most out of it. To this aim I have been wanting to play a lot of tables at low stakes to get me started. Now traditionally I have always been a fan of tiling when multi-tabling, probably because I spend so much time on PKR. Even if playing 12 tournaments on Stars I prefer to have the tables tiled across my two screens. Except on some networks the software is just hideous for trying to play this way. When a table doesn't start flashing or beeping madly when your clock hits 5 seconds, and you have no time bank, you are going to end up folding a lot of hands without realising it. A lot of hands. So for the first time ever I have really got my teeth into cascading the tables. The Ipoker software is clearly better built for this. Basically all your tables overlap slightly and it brings up tables to the foreground in order of the decisions you need to make. I'm now wondering why I never really did this before because I am finding a whole new world of benefits to this process. I have been 16 tabling, the maximum you can open, and I have been playing it comfortably.
 |
| Mmmmm... 16 tables :) |
Clearly this is always going to be a slightly mechanical process. You cannot spend more than one second on a general decision or more than one second glancing at HUD stats. Clearly this would leave you open to being exploited at mid to high stakes unless you had 'mad skills'. You are not going to be aware of the general trends of what a fish at the table is doing unless the HUD makes it obvious. Beyond this though the benefits are huge. Firstly the sheer number of hands you are seeing instantly tightens your pre-flop range up. It stops you getting bored and playing 10 5 suited in a spot you know you really shouldn't be. It doesn't stop you bluffing but it does make you have a set of rules in your head for finding spots to attempt this. I have been getting in 1,000 hands an hour with ease, this allows for some monster monthly volume figures should you wish to generate them.
The best benefits for me are the following two. The speed allows for a real zone of zen poker. The first reason for this is that you rarely ever see the outcome of a hand during the session unless you specifically pull it up on HEM. Think about this. The number one fault most poker players have is that they are too results orientated. They get bothered about losing a hand and it upsets their concentration. If you cannot see the outcome all the time suddenly you are being focused on what you should be focused on... the decision making process. Playing like this you are merely making decision after decision after decision and you are doing it in an emotionally neutral fashion. There is also the added benefit of this process forcing you to spend more time reviewing your session afterwards. Once you have finished the playing you can then review your decisions without the emotional attachment of the moment. It makes it easier to be objective and easier to learn from your mistakes. This has been a very liberating experience. I will be focused on clearing the bonus for at least the next month, it will be interesting if my feelings about playing cash games on different sites have been permanently altered by the end of this experience.
Saturday, 14 January 2012
PKR Cash Game TV 8th November 2011
Ahhhh PKR Cash Game TV. The eternal wonder of what Ashley Hames is on about and whether he will get sued by the end of the episode :) ... Once again the hand selection taunts me by missing out the three hands I played extremely well and showing the one I spent the most time questioning myself about following the end of the session...
http://www.pkr.com/en/community/news-events/pkr-tv-14-01/
This was an interesting session for a number of reasons. You can sit down with a starting stack of 250 big blinds on the the Cash Game TV tables which makes for a much more interesting game and allows for more complexity of play. I sat down with the standard 100 as the table was full of tricky opponents and I didn't want to go nuts, especially as I was in a lot of tournaments at the time. The table dynamics were interesting as in Destacker and ForFoxSake you have two excellent tournament players who play very little cash. mudbone is awkward and tricky at the best of times. Elz442 is dangerous regardless of the format. PokerrPro is one of the most solid low stakes cash gamers on PKR.
Clearly there are often shenanigans present in these TV games that don't exist at a table normally but some very interesting hands came out of this session. The mudbone/Destacker hand is a corker for teaching purposes. There are very strong cases to be argued that both players played the hands brilliantly and that both played terribly. Neither line is something you would suggest a beginner to be taking with 4 2 and A K but neither of these players are beginners. They end up in a spot where you either look like a genius or a donkey depending on the outcome. If Destacker folds on the river then Mudbone has the moral victory. If Destacker calls the river bet and it turns out he has the worst hand then his line looks a bit silly. Destacker ends up looking like a genius in the hand but on the flop and turn he really could be anywhere. The turn bet is quite small though so having called the flop bet it is difficult to not call the turn one. Then the river doesn't really change a lot so I think it makes the call easier. I do wonder if Destacker finds a fold if Mudbone shoves the turn or the river? I think definitely so if done on the turn. I think Destacker might still call if it was done on the river.
The hand between myself and Destacker is an intriguing one. I have raised A Qo and Destacker has flatted 10 7 in the blinds. On the K 6 A flop he has flopped the flush and I have top pair, top kicker, with the nut flush draw. Both hands are monsters at this point. Normally I would be quite happy to get a lot of chips in on this sort of flop but the whole hand became unusually interesting. When Des leads out I know that I am either way in front or way behind. I don't think raising achieves much for me. He is likely to fold out worse aces and worse flush draws, and definitely all his air ball bluffs, if I raise, but he is going nowhere if he has flopped the flush or a set of sixes. The turn card is an absolute brick and changes nothing so again I flat the bet. The river is the best spot. It is another brick... and then he over bets the pot. I don't think he did this at any other point in the two hours. It absolutely polarises him between bluffs and made hands he is turning into a bluff versus a super strong monster hand. On reflection I think the over bet puts it more firmly in his value range than his bluffing range so I dislike the call. It is a tough one though. Either he is trying to extract value from sets, two pairs and smaller flushes or he is turning a hand like A 10o with the ten of diamonds into a bluff. I don't hate the call as the strength of my own hand has been somewhat hidden but I do think I should have erred on the side of caution. This hand also shows exactly how a session can revolve around one hand. I finished with a $14 loss and if I had found the river fold I would have finished with a $74 profit for the two hours.
These sessions are good to play once in a while, they get you thinking to a degree you often do not have to bother with in a standard low stakes cash game. It isn't profitable playing good players all the time but in small doses it is beneficial to your thought process.
http://www.pkr.com/en/community/news-events/pkr-tv-14-01/
This was an interesting session for a number of reasons. You can sit down with a starting stack of 250 big blinds on the the Cash Game TV tables which makes for a much more interesting game and allows for more complexity of play. I sat down with the standard 100 as the table was full of tricky opponents and I didn't want to go nuts, especially as I was in a lot of tournaments at the time. The table dynamics were interesting as in Destacker and ForFoxSake you have two excellent tournament players who play very little cash. mudbone is awkward and tricky at the best of times. Elz442 is dangerous regardless of the format. PokerrPro is one of the most solid low stakes cash gamers on PKR.
Clearly there are often shenanigans present in these TV games that don't exist at a table normally but some very interesting hands came out of this session. The mudbone/Destacker hand is a corker for teaching purposes. There are very strong cases to be argued that both players played the hands brilliantly and that both played terribly. Neither line is something you would suggest a beginner to be taking with 4 2 and A K but neither of these players are beginners. They end up in a spot where you either look like a genius or a donkey depending on the outcome. If Destacker folds on the river then Mudbone has the moral victory. If Destacker calls the river bet and it turns out he has the worst hand then his line looks a bit silly. Destacker ends up looking like a genius in the hand but on the flop and turn he really could be anywhere. The turn bet is quite small though so having called the flop bet it is difficult to not call the turn one. Then the river doesn't really change a lot so I think it makes the call easier. I do wonder if Destacker finds a fold if Mudbone shoves the turn or the river? I think definitely so if done on the turn. I think Destacker might still call if it was done on the river.
The hand between myself and Destacker is an intriguing one. I have raised A Qo and Destacker has flatted 10 7 in the blinds. On the K 6 A flop he has flopped the flush and I have top pair, top kicker, with the nut flush draw. Both hands are monsters at this point. Normally I would be quite happy to get a lot of chips in on this sort of flop but the whole hand became unusually interesting. When Des leads out I know that I am either way in front or way behind. I don't think raising achieves much for me. He is likely to fold out worse aces and worse flush draws, and definitely all his air ball bluffs, if I raise, but he is going nowhere if he has flopped the flush or a set of sixes. The turn card is an absolute brick and changes nothing so again I flat the bet. The river is the best spot. It is another brick... and then he over bets the pot. I don't think he did this at any other point in the two hours. It absolutely polarises him between bluffs and made hands he is turning into a bluff versus a super strong monster hand. On reflection I think the over bet puts it more firmly in his value range than his bluffing range so I dislike the call. It is a tough one though. Either he is trying to extract value from sets, two pairs and smaller flushes or he is turning a hand like A 10o with the ten of diamonds into a bluff. I don't hate the call as the strength of my own hand has been somewhat hidden but I do think I should have erred on the side of caution. This hand also shows exactly how a session can revolve around one hand. I finished with a $14 loss and if I had found the river fold I would have finished with a $74 profit for the two hours.
These sessions are good to play once in a while, they get you thinking to a degree you often do not have to bother with in a standard low stakes cash game. It isn't profitable playing good players all the time but in small doses it is beneficial to your thought process.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
December Review
It ended up being a slightly quieter December on the blogging front than I had anticipated. I did have plans for a few things but a fairly hectic holiday period combined with my broadband modem dying has had me on something of a 'silent running' situation for the last fortnight.
The highlight of the month was definitely the Pokerstars 10th Anniversary Sunday Million with a whopping $10,000,000 guaranteed. 62,116 players eventually joined leading to the biggest online poker prizepool in history with a staggering $12,423,200 in it. It was a very strange tournament from a personal perspective as I have no idea how I got as far as I did. For the first few hours I got zero hands to work with and missed every flop going. Having made a large fold I was down to half my starting stack and in serious need of chips. I managed to get it in badly 3 times and suck out on the turn or river on every occasion.
It was only when I started getting it in good that the problems began. Once through the money bubble I lost several massive pots with a 60/40 and 70/30 advantage and ended up exiting in 3,886th. The evening almost went epic though as friend 'TheSqueeze80' found himself super deep in the tournament. He busted 229th after unfortunately running pocket Queens into the pocket Aces of the most aggressive player at the table.
It was a better month on the cash game front. With a rather busy Christmas I only put in about 50% of my normal minimum of 50,000 hands. I finished slightly up on EV across the month though still nowhere near enough to balance out my fairly epic run bad in recent months. I think my New Years Resolution will be to not run badly in $1/2 games.
Tournaments were also okay. Having won the PKR Primetime + Antes Monday tournament on the last week of November I came close to going back to back in it finishing 5th out of 161 on the first Monday of December . I came 1st out of 285 runners to bink the PKR Dirty Dozen on the same evening for $855. So, like my cash play, a solid set of results without anything spectacular to jump up and down about.
The highlight of the month was definitely the Pokerstars 10th Anniversary Sunday Million with a whopping $10,000,000 guaranteed. 62,116 players eventually joined leading to the biggest online poker prizepool in history with a staggering $12,423,200 in it. It was a very strange tournament from a personal perspective as I have no idea how I got as far as I did. For the first few hours I got zero hands to work with and missed every flop going. Having made a large fold I was down to half my starting stack and in serious need of chips. I managed to get it in badly 3 times and suck out on the turn or river on every occasion.
It was only when I started getting it in good that the problems began. Once through the money bubble I lost several massive pots with a 60/40 and 70/30 advantage and ended up exiting in 3,886th. The evening almost went epic though as friend 'TheSqueeze80' found himself super deep in the tournament. He busted 229th after unfortunately running pocket Queens into the pocket Aces of the most aggressive player at the table.
It was a better month on the cash game front. With a rather busy Christmas I only put in about 50% of my normal minimum of 50,000 hands. I finished slightly up on EV across the month though still nowhere near enough to balance out my fairly epic run bad in recent months. I think my New Years Resolution will be to not run badly in $1/2 games.
Tournaments were also okay. Having won the PKR Primetime + Antes Monday tournament on the last week of November I came close to going back to back in it finishing 5th out of 161 on the first Monday of December . I came 1st out of 285 runners to bink the PKR Dirty Dozen on the same evening for $855. So, like my cash play, a solid set of results without anything spectacular to jump up and down about.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
November Review
Everyone loves payday, I mean why would you not? It is the day that rewards all that time you spend doing something that, however much you love it, you would probably like to spend at least a little less time doing. Poker is not like a job in some ways and exactly like one in others. Unless you are one of a handful of uber geniuses then you will be putting in as many hours as a full time job, maybe more. Sometimes you can earn very consistently, other times you will have big rushes or long droughts. I say all this because my November threatened to be rubbish, turned back to being okay, then threatened to fall apart again, and was salvaged by a decent tournament win in the last week.
My cash game play was dominated for the third month in a row by running extremely badly at all in situations. I only played two sessions at $2/4 and both times I lost a massive pot with the best of it. I did though also play my single worst hand of the month here. I only step up to this level when I spot extremely soft tables. One afternoon the stars had aligned and I was playing two $2/4 tables and two $1/2 tables without a cash reg in sight. I made $600 in an hour and was thinking about leaving as the regs started piling in. Of course I stayed ten minutes too long and stacked off $400 of my profit to Wongaman playing Jacks extremely badly. I really should have got away with just a $100 hit but bet too big on the flop and made my decision on a low board ten times more difficult.
It might surprise you to see that I put in volume as low as $0.10/0.25. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly after a prolonged period of run bad it is nice to put in a number of sessions where you see the green line on your graph moving in the right direction. Secondly the standard is so soft you can hit a pretty huge win rate compared to higher levels. Thirdly I have centred all my cash game play back onto PKR for the moment and often during the times I play there are no games running higher than $0.5/1 and these tend to be nitty reg-fests. Of late I have got much better at table selecting and swallowing my pride and feel that my cash play is benefiting because of it. So taking cake into account it wasn't a terrible month with a $1,000 profit but it would be lovely to just crush cash for a month to prove that I actually can and that the Poker Gods do not hate me.
Tournaments started terribly, I couldn't hit a barn door and nothing was going right. The one moment that threatened to get interesting was a deep run in the Sunday Million on Pokerstars. My radar was on song and I had a well above average stack going through the money bubble. Sadly I lost a massive 70/30 for 150,000 chips when the average stack was 75,000 after beautifully trapping an aggressive player who had position on me. I bounced back but then found myself on the wrong end of another 70/30 for 150,000 chips with the average stack at 150,000. I was extremely short after this and lost a flip several hands later exiting 449th out of 6,967 players.
Things turned around in amusing fashion when I beat an 800+ field to win the $5 Friday night Mini-Primetime Deep Stack on PKR. On many levels I don't know why I play it as you have to finish top three to make it worthwhile but the structure is good and the players are bad. This is the second time in a few months I have won it and for an investment of about $25 have seen a return of just under $2,000. Sadly as the winning hand was completed the game crashed so I missed out on the money falling from from the sky and it has not been recorded either on my Sharkscope, probably about $5k lifetime PKR profit not showing on there now, or on my all time PKR tournament earnings.
Having taken down the Mini-Primetime on the 25th I then had a Monday the 28th that threatened to get epic. You can never tell when a good poker day is coming, generally you grind along and small cash loads of tourrnaments and don't kick on. On this day I found myself heads up for a $5,000 WPT Ireland package and won the Monday night Primetime for $2,052.
The WPT satellite was extremely frustrating. This was only either my first or second attempt at qualifying and with a one in twenty people qualifying structure this could well end up being my only shot at the package. I was playing really well up until the tickets bubble but then made one large error. I kept calm though and bounced back and kept picking on the right people. Once Barkieboy was eliminated I really fancied my chances of winning. I got into the heads up with a player who had been running hot and he had a two to one chip lead on me. I quickly got on top of him and ground out a two to one chip lead. We got all in on a flip where he decided to call my 3 bet jam with Jack ten suited and sadly my pocket sixes failed to hold. I was back to being a two to one underdog. The match then lasted for about another forty minutes, a huge length of time for a PKR tournament. I kept grinding back to level but then dropping back as he hit flop after flop. I wasn't catching much and he wasn't folding second pair to great lines. I only really needed one hand to value town him and it just never came up. He didn't fold his small blind much but managed to twice when I held pocket Kings! It just was not my night, I am proud of the way I stuck at it and as usual it will make the next package win taste all that sweeter.
Below is my Sharkscope for November, though less the $1,000 for the Mini-Primetime.
My cash game play was dominated for the third month in a row by running extremely badly at all in situations. I only played two sessions at $2/4 and both times I lost a massive pot with the best of it. I did though also play my single worst hand of the month here. I only step up to this level when I spot extremely soft tables. One afternoon the stars had aligned and I was playing two $2/4 tables and two $1/2 tables without a cash reg in sight. I made $600 in an hour and was thinking about leaving as the regs started piling in. Of course I stayed ten minutes too long and stacked off $400 of my profit to Wongaman playing Jacks extremely badly. I really should have got away with just a $100 hit but bet too big on the flop and made my decision on a low board ten times more difficult.
It might surprise you to see that I put in volume as low as $0.10/0.25. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly after a prolonged period of run bad it is nice to put in a number of sessions where you see the green line on your graph moving in the right direction. Secondly the standard is so soft you can hit a pretty huge win rate compared to higher levels. Thirdly I have centred all my cash game play back onto PKR for the moment and often during the times I play there are no games running higher than $0.5/1 and these tend to be nitty reg-fests. Of late I have got much better at table selecting and swallowing my pride and feel that my cash play is benefiting because of it. So taking cake into account it wasn't a terrible month with a $1,000 profit but it would be lovely to just crush cash for a month to prove that I actually can and that the Poker Gods do not hate me.
Tournaments started terribly, I couldn't hit a barn door and nothing was going right. The one moment that threatened to get interesting was a deep run in the Sunday Million on Pokerstars. My radar was on song and I had a well above average stack going through the money bubble. Sadly I lost a massive 70/30 for 150,000 chips when the average stack was 75,000 after beautifully trapping an aggressive player who had position on me. I bounced back but then found myself on the wrong end of another 70/30 for 150,000 chips with the average stack at 150,000. I was extremely short after this and lost a flip several hands later exiting 449th out of 6,967 players.
Things turned around in amusing fashion when I beat an 800+ field to win the $5 Friday night Mini-Primetime Deep Stack on PKR. On many levels I don't know why I play it as you have to finish top three to make it worthwhile but the structure is good and the players are bad. This is the second time in a few months I have won it and for an investment of about $25 have seen a return of just under $2,000. Sadly as the winning hand was completed the game crashed so I missed out on the money falling from from the sky and it has not been recorded either on my Sharkscope, probably about $5k lifetime PKR profit not showing on there now, or on my all time PKR tournament earnings.
Having taken down the Mini-Primetime on the 25th I then had a Monday the 28th that threatened to get epic. You can never tell when a good poker day is coming, generally you grind along and small cash loads of tourrnaments and don't kick on. On this day I found myself heads up for a $5,000 WPT Ireland package and won the Monday night Primetime for $2,052.
The WPT satellite was extremely frustrating. This was only either my first or second attempt at qualifying and with a one in twenty people qualifying structure this could well end up being my only shot at the package. I was playing really well up until the tickets bubble but then made one large error. I kept calm though and bounced back and kept picking on the right people. Once Barkieboy was eliminated I really fancied my chances of winning. I got into the heads up with a player who had been running hot and he had a two to one chip lead on me. I quickly got on top of him and ground out a two to one chip lead. We got all in on a flip where he decided to call my 3 bet jam with Jack ten suited and sadly my pocket sixes failed to hold. I was back to being a two to one underdog. The match then lasted for about another forty minutes, a huge length of time for a PKR tournament. I kept grinding back to level but then dropping back as he hit flop after flop. I wasn't catching much and he wasn't folding second pair to great lines. I only really needed one hand to value town him and it just never came up. He didn't fold his small blind much but managed to twice when I held pocket Kings! It just was not my night, I am proud of the way I stuck at it and as usual it will make the next package win taste all that sweeter.
Below is my Sharkscope for November, though less the $1,000 for the Mini-Primetime.
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