Likey's Blog

First of all I want to apologise for not decorating my blog with embedded pictures yet, I can’t really Google for images of hot totties whilst at work otherwise I might as well do that instead of writing. It’s bad enough reading BlackShuck’s blog in case someone is looking over my shoulder, it’s a case of insta-scrolling down so I get to the text which funnily enough is what I have to do when I’m on the EMS Forum because of the huge logo that blatantly says ‘POKER’ lol. So this weekend I’ll alter my posts so hopefully there will be some eye candy to attract more readers.

Time for a cash update:
I have played 4 hourly sessions at $25NL since Sunday which totals around 1250 hands for a slight profit of approx $13, I am really enjoying the grind so far despite not getting many VPPs/FPPs for it. This lead me to reassess and felt that I should be playing $50NL to see if I could cope – having Platinum Status is a waste at $25NL.

My first $50NL session last night started off well and was quickly up 2 buy-ins whilst playing 6-8 tables.
1) KK v QQ – all in on the flop
2) TT v KQo – blind vs blind, I flopped a Set and he hung himself when it came running Kings.

After that it went a bit pear shaped, lost a big 3-way coup for a $143 pot with KK v JJ v QTs on a AKJ board. Marvellous!

The highlight of the evening was the loon who was 1-tabling but managed to run golden throughout most of the session, he was sitting with about $350 by cracking AA/KK a few times with hands like Q5o where he flopped middle/bottom pair and binked on the turn or river. Amazing luck! I tried my best to get into pots with him but couldn’t get a hand to double up with, I did get JJ but he folded when I raised, instead I went to war with the guy in the BB who 3-bet me pre, I called then tried to push him off on an Axx board but he had top set – oops, not doing that again!

After my session I still kept his table up and decided to go back on, managed to double up with my first dealt hand in the BB.

I was down -$73 after around 500 hands for the night but was not bad for my first $50NL session, looks like I’ll stay on this level until I either go broke from getting outplayed by the regulars or I can make good looking up-hill graphs, I look forward to seeing how it all unfolds after maybe 10K hands at the end of this month which is about 20hrs of 6-8 tables.

I also noticed that there were a lot of $50NL multi-tablers so I presume they are all regulars, many of them were playing between 8-24 tables which was interesting to know, the rest were hidden but they probably multi-table too. I’ve yet to work out who to target, either the players that play 1-2 tables or ones that are playing 12+ who are on auto-pilot mode. I’ve made notes of how many tables they play just in case they go hidden one day, hopefully it’ll help with marginal decisions that either save or make me money.

Tonight I think a mixture of $50NL and tournaments will be a good plan – it’ll be interesting to see if the weekend bunch are softer or not. Hopefully my next post will be a brag of 4-figures over the weekend.

Happy grinding!

Tournaments are designed to ruin you I swear to god! One minute you’re all chipped up and ready for the final table then the next you go out 9th for a soul-crushing experience. Or it could be that it’s been so long since you’ve gotten deep in a tournament that you’re doubting your ability as a player. Fortunately for me, combined with the nit status that I am – I just min-cash to maintain my sanity!

On a serious note, ‘Tournaments’ have owned me for the past 3 years, I can safely say I won’t be quitting my day job to play these anytime soon as the profit margins are well below what I earn. It’s exciting yet depressing to see my friends all winning 4-5 figures every other day, but for me to win a nice 4 figures it is like winning the lottery. The last time I took down a 4 figure win was at the end of November 08 and the most recent was May 09, that’s half a year ago!

The good thing about playing tournament is the fun yet challenging aspect of trying to beat everyone else, it’s a good job I know what it feels like. It is that buzz of winning, we all remember our first win and it’s usually the same when you win over and over again but does this outweigh all those times when you don’t win? I don’t think it ever will, with the high-variance that tournaments are, I think you’re always going to be disappointed unless you win and not everyone wins enough times. My recent 4 figure win didn’t end in a buzz even though I finished 1st, this was because I did a deal so it wasn’t the same, next time I’ll fight to the finish!

I have learnt a lot over the last year or so and I don’t intend to stop, my game has been in a rut for a while and still making mistakes. I need to stop these leaks otherwise I am just losing money that I should be winning, taking edges to gain chips instead of just giving up in the pot.

I’m sure the best way to win big is to play LAG yet I try that and to me it’s just a form of FPS (fancy play syndrome). I tend to go over the top when trying to do outrageous moves where the pros seem to get away with it or lose the least possible chips doing it. My new approach will be to fix my fundamentals out first and that is to play cash games, hopefully iron out a lot of leaks and then be able to take down tournaments with the confidence of playing deep stacked as you would in cash.

I really hope my game turns around and I consistent start winning like the big boys do, surely it can’t be that hard to win from these donks out there!

Headline news is that PokerStars have recently cut their guarantees down, there’s speculation on the 2+2 forums that it may be because they will introduce the X2 soon but I doubt it. It’s more likely because there have been a lot of overlay across their tournaments due to the recession, WSOP and the $30m+ of frozen poker accounts in the US.

This may be good or bad news, it’s good because you have a better chance of winning a big field tournament but bad because when you get there your reward is smaller than usual. PokerStars are in the business of making money so I don’t blame them, was nice to see overlay whilst it was there.

Thanks for reading, there’s more blog updates to follow so stay tuned…

May that important boomswitch be on for you!

Astrophysicists may have got excited with the headline news that read ‘Rare Radio Supernova In Nearby Galaxy Is Nearest Supernova In Five Years’ but for a grinder 5 years is far too long.  You see, I am back to grinding cash properly and PokerStars have kindly given the UK Players a chance to reach it super quick!

As a low stakes tournament player I have never reached Silver Star Status (1200 VPPs) but in May I managed to reach 3000 VPPs which normally gives me Gold Star Status.  However, the VIP Promotion boosted my status to Platinum (usually 7500 VPPs) and I have been granted an additional 70,000 VPPs so I am only 25,000 VPPs away from Supernova.

If I put enough volume it should take about 3 months which isn’t too bad, it’s very doubtful that I’d reach the first milestone bonus which is at 200,000 VPPs but who knows.  I could quickly move up to $50NL and playing 6-8 tables with ease, as I’ve said before – only time will tell.

I’m just grateful to be getting FPPs faster and be able to play the freerolls at the weekends where normally I’d be missing out.  There’s also the June Instant Cash Promotion that I am aiming to reach for.  10,000 FPPs gets me $160 which is awesome, I am currently on about 4200 FPPs so I better make a move on because the offer ends at the end of June.

This is another reason I regret not grinding cash sooner, I would have had a mega boost with my VPPs and would probably be closer to another milestone by now.  Better late than never hey?!

Good luck all you grinders, whatever targets you aim to complete.

I have been meaning to start one of these for a while now and hopefully it won’t feel like a chore.  There are so many things I could write about and over time I’m sure it will all spill over this blog in one form or another.

At least I’m not doing this at the beginning of the year where it would have been on my New Year’s Resolution list, we all know things like that tend to get dropped after a while but I intend to maintain this frequently.

To start things off I will mention that Sunday evening was my first cash session and I felt it was quite good even though I roughly broke even.  I installed PokerTracker v2 along with PAHud but it wasn’t used in the session because it was too busy importing all my hands, it would have been useless anyway seeing as I mainly play tournaments.  I managed to drop 1 buy-in because I overplayed JJ but across the $25NL 6-8 tables that I had open I was able to claw it back for a 10c loss for the session.

I do regret not sticking with it when I first said I would, it was around September 2007 and at the time I planned to use $2000 (40 buy-ins at $50NL) as my cash bankroll.  I started to play $50NL 2-tabling at Royal Card Club on the Microgaming network, deposited $1000 on there via Neteller and started to grind, I was up about $110 but had too many things going on such as playing live tournaments and staying at the Gutshot almost every day.  My mistake was not to cash out of there but I had no reason to, who were to know that their money would be stolen by the thieves in charge!  Fortunately I only lost half of my cash bankroll but it was still annoying, it could have been a lot worse, I could have been grinding for months and making decent profit for nothing (except for experience).

It’s nice to see others on the EMS forum take cash seriously and have grinded themselves a nice bankroll out of it, guys like LUFCBas, BlackShuck, isomorph, dvd346 etc.  The Ring Games section has been quite lively with threads on line-checks etc.  Hopefully in a years time I’ll be on $100NL and possibly be on $200NL, only time will tell.

For now, I can only look forward to more sessions whilst increase my knowledge of this type of game and hopefully many winning sessions so that my graph looks good!

Bye for now.