SwingSwingSwing's Poker Journey

Walk Of Shame Monkey

Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome the Walk Of Shame Monkey back to my online abode.

Yip, Bloggerment 33 saw me crashing out in last place. Quixote8 was the villian in the story. I can't remember the exact details of the hand I think it went something like this. The blinds are pretty low, 15/30 I think, and we were both deep stacked. I limp in early with pocket nines, QUixote8 raises with some trashy suited connector (JT). A couple of callers and I call.

On the flop (9QJ?), I hit my set (yipee!) and put out a reasonably sized bet. Quixote8 re-raises all in with his straight and flush draws and I call. The turn brought the flush and I was out. Can I complain? Not really, Quixote8 put his money on 1. On a draw, albeit a strong one 2. When he was behind. According to PokerStove I was a 60/40 favourite when the money went in. Oh well.

The night wasn't a total loss though. I came third in the monthly TMF tournie winning $36 and had a small win playing 5 Card Draw.

Elsewhere on the poker front, I'm starting to consolidate my bankroll. My playing is limited these days and I just don't have enough time to chase the monthly bonuses anymore. So it's goodbye Classic Poker and Interpoker for now.

I came across a post on Stoxpoker.com and Joe Tall's blog regarding the OIC, Open Internet Challenge. It was a scheme/contest created on 2+2 to help build your bankroll in a moderately risk free way. Basically, you set aside a small portion of your bankroll, in this case $50, and grow it, going up limits when you reach certain cash levels.

With $50, I start out playing $0.50/$1 (Limit HE by the way). When I get to $100 I move up to $1/$2. At $200 up to $2/$4. At $500 move to $3/$6 etc. Just as there are rules for moving up there are similar rules for moving down which must be adhered to.

Well, I've got a spare $50 or so lying in Full Tilt and I'm going to give this a go. And if I bust out, I'll have only lost $50.

I've had a mainly frustrating time at the virtual felt recently.

My trip to Montreal meant that I didn't get in as many hands as I normally do and my Silver Star status at PokerStars has now lapsed. I managed to earn about $20 in freeroll winnings during that time, not an amazing amount. I'm not sure if that really makes the effort in getting to Silver Star all that worthwhile.

With the addition of Collin Moshman to the Stoxpoker teaching staff, I've been learning about Sit'n'Goes. I used to play these when I first started playing poker a couple of years but, as my Sharkscope stats will testify, I wasn't very good. And in those days the smallest buyin on PokerStars was $5 so my limited bankroll was taking a massive hit, so it wasn't long before I switched to microlimit cash games.

Anyhoo, with Moshman joining the team at Stoxpoker I've decided to at least learn the basics, figuring it's bound to help with SNGs as well as small MTTs like the Bloggerment and the monthly Motley Fool tournament. So after watching a few of the videos and learning the basics of ICM I sign up for $1 SNG on Stars. Naturally I busted out. Undeterred I carry on, and get ITM on the next attempt.....and so on...... At the $1 level I'm eaking out a profit over the very small number of games I've played. But I'm down overall as I played at $5 table last night and didn't make the money.

Playing these SNGs, two things have caught my attention. Firstly, some of the play is laughable. I mean totally unbelievable. And secondly, is having a dominating hand all it's cracked up to be? I had a really frustrating time on Monday night when I busted out of three SNGs when I pushed all in with a dominating hand yet the dominated hand won. For example, AQ vs A9. A9 makes a straight on the river. Yuch. Plus having QQ busted twice in consecutive games by underpairs hitting sets didn't help either!

Now that I've signed up for a yearly membership to Stoxpoker.com I will be getting a free license for SNG Wizard and a free copy of Collin Moshman's SNG Strategy book too! Woo Hoo! I love free gifts me. Stox has signed up an impressive array of pros to his Stoxpoker.com site recently including Matt Matros, Collin Moshman and Ed Miller. The site is really taking off. Well worth checking out.

PS. I'm not even going to mention my Bloggerment bust out hand from Sunday. Let's just say I was not best pleased at BurlneyMik's preflop resteal attempt and subsequent suck out with 72o. But if he wants to make -EV plays, that's up to him :-)

Well, the WBCOOP was a bit of a washout for me. I started off reasonably well, keeping myself out of trouble but managing to get some chips too. Then I got moved to a table which had the player currently in 2nd place. And he was being a bit of a bully. And he was to my right.

I had AJs in early position and I open raised. Bully was in the blind and he reraised me. Quite a large reraise too. I thought about and decided that I was ahead of his range and reraised all in. Unfortunately he had JJ and I was drawing to three outs or a unlikely flush draw neither of which came in. I finished around 940ish.

I donked out in tenth place in the Bloggerment, which wasn't too bad considering it was a large field (37 IIRC).

The one good thing I've learned is that a large reraise preflop generally means a large pair and I should be throwing away my big cards.

My last post was my PokerStars WBCOOP registration. What I forgot when I signed up was that I would be in Montreal for this tournie. I didn't think this would be that much of a problem as my room was equipped with "high speed internet access".

But when I got here, the internet was kaput. Wireless barely worked. Wired was totally gubbed.High speed internet my arse.

So I had to give the front desk a couple of calls. And I'm glad to say that I'm back online.

If anyone wants to see so pictures of my trip, you can check out my flickr site.

I have registered in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker. Fellow bloggers, quake in your boots!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 5110343

Not a good weekend, poker wise.

Again, I've been busy this time with preparing for a trip to Montreal. (Woo hoo for training courses!) So there wasn't a lot of poker played but I was able to play in the weekly Bloggerment and the monthly Motley Fool tournaments.

Unfortunately, I didn't do that well.

I lasted all of five minutes in the Bloggerment. I had BlueScouse to my right and it was folded to him in the small blind. He raised three times the big blind. Knowing he could have anything I called with my 43s. The flop gave me two pair with two hearts on board. Great I thought. BlueScouse led out. Again he could have anything. I reraised. He reraised all in. Again he could have anything so I called. He had K9 of hearts and I was a 63% favourite. Until the turn brought him his flush and I was left with T20. Next hand I had KJs but lost and was out.

I can't really complain thought. I got the money in when ahead but lost. But it is still really annoying. So as is tradition, here is the monkey.

My annoyance carried over to the Motley Fool tournie. I was actually playing quite well early on, bluffing at and winning several pots then lost focus when Marbster hit trips on the river and my stack fell below T1000. I donked the rest of shortly after.

Ach well.

I haven't put up many updates to the blog recently, mainly due to laziness and a wee spell of illness.

This month I have been busy clearing bonuses. I had a bonus sitting in Pokerstars from their 10 Billionth Hand promotion and I'd barely put a dent in it in the 3 months it had been sitting there. Low limit five card draw does not earn FPPs at anywhere near the same rate as Holdem.

With this in mind, I returned to my old stomping ground of $1/$2 LHE 6 Max. In the past, the Crypto network was my preferred home but after UIGEA the fishpool there was definitely showing signs of evaporating. At Stars, however, the fishpool is teeming whith donators. Perhaps not as many as a year or so ago, but enough to make playing there worthwhile. For 2007 I'm running at over 3BB/100 which is very nice indeed. Not a large number of hands though but I definitely feel my game is improving. Armed with this false sense of security I've been taking pops at some higher limits, all the way up to $10/$20! Definitely foolish but I'm up overall.

Over the weekend I had a number of successes. First off, I cleared the bonus. Second, I made Silver Star at Stars for the first time. Third, I took down the weekly Britbloggerment. Not bad at all :)

July turned out to be reasonably successful month give the time constraints and other tasks diverting my attention. Almost £200 profit. Not bad.

On Sunday, for the first time since October, I actually had to pay into a tournament on Stars with my own money as my tournament dollar fund finally ran dry. Bummer. Now that I'm playing with my own cash, you'd think I take a bit more care but no. Donked out of both. I managed to recoup the entry fees later on playing some $1/$2 FL 6 Max so that as OK!.

In other news, the beautful game is back! Dumbarton FC got off to a winning start beating Elgin City 1-0 at The Rock. Hardly a convincing result but 3 points in the bag.

I suppose I'd best put in a wee update, even though there's not been a lot of poker played in the last week.

It was Saturday afternoon before I got to play any poker at all due to general busyness and even then I was just playing 70FPP sit'n'go satellites to the PokerStar's fairly new Sunday Hundred Grand tournie. These satellites are extremely frustrating for me. The standard of play is shocking so I'd expect that I win at least one. But no, I've played twenty or so and only got to the heads up stage twice. And in those two where I got to headsup I played the HU bit awfully. I was playing far too tight with the blinds really biting into my stack. I'll give it another try later in the week.

The only other poker I played was the Sunday night BritBloggerment in which I finished 3rd out of 39 (a new record for the BritBloggerment) banking $31.......which was nice. The deck was hitting me in the face early on and I managed to build a good lead. Only one major suckout when I rivered a boat. When we got to the final table, I went completely card dead and situation dead as everyone starting to raise up the action. Mikesaban deserves a mention here for his superb shortstack play to make it into the money. I busted out when I pushed with the mighty powerhouse hand that is 74o and ran into Queens :-).