Cold Fact

The monthly VIP points statement from Stars shows I played 514 Sngs in April and 252 Mtt's.Not bad for a weekend warrior! I mentioned before my poker goal of achieving the $100k in cashes badge on Pocket Fives and I'm over half way there now at $58,419 in total tourney cashes.Of course as they say in the business world about turnover and profit, in poker it's cashes for show and profits for dough too and that can't be forgotten.


I also played in the @RFCfanspoker play money game again last Sunday and took it down this time.The funny thing about that was that I was also playing 7-8 real money tourneys at the same time but found myself mainly focussing on the free game.So much for only playing for the money.Looking forward to including it again as part of my Sunday grind and hopefully The Big Chap will get himself on Stars in time to play too.Info below from the guy who runs the game if fellow bluenoses are interested in playing...

No money needed as games will be free.

~~Next FREE tournament is Sunday night at 8pm~~

You can invite friends and family to join but they must be Bears... NO TIMS ALLOWED!!

- If you don't already have it, download the free PokerStars software from www.pokerstars.com
- Open the main poker lobby, then click on the Home Games tab
- Click the 'Join a Poker Club' button
- Enter my Club ID number: 739960
- Enter my Invitation Code: wearethepeople1872

That's it! Once I've approved your membership request, we'll be ready to start playing Home Games online together.



On the real money front I cashed out enough the other day to pay a few bills including the annual council tax,car tax,car insurance and my Rangers season ticket.It means I only have about $2k left on Stars now and won't be playing many $27's and $33 tourneys.That's the downside but it's also nice to feel like all the hours I put in playing poker actually have a real life benefit too.

Last nights grind at the virtual felt actually started quite well as big hands held up and I won a few flips.In the end though I only managed a few small Mtt cashes including coming 22nd from 2647 runners in a wee $5,$10k Gtd Turbo for $40.What cash out curse? Ahh that one! Later on a second place in a $8 180 Turbo Sng for $264 and a couple of other 45 player turbo final tables covered most of the evenings buy-ins.

Away from the poker I'm looking forward to going to see Pink Floyd tribute band "Pond Floyd" at the Glasgow Classic Grand next week.Managed to persuade the S-man to drive and I've already warned him he'd better buy some damn effective air fresheners! I can't believe it's nearly 20 years since I went to Paris in '94 with an ex to see the real Floyd.The tribute band have tweeted that Dark Side of the Moon is going to be in the spotlight for their gig and I'm one lunatic looking forward to being on the grass next weekend.

On the subject of weed and good music Two Pies and I watched the "Searching for Sugarman" documentary last weekend and I'd highly recommend it.It's about an American musician who makes a couple of superb albums in the 70's ( sounds a bit like Dylan only with a better voice).The albums don't sell and he's not heard of again....except in South Africa where a bootleg copy of his first release becomes a huge hit.The less you actually know about this amazing story before seeing it the better so just buy the dvd and don't google it.








Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

ReBlog

If only blogging was like twitter and I could simply pick somebody else's clever witty blog post and repost it instead of having to come up with my own not so witty or clever bollocks to write about.

To my surprise I'm actually quite liking the twitter thing ( @Heavysprinkles) so far.One day I may even get the hang of all the lingo and all the hashtag trending stuff.I can also make the confident prediction that many of the twittering teenage girls of today will be able to set a world record for the "largest group cringe in history" if they all get together in 10 years and read their "Oh Justin I'm so proud of you" tweets from 2013! I'm just glad twitter wasn't around when my walls and ceiling were covered in Madonna posters 25 yrs ago. "I'd just stay in and play with my titties all day" #IfIwasMadonna

The @RFCfanspoker play money game last Sunday was good fun too although I did feel a bit tongue tied when someone mentioned they'd read my blog ( link is on my twitter page).At least I've cured another case of insomnia.My only gripe was that I came 3rd and when the top 3 result was tweeted later someone else was credited with 3rd place! I've not seen it mentioned as breaking news yet but perhaps the words media are waiting for the outcome of the judicial review I've demanded on the basis of good old "sporting integrity"! Not that I'm being over competitive or taking a play money game too seriously...

Not much to shout about over the last few weeks at the real money poker.I did make gold star on Stars for the second month running and will hopefully earn enough vpp's to take another shot at the big $55 again soon.It's probably just variance but I'm also doing far better at the 45 player turbo's ( $7 and $15) than I am at the 180's, but I suppose it only takes a couple of 180 wins to make up for an awful lot of nasty exits.

I did have one moment of Deja vu at the tables last weekend when I happened to notice someone saying hello in the chat as I was playing a load of tables.Yes it was just like old Bloggerment times as Mair38 and I stole each others blinds on a regular basis! The Bloggerment numbers dropped near the end of its run but we did get 40 runners at one point and I wonder if it would be worth bringing it back as a one off game to see if we could get a few old faces back round the virtual table.I suppose with social media moving on and hardly anyone blogging about poker these days it may need to be renamed the Twitterment Tourney!

Not much else going on.Had a bit of a shit week at work and looking forward to the long weekend and being part of the biggest football crowd in the UK on Saturday to watch us play Berwick and get presented with the 3rd Division League Trophy.For me it's more of a first step on the long road back to our rightful place at the top of Scottish football than being about a big celebration but Two Pies ( cousin) and I are certainly going to enjoy the day.

Thanks for reading.Back soon..

Twittering Teeth

For anyone wondering if I've always been a tight bastard who uses too many brackets ( who me?) in his writing I submit the note below. Noticed it on my Mum and Dad's digital photo frame and thought it might make my readers smile.





Oh and I'll probably regret this and delete the account later but after a few smokes yesterday I signed up for twitter under zaggapoker@heavysprinkles.I can't even find the hashtag key on my keyboard so I don't see me lasting long on there.Signing up for a "social media" account when I'm an anti-social git with nothing to say is another reason I probably won't be tweeting for long but I'm on now and will give it a go.The "heavy sprinkles" name comes from a story on my favourite football forum about a ned ordering fish and chips and when asked if he'd like salt n vinegar he gave the legendary reply, "Aye,heavy sprinkles man".

Got an unexpected day off work today after Nacho ran away this morning when I let him out the front.( he's back now) No long lie in or late Sunday night playing poker and a days leave wasted = one dog who can consider himself very lucky to still have his bollocks intact!

Back soon...

4th in Stars $33 Saturday Speedway for $4k

Three hands into this tourney I lost half my stack with Kings just as I was bubbling a $3 Rebuy Sat for a $162 tourney ticket.(came 15th for $69,top 14 got a ticket)

Got lucky about 30 hands after that Kings hand ( I'm a patient nit if nothing else) when my AQs made a straight V KK. Next up a laggy big stack opened on my bb from the button and I shoved 2.5k in with A4s and held v his K5. A5d won v JQ for a big pot.Kings again and they hold! It's a goddamn mother fuckin' miracle.Behold am I actually experiencing the "H" word? Heeeeeeturrrrr! 93o/s bb special when I flop two pair v limped Aces and AJ. Money goes in on the flop and for the first time in my life I was happy not to see a fine pair....on the board.1010 beating AJ took me to 350k in chips.AK beating 55 doubled that plus a few steals meant I was hanging around 8-12th place.

It was already $456 for 12th so I took a slug of Cola out of a bottle in the fridge around 2am to stop my brain completely fuzzing over and hung on for the final table.Once there I raised the first hand after the break but probably took it too easy after that.I was pretty card dead though, and didn't have a big enough stack to raise/fold or make many moves.

With the blinds rising fast I nursed my stack along, managed to steal a few more pots and watched the rest of the table destroy each other until we got 4 handed.Pretty standard as the shortstack to shove my last 400k in with KQ and run into AJ. Hit my King on the flop,had a quick glance to see it was a 779k pot and to begin to dream of pushing on from 2nd or 3rd place.... just before the Stars 14 Ace deck duly delivered that pocket rocket right up ma poker rectum.Roond Ye!

Ding Dong.....Ship the $4111.96 though!

2nd in Stars $3 Rebuy MTT for $2935

I had a half written post about the pain of crashing out the Stars $11 Rebuy $40k Gtd in 11th place after getting KK in v AQ,the flop coming K 8 8 and the villain hitting runner runner Aces to make a better full house, but now I have a wee score to write about instead I don't need tell that bad beat story...

Last Friday night I gave up on Mtt's and 14 tabled 45/180 player turbo sng's instead.On Saturday evening I gave up giving up Mtt's and registered for my usual 25-30 games.I'm glad I did!

The $3 Rebuy ( $20k Gtd)lasted over 9 hours,finishing around 5am and as I didn't have the lobby open and I have Stars set to close tables when I crash out I don't even have a screenshot to show my 2nd place.

I scored some fine herb earlier that day so most of the game itself is a bit of a blur.I do recall checking my stats at the final table and I'd won 13/15 hands that went to showdown and 50 pots without any showdown.One thing I didn't do was load up more tables when my other tourneys finished which meant I was able to focus as fully as is possible after about 15 fat smelly blue cheese smokes!

As usual the decent money payouts didn't start until the final table and to be honest I had a fairly easy ride of it when I did get there due to one player with a huge stack running over the table and when he didn't raise I did.He knocked out the 3rd and 4th place in one hand and had a big lead when we got heads up.I doubled up once before losing with Aces.The extra $1k for first would have been nice but after my recent run I'm happy with 2nd and a $3k score.

I also played enough poker on Stars last month to hit "goldstar" which isn't too bad for a weekend warrior.( as the pro sharks like to call us part-time fish!)

Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

More Final Table Frolics

After donking out of the Micro Millions PLO Mtt yesterday afternoon I pre-rolled eight fat smokes and registered for 32 Mtt's.I learned last week that if I hit the "Ctrl" and "R" keys at the same time Stars shows which tourneys I'm in and how many.Very handy! Anyway I started at 6.30pm and finished up around 3.30 in the morning and despite getting up at 12 today I still feel pretty exhausted.I suppose that's not really a surprise after 9 hours of constant decision making with only a 5 min break every hour.The good news for my bankroll is that I made another final table,this time coming 4th for $719 in a $5 turbo ,$10 Gtd tourney with 2500 runners.

The bad news is that I probably should have taken down that tourney as I had the chiplead going into the final table.My excuse? Well a girl I'm good friends with from work who's off on long term sick at the moment decided( after a bottle of wine apparently!) that last night would be a good time to catch up and even letting her know ( seemed like a subtle hint to me) that I was playing quite a few tables including a final one didn't stop the texts coming.Next time I'm switching my phone off and explaining later!

It's all a bit of a blur looking back but I do remember getting lucky when I shoved 7h4h blind v blind when 5 handed.The villain woke up with 1010 and I made a flush to survive.With the blinds being so high there was no room to raise/fold and although I did resteal a couple of times with nothing I was card dead too and for ICM reasons I had to balance shoving all in preflop without a hand to stay in the game with hoping others would bust and I'd move up the pay ladder.

If I'd been thinking straight it would probably have made sense to try and do a deal as it was a real crapshoot towards the end with myself and the other shorter stack on 6 and 10 big blinds and even the two bigger stacks only holding 14 and 16 bb stacks.The other shorter stack shoved utg and holding KQs on the button I decided I had to call as I had 6bb,the blinds were about to hit me shortly and if I could win the other shorter stacks chips I'd just about lock up 3rd place and have a decent chance of winning the whole thing.He had 22 and flopped a set so that was that.I did twelve table the 45/180 player turbo's for a couple of hours afterwards and although I took a $7 45 one down I should probably have hit the sack earlier.These multi-table sng's do seem to rack up the frequent player points though and as I've hit the magic 3.5k mark I think I'll use them tonight to get a free ticket to the bigger $55.


I've mentioned on here that I'm not into ( well apart from having a good old fashioned online diary of course) social media, however one of my friends pointed me in the direction of a Steven Gerrard twitter Q n A session and some of the questions put to the Liverpool captain were just brilliant.#AskStevieG ...

"Ryan Giggs wife divorced him and took half of everything he owned.How does it feel knowing she has six more Premier League title medals than you do"?

Someone saying they were Ji Sung Park asked Stevie G if he "would like a photocopy of one my winners medals"?

"How does it feel to know that ( insert random member of the public's name) has the same amount of Premier league winners medals you do"?

"If you could have a forehead,whose would you pick"?

"Who would win in a foot race,Jamie Carragher or the erosion of the UK coastline"?

"Stevie,do you remember when you were better than Frank Lampard"?

"Steve,which defeat was harder to take? It's ok you can email me as I know you only have 140 characters on here"

"On a scale of Jonjo Shelvey to Jordan Henderson,how bad is Stewart Downing"?

"At least at Liverpool you can now concentrate on the Champions League,The Premier League,errr your family".

Thanks for reading.Back soon...

There's a Special Place in Hell....

...for Motherfuckers like you.

No real reason for the above.Step A tweeted a pic of a t-shirt with that message on it and I liked it!

On the subject of things I like, what could be better than a website where you can ask someone to paint whatever you like ( the more surreal the better) using just MS Paint.Some excellent work on there and well worth a look.


Things have gone a bit better at the virtual felt since my last post.I took 4th in a $16,$3k Gtd for $458 last weekend and last night after a slow start to the evening I came 5th for $517 in a $9.90 turbo Mtt where only the final table got paid.Frustrating exit hands in both of those games but I checked my stats at that final table last night and I'd won 11/13 hands that went to showdown so I can't really complain.( for a change eh!)

I've stuck to buying into Mtt's at $16 or below for the most part although I do like to give myself the chance to win big in at least one of the games on my schedule and regularly blow $30-$40 on the $11,$40k Gtd rebuy tourney.As per my last post I've also been firing up more 45 and 180 player turbo's and I've had a few wins a the 45's to boost my roll.I'm trying to stick to mainly the $7-$8 buy-in level as I try and grind my roll up again but I usually slip a few $15's into my sets of twelve games too.


Away from the poker I've not been up to much.Just the usual mix of work,football,video games and visiting friends and family.Life at work has certainly been a lot less stressful working with a different manager since the turn of the year.Now I'm not into self-help books or mumbo jumbo bullshit but I did read Oliver James book on Office Politics recently and it's definitely helped me adapt my thinking and helped me improve life at work too.I recognised myself instantly as the "non machiavellian" type he describes and have realised that trying to always stay "true to myself" and be brutally honest in every situation is probably not the best approach to work or life.

A few of the other attributes of a non Machiavellian are :Wears convictions on sleeve,accepts others motives at face value,makes gross assumptions about what others are thinking,assumes reciprocity,believes others ought to act in certain ways,tells it like it is,withdraws into inflexible positions on points of principle and seeks a stable environment.Yup that's me!

Ok,with Nacho staying with Step A this weekend and only my dinner break to interrupt me time to roll one up and hit the felt.Going to start by one tabling the $3.30 6 max PLO Micro Millions event 21 on Stars in a moment.Bring on the 4 card bingo! I just hope I don't end up with any top PLO sharks at my table....

Facing Failure

My run bad at the virtual felt has now reduced me to actually being happy when the villain sucks out on the flop as it saves me the added grief of waiting until the river card to get shafted by the poker gods.Other players now regularly lol in the chat box ( and I don't blame them) as the one outers just keep on coming.At least it helps me narrow my opponents ranges with stunning accuracy as all I need to do after the river card has been dealt is work out what the nut hand would is and assign it to my opponent.Things are truly mind warping at the moment.For example, despite my last post and all sensible logic telling me otherwise, I do sometimes think back to the two near fatal car crashes I've walked away from since the turn of century and think that perhaps I used up my all my run good surviving them.Better to run good at car crashes than poker! Either that or that somebody out there has to be more unlucky at the felt than anyone else and I should just accept that for now that person is me!

Even when I suckout it never lasts.My favourite from last weekend was when I was down to 87k in chips in a low stakes rebuy tourney.The blinds were 8000/16000 with a 1600 ante and when it folded to me in mid position I shoved all in with Kh 5h.The button woke up with Ad Ac and out I go.But no,hold the bus, here comes the flop and Mr Fuckin Whiney Run Bad has flopped a flush on a 6h 9h 7h board! Hey I might even hit an 8h for a sexy straight flush.Poor Mr Aces doesn't even have a re-draw to the nut flush.9d on the turn and.....the Ace of Spades on the river.Nice full house Sir.Glad the best hand preflop got there in the end.Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Of course just blaming bad luck is not the whole story.I mentioned in my Jan 4th post misclicking at a crucial stage of an Mtt when deep and I did it again last weekend.I had eleven tables going and was trying to register for a twelfth.When I clicked on the "register" button an active table popped up and I called an all in and a shove in a $4,$8 Gtd with 23 o/s.It was the only game I was deep in at the time and it just had to be that one that popped up at that exact second.Yes I should have been more careful, but first of all it just had to be that table and not one of the other ten and secondly I just had to have a three high hand too.Maybe I should just accept that somebody out there just has to be more stupid than anyone else....

On checking Pokertracker for that K5s hand I also noticed I've clocked up just short of 1/2 million hands since I bought this laptop back in Sept 2010 and I think I'm long enough in the poker tooth to not just blame bad luck when things go as badly as they have been recently.I included some 45 player turbo's in my sessions and my previous sng experience meant I felt the decisions flowed far more easily and I was very rarely having to second guess myself over hands.I suppose after only few thousand Mtt's I'm still a relative newbie to them and only playing more and studying more vids/hands on forums etc will help make me better at them.I'm still far too nitty during the mid stages and don't 3 bet and resteal often enough.I do take advantage of my nitty image to steal a ton of blinds but I'm definitely not picking up as many chips as I should be.If I was then maybe I'd be able to absorb the bad beats better and still have a stack to play with in some of these games.

I've also cut loose on bankroll management over recent months and as a result I've ended up depositing ( nothing I can't afford!) in the probably mistaken belief that if I keep plugging away I'll be able to turn a deep run into a big score as it just isn't possible to run this way for much longer.When playing sng's it's possible to go on long barren runs too but it's also far easier to bag a few wins to wipe out those losses and return to profit.The Mtt long run is obviously far longer! My shots at $55's and $44's are long gone now, although I will still take the occasional shot at games like the $33 Saturday Speedway.I've now cut out the $27's too and will focus on rebuilding by playing Mtt's under $10 and far more 45/180 player turbo's.Looks like the only cheque I'll be getting from poker anytime soon is a reality one.


Positives? Well despite that misclick when registering I'm very comfortable playing 12 tables these days ( on a 17" laptop with no additional software other than Pokertracker 3) and can play up to about 8 tables while also rolling my next 3 skinner! I've also found that I really like rebuy tourneys as there seems to be a lot more room to play poker when the rebuy period ends.


Not much going on away from the felt.The old friend from school "L" I ended up shagging after her leaving do last August has been back in touch to say she'll be home next month and maybe we'll meet up again.She did text me when she was home for Xmas but I didn't give her much encouragement as the nasty gum infection I had didn't exactly put me in the mood!

I park my car just across the road from my work and people from the Government building next door use the car park for their smoke breaks.A girl started chatting to me a couple of months back as I was about to get in my car and we've chatted a couple of times since then.She's a hot blonde and we got talking again today.Mostly her telling me tales of woe about everything from car troubles,noisy neighbours to a stalker ex who is due up in court in March.To be honest I'm bloody hopeless when it comes to reading signals etc but she when she mentioned she thought she was going to end up being a spinster I did manage to mutter something about her being far too good looking for that to happen and that maybe we could go for a drink sometime.She asked my name and I think we arranged to talk further next time we happen to bump into each other.Of course being hopeless at these things I've no idea if that was a polite brush off or if future drinks are on the cards.Watch this parking space I suppose...

Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

No Entitlement

It's not a very catchy post title but all I can do to keep my sanity at the virtual felt just now is to keep telling myself I'm not entitled to win any hand and only entitled to enter the hand in the first place.I use Pokertracker 3 and I'm almost tempted to buy Holdem Manager 2 just to see if I'm setting some kind of record for running below EV using the red line graph thing they have.I'll leave it in but I should probably delete that last sentence because poker is a brutal game with no room for a "Oh poor me and my run bad" kind of attitude.I've been playing poker online for over 8 years now and while the games are getting tougher and the bad beats seem never ending at the moment, I do still take heart from the fact that there are still plenty of terrible players around the low stakes hammering at their keyboards with their big donkey hooves.

Perhaps I should take a break from Mtt's and focus more on the 18 player turbo's where I only usually have to win a few key hands before getting the chance to run over the other players around the bubble.The thing is that despite my poor recent run I'm still ( for the most part!) enjoying registering for 20-25 tourneys on a Fri/Sat night and I love the buzz of trying to build a stack on 9-10 tables at a time.I even discovered re-buy tourneys last weekend and the big prize pools for a small buy-in ( or two!) make me wish I'd taken a closer look at them before now.

Yup,8 years on and I still love the game.I usually watch a couple of training vids per week and I'm a regular listener of several poker podcasts.Mentioning that gives me a good excuse to flesh out another boring post with a few thoughts on some of my favourite ones.

2+2 Pokercast: Still my favourite poker podcast.Plenty of top guests from the poker world and the hosts Mike and Adam always seem to ask the right questions and strike the right note in their interviews.Plus they're big fans of bacon which has to be a good reason to tune in!

Tournament Poker Edge: Listening to their free podcast inspired me to join their training site and I'm glad I did.The pod is usually based around a few of the TPE pro's discussing hand histories and I love that strategy content and the fact the guys are so passionate about the game.

Thinking Poker: A decent mix of strategy and interviews.I tend to prefer the hand history chat and two hosts bounce off each other well in those segments.The only small issue I have is that the hand history chat sometimes get so indepth on the the turn,flop and river I tend to forget what hand the hero held in the first place! I was pleased to see one of the presenters Andrew Brokos is now doing training vids for TPE.His first vids on hand reading are excellent.

The Mental Game of Poker: Author of the book by the same name Jared Tendler interviews some of the top names in poker and as you would expect deals with the main psychological aspects of the game.The interviews are actually more like being a fly on the wall at a counselling session at times and I like his laid back style.

Pokernews: I'm not so interested in the ones they do on location from the latest big donkament tourney but I do like Kirsty Arnett's strategy interviews and the fact she has such a hot American accent definitely helps too!

OneOuter.com: No new podcasts since the end of last August but I've enjoyed listening to a fellow Scot interviewing some of the top poker players in the world and a few characters from the world of gambling too.I'm not even at all bitter that the host's QJ beat my AJ at a tourney table on Stars many months ago! Well worth downloading stuff from his archive.

Duece Plays with Bart Hanson: This is a paid subscription podcast these days but there are still plenty of the free earlier ones available on I-tunes.It's almost all hand history chat and although the host is usually discussing live cash game hands his enthusiasm and knowledge of the game make this podcast easy to listen to and he has a happy knack of explaining things very clearly.Even as a player who has never played a live cash game hand in my life I usually feel like I've learned something after listening to one of his podcasts.




Not much happening away from the poker.I did see on twitter ( no I've not signed up to it or facebook!)that Rosie is now the proud owner of the 2nd cutest dog in the world.( Nacho made me add "2nd"!) I hope Rosie knows what she's getting into as they say you can tell what size a dog is going to be by the size of it's paws as a pup and by the looks of the pics posted, Shiva is going to be Bristols dog answer to Godzilla!


Right before I go I'll share a quick one from the Rangers match at Ibrox last weekend that made smile.We signed a Brazilian central defender Emilson Cribari last August and so far, despite having played at the top level with Lazio, he's not exactly hit top form with us.One of the boys that sits behind me mentioned Cribari had been quoted in the papers as saying he was thinking about leaving and that top clubs in Italy were interested in him.Quick as a flash another boy fired back "Aye,fuckin nightclubs".Maybe you had to be there...!

Ok thanks for reading and yeah Dudley I'll try and get round to updating my links before my next post!

Poker Time

Nacho's staying with Step A this weekend so I'm starting my Saturday night at the felt early.( no need for a 15 min walk at 7.30!) Smoked three doobs already and registered for 28 tourneys on Stars with buy-ins between $2.20 and $33.Time to grab something to eat and roll a few more for the rollercoaster ride ahead.Just need to win a few of those Aces v A8 coin flips for a change...