Monthly Stats and Little Flo....

Pokerstars $2917 ( + $542) Party $604 ( + $112) Total Profit for September $654 Total Bankroll $3521

Thanks for the comments on my last post although I'm not sure I'll be putting up any more videos of Nacho after he got himself an agent and is now demanding image rights! We're in negotiations as I've threatened to reduce his pigeon chasing rights and send him to the back of the peeing queue if he doesn't back down...

The Jared Tendler thread I linked to on my last post was an excellent read and although I didn't ask any questions myself, that was mainly because any poker mental game problems I have were already covered by other posters.I'm quite lucky that sng's rarely tilt me and I think part of that is down to having played so many of them and part of it's down to the fact that they're so robotic it's quite easy for me to stay self aware enough to know if I'm not playing my usual game. >

I did get annoyed at myself for a spot of over confidence tilt during a wee heads up hyper turbo game I played last weekend.I felt like I was on top of my game after making a soul reading river call and then spewed off my whole stack on the next hand after making an stupid fancy play.

I stopped posting monthly stats for a while because they felt too short term and if I'd made a good profit as the month was ending I'd play less to make sure any downswing wouldn't impact on my figures.Being about $1k up for September and still multi-tabling the very high variance 180 turbo's last weekend was hopefully a step towards banishing that mentality and was at least something positive to take from what turned out to be a brutal session of bad beats.

My "gulp" limit ( the amount I can lose in one session without losing sleep over it) also seems to have increased after last weekends 180 turbo bankroll battering which I suppose is also good news.There's never usually too much danger of me incurring a big loss as I always play well within my roll.The downside of that is I'm so wary of running badly I very rarely take shots and probably don't have enough gamble in me to try and get lucky on a spin up.

At work today we were having a laugh about daft teenage stuff and the girls I work with liked my favourite poem from my teens.Romantic,touching and even a little biblical I'd say...

Oh Little Flo,
I love you so,
Especially in your nightie,
When the moon flits across your tits,
Oh Jesus Christ almighty!

Jared Tendler on Raise the River Forum

Thanks to the hard work of Matthew 'YorkshirePudding' Pitt, mental game coach Jared Tendler has agreed to do a Question and Answer session on the UK forum RaiseTheRiver. Anyone can sign up and join in, so if you have questions about the mental side of poker, or any questions about Jared's book 'The Mental Game of Poker' feel free to sign up and ask your questions in this thread. Copied from Everton Yorkies blog as I just realised I promised to mention this on a post yesterday and I'm too lazy to write a wee spiel of my own! Sadly my two week holiday from work is nearly over and it's not been much of a last week as the sore throat I thought came from shouting at the football last Sunday turned out to be a bit of a nasty cold.I was still fit enough to go and visit the Big Chap on Wednesday and enjoyed watched Nacho giving his dog Baxter more than a run for his money in the fields surrounding his place in Leadhills. I've also been for pub meals with my Dad and Sis and played a ton of Black Ops and poker too.My Mums hip replacement op went well and I've just had a text from her to say she's going home today which is great news. The poker was going well until last night when I decided to give the 180 $8 and $15 games a go and ended up losing just over $300 in 35 games.I can't complain though despite the endless beats as that's the nature of 180 turbo's and if even one or two key hands had held it could have been a profitable night instead. It's still been a decent month at the virtual felt and I'll stick some figures up at the end of the month as usual. And now that I've worked out how to upload video clips from my phone here's another exciting one of Nacho in my flat... Back soon...

Followed His Nose

I'm still getting my voice back today after yesterdays fine 4-2 victory for Rangers over the darkside at Ibrox.See below for the a taste of the atmosphere at Ibrox before a big game...




After the game Two Pies and I popped over to see my folks as my Mum was going in for a hip replacement op today and I wanted to make sure I was in her will in case it all went wrong....I can joke about that now as I've had a call from my Dad today to say it went well and I'm looking forward to seeing her at visiting time later.

Two Pies ( my younger cousin) came back to my place and after watching the Man Utd v Chelsea game we watched the whole Old Firm game again and after a fine takeaway curry I hit the tables.

I was lucky I still had an online bankroll to play with on Stars after some shenanigans on Sat night.The 6 max hyper turbos I've been playing are only $7 games and as I reckon they're much less of a gambling crapshoot then the full ring version I thought I'd take a look at the next level up.For some reason they jump from $7 straight to $30 and I decided ( being a bankroll nit) that was a bit steep for now.

Anyway I rolled up a last smoke for the night and decided to fire up a few more $7's before bed.I had four tables open and was about to open a fifth when I noticed I was apparently registering for a $30 game.A quick check confirmed my four existing tables were all $30.Now $30 games aren't a big jump from the $15's I usually play on Stars or the $22's I play on Party, but it was more the thought that only a bit earlier I'd been watching some high stakes $1k hyper heads up games after playing some $1.50 and $3.50 ones myself.One false move and I could have been just about heads up for rollz without even realising it! As it was I took down one of the $30 games and cashed in another.

I don't want to curse myself but this month is going quite well at the virtual felt so far.I even made an extra $50 from Stars for coming 11th on a low orbit leaderboard thing I'd forgotten even existed.Due to the lack of traffic I rarely play on Party anymore but managed two wins from four games for a nice wee profit there too.

Back to Two Pies coming back to my place yesterday.He usually takes Nacho out at lunchtimes when I'm working ( I'm still on annual leave for another week) and volunteered to take him out a walk about 8.30 last night.After about 20 mins ( it takes about 10 mins to walk round the block) he still wasn't back and although my area is generally quiet, it was the night after an Old Firm game and I gave him call on his mobile to check he hadn't got into any trouble.He had managed to get lost despite living just a five minute walk away from my place.How did he manage this? "Well I just let Nacho follow his nose and went that way". They both arrived back nearly an hour later. Nice lad my cousin, though he won't be troubling the folks at Mensa anytime soon!

Ahh Glasgow women.Had a quick look at a dating site last night and one girl wrote in the hobbies/interests section, "Getting pissed and having a boxing match".I wouldn't fancy taking a broken pay packet home to her!

I don't usually bother listening to the football phone-ins as they generally attract muppet callers who have no idea about the game.I always make an exception after we pump them in an Old Firm game and I'm off to tune in and enjoy their hurt and the modest unassuming calls from my fellow bluenoses! What goes around tends to come around in football so I'm going to enjoy the moment!

Thanks for reading.Back soon...

Confessions of a Grandpa

Anon's comment on my last post made me smile and rethink my Granny Perfume Girl name for the latest girl I've been on a couple of dates with.I don't have a clue about fragrance names, but I do have to confess to only recently throwing out an old bottle of Kurous.I'm also currently wearing something called U by Ungaro, but even then that's only because a girl at work gave me a load of free samples from her Avon book.What is they say about people in glass houses?!


So far I'm enjoying my time off work and have played a ton of poker and Black Ops.I was also blown away by the end of series 5 of The Shield.So much so that I've needed a week to recover and still haven't started series 6 yet!

Last weekends poker is a bit of a blur.I did play some more Mtt's including the $55 I always seem to cash in.( from a large sample size of about 6 attempts!) Until Bullmeister was railing me at the felt last night I had Stars set up to close any table I exited from and although I min cashed in the $55, all I know is that I shoved K5 from the small blind with a 14k stack (1k-2k blinds) and lost.It hurt a bit at the time, however I've still not checked Pokertracker to see what the big blind called me with!

Since the weekend I've played a mix of 6 max $7 hyper turbos,18 player $15 turbo's and a few more heads up hyper turbos too.I've found that by tiling four tables and then adding another 4 directly underneath the first four I can play eight tables without too much trouble.I realise now too that I was far too stubborn in sticking to the 9 player $15's where there seem to be 4-5 regulars in every game.The luck factor means that in the 18's there will usually still be a few fish left to abuse around time the bubble comes round.By abuse, I mean fish don't push or call with wide enough ranges late in the game and are easy to take advantage of.

I did mention before that I liked the meta-game battles with the regulars at the 9 player games as they're the only real break from the standard push/fold monotony of sng's ,but I also like having a big stack and pushing the weaker players around by shoving a ton and I get the chance to do that at the 18's.The bottom line is that owning fish is far more profitable than trying to outplay good players even if it does require less thought.

I've had a few sets of eight games where I haven't cashed and the swings are so big in multi-player sngs that at one point a couple of days ago my Stars roll was back to where it was on Sept 1st and I was thinking what a waste of time the first two weeks of this month had been.For the moment though I've pulled it back and have made a decent profit for the month, although my focus as ever remains more on volume than on short term luck.

Not much more to say today other than a quick moan about smart arses who say "Say again" when they don't catch what you've said the first time.Yes,I realise you're not saying "excuse me" or "pardon" as you're far too clever to need excused or pardoned for simply not hearing what was said originally, but coming out with "say again" instead just makes you look like a dick.

Tomorrow is also the first Old Firm game of the season.Our rivals sneaked back into the Europa League this season after being beaten in a play-off to get there by a Swiss team who apparently fielded ineligible players.I'm not much of a gambler outside of poker although I do put the occasional football coupon on.However I was kicking myself at not following up on a tip on a Rangers forum to take 6-5 on Athletico Madrid beating celtc by more than one goal as it was a licence to print money.( they won 2-0) Anyway hopefully we can thrash them tomorrow and kick on at the top of the league towards 4 league titles in a row!

Here's one of my favourite goals v Them from the 9 in a row season back in '97.I had a bad case of man flu that week, but nothing was going to stop me from going to the game .Can't believe it was fourteen years ago! Oh for a team of that quality these days!



Thanks for reading.Back soon.....

Just Came to say Hello...

Thanks to Burnley Mik for his comment on my last post.The unwanted links I'm seeing on my blog ( and others) must be some minor ( hopefully!) spyware type thing on my laptop as they don't appear when I access the net from my mobile phone.I'm just glad it's not a hacking issue.Although I spout a lot of pish here,it's been my dairy for the last six years and I wouldn't want to lose it! It does make me think twice about renewing my Macfee virus guard thing if it's not going to fully protect my machine.

Mik also asked how I was finding the $15 18 player turbo games and in truth I couldn't answer as I only included a couple of them alongside the 45/180 player turbos I played last weekend.Last night after warming up with a few wee Hu and 9 player hyper turbos, I fired up sets of six $15 18 player sngs and kept six tables going by replacing any I busted out of.One session isn't always enough to judge how the games are playing, but they certainly seemed very soft indeed and I ended up taking more than a few down and making a decent wee profit of $180 for my nights work.

It did cross my mind as I was going ( stumbling more like!) to bed that if I'd won £115 in a live poker tourney I'd be quite excited about it, whereas online swings of a few hundred dollars in either direction really don't give me pause for thought at all.That's probably a good thing as the swingy nature of poker would drive you mad if you let it!

I was also watching Aliens as I played and smoking some fine puff after seeing a woman about a dog last week! The good news is that I'm now on holiday from work for two weeks and although I've no plans to go away, things are starting to get quite stressful at work and I'm looking forward to the break.My neck and shoulders have been quite painful over the last couple of weeks and while I plan on playing a ton of poker during my hols,I'm going to try and avoid being on the laptop when I'm not at the felt as I'm pretty sure that's what's caused my aching neck/shoulders in the first place.

I have updated my links sidebar and have deleted a lot of blogs which are no longer updated and added a couple like The Sports Punter and Everton Yorkie ( who I thought I'd already linked to).

On the dating front I did text Granny perfume girl on Monday to wish her a safe trip to New Zealand and to say we could maybe meet up again when she gets back.She replied on Tuesday to say "Thanks for the message" and to take care etc.Saying "thanks for the message" seems like the kind of reply I'd send to someone at work! I'll probably take a break from the monotony of exchanging daily messages about exciting daily life stuff with women I probably won't even like much in person for the next couple of weeks and get back into it when I'm back from my hols.

After watching Rangers win 1-0 away at Dundee United thanks to a Kyle Lafferty's  ( ex Burnley legend) goal the plan for today is to play some Black Ops ( probably under my new PS3 online "U Futt Bucker" name) and hit the tables later while cheering on Andy Murray in his almost mission impossible task of beating Raffa Nadal in the US Open semi-final.

Ok,time to go and try and stop listening to the catchy wee tune below on repeat on my Ipod all day....!

Unwanted Blog Links!

Hmmm I'm not sure if anyone reading can see links to spam web pages on my posts over the last couple of days.For some reason I can see the word "chat" from paragraph two of my last post and "cinema" and "bonus" from my Aug 27th post now contain links to web pages and I don't know how they got there.Even Amatays comment on my last post seems to contain a link I know he wouldn't have posted.I did a google search and have run my Macfee thing and windows defender and the links are still there.Has my blog been hacked or is it a spyware thing? Any help appreciated!

Edit: As soon as I posted this I can see links I didn't create from the words "games" and "money" to external sites.Grrrr!


To the poker and I hit the tables on Friday night hoping to continue my good run from last weekend and ended up getting thoroughly bitch slapped,managing just one win from my first twenty four $15 sngs and only a few 3rd places from a couple more sets of six games after that.Last night began the same way at the single table $15's.My Stars roll took a battering and was sitting as low as $1882 before I decided to take a break from the 9 player games and hit the 45/180 turbos.

The first few sets brought more nasty exits before I finally managed to make a couple of $15 180 turbo final tables.I took 6th in one for $106 and 2nd in the other for $495.The 2nd place didn't feel great at the time after having 1010 beaten by 55 for a huge lead when three handed and then by A2 for the win when heads up with even stacks.I did beat KK with AQ to get to the final table though and as we all know the poker gods don't owe us anything and don't keep score!

On the dating front I've not been back in touch with the girl I twice watched the last 1/2hr of The Inbetweeners with last Tuesday night.She had said she wasn't into endless texting and I said the same and although we did text a couple of times after each date, she leaves on Wednesday for New Zealand and I feel I made it clear I was free for dinner before then and it's up to her to get back in touch now.We got on fine on our second date, but there isn't much time to chat at a cinema date and although we seemed to click if that's it for now then so be it.Also it may seem trivial but her kissing was a bit passionless and her perfume smelled like something my granny would have worn and although I'm maybe being picky that's also been enough to stop me texting her to see how her packing/planning for NZ is going!

Of course if we do get together again and end up getting it on as a couple, I'll expect you dear reader to pretend you didn't notice the ninja edit which will magically make the last sentence of the previous paragraph disappear into cyberspace!

Next week is my last week at work before I'm on annual leave for two weeks.I did get my new passport through the door last week and considered a jaunt to Amsterdam but Two Pies is broke and although I'd be happy to go myself it's going to cost £400 for flights/hotel for three nights and the Dam is so expensive these days I'd probably be looking at another £300 ish in spending money.I can afford it, but I reckon I'll stay at home and just enjoy long lies,poker,black ops and visiting friends and family this time.

I'll also use some of my time to do a cull on out of date blog links on my sidebar.I realise twitter and the facebook thing have taken over from blogging in many respects and Black Friday has hugely affected the US poker blogs, but it does seem quite sad to me that there only seems to be a handful of the older school poker blogs still being kept up to date.As ever if any genuine bloggers out there would like a link just drop me a comment and if I delete your link and you start writing again just let me know and I'll add you again.
Back soon...