Hypers and Hotkeys

I played nearly 160,6 max $7 hyper turbo sng's over the weekend and still feel like I was in lazy mode as I was only four tabling most of the time and took regular breaks to roll up/watch football.Thanks to reading James Atkins blog I discovered that Pokerstars now has programmable hotkeys and they're quite easy to set up.

The only problem I have is that the hotkeys don't work when I have Pokertracker running.They are only in beta mode so hopefully the compatibility problem is one that will be resolved as life at the virtual felt is a lot easier when I just have to hit one button to fold and one to shove all in.

The main edge for any winning sng player comes around the payout bubble and I like the fact that the 6 max format means more bubble play than standard 9 player games.The players at the $7 level are generally terrible and are quite easy to run over at that stage of the game too. I think the edge gained there helps balance out the edge lost by the blinds increasing so fast and only having 500 starting chips.

I mentioned only playing four tables due to laziness and other distractions, however there is one other major reason for not playing at least six tables and for taking small breaks inbetween each set of games and that's tilt control.I'm fairly untiltable when it comes to normal turbo sngs, but I did notice when continuously playing six games that a few bad sets can cause me to start making bad pushes/calls.I'm still fairly new to hyper turbos and maybe I just need to get used to even faster swings than I see in my usual turbo games.

Tilt control and the ridiculous leap in buy in from $7 to $30 at the hyper turbos are the main reasons I've not been tempted to move up.Some $15 hypers would be nice Pokerstars!

Back soon...

Too Much Steam...

In the same way bands tend to bring out greatest hits albums when they run out of steam I had a wee look at previous posts to see if I could link to a few of them for todays post.I changed my mind though as I've never been a fan of nominating my own "best of" and I didn't fancy trawling through six years worth of mince to find ones I liked anyway.

I did have a quick look back and the post that stood out was one linking to a donations page for a charity walk for cancer my sister undertook back in '06.The incredibly generous response from friends,fellow bloggers and readers was amazing and still nearly brought a tear to my eye even five years on!

My post from Nov '09 when I nearly killed myself in a car accident also made me stop and think.Although my side and back still hurt sometimes I'm almost glad it happened as I was stuck in a vicious circle of being stressed and depressed ( mainly work related) and smoking too much weed every night to try and escape those feelings.Regular heavy smokers will know that even on a trip to the Dam the best highs come during the first day or so and after that it's just more of a fuzzy minded feeling that kicks in.

These days I only smoke at weekends and I love feeling more like myself during the week and I also appreciate my weed far more when I do roll one up at the end of the week.I was so tired and kind of stoned over most of the time before the accident that it felt like I was operating with only half a personality most of the time. My memory of myself from the times I did cut back or didn't smoke was of someone who was far too outgoing and loud.( almost manic probably) So much so that I used to annoy myself!

These days ( though friends and work colleagues would probably disagree) I think I've calmed down a bit.Feeling far better and taking long walks at lunchtime also means I'm dropping off to sleep quite easily most nights instead of tossing and turning for hours with my mind whirring at 1000 mph.( which always happened when I tried to cut back previously)

I'm still only playing poker at weekends and although playing 6-8 tables and including more hyper turbos means I'm still racking up 300-400 sngs per mth, I'd still rather play Black Ops with friends online during the week.With the new Call of Duty game ( Modern Warfare 3) due out on Nov 8th I can't see that changing.

I may even have given up on poker altogether, but I'm a highly competitive person and I usually hate playing video games after a smoke as my slower reactions mean my kill/death ratio goes down ( and that's just not on!).Of course feeling more fresh when I do play poker also means I no longer feel burned out in any way and I actually relish my time at the felt instead of seeing it as a slow money making grind.

I did get back into profit for the month at the virtual felt last weekend,winning $240 over 95 games at the 6 max $7 hypers,18 player $15 turbo's and a $55 Mtt.Two Pies ( my cousin) was over and to change things up a bit I used up most of my 8000 Frequent player points playing satellites to bigger games and although I had no luck in most of them I did manage to win one $55 ticket.

I cashed for $64 in that game after having my Aces busted.I called a cut off raise from the button with my Aces and the big blind came along for the ride too.I used to always raise in that position but I could hear Jonathan Little's voice ( from watching his training vids ) saying that calling in that spot was totally standard and getting it on a seemingly harmless 9 9 2 board seemed ok at the time too... until the cut off showed 98 and the big blind trumped that with his 22.

Ok,I've written so much you're probably wishing I had run out of steam long ago! Thanks for reading.Back soon...

Hypers,Bribes and Pishy Pan Pipes

Thanks for stopping by to read my littletexttard blog today! So much for my esteemed readers backing me up in the important and vital for world peace "do you use your finger or thumb to write text message" debate.If it makes any difference I should point out ( using my index finger of course) that I only started using my finger to write texts when I got my new touchscreen phone earlier this year.

Not got much poker news to report.I made a small profit playing my usual turbo sngs last weekend before having a go at the 9 player hyper turbos where I ran badly and probably didn't play that well either due to being unfamiliar with the right push/fold ranges in many spots.

The edge is just so small in the hyper games due to the faster format,500 chip starting stack and the lack of fold equity.I think there's some room to outplay people in the 6 max version of these games, but the 9 player ones just seem like a bit of a luckfest to me.

I read the thread on 2+2 and Raise the River about the proposed £30 million guaranteed live tourney the Bernard Tapie group have floated as happening at Wembley Stadium next May and if I'd been drinking tea as I read it my reaction ( in time honoured internet forum tradition) would have been to laugh so hard the tea would have ended up all over my screen.

Tapie was the guy involved in match fixing and bribery allegations when he was owner of Marseille football club back in the 90's and I still believe he denied my club Rangers our best ever chance of winning the European Cup that year.As for him taking over Full Tilt poker and paying the players back the money from their accounts I wouldn't be holding my breath on that happening anytime soon either.

At work our team got a new manager back in May and it was obvious when he joined us that he thought he could treat us like teenagers working in a call centre.( his previous job) Without going into too much detail our team get an allocation of complex written complaints every day and we have a separate team who take any calls from customers calling in looking to speak to us.Our department doesn't take complaints over the phone and our boss has found himself way out of his depth trying to deal with the escalations we pass to him.

Due to his attitude he doesn't get any sympathy from us and his initial "I'm on the bus going places" speech didn't go down well either.He's now been off sick for three weeks and has a line for a further four so hopefully he won't be back.One of our other colleagues is also off sick and the team chipped in to send her flowers and a card from "The team ( excluding the bus driver)" which I found quite funny.

I was going to have a quick rant about those American Indian blokes who pollute the Glasgow air with their feckin' pan pipe music when I'm out walking on my lunch hour but I reckon that's enough cool stories for today...

Finger Tards and 10 foot Willies

Such is the nature of poker that if I'd stopped play after just a few games last Friday night I'd have been about $80 up on my end of Sept bankroll total on Stars.It's all one big long session though and finishing down $140 after a crappy run over the rest of last weekend isn't really relevant in the grand scheme of things.Reading about Abarone68 ( one of the best sng players around) and a $2k downswing at the 180 player turbo's has put me off those games for just now.I think I'll stick to the 18 player turbos this weekend.

Away from the poker I see my favourite danger shag,Foxy Knoxy,was released on appeal this week.I've not followed the case closely enough to have an opinion on her guilt or innocence, although it did annoy me that her sister didn't even mention the victims family once in her speech to the media after the appeal verdict.

I did find it mildly amusing that the Daily Mail and Sky News both jumped the gun and announced Knox had been found guilty again ( the first announcement made in court was that she was guilty of a slander charge)and that the Daily Mail was caught not just making a basic mistake about the murder charge verdict but actually making up quotes from the prosecutor to fit the guilty story they ran for a few minutes until it was pulled from their website.( see mailwatch for more).

I took Step A out for a pub meal again last night and it was good to catch up with her.She's bored,skint and frustrated at not being able to get a job and although I'm slightly glad she's not out drinking every night, I know from my own experience of being off work for six months after my accident in '09 that sitting in the house playing console games all day may sound like fun, but it's actually a pretty depressing way to live.I also spent most of '91 on a couch in a bedsit with no job and seemingly few prospects so I know a bit about how it feels.Watching coverage of the first Gulf War and going to the local shops in my pj's soon got boring!

She did manage to cheer herself up by having a go at me and calling me a retard.I'm sure you,cool kid reader,casually hold your mobile in the palm of your hand and can type 10,000 words per min on your Smart/I phone with your thumb when texting.Apparently only retards like me use their index finger to type out messages that take several hours to compose!

Thanks to the Poker News Team and the GirlNextDoor for commenting on my last post.I was very upset to discover via google that the Little Flo poem was in fact a Derek and Clive effort from years ago and wasn't in fact made up on the spot by the friend I was on holiday with when I was 13!

Here's another one from my younger years that stuck in my head and still makes me smile.( and no I haven't and refuse to google it to check its origin)

Old King Billy had a ten foot willy and he showed it to the neighbour next door,
She thought it was a snake and hit it with a rake
And now it's only five foot four...

Thanks for reading.Back soon...