Sweet Little Lie

After posting that I was giving up on Mtt's for just now I sat down after dinner last night,fired up Pokerstars and registered for some.....Mtt's!

I registered for far less games than I normally do and left out the hyper turbos altogether.Aside from the hot $44 Turbo I also gave the higher buy-ins a miss and played a few more slow speed Mtt's too.

Although I watched The Apprentice and a bit of "The Big Game" that was when I was four tabling and when I started building stacks in a few of the games and more tables opened, the tv went off and I tried to focus on my tables.Playing less tables and paying more attention meant I could check my Hud stats for "fold to 3 bet" and other stats that helped me decide when to make moves.

I just missed out on the final table of a $5 Knock Out tourney ( 12th from 806 runners) and came 25th from 1000 starters in another wee $5 slow speed game too.Although I felt I was actually running quite well, winning the really key hands still seemed beyond me at that point.

I was still going well in the $8,$10k Gtd ( 1463 starters) though and after over 5 1/2 hrs of play I made the final table.I was the shortstack but I still had over 10 big blinds and with less pressure from the clock ( 10 min blind levels)I still had room to make moves and add to my stack.I'd love to do a proper final table write up but it was a long game and I smoked an awful lot of joints so all I really remember is getting down to the final three and hoping for some luck as I had a tiny stack compared to the other two players.

I did manage a double up ( gave me aprox 600k to 1.2 and 2.4ish)and when the guy in 2nd place raised again preflop I shoved with A7 and his 66 held to send me to the rail in the 3rd place which was good for a $1161 cash.

While it was great to cash I genuinely didn't feel any great excitement.I'd played well but I'd also run well too and as the latter is beyond my control there's no need to get carried away.I feel the same after losing sessions too and while it did cross my mind that I could have cashed out my whole roll when I had $4k and gone to Amsterdam for my summer hols I never lost any sleep over that bad run.I knew I was taking shots and while it's possible to get lucky there was more than a decent chance of busting.

Tonights plan is to try and repeat last night! Less tables,more focus and no constant lobby checking to see where I am in the field.

Back soon...

Just Another Post Fae a Radge Weegie!

Truth be told I've had a bit of an up and down time since my last post.Things have been getting pretty stressful at work and I've been feeling a bit bored and restless by life in general too.

My poker shot taking has come to an end after another horrible run at the tables, although in truth unless I had hit a nice heater it was always going to end with me depositing some of the money I cashed out of Party Poker recently.I put in $300 of that $600 cashout and hopefully I can build my roll back up over the coming months.

Looking back at my Mtt playing over the last few months I don't have many regrets.As a relative Mtt newbie I could perhaps have stuck to four tabling instead of going for more volume.I could have learned to 3 and 4 bet light earlier and on nights like last Friday I could have taken more time to warm up before jumping in and playing like a donkey for the first couple of hours of my session.

The plan now is to play $8 180 player turbos with some $15's thrown in.I'll also play some of the 18 player turbo's I use to play a few years ago.I do feel a bit sad that it took me so many years to discover I love playing Mtt's and even sadder that it's more than possible that I'm just an Mtt fish( although my sample size is still so small I'll keep blaming variance for the most part!)

Still up lifetime in Mtt's thanks to a decent cash back in '08 but it's not been pretty this year!

As well as the usual poker,Call of Duty and football watching I've also just finished the latest Irvine Welsh book "Skagboys" and it's been the first book I've read in a while that I've barely been able to put down.It's the prequel to "Trainspotting" and I loved reading the back stories of Rents,Sickboy,Begbie and co.Definitely Welsh's best book for a long time.

I'm on to "Before I go to Sleep" now and it's pretty gripping so far too.

Right before I send any more readers to sleep I'll put this posting to bed.Thanks for reading.

You Know What I Mean...

Like Rosie I'm still waiting for good karma to come my way after the good deed I wrote about in my last post.

When I started this blog ( seven years ago this month and that's all I'm saying about that)I came up with the stupid Acorn name after a few smokes as I hoped to grow my poker game into some mighty oak of success.At one point I did consider quitting my job and grinding sng's fulltime but the lack of future security and the monotony of what is basically a data entry job mashing buttons all day on my own put me off that idea.

I quit smoking weed during the week when I went back to work fulltime in May 2010 after my car accident and poker went back to being a weekend hobby rather than an every night obsession.I liked making a few hundred dollars per month profit playing sng's but with a small mortgage and no debts the urge to play 8 sng tables on auto-pilot became less and less and I just wasn't getting much pleasure from the game.

A few months ago I decided to give Mtt's a real go and to relax the nitty bankroll management I've employed since I began playing online.It's been a weird experience because I've managed to reduce my $4k roll to just over $750 and yet I've had more fun and enjoyment playing Mtt's than I ever did playing sng's like a robot.( apart from the heartbreaking exit hands)

I'm making plenty of deep runs which is apparently a good sign but I just can't seem to bink the decent score I need to boost my roll.I do still have the $600 I cashed out in a huff ( after they charged me an inactivity fee) from Party and it's looking like I'll need to stick it on Stars soon.My plan is to keep at the Mtt's and if I drop below $200 I'll deposit the extra $600 and move to $8,180 player turbo's and try and rebuild that way.I can play 8-10 at a time and giving myself 100 buy-ins is far more sensible than buying in for aprox 21 tourneys adding up to $400-$500 each Fri/Sat night.

Away from the poker there's not much going on really apart from me noticing the world seems to be full of Frank Bruno's.The ex boxers catchphrase when being interviewed by the late Harry Carpenter after fights was "Know what I mean 'Arry" and lately it seems everyone is saying it.( well without the 'Arry bit!) Does my nut in!

Oh and I don't know what the fuss is about the Carol Tevez banner.It looks just fine to me...

Run Good Karma?

Despite seeing myself as quite hard headed,cynical and not at all into religious or spiritual mumbo jumbo I do still say hello to lone magpies and slap the roof above me twice as I leave the football.

I'm more of a ( Terminator philosophy,I'm very cultured) "No fate but what we make" than a karma kind of guy but the supermarket checkout operator who served me today reckons I have good things coming to me after I paid the bill for the old lady in front of me in the queue.She had a ton of stuff all picked from the reduced section and even although it only came to less than £3 she said the total wasn't what she expected and started to pick out items to return.

Does karma still work when I only paid her bill because I was in a hurry to get to the post office before it shut? Who knows!

Come to think of it I do try and go through the same turnstyle at the football if we won the week before and was cursing myself for recording the Old Firm game last week because we never seem to win when I tape ( or whatever the digital word is) Rangers v them.I suppose all these wee superstitions come down to trying to feel as if I have some control over the outcome which is obviously nonsense.

Before reading "The Mental Game of Poker" I used to regularly predict the turn and river card that would crack my poker hand and it seemed that more often than not I'd be right.It's a hard habit to break but I try and focus on believing the board is going to brick out and although deep down I know it doesn't make a hoot of difference what I'm thinking as the cards fall I reckon using "positive confirmation bias" in this way can only help my mental state when playing.

It's sometimes hard to shift illogical thoughts.I was sad to hear that poker and gambling legend Amarillo "Slim" Preston died last Sunday.I have an Ace of Spades he signed with a good luck message in my wallet ( the fact that it's made out to "Janice" is only a minor detail) and when I walked away from my near fatal car crash in Nov '09 part of me put my luck down to that being in my wallet.Now despite knowing
my fate had nothing to do with a playing card it's still there tucked away in my wallet.

Perhaps it's like people who are not religious praying to God in situations of serious crisis or illness in the family.They don't actually suddenly believe in a sky fairy but they don't lose anything by praying just in case they're wrong.

Enough wittering for what was going to be a very short post.It's taken so much longer to write than I expected that I've not eaten yet and have probably missed registering for an early evening tourney I was destined to win....

Ok,one more wee thing.I had a laugh at the front page of my local paper last week.It carried a story about a guy who went to his kids school for a parents night and lost the plot because it turned out to be a meeting about a new curriculum.He shouted "This is a lot of shite" and punched an off duty police woman who tried to restrain him.

He was hauled up to court and the bit that tickled me was his defence lawyers quote that this was "completely out of character" for the accused.This was just before he was found guilty and fined at which point he lost his rag again and starting shouting "Do you think I'm a fuckin' Millionaire?" at the judge.Obviously just another "out of character" moment.

Back soon...

Got the Runs....+ Monthly Stats

Deep runs that is.Last weekend I finally found some run good and went deep in a few tourneys.Sadly I only managed some small cashes and still lost key hands at crucial times but it certainly felt better than the last few weeks when I've barely been able to get a hand to hold up or win a flip.

I did take a note of some of my more painful exit hands but I'll spare you the bad beat stories and crack on with the post.The hand below made me smile,mainly because the villain ( that's why I included the hand history)showed the 6d before folding.The only disappointment was that I didn't manage to change my "show hand" option in the lobby quickly enough to show him my 4 high...





PokerStars Hand #79603476124: Tournament #549570516, $30+$3 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level X (150/300) - 2012/04/29 0:48:14 WET [2012/04/28 19:48:14 ET]
Table '549570516 64' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: dhavalzoso (14550 in chips)
Seat 2: Takezo1980 (4275 in chips)
Seat 3: mrtrum1984 (6554 in chips)
Seat 4: zagga (5852 in chips)
Seat 5: Pacosta (7000 in chips)
Seat 6: Small Kev 17 (2910 in chips)
Seat 7: crazydraw10 (1238 in chips)
Seat 8: Utsz3h (4033 in chips)
Seat 9: LosharaUZ (9103 in chips)
dhavalzoso: posts the ante 30
Takezo1980: posts the ante 30

mrtrum1984: posts the ante 30

zagga: posts the ante 30

Pacosta: posts the ante 30

Small Kev 17: posts the ante 30

crazydraw10: posts the ante 30

Utsz3h: posts the ante 30

LosharaUZ: posts the ante 30

zagga: posts small blind 150

Pacosta: posts big blind 300

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to zagga [4s 3c]

Small Kev 17: folds

crazydraw10: folds

Utsz3h: folds

LosharaUZ: folds

dhavalzoso: folds

Takezo1980: folds

mrtrum1984: folds

zagga: raises 450 to 750

Pacosta: calls 450

*** FLOP *** [6h 8c 9c]

zagga: bets 600

Pacosta: raises 600 to 1200

zagga: raises 3872 to 5072 and is all-in

Pacosta: folds [6d]
Uncalled bet (3872) returned to zagga

zagga collected 4170 from pot

zagga: doesn't show hand

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot 4170 | Rake 0

Board [6h 8c 9c]

Seat 8: Utsz3h folded before Flop (didn't bet)


Stats: Pokerstars $1851 ( -$1377) over 256 mtt's and 100 hyper sngs.

There's no doubt Mtt variance when taking shots on a small roll can be very disheartening.Last weekends deeper runs without any actual big cashes made me realise just how much of a shot I am taking playing $55 and $44 games as there's some amount of run good needed to do well in Mtt's.I've posted a few hands I've played with some of the very best players but those players are rare in Mtt land and most of the players tend to be very bad indeed and although watching my big hands go down in flames is frustrating I also find it gives me a lot of hope too as those are the players I'll make my money from when I do learn how to run better at key moments.

Away from the poker I went out with the goldfish kisser again on Saturday.We were going to see "The Hunger Games" but it was sold out so we went to the pub instead.We did kiss again before she got the train home and it was just as bad as it was before.We talked about going to the cinema again sometime this week but when she sent me a text yesterday to try and sort a date I gave her the old "it's not working out" reply.For the best I think.

On Sunday Two Pies and I went to the Old Firm game at the Piggery where we watched the Gers lose 3-0.It was a bit surreal because although we lost to our bitter rivals and the team didn't play well our supporters were louder than ever and the 7500 Rangers fans completely outsung the 50000 shitey home support.My seat ( not that I sat down at all!)was just down from where the vid below was filmed.I'm not a big fan of the "Ten German Bombers" song ( from 5.08 on the vid) but it sounded magic on Sunday and I'm still hoarse from all the singing today.