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.....

Register for Sunday's Bloggerment!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 655839

I thought I'd write a quick post today as I'm tired of clicking on peoples blogs to read their latest post and being hit with only the Pokerstars ad for the blogger game! Yeah,I'm tired,angry ( ok,not really!)and want to read a real post before I crack and call someone a sick disgusting raping beast on Pocket 5's! ( yeah that's actually a compliment in todays kiddie forum speak!)

Last night I'd arranged a sweat session with one of my poker playing mates and we used Teamviewer to allow me to watch him playing on Pokerstars and vice versa.We were both pretty clueless when it came to getting the remote viewing thing working, although I think I missed a trick when asking for his password ( I meant for the teamviewer thing) and he offered his Stars password! I recall then asking for his bank account + pin number but it wasn't forthcoming...

Anyway with our laptops running slower than a week in the jail we found it worked better if he watched me play and I hit up the $16, 9 man turbo games on Stars and the donkery began.I did run into a few beats/coolers as expected, but managed to win three from the ten games played to finish the night in profit.Playing ultra-tight early/aggro loose late on and the joys of Pokertracker 3 + HUD were probably the main talking points.

My mate couldn't believe PT3 was actually legal to use and not banned by the poker sites.The trick is to use PT3 as additional help and not to rely soley on the stats it produces.In all honesty though Sngs ( certainly up to the $33 level I've played) are quite simple games and as bad as it sounds I can watch tv,surf the net and still make money just shoving/folding at the right times late in the game,using mainly the HUD ( Heads up Display) for my reads.

Perhaps that's partly why I don't put in enough volume.Most of my sng decisions are automatic and it's not often I really have to think very deeply about my moves.It's really only when battling other regular players that I need to mix it up on occasion to help balance the ranges they're putting me on.( yeah spite calls are great!)

I hope that doesn't come across as arrogant and certainly I obviously win more paying 100% attention to everything going on at the table, but the winning formula for Sng's just isn't very exciting and as a hobby player I do find motivation hard to come by at times.

Ok,thanks for reading and don't forget to register for tomorrows Bloggerment on Stars...

Raring to go...back to bed!

Am I feeling refreshed and raring to go back to work after two weeks off? Am I f*ck!

Thanks to all who commented on my Dam trip report.Since my return I made the tough decision to finish things with the lady I was seeing.We did swap a few friendly texts last night before her final one which said "I miss you, but don't reply".I do miss her too but have respected her request.

To the poker and the good news is that it looks like being a marginally profitable month for me at the felt.( stats on Tues)I went on a bit of a run at the Party $22's, although after not cashing in a few I moved back to Stars and decided to take a wee shot at $36 45 player turbs.It did take me some time to adjust my game to the format but I also ran like crap too and dropped a couple of hundred.

The same happened at the $16's and only a wee run at the $12 45 player games kept me afloat.In fact I found the 45 player games ( $12 and $36) are very soft indeed and they are also far easier to multi-table ( I played 8) than single table sit and goes for the simple reason that the 45 plyr games are all full tables ( until final table starts to lose players).

Anyway I had $72 left on Stars ( $536 at start of June) and fired up three $16's before the s-man arrived for last nights ps3 sesh.No cashes in those games meant when the s-man left and I hit the felt my Stars roll was in danger of being no more.I nearly took a screenshot when the cashier page showed a $1.58 balance but I managed a win and a couple of cashes at $6.50 to finish the night on $77! Of course I should probably stop being so bloody stubborn and go back the the Party $22's, but now that my Stars roll is on life support I'm actually quite enjoying trying to rebuild it.I could also easily cash some Party profit out and stick it back on Stars but wont do that unless I bust the last $77.

Quick questions: Had anyone else found the Pokertracker 3 auto hud has stopped working on Stars? It's still importing hands but not giving the usual stats overlay on the opposition.( which I definitely missed when playing 8 tables)

Jeeez what a boring comeback post so far! I did read on P5's that David Sklansky's house has been robbed.I loved the post by zander on that thread asking if they only took his real money or if they stole all his Sklansky dollars too.( money "won" everytime you get your chips in as favourite at poker regardless of result)

If you're a Raisetheriver forum member don't forget to transfer your $30 to Amatay and get ready for the upcoming Sunday donkaments.( chance to win a trip to Paris to play in a 250euro buy-in event!)

Ok,thanks for reading.Back on Tues with monthly stats.Watch out for the donkeys...