How is that even possible?

After nearly a week of feeling well out of sorts I'm finally getting my appetite back and feel able to do more than just gouch out in front of the tv.( When I'm too weak for even poker or Black Ops there's something not right!) I did spend a few $$ trying to qualify for the Sunday Million this week but a couple of lost flips and a nasty river put paid to that dream and it was probably for the best as I'm not sure the Lambo Gallardo on offer for first place would fit into the car space I rent near my workplace...



My cousin Two Pies ( he always ordered two pies when we used to go and watch future superstars like Charlie Adam in the Rangers home reserve games about 10 years ago)was over at the weekend and after watching a painfully poor Rangers team beat St Mirren 1-0 we watched the Liverpool v Man Utd and a couple of other games after that.I didn't really care who won as the only teams in England I have a soft spot for are Chelsea and the mighty Burnley but it was a good game and Liverpool were well worth their 3-1 win.

I do wish there was a website available during the game where a fan from each side playing would clarify exactly what was being sung by the supporters ( regardless of how pc the songs are) as it's hard to make out the words from the tv coverage.In fact the only one I caught really was the Man Utd fans singing their "We're Man Utd,We do what we want" after their late consolation goal and the Liverpool fans replying "You're Man Utd,You'll do what you're told" which was class.No doubt the United fans will probably have the last laugh again this season though.

I'm looking forward to the Barca v Arsenal game tonight and hoping the Gers can somehow ( we're now missing nine first team players due to injury) get a result against PSV in Eindhoven on Thursday evening.

Back to the poker and after a couple of breakeven-ish sets of four sngs at the weekend I crashed out of eight in a row last night ( four on Party,four on Stars) before finishing with a couple of wins,a second and a third in my last set.I was only playing four at a time as I was also watching that touching movie "The Human Centipede" that I'd recorded from the scy-fi channel last week.

When I say touching I mean in the "some warped old Nazi stitches three people together joining them from mouth to anus and somehow gives all three one digestive system" kinda way.When he fed the guy at the front and started shouting "Feeeed her" at him I almost switched off despite the dreadful acting making it not very scary at all.( If I've not explained that well enough just be grateful and move on!)

Back to the poker and the post title came from something someone typed in the chatbox after this lovely beat.Made me laugh anyway.( the preflop action was pretty standard)



If I saw the second hand posted on a forum I'd be wondering why the original poster hadn't just folded preflop or at least just completed the small blind and check/folded after that as trying to play too much poker early in a sit and go is almost always a huge error as getting involved in coin flips or marginal situations simply gives the rest of the table a better chance of cashing.( it spews equity to them as the forum kiddies say)

Anyway I was only four tabling and decided open folding 66 from the small blind after it had been folded round to me was too weak and as 66 isn't easy to play postflop I felt a raise was a better option.The villain called and I bet out on the flop as it was probably one of the best flops possible for my hand with no real straight or flush draws out there and only one overcard.It was also unlikely the villain had the 7 and I'd have been happy to take it down with my large-ish flop bet.

I checked when the King fell on the turn as I thought it was a scare card for both of us.When the villain bet out 240 into a 320 pot on such a ragged rainbow board his line just didn't make much sense if he did have a King and as I'd discounted a seven from his hand I check/called.His Vpip was 24% over 200 hands and on checking today he was 24% over 30 hands at 10/20 and 38% vpip over 26 hands at 15/30 so he was obviously a spewy fish.I check/called his turn and eventual river push and although this time I was ahead, I'm still guilty of overplaying/fancy play syndrome and would like to think I won't get involved again in similar future hands.Still,sometimes it's nice to be right and be results orientated!




Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon...

More grinding + Another Royal

I had a slightly frustrating night at the tables.I 8 tabled the $6.50 turbs,made $64 over 35 games and then hit my usual wall of bollocksness at the $16's.$3 profit overall from an 8 hour session at Stars! I did play five quick $14.50 super turbs on Full Tilt and made $76 which was a decent way to finish the night off.(although it was 6am in the morning when I finally went to bed!)

I did hit another Royal Flush on Stars and only require 50 more fpp's to hit Silver status again.According to Sharky I've played 289 sngs on Stars this month and have made....$7!

I've now got 14.7k fpp's at Stars and although I fancied hitting Silver status and using 13.5k to enter the Sun Million I think I may use 5000 fpps to play the $1m 5000fpp Turbo Takedown at 7.30pm tonight.

I wish I could remember which blog originally linked this site.My submission would be that despite not being at all superstitious,I have to say "Hello Mr Magpie" out loud whenever I see one of the damn birds on their own or else it's bad luck! OCD here I come...!

Ok, my brain is too fuzzy to write anymore!

Back soon...

Oops...

Yesterday I took Nacho a long walk,picked Step A up,hit the supermarket and had dinner with the ex and Step A before having a laugh looking up talking dogs on youtube with the wee one.




I may call her the "wee one" but she is growing up fast now and everything and everyone is currently gay and life is just so unfair.The ex and I also played her a wee clip of Harry Enfields "Kevin the teenager" as she seems to have turned into Kevina over the last few months...




I played the Bloggerment with a fairly carefree attitude this week as the Sun Million began half an hour into it and I wanted to give it as much focus and attention as possible.Congrats to Cogsgoine who won it from Juice in 2nd place.( I bubbled in 4th)

I arrived at my Sun Mill table and noticed one pro,Noah Boeken ( screenname:EXCLUSIVE)and decided I wouldn't be donking off my chips to him later...

My first hand under the gun ( first to act) was AK and I nearly shat a brick.I kept telling myself it had only cost me $2 to get into the game but the fact was that I had no idea of the kind of bet sizes etc to expect at that kind of level and had no real feel anyway for how to play the various stages of a big buy-in Mtt.I raised 4bb and they all folded.Ressssssult!

I then went completely card dead almost until the 1st break where I raised with KJ from mid to late and also raised AQ uncontested.I did play A5c from the blinds and was too scared to go with my instinct to check raise the pro who made a position bet when checked to him on an AQ10 board ( 2 hearts).I just didn't want to crash out with an Ace rag type hand!

After the break I wanted to use my tight (probably only one at table not to have seen a flop) image to my advantage and try and loosen myself and my game up a little.I was enjoying the buzz of playing in such a big game and was just hoping to actually catch a card or two to allow me to try and make an impact.

Finally I'm dealt 1010 in the big blind.It all seems a bit hazy now but I think there were a couple of limpers ( including the pro) and I made a decent sized bet.The newly arrived big stack at the table called and the pro made a big reraise.Now in my defence the pro had been very active at the table and had shown down 33 v a much higher pair earlier on but his limp/reraise screamed monster and yet a sudden rush of "newbie caught in the headlights" blood saw me call and crash out to his KK.I was hoping for 22-99 or at worst a flip with AJ-AK and instead was bounced out by someone who played me perfectly.Why would he limp and then reraise the tables tightest player? Doh!

It was good experience though and despite my poor showing I would certainly like another go at it at some point and have already checked out the satellites.

I wasn't in the greatest of moods afterwards and hit up the turbo's winning a wee $6 I played with Juice and crashing out of the other.Juice headed off and I decided to get back to my comfort zone and play some $16 turbs.

Something I picked up from a Jackal69 video on cardrunners is that when the blinds are med-high in turbo's ( and the table is not all donks calling with any two cards) I can steal blinds with marginal hands by making smaller bets and can still fold if someone comes over the top of my bet.At really fishy tables I'll stick to betting big to get the message across but I've found that 2-3 bb bet sizes ( and doing the same with monsters) can quite often get the job done.


Anyway,I had an awful start.After going out the Sun Mill with 1010 they seemed to haunt me.My KK was beaten by 1010 before I hit a 10 on the flop v KK ( I had the tens this time) ,only for a rivered K to knock me out of that one too.I couldn't win a race to save myself and was losing to such poor hands at times that the villains were discussing them in the chatboxes!

I should probably have gone to bed but I'm a stubborn git and knew I was just running badly and that if I kept making the right decisions I could at least recover some losses.I won a couple and scraped a 3rd and 4th before going to bed $175 up from 25 games.

Now it may not last, and it is only over 966 games, but I'm quite pleased that my sng expolits have finally earned me a wee shark symobol next to my name on Sharkscope.I've read that you need 2000-5000 games ( with 1k a min starting point) to have any real idea of a realistic roi figure and I expect if I keep 4 tabling the shark will go, but it's certainly a nice wee boost to my poker confidence.




I'm still feeling the last of that bug and have stayed off work today.Off to pick Nacho up just now and have a nice chilled day.

Oh and if you were the person who found my blog yesterday after googling "jokerstars repeated suckout bad beats" I hope your luck has turned.....

Bring on the Sunday Million!

Maybe it is just ...



Maybe this is my head....



Perhaps this will happen when I shove all in with the hammer ( 72 ) preflop on the first hand...




However I still reckon I'm going to take a shot at tonights Sunday Million Multi-table tournament with my $2.20 winning satellite ticket.I've checked today and when I unregister for the Million I get a refund in "tourney $$" which means whenever I go to log on for my usual $16 ,18 player game,the $16 comes off my $216 tourney $$ and not from my Stars bankroll.

I have enough to play $16's already at Stars and although seven $27 turbos is a tempting way to spend it,I know from experience I could quite easily go on a 0/7 run and be left wishing I'd taken my shot at the big one.

I also very rarely takes shots at anything in poker,preferring to be over bankrolled for all of my games, because I like the psychological cushion I have through knowing even a very very bad run at my level wont hurt too much.

The downside to me playing in the big one today is that despite Tan and Mr Clouds kind words and encouragement,I have very little Multi-table standard speed game experience.In my 3 1/4 years of real money play I would guess that I've probably played in less than one hundred.I've had a few small cashes previously mainly in player point games I've qualified for through my cash game play, but this would be a huge step up and I'm not sure my mtt game is anywhere near being good enough to have a chance of cashing.

The bottom line is though that it's costing me $2.20 and I'm going to keep that at the forefront of my mind no matter how I donk out!


To last nights poker and I managed to squeeze in 25 games by the time I went to bed at 5am.I began by hitting a wall of bad beats and nasty suckouts, but I scraped a couple of 3rd places ( usual $16 ,18 player turbos) to keep me afloat.I took a wee break and came 2nd ( Mr Edge 3rd) in a standard speed $10 sng before heading back to soul sucking turbo land.After about 22 games I was just about breaking even, although I felt that I was right in the zone and playing good poker.Thankfully a few hands held up and I managed to win my last two $16's for a decent overall profit for the night.

I'm also feeling a bit better today, although I reckon I'll probably stay off work tomorrow as I'm only just eating properly again and this nurovirus is supposed to be highly contagious for aprox 48 hours after symptoms vanish.

The Rangers game was called off today due to a water-logged pitch which means the Old Firm game ( Rangers v celtc )will probably be delayed until March now.

I've also been discussing my Mums home game with her and I reckon Feb would be a better month for it, as a week this Friday isn't really enough notice and I've been too unorganised to round up most of the usual suspects.

Ok,don't forget tonights really big game on Pokerstars is the Bloggerment at 9pm gmt/4pm est.Password is donkament as usual and everyone is welcome to play in it...

Spilled the glue

So, I said to Mrs A as I was about to head off to the football on Thursday night "You gonna miss me?" in a half joking kinda way."No" she replied,sounding all serious and instead of going to the game ,enjoying watching Rangers win 4-0 in our biggest win of the season,I was at home trying to save our relationship.Without going into detail we are going to keep working at it and will hopefully come out stronger together.One of her complaints was that we don't go out enough and whilst I can accept that ,part of the reason is that every penny goes towards our next sunshine holiday.There's probably not many couples go abroad 3 times a year but this year we're only going away in Sept so there should be more cash for the comedy nights,cinema,meals out etc that we enjoyed when we first met.

All this after I'd kind of got used to the idea that ( Mrs A's a bit older than me and going through the change) I'd never have any kids of my own.A fellow bloggers kind words ( she knows who she is!) were a great help in letting me see that I can be ( and am) close to Step A and not having any kids that are biologically mine wouldn't leave a big gap in my life.Women eh? Can't live with 'em ,can't shoot 'em! hehehe

Ok,enough! Back to the important stuff....da poker!

I didn't play at all on Thursday night but managed a few games last night,winning a FT $11 sng ,crashing out of another and coming 3rd at a 'Stars 18 player $15 turbo.I also won my first table at a $2.75 triple turbo Sunday Mill sat but never managed to get going in the 2nd round.
I also managed to donk off $20 at a Laddys cash table when I overplayed AJ on a ragged K J 3 rainbow flop with one of those daft moments where all logic said the villian had paired the K ( KQ he had) but my brain insisted he was bluffing me.Doh.

Ok,this afternoon Mrs A and I are donning the matching welly boots ( nae matching wax jackets ,we aint that sad) and taking Nacho to the local park for a walk in the (light) rain before hopefully renting Saw 3 for tonight.

Maybe some poker later, but more probably on Sunday night when Mrs A is working.Something to take from last night was, that even after one night off I found myself really enjoying the game more,especially the sngs'.I've always seen myself as a cash player, but these days it seems such a grind compared to the excitement and drama of the world of sng turbo's.

After reading one of Jordan's latest posts where he wrote ""But I try to offer advice that I have found useful, and a cornerstone to my philosophy is that in order to succeed you must be confident", I'm trying to start my games with a wee pep talk to myself. I accept I make make the odd donk move and can't influence my cards to hold up but if all else is equal then I can be as good or better than anyone at my table.Maybe part of the reason I take so long to actually start playing most nights has been that I'm a lazy git. Whilst I love that feeling of being at a table so long that I have reads on most players and have the dynamic all worked out ,I hate the blind part at the start of an sng or cash game where I have almost zero info.

Righty I've babbled on enough for today.Thanks for stopping by.