Sliding down the pole...

After pounding the tables at the weekend I slowed down a bit last night and watched a couple of sngicons videos before hitting the tables for a set of four games ( $16,18 player turbos) later on.

It's funny how I can play 61 games over an evening,be on the end of repeated bad beats and still enjoy the session,yet last night it only took four games to make me want to spew and buy a cat to kick!

In the first game I raised 6bb preflop with AQ,the money went in when the flop came 8 J Q .Surely the fish didn't call my raise with 910 off sooot....he surely did!

My KK v AcQc was next up and when the money went in on a flop with 2 clubs ,the turn brought the fatal club which knocked me out.My AQ failed to hit v 66 in my next game and even in my last game of the four, I came 4th after shoving KQ into AK.

I'm getting tired of posting philosophical soliloquies on running badly.Ok,I've been reasonable,accepted it's just variance...Now turn the fuckin' beats off!!! Just for once I want to be Mr JJ who gets it in v AJ and AA and still hits his case Jack, instead of being Mr "Np,gg" after yet another fish says sorry for some nasty beat.

I'm trying to remain optimistic and stay focused on making the right decisions.I'm trying not to push too hard and make things happen.I'm going over hand histories,watching more training vids and regularly read the sng forum sections of 2+2,Cardplayer and Rebels of poker.

I've tried talking about running badly in the past tense and treating every hand as a new independent event.Logically there's no way any hands I play tonight can be in any way linked to any previous "bad run" and yet despite telling myself this, every night seems to see the same old crap as big hands get scudded,races are never won and fish pull miracle river cards out their backsides like it's going out of fashion.

As I've learned from the forums,sng downswings and bad runs can last for hundreds and sometimes thousands of games.I've only played 2.5k games on Stars and this is all still part of learning the game for me.The best way to cope is through volume,continued revision of my game and plenty of huffy tantrums and foot stamping whilst shouting about how it's all so unfair.Perhaps not the last part, but I've tried the first few options to no avail!

I'll be back at the tables tonight for more as usual.Tomorrow night I'm looking forward to taking care of Step A and enjoying more "Family Guy" and crap makeover programmes.( her choice!)

Back soon...

Don't think twice...

On Friday night I continued to run badly at Party.I did start with a $22 win there last night and then lost those winnings over the next few games.I'm considering removing my remaining $876 Party total from my overall bankroll and taking a shot with it at $33's and $55's until either I break through or bust.It's really only a wee trick on myself to see if not thinking about my Party money as seriously works out to be good or bad for my bottom line.Will it free me up to stop fretting over beats and to play good poker....or will I semi-tilt the whole lot off?! Hmmmm!

I did thoroughly enjoy watching the Dutch destroy France 4-1 at Euro 2008 with what was at times a mesmerising performance.They are an absolute joy to watch in full flow and must surely be favourites now to go on and win the competition.

Back to the poker and the $16's continue to rip me a new one everytime I play 'em.The bad news was that I went 0/7 without cashing.The only bright spot is that I decided on a couple of $11 180 player turbos as a change of pace and final tabled both of them,coming 5th and 7th for a $90 overall profit for the night.Even in those games I could moan about running A6s ( sb) into tens in the big blind for my 5th place finish or splitting a huge pot with AQ V A10 which would have given me a large lead in the other one....but I won't!

I hope I didn't give the impression in my last post that I was about to quit my job and try and go pro at this juicy yet tough game we all love ( and hate!).It would only even be a consideration if I was offered a large leaving package by my current company and even then this last downswing has probably been enough to put me off that idea.I've also never actually managed to sit down and put in many 6-7 hour sessions successful of 4-6 tabling.I do think I've been unlucky when I have tried ,but I'd want a good few winning sessions of that nature behind me before going pro would be even a speck on the horizon let alone a reality.Nothing to think twice about! Good excuse for this cracking Dylan tune...




Things are still a bit up and down for me in life in general and one nice aspect of working for "the man" is that I can get through a day or two on auto-pilot when required and not be worrying about my job paying bills.All I was trying to say in my last post was that when I first started playing ,going from the little acorn of micro-stakes to the mighty oak of higher stakes pro play seemed a great idea.



After a few years there was never even a remote possibility of that happening at the cash levels I was playing at and I was happy with an extra £200 or so per month earnings.Going down the turbo route will hopefully allow me to at least treble my previous years profits and I suppose that's where I felt the pro door had been left slightly ajar again.

Ok,who asked for more bad beats?!! Here are just a few from last night,some worse than others and fairly typical of how I've been running recently...

1) Never slow play a flopped nut flush eh.

2) Loved this one...

3) Oh how I laughed..

4) Aces v Presto.I should have folded preflop...

5) Ahh lovely Hooks.The hand after this one I was all in with AK V 99 and A8.Lost obviously!

6) Rangers sign Kenny Miller.

Ok,thanks for reading and don't forget to register for the two bloggy games coming up.( see yesterdays post)

I'm off to pick Nacho up and get him walked before Euro 2008 kicks off again with Sweden v Spain...

FU Poker

I've never felt as sick of poker as I feel just now.Part of me thinks I'm being too much of a drama queen over my current downswing and that I'm maybe just not tough enough mentally to cope with continued negative variance.I plan to take a week off from blogging because although it's great to let off steam,my steam is becoming the same old repetitive dirge and nothing much seems to change.

I considered posting the whole hand history from a typical $33 Party turb last night.I wont, but here are the lowlights.This is the third hand of one such game and this is the fifth and last one.Bad beat followed by running a good hand into a better one.I could add dozens and dozens of similar crap.

Here's one that isn't such a blatant beat but is standard when your running badly.My initial limp from the sb was marginal and I only planned to continue if I hit a nice flop.I know it was a coinflip between J7s and my hand after the flop but once again I couldn't have hand picked a worse turn and river card.( the river counterfeiting my two pair and giving Mr limped KK the huge sidepot)

The only bright spot is that if I'd been running this way at the cash tables I'd be down buy-in after buy-in.As it stands I'm still up $9 at Stars for the month ( small Mtt cashes have helped as I'm actually down $120 there for turbo sngs) and down $150 at Party overall.

I did step up briefly at Party and played two $55's and managed 3rd in one ( A10 lost to K10)and crashed out the other one.

I'm off this week and I plan to continue to batter away at the games, although if I don't start to run better then Sundays Bloggerment will be my last game until the Euroblogger game the following Saturday.

Ok,tonight I'm over at the ex's babysitting for Step A.I plan to play some poker,watch the football and The Apprentice final.

There has been one other bright spot this week.When I went to buy some cigarette papers yesterday the boy with the "We ID under 25's" t-shirt on asked me if I had any id as I looked underage!! 36 in less than two months.Get in!

Here are a few funnies from the paper which made me smile.Back in a while...

A young Glasgow chap heard his girlfriend snort as she was flicking through a magazine in his flat and came across a picture of a bikini-clad lovely advertising a brand of beer.

"So are they saying," said his girlfriend derisively, "that if I drank enough of these beers I'd look like her?" "No, I think they're saying," replied the chap, "that if I drank enough of them, I'd think you looked like her."


READ an article in a women's mag entitled All Men Are Liars," said the chap in the pub."Which struck me as strange, as it was next to an ad for Wonderbras."

A Glasgow couple who decided to hire a cottage in the country for the weekend proved what city slickers they were when they were walking back to the abode in the dark.

"What's that noise?" said hubby. "I thought I heard an owl."

"You probably did," replied his wife. "I just stood on the dog's paw."

Gordon Barclay has a forecast for the Euro 2008 final. Not who will win it, but that Gary Lineker in the BBC studio will turn to pundits Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer and ask: "So, are the winners good enough to beat England, then?"

"Did you know that the mobile phone," said the woman in the wine bar ordering a bottle of prosecco for her pals having a night out to avoid the football, "is the only subject over which men will argue who's got the smallest?"

Our Washington correspondent phones to tells us that Hillary Clinton, pictured, has worked out a way to clear the $20m worth of debt left by her unsuccessful presidential campaign: she's going to marry, then divorce, Paul McCartney.

Just time for a nice laidback 60's track from Scooter...