London Bound!

I took 2nd place in the final Britblogger Full Tilt challenge game last night.This kept me in the top two overall and means that I'll be off to London on a Travel/Accomodation expenses paid trip next week to watch the Full Tilt pro's $1m cash game!Bully also won the same deal and all things being well,I'm looking forward to meeting up with him.

Huge thanks again to Sir Alcanthang for all his hard work to make the whole series possible and congrats to Dr Pauly on completely running me over HU to win last nights game.It's funny how life works.I only booked up my Dam trip ( Tues 23rd to Thus 25th) at the last minute because I wasn't sure about making the trip by myself.Dr Paulys solo trip reports clinched the deal for me and now I'm hoping to meet up with Dr P when he arrives on the 24th.Roll on!

The Britbloggerment game is back on Stars for now, although that's not set in stone as I fancy running it as a turbo ( wheee!) in a few weeks time and only Full Tilt seem to have that flexibility for private games.I'm looking forward to running the RTR league game alongside the Bloggy tonight.Not another bubble finish though please!

After the Britblogger challenge fun last night,I fired up a couple of $22's on Party and took 2nd in one.I would have won it if the villain hadn't sucked out donkey style on nearly every hand when we were HU.

Next up I hit up Stars and ( whisper it!) decided to have a go at a couple of PL Omaha games ( 6 max $3.75 sngs) for a change.I googled for the rules and this time they made sense! I didn't realise previously that you had to use 2 hole cards ( from 4) and three from the board.The penny dropped when I read that if the board was all spades after the river card,you only have flush if you have two spades.The board doesn't play.

I played like a newbie fish and donked out the first one and bubbled the second.I did enjoy the change however and it was good to get an insight into why fish are fish! The main reason is simply having no idea about hand values and how strong or weak my holdings were.I imagine the fish that call off their stacks with rag Aces in my turbo holdem sngs are doing so because they haven't the experience or knowledge to gauge just how strong their cards and have no clue how to work out the same about an opponent.

For example I lost to quads ( 666 flop) holding QQ on one hand.In Holdem it's hard to give a villain credit for holding a 6 if raised preflop, but I now realise in Omaha it's highly likely with 5 villains calling and all holding 4 hole cards!I think I need some lessons from King Dudley of the Omaha before playing many more of these strange games though!Maybe I'll change my "2 cards good,4 cards bad" theory one day!

I ended my night with a few sets of four $16 games and ran horribly,only managing to pull my losses back to just $43 after a couple of cashes in the last two games I played.

I consoled myself by checking my overall profit for this poker year ( since Oct 31st '07) and discovering I've made more already than I did over the last 3 years in total.I think I'm probably about breaking even for August so far and sng variance has kicked my backside over the last few months.Very frustrating.

I'm going to try and be less results focused on this blog.I feel as if I'm cheating somehow if I don't mentioned every single result from every game.If anyone really cares it's all there on Sharkscope or in my monthly stats.I think I worry that if I don't stay focused on the short term,I'll let the nasty nature of sng variance get the better of me and I'll end up boarding the runaway train destined for Tiltsville.

Ok,enough witterings for today.I expect I'll be posting a bit less frequently over the next couple of weeks as I'm on a break from work and now have two midweek jaunts to look forward to.....

Back to the 6 max...

After the excitement of cleaning the flat and doing a washing,I was ready to hit the tables,starting with the Bloggerment.I came 5th after shoving Q10 and being called by A6d.Congrats to Weegem for taking it down and thanks to all who came out to play.

I was all ready to hit the $16 turb's, but the Stars sng lobby was down.As soon as the shaking and cold sweats had subsided, I decided to get back to the cash games which were always my main game until just a few months ago, when I caught the turbo sng bug.

I won a quick £5 at Littlewoods £100nl before the table died.I've only got the £25 I deposited at 'Woods to play the RTR league games and although I hate the software and colour,the rakeback deal ( via rtr site banner) is brilliant and well worth a look.

I checked out Ladbrokes and was once again disappointed by the low average pots on offer.Bet 365 was a far jucier proposition and I hit up a $50nl 6 max table for the first time in ages.It went well and I left $80 up.It would have been $130 and I'm still debating getting it all in preflop with QQ v AA.

One of the other villains commented on my play and prehaps I was still shaking off the last of my usual turbo sng and it was a little loose.I enjoyed replying "ty table captain" to the wee lecture, although when looking at the average Bet365 donks all in range, ( he was new to table so no reads)I don't think it was the worst move ever.

Tonight I'm about to have dinner and then head over to the ex's to look after Step A.Hopefully I'll have a net connection and be able to get a few games in...