3000 Not Out!

Although some grinders can sail through 3000 sng's per month,I've finally hit that mark and I'm now only just a bit short ( seems like a glass ceiling)of my recent $8k Sharkscope profit goal.

Most of those 3000 sngs have been played over the last year after I hit a bad run of variance at cash games and decided to try something different.I do miss playing with the late night weekend crazies at $50 and $100nl 6 max Ladbrokes tables,but after 3 years of low stakes cash play I've enjoyed learning a new type of poker and have done better than I could ever have expected.( despite the last two months of bad beat hell!)

Last night I began by playing a couple of $16's alongside the $20 Silver Star freeroll MTT.I failed to cash in the MTT, although I made a decent start at the $16's.I started out playing 3 games,soon moved onto 4 and felt I coped quite well with the pace.Ideally I like to have 2 games close to the final table ( 18 player games) and 2 games at the early stages running.This way I can focus on former and play very tight/aggro at the newer games.

I've always chosen to tile or cascade my tables when 4 tabling.I learned from watching a Cardrunners vid that if you don't chose either option,the "action" table will always pop up anyway.I now have them overlapping ( 17" Laptop) which I prefer as I can still see my hands ( at the end of my arms!)and the tables are big enough to be able to follow the action better and pick up reads.

I did lose to 4-5 one outers last night which was frustrating, but I also played 38 games and if I raced 3-4 times per tourney I suppose a few really nasty ones are to be expected.Overall I won $310 and finished playing just as the clock hit 5am.I've now won $786 over 81 games since the 15th and hopefully I can avoid another horrible downswing for a while.I'm still only up $297 from 397 games since Aug 1st according to Sharky, which just goes to show the effect variance/my 8-12 tabling donkery has on my stats.I'd have embedded Avril Lavigne's "Happy Ending" here if it wasn't disabled on youtube!

My late night has left me feeling quite tired today ,but I'm already starting the countdown to my next holiday from work in mid September.( no bank holiday in Scotland tomorrow sadly!)

Ok,my brain is too fuzzy to write anymore! Just time to link to an excellent football article in todays Times.The last pararaph in particular made for refreshing reading considering the crap the Scottish media usually churn out.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to register for tonights Britbloggerment on Full Tilt and for the Raise the River league game on Stars....

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...