Friday Update

I had been feeling a little better yesterday so I took Nacho out for a decent walk and then went to see a man about a dog last night.Arriving back I felt a bit dizzy and realised I'm still not 100% over the swine/man flu virus.I did sleep for over 10 hours last night though and reckon I'll be fighting fit for dinner at Mum and Dads later, followed by an evening over at the s-mans.I was in two minds about postponing tomorrow nights re-arranged date, but the lady in question has sent me a few hot pics by text and I'm not waiting another week!

On the poker front I'll post my annual stats tomorrow sometime.I did some 6 tabling of the $22's yesterday and dropped about 10 buy-ins through a combination of bad beats and rushed decision making to leave me 5 buy-ins down overall at Party for October.I am up a wee bit on Stars and after my PLO sng win the other night I played my first hands of PLO cash at the baller $10 by-in level.I lost nearly $8 when my A5 flopped a full house and lost to a bigger rivered boat but came back to make....$3 profit overall.I'm still pretty clueless as to what is and what isn't a good PLO hand but for $10 stakes I'm happy to just muddle along.

I was watching the news last night and they covered the touching story of a wee girl called Sophie Atay.I copied the info below from her justgiving website.Feel free to click on the link,make a donation and help sent Sophie to the States for treatment.

"Sophie Atay was born fit and healthy on 15 November 2007 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear. One day whilst drying Sophie after her usual bath her mother felt a lump on the left side of her tummy. After numerous and frustrating hospital visits over a 10 day period Sophie was diagnosed with neuroblastoma stage 4 (high risk) on Monday 16 February 2009. Sophie's family are now looking to raise funds to take her to the Memorial Slone Kettering Hospital in New York for treatment."

Ok,thanks for reading.Back soon..

Da Variance Biatch

A recent poker training video mentioned not constantly checking the cashier/account page when grinding and instead simply keeping the focus on making the right decisions.The theory being that this helps prevent tilt and short term thinking.

The bad news for me is that despite finding the "hide cashier" button on Party,I still check my balance after almost every game.Ideally, I'd like to be able to not check it for weeks at a time and hopefully be pleasantly surprised when I do.When I'm four tabling sng's I do see my buy-ins as money spent and this allows me to play unhindered by any thoughts of crashing out.It does still play on my mind a little that if I'm four tabling $33's I have around £90 in play.£90 would pay for my broadband,phone,mobile and cable tv package every month so it's not exactly a meaningless sum to me.

I wrote about being a bit more "baller" a few weeks ago and I think that helps when it comes to not worrying about money in play or having a losing night.I don't panic anymore if I do lose 10 buy-ins after a particularly bad session because although it hurts,I know my winning sessions have more than made up for those losses in the past.Don't get me wrong,despite pretty decent sngs stats my confidence still gets affected at times after a poor run of games.Am I playing my best game? What is my usual default move in this situation? Are the games suddenly too tough to beat? Will I ever win again? All those questions are hard to answer when running very badly.

When posting about winning say 4/6 sngs or winning 5 in a row my aim is not to brag or to try and convince anyone other than myself that if I'm on my game, any losing streak will come to an end and I'll keep making money overall.Having hit a variance wall of well over a 1000 games at Stars last year ,I'll use every trick in the book to try and keep myself playing well, because if my playing standards slip then I may never get back to winning ways no matter how the variance biatch is treating me.

Ok,back soon...

Britbloggerment on Full Tilt tonight!

Thanks to everyone who showed up to play in last nights Britblogger challenge game.Hammerheid and Alcanthang were the winners of the $120+9 tickets and best of luck to both in today's FTOPS event.The fun continues tonight with the Britbloggerment game starting at it's usual time ( 4pm est/9pm UK time) with the usual "donkament" password over on Full Tilt.My game ended last night when I slow played Aces ( called a pf raise from the button) and allowed my opponent to flop the nut straight.Niiiice!

I went on to have another swingy night at the $16's on Stars.I'm not going to review the last ten days or so at the tables.Imagine a poker hell where very few races are won and bad beats just pile up on each other.Multiply that nightmare by a large number and that's how I've run recently.

I was making $4-$5-ish per sng playing 2-3 tables and I thought if I could make at least $2 per game,playing 6-12 tables then potentially I could play 60-100 per day and make a decent profit.I was happy to sacrifice the ego pleasing stuff like having a high roi/a wee shark next to my name on Sharkscope etc for more overall $$.It didn't work out that way!

As I mentioned I do feel that I ran horribly and have never seen anything like it in all my time playing sngs, but I'm honest enough to admit my auto-pilot 8-12 tabling game could probably be a lot better too.The best thing I did since my last post was to take a 3 day break from playing and I'll try and remember that lesson during future downswings.

Of course being a poker degen, although I didn't play, I watched training vids and ( although I don't usually rail games)spent some time watching "Imcastleman" destroy the $16 games.I've played with some excellent ( and some poor!)regulars at the $16's, but Imcastleman is on another planet when it comes to low level turbos and I'd highly recommend searching for him on Stars one night to see how a complete sicko goes about his work!

The good news for me is that last nights swings finally went in my favour and I've managed to claw back my sng losses on Stars for the month by a few $$.I don't recall the last time Sharkscope said I was "Super hot"!! Seems like many many games ago that's for sure!

I do need to quit playing Super turbs on Full Tilt though.My FT roll would be completey down the swanny if it hadn't been for a couple of profitable cash sessions earlier in the month.My FT roll is not big enough to handle the variance these $7.50 and $14.50 ,300 chip super donk fests dish out!

Thanks to a post over at Poker Pains I realised that my $13.5k Bankroll is actually worth a good bit more than it was in £ thanks to the Dollar gaining strength! That consoled me slightly as I watched yet another premium hand go up the spout at Stars recently!

Ok,time to take Nacho out before it rains again.Thanks for reading...