It has taken me almost a day's worth of playing two tables for a month to reach the mighty figure of 2k worth of hands. While lots of poker players are easily able to play 1k of hands in a single session, nonetheless I am kind of relieved and in some ways proud that I have been able to get my head around PokerTracker after frustrating myself with my illeratcy when it comes to computers and the like. I'm still in the learning process of using PT3, I've tried to use the tools available to the best of my ability. I'm enjoying it as I feel it is improving my cash game quite somewhat, after having to endure a long time having to play without any stats and getting beat at 20nl when I knew much to my frustration I was better than that. I felt trapped by my own inability to understand how to set up PT3 stats until I installed Holdem indicator and based the set-up of my PT3 stats on theirs. Once I got used to PT3, I added more stats and have never used Holdem Indicator since.
I didn't have a great month in August as I mentioned I had only just started using PT3 and it took some time to get used to. I know the profits shown is nothing special but it's not what I'm most pleased about. I'm more pleased with myself for getting used to PT3 more than anything. I don't really have any case for complaint anymore, gone are the days I complain that I'm on perma-tilt cos the players have edge over me simply cos they have stats and I don't. So if I'm losing, I no longer have anyone to look at but myself.
After the first 1k of hands played, I decided to import 250k worth of i-poker hand history 100nl full ring which I bought for $13. Althought they took like forever to import, they were invaluable! I had a lot more information on my opponents and was able to make decisions better based on their stats. After that, I enjoyed a wee upturn in my results in the second half of the 2k of hands played.
Like a mother showing off photos of her newborn baby, I've posted screen shots of my PT3 results.
I would have thought AA would be a winning hand, but out of every single hand I've been dealt, it's the biggest loser on my database. A few times I've gotten dogged and the other times I'm guilty of overplaying it and refusing to let go, so just looking at it now I'm gonna start playing it hard and aggro pre and post flop.It's bizarre looking at the player vs player summary and to see I've lost $2,608.81.
In euros thats €1,828.90 that I have played with and lost. It's a bit frightening to think I've played with so much money within a month. (It's a lot of money to me anyway) That's another good thing about PT3, if I was a losing player I wouldn't be so conscious of how much I have had put on the line and would probably carry on playing, depositing money here and there until I woke up one day and realised I had no money left in my bank account. The only thing is that it's offset by a profit of $3,205 (€2,249), so for now I'm not just yet on the poverty line.
I still haven't played live poker since Cool Hand Lukes closed down. (Actually I've played IDP tournaments but they're totally different) I miss it terribly. The people and the feel of the building made it a special place. I don't like the other places. Admittedly I no longer find any appeal in playing live cash as it's too slow and the rake is too high. But I miss playing the tournaments of which CHL had a great schedule that suited me right down to a Tee. I just hope Dublin city centre will be blessed with a place like CHL again in the near future.
That said, I've registered for the Boylesport International Poker Open which will take place 17-19 October. It should be good with 1,200 players expected to play. But funnily enough I'm more looking forward to the following weekend, when we shall be having our Deepstack tournament in the Fitzwilliam card club on the Saturday. This will easily get 80 runners, maybe 90 if we can get 10 more, I am very proud of this tournament for the numbers have exceeded our expectations and going by other deaf tournaments in Europe, I like to think that we are setting a bench-mark in terms of value, starting stack and registration fee.
On a related note, we had an online freeroll satellite last monday on our sponsors site, Betway. With $100 in the prizepool courtesy of Betway and two tickets to the deepstack event for the top 2 up for grabs, this tournament was password protected. However somewhere along the line, it was leaked to a large number of Latvians who registered. There were a 70 players in total registered for the freeroll, and at a guess I would say 50 of them were not eligible for the tickets which was really disappointing because the point of the whole tournament was to promote the Deepstack tournament. Anyways, it was crazy at the start cos players kept going All-In with trash, but these lunatics committed suicide anyway and got busted. I still had to contend with a vast majority of Lativans as I was determined earn a ticket outright to protect the intergity of Deaf poker. However it was not to be, as the odds were stacked against the three deaf players that reached the final table. Cathy (Forever Late) got blinded out and when she did finally log in, she didn't have enough chips to do anything meaningful. It was left to myself and Christer Markevell (chrism1974) from Sweden to represent the Deaf against the pesky Latvians. I was short stacked than him going into the final table, but had to play aggressively cos that's the best way to play really. Christer got knocked out in 7th place, I tried to finish in the top 2 but it wasn't to be when my JJ was no good against KK and I was out in third place. However, I emailed our Betway representative to complain about the Lativans and he said that the 2 tickets could be awarded to the highest place eligible finishers which meant myself and Christer earned ourselves a ticket. I was glad to give the good news to Christer because he was unhappy just like all of us.
Even though I knew I had nothing to feel guilty about, I still felt a bit bad so being the good samaritan I am, I decided to run my own private freeroll and give away my ticket to the winner. The tournament took place tonight and I exited early when I ran my jacks into Susan's Aces which was bitter sweet revenge after I had busted her the previous week. Henry McDougall (PocketAces81) later went on to take it down. This time the feedback from the players was positive as there were no gate-crashers so that was the most pleasing thing I took from the tournament as I like that everybody enjoyed themselves.
Right I've waffled on far too long so I'm just going to stop here. Best of luck at the tables and be good! ;-)
