The LEPO

Before I start, let me put my hand up and admit I've got the “I-only-blog-when-I'm winning” syndrome. November and December were the two toughest months I have had in my short time of playing poker. I was doubting my ability and desire to play the game. As I said I had previously played very little poker and was on a sabbatical, hence the lack of blog updates.

But after spending Christmas at home, playing happy families was just too much for me to handle so I spontaneously decided to play the LEPO to keep me occupied and to also keep boredom at bay. Paying €200 to play in a tournament would not be something I would do often, but since it was Christmas I wrote the money off as a Christmas present to myself. It was a careless attitude really, but thankfully on this occasion I reaped the dividends of my stupidity by coming 5^th out of 139 players, bringing home €1,750.

I'm not going to start rambling on about particular hands that cropped up during the tournament because that would be boring. My starting table was okay. I say okay because the players weren't great but there were 2 guys who knew what they were doing. I was particularly getting raped on the big blind by this bloke, TJ, who I had played once in Fitzpatricks. (I had played like a donkey that night). So this led to a bit of a battle which led to a big clash later in the tournament when I doubled up against him. I was relieved he got busted later cos if he had made it to the final table, I would imagine he would have been a headache to play with his constant aggression.

But anyways there was this lady playing and she had her daughter in tow. It turned out she (the daughter) was learning sign language, cue me thinking like a typically red-blooded male, that I might sweeten her up and follow it up if we crossed paths later in the bar. She was well fit, especially on day 2 when she was wearing a killer of a black dress. It was hard to concentrate on the poker when some stunner keeps asking you to show her the signs for random stuff. But of course, she had to have a boyfriend who happened to be dealing. So I kind of calmed down after that, but nonetheless it was hard not to keep my eyes off her especially on day 2 when she was in that dress.

Anyways poker-I thought the standard in general was poor. Ended day 1 on 75k when the average was 50k. Day 2 went okay too, my stack was wildly swinging up and down. Reached the final table and enjoyed the fuss made, with the table being held on a “stage” and being cordoned off and Mad Marty's commentary even if I couldn't understand it most of the time! I looked around at the faces at my table and there were two guys from my starting table. One was french and terrible. He also had the most ridiculous act every time he went all in, I was embarrassed for him every time he did it. The other player was Rob who I had played for the majority of the tournament and was glad to have position on him as I respected his game.

I put myself on tilt during the final table cos I felt I had played one hand badly. But I had my biggest fans (lol) to thank for telling me to calm down. Thanks susie and jules!! Got myself back on track when I doubled up against Rob but contributed to my own downfall in a rush of blood to the head, which saw me finally out in 5^th place.

Leaving the hotel, I was tilted because of the way I had fucked up my exit hand and I was gutted because I knew I could have won more. I've managed to calm down now but I can't help but feel envious of Rob and the other guy who chopped for 7k each. Fair play to them both.

Despite the poor turnout of 139 runners, I definitely would want to play this tournament again next year, the structure was fantastic. And the reg fee of 10% was fantastic as well, especially when it was held in a hotel which would usually see a 15% or 20% reg fee. So I think the organisers ran the show very well.

Enough waffling for me now, my gut instinct tells me it's time to stop going on. After making the wrong fold, I'm never going to ignore my instinct from now on!

See you at the tables and I'd like to wish you a happy new year!

Swearing off cash games...

Not got much to say, poker has been deliberately put on the back burner while I figured out where I wanted to go. Decided to stick to tournaments only, it feels playing cash is having a detrimental effect to my game-whilst I feel I've improved my aggression in some spots, I've developed a robotic style playing cash. So that's one of my new year resolutions, play tournaments only and improve at them.

As I post, I'm just getting ready for Day 2 of the Leprechaun Open. I'm feeling a bit rusty, this being the only poker I've played (apart from drunken poker with my mates) for a long long time and at times I felt that I failed to recognise particular spots where a steal would have gone through. More live poker is needed to address that. But anyways, I've a moderately healthy stack of 75k, with 50k being the average. You can follow updates on boards, a new thread should be created somewhere here.

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“Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.” ~Edward Albee

Who said poker was a beautiful game?

Right I haven't blogged in good while so since I'm in work, I suppose I might as well update this page with tales of sorry performances as of late. I hope by blogging about it, I'll banish them to the month of November and start December afresh. It's nearing the end of the month so I'll give a quick summary of how it went.

Online has been really pathetic. I'm not even going to blame the amount of sick beats and bad play that I have had to endure. The truth behind my lame performances this month is because of the attitude I developed. I have literally become independent on poker tracker and my cash game has suffered as a result of playing like a robot. I've stopped taking notes. I don't try to make any improvement. I've become lazy and never get around to reading poker theory and 2+2. I've slacked off big time and my bankroll has taken a massive whopping because of that. Last weekend I happened to come across an article written by a player who posts on boards. Reading it, I found myself guilty of what he had warned against, relying on stats. Afterwards I decided to take a break from playing cash and hopefully it'll serve to refresh my attitude and make me focused when I get back to playing them cos right now, I'm only gonna bust my roll if I continue playing cash games within my current frame of mind.

My tournament game is okay I think, online. I've only played a very small handful, probably around 7 cos I can't be arsed to play tournaments most of the time. But whenever I'm in the rare humour to play an online tournament, I like the MTT SnG on stars because the seats fill up so fast and the tournaments start pretty much instantly. I've either cashed or won in 5 of them and got knocked out really early in the other two. Last night I was dicking about on GJP and won a ticket for the grand final satellite into the European Deepstack. But if I'm not in the mood to play when it comes around, I might as well not bother cos I'm not gonna do well if I'm not focused.

I haven't played that much live. Only played deaf tournaments so far this month. My form reads like this

Played 5, Won 1, Lost 4

Two of these tournaments were took place in Stockholm, which was a beautiful city. Our hostel was top class, it was pratically a hotel! Defintely worth the money we paid. The night-life was okay but I think that was because we went to the wrong areas where it was too posh for us.

The first one was a €100+10 tournament in a private poker club on Friday night but in stereotypical fashion, us Irish visitors stood out like sore thumbs among our Scandinavian peers as we were already drunk when we got there. Rob lasted longest, coming 3rd out of 40-something players as we drunkenly railed him. The old guy with the tattoos was a great source of amusement on my starting table, he was so bad. Christer Markvelle went all in on a KQ74Q board and this guy made the call as if he had a monster hand and triumphantly tossed over absoulte shite J8 and duly gifted Christer the glut of his 10k starting stack. I couldn't hold it in, and had to stand up and turn away to laugh cos that's how funny it was.

The second tournmanet was a €50+10 tournament in casino cosmopol the next day. It attracted 116 players, of whom the majority were just poor. When the field had narrowed to 30 players or so, I was the chip leader of the tournament and really fancied my chances of making serious cash. Until a short stack went all in against my pre flop raise with 5h6h to my AJo, and spiked a 5 on the river. I just went on tilt and cursed the poker gods, and from there on it was a slippery slope till I busted in 25^th place or so. After playing in Gothenburg and Stockholm, there's three things I don't like about Cosmopol.

1- Their starting stack of 3k

2- Their steep blind structure

3-The 20% registration fee

While I think it's great that the Swedish poker societies can attract 100+ players to their tournaments, I don't think there's any value in Cosmopol's tournaments so in future I'm just gonna stick to playing poker in the Swedish Deaf clubs on Friday night cos it's better value for money. I'm still gonna go to Gothenburg in May but am only gonna play PTIG tournaments, not Cosmopol's.

All in all, if it isn't already obvious from the tone of this post, I'm feeling really fed up of poker. It's annoying the hell out of me that I cant take a proper break from the game altogether cos I invariably end up playing it when I'm bored at home in evenings and have nothing else to do. But what buggers me most of all, is unless I TRY to constantly improve, I'm not going to get out of this rut and I don't even know if I have the desire to do that.

Poker. What a sick game.

My first royal flush!!

Having a horrid time of late but just ran into this hand about 5 mins ago and had to post it up here!!

Green Joker Poker Manilla 0.25/0.50, hand converted by the iPoker Converter at Talking-Poker
Visit Hand HQ to purchase hand histories from a range of sites, game types and levels.

saw flop | saw showdown

Button ($171.87)
SB ($9.88)
BB BB ($51.60)
UTG Hero ($41.50)
UTG+1 UTG+1 ($39.99)
CO ($78.78)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with K A
Hero raises to 2, UTG+1 calls 2, 3 folds, BB calls 1.50.

Flop (6.25) J K Q
BB checks, Hero bets 3.12, 1 fold, BB calls 3.12.

Turn (12.49) T
BB checks, Hero checks.

River (12.49) 6
BB bets 7, Hero raises to 33.49, BB moves all-in for 39.48, Hero moves all-in for 2.89

BB shows 6 8
Hero shows K A

Hero wins 95.35 with Straight (Diamonds) with Ace high

A good old ramble...

Online Poker - Making the adjustment to 6-max 50NL

As of my last post, I have dropped from 100NL 8-max to 50NL and exclusively played 6-max online and have developed a style that is shaping to be boarding on the line of LAG/self-destructive. I have tried to work on reducing my passiveness pre-flop and my positional play, I think so far these aspects are certainly getting better but in I'm starting to get a bit risqué with the aggressiveness so I'm going to have to work on my reducing V$IP and using the the aggressiveness more selectively. Nonetheless it's far far too early, as I’ve played less than 1k of hands so it’ll take a bigger sample of my stats to analyse the weaknesses in my 6-max game

International Poker Open 17-19th October

Having slept for way too long, I woke up on the Saturday to realise it was almost 1pm and with the tournament due to kick off at 2pm. I rushed out of the house without any food but managed to arrive at the Regency hotel just a couple of minutes before the cards went up on the air. There were a few faces I recognised out of the 650 odd people that were playing Day 1b, but there were no familiar faces at my table.

The standard of play at my table was passive so I quickly got stuck in with the raises to accumulate chips as early as possible. The only player I felt that was capable of playing back at me was Martin, who I think was the only Irish person at my table as the French came over to Dublin in their droves. Fortunately for me, I had immediate position on him, which was a massive advantage. I liked one hand, which he set up a trap in which I dodged only because of something he had said beforehand. I had raised from all spots in position whenever it was limped around to me. Martin had previously limped several times into me only to get raised. He mutters something about the “others waiting for me” or something like that. So a few hands later, I'm on the button, blinds are 50-100 and I get dealt A10suited. Two people limp into the pot and Martin limps in from CO. I would have raised since I was raising with ATC in position but Martin limping in from that position after that comment I found his limp odd so I folded. As it turned out he flopped a set of nines but got no callers to his bet. Nothing very special about that hand I'm sure you'll agree, it was this hand and the way he played that made me rate him because he was the only one that was really observant and conscious of image. As it turned out I had 19k going into the first break when the average was about 11k. But I lost half of it after I had been dealt 99. EP raises 650, folded around to me in CO+1 I re-raised to 1,800 with 99. EP calls. Flop comes down J67. He checks and I pushed and he snap-called with KJ offsuit. We're both retarded here I think. Pre-flop him calling off 20% of his stack with KJo out of position, post flop I'm retarded for pushing with 99 when I think I should have just bet a wee bit over half the pot and get away from it when he calls or pushes. A couple of levels later, I get dealt 87d and a woman who has just been moved to our table makes it 1,000 to go from EP. I call from CO+1, as does the button and the BB. Pot is now worth 4k and I've only 8k behind. Flop comes down Jd9d4h. The woman bets out 4k and with a straight flush draw, I push and the rest fold and she calls with AA. I miss my 12 outs on the turn and river to see an end to my brief run in the International Poker Open.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tournament. My only gripe that the temperatures kept fluctuating to make me nauseous as the room was really hot but my table was by the door to the smoking area so a draught of coldness would sweep by every time someone went out for a smoke. But nonetheless, I thought that Pokerireland.ie had the tournament very well set up and it was great value with 20k added to the prizepool by the Boylepoker the sponsors. I'll probably play again next year barring unforeseen circumstances!

IDP deepstack weekend

Friday

After several months of planning and promoting our weekend, our deepstack weekend got underway on Friday evening. We had bought three tables but word was that there would be a good number of new Irish players turning up at the Deaf club so we ordered two more tables in desperation on the Friday morning and the website owner was able to deliver them by the evening before the poker night! Just as well as 5 tables proved to be not enough because we had to set up an extra two more as the Swedes, Finnish, British and of course the Irish arrived throughout the night. The games on offer were Sit & Go's that varied from €10 to €30. The IDP team didn't play in any of them as we were all very busy but as the night went on and things quietened down, we temporarily relived ourselves of our duties every now and again to indulge in Heads Up games. I only played the one game against Gerry Grehan for €40 and took it down within 5 mins when my JJ held up against his 55. I can't really recollect everything as it was busy for us all, but at the end of the night I felt extremely satisfied and pleased with how the night went without any hitches. It was a defining moment for the IDP team as we all worked in tandem and I felt that they were superb. After the poker, we all went to the pub afterwards and just got drunk in Quinn's pub! I just can't get enough of their cold bottles of Stella Artois!

Saturday

The following morning, with a hangover in tow I got out of bed and got the bus to meet the Swedes at their hotel only to arrive to find that they had already left to go to the Fitz. I get there to see a deaf cash game going so I sit down and make €90 before we all had to go upstairs to play the tournament. At my table I arrive to find that to my left was Niklas Wanjura and to my right was David Johnsson, both of whom I have played before in Gothenburg. (Niklas was at my first table and I later joined him at the final table with David). So I was sandwiched between two good players and the fact Niklas had immediate position on me was far from ideal.

Play began and it was as passive as I expected it to be, for Deaf people love to call and see the flop so I went into aggressive mode to try and get as many chips as quickly as possible to be absorb any sick beats that I thought I would receive at the later stages. Little did I know I wouldn't get remotely as far as I thought I would. David Johnsson made an early exit when he pushed with AJ on a Jxx board but Magnus had JJ for a set. So I felt a bit more comfortable with David gone but still had to contend with Niklas who counter-acted my raises successfully whenever he did. To cut a long story short, I got up to 13.5k before going down to 6k on a stone-cold bluff against a Swede holding a full house. Then I get back up to 13.5k again by being aggressive in position. Then during the 100/200 level (I think), I find AJ offsuit and make a raise of 875 and get called by Larry White in the SB. Flop comes out KQx and he check-calls my 1,200 bet. Turn is another X, and again he checks-calls my 2,450 bet. River is another blank and Larry again checks. I can't check here and give up the pot so I look at Larry's stack and he has only 5 or 6k behind so I bet out 4k. He calls and shows 44 to win a big pot. I regrettably ask him angrily “44?!” and go on tilt. About 5 minutes later with 7k behind, I find KJ and make the standard raise from MP. I get re-raised by Magnus who has proved very solid and has impressed with his play. I very reluctantly call his raise, basically blindly hoping there was a K or J on the flop, which was stupid now that I come to think of it. I miss the flop and I check and he bets out 2k. I really hate this spot I've gotten myself into. I go all in after thinking about it quickly and after a couple of seconds he calls, correctly putting me on picture cards. He has 88 so I’ve still got live cards, however the 8 on the turn seals my fate and I'm out.


At the time I was pissed off with the 44 hand, for it really put me on tilt and I never got over it, but now as I'm typing this I think I played the hand badly too. As impossible as it was to put a player like Larry on a hand, he could have had a K or Q so I can't go criticising his play before criticising mine. It was reckless and against a calling station, I should have slowed down on the turn and river instead of firing bets at every street. So I need to take a good long hard look at myself and stop going into cash-mode during tournaments.

Anyway Henry McDougall went on to take the tournament down, winning €1,300 which was a fantastic win for him as he had won his deepstack ticket in our private tournament when I gave away the ticket that I had won in our freeroll. On the other hand, the first person to exit the tournament, Stefan Weitmann went downstairs to the blackjack tables and played €1/2 PL and left the casino with a €1,500 profit so it goes to show that contrary to popular thinking amongst the deaf community, an early tournament exit doesn't necessarily make one a bad poker player,

My next live tournament will be in Stockholm. I'm really looking forward to the weekend away and catching up with the Swedes but the tournament will be as tough as it was in Gothenburg, not because of the standard of players but because of the blind structure and starting stack. So in order to do well, I need a lot of luck just like I had in Gothenburg but if I must get knocked out, I pray that it will be early and not late so that I can perform like Stefan Weitmann at the cash tables and make a nice profit!

What goes up, must go down

I'm bored at work so I'd just thought I'd update my blog.. At least I've something to do.. Such is the life of a civil servant!

Since my last post, I have practically lost almost all my profits from playing 100nl 8-max. Of all the leaks I have, tilt is the biggest I think. My biggest and last losing session was when I lost $350 in like the space of 45 minutes. I was playing three tables and I had AA cracked twice in the space of 5 minutes after getting it all in pre-flop, AK no good against Queens and the worse of all, even with steam coming out of my ears, I carried on at one table where I was down to $50 but got it up to $175 with a hyper-aggression mode (cos I was on tilt)... I had everyone covered except for one passive player who kept making these unbelievable suck-outs on everyone with shit like A-9, KJ... Anyway it's folded around to me in the SB and I've got 33. I raise to $3.50, wanting to steal his big blind.. He re-raises to $20, which is a really huge raise. I either was going to re-raise or fold cos I don't want to call. I thought about his re-raise, he seen me play aggro and thought he'd play back at me. The size of his raise looked like he wanted me to go away so I put him on A-J or some stupid hand cos of the way he had been playing at the table and his stats (54/16) so I quickly took the orthodoxy (I dunno if thats actually a word!) decision to go all-in in my tilted wisdom... He dwells so I'm starting to think my read is right. He leaves it till the very very very last possible second and then calls. With fucking Aces. Slow-rolling prick. The board doesn't help and I'm just reeling from the worse losing night I've had playing online. He taunts me in the chatbox and I rise to the bait and proceed to bombard the chatbox with abuse to vent my frustration before slamming my laptop shut and it takes all my willpower to stop myself from hurling it against the wall.

And I haven't played 100nl since. Lol! That night badly affected my bankroll. Of course as I write about the hand, I look back on it and I think what an idiot I was, but at the time the table dynamics and emotions clouded my judgement.

But anyway I've dropped to playing 50nl. I've decided to try and adjust to 6-max which was something I have wanted to do anyway. I haven't gotten that many hands in yet though but so far the sessions have been okay. I definitely don't feel out of my depth there so I hope to be back playing 100nl when my bankroll has been recovered.

I cant put up a graph cos I'm blogging from work which is just as well cos I'd be too embarrassed! =)

Anyway I played live the other weekend for the 1st time since CHL closed down. It was a €55 DC in Silks Casino where Luke is now managing the poker floor. With 1k guaranteed, there was an overlay of €300 as there were 14 players. I had a bit of difficulty re-adjusting to live play after having played almost exclusively online since CHL closed. I wasn't as conscious of stack and pot sizes as I once used to be as I had gotten into the bad habit of just glancing at my opponents balance and pot size online. I didn't play very well and busted out in 8th place or so. I'm not so sure about Silks, I have to go there again before I settle on my initial judgement. I'll say this though, I don't like the tables. Actually I don't like any tables where they have accumulated layer of layer of cloth on top of each other over the years to the point where the table is too soft and you can't stack your chips cos then they will just wobble.

Anyway I'm playing in the IPO tomorrow. Paid the buy in of €150 to play. I wasn't going to play in it after getting so close to winning a satellite ticket into it but changed my mind cos it'll be a shame to miss out on playing in the biggest tournament in Europe with 1,300 people playing! I'm slightly concerned about re-adjusting to live play but hopefully I'll run good cos luck will play a big part if anyone is going to cash from a field that big.

The following weekend is the IDP weekend. The main event is the deepstack tournament on Saturday so I really am looking forward to it. 10K stack for €70 game. Food and drink inclusive of €7 reg. 30 min blinds. I really think this has the best structure and value of all the deaf tournaments in Europe. The only thing is that the standard of play will be quite crap cos there are so many players that have just learnt how to play. But then again, I should be happy about that cos I reckon I have an edge over them.

I'll be back after the deepstack weekend to write about it, so until then good luck!