Wot a tosser
December 15, 2007
Get up to $300 in the Bankroll Challenge and promptly lose 10% of it. Played a $10 18-man SnG and bust on the bubble when A-A cracked by J-7 (lol donkaments), then lose cash stack with A-A beaten by K-K (lol badluckaments).
But, as Sid Vicious may have said, Never mind the b*llocks!
Rebuild time again, but the next level up in cash will be very soon and then I can get motoring a bit more.
But now I’m off to see the mighty Ipswich against fashionable Scunthorpe. Home record this season is unbeaten, with something like 9 wins and one draw. Our away record is won none! WTF is all that about?
Starting roll: $3.
Current roll: $265.
Back in health, thanks to a lunatic
December 10, 2007
Well my brief transformation into a fish fortunately lasted no more than 24 hours, and I got my way back up to $200 and then a bit more, finishing the weekend on $227. Not bad from a $3 starting roll last month, but there’s a long, long way to go.
I had two winning sessions, both still four-tabling 5c/10c with max $10 sit-down. One was longer and steady, the second was just an hour or so where I hit just about everything. It’s rigged, I tell ya.
Far from being a long grind, the first session was great fun, thanks to a complete head case on one of the tables. He had £25 or so when I sat down, and went on a mad, aggressive raise and all-in fest. He got lucky and then wound one or two players up sufficiently to get them to part with all their cash. Before long he had lucked his way to $65. Not bad for a $10 buy-in!
But, some of us at the six-seat table were circling. I noticed a couple more sat down who I had played with before and were quite decent. We all had one thing on our mind - the lunatic’s stack.
The great thing was he fancied himself and his stack so much that he started more or less giving a running commentary on the game. You know the sort of thing: “Darn, nice hand. I had the king and was looking for” blah, blah. Or: “I had K-10, well played.” It doesn’t take much of a genius to work out after a short while how he’s playing.
And within 30 minutes, three of us took his entire stack.
He was left with big, fat nothing. A tremendous fall from grace, and I had the pleasure of taking his last $11 when he pushed all in with the straight, only for me to river the flush (I had a straight draw, too). I actually typed in ‘I hope you don’t have Q-8′ as I called! I enjoyed that one, but he went mental - from the cheeky, cheery chat-box know-all to rude, woe-is-me, you-are-all-terrible-players saddo.
Hahahaha, what fun. Anyway, I hope to continue this decent Bankroll Challenge rise to $400 then I’ll move up a level.
As I’ve said before, starting off with $3 and playing the micros with no more than 5% of total roll might seem an odd thing for me to do, but now I have the luxury of not having to withdraw profit (job!), it is becoming a fantastic exercise in poker discipline.
Unless, of course, I turn into a fish again!
I’m not sure if I’ll be playing again for a day or so, but if I do I’ll be looking for my lunatic friend again.
New Bankroll: £227
Starting roll: $3.
Presenting the fish of the day: ME
December 7, 2007
Having come over all a quiver with excitement after running through $200 in the $3 Bankroll Challenge, I last night got stacked not once, not twice, but three times. Ouch!
Previously I’ve been the one enjoying a fish-feeding frenzy, but last night I inexplicably grew my own gills and fins and gave my cash away faster than a Northern Rock finance director.
Looking back I played the session across four tables far too loosely, which is not a great idea. And when I did hit big time I guess I slowed down too much in the hope of trapping others into a big pot. Unfortunately this twice meant my flopped nuts were overtaken on the turn or river (both full houses, both trumped by higher full houses).
Had I played the flop stronger then I could have escaped, but having said that this trappy style is exactly the sort of play that has grown my stack so nicely up to now. I guess I’ll put last night down to a nasty case of variance!
One nice thing I did was to get away from my ace-high flush on a paired board, folding correctly to the shown rivered full house (now he was a fish!). Small consolation, though.
So, I’m back down to $170. I’ve the got the weekend ahead to get through $200 again, and then I must press on to $400, where I’ve promised myself the luxury of the 10c/25c tables.
Oh, the joy!
Current roll: $173
Starting roll: $3
Cracked $200 in bankroll challenge
December 5, 2007
Phew, managed to keep the Bankroll Challenge on track and have now turned the starting $3 into $204.
I’m still languishing on the 5c/10c tables - a condition of the challenge is you must not play with more than 5% of the roll - and I guess I’ll have to stick at these until probably $400.
Then I’ll move up to 10c/25c and sit down with $20 a pop, probably still four-tabling, and sit down with full $25 once I hit $500.
The level I’m playing now is a bit of a cruise, to be honest, but still fun watching some of the plays. I think I’m running at about 13 BB/100 hands at the mo - I’ve got a few thousand hands at this level in my Poker Office on my home PC, but not on my laptop where I’ve also played a lot for this challenge.
Bankroll Challenge: Slaughtering Fish
December 1, 2007
I’m getting well into the Bankroll Challenge. Forget playing for higher stakes, violent swings, tilt etc, this is the future of poker!
Having started with $3 last month, I’m now up to $142 on the micro stakes. The plan is never to sit at a cash table with more than 5% of the bankroll - but when you start these things you have to be flexible.
At $3 I played the 2c/5c tables, now I’m up to the dizzy heights of 5c/10c! I’m being a bit naughty because I’m sitting down at four six-handed tables at a time with the full $10 buy-in on each, but it seems to be working at the mo. The standard of some of the play down here is woeful, to say the least. The number of fish is of biblical-miracle proportions!
But, and it’s a big but, you have to play pretty much ABC poker - no point in fancy moves or bluffs, someone will call you down with bottom pair!
The plan is to stick with 5c/10c until I get to $400 roll, then I’ll move up to 10c/25c.
We’re doing something similar over on the PartyPoker blog, although we get people there to start with $25 so they can hit the ground running. James “HullJimi” Greenwood is our current star bankroll challenger, so wish him luck.
Anyone else doing/done a challenge?
EDIT: After a decent session after writing this, I’m now up to $182. Many fishy types around today!
Searching for Ainsley Harriet’s Sausage
November 21, 2007
Sometimes, when I really have nothing better to do, I take a look at the search-engine key words that people put in Google or Yahoo when they were directed to this blog. More often than not it will be the obvious: Simon Young, Suffolk Punch, poker blog etc etc. But every now and then one pops up that makes me chuckle.
This morning, as I had a few moments spare, I decided to look at the analytics and note some of the more bizarre ones…
“best hooker bars las vegas” - There are hundreds of these ones coming in!
“ainsley harriet’s sausage” - OMG, what on earth is this one about?
“muppet call poker” - Why would someone be searching for this?
“mr. bond I expect you to die” - I must have blogged about James Bond?
“Norway blonde poker female player” - Hee hee, nominations please.
“does 4 9s beat royal flush” - Erm, nope.
“flying ok if I have a detached retina?” - Wouldn’t recommend it.
“guy massage in ipswich suffolk” - WTF?
“hairy guys blogspot” - See above.
“how often do bad beats occur on poker sites” - LOL, um, only if you are playing well.
“naked pole dancer pics” - That’s more like it.
“scandi muppet” - This made me LOL. His search must have brought up trillions of results.
“hairy gymnast” - YEAH! Readers of this blog will know exactly what this is about.
There are about 3,000 of these key words that have come on to my blog. When I get time I’ll find some more!
I’ve increased my bankroll 33 times over to, er, $100.
November 19, 2007
Over on the PartyPoker Blog, we’ve introduced a new feature called the PartyPoker Bankroll Challenge. It’s a take on Chris Ferguson’s epic roll heroics, except in our case we give our volunteer $25 and see how far they take it (using sensible bankroll management skills, of course).
Our first have-a-go-hero increased his roll to $33 in week one - then went busto in week two! Our second player is under way and will report back later this week.
Obviously I can’t play on PartyPoker’s software (as I work there!), so I began a little challenge of my own over on PokerStars. I decided to start there with a piddly $3 to see where I could take it, and I’m happy to say that after a few weeks I’m up to near enough $100. I’m pretty pleased with that, as I’m not getting much time to play and, needless to say, this is all on the micro limit tables.
Obviously starting with just $3 you have to forget standard bankroll rules of sitting with no more than 5% of your stack (you can’t sit down with 15 cents on the $0.02/$0.04 tables and expect to build!).
I’ve now moved up to the $0.05/$0.10 NL level (6-handed) and am now sitting with the max $10 starting stack when I play. OK, this is still twice too much for the 5% rule, but to be honest I think I can cope with that “risk” until I build up the roll to $200!
Although it is sort of frustrating to be playing for such small stakes, I am finding the whole exercise useful. It’s like going back to poker basics, really. You can’t run so many bluffs or be “creative” at these levels because most of the time you will get called down anyway. So it’s a question of waiting for a decent hand and playing it hard, only letting up if it is obvious another player really has hit big. Occasionally there are setbacks when an ‘ickle fishy catches his two outer on the river!
Needless to say players will, by and large, get better as I move up the levels, but the benefit for me will be adapting to this each time. At the end of the exercise, I should be better equipped at adapting to poker circumstances.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see when the game starts to get really hard. My discipline before was so bad that I knew I was a winner at some levels and a loser in others, but never really had a grasp of how much and where the “line in the sand” was. I also dotted around cash limit, then no limit, then STT and MTT without really ever concentrating on one aspect of my game.
As I no longer play poker for part of my income I can afford to take my time in this particular challenge, which is nice!
Have you tried something similar? I’d love to know how you got on.
Thanks for dropping by.