Quick Update

This is just a real quicky before I get chucked off the computer I'm using. I'm in the Borgata Buisness Centre and they close in 10 minutes.

I've now been in the US for about 10 days and have been having a great time, although Miss Pink is being seriously missed - this is the longest we;ve ever spend apart, sob!

The trip has been fantastic. Overall our gigs went escellently and I've got reports from Foxwoods and a club I went to in NYC all to come.

Right now I'm down in Atlantic City. I played at the Borgata last night and despite a couple of costly mistakes I still managed to leave up. I'm staying at a grotty motel near the Boardwalk but it serves it's perpose. With any luck I'll be meeting up with a fellow ITHer tomorrow night and then Al, FTrain, Pauly and Kevin at other points over the weekend.

I'm getting kicked out of here. Time for some buffet, me thinks.

And They're Off

[This may well be the last post for a bit since we're heading to the airport in an hour, but I'll try and update a as we go but whatever happens there'll be pleanty to read when I get back!]

Yesterday was an early start. We got up at 7am and packed Miss Pink off to the Airport. She's gone to Cyprus with the family for a week in order to while away some of the time that I'min the states as well as delivering some wedding invites.

It's now 9:30 the following morning. I haven't slept yet, we leave for the airport in a couple of hours, and I did a third of my bankroll at the Gutshot last night.

Bummer.

I arrived in the afrternoon just in time for a £33 freezout but slipped slowly into insignificance and busted out when I put in my l;ast two big blinds with JTo. I lost another £30 or so in a 50p/£1 PL game with a max buy-in of £50 shortly after.

In the evening I played in the 'freeroll' satalite for the monthly £250 tourney. It's not really a freeroll since you only start with 500 chips, rebuys are 1000 (£15), and top-ups are 2000 (£15). I soon got rid of my starting 500, grabbed myself a glass of wine and waited for some sort of cash game to get up and running.

Eventually I sat down at a very juicy 25p/50p PL self-delt game, with a number of first timers. Although there was potential for making some money, the pace of the game was pretty slow and I jumped at the opportunity of having a proper dealer when the £1-£2 game started up. This is a game above my bankroll, although it shouldn't have been above my ability and there was the definately possibility of reeling in some 'live-uns'. However, I was the one playing like a fish and most of the £130 I sat down within a couple of hours:

I raised a £5 straddle after one limper to £20 in mid-position with JJ. The small blind (a good, scarry player) thought briefly and flat called. The straddler folded and the limper called. The flop came Axx it was checked to me. I bet £40 into the £60 pot and the Small Blind check raised. I folded faster than Ozumo Aziaki, World Champion of Origami 1999,2000, 2002, 2003 and 2004. I was not ammused by my actions. I mean if the small blind wasn't already beating me pre-flop (very possible)then it was almost certain that one of them had an Ace. I should have put approximately nothing into that pot. The other biggish looser for me came when I overplayed 99 on the flop after raising preflop and I suddenly found myself with no chips.

I stupidly rebought for another £200, but made a dertermined effort to play well. I did play well and managed to escape from a couple of good but second-best hands. I still managed to find myself down to £130, but I eventually managed to double up when I finally hit a set against someone's top-pair, top-kicker. That put me only £150 down for the night and I decided to play till the blinds and cut my losses.

Oh how fatefull that would turn out to be, fro what do I find but two red Kings under-the-gun only to have them run smack up against AA. That left me with £50, which was a pretty insignificant stack by that stage, but again before I could decide to cut my losses, I find myself all-in with AK against AA. I'd love to say the flop came QJT, but it didn't.

Blech.

My only mistake is that I sat down at a table to big for my bankroll and therefore played scarred for the first couple of hours. Once I managed to find my feet, I got a little unlucky and, BOOM. All of a sudden I've posted another big loosing session at The Gutshot.

It's really not what I was looking for at all proir to hitting up Atlantic City. It's pretty much gonna limit me to playing $1-2 NL and $4-8 limit games. That's no bad thing, but it'll make it much harder to cover my expenses, nevermind begining the process of recooping some losses.

On the pus side, while writing this I've won $150 on Paradise, so it's not all bad!

Forgive my prattling. I haven't slept in over 24 hours.

America here we come!

The Final Countdown

I'm currently sitting in the lab that I did my research project in pouring over a final draft of my write-up. How I got here I really dont know. I'm reasonably happy with it - I'm basically just waiting for some other guy to read over it so I can make the last few changes and get the bugger turned in...


It's titled "The Characterisation of ORF4, a novel protein from the SARS Coronavirus". Sounds fun doesn't it! It doesn't really show anything interesting, but hopefully it should get me a few of the marks I'm desperately trying to accumulate this ear in order not to leave with a crappy degree class.

With any luck I'll get it bound and submitted by the end of the afternoon, therefore allowing me to go and drink copious quantities of Guinness in honour of St. Patrick.

It's odd how much of a party St. Patrick's day is becoming in England. Obviously there are a reasonable number of Irish folk over here, but it's generally an excuse for English Egits to get mullered and wear silly Guiness parafanalia. I have no Irish blood in me what-so-ever and yet I'll be going out and joining in with the festivities. St. George's day, on the other hand, passes with very little comotion and I couldn't even tell you when St. David's Day or St. Andrew's Day were.

The problem with showing any patriotism towards England is that you automatically find yourself associated with the likes of the British National Party or similar minded individuals. Ok so I am a big shaven haired soccer fan, but that's about where my right wing similarities end! If there's a big international soccer or rugby match I have no problem in feeling patriotic, but at any other time of the year if you see someone displaying the Union Jack you're more likely to assume that they're a rasist than a patriot. This is a shame. It would be nice to be able to celebrate being English in the same way that the Irish celebrate being Irish, the Scots celebrate being Scottish or the Welsh celebrate being Welsh, without worriying about felling like some kind of neo-nazi.

I was happy last night to find that despite cashing out my bankroll to take with me to the States, I'd left $50 in my Paradise account. I hadn't played any poker for over a week, and it felt good! Bring on Atlantic City.

This forthcoming trip to the US is going to be a lot of fun, but it'll be the longest time I've spent away from MissPink since we got together over 3 years ago. I went away skiing for a week only a couple of months into our relationship, but the longest we've been apart since then is two nights. This time I'm going away for two weeks and I'd imagine it'll be pretty tough. At least I'll have pleanty to keep me occupied: althought she's going to Cyprus for a week with her family, she'll be back at work for the last week which'll be a tad crap.

Final Call For Boarding At Gate Pink

Just a quickie beofre I dive back to my project write-up (3 days to go - aaaaaaarrrggggg).

As some of you may be aware I'm hopping over the pond next week on tour with my a capella group.

There are plan afoot for a blogger meet in Atlantic City. I'll be there from 31st March till 4th April. It looks as though Al's gonna make it down and possibly Pauly and Sean might make it too. So come drunk fishing with us.

I'll be in NYC from 28th till 31st March and there's an outside chance that I might make it to Foxwoods on 23rd.

Otherwise if you're in the following place at the right time then you should come and hear us sing (we're pretty good!):

22nd: Harvard
24th: Brown
25th: Yale
27th: Princeton
30th: Columbia

Right, I have to climb the final peak of this dissertaion. I'm mostly done, I've just got the hard bit left now where I have to draw some intelligent conclusions from negative results. Great.

Student Survey

I've just filled in a survey about online poker playing amongst students. It was a bit of an eye opener. If you're a student a playing online poker I'd recommend giving a few minutes to it.

I definately dont think that I have a 'gambling problem', although I'll conceed that playing poker had definately caused me some problems (mostly degree related). I found the fact that I answered yes to all of the following questions slightly concerning:

As your Online Poker playing progressed did you ever:

1. Become more and more preoccupied with reliving past gambling experiences, studying a gambling system, planning the next venture, or thinking of ways to get money? Yes but that's cruital to improving one's game. Although more worryingly I was less concered with money in general before I started playing poker.

2. Need to gamble with more and more money in order to achieve the desired level of excitement? Yes and no. But mostly yes. It's probably at the root of why I find it hard no to play within my bankroll having spend a reasonable ammount of time at $15/30.

3. Become restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop gambling?
Yes, but I always feel like that when I go into a library

4. Gamble as a way of escaping problems or intolerable feeling states? Yes, studying Biochemistry is an intolerable feeling state!

5. After losing money gambling, try another day to get even (chasing one's losses)? Othwise Know as TILT

6. Lie to family, employer or therapist to protect or conceal the extent of your involvement with gambling? I dont think my Mum knows and since telling the in-laws over Christmas we're definately keeping it under wraps

7. Jeopardise or lost a significant relationship, marriage, education, job or career because of gambling? Umm, see the description of this blog!

At least I answered no to these two:

8. Commit illegal acts such as forgery, fraud, or embezzlement, in order to finance gambling? No.

9. Have repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop gambling? No, I've just accepted the fac that poker is here to stay!

I've been meaning to re-evaluate my motivations for playing poker and my long term expectations, but I think that post will have to wait until after Easter. In the meantime this survey has given me some good food for thought.

Come Ramble With Me

Appologies in advance for the lack of structure in this post. I have a feeling that it might run away with itself.

First off, Happy 21st Birthday to The Little Pinkmeister. I was well stuck for a present idea. Then I had a brainwave...

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Give him a copy of Internet Texas Holdem by Matthew Hilger and open him an account on Party Poker using bonus code "FISHNOW" and he will catch his own fish.

I aslo wanted to chat a litle about the new tables and buy-in structures for Party's NL games. For all their PL and NL games they've changed the maximum buy-in from 50 big blinds to 100 big blinds bringing themselves in-line with virtually every other site out there. They've also added $3/6 and $5/10 NL and PL tables to their armary. Overall this mean that the biggest NL table is now $1000 buy-in compared to the $200 it was before.

Clearly this is a significant change. These new tables combined with the weath of fish floating around on Party with $,000s to burn will surely attract many mid/high-stakes NL players who previously played at other sites. There's an interesting discussion going on over at the ITH forum about the effect that this will have on the previously very lucrative $15/30 limit games. It's all a bit hypothetical as far as I'm concerned at the moment, since my bankroll is a long way off either $15/30 limit or $5/10 NL, but it's been making me think a bit (God forbid!).

I'm planning on spending the summer after I graduate playing seriously with a view, if things go well, to playing for a living for a year or so after that. I know that in order to make some real progress over the summer I'm going to have to focus my energies on one form of poker and I was leaning on the side of limit, since reaching $15/30 by the end of the summer is a possible goal and a level that once reached could provide a decent income. If Party's $15/30 tightens up conciderably then I might have to re-think that plan and concentrate on NL insted. I guess I'll see how things stand nearer the time.

I've contiuned to play a tad of poker this week, when taking breaks from project work. I've put my Full Tilt bonus on hold while I clear the most recent Party one. I've been playing $3/6 and am up a tasty 50BB after only two sessions. Party is SOOOOOOOOO soft!

The a cappella group that I'm in have a small set tonight as part of a charity gig done by the five big groups at the University here so I should really go and make sure I've got our pieces totally memorized before finally getting back to some project write up.