Back in the Back Row

This morning saw me back in the lecture theatre for the first time in a seriously long while. It's got to be around May of last year that I last went to a lecture - wowsers.


It's not that I've been sciving a whole load, although I did have a certain penchant for missing the odd lecture, it's just that there have been very few lectures for my course since last May. Our exams were in June and the whole of last term was spent in the lab. Today was the first timetable lecture of this year: "Gene Therpay in Cystic Fibrosis" - quite interesting actually!

I'm now grabbing a quick hour on Party while I try and work off the most recent bonus (sign up using bonus code "fish now" before heading back downstairs for some "Antibody Engineering". Fun, fun, fun.

For those of you who dont come to me via other bloggers I thought I'd let you know of some other interesting things going down in the world of the poker blog:

AlCantHang is over at the Comerce Casino in LA this weekend. His DutchBoyd Style ebay auction requires checking out. 1% of him is mine!

Following Otis's gig blogging the Carribean Poker Adventure on the World Poker tour. He just been over in Denmark covering the Scandinavian Open as part of the European Poker Tour.

Otherwise take a random click at some of the delights on offer over to the right.

Nothing Much

I dont really have much to say, but I thought I'd post anyway so appologies if this is a rambling stream-of-conscienceness-type post.

I'm still yet to start any academic work since coming back to Oxford, which is somewhat concerning. I was intending to have a decent amount of my project written to show my supervisor when he came back from the Ukrane (I know, a funny place to choose as a holiday destination at the moment!). That was on Saturday. I now have a new target, which is to have a decent ammount done by the end of next week - that's is when lectures start again, and then to have a rough draft by the end of the following week. It's not going to happen unless I pull my finger out, fast!


The fact that I should be working while I'm playing poker is distracting me from my play. I'm really not playing well at all recently. For a start, I'm multitabling, but I'm also trying to do a host of other things at the same time. I spent a good part of yesterday organising The Gargoyles trip to East Coast over Easter, whilst simultaneuously playing two tables of $5/10 Holdem and one table of $10/20 O8B. Things progressed nicely with the tour organisation, but I dropped about 30BB on the holdem tables and another 10BB on the Hi/Low.

I think my limit play is pretty weak at the moment. I'm making far too many mistakes (calling down too much, not respecting turn raises, almost always betting out after a preflop riase no matter what the circumstances etc etc) and is really crippling me. It's time to go back to basics an re-read ITH. The problem I have at the moment is that I dont really have time to be playing poker let alone to be reading. Unfortunately my disciplin is doubley bad: I'm not disciplined enough not to play poker when I have work to do and I'm not disciplined enough to spend time improving my game rather than just getting more hours in. All in all, it's not good.

My bankroll has hovered at about the $2,000 since Christmas and it's been the few wins that I've had in MTTs that have prevented me from realising that my ring-game play is not up to scratch. I haven't been record keeping as I promised I would and I've only really been using Poker Tracker to analyse other players. I need to keep beter track of my earn rate etc. - it's time to get jiggy in Excel.

Well as boring as this post must have been for you to read, it's been pretty useful for me. At least I'm acknowledging to myself what's going wrong.

Time for something a little more interesting... but I think I'll save it for another post, because I doubt that you've made it this far!

Dealer's Choice Crazyness

For some reason the University Poker Society hadn't got it's arse in gear to organise a meeting for the first Sunday of term, which is a shame because I'm sure there are pleanty of fish who got chip sets for Christmas and are itching to play some cards. Instead a few of the more hardened players agreed to meet last night as we had been doing after term had finished when there were still some of us hanging around in Oxford.


There were only 6 of us and we started the evening playing 10p/20p NL holdem; most of us bought in for an initial £20. Within a couple of hours there was about £300 at the table and a couple of hours after that we were playing PL dealers cioce.

Things started relatively sensibly with simple games such as Omaha Hi/lo, Draw Dueces Wild and 3-Card Irish. It didn't take long to degrenerate into complete chaos. 6 and 8-Card Omaha Hi/Lo were among the favorites as was a newly invented version of 4-Card Irish: 4 cards are dealt to each player and there's a round of betting based on those. Then each player picks - at random - a card from the player on their right and there's another round of beting. Then the flop. After the flop betting each player discards two hole cards and the game continues as Holdem.

The last hand of the night was 10-Card Omaha Hi/Lo! That's right - each of us received 10 holde cards from which we had to pick two to make our best Hi hand and two to make our best low hand. It was bound to end in tears.

Thankfully no egit decided to raise preflop and I was pleasently surprised to see the flop of 8TJ (rainbow) since I held Q9 (and a few other cards!). I was first to act and raised the pot. The pot got reraised behind me and in a moment of complete stupidity I re-raised the pot. If I'd have thought for even half a second it would have been obvious that the other guy also had Q9. I had virtually no redraws. I had a K so I could imrpove my hand if an Ace came but other than that I had nothing. It would have been so easy for him to have two pair or a set as well as the straight. He called, the turn was a 5 and it completed the rainbow. I checked and he bet the pot. After a minuted or so of bitching and whining I decded to call. Even if he had some kind of two pair or set, I should still hope to split the pot most of the time and if an Ace came then I'd have a reasonable chance of scooping. The river was a beautful gleaming Ace.

But wait, I'd completely forgotten about the Low hand. SHIT! I did have a low hand but with only 26 it wasn't looking too good. He did indeed have a reasonable low hand (24) but - thank god - he only had Q9 for a lower straight that me. It turned out that he didn't have any draws to the full house, but if any low card other than and Ace had came on the ricer, I would have been quartered! Phew.

I got back my half of the £120 pot. Lesson learned.

The Bloggers' Game

This post is aimed at any poker bloggers who play in the $25NL game on Party. I'd be really interested in hooking up with you all on these tables, but is it invite only? If I can just turn up then what usernames do you all go by so I can search you out. Thanks

Bird Poo

Has it ever occurred to you wht bird poo is white when almost every other species' poo is of a darker hue? Well, I made a very interesting dicovery last night. That white mass falling from the sky is not bird poo.

It's Bird WEE!


Would you believe it! Apparently - and I haven't been able to find the exact mechanism by which this happens - due to the hight levels of ammonia in bird poo, it solidifies (to an extent) to create what we so gratefully receive on our car windshields, from time to time. Wow!

Not all that much of interest has been happening this week. I've been doing little (well, none actualy) work and playing lots of poker. I'm focusing my efforts on the $5/10 Bad Beat Jackpot tables at Party Poker. They have been very fishy, since the jackpot currently stands at a whopping $650,000. Consequently I have been 4-tabling to maximise the number of fish I encounter. I may stop doing this, however, as I've been making more mistakes than I would like (none would be good!) and have little profit to show for my efforts.

Two new books arrived in the post this morning, which might enable me to iron out some mistakes/maximsise my winnings. I have just been pourning over Miller's "Small Stakes Holdem" and Ciaffone's "Middle Limit Holdem" will soon follow.

I must dash since Ms Pink needs picking up from work, although I am getting out of swimming today since the a capella group that I'm in ha s a meeting. But before I go - if you haven't already done so - check out the banter going on about "The Hammer" on this poor fool's blog (Thanks to AlCantHang for showing me the way there).

Time For Some Studying

Term starrts again at the end of this week and it would be a really good thing if I actually did some of the write up for my research project rather than play poker all day long! Once terms starts and the lectures and tutorials kick in there's not going to be alot of time for writing this bugger up so it would be a good idea to start now!

On the other hand there are a load of poker books which I want to read which I may very well have to order now my student loan has come in!


Just a quick updatre on my Party Poker Million Quest: I played in the last of the weekend's batch of semi-finals and again I got bumped fairly early on. I hit some big hands early on (AA twice and two sets) but got paid very little for them. I then lost a decent chunk when I raised with AK missed the flop, bet it anyway and then had to fold to a raise - I need to adjust the way I play AK, especially in tournaments. The table then went crazy. One guy had a VPIP% of 60 and a PFR% of 25%. He was bully the hell out of people, getting quite lucky and was amassing huge ammount of chips, but could I hit anything like a hand? You bet I couldn't!

The blinds increased and my stack dwindled, I hung on by stealing the blinds from time to time, but no sign of a double through. Eventually impatience and frustration got the better of me. Mr. Raise-a-lot made it 700 on my big blind of 300. I had about 1500 left (enough for a couple of rounds of waiting for a better opportunity) but I decided to push with KTs. He flipped up AK. Bleh.

Now to tell you about my new found addiction: Omaha Hi/Lo!

Since my MTT win at the $20 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo on Party Poker I've been dabling with some limit cash games. Today I have mostly been playing the $10/20 game. Although it's slightly above my bankroll, I'm justifying it (at least to myself!) by the fact that the varience must be smaller because pots get split left right and centre. I know this logic is flawed, but any excuse to play at the higher limits!!

I think I'll buy myself a book - any recommendations? Should I learn more about Omaha first before delving into the world of split pots or are Omaha and Omaha Hi/Lo significantly different beasts that I can go straight into either - any advice on this would be most welcome.

Right, I now have to go and feed the cat beofre collecting Ms Pink and then burning some more Christmas Accumulations in the pool. Peace out.

1st MTT Win!

So, yesterday I finally got my first MTT win!

It was a $20+2 Omaha Hi/Lo on Party Poker and I came first out of 90 people for $504.


It didn't occur to me when I registered that I needed to go and pick up Ms Pink from work in a couple of hours - oops. So I started playing a little reclessly and suddenly found myself with a huge chips lead. At this point we were down to about 25 so I phoned the missus to let her know the predicament and promised to spend any winnings on her if she wouldn't mind getting the bus home!

My stack went up and down a little but I was in amongst the top three when we got down to the final table. Ms Pink arrived home when we were six handed. She peered over my shoulder to see how much I was going to be spending on her and exclaimed "What the hell? This isn't Holdem!"

I feel a bit cheap that my first MTT win wasn't at a game that I can claim to understand all that well, but what the hell, I still won!

It took a while for the three smaller stacks to bust out, but once one went the others folowed pretty quickly. I was second in chips once we were down to 3 but thankfully I was able to knock out the third position guy which lead to a very even start to the heads up match.

What I really enjoyed about this tournament was that at no point were the blinds too big is relationship to our stack sizes which allowed some decent poker to be played and I thought that worked a bit to my advantage.

I was being a bit outplayed heads up (or he was just getting good cards - one or the other!) and my chips were begining to dwindle but then I manged an all-in scoop with bottom set which gave me a 3-1 chip lead. He almost came all the way back to 50-50 but my straight held up on a paired board when he went all in - I'd done it!

It was a nice win, but I'd definately have swapped it for a bit better luck in last night's WPT qualifier. I'm pretty pissed off about that, but there's always Sunday to qualify annd I'm playing another sub-qualifyer for the limit tourney tonight, so who knows what might happen - I'll be sure to let you know!

Drowning On The River

I continued to chase shitty draws till I was down to 1K then got a second chance to start playing well when I finally hit a flush (!) and trebled up.

Then came the hand to which the title refers (Hand Converter)...


(Big Bling is 150)

CO (t2026)
Cock Boy (t2624)
SB (t4763)
The Pinkmeister(t2655) Ac Qh
UTG (t3373)
UTG+1 (t5135)
UTG+2 (t418)
MP1 (t4378)
MP2 (t2223)
MP3 (t2895)

Preflop: mrpinkmcpink is BB with Qh, Ac.
2 folds, UTG+2 raises to t418 (All-In), 4 folds, Button calls t418, 1 fold, mrpinkmcpink calls t268.

Flop: (t1329) 8h, Ah, Ts (3 players, 1 all-in)
mrpinkmcpink bets t500, Button calls t500.

Turn: (t2329) Td (3 players, 1 all-in)
mrpinkmcpink checks, Button bets t1706 (All-In), mrpinkmcpink calls t1706.

River: (t5741) Kd (3 players, 2 all-in)

Final Pot: t5741
Main Pot: t1329 (t1329), between Button, mrpinkmcpink and UTG+2. > Pot won by Button (t1329).
Pot 2: t4412 (t4412), between Button and mrpinkmcpink. > Pot won by Button (t4412).

UTG+2 had 6s 5s (one pair, tens).
Cock Boy had Qc Jd (straight, ace high).

I felt fairly happy over-calling with AQ here - The Cock had a VPIP of 60%. I haven't decided weather I like the way I bet out the flop and then checked the turn, but the call was obviously right. Maybe if I had bet out on the turn he would have folded, but there's not muhc point in speculating. I was all in on my small blind in the next hand and my pocket 2s failed to hold up.

Such is poker. I'll be playing again on Sunday night - hopefully a bit better than I played tonight!

Flush Draws

Nothing much to repost after the first hour. I've managed to burn about 600 of my starting 3000 chasing a few draws. They probably came from playing a bit too loosely pre-flop. Time to get my "A" head on...

[Again - nothing to read so dont click below. I guess I should really find a way of getting rid of that link when I dont want it!]

Kick Off

The Party Poker Million Semi-Fianl qualifyer that I'm playing in kicksoff in about 3 minutes time. I'll keep you posted with progress reports and big hands.

Btw, I won my first MTT earlier today (well yesterday actually - you can't get much earlier in today than it currently is!), but that's a whole other story.

Right now I need to hit up google with thenames of people at my table to see if I've got any sharkies.

[No more to read so don't click below]

The Party Poker Million Quest Continues

The next set of semi-finals for the Party Poker Million IV are this coming weekend. I came close back in November, but no cigar (or cruise for that matter).

I completely forgotten about their imminence until yesterday night, so this morning I sat down to play in the single table qualifiers for the semi-finals. They're a $32 buy-in. 1st place qualifies for the semi's, 2nd and 3rd get to repeat the single table.


Well, somehow I managed to win the first two I entered so I now know what I'll be up to this weekend! I've registered for both the NL Semi-Finals (there also being two limit ones). As I'm on the wrong side of the pond it's gonna mean a couple of rather late nights. Friday night's qualifyer starts at 2am (that'll be Saturay morning then!) and Sundays starts at a slightly more reasonable 9pm, although to get right to the end last time took about 8 hours!

I really really really really really really really really really want to qualify! It would be so cool to be able to play in a WPT event, especially when it envolves a week's cruise for two! Ammbo, from the forum is currently in the Bahamas playing in the Poker Stars WPT event. Otis from Up for Poker is also there since Stars have him blogging the event for them. He's also just qualified (see his post) for the Party Million - envy and congratulations in equal measures!!

Mentioning Otis brings me nicely on to mention the little additions I've made to this here blog. I've been gradually discovering the massive community of poker bloggers over the last couple of weeks so I've posted a whole load of links. I can't believe I didn't come across them earlier, but better late than never; from what I've read so far, I'm going to have a lot of fun getting to know them.

That all for now - I must nurse my aching limbs; today was our first swimming session of the afore-mentioned fitness regime, more ouch.

Ouch!

I didn't die, but I came pretty close!

I managed the grand distance of 2 miles, although I'm not sure "managed" is quite the right verb to use! I've spent the last ten minutes stretching but I know that I wont be able to move my legs at all when I get up tomorrow. To top it all off I'm supposed to be going swimming with Ms Pink when she's finished work - help!

It has begun...

New Year Fitness Regime

I'm now back in Oxford and current;y putting off going for my first run of the new year by telling myself that I'll just play one more round of the button! The weather outside is proper rubbish and I'm siting at a juicy $0.50/1.00 NL table on Will Hill, but if I dont go soon, then I'll never get this fitness campaign off the gound.

Whoops, forgot to de-select "auto-post blinds". I guess I'll just have to play one more round!

[No more to read so dont click below; I'll post later to let you know later how far I got before dying!]

Cool Things About 2005

1. Getting married
2. Graduating and getting the hell out of Shitty-Oxford
3. Moving to London
4. A whole year to improve my poker


1. Getting married
I’m getting married this year! I’m going to be a husband! Now that’s pretty freaking cool.

We’ve being getting the ball rolling in terms of planning the wedding over the last couple of weeks and I’ve been really excited about it, but it wasn’t until the early hours of this morning when my fiancée turned to me and pointed out that we were getting married this year, that it really sunk in. I have to say, I’m damn happy.

It’s gonna take one hell of a lot of planning and a great deal of sweat, but I’m looking forward of every minute of it.

2. Graduating and getting the hell out of Shitty-Oxford
For those of you who have had enough of the excess saccharine that this post has so far delivered, let me preface the second cool thing about 2005 by having a good old bitch about our life in Oxford.

Oxford is shitty and boring and crap! I’m fed up of being a student and my better half is damn sick of handing around doing shitty, boring, crap jobs while I hurry up and get my degree!

Three years in Oxford is plenty long enough - it’s not a particularly big city and most of what is has to offer has been thoroughly rinsed by the end of the first term of the first year – Four years is ridiculous.

Still, in a mere seven months I shall be a free agent. No longer shall I be bound by the shackles of the library or held by the lure of the laboratories. I shall have every freedom afforded to the professional gambler with all the perks of the penniless job seeker! [It should also be noted that the World Series starts in 7 months, so it will be a particularly busy time of the year for me since I have every intention of qualifying for The Big One!]

3. Moving to London
Hurray, Hurrah and Yippee! Civilization, Activity and Life! Oh yeah, and crazy accommodation costs and no jobs (yet)!

That’s no entirely true, since we do have the option of renting a house from the In-Laws, but since my Better Half grew up in the same house and since her cousin and his family live next door, it may not be our first choice location.

With any luck at least one of us may have a job before we get there and if poker isn’t bringing in the goods by that stage, then I’ve been known to dabble a little in the job market myself!

Most importantly though, we’re moving to London and it’s a fantastic city. The more time I spend here, the less time I want to spend away. There’s so much going on and North London, in particular, has such a great feel of community and life. I can’t wait!

4. A whole year to improve my poker
Poker, poker, poker - where to start?

I’ve now been playing poker for about nine months. It all started a few weeks before the end of Hilary Term (=a few weeks before Spring Break). I’d been working hard for my degree and things were fairly well on track for me to get a First. I was busy wasting a few minutes on FHM’s 100 Greatest Games, when I spotted a link to their online poker room (a skin of Victor Chandler). I’d always been interested in learning to play but the opportunity had never seemed to present itself. I remember a friend of a friend telling me about his playing online and making huge amounts of money. Now this guy was a complete maths genius and went on from Oxford to do a Masters at LSE; I never even contemplated that I’d be able to do the same thing, but I was certainly intrigued and more than a little envious. So when poker was finally placed in front of me by means of a very easily clickable link, I was hardly going to turn it down especially since it was made very clear that one could play for pretend money.

After a quick tutorial I dived in at the play-money tables and before I knew it I was one of the pros, for sure. Enough of this pretend money crap where no one takes it seriously, I need the real thing! So I made my first real money deposit of ten whole English Pounds! It took me a lot longer to loose it all than you might have expected especially since I didn’t even know the difference between No-Limit and Limit!

In the meantime I’d jumped onto Amazon in the search for some poker wisdom and had had the massive fortune to come across “Internet Texas Holdem” by Matthew Hilger – poker clearly IS all about good luck! This book and the accompanying website and poker forum, www.internettexasholdem.com, have been the mainstay of my poker journey so far and I owe a great deal to Matt Hilger and everyone else who posts on the forum.

After reading the book I made my first serious deposit of $400 on Party Poker and started off playing $0.50/1.00 limit Holdem. I gradually worked my way up - with the help off bonus chasing – to $3/6. It was at this point when I was on the verge of having enough of a bankroll to play $5/10 that I had my first big downswing: "All The Summer's Poker News (Part One)".

While all this poker happened, little else was going on! My finals were getting closer and closer and I was doing no work. Poker had pretty much taken over, I had no motivation for study and I ended up with a 2:2 at the end of the year (Results!). This may not totally screw me over as I have a reasonable chance this year of pulling things up to a 2:1, but it’ll need some serious graft.

Right now I’m pretty happy with the way things stand regarding poker. I have a reasonable bankroll and I have managed to save a decent amount to fund the honeymoon.

One of my biggest problems is impatience. I’m not talking about the patience require to wait for a good hand and to see out the spells of cold cards. I’m talking about the patience needed to learn, improve one's game and build the bankroll and the experience gradually. I’m far too eager to be the best and to beat the bigger games. I too often find myself playing at stakes that are too risky for my bankroll and sometimes my ability too. Going into a fresh new year, this is my biggest poker resolution:

Always to play at a level that matches both my bankroll and my ability.

Without this discipline there is no way I could count on poker as a reliable* source of income and this is something I would like to be able to do. (*Obviously as poker is a game of chance there is no guarantee of reliability in the short or even medium term).

The next most important thing that I need to work on this year is my record keeping and self-analysis. I bought Poker Tracker very early on and it has been a big help to me, but I have definitely not used it as well as I should have. Too often I have just focused on the bottom line and eliminating as much red as possible from the tables of figures without looking hard into where the red numbers might be coming from. I also don’t keep enough session specific data e.g. win rate, standard deviation, hours played and at what levels. These are fairly easy to keep in some kind of spreadsheet and I may by some record keeping software such as Stat King to help me. Equally importantly is reviewing hands. I have had periods where I’ve been pretty good about going over my past hands to try and eliminate mistakes but more often than not, I’d be more likely just to play more poker rather than work on improving my game.

With regard to improving my game, I need to read and reread more books. I haven’t done my reading or revising recently and I think my game has suffered from it – certainly my limit poker. I’m going to order Middle Limit Holdem and Small Stakes Holdem, which I’ve been meaning to read for ages and in the mean time I’ll re-read ITH. After that I’ll go back to Sklansky’s Holdem For Advanced Players, which I wasn’t ready for when I first picked it up.

I think my most important goals for the coming year, as I have said, are better discipline and better record keeping and self-analysis. These are much more important than setting specific targets, but there are some goals which I would very much like to achieve this year:

1. I would like to build my bankroll and ability so that I am totally comfortable (and profitable!) at the $15/30 tables on Party Poker. The one thing that I’m not sure about is weather I should approach this target by playing full tables or 6-max. I think that a large part of the bankroll building will be done at $5/10 6-max, but it will probably be a long time before I’m happy playing $15/30 short-handed.

2. I would like to become a proficient tournament player and I hope very much to notch up my first tournament win before too long. I’ve had a number of final tables but that first place is still eluding me.

3. The final goal for this year is slightly more pie-in-the-sky but nonetheless a big ambition: I would like to qualify for a big tournament. To play in a WPT or WSOP is obviously a dream come true, but I don’t want to let the draw of TV poker take over from the more down-to-earth goal of improving as a poker player.

If I were to achieve the first or first two goals then I would probably be able to use poker as a source of income after I graduate. This is an whole other kettle of fish and not a subject I am going to broach in any depth right now. Suffice it to say that for at least a couple of years this is something I would very much like to be able to do. It would give us the freedom to pursue other interests without necessarily being tied to a 9-5 job and it would also allow me the time to figure out what I might like to do with the rest of my life! While I hope that poker will always be able to figure, I doubt that it will be able to fulfil all by itself.

I have one last thing to say, but first I shall wish you all a very successful and enjoyable new year and may bad beats roll off you like a cat in a bob slay run!

Watch out for the launch of Fish and Chips Poker sometime in 2005!