Good Ridence, November

As predicted, November was my second loosing month of the year. It was a big loosing month too, although considering I was playing a bit of $1000 NL here and there it could easily have been worse. I wasn't playing well and when you dont play well, it's hard to win. Without a couple of nice tournament scores, it could have been much worse so I must be thankfull for small mercies.

Thankfully, December has started in the black which is good for the confidence and good because I'm giving 10% of any profits this month to The Global Fund to fight AIDS. You may have come across the RED conept alread. I've signed up for (American Express) RED. My new mobile will be (Motorola) RED and I've pointed Mrs Pink in the direction of (Gap) RED for Christmas prezzies.

It seems like a great idea and the fight against AIDS is one of the 'global issues' that I care about most. I was close to working on an HIV project for my Maters' year but ended up working on SARS instead. I think that if I'd have gone on to do a Dphil/PhD then I would have pushed hard to be involved in an HIV lab. (Ha, but that would have involved my actually needing to do some work!). Since poker was the reason I stopped studying, it seems fitting that I might be able to use it to help fight the battle against AIDS.

What else......?

Oh yes, on the general theme of charity, The Salisbury Poker Chapionship is in two weeks on Saturday 16th February at 1pm,so if you're in striking distance of North London click here for details. Money raised is going to The Princes Trust, who I also hope to be doing some work for sometime in the not too distant future (more news on that another time, perhapse).

I've been playing the odd bit of live poker recently. I've been to The Vic a couple of times in addition to The Gutshot. There are some very good regulars in the Vic's £100 PL game (£3-3 blinds) but there are also enough bad players if one has the disiplin to pick when one plays.

The last couple of Saturdays I've taken to getting up early in the morning, heading to The Gutshot and picking on the tired and stuck people. The £50 minimum, no maximum, Pot-Limit game with £1-2 blinds and a regular £5 straddle can be very good and very deep by early on Saturday morning. Last week I manged a profit of about £200 and I felt I played well. My one mistake was forgetting to top up the parking meter outside and ending up with a £50 fine. I played this morning and managed to get there while the well known Friday Night Whale was still in session. I won about £200 from him, although ended up slightly down overall mostly thanks to this hand: I saw a cheap flop of 2d4s5d with As3s. I lead £20 into the £25 pot and picked up two callers behind me. The turn was the 5s. I bet £75 and a good, semi-loose-aggressive player raised all-in for another £180. I thought for a bit, decided that he probably would have raised the flop with anything that was beating me, so I called. I'd actaully totally forgotten that I had the spade draw for back up so when he turned over 6s7s, it may have come across as a bit of a slowroll when I tabled my hand. I was too busy appologising to him to notice that the spade on the river was actually the 8 which gave him a straight flush.

Not much else to say. I'll try and stop back and post a bit more regularly.