Fish and Chips

A poker themed blog, charting the demise of my degree and the rise of my poker career.


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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

End of Year Bollocks

Here's a rather rushed end of year review, before I grab a couple of hours well needed kip before drinking myself silly later tonight.

I posted my goals for 2008 at the beginning of the year. I didn't achieve many of them. I'd imagine next year's will be similar. Hurrah for treading water and generally stagnating!

I am, however, upbeat about life. Home life is always good. Work is going pretty well. Poker-wise, I've not made the progress or had the success that I would have liked over the last few years, but I'm a decent winning player and I think my game has improved a reasonable amount this year. So over all, I'm a happy Pink.

Of the life goals I set myself I achieved one out of five and that was to enjoy life with Mrs. Pink. Of the others I made progress in two more: promotion ambitions at work will culminate in April; and I ran a couple of half marathons and generally got quite fit, until about September when I stopped doing any exercise at all and starting putting loads of weight on.

Of the poker goals I set myself I achieved one out of five (an hourly rate of $30) and came close to a couple of others; I was about 80% towards my target of making $25k, which given that I achieved the hourly rate I was looking for, obviously meant that I was expecting to put in loads more hours.

I'll be back shortly into the new year with a bunch of goals which - no doubt - will be very similar to last year's.

Hope you all had a good 2008 and best wishes for 2009.

December

Before I go through the obligagtory year review here's a December recap:

1. Did my proverbial bollcks in the first few days going on tilt and chasing a couple of fish to a $10/20 table.
2. Played in the DTD Anniversary Cup. Broke even (minus expenses), but should have won the £200 side event for £6k.
3. Discovered the proverbial gold mine that is iPoker and spent the rest of the month grinding my way out of the £2500 hole i'd got myself into in the first few days.
4. Finished a whopping £300 in profit for the month!

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Some Light Relief

Thanks to Amatay for the link to this:

Sunday, December 07, 2008

Sick

Busted. Pretty hacked off to have had to stay on for twenty minutes of poker. Even more livid that I was an 80% favorite to take the chip lead and from then totally walk over the table.

On the first hand I knocked out the short stack with AK against his nines. On the second hand I pick up aces and get it in againt the chap who folded his kings to me the night before. He had Jacks and flopped his set. That pot would have put me up to about 80,000 chips, but instead it left me with 14,000.

The blind were 800/1600/200, so withg 4,500 going in every orbit, I was looking to get my chips in the middle and hope for the best. I managed to walk my Q3 into Kings and that was that. I actually think, given how tight the table was, that if I hadn't walked into a monster I could have stolen my way back to a workable stack, but 'what's ifs' are a bit fucking redundant now.

More Live Updates

It's Sunday afternoon and I'm still at DTD, when quite frankly I wish I was at home. Three long days of poker, booze, no sleep, and greasy food doesn't make you feel all that good.

The reason I'm still here is that I made day two of the £200 event that started last night. It event attracted 84 runners, which was the first bad beat of the evening - if there has been fewer than 80 runners we would have finished the tournamnet in one day.

So 18 of us have come back for day two, even though only 9 get paid and they could easily have played down to a final table last night instead of finishing play at the early time of 1:15am.

I was pretty annoyed to have to come back for a second day without the garuntee of getting paid, and to add insult to injury I found myslef as a short stack towards the end of play. I'd been bossing the vairious tables that I'd been sat at and had one of the biggest stacks. Then the blinds caught up and I managed to double up a short stack on a QJT flop to leave myself short (I had AQ, he had QJ).

I wasn't prepared to come back for day two as a short stack, so I went into a crazed overdrive. Amazingly, enough people still managed to find stupidly tight folds against my 'button steal' with KK and my 'obvious squeeze steal' with JJ.

With about 5 minutes of play left, I was moved to another new table. I had about three hands to double or bust. The first hand was folded to me in last position and I nicked the blinds. The next hand one of the various nitty dinosaurs that were playing opened in early position and I was all ready to float him to the river with 74o when another rock flat called out of turn behind me and I decided that I could wait one more hand...

On the final hand of the day, another fossil raised in early position. I looked down at 53o and found the re-raise button. The rock flat called and we saw a flop of A7T. He checked and I checked back to allow him to fire the turn before I moved in on him. The turn was something insignificant and he checked again. At this point there was about 12,000 in the pot and I had about 22,000 left in my stack. I didn't want to bet and get check raised, becasue as much as I didn't want to come back and play a short stack on day two, even I draw the line at calling off when drawing dead, so I decided to ship the lot in. The old geezer tanked for a good few minutes before laying down KK face up!

I showed him, but now I wish I hadn't. Becasue I'll be able to steal less today.

I've got an average stack and hopefully I can take advantage of some incredibly tight play. First place is near the £6k mark and I recon I've got a good shot.

Friday, December 05, 2008

Wish I had 45k

Busted around 40th. I ended up sticking too much of my stack in 3-betting with AJ to be able to fold to villain's shove. I ran into AK, and couldn't suck out despite turning a flush draw.

I'm retty dissapointed. I don't really like my 3 bet becasue AJ is in horrible shape to a shove, but once I've done it I was getting 5-3 on a call and given how tough the table was, and wasn't likely to break soon, I think I have to call the all-in.

I'm going to try not to tilt off my roll playing cash games.

Still ***cking 45k

Jees, grind grind grind. Bluffed off half of my stack with what I thought was a great bluff, but the guy managed to find a call. That took me down to 27k, but I managed a double through a few ahnds later in a battle of the blinds when I rivered a boat with 22.

It'll all about patience.

Dinner Break (Day2)

Stagnating at 45k. Average is now over 60k, but with blinds now at 400/800/100 I've still got 50 BB no there nothing to panic about. I could do with getting lucky. If someone gave me the choice of a table move or pocket aces, I'd probably take the former.

Grind, grind, grind.

Level 6 Update

We're one level into day 2 and I'm up to 49,000, which is average. I've splashed around in a few pots, which is asking for trouble given how tough the table is. Each new player moved onto our table is better than the last.

I'm just gonna keep grinding and see how it goes. The stacks are still quite deep, so if I have to sit a be a nit for a level then it's not the end of the world.

Keep following the action on Blonde.

Day One's a Wrap

Finished the day bang on average with 40,000.

As people busted the table got really tough and I ended up spewing a few chips. I had reached a high of about 48k, but dropped down to 30k at my lowest. Then, on the last hand of the night I picked up Aces UTG. I limped, expecting there to be quiet a lot of action as there were a few people short on chips who might not have wanted to come back for a second day to nurse a small stack. In the end only the small blind ended up getting it in (as he'd pretty much announced he would before the hand). The very aggressive big blind almost got involved but deiced to get out of the way. My aces held agains thte short stack's 9T and I finished the day on 40k.

90 players are coming back tomorrow at 2pm and we start with blinds of 250/500/50. Our table isn't due to break anytime soon, so it's set to be a tough day. There are serveral very good players at our table, so I'm going to need a good helping of luck.

See you tomorrow...

Thursday, December 04, 2008

45k

End of the third level. Playing like a rock but running red hot.

I doubled to about 34k with a sick sick beat on a poor guy holding 77. The board was 6h 6d 3d 5d 7h. I'd flopped quads.

I then, despite playing like the proverbial boulder, managed to get some guy to stack off against me with AK on a KTx flop. I'd raised preflop and lead into him. He min-raised my flop bet and then called when I pushed all-in.

I've got a really tight image so hopefully I can start to use my stack to accumulate chips now the antes kick in.

Still 17000

Dinner break. I've been treading water with no hands where I could really get involved.

The table is still quite good. I've got the fish and the loose players to my right and there still only one or two good players at the table. Everyone else is fairly standard tight and fairly passive. I've just not had any spots to mix things up.

Hopefully I can ride out the cold wave, keeping my patience and picking the good spots.

Updates on BlondPoker.

17000 at First Break

Was up to 22k, but lost a big pot just before the break when villain's up and down and flush draw got there against my trips, thankfully he didn't chanrge me for it.

I'm pretty happy with my table. There seem to be enough fish to go around and there seem only to be acouple of people who could cause me to make difficult decisions.

Time to get back to it...

DTD Anniversary Cup

Well, I've just arrived at DTD for the £1060 main event. I'll try and get some updates going as I amass a giant stack or bluff the lot off in the first level with some dirty busted draw on the river.

The online and live satalites they ran for this event over the last week or so seem to have generate at least 40 seats, which means they're expecting at least 150 runners and hopefully it'll mean that there's some value out there somewhere.

Let's see...

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