More Meh

I shouldn't really be trusted to play any form of poker the way I'm playing at the moment. I've even been running badly in the Steps SNGs and have lost a a few tickets.

I played the Sunday Million again last night and despite having quite a soft starting table, I couldn't get it going and then got into trouble playing marginal hands against calling stations.

I;m finally getting back into analysing my game and watching coaching videos which will hopefully remind me of how badly I've been playing and go someway towards helping me rebuild a bit of the roll.

I've been playing quite a lot of Razz for want of anything better. I'm running about even in it. I'm noticing a lot of bad players and if I could only sort out a few mistakes of my own then that game could be nicely profitable. At the moment, though as long as I'm not loosing whilst playing it, then it's an enjoyable diversion.

Steps update:
Money Invested: $1625
Value of tickets won $5833 (plus three $215 tickets I've used in Sunday tourneys)

Sunday Night

Same same: I did more chunks of my roll playing $200 NL holdem on Friday, which sucks a lot. I played a handfull of Steps and roughly broke even on those.

The bankroll is beginning to look a little depleted. I'm loving these Steps, but there needs to be a replenishment of the funds somehow.

The weekend was spent visiting the rellies in ruralshire.

This afternoon I plucked up the courage to go and watch Villa play live for the first time live in about three years. Villa used to be so shit to watch I'd given up going. This season we've been playing some jazzy football so I thought it was about time I took a little trip up to Villa Park.

Well, we played like utter shite and I did another £20 betting on the game. We've pretty much blown any chance we had of making the Champions League next season. Oh well, quelle surprise.

Tonight I used one of my $215 Step 4 tickets and took a shot at the Sunday Million tournament on Stars. I had a very juicy table and doubled up early on. I had a massive fish immeidately to might left. He called every raise I made preflop and I don't think I hit a single flop. Obviously he called all of my continutation bets and fired me out of the pot when ever I gave him the chance to bet. Eventually I got my stack in on the button with KJ for quite a large raise (proabaly about 13 effective big blinds) and the fish snap called out of the small blind with 44 and help to cripple me. I busted very soon after.

I then took refuge back at the Step tournaments and managed to notch up another Step 6 ticket. Here are my stats so far:

Money Invested: $1495
Value of Tickets Won: $6393

I just need to convert that into a few WSOP seats and I'll be laughing!

Steps Update

More of the same to report: the Step tournies on Stars continue to go well and I'm doing more of my plumbs in the PLO games. I'm probably going to give up PLO for about the 5th time and go back to No-limit Holdem to try and recover some of my bankroll.

Here's how things stand with the Steps:

Money Invested: $1379
Value of tickets won: $4644

Step 1 ($8) tickets: 1
Step 2 ($27) tickets: 2
Step 3 ($82) tickets: 6
Step 4 ($215) tickets: 6
Step 5 ($700) tickets: 1
Step 6 ($2100) tickets: 1

Bring on the WSOP!

Coming up for Air

Contrary to popular belief, I am still alive and playing poker, albeit fairly badly. I seem to have less and less time or inclination to blog about poker and little motivation to write anything else of any meaning here. This blog is very nearly dead, so I'm going to try one final push to rejuvenate it.

I'm going to start a completely new blog on which to pen the odd non-poker thought. I will then keep this one for poker musings only and I'll try to write more regularly about the games I'm playing and the odd interesting hand or strategy thought.

Just to fill you in on the last couple of months, January was mostly filledwith playing the $200 NL tables on Ipoker and loosing most of the time. I then started throwing a few of the Steps SNGs on Stars.

For those of you who aren't aware of the Stars Step Sit-and-Go’s then here's a brief rundown: They're mostly 9-man Sit and Go tournaments where the top couple of finishers advance to the next step up. Those finishing 3rd/4th/5th usually get another chance at the same step or get bumped down to the one below. There are six steps with buy-ins ranging from $8 to $2,100. Winners of Step 6 gain entry into big tournaments, e.g. WSOP, EPT, WPT etc. Step 4 tickets are worth $215 and can be used to buy into any of the Stars $215 online tournaments including the Sunday Million.

I've found them pretty soft and a pleasant change of scene. I've invested about $900 into them starting at Step two ($27). I've now got about $3000 worth of tickets at various levels, including two Step 5 tickets ($700 each) and about six Step 4 tickets ($215 each).

I'll probably invest another $600 or so into Step 2 and then try my hardest to qualify for the WSOP main event by working my way up to Step 6. I'll probably use a few Step 4 tickets here and there to buy into the Sunday Million too.

In the last few weeks I've been taking another shot at Pot Limit Omaha. I've never been able to master the game, which has been frustrating because I know that there is a lot of money out there. This time I seem to breaking even at the $100 tables, which at least is a start, but I really should be able to kill those tables.

So the plan for the next couple of months is just to try and enjoy poker and get better at PLO, whilst trying to qualify for the WSOP and taking a few shots at the Sunday Million.

As I said above, I'll try and post much more regularly and once I've got my new blog up and running I'll post the link here.