Good week - could have been better.

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end of month update

Ok – end of month blog update. Well, it’s not been going all that great, very close to break even. Okies – I’ve played 17k hands and up $100. However, I’m much happier with my style: playing 16/11.

I know that I should be up more over this many hands – however – I’ve seen some horrible variance – esp on FT and Sun, however – PTY has been going pretty good. The main thing I’m happy with is the fact I can drop 4 buy-ins and still play good; in fact on one night I was stuck 5 buy-ins and ground 3 back before I quit for the night. In my opinion, in order to beat FT you have to play a very LAG style and really concentrate on the tables and the table selection – PTY on the other hand is certainly beatable playing fairly TAG with a bit of extra aggression pre. However, playing very aggressive on the flops and running big bluffs is certainly –ev; the value is because they cannot fold.

So yer – I’ve got a few hands below:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1650117 – should I have folded, vil is playing 39/28 from 38...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1650095 – do you think the way I played this hand was +ev? – vil is playing 100/27 from 7 – so I presumed AA was in his re-raising pre-flop range. My plan was obv. to get HU with the short stack – who I correctly believed had nothing. Also – this table was playing wild; I’d recently seen AK vs 66 AIP – so thought my JJ was massive. Lol.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1647101 – not so sure what to do here...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1658829 – or what he has here...

These are more “LOL donkament” brags – funny, none from FTP...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1658838 – lol donkaments...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1658882 – everyone wants 4-way action with KK...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1658889 – vil played bad – but I did love my river shove – think it looked like a bluff – he called with 2 seconds left – ship! Ship!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1658896 – Sun poker aint so bad.

Okies – well that’s been my month. Plans from here – well I’ve just started reading week – I would like to do a bit of work – but I also want to play 40 hours of poker before Sunday next week. The plan is to reach 30 buy-ins for 50/1 – coz this $50nl bull shit is killing me. Honestly, I believe with a bit of luck I could even start playing 50/1 by the Sunday. Will keep people posted with a Wednesday update.

Anyways – ty for reading – gl at the tables

Still bocked on FT H-core

Ok – so today – playing a $20 45 runner sng - $380 for 1st place. First hand – there’s been a raise and a call so I opt to set mine with TT in the SB – flop a set and manage to get TPTK to get it all-in and someone with a gutshot – a few hands later I run QQ into AK and AK and I’m now sitting on 7k (starting 1.5). Manage to make it to the final two when I lose 3 hands, 1) KK runs into AA, then QQ into KK, then QQ into A8 lol.
So decide to leave the hold’em for a bit and try 2-7 triple draw $1-$2. Start of playing well, however then get dealt 10 low – bet it all the way (and standing pat obv) against someone who draws 2 cards on the final draw! So obvious bet out – he then re-raises me with 8-6 low! Now, not being a good low-ball player and also tilting I manage to run 8-7 low into 8-6 low about 3 times and piss my last few $s.
So after a break – time for hold’em to get even again. 1st bocking is that PTY crashed as soon as I got on to it. So FT and sun poker – as per usual, the boring, action repelling fuckers combine with my constant lack of cards and I make a small loss on sun poker. On FT things go a little better or so I thought! After taking down a few pots I’m on a bit of a roll and at exactly the same time these two hands occur...
Okies – I am able to insta-call this guy knowing 100% that I’m ahead coz I re-popped him on the last three hands tbh I expect him to turn over AK/AQ here.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1620705

and as i get outdrawn there i look up to see this stack shooting off aswell
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1620758

Wtf – closed every table straight away after that – what a joke
How do you beat FT?

This is why bluescouse beats Crypto!

Alright – Firstly I don’t want to be seen to be moaning – I’m running real good on PTY and am playing it pretty good as well – However – Crypto is the biggest bok ever – it has to be rigged!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1599037 – rigged!
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1599041 – rigged!!
Ok – so sometimes I get my money in behind – but how am I meant to play this hand differently? – he’s playing 45/9 – lol - http://www.pokerhand.org/?1599018
This guy’s playing 75/20 - http://www.pokerhand.org/?1599030 – rigged!!!
And there’s been a load more but my poker tracker has somehow lost them - lmao

midweek mid-stakes, and ssnl donkaments

Okies – little UB spin-up update. Basically – my AQ turned in to TPTK and I lost the roll to KK $285 pot (the biggest one I’ve ever lost). Can’t wait to have the roll for $1/$2 – there are some real donks out there and they’re worth so much more – lmao.
Just when I thought everyone played ABC poker and rather poorly on Party I got into this hand. http://www.pokerhand.org/?1595610 – I loved saying “so sick” in the chat-box – made me feel like Daniel Negreanu in High Stakes poker before donking off another $200,000. And they don’t need a flush-draw to get fruity – a gutshot is just as good...isn’t it? http://www.pokerhand.org/?1595619.
However – my session isn’t all brags. On sun poker I dropped 3 buy-ins. QQ vs AK all-in on the flop – he called with no-pair-no-draw. AA vs 67s – flop a set, get it all-in and lose to a flush, KK vs 97s – flop a set again! And get it all-in on the flop and you guessed it matey.

Anyways – just wanted to keep that short and sweet.
Ty for reading, gl at the tables

Monday blogaments

Basically – I wouldn’t be on a downswing if it wasn’t for FT – I have lost about $700 on FT since I started playing poker after the summer. All-in-all however, I’m only down $330. My thoughts in brief are: FT is almost certainly rigged, PTY is still awesome (and who cares if I won’t be making $100 a month in rakeback or able to get a FT T-shirt for every 3million raked hands) and that Sun Poker (Crypto ntwk) has to be the most passive poker site I have ever played on – when I get a hand or two I might actually be able to make a buck or two – lol.

Me getting dicked on – FT:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1589667 – I know, a fairly standard hand that I think I played fairly badly – only thing that made me get it all-in was the amount that went in pre-flop which made me feel rather committed to the pot – villain playing 30/13. All-in-all think it’s pretty obv what he’s got when he puts in the check raise – should I got broke here tho...?

Any other hand posts I could stick up from FT this week would be bad beat stories – so not much else to say – just seems it’s hard to get them to get any chips in without a big hand (normally bigger than mine – lol) – so no more FT for a while then.

PTY donkamentation
1) http://www.pokerhand.org/?1589641 –“ imbluffable” stands by his name and plays 67/17
2) http://www.pokerhand.org/?1589650 – Quite happy with the outcome of this hand obv. – not sure what others would say about the way I played it – due to the amount they called pre I hoped there would be another big pair out there that would call my insta-push and also did not want to get anymore cards out on the board. Odds are my 57% to his 42% so not a bad call on his part – slightly –ev call pre though... lol
3) http://www.pokerhand.org/?1589689 – I’m not posting this hand as a brag coz it played itself – but more to ask the question, if you have been check-raised (esp by the pre-flop raiser) and you have a nutty draw that’ll get there 1/3 of the time – is it +ev to push? – my feeling was this guy has very little fold equity here. Also – on this table I’m playing 14/10 L.
4) http://www.pokerhand.org/?1589700- how the hell do I get value here?
So – total roll across all accounts stands at $2216 – looking to make $800 before I take a 5 buy-in shot at 50/1 – and fook me if it doesn’t happen soon I’m going to top myself I think – lol. Only other note I should add is that I’m planning on reducing the number of tables I play and try to really crush them – I find it dull but I’m going to need to improve my winrate asap.

Also – the bankroll management has become a bit of a bore – I know it’s the only way to have long-term results etc etc – but I needed a bit of fun so I’ve opened a UB account with $50 for a spin-up. The start – Will convinced me that the best way to start was to play BJ – so $50 on the spot, I get 16 vs an A – a bad spot – so hit surrender. After a few wins and losses my account still stands at $50, but I now have 4.2 UB points – think that translates to 0.49c or summin’ sick.

Take the $50 to 50/1 – have a bit of luck and get up to $75 – time for $1/$2 – get it all-in pre against a short stack with AA against his AK - $100 pot – after that I managed to push up to $200+ before descending to $125, getting board and quitting. – spin-ups aren’t as fun as I imagined.

The plan now is to get to $225-$250 on $1/$2 before taking a half buy-in shot at $2/$4. I am planning to get my edge through good table selection and holding a string of Rosary beads to warn away the bad beats. I think religion is an important part of poker – as proven by this year’s WSOP ME winner. God bless his little spiritual self.

Anyways – will let you know how the spin up goes. And will keep you updated with the real roll building as well.

TY for reading, GL at the tables

10,000 hands later - $60 down

Okies – so a few weeks on and just shy of 10,000 hands from the last post and how’s my roll looking – well it’s at -$285 - $61 worse than the last update – lol.
Basically, I managed to go on a downswing of nearly 10 buy-ins, reduced it to three and now back to 5.5 – so it’s been fun... I’m now playing across 5 accounts. My big losses however have all been confined to FT where I’m stuck $422 for the last 30 days. I’m finding that the site is getting increasingly hard to play on – the players are often very tight and of many different standards making it a bit of a nightmare for multitabling.
For example:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570037 – have no stats on the villain... wasn’t expecting to be behind when that river was checked to me. Lol
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570051 – and then you get hands like this where you’re just shocked at how poor some of them play.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570058 – basically this is the only way to stack them ( I didn’t raise pre because villain was playing 10/5 – so was pretty sure that the hand only had set value)
But then again, there’s still a few players who can’t seem to fold TPTK – this pot is worth a lot to me coz it’s against Sbrugby’s nemesis. - http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570105
.....lol donkaments mixmastered
Overall I’ve found that there are a heap of different styles on FT, and as I like to multi table, I’m finding it very hard to beat these guys. It seems that there’s some that’ll call with pretty much any two vaguely pretty cards pre flop and will call (or check min-raise) all C-bets and make crying calls to the river, there’s others who’ll refuse to put any money in with out the nuts, but most significantly there’s very few absolute donkeys. So many of the players are break-even regs who live off the rakeback deals etc. So, all-in-all after a rather shitty month I’m gonna give it a break for a while.

When things get shitty on FT I always go back to the happy place that is Party – even without it’s rakeback this Mecca for the sort of gamblers who find it hard to choose between craps or poker and play both games in much the same way.
I’ve been running nicely on PTY – making a half stack an hour average.
I found a great table earlier tonight (which helped me to climb near to the surface of my FT hole for the night)-
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570128 – villain is playing 35/3 – but my thoughts were that if he did have a set he’d have probably chosen to 3-bet the flop and therefore, my JJ must be good enough.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570131 – a few hands later I came up against this donk playing 79/25 – (the main reason I didn’t raise pre due to the way the table had been playing) – if I can call, make a hand, and get paid – why take risks?

Ok for some less donkish hands - http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570156 – an interesting way to play TPTK I know – and I have to give Jack the credit as it was to his choosing – based on the opponents’ stats of 50/0 with an agro factor of 2.5!
This hand is very much up for suggestions: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570172 – villain is playing 30/20 which I found priced me into calling him down - just couldn’t work out why he chose to play the hand so fast, and then slow down so much...
Played a couple of hands against this opponent, obv. Mr Townsend’s (less talented) cousin. The first one played itself, the second – well I chose to play that in accordance to my opponent’s style...
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570166
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1570167

As is often the case with party – when I review my hand histories they seem very standard and simple – very little requires and discussion. I made money because people stacked off to me. I lost money on FT coz people refused to stack off to me – lol – what does this say about me as a poker player!

Plans for the next few weeks are to try to $800 so that I’ll have 30 buy-ins for 50/1. I’m going to stick to Party, but maybe integrate a few FT tables if they look fishy. I’m also going to try to build a bit of a roll in Sun Poker (crypto ntwk) because their rake back and monthly bonus deals are rather fruity – and the play is almost softer than party – but they’re not so quick to shove in their stacks...shame.

Also invested a few quid in a new monitor – Dell 27” which works well with my 17” laptop screen – I think I can 16 table FT quite nicely – perhaps this is the key to beating the nits. Hopefully it’ll pay for itself...

Anyways – at least I can look forward to the rake back that FT will be giving me on the 15th – it’s the only time of the month I can say yum yum on that site.

Cheers for reading – please comment on any of the hands

Gl at the tables.

Top of Form

Hard night...

Okies – so to set the scene I was tilting due to my internet connection which seems to suffer from the increased use it gets on Sunday evenings.
I’m stuck about half a buy-in and then I get into this hand:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512969 – I checked the flop hoping to check-raise – then my comp disconnected, and when it reconnected I think I played the hand badly – however – I knew if I called his turn bet he would probably put me all-in on the river. Basically, this is open for discussion. Villain is playing 30/10/7
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512982 – next hand I played KK like a donkey, should have bet the turn and folded the river – pretty obvious what he had. Villain is playing 42/8/4
Now down $100 so take a break and have dinner. Mmmm
****
Internet connection still a bit screwy but manage to play this hand before it fucks up again
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512964 – if he hadn’t raised me on the flop I would have folded the river bet – but I don’t like people changing their story...
So down $75 for the night...
****
After another break I start playing again. I managed to lose $150 in this session and I’m not quite sure how I dropped three stacks.
I think I played the following hand quite well, but it’s open for discussion. Posted it because it’s a fairly common situation on SSNL tables.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512998 – in this hand, after 2-betting the opponent and not getting raised I was happy to go broke on a board with no over’s – think this is an ok mentality – had no stats on the villain and he was a short stacked donkey as far as I was concerned.
And now the not so good ones:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512910 – this was a bit of a tilt call on the turn... can I justify it?
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512921 – Okies my thoughts were; on the flop: how can I fold this hand? On the turn: he’s giving me 4:1 and there’s a 20% chance the board will pair and on the river – thank god for the 8, it just saved the latter half of my stack. Lol – anyone think I could have played this differently? Villain playing 40/6/4
http://www.pokerhand.org/?1512937 – this was kinda embarrassing when he almost timed out before making the call. My thoughts were, there is no way he’s checking a house or the nuts flush to me on the river – if I bet $20 he may think it’s a mis-click, call with a small flush or three of a kind Ts. Don’t know – as it played out it made me look like a donkey. Villain playing 44/5/5
There were also a fair few hands like this: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1513048 – villain playing 45/13/12 - I know this is a small pot but I cannot work out if I should be looking to call here... cannot understand his play...
Overall – so many hands where I would raise pre, C-bet in pos, get called and see that they were holding some raggy TP by the river – not sure if I should be increasing my aggression or reducing it...
Overall I hit very few sets over the course of the night, tbh I hit very few flops really. Lol. Having looked fthrough a shit load of hands I’m just beginning to think it was an unlucky night. It seemed if I had a pocket pair and they had overs they would hit their overs, and if it was the other way round I’d just not hit at all.
Anyways – down $225 on the night. Not feeling too shitty about it coz I don’t think I could attribute more than $40-$50 to pure tilt. And I didn’t get any horrible outdraws after the money went in. Just think I got on the nastier end of variance. Probably will hit the tables again on Tuesday and start trying to make it back. To make myself feel happier I re-loaded $100 as I made about $140 playing live the other night so think I should include the profit in my roll.

Ty for reading. Gl at the tables

The week...

Okies – so the week where I was planning on making loads of money and running my roll up – well – it didn’t really happen. Played a little on Monday and Tuesday, but spent half the time trying to get PTH and PAHud working properly – and in terms of profits I broke even.
Wednesday night home game – 10/25p with straddles. I bought in for £120 but only started with £50 on the table. A couple of hours later and I was stuck £40-£50. The game was fairly fishy so I decided to play a fairly weak; trying to make hands and get paid rather than make any plays. Had to lay down a few big ish hands after getting sucked out on, or appearing to.
By 1am I had £60 on the table (the remains of the £120) and started to make a few well times plays against those who could fold. After making back a little bit of cash the home game looseness got me back in the black when I managed to get into a £100 pot 3-betting all-in on a 7, 7, 2 board with my KK and getting called by 66.

An hour later and we were down to 4 handed, tbh the game was now only slightly +ev for me – most of the producers had gone broke. However, I managed to get into a big pot with Rich: I called a small raise out of pos with 66, flop fell 3x,5s,6s – I bet just under the pot (about £2.50) mainly because I know rich will either float me or raise – he does, making it £8 – I then make it £20 – and he insta-pushes. I have him covered but the call is about £100 (400bbs). I know I have to call, however, we talk a deal with my hand exposed and his covered and decide to run it for £100 – nothing too interesting comes on the turn and river and he flashes QQ before folding. I think the deal I made here was absolutely terrible – I should have called and then decided on offers – I was worried that he’d have a straight, or a draw to the straight, flush or both and would have a chance ranging from 25% to 65%. Basically, I should have played for the whole stack. Lol donkaments on my part.

I ended up playing in the game til 8am – which became very –ev for me, i made some bad plays and bad calls and ended up a £70 winner for the night. It’s hard to cash out of a game when you are the big winner and the host though. Lol.

****

Spent the rest of the week and most of the weekend locked in a sea of debauchery but tried to play this afternoon. It was a fairly poor idea; I was certainly not playing my a-game (due to the after affects of the weekend) and due to the foooooking internet connection which chose to render me offline as soon as I got into a big hand.

read the next post for the session report - lol

gl all

The summer...

I would like to say I achieved my goals: running my roll up to $6k and gaining experience from playing half a million hands +, however – it wasn’t to be. What poker I played I did after drinking, although, in my defence, I kept it to small tourneys and stts in an attempt to limit the assault on my bank roll. I think I did fairly successfully. I have to say my overall respect to those who make most of their income from stts has definitely increased; those things have to be the most frustrating little fuckers around – not going to run through the outdraws and bad-beats (mainly because I can’t remember them).

The summer has been slightly dull tbh. After making vague calculations of sums that I spent over the last three terms at Warwick I knew I needed to sort out a fairly solid income. So back down the poker rooms to be paid to take shit from gambling degenerates who honestly believed I was in complete control of the cards I squeezed off the deck. This was then combined with the stress of being paid in a variety of different ways ranging from an hourly rate, rake commission and purely on tips; meaning that my ‘stable’ job could earn me half as much for the same hours one weekend as it did for the previous. Overall, I really fukin hope I never have to work in another gambling dive again.

Other than the poker dealing I also did a month of 9-5ing at a London trading house. It was an interesting experience, but I have to confess the overall impression of myself that I left was that of a lazy cunt who found it hard to make it to work before 11:30am, read the paper for 2 hours a day and always stank of the previous night’s alcohol. So, me thinks there might not be a job waiting for me there for after graduation.

I didm however, managed to get out of the country for 10 days in Ibiza. It was pleasant apart from the intense heat, the fukin outrageous prices and the parasitical Spanish people who were getting very rich as a result. Overall, good fun had by all…

Basically, how I see it now – I have two weeks left before I have to be in Warwick, and I’m really going to try to make the most of my time in terms of poker. My aim is to go for the complete package; try to eat healthily, get more exercise and reduce the evening’s intake of toxins. Hopefully, this’ll put me in much better stead at the tables, especially in terms of reducing my losses when things start going downhill.
Three concepts have certainly been compounded this summer.
1) Bad-beats happen to everyone – but it doesn’t matter how sick they are, they’re still really, really boring to everyone else. The amount of times I found myself saying, “If he was very unlikely to win, surely you wanted him to get his money in?” So, I’m going to try my best to analyse my play without thinking about my roll total - and certainly try to not dwell on bad luck.
2) The combination of pride and tilt is a danger to any player regardless of their ability and bankroll. I was dealing at the Western and watched as one of the bosses managed to loose about £4.5-5k playing £2/£2 PLH in about four hours. It included the following hand; seat 3 sb, 4bb, 5posts £5 straddle, the boss is next to act and raises pot (£19) with 9-5o – two folds and a call from the button, flop is 3,9,5 – somehow, with a combination of raises and re-raises the boss managed to get the button all-in on this board for a further £1200 and saw that he’d been called by bottom set. I’m not saying I’m a protégé, but I’m sure I could have chucked the two pair for 600 bbs!
3) Finally, alcohol (and most other intoxicants) is a great way to relieve you of your roll. There was always a couple of people who’d walk in after a long night out and manage to loose upwards of a grand on the £1/£1 PLH game.
So from this my master plan was formed – firstly try my best for healthy living; feel good, play good and get rich – lol.

Also – I think tilt can be reduced by expensive technology – so I’m looking to buy a 27” or 30” dell LCD screen to run off my new Vaio. Hopefully, these items can be seen as investments and not losses – but only time will tell.

Finally, as I only managed to clear half on my FT bonus, I’m looking to start up a new account with a nice bonus scheme some time soon. Anyone have any ideas of which site to go through?

need help!

Okies - just bought a new laptop - I saw it as +ev (and it better make me win!)

however, windows vista is clever, and it won't let me install me slightly cracked copy of Microsoft Office 2003 Professional - therefore i have a million problems with my PTH

1) - i think i need to buy the fukin software again, coz i have it on two computers already.
2) - my existing database is in MS access (which is a fukin expensive program now that i can't have it for free)
3) - if the two previous problems were sorted i wouldn't have a clue how to just keep adding to my existing database

basically, i need help -
1) can i change the format of my existing database so it's in excel or summin? (coz i can get this on theOffice student edition for about £400 cheaper)
2) how would i go about linking the database to the new PTH etc
3) anyone know where i could get my hands on Microsoft Office 2007 professional for a "little" less than the list price?

Poker on the back burner for now

My feeling is - I have taken about 3 weeks away from the game now, and although I can find time here and there, I just know it's gonna take me a session or two to get my game back to where it should be - so if I can give myself a 3 day period in which to bash it out i'll go for it - but at the moment with my current work schedule it's gonna have to wait.

I would say however, i'm making a little bit here and ther from matched betting and have just started the bonus bagging, it's true what people say about blackjack, it's like having a cup of tea for gamblers - i quite enjoy it. (sure it will become horrible if i carry on for too long tho)

Another plan for next year is to try and get a bank roll of £2k together to start arbitrage betting. I'm researching different methods accross both financial spreads and sports. It seems that you can spend a long time finding an arbitrage (obviously), but there are some sites who for about £40-£50 a month will notify you of any that they can find - however, i'm not one to give £50 to anyone without good reason - so if anyone knows any more about the concept please let me know.

Other than that,
GL at the tables, sorry to hear that Warwick had no WSOP cashes this year.

Not got round to much play.

Just a quick one: I haven’t been playing much poker recently coz of the 5 days a week of work and some 13 hour shifts! Also I’m off to Ibiza tomorrow so, with a bit of luck, the hotel won’t have wireless internet and I won’t ruin another holiday with 9 hour stints. Anyways – hope to get back to the tables on my return – I have to finish off a FT bonus (I have about $300 left to clear by the 24th). But until then GL at the tables everyone – and good luck to all those representing Warwick out in the WSOP.

Charlie, Paul, Partying, Poker and a 2:1

I've just got my second year results and managed to average 62 without any fails (inc. a 1st in one exam paper and in one assessed essay). I'm pretty happy with my results after being called many things this year including a lazy bastard and a gambling addict. Well, I always like to put two fingers up to those who doubt me, however as I didn't get a first I feel this is a fair one finger salute.

Not too much celebrating until I get a day off work on Sunday.

Not much poker recently -

Well last week saw very little play – I lost during the 3 sessions I played and was stuck $110 (well $130 but I got a $20 bonus). Was planning on playing during my days off but I ended up getting pissed on the Sunday and recovering on the Monday so not really in the correct mindset. On Tuesday I played an hour session at work, playing 5 tables coz the club was quiet and I made about $45, it was really good to have played this session because it showed me that my play is still good and that, as was conferred by many comments on the forum, last week’s losses were mainly due to bad luck.

I got home at 1am and decided to play the P-Stars $18k guaranteed ($27.50 buy-in). I’ve got a great record in this tourney and came about 50th out of 1200 runners. I don’t think I can put that all down to luck alone, I played ABC, didn’t stack anyone on a cooler and hung on to my chips when I didn’t have good cards. I think my success has often been due to the failure of many others – the stacks are 3k but people still play as if they’re 1.5k – which just means if your patient you can really get deep as long as you don’t splash around. I saw people calling off 1/3 of massive stacks for “set value” which meant that I was able to do fairly well playing strong hands and folding the rest. The problem I have is being able to make chips when it counts, and I need to stop worrying about making the money and focus more on making the final table. I have to confess I folded JJ during the bubble to an early pos. raise and perhaps should have pushed. I have never placed outside of the top 225, but have never placed better than 50th (out of 5 attempts) so need to work on some of my later stage strategy.

Over the next few weeks I want to try to play a bit more poker, but I don’t want to play when I’m not 100% focussed, such as after an 8-10 hour shift. So it’s gonna be hard to balance.

I’m going to start my matched betting soon (bonus whoring on bookie sites). I managed to make £35 on bet-fair quite slyly. I deposited £25 with a bonus code to get me 100% matched bonus and then got a call the next morning to say they’d credit me a further £10 if I made a £5 bet that day. I bet on Roger Federer to beat some 175th in the world no-hoper, and made 50p from my winning £25 bet. However I unlocked £35 of bonuses – score! – my plan is to use whatever profit I make from matched betting to bolster my roll so that I can afford to take a stab at the 50/1. I am currently rolled at $2375 (which is $499 down for the year) – if I can make another $625 from playing and matched betting over the next few weeks I’ll be able to take a stab at the 50/1. I’m pretty sure I can beat that level, I’m just worried about how badly I might take the larger swings. Does anyone have any advice on that? Will wait a while before my next update now, well… at least until something happens.

Ty for reading, gl at the tables.