Teh Pokers on Location

Quite recently a couple of my Poker playing buddies (Kev B, Kev S and Jools) headed over to the Killarney for the Irish Poker Open having qualified on Ladbrokes Poker (I think? lol). Sadly they were unable to make a big score although Kev B did come home with some change for us endeavours as you'd expect, his tournament game has really progressed in the last 2-3 years.

But it got me wondering about the worth of making journeys to far and beyond with the sole intention of playing Poker. Now not being totally oblivious to the fact that Killarney is in a nice spot of the world, I'm sure our heroes also took the time to see a bit of the area and enjoy a few pints of Guinness along the way, but of course Poker was their main motivation for going to Killarney, so I was wondering if this at affected their game?

Let's consider the cirumstances involved here for our heroes. They'll have had to of taken a number of days off work to attend this tournament, caught a flight to Ireland (Shannon Airport) and then drove 2.5 hours to Killarney and all this before a single card is in the air. Then begins a long and arduous tournament consisting of 15k chips and a 1 hour clock, it's going to be a long road and massively different to the kind of formats our patrons are used to.

Clearly our crew got unlucky along the way, but do these combined factors listed above affect our game? Did they ever once think to themselves "well i've come all this way, I can't make this risk on this hand' kind of thing? Personally I think our players in this instance are too strong for that line of thinking, however I think it's possible that all the other pyschological factors can play on a person, particularly if you don't do this kind of thing often.

I can recall from my own experience playing a low buy-in event at the '06 WSOP that it's a drain on you, whilst I didn't play bad I certainly didn't play great either and come the end of it I was actually 'genuinely pleased' to be eliminated, it was that gruelling. I think for myself, I wouldn't take a long journey with the main purpose of going to simply play Poker for a couple of days (1 big tournament for example), I believe that if you're going for a couple of weeks, say to a big festival and you intend to play over many days you will get better as it progress and you'll reach form before it is time to depart, whereas if it's a 1-2 day trip the factors are not in your favour to perform against locals or regular circuit players are comfortable in these conditions.
Food for thought perhaps for you Poker Playing revellers?

Big Game - The Result

Well just a brief update to accompany my previous blog. We played the big game last night and as expected it was beefy to say the least. Needless to say I didn't see much action early, I had a couple pots I took down some multi-limps when dealt big hands in the blinds and made decent preflop raises. 1st hand I got stuck into was a hand with AA under the gun. It's important to realise at this point that the game has been fairly aggressive, almost no limped pots, and the standard raise pre was to £7, so I limp, a couple behind me and then a raise from middle position to £9, one more caller and re-pop it to £31 and everyone folds. It wasn't particularly dramatic but roused some debate at the table as to what I was holding, which is always a good thing.

I pick a few small pots along the way and I'm up about £120 where a very interesting hand occurs. It's multiway limpage and I have 6, 7 suited on the BB so happy to see the flop here. Comes 4, 5, 6 rainbow, I check and there is a bet and a call, my theory is I have to take control of this hand right away to stop the pot size getting out of my control and maybe force a fold before the river if I can, I think the bet was £12 and I pop it up to £35, they both call. The turn is a 3 which looks like gold and I bet £55 where the original flop raiser shoves.... the other caller debates for a while and mucks looking pissed.... this is a tough spot, I'm finding 7, 8 to be a stretch but it's certainly not impossible, I try to convince myself it might be a deuce but that makes no sense to call my raise so my logical conclusion is we're chopping with one card to come and it's going to cost me £280 to find out. After much deliberation I manage to negotiate a return of my £55 and to see his cards if I fold, so I think this is a good result for me and he shows 7, 9 for the same straight plus a redraw, the other guy also had a 7, so pretty remarkable hand really. In all fairness, Bob played the hand very well, although I think when he made the move he originally thought I had a set when I reraised the flop and went for the kill on the turn. I wish I had the exact numbers to hand to work out if me taking that £55 back and not calling for a chop was a good move, but it seemed to be value to me at the time as I was convinced I couldn't be winning in that spot.

Well the game played on but if I am honest that kinda blew my confidence a little and found myself playing ABC thereafter, although a pretty cool hand came up against Princey who has been very tight all night, I'm feeling frisky and make it £6 utg with 3, 2 suited, and he pops it to £15 from the button, I call. Flop comes 8, J, 10 , we both check to the river and the board is now 7, 8, 10, J, Q and a possible flush on, I'm just thinking I can't really bluff into that versus his range and sheepishly check, he looks at me, smiles he clearly doesn't know where he is at either but I'm giving out all the signals I'm beat, but he checks. 'I play the board' I say.... 'really? So am i' and turns 5, 3 for a pretty big laugh from everyone and we chop a baby pot.

On the whole it's made me realise how much I miss playing live although it's a little bigger than I would like to play right now, £1/£2 afterall is much bigger than $1/$2 which is as big as i've played live before. The potential for ruin is very big, as demonstrated in one of the last pots of the night where a guy flopped an Ace-High flush versus a straight flush and naturally all the money went in for a £700+ pot, pretty outrageous for a home game lol. I'm not sure at this point where I'm heading in the game, I've considered going back online and maybe playing Limit, either HE or Omaha but I really don't want to play on FTP or iPoker.

Decisions, Decisions

Fun or Finance - Crossing the Line

I hope I'll be forgiven for the relative lack of blogging as of late. After an initial bad run in my PLO experiment I decided I'd be happy saving my money rather than spunking it online and I'm taking a little break. Truth be told I've not really 'enjoyed' playing online poker since I had to stop playing on PokerStars. I know some might say "you can find a game elsewhere' or 'Full-Tilt is just as good' etc, but to me none of them really are and when you're putting serious hours in enjoyment becomes a significant part of the game.

So anyways, that's a little background which brings me to the purpose of this particular blog entry. Although I've stopped playing online for the time being, I still have an itch to get in the game. I think if I were in Stoke I'd be at the Circus quite often this week, but alas the Isle of Man has little live Poker to speak of. That was until a few of us from work got talking during a little drinking session last friday at the local watering-hole. This was when the idea of having a home game was brought up...

Initially I wasn't impressed as I played a baby stakes home SNG here a few weeks ago and couldn't have been more bored. However the guy in question wasn't talk about a typical £10 donkament, he wanted to experiment in a 'modest stakes cash game'.
OK, so he has my attention at this point, I'm all ears.

Now it's important to note at this point that the person I'm speaking about I know is a good player and his circle of poker playing friends often get together to play some fairly folklore soaked Dealers Choice games, so i was airing on the side of caution. Anyways, his idea was to play an NL Hold'em game only, no variations but £1/£2 with a 25p ante.... I think my arse dropped on the spot. That would officially make this the largest live cash game I'd ever played in. After discussions on who might be invited and their penchants for out and out gambling I decided to sign up, although I'm wondering if this is a good idea. Thinking about this more logically I'm wondering if the size of this game will affect my performance, £1/£2 is alot bigger than $1/$2 nevermind having the 25p ante thrown in on top! I'm figuring I'll take 2 buy-ins (£400) and hope for the best.

But this poses the question in the blog title, where does a supposedly fun home game cross the line and become something much more? Needless to say I'll do my best to socialise with my workmates but I'll be taking the game extremely seriously. Or maybe i've bitten off more than I can comfortably chew on this one? Game is this weekend, report will come later lol.

Raking it on iPoker

Recent adventures in PLO have been swongy to say the least. Dispite my relatively poor on Full Tilt I worked my balance back to break even, got my $100 bouns for testing the new client and decided to cash out. Now this wasn't a full retreat, but more of a tactical one. The reason being I'd received an email a few days ago from a website I'd signed up with many agos called 'Rakeback Check'.

They kindly informed me that as CelebPoker was moving to the iPoker network (story as featured at UKpokerinfo.co.uk) they would honour any new account sign ups that registered with them on the boss network which allows 30% rakeback and the new account would inherit your rakeback status upon migration. So this was too an opportunity to miss, iPoker doesn't normally allow rakeback and the PLO game is considerably softer on iPoker, so it seemed like a great deal.

So I played a couple of sessions so far on iPoker with CelebPoker and it hasn't really gone to plan, the first night I played I think I churned out about 500 hands just to reaccquaint myself with the software and finished up a couple of buy-ins, but then the following night I played and really didn't do myself any favours. To be honest a couple of times I got the money in very far ahead and got rattled on the river, shit happens. But I think turned me in ultra aggressive mode, something I blame on the new book I'm reading, Jeff Hwang's Advanced Pot Limit Omaha which unlike the Slotboom book focusses more on short handed games but encourages a very aggressive game.

To be fair in the large part his tactics worked, anytime someone doesn't bet pot, call and then pot bet the next street and it's impressive how often they fold. Sadly that I took this a little bit too much to heart and on more than one occassion I bluffed a stuck into the nuts LOL. Oh well, we live and learn and I've got to make further adjustments in my game in order to successfully going from a tighter full ring game style to a loose-aggressive short handed one. But I'm hoping with rakeback as a fall-back if I can survive the short term swongs than the long term looks quite rosey.

Ciao for now.

1st week of Pure PLO

Following on my last blog, I apologise it's been a while since the last update but having recently moved to Isle of Man and all the drama that goes with it took me a while to find the motivation (nevermind 'the time') to play.

I recently managed to get myself fixed up on Full Tilt Poker with a rakeback deal at 27% and the 100% match up bounus, which I plummed in £200 worth so around $325 in USDeeee's. Also FTP have just recently launched a new client which adds some much need game filters amongst other things to the lobby, as such they are offering a free $100 bonus which is released in one go and seems to be accumulating much faster than the normal bouns so that's cool.

Anyways onto the games. Needless to say this has been one of the most fustrating experiences in my days playing Internet Pokers. As followers of my blog will know, I like to employ the Slotboom short stack style in Full Ring PLO games, however this strategy is dependent on being able to trick aggressive players into creating big pots pre-flop versus your premium rundown hands (10,J,Q,K for example) or your strong AAxx combo's. Sadly it seems no one on FTP is willing to play ball. I've never played against such passive opponents before, it's really very confusing as to what they are thinking, never mind what they are holding!

My experience so far has been making small or pot sized raises preflop in order to build a pot, from experience this will result in getting usually 1 maybe 2 callers, however on FTP when someone raises they auto suspect you have AA or KK and you'll get lots and lots of callers. So you'll see the flop and miss with your AA/KK as you often will and they check around to you, you bet like you're supposed to and you'll very often get called and they drop the hammer on you on the turn.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm familiar with floating and do it often, but floating multiway is extremely advanced (if not stupid), so either I'm getting completely gamed or these guys are smoking something exotic. Not to mention I'm getting unlucky, the amount of times I'm getting fucked by gutshots and similarly tiny draws even makes this sensible mind question the integrity of the game on FTP..... well no, not really but I've done some major facepalms this week lol.

So, having played 2100 hands this week I'm $136 down (+$60 in accumulated bonuses) which is really depressing if i'm honest. I'm stuck with FTP at least for the time being whilst I at the very least attempt to nail this free $100 bouns, I'm hoping variance evens out a little or I start to figure out these guys, otherwise maybe I have to admit that I can't beat this game and look elsewhere.

Ciao darlings.

Making a commitment to one discipline...

Apologies it's been a little longer since my last blog. I was getting into a good habit of doing it at least once per week but until the last few days I'd not played any poker since my last entry, but there is news on the horizion.

So the last couple of days I've been playing some PLO on iPoker using the Slotboom short stacking strategy which has served me well of late. I put in £125, which equated to $200 approximately and was buying in for $15 a piece on $0.25/$0.50 tables. As I was just playing mostly to wind down in the evening following sunny escapades in London-Town over the weekend I was quite happy to cash for £195 after only a couple of hours worth of play, if PLO allowed you to run anywhere near expectation it would have been considerably more LOL.

It had originally been my intention to play PKR as I thought trying the Slotboom method on what would surely be less competent players would pay dividends.... sadly for me I forgot that I asked them to close my account in some sort of customer service dispute a while back.... damn me and my principles lol. Anyways, my purpose for blogging was not to brag over my bountiful £70 win online (FML etc) but was to ask the question which forms the subject of this blog. I seem to be winning regulary playing PLO online, far more often infact than if I dabble in Unlimited Hold Them's... so I'm beginning to ask myself "Should I commit to only playing PLO from now on?"

This isn't an easy thing to do, being poker players many of us like to dip our fingers into as many virtual pies as we can in Internet Pokers and it goes without saying that the softest players are still trapped in a 6 max game somewhere between Kev Bloor and Rob Ho... so why change? It's widely recognised that the online game is on a very slow but gradual switch... PLO is getting more and more popular, particularly amongst the big 2 (Stars/Tilt) and perhaps the next Poker Boom will have room for NLHE and PLO as a forefront. That's all well and good for the long term, but the short term is I'm winning more consistently at PLO than in Hold'em and I enjoy playing it more. That said at this time the game selection is far less and potentially bankroll requirements are even higher, although with my short stacking strategy that applies less often.

I think for me, PLO is an more obvious route to some shorter term success, if only I had the resolve to keep my money in a site long enough to try and build upon it....

The above is likely to change in the near future. The reason being is that my London adventure is likely to be coming to an end very soon, the company wants to move me to the big office in the Isle of Man so I imagine if I make the move I will be playing a F*CK load of online pokers, so if this is case I need to make myself commit to a game and commit the funds to give it a real go. There isn't much in the way of live games on the Island but it is slightly closer to Dublin (gotta look at the bright side, Kev), so from this point forward I'll be considering myself a commited Omaha player with the ocassional vice of playing a donkament here and there.

Wish me luck, F*CK knows I need it!

Ciao Ciao!

A Negative weekend...

So it's been a long week at the office and I was looking forward to playing some live pokers. I'd been dabbling in $50 PLO on iPoker over the weekend and won a few hundy and decided to take it out so I could play live over the weekend, costs £5 for the priviledge of withdrawing via Neteller, but hey-ho, those are the breaks, kinda wish I hadn't bothered now.

The weekend starts well enough, I has a date with a nice lady who works in TV (epic imo), this is the 2nd time I've been out with her and shes awesome company, very funny and best of all, she's really into little old me, so it's a winner, so friday night was played safe, a nice meal in Notting Hill and a few drinks before saying goodnight but not before a bit of groping in the street mind, who said romance was dead?

So, Saturday I headed down to Loose Cannon to play their £30 FO however sadly when i got there the club was closed due to an electrical fault. Almost in devine syncronisation I feel the immediate urge to empty my bowels in violent fashion (must have been the Crispy Dunk from the night before!), just typical when you're immediate escape route has been cruelly denied. So I'm now tight clenching around Cannon Street in true royal guard fashion looking for a bog, I spot an O'Neill's pub in the distance and power clench march my way to it. I frantically search for the men's and almost as soon as my arse hits the seat I'm away.... it was a long one but I felt great after so i thought my day was going to get really good after that.

Well, with Loose Cannon (how ironic after that last paragraph) being closed and me still requiring a fix for the day, I headed off to the only game in town I knew I could get to in time, that was the Empire in Leicester Square. I thought it was a £20 FO, but turned out to be a £20/r, I reluctantly jumped into the game with the mind set of a usual 3 buy-in rule for me. Needless to say it didn't go great, as seems to be the way whenever I play rebuy tournaments I get NO HANDS whatsoever so my 1000 chips (60min rebuys) wasn't improving fast, I did nick a pot when a multi-way limp found it's way to me in the SB with A4 and I shoved to try and scoop 5 x 100 limpy limps and the button didn't believe me, he had A7 and called, luckily the board was running high for a split but I spiked a 4 and took it down. I then topped up for an extra £20 giving you a further 2000 chips so well worth it but went out shortly after the break when I ran an ill-timed steal again in a mutli-limp pot into a monster when a guy had limped in with KK.

I wasn't quite ready to go home at that point, I felt kinda hard done by there so decided to try and get a PLO cash game going. Sadly it seemed everyone in the place is about as receptive to PLO as they are to Swine Flu, they didn't really want anything of it, but I managed to collar 5 others on their way in to get a game running. Amazingly in a card room that generally plays so loose the PLO was tight, I mean REALLY TIGHT. Again I saw little action and few hands, i was a adopting a £60 buy-in strategy (£1/£2 £50min/£400max) Rolf Slotboom style that was paying dividends online for me and thankfully it did here too, eventually. I double up twice in the space of 2 hands, the 1st hand with a KK double suited combo hand, making a small raise early only to get jammed and I fired it in and got lucky when a guy flopped 2 pair and the board paired up on the river to save the day. Next hand I get a wanky AA92 but was prepared to jam with these fools, I make the 2nd limp in early position and a guy to my left makes it £10 to go, 2 more callers and I now have a pot big enough to fire some big chips in, myself and the raise get it all in and my AA holds and I decide to call it a day. So Saturday all in all was OK, good poo and good PLO, bad tourny though.

Sunday - I should have been seeing my lady friend again but I just couldn't be arsed, I felt like playing more Pokers (fuck my life....) so checking out the options on the local scene the only game that stuck out was a £20+£5 bounty at The International, fair enough so i headed over and also took additional funds in case I wanted to play cash. The tournament was a bit of a disaster, there was only 12 runners to begin with and a couple of late arrivals joined later and I was out on level 1 when I called a 3 x BB raise with J7s, flop 2, 9, J, our early position raiser fires and I call, turn is a J and we both get it all in and he has 9,9... I don't fill up and end of game. Also as the tournament started the only cash game running broke, so I was truly pissed off and don't think I'll go back to the International again to be honest, it's not my cup of tea at all, how a venue can only get that many runners on a sunday is beyond me....

So, I had back to Leicester Square again to the Empire, again hoping to play PLO, but no such luck and I dip into the £1/£2 NL game playing 2 x £85 buy-ins. I'll take a moment just to give my props to the Empire, it's an awesome casino with good service, nice food, comped drinks (just a tip will do) and very good dealers and I really like the tables and decor there, it's become my room of choice. So, I soon find out that I've stepped into a dream DREAM game, there are 1 or 2 easily identifiable nits on the game who you can abuse if you get chips but generally you know to stay away from, an older Arabian guy who sat down with £1000 who has his name on every waiting list so he can hop games for the most action and a pakistani chap named Hassan who was quite possibly the biggest live-one I've ever played with. Hassan was drunk and looked knackered, I think he'd been there for a while and was very loud, but very funny, not only was he giving money away he was entertaining me so it's all good.

So, a few hands in and Hassan has already given away £400 and I get KK utg, I just limp fully expecting him to raise, he obliges and raises to £15, a tight player calls from position and I just ship my £80 in and he calls me with.... 2, 2 He gives the usual brain-dead comment about 'what if a 2 comes, mate?' It was irrelevant as I flopped top set, but sadly the player I pushed out would have flopped a set of 3's too.... oh well. After this it goes truly pair shaped as I start to get impatient with the lack of hands I'm being, everytime I try to get in cheap with a small pair or suited connector I'm being pushed out and I'd of hit big each time so I'm boiling a bit at this stage. There is a young Chinese couple at the table who has now moved next to each other and I'm fairly sure are colluding (obviously lol) and each time I raised she'd call to my immediate left and he'd min-reraise, it wasn't terribly well hidden but couldn't be proved either, so they were getting the better of me but instead of leaving the game I allowed myself to snap....

I limp early with 6, 6 and the girl calls and he makes a raise to £15 as was always the case and 2 others call..... now because of all the hands that I was getting semi-involved in my stack has dwindled down to what I started with and I can't afford to make calls to set-mine so i decide to shove in hope that no one is strong enough to call.... sadly our chinese fellow has a hand this time and flips JJ and I feel rather stupid but in terms of Meta-game it makes me look a softer prospect so all is not lost. I re-buy but largely the same thing happens again and I'm only really in the game at this point to try and get a hand against Hassan who is getting hit in the face by the deck at this point, his earlier shite play is now turned seriously tardy, making opening raises preflop to "£20 to play mate, no bullshit" LOL.... i love that line and I'm stealing it, but then he'd bet the flop for just £6.... he was really getting the better of the table and was up massive before long.... eventually though I lose my resolve again when i see all this action and I'm dying to get involved, I limped 9, 6 suited early and some raises to £15 and 2 callers.... I should fold but there are great odds to hit something so i call with just £60 in front of me, the flop comes 9 high and I pick up runner runner flush and straight draws but get 2 all-in's ahead of me.... I'm like WTF? seriously?!?!

Had I had more money it's an easy fold but my desperation to win something encourages me to call hoping they're drawing or have smaller pairs.... turned out they both had 9's with better kickers and I don't improve. So the moral of the story here is don't stand up a date for poker.... it's an expensive (not to mention degenerate) mistake to make! It was a great game though, I just wish I had more money to carry on playing. Normally patience is one of my stronger game attributes but it's totally abandoned me of late, I guess that's me being rusty from live-play and/or a combination of the fact I've been playing PLO more lately and I'm used to having more involvement, either way I'm not impressed with how I played all weekend, some food for thought and I need to improve sharpish if I'm to take a piece of that juicy London pie.

Ciao Ciao

Matt