Poker: January is a miserable month !

The first week of January was good for me in the Poker world.  I was a few bucks up online and cashed in the Monthly live tournament… but them it all went horribly wrong :-)

I was playing almost exclusively $30 and $20 STT tournaments, but just couldn’t seem to cash in on any of them… actually tell a lie, I did come 3rd in one… but not enough to make a difference.   When my Pokerstars funds exhausted 14th Jan, I decided to go back to Ladbrokes for a while.   

It took me a few games to get back into the UI and how to find the right games, but am finding that there are very few players in the games I want to play…. all seems to be $5 turbo games or those double or nothing STT.  

I have ended up playing the odd cash game (which is not my favorite) or the MTT tournaments of various buy in levels (which are good, but take 2 or 3 hours normally).    Actually my MTT performance has been pretty OK, coming 11th of 55 players (top 10 paid!!), 10th of 113 (for a $7 profit after nearly 3 hours play) and 25th of 175 (only the top 20 paid out which was a little disappointing)

Despite losing $100 on Poker, I have managed to maintain my funds by getting lucky at Blackjack and Roulette (I have won around $110 !)  however not only is this not sustainable, but it isn’t the way I want to maintain my bankroll either !

The most annoying thing for me on Ladbrokes is the game selection (or lack of it) so will probably keep enough in to enter a few of the MTT but either go back to PokerStars or PartyPoker where the game selection is much better and can also get back to using  PokerTracker, which doesn’t work at Ladbrokes !!

General: New fitness regime

Now we have got our Home Gym sorted out, Christmas is over and I’m back to the normal regime… thought it was time to review how I’m getting on with it….

I haven’t recorded the heart rates like I did on my previous Gym Update last year, but my current workload looks like this…

Monday (Running)
Run at 6.5mph for 25 minutes, then 12mph for 5 mins, plus 5 minutes cool down.

Tuesday (Rowing)
25 minutes at around 27 spm (there is no resistance adjustment and I am convinced it is harder than the hardest setting on the Concept 2 rower in the David Lloyd gym !) plus 3 minutes cool down.   Cover 3.45 miles

Wednesday (Cycling)
Pedal at around 13mph at level 9 resistance for 10 minutes, then 10 minutes at 14mph at level 10 and finally 10 minutes at 15mph at level 11.  Then do 5 minutes cool down. Cover 7.3 miles

Thursday (Cross Trainer and Weights)
6 minutes at level 2 plus 3 minutes backward peddling (or whatever it is you do on a Cross Trainer!)  Then 9 mins at level 4 plus 3 minutes backwards.   21 minutes in total, covering 1.8 miles

Then do one cycle of weights

15 x 2 reps of Chest Fly (1 weight)
15 x 2 Chest Press (1)
15 x 2 Leg Extension (1)
15 x 2 Lat Pull Down (4)
15 x 2 Ab Crunch (4)

Friday (Swimming or Weights)
As my David Lloyd membership doesn’t run out until end February, I am currently going Swimming on a Friday.  Once membership runs out, I will be doing 2 x cycles of the Weights (described above)

The above is derived from my old gym workout schedule, so the running, rowing and cycling is pretty much what I was doing before anyway… but obviously with differences now on the Cross Trainer and weights.   I am hoping to get the rowing back up to 30 minutes and increase the weights a little bit as I get used to them, but otherwise am expecting the above to be my long term regime

Just got to cut down my fat and sugar intake now :-)

Poker: Investing in Poker Tracker 3

Having had some good hints from using the trial version of the software, I decided to invest the $90 to get the full version of Poker Tracker 3

The software basically keeps track of all the hands you play and allows you to :

• Review your performance and the performance of your foes by interrogating the database of hands played
• more importantly (in my view)… gives you a real time Heads Up Display (HUD) of all kinds of interesting statistics whilst playing

You still need to pay attention to your opponents and put them on hands as normal, but you can see statistics like how many times they enter a pot voluntarily, how many times they raise pre-flop, do they check/raise, and masses of other data.   Once used to the output and verified some of the meanings behind the stats, I have used this information to help decide how to play against my opponents

One of the most interesting things I have noticed is that I seem to enter a lot of pots and my “aggression factor” always seems to be amongst the highest on the table !!    Never really thought of myself as being an aggressive player :-)

If you play the sites that are supported by the software, then you get a 60 day free trial, which allows you to do pretty much everything the full version does…. so in my view, it’s worth a go if you are playing regularly online as you can see if you get on with it and it actually helps your game

Poker: Home Tournament - January 2009

Wow, what a start to the season!

Although it was only last night.... my memory is a bit vague, but due only to the fact that there was so much action on the tables and lots of frivolity, that I am just having trouble recalling the best bits !!

With Martin to my left and Darren to my right... I was always going to have and interesting game... my basic strategy was pretty standard in that I started out steady and let the others go all in if they wanted to (Martin was the first rebuy in the first hand on our table :-) )  I was going pretty steady and managed to win some chips somewhere along the way, then had a run of cards.. first getting QQ but Lee and Darren both called... Lee with KQ and Darren has QJ.  The flop brought a J then the turn saw another J !!  Luckily Darren has a fair bit less chips so I won pot 2 from Lee so wasn't dented too much.    I then took down a pot uncontested with AT  and the next hand got KK and managed to win some chips there as well !   Later on Martin re-raised my raise and we ended up all-in pre-flop.  My KQ wasn't looking good against his QQ but the ladies were not lucky tonight as a K took Martins stack very low

With all the action going on we seemed to get to the final table quite quickly.  I had managed to build a good chip stack of around 12'000 or so and was probably the chip lead... and had even draw the dealer button so could relax for a few hands.

Lee was always in trouble with the short stack (but was in the points again !) and was the first one out from the final table, taken out by Andy.  Andy then took out Bill when Bill decided his T high was good enough to call to catch a bluff (however Andy wasn't bluffing..)

We then seemed to have a phase were the short stacks were doubling up... I remember doubling up Derek somewhere along the line when my A7 was dominated by his A-9... I also gave Andy and Darren a load of chips (I think)

Eventually, with the blinds now at 2000/1000 something had to give....  I managed to take out Derek and get myself back in the running, then just as the time ended Alex took out Andy and gave himself a very healthy looking stack.  

With three hands to play and 4 players left, all with reasonable stacks, it was all to play for.    Simon took out Alex and had a reasonable lead, the 2nd last hand I got KK and was happy when Simon raised.  Darren folded to my all-in.   Unfortunately an A came and reduced me to 1000 chips with one hand to play and that was it as Simon had an unassailable lead and Darren was large amount ahead of me....

It was a great game with loads of action, so a really good start to the year.  I am not sure if the new rule of getting a point for each knockout was in peoples minds during the game, but certainly make the January results a bit closer than they would have been otherwise.... looks to be a cracking season in prospect

Looking forward to the next one already......

Poker: How was 2008 ?

My year started out with the best of intentions and had the motivation of trying to make this a breakthrough year (this was my main hope from my previous end of year reflections)

I did manage to stick to my basic bankroll formula and playing on one site (mainly, just a couple of temporary switches here and there) and also didn’t get distracted by trying to satellite into a big tourney….. however still managed to finish the year down $1155 !

Up to the end of march I was $40 up, but April was a definite downswing for me.  I was playing some games like Omaha and Horse (and also started 8 game) which was a bit of a drain on my resources, but really just had a few games at the $33 level which I didn’t cash in on to give a big dent to my funds.    July was a disastrous month for me, as it started with a big win at $22 level so I foolishly decided to try playing a couple of games at $100 level.   I did win the first game, but lost a couple on the trot to give me only a small profit for the month.  Although I did them drop back down to less giddy stakes, I didn’t cash in on the key games and ended up $100 own on the month, whereas I should easily have set myself up for a sizeable profit… oh well lesson learned :-)

October was the worse month, although in fairness I had decided to allocate some specific (extra) funds to risk in order to try and double up to fund a specific purchase I was keen to make.  Unfortunately my gamble didn’t pay off and so my figures are around $250 more than they would otherwise have been…. although still would have been another bad month!

Nov and Dec I am quite happy with my performance and do seem to have had more consistency for these two months.    For the two months combined I do make a small profit and of the 25 days where I played, 12 were profitable days

Overall, I feel I am playing OK but do need to be a bit more careful about sticking to my Bankroll strategy and my game selection.

In 2009 my aims are to firstly stick to the game level I can bankroll and focus on STT.  My MTT will be very restricted so will try to only play one a week.      I will doubtless play some cash games as well, but only low limit NL Holdem.      The games will primarily be Holdem, but do enjoy the HORSE and 8 Game, so will also continue with these but only for low stakes.     I will probably keep an eye open for the Ladbrokes Poker Cruise as am tempted to go for it again in 2009…..