A New Blog A New Month And Plenty Of Spew</h1> <article> <h1>A New Blog A New Month And Plenty Of Spew</h1> <p>Siminitt — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:14:00 GMT</p> Hello and welcome - decided to start a blog again as my last one had decent reviews when I was writing on Coinflip, a lot has happened since then and the time has come to start sharing some of the highs and lows!!!<br /><br />So a little about me - I'm currently one of the sponsored pros for Badbeat I play poker full time and have done for 5 years now, I play 6max cash 200nl + on Ipoker and also on microgaming. <br /><br />I joined Badbeat around 3 months ago and unfortunately didn't get off to the best start I was spewing buyins away like it was monopoly money and didn't seem to be on the right side of any run good, after breaking my loss limit, looking at my hands and realising how bad I was playing, I was told to take a break for a while until some of the coaches had finished in Vegas and then we could re-evaluate where I was at. (sigh)<br />3 weeks passed and I was informed that I had received a new mentor called Peter - I obvs googled to get some background on him and found out hes a real good player, really solid and good win rate etc. (happy days). I had a skype call with Peter and he informed me that he had spoken to some of the big wigs at BB and assured them that my game was a winner and that I had defo been on the wrong side of some situations and that he had confidence in me winning again.<br /><br />A month after I effectively broke even maybe even a slight profit under the guidance of my coach and started to get a real feel for the games, I still have the odd spew monkey moment which I'm trying to iron out but hey who doesn't???? :-) (Peter)<br /><br />Month 2 started off real good I was winning even though I was running below EV by a huge margin and was playing a lot better my game had changed my spew was there but in a more calculated way and I was starting to enjoy poker again, I was waking up with a buzz and an urge to grind and improve.<br />Typical poker meant typical swings and mine came with about a week to go - I now started running out of flip tokens and my hands were just getting pipped here there and everywhere all of a sudden I'm now losing like 3k after being up nearly 5k WTF.... I did some sessions again reviewed some hands and spotted some easy mistakes and tried to rectify them. I had a 25th placed finish in the 500k even on microgaming which was extremely tilting I still picked up around $4k but I was 3rd in chips for so long and with 26 to go thought I had a real chance at the 120k euro for the winner :( anyhow I think I finished again with a slight profit of around 1k after a swingy month.<br /><br />September has started ok - I'm running 14buyin below EV but I'm even at the moment having played a few k hands, I did have a nice score in the 10k on microgaming for 3k euros which sees me up around 4k overall so far this month - hoping to have a real positive month I know I'm playing well and just want my figures to reflect this - (fingers crossed).<br /><br />I'm setting myself a target of 10k - 15k profit for this month and hoping to play around 60k hands again, I will do weekly updates and post hands graphs etc for people who want to, can follow, comment, criticise or compliment :-)<br /><br />A little bit of more about me away from poker, I'm in the process of buying a house with my girlfriend :-) Im a huge Blackburn Rovers fan, I've played semi-pro football in my earlier years (28 now) I love snowboarding and try to have as much banter in my life as possible - I'm a PS3 geek too and play ProEvo and COD for redic hours... <br /><br />Enough of boring you lot I will update later in the week :-)<br />Laters Ant :-) </article> <article> <h1>Test Blog</h1> <p>n0tont1lt — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:13:00 GMT</p> <p>Testing123...</p> </article> <article> <h1>A year in review.. and a look forward...</h1> <p>officespace — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:59:00 GMT</p> <p>Well 2010 is done with and what a year it was! Lots of great times were had and wanted to do a long blog (sorry you ADHD suffers out there ..) to just recap the goals I set at the start of the year, and then maybe set some new ones. </p><p> </p><p><b><u><i>Goals that I set in my blog in December 2009:- </i></u></b></p><ul><li><i>Play 1,000,000 hands in 2010 - This goal is pretty self explainitory but think its a good one, it means averaging about 90k hands a month and is perfectly feasable with a little hard work ethic. </i>- <b>My grind ethic is still as terrilbe as ever and I believe I played a total of 300k hands this year online. Missed this one by a mile, however when I wrote this I was 9 tabling $100nl, and soon realised that to move up I had to lower the tables and start to crush more. </b></li></ul><ul><li><i>Play higher - Such a generalised goal, and to be honest I don't have dreams of one day playing 200/400 hu vs durrrr etc. Just like to earn a nice tidy profit for the year and get alot better. I also think saying 'I wanna play 5/10 full time' just pointless for me as the higher I move up usually the less hands I play. This is partly due to less tables to begin with/ games might not run as frequently esp on a site like betfair where I don't think I've ever seen 10 '$10/20' games run. So just going to say, play higher for the majority of the year. Prolly 1/2 or something, and I will try to stay at betfair due to the redic rakeback % I get just means that if I did play 1m hands then that's more than most people earn in a year just in rakeback. <b> - </b></i><b>Ok well I DEFINATLY achieved this goal. I started the year playing $100nl on betfair and finished it playing $400 and $600nl on betfair still. I really improved as a poker player and put in the time away from the tables to get to the stage where my win rate is certainly enviable. </b></li></ul><ul><li><i>Go WSOP and play 2 or more events - I've been to the WSOP 2 times and sadly due to being underage at the time couldn't play any of the events, only cash games... sooo.. this year with the live br thing and me having the time I think it's a good goal. The events I'll play are going to be <$5k so they won't be great structures so setting a goal to cash in one is unrealistic.</i></li></ul><ul><li><i>Played a few more live tournamnets - Outside of the WSOP I want to play in the WSOPE this year and travel to the PCA, I mean the Jan 2010, as it's a little late to be planning to go in a few days and I have other things going on in Jan. </i>- Ok well I'll take these two as a join one. <b>Thanks the generousity of badbeat promotions each month AND my run good in events I went to the 'Betfair Live Ibiza' event, which I final tabled and wrote a review up for. I also went to UKIPT which cost me a fortune, but was well worth it to meet the team and again there is a blog entry up on that week too. I also played in the Malta Poker Open which was a £1k buy in, and sadly didn't cash in that. Finally to trump all of those I won a sat to the WSOPE main event £10k buy in and played that, which was a great experience even with busting last hand of the day. I think I achieved this goal, however still this year I havn't found the time or bankroll to treat myself to the PCA. </b> </li></ul><ul><li><i>Make $100k incl rakeback - This might be a little unrealistic, not sure but it will become apparent pretty quickly. I think though if I hit the 90k hands a month goal that should equal just shy of $9k a month including rakeback @ $100nl. So if I'm moving up later on in the year and such, I don't think it's unachieveable. - </i><b>I believe that I made just shy of $50k this year online with 75% of that being pure profit, so not too disappointed about that considering 50% of my hands were at 50/1 and I was working my way through the limits. I am super proud of my $1/2 graph and win rate and predict to easily make $100k in 2011 now I'm playing 2/4 full time. Finally I achieved the role of having my own mentor group which obviously pad's the bank account and also won probably £10k in live cash games and about £5k in live tournamnet cashes. Overall would say I hit this goal 'technically' but this year would like $100k profit from online cash games exclusivly. </b> </li></ul><ul><li><i>Live outside of the UK for 3-6 months of the year - Pretty self explainitory and is covered below :) I like the UK and have done alot of travelled outside of it compared to others my age, but honestly never lived in a different country for any period of time. Now the USA has like a 90 day visa waiver programme and so many countries are in the EU allowing people to move freely it seems a waste to not take advantage of this whilst young with no commitments. - </i><b>I at least came close to achieving this, as my blog has often mentioned my travels around Malta, and I lived there between the end of August and the end of November this year. Add that to the odd live tournamnet and week away then I was at least travelling for maybe 40% of the year. </b> </li></ul><p>Overall this was my first year that I pretty much 'went pro' with good bankroll management and a strong effort to improve from a low stakes grinder to a midstakes crushing reg. Very happy with my standard at the virtual and real life tables, and what I see myself achieving in 2011... </p><p> </p><p><b><u><i>Goals that I set in in 2011:- </i></u></b> </p><ul><li><i>Make $100k only online and finish the year playing $5/10 at least. - I can see this being VERY achievable and with such a strong end to 2010 I would be very disappointed if I didn't make this.</i></li></ul><ul><li><i>Try to either play the WSOPE or the WSOP main event in 2011 - I desperatly want to go to Vegas again for the WSOP, having missed it the last 2 years. With the dream team promotion (see more about that later) and hopefully some great results online I cannot see myself not going. Also maybe if I get very lucky again maybe winning a seat the WSOPE £10k would be amazing as that tournament was one of the best poker experiences I've ever had in every way.. the only way it could have been better is if I won it! <br /></i></li></ul><ul><li><i>Have live tournament cashes of $15k - I don't play tournaments for a living and don't claim to be amazing at them, however it would be nice to build on the little success that I had this year and cash for at least $15k.. I'm setting the bar very low and really I would hope to bink something and make it $50k. </i></li></ul><ul><li><i>Become more active in the online community and strategy side of forums - I feel I'm a great coach, and thus was fortunate to be given my mentor group. My HEM skills of analysis and also understanding of the game mean that I should try to become a more known player and for that to happen I must start being more active on sites like 2+2. Not a figure or anything that I can put on this, but at the end of 2011 I will be able to honestly say whether I'm happy with where I am. This is somewhat linked too with the previous point as if you are to bink a tournament somewhere you are instantly more know and somehow respected as a player (something I disagree with), so it could come in a variety of ways. </i></li></ul><ul><li><i>Continue travelling and purchase a car - I try to travel as much as I can whilst young and single, so at least until I hit 25/26 I don't see this slowing down anytime soon if I continue with this flexible profession. I have a trip to Lyon planned for this time next week for a month to stay in a fellow betfair reg's apartment and put in some hands/get better.. after that it is the UKIPT's and possibly a little vacation to Thailand. One down side of this though has been that I've never brought my own car, and relied on borrowing families. Mainly it was the guilt of wasting so much on insurance and devaluation whilst not around, but also I wanted my first car not be a let down and something special. Either way I would like to start saving up for something to treat myself at the end of 2011. </i></li></ul><p><br /><u><b>Other reports:-</b></u> Well the festive period is now officially over, and I would love to say that I spent it grinding online and crushing the easy fish that appear this time of year. That would be a lie. I spent most of the time either covering shift manager or drinking corona's whilst watching films. In our house we do not celebrate xmas too much, and instead just had my grandma over to stay for boxing day whilst watching England own in the cricket. <br /><br />However one party not to be missed was the Badbeat Xmas party up in Yorkshire and this year it was a cracker.. I've never been to one before, however it would take something special to top it in 2011. To start with it was really nice to just meet all the people that I hadn't met before (ie. James, Sandy, Chris, Laura and Ken) and also fantastic to catch up with those that I had, (Strummer, Daz, Steve, Neil, John and many more...).</p><p>Really though I'm sure everybody secretly wanted to prove thier skills at the felt and so 4 or 5 professional poker tables has been set up in the suprisingly large office, and as soon as the beer was cracked open the cards were shuffled up and dealt. It all started civilised with a standard £20 10 man sit and go. It was mainly mentors and managment that played this, and when all was done obviously the top 2 came out on top... John Conroy being 2nd and myself crusing to victory haha :D. I should point out at this stage that anybody who thought that this blog would not include gloating, celebration and a slight needling about the nights festivites was gravely mistaken!</p><p>Next up was a great Indian meal and no sooner had it all been washed down by a number of corona's the 'Main Event' begun. I believe it was a £20 mtt but with a £20 rebuy or add on allowed for the first 90 minutes. The structure was reasonable so as to allow the best, most skillful and handsome players (you can see where this is going obv) could rise to the top. My memory isn't too clear on that night but I believe we got 55 runners and I came 2nd after doing a deal and losing a flip to win.. it was good for a very nice £400. Also given was a badbeat goody bag and the bragging rights that I was officially on a heater. <i>As a side note.. if you are ever going to go on a mega heater its best to just save it for when your playing vs friends and colleagues and even better if the M.D. of badbeat and other management are also there as witnesses for good impression! </i></p><p>By this time a steady cash game was creating quite the stir and noise, and I would definatly be guilty of trying to bust the tournament a few times to go join it..however the pokergods had spoken and after the mtt and many many many beers I had my seat in the cash game. The details are hazy but most had brought in for £200-300 and the biggest stack was probably Sturmmer with close to £800. I sat down with £350 and I believe 3rd hand in got somebody to 5 bet shove me with 75o and I called for £300 with 88. I held and the villan of the hand wasn't particularly happy. The rest of the cash game is a blurr but I do remember discussing vividly with anybody that looked vaguly interested (and others that just didn't) about a hand in which I had to call £300 on the river with TPTK, only to be shown runner runner 2 pair. I was still happy with how I played it and won't bore you with the details.</p><p>During the cash game I took a break and was convicned to join another 9 man £20 sit and go, which I won because again, save up your heaters for christmas time. Don't use them in the obvious $10k events where everybody is :D</p><p>Either way I think I walked out about 5am extremely drunk and about £600+ better off. It was a great night and one that I hope is repeated many times this year at UKIPT's and 'Meet the team' promotions. I, along with everybody else I have spoken to since that attended had a thoroughly good time, so thanks again for hosting it and supplying the catering and drink.</p><p> </p><p>Good luck in 2011 in whatever you do, on and off the felt! </p><p> Sam - Below just some graphs..sadly not all hands for the year as on new laptop but I guess covers alot.</p><p> </p><p><i>$100nl</i> <br /></p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/1.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p><i>$200nl</i></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/2.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p><i>$400nl</i></p><p><i></i> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/3.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Its a long one!!!!!</h1> <p>Strummer — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:11:00 GMT</p> <p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Calibri">Once again its been too long, and ive actually had things to talk about, so no excuses really i should have posted weeks ago! Still, im here now. Last time i posted i was going through a stage of playing huge volumes of online cash and play very few tournaments or satellites to live events which was my stated intent. Well three weeks or so of playing 25,000/week grinding the low levels brought me to my senses! Boy its hard work putting in big volume, and to be honest it was making me a grumpy bleeder too!!! So is stopped playing huge volume, got back to playing 1 or 2 tables in small sessions and all of a sudden im enjoying my poker and smiling again! Im a great believer in the positive thought positive results theory, i don’t know too many winners who think like losers! But off the back of my smiling happy poker out look good things started to happen. As i said earlier my goals poker wise where/are to get out playing live at least once month, well ask and you shall receive! I got my first live event from a very unexpected source. Gary Ingham was part of the Ladbrokes poker team from the glory days, he then went on to work for mansion poker before moving to pokerstars. Hes now moved on to a new site called jetbull poker based in Prague. Gary and i are from the same town and have know each other a long time and naturally talk frequently. Anyway one morning on msn he asks me what im doing at the weekend and would i like to represent jetbull in the Malta open?! Well i thought about for a second or two before snapping his hand off!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>A couple of days later and im in the Hilton hotel Casino playing against the locals in the 100euro sat to the 1000euro main event. I can honestly say hand on heart i have NEVER had such a big edge in a poker game in my life, i can also say hand on heart that i will NEVER have a bigger edge in a poker game again!!!!!! It wasn’t that they didn’t know how to play, talking about hands they clearly had a good understanding of the game, in fact they generally had high levels of thinking about the game, but when it actually came to implementing the thoughts into practice, well they either couldn’t or if they did they made it so very obvious what they had they may as well have had the cards face up! An example of this was a hand i played early on in the game and was to be repeated several times throughout the night with several different players. Because i was decked out in my jetbull/badbeat gear and was getting some attention from the press there it didn’t take a genius to work out i was a pro player, and the locals were only too willing to test their skills against a “pro”. So im raising nearly every pot, im bluffing sometimes but im hitting too and when i hit i show, they wanted to believe i had a hand every time and i wanted to show them they were right. Again i raise and there are a couple of callers, it gets round to a local reg who re-raises big, and its folded to me. I don’t remember what i had but it was going to be an easy fold but i gave it a bit of Hollywood to keep up the image of having a hand. After 30 seconds or so the fella tells me “look, just fold i have huge hand i will show you”, well his bet size already told me that, and it was clear by how he spoke he was telling the truth, i smiled told him i was making a huge fold and folded as did the other players in the pot, the chap then flips over AA. So he tells me his hand size with his bet size, he verbally tells me his hand strength and then he confirms it by showing his hand............like i said this happened many times during the night with several different players. Its as if the small local poker community had introduced this as a way of not having the big hands busted, because they were all at it!!!! “i have a big hand, i will show you” and they kept doing it!!!!!! Bloody wonderful!! There were 12 tickets up for grabs and when we were down to 14 players i was on around 15BB, i was ok but not safe, i was also very tired as i had been awake for 24 hours due to my early morning flight and the fact that this satellite had dragged on far longer than anyone had planned for due to a good structure. But i didn’t need to worry, i was the only outsider on my table of locals and they were all nudging and winking at each other in the most blatant live poker collusion i have even seen!!!!! Not that i complained as they time wasted then folded to the blind every hand! So sick! There was also no hand for hand as they only do this in the events themselves!!!!! <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Needless to say i got one of the tickets and cashed it it for the 1100euro that cover the exs for the trip. So the next day and <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>to the main event itself, this field was a little tougher than the sat as there was a number of strong players from Denmark here, but over all it was still a great value field. I got off to a good steady start pick up pots at will, after an hour i had turned my 15,000 starting stack into 22,000 while the average was 15,500. I then get all my money in pre flop in a 45,000 pot with AA v KK.....................the river was a K! Blahhhhhhhh!!!!!! I know i will sound so up my own bottom for saying this, but im just so sure that if i win that pot its all over, i mean i have three times more chips than anyone in a field of players who tell you what cards they have.............o well! Still it was nice to out there playing again, and Malta was great too, but as so often in my poker life there was no cigar!</font></p> <p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Calibri">Standard for me the next day i jumped on the first plane out of there and headed off home. On getting home i received some more good news, due to my good results online the previous month badbeat had given me a bonus seat to the GUKPT event at Blackpool, things where starting to happen in a very positive way indeed!</font></p><font size="3" face="Calibri"> </font> <p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Calibri">So to Blackpool, and i arrive here in good spirits. I always play the Thursday in this event for two reasons, firstly on the Wednesday most of the UK poker world goes out on the town in Blackpool for the Christmas due so i hope that a few players will be a little worse for wear, also i feel Fridays are generally a little tougher than Thursdays, this is based on zero evidence, and was to be proven very wrong as i take me seat only to find <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Richard Ashby and Stuart Fox sat with me. For all the quality at my table there was also a generous splashing of value, most notably a Lady of advancing years who was sat three to my left. I don’t really remember much of day one apart from two hands, the first was early on again the said lady. I got dealt AA, a raise a couple of calls to me i put out a standard 3bet squeeze raise and get just the one call. The flop was 7h2hxd, i bet out 1000 and she re-raise to 2000. In the hands she had played she played a very straight forward (poor) game so i was pretty sure she had a set, but as i was thinking what to do the dealer dealt the next card Jh, she then went mental! So now i KNOW for sure she has a set. The floor is called, the jack is put back and now i have a decision. I know i can rep if the heart hits, and obviously i still have 2 outs in the aces, also the bet is so small and i have position that i take the turn..........Qh. Perfect, i check and she tut checks behind me, the river is a 4<sup>th</sup> heart and its the perfect card to bluff on, so i lead out with a nice 60% pot bet, no thought, just tuts as she snap calls turning over her set...........FFS don’t bluff the fish!!!!!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>I grind back the stack back up and along the way pick up a nice pot against foxy when i squeeze 4 players with KQ, flop the K then get a value bet in on the flop, turn and river. Like i said i don’t really remember too much of day 1, not even my stack size, but i know i made it to day 2 with an above average stack.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Too be honest day 2 was also a bit of a blur, though i do remember the key hands! The first major pot i had raised from utg with KJ, a player who had been at the table for just a few hands flat calls, at the time i was starting to get in the “zone” and was being very clear at putting people on not just ranges put them on real tight ranges , in the hand 55-88 was the feeling. Everyone folds. The flop was J xd xd. I bet out and the guy thinks a little before moving all in. This was a huge pot, if i win im right up there with the chip leaders, if i lose im way down the list. As i said pre flop i was sure of the hand he held, but now on the flop i started second guessing myself, AJ? Flush draw? Playing a set like a flush draw? With all this going on in my head im also start looking the player up, then my mind was made up for me, he looked terrified, i was back in the “zone”! I call and he turns over 77 with no back door straight/flush draws so just the 2 outs, he misses i double up and im in good shape! <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Again i don’t really remember how the stack went during the rest of the day, but i know as we passed the bubble and played the last couple of tables i was on the short side. I think the blinds where around the 5000/10000 level and i had about 100,000. To my right was Ladbrokes stalwart BigLad. Now the hand we play i understand caused a bit of a thread on a couple of forums. Biglad was on a very similar stack to me so was also in need of a double up. Hes also a good player and totally understands the need to pinch the blinds and anti whenever possible. It was folded around to our blinds, he thought and pushed all in and i folded my rags. A couple of rounds later the same thing happened, its folded to our blinds, he thinks then moved all in. I look down and see 33. Now when asked about this hand by him later, and when asked about it by others later i explain it very simply, i was sure it was a race, and i was happy to take the race. I also felt pretty confident, its hard to say what i thought but the poker side of it, the maths etc was very straight forward in my mind, but the gut feeling of that moment just made it the right thing to do. I think he had k6, but the flop was so sick as he caught a open ended straight, the turn then paired which basically gave him every card in the deck!!! Amazingly i caught some random dream card on the river and my 33 held up and i was back in the races. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Now im not a great fan of calling of my tournament life with 33! Its not a standard play , but again i just “knew” at that time, in that spot it was correct, and well sometimes you just got to trust them feelings. At this time a real strange thing started to happen, two players who for two days had played like ducks bottoms, all of a sudden the fact they had £2000 guaranteed they started playing like lemons!!!! I cant begin to explain just how spewy they got , but one of them pushes all in utg with J9 and the other calls with AJ when there are probably 3<sup>rd</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup> in the chips.................well you get the picture. Thankfully i was still very much switched on and steadily built the stack up, then i played THE hand. Once again it involved my now favourite hand KJ, again i raise utg, this time i get just 1 caller from the small blind. The flop is Q 10 x. I make good size bet, SB thinks about it and makes a call, but it looked like a pained call, thinking it through im putting him on A10, K10, J10 or maybe the same hand as me KJ, i cant see him being in there with Q9, and i think with AQ, KQ, JQ or Q10 he would have been much more pleased to get him money in. With the blinds as they were this pot was now a huge pot with over 150,000 in it, and we had 150,000 each behind. The turn was a rag, again he checks. Like i say he just looked like he didn’t like his hand, im sure hes weak and go with my read, i push all in. His reaction tells me that my read is right, as he stands up, and starts talked to himself................only thing is hes not folding, why arnt you folding???!!!!!! After about 5 minutes of telling himself he doesn’t like his hand, that hes behind, he whispers “i call”, he then flips over JJ. Hmmmmm, now i really hate is play on every street, i mean limping in the SB from a UTG raise with hug blinds with JJ!!!! I mean, come on, please!!!! So to the river, i still have outs, any A, 9 or K, the K on the river bringing him to his knees, its nice to play good but its even better to get lucky!!!! Still you make your own luck, i played that hand right in my mind, not to sure he can say the same!!! So that hand sealed my seat at the final table, again i cant actually remember the details of stack size, but i know i was up there in a nice position. </font></p> <p style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Calibri">The final table on Sunday seemed to fly by, i don’t remember playing too many hands, but the ones i did play i won!!! The first big hand i played was against the table clown Andrew Bradshaw, now get me wrong i like a bit of personality at the table, but when someone tries shooting angles like he does in EVERY hand he plays, well me personally, i like to try and take their chips and shut them up!!! So ive played pretty tight in the early stages when i fin 1010 in early position and raise, mouth calls. The flop is Qh x x, he checks i bet, then the talk starts “ i cant fold this, i love my hand, don’t go broke here” blah blah blah (seriously doesn’t he get we’ve been here seen it all before?), the turn is xh, he checks and i check behind, the river brings a Ah and you can see the disappointment on his face, he checks, i think take my time, count out a nice size bet and bet. “how can i let you catch up, why did i give you the free cards” blah blah blah. After 10 minutes hes says he will fold if i show, i shake my head.........then i tell him he can see one and he can choose, for some reason this sends him over the edge as he rants at himself for letting me “catch up”, eventually he mucks showing KQ............i offer him one card but hes not interested!! The bookies favourite at the table was the young wonder Jack Ellwood, apparently hes been on a huge winning year clocking up some impressive results online and live, and i had him two to my left, unfortunately for him he had three short stacks to his left, so every time in tried imposing himself on the table one of the short stacks would pop it back to him, the result was he lost a couple of races and couldn’t get a grip of the table as he would have like. At the other end of the table Bradshaw was still playing the table clown, in his head im sure he was playing super advanced mind games, but i think in the real world we had him sussed. His exit was soon to come, first of all he lost a HUGE pot moving all in with JQ on a Q high board against KK. He then pushed all in a couple of time, then he pushed on my BB i have A7, it was 1/3<sup>rd</sup> of my stack and i snap call. I win the race against his q6. A couple of hands later Ellwood pushes all in, i look down and find two ladies, i call and again i win a raise against his AJ, in the space of 10mins i get rid of the table clown and the best player, sweeeeeet. The other plus point to losing Ellwood is that there can now be talk of a deal, when youve had the year hes had you don’t need to deals thus don’t, unfortunately i havnt had such a year and thus would love to do a deal, though i wasn’t going to say so!!! After a few hands four handed i was slight chip leader on about 1.3m chips, second had 1m with 3<sup>rd</sup> on 800k and the “small” stack on 650k. This is when the player in third asked about a deal. Fourth was to pay £17k, 3<sup>rd</sup> £26k, 2<sup>nd</sup> £45k and first about £70k. Even though i was chip leader i was only one race away from being the small stack so a deal was good with me, in the end the two small stakes took £34k and £35k, the second in chips took £44k and i took £45k, nothing surer i could have pushed for, i think i could have squeezed another £5k, but it was a fair deal and i was happy with it as where the other players so why get greedy? Happy Christmas!!!!!!! As soon as the deal was done the game opened up, we lost the short stack quickly then i took out Ronald Musson when i called all in with 77 again his Q2. So HU and im chip leader against David Johnson.......................and then for some unknown reason we have a dinner break!!!!!!! Well the money had already been chopped and i had visions of the very nice bottle of red waiting at home for me!! Basically i’d lost my focus. When we finally got it back on i wasn’t playing good, this was confirmed in the last hand we played. I open up with 108 and get called. The flop 10h8hKd was perfect and we get all the money in. Dave turns over KJ and i flip over my 108........................though it wasn’t 108, it was 107!!!!!! Just to rub it in the turn bring another 8! The rivers a blank and the KJ is good and im left shaking my head!! Still 45 bags in the bank soon brought a smile back to my face!! Ive been saying for far too long that im playing good and that a result is just around the corner, well at last i can say I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!! But i guess if you say something enough times well its got to get there in the end!!!!! Still its great to back in the money, probably my most important cash in the grand scale of things and it pays them bloody credit card bills off, sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!! Next stop London for the grand final, and you know what i think i got plenty more results in me , and plenty more results due!!!!</font></p> <p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>..lets not talk about today.</h1> <p>officespace — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:39:00 GMT</p> <p>Well today wasn't fun, no big downswong just really hated getting constantly rivered and then lol'ing when the person goes for no value what so ever. Anyways going to attempt to make my way in the snow and go to the pub for a couple of drinks today. Will try to remember to update this after that!</p><p>O and a good luck to strummer and others who are playing in the UKIPT in Ireland this weekend. Shocked that flights are still running and that they got there.. but I guess won that flip!</p><p>Sam <br /></p><p> </p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/1-12-10.jpg"></a></p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Life-tilting day</h1> <p>officespace — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 22:59:00 GMT</p> <p>Well as title suggest today was super tilty for non poker related reasons. Went to bed at 3am, and was up by 8am waiting for a BT engineer to come fix the crappy internet speeds in my house.. only one problem.. he didn't turn up. So I was told it would be between 8am and 1pm, but when I called up at 3pm to ask where this guy was I was given some awful excuse and told to rebook. This meant that I was super tired all day and really didn't feel like playing at all :( </p><p>I also totally forgot about the weekly mentor call for badbeat too today, so all round not a great day.. apart from the 99 hands of poker I played lol. Decided I was super tired after getting +$500 at dinner time and just book the nice day for 0 effort.</p><p>Tomorrow should be good as meeting a couple of fellow badbeat traders and mentors at the Vic in London for the £2500 GUKPT final. I don't think I will be playing it, but expect to find a nice cash game to grind!</p><p> </p><p>Soooooooo tired that I have to snap go to bed... Sam</p><p>(and congrats to Neil Walker for shipping I believe the $10 6 max rebuy donkament on pokertime tonight for a couple of k.. beers on you tomororw fella!) </p><p> </p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/25-11-10.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Runaway train... :)</h1> <p>officespace — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:52:00 GMT</p> <p>Well volume is still DESPERATLY lacking.. tomorrow going to set the 1500 hands target again.. today was good though as I held a sweat session with somebody for an hour or two and just played 3/4 tables of $400nl during that. Good profit, and as I had so much to do in the way of coaching and also personal stuff I decided to just bank the $600 profit for the day.</p><p>I went to the doctors today, only to be told that my appointment wasn't for today.. it was for yesterday.. I'm not sure whos fault it was (mine or receptionist) but I was pretty tilted and had to rebook for friday. Also my cable tv is f***ing up a ton recently, so got an engineer turning up tomorrow morning between 8am-1pm (deary deary me), so going to be a challenge and a half to get up in time, and probs will hit the sack after typing this up!</p><p>Had to miss a good concert featuring Laura Marling tonight in London, that I was really looking forward to, but sadly couldn't find anybody to go with and so really made me realise I gotta find a gf asap now I'm back for times like that.. also handy for the inevitable chrsitmas parties and such. </p><p>As per usual, graph below and a couple of interesting hands, but to be fair all seem 100% standard. Hope to have more hands and good results to post tomorrow, but for now back to coaching! </p><p> </p><p><b><i>Amount won today (before rake): +$670</i></b></p><p><b><i>Distance from target: $7200</i></b></p><p> </p><p>GL at the tables, Sam</p><p> </p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/24-11-10.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p><i><u><b>Hand 1:</b></u> 100% standard line from me... he has QJ and his line is certianly quesitonable on the flop and turn.. the result is to completely set himself up on the river. </i></p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /></p><p> SB ($452)<br /> BB ($400)<br /> UTG ($358)<br /> Hero (Button) ($430)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is Button with Q, 10<br /> <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $10</font>, SB calls $8, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font><br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($24) 2, 10, Q <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">SB bets $24</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $59</font>, SB calls $35<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($142) 4 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> SB checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $101</font>, SB calls $101<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($344) Q <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> SB checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $260 (All-In)</font>, SB calls $260<br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $864<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Hero had Q, 10 (full house, Queens over tens).<br /> SB didn't show (he had QJ)<br /> Outcome: Hero won $862<br /><br /><i><u><b>Hand 2:</b></u> Just me just spewing off :D To be honest I don't mind how I played it and the turn is a pretty good card to barrel, however this time I'm not 100% certain what he had as tank shoved. I doubt he check flats a set here on the flop oop, and if he has like A high flush draw would expect him to again get this in on the flop as seems to be an 'ok' reg. This leads me to think that he believe me so to be super spewy and has like QdQ or even jacks. Either way if it is a biggish pair or like 9Ts, he totally confused me, not that it matters. </i></p><p><i> </i><br /> No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (5 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /> <br /> SB ($278.75)<br /> BB ($1214)<br /> UTG ($592)<br /> MP ($551.80)<br /> Hero (Button) ($394)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is Button with A, 7<br /> <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, <font color="#cc3333">MP bets $12</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $35</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>2 folds</i></font>, MP calls $23<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($76) 9, 8, 2 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> MP checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $56</font>, MP calls $56<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($188) 9 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> MP checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $109</font>, <font color="#cc3333">MP raises $460.80 (All-In)</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>Hero folds</i></font><br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $406<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> MP didn't show<br /> Outcome: MP won $754.80<br /> </p><i></i> </article> <article> <h1>Achievement!</h1> <p>officespace — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:15:00 GMT</p> <p>Today was a bit of a swongy day.. (although not really for 2/4 standards) it just felt like was missing everything and then got KK into AA to cement those thoughts... However mounted a good comeback and turned a -$1k day into a $700 day, so I agreed with shift manager to stop and to bank the profit. </p><p>Played 1100 hands, and as per usual will post graph and a couple of interesting hands below :) O and changed my all in line on the graph to orange so it is actually distinguishable between non-showdown winnings. </p><p>In other news, today I booked to go to the doctors as I've had this cough/chest infection for like 10 days+ now and although it has got alot better, it doesn't appear to be disappearing on its own. Also as mentioned in my previous blog, booked my hotel and travel to go to the badbeat xmas party this year, so super excited about that!! </p><p>GL at the tables, Sam <br /></p><p> </p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/23-11-10.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p><u><i><b>Hand 1:</b></i></u><i> </i><i>Sure this is 100% std given that this reg views me as some type of spewy exploitable fish. He defo sometimes goes for value with 99-QQ and realistically only hands I belive in his range that beats me is 67s/A6s so I snapped and was suprised he made this move with total air and not some sort of straight draw that missed. </i></p><p> No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (3 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /> <br /> SB ($558.40)<br /> BB ($394)<br /> Hero (Button) ($506)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is Button with K, K<br /> <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $12</font>, SB calls $10, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font><br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($28) 6, 3, 6 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> SB checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $20</font>, SB calls $20<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($68) 4 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> SB checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $49</font>, <font color="#cc3333">SB raises $134</font>, Hero calls $85<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($336) 3 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">SB bets $288</font>, Hero calls $288<br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $912<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Hero had K, K (two pair, Kings and sixes).<br /> SB had J, K (two pair, sixes and threes).<br /> Outcome: Hero won $910<br /></p><p><br /><u><i><b>Hand 2:</b></i></u><i> Villan in this hand had Q4o and personally I hate his line the whole way...make what you will of it all. <br /></i></p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /></p><p> Hero (SB) ($772.60)<br /> BB ($1046)<br /> UTG ($400)<br /> Button ($358.90)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is SB with 5, 6<br /> <font color="#666666"><i>2 folds</i></font>, Button calls $4, Hero checks<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($8) Q, 10, 4 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $6</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Button raises $26</font>, Hero calls $20<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($60) 3 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> Hero checks, <font color="#cc3333">Button bets $60</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $196</font>, Button calls $136<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($452) 8 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $546.60 (All-In)</font>, Button calls $132.90 (All-In)<br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $717.80<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Button didn't show<br /> Hero had 5, 6 (flush, Queen high).<br /> Outcome: Hero won $1129.50<br /><br /><br /><u><i><b>Hand 3:</b></i></u> <i>No idea what to say about this hand. Stack sizes made it super difficult on the flop to chose a correct amount, but generally I hate betting this turn for obv reasons. The guy was the mark at the table, so yeh just weird, and maybe could find a fold on the river now I'm basically just hoping he somehow has worse flush or super retard (which is possible).</i><br /><br /> No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /> <br /> SB ($212.70)<br /> Hero (BB) ($625.50)<br /> UTG ($502)<br /> Button ($416.70)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is BB with 6, 7<br /> <font color="#cc3333">UTG bets $12</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, SB calls $10, Hero calls $8<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($36) 8, 2, Q <font color="#009b00">(3 players)</font><br /> SB checks, Hero checks, <font color="#cc3333">UTG bets $28</font>, SB calls $28, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $80</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, SB calls $52<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($224) 9 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> SB checks, Hero checks<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($224) 2 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">SB bets $120.70 (All-In)</font>, Hero calls $120.70<br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $465.40<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> SB had Q, Q (full house, Queens over twos).<br /> Hero had 6, 7 (flush, Queen high).<br /> Outcome: SB won $463.40<br /> </p><p> </p><p><b><u><i>Hand 4:</i></u></b> <i>Not sure what I was thinking on this river.. maybe get him to fold super marginal overpairs like sevens or eights, or even better missed flush draws too. Either way hate my line on turn, and pretty much my fault for losing the extra $80 here. </i></p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (5 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /> <br /> SB ($446.30)<br /> Hero (BB) ($400)<br /> UTG ($414.20)<br /> MP ($425.90)<br /> Button ($203.70)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is BB with Q, 10<br /> <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, <font color="#cc3333">MP bets $12</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>2 folds</i></font>, Hero calls $8<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($26) 6, 8, 7 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> Hero checks, <font color="#cc3333">MP bets $22</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $57</font>, MP calls $35<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($140) 7 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> Hero checks, MP checks<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($140) 6 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $84</font>, MP calls $84<br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $308<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Hero had Q, 10 (two pair, sevens and sixes).<br /> MP had 10, 10 (two pair, tens and sevens).<br /> Outcome: MP won $305<br /> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Hmm.. not going to plan...</h1> <p>officespace — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:45:00 GMT</p> <p>Right well TOMORROW (like everybody always says about everything 'tomorrow i will do xyz') I will DEFINATLY be playing 1500 hands!!! I started a session today and then was interupted by a friend popping over, which was nice so not complaining about that :) If I don't do 1500 hands tomorrow I'm going to donate $20 to RNLI, as per all my defaults on bets. </p><p>Also in other news I've been asked to join a badbeat dream team consisting of Strummer, Manuel (head of UK mentoring) and Richard Ellis (a good cash game player i am not familiar with). If you are not familiar with the 'Badbeat Dream Team' promo, basically there are online tournaments over a couple of months, and results of those dictate your teams starting stack in the live final. Then depending how the team overall performs in the live final, then you can win some seriously good prizes. This year I believe 1st is a $15k WSOP package for all team members, 2nd being a $5500 WSOP package for all team members and finally 3rd being all expenses paid UKIPT trip for all the team!! </p><p>Anyways 2/4 is still super lol bad it would appear, but my volume is just embarressing.. (see graph below and an interesting hand)</p><p>GL at the tables, tonight I'm off out to play in a live game which should be a good laugh :)</p><p>Sam </p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/22-11-10.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p><i><u><b>Hand 1:-</b></u><b> Don't think its possible to not go broke here tbh no matter what level of thinking.</b></i> </p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (5 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /></p> SB ($209.30)<br /> BB ($421.50)<br /> UTG ($523.40)<br /> MP ($372)<br /> Hero (Button) ($394)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is Button with A, A<br /> <font color="#cc3333">UTG bets $14</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $40</font>, SB calls $38, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, UTG calls $26<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($124) 7, 5, 6 <font color="#009b00">(3 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">SB bets $169.30 (All-In)</font>, UTG calls $169.30, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $354 (All-In)</font>, UTG calls $184.70<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($1001.30) 5 <font color="#009b00">(3 players, 2 all-in)</font><br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($1001.30) 10 <font color="#009b00">(3 players, 2 all-in)</font><br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $1001.30<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Hero had A, A (two pair, Aces and fives).<br /> SB had 10, J (two pair, tens and fives).<br /> UTG had 9, 8 (straight, ten high).<br /> Outcome: UTG won $998.30<br /> </article> <article> <h1>Take it easyyyyyy</h1> <p>officespace — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 21:58:00 GMT</p> <p>Well as title says.. already slacking (just a little). Covered for somebody doing shift manager for a couple of hours, and then after that played for an hour or so just on some 3 handed tables. These tables appear to attract alot of fish or people who just want to put the last of thier online bankroll on the line. Could be that I just hit a good period, but evertytime I joined one there was at least 1 terrible player on the table. I thought I would post some interesting hands from last 2 days for people to pick apart. </p><p>Then played some 2/4 briefly but wasn't feeling in the mood to grind and decided to just book a $300 win on the day. Not fantastic, but for minimal effort then I'll take it :D </p><p>Tonight havn't got a lot planned apart from catch up on some tv shows and some mentor sessions with my group. I will post a better update tomorrow when there is much more to say! O and before I forget I believe the badbeat Christmas party is the 16th Decemeber this year.... hope to see alot of people there! Currently most mentors are confirmed, along with office staff, and then I know of 4-5 players at least also going... should be a blast!</p><p> GL at the tables, Sam<br /> </p><p> </p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/20-11-10.jpg"></a></p><p><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;font-style:italic;">Hand 1: (Words elude me.. but I guess my image pays off sometimes)</p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /> <br /> SB ($400)<br /> BB ($406)<br /> UTG ($521.70)<br /> Hero (Button) ($479.90)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is Button with Q, K<br /> <font color="#666666"><i>2 folds</i></font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $12</font>, <font color="#cc3333">SB raises $32</font>, Hero calls $24<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($72) K, K, J <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">SB bets $44</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $100</font>, SB calls $56<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($272) 8 <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> SB checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $156</font>, <font color="#cc3333">SB raises $264 (All-In)</font>, Hero calls $108<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($800) J <font color="#009b00">(2 players, 1 all-in)</font><br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $800<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Hero had Q, K (full house, Kings over Jacks).<br /> SB had 5, A (two pair, Kings and Jacks).<br /> Outcome: Hero won $798</p><p> </p><p><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hand 2:</span></span></span> </p><p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"></span>This guy was a total fish and I really liked my line.. maybe make it any extra $10-15 on the river as appeared too cheap for him to fold although wanted it to look valuetown-ish. </p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $4.00 BB (5 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /></p><p> SB ($292.30)<br /> BB ($433)<br /> UTG ($661)<br /> Hero (MP) ($1057.20)<br /> Button ($541.50)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is MP with 6, 7<br /> <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $10</font>, Button calls $10, SB calls $8, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font><br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($34) 3, K, 2 <font color="#009b00">(3 players)</font><br /> SB checks, Hero checks, Button checks<br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($34) 4 <font color="#009b00">(3 players)</font><br /> SB checks, <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $21</font>, <font color="#666666"><i>1 fold</i></font>, SB calls $21<br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($76) K <font color="#009b00">(2 players)</font><br /> <font color="#cc3333">SB bets $45</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $96</font>, SB calls $51<br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $268<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> SB had 6, 3 (two pair, Kings and threes).<br /> Hero had 6, 7 (one pair, Kings).<br /> Outcome: SB won $265<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">Hand 3: (posting for lolz)<br /></span></span></span></p><p>No-Limit Hold'em, $2.00 BB (3 handed) - <a href="http://www.handhistoryconverter.com/">Hold'em Manager Hand Converter</a> from HandHistoryConverter.com<br /></p> SB ($31.90)<br /> BB ($76.40)<br /> Hero (Button) ($573.30)<br /> <br /> <b>Preflop</b>: Hero is Button with A, Q<br /> <font color="#cc3333">Hero bets $6</font>, SB calls $5, <font color="#cc3333">BB raises $74.40 (All-In)</font>, <font color="#cc3333">Hero raises $140.80</font>, SB calls $25.90 (All-In)<br /> <br /> <b>Flop</b>: ($184.70) 5, 9, 7 <font color="#009b00">(3 players, 2 all-in)</font><br /> <br /> <b>Turn</b>: ($184.70) 8 <font color="#009b00">(3 players, 2 all-in)</font><br /> <br /> <b>River</b>: ($184.70) 9 <font color="#009b00">(3 players, 2 all-in)</font><br /> <br /> <b>Total pot:</b> $184.70<br /> <br /> Results:<br /> Hero had A, Q (one pair, nines).<br /> SB had 3, 3 (two pair, nines and threes).<br /> BB had A, 8 (two pair, nines and eights).<br /> Outcome: BB won $182.70<br /> </article> <article> <h1>.....GO</h1> <p>officespace — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 21:45:00 GMT</p> <p>Well I wanted to start playing alot earlier than I did, so only managed to put in just under 1000 hands today before starting some mentoring. I would like to aim to do 2000 a day to be honest, but predict it will be more like 1500. The $2/4 games on betfair seem to be pretty juicy so far and people don't seem to be adapting to 5 handed very well. It could be that because I am only 4 tabling and thus can spot some good spots that others playing more cannot... I am not sure but over next 50k hands will soon find out!</p><p>I was playing 1 table of $200nl and 3 tables of $400nl and ran pretty bad at the 1/2 one account for the difference in all in ev. Anyways a great start to my new effort towards poker and will keep a running tally as to how far away from $10k I am.</p><p> </p><p><b><i>Amount won today (before rake): +$820<br /></i></b></p><p><b><i>Distance from target: $9180</i></b></p><p> </p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/19-11-10.jpg"></a></p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>A New Era..</h1> <p>officespace — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:50:00 GMT</p> <p>Well its a month since my 23rd and it is time for a change in mentality and work ethic. I've realised that to win alot and have a very good $10k+ income each month takes effort/hard work/ and to put in hands. All of which I am terrible at for the last 2 months :( So starting today up until xmas day, I'm going to do an update 6 days a week and also donate $20 to RNLI every time I fail. I already give a little to them but sadly not balla enough to do any more than $20 haha and I'll post proof that I shipped when the time comes! </p><p><u><b>Malta: </b></u></p><p>Well I'm back from Malta now, after 3 months living there with some other poker players. It was a blast and I would have loved to have stayed but wanted to come home for xmas and see my friends and parents. We ended the poker house as one of the guy's went busto (I lent him a bit to keep him afloat to see if he could get any big score and be ok, but alas he came very close), and another wanted to return to studying. Sadly that left me with a tough choice and despite trying to find some replacements on 2+2 it just didn't work out. All the guy's I lived with were awsome though and met alot of friendly girls too, so I have agreed to go back for summer for another 2-3 months as Malta really is a place that peaks in June-September. </p><p>Being back in England is great for my work ethic though, which I will admit was lacking in all forms, and not longer is there lots of temptation so close to my house or roommates asking to go out every day :) It was nice, but I think until I can get into some self discipline then I should stay in UK and grind it out. </p><p><u><b>Live Poker:</b></u> </p><p>Played the 1100eu Malta Open with Richard Herbert (Strummer9) also flying over to attend too. The weekend was a blast, but sadly the tournament yeilded no fruit :( I got chipped down early just missing everything before managed to find a sick spot to get the only good player at the table to squeeze with J7dd vs my QdQ :D The utg fish limper though had KK and I somehow managed to suck out with a 4 card flush, to build a nice mosnter stack of chips. Anyways I get moved to strummers table and no sooner than I did he gets AA in vs KK and loses to the K ball on the river. Was most disgusting to see happen infront of me and I did feel for him...however I didn't need to mourn for long as about 20 hands later I ran my KK into AA aipf and didn't hit another miracle. It was a super fun tournament and always nice to be able to play on 'home turf' but this time wasn't to be, and I tried me best which is all I can ask.</p><p>Congrats to Richard though as the next event he played (Blacpool GUKPT) he managed to secure a deal whilst chip leader, to net him to most $$$$ and take away a very healthy £45k!!! I watched the live stream and was railing from Malta, so can say he played well and sadly after the deal had to settle for 2nd and not take the trophy home this time :( </p><p><u><b>Online Poker:</b></u></p><p>It has been going well, and moved up to playing 2/4 alot more on the new betfair software. So far going well and I'll post some graphs below of this extrememly short sample size :) However I'm going to set a good target for myself to win $10k with rakeback before christmas day. To be honest this 'should' be a very achievable goal but given my motivation levels makes it hard. So I'm going to hope that the updating this blog everyday with my results and such will make me want to prove that I can do this. I would hope that I could play 40k hands before now and then with a win rate of 4-5bb/100.... anyways will see how it goes. If I do it I will probably treat myself to something nice like an ipad or something. </p><p>Well, you will see an update tomorrow (I'm counting this as the 19th) and I'll be playing alot more this coming 11 days, so expect hands posted and many graphs.</p><p> </p><p>Sam</p><p> </p><p><u><i>Just a quick overview of the month (lol @ hands played)</i></u></p><p><u><i></i></u> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/ocer.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p><i><u>Filtered for $1/2 as looks alot nicer XD</u></i></p><p><i><u><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/123457.jpg"></a></u></i></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <br /></p> </article> <article> <h1>Ramblings. Ramblings.</h1> <p>officespace — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:53:00 GMT</p> <p>I've got ALOT to catch up on writing about so I figured I would add everything that wasn't related to Dublin of the WSOPE into this blog (WSOPE £10k write up to come shortly in a few days). Pretty much going to cover Malta life, how online poker has been going, coaching and my mentor group and just general stuff.<br /></p><p><br /><u><b>Online Poker:</b></u> </p><p>Online has been going pretty well, sadly I don't have many graphs because I have been using about 4 difference machines to play on so my HEM has missed 90% of my sessions. I finished August +$4k, so that meant that I managed to get the promotion of a free ticket to Dublin for the 2nd month running. Was super happy to hit the promo as I was moving to Malta in this month and so really didn't manage to put in much voulme. <br /><br />September was pretty good too, think I won like $9k playing a bit of 2/4 and 3/6 on pokertime so that was a nice bonus and good to get another big winning month! So far in October I have been too busy with sessions and moving back to Betfair etc to play that much but managing to keep afloat and +$3k with rake. I've posted some graphs below :) </p><p>Generally though my volume and commitment to online poker this last 6 weeks has been poor at best, although I've been super lucky to run well and book some solid profit. After this weekend I'm going to invest in a new monitor and desk and start grinding on Betfair again. I've been crushing the 1/2 and doing super good at 2/4 so really I just need to start putting in more voulme at 2/4 and 3/6 and starting to play higher. I always thought aiming to play higher was like chasing a pipe dream, but I've made some solid money this year and now got some garenteed income with the coaching job, so if I can't attempt to become a 5/10 regular now whilst I'm young.. not really sure when I can do it! It may end in disappointment and a $10k downswing with that result being me grinding out the $1/2 again but we will see. I'm super confident in my game and ability to beat most $400nl games running on ongame. <u><b><br /></b></u></p><p><u><b>Malta:</b></u><br /><br />So finally set up in Malta now and super happy with how things are going. I have slipped into a good routine and started running again frequently. The weather this last week has been mostly sunny in the day time, then thunderstorms of a night time which makes for some spectacular lightning displays to watch from the balcony. <br /><br />I've met a few people out side of poker which is always nice, and begun hanging around with a couple of girls from the Netherlands who can party pretty hard! (chances of either of them finding this blog is super remote but if they do.. hey!). Also after weeks of me saying I would sort it out, I have finally got a Maltese ID card today so that allows me to open a euro bank account and some other privilidges too, so worth doing.</p><p>It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I tried to celebrate in style.. we had a group of maybe 9/10 people and started off going to a nice sushi restaurant in the main area of Malta, before hitting the bars for shots and beers.. and finally ended up in the strip club at 5am... it was a blast and certainly a birthday that me and my wallet will remember :D Another sa few too many alcholic beverages ;) I've posted some pictures below of all of us on a night out, and it was a really REALLY good time. Yana (Gilles' sister) really knew how to dance and her boyfriend after a few drinks started to throw down the shapes on the dancefloor too. We tended to hang out in 'The Nordic bar', and as the name suggests it really only plays music that is either from 1997 or things in dutch and scandi which I totally don't follow. It's always a good time though and a great place to meet people. </p><p>Tomorrow another mentor from badbeat (Strummer) arrives to play the 1100euro 'Malta Poker Open' this weekend, which I am also going to play due to using the $1750 May Madness promo that I qualified for earlier in the year. Cannot wait to finally meet my mentor, show him around Malta and have a couple of drinks/catch up. Hopefully one of us wins the tournament and I can post some pictures with the trophy and novelty cheque next time. </p><p>GL at the tables, Sam!</p><p> </p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/august.jpg"></a></p><p><i>August (missed alot of hands but +$4k was about right) also didn't play with a HUD alot of the time and this showed as I probably paid people off too light and thus terrible showdown.</i><br /></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/sept.jpg"></a></p><p><i>September: Was ok, missed alot of hands and actually about +$9k I think with rakeback. Was happy with how I played but again no volume.</i><br /></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/october.JPG"></a><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/otf.jpg"></a><br /></p><p><i>October: In summary I've been super lazy with the playing and really REALLY need to change that. Feel so guilty and also annoyed that so much more money out there to win.</i></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;">Pictures from birthdays this month:-</span></p><p><span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;"></span> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/me2.jpg"></a></p><p><span style="font-style:italic;"> Me and my friend the giant cog wheel in some nightclub</span> </p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/me%20and%20the%20boys.jpg"></a></p><p>Me, Gilles and his sisters boyfriend :D</p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/me%20and%20yana.jpg"></a></p><p> Me and Yana</p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/girls.jpg"></a></p><p> Dutch Girls</p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/bday.jpg"></a></p><p>My roommates on my birthday (Mark, me, Gilles and Jimmie) <br /></p><p> </p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>October 2010</h1> <p>Strummer — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 07:27:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Three weeks in with my new focus on the game, as I said in previous posts im going to spend more time playing mtts and try to get back out in the live arena……………………so the stats so far: Mtts players 1, satellites played 0 and cash hands played, ermmmmmm 60,000! As you can see when I get a clear idea of what I wont I go for it!!!!!! Bloody hell! To be honest playing the large number of cash hands was done as I chased down the weekly leader board at pokertime, which I won, that gives me a $1500 live buy in ticket, so its part of the plan! As for the mtts, well I played the £25 rebuy on pokertime last week, 320 runners I finished a respectable 40<sup>th</sup>. The old saying of to win a tournament you need to win with AK and you have to beat AK couldn’t have been made any cleared as I lost two huge races, once with AK (SB open shoved all in on my BB with 77…………what could I do) and once with 1010, win either im on final table……………loss both and I was out! Still it was nice to get into tourney mode, but ive got a feeling that chasing down weekly/monthly leader boards again this month with stop me playing the number of mtts that I want to. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>It’s a pretty depressing time looking at the live scene at the moment, after missing the WSOP I was thinking about at least playing a couple of side events at the WSOPE…………..didnt happen, so then theres the London leg of the EPT, again get down there couple of side events, couple of sats……………….didnt happen……………..then there the Ladbrokes Ireland thing (well done skalie, £20k for 4<sup>th</sup>)………………………..didnt happen!!!!! But there s Brighton this weekend and Ive got a live token I can use…………could happen??? Well it could, but im currently in bed with the flu of all flu, yep the man flu (sorry if ive painted a horror image of me, sweating, unshaven, naked, with dribbling features typing away on the notepad…………………but it happening)! So unless I make some kind of speedy recovery it looks like my fist live event in while will be up North in the Blackpool leg of the GUKPT. In the mean time im going to keep grinding away at the low-medium levels at pokertime and try and pick a few more live buy in tokens and get that live bankroll fattened up for a real good run at live events in the coming months……………..it will happen!!</font></p> </article> <article> <h1>Well.. this is going to test my memory..</h1> <p>officespace — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:41:00 GMT</p> <p> </p><p>I was going to do one big long blog post about the last 2 months including the 550euro UKIPT and the £10k WSOPE I played, along with how things were going online and in Malta... BUT it turned into a novel, so I thought I woudl break it down into 3 seperate blogs. Here is the first, Dublin:-<br /><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span></p><p> </p><p><b><u><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Dublin </span></u></b></p><p><b><u><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span></u></b><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">So around the start of this September I went to Dublin with badbeat for the UKIPT tour run by Pokerstars. I won 2 packages to this by hitting the promotions and targets set, so gave one package to another badbeat trader, Dave English. One of the best decisions I made all year :D and it turned out to be just a really great weekend.</span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">There were plenty of people from badbeat, Jeff (head of mentoring), Daz (MTT mentor), Phil (Shortstack/Stats mentor man) Dave, Dale, Steve, Neil, Scott, Jon along with a brief visit from Dave Conroy too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Along the way I met up with one of my roomates from Malta, some beautiful Belgium ladies Charlotte and Gale, and many other characters who made the 5 nights in Dublin super memorable.</span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Upon arriving the first person I met was Daz, who being Irish, proceeded to confirm every sterotype that I know and head to the bar and order a Guiness. The conversation soon got around to if I ever smoked and/or drunk my fair share.. I answered humbly 'yeh sometimes..' and over the course of the next 5 nights would, (to quote daz) "Smoke like a chimley and drink like a fish'. The first night was lots of fun and pokerstars kindly provided a free bad to keep us occupied and hydrated :) I met Neil who is in Daz's group, but I was unaware at that time that Neil doesn't really sleep and enjoys nothing more than to play live cash games for 30 hours straight.. Also around was Steve who is also an MTT player and a great laugh. The night went flying by and I believe we headed to bed around 3am.. well some of us did.. some of us went to play cash games.. I won't mention names like Neil or Daz.</span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">The next day arrived, and with it brung Jeff and Phil from Wales, and some badbeat traders (Scott, Jon and Dave). I believe this was the day we played the tournament, but as the title of this blog title indicates, looking back on it, my memory is just slightly hazy. However one thing that isn't hazy is the way my tournament went.. it was a 560euro tournament with a pretty decent structure of 15k starting stack and I believe 30 minute blinds. 600 people turn out to play, which I think was the cap, and first ended up being something in the region of $100k.. definatly worth bring the A game for.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Although I had met Scott before, breifly for about 10 seconds before going back up to bed for more sleep just before the tournamnet, I totally didin't recognise him when I got to my starting table and sat myself to his direct left. Maybe I should rephrase 'starting table' to 'my home for a whole 1.5 hours'. Anyways as said, the structure was good, and within the first 30 hands or so I had seen QQ twice and chipped up to something like 18k.. sadly then the wheels fell off..</span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><i><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Hand 1: </span></i><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Rai</span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">se it up with AK in the hijack and get 3 bet by the small blind, who so far was playing something in the region of 60% of hands since turning up late, but yet to reraise. Also because of this there had been maybe 4 or 5 instances of him just c/f to continuation bets on flops on a broadspectrum of boards. Even so he knows that I've been involved a fair amount, but I elect to just call in position. The flop comes down a mouth watering KKJ and he checks to me, to which I happily throw out a half pot bet of 1200 or so. I'm no nit, but I wasn't super thrilled when he pumped it back up to 4k back to me. I elected to call, feeling that if he was screwing with me I could snap off a turn bet or just hide the strength of my hand and control what occurs. A 9 peels off on the turn and altough intitally I wasn't too concerned, I pretty much threw up a little when he made a pretty stack commiting 7k bet on the turn. After a solid 5 minutes of tanking and working out whether this passive random was infact screwing with me or able to value bet worse I folded the AK and he showed me JJ to solidify my good fold. Anybody that knows or plays with me will tell you I'm not exactly what you class as a nit, but in that situation I just felt I was behind more often than not and the table was so fishy that I had a better edge with my 11k stack at 100/200. </span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><i><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Hand 2</span></i><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"> <i>(Also effectionally known as my final hand)</i>: About an orbit later from my nonstandard AK hero fold, I look down at QQ and raise it up to the std 450 at 100/200. I havn't really gone in depth about the characters at my table, as honestly it isn't nessesary, but I can tell you there was one uber fishy Irish player who was just terribad about 2 to my left. I attempt these days to avoid jumping to conclusions about people's play and sterotypes, but he was firstly 40+ and secondly had flatted redic raises, called down huge bets with gutshots, bet 5x pot oop itno a preflop raiser numerous times, and finally completed the action with QQ preflop after open limping UTG when somebody squeezed and recieved about 4 flats infront of him. Solid was more of a word to describe his physique and not his poker game... Anyways back to the hand. <br /><br />He minraises me to whatever that was like 700 otb, and somewhere along the line the big blind decided to flat call it. This to me just screams small pocket pair from the big blind, althuogh I was slightly concerned uber fish minraised me. Best bet I felt was to send this guy to 4 bet town and see what action too place... so I pump it back up to about 2250, expecting 2 folds and some chips added to my stack. Sadly man on the button flats, and after some deliberation the small blind flats to. Bring out the board of 882 and I'm still kinda happy about my hand. I really felt the uber donk would reraise me with AK/KK/AA so usually I was thinking TT/JJ was villans range in this spot and I'm going to be able to get my stack in for value. As this is my last hand I think we are all aware this didn't go anythign like that... small blind checks, I check (looking to c/shove) and button leads out for 4000 and the small blind flats. If I'm honest I probably should have folded in this spot now as small blind just so often has 22 or 88, and although so far had proved to me to be terrible at tournament poker, even I wouldn't expect him to flat with 33-77 here. Anyways I had it in my mind I was shoving and hoping for a button call, so thats what I did for 9k.. button snap calls me and after some hollywooding the small blind folded. The donk on the button has AA (for a somewhat kinda respectable line) and that was the end of me and my queens...</span> </p><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><p><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">I lasted about 1.5 hours, or just under and that meant I was heading to the bar and first in line for the lunch buffet... I played some other side events and some cash whilst in Dublin and sadly none of them proved particularly profitable... I will give a very good mention to the 1/2nl game with a round of omaha and a round of NLHE which Neil, Phil and I played for the last 4 hours of our time in Ireland... everybody was very drunk and nearly everybody at the table had never played omaha live before... somehow I made back a few hundred euros and had alot of enjoyable table talk with some drunk dutch guys :)</span></p><p><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">Worth mentioning too was the 'badbeat.com' private tournament that was organised, which was a 55 euro single table tournament with a winner take all structure... As not a sole cashed in the main event or any other side event, this was pretty much filled up with myself, Jeff, Daz (who claimed half way through to have never been told it was winner take all... lol), Steve, Dave, Charlotte, Gale, Gilles, Dale and Neil. I've put some pictures below this of us all playng and it really was a good laugh and highlight of the weekend. Within the first 5 hands the tone had been set, when Jeff proceeded to knock out the only looker playing (Charlotte) with KK vs 66 on a K6x flop. From them on there was no stopping him as he proceeded to tip the dealer and in return recieved KK/AA/AK/QQ every other hand to single handidly knock everybody out and claim the biggest victory of the weekend ;) Humble in victory as ever, Jeff treated us all to a few rounds at the bar. </span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;"></span><span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';color:black;font-size:10pt;">It was a great pleasure to meet the rest of the badbeat team, and I think I can speak for everybody in saying that we all had a blast over those 4/5 nights. See below for some pictures of that.<br /></span></p><p> <br />Keep an eye out for the next two blogs that should be out in the next couple of days! :D</p><p>GL at the tables, Sam </p><p> </p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/sng2.jpg"></a></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/sng2.jpg"></a><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/oursng.jpg"></a><br /></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/charlotte.jpg"></a></p><p><i>Charlotte</i></p><p><i></i> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/the%20girls.jpg"></a></p><p><i>Charlotte and Gale</i></p><p><i></i> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/Me%20and%20daz.jpg"></a></p><p>Me and Daz</p><p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/me.jpg"></a> <br /></p><p>Not my finest picture :| <br /></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/jeff.jpg"></a></p><p>Jeff (before he took all our chips!)</p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/dave.jpg"></a></p><p> Dave English</p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/phil.jpg"></a></p><p>Phil <br /></p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Its been a long time!!</h1> <p>Strummer — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:35:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Well I know I said I would try to write a regular diary………………….but well you know the answer!!! But I promise, im really going to try and start writing again, it’s a good outlet for my frustrations! So, whats been happening in the past 2-3 months since the last post? Well lets start with the WSOP, when push came to shove I decided <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>not to go, when I decided not to go I was happy with my decision, when the the WSOP was on I was gutted with my decision, but now its all over and im $15,000 better off im happy again! Well kind of happy, truth is the WSOP is what its all about and to not be there for the first time in my poker life was painful, but as always with my life its family first so it was the correct grown up thing to do, though from a poker playing point of view it wasn’t!!! Still WSOP will be there next year, and the year after that! The story of this years WSOP for me was Praz picking up his second bracelet, his form over the last few years as been nothing short of unbelievable, just proving the point beyond doubt that if your good enough your good enough! Its also helped me focus a little more on what I want from the game. The past three years or so its been cash games 99.9% of the time with a few live events here and there, how can I expect to play live if all im doing is playing online cash?!! If im going to get out there more, well I got to get out there more!!! So from now on its not going to be cash games only, im going to get back to my first love MTTS and try qualifying for live events again, its what I used to do so im going to do it again.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">So online, well the past three months have hardly been the best months of my life, one winning month, one break even and last month a losing month. The losing month was no surprise to be honest. My online home of betfair took the unreal decision of moving from its own independent platform and joining possibly the worst platform in poker, that is ongame……………..seriously what a bag of s**t that place is! Betfair was my platform of choice for many reasons, good software and the fact I won there being the main reasons, but within a week of the move I knew my love of the place had ended, who ever made the decision to move there needs shooting, of all the platforms to pick from they pick the worlds worst…………….ahhhh well such is life, RIP betfair! So where to play now? Well pokertime is going to be the new home, it’s a new skin on the microgaming platform and its not particularly busy at the moment, but its a pretty soft site (at the moment!!) and pokertime are giving away massive weekly bonuses that that can be used for live events which obviously ties in nicely with my need to get playing live, so all in all a perfect match! The action at pokertime isnt really happening above $1/$2 at the moment, so to fill the gap im going to be playing at my old stomping group Mansion poker, again a good rake deal being the main reason but also after spending the past 2 years playing nothing but seasoned pros at betfair ive found theres still a lot of value to be found on the bigger platforms!</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Ive just returned for a 2 week break in Italy, nothing like a good break to re focus and re charge the poker mind, ive done a lot of thinking on the holiday and have got a very good idea of what I want and where I want to be in the next 12 months. I think<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>betfair moving and forcing me to change my daily routine may well be the catalyst to what I want to achieve, well I hope so,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>as Praz has show so well over the last few years, its all possible you just got to get out there and do it!</font></p> <p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Semi-Bluffing Part I</h1> <p>CPoort1 — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:09:00 GMT</p> <p><strong>Semi-Bluffing Part I by Charlie-Robinson Poortvliet</strong></p> <p>In this blog I'm going to talk about the power that's semi-bluffing. For those of you who don't know what it is: semi-bluffing is bluffing with a hand that has potential. Most of these hands are drawing hands. Example: You're in the small blind with Jh10h, you call the buttons 3 BB raise and the flop comes 9h 8d 4s (rainbow). You check-raise his continuation bet, which is half the pot. But you have nothing? Why raise? The three main reasons for this are: 1) Your hand potential 2) Building the pot 3) Creating fold equity.</p> <p>With an open-ended straight draw, you'll make the nuts when a Q or 7 hits. A Jack or 10 could be good as well, giving you at least 8 outs to the winner ( 7777 + QQQQ).</p> <p>When you hit your hand, you want to win the most chips possible. Therefore you raise without hitting it yet.</p> <p>Given the fact that you're opponent will miss 75 % of the flops, you're raise enables you to win the pot right there. If he does call, you can either hit your hand or semi-bluff the turn. Will go into that later.</p> <p>So let's say you're playing 3000 chips with blinds at 25/50 and no antes. The button has 3200 and makes it 150 preflop, you call the extra 125 and the big blind folds. This means the pot is 350 and both players have deep stacks. You check the 9h 8d 4s flop, button bets 175 and you decide to raise to 425 leaving you 2400 behind. Most of the times, you'll win the pot right here . But in this case he decides to call, and you're both seeing the turn which is the Kh. At this point, you have to think about his range of hands. Is he strong? Is he floating? Is he weak? Whether he's strong or not, the best play is to lead out.</p> <p>You're out of position with no hand at this point, but the turn brought you more outs (hearts). So you'll know you'll win with a Q or 7, and most certainly with a heart. It's unlikely that he has a hand like AQhh or Axhh Qxhh. He could have the 67hh, but you're flush will be good in that case. So we're happy with 15 outs (9 hearts, 3 Queens and 3 Sevens) and the odds of that hitting is 30 % on the river. The pot is 1200 (350+850), so in order to check-call he must bet around 400 (30 % of the pot). However if you're the one applying the pressure, by betting 800 for example. He has to release any 8, weak 9, QJ, small pocket pairs... Not only does he have to worry about being beat, he also have to worry about you betting the river. So unless he weak-called AK on the flop or flopped a set or two pair, he'll release. If you check-call and you miss, you're possible bluff on the river isn't that convincing too. Raising the flop -> betting the turn -> betting the river looks stronger than raising the flop -> check-calling the turn -> shoving the river (remember you're first to act).</p> <p>The main flaw I see most players make, with semi-bluffing, is that they change their aggression if they hit. They understand the concept, but check when they made their hand. Sometimes it'll induce a bluff, but most times your opponent has a made hand that wants to go to showdown. Example, same hand, same scenario, and the river is the 7c. You made the nuts, now what to do? My advice is to make the same bet when you'll miss the river. If you always fire 3 barrels with a semi-bluff, than do so too with your nuts hand. So opponents cannot read any patterns and will pay you off or fold.</p> <p> </p> <p><b>Combining previous factors into semi-bluffing.</b></p> <p><b></b> </p> <p><b>Me</b></p> <p>Hand: 2s5s</p> <p>Position: Big Blind</p> <p>Stack: 9966</p> <p>Blinds: 300/600 with an ante of 60</p> <p><b>Opponent</b></p> <p>Hand: ?</p> <p>Position: Small Blind</p> <p>Stack: 31595</p> <p>Blinds: 300/600 with an ante of 60</p> <p><b>Action:</b></p> <p>SB raises to 1200 and I call. Flop comes 5d Qs 4d, giving me middle pair with backdoor straight and flush draws. SB Leads out 1200 in the 2955 pot, I raise to 2885 and SB calls. Turn is the Js, he checks, I shove for 6481 and he folds.</p> <p><b>Thought Process:</b></p> <p>Preflop I could easily just folded my hand, but I elected to call because he min-raised and gave me a good price. Flop is quite good for my hand, a middle pair is strong heads up. His continuation bet doesn't tell me anything, so I raised for both information and to take initiative. I'd preferred if he folded, but he called. Turn is the Jack of spades giving me a flush draw along with my pair. After his check I shoved all-in. I do this, because I couldn't give him credit for a strong hand. Would he really flat call the flop with a queen, when there's a possible straight and flush draw on board? I didn't think I had the best hand necessary, but I was confident that he couldn't call a pot bet given my range. He doesn't have the right price to draw and so he has to call with a made hand. He doesn't know I have a weak 5, and even if he called with a better hand I'd have outs. That's the power of semi-bluffing. </p> <p><b>Afterword</b></p> <p>As you may have noticed, the two situations I described are ones out of position. It's a lot easier to semi-bluff in position as you'll have the option to check behind on the turn, giving you a free card. That way you can control the pot and re-evaluate your hand on the river. I'll write about this next time!</p> <p>Do not hesitate to contact me with any questions at <a href="mailto:charliepoortvliet@hotmail.com">charliepoortvliet@hotmail.com</a> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Jumble...</h1> <p>officespace — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:22:00 GMT</p> <p>Well it has been 6 weeks since previous blog post and alot has happened in that time :-) </p><p> </p><p><u><b>Ibiza:</b></u> </p><p>I final tabled and came 8th for $3k (2500eu) which was pretty nice, although first was $30k. You gotta win your flips at that stage, and I did not so that's all there is to that. But generally throughout the 2/3 days I played really well and certainly felt I deserved to be on that ft. Below are 3-4 pics from the event (will post later) and it was very cool to meet alot of the betfair regs that I battle with on a daily basis. Randomly too the balla 90's footballer Ronaldo was in Ibiza and kept dropping by to play 2/5 and 5/10euro cash and was giving lots of action. So that was Ibiza, but I think my live game is definatly improving generally and I'm getting the urge to play them more as a holiday/change of pace.</p><p> </p><p><u><b>Badbeat stuff:</b></u></p><p>Well I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but badbeat had kindly previously offered me the chance to join the team and become a cash game mentor. I started at the begining of July and so far it has been going really well! I have done a fair bit of private coaching in the past and this was a great opportunity to gain more experience, along with keeping my own game sharp. I had mentioned in previous blog posts that I was looking for some sort of garentueed income as late, for security and peace of mind, and this was exactly the perfect job. I'm still playing alot myself, but oddly having more work and responsibilites has forced me into far better time management and I know I'm being more productive than in as long as I can remember. </p><p> </p><p><u><b>Poker:</b></u> </p><p>Poker has gone really well since last blog, aside from the $3k live cash I've also recieved a few $k to spend on live buyin's as part of promotions, and this month earned a trip to Dublin for the UKIPT tournament in September. I understand alot of badbeat people are attending this (I got my package via the promo on the home page) so looking forward to putting some faces to names! Keeping on the live poker theme, I will also be playing in the £1k wsope yearly turbo test of how well you run.. this is just a few days after the UKIPT, so that should also be a great time. </p><p>Online poker has treated me well, I will post a couple of graphs below, but this month has been super weird. I've played alot on pokertime (a great new skin of microgaming) and mainly just played anybody that comes along to play 1/2. The site isn't super busy so usually this is HU or 3 handed but it is getting busier day by day and below $200nl the games are well populated with a good mixture of players. I think this month so far I've won about $7.5k with rakeback, about $500 in bonuses and also this UKIPT package which I think is worth about $2k so definatly proud of my results. </p><p>Finally last thing worth noting, is my beloved betfair is merging with the ongame network in a couple of days. I'm not too sure what this will mean for me or betfair poker, but only time will tell. I'm all for more fish and people but sometimes I just believe in the 'if it aint broke don't fix it' moto and I really enjoyed the small betfair community and the super fishy games lol. Got a feeling it will be bad and the influx of regs will outway the fish.. but I'm going to give it a go and if I don't enjoy it there are plenty of other sites to play on! <br /></p><p> </p><p><u><b>Travelling:</b></u></p><p>I think I quote myself when I say 'if I cash in Ibiza I'll be at the wsop this year', sadly I couldn't make it in the end. Had a great result to cash obviously at the Betfair bash on the party island, but a couple of things stopped me. The main one was that I was starting this new mentor position on the 1st July and that would mean I would have had to go to Vegas and work alot whilst out there. This isn't ideal and to be honest vegas + work ethic don't go too well, so definatly didn't want to disappoint people within my first week! Also ontop of that was the financial cost too, as the WSOP can easily cost $10k and honestly I was thinking of better ways to spend that money... which leads me to... Malta!</p><p>Around Jan/Feb it was my intention to move to Malta, but the person I agreed to move with had some personal issues and financially I just didn't feel too comfortable to move there on my own at that time.. well now with this job things have perked up and poker is going well.By coincidence the person I had agreed to emailed me 2 days ago to say he too was now ready to head back out there.. so the plan is before the UKIPT, around the 20-25th August all meet up in Malta and find a nice place by the beach to rent. <span style="font-style:italic;">Really </span>excited about this and just happy that even if people pull out this time, I am not too fussed it won't effect what I do. Towards the end of July there is a cool tournament series in Malta, at a casino I played a $3k event back in November, called Malta Madness (www.maltamadness.com). It looks like loads of fun with a cheap team tournament, which allows chip dumping, seat swapping, asking for advise and all sorts of crazy things. Coupled with a boat party and a free bar for players in the 1100eu main event, I think I'm already set on playing it!! There are online seat qualifiers on the site that is sponsoring it and is sure to have a great turn out with so many poker players living in Malta and it being just after the WSOPE so maybe even some Americans will stick around in Europe for it. </p><p> </p><p>Anways GL at the tables and I hope to meet a few people in Ireland soon :D</p><p style="font-weight:bold;"> </p><p> <span style="font-style:italic;">June: Was ok given that I was away for 2 weeks of it and had a nice live score!</span></p><p> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/June.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p> <span style="font-style:italic;">July: Pretty sicko month to be honest but I've worked hard for it!</span></p><p><span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/July.jpg"></a></span></p><p> </p><p><i>Since May.. just a pure barg..</i></p><p><i></i> <a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/may-.jpg"></a></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>july....</h1> <p>armonvictor7 — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 14:03:00 GMT</p> <p>well a few weeks since my last blog....nothing much to report tbh....having a pretty hard time of things poker wise but whats new there ehy? lol</p> <p>playing on betfair aswell as mansion now..betfair has pleanty of bad players like everywhere else but i dont think i have ever seen so many short stackers ever...its like only the regs sit 100bb deep the rest of the time its 30bb'sand 50bb's...which just means ur going to get hit n run so much more..still pretty easy to adjust to that..just tighten up early on to stop it from happening and try even more to give nothing away...whats been happening pretty much is there making hands/winning flips with x-x vs my ak type hands then doing the bunk which is frustrating...but why am i results orientated????? i know i shouldnt be...just human i guess.</p> <p> Strange thing is im probs more knowledgeable now at hu than i ever have been and am working hard away from the table but am break even over the last 2 months...just goes to show poker owes us nothing..and just becasue we work on our game doesn't say were going to make a bunch of money in the short term does it...it does mean in the long run we will make more as we will make the best play more often or thats the theory im working with to keep my spirits up, on the flip side to that if i made 3 mistakes less per session over the month i'd be comfortably in profit...so when you look at it like that my results are pretty much in my hands and not in the lap of the poker gods.</p> <p> so all in all im pretty happy im becoming a better player but the "better" player sadly isnt at the table all the time :) something to work on tho.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Playing for Badbeat Month 4</h1> <p>CPoort1 — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:22:00 GMT</p> <p><b>Playing For BadBeat: June</b></p> <p>Hey all, back here with another blog! After my last one, I received feedback saying they'd prefer me talking hands and thought processes. So I looked back on some of my deep MTT finishes, using Hold ‘Em Manager and will post some key hands. June started great after I shipped a MTT on the very first day of June :-). </p> <p>I mainly played turbo's and SNG's due to the World Cup 2010. As a big soccer fan, I wanted to watch almost every game I could see. Therefore, couldn't play evenings and just start playing afterwards. There aren't a lot of games at around 11 pm on PokerTime, so I just played the turbo ones. In the hand analysis's I will review the key hands of the € 55 buy-in € 2500 GTD tournament. These small field tournaments offer a potential high return of 1 or 2 hours of play. </p> <p><b>Highlights June:</b></p> <p>1<sup>st</sup> in the € 5 Turbo Hold ‘Em 1/126 on PokerTime</p> <p>4<sup>th</sup> in the 3-2-1 Jackpot MTT 4/312 on Pokertime</p> <p>2<sup>nd</sup> in the € 2500 GTD 2/69 on PokerTime</p> <p>3<sup>rd</sup> in the € 2000 GTD Turbo 3/285 on PokerTime</p> <p>6<sup>th</sup> in the € 2500 GTD 6/53 on PokerTime</p> <p><b>Tournament: € 2500 GTD (result 2/69)</b></p> <p><b>Starting Stack: 2500</b></p> <p><b>Blinds: 5 Minutes starting at 10/20</b></p> <p>At the 2<sup>nd</sup> level (15/30 blinds) I found myself waking up with AA on the BB. I was very fortunate to see a limper, a raiser and a button caller in front of me. Of course I'm playing aces, the only question here is how? I could flat call to disguise my hand, but against 2 or 3 opponents that's not an ideal choice. I could also flat call hoping the preflop limper will make a squeeze play. On the other hand, if I shove all-in I might scare them off as no-one is pot committed. I decide that the best play is to reraise. With the pot being 315 ( 15 SB +30 BB + 30 Limper + 120 Raiser + 120 Caller) I decide to raise to 360, pumping up the pot to 645. The limper folds, the raiser 4-bets to 600 and the button caller folds. This is exactly what I want, getting my aces heads up with a big pot already in front of us. I read his small 4-bet as a legitimate raise, meaning he'd raise more if he's bluffing and trying to put me off my hand. Besides, he only has 1400 in chips and his 4-bet is therefore telling me he's not folding. So, I shove all-in and he calls with KK and I win a 4k pot.</p> <p>At the 3<sup>rd</sup> level (25/50 blinds) and with a stack of 3800 I'm in middle position when I get aces again. UTG limps, as does UTG +1. I raise 5 BB's to 250 and the button ,UTG and UTG +1 call. So 4 players in a 1075 pot. I hated the button calling as he's giving UTG and UTG +1 pot odds to call as well, but aces have great potential. When the flop comes 2 4 8 with 2 spades I am a little worried. With 3 people flat calling and not folding or reraising preflop, I'm narrowing their range down to 22 to JJ and hands like 56s/67s etcetera. I don't see them calling 5 BB's with hands like AJ/AQ/KQ as they are likely to be dominated, but you never know. Key thing in this scenario is what they think my range is? I only played two pots so far.. Getting AA all-in to KK and flopping trips with A3 in a limped pot. So, they should put me on a very tight range like JJ/AK +. So their most likely holdings are hands that crack big pairs or AK. </p> <p>So that means they are calling for implied odds. If they hit a big flop, they correctly assume I'll pay them off with big pairs. Ok, on the flop UTG and UTG +1 check to me. I fire out a continuation bet of 1050 (almost full pot). Seems a little much for an overpair? Well I bet this big to avoid myself getting in trouble by giving them odds to draw. A hand like J10 of spades will have a hard time calling hoping to hit a spade. And if they decide to shove with that kind of hand, I'm about a 3 to 1 favorite to win the hand. I also bet this much giving their stack sizes post flop: UTG = 1490, UTG +1 = 1600 and Button = 2660. I also have the advantage that they might me read my bet as AK, missing the flop. That will get their money in with any pair they might have.</p> <p>Button folds, UTG shoves for 400 more and UTG +1 folds. By now I'm pot committed and I call, only to see 88 for a flopped set. Turn and river brick out and I'm left with 2020 in chips. </p> <p>At the 4<sup>th</sup> level (50/100 blinds) I'm left with 1800 and decided it's time to use my tight image. The cutoff limps and I raise to 400 from the button with 66. Both blinds call, as does the cutoff. Flop comes 10 7 Q and they check it to me. Not exactly the flop I'm looking for, but I decided to bet half the pot leaving me 620 behind. I bet 800 in the 1600 pot, because it looks strong giving my stack size and they see me as a very tight player. So they're only comfortable with at least top pair. When they fold, my stack increases to 3820 due to this gutsy but thought over play. Image is important.</p> <p>Afterwards I quietly went on and got to the final table and the final 3, when the chipleader had 100k and the short stack 20k. I was sitting 2<sup>nd</sup> with 40k, with blinds being 1500/3000. I'm on the SB and I look down at 44 with the short stack on the BB. To me this is an easy shove, for the following reasons: 1) A pocket pair 3-handed is very strong 2) His effective stack is around 7 BB 3) My effective stack is around 13 BB 4) He already has 3000 (or 1 BB) invested. All in all an easy shove, whereas he called with A5 and lost the coin flip.</p> <p>The key hand Heads Up came up when I had 60k versus chipleader's 100k, with blinds at 2000/4000. My opponent was a fairly aggressive player, who min-raised almost every pot and folded to a lot of my 3-bets. He min-raised yet again, and I shoved with KJ. He called with A9 and won the flip. I was very unhappy with this decision afterwards. Although we were effectively flipping, he had a tough time calling all-in with A9. And I didn't want to re-evaluate my hand post-flop (like would it be good on Q J 4? ). But, I was taking most pots away from him and he correctly put me on a wide range here. Looking back, I should have taken a flop and play post-flop (as he was weaker at it). They money difference was significant and I shouldn't have gambled with a hand like KJ. I guess it was my impatience and my confidence in him folding to almost every reraise of me. This is something I have to work on!</p> <p>See you next month!</p> <p><b><i>Charlie-Robinson Poortvliet aka ‘CPoort 1'!</i></b></p> </article> <article> <h1>21st June 2010</h1> <p>Strummer — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:38:00 GMT</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">Once again its been far too long since my last post, jes nearly 2 months!!!!!! Unlike last time though its not because ive been running bad and thus not wanting to write about, its actually be the complete opposite, no the reason for the lack of posts is purely down to lack of time!! This is not a moan, this is just the way it is, time is becoming more and more hard to come by, like I said I m not moaning, I wouldn’t change a thing in my life at the moment, I am blessed and I know it! But trying to find time to write on top of the mentoring, playing poker, working on my game, family life ( I seriously cant remember it being so hard having a baby in the house!) and some how trying to fit in the things like eating, running, socialising ……..well its kind of hard at the moment! Still a good morning session that I decided to bank has freed up 30mins and so im using it to write this! So to May, well it was a great month , I finished well into five figures up, added to some good rake figures its was the perfect come back after such a poor P&L in April. Added on top of this was the $1750 I picked up for the badbeat May madness promotion, all in all a very nice month indeed. But it didn’t end there, as part of the promotion as the biggest overall winning player for May I got to pick a group in the World cup, if a team from this group goes on to finish 1<sup>st</sup>, 2<sup>nd</sup> or 3<sup>rd</sup> in the world cup I can go on and collect another live poker buy in up to the value of $10,000!! Not a bad freeroll in my book! Naturally I went for the group of death that contains Brazil, Portugal and the Ivory Coast, a good group me thinks!</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 10pt;"><font face="Calibri" size="3">So to this month and of course the WSOP. My initial plan was to go out for the WSOP early June, for one reason or another this was put on hold (mainly the missus asking me not to go this year due to the arrival of Oliver), so my next cunning plan was to see how this month went and maybe pick up a main event ticket somewhere along the line and head out to Vegas at the back end of this month. Also there was the attraction of trying to take advantage of this months <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>badbeat promotion: to net $5000 for the month combined your GROSS rake (no misprint, it really is GROSS rake) and the month P&L and you pick up a $1500 live buy in ticket, put simply this is a give me, this is free money! Part of the deal is you must finish +$1 on P&L to qualify and well the poker gods in the first part of this month decided that there were in no mood to make things easy. After 2 weeks I found myself in a deep black hole with losses for the month touching 5 figures, the gross rake was in place but the +$1 P&L was<span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>looking a distant dream, and the WSOP was even further away! As has been the pattern this year the losses where down to a combination of set up hands but more often that not me holding a solid 2<sup>nd</sup> best hand, nothing worse in poker than the 2<sup>nd</sup> best hand! This inevitably lead to some poor play on my part, thankfully not to much was lost due to bad play as the errors in my game where quickly found after a few hours pouring over my stats in holdem manager. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes;"> </span>Slowly though the hole has been filled, getting back to the basics and focusing on banking winning days followed by a real hot streak as seen me finally reach profit for the month, and ive got to be honest im a happy bunny! Five figure losing months are never nice but when its also going to cost me several $1000s in live buy in tickets, well the pain becomes two fold! But that’s last weeks worry, im back in profit so need for that conversation! The last few days have been very nice, its been sooooo nice to see the best hand v 2<sup>nd</sup> best coming down in my favour for a change! And ive certainly had my fair share of AAs too! So where does that leave me regarding Vegas? Well the truth is I really don’t know! Naturally I want to go, it’s the WSOP!!!! But then theres the family issue, the missus wants me to leave it this year, and well I probably can bit my lip and miss the big game for one year……………not sure im convincing myself though!! To help soften the blow I have of course got the World cup to watch and help me forget! Truth is im really unsure what to do, or what I want to do so today is not the day to make the decision! And then theres also the badbeat promos! Not sure what the next promotion is, but I know there going to be big and I want my piece……………lets wait and see.</font></p> <p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>JUNE 19</h1> <p>armonvictor7 — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:40:00 GMT</p> <p>Hey everyone been a while, been on my hols to spain the for a week the end of may, good time all in all :) pity i couldnt find a game anywhere in benidorm was getting withdrawl symptoms after 3 days lol and pretty much sick of drinking aswell, must be getting old.</p> <p>On the poker front things have been pretty busy, after ending last month a few hundred up i was at least pleased i had'nt finished the month stuck, good games seemed few and far between, the fish are there without out doubt but as you move into the 200nl HU waters there's alot of regs sitting waiting for action ( and i dont blame them) but there are like 40 regs sitting and 3 matches playing its going to be pretty tough to hit a fish, well in fact if you open 4 tables i guess u got one chance in 11 for the fish to jump into your game, so ive been mainly playing 100nl with a bit of 50nl mixed in just to get hands in basically, but i did play some spewy stuff at times and the mistakes that i made cost me alot of money over the month....this month is going somewhat better think im 5/600 up so far which aint a fortune but i feel like im playing somewhere near again, also im putting 10-15hrs a week with some guys i know online who play hu for a living,mainly going over hands and working on handreading and different aspects of the game, this is something im pretty lazy at really ( putting effort in away from the table) but i think i've finally relized that unless i put it in i wont improve, im seeing the benefits albeit slowly, just need to start putting it into practice regualry now and the future should be bright. </p> </article> <article> <h1>May Madnesssssss</h1> <p>officespace — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:43:00 GMT</p> <p> </p> <p>Yoooo! </p> <p> </p> <p>Well it seems that every poker site (badbeat included) was running a 'May Madness' promo so chose that as a title... May was a pretty dam good month... Poker wise I made about $5k at the tables, got $1750 bonus from badbeat, and won a $2k package to a live event abroad... can't complain with that, and life generally is good atm.</p> <p> </p> <p>I played nearly exclusively 1/2 last month with a little 50/1 thrown in when running terribad... and then for some reason 2/3 fish kept jumping up to 2/5 and so when there was a v juicy game of 2/5 running and I could get a seat on it, I snapped it up. Overall it felt good to pretty much crush $200nl, not so great to run bad at $100nl, and think I broke even at $500nl, but tbh shoulda have been +2/300 I just made a could of bad pow river calls.</p> <p> </p> <p>The may madness badbeat promo was basically make $5k with your gross total profit and rake combine and I did it, (w0000peee) so that is a nice little $1750 bonus. Four other people achieved this feat and if your not familar with the promo we all now select a world cup group and if any of the teams in that group finish in the top 3 then you get another little freeroll at a bonus which relates to how much you have won in May/June/July... up to $20k... so hats off to badbeat for that awsome promo and more of you should have taken advantage of it!!!!! </p> <p> </p> <p>Also I played a $110 sat to a Betfair live event in Ibiza.. and won it! eeeeek so as I write this I'm actually just getting the last of the packing done and my flight is tomorrow evening :-) I'm going with a friend of mine who has also brought into the event ($900) and it should be a really really good time. Previous times, (like wsope) Betfair have run events, its been very professional and a great experience. I'm sure there will be a few opening/closing parties and I believe they have kindly got us free entrances to pacha nightclub for the weekend. I've never been Ibiza but told that's the place to go so should be a blast. </p> <p> </p> <p>Vegas for the WSOP is looking more and more likley. I busted a freeroll earlier this evening (ghey hand) to a main event package, but I think now that I have this extra $1750 from the promo I will see if that can be used for the WSOP and add it to my other live bankroll from earlier in the year. That will give me enouhg to play 2/3 events and a small $1k sng to the main maybe! So I'm determined to make it out there and if I cash in Ibiza then I'll %100 be there at about 22/29th June. </p> <p> </p> <p>Anyways sorry for the rush and I'll confess to not proof reading this at all, but lots to do before I go to bed..... GL at the tables and see graphs below! </p> <p>(My next blog might have some interesting news, and hopefully a report on how to own souls in sunny climates!) </p> <p>Sam! </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><em>$200nl May</em><em>: Pretty dam happy with this, felt good to play well and run close to ev... not to mention the red line being flat usually indicates my game is right on.</em></p> <p><em><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/200%20may.jpg"></a></em></p> <p><em></em> </p> <p><em>$100nl May: Obviously when I felt I was playing/running bad I dropped down so kinda makes sense to have this horrific graph...but not need for the ev! eeek</em></p> <p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/100%20may.jpg"></a></p> <p> </p> <p><em>May All limits in $$$:</em></p> <p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/total%20may.jpg"></a></p> <p> </p> <p><em>May in Big Blinds:</em></p> <p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/may%20big%20blinds.jpg"></a></p> <p> </p> <p><em>2010 in Big Blinds so far... one day that EV will come back ;-)</em></p> <p><a href="http://forum.badbeat.com/blogs/officespace/2010.jpg"></a></p> </article> <article> <h1>May 20</h1> <p>armonvictor7 — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:41:00 GMT</p> <p>Strange month this has been so far, the first week of the month was pretty much spent with a hot water bottle on my jaw with the tooth ache from hell, so i didnt play a great deal as i couldn't really think to great, so after that got sorted out i went card ded,which lead me to get abit frustrated, which isnt ideal when you have just moved up a levell, and it resulted in me getting my money in bad sometimes and just not playing great in general. But in a way its not a bad thing.</p> <p>why's that you might ask??, coz really if im going to play sessions without making a decent hand and getting muffed more than my fair share and play my B/C game and still be break even, that says to me that if i can continue to learn and work at becoming a better player i could almost still be making money even in the hard times, or thats my theory anyway. I always think at the end of a losing session "how much money would a better player have won/lost ??" i guess the answer would be he would win more and lose less lol, but it just shows, you can run bad and you can all so play bad and you can also blame playing bad on runningbad, which is something im making a concious effort to steer away.</p> <p>so i think for the remainder of the month im going to try to bang 6/7k hands in and make some profit, after the first 2 months or was it 3 months i played for badbeat back in september 2009 i was stuck month after month from then on i figured never again, and when i get stuck i just try even harder to get back even now. On the brighter side i've won a few stacks at 200nl HU so im settling in pretty nice there's pleanty of bad players about with some decent money to lose so i figure its all going to comegood in june</p> </article> <article> <h1>Getting a bit 'Gruntled'</h1> <p>Flanks — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:08:00 GMT</p> <p>Thanks to my lovely mentor Manuel I have been fortunate to move over to to the new pokertime software.</p> <p> Adjusting to the software took a few thousand hands, not least because of the speed of the deal! The software is a strange mix of very modern and smooth graphical interface twinned with what feels like a fairly ancient piece of programming and analogue windows. You can feel it with the button clicks, that while it looks modern there is actually a constant delay on the click and response time, which I imagine would seriously hamper anyone playing over 6 tables at a time.</p> <p>There are a lot of badbeat players on this network, and this blog post concerns a two hands from a session against the same player who has the screen Alias 'Gruntled'. He is a player I have noticed for two reasons: <br />1) he is hyperactive, there is only one other player I have shared as many hands with in the last few days.<br />2) He is one of the few players who is neither overly passive (check/call, check/call style) or ridiculously aggressive (I got QQ, automatic 3bet shove preflop!!!!!). He lies well in the middle, backing up his hands with good sized bets ensuring that his opponents pay for their drawing streets.</p> <p> <strong><u>Part 1</u>: When an unstoppable force hits an immovable object.</strong><br />So this leads me onto hand 1. Having settled into my general read on him as a fairly traditional tight/conservative/aggressive player, I picked out a hand where I thought I could try to run a bluff by. The hand played as follows:</p> <p><strong> Our Hero: (D) </strong>7s 5s - $49.50<br /> <strong>Gruntled: (UTG)</strong> - $64.50</p> <p><strong>Preflop:</strong><br />Gruntled - Raise to $2<br />Hero - Call</p> <p><strong>Pot $4.75</strong><br /><em>Flop:</em> <strong>2d Js Ad</strong></p> <p>Gruntled - Bet $2.50, Call<br />Hero - Raise to $8.50</p> <p>Having watched my new friend, I gave him credit for a hand. However obviously there is a fairly wide range of hands he can continue with after the flop, ranging from an ace, to KK/QQ and any flush draw. He is tight, not passive. So it was at this point with my ownership of the button that I decided to vary my play slightly and see what he did with my raise. The call did not surprise me at all, as obviously nearly all the hands in the range he could have would have reason to think they might be good in this spot, I would have been more surprised had he folded. Probably the only hand rule out him having is AJ or A7, which is good for my play as they are the 2 of the 5 big hands my play has close to 0% chance against. So the interesting card for this play is of course the turn.</p> <p><strong>Pot - $22</strong><br /><em>Turn: 2d Js Ad</em> <strong>7c</strong></p> <p>Woohoo I made a pair!</p> <p>Gruntled - Check, Call<br />Hero - Bet $9</p> <p>This slightly surprised me, purely because the flush has missed. So I now rule out AK/AQ and any 2pair/set, as these hands (I think) he would want to kill the pot with at this stage. So either he has the flush draw himself, or a weak ace. A weak ace would surprise me, but perhaps he is hoping for a free showdown at the river. In short, if a diamond misses I have to fancy that my intended bluff is batting a high % against whatever range he is normally holding.</p> <p><strong>Pot $40</strong><br /><em>River: 2d Js Ad 7c</em> <strong>3s</strong></p> <p>Gin. A perfect blank.</p> <p>Gruntled - Check, Call<br />Hero - Bet $19</p> <p>He then showed A10 to claim the pot. I was quite surprised, I personally don't believe I could have stomached the $19 on the river myself after such sustained pressure, but there we are he must have assumed I had been pushing a busted draw and made the brave call.</p> <p><br /><strong><u>Part 2:</u> The Empire Strikes Back!</strong></p> <p>Armed with my new image agaisnt my new friend, the story resumes on the flop in a 3 way pot after he has preflop raised, 4 or 5 hands later.</p> <p><em>Gruntled: $97<br />Hero: <strong>As 9s </strong>$56</em></p> <p><strong>Pot: $6</strong><br /><em>Flop - 9h 9d 7s</em></p> <p>Gruntled - bet $3<br />Hero - raise to $6</p> <p>Now I am armed with a real hand and he is leading out into a 3 way pot. Traditional thought would suggest that I just call this and try to get more on the turn, however armed with our recent tussle in which he saw me bluff I decided to pump for the minimum raise. Any raise would work of course if he has a real hand, but I figured that a min-raise might look like a lazy bluff to steal a paired board rather than a thought out bet.</p> <p>The third player got out of the way at which point my new friend made it $14.50. Obviously he <em>might</em> have 77, in which case I am cooked, but it is hardly likely and nor can I chuck an ace kicker at this stage anyway. Far more likely is that he has a 9 himself, or a big overpair. So keen to give the idea that I am weak, perhaps a pair of my own or a mere 7, I call in the knowledge that he acts first and will likely bet again with my show of weakness.</p> <p><strong>Pot - $44<br /></strong><em>Turn - 9h 9d 7s </em><strong>6d</strong></p> <p>Gruntled - bet $21, Call<br />Hero - Raise allin for $40</p> <p>Obviously the turn is slightly scary to him, as I might just have fished out with 8-10. Given his 3bet on the flop though, I had no such worries myself that he might have made a straight. So the simple all in bet was made, and he made a (no doubt) crying call with <strong>Qh Qd</strong>. River blank secured the pot.</p> <p><br />But for the history of the previous hand, I doubt I would have doubled through in the sequel. Much more likely that I would have flat called his flop bet, and then the smaller pot size would stop him stacking to me. completely. I would predict that he checks the river and calls a fairly small value bet, probably shaving about $30 off of the pot total by the end.</p> <p>Either way it was a fun series of hands, no doubt we will share more!</p> </article> </main></body></html>