First MTT Cash

Yup you heard it here first.

It was one of the christmas promo tourney's:

Event 1
Buy-in $1+$0.10
Plus $3K added money
Prize pool $4200

I came 163 out of 1200 for a whopping $5.

after 2 and a bit hours my AJ ran into AK and I was history.

Oh Merry Christmas Everyone in blog land, Full report on a poor month in a couple of days

How to make that first deposit

So as you all know this has been my first year playing poker. Sheesh its over a year now, I started this blog last September and had probably been playing for a month prior to that. During that space of time I’ve signed up to 5 card rooms and I can now give you (with some confidence) my views as to which are the best for the beginner player and how to go about making that first deposit.


So you have decided to make that deposit and enter the degenerate world of gambling. It’s a pretty tough decision cause if your anything like me Previous to joining sky poker the only time I’d ever been in a bookies was to place bets for my degen m8 while he was on holiday. Lol That boy can bet on grass growing but he absolutely wont play poker and worse he won’t signup to a room via me.


First thing to do is get one of those pay as you go credit cards, mines a tuxedo. You wanna get the Visa kind and not Mastercard. Card rooms don’t mind depositing with either but they don’t seem to like you withdrawing to a Mastercard. The beauty of this is that it allows you to keep your poker money separate to real money. Once you’ve been to the post office to top the card up its not money anymore its chips.


Next you need to choose a card room. Like I’ve said before my journey started at sky for no other reason than I had seen it on the telly. Then moved onto party poker and I don’t even know why I signed up there. I do know however that I just typed the address into my browser and signed up on the spot. Classic school boy error. NEVER and I mean NEVER just go to the card rooms website and sign up on the spot. You have to get a deal of some kind and you can only do that via 3rd party sites like mine or any other of the millions of bloggers on the net. Or via one of the strategy sites like pokerstrategy or 2+2. Remember, signup via a site that gives your money extra value.


All of that is mute because the reality is that for the n00b there are only two sites to choose from and they are Full Tilt and Pokerstars. None of the other sites have anywhere near the kind of traffic of the big two. More traffic means that tables are easier to find and there will be more people at or hopefully below your skill level. Pokerstars defiantly has the edge here however there’s one thing that you can’t get at Pokerstars and that’s rakeback. I won’t bore you with the details of rakeback, that’s what Google’s for. Suffice to say every week you get a nice deposit in your account. And it’s this deposit that as a n00b can turn you from a losing player to breakeven or even a winner.


Next, how much to deposit. Heres the rub, you’re gonna see claims of 100% upto $600. Let me tell you now as a beginner you aint gonna clear this. I’d suggest starting with something a little more conservative $100 MAX. Full Tilt will match this and give you three months to clear it. The good news is that Full Tilt bonuses clear in chunks so even if you don’t manage to clear the lot you’ll certainly release some of it.


So after all that what have we learnt?

Method: PAYG Credit Card – Visa

Site: Full Tilt Via 3rd Party

Amount: $50 - $100 MAX

Good week

ewwww, I have a stinking cold this morning. I don't quite think its running to man-flu yet but it's close. We all know man-flu is far worse than swine flu so as you might guess I am pretty poorly ;)

It's been a pretty good lesson in bankroll management this week after getting a bit burnt at NL10. You can say a lot about the poorer aspects off my game but at BRM I do shine. I have no fear or ego issues with moving down a level to re-coup. I'm getting close to hitting NL10 up again (read about $20). This time with a more staggered approach. Just need to hit the ground running and I'll be off. whoosh.

Played pretty good for most of the week. Except Saturday, which I am going to put down to having a monster hangover. Lol I came home Friday night after the first of the staff party's. Having consumed 4 pints of Kronenburg, 2 Bottles of Corona and a Double vodka redbull. Played about 60 hands whilst talking complete shite to tom and stacked someone. Sensibly stopping there, not because I particularly wanted to. I just couldn't focus on the screen. However every up has a down and the poker gods got me back on Saturday when I lost 2 stacks over 1000 hands.

Week Graphage

Week Stats

Still managed just under 5BI and just under 8BI with bonus and rakeback and an overall 13bb/100. So, not too shabby. Although after Saturday it was a bit touch and go. Fortunately Sunday went really well and I coulda played a whole lot more if I wasn't cursed with this potentially life threatening man-flu.

20k hands have passed since returning to cash.

20k

As you can see it was pretty obvious that dropping back to NL5 was the thing to do and even then I haven't found nearly the form I had for the first 10k. At least we're going in the right direction again.

I forgot to tot up my rolls this morning. theres $186 in full tilt, $73 in Party and $132 in stars.... ish. So just a shade under $400. The plan is pretty much to play NL5 out until next week when my holiday's start and then make another push at NL10. As soon as I clear the pokerstrategy bonus I'll be withdrawing $100 from stars adding £50 of my own and making my first deposit on Full Tilt for the signup bonus (if I can). I really don't see the point of playing at stars anymore. After being so vocal all year about how poor the points system is for micro players I really should put my money where my mouth is and fuck off.

Well that's it for another post. Have we learnt any thing? As Homer would say "nothing at all"

6BI Downswing Alert!

Shocking weekend on the pokes has left me 6BI down and feeling a bit sick. Sick cause I dropped back top NL5 at about 5BI and still managed to drop another $10. And Fuck me did I play some hands on Saturday. Something like 2k. So I've basically been losing since 3 days before the end of last month. I've got to the point now where I am only playing my 2 cards. As every time I try and get a read I lose the pot/plot.

Sorry no graph this morning. I forgot to put the bins out last night and then never got back to my PC after all the beer juice from the bottles box ran down my leg at 6.30am. Not the best start to the week.

Last night I developed a new strategy. And that's to 3 table for just 30mins at a time. So after just 30 mins of being seated I'll get up walk around a bit and have a brew (tea) maybe put some more door handles on around the house. Lol I managed 1 this weekend, oops.

Well that's it really. Only have to get up 9 more times before the Christmas hols. Faculty staff do on Friday and then big do a week Friday.

09/12/09 Edit: Clawing it back a BI at a time at NL5. Back up 3BI and Full Tilt's account is almost back to where I left off. Just a $40 mountain to climb at stars. Seriously considering withdrawing most of the stars money and moving it to tilt. At least I'm still earning rakeback while losing.

Its Not All About Poker

Slow day in the office today so I thought I share this with you.

I'd never heard of Katt Williams until ten mins ago. then I saw these two clips

Thats funny.... but this is really cool



anyone wanna tell me how he does that. I can hear that he's using a vocoder to change the pitch but how do you timestretch like that?

Strange Things Are Afoot At The Circle K

Indeed, strange things. Look at the pokerstars graph and look at the full Tilt one. WTF!

pokerstars

Full Tilt

I cannot make inroads or adjust to pokerstars at all. Is the play really that different? And more importantly which one is the weaker site. Am I playing better at full tilt? Is it just the cards? A little from column A and a Little from column B? None of the above?

The way I am running at stars I can't get a look in. Then being spewy with it. Tightening up (lol if I can do such a thing) isn't helping as I am not hitting after the flop. I can't seem to bluff anyone off a pot with aggression. Its just not working. Pokerstars and its players are suddenly seeming very random. And after losing a few buy-ins every hand I enter and miss on the flop I'm giving my opponent credit for hitting.

Full Tilt on the other hand is going really well, still. Even my redline has gone up. People are folding and I'm showing down big winning hands.

So here's an observation maybe someone would discuss it with me. Play is better at Tilt. I say this because its harder to get a seat at a table. At pokerstars its just a case filtering out full tables which still leaves loads of tables with 5 players and loads above 35% plyrs/flop. Also when I play in the evenings theres some 250K playing at stars and maybe 90K playing at Tilt so the traffic is almost treble at stars which to me is an indication that there must be many more weaker players. Stats seem more stable at tilt. Theres more people running V$IP/PFR's that are close together, where as over at stars the limping calling fish seem to school.

Ok I've just read about schooling fish, come back to this and realised that I am boring myself. So I'll leave it there.

Cleared another chunk of the bonus this morning giving me $15 profay so far this week and 8.10bb/100. There should be a bit of rakeback tonight too. So all in all not too bad. Just need to adjust to the two sites.... watch this space. Should have 280fpps at some point this weekend so I can play a 6MAX hyperturbo sat to the sunday 1/4mill.

November Results

Ohhh my fucking arse hurts. I just got raped at NL10 lastnight to the tune of 3.5BI. Stop loss came into full effect and I had to shutdown for the day. Out numbered and out gunned, I couldn't hit shit. Two sets run into a straight and a flush on the river respectively. Add a sprinkling of tilt and there goes $36 much quicker than I could have made it and a fucking filthy mood followed. I know I played bad, because I spent the day dreaming about NL25 and how much I need to earn from poker to start pushing my life forward. I also made the mistake last night of trying to watch a new pokerstrategy.com video while I was playing. Classic schoolboy errors.


On the whole, apart from the monumental fuck-up last night. This month has been an absolute blinder so I really can't complain. I don't think I could have played better 90% of the time.

Achievements
[*] NL5 - Pwned
[*] Account with rakeback - Fulltilt
[*] Silverstar @ Pokerstrategy.com
[*] Released 3 parts of full tilt bonus
[*] 10bb/100+ on all levels played

With rakeback and bonuses its $135.31 profay for the month, my best yet.

I have one solitary goal for december

MAKE NL10 STICK

roll: $365

Edit: Managed to claw 2 BI back yesterday. All is good