In March I didn’t play a huge amount of poker. Just tournaments, mainly the UK Sharks forum games and some other games that were on at the same time, $1 to $2 buy-ins mostly, so no stress. Overall I ran good:

This was my biggest pot of the month in terms of tournament chips. Nice turn card, too:

888 Poker – $0+$0|4000/8000 NL – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

CO: 168,036.00
BTN: 223,745.00
SB: 177,876.00
BB: 246,780.00
Hero (UTG): 127,326.00
MP: 754,237.00

CO posts ante 800.00, BB posts ante 800.00, Hero posts ante 800.00, MP posts ante 800.00, BTN posts ante 800.00, SB posts ante 800.00, SB posts SB 4,000.00, BB posts BB 8,000.00

Pre Flop: (16800.00) Hero has 6♦6♥
Hero raises to 16,000.00, MP calls 16,000.00, fold, fold, fold, fold

Flop: (48800.00, 2 players) 5♣7♥6♣
Hero bets 24,400.00, MP calls 24,400.00

Turn: (97600.00, 2 players) 6♠
Hero checks, MP bets 24,000.00, Hero calls 24,000.00

River: (145600.00, 2 players) 7♠
Hero bets 62,126.00, MP calls 62,126.00

Hero shows 6♦6♥ (Four of a Kind, Sixes) (Pre 66%, Flop 94%, Turn 100%)
MP shows 5♥A♥ (Two Pair, Sevens and Sixes) (Pre 34%, Flop 6%, Turn 0%)
Hero wins 269,852.00

I wouldn’t mind a few like that in Vegas next month. Roll on the holidays!

In my last post I explained about the WBCOOP – the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker put on by Pokerstars.

I submitted that post as my entry and they gave me ten tickets to use on WBCOOP freerolls.

I used them all and had a pretty good return: 7 SCOOP (Spring Championship Of Online Poker) tickets plus a small cash in the “main event” at the end of the series.

In total:

• Two $22 SCOOP tickets
• Four $11 SCOOP tickets
• One $5.50 SCOOP ticket
• $23 dollars in cash

Not at all a bad haul, thanks Pokerstars. Now I have to see if I can convert one of those SCOOP tickets into a decent cash. I think the series starts in May, after I’m back from Vegas (thinly veiled brag).

Away from WBCOOP, in February I recovered January’s losses; thanks mainly to a prize for placing in the UK Sharks 2011 Player of the Year final. Thanks Stu, you’re a gentleman! Who knows, maybe I’ll have a profitable first quarter of 2012 after all. Here’s the scorecard for February:
 

Onwards and upwards in March, hopefully!

Doesn’t February come around quick?

Here we are again, time for another World Blogger Poker Championship on Pokerstars. The last two were great fun even though I didn’t win, so third time lucky!

The Pokerstars guys are keen to know what we would do with our winnings – top prize $5K would be fantastic.

In my case it is easy. I have a three part plan.

Part 1…
In a couple of months I’ll be on my third trip to Las Vegas. At the moment I’m planning to play a little $1-$2 cash and mix in a few cheap tournaments. But with the $5k my plans change completely: I’ll be rolled to make a daily pilgrimage to the Venetian to play the deepstack and take a shot at a decent cash during the fortnight.

Last time I was in Vegas I gave the Venetian a miss, spending time in the new Aria cardroom instead. I did go there during the ’09 WSOP, but was too cheapskate to play the proper deepstack and just had a bash at a $120 Second Chance instead. A little crapshooty but not a bad tournament, except that I was card and luck dead. With my skillz I need both cards and luck so that was that.

Anyway, I digress. The deepstacks proper sound excellent, being 2-day events with a decent stack and a decent clock. With enough money to not play scared I reckon I’ve got decent chances of luckboxing a decent score.

Part 2…
The next part of the plan is to put the Vegas proceeds (or with whatever is left, depending) back into Stars. From there I will perform a determined spin-up on the cash tables. I reckon from what I’ve seen of $200 NL it could be a good giggle. I’ll need to reduce that ft3b% stat though or I’ll get steamrollered!

Obviously if I’m down to my last $300 I’m going to have to start lower. But I have plenty of experience losing at $50NL 6-max so I reckon it’s only a matter of time before my luck turns.

This will carry on until the early summer at which point I will have a decent wedge, just in time for…

Part 3…
The Pokerstars spin-up proceeds will go back to Vegas with me in July to pay for some WSOP fun time. Hopefully there will be enough for a main event buy-in; otherwise it’ll be one or more of the smaller WSOP events. If I stick to NLHE the fields will be huge as will the prizes.

The resulting victory will be my passport to a residency at Stars mid-stakes and to the HSNL thread on 2+2. My natural wit, telegenicity and all-round-good-egginess will ensure me invitations to Sky Poker guest commentator, Pokerstars Red Pro and perhaps even the Palace.

I can see it all now. What could possibly go wrong?

…

Anyway, you are probably wondering why I’m prevaricating instead of giving you my January 2012 results. Simple really … I didn’t play much and when I did I didn’t play very well. But then, I always lose in January. I blame SAD. That and fish making resolutions.

But here’s the score on the door:

Oh well. Still, February has already started better, so we’ll see what happens!

Here is my summary of 2011.

I made a profit, which was nice:

I mostly spent my online time in 2011 playing microstakes tournaments, on Pokerstars and 888 with a smattering of other sites. My game is quite a bit better than a year ago with more gears available instead of just being a constant nit. No big cashes in there, but nonetheless a reasonable ROI.

Here’s my 888poker tournament graph for 2011. Pretty, isn’t it:

I had two bouts of cash play. The first was early in the year when I had a bash on Sky Poker, taking my previous year’s shortstacking profit and trying to play “properly” with it. I was rubbish at it so I abandoned the attempt and went back to micro tournaments.

Late in the year I went back to cash on 888. This started off the same way as Sky, so I sought the help of a couple of online mates who got me into a better mindset to help me claw some of the losses back. Cheers and kudos to kgr00 and reg, I owe you both a drink!

There’s still work to do though, the pots I lose are still much bigger on average than the pots I win. So either I need to value bet bigger or I have to stop calling big bets. Maybe even both?

Here’s a breakdown of profit by site. It always amazes me how many different sites I touch during the course of a year:

Ambitions for 2012: Play less, win more. Simple!

November was my first losing month for a while. Here’s the damage:

As you can see, it was my decision to get back into the cash games that did the damage. I had $100 or so on WSOP.com that wasn’t doing anything much, the players on that site (it’s a skin of 888) are pretty poor, so it seemed like a good idea to dip a toe into the $6 games and see how I got on.

The answer was, badly:

It didn’t feel like I was playing badly, in fact I was reasonably happy with the way I was approaching the games, but I had obviously forgotten how to play cash. It was going the same as it did last time I gave it a whirl 6 months ago. So about half way through that graph – at the bottom of the slide, in fact – I looked for some help.

I watched some videos online, and two very kind people who play lots of cash – Keith on UK Sharks and Reg on EMS – gave me some very useful input. Keith looked through some hand histories and Reg sat in for a sweat session. This was all hugely helpful. Most of it was reassurance and encouragement, but none the less valuable for that. My two biggest takeways were to remember that:

- I have to make sure I think through hands properly instead of sometimes making hurried decisions
- I have to make sure I get full value for my good hands.

The second point follows logically from the fact that the micro tables these days are hugely aggressive. Every table has some players who are relentlessly raising it up with all kinds of hands. Because of this it is easy to fall into a pattern of playing trappy / passive and thereby letting the opponent dictate the pot size. This can mean that when they win they win bigger pots than I do when I win. So the way to beat these people is to play a higher value range of starting hands than they do and to get enough money into the pot when I am strong enough to get to showdown. And to remember that should they start folding to me then I can exploit that – not by widening my range substantially, but by recognising the spots where they have probably missed.

If I remember this stuff it will be fine. Indeed I’m feeling better about my cash game now so let’s see a better graph next time.

One other good piece of advice was from Reg – the rake on $6 games on 888 is horrible, it’s better to play the $10 games where the players are just as bad and the rake is less severe. So that’s what I’m doing.

In the meantime, here’s a hand where I was headed for cooler town but got very lucky:

Pacific Poker – $0.06 NL – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

UTG: $6.99
MP: $11.58
CO: $6.00
Hero (BTN): $5.76
SB: $6.00
BB: $6.05

SB posts SB $0.03, BB posts BB $0.06

Pre Flop: ($0.09) Hero has 9♣J♣

UTG calls $0.06, MP calls $0.06, CO raises to $0.33, Hero calls $0.33, SB calls $0.30, fold, fold, MP calls $0.27

Flop: ($1.44, 4 players) Q♣K♥8♣
SB checks, MP checks, CO bets $1.02, Hero raises to $3.37, fold, fold, CO raises to $5.67, Hero calls $2.06

Turn: ($12.30, 2 players) T♣

River: ($12.30, 2 players) 8♠

CO shows K♣A♣ (Flush, Ace High) (Pre 65%, Flop 84%, Turn 0%)
Hero shows 9♣J♣ (Straight Flush, Queen High) (Pre 35%, Flop 16%, Turn 100%)
Hero wins $11.58

Volume fail – although it feels like I’ve played lots of poker, in reality I’ve only played for the small number of hours I’m not actually at work.

When I’ve played, it’s been almost exclusively low-level tournaments: forum games and micro buy-ins on 888.com.

Blogging fail – not a lot to write about poker-wise, so no entertainment for my reader.

Still, I’m here now. Here are the scores for the last two months:

As you see, I’m behind target again for the year, but still I’m in the black numbers just about. Which is fair enough.

One thing I’ve been doing is looking out for tournaments that have these features:
- cheap rebuy games, with
- an add-on that gives a lot more chips than the normal rebuy, and
- a long late registration period.

888.com and skins seem to do a few of these. The idea is to join as late as possible then hold on for the break and take the add-on. This means that although you join as a shortstack you are paying a lot less per chip than the average. So as long as you are adequate with a shortstack you start with a significant advantage in terms of EV. And even a mincash typically gets you like 4x your stake!

The theory is sound, but it would be good to take one or two of these down. Maybe in November.

In a very interesting article about something completely different, Kat Martin at Blind Straddle wrote,

T.J. Cloutier describes a poker player from back in the day who was easy to run over when sober, a chip-spewer when drunk, but an extremely dangerous opponent during the happily-buzzed phase of intoxication. In fact this general profile is fairly common, particularly amongst recreational players who are regular drinkers but who rarely play live. While such players are unlikely to become formidable opponents at any level of inebriation, a couple of drinks will often allow them to feel more settled at the table. Once they stop worrying about whether they are playing fast enough or handling their chips and cards correctly they can devote more of their attention to playing their best game.

This is me too. I noticed a long time back that at pretty much all games – darts, bridge, pool, golf, bowling, now poker too – I play best after a couple of loosening drinks but fall away as inebriation sets in. Quicker if the game involves standing up, obviously, but noticeably in any game.

So now I always have a glass next to me when playing.

Apologies to my reader for the long gap between posts, but here are the results of the online grind for July and August. Again I didn’t play a lot, but enough to keep my hand in:

Any profit is good profit. I’m sure the time will come again when I can get some volume in, but it might not be until after Christmas!

I’ve been out on the juice tonight, so can’t play any poker.

But it’s a funny thing, when you’re not playing you find yourself thinking about the game in idle moments.

The first thing I though was, blimey, I haven’t posted my June results yet! So here they are:

I didn’t play much during June, so am happy to take a small profit.

It’s noticeable (well actually it’s blindingly obvious) that I’m focussing on micro buy-in tournaments at the moment while giving the cash games a miss. In fact it’s obvious that this is the only reason I’m continuing to be in profit.

It occurred to me today on the way home while waiting in the queue for the loo that there may be a fundamental reason for this. Not the fact that I’m in the queue for the loo, that’s a function of age and beer (I may need to modify the youthful formula of pees = pints + 2, but that’s another story). No, the fact that lately I’m doing fine at micro donkaments but rubbish at micro cash.

Today’s flash of enlightenment went as follows…

There are lots of ways of being +chipEV, but the main ones are:
a) You can be really tight and wait for the fish to pay you off, or
b) You can play really aggressive and be prepared to get it in as 40:60 dog when the pot pays you 2 to 1.

Both of these can easily have the same long-term expectation in terms of chips; and actually most styles are either a or b or somewhere in between.

HOWEVER…

One style is much lower variance than the other.

If you’re playing microcash it doesn’t matter which style you use, the only thing that matters is your winrate, your +EVness, your PTBB/100.

But in tournaments it really does make a huge difference… and playing tight is far and away the worst option.

It’s a variance thing. It comes down to the payout structure: on most sites the money is disproportionately in the final table and especially the top 3 places.

Player A could play 100 decent size tournaments and scrape into the top 10% 50 times. This player will be roughly break even or make a small profit. Well done sir! This is the lot of the tight player.

But Player B might win 2, make the top 3 in 3 more, the top 10 in 5 more and donk out by level 3 in the other 90. The aggressive player with the same overall chipEV embraces the variance because that is the best way of getting into the big payout spots.

Player B will win loads more $$$ than Player A.

So maybe my results of the last 18 months show I’m starting to let a bit more variance into my game.

Or maybe I’ve just continued being a lucky fish? Don’t spoil it…

So, May turned a useful profit to get the average profit back over $150 per month for the year to date:

Basically this is variance kicking back in at the tournament tables. I’ve definitely been playing a little better and the cards have been friendly once or twice in sympathy.

I put the improved play down to two things:
- the builders are in at the new house, so I don’t have to go there as much because there’s nothing much I can do while they are working their expensive magic;
- I’ve been playing facebook poker a bit.

Don’t laugh; facebook poker is so different from real poker it definitely exercises the poker muscles and helps get you thinking about what the random opponents are doing and how to exploit it. Also the winning gives you confidence that you can take to the real tables.

Mind you I’m going to have to step up the winnings to pay for those builders; you don’t get a lot of plumbing and wiring for $150 these days…

April was an eventful month for online poker.

Only if you were living in a cave will you have missed the US clampdown on the two biggest poker sites, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. On “Black Friday”, April 15, 2011, both sites, plus Absolute Poker, were indicted on various charges relating to “bank fraud, illegal gambling offenses, and laundering billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds.”

As related on www.pokerblackfriday.com, this was followed by the seizure of internet domain names used by PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker as well as the freezing of 75 bank accounts utilized by those operators and their payment processors. Later, all three operators banned American players from their sites and froze their real money accounts.

Unsurprisingly this triggered a rush for the exits by millions of players worldwide. Including of course me; I have been playing regularly on both PS and FTP so I keep some money there routinely.

Frankly I wasn’t expecting the withdrawals to come to anything, especially as my first attempt to withdraw from PS encountered a software bug that had to be referred to their support.

But no, to my surprise PS fixed the problem and processed the payment; it took a couple of days longer than usual but I guess they were a little busy.

FTP paid out too, although it took them a full three weeks to get it sorted.

So congratulations to both sites for weathering the storm. PS have made some adjustments to their guaranteed prize pools and other minor tweaks to accommodate the reduction in players but otherwise the world outside the US is carrying on with its online poker as normal.

But I can’t help thinking that this is just another step in the slow process of global clampdown on internet gaming. Governments everywhere are looking at the money moving around outside of their control and trying to find ways of getting hold of it. I suspect they are looking closely at the US to see what happens next.

My bet would be that it is regularised, brought onshore, properly taxed … and run by Harrah’s or one of the other big names in US gaming.

Once that happens we will see the net closing in across the globe. Still it will be interesting to see things unfold and to see how the likes of PokerStars cope- after all they are the current biggest operator by far, with the best software and the best support. Surely they will have to do some more deals, like they did with the French operation (pokerstars.fr).

Worldshaking events aside, I know you’re wondering how I got on at the  tables in April. Well I’m afraid it was more of the same: not much volume, not much rungood. Here’s the table:

Oh well, at least I already know May is going to be better.