World Champs Everywhere

So it’s the WSOPE – which sadly I’m not playing in. It’s a great event but I’d be an underdog in it as the field is really strong. Or at least it certainly seems this way as only the best come over from America and only the best Europeans can manage the buy in. It’s definitely one of the big ones all the pros are desperate to win in the calendar and hopefully it will get a great champ as it has in previous years.

Apparently Phil Hellmuth rode a chariot round Leicester square and came in as a centurion or prefect or whatever that ludicrous garb is supposed to be. So … um… why did this happen exactly? This is the same ‘entrance’ he ‘performed’ at the WSOP in Vegas – so obviously it was such a hit that we needed to see it again. Clearly Phil is hoping that the continued and increasingly preposterous entrances will mask his obviously dwindling abilities and the incontrovertible fact that he enters these non-big field WSOP events as a huge underdog to the field. It’s a bit like the Burnley team turning up at Anfield dressed as super heroes and being choppered in to the centre circle with accompanying fireworks only to be beaten 6-0. I guess it’s too much to ask when he gets knocked out this time if he’ll fall on his sword?

In other news I was making the short walk from my flat to my local Waitrose when I spotted someone coming the other way and had that ‘I know him who is it’ feeling. It was one of those situations where it was so unlikely I’d see this person I couldn’t place him. He was looking at me similarly. Anyway we were almost past each other when I blurted ‘you’re peter eastgate’ (I suspect he already knew that) he replied ‘you do the commentary’ …. We had a nice chat mainly about the docklands light railway and that it transpires he lives about 5 minutes walk from me. As I left the conversation with a smile on my face I slowly realised the creeping truth of it all – I was no longer the best poker player in Canary Wharf. In fact he lives so close that I’m now only the best player in my block of flats. That is until I find out Cole South is renting the penthouse two floors up.

I will – of course – be moving

Sickening

Can’t believe my last blog was about two months ago – where does time go these days?! I’m sure there’s less hours in the day since I turned 30 nearly a year ago.

Anyway, I want to say something about poker – I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! Just when you think you’ve got it licked it reaches inside you, rips out your heart and smushes it in its grubby mitt.

As I’ve said in previous posts I’ve finally made the conversion to cash games from sit-and-gos and tournaments, and for the most part, I’m enjoying it far more. No more playing for five hours to go out on the bubble, no more all-in fests with razor-thin edges if you’re lucky, and – I was hoping – I would have some lovely profit to show for it.

But I haven’t. It’ 1.54am and I’m writing this because I’ve had a couple of stinking days. I’m starting from scratch with 6-max cash games and trying to beat the 25NL and 50NL games before moving up. Two days ago I was beating the 25NL game for nearly 14BB/100 and now it’s down to less than 2BB/100 after about 7,500 hands. I was nearly sick in my mouth tonight with the amount of horrific outdraws, coolers and general bad beats. I played well at first limiting the losses, but I seemed to become a bit of a station towards the end of the session and that is something I know I’ll have to work on. But I know most of it was down to tilt.

Here’s a great illustration, though, from my last hand of the night. I raise UTG with JTs and get 3-bet from guy to my left; I’m tilting so I call. Flop comes 5-Q-3 and I check, he checks too, which I thought was very odd. One thought popped into my mind straight away though – he’s flopped top set with QQ and is now trying to slowplay. Anyway, turn is a J, so now I have second pair. I check, he bet $5 into pot of around $6.50. Everything in my body told me to fold, so I called. River is a blank, I check, he bets $11.25 and I of course make the call, only for him to – you guessed it- flip up QQ for top set. I laughed, immediately closed down the poker site and decided to write this. I have to get it off my chest and the weight does seem to be lifting as I type.

Anyway, my Hold’em Manager graph is looking very sick, and according to the light green line I’m running nearly $400 below expectation over nearly 14,000 hands. At 25NL and 50NL!!! I think that’s maybe 6-7 BB/100 below EV. SICK!!

Back to the tables tomorrow I guess – would be nice to turn some kind of profit this month, and weekends are full of bad recreational players so hopefully I should get some back.

Tatjana’s New Blog – Coming Soon!

Watch this space, Tatjana Pasalic will be blogging ‘On The Rail’ very soon!

talking about poker…a lot

..Right so all he did next was make people in Britain stay on their sofas….not the biggest achievement ever is it?!

Since last writing I’ve been sucked into a world of poker commentaries – never to return. I’ve done cash games and online final tables til it’s starting to blur into one. After writing this I’m off to do commentary on the 8 game mix final table for the wccoop – that should wake me up.

Two things about doing commentaries worth mentioning. It definitely makes you a better player. Not only watching good players (and bad ones) teaches you but also verbalising your thoughts and hearing good players and top pros either agreeing or disagreeing with your analysis. You might feel a bit crazy doing it but I’d definitely advocate verbalising what you’re doing (online not live!!) – it makes you think things through and understand where you have an edge on people.

The other things that’s really apparent is how the standard and awareness of players has risen. Good No Limit Holdem players really are sensationally good.

Due to all this I haven’t played too much recently – I was going to play a few more tournaments this month but that hasn’t happened and due to other work stuff probably won’t at any of the big festivals in London sadly. I’ve played some PLO cash this month and I’m having an okay month after a dodgy August. I’m very aware that my game isn’t going to make the next jump forward until I spend some proper time working on it which just isn’t going to happen until next month

Okay this blog is summing up my mood – not funny….bit sleepy….Just seen Michael Owen score the winner in the Manchester derby – as a liverpool fan and someone that clings on to some kind of team loyalty ideas that’s a little bit sad…

PLO tourneys and Derren

This is a bit rushed as things have got busy as I thought they would

First up the PLO tourney went pretty well.

I finished 33^rd out of almost 2800 for just under a 2k cash.

Obviously I’m pleased but it’s always a bit disappointing when you make a deep run in a tourney and don’t have a huge score.

I got off to a fast start – tripling up early with Aces vs 2 optimists. And was able to build on that to be in the top 10 for a long time

I lost a couple of big pots and then had to grind for the last couple of hours. Ended up getting it in with bad Aces fro 15 big blinds vs tw others. Only had 38% equity but if I’d have holed up I would have been right back in it – all pretty standard

This finish goes with my 10^th in the FTOPs last year and a 14^th in a £500 live tourney in the Vic. I’ve also won two small PLO buy in events online.

So in my short PLO career I have a ludicrous ROI in tournament and am showing about a $10k profit.

Clearly I’ve run very hot and gotten lucky so far however I do think theres a lot of money to be made in PLO tourneys. The play is much too passive with very little non AA 3 betting. There are also a lot of players taking a shot at the game and a ton of dead money

I’m going to play more (obviously) hopefully with one of the live events at the London EPT or upcoming Vic festival.

In other news I’m sure you all saw the Derren Brown predict the lottery results programme.

I love Derren – especially his book – not only is he great at what he does he’s also funny and is clearly on a mission to expose the nonsense people believe while simultaneously taking advantage of it.

Though I wouldn’t care to guess the logistics -it’s pretty obvious the lottery prediction show was a form of past posting (knowing the result before declaring it).

However the interesting thing was the ‘explanation’ show. I thought it was pretty funny – actually hilarious.

Then on a train journey yesterday I heard a woman explaining to her friend how he’d used the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to predict the lottery. I was actually shocked anyone could view the show as credible or anything other than funny – as I’m sure it was intended. But then we live in a world where people believe in astrology, homeopathy and who knows what else so I shouldn’t be.

Like everything it relates to poker and the scores of players who refuse to approach the logic of the game and blame anything but bad decisions for their bad results.

Wisdom of crowds?! I can think of other words….

Can’t wait for what Derren has next

UK

It’s been an amazing couple of years working for PokerStars with the EPT. It feels quite strange to know that season 6 is underway and yet I’m not at my post. After two great years with some amazing people, I made the decision to step away from the job that I had so much fun with,  when it became clear that I just couldn’t commit to making all the stops this year.

I think I travelled to 14 countries with PokerStars, either as their TV presenter or a poker player – generally twice each country and for about a week each time. It was a real whirlwind and although I’m enjoying being at home now and not missing my friends’ birthdays and special occasions, I will certainly miss the amazing people I worked with. Thankfully, poker is a small world and no doubt I’ll catch up with people at various poker events.

A huge amount of poker is about to be played in London this month and next, not to mention the English Open up in Nottingham so it makes sense that poker players from all over the world are flocking here. I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to some of it myself soon!

Ladies, Lucky Girl & Hopes.

I was kindly asked to represent Redtooth poker in the latest leg of the Betfred Ladies Tour last week in Birmingham!  My first reaction is always the same – no chance.  I dunno why I have such a hang up with Ladies only multi table tournaments?  I have gone over these reasons time and time again in the past and the arguments are getting boring.  There is absolutely no reason that I can see that these tournaments should exist but yet they do and it looks like they are here to stay.

I understand though how a lot of Ladies can get alot of satisfaction out of playing these events, and they are great for the less experienced and the more intimidated by the loud booming guys usually found in casino tournaments.  I have found my problem now – I just have problems reading women at the table.  They perplex me and give me earache.  I am just far used to reading men and frankly, they are just easier table mates!  So it comes as no surprise to report that I lasted no longer than 2 hours and I tried really hard, I really did.

The best news I have heard this week is that Full Tilt have sponsored me to play in the much anticipated $5,000 English Poker Open at my local Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham!  It is awesome news and am really excited by the line up, prize pool and competition that are coming over.  I’m sure there will be a few extra big names coming last minute too before they hit London for the WSOPE & EPT. 

The locals are buzzing at the thought of seeing the likes of Phil Helmuth and Doyle Brunson in Nottingham.  I hope as many name players as possible come to support this event and show the big guns what an awesome venue Dusk Till Dawn is and that poker is not just all about London – the Midlands can rock too!! 

Training For Vegas

You’ll forgive me if I’m a little distracted this month. The thing is I’m in the ‘zone’. I’ve got my game face on. I’m …you know… ‘locked in’ n that. The problem is it’s the few days before going to Vegas for the series and I’m in training. I’m in a hyped up volatile state. [...]

A Comment on the mix games.

When I was comparing limit games to no limit or pot limit I always used a 6x multiplier.  So 10/20 NLH requires similar bankroll and has similar swings as 50/100 or 60/120 LHE.  In the mix game rotation they use a 4x multiplier which I feel is to small and doesn’t give the limit games enough weight.  I have been playing 1k+ hands every day and my results are always determined by one or two big PLO or NLH pots.

To counter this lower multiplier tho there are only two big bet games and five or six limit games depending on if you are playing on stars or fulltilt.  I guess this helps negate some of the edge that someone good at the big bet games will have.  Still though I think to make it more fair they should use at least a five times multiplier on the limit games.

The past couple of days I have also been thinking how I want to learn.  I have been giving alot of thought to computer models and I realize that people are limited in there calculations.  Poker was a game which computers are best served to help us model situations.  I have hired a computer program who is designing some programs which will hopefully help me alot with the mixed games.

As I have been playing the past week I realized I am sort of wasting my time learning by grinding.  I think its important to grind some but I think I should split my time between study away from the tables with computer simulations and at the tables learning from experience.  I think ultimately learning away from the table with sims is ideal, but unfortunately computers aren’t powerful enough right now to do a complete model of most poker games.

That said reviewing hands is very boring for me compared to playing so hopefully I can keep putting in the time away from the computer.

Here are a few hands from the past couple of days.

A big Stud8 pot that I played very aggressively with my one pair.

Check Out Brian’s Online Training Site – CardRunners

Talking

I’m not into rules. In fact I slap the face of rules and stamp on the fingers of regulators. I’m a middle class rebel with a healthy disrespect for authority. If you come at me with rules I’ll…. um… politely question them in a semi-forceful manner. Of course poker has no rules – there are [...]

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