"..where she stops nobody knows"

Wow, so the festive season is about over, just New Year to go so time for an update I think.

I've played a lot of poker over the last 10 days with not much to show for it.

Current balance is : $232.73 (including $12 cashback), C$0, T$0, Tickets 4 with $4 value.

Played quite a few satellites trying to get into some of the bigger tourneys. Managed to turn a $1.08 satellite ticket into a $5 ticket and then that into a $25 ticket and that into a $125 ticket but the run ended there. Part of the issue was all those tourneys running into each other without a chance to take stock or have much of a break but I can't really complain. I felt I played well until the last one and then played poorly running eventually AKs into QQ.

Dropped 3 BI on the NL5 tables in about 10 mins one day each time AI pre-flop with AKs (beginning to hate that hand) but have managed to recover it all and show a small profit from the 10 days play.

Back to working for a living on the 2nd after 2 weeks holidays so will mainly be playing on weekends only from now and will see if I can update this on the Sunday evenings.

if I can figure a way to get the HHs from GG so that I can show them here I will show a few interesting hands as they arise. I don't like the way they show up in the history there as there seems no way to put the results in a spoiler which would be my preferred way to post them. Open to suggestions if anyone has any.

Best of luck for the NY all.

Take care

Fagin

So, time for an update ... Managed to play every evening during the week and then quite a bit on Sat and Sun. During the week I got my cash up to $255 and then on sat I decided to try NL10 again.

850 hands later and I was down to $212. Very poor day, every showdown I seemed to only just have the 2nd best hand, or they hit their 2nd pr, str8 or flush on the river. Didn't feel like I was playing poorly I just couldn't hit a flop with a baseball bat!

Back to NL5 today and got back up to $222.17 after 500 hands. Had a couple of interesting hands but not figured out how to convert them to a reasonable format to post here. If anyone can assist with some advice on that I would appreciate it.

Main reason I played every day has been to get chips in the "12 days of resolution flipout". I've achieved all 7 so far and should manage to achieve the remainder. Had to get dealt pocket 8s on Sat and it took nearly 1k hands to get dealt them. Needed 99 on Sunday and it took 25 hands!

Despite getting chips every day, (I should end up with about 88k chips) I have zero expectations for the flipout. I have never won anything in any of the GGcare/GGcheers flips and I've had chips in quite a few of them over the last 2 months. I don't consider myself a "lucky" person in that way. A while back I worked for an agency for about 14 years and every week I would get a free lotto ticket with my wage slip. It quickly became a standing joke in the house that whatever numbers were on my ticket were the numbers to avoid for that week's draw and true to form in all that time I never had a single winning ticket from them. Just goes to show how low the chances are of winning anything in those lotteries.

Ah well, enough rambling from me.

GG all.

Take care

Fagin

PS - just remembered that I have been thinking about goals for this blog. Initially I plan to post weekly and am setting a cash goal of $450.

Not the best goals perhaps but I will set others as I decide on them. Primarily any goals have to be measurable and have meaning to me and those fit both of those categories nicely. Cash is after all one of the main ways we have in poker of "keeping score" so for now that's where I'll start.

Time for a quick update. I've finished the New Year Resolution Missions and have a grand total of 88,824 chips as I predicted. I've managed to do it the easy way by simply playing 4 x NL5 tables for about 30 mins to an hour each evening. My cash is back up to a more reasonable level now from last Sunday .. $257.23.

Over the last 5 days I've played 1214 hands of NL5 and won $41.29. If my maths is correct that's about 17bb/100 WOW! That's better than I expected and even though I saw the balance building over the last 5 days I was only half expecting to get to $250 by Sunday. Happy to have gotten there early.

I had thought of going back up to NL10 once I got there but I may hold off until I hit $300. I'll have to see how I feel.

Not sure if I'll play every night next week, to be fair I've had to make time for it on some days and have only done so because of the New Years Resolution missions. I decided early on that if I was going to be in one of the flips that I was better off being in the one with either the fewest players or the biggest prize pool to maximise my chances of a prize, so completing all 12 was the way to go.

I'll update again on Sunday as planned.

GG and take care

Fagin

Sunday evening update time again.

As predicted I got nothing from the flipout, I was out in the first hand although I did have nearly 12% equity at one point!

Played some NL5 over the weekend, (decided against the NL10 for now, NL5 just feels very comfortable, maybe too comfortable) and dropped about 3 BI on Sat but got it back and more today finishing at $268.26.

Happy with progress so far, up about $64 since starting the blog and mostly feel like I'm playing reasonably well.

I've joined the bankroll challenge also so we'll see how that goes although having to set a target of over $1.2k feels a bit daunting at the moment. Here I am happily playing 45 mins of an evening and feeling good for picking up $5 or so. It could take a while to complete the challenge at that rate lol.

Finding the $.25 Battle Royale a good way to finish an evening session. Playing 2 of them, (1 with the daily freebie ticket and buying into the other), I seem to be able to cash in 1 out of 4 I play so picking up a few extra cents there.

Been looking at the satellites to the UKPC main event but struggling to find enough time to commit to playing them. Maybe next weekend. DTD is about 3 hours drive away and I've played there once before. I got a seat into the £300 deepstack and managed to cash for £1100 so have some good memories from there.

That's about it for now

Take care all

Fagin

Here I go again with another Sunday evening update

It's been an up and down and back up again week. I started off with losing days on Mon and Tues finishing up down over 5BI at $242 ish. Things picked up for Wed, Thurs and Fri and I managed to recoup my earlier losses and show a small profit at about $270 ish. Sat it was all downhill again with about 3 BI lost over 3 sessions but then on Sunday everything was rosy again and I have just signed off with $285.75 showing for a gain of $17.49 (actually up about $43 over the last 5 days!)

Most of the gains come from NL5 cash but there are some from Battle Royale wins, maybe about $7 ish (50% in the money from the last 6), and I made a small profit on spins having played about 6.

I tried to play some sattys but only managed 2 and while I got to the money in 1 of them it was only a $0.36 return for my $3 buy in lol.

I only realised earlier today that I need to post in the Bankroll Challenge update thread so will do that this evening too. At least I have a profit to post there for my first update

Take care out there

Fagin

Sunday evening again so time for an update.

Been up and down again this week, up every day until this evening where I managed to drop 5BI over 1 hour. Typical hands were AIPF with KK vs QQ, villain flops a Q, AIPF with QQ vs AKos, villain rivers an A - those two happened in consecutive hands on the same table.

Noticed over the session that I was getting 3 bet from the blinds fairly frequently. It seemed to happen mostly when I raised with marginal hands to pick up the blinds. On the few times it happened when I had something to call the 3 bet with, a low to med PP or suited A, 90% of the time villain was betting pot on the flop and it always seemed to be when I had no pair and no draw so I fold and there goes another 6 or 8 bb. This probably accounted for 1 BI over the session.

5 or more times in the session I was sitting in the bb with AA or KK and got a walk ??

When I saw flops I struggled to make more than 1 pair and was unable to call the multi-street pot sized bets I was facing. When I had better hands villains never seemed to have enough to call even a small bet.

I feel quite disappointed after this evening's session having felt positive about my game over this week, working my way up to over $300 for the first time on GG and since starting this blog. Not sure where I was going wrong, or even if I was. Its difficult to review a session with just PokerCraft to look at. I would like to pull all the hands over to PT4 but when I have tried so far all the villains IDs get changed to random mixed letters and numbers and I have no idea how to get around it. If the hands ported over successfully I would post some here but I've not been able to spend much time on trying to figure it out. Life puts enough demands on my time as it is!

Ah well that's poker, rant over.

Over the week, according to PokerCraft I played 4227 hands and finished on $277.88 (I was on $303 about 2 hours ago). That makes a loss of -$7.87 for this week.

I was thinking of trying some NL 10 tables when I was got to $300 + so will stick to that plan and will probably play 2 x NL5 and 2 x NL10 when I get back up to $300.

Ok, that's enough for now. Time to make the disappointing update to the bankroll challenge thread and sign off.

Take care all

Fagin

Here I go again with another Sunday evening update.

Good news this week I managed to get back up to over $300, finishing off this evening on $310.10 which means that starting tomorrow I will be moving up to NL10. With that in mind I am collecting my rakeback via the Platinum Whale promotion which adds $7.02 giving me a total of $317.12. With that included I can happily report a profit of + $39.24 :f_thumbsup::f_drink:

Interestingly PokerCraft shows me with a profit of $50.33. No idea how that is worked out. It also showed me with a profit over the previous week which strangely was not reflected in my balance. If anyone can explain how that works I'd appreciate it

I spent about $2.5 on Battle Royales and spins over the week and picked up $2.48. I'm tending to use the daily freebie at the end of the day and buy in for a second one of the same to play two at the same time which seems to be working out profitable for me at the moment. Looking at PokerCraft it seems I made a loss of $1.28 on spins and a profit of $3.76 on BRs.

I've not managed to play any tournaments due to lack of time. My poker playing is currently restricted by IRL commitments, cooking, laundry, household chores, looking after my dog, work etc and needing to be able to get away from the computer for a break. I have a week off coming up in March and am currently planning to put in a few more hours at poker. 1 day will probably be spent on spins, (did that over Christmas and enjoyed it) and maybe 1 on BRs but not decided on that as yet, hopefully with a tournament or two mixed in as well.

Outside of online poker I may be running some live games in a venue about 25 mins drive from home in the next few months ... details to be arranged but looking hopeful at the moment, fingers crossed that it works out cause I enjoy the live games. Running the games does distract somewhat from being able to focus on my own game but I enjoy that side of it also so no worries.

Enough rambling from me.

Take care all

Fagin

Well here I go a rambling again!

Been a mixed week, started off not playing on Monday as RL just butted in and stopped that. Tuesday I only played the daily freebie and the usual additional one and got nothing in either. Wed I started by picking up a few $ then quickly dropped them but over the next few days I got up to $345 ish with what felt like some good aggressive play and enjoyed the games. Sat I played over4 1k hands and finished up even for the day then played the $1 freeb ie spin & go with the added 1 and got a first and second. Both were only $4 spins but still a good win.

My best bit of luck in the week was logging on to GG and finding a 50 Euro ticket for a satellite to the 370 Euro Deepstack at the Dublin Poker Festival waiting for me. I won the ticket here on PS and was very happy with that as Dublin was where I grew up and I always enjoy going back there (it's a wonderful city to visit if you ever get the chance). I was over there for the Irish Open some years ago and very much enjoyed the experience so the idea of winning a seat really appealed.

Looking at GG they only listed 2 satellites, one this evening and one during the week. I didn't fancy playing after a long day at work so it had to be this evening. I late regged when 2 players had already gone out and I had about 50bb. I lost about 15bb on a 9 high board with pp10s against another pp10s and 75os (who really should not have been in the hand) and who hit a 5 on the flop and a 7 on the river!!!.

About 15 mins later I got it AI with JJ vs 99 for about 30bb and my reputation for getting it AI with the best hand and losing did not let me down when he hit a 9 on the river

Looks like my dreams of playing in Dublin will have to wait a while longer.

Along with that I had similar luck on the cash tables over Sat evening and Sunday dropping from about $345 to $313. Mostly with other players calling down with 3rd pair type hands and hitting their 2nd pair on the river or hitting a runner, runner flush vs my flopped set or str8. I had someone 3bet my MP raise (I had AQs) with A10os and with an A on F he called F + T + R 1/2 pot bets only to hit his 10 on the R. It seems like I dropped a lot but in reality is only a $3 loss on the week so not as bad as it may have been.

Winning the ticket here seemed to have used up all my good luck for the week so hopefully I can run good starting again tomorrow.

Take care all

Fagin

Hey man,

Good to read that you find time every evening to play poker comfortly beside all the chores that you have to do.

In that case, it's is ok to stick to playing NL5 when that feels better.
(In the end, I don't think there is a big difference between playing NL5 or NL10, but it might be for you, mentally)

Too bad you didn't win a Dublin seat.

Keep up the grind and enjoy! ♠_drink:

Well, it seems that somebody actually reads the ramblings I post here!

The Dublin seat would have been great but at least I don't have the headache of trying to find the cash to get there and back, pay for a hotel and food and drink for 3 or 4 days. All that would have added up to over £500 that I don't actually have right now

Playing poker at the end of the day is less than ideal for me in some ways. I'm usually tired as I work a physically demanding job and then there's my dog to sort out, dinner to get and a much needed shower etc so it's usually 20:30 before I get to play and I like to get to mbed by 22:30 as I'm up at 06:20. On the plus side it means that I rarely drink alcohol as I don't like to mix booze and poker. It helps to keep my mind active and in some ways to wind down at the end of a long day.

NL10 is a little different to NL5, more and bigger 3 bets, a little more aggressive post-flop play ( I get bet out of more pots and rarely get the odds needed to chase a draw). As I am looking to move up probably to NL50 or NL100 eventually it would be useful to master NL10 on the way lol. I do drop down to NL5 at times (pre-determined if my BR drops below $280) but less as time goes on.

Cheers for the reply, i'll drop over to your blog this evening.

Take care

Fagin

Well, here we go again for a Sunday evening roundup of the last week.

It started off quietly enough as I didn't play on Monday. RL got in the way a bit and I wasn't really in the right headspace so decided to avoid poker for the day. That worked ok as I was looking forward to playing on Tuesday evening and did fine, picking up about $15 or $20. By Thursday I was up to $380 and playing well but then variance decided to smack me in the face and over the course of Friday evening and Sat morning I managed to get back to about $330. I kept at it and on Sat evening I had a lovely start turning $10 into $28 in my first orbit at one table. The session was a little quieter after that but stayed quite positive. Sunday was a bit up and down but still able to report a $44.94 profit on the week finishing up with $358.73

Nothing further to report on the possible live games as yet, mainly waiting on a phone call. Buy in, structure and a few other details need sorting and will need to be agreed with the venue but still hopeful that it comes off.

Busy week ahead at work so may not play every evening this coming week but we'll see.

Take care all

Fagin

Well back with an update after a strange week. Started off ok ish making a few $s over 4 days but then Friday came. On Friday I seemed fated to have the best hand by the turn and the 2nd best on the river. Time after time after time.

I finished the session early (rage quit for the first time ever) - not due to the bad beats but due to my computer acting up. I was having to click a button multiple times before the input was accepted. This lead to me timing out on some tables and losing pots on others. It was simpler to quit than try to manage the issue (still not sure what it is, probably just age as my PC is about 13 years old now) and it still affects use now. My cursor will suddenly jump to the other side of the screen, windows will close by themselves, when browsing the web I can suddenly find I've jumped back a page when the cursor has been nowhere near the back button etc.

Having finished the session I found that I was down over $50

Spent Sat and Sun trying to pick up a few $ and eventually finished at $319.55 for a loss of about $39.

Managed to hit a Royal on Sat but so did the villain as it was on the board. The idiot even decided to give GG some free cash by shoving the river for about $6 - like I was going to fold The best part was that he had the 9 and hit the str8 flush on the turn, checked to me and I checked behind, then the river was the A lol

Forgot to say last week that I had hit quads 4 times between the Fri and Sunday getting paid twice which contributed to my nice profit last week.

It's been a frustrating few days at the tables with opponents making bad calls against me and profiting. Typical example from earlier today - I raise from MP and SB calls. Flop is Q6Jr (I have QJ). He checks, I bet 1/3 pot and he calls. T is a 7. He checks and I bet 3/4 pot. He tank calls and I'm suspecting he has 66 or 77 for a set. R is a K and he checks, I check back to find he has K6os for a better 2pr :f_rolleyes::f_mad:

Had a few days of that to get through but still here and still playing. Been relaxing by watching the Six Nations and catching up on season 6 of Drive to Survive ahead of the F1 season starting. As usual I had forgotten a load of the things that happened during last seasons races. I watch every race and yet within a few days the events seem to fade and very soon they all merge into one mix of bits of races that I don't always relate to a particular circuit. Mind you I have watched a few seasons of F1 now, must be over 40 years worth lol.

Enough ramblings from me for now, more next week.

Take care

Fagin

Chi gioca con me

Here I go again with another Sunday evening update. Just updated the bankroll challenge thread with the huge news of $1.47 profit this week after over 3k hands. To say it was hard won would be a huge understatement. I was down to $286 this afternoon after being up to over $350 on Tuesday.

One of those weeks, towards the end of the week I couldn't hit a flop with a bat never mind the cards in my hand. Raising with premiums either got me the blinds or got me all in. A typical example being getting 125bb in PF with AA vs KK, QJos and QJos. As I expected the KK hit a set on the turn and that was the end of those 125bb and a 350bb pot goes to villain instead of me.

It got to the point last night where I was raising with a big pair and simultaneously wondering how much I was going to lose with the hand. Catching those thoughts floating around in my head I decided to quit for the day as with that mindset I was unlikely to win much.

Today started off in much the same vein with a losing session this morning and I decided not to play a session this afternoon even though I had planned to play and had the time set aside. I spent the time on a few non poker related things, (brain training games, sudoku, some reading and walking the dog).

Coming back to play this evening I finally managed to get in the winning frame of mind and with some hard work, the odd "soul read" and a well timed bluff or two I turned it around to manage to post a miniscule profit for the week.

Interestingly, according to pokercraft I'm running +ev. No idea how they figured that out as I've lost 8 of the last 9 AIs and have been the favourite in all but 1. I'm very suspicious of their figures and may try getting my HH into PT4 one of these days to have a better look at things.

That's enough from me for now.

Take care all

Fagin

Edit : In my excitement at managing to report getting back into profit for the week I forgot the most important thing that happened - I've achieved Gold status here on PS

And you are rewarded not only with Gold but also in cash. Congrats!

Congrats on winning the $150 blog raffle top prize dude! ♠_drink:

Cool, $150, did not expect that ♠_thumbsup:

Huge thanks to PokerStrategy for that. That's nearly 50% of my current BR on GG

Thanks for your comments folks, kind of good to know I don't just waffle for myself, others actually have a look.

Take care

Fagin

Great week! Congratualtions! ♠_drink:

Ok, time for my weekly update.

Firstly the week started off superbly with winning the $150 in the blogger raffle here on PS. That was awesome, theoretically increased my BR by nearly 50%. Huge thanks to PS for that. Thanks also to those who dropped by to offer congrats, I appreciated that more than I expected to. It surprised me that people took time out of their busy days to do that, so cheers all

I say theoretically as I won't officially count it as part of my BR until I get it to my account on GG. It seems that I can't get it transferred directly so will have to go another way, probably via Skrill. I already had $50 in my TaF account so will get it all sent over together. I'll update here when it arrives!

The downswing has carried on with some exceptions. I'm getting bet out of too many pots where people are betting 50 or 60 bb into a pot of 35 or 40bb and I'm not just continuing with 1pr as I'm so rarely still ahead in these spots that I fold a lot. Despite that I've shown a small profit this week of $5.9. This has been helped by two hands in particular, one where I hit a straight flush against the A high flush and got paid, and the other where AA beat JJ.

(Hope I've done those links correctly)

I'm getting out-pipped, outdrawn and just downright unlucky a lot lately but not letting it get to me. Still playing positive poker and picking up pots where I can.

Should be able to play a lot more hands this week as I'm off work until Mon 18th. Planning on spending a day playing Spins and maybe a day on Battle Royale too, we'll see how it goes (lots of getting it in good and losing in both of those games for me lol).

I've put my name in the raffle for the WSOP-C Main Event at Dusk Till Dawn draw so we'll see if anything comes of that.

That's about it for now.

Thanks for reading my latest ramblings.

Take care all

Fagin