I'm an iPhone developer

I have handed in my notice for my 9-5 IT Dept job, woo hoo! I'm working my notice period at the moment but I'll be free by 17th July at the latest, "JURASIC PARK!". I have been leaning about iPhone development and will be working self-employed on exciting, sexy iPhone projects. More interesting work, more flexible and more profitable in the long run I hope. It will also give me a chance to try other things such as Betfair odds trading and who knows, maybe even play some poker :gasp:!

I had a go at knocking up an app to sell on the App Store myself. I chose the simplest idea I had so I could quickly go through the learning process of App Store upload/approval, which is a bit of a tortuous ordeal. Anyway, my first app was approved (1st time, amazingly), and for the princely sum of 59p you can buy it here - Odd-o-matic. Its a betting odds converter that converts between American, decimal and traditional odds formats. OK it is never going to set any sales records but that wasn't the point, the point is I now know how to write iPhone apps and get them on the App Store.

It's a real drag having to work my notice period, I would rather get out now, but that's what my employer wanted and I'm playing ball. At least it's nice to be able to post stuff on here without censoring myself.

So, roll on 17th July, freedom day!

Thanks for reading,

Simon

Break / Betfair course

I'm in France for 2 weeks for our first family holiday with the 3 of us. It's really good to be able to chill out and take a step back to get some perspective on a few things, mainly work-related things. The company I work for is closing the office I work in again, (deja vu, same thing happened earlier this year) and shunting us to another office. Appropriately enough I have bought "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" by Alain De Botton to read while I'm away.

I have withdrawn my poker roll and booked myself on the Betangel Betfair exchange trading course with Peter Webb for 27th July, so I am going to have a decent shot at this trading lark when I get back.

Just a short post as the sun is shining and the beach is calling.

GL all

Simon

A Better Casino Hire Night for Everybody

If you are an avid gambler but don’t live near a casino, you must know how difficult it is to get involved in a typical home game. There are so many factors that affect how enjoyable the gambling or casino hire event/session will be. Everything from selecting the right venue, to the right combination of guests and even the lighting has to be just right to recreate that indisputable magic of the casino. There is however, one key factor that makes a wealth of difference to most games, but is typically overlooked.

A much underestimated aspect of recreating that elusive gambling tension lies in having a skilled dealer dealing at your games. A professional card dealer will often have several years of card dealing experience at a variety of casinos and be armed with a set of card handling skills that will elevate any game to the next level. An effect of hiring a good dealer is that guests will often bet higher at tables where a professional is dealing. This is because the dealer acts as an established authority ensuring that people are more forward with their bets.

Until now, the best dealers were quickly snapped up by private players for their home games. Finding a good croupier for a fun casino hire night can be a hard task and often requires a good degree of experience in networking at such games and learning your local circuit too.

One website that is hoping to put more dealers in touch with gamblers no matter where they live is the social network for card dealers, Dial A Dealer. Aimed at gambling fans and party planners, visitors to the site can browse the various dealers from around the world including the US, Canada, The UK, Australia and New Zealand. At www.dialadealer.com , you can view the in-depth profiles of professional card dealers and hire them directly.

Each dealer profile contains a photograph, their rate per hour, their direct contact telephone number and their vital statistics. Dial A Dealer even lets dealers list the competitions and tournaments they have taken part in and any prizes they may have won too. Some of the more popular dealers also provide an equipment hire and gambling party planning service to make sure larger events or corporate parties are catered for.

Using the site, which is based around the image of a typical casino card table, its easy to narrow in on a preferred dealer and get a quote for your event directly. With a high level of attention paid to the site’s design, the information is presented clearly and the content is engaging.

To ensure that visiting gamblers are kept up to date, the site also hosts a well written blog that is updated constantly with the latest news, casino events, tips and advice from the gambling and dealing world. For more information about the different gambling games and tips for hosting parties, a comprehensive list of articles can also be found on the site. These cover such topics as planning a private or corporate night to picking the best venue.

To find out more about this useful site and to hire a dealer from Dial A Dealer, please visit www.dialadealer.com.

I played poker!

Wow, I actually played poker!  I got $10 from Party Poker as a random "how dare you stop playing" bonus, to try and lure my lips back to the poker crack-pipe, but alas it didn't go well.  I played $10nl for 2 orbits, losing $5 then winning $5.10, got bored, went to a $50nl heads-up table and after 5 hands I ran KQs into 10 10 pre-flop and lost to a set of 10s.

So yeah, that was that.  I have pooled my $1200 poker bankroll into Neteller, and I think I'm going to withdraw it to pay to go on Peter Webbs Betangel course.  That should give me a head start in the Betfair odds trading game, and we'll see how it goes from there.  Not sure when the next course is but I am just going to go on the next available one.  

I'll get back into poker at some point no doubt. I still read the blogs and listen to the 2+2 Pokercast.  For now though, I'm off to France for 2 weeks to clear my head and relax, hopefully that will give me time to get a clear picture of where I want to go next.

Gl All

Simon

Motivation

There are very few things that can make me bring myself to do something that I'm not motivated to do, not passionate about, or even interested in. Money can certainly do that, and I'm surprised at how long money alone can keep me doing something I don't enjoy. I can't post about some of the stuff I'm doing at the moment, well, I could but I won't as I want to keep control of my situation and not give away free information to people who could use it against me. Never show your cards unless you have to, right? <- Look a poker reference!!!

Learning new stuff motivates me, I am passionate about whatever I'm learning and its a virtuous circle as I pick things up quicker and motivates me to go on learning. The key is finding that magical confluence of something you enjoy that can also be monetized, and to keep it fun and fresh with variety. It should have a name, that coming together of fun stuff and money-making. The "Chuckleton-Moolah Confluence" maybe? Anyway, here's to some interesting upcoming blog posts, hopefully sooner rather than later. And good luck in your search for the elusive Chuckleton-Moolah Confluence.

Simon

Scalping and Swing Trading

I'll start with a warning: since I haven't so much as loaded a poker client since my last post there will be no poker content in this poker blog post. Maybe I should change it to a life blog, I find the "life" bits of poker blogs I read more interesting than the poker bits anyway.

I have been more focused since my last post, and I feel better for it. The two main things I've been doing are learning iPhone development, and learning about trading (mostly relating to Betfair odds-trading, but a bit of currency trading too).  The iPhone stuff seems to be sticking in my head at last, it is a steep learning curve as I've not previously done any Objective-C / Cocoa / Mac related coding at all.  I"ll have to have a go at thinking of a nice little app I can write to add to the App Store when I've learnt a bit more.

I stumbled upon Adam Heathcote's blog, and very quickly became interested in trading odds swings on Betfair after reading that he has made almost £100k so far this year!  I have taken up the trial of the BetAngel software he uses and had a play with it on some horse races.  It's very addictive when you have a series of races 10 minutes apart, you move straight from 1 race to the next and before you realize what has happened 3 hours have passed.  I have kept my "tick size" (the profit/loss for the smallest odds movement) small, between 5 and 50p.  Sadly my worst trade coincided with the 50p tick size (a £10 loss) and my best result with the 5p tick size (35p profit woo). I'm down about a fiver I think, unsurprising as I just got stuck in without knowing what I was doing, but I think I can see how I could be profitable with a bit of time and effort.  The main lesson I learned from the £10 loss: be careful with short-priced favorites (below evens) as the odds tick up/down VERY fast, if you back at, say,  1.68 the "tick" is 0.01, so the odds only have to move to 1.5 and you're 18 ticks down in a few seconds. With higher odds each tick is bigger, so at 3.2 it's (I think) a 0.1 tick so you would only lose 2 ticks if it goes to 3.0. It seems the way to profit (or one of the ways) is to scalp and/or swing trade each race from 10 minutes before the off.  If I find myself with some time on my hands I"ll give it a serious go, and try to learn the patterns/signals to predict the odds swings.

Other than that I've done a bit of reading, "Richest Man in Babylon" an old book on money management, too cautious an approach for my tastes but definitely worth a look. Also read "The 4-hour work week", some useful nuggets, but not worth the effort as it's more a list of resources and a "how to be great by copying the author exactly" book. You realize very quickly that the book itself is part of the authors own get rich scheme (aren't they always).

Good luck at the tables, I might even play there myself at some point!

Simon

Not much poker

Couldn't find a relevant pic, so used one of my son looking very thoughtful (wow it still blows my mind saying that...I have a son!!).

Played a bit of 50nl 6-max but ran pretty bad, I basically have $150 worth of "$50nl shot taking money" left and if I blow that I'm below $1000 so I'm moving back down. Not been playing much as I no longer have thoughts of trying to play for a living imminently (although I'd still love to try it at some point).  So I'm looking for other avenues with more stable income (or at least avenues where losing money isn't such a likely issue).  

Been looking into all kinds of guff, a lot of which I have linked to on the right -->>. Reading Careershifters.org, think of booking a session with a career coach, looking for some kind of writing work,  becoming a web programming contractor, doing some matched betting,  learning iPhone programming, reading "Get Rich" books, watching youtube vids of snake oil salesmen ;-) Basically my head is swimming with all this wreckage of bit of ideas and I'm trying to sift through it all and actually figure out where the hell I'm going with my "career".  The only answer I have so far is "not into a 9 to 5  Microsoft programming job", I just can't motivate myself to learn stuff that I'm not interested in, I physically can't do it.

Made a bit of profit from free bet offers over the Cheltenham races (£150ish, which won't be going into my poker roll), and have even found a few arbs recently, not a bad profit for the small amount of time invested. I think I could use arbs and free bets to pay the bills in an emergency if I put more time and more working capital into it, while I figured out my next move.

Oh, I also joined the brave new world of Twitter - http://twitter.com/simonbetts1time ...better late than never.

Good Luck all

Simon

Cash game progress

So I was playing the 20 dollar cash games, playing badly, playing too many tables, tilting off buy ins (I raise 1010, get 2 callers and insta-shove 50bbs on a 29K rainbow board...KJ calls LOL gg wp). Now at this point I did the only logical, rational thing possible. I moved up and jumped straight on to 3 $50nl tables :-)

To be fair I had finished my 10,000 hands of $20nl that I was forcing myself to play and I had the bankroll required (about 20 buy ins) to move up. Surprisingly it worked out really well, and I have more than clawed back my losses. More importantly I have been playing well, playing fewer tables (3 or 4 at the most) and feeling confident. The players seem to want to spew off money at 50nl, I honestly think its been easier than 20nl so far (although I've only played 1,000 hands of 50nl). I'm earning more rakeback too.

I also broke my "biggest ever pot" record with a slow-played set in this $108 hand. BIG BUCKS!!!!

GL all

Simon

Mediocre Poker Radio

Check out these podcasts from "Mediocre Poker Radio". There are some awesome guest interviews on there. Krantz/Pr1nnyraid, Cole South/CTS, even the Dang brothers (Urindanger and Trex313) came into the studio, I have no idea how these guys got these guests but they are fascinating to listen to. They would be even better if the annoying, over-excited interviewers would let their guests talk instead of interrupting all the time, nevermind. The Dang bros one is the best place to start IMO, very inspiring.

Nothing much doing poker wise for me, just trying to finish my 10K hands of 20nl and/or 25nl before I move up to 50nl. I think I'm almost at the 9K mark now so not far to go, and I feel a lot more "ready" to move up after forcing myself to play lower/overrolled for a while.

GL al

Simon

Puke-o-matic

Wow, that was no fun. I went from feeling a little off after my last post to having full blown puke-o-matic disease. I managed to last 'till the end of the day at work, and got the train station when that sense of the inevitable came over me: I'm going to spew, and there's no way to stop it. Fortunately I had walked up the platform a bit, away from everyone else, where I spotted a drain. I was too busy projectile vomiting to know or care if anyone saw me. If they did they probably thought I was some kind of washed-up alcoholic, staggering along the platform and then blowing chunks down the drain. Anyway, hope you weren't eating while you were reading that!

What with being ill and all I have played no poker the last few days so I may as well sum up January - "I didn't play enough". That about sums it up. I made +$275 overall, mostly ($180) from tournaments. I played 2 tournaments and finished 1st in one and 2nd in the another! I managed to get in 6,300 hands on the cash tables which, as I said, isn't nearly enough, but its the most I've played in a good few months I guess. So, on to next month and I'll just have to try to keep moving forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!

Gl all,

Simon

Under the weather

Feel rough at the moment, not properly ill, so that I can stay off work, but def. not right. Yep, it's the dreaded man-flu. I don't know who caught it off who but my little son is not right either. He was really sleepy yesterday, and refused one feed, which was very worrying. He's five months old and this is the first time he's been ill in any way. Just as we put the phone down after talking to a nurse on NHS Direct he woke up, smiled, and gulped down his milk. A miracle recovery, and a big relief!

I have played a couple more sessions of 6-max at the $20nl level, which went badly, ending with me down 2-3 buy ins. I have decided to learn heads-up cash. This is mainly for fun at the moment as at 10nl I worked out I was paying 20bbs per 100 hands in rake. I don't think it's easy for a begginner HU player to overcome a 20bb/100 penalty right from the word go so I'll be playing only to learn and for fun until I can move up. I lost a buy-in on my first HU match, but I played OK I think. Nothing you can do when villain (a total calling station) keeps hitting bottom pair and you keep missing. Of course just as the tide was turning and I started hitting a few hands he ran off, the feeble weak-wristed fop.

So I need to get in a load more 6-max hands, and keep learning HU, which will hopefully help my 6-max game. I just need to put the hours in.

Gl All

Simon.

RaiseTheRiver.com

Thought I would start off with a plug for a friendly poker forum I visit called RaiseTheRiver. There are a good bunch of posters on there, plenty of banter, they have regular forum league games (you can play against me, but don't let that put you off) and even a podcast. Give it a whirl - http://www.raisetheriver.com/.

I thought I should give them a plug as the last 2 RTR league games have been very kind to me. It started off 2 Sundays ago with a 2nd place finish in the 1st game of the new league. I was beaten by Amatay, which isn't surprising as he plays tourns for a living and I hardly ever touch them. Anyway last Sunday I played in the 2nd game, a $5 rebuy and after a crazy 1st hour (mostly on the other table where people were shoving pre straight from the off) I was in for $20, with a bloated prize pool of about $300 from everyone's rebuys. I managed to win few flips and hit a few flops at the right time (just before and after the bubble) and ended up winning the thing for over $150. With the next game being Omaha (4 hole cards, WTF!?), we shall see how long I last at the top of the league...

I also played a quick 6-tabling session at 25nl 6-max too. I managed to run well and play fairly solid poker to make $60 in under an hour, so things are going well at the mo. Long may it continue.

Gl all ,

Simon

Bankroll: $1280

Top Secret

The green goose flies high when the blue nun walks sideways. Hello! My top secret project continues, in fact it has doubled in size in terms of my input. I'll tell you all about it at the end of the month, promise.

I started trying to get a lot more hands in, and get into a groove, but the secret project interrupted that. I have only got in 3,000 hands of 6-max cash, $20nl, $25nl and a bit of $50nl so far in January. I made a small profit, which is good as I am very rusty at the cash tables, but I would be aiming to play more hands than that in 1 day if I was playing full time. I've got back to the point where I am fine 4-tabling and can almost 6-table comfortably, with the aid of my new monitor, a BenQ 24 incher. I bought it so I am prepared to play full time, at lots of tables (whether that's cash, SNG or MTTs) basically to remove any excuse I could make for not playing enough. Also I though it was a good idea to buy it now as I still have a regular salary coming in!

The plan is to play 10,000 hands at $25 or $20nl to get back into the swing and move up to $50nl (or at least take a shot at that level). My bankroll is around $1100 or $1200 dollars, so that's plenty for $50nl while I'm still employed full time.

In other poker news I managed to finish 2nd out of 22 in the 1st game of the new league at Raise the River on Sunday night. Afterwards I realized the $48 prize was my biggest tournament cash ever, lol donkaments. Sadly I couldn't come back from a 4 - 1 chip deficit against that fish Amatay, and I ended up calling 9 or 10 BBs off with Q7o (awful call in retrospect, don't mind shoving with it, but not calling) to lose to his Ax (A10 possibly?) . I feel bad for the rest of the forum that they have to put up with his bragging now, after I failed to beat him ;-) Sorry guys!

Good luck at the tables,

Simon

Obligatory New Year post

Well every other blogger has done it, so here is my new year post, excuse the sight delay.  

2008 was a patchy year, poker-wise. Looking back over my blog, I seem to have played in spurts, inconstantly.  Poker has been just a little side-hobby this year, so I'm not going to talk in terms of success or failure . I have tried to improve, but I haven't done the main thing needed to really get better in my opinion: play hundreds of thousands of hands.  From what little poker I did play I managed to increased my bankroll, in fits and starts, from $300 to over $1K. That makes me a member of a very select club: a winning poker player, even if it is only a small amount of money.

Career-wise 2008 was a write-off. I was bounced from merger to sell-off to who knows what next...redundancy probably.  The less said about this he better, so I'll move on.

In terms of other life stuff, last year was amazing. I became a Dad for the first time.  I won't bore you with a series of cliches, instead I'll just say it has already been the most rewarding thing I've ever done, and he's only 4 month old!

And so we get to 2009. Here's my ambition for poker in 2009.  It's a biggie.  At some point this year I want to try playing full-time, to see if I can potentially get good enough to use poker to pay the bills.  I posted on Raise the River asking for advise, and got a range of responses, all helpful in one way or another.

I know I don't have the bankroll to play full-time, and I know I'm not good enough yet.  I believe I have the potential to improve, build my roll, and play full time.  I do realize how hard it will be to achieve this.  The first thing I'm going to do is get back to playing 6-max NLHE cash, and see if I can get a lot of hand in.  Enough jibber-jabber, it's time to play poker.

Gl all

Simon

Playing with my chopper

Not been playing any poker, been having too much fun playing with my chopper.  Here's a video of my chopper.

 I'm such a big kid, but its a fun little heli.  It's an E-flite Blade mCX, very stable and easy for a total noob like me to fly, but still full 4 channel control (i.e. up+down / left+right drift / forward+backward drift / spin left+right). 

Hope you all had a good Xmas :)

Simon

Badugi

Yo dudes! Apart from a few satellites to the Sunday majors (came frustratingly close to getting into the Sunday Brawl on 'tilt, but just missed out) I have been learning a new game - Badugi!

I tried the play money tables on Stars, and after about 10 mins of playing and reading the rules I jumped into a real money 25/50c limit ring game. I worked out the rough odds of improving from a 3 card hand to a Badugi and just played tight. It went OK and I ended up making a few $ profit. I saw some pretty bad plays, basically people starting with bad hands and trying to draw out.  Not as bad as the $2 Badugi MTTs though, some of the people who play those don't even seem to have read the rules (standing pat on a 3 card hand with a free draw, and not betting/bluffing after the draw!?).  In my first tourney I came 14th / 88 for a measly $4, and in the next I came 3rd / 128 for $31. Not a bad ROI, shame it was so small stakes.

Life-wise I've had the last week and a half off work so I've been relaxing, enjoying my time with my baby son and wife, and visiting a ton a relatives.  All good fun.

Have a good Christmas.

Simon

Sidetracked

Haven't played any more satellites since my last post, I got sidetracked by my secret project, which is looking more likely to actually happen and I can't wait to blog about it.  Fingers crossed that it goes live soon, I hope to get some news tomorrow.   It should give you a good laugh, at the very least.

So, the next target is the EPT event in France in January.  Sats running on Stars now, so I think that should be my focus. It'll have to be cheap satellites though, as funds are running low and I want to keep my "proper" bankroll separate and not fritter it away on sats.  I'll have a look for any big online events too, as that will be easier than swanning off round Europe, leaving my wife to look after our 14 week old boy.

Also did a spot of matched betting, a £50 and 2 £25 offers.  Made about £70-80 quid from that so can't complain. It did get a bit too exciting when the odds suddenly moved on a horse I was laying on Betfair.  Luckily they went the right way and I ended up backing a 5.2 and laying at 4.6. I realized I hadn't layed enough as the race was running, and managed to lump a bit more on (too much in the end!).  Fortunately the horse couldn't be bothered to finish the race and I collected the cash in my Betfair account.

That's all I've got for now, good luck at the tables guys, Simon Betts, signing off.

Close, but no cigar

Played quite a few satellites over the last week, getting nowhere in the GUKPT sats on bluesq or the GCBPT ones on Coral. The only one I got close in was an ECOOP main event sat. I played a $6 re-buy sat and managed to win a $55 seat into the final stage sat after burning through 3 or 4 rebuys. With 2 x $1060 entries into the ECOOP main event on offer I was really hoping to cash. There were 24 starters, most I recognised from the $6 sat as being fairly donkish. For example, two or three hands in its folded to me on the button and I raise to 70 (10/20 blinds) with 85o or some other trash, SB raises to 270 and I fold, and this seems to be the most baffling thing he's ever seen, he types "???WTF!!" in chat. Like a blind steal is some amazing mind-blowing concept he's never even contemplated.

Anyway, a couple of hands later it's folded to me and I raise As8s in middle position, again to 70, BB makes it 140 (mmm strength) and I obv call. Flop is 488 rainbow...lovely. I call his flop bet and we get all the money in on the turn, he shows AA and it bricks off, poor guy :-) After that I was flying, staying around 3rd/4th most of the first 30-40 mins, which is good as it was a re-buy event and I had no more cash on the site! I ran bad heading towards the 1st break though, and ended up with 2300 chips left after the re-buy period break was over, with 100/200 blinds :-( First hand after the break and early/mid position guy makes it 600, and it folds to me in the BB with 99....easy decision for me with 11.5BBs. So I shoved and started chanting "please be flipping, please be flipping", he calls with AJo, "That's fine, I'm flipping" flop bricks, turn bricks, river Ace, out in 9th place, sigh, standard, "gg, wp".

There's a few other poker related things bubbling under. One which I can't talk about, but which will be quite cool/fun/unexpected if it comes off. I really want to say more but can't, as if I do it's less likely to happen, if you see what I mean, I'll blog about it as soon as I can though. Also, due to ongoing job uncertainty/credit crunch type issues I need to have a serious think about what to do next "career-wise". This is poker related as I've always wanted to try playing for a living but would never quit my job to play, far too risky. If I was made redundant however... With that in mind I've been looking at matched-betting again, as something to do alongside poker, so I might see if there are any new offers kicking about since I haven't looked for months.

Gl all

Simon

Poker virgin

I have been playing and learning about poker for about 3 years. In that time I have never played live...ever. The only time I remember playing with actual physical cards is one Christmas when I was about 12 with my family. About 5 of us played a 5 card draw game, and I crushed (naturally) taking home a cool £2.50 in 1 and 2p coins!

I would like to have a go at a live donkament at some point. It would have to be a big one, say £1,000 buy-in or more, otherwise why bother with all the travelling, hotels etc. Now there’s no way I would play a £1k tourney unless I won a seat via a satellite. So I had a go at a few sats to the GUKPT events on BlueSq over the last week, but failed to get very far. The best I did was to win a freeroll into a $10 rebuy sat. feeder. Sadly I busted 7th out of 17 (prizes were 2 $160 seats to ANOTHER satellite, and $60 for 3rd). I played well, which in this type of tourney means simple ABC stuff, allowing the donks to call with trash and forcing them to re-buy. I didn’t need to rebuy once, I just bought the add-on for $10 at the break to leave me poised in the middle of the pack on 6k chips with 10 players left. I lost a few chips when a blind steal with K10 went wrong, and with about 10BBs left waited for a decent hand. If you can’t beat A9 when you have AJ AIPF you’re going to struggle to win in this sort of game…that hand left me short so I shoved A9s when it was folded to me on the button and lost to J10o and that was that. I will try again I think, the freerollls are so easy – played 6 (approx 2-300 entries in each) and won a seat to the next stage in 3 of them.


I'm kind of changing my thinking about why I'm playing poker in my current situation. I could grind out $25nl 6-max or some sitngos for hours on end and make a few hundred dollars a month, but what difference is that going to make to my life? If I had a lot of time I would steadily grind out the games but I don't, and with an income from a full time job I can go for that 1 big tourney cash, online or live.


So my new strategy is (until next week when I change my mind!) - try to sat. into a big live event, the big Sunday tourns online or the big online events (FTOPS etc) and see if I can come up with a big cash.


Gl at the tables all


Simon

Kenny Tran

Played a session with Kenny Tran yesterday. He was bugging me over AIM to come and play him so eventually I agreed, just to shut him up like. I pretty much owned his soul as you can see from this hand ...

Full Tilt Poker Game #8734793859: Table Tesara Vista - $0.25/$0.50 - Limit Hold'em - 18:13:26 ET - 2008/10/30
Seat 1: RacingFerret ($27.45)
Seat 2: KyleLaban ($15.10)
Seat 3: Kenny Tran ($1,098.90)
Seat 4: JoeAvrg ($28.20)
Seat 5: inevermiss ($112.25)
Seat 6: oogityboogity1 ($12.20), is sitting out
Seat 7: GAN241 ($1,018.20)
Seat 8: npitts ($8.65)
Seat 9: Last Name Taken ($4.10)
GAN241 posts the small blind of $0.10
npitts posts the big blind of $0.25
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RacingFerret [Td Ad]
Last Name Taken folds
RacingFerret raises to $0.50
KyleLaban raises to $0.75
Kenny Tran raises to $1
JoeAvrg folds
inevermiss folds
GAN241 folds
npitts folds
RacingFerret calls $0.50
KyleLaban calls $0.25
*** FLOP *** [Tc 8d Qd]
RacingFerret checks
KyleLaban checks
Kenny Tran bets $0.25
RacingFerret raises to $0.50
Kenny Tran: j 10 i had last..
KyleLaban calls $0.50
Kenny Tran calls $0.25
*** TURN *** [Tc 8d Qd] [Th]
GAN241: yep
GAN241: 63os
RacingFerret bets $0.50
GAN241: looooooool
KyleLaban folds
Last Name Taken: thx
Kenny Tran has 15 seconds left to act
Kenny Tran calls $0.50
*** RIVER *** [Tc 8d Qd Th] [Qc]
Last Name Taken: <------TT RacingFerret has 15 seconds left to act RacingFerret bets $0.50 Kenny Tran has 15 seconds left to act Kenny Tran: nh Kenny Tran folds Uncalled bet of $0.50 returned to RacingFerret RacingFerret mucks RacingFerret wins the pot ($5.60) *** SUMMARY *** Total pot $5.85 | Rake $0.25 Board: [Tc 8d Qd Th Qc] Seat 1: RacingFerret collected ($5.60), mucked Seat 2: KyleLaban folded on the Turn Seat 3: Kenny Tran folded on the River Seat 4: JoeAvrg didn't bet (folded) Seat 5: inevermiss (button) didn't bet (folded) Seat 6: oogityboogity1 is sitting out Seat 7: GAN241 (small blind) folded before the Flop Seat 8: npitts (big blind) folded before the Flop Seat 9: Last Name Taken didn't bet (folded)

You ain't getting that $5.60 back Kenny! Lol, just kidding, saw him sitting at .25/.50 LIMITED HOLD THEM so I thought it would be fun to dust off my old limit skillz and try and win a pot against Tranny Ken, er, Kenny Tran.



gl all

Simon

(Credit Mike Q for the Tranny Ken pic.... more at http://www.pokerroad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=630)

Finding my grind

Spent the last week in Bourton-on-the-water in a quaint little cottage (that is bigger than my house!) relaxing and spending quality time with Mrs Ferret and Ferret junior, really enjoyed it, even managed some lie-ins! It's the first time I haven't felt shattered/zombified since the little guy was born. Been playing a bit of poker over the weekend, and mostly getting screwed by variance but I won't go into a list of beats as they are too ridiculous and tedious to detail.

I'm trying to find a niche that I could, in theory, grind out and pay the bills with. You know just if, in theory, the entire world economy was screwed and, in theory, we went into recession and, in theory, I lost my job and needed some cash while I was looking for a new one. In theory.

This is not about poker skill or flair or having fun, just something I could do as a stop-gap. The obvious choice was grinding sit-n-goes. Well I sat, and it did not go too well. I'm down over $200 from about 40ish of the $16 and $12 9 man turbos on Stars and FTP so far. I think a lot of it is variance, but I'm going to watch a load of vids by Jackal on Cardrunners to see if I can spot anything I'm doing wrong. I also played about 10 45 manners, and managed to get a 2nd in an $11 game after being the short stack on the bubble to recover a little cash.

I'm surprisingly motivated to beat these SNGs at this level, just by the challenge more than anything. I'd love to see my Sharkscope graph pointing proudly skywards after 1000 games or so. I would honestly rather bash out sit-n-goes all day every day than get a new job that is not the sort of work I want to do, stuck in the 9 to 5 rat race. If I could get a pay rise and a cool/fun developer job then I'd do that, but I'm not sure my fantasy job even exists. Obviously if it did come to playing the pokers for a job I'd try to grind out enough SNGs to pay the bills as quickly as possibly then "freeroll" the rest of the month playing 6-max cash or MTTs or learning to write iPhone apps to sell on Apple's online apps store. Oh well, for now its back to the grind.

Gl all

Simon

Bankroll: $1077

$46.99!!!

Woooooooo, big tournament score for the RacingFerret - $46.99 AMAZING! Lol, I don't really play tournaments but I just got the urge yesterday, I think having $15 as my biggest ever tourney cash was bugging me so I decided to try and beat it. I did, but it could have been so much more :-( I played a $5 on Stars and did OK 'till I ran 1010 into JJ, then I reg'd in a $6 tourn on Party, only when it started it was LIMIT HOLD'EM, not no limit....ugh it was like pulling teeth!

I was also looking on Pacific and there was an $18 satellite into the $50+5 ($20k GTD) starting in 19 seconds and I kind of panic-registered without really wanting to, 20-ish players, 7 win a seat. I can't remember how, but I lost a huge pot early on and was down to 120 chips which was 2BBs, and thought it was over. Somehow, however, I managed to treble up after shoving my 2BBs in UTG, then double again and finish in 7th. So I played the $50+5 and did OK at first, but got coolered a couple of times and ended up (this became the theme of the night) running 1010 into JJ again.

So no cashes so far, but in the background I'd had a $3+.30 rebuy running on Stars, and after busting/rebuying once I had above average chips. I didn't realise quite how big these tourneys were as I never usually play them. 3816 entries, 1st place pays over $5,000! I was cruising most of the way, never going below average chips, all too easy really. After I was in the money (585 paid) I went card dead and a few steal attempts went wrong and I ended up shoving 9BBs with A10o on the button over a raise from the cut-off. I knew he was stealing and would fold almost every time. Sadly I didn't know that the big blind had AK, he shoved, cut off folded (I was right damit!) and I missed my 3 outs to finish 197th.

$46.99 for a mere 5 hours play. Shouldn't complain, I guess it's a lot compared to the $3.30 buy-in and its the most poker I've played in a while.

Gl everyone

Simon

bankroll: $1106

Smash & Grab

Had another quick blast at $50nl 6-max on Pacific over the weekend, making almost 2 buy-ins in less than 100 hands. Usually when I first sit at a table I'm trying to figure out who the fish is, at Pacific I just assume everyone is a fish and look for the good player...I'm still looking. The most interesting hand came when I raised AJo from the cut-off and the fish in the BB calls, flop is AQ5 two-tone and the fish blasts $40 into the $4 pot! Now I've seen people do this with the nuts before but this guy had only played 2 orbits and he had done a similar thing once already so I was very suspicious. Anyway, I called instantly, he flips over Q2o(?!) and I hold. I was happy with how I played, adjusting well to the calling-station sitting to my left by increasing my pre-flop raise size with bigger hands becuase he would just call anyway. He had $125 when I sat, I managed to get him to donate about $50 to me, as he gave away his entire stack and quit within 15 mins. I raise AcKc to $3.25 and the fish I just mentioned calls (6.5BB raises FTW against this dude), flop comes 2 clubs and I think we both checked, turn is a very pretty club giving me the nuts and I get $8 off him on the turn and $30 on the river. Would love to know what he had but the stunningly awful software on Pacific doesn't let you see even if villain calls the river bet.

The only other poker I played was a $22 sit-n-go on Party as they gave my a free $20 for some reason, I managed to get it in ahead but got sucked out on and busted in 5th.

Not had much time to play so I have put a bit of my roll into action by staking that fish Amatay, who is having a very impressive month playing MTTs, maybe he will take down the $300k guaranteed on Party and ship me the 5%, gl Amafish, no pressure ;-)

gl all

Simon

Bankroll: $1091

Bidness Hexpense

Poker news first, since there's not much to report :) Played a few orbits of $5 on Party just to get a point so I don't lose my VIP level, then I took my first shot at $50NL on Pacific Poker, since I am rolled for it (20 buy-ins), although I only had $70 on Pacific so it could have been a very short session!  The players on Pacific $50NL are worse than the Party $5 players, seriously, the Pacific players are just giving away money. Just raising pre-flop and c-betting won the pot 9 times out of ten...I didn't even have to hit a flop. Shame the Pacific software is awful, anyway I won 30BBs 1 tabling in just over half an hour so I'll stick with it I think. No poker other than that, apart from wishing I could play in the 2008 WSOPE :) and watching a load of Cardrunners vids.

Life-wise I'm enjoying my new role as a Dad, still can't quite believe it though. Can't wait to watch him grow, start talking, walking etc. but people say enjoy him as he is now as it goes so fast.  What age can I teach him poker, thats the important question?!

Been reading "Find your Lightbulb" by Mike Harris, the bloke who started Egg and FirstDirect and grew them into billion quid businesses.  I've flirted with the dream of starting a business for ages, but don't know if I could do it, if  I would enjoy it, or if I can even think of a good business to start.  I still have the urge to do it though.  I guess the urge is to have enough money so I can do whatever I want rather than the power, status, sense of achievement  or anything else that comes with having your own business.  This leads on to me wondering if I could make that money from poker instead... probably more likely given my character. I just like the idea of my hard work at poker leading more or less directly to more money, whereas with a business you have to motivate other people and deal with all the politics and red-tape (and pay tax, not an issue you have with poker winnings!).  

I even considered becoming a scummy buy-to-let landlord (not now, when house prices have bottomed out!) so I read "Successful Property Letting".  Jesus Christ what a ball-ache! Voids, bad tenants, squatters, dodgy freeholders, insurance costs, maintenance costs, useless letting agents, endless administration.  How anyone could enjoy being a landlord is beyond me.  There would have to be some serious profit in it to make it worthwhile for me,  and there just isn't in the current economic climate. All billion quid business ideas welcome, just post your business plan in the comments section.

Fuck it, I'll just buy a lotto ticket.

gl all,

Simon

I'm a Dad!!!

No poker content for the moment, obv. :)

On Sunday morning at 4:32 I became a Dad for the first time! Here's a pic of little Oliver, mom & baby doing well. Dad is elated, and overwhelmed!

gl all

Simon

Squids

When I started my gambling "career" I logged everything in a spreadsheet.  I started around Dec. 2005 so after updating my "Squids" graph to include my tradefair profit (see below) I have made over £5K in just over 2.5 years. It's come from blackjack bonuses and matched betting mostly, and it feels good to make a profit from an industry which is actively trying to "rip the skin off its customer's faces", as one gambling  industry exec. put it.

Not played a lot of poker lately, 1 session of $25NL six-max to be exact. I did well and got my bankroll back above $1K.

Done a bit more trading/spread betting with my free £100 from tradefair.com, running it up to £548 trading on a few different shares. I'm probably going to stop now and withdraw/quit while I'm ahead.  I don't really have a strategy that will work long term, the profit has largely been down to luck, but I'll take it. I'm sure the money will come in useful very soon, as there are a couple of big life changes coming up for me shortly, I just feel like I'm waiting around for things to happen a the mo.  More news to follow :-)

gl

Simon

Bankroll $1027 (+ £548 to be withdrawn)  

Faffing around

I seem to have stopped playing my normal game. For the last couple of months I've been grinding $25nl on Party but I think I just got bored and the games got a little nittier. The few times I've checked there seems to be a couple of OK 20/15 style players, a couple of 11/7 nits and a 45/15 fish (but with only $4 left!) on almost every table.

So I've been faffing about with some different games: I played Limit 5 card draw on Stars. I actually enjoyed this as the players are so fishy, and started 4-tabling! Its so hard to multi table a draw game though, as you are frantically trying to click which cards to chuck away, didn't make any money but at least it was a laugh. I also played a bit of HORSE. Then I wondered how many tables of 6-max NLHE I could play, so I sat at a load of 1/2 cent tables on stars and layered the tables on top of each other. I got up to 14 at 1 point, which was fun - table pops up, you scan the table/cards/players/pot and make a quick descision, next table pops up etc. over and over again, it was fun in a weird "I'm turning in to a robot" kind of way and I made about $10!. I spotted a comment in the chat box from 1 player "RacingFerret is 12-tabling! He must be amazing!" LOL.

I used the same technique to play some sit-n-gos, opening 10 and putting the windows on top of each other. It would have worked great if I hadn't run like shite. Can JJ beat AJ? Can AQ beat A9? Can I win ANY coinflips? The answer to all of these questions is NO. I played about 60 games and finished DOWN $8 ugh.

So then, a bit tilted, I played $10NL on Pacific to try and build my $100 roll on there. I lost a few pots and got frustrated, I guess playing those smaller games I didn't care about the money. In my tilted state I shoved JJ pre flop (folded to my in cut-off) SB calls and shows QQ...AAARG. So at this point I'm $50 down and tilted so I do the obvious thing and quit...LOL not really I sat at a $25NL HU table...wise move Betts, good thinking! Surprisingly this doesn't end with me busting my Pacific roll as I played well HU, only won $10, but made some good bluffs and some correct hero calls and had quite a good long battle to end up in profit after I lost almost a buy-in in the first few hands.

Away from the tables I just took delivery of a parcel from the postie of 1.5KG of gourmet coffee beans. I love espresso (or anything Italian...cars, food, climate, history) and I found his place on the web that do a roast & post service where they roast the beans just before they post them so they are fresh. So yeah I basically ended up donking off 38 quid on enough coffee beans to last me 3 months! I've just tried the Monsoon Malabar dark roast and its pretty nice, subtle and deep, quite rich with no acidity and the grounds smell amazing, really smokey. Its given me quite a kick too judging by the length of this post and the speed of my typing! Anyway that's enough poncyness from me for now, don't worry though, I'll be back soon with more coffee bean reviews.

Cheers

Simon

Bankroll $987 :-(

$1,000

Last night I decided to use my meagre few Party Points (1,800) to enter 6 $3 SNGs, rather than wait till I got 2,500 and cashing in for $25. I played all 6 at once, which was probably a mistake as it was a bit frantic towards the end when I was still in all 6 games! I have no idea what the results were, as I was too busy sliding the sliders to "All-in" to watch all the tables, although I'm sure I won 1. Anyway my account balance went up by just over $20 it worked out quite well, and that pushed me over the mystical $1,000 mark for the first time! I know its not that exciting and I've probably jinxed it by posting this but it's good that the bankroll is heading in the right direction.

Played in my first Raise the River tourney on Sunday, but the less said about that the better. I was rushing around, tidying up after a party we'd had in the garden, and the tourney table popped up - first hand AK in the BB. Everyone folds to SB who raises. I re-pop his obvious steal and he shoves. Now it looks to me like he wants me to fold so I do the opposite and am surprised to see his QQ flip over. I don't hit my outs and carry on with the tidying, oh well. I can say with some certainty that I'll do better next time!

gl all

Simon

Bankroll : $1,005

mobile blog post!l

I've supposedly set up the ability to post to my blog from my mobile. What
use this is to me I've no idea. I'm in front of a computer with internet
access 23.75 hours a day anyway! Anyway, if you're reading this,it worked,
woo.

Poker wise I've gone nowhere, played cash, sngs and tournies on pacific to
try and build my roll there. Got from 40 to 90 dollars but then lost a
stack at 25nl when my QQ lost to 1010. Made a bit back at sngs and played a
1 dollar tourney as it was 500 doll garuntee with 300 players. Massive
overlay!!?! Was dissapointed to finish 8th for 15 dollars. 1st was 125 and
I would have had a good shot at winning if my 43 had hit against AK (had
4BBs left so had to call). That would have given me the lead, with a
monster 8BB stack! Anyway 15 dollars is actually my biggest MTT cash!
Record breakers!

GL all

simon

Bankroll: 978

Doing the "run good"

Had a good couple of sessions at the $25NL 6-max tables on Party. In a quick session on Thursday I made a couple of buy-ins, and also released a $40 bonus, and on Friday I made over $100 in less than 500 hands. It made me realise how bad/average I've running for so long, I think I'm long overdue a good run. My roll is closing in on the $1K mark, so I hope to be taking shots at $50nl soon. I feel happy with my 6-max game, and I really feel I earned the cash with the way I played, not just the way I ran. I've watched a ton of Cardrunners vids and I am thinking about the game really with a new found clarity, it really is fun when everything just clicks into place. I may switch to Pacific Poker now, as I've read the games are really soft there, and now I've got that bonus the Party reward program is a bit naff. If I could get in the ~600 hands a day I need to qualify for the new bonus (need 1000 points to qualify) I would carry on playing at Party but I've noticed that the games are more nitty now this promo is running and all the grind-o-donks are chasing points.

I've been following the news updates for the Main Event at the WSOP, willing David "Raptor" Benefield on. He was chip leader at one point but he busted yesterday which made me sad. He was even sadder, and quite angry judging by his latest blog entry. There's nobody I know of left in now that Pinky and Perky (Hellmuth and Matusow) also busted out, but I guess it will be interesting to see what happens with the "November nine".

Happy variance,

Simon

Bankroll: $954

Nutjob

Have a look at this hand http://www.pokerhand.org/?2833728 Is he a nutjob or what? My line looks so strong, and on the river my small bet just begs for a call. I think I totally gave away my hand, but he apparently wants to value-raise with A high. The end result was I won my biggest pot ever, a massive $99, high-rollin'! I've also just noticed my bankroll is at $749, beating my previous 'peak bankroll' record by $2, woo. Hope I can keep chugging along and build a roll for 50NL.

Its not all been sunshine and candyfloss though. Was noodling about with poker tracker and I noticed I'd paid $200 rake over 10K hands at 25NL. Eight buy-ins worth of rake, what a rip off! If the poker sites would stop shafting micro stakes players maybe we could move up a lot quicker and pay them more rake by playing higher stakes. Thieves.

Also had another crack at beating my tourney cash record and ended up wanting to stab my eyes out with a rusty trombone. Details as follows. Hours played- 3, people I beat - 1,300+, hand that beat my QQ to bust me - 97o, money won - $0, LOL Donkaments etc.

Happy gamblings.

Simon

Bankroll: $749