Twenty nine bucks, woo!

That's my poker bankroll at the moment : $29.  I (eventually) got a free $25 on tower gaming (OnGame network) and there appears to be no restriction on what games I can play with it.  So its time for another round of "spin up the meagre bankroll", but what to play?

Tournaments are out straight away as they take too much time and theres no flexibility in terms of start/finish time.  SNGs are out because the lowest buy-ins seem to be $2.20s and 11 buy-ins isn't really enough of a bankroll, and 20% is really too much rake (I did find some $1 and $0.50 SNGs and registered, only to notice too late that they were "coin flip" SNGs where you just sit there and watch all your chips get shoved in on the 1st hand!  Turns out I'm good a winning flips so no harm done).

So, after deciding I still cat be bothered to learn PLO properly, it's back to good old NLHE 6-max cash games.  Again the lowest games ($4nl) are too high (only 6 buy ins!) so I've been short-stacking, buying in for $1.40 (needs must when the devil vomits into your kettle, eh Baldrick?) and after a couple of short sessions I'm up to $29.

After 2 evenings of basically just gambling on the Champions League with my Betfair balance, trying to convince myself I had some kind of edge, and luckily spinning it up from £60 to £90 I've withdrawn the monies and decided to just focus on poker instead.  I was backing/laying the under 2.5 goals markets based on comments on Peter Webb's blog, and trading out after a certain time, but I only profited by luck TBH so I'll quit while I'm ahead.

So, it's not much, $29, but I guess its more than the poor sods who have their 'rolls stuck on Full Tilt. Can't believe it's taken this long for Aldernay to revoke their gambling license, it should have happened months ago (years ago if they had spotted the problems earlier).  Why didn't they do audits via an independent 3rd party? I really don't understand why anyone has been taken in by Full Tilts "give us a few more weeks and we'll have an investor" line.  From Aldernay's report it seems Full Tilt represented $129 million of un-processable deposits as cash in the bank, and that they haven't reported seizures by the DOJ from as far back as 2007, and that they are now insolvent!  How anyone would not question every word they say is beyond me.  Anyway, surely this is the low point, it can't get ay worse now, can it?

Gl all

Simon

Nothing happening.

No updates since July...SLACK! *sigh*

Betfair trading: I traded a pathetic 26 races in August, losing 4 quid.  So far this month I have traded no races whatsoever.  I'm sacking off Betfair trading I think (wow that'll free a lot of time up for me!) I've realised the only way I may actually make a profit from it is to sit in front of every race, every day for a month or so and really throw myself into it so I can understand the markets.  Since theres no realistic way I can do that I don't think there's any point in dallying around with a couple of races per day, getting nowhere.

I may donk around with the £60 left in my Betfair account, but I won't be trying to learn to trade.  There's a thread on the Betangel forum alerting people whenever horses from a certain trainer are running (the "Curley Alert" thread) and it seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that these runners have massive swings  (because everyone thinks/knows they will have massive swings).  I just traded one today and made a quick 3 quid without even trying as it gyrated from odds of 7.0 out to 20!  So I'll be looking out for more opportunities like that  to pounce on.

Poker: I've signed up for a couple of $25 free bankrolls but one has very nitty restrictions on what stakes I can play and the other hasn't come through yet.  I'll have to try and get a roll going but I'm really struggling for motivation, I've just got other things I prefer to do than play micro stakes poker.

Blog: Need to make this blog more interesting as it was only supposed to track my journey to high(er) stakes poker, and that hasn't happened. Trouble is I have no idea how to make it more readable. Hmmm  I could post pics of the MASSIVE pumpkins I've grown in my new garden.  That'll get you checking back, the promise of seeing my MASSIVE pumpkins.

Gl all

Simon

Own worst enemy

So, new begginings in my new round of trading and pokering, small beginnings to be precise. Rome wasn't built from tiny acorns, as they say. Something like that anyway.

Pokerwise, since my bankroll is zero I've been playing freerolls. The 10cent give-aways on PKR have earned me a massive $0.38 so far, they are 10 man sit n gos with the top 2 paid. I'm sticking with the mindset of "it's a computer game, so the monetary value doesn't matter, just beating your high score matters" and it seems to be working. I'm certainly enjoying it, as the some of the plays are just so funny - raising to 2bbs with a 3bb stack and then folding to my shove...nice! Going to keep plugging away till I'm up to $1 then take shots a the big game (.02/.04 ring games) as there aren't any lower games I can play on PKR, and they're not going to let me withdraw $1 (min withdrawal is $20). Ah the problems of nano stakes poker! Actually nano stakes is an overestimate, there needs to be a new term...quark-stakes poker?

Betfair trading roundup ahoy. I've watched up to week 17 (of 26) on the sports trading journey course, and I have traded a few races when I get the chance. It was going OK with an average loss of 3p per race, so pretty much break even, which is an achievement in itself. I say it was going well as I had a bit of a blowup where a move went against me. As the horse's price drifted I not only failed to cut my loss, I also increased my stakes by a factor of 5 and chased my losses, brilliant. I ended up losing £1.60ish which is bad when you are supposed to be using £2 stakes. The worst part was that I knew what I was doing was terrible even as I did it. It's like I was possessed and lost control of my actions. Oh well, at least I didn't let it go in-running. Onwards and upwards.

Gl gl gl

Simon

Sidelines sidelined

Long time no blog! I'm sure no one is too disappointed, or indeed has even noticed that I've haven't posted for so long, but I'll try and get back in the habit from now on. Truth is blogging poker and trading have been way down my list of priorities, what with a newborn human child to look after and everything. My todo list, apart from work and helping with the new baby has really only needed to contain 1 item:"sleep".

Four months down the line and the little guy is already growing and changing fast, and is thankfully healthy and normal, insofar as anything that can projectile vomit that distance with no warning can be described as "normal". To be fair he has been sleeping beautifully, and now goes to bed around 8pm and sleeps until 5 or 6am. The result of that is that I actually feel like I've caught up on my sleep and *gasp* have even had the odd bit of free time.

With that free time I eventually got around to checking in with my old sideline projects: poker and Betfair trading. I leave for a few months and it seems everything has gone titsup! Fulltiltpoker.com has been shut down by their regulator, and Betfair have started charging up to 60% of profits for their most successful customers. There's also rumours of new UK gambling tax being brought in. I feel bad for the players with money stuck on Full Tilt, it really seemed like a top class company, but some of the allegations are utterly shocking.

As far as Betfair is concerned, it must be a huge kick in the balls for the (500?) people affected by the new charge, and knowing there is this £250k cut-off point rules Betfair trading out as any kind of backup career for me (if I lost my job I would have traded Betfair 24/7 until I got profitable, or found a new job). However, despite all of the bile and fury posted on trading forums, the facebook campaigns, petitions, talk of legal challenges and conspiracy theories, it seems to be business as usual for those under the £250k lifetime profit level. There seems to be plenty of money flowing through the markets, and I suspect most people know that the Betfair markets should be easier to trade now that the 500 best traders have gone, even though they won't say this publicly.

So, as for me, I'm still going try and get back into poker in some way and also pick up Betfair trading. I can't find it now but I read a trading blog about just seeing your profit/loss as a score in a computer game, and forgetting about the real value of the money. It struck a chord with me a has given me the impetus to want to play poker and trade again. So, once again, I guess I reset everything and start afresh with whatever was in my Betfair account -

Betfair trading bankroll: £63

and whatever was left in my various poker accounts, ummm -

Poker bankroll: £0

Oh well, got to start somewhere, gl all!

Simon

PDM & Cock Racing

This will make no sense at all to most people but if you would like the code for Paranormal Deathmatch or Cockracing.com you can download them from here:

http://sparklysolutions.com/Sparkly_Solutions/PDM_Cockracing.html

By way of a brief explanation for the uninitiated Paranormal Deathmatch was a "fun free online battle game" I wrote over 10 years ago, where your charater battles other users, and the game is "hosted" by Bruce Forsyth. I gave away the code eventually, and it is still running here!

Cockracing was another web-game I wrote after PDM, where you buy a cock (LOLZ) and enter it into races to compete against other "cock handlers". Fun times.

Down to bidness

Right, it begins, another crack at this Betfair trading lark. I've traded a few American races in the evenings last week as well as some of the UK races today and yesterday. Above is my profit/loss screen for today, showing 13 races traded, no losing races and 88p profit. Get in! I'm chuffed with that, obviously the money is meaningless but the fact that its above zero means everything. It means I'm finally starting to understand the markets and if it continues I can think about using more than £2 stakes. No point in increasing stakes as a losing trader, which is what I've been up to now.

I've had a string of 20 races without loss, a new record for me, in fact on my last attempt at trading last year it was more like I didn't have a winning race in 20 races. I've put up a trading records section to the left to motivate me to beat them, and blogging about trading will also motivate me. The embarrassment of seeing 88p as my biggest winning day just makes me want to trade more to beat it! After all the original point of this blog was to record my progress from pennies towards megabucks, albeit in poker. I made some dollars but, it never really took off to the extent I had hoped but I feel like this could be a profitable (and difficult/long) road to take.

I have to thank Jack at SportsTradingJourney.com as its no coincidence that I went from losing to winning after watching his trading videos. I'm only on week 10 of his 6 month course so lots more insight to come from there. I'm sure reading the trading forums, reading "Trading in the Zone" by Mark Douglas and attending the course the summer before last all helped. It's strange how it all suddenly clicks.

Anyway, lets not get carried away, its a promising start, nothing more, and a long way till the end of the (hopefully profitable) month.

January

Time to review all my poker and Betfair trading activity during January. First my poker graph:

...yeah, and here's my trading graph :

um, yeah, nothing doing there either. So what have I been doing?

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Ah yes, more DIY, getting the bedroom ready for mini-me 2 this time. I'll keep the details brief. Stripped the wallpaper, water from steamer ruined the floor. Chopped plug socket into the wall, chiseling knocked chunk of plaster off other side of the wall (i.e. next doors lounge!). Removed old floor. Removed old bodged skirting. Removed radiator to plaster, valve stuck, had to drain system, replace valve, 5 hours to get heating to come back on. Coat of Thistlebond-it over whole room. Re-plastered whole room (thanks Dad). Painted with 4 coats to cover new plaster. Laid new floor. Fitted and stained new skirting. Stuck border on and finally built the cot, drawers and wardrobe. Easy.

All finished now, so we're ready for the sprog to drop, and I'm ready for a break from decorating. Depending on how long it is 'till the birth I'm going to try and get back into pre-off horse race trading on Betfair, the American races in the evening and UK races at the weekend.

Gl All

Simon

Sunday Million

I write this on a Monday morning after playing the Sunday Million. I had a great night's sleep, which should tell you everything you need to know about how badly the Sunday Million went! I never really got going, didn't feel like I had my poker head on at all. I gradually donked off a few K of my starting stack until an hour in, when I saw a limp, a raise, and a re-raise pre-flop. Holding AA in the BB I was quite pleased with the situation and put in the 4-bet! The 3-bettor near the button called and called my bet on the Q64r flop. I check the 5 on the turn and he bet. Like I say I didn't feel I had my poker head on and I shoved all my chips in over his turn bet. He tanked for ages, and folded, I was relieved. If I'd been on my game I would have wanted him to call, surely? He'd have to be getting very fruity to have the straight, so he has a big pair or an unlikely set of queens. Watching him more, and seeing his exit hand (calling a big all-in with a bare flush draw) I'm 99% sure he was just tanking for "image" reasons and had air. Anyway, that took me up to 12,500 chips, which was as high as I got, I just couldn't win another hand, and went out after shoving 12BBs with AJ vs. 77 and missing. I don't think I lasted more than 2 hours.

I did a bit better on the little $11 Sunday 1/4 mil, had a decent run but once I got in the money (with triple the avg. stack) my luck ran out. I ended up 3368th out of 34377 for a massive $20.62. After that I un-regged from the other 2 tourns I was going to play and went to bed.

I think I'm going to focus on Betfair trading for a bit as I don't seem to have the passion for poker at the moment. At $215 the Sunday Million is by far the biggest tourn I've played, but apart from the AA hand (which got the heart pumping mainly because I thought I'd screwed up) I just didn't get any kind of buzz from it at all, weird.

Hope you run better than me, gl all.

Simon

2010 Review

It's time to wheel out the cliched end of year review posts everyone, woo!

Poker wise (is this still a poker blog?!) I've not done a massive amount for most of the year due to other stuff getting in the way/being more important/interesting. Reading through my riveting posts for the year I seem to have gathered $40 of freebies, binked a $300 score in a $3 rebuy Rush tourney (what happened to bank roll management?!) and run that up to $700. BUT WAIT! There may be a sting in the tail end of the year, a big juicy pleasure-sting. I still have the $215 tourney bucks that I won when I tried (and succeeded 1st time of course ;-) to satellite in to the Sunday Million. I plan to play the Sunday Mil on Boxing day, and also use up some $11 and $22 tourney tickets I bought on Bidibot (don't ask, total waste of time and money THAT was).

Anyway I set some goals for the year back in January, so how did I do? Oh the tension...

1) Get my own iPhone game in the store.

Success! Icecream Tycoon was approved by Apple in March and has made me a couple of grand. Not spectacular but it has paid for the development time I put into it. I've neglected it a bit since it launched so I'll have to do some updates soon.


2) Work out 3x a week

HA haha ha ha ah haha ha ha h aha ah! (fail) Three times in the whole year maybe, oh well.

3) Get a new house.

YES! After a lot of stress the planets aligned and we were able to move to a nice big house in a village on the edge of the countryside. Or to put it more modestly a 3 bed semi near Kidderminster. It could have gone wrong so easily - if I hadn't stopped self employment and gone full time I wouldn't have got the mortgage increase, if we hadn't sold ours and found one that we could move into the same day we moved out of ours we would have lost our ace mortgage deal and basically wouldn't have been able to afford the new house. And all this in the middle of the biggest housing downturn in decades. Never again.

4) Get pregnant

Surprise! Yes I am going to be a dad for the second time! Another boy due end of Feb, another heir to the Betts throne/fortune. Everything has been fine so far, so fingers crossed for the last 2 months. Can't wait.

5) Play a big-ish live poker tournament

Not really. I barely played any sats at all, bit of fail, however I have got the Sunday Mil ticket, which will be the biggest tourney I've played in so only a half-fail.

So pretty good overall, some very significant life stuff with the new baby on the way and the new house. I've no idea what I want to aim for in 2011, probably just recover from sleep depravation after the birth of mini-me 2!

Gl for 2011

Simon

Back to Betfair

I had half hearted go at trading the horse racing markets on Betfair about a year ago. I was never profitable, and I haven't even looked at the markets for months. As is the way with these things (for me anyway) I suddenly have the urge to have another go out of nowhere, I guess its just whatever fad happens to take my interest at the time, I try it and either fail and get bored and move on quickly, or start to succeed and get to a higher level where I...er fail and move on after getting bored!

So at the moment the fad is Betfair trading, and the timing is quite good because someone who trades full time has just launched a new website (Sports Trading Journey) which goes through how to trade using videos to demonstrate. The first course is spread over 6 months so hopefully the pace will keep me interested and the knowledge will soak in over a longer time frame...I gave up after 2 or 3 weeks last time.

I have set up the software ("The Geeks Toy", v. good trading software, and totally free, surprisingly) and had a play in a few markets with minimum £2 stakes and I did actually make a profit, to my amazement. I need to get some more races under my belt, which is difficult at the moment as there just isn't any racing due to the weather, but fingers crossed this time I can crack it. I just feel that I can be successful at this if I give it another go, and I like a challenge, so 1st task is to break even over a decent sample of races. Anyway if I fail I'll get bored really quickly and do something else.

Gl All

Simon