The way of the Racing Ferret - my enthralling blog

Twenty nine bucks, woo!

2011-09-30T18:30:00.000+01:00

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my Betfair balance, trying to convince myself I had some kind of edge, and luckily spinning it up from £60 to £90 I've withdrawn the monies and decided to just focus on poker instead.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.

2011-09-20T19:08:00.000+01:00

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

2011-07-30T22:02:00.000+01:00

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

2011-07-18T19:07:00.003+01:00

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

2011-02-20T13:54:00.000Z

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

2011-02-13T21:17:00.004Z

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

2011-02-07T20:56:00.007Z

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

2010-12-27T09:42:00.003Z

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

2010-12-24T14:02:00.002Z

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

2010-12-23T16:32:00.003Z

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

Satellite success

2010-11-07T08:34:00.007Z

Hello! It's been a while, must try and update more. Thinking about one of my poker goals this year - to try and satellite in to a big live event - I have to admit I've barely even attempted it. I think I played 1 $3 sat for one of the £5k London events, which is a pathetic amount of effort. I always have a good excuse, and the last three or four months that excuse has been those dreaded three letters DIY.

So theres been little time to look at live schedules and play satellites, let alone travel to another county to spend days playing poker On the other hand I now have amazing skills in the arena of fitting skirting, architrave, coving and hanging wallpaper. In light of this I revised my goal to sat. into a big online event. The choice of event wasn't hard..if only there was a regular tourney with a $1 million+ prize pool...yep the Sunday Million on Pokerstars.

I picked the $11r satellites as they seem to offer a decent player/seat ratio, and gave it a try on Wednesday evening. It all went very standard, ended up being in for about $30 and got down to about 15 players of the 33 that entered with less than 10bbs left and lost a hand with me all in vs another short stack. I thought I was out but I had him covered by 175 chips...about half a bb at the time! Obviously I thought it was over but the old "chip and a chair" effect kicked in and I doubled up the next 3 hands in a row! I got back to an average stack and from then for a little while I just couldn't miss a flop, all my draws came in. So, we get down to 5 players but I am one of the 2 shortstacks with 4 tickets to the Sunday Mil on offer. With the both of us on about 3bbs he was in the big blind. I shoved KQo uder the gun and started praying. Everyone folded to let us knock each other out, and he (eventually) called with 10 9o and I hit a queen to bust him and win entry to the biggest weekly online tourney on the planet!

Now I just need to find a Sunday where it doesn't matter if I stay up all night playing scintillating tournament poker.

Gl all

Simon

Break

2010-08-15T17:20:00.005+01:00

Loving the new house, so much so much space compared to our last place. About a million jobs to do, I've just been finishing work and picking the drill straight up to put curtain rails up, fix door handles, put pictures / mirrors up as well as sorting through 10,000 boxes of stuff we have to unpack, and trying to get started on my new allotment-sized garden. It's great though, I think we'll be really happy here.

Poker-wise I'm finished playing on Full Tilt, for a while at least, my roll has gone to a new site. Unfortunately I couldn't play on that new site until now as my account was suspended for being a very naughty boy. Because I already had an account on...lets call it MuffinPoker.com in case they ever read this....I signed up in my brothers name, et. voila 27% rakeback. Because I'm a lazy idiot I tried depositing with my own moneybookers account, and all went well until a couple of days later they suspend my account , d'oh!

I had to send mine and my brothers driving license, and a utility bill for my brothers address. Now, he's only just moved in so I, er, did a bit of photoshopping with a council tax bill of my own to substitute his name and address for mine...breakin the law, breakin the law! It took them WEEKS but they have finally accepted my documents and the account is working again. Shows they don't really check very deeply as the address on the bill is not in the right council/county!

So I'm going to try this, and a few other smaller / softer sites and try and build a bankroll on the softest one, when I get chance to put the drill down.

Gl all,

Simon

July results

2010-08-02T22:21:00.001+01:00

Just for the record/for me to compare if I play a decent amount this month (unlikely what with having tons of jobs to do in the new house, and only mobile Internet at the moment) here are my results for July, bring on the numbers:

Hands: about 9,000 6-max Rush $25nl

Rake: $165 (6.5 buy-ins *shakes fist*)

Bonus: $60

Rakeback: $28

T O T A L P R O F I T: $170

Got to be happy with that since its the first non-trivial volume I've put in for ages. Anyway, back to unpacking stuff for the new house.

GL all

Simon

Moving

2010-07-27T21:34:00.004+01:00

I'm moving house! We exchanged contracts yesterday so obviously we've got a busy few weeks sorting everything so we are ready to go. Or...not, as we are moving on THURSDAY. OMGWTFBBQs! It'll be fine, what can go wrong, moving isn't stressful, at all *feints*. TBH I can't wait to get in as it's dragged on and on with the exchange date slipping further and further back towards the completion date, which itself has moved by back by a couple of weeks.

I'm moving poker site! OK not quite the same impact. I've obviously not had much time for poker but I have just finished a ninja 4-tabling session at $25nl Rush to get Iron man status for July. I set a little target and achieved it, even though I almost certainly won't bother with Iron man or Full Tilt next month. Managed to be on the right end of a few set-over-sets and won a buyin or 3 for a change.

After looking at the top 50 winners for 2010 at Hold'em and Omaha on various sites it is clear that I'm on a hiding to nothing grinding 25nl at full tilt.

site	limit	game	big bets per 100
FT	25pl	Omaha	7.44
FT	25nl	Hold'em	2.44
PS	25nl	Hold'em	3.44
Party	25pl	Omaha	6.6
Party	25nl	Hold'em	2.34
iPoker	20nl	Hold'em	1.87
Absolute	25nl	Hold'em	3.73
Absolute	25pl	Omaha	14.08
Cake	20pl	omaha	23.45
cake	20nl	old'em	4.82
bodog	25pl	omaha	39.22
bodog	25nl	hold'em	6.2

FT	50nl	HEM	5.66
FT	100nl	HEM	3.2
FT	200nl	HEM	3.18
FT	400nl	HEM	3.419
FT	five slash 10	HEM	3.36

So, the above is the avg win rate for the top 50 players...i.e the BEST 50 players at 25nl on FT averaged 2.44 BB/100. I can easily admit I'm not in the best 50 25nl grinders. I don't review my hands, study, subscribe to a training site, post hands for discussion. Now I've been playing Rush which isn't tracked but I still think my conclusions are valid, and my conclusions from the above are:

on FT 50nl is "easier" than 25nl probably due to the proportionally higher rake.

The main/big sites are tough to win at.

Bodog is soft!

Omaha has higher potential win rates.

So I'm going to try a different site, maybe even switch to Omaha, but there's no rush (no pun intended) as I've got a house move to think about first!

Gl all

Simon

Bankroll: $599

Time for a re-think?

2010-07-21T22:05:00.001+01:00

Above is the story so far for July, a big fat waste of time in terms of profit. In fact its worse than that - I have played another session since I exported that graph and lost another 1.5 buy ins. 7.5K hands is not enough to base any firm conclusions on but its not an insignificant number of hands. It may be time for a re-think and I have an idea.

I notice that on Pokertableratings.com you can see the top 50 winners by site/game/stakes/month/year. Using this it should be possible to figure out some answers to questions. E.g. which is the softest site, does rakeback make up for one site being tougher, how do winrates at different stakes compare, how do the winrates at Hold'em and Omahahaha compare etc.

I'll see if I can figure out where I should be focusing my attention, even if that means switching to mixed games and just playing poker for fun (there's a novel thought!), but since I only need 3 more days play to make Iron Man I'll still keep going with Rush for July I guess.

Gl all

Simon

Bankroll $477

Mis-sat

2010-07-19T22:39:00.001+01:00

LOL that could've gone wrong - I went to sit at my usual $25nl Rush game but misclicked and ended up in the BB in a $200nl full ring Rush game! It was folded to the SB who raised, and I 3-bet with the mighty A2o and took (thankfully) it down to raking a $6 profit, woo! No idea what I would've done if he had called and I hit a half decent hand...lost 1/3rd of bankroll probably!

Still plugging away, not doing very well, on a bit of a downswing, don't think I'm doing too much wrong, just need to learn how to stop getting set-over-setted.

Things are finally happening on the house move front too, I won't say anymore till the contracts are exchanged as I'll probably jinx it!

Gl all

Simon

Playing like a TIT

2010-07-18T13:49:00.002+01:00

Note to self: You know that the vast majority of the players at $25nl Rush are nut-pedlars, so what do you think it means when they start putting in MASSIVE bets post flop!? Stop playing like a TIT.

Lost 3 buy-ins.

That is all.

Simon

Bankroll: $542

Blip

2010-07-17T15:12:00.004+01:00

I watched the 1998 classic poker film "Rounders" last night, great film. Now I will get all the poker forum references to Teddy KGB and Oreos and (I assume) where Leatherass got his name. Of course the actual poker hands were laughable, saying you were outplayed when you called with A9 on a Ax99x 3-flush board...yeah, like anyone's folding the 2nd nuts there! Good film though, enjoyed it.

Dropped about 3 buy-ins in yesterday's $25nl 6 max Rush session. It was really weird, the game just "felt" different. It felt as though none of my c-bets worked, and every time I raised with premium hands they folded, all my trash hand raises got called or 3 bet. Throw in a few coolers, such as AK on a 2 -8 - K - K - 6 board...he had 66, just for good measure, and you have a recipe for a nightmare session. I think I lost just about the minimum, and I *think* I avoided tilting. Maybe it was just a case of running bad, but as I say, the game def. felt different, although it could have been that I was playing against different players attracted by the Rush Week promo, I dunno. I do know that normal service was resumed today. Only made $15 but it was easy, c-bets working, and villains mostly making it really obvious when they had a monster. I'm 5 or 6 days off qualifying for Iron Man (only bronze) but that will be 1 little goal achieved, and it has got me playing again, even if it is only half an hour a day.

Gl all

Simon

Bankroll: $615

Fiddy Cent's little brother...

2010-07-14T22:43:00.001+01:00

Meet One Cent, poor chap (actually it looks like a girls name in the screenshot). It just made me laugh that I raised enough to leave her with 1c and she called. Terrible play by me really, giving up 1 Sklansky cent! I'm never betting that much on the riv with less than 2 pair in these games, but I guess she wasn't to know.

I finished that sesh yesterday about even, and just ended today's 50 point blast and wound up winning almost a buy-in. So yeah, about 5K hands of rush so far this month and it's all good. Seems like a profitable game (yeah tiny sample I know), I think my style is quite exploitable, but due to the nature of Rush poker I don't think anyone will notice, or if they do I'll be ready to move up by then.

Gl all.

Simon

Bankroll: $656

25nl 6-max Rush poker

2010-07-11T21:35:00.005+01:00

Been playing some poker...AMAZING SCENES, the Racing Ferret is back! Attacking the 10/25c rush games with relentless skillz, playing little sessions most days so far this month to try and get Iron Man status on Full Tilt. It's gone rather well so far, I've built my BR back up from $425 to $600. Playing until I've got the required 50 points per days essentially gives me an arbitrary session length, and I believe this is helping my profits because: 1) I can't stop when I win a few big pots, and 2) I don't carry on indefinitely trying to claw back losses, I just play 50 points worth, and stop. I'm sure that playing longer sessions when losing and shorter ones when winning has cost me quite a few buy-ins in the past.

So I've ben 2- tabling the Rush games, trying a few things out to see what works in these games. I started with the theory that as these games are essentially readless, the 2 extremes of strategy would be profitable - playing very tight or very loose - as your opponents would not be expecting either extreme. As most players seem to play very nitty in these games, only getting it in with a set or better post flop, so I initially went for the very loose strategy. It was fun raising every single unopened pot pre-flop, and c-betting 100% and I broke even over a small sample. I have now reigned in that strategy a bit, folding more out of position and not quite c-betting as much and it seems profitable so far. The basic theme is folding quickly to resistance/re-raises and playing cautiously (weakly?) where I'm uncertain, trying to reduce variance.

I was going to review my New Years Resolution goals but one of them was moving house and we still haven't exchanged contracts so I don't want to jinx it by saying anything prematurely, so that post can wait. For now, I'll just keep pummelling the Rush tables, 50 points at a time.

GL all

Simon

Bankroll: $600

Bad Start

2010-06-20T22:11:00.004+01:00

So I've got my little 500 buck bankroll together, and actually motivated myself to play a bit of $25nl 6-max. Less than 100 hands in and I'm $75 down. Got TPTK in against a set, hit trips with A 10 against a flush, bye bye buyin, moved to the short stack tables and lost a bit more, same kind of stuff.

Pretty shit really but what can you do, fold trip aces against unknowns? Go nuts / tilt because of a fundamental element of the game (i.e. luck)? OK so if we can move past level 1 and stop ourself tilting because the luck element of a game involving a large amount of luck went against us, what then? Boredom, that's what, in my experience. The beats stop winding you up and just turn into tedium, just another form of tilt I suppose. So at the moment it's just a battle of finding the motivation to play against a backdrop of bad luck. In fact I did get lucky few times but only when I made a clearly bad play, e.g. hitting a 10 after getting AIPF with A 10 vs A J.

I'm going to try and give it a chance for the variance to even out, even though I know probability doesn't really work like that (yeah it has to even out now because I lost last time...er nope). I know it's daft and not really worth the bother but I may try and hit Iron Man status next month on Full Tilt. That sort of point collecting mentality motivates me for some reason and if I could hit bronze for doing 50 points for 15 days at least it would have got me playing enough to give it more of a shot. We shall see.

Gl all

Simon

Bankroll : $430

200nl

2010-06-14T20:51:00.005+01:00

Been playing a little 200nl 6-max the last couple of evenings. Decided to jump straight in with my $350 bankroll and try to run it up.

Nah, not really, I was looking for a bonus to give me some incentive to play and checked my Party account. They had given me a total of $55, non-withdrawable until a billion party points have been earned. The great thing about this type of bonus from Party is if you make a profit then that $ is withdrawable...commence short-stacking!

I started off great and ended up nearly tripling up to $200 on Sunday, getting all in pre with JJ against villains 10 10 helped. The tactic was to try to double up and rathole the profits. I know, I'm evil. I still had the bonus so tonight I tried again. After about 5 hands I got AA and a raise in front of me...joy! Both blinds call and original raiser shoves...juicy! I snap call (duh!), blinds fold, and he shows AKo ... wheeee! Board plops out 10 10 K K 2 .. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck : (

Oh well, can't complain overall, you lose as a 90% favourite the majority of the time ;-) its a fact of poker, and adding $150ish to my $350 bankroll is a significant boost. Now I need to find a grind, so to speak, and get into a routine of playing and building up my 500 buckeroonies.

GL all

Simon

Need a plan

2010-06-09T20:59:00.006+01:00

Poker player battery farming methods

criticised by animal welfare campaigners.

So apparently there's a little poker get-togther going on in Vegas at the moment ;-) Not really been following it too closely, saw that Durrrr came 2nd in one event, must be gutted. But other than that, Annette's tweets have been the only WSOP info I've heard.

In terms of my gambling related activities I've sort of been drifting, rudderless for a while, still need to make some kind of plan. Found a £75 free World Cup bet, but surprisingly little else in the way of freebies. Sign of the times I guess, the age of austerity. Same with the poker sites, had a quick look but can't see any bankroll-building bonuses.

I need to get some poker time into my routine I think; same goes for some kind of exercise. I'm such a lazy bastard at the moment, apart from walking to the supermarket (barely a mile?) to buy some pies I get no exercise at all.

So, I'll add to my to-do list : Review my goals for this year I set in January, and make a plan. Ah to-do lists, tool of choice for procrastinators everywhere!

Gl all

Simon

It's all happening

2010-05-08T16:01:00.004+01:00

poker :lolz, no time for pokering!

Trading: see above.

Early this week, after a 3 month drought of viewings on our house, we agreed a price on a sale. Today we agreed a price on the house we want to buy. Busy times at the moment, quite a bit of back and forth on both negotiations, organising solicitors (and filling in trees worth of paperwork), talking to the mortgage people until I lost the will to live (no, I don't know how much a month I spend on "hobbies, clothes and going out" FFS). All a bit frantic. And on top of that I've accepted an offer of permanent employment, so I'm leaving the rollercoaster world of self employment. I'll still be doing the same work for the same company with the same flexibility, but I'll be getting paid every month instead of essentially at random, which is less stressful. Now it's time to start clearing 5 years worth of junk out of the loft!

GL all

Simon

Wheeeee!

2010-04-22T14:00:00.000+01:00

Pokering: Well, in my last post I did ask Full Tilt to flip my boom switch and the result is I've just multiplied my $40 "bankroll" over 8 times to $345!

I had an email saying they've introduced Rush Poker tournaments so I decided to give one a try. Unfortunately (or not as it turned out) the only one coming up was a $3 rebuy tourney, and I'm no expert on tourney poker bankrolls, but I don't think $40 is enough to play $3 rebuys ;-) 2 hours and 3 rebuys later and I'm down to the last 3 of about 240 entrants, after some pretty bad beats both given and received. As the short stack with about 12BBs left I shoved with Ah3h over an aggro button raiser, and he called with 22 but I missed my outs...still. I think the $316 is my biggest tourney cash ever. LOL donkaments etc.

I like Rush Poker tournaments a lot, although I would say that a this point wouldn't I. They're like normal tournament poker, but with the soul crushing dullness of waiting for hands removed.

Now I've actually got a semi-decent starting bankroll I'll have to have a think about playing more and what games I should focus on.

Betfair Trading: Done a tiny bit of trading, partly with min stakes, then as I was still profiting on most races I switched to more balanced stakes. i.e. higher stakes on lower odds ponies. I ended up breaking even (well, actually I made 8p!!) over 14 races which is a massive improvement on my previous consistent losses, so heading in the right direction. Long may it continue.

Hope you all run as good as me!

Simon

Dabbling

2010-04-02T10:25:00.002+01:00

Teh Pokers: Just opened up Full Tilt and sat at a rush poker table. 1st had I'm dealt QQ on the button, 1 raise 1 call, I 3bet, original raiser calls, flop is 10 8 3 rainbow, all the money goes in, he has J 10, turn is a Jack...I close Full Tilt. Seriously, they need to flip my boom switch if they want me to start playing again, there's just no incentive. I thought a break from poker was supposed to make you want to play again, but no, it's just highlighted how much luck is involved and dull it is unless you happen to run good. It's not as if there are even any good bonuses around anymore, where you could make a profit without spending days grinding out rakeback.

Trading: I have been recording/watching the afternoons racing, and making notes, and have also traded a few races with min stakes where time allows. I have lost on 17, profited on 22 so not a bad start, albeit very few races (this is over the whole of March). Can't really say whether I am profitable as using min stakes doesn't balance out the profit/loss properly - a few ticks on a horse at 8.0 could hide a lot of losses on horses below 2.0. Now that I seem to be profiting on more than 50% of races I will carry on for a bit to confirm that, and then use balanced stakes. I want to trade a bit more before I change stakes as I went nutso crazy on 1 race, made a mistake/loss and just let it get to me and repeatedly clicked in frustration, building up a £16 position with £2 stakes in about 2 seconds! Monkey tilt for the lose! Ended up with an 84p loss so no damage done, and profited on the next 3 races in a row, a decent recovery.

Ice cream Tycoon is still selling, making me some pocket monies, nothing spectacular. More profit than trading or poker at the moment that's for sure!

GL all

Simon

Comparing the meerkat

2010-03-23T22:02:00.003Z

No, wait, market, not meerkat, always get those two mixed up. I have been getting a bit more interested on trading again recently. Been running The Geeks Toy on a spare machine, capturing the afternoon mule racing with Camtasia while I'm working, and studying the market movements in the evenings. The results look positive in terms of some of the markets doing what I expect/have been told they should do. Of course, its not the same as actually being able to profit from them "live" as it were. Last time I tried trading I kind of dived headfirst in to every race fairly aggressively. I think now I would just leave some markets well alone, especially where there are jumpy markets with low liquidity and fewer runners.

I'll have a crack at some evening racing at some point, but I need to look at a lot more markets first to get more of a feel. I probably should have done this right at the start TBH but lets just see how it goes.

Played a bit of rush poker, shoved against 1 guys flop raise on a 255 board with JQ, he calls with 8 9 off...hits a 9 on the turn.

1) I read his soul, knew he didn't have anything

2)he CALLED..WTF 8 9 off (it was rasied pf too)

3) *sigh* lost the hand, same old shite

Wishing you all better luck than me at the tables

Simon

0-100 in a week

2010-03-17T17:27:00.005Z

Not a post about grandad-style driving, rather a celebration of selling 100 copies of Ice cream Tycoon. Starting with a trickle of 5 or so per day, things picked up over the weekend, when I guess people have more time to mess around with daft games! It's not going to make me a millionaire any time soon but considering my marketing budget is feck all, I'm calling that a success. I'm glad it picked up as I wouldn't be bothered about updating it and adding new features if it wasn't selling, but I've got a little to-do list together for when I've got some time. I need to add a pause button as one reviewer, lets call him "cunt face", gave me two stars and moaned about there being no pause feature. According to him, considering the high price of the app, such features are expected. It's £1.19 FFS, you can't buy a decent sandwich for £1.19! Fuckwit. Oh that reminds me, I had to add a quick "ban" feature to stop certain people showing up on the leaderboard, as someone though "Fuckwit Icecream" was a good name for their stall!

Poker: I played poker the other day! Played a $4 sat. to a $50 sat. to a $1K GUPT event. Got down to the last 3, 2 paid, flopped a straight, got it all in vs 2 pair but he boated up on the river. Usual bollocks *sigh*.

Simon

Sense of achievement

2010-03-14T12:00:00.000Z

I was flicking through the apps on my iPhone the other day, deleting a few that I don't use, when I noticed that most of 1 screen contained apps I had written myself! I started re-arranging the apps and did indeed fill all 12 slots on one screen with my apps. A couple are my own personal/side projects, and the rest are customer's apps. Just thought it was pretty cool, and nice little boost/reminder of what I've been doing since I left my old job. It feels good to be working with really great technology, and whatever happens in the future, I won't have the same reservations about taking a chance in terms of leaving a dull job to do something more interesting. It has given me renewed confidence, and just makes me wish I'd jacked my "safe" job in sooner.

That was a bit emo, so I'll stop now before I reach for the black eyeshadow and drainpipe jeans. I really must get around to some gambling at some point. I have dicked around on Betfair with BetAngel and The Geeks Toy. I made a profit scalping a couple of footie matches pre-kickoff with min stakes, found that most greyhound racing is near impossible to trade due to lack of liquidity, and lost a quid or two messing about with a tennis betting strategy.

I guess the plan is to have a look at the live poker calendar and pick a target event to qualify for, and keep trying the footie scalping. I did have a look at the horsie markets again, and was amazed that I ever tried to trade them, the odds were absolutely flying around! I think I just need to study those markets a lot before I jump in again, anyway gl all!

Simon

Icecream Tycoon

2010-03-09T08:55:00.005Z

Hurrah! My game, Icecream Tycoon, has been approved for sale by Apple, and is now in the app store! It puts you in charge of an icecream stall, which you start with a borrowed $50, and you have to serve the customers, manage/order the stock and upgrade your stall with new products. It has a strangely addictive quality, which I found when my wife kept asking for my iPhone, and refused to put it down because "there are more customers, I can't let them down"! Hopefully it will sell well, but well have to wait and see as games is a very competitive category in the app store.

Simon

Coming up for air

2010-03-06T19:23:00.004Z

I think I have finished version 1.0 of my iPhone game. Well, I hope so because I've submitted it to Apple for approval! I'll blog about it if/when it is approved (you never can be sure what weird and wonderful reasons Apple will dream up for rejecting an app). The pic above is the app icon, just to tease you.

Now that's out of the way (until I start version 2.0!) and the viewings on our house have dried up, I may actually have some kind of free time to play poker or trade on Betfair. I was mulling over which to focus on when I read this post by Burnley Mik. It brought back all the frustrations of the variance involved in poker so I'll think I'll have another dabble on Betfair. I'll maybe try and scalp some footie matches since I have utterly failed to make a profit on the horses in the past (and the horse racing is still quiet in March, apart from Cheltenham, apparently). Just going to use min stakes and concentrate on learning the markets first.

I might play a bit of poker, but only for fun, or to try and qualify for a live event, the days of making a quick $1K clearing a few easy poker bonuses have long gone, sadly. It's pretty clear that making cash from trading is not the easy option either, but I think I have a better chance at that than poker. Who knows, maybe my game will sell well and I can stop looking for money making schemes!

Gl All

Simon

Trying to get a move on

2010-02-23T17:38:00.004Z

No bloggidge from me for a while, we have put the house on the market, and have been looking for a new place. Its amazing how much time it soaks up - fixing/decorating/tidying, getting valuations etc. Then there's the fact that you spend hours before each viewing tidy up AGAIN. I have looked at every house on rightmove within 5 miles of here, and there were only 2 properties that stood out. It's a bit worrying that we might sell and have nowhere to go to be honest, especially as 1 of the 2 houses that I would actually like to live in sold less than 24 hours after we viewed it.

Made some progress on my iPhone game, it's not a million miles off being finished, mainly because I keep jettisoning features to get it finished quicker! I think I'll add things (e..g sound effects) at a later time, in an update, I'm just trying to get it out there quickly, as it's another thing soaking up my spare time at the moment.

I played a bit of rush poker on Full Tilt, broke even, nothing to report really, just a couple of half hour sessions, although I did manage to lose to AJ with KK on a 222 flop...river was a 2 *sigh* poker never changes, no matter how long I spend away from the game.

Good luck all,

Simon

PS the pic is the rather muddy result of an off-road karting/buggy session at http://www.walker-adams.co.uk/ on a recent stag-do. More messy/slidy/fun than regular karting!

Snow far snow good

2010-01-10T21:20:00.004Z

I've always loved snowy weather, it happens so rarely you have to enjoy it. Yes it incoveniences you a bit but that is more than made up for by the fact that you can do ace handbrake-slides on the side-roads, and watching the my son play in the snow for the first time has been brilliant.

I've managed to do a bit more work on my iPhone game. Its starting to come alive now and I think it will be fun to play when its finished. A good sign is that I find myself just playing it instead of testing whatever feature I've just coded. It's turning into a bit of a beast of a project though, so I've no idea when it will be ready.

I've actually done a few workouts, and have gained 1lb in a week, not massive but if I can keep that up for a while I'll be happy. That feeling of aching the day or two after a good workout is immense, it makes you feel so good and is really addictive.

Been way too busy with iPhone work to even think about trying to sat into the GUKPT or EPT France event this month so I'll put that on hold till Feb at least.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

GL all

Simon

New years resolutions

2010-01-01T08:00:00.000Z

Happy New Year!

Time for some resolutions, I like the fact that they are stored here so I can look them up in December and see how I did. Last year I wanted to try playing poker for a living, because I hated my shitty job. I failed to achieve this but I am glad I did, as playing poker for a living is nuts! I managed to sort out a new career direction and that desire to escape by playing poker evaporated, and I stopped playing completely for months. So for 2010 I want to

1) Get my own iPhone game in the store.

I haven't tried to do an app for myself yet, been too busy with client apps. I did that betting converter, odd-o-matic, but that was just the easiest idea I had so I could learn about app submission/programming the iPhone. I have started work on a little game that should be fun, not sure how I'm going to approach the artwork and sounds yet. I could go for the "deliberately shite" look, to cover up my lack of photoshop skillz.

2) Work out 3x a week

Need to get back in the gym, I'm such a lazy bastard. Going to do some weights and eat some pies [protein shakes] and try and bulk up a bit.

3) Get a new house.

A new house that can fit us and our stuff in is a priority, moving from one side of our kitchen to the other is like being in one of those puzzles where you slide the squares round with 1 square as a gap.

4) Get pregnant

Ideally my wife, rather than me! Would love another baby if we are luck enough to be able to have one.

5) Play a big-ish live poker tournament

I guess $1000+ is what I mean by big. I'll have a look at whats going on, see if I can satellite into anything.

Gl for 2010!

Simon

2009 review

2009-12-13T13:07:00.003Z

So that was 2009, yes I know there's still a bit left but if I don't do this post now I'll probably not get another chance. I't's not an easy year to write about, 2009. Not for any emotional reason; the 9 key on my laptop doesn't work so every time I want to type 9 I have to load the on-screen keyboard viewer and click 9.

It was a year of 2 halves , career-wise. I was really unhappy in my job for the first six months of 200 err two thousand and nine. A typical day consisted of leaving the house at 7am, a 45min train journey - time to think how much better it would be to just get made redundant - then a 15-20 min walk from Acocks Green to Yardley - time to keep my head down, walk fast, and hope I didn't have to dodge any bullets. I would head to our temporary office and often arrive to a dark, empty building, open up, and sit down to a day of trying to 1) avoid getting asked to any meetings in Watford (complete ball-ache travelling there and back) 2) avoid getting involved in any new soul crushingly dull MS SQL projects 3) avoid doing any work on the boring old ASP projects and 4) avoid getting lumbered with bizarre menial tasks that one twat in the Watford office kept trying to dump on me for no apparent reason other than his inherent twatishness.

Ok there were brief flashes of light. The day I came in knowing full well no-one else was due in, spent all morning flying my little Blade MCX helicopter round the entire building, then phoned the boss feigning surprise that I was alone, and using that (quoting health and safety rules etc) as an excuse to work from home in the afternoon. The abandoned top floor was best, flying the heli towards a line of desk-fans at full pelt (both the heli and the desk fans). Childish? yes, fun? very! I also did a lot of research on changing careers, a lot of soul searching, learning Objective C and the SDK so I could write iPhone apps, reading motivational books etc.

The second half of the year was a million times better. Working on a bunch of interesting apps, on a cutting edge mobile platform, setting my own hours, no commuting all for a higher daily rate. I've got a few poker sessions in between projects, as well as doing a spot of Betfair trading after attending Peter Webb's trading course in July. Am really looking forward to Christmas, its fantastic seeing it through my 16 month-olds eyes, just his reactions to the lights up on peoples houses is fantastic.

I've got a few big new years resolutions in my head, but I'll leave that for another post. For now, life is good.

Gl All

Simon

Running through treacle

2009-12-04T21:41:00.003Z

My poker bankroll is going nowhere. I feel like I'm driving along, but I'm stuck on the ring-road...4th time round. I've played a bit over the course of November, ~6,800 hands of cash and a few dozen sitngos, not massive volume but enough to produce some king of result. Nothing's happened though, I'm still stuck on $50, almost wish I was busto so I'd have something interesting to write.

In 6-max cash I just swung up to $60, down to $50 up to $60 and back to $50 again. I tried a few sitngos as that would seem to clear my current bonus at Tilt quicker, but I got shat on by variance. AQ loses to A5, KJ loses to K8, AA loses to 88 etc etc. and I'm down to $40 before I know it.

In the past that would have enraged me, now it just bores me. I find online poker really dull when that sort stuff is happening, and I just can't be bothered to play. It used to make me play more to try and get even, so I guess its good in a way, as I would end up losing even more. I played a few more sitngos a few days later and got back to $50. Even tried a bit of Omaha to spice things up. Guess what, I broke even.

GL all

Simon

Swingy swingy

2009-11-23T20:11:00.003Z

Had another downswing at 0.01/0.02 and the roll is back down to about $45. I'm taking the fact that I'm not beating these tiny games really well, I'm not frustrated at all, its just down to variance and rake - I've paid nearly my whole $50 roll in rake so far! In a way its surprising I'm not busto. I've set myself a little challenge of getting at least bronze Iron Man status on Full Tilt in December. It's not really worth it in terms of the rewards but its the sort of obsessive "collecting" task that motivates me in a weird way.

Thankfully my other sources of making money are working a little better than poker. I usually can't be bothered to do the odd £10 free bet I get sent, but on Sunday Betfair offered me £25, BlueSQ £50 and Will Hill £70 so I thought.."be rude not to" and took advantage. Just done another £10 Will Hill one and have made about £110 profit from all of that lot. Nice. Had to tie up £1000 for a few days to cover all the lays/exposure but it should be back in the bank soon.

I'm still cranking out the iPhone apps at a good rate. I finished a really fun one a couple of weeks ago which has now been approved and is in the store. Magic Hamster Ball I won't attempt to explain it, I'll just say he's a magical hamster who predicts the future, just ask him a question and shake the phone. A cartoonist known as the StiK did the images and sounds and I stuck 'em together in the right order and put the logic/magical future-predicting abilities in there. Too much fun to be called "work" really!

GL all

Simon

Poker Bug

2009-11-17T18:57:00.010Z

Trading: Every trading blog or forum I read at the moment has comments on how tough it is to trade at the horse racing markets at the moment. There are no big meetings, poor quality races, lack of money in the markets, and apparently nothing changes until March when Cheltenham comes around again. I've decided to put learning to trade on hold until at least January, and that leads me on to -

Poker: It's odd how I've just had no desire to play for months and months, but now I think I'm finally getting the bug again. Now I've decided not to trade at the moment it gives me a chance to try and spin up another poker bankroll. I had about 20 2+2 pokercast episodes to listen to, and after getting through my backlog of other podcasts I started listening to them, catching up with the poker gossip, and realizing that the WSOP final table was about to start! After following that (Cada is a lucky ******), watching all 10 episodes of "2 months 2 million", and following Isildur1 as he won $6 million in a week on FullTilt.com, I'm actually interested in poker again.

I've already set myself the challenge of spinning up from $50 (well, $0 really as I won the $50 in a freeroll 3-table sitNgo). So I've been playing the massive $0.01/$0.02 6 max NLHE games on Full Tilt. After an initial downswing, hitting a low of $40ish, I've built back up and am now at $62. The luck has turned my way and almost evened out the bad luck, e.g. instead of getting repeated full house over full house situations I'm now doing stuff like getting all in with KK against a flopped set of 3s and rivering a King, yay!

The players are so funny, especially the shortstackers. I was agonising over calling a 50BB shove with KQo thinking "this is bad, he has a pair at least". I called anyway..he had K6o! Since then I've not put much effort into figuring out what the hell they are doing (I don't think they know themselves) and I've just been grinding away on 8 tables. I should blast through to the mighty $0.02/$0.05 games soon, and then hopefully keep going until I'm up there playing Isildur1 ;-)

Poker Bankroll: $62

gl all

Simon

October Trading

2009-11-03T18:10:00.003Z

Time for a bit of a review of my trading stats. Not that interesting but for my own reference here is my trading so far.

Month \|	races traded \|	£ per race \|	strike rate \|	total £
OCT	181	-£0.19	58.6%	-£34.64
SEPT	8	-£0.45	50.00%	-£3.62
AUG	71	-£0.28	57.7%	-£20.13
JUL	93	-£0.61	50%	-£56.00

Not a pretty sight but at least the losses per race are decreasing and the strike rate is increasing slowly). My strike rate seems way too low, although it is kind of meaningless without knowing £ won and £ lost on the respective winning/losing trades. i.e you can be profitable with a low strike rate if you win enough extra on your winning trades to balance out your losing trades.

Anyway, 181 races is the most I've done in a month, equating to 9 or 10 "full" days (afternoons) traded so that's positive, and I've got a little exercise to do with the betfair graphs to see if I can spot some trends.

Enjoying my iPhone project, will have to post a link when its in the store as it is a really funny one.

Cheers

Simon

Long way to go

2009-10-25T19:47:00.002Z

Trading: Still feels like I have a long way to go with the trading. I managed to get 14 races in today, losing £4ish. I am still just sitting there on a loss sometimes, and cutting out profits nice and quickly, obviously the exact opposite of what I should be doing. At least I've managed to get a half decent number of races traded, and its not an easy time of year for horse race trading, apparently. I might start recording my trading and reviewing the sessions, although I'd rather just trade and get more direct experience if I can.

Poker: Not had change to play, but made/got a massive $3 in rakeback so I'm back to where I started, almost...

Trading bank: £68

Poker bankroll: $49

Got some iPhone work to do next week , got to pay the bills, so I'll have to put my search for the perfect moochers lifestyle on hold and get coding.

Cheers

Simon

Total balls up

2009-10-22T17:36:00.002+01:00

I started trading today with a lot of hope and confidence, mainly because of yesterdays 87.5 % strike rate, and the fact that I knew I wouldn't make the same silly mistakes again.

The hope and the confidence soon vanished as nothing was going right and I just couldn't get anything working for me. You are supposed to be aggressive, and I placed 50 bets in one race so I think that counts as aggressive, but I think I'm trying to run before I walk. If a horse was trading in a straight line you could guarantee as soon as I started scalping the price would fly off into the distance against me within half a second. I ended up £5 down, which is awful. Or rather I thought I ended £5 down until I checked my statement and I lost £10 on 1 race alone! I must have had an open position after I finished trading that race, really odd as I always check that I have greened up properly. Looking through the list of bets you can see the last green up bet (as its an odd stake size) but there are £10 extra back bets compared to lay bets. Very odd, I don't understand why the green-up bet went through last, but I still somehow had open bets.

So I'm £15 down on the day, leaving me with a £72 bank, using max £7.20 stakes, and no confidence at all. Oh well.

Cheers

Simon

A game of 2 halves

2009-10-21T17:24:00.003+01:00

Trading: Interesting afternoon's trading (well 16 races, so 3/4 of an afternoon). I made a little profit in the first race, scalping the favourite if I remember rightly. I moved on the 2nd race and made a bit there, then the same in the 3rd, 4th, 5th and by the time the 9th race had started without a single loss I was already planning this blog post's title - "A clean sweep!".

You're probably ahead of me here, but it was not to be, sadly. I was down a bit in the 10th race and was really pushing it to try and get back to even when the race started and I had to quickly get out of my position in play. I was so pissed off that I had wiped out most of my profits with a silly mistake that I vowed never to let it happen again, unfortunately this was to cause me even bigger problems, as you will see.

The next race went fine, and I recovered a bit of profit, then in the 12th race it was very close to the off and I was about even, but had an open position. As it was so close to the off I decided to be a good boy and do the right thing and exit for a small loss, as I had promised I would, so I dragged my unmatched back bet down to the bottom of the ladder and dropped it. However, at exactly the same time the market suspended and all the money in front of my bet disappeared! I got matched over 10 ticks away from where I would have been had I dropped the bet half a second earlier. Argh! I was so mad that I didn't even green up (red-up, in this case) so rather than getting out for -£1 I gambled and lost over £4 as the horse went on to win. ARGH!

So lesson 1 - don't leave it till the last second to get out.

Lesson 2 - if you go in play accidentally red-up ASAP and move on.

And actually - Lesson 3 my strike rate today (87.5% )was my best ever, I only lost on 2 out of 16 races, and if I can learn lessons 1 and 2 I know I can be a profitable trader.

Cheers

Simon

A Sure Fire thing

2009-10-19T19:40:00.006+01:00

A good day today; actually had a winning poker session for once and also made a profit trading the horsies on Betfair. The numbers involved are tiny (~$3 poker profit and 38p trading profit) but relative to my bankrolls and relative to how it has been going in the recent past it's a good result.

Poker is still swingy. Anyone that complains or says X poker site is rigged or Y poker site's random number generator is dodgy is a) wrong* (why would they specifically rig it against you, and what would the other player who won "your" pot think?) and b) is really complaining about something which is fundamental to the fabric of poker itself - luck. Anyway, I ran a bit better and have also earned $2 rakeback from the 4 BUY INS of rake I've paid. So actually I would be up 2 buy-ins if there was no rake but I won't start whinging about that again.

Trading went well today, traded 21 races which is good in itself, and made a few pennies overall profit. I really feel like I'm getting somewhere now, and have gone from losing £1 per race on average, steadily improving to losing 14p per race on average for October. I've still traded less than 15 days worth of races in 3 months which is the main reason it has taken a while to make a profit, but it has always been going in the right direction. I was winding down trading "Sure Fire" in the 17:20 at Plumpton whilst barely concentrating and it was so easy it was unbelievable. I would have killed it if I had spotted what was happening earlier, and I'm sure the big boys make a fortune. In a horse race, the price of one horse can and does move the price of the other(s), to a big or small degree depending on a number of things. The 1st and 2nd favourites were moving in opposite directions so it was just a case of watching one to see what would happen to the other - thus.

Easy money, if only they were all Sure Fire things like that!

Cheers

Simon

*OK, OK, UlitmateBet.com and Absolute Poker were rigged, and there once was a site with a dodgy RNG.

F U Luck

2009-10-18T18:09:00.002+01:00

Still running as bad as it is possible to run at poker. Starting with $50 and playing $2 6-max ring games I now have $43, and have not had 1 winning session yet, at all. I think it did actually start to tilt me and I made a dubious turn shove with what I thought was a flush draw and 2 overs, when in fact I only had 1 overcard (his KK to my AK) and I should have read him as a rock. I pulled it back pretty quickly though (as in, I stopped myself from tilting, rather than pulling back my losses unfortunately) when I got AIPF with AK vs A7o for 50BBs. I said out loud "of course a seven will hit the flop" and sure as eggs is eggs the devil vomited a putrid 7 from the depths of his sulphurous bowels onto to the flop. I just laughed, and that snapped me out of the tilt as I knew I was playing fine. Not exactly hard to play better than 1c/2c donks but when you keep losing you do start to wonder. Once again there is a list of beats but I'll spare you the tedium.

Maybe that's why most people are never really successful at poker; even if you have it all figured out perfectly you can still run so bad for so long that you doubt yourself and change your game, even though it was fine in the first place.

On an ever so slightly more positive note I traded 5 races today on Betfair for an overall profit of 36p, woo! Caught a decent swing in the first race, a few tiny profits on the next 3 as I didn't really see any opportunities in the small field/poor quality races, and then lost a bit on the 5th race in a really jumpy market.

I'll keep plugging away with poker and pre-off horse race trading as much as I can, but trading is edging it so far in terms of potential for money making and just holding on to my sanity.

Poker roll: $43

Trading Bank: £90

Cheers

Simon

Reset

2009-10-16T18:32:00.007+01:00

I have started a little experiment with resetting my Betfair account to £100, and also starting to play poker with a $50 bankroll. I had money flying all over the place to different bookies from Betfair due to doing a few free bets, and it was hard to filter out my trading activities for all the "noise". The idea is to Trade and play poker and see which makes me the most profit. Unfortunately the answer at the moment is neither - I'm losing at the $2 buy-in 6 max games on Full Tilt and am losing an average of 15p a race over 68 races traded on Betfair.

On the poker front I have constantly been reminded why I stopped playing. I'll just say my AA lost to AK, aipf, flop KK2! Oh and the lovely multiple examples of full house beaten by higher full house situations. There are many others but you don't want a list, I'm sure. I'm actually not at all tilted by it anymore, as it's only the $2 games and I now have some perspective after my long break from poker. I just feel that poker is mostly luck, and the skill element takes a looong time to show.

Trading on the other hand feels like its a lot more like skill, with a smaller element of luck, so I've no one to blame for the losses but myself! I'm a bit frustrated that I'm not making profit yet but is not surprising since I've probably traded less than 10 full afternoons and did barely any trading at all in September. I seem to take 5 or 6 tiny steps forward, making 5 or 6 tiny profits and then 1 massive loss on the next race. I did learn 1 definite lesson yesterday; reboot windows after MS Update has run. I was trading with 3 mins to go before a race when my laptop shut down on its own leaving me with an open position! I didn't spot the "Restart now/later" box on the 2nd monitor and it merrily counted down and switched off the power. I have a low opinion of Microsoft and their awful products at the best of times, but when they cost me money...grrrr.

Peter Webb is also trading with a £100 bank in his "£10 trader" experiment. I'd like to say I'll try and challenge him in terms of profits, but I'll probably lose money as fast as he makes it!

Cheers,

Simon

Played a bit of poker, won a bit of cash

2009-09-23T14:41:00.002+01:00

I *heart* free money, and due to the fact that I have accounts with most European bookies (from getting free cash from their bonuses) I get emails offering random bits of free cash every so often. The latest one was a €7 poker tourney credit on the BOSS network, which I used to play 1.20 and 5.60 SNGs. I busted the 1.2 quickly but sucked out about halfway through the other to go 1st for a while, eventually busting 2nd when I really could have folded. I think its the 1st poker I've played in 2 months so its good that I've still got my poker skillz ;-) I won €36, nothing better than conjuring money out of nothing, even if it is only 30 quid, and I am tempted to use it to start a new poker bankroll and see if I can spin it up.

Done no Betfair trading at all, as I have been busy creating numerous iPhone apps. If I get any free time I'll trade if there are races going on at that time, and play poker if not. It's been good to have a long break from poker, gives you perspective. It made me laugh when, for example, a player went nuts for losing to a rivered Ace (to AJo) when they went AIPF with Q3o. It really wasn't "UNBELIEVABLE" and the poker site is not "R!GGED@", it was simply a random outcome that went against you, deal with it.

Cheers

Simon

PS How do you like my new office setup?!

Not much trading

2009-09-04T22:26:00.005+01:00

Some kind of August review post is in order I suppose: I didn't trade much at all really. Just 71 races, so about 4-5 full sessions. I would have liked to have done more but a week in the Cotswolds and lots of iPhone work were the things that stopped me so it's not as though I can be disappointed. Its good that I'm busy with work, and good that I had a weeks holiday!

I've got a handful of iPhone projects on the go at various stages of completion so it looks like it will be hard to get much trading in for September. One app we finished for a customer in August has just gone in the store; iGoLoco - all you London clubber types should check it out to find your nearest rave-up!

Right I'm off the get the RX-8 MOT'd, its going in Autotrader...any offers?!

Cheers

Simon

Feeling good

2009-08-24T18:01:00.010+01:00

Feeling really good at the moment. It's the first time I've not been ill in some way for what feels like weeks. I seem to have had a cold, a fever, a sore throat or all three for the last month, but it finally seems to have cleared up. You don't realize how good it feels to be "normal" until you're ill. Spending last week in the Cotswolds certainly helped, I feel very relaxed and ready to get on with iPhone work and Betfair trading, although realizing I was not getting paid for the week certainly focuses the mind. Self employment breeds a healthy respect for the value of money.

I traded 18 races today, losing £1.46, so I've not yet stopped losing money but am still getting closer to that goal. In one race today I "felt" the market for the 1st time. I was in tune with it and not only traded the drift in the price, I also traded the small "correction" back the other way, and then the resumption of the drift. It felt pretty cool, now I just need to cut down the size of my losses and I'll be profitable.

I read "Trading in the Zone" last week, and some of the stuff in t there really struck a chord. I tend to take losses personally and blame the market which, when you realize that the market is an inanimate system that can potentially do anything at any time, is pretty silly. I've also got my head around the fact that you don't need to know which way the market will move to make money, as well as trying to think in probabilities, it's all slowly falling into place I think!

Cheers,

Simon

Turbulence

2009-08-11T18:04:00.002+01:00

This post is mainly to put a big mistake out there in the hope that writing and posting this will stop me doing the same thing again in the future. I had a good start to todays session, with my biggest amount won on 1 race: £3.43 smashing my old record (not exactly hard!). Anyway about 5 races in I was in profit doing OK when a trade went sharply against me. The market on this race felt different to the others today, and I should have just stayed out of it.

I didn't stay out of it though, I piled right in and took a £5 loss straight away. Then I realized I may not be on top of things and scaled my stakes and trades right back, so as not to lose too much....did I bollocks, I piled in again and again backing just as it was about to go out and laying just before the price came in, it was uncanny how wrong I got it time after time. I ended up losing just over £10 on that race.

Traders don't seem to use the word "tilt" like poker players do, but I was definitely on tilt, and it (i.e. the situation) will come up again, the only question is how I react to it. Hopefully I can learn from this mistake and not repeat it. Overall today I averaged 25p loss per race, which isn't too bad at all considering the -£10 disaster.

Onwards and upwards.

Simon

Slow start

2009-08-10T21:03:00.002+01:00

It's been a slow and frustrating start to my trading. I seem to have been ill with one thing or another for about a month, and it is really holding me back from getting started with trading.

It's early days but what little trading I've done seems to be going in the right direction. I've mostly stuck with £1 tick sizes, although I did use less for a little while after a horrible mistake and associated loss of confidence. I keep hearing how its all about confidence and you need to be at your peak, well I can see why - trading a full afternoon leaves you drained, and you start to lose focus.

I worked out I was losing £1 per race on average near the end of July, but after a few good sessions it reduced to -60p per race. I'm embarrassed and frustrated to say I've only traded 2 days in August, averaging £0.00 per race so if I can get a load more races under my belt I can be more confident that I am break even. If I can stop losing money and just average zero for august that's fine, and that is my goal. Once I get there I'll re-assess and set a new target, hopefully lots of small, achievable targets will eventual add up, we shall see.

I might move my "poker records" section down and make a "trading records" box where I can detail my achievements such as my biggest winning race +£2.47!

gl all

Simon

Peter Webb's Trading Masterclass

2009-07-31T17:24:00.004+01:00

I attended this course on Monday, hoping to get a kick-start to my Betfair trading, and I really enjoyed it. Had a 'mare of time getting there though. Booked the Tavel Lodge for the night before the course a few miles from the hotel where the course was actually held ( it was only £30). After sitting in a massive traffic jam (on a Sunday night?!) on the M40 the sat nav took me to a spot 5 miles from the hotel!? I then programmed it in again a different way and it took me almost there, but decided to send me down the wrong turning off the roundabout. It was a big roundabout with 6 exits. The correct exit was the 6th one I tried, obviously. I checked in and called it a night, knackered. I know why it was so cheap now; damp carpet, no working hot tap on the shower and no free little packet of BISCUITS! Unforgivable!

In the morning I kind of over-compensated for the sat-nav cock-up of the previous night, checking the course venue (again the sat nav had it in the wrong place) and setting off early. I arrived over an hour before the course! Still, gave me a chance to send a few work emails and check out the hotel where the course was held (should have just stayed there, much nicer).

The morning session was a good overview and intro to trading, I learned a lot of interesting little facts and quirks about the Betfair markets and trading. Got to see some inspirational P&L figures of Peter's, and heard about his journey trading on Betfair since almost day 1. We also went into money management, and talked about the structure of different types of races, and set up a few trades for the afternoon.

After a much needed buffet lunch it was back down to work and another intense session. The afternoon was all about trading strategies on the horses. My head was spinning by the end, but I learned a lot and I definitely got a couple of lightbulb moments that I just wouldn't have figured out myself. I also got a few little things that I suspected may work confirmed so it did give me some confidence and has hopefully set me on the right track.

So, August trading goals:

1: trade tons of races ;-)

2: learn to CUT OUT QUICKLY when its going against me instead of dithering (my worst leak, I think).

3: Get to break-even point.

Cheers,

Simon

Poker training videos - by me!

2009-07-29T20:23:00.002+01:00

I have been wanting to blog about my foray into making poker training videos for Party Poker for ages, making obtuse allusions to a "secret project" that I was working on, but things didn't happen very swiftly. After not checking the site for ages, I happened to have a look at partyacademy.com the other day and, finally they have put my videos online. So here's what happened.

The marketing manager at Party contacted me out of the blue via this blog in November last year asking if I would be interested in making videos for a training site that Party were launching. I managed to pick myself off the floor and stop laughing, and rather than pointing out my lack of poker skills or any kind of teaching ability I decided to play along just to see what would happen.

I made a test video and to my great surprise they liked it and asked for 9 more! They were offering a payment that was a good % of my bankroll at the time so I gladly accepted. I enjoyed making the videos, I deleted the first few attempts within 5 mins of starting recording, but once I got over the fact that I hate listening to recordings of my voice I was OK. I remember running pretty bad for the sit n go vids (apart from the 1 I luckboxed), and finding it hard to get enough quiet time with a new born baby in the house at the time!

After they watched through the videos they commented that mine were the best submitted, and asked for 10 more, which was nice!

Have a look at partyacademy.com if you have a Party Poker account and see what you think. My videos are the ones labelled as author:Simon Betts, obviously.

Gl All

Simon

2009-07-24T21:20:00.000+01:00

Hello muffin x

I'm an iPhone developer

2009-06-29T12:32:00.004+01:00

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

2009-06-09T20:53:00.006+01:00

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

I played poker!

2009-06-09T19:28:00.005+01:00

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

2009-05-20T11:40:00.004+01:00

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

2009-04-16T11:02:00.004+01:00

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

2009-03-20T13:15:00.006Z

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

2009-02-25T21:26:00.004Z

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

2009-02-12T10:53:00.002Z

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

2009-01-30T13:37:00.005Z

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

2009-01-26T11:30:00.003Z

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

2009-01-19T11:31:00.004Z

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

2009-01-13T11:36:00.003Z

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

2009-01-05T17:55:00.004Z

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

2008-12-27T16:22:00.002Z

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

2008-12-22T13:05:00.003Z

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

2008-12-09T21:31:00.004Z

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

2008-11-24T11:04:00.003Z

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

2008-11-12T13:40:00.005Z

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

2008-10-30T22:49:00.007Z

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

2008-10-27T10:38:00.003Z

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!!!

2008-10-10T08:32:00.005+01:00

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

2008-09-30T08:40:00.007+01:00

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

2008-09-19T17:32:00.007+01:00

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!!!

2008-09-03T12:01:00.004+01:00

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

2008-08-26T15:50:00.004+01:00

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 :-)

Simon

Bankroll $1027 (+ £548 to be withdrawn)

Faffing around

2008-08-06T18:00:00.004+01:00

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

2008-07-29T09:02:00.003+01:00

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

2008-07-24T10:48:00.000+01:00

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"

2008-07-14T09:38:00.002+01:00

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

2008-07-07T00:01:00.000+01:00

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

LOL misreadaments

2008-06-30T11:57:00.000+01:00

Here's a hand from a recent session I played- http://www.pokerhand.org/?2807570 so funny, I mis-read the board on the flop, thinking woo I hit the str8! Once I shoved the river I realised I only had K high, would love to know what I got him to fold. After that I thought "hmmm probably a good time to take a break now".

Been enjoying my poker recently. Just finished a good little 400 hand 6-max session where I managed to make 1.5 buy ins while running pretty card dead. I'm getting more confident with my game, made some good folds, adjusted my play a lot based on reads, raised their flop bets with air when I thought they were full of sh*t.

I even played 3 donkaments on Stars the other day. Thought I would try to beat my $14 biggest tourney cash, as it is embarrassing looking at it on my "records" list. I played, an $11, a $6 and a $1 . Did OK in the $10, finished about 100th out of 450, didn't cash in any but got knocked out as big favorite each time, just couldn't win a 70/30 "flip". It is stunning how much luck is involved in tourneys.

I've ended up making back the money I lost at the start of the month so my bankroll has gone nowhere but my game has improved I think. I'm trying not to care about the results - as long as I play well the results will take care of themselves. I really think if I could get, like, a million hands of 6-max in I could be a really good player, I think that's the main thing I lack; experience.

Here is the mandatory review of my June goals -

1. play 10,000+ hands

YES! played over 13,000 hands in cash games...a new record for me.

2. get bankroll above $750

NO :( $693

3. get to Queen 3 level at Party Poker

YES! easily, I'm 100 points off Queen 4 so I'll soon be a king hopefully.

4. stop losing monies on the stock market

NO, lost a bit on financial spread betting - not much I can do when I go long on a share that bounces down, triggers my stop-loss and then shoots up. My index tracker lost money, my shares in the company I work for lost money, hey ho, it'll turn at some point.

5. learn how to transmorph into a seagull

YES, SQUARK!! Watch out kids, I'm going to dive-bomb your chips!

Bankroll: $693

PS, the pic is stolen from a 2+2 thread about big name poker players -"What if they had never played poker", LOL.

Sunday and whatnot

2008-06-25T15:57:00.004+01:00

Woke at 7:30 which is super-early for me on a Sunday, had a nice bowl of Kellogs Crunchy Nut Clusters and a cup of Twinings "Chai" tea. I started a NLHE session after breakfast but stopped after only a few hands when the PartyPoker client software put me on tilt by crashing and folding my hand when I had hit a straight on the river. I emailed PartyPoker support to ask for a refund but it soon became clear that they are chimps and don't care about their customers and whatnot.

Later on I had a great workout in this new gym that opened near my house called "my garage". I did some bench presses and shoulder presses and a bit of cardio and whatnot. I didn't feel as awesome as I expected afterwards as my elbow was hurting and whatnot.

I felt less tilted after my workout so I hit the super-soft Party tables again and quickly made just over a buy-in. I've played a lot of hands this month without really making any money but at least I'm not stuck. I'll do a "monthly goals" update at the end of the month, so look out for that, it will be super-awesome. Cheers.

- David Benefield err sorry I mean Simon.

6-max is back

2008-06-19T09:59:00.005+01:00

Pic: 1967 Alfa Duetto. Thought I'd brighten up this post with a pic of my favorite Alfa, once I'm a poker millionaire I'll have one one these in my garage, next to the F430 and the M5 Beemer, LOLZ.

Anyways, since I've been playing $10NL at PartyPoker in the recent past I have had to play full ring, they don't have 10NL 6-max for some unknown reason. Now that I've decided to stick at $25NL I have the choice of 6-max or full ring. After my last post I fired up Party and sat in 6 full-ring tables as usual, but for some reason I just had this urge to play 6-max. I guess I thought full ring was a "safer" way to build my roll but I've watched a ton of CardRunners vids, most of which are 6-max NLHE, so I feel quite confident in my 6-max game at these stakes and I think I can beat them for a higher win rate, even if I am a safe/boring full ring player at heart. I think that is one of, if not the, biggest weakness of mine: I'm not a gambler at heart, I have to learn the ways of the degenerate. I think I'm getting there though.

So I left the full ring tables after less than an orbit and sat at four 6-max tables, and even though I ran like crap at first, it was the most fun I've had playing poker in a long time. I haven't even changed my style from full ring that much. OK I've done a few light 3-bets from the BB when the SB or button tries to steal but other that that I've been playing my normal game minus the 1st 4 early position seats. After a few thousand hands my pre-flop stats have worked out at 20/16ish which I think is tight, but fine for $25NL, and I'm really happy with my game. The games are more swingy, but I have managed to eke out a small profit. Here are some hands...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2780256 - here's my biggest pot in a while, loving my flop check, as I would have folded out at least 1 player, perfect turn card, ship it.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2780295 Messed this one up, I don't normally bet this small on the flop or turn, and I didn't see the straight possibilities. Even if I had I'm not sure I could have folded as I've see people spaz shove the river with worse than top set. The spaz shove is a very important concept at 25NL IMO.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2780312 This one is standard, but I posted it to remind me to add this crag1975 guy to my buddy list! So, so bad. From his play here I suspect he hates money.

Bankroll: $680

gl peeps,

Simon

$25NL hates me.

2008-06-12T20:33:00.007+01:00

Every single time I move up I immediately get owned by variance. I got my roll up to about $725 and played 3 $25NL full ring tables at the same time as 3 or 4 $10NL tables. Within half an hour I took 3 beats/coolers...all of them on the 25NL tables of course.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2747940 AA vs QQ, his stats were VERY tight, but I guess he does this with KK and AQ and I'm more than happy to get it all in with an overpair at microstakes.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2747953 bit of a cooler I think, maybe I should have flat called the river but that seems too nitty and I could easily be up against J10 or a low set and my hand is well disguised (so was his lol).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2747960 KK vs Ah5h I got it all in on the flop as a favorite (only 52%, thought it would be more like 60%), I was 66% favorite on the turn, and lost to the runner runner straight, *sigh*. stranger1911 even had the nerve to type "fool" in the chatbox after the hand. Utterly classless, and very confused about the value of his hand I suspect.

You know what, I'm going to stick with 25NL, maybe even if I drop below $500. I need to move up if I'm ever going to make any money from poker and playing 10NL with 64 buy-ins is far too cautious, if I end up back at $300 then I'll move down....again.

I got my spread betting £100 credit and have been cluelessly gambling on the price of oil. Wow, it is so scary. I can see how people lose their shirt on this sort of thing. The smallest trade is £1, which means every cent the oil price moves, I win/lose £1. To give you an idea, oil recently went up $10 in 1 day, so that's potentially + or - £1000 in a day for a £1 trade, frightening. I could have easily wiped out my £100 (and even ended up in debt if the stop-loss didn't work). I was lucky, however and after 6 or 7 very short term trades I have doubled my starting balance up to just over £200. Nice!

Gl all,

Simon

Bankroll: $642

Spread betting

2008-06-08T10:10:00.004+01:00

I had an email from Betfair a few weeks ago asking me to try their new spread betting demo site at spreads.tradefair.com. I signed up and had a go, starting with £10,000 play money I quickly lost £3k on my first few (random) trades. There was a prize of £100 account credit for the top 100 people making the most play money in a certain timeframe. I thought my best chance was to choose 1 volatile trade and max it out, not sure why I didn't choose oil but I picked US$ vs. £, betting the $ would rise, quite a contrarian bet as the $ is piss-weak at the moment. Anyway, some guy called Bernanke made some comments on how the Fed may have stopped cutting rates and that sent the dollar shooting up. I came 12th overall, finishing on £39k, so yeah..spread betting is volatile!

I have no clue what to bet on with the £100, I do know I need to be careful about setting a stop-loss as you can lose a ton of money spread betting. I don't care if I lose the £100, but I'll be pissed off if I end up in debt. Hopefully I can make a bit of profit and add it to my roll.

Had a few decent poker sessions at $10NL, think I've pulled it back to even from my crappy start o the month. Also got a random £3 free bet from Betclick.com, won £7.50 with it betting on the Czechs to beat the Swiss, and then won another couple of quid betting on Portugal to win their 1st match. I donked around with the profit on Betclicks poker site, busted early in a 3 euro tourney but won a couple of 5 man sit-n-goes and 1 pot in a 10NL cash game so ended slightly up.

Bankroll: $656

Not a great start to June

2008-06-02T08:57:00.005+01:00

Ugh, what a shit start to the month. I had a bad session at $25NL where I quickly lost $75, but managed to recover a little. Usual story, move up, run bad, get coolered cry, move back down. Like this little beauty for example....

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2700744

So I played some $10NL for a while after this hand and lost 5 buyins. I got owned by a fish playing 75% of his hands when he called my pre flop raise with 96o (I had KK) and he flopped 2 pair and I failed to improve after we got it all in on the flop. I played about 1,500 hands in that one session, trying to get back to even (lolz, bad idea) but I gave up in the end. At least I moved down instead of blowing half my roll like last time this sort of thing happened. Just going to try and play through it.

Suppose I had better to set some goals for June, as is the fashion with these blog things.

1. play 10,000+ hands
2. get bankroll above $750
3. get to Queen 3 level at Party Poker
4. stop losing monies on the stock market
5. learn how to transmorph into a seagull

Bankroll: $613

Achievable goals FTW!

gl all

Simon

Record Breakers

2008-05-27T22:49:00.007+01:00

I have added some records/personal bests to the side of my blog. They look really pathetic TBH, but I guess that's the whole point; to motivate me to play more/better so I can update them.

I have beaten my "most hands in a month" record this month, playing 8,000 hands so far, and I may be able to get in a few more. The old record was 6.5K so it wasn't that hard but still, its a start. I was on track to beat the "peak bankroll" and "most $ won in a month" playing $25NL but I hit a bad run of cards and dropped back down to $10NL to avoid losing half my roll again. The weird thing is since I was winning at 4 ptBB/100 at $25NL and 12.4 ptBB/100 I'm making more per hour playing $10NL (over $11 an hour...woo time to quit my job!).

Almost all the poker I have played this month has been cash games and I've really enjoyed it. I did play a $4.40 180-man SNG on Stars but busted on about the 6th hand after shoving AKo and getting called by AQo. River was a queen, LOL donkamnets. Probably for the best as it made me want to play more cash games and not bother with tournies.

Bankroll: $702

Good luck all,

Simon

Lol, misclickaments!

2008-05-18T17:26:00.004+01:00

I decided to have another little blast at $25NL full ring today, and it went well results-wise. I only played 200 hands but made $41. I did a special misclick in the hand below, where I meant to raise to $0.9 but missed the "." oops. Once he shoved I thought he may have realised my bet was a misclick so I called his shove and put him on AK or less, but no, he had AA, oops.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2626973

So yeah I flopped a set, oops. Hopefully I can keep this run going and stick at $25NL instead of having to move down again, fingers crossed. The players seem a bit more aggro but just as bad as the 10NL bunch so far.

Bankroll: $646

Many Happy missclicks,

Simon

Royal Flush

2008-05-15T22:01:00.002+01:00

Yay, I just hit my 1st ever Royal Flush! Spades too, apparently a spades royal flush is the finest of all the royals.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2614656

Shame I didn't get to show it down, and that I only gained $0.98 from it!

Hope my luck continues and I now go on a massive heater.

gl all

Simon

Steps

2008-05-15T08:44:00.003+01:00

I entered 4 x $3 Step 1 sit-n-goes on Party on the 8th May, and I have only just bust out my last buy-in. You certainly get a lot of play for your money, then I got about 20 games out of it. I got up to Step 3 (step 6 gets you the cash) where I bubbled and dropped down to 2 again. I was bouncing up and down around Step 2 with my last 'token' for ages, was kind of relieved to lose it as it was wasting good cash-game playing time.

I've played a bit more $10NL full ring and a wee bit of $25NL. Did OK at first but lost 2 buy-ins in a longish (700 hands is long for me) session of $10NL yesterday. Raised 33 in the cut-off, BB flat calls, we get it all in on a flop of 3sJsAh and he flips up JJ, nh wp, river gives him quads just to rub it in a bit more. Lost the other buy-in all in pre-flop with AcKc vs JJ and a short stack with 33, 2 clubs on the flop got my hopes up but alas I missed my 15 outs twice. Pokerstove tells me I should have folded pre-flop, although I think the money already in the pot makes it close, but on the flop I was just over 50% to win. Its one of those high-variance plays I have been avoiding lately, not sure why I did it. Then again if I had won the flip it would have been a 1/2 buy-in winning session instead of a losing one, ho-hum.

In real life I still have a top secret project in the works which I hope to reveal in September. Other that that I stupidly left my car unlocked the other night, and some knob went in (what are the chances of someone trying the handle on that 1 night) and stole a 12v TomTom lead and a TomTom windscreen sucker thing. Good luck selling those you scratty bastard, hope the £1.65 buys you lots of heroin. Funny thing was they left my wife’s “Greatest Love Songs” CD on the passenger seat! Guess they have some taste :)

Bankroll: $585

Wishing you many upswongs.

Simon

"May" the force be with you

2008-05-07T13:43:00.004+01:00

Yusssss! Its May, the finest month of the year, the blossom is blossoming the sap is rising, and its my birthday soon.

Poker-wise I got off to a flyer, up a massive $70 already playing mostly $10NL full ring and a little $25NL six-max on Party Poker. I have not played full ring for ages, it seems so easy, I guess its a combination of Party being soft, and full ring players being softer than 6-max players. I can manage 6 tables of full ring easily, and have come up against some real donks. E.g. (10NL) UTG min-raises, I re-raise my AA from small blind to 0.60, UTG calls, flop is 10 10 4, I bet $1 he min-raises I call as its going to take more than that to push me off AA, turn is another 4 and he bets less than half pot. I think and in the end just shove as he only has 3.30 left and I'm not really sure what the best play is (fold?). He CALLS & shows QJo...explain that. No pair, no draw, no Ace-high, no chance to get me to fold as I'm all-in. I haven't seen that kind of "don't know the rules of poker" play for a long time.

I've played quite a lot of hands (for me) this last week. I'm running at 48bb/100 over 1200ish hands...sustainable?! Its weird what motivates me. I've been climbing the ranks on the Party loyalty scheme, from J1 to J4. The points are pretty worthless to me as I earn them so slowly at 10NL but, strangely, watching the progress bar fill up has made me play more hands. The softness of the games helps too. I've started playing the odd 25NL game when I feel like it. I'm going to move up slowly, instead of doing my usual "move up at 20 buy-ins and go on a 10 buy-in downswong" thing. I may set a stop-loss, and/or move up and down the levels often until I'm more comfortable at the dizzy heights of 25NL.

Bankroll: $570

Happy flipping!

Simon

You finished in position 4

2008-04-30T13:44:00.002+01:00

I have no idea why I logged into my PartyPoker account today, but when I did I found a $50 bonus waiting for me. I decided to register for a $55 sit-n-go in an all-or-nothing gamble. As you can guess by the title of the blog the result was : nothing.

It was an interesting match, 4 people all-in on the 1st hand. 88 vs 99 vs 1010 vs AA, AA won, unbelievably. So I'm sitting there thinking that I actually have a chance to cash, and that most of these players seem worse than the Stars £3.40 players but, alas, it was no to be. With 5 or 6 BBs left I shoved K8 and K9, taking the blinds but soon ended up back on 6BB. Then, in the big blind I re-raised an obvious steal with A8, all the chips went in and despite having his Q8 dominated I still lost as he hit a flush. Sigh.

Pick 'n' mix

2008-04-28T16:22:00.002+01:00

Not really a post about Woolworths sweets, although now that thought is in my head I want some. I have been playing quite a mix of poker lately, HU and 10-man sit-n-goes, 6-max cash games and some $.01/.02 PLO cash. I ran pretty bad, especially in the 10 man sit-n-goes. When you go all-in with KK and get called by 22 and AJs you don't expect to win every time, but when 22 takes the pot by making a flush on the river you really wonder what you have to do to win. I did shite in the Pokerstars planets thing, came about 993rd, for which there was no prize, sadly. Just couldn't string a block of 20 results together after playing about 60 sit-n-goes. Also ran awful in 6-max cash ($10NL) but managed to pull it back with a few 'big' pots and some sit-n-go cashes last night.

I am up at PLO (not hard at .01/.02), even though I know nothing about starting hand ranges. I'm still at the "hang on, what hand do I have?" stage. Probably should have started on less than 4 tables, but I need to get in lots of hands to get some experience. Same old problem really, I need to play all day every day for a year to find out if I'm any good/build a roll, and I can't see that happening unless I fake an illness that requires 12 months of work, hmmm.

Bankroll: $498

WSOP?

2008-04-23T10:29:00.005+01:00

I have entered a Cardrunners competition where 1st prize is a $10,000 WSOP seat. I have no idea why, as I know I can't go due to other commitments made long ago (not that I expect to win anyway). I'll hopefully post more about this in July/August. If I do win I hope there's a cash alternative, increasing my bankroll 20 times in an instant would be fun. Knowing me I'd probably carry on playing 10NL though.

Been playing a few $3+.40 10 man sit-n-goes on Stars in their "battle of the planets" thing. I'm about 400th at the moment, lol. You would have to win about 12 in a block of 20 SNGs to get 1st. Unlikely, but I'm making monies anyway. I play in blocks of 4 and usually seems to lose 2, and get a 2nd and a 1st in the others.

My "bankroll" is up to a massive $519 now - party time!

gl all

Simon

Little mouse with clogs on

2008-04-15T14:59:00.003+01:00

12th April: Tilly, our cat, suddenly seems interested in the fireplace. She's poking her head up the chimney looking for something. Mrs B says there is a "creature" living behind the fire. I say she is a loon.

13th April: Mrs B hears rustling in the night, and finds her apple has been nibbled. She says there's a mouse in the house. I call her a loon.

14th April, 3AM: Mrs B wakes me up, there is a clicky-clicky noise coming from the window. I say "its raining", she looks outside. It's not raining. The noise continues, it sounds like claws on cloth. A shadow moves up the curtains. Mrs B panics, hyperventilates , starts whimpering and hides in the bathroom. I turn on the light.

A field mouse appears from behind the curtains, and looks straight at me from its vantage point atop the curtain pole. There follows 5 minutes of trying to figure out how you catch a mouse, then I realize there is a deadly mouse-hunting machine sleeping on the floor below. After waking Tilly the cat and eventually making her realize what was afoot she sat below the curtains, frozen. A short while later in one split-second move she pounced on the hapless rodent and carried it downstairs in her jaws.

After wresting the fury mammal from Tilly's mouth and feeding it a bit of bread, Mrs B and I took it around the corner and released it in the field. Neither of us slept much for the remainder of the night.

Poker-wise I've played 1K hands of 6-max 10NL so far this month. I'm trying to get back in to cash games after a long break. I'm running badly but am up 2.5 buy-ins so far. If I hit some cards I'll kill the players at this level. I think my bank roll is $480ish but I'm not moving to $25NL until I reach $1K as I don't want to have to move down after the inevitable downswing if I move up with 15 buy-ins. I'm also playing HU sit-n-goes and 9-man sit-n-goes to avoid boredom.

gl gl gl

Simon

Learning vs. Earning

2008-04-08T13:14:00.002+01:00

Have a look at my Full Tilt graph from game 280ish. The chunk of about 15 games from game 280 to 295ish are 9-man sit-n-goes, I never really sucked out, I just played the standard tight-early, loose-late tactics that everyone knows. I played 4 at a time and just played them like a robot, using ICM theory. I learned nothing about poker. I made some monies, in the first set of 4 I came 1st/1st/2nd/3rd. I could grind these out and build my roll but what would be the point? I could double my tiny roll from $400 to $800 but that's not going to change my life.

Now look at the games after that spurt. Those were heads-up sit-n-goes. The last 4 were against this over-aggressive guy and I lost the 1st 2 matches. I kept re-matching him and learned how to beat him and won the next 2. He declined the next re-match but I learned how to play against this type of player. I played 1 table, I guess 80% of my hands so I was thinking and learning the whole time, rather than trying to play the end-game on 4 9-man sit-n-goes frantically push/folding. Of course at some point I need to move up, so I need a bigger roll, but for now I'll keep trying to learn.

Gl at the tables.

Simon

Joined Cardrunners

2008-04-02T19:09:00.000+01:00

Note the lack of wacky April fools posts here yesterday. I did not win $1 million flipping my roll, have a sex change or meet Annette_15 for a secret rendezvous. I did, however, get very frustrated playing 17 HU sit-n-goes, and losing 12 of them. I thought it was all coolers/beats but after looking over my hand histories there were a lot of awful awful mistakes as well as the coolers (Q8 loses to Q6 on a 2 6 Q Q J board) and beats (all in with AK vs 10 K on a K 2 5 board...turn is a 10). So here are my goals for April:

1. Play good
2. Run good

I just joined Cardrunners after dithering about the sign up fee for too long. In the end I figured the weak dollar means it doesn't actually cost that much in Sterling. The $99 cost woks out at about 27p and a bit of pocket fluff at current exchange rates. Watched a couple of HU sit-n-go vids so far and am reasonably impressed. There aren't many HU sit-n-go specific vids but I watched one by Stinger88 (Brian Hastings?) and one by Taylor Caby which confirmed a few things: I am thinking along the right lines, there is no magic "secret" that CR is going to give me. I predicted a lot of their moves, agreed with most plays and understood what they were saying when they were doing something different to my way of thinking. HU is about adapting to your opponent quickly, there is no single 'right' way to play. If I play my best and run average I will crush these piddly little $2+0.15 HU sit-n-goes.

gl all,

Simon