My Pokerstars debut

It was a bit of a washout actually. I played the $10k guarantee with a $5 buy-in, field of ~4400, and I worked out all the options menus and changed the table skin to some sleek new black background they are Beta testing so it looks a lot better than the mustard shit they set as default... and then I sat card-dead for an hour, until I picked up AQ just before the break with a 25BB stack, and opted to 3-bet shove over a 4BB opening raise. He showed 10-10 and predictably I lost the race. Sound familiar? It actually doesn't bother me though, whereas if it had happened on Full Tilt I would have been cursing the heavens. It's an interesting one, psychologically. I think of it as being like rain; when I am at home, doing my boring everyday things, rain is a nuisance and can really piss me off (it's been fucking WET with capital letters in Manchester lately)... but when I'm on holiday somewhere else and it rains, it just feels vaguely comical. I remember getting caught in a crazy tropical storm in Havana once, but everyone in my tourist group found it funny for the novelty. I guess we are more carefree when we are vacationing, or something. And I kind of feel like I am vacationing on Pokerstars at the moment, although I plan on playing there as long as it suits me, so I guess nothing will bother me for the short term no matter how bad I run.

I plan on playing one of the "First Depositor" freerolls later on, they gave me a couple of entries into those when I deposited, along with a $50 bonus I probably won't play enough to clear lolz.

Standard of play so far is questionable at best... the tourny I played began with 150BB effective stacks, which was a very pleasant surprise to me (although they make up for it by jumping the blinds by greater amounts when they rise it), but that is wasted on some people as there were two ninnies at my table who open-shoved for 150BBs twice each. Just cut a hole in the bottom of your wallet already guys, jayzus. Wish I could have been dealt some cards, because these guys were trying to give it away. I'm sure there are a lot of players that bad though... I've heard people say Stars players are worse than Full Tilt ones, which would be a nice bonus. I also look forward to checking out the $4.40 180-man SNGs that people on Cardplayer have said are extremely soft and full of brain-dead people on day release from their hospital beds.

Tuesday Ramblerments

The only game I have played since my last entry was the Tuesday night Rambler series event... given my new-found love(/hate) for Omaha the idea of a HA (lol at Full Tilt not wanting to call it a HO game) tournament was appealing enough for me to stay up for the 2am start time. There was a better turn out than previous weeks since the basketball is over now (I think, I don't follow it because it's full of oversized freaks), 2 full tables I think. I went out in 7th, in predictable fashion... losing a race to Loretta with AJ v 66. Was teased by a flop which gave me 18 outs twice, but he was running so well he was 90% favorite to win every flip and 75% favorite to win when he was well behind :( The one that hurt more was in an earlier Omaha level, where I got rivered with AcAsQs4h all-in pre-flop against KhKcJc10c (65-35 favorite orly?) - if I had won that I'd have been top 3 in chips, losing it put me bottom 2 and took all my momentum away. My hand actually got stronger and stronger on every street; flopped an ace, turn gave me a flush draw to kill all but 4 of villain's outs, but 4 outs is enough to bend me over and intrude upon my anal passage these days.

Nice tournament though, anyone reading this who doesn't already know about the series should check out http://nyramblerpoker.blogspot.com for details... next week is PLO8, which appeals to me but at the same time is a game that I suck at, so I will be there providing dead money and just trying to suck out on everyone.

The run continues

So poker is still sucking pretty badly. Last night saw my net profits from PLO reduced to almost zero, and today the only game I played was the $10 MSOP event where I ran predictably badly. I wasn't going to play at all, except maybe a $2 game or two, but the chance to play for a $30k prize pool for just a $10 buy-in doesn't come along very often. Sadly, I ran JJ into KK early on an all-unders flop against a guy who had already shown down K5s (raised it UTG obv) and A9o (cold-called a 3-bet pre-flop and shoved the flop with air), so he almost never has a real hand... unless he is in the pot with me of course. Then my short-stack disappeared after I shoved AJ over what looked a standard steal and he turned over JJ. What the fuck can I do?

So poker is highly unenjoyable at the moment... to everyone who says that making the correct play is its own reward, and every time you do that you win money regardless of the hand outcome, I say "Die in a grease fire please". Yes, it all evens itself out, I know. But I play poker primarily because I enjoy it; the fact I am good enough to be a winning player and therefore take it more seriously than most is a happy by-product. But when you take regular beats, run into regular coolers and lose 3/4 of your 50-50s (even more so against opponents who have you covered), then the fun kind of evaporates from it all.

I need a few days off. I just took a month off because bad running was tilting me though, I only hit the tables again at the end of May, it seems a waste. I am truly torn whether to play through or not.

What goes up...

Since my 2nd place on Wednesday I have run like shit. I can't win a race to save my life in a tournament, and I lost most of the profit I have made playing PLO today when everyone's draws hit against me after we were all in with me having a 60-40/65-35 edge. Boo-urns.

I thought was I about to overcome it all by a deep run in the Early Double again, but just busted out in 97th, which although it paid is actually a loss when you consider I played both the Double tournaments. Other one I busted early when I lost with AKo all-in pre-flop against QQ, and this one I shoved over a raise with KQs and lost a flip with 88. Dealer teased me too, hitting my queen on the turn only to deliver the 2-outer on the river. Yeah, I know it's not really a 2-outer, but it did give me a rye smile. I never really got going, I think I only stayed alive so long by careful stealing and nobody wanting to raise my big blind... I've never had so many free passes in a tournament, it was unreal. On the other hand, I hardly had any hands worthy of mention.

Full Tilt roll is now around $770. I wants it be bigger still :(

Live games = limp games IMO

So I did play the donkament MTT last night as expected... it is run by a firm called Poker Results UK, and is part of a miniature "tour" of sorts around the North West of England. I would give more details for any Brits reading this, except that to be honest I wouldn't really recommend the games... buy-in is £15+2.5, starting stack is 2000 chips with 25/50 blinds, so stacks start shallow and shrink every 15 minutes after that. Typically, unless I find a big hand early, I will find myself down to ~10 big blinds within two orbits, so yes, the game structure pretty much sucks. I have taken a decent amount of money here in the past (my net profit for games run by this company is £395), but some bad running around March really tilted me at the structure and I have hardly played there since.

So anyway, I went back and nothing had changed. We had 26 runners, and I busted out in about 13th or 14th gambling for a HUGE stack. I had recently picked up some hands and played them very aggressively (AA doubled up when someone limped QJo pre-flop and called my shove, and KK shoved over a raise to take the pot down); this put me up among the bigger stacks left in the game with 7200 (200/400 level, so M is only 12 obv!). My constant shoving was tilting some of the players pretty hard, they all like to limp limp limp and see cheap flops, and the general consensus at the table was that my shoves, which were typically for 9 or 10 big blinds over a couple of limpers pre-flop, where excessive overbets!!! I didn't bother breaking the news to them that there IS no post-flop play in a game structured this badly, let's not disillusion them.

Onwards to my demise. There is a limp from UTG obviously, and I crank it up to 2400 with AK intending to call a shove. A short stack calls himself all-in, and the original limper umms and ahhs for a while, clearly frustrated at this donkey who just raises all the time when he limps. In the end he shoved, and I snap-called. It was unfortunate that he was the only stack at the table that had me covered, but so be it... if I win this pot I have around half the chips in play with 12 still remaining.

He showed down 88 (was hoping for a weaker ace, very much in his limping range, but oh well) and the shorty had K10s. All the overcards whiffed and the 88 held, gg me. That's poker I guess, I was happy with how I played the whole game. Overall, the standard was only moderately bad lolololol. Not sure I will be going back much, but might do from time to time - the buy-in is a little more than I would like to pay regularly for a glorified crapshoot though.

In other news, when browsing http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/ today I found I had achieved a minor goal of mine and broken into the top 5% of online MTT players according to their rating system (whatever that may be) -

Not really significant, but nice to know that if you sat me down with 19 other randomly selected online players the chances are I would be the best one there. Egos need stroking sometimes!