mathare's Gamblog

[mathare]

Let's see if we can't fire up a bit of poker chatter again...

Today I decided to start playing NLHE cash games. I've dabbled in this area before but not at all seriously. Most of my play to date has been limit cash or no-limit SnGs so this is a bit of a step into the unknown for me. And for that reason I am keeping the stakes low while I learn a new game dynamic.

I had around $100 in my Ladbrokes poker account and for some reason I seem to like playing on there, maybe because it meshes nicely with Poker Office. So I figured I may as well play NLHE on Ladbrokes.

I have read in several places about the 10% rule, i.e take no more than 10% of your bankroll to the table. And indeed Annie Duke reckons it should be 5-8%. But anyway, I figured that was a bit strict for my tiddly playing bankroll so I was happy to start at the $0.10-$0.20 tables with a $20 maximum buy-in. I know this is 20% of my bankroll but so what? It's not as though the $100 I have in my account is all the poker cash I have, it's just all I had in there at the time. Plus, as always, I like to make the mistakes I am going to make as cheaply as possible so why not put in the hours at tables such as $0.10-$0.20 and build up from there?

I've only played a couple of sessions and I am pleased to say it's going well. I feel good playing too, which is always a bonus. And it's reflected in my play. I have got my steals working at a good frequency and playing tight aggressive poker.

I have also decided that as this is the start of a new poker journey for me I should take it seriously and do what I know I should do and always struggle to - concentrate on the game and take notes on my opponents. That means not reading the forum between hands (too often - and I must confess I am in the middle of a poker session as I write this so it's not all going fully to plan just yet) and not writing VBA or playing with my betting spreadsheets. Watch the action and try and build up a picture of how each player is playing.

I'll hopefully update this thread every now and then with progress to date and maybe a few stats along the way.

PS I just took a guy of 80% of his stack with AQo while writing those last few lines :D

[mathare]

Lost a big portion of my stack to KdKc when holding AdAh.

I raised, a guy re-raised and I re-raised once more. He calls and we see a ragged flop (2h 6h 7c). I bet $5 into a pot of around $6.50 and he goes into the tank, invoking his time bank. Then comes the all-in. I'll have some of that I think and call quickly.

Now this is the annoying bit. The Laddies software doesn't flip your cards when there can be no more betting so someone can go all in and muck on you if they lose. I hate that. Anyway...

River came Kh and the river dropped 9s and he swept in the pot before I'd even seen the river. My hand was auto-mucked so he never saw it.

He asked if I had AA, I told him I had AK but I reckon he can check the hand history and see what I had. I think. And if he did put me on AA he must have known he was a 4/1 underdog in the hand but I guess he just couldn't lay 'em down. Unfortunately for me :(

I've stolen a few pots since that to get my stack back to about 75% of my starting stack

[mathare]

Fought back close to level before the table started to break up. I could have finished a few dollars but instead finished just over $1 down after trying to force the game and trying to run over a couple of players that wouldn't have it after we went short-handed. I didn't adapt to the reduced number of players and that cost me a bit. Like I said earlier though, make the mistakes cheaply...

[mathare]

I keep thinking back to that AA v KK hand and whether I could have played it differently.

I raised a pretty standard amount from early position, around 3-4xBB I think (I don't have the hand history available at present to confirm that). I got re-raised from the other side of the table. It wasn't a big re-raise, I know that much. I re-raised more than the minimum to bring it up to $3 and he called.

Here's my first concern - was my re-raise enough?

Looking back on it I am quite happy with it. I have AA and have shown strength. When I have shown down cards they have been good cards and I have been playing tight. Sure, I've made a few late position steals but this is early position. I think I look strong here. I get raised, and now I know what he had I think this is a decent enough move although I may have raised more had I been him. But he 'only' has KK so what would he do if an A hits the flop. His raise is probably OK. But my re-raise - what of that? I have AA what have I got to fear? I don't want to play a small pot. I have isolated myself against one opponent who is raising into my aces. I want him calling the bet so I am happy with the re-raise to $3.

The flop comes 5-4-7 so it's as ragged as I could have hoped for. Is he playing 86 or 63? I really quite seriously doubt it as he re-raised me and called my subsequent re-raise. Is he playing A or K with an kicker that puts him on a straight draw? Again I doubt it because of the pre-flop action. So I bet out $5 into a pot that was around $6.50.

Was this a sensible bet?

I'm not going to check here am I? I've already decided he isn't playing cards that could connect with that flop enough to put him ahead of me. He wasn't afraid to raise pre-flop so I can assume he won't just fold here, and if he does I'll get the pot. So I bet out with a decent continuation bet. It's about the right size for that sort of bet and I figure on him calling, if not raising. I'm good so far.

He goes into the tank and invokes his time bank. That bet has put him to the test. He raises me going all-in for another $15 or so. I know he's not ahead of me in this hand so I have to call and the betting action is over.

Regardless of how the hand turned out did I play it right?

I think I did. I wanted to win his stack off him and by raising me pre-flop I figured I had a good chance to do so if I got a friendly flop. I got what I wanted in that respect and got all the chips in the middle. OK, so the turn screwed me a bit but I still had outs - the two other Aces and any of the remaining hearts. I make that 11 outs on the river. I was just unlucky and that happens. Luck is still part of the game after all.

That hand bothered me a bit last night but I think I played it OK even though I lost a load of chips with it. On another day the King won't come or I'll hit an out on the river and the situation will be reversed but I did what I had planned to do and put myself in a position to take this guy off his entire stack.

[mathare]

I know I'm just talking to myself here buy hey-ho. It helps me and boosts my post count :)

One buy-in burned through inside half an hour this evening. I just ran into a player who was trickier than I thought and hit the cards he needed really. I lost a chunk of chips early on when I played AQ stronger than I should have. I fired a bet in on an average flo and got a call. So I fired again on the turn and he had me beat in the end. He had chips and wasn't afraid to use them. I then suffered a few smaller knocks and finally got whacked holding JJ when this guy's 22 from the BB hit trips on the flop and then turned into a full house on the turn and river.

I reloaded instinctively and then thought: why am I still here? This table is not a simply beatable table and this guy has annoyed me. Not enough to put me off my game really but probably enough to bring my play down a notch from where it was. So I upped and switched tables. Let's see what the new table brings.

On anther note I don't feel as focused as yesterday so maybe that was an omen that I shouldn't be playing...

[vegyjones]

I know I'm just talking to myself here buy hey-ho. It helps me and boosts my post count :)

What a good idea :D

[mathare]

Not my night tonight :(

Three-quarters of my stack gone. AK getting me into a spot of bother from the big blind.

Three callers from a variety of positions and the SB raises to 6xBB. I call with AKo as does one other player from early position. The flop comes 5-A-9 suited. I'm top pair/top kicker with the nut flush draw. SB bets, quite small at around 1/4-1/3 of the pot. I call, the other fella goes all in for just over $6. The SB min raises to around $10 and I am put to a decision as that represents just over half my stack. I think fast and the odds say call. I am on top/top with the nut flush draw and while not getting great odds to call the money can't go much deeper as SB only has around $5 left.

The 7s comes down and the rest of the chips go in the middle, obviously. Then comes Ks and I have made two pair, losing to the SB's flopped trips as he held 9h9c.

I hate AK at times. I know I didn't play it well but that's another one of those hands where either of the remaining aces or one of my flush cards would have seen me right but they just didn't come. For the second day in a row.

I'm less convinced about my play in this hang than in yesterday's AA v KK though. Was I blinded by top/top with the nut flush draw? Were the outs enough? Should I have seen him for a hand and conceded on the flop?

One to think about later I reckon.

[mathare]

According to the hand history for that one the other fella held Ac8s. I was never in particularly good shape there according to the odds calculator on the Cardplayer site. Ah well! :(

[mathare]

Absolute rubbish this evening

Bought in for $20 twice and cashed out with not a lot of it left ($8.88).

I didn't play great all night, I'm not too big to admit that. I didn't feel on my game but I wanted to play because I am in the house by myself and it was a choice between poker, blackjack towards a Paddy Power bonus and working on my betting spreadsheet. I'd had a good session on the Paddy Power blackjack earlier and didn't fancy spreadsheetery this evening so poker got the nod. Plus I was keen to put in the hours at the table, build up my stats more at this level and learn more about NLHE cash games.

Instead I learned how to blow a big chunk of my chip stack - twice.

Looking back at the history for that first session it was downhill all the way. I got bet off AQo when I was playing that too strongly and that was only 7 hands in. Four hands later came a smaller loss when I played a small pocket pair (33) from the button. I thought I had the odds to draw to the full house when two 8s hit the flop but looking back I'm not so sure. I got off that hand anyway without too much of a loss really. AK two hands later gave me a slight boost but 7 hands later it was all over as the remaining half of my starting stack went on those Jacks to the full house. 20 hands, $20. Not an ideal start.

The other session wasn't quite as exciting. I had 4 small-ish wins, two small losses and one killer with AK as I mentioned earlier. I doubled up next hand to bring me back to around half my starting stack for this table but after that it was nearly 50 hands of absolute nothingness.

I'm not at all happy about those sessions this evening. I am sure there were at least a couple of hands in the 50 nothing hands that I could have tried to squeeze a bit back and perhaps I should have played some of the hands I did play differently. But what's done is done.

What I need to do know is mentally file those sessions and move on. I don't want to forget them as that defeats the point. I need to learn from them and then move on. I know I have a tendency to give up on a game after a night like tonight but I can't do that here. The game is not better than me. I just had a bad night at the tables and I can recover. Confidence. Belief.

And playing cards for money, even small stakes like I am now, when I am not on my game is a BIG no-no.

[mathare]

Bit of a change of plan on this already.

My Bet365 account was empty so I have loaded that with £50 and that's my new NLHE bankroll. So it's basically the same as I was trying with Ladbrokes but on a different site, one who use a slightly different version of the Microgaming software and one I prefer actually.

So it's a fresh start and although this won't be a long session tonight (2 hours at the absolute max) I am in a good mood and feeling confident and on top of my game so let's see how it goes. I am taking my time to breathe in the game as John Vorhaus calls it. I've passed up a few steal opportunities already while I learn what will get the table to fold. Meanwhile I am building a tight image hand by hand, something I can exploit later on in the session.

Let's play...

[mathare]

Why do I bother?

Another day, another lousy session at the tables.

Let's first look at the story of the session and then we'll step back and look at the bigger picture shall we?

I was card dead for a lot of this session. 105 hands and I saw only 14.29% of flops. That's tight and then some. I won more than my fair share of hands apparently (12.38%) but most of that was blind stealing from the button or the cut-off, just for fun and because I could really.

There are only three green hands in tonight's Poker Office profit graph:
1) Rivered a jammy straight and won a small pot
2) Flopped top/top and bet it to win a small pot
3) Called with 55 from the SB and bet into 4TT on the flop to win a tiny pot.
My steals don't even register as green on the graph so we can forget them.

And the red, losing hands - 7 of them :(
1) Q8s getting me into trouble when my flopped set runs into a rivered full house - not a big pot that one though
2) A slight loss with 88 when the flop came J high. The hand was played out passively so I lost minimal chips but it's still red on the graph
3) JJ causing my trouble again when the flop contains AKx and I can't seriously call any bet on that flop
4) The biggest loss of the night when I overplayed AQ on a KK575 board and my opponent showed me a King in the showdown
5) A steal attempt with T9 went wrong and cost me a bit
6) Second to last hand and another steal attempt goes wrong. Folder round to SB who raises my BB. I raise back trying to exploit the tight image and get significantly re-raised. A6s is not going to be good enough here so I cut my losses and fold. SB shows me K8o. This was a signal that the table think I can be pushed around and maybe they're right. If I am to stay I need to hand I can play back with to get my confidence back up a bit
7) Last hand, 98s rivers a straight but the river card puts 4 to a flush on the board and of course it's not my suit so I fold to the river bet.

I cashed out with $7.55 from the $20 buy-in. I'm not too chuffed with tonight's performance. Being card dead for too long left me stranded. And so often when I folded junk I find it would have hit the flop, and quite often hit it hard. I hate it when that happens.

So, on reflection, am I making a mistake even playing the game? Is it the right game? Is it the right site? Am I playing the right stakes? Am I playing the right table?

Game - I can play tourney NLHE and have done alright in the SnGs recently. But perhaps the cash game isn't for me. I don't know how to tell really, short of playing a hell of a lot more until it makes or breaks me.
Site - I know not all sites are equally good but no site is going to be full of tables so soft and squishy that I can stomp all over them are they?
Stakes - Am I playing high enough? A strange question to ask when you're losing but am I trying to make moves against players no sophisticated enough to spot them? Am I not trying hard enough because there's not enough at stake? No, and no, I think. I'm not trying to get too tricky on anyone, just tricky enough to avoid being predictable. And I have said all along I want the mistakes to be as cheap as possible so I have no plans to jump the stakes.
Tables - much of the poker literature bangs on about table selection but online the table can go loose to tight in the space of a few hands as the players change. So you can watch a table for half an hour and see it play one way only to sit down and have the table total change on you so I don't really give table selection much credit.

Am I just running bad and everything will come good again in time?

In the last two days I have played exactly 200 hands and seen only 39 flops. I've had 10 showdowns and won only 3 of them. That's not right. I've lost $43.57 in that time too.

Statistical blip or is this game just not for me? One to sleep on I think but instinct tells me I need to keep playing. If I lose my Bet365 bankroll then so be it. £50 ain't that much to learn whether or not I can play NLHE and if it is heading that way I reckon on bailing out before the full bankroll is gone. Maybe I need to go back to limit cash games - I was at least winning there even if it was below the expected rate for a decent player (expected rates run about 1xBB/hour, I was on 0.81xBB/100 hands so around 0.65xBB/hour). We'll see as time goes on I guess.

[mathare]

I have a plan - sort of.

Get at least 1000 hands of NLHE cash game poker under my belt and then see where I stand.

I'll look back at the cards I have had and see whether I have been running hot, cold or about average so I have a context to put my results in. If I am running hot and losing badly then the game really isn't for me. If I have been card dead for too long and am losing badly then it's not a definite no-no. Similarly a good set of results from bad cards is a good sign and good results from good cards is fairly inconclusive.

At the end of the day I can always go back to multi-tabling limit hold'em.

[mathare]

Get at least 1000 hands of NLHE cash game poker under my belt and then see where I stand.

New plan - play 491 hands of NLHE in cash games and then give up because it's not for you. Let's have a quick check of the Poker Office database and would you believe it, 491 NLHE hands played at $0.10-$0.20 so it's time to give up.

And do you know what - this plan feels 100% right.

I'm not going to dissect tonight's session in detail - I lost again and that's all that really matters at the end of the day. And I got the cards this evening too so I can't blame that. But one hand made me see the light:

I had AA cracked by KQ that hit two pair on the flop, filled up on the river and cost me around half my original buy-in. That's when I realised that I can't get good enough reads on my opponent and that's what I need in NLHE cash games. I suspected a K or a Q, or maybe drawing to a straight. But the mistake in calling a decent all-in raise cost me a lot of chips. And that's when I thought - why are you playing no limit when you know deep down you're a limit player for cash games? And that's exactly how it is. That hand would have cost me one or two big bets in limit, not half my stack.

With SnGs it's different as the rising blinds mean it becomes about the right move at the right time more than the right move against the right opponent. I can play NLHE SnGs it seems but I can't convert that success to cash games so I shouldn't even try any more.

Making the decision to ditch NHLE and go back to limit hold'em was so easy to make and felt so right. It was a proper moment of clarity and I know it is the right move. I tried NLHE cash games - they're not for me so move on. I guess I had to try it, and in some respects limit hold'em is seen as the wimp's version of the game. Men play NLHE and you're not a proper poker player unless you make a profit at NLHE. Is that the case? Then I'll stick with limit hold'em because I know I can beat that.

So it's back to multi-tabling $0.50-$1 tables for me, which means a change of site again as the action on those tables on Bet365 and Ladbrokes is almost non-existant. So it'll be Victor Chandler or Party/Empire Poker for me for a while now. I'll use B365 and Laddies for NLHE SnGs still but not cash games, not any more.

Which gives me a bit of a problem? I have found this talking to myself business a real help in getting my head straight during/after poker sessions and I would like to continue with it. But it is supposed to be about NLHE cash games, as the title suggests. So a new thread or change the title? My preferred option is to expand the scope of the thread and use it to straighten my thoughts on other forms of gambling as well as poker, such as my casino bonus hustling. I have also been doing some work to resurrect my diary that I used to run so I could include that sort of thing in here as well. So I reckon in due course I will move this thread to a different area of the forum and rename it. It can be my gambling blog henceforth known as my gamblog. :D

Yeah! That all feels so right.

[mathare]

So I had my first session of limit hold'em under the new plan this evening.

I started by opening a load of tables on Party and Victor Chandler and letting Poker Office run the rule over those while I had my tea. The plan was to come back and sit at a semi-loose/loose table and play tight, solid poker and make a profit that way. Except I realised I wasn't getting the table stats properly from Party so after my tea I scrapped all those and switched focus to the VC tables. Then I cocked up and closed Poker Office and lost the table stats :splapme so in the end I just put my name on the waiting list for all 10 seater $0.50-$1 tables. I was only going to play one table at once tonight as I wanted to write some VBA at the same time. Anyway, I got myself seated and off we went...

Not much exciting happened for the first hour or so really. I played a few hands, lost a few chips, won a few chips back and that was it really. Limit poker is just about the grind rather than the big swings and great bluffs and laydowns. Poker Office was giving me the pot odds etc at all times so I knew where I was all the time and just played it straight and by the book. Looking at the session details I seem to have got myself into a bit of trouble with TT but nothing else seems to have gone too wrong. And by the end of the first hour I was about back where I started after winning 4 hands on the trot with AKo, T6s (blind steal), J7s (a blind steal that flopped trips) and QTo (a deliberately loose play that won the small pot on the flop).

I then accidentally closed Poker Office again when trying to get rid of some of the extra tables I had open so the rest of the evening is in a new session but that's no bad thing as it coincides with a bit of a change in thinking. Twice.

At the start of the second session this evening I lost focus and started to play strangely. My focus was elsewhere I think otherwise I cannot see why I played some of the starting hands I did. Anyway my stack went up and down and at once stage was down around $15 from the starting point of $50 this evening.

But then poker sense kicked in and I glanced at the table stats and compared them to my stats. I was playing too passively after the flop but nice tight-aggressive poker beforehand. But the rest of the table were playing tight too and the percentage of people seeing the flop had dipped to around 20% while my own percentage of flops seen was around 22%. I was going with the flow rather than against it so I loosened up and started to raise several hands in a row with any suited paint and almost any cards in position when I was first into an unraised pot. I stole a few blinds before a few people cottoned on and I got callers. The thing is I also had cards then and won a few good hands, only folding the really poor hands. Loosening up had turned the session around and done me the world of good. It was the change of gear I needed and it surprised the rest of the table who were playing like proper rocks.

The end result - I finished up $4.20, which is hardly a sum worth writing home about and won't exactly pay the bills but it's a start and that's all I was after. Softly, softly, catchee mon(k)ey after all. One big bet an hour is an average win rate for limit hold'em supposedly. I was running at nearly double that tonight so I can't complain.

My starting requirements were all over the place at times though. Calling in early position with KQo :errrm Raise or fold 'em, son. I need to adapt back to limit hold'em still but I'll get there and soon I will be ready to start multi-tabling again. All the action you crave just over several tables so you're still playing tight-aggressive poker. And Poker Office tells you all you need to know superimposed on the table such as your pot odds, how loose your opponent is, how often he raises pre-flop and how often he sees the turn having seen the flop. And also how he's running this session. I made moves against some (relatively) big losers this evening I wouldn't have made againsr players who were winning and vice versa also. If a guy has lost $15 of his $20 buy-in he's going to lose the other $5 too so you're less likely to bet him off a hand if he has any part of it. May as well go for $20 as for $15. But if he's $15 up then he wants to keep those chips he's won. He earned those and doesn't want to end the session with no profit to show for it so he can be pushed around, as much as you can push people around in limit hold'em.

I feel good after that session. The poker took a back seat for much of the evening, as one table of limit hold'em at that level can and still produce a win. But I'm back in the game!

[mathare]

After some pestering by Betfair I have relented and given their poker client another go. I used to play here on and off when I was first starting out in online poker two or three years back. I looked in every now and again to see what they were up to, especially when they would e-mail to say they had changed something. And now I am playing in one of their daily WSOPE freerolls and I have to say the poker client is rubbish!

It looks tacky and the lobby can't even get the correct information displayed at all times. I am displaying the lobby for this tourney and it says:

• Prize Pool $0 - it's $100 plus 9 seats to a WSOPE final qualifier tourney
• 10 seats in the WSOPE $250k giveaway up for grabs for players who generated 100 BFP - no, it's a freeroll with 9 seats up for grabs and no conditions on entry
• Blinds would go up every 15 minutes - they go up every 5 minutes

Add to that the fact that it looks tacky, isn't compatible with Poker Office and just smacks of a DIY effort rather than going with one of the big networks/providers. I'm not impressed and won't be playing here for money

[mathare]

Well that's that pointless waste of time over and done with. I lasted 25 minutes, got dealt 22 hands and played 3 of them. I got one freebie out the BB, I made up the blinds from the SB in an unraised pot because the pot odds were good and shoved UTG with AQo with only around 5xBB left and the blinds set to increase again. The flop wasn't kind, the turn and river were no help either and I exited in 748th out of 1635 players.

And the Betfair software still gets on me nerves. It really is quite amazingly rubbish and amateur-looking.

I'll play some cash games on a proper site after my tea.

[mathare]

On the off chance that anyone is reading this I'd really appreciate some tips on loosening up, bearing in mind I'm playing limit hold'em much of the time now.

I'm a tight player by nature and I reckon on seeing maybe 20-21% of flops but the thing I am encountering on Party Poker a lot these days is similarly tight players. So if the table is tight I want to play a bit looser and swim against the tide as it were. But how do I loosen my play up properly?

I don't want to be in there with T3o and trash like that but what do I want to be in a pot with to play looser? Is any suited Ace now playable? What about the so-called 20s (A9, KJ, QT etc., any hand with a blackjack value of 20), are they good to add to my starting hands?

I already play suited connectors in position and strong hands. I try to play pocket pairs in almost any position but I won't generally play small pairs (66 and lower) into a raised pot from early/mid position.

As I naturally tight player in a game where you generally can't steal a pot with a late raise (he says as he raises with 83s on the button and steals the blinds) I look at most hands and immediately think fold. But what hands do you loose players look at and think "yeah, I could play that"?

[presto]

i play 44% of flops :)

so if you want to loosen up:

play all pairs - only cheap if they are low, (a low set is very profitable).
all suited Aces, (chasing the nut flush is cheaper in limit - if implied odd's are ok)
play all suited connectors, any position. - i don't play limit but would have thaught your going to get more chances to catch cards without being priced out (unlike no limit).
i usually play 20's.

throw in random crap like 5-7 (cheap) - if you hit the flop nobody can put you on a hand and you can take a big pot, always bluff it - if you win show your bluff to loosen up your image.
(that may just be a sharkfish tactic though :D )

[mathare]

Cheers Presto. That's the sort of thing I wanted.

Although after last night I was wondering if poker was the game for me. I've been having some dodgy sessions recently and I am a bit down on the game. I can't decide whether I am just not giving the game enough care and attention and just playing for the hell of it, playing badly or being unlucky.

I need to sit down and go back over my Poker Office stats and see a more accurate picture of things. But at the minute I have thrown my toys out of the pram and gone off poker. I don't see the point of playing and losing.

[mathare]

Bit better this evening

I started with one $0.50-$1 limit table kinda in the background while I was working on something else. When that was done about 45 minutes later I fired up a second table at the same limits to keep my brain engaged better.

Did that work?

It did, mostly, yes. I was on Party which lets you easily tile multiple tables so the two tables I was sat at occupied the top half of my screen with either my browser or a spreadsheet behind them showing in the bottom half of the screen. This mostly kept my focus on poker and not on surfing the web or playing with my spreadsheets so I was quite pleased with that. I think I could easily handle one more table though and perhaps two in time. I'll stick to two tables for now until I get back into the limit swing of things and then bump it up to three and see how that goes.

I'll be the first to admit I got lucky on a couple of key hands this evening. Well, I say lucky, people weren't playing the hands I thought they would be so is that luck or skill? Four-straights and four-flushes were hitting the board and no-one was connecting with them and top two pair or a set would often win the hand. Fortunately I hit enough hands like that to show a good profit in one session and only a slight loss in the shorter session.

I saw about 25% of flops in both sessions and I didn't feel too loose so that's good. Whether this is about the figure to aim for I don't know. I thought about Party tables more last night and this morning and wondered whether I just need to play my normal tight game rather than force myself into an unfamiliar loose style. Maybe I was trying to play a loose game that I don't know too well and can't play too well so rather than playing tight and well I was playing semi-loose and poorly. That's certainly possible based on last night's play. Tonight was much more me and my normal style, as it needs to be if I am multi-tabling and that was part of the reason for multi-tabling tonight - to force me into my usual style of limit poker. And it's an experiment I will continue with.

I have a new plan - the umpteenth for this thread already . The new plan is to get to either $100 profit from the tables I am playing now or 5000 hands. Maybe both - the plan is still quite flexible. I'm on 3100 hands and $23.08 profit at this level. When I reach one of those milestones depending on how I am standing at the time and how it feels I may mix a $1-$2 in as one of the tables when I play two at once. So one $0.50-$1 and one $1-$2 table. The plan hasn't extended as far as whether to stick with Party or not. At the minute I just need to build up some loyalty points to unlock a bonus they gave me. I'm over halfway there I reckon. After that, who knows? I'd like to go where the tables are loose so my tight play is more likely to profit. That said I hate people connecting with nothing flops and making a hand to beat my big pocket pairs and confidence seems to be a big part of my game at the minute. When I feel good and feel confident I play better.

No doubt I'll be back with a new plan soon

That may be it on the poker front for a few days. I have a home game tourney at a mate's over in Kent on Saturday, followed by a cash game but that's just a bit of fun really. Not sure I will get chance to play again before then but a good boost this evening going into that live game.

[Profit Seeker]

Cash games scare the hell out of me. I've very rarely had a mess about on lowest possible limit stuff and apart from getting bored out my pants I always found that being a newcomer I got all the cards, made an easy pofit then ran off an hour later, but I know it wouldn't stay like that at all, hence running away and not coming back for a long time. I'm quite happy being a seemingly natural genius at tournament play, it's easy enough winning with the cards in my favour but feels great pulling a cheeky move with nothing, my timing is usually impeccable and it all comes through instinct and chi being focused on one table at a time, forget all this way over the top analysing and software trialling, just use your instincts.

[mathare]

There we go - this is now officially a gamblog :)

And to celebrate I'll start with some non-poker news. There is good and bad news today so let's begin on a cheery note.

Coral are one of several casinos that offer a monthly loyalty bonus and I realised the other day that I hadn't claimed this month's and £25 for nowt is not to be sniffed it if you ask me. OK, so the EV is only around £22 but let's not split hairs on this one. Anyway, I played my usual blackjack game for a couple of hours this evening and after staking £626 the bonus was mine. I even staked a quid more than I needed to to get the bonus - who said I'm a casino bonus abuser? :D And even better than the fact that I got £25 free was the fact that I won a little bit too so the bonus was actually worth £30 if you want to think of it in those terms. And a whole new month starts tomorrow so I could do it all again then if I wanted.

And now the bad news - the horses. I got properly today by the damn donkeys. Or at least that is how it felt. I lost around £150 all told and bearing in mind I have been winning £100+ for the past few days and £200+ the other day I can't bitch about it too much. Gambling is about taking the rough with the smooth and building banks steadily. This month some of mine have rocketed so I should be really happy. And overall I am as this month has been my best by a long way. Maybe it's just the stage I am at in my gambling career with bigger banks and what have you but this month's bottom line is around double my previous best month.

To give you an idea where I am with my staking and banks I would still class myself as a small-time gambler. My banks are building though and I reckon on each day netting me around £100 or costing me about £100 depending on how the results go for me. Yeah, I'd say around £100 a day is my average profit/loss at the minute. That's a nice figure for me to have in mind certainly. I don't get excited about profits less than £100 and similarly don't worry about daily losses less than that.

I'm hoping in the next few days to start putting more meaningful figures in this gamblog. I am still working on the code behind my spreadsheet to get it to produce the figures I'd like to publish, things like daily SR, overall SR, profit/loss expressed as a number of base bets for both each day and overall, margins over SP, that sort of thing. Once I have knocked the code up and got it producing some decent HTML I will start putting the figures in here for all my major banks, which just happen to be the W2W systems. Hopefully having the figures staring back at me from this gamblog as well as my spreadsheet will help focus me as well as give you lot an idea of how the systems are running for me. My main concern at the minute is that each such entry in this gamblog will be rather large so I need to sit down and work out exactly what figures I do want to show for each system. Maybe the total number of bets to date, strike rate, profit/loss in BB and overlay/overbet is sufficient rather than giving daily or monthly figures also. I'll give it some thought anyway.

But tonight the coding continues...

[Merlin]

Nice Blog , Mat.....nice to read......

[mathare]

Nice Blog , Mat.....nice to read......

Thanks Merl. It helps me a lot to write things down, not just with gambling but with everything really. It organises my thoughts so much better and makes things much clearer for me. I'm hoping this blog helps me keep my betting in focus and helps me spot my strengths and weaknesses better. And by mixing in the casino betting and poker I hope it makes it more of an all-round read than my previous diaries have been as they were basically just tables of numbers.

[Win2Win]

Due to the fact I hadn't played poker since night racing started, when I fired up BET365 & Partypoker, bith of them gave me free money to start playing again, so thanks for the $50....will be useful to build up my banks even more, completely forgot I had around £2000 in the accounts.

[Win2Win]

Nice Blog , Mat.....nice to read......

Better than that Merl's waffle eh?

[mathare]

completely forgot I had around £2000 in the accounts.

You need to update your spreadsheets/betting records to display your bookie/exchange balances like I do :wink

[Win2Win]

You need to update your spreadsheets/betting records to display your bookie/exchange balances like I do :wink

Easy to forget loose change though eh?

[mathare]

Just played a bit of limit hold'em again. I have been continuing to work on the code that is producing the stats I want for this blog and while that is processing I wanted something to do so figured I may as well play a bit of poker.

A very mixed session really. I played my normal game of tight-aggressive poker but I am starting to get the feeling I am perhaps too passive post-flop. That's certainly what Poker Office seems to think anyway. Overall for $0.50-$1 limit it has be tagged as tight aggressive (pre-flop) - neutral (post-flop). But looking at the detailed stats I am upping my pre-flop aggression but I think my post-flop aggression is waning, especially on the river. Something to be aware of there for future sessions.

It was an 87 hand session today lasting an hour and a quarter so the hand rate was reasonable. I lost a few hands in the first third of the session and at my lowest point was $10 down. I then went on a bit of a run and brought myself back level before AJo got me into a bit of trouble. But I ran up my stack to be a tad under $10 up a few hands from the end before 55, 66 and KQ in four hands cost me a bit and put me back to where I started, more or less. It was then that I decided to uncheck the 'Auto post blinds' checkbox and see out the round. I got 55 under the gun on my last hand, a hand I would um and ahh over and sometimes play in that position and sometimes now. If I was going to play I'd be in for a raise and drop below my starting stack. Not that that should matter as it's really all one long session broken into stages isn't it? But I folded and the board came A8Q so I think I was well off out of it. So I could have been $10 down, I could have been $10 up but instead I finished $0.45 up after 87 hands and 77 minutes. But the money isn't important - getting back into the swing of limit poker is the important thing here. Remembering that pod odds are king and that unless you're sure you're beaten folding on the river is usually a bigger mistake than calling because of those pot odds.

It's an NLHE tourney for me tonight but it's a home game (albeit an away fixture for me as it's over in Crayford, Kent) so it's more about the beer than the cards a lot of the time. And the tourney will be followed by a few hours of dealer's choice cash games and I tend to do alright there, especially when wild cards are introduced for some reason.

[mathare]

I said the other day that a profit or loss under £100 doesn't matter to me and I only bother with results outside that range. Well I guess that means I need to celebrate Saturday's results as I made over £250

It was the flat combo bank that sparked the celebration as that bank went up over £300 yesterday. I had a slight loss on the other systems and lays overall but nothing worth writing home about. But 6 winners from 7 bets, two of them at double stakes and some at very nice odds makes for happy days

Or does it? I have to admit that my flat combo bank has left me in a slightly uncomfortable position - the stakes are much higher than I am used to and as I sit here before the start of racing on Sunday I am a little nervous about the bets I have to place in the coming hours. One of the flat combo bets is a triple-staker so the best part of £70 is going on one horse. That's a lot of money and way larger than bets I usually place. One of the lay systems I do is at £4 fixed stake 11.0 cut-off so could cost me £40 but that doesn't happen very often so I am not used to seeing potentially big losses from one horse. My other backing stakes vary from around 40p on the System Banker to just over £11 on the Michael Stoute system. I have lays with max liabilities of £30 and £40 and dutching is £27 per race when I do it. So this flat combo bet today is a little scary.

Don't get me wrong, my staking is all under control and in line with the banks etc etc etc. I am not chasing losses and placing big bets because I need to try and claw some money back from the layers, not at all. The bank has soared recently and my stakes have gone up accordingly but I am not used to these sorts of stakes and I find it more than slightly unnerving. Of course this is something I will need to get used to as my banks grow but when you first start placing bets like this it can be a little scary. Obviously I hope that one day stakes like this will be on the small side of normal but that day is many years away yet.

Here's to a good Sunday, hopefully.

Oh yeah, the poker home game. There should have been 6 of us but only 5 made it, and one of those was quite late and was being blinded away. I played tight enough and smart enough when it got really short-handed to get heads-up and should have finished the eventual winner off on two occasions but the cards had other ideas. He went all in blind from the big blind when we were down to three and he was very short-stacked so I pushed all-in behind him when I saw my ATo to push out the small blind. That worked and the BB turned over 32o. Oh yeah! But he paired his 3 and doubled through. And then when we got heads-up I went all-in with KT and got called by his QT I think it was. He rivered the miracle card he needed and doubled up again and a few hands it was all over when his K8 stood up against my Q5. The buy-in was a tenner and I got £15 for second and then lost £10 playing some very poor cash game poker. So I made a slight loss on the night but it was good experience again and good to see everyone and finally get some live poker in for the first time in a long while.