kentuckyfriedcruelty.com

Tuesday 29 April 2008

GTA IV

I have decided I will probably never be a long term winner at poker, so I'm gonna tone down my play for a bit and try to play a lot less. Thankfully I received Grand Theft Auto IV for my PS3 in the post today so I am going to have something to keep me occupied for a good while, can't wait to play this game the hype has been unreal and apparently completely justified!

On Thursday night, I had £200 left of my roll, I got it up to £300+ playing £2/£5 then lost it all, then a further £100, then £100 then £100 then a last £100 before I went to bed at about 3:30am £600 poorer and text work to say I wouldn't be coming in the next day; miserable. Since then however I have managed to win £200 of the £400 I lost from my bank back, and I get at least £200 in rakeback on Thursday so I will withdraw this too at least putting me even with my bank but I won't have much of a roll if at all, but I'm not really bothered.

So I don't think I will play as much, and certainly won't be touching the higher levels, I just can't afford to lose at these levels, and losing a few min buy ins doesn't necessarily mean I am crap, it's just too much for me to afford seeing as I earn about £900 a month after tax :-(

I will probably play a few £20 multis here and there and hope for a big score, and at least get more poker for my money, but I think I will be playing far less. I played a €20 multi the other day; top 5 got paid and I was 2nd with 6 left and still came 6th, this is how: I am 2nd and raise big when folded to me on the button with 77. The BB who is tilting like mad makes the call and pushes the 8c 8 10c flop which I snap call cos I knew he would do this cos he has been pulling this stop and go all the time, also I still had a lot of chips if he wins the hand. He shows 95c for the flush draw and hits on the turn. The very next hand I raise up AQs and the BB pushes all in, I have him covered and again snap call, he shows A10d, the flop is Q9x and I think I'm safe, of course the turn is a K and when I say no jack no jack it was inevitable that it would come on the river. This really pissed me off and now I'm down to 2K and nearly out, I almost mounted a comeback but it wasn't to be, and it was €400 for 1st, annoying.

Oh well I have booked tomorrow off work to get some quality GTA IV time in, sad I know but I don't care cos this game looks awesome, I also have barely played Call of Duty 4 since I bought it cos I keep prefering to play poker in my spare time ;-p. Seeing as I don't have to get up early I might play the £20 NTX on crypto, who knows!

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Jazzy

I'm bored at work so I decided to muck about and jazz up the colour of my blog a bit, it kinda hurts the eyes but fuck it, I'll change it up again another time. I have been playing a bit and have withdrawn the £500 I put in the other day and have also withdrawn a further £320 leaving myself with a roll of about £325.

My plan was buying into £0.50/£1 with £50 each time and was having good success. On Monday night however I played for too long and started to get bored and very very loose, topping up my buy in and seeing lots of flops. I went up and down and this culminated in me losing a £340+ pot with something like 56d to AA where all the money went in on the turn where I mis read him for AK he played it well. If I can find the hand history at home I might post the hand. I had started the night with £585 (this was before withdrawing the £300 but after the £500) after this tilty session I was down to £175 so at about 1:30am I joined £2/£5 with the lot.

A few hands in it's folded to me on the button and I make it £17 with J8c which seemed to be the standard table raise. The BB re raised to about £52 and of course I call. The flop comes J 7 2 or something and he sticks me all in, hoping he has AK or 1010 etc, and not really caring, I of course call and he shows QQ. However the poker gods were shining down on me and I rivered another J to double up to about £300 - one card away from having no roll, phew! Shortly after the same opponent raised to £17 from UTG and I called on the button with 55 and the big blind called also. The flop was a pleasing 5 10 7 with 2 diamonds. BB checks, original raiser bets £35 or something, I raise it up big to about £110, BB folds, original raiser thinks then pushes which is exactly what I wanted. I insta call and he shows Q10s, the turn was a Q and the river a 10!!!! Just kidding, it went blank blank and the fishy doubled me up again to £600! All this in about 20 mins of being in this room.

A bit earlier as it was getting late I had said to myself the next time I hit a set or get back up to £600 I will go to bed cos I hadn't hit a set in like 100 pocket pairs. Well this hand which was my first and only pocket pair in this £2/£5 room not only gave me a set but also got me back up to £600 and it was like 2am so I took this as a sign to count my blessings and leave which I did.

Yesterday I withdrew the £320 like I said and played a bit of $2/$5 before going out, winning $60. I cant be arsed to grind with this £325, I'll most likely buy in half stack to £1/£2 and $2/$5 and attempt some sort of spinnage so I'll either bust it all or make a nice sum. In future I think I am going to withdraw more. Like if I get to £1000 then withdraw £500 and carry on from there because the amount of times I have won a decent amount then lost it is ridiculous so if I was to keep withdrawing I would have something to show for it at least. Good luck at the tables and Jack, when is SAPS night?!

Friday 18 April 2008

Playing again

I took out a £500 overdraft and deposited it onto Inter last night. I started by playing 2 tournaments costing £55 combined and got close but no cigar in both. I played some £0.25/£0.50 and started well but ended up losing a bit. In annoyance I short stacked £1/£2, bust a couple of times then built a £100 stack into £300+ which was cool. I also decided to min buy in £2/£5 and turned my £100 into just over £400 then left. Feeling crazy, I railed bluescouse for a bit watching him short stacking £5/£10, he span £200 into £2500 pretty quickly! So I thought it would be fun to sit next to him, I sat with £400 and got dealt AA in my very first hand but annoyingly on this loose table everyone folded. I only stayed in this room for about 8 hands altogether I got a bit scared and left with the exact same £400 I bought in with! Total profit for last night was about £275. I will withdraw the original £500 as soon as I hit £1000. Might take some more shots at £2/£5, might just play £0.50/£1, who knows! Fun to be playing again.

Sunday 13 April 2008

Update

I'm gonna try and do all this from memory so it might not all be 100% accurate. Starting with how I lost my roll. Welllllll its kinda funny really in a sick way. The roll was approaching £1300 but I had taken a few hits and it was on something like £1,060. This happened from 6 tabling and constantly topping up my stack to maximum in all rooms if I lost a pot, this all adds up cos there was a lot of sick pot losing going on! All the usual nasty crap kept missing the flop bad beats probably playing bad and too loose too etc etc. Playing 6 tables might not have been the best idea!

Anyway I played another night plus a couple of multis and pretty much the same shit happened till my roll was at about £860! I took a break and played some Tekken online, now I'm usually pretty good but I got my arse kicked! This really pissed me off so I logged back on in a bad mood and searched around for a table to play. I noticed someone sitting in $5/$10 Fixed Limit heads up room with $200 so I decided it would be an excellent idea to play a game in which I have no clue about the strategy and that is about 50 times above my bankroll. I managed to get him down to $60 quickly winning with hands like middle pair etc. I had watched a bit of FL before and knew that sometimes rubbish hands were good at showdown. Easy money I thought this guy is a fish. How wrong was I, he topped up and proceeded to beat me in pot after pot after pot, so many times he would raise me on the turn with absolutely nothing and hit on the river, gutshot, over card whatever it was so so so so sick! Anyway I dropped about £760 in about 40 mins to this guy, I knew I was gonna lose it all yet I couldn't come out of the room, I literally could not stop myself, like some form of self punishment or something I couldn't be happy till I lost the lot, wtf is wrong with me?! I somehow left with about $200 left and played in £1/£2 HU with the whole £97 knowing I would probably lose it all. Someone sat with the same amount as me and I quickly lost it. It was all i could do to not reach for the deposit page instantly, luckily he left however and I wrote that post feeling like shit and went to bed in a depressed mood.

However it's not like I was gonna quit or anything so I deposited £300 and played £0.50/£1 the next day I think! Well I won about £170 so I withdrew the £300 and played with that. One night I went on a sick run starting with £50 and leaving on about £370. The roll was back up to about £570 in just a couple of days. However the next day I lost it all bar £75 with some sick coolers like Q high flush vs K high flush on a 3 diamond board with A of diamonds showing. Lost when I accidentally raised 23s to £5 - flop came J 2 3 turn 9 river 3 - he had 99 obv my pot bet on the flop wasn't enough. Well it started with coolers such as that then turned to tilt, the only reason I managed to salvage my last £74 was because my friend literally wouldn't shut up till I logged off, I could not leave! Something in my head was making me stay till I lost it all it's chemical I swear - I need help!

Anyway the next day I got home from work and lost it quickly. Since then I have been depositing and not winning. Playing lots of heads up with no roll trying to spin and failing, sigh. My bank account now reads £0.00, however I do get paid on Wednesday, not good though is that I have already lost about £150 of my shit wage because I deposited money when my bank did that thing when transactions temporarily sort of reverse allowing me to spend the money but its not really there, sounds weird I know. Not really sure where to go from here, I should probably quit I can't keep hold of a roll, thing is I'm addicted and I have shown I can win money at this game, I just don't have the right mind for it and something takes over when I tilt that I just can't control. I will probably go on with the same win/bust cycle however until that huge tourney win I know is coming lol. If all else fails I can always get an overdraft again. Aarrgh irontwat!

Oh yeh someone came into my heads up room yesterday to say he reads my blog! I didn't think anyone read it really so that was cool, he's a good player too I have played him before, so shout out to royalfire - donate me some buy ins sometime mate eh?

Friday 4 April 2008

Bust

Fuck! It was probably always gonna happen, guess I'm not cut out for this poker lark I just can't control myself. All those hours of work in the last couple of weeks gone to waste. Fuck life I'm mega depressed right now.

Tuesday 1 April 2008

Grinding away

I have played a few sessions recently and have started to get to grips with multi tabling. I have been playing 6 tables maximum using crypto's 'proview' mode which took some getting use to but I am getting better at doing it. It means I play tighter because you need to fold so many hands as I still find it a little tricky when I am dealt 3 or 4 good hands at once, hit the flop and try to work out how best to play the hands all at once! I still have not played higher than $50 or £25 and I am very proud of this despite being slightly tempted last night....

My roll was £960 at the start of last night and I decided to have a 'quick' session of heads up play at about 9:30. I dropped a buy in to some guy who said he was on a train in Belgium and had to change trains! So I changed rooms to someone who had a $270 stack in $50NL. Things just went awful against this guy, starting when I stacked off with a turned middle two against a flopped top 2. There were so many set up hands and it felt like I couldn't win a thing, he kept pushing pre flop to my raises and I kept calling because I was tilting and he kept having the better of it! A $200+ pot really sent me over the edge when I re-raised JJ pre flop and he pushed and I called he had AQ and of course hit not one but 2 aces.

I ended up dropping about 7 or 8 buy ins to this guy before making one back before he left. Most players at this level are pretty useless in the heads up rooms but I gotta give this guy credit he played a blinder and tilted me like a gooden, he also ran like fucking god but hey such is poker. I stayed in this room and opened up another and then I started to run better! In my original room I stacked a couple peeps and got up to $200. In the new room I stacked everyone who sat opposite me including the same person 3 times; my KK held up to AQs AIPF despite the 2 spades on the flop for a $170 pot. My set of 7's held up against the nut flush draw on the flop for another $100+ pot. So at 1am I cashed out of one room with $200 and the other $300 leaving me with a £3 loss for the night, felt like a huge win though! Kinda reminds me why I both shouldn't play heads up, and why I like it so much ;-)

I keep having crazy losses followed by huge wins to make it all back and I just wish I could do the latter and forget the former! On Saturday night I came home semi-drunk from a wedding and got stacked a couple of times, then went on a crazy run turning my £25 into £150 in £25 NL in about an hour! I ended that night break even! I was also playing some $50 PLO spinning up to $150, busting it all, reloading and spinning back up to $130 before leaving lol, gotta try not to play drunk it can be very swingy indeed.

Having said all that though things are most definitely going well, I feel like a proper grinder when I'm sitting there playing 6 tables but I really enjoy it, being rolled allows you to make decent bold plays that often get paid off and I am very comfortable with my game at the moment. The roll is now £957 and I am due rakeback any day now which should take it comfortably above £1000, which has taken me 2 weeks to earn, I hope I can keep up the success, I just wish I could play all day instead of working some boring job!

On a side not I'm gonna add amatay's blog because it is a good read. He just had a bad tilty session which just goes to show that even the most level headed and decent players can blow up and tilt like maniacs, poker is not easy, despite what anyone says.

I wanna say hi to Tom and Jack I know you sometimes read this - we need a home game soon big time, and Tom - start a blog!

Edit: I got £293.20 in rakeback! Far more than I expected, great thing it is! Just played a bit of HU too so the roll is now £1263.69.