When Will This End...

It feels like pure torture at the tables at the moment. I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, and everyone goes through it, but if I can't win at the moment, and I'm going to make a post here, what else is there to say? Maybe some people enjoy to hear that other people are going through a bad run anyway, so they know it's not just them.

Well this 2 month long "torture" is starting to test my patience. I just can't win for shit and I've got to admit it is getting to me. I'm not really losing money, I'm just not making the kind of profit I feel I should be. A couple of hundred quid profit for a months worth of £60 6pak's I can't really class as "going to plan". This following on from a £2k loss the previous month. However, to make sure this isn't just selective memory on my part, and to prove to myself that the reason I'm not winning at the moment is just because I'm running awful, I'm going to start keeping some records.

I think the best way to measure how lucky I'm getting in 6paks is to see how I'm fareing in the pre-flop all ins. Of course there are many many other factors, but I can't really measure them as easily. However, I can easily just write down on a notepad every time I'm all in pre-flop; what hands im up against and if I win or not. This is where I feel I'm getting unlucky at the moment, at the business end of the 6pak's, so I think it will be interesting to see the stats.

So next time I post on here, If I'm still not winning money, instead of just blaming it on me "thinking" I'm not winning anywhere near my fair share of 50/50's, 60/40 shots, etc, I'll have some figures to back it up. Of course I hope thats not the case though, and instead I manage to report back about how fuckin lucky I've become :)! To be backed up by some amazing 50/50 win-rate and a hefty chunk of profit as a result!

If I report back that I'm winning more than my fair share of 50/50's, 60/40's, etc, but still losing, then I guess I'll have to think up some other excuse, rather than keep using this one! I mean, it couldn't just be that I'm playing bad and actually have no edge over the other players, surely not?!

Weekend Standard of Play

Until today I haven't had a chance to play at all really since my last post. But I just had to make a quick post about the standard of play I'm seeing at the moment. A few weeks back when I was struggling to win (and I still am), I was starting to think... maybe I just don't have much of an edge anymore and everyone's getting better. I was starting to question if theres still decent money to be made for me in this game. I soon realised how stupid this was, as I still see just about as much stupid play as I did a couple of years ago. Instead I now realise it's just been a case of me not exactly playing great poker and running pretty awful.

I think the poor standard is especially emphasised at the weekends, for obvious reasons, when more of the part-time newbies come out to play. Today some of the standard I've seen has been absolutely dire and it makes me embarassed to say that I'm down money this past couple of months with players like these in my games.

The best play of the day, has got to be one of, if not THE biggest pet hate of mine in poker. It's when someone folds they're BB to someones all in during a tournement when they're getting such good odds its absolutely impossible to fold. It really pisses me off, especially if I'm the 3rd man late on in a 6pak and the BB folds to an easy call from the short stacks all in. So many times this has happened and you're the one that goes on to finish bloody 3rd because of the stupid play of the BB. Well this is by far the worst I've ever seen ....

Blinds 100/200

BB has about 4k
SB has almost 2k
Im on the button with just 206 chips (I just lost JJ all in vs the BB's A6 but thats not the point).

I move all in on the button and the SB folds (that fold is bad enough), the BB then dwells for about almost the whole time before folding for the extra 6 chips. Firstly he didn't time out. So of course next thing you think is it MUST have been a misclick. But surely a misclick happens when you don't have the table up and it pops up about half way through the timer when it beeps, and not right at the end of the timer. This player had played absolutely abysmally in the few tournements I had played with him in today. This leads me to believe that it was actually a genuine fold and that he was so new to the game he couldn't grasp the concept that he only had 6 more chips to put into the pot from my all in. Pretty funny from my position, but if I was the other guy I would be livid. Unfortunately I didn't go on to cash, but that would have been hilarious if I did.

When someone makes a stupid fold where they are obviously getting great odds it really pisses me off. Of course this was an extreme example, but it happens so much to less of an extent, and is just so annoying for the 3rd party in the game.

Anyway, time to get back to making money (or at least trying to) off the weekend fish. I just had to share this.

Slacking...

The title basically sums up what's happened on my part since my last post (which was a long, long time ago). A lot of slacking. The first instance is obviously a lack of posting on here. I don't want this blog to be the case that I only post when things are going well. People that choose to read blog's will want to hear about the high's and low's, not just selected information. So it's time to start updating regularly again.

I've been meaning to update for quite a while, but just haven't got round to it. The longer I've gone without updating, the more I've just thought; "well it's been 3 weeks since I last updated, a few more days won't make a difference". Initially I didn't update because shortly after my last post our internet screwed up at university, forcing me not to play for a couple of weeks. But I've been back home for 3 weeks now, and really have no excuse for not updating sooner. Finally, I've got round to it!

The second instance of slacking is the same old story of not putting enough hours into the game. Well, that's up until the past week, as I've managed to play a fair bit this week. It's been a pretty unsuccessful week, but at least im playing. In fact, its been a pretty unsuccessful past 2 months. This takes me onto my next case of slacking on my part. This time it's my poker game in general. Everyone thinks they're unlucky when they're losing, and I'm no different. I do still feel I've been pretty damn unlucky this past 2 months, but until the past few days I thought this was just about the only reason I'm struggling to win at the moment. My only other reasoning was that theres a couple of decent players that have started playing regularly in my 6pak games. However, a few days ago I noticed I really haven't been playing my "A game".

One of the main reasons why I think 6pak's can be so profitable is because a lot of the players don't put enough emphasis on the need to WIN them, and pretty much forget about playing to cash (unless in extreme circumstances like one player only having a couple of hundred chips left in the final 3). It was a pretty easy concept for me to grasp and I didnt understand how so many players played to cash before going for 1st. Well recently I noticed that to an extent I have been one of these people. I guess this is firstly due to expecting to lose any coin flip I enter, and then also being on a losing streak I was just content with getting SOME money back. Both of these reason's are stupid ways of looking at things, so it's back to forgetting what has happened previously, and playing for 1st in every 6pak I play!

The final illustration of how I've been slacking would be failing to keep records of my results. I wanted to record how I fare over the course of the whole of this year, 1st Jan - 31st Dec. It should be pretty interesting at the end for me to look over, and hopefully useful over the course of the year in other ways. January and February went fine, but since then I haven't recorded a thing. I guess I can't be bothered to total up just exactly how much I'm losing, cause I know it won't be a pretty sight!

So far I've started putting the hours in, I've updated this blog (just need to continue doing so now), and I've noticed what I'm doing wrong at the tables, now I just need to address the final point of record keeping. If I can be bothered, I will go back over my game histories and enter all the results I've missed out. It'll be a pretty long process tho!

Right, I guess it's time to get back to the tables and try to win a 50/50. Quite a task in itself at the moment, so once I can master this, maybe I'll be allowed to win the odd tourney here and there...