So there I am, bemoaning my luck and generally considering radically altering my game when suddenly it all clicks…splitting the £50 rebuy at Luton last Wednesday, winning the £20 rebuy outright last Thursday, fifth in the £100 rebuy at the first Triple Bill event on the Friday and second in the P4C at the Western on Sunday. Where all this came from I do not know but the major confrontations began to turn my way and that is of course crucial. With decent festivals coming up at the Western and Walsall within the next month I can now play those events I choose out of last weeks proceeds without dipping into a bankroll that became a little stretched during my barren month of April, where I didn’t win a bean in my live game.
Having considered further the question I posed in the last blog entry as to the correct playing style for the major events, I think the right answer for me has to be evolution not revolution. The revolution option that would see me dancing with the wolves with any two in unraised pots appears to me to be fraught with danger, and likely to be very expensive before it becomes very profitable. I also have to accept that by temperament and disposition I am not a manic aggressive type and I have to find an accommodation between the rock-ish player that history suggests I am and the pragmatic need to acquire chips earlier that suggests a more aggressive style is the way to go against festival fields.
It’s coming though. Without giving away too many trade secrets, mere experience is teaching me the profitable situations and likely scenarios for making moves and withstanding those card dead periods that used to do me so much damage where I would sit at the table inert, passing hand after hand if it was not of premium value. Take this example, which I found satisfying. We are on the bubble of one of last week's events. I have above average chips and am on the big blind and a player ,who I out-chip, raises on the button. I re-raise him all-in with K-2 suited and he immediately passes showing a King. Well of course I just have to flash the King and give it the 'good fold' routine...
On the way back from the Western late last night I began to think about writing this blog entry as I passed M1 J11 which is the junction for Luton. It then struck me that my life has come a fair way in the only eighteen months since I first set foot in the Grosvenor there, which is a fifteen minute drive from my house.
Back then my life was in turmoil. It was a few months after the break-up of my marriage and I was a mess. Relations with my ex were at the acrimonious stage and I was having trouble seeing my kids, which upset me greatly. The circumstances of the end of my marriage had left me temporarily as it turned out without much of a support network in terms of friendship and I went to the casino on a complete whim, probably just hoping for an adrenalin rush and to forget, and to avoid another night of telly and dinner on a tray. I was mired in self pity and self loathing. From this example of classic displacement activity and a path to the type of compulsive obsessive behaviour that marred my life when I was younger my life turned in a different direction.
I was sitting playing blackjack when the gentleman next to me asked me if I played Poker. “No,” I said, “I have played a couple of times online and know the rules but that’s about it.” And he went on to explain about that night’s rookie tournament, a £10 rebuy, and said I should give it a go. I was reluctant, really the fears of any rookie... I can’t shuffle, I’ll look like an idiot, how do I deal? However I relented and sat down. What a buzz! I of course didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but the advantage of this was that no one else had a clue what I was doing either! Some hours later I made the final and finished in the top four for a few hundred quid. Thinking it was clearly a mug's game, I went on the Friday too… a £250 freezeout no less… and made the final there too. From then I went four months, playing two or three times a week, without winning a penny and set about reading everything I could about the game in books, forums, magazines and quizzing players who I had become acquainted with at Luton. Part of this was discovering the blonde main site on its first day and I remember cold e-mailing tikay asking, “Are you going to start a forum?” I think he ended up starting a forum!! Not a day goes by now when I don’t make a conscious effort to improve my game by study. It might not suit everyone, but it seems to work for me.
I have now been a winning player for nine of the past ten months, having lost for the previous seven of the previous eight after starting... and there’s a long way to go. Over and above that though, discovering poker has assisted me in getting my life back on track. I’ve renewed friendships with people outside poker, I’ve made long lasting close friendships with many people in poker, particularly on blonde of coursem and I am settled and happy. Would I have been so without poker? Sometimes I doubt it.
Also, not a week goes by when I don’t roar with laughter at what I see within poker. Only on Friday night I am chatting blonde matters with tikay at the Luton Triple Bill. We are constantly interrupted as everyone knows tikay and he has time for everyone as any good celebrity should. Along comes NoFlopsHomer and, as he and tikay say hello to each other, they shake hands and NoFlops bows extravagantly, as if addressing the Queen. I think tikay’s come quite a long way too if he has blondeites prepared to bow to him in front of others….
Finally its 1am on the Uxbridge Road in London…seven of us are searching high and low for a restaurant after the P4C event… I’m driving Colchester Kev, The Jagster and Poppet and londonpokergirl is ferrying thetank and Just Jo around the nether regions of West London near QPR’s ground. Everywhere is closed and we have to settle for a KFC. Thetank is a little worse for wear, doing the involuntary backwards dance so beloved of Glaswegians the world over. Rarely, Kev is sober and bewildered by what he is witnessing and equally bewildered by Mel’s driving.
Tank approaches the counter and is asked
“What would you like?”
His reply:
“What do you bloody think I want? I want CHICKEN!” at the top of his voice.
Where else but through blonde would I have met characters like this?
Having considered further the question I posed in the last blog entry as to the correct playing style for the major events, I think the right answer for me has to be evolution not revolution. The revolution option that would see me dancing with the wolves with any two in unraised pots appears to me to be fraught with danger, and likely to be very expensive before it becomes very profitable. I also have to accept that by temperament and disposition I am not a manic aggressive type and I have to find an accommodation between the rock-ish player that history suggests I am and the pragmatic need to acquire chips earlier that suggests a more aggressive style is the way to go against festival fields.
It’s coming though. Without giving away too many trade secrets, mere experience is teaching me the profitable situations and likely scenarios for making moves and withstanding those card dead periods that used to do me so much damage where I would sit at the table inert, passing hand after hand if it was not of premium value. Take this example, which I found satisfying. We are on the bubble of one of last week's events. I have above average chips and am on the big blind and a player ,who I out-chip, raises on the button. I re-raise him all-in with K-2 suited and he immediately passes showing a King. Well of course I just have to flash the King and give it the 'good fold' routine...
On the way back from the Western late last night I began to think about writing this blog entry as I passed M1 J11 which is the junction for Luton. It then struck me that my life has come a fair way in the only eighteen months since I first set foot in the Grosvenor there, which is a fifteen minute drive from my house.
Back then my life was in turmoil. It was a few months after the break-up of my marriage and I was a mess. Relations with my ex were at the acrimonious stage and I was having trouble seeing my kids, which upset me greatly. The circumstances of the end of my marriage had left me temporarily as it turned out without much of a support network in terms of friendship and I went to the casino on a complete whim, probably just hoping for an adrenalin rush and to forget, and to avoid another night of telly and dinner on a tray. I was mired in self pity and self loathing. From this example of classic displacement activity and a path to the type of compulsive obsessive behaviour that marred my life when I was younger my life turned in a different direction.
I was sitting playing blackjack when the gentleman next to me asked me if I played Poker. “No,” I said, “I have played a couple of times online and know the rules but that’s about it.” And he went on to explain about that night’s rookie tournament, a £10 rebuy, and said I should give it a go. I was reluctant, really the fears of any rookie... I can’t shuffle, I’ll look like an idiot, how do I deal? However I relented and sat down. What a buzz! I of course didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but the advantage of this was that no one else had a clue what I was doing either! Some hours later I made the final and finished in the top four for a few hundred quid. Thinking it was clearly a mug's game, I went on the Friday too… a £250 freezeout no less… and made the final there too. From then I went four months, playing two or three times a week, without winning a penny and set about reading everything I could about the game in books, forums, magazines and quizzing players who I had become acquainted with at Luton. Part of this was discovering the blonde main site on its first day and I remember cold e-mailing tikay asking, “Are you going to start a forum?” I think he ended up starting a forum!! Not a day goes by now when I don’t make a conscious effort to improve my game by study. It might not suit everyone, but it seems to work for me.
I have now been a winning player for nine of the past ten months, having lost for the previous seven of the previous eight after starting... and there’s a long way to go. Over and above that though, discovering poker has assisted me in getting my life back on track. I’ve renewed friendships with people outside poker, I’ve made long lasting close friendships with many people in poker, particularly on blonde of coursem and I am settled and happy. Would I have been so without poker? Sometimes I doubt it.
Also, not a week goes by when I don’t roar with laughter at what I see within poker. Only on Friday night I am chatting blonde matters with tikay at the Luton Triple Bill. We are constantly interrupted as everyone knows tikay and he has time for everyone as any good celebrity should. Along comes NoFlopsHomer and, as he and tikay say hello to each other, they shake hands and NoFlops bows extravagantly, as if addressing the Queen. I think tikay’s come quite a long way too if he has blondeites prepared to bow to him in front of others….
Finally its 1am on the Uxbridge Road in London…seven of us are searching high and low for a restaurant after the P4C event… I’m driving Colchester Kev, The Jagster and Poppet and londonpokergirl is ferrying thetank and Just Jo around the nether regions of West London near QPR’s ground. Everywhere is closed and we have to settle for a KFC. Thetank is a little worse for wear, doing the involuntary backwards dance so beloved of Glaswegians the world over. Rarely, Kev is sober and bewildered by what he is witnessing and equally bewildered by Mel’s driving.
Tank approaches the counter and is asked
“What would you like?”
His reply:
“What do you bloody think I want? I want CHICKEN!” at the top of his voice.
Where else but through blonde would I have met characters like this?