blonde poker forum

As anyone who knows me in real life will be aware, poker has not been going too well for me recently.  I am not losing thousands, but as poker is currently my main source of income, I need to be making some kind of profit from it, and over the last few months I can just about manage to break even.  This means that slowly I am leaking money as although I'm not losing all that much, I'm not winning enough to be able to pay my living expenses.  It is slowly dripping away.

Since I first started playing I have always been a tournament player.  I like the added strategic elements that tournament poker brings in comparison to cash games.  Over the summer I moved back to my home town of Northampton.  Previous to that I had been living in Oxford and playing mainly in London as that was the nearest place to find a game of poker.  When I moved back to Northampton I began playing regularly at my local casino which is a Gala.  All they run at Gala is MTTs and STTs, no cash games.  The structure has a tendency to be a bit of a crapshoot, although it is slowly improving thanks to the persistence of the Card Room Supervisor.  To begin with, I was playing up there about 4 times a week, and averaging about one final table a week.  I was probably either winning or chopping the tournament about once every 2 or 3 weeks!  Then slowly, this began to subside, and I have not had a decent cash in a live tournament since just before GUKPT Plymouth, which must be  around 3 or 4 months ago.

Now, some people will probably disagree with what I am about to say, but I put a lot of my inital winning at the casino down to the fact that I am a girl.  To date, I am pretty much the only female regular at Gala Sol Central.  A few months ago I was probably the only girl you would see in there full stop.  I like to believe that it is possible to use being a girl in poker to my advantage.  Some guys (not all) tend to stereotype female poker players they have never played against before into one of two categories.  They will either be a total rock, which means they can be pushed off hands and will only get their money in when they have the nuts, OR they will be a complete and utter calling station.  I was seen as being a total rock I think, which enabled me to make moves, and get people to lay down big hands.  People would not call my raises and therefore they never got the chance to outdraw me.  I wasn't having a particuarly good run of cards, just like I'm not having a particularly bad run of cards now either.  Although I was winning more coinflip situations.  To begin with I was this girl who'd just started coming and was winning everything.  Gradually there became whispers of my Poker 6 cash and even if they didn't think I was a rock anymore, they respected my game and I was still winning.  Then all of a sudden, it stopped, just like that.

Now Gala Sol Central is a bit of a funny place.  Although there are some good players , the general standard of play there is very low compared to other card rooms.  It also seems to exist outside of the normal poker circuit, and you won't find pretty much anyone in there who plays the UK circuit on a regular basis. 

Before, when I was winning there, I was hardly playing any STTs because I was quite often going deep in the comp.  Now however, I find myself playing 3-4 STTs some nights if I bust early.  The STTs are normally 10 seaters and the split is 70%/30% for 1st and 2nd.  I tend to do better on the higher buyins because it is less of a crapshoot as we are given more chips to start and a longer clock.  Since September I have been cashing in an average of just a bit more than 1 in 4, and the vast majority of the time I am winning or doing a deal heads up.  One of the guys in the cardroom made a printout off the computer with a league list of who is winning the most tournaments and STTs. On the tournament list I am about 12th or something.  But on the STT list I am top.  So I am winning in these.  Someone said to be "Well if you are winning in the STTs then why bother playing in the main comp?", and the answer to that is because I love tournaments, and I'm trying to figure out what's going wrong.  It could be a combination of so many things:

- The other players have got to know my game too well
- I'm not taking it as seriously as I used to
- The structures increase the luck element too much
- The standard of play is so low that my game has suffered too
- I am playing too much

So I am winning in the STTs.  But not in the tournaments.  I don't play just at Gala, but I think on an average week I must spend about £200 just on MTTs.  This is the difference between me being a winning player, or a break even player like I am at the moment.  But MTTs are what I love and what I really want to be doing.  I know its virtually impossible to make a living from playing just MTTs, and that's not what I'm after.  I try and sit in a cash game once or twice a week, and normally walk out with a profit of some kind.  Although I mostly play at Gala, I have been having no luck anywhere else either.  I went to Stanleys at Luton on New Years day to play the £100 deeper stack thing.  I played my arse off all night, and still nothing.  I go to other places like Coventry and sometimes into London to play, but still nothing happens.  Occassionally I will get a result in a tournament online, but that's it.  I'm not saying I'm the worlds greatest player or anything, because I'm most definitely not, but I'd like to think I am a fairly good player.  It's like I keep coming so close.  A few of you will know about the Betfred Women's Tour.  I cashed in two of these events and was 4th in the league.  The top 2 got a seat in the grand final.  All I had to do to get in the top 2 was make the final table in the last leg.  There were over 100 runners, and I came 15th! 

Anyway I've just looked up and realised how much I've written, so I will stop now before I bore you all to death.  If anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated, but for some reason I think I partly just needed to write all of this down to make some sense of it all.

As someone recently wrote in my Xmas card, I'd rather be lucky than good.

You are a good player..Poker 6 if I remember right

but, respectfully, you are playing regularly at completely the wrong venue (given their range of tournaments and strucutres) to benefit from any skill you may have compared to a random.

I think I can only pass on a comment that seems to be widely accepted - tournaments are for show and cash is for dough.  I would love cash at the Sol in Northampton - I would be over like a shot - as i think the play there is quite soft - and I also think a lot of the tourney players there would take time to adjust to cash games. But as for tourneys at Sol - they are not for serious skilled players who want to make a living from poker.

However if MTT's work for you - and it's your way of making a living - then keep playing them. You may enjoy tourneys but making a living out of poker isn't always enjoyable - a lot of the time peope find it a grind - and play the tourneys for light relief.

In any casino there is going to be variance - it's the same in Luton - you can't expect to cash everytime however good you are.

Good luck with it!

Tracey

On the other hand it might also just be called tournament 'variance.'  Before last summer, I seemed to be in a very similar position to yourself and it lasted 10 months!!  It happens I'm afraid, you just have to push through it and I agree It is possibly time to source out a better venue and play cash in between comps..Gl

Sounds like your sample size is tiny.

If you are just playing a few times a week then how many tournaments have you played? Can you be sure you deffo have an edge?

Play online, its a bit harder but you can put in a lot more table hours.

Chilli - what do/did you do when it lasts that long?

Rumour has it that cash games may be making an appearance at Sol over the coming months...which would be brilliant.  Yeah I definitely understand that it is very difficult to make a regular income at tournament poker, but I just feel that if I could start cashing in maybe one tournament a month, my bankroll would be a whole lot healthier, but I'm not sure where it's going wrong.  Gala isn't the best place to play, and I have started to try mixing up the places I go a little more, in fact it was my New Year's resolution!  I'm just trying to work out if it is because I have changed as a player since I started going there, or if it is just because the tournament structures can make them a bit of a crapshoot.  At the moment anything I win is coming from cash games and STTs, I'd just like MTTs to not be a big red minus.

Royal Flush - I hate playing online and it doesn't work for me at all unfortunetly.  I play poker live for maybe 7 hours a day, 5 days a week altogether, but this is a mixture of STTs, MTTs, and cash.  At the moment I am profiting in cash games and STTs, its just the MTTs that are putting a bit of a drain on.  The card room guys at Gala worked out that in the last six months I have paid about £1000 in juice, its probably a bit more now, which means i have staked over £10,000 in there on STTs and MTTs.   I know the variance shows more in live play because you see so few hands compared to online, but I'd rather see what I can do to help it rather than just putting it down to variance alone.  I am definitely very much in profit for the year just gone, but it has been gradually dwindling for the last few months, which is what I need to fix.

Kicked stuff a fair few times!!  Seriously, I had to take it each comp at a time, resist the urge to feel that everyone and everything is against you and above all didn't doubt my ability to play the game.  Maybe I did make bad decisions that I wouldn't ordinarily make but lack of confidence is a killer in poker, you have to believe that things will turn around eventually.

It did turn around but also with help to my bankroll in the meantime of playing cash once or twice a week to keep things ticking over.  If you rely on poker as your main/only source of income, then without a doubt it is not gonna be plain sailing.  At the end of the day we are all gambling (a word I refused to use for a very long time, but have since grown up).

If you play tournament poker this WILL happen

As sure as eggs is eggs you will have good spells and bad spells and often there is little you can do about it. First and foremost you must be philosophical about tournament poker. Did you play well and loose? If so, then you must congratulate yourself for your stirling play and ensure that the loosing streak doesn't adversely affect your approach to the game.

My advice...

1. "It's like I keep coming so close"....It's like you keep playing so well you cut through most of the field. This is something that should actually give you a lot of confidence and encouragement for the future. To be disappointed with yourself for doing well is unproductive and it WILL affect your game. To play and win tournaments you need to sit down with confidence and aggression, so if you start retreating from risky situations because you're getting close to cashing you will be manufacturing a downward spiral for yourself and will playing with the wrong attitude.

2. "they didn't think I was a rock anymore"....Awareness of your image is essential and guess what?...you are aware of your image. After Brunson wrote Super System he had to adjust his playing style to re-gain his edge and so will you. But that will make you a more rounded and versatile player so embrace the challenge.

3. STT's are good for tournament practise and can often be a source of regular income but I wouldn't rely on these myself. Why? Because the variance is such when playing tournament poker that you NEED bigger cashes in MTT's in order to sustain yourself through these bleak periods. In addition, we play tournament poker to WIN big tournaments and nothing is ever going to beat that. It is the ultimate destination on your poker journey. Even just using a % of your current STT profit to tackle sats for bigger events is the way to go. You are better with big stacks so avoiding big stack events is not a good move for you. One big cash will blow this current negativity away in a heartbeat.

4. I believe that dispite the many many advantages experience can also bring a lot of clutter to your game. You tend to think too much and can loose the raw, instinctive and fearless approach that made you a success in the first place. Next time you play, just play with freedom. No pressure. It is when you pressure yourself to manufacture the result you desperately want that you actually loose the edge that will get you there at all. Worry and negatively will NEVER help you win a tournament.

5. Don't play cash. Too many reasons to mention here, but the best way to achieve tournament success is to avoid a dirty cash mentality infecting your pure-as-the-driven-snow tournament mind. ( But of course if it is pure profit you are looking for cash is the only way to go )

Good Luck

terrible advice. the early levels of major comps have 100+ BBs. The best way to learn to play them is to play cash imo.

Excellent review on tournament mentality there Mantis - apart from the "Don't play cash" part.  If poker is your only income (as it is mine & the OP) then "pure profit" is the only way to exist and to ever play poker again. 

I actually don't enjoy cash anywhere near as much as I adore tournaments but it has took me a long time (and I am a stubborn mule mostly) to realize that needs must and bills HAVE to be paid.  You just have become more of a multi tasker to adjust and flick between the two mentalities of cash play and tournament play...

Excellent advice from Mantis.

says the man who spends half his life playing cash at DTD?

Yeah I agree (for once lol), though complete disimissing learning cash is a bit too much  for my liking and you can retain skills in both.

Actually I agree with Chili that cash games are a usefull way to help put bread on the table. Having said that, I think you have to be really aware of the differences between cash and tournament play so as not to let one taint the other.

Mantis's piece was excellent notwithstanding.

There is actually an argument which is that if you play cash for income, then you should stay away from tournaments altogether as you'll spend too much time playing in short-stacked environments which will make you pick up bad habits which will cost you when you play deepstack cash.

Agreed but im sure there are examples of players who excell in both Phil Ivey for one, mind you I tend to not mix the two.

Well of course I was well aware that the "don't play cash comment" was the stirrer there.

If your main income is poker and you want to make money, then playing cash is a mandatory requirement imo. However, the fine difference between winning and loosing tournaments can often be the mentality you employ....and I think the mentality you need to succeed in cash and tournaments is different. If you can successfully switch between the two completely then God speed to you but it's often the case that if you do something lots it becomes habitual.

Phil Helmuth is the most successful modern day tournament player but is always seen as the "value" in cash. The skills he has work best in tournaments. So if the question is "How do I do better in tournaments?" then I don't think the answer can be found in cash. But if the question is "How do I make money playing poker?" then the don't play cash comment would be an idiotic one for sure.

I like Mantis' advice..it's good positive advice. I don't like the "don't play cash" part though. She said she's playing for profit..it's her living and therefore cash is an essential addition.

I have to say I don't like the "I don't play online tourneys, they don't work for me" part of the original post. Making a living out of playing live tourneys is just about the most ineffective way of trying to be a successful MTT player because of the expenses involved. I understand that there is a big difference between playing live tourneys and online tourneys but it is something I think you have to work on, not doing that would be a big mistake in my humble opinion.

Hi Danni,

not sure I can offer any great advice, but just wondered if you'd been able to put your finger on any factors affecting your results.  Do you think you are not playing as well, or are you getting unlucky?  IMVHO it sounds like you had a good run, and that's being balanced out by a not so good run.  Try not to let the bad results get to you, and remember that you are a good tournament player, and it's the long term results that matter.

If your main income is poker you should imho play cash games not tourneys. Online cash games are available 24/7 and a decent player can make money with good selection and having a this is business mindset. When I left work I was doing a job that paid 35k a year, one day I sat down and worked out how much after tax, expenses,travel, sustenance and suits a year and it equated to about £60 a day. I decided that I could make this amount consistently each day from punting and pokering with a nice bankroll and a 'smallball' mindset IF I cut out poker tournaments.


Its not that I haven't played well/won tourneys in the past its that the sheer difficulty of winning a decent runner event means  you have to get good returns now and again to cover the variance. For me playing tourneys is gambling to make a wage more than playing cash.By sticking to cash games you are playing for smaller more regular profits, this keeps you in the business mindset from day to day slowly building up a wage.

Now I am aware that my mindset is maybe smallball but its to avoid the situation you are in that I prefer to play that way. The game is full of players that are good at poker but try to crack the higher buy in tourney schedule and go skint doing it, this is not a business like way to play for a living imho.

As Andrew say above I have deffo found that my tourney game has suffered a lot from playing constant cash but so be it, when I do play a tourney its usually live and a break from the norm tho still very important as a potential bankroll booster.

I've nothing but respect for players like Tom that make a good living playing online comps and some of the bigger live games but he has fantastic bankroll management and I'm pretty sure doesn't put himself in danger of going bust. In truth my game isn't good enough to compete at a level like that but I dont mind that at all coz I have found a level I win at consistently. 

Tourneys for show, cash games for dough Is how I like to think of it.


Do you play cash games online Lady? If so have you played a lot of hands to give you a fair sign of how much you could make a month by sticking to them?

What kind of buyin tourneys are you entering?

Why?



Quite simply put your sample size is just tiny, there is no way of working out yet if you are a winning player or a losing player. The only way to make a living from tournament poker is to play online, its the only way to ride out the variance.

What about it don't you like? If you could work yourself into becoming a long term winning MTT player online then you are laughing.

it seems like I look at poker in a fundamentally different way to you guys. To me it's all NL HE, you get two cards and they put 5 in the middle. If I have 100 BBs I play pretty much the same whether I'm playing cash or a comp. If I decided I wanted to play cash with 10 or 20 BBs then I would play pretty much the same as I would in a comp. There are some other things to consider in a tourny, blinds going up, the bubble, going up the pay ladder but they are fairly simple things to consider aren't they?

so where am I going wrong? what are these huge differences that I am missing? why will playing cash ruin my tourney game when I think it's the total opposite?

the reason I started thinking about playing cash is that I donked my way into the season 2 Monte Carlo EPT where IIRC we started with 200 BBs. I absolutely was a fish out of water, errr yeah I'll call with 6s 7s, er implied odds, er I've missed, er I'll raise the turn and hopefully he'll fold, oh he's called and the rivers missed me, what do I do now ???

If I ever win a sat to a big event again I will be a lot more confident when deep and when short it's just the standard 20 BB tourney game we've all played a zillion times right? 

I know plenty of players who purely play £10/£20 rebuys locally (walsall, broadway, starcity etc.) that year after year make a constant profit.
You must know these too Mark.
When you get chance ask Vince Madden about his poker book.

Basically put tourneys require a change in gears, moves etc as the blinds become larger. In cash they stay the same and is more odds focused. You should always be playing a hand as a slight fav in cash as you can just pull up again, not so in a tourney, where losing a race can mean your out.

In answer to Op it sounds as though you have the answers already. Players were giving you more respect and passing hands but they are not anymore. This has reduced your edge. They sound like crapshoots against opposition that isn't that tough. I find that varience becomes more a part in these circumstances as people wont let go of hands. Sounds stupid but play a few micro limit tourneys online, these crapshoot live tourneys aren't played much different imho. It may even be worth just sticking to stt and cash live for a while, as your making a profit at them.
Also as you earn a living from poker then you probably have to start playing online. The expenses are much lower, plus you would be earning cashback from the juice.

Yes Ian, I know Vince well, and he is indeed a seasoned campaigner and a solid player. But he also knows a lot about the bad runs too. I talked to him during a period when he hadn't cashed for weeks and he was well pissed off...so he's aware that constant profit is difficult to sustain. He always has a punt at the bigger events though. Like Marcus, he knows that winning an event like the Grand Prix buys you a lot of future poker.

Also, Vince is over 100 years old so you can't acquire his skills overnight.

Playing cash only I feel I have lost a little understanding of the nuances of tourney poker that I had before. I bluff less, poistion raise less and generally just play the cards instead of looking for spots I can exploit. In cash games I like to have certain criteria met when I sit at a table, these conditions are unatainable in tourneys.

Hi Claire, yes it was a very good run indeed and I'm aware that things aren't going to be like that very often, but I don't feel that this bad swing in tournaments is just down to variance.  The main problem I think is the venue.  The structures just don't allow the good players enough of an edge.  But I worry that this is not the only reason, and that my game has been altered for the worst by playing against bad players all the time, or that I'm playing too much so I'm not always playing to the best of my ability or something.  As far as the cards go, I'm not getting particularly bad ones at the moment (although its not wonderful either), although if I find myself in a coinflip situation I pretty much always lose at the moment, which doesn't help.  Thanks for the advice though, hopefully things will turn round a bit soon.  New Year and all that.

As far as cash play effecting tournament play and vice-versa, I tend to try and keep both styles of play very seperate, especially in tournaments with very restrictive blinds.  I do worry though, like I've said before, that because the standard of play is not very good at Gala, that sometimes I get sucked into playing much looser than normal because I want to play them at their own game, see more flops, and try and outplay them.  And this quite often backfires.

Mantis wrote

3. STT's are good for tournament practise and can often be a source of regular income but I wouldn't rely on these myself. Why? Because the variance is such when playing tournament poker that you NEED bigger cashes in MTT's in order to sustain yourself through these bleak periods. In addition, we play tournament poker to WIN big tournaments and nothing is ever going to beat that. It is the ultimate destination on your poker journey. Even just using a % of your current STT profit to tackle sats for bigger events is the way to go. You are better with big stacks so avoiding big stack events is not a good move for you. One big cash will blow this current negativity away in a heartbeat.

Mantis, I disagree with this and I know I may be standing alone. The ultimate destination of anyone that is seriously playing poker is to make money, why do people always think it is entering and winning poker tourneys?

If the player is winning cash at STT's and losing at MTT's why would anyone stop playing the winning comps and start to take shots at bigger events, they are trying to make a living not get blinded by the flashing lights.

In my experience STT playing is a pretty low risk play, a little monotonous but so are most jobs, my advice if you dont want to play cash would be to knock the MTT's on the head and play where you are making a profit in the STT's.

thanks

What strikes me in the OP is, as Flushy says, how little you've actually played in six months, despite putting the hours in.

I have basically no feel at all for what is an achievable return on investment in live MTTs and STTs. And obviously I don't know what your living costs are, PLady. But if poker is your sole income and you want to build your bankroll as well, then if you're 'investing' £10k in six months I guess you'd need something like a 100% ROI. Is this realistic...?

If you played online then a 10% ROI would probably be realistic for STTs at the same stakes - but you'd easily be able to see 10 times as many hands per hour, so could 'invest' £100k in six months and make the same amount of profit.

It seems to me that there's a major psychological disadvantage here to playing live as opposed to online. Online, it's fairly quick and easy to work out what your average ROI is. That means that when you play solidly but have a losing week, you can still tell yourself, "Well, I put in 30 hours and on average I make $30 an hour, so in theory I'm up $900." (As long as you scale down your big winning sessions to their 'theoretical' level as well.)

But live, because it's so much harder to work out whether and by how much you are actually a long-term winning player, a losing spell can much more easily make you think that you're throwing money away, and affect your game/motivation.

Good luck.

(If anyone can say what's an achievable ROI in MTTs live and online I'd be really interested, thanks.)

A lot of the Gala players have migrated to Luton and are happy to keep going back - that must say something. I think a definite change of venue is needed, and not just for one night, spend some time at one place, get to know the players - don't make life difficult by going to lots of different places and having to relearn people all the time.

A change in venue may give you a change in variance. It's worth a try.

This is a very interesting point.  As far as cash games go (and I'm talking online here), you can pick and choose when to play, what level to play, and who to play against.  This is an important part of cash play for me (and I play at low levels so I don't know what it's like at the dizzier heights).

You can join and leave a table when you want, knowing that another is just a click away.  I often sit down at a group of tables, work out which ones are going to be the most lucrative, and ditch the tougher ones.  You can't do that with tournaments.  Obviously, you can choose tournaments that suit you and look for the added valooo or weaker fields, but it's not the same as table selection for cash games.

Game selection in Live Mtts though is vital..seems to me Pocket Lady is making a mistake here

whether you focus on buy-in, structures, venues (and how well you know the players) and associated expenses...I would have thought you could do a lot better (for a decent player looking for an edge) that Gala Sol!

Thats how I see it and why I disagree with Mantis, you look at where your profit comes from and where it looks more likely to come from in the future and you play in those games. If you can then tilt conditions in your favour then even better but the OP is winning at 2 of the 3 disciplines she is playing yet wants to play more of the disciplines she is not winning at. Restricting the games instead of playing online too is fine If you can afford to play for a living without it but to me it seems to be the most financially sound arena to play in as Tighty says, your exes are minimal and you can stop start when you feel able to play your best.

This 10k figure I've stated...this is at Gala only.  Where they only offer STTs and MTTs.  As stated before this is most definitely not the only place I play on regular basis, and doesn't include cash games at all. 

Overall it is definitely easier to make a regular income playing cash.

I even know a ventriloquist's dummy who loves tourneys but insists that cash games are his gread and gutter.



 ;marks;

Thats easy for him to say!!

I have cut down on the amount I play at Gala a fair bit over the last couple of weeks.  I'm intending to start getting up to dtd on a regular basis, and I also play at The Isle at Coventry, who's cash games are quite good.  I have a problem in that for personal reasons I can't play at Luton.  I wish it were otherwise but it leaves the problem of having to source out other venues unfortunetly.

I agree with TightEnd that I most definitely need to be playing MTTs at venues other than gala.  But to be honest, I already travel all over the place to play MTTs quite often as it is.  Hopefully playing GUKPT Brighton next week, maybe that will wake me up a bit and let me get the buzz again!

good luck next week mate, sometimes a good chat can invigorate the poker mind nicely, let us know how it goes.

I don't play online often because I feel that live play is where many of my strengths lie.  Multitabling 4 tables for 8 hours a day will just never be my thing really, and I'm much better when I play live (cash) so what would be the point anyway.  My main reason for playing online is to play satellites for big live events. Other than that, it just isn't for me.

I am beginning to think perhaps I chose the wrong title for this thread.  I don't mean I want and expect to be able to play MTTs day in day out and make a living just from that.  I'm saying that MTTs are what I have always known, and until recently, what I have always been good at.  And what I want to be good again, but  along side other disciplines, not instead of.


Thanks :-) Would be an ideal time to get some form back...think that's asking too much?? Lol.

not at all, give it your best shot.

I think you have to be realisitic here you are trying to make a living playing live (mainly MTT's) this is about the hardest way to make a living out of poker. As varience is massive, you have overhead that while seem inconsequtial on a night by night basis are often massive in the long term to eat and travel to a casino every night must be £5-10. This is like paying the tournament fee twice over at least.

Also as Flushy and others have pointed out, your sample size is very small. People ALWAYS underestimate varience in poker especially live players, for example i made a living out of crapshoots for 18 months (playing turbos sngs) and i can give show you periods of breaking even for at least 500+ tournies* and i was solid winner in those games. That is 25000 hands, you are playing 40hrs a week top right. I would estimate you are only getting 30 hands an hour. So that 5 months in live poker and thats assuming you have a significant edge. These are conservative estimates and i was probably lucky not to have worse runs, 100000 hands is somewhere nearer the long term.

Whilst variance will always be a factor (and maybe I do underestimate it), I have been ignoring and overlooking other factors which mean that I am not able to play to the best of my ability.  Variance can always be blammed if someone is running bad, and often it is probably true, probably in this case as well, but I just want to get rid of any other contributing factors that could be making it worse.  This is the issues with venue/players etc.  And if I'm honest, it is mainly down to laziness and the social aspect which means I drag myself to unsuitable games night after night.  But that will be changing, as of now I think. 

Ok, sounds like you have the right attitude to succeed. Best of luck

Well after following the advice of the blonde forum (and kind of what I already knew), I chucked in Gala and went to DTD for the first time last night to play the £75 freezeout.  After being down to 1500 chips after the first 4 hands I thought "here we go again".  But by some miracle I came back from almost nothing and ended up finishing 7th out of nearly 150 runners.  Unfortunately I was card dead for the final otherwise I think I could have done better.  Nonetheless it was a nice change to be rewarded for good play.  The most important hand for the night for me would have undoubtedly ended in disaster if I had been at Gala.  The blinds were 300-600 and second to act had raised to 2400, with a call from the guy next to him.  I was on the button with  9h 9d and it felt to me like chances are I was behind to a bigger pair.  I opted to call and see a flop as I had position on them.  The flop was a brilliant  9s 6s 2h.  I am sat with about 12k. First person to speak checks, and the other guy bets 5k.  I re-raise all in for 12k.  The checker immediately passes, and the other guy calls the remaining 7k with  Td Th.  Two blanks come down and I'm home free.  I find out after the hand that the guy who passed to my all in had in actual fact thrown  Jc Jh.  The river was in fact the Jd which would have sent me to the rails if he wasn't good enough to pass.  Just highlighted to me the huge difference in standard.  So it wasn't a massive cash, but a confidence booster even so.  I also sat in the cash game for an hour after and won £200 quid, so a good night all in all.  Roll on brighton! 

nice work mate,  all the best in Brighton

Nice 1 Danni and good luck in Brighton  ;applause; ;applause; ;applause;

gl
mtt's for the win
yeehaw