Swings, Swings, Swings

Variance is not my best friend recently. I had made an excellent start at 1/2 on Full Tilt, quickly maintaining my progress from 100NL, running at about 8ptbb/100 hands, and making 9 buyins over a few days. Then disaster struck last Friday when i dropped $1k in 2hrs, losing set v set twice, and AK on a QJT flop, which i enjoyed. Also quite a few 1/2 buyin pots when i generally had the second best great hand.

I took a few days off to recover till Monday, and had made quite a bit back by Tuesday evening, and then deja vu on Wednesday - it happened again - I was 1k down in a session... I made most of it back, including this class hand where I won a $400 pot with king high.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?471929

The other guy in the hand was ridiculously aggressive on the flop, and therefore it was a good spot to reraise with overs and second nut flush draw. He gets allin with a worse draw and all i have to dodge is a 9 or Q. That would have wound me right up if he hit one of those.

Had an ok day yesterday, picking up a couple of buyins, and played a short session today, didn't really get into it as I was tired and didn't really get any situations to play big pots with people, and i left $25 down in an hour.

I'm going to Spurs tomorrow, we are playing Everton at home, we have a really good record against them and Robbie Keane always scores against them, so hopefully we can get the win.

It's also my football team's last preseason friendly on Sunday (I'm player/manager), we have been promoted to Division 2 (out of 6) in the Sunday League, and hopefully we can make a real impact in it as I think we have the squad to do really well.

Good luck at the tables everyone.

PC Problems!

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have had massive laptop problems and also severe poker site problems so for the vast majority of the last 3 weeks I haven't played a great deal.

My laptop basically gave up, it was ridiculous. My cards were totally lagging and I kept getting disconnected. It even switched itself off twice during a session, so after trying to fix it I ended up having to buy a new pc, I got a desktop this time with a 19" screen which is better for poker anyway. Then, William Hill was basically semidown for like a week, and at times I couldn't reload or even take vacant/reserved seats! This seems to happen a lot on crypto, and after some thought I decided to withdraw my whole roll and move it to another site. I was considering doing so anyway as there are a lot of decent aggressive regulars at 100NL and the fish were getting few and far between.

It then took me like about a week to move my roll to Full Tilt. The problems I have had doing this were beyond belief. With all these rules about fraud and money laundering it seems the process is nigh on impossible, unless you have the patience of a saint and are prepared to talk to some foreigner you can't understand in a call centre halfway across the world ten times a day.

I finally got my roll over to FTP last thursday. My starting roll when I got there was about $6400, and I was raring to get going. I played a decent amount on thursday and did OK once I got used to the software etc, and did a small losing session on friday morning. I then went away with some friends to Nottingham for a 2 day trip on Friday afternoon, we went out in the city on Friday and then to Alton Towers on the saturday, which was pretty cool apart from the fact I got stung by a wasp when I was queueing for the first ride! I had football on sunday and after this and getting back shattered on saturday night I was too tired to play, which was definitely the right decision.

The ironic thing over this time that I hadn't really been playing was that I was going to give poker a go as my fulltime income source, which made this interruption even more annoying!

But I've definitely made up for lost time this week. So far I have got my roll to $8100 which obviously I am ecstatic about. The cardrunners style seems to have far more effect at FTP which seems to be far more passive than crypto, and I've been killing the games. And only $180 of the profit was from clearing the bonus too, so I've got another $420 of that to get too! I'm running at 11.13 BB/100 Hands over 6500 hands which is just sick, that won't last but if I can keep this above 6 I'll be happy. I'm also moving upto $1/$2 tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to now I have the roll for it! I'm pretty happy to have made over $6k part-time in 4 months, and hopefully continue this progress!

I've been stacked twice in this period, once with KKvAA all in preflop within 2 mins of playing the site for the first time, and within the first 5 mins lost set over a set too for half a buyin (luckily), but since then things have improved dramatically!

Here's a few hands I have played:-

This first hand I got stacked by a gigantic fish. He was basically the main reason why I was at the table. I'm always going to be playing allin with him with tptk, his range is gigantic here. He sucked out on the river, but thats just one of those things.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?449744

This next hand was against an 18/12, very tight player. I flopped a set, I had him on a smallish overpair on the flop, and I checkraised him on the turn (my favourite play nowadays btw), and we got it allin on the river when I hit a boat and he hit a flush. I was amazed to see his hand, as I never had him on a flush draw...

http://www.pokerhand.org/?449745

I then flopped another set this afternoon against a lunatic after I raised preflop. Against a better player, I may smooth call his reraise and checkraise him allin on the turn, but because I thought he may be on a flush draw, and the fact I couldn't see him folding an ace, we got it allin on the flop when he was pretty much drawing dead, nice!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?449747

This next hand, I severely lucked out. I really didn't have him on an overpair after he just called my reraise preflop, and I checked the turn to try to induce him to push. He did just that, and I was drawing to 5 outs. He went absolutely berserk afterwards, I apologised after the hand straight away, he just started laying into me calling me a moron etc... the rest of the table were on my side and we were all giving it back, good times!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?449749

Finally this next hand. It's hard to get paid with sets in unraised pots, but this guy did a decent job. How did he think he was winning? I'll never know! But this is the reason why you want to get all your roll to FTP asap!

http://www.pokerhand.org/?449757