Black Wednesday

I don't know if you follow the stock market, but you may have noticed Toshiba shares took a nosedive yesterday. The city got word that I was team leader! The rota'd TL was sick, so I had to step up to the plate LOL. You could taste the irony, as the office clown, attempted to exert some kind of authority. It's a victory for slackers everywhere. Actually the team managed to keep a lid on most things, and apparently the company is still trading. I have applied for the post permanently, as they are fairly desperate to fill the spots, I may even get it. It's not much in terms of salary but will look good on CV.

Good graph for today

I even had A's busted by 22 on the river too. Did I turn on the chat as usual? Not a bit of it, just had a chuckle and played on. Maybe I have kicked the tapping on the glass habit, don't know, too early to tell, but definitely progress.

Don't Tap on the Glass...

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned attaining the magic $250, as the poker gods heard and they have cast variance down on me with a vengeance. The fish are hitting every two outer on the river, like chasing is going out of business. I say variance, but some of it may be I am not the LAG I need to be. LAG means loose/aggressive, I play and raise more hands than a TAG (tight/aggressive) but less than the fish. The key to good lag play is reading the flop and outplaying your opponents on later streets.

Anyway, here is the most illogical thing I do while playing online poker. Tapping on the glass. Is when you berate, insult, and abuse the retarded moronic plays fish make in the hands against you, when they catch unlikely hands to win the pot. As any theory book will tell you, there is no justification for it. The outcome will be one of two things, both bad. A) You will educate the fish, by explaining his bad play. You need as many bad players in the game as possible. B) You will upset the fish, and he will leave the table. Now a potential source of income has left with your money. I know all this, and yet , cannot resist turning the chat back on (I have it switched off in a futile attempt to combat this habit) and giving the fish both barrels. I keep telling myself, I need to get over this but..... ah well, they say recognising is the first step.

Got to do a Double Shift....

Not too much poker in the last few days, I did double shifts at work Saturday AND, I say, AND Sunday, and as it is very busy at the moment, I only managed to play a bit at work. I have a mobile broadband dongle, so I can play a bit, only one table though, as work keeps getting in the way, so inconsiderate. Last three or four sessions have seen small profits, so still working towards that magic $250 bank roll. I have to decide how I am going to celebrate this milestone, sometimes it feels like a like a long time coming, but it's all good discipline and patience wise.

Needing the exercise I took a walk into town today, to get a haircut. Bought a couple of books as I had a voucher to use up. Looking forward to starting 'The Search for the Dice Man' by Luke Rhinehart. I had forgotten just how awesome 'The Dice Man' is and I have not read anything else by him. Took a quick look at this sequel over coffee, and looks really good. Also got 'Matterhorn' Karl Marlantes. Epic Vietnam war novel, an era that fascinates me. Lastly, 'Invisible' Paul Auster. Read quite a few of his, and I enjoy his enigmatic style. Thing is, I am already reading and enjoying 'Dracula' which I picked up in the cheap classics section of Asda/Wall Mart for a quid, bargain.

Quick ten minute video of my poker setup and a few hands here

http://www.screentoaster.com./watch/stUE9dQ0dLRFtWQFpcWl9aU1NS/simon_poker_setup

Web Site of the Day

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1oiez8/www.bestonlinetools.org/50-top-websites-to-download-ebooks/

Don't Know What to Title Todays Blog

Yesterdays graph looking better. Recovered $5 or so, of the recent debacle. If I am on an early shift, I try to get in two hours poker before Denise gets home, but yesterday, quit early due to the high win rate I wanted to protect. This is not really the correct attitude in the sense, that if you are beating the game, then the longer you play, the better. But, another reason to play only those two hours, is because I then start to get tired. This is also when poor or sub optimal decisions start to creep in.

If you have not already seen it, my beloved Orient star in the latest Nintendo DS ad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwE0_bzZTQA

Me and Mark went to see the boys on Tuesday night, in a first round replay against upstart local rivals Dagenham and redbridge. I never thought I would hear the chant "We love you Dagenham, we do", but there you go, we stuffed them 3-2 despite the idiot ref awarding them a sympathy pen to let them back in it.

Website of the day

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2incLn/www.futilitycloset.com/2010/06/28/mirror-years

The Cooler King

OK, yesterday I was saying I was .82c up, well that went south pretty rapidly. It turned into what we poker degenerates call, a cooler.

There are sessions where no matter what you do, how well you play, the poker gods will mock you. They will give idiot players, fish as we call them, improbable hands time after time. Yesterday I had two full houses beaten, which accounts for stacking off twice (losing my entire buy in for that table). Sometimes you get in the situation where your opponent, known as the villain, requires a one or two outer to beat you. That is, there are only one or two cards left in the pack to be dealt, that can beat you. The odds against the villain hitting are high. But on certain days, they will, again and again.

This is what I have referred to before, as variance. Mathematical probabilities are correct over very high samples. In the short term all kinds of weird plays can happen. Even knowing this, is no guarantee of sanity though. You can start to question your strategy, your karma and whether it is unlucky to be superstitious (It is). Another downside to this variance is it can affect your discipline, I made some bad plays, because I let emotion into the building. The poker table is not a place for emotions.

Today is a new day, time to dust myself off, and get back in the ring. One upside is I get post a pic of the all time cooler king himself.

Saving for cheeseburgers.

It's two hours and twenty minutes into today's session and I am .82c up. Yes, another few hours and I can afford a cheeseburger!

You may be wondering, what is the point? Poker players view their progress by win rate, that is, big blinds per hour, or per hundred hands. Money or chips are just the points system they use to keep score, and not viewed as real money.

I am playing .1c-.2c (2nl) so my win rate today is 41bb/100. General poker wisdom says that three or four big blinds per hundred is a good win rate, so mine today, so far is positively extortionate. I can feel Bill Gates quaking in his boots, that I might be buying him out soon. As I was saying in another post, it's the long term that matters, many hundreds of thousands of hands that count. Being a long term winner is the goal.

Todays web site of the day,

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/ADP44u/www.um-hi.com/hootch/jack.html

The Dark Side

It's been nearly a year since my last post. Good job I am not a writer.

I have decided to take another run at poker. My last post related to how variance can affect your game, with more research, I have discovered that my bankroll for my last run at 200nl ($1-2$) at 10 buy ins, was not nearly enough to cover variance and bad play.

A conservative amount is considered to be 40 buy ins of whatever stake you play. I am going to go 50, as I think the extra cushion helps my A game. That is, I can be more aggressive knowing I should not bust.

I am currently playing the basement level micros .1c-.2c or 2nl and when my bankroll reaches $250 I will move to 5nl, and so on.

This time around I have done a lot of reading of poker forums, to maximise my strategy for these levels. My stating roll was about $40 and I am now about $30 short of the next level. Hopefully I can post my winnings here!