I just found $6875 [woooooooooooo!]

A long time ago, I exchanged several emails with Pacific poker regarding their comp point reward system.

It basically went like this:

Pacific: We're taking your loyalty bonus away because you've won money here.
Me: Wtf? You stingy bastards, do you realise how much rake i've paid?
Pacific: Yes and we apologise but the decision is final.
Me: If i start losing, can I have my loyalty bonus back?
Pacific: No, now fuck off before we doomswitch you.
Me: Ok, please don't do that, i'm very sorry.

Today, I was nosing around the cashier section, and went into the comp points section to see how much money i would have if they hadn't taken my bonus away. It said something like you have 339k points, click here to convert. I clicked and $6.7k was credited to my account!!!!!!!

Although this is obviously great, it does concern me that Pacific may now consider me a fish that is simply having a lucky run.

In other poker news, today was pretty good, made a few buyins, the games were pretty tight and taggy at times but i think im dealing with it pretty well.

Coaching & being coached

I've always been a fan of coaching, i've always found huge benefit from getting a v. good player to look at your game. I've had 5 or 6 coaches so far and had my first lesson with a new one today - MDMA managed to fit me in for a sesh. This guy has his rep for a reason, jeeez he's clever. I've still got to finish my lessons with BobboFitos, so i'll have him to talk theory with and MDMA to sweat me. I'm hoping that this will allow me to a) beat the games for a higher winrate and b) be able to make a living player poker for a longer time. I see it as an investment - though $8k is a lot a month, perhaps 4 lessons/month would be better.

I've also been doing some coaching myself, our lodger [he has many names, any from Vulture/Bellick/Cunt/Squatter/Liberty Taker/Splitting Headache/Joe Hutton is fine] has been playing $50nl on pacific and i'm pretty proud of his progress, he's thinking about the game, and putting a lot of effort in. I've also been coaching a guy named Chris [Milky on 2+2] from the uNL forums. He's a nice guy, has a drive to succeed and is receptive to my ramblings, so that's pretty cool. He also helps a lot of people out in uNL, so it's nice to try to help a helper out.

Something that i'm a little peeved about [not really lol, i'm still pretty stoked] is that, without a pretty sick next 112 hands, i'm not going to hit $100k at 100k hands of 5/10:

Heads up poker can crawl off and suffer somewhere

Lol, i lost $20k to a fucking terrible player on friday night at 10/20. This is something i'm pretty ashamed about. I'm going to take a week off i think, catch up with my uni work, buy some stuff, eat sushi and then come back and play 5k hands of 2/4 as punishment. I should be able to jump back into the bigger games fully prepared.


This is November so far:

I'm not going to make any excuses about my play heads up, I wasn't good enough, and I need to rethink my game. I've decided i'm going to be really hard on myself about my losses from now on, I spoke to some random dude on AIM today and he told me about all his theories that FTP is rigged against him. It is my opinion that thinking that you are unlucky or that the site is rigged, or that you ran badly is all an external factor that you can't control, but it gives you an excuse not to work on your game. I don't want this to happen to me, I lost a lot of money because I didn't adjust my stupid fucking bluff happy, straightforward bullshit identikit strategy to a guy playing a very different game. I carried on playing when I was tilted, tired, dehydrated and pissed off, i'm annoyed at myself for that, I need to give myself the very best chances of winning big. I want to crush the games this year and losses like this will make me get to a stage where I can compete with the best players about. I'm not going to be lazy about my game or make excuses any more.

I thought this was quite a cool idea. I'm studying corporate social responsibility at the moment and it's got me thinking about companies and what they can do environmentally and socially. I'm not sure if all companies [and innocent in this case] have entirely the best intentions with these campaigns but it does mean there's another couple of trees out there after i've lapped down their awesome smoothies, so that's pretty cool. I also like being able to plant trees without getting muddy [or indeed out of my chair]

In other news:

Holy fucking shit, today was crazy:

The last few weeks have been ridic:

[this is lifetime but you see my point]

Shots for a friend, Gaucho grill and fkn ridic poker players

Yesterday was a great day, didn't go to lectures because I didn't go to sleep the night before, just bummmed about all day and did a load of reading i needed to get done. In the evening I played on my friend's account at .25/.5. He joked about me playing on 5/10-10/20 on his account, i fancied the idea so offered 50% profits and i'll cover all losses [a fkn sick deal for him obv]. I didn't let him down:


I decided with my £500 that i wanted to take my housemates out for dinner. We left pretty much straight away and went to the Gaucho grill in hampstead. This place is awesome, one of my favourite restaurants, best steaks i've ever had [go for the ribeye if you ever go, it's unreal]

This is what it looks like:


We all had a great feed and a few glasses of wine [pretty cultured for this household tbh, beats noodles and eating dinner in a stinking, filthy hold of a kitchen], it was a lot of fun.

I've been looking through this thread today:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12733477&an=0&page=0&gonew=1#UNREAD

Some of these guys are fucking sick, i was fucking proud of my graph this month but it got shit all over. It's motivated me to put hands in though, the problem isn't my winrate or stakes, it's the amount of time i play for. I really need to put some more hands in, with the eventual aim of a $100k month . If i could do 50k in a month and still get a decent amount of work done, that'd be amazing.[thats a big aim, pretty much 5ptbb at 10/20 to reach $100k, maybe with shots at 25/50 its possible though]

Anyone wanna buy some Ugg Boots?

These things have caused me a whole world of problems this week. I went into an email account of mine yesterday so find several messages from ebay buyers wishing to ask me various details on the ugg boots i was selling there. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except that i'm not selling ugg boots on ebay. Some little bastard has got into my account somehow [through my email possibly or perhaps through a dictionary attack] and listed 6 pairs of ugg boots for sale. Not only did they not gain access to any other accounts but they didnt change the password for my ebay account or email account. Either they're fucking stupid or this is all part of a grander scheme to con me and im the fucking stupid one. All seems to be secure now though.

Because of this, I probably won't get any hands in until the end of the month - my poker account is locked. So here's my final graph for October [still, irritatingly, missing $7.5k at 10/20, so the final total is a shade over $60k]

Best Day Ever:

My first over $20k, i'm pretty stoked:


That also makes my best month ever. PT says $47k, but there's at least $7.5k missing so it's $54.5k at least.

These are my biggest hands from today [the big one posted below is also from today]:


$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold'em - *** 10 27 04:10:13 2007
Table Premium Blonde (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 2: Hoooooof ( $11490 )
Seat 4: lureli ( $1950 )
Seat 6: mwt5 ( $1919.22 )
Seat 7: DOCCOD ( $4154.77 )
Hoooooof posts small blind [$10].
lureli posts big blind [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hoooooof [ Js Jc ]
mwt5 folds.
DOCCOD raises [$88].
Hoooooof raises [$280].
lureli folds.
DOCCOD raises [$777].
Hoooooof calls [$575].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 5d, 6d, 9c ]
Hoooooof checks.
DOCCOD bets [$888].
Hoooooof raises [$10625].
DOCCOD calls [$2401.77].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 4c ]
** Dealing River ** [ Kc ]
** Summary **
Hoooooof shows [ Js Jc ].
DOCCOD shows [ Kd As ].
DOCCOD shows [ Kd As ].
DOCCOD collected [$8325.54].
Hoooooof collected [$7335.23].

Here i figure i'm ahead of a 4betting range, and because we're so deep i've got a few options, i decide to call and get it in on a low flop. Turned out ok [apart from the result] tho i'm really not certain on my play here.


$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold'em - *** 10 27 02:40:33 2007
Table Le Hoyo des Dieux (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 1: fishu55 ( $1186.88 )
Seat 2: Hoooooof ( $2216 )
Seat 6: llms ( $2039 )
Seat 7: DOCCOD ( $4655 )
llms posts small blind [$10].
DOCCOD posts big blind [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hoooooof [ Ad As ]
fishu55 folds.
Hoooooof raises [$80].
llms folds.
DOCCOD raises [$222].
Hoooooof raises [$540].
DOCCOD raises [$4413].
Hoooooof calls [$1596].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 8c, Kd, 10c ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Kc ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8h ]
** Summary **
Hoooooof shows [ Ad As ].
DOCCOD shows [ Kh 10h ].
Hoooooof shows [ Ad As ].
DOCCOD shows [ Kh 10h ].
DOCCOD collected [$4438].
DOCCOD collected [$2439].


Standard...........


$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold'em - *** 10 27 02:53:07 2007
Table Caonao (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 10: thbzz ( $2389.39 )
Seat 1: stinkyb ( $2403.2 )
Seat 2: Hoooooof ( $2026 )
Seat 6: lexie116 ( $3297.5 )
Seat 8: APAT ( $2286 )
lexie116 posts small blind [$10].
APAT posts big blind [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hoooooof [ 9h 9c ]
thbzz calls [$20].
stinkyb folds.
Hoooooof raises [$100].
lexie116 folds.
APAT folds.
thbzz calls [$80].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 10s, Kc, 5h ]
thbzz checks.
Hoooooof checks.
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9s ]
thbzz bets [$76.03].
Hoooooof raises [$360].
thbzz calls [$283.97].
** Dealing River ** [ Ks ]
thbzz bets [$538.6].
Hoooooof raises [$1566].
thbzz calls [$1027.4].
** Summary **
thbzz shows [ 10d 10c ].
Hoooooof shows [ 9h 9c ].
Hoooooof shows [ 9h 9c ].
thbzz shows [ 10d 10c ].
thbzz collected [$4078].



$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold'em - *** 10 27 05:20:15 2007
Table Cohiba Lanceros (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 5
Seat 10: llms ( $2628 )
Seat 1: mwt5 ( $4252.54 )
Seat 4: MrHugo1 ( $3045.21 )
Seat 6: Hoooooof ( $3153.5 )
Seat 8: SHEAF ( $2557 )
llms posts small blind [$10].
mwt5 posts big blind [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hoooooof [ Ac As ]
MrHugo1 raises [$100].
Hoooooof raises [$380].
SHEAF folds.
llms folds.
mwt5 folds.
MrHugo1 calls [$280].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 2h, 6d, 3d ]
MrHugo1 bets [$200].
Hoooooof raises [$750].
MrHugo1 raises [$1100].
Hoooooof raises [$2023.5].
MrHugo1 calls [$1365.21].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 8c ]
** Dealing River ** [ 9h ]
** Summary **
MrHugo1 shows [ Jd Kd ].
Hoooooof shows [ Ac As ].
MrHugo1 shows [ Jd Kd ].
Hoooooof shows [ Ac As ].
Hoooooof collected [$6116.42].
Hoooooof collected [$108.29].


$10/$20 Blinds No Limit Hold'em - *** 10 27 04:01:56 2007
Table Le Hoyo des Dieux (Real Money)
Seat 7 is the button
Total number of players : 4
Seat 2: Hoooooof ( $2223 )
Seat 5: SHEAF ( $2715 )
Seat 7: DOCCOD ( $4537.5 )
Seat 9: mwt5 ( $3974 )
mwt5 posts small blind [$10].
Hoooooof posts big blind [$20].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Hoooooof [ As Qc ]
SHEAF folds.
DOCCOD raises [$77].
mwt5 folds.
Hoooooof raises [$260].
DOCCOD calls [$203].
** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, 5s, 7d ]
Hoooooof bets [$420].
DOCCOD raises [$840].
Hoooooof raises [$1523].
DOCCOD calls [$1103].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3s ]
** Dealing River ** [ 3h ]
** Summary **
Hoooooof shows [ As Qc ].
DOCCOD shows [ Ah 5h ].
DOCCOD shows [ Ah 5h ].
Hoooooof shows [ As Qc ].
Hoooooof collected [$4452].