When you can't stands it no more.

Profit: $10

I'm talking about uni work fortunately. I've been working on a wretched curriculum assignment for three days straight and I decided to have tonight off to play poker

As you can see, it went quite well. I was playing at Full Tilt tonight and a lot of the rooms were full of short stacks. I've struggled to understand how to play shortstacks in the past so today was a good learning experience. The key really is to treat them like any other player. I know this sounds daft but in the past I've tried to push them off hands by sticking them all in with middle pair. That simply doesn't work and the implied odds are hopeless anyway. Today I just played ultra tight. I limped in with draws, raised with my big hands and slowly but gradually eeked out a profit. There were a couple nice hands that worked out for me. I turned two pair and someone went all in with an obvious bluff (he showed the dolly hand with no outs). I then found myself all in with a guy pre-flop. I had QQs and he had AK. I seem to remember this happened a couple of months ago. I lost that one but won this one (it's just a bloody shame the one I lost was for $32 and this one was worth $5!).

After those hands I went utterly card dead, I mean absolutely nothing; rag after rag after rag. This lasted for an hour, I was so bored I fired up a third table but still nothing came. I must have blind off about 40% of my profits. Then I got 10 3. The flop came 10 J 3 with two diamonds. I made a bet trying to get some information straight and flush draws. One player called and the turn came a 3d. I bet about 2/3 pots just praying the guy had a flush. He called and the river brought another diamond. He instantly went all in. Bad beat for him but I played the hand in a fashion that minimised my potential losses. I got about $6 from that and quit soon after.

Having a quick look through my figures over the past 10 days, it's showing that the most I have lost in a single hand has been $4.85 - and that was a hand where someone got me with a gutshot on the river. In the last 400 recorded hands I've lost $1 or more in a hand just three times. That just shows how much I've improved when it comes to not paying people off. In contrast I've won 11 hands worth more than $1. It's the small pots when you lose, big pots when you win principle.

I'm so chuffed with myself I'm going to round off this blog with a graph.