Played loads and loads

Profit: about $50

I've put in the hours recently and I think I've been playing quite well.

I wouldn't say the deck has hit me in the face but I would say that I've not had many setup hands as I haven't been stacked for a while. I've had to throw in some pretty big laydowns but I've been playing on a site (carbon poker) where you can show your folds. Often when I do show a big fold they seem to think its courtesy to show me, and if not that they want to rabbit.

I'm being proved right more than I'm being proved wrong which is pleasing as I've always wondered if I am too tight. I probably am too tight pre-flop and on the flop - I don't think I raise enough - but I know how to put bets in to get information I need about whether my hand is bad. I'm never sure if it's good but I know when I'm bad.

I also found $8 in my betfair account and ran that up to $40 before suffering some set backs. I had a session on Wednesday when I just missed every single draw. I got frustrated and push with K8 on a K89 board after the guy min-raised my flop bet. I should have called and check-folded the turn because it was an unraised pot so I had no idea what he had. On Thursday I got nailed again. In one hand I had AKh, two callers called my re-raise and the flop came JQX with two hearts (wasn't royal draw). I bet out on the flop and they both called. Then my connection cut and I got back in to find they had both gone all in with a 9 on the turn. It was $2 to call into a $12; one of those horrible situations where I have to call knowing my chances are slim. Of course I missed.

Immediately after that I went on a card rush and won all the money back through what was aggressive and slightly tilted play. Then I got JJ, raised and got reraised all in. $7 call after I had invested $0.35. Stupidly I called and he flipped over Aces obviously. I guess I was just caught up in my rush and felt invincible. Straight after I went on another card rush and recovered some but not all of the money. I'm down to $23 on betfair. Maybe I should just do what Gniz suggested and take a shot with it - although there isn't much to take a shot with. lol!

Played on Full Tilt today and had 109 early on. A couple of limpers so I raised pot and got one caller. Flop came 109x. He bet, I raised to $3 and he went all in. I called and he showed A4 and missed what almost became a runner-runner flush. Raising limpers is something I rarely do. Partly because I haven't got the balls to do it with trash but mostly because in 10nl everyone calls the reraise anyway. But I've been watching more tutorial videos and have been learning stuff like this. Also check-calling with tp out of position and calling with bottom-middle pairs in position is something I've picked up.

After that hand I went on a good run. In one table I kept getting shoved out of hands. But for once my patience paid when I flopped a set of 5s and allowed the aggressive player to his stuff and donate his stack to me. A lot of other hands hit too and I went on a bit of heater. Played well, avoided some tough spots and got value from my hands. Read situations quite well too. I ran up a $30 session.

It's pleasing to know I can earn money in a short space of time when I get good cards. The struggle is the period in between when I go card dead and I spend ages dropping $10 because I can't get anything going.

I've really been concentrating on table selection in the past couple of weeks, choosing the tables with the highest avg pot and % of players to the flop. The idea being that I purposely play like a nit and hope to win the big pots. It's been going ok but when I get into the rooms the tables aren't always as choatic as the stats suggest (sometimes I suspect betfair bases its stats off one hand). I'll have to try the same in rooms with small avg pots and % players to the flop and play agressively in them.

Generals points for the rest of the year:

Keep playing single tables while watching tutorial vids. I pick up some useful tips and the poker keeps me interested during deads bits of the video.

Be more agressive and loose in position. Raise with 108s and the like on the button. My strength is getting away from danger spots so I should be capable of playing these hands to win big pots. Also call raises in position with hands like this.

Make a note of every minimum raiser and check-raiser. I hate these types of players and need to make sure I don't give them money on c/bets.

Going all in pre/flop with AA is still very profitable. I can either take six out of seven pots pre/flop or on the flop with aggressive small pot poker - and lose a big pot when the rockets get outdrawn - or go all in preflop all the time and get the idiots calling with 77, AK and so on and win a huge pot every 10 times or so. Unless I know some maniac is going reraise me preflop and then call my all-in reraise, the safest and most profitable options seems to be to just go all in. I should probably do the same with KKs as I bet the statistic would be the same, but the thought of someone calling me with AK and hitting that A... enough to make the blood tingle.

There are probably some more points I could make and I probably will do in a later blog, but I'm tired and I've alread typed a lot.

One last thing. I've tried doing some video recordings on the macbook of my games but the fan always goes crazy and the voice sync is terrible and never works. Can anyone suggest a recording program that works? Camtasia and Camstudio don't do the trick.