Dear readers,
As a rule of thumb I would say that getting too involved in the chat while playing on-line poker is EV-. However, I play mostly live poker and when playing online is normally low-stakes cash or some tourney/SNG ...........nothing too heavy , so I can afford to "relax" a bit.
Last night I decided to grab the new Full Tilt bonus available for any player that had actually played for real money with a Full Tilt account prior to this week. Since I got a month to clear the bonus started hammering a table right away.
I chose a 0.25/0.5 NL table which look okish and played solid for about an hour. I always buy-in for the max and it kind of bothers me a lot to get too many short stacks at the table. Unfortunately that was the case towards the end of my session so I stood up turning a tidy profit of $36. Another negative factor playing online is how quickly tables change in a session, as I said I played only for an hour and in the end most of the table were short-stacks whereus at first they were mostly deep.
After that mini-session I was watching some old High Stakes Poker episodes on Pokertube when disaster occurred , the server crashed ! Oh well , the episode was very enjoyable. So what to do.........I went back to playing poker at Full tilt of course :-)
This time around I was wise enough to choose a deep stack table, on of those in which no one can buy in really shorty, also 0.25-0.5 NL. Table seemed to be quite good and I was playing well , making the most of position and reading people accurately. I would like to comment a few hands:
Hand 1. I was BB with 10-8 off, MP semi-tight medium stack raises to $1.5 , Cut-off medium stack calls $1.5 , SB folds and I make the call.
FLOP 4-6-7 rainbow ( POT $4.75). I lead for 2$ since I have a double belly to make the straight plus the others might have missed completely. Original raiser min raises to $4, cut off calls $4 so do I.
TURN ( POT $16.75 ) Kh , putting two hearts on the board. I check , MP bets $7 , cut off calls $7. Now , I think I could have check-raised here to something like $22 and take the pot down , did not feel they were that strong on that board. In the end decided to play it a bit weak passive and called the $7.
RIVER ( POT $37.75 ) 5x . So I made the second nut straight. Now , I missed some value here , thought that the cut-off was on some kind of draw and did not want to be raised by the nut straight so I checked so did they and took the pot down.
The original raiser showed AA and berated me quite a bit, the other guy also said how fishy my play was. I actually replied that those pocket As were in fact very poorly played. Had he bet big on the flop or flop and turn he surely would have taken it down !!!
Hand 2. I open raise in MP with 5-6 off to $1.75 , it folds to the SB that min-raises me to $4.25. The SB was short stack so there was really not much point for me to play that sort of hand but his raise was so tiny that I was priced in so made the call. He had only about $16 more behind.
FLOP 5-7-J all hearts ( POT $9 ) . I held the 6h so actually flopped a pair and a baby flush draw. SB goes all-in and to be honest I thought he could have AK /AQ, maybe with one heart or a decent pair. I knew I could be behind but did not feel like drawing dead and it was possible I was ahead so I called , turned a heart and won the pot against QQ no heart. Again people started berating me at the table. After that I flopped a couple of small sets against bigger stacks that had re-raised me pre-flop offering good set mining odds so I won two decent size pots.
At that point the chat was on fire, I was obviously in some sort of heater but seriously playing OK, it was not crazy "gambool". One guy said : " have you actually been ahead pre-flop all night?" to which my reply was "the money is made after .... honey". :-)
In my opinion you really have to mix it well playing cash games. Yes , I did raise with junk on a couple of occasions, got lucky and showed it to the table but the majority of my holdings were really solid and well played in relation to position and stack sizes.
At that point I picked up KK in early position, raised my usual initial $1.75 and it folds to the SB , medium stack who was one of the "beraters". He re-raised to $9 and I knew what was coming next. The guy obviosly thought I did not have much.........well , I did .......and 4 bet him to $22........he went all-in for about $38 and of course I called. V tabled QQ , my KK held and well.......ship it ! :-). That's clearly another advantage of a measure junk mixing strategy, people pay you off when you are big plus junk is easy to get away from if called and missed plus when junk hits it tends to win big pots as well.
Ended the session up $130, great for about over an hour of 0.25-0.5 ! So I went from $150 prior any poker yesterday to $316 after two short sessions plus am accruing that $100 bonus nicely so hopefully I'll get the first $10 instalment tonight or tomorrow. I really really like the new Full tilt software and I urge you to try it.
Please , if you do not have a Full Tilt account and wish to open one please let me know so we can use the refer-a-friend feature.
XXX
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Saturday, 1 August 2009
As promised: My last Vegas trip!
Dear readers,
As I mentioned last week back in May I travelled to the world's poker capital : Vegas. That was not my first trip to Sin City but in my previous visits I still was a poker virgin and gambled quite a bit on the other main house games (Roulette , BJ, etc. ).
I chose to fly with one stop-over in Detroit, got a good deal with North West so quite a few pounds were saved on the flight. However , from now on I intend to fly over there only direct, it's such a pain to have to wait for and suffer a second cross country flight after crossing the Atlantic. Moreover, the internal flights do not have the entertainment on offer you normally get on the long haul ones so it's really gruelling in the end.
I arrived there on May the first, at about 5pm, really tired but very excited ! Got a taxi to the Sahara and before I knew I was unpacked and ready to go. My hotel choice was based purely on the price , got such a good offer at the Sahara and on the whole the hotel is ok. It's a bit out of the way but has a monorail station right at the back, which takes you anywhere on the Strip for 5$. If you like walking it's pleasant to walk back from the strip at night when it's not so hot so all in all location was not such an issue to me.
Money wise I wasn't really worried , even though I really had a mediocre bankroll for such a trip. I might have been in trouble if things turned sour at the poker tables but overall was pretty confident on my ability to beat low stakes there.
Prior to my trip I had been researching quite a bit of info about the Vegas poker scene so I knew what to expect. My plan was to play mainly 1-2$NL and combine a schedule mixing well known soft games with an extensive tour of all the main poker rooms. The first two days were absolutely awesome. In fact on Saturday the 2nd I went to the Venetian after an excellent breakfast at the Peppermill and had what would be my best session while in Vegas, raking a $1000 profit. That very same night I went to the MGM and even though I did not really like any of the tables I played at ended up profiting a further $100.
The next day, Sunday the 3rd, was also an excellent poker day. I met a really nice Italian guy playing at the IP ( Imperial Palace ) and made about $400 there. This Italian guy and I would spend most of week 1 together, he was also by himself and wanted to follow my poker schedule and have some nice meals and that sort of thing. I do not have a problem going to nice restaurants by myself but some people, and that was his case, really need someone with them to enjoy a proper holiday : nice meals , shows and the lot.
Over the course of the next few days I played at different card rooms, only had one losing day and the only place I played at consistently was the Venetian. The Venetian has a gorgeous poker room, the design is outstanding. On top of that the dealers are very professional , the cocktail service is excellent, they comp you $1 in food vouchers per hour played and the rake is very reasonable, $4 max. They always have loads of games going, so if you find a tough table it's easy to be transferred to an easier one. Most staff are really friendly and overall the room is run close to perfection.
It was such a treat after a few hours playing at the Venetian every morning to redeem your food voucher and have some lunch at the Grand Lux Cafe. This eatery is within the Venetian main Casino floor and in my opinion provides great value for money. Both food quality and service are well above average.
During my second weekend I had one monster rollercoaster poker session. It started awfully at the MGM. I was second best all night, when turning a straight was rivered by a flush, when rivering a full house was cleaned by quads, when pushing with trips second kicker was defeated by trips top kicker, and so on and on and on. I was playing well but could not get anything going. I lost my initial $200 buy-in, followed by another $200. Against my personal rules I re-bought a third time, the tables were good and my game was sharp so I was hoping to re-bounce at that point. None of it, after a few hours of trying got rivered once more and left very fed up with $91 in my pocket at 4 in the morning. At that point felt hungry and decided to try the late night Steak special at Bill's. Bill's is a small mid-Strip popular casino. The waiting list for the special was HUGE so thought of trying Harrah's instead. Harrah's located also quite centrally on the Strip and the late night Steak special was great for a cool $7 ! After the meal I did not feel like going to bed and somehow the thought of trying out a degenerate early morning poker session at the IP sounded so appealing that could not resist it and went there.
Now , that session at the IP, was THE SESSION. I found a friendly table with an open seat right there waiting for me.There was a large guy that looked like a half baked potato donating money left and right. Obviously his game was sub-standard and in addition to that he had a huge stack of about $800: great :-). I proceeded to double up my $91 twice through that guy and after that just played very solid till 6 pm !!! Yes , 6 pm, it was a marathon session. That guy ended up broke ( surprise , surprise ) and the rest of the table consisted of a mix of decent players and lousy gamblers. Needless to say that picking the right spots to grab some chips was plain easy. When I left gave all my chips to the nice lady behind the counter and cashed out for a cool $900. Not bad considering how things had been at the MGM the previous night and my short starting stack.
The Imperial Palace is not a fancy hotel by any means and its poker room is small but they often have juicy games and I strongly recommend it as part of any low stakes grinder schedule.
During my second week in Vegas I started to feel how tiring it was to try to concentrate at the poker table when you aim to turn a profit on a daily basis. Moreover it is so difficult to keep up a healthy life style during such a holiday. As a result everyday I was leaving the poker tables a bit earlier than the first week and enjoying some relaxing Pai-Gow poker at the Sahara. Pai-Gow poker is a house game that you can play without challenging your brain at all with a cool free bloody Mary in hand and it's easy to break even.
One negative factor while in Vegas was the heat. I had been to Vegas before in May, but this time around the average temperature was way higher. To be honest that's not a problem when you are playing cards since all properties feature Nordic climate indoors. However , it's nice to be out and about , walk during the day, make the most of the outdoors, and that helps your poker performance. When it's that hot you cannot really enjoy being in the streets and therefore run out of energy easily.
To sum up , the holiday was awesome, had loads of winning poker sessions and only a few losses, met some nice people, had great meals and cannot wait to go back again. My next Vegas adventure will start on October the 2nd and will be a Mega-holiday, ending on October 24th.
Thanks for reading and please send me any feed-back about the blog or question you may have about my poker live in London in general or my Vegas trip in particular.
XXX
As I mentioned last week back in May I travelled to the world's poker capital : Vegas. That was not my first trip to Sin City but in my previous visits I still was a poker virgin and gambled quite a bit on the other main house games (Roulette , BJ, etc. ).
I chose to fly with one stop-over in Detroit, got a good deal with North West so quite a few pounds were saved on the flight. However , from now on I intend to fly over there only direct, it's such a pain to have to wait for and suffer a second cross country flight after crossing the Atlantic. Moreover, the internal flights do not have the entertainment on offer you normally get on the long haul ones so it's really gruelling in the end.
I arrived there on May the first, at about 5pm, really tired but very excited ! Got a taxi to the Sahara and before I knew I was unpacked and ready to go. My hotel choice was based purely on the price , got such a good offer at the Sahara and on the whole the hotel is ok. It's a bit out of the way but has a monorail station right at the back, which takes you anywhere on the Strip for 5$. If you like walking it's pleasant to walk back from the strip at night when it's not so hot so all in all location was not such an issue to me.
Money wise I wasn't really worried , even though I really had a mediocre bankroll for such a trip. I might have been in trouble if things turned sour at the poker tables but overall was pretty confident on my ability to beat low stakes there.
Prior to my trip I had been researching quite a bit of info about the Vegas poker scene so I knew what to expect. My plan was to play mainly 1-2$NL and combine a schedule mixing well known soft games with an extensive tour of all the main poker rooms. The first two days were absolutely awesome. In fact on Saturday the 2nd I went to the Venetian after an excellent breakfast at the Peppermill and had what would be my best session while in Vegas, raking a $1000 profit. That very same night I went to the MGM and even though I did not really like any of the tables I played at ended up profiting a further $100.
The next day, Sunday the 3rd, was also an excellent poker day. I met a really nice Italian guy playing at the IP ( Imperial Palace ) and made about $400 there. This Italian guy and I would spend most of week 1 together, he was also by himself and wanted to follow my poker schedule and have some nice meals and that sort of thing. I do not have a problem going to nice restaurants by myself but some people, and that was his case, really need someone with them to enjoy a proper holiday : nice meals , shows and the lot.
Over the course of the next few days I played at different card rooms, only had one losing day and the only place I played at consistently was the Venetian. The Venetian has a gorgeous poker room, the design is outstanding. On top of that the dealers are very professional , the cocktail service is excellent, they comp you $1 in food vouchers per hour played and the rake is very reasonable, $4 max. They always have loads of games going, so if you find a tough table it's easy to be transferred to an easier one. Most staff are really friendly and overall the room is run close to perfection.
It was such a treat after a few hours playing at the Venetian every morning to redeem your food voucher and have some lunch at the Grand Lux Cafe. This eatery is within the Venetian main Casino floor and in my opinion provides great value for money. Both food quality and service are well above average.
During my second weekend I had one monster rollercoaster poker session. It started awfully at the MGM. I was second best all night, when turning a straight was rivered by a flush, when rivering a full house was cleaned by quads, when pushing with trips second kicker was defeated by trips top kicker, and so on and on and on. I was playing well but could not get anything going. I lost my initial $200 buy-in, followed by another $200. Against my personal rules I re-bought a third time, the tables were good and my game was sharp so I was hoping to re-bounce at that point. None of it, after a few hours of trying got rivered once more and left very fed up with $91 in my pocket at 4 in the morning. At that point felt hungry and decided to try the late night Steak special at Bill's. Bill's is a small mid-Strip popular casino. The waiting list for the special was HUGE so thought of trying Harrah's instead. Harrah's located also quite centrally on the Strip and the late night Steak special was great for a cool $7 ! After the meal I did not feel like going to bed and somehow the thought of trying out a degenerate early morning poker session at the IP sounded so appealing that could not resist it and went there.
Now , that session at the IP, was THE SESSION. I found a friendly table with an open seat right there waiting for me.There was a large guy that looked like a half baked potato donating money left and right. Obviously his game was sub-standard and in addition to that he had a huge stack of about $800: great :-). I proceeded to double up my $91 twice through that guy and after that just played very solid till 6 pm !!! Yes , 6 pm, it was a marathon session. That guy ended up broke ( surprise , surprise ) and the rest of the table consisted of a mix of decent players and lousy gamblers. Needless to say that picking the right spots to grab some chips was plain easy. When I left gave all my chips to the nice lady behind the counter and cashed out for a cool $900. Not bad considering how things had been at the MGM the previous night and my short starting stack.
The Imperial Palace is not a fancy hotel by any means and its poker room is small but they often have juicy games and I strongly recommend it as part of any low stakes grinder schedule.
During my second week in Vegas I started to feel how tiring it was to try to concentrate at the poker table when you aim to turn a profit on a daily basis. Moreover it is so difficult to keep up a healthy life style during such a holiday. As a result everyday I was leaving the poker tables a bit earlier than the first week and enjoying some relaxing Pai-Gow poker at the Sahara. Pai-Gow poker is a house game that you can play without challenging your brain at all with a cool free bloody Mary in hand and it's easy to break even.
One negative factor while in Vegas was the heat. I had been to Vegas before in May, but this time around the average temperature was way higher. To be honest that's not a problem when you are playing cards since all properties feature Nordic climate indoors. However , it's nice to be out and about , walk during the day, make the most of the outdoors, and that helps your poker performance. When it's that hot you cannot really enjoy being in the streets and therefore run out of energy easily.
To sum up , the holiday was awesome, had loads of winning poker sessions and only a few losses, met some nice people, had great meals and cannot wait to go back again. My next Vegas adventure will start on October the 2nd and will be a Mega-holiday, ending on October 24th.
Thanks for reading and please send me any feed-back about the blog or question you may have about my poker live in London in general or my Vegas trip in particular.
XXX
Friday, 24 July 2009
Where to start............myself.
Dear readers,
I have loads of spare time at the office and am so passionate about poker that writing a blog comes as 2+2=4.
First of all a little bit about myself. I grew up in sunny Spain, such a gorgeous country, in the capital city of Madrid.
Being a child I was ever interested in strategy games and was bright and articulate, a bit too quiet if you ask my mum. Most of my family were very keen card games players, and some of them, pure gamblers. Growing up in such environment made me an avid card player as well and overtime a bit of a gambler.
For years I loved to visit the Casino in Madrid and other venues while on holiday and gambled quite a bit. Roulette , BJ and the sort. I never got into big trouble financially , a few times spent more money than I should have though.
Gambling was FUN and I was ( and still am and possibly always will be ) a bit of a gambler. However, I never really felt fully satisfied with the whole thing and at times thought it was such a liability to pour money on those games.
I moved to London 9 years ago after working in Madrid at a boring-nothing-to-do-no-challenge office for about 6 years. Things did not change much for me overhere, I learnt the language well , met loads of interesting people, gambled from time to time , got a partner, got separated .............lived.
ALL of that would change completely last year............. I discovered my passion, my calling , the activity that combines the elements of exciment, intellectual challenge, competition and gambling.....POKER.
By coincidence found myself trying out on-line that thingy called Texas Holdem to never look back again.
I just love this game too much and during the past twelve months have been working on my game and improving it enormously.
Almost from the word go I was doing OK playing SNGs , Cash is a different beast all together. I have learnt the "hard way". To sum up my on-line experience it's been up and down, unfortunately mostly down.
I still enjoy playing on-line at times, but so far haven't had the discipline and determination to set some goals and turn a profit. Last winter I found myself playing live poker , here in London, and since then on-line is just a mere small stakes sudoku. i LOVE playing live !!!
Quite a few leaks have been fixed and these days I seem to dominate the majority of my fellow live players, on occasion it's just too easy. I mostly play 1-2 NL , always buy-in for £200 and more often than not go home with a tidy profit.
Nowadays I am simply unable to spend more than £10-£20 on any other game. The other casino games have lost their appeal to me. Poker is thrilling and may be lucrative, why wasting time and money on anything else???
Next time I blog I will let you know about my last trip to Vegas , May 1st-17th, and my plans for the next one, October 2nd-24th.
Till then , I hope you enjoy my never-ending poker fight.
XXX
I have loads of spare time at the office and am so passionate about poker that writing a blog comes as 2+2=4.
First of all a little bit about myself. I grew up in sunny Spain, such a gorgeous country, in the capital city of Madrid.
Being a child I was ever interested in strategy games and was bright and articulate, a bit too quiet if you ask my mum. Most of my family were very keen card games players, and some of them, pure gamblers. Growing up in such environment made me an avid card player as well and overtime a bit of a gambler.
For years I loved to visit the Casino in Madrid and other venues while on holiday and gambled quite a bit. Roulette , BJ and the sort. I never got into big trouble financially , a few times spent more money than I should have though.
Gambling was FUN and I was ( and still am and possibly always will be ) a bit of a gambler. However, I never really felt fully satisfied with the whole thing and at times thought it was such a liability to pour money on those games.
I moved to London 9 years ago after working in Madrid at a boring-nothing-to-do-no-challenge office for about 6 years. Things did not change much for me overhere, I learnt the language well , met loads of interesting people, gambled from time to time , got a partner, got separated .............lived.
ALL of that would change completely last year............. I discovered my passion, my calling , the activity that combines the elements of exciment, intellectual challenge, competition and gambling.....POKER.
By coincidence found myself trying out on-line that thingy called Texas Holdem to never look back again.
I just love this game too much and during the past twelve months have been working on my game and improving it enormously.
Almost from the word go I was doing OK playing SNGs , Cash is a different beast all together. I have learnt the "hard way". To sum up my on-line experience it's been up and down, unfortunately mostly down.
I still enjoy playing on-line at times, but so far haven't had the discipline and determination to set some goals and turn a profit. Last winter I found myself playing live poker , here in London, and since then on-line is just a mere small stakes sudoku. i LOVE playing live !!!
Quite a few leaks have been fixed and these days I seem to dominate the majority of my fellow live players, on occasion it's just too easy. I mostly play 1-2 NL , always buy-in for £200 and more often than not go home with a tidy profit.
Nowadays I am simply unable to spend more than £10-£20 on any other game. The other casino games have lost their appeal to me. Poker is thrilling and may be lucrative, why wasting time and money on anything else???
Next time I blog I will let you know about my last trip to Vegas , May 1st-17th, and my plans for the next one, October 2nd-24th.
Till then , I hope you enjoy my never-ending poker fight.
XXX
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
