Just Call Me Lucky!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

There has been recent accusation within the comments section of my blog that I don't post enough about poker and that I only use this resource as a means to moan about my life in general. I really can't defend against that accusation as it does actually carry significant weight.

So without further ado I shall moan some more :D As you may recall I put my Subaru up for sale in September 2007. At the time it had a full years MOT, brand new brakes all round, 6 months tax, 4 good tyres and was in exceptional condition after I'd spent two days machine polishing it. Within days of the adverts going up it was hit by an uninsured Polish driver costing me £350 in insurance excess payments and a check mark against my claims record. In the months that followed I argued back and forth with the insurance company before it finally went in to get repairs. The car is now back and fully repaired to a high standard. I was literally days away from reposting my adverts when Laura noticed that someone has kindly keyed the entire passenger side of the car - that will be another £200 or so to put right. Who are these scum btw!!!! It's like the world realized I was at a low point and decided to kick me even harder!

Ironically this sad tale gets even worse. You see, I had planned to post a picture of the keyed panels under my title above for shock value. Call is pictorial evidence of how crummy my life is just now. However, when I took the memory card out the camera to download the pictures I discovered that Laura had erased the picture I took the other day and with it the pictures I took of the crash damage a few months back. That might seem trivial but I will now be trying to sell a car that has clearly had a wing replaced within the last few weeks under the guise of needing the money for a wedding but with no picture evidence of how minimal the damage actually was. I know as a buyer I would assume the worse* and walk away.

* the worse being that the car was quite badly knocked, that the owner had lost faith in it and that he was now looking to just get rid of it!

Then we get to poker! I diligently played 14,388 hands of poker this week and made a profit of $632 with rakeback to be added on top of that. However, this does not tell the whole story as it was, in fact, a terrible week with bad beat after bad beat. According to Poker EV I was a whopping -$1608 for my all in luck. In total that puts me at between $4500-5000 down for all in luck since I started playing for a living which is, to put not too fine a point on it, disgustingly sick. I need that money so bad but the one factor I simply cannot control is poker is my luck once I've put my money in. Yet again another week passes where I must put faith in the maths and the fact that all the statistics, programmes, sklansky buck lines, etc, etc tell me I should be making big profits. Truth be told, I was never a very good Christian because I simply wanted proof of god. In a similar vein I just want the cold hard currency in my poker account and not the promises of Tracker this and EV that.

That's enough moaning for now though. The bottom line is that in spite of these set backs I did make some reasonable profit last week and I got through a good amount of hands/hours to boot. I shall continue with my currently levels of commitment to my poker and I believe the results will come. I'm still above 2ptbb/100 over the last 90,000 hands of NL$200 so I'm growing increasingly confident that I can beat the game. I also found putting in circa 25 hours last week was easy enough even when I was running badly.

As for poker strategy and discussions, well, most of that will have to wait for now. I'm playing a fairly basic game and employing simple strategies that have been discussed before in the blog. I have a few ideas floating around that I will experiment with in the future but only when I have the finances to allow for such experimentation. At the moment I have to try and make as much money as possible and if that means being an A,B,C nit then so be it.

To finish on a 'lucky' note I'll drop in a hand history. I regard this as quite possibly the luckiest hand I have ever played at poker as I was set up to do my entire stack but by choosing to play a hand far slower than usual, and by my opponents making similar choices, I saved a fortune. I will admit that I was going super-fly-TNT when the river card was dealt prior to me seeing my opponent's hands.

Full Tilt Poker, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 7 Players LeggoPoker.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $209.25
UTG+1: $192.15
MP: $110.95
Hero (CO): $246.25
BTN: $172.40
SB: $216.25
BB: $194

Pre-Flop: Qh Qs dealt to Hero (CO)

3 folds, Hero raises to $8, BTN calls $8, SB calls $7, BB calls $6

Flop: ($32) Kc Ks Qc (4 Players)

SB checks, BB checks, Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($32) 5d (4 Players)

SB bets $32, BB folds, Hero calls $32, BTN calls $32

River: ($128) 5s (3 Players)

SB bets $42, Hero folds, BTN raises to $132.40 and is All-In, SB calls $90.40

Results: $392.80 Pot ($3 Rake)

BTN showed Qd Kd (a full house, Kings full of Queens) and WON $389.80 (+$217.40 NET) SB mucked Kh Ah (a full house, Kings full of Fives) and LOST (-$172.40 NET)

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