Monday 22 March 2010

AMAZING NIGHT!

This post will completely lack in coherence I imagine but I am writing it right off the back of a pretty surreal session.

For me, tonight really epitomises one thing - that persistence and volume really will reap rewards. I have played upwards of 50 tournaments this weekend, across three nights and although its nothing compared to a lot of baller grinders out there, its a substantial amount of volume for me and the schedule I play. Despite disastrous Friday and Saturday nights I was determined to sit back at the tables on Sunday and make it happen, when many may have passed it off and been downbeat. Indeed, I was so incredibly pumped at 4pm this afternoon, really looking forward to hitting the felt. It paid off and I truly believe I played some brilliant poker whilst also pulling off some sick sick run good!!!

I had multiple deep runs tonight, started at 4pm and I don't think I busted anything until about 7 so it was a bit crazy. I had 8 cashes and they were all pretty decent - with $70+ cashes in the 250k and the Daily $30k. I final table bubbled two tournaments on the euros, including Bwin's big $5 rebuy. However, that doesn't tell half the tale.

I managed a 2nd in the Ipoker $22, for a $900 score (damn 2nd :P) but more importantly and most notably I managed my first final table on Stars, which is pretty hilarious after my posts recently on Stars! Not only that but I also managed to ship it woooooop, sending me packing with a cool $2300 and some change, my biggest score to date!!! Sick life. Typically it was the $3.30 that I run good in but whatever, I won't complain!

In my haste to go and scream and run around for a few seconds I forgot to take any screen shots and the 2nd place on ipoker was whilst I was nearing the FT of the Stars tournament. I'll guess you'll have to trust me lol!

Literally an insane night with cashes just over $3500, taking the roll to just shy of $7000!!! Considering my target is $10,000 for the year, its looking good!

I literally have no idea what to do with myself now, I can't stop grinning and it feels so good cos I genuinely feel as if I deserved that and its a case of hard work paying off. Who knows. Also really happy to end on a high, as that will be my last big session until post-exams. I'll play a few tournaments as a break from revision now and again probably but nothing too big. Then its to the big month of June. Shame I can't continue now, maybe Stars has put me on a heater lol but I really have to knuckle down for a couple of months.

Anyway, that's the wrap I reckon, nothing to add. GL all

Saturday 20 March 2010

4th Place and the Champions League

Purely because I'm immensely bored and find myself sitting in the library at half past 5 on a Saturday evening railing my weekend accumulator, I want to talk football!

This season has been pretty immense and as it draws to its close, wherever you look in the table you can see fierce battles being fought. I'm just posting what I think will happen, sort of a little bet with myself I guess (or any potential readers), which will make it that much more interesting if it needs to be!

Firstly, I think the relegation battle will stay as it is, position-wise. Portsmouth was a massive game for Hull today and coming away with nothing massively dents their survival hopes imo. I full expect, Burnley and Portsmouth to go down and after the manner of defeat at Fratton Park, I think its very likely that Hull will now join them.

Turning to the title, well, its pretty open and pretty daunting to try and pick anyone! On the one hand Arsenal have an easy run-in but they are the world's best at crumbling under pressure and how many of their youngsters could have one eye on a massive quarter-final tie with Barcelona? I think they are too inexperienced and need to put all their eggs in one basket, as Chelsea have been forced to do. Utd are born and bred competitors and when you have Rooney leading the line, who would bet against them? They have a candid ability to grind out the results need right at the death to win the title - as we saw last year. That said, I favour Chelsea. A month ago I was saying Utd but the impact of the Champs League exit, I think, can be positive for Chelsea. They have vast amounts of experience all over the team, great leaders and a great ability. Drogba seems to have tailed off of late and maybe they are tiring a little as they don't seem to have the quality in depth any more. However, Ancelloti is a pedigree in himself and with the inner tussles, management-wise, to add to that, I don't believe he will let his side throw the opportunity before them away. A lot of course will be decided in the Utd v Chelsea game but I'll pip Chelsea to take it, marginally. It will go to the wire however.

Now, to the much-coveted fourth spot and that final Champions League qualification spot. As has become apparent from previous posts, I'm a Liverpool fan so there may be an element of bias but I have legitimately tried to keep it to a minimum or eradicate it entirely! For this call I've analysed the fixtures of the remaining teams, which I will post below in a minute. Firstly, Villa will have taken a knock to their confidence today and I don't think they are mature enough, despite being guided by the capable Martin O'Neill, to come back from that. Again, the Carling Cup final loss will have hurt and I think a lot of them will be looking to rectify that in the FA cup - for the youngsters and a relatively "average" team, a trophy and a final appearance will mean more. Lets be honest, Villa in the Champs League - I don't think so. Tottenham are in pole position and under Redknapp anything can happen; its just a question of whether they can keep their nerve and get something from some big big games they have in the run-in. City are such an odd team, on their day they're great, as we saw against Chelsea but again, I don't think they have many leaders (even in a managerial role) who can stand up and be counted, take the bull by the horns and just go out there. Given, Tevez and Bellamy have real character but I don't see anyone in the midfield or defence who is just going to ring the team by its neck in the final few games and they are the areas that arguably need such character. Liverpool, again, a team of two halves and a season of many proportions. I have zero faith in Rafa's ability and have had that opinion for a long time; even before we came close to the title last year. However, as Lucas alluded to against Lille - Gerrard has that leadership quality and others in the team relish that and improve as a result. We arguably have the easiest run-in, looking at the games as a whole and we are on the back of a decent run, also buoyed, perhaps, by a quarter-final. However, this happened a few weeks back and it came to a crashing halt so its whether or not they can maintain it. Internally I think there is a massive amount of pressure on the lads' shoulders also, the importance of fourth spot is far greater to Liverpool then any others in the race imo. Whether the likes of Insua, Maxi, Babel and Lucas can cope with that remains to be seen. Anyway the fixtures:

Villa:

Home games - Sunderland, Everton, Birmingham and Blackburn
Away - Chelsea, Bolton, Portsmouth, Hull, Man City

I anticipate them getting 15 points from a potential 27, leaving them on a total of 65 points. They will drop points against City and Chelsea whilst drawing with Bolton, Blackburn and Everton. They are unbeaten in 2010 but have drawn 6/10, they struggle to break down stubborn teams and they are too focused on an FA cup. Like last year, they will fade and today didn't help that.

City:

Home - Wigan, B'ham, Utd, Villa, Spurs
Away - Fulham, Everton, Burnley, Arsenal, West Ham

They will get 18 points from a potential 30. I don't believe they will get anything from the Arsenal or Utd games, they have far greater achievements to be playing for. I also think they will draw their next two games, away against Fulham (buoyed after the Juve win) and Everton, who are ending the season in great form and not fighting on any other front. They may well share the points with Tottenham also and indeed, that game could prove to be pivotal.

Tottenham:

Home - Portsmouth, Arsenal, Chelsea, Bolton
Away - Sunderland, Utd, Man City, Burnley

I think they will take 13 points from a possible 24. Again, I think they have the hardest run-in and I just don't see how they will get anything from the Arsenal, Utd and Chelsea games. The City game could prove pivotal to them, as all the others are straight-forward, or should be.

Liverpool:

Home - Sunderland, Fulham, West Ham, Chelsea
Away - Utd, B'ham, Burnley, Hull

I think they will get 18 points from a possible 24. As we have seen with Liverpool over the last couple of seasons, they have an exceptional ability to cock up. That run-in, bar the two obvious games, should be producing maximum points and that could luckily propel us to fourth but who knows? I'm being conservative and going with my thinking with the other three contenders - that being, we will drop maximum points against Utd away and Chelsea at home. Based on my analysis I think that is probably likely. I wouldn't be surprised however if we nick something from both games but I wouldn't bet on it. We seem pumped for the Utd games recently but after playing on Monday and Thursday - where we did look tired, I just can't see coming away from Old Trafford with anything. Chelsea at home is probably our best bet there but again, they will really want the title.

Based on that I think it will finish like this:

4th - Liverpool, 69 points
5th - Tottenham, 68 points and a superior goal difference to:
6th - City, 68 points
7th - Villa, 67 points


As I say, this was done out of pure boredom but if anyone fancies a flutter I would be happy to oblige! This should make it an even more entertaining final 8/9 games also! Epic if I am bang on.......

Anyway, finish off this last bit of work, then home to get on ze grind!

Ooops!




Summary of the post above!
Decided to post on it now, at 4am, to get my thoughts etc out my head before the morning!

Put in a pretty hefty session tonight, playing a total of 26 tournaments, included a couple of $33s, resulting in a total buy-in of about $360. This is a little more than I would have liked to put on the line perhaps but I wanted to concentrate on the volume and with the average buy-in being at a comfortable $14 it was fine!

Anyway, despite some exceptionally deep runs, AGAIN, on Stars (including a 20th) and a final table (10th)on Bwin I couldn't manage to recoup or earn on that buy-in, resulting in a resounding $160 loss for the night. It was a fun evening however - railing Jon and vice versa, we also managed to talk a fair amount on hands and it was generally quite a productive evening in the sense that I feel I took a lot from it. That said, I'm in the game to earn money effectively and when that doesn't happen the successes are rather mundane!

What's more annoying is this is my last weekend of poker before a self-imposed ban in the build up to exams. I may play the odd tournament here and there as a break but I won't be putting in any significant sessions to speak of. On that basis I hope to be able to put in a session tomorrow but if not, certainly Sunday. I really want to end on a high so it doesn't consume my thoughts thereafter so I'm determined to make use of the next couple of nights. Alternatively, I have a big accumulator on the football this weekend so let me run good with that one time and ship ze monies! Must be due a win!

At some point over the next few weeks I'll post on my plans for after exams, with regard to poker. As I said before, my aim is to play full-time in June and see where I can go with it but I'm seriously frustrated with Stars and my current schedule in that respect. I'm only interested in playing schedules but I'm sick of having uber deep runs and earning peanuts in comparison to the effort put in or the result achieved. At the moment I sort of feel like slogging it out to get that illusive final table before leaving the site - as if I am owed it. I sure as hell have played a lot on there and time after time I lose the crucial flips when deep. On a side note...I ran into AA 5 times tonight when making those standard shoves when deep. Four of which woke up in the BB. Pretty hilarious.

Anyway, with a view to maintaining at least a reasonable lifestyle, whilst also reducing variance, I may well scrap Stars from my schedule. This will result in a decrease on volume on the night so I'll just have to make sure the frequency of sessions is increased. More of that later though..

I'll post again at the end of the weekend, hopefully with some positive news! GL

Monday 15 March 2010

Here's to Monday then....






It didn't really go according to plan needless to say!

Despite having numerous deep runs with 6 finishes in the top 40 of tournaments, I still only managed $240 worth of cashes, resulting in a $130 loss for the evening! Not exactly what I was hoping for but it was fun nonetheless!!
I stuck to the schedule and also sold 15% worth of shares to Jon, which I fortunately managed to recoup the majority of for him lol! This might be something I look to do a little more of in the future but only if I increase the buy-ins a little. It was pretty pointless tonight really cos nothing was out of my comfort zone, every tournament was more or less comfortably within my roll. We'll see how that pans out!


Anyway, not really got anything else to add on tonight specifically. There are a few hands I will go over at some point this week and have got a few up on 2p2 but otherwise it was just standard. Deep runs in Stars to no avail might I add! Bastards!

I don't think I'll be able to play again this coming week, really need to get a lot of work done having slacked off towards the end of this week. I'll try and put in a smaller session at some point but will have to see how it goes.

Roll stands at just over $4.5k and I'll have to do my personal finances this week to see if a withdrawal has to be made. May end up forcing myself to be extremely tight with money and not go out much instead, would sooner not withdraw!

GL, have a good week!

Sunday 14 March 2010

Its Sundayyyyy!

Having not played in a couple of weeks I'm looking forward to having a tasty session tonight and hopefully shipping ze monies...

I've had a really busy couple of weeks with uni work and assignments, as well as playing host to a couple of people who have been staying with us in the flat for 5 days or so. Its been good fun but I've also spent a lot of money so hopefully I can make some money tonight as a withdrawal could be inbound :(

Here is the full schedule for tonight below. I have looked at it in a fair amount of detail and think that it could be manageable in terms of the number of tables etc.

STARS:

(N.B. Sticking to lower buy-ins in the main, as was discussed in a previous post).

1700: $5.50, $20,000 GTD
1700: $22, $5,000 GTD
1800: $11, Daily $30k
1900: $5.50 Turbo, $12,000 GTD
1915: $11, $15,000 GTD
2000: $11, Sunday $250k
2000: $8.80, $5,000 GTD


IPOKER:

1700: $11, $4,000 GTD
1745: $22, $3,000 GTD
1820: $5.50, $2,500 GTD
1845: $22, $4,000 GTD
2010: $5.50, $6,000 GTD
2140: $5.50, $3,000 GTD
2215: $22, $5,000 GTD
2235: $5.50, $2,000 GTD


ONGAME:


1715: $5.50, $3,500 GTD
1820: $11, $2,000 GTD
2015: $22, $9,000 GTD
2030: $11, $5,000 GTD
2100: $5.50, $8,000 GTD
2230: $5.50, $5,000 GTD


BOSS:


1830: €6.60, €1,500 GTD, Deepstack Turbo
1930: €22, €3,500 GTD, Deepstack
2035: €11, €3,500 GTD
2100: €27.50, €4,000 GTD
2145: €5.50, €1,500 GTD, Deepstack Turbo


26 tournaments lined up with the total buy-in at $339.77. Lets hope Sunday lives up to the hype!

On a final note, I'm on the prow at the moment looking to stake a couple of people. I was pretty annoyed to see I missed out on F3nix35 (see blog on right) but haven't been on the internet in days and sods law the action, unsurprisingly, had been snapped up by the time I saw it! Hopefully someone else can come up trumps :P

GL GL