Life update

We've still not won a game this year. A rather pathetic 1-1 draw last weekend against Hull pretty much sums the team up at the moment. If we can't beat Brighton tomorrow then there is no hope for us. But I rather like Brighton and really don't want them to get relegated so this is one time I wouldn't be too upset if we lost. How unfaithful to my team is that!

England have arrived in India just as they find their form... Typical. The test series should be good anyway, but a complete drubbing in the one-days is expected (by me).

Poker. I'm finding my feet at the $1+0.2 SnGs at Absolute Poker. Don't like paying 20% rake but I definitely see this as a learning experience. I'll worry about that once I get to the $5+ games. my ROI is hovering around 0% and my ITM is probably about 30%. Need to improve both. But if I stop calling all-ins and never ever ever play AQo ever in my life ever again, I might have a chance.

And I finally got my presentation submitted for the conference next week. Makes a change from the usual day before rush! I'm off to Hawaii next week. /gets excited

It's derby day

Norwich vs Ipswich. Bring it on. Only problem I can see is that I'm going to have to get up at 4am to listen to it. Will I? Maybe. Who on earth thought of an 11:15 kick-off anyway, how bloody ridiculous.

I'd have gone to bed already but unfortunately I'm getting close to the end of the third series of 24 (3 hours to go) and it's getting exciting... I love these, but I'm not sure what the replay value is now I know all (most) of the twists.

Is 4-0 an embarassing score?

I would say so. And on the very day that a big thing is being made about Norwich overpaying for a 'star' striker to make up for the last one they sold. Not a great introduction for the guy but he still managed to sound positive when being interviewed. So losing to the league leaders is not unexpected but they could at least have put up a fight and not rolled over so easily. Why do I support them? At least it's the local derby against Ipswich at the weekend, probably about 4am here (think it is an 11am kick-off on sunday). Will I listen? We'll see, but for now I'd say "not bloody likely".

Still hoping for a play-off place. Hope against hope.

Oh Yeah, I'm still playing poker. Lost a bit at some $1/2 tables last night against a maniac who always caught his inside straight (or similar) on the river after calling with minimal pot odds. Well he always caught his card when against me, he lost more than me overall. SnGs still ok.

That's all for now
a

I rule the sit'n'go

Which may be a slight overstatement as I am in fact slightly losing money at my new venture (to the tune of about 30 cents - ignore the number to the right, tis old). No idea what I'm talking about, well let me explain... I've been getting a bit bored with low-limit HE an because of this my game was suffering so I decided to venture out into other games... O8, NLHE and I learnt the basics but didn't get particularly excited by them, they are ring games after all, so SnGs are my new venture of choice. I played a few with mixed (but overall losing) success and I just felt I was being too passive. Last weekend I decided to do some reading, some learning and some applying and actually develop my SnG game. My main learning sources were
Wes's blog, Flopturnriver.com, sit-n-go.com and the occasional glance at twoplustwo. I used to spend quite a bit of time at twoplustwo but in all honesty there is too much rubbbish on there to make it worth trawling through...

In order to help my tracking and general expertise I am also using
Sit n' Go Tracker
Poker Tracker
Sit n Go Power Tools.
The last of these is a fantastic resource if only I could work out how to use it properly. In my opinion though it has been worth half the money so far and when some more lessons get written it will be worth the rest. Still a lot of learning to happen here! The thing I want most from it though is the ability to run the calculations when there are already limpers or raisers in the pot. This may help prevent me from being over-aggressive.

So, what has happened? Well I now feel comfortable pushing my chips in when I am behind but have a strong draw. I am also getting better at working out who the passive players are. What can't I do? Mostly it is wait. I have played crap like J10o from early position in the first orbit and found myself crippled, I have been overaggressive with QQ and JJ against multiple opponents and I have made good raises with QQ, leaving myself with the option of folding faced with a re-raise and then called the all-in re-raise. Sometimes I don't understand myself. Anyway at least I can see some of my faults. That's a start, isn't it?

So, where do I stand? Played 10 SnGs at Absolute $1+0.2 (9 handed) and am about break-even. I need to load the last few tourneys into pokertracker and then I'll give you the ITM and ROI percentages, but let me say now my ROI wil be about -0.5%. Hardly great, but I'm learning.

Big problem -- I am over-aggressive on the bubbble. Even when I am chip leader I can't stop myself and must learn to do this. Once it is down to three or heads-up and the blinds are high 150/300 or above I feel really comfortable about my play and think I can out-play or compete with people at this level (Note: I still suck at heads-up, it's all relative though), so why worry about an extra thousand chips or so when I can be more patient and get into the money?

My first home game

I was invited to my boss's house last friday to join in his 'regular' poker game. Hmm. Only provided $20 for them to share amongst themselves so not too bad. I've never played draw or stud poker before (guess what were the major games played?!) and they kept introducing variations that I'd never heard of and had no idea of how to play. There were a few fun games in there and it worked out a lot cheaper than a night in the bar. I would have loved to have played an hour or so of Omaha H/L eights or better (O8) so I could settle into a game and work out how other people played but the game changes every orbit and the variety changed most hands. Crazy.

Think I might learn Razz or Triple Draw Lowball so I can teach them that next time we meet!

Macs and poker

We all know that macs rule. I'm hearing no arguement here so let's continue (no, it's not because no-one is reading). But until recently my shiny little powerbook has been prety useless when it came to playing online poker. Well, there was (and is) a pretty good java interface for pacific poker and I believe pokerroom do to, but I never liked to trust them for long sessions there was just too much opportunity for being logged out and not being able to rejoin quickly. Back to the point... Just recently a few sites, led by Full Tilt are actually coming out with native mac software to give all the functionality of windows clients (hand histories, notes etc) with the benefit of a good operating system ;-)
If you google something suitable, there appear to be suggestions that other sites are starting to follow this trend, but they may be java interfaces and I was feeling too lazy to check. I don't have a Full Tilt account yet so maybe this will be my next stop. Sometimes I feel like I have too many poker accounts.

Oh Yeah. Norwich lost again. Had the lead twice and conceded the final goal in injury time at the end. Don't want to talk about it. Well I do, but I don't want to make myself miserable so I'm not going to.

Sorry Wes

Quite out of the blue one of my regular blog haunts has been deleted. By choice I might add, not for any more exciting reason. I will miss it, particularly as I hadn't made it back through the archives yet. Of course I had to post a comment about this but guess I missed the target motivation wise... shit does that make sense? You see now Wes why I prefer to read your blog and told you not to bother coming by here.

Anyhow I'm sorry if you took my comments to be derogatory, they were not intended that way and I hope you start up again soon.

Why does it happen?

I hate poker. You don't need to know the details, who wants to hear anyway, but why do I have to suffer all my bad beats in one session? I mean, give me a break. All on the river too. Pocket queens, never any good. Ace-high straight? Here comes a flush. You've got one out, well I bet you're going to hit it. Two outs? Likely hit them both.

The fact is I'm just as bored by this post as I expect you are. In fact I'm going to stop now. Why can't poker be a game where I always win? Or at least more often then. More on this some other time perhaps.

Definitely one of my more depressing days.

The taste of victory

Can't believe I didn't mention this before, but Norwich City, my beloved football team, have now won four in a row. Amazing. No clean sheet yet, but I'll take the points. This included beating the second place team away from home (they were unbeaten up until then). We are now only five points off the play-off places. Should get one, but won't make an automatic promotion place as we are 30 points off the leader and 20 off second place.

Bad thing coming up. The January transfer window means that someone is going to buy our 'star striker'. Granted we should get 6+ million GBP for him but who is going to score? We need replacements. Something like this may be just the thing to ruin our winning streak.

What no cracks?

Back from my chrismas break in Utah. Probably had one of my most enjoyable chrismases and all I did was grill some (turkey) sausages and keep the fire going. Lots of cool maps, particularly like Smith's geological map of the UK from 1815. A reproduction obviously. Guess I am a geophysicist after all...

Arches NP rocks. Didn't get to Canyonlands because Chris was ill (also lost the first day because I wasn't well) and I didn't actually climb anything: Chris had her first lead fall and was too shaken to continue (I was pretty scared too as it was a big fall coming down upside down and head-first) and then was ill so we didn't go back. Shame. Was great to be on sandstone slabs again even if all I got to do was look longingly at it. Why is most climbing in the US crack stuff?

Laptop still broken so no poker for me. Got my powerbook back though. Finally. When I've saved a little money up again I want to go back and play live again. That was a lot of fun; I must tell you about it sometime.

Off to Ney York tomorrow. Will be my first time there. Not sure what I'm going to do, but feel like it is somewhere I must visit. And new year should make it even more fun. Not sure why I'm writing in such short sentences either. Perhaps I should do some research and find out some nice places to visit and not the horrible tacky touristy stuff that is so obvious. Might still have to go up the Empire state building though ;-)

Quick summary

So, I'm leaving to go camping for christmas tomorrow and here is what has happened in the last week.

My powerbook refuses to be repaired. No really it is sitting there and sticking its tounge out at me. The USB port is faulty and so far I've had the port itself, data cable and USB board replaced, next is the motherboard and I hope that fixes it.

I seem to have had a hard drive failure on my windows laptop. Lost everything and can't play online poker :-(
More cost.

Coming back from San Francisco United re-routed my baggage through an alternative airport (no idea why) and during that time someone went through it and stole my camera and brand new laptop charger. My only uninsured camera. More cost.

Chris is still here :-) More cost.

Anyway I think a week away is just what I need. It's going to be cold, but some climbing, skiing and hiking/snowshoeing should be fun.

Then we're off to New York for New Year. One to remember? Definitely more cost.

Enjoy christmas,
a.x

The most confusing game so far

Oops, meant to post this about a week ago. Bless the 'save as draft' button.
Not that you missed much really.

Triple draw lowball.

WTF

5 card draw with four betting rounds, three drawing rounds and the low hand wins.
For the deuce-seven variety aces are high and the best hand is 2-3-4-5-7 (unsuited obviously).

There's a home game I'm hoping to get invited to this weekend so this may be a chance to try it out. With any luck I'll be the only person that has any idea of the rules, never mind strategy! Expect the variance is pretty high in this game.

Changes

I have added my bankroll on the right-hand side. Check it out and see it fluctuate. Hold on, doesn't that imply it goes up as well...

Branching out into Sit n Gos

It's not that I'm bored with the ring game but...

So I've been playing Omaha hi/low a tiny bit and started dabbling in sit and go tournaments. Unsuccessfully.
First day played 7, had 4 third places unfortunately they pay the top two only.
Played two more tonight and finished 6th (last) and first! I won my first tournament!!
Currently I am sitting out at the Titan $1+0.1 SnGs. They are 6 max and only pay the top two places. I've not worked out if this is a good arrangement or not, but I am happy for now. I will work my way up from this level I think. I feel quite comfortable playing against a full table so may look for some 10 max elsewhere when I step up a level or two.

So, some analysis then...
Those four 3rd places bothered me. Mostly because I went in to the last 3 as a big chip leader in two of them. I carried on playing aggressively and lost out. This is a good thing I think, but what seemed to happen was that I'd raise 4-5 times the BB pre-flop , get called and out-drawn. Maybe I should bet stronger pre-flop and limp with weaker hands in position. Position seems to be more important than ever when you get down to three.

Of course, the tourney I won I played tighter than normal. Can't put it down to too much as I won a couple of important hands. Need a lot larger experience before I can conclude anything. But then again tight may be the way to go as they didn't really respect my play.

Don't think I'll ever understand poker.

a

Away

I have been, and still am, in San Francisco this week. I'm tired. It has just convinced me that I have so much more work to do if I am going to apply for a proper job somewhere. Am I prepared to commit myself to it? Wish I felt more confident and committed.

Still, had a fun week. Don't really like San Francisco a whole lot but have met up wit friends and colleagues from Southampton and that has been nice. Perhaps it will spur me into action after all. Want to get back to my girlfriend in Wyoming as she is only wisiting for a short time and then has to leave again.

Tired and been drinking so that's all for now.

The last week has been full of ups and downs

Since my last post last week a lot has happened. I left you wondering about a bonus (actually I wrote another post, about O8, but that seemed to be lost by blogger...) and since then I've lost some money on Party, had thanksgiving, had my first casino poker trip ever and won most of the money back on Party again.

What does this all mean? Well, one thing at a time.

I took the Party bonus with the demands of 7x raked hands (525) and seven days to clear thinking I'd probably get some playing in on thanksgiving and the weekend and this would be no problem; it started out like that, some 200+ raked hands on thursday but turned out to be much harder work than I expected. Friday became a last-minute casino visit with my boss (more in a minute) so I lost that day and then, as much as I wanted to be motivated to play I never really felt in the mood. So I kind of forced 100 odd hands per day, never really enjoying the game buy because I was down maybe $50 at that point I felt like I needed the bonus to even my losses out.

Yesterday was when I realised what was going wrong and it hinges on table selection. I was looking at my sessions in poker tracker and saw that I had had a few big losses ($25-30) and more, but smaller, winning sessions. My losses came from tight tables where it would frequently be 2-3 handed to the flop. I just don't know how to play these, and I suppose that means I don't know how to play heads-up either. Big surprise. I also discovered how to search for better tables on Party, so that I could get bigger pots and a lot more passive play around me. Then I was happy. I enjoyed the game yesterday. I played well and won most of my money back over several hours. I finished down about $13 over all that time and would have been winning if I'd learnt to leave the silly tight tables and find a new one quickly.

The other problem with the tight tables is that hands are only raked once the pot reaches $5 and there may be only 2-3 of these per orbit. It takes forever to clear the bonus this way, lots of blinds and few wins. So table selection, table selection, table selection. My new party mantra.

Tired now, casino update will follow.

a.x

Why do I bother?

This isn't a oh, wo is me kind of post, but a serious question. What makes me play poker? What drives me?
And what led me to this question I hear no-one asking very quietly indeed, well this is what happened last night...

I logged in to Party poker, not really wanting to play, but knowing table time might be limited in the next month so I wanted to keep my account active, and they offered me a reload bonus. 15% up to $75 and play 7x hands to release. OK, that's achieveable... So I moved some money around to enable me to reload here. But then I thought, do I really want to grind out all these hours at a low limit hold-em table when I'm enjoying playing Omaha at the moment? Why am I playing poker? Sure I could probably make a little while clearing this bonus and get $75 of free money, but where is the fun? I won't make that at omaha that's for sure. Playing 5c/10c O8 is never going to make me rich, but perhaps that is another story ;-)

Perhaps it is because I feel like I've reached a plateau with my Texas Hold'em and I'm just not prepared to put the time in to improve... Certainly the money is a little important, but it's more winning the money and not the amount that I seem to care about. I'm kind of freerolling on my poker right now and not making any further investments so am happy to see the level grow slowly. I'm just enjoying learning something new.

So, what am I going to do?
Probably take the bonus! I figure I can still get a little Omaha in and I'm going away in a weeks time where I will only have my mac with me and seeing as pacific poker has become my Omaha home I can play that through their java interface when the conference gets boring. Hope they don't restrict access to gambling sites!

Difficult decisions...
a.x

Can it value the rest of my life too?

Just about says it all really. Anyone want to buy it?
Should have gone to bed hours ago but I was bored and now I'm so tired that I can't sleep.

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

A mix of English sporting results

No poker for a few days as I've been busy with work. I'm also pretty tired although I blame the England cricket team for making me stay up late and then failing to deliver so spectacularly. Again. At least we're back to some sense of normality for them. It's going to make it hard to win the three-match series now, but they've only got themselves to blame. At least they start the next one this weekend so maybe they'll feel guilty and actually join in the game this time. Of course even the first innings batting performance was less than average if you forget about Trescothick's effort.

Still enjoying England's football victory over Argentina though :-) I was watching this with some Argentinian friends and had accepted the English defeat, so to have it turn round so spectacularly was very nice. And their faces made it even better! They even played liek they cared this time which was altogether unexpected.

Oh yeah, and the English rugby team destroying the Aussies so they lose their seventh game in a row! Bring it on. New Zealand this coming weekend. They are playing amazing rugby at the moment and I expect the result to be completely the opposite. Just don't be embarassing, please.

I love sports...

Downswings are never nice

I've been playing a lot of poker recently, motivated by the desire to clear a bonus on Titan poker (actually I started mostly to get my free chips -- very nice, more about these later), but have generally been having losing sessions. I don't like this very much. Now I accept that poker if full of variance and what I'm seeing is well within expected levels but I can't help but feel there is more to it than that. I've just not been feeling good about my game.

This bonus clearing encourages multi-tabling and I think this is effecting my game. And the bonus on Titan is definitely not worth dropping real cash for. So, I've pledged to drop back to one table at a time play again to see if this helps me. I suspect part of it is putting money in with weak high cards. If only Titan was compatible with poker tracker then I could see what was going on...

Started this new plan tonight. Played 1/2 for about an hour and ended up $5 plus change. Hardly ground breaking, but in the black never the less. Must do some revision again. Out comes my 'Small stakes Hold'em' book and thanks to Ed Miller once again...

The real thing that annoyed me

You might think that getting up early to faithfully listen to my football team make a pathetic attempt at winning a game (Dean Ashton (our best striker) didn't get a shot on target in the entire match) and losing 2-0 after conceding a goal in the first minute would be enough to upset me this weekend, but that isn't the most annoying thing that has happened.

oh no...

You see, I'm British but living and working in the USA for a few years and yesterday afternoon I discovered that one of my UK bank accounts has a bunch of charges on it that weren't mine. Someone had obviously got hold of a bank card and was using it. I don't know the details because my bank had suspended access to it, but it looked like lots of small payments of GBP, each one attracting a 30GBP charge from my bank. I guess that It's about 50-50 between payments and bank charges for a total of 950GBP overdrawn. Nice. I spent yesterday afternoon on the phone to them but it seems that one department deals with fraud and shut that account, another one deals with recovering money and they had suspended all my other accounts and of course, it was friday afternoon here so no one was open to actually do anything about it.

Frustrating, and I'm just hoping I'll get this money back. I just went to the bar and had a few drinks after getting off the phone. The sweet nectar that makes everything better did its job!

Maybe I'll play some poker and get some of the money back. On the other hand, a losing session would hardly help the way I'm feeling. Probably best to abstain at times like this.

a.x

Still Alive

It has been over a year since my last post. Guess I forgot about this blogging lark and didn't feel like I needed the self induced support session -- that's mostly what it is really after all. Not like I have an exciting life to tell you about anyway!

So, I aim to post more regularly now, give some background on my poker experience and targets and occasionally whinge about the results from my football team (Who incidentally won last weekend with the help of an own-goal so I'm waiting until after this weekends games to start moaning again).

gone, but not forgotten

I am around.

I expect to submit my PhD thesis in about one week, so I have been a little busy to share much with you. Or, to put it another way, I've been too busy to do anything to share with you!

Life is OK though. Prague was quite nice, not as beautiful as I was expecting although there are, without a doubt, some lovely examples of architecxture around. Maybe it was the tourists! Took me three days before I started to relax, but I did enjoy it after that point. Some nice photos. Lots of bad ones.

Back to work now though,

a.x

Aaarrrggghhhhh

Just about sums it up.

Why did I start?
Why am I still doing it?
Why?

This is about the most positive i've felt for the last few weeks, hence my reticence to spread my joy. Sorry for my absence and exect it to continue until i've submitted...


I'm off to Prague for a week on Friday. Talk about bad timing. BUT, I do need a break and maybe when I gat back I will feel more positive about it and actually want to get on with writing. I do hope so. I thoroughly pissed off with it now.

a.x

Been quiet lately

I've not said much recently, you might be wondering why. Or probably not.

Well, I decided that as I was generally not being very positive about my progress and no-one would care about my frustrations... after all, there are only so many consecutive days where you can say "not got anywhere", "will the end ever come" and "i wish i hadn't started".

My feelings haven't changed, but i'm not going on about it.

What else then?
England getting knocked out of euro 2004.
My twelve way accumulator bet relying on France beating Greece to complete it...
Not great.

My poker is steady at very low limits, playing $0.05/0.1 limits to build a bankroll, "heads up" at william hill online is fun, and Norwich have signed a new midfielder from Coventry: Yousseff Saffri. I've never heard of him before, but I hear he is a Moroccan international and pretty good. It will be an interesting season.
Oh and our first game is against Crystal Palace, also newly promoted, to give us the chance of some points before having to play Chelsea, Newcastle and Man Utd in the next games. It's going t o be a very hard season.

a.x

progress report

A few more days gone, and a little achieved.

My desk is now surrounded by colourful pictures that I am supposed to be writing about, but it seems to be going so slowly. Some of them look really good though. Lets hope I can sway the examiners with colourfull, impressive pictures and they forget everything else.

What else?
Not much. Haven't played poker for a while. Tried a no-limit freeroll at paradise the other day, but also discovered that the no-limit bet amount buttons are corrupted when running it in linux so I went all in with something... i forget what... not great, but i was favourite until the river. I lost and gave up. Think i'll stick to limit (low!!) for now or use windows. Oops i left off the trademark symbol, aren't i naughty. Probably should have capitalised the 'W' too.

I am generally unimpressed with microsoft (apart from the x-box which is actually an excellent piece of hardware). OK, I'll save this rant for another time when i'm more coherent.

night night,
a.x

late nights and cricket.

A short post now as it is five in the morning and i'm about to leave work for yesterday evening! On the positive side I have made a bunch of figures and actually written some real words down. It has been about a week since I wrote something properly so this is a good step. I think i'd got a bit stuck.

Last night (actually not last night anymore, but two days ago) I played cricket for the SOC team as usual. As usual I was 'asked' to open, BUT unusually I stayed in and made 20 runs. This is, of course, very good for me, and for the team. I topped it off by taking two wickets... yeah. No mention of the fact that one didn't pitch, hit the batsman in the chest area and as he tried to pull it ended up hitting it back onto his own stumps. It was a very lucky day for me.

That's all for now.

Norwich have signed two players, but we'll still go down! At least we might be competitive for a few games a year...

a.x

Wait... now panic

4 weeks.
That is all i've got to write my PhD thesis.
And correct it.
And bind it.

But it can be done, and it will have to be.

So far I have written one major chapter wich covers most of the work that i've done during the last three and a half years (the rest of it was kind of botched together -- but don't tell my examiners!), so it is the piece that i will be most seriously examined on.

I have another work chapter to write and then after that it is mostly just introductions etc which could be time consuming but could end up rather short if time is a problem.

In an effort to convince myself that i am getting somewhere I think i will make daily posts listing the work completed. Starting now.

Oh. Well today I checked some seismic data unrelated to my PhD and have attempted to work out which shots are missing. Unsuccessfully. Who on earth would strip all the header information out and then only distinguish shots on the basis of a repeating 3 digit number(1-999 for >7000 shots) and then not supply all shots, but have no means of identifying the missing ones.
\rant

Anyway also made a pretty picture today and must write a few more words before running off to play cricket in an hour...

a.x

Hello and welcome

I feel like I should explain why I have bothered to set up this blog and yet haven't really posted to it yet.

Well it's not laziness. I am a PhD student who is in the final stages of writing up: my deadline is in four weeks time, but don't panic, I've written at least half of it ;-)

So this means i'm working hard at the moment and (apart from playing cricket and the occasional online poker game) forgetting all my other interests.

In the meantime check out this blog
www.terrible-customer-service.blogspot.com
for the on-running saga of poor customer service from Dabs.com, a 'leading' UK online computer retailer. The sad thing is these companies can easily get away with poor customer service like this and they think they will only lose 1 customer, well I think the word should be spread and people should beware. Incidentally, I have shopped with dabs before and had no problems, but i don't like the thought that this is what could happen if things do go wrong.

Maybe one day I'll tell you about my 3 mobile woes... For now, just take the cheap contract and calls and hope all goes well or avoid like the plague.

That's it for now. The future holds much more interesting comments. I will rant on about the progress of Norwich (new first division champions) as they fail in the premier league next year and maybe keep you updated as I play poker and actually learn to be successfull. What the hell, I'll bore you about my PhD work too.

later,
a.x

Message to blogger.com help

If you are from blogger help and reading this post then please ignore help request "[#58289] Problem setting up blog".
I seem to have been registered and can sort everything else out from here.
Ta very much.
a.x