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MoreTBC

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in the following blog/brain fart are my own and do not in any way represent the thoughts of anyone that actually knows how to play poker. Challenges and goals may be posted in this blog from time to time, do not expect any of them to be completed. Also, do not expect results tracking to be consistent or accurate, I'm lazy about that kinda stuff. I accept no responsibility for any loss of €€€ caused by following my advice or copying of my actions. Readers must also accept the fact that at some point I will mistype 'the' as 'teh' due to some sort of weird muscle memory I have and that in general grammar/punctuation rules will not be followed.

If you do not accept the above disclaimer please click HERE.

If you accept the above disclaimer then welcome aboard and good luck :Cool:

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The Introduction

Right, so here we go then. Best to start off with a little background story so you can understand what you're letting yourself in for :)

I'm 32, I live in Aberdeen (Scotland) and I occasional try to win money playing poker. I have a 9-5 job in the telecommunications industry that pays the bills and keeps me out of trouble and I'm also a part time DJ on the weekends. I'll sprinkle some IRL stuff into the blog from time to time but if I'm honest I do the same stuff every week so it's not that exciting :Geek:

Now the IRL stuff is out the way, let's talk poker!

The Early days

I have no idea when I started playing poker to be honest... It's got to be 10 years ago, maybe more. The first site I can remember actively playing on was pokerroom.com. It felt like a great site to play on, it was part of a decent network with lots of skins and have plenty of action. If I could go back and look at it now though it probably overraked players, had terrible structures and offered stupid VIP programs but when you first start you don't look at those things.. just getting a tingle in your loins the first time you double up or cash a $5 MTT is enough. I had no concept of BRM or anything like that and was a losing player, but I didn't really care. I was using disposable income and the dream of winning the big bucks kept me playing. I did what most players did and bounced around various sites whenever they had good bonus/reload offers on. I never had any big wins though and eventually stopped playing. I think the only 'big' win I can remember was playing in a freeroll on Ladbrokes where the top 50 got entry into a big entry MTT ($500+ buyin) and the 10 or so before the ticket payout got $300. I actively tried to get the $300 because I thought it was better value. I finished 51st :Cool:

Going by Sharkscope (no, you can't have my alias :Haha:) I played a little in 2012 on PS but I imagine that was just a $50 deposit based on some promo email I got and it didn't go well. Fast forward to this time 2014 and it looks like I started playing again on PS. I don't know what drove me to play again but what followed is the classic poker story. I played for the about a month and then blink!.. 1st place in a $2.70 Turbo KO. Goodbye 5000+ players, hello $1630. From then on I definitely had the bug. I was still a losing player but I would hit a big win every now and again to keep me going. I had two 1K+ cashes in 2015 and a few in the $700-900 mark but in general I still sucked as a player. In retrospect I was probably just running really hot and getting lucky. About August 2015 the luck ran out and from then on I had no major wins and generally just sucked. I was chasing my tail for the big win, playing more tables and taking shots I shouldn't have. I've never been really good at BRM but at the end of 2015 I didn't even know what it meant.

I started watching a lot of stuff on Twitch during 2015 which helped the bug.. Jason Somerville, Jamie Staples, Tonkaaa etc. This was where I really started thinking about my decision process when playing. Ranges, equity, outs.. all these poker terms I'd heard before but never fully understood started to make a little more sense. They were all playing for hundreds/thousands of dollars but things they were saying or doing could be used in the micro stakes I was playing. The stuff that really stuck with me though was the way they approached things mentally. Dealing with variance, bad beats and tough spots. The one thing that was consistent between them all was that if you are making good/profitable decisions then the outcome isn't as important because in the end you're winning. It's something I've definitely used on the tables and IRL and I feel better for it.

Coming to Unibet

I imagine this is a pretty standard poker story now too :Smile:. Battling 1000s of player on PS can be fun and all but most of the time it's just a grind and you're one bad beat away from 5 hours of play being wasted. Part of being absorbed into the Twitch world was hearing about 2+2, a poker forum that has been around for as long as Doyle Brunson. One thing that kept coming up on the forum was players saying how easy playing on Unibet was and how the rewards were great etc. Easy opponents you say? Good value for money you say? Sign me up! I plopped down my £50 at the cashier and got me some Euros, a massive signup bonus and a gaggle of welcome tickets. I created an account on 2+2 in Dec 2015 but my first post was April 2016.. it was in the Unibet thread :Laugh: It was, of course, me talking about software improvements I thought would be good on the site. I've been a pain in the ass about that stuff ever since :Geek:

On the felt, things were going well. I asked the virtual cashier for my £50 back because I had won my first MTT and topped the Butler League in the same week. That was a good week! Since then my bankroll has bobbled anywhere from €400+ to €20. Winning the first community freeroll was a great feeling and my biggest single win on Unibet at that point. I made two additional deposits totalling £150 during the Rio Showdown series as I was playing well out of BRM with the €10 MTTs but they really were the only way to get a decent position on the LB. I finished 110th :Waterfall:

Fast forward to today and I have won/came second (I can't actually remember:Laugh:) in a €25 I satellited into for €4 in the last week so the additional deposits have now been withdrawn and I'm back to playing on profit only :Cool:.

 

Goals

  • Don't hit €0 and have to deposit again/Win all the mulah.
  • Make a UO or UOUK event starting at the lowest satellite buy-in level only (I'll accept doing it from a ticket starting at a higher level as well)
  • Cash the Sunday Entitled/Daily €4. (For some reason I just can't do it just now :Smirk:)
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.
  • Don't be mean to pecalbear

 

Going Forward

If you've made it this far then congratulations, you win a virtual high five from me!:Cool: The plan is to start the blog for real on Thursday 1st September. I'll post current bankroll, challenge points and nearly all my aliases so we can be nice and transparent about things. Bankroll updates will be per session and I'll do challenges and fancy graphs every month or something. I'll try and post at least one hand for discussion every session post as well as I want to be able to learn from this as much as (hopefully) everyone else will.

If you've got any questions or ideas let me know. If not, I'll see you on Thursday :Veryhappy:

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Sneak peek at how reporting is going to look HERE.

Any input on stuff you'd like to see added is greatly appreciated or if you want to point out any obvious errors that'll be nice too.

 

The losing day was just for testing, promise ;)

 

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@MoreTBC wrote:

Sneak peek at how reporting is going to look HERE.

Any input on stuff you'd like to see added is greatly appreciated or if you want to point out any obvious errors that'll be nice too.

The losing day was just for testing, promise ;)


What a great thread, @MoreTBC. Even though you were just "testing" yesterday, I'd like to offer you € 20 in tickets, to get you off to a good start. Just let me know which tickets you'd like and I'll get them added later today :)

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 - Thanks very much, that's very generous. I suppose the only way I can use them is try and complete some of my vague goals so could I get the following please:-

3x €2 UO tickets

4x €1 UO UK tickets

2x €4 MTT tickets (For the Daily €4 I can never cash)

1x €2 MTT ticket (For the start of the new community league tomorrow)

 

 - Mostly MTTs I expect. I like to have 4 tables open so what I tend to do is play a little cash at the end to fill the gaps when I run out of MTTs to play. I also have a PLO major challenge I just can't complete that's bugging me so I've been trying to clear that. I'll probably bounce around depending on what promos are on.

 

In another mini spoiler, I'm on exactly 20000 challenge points so that'll be a nice round number to start on for the blog. Also gave me a €5 Banzai ticket so there will be some action from that on day one :) Glad to see everyones excited about all this nonsense, makes it feel worthwhile. ♥️

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30/08/16 - Prelude :: The calm before the..  calm, probably.

It turns out poker blogging is hard, certainly harder than I imagined when I initially thought about it a week or two ago. I've not even really started yet and I've several things that are going to be minor annoyances during this adventure. 

Problem 1: Game tracking. When testing out the spreadsheet last night I ran into a few things that made keeping it up to date a little trickier. Bounties were the initial problem as the notification of how much you've earned does not appear for long and with 4-6 tables open the font is tiny. I believe this will be sorted for 2.0 so hopefully this will be less of an issue in future. The other issue I had was actually having the time while playing to input the information in the spreadsheet. I do have a desk with a second monitor (which I'll post a pic of at some point) that will make this a lot easier but last night I sat on my sofa and with a single screen and 4 tables getting angry and blinking at you for responses all the time it was tough to get everything typed in.  I expect it'll be something I'll get used to but it's definitely a distraction and don't help you play good poker.

Problem 2: Hand history reviews. I still don't really know how I'm going to do this :speechless: At the moment you can't highlight a hand in the history section of the client to go over it again so I'm probably going to have to screenshot the hand at the point of the difficult decision and post that along with a description of what is happening from what I remember. Then it'll be a "What would you do?" type quiz I guess and then I'll put what actually happened and why I did what I did. I'm hoping the forum software allows 'Spoiler' tags and I can hide the results so you can answer before seeing what happened. I'll be able to use the screenshot to get the hand number and check the results so hopefully that'll work. If you have any better ideas or like the sound of this then let me know.

Problem 3: When to write. Do I write the blog after the session or the next day? If I write it directly after the session then all the information is fresh but at the same time it's going to be late in the evening and spending time typing up bad beat stories during a losing session might not be high on the list of things to do :) If I do them the next day I'm bound to forget details about the hand or players and things are just not going to be as accurate. Probably going to be trial and error on this one, I'll try both and see what works. Can't make an omelette and all that 🆒

 

The test session

I normally play a pretty full schedule on a Monday anyway so it was a perfect day to test the spreadsheet and see how things would work. You've probably seen the results via the link a few posts above but things didn't go very well. One final table and then busto for the rest of the night. I really like Mondays, the Butler league is something I really enjoy and dreaming of the binking both the Jackpot tourneys makes it a fun day for an MTT player. I just didn't play very well though. Can't think of anything off the top of my head that was really terrible but I know I didn't make the best decision on a number of occasions.. and the results prove that.

I suppose it was a blessing in disguise thought as Stubbe felt bad for me and gave me €20 in free tickets to get the blog going on a positive note. You really can't fault the mod team here on the Community and Unibet in general for the volume of bonuses/tickets/promos they give to their players. It's something you just don't see on other sites and a credit to the way they look after their players. I'm fully aware I'm the house moaner on the forum but the staff have never not responded or been rude and have always given reasons why things are/are not in place and are always open to discussions and the pros/cons of those decisions. It's good to know your attempts to make the product better are always considered :)

I've updated the results sheet to show tickets that I have in my account and will highlight any games in the daily results where I use a ticket so you can see where the freebies have gone :) Big thanks again to  and  for organising the tickets. The UO and UOUK ticket values have changed slightly from what I posted earlier so I'll now be trying to get from the €1 level all the way up to the big win in both satellite systems (Well once they appear in my account 😏). Also looks like a Butler League LB prize has been added to my account so I've added that in too. The whole £ to € conversion thing is going to make keeping track of stuff like that a nightmare :geek:

 

I plan on playing my first day for the blog on the 31st as I can't actually play on Thursday but I'll type it out so it's ready for a Thursday posting. Until then, try and control your excitement ;)

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01/09/16 - Day one, Back to the future

 So here we go then, day one of blogging the ins and outs of being a recreational player that does alright with some fun coupons. I sat down around 18:30 GMT, mid pizza slice, and had a look at what was available to play. Having just cracked 20K points for the quarter I had a €5 Banzai ticket staring me in the face so that was the first port of call. It lasted 3 flops :waterfall:. I was actually up to €6.15 on the ticket when it all ended so I was doing alright. I'd had a double up when I went all in with AKo and came up against a loose K9o call. 9 On the turn 😠, A on the river 😀. After that I just blinded out for 20 minutes, winning the blinds once with an Ax shove. Then came the crippler.

I was in the big blind with K♣️9♦️ (the irony) so I already have €0.50 in the pot. Early position raises to €1, small blind calls. So there is €2.50 in the pot and it's only another €0.50 to have a look. I -think- the odds are ok to call, which I do. 

Flop is 9♠️ 7♣️ K:diamonds:.. Jackpot!

Although nowhere near the nuts I'm way ahead of the very possible AK (or any other Kx combo) from the inital raiser and any suited connectors the small blind might have come along with, especially as it's a rainbow board. Small blind bets out for €1.50. At this point I don't really know whether shoving or calling is the best play but I figured with the pre-flop raiser still to act it would be better to just call and give the PFR a change to shove so I call, PFR folds :speechless:

Turn is a Q♦️

Not the best card to see at all. JT now completes a straight and KQ has me crushed. SB goes all in €4.50. Pot is now €10.50 and I have €3.65 left. There are the two combos above plus sets that beat me and I'm ahead of any Ax hand, any pairs and any ♦️ flush/straight draws. Then the degen in me says "It's a free ticket" and I click call.

SB turns over K♥️J♠️... :inlove: ...

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Ohh that's right, another Q on the river to give us both two pair with his J out kicking me 😏

What can you do 🤣

 

Anyway, we dusted that off and started with the main schedule. Actually, I had one of the 2 €4 bounty tourneys (The early €4) running while I went on my Banzai adventure. I like the bounty tourneys, they give you a sense of still winning even when you don't make the payouts because of the KO effect. Turns out now that I've started recording the bounties that's not the case sometimes. Anyway, the early €4 fortunately provided me with a decision that will create the first ever 'What would you do?'  segment of the blog :)

What would you do? - Episode 1

I'll set the scene. It's 20:20 BST, I'm sitting on the sofa, with at this point, 4 tables open. I'm half watching a film called 'The Forest', a horror about a woman that goes to a haunted forest in Japan to find her missing twin sister. Blinds are 120/240 with a 25 chip ante. I have 6561 chips (27 Big Blinds). I have no idea what position I'm in in the tourney or how far away from the money I am. I have no reads on my opponents because I'm not paying that much attention due to the film, filling in the spreadsheet and looking at the forum. I'm dealt Q♣️Q♥️ in the cut off. (At this point I'm assuming people know table position terms and the short versions for them. If anyone doesn't, let me know and I'll add some descriptions whenever I use a new one)

Middle position min bets to 480 and I raise to 1080. First question is sizing of the 3-bet here. Is this too small? Would you go bigger? Looking at it now, I would say it's a little on the small side but hindsight is a great thing in poker. Anyway, SB raises to 1560. I find this a very strange raise. SB has roughly the same chips stack as me (6654.50 to be exact) so I would expect the 4-bet to just be a shove all-in at this point. I have strong suspicions that they are holding AA at this point. I figure it's only another 2.5BB and if the flop looks horrible I can always get away with it and have around 20BB to play with.

Flop comes K♣️ 8♦️ 3♥️SB checks, I check behind. The K is not what I wanted to see. AK/KK could easily be something the SB has.

Turn is 5♠️. SB checks again, I check behind again. At this point I have a feeling i might be ahead, There are now no flush draws and I doun't think he is 4-betting with 67.

A10onShowdownEdit.thumb.png.3b0e018c91969142442090fb0e8a045b.png

River is a K♦️ and the SB bets out half pot. What do you do? Answers on a postcard please, or in a forum reply. Whichever is easiest for you :Cool:

I decided that if he had a K he would have bet on the flop/turn. The possibility of AA but I can't see them slowplaying it in a bounty tourney especially when it's mine on the line. I called. He showed T♠️A♥️8.4K my way please.

I ended up finishing 9th for a €8 cash plus 1 bounty. I can't remember what the last hand was but I'm pretty sure I only had a few BB left and went all-in with some broadway cards. Standard stuff. Finished 7th in the first Community League game of the month, knocked out by  (or someone that's stolen his name for an alias) in a JJ > KJs shove for 5 BB. No money back but a good score for the leaderboard. I can't play the Friday games because I DJ on Friday nights so making the Wednesday ones count is really important if I want my face in the client as an Avatar :Geek:

After that I had my usual in the Daily 4, AKo < KJs all in pre-flop for 16+BB. One day I will cash that :Heart:♥️:Heart: tourney, ONE DAY!!! 😠:Teardrop:

All the satellite attempts were a bust, I wasn't really playing satellite poker (ABC) so it's my own fault. I think in future I'll maybe play only sats at the same time so I'm more focused on what I'm doing. I probably need to look at which ones are overlaying or the best value before getting involved.

I had another 'Premium win' added to my account which I initially thought was for the Butler league but actually now I think it was for Rio. I finished 110th officially but due to the Flip MTT/LB issue (which is my fault, sorry :Lovekiss:) the last popup I got in the client said I was 98th. Possibly Unibet are paying out based on that for some people? Maybe one of the poker team can confirm if they read this. The wins show up as £ in my account which makes working out what they're for even harder but it appeared to be slightly more than the €20 I got for the Butler league and €25 was the lowest payout so that would tie in. Maybe, I'll never know :)

Updated results are HERE. Basically, even though Ive been playing badly, I'm up since I started recording my wins/losses. Next session will probably be a small cash one on Saturday to get some spins in the UO promo. I'm not a big cash player but I'll put a cash table on the screen if there an achievable prize at stake. I'll probably do a writeup of it and then save it and just add it to a bigger post after another decent sized session.

 

The off-topic, off site brag.

Backstory: I few months ago I signed up for another site that was launching their poker offering. There was a 200% deposit bonus so it sounded like a good idea. Turns out their poker offering was a 4-max spin and go variant where everyone got a box a la Deal or No Deal with a multiplied prize in it. You box opened when you got knocked out to see what you would have won and when you won to show your payout. Long story short, the bonus was a pain in the ass to clear and there were not enough players to make it worth staying. I withdrew after clearing my bonus and tripling my deposit :Cool:. 

Anyway, the point of the story is they also offer a daily free game where there is a grid and you click on squares to try and reveal symbols for free spins/cash prizes. You get 6 picks a day and then at the end of the month there is a bonus round depending on how many days you've played in the month. I went on last night, won a few free spins and and ended up with £2.50. Big winner, I know. I'm never going to take that money out so I found a slot machine that looked fun and figured I've got 5 x 50p spins, what's the worst that could happen. 

Well 90 minutes later I'm withdrawing £280 :Cool: It'll never happen again and this is not an advert for playing slots at all but if you've got a few quid kicking about (or some free spins) it might be worth seeing what Unibet has to offer ;) [/freeadvertising]

 

Anyway, that's more than enough from me for one day. Hope you enjoyed it and let me know 'What would you do'  as it just looks silly if no one replies.

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05/09/16 - The inevitable post launch lull

First of all, let's rewind to Saturday. It's a pretty structured day for me normally. I get up, have breakfast and then sit down at my desk and on one monitor I open Unibet and on the other I open a web browser. One of the perks of being a DJ is that you get sent advance or promo releases of tracks before the general public so you can play them out and get a response to how people are liking them.. I get a lot of these and they arrive all week. I've found the best way to go through them is to have one day a week as 'promo day' and just go through them all in a oner. That's the web browser screen sorted for a few hours leaving screen two open for a few games of poker :) Last Saturday was slightly different. I opened the client, took one look at the lobby and then closed the client. I just didn't want to play on Unibet :speechless:.

This isn't going to be a rant or anything like that, I love playing on Unibet and I'm very excited about 2.0 and all the impending improvements.. I'm just not interested this month. The promos do nothing for me at all and I just didn't want to play any of the MTTs running. I thought I might want to play a little cash and get some slot tickets but after trying it on Thursday I realised it's flops and not hands needed to complete the promo and that playing PLO and NLHE count separately for the flop count at the same buy-in. 150 flops at either game one or two tabling is a couple of hours work at least every day, it's not for me. I'll complete the missions as they're always fun to do and play the Monday schedule and the odd MTT like the Daily 4 and some sats with the tickets I've got but other than that I don't expect a lot of volume this month. 

The other reason I'm not playing much this month is because there is another site that happens to be running it's largest MTT series of the year, and more importantly for me, running a micro stakes version of it for the first time. I believe that anyone that reads this is savvy enough to understand there are lots of places to play poker and many players play on multiple sites so hopefully this won't be seen as a plug for somewhere else :) Let's be honest, the MTT schedule on Unibet is a little lacking. That's not Robin's fault (or anyone else that deals with it) at all. They are some of the most responsive reps when it comes to player suggestions on here and 2+2 and the schedule is about the best it could be. It's just player volume and game selection that's the problem. You just can't pay a couple of €s and play for the big bucks daily 🆒. The addition of rebuys in 2.0 is definitely going to help this and hopefully there will be some reshuffling of the schedule when that happens to make for some tasty tourneys in the evening. Until then, as a MTT player, I have to look elsewhere from time to time.

So for the next month I'll probably be posting some hand histories that are not from Unibet. I won't do any screenshots and I'll edit the history so the other site isn't mentioned. It'll mean I can post hands from games that are not available on Unibet, which I think will be interesting and I'll also be able to give you some playing stats of my opponents from the HUD. It'll be a nice change for a few weeks before the next MTT series starts here..  that I either dreamt about or read in a post somewhere.  

[Mid typing edit]

I wasn going to say I'll have a full poker based blog post tomorrow for you but I'm now working tonight (It's the start of freshers week here so extra DJ gigs are always kicking about) so gonna miss all the Monday fun :( The next post will probably be Thursday with whatever happens on Wednesday night.

Well this has turned out to be quite the boring post. I promise to make the next one more fun 🆒 

   

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Nice to come back from an extended weekend away and catch up on your blog! 

 

Reply: What would you do? - Episode 1

I agree, 1080 is a little on the small side for a 3-bet with already 965 in the pot. I would 3-bet more - especially because with a bigger bet you are still telling the same story about MoreTBC with a big pair on his hand.

I agree too the weirdness of SB's bet but I have seen that bet size a lot during the last year - though, not as a 4-bet in SB position. I think he misunderstood the function of this bet size.

When it comes to the check at flop I wouldn't do the same. You're in position, villain just checked and I would put him to the test. Maybe K is a scare card for him as well. If he had AK, AA or so I would expect him to make a happy bet. I would test him with a small bet that tells him I have my pair. 

If he called I would bet small again at turn. If he called again I would put him at TT, JJ or even QQ. If he checked again at river I would make a small bet again. If he shoved or made the same half pot bet I would ❤️♥️❤️ my pants and call - considering his dizzy play.

The way you played it I'm not surprised he tried to steal at a river bet. But it's hard when he is 4-betting before flop with a hand like your spoiler tells. In Early 4 bounty my experience is that our friends play more aggresively than in other MTTs. Generally (and maybe I shouldn't write that here), I have a more suspicious tactic in this particular tourney. 

Keep blogging, it's nice to follow - also your reporting. Hopefully we see you at the community table on wednesdays in September. 

All the best

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Admin note: I'm going to start dating the posts based on the day the play happened, not the day I write them. Just seems to make more sense if you're looking at the results.

06/09/16 - Four cards please dealer.. No, make it 5 actually.

I normally have a half day at work on a Tuesday so when I woke up I thought I'd try and squeeze in an hour of poker to win a slot spin or two. Contrary to what I said in the last post I think completing the promo on a daily basis will not be as time consuming as expected, if you do it playing PLO. I learnt this after the morning session as I managed to get a spin in a hour playing 2 tables of PLO4 and only got halfway with 2 tables of NL4. The requirements are less (40 flops at PLO4 compared to 60 i think at NL4), you tend to see more flops playing PLO in general, people are trying to complete the first stage of the missions so competition is a little easier so all these factors mean it should be achievable. Also, it's just more fun :) Don't get me wrong, I love NLHE but throwing an extra two cards into the mix just works the brain a little more and I like that. Ended the session a little down, we're talking a few €, and with a winless spin.

Every Tuesday I go visit my Gran for tea. I've done it for years and will probably continue to do so until she 'expires' as she likes to put it. We eat the same foods on rotation and talk about the same things every week but it keeps her happy so it's just become part of my weekly routine :). It does however mean less time at the tables on a Tuesday as I don't get home till around 7pm. I figured I'd try and get the other two spins for the day and skip the MTTs so I opened 3x PLO4 and 1x PLO10 tables. 

I was trying to get the spins as quickly as I could so I didn't take any notes on hands or screenshots but I made back the loses from the morning and €5 on top of that. First spin was a bust and the second one gave me a freeroll ticket so all in all a successful day. Checked my account to make sure everything matched with the results sheet and found out all my lovely tickets donated by Stubbe/Marco were expiring. Thought it best to try and use up what I could so jumped into a €1 UO sat. Ohh my, they're loose in those games! I wish I'd taken some screenshots now to prove this but I imagine you've all played them before and seen the carnage. Anyway, long story short, I scraped into the last prize spot and we're into the €10 phase and one step closer to Bucharest. I have a few more tickets (The results page is not updated with tickets correctly) so I'll try and get a few more entries over the next week. Now, on to what else happened that night.

 

$11, what's the worst that could happen

As I mentioned before, there is a big series of tourneys running on another site and I've been playing in a few of the events. When I went on the client last night I had a look to see what was running/upcoming. Pickings were slim. There was a NL Single Draw 2-7 that had been running since 3pm my time and a standard NLHE event that started at 6pm. One thing I've learned over the years is that the xCOOP events last a long  time. With this in mind I ignored the NLHE event as I knew it would run for 9 hours, meaning having to stay up till 3am if I made a deep run, and jumped into the $11 NL SD 2-7 instead. I have only ever played the format as part of mixed game MTTs and basically had no clue what I was doing :) For anyone that is not aware of how the format works, here's Wikipedia with some knowledge..

@Wikipedia wrote:

Deuce-to-seven low is often called Kansas City lowball (the no-limit single-draw variation) or just "low poker". It is almost the direct opposite of standard poker: high hand loses. It is not as commonly used as the ace-to-five low method.

As in all lowball games, pairs and trips are bad: that is, any hand with no pair defeats any hand with a pair; one pair hands defeat two pair or trips, etc. No-pair hands are compared starting with the highest-ranking card, just as in high poker, except that the high hand loses. In deuce-to-seven low, straights and flushes count as high (and are therefore bad). Aces are always high (and therefore bad).

For example, the hand 8-5-4-3-2 defeats 9-7-6-4-3, because eight-high is lower than nine-high. The hand 7-6-5-4-2 defeats both, because seven-high is lower still. The hand 7-6-5-4-3 would lose, because it is a straight. Aces are high, so Q-8-5-4-3 defeats A-8-5-4-3. In the rare event that hands with pairs tie, kickers are used just as in high poker (but reversed): 3-3-6-4-2 defeats 3-3-6-5-2.


1124 people entered the event (with 336 re-entries) giving a healthy $14600 prize pool and just over $2.2K to the eventual winner. I jumped in around 4 and half hours into the tourney and there was still 90 minutes of late reg left. I think I had more than 30 BB to play with and a dream I could win big in a game I know nothing about. I had some ups, I had some downs but as the clock hit 00:01 on Wednesday morning I was still in the flippin' tourney! As it stands there are 122 players left, we're all in the money for at least $28.86 and play resumes at 3pm my time. This is both exciting and annoying. I'm at work till 5:30pm so chances are I'm just going to blind out but the next pay jump is at 118th so I'll get another 10 bucks or something for my troubles :) It's not going to be a big win but I believe there is a joy in being able to compete with players that are much better than you and survive to make the money. Even lasting the 5 hours last night gave me a great satisfaction, not monetary satisfaction, but just beating another human kinda satisfaction :Cool:. I don't know how to explain it properly but you all know what I'm talking about. That feeling when a bluff gets through or you get maximum value on the river. That feeling gets multiplied when you don't really know what you're doing in a game. I don't really care where I finish at this point, just making day two is enough for little ol' me :)

 

Wednesday is Community League day so expect a full report of that tomorrow, as one of you hooligans knocks me out no doubt, the outcome of my 2-7 Single Draw adventure and another day on the PLO cash tables donating money :)

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Probably should have mentioned I'm sitting 77th out of the 122 players remaining and have about 35 big blinds. Blinds are twenty minutes long so I have about 10 full orbits worth of chips at the first level of the day. I expect to be out in the first hour or so but thanks to the glorious invention that is remote access I'll be able to watch my demise live at work 🆒

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07/09/2016 - Win some, Lose some

Let's get the non Unibet stuff out the way first. Play restarted in the Mini-WCOOP 2-7 Single Draw at 15:00 and I managed to last until about 16:45. With being at work I really couldn't play and only survived that long with a lucky triple up at one point. I finished in 65th and earned $48ish. Not bad for my first 2-7 SD tourney if I do say so myself 🆒. Played the 5-Card Draw later in the day and lasted about 20 minutes so turns out my cash was a complete fluke and I know even less about 5-Card Draw than 2-7 SD :laugh:. It's a $2 1R1A PLO tourney today (Thursday) so we'll see how far I can get in that with all the PLO bosses. I actually have a fairly good PLO MTT record (according to my own brain with no records for backup) on Unibet, I've won at least two of them so that makes me a crusher right? 😛 Updates tomorrow (Friday now :)) about how I do and the inevitable bust out after 7 hours 😠

 

After my very quick exit from the 5-card Mini-WCOOP I broke out the Unibet client and set about earning those spins. 3x PLO4 and 1x PLO10 seems to be the way I'm most comfortable doing it. I can clear 1 spin at PLO4 and 1 spin at PLO10 in the same time. I do tend to end up down a few € when I play too that I doubt I'll ever make back in spin prizes but we'll see at the end of the month. One of the perks of recording everything I guess :) I think I got 2x freeroll tickets and a €1 SnG ticket out of the 4 spins so It wasn't all bad.

I registered the Community League early so it popped up while I was still grinding away at PLO. I'll be honest, I wasn't paying much attention so I didn't do very well. Finished in 17th which game me 2 points I think and I was knocked out by DuckItUp, who I'm fairly confident is on the forum. I've just looked back at the hand history and I only had a few BB and shoved pre with A10s. The 'Villian' had 67s and the flop was 6Q7. GG, onto the next one :(

Looks like Sam Grafton is back to his Wednesday slot so there was a freeroll and the €2 'Squid Spectacular' running so I jumped into both of them. 

What would you do? - Episode 2

Let's set the scene.. It's almost identical to last time, on the sofa, watching a movie 🤣 We've been in the Squid freeroll for about 5 minutes and have not played a single hand. Blinds are 20/40 and we have 2960 chips to play with. It's early days basically. We're in the small blind and dealt K♣️ 8♣️. Villain (with 3500ish chips and no reads from me because I'm not paying attention) in mid position raises to 120 (3x) and it folds round to me. I'm feeling splashy with two suited cards early in the tourney and call. This is a bad call, I know, I know, but I'm a degenerate and it's a freeroll so I wanted to see a flop. Sue me 🆒

Flop comes K♦️ 4♦️ 2♣️

Ooh, a King! I check, fully expecting the villian to bet and he does. 160 chips, I can give that away no bother. 

Turn is a Q♠️ 

Another check from me and the villain bets 340, just over half pot. I don't believe him and call. It's a freeroll after all, he could have anything.

River is a 8♦️ 

A flush draw completes but that's about it. I check a 3rd time looking for a friendly showdown.. villain launches every ship he has into the middle of the table (virtually of course).

What would you do? What do you think he has?

I'm a degenerate and called. He flipped over J♦️ 6♦️ :puking:
3x bet preflop and over half pot bets on the flop and turn with no pair and only an average flush draw to dream about. I know I shouldn't have got involved in the hand in the first place but I didnt expect that much of a draw to be up against. For you stats guys and gals out there I did the simulations and I'm 62%-38% pre-flop, same after the flop and 80%-20% on the turn. Calling the shove was silly but making the shove was just as silly IMO. Maybe one of the boffins can confirm that for me please so I feel better :)

I wrote all the above on Thursday so I'm now a little rusty on what else happened that night. I also can't get the web client to open for me just now so I can't even check hand histories at work :(. The rest of the post is based purely off the results sheet :)

So I entered the €2 Squid tourney as well as the freeroll and it turns out I play a lot better when I've used my own money to pay the buy-in. For some strange reason I've not recorded my finishing position so let's go for 5th or 6th for €9:) I remember the last hand being one of those annoying 10BB shoves against the big stack where they call with any 2. I think I had KQs and they had K8. You already know there was a 8 somewhere on the flop and it was GG time. If I had remembered to take a screenshot we could have had a debate about ICM (which I know nothing about) as everyone apart from the chip leader had the same sort of stack size. Next time I'm in that situation I'll make sure to take better notes :)

I also had my easiest €1 UO sat ever, I don't think I'll ever have an easier one to be honest and I'm amazed what happened, did. I registered the sat (the 9pm UK time one) 20 minutes or so before it began and then forgot about. I tend to do that because I know it'll just pop up at some point and I can just re-tile the tables and carry on. It hits about 9:15 and I pop up the main client to look at something and I see I have a notification. 'You have been awarded a €10 UO ticket' (or whatever the notification says). 'That's weird' I thought. I went to my challenges, no where near my next milestone. Missions can't be completed today so it's not that. Checked the community forum in case the mods were giving stuff away for fun like they do, nope. Then it dawns on me that I've not had the table pop up for the €1 UO sat :Wow:. I check the MTT lobby and sure enough it says the sat is finished. I go look in the lobby and it looks like 5 players registered and 5 players got tickets. Talk about overlay! I promptly entered a €10 sat and did terribly :)

The €1 SnG ticket I got from a UO spin was converted into a 1st place in a 5-man and I then punted €10 away on the nightly bounty MTT, finishing 2 spots off the money with no bounties :(

 

Another losing session. I'm well versed in the concept of variance and downswings so these things don't really phase me. My bankroll is still 100% profit so even if I hit 0 I've not really lost anything :)

Current results are available HERE. I update them on the fly so if you ever want so see how a session is going you can view it live at any time. It'll also show you what I'm playing as well, like a rudimentary 'Find a player' function :)

Answers/discussions regarding the 'What would you do?' are always appreciated :)

 

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08/09/2016 - The downward spiral

First of all, the good news.. We've made post of the week! Another €25 of tickets generously donated by Unibet will be winging it's way into my account at some point. At this rate, if I degen my way into the red they'll maybe ship me to a UO event 😏 I made a slight modification to the ticket quantities as i'm finding it pretty tough to use the €1 UO UK tickets just now. I just keep missing them/They're not running. I may have to convert up to a €4 ticket and just start the quest at that buy-in size.

 

Mini-WCOOP time again, it's a $2.20+R PLO event this time. I managed to get in with 3 minutes of late reg to spare and auto-rebought so I had a decent sized stack of around 50BB. That's not bad for a tourney that's been running for 3 hours already. I remember having 199BB at one point and I also remember being knocked out. The two situations were probably less than an hour apart :annoyed:. It basically set the tone for the evening.

Cue 4 hours or so on Unibet not cashing any tourneys and leaving every cash table I played at down. The only brief moment of joy (and it was very, very brief) was a 2nd in a €1 SnG that I entered with a UO slot spin win. I had a fairly decent stack in the Daily 4 for once and then got crippled in a standard KK < AQ flip. Had A4s next hand with about 5BB so shoved and was met with KK and AQ :waterfall:. All in all, a terrible playing day.

There will be no play on Friday as I simply don't have time. Between the day job and DJing at night I get about 3 hours so that time is used to eat and sleep. It'll be a light schedule on Saturday so I'll just lump that in with the Sunday stuff when I post on Monday. Probably need a day or two off anyway, refocus and all that motivational mumbo jumbo :geek:

 

I did say I would try and chuck in the odd IRL moment so here is one of them, my desk I use when I'm being serious playing poker..

IMAG0595.thumb.jpg.e6c83ff4ad2a59b2df6468dbf4135d79.jpg

Plenty of interesting things to see there. Here are my favourites:-

  • The nice magenta cushion to stop my bum going numb on the £20 computer chair I bought
  • A Pokerstars shark stress toy I got with starcoins
  • The various bit of music production equipment I never use
  • A chocolate digestive

I will be spending most of Saturday here for sure, the rest of the week not so much :)

Anyway, that's enough from me, the double post is more than enough to fill your lunch break as we'll reconvene on Monday with hopefully tales of big wins and happiness :Cool: 

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 I'm really enjoying your Blog mate. Thanx for the pic of your Poker Cave, looks awesome. Reading your blog has made me want to do a blog to, I just don't know what I should blog about ? I'll think of something.. I've got time. Thanx for the effort you putting in. Jus a quick question. Where in the U.K. are you @ ?

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The Granite City, Aberdeen, Scotland. Voted 'Happiest city in the UK' in 2012. 🆒

Just blog about what interests you. A lot of people do bankroll challenges for example. You could blog about trying to get to a UO event or specifically about cash games etc, so long as it's interesting and poker related you're in the right place to post it. 

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images.png.5198d601fdc7a25424e7ffa3f6abb297.png

yeah, now there is an idea . I want to go to the UO and have always wanted to visit Romania. When I was staying in the U.K. we nearly went, but ended up going to France instead  LOL ( long story ). I also did some time in Wales ( an even longer story, maybe even a blog in there ) Thanx for the motivation & idea, it was right in front of me & I didn't see it,  your are now labeled an enabler.

Always remember... You can be... do... or have anything your heart desires !
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