When will it end....

I played a $5 stt today and as usual the combination of being card dead and no luck put paid to me in 5th place. Not a great deal of hands to talk about but this one will give you an idea of how I run at the moment. Level 3 and I get AQ in the sb - not great but about the best I'd so far so I call the raise to 100 with 4 other callers. Flop is Q72 rainbow so I bet out 300 and get 2 callers. Turn is 7 and I bet 750, 1 caller. River is 4 and I bet 750, the caller has 87 and I lose a 4.5k pot. Miles ahead after the flop (81%-19% favourite) and he hits of course. Ok I could have raised preflop but out of position I'm just hoping to hit the flop cheaply and I don't think that I'm gonna get rid of too many given the looseness of the play so far. So why would I want to build the pot just yet? Surely better to see the flop cheaply and then if I hit, that's the time to bet?

About 20 hands later I push with AJ after hitting the J on the flop and of course the AK caller hits a river K and that's it.

I think I may take a more long term break as as I said a few posts ago, every time I play I'm expecting to lose and even when I get big hands I'm expecting to be outdrawn by idiots who are miles behind.

Challenge bankroll is $284.56

Same old story...

I played another $2 stt the other day and was completely card dead until level 5....about 85 hands! I'm down to about 4k and have been so patient. I finally pick up KK and raise to 500, the short stack with 3k pushes all in and I insta-call and am loving his TT.....but ffs he hits a fecking T on the turn and instead of being second I'm now the short stack with about 1k left...! He said 'sorry, ul' which really winds me up! Why is he sorry? Would he rather have lost? And also I think his re-raise with TT was shit play. Did he not notice that I have barely played a hand and might therefore be playing quite tight? TT is NOT a big pair and is not a re-raise all in hand where you are unlikely to get a call from a lower pair and be, at best, in a race against over cards or a 4-1 dog against a bigger pair.

Any way I'm now past caring and manage to double up, ironically, with TT when my push for 1.1k is called by 87? Of course the A96 flop brought him about a million outs for an open ended straight and flush but unbelievably he missed them all and I'm up to 2.3k. My luck then seemed to change and I hit quad As followed soon after by quad 7s but not for huge pots as even the donkeys I was playing smelt some danger or more likely didn't have anything despite calling pre-flop raises lol. There was also a split pot of quad 2s when the board was 2222A. I didn't see the point of the donkey raising the pot unless there was an idiot who would fold so I just called.

There was one guy who was up and down, going in with crap and sucking out all over the place....doesn't it drive you mad that when you can't hit a barn door others seem to hit 2 outers all the time? I won't go into the detail of my last hand but it was as predictable as you can imagine with me being ahead when the chips went in but not for long and I bubbled.

Anyway here's the nice pics of the quad hands.

Back in the money...

I played a game on Thursday and although it was a free roll, it was a $10k free roll so definitely worth playing. I managed 117th/1153 for $13. I never got many cards and when I did, i.e. I had KK twice, all folded to my my pre-flop raises. I pushed in the hand after the bubble had burst with AK in the big blind but ran into a set of jacks.

Given the way my luck has been going I decided to play a $2 stt on laddies instead of the usual $5 game. It was a real old slog and lasted 2 and a half ours! I managed to get 2nd for $4.50 which was ok but as we were about even chips when heads up and I managed to get a 26k-14k lead at one point I was disappointed not to win. It was the usual story of not being able to get paid off with my good hands i.e. him folding pre-flop both times when i had AA...grrrr! And then when I tried to be aggressive without much, he played back at me with a hand and showed it. The main turning point was when I was on the wrong end of a set vs set situation which meant him getting the 30k - 10k chip lead. I then pushed all in 5 times in a row and he folded each time and of course when I finally had a hand and got him to call, he sucked out on me lol. Still better then bubbling though!

Challenge bankroll is now $292.36

April 2008 stats

April was not a great month and in terms of earnings it was an overall loss of $29.14 - the first losing month of the challenge so far. However, the bankroll (which is what is important) only went down by $2.04 as a result of bonuses etc.

STTs
I played 10 stts and cashed in 5 for an overall loss of $8.75

MTTs
I played 7 MTTs for an overall loss of $15.87

Cash
I played 1 cash session for a loss of $4.52

If I had won a couple of a couple of coin flips and turned 2nd places into 1sts then it would probably have been a winning month but that's poker.

So I guess the main aim of this month is to get the earnings graph going the right way!

Challenge bankroll at the end of the month was $276.86

Time for a break

I think I'm not gonna play for a week as I am just totally card dead at the moment....its just getting ridiculous. I played a laddies super deep stack today and finished 5th. I played 170 hands and the only cards I had were JJ twice and nothing else. I had AQ a few times in early position which is almost insta fold and whenever I did limp, the flop couldn't miss me by much more lol and it was fold to a raise or re-raise. I lost count of the times I had absolute rubbish on my big blind and when I did defend after getting sick of folding it, a nightmare flop or a re-raise meant I had to lay down. I mean it was getting to the point where KJ suited was looking a monster! Of course I had my usual fold shit and then hit a monster, this time it was A6 which would have given me quads on the river


Of course the others on the table were calling raises with 45 under the gun and flopping trips or Q8 and flopping full houses. The chip leader was showing AA, AK, QQ, KK god knows how many times.....this game is sooooooooo frustrating sometimes. Oh and I went out on a coin flip with A4 against 33 which was no surprise. It was so bad that I almost just sat out and went and did something else!

Anyway I'm not gonna play any games for a week as I'm not in the right frame of mind at the moment and am just sat there expecting to get dealt shit and it is happening!

The challenge bankroll is $276.62 and whilst this is heading in the right direction is as a result of bonuses from various sites rather than money won lol.

$1000 added but card dead :-(

I played the $10 private blonde poker MTT tonight on PokerTrillion as it had $1000 added and as there were only 26 players it was great value. However, I didnt have a hand all game and went out in 13th when I ran into the chipleader's AA after raising with A9 when I was pretty shortstacked and hitting 9 on the flop lol shame! Although it was a bigger buy in than usual, I got $25 free from PokerTrillion as part of a promotion as they have moved networks so nothing lost really.

Challenge bankroll is $282.12

Card dead

I played a 1 euro MTT on Poker Trillion tonight and had no cards all game. The only hand I had for the first 4 levels was JJ which I folded to a big bet on an AK flop. I witnessed some shockingly bad play too. In most hands there were 5 or 6 callers and I lost count of the hands where 8 or 9 players saw the flop even with a pref-flop raise! We had lost 100 players out of 370 by half way through the second level and almost 2/3 of the field by the first break. Calling all ins with K3 for your whole stack was the norm.

I had to laugh when a guy went all in with A9 and was called by K8 for all his stack. The flop brought a K but when the river brought an A, the guy with A9 said 'sorry'! Why are you sorry? You were ahead preflop, some donkey called for his whole stack with K8, got lucky and then you won on the river...why are you sorry when you had the best hand preflop? lol The donkey with K8 got what he deserved for his awful call for all his chips! I mean you can move all in with K8 but calling with it? lol

I managed a double up to 2.6k with AA after my 2x bb raise was re-raised all in by AQ. I couldn't get my chips in fast enough and the A on flop pretty much sealed the deal. However, that was as far as my good fortune went and a push on the button with K8, which was ironic given the donkey call above, for less than 4 xbb got a call in the big blind with AT which was fine and he flopped a full house lol.

Challenge bankroll is $269.48 and seems to have plateaued for the last 6 weeks or so but at least the general trend is upwards rather than downwards. I don't think I'm playing any different than usual, its just that little bit of bad luck or others hitting cards at the wrong times (for me) but that's just the run of the cards and something that has happened many times before. A bit frustrating but not a lot you can do about it really!

Anyway I doubt I am gonna be able to play much this weekend as we are moving house next month and so have plenty of things to do before then!