Live Session #3: Back From The Fox (Part 2)

Cash Game Session At £1/£1

To be honest, I don't really like playing £1/£1 at The Fox due to the 10% rake; however, sometimes it's just nice to ease off from the wild £1/£2 games at The Empire and play a lower stake game just to steady the variance a bit. Early indications told me that there were no real tricky players at the table, which was nice, but my cash game session started off badly. Early on I got dealt AA and decided to go all-in on the K 7 x flop. My opponent called and showed his K7. (Before you ask, yes I did do a substantial raise pre-flop.) He also hit a king on the turn for a full house, just for good measure.

This put me down £60 early on so not a great start. Fortunately there was a maniac on the table who had no idea about the importance of position and played a very poor loose aggressive game; as such, I won about £70 off her with AK (see below). I guess you could call it my "key hand" but I did manage to spin my stack up to ~£300 overall (I reloaded £50) which put me up about £50 at the cash game and up around £10 on the night.

Key Hand 
I did my fair share of ducking and diving but there were two "key hands" really. The first I mentioned above where I lost about £60 with AA. The second was where I made about £70 with AK. I raised with it preflop and got called by Ms Maniac and Mr Confident. The flop came 3 3 7. Ms Maniac checked while Mr Confident hollywooded for a bit but ended up checking. Taking their style of play into account, this told me that I was very likely ahead but I checked anyway. The turn came a king. Ms Maniac pushed all-in for her remaining £60, Mr Confident folded and I snap-called. Clearly disappointed Ms Maniac just showed the king but, obviously, my kicker was good enough.

---------------

I guess it's nice to report that I was up £10 on the night but one leak I really need to put right is tipping too much. To be honest, I was pretty much the ONLY player who did, but announcing at the table that I "always tip" didn't help. As a man of my word I then tipped £1 for EVERY hand that I won. As I won well over ten hands, including quite a few pre-flop, I really just gave away far too much money. Sort it out Wobble!

Lesson 1: Stick to live cash games and carry on limiting yourself to just one live MTT per month.

Lesson 2: Ease off with the tipping ESPECIALLY after winning hands pre-flop (you idiot!).

Lesson 3: Do NOT buy two pizza slices at the end of the evening when only one will do!

Live Session #3: Back From The Fox (Part 1)

Part 1 - The Nonsense Of The £38 Freezeout

First off, The Fox has gone the way of a few other clubs and popped in a hidden cost to their MTTs. Now, instead of the usual £35 buy-in plus £5 entry fee, they have added a £3 "dealer bonus" making the whole thing £38. Basically, this means you pay an extra £3 for an extra 1500 chips. To get the value, you should take the extra chips BUT that £3 does NOT go into the prize pool which kinda takes the value away when you think about it. (Talk about giving with one hand but taking with the other.) Effectively, this has now become a £38 freezout where you pay a 21% charge. It's fair enough that they take 13% to run the event but to siphon off 8% to go in their coffers is a bit much. I'm all for tipping the dealers (see Part 2) but I've always seen this as a bit of a rip-off to be honest. 

Anyway, once again, I seem to be playing these MTTs just to remind myself why the hell I shouldn't be playing these bloody MTTs!! Yep, this time it was a knock-out due to being on the wrong end of some set-over-set shenanigans. I held 44 my opponent held JJ and the flop came A J 4; you can guess the rest. Anyway, foregoing a trip to The Empire tonight, I decided to stay at The Fox to try my hand at the cash game tables. Fortunately, I managed to battle quite nicely and ended up winning back my £38 entry to the freezeout and then some (but only a very little sum). Details of this will follow in Part 2...

The Difference Rakeback Makes

It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting up in bed with my laptop. I'll be going into town today for a live session but I haven't really decided which venue to plump for yet. A gentle £35 freezeout at The Fox is certainly calling me so that's looking the most likely at present, although the temptation to play £1/£2 cash games at The Empire will be hard to withstand for obvious reasons. If I do decide on The Fox I'll need to get down there for 6PM cos last time they were queueing outside the door at 6:30PM and I never got round to registering.

Yesterday, I received a $170 rakeback payment at PKR thus lifting my bankroll up to $1180. On top of this, I have secured $50 profit by mainly playing $100nl. Nothing fancy but it puts my bankroll at $1230 and at least it's moving in the right direction. Now, although my online progress has been poor, to say the least, rakeback really does give you a boost at the beginning of the month; particularly if you are looking to repair the previous month's damage.

Unfortunately, you cannot secure a rakeback deal retrospectively after you have registered an account and this is a major headache for a lot of online players. Last week I was chatting with this guy at The Empire who told me that when he started playing online he just registered with loads of sites but never researched rakeback. Now, while registered with virtually every network under the sun he doesn't receive rakeback from ANY site whatsoever - bummer!

Moral: ALWAYS research a rakeback deal before registering with an online poker site.

Personally, I get rakeback from; PKR, Betfair, Poker Heaven and Full Tilt. But I'm still kicking myself for not investigating rakeback deals at other major sites, which I joined years ago, like; Stars, Party, Paddy Power etc etc.

---------------

Still, there is one other thing I need to mention before signing off. In previous posts I mentioned my desire to post about short-term results and maintained that it made no difference to my state-of-mind or how I played at the tables. Well, I've decided to take japete's advice and I'm not going to dwell on my results so much in my posts. I will continue to post weekly updates on Sunday evening, cos that's all part of the deal, but I'm just not going to dwell so much on individual sessions. We'll see how it goes.

Twaddling On - And We're Off...

I have just placed the necessaries into my PKR account and so the wheels to my amazing new bankroll management strategy have been set in motion  - we're off baby! Yet again, of course, I have fallen victim to the exchange rate rip-off. A deposit of £650 sees me with a $1020 balance, yet if I were to withdraw that sum today I only get £610 back! That's another £40 disappeared and swallowed up in digital cyberspace; no doubt pocketed by some big fat cat. Anyway, at least rakeback day will supply some sort of recompense.

For convenience sake, and for the benefit of updates, I'm just going to see it as a £600 deposit for a $1000 starting balance for February, so there.

Let's remind ourselves once again of my fantabulous strategy:

For live poker, I've set aside £1000 which I'll use as and when I take a trip into old London Town for the £1/£1 and £1/£2 cash games as well as for a few MTTs. It's looking very likely, by the way, that I'll be heading downtown over the weekend (and I'll do my usual trip report for this). For the online game, the $1000 balance is what I'll use to play with this month. I'll probably start off with some low-limit games, like $25nl and $50, just to get in the swing of things before dipping my toes into the $100nl and $200nl every so often. It's all fairly experimental but we'll see how things go eh?

NOW COME ON!!!

Las Vegas - To Go Or Not To Go...

... That is the question.

As someone who has played a fair amount of poker over the last five years and who claims to be a keen enthusiast, it may surprise you to know that I have yet to make the trip out to Las Vegas. Recently I have been doing a lot of research on the subject and the urge to go is as strong as it's ever been before. The thing is, this year, the year of the blog, is probably the most appropriate time to make my first visit out there.

While researching all the possibilities, I'm drawn to the convenience of staying at Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon. It's not exactly state-of-the-art or 5-star but as long as I get a good night's sleep it seems fine. Its central location is ideal with there being easy access to all your favourites like; Bally's, Paris, Flamingo, Bellagio and Caesars Palace. It also seems you can get from your room to the main street in less than five minutes and without having to get your compass out or putting your hiking boots on. At the moment, I'm considering going for eight days from Tuesday to the following Wednesday (so I get a full jet-lag free weekend) and the price, at present, for both the flight and hotel is a not unreasonable £1058.

The other alternative that I've been considering, due to the favourable reviews of its poker room, is the MGM. This hotel is huge, more expensive but a bit out of the way on the south part of the strip. It also, apparently, takes an age to get from your hotel room to the casino floor. Hmm, not so good. This package comes in at £1285.

Something to think about. I might well just get this booked over the weekend but I still haven't got my passport renewed yet which is a slight annoyance. Still, I'll let you know how things develop with this.