Far better player than you? Do behave! 90% of the time I am capable I think, 10% of the time I am more interested in whatever it is I am eating or drinking at that moment in time! This time next week, last nights battering will be a distant memory to you, bet ya. I'm not playing today (just as well, I usually do rubbish on a Friday) but will see you and the usual gang tomorrow if you about. Posted by Macacgirl1
I'd swap with your game any day. Dependable, solid, class. You never have £70 losing sessions, either! We bumped heads a few times last night, eh? Great atmo on the table last night though. I can't chat much, too many Tables, but I read it all.
Enjoy whatever you do tonight, & I'll see you tomorrow. Twiglet Party tonight, right?
I plan on 2 big sessions this weekend, as I'm desperately trying to reach 3,000 Reward Points in July, & I only have 6 nights left, so I need 125 points per night.
By the bye, I've started a PLO8 DYM "HELP, TIPS & ADVICE" thread, be great if you could pop in & help out now & then, ditto anyone else, especially the likes of Ger, Footsie, Alexis, & all the other good Ploppers. It's HERE
Well there must have been some big winners last night Tikay as you and I both donated all evening. Rather than try and ride it out like you did I cut my session short in order to avoid adding to the pain. Not only were my PLO8 STTs bad but I also discovered that QJ all in pre flop is miles ahead of any Ace in holdem MTTs, at least it was when I held the ace hand as I think I was busted or crippled by that match up in 3 of 4 MTTs.
Anyway onwards and upwards and hope to see you and the others at the tables over the weekend.
Decided to have a big session - 45 games - & seemed to be able to control most of my games. There'll always be outdraws & stuff, but I did not make too many mistakes last night, only two really bad ones that I recall or recognized.
I always like to try & get a clean sweep by winning overall at all buy-in levels, but failed when I mistakenly regged for a £2.20 & lost it. Won very well @ £3.30 & £5.50 though.
Anyway, back into profit for July (& that excludes Reward Points money), & got the Win Ratio back up to 56%.
Not a single £11er ran all evening, but that apart, traffic was good, & tons of new faces turned up.
Really concentrated hard last night, & that made all the difference I think. Guess I ran well, too.
Best Reward Points haul of the month, 160 points, so I'm not quite dead yet in my quest for 3,000 Reward Points in July. I have 5 sessions left (am working on the 31st), & will be doing everything I can to get there. It "only" makes £15 of difference (£45 instead of £30) but in the context of an average buy-in of less than a fiver, & my starting 'roll of £200, it's actually a lump of money, & worth trying for.
Good atmo again last night, there was no trash talking nonsense.
Will be hoping to have another big session tonight.
Haha well done Tikay very nice pic! The ups and down of poker eh. Car crash for me lastnight on Sky lost all 4 boohoo. Off on holidays now for a few days and no poker!
Haha well done Tikay very nice pic! The ups and down of poker eh. Car crash for me lastnight on Sky lost all 4 boohoo. Off on holidays now for a few days and no poker! After yesterdays run I think I need a break. Good luck all Posted by gerardirl
Yes, I saw you were running a bit bad, some nights it just happens.
Have a great break, & thanks for posting on the Strategy Thread, that was a great post.
The photo. Amazing what a roller-coaster of swings & swongs, ups & downs, poker is. It must be horrible if you don't have the mettle do handle the swings & swongs, & I can understand why some folks get uppity, but really, they need to understand, thats just how poker works. Best to get used to it, & take it in our stride, or quit the game, imo. Poker don't 'arf expose our character & backbone.
A word about my mate, Vespa, who is enduring a torrid run at the moment.
Watched him last night, he could not win a hand to save his life, he did everything right, every time, & just kept getting coolered or outdrawn. Not nice to see, especially for such a top bloke. He never moaned once, but I could tell it was hurting.
Oddly, he put me in a peculiar spot.
He was down to about 3 or 4 bigs I think, & Potted from UTG. I was in the BB, with plenty of chips. He's a wily player, so I KNOW he does not have to have much here, he can & should jam pretty wide.
Should I call?
I'm not much of a caller really, I much prefer to be the bettor, & play my own hands to my own agenda, rather than react to what others do.
My hand was not good, & I was pretty sure I'd probably be in bad shape. I thought & thought.....& somehow, it came into my mind, that if I called & outdrew him again, I'd feel really bad. After some soul-searching, I found the fold. It might have beeen that he had a grerat hand, & if I called I'd double him up, so maybe I did him no favours after all.
Daft, & wrong, yes yes, I know, but these, surely, are the emotions we deal with all the time.
Have to add, a rigorous belief of mine is NEVER DOUBLE UP A GOOD PLAYER. I think that was my main reason for folding.
So many beautifully complex decisions we have to make during an evening of poker.
What a great game it is.
Anyway Mick, hope you soon start running better. It'll feel terrific, it really will.
Hey Tikay, Not a nice feeling Im sure. However I do love the car crash pic.....I could have done with that the other day after losing 6 straight over 3 days! yikes. When you have a bad run what goes through your mind the next day when you have had time to regroup your thoughts?Personally I think bad days keep you honest and it is the bad days that keep me motivated to come back and win again! Hope it turns for you tonight! Posted by gerardirl
Great questions, & wise advice.
What goes through my mind, after a session like that £70 loss the other day? All sorts!
First up, I try not to think about it straight after the session. Sleeping on it, & re-visiting after time to reflect, always produces a better balanced thought process.It certainly does damage my admittedly fragile self-confidence though.
I guess my thoughts went like this....
Re-assure myself.
Over a period in which I have ONLY played PLO8 DYM's, I am a small winning player. Not much, about £750 over a whopping 3,800 games, so only about £0.20 per game. That's a big sample size though, & I'm getting better as I learn more, so I think I should be able to accept nights like that are going to happen now & then, & I'm not as bad as a night like that suggests.
Understand variance.
It is SUCH an extraordinarily powerful thing. Nobody, nobody on earth, is immune.
Self-Examine
This is the most important thing. It's easy to think or say "those idiots keep calling with garbage & hitting", or "the software is rigged" & all that stuff. It's nonsense of course. Over time, we get EXACTLY the results our game deserves. If we are good enough, we'll win, it we are not, we'll lose.
The 10,000 Hand Test
I just accept that the best hand does not always win, or that sometimes we go in with a very good hand & just plum bump into a bigger one. It happens.
So I try to say to myself, "if I played that hand, in that spot, that way, 10,000 times, how often should I win?" If it is more than 5,000, than I'm doing it right, & variance will take care of me over time. Outdraws, honestly & truly, don't bother me one iota, never have, never will. They are what makes poker so good.
Could I have done better?
The answer is usually "yes".
In this case, my weakness, I think, is that when I get "behind" during a session, I get overly aggro, & don't exercise enough patience, I "press" too hard to try & retrieve losses. I need to repair that leak. I'm pretty sure that if I stuck to my stratgy & formula, I SHOULD have lost £30 or £40 that night, due to genuine run-bad. Instead, I pressed too hard & done much more.
Concentration
I do think a night off every now & then does me good. When I have winning sessions, the common theme is CONCENTRATION, thinking about every single hand, carefully.
Some nights though my mind wanders, or I have work or life worries crowding my mind. These almost invariably tie in with losing nights.
As it happens, I had a big "fire" to deal with last night on a Forum, which was frazzling my head. So I just decided to log off that Forum completely, & refuse to think about it until this morning.
System Check
Am I doing everything correct, or have I developed a little leak in my game? Usually I find little errors creeping in. That's why bad nights are good.
Anyway, I did my utter best last night, really tried my best, & ended up winning about £0.70 per game, in mostly £3 games, over a 45 game sample. Happy with that, very happy. The bounce-back nights are one of the best things about poker. Tonight, who knows? That's another great thing, we just don't know.
I do know that before every poker session I ever have, I get ridiculously excited & nervous, & can't wait to get started. If I did not, I'd give the game up, right away.
i must be awful because tikay doubles me up everytime. viva el presidente robertoooooooo Posted by robertod
That's because you own me.
Which reminds me. Last night, as per most nights, I bet 20 different people made comments like "you still awake tikay, not played a hand in 20 minutes?".
For the record, I play less hands than almost any player here, it's my deliberate style. All this limping every hand lark is a losers game.
But....
If you watch, you'll note that I change gears completely once we get 4 handed, & become THE most active & aggro player at the table by far. There's a reason for that.
Sorry I could not chat much last night, & failed to reply to your comments. With 6 or 8 Tables on the go, & trying to concentrate, I just struggle a bit with replying to everyone, but no offence is intended.
my god that dogs beautiful. me playing too many hands is also a tactic of mine and i think a rather shrewd one. its to fool other players into believing im rubbish. they have no clue that im actually brilliant. so there.
You keep mentioning low self-confidence at the moment Tikay, chin up! You are up in the DYMs, STILL on the telly, fresh from award season glory and organising one of the biggest tournaments in the UK.
Good session, eventually, though it began as bad as bad can be, when I ran really bad.
Lost 6 of the first 9, despite, I thought, playing well. In one beaut, we got it all-in on the flop when I flopped a set of Jacks, & the other poor chap was in a world of pain with a set of 7's. Cue quad sevens, ha! The thing to remember though is that we played the hand correctly, & if we keep doing that, we'll be fine.
"beats" are like buses, they seem to come in clusters, & we notice them. But we outdraw people in clusters too, but put that down to good play.
Anyway, I eventually found my rhythm & pace, & the 15 game sectors went like this.....
First 15 games - W7, L8
2nd 15 games - W11, L4
3rd 15 games - W10 L5
Pretty pleased with that really, & it gets the Games Won % back up to 57%.
Traffic was very light mid-evening (barbecue night, I guess), but then livened up late on, so it was a late night finish. Not one £11er ran until the very last game, so I loaded up a couple of £3's & £5's to help my concentration & we won the £11er with some ease.
The £11er had a very odd dynamic, as one unlucky player was "AWAY" throughout, which makes things both easier, but more awkward. The position you have relative to the AWAY player is key, of course, & the player to his immediate right is in a good spot. I was to his LEFT, so it cramped me rather badly, but we ran good & got there eventually.
There were a lot of players who had consumed rather too much alcohol, so it was kinda awkward to chat, as it was all nonsense stuff, & whilst we want drunk players in the game, they play so unpredictably. To find yourself heads up & all-in pre-flop versus 10-7-6-4 is one of those double take moments, "did he REALLY just do that?" sorta thing. Chop-chop, lol.
In a £5 game, 4 of us left, & a chap with just 2 bigs made his mandatory shove, & so two of us flatted behind. The chippie then re-shoved! Groan, fold fold. Shortie more than trebled up, & it was back to square one.
In another game, I was surviving on fumes with 4 Bigs (4 handed) & the two Billy Big Stacks proceeded to get it all-in v each other, & I sort of won by default. Why DO people do that? It's beyond words really, but I'm not complaining. Oh no Sir.
Poor Vespa continued his miserable run, don't recall ever seeing a player run so bad for so long. Take a little break Mick, & come back refreshed. Your game is just fine, but Miss Variance has taken a temporary dislike. She's fickle though, she'll be all cooey-wooey next week.
I plan another big session tonight, traffic permitting. Am really keen to reach 3,000 Reward Points, & I still need 438 over my remaining 4 sessions. It's do-able, but only just, & I'll need plenty of traffic to do it, &, hopefully, a few £11ers to run. In my last 90 games, just ONE £11er has run. Traffic levels are remarkably high, all things considered, time of year, weather, so it'll be grand in the winter, but there are just not enough of the bigger games running right now.
Anyway, an enjoyable & satisfying evening. It feels really good to be behind early & then turn it round.
Today on TV its the F1 GP, racing from Ascot, Darts, Golf, then poker. Ooohhh.
Tikay, In response to your comment about 2 big stacks going to war. I believe I was one of those big stacks and having been pushed around in a previous encounter it was time to make a stand.In the future maybe he/she wont try to bully me again.It is all about the long term strategy.
Tikay, In response to your comment about 2 big stacks going to war. I believe I was one of those big stacks and having been pushed around in a previous encounter it was time to make a stand.In the future maybe he/she wont try to bully me again.It is all about the long term strategy. See you at the tables later, Eon Posted by eon1961
Morning Very Old Bloke.
No, you were not on that table.
Great fun last night, eh? Especially when you sealed the deal in that £11 thing with all those Queens!
I won another £11er last night after going down to 550 chips in ther firdt orbit when Mr Station did a get. I clung & clung, & eventually won it. Most satisfying win of the evening.
Comments
Enjoy whatever you do tonight, & I'll see you tomorrow. Twiglet Party tonight, right?
I plan on 2 big sessions this weekend, as I'm desperately trying to reach 3,000 Reward Points in July, & I only have 6 nights left, so I need 125 points per night.
By the bye, I've started a PLO8 DYM "HELP, TIPS & ADVICE" thread, be great if you could pop in & help out now & then, ditto anyone else, especially the likes of Ger, Footsie, Alexis, & all the other good Ploppers. It's HERE
Anyway onwards and upwards and hope to see you and the others at the tables over the weekend.
25th July Numbers & Stuff
Played 45
Won 30
Lost 15
£2.20 P 1, W 0, L 1
£3.30, P 33, W 23, L 10
£5.50, P 11, W 7 L 4
£11, P 0, W 0, L 0
Opening Balance - £1,284.25.42
Closing Balance = £1,314.60
Profit Loss on Night - £30.35
Profit Loss on Month = £21.40
REWARD POINTS on night = 160
REWARD POINTS IN MONTH = 2,402 (= £24.02)
GAMES PLAYED IN MONTH = 595
GAMES WON IN MONTH = 333
JULY WIN % = 56.0%
Phew, that was better.
Decided to have a big session - 45 games - & seemed to be able to control most of my games. There'll always be outdraws & stuff, but I did not make too many mistakes last night, only two really bad ones that I recall or recognized.
I always like to try & get a clean sweep by winning overall at all buy-in levels, but failed when I mistakenly regged for a £2.20 & lost it. Won very well @ £3.30 & £5.50 though.
Anyway, back into profit for July (& that excludes Reward Points money), & got the Win Ratio back up to 56%.
Not a single £11er ran all evening, but that apart, traffic was good, & tons of new faces turned up.
Really concentrated hard last night, & that made all the difference I think. Guess I ran well, too.
Best Reward Points haul of the month, 160 points, so I'm not quite dead yet in my quest for 3,000 Reward Points in July. I have 5 sessions left (am working on the 31st), & will be doing everything I can to get there. It "only" makes £15 of difference (£45 instead of £30) but in the context of an average buy-in of less than a fiver, & my starting 'roll of £200, it's actually a lump of money, & worth trying for.
Good atmo again last night, there was no trash talking nonsense.
Will be hoping to have another big session tonight.
Have a great break, & thanks for posting on the Strategy Thread, that was a great post.
The photo. Amazing what a roller-coaster of swings & swongs, ups & downs, poker is. It must be horrible if you don't have the mettle do handle the swings & swongs, & I can understand why some folks get uppity, but really, they need to understand, thats just how poker works. Best to get used to it, & take it in our stride, or quit the game, imo. Poker don't 'arf expose our character & backbone.
A word about my mate, Vespa, who is enduring a torrid run at the moment.
Watched him last night, he could not win a hand to save his life, he did everything right, every time, & just kept getting coolered or outdrawn. Not nice to see, especially for such a top bloke. He never moaned once, but I could tell it was hurting.
Oddly, he put me in a peculiar spot.
He was down to about 3 or 4 bigs I think, & Potted from UTG. I was in the BB, with plenty of chips. He's a wily player, so I KNOW he does not have to have much here, he can & should jam pretty wide.
Should I call?
I'm not much of a caller really, I much prefer to be the bettor, & play my own hands to my own agenda, rather than react to what others do.
My hand was not good, & I was pretty sure I'd probably be in bad shape. I thought & thought.....& somehow, it came into my mind, that if I called & outdrew him again, I'd feel really bad. After some soul-searching, I found the fold. It might have beeen that he had a grerat hand, & if I called I'd double him up, so maybe I did him no favours after all.
Daft, & wrong, yes yes, I know, but these, surely, are the emotions we deal with all the time.
Have to add, a rigorous belief of mine is NEVER DOUBLE UP A GOOD PLAYER. I think that was my main reason for folding.
So many beautifully complex decisions we have to make during an evening of poker.
What a great game it is.
Anyway Mick, hope you soon start running better. It'll feel terrific, it really will.
What goes through my mind, after a session like that £70 loss the other day? All sorts!
First up, I try not to think about it straight after the session. Sleeping on it, & re-visiting after time to reflect, always produces a better balanced thought process.It certainly does damage my admittedly fragile self-confidence though.
I guess my thoughts went like this....
Re-assure myself.
Over a period in which I have ONLY played PLO8 DYM's, I am a small winning player. Not much, about £750 over a whopping 3,800 games, so only about £0.20 per game. That's a big sample size though, & I'm getting better as I learn more, so I think I should be able to accept nights like that are going to happen now & then, & I'm not as bad as a night like that suggests.
Understand variance.
It is SUCH an extraordinarily powerful thing. Nobody, nobody on earth, is immune.
Self-Examine
This is the most important thing. It's easy to think or say "those idiots keep calling with garbage & hitting", or "the software is rigged" & all that stuff. It's nonsense of course. Over time, we get EXACTLY the results our game deserves. If we are good enough, we'll win, it we are not, we'll lose.
The 10,000 Hand Test
I just accept that the best hand does not always win, or that sometimes we go in with a very good hand & just plum bump into a bigger one. It happens.
So I try to say to myself, "if I played that hand, in that spot, that way, 10,000 times, how often should I win?" If it is more than 5,000, than I'm doing it right, & variance will take care of me over time. Outdraws, honestly & truly, don't bother me one iota, never have, never will. They are what makes poker so good.
Could I have done better?
The answer is usually "yes".
In this case, my weakness, I think, is that when I get "behind" during a session, I get overly aggro, & don't exercise enough patience, I "press" too hard to try & retrieve losses. I need to repair that leak. I'm pretty sure that if I stuck to my stratgy & formula, I SHOULD have lost £30 or £40 that night, due to genuine run-bad. Instead, I pressed too hard & done much more.
Concentration
I do think a night off every now & then does me good. When I have winning sessions, the common theme is CONCENTRATION, thinking about every single hand, carefully.
Some nights though my mind wanders, or I have work or life worries crowding my mind. These almost invariably tie in with losing nights.
As it happens, I had a big "fire" to deal with last night on a Forum, which was frazzling my head. So I just decided to log off that Forum completely, & refuse to think about it until this morning.
System Check
Am I doing everything correct, or have I developed a little leak in my game? Usually I find little errors creeping in. That's why bad nights are good.
Anyway, I did my utter best last night, really tried my best, & ended up winning about £0.70 per game, in mostly £3 games, over a 45 game sample. Happy with that, very happy. The bounce-back nights are one of the best things about poker. Tonight, who knows? That's another great thing, we just don't know.
I do know that before every poker session I ever have, I get ridiculously excited & nervous, & can't wait to get started. If I did not, I'd give the game up, right away.
Which reminds me. Last night, as per most nights, I bet 20 different people made comments like "you still awake tikay, not played a hand in 20 minutes?".
For the record, I play less hands than almost any player here, it's my deliberate style. All this limping every hand lark is a losers game.
But....
If you watch, you'll note that I change gears completely once we get 4 handed, & become THE most active & aggro player at the table by far. There's a reason for that.
Sorry I could not chat much last night, & failed to reply to your comments. With 6 or 8 Tables on the go, & trying to concentrate, I just struggle a bit with replying to everyone, but no offence is intended.
Here's a happy rotty to make up for it.
Quite happy to sit nice & quietly, foldy foldy foldy, whilst many others limp into every pot. Economy of effort, that.
26th July Numbers & Stuff
Played 45
Won 28
Lost 17
£3.30, P 35, W 21, L 14
£5.50, P 9, W 6 L 3
£11, P 1, W 1, L 0
Opening Balance - £1,314.60
Closing Balance = £1,344.60
Profit Loss on Night - £30.00
Profit Loss on Month = £51.40
REWARD POINTS on night = 164
REWARD POINTS IN MONTH = 2,562 (= £25.62)
GAMES PLAYED IN MONTH = 640
GAMES WON IN MONTH = 365
JULY WIN % = 57.0%
Good session, eventually, though it began as bad as bad can be, when I ran really bad.
Lost 6 of the first 9, despite, I thought, playing well. In one beaut, we got it all-in on the flop when I flopped a set of Jacks, & the other poor chap was in a world of pain with a set of 7's. Cue quad sevens, ha! The thing to remember though is that we played the hand correctly, & if we keep doing that, we'll be fine.
"beats" are like buses, they seem to come in clusters, & we notice them. But we outdraw people in clusters too, but put that down to good play.
Anyway, I eventually found my rhythm & pace, & the 15 game sectors went like this.....
First 15 games - W7, L8
2nd 15 games - W11, L4
3rd 15 games - W10 L5
Pretty pleased with that really, & it gets the Games Won % back up to 57%.
Traffic was very light mid-evening (barbecue night, I guess), but then livened up late on, so it was a late night finish. Not one £11er ran until the very last game, so I loaded up a couple of £3's & £5's to help my concentration & we won the £11er with some ease.
The £11er had a very odd dynamic, as one unlucky player was "AWAY" throughout, which makes things both easier, but more awkward. The position you have relative to the AWAY player is key, of course, & the player to his immediate right is in a good spot. I was to his LEFT, so it cramped me rather badly, but we ran good & got there eventually.
There were a lot of players who had consumed rather too much alcohol, so it was kinda awkward to chat, as it was all nonsense stuff, & whilst we want drunk players in the game, they play so unpredictably. To find yourself heads up & all-in pre-flop versus 10-7-6-4 is one of those double take moments, "did he REALLY just do that?" sorta thing. Chop-chop, lol.
In a £5 game, 4 of us left, & a chap with just 2 bigs made his mandatory shove, & so two of us flatted behind. The chippie then re-shoved! Groan, fold fold. Shortie more than trebled up, & it was back to square one.
In another game, I was surviving on fumes with 4 Bigs (4 handed) & the two Billy Big Stacks proceeded to get it all-in v each other, & I sort of won by default. Why DO people do that? It's beyond words really, but I'm not complaining. Oh no Sir.
Poor Vespa continued his miserable run, don't recall ever seeing a player run so bad for so long. Take a little break Mick, & come back refreshed. Your game is just fine, but Miss Variance has taken a temporary dislike. She's fickle though, she'll be all cooey-wooey next week.
I plan another big session tonight, traffic permitting. Am really keen to reach 3,000 Reward Points, & I still need 438 over my remaining 4 sessions. It's do-able, but only just, & I'll need plenty of traffic to do it, &, hopefully, a few £11ers to run. In my last 90 games, just ONE £11er has run. Traffic levels are remarkably high, all things considered, time of year, weather, so it'll be grand in the winter, but there are just not enough of the bigger games running right now.
Anyway, an enjoyable & satisfying evening. It feels really good to be behind early & then turn it round.
Today on TV its the F1 GP, racing from Ascot, Darts, Golf, then poker. Ooohhh.
Enjoy your Sunday, whatever plans you have.
In response to your comment about 2 big stacks going to war.
I believe I was one of those big stacks and having been pushed around in a previous encounter it was time to make a stand.In the future maybe he/she wont try to bully me again.It is all about the long term strategy.
See you at the tables later,
Eon
No, you were not on that table.
Great fun last night, eh? Especially when you sealed the deal in that £11 thing with all those Queens!
I won another £11er last night after going down to 550 chips in ther firdt orbit when Mr Station did a get. I clung & clung, & eventually won it. Most satisfying win of the evening.