What did I tell ya
Well…..what did I tell you….that I would get those fishes on the 25-50 thats what. They were paying the rent big time last night and yours truly was landlord and collecting his fair share. The bad news was that I believe one of the players has took a fair size whack in the wallet and may not return. I wont tell you the amounts but I am one happy guy today and it was due after the near misses that I have had over the last couple of weeks. I recorded my biggest ever win for a single session on one table, in fact I dont recall off the top of my head ever winning more in an online cash game before. But in all seriousness, I have had more than my fair share of losses but my records show my win column far out stretching my loss column and that is good enough for me. Something tells me that this game is over in the 25-50, as far as soft players go anyway so I might just lay low for awhile and play some limit and grind it out on the 6 max. One hand goes, it is folded to me with 8d-6c and I raise from the cut off to $175, all fold to the BB who calls….this is my target. The pot is $375…..flop comes K-7-4 rainbow and he checks (or she), I fire $220 at it on a semi bluff with an inside straight draw and representing the high card king. He calls the $220 making the pot $815 and we each have around $5k left. Turn card comes a jack and they check again. I check it back, I usually fire again but I have come to know this guy and I just feel that he has steeled himself to check call me with the better hand all the way to the river. I take the free card and it comes on the river, a nice big fat five of hearts. He bets $140, I think that he has a hand now and is wanting me to come over the top with a bluff and trying to make me think that he is trying to steal the pot but is afraid to bet any more. So I do not dissapoint him and move in and he calls. I do not see his hand but he informs me that he had KJ. I have been waiting for a situation like this for awhile and he reloads straight away. Well I have not had a session in NL and especially in 25-50 where so much went my way in the same session before but you know what they say about all good things. So have a nice weekend and we will talk next week where I will discuss some NL strategies in my blog. see ya soon The Dean
You Gotta Know Your Limit
Hey, dont get me started on ego matters, I despatched with mine some years ago when I finally realised that I was not as good as I thought I was……and then started from scratch and rebuilt my game like a golfer rebuilds their swing and I was back like the six million dollar man……you know the saying from the cult 1970’s series……”a man barely alive….we can rebuild him better than he was before…..better…stronger….faster” cue theme tune. Well that is me, whenever I am playing limit hold’em multi-tabling I am part man part machine. I am robot man simply churning out the hourly dollar rate. It sucks….but then again as any pro gambler or stock market trader will tell you…..gambling is supposed to be boring. If you find it exciting then you sure as hell aint doing it right. So I grind out 27BB last night at 10-20 limit playing three tables….$540….it aint dramatic and it aint Vegas but it sure is wages and it sure beats an awful lotta jobs. I keep having to tell myself this from time to time because I tend to lose focus on my real goals sometimes. The 25-50 was dead, hope that my targets have not flown the nest but I have a feeling that they will be back over the weekend….dont know why….just a hunch. I am spending more and more time these days doing my second favourite gambling pastime….trading. Betting exchanges have long since held a fascination for me and it was www.laytheodds.com that refuelled that desire last year. A great site for anyone wanting to learn and earn from betting exchanges. So I made a few quid this week during the afternoons, I like it better than limit hold’em even though they are both mechanical processes…or at least they are the way that I perform. I am also finding that my betting exchange turnover is steadily rising as well. I better be careful here or people will stop coming to me for poker advice. Hey….whoever said that you could not fight a war on two fronts…..happy hunting. see ya soon The Dean
Going By The Book
I have lost count of the number of people who have been asking me what poker books they should be reading and feel that this would make for an interesting blog today. Bad session in the 25-50 last night but I will leave that as I am still looking to ease the pain. I have some strong opinions on most poker books and I suppose that I had better be careful here what books I slander because I do not want to upset anyone or get into a war so I will choose my words very carefully. Books by sheer definition become less affective the more circulated they become and the strategies become too widely known. What you cannot do is assume that just because you have read a few poker books that this somehow entitles you to win at the tables. The greatest skill I feel to utilising the information that you derive from books is to identify where the information in them can be used, against who, when and for how long and how much money. That is an awful lot of “ifs” but the bottom line is that books are a constant in what is an ever changing poker world. The wording of a book cannot be changed once it is written and yet the environment that it describes is like a forever changing sand dune. This makes many of the older books much less effective in todays poker world. There is really no substitute for hard work unless you happen to know a decent coach. This is why I am not going to recommend any specific books even though I have read hundreds. I think that you need to read as much as what you can get your hands on because sometimes you need to unlearn before you can learn. To get a rounded poker education then books should only be one facet of your learning. Go on forums, read magazines, watch poker on TV, go on websites, get coaching etc etc. It is a long road but the journey is worth it. catch you later The Dean
When the lambs strike back
Well you can never take anything for granted can you in this game although I have played for long enough now to know that. But after my $17k win in the 25-50 the other night, I came back down to earth with a bump last night and again today. After getting ahead by a further $9k then I became complacent and paid for it. I got rammed up the rear in one humungous pot with one of the best players on the site. Nothing I could do because it was a cooler. The guy was a chronic floater and I flopped the nut flush and he went runner runner with a small pocket pair and goodnight lil’ol me. So the $9k went and another $10k (four on tilt) and suddenly my feet are back on the ground again. Still the game is fantastic and is the best game all year to my knowledge at the 25-50. But the bad players are calling too much. You just get yourself into too many sticky situations when you do that out of position. There has also been a definite tendency amongst certain players to get all in more often than your average high stakes NL game. Like I said the other day, I really hope that these guys stick around. Had a fancy to try my hand at HU again, I did a big chunk in the last time that I played it. Although at the back of my mind I feel that I have dicipline problems in this form of the game. But this has always been my way, I get something beat and then it starts to bore me so I take on soemthing else for another challenge. A new passion of mine is trading on the betting exchanges and I have been doing quite well but this is a poker site so I wont be going into that too much. Well I am going back on the 25-50 later to see if my “pals” have returned. Hope you all stay lucky The Dean
It’s still nice to win though
It’s all one big game….one big long never ending game. We all know this right….of course we do. Yet I have always argued that the maths guru’s miss some very important points when talking about standard deviation and variance in gambling. Many of them have not gambled or played poker in their lives and then preach to the likes of us telling us what to do. Well I was doing my nuts in last night in the 25-50 to the tune of around $9k or so and was ready for packing it in not because I was behind by 9k but because I dont play well when I am losing. Suddenly a player who should not be within three time zones of a 25-50 NL sits down. I have book on him and I decide to stick around for a while. He buys in for the maximum and within about 30 minutes to an hour, passes almost two entire buy ins across to one very grateful recipient…..me! Shortly after that the game broke up as there was no way I was playing HU against the deadliest HU NL player on the site. But dont anyone tell me that ending a session $800 ahead after being down nearly 10k is a great result not just for your roll but also for you mental well being. I am not the worlds most natural poker player, I am very good but only after having worked damn hard on my game for a very long time. There are many more very good players around now and you have to be careful who you sit down with and 25-50 NL is not my natural game. Limit hold’em has always been my bread and butter now for ages but those games really started to tighten up and I struggled for a while but have started doing very well again in 6 handed games after adjusting my game somewhat. But I am alot more selective these days but yet multi-tabling at 10-20 limit with rakeback still gives me a very good hourly rate. I used to hate multi-tabling a while back but lots of things have changed this year. I am playing more PLO than I used to and limit is so automatic that it lends itself to multi-tabling and is the game that I play whenever I am tired but dont want to lose any hours at the table. I just hope that I can catch these fish on the 25-50 before they do their roll in and vanish. You can easily get 50k up in an evening in these games and it often happens but not to me yet. By the way, my book Secrets of Professional Limit Hold’em is due out late this year, I know that it is massively delayed but it is on its way…honest. See you all soon and stay lucky The Dean
The $10,000 Challenge
I have been thinking very hard over the past few weeks of taking on a challenge that I have been tempted to do for quite some time. This is turning nothing into $10,000 and seeing how long it would actually take me. An online pro friend of mine has challenged me to a £1000 bet, he thinks that I cannot do it and to be honest he may be right. The way to go is to start off with the freeroll tournaments and then slowly work your way up. There is a time limit of 1 year which seems like an awful long time but I dont really know if I have the discipline at the micro limits. I have always fancied having a crack at turning thin air into $10,000 but when you think about it then that $10,000 turns out to be poor value because of the sheer length of time that it would take to achieve…..if I ever could at all. This may just be one of those things that sounds great in theory but is better left that way….at least for the time being that is. At this moment in time when I have been out of action for so long then grinding it out in freerolls and micro limits is not what I really want to be doing in the immediate future. I think that you really need differing personality traits to succeed at various levels. This of course ridicules the suggestion that higher limit players could beat levels below what they are currently playing at. The patient low limit grinders will turn into sharks and the sharks will become fish food…..dont like the thought of that. Oh, nearly forgot, great session in the 25-50 and in fact best session for 6 months……$17k in around 4 hours or so before the game broke. I really hope that some of these guys stick around. Hope that you do too The Dean
My Kingdom for a Blackjack
Anyone who has been following or reading my website features will be only too aware that I was a full time blackjack player before I turned my attention to online poker. In fact “Princes of Darkness” tells the story of what happened between 1998-2002. But people still come to me even now for training and information on how to beat shuffling machines. In fact I had a quite nasty e-mail from someone in Austria (my e-mail address is common knowledge) trying to tell me that it could not be done all because you could not get count information from a shuffling machine. Jesus!!!!!…..some people dont half lack imagination. What he failed to take on board was that electronic shufflers are still operated by human dealers and this is their weakness. So after educating him at my own time (and expense), he ended the conversation a wiser man but not all that much wiser as there was no way that I was providing him with sensitive information for nothing. I was nearly ten years in the gaming industry so for someone to try and tell me my job was rather funny. But then again I suppose that when you stick your neck out then you can expect to get shot at. But the gaming industry would certainly like to know this stuff because they are vulnerable as hell and they know it as well. So what has happened on the poker front since Saturday….nothing because I have not played. Combination of writing work and just not being in the mood. But I am playing tonight in a 25-50 NL which I have not played in for awhile but there are a few players who I fancy taking a crack at who have been playing recently so I will let you know what happens. You may notice that the content and frequency of these blogs has changed but I was getting e-mails from people wanting more so I have pushed the boat out a bit and found some more time….thanks for visiting Pokersharkpool guys. See you all soon The Dean
