I have to say sorry for keep promising to make this a daily blog and then I keep dropping days. I just seem to have too much work and not enough time to do it in. But you wanted to know about The Jackal right

Well at the end of week 1 we are ahead by $314 after exactly 22 hours of play so $14.27/hour so far. However this isn’t what we need to be looking at and this is the bb/100. By the way, do not confuse this earn rate with ptbb/100 which isn’t the same thing. These are merely bb/100 so in $0.25-$0.50 this means $0.50/100 hands.

We have played near as damn it 5k hands so the rate is 12.56bb/100. This is even bigger than the last check and according to Richard, he hasn’t got exceptionally lucky. Although luck can be measured in different ways and you don’t always see your good look. For instance, you raise with K-K and get called by 10-9s and the flop comes 10-6-2 rainbow and they pay you off all the way to the river……this is good luck and it isn’t always having your aces against kings or flopping a king when its the other way around.

I am convinced that this is still too high. I think it would take a million hands for the earn rate to smooth out but 100k will do. By the way, we are not counting rakeback either in with these earn rates. So the bottom line is that I am very pleased after week 1.

I played some $2-$4 and $3-$6 six max limit hold’em over the weekend and won just over $100. If you think that I have taken leave of my senses then fear not. This was the maiden session of my even later system The Fox which is my low-stakes six max limit system that I have been working on. If I can get someone to road test this then I may get all three running side by side, now wouldn’t that be something

see you soon

Carl

I have some upto date figures after five days of The Jackal and we are ahead by $211 after 15 hours of play and 3749 hands. So it is $5.62/100 hands at the moment but that is four tabling. So we are at 11.24bb/100 which just HAS to be too high due to the small sample size.

Richard wasn’t always four tabling because because he was playing at relatively quiet times of the day. My sources tell me that 1-4bb/100 is solid and 5-9 is very impressive. I asked about 10bb+ and have been told that it is very rare and indicative of small sample sizes so we have been fortunate so far but I will settle for 4bb/100 at this stage.

So even though we have dropped around $50 since the last post, we are doing very well and I am pleased. Shame that I cannot say the same for my own poker play, I dropped 50 big bets at 10-20 limit the other days after swearing to myself that I wouldn’t play the game.

Actually though I was dumped on and lost two huge 20+ big bet pots when my K-K was rivered by a Q-Q hitting a set in a huge multi-way pot. This just shows that my boredom levels are rising. Still though I have to say that I played well and single tabled and I really zoned in but the muppets got away

See you soon

Carl

We are into day 4 of the Jackal trial and I am pleased to report initial success. We are already five full buy-ins ahead at +$256. This seems too good to be true and seems way ahead of what our Sklansky Dollars should be although I haven’t seen any data yet so you are as much in the dark as me.

I have seen 10ptbb/100 in six max so its possible I suppose but early days yet…..very early days. Apparently though it has been swingy so far and we were ahead by over $300 at one stage and down to $100. Or maybe its me, maybe the swings in six max really are that normal. I have only ever played NL50 full ring and so has he.

I think that it is in safe hands though and is why I gave him the job. Been no poker for me as I was busy on the exchanges yesterday and then watched the Leeds vs Tottenham match. Will struggle to get any work done next weekend with loads of live cup football and me taking the missus away for Valentines, lord knows what I am going to do during the World Cup

See you soon

Carl

I did say that I would give daily reports on the progress of The Jackal but unfortunately that means often having nothing to report. I didn’t get an update last night so the Jackal is as it was yesterday and is ahead by $144.

However I will be talking about my own poker play today and I want to have another modern sample size with The Vulture. I fully intend to do what I should have done last summer and that was to get The Vulture down into print. I want to see if I can still maintain the earn rate that I made in 2008-2009 when I was on Cake Poker.

I don’t see why not but sources have told me that the NL50’s have tightened up so I may have to adjust. What I don’t want to do is end up writing stuff that is out of date so hence the trials. I am trying to get Richard to agree to doing both although that would mean him playing full-time. The problem is with the Vulture is that I need to be there in person actually doing it.

I am once again going to pick the softest site that I can find that has decent enough action on NL50 and see how it goes. My scheduled start date is 1st Mar which is a full month after the Jackal but I intend to get them both running side by side in about four weeks time.

So look out for that, ideally I would like to expand these systems to mass table them. With the right rakeback scheme in place, the right discipline and if you can find enough tables even if that means playing several different sites at once then I think that $100/hour is possible. But anyway, that’s all pie in the sky as it stands so will just have to see over the coming weeks.

see you soon

Carl

Everything seemed to go my way yesterday, I had someone contact me from ages ago with some money that they owed me that I had actually written off so that was nice. Then the job that needed doing on my car ended up being nothing to worry about.

Then I get news that The Jackal won $144 on the first day after only two hours of play….what a start

Then it gets better, I sit down in a $400 PLO six max game and within a couple of minutes I can see that these players are very aggressive. One player has around $1500 and another has $3300 and they really look like they know what time of day it is.

I play really tight (had no choice given the hands and the action) but then I get aces with a king and one of the aces is suited. I am in the big blind and it gets raised to $14 and then there is another pot raise after a caller. It gets to me and I now lower the boom and pot it again. I am happy to only see one caller and I am first to speak and ship the rest in on the flop.

The flop is K-X-X with few draws and they call. Turn card is an ace and I think that they were drawing dead as I recall. Anyway I win a near $1k pot and leave with their money

I wasn’t wimping out, these guys looked very good which begs the question that I shouldn’t have been in the game in the first place but you know me

But the Jackal’s good start pleased me the most and before I leave, I also had £100 on Sunderland vs Stoke to end in a draw…….good times.

JACKAL RUNNING TOTAL……… + $144

See you soon

PS (someone asked me yesterday why I am not playing the Jackal myself…..answer is simple…TIME)

Carl

Here we go then on my biggest adventure of the year and I am not even playing……how about that. The Jackal road test starts today and I haven’t been in touch with my guinea pig yet so I don’t know if he has started or not. The test involves four tabling NL50 six max and we are trying to get to 100k hands.

I have provided Richard with a $1000 bankroll as its only fair that if the system goes pear shaped that it isn’t his money that goes west. The problem is that he is a winning player as well so if the system fails to work then it is going to cost him money as well as this means that he cannot play his usual SNG’s and NLHE full-ring.

So the plan is for him to play around 20 hours a week which should get us around 300 hands an hour. We are hoping to get the 100k sample in 4 months at the outside. If the Jackal starts being successful then we will look at possibly playing more hours so the 100k sample could be reached sooner than that.

I also need to point out that I am not divulging the site where he is playing. The reason I am doing this is for several reasons. Firstly we have carefully selected this site because I have it on good authority that the games are softer than usual. But if that proves not to be the case then we will change sites in mid-stream if need be. Also, if all goes well then I don’t want players coming in on our project and tightening the games up.

So you are all on a strictly need to know basis and you don’t need to know……yet

Don’t worry though because when the time comes, all will be revealed. Also remember that this is now a DAILY BLOG with daily updates of The Jackal and if and when the road test is successful then both The Jackal and The Vulture will be available through Pokersharkpool.

I will also be restarting my video blog as well which I haven’t done for ages so look out for some interesting videos once again. Had a good session last night at $200 PLO and won just over $500. It’s funny but everytime I win then I feel that I have an angle on this game and when I lose then I don’t…….

Problem is that I haven’t had a big enough sample size at PLO to form a concrete conclusion but I am really starting to prefer this game over hold’em.

Anyway see you tomorrow.

Carl

I have to apologise for not posting lately as often as what I have promised. But the good news……starting 1st Feb is that this will be a daily blog except for the 14th Feb when I am taking the missus somewhere special for Valentines Day.

Things have been really hectic lately and I have finally got someone lined up to play The Jackal properly from next month. We have agreed that he keeps all winnings and rakeback and simply pays me a kick back if and when he reaches $5k.

I am struggling to find the time but I do know that Richard is a winning reg at NL50 full-ring. Here though he will be playing six max for the first time. To say that I am nervous is an understatement as I will be reporting the results on here and they will be totally out of my control.

Although in the light of my horrible spewy sessions with The Vulture in 2008-2009 then that can hardly be a bad thing. At least with him then I have someone who will be professional all the time and who will respect the money. So it all starts proper on Monday of next week so keep a look out for that and the daily reports.

Speaking of reports, I managed to play a few sessions of $200 PLO since last post with mixed results. Managed to get around $1000 up for last week and was feeling good until I lost nearly five buy-ins in a single day. I guess that the increased variance in PLO is new to me so I am having to get used to it.

January has been mediocre on the poker front after starting out really well although winnings are winnings I suppose but the effort didn’t seem worth it. I may stick to heads up play next month and see how that goes. The PLO has definitely dragged my hourly rate down for January and it would have been a good month had it not been for the PLO.

I am fixated with trying to improve at this game. At heads up I think it is important that you hide your ID because it is all so easy these days for people to datamine and even buy ready made databases. You cannot afford for players to know your game before the get go. Although in heads up play against good players (which they tend to be at $200) then feeling them out and metagame factors are key.

What else is new, well in December I managed to avail myself of a copy of “Let there be Range” which is the e-book that I mentioned some weeks ago that cost $1800. It took me a while to get around to reading it what with Christmas and other things getting in the way. It is written by Cole South and Tri Nguyen. I think the book is excellent although probably too technical for many players.

I definitely improved my game as a result of reading it……in fact scrap that…..I improved it tremendously. Just shows you that in the modern online poker world…….young is best

See you soon

Carl

I am $414 ahead so far with the Jackal but I am running into difficulties in playing enough hours and this may be even more of a problem next month. I have managed to play around 2.5k hands so the earn rate so far is $16.56/100 hands. This equates to $4.13/100 per table or just over 8bb.

Still early days of course but I am going to try to get someone to play The Jackal for me as a test starting next month. I have also been playing some heads up again but things haven’t gone too well and I am experiencing what i think is a correction.

Still been a good solid start to the year though but the Jackal is currently running at $59/hour in total……but early days like I said. I am going to have a few other areas next month that are going to be taking up huge chunks of my time so posts may be less but hopefully somebody with a temperament far better than mine will report some better results than what I could have achieved with The Jackal.

What I should have done was give the Vulture to this guy and let him use that, I would have bet my bottom teeth that he would have earned more. Still…..all water under the bridge. So starting the 1st Feb I am going to be concentrating on HUNLHE and will be leaving the Jackal to someone else.

The results will still get reported obviously so do keep a look out for that,

see you soon

Carl

I was playing a NL400 heads up last night when the following hand came up. I was in the big blind with 10s-6s. I had bought in for $400 and had watched a certain player for a while. They had run well and had amassed around $1000. I was a little up on them so effective stacks were around $420.

They were very LAG even for a heads up and we were only about ten hands into the contest. They raise to $12 and I think that all three plays have merit at this stage but I decide to call for balance. The pot is $24 and the flop comes 4s-3c-2s giving me the flush draw, gutshot straight draw and two overcards.

Leading out with a draw of that size is a solid line and probably better than check-raising which is the line I chose. So I checked knowing that they would c-bet although I think that leading out is the better line. Anyway I check and they bet $16 and I check-raise to $72. They insta all-in shove for their entire stack! The effective all-in is for $336 as this is all that I have left.

The pot is $504 and it costs me $336 so the pot odds are 1.5/1. I could have as many as 18 outs here but the likelihood is that I may need to make the flush or the straight as the six may not be enough although the ten might be if they are shoving a medium pocket pair. Even discounting my outs for non nut hands, tied hands and possibly hitting second best hands then I cannot be much worse than even money here so I called.

Anyway he shows 4d-3d for top two pair and the turn card is the Kc and river card is the As giving me a flush on the river. Then it all kicked off……I have been called some things in my time but this was something else. I almost reported the guy to be honest but then I just sat back and laughed because some of the things were so funny. Although later on I suspected that he could have been trying to make me think that he was tilting when he wasn’t!

I listened for a while but then left the game as I had other things to do like watch the football and you don’t often see ten goals in a game of football do you. The jackal has had two more sessions since we last spoke and I have won a further $211 so a decent start on the whole.

See you soon

Carl

I had an e-mail yesterday from what seemed a charming lady asking me for the details of Paul McKenna’s weight loss book and program 

Please ladies and gents, I am not a health and diet advisor so no more e-mails on how to lose weight as I can’t even be certain that my weight is off for good yet

Anyway back to the poker and I actually played the first session proper with The Jackal yesterday and lost

Actually I was unlucky so no sweat and the loss was only $34 but I will be keeping a running total on the blog. I am four tabling NL50 six max and the amounts will NOT include rakeback like last time with The Vulture.

It seemed a bit weird playing six max at such a low level but I am sure that I will get used to it. Something else that I struggled with was the speed at which the hands come around. I have seen videos with players 24-tabling six max games and I simply don’t know how they do it.

It seemed like my audio prompt was bleeping constantly playing only four bloody tables let alone twenty four. I made a couple of bad decisions and in fact the session was far more erratic than I was used to with The Vulture.

I was $100 up at one stage and $150 down which is something that never happened with The Vulture. Actually a horrible thought came to me yesterday and that is if I cannot make this pay now that I am talking about it on my blog…….on a scale of one to ten….HOW BAD would that be

I will have to think of some excuses and get them ready over the next week or so. Seriously though, the only problem should be my own indiscipline as it was with the Vulture but even that didn’t stop me make $25/hour.

Should be an interesting few weeks but I will struggle to play this and play PLO and HUNL as I only have so much time although I did play 2 hours at $200 PLO last night and just about broke even which was brilliant because I was down about $500 at one stage.

see you soon

Carl