There’s a reason I haven’t rushed to report on this week’s Poker night (it was Wednesday). I didn’t win!

I ended up down (only a couple of quid), James doubled up and Sam finished up too. Rosie blew her stack completely :) It was a good game though, they get better every week as people get the feel for the game and the skill level is increasing rapidly. Sam in particular bluffed me out of a huge pot and I’m not going to let that go for quite some time :)

Another poker night! Jeeze am I updating that infrequently? Yeesh, I’m so busy lately :/

Anyway another poker night, another victory :) We switched from tournament style to a cash game tonight, which fits in better with us having a time limit (homes to go to, etc), and also meant noone finished early. Still playing it safe with a £5 buyin, and I came away with a ~£6 profit so am happy :)

Will do a catch-up post tomorrow - promise!

Last night was poker night again. It was a lot of fun, which is to say that I won again :D Ok so it was largely via luck this time, having started with a run of pretty terrible cards, things really shaped up towards the end and fortunes changed rapidly.

We were up to 5 players this week - more is good though - hopefully it’ll be 6 or 7 next week?

I still can’t get over how cheap hard drives are getting - I think I’m gonna stop burning data to DVDRs and just keep buying drives! ;)

So I’m reading another poker book - this time: Small Stakes Hold ‘em: Winning Big with Expert Play - it’s pretty much the definitive book for learning to play low limits. It’s not a beginner book however, so it dives right in at a fairly high level.. I’m about halfway through the book and it’s changing the way I’m thinking about the game - I’m picking up lots of new tactics. Right now I can fairly reliably make money playing $0.5/$1 limit hold’em online, but slowly… This book should help me up my win rate - it’s nice to have a hobby that makes a little money :)

Oh and it’s gotten far too cold and wet and gross outside to even think about jogging, lately. I’m in half a mind to buy an exercise bike and be done with it ;)

One more thing: GTA San Andreas is an awesome, awesome game :D

Clearly this is turning into a theme, but I turned $25 in to $75 tonight so I’m still on a poker mini-high. I’m concentrating on playing 10 player low limit hold’em at the moment, because although tournaments are more fun, the ring games can be pretty lucrative if you play them right..

The difficultly is the discipline. With 10 players at low limits you can’t play many hands, and you often only want to push if you have the absolute nuts.. There are a lot of players drawing on big hands and they often make them.

So basically I’m practising being patient, playing big starting hands only, and often folding them on the flop if they don’t look pretty great. It’s been hit and miss but tonight it went pretty well. Limit feels a lot more like grinding than no limit though, it’s certainly less fun!

Oh one thing about low limit - bad players. Playing against bad players isn’t as great as it sounds! Sure they make a lot of mistakes that can pay you, but man, they can very often play a bad hand badly, then suck out (make an unlikely draw) on the river and beat you against the odds! That really hurts, I can tell you…

Tonight I won two tournaments in a row, picking up $25 each time. I think I played some of my best poker to date, although I also ran into some luck. Check out the hand below, late in the second tournament (3 from 10 left, in this round I knocked out the 3rd place finisher). I was favourite with my higher pair but look how the flop seals the deal :D

Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is $300 (3 handed)

gilbrit ($2925)
BB ($3100)
Button ($1975)

Preflop: gilbrit is SB with 7♠7♥.
Button raises to $600, gilbrit raises to $900, BB folds, Button raises to $1975 (All-In), gilbrit calls $1075.

Flop: ($4250) 2♦7♦7♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Turn: ($4250) A♦ (2 players, 1 all-in)

River: ($4250) 8♣ (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: $4250

Results below:
gilbrit has A♦7♠7♥7♦7♣ (four of a kind, sevens).
Button has A♦7♦7♣6♥6♦ (two pair, sevens and sixes).
Outcome: gilbrit wins $4250.

This was the second hand of the $5 tournament I played last night, isn’t it nice to hit the nuts on the flop? Especially when you can convince someone to commit all their chips to the pot. I’m pretty sure (but will never know) that the BB made a low straight here, probably on the river. I went on to place 2nd of 10, winning $15. (These are just tournament chips below, the $5 buy-in gets you $800 in chips).

Party Poker No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is $15 (10 handed)

Preflop: gilbrit is CO with K♠T♥.
UTG calls $15, UTG+1 folds, UTG+2 folds, MP1 folds, MP2 folds, MP3 calls $15, gilbrit calls $15, Button folds, SB completes, BB checks.

Flop: ($75) 9♠J♣Q♥ (5 players)
SB checks, BB bets $15, UTG raises to $30, MP3 folds, gilbrit raises to $45, SB calls $45, BB raises to $60, UTG calls $30, gilbrit calls $15, SB calls $15.

Turn: ($315) 7♦ (4 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, gilbrit bets $150, SB folds, BB calls $150, UTG calls $150.

River: ($765) 6♥ (3 players)
BB bets $575 (All-In), UTG folds, gilbrit calls $545 (All-In).

Final Pot: $1885

Results below:
BB doesn’t show.
gilbrit has K♠Q♥J♣T♥9♠ (straight, king high).
Outcome: gilbrit wins $1855. BB wins $30.

So for the past few months there’s been quite a lot of poker on TV, specifically Texas Holdem’, which has been gaining popularilty significantly of late. The main reason for this is the televising of the World Series of Poker which is very entertaining to watch, and (in the UK), Late Night Poker has been running for some time now on Challenge.

Having been an interested spectator for some time, and following Paul’s example, I decided last weekend to start playing. I hopped on to Pacific Poker and played some “fake money” games.

However I found the fake money tables frustrating after a while. Even playing No Limit it was simply impossible to bluff anyone - a big part of the NL game. With fake money, people call you just to “see what you have” because there’s nothing really to lose. Bah :/

Paul suggested playing the cheap real money tables to get around this, so I did. I played some ring games there, they were fun, then I hopped on to a cheap tournament ($2.50 entry fee, 10 players, no limit) and rather unexpectedly won! That was great :)

Later on I came 2nd in a $10 tournament ($50 1st prize, I got $30 for coming 2nd), which was cool - but showed I have a lot to learn about heads up. When we got down to the last two I was chip leader, 6k chips to 2k and the guy schooled me :)

Tonight I switched over to Party Poker (just to check out the alternatives) and I’ve spent all night playing a ring game (limit holdem, 50c/$1 bets). I started the evening by depositing $25, and have been sat at one table for 3 hours. I’m currently at $82.75 and about to call it a night :)

It’s nice when you can have fun and make a bit of money too :) Don’t worry - I have no plans to risk the higher stake games - that way lie sharks!