Reg's Ramblings

Ok, so its been a while since my last update, no reason for that, other than nothing much has been happening that was noteworthy.

We got our pay deal settled at work. We eventually settled on a pretty disappointing 2.5%, with a guarantee of an inflation matching payrise in Jan 11. Its not great but given that some people are having to deal with pay freezes and/or job losses, I suppose we should be at least grateful for small mercies. At least this deal spares me the ordeal of having to negotiate again next year, whilst we're still likely to be in a recession. The key part of the deal for me, was the guarantee of matching the RPI next year. The company is obviously gambling on the RPI dropping significantly but I suspect it might stay quite high, at around at least 4.5% and I wouldn't have wanted to bet on us receiving that amount had we started negotiating afresh in November.

Things have been going well on the poker front. I'm having my best ever cash month, having cleared $2k for the month. I started the month on Betfair and I went on a ludicrous heater. The wheels started to come off last weekend and I never really recovered, so I made a decision to move my new improved roll over the Betfred on the ipoker network, where for the first time, I'm comfortably rolled to launch a serious assault on their $50nl FR games.

The title of this blog refers to my medium term ambition for the rest of the year. I have set myself a mini goal of achieving an hourly rate of $25 between now and Xmas. Its an ambition of mine to eventually earn more from poker than I do in my day job, so I then don't live my life in fear of redundancy, like the rest of my colleagues do. Having a very real immediate fallback position of being able to support myself and my family from poker earnings would really ease the pressure should I lose my job during this difficult time for British industry.

My plan is to stay at $50nl, saving almost all of my earnings(allowing for the odd luxury as a reward)So, should I be unfortunate enough to lose my job, I can have enough savings to allow myself a shot at supporting myself full time should the need ever arise.

Its a big step for me to to go public with this ambition, as I've pretty much kept it to myself until now. I know that to some people, my ambition will seem somewhere between unrealistic and utterly ludicrous but its a logical next step to me and I know if I work hard at learning to be more consistent and unaffected by swings, either positive, or negative, I know I stand a decent chance. This is important to me, so I'll sure as hell be giving it my best shot.

Thats all for now. Until next time, stay well and be lucky.

So, I went down to Wembley yesterday to watch my team, Barrow AFC play in the FA Trophy final against Stevenage Borough. Stevenage won the Blue Square Premier this year and are easily the best team in the league, so I wasn’t too hopeful of us winning.

After a nice three hours in the pub, we made our way to the stadium. It was my first visit to the new Wembley and I was very impressed. To watch my relatively small club play there for a second time was absolutely fantastic.

Before the first game in the competition, I had a bet on Barrow to win at odds of 66/1 and stood to win £1.2k if we could win the game but in all honestly, I hardly even thought about it during the game and was just desperate for us to win.

Stevenage scored the first goal and it wasn’t looking good for us. Then, a Stevenage player got himself sent off and it levelled the game up from a Barrow perspective. We scored an equaliser in the 80th minute.

Then, a Barrow player got himself sent off after a nasty collision with a Stevenage player. Fortunately for Barrow, Stevenage had already used up their three allocated substitutions, so were unable to replace their injured player and had to play extra time with 9 players against Barrow’s 10.

The only local lad in the Barrow team scored a fantastic winning goal at the start of the second half of extra time and we held on to win the cup. It was an amazing game that will live with me forever.

Because of our recent house move and trip to Wembley, my poker bankroll had taken a battering. I’m going to use some of my £1.2k winnings to rebuil the roll. I haven’t played much poker for a week or so now, as I’d been having trouble focusing with so much else going on in my life.

I have no solid plans for how I’m going to use my new improved roll. I’ve had a bit of time to think lately with not having the desire to play much and I’ve definitely been guilty of heaping too much expectation on myself and then getting fed up when I fail to meet my expectations, so I’m just going to fiddle around playing whatever suits my mood and try to be a lot more relaxed about poker in general.

Hopefully a more relaxed attitude will stop me getting obsessed with volume/winrates/hourly rates etc.. and I can just begin to enjoy it again, like I used to before I thought I was good lol

Until next time, take care and good luck.

So, after weeks of stress and messing around, I finally moved house on Friday. It was hard work but worth it. The new house is a significant improvement on my old place, it catches much more daylight, is in a slightly quieter area of the town and there is an area outside for the kids to play in when they stay. We’re closer to the playing fields too. The negatives are that we’re 100 metres further away from the off license, 120 metres further away from the kebab shop and I think the council tax bill will go up(thats Dawns dept, so I’m not certain of that).

My friend, Adam, came up to visit us last night. He wanted to go to the casino before he gets posted overseas with the army but the expense of moving house and a trip to Wembley had placed a little pressure on my disposable income, so we settled for a night in playing online instead. We played some mixed games and some PLO. We were lucky enough to bink a win for a PLO tournament for $1k and it was a nice way to round off Adam’s brief visit back home.

I’ve thought for a little while now that PLO was my best game. Not because I’m neccesarily more skilled in PLO than NL but more because the games play much softer at this moment in time. My year so far has been pretty much a non event. I’ve scratched around, making a little bit but not progressing at all. I’m pretty well known for being the sort of bloke who can’t settle on anything for long.

All I do know is that I really don’t enjoy playing NL anymore. In my opinion, even at $20nl/$25nl, the games are pretty bad compared to a couple of years ago. There was an article in the PTR newsletter last week, suggesting that 6max NL might be the toughest games right now and I’m very much inclined to agree with that.

I’m primarily a recreational player that is good enough to grind out a profit but if I’m not enjoying it, my profitability suffers and as they’re my two main reasons for playing, if I’m neither making a profit, or having fun, its a pretty pointless endeavour.

With that in mind, I’m going to set about making PLO my new main game and start to learn to play stud games too. I still love poker and would really like to improve my game in all disciplines. I think there is still a lot of dead money in non hold em games online. I intend to play PLO ring games as my main game with PLO tournaments and mixed game mtt’s as the second string to my bow. I really enjoyed the change with Adam last night and I’m hopefuly that the change will invigorate me.

I want to end this latest edition by wishing Adam the very best of luck in the next stage of his training. I think you already know it but you have my full respect for your choice of career mate. You’re far braver than me. You and your colleagues do a marvellous job for which I’m eternally grateful. Take care and come back safe.

For the rest of you, until next time, take care and good luck.

So, I played 10k hands of a mix of $10nl, £10nl and €10nl over the weekend without a HUD. I profited $36, so all wasn’t lost but I was definitely left guessing more often than not. Volume wise, I’m really pleased though, getting 10k hands in over 11 hours play was pleasing, even if the results were very moderate.

My only focus this week is the rake race. I move house on Friday, so I’ll lose a day there and I’ll be spending time with my kids on Saturday, so I’ll lose another half day there which means I’m going to have to cram tonnes of hands in Mon-Thurs before launching a final assault on Sunday when its double points day.

At the end of the race, I’ll be off back to Betfair because ipoker has very little to offer when its not rewarding volume. If I win the race, I’ll make $300 for playing ~30-40k hands, the $300 represents 66% rakeback, so its worth going for but the games on ipoker are pretty much dead, even as low as $20nl because at any point in time, one skin or another is running a rake race meaning the site is full of solid TAG’s beating the game for probably 2bb/100.

I’ve been playing pretty badly lately, levelling myself all the time by relying too heavily on HUD stats that probably don’t mean much over the sample sizes that I have, when, essentially, all you need to do at micro’s is play solid, ABC poker.

So, for my next few sessions, I’m going to experiment playing without my HEM running, this will stop me checking how I’m doing every 5 mins as well, which can affect my play and session length.

In case it goes badly, I’m going to conduct this experiment on Betfred Poker, which is on the ipoker network. The reason for doing this is because they’re currently running a rake race, which I think I have an excellent chance of winning in the micro category. I played a couple of days on there last week and still managed to finish in the top 20. The winner played 8k raked hands, I feel I can easily surpass that with the volume I’m capable of putting in.

In other news, we move house at the end of the week. I’m not looking forward to it. I’m a notoriously lazy article and I also don’t fare too well in chaotic situations, so as you can imagine, I’m pretty much dreading the big day.

Finally, I’ve been enjoying watching the World Snooker Championships on television and was made up to see 80’s legend, Steve Davis roll back the years to eliminate current World Champion, John Higgins 13-11 this morning. Fingers crossed he can win his quarter final and have one final swansong playing to the full Crucible Theatre late next week.

Go Steve.

Until next time, take care and be lucky.

Hi, this is my first ever blog, so I’m just going to do some basic introductions.

I’m a 36yr old micro stakes nit from a place called Dalton in Furness in the UK. Dalton is in the North West of England, situated around 30 miles South of the beautiful Lake District. Its a small town and there isn’t much of a local poker scene, so I’m mostly an online player apart from the occasional trip to Blackpool Casino and our weekly home game.

I have three fantastic children from a previous relationship and I am currently in a long term relationship with a wonderful lady.

I work as in a local detergent factory. I’m the Trade Union leader on site but when I’m not doing union work, my day job is as a lab technician. Its pretty damn boring but it pays more than most jobs in my area and it couldn’t ever be described as hard work.

My poker addiction started around 7 years ago. I was introduced to the game by a friend, who wanted to pick up the $50 from 888.com for referring me. I got a free $25 too and soon blew it away in $2 stt’s.

I was a losing player for a long time, definitely the first 3 to 4 years. I had no direction and generally just played whatever took my fancy with little to no regard for bankroll management or game selection. I was going through around $400 per month on average but it was my hobby and I was only spending money I could afford to lose.

Eventually, I got tired of losing and decided to make a concerted effort to improve my game. I joined the uk poker forum ‘eatmystack’ and from there, my game began to improve really quickly to the point where I soon became a relatively decent tournament player.

It was around 18 months ago that I decided to learn to play ring games. I subscribed to DC, bought HEM and started to have regular winning months. Since then though, I appear to have hit a brick wall. I’m pretty much stuck between crushing $20nl on the UK site Betfair and losing at $50nl and I’m currently in a cycle of building up my roll, taking a shot, losing and having to drop back down again.

So, that has brought you pretty much up to date with my poker story. I hope to update the blog regularly, not just with poker stuff but also with other random stuff that is going on in my life.

Thanks for reading

Take care and good luck

Reg