Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Swimming Upstream

An update at last! It's been a long time since I've updated this blog so i guess I better give an update from my bizarre world. Well as you might have guessed it ain't been going too well. I may be suffering from a case of what Gordon calls "only blogging when you are winning" syndrome. There's no doubt its much easier to blog when you are feeling triumphant, an emotion I am not familiar with en ce moment.

I made an error in my latest Poker Ireland piece. I let my emotions take over the theme of my article and that's quite a bad characteristic for a writer. I should be able to write unbiased and not let my emotions at the time affect the tone of the piece. Another area I am learning in I guess.

I've been playing a lot of live cash in the past few weeks and the results have been poor. I've lost 8 out of my last 10 sessions and 7 from my last 7. I have no idea what has gone wrong which is even more worrying. I have been running bad obviously but I played some hands quite sloppy too which is disappointing. Also thinking back over the hands I seemed to get in a lot of huge pots with OESF draws and the like. Essentially racing in circa €1500 pots. Of the four that I can remember off hand, I lost every one. For a live cash player in Dublin, you need to win these pots. Otherwise you will be having losing months like me.

In one of the aforementioned pots I got it all in with the nut flush draw and two over-cards against Troy's bottom pair and non-nut flush draw. We were racing for the pot basically. Flip a coin. He offered to take money out of the pot and I refused quite quickly. I then lost the pot. In hindsight I guess I should have taken money back but I can't predict the future (just ask Byron or Emmett Hegarty down the dogs). You have to let poker balance itself out I believe and if you start taking money out of some pots and not others you are interrupting the natural course of poker. Taking money back from pots is just not the way I operate but it was an interesting proposal none the less.

Speaking of interesting proposals, some of the regular lads (namely Seamus, Dermot and Marc) were in the jackpot last week and put forward the idea of playing dealers choice. I'm rubbish at every game (okay moderate at hold'em) so naturally I agreed. Blind man's bluff, 5 card Omaha, double-flop hold'em, double-flop Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, Blind Omaha, Hold'em deuces wild, Crazy Pineapple, you name it. It's rather uncomfortable to note that this was one of my winning sessions from the last 2 weeks. Lets hope they get it going more regularly in the Jackpot over the coming weeks.

Poker loves rewarding the undeserving of late it seems. Take Tues ROE tourney in the jackpot for example. I had 6000 at the break (25% of the average stack) and ended up being heads-up with the chip lead a few hours later. Thanks to my sterling efforts in the Omaha no doubt. Fish are certainly swimming strong at the moment.

Another fish swimming strong at present is Micheal Phelps. The man was "born to swim" they say and he has been doing plenty of that in Beijing. Gordon, (who is playing pro Olympics tipster during the games) doesn't seem to rate him as not once has he tipped him so far. Fwiw he reckons Pieter Van Den Hoogenbend is going to be thereortherabouts in the 100 metres freestyle tonight and is a stonking each way bet at 16/1 with laddies. God loves a trier but I think the only thing Gordon is trying to do is take the weight out of our wallets with this one.

Not much else to report unless you want me to divulge each and every cent I've lost over the past few weeks. I'd rather look forward to be honest. I don't need to look too far forward either it seems with the Macau Festival on this weekend. I'm heading down tomorrow on the train with Dermot so I can be there in plenty of time before the ME starts at 7pm on Fri. I picked up a slightly-cheaper-than-the-normal-entry-price-ticket so no doubt Ken won't let me in. A big result would be welcome so one time plz dealer and all that nonsense. Or I could just shout at myself instead of the dealer. Wouldn't that be unique?

BRING IT HOME!

There we go.

6 comments:

Gordon said...

sick! now the pressure is on with Hoogenbend,no doubt he'll choke but like a true gambler there's always tomorrow

Collie said...

Thanks for updating. Thought you were going to join El Stuntman and Smurph, and refuse to report.
Hope I'm stating the obvious-Crazy Pineapple is not the way to go.

Mellor said...

Hoogenbend was never going to be up there, Lazek for a medal,
he swam under the new world record (semis) by over a second in the relay.
Have a few irish medal tips on the blog, so far going strong

good luck at the weekend

Bobby Kenny said...

tbh, I think you were mad not to take back the money in that hand.

Reducing one's variance in the game is of major importance and I suspect isn't fully understood by most players. I don't know what the exact equity was in the hand you played but even if I were a 51% favourite, I would prefer to reduce my variance than take my 1% edge for 300+ BBs. The reason is simple, eventhough it is +EV to take the tiny edge, I know that should I lose the hand, I will likely lose a lot more through tilt. Call it implied negative expectaion if you will.

So effectively, you're putting yourself in a situation where if you win the flip, you win the pot and continue to play your normal game. Whereas if you lose the flip, (assuming you are not a complete robot) the tilt monster will come out to play which is surely massively -EV.

And I don't buy this nonsense of it going against the natural course of the game. I hear the same rubbish being touted by people commenting on High Stakes Poker who feel agrieved not to see blood when the players agree to run it twice. Variance reduction shouldn't be frowned upon, if you want to stick large sum on coinflips, just play roulette.

dokearney said...

FWIW, I enjoyed the Poker Ireland piece. Opinion pieces should be influenced by the current mood of the writer: it gives them colour.

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