Head back above water

The recovery is complete, with another very nice session on RedStar last night: +60BB or so.

At this point, I thought I would reflect on my graph (total profit), going back to about the beginning of the year:

As you can see, I am a very swingy player. The two red lines show some nice upward trends (well the first was really a two month heater), but there are also some very long flat spots. I wonder how other players seem to manage a much more consistent and less volatile trend (yes, I'm looking at you Bonus Chasing Grinder)? I think I am probably now playing slightly higher stakes on average, but I also suspect that I am a much LAGgier player and am undecided as to whether that's a good thing or not. It certainly makes for some excitement!

And to finish up, here is the funniest hand I have played in a long time (on the crazienst table I have played in a long time). TT is not a hand I expect to hold up in a six way capped pot preflop. Even less so when a king and queen appear on the board.

Apologies for the crappy formatting - anyone know of a hand converter which works for Cake histories?

Hand#2059012067000707 - Lillehammer (Turbo, 6-max) 12067 -- $2/$4 FL Hold'em -- 2009/11/24 - 17:57:41
Seat 1: Rabi***1 ($108 in chips)
Seat 2: sick***2 ($99.50 in chips)
Seat 3: 2iti***3 ($13.25 in chips)
Seat 8: Hero ($60 in chips)
Seat 9: PUTA***9 ($112 in chips) DEALER
Seat 10: flir***10 ($65 in chips)
flir***10: posts small blind $1
Rabi***1: posts big blind $2
Dealt to Hero [Ts,Th]
sick***2: raises to $4
2iti***3: raises to $6
Hero: raises to $8
PUTA***9: calls $8
flir***10: calls $7
Rabi***1: calls $6
sick***2: calls $4
2iti***3: calls $2
*** FLOP *** [3h,Kc,7s]
flir***10: checks
Rabi***1: checks
sick***2: bets $2
2iti***3: raises to $4
Hero: calls $4
PUTA***9: calls $4
flir***10: folds
Rabi***1: folds
sick***2: calls $2
*** TURN *** [Qs]
sick***2: checks
2iti***3: is all in 1.2500
Hero: calls $1.25
PUTA***9: folds
sick***2: calls $1.25
*** RIVER *** [ Ks ]
sick***2: checks
Hero: checks
***SHOW DOWN***
2iti***3: shows [4s 4c] (Two Pairs, Kings and Fours )
Hero: shows [Ts Th] (Two Pairs, Kings and Tens )
sick***2: mucks
Hero: wins $64.75 with Two Pairs, Kings and Tens
sick***2: mucks [ 7c, Ad ] (TwoPair)

Swing swong

This is getting a little bit insane.

I redeposited on RedStar the other day to take up a reload bonus, and managed to win nearly 70BB in the space of about 150 hands of $3/6 yesterday. It's not quite the same as E5/10, but it was a welcome recovery after my horror session on PL.

I am now looking forward to a work trip to Sydney and the opportunity to play in one of the APPT lead up events.

The swings and the roundabouts

I was all set to write a "woe is me" post on how badly I have run since hitting the $10k milestone last week, but actually I have made a pretty rapid recovery. The low point was at least $800 down on the peak (probably more, because I think I sank lower mid-session). In the last couple of sessions, I have managed to recover to be only $300 under the peak, and set to bust through that $10k mark permanently.

As usual, the swings are down to playing at the limit of my online stakes - 5/10Euro on Purple Lounge. There have been one or two tables running at this stake every night for the last couple of weeks, and it is pretty good fishing territory. I have seen at least two or three different megafish in this game with stats like 70/10/0.8, and a whole host of bad regs (too loose mostly) that are losing a lot of money according to my DB. Sadly the downs have exceeded the ups on 5/10 in the last few days, with the wins coming mainly from 2/4 - but I'm sure I'm going to hit some cards soon and have a big win.

If anyone wants a great VIP deal on Purple Lounge, check out the notice on the right of the blog and drop me a line.

A bit of fun

Just on a whim, I signed up for a little 20-seat sit 'n go last night (3.75 with rebuys and addons). It turned out that it was a super shorthanded tournament with four seat tables. This turned out to be very interesting, and really good practice for blind stealing a sizing bets correctly. The players were almost uniformly dismal (to be expected at that buyin), playing either weak tight or loose passive. I was able to steal blinds and bluff the flop at will, and was given excellent odds to chase straights and flushed by all the postflop minbetting. Anyway, I didn't have to rebuy at all (I intended to double my stack at the start but won the first hand and never dropped below starting chips after that) and just took the addon after 30min. Finished up in 2nd for about $38 or so.

I had a good session at the cash tables too, ending up $100 up or so. Unfortunately I then sat at two very fishy tables late in the evening and pissed away the entire evening's profit on a massive cooler over about half an hour (running at about 30%WTSD and 33%W$SD) *sigh*.

Swings

The swings in this game are doing my head in. On Tuesday, I played a couple of tables at Littlewoods (888). I started out on a massive heater to be up about 40BB on the 2/4 table. It turned into reverse shortly thereafter and I lost the lot, and recovered at the end to be slightly ahead.

Yesterday, much the same story. I started out cold as ice on Littlewoods, losing maybe 40BB on two tables in half an hour (the stats were abysmal 30%WTSD, 20W$SD, stuff like that). There were a couple of horrendous bad beats - pocket jacks, made a set, rivered by a straight and then KK overpair also rivered by a straight. Both of those were huge pots, maybe 25BB altogether. I recovered a little of the loss (but far from all), and switched to Eurolinx. Even there, I had a huge swing - up 30BB, lost the lot, ended up 15BB or thereabouts.

Across the two days I am up a bit, but it's frustrating when the high point was so much higher.

By the way, Eurolinx is a Microgaming room where I signed up for rakeback via RakeTheRake. There is a 14x raked hands bonus that I will probably finish (with the rakeback factored in it probably works out similar to the CaptainCook bonus I did a while ago). RTR also have some exclusive rake races, so I may shoot for a small prize in one of those at some point.

I have also recently completed the Ladbrokes kickback bonus on Boogster. It was pretty easy, though I suffered a fairly sizable loss while accumulating the bonus (that seems to happen to me a lot).

More swings

Had a crazy swing last night on Titan. I tried a shorthanded 2/4 limit table, stepping up a level. I found a juicy looking nutcase raiser on my right, but unfortunately couldn't find the cards to make him pay. I lost nearly $60 in pretty quick time. I switched back down to 1/2, and played three tables. Again, I was quickly down another $30, but finally persistence paid off. The cards turned my way, and in another hour I recouped the entire evening's loss and added another $30 or so on top. Poker is a crazy game.