Well, I’m more or less recovered from the flu now, and it’s Christmas day, I’m stuffed full of christmas dinner so what better to do than lie on the couch watching tv and playing a bit of poker?

Played for about 3 and a half hours after lunch, and made about $2.50 or something.  Was definitely able to focus better and make better decisions than when I was sick.   William Hill has a bonus of $25 for people who logged in on xmas day, but I haven’t yet seen the terms, so I’m not sure how many hands I’ll have to play to unlock it.

Today was about as bad as yesterday.  I lost about 3 dollars in about 2 hours at the 5c/10c tables.  I did a few stupid things, like calling down to the river with nothing but a straight draw even though the other guy was raising and reraising and clearly had a hand (he flopped the nut flush).  I don’t think I should play when I’m not able to focus properly.  I think I’ll give it a miss until I’m recovered from the swine flu.

Spent about 6 hours today idly 1-tabling 5c/10c limit at William Hill.  Lost a bit over $3 during the course of the day.   The cards didn’t seem to be running my way.  I got aces once and everyone folded, and the best hands I got were queens about 4 times and each time they were beaten by either aces or kings.  The last two times I laid them down on the turn rather than put more money in the pot as I’d done the first two times.

I realised that I was just paying attention to my own hand and what it might be, and was hardly ever thinking about what my opponent might have.  For instance, I ended up with a full house with A9 and a board of 98882.  All I was thinking was that I had a full house and there was no way he could beat that so I was getting as much money into the pot as I could.   Of course, he had pocket kings for a better full house and took more than a dollar off me.   I don’t think I could have figured it out preflop. He raised but didn’t reraise, although he also raised with stuff like Ax and Kxs so I wasn’t too worried.  In hindsight, he showed himself willing to bet, raise, reraise and cap on every street, and that should have tipped me off that he had something big.  But I was too busy feeling pleased with my awesome hand to notice.  Oh well, live and learn.

Also, in hindsight, it’s probably not a great idea to play when sick.  I think I’ve got the flu and I’m pretty exhausted, so I’m sure that didn’t help.

At this point, I’ve only played about 800 hands.  According to learned people on discussion forums, this is far too few to tell if I’m any good or not.  They say I need at least 10k hands before I can even start to evaluate my stats.   I’m aiming to hit that by the end of the year, so that’s going to keep me very busy.

Yesterday, one of the Sit & Go’s I entered turned out to be actually a satellite to the Daily Dollar tournament.  I was just looking for the cheapest SnG I could find and didn’t actually pay attention to the prize pool.  Top two places got seats, so when we got down to the final three and one of them went AWOL, I just folded my way into second place.

I was doing fairly well in the early stages of the tournament – playing reasonably tight, stealing blinds when I could and knocking a few players out when I had the cards.  I was the chip leader at my table for the first couple of hours.   That changed when I lost half my stack.  I had ATs and flop came 38T giving me TPTK and a four flush.  A guy who limped in bet about half the pot and I raised him.  He went all in and I called.  He had AQ, and caught a queen on the river to take half my stack. 

After that I had a run of lousy cards and barely managed to stay even while others were knocking other players out and eating their chips.  It wasn’t too long until I was the short stack. On the plus side, my table image was fairly tight, so I was usually able to steal the blinds every now and then.  Once the antes kicked in I started bleeding chips fairly heavily and needed to do something.  Before I got into a position to do anything, the tables were rebalanced and I ended up at a completely different table.  The next hand was AJs and I went all in.  I was called by someone with 10x my chip stack who had ATo.  His T hit on the flop and I was gone in something like 1136th place.  I think there were about 9k entrants and the top 1080 places paid.

I’m not so sure I really like multi table tournaments much.  I played for over 3 hours and basically ended up with nothing.  Sure, it only cost me 30c, but that’s a rather large time investment for bugger all return.

Played a few hours of 5c/10c limit at William Hill today.  Still single tabling for the most part although will probably work up to two tabling soon.   I do get a bit bored single tabling – mostly I read poker forums or other stuff on the net while I’m waiting for others to act.   This is probably not such a good idea.  I think I should be more focused on the table, and trying to get reads on the other players. I’m really not very good at that so far.

Everyone eventually left the 5c/10c limit tables at iPoker and when I ended up 3 handed I logged off.  For some random reason, I decided to play a freeroll Sit & Go at Everest poker.  Ended up going out on the bubble so logged off and hit the sack.

I was playing 5c/10c limit Holdem full ring at William Hill for about 4 hours this afternoon/evening.  There were only 2 tables on the iPoker network, and eventually merged down to one.   One particular player on my right had been playing fairly unspectacularly for about an hour – mostly calling, very few raises, mostly seemed to have at least one high card in his hand at showdown.  And then he suddenly seemed to go nuts.

He started raising every single hand preflop. After the flop, he would bet if he was first to act, or raise if someone had opened on every single street.  Most people were folding to him, including me.  When he finally saw a couple of showdowns against other players, he won both with a lucky river holding things like 82o and 4To.  Within about 10m, he’d picked up a couple of dollars from the table.

Normally I try to be reasonably tight with my starting hands.  Not uber nitty, but I generally wouldn’t call a preflop raise with Axo or Kx or something like that.  I decided that with this guy, I should call him with any hand that I thought was likely to be better on average than what he had.  And since he seemed to be raising and calling with any two cards, that opened my range up considerably.

I started pushing back at him, reraising and capping, betting when I was first to act.  He responded on all streets except the river.  On several hands, we would cap the flop and turn and then he would just fold to me on the river.  When we did show down on the river, I usually won, although once or twice it was a close thing, with my draws completing on the river.  Eventually, he went all in and went bust and logged off for the night.  I left the table shortly afterwards.

I sat down at the table with $2 and left three hours later with $8 (60BB), of which half came from this one player.

I was on only a little bit later today than yesterday, so there was only one table at 5c/10c stakes.  I played it for a couple of hours until it got down to 3 people and then I left to spend an hour at a 2c/4c table.  Made about 85c.  Seems I can still remember some things from a couple years ago, but I really need to dig out my books again and brush up.

I deposited my $50 today and went to start playing, but I obviously picked the wrong time of day (3pm NZ time).  The limit holdem tables were almost empty, so I just played a couple of No Limit 10c+2c Sit & Gos.  The first was a 6 max, and I went out in 3rd place, getting nothing.  The second was a 9 player SnG, and I came first in that, winning 50c.  No Limit isn’t really my thing though, so I’ll have to figure out which times there are more players online.