theonlinepokerleague.com Blog

UP and running

Oh well I’m back up and running on the PC front so not all bad news recently. Another bonus is that I went to see Deep Purple, Styx & Thin Lizzy in Nottingham last night and despite the technical problems that limite Styx to just 3 songs I have to say that it was a great gig with Purple doing most of The Machine Head album..great stuff.

Back to the poker my balance of $380 on Hollywood has diminished greatly and is now on $230. Yes - I have played some appalling hands but everytime I get Kings and I’m trying to get my only caller to go all in he does with Aces and if I have aces then some nutter calls with 35 and makes a straight..aargh. I must admit I had flu like symptons over the weekend and my mind wasn’t totally clear so that may have contributed.

 My old PC went and pegged it last week so the transfer of data to my new pc with all the hand histories on Poker Tracker and my ledger as to well or badly that I have been doing has been lost. I will keep working on that PC as I believe it may just be a power issue but that could take some time so from May 1 I will start a new ledger. Heres hoping I can at least clear my small bonus on Hollywood without a major meltdown!

Computer probs and tonights event (#8)

Well after a weeks decent set of money finishes I have run bad..and when I say bad I mean I have stunk big time!! Not all of it has been my fault, however, with a series of PC crashes at important stages in SNG’s and MTT’s. I have therefore ordered a new PC which hopefully will turn up next week. In the meantime I was playing on Hollywood last night and the PC crashed with just 4 players left in the SNG (aargh) and nearly 18 hours later I still have not managed to get the PC working again. Hopefully I can get this laptop to work later so that I can play in Event #8 of The Online Poker League 2007 Championship. This weeks game is an $11 No Limit Holdem game. Everyone one is welcome so just look for TOPL #8 in the private lobby on PokerStars and enter topl07 as the password and with any luck I will see you there.

Back in the money!!..yahoo!!

My intention last night was to blast away the cold decks by playing 3 or 4 tables of SNG on Prima and get myself out of this terrible run I’ve been on for the last week. Things do not always go to plan, however, and I ended up on Bodog and I quite fancied the $3k guaranteed tourney with a $7.50 buy in. Again my cards were pretty poor but I managed to make things happen and got lucky a couple of times. Before I knew it 4 hours had gone and I was sitting at the final table in 5th place. I was mid/late with AJ so I raised and everyone folds and I picked up the blinds and antes of about 15k and moved up to 3rd and then I get KK. Well this is the first time I’ve seen a premium hand all night and I’m happy to pick up the blinds and antes again and if I get called I’m likely to be in good shape so I push with the hand and I’m all in. The big stack is now on the Big Blind and I think he had umbridge with my raise on the previous hand so he takes a stand with Ax. OK its a race and if I win I will be leading the tourney with just 7 players left so I’m not that unhappy but of course the A on the flop does make me swear a bit and I’m out in 7th place and a cash of $105.

Card dead?

Yikes its been a bad day today. I’ve played in 4 MTT’s and I have won a grand total of 5 hands in that time! I have had no cards to speak of at all and the only Aces I saw where the ones that I walked into (twice!). Should be good for Razz later..lol

MTT’s yesterday

I managed to play a number of MTT’s yesterday and I didn’t play too bad. First up I was in a $10 625 player No Limit Holdem game on PokerStars which has to be one of the tightest tournaments that I’ve played in for a while I tried to make some moves on my table to try and counter this but I always seemed to come against a premium hand. I just scraped into the money but bubbled on the level where the money was due to go up.

I then went to Hollywood Poker to play a $10 MTT $2000 Gtd tourney.  For the 2nd time in 3 weeks my PC suffered a malfunction when it went to load up the table and by the time I got back into the game 20 mins had gone. I had only blinded off about 100 chips so it wasn’t too bad but in comparision to the previous game this was quite loose and I lost a few key hands when I had the best of it in multi way pots (aargh!) and then came the great suck out! Oh well never mind this happens and we just have to move on to the next tourney!

The next game was the weekly WAPT London event at PokerStars where a handful of us play each week. Anyway we were early in the tournament and I have AK which I have raised 4BB and I have been called. The flop is a nightmare with QQJ but I need to get rid of at least one or both of these players if I want to win the pot so I put in a half pot raise. Everyone calls. What could they have? I’m thinking that if the Q or J are out there that there would have been a reraise at this point so I think that they are just on a draw. The turn brings a 10 which gives me the nut straight and I’m pretty sure at least one of the others is on the second straight but there is only one way to find out and that is to stick the chips in and sure enough there are 3 of us all in. The hands come AK (nut straight) and K9 (second straight) but we are dead in the water against 10 10 who now has a Full House!

To try and take my mind off that carnage I played an $8 PL Omaha tourney on PokerStars which was a bit wild but I managed to cash in this one as well (18th out of 170+ players) which is the first time I have ever cash in an Omaha MTT so I quite with this one even if it was only for $17.

I’m gonna try to get into the Mansion $100k later today and there is also The Online Poker League event at PokerStars which is Razz. I just hope that everyone else is as bad as me on that or I have no chance!!

Poker Tracker problems

I’m having a devil of a time getting PT to upload my hands from Hollywood Poker (Ongame Network). I think after an hour looking at it I’m going to give in and check the PT forum to see if they have any ideas!

Had a small winning session on Hollywood and on Battlefield Poker last night and I am quite keen to get the stats updated.

Pruning my sites

I have been doing quite a bit of pruning of my poker rooms recently because I have now discovered rake back (2 years too late) and I am trying to get as many of my favourite networks on rake back as I can. I have withdrawn money from all of my Prima accounts to Neteller and opened an account with Battlefield Poker with a 30% rakeback and I have done a similar thing with Absolute Poker to Vegas 247. For Ongame I am taking my money out of PokerRoom and I have opened an account with Hollywood which has a perpetual reload bonus (rakeback in effect). I will be posting some of the deals on here in due course so look out for some of the best action from the rake back market on here in future.

In the meantime you can find out about rakeback here: http://theonlinepokerleague.com/rake.html

Hollywood Poker $5.50 tourney

I had a bit of a stormer tonight with a 2nd place in a $5.50 tourney at Hollywood Poker. There were 582 players and I managed to survive being dealt a cold deck for the first two hours (best hands 6’s and 7’s - but doubled on both!!) and then I managed to suck out against AA 3 times with K 10 & KJ. Ultimately I got to the heads up stage slightly behind and with some aggressive play got to being 2:1 ahead but unfortunately I had a bad hand and then my AJ came up against AA which put me down to 15% of the chips and it wasn’t long before I went out. Still this is my best finish in a tourney and whilst not my best cash of $363.75 ($3,750 on Pacific a few weeks back) it is confirmation that I do seem to be going in the right direction.

Mansion $100k Gtd tourney last night

I managed to get into the $100 buy in $100k gtd tournament again last night and this time I got in by winning a $10 satellite which I was quite please about.

In the game itself I had unbelievable hands at the start with nothing but paint for the first half a dozen hands which I managed to not get involved with at this stage of the tourney. I then picked up AA three times in about twenty hands and only managed to make any money on the last one as I couldn’t get anyone to play with me for even a small raise. On the last one I managed to more than double up and got myself into 3rd place. I then managed to keep myself in contention and even had AA again so that when it came down to about 150 players I was still top 25. Unfortunately at this stage I got caught with AJ making a 3,000 raise which was called and then my 3,000 on the flop was also called. In hindsight I wish I’d shoved my chips in and see what his reaction was. I then checked the turn and he put in a big raise which I then folded to. Granted I hadn’t hit anything but the board was mainly low cards and whilst he may have been a playing a bit tricky with A5 or something he may have just had two high cards. I meane what else could he have called my pre flop raise with - a mid pair perhaps but likely to be a high A or KQ? Anyway after that I managed to hang around for a bit but went out in about 132 place.

Still I’m generally please with my play at the moment even though I’m down on the month and I hope to have another go at this next week.

Blog problems…

Wow..my blog was OK for about a year and then pow it goes all wacky and I’ve lost all my postings for a year. Such is the nature of things that I will just have to rebuild the blog. Now then how did I get those sidebar widgets on last time?…Won’t take me long honest!