Archive for the 'Life' Category

On the other side of the bar

So, I started work in the bar in work. I look upon it as a graduation of sorts, even though I’m only wearing a different colour uniform! I’m liking it so far and am getting to grips with how everything works, although admittedly I haven’t been on until finish on any of the days yet! The latest I’ve been working is 2am which was for the Newtown Debs, which brought back some painful memories from when I was at the other side of the bar the year before, ordering triples by the minute!

The night started off with mostly everyone being responsible, as did mine from what I can remember but within moments I could point out the people who were going to be absolutely hammered by the end of the night. There was one guy in particular who reminded me of myself this time last year. He kept ordering obscure drinks that he was trying for the first time and when he could no longer afford them, he started doing straight vodka!

I had discovered Sambucha for the first time at my own Debs and whereas everyone else was ordering pints of Heineken etc, I was ordering 3 shots of Sambucha! It didn’t take long for me to realise that if I moved from the bar, I’d just fall onto the ground - so I spent the rest of my night (the keyword being MY) holding myself up at the bar. Of course, people started buying me drinks because I was standing by the bar and I managed to drink enough to make me think I didn’t need the support of the counter to stand up straight - I did!

My own Debs night drew to a close at about half one in the morning, while the music was still playing and the bar still serving - I’m such a lightweight! I distinctly remember being in my hotel room at that time getting sick all over the carpet to the sound of “Sweet Dreams” with my date nowhere to be seen! The fact that girls were offering me head for free drink the other night really shows just how badly I messed up my Debs night!

Thursday nights Debs was a cakewalk so to speak. Only 90 odd people. We’re catering for 350 or so in the coming weeks. I have no doubt that there will be about 50 odd people like me at that Debs. At least I had the decency not to get sick on the dancefloor or piss myself like people did the other night!

A Calling Station No More!

I actually only wish this post was poker related, but alas it’s not! Last night I went out to the forum in Waterford. It’s where I usually go out on a Saturday night because I’m part of the “alternative crowd” and places where they play trance and black people music make my eyes and ears bleed! It’s pretty much no holds barred and the dancing - if you could even call it that - consists of jumping up and down and into people! It’s crazy stuff, but I can think of no better way to spend my Saturday nights that doesn’t involve coke and hookers!

Anyway, while I was “dancing”, my almost brand new Atom Life phone slipped out of my pocket while I was in midair and came back down to earth with a crunch! For those of you who aren’t familiar with this phone, think of it as the perfect portable media player, the perfect texting tool and the perfect mobile internet surfer.. it’s a pretty decent phone too! The stylus (pull out tool for the touch screen) went flying across the dancefloor, but I didn’t give a crap about the worthless piece of metal and only cared for the €320 phone which upon closer inspection I found had its TFT screen turned into an illegible black and white mess! Sick!

I’ve sent off an email to the manufacturer saying that the screen slowly stopped working properly. Hopefully they’ll believe me, or feel sorry for me and will repair it free of charge. It’s well within warranty after all, but I suppose the warranty doesn’t cover me for it falling from about 6ft onto the ground! I’ll just have to wait and see!

My Waterford Open 2008

Thursday saw me take the trip out to Tramore in what would see me put more hours in four days than I would usually put into 2 weeks! I was originally meant to be dealing for the weekend but by Saturday I had perfected the art of running around the ballroom with a chicken and cheese panini in one hand, a notepad in the other and an expensive looking camera around my neck! I was living the hectic life of a tournament blogger!

I’ll spare the details of the weekend, because they can all be seen at the Bodog Waterford Open Blog, but I will say that I was absolutely run off my feet as this whole tournament blogging scene was new to me! I can’t think of the number of times that I had taken note of a hand, taken a picture of the players and had gone to the laptop to post the story only to have to hop back up again to cover another hand!

I think I eventually got the hang of it as I just took a picture of the board and the players, went to the laptop and reconstructed the action using the pictures of the table… resourceful huh? The fact that by Day 3, there were only a handful of players left in the tournament also helped as I was no longer being summoned into the tournament areas to cries of “ALL-IN” every 15 seconds!

Having covered the whole event, it really highlighted the luck-factor in these tournaments. In looking back through the blog, I noticed that every player on the final table had two things in common 1) they were all involved in some kind of hand during the tournament where at best they were racing for all their chips and 2) they all left a trail of destruction in their wake!

So, after working for 50 hours over the 4 days, I stumbled back home with my various bits and pieces making sure that I had the most valuable things of all… the tiny orange notebook that now had the email addresses of two models that were down for the weekend? A thinly-veiled brag? I think not :p

A Rethink… of everything

So, I found out that I won’t be going to work in Dublin for the Summer, much to the delight of my mother won’t be left alone for the Summer months. Previously I said that I was going to try grind my way through the Micro levels and try etch out a reasonable living by doing as little work as possible. Well, a few days later and I’m spewing away buyin after buyin and I can’t remember the last time my big hands got paid off. It seems as if I have to jump through hoops to stack people and I’m tired of it!

With that in mind, I’ve decided to accept the job of being a barman in the Tower which should see me getting full time hours, leaving very little time for poker. My limited poker endeavours are now going to be focused on clearing my signup bonus with Carlospoker which I’ll then withdraw and put into savings before depositing a small sum onto Cakepoker and trying to get a roll going there. I have a 33% rakeback deal through DeucesCracked which gives me the added perk of gaining a months subcription there whenever I rake $500+ a month which shouldn’t be too difficult.

I’ve also been thinking of my blogs content. It’s been “evolving” over the past three years at a steady pace but I’d like to get back into the creative writing side of things as it’s clearly apparent that most poker blogs are obviously targeted at a niche demographic making it inaccessible to recreational readers who only want to read some stories rather than learn about I spewed off another buyin in a 4bet pot! So expect to see some new content finding its way into the blog that will hopefully appeal to your average reader as well as satisfying my own desire to write something productive!

College over - To Work or To Play?

As of last Friday, I’ve officially finished college for the year having handed in my final portfolio for one of my modules. This leaves me with a very important decision to make for Summer - Shall I spend the Summer months working, or playing? I went for an interview last week in Dublin with a prominent online entertainment company and if I get the go ahead for an internship, I should be moving up to Dublin which should be a great experience, both professionally and socially!

On the flipside, if I don’t get the job in Dublin, I can either plug away a few days a week in the Tower Hotel like I’ve been doing for the past 3 years, or I can kick the job to the curb and play poker online for the Summer! How’s that going, I hear you ask! Well I was forced to drop limits and have grinded my way up to 38 buyins at $20NL and will be moving up to $50NL when I either win another two buyins, or when I receive my next rakeback payment!

Now it’s certainly not possible to make a living playing $20NL, but the possibility begins to present itself at $50NL where 200BB pots are now worth $100. Win enough of those and I’ll not only ensure a nice monthly rakeback payment but also I’ll be well on my way to $100NL which is now my revised goal for the end of Summer.

Regarding how I feel my game is, I’ve subscribed to DeucesCracked for their training videos and have been very impressed and I’ve also recorded and published videos of my play for criticism from a “Small Stakes Study Group” that I’m a member of! So you can’t accuse me of not trying to improve my game! I’ve also stepped it up in terms of tables - I now have up to 8 on the go at once. The reason for the change is that I read a respected user on Boards.ie post that at these levels it’s all about getting yourself into as many situations and face as many awkward and difficult decisions as possible. While I’m not beating the games at the same rate I was when I was playing 4tables, I’m becoming more proficient at making correct decisions and extracting value from my hands which should stand to me when I move up the levels!

While it seems that I’m doing a lot to improve my game, a skeleton remains in my closet in the form of random tilting and spewing! I find myself calling people down light and stacking off preflop with marginal holdings. Stupid moves like this are very costly and are the number one reason why it’s taken me so long to beat this level! I hope to get a handle on it by time I move up, otherwise $50NL could prove to be an expensive (mis)adventure!

So, with all that said, I think I’m constantly improving my game and am capable of beating the games I play to make a relatively modest living out of it. If I get the job in Dublin then obviously it takes priority but I’d much rather grind the tables for 5 hours a day than continue working where I am now…

Poker Review: 13th - 19th Feb. A Rollercoaster

I must say that I’m adopting a very unorthodox method of reviewing my weekly sessions. Most peoples week starts on a Monday, or Sunday but I’m opting for Wednesday to be the beginning of my week for the purpose of these reviews? Why, I hear you ask. Well put simply, I moved over to a new skin last Wednesday, so decided that I may as well just start reviewing my sessions from then, instead of waiting for another few days :).

I started by lodging a $850 bankroll which I hoped would keep me out of trouble at $50NL. I had previously taken 4 and 5 buyin shots at $50NL and found it to be beatable but 5 buyins isn’t enough to sustain the negative variance in poker and despite running well for the first thousand or so hands each time, the doomswitch would soon be flicked and I’d find myself missing all my big draws, constantly getting outdrawn on and consequently found myself stacking off the rest of bankroll on 3-barrel 6 high bluffs! This time I swore it would be different!

The usual trend soon began to appear with me running well for the first few sessions (being up $83) before it all went wrong. I finished my first day on the new skin down a buyin. Day 2 started off as the first finished with me once again dropping a buyin on a KK vs AA hand. Maniac had the aces obviously :(. I dropped another buyin to him shortly after when I foolishly called his river overbet with TPTK. He had rivered a set :(. By the end of Day 2 I was down 3 and a half buyins, a small downswing some might say, but it wasn’t just a case of running bad - I was playing badly too. I was raising too lightly in middle position and found myself calling 3bets OOP with very vulnerable hands. I also found myself approaching the shortstacks in far too aggressive a manner. I set about tightening up in early and mid position and tackle the shortstacks in a more cautious but ultimately more effective way (I have to thank the 2+2 forums for a lot of the advice on that shortstackers).

So I began a process of rebuilding. I was very fortunate to hit a gutshot in the following hand to earn back a buyin.

Absolute Life Poker 0.25/0.50, hand converted by the iPoker Converter at Talking-Poker

saw flop | saw showdown

Button rakatam ($22.05)
SB GuardianSaint ($58.50)
BB PeppeT78 ($15.00)
UTG cesena ($22.80)
UTG+1 cannacaz ($12.90)
MP Tuomasso ($56.05)
CO-1 Hero ($65.55)
BB HUGOSPEWGO ($50.00)

Preflop: Hero is in the CO-1 with T 9
3 folds, Hero raises to 2.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 1.50, 3 folds.

Flop (4.75) 2 K J
Hero bets 3.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 3.00.

Turn (10.75) Q
Hero bets 7.00, HUGOSPEWGO calls 7.00.

River (24.75) A
Hero checks, HUGOSPEWGO moves all-in for 38.00, Hero calls 38.00

Hero shows T 9
HUGOSPEWGO shows K A

Hero wins 100.75 with A straight, Ace high.

I soon lost it though with Q8 on the button when I stacked off when my middle pair was no good against a turned house on a 55QK board :S. Horrible play! The next thousand or so hands were all steady going. I didn’t lose to much and constantly plugged away at the blinds while also picking up a few nice pots with some fortuitous flopped sets.

It wasn’t until today that I finally got back into the green, starting the day flopping a flush in the first hand I played on the button when I raised with 89c and the flop came J47c and he called my bets all the way with KJ with all the money going in when the K hit the river! I picked up another buyin when I hit bottom set with 33 and called the villains cbet on a rainbow flop. He hit his ace on the turn and stacked off with his A5!

So here are my stats for the end of the week:

Hands: 2539
VP$IP: 17.57%
PFR: 13.4%
AF: 2.91 (6.13/3.05/1.59)
Att. To Steal: 37.12%
W$WSF: 41.52%
Total Won/Lost: $103.37 (4.09 ptbb/100)
Cashback and Bonus: Approx $40

Net Profit/Loss: $143.37

poker.jpg

My Poker Challenge - €0 to €1k! - Weeks 2 and 3

Well I missed my usual date for reporting my progress last week because I was too busy getting my Leaving Certificate results and binge drinking for the entire day! For those that are interested, I got 365 points which is statistically an above average leaving cert but when I compare the points I got to the amount of effort I put in then I can safely say that my return on effort was exceptionally high! How does this affect my life? Well come October I’ll be studying Marketing in the local “university level” Institute of Technology for the next four years. The main advantage of this regarding my poker playing is that I’ll be living at home and will therefore still have access to the Internet and be able to play.

I’m currently running along very smoothly and I’m pleased to say that last week saw me make my first every final table in a MTT - a $1500 Value Guarantee Tournament - which I went on to win! I earned $300 for that which is a massive return considering the tournament cost $1 to enter, I didn’t need to rebuy and purchased my addon at the end of the rebuy period bringing my total investment to $2!

Going into the first tournament break, I was only slightly above the average chip amount but I was patient, played my cards and picked my spots and found myself to be one of the chipleaders going into the second break! It nearly all fell apart in the mid-late stage of the tournament when I found AA for the first time in the tournament and induced an all-in bet preflop from a villain who turned over KK and hit his King on the flop taking around 70% of my stack with it! I had, up to this point, been playing tight and picked up the blinds whenever I sensed weakness but now with the relatively short stack I found myself having to take risks and on several occasions found myself at the wrong side of 70-30 situations which I somehow wiggled my way out of! Once I built up my stack again and as play approached the bubble, I found myself being able to steal blinds at will and soar onto the final table with a healthy chip lead. I knocked out 6 (I think) of the final table to go heads-up against a relatively short stacked opponent. I soon became the shortstack as I ran into AK and AA in consecutive hands but recovered through aggressive play and finally knocked the villain out for my biggest poker win yet when my ATs topped his A9o!

At the end of the week I decided to revert back to cash play but played very poorly and was down $30 (~150 buyins) within an hour and concluded that I should stick to Sit N Go’s and MTTs if as I had found them to be both great value for money and great fun to play. I may opt to go back to cash table play in the future, in fact I may have to by necessity as Cash play is very popular in the card rooms here, but for now I feel that as long as I’m making money playing tournaments then I shouldn’t change a thing!

Today I played my first bit of poker since Friday. I opted for 2 $5 dollar 6-Max Sit N Go’s as I find that there are a lot of soft players who are willing to gamble at the early stages who make it much easier to reach the money. I don’t mind letting one gambler double-up at the expense of another in the early stages as I feel that I can play better poker than them in the long run and overcome their chip dominance and topple them when playing heads-up. I won both the Sit N Go’s, netting $21 from each! I had been having mixed success in the Sit N Go’s last week when I started playing them but I now believe that I have adapted my game to counter the trends and styles of play that I’m encountering on the tables which is ultimately turning me into a more profitable player!

Following my two Sit N Go victories, I decided to enter into the $1500 Value Guarantee Tournament on VCPoker which had a $3 buyin with unlimited rebuys within the first hour, an optional addon at the first break and a field of 80 players. The first few levels were very hectic as players were going all-in with almost ATC. I read that the logic behind this is that you are pumping the table full of chips which (as the supposedly better poker player) you intend on winning back after the rebuy period has lapsed. While I’m sure that this strategy does work from time to time, I believe that winning the chips from the rebuying players through tight play is a sounder and more profitable way of playing (well, certainly at this level it is). Once again I was playing tight poker and was picking my spots to steal the blinds. I was very happy that I brought the best hand to the showdown in 100% of my shown hands within the first two breaks. I was the chip leader going into the 3rd hour of play but suffered a few bad beats and made a few bad calls which probably affected my table image resulting in me being unable to steal as many blinds as I would have liked. I still controlled over 15% of the chips at the bubble and was placed 4th until I called an all-in bet by the short stack with my pocket tens only to have another shortstack reraise all-in with QJ. He hit his Queen on the flop and a forth club on the river gave him his flush.

This meant that I was in less than satisfactory shape going onto the final table. I was 7th in chips with 28,000 bu the blinds were 5k/10k and when play started at the final table I found myself UTG+1 meaning the blinds were going to nip me in the arse and decimate my remaining stack within 3 hands. I folded my first hand, a hand that resulted in a player being knocked out, but decided to push all-in with Ts7s UTG while I still had the ability to push people off hands. I figured that if I could pick up the blinds here, I would be able to survive another orbit, giving me a chance to pick up some playable hands or result in some of the other shortstacks being eliminated. Needless to say, my push was folded all the way round to the chip leader on the button who called with pocket kings. The flop gave him a set, the turn gave me a gutshot draw but the river was a blank, and so I finished up in 9th place for $45!

So overall it’s been a very successful fortnight for me. Unfortunately iPoker doesn’t provide any tournament summaries so it’s nigh on impossible for me to calculate how much I have won/lost using any method other than: adding my current NETeller balance (€344.05) and my current poker account balance (€27.03). When I do this, I get €371.08!. So after three weeks, I am over a third of the way to completing my goal and as college looms I’m starting to realise that the €1k could very well come in handy in the very near future!

My Poker Challenge - €0 to €1k! - Week 1

So one week has passed since I started my challenge of making zero money into one thousand and so far I’m exceeding my expectations, but unfortunately it isn’t my poker that’s being the shining light, instead it’s moreso my cunning use of bonuses which see’s me up €115.

My initial €8 ($10) bonus on VCPoker was quickly chewed up as I foolishly played where I am most comfortable, at the $20NL Ring tables. I could only play on one table at a time and had to sit each time with my entire bankroll in play. At this point I didn’t have Poker Tracker or Gametime+ running but I found that I didn’t need either to help me read my opponents and make moves which were working and after solid play for two hours I had more than doubled my money to €23 and could now afford to sit at two tables, once again without PT or GT+ running. Once I switched to multi-tabling however, my fortunes started to turn as I could no longer focus solely on the one table and couldn’t gain any insights into my opponents through observation.

I lost half my bankroll in a hand where I was trying to play the player, not the cards. A few hands prior to it, I looked down at AJs in mid position and made it $1 to play, all folded except for the button who made it $2.40. I thought about it and folded and then I told him what I folded and this is the key reason why I did what I did the next orbit when I looked down at KTo and raised once again to $1. Once again, all folded except for the button who once again made it $2.40, I realised that this was the exact same play as before and remembered that I had told him that I folded AJs so any reraise I put in would be indicative of me having a hand greater than that. I also considered that he was making a move, as he knew that he had previously knocked me off AJs with the same raise. I shoved and he called. The board came down Q84 J 4 which didn’t help me in the slightest and he turned over AKo to rake in a pretty substantially sized pot which included half my entire bankroll! He must have been bricking it when he saw the Queens and Jacks as he could have only made that call if he had put me on AJ or AQ. I felt hard done by, but in retrospect it was a very optimistic play that deserved to have me bust out!

With only a tiny amount of money to play with, I decided to look for other “no deposit needed” offers on other sites and accidentally came across the casino site, CasinoClassic which proudly advertised that it offers €500 to new members to play with for one hour and you get to keep anything that you win above that amount. It seemed too good to be true and in hindsight it was as I was required to deposit €20 to access the bonus that I had won after the hour trial (which was the maximum of €200), when I deposited the money I learned that I had to wager my bonus 30 times before I was able to withdraw anything and my favoured game, Blackjack, only counted for 10%, so I would have had to wager 300 times €200 (€60,000!) before any of my bonus money was unlocked! I decided instead to play European Roulette and wager 50% of my bankroll on Red and 50% on black. I was risking 100% of my money for a 87.5% chance of merely breaking even but by breaking even I would be unlocking a bonus ten times my initial deposit! After every few spins I’d check the banking window to see if I could withdraw and finally I saw that I was able to withdraw €120 of my bonus into the safety of my Neteller account. What I learned from my brief encounter with an online casino was that they are to kept away from. They lure you in with a big promotion and use the small print as an excuse to have you keep playing for your money. They also don’t have an option to let you know how much you’ve wagered which can only spell trouble for those who are immersed in their games!

So after a bit of luck, my bankroll was back up to €100 (I’m subtracting the €20 of my own money that I had to deposit to unlock the bonus). I then set about joining as many other poker sites that I could in order to avail of bonuses and exclusive freerolls and started playing in $5 “6 Max” Sit N Go’s on iPoker with a great deal of success. I was looking set to cash in on my third consecutive game when I pushed all-in on the bubble with JJ and the villain (who I had covered slightly) called with J5o. I was a 95% favourite to win the hand, he needed twin fives to win and of course he hit them both on the flop, leaving me drawing to a one outer which never hit. I was left with 350 chips with the blinds at 150/300, so in the next hand, I pushed from the SB with my remaining 200 with K7o and was called by the Button who turned over K8o to knock me out in third spot and out of the money.

After one week then, my bankroll is now at €115.93 with an additional $7 to be unlocked on Titan Poker if I start earning points. Overall it’s all looking pretty rosy, not bad for a shoddy weeks work :).

Leaving Cert 2007 - German

Never in two years of Leaving Cert German had I contemplated doing Ordinary Level. But this morning I learned that several of my friends were dropping down to Ordinary level and these were people that did better than me in their mocks. Suddenly, doubts were cast in my mind but I knew that I couldn’t even contemplate dropping - I needed to pass German to get into university, but without the points of honours I wouldn’t have enough points to get a university course - so honours it would have to be!

The first of the two comprehensions was quite difficult. It was about a woman who loved the language of music. I spent close to an hour trying to decipher the meaning of the story. I was at a particular disadvantage having not looked at music vocabulary since the Junior Cert! I was only able to manipulate the text in a small number of places so I’m certainly not entitled to full marks there. The second text was much easier and I certainly made up for my lack of manipulation in the first text here as I was able to substitute words in many areas as I was well prepared in the topic.

My Ausserung Zum Thema was a hastily put together 86 word piece which is slightly shorter than the recommended amount but I was under a pit of time pressure to move on. The letter was the final task on the paper. I was asked to respond to my German penpal who was telling me all about their gap year in Africa, their class project, their “Abi Ball” and Reality TV. I enjoyed writing it and it came in at about 200 words in length although I didn’t really include any phrases that implied fluency but I’m hopeful of a good honours mark on the paper!

After a quick 5 minute break, we were subjected to the aural exam. It was generally quite easy , at times it was unbelievably easy, but there were a few difficult parts I found to Part 4 - The News Bulletins - one being a UN announcement which I now know was to do with dolphins but I wrote down that it was the “Year of the Fisherman”. Also as I’ve been doing since 5th year, I answered the only part of the exam that’s meant to be in German in English before realising my mistake upon the second listening!

Before the exams started, I was openly dismissive about being able to get my first choice in college, but now, with only one exam left, I’m starting to feel as if I may just be in with a decent shout should the points happen to drop. My remaining exam is Economics - my strongest subject. I hope to spend the next few days putting in the work required for an A1. If I manage that then who knows how my college offers will pan out…

Leaving Cert 2007 - History

Since last Thursday, the only thing I’ve been looking at is the blue examination papers and I was getting a bit bored of them! So I was pleased today to be sitting a higher level exam in the form of History. I said yesterday that it’s a course so vast that all you can do is pray that what topics you’ve studied come up in some shape or form on the exam! Of course you could spend the time praying doing some actual study instead. I like my way better though for today when I opened the paper I saw questions on everything I had studied… lucky me :)

The documents question was based on the GAA and while I didn’t do much study on it, the questions were nice and easy and the 40 mark essay was on a nice and broad topic (how did the GAA overcome the difficulties it faced). I just waffled on for a page and a bit about how they popularised the sports and tackled the Fenian influence in the organisation. Hopefully I’ll get close to full marks for the section!

Section Two was all about Irish History which is by far my worst area because of the many similar dates that you’re required to remember and despite my last minute efforts to imprint important dates into my brain, I forgot them all when I went to answer the question on Anglo-Irish relations following the foundation of the Free State. All I could do was include rough dates but I reckon the standard of my two and half page answer was around the C level.

I must say that I loved the 2 questions I did on European History. The Dictatorship and Democracy question I did saw me explain the main characteristics of Nazi Germany prior to WWII. I was able to rant and rave about education, the economy, propaganda, religion and the persecution of the Jews for a good while and I reckon the overall answer was worthy of maybe 75/100 marks, once again dropping marks for being unable to pinpoint certain dates! The other question wasn’t on The role of women as I had hoped… instead it was on the role of women and the changes in family and marriage. I was spoilt for choice! I was able bang off facts and figures relating to 40 years of change and was able to get in 8 decently sized paragraphs all filled with scrumptuous relavent information. I’d be disappointed if I don’t get 90/100 for it :)

Overall I reckon it went very well and am hoping for a low B or a high C. I was very nervous about it this morning but once I started writing there was no looking back and I left the exam hall after time was up today feeling as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders! I know many have finished their exams today, but I still have two left - German and Economics. Strangely enough I can’t wait for them!