Leicester Races and Quarter Roll Update

Well Leicester races was very enjoyable. Many drinks were drunk a dodgy burger was eaten and a few bets were placed.

In my usual non gambling fashion I just had a couple of quid per race and hit 1 winner (pictured below - can't remember the name) and two places. Was gutted in the first race when I had a reverse forecast come in second and third behind an outsider ... OUCH! ... that would have been a nice payoff.

However overall on the day (betting only) I ended up about £8 down.

So that's the good news ... now onto my quarter roll experiment.

Not so good. Take a look at my graph after just over a thousand hands.

See the first big drop from about buy in 22 ? That was when my AA got called light by a small pair, they hit their one card flush on the river and I lost about $30.

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See the second big drop from about buy in 24 ? That was when my KK ran in to AA and I lost my $50 buy in.

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See the third big drop at about hand 30? That's when I hit my set of 8's on the flop and was called all in by a player who had paired his 96 on a 789 board, to see him fill a straight by the river. His call was OK with about 44% considering the pot size was reasonably big following a raise re raise fest, but why couldn't I just win this race?

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So I guess "They" are right when it is said you need 20 buy ins at a particular level to take the swings. I still have about $57 left of the $200 so am going to persevere and see if it takes me anywhere.

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Until Next Time.

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Keep it Tight!

A good night out ... Gala Casino Leicester

Well the GF and I did go to the Gala Casino as planned last night and started the night with a drink and then a meal upstairs. They do an offer called "A Stake for a Steak". Basically you get a 10 pound voucher for every steak you order to be placed on any evens bet on the roulette tables. So we both had a steak (they are very good at this casino ... well recommended), got our two £10 vouchers and headed for the roulette table. Wanting to get at least some return from our vouchers we decided not to gamble and placed one voucher on red and one on black ... that provided us with £10 win number one.

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Happy with our lot we decided to have a few more drinks and another go on the slots on which we had lost about ten quid earlier. So sitting on the Cleopatra machine we fed it another £10 and got to playing. Feature number one came in after about 5 spins and we thought we were in ... however it only paid off about £5. However after about another 10 spins we got the feature again and this time it paid us handsomely ... as seen in the picture below.

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Now completely happy with our evening we cashed out our pound coins and just as we were leaving I noticed that the Friday night Poker Comp was drawing to an end but there were a few £10+£1 SnG's running. Asking tentatively if I could play one, and being given the answer of yes I sat down for the first comp and the GF made her way off home.

Anyway I didn't figure in the money on the first comp (9 man paying 1st and 2nd) but got to the final 2 on the 2nd one which only had 8 players and ended up splitting £40 each so as to quickly get another under way. The 3rd and 4th tournaments only had 5 players in each and we agreed to pay £40 to the winner and 2nd get his buy in £10 back. Missed out in the 3rd but got into the last two again in the 4th SnG. We agreed a £20 split and play to the winner for the final tenner. Well this heads up lasted about 45 minutes and was a really great game that finished around 3.30am, unfortunately I wasn't the victor.

Still cashing in 2 out of 4 for a £16 profit and another chance to play a far more enjoyable live game rounded of a very enjoyable and tiring night.

Leicester may not be Vegas but a night out at the Casino can be just as enjoyable.

As I said yesterday its off to Leicester races today, although looking out of the window the weather doesn't look too good, fingers crossed it improves.

Until next time.

Keep it Tight!

A day of leisure

Today was a day of leisure ...

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I came back from London last night and put the car in for a service today leaving me some time to catch up with a good mate.

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Thats the problem with working away all week, very little time to catch up with friends. So it was off down the snooker hall for a few frames. Thinking I would just be able to pick the cue up again and knock in a few breaks I was very disappointed. My highest break was 10 and I lost the match 4-0. Luckily no money on it.

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Next up to the pool tables. Now this is my game.

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So £5 down first to 10 ... lost 10-5

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Double or quits first to 5?

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Yep lost 5-1.

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Tail between my legs I say lets go ... still good to catch up with an old mate.

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Off to the Casino tonight for a meal then Leicester races tomorrow ...

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I am worried I am becoming a compulsive gambler?

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Nah! Bet you a tenner I'm not.

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Until Next Time

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Keep it Tight!

Jesters 1/4 Rolled System

OK ... so here's my new plan to get me playing at higher stakes.-

I am putting $200 down to lose or, hopefully, win with. No matter how big this pot gets, to me its still only $200 ... Repeat to myself ... no matter how big this pot gets its still ONLY two hundred dollars. -

$200 I am prepared to lose ... and not to get protective of it if it grows!!!!-

Still not sure if that has sank in with myself yet but we will see.

So how am I to grow it?

Well this is purely cash game money ... No SnG grind! No Multi's! They will be played from my normal pot, so this is purely cash game money.-

Now this is where my newly devised 1/4 rolled bank rolling system comes in.-

I will be starting by playing at $0.25/$0.50 blinds No Limit Holdem Full Ring tables with a full buy in. So now you see I am quarter rolled by my buy in i.e. one full buy in is a quarter of my bankroll. Now I know that "they" say this is not enough and I should have at least 20 buy ins for a particular level. Well this is where the second part of my plan comes in.-

I will only play any one session for a quarter of my stack, so if I get below $37.5 on a particular buy in I will be leaving the table. This doesn't mean I won't put my whole stack at risk in any one hand but it is going to concentrate my mind before I do so. If I lose all 4 buy ins to my pocket AA being cracked on 4 separate occasions ... well thats just going to be the way of the felt.-

So what about when I hit a profit on a particular buy in? Well if the profit is an additional quarter of my initial buy in or it has been greater than an additional quarter of my buy in but then dropped back to the quarter level then I must bank. Other than that I am going to use my discretion depending on table dynamics, mental state ... that sort of thing.-

I will move up a level when my bankroll is 4 times the max buy in for the new level. So for my next level $0.50/$1 I will need to have turned my $200 into $400. As soon as my bankroll drops below the 4 full buy in amount I have to go down a level with $0.25/0.50 being the lowest I can play.-

That means the toughest level should be my first because I have less full buy ins before I bust out.-

Thats it in a nutshell. I have chosen this structure to be more aggressive than with my current bank rolling method (which i will be continuing with for my safe pot). My target is to get to the $2/$4 level (that means I need to get this $200 up to $1600) This would be the highest I have ever played (I did play $1/$3 at Ceasars Vegas on a couple of occasions).-

I will be posting my progress every 1000 hands ... if it gets that far LOL.-

Until Next Time-

Keep it Tight!

Happy Easter All!!

Happy Easter all, hope you are enjoying your few days off.

We have just got back from the boat early to try and get a couple of things done around the house before I have to return to the grind in London.

Most of the trip was spent checking over the boat which thankfully seemed OK. We did however spend yesterday in Colchester as this isn't too far from where the boat is moored.

Colchester seemed to be a bit run down this visit for some reason. We went early last year and visited the castle which is a great day out if you ever get to go (especially the Museum). It seemed much cleaner and livelier a year ago ... perhaps the recession is hitting there harder than other places I have been to recently.

I did manage to get a bit of poker played on the net which is always nice with a glass of lager in hand and a couple of SnG's on the go.

Just settling in to watch the final round of the Masters golf ... I have a few quid riding on Perry so good luck to him.

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I have been thinking about a new approach to my poker playing (yet again!) by setting myself a little challenge and also to try and get me playing higher levels. As you know I have a constant battle with myself in trying to force myself to put a little more at stake in the poker world and think I have come up with a new bank rolling method to help me with this. So I will put some details down in my next post.

Until Then

Keep it Tight!

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again!

Well no joy in the GUKPT qualifier yesterday. I came 14th out of 25.

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Started ok and at the break had just above the starting stack, then hit a nice hand just after the break to take me to about 3000 chips.

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When my chips got to about 2000 with blinds at 100/200 I got a king high flush draw in the BB with 2 spades in my hand and 2 spades on the flop. The flush hit on the river and all the chips went in for me to be beaten by the A high flush. So that was the end of that ... back to the sub qualifiers for me.

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Off to the boat tomorrow for bank holiday. Haven't been out there for about 4 months so fingers crossed it will still be floating. I am taking the laptop so may be able to play a little, but most of all I intend to have a really relaxing time.

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Have a good break all.

Keep it Tight!

GUKPT qualifier again!

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A little success again in the $5.5 GUKPT sub qualifier tonight.
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I had just the add on after my initial buy in and played against 12 other players for the single $109 GUKPT Satellite seat.
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I played fairly solid until down to 3 left when I managed to keep my stack afloat with some moves in different positions. Luckily the other two players got committed to one pot and one went out leaving me heads up with a huge deficit in chips.
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I typed in that " I need some real luck now ... gl!" ... and luck I got as the heads up only lasted 6 hands (blinds at 150/300 a50).
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The first hand of the heads up I found 88 in the SB ... this was going to be my double up to get me back into contention, either that or I will come second and receive nothing, either way this is THE hand. I raise, my opponent re raises and I go all in. He calls and shows A7, the 88 holds up and now we have an almost even chip count (I now had about 15,000 chips, he had about 16,000 chips).
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Very next hand I get Ad8h in the BB. My opponent raises to 1000. It was my intention to play a few small pots to see if I could work an advantage so just called, happy to play the flop. The flop came down As3hQs and I was hoping my A was massively disguised. I checked, he raised and I pushed all in. He turned over Ac9s ... damn I was a huge underdog and was hoping for high cards to split the pot ... but an eight on the river saw the pot sliding in my direction.
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Another couple of pots with his small stack going all in and I took the ticket ... very luckily!
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So I will be trying to get my first GUKPT live event ticket on Wednesday.

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Just to let you know where I am with all my qualifying efforts here are my results to date:
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So far I have played 18 GUKPT Sub Qualifiers and won two Main GUKPT Satellite Tickets and cashed for the remainder of the prize funds twice (buy in's - $172.6, winnings and tickets to the value of - $271)
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Played the Pacific $20K sub qualifier 3 times and won 1 ticket (buy in's - $21.3, won 1 ticket to a value of $55)
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Played Pacific Irish Open Sub Qualifiers 12 times and won one higher level satellite ticket (buy in's $53.29, wins 1 ticket $15)
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Unfortunately I have yet to hit a main event or decent prize from my sub qualifier ticket wins, but I live in hope. Whats more important is that I haven't spent more on qualifiers than the tickets were worth ... so I will continue to play them.
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Until Later



Keep it Tight!

National Winner and F1 Farce

One of my favourite horse races of the year and it did not fail to impress me again this year. I usually have a little flutter on the horses and kept to my usual Grand National betting system. Again it paid off as I had the winner as a place bet on Betfair (along with 4 other horses that came no where). So a few pounds back in the Betfair fund.
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Then on to the F1 race this morning. Despite a late night last night I managed to get up early enough to see the start of the race. I also have a system for betting the F1 on Betfair and generally do quite well. It was all going swimmingly (pun intended) until the rain fell. Then I sat and watched half an hour of people running around with umbrellas. Whoever decided to put the race on later needs their head examining. I guess the decision was based around some financial opportunity by the organisers as is F1's want. Anyway, the fact that the race was abandoned and finished early meant I couldn't trade off my remaining risk and ended up giving back my profits from yesterday.

As with any of my gambling I don't ever put down large sums of money, I just find that it adds an extra dimension and provides a bit more enjoyment to these sporting events.

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So for now, back to the poker.

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Until next Time.

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Keep it Tight.

Quick update for the year

A quick update on my performance for the year then.

March saw me play less ... mainly because of the week off in Vegas ... but posted the most profitable month for 2009.

SnG performance - played 89, cashed 62 (69%)

Cash games - buy ins $1150, returns $1488.23 (29.4% ROI)

Overall ROI for month = 26.8%

All I need to do is achieve these figures at 10x the buy ins and it would be a meaningful amount of money LOL.

Going to be playing mainly on Party this month as they are running the Gladiator bonus.

Realistically I will probably only get about $25 bonus as max and I'm not going to push for any more but free money is always good money in my books.

So until next time

Keep it Tight!

The last lot of pics ... honest

Ok so let me get the last of Vegas out of my system ...

Thunderbirds ? No Hoover Dam ... These pictures do not capture the enormity of this thing. Believe me IT IS AWESOME!!!!

Now this has to be Thunderbirds! ... no just more Hoover Dam!

The new bridge that crosses the canyon. In this day and age you would think we could do things better. But no ... this is gonna take longer than the dam itself.

The power of Vegas ... these turbines driven by the Colorado River provide the power for most of the Nevada communities. Who says we are in the forefront of renewable energy?

Lake Mead! next time we are here we will hire a boat and survey some of REAL America.

The view from the Hacienda Casino ... the closest Casino to the Dam .. I think!

So there we have it ... Vegas been and gone!

Hope you enjoyed it!

We DID!

Until next post.

Keep it Tight!