ILX Poker Players Unite

(I was teaching a mate how to play - he mnaged to hold his own for a while, play sensibly, win a few hand,s then threw away $20 in one go with one of the most foolish hands I've ever seen! Made me feel better in a way. My bad?)

I think I am becoming genuinely resentful (TILT TILT TILT) at my bad luck. I keep thinking over and over the mistakes I made, what I should have done to rectify them, and it all makes sense - until I sit down at a virtual table. My opponents seem to have vast reservoirs of luck - in the entire time I've been playing, I have had 2 lucky breaks, including my first four of a kind, and that's it. Pocket rockets, I bet aggressively against a guy with a FUCKING 2 AND 7 SUITED. Of course, he makes a flush on the river.

So anyway, I'm now folding anything that doesn't look fantastic, and I think I've lost it.

Help?

David, I guess my winning streak was too good to be true anyway. Or maybe, for some reason, I can do tourneys but not ring games. Ah well.

$82 down this weekend. So far.

(I haven't won the tourney yet, far from it, but my mindset is just totally different. Weird)

Markelby: if you happen to be reading this, I will give you a call re: Friday's game tomorrow evening!

How's everyone else doing - time for an update I think. I have only played about 40 mins in the last week (broke even), but I'm impressed with Ken's chum. How did he do it, Ken? If that's the same guy I saw you playing just before I left, he wasn't doing anything special at the time.

David R, you are a prince among men - thanks so much for everything on Thursday - I had a fantastic time!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, for my wallet), I am taking a self-imposed break from pokeration, as I am currently unable to play w/out the URGE TO KILL rising to such levels as to want to choke the life out of the fickle poker gods. Also, I've been dropping more $$$ than my finances can really allow. Until I get my billz straightened out (and I don't want to suckerpunch every person that beats me), I think I'll limit myself to playing w/ fun money.

On the advice of a guy I've been recently teaching hold'em to, I have signed up for William Hill (old-style UK bookmaker)'s online poker site. He said there were far more fish there than pokerroom, where we'd been playing, and certainly his bankroll indicates this. I, however, have been up and down like a yoyo since I joined. Started with £30; up to £45 first night. Next night, unable to sleep, miserable and on tilt, lost the whole lot; over the weekend, put another £20 in and am now up to £54. All of this in ring games, where I am much less comfortable than in tourneys.

Next stop, I think, may be to sign up for one of the biggest sites - Party Poker, or Pacific, or something. My logic is that the ones who market themselves most heavily will be the ones with the biggest number of naive newcomers. Thoughts?

Do any of you chaps use flopturnriver.com? It seems to be an excellent hold'em forum - I have tentatively started posting there.

If you like, I can get together a load of links I found for a friend of mine I taught a few weeks ago, and who now is £100 up on me as well as being, by all accounts, a much better player.

I'm actually AHEAD overall now (not as much as I'd like of course, but it's the nature of the beast). It's madness. Of course, now I expect to win, so when folks suck me out (for instance, when 2 heart-suited guys are calling my agressive raises when I get 2 pair - Ks & 3s - on the flop, and BOTH OF THEM go runner runner on me when they should've folded eons ago), I get slightly perturbed. I mean, OK, you have AQ hearts, and K73 flop (one heart), and you're short-stacked, sure, waste your money chasing an A or the long-shot flush but NINE SIX? NINE SIX? Are you STUPID? Do you want me to wipe that drool off your chin, you incompetent luck-fucking douche?

Other anti-luck fun - getting dealt pocket 10s, and losing to pocket Qs BOTH TIMES (including one hand where the flop offered both a 10 AND a Q). Also - losing AJ to 42 suited because a TWO comes up on the river. Also - losing 3 Js because my showdown opponent drew the 4 cards he needed for a straight.

I think I'm finally coming to grips w/ the random chance nature of poker, tho - I went fishing 5 times successfully last night. Granted, I was fishing for a flush w/ AK suited, or fishing for a pair w/ AJ offsuit and nothing higher than a 9 showing. Fishing for high game w/ quality bait is A-OK, unless you come up short and the dorkwit w/ pocket 3s wins all your stuff. Still, some downers or muscle relaxants would probably mitigate my need to foam at the mouth when I don't get the breaks.

Last night I managed to lose $80 at William Hill - very frustrating, but I think playing against UNBEFUCKINGLIEVABLY slow calling stations has warped my playing style for the worse.

So afterwards, I went to pokerroom and played shorthanded ring for a while. At first, my money ebbed away slowly (mainly because of a decent player to my right), but when he left I turned $13 into $46 in not very long at all, playing good poker, quickly, with decent-good cards against decent players who folded when they should and didn't take 30 seconds on ONE SINGLE DECISION.

God it felt good. Thing is, I *know* I can make money at William Hill, as I'm £160 up so far (playing in sterling there is very good for the bank balance - assuming I'm not losing, of course), so I'd like to stick around there a while longer. So... I'm multi-tabling from now on. I'll start with 2 tables, and consider three if that gets dull/good returns. Only real concern is that there are only 5 or 6 £0.15/£0.25 tables, and people may be getting to know my style.

Toby, do you have AIM or MSN? I'd love to discuss the whole shebang with you while you're learning - give advice if I can etc.

I'm on hols from 9th - 13th June, but after that, let's kick some ass. Via email too is fun. You should sign up for a poker site that has micro limits (i.e. where each minimum bet is between 2 and 10 cents, rather than $0.25/£0.25 where I play) as you'll learn better there than on play tables - I hear Ultimate Bet has good microlimit facilities. It may cost you a few bucks - the so-called "learning tax" whereby you lose money to start with but learn by your mistakes - but it's part of the process - and at micro-limits there's no way you should lose more than $20-$30 before you start consistently winning.

(this is me right now).

Amateurs hardly ever bluff. A re-raise from a fish is a 100% sign they have the cards.

I haven't seen this software, Ken - can you describe in detail what it does?

I've been playing tournaments this week after a couple of months of cash games only. It's been great fun - I can totally recommend Pacific (who are shit for most things) Poker's Nitro 16-man tourneys - 16 people, $5.50 buyin, $40 1st prize, and it's all over in 25 mins! 10 seconds to make your bet is NOT a lot of time, trust me.

I still haven't made the money in any multi-table tourneys, but equally I barely ever can spare the time to play them. SNGs I'm still comfortably up though.

Currently I'm about £350 up in all, which is a bit under £100 a month in real terms. But it's a great hobby, regardless of the cash.

If anyone wants any referrals, btw (to Pacific, Pokerroom, William Hill or Empire) I'd be delighted to send you one :)

One of the guys I play poker with said that he quit the online stuff once when he had four of a kind and was beaten by a straight flush. Bull fuckin' shit. Least with a human being, you can whup their ass.

As for me - I think I'm still up overall, but not by much. (I don't want to find out how much of my winnings have been eaten up.) Been trying higher-stakes tourneys (higher-stakes REBUY tourneys), and have been getting hosed overall. Rebuy tourneys are a bitch, as players (already looser than my shorts) just play shit hands because, hey, they can just buy back in. Had a run for about 3 weeks where I was either just missing the money or only finishing in the lower tier of the money. However, I was also playing a LOT of tourneys in a day, which probably numbed me to the nuances of the game, and made me go from cautious cagey card fiend to free-wheeling shitwit.

Played yesterday (online) for the first time in about a week - dropping most of my savings on college tuition means less happy-fun-time gambling for me. Finished 30th and won $17 in a $5 tourney (400+ entrants), and (most importantly) made good plays. And also avoided the "KK v AA" type of pooch-screws. Except when I was shortstacked near the end, and went all in preflop w/ 66 (because my stack was worth about 2 blinds), and the guy next to me called my bet. With KK. Bastard.

Anyway, tonight, not only did I finish up in cash games on FOUR different sites (albeit only one of them being a decent amount, £33 on William Hill), but I managed to WIN a single table tournament versus 9 other members of the poker forum of which I'm a member! They are almost all more experienced and successful than me, so it was doubly sweet :)

(in case anyone here is interested in having a look and maybe joining, this is the link)

-- David R. (quoteidio...), August 26th, 2005. (popshots75`)

Hahahahaha guess what hand finally eliminated me from the tournament? I fucking called him with K9s as well.

PP, you reckon it's fixed? Really?

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4746

ARE THE POKER CLAN "ROCKS N RINGS" THE COOLEST PEOPLE IN HISTORY???
http://parishiltonists.blogspot.com