October summary

Well after the massive struggle that was the middle of October, this month hasn't ended too badly. I've made about $850 which is mainly from rakeback and bonuses which isn't too bad.

Hopefully my Bodog bankroll will also increase a little further so I can get back on to the $4/8 tables there as well. Its almost enough at $800, and I might even take a shot or two next month if I can see some fishy tables running.

It looks like my cashing out in the previous month was a couple weeks premature, as the $A decided to collapse even further in very quick time. At least its now increased my earning rate if I do cash out any more, but i'd like to build my online roll a bit further first.

Last month's goals for October:

• Play my 5 hours on William Hill for the $50 bonus (no longer available ... argh)
• Clear as much of my Bodog bonus as possible (and take a shot at $4/8) (cleared a big chunk of my reload which still gets paid out, but didn't take a shot. next month if all goes well)
• Have a sniff around on Pacific under my new deal there (got a deal there)
• Try to get the handgrabbing software and have it running correctly on Bodog and Pacific (bodog software running a treat. Have not got pacific yet)
• Pray for another Cake reload (dammit. reload cake reload)
• Maybe find a new site to play on and score some new bonuses (signed up to interpoker through rtr. bonus to be cleared in Nov)
• Would be nice to actually win from play :) (yep)

The gain of $850 for the month was made up of:

Bonuses/VIP: $380

• Bodog: $230
• Interpoker: $150

Rakeback: $150

• Fulltilt: $70
• Interpoker: $80

Poker bankroll Interest: $50

Poker winnings / (losses): $270

For November the goals in order of priority are:

• Clear as much of my Bodog reload bonus as possible (take a shot at $4/8)
• Complete my interpoker bonus (and hopefully play in the freeroll)
• Pray for another Cake reload ... cmon!!
• Maybe sign up on Eurolinx through RTR ... although that may be a later month
• Withdraw some $ from a poker room to my neteller account to take up any new bonuses

I'm not expecting to play as much in November as I have a week off on holiday, and am out and about most weekends. Still, I will make sure I complete the Interpoker bonus which is another 550 or so MPPs.

Current bankroll: $13,900

Great table, relatively poor position

Found a fanstastic, although high variance table last night with the average VPIP up around the 60% mark. It looked something like:

maniac 70/45/4/36
superfish 95/3/.3/40
maniac 65/55/5/45
Lag/Tag 25/18/2/35
Me
tp 16/2/2/25

Obviously my seat was not ideal being to the right of the tag, however, since the table was so juicy, I just couldn't give it up. The tight passive on my left was kinda handy though, as he was folding almost every hand.

Each hand preflop would go Maniac 1 raises, Superfish calls, Maniac 2 generally raises, Lag/Tag either 3 bets or caps or folds, I either 3 bet or cap or fold, and tight passive folds.

Ended up being a pretty high variance session although I made about 20BBs mainly through playing premium hands that hit the flop hard. Lost a couple big pots such as when Maniac 1 opened and I 3 bet with AKo. Flop of AK5r, turn 3, river 8 and he flips over 42o .... go figure. Had a similar hand occur later as well, but may have been on another table.

The other benefit of that table would have been that every hand would have been raked significantly, so I will be getting a decent chunk of rakeback.

Funnily enough in the second half of my session I found another table with possibly the maniac of all maniacs. He was often 5 or 6 betting with 3rd pair, and I pulled in another 20BBs there in very quick time, basically calling down with any pair and even raising multiple times with only top pair. I will have to dig out some of the hands to post, as they were ridiculous. I've never seen anyone put in so many bets with such poor hands before.

Current bankroll: $13,750

The importance of a large backup room

Whilst clearing away these bonuses and various deals on smaller poker rooms, I've noticed that its important to have a larger site as a back up to play on when traffic is poor. Its even more relevant to me, as being on Aussie time, my evenings are generally when most sites have their lowest number of players. In some cases there is not even a single table running at my game/stakes.

So, which is my site of choice? Fulltilt. I know Fulltilt gets knocked a fair bit on sites like 2p2 as a site where non Americans should avoid as other sites are softer. I find however, that although there are many tight players on Full Tilt, you are also able to table select a lot more, as more tables are actually running. That actually allows you to target the fish.

The other thing I like about Fulltilt is the relatively smaller rake structure for the games I play. I pay significantly less rake there than on say ipoker or cryptologic. So even though the rakeback is a bit lower at 27%, since i'm paying less rake in total, it basically evens out, or actually puts Fulltilt in front at some levels. (Although at 27% rakeback its still well in front of Pokerstars which is why I don't play there).

So when my tables have dried up on Bodog and Ipoker, Fulltilt is where you'll find me playing. My sign up of choice that i'd still recommend is raketherake (link on right) for the standard 27% rakeback as well as various races and freerolls.

I did put in an hour of play last night, and suffered a number of terrible beats on the $1/2 tables on Fulltilt, which was more than offset by a 20BB profit on a single $2/4 table where the fish were biting nicely and I was just reeling them in. Bodog also paid off a few BBs from the one table that was running.

Current Bankroll: $13,650

Bodog bonuses

Only played a small session, but managed to have one table where the card gods decided to smile on me and ended about $50 up in half an hour. The other tables still managed to deliver a number painful beats, but I can live with that if i'm destroying another table.

It was actually one of those tables which are just about perfect. Two very loose passive fish on my right, and a very tight player on my left who folded to almost all of my preflop raises.

It would be nice to have a few bigger wins, so hopefully that will happen in one of my next few sessions.

I did get my Bodog reload bonus of $230 the other day which was handy. That takes me to about $230 in total for the month on that site alone which makes up for me running fairly cool. The interesting thing about their bonus is that you seem to be able to withdraw as well without it actually impacting the bonus. I will withdraw the $200 i deposited yesterday in about a week, as i'd rather just be playing that site on pure profits. A few more decent sessions on there and i'll be able to start stabbing at $4/8 again.

Interpoker i'm now over 900 points so have less than 100 points to hit my goal for this month, so I may have to stop playing there for a few days if I hit that tonight.

Current bankroll: $13,600

Craptacular running

Both Bodog and Interpoker are still killin me! Interpoker i'm heading down towards requiring to reload range again, although I have about $80 in rakeback to receive shortly so hopefully will be okay there.

I came up against my nemesis fish Strasink or something like that on Interpoker. He's currently running at 70/40/4/50 with a W$SD of 65% as well over 150 hands. His main winning hands are 82s and T3s ... and every time he seems to suck out against me. I played another 30 hands against him in a half hour session, and again managed to not win a single showdown. Surely the card gods will smile on me soon and allow me to have a W$SD of 65% for a few hands even. My BB/100 has now dropped to -4BB/100. F me.

Bodog is a little more interesting where my BB/100 is now 0.5BB/100. Thing is i'm still running at a fairly cool 36% WTSD with only a 47% W$SD over 7,000 hands. So i'm basically a good 6%-8% down on my showdown wins, which equates to around 5BB/100. I'm probably reasonably lucky then to still be showing a profit over that many hands. Surely i'm going to warm up soon, or even show signs of normal showdown win rates ... i'd be happy with that. 7,000 hands is quite a lot to me to be running cool, as that's about all i'd play in an entire month. I know there are 2p2ers who have done 100,000 hands of break even, but I figure i'm probably a bit more table selective and seat selective so shouldn't run into that.

Hopefully will run hot soon, as it feels like its been a while since i've had a nice consistent run .. well not since last month :) hehe

Current bankroll: $13,550

Too much?

Put in another fairly big session (well big for me) of about 5 hours over the weekend. Had this interesting hand come up .. how would you have played it?

Villain is a pretty nice fish, running at about 70/10/1.5/38.

UTG
$26.52
Hero
$55.75
BTN
$113.80
SB
$41.50
BB
$42.73
Pre-Flop (1.5 SB, 5 players) Hero is CO with QcJd

1 fold, Hero raises, BTN calls, 2 folds (yep cold call me fishy)
Flop (5.5 SB, 2 players)

4hJsQh (sweet .. only concern might be a FD but surely i'm miles in front here)

Hero bets, BTN calls (call me down fishy)
Turn (3.8 BB, 2 players)

As (hmmm not the best of cards for me. KT hit a straight, AQ or AJ are now in front of me. Can't see him holding AA based on preflop and flop. And surely he would have reraised AQ on the flop)

Hero bets, BTN calls (hmm no reraise. i must be in front still)
River (5.8 BB, 2 players)

Qs (okay now i've hit my boat, and am in front of AJ now too)

Hero bets, BTN raises, Hero 3-bets, BTN 4-bets, Hero 5-bets, BTN 6-bets, Hero 7-bets, BTN 8-bets, Hero 9-bets .... (okay by about the 6th bet i'm starting to get worried. Maybe he does have AQ or AA. Surely not though.)

What would you have done?

As far as my session overall went, I actually ended up down around $50, mainly thanks to my last 80 hands of the session where I managed to see only 20% of flops, go to showdown only 22% of those, and actually not win a single showdown. Two other muppets were just sucking out left and right.

However, on the plus side, I got paid out a chunk of my Bodog bonus of around $150, so overall I was up for the weekend. Thank god for bonuses/rakeback or it would have been a total waste of time. Might have to post my Bodog stats next time. I've now done 7,000 hands there since I bought the hand grabber, and i'm still running quite cool, even though i'm generally playing with fish. Interpoker also didn't treat me all that well over the weekend, but i'm now well over halfway to clearing the signup and ipod nano bonus. I will do 1,000mpps this month, and then leave the last 500 for next month to qualify for the next months freerolls.

Current bankroll: $13,600

Big session

Well ... a big session or 3 for me. I've played about 5 hours in total since my last post, mainly on interpoker and a bit of bodog on the side. I've had to switch tables reasonably often to make sure that a) they are fishy enough and b) I have position on the fish.

I suspect I also accrued a decent stack of rakeback over that time, and i'm now over halfway to clearing my Interpoker bonus as well.

I haven't been running overly well, as early on one fish slaughtered me with stats of 60/10/.5/60 ... and a W$SD of about 60 as well. I had position on him, but boy did he manage to suck out left and right. I dont think he ever missed a flush. Anyways PT tells me he ended up with a BB/100 of 50 over 150 hands. I'd be pretty happy with that!

Have pushed along on the other tables though so have made a few BBs here and there. Reasonably consistently.

I also played in one of those cake gold card tourneys this morning which was kinda interesting. I was about midstacked and got sucked out on for most of my stack when JJ got done on a 7 high flop by KTs. I then pushed on AQs into AK and I sucked that one out, and then pushed my 99 into TT and sucked out a straight. I only barely made the money though and lost two hands in a row to kick me out. With about 8BBs i pushed with AKo and ran into QQ. I then pushed for my last few BBs with A9s and ran into JJ. And that was it for me.

Current Bankroll: $13,500