I am still alive!!

Apologies to all who have passed by this humble little blog in the last week or so only to find a glaring lack of updates. After my trip to China for golf and beer I have endured a hectic week and haven’t had chance to play poker…therefore no updates!

Last night I did manage to get back to the virtual felt, I played 3 SnG’s. I place 3rd in 2 of them and 5th in the other. I didn’t think I played that badly apart from a couple of glaring mistakes.

About 20 minutes into the $15 9 person SnG I get dealt pocket 7’s and decide its about time I made a move, an early position caller raises it up 3x the BB and due to a rush of blood to the head I decide I am going all in??? I have no idea why!!

He calls me and turns over JJ. The flop brought a 7 and nothing more and crippled him…. lucky, lucky, lucky! (Maybe he should have read my earlier post on pocket pairs!)

My normal move there would be to call and see what the flop brings, and in this case the money would have gone in on the flop but why I decided to play like a push monkey is anyone’s guess!!

Down to the 3 in the same SnG and I am 2nd in chips and find A10s, again I decide I am going to war with this from the SB. First guy calls the BB and I push, BB calls, as does the initial caller.

3 way race, A10s, 66 & AQo, no help for anyone and I go home in 3rd. Donkey play by yours truly!!

I haven’t really been able to keep up with what other bloggers are upto, although I see that Iak is tearing up the MTT’s at the moment, good work fella!!

That’s about all for now, I will try my hardest to update more frequently in future.

Temporary Service

Sorry for the lack of writing this week, work and other such things got in the way. So much so in fact that not only have I been unable to play poker, I haven’t even had the opportunity to continue reading Harrington Vol.1.

It sounds as though everyone had a great time in Vegas, I can but dream that one day I shall also be there. I am looking forward to lots of reports on all the Vegas trips. In fact you have to do this, whilst everyone was away in Vegas I had nothing to read in the mornings while at work. Inconsiderate bunch!!

Well, not much point waffling on if I haven’t got any poker related stories, off to China tomorrow for a long weekend of golf and beer with some friends.
Have a good one.

Pocket Pairs & People

Family – AA & KK
You love them and they love you. They would never intentionally hurt you and always try to help you out as much as possible.

Good Friends – QQ & 1010
Like your family, these folks will try to help you as much as possible but they can be unreliable, sometimes they unintentionally hurt your feelings whilst at other times they make you feel all warm and happy.

Acquaintances – 99 & 88
Probably that guy you have known for years after being introduced to him in the pub. Your paths cross frequently and sometimes you feel like you wish you knew him better, whilst at other times you wish you never met him at all.

Strangers – 77 to 22
You don’t know these people, and shouldn’t really trust them. But then again you are a nice person and you give these people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes you are rewarded for your trust, whilst sometimes they make you look plain foolish.

Enemies – JJ
Never to be trusted, this is a common hatred so intense that everyone around you can feel how uncomfortable you are. It’s no ordinary hatred either, it’s the “You wouldn’t piss in their mouth if their teeth were on fire” kind of hatred.

I know, I know, I could have just written “I hate pocket Jacks” but where is the fun in that?

Count to 10 and take a deep breath

Having thrown my toys out of the pram earlier this week I have now calmed down and am back to playing a little bit of poker.

I have almost finished Harrington on Hold’em Vol 1 and whilst reading it I got the urge to try out some of the suggestions he makes, so I ended up back at the tables.

I have decided I am still going to limit the amount of poker I play, and I am only playing 1 table at a time, I decided to continue with the “Unoriginal Challenge” and although things are not going aswell as I expected at least I have controlled my urges to donate my chips to everyone else. A more detailed review of how things are not progressing with the challenge will be posted later this week.

I have also seen some of the things I have learnt from Harrington pay dividends, which is helping with my confidence. I don’t think I will get completely back into the poker groove until I have read Vol. 2 but I am on my way back.

If you haven’t stopped by Melinda’s blog for a while, she has updated, and boy what an update!!

Only myself to blame!

I think the time has come for me to take a cold hard look at why I play poker.

I am unsure if I have the “right-stuff” to play for anything other than a bit of fun. In which case is there a point in playing?

I have been running bad lately and have found that I end up chasing losses, not good!!

This weekend i sat down and played whilst drunk and not only did I manage to donk off a lot of my bankroll but got a warning from PokerStars about my use of the English language. Not something I am proud off.

My books that I ordered have finally arrived, maybe this is an opportunity to take a break from playing and do some reading and then try again and review my performance.

Out to lunch
Back soon.

The Unoriginal Challenge

I have been wondering recently how to encourage myself to spend more time at the poker tables.

Obviously, such tedious things like work, the girlfriend, sleeping and drinking eat into my potential poker time. But I can play all day Saturday & Sunday however in reality I tend to get distracted by other things such as drinking, meeting up with friends or generally being lazy. So how can I change this?

Well its time to set myself a little challenge, I don’t have the intellect to come up with something myself but I do remember seeing this idea on someones blog and thought I would give it a go. (If you know which blog I got this idea from please leave a comment so I can provide credit and a link)

So, starting this weekend I will begin to play the lowest level STT Turbo tournament.
If I win I move upto the next buy-in level.
If I come 2nd or 3rd I stay where I am.
If I finish outside of the cash I go back to the lowest level.

I am putting a limit of 50 tournaments on this and will be recording my results.
It will be interesting to see how far I can go, I will of course provide regular updates on here so you can mock my attempts to turn a dollar into much more.

If you have nothing better to do with your time, and feel like having a go at this then please leave a comment or email me via my profile so we can compare our progress.

Donkeys, Pimps & Food

Last night I played like a donk-fish, check out sharkscope.com for confirmation.

Before I sat down I did think twice about playing as I felt tired, but decided I would be fine. In the end I played and donked out of 6 STT’s. It didn’t help that whilst playing a 9 & 18 person tournament I disconnected and couldn’t get back online for over 5 minutes.
By the time I got back I was out of the 9 player game and 8/8 in the 18 player game with just 800 chips.

Somehow I managed to get upto 3rd with 5000 chips but then donked them off. Poker is for faggots anyway.

Because I have fallen out of love with poker at the moment this post is going to be about random crap.

So firstly, Melinda seems to be sulking, she has removed all the comments she didn’t like (the ones from poker bloggers). I am not sure if we will see any further posts from her, but then again she didn’t post that regularly anyway so we will have to wait and see.

I found her blog from this list of Korean blogs, on the left of the screen is links to all the blogs and in the main body of the page are the 10 newest blogs.

When I first got to Korea, I stumbled across this page and gradually worked my way through the blogs trying to learn what I could from ex-pats, GI’s and English teachers. When Melinda came to Korean and registered I was fortunate enough to check out her blog and the rest, as they say, is history!!

A couple of great blogs I can recommend are

LostSeouls.com – This was written by an English guy who worked here for a couple of years, unfortunately he has now left but this is the sort of blog you cant read at work because everyone will see you snorting coffee out of your nose when you try to stifle your laughter. Seriously, read all the archives and check out the A to Z

The Marmots Hole – Written by an American guy, basically a sideways glance at the news stories that affect Korea locally or worldwide. The comments very often turn into all out war.

Ok that’s enough Korean blog pimpage, here are some links to a few nice people who took the time to comment on my blog, i suggest you stop reading my non-poker drivel and go check them out.

Bone Daddy – apparently flawed poker?? His post on playing AK has changed the way I play that hand.

Tripjax – I have read his blog on and off for a while now, great content and makes fantastic banners.

Guin – A Canadian player whose blog I hadn’t read before, but will now be included on my regular reading list.

Ok now for something that I think may become semi-regular, in an attempt to educate the poker masses I have decided that I will provide links to non-poker blogs that are worth a visit.

The Gallery of Regrettable food (No seriously!)


Ok, that’s all, bugger off!

Suggestions

EDIT - MELINDA UPDATE - Breaking news just in, Melinda has now deleted all comments made by poker bloggers, including my original "I got deported" comment and the very sincere!?! comments that Iak made. I wonder if this will be the last Melinda update?

I have grown tired of BlueSQ poker.

There aren't many players on there and they dont have the range of tournaments that PokerStars offers. Ok i mainly play STT's but i have begun entering more 18 & 45 person tournaments, plus its nice to have the choice!

So what other sites do you recommend? I very rarely play cash games, so i am looking for a site with lots of different tournaments, and maybe even a sign-up bonus, although i realise most of these are based on raked hands.

So what are your suggestions?

Coming later this week will be a review of my first month of tournaments on PokerStars, a review of the goals i set myself and a target to ensure i keep focused, the working title of which is "The Unoriginal Challenge".

If anyone has any suggestions for the challenge let me know.

Meatballs and Rocks

Well firstly a big thanks to all the people who commented on my last post, I hope you will continue to visit.
Drewspop, Highonpoker, Iamhoff, Katitude, sirfwalgman, will all be getting links when I get time later this week whilst slb159 will get a link when he takes the plunge into the blogosphere. Iak thanks for all your pimping buddy!!

Before we get onto poker, there is a quick Melinda update, with the exception of the comments by Iak and myself all other comments have been deleted. And Melinda (and boyfriend) has hit back with the following ground breaking news:

"All you poker geeks stop cyber-stalking me. My boyfriend says poker is for faggots anyway."

Where I come from faggots are Meatballs in gravy, I am not sure I want to play with faggots as the cards would get all messy.

Anyway, enough of all that and onto poker;

On Saturday I played in my first ever live tournament. 40 players started the tournament and I had a rough ride!! I was on perhaps the tightest table imaginable.

I was in the 5 seat and with the exception of the 1 & 8 seat everyone was a rock.

I think my day can be summed up with the following, a bad read and lay down followed by a bad push when short-stacked!! But as this is a blog please allow me to go into a bit more detail.

Firstly, in the 4th hand I get pocket Jacks and I just call the raise in front of me, 3 of us see the flop which I read as being no good to anyone and make a decent sized bet to which both players call.

An Ace on the turn scares me but I still open bet and get re-raised, I think for a while and lay down my cards figuring 1 if not both other players have an Ace. At the showdown I see to my dismay that pocket 10’s was the best hand!! Damn it!!

So down to 600 of my 1000 starting chips I need to make a recovery. And the following 3 hands sum up my day –

I get AA – X3 raise, everyone folds and I get the blinds
I get QQ – X3 raise, everyone folds and I get the blinds
I get AKo – X3 raise, everyone folds and I get the blinds.

I eventually get pocket 10’s in the big blind and make my set on the flop, which turned into a boat on the river and I was back upto 1300 chips. And then I got the worst run of cards I can imagine, I couldn’t defend my blinds let alone make stabs at the pot.

I eventually went out trying to steal the blinds or get a weak call, when I went all in with Q10s only to get called by the SB with AJ suited and I go home in 12th.

All in all I enjoyed the experience, I learnt what I need to improve and I learnt that I wasn’t intimidated by anyone, that last bit was particularly gratifying as I was worried that I would be so nervous that I would be shaking like a shitting dog!!

Well folks that’s just about it for now, hope to see all you Meatballs in Gravy at the tables soon.

Ooooohhhh....Bitchy!!!

Well I have ummed and ahhed about whether to make any further reference to the comment posted here by Melinda.
Iak has been shouting loudly that he wants more background on the incident but I didn’t want to get into details on a poker blog.

But then I remembered that in my very first post I stated that I would also comment on life in Korea and I think this incident comes under that banner…albeit loosely!! I’m sure once you read this you will wish I hadn’t bothered!!

Firstly lets give you a little introduction into the expat world in Korea…

There are 3 distinct groups of expats in Korea
1. US military & contractors – there are still some 30,000 troops here. In general they are well behaved, with the odd exception.
2. English teachers – bloody thousands of em! Mainly American and Canadian.
3. Business types – Not so many of us!!

Anyway, to focus on English teachers, many of them tend to have studied something “useful” in college such as Geology, Philosophy or Needlepoint only to realize that when they come to look for a job there isn’t much out there. So what do they do?

With student debts to pay the lure of anything upto $2000 a month plus accommodation to come and teach Korean kids English is too much. So just like the Incheon landings they come in there droves.

The academies here will arrange the visa, accommodation and return air far on completion of your 12-month contract, however some of the following has given the teachers here a bad name:
False degree certificates
Skipping out on your contract and flying home.
Or the worst incident…. posting on message boards about how to get your students into bed!

Anyway, everyone’s friend Melinda arrived in Korea in Mid March, her posts show a lack of maturity rarely seen in a fully grown adult and less than 3 months later she has quit her job with the courage and dignity we have come to expect from her by merely not turning up to work for several days and then getting her boyfriend to speak to the school bosses!!

This now means her visa is invalid, she is now an illegal immigrant (They aren’t just in the U.S.)
I decided to make a tongue in cheek comment about the possible title of one of her future posts “I got deported”.

Little did I expect that I would then be accused of stealing due to the fact that one of my titles was the same as one on her blog. Although being an “English” teacher you would think she would know that plagiarism would have been a more correct term.

Anyway, I tried to explain to her that Long time no blog is merely a play on words but this apparently now makes me a liar!!

So if any of you get the rights to name one of the future tournaments or someone’s blog for a week may I suggest Long Time No Blog.

Disclaimers
1. I have never met Melinda.
2. Most English teachers are good people.
3. Melinda’s blog is entertaining (In a did a 12 year old write this kind of way)
4. I cannot be an English teacher in Korea, I left school at 16 and don’t have a degree.
5. I apologise to anyone with degrees in Geology, Philosophy or Needlepoint.
6. I told you that you would wish I hadn’t bothered writing this up!
7. My next post will be about poker.
8. To check out many more blogs on Korea, which may or may not be of the same quality as Melindas check out this link page.