Continued Mucking and Some Spinning...

It’s 10:40am Tuesday morning, and I can’t get to sleep.

I was in another amazing game at The Vic last night.

I got my seat on table 24, but spotted a juicer game on 25, the game was playing super deep and I actually thought it was a £1-£3 game.

I folded for a couple of orbits and eventually got my transfer across.

The only face I recognised was that fucking Jew Ben. Ben’s the old fucking guy who has some problems with me for one reason or another, and is just a fucking cunt. Plays like a fucking cunt too.

He runs super good, and I am just amazed when this guy’s hands go to showdown, I try and figure out what goes through his Jew head but simply can’t figure it out. He might not be Jewish by the way, but meh.

Shortly after I sit down I witness a hand he plays, where he somehow jams his stack of £300ish in on an A 8 2 flushing flop versus an uber donk, who reluctantly calls with A4 off. The board bricks out (the flush might of actually got there) the uber donk timidly tables his shitty hand, Ben mucks. WTF?

Ben fucks off and we get Andre the Bulgarian. In a straddle pot Andre raises to £24 on the button and gets 3 COLD callers, including some girl (semi-reg Chinese degen) with J9, who actually check shoves over Andre’s £80ish continuation bet on a 10 8 x board, she gets there on the turn, Andre mucks. Weee...

We then get the 40 year old virgin (you either know who this is or your don’t!) join the game and open UTG to £12 with QQ, the uber donk who stacked Ben earlier is now nursing a short stack (£100 ish) and decided to 3 bet jam with K6 off, and promptly gets called. The board runs out 6 6 x x K.

K6 off? Why K6 off? What the fuck goes through these morons heads seriously?

I am sat there in my usual auto –muck mode, and eventually pick up AA on the button. I see that the uber donk has limped (along with a few others); I pop it up to £15. The uber donk jams! I snap. He tables A9, board bricks out.

I had literally folded every hand since my arrival at least 2 hours prior to this hand, but this guy obviously didn’t notice, or just felt like he wanted to give me a spin!

Some weird European dude joins the game and sits quietly for about 3 hours next to me, then out of nowhere gets his stack in on a complete bluff with something like 5 high on an ace high board drawing dead. WTF? It’s like these guys just snap, they plan on playing tight and solid, but eventually they just lose the fucking plot!

Our game gets shorthanded, and I have to do the moronic card room staff’s job for them let again, and manage to get our game broken.

I join an equally active table and witness a hand straight away where some young Chinese nerd opens with A6, and gets another nerd to call him with Q10. Flop is 6 6 9. Chinese nerd bets, Q10 nerd floats. Turn is a Q. Bet, raise, re raise, jam, and somehow they manage to get in over £400 each in the pot. River Q. Ouch!

Chinese nerd goes on life tilt; opens with 23 suited, the button 3 bets with AK, small blind wakes up with KK and 4 bet jams. Chinese nerd iso-jams! AK calls! Board runs out ace high!

Another super whale joins the game late on, opens in the cut-off with 1010 to £12ish; button 3 bet jams £300+ with AK, 1010 snaps! Board runs out ace high! Wow!

Many more retarded pots go down, and chips are flying around! Meanwhile I am card dead, and am discussing Rush Poker strategy with the Bulgarian and explaining the benefits of Hold’em Manager.

Rob “The Horse” Angood rolls in from a session at The Palm Beach, £5-£10 reg obviously. Tells me about a hand he played against some dude called Nik (apparently he is a well known pro, meh...never heard of him).

He sweats me for a couple of hands, and obviously is upset about my tight range, and procedures to make fun of me! I feel no need to explain my game plan to his dumb LAGTARD ass.

If you sat in a game (s), with many hands like the above mentioned going down, would you play loose and aggressive? Sure you might attempt to run the table over, and you might run good and win a bunch of money.

But these guys just don’t fucking care, they will play with and pay you anyway. So fuck it I will sit and fold. I might not a win a bundle today, but I will get my piece of the pie over the week, with a very small volatility in my game.

No need for a balanced range, just value bet the shit out of these boys when you get the hands and all will be OK.

Anyway, I finish up around 6am, and head straight to the gym for a 45 minute intense Spin Class. Sick workout!

Last 14 days or so have gone pretty good online and live, I just need to keep putting in the volume and working on my game (obviously finding new and more creating ways of mucking my cards!).

I do a lot of lurking on the 2+2 forums, especially in the NVG forum. Came across a hilarious photo-shop thread recently, I highly recommend it for a good laugh:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/why-esfandiari-can-never-beat-laak-pic-728514/

Here is are some examples of the shit on there:

Here are some of my attempts (obviously I haven’t posted these on there because most wouldn't know these locals boys, but if you know these goats you might get the jokes...if not you either don’t know them or you just don’t find me funny...either way you are gay!)...

One the guy's in the first photo is a friend (well old work mate) of mine, he is a super cool guy and if he does come across this blog, I wish not to offend! Hope you don't mind me using this photo!

I got a few more but I will save them for the next post...

Bedtime!

Full Tilt loving...

As most of you know my Full Tilt account is rigged. There is no denying it.

It’s a fact.

However they will tend to throw me a bone every now and then. I played a $3 re-buy yesterday and managed to get through a +1,500 field to finish 4th, cashing for $1,200.

I was actually delighted with the result; as when I got to the final table I was the super short stack with 5 big blinds. Weeee! Small score, but much needed.

Needless to say I insta-withdrew the $1k! I’m not fucking leaving it on that rigged site!

Anyway, I got done playing online around 1am and promptly made my way down to The Vic.

The GUKPT festival is on this week, and the traffic into the games and the general buzz around the room is great so I am trying to book in as many hours as I can.

I had to deal with the usual moronic staff and management at The Vic for a couple of hours, I won’t bother going into detail, but the usual fucking bullshit.

Maybe they should fucking focus on doing their job, and being efficient instead of fucking around.

I do my usual folding act for a while and chip up to about £350 somehow, then I get pretty unlucky and my over pair is cracked by a flush draw, a complete session breaker.

I end the session £100 down. Oh well.

Friday night! Come on one time tonight! Let’s finish the month off on a high please!

Shout out to Harry! Playing in the main event today, good luck man! One time baby!

I call this "the ticket machine"...

Folding and not donking...

I could do with a little heater.

Man, I am so card dead at the moment, it’s pretty bad.

Good thing I am good at folding and sitting on my fat ass otherwise the few hands which I do get I would go butt wild crazy with.

Here are two examples of what I mean; first hand I have 1010 and limp behind on the button. Some fat donkey raises out of the blinds with 77. Everyone calls, I call.

Flop 886. Donk bets £15. Action folds around to me, I pop to £50 (with £110 is behind). Donk flats.

Turn 7. Board 8867. Donk insta jams. Lol! I tank and pass. If he checks, I jam, he calls, and he makes £110 more. He must have obviously felt bad about the turn card!

Second hand, I have “The Horse” railing me, and call a £11 mid position raise on the button with J10 suited. I would usually pass this hand with 100BB stacks, but meh I called along with some old donk who looks like he is about to die.

Flop comes down Jack high. Pre flop raiser leads for £30. I pass, “The Horse” is mumbling “..how the fuck do you not peal one off there..?”

Turn is a King, the pre flop raiser bets £75, old donk calls. River Jack. Check, jam, call. Old donk has AJ.

I am upset I called £11 pre flop, but even after being card dead for hours I don’t get excited flopping top pair and am able to analyse situations individually.

Oh well. Even more frustrating is the fact that chips are flying around the table, random cunts are hitting nut nut coolers or sucking out like Brazilian hookers.

What can you do eh?

At least I have a lovely night bus journey home...

Body Pumping and Long Napping...

I got to The Vic late last night; you see I thought I would have a little nap before heading in. But a little nap turned into a deep sleep, and I woke up at 1am.

Oh well, I got to The Vic and straight into a game just before 2am.

I felt really fresh, rested, but very sore. I had joined Su for the Body Pump session at the gym earlier. My fucking god it was a tough workout.

Body Pump is a group session, where you follow the instructor and work out pretty much every muscle in your body over a 60 minute period. As I write this now, literally my whole body is in pain! Su insists this is a good sign! I can’t even wash my hair because lifting my arms is too painful!

So I get my money from the cage and settle down to a decent looking game. Rosh is there, I also recognise some Finish dude who I have played with over the weekend, Doctor G is also in the game (upon request his identity shall be kept anonymous), and a couple of Chinese degenerates waiting for a flush draw to jam their bowls in.

Rob “The Horse” Angood is around too. It’s really nice to see him; I genuinely miss his presence around the card room these days. He tells me he has got the “lot” again in the £2-£5; must be nice eh?

Just when I was wondering why he was wearing a sexy Oxford shirt (as opposed to his lucky Adidas poker hood), Rosh confirms some cunt is in town and Rob is entertaining her. Fair enough. Good luck with that one.

The game is flowing nicely, plenty of action, but not crazy. The Finish guy keeps wondering off, which is kind of disturbing the game because it seems along with me, Rosh, and Doctor G, the table have identified him as somewhat of the “action player” and are just passively passing chips around until he returns.

He does indeed return to spice shit up. He buys the button, Rosh and I limp along with couple of others. I have 88.

The Finish guy pops it up to £14, everyone calls.

The flop comes down queen high. The Finish guy leads for £35ish, Rosh slowly and deliberately cuts out a raise to £90ish with about £100 behind.

The action snap folds around to the Finish guy, who has Rosh well covered, he begins to tank, and does so for a while.

The tanking is a great sign. The guy is competent enough to know (after asking Rosh how much he has behind) that his opponent is committed to the pot. So with his bet Rosh has put this guy to a decision for stacks, and when you tank you rarely have a strong enough hand to play for stacks.

I would not raise out of the blinds in that spot with anything less than QQ+, not even AK, because you are not going to fold out the limpers for a reasonable price and there is absolutely no value in playing a raised multi-way pot out of position.
But that is me. This guy will and has a much broader range; consisting of any pocket pair, KQ, AJ, AQ, AK and sometimes even junk.

Rosh’s early position limp calling range here is heavily consisted of pocket pairs, though occasionally he will limp some broad way cards along with suited aces, but will very rarely call the raise.

His raise screams strength to me. He must have a set. The board is dry, there are no viable draws out there, and so this Finish guy has to put Rosh on either a complete bluff or a set.

It’s that simple, no need to tank. But he does and eventually puts Rosh in for the rest of his stack, who reluctantly but nevertheless snaps.

By Rosh’s reaction I know he doesn’t have much. The board runs out and Finish guy tables KQ off.

Rosh mucks his cards, and leaves. At least he doesn’t have to take the night bus I suppose.

I haven’t spoken to him about this hand let, and I don’t really know for certain what he had, and I think for the most part it’s irrelevant.

You see Rosh calls and plays a wide range pre flop, not only in this particular hand but in general because of his superior post flop ability.

He is prepared and comfortable playing post flop, and is able to take away many pots when he senses weakness. He trusts his hand reading ability, and has the heart to go with his reads.

He will set up multi street plays, and put his opponents to very hard decisions, forcing them into “infliction points”.

Though this is a term primary used in tournament poker, in cash games it basically means the point of no going back, the point of commitment. You can push your opponent to this point, with the illusion of you being there too but not really being there.

Imagine you are pushing some guy to the edge of a cliff, he is pushing you back, but he is for some reason is standing on a skate board, so even though he is trying to push you back, he is failing to make up any ground, and you continue to push him back towards the edge of the cliff.

You get to the edge of the cliff, and although you are right there with this guy / your opponent, he is at the infliction point first, you are there together right? In fact you are the one moving forwards the edge of the cliff / you are heading towards the infliction point. But this guy has to decide first, he can stop, get off the skate board, and concede / fold, or he can decide to breach the infliction point and go off the edge of the cliff.

But you see if this guy falls off the side of the cliff, you can still change your mind. If he doesn’t fold, you still can.

In no limit this is so powerful I can’t even begin to explain, stronger than the force of fold equity.
But you need heart, conviction, immense hand reading skills and a great deal of intelligence to utilise it. Yogi (Rosh) has this in his arsenal and frequently uses it.

Moral of the story, this Finish guy sucks donkey cock.

As a new feature (and to add some colour) I am going to try and post random photos captured during my journeys on London’s public transport. Here is a fresh “tag” done while I was on the tube to kick things off, I only wish I had the bottle to capture the guy while he was doing it!

Yigit out!

Vomit

OK so firstly I just read the previous post back to myself. Sounds worse than it actually is.

Funny how shit just comes out when you write.

Well last night I was on the bus to The Vic, I had my headphones on, and some fat, smelly homeless bum threw a fucking chip at me (chip as in fish and chips).

Not in a spiteful way though, he just wanted to get my attention, and apparently he had been shouting and I hadn’t heard him. Yeah so why not just fucking throw a chip at me?

The bus stunk because of him, a mixture of shit, piss and vinegar, with the windows steaming up. My god I felt sick.

Then on the 5am bus back home, there was so much vomit on the seats, on the floor, half the bus was fucking covered by vomit. Fucking hell.

Well I just thought I would share.

Waste

OK so where am I? What have I been up?

Firstly the study of the hands I was conducting (which I started to document in my last post) made me realise my Full Tilt account is rigged, I didn’t bother finishing the write up on here, because the more I looked at the results the more tilted (well angry) I got with Full Tilt.

You can see some of the set ups and beats I took in the earlier entry I made.

So knowing I would struggle to make any decent money online, I increased my hours at The Vic.

My results have been good, modest but good.

With a re-constructed game plan / strategy I am making steady progress.

But there are a few things I need to get off my chest, and some realities I need to face.

I hate the way I am playing. I hate it, it kills me inside.

With my current approach to the game, I pass up marginal situations and basically let people run me over. Well they run me over until I have the nuts and then double me up, but for the most part they run me over.

I can’t explain how much this tilts me inside.

But it’s a winning approach, I promise you that. You will make money playing tight, solid poker.

Even if you only play the nuts, these morons will pay you off; because they are fish.

I have come a long way from the days when I wanted to crush everyone, and prove myself to people. Seriously I couldn’t give a fuck anymore what people think of me.

But I care, and it hurts me so much I can’t explain.

I don’t care what people think of me, but I care of what I think of myself.

Am I slowly turning into one of these old granites who come to the “club”, and sit on their bowl of rice for 8 hours, have a cup of tea, talk to their old friends and fuck off home?

OK, I know that’s bit extreme, but am I on that path? Am I letting the game leave me behind?

I am wasting away, in fact I am wasting my potential, I am wasting my experience and knowledge, I am just wasting. It hurts. It really does, and no one really understands me.

I sometimes wish I never starting playing poker. I mean not for a living, I am talking never ever played poker.

What the fuck am I doing with my life? What has poker given me? Funny when I think like this. Poker doesn’t make me happy; in fact I haven’t enjoyed playing poker for a long time.

Wow.

Nice positive post to come back eh? Writing this is making me sad, so I will stop.