WBCOOP $5000 Blogger Prize
 
Question; What would I do with $5000.

 Answer; Firstly, I’d buy Victoria Coren’s ‘For richer, for poorer’, goodness only knows I could do with a blogging and writing role model.

 After that  I’d check out a course in creative writing, as‘boy’ do I need to up skill my abilities as a blogger. I mean check out my blogs from the last year……terrible and that’s just the grammar and speling!


Then to treat Mrs Shaggle, (or Fraggle_Red4 as some of you might know her) who is just learning the dark arts of NLH, she seems to have taken a recent shine to a certain Kid Poker, but I guess curling up with his latest offering of ‘more Hold’em Wisdom for all players’ couldn’t hurt….could it?

 Then to sign up for a UKIPT event. Decisions, decisions…London or Newcastle? I guess, Newcastle, as its being played at my home casino Aspers.

 But hey, what about a little trip? And a few satellites for some EPT and WPT events. I hear Madrid is a lovely place to visit and the PCA event recently whet my appetite for travel.
 
Maybe even a trip to Vegas and my ambition of winning a WSOP bracelet. Reports of an epic final table battle as the short stack knocking out Mercier, Heinz, Katchalov, Selbst, Grospellier, Russo, Texas Dolly  and then the Poker Brat himself to take the spoils. Well everyone has to dream, as it’s our dreams that keep us alive.

 But, I really do need to get out more and meet people, so I guess purchasing an Ipad2 and downloading the new Pokerstars app would help me get out and about. I might even make some new friends, who knows?


Then to turn towards something for the house, a little conversion work for the garage and my very own little poker room with a bar. Cliché but what the hell, I deserve it. I could use my FPP to get some cards and chips, then for a festival of poker ‘a la Maison du Shaggle’. I could invite my twitter friends, maybe Pokerstars could re-tweet my invitation, hmm….that might just work.

 Then a whole new set up in the study with a state of the art PC, three 22” screens, just like Nanonoko during his recent world record attempt, just the thing for multi tabling on my favourite site, and lets  no forget a 42” plasma for the wall and watching the ‘Big Game’.


Then finally with what’s left, let’s bolster my online bank roll. I fancy a crack at the nosebleeds someday so a good opportunity to help chip me up never goes a miss. I’m sure that ‘Mrsweet28’, ‘Isildur1’ and ‘Illari Fin’ are already all a quiver with fear or is that anticipation?

 Well, that seems to have seen off the $5000 rather rapidly. I’d better get back to the tables and chip it up some more. 

See you at the felt and I hope ‘you run hotter than lava’ and  'lmayet your rivers run
full of boats’.


Shaggle69.

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As John Lennon sang- 

“So this is Christmas and what have you
done, another year over and new one just begun”
 
I find it is time to reflect on the year just gone and plan for the one to come. So what happened in 2011? The Western Economies continued to crash, the Arab world sought to move to democracy and
Poker was hit by the Full Tilt scandal. I was one of the lucky ones, I predicted the difficulties Full Tilt were to experience and was probably one of the last people to cash out my bankroll. I was forced to switch sites, and for a while I  wandered the electronic world of Poker like a Ronin, masterless. Through Ladbrokes, William Hill and Party Poker until I found Pokerstars. Attracted by stars like Kid Poker, Jason Mercier and Victoria Coren.

At the same time I stood back and took a real hard look at my meta-game and decided that I wasn’t going to continue to play poker just for fun, that I was going to have a ‘crack’ at hitting some ambitious targets. So in August I deposited £100 ($167) into my account and set off on an adventure. I also set up a twitter account and a website to chart my progress. The goal to build a bank roll that would take me to Vegas for the WSOP 2012. 
 
So where are we with the dream?
 
Happy to say, it’s not going too bad, some might even say that I’m doing ok. After initially rifling up to my first month’s target of $263, then next few months saw me falter losing months in both September and October totalling-$129 and almost taking me back to my original deposit levels. But here was were things started to be different from the previous 5 years of my poker life. I continued to stick to my ‘golden rules’ which included a strict bankroll management system and an anti-tilt policy. I found that instead of angrily blow the rest of my stack and bankroll to the sharks, I started to scrap and crawl back up. November saw a massive swing in
fortunes. I switched away from 6 max SnG Turbos to play at Full Ring 18 Max SnG Turbos. The results were startling. Whilst I was profitable at 6 Max, I found the following comparisons:-                 
                 
         Played  ITM     ROI  Profit ($)

STT    362     37.57  6.27  $303.82
MTT    133    32.33  36.62 $1144.57
 
The one thing that continues to plague me with difficulties is the cash game.
                                 
             Table 
            Sessions Hands      $ Won  Rake

Cash        37       10,284     -$235  -$200 
(I guess I really should get a Rake Back
  deal.)

So my highlights of the year?

Firstly and most importantly it looks like 2011 will end with my first full year in profit. In fact I’m almost even over my career. Secondly, recently cashing in the 10 Year Anniversary ‘Sunday Storm’ event on Stars, 120,000 entries and I made it to cash at 9,745, Top 8%, my first large pool MTT and great fun too. I also enjoyed my ‘Chip and chair’moment when during an 18 max
game, I went from 30 chips and 18th out of 18 to chip up and win. It was a roller coaster moment and a thorough enjoyable ride. Finally I always remember 2011 as the year that I started to play ‘proper’ poker. I’m a more even tempered, balanced and sometimes creative player than ever, I’m less results orientated, more performance orientated and am back to enjoying the game.

But what of next year?

Firstly I am still carrying on with my ‘Desperately Seeking Vegas’challenge. I’m currently hovering around 68% against monthly target, however the curve starts to significantly get steeper from January onwards and I’m running out of SnG levels to move up to. So by February, I’ll be facing a dilemma. How to I continue to increase my profit without the moving up the stakes level? 
 
Well there are three options that I’m currently considering:


1) Multi-table 18 Max games
2) Move to true MTT tournament, where a smaller buy-in can yield a larger return
3) Switch to cash games. 
 
None of the above look particularly appetizing to me, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

What else will be grabbing my attention in 2012?

I recently returned to the North East of England, which gives me easy access to a number of Casino’s in the area, so ‘Live’ play is back on the calendar. I’m even targeting playing in a UKIPT or GUKPT game this year, but probably after I’ve won my first three WSOP bracelets in Vegas!

Also I’m looking to upgrade the site to something.....More. So watch this space.

To finish, I like to thank anyone who has taken time to look at the site, I’m no Vicky Coren in my writing skills, but hopefully you might have got something from the blogs and the hands posted here. I wish you well for 2012 and I hope to see you at the felt.
 
Come on 2012, lets “Shuffle and deal”.


 
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Why do I hate poker on a Saturday?

According to the books, the forums and the blogs, weekends especially Saturdays are full of fat fish ready to be caught and eaten.

True, the games on Saturday are fired full of loose raises, passive calls and ill judged shoves.

So why is it then that regardless of this I feel like I take a beating every Saturday?

Am I an unconscious incompetent poker player, the type of guy who believes that he is better than the stats tell him and just unlucky?

Well I hope not....maybe my pokertracker will help me out, what do the stats say?

Ok, to start off, I’m a winning SnG low stakes player and have been for the last two years. True, I’ve been winning nickel and dime, but profit is profit, if I’d have bothered to get a rake back, then I’d return even more profit, but still, overall, I’m a winning player.

Is it then, that after along week and a Saturday full of hope and desire, I just think my glass is half empty, or my bullets are firing blanks? The only way is to delve a little more it the database....and look what I found;

For the last 6 months the following stats from my tracker show

Day                  Games played             Profit

Saturdays                    142                  -$31.83

All other days              262                  $394.73

How can that be....poker sites resembling ‘Barrels’ simply full of fish, UK guppies with their bright flappy tails, Russian sturgeon full of caviar, North Atlantic Salmon all but jumping into the bears jaws, even the odd tropical Angel fish from the Amazon basin. So why is it I’m being eating every Saturday like a water fly sat on the pond surface?

Well I’ve delved deeper into the facts to see if I’m loosening up too much, or not getting it in enough. I’m desperate to find a rationale or reason but all I find are reams of hands like the following;

http://www.pokerhand.org/?6249112 and http://www.pokerhand.org/?6249157 and http://www.pokerhand.org/?6249159 and my particular favourite at the end of a long grind... http://www.pokerhand.org/?6249165

I love the probability/odds that go with the last hand.... 69.17% pre-flop, 95.15% on the flop and when it all goes in...81.82%.

But picture the scene and the tension, the fat fish with his A4o thinking that he is slow playing with passive calls all the way down, the angler fish from the flop dangling the bait, before the turn action of...check, bet, check-raise all in, SNAP CALL and.....BAM the jaws seemingly snapping shut on dinner, but then with just 10 outs..CRASH dinner terms into a poisoned jellyfish...another cold deck...DAMN...TILT.

Obviously I could post the other times when low on chips I’ve shoved QQ on the button which crashes into AA in the blinds or the mis-read shove with my straight or set against the slow played flopped Q5 flush that hit on the turn.

But the point is, I can talk about statistical variance, probability and maths based approaches, but poker is not a science, the odds don’t always pay out to the favourite and even when you 80% to win, remember that your lose 1 in 5. So if your all in 5 times a game with those odds, chances are you are heading out to the rail. Poker is more luck that the pros credit it for, luck is part of the game, and some fish just live a charmed life, that’s life, that’s poker. Live with it or play chess.

Anyway for me, I hate the luck,, I hate the fish. For me poker is about the decisions not the winning. I like nothing better than making the right call, shoving it in ahead and blitzing the villain with a brilliant play that flanks them out of their skin.

The more difficult the table, the better the game, because unless your opponents can appreciate the defeat, see the brilliance, and comprehend the genius then playing and winning just isn’t any fun.

The fish will forever shove when behind and ignorantly blame it on bad luck, so for me it’s ‘no thanks’ to barrel shooting, I prefer to swim with the sharks and from the stats it appears i enjoy a fair share of shark fin soup to get me satiated.

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Pain and no gain 09/04/2011
 

Well the end of a dissappointing weekend. 33 SnG tournaments this weekend and no profit. I even had to move down the stakes back to $7.

But a late surge inspired by railing the WCOOP events today, made me take a punt at two, two table SnGs. Away from my usual 6 max turbo. I sat down at two $7- 9 seater turbos and an hour later I'd cashed third in one and won the other.

These two cashes turned around my fortune for Sundays games and left me with profit of $47.86 for the day, and given that when I sat down today I had dropped my Bankroll from $338 to $269 from the previous two days. I have to say that I'm happy with that.

Overall I'm down £21.39 for the weekend, but have been able to claw back above the $300 mark which means I'm allowed to play back at the $15 level.

I've checked my tracker results and it seems that after my $15 6 max turbos, the $7 2-table turbos are bringing me the most profit.

In fact looking at the stats I'm currently running the following profit levels:

Type                            Tournaments    Profit         ROI
$15 STT 6 max turbo      81                  $188.16     15.49
$7 MTT 2-Table turbo      5                   $139.32     298.06
$7 STT 6 max turbo        92                  $55.84       8.67
$7 STT 6 max                 8                   $45.12       80.57

I beleive that these are around good to average, although I realise that 5 and 8 tournaments doesn't really give a true result. Aside from that its looking good.

My loses are coming from MTTs, which I guess should be no surprise.

So I guess its back to rule number 2 : stick to what you know.

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A Swift One 09/02/2011
 
So the summer is all but over and September is here. The
inevitable run towards Halloween, bonfires, dark evenings and brown leaves, even the swifts under are eaves are packing up and heading south. Goodness I hate the Autumn, it reminds me of middle-age. 

But not this year, this year like a squirrel, I’m still going to be busy collecting and burying my nuts. Ready for next summer and Vegas. So how
is the challenge going? 
 
Let me remind myself of my end of August targets :– 
         Poker bankroll $262.50
         Weight 233lbs
 
Well not so......bad, surprisingly.

My Bankroll on the 31st August was $338.97, $76.47 up against target and a whopping 114% profit and more importantly 29% above my monthly target...ok not pretty good! I’ve been able to move up the table stakes to the $15 tables and haven’t noticed any change in either difficulty or success. I’m on a roll!! The target for this month $459.38 is just over $120 away or three straight wins. Wow, I’m starting to think that I might actually be able to do this. 

     “Vegas baby, com’n down !!”

I thinking WSOP, I’m thinking Bellagio and Bobby’s room, I’m thinking lounging by the pool....uh-oh, the speedo challenge! I almost forgot in the midst of my self-indulged fantasy. "What about the weight, fat boy", I hear
the dark voice from within cry. 
                 
     “231lbs.....2lbs ahead of my goal for the month....eat my shorts dark 
     one!”
 
Yep, it's all going well. It maybe be baby steps, there maybe be troubled waters ahead and rivers to be jumped but right now, I gonna take the win and enjoy. after all;
                 
     “Success is success and success breeds success, winning becomes a     
      habit.” 
  
Suddenly autumn doesn’t look so dull, the fervent activity that once looked like panic before the storm, simply looks like well planned preparation for the next stage of natures cycle. Even the swifts that are darting around my head seem to be saying to me..."looking good, see you in Vegas baby!"
 
Yep, summers gone and autumns here, but there is still plenty of nuts around. The tables are full and there's plenty for all.



Autumn is looking gooooooood.


 
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How do you improve your game? Some say that you simply have to
put in the hours and that there is no substitute for playing either live or
online, but is that the best way to up your game? I’ve been doing that and, nope, it appears that I am not the poker prodigy or the natural born hustler that I’ve seen in the films.

The facts are that I’ve been playing now for around 6 years, almost exclusively at the micro stakes and mostly in Sit n Go’s, but has my game
improved?

Yes it has, but not to the extent that I have built a firm bankroll and moved up the stakes, and after all, we all hear and read about the internet whizz kid that deposits $50 and is now playing nosebleed limits and featuring on the ‘The Big Game’ at 21 or 22. So how do they do it? 
  
I’m not sure and that’s my problem. I’ve read books by Harrington and Sklansky, joined forums such as 2+2. I’ve even turned to watching online
‘poker school’ podcasts and replays of big hands, but yet I seem not to have
improved enough to even move from my micro stakes limits. 
 
So is it me, and I destined to just be shark bait? The plankton at the bottom of the food chain or am I missing something simple? Something that will turn me from Whitebait to Great White.
 
Maybe I need to sit down and work out what I need to learn, but doesn’t this identify the real issue which is ‘what do I need to learn?’ How do you improve something by yourself if you don’t know what it is that you need to
learn? What is it that I don’t know? 
 
I don’t know!!
 
So how do I combat this self-fulfilling circle of ignorance? How do I drag myself from this quagmire of inertia? How have I learnt in the past?
 
Simple, I went to School and College. I listened to a teacher or
got a coach. I’ve even used peer mentoring, but why these methods over those ‘self help’ type books and online podcasts? Simple really, because books et al provide theorems and general lessons, they don’t provide personalised learning and it is this incisive approach that I’m missing. I’m missing the one to one or group discussion on MY leaks and MY faults. 
 
I guess my first move will therefore to be to start posting on poker discussion boards rather than simply reading them, the next trying to get
together a group locally that are willing to sit down and talk poker rather than play it, and possibly to seek out some 1-2-1 coaching.
 
So the Chinese had the solution all along.....
 
     “A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.” Chinese Proverb
 
And it only took me 6 years to find this out.

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Month             Monthly          Target BR   
                      Starting BR     Month End

August            $150.00          $262.50       
September      $262.50          $459.38         
October           $459.38          $803.91 
November       $803.91          $1,340.11 
December       $1,340.11        $2,233.97 
January           $2,233.97       $3,724.02 
February         $3,724.02        $5,586.03 
March             $5,586.03        $8,379.05 
April               $8,379.05        $12,568.57 
May                $12,568.57      $16,766.48 
 
So I've worked out my road map to success. A monthly target to aim at (above), no fancy formula, just some figures pulled together that 'kinda' makes sense. Well to me anyway, and that I guess is what counts most.

When I look down the chart, I reckon that'll I start to worry around January time, but hey, who doesn't worry about money in January?

And my final target of $16.7k, I know what your saying... 

    "...that won't get you to the WSOP Main Event."

    "Nope, but then who said tha it had to be the ME? Not me!"

So I'm pulling for one of the lower buy-in games, and who knows if I get there...(cough)....when I get there, I might just cash big in the little event and make it to the big game! Then again I have heard that there are always some cheap satellite games to the ME going on, so who knows my 10 month blog might turn into my 16 month blog and chart my way to the November Nine? Well as Oscar Wilde once said:

    "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"

So I have a plan, or more accurately I have a target. Plans are to come later. The first 3 will need to consider:

1. How will I play enough to increase my bankroll whilst still working full time and being a dad?
2. How do I rapidily improve my game for when I move up the SnG stakes.
3. How will I make the successful adjustments to cash games away from SnGs?

Life is never easy, and the road always seems to be up-hill. but then as Margaret Thatcher (ex-UK Prime Minster) once said:

    "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it.”

So here's not to easy living, but to working hard, playing tough and dreaming of stardom!

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Poker Rules, Ok? 08/03/2011
 

Another night, another loss, but one thing seems to be different. 

In the past a losing streak almost certainly meant ‘busto’ to my poker account, but not this time. True I have been leaking more money than a faulty facet but this time no ‘busto’.

In fact I’m only around $12 down on my initial buy in. 
 
True, a losing player will always go broke, but am I seeing the benefits of managing my game better than before? 

“Possibly, NO, probably.”

Around a month ago, I decided to set out some simple rules to play by and on the whole have stuck to them and maybe they are paying dividends in their own little way.

My five simple rules are;

    1. Don’t play angry 
    2. Stick to what you know
    3. Concentrate
    4. Position, position, position
    5. Play the player, not the cards

Why these rules? Well it helps me to remember my natural failings
as a poker player. We all have them, except for maybe Phil Ivey.

Mine, are as follows;

Tilting is my biggest enemy. Luck is against me. Every coin flip goes against me, every river turns a two outer and every player at the table is just a lucky donkey. To paraphrase the Poker Brat; 

     “if you took luck out of the game, I’d win every time.” 

Yep I hear myself saying it every time I pay someone off, and then I’m off, sledging in the chat box, screaming at the kids and even kicking the dog, it has to be his fault right? Lying there at my feet snoring!!
 
    “...pay attention dog my aces just got freaking cracked again!!”

It has to be everybody else’s fault, it can’t be mine!! 
 
So rule one “Don’t play angry”. Rule two is really part of my rule number one problem. 

     “...freaking No Limit Hold’em! I bet if I changed and played Omaha H/L I’d have more luck.” 
 
Donk, another full buy-in tilted off.
 
Rule three, multi-tasking.

     “Lets just quickly check the news and update my twitter page, has anyone posted on Facebook today? Oh and I need to search for the car insurance which needs renewing....”

Donk, another crash out in 5th or 6th.

Would I try hitting a golf ball, whilst texting on my mobile? No I guess not. So why is it that I can play poker while chatting to the missus, surfing the internet on a sub page? 

Answer: You can’t !! So Stop It, Donkey!!
 
The last two rules, well I’ll leave you to think them over. If you don’t know why then a quick trip to 2+2 or Pokerstars School will set you right.

 
But it’s amazing how many times I have to ask the question 

    “am I  playing to the above?”

In fact I can look back on most of my bad nights on the electronic felt and can nearly always pin point a failing in at least one of the above. Last night, 3 and 5 were missing from my game. In the end I seemed unable to put other players on any type of holding at all, I had to shut it down and go to bed. 

Maybe if I’d checked my list sooner I’d have quit earlier and saved even more of my precious bankroll.

And that then brings me onto another critical change I have made in the last month, a simple Bankroll management system. 

Now I don’t have a ‘proper’ bankroll, poker is fun and a hobby. I’m lucky I have a good job and on the whole can afford to reload my account once every couple of months. The outlay on poker for me is well within limits; strangely it’s one of the cheaper hobbies that I have engaged with over the years (golf being probably the most expensive). Now it’s nothing spectacular, just a simple adaptation from Jesus Ferguson, a simple 1/20th of my roll for any buy-in to a STT SnG, and a 10% maximum buy in to any cash game. 

Yep its boring, yep it’s frustrating, yep it stops me going from Zero to Hero overnight, but it seems to have stopped me going bust every month. It’s not as tight and as well defined as some, but at least there are some boundaries and this last month was the first time I actually stuck to it. I’ve avoided re-buying in even during a downswing that has spanned a couple of weeks now. 

So in conclusion, Poker rules (except when it sucks!!).

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So, I have been tweeting now for some time under the name of Shaggle69.

In those months I have accumulated a whole twenty-four followers, ok I’m a little behind Lady Gaga and Stephen Fry but a guy has to start somewhere.

Anyway, exclusive can be good. It’s not quantity its quality that counts, if you don’t believe me then just ask Louis Vuitton or Ferrari.

But I digress, I’m starting a blog to track through the next ten months of my life as a micro stakes to high stakes poker player. If Jesus Ferguson can make $10g from nothing then so can I. If Kerry Katona can lose six stones then I can lose four, all it’ll take is maths, a low fat diet and will  power.....the first two seem easy enough, will work on the last one first thing tomorrow...HONEST!!

I’m not sure how any of this is going to work, probably end up as a list of bad beat stories, couldn’t resist that bar of chocolate, frustrated self
loathing kind of thing but who knows it might end up as a cross between Gus Hanson’s ‘Every Hand Revealed’ and Weight Watchers ‘Pro Points Plan’. It might even make me a millionaire by its self, who knows.


Anyway, follow if you want, ignore if you don’t and feedback if you have nothing better to do. 

Good luck at the tables, may your rivers be full of boats and I'll
see you in Vegas!

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