A little trumpet blowing

 You’d probably presume that, as a journalist, my moral compass is set differently to the Average Joe on the street. Not so. I’m actually a stand-up guy. So it’s with no ethical conflict whatsoever that I recommend the July issue of Inside Poker, which is on the shelves now. It’s a great issue of what is a routinely excellent magazine. And it just so happens to include a feature what I done wrote. It’s the ‘How to make a million’ piece trailed pleasingly prominently on the front cover.

I know what you’re thinking: “This chancer turns up after a two year absence banging on about how he needs to improve his poker skills in order to have a chance of making a living from sitting on his arse next year, and yet a reputable magazine is employing him to write a feature on how to make lots of money from poker. What a joke!” What can I say? They’re suckers! Not really; the piece was written up using a bunch of tips and advice given by a number of established professionals, so the guidance is good. I got to interview some great players who were very generous with their time. There are contributions from Neil Channing, Annie Duke, Vicky Coren, Jeff Kimber, Adam Noone and Ryan Pachmayer covering all aspects of the game. Really pleased with how it turned out.

Great mag, great contributors

Call off the search

Two years, eh? Just think what you can achieve in two years with a little get-up-and-go. And yet, I’ve done very little. While there have been some major changes in my personal life, other areas of my life remain much the same. For instance, I still work as a journalist in a job I don’t really enjoy (the company has changed; my apathy not so much), although I do still do some freelance work in a subject area that I find infinitely more rewarding. More on that shortly.

When I last wrote in 2007, I was gearing up to get married. I’m pleased to announce, albeit extremely belatedly, that the wedding went down without a hitch. Well, it pissed down with rain, but apart from that it was all good. I can’t quite believe that I will have spent two years as a married man come next month, but I guess time flies and all that. The other major change came about with the arrival of my son in February. Clearly, all parents are naturally biased, but he’s a little belter. He’s a handful at times, granted, but on the whole we’ve been really lucky with sleeping through the night from an early age, etc. He’s generally very well behaved; we’ve heard some real horror stories form the other new parents we’ve met recently.

Anyway, when I was last regularly updating this blog I began to write a little more frequently about poker. With life being as hectic as it has been recently, my opportunities to play poker diminished spectacularly. Now, though, the little man is going to bed at an earlier hour and I’m finding myself with some time in the evenings to get back into the swing of things. There’s a real possibility that my wife will go back to work in the New Year, with me taking on househusband duties. If that happens, I’ll be looking to bring in some extra cash with freelance writing and poker. If that’s to happen, I need to ramp up my game – starting now. I’ve hit a handful of low-stakes final tables since my return to online poker, so I want to use that as a platform to push on and evolve my game a step further. I’m primarily a tournament player (a good one at that, but with a couple of key areas which could do with improvement), but I need to drastically improve my erratic cash game if this ‘do the odd bit of real work in-between gambling for a living’ pipe dream is going to become a realistic option.

So I plan to get back to the regular blogging. It’ll still be about a range of stuff, but I’d expect it to be heavily poker-related as I try and ramp up my skills between now and the new year. I fully expect it to be a roller coaster ride of excitement*, so why not drop by now and again and see how I’ve been getting on?

I know, I know – tl:dr. The short version? I’m now married with a kid and – more importantly – I’ve stopped talking in the third person.

Incidentally, if you’d like to receive dull, infrequent updates of a more concise nature, you can join literally tens of like-minded individuals and follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/trendthrift

*Excitement not guaranteed.

Frustrating times

This post is later than intended because, yes, I have been busy finishing off the work I was supposed to be doing yesterday. Pity me.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m making a concerted effort to improve my poker game online. While I’ve been on a great run in general since I started recording my results, I’ve hit something of a slump in the past couple of days. Bad players are getting rewarded for silly moves, and it’s getting a little frustrating. Of course, I’m far from the finished article myself, and I’m all too aware that although skill plays a big part, poker is still very much a game of luck in places. A couple of examples:

 10-seat SNG

Six players left, I’m holding Q7o in the Big Blind. The guy in the Small Blind, who has been agressive the whole game, calls. The flop comes Q-J-x, so I’m in decent shape here with top pair. I raise around 2/3 of the pot, only for the SB to re-raise all-in. From studying his play so far, I read this as a huge over-bet because of a weak hand. I call, and he turns over KJ. My read was spot on, and I’m very happy. Until another Jack comes down on the turn, of course.

$5 MTT

899 entrants, around half of those are left. I get moved to a new table, and in the first hand there I get dealt pocket Kings in first position. I raise a little more than three times the Big Blind to show strength (I’m new to the table and so have no information about the other players; it’s best to play ABC poker here). The guy to my left calls. The flop comes J-J-10. I bet out big, he calls. That’s a worry. If he’s got pocket Jacks, then fair enough I guess, but any other hand with a J would be a strange call to such a strong pre-flop bet from first position. When the turn card is a low card, I push all-in. He calls instantly and shows J9o for trip 9s, and I’m out of the tournament. I have no idea how he’s calling a big raise with J9o pre-flop, but this is the kind of thing I’m talking about.

I don’t go in for slating other players for making money with ‘bad’ moves, for a number of reasons:

•  It’s not really necessary; I find some of the slagging off you find online a little unsavoury
• What’s the point in telling somebody they’ve made a move that will lose them more money than it will make them in the long run? If they take note of what you’re saying, that’s one less person to make easy money from in the future
• Although I’ve moved up a level recently, I’m still only playing $10 games. I shouldn’t really be surprised that there are still people who haven’t studied the game to the same extent that I have at this level. After all, $10 isn’t exactly huge money

The problem is that I consider myself good enough to be playing at a higher level where these kinds of things will happen less often, but I’m realistic enough to know that I need to build up a significant bankroll before I even think about playing higher up the ladder. I just need to get my head down and ride through it. And more importantly I need to stop whinging about it on here. Sorry.

I will never say the word ‘procrastinate’ again

I’ve been messing around with the layout of the site a little, as I didn’t bother with it too much when I first started. If you’re wondering why I’ve spent so much time updating the site today when the last post beforehand was written back in November, well let’s just say that I’ve got an article due in tomorrow. You’ll find my productivity on here rise whenever I’ve got actual paid work to be doing. I am an idiot.

Anyway, a big pat on the back for me. That’s right, I’ve become the last person on the internet to sign up for a Last.fm account. You’ll see the results over there on the right. At least that’s the plan, but I don’t really know what I’m doing.  No worries if not, you’re not missing much — it would probably just say THE POSTAL SERVICE in ten-storey high block capitals anyway.

Building the stack

First off, yes, I know that new image at the top of the page looks awful amateurish. There’s a good reason for that (clue: it’s not because that’s the look I was aiming for). We’ll call it a placeholder for now, and we can all pretend that I’ll get around to replacing it. Okay?

 The reason said image contains poker-related paraphernalia is that I’m going to be writing a fair bit about it in subsequent posts. I’ve been playing the game online and in ‘real life’ for about a year now (tournament play mostly; I’m not too interested in cash games just yet), and I’ve had a few nice results along the way. It’s only recently, though, that I’ve been keeping detailed results of my online play. I want to see exactly how I’m progressing, with one eye on taking steps up the ladder as the stats tell me its appropriate to do so. I don’t have the exact figures with me at the moment, but since I started noting down my exact results from November 22nd 2006, I’ve made around $550. Admittedly, a big chunk of that profit came from a fourth place finish in a $10 Multi Table Tournament, so that skews the overall picture somewhat. That said, I showed a good profit at $5 Single Table Tournaments (10-man Sit-and-Go or SNG) too. I played 100 SNG at $5 levels and showed a healthy profit, so I’ve now moved up to the $10 games. That’s started fairly well too, but I won’t be making any decisions until I’ve played at least 100 of those. 

 I have a couple of friends who are undertaking a similar push to further themselves when it comes to online poker, which helps immensely when it comes to comparing strategy, etc. He’s just started his own blog, Road to the Final Table, so pop along and give him some encouragement. Yes, he’s an Arsenal fan, but try and look past that for now.