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I have been on trips where this is the case and they are a world apart from the Sky experience. Last year with another site I basically collected my buy in money from the front desk and never seen another soul from the site in question. I am quite capable of entertaining myself but it makes it a much more pleasurable experience when the site is more involved. I would have liked to have been more involved with the golf stuff, the bus tour and made more of the first night meet up but the passport situation kind of put the blockers on that.
Also for some it would have been their first time over in Vegas and those extra elements that Sky add would make it such a more enjoyable experience for many in that situation.
As for the 'odds calls'... Well you obviously brought your Vegas form back with you and set me straight on that
Played for the first time since I got back last night. Still feeling knackered from the jetlag and long journey, yeah yeah I know some people have real problems and have to work 12 hour+ days etc so I will suck it up
Only played 2 OH8 DYM's and the 4 weekly OH8 MTT's for the FOSP league.
Cashed in 1 of the 2 DYM's (luckily the higher buy in one to give a small profit). I should have cashed in the other as I had a nice stack but a certain reg kept throwing the pot at my BB. The tourneys went better and I managed 2 FT's out of the 4 with a win in the £2.20 for £55. A nice steady £55 profit all in all after the first night of play and also managed to win the weekly leaderboard.
Enjoying catching up on the forum stuff too and the WSOP thread. Happy to see Johnny Bax is the chiplead in the WSOP ME. I watched pretty much all the videos he used to post online as I started out in poker and learned so much from them. Top bloke who would be/is a great ambassador for poker.
Thanks for reading and GL on the tables!
More seriously, was a tough final 4, that. 4 tidy players, & all know what they are doing. Proper cat & mouse stuff, lots of meta-game, & a real need to concentrate, to find the "spots". Loved that game.
Morning Mark,
Not seen you on site for nearly a week, & no Diary updates - hope you are ok mate.
Amazing how he has absolutely dominated those Thursday evening PLO8 MTT's. Different gravy, clearly.
All is well just been caught up with some other things. My girlfriends 30th birthday and my father's birthday tomorrow. Also been out cycling quite a bit and had a few work things to clear up after Vegas.
Haven't read the thread yet but I see the mention of new sattys to Punta Cana, might have to give those a try
By next week I am hoping to have the time to get playing a decent amount of games again!
Hope you are all running well on and off the tables.
Glad all is well is Marky land.
You have been cycling?
Crikey, never had you down as a cyclist.
Ladies & Gentlemen of the jury.
Does this look like a cyclist in training to you?
It's Marky, in Vegas.
Have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed getting out and about on the bikes over the last week and I guess it has to be of some benefit when mounting the scales and hoping for some sort of semi respectable number to be reflected back. At the very least it should compensate to some extent for the all too frequent visits to the bacon roll shop.
I am a bit more into the cross country off road stuff and I wouldn't hold out much hope of catching me clad in lycra
^^^^
Memo to Mr (Or Miss) Photo Approver - No rush. No rush at all.
I was feeling completely knackered when I got back from Vegas (had a great time but was just feeling so tired). I put this down to jetlag but I don't think this is what it was. The last 18 months have been completely insane. As I think I mentioned somewhere on here, during the last 18 months my mother, grandmother, grandfather and partners grandmother have all died. Obviously these things take their toll and I was doing what I could to help the family out and deal with a lot of the arrangements etc.
On top of this I had to produce an extensive business profile for a charity organisation making some recommendations for them going forward, also another document outlining their services and the benefit of these services to the community and also helped them with a proposal to take over a council building via an asset transfer. I was also serving on the board for 2 charities, at uni full time studying for my psychology degree and dealing with the deadlines associated with that, trying to run a cleaning business, trying to start up another online business and dealing with the real life stuff such as running a house with 2 hyper energetic dogs, 2 cats and 2 'kids'. Then of course on top of this I have been trying to get back into the poker.
I was thinking Vegas would be a break and a sort of recharge period but as my father was there for the first time I done a load with him to let him see a lot of the local attractions. We went up Mount Charleston, visited Lake Las Vegas, Lake Mead, done the Grand Canyon helicopter tours etc etc.
The upshot is even with the 2 day+ journey back due to diversions and delays, I don't think the tiredness was down to jetlag but just generally feeling a bit burnt out! I know everyone has hectic stuff going on in their lives and problems to deal with so I am not expecting everyone to break out the violins but I just personally feel like I have spread myself a bit too thin over the last couple of years.
Kind of looking forward to uni starting back up as the financial support covers the basic bases, the work isn't really too demanding and on reflection there actually seems to be more free time for the poker...
I am planning to chill a lot for the weekend then get tore back into everything from the beginning of the coming week. Really want to try and push for the Punta Cana package and if I am lucky enough to snag this I will take my partner this time.
In relation to the poker...
Well I haven't played nearly as much as I wanted to recently. I did have a free ticket to a $22 NLHE tourney on another site which I would lose if I didn't play it. Got down to the last 50 out of 1100 runners then with 300k chips, blinds at 10k/20k with a 2k ante I get TT UTG 9 handed. With about 50k in the middle due to blinds and antes. I cannot see any play here other than open shoving. It all folds around to the BB who has 400k and decides it would be a good spot to call off 3/4 of his stack with Q9s. The 9 on the flop and 9 on the turn put an end to that run which was disappointing. That pot would have put me in very nice shape for a deep deep run with around $4k up top for 1st, such is life.
The only other thing I have really played was the weekly league games last night. Got off to a good start and won the first MTT but couldn't get another decent run and finished 3rd in the weekly league. This was enough to tie up the monthly leaderboard and snag a £33 ticket.
So a bit of a chill period at the weekend, a birthday dinner to go to and then hopefully next week I will feel charged up and will get some work done off the tables and try and seriously up the volume on the tables and make a start on pushing for the Punta Cana packages.
Apologies for the book but kind of thinking out loud and I am sure most of you have figured out that being succinct is not my strong point!
Thanks for reading and hope you are all running well!
Have a great weekend,
Marky
Played a little tonight.
Feeling quite refreshed after feeling sluggish last week so was looking forward to splashing some chips around tonight.
Bricked the rewards freeroll and the £5.50 BH.
Also played the £33 B/H as I had a free ticket to it from the OH8 league. Lost half my stack early with TT when I made the set on a horrible board and opponent made the straight. Rebuilt from around 3,000 to 9000+ then Haysie joined the table who I met in Vegas. Was nice to play against him for the 1st time although not profitable. Raised with KK into his BB and flop was KT3. I continued the betting and the turn was an ace. I was hoping he floated the flop and hit the ace on the turn and so bet again, he called and the river was the Q giving a KT3AQ board. I was conflicted as to whether I should check/call or bet/fold. I decided to lead for value and was reraised big so had to let it go.
He said he had the straight and I have no reason to not believe him so NH
I did manage to build again and got up to 17k then hit a few rough spots until with 20 BBS left I 3 bet shoved AQs into AA... I had thought about flatting and could have got away but decided to go for the stack but my timing was a bit off lol. Managed £11 in bounties so a small profit as the ticket was free.
Squeezed in some OH8 DYM's (3x £5.50's and 3 x £11's) Cashed in all apart from one of the £5.50's and really enjoyed playing these tonight. The games were filled with strong players but I felt I was playing good, had my patience back and was running lucky too which always helps.
Went to see if there were any Punta Cana satty's after these games but I was a tad late.
An enjoyable evening playing, a small profit of around £36 and some good banter at the tables. There was even some chat about food to keep Tikay happy
Looking forward to playing a fair amount over the coming weeks.
Hope you are all running well and thanks for reading!
I would say on reflection that overall I played a bit patchy tonight and ran just about right so no complaints. I did hit 7 tables at one point (I know some players play much much more than that) and I used to manage that with no issues but I feel more comfortable with 3 or 4 these days (maybe it is the 6 max thing) and don't think the amount of tables helped the cause tonight. Will try and keep it to 4 maximum next session and see if that helps.
It was an enjoyable night in terms of the games were all played in a nice spirit with lashing of 'witty banter' to quote Dave.
Will dust off and try and up the game tomorrow
One point that came up was my open raise sizing. I tend to bet silly numbers such as 100.49, 99.63 etc and make use of the fact you can bet to decimal places on Sky. I am surprised more people do not do it to be honest and would be interested to hear others opinions on this.
My take on it is as follows...
I am not great at mathematics but I am very strong at arithmetic. In terms of the game dynamic the fraction of a chip is unlikely to ever make much difference in real terms, however, if you feel your arithmetical ability is above average would it not be prudent to make the maths marginally more complicated for your opponent to figure out? I mean yes it is a marginal difference but I would say it does make it ever so slightly more difficult for opponents to 'do their sums', figure out what is going on and work out their bet sizing and odds.
Another thing I have noticed and this is not aimed at anyone in particular... The betting silly numbers thing seems to tilt some players. Most wouldn't care a jot but some do seem to get rather irked by it. I don't quite understand why, I mean what makes numbers with decimals more annoying numbers compared to round numbers? If there is a legitimate way to possibly tilt or confuse a very small number of opponents by betting slightly odd amounts to two decimal points then why not do it? Even if it only helps draw mistakes out of 2% or 3% of opponents surely that would make it worthwhile? I am struggling to see any downside to this...
Anyways I will stop rambling for a bit, hope you are all running well and as always... thanks for reading!
On the tables
Have been playing a few more OH8 DYM's since my last update and feel my game is not 100% where it can be, there are some sloppy mistakes but I do feel it is relatively close. I am happy enough with this as I feel my style is successfully transitioning a little at the moment to a more aggressive but slightly more selective style. Not necessarily more selective hands but being a bit more selective about the spots I am playing. Picking up a few extra spots that I may have been missing, dropping a few I may have persued in the past and altering the aggression levels in some spots. These changes have been required as the play in the games has morphed a bit of late.
Anyways, generally all going good in the last day and a half with 11 cashes in my last 14 and a profit over the last couple of days of around £80. Probably most importantly I have been enjoying the games more and am looking forward to the sessions.
The weekly league games didn't go great. I created 2 spots for 50k stacks in which I was significantly ahead in both spots in the first game, on and near the final table. Winning either pot in which I was well ahead would have gave me the stack to try and take it down. One of the pots I had a flopped set versus top pair top kicker but lost to a runner runner boat. These things happen and I couldn't muster a decent run in any of the other 3 to match it anyway. There is always next week
I really want to go after the Punta Cana stuff and ideally wanted to be pounding the qualifiers from the get go to give myself the best chance. I have a few other things going on which have made finances more restricted and limited my approach at this exact time. This is temporary and I will definitely have a major pop at the Punta Cana stuff after the 1st week in September if not before and am hoping to have a lot of bashes at some of the other bigger tourneys around the same time.
Off the tables
Been enjoying cycling and trying to get into slightly better shape. This has been a bit hit and miss though. I am still smoking more than I should be (really need to address this soon) and am eating too much which has undone a lot of the benefits of the cycling...
To be fair I usually play football for around 45-60 minutes every day with my son and my 2 crazy dogs but I have done some kind of damage to my abdomen and either severely torn some muscles or developed a hernia or something similar. Had the aches for about 2 months + which subsided in Vegas when not playing football but instantly returned with the first kick of a ball when I got back so I will need to knock the football on the head for at least a month.
Choosing my specific psychology modules this week for the 3rd year of my BA studies and kind of looking forward to getting back to the studies. I will keep a firm schedule and make sure I leave plenty of time for the poker.
Also nice to see Celtic win on Wednesday night and progress to the last qualifying round of the champions league. Not sure where it is all headed under Brendan Rogers but there has to be a bit more hope than when Deila was in charge. Reminds me the draw for the 3rd round might have taken place so I will go check that out
Also good to see the traffic in the OH8 DYM's pick up so much recently. I have a few commitments during the days of the coming weeks but I am hoping to put some monster volume in at the DYM tables in the coming months seen as I am enjoying them more lately. Enjoying poker in general so much more lately, had a bit of a lull in interest immediately after Vegas but thoroughly enjoying it again, hence the spamming in the forum etc lol.
Hope you are all running golden and thanks for reading!
It has felt a bit like banging my head off the wall the last couple of weeks. 1 step forward, 1 step back, rinse and repeat. Have a few things to sort out and some commitments away from the tables just now so am going to give the tables a rest for a few weeks. Might pop in and out for the Thursday oh8 league games if possible.
In a few weeks uni starts back up which actually means funding kicks in, other commitments fall away and I am hoping to put a whole lot more volume in. By then a mini-break will hopefully have helped clear the head.
Hope you are all running golden and see you all in a few weeks if not before.
Morning Mark,
Just a quick note to say hope all is well, & you'll soon be back amongst us.
You did warn us you'd be AWOL for a few weeks, & we've certainly missed your presence.
Fair to say, in your absence, the games are a bit easier, too, so no rush to return, right?
PS - GO AWAY
Appreciate the message sir
All is well here! Have been enjoying the outdoors and in particular transforming my back garden from something resembling a war zone to a nice tranquil and pleasant place to spend some time. Am even hoping to have a little office built out the back in the near future so I can disappear and play poker sessions in relative peace.
Apart from that I have been sorting a lot of rather dull things out such as university funding and module selection for the 3rd year of my psychology BA.
Hopefully the little break will have a positive effect on my game when I return (probably next week, possibly on Monday if not Tuesday all being well). Am hoping to be playing an awful lot when I return so am making the most of the complete break at the moment.
Hope you are tearing the DYM's up and all is well off the tables too!
Looking forward to coming back very soon and trying to work out what ridiculous ranges you will be attacking my BB's with
Have a great weekend mate & see you on the felt soon.
Took a bit of a break from poker as I am trying to do some major work on my house and gardens. Making some great progress but still work to do!
Before/after pic of the back garden which I bored Tikay with earlier
Really enjoyed getting it into shape and have left room to build a poker office/study type refuge from the noise of the house at the bottom of the garden. Also built a patio type area out of shot to chill with a beer/wine in the evenings when the weather permits (should be at least twice a year on the west coast of Scotland right?). Hoping to get the officey thingybob done in the coming weeks.
Returned to the tables the other night and started with some OH8 DYM's. Super keen and thought the break may have improved my patience etc. This wasn't an entirely correct assumption. Played 'okay' initially and ran quite bad. Then played below average/average and still ran bad and wound up about £30 down. The games had wound up for the night so I played some PLO cash games and lost another £70. So around £100 down, no biggy and I am chalking this up to a mixture of run bad and play bad.
Tikay's email informing me that I had won a super roller ticket via the forum competition got my Sunday off to a pleasant start so thanks to Tikay and Sky for that! Especially grateful for the email as I may not have noticed this as I was working on the house and garden all day.
Not sure exactly where I am going from here in a poker sense. Will definitely be playing more over the coming months and will definitely play a reasonable chunk of OH8 DYM's. Having said that, I feel I have a problem with my patience in these at the moment and the fact winnings are limited due to the game dynamic and traffic is somewhat restrictive I am unsure exactly how many I will play. Definitely a fair amount although will have to tweak the patience levels. There are some juicy OH8 MTT's around online these days so I may mix in some or a lot of these depending on how they go.
Apart from the poker, uni starts back next week. Passed everything and with pretty high marks last year but was getting quite bored with it by the time 2nd year wound up in June but the break has helped renew my interest. This is handy as it is the 3rd year of a Psychology BA am I am about to start and this year basically ties up at the very least the ordinary degree; 99% sure I will do the 4th 'honours' year after that though, all being well.
Anyways I will go get ready for the super roller which starts in < 1 hour. Will try to not be 'too distracted' by the Malta vs Scotland game in the background
Hope you have all been doing well the last few weeks, winning loads of ££'s and enjoying life!
Thanks for reading and GL @ the tables.