A busy two weeks and a Blogging Bad Beat

I've gone through spells in my life where I take up jogging or, when I was younger, running. I really enjoy it and get a lot of benefit from it. Then for some reason, it'll be wet and cold or I'm just tired and I'll miss a couple of days. Before you know it, a couple of weeks go past and each day that you miss seems to matter less. And so it has been with this blog. Hopefully I am back in the saddle though. I have been keeping up to date with my favourite blogs and am pleased to see Adam around again.

I hate to end the year with a bad beat story ... but ... having finally got around to capturing the last 2 weeks in an entry, the Save failed because my wireless had dropped out. Gutted, I couldn't muster the energy to retype it all again. Luckily it is NYE and I am now typing in Notepad, so I don't have an option but to jot down the festive season activities.

Christmas is always busy at home, we close a few things out at work, we have 3 birthdays including my own, the kids are finishing school and it is the middle of summer in Oz. Add to the mix a healthy dose of poker and the blog has taken a back seat for 2 weeks. I won't be able to recreate last night's lost epic entry but I did want to share the two most memorable poker happenings, a sweat session with Laff and a home game.

SWEATING LAFF

Thanks to an entry on Laffs blog, I offered to watch his play and see if there was any value that I could add by sweating him. The answer was a resounding 'No'. Laff was kind enough to blame the internet lag but the truth is that I am way off being qualified to comment on someone's style in a short session. It was my first attempt and I'd be interested to learn if anyone can add any real value in such an exercise.

What did appear useful though was firing up 4 tables of my own and talking my way through my logic, similar to a Training Video. Again, I am way under-qualified but the exercise taught me a lot and Laff seemed to learn too. I discovered that my play is very inconsistent. I'm not convinced that that is not such a bad thing as it provides balance. While inconsistent on the surface, it may have underlying reasons behind it that I don't fully understand myself (I hope).

Starting hands are the foundation of hold'em strategy. Refining the ranges for stack sizes and your opponents playing styles is something that must be tailored to your own risk tolerance and post flop play. I've now realised that since reading Harrington on Cash that my objective is to stack off whenever I am confident that I am in front. Playing that style, I find that selective pot-sized bluffs pay off more than 50% of the time and are hence profitable.

Hopefully Laff and I can have another session soon and I may well learn a little more about my own play.

Home Game

Now this section was my epic as I had 12 people around for a Christmas Home Game. It went off very well and I had detailed all of the players and their styles (alas, without Jesse's humour). Format was one that we'd used before - casino rules enforced, 50c/$1 blinds, $100 buy-in, top-ups at any time in $10 increments. Tip: Make up zip lock bags with complete Buy Ins in advance.

The long and short was that we had 2 extras turn up which meant we split into 2 6-max tables which worked well. We didn't lose anyone all night and with rebuys, the bowl became pretty full. It still amazes me the scale of the poker economy. When I first deposited $25, I sweated over 1c/2c. I remember reading someone who couldn't understand someone sweating near the bubble of a $1 tourney. I can say that I still have the discipline to take those situations seriously, while also being able to shove a few hundred dollars in on a single bet, live or online. Anyway, when cashing out $4000+, it all balanced to the $. That's 5 nights out of 5 for perfect accounting.

My own result was a slightly disappointing $200 win. I had the softer table of the two and ran into a few big hands from the same player who had an amazing run of cards. He made $650, we had one other small winner and three losers. The other table was a lot tougher with everyone being a very good tournament player. As you know, cash is different and the cream did come to the top. One young guy (who can use the money the most) played perfect TAG style and took down 2 big pots for a $450 win. On that table we had 1 big loser and the rest pretty much stayed even for the night. Everyone that played has plenty of money, so no-one gets really hurt.

Relative to my online success (or lack thereof), offline reaps the benefits of all the study and experience of playing 100K+ hands. My offline bankroll is mounting up and even though it isn't enough to retire on, it is certainly significantly more than a burger flipping wage. I have had the significant advantage of occassional soft home games and no rake.