Betfair.net

One thing that usually really gets on my nerves at the poker tables is really arrogant players. You know the type, the ones who when they win a hand boast at how great they are and when they lose it was never their fault. However, now and again, someone comes along and adds another side to arrogance that is hilarious. One such player goes by the name of ch3ckraise on the popular forum, 2+2.

Ch3ckraise basically started a thread where he posted a victory song he posts into the chat whenever he wins a full stack from his opponent in his heads-up cash games. Usually I'd think he was a bit of a tosser but it's actually quite funny, especially when you read some of the replies he gets from his recently stacked opponents. To make things even better, one of the posters on 2+2 made an absolutely brilliant music video about it and put it on YouTube!

If you've watched it and wonder why Barry Greenstein features quite heavily in it, it is because he is going to say this catchphrase if he stacks someone in the next series of High Stakes Poker. Barry has already uttered the one-liners, "Lol donkaments", and "math is idiotic" in order raise money for charity and has promised to say "Bing, Blang, Blaow" if he felts someone!

Well, I suppose I better update on my own poker playing even though it doesn't really make pretty viewing. Since my staking started I hadn't had a single wining session from the four I had played so I was in two minds about playing my fifth session. I know results are all independent of each other but part of me expected to lose and the other part expected a huge heater to wipe out my losses.

Unfortunately the Poker Gods (amen) decided it would be the former and on Friday I had my worst session yet, dropping over 10 buy-ins and meaning I had lost nearly half of my backer's money. Now I knew I wasn't playing as badly as to lose close to $200 playing $6.50 games so I asked him to come online and go through some of my hands and stats with me.

He was surprised to see how horrible I was running and that I was close to 80,000 chips under EV but he also pointed out some end-game leaks I had that could have helped turn a few of the tournaments I bubbled into cashes and min-cashes into more substantial wins. The leaks were mainly not pushing wide enough with less than ten big blinds but we put this down to possibly playing too many tables and auto-folding hands that look like trash.

On Saturday night I fired up four of the $6.50 45 man games and finished 33rd twice, 17th and 15th, again running into dominating hands at key times. These defeats left me with 60 buy-ins for the lower $3.25 games and I decided to move down to those in order to prevent myself from going bust, which would obviously be a disaster.

For some reason, I crush the $3.25 games but get owned at the $6.50's despite the skill difference being minimal and my last session was no different from any of my other $3.25 sessions. I basically killed them, albeit over a tiny sample of 17 games, I mean really killed them. Two third places, three seconds and two wins meant I won $160.75 to claw back almost all the losses incurred in the $6.50's.

I would have won all the losses back but I had an 11th place, where AT couldn't out-race 66,and 9th place, where 55 ran into A7s, to essentially bubble two more tournaments as the top seven are paid in these. So my confidence has been restored slightly, despite having a minus 5.7% ROI from the 126 games I have played with my backer's money. Hopefully the EV will start to even out over the next week or so and I can start to win us both some money!

Well, that's all for now I think, seeing as this post seems to have grown huge! Funds permitting, I should be going to the WSOPE on Friday to pick up my press pass and to watch the Caesars Cup with Amatay and my boss and friend Dave Allan. Should be good fun though I'm not looking forward to setting off driving at 0500. If any of you are there it would be great to meet you.

Until next time, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!