Cloud Poker / Nick Cantwell / 25 March 2009 / Leave a comment

It's been a very busy week of poker, and in particular some long term poker planning.

"I have my own personal poker God. I think everyone should have one, and I got mine on Ebay (£2.80 inc P & P) - his name is Steve, and I speak to him when the cards are not running well."

I have decided to start a poker "holiday fund". This fund will (hopefully) grow and grow until I have enough dollars to pay for an American Road Trip along the famous Route 66. Unfortunately, after the first few days, it looked like the only trip I was going to make was a trip to the bank to extend my overdraft. You see, I had a hellish week.

It started on Monday morning - within the first few hands I flopped a full house (77 on a 788 flop). I was wondering how to get my opponent to commit all his chips here, but they all went in pretty easily - and I was delighted with my buy-in profit to start the week. That was until all the chips slid to my opponent, who was holding 88, and had flopped four of a kind.

Now strangely, I can't class this as a bad beat, as I was always behind, but it sure felt like it. And that was the story of my week - I didn't have many "bad beats", but I kept running KK into AA, and by Friday lunchtime I was eight buy-ins down at NL10 - which is easily my most disastrous week of poker. I was at the stage where I was beginning to question my play, but after looking over my big losing hands, I was content that I was actually playing well - and the Variance monster was playing games.

I have mentioned before that I have my own personal poker God. I think everyone should have one, and I got mine on Ebay (£2.80 inc P & P) - his name is Steve, and I speak to him when the cards are not running well. So I tried it again.

"Steve, is there any chance of you actually getting your backside in gear, and look after my poker, instead of sitting on a beach sipping Sambuca".

And it worked (with a little bit of help from one of my opponents). I was sitting in the big blind with A4, and the flop came KK2. Without boring you with another hand history, it turned out my opponent slowplayed trips at the same time that an Ace hit both the turn and the river - and he only woke up by pushing his stack on the river, where I delightfully stacked him.

This was the turning point, and since then I have made around eleven buy-ins, and my "roadtrip" fund actually has some funds in it. (Well, OK, I don't quite have enough to hire a cab to the airport yet, but from little acorns.....)

On a side note, I'd like to touch on my previous post. It has actually become my favourite blog post of all time - I wrote an STT from the point of view of a fish (the author "Anthony Fish" was a bit of a giveaway). However, from the comments it was clear that some people misunderstood and thought I was playing for real. I can assure you, that although my play can be bad sometimes, it isn't actually that bad. Honest.

Good luck at the Felt!!

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How Not to Play an STT - Analysed
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