Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 07 September 2009 /

Regular readers of this blog will know that despite me being 28-years old, I do enjoy blowing stuff up and shooting stuff on my trusty Xbox 360. Well now I can't do that because the bloody thing has broken.

It had been making a few weird noises that last couple of times I had used it but I put this down to the lens probably needing cleaning or something like that but on Tuesday it completely gave up the ghost. Mrs P and I had planned to watch 'Kiss The Girls' starring Morgan Freeman on DVD but when I went to turn on the Xbox I was greeted with what is more commonly known as "The Red Ring Of Death!"

Basically, the Xbox 360 has a quadrant of lights on the front that when functioning properly displays a green light in the top left hand corner but mine was displaying three flashing red lights meaning that there was a general hardware failure that would need repairing by Microsoft.

Thankfully my machine is still under warranty so I boxed it up and sent it to Frankfurt for repairing so I am without my toy for between two-three weeks. Not a happy bunny at all. But they say every cloud has a silver lining and this is true here because it has meant I have stopped pratting about with video games and actually played some poker!

During last week I was approached by blogger and professional player James Atkin about a potential staking deal. I've spoken to James a few times over MSN and Facebook and he's left the odd comment on my blog (when comments were actually turned on!) Anyway, he told me he had read my blog and was prepared to stake me for some $6.50 45 man tournaments! Marvellous!

He's also offered to do a few sweat sessions with me and have me as his pupil so to speak, the first of which sessions we had on Friday night over Skype. I had already played 40 of the $3.25 45 man games before the sweat session and had basically run like God so was really looking forward to having James critique my game and hopefully increase my win rate further.

After setting up my Holdem Manager, a few card and chip modifications and Table Ninja, I fired up eight tables and had James watch over Team Viewer whilst we chatted over Skype. Obviously early on there is not a lot to discuss as you essentially fold, fold and fold some more but there does come a time when you are basically shoving or folding, which I thought I was pretty good at. Notice how I said thought.

As mentioned, I thought my push/fold strategy was pretty good until James started telling me how many spots I should have been getting my chips in the middle. Some of the holdings I was like WTF, really? But he explained why it was profitable and that sometimes he'd even be shoving with 92o!

After the games were over, including showing him how to win every all-in confrontation whilst 6 handed, he talked me through a hand history from a tournament he had won, so that I could see the sort of moves to make etc. It was really interesting going through the hands, SNG Wiz and Poker Stove to show how profitable or not a particular shove was. All in all I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to more sessions in the future.

My actual staking should start next week all being well. James offered to start the stake right away but I wanted to try and play a few of the $3.25 games to iron out some leaks and to try implement my new uber wide pushing range! I've now played exactly 100 of these things, cashed in 21% of them for an ROI of 61.5%. Totally unsustainable but I'll take earning $21 an hour playing $3 games!

Stay tuned for some updates on my quest to become the Micro Ivey, LOL! I've also bought a couple of books thanks to Mr Taxman so once I've read them I'll do a review for you plus there's an interview in the pipeline with a certain blogger by the name of Amatay!

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

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