Came back from skiing yesterday with a skinking cold and feeling miserable. The skiing was great however, we had a two foot dump on Tuesday night and the powder on wednesday was phenomenal. I did the most off-pisting iv ever done this holiday, nailing really tricky and hard to get to bowls and some nasty tree runs. I also think the six-pack challenge is in the bag. Ship-it artist.

Bought and read a few books. Phil Gordons Little Green Book is good. 8/10. His Blue book is a little weaker and i wouldnt advise buying it IMHO. Same with "How to win the World Series (or not)". What a piece of shit. I considered ripping it up when we ran out of bog roll one night.

I do have a few problems with Gordons reasoning on a few issues however. When talking about liming in early position on page 30 he says....

"I have found limping to be most effective when i do it with a marginal hand about 4 times more than i do it with big hands. Why is that? Mathematics [1].
Assume my opponents are likely to raise 5 times the big blind when i limp, in an effort to get me to fold [2]. If i follow the four to one ratio [3] above then 4 out of the 5 times i will have a mediocre hand that i will have to fold after my opponents raise. Over the course of those hands i will lose the equivalent of 4 big blinds. On the 5th time, however i will have a strong hand, re-raise the raiser, and (hopefully) [4] win the pot right there. I will win the money they have raised- about 5 times the size of the big blind- and cover the 4 times that i lost, leaving me with a net gain equivalent to one big blind [5]."

Now to me this is a pure example of someone twisting mathematics to suit their own example. I appreciate that you need to vary your plays to keep good players guessing, but there are so many faults with this advice (obv Phil Gordon is a proven poker player and legend. I am a wannabe so healthy dollop of salt involved here).

1. Are you serious? Ok ill agree with you for the moment phil.

2. Standard escalation of initial raise is to increase by 1 big blind the raise you should make if there are limpers in the pot. Most intermediate players would make a raise of 4*BB if there is already a limper in the pot, trying to get the pot HU or end it.

3. So should i really follow a 4-1 ratio. I mean, note down "limped with 33 UTG, folded. limped with 56s, folded. limped with a10s, folded. limped with QJo, folded. woke up with AK, re-raised raiser all-in, won blinds" just to make sure my ratio is correct. Because by deviating EVEN REMOTELY from his ratio, i lose money.

4. Of course when i re-raise all-in he could well think it was a move and call with 88. oops.

5. Net gain equivalent of 1 BB you say. Nice. I'v got a better idea. Ill limp at a ratio of 3-1 instead. That way ill make 2BB as a net gain. Great. Oh wait. Iv just had a brainwave. Ill limp at a a 50/50 ratio. That way i make 4 big blinds!!! WOOHOO. What a great idea. Now THATS a +EV play wouldnt you all agree. Erm, no sir, i wouldnt

But the rest of his book is good with some insightful examples of clever plays, plus using pot odds to govern 90% of your decisions is what was reinforced to me in my mind.




So on Sunday afternoon i watched the Arsenal play. Why why why does it take us to go a goal down before we actually start playing. Getting tiresome.

I probably should have had a rest before playing the Sunday comps but ah well.

The lineup and results went as follows.

8pm. 20k on Tribeca. Didnt pull the trigger when i had the chance. Let a guy hit his str8 on the river. Lesson learned. Dont fear slow-played big hands so much. 140/850.

8.45pm $200 FO $200k GTD on Tribeca. Moves are naughty. Big moves are far naughtier. Went card dead half way through. Then had the entire table limp on my BB. Blinds were 200/400 and my stack was 6k. Can you guess what i did yet? Sadly J7o (although in remarkable good shape) was killed by a hero who called for his stack with 33. WP that man, go win........sweet FA. 350/1000

10pm. $27 RB 15k GTD Tribeca, no good. Table was full of good players who were never going to give me a stack. Didnt even bother rebuying. 200/240

10pm $200 UB FO. Had an ok tournament befroe serial button thief woke up with a hand when i thought A10sooooted was goood for a resteal from the BB. Wasnt, he had AQ, no miracles. 200/900 odd. On the plus side i did extract the MAXIMUM with quads. Called a preflop raise with 1010. Flop comes 1010A. I bet full pot, he comes OTT for the lot. I call, he has AK. HOHOHOHO you'll be alright.

11pm $600 FO Pokerface GF Satellite. Was looking forward to this as i thought it was my best opportunity for a seat this spring to a major comp. Ducked and dived early on, taking a lot of chips that were not mine by right as i (correctly) assumed that all of these satellite players would play ultra tight. Got a loverly double up later with K6o all-in from the BB v 88. Then listened to the whole table say what a donkey i was. eyyyyyawwww i replied, but donkeys get paid. KK next hand, AQ no good sunshine, ship-it, go play with ur PSP.
Then the weak players dried up, to be replaced with a whole different kettle of chips. Nightmar31 on Tribeca is a GREAT MTT player. only played with him twice but he is horrible. Just outplayed me big time. Pretty sure i got bluffed off a flop of JJ8 with the best hand. I had 1010. This makes 10 9 unlikely so i didnt think he was semi-bluffing with a str8 draw. Damnnit i wish id called after that i made a shocking error. Tried a re-steal with AJ (now THATS a donkey play) and got called by AQ. Great. Came 19th out of 100 or so but with 5 seat i should have done better.

$36 FO 5k GTD. Must stop playing this late on, got tired and donated my chips to a guy who played Aces really badly. Was fun really, i bet he thinks he played them superbly, in reality i just wanted to focus on the Ricky Hatton fight.

So for the month of Feb i am not going to play ANY tournaments. Only cash games for 1 month.
I have scraped my account down to 5k again (only $500 less than it was when i came back) and i shall be grinding 1/2 NL like a bot every night until i get 16k and then shall be moving up to 2/4 where i would LOVE to be playing again. In fact i really miss it, but thats life, we dont alwasy get what we want.

Going to Luton tonight for their £50 FO. Im hoping the cash game is soft afterwards so i can dip in.


On a totally seperate isssue a big congratufuckinglations to Julian Thew who has just had a baby. Well done that man.

out.