So I'm just finishing up a little experiment where I have been logging some serious hands using all of the major poker hand tracking and analysis software.

Its been a bit of an eye opener actually, although there aren't many programs to choose from there are some fairly large differences in my opinion between the products.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be finishing of my little experiment before reviewing each of the main programs and giving a final StackTown seal of approval on my choice.

In the meantime I've added a poll to the right of this post, would love you all to take 5 seconds to click on the program you use or none if you don't so I can get an idea of whats popular.

Many thanks and hope everyone had a great Christmas

While most of us were celebrating Christmas with our families, opening presents, drinking bad wine and playing random boardgames the nose bleeds were in full swing!

On what turned out to be a action packed Christmas day there were some big winners and losers.

Although not the biggest winner of the day Tom 'Durrrr' Dwan logged on for a paltry hour, played 75 hands and walked away for a profit of $461,356 on the monitored tables. I sincerely hope the young lad got smashed after this because a) its Christmas, and b) he had just won $450k+!

Here is a round-up of those that found presents under their Christmas trees, and those that found coal;

MR B 2 U SON $557,859
durrrr $461,356
Patrik Antonius $241,938
Ziigmund $205,453
ActionJeff $104,053

Gus Hansen $-762,439
Phil Ivey $-522,778
Urindanger $-219,320
David Oppenheim $-127,355
mastrblastr $-69,607

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Its that time of year again, the elves are frantically wrapping the last few presents, kids are getting excited and hopefully the donkey's are getting drunk.!

So I'd just like to take a moment to wish you all an extremely Merry Christmas, I hope everyone gets a nice bankroll boost (as long as its not at my expense) and Santa all brings you white hot decks.

-MERRY CHRISTMAS-

Today I have an engineer scheduled to come and replace my fried motherboard. I'm strangely excited about this as I've felt a little out of touch at home without my trusty laptop to connect me to the world!

I've also missed the grind. I know I don't play masses of hands but I do like booting up the tables after a horrid day in the office and smoking a few fishes while trying not to get smoked myself. There something simple, yet carnal in it all.

So while I sit here waiting to get back on the tables I've been thinking about what I would want for Poker Claus this Christmas. I know he's a volatile character so I may not get what I ask for but none the less its worth asking.

1) Firstly I'd like a coach, a decent SS grinder who can help me improve my game, close off some leaks, open me up a bit and make me play better in marginal situations.

2) Secondly, I'd like poker to explode in countries like Russia, India and China so the number of online fish sore. The poker economy could do with a little boost at the moment.

3) Thirdly, I'd like a big fat bankroll boost! Don't we all though!

Doorbells just gone, must be time for the motherboard. Finally!

Happy donkey hunting all.

Every one's favorite Australian Russian destroyer Tony G seems to bare an unlikely resemblance to 'This is England' star Thomas Turgoose. If there are any high stakes Russian players reading this then make sure you bring it up at your next game :)


Judge for yourself!

That's right, the 3 days, 3 thousand hands, 3 buy in's challenge is kaput!

Today my computer went into meltdown. it totally spazzed out and won't do anything. Have spent about 5 hours trying to sort things out myself but looks like my motherboard has given up!

Obviously its 18 days outside of the warranty! Couldn't have exploded 3 weeks ago, no no no!

Anyhoo, it means that the challenge is over. I'm on my work computer at the mo so I can still play but I'm lacking PT3 and just can't be bovved now.

Oh well, I still like the idea of the 3/3/3 challenge so will have to look for another opportunity to put it into effect.

Hope everyone else's systems are still running smoothly :)

Right I'm ready to kick off my latest challenge. Starting a little later than I intended as I had to chaperon a friend around London today but that's all sorted to its time to get down to action.

Again, I'll set some rough parameters and they are as follows;

1. Party Poker is the site of choice
2. I'll be 3 or 4 tabling only so as to improve my game and learn from the challenge
3. I'll be posting regular updates during my breaks and at the end of each of the 3 days
   
4. I can't look at my win/loss until the end of each day so as not to distract me and/or make me play sub-optimally
5. You'll be hearing all about how I'm feeling!

So before I begin here is the lowdown and tracker points on me;

--FEELING: Pretty good, need to eat and turn the heating on, bbrrr
--MINUTES PLAYED: 0
--HANDS PLAYED: 0 of 3000
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 0, Villains = 0
--PROFIT/LOSS: To be filled in daily (0 of 150 Big Bets = 3 Buy in's)

Right that's me done, gonna grab a curry and hit the tables shortly, wish me luck!

EDIT:

Just finished my first and last session of the day. Started to feel really tired and don't want to play when I'm not at my best. Quickly dropped 2 buy in's after about 50 hands or so, so was on the back foot most of the session. Managed to pull it together though and post the tiniest of tiny profit! Tracker update as follows;

Started at 20:28 GMT/15:28 EST/12:28 PST
--FEELING: Content that I got myself unstuck but frustrated I got stuck in the first place!
--MINUTES PLAYED: 108
--HANDS PLAYED: 566
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 0, Villain = 0
--PROFIT/LOSS: 3BB of 150

Long way to go but better then being -50 of 150 I guess!

Will play catch up tomorrow and get myself on track to complete the 3/3/3 challenge

This has disturbed me slightly but is there not something eerily similar between KD Lang and Phil Hellmuth? Has anyone ever seen these two in the same room?


Judge for yourself!

As some have you may have read I recently set myself a 5 hour challenge, whereby I put in a total of 5 hours worth of play one day and looked at my results across the total session.

I had loads of fun doing it and it helped me forget the all important winnings/losings and just focus on making the right decisions based on the hands I was dealt.

I've since been inspired to set myself a new challenge and as the title suggests I'll be playing 1000 hands per day, so 3000 hands over 3 days with the goal of making 3 buy in's in profit.

The challenge will start on Thursday 18th December and finish on Saturday 20th December. I'll be following the same format as my last challenge by posting my progress in non-monetary terms before reviewing the experience overall.

Hopefully you'll join me, I know its not going to break any world records in terms of volume or minutage but that's not the point, its about having fun and enjoying the game.

I've been considering poker over the last few weeks and ways/opportunities to improve ones game and thus make more money. This has led me to start comparing poker (as a business) to the tactics or philosophy's employed by some of the worlds most successful companies.

One of these companies, Toyota, employs a philosophy called 'Kaizen'. Kaizen is the search for continuous improvement. Everyday, every employee from the CEO down is looking for ways to improve themselves and the processes they go through to become better and more efficient at their jobs.

Now i think the Kaizen idea is easily and practically applied to poker and can help both me and any player make small improvements everyday that will propel their game on a continuous upward trajectory.

Let me show you how i think this applies. Kaizen is based around 3 principles which i will outline below and then demonstrate how i think that can be mapped to poker improvement;

1) Consider the process and the results (not results-only) so that actions to achieve effects are surfaced.

- Review and analyse your play to establish where you made mistakes or where you play wasn't optimal so you can eliminate the negative aspects and increase the positive.

2) Systemic thinking of the whole process and not just that immediately in view (i.e. big picture, not solely the narrow view) in order to avoid creating problems elsewhere in the process.

- Don't look at your or opponents actions individually but build a picture or story around their play so you can spot patterns and anomalies and adapt to exploit these. This can be further defined by using R.E.M strategy and commitment planning.

3) A learning, non-judgmental, non-blaming (because blaming is wasteful) approach and intent will allow the re-examination of the assumptions that resulted in the current process.

- Don't focus on the negatives such as bad beats or suck outs but instead look at the long term view that these negative occurrences are actually a positive sign that a) you made the right decision, and b) your opponent got lucky on a hand, but continued optimal play negates or reduces the effect of luck allowing the most skilled players to become long term winners.

So there it is, Kaizen poker. To me this approach makes total sense. To improve requires learning and study on a continuous basis not periodically. Only then can you adapt and improve to stay ahead of the game and maintain your position as a winning player. Improvements don't need to be huge transitions in your play, rather focus on making many small adjustments and use your play as a learning tool to take those steps.

1) I'm the best god dam poker player ever!
2) I'm the best tournament player
3) Count the bracelets
4) That's right 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
5) I'm the best cash game player
6) You just haven't seen the cash game skills yet
7) Oh, but they're there, check the Matusow hand on High Stakes Poker
8) What a bluff, I owned that chump!
9) Owned his ass, so sweet!
10) Right that's enough practicing in the mirror for now

Party Poker $25 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players

SB: $19.35
Hero (BB): $25.00
UTG: $3.75
CO: $25.85
BTN: $25.25

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BB with A A
1 fold, CO raises to $0.90, 2 folds, Hero raises to $2.70, CO calls $1.80

Flop: ($5.50) K 4 K (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: ($5.50) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $3.05, Hero calls $3.05

River: ($11.60) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $7.45

Three questions;
What should hero have done on the flop? Cbet?
What should hero do on the turn?
Should hero call the river?

(Villain in is 23/20 over 40 hands, this is Hero's third hand at the table)

This ones a little cruel, but don't you think 2007 WSOP Main Event Champion Jerry Yang looks a little like Nien Nunb from Star Wars? I think he does!


Judge for yourself!

With Christmas fast approaching its no surprise that the biggest poker players in the world are ramping up the action to try and pay for all those presents they must be buying!

One such player that must finally have a bit of festive cheer in him is LarsLuzak who has finally turned a profit booking a $556,108 win over the weekend putting him $176,653 in the green.

But that $556k win is staggeringly average! Two players booked a $1m+ in winnings and another came tantalisingly close over a ridiculous few days of action.

durrrr $1,476,575
OMGClayAiken $1,141,694
Urindanger $946,900
LarsLuzak $556,108
ioi $335,649

But where there are winners there must be losers, and the scale of some of these losses may make Christmas a rather somber affair.

Ziigmund $-1,615,314
Gus Hansen $-1,397,880
elmariachimacho $-1,088,955
luvtheWNBA $-353,702
Boosted J $-252,266

Ziigmund in particular wiped out roughly 3 quarters of his yearly profit in one go, he’s got to be hurting at the moment, but he should take stock from LarsLuzak’s renaissance!

Right I'm back, had a funny nights sleep as all I could see were cards flying around in my mind but I feel ok none the less.

I've gone through my results and have come to the conclusion that I played ok to well. There were probably 2 main mistakes I made that cost me a stack and a half over the duration of the day. Some people might think 2 mistakes are ok but when its costing you so much I think not.

The first mistake, and one which kept me up a little went something like this.

I wake up with Queens on the button, its folded to me and I raise. The big blind then 3bets me. I look at his stats and he's 5/3/40 odd hands with no history of 3 bets. I think to myself he has Aces, Kings, Ace/King or if he's gone a little nutty Jacks. I call, flop comes down Jxx. I think to myself i'm screwed now if he has Jacks I should just let this hand go. He bets pot and I call! Turn in a blank, he ships it in and I said to myself 'Damn these bullets' and call. River blank and he flips Aces. Argh, wasted a buyin when I knew I was beaten, that is a big leak!

The second one was a suckout on the villains part but I should have folded the river but I won't bore you with that.

So, to the graph, it turned into a sorry state of affairs towards the end I'm sad to say, but here it is anyway.


So instead of looking like a never ending hike up a hill my graph looks like I've done the whole mountain in a day which is a shame.

Never the less, I definitely got a lot out of the session, I've learnt a lot and identified some leaks so I think moving forward I should see more of an upward trajectory.

Finally, the tracker update is as follows;

Reflection the following day
--FEELING: Content but haunted by one hand!
--MINUTES PLAYED: 309 of 300 (equals 5 hours)
--HANDS PLAYED: 1361
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 1, Villain = 2
--PROFIT/LOSS: Total won of 18Big Bets @ 1.33BB per hour

Good luck at the tables!

Poker and blogging seem to have been separated at birth! In fact poker players without blogs may actually be the minority.

An integral part of the poker/blogging scene is the personal challenge. The goals that players set themselves such as hand challenges, profit challenges even villain stacking challenges. Its all good fun and it keeps us players motivated and focused.

Now I haven't been part of a poker challenge for a while now, so i thought I'd set myself one, and that is the 5 hour challenge!

I've set 5 hours of my life aside today to hit the tables and hit them as hard as I can.

The parameters are as follows;

1. Party Poker is the site of choice
2. I'll be 3 tabling only so as to improve my game and learn from the challenge
3. I'll be posting regular updates during my breaks
4. I can't look at my win/loss until the challenge is over so as not to distract me and/or make me play sub-optimally
5. You'll be hearing all about how I'm feeling!

So before I begin here is the lowdown and tracker points on me;

--FEELING: Good, confident and positive
--MINUTES PLAYED: 0 of 300 (equals 5 hours)
--HANDS PLAYED: 0
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 0, Villains = 0
--PROFIT/LOSS: To be filled in at the end

Right, so sit back and enjoy the show. I'm going to grab some food and coffee before things get underway within the hour.

Wish me luck!

EDIT 1:

Just played my first session, played solid poker, only 1 or 2 errors that I'm aware of so pretty pleased with myself thus far. Tracker update as follows;

Started at 13:55 GMT/08:08 EST/05:08 PST
--FEELING: Happy with my game
--MINUTES PLAYED: 77 of 300 (equals 5 hours)
--HANDS PLAYED: 329
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 1, Villain = 0
--PROFIT/LOSS: To be filled in at the end

Gonna take a break, pop to the shops and freshen up ready for the next sess.

EDIT 2:

Just finished my second session and for once I ended play because I wasn't feeling 100% focused. There were a few bad spots where I leaked chips and I felt i was getting a little irritated by things. So with that in mind I'm breaking for a bit. Tracker update as follows;

Started at 16:08 GMT/11:08 EST/08:08 PST
--FEELING: Ok, need to refocus before next session
--MINUTES PLAYED: 133 of 300 (equals 5 hours)
--HANDS PLAYED: 558
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 1, Villain = 0
--PROFIT/LOSS: To be filled in at the end

Back soon!

EDIT 3:

Third session over with. Very happy with it, made moves in the right places, made a few hero calls, and also made some good lay-downs.

I invested a little more in table selection, coupled with some good note taking and I feel the extra effort paid off over the session. Tracker update as follows;

Started at 18:16 GMT/13:16 EST/10:16 PST
--FEELING: Wicked awesome!
--MINUTES PLAYED: 204 of 300 (equals 5 hours)
--HANDS PLAYED: 827
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 1, Villain = 1
--PROFIT/LOSS: To be filled in at the end

One more session to go I think but for now I'm powering down, gonna have some dinner and watch a movie!

EDIT 4:

Just finished my last session of the 5 hour challenge and it was a sick sick session. If I was running hot before then I was cold decked right in the face! Nothing hit and everything I tried failed. Sigh, really frustrating. Tracker update as follows;

Started at 22:14 GMT/17:14 EST/14:14 PST
--FEELING: Irritated and annoyed at the way the challenge ended
--MINUTES PLAYED: 309 of 300 (equals 5 hours)
--HANDS PLAYED: 1361
--SUCK OUTS: Me = 1, Villain = 2
--PROFIT/LOSS: To be filled in at the end

I won't post the results right now, I'm gonna chill out and relax then go through Poker Tracker tomorrow. Already know that from flying high earlier in the day it all my hard work went up in smoke towards the end.

But thats poker I guess!

How did your love affair with poker begin?

Watching Late Night Poker Ace like most people. Then randomly one day i ended up playing online on some UK gambling site. I've always been pretty good at things involving psychology so i knew i could do well at it. I won about £800 before i lost it all and then continued to lose a few hundred a day before i took a weeks break to reflect on my game. Since then I've won thousands of dollars.

And where has it led you to today?

I play for a living now. It don't earn mega bucks, far from it but easily enough to live off. My problem is volume tbh.

What’s you poker ambition?

I don't really have one, i guess that's another problem of mine.

Live or online?

Mainly online.

Cash or Tournaments?

I used to play 9-12 tables of $1/2 sometimes $2/4 but more recently have been playing mtt's with gd success.

Biggest poker moment?

Quitting my job to play for a living.

60 minutes with poker legend Doyle Brunson or 60 minutes with poker babe Kimberly Lansing?

Depends what im doing lol.

Want to share a poker tip?

Control the controllables.

Big thank you to Simon Jones, known as Amatay on his blog! You can read more about Amatay's table exploits here 'Amatay's blog', definitely check it out if you haven't as its well worth a read.

This is one of my favourite look-a-likes, seems there is an uncanny resemblance between Joe Hachem and The Count from Sesame Street!


Judge for yourself!

This weekend (28th -30th Nov) saw some huge action take place at the nosebleeds.

There were some big winners and losers in that time which have shaken a few things up at the top of the high stakes online world.

LarsLuzak for one finally started to run well! Over the 3 days he managed to put in 4506 hands posting a combined win of $1,231,114 on the monitored tables. Not too shabby at all, its worth mentioning though that this means he’s only down $120k for the year now!

The biggest loser of the weekend was Patrik Antonius who burned through over $900,000, he’s still up for the year but now his winnings only stand at a rather modest $207k.

Other big winners and losers were;

Winners
Gus Hansen $583,655
David Oppenheim $461,125
Nuts78 $360,693

Losers
MR B 2 U SON $-418.250
durrrr $-362.074
David Singer $-359.574

Let’s hope the action stays high throughout the festive period, hohoho!