I am just back from a lovely weekend in Barcelona. I headed over with my brother, his friend, and my father. You can't beat a bit of 25 degrees heat! We got VIP tickets for Barcelona's last home game of the season versus Deportivo La Coruná. They were presented with the La Liga title and they was a real party atmosphere in the Camp Nou, they even had a fireworks display! We were in the enclosure with all the wives and girlfriends (unfortunately Piqué's girlfriend Shakira decided not to show up!), the president aka Sandro Rosell also rubbed shoulders with us for a while. The players carried out a weird celebration, after getting the trophy,they started throwing red peppers into the crowd. I managed to get my hands on one, and in total they handed out 16,000 peppers!
I have bought my first poker book since I started playing poker. My first book was "Poker for dummies"! Aptly titled as I didn't have a clue but looking back on it now I realise how directed at the novice it was! I decided to buy Miko Caro's physcology of Poker. I have read some good reviews about it and it seems to be an interesting book. Also my girlfriend does physcology in college, so it would be nice to read her mind for once and not vice versa!
Here comes a little bit of a plug! I bought the book off the book depository.com. It's a cool site as it has a very wide range of books and, most importantly, it supplies free delivery worldwide. I think it is slightly dearer than amazon but the free shipping makes up for it. I have used it before for some christmas shopping after I heard it being mentioned on a budget show on tv and I must say I have had no complaints. Also during the month of May,if you use the code "May11" you get 10% of your purchases. I paid €14.23 for the book and I have my eye on a few other books that might come in handy, like the bibles of poker, the super system series (the old testament) and the harrington on hold'em volumes(the new testament). I might add these to my collection over the coming months.
My prediction has come true with the micro tables on Stars. The fish have come out of the woodwork for the SCOOP and I have been hoovering up their chips at the 5NL tables. So far I have surpassed my previous month's best of $145 by quite a bit and this is without playing a really big pot. I am just pottering away, winning a buy-in here,a buy-in there. Long may this continue! I have also played a few feeder satellites into the SCOOP events and then just kept the tourney $'s. I will leave you with the stats so far for May,a new personal best!
May:
Bankroll = $804 (+ $184)
Vpps = 364
Yearly vpps = 2,643
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
SCOOP Begins & Bonuses Stack Up!
I have had a good start to the month. I have cleared another €10 of the reload bonus and I now have another bonus to clear! I played in the 2+2 pokercast tournament on Sunday last. This is a $1.10 tournament run by the 2+2 forum and the password is given out on air. They supply an additional $500 to the prizepool and they also hand out a $50 bonus to whoever finishes in the top 18. They change the game type every week and this week it was the turn of pot limit omaha. Granted this game type is not my forté (indeed I have only ever played omaha a handful of times!), but I had nothing else to do on a bank holiday Sunday! I played nice and tight, or whatever I understood tight play to be in Omaha!
At times I was lost in the action, having to check back over hands to see who won and how they won! Suprisingly, I headed in to the final table 2nd in chips but the blinds were high and I eventually bowed out in 8th place, pocketing $19.22 for my troubles. The main positive was that I had won myself a $50 bonus that I now have 90 days to unlock it. On the downside I will effectively only have 60 days to clear it as I can't clear my two bonuses concurrently. In this time I have to accrue 350 fpp's which should be a piece of cake seeing as I normally earn that amount of fpp's in a month.
This is a timely boost to my bankroll challenge as I now have two bonuses to unlock and the Stellar rewards to earn. I feel like a supernova elite with all the rakeback I am earning!! I also had the pleasure of having JRmontano on my starting table. I can't remember the last time I sat with him in a tournament, probably a pokerspace event, but I was glad when he was knocked out as I knew he was a dangerous player on my table. Better luck next time Jr!
I have just busted out of the first NL $22 low event in the SCOOP. It was a non-event really. Built my stack up to double the starting one and then hit top two against a flopped straight. So, that's one of my SCOOP tickets used up. I played a hyper-turbo for the tournament and scored with it so I now have $22 tournament dollars in my account now too. I will leave you with the stats for May so far:
May:
Bankroll = $723 (+ $103)
Vpps = 171
Yearly vpps = 2,450
At times I was lost in the action, having to check back over hands to see who won and how they won! Suprisingly, I headed in to the final table 2nd in chips but the blinds were high and I eventually bowed out in 8th place, pocketing $19.22 for my troubles. The main positive was that I had won myself a $50 bonus that I now have 90 days to unlock it. On the downside I will effectively only have 60 days to clear it as I can't clear my two bonuses concurrently. In this time I have to accrue 350 fpp's which should be a piece of cake seeing as I normally earn that amount of fpp's in a month.
This is a timely boost to my bankroll challenge as I now have two bonuses to unlock and the Stellar rewards to earn. I feel like a supernova elite with all the rakeback I am earning!! I also had the pleasure of having JRmontano on my starting table. I can't remember the last time I sat with him in a tournament, probably a pokerspace event, but I was glad when he was knocked out as I knew he was a dangerous player on my table. Better luck next time Jr!
I have just busted out of the first NL $22 low event in the SCOOP. It was a non-event really. Built my stack up to double the starting one and then hit top two against a flopped straight. So, that's one of my SCOOP tickets used up. I played a hyper-turbo for the tournament and scored with it so I now have $22 tournament dollars in my account now too. I will leave you with the stats for May so far:
May:
Bankroll = $723 (+ $103)
Vpps = 171
Yearly vpps = 2,450
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The SCOOP & April Stats
So it's that time of year again! The Spring Championship Of Online Poker or The SCOOP as it is fondly known! I have never cashed in a SCOOP event before but then again I have only ever played in one tournament! I am currently in posession of one $22 ticket and two $11 tickets which I won during WBCOOP. Now it is time to parlay these free tickets into some serious revenue! I still haven't decided which tournaments to play yet. I might combine the two $11 tickets into another $22 ticket and then just play two events.
Pokerstars have released a revised schedule for the SCOOP in light of the recent revelations with regards to the American players. As expected, the guarantees are all reduced but there is a slight upside for the Europeans to be happy about. Pokerstars have changed the times of the events to a more European friendly schedule. The only problem for me is that the tournaments that I would be interested in playing (full ring NL $22 & $11 tournaments), run on Sundays at the same time as I would be travelling up to Dublin. I might have to play some mid-week tournaments but these are 6-max which have proven to be my achille's heel in the past.
I hope to make a bit more money off the tables as recreational fish come onto the site for the series. Hopefully I will be on the right side of these spew monkeys! I have so far cleared €10 of the €50 reload bonus which came from the SCOOP promotion. I have also collected my third VIP stellar reward and I am inching closer to the 5,000 yearly fpp goal. The completion of this goal would give me an extra $70 and this would in turn help me to achieve my "Triple the Bankroll" challenge. May was an interesting month for everyone in the poker world. I actually put in quite a lot of time at the tables and nearly achieved SilverStar status for May only for the fact that I didn't play a hand of poker the week after "Black Friday".
Excluding the bonuses earned during the month, I am only up a small amount on the tables. This is partly down to me playing poorly, poor table selection and the cards going against me. I have started to play more 5 NL dollar tables as they seem to be busier than the euro tables. Suprisingly my stats vary greatly between the two currency tables. I am down about $30 on the dollar tables compared to being up around €40 on the euro tables. For the month of May I might focus on this statistic and try to drag my winrate up on the $ tables. Once again I will leave you with the figures for the month of April:
April:
Bankroll = $620 (+ $78)
Vpps = 620
Yearly vpps = 2,279
Pokerstars have released a revised schedule for the SCOOP in light of the recent revelations with regards to the American players. As expected, the guarantees are all reduced but there is a slight upside for the Europeans to be happy about. Pokerstars have changed the times of the events to a more European friendly schedule. The only problem for me is that the tournaments that I would be interested in playing (full ring NL $22 & $11 tournaments), run on Sundays at the same time as I would be travelling up to Dublin. I might have to play some mid-week tournaments but these are 6-max which have proven to be my achille's heel in the past.
I hope to make a bit more money off the tables as recreational fish come onto the site for the series. Hopefully I will be on the right side of these spew monkeys! I have so far cleared €10 of the €50 reload bonus which came from the SCOOP promotion. I have also collected my third VIP stellar reward and I am inching closer to the 5,000 yearly fpp goal. The completion of this goal would give me an extra $70 and this would in turn help me to achieve my "Triple the Bankroll" challenge. May was an interesting month for everyone in the poker world. I actually put in quite a lot of time at the tables and nearly achieved SilverStar status for May only for the fact that I didn't play a hand of poker the week after "Black Friday".
Excluding the bonuses earned during the month, I am only up a small amount on the tables. This is partly down to me playing poorly, poor table selection and the cards going against me. I have started to play more 5 NL dollar tables as they seem to be busier than the euro tables. Suprisingly my stats vary greatly between the two currency tables. I am down about $30 on the dollar tables compared to being up around €40 on the euro tables. For the month of May I might focus on this statistic and try to drag my winrate up on the $ tables. Once again I will leave you with the figures for the month of April:
April:
Bankroll = $620 (+ $78)
Vpps = 620
Yearly vpps = 2,279
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