Very Humorous

Well, there is no avoiding it now, this will be my first losing month playing poker since August 09. It disheartens me to write that sentence, but this month my luck has been truly horrendous. I have been spending the majority of my time online on VC, and live playing cash at NPC. VC started the month by launching a brand new poker client with resizeable tables, time banks, better table displays for cash games and a new Poker Olympics promotion. Avatars are also now displayed on tables, even when they are re-sized to a small table for multitabling, whereas before they were only visible on the large table view which I never used. Which means that for the first time I got to see my avatar on every table I played.

I didn't really feel a connection to the middle-aged man with grey hair, wearing a hawaiin shirt and sunglasses which apparently was my current chosen face to the online community, and so I set about looking into alternatives. There were all the classic options, the sexy redhead high class escort, the mafia boss in a cream linen suit, the cowboy straight out of a John Wayne movie, but I fancied a less cliche avatar that might demand a bit more respect. The one that caught my eye was a smart young man in a suit, who happened to look rather similar to Barack Obama. So, deciding to show solidarity with the modern world, I changed my online appearance to a younger, much more professional looking man. Needless to say, I got ruined.

I have consistently lost money ever since. The outdraws have been shocking - Truly horrendous. I can only assume this is purely down to the fact that Victor Chandler now think I am black. My Victor Chandler account which has always run good as long as they thought I was an old time retiree on a permanent mediterranean cruise, has all of a sudden been cursed ever since I have been a smartly dressed young black man. The sheer audacity of this blatant racism shocks me. It's disappointing that in the 21st century, this is still an issue, especially with a public, respectable company like Victor Chandler. Very sad indeed.

I'm not going to mention specific hands as I have played around 12,000 hands this month and there are too many to mention but four times I have been all-in on the flop with a 95% chance of winning the pot with a set over a set, and I have lost all four to runner runner straights or flushes for a total of $1.4k. Not to mention all the pots where I was 60% favourite or more and simply got ruined. As a result I have moved down stakes now 6-tabling 25c/50c PLO instead of 50c/$1. The standard is noticeably worse, and despite my terrible luck continuing at these stakes, losing far more than a fair amount of showdowns, I have managed to break level. Luckily, the poor standard of play has compensated for my bad luck.

A similar streak of bad form has hit me playing live as well. I have played at NPC maybe six or seven times this month, winning probably on only two visits, and being shockingly outdrawn or coolered on the others. I am probably around £800 down on the month from playing live, which is a highly frustrating statistic, and one which hopefully won't repeat itself too often. I made one bad call that sticks out which was not being able to fold AT on an A25T board for a re-raise of £420. It was an annoying hand, and I came painfully close to folding, given that I know the player well and I was convinced that he couldn't be bluffing. However I just couldn't get the possibility that he had A5 out of my head. I ended up making a terrible call only able to beat one hand which he didn't have. But apart from that, I really haven't done anything wrong in terms of playing cash. The deck has simply been against me this month as is inevitable every now and again. No matter how I played, I was just never going to win.

I've played a few mtts at weekends with no success, at one point having a fun two minutes or so while I was playing two tournaments. I called a mid-stacks button shove from the BB with AJcc on the bubble of the 45k gtd. on FT and he had Q9o. The flop came 89Tcc and then bricked to leave me crippled, while at precisely the same time on VC I was all-in on the bubble of the $10r $35k gtd. with AA vs Bristol for a huge pot which inevitably came J849T. I wasn't too bothered about getting rivered as I knew I was drawing dead on the turn. My financial shares also took a tumble this month annoyingly, and no football bets have come in just to complete the financial hell from all angles ;)

But nevermind, I'm feeling more positive at the moment for some strange reason. I've moved away from Norwich for a couple of weeks just to have a change of scenery and chill out for a bit. While living in Norwich is great at the moment, there are just too many people and too many distractions and I'm simply not putting in the hours as I always agree to do something fun instead of playing. So hopefully, I'll be able to put in the hours and earn some money over the next fortnight. My friend Paul has very kindly offered to stake me in some SCOOP events which are starting this weekend so hopefully I can run good in one of them. For those that don't know, Paul won the Sunday Million this week for $258k! An incredible result. His blog is linked on the right-hand side of this page in my Blogroll, and he has written a post of the tournament commenting on his key hands along the way which is well worth a read. VC also have two superb promotions running at the moment which I shall take advantage of when I'm not playing tournaments on Stars. I'm hoping to do well playing PLO cash, despite the fact that I still haven't changed my avatar. That's about all for now, sorry it's been so long again since my last post, I shall try to keep updates more punctual. I Hope everyone has a fun bank holiday weekend,

Rich x

PS - Barbers are the world's best philosophers. Listen to their words wisely.