First things first and very nearly the last..

Last Sunday I deposited the first $400 of the cash i'll deposit on The Gutshot this month. I've had pretty much 2 weeks from playing poker only broken by playing the NLH and PLO forum games on the Gutshot. I won the NLH tourney for a small $100 prize, but it all counts...

This week i'll be concentrating on the Gutshot100 SNG League and playing $0.25/$0.50 6 handed cash games... or so I thought! I started to play Sunday evening, and without thinking started played $2/$4 cash tables. I spun the original money to $600 before moving up to $5/$10 and spinning up to $1200. This all happened pretty quickly and just as quickly went the other way first losing a big pot with AA against KK with made a set on the turn, and then when I had KK and lost to AA. Now I'm back where I started (roughly) on $388.

Why do I do this? I start with the best intentions and with little or no self control play limits well over my bankroll. It really pisses me off when I don't follow my own rules...

In this instance no harm done, but it could have quite easily meant having to deposit another of $400 i've put aside for the Gutshot BR this month. Has anyone ever worked how to increase your self control? Life would be many times simpler if it was possible! Would taking away temptation help, or would I just find new things to tempt me?

So after a rocky start to the week it looks like i'll not have time to play again until maybe Thursday. The football tonight followed by the 'big match' tomorrow night will hopefully give an all red final near Red Square.

Over the last 2 years i've gone from a reasonable 72kgs to over 94kgs. Aside from controlling the levels at which I play poker and building a bankroll I want to lose some of that lard. This weekend I'll buy a new bike which i've had my eye on for a few weeks. I have a tendency to always buy the more expensive options, but i've seen a Trek hybrid bike that's got excellent reviews and falls into my £500 budget. I want to try and put in 60 km's a week for the first few weeks and I hope this help with my poker. Exercise when I feel i'm playing poorly or there's a chance of tilt will be my new mantra!!

Hopefully i'll get my flight and hotel booked for Vegas this weekend. After looking in the week I should be able to make the last $1500 bracelet event and plan to book into the Gold Coast for 2 weeks to try and satellite into the main event. Once it's all booked I can forget about and get in some sort of physical and mental shape!!

Where, When, What and How?

So this week I'm on poker sabbatical. Revising if you like for the grind ahead. An enjoyable grind, but a grind all the same. I'm away in Stockholm from Sunday to Thursday and plan to finish reading Harrington on cash game in that time. So far i've found the first few chapters to be interesting, perhaps enlightening, but certainly not riveting. I get bored easily. I always have and always will so reading books comes in fits and starts. I don't imagine i'll learn a huge about, but more reinforce what I already know. This is something that's very much needed.

A few questions i've been pondering this week is whether or not it's worth playing on more than one site with my reasonably small bankroll. I will definitely play on The Gutshot, but was toying with the idea of playing another. Maybe Poker Trillion? They seem to have some decent offers, and qualifiers for the WSOP. A second question is what limits should I play if I deposit say $800?

I've proven on many sites that i'm a winning player at lower limits such as 25c/50c, but is this a big enough roll to play these relatively low limits? The rule i'm going to go by is the 5% rule Phil Laak wrote about and I mentioned in my first post. Given this $40 buy in that limit will be fine, but I know i'll be dying to take a step up quickly. The urge i'll have to resist for the time being.

On the odd school day i've been at home playing poker i've found that the better players scurry down the limits to find the food. The weekend has always seemed like easier money and a better time to take the odd shot at higher levels. As the pubs clear out on Friday and Saturday nights poker players prey on the drunk. These are times i've generally had my higher returns. I intend to look more into this before next week.

The last thing i'm committing to this week is to play at least two events at the European Series of Poker Festival at the Gutshot towards the end of May. At the moment i'm looking at playing the PLO £200 FO and the Main event, although i'll try and qualify for that. I'll pay for this separately as a little treat to myself. Out of the two £100+ buy in events i've played this year i've made final tables on both for a £1500 combined cash. As i've historically kept my on and offline bank rolls separate i'll use the old funds.

In the Beginning...

They say poker is a game of decisions based on imperfect information. You make a decision to bet, raise, check, call or fold based on the information laid out in front of you. For me this just mirrors life. You make decisions in life with the best intentions and on the information you have, but a percentage of the time you're going to be wrong.

I can't remember the first time I played poker, but i do remember it was 5 card draw. I more than likely played with friends, and more than likely we played with little or no knowledge of the rules. Like most poker players these days i play the variation called Texas Holdem, although in the last few weeks i've been playing more Omaha. I watched Late Night Poker in years gone by and over the years fell in love with the game.



I am most definitely an amateur player, but have qualified for and played in the World Series of Poker Main event in 2007 and other live tournaments. I qualified for the WSOP through the Gutshot in London , which is where i've played the majority of my live poker over the last few years. I also post on the www.gutshot.com forum as Deeve and play poker under moniker of The_Chimp.

I decided recently that the main obstacle stopping me from becoming a 'winning' poker player was bank roll management. I have an excellent grasp of the game, and in the short term have no trouble either progressing to final tables of tourneys, winning SNG's or making advances in cash games. What is letting me down is the inability to control which level I play at and therefore for third time in my poker career this week I bust out.

A fellow member on the Gutshot poker forum posted this link for me to read.

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/Kelly%27s-Criterion-Phil-Laak-1295.htm

Although the article was nothing new to me, when reading it in such basic terms I decided (for once in my life!!) to take the advice on board.

This week i'm taking a poker time-out to reread Harrington on Holdem vol 2 and also his new Harrington on Cash games. As of next week i'll deposit a bankroll on Gutshot and start the grind playing tourneys, SNG's and ring games to build that bankroll. I will post session reviews, some (yawn!) hand histories and hope some readers might find it interesting to read and make comment.

I played in the WSOP 2007 and by no means disgraced myself losing to a runner, runner on one of the final hands of Day 1b in a 70k chip pot. I'm committed to going again this year to (unless I qualify before) play a super satellite in Vegas and maybe one of the $1,500 bracelet events. In the meantime i'll be attempting to improve my game.

http://www.gutshot.com/bforum/