I went to Skycity Casino with my wife a couple of weeks ago. Over the years it's become a tradition for us to celebrate our wedding anniversary by sitting in different areas of a huge room full of strangers (LOL). Anyway, I decided to check out the 'Poker Zone' upstairs. The previous year I'd gone up there and bought in to a ring game for the minimum amount of $60 and walked out a couple of hours later with over $500. However, when I got there I found that the buy-in had increased. The blinds had gone up from $2/$3 to $2/$4 and the minimum buy-in was now $100. Oh well, back to the roulette. When I first played poker at the casino a few years ago, the blinds were $1/$2. I guess those were the good old days.
I'm writing this on my new notebook. Not only do I have a new computer that measures its speed and memory in gigs rather than megs, but I've also got a broadband connection. Everything happens so much faster now. As an example, when I downloaded the 888 software from the website, a process that used to take more than an hour, it was all done within three minutes! I am so impressed. I haven't had any disconnection problems when playing online and that annoying delay that always appeared during ring games has disappeared. Also, I can surf the net at the same time as playing poker if I want to, although I don't think I will because I need to concentrate on my games.
My results however, have not changed. What I used to describe as a downswing has now become an inexorable slide into oblivion. The last ten times I've played have all been losing sessions and my bankroll is at its lowest point since August 2009. And I am at a total loss to explain why. I simply cannot take a trick. At this point I couldn't win a game of poker against a blind donkey playing with his cards face-up on the table. Nevertheless, I keep plugging away.
I've been watching the World Series of Poker Main Event final table on TV recently. The final table was shown live and my wife and I recorded it and watched it in manageable segments. The first six players were knocked out within a few hours, but once it was down to the final three, it turned into a marathon. It was ten hours before the seventh player was finally knocked out. But even though this was not edited and at times the players took an age to make a decision and we didn't get to see the hole cards until the hand was over, it was still fascinating to watch. I was glad to see that two of the three were 888 players, and I was cheering for Jake Balsiger, because he was the short stack and I like to cheer for the underdog. However, in that epic battle he was eventually overwhelmed and had to settle for a measly couple of million dollars.
So we settled in for a long heads-up contest between Greg Merson and Jesse Sylvia. But it all ended in anti-climax. After just 17 heads-up hands, Merson pushed all-in with K5 and, to my surprise, Sylvia called with QJ. King high won the hand and Merson took out the title, the $8m, the bracelet and, for good measure, enough points to beat Phil Hellmuth in the Player of the Year contest. A good win for Greg Merson, who looked to be in control of the game pretty much all the way.
I've also been watching The Big Game on TV. Even though they're only showing highlights of previous shows, it's still fun to watch. The thing I like most about this show is the commentary. The guy who commentates on the play (I don't remember his name) is very knowledgeable about the game and really adds another dimension to the show. He's always explaining why he thinks particular plays are being made, what the players' reasoning might be, what sort of odds they are getting, and lots of other details that make it much more interesting than other poker shows. It's nice to see a show that's both entertaining and informative.
I'm still struggling to figure out a successful Fixed Limit 6-max strategy. I had a series of decent wins last month but have now reverted to my usual form in this game. Last week I tried ultra-passive pre-flop combined with more aggressive post-flop play but it didn't do me any good. When I play again tomorrow maybe I'll try the seat-of-the-pants make-it-up-as-I-go-along strategy. Or maybe the hope-to-get-lucky-strategy. Or maybe the call-everything-to-the-river strategy. Or something. Time will tell.
Another advantage of having a modern computer is that I can watch video now. I started reading poker-pro Daniel Negraneau's blog a while back, but I could only read his old stuff because he switched to video-blogs (vlogs?) earlier this year and my old computer couldn't hack showing video. So now I've started watching his more recent posts. These can be found at www.fullcontactpoker.com. Check out the first one, 'Real Talk', where he goes off at the people behind the Fulltilt Poker scam. Classic.
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