Thursday, July 27, 2006

Life After

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

Dang it's been an entire week since I last posted. Haven't really been playing much poker so I guess there hasn't been much reason to post either. Between Baseball, Football, and Soccer the kids have us running pretty ragged right now. Baseball ended last night for my middle boy. They won their division this season and went out last night in the single elimination playoffs. They were one game away from the finals so that was a little disappointing.

The blogroll has finally been merged with my bloglines feeds so it will stay constantly updated with whatever blogs I'm subscribed to. It's a nice feature and I should have done that a long time ago.

With the loss of the Eurobet rakeback deal I've been playing on UltimateBet to clear an old and rather large bonus I had built up. I'm still running good in the cash games so I'm debating between staying and clearing the bonus, or signing up for the new rakeback deal that RakeRebate.net has offered at PokesPoker. I've never heard of this site but it's an OnGame skin so I'd be back on the same network that Eurobet was on. I liked the play there so I'm torn.

Were planning a weekend trip to the Cosmosphere so there probably won't be too much poker in the near future. I'd like to say I'm missing it... but that's just not the case right now.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Not Cool

Filed Under: Poker

There goes yet another attempt to enjoy rakeback. My government is really pissing me off.

Email I received this morning:

Dear Eurobet Customer,

Please be advised that in the light of recent actions by US regulators, Eurobet has regretfully taken the decision to cease taking any business through its websites from U.S. residents with immediate effect. U.S. residents will no longer be able to transact with our websites and all accounts held by U.S. residents have now been closed.

We are contacting you because we believe that, based on the personal details you have provided us, you are a US resident and therefore affected by this decision.

Where we already have your payment details we will refund any outstanding balance using that method within 7 days from today. If we do not have the necessary details please contact us on +44 1483 773224 or via email at uscustomerservice@eurobet.com to confirm how you wish any existing balances on your account should be repaid including the appropriate financial details.

We commit to processing such refund with 7 days of receiving your payment instructions.

On behalf of the entire Eurobet team we apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank you for your previous custom.


Kind regards,

Emma Jordan
Head of Services

Eurobet.com

Monday, July 17, 2006

Introspection

Filed Under: Poker

This month has been a disaster. When things are going as poorly as they are right now it becomes very difficult to get up the motivation necessary to post. I'm hoping that taking a closer look at what's gone wrong and putting it down may help me overcome my current rut, or at least put it in perspective.

I'm going to need a two prong approach here so let's talk about tournament play first. The cold hard fact is that I haven't cashed in a single money tournament. I'm quantifying that with the "money" designation because I have placed in a few token and satellite tournaments. The last time I had a month without a cash was in January, and in that month I only played four tournaments. This month I've played in 17 so far and been completely unsuccessful.

I track my average finish position as a percentage of the field size and I'm averaging 60% right now. That means that if every tournament had 100 players my finish would average out to 60th. My best month was April and my average finish percentage was 28%. In that month I played 32 tournaments. If we extend my non cashing streak I can go back into June which puts me at 24 tournaments now without a cash. Up until the beginning of my bad streak I had averaged a cash every 4.34 tournaments in 2006.

Why now? The answer to this is easy. It's the cause of the answer which just now dawns on me as I'm righting this. I'll start with the answer. I've been playing like crap. I've had a severe lack of patience in the first hour of these things and that is a requirement. I only have one event where I felt I played the best I could and that one ended in back to back beats.

The reason I'm playing poorly is because, deep down, I know I shouldn't be. I have a son who lives with me during the summer for about 2 1/2 months. Instead of taking the 4-5 hours out at night to play a tourney, I should be spending it all with him, and the rest of my family. I believe this has led to my lack of patience and poor play. I'm going to remedy that by cutting down my play at night. Unless I have an event that I really feel the need to sit down for I'm not going to bother. I've gotten into a habit of playing a few of the guaranteed tourneys about 5 nights a week but that will stop for now.

What about the ring games? This one is a lot easier to deal with than the tournaments. I spent the first week of July playing to almost exactly dead even finishing down $11. I play my cash game almost exclusively while at work so the distractions are different than my tournament play and I can always sit out if I need to.

Sunday the ninth is when it happened. I went on tilt. I tossed out 5 buy ins which goes well beyond my normal tolerance. On July tenth I made the decision to drop down a level until I felt I had my mind and game back in order. It has turned out to be a good move as I haven't had a losing session since and have finished up 6 buyins on the week. With the money being half as much I still haven't recovered from the Sunday Tiltathon. I've decided that when I get up an additional 6 buyins I'll move back up a level.

I'm used to playing my cash games in shorter sessions which will lead to me playing more cash games for the rest of the month. I generally stay up an hour or two after the rest of the family has gone to bed so that will lend itself to picking up more ring games at home. I'll throw in a few token satellites and probably just focus on that for the time being.

In other news Actyper has finally qualified for the WSOP main event in the eleventh hour so go wish him well.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

ehhh

Filed Under: Poker

It's been a real blah type week. I'm down in both tourneys and cash games but if you take the last two weeks into consideration I'm even. I've finally gotten to a point financially that my bankroll should now be my own. I'm not anticipating having to withdrawal from it anymore to pay bills so I was really looking forward to a good building week. Instead I lost a little and I'm feeling rather indifferent about it. Usually I'm really bummed when I have a down week. Not having to count on the money each few weeks apparently has an effect on me. Problem is I don't know if it's a good effect. I seem to have lost a little drive. We'll see what happens next week.