Brag: Just beat John Duthie HU!

Ok so he probably wasn't trying his absolute hardest having nothing invested and it being Christmas an all but hey! Santa didn't bring much else this year so everything is being gratefully received! He seems like a really nice guy actually, and very strange that he only lives 5 mins round the corner from my old flat in Wandsworth. We should have got him round for our old home games....

So now attention turns back to the TLB. Having had a week or so off I've slipped down to 8th on the monthly TLB but have a couple of days left to recover that situation and am now registered in the Sunday majors including my 2nd Poker World Record attempt....

Heres the 1st

HALL OF FAME

What a week!

Finally managed to grind my way through and now the results are finalised on Stars. I am offically the Weekly TLB winner and thanks to some pretty damn hard work have also managed to make it to 4th in the all time Weekly Hall of Fame!

I was eventually 4 points off of 3rd which is a bit gutting especially as those 4 points were there begging to be had. my last 2 eligiable tourney's ended with Rockets in 18th place of a 180 seater and heads 33 v AL 1st hand of the HU match with no luck for my Big Slick. Either of those hands hold and I'm looking at cracking 3rd place. But hey I guess I should be satisfied, now I just need to recover in time to defend my Sunday $200k title tonight......

Shipped 3rd in the $10 - $30k Guaranteed....

Not a bad nights work....

Was pretty card dead for most of the tourney bt thankfully won most of my flips. Got some decent luck at the final table A8 > QQ, A high flop. 99 > KJ flopped set v's flopped straight, turned the FH! After that was pretty dire starting hand wise, leaked chips everywhere & ended up running K4 from the SB in to A4.

But all good for the TLB, puts me back into 1st with 4,214.26.

A new record for an Enlgish player and 10th best score in the hall of fame!! I'm pretty satisfied atm and have 4 more scores before Saturday night to add to that yet!

TLB Chase & Other Bits

Well the elation from Sunday has kinda of settled down now and I'm setting some proper goals starting with this week.

I got 3179 points for the 1st in the Sunday $200k which pretty much jumped me straight to the top of this weeks Tournament Leader Board.

I'd already got myself a bunch of decent 180 scores so I'm also sat 7th in the monthly currently with 5,261. Looking back at last months that would leave me around the 40th place mark, which although nice is not really deserving of such a fantastic head start.

With that in mind I'm now putting in even more hours on pretty much every MTT I can trying to boost that score up to around the 6.6k mark by the end of the month.

I've been reasonbly deep (double figures) in a couple and placed 2nd yesterday in another 180 which has stretched the lead I already have in the weekly TLB.



So the other bits. Well having been staked for my inital bankroll by my buddy I tried to transfer him his 50% (we'd so nearly ended it on Saturday as money was a bit tight for both of us, he's pretty happy he held off!) Anyway since trying to transfer him his half of the bounty its been a f*cking nightmare.
Stars locked both our accounts until we sent them passports and bills etc.
Thats now been done but he had his locked for cashouts until he basically builds up enough FPPs to cover the amount of money I transfered. Not sure if thats a new thing but it's really annoying. He's grinding away decent level Turbo SnG's at the moment to try and get some money out before Xmas.
Me, I've only just been able to get a csahout request sorted. I spoke to Stars security about getting money off fast as I wanted to book a ticket to go and see my folks for Christmas. Shame I did actually as after speaking to them I used my Visa to deposit £10 so I could then cash out to this card and pay for the flights etc. It seems I'd have been better off walking into a bank with a shotgun, I'd probably have gotten a better response. 7 different people, about 25 emails, more scans of bills, scans of credit card,passport again, signed waivers the list goes on! I'm not going to the toilet at the moment in case I'm asked for a urine sample!

Basically after dealing with Stars Support for so long I got used to truly excellent customer service. After dealing with the Security team for 2 days I am burnt out. Seriously if they actually read what people write rather than copy and pasting stock emails things could be so much easier. If they made any attempt to apologise or empathise I'd be a bit placated but I'm seriously considering moving to Bodog in the new year after the way I've been treated in the past couple of days.

If anyone can suggest the best sites with good promotions I'd be interested to hear.

EDIT: UPDATE! Stars Security has just phoned(!) to apologise to Dave about all the probs he's been having.... Of course I hijacked the call after he was done to actually speak to someone in person and am now waiting for a proper response from someone about all the issues I've had... More to follow, i hope.....

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 654869

JUST WON THE SUNDAY $200,000 On POKERSTARS

Can't really put much into words at the moment as it's 5am but think the title says it all!

"I knew you'd stack off if I hit"

PokerStars Game #22892951169: Tournament #126815631, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level XIV (800/1600) - 2008/12/13 19:53:04 ET
Table '126815631 12' 9-max Seat #8 is the button
Seat 1: poo_tane (15738 in chips)
Seat 2: Luke00016 (42492 in chips)
Seat 3: angrynorman (43369 in chips) Seat 4: shooter17991 (65498 in chips)
Seat 5: AnneOkly (37441 in chips)
Seat 8: pattypooh25 (45380 in chips)
Seat 9: deano6669 (20082 in chips)
poo_tane: posts the ante 150
Luke00016: posts the ante 150
angrynorman: posts the ante 150
shooter17991: posts the ante 150
AnneOkly: posts the ante 150
pattypooh25: posts the ante 150
deano6669: posts the ante 150
deano6669: posts small blind 800
poo_tane: posts big blind 1600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to angrynorman [Qc Qd]
Luke00016: raises 1600 to 3200
angrynorman: raises 8000 to 11200
shooter17991: folds
AnneOkly: folds
pattypooh25: folds
deano6669: folds
poo_tane: folds
Luke00016: calls 8000
*** FLOP *** [8d Tc 5h]
Luke00016: bets 12000
angrynorman: raises 20019 to 32019 and is all-in
Luke00016: calls 19142 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (877) returned to angrynorman
*** TURN *** [8d Tc 5h] [Td]
deano6669 said, "oh"
*** RIVER *** [8d Tc 5h Td] [Kc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Luke00016: shows [8h 8s] (a full house, Eights full of Tens)
angrynorman: shows [Qc Qd] (two pair, Queens and Tens)
Luke00016 collected 88134 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 88134 | Rake 0
Board [8d Tc 5h Td Kc]
Seat 1: poo_tane (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: Luke00016 showed [8h 8s] and won (88134) with a full house, Eights full of Tens
Seat 3: angrynorman showed [Qc Qd] and lost with two pair, Queens and Tens
Seat 4: shooter17991 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: AnneOkly folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: pattypooh25 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: deano6669 (small blind) folded before Flop


His justification for calling 25% of his stack pre-flop OOP to a re-raise.... "I knew you'd stack off if I hit"

Ok mate, I'll take you calling without the odds for a 2 outer on a final table every single day! And hey, maybe one day the RNG won't decide to fist me without even spitting first for lubrication.......

Zandi Zandi we love you!

For those that follow the 2+2 forums you may well have seen a thread recently about PokerStars support staff. You should also remember that the OP managed to get himself a Poker Haiku written by a support person called Zandi.

Well I can now go one better! Zandi has just made my day by awarding me a gift straight from the PokerStars bank account so in return.

Zandi We Love You
You Make Our Poker Lives Complete
To FullTilt Don't Go!

I'm hoping tat this, along with my new Avatar will give me some Karma & good luck for today's session!

Much Love!

(Not so)angrynorman


EDIT: Just received this in reply....

Hello,

Thank you for your email.

The fullness of any tilt
of this globe that we inhabit
pales beneath the Stars.

Regards,

Zandi D
PokerStars Support Team



Zandi, you are a legend!

1 for 1

Ok So had a go at the $11 180 seater today. Played solid TAG poker from position, made the most of the final table bubble and managed to play my way to 4th.

So why am I tiltiing?

Because making a correct decision ended up costing me at least 2nd place. Throughout the final stages I had worked out the 2 players that my chips were coming from. One a very tight guy to my left who gave up his blinds very cheaply and the 2nd a moster aggro lagtard who would open shove any A and Re-Raise All In pre flop against tight players with anything from A3 up. I didn't actually get any hands with which to get into pots in position with him during the final 9 until we were 4 handed. At this point he had open shoved his stack, 80K ish from the SB EVERY time it had folded round. Now I don't mind a big stck keeping pressure on smaller stacks but the guy had shown he was doing this with ATC. Getting called by A10 a few rounds earlier and hitting a straight with his 8 5o. So when 4 handed the button folds and I'm sitting with AJs in the BB I'm literally hovering over the call button. As I knew, he shove's. K 6 off. Great, rub hands I'm about to double up to 80k, take 2nd place and after watching the rest of the players have to be pretty confident of going on to win.... unti the 6 hits and thats me gone. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished. I have noted the guy and will be getting into as many pots with him as I can the next time we come up against each other.

As for now I'm too tilted by his idiotic attempts to justify his play in he chat box to carry on playing. It's friday night, I'm on a promise and I'm off out to vent alll frustration on the poor unsuspecting lady! If she compains I'll just give her the guy's S/N and tell her to get some compensation from him!

Squeezeing Limpers

I'm going to start a thread about this in 2+2 but I'm going to expand on the subjext a bit more here.

Personally I think that a well timed Squeeze Play is a lot more valuable than stealing blinds from CO or Button. My rationale is this. Whilst post flop the button is the last to act, pre flop is the one time when you as the BB have more information than anybody else at the table.

Further more if you are stealing from the button after its folded round then you are picking up 1 1/2 BB's (plus antes). Whereas a good squeeze play is getting at least 2 - 3 extra BB's. All valuable extra chips...

Unfortunately I've had a faulty radar today and walked into quite a few monsters that have limped in late position. Its a move I don't expect and just dont understand. If you're limping with Kings or Queens from the button / cutoff surely you're just inviting a bad beat by raggy Aces or random 2 pairs....

Anyway, small profit today. was only 2 tabling for most of it as my heart wasnt really in the grind and had a bit of a headache. Managed a 6th, a min cash and cashed in the PS Daily 30k. Also sat at an Omaha .5 / .10 table for about 15 minutes. Some madness going on but I figured after winning 1.5 buyins after rivering quads was a decent time to leave!

any comments on the dangers of squeezing are more than welcome.

Angrynorm

Calling Station ALERT!!

Pokerstars giveth, Greyghost8 giveth even more!!!



PokerStars Game #22818959941: Tournament #126310320, $4.00+$0.40 Hold'em No Limit - Level VII (125/250) - 2008/12/11 10:36:50 ET
Table '126310320 15' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: DamienBoyle (5675 in chips)
Seat 2: Antoniozete (3390 in chips)
Seat 3: greyghost8 (13011 in chips)
Seat 5: angrynorman (12132 in chips)
Seat 6: scayrich (7005 in chips)
Seat 7: hairytoe62 (4855 in chips)
Seat 8: pokkerchic25 (1290 in chips)
Seat 9: kojar82 (1450 in chips)
DamienBoyle: posts the ante 25
Antoniozete: posts the ante 25
greyghost8: posts the ante 25
angrynorman: posts the ante 25
scayrich: posts the ante 25
hairytoe62: posts the ante 25
pokkerchic25: posts the ante 25
kojar82: posts the ante 25
pokkerchic25: posts small blind 125
kojar82: posts big blind 250
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to angrynorman [Jd Ad]
DamienBoyle: calls 250
Antoniozete: folds
greyghost8: calls 250
angrynorman: raises 1000 to 1250
scayrich: folds
hairytoe62: folds
pokkerchic25: folds
kojar82: raises 175 to 1425 and is all-in
DamienBoyle: folds
greyghost8: calls 1175
angrynorman: calls 175
*** FLOP *** [Jc 5c Js]
greyghost8: checks
angrynorman: checks
*** TURN *** [Jc 5c Js] [9h]
greyghost8: checks
angrynorman: bets 1750
greyghost8: calls 1750
*** RIVER *** [Jc 5c Js 9h] [Ac]
greyghost8: checks
angrynorman: bets 2750
greyghost8: calls 2750
*** SHOW DOWN ***
angrynorman: shows [Jd Ad] (a full house, Jacks full of Aces)
greyghost8: mucks hand
angrynorman collected 9000 from side pot
kojar82: mucks hand
DamienBoyle said, "nh"
angrynorman collected 4850 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 13850 Main pot 4850. Side pot 9000. | Rake 0
Board [Jc 5c Js 9h Ac]
Seat 1: DamienBoyle folded before Flop
Seat 2: Antoniozete folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: greyghost8 mucked [4h 4c]
Seat 5: angrynorman showed [Jd Ad] and won (13850) with a full house, Jacks full of Aces
Seat 6: scayrich folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: hairytoe62 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: pokkerchic25 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: kojar82 (big blind) mucked [Ks 8s]

How many raises / re-raises until you think your mid pocket pair might not be in such good shape???

Hmmm it seems at $4.40 stakes there is no amount of action that will let you give up on 7's or 10's

Ahh well at least it was only the 2nd hand of the tourney!

PokerStars Game #22818691209: Tournament #126321080, $4.00+$0.40 Hold'em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2008/12/11 10:23:03 ET
Table '126321080 20' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: Colt Car (1500 in chips)
Seat 2: heino1969 (1490 in chips)
Seat 3: 2MUCHBOOST (1480 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 4: achy1 (1500 in chips)
Seat 5: schrANK111 (1500 in chips)
Seat 6: REDRIVER6161 (1500 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 7: flop-hustla (1500 in chips)
Seat 8: jhwdgfbfbfba (1440 in chips)
Seat 9: angrynorman (1590 in chips)
2MUCHBOOST: posts small blind 10
achy1: posts big blind 20
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to angrynorman [Qs Qh]
schrANK111: folds
REDRIVER6161: folds
flop-hustla: folds
jhwdgfbfbfba said, "like that then"
jhwdgfbfbfba: calls 20
angrynorman: raises 80 to 100
Colt Car: raises 120 to 220
heino1969: folds
2MUCHBOOST: folds
2MUCHBOOST has returned
achy1: calls 200
jhwdgfbfbfba: raises 1220 to 1440 and is all-in
angrynorman: calls 1340
Colt Car: raises 60 to 1500 and is all-in
achy1: calls 1280 and is all-in
angrynorman: calls 60
*** FLOP *** [Tc 3s 9c]
*** TURN *** [Tc 3s 9c] [Kc]
*** RIVER *** [Tc 3s 9c Kc] [7h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
achy1: shows [7c 7s] (three of a kind, Sevens)
angrynorman: shows [Qs Qh] (a pair of Queens)
Colt Car: shows [Ts Th] (three of a kind, Tens)
Colt Car collected 180 from side pot
jhwdgfbfbfba: shows [Qd Ac] (high card Ace)
Colt Car collected 5770 from main pot
rtrain0809 is connected
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 5950 Main pot 5770. Side pot 180. | Rake 0
Board [Tc 3s 9c Kc 7h]
Seat 1: Colt Car showed [Ts Th] and won (5950) with three of a kind, Tens
Seat 2: heino1969 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: 2MUCHBOOST (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: achy1 (big blind) showed [7c 7s] and lost with three of a kind, Sevens
Seat 5: schrANK111 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: REDRIVER6161 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: flop-hustla folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: jhwdgfbfbfba showed [Qd Ac] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 9: angrynorman showed [Qs Qh] and lost with a pair of Queens

Officially OWNED yesterday. Horrific session. Don't think I've ever witnessed such coolers:
4x sets of flopped or turned Quads. (within 45 minutes)
1x Flopped Nut Flush > Flopped Straight flush.
Flopped Top 2 V's Bottom 2 > into turned FH
Numerous FH over FH.
Set over set would have been a dream hand for me!

Oh well at least I just switched off rather than tilting / spewing everywhere and damaging my fist like I used to.... Zen master techniques working well.

So Silver lining: No damage to laptop, mouse, walls, doors or self harm..... Today I feel good!

FTW!

So 6 hours of play
3 cashes and a win: Account balance now $618.97

Decided to step up to 5 tables and found it remarkably comfortable. Had some horrible beats along the way and obviously a bit of luck in spots. Again issues with calling stations and suicidals.. e.g AK into A2.. I started with 25k Standard 4x raise from Button to 4800 BB shoves for another c10k. I was 3rd in chips with 15 left so looking at a good run for the win but obviously flop brings a 2... 2 hands later I'm out so only $8 into the kitty from that one.

Gonna take a little break, grab some dinner and reload some more in a bit will update more then.

Haha ok evidence of the calling stations I was talking about in my last post. Within about 10 minutes of starting the 1st 180 this happens....


Poker Stars $4.00+$0.40 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t10/t20 Blinds - 9 players
The Official Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG+1: t1100
UTG+2: t1480
MP1: t1580
MP2: t1390
CO: t820
Hero (BTN): t2070
SB: t2060
BB: t1500
UTG: t1500

Pre Flop: (t30) Hero is BTN with J:d A:d
5 folds, CO raises to t40, Hero calls t40, SB calls t30, 1 fold

Flop: (t140) A:h 6:h 5:s 3 players
SB checks, CO checks, Hero bets t120, SB folds, CO calls t120

Turn: (t380) 9:s (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets t340, CO calls t340

River: (t1060) 3:c (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets t320, CO calls t320 all in

Final Pot: t1700
CO shows 3:h 7:d (a pair of Threes)
Hero shows J:d A:d (a pair of Aces)
Hero wins t1700

Right here goes.

its 12.41 UK time and I'm just logging onto Stars to start a session. Going to be playing $4.40 180 man SnG's playing 4 at a time.

Starting balance is $448.

Now I'm not bad at these 180 seaters but I do have a problem with calling stations. I'm pretty tight pre flop / aggressive post flop but it's almost impossible to get people off of any draws in these so I find I can make the "right" plays but once the river hits a lot of the time my 2 pair or Top Pair / Top Kicker can be very very dead. Anyhoo I havent donea proper 4 table session before so hopefully I'll have less time to try and be creative and play a bit mroe ABC. Lets see how it goes! SHINY DISCO BALLS!!

The Start: Well not quite but you have to start somewhere....

Ok here we go. I've been reading about other people keeping records and online blogs helping them to keep track of how they're doing poker wise and thought I'd give it a go...




So a bit of background:

I'm 29 (rapidly approaching 30!)
Single
English, living in Liverpool
Been playing for a couple of years on and off
Play on PokerStars, mainly SnG's and some MTT's
I post on 2+2 under the name DirtyLittleF



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