Bounty hunter tournaments

Tonight I decided to see if I could satellite into a bounty hunter tournament on sky poker. With 1 in 5 qualifying , I made it quite comfortably. In fact I was the biggest stack when the satellite ended. Well onto the main event which would normally have been an £11 buy in. The really attractive thing about sky bounties is that each time you knock a player out, your head value increases, which encourages other people to gamble if they see you have a high head value and they have a chance of knocking you out. Most sites just give you the same bounty value for each player you knock out. Sky adds 1/4 to your head value and gives you the rest. So just as an example the bounty's tonight started at £5 per head. It was a £10 +. £1 fee tournament. After I knocked the first player out , my head value increased to £6.25 and I was awarded £3.75 in prize money. I eventually exited shoving aj and being called by k9 off which just had me covered. This was a call made purely based on my head value which was over £9 so understandable in the context of the bounty hunter tournament. I made £13.25 for a buy in of £2.40 so a small profit was made but it all adds up.

A mixed couple of days

I had a mixed couple of days on sky poker playing 2p - 4p cash.  One bad decision cost me a buy-in.  Essentially there was a min raise to 8p and I popped it up to 20c.  I think I was re-reraised at which point I could fold, call and see a flop or get it all in. The villain was new at the table but had bought in the full amount.  I decided to Jam and got called by AA.   I think I really should have folded here.   Its really these 1 or 2 bad decisions costing me a buy-in which undo all my previous good work.

 I had another situation where I was dealt QQ and re-reraised preflop and the flop came down 678.  villain bet into me and I jammed and villain showed 9s10s.   sigh.  I think this is fairly standard. I  don't really think theres any other way of playing the hand apart of jamming pre-flop, which I think is bad. Maybe at a higher level, you can fold QQ here, but at this level I thinkI played it correctly.

Well, I managed to wipe out these losses and make a little bit more money, mainly by taking advantage of some terrible play by my opponents. In one instance, my reraise was met by a shove all-in which I was always going to call , considering it was 1/3 of the pot for me to call , and I was met by K3s.   I was ahead and my hand held.
Hopefully a few more players like the one above will come along, and not get lucky. 

Sky Poker Cash

Over the last couple of days I have been playing a bit of micro-cash on SkyPoker. Okay it's only 2c-4c but I managed to more than treble my buy-in in one session and in another session I nearly doubled it.  Rather pleasing to me is I did not have a single loss of £1 or more but I had a few wins which were greater than a £1.  One person who was a bit put out that somebody called his all-in with middle pair.  I wasn't even watching so I cannot comment on the hand, and the hand history on sky is just so yeuch.  Anyway this guy started berating other people on the table and said he was only there because he had been given a come back to sky offer and was going back to 888.   Now this is pretty typical, but what is not typical, was , he said, I was the solid player at the table, and to be fair I had been playing fairly solidly.   Maybe the tide is turning at last, and I will be able to beat microstakes.   I'm going to continue on this 2p-4p level for a while.   Another thing I did was change tables pretty quickly, when I had an inkling that the other players were better than me.   And finally, I was patient. Much more than usual, but when I got the money in I was usually ahead.

iPhone app for blogger

This is a test publication from blogger iPhone app

Ok, well its IPO time again, and I am playing on Saturday (Day 1B).
I've managed to play this event, every year, since its inception and there really is a great atmosphere. The only thing that lets it down is the standard of some of the bar food served up by the regency.

The first year I was there, I opted to get a burger from the Bar Menu, rather than  the standard nosh which was being served up for the poker players.  It didn't cost that much extra, compared to the poker nosh, and it was absolutely lovely.  
The next year, I was really looking forward to the same burger again, and I was hugely disappointed with what was clearly a bought in microwaved burger. I'm not the greatest cook in the world, but I would struggle to produce something that bad at home.  I wasnt the only one who was of this opinion. Jesse May was absolutely starving and ordered two burgers, despite me warning him how bad they were.   He ended up eating one and a bit burgers.   
Needless  to say, the following year, I declined to eat at the regency, and instead took a short walk down to the spar shop and had a lovely breakfast roll, for half the price and twice the taste.  
This will be the 4th year that the IPO will be held in the regency, and I sincerely hope that the standard of catering has improved. 

It will be the first time I have played live poker since I had the operation on my arm.   i'm still having physiotherapy at the beacon clinic, and it is going extremely well, and it looks like I just have one session left.  I'm due to see the orthopaedic surgeon next week to follow up in progress as well.   Hopefully, come november, I can get back up on a horse.

poker player is stuck

Not, in a financial sense, and not in a traffic jam or in the mud.  More in a physical sense.  Way back in april, I tried jumping a horse I was not very familiar with in a jumping competition, but he refused the first fence, and ended up carting me around the arena at least 4 times, when I eventually asked for assistance, to help me.  I came back later during the day jumping lower fences and asked for assistance from one of my instructors. We refused the first fence again but after I was given some advise, we managed to jump clear.  I decided to quit after the one round as I wasn't feeling very confident. A couple of days later, I woke up with a stiff right arm.  Naturally, I assumed that this would get better in a week or so, but it didn't.  I spoke to an orthopaedic surgeon (who is in our riding club), and he told me to come in to his hospital clinic on the next thursday. He sent me for x-rays which confirmed that I had tendonitis in the rotator cuff muscles on my right hand side.  These are a small group of muscles which control virtually all of your shoulder movements.  I was given an injection into the muscle which was a combination of steroid and painkiller.

I then decided to try some acupuncture, which helped relieve the symptoms considerably, but after one session when I was lying on my back, I was in agony if I tried to move my right arm.  It had to be massaged a bit more and this eventually freed it.

The regular acupuncturist went on holiday, and the replacement tried a completely different technique, and I immediately had the same problem with my right arm. I had to request the needles be taken out straight away.
That evening day I decided to go to the healthcare clinic and they diagnosed that I had a condition called frozen shoulder.  (ie it was stuck). They put me in a shoulder harness, and gave me some medication and a letter for the orthopaedic surgeon.  At this stage I decided to give up my horseriding lessons for a while. 


I had to wait for him to come back from holiday, and he basically agreed with the diagnosis from the clinic, and he organised an MRI scan and  to put me in to hospital for a day to have a procedure known as MUA.  (Manipulation under Anaesthetic).

Its amazing, but you don't really know how much you use your shoulder muscles, until you don't have the use of them.  I being right handed, was virtually living as a one armed person.   I could still drive, but had to be careful turning, so I adjusted my normal route to work to eliminate as much turns as possible.  I had to take my jumpers off with just my left hand.

Well I had the procedure yesterday, and afterwards the surgeon told me that my shoulder was really stuck. 
Fortunately, the procedure went well, but now I have to do physiotherapy exercises at home, 3 times a day.
I also have to go in to the hospital tomorrow and see the physiotherapist (at 7.30 am). This will also be a regular occurrence, and I'll find out tomorrow for how often and how long the whole process would last.

The good thing now is that I have so much more freedom of movement.  However, this has been one of the reasons why I haven't been posting as much or playing as much poker.

Anyway its time for me to do my last exercises of the day now

next vip level gained

Just a short note to say that I managed to achieve the next vip level on boylepoker.  (ipoker network).
As far as the jackpot sit n go's go I ran into a bit of a cooler when I hit trip 7's on the flop and ran into someone else with trip 7's with ace kicker.  I think it was my bb as well.   Still,I have managed to turn €30 into nearly €100 with very little risk plus an extra €35 will be coming my way at the start of next month.