Been a while .....

..... so a bit of an update.

Firstly, the mooted game between C-nut, the Deerhunter and myself on Saturday night never materialized, at least not in its fullest form. C-nut couldn't quite get off the leash. Bugger. At least the Deerhunter came around and we had a private party. Great fun. Beers, a spliff or three, X-Box and some Heads Up! Not much to report really. We put a tenner in each, which I managed to win. It's all pretty hazy, but in the final hand he ran A7 soooooted into AQ off and I busted his cardigan wearing arse! (In all honesty, he was wearing a big black coat.... but he still owns a cardigan!) Then we just played some friendly hands, which was nowhere near as aggressive, but great for a larf. We pulled up stumps around 2am. Must be gettin' old!

I might have found another bloke who's happy to play mid-week. Definitely missing the 'real' action of a four way game with the boys, when there's some coin on the line. It's not about the $$$, rather the satisfaction of playing well in more of a pressure cooker situation. Here's hoping we can do it sooner rather than later.

I've been playing a fair bit of free shit on Full Tilt. (I've given up on, and uninstalled Betzip. Their new software sux balls.) Made top 40 (AGAIN) in a 630 ppl multi again the other night. Must've been a bit pissed. Donked out when I pushed top 2 pr into a flush without reaaaally having a good look at the river card. Hey. We've ALL done it!)

Had a bit more luck last night. Ended up heads up in a 630 ppl multi. Played smart agressive poker last night.

* I didn't back off when I had the cards. I was making people pay dearly to see another card.
* I called some stuff that I normally wouldn't in a live game.
* I didn't play suited crud as often as I sometimes want to.
* My set mining worked a treat. Three or four from medium pairs over the journey?
* I didn't pussy out when I was representing cards (even when I didn't have them.) Got me a bundle of chips in fact, when I was quietly shitting bricks and was SURE I was beaten.

Heads up lasted probably 10 minutes. He had almost $300k and I had around $200k and the blinds and antes were horrendous. Talk about card death! I hardly had a decent hand to work with the entire time. When I tried to play strategically, he pushed back twice as hard. The few times I tried to match his strength, I went down. The coupla times I had a very solid hand, it seemed he'd fold from the small blind. The only time I thought '... for God's sake dude. PUSH' was when I was holding Big Slick, and the prick folded. Fuggit! In the end I'm pretty sure I had KQc and he spiked an A with his kinda-average A8 off. I'd probably jam with that 99% of the time heads up.

On the whole tho I can't be disappointed. I thought I played pretty well, considering my dearth of decent cards. I feel since starting to read Harrington 1, my play with crap cards has improved out of sight, and let's face it... sooooo much of Hold'em is playing your shit as much as playing your cream, well. And there's sooooo many complete fuckheads playing in those freebie tournaments, it's ridic. The last 5 or 6 times I'm cracking top 50 at least and have final tabled two, finishing the bridesmaid once. So my honest assesment of my play is this. I'm not getting into too many dangerous spots. I'm laying down when I should be and not chasing crazy shit. If I have one criticizm of my game, is that sometimes I'm don't have nearly enough chips to have an impact at 'the pointy end'. But perhaps I'm learning to rectify that, as evidenced by my play last night. Time will tell.

Weeeeeooooooord!