A quick update...

I finished up the staking deal that I had with Cadmonkey from Raise the River. The stake was to play 10 $10+$1 games over at Full Tilt Poker. I ended up placing 3rd in one and 4th in another... Add in a few KO's and I made us both $50 profit so all and all I am pretty happy with it.

I need to bug Burnleymik so he can update the staking stats/leader board as I am showing a profit. Had some railage from Lukybugor from RtR, and we discussed my latest idea for a stake when we decided to do a percentage share for the idea.

What we came up with is we both will play 5 8.80 18 man token games and then play $26 dollar 45 man tournaments with the tokens we win. Then we will split the profit. Hopefully this little experiment will boost both of our rolls considerably.

In other news I decided to stake Rod again since he did so well making me money last week so I will be watching my horse carefully to see if he makes me rich once again...

A feel good day

Good News,

I am not going to be bitching about things today… I actually have a feel good type post. At least it is to me.

My weekend started off typically as I logged on to Raise the River.com and BAM! I was slapped in the face by the new RtR forum page design. I have to give Hull Jimi credit as he did a bang up job. Anyway I took over the responsibility of welcoming new member to the forum while Mair takes a break from pokes and such and have actually enjoyed it. Everyone I send the e-mail to is very pleasant, and I think it introduces them to the friendliest poker forum on the planet the right way.

To continue from that I sent a welcome message to a new guy named Rod. He replied pleasantly to me by thanking me for the welcome message. I noticed he had also put up a thread in the staking forum about wanting to be staked for 4 x $4.40 180 man games on Poker Stars. I was in the process of trying to decide if I wanted to give the new guy a chance when my messenger popped up and it was the new guy requesting to be added. I added him and we began chatting. I decided to stake him and he made me a nice little $34 in profit which he shipped to me very quickly.

I digress though as the point of the story is not that I took a chance with the new guy and he made a profit. The point is more that we chatted for almost four hours during the day while we played poker. It got me thinking about the people we meet online and how we take these people for granted. My wife always makes fun of me because every morning the same thing happens, I wake up log in to RtR and my messenger starts popping up with offline messages, or I start chatting with folks.

I started to think of the times that myself and Burnleymik have argued over the proper way to play a hand, or when Burnleymik quit poker and Bill Rini left an encouraging comment for me. I started thinking about the few comments left on here by the man that started my infatuation with poker with his blog "The Cards Speak". I thought about the Uber posts over at "Guinness and Poker" that got me through until I found my own poker community to get involved in. Or the times I have chatted it up with the ruler of the empire Mark, whom I swear dreams of ways to expand his grasp on the empire of virtual felt. To give an example of how far reaching his grasp is, let’s say you want to know how to play a Sit and Go properly. Just go there to "Sit and Go Planet". Maybe you want to pick up some Omaha tips at "Omaha Planet". Perhaps you're breaking even and want to find a good rake back deal-well, check out "Rakeback Planet" Last but definitely not least, maybe the bad beats have you in tears and you just want some poker humor so you check out "Melted Felt". Now folks if that is not an online poker empire I do not know what is.

I went on a bit of a flashback and read some old posts on RtR from Ken, who uses his gigolometer to win poker tournaments like they are going out of style. I remember discovering Amatay's blog, which is entertaining for both him and his readers. Then Yorkshire Pudding made a leap in the right direction by getting a deal to blog for BetFair. I remember when I first started playing and reading blogs like "The Cards Speak", "MeneGene", "PokerGrub", "Guinness and Poker", Bill Rini’s poker blog, "http://www.upforanything.net/poker/", and badblood. The bloggers were like mini-celebrities to me. They were above the average player like me. I started my own blog without expectations of having anyone ever visit. It started out as just being a place for me to speak my mind. I am proud that I have been recognized on the blogfathers blog. Even if was just a quick mention. I am happy that I took the time to attempt to make the Up For Poker blog a new banner even though they did not use it. All these things have made me proud of my little corner of hyperspace. I mean I have not won a UKgatsby yet (nudge) but we cant all be famous, right? I hope that someday I get a chance to meet some of these great people that I chat with over the virtual world.

Anyway, many thanks to everyone who has become like family to me and thanks to everyone who comes and joins our little poker community over at RtR.

A Bitch about Full Tilt Customer Service

Ok many I am putting this up there as I am sure most of the readers I do have play at Full Tilt Poker. Now I am not going to quit playing there as I really don't have a lot of options considering I live in japan, and have a US bank account.

It all started when I read a thread over at Raise the River the peeked my interest about the possibility of receiving Rake Back with an existing account. Now I don't play big time poker or anything but to be honest rake back could be the difference to redepositing sometimes.

So I sent an e-mail to them and asked. Well it turned out that I was not eligible because I had signed up through an affiliate that did not offer rakeback so so unfortunately there was nothing they could do.

Yet the story does not end there as I asked my affiliate if there was anyway to switch from their non-rakeback code to their rakeback code. The affiliate did something completely unexpected and e-mailed Full Tilt and told them to release me from their affiliate account.

So I get this wonderful e-mail from Full Tilt Support
-----------------------------------------------------

Hello Scott,

This is to inform that as requested we have added your username to the Rakebackpro's list.

If you are selected to receive rakeback from the affiliate you will receive a confirmation email from Full Tilt Poker.

We appreciate your business. If there's anything else we can assist you with, please let us know.

Best of luck on the tables!

Regards,

Jose
Full Tilt Poker Support

-----------------------------------------------------

Since this e-mail was unsolicited from me I emailed to ask when I might be recieving an email letting me know for sure... This is the dickhead responce that I get.

-----------------------------------------------------
Hello Scott,

As you have been informed in previous correspondence you will be contacted by Full Tilt Poker if you are selected to participate.

We feel we have been more than accommodating in answering several emails from you on this subject in the past. At this time, we must advise you that, while we will be more than happy to answer your questions or concerns on any other topic, we will no longer be responding to any correspondence from you regarding receiving rakeback,

Regards,

Berndt
Full Tilt Poker Support
-----------------------------------------------------

I mean WTF after two e-mails anyways rumor has it that the rakebackpros thing is just a ploy to shut people up for awhile. Oh well Just horrid customer service IMO

start to the weekend

Last night I returned to the virtual felt. Since I got to a late start I decided to change it up a bit and play some different games. It did not work out and I was down about $40 when all I had left was 2 $5 6-MAX STT’s left. I took 1st and 2nd respectively and saved my evening by making only a $10 loss.

As I have stated about 1 million times before, my biggest problem is with self discipline. I don’t want to earn my way to the bigger games by grinding out smaller games. I just want to be there. This push I am on now is different. I have a set strategy with this which includes playing micro MTT’s and then building from that. Right now I am concentrating my efforts on Full Tilt Poker but in a day or so I am planning on playing a set of 4 180 man games as well.

Originally my plan was to play the $3 90 man KO’s until my roll was up to 50 buy-ins of the $10+1 90 Man KO’s. At that time my plan was to introduce the $10 games slowly by playing my normal set of 4 – 6 games but including 1 or 2 $10 games. Again I am sure most of you have noticed I am speaking in past tense here. Yesterday I was fumbling around RTR and found a stake offer for 10 $10 +1 games on FTP. So I told the guy I was interested and when he said OK ACE you have the money I developed a plan. What I am planning to do is my original plan and incorporate the 10 $10 games into my normal routine.

So A big thank you to CADMONKEY for staking me and hopefully I make us both rich!!!

A quick update

How am I, you ask?


Well, as stated yesterday this week was the start of my new poker playing schedule and today is my first day off from playing poker. I do have to play one STT for IRON MAN reasons on FTP. I don’t play enough to get up to bronze status, but if you earn 1 point per day for a month you do get 16 IRON MAN Medals and if you save them up you can use them for all sorts of cool things.


I guess I will start with a run down of the games I have played this week so far. I did not manage to play 2 sets of STT yesterday but as I said, the schedule is fluid and sometimes I won’t play all of it…


So I started this on 08 Jun 08 by saying I was going to play 100 $3.30 90 Man KO tournaments…

I have since played… 12- 90 man KO tournaments…

Game 1: Finished 11th for $0.00 / 1 KO for $0.50

Game 2: Finished 10th for $0.00/ 2 KO for $1.00

Game 3: Finished 14th for $0.00/ 8 KO for $4.00

Game 4: Finished 8th for $6.75/ 7 KO for $3.50

Game 5: Finished 9th for $5.62/ 3 KO for $1.50

Game 6: Finished 21st for $0.00/ 1 KO for $0.50

Game 7: Finished 17th for $0.00/ 1 KO for $0.50

Game 8: Finished 34th for $0.00/ 0 KO for $0.00

Game 9: Finished 1st for $72.00/ 5 KO for $2.50 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Game 10: Finished 25th for $ 0.00/ 2 KO for $1.00

Game 11: Finished 12th for $ 0.00/ 3 KO for $1.50

Game 12: Finished 54th for $ 0.00/ 0 KO for $0.00


I also have played 2 $3 Rebuy with one Finale table but onle 5 got paid and I exited in 9th when my AA got stomped by 88, as well as 2 $3 double stack non turbo MTT’s on FTP. I cashed in placing 11th oujt of 106 entrants in one of those as well, and finished 12 out of 96 in the other.


Needless to say I am playing consistently and getting pretty deep in most the MTT’s I am playing. I am hoping I can keep this up and adjust my LATE/BUBBLE play a little as I noticed some leaks right at the bubble that I really believe cost me two cashes.


An update on the AMATAY prop bet-he has so far played 150 games with an ROI of 30.5% If he keeps this up he might be able to accomplish his bet. I still think my money is safe though.

taking things seriously

How am I you ask?

Well yesterday I highlighted the fact that I had lost my second income and decided to try to play online poker in an attempt to make up the difference. I feel I have the capability, I spend a lot of time thinking about poker, and honestly felt the second job was killing my ability to play.


That being said it was quite evident to me that I would have to take poker much more seriously then I have been and that means I have to stop playing all over the place and odd times ect…


So the first order of business was asking my beautiful, intelligent, always correct wife to assist me in coming up with a schedule that would allow me to play a decent amount of online poker, but also allow the poker free time I am beginning to think is vital to succeeding in this game over the long term. After very little deliberation my schedule was determined.


Aces poker schedule

Monday – 1 set of 4 STT/1 set of 4 MTT
Tuesday - 2 set of 4 STT/1 set of 6 MTT
Wednesday – NO POKER
Thursday - 2 set of 4 STT/1 set of 6 MTT
Friday - NO POKER
Saturday - 2 set of 4 STT/2 set of 4 MTT
Sunday – 1 set of 4 STT/ 1 set of 4 MTT


Now obviously this is not set in stone as life commitment and such will affect this schedule somewhat, and depending on how I am running I might choose to quit playing early, or maybe if I have a free 30 min might play 1 6 max game on a day off, but overall this is the schedule that I am going to be playing for awhile.

Next post i will give a run down of everything i have played thus far...

Another chance?

How am I, you ask?

Well, my week started off pretty normal I guess. I ran a poker
tournament on Tuesday(which was my second job). I did this three times a week.
actually two times as I paid someone else to do it for me on Sundays. So
my schedule for most weeks looked like this:

Monday 5:30 AM-4:30 PM work
Tuesday 5:30 AM-4:15 PM work
5:00 PM-10:30/11:00PM Second Job
Wednesday 5:30 AM-4:30 PM work
Thursday 5:30 AM-4:15 PM work
5:00 PM-10:30/11:00PM Second Job
Friday 5:30 AM-4:30 PM work

Needless to say when adding in quality time with my kids, quality time with my beautiful, intelligent, always correct wife, along with household obligations such as mowing the lawn, etc... The amount of time left to devote to poker (either playing
or learning) was minimal. Now the crafty reader will notice I am speaking in the past tense...

The reason for that is I got fired. Actually I quit but it was going to be that or get fired anyway... Why?, you may ask. Well I had a couple customers being idiots and arguing with me over some rules and I lost my cool and told them to sit the f*ck down. Needless to say me dropping the f-bomb on a customer was enough to entice them to comment to the duty manager so instead of waiting for the inevitable call from my main boss at the club I decided to go ahead and quit.

First off I don't think this is a horrible thing. The reason that I don't think so is mainly because I did not enjoy going there anyway. In fact I kind of despised it. The only reason I accepted it in the first place was because someone was going to pay me $700 a month to oversee 12 tournaments a month. I did learn something about myself though. I love playing poker, I don't love watching idiots that don't understand how to play poker. I cant count how many times I heard, "Well I was ahead because his AA only has 2 outs and I had 6 outs with my KJ." or something equally as dumb blurted out.

Secondly my poker game suffered dramatically since I took that job. Which is devastating to me as I really feel I was hitting my stride right before I took it. I have had several conversations with a friend of mine burnleymik over my recent flaws, and I think through his honestly and my brutal research of recent hand histories I have noticed several huge gushing leaks that crept into my game that I am hoping I
will be able to close.

So through the unfortunate/fortunate incident of me losing my second income(depends how you look at it I guess) I am faced with a dilemna of how to attempt to replace it. I have chosen to attempt it through online poker as I feel I am good enough if I devote the effort and it is like anything else- you get out of it what you put into it. That being said, those I know of what are successful play at certain times. Thus
leaving the time not devoted to playing for non-poker relatedactivities. I have decided to do the same thing. I am going to dedicate certain times for online poker and also certain times for studying it as well. I hope to have my bankroll back to legitimate status real soon. Probably 1 or 2 months.

On to the decision of what type of schedule to keep. I have to work that out with the wife, so I will address that in the next post. I do plan on concentrating on micro MTT's for now so I will probably base my schedule around playing a set of mTT's at a time.

My first order of business will be to play 100 of the $3.30 90 Man KO games on Full Tilt Poker. These are within my bankroll and I feel that 100 of them will either give my bankroll a boost or at least show me where I am at as a player. I have not yet decided whether or not to take my entire roll out of Stars. However, I have decided I will play most of my poker on Full Tilt for now. I would like to try UB again shortly
but there would have to be a strict NO black Jack rule if I did that.
I guess that's enough insight for now and I will pop back in tomorrow and probably post my playing schedule. I should finish my first 10 90 manners tonight so should have some decent info on those to post as well.