Stephen Groom Music Producer? Poker Pro? Sports Bettor? Tune in next post to find out

GG November

Well.. November was an aaaaaaaaaaaaaaawful month for live poker for me, especially in cash games.  I'm not going to be too specific in terms of £££ figures but it was a huge losing month, even without me taking a shot at DTD early in the month.

Cash Games:

Excluding DTD I played only 5 live cash sessions.  I didn't finish in the black in a single session and finished well down.  At £0.25/50 my hourly rate over the month has been -£28.25 which is a real achievement.  It will take a good few hours of grinding to bring that back to a positive figure.  I do look foward to trying however.

I have a few notes from my session logs and will post them here, to detail how I managed to lose at such a hurrendous rate:

AIOTF w/ vs vs on  a board for a £150 pot.  Obviously find running bricks with the for the worst hand to scoop.  F8cking nemo!

Ak vs JJ
Top and bottom vs Top two
KK vs T7
Sick game

AIPF w/ vs of scotty hocking.  on turn.  GG!

So yeah.  An awful couple of hours of cash games and these probably go some way to explaining why I lost the motivation to play and only played ~10 hours

Tournaments

I did reasonably well in tournaments this month, and excluding DTD finished -1BI after 10 games.

There was an interesting game some way through the month though.

As a promotion from the G casino Newcastle, I played in a £2.5k live freeroll with about 30 entrants.  Of the 30, only around 18 actually turned up, and the game was basically an 18 man winner takes all SnG with 18 of the worst players you could find at a holdem table.

Before the tournament, a number of players had discuss a 10 way chop for £250 each which I was opposed to.  Basically, as I felt I had an edge on the field and felt I am a better bet than all but one or two of the field, I was not prepared to chop with 9 others.  As the final table approached, I had around 3x chip average.  The organisers of this chop were happily folding their way to 2-3BBs hoping that the final table would bow to pressure and agree to chop.  There was only me and one other who didn't agree to chop out of 11 players and by the time we were down to the final 10, the other party had bowed to pressure and agreed to chop.

A very awkward situation ensued whereby I involved the Tournament Director and discussed the issues of collusion, softplaying and basically cheating which I believed would arise on the final table.  He assured me that he would "ensure that the game is conducted fairly" and to his credit, I believe he did the best he can.  I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people throughout that final table though as people were openly discussing the strategy for ensuring that I wasn't going to win that game.  One player in particular using words like "If he's in a pot, everybody limp along and try to stack him".  The Tournament Director was informed of these comments etc but nothing was done, and nobody was spoken to, given a penalty, disqualified or otherwise.

To cut a long story short,  I finished the tournament in 5th place when my dwindling stack was forced to get AIPF w/ vs and The board ran out 5 low cards to give him the pot.  The 10 final tablists then went on to split the 1st place prize money 9 ways distributing as if I had exited in 10th and they had chopped.  This was very insulting and again, a lot of respect was lost for a number of people involved in this deal.

I believe that something should have been done by the tournament director about this deal but it hasn't, and I will move on happy that I was the only player playing FTW, at one stage of the final table getting a 9:1 price on a 4:1 £250 free bet worth £2.5k  (5 players, £250 outlay, £2.5k to win).  As any gambler knows, it is exploting favourable bets like this over the long term that will make us money.

In the end it is up to the 1st place finisher what he does with his prize money, but I am very unhappy that he was manipulated by 2-3 people with 2BBs who ensured that they were paid £250 when they had <1% chance at winning the tournament.  Again, back to getting favourable odds.. Good on them really

Moving on...

2 back-to-back cashes at Circus Newcastle were very rewarding but having gone on to the final table with 3x chip average both times, I really should have won.  I need to learn to win flips and also how to not get commited with 8 high when the villain obviously has aces.  Had I have laddered 1 or 2 spots in one of these games, I'd have broke even for tournaments (Excluding DTD) for the month.

December

My plans for December are very limited, mostly because of the fact that I'm life-busto, with only enough money for meals, fuel and parking.  It is very likely that my play will be on hiatus until January.

Keep checking/Subscribe though as it's very likely I will be posting a long-term bankroll management strategy for online play in the new year.

Cheers
Stephen