DUBLIN BELLYBUSTERS

According to Sharkscope, at about 8.30AM (GMT) this morning, I played my 10,000th SNG on Full Tilt. While the data is probably subject to some margin for error and of course, doesn't factor in my 1110 MTTs and the potential 'Bradley Effect' of Cash Games, I am sure it is accurate enough.

A few noteworthy statistics are as follows.

After 2000 games, my total profit was $55
After 3000 games, my total deficit was $215
After 4000 games, my total profit was $7030
After 5000 games, my total profit was $20370
After 10,000 games, my total profit was $42463

After 10,000 games my total rake paid to Full Tilt was $20400
My best day of the week is Tuesday with $9900 made
My worst day of the week is Sunday with $2990 made
My best month was March 2008 when I made $6430
My worst month was April 2007 when I lost $480
I have not had a negative month since May 2007

I have a positive ROI at all stake levels apart from $11+1 and $55+5
77% of all my profit was earned between 11PM and 6AM
I am down $1800 in the hour between 7AM and 8AM
My biggest winning streak was 7 games in a row (all Heads-up matches) which I have done on two occasions
My worst losing streak was 28 games in a row without cashing
My worst downswing was $1730

Okay - this post is therapy coz after the shit I just suffered I need some catharsis. The 28K tonight was my tournament. I played my best poker ever. I was super-tight early on, didn't have much to play with but from the introduction of the antes onwards, I ripped through the gears and accumulated like crazy. As the bubble neared, I had the chiplead and was raising every unopened pot. I made squeeze-plays with J2 and Q6. I amassed a stack of 160K - almost double the guy in 2nd. Then the misery started....

I had JJ in mid-position and got reraised by the BB with A9 for all his 55k in chips. He turns an ace. I fight my way back to 140K over the next half hour. With the blinds 2K/4K, I raise to 10K with AK in EP. I get called by a semi-shortstack (42K) with 99 in the SB. The flop comes AAJ. He donk-shoves into me, I call and he turn-rivers a flush. I play  more good poker and then I have to make a huge laydown after I check two pair on the flop and the turn river brings a 4-card flush. He showed the nuts so I saved myself, losing the very minimum. (He also had flopped 2nd pair so i reckon he wudda stuck around for the turn.) I am back down to 90K and am 10th of 60.

I decide to get a bit more patient as I feel my table are primed. The chipleader limps for 8K UTG+2 and it is folded around to me in the BB with A9. I check. The flop comes QJ10. I check and he bets 12K. I call. The turn comes another J. I check and he checks. The river brings a K and I have a little think. There is 56K in the pot and I have 68K left. I decide to check figuring that he might bet to represent the ace and even if he has it I'll get a chop. In other words, I may as well try to induce the bluff. He shoves his stack and I insta-call. He has 45 and I am back up to almost 200K.

I move tables which I am happy about. I immediately raise up 3 of the first 5 pots. The 3rd time I do it, I am re-raised all-in but a short-stack. I am getting about 1.9 to 1 pot odds and even though Q9 is the best of the three hands with which I had raised, I opt to lay it down. The very next hand, I have AQ in EP. I raise it up to 22K and am re-raised by a guy with 85K. I call. He has AJ. The board pairs twice and we chop. I should have 350K and the chiplead again but instead I have 260K. An orbit later, I make a raise to 20K with A9 from the button and again a short-stack reraises all-in. He has only 70K so I call and he tables 66. I miss and am back down to 190K. Next hand I have 99 in the SB. The blinds and antes are worth 25K so when it is folded around to me, I shove into the BB who has 80K. He calls with 33 and flops a 3. I wanna fuckin' vomit! 30 left and I have 110K. I am 11th.

A few hands later, I decide to play my A9 a bit funky from the Cut-Off. I figure it will look odd to the table as I have always opened for a raise and I don't really wanna put 20% of my stack in to make a raise as I will have to fold to a reraise and I definitely don't wanna shove my stack so weak. It is foled to the BB who checks. The flop comes A98. Bingo! He checks. I bet small, he mini-raises and I just smooth call. The turn comes a 4 and he shoves. Insta-call and he shows 89 for a worse two pair. Cooler for him! Yay for me! So I am back up over 200K - sitting pretty in 4th. Even though I feel I should have more, I know I am still well in the running.

Well from there, the bad-beat machine went into overdrive! I lost a 90K pot when my KK was cracked by A5 all-in preflop. I lost a 120K pot with AQ to A10, again all-in preflop. I was down to 90K (16 of 20 remaining) with the blinds huge at 8K/16K but stole my way back to 140K before the following sick hand:

It is folded around to the blinds. The SB with 200K raises to 42K. I have 55 and figure it's time to gamble. I reraise all-in for 140K. He insta-(and I mean insta)calls with 84. He flops and 8 and I roar in pain. WTF-OMG-FUCK-SHIT-DONKEYBALLS!

First place got $6650 and for 19th I got $104.75. Woopdeefrickin'doo!

Late last night, I decided to fire up some games. I am very conscious at the moment of how I haven't been cashing in my MTTS and feel that my old bad habit of playing my 45 player SNG game in them has crept back in. While it is an optimal style in the turbo-ish 45 player format, it is too loose for the large MTTs. With that in mind I tightened up  a bit and played a $10 rebuy. There were 600 entrants and  at the break I had ammassed a chipstack of 12K so didn't add-on. (I did do a double buy-in at the start). From there I coasted for an hour - my stack remaining much the same. That was until I woke up with pocket Kings in the BB. An EP raiser had made it 700 to go and the SB had called. I decided to make a small-ish raise as I didn't want my continue bet to commit me in the event that an ace peeled off on the flop. I made it 2200 and the EP raiser tanked befoe shoving. The SB folded and I called. He flipped up 66 and flopped a six. I was left with 36 chips. The blinds were 120/240 with a 25 ante. I was obviously all-in next hand but that permitted me the opportunity to tell my opponent (L1verpoolFC) how well he had played. He started giving me shit - he said "I probably ruined your night, huh?" I told him that I was happy with his call before the six flopped so it would be foolish to complain about it now.

So anyway, I'm all-in with 9-2 versus three opponents. The flop comes AK10 - one of the limpers bet and the other two fold. GG me, huh? Well you'd think, especially seeing as he turned up A10. However, my night wasn't ruined yet. The turn came Q and the river J. We chopped the spoils - well I got my fair proportion and had successfull quadrupled my stack. AQ the next hand was a no-brainer (not that I would have folded any 2). The flop came an ace and my hand held. I had 500 chips. JQ the next hand was good enough too and again I won the pot, getting in behind an raise in mid-pos with 88. I immediately got moved to a new table with my 1475 chips. I folded a hand and then pushed my 44 the next, stealing the blinds. With almost 2K, I at least had a bit of wiggle room. Two orbits later and one more double up, I had 6K. Pocket aces tripled be up 15 minutes later and I was among the chipleaders again. By the next break, I had 27K in chips. I popped in on L1verpoolFC to see how he was gettin on. He has 12K. Two hands later, he was all-in and out. Why didn't I offer him a last-longer!

The bubble approcahed and I got frisky, turning my 27K into 41K in one orbit through pure aggression. By the next break I had just over 90K and was 6th of 40. Sadly though, it wasn't to be. The tournament chipleader made an EP raise to 4 times the BB. That, for me, smelled like 88-1010 so I repopped him with AK for half my stack. He tanked and shoved. I called and he showed JJ. I didn't improve and was eliminated. If I had won that race, I would have gone chipleader just 90 minutes after being reduced to 36 chips. From there, who knows? Maybe I would have won the whole enchilada. I could have called myself Jack frickin' Strauss!

George Bush delivered a speech tonight in which he told the people of America what was going on in the economic world in words both he and they could understand. He unpacked the term ‘credit crunch’, telling a room full of carpenters that it meant that people could no longer borrow the money to buy their desks. It would have sounded patronising if anyone else had delivered it but from him, it just sounded like a man happy to articulate something coherently.

The world is in the middle of what Marx described as a catastrophic collapse of credit - an event (like the Wall Street Crash of 1929) when a tidal wave of bankruptcies sweeps across the world, paralysing production and ultimately leading to massive unemployment. How did it come about? The recent decade or more of boom not only inflated the value of shares on global stockmarkets but also allowed banks to accumulate a vast quantity of ‘fictitious capital’.

But what is fictitious capital? In short, it is the future surplus value of something. It is capital that is yet to be realised. A company might raise actual capital by issuing stocks, shares and bonds and then use that capital to generate surplus value. The owner of the share certificate or bond therefore has a marketable claim to a share of the future surplus value production. However, because the value of this claim does not function as capital, merely a claim on future surplus, the capital-value of this certificate is illusory - it is ‘fictitious’.

With the part-nationalisation of the banking sector in some countries and the tax-payer bailout in others, the general public are effectively becoming gamblers. Governments are betting on the future surplus value of the ailing banking sector using the people’s money. Talk about negative EV wagers? How ironic this is for the gambling community of the USA who have been blocked and hampered from making deposits onto online gambling sites by recent ‘nanny state’ legislation. It is almost as ironic as President Bush supporting a leftist Communist solution to America’s woes now that his beloved Market Capitalism has (as Marx predicted) proved itself untenable.

I have assembled my crack-team of No Limit Hold ‘Em specialists for the upcoming Dublin Bellybusters versus Badbeatspoker.net Heads-up Poker Series. Boasting six professionals and three semi-pros and with a combined online profit of almost four hundred thousand dollars, I believe my team will have the guile, cunning and experience necessary to overcome Scott Cook and his crew.

In recent weeks, I have been selling this Series as the Ryder Cup of Poker but given Europe’s dismal effort in the golf, I shall be refraining from that comparison forthwith. In any case, there will be four matches every Sunday night for 10 weeks starting October 5th. While the focus will be on fun for this 40 game mano-a-mano marathon, I have no doubt that both sides will be 100% committed to the pursuit of victory. Credit must go to Scott Cook and Dave Walasinski for all their efforts in assembling a 20-strong badbeatspoker.net team. I hope that the series will be an exciting and close contest, played in a good spirit. I also hope not only that it becomes an annual event but that its format proves to be an adequate template for similar competitions versus similar opposition.

Good luck to all the participants. May the best group of human beings win!