.

Poker is great, Poker sucks

0 comments
My non poker playing activities are going tremendously well at the moment and at the same time, poker itself is going awful. I’ve had maybe my worse month of the year, my 2nd losing month of the year (although thankfully rakeback and bonuses made it a break even month technically, so I’ve only really had one losing month in 2009) and my luck has been awful. It’s the big pots I’ve been losing, the aces, the kings and the set type hands and the smaller pots have been fine. My Sklansky graph is a joke once again and like a div I just started backing up my database which will take all day so I can’t post it.

But as much as I blame bad luck (and I do believe the majority of my losers were coolers) my coach has been looking over my hands and pointing out plenty of mistakes I’ve made as well. So I’m taking a couple of weeks off and will be spending most of next week studying hand histories and discussing as much strategy with my coach and anyone who will listen. I’m way too tilted to play at the moment and everything else is going so well I may as well throw myself into that.

I’m loving my work for Pokernews at the moment and getting more involved with some of the behind the scenes stuff, for example I’m trying to shed a few last pounds for my appearance on Sky Pokers ‘The Club’ next week where I will be talking about Pokernews. I’m also doing a bit of writing for the newly launched www.pokerchanneleurope.com where I’ve been reunited with my old mate Paul Sandells. The website looks really swish and there will be loads of video content on there soon.

As you can see from the big purple banner at the top of the page, I’ve kind of unwittingly been promoting the tetleyboy-affiliates for a few weeks now so I ended up putting a banner up for them. Basically I got the best loyalty deal I’ve ever seen through them, I got chatting with the guy involved and was so impressed with his service and his personalised approach, I ended up sending a few players his way. If you want to know more send me an email and I can get you a special rate.

Unrelated to the Tetleyboy thing, I can also get you a great deal at VC Poker (Again, send me an email) which has one of the best loyalty systems available on the iPoker and send me an email for more. They’ve just announced the second Prague Poker Palooza on November 24th and I was gutted to miss the last one. I love Prague and it makes so much sense to have a poker tournament there, I’m hoping to get my ass over there very soon.

So yeah, its times like this I consider myself really lucky that I’ve got my fingers in a lot of pies. If I just logged on, played poker and logged off again each day, times like this would be brutal, but it’s nice I can have a break from playing and still make plenty of money and get plenty of opportunities from poker.

New Party Software

1 comments


Here's a Pokernews article I wrote today on the new party poker software. PartyPoker is the first place I ever played online poker and it felt a bit funny playing on this new software, but I like it. The best thing for me are the bet pot buttons, not because I use them (I never do) but because there are soooooo many players who use them without thinking. They'll use a 'bet half pot' button for when they have middle pair, 'bet 3/4 pot' when they have a top pair or better and a 'bet pot' when its a bluff. Obviously the good players don't do it but it certainly made iPoker more interesting to play lately and I might have to revisit an old friend called Party for the same reason.

In the same Pokernews post I managed to BOK Yuval Brohnstein completelty by backing him to win, I think he bust within a minute of me actually uploading the item too.

I'm taking a few days off the playing side of things because things have gone from bad to, well the same, not worse. I lost three times a row with Kings-Full to give you an idea of what I mean, but at the same time my poker coach has been pointing out to me plenty of hands that were NOT coolers and I just misplayed them, so Im gonna stop moaning. Either way a break is good.

Thank gawd for rakeback

0 comments
Every time I moan on this blog about running bad it has a tendancy to reward me with a hot streak where I run like god for a few weeks, so here goes:

Im running a bit bad

Not that I'm losing money, far from it, thanks to some very good rakeback deals with the rooms I play on, I'm actually going to show a profit for the month despite it technically being a losing month so far. I genuinley think that one can make a living from poker by simply breaking even at $100nl or $200nl games (maybe $400nl, not much higher because the games are too tough to try and play break even only poker) and playing at high volume with a good deal. I know of a player on Full Tilt who makes about $8000 a month from rakeback at the $1/$2 tables and he is a winning player too. Some of the rakeback deals I have with some poker rooms are between 45-57% and I reckon I could earn a reasonable living from it if I could stand the hours.

Some of the deals are a bit hush hush, which is why I havent mentoned any specific poker rooms, send me an email if you wanna know more.

I'm on The Club on Sky Poker next wednesday to talk about Pokernews, who if you havent noticed, have kind of relaunched and I think are looking better for it. The new format makes it so much easier for me to write what I want and what I think people want to read, its a shorter snappier newsreader style that lets me be much more creative.

Sky Poker and World Records

1 comments
Ive actually had the two most fun poker outings in nearly a year over the last three days. The Sky Poker UK Tour was a hoot and even though there seemed to be people chucking all their money in the middle on hand one with pocket eights at other tables, it was a real rock garden on ours. I did managed to make one lad check-fold pocket kings on a Q-2-2 flop to just one very small bet and also managed to make someone fold a full house when I had a straight (I cant beat a boat he said, even though he had one). Both seemed very keen not to bust early, as folks do when its their first live event.

The atmosphere was just great at DTD and you could tell a few of the people were very nervous and it was cute to see some of the ways folks were handling their chips. You should have seen the old fella on my right handle his chips when he found pocket kings. Im no Mike Caro but my ability to spot tells was through the roof on Saturday.

I even got the chance to take the piss out of Richard Orford briefly for his time on the now extinct 'Advert Channel' - a whole channel devoted to adverts which had one major flaw - it didnt have a single advert on it. Just a bunch of TV presenters saying 'do you remember the Smash advert? that was good with the monkeys, no wait, that was PG tips'.

Today I went to participate in the world record heads up attempt. Dave Cain is a legend and Im truly routing for the maniac, he is doing it on the Lincoln Uni campus and it was the start of freshers yesterday. I was expecting him to be a bit weird but he was a really nice bloke and I think he can do it. He played very well in our match despite having been up for 30 odd hours already so I think he clearly can run on fumes better than most.

Im on TV next month on the Club, the Sky Poker chat show, so Im expecting to shed a few pounds between now and then, as these things tend to motivate me.
Copyright © Barry Carter Poker