February Summary

Very much a 'poker lite' month. Not a huge number of hands played, and stasis in the bankroll.

As promised, I stuck to my diet of 100% PLO8B.

Initially I enjoyed the challenge, but as the month wore on I did begin to get a bit sick of it. Despite it becoming a bit of a grind, I stuck to my guns.

Short term this is a -EV way to approach things, as I could easily have been grinding out more hands and chasing bonuses at LHE, but I want to broaden and deepen my game by applying some discipline and study.

That means less focus on results, and total attention to expansion of my comprehension and insight into the sport of poker.

Comrades, I tell you, yonder lies the path to enlightenment and fulfilment.

Sometime around 2015 I confidently expect to take my seat at the final table of the WSOP HORSE tourney - which by then will be the main event - by levitating across the arena on a cloud of pure poker karma.

Ahem. Back in the real world, on nights when I was too tired or demotivated to play, I buried my head in a variety of books.

Over the last few evenings I also diversified from cash games into playing some small buy-in SNG on Stars.

These proved to be an invigorating change.

Unlike the cash games which tend to be fairly passive affairs, there seems to be a compulsion in the SNGs to get all the chips in the middle at the earliest opportunity. Regardless of hand strength or board cards!

I did have a little difficulty adapting but I got the feeling this could be worth further investigation. I began to wonder if there is more of an edge in these games, where time is limited and hanging around waiting for the nuts isn't always an option.

Suddenly it seemed a shame that February only had 28 days.

The plan for March is to have a go at Stud-8OB. I figured since I am so familiar with split pots, it made more sense to go for this option as my first serious foray into a no-flop poker variant.

PokerStars seem to have the best structure, as their ante is only 10% of the small bet, so I'll probably spend most of the month there.

Their cash tables also go down to real micro limits, which makes it's a good place to get my feet wet.

I'd hope to move up a few levels very quickly, having already observed at slightly bigger tables and found myself saying on 4th or 5th street 'why the hell are you calling, you can't beat either of those hands'.

The joys of online poker.

In other news, I've also been faffing around with a free graphics package called, and I am not making this up, The Gimp - which stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. Those cheeky nerds!

Thus my card icons are starting to look a bit more presentable, and I'm trying to hand craft a few more options which might come in useful. Art isn't my strong point, so this could take a while.

Aside from Stud-8OB, for me the other big poker event in March should be The Blonde Bash - which is probably the closest thing we have in the UK to a blogger get together.

The bash is in Glasgow at The Cincinnati Club, so I don't have far to travel.

Glasgow is rapidly growing into its Glas-Vegas tag, as yet another casino was announced in February and plans for a mega-casino were revived.

If only I had more time and money to 'invest' in playing locally!