Ladbrokes: 239 dollars
Pacific: 120 dollars

Total: 359 dollars

Another useful week. I definitely feel that I have a handle on the Pacific game now. It is much more volatile than on Laddies, but I think you just have to accept that. You can go down 10 in a session and then up 20 in the next. So long as the trend is in the right direction, which it has been lately, then fair enough.

I haven't played so much on Laddies but have had a useful learning experience. I was chugging along with a decent profit (and reading the Bob Dylan autobiography "Chronicles", which is brilliant by the way) when a new player came to the table, "cjh8047" from Faringdon. He had position on me and boy did he maximise it. I couldn't do anything right. If I raised with AQ suited and hit a Queen on the flop, he had 2 unraised pocket Kings. It went this sort of way for 3 or 4 hands over a half hour period, until I realised what I needed to do - I got out! You can't fight that sort of thing and you go "on tilt" if you try. I would have changed position, but that wasn't possible.

Funny thing is that it was hard to work out if he was a good player or just lucky. I suspect a bit of both. You just have to accept that you will get "bad beats" from time to time. However, if you stay on the "path of rightiousness", you will be sound over time and that is what it is all about.

The stats on Laddies are still totally skew whiff. According to them I am seeing 54% of flops - I doubt if I am seeing half of that, given my current style of play. Clearly if I want to maintain a bead on what I am doing I am going to have to power up "Poker Office" more often. It doesn't work on Pacific however, which is a bit of a shame.

"J" in his blog (I must get around to putting some links in) mentions a site by a Canadian player called David Scharf. This is a good read though it is mainly about no limit.