"I'VE BEEN DOWN SO GODDAMN LONG, THAT IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME!"

Ladbrokes: 55 dollars
Pacific: 376 dollars
Party: 87 dollars

Total: 518 dollars

This week I concentrated on playing at Party, got hammered and went to try my luck on Laddies, not much better. Sigh.

Given that I haven't had anything like a decent winning week for a month now, I've come to the conclusion that I need to reappraise my game.

I'm going to drop down to playing .25/.5 on Pacific and see if I can turn things around. I am also going to loosen up on my preflop calling in late position. Looking back I recall that when I last had a bad trot like this one of the issues I identified was that I was playing way too tight for the general standard of the opposition. The problem with playing too tight in microlimit games is that when you get a run of high pairs being busted by too many callers following you down to the river etc, as I have been doing, you are not getting many chances to repair the situation. This worked for me in the past so it has to be worth a try.

The other thing I need to do is get a full version of "PokerTracker" so that I can keep a close watch on what I am doing. I've had a go with the free version and it is certainly very useful.

So, the target is to get to 600 dollars before I move back to .5/1 again, which means Party is out for the time being.

Kudos to the first person to identify the song the headline came from!

BOBBING ALONG.

Ladbrokes: 75 dollars
Pacific: 376 dollars
Party: 114 dollars

Total: 565 dollars

The good news is that I am back in the black this week, not by much but I'm in no mood to quibble. I was actually over 100 on Laddies at one point but a poor session on Friday night saw me fall back from that. The lowlight of the evening was a hand where I had 2Q's late which I raised, getting three callers. The flop came Qc Ah Jc giving me three Q's but concerns about flush and straight possibilities. Under the gun bets and I raise and they all go with me. Turn is Ac. Clearly there is virtually a certain flush out there but I have a house now - the big worry is somebody having something like AJ. There are three of us betting and it caps out. The river is Ad. Ah,ha. Now I have the best house and can only be beaten by someone with the fourth Ace. Under the gun has the fourth Ace. SIGH.

On a brighter note, I think that I have plugged some of the leaks in my game. I detected that I was getting into bad habits with regard to calling for draws when I didn't have the pot odds. Discipline my boy, discipline!

BLOOD ON THE TABLES.

Ladbrokes: 61 dollars
Pacific: 336 dollars
Party: 107 dollars

Total: 504 dollars

A truely awful week. I got slaughtered on Pacific, where I could do no right at all. This seems to be a common theme. I noticed that Jeins and The Edge have also been reporting heavy losses on Pacific recently too. Basically it has been a case of being over-run by the fish. I have been getting 3 and 4 players taking on my good hands and beating me up with draws. I "know" that statistically I will come through this if I can keep my game together, but it is hard to play confident poker when you are in the middle of such a sustained hammering.

I tried to play a bit on Party by way of variation, but didn't make any impact at all. In the end I was having a session on Pacific where I kept getting disconnected. So I decided to take a look on Laddies where, blow me, I found a ring game at .5/1.00. Butroz was playing too and I actually managed to win a few dollars, which was a pleasant change from proceedings elsewhere. They have upgraded the software and it has been giving me a few problems. The chat facility and the betting buttons are off the bottom of my screen for some reason and the only way I can play is to use the "small screen" facility. I'll have to have a fiddle about and see if I can sort it, since there seem to be games available there that I want to play. I will have to be careful though since my bankroll is so low there now. Having said farewell last week, perhaps I might be back after all.

AN AVERAGE WEEK.

Ladbrokes: 44 dollars
Pacific: 393 dollars
Party: 125 dollars

Total: 562 dollars

After the trials and tribulations of the previous week it's nice to be able to report a return to something like normal. I haven't actually played that much, but what I have played has been more like the previous expectations in terms of variance and so on. I went up 25 early in the week. Fell back to more or less my starting position and then finished, with a session on Saturday, up 17. Nothing thrilling but at least it's positive. It would have been better, but I suffered from full houses getting busted twice in the session, which gives some idea of how much action there was. I had Jacks over Aces and got hit by a Queen on the river by a guy with 2 Queens. So it goes.

Meanwhile Newcastle Utd go from strength to strength under Glen Roeder. The defence has improved out of all recognition (only conceeding 2 goals in 6 matches). The crunch will come over the next 4 weeks I expect, since they have to play Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs. If Roeder wins two of those I think he must have a chance of getting the job. Mind you I'd perfer to see Martin O'Niell there.