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Keeping Warm in Winter
AAroddersAA:
Lost my motivation to play at the moment, played a little bit on Saturday morning lost about £45 on Sky switched to Betfair for a change (I felt like playing PLO and Sky does not have it) and won about £25 back so lost about £20, no big deal.
Online Cash = +£35.92
Was in work until late today so could not play the Blonde League game which was a shame. I am going to take the rest of the week off playing (really not able to motivate myself to do good volume this year - hopefully that will change when the APAT season restarts).
I see they have cancelled the Bahrain GP. This is probably a sensible decision but means 2 extra weeks to wait until the season kicks off.I don"t expect that to make too much difference although it would be good if another test session was arranged.
AAroddersAA:
APAT and how I got here - or The History of Rodders - Part Two
I lived in Newport, and it must have been around 2002. I had left college and went to work from a small local Internet company which would shortly after turn into ntl: which eventually became Virgin Media. I had started out as a tech support agent, then became a senior tech before moving into a role within the training department. This gave me the chance to travel to lots of locations around the country and at this point in time life was generally good. I did the normal things that people do but still played Magic every now and again.
A mate of mine who I had not seen for a while (Brian) was managing a local Snooker club at this point. One day I was passing and decided I would pop in. As it happened Brian was finishing his shift at 4pm that day and he suggested I come back then and we go for a pint. This sounded like a good idea so I did. It was then that I was introduced to a new type of game. A game different to the ones I had played before. This game was called.. playing fruit machines.
Now to start with I must confess to being sceptical. I had played fruit machine before of course as most people have but there was no skill to it, you just put money in and hoped you won, didn"t you? Apparently not. Fruit machines keep about 20% of the money that goes into them and pay out around 80%. So it is like a very expensive rake. Just remember you are not playing against the machine but against the other players playing it. The more skillful players should be able to win whilst the less skilled players lose. The machine knows when it has to pay out and will shows signs that it has to do so. It has to keep it"s percentage correct. The better players won because they had something that is known in the trade as "an edge".
Now I am guessing there might be a few of you out there reading this who have played the odd machine themselves (hopefully not Deal or No Deal *lol*). This of course was in the days of the big Barcrest Machines. There was Hot Stuff, Hellraiser, The Big Cheese (and it"s many clones) Beaver Las Vegas and Vamp it up. There were other makes as well, RED machines were very common and playable and many other that I won"t name here. The edge came from knowing what you are doing and making correct decisions, it was far from an exact art but it was possible, read the signs correctly and some machines would pay you handsomely, in those day Big Cheese was a classic example as when you got it, it was often pretty sure to go again. This was in fact a great money making trick back then. We would often see somebody win the jackpot on a machine and get off straight away and we could not get to those machines quickly enough. One of the golden rules in those days was always have a look behind (when you get the jackpot don"t walk away check again as it may want to pay another one - streaker machines were pretty common). So you would risk a little with the potential of a nice pay day. You use your supierior knowledge to take the money from the munters (a fruit machine term for fish, it means mug punters). I started to get an understanding of all of these concepts and how to apply them.
We found machine routes in Newport, Cardiff, Swansea and other places further away. We spent weekend after weekend heading to different pubs in different towns to play these (good times), in a little under a year we ran a starting bankroll of £125 (which was way to small btw but we knew no better) up to over £1000. We probably spent most of that in the pubs along the way but we didn"t really care about that. We then started to look for other edges. We found Betfair and tried football betting, which went rather badly, we tried Formula One, Darts and Snooker betting which actually went better. We started to understand the way our "edge" worked better.
So now we were looking around for new places to find our edge, we found casinos and tried to work out systems for blackjack, we couldn"t. We once nailed a great bet on the 2005 US Grand Prix due to understanding that the Michelin tyres just were not going to work at that track (thank you Paddy Power).
But amazingly at this point neither of us gave poker a thought. It seemed a bit intimidating. I thought it was all about knowing what the other person had by looking into their eyes and knowing that they were bluffing. I was vaguely aware of online poker due to adverts on betting sites - Paradise Poker wa the main one in those days. I never thought of playing though. How I wish I could find a time machine and head back there now.
However I was about to find poker see the next exciting installment to see how this happened and how it went initially.
Swinebag:
--- Quote from: AAroddersAA on February 22, 2011, 11:54:54 AM ---
I lived in Newport.
--- End quote ---
Got this far and gave up
top read really - more please
AAroddersAA:
Last night I got back from work, it was gone 10pm (I was supposed to finish at 8pm but there we go). I decided I was not tried so would play a little poker. about 2 minutes into the session get AA. Good so I raise from late position to £1.20 and get one caller from a player I consider to be a bit of a calling station but not too bad.
The flop came a very safe looking K-4-2 with two clubs. I bet out £3 into a pot of £2.75. He calls and I now have him on the king, or the draw (the king is more likely I think). Or he could be on some kind of under pair to the king I guess. The turn is a safe card and I bet £9 into a pot of £8.75, he again calls and the river is a 6, which be be fair completes a very unlikely str9 draw but the flush draw misses. I don"t think he is laying down a king so I shove and he calls. He obviously had K-6. GG £30.
I manage to lose another £10 before I decide that having spent the best part of 12 hours in work it is probably not the best time to be playing poker. Mangd to end up down for the year at online cash by about £5 although I am up about £60 for the month. Hopefully can make the profitlook at little better over the weekend.
Marty719:
--- Quote from: AAroddersAA on February 25, 2011, 12:08:08 PM ---
Last night I got back from work, it was gone 10pm (I was supposed to finish at 8pm but there we go). I decided I was not tried so would play a little poker. about 2 minutes into the session get AA. Good so I raise from late position to £1.20 and get one caller from a player I consider to be a bit of a calling station but not too bad.
The flop came a very safe looking K-4-2 with two clubs. I bet out £3 into a pot of £2.75. He calls and I now have him on the king, or the draw (the king is more likely I think). Or he could be on some kind of under pair to the king I guess. The turn is a safe card and I bet £9 into a pot of £8.75, he again calls and the river is a 6, which be be fair completes a very unlikely str9 draw but the flush draw misses. I don"t think he is laying down a king so I shove and he calls. He obviously had K-6. GG £30.
--- End quote ---
Betting less than full pot on the flop and turn will lead to you getting called by a wider range and therefore result in greater long-term profit. If you think his range is Kx and underpairs, you want to bet an amount that will keep the entire range in. With ur turn-betsizing, you pretty much discard air from your range (this betsize with air would be horrendous). Reasonable villains will be folding all underpairs as well as the weaker Kx hands.
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