OK I promised not to moan about bad beat again but this really annoyed me. Well, I say annoyed, but I mean made me tusk! I wouldn't have played A3s yet alone raised with it and I certainly wouldn't have called a raise.

A BAD BEAT

1 Ace left in the pack surely I shouldn't be expected to spot that he had it and fold a full house Aces full of Kings?

I guess it's times like this is the reason that they say you need 100 buy ins for no limit cash games for the level you are play in. Tonight, I just can't catch cards. The best two hands I've had KK and AA, I lost as above with the kings and the aces, some other guy had AA too so we split the pot - and I can't help but feel I was lucky there. Saying that, I've just won a nice pot with QQ but a 999 board appeared and I was a bit anxious to say the least but it couldn't happen twice in a night could it? Thankfully he had pocket 10's and the pot was mine.

I like to think I've got better at ring games but my call of $21 when I held two pairs on a straight board makes me think perhaps I haven't. I certainly have learnt but I get excited with two pairs and think I've won. I don't like to fold all the time because I'd be forever putting hands down to reraises or large bets, but unless I have the nuts, for large bets, I think I'll have to.

There's one guy on $240 and one on $176 and I can't work out how they get that much. I see them playing all sort of things. I think the main thing is that I probably don't bet strong enough. The hand posted is probably a good example of this. I only raised $3 and gave him the odds to call. It's hardly a 'get out of my way punk' raise, probaly more of a trying to steal raise.

Didn't manage to get much of my loss back. It's a small lesson learnt - raise more preflop. I still see it as a bad beat - and a proper one too, but I probably do have myself to blame. It hasn't effected me though which I think is good. I guess it would have been a prime example to go on tilt with but I reloaded after one hand out and carried on. Made it up to $90 before calling that straight (mentioned) and went down a bit, back up to £68 now but will probably call it a day soon.

I like cash games though. I like mtt's too. I'm not so keen on stt's now. I think the cash games and mtt games are going well together for me too. It's made me concentrate more on the mtt's and play stronger. Sometimes I perhaps play too tight though which can be costly but overall, I think my game has improved.

Providing I don't lose to much money getting to Silver status, I'll continue to play 50c/$1 NLHE. I certainly enjoy them and they make you think one hell of a lot - I could use some brain activity, I don't really have that much to concentrate on in my life at the moment. I need to get into the maths side of things more though. Winning (or cashing in) a mtt is such a great feeling and cash games give me that feeling every time I win a nice pot. I can't afford to be putting my entire bankroll at risk for the sake of enjoying a game so if things do go south at a noticable rate, I'll have to cut back. The trouble I have is that I don't want to be playing micro stakes stt's, I want to be playing for some nice money, I just can't afford it lol
It's been a bit of a bad day with me losing a buy in, but it's only happened twice during my attempt to go for Silver. Unfortunatly it's twice in the last two days. I may reload with £100 just to cover it, althogh I still have enough in my account, I Just don't want it to look so small.

I'm still happy though.

Silver is looking an easy target now though. Almost half way there, perhaps I should go for Gold!

.......maybe not