Last night of poker isn't going too well. I had planned to run good for once in the $24 KO on Tilt but 15 mins in, I managed to run my aces into jacks leaving me with ten chips as he set up, then with those ten I was all in with AQ and despite hitting trip queens, matey with the jacks had pocket 7's with a 7 on the flop! Ran usual good there. I needed his good luck tonight, not my usual!

Playing some other bits too, my last $9 on Stars is going on the omaha 8:30 comp.

One time please!

See you in a couple of weeks

Tonight's been one of those nights where I remember why I moved to cash games, it's just been beat after beat. I won't bore with details but the two annoyed me. I shoved with AK in the $24 on Tilt and am called by QJ and A2, A2 hits the straight. In another tourney I've pushed with 55 and am looked up by K2o. The board pairs twice and the king kicker takes it.

Anyway, I'm still fairly confident I'm playing okish. I have one left tonight that perhaps I'll make the money in, who knows, but even losing the tourneys tonight is cheaper than one of my losses in the cash games.

I've set myself a few small buy in tournaments as my regular tourneys based on the sites that I need to build my roll up on. On Stars, I think I'm going to stick with the $10 180 man sng's and the odd 6pm $80k sat to get the T$, that's quite a soft comp and there's usually 90+ seats available. I may play the 8:30pm omaha $8 comp too, but mainly because it's fun. On Tilt it's early doubles A&B starting at 9pm and I may play the odd $10 45 man sit and go and on DTD, well, it's pretty much any tourney $20 and below that I fancy. I'd quite like to build a roll up on there to pay for future live events at the club.

Tonight's not gone great, I've played 3 and am out of two unfortunately holding JJ in both - one I ran into AK and the other A5 who hit a flush. Made the money in ED A though and am grinding out my superlow stack like a trooper.

I've continued with the limit for now and had another good session with Simon the other day. Still lost money, but it's definatley not me, I'm just running bad at the moment. The main loss came with KK when I repopped a raiser on a 2/4 table. The flop came 2 hearts with all low cards. We maxed out the flop then the ace came on the turn and he completed his flush on the river. Needless to say moving up to 2/4 failed to pay off.

On the plus side, I made 27th and 44th (I think) in the Early doubles on Tilt the other day and thought I was in for the highest finish but two others finished better than me overall. Still, hopefully get a small bonus for that although it's not gone in yet. And... I came 3rd in a £5 HH comp on DTD last night for another £60ish. Didn't manage to pick up one head though which was slighly amusing. I was going to play the lucky 7k but decided that £33 out of the £35 I had in there was perhaps a bit optomistic, but I'm pleased with the cash I made and will continue to grind out these smaller field comps on DTD for a bit. I'd like to avoid the HH comps soon but they're the only cheap ones that have decent guarantees, I'll obviously have to attempt to sat into the likes of the £7k.

There are many positives regarding my last entry. In fact, I've actually been quite pleased with my game recently, I just haven't had any results to show for it yet. I think losing at cash helps me concentrate more on tournaments, I'm sure last time I felt this good playing tourneys, I was on a run of losing at NL50! Shame it's so costly, I could use a win to break even. I've been thinking more about my game and concentrating on what my expectation of hands are before making decisions and it seems to be working out in terms of placings but perhaps something else is missing to make it to the serious money. Most of my exits are beats these days so I think I need to work on getting rid of some, for example

My one cash recently was in the DTD $20 HH comp on Sunday night. I made 9th and thought I was unlucky to be knocked out. I'm in the big blind with pocket 2's. The blinds are 800/1600 plus antes (100?) and there's 4 limpers to me and I've checked. Pot is 7400. Flop 2 3 J rainbow. I check my set and it's checked round. Turn comes with a T and at this point I lead out with a 6400 bet and get one caller. The river is a 9 so I shove for my last 9k and am instacalled by KQ who's hit a straight.

I was reading Sklanskys Tournament Poker last night and this exact situation occurs in one of the hand test/examples but in a stud tourney, but the theory is the same, even down to the fact that it was a final table of a tournament. Basically, in a ring game or early stages, the check on the flop is fine, but at a final table, I've just let him in.

Anyway, I've twigged on to a couple of ideas recently and hopefully something decent is just around the corner.

In cash news, I've pretty much buggered my bankroll. I'm down $300 on Tilt for the LHE experience. That coupled with the losses in August and September make for a loss of.....God, I don't even know, probably around $1200 but to be honest, I'm too scared to work it out. I have all the figures in Holdem Manager, but I really don't want to see them at the moment. I've decimated my tournament earned bankroll playing cash and I need to get it back to where it was before I work out the true cost. For the first time in well over a year, I'm beginning to feel like money is running out to play poker with. Got a quite a few cheap tourneys left, but never been this low before and I don't like it! I must watch some Cardrunners vids in the mean time, I'm crap at this, I've paid for a year and hardly watched it, my subscription must be up soon too.

I blame the credit crunch.