Fultons Point

Having seen Acorn's success at using his Blog to promote his sister's worthwhile activities in raising money for her charity, I'm gonna try a slightly different bit of shameless promotion.

Basically, a friend of mine is in a band called Fultons Point and they are trying to get themsleves under the eye of someone who might recognise their talent and give them a record deal.
Not just trying to promote a friend, I actually think they are pretty good. They have a really distinctive sound, write their own songs and are currently having some minor success on the small club circuit in Manchester - with a couple of very positive reviews.
They have just recorded a 7 track CD and put together a video to try and launch their track 'Roll, Roll, Roll', which you can watch and listen to by clicking here.

My brother is a good friend of a well known pop band member and he has very kindly agreed to listen to the CD, so we have sent him a handful of the Fultons' CD to see if he can get them some exposure. If any bloggers out there have any connections, however loose, in the music business, I would be really grateful if you could get in touch and see if we can give the lads a break.

Anyway, back to more pokery topics, and another night on the tables saw a mixed night. My good run at Absolute seems to have come to an abrupt end, and I found myself 60$ down at NL tables. Before I get to the reasons for this loss, I decided to head to $1 Limit tables to see if I could arrest my slide, and 30 minutes later 50$ was back in my account, so I guess I have to be pleased with that. I actually wanted to stay on, despite it being 1.30am on a school night, as the players at the table were being very generous, and I was hitting my outs. I was glad in a financial sense, but when I got to work this morning, it was a struggle to get through the afternoon without nodding off at my desk.

My thoughts on the 60$ loss - what a difference to your nights poker if you hit your draws eh? Possibly the biggest drain on a poker players BR is a flopped open ended str8 or 4-to-a-flush draws. If the odds are there for a call, I call - but you still gotta hit. It can be very lucrative if your opponent isn't trying to guess at your hand when he hits 2 pair and you hit your str8. But, if you miss a good handful of these in a row - there is a massive leak and I think this is what has made the difference at Absolute. Hit 20-30% and you can be comfortably up, miss 20 on the run (or into the 30's as I got last night) and the effect can be horrendous. I put my 60$ loss down to missing such a long run of draws, where I was mathmatically correct to call, but didn't hit.
It is hard to get away from them, and a call of up 4 x BB (at 25c and/or 50c NL anyway) I think is acceptable if there are no scary cards to make you think your str8 or flush may not be good enough, if it hits.
Some players bet an open str8 or flush draw as if they've already hit - it's that horrible position where if you bet when you hit, everyone folds and you make very little (but lose nothing), but bet the flop and run the risk of a raise from someone with a made hand, or keep betting and not hit, therefore losing more.
Maybe I need to read up a bit more on how to play these properly, as I don't appear to have a definite strategy.

A conundrum of Carol Vorderman proportions for sure.