The exciting life of a Poker Player

After the bleak period I ran in September, things have been remarkably quieter on the tables for me. I’m only playing at Bodog and Ladbrokes at the moment, and this seems to have helped me calm things down.
I’m a real big fan of analysing the past so you can learn for the future and now my heart rate and emotions have calmed down, things have been really steady. No great wins, no great losses, just a steady period of play to stabilise after losing the most I have lost.
My VPIP is down at the lowest level I have seen, my flops seen % similar, and I think I have become the tightest player ever. This has meant that playing so much fewer hands leaves you open to not hitting as many hands. My stats for October show an increase, which is important of course, but after the poor run, it seems like I’ve won a fortune.

Ladbrokes has been pretty level after 2 weeks of play, maybe the above explains why I just haven’t seemed to be able to get into a flow of hands although I do show a profit of about 20$. Did reach a higher peak but two big hands flopped knocked me back when the river changed everything. Maybe it’s time to start gently loosening up my starting hands to include a few more playable hands, but I’m cautious I don’t fall into another hole.
Bodog is great. I love it. It will be such a big shame when the US clears the gaming laws that will prevent most of the players from participating. Standards are so poor at the 10$ and 25$ buy in; a tight player can pick them off like a sniper. My account here shows a tidy profit of 183$ in October and I have set myself a little challenge (which I have done before quite successfully). I’ve cashed out all but 10$ and am seeing what I can build with a very small starting stack. This really focus’s the mind on what I can and can’t play, coz once the 10$ has gone – I’m bust.
OK, I’m not really bust, but I’m trying to feel like that. So far I’m up to 35$ and my target is 100$ then I’ll cash out back to 10$ and start again. I don’t believe I could do this at any other poker site.

This last sentence got me thinking about my thoughts of different poker sites and how I seem to fare at each one. Laddies (predominately European in my experience) has always struck me as a tough place to play, Bodog and CD (predominately US) seem easier by comparison. I can’t seem to win SNG’s at Laddies or Bodog though, yet my stats show Inter and CD has huge earners. More thought to this I think.

Off the tables, I had a great 2 hours with Mia at the party and I don’t think we’ve both laughed together as much as we did that day, and when we got back home. Cathy working weekends and me taking over the Mia duties has made us closer. Usually I see Mia when I get home from work when we are both tired from the days exertions, and don’t seem to play too actively.
There was the scariest moment in my life when we were playing on the couch. Mia likes to crawl on the sofa, up my legs, chest, on to my shoulders and stands high saying ‘too big, too big’, which she thinks is really funny and giggles uncontrollably. Our sofa’s have quite high arms and as she tried to get round the back of my head, she fell, bounced off the arm of the sofa and hit the wooden flooring with a thud before I could catch her.
The thoughts that run through your mind are horrible, as I’m sure any parent will concur, and in the few seconds it took me to get round to her, I had flashes of all sorts of injuries and hospital visits. She was so quiet as well, which scared me. Then I got to her and she didn’t appear to be breathing, just lying there with her eyes glazed and mouth wide open. She was almost frozen for about 10 seconds then burst into the biggest cry ever, which bizarrely was a massive relief. I think it was the shock more than anything, I cuddled her for a minute before thinking, shit, what if she’s broken something and I’m cuddling her and making it worse. I laid her down on the sofa and checked her arms, legs, back, chest and head and could find no swelling, bruising apart from a red patch on her knee. She was so pale for about 10 minutes and would not let go of me. Then she gradually regained herself and 30 minutes later was back to normal though she got a bit upset when I had to nip upstairs to the loo!

OK, I’m off, enough here for one post I think.