The past couple months I’ve been going once a week to the G Club in Manchester to get in some live practice. I haven't bothered with the tournaments as the stakes are too small to interest me. I've been playing the cash games basically to get used to playing live opposition. The stakes in the bigger game I play there are typically £2-£2, though in many cases people straddle it for more than this to up the action. This sort of money is more or less on par with my average online stakes and the fact that a lot of people buy-in short I don’t feel the least bit intimidated by the stakes. By and large I’ve felt I’ve played good in the G, but I did have a horror show in Omaha last Monday, making a ridiculous call that I should never have made and a very obvious bluff that a good player was always likely to spot. My only excuse is I think I just had too much gamble in me, tiredness might have been a factor and it’s only my 3rd time playing a live Omaha Cash Game.

When playing in the biggish live tournaments I felt under pressure since I was playing in a big event. I felt like I was outside of my usual online environment. I felt self conscious about my chip handling, my posture and whether I was I giving off tells or not. My practice in Manchester has thought me not to care too much about these things, just play poker. I’m just going to play Poker and totally forget about the occasion and the potential sums of money involved.
My recent run of form online has also come at a great time, I feel if I can bring this to the live poker table and if people misjudge my sloppy chip-handling for the table sucker then on their head be it. That’s the attitude I want to take with me to Vegas.

Anyway a thanks to all the players I’ve played against in the G Club over the past weeks. I’ve enjoyed all the banter and even some of the moaning and people losing their heads that come with the live game, if I do well in Vegas you guys will have played a part no doubt.

Anyway wish me luck as I head Stateside.

1. I pored over my past history in pokertracker and identified a number of minor leaks which I have begun to address.
2. Totally abandoned playing outside of my bankroll.
3. Identified the sites, games and levels where I do best at and which games are most profitable in my current bankroll level.
   1. I have done this in big detail, including bringing together all my past pokertracker data into one database. I made a shocking discovery. My average $ hour in hold’em pokertracker was $34. If I hadn’t been taking shots at big games like 20/40 NL and stuck to 5/10 NL it appears that even taking a conservative estimate of my returns playing 2 to 3 tables of $5-$10 NL would have earned me an average of over $200 an hour, a massive almost 6-fold difference. A thumbs up for bankroll management if ever there was one.
   2. I have created spreadsheets using statistical formula and done some VBA programming to determine best game selection vis a vis current bankroll.
   3. Abandoned playing online Mtts, they have never been a source of revenue for me and even if they were I can’t conceive that I can ever make money in them to the same extent or consistency that I do in cash games or even in Sit N’ Gos.
   4. Restricted my Sit N Gos to Everest Poker where I have a massive ROI(Return on Investment) so far, the structure and the play standard in here makes these by far my favourite place to play Sit N Go’s. Even so I have cut back on these, with my current bankroll it only makes sense for me to either play two or more $200 games at a time or play the $500 games and these don’t happen quite as often as I’d like.
   5. I’ve progressed from $1-$2 NL to $3-$6NL and with some occasional $5-$10 NL play on Green Joker Poker and occasionally on other sites on the IPoker network. I’ve had a good time of it there the past couple months, been satisfying to work my way up levels. A lot of the regular guys are tough enough here, it’s the guys who are not so familiar to me, the people who by and large are taking shots out of their bankroll and who are out of their depth who provide the profit.

The results so far have shown a dramatic improvement, even above my forecasts based on my pokertracker review. May and June have seen me make $13.5K in No Limit Hold’Em with a return of ptBB/100 of 8.97. More recently in the 3/6 and 5/10 tables I’m running even better earning $158.33 per table per hour. I do need to work on the amount of these tables I’m playing at one time, my MT(multi-tabling) ratio at 3/6 and 5/10 is just at 1.48(this low figure is partially accounted for also because I’m playing some 2/4 at the same time) so my overall $ per hour at 3/6 and 5/10 is $233.72. A massive improvement to what went before, I don’t see any reason either why this can’t be sustained. I just have to avoid moving beyond 5/10 until I have a massive bankroll. Hopefully that might be the case after my trip to Vegas.

In my pokertracker reviews my Pot Limit Omaha returns were a lot better than my NL returns. I was running at over $60 an hour in this game, considering I only took it up in March 2006 I think I did very well, though I think there is room for serious improvement here also.

I have been concentrating more on No Limit the past couple months. I have played a small bit of Omaha though and have had returns of $85.63 per hour since May 14th the date of my previous post. I think this can be further improved upon but feel I haven’t been playing my best Omaha as No Limit Holdem has got more of my attention. For the time being this probably will remain the case, I felt I have made too many silly plays in Omaha when switching from Holdem, and it makes sense to stick more with what’s bringing in the money.

My Sit N Go performance on Everest has continued strong, I have averaged over $200 an hour there and that’s with just an MT ratio of 1.03, my ROI is savage at 57.47% at 200 and 500 NL there. I know a lot of people would argue that this level of return is unsustainable and I wouldn’t disagree that it’s likely to drop, but the structure is so good on Everest and the play standard so bad I really think a ROI as high as 40% is sustainable, though whether that bears out in actuality I would need to play a load more to get a better idea of the truth of this belief.

I typically start at step 3 or step 4. In 2005 I reached the final step once, and in 2006 I reached it twice. However I did not have so many opportunities to play these WSOP steps then, one of the reasons for this, is that many of the step 4 and step 5 games were kicking off in the US evening time, by that time I’m long asleep. This year though the final step though it seems to be kicking off just once a week, normally over the weekend, it’s happening at European times . My first final step appearance this year was back in March and I finished a disappointing 8th. Then D-Day Sunday 15th April 2007, I log onto the pc on the Sunday morning, then at about 12 p.m. I decided to have a check on the steps situation in party poker. To my great surprise I noticed that a step 5 is nearly full. As this event only kicks off once a week or so and even then I’m not always around to play it, though it’s a large enough chunk of my bankroll, I decide to hell with it I’m going for it.

It’s always easy to praise or indeed criticise yourself too much after an event goes well or on the flip side poorly. But I really felt I got about every decision right in this particular tourney, it was one of my in the zone times. Early on in the tournament I wasn’t really getting anywhere, any hand I got, someone else on the table by their betting was telling me their hand was better and at times I made some big but I think judicious folds. I had a very loose Canadian guy on my left which made the game tricky for me. He was basically getting involved with many sort of hands. Cold calling raises with hands like A7o, KT etc. Anyway he was hitting some flops hard and busted out a couple of guys.

Then a pivotal hand occurred, I look down to the pleasing site of AA. Blinds are 100/200, my stack is a not great 1,510 from a starting stack of 2000. The short stack to my immediate right raises 710 and is all-in. Now I don’t want to scare the Canadian guy off and I know he likes to call and bet on the flop if he senses weakness. So I flat call, sure enough the Canadian calls quickly enough, the blinds fold. The flop comes all medium cards. I check to the Canadian and sure enough he does his little bet. At this stage I think it’s definitely time to pull the trigger. There’s enough in the pot and there’s every chance the Canadian will call for just the 600 more, which of course he does. He has just KdJd overcards, pretty much the type of hand from his previous plays, that I would have expected him to be there with. The turn gave him a flush draw but thankfully there’s no suckout on the river. I now start to think this could well be my day after all. I have the 2nd biggest stack on the table. Game On.

From there on in, I’m bobbing and weaving. Eventually it’s just me and the Canadian guy. I’m in the tasty position of having almost 3 to 1 chip lead over him. I’m in the Big Blind with J4o, any sort of decent raise and I fold this without a second thought. But the guy has a habit of making min raises with hands like Axo and I will hardly ever fold to a minimum raise, if someone is foolish enough to give me the odds to play and try and hit a flop, I will normally take that, especially as I can make a guess of what type of hand he might have. So when he min raises, I call with my J4o. The flop comes a tasty A J 4. I reckon mr.C has got Ax so I decide to take a chance and give him some rope, sure enough he bets the flop. Resisting the urge to play safe and raise, I just call. I check back the turn again, praying he continues to take the bait. Sure enough he bets again, now I pull the trigger and check raise him all-in, so much of his chips are now in the pot that it’s almost impossible for him to fold and he doesn’t. Sure enough he has A5o and thankfully the river misses his hand. I stare at the screen almost in disbelief as it says I have won the tournament and then it sinks in and I’m hollering in delight. I’m going to Vegas baby!

Introduction
For the past few years virtually all my Poker has been played online. In 2006 I played my first major live tournament in the Poker Open of Paris in the Aviation Club De France, where I finished 10th and in the money. In 2007 one of my main poker aims has been to play more live events and so far I have already played 3 major events.

Bolton GKUPT

The first one was in January, the £1K Bolton leg of the GKUPT (Grosvenor UK Poker Tour). I never really got going in this event. I managed to limp through the 1st day of it, but ended up with the second shortest stack going into the second day. I mean if I had been thinking anyway properly at all, coming down to the last 40 minutes of the night, I should have been looking to gamble more, to at least come back on the following day with a moderate stack or not at all. It only dawned on me after the close of the first day, how not taking some calculated gambles was a big mistake on my part. I got off to a reasonable start on the second day managing to double up early on but that was about as good as it got, after a couple of hours play my pocket eights ran into Aces and I didn’t hit any suckout. I think I went there without enough attitude, with a kind of see what happens approach. Obviously you can’t plan for how an event is going to go but it’s important to feel determined. For some reason I did not have the same level of confidence or determination that I went with to the Paris event. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Bolton is just over 20 miles from where I currently reside, whereas having made the effort to go to Paris, I was determined to play good poker there.

Bregenz Poker Open March 2nd – 3rd 2007

Getting there
The second event was the €2K Bregenz Poker Open in Austria in March. I qualified for this event via a €100 satelite on Everest Poker. Before this event I knew Bregenz was somewhere in Austria but that was about it. There are no direct flights to any airport near Bregenz from Manchester. If I realised what an awkward spot this little town in the far north western corner of Austria would be to get to from Manchester, I probably never would have entered the online satellite, but I’m glad I did. This time my wife Adrienne came on the trip with me. There were closer locations like Zurich and Munich that we could have flown to but in the end we decided to fly to Salzburg, Austria , as it sounded like a nice city to stay in. We spent 2 nights there, staying in the pleasant and reasonably prized Austrotel Salzburg. Salzburg, a major tourist destination, is a very pretty and clean city and I think it’s safe to say we enjoyed our stay there. I didn’t realise how small the city was, in terms of size it’s comparable to Cork. We travelled by train for over 4 and a half hours to Bregenz. It was one of the nicest train journeys I ever had, passing through breath taking mountain scenery. Austria really is a beautiful country.

While in Salzburg I met my double in the dwarf park. He happily posed beside me, not sure who won the battle of the beer gut, you decide :)

View image

The Tournament
I was determined after my poor showing in Bolton to play better poker here in Bregenz. I certainly think I managed to do that, though I did think my lack of exposure to live play let me down on a few occasions. The 2 day event kicked off at 15:30 on Saturday March 3rd. I played nervously at times and possibly my biggest mistake was not to continue bet enough. Nevertheless, after having survived a couple of coin toss all-ins, I was in reasonable shape with about an average stack, with just about 70 players left out of 200 entrants, after about 11 hours play and felt like I was playing better and better.

Then a big hand occurred. I was in middle position when I look down at the pleasing site of pocket Kings. A pretty lose Austrian player limped in early position, his range here is pretty big. I raised about pot size and he calls me for about 35% of his chips. The flop comes T88. I’m as convinced as I can possibly be that my opponent has a pocket pair and probably a small one at that, so I decide if I bet here he’s going to fold and I don’t want that. So I feign distress, as if I’m making out I have AK and can’t decide what to do, expecting and hoping he’s going to come out firing a bluff on the turn. The turn is a 5. Sure enough he pushes all-in and I can’t call him fast enough. He has pocket 4s and I’m pleased that I have played the hand really well. The only card that can save him now, and stop me from getting one of the bigger stacks on the table and being in with a real chance in this event is one of the two remaining 4s. Yeah you guessed it; he hit his 4 on the river. I never managed to get back to a decent stack again. Later on, when I pushed from the small blind with Q8o and ran into the big blind’s pocket Kings, my tournament was over, finishing in 45th place.

Some friendly locals

The following day, my wife and I decided to do some tourist type things, we got a cable car up a little mountain overlooking Bregenz. From the top of the mountain you can see 4 different countries, Austria of course, Germany, Switzerland and little Liechtenstein. We went to a bar/restaurant while we were up there. While we were there, we got chatting to 3 local guys, all in their early 30s. There were 3 really funny and different characters but you could see they were great pals. We had some real good laughs and interesting conversations with them. Although we just met them, it was one of those few occasions in life where you really feel a good friendship occurred in just a short space of time. Adrienne took their email address, but somehow ‘Miss Organised’ lost it! So now they probably think we weren’t genuine when we said we’d definitely send them an email. Anyway in the unlikely event that any of you three see this, drop me a mail, my email is found on the Contact Us.

So the trip didn’t end in Poker glory, but we enjoyed our stay overall.

Quick stop off at the Irish Poker Open

Adrienne and I were over in Portugal, completing purchase of a property there near the town of Ferreira Do Zezere. While there I got a mad brainstorm to compete in the €300 rebuy Pot Limit Omaha event of the Irish Poker Open on Saturday 7th April 2007. I think I played reasonably well here. I wasn’t getting so many cards early on. Definitely my lack of live practice told against me somewhat, when online you don’t need to hide the fact that you’re faced with a tricky decision. I think at times I made it glaringly obvious what sort of hand I had, by either my delays or lack of them.

I made it reasonably far, my exit hand I made a move to steal the blinds one from the cut off with QJTx (the QJ were suited), the small blind a pretty loose aggressive young player was deliberating, then I made a massive mistake by nervously looking at my hand again. He spotted this and unfortunately for me it was a genuine tell I had given away, he had something like AKJx and re-raised me, puting me all-in if I wanted to call, which of course given the pot odds at that stage I had to do, Still I wasn’t a massive dog, and when a Queen came on the flop I became the favourite to win the hand, the turn was a blank, and then the river put pay to my night when an Ace came. I ended up about 46th out of something like 180. It was a disappointing end to the night, but I really felt with some more live practice that Omaha tournaments are something I could do very well at, perhaps more so than Hold Em to be frank.

Well I certainly haven’t taken the game by storm. Primarily, because I’ve committed one of the cardinal sins of poker, by playing outside of my bankroll at times. I’m still in profit for the year but nowhere like I would have thought I would be at the start of the year, when I thought a 6 figure sum (in dollars) was a realistic possibility. I’ve had to readjust my goals as a result. In the past couple of months I’ve been grinding it out playing mostly $1-$2, some $2-$4 and a very small amount of $5-$10 No Limit Poker primarily with GreenJokerPoker on the IPoker network and some with Everest Poker.

As of May 14th I’m up about $6.5K since the 1st April in Hold Em Cash Games. Unfortunately during the same timeframe I have lost $1.5K in Omaha. Omaha has much higher variance than Hold Em and I tend to play lately when I fancy a gamble. I have been buying in short to the big online games. i.e. $400 to a $10-$20 game, this can be an effective strategy when executed well, but it still can have huge variance and unfortunately I haven’t had much in the way of luck in the past few months in the game. Although I've been doing well in Sit N Gos, the ones I have been doing well on have been when I played at Everest Poker(just 13 Sit N Gos there), primarily the $59 ones on IPoker but I have had a stinker of a time on the $200 ones on Party Poker. I don't think it's that the standard is good or anything or that I've played particularly bad in them, it's just the inevitable variance that occurs and the rub of the green is just not happening. Some of my tournament figures in Poker Tracker look a bit muddled up, so it's hard to estimate how much I'm down in them since April. I think about $2K seems about ballpark right.

When it comes to Omaha I think the sensible thing to do of course is to just buy-in to the $1-$2, $2-$4 Pot Limit Omaha Games which I think can be very profitable despite the variance. However for me personally Omaha seems to bring out the gamble in me and if I play it at all, I’ll probably ending up getting impatient with the $1-$2 and $2-$4 games, so I’m going to be staying well clear of the game, until if and when I have the mother of all bankrolls. Personally I’d love to have a 6 figure roll that is required for the $10-$20 Online Pot Limit Omaha game as I think they are so much more beatable than the $10-$20 No Limit Hold Em Games. Well one day hopefully I’ll have that 6 figure roll, it’s unlikely to be this year to be honest, but I’m working on trying to be more patient, so here’s hoping that maybe a couple years down the line I’ll have the roll for the game.

Sit N Go's is a different story, I don't consider $200 buy-in games to be that tough on Party Poker but it just is not happening for me there at the minute and maybe I just need to lay off them for a while, sit back and reassess. In fact writing this now I think it's probably wiser for me to play the even softer Sit N Gos on Everest instead. Hmm nice to resolve that issue at the end of this post :)

It’s been a long while since I did any updates, I’ve been busy between doing poker writing and playing the game and firbolg has suffered from a lack of updates as a result unfortunately. I’m going to just quickly surmise my poker year in 2006.€

Well I think my game improved a hell of a lot during 2006 and I made a decent five figure sum in cash games. I’ve been playing online now for several years and of course that experience is one reason. However I think the main reasons for the improvement were getting to chat regularly to some winning players, who I encountered online. One of them is a Slovenian guy who is one of the biggest online winners in Europe, a few tips I got off him during the start of 2006 had an immediate impact on my no limit hold em game. The second is Matthew Hart, an online poker pro from the United States, I chat to Matt several times a week about poker and other stuff, and like to think we both have helped each other out a lot with our game, and though I have never actually met Matt I consider him a very good friend at this stage.

Another major reason for my poker improvement is down to getting involved, in the summer of 2006, on the biggest Irish poker forum, of the very popular site boards.ie. I have learned a lot from some of the many great posters there, four or five of whom I now chat to on msn also about Poker. I hope I have given something back to both the fourm and to the guys I chat about poker with some of my own opinions and advice also.

Therefore as of August 2006 I finally got to put my money where my mouth is and I went full-time professional. I think it makes big difference that I am no longer playing poker after coming back from a long day at the office. Playing poker is now what I do in my office and the fact that I am a dedicated in a professional manner to winning at online poker thus far reflects in my results, the increased time I now have to spend on poker and writing should hopefully allow many more updates from me on firbolg over the next few months.

I have decided to clearly define my advertising policy for my advertisers convenience.

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Discounts will operate at 10% for 3 months prepayment and 25% for 6 months or more. Two ads will entitle you to a 25% discount, further bulk purchasing of ads may entitle you to further discount.

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When talking about early position, I am talking about the first three players to act following the big blind.

What you need to keep in mind in this early position is that you are forced to make decisions on your hand before anyone else. After each round of betting, you will be one of the first to act. How you are perceived will determine your success in this position. You want to take a strong stance at the table. If you are perceived weak, you will be attacked with raises.

Ideally, you want to get in to the hand, for as little as possible when
you do not have a premium hand. To be allowed to do that, you need to
create fear and uncertainty in your opponent. You need them to always
be guessing what you have. If you don’t, you will find you aren’t
allowed to limp in very often. You will be forced to put more in the
pot if you want to play.

What does your bet say about your hand?

When you call the big blind, you are saying you are curious about the
hand and just want to dabble a little. You are representing to the
table a weak hand. When you raise, you’re saying you have some kind of hand. The larger the raise you make, the better the hand you are representing to the table. In either case, this is the initial perception.

The important key here is that your hand doesn’t have to mean that at
all. As I said, you are representing a certain strength hand. Your hand
doesn’t have to be what it seems for you to choose a particular betting
behavior.

How much should you raise?

You can raise three to five times the big blind. You can raise the same amount regardless of how strong your hand is. A lot of your betting behavior is determined by the other players at the table. Whatever you do, don’t always bet big on pocket high cards, and small on small pairs. You want to keep your opponent guessing. It’s hard to put you on a hand if you change you’re betting behavior, or you’re always raising the same amount.

What hands should you play?

What hands you play depends on the table and your playing style. If the table is weak, play more hands. If the table is aggressive, play less hands and look to trap and bust your overly aggressive opponent(s).

Closing remarks

Take your time, be patient and get to know the table. The blind progressions are small and usually increase slowly, unless it is an accelerated/turbo format. Adapt your play to the table. You’re in the early position, three out of ten times. No need to get fancy with 2 3 off suit. There’s plenty of time to make your move. Stay unpredictable, and you’ll do fine.

All poker sites which provide valuable information to do with the game are welcome as link partners.

I am not interested in exchanging links with any site where my link is not clearly visible. It must either be easy to navigate to and/or on a page with high Google PR. If you post my link somewhere that is almost impossible to find, I will not exchange links with you.

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My present policy allows for links from my home page as well as my premier links page and for the few non poker related sites that I do link to my other links page. I will only link from my home page to those who wish to reciprocate and who can offer the same home page PR of 4 or higher, otherwise I will put your link on my premier links page.

For a link from my Premier Links page you must put my url on the main page for this type of link i.e. my site is primarily about poker advice and reviews, if you put my link on page 6 for poker advice then the link exchange is not going to happen or if your page contains hundreds of links and has no page rank.

I'm not insisting on this for selfish reasons I will endeavour to treat your site the same way you treat mine but if the link exchange doesn't happen this way it's pointless for both our sites.

If you are initiating the exchange, you must first post my link on your site and your link to me must not use a redirect. When you send me an email requesting to exchange links, you must include the url to the page on your site where my link is shown. Please note that I will go to your home page to see how difficult it is to find my link on your site. If you send me an email, and my link is not already on your site, your email will go unanswered.

A properly formatted link exchange request would include the following information about your site...

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Firbolg Link Information

Please link to Firbolg (www.firbolg.com) using the title : Online Poker Strategy from firbolg.com
Something like one of the following descriptions, though it's better if you can do your own description for my site

A site dedicated to all sorts of online poker strategy provided free by professional online players.

An increasingly popular site with a unique character that offers poker advice for online players, also reviews poker books and online poker sites.

or

A high quality and original guide to online poker. With a name like this, how could you not like this site?

I am a professional online poker player — I have been playing for over 4 years online, though I have only gone full-time pro recently. I rarely get to play in live casinos but enjoy it when I can make it. I also freelance as a poker writer and of course as webmaster of this site.

Matthew Hart is from Virginia, USA he is a full-time professional poker player who plays just about any type of poker there is.

Steven Sweet is a professional poker writer along with being a winning online player.