40% Rakeback at Betfair...and I do like to follow up on a promise

Take a look at the last line my previous blog entry. It took me four attempts before coming good. :)




As usual I had a huge HU deficit at one point 380000-35000 down only to come back and give some Romanian a lesson in HU. That in it's self was quite satisfying as he had about 10 mates railing and they were all total arseholes. With the $ as it is that came in at just over £1k.

Also won £1500 (but had to give £750 on a share) for 2nd in a freeroll on Saturday. Throw in a couple of decent results in the usual tin-pot MTTs I've been playing and all in all not a bad week for poker.


If you are after a decent rakeback deal Betfair have just launched a new promotion offering 40% gross rakeback for new accounts if you rake over £1500 a month. This is running Feb-April to start with. All you need to do is clear your cookies, click this Betfair link , set up an account and get playing. Feel free to mail me at jimshell@talk21.com and I'll can check the account is set up ok.



I wrote all the above a few days ago and not had time to publish it until now.. the plan was to head to DTD for the next £300 Monthly special 1st weekend in Feb, but I've had to cancel for family reasons. In fact it's been a pretty grim week for one reason or another. Sometime stuff happens that puts poker in perspective, may have to wait a while for the next update.

All the best.

Jim

Quadraphobia

Well didn't play much in December and showed a minor profit rounding off a reasonably profitable but far from spectacular year. The bank roll is still fked as most of the winnings got spent. With bambino number two on the way mid 2009 it don't look like much is going to change on that front. So it's survival and grab a slot in bigger comps cheap where ever I can.

Once the new year was safely out of the way I as itching to play some poker and the new £50k, £300 buy in at DTD looked just the ticket. Managed to get a backer for 30% to take some of the sting out of it and headed up the M1 once again.

When I got there it was packed with a big queue to register. I managed to pay in just before Simon Trumper announced that 12 dealers had called in sick and they only had enough to run 21 tables of nine. With 180 already registered and at least another 50 in the queue there were going to be some disappointed punters.

Eventually common sense dictated that some tables would be self dealt until dealers became available and the final number of entrants came up just shy of 300 for a £89k prize pool and a £27k first prize.

Day 1 went ok, was stuck on the 10k starting for 4 or 5 levels before I slow played KK into AA... lucky for me the flop came K high and I managed to get a nice double up to get things moving. It was one of those days where i never really settled as I was moved 3 times. I ended up on an average 30K overnight with 90 runners coming back for day 2 chasing 27 paid places.

Things got going well on day 2 moving quickly onto 44k when I was moved again. Shortly after I was moved came the hand that would make or break me... I managed to get it all in pre-flop with KK vs QQ only for the fker to spike quad Queens on the turn. That crippled me and left me scrambling. I did manage a minor recovery when I doubled up with Kings, but the very next hand I lost a chunk with TT into a flopped set of 4s on a low board. I would have lost more but he jammed to my flop bet and let me off the hook.

I finally busted with 33 vs JJ when really short and that was that... out in 65th.

The KK vs QQ hand comes my way and I'm pretty sure I make the money and who knows from there. Bit gutted to be honest. I'm looking to play this £300 every month from now on funds permitting.

The Blonde poker guys seem to make a habit of snapping me looking pissed off just as i'm about to exit... here's this months entry...






After the break in December I've been playing a few more minor MTTs online. There is one which is totally doing my head in. The nightly $5k gtd deepstack on Betfair. I really like the structure and I've final tabled several times but never managed to win it. I always seem to lose a chip lead from 15-20 out and finish 9th for cock all money! I don't blow it.... I just get totally sucked out. I must have played it about 12 times since the start of December and on three occasions I've flopped set over set and lost to quads!!! I mean come on... threeee times. The most recent one was last night and after the QQQQ at weekend I was right for chucking the laptop out the window.

Some greek bloke was tilting the whole table with his overraises...fk knows why he wasn't chuckin bricks at police men with the rest of his countrymen.

I'd already layed a monster down to his allin against my better judgement and I'd told the Mrs I was going to nail him. 10mins later I've got half his stack and another guy almost felts him... but he managed to scramble back to a decent stack by the time we are about 15 deep. At this point I'm chip lead and cruising.

I pick up AA in early positon. There's a short stack itching to get it in on a value pot and Greek boy sat just behind him. I juice the pot with a min raise and short stack takes the bait and jams. Greek boy has obviously read the script and moves all in to isolate for the 40th time. Bingo!!!

First bleeding card off the deck is a Ten... but its ok cos the 3rd card is an Ace :)

4th is another Ten!! I mean come on!!!

The only scant consolation is that the fking idiot busted out on the bubble in 10th with an Ace high all in bluff into two pair and I just managed to scrape 9th place again for a few hundred.

I'm going to win the $5k before too long... watch this space.