Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

I was trying to install a local version of Typo3 to assist with the development of my new website, Personal Finance TV, but just destroyed my MySQL database that had my Poker Office statistics instead. As a result I'm having to start again using Microsoft Access. Doh.

After 51 hands at 0.10/0.20 Limit at Ladbrokes Poker I'm Loose-Aggressive - Aggressive. That's a better profile than my previous Tight-Aggressive/Passive rating. I believe this difference is due to

- my reduced stakes that reduce my fear of raising
- what I hope is an increased understanding of hand protection, as discussed in Small Stakes Holdem.

If you'd like to reel in the fish then you can sign up to Ladbrokes Poker by following This Link.

In terms of P&L there isn't much to report. I'm slowly recovering my heavy losses at Coral Poker. I won't post a chart as they seem to disappear all the time as I do various bits of administration on the server and fix hacks by evil hackers from Turkey. Hopefull these problems will change when I move to a new web hosting provider next week.

Juice is coming along well. He's accumulated a small library of Poker books and as studied them diligently. Hopefully he'll continue to have success when he starts scaling up the bets. He has also become quite a character at Ladbrokes Poker due to his heavy use of 72o. You can read his post about his fame here.

We have teamed up with Noble Poker to help raise more money for cats and other animals in need.

From now on 35% of all Noble Poker revenue, generated by players signing up via our banner, will be used to support cats like Canyon the Sand Cat and other animals in need.

If you would like to support cats by playing Poker please sign up via the Noble Poker banner above or click here.

Or if there are any particulary worthy causes that you would like us to support in the future please let us know by leaving a comment below.

About Canyon the Sand Cat and Big Cat Rescue

Canyon is a Sand Cat living at Big Cat Rescue, based in Florida, USA. Sand cats are small desert dwelling cats native to northern Africa and the Middle East. They are frequent victims of the illegal pet trade and during the Gulf War were often used for target practice. In an effort to preserve the species, the Saudi government sent eight of these cats to S.O.S. Care, a California-based international cat-conservation organization. Canyon and four littermates, descendents of the original group, were sent to Big Cat Rescue as a genetic back-up in case of disaster at S.O.S. Care. They like to sleep in and under flowerpots and, although rather timid, can be quite fierce at feeding time.

If you would like to learn more about Sand Cats then please click here.

I've been practising protecting my hands tonight.

Suppose you have KsKh and the flop is 2s6c9c with 8 bets in the pot. You are first to act.

You should notice that there is a club flush draw on the table. However, if you bet, the next player will be getting 9/1 on a call which is profitable when drawing to a flush. A better play than betting is to check/call until the turn to see if a safe card lands. If it does then bet/raise if doing so will still deny other players the 4/1 required for a profitable call on a flush draw.

Scratched a session playing 0.10/0.20 with Juice last night. Was not concentrating and should have paid more attention to Texas Calculatem's signals. Juice did well as there were lots of fish on the table.

Found an interesting article on failure on the BBC News site. Click here to read it.

Just like the Juice, I say that I'm quitting, and then start getting involved. Poker is like a drug!

However, I've left Coral Poker and am at Ladbrokes Poker on a $0.25/$0.50 fixed table. I can hardly say I've played well, but I'm up $17.11 already. As I said before. Coral Poker hate me and Ladbrokes want to give me free money.

Some might argue that my performance is either luck, or psychogically down to the smaller limits. But I started off my Poker career at $0.50/$1.00 using pure Texas Calculatem so psychological reason were not the cause of my initial blowout at Coral Poker. Hmmm... Actually I think I might be doing well due to how poor the other players are. The pot was over 14SB on the flop. I bet and 3 of them folded. When you're getting such high odds it's probably worth a small call.

Jen, a nice girl from Casino Partners, has offered to help me raise more money for cats. She's going to help me set up an offer where players who play at Noble Poker help support cute little cats. I got my Big Cat Rescue sponsorship package today so hopefully it'll get done soon.

Hmmm... Apologies for the pornographic ads. I'll try to remove them ASAP!

Just found a new poker room run by the guys who do the World Poker Tour. I've never heard of it before, Texas Calculatem is not compatible and I believe it's quite new. The promotional stuff all looks fairly standard and it has freerolls.

I'll try to give it a go this weekend as it sounds like the sort of place where the fish will be swarming. With such a big name, new players will be dying to sign up, and people like the Juice and myself should be able to clean up.

Resources:

WPTOnline

This is another funny prank:

http://www.zug.com/pranks/outgoing/italian.html

I may give up Poker and start sending out prank emails. It'll be cheaper then getting raped at Coral Poker again.

This idea is even better:

Fool the Media

If I can successfully fool the media maybe I could finally get more traffic for this site. I'm very disappointed in all you readers for railing to vote for one of the cats. You all had to play a lot of poker in order to sponsor the little thing, but now you just don't care!

I'm taking a break from Poker and reading random crap off the Internet.

This is funny:

Credit Card Pranks

Just to confirm what I wrote earlier... don't bother playing at Coral Poker. I've wasted 4 hours playing non-stop only to lose $25.88. I missed all the draws. And had few hands worth playing past the flop. Stick to better Poker rooms such as Ladbrokes Poker and Royal Vegas Poker.

I've nearly lost my whole deposit at Coral Poker. I really don't recommend that site. I keep on going back due to the rakeback that I get, but I can't beat the games whether I use Texas Calculatem, Poker Office, or my own pathetic Poker skills.

Wheels has offered to write some articles on this blog regarding his experiments with the ideas from a book called "Internet Poker". I'll have to set him up with an account and see how he does. It can't be worse than how I've done at Coral Poker. I'm down to $9.38 from a $100 deposit. Will get a few dollars in rackback but I won't be reinvesting it there!

Resources:

- Buy Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games from Amazon US

I need to stop playing at Coral Poker. I just can't win there. When I do $0.25/$0.50 fixed limit at other sites I win. But when I step up to $0.50/$1.00 at Coral (because of the rake back) I lose it all.

I'm going to move back to ladbrokes and solidify my $0.25/$0.50 game. I will stay at ladbrokes until I am consistently beating the $5.00/$10.00 game.

Rumour mill states that Juice has been cleaning up at a home game using the 4 Big Blind raises as recommended in Super System 2. I might need to get myself a copy of it if I become serious about no limit.

Resources

- Buy Super System 2 from Amazon UK.
- Buy Super System 2 from Amazon US.

After a debate with Juice I've decided to throw a poll out to our readers.

Which cat do you prefer?

Cat 1


Cat 2


Please cast your vote by leaving a comment below. I will count up the votes after this poll closes on 20th July 2005.

My mate, Juice, has started up his own Poker Blog:

The Pain of Poker

It is much more passionate than my rather impersonal blog, and will be worth following, as Juice goes through the highs and lows in the life of a professional poker player.

Did more poker yesterday.

After my initial session I got cocky. I did some social playing at NL $0.10/$0.20 and was down a few dollars. I then started raising all the way at $0.50/$1.00 fixed limit and ended the session going bust and losing $20. I will have to follow Calculatem more carefully in the future.

I'm playing at Coral Poker as I write. I'm purely using Texas Calculatem. Poker Office is off as I'm running a lot of stuff in the background. At this moment I'm up $9 on table 25393, a $0.50/$1.00 fixed limit table. I'm totally wetting my pants as I always get raped at Coral, whether I play descretionarily or using Texas Calculatem. Ooh. I just won with trip 4's. I'm now up $19.75. I'm such a winner.

Nasir request a link for Small Stakes Hold'em. Here it is:

Thanks to the support I have received from you - my loyal blog readers and hard playing Poker players - I have managed to give a little relief to two animals in need.



I have sponsored a Sand Cat from Big Cat Rescue and should get a sponsorship package from them soon. I will post the little moggy's picture when I get it.



I also decided to sponsor Toby the Dog, a cute looking Japanese Shiba Inu, who resides at Poplar Farm Kennels.

None of this wouldn't have been possible without the your support, the great game of Texas Hold'Em, or the astounding Texas Calculatem. And goes to show that gambling doesn't have to be the vile vice that so many lead us to believe.

I played in a live game last night. The game was No Limit Texas Holdem, buy in £2, ring game with static blinds. My performance was uninspired, to say the least. I tried the usual 4 big blind raises pre-flop but just missed everytime. I also didn't have my mind on it and was continuously prodded to make my move when my mind wandered. Not good.

I also played in a freeroll at Ladbroesk today. I was on a good run and increased my chips to over 27,000 at one point. However, I got bored, went all in with a straight draw, and lost.

I'm not too sure if I should keep on playing Poker if my mindset remains in this state. I'll just be throwing money away.

I'll just continue my Poker Office analysis for the time being and see what happens.

72 players
Atleast 300 hands per player
"Saw Flop %" is the percentage of flops that the player has seen.
"$Won/Hand" is the average amount that a player has won for every hand that they've played.

I have more information now, but the chart is not showing me any obvious correlations whatsover. What I conclude from this is that there is no direct linear correlation between Saw Flop % and $Won/Hand.

The only discernable pattern that I see is that the most successful players tend to have a Saw Flop % between 30% and 40%. Most players have a Saw Flop % of below 30%, but that does not seem to make them more or less successful.

I'll have to examine different measures in the future.