Grinding

Morning all

Yesterday was an interesting day and quite a busy one. I have been playing catch up at work after the 2 week Christmas break and that has been very hectic. I saw a few of my clients which went well and will earn me about 5k so a good start to the New Year business wise although today I have to do a few exams – taking exams at my age is a pain in the butt but has to be done I guess.

I had a half hour to kill before I went to see my clients so not enough time for a game of poker so I played a few hands of Blackjack with the £500 I still had in my Betfair account and managed to spin it up to £800 so happy with that. I am looking out now for a suitable use for this £800 i.e. what to bet it on. Perhaps I should play one game of HU on Betfair for a double or nothing spin up – who knows I may well do that.

I played quite a few STTs in the evening and ended up with £300 profit so that takes this year to £2000 profit and still yet to have a losing day – maybe just maybe this will be my year. What is interesting though is that when I looked this morning I had paid $435 (£270) in rake. I am usually a little blasé about this aspect of poker and just look at what’s in my account to gauge my profit. It makes you realise just how much sites can make from the likes of us for effectively running a piece of software. My profit without the rake would have been £570 so quite a difference. This just backs up the importance of making sure you are on some sort of a deal to get some of this back. I see it now as a way of saving and its always nice to get a lump sum back at the end of the month.

When you look back to when you started playing poker its amazing what you learn as you go along not just some of the skills that you pick up but also some of the tools that you can benefit from. I started playing online with Littlewoods and had no idea I was playing against players from Hills and Betfair etc and it was about 2 years before I stumbled across rakeback with Betfair.I reckon this cost me about £20,000 in lost money which had I known I would have got back. Since then I have found out about the likes of Sharkscope, poker tracker, poker bots etc and realise the importance of having a slight edge against your opponent and just how much some use these tools. Maybe rather stupidly I don’t use any of them – too lazy I think to really research them and understand them but I know for some they are very useful, I hardly play any cash but if I did undoubtedly they are an essential item. There are some good forums around where if you ask the questions people will give you the answers and so for any aspiring players out there I would really advise that you do your research first and plague the forums with your questions

The one item I do use is the common sense approach of making sure I get some of my poker fees returned to me and making sure that I play on a site that offers me the right software. Here we go again another plug for The Big Slick I hear you say but why not? It has never collapsed on me and offers me all the games that I want to play with near on 30000 players online at peak times. I also get a very good loyalty deal and have the chance to play a greater number of players and there is no waiting for a game to start. You will also recall that I won a multi just before Chrimbo where my $30 entry got me $7,350 – no way could I have done that on my previous site. So sorry for harping on but I really can’t understand why anyone would not want to play there and if you did then why not take advantage of the loyalty scheme we have running.

I plan to play online later today and tonight so will see you at the tables. Good luck all and may all your cards be good uns.