Weekly Update
Bit of a downturn this week, not just for myself but seemingly all over the online sites. Not too many of the big name pros are showing up on Full Tilt in the past couple weeks so the action has almost become non-existant. I’m assuming Isildur1 is not going to deposit anymore money until the whole data mining thing is resolved. I know he wants some of his money back but whether he gets it is another question. Pokernews.com posted a pretty interesting question as to whether people should be able to change their screen names as many times as they want. I’m sort of mixed on this one.
I can see why it would be both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because you wouldn’t be able to gang up on one player the way that Cole South, Brian Hastings and Brian Townsend did. After a particularly bad session, you could quit and come back later under a different name. I think with certain playing styles at the bigger levels you’d be able to figure out pretty quickly who someone is but you wouldn’t always be sure. It would keep you honest anyway.
As for how it might be bad, I’m not sure. I guess considering you don’t get to just change identities in a live game, why should you be able to online? Guys can get together and talk about you on their own time for live game players and try to figure out ways to beat you for next time. Granted, they don’t have hand histories, stats, and tendencies sitting in front of them while it’s being discussed but still. For now, it’s against every site’s Terms and Conditions and I don’t see it changing any time soon.
As for how my game is going, it’s been very up and down. After repaying my buddy back the money I owed him and sending my account down to $1200, I went on a very bad run losing another $450 or so and forcing me back down to the .25/.50 level. I did get back up as far as $1000, went back down to $750 and now am around the $900 mark. Some big hands I’ve lost have been some of those that just play themselves out. After raising preflop with AcKd and getting called the flop came Ad 8d 5d. We ended up getting it all in on the flop and my opponent flipped over pocket 5’s. The turn and river were blanks and I was $100 lighter. Really, just nothing you can do there but I’m also not playing my best at the moment either. I got into a hand where I got severely outplayed and sucked out on the river with a 3 outer ace. I had AQ and my opponent had KK. Never saw it coming, made a bad read on a guy and bluffed all in only to catch it. I didn’t say sorry or anything because we all know how hollow those sorts of apologies are (after all, we are here to take each other’s money in the end) and nobody is ever really sorry. I did compliment him for totally outplaying me and he was gracious in saying “nh” but that’s the game I guess.
So, that’s where I’m at right now, just grinding away as usual. PokerStars has been terrible and I’m just sort of taking a break from that site for a little while. I’m only around $220 there and it’s harder playing that far down when I’ve been playing even as high as $1/2 on Full Tilt. I’ll get back to it soon and hopefully I’ll get going on a run there as well.
