It wasn't my night for pocket pairs .

hit by then beaten by and beaten by the which was inevitable.

I can't get to upset about it as if you have the highest pair on a ragged board then it takes a far better player than me to fold especially in low limit hold em with so many players chasing with their or more likely

Overall lost by quite a substatial margin but BB monthly return is still hovering at around 4BB/100 which is my biggest winning margin in a long time.

From a self confidence point of view tonight is the last game of the month so I plan to play for a short time and at low limits as I don't want to jepordazize this months winnings as I see no point in joining a $3/$6 game and risk a heavy loss so will probably multitable down at the $1/$2 level.

Nearly ready for my weeks holiday in The Basque Country and must remember not to speak Spanish given the political sensibilities of the region though Basque as a language is very difficult worse even than Ukrainian

It’s been a very good month and the summary is as follows:

VP$IP%:19.14% (with the aim next month to reduce this to around 18% though am happy to play marginal hands for the challenge and skill involved).

PFR%: 10.02% (Reasonably happy with this but monitor attacks on the blinds as maybe to strong).

W$SD : 64.69% (Can’t complain about this but does indicate probable good reads and admittedly more than my fair share of luck this month).

W$WSF : 36.52% ( not sure what to measure this against but read 35% plus is good so happy)

Aggression Factor: 2.07 (Could be higher but often drawing to nut flushes and straights and sometimes want to keep people in but keep reviewing)

BB/100: 3.68 (Got to be pleased with this but see luck factor above)

The only area of my play I am definitely not happy with is blind defence and blind attacks as I could be overdoing this especially when holding Ace X as this needs to be monitored once a more representative sample is obtained

Playing profit for August: £442
One off Bonus for August: £160
Normal site bonuses: £200

Total return for August £802.

Total Year to Date £3,297.

I do expect a downturn in September as August has been my best month to date but who knows it might be even better and I plan to keep playing the £1/£2 games or the $2/4 limit games with the occasional dabble at $3/$6 and play more on UB given the quality of software and speed of games despite the better players.

Last night's 20 minutes session must have been my shortest on record

Lost with then lost with and missed the flop with and sucked out of a straight (wheel) by a very obscure and then the table tightened up and I knew it would take a very long time to recoup my early losses so I abrupty ended the session as I hadn't really been that enthusiastic to begin with.

I hope I recognised the 'tilt signs' and I didn't enjoy walking away but I think things may have got much worse.

That's me for a week now as off to The Basque Country for a week walking in the Pyrenees so no poker,no journal and no life but really looking forward to it.

Nice to be back after a great week in the North of Spain or is it The Basque Country

Obviously as some one who wants my own country (Scotland) to be an proper independent country seperate from England in the same way as other smaller Europeran countries exist quite succesfully such as Ireland, Denmark,Finland,Austria, Switzerland or Belgium then your natural reaction is to side with the Basques in the quest of cessastion from Spain.

However,I wasn't really clear if this was the majority view in the region.
It is certainly a very rich region, and surprisingly green and mountainous with very pleasant friendly people and they have a degree of autonomy but I wasn't able to find out if they have a mechanism or genuine desire for achieving independance.

In Scotland it it is very easy we can vote for it in either the UK general election or the Scottish parliamentary election and while of course there would be Unionist propoganda and dirty tricks to overcome ultimately however the elections would be free and fair.

In the Basque country I'm not sure of any structures in place that allow the move to independence hence the existence of ETA and political violence and prisoners of war (or plain terrorists as the Spanish would argue from there viewpoint).There also seem to be a lot of natural Spanish people living there hence the clash of cultures.

This occupied my mind a lot over the week so hopefully no -one minds a European politics post on a Poker forum and I didn't really miss playing poker at all which surprised me.
However I will rectify this and am on holiday for the next week or so with lots of play to catch up on and lots of bonuses to clear.

Downloaded the most up to date Poker Ace 0.27 version so I plan to use tonight to see what additional information this may provide.

It was nice to get back playing again and I was quite happy to be coasting along for a break even evening when the following hand happenned in the Big Blind when sitting with .

4 players limped in and I was quite happy to see a free a flop of for a chance of a flush and checked hoping for a free card which duly arrived and which wasn't much help being a .

Everyone this time bet and called and no one raised so as I had got to the river for next to nothing I called thankful no one had forced me to pay for the draw and then I hit my flush with .

I bet out and all hell brakes loose with raises reraises and caps and on the showdown one player had slowplayed and the other had slowplayed and the third had slowplayed his trip tens.

Yet another example that you don't have to be good to win at poker:All you have to do is play less bad than the other players as that was a hand that I would have folded at the outset or on the flop or on the turn had I been facing a raise or reraise but not that I'm complaining.

One of them even had the cheek to insult me about playing the hand in the first place not even realising I was BB.

I enjoyed reading your account of that hand. A good example of how slow playing can cost someone a win.

Just for a change and also as I couldn't find a decent £1/£2 table I went downstream to the weird and wacky word of £0.50/£1 tables and this really was an interesting experience with 5/6 players regularly hitting the flop and players with VP$IP of 80% plus and one even managed to have 95%.

I felt like asking him just why he bothered folding the 1 or 2 hands that made up the folded 5% Didn't really seem much point I thought.

After an hour of mostly folding or missing the flop I eventually got some good cards and hit full houses and flushes and with these many players going to the flop the pay offs were enormous .

By the end of the evening I had won 50BB and virtually doubled my starting amount..
The one problem with this though is that it is not very satisying (though it would be if you could guarantee you could win these huge relative sums all the time but you can't).

I enjoy winning but I also like to bluff, steal blinds. put my opponent on a hand, and check raise but at this level everything becomes mechanical and the opportunity for creative play is limited so at the end of the night I was delighted I had won but was strangely unfulfilled

Of course I'd take this to losing though any day

Another top class night taking my win rate for the month to a very healthy 8.6 BB/100

As with last month however I expect this to fall away and hopefully I can stay on course for my target of somewhere between 3.0 and 3.5. which would be very respectable and quite profitable.

Interesting observation of the night is just how absolutely useless Poker Ace Heads up stats are if you are working with a small sample.

This is an excellent piece of software but a real long term animal as my 100 hand stats were showing VP$IP of 8.6% (I'm actually 18%ish) with a Preflop raise of 2.5% ( usually around 9.0%) and an aggression factor of 1.2 (usually 2.1).

Anyone monitoring my stats for the first time would have the totally wrong impression of the type of player I am which is probably good but equally as I read other players for the first time then 100 hands is an indication but a very loose one as to the type of player they are until a much larger sample is obtained.

Other interesting stat is that in the last 20 hours I have never had pocket .

Not really that interesting.


Away from poker and looking forward to my big day out tomorrow which promises to be one full of lots of beer and good food and football or soccer to those from the USA


A nice meal is planned for the afternoon and then beers in the evening and then the Hibs v FC Dnoprov????? (can't spell it) from the Ukraine in the first round of the UEFA Cup and then back to the centre of Edinburgh for more beer and food.

Good luck to Hibs for getting a decent result to take to the Ukraine for the second game (2-0 being my prediction)

Played a very late night session for a few hours but never received any cards though equally no bad beats and won a few hands and lost a few others and ended up exactly where I had started give or take a few £'s.

Had spent the rest of the day at the coast watching the waves, walking on the sands climbing rocks and eating ice cream with the 6 year old daughter of my cousin and this was worth far more than getting three times on the bounce

This is such a nice part of the world to live in.

Switched back to the Cryptosites last night and had another very good night to extend my winning run to something like 7 days in a row which considering I don't normally multi table is pretty good even if I say so myself.

I was particularly pleased as I came back from a 25BB deficit ($100) to end the evening well into the black though for a time I wished I was playing Blackjack as I kept getting
for a total of 12 times in the one session.


The only drawback is these so called bonuses on LittleWoods and Pokerplex as I 'm not really sure if they were credited to my account or not and it seems really difficult to confirm this or not when checking the various available screens

This means an email to the wonderful world of Poker help desks so if I get a reply this side of xmas then I will be lucky

If you have PT use the game tab to keep track of your hands. If you have passed the hand requirements they will deposit this bonus immediately. I have never had a delay thus far in ca. 1 year of playing them.