The Future Poker Star

The 8 Game Experiment

2009-01-29T22:14:00.005Z

I sit here pondering to myself about the games that I play. Early on in this journey I wrote a post when I realised that no limit hold 'em wasn't the "be all and end all" of poker. I find that no limit hold em is the hardest game to profit from for me. I think that because so many people are clued up on the basic and intermediate skills required to play it, it gives me, or any reasonably intelligent poker player less of an edge.

People know the odds of hitting their flush draws. They know that raising 3 times the blinds pre flop from an early position means that I have a good hand. And they know not to hold on to their ace – rag after they miss the flop if someone is betting into them.

These basic skills that every poker player has seem to be missing in other games though.

I have noticed that in low ball games like razz, deuce to seven triple draw etc, people make silly mistakes that pay me off. They make errors that you don’t really see in hold ‘em. In Omaha high / low, people will fight each other in a multi-way pot for the high end, allowing me to easily collect the low end half of the pot. I feel that I want to explore other games properly, instead of just playing a stud tournament here and there, or a razz cash game every now and then.

I have decided that it is time for an experiment.

In the 2008 World Series a new tournament was launched. It was structured the same as any other poker tournament, but every time the blinds went up, the game changed. It was like an extended HORSE game, but there was eight games played in rotation, so the tournament was imaginatively called “8 game”!

Pokerstars run “8 game” sit n go’s and tournaments which I have played. I satellited into the WCCOP 8 game tournament last year and although I think I did well, I didn’t cash. They also do cash games using the same format which will provide the perfect arena for this experiment.

I will play the small stake 8 game tables for 100 rounds. Each round consists of 6 hands of each game. This will be a total of 600 hands for each game. I have designed a simple spreadsheet to track my performance in each game. The object of this experiment is to find out which game I am best at, and which gives me the most money.

I will update soon with some results after I have played for a while.

Home Game Results

2009-01-14T10:52:00.004Z

Well the results from the home game we mixed financially, but I think I achieved what I wanted to do. I wanted to read players that I have played against a lot now. I wanted to use the knowledge I have gained by playing against these people to play them all individually. This is a skill that a poker player needs to learn to do by instinct.

First of all, the financial result:
I had a great start. I was playing tight aggressive. I have a really good read on one certain player who always likes to play very aggressively against me. He's a good friend of mine, but likes to put me on the spot when we play poker. This is a good thing because I can wait until I have a good hand before I choose to put my chips in with him. I know he will play me in big hands because he just likes to try to knock me out of tournaments. This is probably the most useful tool I had all night.

Another player that I play against a lot will play his draws strictly to the pot odds. I remember a particular hand early when I raised the blinds and when the flop came down we both missed it. I was out of position so I checked the flop and so did he. The turn came down to give two hearts on the board. I raised enough to make sure that the pot odds weren’t worth a call for the flush. He sat there, worked it out, and then folded. I could almost see the cogs turning in his brain.

The night started well with a few good results. I think with two payouts I just try to get to heads up. I have found out that I'm good at negotiating a chop if i want one. As the night went on I got tired. Some people can play tired, almost automatically. Then again, some people can play drunk. I can't. Not only did the results start going the other way but so did the way i was playing. I wish I stopped when I knew I was getting tired.

I think that the lessons that I tried to learn about reading players that I play regularly was over shadowed by another lesson. Don't play tired.

Home Game Test

2009-01-09T18:44:00.004Z

Tonight will be a great test in reading players tonight as I have been invited to play in a home game involving 5 other players that I have played a lot against. I am hoping to use the knowledge that I have of the individual players tonight to give myself a new years bankroll boost.

The format will be "a few sit n go's", meaning that we will play a couple of mini tournaments, probably at a £10 or £15 buy in. The interesting part about tonight is that I won't be using a normal stratagy, am going to use everything that I know about the players to play them and not the cards.

I'll post my results and how I got on in the morning.

Learned To Run But Need To Remind Myself How To Walk

2009-01-06T00:48:00.005Z

There is a bar near me, that every Sunday evening holds a game of no limit hold 'em. It's a small stakes shootout tournament, five pounds (about $7.25) which attracts a few good players that I know, but is filled mainly by people that don't know how to play. They know the hand rankings, and they know how to go all in, but that's it.

I see this game as a good bit of practice for basic 101 tournament poker. I struggled with this game for a while, as I couldn't make people fold their bottom pair on the flop, and I couldn't price them out on their draws. I think last year that although this is the easiest game I probably will ever play, I still lost money from the ten or so games that I played.

The thought came to me the other day exactly how to play this game. If people don't know how to play then there is no point trying fancy moves against them.

This Sunday I noticed that none of them would throw away an ace. I remember someone calling a raise pre-flop on a hand I wasn't involved with. The flop came down as three suited connectors so there was straight possibilities as well as a flush on, but the gentleman kept calling reasonably high bets. At the showdown he turned over his Ace 9 and thought he was in good shape (he paired his ace on the river) but the other player had a straight which he hit on the flop. I noticed people holding on with their aces or small pocket pairs all night.

Normally with a dangerous board I bet out at it. Or if I sense weakness I'll bet because a reasonably good player will fold to a bet if they miss the flop completely. They would look at the board and know what roughly the odds of hitting a good hand on the turn or the river are and play accordingly. A bad player doesn't though and that's the point I am making. I have to play bad players completely differently.

I need to tighten up my starting range against a bad player that will call all the way down to the river with a draw or small pair. I need to assume before I even call or raise the blinds, that we are going all the way no matter what cards come down. I need to play the board and the cards more with this type of player, and most importantly I need to stop trying to out play someone who can't be pushed off the pot.

I want to win this Sunday night tournaments regularly because, well, I should be winning them. I have a massive edge over these players. But I also have a very keen interest in getting back to learning basic poker, because I am told that at most events at the World Series, the tables are full of players like this.

I'll employ my basic 101 tournament poker strategy at this weekly game and report back to you.

My Poker Goals for 2009

2008-12-31T23:59:00.003Z

I have come a long way in 2008 as my previous post explains and I'm happy with the way we are moving. I want to lay out a few of my goals for 2009:

Employ proper bankroll management - This is something that I'm very slack at keeping on top of. I am going to use the spreadsheet to track every single game that I play, with no exceptions. It can be very hard to find live games in my local area so sometimes it's a case of playing in whatever I can find, but I'm going to play strictly to my bankroll in 2009.
Improve my cash game -I think it will only take a month or so of solid concentration and studying to find out and resolve why my cash game results are so up and down. The new year is going to represent a new era in terms of cash games for me.
Play a professional circuit tournament - I will, at some point in 2009, play in a world class tournament. I just want a taste of things to come and some experience at the top level. I think it will either be the EPT in London next October, or the WSOP Europe.
Blog more - No more lay-offs for months at a time. It helps me when I write this blog.

So that's it, the plan of action for 2009. Happy new year everyone, where ever you are.

2008 In Review

2008-12-30T06:21:00.004Z

It's time for The Future Poker Star to look back at 2008, and ask if we are on track.

First of all I apologize to readers, and to myself, for not keeping on top of this blog. I found it hard to write witty intelligent 300 word explanations of games so I neglected to keep it up to date. I know it would have been better to just write results than to write nothing. So now, after a bit of house keeping and spam deleting, I'm back.

If I look back to this time last year, I think I would be very happy and surprised to know that by the end of 2008 I am as far along the road as I am. For starters, I have been crushing the weekly local tournament. By about October I have been pretty much unbeatable there. In fact in the last 6 games before Christmas, I won 5 of them and came 2nd in the other. I have learned how to play every regular player there exactly as they need to be played which is very important. I know that to lose I have to get unlucky.

I still feel that I am best suited to tournaments as the other players that I play against don’t seem to understand the basics of tournament play. I have lost count of the times that I have heard someone say “I had to call his all in with my 7-3 off suit; he’s such a short stack”. This to me is just crazy but the players there seem to think this is how to play tournament poker. It’s not there fault, but nobody seems to understand what the end game is, that they have to be there at the end. It seems as though everyone just wants to bulldoze over each other. I find that a very tight hand selection coupled with the knowledge of what each player plays and how he plays it is the way to go.

I have started to play another tournament too. Again it is a weekly local game but it is with a completely different group of players. I get crushed here. It’s a very low buy-in (£5.00) which I think attracts bad play. It is like being the best dancer in a dancing competition in a mine field. It’s just who is the luckiest. Players don’t like to play me post flop, so they stick it all in with rubbish. I should be making a profit from these games, but they turn it into a coin flipping contest. I should really set aside some time to study a strategy for this game, because out trying to out play them just isn’t going to cut it.

A negative from my tournament play for 2008 though is that I haven’t expanded. I’m still in the same town playing the same players in the same games. I haven’t gone further afield and branched out. This is down to a few reasons but really I think I may just be stuck in my comfort zone.

Cash games this year have been a different story.

Every cash game I am in I struggle with. I can never seem to get a rhythm going. I find it hard to get money out of people in cash games. I think it is because I play so tight that people aren’t going to give me action when I want it. I would be surprised it I have even turned a profit in cash games in 2008.

All in all, I feel that I am a much better player than I was this time last year. My poker theory is worlds apart, mainly because of all the time I put into it. Every time I have a spare minute, I put the iPod in, preloaded with poker instructional mp3’s and podcasts. I read poker books constantly, and I’m always scouring the net. The more I read, the more I want.

Also my reading skills are a lot better. It is starting to come as an instinct. Just a simple process of elimination and I know pretty the range of cards someone is playing, which is improving all the time.

Oh yeah, I was on the same table as Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu in a Pokerstars tournament at one point too which satisfied the geek in me.

Happy New Years everyone, now let’s shuffle up and deal!

Tournament Take Down.

2008-05-29T23:14:00.012+01:00

After five long, hard attempts at the weekly local tournament, I finally managed to take it down this week.

This weekly game represented the "next step up" on the ladder to me and it has given me a real sense of achievement. The reason for this is because I know that one or two months ago I didn't have the skill, knowledge, experience, or confidence to win it. I didn't luck my way to winning.... I learned how it win it.

The first thing to note about this tournament is that minutes before I arrived at the venue I had one of those random confrontations that comes your way every now and then that really tests you. It had me worked up and a few years ago I would have let my aggression get the better of me, but by the time I sat down I already knew that I had to chill out or I wouldn't last long. I almost sat out, let my heart rate reduce to normal, and gave it time for my body temperature to return to normal. I knew not to let personal things come to the table, so I sat back and let them all play while I folded until my mind was really on the game.

For the first hour or so, I played tight and just played the top hands as per usual, but I also played the suited connectors as best to Doyle Brunsons instructions in Super System as possible. I am finding these cards to be very profitable in a very different way than the traditional top hands and I feel that every hold 'em player should read what he has to say about them.

There was only 21 players but they all wanted to win it within the first few orbits of the table. It seemed that they turned up to double up or go home. Nobody wanted to just grind it out adding to their stack bit by bit. It is something that I have noticed at all live poker games that I have played. You can almost smell that certain players at times feel the urge to push all-in no matter what their cards are.

I got to the final table without much drama.

When we got there I had pretty much the same amount of chips that I started with. I had been here before and knew where I went wrong. In the past when I was short stacked I was waiting for the big hands and hoping to double up. This time I decided that I would get a read of the players and raise them out of the blinds when I thought they were week. It really didn't matter what i had, it only mattered what I thought they had. As long as I had position on them, and I thought they were week, I would really go for them and not give an inch until they folded.

I managed to slug it out and work my way into a pretty good chip stack by the time we were at the bubble. This is the time when I think I played very badly. I was playing super tight and was scared to do anything. This was stupid because to me, poker isn't about the money, it's about becoming the best poker player I can be. With that said though I became the turtle that retreated in it's shell when everything I read tells me to do the opposite and attack every bit of weakness at the table.

We got past the bubble and I played good solid poker, but this week I was playing it aggressively. I made sure that I was the player at the table that they all had to beat and they all took shots at me. This is what I wanted. I wanted players to be firing bullets at me. the further into the game we went, the more confident I was becoming. I was going through a "rush" of cards when three players went out quickly.

We were heads up for the first time, and I had a massive chip lead. I must have had three or four times more than my opponent and it was only a few hands before he went all in with a Queen and a King to my Ace King. The community cards came to create on of the most uneventful hands on my journey so far (my Ace high to his King high), but as the river hit, I knew that I had achieved something.

I now have complete and utter confidence in what I am trying to prove, that being a winning poker player is all about studying and practising as much as you can. It was just a small tournament in the grand scale of things to come, but it was a huge step for me.

I am going to continue to play in the same weekly game with the same dedication and concentration, but I am going to look for another game somewhere, another tournament with higher stakes and hopefully a higher skill level. I want to be able to keep going along the steep learning curve and adjust to a higher game.

But for tonight at least, I want to feel happy with myself and the people that have helped me. Not for winning a few hundred pounds, but for finding out that I can really do this, not with some set of skills that I was born with, but by dedication to learning how to become The Future Poker Star.

I have updated the latest statistic page and it has made a big difference.

Quick Super System Notes

2008-05-23T22:09:00.014+01:00

I received Doyle Brunson's Super System in the post the other day and decided to give you some quick thoughts on it so far.

I read the introductions and skipped to the no-limit hold 'em section, so this is by no means an in-depth review but more my initial thoughts on it.

For those who don't know, Super System is known as the bible of poker books and has been selling well for years. By the time Brunson had written the book he had already won millions in poker and had won the World series Of Poker (then known as the Poker World Championship) twice.

When it comes to poker, he knows his stuff.

After a read though the specified sections I took two things away straight away which will defiantly improve my play.

The first one is that the way that he plays hold 'em is aggression, aggression, aggression! One particular quote that I took from the book is this:

"If your going to call, then bet."

By that he means that if you aren't on the button, and you would call say 100 chips, then instead of checking and waiting for an opponent to bet, then bet the 100 chips yourself. This may sound simple to some readers but it opened my eyes to another major flaw in my game. I really check sometimes knowing that I would call a bet that may come may way. Doyle explained that I should bet in those situations.

The other thing that I picked up straight away is the value of mid sized connecting cards. By this I mean 6-7 suited, 7-8 suited, 8-9 suited etc. He writes a huge chapter on it which I am currently absorbing. I hope that I don't do his millions of hands of experience an injustice by explaining the power of these cards in a few sentences.

Basically if you raise pre-flop with these hands then most poker players will throw away cards other than picture cards, like aces, or kinds, or queens etc. If you have four players in the hand with picture cards and you hit your straight with your mid-sized connectors then you know you will have the best hand and the chances are if they have a big pair then you can get a lot of money from them.

It's like making sure that everyone is beating themselves up and fighting to make their way to the front door, you can wipe them all out by quietly sneaking out the back. You are setting them up perfectly for a fall.

Again, I have just read a few sections and I can't say I properly studied them. These are just my initial thoughts and observations on a huge course on poker. However, I used these tactics at a local tournament on Tuesday this week and finished higher than I ever had done before.

Search For Super System On Ebay

Back To The Drawing Board

2008-05-13T23:39:00.006+01:00

I have just come back from the regular Tuesday evening local tournament with a revelation.

Over the past month or so I have been completely humbled in just about every game that I have played and it has to go down as more than just being on tilt. I can't seem to get any good cards and if I do, I seem to get beat by weaker starting hands.

I guess this is luck, or the lack of it.

But what i am really starting to worry about is the fact that I am starting to play crap. I back down to re-raises every time, I am not concentrating on other players reactions or betting patterns, and I'm not being aggressive at all unless I happen to flop the nuts.

The fact of the matter is that I need to get back to basics. I need to get back to where I started going wrong and take it from there. I have to go back to the times when I was winning by being the best player at the table.

I have ordered Doyle Brunson's book "Super System" and I am going to read and re-read it before I play one more hand. I'm going to use the next few weeks getting back into my winning ways by learning more than I have done before and I simply must get back to playing smart poker so I can play my way out of this bad patch and continue towards our goal of becoming The Future Poker Star.

Facebook Page

2008-05-10T15:41:00.005+01:00

After fighting the Facebook revolution for years now, The Future Poker Star has been added. The reason we didn't have one before is because for some reason I just couldn't figure it out. Luckily, Olly sorted it all out and did a fantastic job with it.

On our profile are some really useful tools including videos, a hand rank calculator, a bankroll management application and some poker lessons. If you are one of the 43 million people on Facebook then go ahead and add yourself to our page by clicking the link below or the button on the side bar.

Facebook Page

Once again, thank you very much to Olly who gave his time and patience to it.

Moving Up In Stake

2008-04-30T17:33:00.003+01:00

I have noticed something strange recently about my results from my online poker sit 'n go's. It seems that the higher the stake, the more success I have. Here is a brief rundown of the past few months SNG results by stake.

$1.20 - PokerStars

These were very frustrating. I could never seem to get consistent results no matter how I played. Luck always played a major part in the game. It was as though I didn't have any control at all over them at all and although I played hundreds of them, I pretty much broke even. It was very frustrating as I expected to win these easily, but I found that other players wouldn't respect any raise at all and would go all-in with any two cards.

$3.40 Turbo - PokerStars

I found that I could play poker a bit more. By that I mean that if I made a big raise pre-flop, like 4 or 5 times the blind, people with useless hands like 3 4 off suit would fold. This I found a lot easier but as it was a turbo game the blinds went up a lot quicker and I found I had to push the action a lot more. This loosened up my play a lot and I learned how to play hands other than the premium hands like King King or Queen Queen etc. I did find though that people reverted to the old tactic of pushing all-in with crappy cards after 20 minutes or so, which can be either really profitable, or really frustrating.

$5.50 - BetFred

I changed sites for a few reasons. Mainly because the rake I was paying (the fee that goes to the site as a charge for playing) was taking up a good percentage of the profits I could have been making. By changing sites I managed to get a "new depositors" bonus which would make up for it. Also, it's never good to be playing at the same format and I just wanted to mix it up a bit. This is by far my most profitable game. Although I still find myself getting sucked out with people playing cards they really shouldn't be, I managed to out play most of the people I played on BetFred at the $5.50 level. I did make a rather strange observation though, people playing the $5.50 SNG on BetFred will type some really crazy things in the chatbox once they get eliminated. My favorite so far is "FU DONK MUTHER FUCER ND UR MUMMA". He wasn't happy.

Now I have heard a few theories about why I should be getting better results at slightly different levels and sites. One is that people who play at the minimum levels possible are players who don't really know how to play and will rely on luck. Luck being pretty much uncontrollable can really mess up your poker games. Another theory is that PokerStars is aimed at poker players, where BetFred (a major UK highstreet bookmaker) is aimed at online gamblers who happen to play poker. I guess this is like the pros who live in Las Vegas who play the holiday makers who happen to play poker and see a casino.

Something that is floating around in my mind is that it might just be that I put more effort and concentration into my play when the prizes will noticeably effect my bankroll. I hope this isn't the case because regular readers will know that I'm not here to make money, but to gain experience and learn how to play poker.

I am now thinking of moving up again to maybe the $11 sit and go's on BetFred. I think my bankroll will be able to sustain a few losses while I test the waters and get a feel for the game. Also I want to see if or how the play is different. I have made my live games harder by moving up a level from my drunken home games to properly run local tournaments and have done OK so far. So I feel that by moving up to the $11 online games would be just another small but vital step towards the top of the poker ladder.

As always, any comments, suggestions, feedback, or pieces of advise would be greatly appreciated.

Playing Like A Rookie

2008-04-23T20:55:00.005+01:00

Last night was a bad night for The Future Poker Star.

It all started at my pre-poker game ritual of shaving. It's not a superstition but more of a habit. Well I got a tiny cut but it bled like a pig. Suffering the consequences for not concentrating seemed to be the theme of the night.

I then started to walk to my local weekly game. My grand father taught me at a very young age that walking can clear your head and it's something that I utilize a lot. The relaxing stroll with the ipod is just what I needed to put the nine to five day behind me and transition into The Future Poker Star. But tonight it rained. And I mean rained. Twenty minutes later I arrived at the game with a stupid plaster on my face where I cut myself and soaking wet from the good old British weather.

The chips were collected, the drinks were bought, the hello's were said, and we sat down. The first half an hour went by without playing anything at all until I looked down at my pair of nines. To be honesty, I need to read up on how to play a mid-pair, because as soon as I saw them I thought "I have no idea how to play these". If in doubt, raise three times the blind. I know that isn't an actual saying but that's what i went with. I got action.

The two players that involved themselves were the most noticeable players on the table. The first one was raising and re-raising with absolutely nothing so far and I knew he would raise. He bet pot. It went to the player on my right who seemed to be stealing a lot of pots so far but when ever he had to turn his cards over he always seemed to have the best hands. He was aggressive with good hands so far. He too bet pot.

This was now a big pot, the biggest of the game by far. I was completely at a loss as to what to do. The sensible thing would be to sit back, relax a little, and think. I should have used the small amount of knowledge of what I had gathered from this project so far to make an informed and sensible decision. But I didn't. I called instantly as if to say that the cards in my hand were the best. An insta-call the net guys call it.

Flop came. Ace, King, Three all spades. Neither of my nines were spades. Pre-flop my hand was OK, until it got raised then re-raised. I should have let them duke it out but didn't and now my nines don't look very strong at all. They could have the flush, the possible flush, a pair of Aces, a Pair of Kings..... the list goes on, and most of the list beats me. I put in three times the blinds again which was another stupid move. The thinking was that I wanted to see if anyone had hit anything but because of the size of the pot it didn't do anything except made me look like I haven't got a clue how to play poker. Mr Loose raised the pot again and Mr Nice Hands called. I insta-called again. Stupid, stupid, stupid move. I should have been out of this hand ages ago.

The turn came: five of clubs. Mr Loose went all-in and Mr Nice Hands folded. I spent a while pretending to contemplate calling and putting my game on the line, but really I was pondering on why I played this hand so badly. Really, this is the worst play I can remember playing. I folded and Mr Loose swept up about half of my stack. I didn't even bother asking about his hand. I didn't care. He didn't beat me but I beat myself.

I got up to go to the toilet which is something I rarely do during a game. I think it shows disrespect to the table and to the game of poker as a whole to walk off while others are playing. I think it says that you don't care about hands that you aren't directly involved in. But I had to leave briefly to clear my head and to try to take in how badly I played that hand so I can let it go.

I don't think that I did let it go.

I sat down and looked at Ace King suited. A good hand, one of the best. As I was thinking how I am going to turn my game around and start the comeback here, I heard a voice confidently say "All-In". Wait a moment, it was me that was first to act. It turns out that I said it! It folded all the way around to me and I picked up the very small blinds. That is like winning the lottery when you were the only person to play that week. A lack of concentration was to blame for that.

A few hands later and I picked up king - queen suited. Again, Mr Loose raised and I was the big blind. Everyone folded to me and I had to choose to go all-in or fold. I wanted badly to double up and was thinking that I wanted to exploit him soon and punish him for making silly raises. I asked him what he had. I didn't expect him to tell me, but I wanted some clues. He said something along the lines of "call and find out". He didn't look confident. I told him I had two picture cards. He had a good poker face. He didn't react at all. Not a blink. I wanted badly to call him and thought about it for a long time. Suddenly he shrunk into his seat like a six year old getting told off. Thank you!

"I call" I said. He turned over King Six off suit. I got this Guy! The flop came and we both missed it completely. There was no flush on and no straight on. This was good news for me. It meant that I could only lose by seeing a six with the remaining two cards. The turn came and again we both missed it. Fantastic. this one is in the bag and I'm going to get back to about what I started with. I can wipe the slate clean and start over with my proper game head on. I just have to see the last card without seeing a six and I can put my awful play in the past and move on to try and take this game and prize money home with me. The flop came. Six.

I stood up and said "nice hand sir". What else was there to say? I shook hands with everyone, wished good luck to all and left. As a kick in the teeth I passed someone coming through the doors on my way out. He had turned up late and as a result his cards were folded for him. The irony is that because it was so early in the tournament it wouldn't really effect his chip stack. If only I had turned up late!

At least the rain had stopped for my walk home, even if my hair and coat was still wet from the walk here. It gave me time to ponder on the fact that I played really bad and promised myself that next time it was time to let go I would throw away my cards. The poker gods gave me one final reminder of how important it is to concentrate at all times... as I hit my face square into a lamp post! I currently have a mirror reminding me to pay attention as I see The Future Poker Star with a shaving cut, a bruise on my eye socket, and £25 out of pocket. Good night cruel world!

Finding A Tell In Everyone

2008-04-21T20:14:00.006+01:00

Tells - noun

Behaviours or patterns of behaviour that reveal information about a player's intended actions or about a player's cards, especially when such behaviours are unconscious or unintended; clues about how an opponent will play or the cards an opponent is holding.
The Pokerzone Dictionary

So far in this journey, the most intriguing and interesting discoveries have been the way that people act without realising it. The subtle, subconscious differences in the way that somebody could say something but mean something else is something that I have been studying in my day to day life as well as at the poker table. I have been trying to look past what their words are telling me and listen to what their body language is saying, because people can lie easily with words, but their body language is a lot more truthful.

One of Aprils Goals was to find a tell in everybody. I wanted to look at the people closest to me, that I have known for years, and try to find a subconscious trait that they have in their body language that tells me what they are thinking when they talk.

I noticed quickly something that I used to my advantage at the table. When somebody is relaxed and casual, they are harder to read. But if you put someone under a small amount of pressure, like asking for details about the subject they are talking about, or simply asking them to repeat a key word in a sentence, their body language becomes easier to judge. I used this at a tournament this week by questioning a player about his hand. He calmly raised a lot of his chips on the river without giving me any kind of clue if he had me beat or not. I thought about it for a few seconds and just asked him if he hit his flush. He didn't use his words to tell me but his body language and particularly his eyes screamed that he hit it and hit it hard.

Another thing that I noticed is that when someone is lying or playing a prank on you they will smile when they think you have figured them out. I think this might be some kind of subconscious get out clause for them. By that I mean that they are smiling just before they get caught so that it lets me know that it was all a joke and not some kind of nasty lie. I am dying to try and spot this at a poker table especially if used with the questioning technique mentioned before.

One of my favourite posts on this blog was the post asking myself the question: can I spot the bluff? I love the video clip of Derren Brown spotting real life bluffs and pointing them out. I found out this month that I can practice this skill all the time, not just whilst playing poker and that is exactly what I am going to do.

But sometimes, you can't explain why you don't trust somebody, or why you think someone is lying, or why you think you should fold your hand. We can pick up on the signs even if we can't explain what they were. Here is a clip of one of the greatest poker players of all time, Johnny Chan, demonstrating that you can study someone all you want, but sometimes you just have to go with your instincts.

The Rematch

2008-04-18T23:52:00.004+01:00

Earlier this week I attended the same poker night as my previous post. The format was the same as last week: 4 or 5 tables, deep-staked, £20 buy in plus a £2 rake (approximately US$44 total), cheap beer, with the top 6 or 7 players getting paid.

I went into last weeks game with the plan of getting in the money, which I did pretty comfortably, but didn't give myself a chance when I got there because I was so short stacked. This week I had evil intentions. I was still going to pick my spots but play more aggressively, so if or when I got to the final table, I would be in a position to take the top prize.

I started off by getting junk hands and I folded everything for the first hour. By everything, I mean absolutely everything! I didn't play a hand at all. During this hour though I was studying the other players and more importantly for my journey to the top, I was studying myself. I really wanted to work on my own tells tonight after my post about how easy I am to read.

I played really well. I played tight patient poker, but I played it aggressively. I made a lot of good moves and I made one or two great moves, my favorites being folding set of jacks after somebody re-raised with his set of aces. I turned over my cards after I folded and the other players laughed at my "rookie fold" saying how I should have pushed all in. I said "nice hand" just before the other guy turned his aces over knowing that although my hand was nice, my read was nicer!

I set myself the target of reaching the final table with enough chips to play it with, and I got there. In some aspect I would say it was easy, I was never all-in so my game was never on the line and I didn't once find myself in a pot that I wish I didn't go into. I just kept slowly adding to my stack. But in other ways I am finding out that to play patiently for twenty minutes is easy, but to play patiently for 3 hours is a very hard thing to do and takes a lot out of a player. It makes the five days of a World Series main event seem like a life time.

As we sat down for the final table I had a pretty good idea how most of the players were playing and was using it to my advantage. I got involved in a war of cards with a guy at the other side of the table with me because when ever he had a good hand, so did I. It seemed like a heads up match with me and him with the other players simply watching. It was a good exchange and the gentleman was staring right through me the whole time. I thought I noticed something with his blinking pattern but didn't have time to really study it before I took him out (he flopped a straight and I flopped the flush.). I enjoyed going one on one with him and would have liked to have done it with just the two of us because I think I could have found a major tell with his eyes but he left with a handshake and a see ya next week.

The table got down to 5 people and the train suddenly got derailed in an instance. I had pocket kings and the chip leader (who was ridiculously loose since winning a huge pot just before the final table) pushed all in with pocket 4 7 off suit. I called and he hit a 4 on the turn and a 7 on the river giving him two pairs to my kings. I was gone out of the game but didn't feel bad about it. Bad beats happen, it is a part of poker that you can't avoid so there isn't any point in dwelling on it. Besides, I played really well tonight and felt as though it is just a matter of time before I get a massive boost to my bank roll by winning that weekly tournament. I also met some really interesting people that seemed to fit into certain stereotypes of poker players, but I'll save that observation for another post. I went to bed with a lot to think about and I fell asleep that night with a good feeling about our mission and felt that I am really making progress.

Later that night, when there was silence in the streets, and the only movement was the stars twinkling in the sky, and the moon was gently watching over a sleeping world, The Future Poker Star woke from his sleep like a bolt of lightening, his eyes sprung open and said: HOW THE F**K COULD HE PUSH ME ALL IN WITH 4 7 OFF SUIT?!?!?!?

Brief Site Update

2008-04-16T21:41:00.007+01:00

I have updated the site slightly over the last few days and thought I would share with you what I have done.

Firstly I have changed the domain to www.thefuturepokerstar.co.uk and got rid of the .blogspot.com. I did this so that a visitor or reader doesn't think that this is some half an hour a day hobby that I write about in my spare time. I think the new URL looks more professional. Apparently the old address still points to the site but I'm not sure about any bookmarks or feeds you have.

Also you may have noticed an advert for another site appearing at the side bar. I want to make something clear right now, and that is that this site is not set up or run to make some pocket change from adverts. Any advert or link on this site will be put there solely to get more readers and contributers on here to help us on our journey to the top of the poker mountain.

Another change to the site recently is the Our Links section. The buttons are to make looking around our site and becoming a part of our community a little easier. You can now email me directly if you like by clicking on the e-mail button.

If you notice any problems with dead links or rss feeds not working (I am expecting a few due to the site address changing) then please let me know.

Hiding Poker Tells

2008-04-13T14:52:00.003+01:00

I have noticed something lately that I need to stamp on straight away. I realized that when I play live against people that I haven't played against before, that I am an open book in terms of tells. By that I mean that I am extremely easy to read. I think it is a cross between nervousness and being in a different environment. Whatever the reasons for it, the more I learn about tells in other players, the more I realize that I give off tells about me.

It just hit me the other night during my first tournament that this is a major flaw in my game. I don't think that my bluffs are easy to read, but I am pretty sure that when I hit a monster, the whole rooms knows about it.

So what do I do about this?

I recently listened to an interview by a former FBI agent who taught Phil Hellmuth how to cover his tells. He said he taught him the left hand over the right fist technique (see the image on the right). I am going to use this from now on no matter what kind of hand I have. I think the idea behind it is that it covers your face pretty well while still allowing you to look at other people.

Another thing that I have been practicing when I have a good hand is to tell myself that I am bluffing. For example, if I flop a flush, I need to keep repeating to myself in my mind that I completely missed it and I need to try to steal the pot with a high card. Hopefully this will send out some subconscious signals of weakness and encourage people to raise me.

I don't really want to go down the route of sunglasses and a baseball cap just yet because the best part of my game is reading others and I think that it may hinder me in that regard. However this might be something to seriously consider.

If anyone has any other tips or techniques that you think might help then let me know and I'll try them out.

The Biggest Game So Far

2008-04-09T22:05:00.011+01:00

Last night I played in my first live tournament at a local club. It had the highest buy-in and highest number of opponents of any game that I had ever played live. Although it was "just a game" to everyone else there, it was a lot more to me. It was one more small but significant step into becoming The Future Poker Star.

All the information I had to start with was the buy-in, the amount of players, the chip stacks, and the blind structure. I knew none of the players or more importantly, how they played.

I got there about half an hour early. Due to some crazy laws with poker and gambling in the UK, I had to become a member of the club which hosted the game, which I thought would take a lot longer but it was a simple case of signing my name and handing a five pound note over. I introduced myself to the gentleman who ran the game and enjoyed a bit of social small talk with him. I figured he might just be the man that I am looking for to open some poker doors for me at some time down the road, so I made face known to him.

The room started filling up and I was chatting away with some of the other players while drinking my non-alcoholic drink. I took note, as instructed, of "the drinkers". There was about 10 people who went straight to the bar, and I looked hard to remember their faces. These would be the people that I would take advantage of at some point, hoping that they would be the risk takers that evening.

I paid my money and paid for a bounty side game too. This was £2 which wasn't explained to me before hand but worked out that someone would be drawn at random to be the bounty, who ever knocked him from the game becomes the bounty and whoever is the bounty at the final table wins the money. Everyone paid the money so I thought I would too. After all, the odds of me becoming the bounty is completely even with everyone else, regardless of experience or skill, and as my style is fairly tight I think that if I got the bounty I would be able to hold onto it until the final table. So this was probably my best chance of winning some money tonight.

As we sat down I realized that there was only 3 tables of players, and was told that only 21 people turned up tonight. This threw me off to be honest as I had mentally prepared for a game of at least 4 or 5 tables. Whatever. The game started and we are underway.

The first thing I noticed was probably a great lesson to learn, not only in poker but in life. There were a few people that had some fancy tricks with the cards and chips. You know the ones I mean, the fancy shuffle, the flick of the wrist to throw the cards into the muck, the one handed chip stacker. I assumed that these people had played a lot of poker and were the ones to look out for. I guess it is like when you see a guy shouting his mouth off acting hard at a bar that you think you shouldn't mess with, or a guy that tells you that he sleeps with loads of women. Well it turns out that these were the players that seemed to just be putting a front on. They may look and act like dangerous professional poker players, but some of the plays they were making told a very different story.

I played tight to start with and only went in with good hands, but I was getting some great hands! I flopped quads twice in a row in the first few hands and managed to get a reasonable chip lead on the table. This was when I realized that I had no idea how I stood in the tournament itself in terms of my chip stack. In an online multi-table tournament you just look at the lobby and see exactly how you are ranked, but I couldn't do that last night and it was a bit off-putting.

As time went on I was folding just about everything and just seeing a flop if it was cheep. before I knew it the first half an hour had gone and people started dropping like flies. Tight players started playing silly cards, and small raises were turning into all-ins. I personally think that a combination of things were causing players to do this: a lack of patience, boredom, and the effects of cheap beer were turning good players into rookies. By the time the hour break came along, we were down to 2 tables and by my calculations of the amount of chips that we started with and the amount of players left in the game, I was well above the average.

Everyone headed to the bar and I headed outside for a cigarette. A few guys that approached me and I said that I hadn't been playing long and wasn't very good. I said I got lucky a few times. I always think that it is better to make people think that you are lucky as opposed to skillful,and that you are just there for something to do on a week day evening as opposed to having the ambition and goals of becoming The Future Poker Star!

I sat at a new table and was made to feel like "the new boy". There was one particular guy who kept muttering and sniggering at everything I did. Even down to the way I had my chips stacked at the table induced remarks under his breath with a grin. I didn't care. There was a time when this would have produced a reaction from me that would have made him regret it for his entire life, but not these days. He called me all in every time I raised and I knew that I would get him if I kept my cool and had patience. Eventually the aces hit and I called his all-in raise. He had 7 3 off suit and something to think about on his way out of the door.

The second break came and went and we went hand for hand soon after. I folded a pair of jacks pre-flop at one point which I think was just because I wanted to get to the final table which was probably a mistake. But I made it to the final table.

The payout structure was changed just before the start. Because there was only 21 players, only 5 got paid where normally it would be 7 players. I was starting the final table with the smallest stack and only had enough for a few orbits of the board before I was blinded out. Fortunately for me people were panicking and making what I consider to be mistakes. People were going out thick and fast and before I knew it we were at the bubble. I was happy to be here and knew from my online games that people would tighten up. I stole some blinds by pushing all-in when I sensed weakness and managed to survive. As a player called me all-in I looked at her and asked her what she had. She said "I have good cards" but her eyes looked down straight away, she looked at her stack, and took a deep breath. I asked her if she could beat my pair of nines and she shrugged her shoulders, and her eyes darted back to her chips again. That was enough for me. I called and saw her pair of sevens. My nines held up and I doubled up and she got knocked out the next hand. She was the only woman I have ever played against and the only female player there, so I felt a bit bad for her, but I was happy that I made the money and felt a sense of achievement. The blinds went up and I was forced all-in with a jack 10 suited. My opponent and the eventual winner called with ace king and took me out. After a few hand shakes and good lucks I left with a £20 profit, my first live tournament out of the way, and most importantly; one of Aprils goals scored!

I was happy that I played to the game plan and I was happy to have finished in the money. I learned a lot tonight about first impressions often being misleading, and I learned a lot about the power of being patient. I also think that it helped by telling a few lies about me not playing very often and not taking poker seriously giving the impression that I wasn't a threat to anybody. I also learned that I can play to limp into the money if that is what I want to do, but to win I would have to play to win from the very start.

I wondered on my way home if I would have finished in the same position if there were over 40 players playing. I would have made over a hundred pounds if I did, or I may have tripped up and been sent home early. I guess next week I will find out.

When I started writing this post I didn't realize that it would be so long, but I hope that some readers might be able to take what I have learned from my first tournament and my step further in the long journey of becoming The Future Poker Star.

My First Tournament

2008-04-05T18:25:00.015+01:00

After much googleing and a few phone calls, I have found a small local poker tournament that plays at the beginning part of next week. The buy in is £20 (approximately $40) and I have to become a member of the venue which is £5 (or $10). That seems like quite a high rake but it is the membership for the year so I'm fine with that.

I am told that anything between 30 and 45 players will enter. I have played similar tournaments online but not live. The only other thing to note is the blind structure. They start at 15/30 then go up to 30/60 etc. They go up every half an hour and we all start with 7000 chips. Now to me this seems extremely deep stacked. In fact if there is 45 people with 9 to a table then it sounds to me like I could fold for days!

The £20 buy in with the £5 membership fee is well above my poker bankroll at the moment, so I would prefer maybe a £5 buy in, but because I live in the middle of nowhere I guess I can stretch to this as it's still more about getting experience and knowledge right now than money. Also this is one of Aprils goals so I'm entering.

To be honest, I'm not expecting to go in there and rip the room to pieces. I would just like to learn something about these kind of games and get some experience for the future. However, with that said, it would be nice to get into the top 7 and therefore cash.

I think I am going to very tight for the first hour or so and try and get the measure of a few people. If you don't know who the sucker is, it is you, so I will work out who the suckers are and who I should avoid before I do anything fancy. When the moment is right I will strike with the best hands and not before.

Other than that I don't really have a game plan and was hoping that a few readers could throw a few tips my way.

Aprils Goals

2008-04-02T20:34:00.007+01:00

I have a very clear idea of where I want to be by the end of my poker life. In the long term I want to be a poker star and I know that to do it will be a very long a winding road. But it suddenly came to me today that I don't have my short term goals mapped out.

Last month I just pottered along playing some online sit n go's, had a live home game and read a few articles online. I didn't have a plan and instead of marching forcefully down the road of success, I just floated along it.

Not this month!

Here is the plan for April 2008 for The Future Poker Star.

Break even - I understand that my mission right now is to gain knowledge and experience, and not necessarily money. However I want to be able to set a target to sustain my poker education this month.
Find a tell in everyone - Since starting this project I have been looking a lot more at the way that people talk to me in my everyday life. I think that there is a lot to learn about peoples tells, not just at a poker table, but twenty four hours a day. I want to be able to spot a tell, or at least something unusual in the subconscious behaviour in the closest people in my life.
Play a live tournament - It is very difficult to do anything where I live! I live out in the countryside so I have to travel to get anywhere. Also with my current bankroll I don't want to just jump head first into a game that is way above my poker finances. However, in April, I will find a poker tournament, play it, and learn as much as possible from it. (entered) and (played)
Quality over quantity - I played 120 online sit n go's last month, and can honestly say I learned nothing with it. In fact, I probably had sharper poker skills a month ago. I think that online poker is a fantastic thing, but it has defiantly dumbed me down. I found that i was just clicking away without really concentrating like I should be. I will play a lot less this month but learn more at online poker.
Be the home game hero - There is a re-buy game with friends that I play about once a fortnight. It is a typical drunken re-buy game where people make crazy raises and they go all in as soon as they see a top pair. I know that I am better than that and I know I should take one of these games down this month without buying back in by using my skills I have learned.
Read Super System - Many people have recommended this book to me and i am told it could be the most important book I ever read.

So here we go, more focused than ever this month and knowing that long term goals are only archived by hitting the short term targets.

The Future Poker Star on PPSN

2008-03-29T19:18:00.006Z

I came across a social network site (like myspace, bebo, facebook etc) solely for poker players creatively called poker players social network and added a profile for our site.

It seems to be pretty good with some good discussions going on over there and I have spoken to some nice people. There isn't a huge amount of members but the site is quite new and they are getting new members all the time, so go check it, add yourself to my page and say hello. It's free and is really easy to set up.

Poker Players Social Network Page and don't forget about the MySpace.

Interesting Hand Analysis?

2008-03-23T19:52:00.009Z

Did you know that 0.7% of the worlds population is drunk right now? Or that 32% of Americans work while eating lunch? Or that 1 kilo of sugar is approximately 5 million grains?

I'm sure this will be interesting stuff to somebody out there. But the statistics that I'm bringing to you today are the last 5000 hands that I played on pokerstars.

There are plenty of programs out there which will keep a record of all the hands you play and memorize how you play them. I decided to install one and let it capture my playing style. Please bear in mind that these figures are not for cash games, but for sit 'n' go's and tournaments.

Hands: How many hands I played.
VP$IP%: The percentage of hands I put money into the pot when I didn't have to.
PFR%: The percentage of hands I raised pre-flop.
WSD%: The percentage of hands I went to the showdown.
WSDW%: The percentage of showdowns that I won.

So the first thing that stands out to me is that I consider myself a reasonably tight player, but the stats say that I put money into the pot in a quarter of the hands that were given to me. Is this pretty loose? I also like to raise before the flop when I have a good hand but discovered that I raised 7.5% of the times before the flop but went to the showdown over 12%, so I think I am limping in too much.

Possibly the most interesting statistic here is that from all the showdowns I went to I won only 46.52% of them. I need to tighten up and only go to the showdowns with the hands that I think I am going to win, instead of just "good hands".

But maybe the hand analysis matters as much as how many grains of sugar are in a kilo.

How To Play Five Card Draw

2008-02-25T01:09:00.014Z

OK, I'll admit it, I whored my self out for the sake of Google search rankings. What the title should probably be is... How the hell am I supposed to play five card draw?

I have been experimenting with the different types of poker recently since my convenient accident with limit poker and have came across 5 card draw on Pokerstars. Even though I know nothing about one of the oldest forms of poker other than the rules, it seems as though that's a hell of a lot more than most people on there!

The rules

Everyone gets five hole cards face down.
The betting takes place the same as no limit (raise, call or fold).
When the betting is over you have the choice to throw away and replace as many of the five cards that you like.
Another round of betting takes place .If you're still in the hand then you turn your cards over and see who has the best.

Simple.... right?

Well if you are used to No Limit Hold 'Em then the rules become second nature after a hand or two. But the intricate decisions are really baking my noodle. The following hand is a good example of what I mean:

I received (while on the big blind) :

Five people called the blind and I checked and had the choice to get rid of some cards. The choices are this:

1. Play it safe and keep in the hope of hitting another 6 (11.4%), hitting another pair (15.9%), hitting 3 of something else to give me a full house (1.0%), or having Christmas come early for quads (0.2%).

2.Keep in the hope of hitting one of the 8's to get my straight (8.5%).

3.Keep and go for the flush (no idea what the odds are here!).

4.Do what is called "Stand Pat" and keeping the lot of them. This would achieve nothing other than telling the table that I am perfectly confident with the hand I have got and I don't want to change any card. I think that this is the biggest bluff in poker.

I have looked up the odds of hitting my desired hand and have put it in (red brackets) next to it. The sensible thing here according to the odds is to keep my six's and try and improve on the hand because at least then I have a pair. But the same odds tell me that with the hand I have and the amount of players, the odds of at least one person having a better hand than me is 87.2% for the people still keeping up with the percentages, or 0.15:1 for our American friends, or extremely likely for the rest of us. So keeping the 6's isn't going to work out.

The straight and the flush is a shot in the dark. Maybe if the game didn't matter and I was just playing for fun I would have gone for the flush, but for the purpose of this experiment, every game matters and every game is a step towards my goal of becoming The Future Poker Star.

I decided to do an amature move and "Stand Pat". I kept all my cards and put a big raise in when it was my turn to bet. They all folded and I realized that this is old school poker. This is the poker that was played in the saloons 200 years ago by cowboys and gentlemen before poker was about advertising deals, internet player points and bonus codes, when a bluff involved looking your opponent in the eyes and saying you have them beat. A few clicks on a mouse was tough enough for me, but to do this live in a proper game would take one cool cat.

So the point of this post is the same as the point of this site. I'll leave this post up for the whole experiment for people to put their advise in here. How the hell do I play five card draw? Which hands should I be playing? What kind of strategy should I be using?

New Myspace Page

2008-02-19T23:17:00.006Z

I have added The Future Poker Star to Myspace. I think that it would be a good way to interact with other groups and people that are into poker as well as getting new readers and contributers to this blog. It will also be good to put faces to the names of people that leave comments on this site.

I have designed it as a page for the site as opposed to a personal page for me so if you have a Myspace page then feel free to add us.

The Future Poker Star Myspace Page

Poker Bankroll / Stats Spreadsheet

2008-02-13T00:01:00.018Z

After searching forever for a simple but useful spreadsheet to track all my poker results I decided to make my own and share it with the world. The idea is that I can use it for tournaments, sit and go's, live games and cash games. I just put the result into the sheet after the game and I can review all my games and keep an eye on my bankroll. I have decided to make it last for 4 years, as Microsoft will probably update excel by then.

You don't need any macros running to use it and you don't need to know anything at all about Excel. It will give me information about how profitable certain games, the effects of playing more than one table at once, the return on my investments, the profitability of sites, venues and home games. and much more. The more that this is used, the more the stats will show you what is needed to improve in your game.

I'll use this page for any questions anyone might have while using it.

How to use:

Go to Personal Preferences page and add a site or venue where you play. Some have been added already but feel free to delete them.
When you play a game click on the Input page. This is where you will log your games after playing them. There are two sheets in one here, one for sit and go's or tournaments (blue), and one for ring games (purple). Make sure you put the data in for all of the requested columns. The Spreadsheet will take care of the rest.

Download Spreadsheet

Some things to note.

The date format at the moment is set as dd-mm-yy, so when you input the dates you must input them that way. For example, the 10th of February 2008 is 10-02-08 and not 02-10-08 as the Americans would use it. The sheet would read the above example as the 2nd of October 2008 which would cause errors when you analyze your data afterwards.

I have put a few sample entries in the Input and Personal Preferences pages to show you how to put them in, so just delete those.

The sites or venues that you play can be deleted but NOT if you have played there already and used it. This is important. It holds a maximum of 50.

The charts, graphs and tables will be very useful once you have input some data into it but as with all data analyzing, will be useless to start with. The more you use it the more it will help you.

This spreadsheet is obviously completely free, but if you could click on the bookmark button underneath this post and help spread the word then that would really be appreciated.

Dead Blog?

2008-02-04T23:57:00.000Z

This is a quick update to let anyone that looks at this know that I'm not dead.... and neither is this blog.

I have been super busy lately preparing for this project and will let you all know about it very soon. I guess that right now you could banner this blog with "UNDER CONSTRUCTION", because I haven't launched the marketing for it yet to get people on here. I think it would be best to do it all at the same time and when I have written the tales of the bottom rung of this long poker ladder.

Check back soon for among other things: a downloadable bankroll manager, my truely ridiculas luck at 5-card draw, my first poker table brawl, 3d poker experiences, and a whole hell of a lot more.

On a side note, thanks to the 2 people that check my blog daily, and for the 155 people that have looked at it so far! Stay Tuned

The Convenient Accident

2007-12-19T23:36:00.000Z

With nothing to do this evening I decided to log into poker stars and play an online tournament. I think that by playing the big tournaments with small stakes I can get to play (and practice) a lot of poker for a small amount of money. So I found a game for $1.65 including the rake with 558 people in it. So with that amount of people I know that I should be playing a lot of cards, and the worst thing that can happen is losing $1.65, so all is good.

The convenient accident came when the first cards came down and I noticed my raise-o-meter wasn't there. It suddenly dawned on me that I was playing limit poker as opposed to no-limit. What a stupid mistake to make, not realizing what game I was playing before it started! But this mistake might have turned out to be a good thing...

As I was playing I could see that my style of play was a lot more suited to limit poker. Before I started this blog and therefore this monumental mission of becoming The Future Poker Star, I played a few tournaments online, and the main problem I had was the blinds and antes. You see I play tight, not chasing the straights and flushes, and go in for the kill with the good hands. Patience is a virtue and all that. Well the blinds and antes always killed me, not the other players. But the blinds went up at a nice level tonight and there was no antes, so I could play the gameplan that I wanted to play.

And play I did.

I got to 26th out of 558 players comfortably and won $4.16 (£2.08) which isn't a spectacular result on paper, but I think that the $1.65 (£0.83) was well spent to learn the lesson that poker isn't no limit hold 'em, but no limit hold 'em is just a part of poker. With so many different variations of poker out there (Omaha, Raz, 7 card stud, 5 card draw, HORSE etc) then maybe along this journey there will be a game that's just right for me, and to be The Future Poker Star I need to explore these all with the same dedication that I will for no limit.

Can I Spot The Bluff?

2007-12-18T14:22:00.000Z

Throughout my life, I've been known to be a bit paranoid about things. There could be 10 people in my house and I'll tell you which one likes my sister a little too much, and which one is planning on stealing my TV. I could be in a club and get a big feeling that it's all about to kick off, or that the girl I'm dancing with just wants some free drinks.

These are the typical symptoms of someone with paranoia, but with me it's different for one vital reason... normally I'm right!

Now there are two ways to look at this:

I have a guardian angel on my shoulder protecting me and guiding me through life, or
Without realizing I can pick up on other peoples subconsciouses body language.

For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to discard number one and hope that if I really do have a guardian angel, it isn't online.

So that leads us nicely to number two. Now from a small bit of research i can see that when we lie our body does different things than when we tell the truth. Some one could stutter slightly or avoid a question. They could use filler sounds and words like "umm... yeah... that's right" instead of a truthful "yes". These are obvious give aways to a lier. But any half decent poker player would be able to hide these.

The tells that interest me, as The Future Poker Star, are the ones that I believe I pick up on without realizing. The way that people might raise their eyebrows slightly when the flop hits or the way they shuffle with their chips whilst contemplating a re-raise is what floats my boat. I believe that there is only so far we can can go on this journey without learning and honing the skills to read people.

I have ordered a book by a man called Derren Brown. He has a program in the UK where he plays with peoples minds. I have seen him do many different "tricks" but in reality he is just a person who knows how the mind works. But the way he can tell a truth from a lie is not only amazing, but also something that a Future Poker Star needs learn!

Here is a clip of Derran Brown. I don't plan on filling this blog up with youtube videos, but I think that this is something that needs to be shown. Now just imagine if you had these skills, and wanted to know if the person infront of you that just raised your two kings has the two aces.

Part 1

Part 2

Latest Statistics (updated 31 May)

2007-12-13T19:30:00.011Z

(click image to see full screen)

I think it is time to update the Latest Statistics page. There hasn't been a lot to report on lately as I have just been grinding away at the small level sit 'n go's but the live game tournament buy-in's were huge compared to my on line buy-ins, which explain the sharp losses and wins.

I have tracked my statistics since I started using The Future Poker Star spreadsheet in the middle of February and as you can see my biggest win by far was the local Tournament Take Down this week.

I just thought I would show you another graph showing the "hits" from the site. This just shows the actual blog stats and not the stats for the rest of our community (i.e the forums, facebook, myspace etc). I have been tracking them since the beginning of the year and thought I would share them with you.

(click image to see full screen)

I don't really think that it means anything, as I would rather have one person to help me oput somehow than 1000 people just reading the posts, but I thought I would share it with you all.

What I Learned Last Night

2007-12-13T14:34:00.003Z

It cost me £5 last night to learn a lesson that might have saved me thousands.

The venue was set, the nibbles were layed down, and the fridge was full of beer, all set up nicely for the game of No Limit Hold 'Em round a friends house. £5.00 buy in, re buy-ins before an hour, second place wins money back, and winner takes the rest.

Although I was going in blind to their different styles of play as I hadn't played with any of the nine players before, I did know quite a lot about some of their personalities. For example, I knew that two of the nine players were ridiculously competitive with each other, and I knew that another one of the nine looked a lot more stupid than he actually was. So I felt that I had a very small advantage of the table, especially being The Future Poker Star!

A quick $5 sit 'n go on Pokerstars for a warm up before I left was in order, which using a combination of extreme concentration and a dash of luck, was won. I'm up on the night and feeling good.

The tactic for the live game was to sit back, relax, and go in when I had the better hands. I thought that I would let everyone else knock each other out while I collected on the hands that I should collect on. I checked twice when I had a straight ace high knowing that the only other player on the table would raise to the roof. He did, nearly bankrupting himself as I more than doubled my chips.

Then it all started going wrong! I was far and away the chip leader, with my new "don't mess with me" table image, when I decided to get the drinks flowing. The rum, the vodka, the beers...

Without thinking I made two stupid mistakes. I raised most of my chips to put someone all in with my pair of kings without noticing the flush draw staring at me on the table which put me on the small stack, then went all in on the next hand with two queens! Why the hell did I do that? The caller had two aces (one in his hand and one on the flop) and that was me for the night!

The SNG on Pokerstars softened the financial blow, but I should have gone to bed last night on a high.

So the lesson I have learned is this: Don't drink while playing poker!

Is a bit of dutch courage good for your game? Or does it just give you false confidence?

The Beginning - Can It Be Done?

2007-12-10T02:13:00.000Z

I had it all. The perfect family, the nice house, the nice job. Then I lost it all.

From now on, I can never be as low as i once was and I can never lose more than I have lost. It's all up hill from here.

During this bad time of my life I couldn't do anything except stay in my house alone as I locked myself away from the world. During this time I needed something to take my mind off things, so I researched. I found out how to edit videos to a pretty good standard. I researched the 9/11 tragedy, and I learned the basics of poker.

This is what I have to start with:

The hands - I know what hands are bigger others. This is now been imprinted in my mind!
Very Basic Pot Odds - I have a basic knowledge of pot odds , but I don't think I am using this basic knowledge properly.
Understanding of the position - It seems like nobody that I play with cares where the button is. It doesn't affect their play at all, where as I can take advantage of that by reacting to the button.
Ability to learn - By that I mean that if I put my mind to something, I can research every second of the day to achieve it.
Great Maths - I have a really good grasp on mathematics. I have never had a problem at getting numbers round my head.
Balls of steel - I've been known to "flip-out" sometimes in normal everyday circumstances, but i have also been known to keep a cool head when everyone else around me has fallen apart.

With a few games online and a couple of games with my friends I would say that I've hung pretty well, but also I understand that that is probably the lowest standard of opponent I can get. I also realize that for every one person that makes a living from poker, he or she has to take a small portion of hundreds of other peoples disposable income. Therefore to take on even the beginning stages of this project, I have to be better than most.

I can't do it alone. I don't have a mentor to help me, and I don't have the knowledge or the experience. This is why I have set up this blog.

This isn't a blog that gives you information (although I'm sure many people will learn from my mistakes and triumphs), but this is a blog to give me the skills, advise, tips, stories and support to become The Future Poker Star.

The World Series from nothing from one person is a pipe dream, but could a group of people do it? Could a network of people collectively achieve it by sharing every piece of knowledge they have? Together, I think we can cause a stir.

Lets find out.

Contact Me

2007-04-03T18:18:00.002+01:00

Feel free to email me about any off topic subject you like or just to say hello. Your email won't be added to any annoying mailing list and it won't be spammed.

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2007-04-03T04:15:00.005+01:00

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