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Finished Littlewoods monthly bonus just in time ending up +£41.50. A cracking result. Up £16.50 from the £625 WR plus the £25 bonus.

I found three good arbs on football matches yesterday and managed to bet a total of £1,900 with Ladbrokes on Morocco and Mali in the African Nations Cup as well as Liverpool in the Premiership. Mali were playing Benin (I must confess I had never even heard of either of these two countries). This produced a very satisfying £70 profit.

Ladbrokes reissued the Liverpool coupon after  cutting the price from 4/6 to 4/7, but as always I had taken several spare copies when the orginals first appeared. Their computer system will always accept them.

Also I got to the semifinals of the Monday Blackjack Tourny freeroll that I play in collecting £10 so I was pretty satisfied with my day’s results when I opened up Stan James Poker to play a few hands late in the evening.

Surprisingly, there were no tables of omaha high-low open at either the $20, $40 or $50 buyin levels. (Is this a sign that online poker has passed its peak? A year or two ago and I would have been able to choose the best game from half a dozen tables). So, I put down $100 for the bigger game that was running. I recognised several people from my normal game and have the bankroll to play here so although this is a bigger game than I normally play, I was happy.

Within a few hands I had got myself stacked after making a move on the flop on a guy I didn’t know. I then fired again on the turn and after a long think got called and lost $100. Really, really stupid play on my part and something I never would have done if I was playing in a smaller game. For the last couple of weeks I have been playing pretty tight whilst racking up the 100 raked hands to qualify for the SJ freerolls and have won $85 or so. Now it is gone, in one hand when I was completely dead with 0% chance of winning.

 If I am honest, I would have to say this is not the first time this has happened. I play well, maybe catch some good flops and the bank balance increases nicely. Then I say to myself, “Hey, you could win twice as much if you moved up a level or played twice as much”. Very often, the bad players I have good notes on can be found playing for bigger stakes so how hard can it be? But it seems that I play worse when there is more money in the middle of the table.

I find it more difficult to put hands down, so get quartered more often. Maybe if I played the $100 buyins more often I would get used to them? But how much would that cost me to learn? And what if it turns out that the $50 buyin is the right level for me?

Most people lose at poker so I guess this would be “a normal experience” for them. Although unpleasant, losing buy-ins in plo8 is going to happen. Its a drawing game and sometimes people will outdraw you. But if you are putting your money when you have positive ev you will be ok in the long run. What seems to happen to me is that I try too hard to win every pot, once I move to the bigger games something I am constantly aware I shouldn’t do at the lower levels.

So, I am trying to put down my thoughts on paper, to try and learn from what went wrong. If any of this helps you too that’s fine, but really, I am concerned about me.

Firstly, the matched betting is now the biggest source of profits for me. I am winning £200+/week from this. Trying to win a similar amount from the poker is probably over-optimistic. In the past although I have been a consistent winner in the cash games, £50-£100/week has been typical.

The matched betting is also much more consistent. A losing day from arbing is pretty unusual and I have never had a losing week whereas at poker sometimes you are going to lose, what is important is only to lose the minimum.

My experience with matched betting has made me more likely to tilt when playing poker now, compared to a couple of years ago.

Because I am just constantly accumulating profits with the arbing I expect subconciously to be able to do the same at all gambling. And of course that’s not going to happen.

Seconly, I enjoy poker (well, enjoy winning anyway) but £50 or $100 seems to be the level at which I am afraid to lose. I start to think more about the money ( and what I could have done with it) and less about making correct decisions. Even though I have over £7,000 in my gambling bankroll I am playing as if this was “scared money” once I move up to the $100 tables. I just don’t feel comfortable losing £50 in one hand. Or to put it another way the guilt I feel from losing outweighs the pleasure I feel on the occasions I end up winning the pot. The fact that some other players (who I know are losing players) are happy to lose at the $100 as well as the $50 tables is irrevelant.

The conclusion seems pretty obvious, just don’t play at the $100 tables any more. I have decided this before, on at least two occasions. I can’t explain why I am finding it difficult.

So, I have decided to take a break from poker for a week. Maybe spend the time writing some plo8 articles for my website and hopefully refocus my brain on what is necessary to play winning poker.

So +£20 for the day overall, but I felt terribly disappointed as I switched my compuer off.

Sporting Index had another “refund your losses upto £30″ for their new game Cricket Roulette. I did the usual thing of 9 small bets (after which I was down £1.65) and then a big bet which had a max loss of £28.50 and a max win of £108. Needless to say I got boweld out first ball incurring the maximum loss for anoverall result of -£30.15 or down 15p after the refund tomorrow.

I thought this was one oftheir more exciting games although I would never play it with my own money because I have no idea what their edge is.

I got to the semifinal of Paddy Power’s £150 blackjack freeroll tonight. Won £15 after about 45 minutes. This event runs weekly at 6pm on Wednesday’s is has proved to be a good source of cash over the years. I won it once (when the prize money was £250 picking up £100) but it is always over quite quickly so I always enter it if I am in.

The racing is going through a slow patch at the moment. Meetings are being abandoned due to the weather and arbs are proving hard to spot. However, I got another £5 free bet today from the lovely people at bet365 which surprised me a little as I haven’t given them much business apart from the Channel 4 Racing on Saturday.

On the bright side, I have been doing alot of football bets, especially with Ladbrokes. I reinvested most of my winnings from Reading v Spurs on Havant v Swansea. As I write this Swansea are 3 nil down (after 44 mins) so with luck I won’t have any money to collect tomorrow and the Ladbrokes’ staff can reassure themselves that all is right with the world and that eventually I will lose all my money. If only they knew that I want all my football bets to lose. I make the same profit win, lose or draw. Its far better for me to lose and have the money end up in my exchange account.

There is a monster arb in tonight FA Cup matches. Reading  v Spurs. Available at 6/5 with The Tote and 11/10 at Ladbrokes. I’ve got £1400 on and laid it off at 1.97-1.98. If Spurs win my Betmate balance will be wiped out.

I played the $50 plo8 games for a couple of hours today. Principally to get the 100 raked hands needed to qualify for the SJ freerolls (10 raked hands are needed for the Tues and Thurs ones, 100 raked hands for Sunday). You get credit for a raked hand if the rake hits 25c and you are dealt cards in that hand. No nonsense about having to actually contribute to the pot, so its pretty easy to rack them up.

Finished over 2 buy-ins up. I hit some cracking flops and got customers each time. Quartered one guy when I made a str flush A-5 clubs and made another $25 when my AJTT flopped QTT to make quads. I checked the flop and the turn only to find a guy betting at me on the river. He had QQxx so must have been pretty cheesed off to get stacked in that position.

So $100 up and qualification for the next three SJ freerolls.

Intercasino convert your comp points into dollars at the rate of 100/$ once you hit 2,000 points. I hit this during Dec so got an extra $20 added to my account. I don’t think I will be playing much here anymore. The 50x WR is too big for me.

A cracking start to 2008 when I came 2nd out of 158 in the SJ Tuesday freeroll. This had prize money of $300.