February went better than January, poker-wise.

At the cash tables I managed to undo pretty much all of January’s damage. The guys at Eat My Stack pointed out how I was playing much too tight for the 5-max games with a big leak on the small blind.

So a few little tweaks and voila, here’s the February cash table performance:

It’s a good job that the cash came good because I won precious little in tournaments. I did win a couple of qualifiers for next week’s ICOP on Virgin Poker though, so if I score there that will get March off to a great start.

I also lost over $80 due to the deteriorating sterling-dollar exchange rate, which more than wiped out the rakeback from January.

So here’s the summary for February and year-to-date:

I’m feeling really good about my game just now, so maybe in March I can press on while the feeling lasts!

Well that’s settled then, the Baglady and I are going to Vegas in June to fetch back the money we spent there last year.

We also get to have another go at winning a bracelet: our holiday coincides with the WSOP Seniors event that we did so rubbish in last year. This time it will be better.

For the benefit of Crispy and anyone else who’s interested, here is the tournament structure from last year. To be honest it’s not great, could use a bigger starting stack, but imagine what it was like a few years ago when you started with just 1000:

Anyway, we’ll be staying at the Flamingo this year, so I expect we’ll be sick of pink by the time we come home again. But never mind that, roll on June!!!

I reckon I’ve got this Pot Limit Omaha thing cracked.

The other day I sat down to play some heads-up PLO. It was a 1-2 game and my opponent, who I knew to be a decent sort, sat down with the same $200 that I did.

On the very first hand I was dealt any four cards. I pretended to look at them, as you do, then saw the $3 in the pot.

Poker is a game of skill and my own edge comes from a solid grasp of the arithmetic of poker. Here I knew that my own any four cards had a 50% chance of beating my opponent’s any four cards, so folding was out of the question. I immediately realised that if I bet the maximum, raising it to $6, I have two ways to win. He might make the mistake of folding his any four cards, in which case I win $3 immediately. Or he may call, in which case I will lose $5 half the time but win $7 the other half of the time, average gain $1.

Nice.

Easy game, easy raise. So now there is $8 in the pot and $4 for him to call.

I’m not a mind-reader, but I don’t need to be. Oppo must have worked out that folding now is an obvious error with $8 in the pot, given that his any four cards have a 50% chance against my any four cards. Calling is obviously possible, getting 2 to 1 on an even money bet, average gain $2. But surely raising is better, he would have thought. He thought right: raising gives the added chance that opener (me) might fold; even if I call he will lose $16 half the time but win $20 the other half of the time, average gain $2.

With the action back on me, it took no more than the blink of an eye for my calculations to work out that with my any four cards having an even money chance against his any four cards, folding would be an egregious error.

Using the already familiar calculations it took us no time at all to bet the maximum a couple more times each. Before you could say “any four cards will do”, all the money was in the middle with both of us having the better of it, which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill.

So with the pot at $400 minus a tiny rake, it was time for me to look at my cards.

It was then that the alarm went off and I woke up.

 The Baglady and I had a very pleasant outing to Birmingham this last weekend for the PokerPlayersPlace Invitational Team Championship.

Also known as “Not The APAT Team Championship” because it was set up by the PokerPlayerPlace people when they couldn’t get into the APAT team event.

Anyway, this weekend was a competition between 10 teams of 9 players at the Star City (Circus) casino. As a 2-day event with a £40 buy-in and a 45 minute clock, this is fantastic entertainment value.

Slightly unusual features of the event were that even though the casino provided dealers there was no fee paid for by the players, all the money went into team and individual prizes.

I was in the UK Sharks team, captained by the famous John Miller, while the Baglady came along to rail and perform any necessary bar biatch duties. But even though the poker was fiercely competitive, the focus was really on a fun social weekend, which was achieved admirably. Good job really because the UK Sharks team didn’t win…

My own performance was to finish Day 1 slightly above average, then hang around on Day 2 to make the final table as a shortstack, then go out in 9th place for £50 having had no luck when I started throwing the chips around.

The Baglady did much better than me - on Day 2 the casino put together a 30-player, £10+1 event that she went ahead and won, the £120 prize paid for the hotel and petrol. Go the Bag!!

Hope this happens again next year and if it does I hope I can persuade them to pick me.

Here’s the team photo, taken at the start when we were still sober standing behind the trophy we didn’t win:

Front (L to R): RedWineLady, Stu, RiverAsUsual (capt)

Back (L to R): Chewy/Dwarn/Rampton, Crispy, Crumble, BtretAvit, ZeroTime, MrWhizz and Whipit.

The Baglady was too shy to stand in, ahhh.

Well done team, I don’t think any of the others enjoyed it any more than we did!