Yorky Pud

After running like death for the last 100 or so heads up SNG, I decided to take a few days off from the online poker grind because the constant losing, despite getting my money in good, was really starting to get me down and I was going into games thinking I was going to lose. If that is your mindset then you are doomed from the start.

I logged onto Betfair Poker on Monday and instead of playing HUSNG I found myself sitting down at four six-max cash game tables, the first time I had sat in the new format since they were launched last week or the week before. The cash games on Betfair are generally full of donks but the old five-max format just did not appeal to me but I thought I would give the new six-handed games a try.

I know some of the mid-stakes guys have complained about the games tightening up with the extra player being involved but at the $0.05/$0.10 games where I have been splashing around I can confirm that they are as loose and full of fish as ever. Monday saw me play 704 hands, the most I have played in like forever. I actually only wanted to play for 20-30 minutes but finished up playing for a little over two hours because I was running well and the others at my table were so bad it was worth paying rake just to watch them!

There were villains calling shoves with Ts6c on a 2d-3h-4h-Kh board (I held AhAs BTW), in fact I have been in the right side of at least four pots for stacks where villain only has a gutshot. The play has been that horrible that I have managed to play 1,564 hands since Monday and you know what I am like for not being able to put in any sort of volume. That said I am miles behind John Tabatabai in the grinder stakes as he's played around 80,000 hands this month, but he 10-12 tables whilst I merely play four.

Apart from the shocking players I am quite impressed with the software. It has got a lot of negative press on various forums but the recently launched client seems much more stable and is not as resource intensive as the previous version. Now I can play four tables and have Holdem Manager running and my prehistoric laptop does not try and melt through my thighs! I'm impressed with the speed of the tables too as I'm averaging at 350 hands per hour whilst four-tabling and now that I have managed to figure out how to get my HUD to display properly I may be able to add some more tables and really rack up some hands. My major gripe, and one that you really need to sort out My Betfair Boss if you are listening, is BLOODY AUTO-TOP UP! Everywhere has it now and it is so tilting to have to continually top up my stack, which is quite often as I play quite a lot of hands, plus it highlights when things aren't going well for you as you know you have topped up half a dozen times after whiffing flops. Hopefully it'll come in the next couple of updates as it will certainly help anyone playing more than a single table.

I'm still hoping to play in some of the low by-in tournaments on Betfair but I had to withdraw a decent chunk of my bankroll for the house move so I am back playing just $0.05/$0.10 for the time being, hoping to grind back up towards $500, at which point I'll start to mix some MTTs in and will probably try my arm at HUSNG again in the near future too as I believe these are a great way to build a bankroll pretty quickly as again the players are very weak and you can rake quite a lot which is good for the old rakeback, sorry valueback.

Well I think that's enough for one day. As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!