Well I am sunk; I will head back to Poker Stars, tail between my legs and console myself with the lowly $5.50 SnG and small multis as I have done my deposit in about 4 hours of play at Interpoker.

Now to get the bad beats straight out. Over the course of these 4 hours, I played pretty tight Poker, but was beat 4 times when the villain hits their A on the river on pots $20+, not winning one of these pots hurts, I would expect to win at least 50% of these but lost all four. The last, I get QQ pocket, and raise $1 on pre-flop, get one caller and flop comes 6c3d7c, now while there is a possible straight there, the way the table was playing I doubt it, people limping in with premium or one high card. I am checked to and decided to all-in just to take down this pot and I get called - they flip over AhKd...they got nothing, pot of $39, no flush draw, no straight draw, but of course for the 4th time they hit a river A and there goes another $25 buy-in. So I saddle up again and play for another hour, and long story short my two pair 9Ts all-in (9T7) go down in by JT when they hit their gut shot with an 8 on the river. Yes, I should have known better on this one, but geez I could not take a trick.

Things that I have learnt from this experience.

• Ring games are vastly different from SnG and MTT's (duh you all say). If anyone has some good resources on ring v SnG/ MTT play I would love to hear from you or anything about ring play in general.
• NL Ring games, no matter what the limit, is not the place to learn ring games.
• Do not try playing and learning on a very tight table. I was playing on a table that was only nudging 30% seeing the flop. Which pretty much meant that I was running into premium hands - I was totally the fish over the last two days. Need to be playing on more loose tables. The issue at Interpoker there was pretty much only 1 ten seat table at each limit otherwise they were short-handed.
• You are not trying to knock people out in Ring Games - as dumb as that sounds I think it is important if you play SnG and MTT games. There is no time limit in Ring games, the blinds are not going to go up. There is no pressure to 'make this hand pay' otherwise you are out / low stacked with the blinds about to hit you. All that matter is this hand this pot, if it is not right just get out.
• If you have been playing for an hour and are up $3.50 that is ok, you don't need to be up $1,237,567 for it to be meaningful, unlike SnG where after an hour you would expect to have a good stack and down to final 3-4. Especially if you are just trying to clear the bonus, it is about hands played, so breaking even is fine, just continue to play the hands. All-in is for the nuts! In my cases while pissed they hit their A to win, 4 times, I was never a certainty and should have known better and thought about why I was playing - to clear the bonus, not to win $100 this hand (although that would have been nice to).

So - while writing I have been thinking - am I ready to give this up? Can I learn from this now and get back into the action and try and clear the bonus. I can throw some more dosh at Interpoker and learn from the above and clear the bonus and if (and it seems to be a big if for me) I can play properly with break-even poker the bonus will see me slightly down on my investment. And playing another 500 raked hands may offer some pretty good lessons, hopefully not as expensive. I guess the issue is also that I need to find a loose table to play at, and at 5:30am US ET this may be a little difficult at Interpoker.

I'll give it some thought...

¶ Wednesday, January 11, 2006